Do something you love

 

It isn't just what you say that matters. It is what you do.

If all you do is sit and moan, nothing will change. At least nothing for the better. 

There are people who simply do what is necessary to get by and while we all do that sometimes, if you make a habit of it, you miss a lot.

People need to figure out what makes them happy and do that!

That!

Whatever that is: playing with miniature dollhouses, or trains, playing guitar and singing, painting, crocheting, something that is fun to do even if it serves no other purpose. That is part of living.

There is no awards ceremony, that I am aware of, at the end of a life, that hands out certificates for the most work done. There are no martyr awards unless you are willing to die burning at the stake and settle for a paragraph in some distant history book. 

If we have children, we need to raise them so they understand how to get along in the real world. There is work, play, some meditation and some musing, but all one thing and not the others makes one a very dull, and unhappy, person.

Don't just do something.

Do something you love.

Family

 

I try not to over react when my crazy family does something unusual and by unusual, I mean odd, strange, weird, bizarre. 

Some of them are notable oddballs. They do things that are not only not in their best interests, but actually harmful to themselves. 

However it is not illegal to do a lot of crazy things.

It is also not funny, cute, or laudable in any way.

I have one relative who never answers their phone, responds to a text, or listens when anyone talks to them. I have been known to call them, listen to them talk and have them hang up before I get a chance to say why I called! They are not angry with me, they are just so self focused they don't seem to realize someone might call them for a reason.

Tonight took the cake though! My phone rang and I answered it. I repeatedly said, "Hello," and no one responded. I was almost ready to hang up when this person giggled and said, "I thought I was hallucinating. I forgot I called you then I heard this voice coming from somewhere."

This person has a job working with people and I wonder how that works out? 

Our phone call was a jumble of random stories that had little to do with anything I said, or asked. It made little sense. I felt like I was hearing pre-made responses randomly tossed out over and over.  I asked if they were on any medicine and was given only their normal prescription names. 

Now I have an ache deep in my stomach, a sense of foreboding, and the knowledge that there is nothing I can do about it. Experience has taught me that. Sometimes I wish I could just forget I have these people in my life, but it is not that easy.

Mobility

 

When you have an injury that leaves you unable to get around you are one step from a nursing home. I would rather be dead than go there.

I injured my left foot while the right one was healing and found myself virtually trapped!

My walker was five years old and never a very good one. Using it didn't help much. It left the palms of my hands bruised and every step was still agony. 

Necessity is definitely the mother of invention. I discovered I could scoot around on my desk chair and kitchen bar stool. Neither is made for that and neither worked very well on the carpeting, but they were fine for the kitchen and bathroom.

Thank goodness I had recently snugged up my living space, so most of what I need is not too far away, but there were still problems. I used a cane to reach the switch that turns the fan on and off and made a train when the groceries were delivered outside my front door. 

Using the cane, I hooked the groceries off the front patio, put them on the office chair and, sitting on the kitchen bar stool, pushed the groceries back to the kitchen where I put them away. The first time I did it, my sack fell off the front of the chair, the one with two dozen eggs in it, but not one broke!

Today my new walker came, a week early! It is the difference between night and day. I can get around my apartment. I can carry out my trash and get my mail. I can even get to my car! 

I will live to innovate another day!

How did you know?

 

How did I know?    

I didn't.

Yet I did and I did it just right.

Some people call it luck,

Others coincidence,

A few might say it's magic,

But I think it is just paying attention:

To feelings,

And yearnings,

And love flowing between

Those who care about each other.

Touching

 

I want to reach out

Hug you

Hold you

Make it better

But

Emptiness explodes inside me

Filling me with something 

I cannot touch

Cannot feel

It hurts more than I can explain

This wanting

To heal

Your grief

I feel but cannot touch.

Letting go

I have found myself drawn to her from the very beginning. Seeing her play hide and seek with her boy, watching her tirelessly chasing balls, convinced every yellow tennis ball was made just for her!

She has a great life. I don't think anything has been left out. Her parents let her sleep in their beds. They cook for her, take her on long walks every day, arrange their vacations so she can swim in the water wherever they go. And now they have taken the extra long road around her cancer, making sure the quality of her life is absolutely as good as it can be.

Today she will slide out of her large doggie body and into whatever comes next. She will do it at home, surrounded by love and peace, broken hearts and tears of sadness. She will not suffer. She will never suffer.

It is the final step in loving. It is letting go at the very last moment when that is the kindest most loving thing to do.

Maddie

Vibrant eyes

Smiling mouth

Galloping across the grass in radiant wonder

Her panting a mantra of joy

Her presence a comfort

Love on four legs.

Set free

Amusing Grace

 

People are taught to want the common. 

It is easier for the world if everyone wants superfluous things like geegaws and faddish clothes.

Buying new cars and houses and cruises keeps the fat cats fed and everyone else running on treadmills where they are too busy doing the habitual instead of thinking, or really living.

Joy is defined in columns of dollars and cents, files of positive and negative tests, being different like everyone else.

The ultimate success can be seen as winning a gig on The Voice, a husband on the batchelorette, or a promotion in a tall building.

All things can be won, bought, or collected! The right ones are supposed to make you healthy, wealthy, and wise. But do they?

What if what makes me happy is something else? Finding that something could be the secret to a truly fulfilled life. One where I don't have to be or do what I see on television. 

Striving to be what I am not really only leads to failure. Some people were not cut out to be mothers, or teachers, artists, or race car drivers and all the work in the world will not make them successful at that. Not really. If life makes escaping to work, or sleep, feel good, maybe I am in the wrong place doing the wrong things.

Life shouldn't be years of escapism. Joy comes from immersing myself in what I love. 

Grace is not conforming, or even not conforming. It is finding fulfillment in doing what feels right. Not just looking right.

There are Puritans among us

My journey along the way has been long. As a child I was open and vulnerable. Ready to believe whatever was told me, taking it at face value no matter what, finding security in the grown-ups around me. Exposed to religion in bits and pieces, I put together a strange and sweet story based on love, fear and an agrarian society.

My teen years found me romantically searching for truth among the stories of saints and those extreme religious, like cloistered nuns in hospitals. I wanted ritual and order, safety and absolute security.

After my marriage I was drawn back into the religion of my husband and my father's family. Episcopalians are transitional people. Not quite Catholic and definitely not Baptist. But looking back I think it was mostly belonging. The priest drew us in, gave us places in the church, work to do and he tapped into our neediest desires. That belonging lasted through my child raising years.

And then, just as my boys were starting to question and rebel, the people in our new, tiny, upstart Episcopal church began to bend towards the fanatical. Not the priest, he was and still is a person I love, respect, and admire, but many other upstanding members began to stand above and upon the others. There was a dark, grim, satisfaction in suffering that emanated from them, time honored descendants of a Puritanical society.

I did not belong.

In the end this opened the way for me to explore other religious and spiritual paths and, ultimately, a doctrine of my own based on science and being and meditation. This morning, walking across the acorn strewn grass, stepping over and around huge, long tree roots, feeling the breeze gently blowing through my hair, seeing people in the distance fishing, I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging, of being, of a love that transcends time and space and finds the puritans among us to be mere shadows in the light.

The compression of atoms that define this body in time seems of supreme importance to me, but this is barely a spark in the continuum of time. I am. I was. I will always be.

Whether I am aware, or how I am aware, is irrelevant to 99% of what is, but it is important to me now and I want to make the best of it.

A glance at the past

 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2008

What Do You See?

I have to ask my sister. "What do you see?"
I need to know.
Not that I doubt my own eyes, my own judgment, but I want to see through her eyes.
I want to feel the image pressed against her retina, smell the odor of it within the confines of her receptors.
I want my hand to reach out and feel what she feels and he feels and they feel and you feel.

Right here, among us, the creator constantly works. Everywhere, mountains of creations, worlds of creations, simple, plain, ornate in a million different ways, surround us. Each one, only the same one, made again and again. The medium never changes. The hands work with the same level of skill and the skill never varies. Not one is any more precious than the other, not one looks different in its creator's eyes, like a cook preparing innumerable meatballs for a great feast they are all the same, only these are Faberge meatballs, their value beyond comprehension.

Each one shaped with love and exquisite care. Each one honed and fired and decorated and then, just before letting it go, a thumb presses slightly into the cradled object. One thumbprint, a small indentation for identification. A shallow shadow of a place left to hold all the differences that can be. Almost invisible, it is the only place visible to many of us and it is a shape shifter, a reflecting pond displaying our own selves, not the one before us.

How odd that we judge ourselves so harshly thinking that it is someone else. How strange the conclusions we draw from such a shallow place. How bizzare the levels of resentments and pain that pile upon us from something so immaterial, so miniscule and fleetingly fragile. How often do we crack the object during our perusal, imagining a tiny little flaw the creator deemed a signature? This ever changing flicker of uniqueness becomes the visage blocking our view and we spend our entire lives seeking what we are.

And so I ask my sister, "What do you see?" Thinking that perhaps I should stir the soup one more time, this time with my eyes closed so that I may immerse myself in us.

Stifled?

Society is built around customs and conventions. We grow up thinking that the things we learn and do are the right way.

Different is always dangerous because the average person is afraid of it. They don't recognize it immediately, nor do they trust it, but change is part of growth and customs are often just arbitrary things that caught on over time.

Holding a fork and knife a certain way changes depending upon where you live, but as long as the nutrients reach your mouth, nature doesn't care. I care, but that is only my preference. The same goes for styles and colors of clothing. Wearing white after Labor Day was once a great faux pas. That doesn't hold true for everyone anymore. Faux pas are like other customs. They change.

Kitchens were once separate houses, or rooms, behind the house because of heat and fire dangers. Then they were separate rooms closed off from the rest of the house so guests would not see the clutter, but now most of us cannot afford hired kitchen help, so kitchens are part of the living room, or great room.

We transitioned from teepees and cabins to houses, to McMansions, and now some people have gone full circle back to tiny houses. Our need to distinguish ourselves by building bigger anthills has diminished somewhat. We are building homes we find comfortable and not necessarily museums.

Although a home is a museum of sorts. It's the place to display our personality. The key word being OUR. Daring to live and decorate and dress ourselves in ways pleasing to us takes courage. Honestly, there really aren't any absolute rules for living besides being safe and healthy. Buying a book written by someone who is supposed to really know the etiquette for all of life mostly benefits the author.

Stifling creativity for the sake of so called etiquette is lazy. 

That being said, I don't want to see the food in your mouth, or be subjected to your noise unless we agree to share it. Those are some of my personality quirks. 

Balance is tricky.

To the moon

 

I  have occasionally thought about the fact that I am separated from one of my children and, as painful as this was for a while, it has become acceptable now. All my life I have had to separate from those I cared about. 

Our family moved frequently while I was between eleven and seventeen and even if it was only across town a few miles, the new school meant never seeing my old friends again. Looking back I don't understand why my mother didn't find ways for me to maintain those relationships, but she did not and it never occurred to me that I could. Today a ten minute drive to a friend's house is nothing. Back then it was like going to the moon.

I am watching Star Trek Voyager and one of the characters becomes the caretakers for some children who eventually must go back to their biological families. Each time this happens my heart sinks and I feel a deep sadness for her. It didn't occur to me right away that I have had similar experiences.

Foster children are not ours to keep. Other children may move on as adults. People divorce, die, move onto new relationships in other states, there are infinite ways to say good-bye.

Learning to adapt was a necessary part of my maturation process. It might be a little easier for me than it is for some people. I am a naturally hopeful person. I tend to discover the best in most situations. I am malleable and resourceful. I can protect myself by expecting the worst, but that never lasts longer than it takes to find some glimmer of a reprieve.

And for that I am truly glad.

Mind does matter

 

I belong to a Facebook group that shows pictures of our town long ago. Sometimes I look at them and feel a sense of longing that seems out of place.

Born just before 1950, my generation was a transitional one. All generations are to some extent, but mine saw horse drawn milk wagons, tiny mom and pop stores, hot summers without air conditioning and our first forays into space.

Houses still had functional porches surrounded by towering trees to keep things cool. They had big windows and lots of doors for light and breezes and access to outside places to work in hot weather. Garages were still huge, leftovers from when they had been barns and many large houses still took up a quarter of a block of land.

Coal furnaces had to be stoked and piles of coal were delivered through chutes into brick basements that often had dirt floors. Electric chandeliers were often converted gas lamps attached to ten foot ceilings and clothes were washed in old wringer washers dragged into the kitchen on wash day. Later they were dried on clothes lines propped up with long wooden poles.

Families had one radio that people gathered round like we do televisions today and one car, so walking was the most common form of transportation. We still got smallpox vaccinations and polio shots came out, but not before many children were living in iron lungs.

I jumped rope, played jacks, roller skated and rode my bicycle to my neighbor's house where we dragged her toy kitchen out onto the front porch to play. Dogs were not penned up, or tied out, so there were packs of them running, even on the school playground. I was afraid of dogs.

But I had a dog! He was a Scottish terrier, Snorkel, that my father brought home. He followed me everywhere until one night some children happened on him eating on a meaty bone and he bit them. I don't know why, but he was put down after that.

It was a time of innocence. We were all bathed together, played together, fed the wild squirrel bread from our hands and polished silver on the picnic table with a bunch of friends. My girl friend and I pierced our hands with a safety pin and become blood sisters. I had a squirrel tail hanging on the handlebars of my bike and a rabbit's foot in my pocket. We were little savages, but so was everyone else.

During the course of my childhood I had pet rabbits, ducks, fish, frogs, a parrot and monkeys. Once we even had a tiny alligator, but my mother returned him to the store because he preferred his meat rotten and saved it in his little pond.

So many of the things we believed, did and hoped for are no longer safe, politically correct, or even imaginable now. Looking back at it I sometimes feel closer to the world of my grandfather than my grandchildren, but that is the way of the world.

Youth is best defined by its ability to change. The wisdom of old age is mitigated by the amount the mind has atrophied.

Memory Album

 

I found a realtor's ad for the house I lived in from kindergarten through eleventh grade, minus two years in the middle. My grandfather bought it and rented it to my parents so I could go to kindergarten when kindergarten was a rather rare commodity in schools at that time. 

Walking through those pictures sparked a lifetime of memories! There was the corner of the yard that used to have bushes with a path through them. I ran through it on the way home from school on days when I had piano lessons and one day I tripped. I fell so hard it knocked the wind out of me. And there was the sidewalk where I would ride my wagon by putting one knee in it and pushing with the other leg to zoom down the side of the house, or ride my bike and see how I low I could go while turning the corner, before I fell one day and took layers off my knee.

Inside was the mail slot into our foyer with the big glass door to keep the chill out of the house. To the left was the living room and I could still see the baby grand piano in the corner that used to hold our giant Christmas tree, wired into the woodwork so four little ones couldn't knock it over. I could see the windows I had peered out of when my mother went out to build a snowman for us since we were too sick to go out ourselves. There was the wall where our aquarium sat, right by the big television set that had converter boxes and rotator boxes on top so we could watch one of three channels.

The sun porch was painted white, but the bookcases were still there from when my father had his office upstairs. The dining room where we ate every dinner and celebrated birthdays and holdidays had different light fixtures, but I could see where the buffet with it's huge mirror had been. My mother hid a brush in one of the drawers so she could do our hair before we left for school.

The kitchen was much different, but there were the windows our neighbor passed in a trouble light through one night when the power was off. I remember sticking my finger in the empty socket as I pulled it in and getting shocked. Under them was the space where our kitchen table sat. We each had our place. My youngest brother sat at the end on a step stool type chair and sometimes the toast would fly out the end of the toaster and slide all the way down to him! I also remembered where the high chair was and the trash can next to it where one of my brothers threw away a match when he got caught playing with fire. My mother was a hero that day, kicking the burning trash can down the steps and out the back door and ripping the curtains off the wall before the firemen came.

The basement still had the room that was once my dad's office when he was a high school teacher grading papers, and the old enamel brick shower we sometimes used in the summer. Even the toilet on its dais was still here, right in the middle of the laundry room!

I could see the second floor bathroom, pretty much the same as it had been, but no longer pink tiled. And I could see into all four upstairs bedrooms, three of which were mine at different times in my life. Each room full of memories from that age when I slept there. The bedspread decorated with dolls from many lands when I was young, the day bed room with the bright green furniture my mother thought a young teen would love, and finally the deep orange painted room of a young girl in high school with her Nasa clock and so many dreams.

I remember sleeping on brush curlers, using Ten O Six on my face, getting ready for dates and standing there looking at myself in my dresser mirror thinking, this is me?

So many memories waiting in those pictures, it felt like a time machine.

Sunshine

After dealing with problems for two days I was very relieved to have things solved, so I decided to paint something.

I've been picturing some kind of ocean with the sun coming up, or setting behind it, but my skill is such that I never really know how my paintings will turn out. I mentally divided my canvas into three sections and began with my favorite color, cerulean blue. Then I used some deep purple, another color I really love and finally, because suns are typically yellow, I used that for the top. By this time I was getting into it and adding some red highlights to the sun seemed like a good idea. 

As usual I found myself drawn into the process and when I looked up it had been almost two hours, which isn't long for a painting. I usually start like this then leave it for a few days while I just kind of stare at it until I am ready to do more. Sometimes I share it with Bestest or my youngest son and sometimes they make a suggestion. This time Bestest really loved it!

He liked it so much he called me to see if I actually painted it and then told me it was beautiful! He's never done that before and it really made me feel good. In fact, it kind of changed everything. 

Now there is a possibility that someone is going to buy this painting! I would gladly just give it to them, but the thought that they want to pay for it astounds me. I like it. I sit and look at it sometimes, but I honestly don't know what is so different about this painting. Still, the whole experience has been joyful and uplifting. It's like the sunshine in that painting spilled over into my life.

Frustration

I am having to rollover a beneficiary 401K to an IRA.  At least I think that is what I am doing! I have an accountant who has taken care of things like this for me since 1998, but State Farm has decided to make things difficult.

Suddenly the paperwork is not enough. They sent me a vague letter saying I needed to call them, but when I did, the woman wasn't really sure why I was calling. Since I didn't know either, it was a problem. I took the letter to my accountant, but State Farm would not allow her to speak on my behalf.

Armed with information she gave me, I called them back.

Now every time I call I have to go through a text message to prove I am who I am because I have never been able to get their pin number to work on my online account. And every time I called today I got a different person who had a different problem with what was going on. I ended up calling back and forth between my accountant and State Farm's benefits people for first one thing and then another. 

I was finally able to give them the name of the process that satisfied them, the account number for the new IRA, the name of the new company and a name to put on the check they insist must be sent straight to me. But . . . the name of the new company was too long! It would not fit on their check! I asked couldn't they just abbreviate the less important words? Couldn't they just use the name of the company, Putman Fiduciary Trust Company? Couldn't they look at the detailed paperwork that company had sent them to facilitate all of this to begin with? Nope! They needed me to call back with a shorter name that would fit on their check!

I called around and had a name for them, but when I called back I had used up my day's worth of allotted texts for my pin number and they could not accept my call! A woman offered to help me update my pin, which I have been unable to make work for years. She said it was simple. Forty minutes later she gave up too and decided she would pass me on to a 401K representative. (I might mention here that during the course of the morning I had been shuffled from one kind of representative to another, each one ostensibly the ONLY one who could help me. In between I was placed on very long holds waiting for my call to be the next one in line.)

All I needed to do was give him the short name they could type on the check they were going to send me, but he can't do that for 24 hours since I used up all the text messages they allowed.

Tomorrow at 12:35 PM I am hoping to call back, get the right representative, and have them type Putman Investments on a check that will be mailed to me. It sounds simple, but I have nearly four hours of phone calls that say it won't be that easy.

Joy

 

What is joy?

I thought that would be the easy part of this, but joy is elusive. It is light and airy, something that lifts me up like a feather on the breeze. And yet its foundations are forged deep within my past. There is something mysterious and magical about joy. Something indiscernible.

But it is visceral, like my favorite colors or flavors, it is a part of me distinguished by something inside of me for something outside of me.

Joy is what connects the two. It is the peaceful feeling of fulfillment unlike any other. It is a deep, abiding satisfaction that emanates from my very core.

I find joy in the things I display in my living room niche. I also find joy in removing all the unnecessary things in my life. For reasons I do not understand, I find joy in the sound of thunderstorms and rain pelting against my windows, joy in order and the security it promotes within me, joy when gazing at water, or the silhouettes of herons flying by. I find joy in the sound of certain people's voices.

I like many things, but most things that give me joy cannot be held in my hand. 

Only in my heart.

Remembering

 

Who do you remember?

Who are the people who made an impression on you?

I doubt many of you think fondly of: Mable, she had a kitchen floor so clean I could eat off of it, but I preferred the table and plates. Or, Maxine who was always working in her basement. For forty years she worked on that basement! Paid a guy fifty bucks to haul it all away in the end. Or Gramma, who worked so hard all day that she slept the rest of her life away.

Most of us remember people who did things with us. People who built sand castles, or tents made out of blankets we crawled in and out of. People who sat down and looked us in the eye, listened to us and offered some kind of feedback to show they really cared and paid attention.

We don't want to be someone's project. We want people who walk beside us, who interact with us in inspiring or joyful ways. People remember smiling faces and thoughtful words.

All the clean houses and all the big jobs, cracked Humpty Dumpty up and that's no yolk! Remember the story of the Dutch woman who was so clean she scrubbed the faces right off her children? She probably believed that was more important than playing with them. Misconceptions can ruin us. Work is what we do to survive. but it is not enough to define a memorable life.

Do what you love.

People will remember your sparkling eyes, your genuine smile, your love of life.

Coping

 

I read Facebook and see people trying to cope with whatever means they can find.

It's always been this way.

Some people cope by praying. Some by meditating, breathing, drumming, counting steps. Some walk in nature. Some push pins into dolls. Some invent wild scenarios that have meaning to them, but no one else.

In the end it is simply a way of putting time between them and their anguish in the hope that something better will happen.

If things get better? Then that way worked. If they don't? It's time to try a new coping mechanism.

There is nothing like the pain of hopelessness to make folks grab at straws.

Call it faith, religion, cults, curses, witch craft, whatever you like. In the end it has more to do with who you are than how you did it. Your belief makes all the excuses necessary to validate what you cannot control.

And sometimes time allows you to find a new answer, a new way, a better way of coping.

Today

 

Today I left the house wearing two real shoes for the first time in weeks. In fact it was the first time I had plans to get out of the car and go into a store in an equally long time.

It isn't that I am no longer in pain, but the pain is doable if I am very careful and don't over do it.

I went to a drive through and ordered cheese curds and a drink, then drove to my favorite little park. There I pulled up under the shade of a huge old tree and ate my lunch while I drank in the nature around me. I needed this!

This past week was a blur of bad television and sleeping. It got to be a challenge to know what I had even done when I was awake. At my age it could be the beginning of senility. A senility brought on by bad medical practices and unmanageable pain that made every step an agony. Add depression to that and you have a recipe for the end.

Now, after being able to at least sit in the park in my car, then buy some gift bags for my granddaughter's birthday tomorrow, I feel like a new person.

Last night the Doors, The End, ran over and over through my mind. Today I am back in the sunlight wondering how I ever stepped out of it.

In spite of

 

May eleventh, a day that will live in infamy! 

On that day my nephrologist prescribed four new drugs all at once. Each one had a bad, if somewhat delayed reaction, except for one that I only took a half of. Now three months later I am still suffering the results of those drugs, plus I am on massive amounts of anti-inflammatory drugs for my right foot, which was one of the side effects. 

Unable to put any weight at all on it until yesterday, I am going stir crazy staying at home. Tomorrow I go back to my podiatrist to see how things are shaping up. Best case scenario is that the foot stays pain free when the drugs are gone and I can be fitted for new orthotics and shoes.

On May tenth I was happy, feeling good and excited about Bestest coming for a visit. By the time he arrived I was on the decline. For the first time in my life I feel like an elderly person! Three doctors and a dentist have destroyed my health in order to reach their goals for me. 

I am hoping to climb out of this morass in spite of them all. There must be quality of life as well as quantity and just because I cannot achieve the blood pressure that is desirable does not mean I should live the rest of my life in misery.

No show

Today I went to the doctor. Again. I checked in at 2:10 for a 2:20 appointment. No one else was in the waiting room and the receptionist merrily announced that she would let the doctor know I was there.

People came in. People went out. More people came and went and after fifty minutes I finally went back to the receptionist's desk. Now there were two women there, so I asked the other one if she knew how much longer I would have to wait? 

She looked up my name and said, "You were a no show, so you lost your place!" I explained that I absolutely was not a no show.  

An hour later, when I finally got into a room, I told the nurse what happened. She said, "I came to the waiting room, but you were a no show, so I took the next person!!!!!!"

I had to explain what happened - twice - before she acknowledged it! Then she told me my rash might, or might not be due to the medicine, that the doctor would let me know. I explained that there was no doubt that the medicine caused the rash. Then she took my blood pressure and seemed surprised that it was so high.

Thank god the doctor took one look at me and said, "Oh my god, that is definitely an allergic reaction to the medicine."

She gave me a Cortizone shot and a prescription for methylprednisolone, making sure that I knew if it didn't get better she might put me on an extended one.

I went to the pharmacy to pick it up and the guy in front of me never moved in the drive up lane. After fifteen minutes a store rep came out and told all of us to move into the next line as we could. The guy at the window was filling out insurance forms! I have to say, the nice guy behind me stayed back and let me in for which I am grateful.

I am a body attached to a rash and that is an itchy situation.

On Top of

 

On top of everything else that went wrong last week, I turned out to be allergic to the antibiotic my dentist gave me  to fight off possible infection after pulling my tooth. I am now covered, head to toe, in a bright red measles like rash that itches insanely.

Nothing else has improved. I eat poorly when I feel poorly and I do feel poorly!

My toe still hurts even though I can walk with the aid of a soft cast and orthotic shoe. I have to squish my foot through a tiny latex hole in a waterproof bag when I shower and pry it out afterwards.

I am angry!

Angry at all the inconveniences that have erupted from the medical profession trying to cover its a _ _.  It is hard to be sure what is necessary and what is just "in case of."

They don't want to be sued, so they go overboard and my body does not tolerate any foreign substances easily.        

Just shoot me!

 

I woke up before seven yesterday and my blood sugar had dropped down way too low overnight. Stumbling into the bathroom, I sat down and my toilet seat cracked in half! I went to my primary doctor which was relatively productive, then I went to the dentist, who pulled my tooth and put me on an antibiotic for an infection in the bone.

Wearing a face mask always throws me a little off balance. You'd think it was covering my eyes instead of my nose and mouth. I tripped when I got out of the dentist's chair and she grabbed my arm. 

"Are you okay" She asked.

"I just can't see." I said.

That got a pretty radical response until she realized I just meant I was clumsy with a mask on. I paid the dentist and came home, but my big toe which has gout from the nephrologist's insistence on me taking Lasix was so painful, even after a whole course of methylprednisolone, that I made an appointment with my podiatrist!

I am in a cast for several weeks with the hope of wearing some kind of special shoe after that!

I am not asking what next!

Instead I am laughing. What else could I do?

Survival

 

I have been feeling almost human again for the first time since going to the kidney doctor in May! Not that anything he did has anything to do with this. In fact, it is quite the opposite. 

My regular doctor just put me on a methylprednisolone pack and I am four days in. This is counteracting all the damage the other doctor did with his over zealous prescriptions. Thank god I did not let him do all the heart tests and other sonograms he wanted to perform on my legs!

I feel better than I have in months, but I go in to see my regular doctor Tuesday and I never underestimate the ability of a medical person to over react. I just have to be courageous enough to refuse.

In Illinois the fear of a medical mal practice suit is so great that doctors would rather kill you than take a chance on missing something.

I, on the other hand, believe there must be not only quantity of life, but quality. Ten years of the last two months would be grounds for suicide.

But maybe I will be surprised.

Maybe my regular doctor will turn out to be the person I thought she was when I first met her last Fall.

When it rains it pours

 

I have been on a medical roller coaster since May 11th when a kidney doctor I was referred to started me on four new prescription drugs all at once. 

In almost constant pain of one sort or another since then, the latest has been gout! I had it so I went off the offending drug and it went away. The doctor wanted me to retry the drug, but only take it three days a week. I did that and two weeks later came down with the worst case of gout in my big toe I could imagine. It's still there! It won't go away!

Now I have an appointment with my regular medical doctor next Tuesday. I am hoping to clear a lot of things up. I am only on one of the four new drugs the kidney doctor prescribed, but my blood pressure isn't any better and, theoretically that is why I was sent to him.

It's hard to know how accurate any of this is right now since I have lost over twenty pounds, had to go off the diabetic medicine I was on (But I am within pre-diabetic numbers) and someone requested that my 401K be dissolved in September! It wasn't me, so they are trying to figure out what is going on there.

So many issues in the air. 

So many unknowns.

Diabetes. Gout. Blood pressure. Financial security.

The pressure is almost unbearable.

Power

 

It is hard to stand my ground around people I see as power figures, especially doctors. My regular doctor seems to have both feet on the ground. My kidney doctor seems to be an awfulizer. 

No matter what I say to the kidney doctor, he hears a worst case scenario. He hears a murmur I've had all my life and says, "Heart problems! We need to do tests." I refuse. I tell him my toe is swollen from gout that I believe is from his diuretic and he says, "Your lower leg is swollen.  We need tests!" I refuse all but the labs.

I do have bad kidneys, but I do not need all the prescriptions he prescribed the first day I saw him. They produced side effects that have made me miserable for over two months. 

He adds so much stress to my life I think I'd be better off without him. 

Type 2 Diabetes

 

This is a whole new way of life!

Everything affects everything else!

I have type 2 diabetes, but I don't take insulin. I take a pill called Glipizide.

I started out taking ten mg. twice a day, thirty minutes before eating and even then I had to drastically reduce any and all carbs and sugars to make it work.

Now, having lost twenty pounds, everything is different. I am good at eliminating carbs, but because of that and because of the lost weight, my new problem is low blood sugar at night.

My doctor cut the medicine in half. Now it is five mg. twice a day, but two days ago I bottomed out in the middle of the night. My blood sugar dropped to forty, seventy is low, and I was so confused I didn't know what to do. 

It was terrifying!

It happened again last night, but I caught it a little earlier and ate a tablespoon of honey. All of this creates a new problem. When your blood sugar drops really low at night, it rises higher the next morning.

Today I only took one pill in the morning and I added 22 grams of carbs at dinner. I feel like a science experiment. 

It is possible I am going to go off the medicine all together, but we aren't sure yet. I am still want to keep losing weight, but I am also not wanting to find myself confused, sweating buckets, and shaking like a leaf.

My doctor tells me I am moving in the right direction, but the path is shaky.

Single women

 

I looked up best place for single women to move to, or retire to.

It was disappointing.

Every article seemed to assume that the first thing a single woman was looking for was a man!

Surely women have other needs that supersede that one.

I was hoping for things like Meetup groups for women with various interests, or local interests of some sort.

I was wondering about the weather in winter and transportation.

I was looking for a place where an older woman might conceivably make a new life for herself and connect even though her children were grown and she was retired.

I don't know all the things I was looking for, but a man was not one of them!

I am not averse to meeting a man, but it seems to me it should come as a by product of bigger interests. Then if a relationship seems worthwhile, we could pursue it, but the last thing I am looking for is a city far far away that has lots of available men looking for women.

Elegant

I think almost anyone can be good, or bad, but it takes a bit of know how to be elegant.

Elegant is more than a look, more than an action, it is more of a style, a way to do things. 

Being elegant requires someone to know just how much of a flourish is not too much or too little. It must be noticeable without being flamboyant, or garish.

It is that soft rich tone of voice that is not sexy or childish, promising unspoken delights, aided and abetted by sparkling eyes.

Elegant is an art.