Sorting The Pieces

Catching up

2011-12-28T14:06:00.002-06:00

Damn, it's been a long time since I've written an entry for my blog. I'll be honest, over the last few years, this has not been uncommon. What is a refreshed feeling for me is the desire. There's so much I want to share with my friends here. When I left off, I was recuperating from my hysterectomy and basically in a holding pattern, waiting for things that had been discussed, hoped for, dreamed for to happen.

Then, it all happened. A little over a week before Thanksgiving, I moved from my tiny town in west Tennessee to Franklin, TN. Franklin used to be a small, incredibly gracious southern town whose primary claim to fame was that it was the site of what some have called the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Now it's a sprawling suburb of Nashville, home to many country music stars, a place of McMansions, real mansions, homes on the National Register of Historic Places, and the most charming downtown business district I've seen in years. If a city wants to learn how to revitalize its downtown, they need to talk to the people in Franklin.

One day after I moved, with boxes and furniture crammed into an apartment about half the size of my old house, I started my new job. Like my old job, it's only part time, but I have a promise of full time employment here within a year. I'm also making more money at this part time job than I did at my former job and whatever errand running, baby sitting, elder sitting, dog walking, house cleaning odd jobs I could scrape up. (I would go months without a full day off and still often worried if I'd have enough gas and groceries to make it through to the next paycheck.) Best of all, at my new job, I'm treated with courtesy and respect -- something that was frequently lacking at my last job tending the 'zillas of the bridal world.

I am happy and truly hopeful for the first time in years. This isn't the teeth gritting, white knuckle kind of hope that I've had for years. This is the kind of hope you have when things have gone right, and you have reason to believe that other things can go right as well. Here are some of the changes.

My old commute to my primary part time job was 25 miles one way to a strip mall with a pot holed parking lot. I worked every weekend. Saturday and Sunday, when most people normally relaxed, I was up early and dealing with the section of the public that is encouraged to have an entitlement attitude and to think that bad manners are what is expected of them. Now, I drive 2.5 miles down the street to my office. It's located in an antebellum former home. My office was probably once a ladies' parlor. It's small and cozy with twelve foot ceilings trimmed with dentil molding. It has a non-working marble fireplace flanked by Corinthian columns, the mantle immediately over the fireplace is backed by a mirror, and there is a second mantle on top of the columns. It's right next door to the public library (which is four times the size of the one in the city where I used to work, even though the population here is about the same) whose land is dotted with trees that look a century or more old. It's directly across the street from a memorial garden on the site of the battlefield. The state wants to buy the other lot across the street, now occupied by a pizza joint, a tortilleria and Mexican grocery to build a small state park about the Battle of Franklin. I'm also just down the street from a Civil War Museum, and surrounded by houses marked by Historic Site signs.

If I choose to drive just another two or three miles down the street and make a few inconsequential turns, I can drop in on my sister and her family. If I want to drive about 20 minutes the other direction, I can visit my oldest friend. If I drive a little less than an hour south, I can visit my daughter, and upon her invitation, that's exactly what I've done for the last four weekends.

I've been to a great concert (Nashville in Harmony, the GLBT choir in Nashville) at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. One of my friends plays in The Brass Band of Nashville, who were accompanying the choir that night. This is an 80 plus person choir that nearly sold out a TPAC theater. To give you an idea of the scale of the production, the last time I was there, I saw the Broadway touring company of Phantom of the Opera.

I'm getting to go to church again, visiting around on Sundays. I was invited to the Christmas concert at a friend's church, in which she was singing, but couldn't make it because I was with my daughter who got sick that day. I've been able to attend a Christmas Eve candle light service and was invited to two others. One thing that's taken a little getting used to is the church music here. I grew up in a church with a huge choir and a famous within the Southern Baptist Convention choir leader, so good music in church is not news to me. However, when the musicians and soloists are also professional recording artists in Nashville, it's a whole other level of good.

In the weeks I've been here, I've seen more people socially than I had in the previous three years. My life in my last little town consisted of going to a job I didn't like and then coming home to be in a house alone. I truly feared that I had forgotten how to be with people on any level other than professional courtesy. Now, I really do have to look at my calendar and make choices. "Oh, I'm doing this that night. I'm sorry, how is this other date to get together?" That's such a common thing for so many people. For me, it feels like a miracle.

My sister and I are getting along better than we have, well, ever. We can joke with and tease each other. We've developed more respect for each other. On Thanksgiving and the two Christmas celebrations she hosted (one for her husband's large family gathering of about 30 people and one for the intimate gathering of just her and my immediate families), we decorated, prepped and cooked together, and found that it was both easier and more fun when we did it together. Without intending for it to happen, I also became a souffle' queen over the holidays with my carrot souffle', corn souffle and cheese grits souffle' all being hits for the holiday dinners.

The relationship with my daughter is great. She has worked exceptionally hard in college after dropping out her freshman year at Lambuth and then starting over at Middle Tennessee State University. She left Lambuth with a GPA of slightly over 1.0. Her overall GPA now is 2.96. You know what it's like in college. If you start off with a high GPA, it's easier to keep it high. Start off low, though, and it's very hard to bring up. She's done it, and even though she still has at least a year before she graduates, she's looking at and planning for graduate schools. Can I also add that other than this last semester, she's also worked the whole time she's been in school? Yes, I'm proud, and I'm inspired. She, better than anybody, knows just how hard these last few years have been on me. They were just as hard, if not harder on her, but she's managed to move forward.

She's also told me more than once that she is so glad to have me around. She spent the night with Christmas Eve, and the next morning when we were getting ready to go to my sister's, she stopped me in front of the mirror. People have always told her that she was a mini-me. I was the exception, and feature by feature, we went through what she could tell came from me and what came from her dad.

We can talk about him again. We've both felt a good bit of guilt since his death. His behavior became so odd in the last years of his life, but it happened so gradually that until it was truly bizarre, we didn't notice the changes that much. I had thought, before he died, that he had just quit caring about me, his daughter, and his family. I withdrew because it hurt too much not to. C., well, she was a teenager, and he didn't know how to handle his little girl becoming a young woman. Independently, we have both wondered and have finally discussed if he was suffering from vascular dementia. This creates a different kind of pain, but it has made getting over the hurt his behavior caused go a little smoother.

I am moving forward too now. I felt like I was dying in Tiny Town, this empty death in life. More than once, when I was so sick earlier this year, anemic from daily blood loss, in constant pain from daily migraines, I thought that all life would ever hold for me again would be poverty, pain, loneliness and sorrow.

I was wrong. I wake up every day with"Thank You, God" in my heart and on my lips. There are times I find myself crying still, but it's with gratitude. I have a family again. I have friends again. I have a job where I'm treated well, and I've learned enough to know that I am more than my job, and my self-respect doesn't have to hinge on what I do. I have a clean apartment that's just the right size for me, and it's getting more attractive every day. I'm having fun decorating again. I'm living again, more than a just a polite robot at work and a tired hulk of woman flesh collapsed on a not so comfy chair.

I went through a long decade of pain and loss, and now things are looking up. It's just been a few weeks, but I know that good things can come back into a life. I'm happy. I'm very happy, and I've learned that I'm rather strong. I'm very loved, and I've been richly blessed with times hard and good. Thank you again God, and it may feel a few days late for this, but...

God Bless Us Everyone!

Walking my way through

2011-09-30T18:30:00.002-05:00

I did it. It's something I've promised myself I would do. It's one of the few things I've really known I wanted to do for awhile. I finally went to Jackson Madison County General Hospital to walk the labyrinth. They've added so much to the hospital since the last time I was there, including the labyrinth, that I had to ask how to get there. The young man in the lobby wasn't quite sure either, but together we found it.

It's tucked away between three buildings and called the Serenity Garden. The hospital is a high traffic area, but the garden is hidden away enough to be quiet. At the entrance to the garden is a statue of an angel, a dedication plaque to the former president of the hospital and his wife, and an invitation to remember those in need "with a direct intention to God." The labyrinth looks like it was made of gray granite pavers with brick red borders. It's surrounded by large bushes and has four benches around it.

When I started, I took a deep breath and started walking. The other day, I read something from one of my preacher friends who said that her anxiety grows when she's walking inward on a labyrinth. I don't know if it was the power of suggestion or one of the daily, small scale menopausal panic attacks I've been having, or what, but my heart rate shot through the roof. I started pouring sweat even though I wasn't hot. My mind was bumping from thought to thought, and I kept trying to force myself to focus.

I found that I was calmer on the longer, straighter stretches, but when the turns came more frequently, I was more anxious. It was there that I started thinking about how I'd write about this, or what I need to do tomorrow, and then I felt guilty that I couldn't keep a prayer going for any length of time. I felt superficial for thinking about how I'd share this, when I really wanted to experience it. Midway on my way in, I gave up on trying to focus on any intention and just started mentally repeating, "All is well. All is well, and all manner of things shall be well." The repetitive chant helped. My steps slowed, and the interrupting thoughts were easier to push away.

When I got to the center of the labyrinth, surrounding the center circle, I found another plaque embedded in the ground of center circle. This one brought me to a stop. On it was "Be still and know that I am God." Psalms 46:10. On Sunday, the day a little clarity and peace came to me, this was the verse that kept repeating itself in my mind.

My way out of the labyrinth was easier. No panic. No flop sweat. I didn't mind the curves, twists and turns. Over and over, I repeated, "Be still and know that I am God." It surprised me that the way out seemed longer than the way in. When I finished, I took a seat on one of the benches and just sat for awhile. I enjoyed the breeze and the feeling of seclusion. I took another deep breath, got up to leave, and the toe of my shoe caught between the stones under the benches and the edge of the labyrinth, and I fell to my knees.

When I stood up, I was laughing, and I left the hospital with a smile on my face. I want to do this again. When I figure out to upload pictures from the iPad, I'll post them here.

Cancer

2011-09-28T16:51:00.004-05:00

I've been absolutely worn out today. On a day when I'm too tired to make coffee, you know that I'm wiped out. My stomach hurts, and I'm a little shaky. With everything I've read about hysterectomy recuperation, even at this five week mark, that's normal after the busy day I had yesterday. You really don't realize how much you use your abdominal muscles when you drive until they've been compromised. I'm really not complaining. I'll feel better tomorrow because I'm resting today.

What I can't get off my mind is the word cancer. Before my surgery, I knew that it was a possibility. One of the challenges of endometrial hyperplasia is that the lining of the uterus can grow so thick that it can hide cancer. When I saw my doctor the day after surgery, one of the first things he said was, "There was no visible cancer, but we still have to wait for the tissue tests." Now, I know, it was there. It was microscopic, but it was still there. Like all things invisible, it doesn't seem real.

Heaven, help me. Yesterday, when the doctor said that cancer cells had been found, but the surgery had taken care of it, my very first (and well hidden reaction) was wanting a cigarette.

I've gotten off easy, and I know it. I am one of the lucky ones. I've avoided real cancer. My mind is filled with images I don't want to write, and I can't help thinking about the ones who haven't been lucky. Why them? Why not me? And conversely.

I've had a mute prayer going on in my mind all day, for all those who are suffering, for those who are in fear, for those who are fighting, for those who are caring and observing this in others that they love.

Cancer. I've stood in its shadow now, but other than on future technical, medical forms, I can't honestly say that I've had it. I wish everybody who's felt this shadow could have my luck. I'll never understand the randomness with which people are struck with illness and tragedy. It's beyond the capability of my limited mind, and I'm willing to tolerate this as one of the sad mysteries of life. I nearly wrote accept, but that's just beyond the truth. I can't accept it, but tolerate, I must, because there is no other choice.

Friends and strangers who have been lost. Friends and strangers who are struggling. Friends and strangers beginning this journey I wouldn't want anyone to take. You are all in my thoughts, heart and prayers. Especially our dear Robin.

What a day, part two

2011-09-28T09:31:00.004-05:00

With my plumbing dilemma under control, I started to get ready for my appointment. Now, some of the clothes and most of the shoes in my closet, which is connected to my bathroom, were now wet. When I finally found something to wear, I rushed through my makeup and try to get my hair under control. That wasn't easy, since I wouldn't touch the blow dryer ready to electrocute me. Finally, I was ready to leave.

I've known I've needed this surgery since February, but I've had some challenges to get it done. I only work part time, and stretching a part time income to cover a full time life has its challenges. Part time work is not what I'd prefer, but in this economy, it definitely beats unemployment. I've had to plan when and how I could take the time off. My company, like most, doesn't offer insurance to part time employees. I've tried for years to get independent health coverage, but insurance companies refuse to cover me. For awhile, I was able to get Tenncare, my state's Medicaid program, but I was one of the many people they dropped. It was through Tenncare that I was able to join Weight Watchers which contributed to my 100 + pound weight loss that has now been maintained for four years. I actually used insurance when I had it to get healthier, which made it easier for me to get a job and be productive. I've often wondered if I had been able to continue if I would have lost more weight and broken that barrier of medical obesity which disqualifies me for independent insurance. (That was my mini-rant for the day.) Tenncare has made it harder for people to get coverage though.

For a woman without minor children, the only way to qualify is to have either breast or cervical cancer or be at a high risk pre-cancerous stage of either. My condition was called endometrial hyperplasia, a pre-cancerous abnormal thickening of the uterine lining. Now the cervix is part of the uterus, but that specific part was in sound health. It was just centimeters above it where things were going wrong. On a very simplified level, a tiny distance determined my ability to have health insurance.

So enough with the back story, I went to my doctor's appointment. The three hour drive from my tiny town in west Tennessee is gorgeous, especially on a beautiful early fall day, and it took away a lot of my stress from my pre-dawn morning events. I am severely directionally challenged and had Googled directions the night before. There was only one problem. My doctor's clinic has two locations, and Google didn't send me to the right one. I love Nashville, but hate driving around it. It's a city connected by circles of overlapping highways, and if you get on the wrong circle, God help you. The inside part of the city isn't much better, and with help from the clinical staff, I finally got to my appointment two minutes before I was supposed to be there. The full on panic attack had me dripping sweat, so I could forget about that looking good for confidence thing.

Finally back in the doctor's examining room, it was confirmed that I'm healing well and the ongoing soreness, fatigue and abdominal issues are par for the course. What I also found out was that my tissue tests showed that my condition had progressed, and there were definite cancer cells found, though they hadn't advanced to a visible to the naked eye level. What this means for now is two gynecologist appointments a year instead of one for now and there will be no hormone therapy for menopause. My immediate reaction was, "I am one of the lucky ones." If I hadn't had a period that left me hemorraghing with blood rolling down my legs for a week, I would have thought my other symptoms were just normal for perimenopause. I could have ignored seven months of daily spotting and other heavy periods, and this thing would still be growing inside me.

My mood was nearly giddy when I left, heading to nearby Franklin, where my sister lives. Franklin used to be a small town of beautiful historic houses, but it has grown to a large, sprawling suburb. There I got to visit with my nephew, and after my sister finished her work day, she bought me two new and much needed tires for my car. While waiting at the tire shop, I was reading The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry. His beautiful prose on reconnecting to the sacredness of the land of his childhood home took me to a place of deep tranquility. I was sitting outside on a bench. Traffic was heavy, loud and the odor of new tires and engine fumes filled the air. I could have chosen to be stressed and annoyed. It didn't matter that I couldn't see, hear and smell the woods of the fields and hollows that Berry, a master of the mot juste, was walking. I had one of those times when I knew that all places are sacred even when we people scar them. In the most mundane of settings through an exceptional writer, God showed God-self to me, and I felt awed and humbled.

Back to my sister's house and a laughter filled dinner with her family, and it was time for me to hit the road. Now my sister had already spent a good chunk of money on me today. As a get well gift a few weeks ago, she gave me a new iPad 2. Earlier this year, she had given me a Kindle. As a parting gift yesterday, she gave me a cover for the iPad and a gift of cash. I haven't had a paycheck in over a month now, and well, it's been tight around here. She had already paid my last utility bill. Another relative bought my gas for the drive to Nashville and home for the day. All of this made the first hour of my drive home rather challenging because the tears would not stay contained.

I got home about 10:30 last night. My stomach was hurting. I was stiff and sore all over. There was still more water to mop up. Almost all of my makeup and many personal supplies had been ruined in the plumbing snafu from the morning. The cat had managed to open the refrigerator door and have a little food raid while I was away. My dog, who is now ten years old, had not made it through the day without an accident.

All I could say was, "I have been blessed."

What a day, part one

2011-09-28T01:23:00.004-05:00

I've been up nearly 20 hours. I'm physically exhausted, hurting, but mentally so alert that sleep is a good ways away. It's been a heck of a day.

I woke this morning at 5:30. With a doctor's appointment in Nashville, I wanted to make myself look good before my three hour drive. I've been concerned, had a list of questions ready, and dealing with instant menopause has really brought out my anxiety. Looking good helps me feel more confident. Also, the last time my tall, dark and handsome gyn-oncologist saw me, I was less than 24 hours post-op, in a typically chic hospital gown, and my hair was sticking out in every direction it could. Not that I have designs on this young man, but no one wants that image to be the one that someone holds of you.

I headed to the bathroom to start getting ready. That included taking hand washables out of the sink. When I started to wring them out, the sink collapsed through the bathroom counter, the pipes underneath broke, and a jet of water started shooting straight up. Now, remember this is 5:30 in the morning, I live alone, and it's still dark outside. After several futile attempts to turn off the water, I'm panicking. Who can I call this early? No plumber is going to answer the phone. The only person I can think of is the guy who's done my yard this summer. Over the last few months, he, his girlfriend and I have made inroads to becoming friends, but we're far from close.

Within minutes, he's over here and wrestling with that contrary knob. He can't turn it off either and goes to turn off the water outside. The only problem is he doesn't have a tool to lift the metal lid. Back in he comes, tries again and then asks for a towel to try to contain the geyser. That finally works, and he gets the water off. That's when we both notice the hole that my spontaneous bathroom fountain punched in the ceiling, and that the popcorn textured ceiling paint is hanging in sheets. Water is dripping from all over the ceiling. It's running down the walls. It's pouring out of the light fixtures and my plugged in hair dryer. We're both drenched, standing in an inch of water, I'm wearing only the swimming suit cover I use as a housecoat, and the sun hasn't come up yet.

There was only one thing I could say, "Well, fuck-a-doodle-doo."

A good day

2011-09-25T21:32:00.003-05:00

Here I am, sitting at home. It's pretty much all I've done for the last few weeks, well, sit and then clean in spells. For two days after my last entry, all I could do was stay in bed. Recuperation definitely means learning your limits again. What's made that hard for me is that on a good day, I feel better than I have in nearly a year. I wake up with energy, ready to get on with the day, work in the house until something hurts, rest awhile and then do more, because I have the energy to do more. Then I'll have a bad day when I know that despite the nearly invisible incisions, I still have a few hundred internal stitches that don't like being pushed and pulled. The weakness is much better, but unfortunately the fatigue is not. That's due to the insomnia.

I'm averaging about two hours of sleep a night. I cut out caffeine after noon, because the two hours will become minutes caught in snatches if I don't. That hurts. I really want my caffeine. I'm used to two cups of coffee in the morning, a generous soft drink or two in the afternoons, and a cup of Earl Grey at night. A friend suggested that I go to daily wine instead, and that does sound better all the time.

Being at home does get really old. I'd wished for months for some time to get caught up in the house, but not having paid medical leave has meant that being at home is my only real choice. I am determined to do a labyrinth walk at Jackson Madison County General Hospital before I return to work. It's something I've wanted to do for years, and now while I have time, it's time to do it. It's supposed to be a small replica of the labyrinth at Chartres.

We've had beautiful early fall weather here, temperatures in the seventies, low humidity and brilliant skies, and the only real rain we've had has come at night. Lately, in the afternoons, I'll take my iPad to a nearby restaurant. You can't call what they have a patio. It's really the walkway of a mini-strip mall, but they have tables outside and free wi-fi. (The reception at my home is terrible.) I'll sit outside, enjoy my new tech toy. (I haven't learned enough about it to make it a tool yet.) I'll enjoy the breeze, watch the traffic on the four lane highway and feel grateful that I'm not rushing anywhere. Those have been my most pleasurable moments.

Yesterday, I was watching The Tudors on Netflix while out there, and my mind was rambling. What I was finally able to admit is that I've been badly broken and unable to pick up the pieces. Was it just my husband's death? No, but that was a brutal, shattering blow. It's been an accumulation of wounds. I finally admitted all the hurt I'd suppressed while moving from one life challenge to another, not just the challenges. This may sound odd, considering all the whining I've done in this blog over the years. I've sought peace, balance and healing for so long, and I've tried desperately to be strong. Yesterday, though, I finally admitted my weakness, anger and resentment, my shame at what my life has become, how much I hurt, how fearful I've been, the tremendous emptiness inside, and that all my striving to peace and strength has been a front.

I did this calmly, no tears, no self-recriminations, just a straight up confession and dropping of my denial. And then, the peace I've wanted for so long came to me. Now, later last night, I had a doozy of a panic attack (daily panic attacks have been one of my symptoms of instant menopause), but after my heart and breathing returned to its normal rate, the peace was still there. Maybe I just had to step out of denial. Maybe I had to quit making lists and trying to structure everything. Maybe, I just surrendered, and I'm glad I did.

I'm still broken. Certain things still hurt badly. I'll never again be who I was, and maybe I don't need to be. But I'm no longer ashamed of being in pieces. I can see myself picking them all up some day. I don't know when, but I feel like I can.

I've always liked the title of my blog and the image of a life as a quilt. A quilt, though, can be heavy. There are times it can feel suffocating. Tonight, I'm thinking of a mosaic or of stained glass. You can see the breaks in those, and yet, they still form a whole. Sometimes they reflect light. Some times they let light shine through. I can hope for that, and if I cut myself on a jagged edge every now and then, well, that's the way it goes. I'm not afraid of blood, at least not tonight.

Rest and recuperation

2011-09-13T23:25:00.004-05:00

I've been back in my home since Friday evening, and it's nice to be in my own space again. What really feels good is taking the first step to reclaiming my independence. I'm not there yet, but the first steps have been made. I've also been able to help someone else by driving my mother-in-law to her doctor for an outpatient procedure. Being of use is important to my sense of identity, and it helped me more than her. It restored a sense of balance to my inner universe.

The type of surgery I had is called a DaVinci robotic assisted bilateral salpingo-oopherectomy hysterectomy. In short, the doctor removed my uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes through five small incisions. This type of hysterectomy is supposed to have the shortest healing time, and it has surprised me how quickly I've been able to be up, moving around and at how minimal the pain has actually been. It's really amazing that a person can have nearly all of an entire system removed and feel almost normal. Also, you can barely see three of my incisions. (I thought it was just incredibly convenient that they were placed almost exactly on other pre-existing scars.) The other two do have a small infection for which I'm taking antibiotics.

Part of recuperation has been easy enough to make the rest surprisingly hard. The weakness is just odd. After my first trip out, I walked into a wall and couldn't carry a grocery bag holding a two liter soft drink. My legs haven't been strong enough to push down the footrest of a recliner, and I know it's time to lie down when my iPad (a get well gift from my sister) feels heavy. After my three hour drive home and two hours of minor errands, I felt like I did my first day post-op, walking hunched over to protect the belly and waddling from side to side.

Then today, I woke up feeling great. I swept the house from one end to the other. I cleaned the bathtub, toilet, sink, counters and mirror in one bathroom, dusted the bedroom, dining room and living room, finished unpacking my luggage, did dishes, four loads of laundry, went to the grocery story and filled two garbage bags with old files I no longer need. I look at that and feel amazingly productive now. I'm also feeling twinges and pulls in my abdomen. What kills me is that I felt lazy most of the day because I took big breaks between chores.

This surgery has left me an emotional mess, and that is part of the recuperation process. For once, I can say that my swirling moods are exactly normal. It doesn't make going through them any easier, but the logical part of my brain is reminding me not to blame myself for a perfectly natural chemical reaction. At least it is after I finish a crying spell.

I don't go back to my doctor until September 27th, and this is meant to be a time of healing. I'm hoping it will be on multiple levels.

Too many feelings

2011-09-03T20:48:00.002-05:00

I don't know if it's cabin fever, prescription painkillers or hormones leaving my system, or what, but I'm just a big old emotional mess today. I've had a mini panic attack, became so sad I just had to cry for awhile and been so mentally scattered I couldn't center myself enough to meditate or pray. I feel raw and easily bruised and want to pull deep inside myself. I want to wear my hardest shell, but I don't really.

What I want is to feel some joy, enthusiasm and energy. I want to be vibrant, dynamic, interesting, charming and charismatic.

I'd settle, at least for the moment, for not feeling like a failure who's wasted her life and is a burden on her family.

I recently read that the chemicals that cause emotion leave a person's body within 90 seconds. After that brief moment, staying engaged in that emotion is a choice, not a reaction to either external or internal stimuli. I don't remember choosing anything, and that feels like a failure of consciousness and awareness. I feel damned if I do and damned if I don't guilty about everything today, even my very existence.

I'm glad I got the anti-depressants refilled today. I don't want to imagine how much worse this would be with less serotonin in my system. I've done at least one thing right today. Once again, I'm telling myself that has to be good enough for now.

Stuck in idle

2011-09-01T19:13:00.004-05:00

Thursday evening. I'm back on the screened in porch, this time sweating while the sun goes down. I spend my days now rotating between the womanchild's bedroom, the living room, the kitchen and this porch. Before it gets too hot, I'll take a walk. I hit the fifteen minute mark day before yesterday. Yesterday, I found out that was a bit too much right now. I was weak and tired all day. Today, though, other than just a little soreness on two of the incisions, I feel fine enough to wonder why I have to be off work until October. I know something will come along to let me know just exactly why.

I'm just bored out of my skull, and it bothers me that my biggest accomplishment in the last few days has been that my digestive system is now fully functioning again. I've satisfied a long denied emotional need for some time to just do nothing, and I'm ready for more. I'm on my fourth book, and I'm halfway through the second season of The Tudors. I won't even mention how much time I've spent on Facebook. There are six more days until I can drive again, and I'm hoping I can hold out that long. I think this would be easier if I were in my own home. There are a lot of things I could do there that wouldn't violate my lifting limits, but I would have run out of food days ago.

This is a good lesson in patience and gratitude. I'm just not in the mood to be a good student.

Wistful morning

2011-08-29T08:51:00.003-05:00

It's a cool, fresh morning, and I'm sitting on the screened in porch of my daughter's house. The sunshine is filtered through the leaves of a huge oak tree. I've watched the womanchild and one of her roommates rush off to their first day of classes for fall semester while I've sat back, just enjoying the internet. It feels both deliciously and guiltily lazy.

That guilt reflex just kills me. My hysterectomy was only five days ago, but I still feel like I should be up and doing something productive. I'm letting my head lead my emotions though, and I'm taking it easy. Just because I've worked through some not inconsiderable pain for months now doesn't mean I always have to do that. Letting myself heal is smart.

I've crossed a bridge this last week. A hysterectomy is a big life change, but that's not the one I mean. My daughter is taking care of me. She drove me to the hospital and was the one pushing for answers while I was in recovery. She drove me to her house when I was discharged, carried my bags in, tucked me in bed and then went to get my prescriptions filled. She's cooking my meals and making sure I have everything I need. She's really being a complete angel, albeit one with a smart, funny and sassy mouth who will laugh at me holding my swollen belly while I laugh at something she said.

She's doing the things for me that I did for her for years, what I did for my father just a few years ago. In a matter of days, I've gone from being a middle aged woman (feeling my age, but definitely not old) to being the older generation in need of care. I know that physically, I'll get back to the other side of the bridge. It won't be long before I'm driving, cooking, cleaning and taking care of myself again, but the time may come again when I will need help. Will it be up to my daughter to take care of me again? That thought is a little sad and scary. I want to be the one helping her.

I'm not ready to hand over this baton and say my time of action and independence has come to an end, and I can't help but feel I've had my first taste of what will inevitably come.

Question #3

2011-08-15T00:15:00.004-05:00

What do you consider to be the big question or conundrum of your life?

That is Robin's third question. It's one hell of a question, and I had very good reason to be scared about answering it. I've known the answer to this for a long, long time, and I don't like it. The easy answer is that I'm stuck. I can put it a lot of different ways. I've misplaced my mojo. I've lost my groove. I got confused or scared or tired or overwhelmed or lazy. I was defeated, or did I surrender? Probably some combination of all of the above.

With the few people who still read my blog, I don't have to rehash everything that got me to this point. Y'all know it's been a decade long stretch now of illnesses, deaths, losses, some bad decisions, some necessary but painful decisions and just general changes for the worse that have left me literally sick, tired, poor, alone and figuratively disconnected on intellectual, emotional and spiritual levels. I like to think that I've fought a good fight, but I'm just not getting anywhere.

I feel powerless, and I don't like it. I know that I need to change. I have both memories and dreams of how life can be, but I'm absolutely clueless about what to do to get out of the position I'm in. When I get a hint about what I need to do, I muddle about until I'm hip deep in procrastination and panic. I've even wondered if I'm subconsciously sabotaging myself.

For example, the day before the last scheduled date for the hysterectomy, I had an appointment for my dog to be put to sleep. That morning, the womanchild called and said her roommates would let her keep him. She then drove three hours to pick up Zorro, and to meet her, I rescheduled an errand running job that would earn me a few bucks. I had to work to have the gas money to make the drive to the Nashville area for the surgery. After I finished that, my oil light came on, and I had to have a last minute oil change. When I finally hit the road, I got stuck behind two tractor-trailer wrecks, and a three hour drive became five hours. It was obviously not a good day, but I was supposed to drink two bottles of a laxative that day, and I forgot. Everything I did that day I absolutely had to do, but what would actually help me accomplish a bigger goal got lost in everything else. Similar events happen often enough that I'd have to be completely blind not to notice.

I don't want to be the turtle on its back. I want to get back on my feet and moving forward on my own power. Right now, it just feels like I'm flailing, and that is my conundrum.

That's nice

2011-08-12T09:42:00.002-05:00

With Kat, Lisa, Nelle, Robin (God bless her courage in continuing to blog),Mary Ellen, Jackie, and Judi and me all actively blogging, I had a thought last night.

We've got the band back together again.

Maybe, some more old AOL bloggers will get back in the swing of things too.

Question #2

2011-08-11T19:50:00.005-05:00

The other day Robin posed an question. These were my responses.

Five Colors: Red, Blue, Green, Purple, Beige

Five Cities: New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, St. Louis, Washington D.C.

Five Landscapes: The Smoky Mountains, The Grand Canyon, The Gulf Coast, kudzu covered trees, a cotton field at harvest

Five Interiors: A fireplace hearth, a sunlit kitchen, a church sanctuary, a library, a reading nook

Five things you might wear: khakis, turtleneck, scarf, loafers, pearls

She promised more to come, and boy did she deliver.

The first question is: Within each of your groups, do you see commonalities?

Before I answer the questions, my lists are composed of the first things I thought of in each category. I didn't think them through. I just responded.

In the colors, the common attributes of four of my picks are obvious. They're strong, vibrant colors. In the shades of those colors that I thought of, they're speak out loud notice me colors. They're colors that I like for my wardrobe. They set off the black which has always been my staple color. They're the colors that draw my eye in art. Then there's beige, boring, bland, the color of government buildings, oatmeal, tapioca, nearly invisible beige. In comparison to the other colors, its very blandness makes it stick out like a sore thumb. Well, that could be a common characteristic, but if you look underneath that, a neutral color has to be strong enough to hold up against stronger colors. Too many bright colors can be overwhelming. A strong neutral is needed for an anchor. There is the true commonality. It's strong.

With the cities, music, art and heat are what draw them together. So many good memories. I can see my husband and me at Blues Alley on a hot August Night listening to an absolutely smoking guitarist or sipping lemonade in June at Preservation Hall to the tunes of old school Dixieland jazz, waiting to get into the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. We wandered the Parthenon together in Nashville, enjoying the respite from the heat on another fun day. During an outdoor wedding in Nashville one summer many years ago, within sight and hearing distance of the Parthenon, Medea was being performed. We laughed together over that irony. In New Orleans, I dragged him to every museum we could get into with the promise that I would still dance all night. Museums have always been one of my passion, and I remember walking the mall in D.C. with my sister and her ex, telling them we absolutely had to see the Rodin exhibit, even if it was late and we were tired. In St. Louis, the memory is my husband and two of our closest friends at a museum and wandering through its gardens while I was heavily pregnant, then later listening to Alan play his guitar. All of these memories, as is right for a southern woman in summer, are drenched in sweat.

With the landscapes, I think the common element is that they can bring about a quiet sense of awe. The Smokies for me have always been a place of tremendous peace. When I read Philip Levine's Our Valley, I knew exactly what he meant.

"They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified."

It's what I feel when I see the ocean before me. It's what I imagine I'd feel at The Grand Canyon. The kudzu covered treescape and a cotton field at harvest aren't quite so magnificent, but it's there. The ability of kudzu to grow, cover and transform anything is amazing. It creates completely natural, organic sculptures that can be beautiful or grotesque, and trying to conquer kudzu is a reminder of the weakness and futility that a human can hold within herself. Allow yourself to truly observe a massive stretch of kudzu, and it can induce a sense of awe. I live in cotton country, and cotton in fall is a thing of beauty. Cotton takes a long time to grow, and all summer long, it will be green and leafy, and then suddenly (unless you're out in the fields daily), it seems that those fields have turned white. When you just can't bear the heat anymore, and stores are selling sweaters that only remind you of the daily humidity, you can drive by a stretch of white that just goes on and on and remember the hope of a crisp winter morning.

With the interiors, the common element is comfort. Each feels peaceful, calm and welcoming to me. In any of them, I feel like I can retreat to my own inner self or join with others. (A perfect little nook for reading has two comfortable chairs.)

For the clothing, that's my favorite casual attire on a cool, autumn day. Just take your choice of pearls or a scarf.

Robin has more questions. I'm almost a little scared.

Another dream

2011-08-08T11:46:00.004-05:00

While my waking life consists of waiting and routine tasks, my dreaming life seems to have escalated. Last night, I dreamed that I returned to college. I was the age I am now and was returning because I hadn't completed my bachelor's degree. In real life, I graduated and went on to graduate school which I did not complete. I was moving into a dorm and surrounded by young, hopeful girls, feeling quite out of place but hopeful myself.

My adviser from my undergraduate days came to my dorm room and told me how glad he was that I was finishing my degree and that I had too much potential not to finish. He also insisted that I sign up for his class in women's studies, a course not in his academic discipline He was one of my favorite professors in college, but I was always nervous around him. He always challenged me to think and consistently called me on mediocre work if he thought I could do better. I always wanted his approval and felt like I had lost it when I let my parents talk me out of taking an internship.

Later I was heading off to that class and realized that I was both late and didn't know where the class was. I went to an office that looked remarkably like the office of my high school to ask directions. On my way there, I was met by two of my other favorite teachers, one from high school, one a former business supervisor. They told me that I needed to come with them. I said that I didn't know they knew each other, and they answered that they all knew everybody here.

We headed off together to a small hill that had been covered with people's artwork. We headed up a slope that was made of masks. Their surfaces had the texture and color of burnt metal. Each mask showed a blank face whose expressions only differed by the shape of the mouth. There were hundreds of these masks, and they had been placed like paving stones, creating a surface like curved fish scales leading up to a sharper rise. At the base of this rise was a ledge wide enough to walk. The vertical area was a glassy black, like obsidian, and had been carved by different artists into different pictures and shapes. I remember running my hands over what looked like a carved basket. The other part of the hill was made of a rough, uncarved white material like limestone. We sat on the ledge and leaned back against that milk white surface, and my teachers turned to me and said, "Now, read the moon." I looked to the left, and there was the moon, out in broad daylight, closer and larger than I've ever seen. It was like I was looking at a large building, not a distant satellite.

At first, there were words on the moon that soon morphed into the familiar shadows we all know from the moon. As I laid back and stared at the moon shadows, trying to understand them, I looked down and saw a city far beneath the hill I was on burst into flames. My teachers then said, "Welcome to Israel."

I jumped up, and my teachers were gone. My sister and oldest friend came up to me and said, "You have to leave now. It's too dangerous." I insisted that we had to do something. Suddenly we were inside a building that contained a scale model of the burning city. The buildings that were burning in the real city were burning in the model as well. I would identify which buildings were on fire and communicate somehow where help was needed to the people actually working to extinguish the fires.

Then I woke. What gets me about this dream is that this is the second time I've dreamed recently that I returned to college because my bachelor's degree hadn't been completed. Seeing my degree on my bedroom wall this morning was a real comfort. The teachers in my dreams have all died in real life. My sister and friend are still very much alive, and both are pretty much always there for me. The hill of art was beautiful and compelling, but the masks in retrospect are disturbing. It bothered me to walk on someone else's art, especially since it seemed damaged. I remember wondering how many artists had carved on that hill, and just what I was supposed to read on the moon. And Israel? Just what was that supposed to mean?

My subconscious mind is fun and disturbing, and I love remembering my dreams. Isn't this a fun one to chew over?

What a dream

2011-06-27T21:44:00.003-05:00

Sleep and me, it's complicated. I crave it. I think about it with such longing that I can feel my desire. The images obsess me. Visions of pillows, plump and encased in eyelet trimmed white linen, cool, soft sheets tousled around me, a fluffy comforter carelessly kicked to the foot of a bed fill my mind. (The ones I imagine are, of course, not the ones I own.) I can see myself, one arm tucked to my chest, the other sprawled out, my hair tousled and my eyelids flickering as I dream. I feel like a teenager who has a crush on a totally hot boy who doesn't know she's alive.

For weeks now, I've been sleeping in snatches, an hour or two at a time at the best. The last few nights though, that totally hot boy and I actually held hands. I haven't been able to get to sleep until very late. This morning, I actually saw the sky begin to pale before true sunrise before I got to sleep. When my eyes finally closed though, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Not only did I sleep, but I dreamed, wild, fun, happy, and bizarre dreams. Best of all, there are snatches that have hung in my memory.

In one, I met a man at my work place. It was love at first sight, and we married. Then we moved to Tonga, yes, Tonga. We lived in a small house, and I distinctly remember a couch upholstered in a bright green and white stripes. I can see light pouring in through windows adorned only with long, sheer white drapes, pulled aside to let in the sun. We were happy, and I had many friends. I remember one woman in particular, plump, brown with long, straight black hair and a huge smile. I remember us laughing on a beach with children playing around us. Other than being set in Tonga, it was normal, day to day life, and it was wonderful. It also felt exceptionally real. We were there, for a clearly, specified time of five years.

Of course, the best dreams always have their touch of the bizarre. I worked in a small, run down hospital. There were rodents, small cute, fuzzy rodents who lived in the walls. One doctor, a wise old man, balding, with a gray beard and glasses, let them play under his desk. I felt tremendous affection for him, but his tolerance of these fluff balls, in a medical environment bothered me. Rodents weren't the only animals there. Behind pipes, in corners, closets and other places, I'd find snakes. It was always one snake at a time. They were different types and colors. I wasn't afraid, in my normal yelp and goosebump way, but deeply respectful of their space. They were snakes, after all. The largest snake was found in the darkest corner, and it was pure white. I remember, the texture of its skin, its black eyes, and its flickering tongue very clearly.

At some point, I woke up from this dream and was at work, telling my co-workers about the convincing reality of the dream. I was cautioned about flirting at work. It's important to remember that I work in a bridal boutique that does not handle men's wear, not exactly a rocking place to meet single men. About the only men who do come in are grooms to be (young enough to be my child) or the occasional father of the bride, torn between the beauty of his little girl and the size of the check he's about to write. The idea of me flirting with any of them is ludicrous. I also told them that the man in my dream and his fiancee' were on our appointment book for the day. That's when I woke up for real.

I always have to analyze a dream when I remember it. What surprised me the most was Tonga. Why did a specific place I know nothing about pop into my dream? The name was vaguely familiar, but I had to Google it. It did look like the paradise of my dream, but the only snakes they have there are sea snakes. I could definitely use some beach time, and I have been craving something different from the numbing sameness of my days now. From Tennessee to Tonga, well, that's definitely a change. Love, marriage and happiness... the happiness I definitely want. Yes, I'd welcome more love in my life, but I'm not actively searching for it. Marriage, don't think so. More friendship and laughter, yes, oh yes. I love the dream within a dream here and hate that I automatically thought of Inception when I realized the layers of my dream.

I had to look up the symbolism of the most specific images. One dream dictionary said that beaches represent the spiritual approach to life, since the beach is the approach to the ocean, the source of life. The clearest image of the beach was of me and my friend sitting, watching over and enjoying children playing there. It was both peaceful and joyful. Hospitals were said to symbolize your state of mind and how it affects your health and healing. This is a good time to point out again that the hospital where I worked was small, shabby, in need of repair and infested with rodents and snakes, both of which can symbolize cancer. Well, I'm working on the state of mind, and I will get that hysterectomy sometime this summer. Snakes can also be symbols of re-birth, power, wisdom, the ability to counsel and cunning. That white snake is not an image I'll forget any time soon. This isn't the only dream I've had featuring snakes lately. I also keep running into them in real life, four times in the last couple of months. The sunlight was a constant in the dream, and it is supposed to represent healing. I'll take that. Two colors dominated my dream, green and white. They showed up in the furniture, the beach, the ocean, the leaves of trees, mats woven from those leaves. They were everywhere. Sticking to the same dictionary, it said that green, as the color of the heart chakra, symbolized healing of the heart. White, of course, is the color of purity, but it also represents faith, hope, confidence, enlightenment and perfection.

If my feelings on waking weren't proof enough, I'd say this was a very positive dream. Even more hopeful is the movement from dream to reality within the structure of the dream itself. It makes me anticipate my waking hours, but right now, I'm going to try to go to sleep.

An unexpected pleasure

2011-06-06T23:58:00.003-05:00

I wanted to post this picture just because I love it. Last night I was web surfing for art nouveau paintings and found architecture instead. I don't know what the name of the building is, but it's in Riga, Latvia. Isn't it wonderful? You know in a heart beat that it's European. Now, granted my knowledge of architecture wouldn't fill a thimble, but I just can't see an American putting a face that large on a building. Even though the expression is somber, I think the architect had to have had a wonderful sense of humor, whimsy and play to have included it. I just feel like an American, even of the same era, would have been more practical and exchanged beauty for more functionality. I think that if I walked by a building that looked like that every day, I'd usually smile. Then again, it might eventually play on on my subterranean paranoia. I think it would always make me feel something.

Answering myself

2011-06-06T20:18:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I asked myself some big questions, and I'm not going to chicken out this time. I'm going to give myself some answers. For an introvert, it's easy to come up with these questions. For a depressive, it's not even second nature, it's first nature. What I usually do is just let one question lead to another until I've amassed a hoard.

I chose that word intentionally. One of the worst things the womanchild and I can call each other is a hoarder. We've lived through that and had to spend weeks getting rid the stuff my husband had gathered. Even now, when she comes home to visit, a planned activity is getting rid of the stuff I've accumulated. (Do I really need four cast iron pans designed just for cornbread sticks, even if they did all come from grandmothers?)

I want to do that with the mental clutter as well. I'm afraid that I've taken the adage that the unexamined life is not worth living too seriously. I've examined a lot, sometimes scouring for deeply faded memories for just more fodder for the mental grist mill. Let's get rid of some of it, or at least box it up somewhat neatly. So here we go....

Do I fear my own lack of competency? That's one of those that is both easy and hard. The easy answer is yes, I do. Why I feel that way is more complicated. I'm one of those people who basically does things well. Other than anything involving serious math or athletics, I'm pretty good at whatever I set my mind to. I'm reasonably intelligent and know that I have talents and limits. I'll never be the type of cook who can go into the kitchen, look at what's in there and just whip up a delicious meal. I've always been able though to follow just about any recipe and make a dish that people ask me for the recipe. I've always fallen into some training responsibilities at every job I've had because I can help people become better at what they do. As a very shy young adult, I followed a career path that led me into sales and found that I am good at a job which requires putting your personality out there constantly and using persuasion skills. These aren't the only examples I can cite. So, I have proof that I'm competent, and that niggling, undermining lack of belief in myself is still there. I've used this before as a tool, sort of an 'I'll show you' to prove something to myself.

I can do it again, but I think that there has to be a more positive way. I'm terrible about getting stuck in the past, and there have definitely been things in my life to undermine my self confidence. What I've come to realize is that forgiveness is a chore I have to tackle. I'm not in the forgive and forget school of forgiveness. Forgetting is too high a price to pay. Forgetting would change the person I am, and underneath all the garbage I've piled up in my mind, I basically really like who I am. Forgiveness, though, is a path to peace. It both comes from and increases our ability to love. Plus, I can never forget this. If I am to live as a Christian and not just call myself one, forgiveness is my responsibility. I cannot legitimately pray 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us' if I am not working on forgiveness.

It's not easy. There are words and events that still hurt. There are people I've loved, trusted and admired who sometimes taught me that I wasn't good enough. That probably wasn't the intent, but it has been the affect. One thought has come to me over and over though, you can't fault someone for giving you the best they have even when it's damaged. We are all flawed, hurting people who come from flawed, hurting people and choose to involve ourselves with more flawed, hurting people. It's a universal condition of being human.

Forgiveness won't change that, but I do believe that forgiveness can reach into the past. I don't think that it will blur and soften the old, hurtful images. I actually think it sharpens not the picture but our vision. It lets us take in more information, understand more and eventually gain more peace. I also think I've going to have actually make myself focus on forgiveness every time of those old, self-negating thoughts comes into my head.

Burning

2011-06-06T01:07:00.003-05:00

The temperature reached 99 degrees here today, tying a record high for the day. That's the second time a temperature record has been tied here this month.

Like my beautiful friend here, I did the same thing, indulging in long, loose, flowing clothing and a nap. For the latter, I do feel just a little guilty. I wonder if I'll ever get over the feeling that my waking hours should all be spent in something productive, and that my sleeping hours should be limited to night time only.

For someone whose guilt reflex shifts into gear for lack of productivity, I seem to be getting very little done lately. I work efficiently at my job. I don't waste time, and I look for ways other than my defined work duties to help. My co-workers have kidded me that they never had to order so many dusting supplies before I started working at the boutique. Let me get home though, and the story changes.

I'll look at the mess, think I absolutely have to do something about this and start on a chore. Before I get too far into it, the feeling kicks in that there has to be something more to my life than this. So off I go in search of some inexpensive pleasure -- a book that will divert and not take my emotions to some place I don't want them to go, a dvd that hasn't been viewed too often to wear off its charm, a witty observation from a friend on Facebook. It can be almost anything to keep my mind going to the dark paths it finds so easily. It doesn't help though. My work and my diversions all feel meaningless, and that's what bothers me the most.

I've given up on quite a few dreams in my life. Some were intelligently relinquished because I have learned a thing or two as I aged. Others have been painfully sacrificed, but I've never given up on my life having meaning and making a contribution for the greater good. That leads me to the big question of why I'm not doing more about it. I confess I'm afraid of answering that question.

Do I fear my own lack of competency? Do I fear what I'll have to sacrifice to do something meaningful? Is it just more comfortable to be miserable than to change, and is change really possible? Do I really deserve a life better than this? Do I really have anything to offer? What if I do make the changes, and nothing is better? One question always leads to another, and it's only because I've been back on anti-depressants for about a month that I've even had the guts to ask these questions. The structured, organized part of myself is calling me to create my traditional lists. My more poetic side is yearning for dreams that could contain hints, clues and signs of hope.

I chose today's painting for the suitability of its title for our local weather. I had no clue what direction I'd head when I started writing. I just wanted to post that picture, and I like where it's taking me. Just writing down the questions has made me feel a little more hopeful that the serenity the painting shows is possible for me.

The painting is Flaming June by Lord Frederic Leighton, 1895.

Everything old is new again

2011-05-30T21:49:00.002-05:00

I have been sorely lacking inspiration for quite some time now. I've felt dumb, dull and petty. I've tried to read good books to get the brain in gear but just haven't felt up to it. Anything more than just amusing, diverting or (on spiritual matters) simply written and affirming my own beliefs sent me to places I didn't want to go. Despite a small but nice collection of art books, I haven't even indulged that love. As for music, I keep going back to the same old favorites. As wonderful as they are, they and everything else in my life have been too damn familiar. There's been nothing new, nothing intriguing, nothing that caught my mind and made it want to go wandering.

The itch to write tonight was strong, but the question as usual, was 'what do I have worth saying'. Then I thought about how I used to post paintings on my blog and how much I used to enjoy that. It was just fun, and it usually opened my eyes to seeing things in different ways. So tonight, I went to my old, reliable site for art, CGFA. I scrolled through classical paintings of scenes from mythology and the Bible, thinking that I was wasting my time. Then I found this little gem. It's called The Librarian, and when I saw it, my heart just felt lighter. I loved its whimsy and gentle mockery, and I thought it had to be early twentieth century, some surrealist contemporary of Magritte.

Was I ever surprised. The painting was done in 1566 by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. (That is just a wonderful name. You can almost taste it when you say it out loud. I want to describe it like one would a wine, round, full bodied but with notes of brightness.) This little gem was done nearly 460 years ago. It's so easy to think of people from that long ago in two dimensional terms. Even lover of history that I am, their lives seem as foreign to me as an undiscovered life form from a yet unknown planet. My mind shapes them in two dimensions -- flat pictures of people in odd clothing easily dismissed in this cynical, sarcastic, fast paced, information overloaded time.

They were more than that though. This delightfully twisted sensibility I'd felt had to be a hallmark of the recent past is actually ageless. As is humanity. As are all the feelings of despair, hopelessness and powerless I've felt for so long. As is the possibility of seeing something familiar in a new way and feeling a little bit more alive.

After the storm

2011-05-26T01:05:00.002-05:00

One o'clock in the morning, and I'm sitting here yawning. While usually uncomfortable, tonight, this just feels right. I'm in that lovely in-between phase, gently tired enough to welcome sleep when it comes but mentally mobile. My mind feels limber and supple in contrast to the stiffness in my feet and knees. It's a pleasure to feel free of the late night worries that too often accompany this hour.

Part of this is relief that the latest storm seems to have passed, and my home and I are still intact. I fret more about tornadoes than in the past. When the winds are up, I can't release a tension that's a mixture of attentiveness and helplessness. With a funnel cloud on the horizon, I become grumpily fatalistic. If it's going to get me, there's nothing I can do, but I don't have to accept it cheerfully. That agitation settles under my skin as I debate between hallway and bath as my best refuge and look ruefully at the old pin oaks lashing about in my front yard.

The winds did settle though, and despite the occasional thunder rumble, the general quiet of the night is a balm. I feel peaceful and hopeful. Tonight, a future different from this dreary and rather grim existence of mine feels like a reality that's just a few steps away.

I shall never grow so old again

2011-05-19T23:01:00.003-05:00

A few weeks have made a big difference in the way I've been feeling. My blood pressure is down, and it's been over two weeks since I've had a migraine. Best of all, I no longer feel hopelessly depressed. It doesn't mean that the problems aren't there, that I don't worry about them or experience some sadness, but I'm not overwhelmed by them. I'm not constantly plagued by self-critical thoughts, painful memories and questions of what might have been, and I'm not crying every day. A thought about my husband will come into my head, and I won't be flooded with loss. There are times I even feel lucky to have had our good years together. Anti-depressants are such a wonderful gift.

My actions haven't caught up with my feelings, but it hit me today that I didn't feel old for the first time in ages. One of the hardest things that happened after my husband died was that most of my friends just disappeared. My closest friends moved away, and phone and email are not the same as hanging out together and being gently hectored to not go hermit. What hurt was that my local friends disappeared as well. The only people in this town who have maintained more than saying hi in the grocery store contact have been my mother-in-law, her sister, and a neighbor who's over 80. No one else, and I mean no one, in the town where I've lived for 13 years now, has even called me on the phone since the funeral. I work primarily with women in their 20s and when I see someone away from work, they're most often from my parent's generation. Seeing people around my own age is a rare treat, and sometimes I forget that there can be more than just monitoring how I'm hanging on to existence.

It's time for me to quit being such an old lady, and I think I know the first two steps. Remember who I am and imagine who I really want to be. This storm of loss and sadness is beginning to clear, and what I can see now is that I am funny, sweet, sensitive, smart and enduring. Who do I want to be? I want to be more social. I want to be more creative. I want to be in greater command of my body. I want to smile and laugh more and enjoy those lines around my mouth and eyes. I want to take a yoga class without feeling self-conscious and paint my walls strong, vibrant, happy colors. I want to spend time gazing into a fire, and I want to get back to a beach. I want to get a decent haircut that makes me feel cute, sassy and maybe even a little sophisticated. I want to live in a decent sized city.

It's a rough sketch, but isn't that where masterpieces begin?

Making what I can from a boring night

2011-05-06T21:17:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting here yawning so big my jaw is popping as I open wide to take in more air, quite the picture of feminine delicacy. I'm tired, bored and some chat board troll comment,'only boring people get bored' is rolling through my head. There are at least six new books on the Kindle, but none of them has the appeal that they did when I clicked the buy button. Every DVD in my collection has been viewed so many times I can't stand another repeat. It's nights like this that I miss television.

I'm better off reminding myself that I actually do have inner resources. I actually had a flash of those earlier today. I was taking my pills and thinking that this was a good first step to pulling myself out of this quagmire. The physical, mental, emotional and spiritual are indelibly intertwined, and when one goes down, it's easy for the rest to follow. Addressing the physical is always the easiest for me. It's tangible. It's quantifiable. I've been taking my medicine for 10 days, and my blood pressure measured 127 over 79 today, a significant, measurable improvement.

A decent beginning always makes you ask what should the next step be. Physically, I know that it has to be gently increasing my physical activity. Today my resting heart rate was what my optimum target heart rate for aerobic exercise should be, but sitting on my fat fanny won't do me any good. There has to be a cheap beginner's yoga DVD out there somewhere.

Addressing just the physical though won't do me any good though. I have to do something about my inner life. I've re-read some older blog entries lately, many of them written when I was seriously struggling. My last ten years have seen a good share of struggles, but what came through to me is that I always had three things going for me. I was willing to look at multiple sides of an issue. I could usually find something to spark my gratitude, and I've been able to laugh at myself. Those are not shabby gifts, and I'm going to exercise them more.

Something else I intend on exercising more is my self-discipline. For years, monitoring my emotional well-being was as routine as brushing my teeth. When I felt the darkness creeping in, I'd start the mental exercises to stop negative, self-destructive thoughts in their tracks. Instead I've indulged them, fed them questions that could lead to more self-criticism. When I'm deep in a funk, I lose my personal organizational skills. (Funny how this never happens at work. If anything I'm more compulsive there when I'm feeling really down.) It's time to start up short, realistic daily lists again. I need to write them down and feel the satisfaction of scratching the items off as I complete them.

One thing I'm proud of over the last couple of years is maintaining most of my weight loss. Granted, I re-gained close to 40 of the nearly 150 pounds I lost, but I've fluctuated that much in just a couple of months before. As it is, I've maintained over a hundred pound weigh loss for over three years. I still have a lot more to lose, but I've accomplished something already with my weight loss and maintenance, and I deserve to feel proud of it. Giving myself credit when it's due is good for me when I'm down.

It wasn't my intention when I sat down tonight, but I think I've just made my first new to do list. I love when something comes out of my rambling.

2011-05-03T20:22:00.002-05:00

Last week, fed up with the constant migraine, I went to the doctor. I'm glad I did. My blood pressure and heart rate were ridiculously high, 183 over 137 with a resting heart rate of 104. It scared me. I have a friend, another migraine sufferer, who's just a few years younger than I am who recently had a stroke.

I'm following doctor's orders and taking my prescriptions, including the gratefully received anti-depressant. I'm also rather compulsively monitoring my heart rate. I once heard someone say, in reference to the heart, that all pumps are pre-rated, and I can't help wondering how many beats I've wasted due to stress and not taking better care of myself.

That is really the heart of the matter for me. I'm terrible at taking care of myself, and it saddens me because I was really pretty good at taking care of other people. At least, I think I was. I'm not so sure of that anymore. There are so many things I'm unsure of now.

I'm holding onto hope though. Maybe I can start feeling better. It's been almost a week since I started the medicines, I've blacked out once, but I haven't had a migraine in three days. I took my blood pressure at a free monitor at a big box store today, and it was still high, but lower. For I don't know how long now, I've white knuckled my way through my job and then gone home to crash with no energy left for anything else.

My intellectual, creative and social life are non-existent, and I can no longer rationalize away all the choices I've made. I'm tired of the self-pity and the fear. I want better for myself and from myself, and I have to convince myself that I am worth what it's going to take to get it.

Another day

2011-04-24T23:47:00.002-05:00

It's been another day spent in a darkened room with the right side of my head throbbing and my wandering eye so out of control it feels like my right eye has been stuck in its outer corner. I've been craving a simple Diet Coke but haven't trusted myself to drive even three miles to the nearest grocery.

The same vision impairment kept me from doing what I really wanted today as well. I wanted to go to church. I work every Sunday, and it's made church attendance difficult, but today the boutique was closed. I wanted to hear a sermon on forgiveness, resurrection and salvation. I wanted familiar hymns. I wanted to quietly join in the celebration of the defining act of my faith. Instead, I went it alone. The worship in my head definitely lacked the presentation of a high church service on a high holy day, but I did try to worship. Honestly, it's felt a bit flat, but that's okay. I'll blame the head, and I know that the miracle and grace of Jesus' resurrection is far greater than any mood of mine.

For years, people have told me that you can't really go it alone as a Christian. You have to be part of a community, i.e. a church. They have a point. Having the support and guidance of a community of believers can make things easier. It can provide a little social grease to aid in the transition of the mind and the heart from the mundane to the miraculous. Fellow believers and leaders have challenged and comforted me when I've needed it. I don't know how many times I've gone to church and heard just what I needed to hear in a sermon, been inspired by just another schmo like me trying to truly live their faith well or even felt the comfort of just being with others as we worshiped together. I miss those things. I really do. At the same time, I've always had this feeling that sometimes Christians need to go it alone. It's very powerful when you realize that it's just you and God. It can also be very easy to just get confused and frustrated. I guess I'm still searching for that optimum middle way, and I have to accept that as part of my journey.

The community aspects of church are also what make it hard for me. Not since childhood have the social aspects of church been comfortable for me. The coffee break between Sunday School and the worship service has always been miserable. Standing alone, trying to look friendly, respectable and approachable enough, watching what seems like everybody else engaged in conversations while I stand alone with what is usually a terrible cup of coffee -- it makes me feel like the girl who never got to dance at the high school dances again. If it's been a new church for me to visit, someone will usually say "glad you're here", but I would just love it if someone would take a minute or two to tell me about what's going on that might be helpful to me, like a class for people my age where I won't be the only uncoupled person there. There have been times when going to church made me feel like introversion was just a heinous sin.

I'm rambling now, and I have no real point. I just wanted to write something here tonight. It's a feeble way of reaching out and saying I am here. Hurting, weak, disappointed in myself, but loved by God, I am here.

Of migraines and menopause

2011-04-12T20:44:00.002-05:00

It’s been another migraine day. I have more of those lately than I don’t. Migraines have always been a problem for me. In my late twenties, I went eighteen straight months with a migraine. I woke with it, slept with it, carried it through my days like shackles that had been welded on. I feel like I lost part of my youth to migraines, and now I fear that I’m losing another part of my life when I don’t have as much left. That monster migraine ended shortly after I became pregnant, and its subsequent brothers and sisters only bothered me intermittently over the years

Hormonal changes and migraines, that’s why I haven’t been so surprised that they’ve become a problem again. There’s no denying my age and that menopause is lurking. It’s coming sooner than I expected though. You see, I need a hysterectomy. It’s not just my imagination. It’s my official diagnosis. I have a pre-cancerous condition called atypical endometrial hyperplasia.

What this has meant so far is that blood and pain are my regular companions. It’s also meant that I have a lot of things to arrange. Surgically, a hysterectomy is no big deal any more. For me, losing my uterus is no emotional big deal. I feel blessed to have had one, but at fifty, I certainly had no plans for more children. It’s just complicated when you have no insurance and you live alone.

I’ve accepted that debt will always be a part of my life, but one emergency room visit, two doctor’s appointments and resulting lab work have come to more than a month’s income for me. I have to think about what hospital bills and recovery time will mean. Recovery will be two weeks if I’m lucky, six weeks if I’m not. When you live paycheck to paycheck, the possibility of nearly two months with no income is seriously frightening. Also complicated is what I’ll do if I need help while I’m recovering.

So, I’m coping with a fair amount of stress, another contributing factor to the constant migraines, which contribute to the lack of energy and lack of ability to focus to get everything arranged before I can schedule the surgery. As in so many other areas of my life, I feel caught in some circular maze. Theseus tied a red string to guide him back out of the maze. It just leads me deeper in.

Fatigue

2011-04-10T20:02:00.003-05:00

I've been sitting here for awhile now, and I've hit the delete key more than any other key on this board. I want to say something, but just what I want to say hasn't quite shaped itself into anything comprehensible yet. There is hope in that last word. I'm counting on having something to say again one day. It's an article of faith.

So, in lieu of trying to pin down these inchoate thoughts, I'll simply say I'm tired. That seems to be my primary modus operandi lately. I get up, make extra strong coffee, take my vitamins, extra B12, extra iron because I've been anemic, and ginseng. I'll fix breakfast, and by the time I finish my meal, I'm worn out again. My steps are slow, and after even fifteen minutes of a chore like yard work or mopping, I want to rest. I feel old, and worse, I feel lazy because I'm not getting done what I feel like I should be able to accomplish.

I don't like this, so, I'm trying to readjust. First, I try to give myself credit for what I do get done. I've lost count of how many times I've said, "It doesn't have to be perfect, just show some progress." That helps for a few minutes. I'm trying to do what it takes to build more energy, a balanced diet, the aforementioned vitamins and supplements, and some exercise that won't put to the point of collapse. I'm also asking myself if this is what I need to expect at my age and weight. Even a big dreamer knows that realistic expectations have some benefits.

Now, this dreamer is going to fix a cup of chamomile tea and try to get a decent night's rest. That isn't a very realistic expectation, but I simply have to try.

Hello again

2011-04-08T22:58:00.003-05:00

I tried to write an entry earlier today and deleted it. It's not easy to resume this after months of blogging absence. That leaves the question on the table of why I was absent. I've loved my little blog over all these years. I love the friendships, ethereal as they are, that I've made through blogging. So, if I love something, why did I ignore it?

I could go into a long explanation, but the short version is that I felt terrible. Terrible -- emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically. Big surprise, I know. It seems that most of what I've written over the years has been about dealing with how terrible I felt. The difference is that I haven't been dealing with it. I nearly let it suck me under, and I wouldn't, couldn't put that out in a public venue.

I've spent too much time crying in shame, bitterness, resentment, pain and fear. The countless mistakes I've made in life have played in a countless loop in my head. I've felt weak and powerless to such a degree that it made me question everything I thought I knew about myself.
It's been more than just another bout of depression, and I couldn't see a way out.

It actually helped when I found out that some health issues were contributing to the miasma I was in. You can deal with something physical, and I am, slowly. Once you begin managing one issue, it's easier to believe that you can manage others.

How much I have to manage intimidates me, but I'm working on things a little bit of a time. It's enough to get me through a day and enough to get me back to my blog.

Christmas liberation

2010-12-19T00:36:00.004-06:00

Charles Dickens knew it. So did Charlie Brown, and now, proudly, gratefully and publicly, I do too. Christmas is not a complete experience without tasting, acknowledging and accepting its inextricable sadness. This is so damn freeing that I'm feeling the Christmas spirit for the first time in years. I'm humming those wistful notes from Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas," and I can remember the absolute joyous magic of a lit up Christmas tree and awestruck knowledge that Santa Claus was coming if I'd been good enough.

I remember the childhood tenderness evoked by the thought of Baby Jesus in the manger. When I was older, it was the courage of Mary that struck a true humility in me as a young mother. I still shake my head at the faith it must have taken to believe that by following a star one would find a king. I can't help but smile when I think about how I finally understood that the angels weren't telling the shepherds not to feel afraid because they were seeing angels, but they no longer needed to fear anything.

Christmas is work now. It's figuring out how to stretch a budget that already feels like a worn out rubber band. It's trying to find the time to shop and the patience to avoid road rage after being stuck at one red light through five color changes because traffic is so heavy. It's helping people find party dresses knowing that I'll be going home alone to a silent house. I look around and see rudeness, greed and ego inflated entitlement. I look a little farther and see need so overwhelming that I feel like a spoiled brat for thinking I have problems. It's feeling so drained when I get to a church service that I'm emotionally numb.

As I've aged, my tastes have changed. When I was a kid, I loved the creaminess of milk chocolate, but now I savor dark chocolate with its bitter edge. Similarly, I can't settle for a simple, holly, jolly Christmas. It takes too much denial on my part, and I feel like I disrespect its intricacy when I settle for a superficial, happy holiday face. I'll enjoy the tinsel and twinkling lights. I'll wish you a Merry Christmas and mean it, but I'll also wipe tears as I wrap the few presents I'm giving and remember different days. Christmas is complex magic. It's beauty, awe, joy, wonder, innocence, generosity, and it's tackiness, regret, pain, wrenching loss and deep sadness. Hallelujah! I get to experience it all.

I wasn't lying

2010-10-23T22:32:00.003-05:00

The quality in writing that I have always admired the most is an honesty so deep it settles in your bones. For a personal blogger who tries to write well, that can be challenging. As personal as I can get, I don't believe in over sharing, but damn it, I needed to write honestly. So I sat down, pen poised over the pages of a nearly filled journal, and just decided to be honest. My college in major in journalism was actually my touchstone here. Instead of meandering about through my complex emotional state, I started with, "These are the facts of my life..." and wrote what was observable and verifiable about my current existence with few explanations, excuses or rationales.

It wasn't easy. It required a certain coldness and a willingness to squirm with shame, to cry, to laugh, to smile, to feel proud and carry on without getting caught up in the emotions. It was a good exercise, both personally and as a writer. On a personal level, I'm very good at BS. It's just never a good idea to BS yourself, and an exercise like this will stop you in your tracks. As for writing, "Show, don't tell" is such old advice, it's practically a cliche'. However, it's still damn good advice, and as I wrote, I started to emerge as a character in and not just the narrator of my own writing. I find it a very good thing that I liked her.

Work has allowed very little time for anything else, but I'm planning on doing more of this. I also found that as I was writing down the character of me, I'd have to stop and write a short scene, sometimes just a few lines, never more than a page, of something else. That was just fun, and right now, every one of those ideas is still shiny with potential. That's a welcome change. I've been shooting ideas down as fast as I could get them lately, and I need to stop that. You rebuild hope with one idea, one word and one action at a time.

Love is just a dream

2010-10-17T20:18:00.002-05:00

I've mentioned before that working in a bridal boutique was a challenge for me as a new widow. I'm not so new at this anymore, but I still find myself working there a bit strange. Don't get me wrong. It's a good company, and the people I work with are truly dedicated to helping brides have the wedding of their dreams. I've rarely seen a team of people put forth such consistent, dedicated effort to serving their customers well.

It's just that I see more than ever that with every wedding comes many dreams. Some are of romance, passion and a life long adventure. Others want to open the door to a warm and comforting domesticity blanketing a dear friendship. Some crave a day of beauty and admiration. Some of these dreams are beautiful and inspire me. Others, frankly, remind me that underneath my professionally charming exterior, I'm really a cranky, old broad. Every one of these dreams though has love at its core.

See, I have both dreams and memories of love and romance. I cherish them, but the bottom line for me is that I prefer the reality of love to sweet, young dreams. Love doesn't just lift me up to soaring heights. It exhausts me with hard work and opens my heart to a sadness whose depth is only possible because of how much I've loved. It drains me with demands I am thrilled to meet and then refreshes and renews me. I am blessed. I can look at my life and know that I've been loved and loved in return.

It's enabled me to set a high standard for love, yet my job is, in part, marketing the dream. So when I see a vivid example of love's reality at work, it truly moves me. I've worked with a bride who fell in love with a certain dress that was beyond her budget. I'm rarely moved anymore by women in wedding gowns, but she seemed transformed in that beautiful dress. She decided that a much smaller wedding was a better choice. It was prudent, but the dream of that dress made a big impact on her and her fiancé.

For months now, he has been coming in and making small weekly payments towards a layaway. His bride to be has no idea that on her wedding day she will be the vision in her dream. He was out of work for awhile and kept up the payments. He's made a real effort because her happiness is important to him.

A wedding is just one event on one day in a lifetime. All those other days eventually matter much, much more, but I have the feeling this wedding will be one of those special ones that showcase what those other days are about.

Mute

2010-10-12T23:50:00.003-05:00

Other than business letters and a few short emails, I haven't written a word in six weeks. (I refuse to count Facebook status updates.) It has been more than a decade since I've gone that long without writing. I don't like it. It's time like this when I look at everything else I've written and think I'm nothing more than a dilettante. That's not a comfortable feeling.

I've been blogging for seven years. I started blogging with the express intention of making my writing a more regular habit. The medium of blogging may not be seen as a serious one for writers, but that doesn't mean I didn't take the writing seriously. For a long time it worked. I wrote something every day for years. Writing became a habit again. Then I started concentrating not just on writing but on trying to improve my writing. The goal became not just putting words out there to but writing well. Then I wanted to say say something with meaning as well as beauty. (I just had a flashback to The Dead Poet's Society with students graphing the importance of a piece of literature with meaning on one axis and beauty on the other.) Getting published again actually became a dream again, and I made some tentative efforts, but something always held me back from seriously pursuing it.

This latest dry spell has convincingly shown me that with my writing, as in much of the rest of my life, I'm back at a beginning. It's not The Beginning. I have too much respect for the where I've been and what I've done. Some of my writing has been quite good. I've got too many wrinkles, scars and memories as well as two pen shaped callouses on my right index and middle fingers to pretend that I'm starting as fresh as the first dewy morning of a newly created world. I feel more like the first silver crescent of a new moon. The darkness is a tangible presence, but I can ride with the natural rhythms of ceaseless change and let my words come out again.

I'll be looking for writing prompts, and if anybody has suggestions, I'll welcome them. I just need more than my own private journal now for the beat of writing to return.

Restoring the Honor

2010-08-28T22:56:00.003-05:00

Dear Mr. Beck

I've heard and read some of your words. These have really stood out for me.

"I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words." (Fox News Glenn Beck, March 2010)

"This president, I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture...I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist." (Fox News Glenn Beck, July 28, 2009)

"The only Katrina victims we're seeing on television are the scumbags." (The Glenn Beck Radio Program, Sept. 9, 2005, 6 days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans)

"Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames." (2003)

"Some may believe we're on the road to the Hitler youth." (on teaching children about climate change) (Fox News Glenn Beck, Feb. 5, 2009)

"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it...No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong?" (The Glenn Beck Program, May 17, 2005)

So when you say something like this, "...recognize your place to the Creator. Realize that He is our King. He is the one who guides and directs our life and protects us...I ask, not only if you would pray on your knees, but pray on your knees but with your door open for your children to see," (Restoring the Honor Rally in Washington, D.C., August 28, 2010), I don't know how to react.

Sir, I am a Christian, and though I'm no Bible scholar, these comments made me think of a few Bible verses. Churches and social justice sent me to Micah 6:8 says "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." When you call our part Caucasian president a racist or compare teaching about climate change to the Nazi youth, I wondered how that fit with Proverbs 26:20 - 21, "Without wood a fire goes out: without gossip a quarrel dies down. As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife." Your remarks about Katrina victims brought this to mind, Deuteronomy 15:7, 11, "If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord, your God, is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Your comments about Kucinich and Moore took me first to Exodus 20: 13, "You shall not murder," and then to Matthew 5:28, "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." It just seems to me that the same standard can be applied to murder as adultery.

The disconnect between your earlier words and the teachings of the Christian religion I follow make it really hard for me to find much honor here. This same disconnect though did inspire me to prayer for my country, myself and, Mr. Beck, for you. We all need it.

Just for fun

2010-08-18T19:01:00.003-05:00

I stole this from Redsneakz for some blog filler while my brain's not working.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath
08. Said I love you and meant it
09. Hugged a tree (for a picture)
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (Neyland Stadium, Go Vols)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby's diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne (the after-effects: not so fun)
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking (that's pretty much any time I dance)
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was too drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs.
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58 . Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Posed nude in front of strangers
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played a Computer game for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an "expert"
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Had a one-night stand
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children (not completely)
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldnt have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Petted a stingray
110. Broken someone's heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Petted a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad
135. Selected one "important" author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone's life
151. Changed your own oil
152. Changed your own brake pads
153. Made pizza from scratch
154. Stood atop the highest point in your home state
155. Gone swimming in a rock quarry
156. Gone on a trip of more than two days to an unfamiliar place and not eaten at a single chain restaurant
157. Grown your hair long
158. Made your own cheese
159. Re-established contact with an old flame many years later
160. Bought a car new and driven it until well past 150000 miles
161. Sewn a complete garment
162. Uttered a curse word in front of a clergyperson
163. Blown your rent money at your favorite store
164. Seen your car being towed
165. Phoned in a vote on some reality TV show competition
166. Seriously considered living in a different country
167. Served in the armed forces
168. Been kicked out of a movie theater
169. Seen a classic film on the big screen
170. Eaten haggis
171. Eaten dim sum in a traditional setting
172. Prepared an entire Thanksgiving dinner
173. Gone swimming fully clothed
174. Gone swimming not clothed at all
175. Driven across the country taking shifts so the trip only takes a few days
176. Explored a construction site in the dark
177. Ridden an elephant
178. Attended a Major League Baseball game
179. Attended an NFL game
180. Attended an NHL game
181. Attended an NBA game
182. Seen a US President live (Jimmy Carter!)
183. Actually met a sitting US President
184. Auditioned for a reality TV show
185. Been hit in the face with a pie
186. Stood in line on the release date of a product
187. Worked aboard a fishing boat
188. Cut down a fully mature tree
189. Seen the Mona Lisa
190. Seen the Sistine Chapel
191. Eaten fugu
192. Paddled a canoe or kayak
193. Held the control stick of an aircraft in flight
194. Asked a librarian for help finding a book
195. Personally acquired the autograph of a person you admire
196. Locked your keys in your car in a strange city
197. Had to break into your own home
198. Seen a space shuttle launch
199. Attended a NASCAR race
200. Marched in a parade

Good enough

2010-08-16T07:54:00.003-05:00

For awhile now, I've been making efforts to reconnect with people. I mean this in the generic and specific senses. There are certain individuals whose friendship I highly value, but I haven't done the work to keep the relationship going. That's my fault, and I can see that now, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. My efforts have been small -- the phone call, the email, the blog entry. I've even managed to actually, physically see some people face to face. I'm having to work myself back up to social engagement. Whenever you let a muscle atrophy, you can't expect to jump back to activity at full speed.

After feeling the need to hide away for so long, that almost feels like a miracle. It also makes me feel grateful for the people who've let me reappear in their lives after a notable absence. The efforts may have been small, but after long months of feeling like all I had to offer anyone was toxicity, they've required an amount of courage I won't disrespect.

Then, there's everyone else, this whole world. It's full of interesting, kind, funny, smart, fascinating people. It's been my luck lately to begin getting to know a few, and unsurprisingly, my insecurities kicked in. Why would someone who can do all these things and has been all these places want to get to know someone like me, who's had such narrow boundaries on my life for awhile now? That's a question that initially made me want to go hide again, but I paused and took a breath. I acknowledged the good stuff inside those old border lines and the changes I'm trying to make to push out the limitations I've had on my life. The kind of people I really want to know will appreciate what's there, and each new connection is expanding my territory.

I'm not going to keep putting my life on hold because it's not where I feel it ought to be to be good enough for other people.

Oh, please

2010-08-12T01:00:00.007-05:00

Every where I turn, people are talking about Steven Slater. I confess, when I first read the story, I laughed. He really acted out a fantasy for almost everyone who's worked in customer service. Having worked in customer service fields for a long time, I definitely understood how he felt.

Once at the end of a long work day, I literally had to spit out a tiny piece of tooth enamel, because I'd been grinding my teeth to keep from saying what I dearly longed to say. While I looked at that chip in my hand, I remembered that Bill Cosby once said that the key to failure is trying to please everyone. My job in customer service was trying to please everyone. The inevitable conclusion was that being a failure was my job.

That was just a bad day though, and I'm proud of what I do.

I've worked in a variety of customer service jobs throughout my career. Some have been seen as serious career jobs that require a solid base of knowledge and professional skill before service could be provided. I'm glad I've spent more time in those than the other type. Those are the customer service jobs where the people like me are just seen as the flunky you get stuck dealing with. Throughout both types of jobs though, I've come to hold a lot of respect for good customer service people everywhere.

It's not an easy job. I've worked in marketing, sales and public relations as well as traditional customer service, and frankly, customer service demands a higher level of communication skills than any of those fields. You have to be able to listen effectively, promptly identify a customer's real need, and present a problem solving solution in a clear way that makes your customer feel good and want to do business with your company again. A good customer service rep has to think quickly and master the art of emotional alleviation. She has to thoroughly understand company policies and procedures and have the ability to adapt those procedures to individual needs, while pleasing both the customer and the company. Let me add, either company or customer could have caused the problem you're trying to solve. Talk about being in a hot spot.

Since the people you're dealing with are sometimes upset, they can often be long winded and short tempered, and you have to be able to sort out the verbal chaff from the essential information. This requires patience, but beyond that, it requires an emotional maturity that is becoming increasingly rare. On a bad day, it's not just maturity that's needed, it's emotional teflon. I haven't met too many people made of synthetic polymers, but every day I see more evidence that the loss of civility is not limited to the political realm.

Yes, there are days when I've really wanted to make a bold "F... You" statement like Steven Slater, but some fantasies need to stay in the land of daydreams. His flamboyant reaction was another loss of civility, maturity and self-control. It was no better than the customers who put their desires before any one else's needs, and the biggest part of me wants to tell them all, "Grow up!"

Read, write, pray

2010-08-09T20:11:00.010-05:00

I started this year with the intention of writing a little something about every book I read. That feel through pretty quickly, because I fell into a short run of books that were barely worth the time to read, much less to write about. My reading material improved, but I never got back into writing about the books I was reading. I don't really read book reviews. The little entries I did on books felt more like middle school book reports than anything else. I don't enjoy criticizing things, even in this recent Madame Cranky Pants mood. More importantly, writing became increasingly difficult, and what writing energy I spent, I wanted to spend on things I enjoyed writing more. (Not too much luck there, either. I haven't enjoyed writing in months, but in my southern vernacular, I'm just "not quite right" if I don't write.)

Every time I went to the bookstore though, I kept seeing Eat, Pray, Love. Since it was already a bestseller, that's no surprise, but it was months before the movie hype started which dedicated every end cap to the book and the kitsch that's tagging on its coat tails. Its cute chick lit cover pushed me away. I was tired of fluffy books, but every time I started a "serious" book, I found I just couldn't settle into it. The temptation grew. After all, those three words sum up a big part of my identity and my writing.

In fact, thinking about that made me go back and re-read some of my old entries on those themes. It's a good feeling when you read something you wrote a good while ago and can say, "I did alright." I really like what I wrote about artichokes and pomegranates. When I read some of my entries on spirituality, some of the writing didn't please, but the content still felt real, and that's good enough. Well, the love parts, reading those still made me hurt, and that says something.

So, after deciding the topics need some external reading, I picked up the book. I didn't love it, but I did like it. For the life of me, as visual as the book can be sometimes, I just don't see how they'll make it into a movie. Oh, I take that back. Parts of it will make a very pretty, very international romantic comedy, but I just don't see how the depth in the book can be filmed. I know that the book has been called Spirituality Lite, and that's definitely part of it. Translating a spiritual experience into language is incredibly difficult. It's so easy to sound trite, or preachy, or stuffy, or holier than thou, so I'll cut Elizabeth Gilbert some slack on that one.

What keeps Eat, Pray, Love from completely deserving the Spirituality Lite label is the author's honesty. I love a memoirist who's not afraid to paint herself as just human. Gilbert describes herself as neither the worst of sinners nor a saint, just a decent person who's made some doozy mistakes. She practices real restraint in describing the breakup of the marriage and the relationship that instigated the journey behind the book, but I still got to the point where I wanted to tell her, "Just suck it up. So many people have gone through much worse and didn't get the chance to escape to Italy, India and Bali afterwards." Acknowledging the duality of pleasure seeking and God seeking in my own life, I appreciated her quest for both. I found Gilbert a charming writer, and her year's adventure seems to have been a true growth experience for her. I liked the book enough to pick up her next book, Committed.

I think what I liked most about the book though is that it has made me want to pray more. Pray in depth. Open myself to that wonderful adventure and see what happens. It still surprises me how awkward and difficult this can be when I know the wonderful gifts God has given me through prayer. I want the whole experience: that frustrating one sided feeling, the sinking through self until self is passed, the willingness to keep on trying, listening but not getting and sometimes, wonderfully receiving. Yeah, I want it again.

Too darn hot

2010-08-08T18:53:00.003-05:00

I'm blaming it on the heat. That makes me feel more comfortable with myself. I can look at my irritability and flaming disgust with people as a side affect of what some have called the hottest summer in recorded history. I've lost track of how many days we've been under heat advisories here and of how many foul epithets I've uttered under my breath. I fear I'm beginning to resemble Kreacher in Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, even though "mudblood" has yet to enter my repertoire of insults. It might be one of the nicer things I could say.

I'm tired of everything. I'm sick of tackiness. I'm sick of snobbery and pretension. Working in a bridal boutique, I'm exposed to a good bit of both. Though luckily, I haven't experienced too much lately, I've witnessed so much rudeness I'm just ready to start rapping knuckles with a metal ruler. I'm near the end of my tolerance of willful ignorance. No one can know everything, but there has to be some basic regard for facts instead of just opinions. Just having come through a political primary has really strained this capacity. I'm sick of unreliable people who say they'll do things and then don't. I'm so tired from this heat that I fear I'm becoming one, especially when I look at my list of things undone.

Yes, I'm blaming this all on the heat, but it's not affecting just me. It seems that everyone is just ill, and crime is up. I'm staying inside and trying to follow my mother's advice that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Know you know why this blog has sat untouched for weeks.

Rediscovering

2010-07-14T00:19:00.004-05:00

The need for structure.

It's been a day of scattershot thoughts and activities. I'm bumping like a pinball between chores left neglected too long, thoughts that probably don't need to be developed any more than they already have been, and trying to fit in a little leisure time on my day off. I've got so much to do though that any leisure is accompanied by a persistent, though fairly well constrained, sense of guilt.

There is part of me that just itches if practically every waking moment is not spent in some productive activity. Now my definition of productive activity can be considered liberal. Reading is productive. Meditation is productive. When I'm being really nice to myself, I even think that just writing is productive. On my more disciplined days, it has be writing with a clear purpose, preferably writing for potential publication or income.

This has been the type of day that just makes me want to wail that it will never get done. I finish one chore, and another that seems even more pressing is staring me in the face. Then I start to think that I'll never get to what really needs to be done because of what has to be done now. If I let those thoughts really get going, I end up feeling really ashamed, ready to just quit and do nothing and think this is all that I really deserve.

I think I need to go back to checking off a list. It beats the guilt I feel regardless of how productive I've actually been. More important than that, a list is a rudimentary plan. Get a plan going, and you'll have strategies and tactics. If I can do that for the little things, I can do it for the big things, like my life.

Getting older

2010-07-11T22:53:00.003-05:00

Certain birthdays are supposed to be wonderful. When you're 10, you're finally into those double digits. 16, you can drive. 18, you're an adult. 21, you can drink. After that, they're supposed to turn traumatic for awhile. 30, you're not really young anymore. 40, are you really middle aged? 50, how the fuck did this happen? You're half a century old, and the AARP is sending you membership cards in the mail. My older friends have taken 60 and 70 in stride, and 80 seems to be greeted with some pride. My father quit being 39 and finally announced his age then, and he had been 39 since before I was born.

After hitting the half century mark a couple of weeks ago, I've thought about aging quite a bit. Ending my forties actually came as a relief. They were the absolute worst decade of my life, and I've had this niggling hope that maybe all the drama, grief and trauma will ease up for awhile. If not, I've got a much better idea of just what I can handle. Coming through the illnesses and losses and remaining somewhat intact has actually given me a greater sense of self-respect.

What to do next and how to do it with the available resources are still the big questions, and I confess the answers are slow in coming. One of the things I don't like about aging is building the energy I need to do everything also takes more time, and the deadlines seem much shorter than they used to. I don't care too much for the aching joints, the deteriorating vision, and the little memory slippages. (Dang it, I left my glasses in the living room!) The self consciousness at job interviews when I'm the oldest one there, including the interviewer, isn't too much fun either. Everything has a downside.

Simple feminine vanity has actually been a comfort at turning 50. I've heard this quote attributed to people as varied as Abraham Lincoln, Gloria Steinem, George Orwell and Coco Chanel, and it makes me feel good. "Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve." Granted, I now spend more time preparing my face to be naked at bed time than I used to spend on my daily makeup. Being able to look myself in the face, know every flaw and still feel good may have only come because I have aged. That may be worth the AARP card.

The feel of a good morning

2010-07-02T06:22:00.003-05:00

In the last few weeks, I've rediscovered something wonderful -- sleep. After long years of insomnia, my body and brain have decided to cooperate. I find myself yawning around ten p.m. and soon afterwards, this miracle occurs. I'll lie down. I won't have to rotate the pillow a few dozen times. I don't play Twister with my sheets. Somehow, the world just slides away. Sweet bliss as delectable as dark chocolate.

I woke this morning around five, rested, moving slowly, but ready to move without my body grudgingly complaining. Sunrises look entirely different when you're up only minutes as opposed to hours before them. Coffee tastes better when you drink it without the need for the caffeinated kick start. I'd forgotten how good all this feels, and the idea that I have hours to enjoy before work feels as good to my soul as silk does to my skin.

I can't help thinking about how a few years ago I treasured my early mornings because they were the only time I had to myself. Deeply protective of those, stiff, achy and bleary eyed minutes, I rose early because it was the only time I had to be me without the additional layers of responsibilities and roles. I loved many of those roles. Being wife, mother, daughter, friend, volunteer, business person and more all contributed to the core of who I am. I've found though that it was easier to just be me when I only had to do it minutes each day.

Being just me, the me I want to be, has become a challenging and rewarding full time job. The hard part has been acknowledging the parts of me that I don't really like. That means there are decisions to be made about either changing or accepting those parts. What is surprisingly, but equally, challenging is really engaging what I love about myself in activities where I can let the best part of me grow, contribute, and even shine. I feel like I'm inches away from ground zero in all of this, but damn it, those inches matter.

Boring

2010-06-29T23:29:00.003-05:00

How do you write when you feel like you have nothing to say -- at least nothing that you haven't already said too many times before? That's been a persistent question for me lately. I sit down, pen in hand, and there's nothing there.

Oh, I could describe the beautiful sunrise I saw yesterday morning. I could do something both tender and fierce about the challenges and rewards of motherhood. I could write something both a little funny and woe-is-me about my recent stomach virus or having multiple cats. If I didn't have a still tender stomach, I could rhapsodize about food. I could recommend a few books (Stieg Larsson. That's all I'll say.) I could share my anger about the oil disaster in the Gulf or the multitude of feelings about my two closest friends both moving hours away from here. If I had more than the remnants of a spiritual life, I could write about that. Honestly, it all feels over done. I feel boring. Though I've led a small, ordinary life, I've never been a boring person, and I have no intentions of becoming one.

That leads me to my next question. Is this writer's block or a more significant life blockage? I hate when I already know the answer to a question if I don't like the answer. I operated in crisis mode for a long time, taking care of what was right in front of me because things were both urgent and important. Illnesses, deaths, car wrecks, job losses, what a string of fun. Now, what is right in front of me is every day life. Get up, go to work, come home. Repeat. Boring.

My job is to make my life interesting again, this time without another string of crises. I want some beauty and zest back in my life. That's a real challenge, and I damn well better be up to it.

Time

2010-06-16T22:40:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I had one of those coincidences that just make you take note. It was little, somewhat silly, and it gently moved me. My Facebook friends will just have to forgive me for repeating this. I was watching The Time Traveler's Wife while I was getting ready for work. I got in the car, and Time Is On My Side by The Rolling Stones was on the radio. When I left work, the radio started up with Too Much Time On My Hands by Styx. Foreigner's Feels Like The First Time followed. When I got home, the song playing was Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper.

What made this little coincidence to me significant is that today would have been a fairly notable marker of time passed, my 24th wedding anniversary. What has surprised me is that I've taken this well in stride. Anticipating the anniversary of my husband's death knocked me into a weeks long depression. On the anniversary itself, I received the wake up call I wrote about a couple of entries ago.

Without plan, to do list or even firm resolve, in the last few weeks, I've basically chosen to stay in the present. I've worked, respecting that even though I have abilities far greater than my job requires, I still contribute something of value to my customers and co-workers as well as taking care of myself. I've stretched myself to see and talk with local friends and visit my family, instead of hiding away from people. I've made a point to be friendlier in public, instead of projecting the body and spoken language that says "leave me alone." I've played around with hair and makeup to update my appearance. I've watched more TV shows and movies. I can feel the first itch of a viable plan (instead of a daydream) to make bigger changes.

I've also made a point of staying out of my own head. Since I'd been in a rather dark place, this was good. In effect, I haven't allowed myself to think or feel too deeply about anything personal. It's easy for me to go in the deep water. I'm comfortable there, but my life needs balance, and it was time to head back to shore and just let my toes play in the surf. The downside of this is that my writing comes from a fairly deep place in me, even when the writing is light and fluffy. I have to open the doors to whatever is in there and let it come out. I've felt more peaceful in the last few weeks than I have in a long time, but if I'm not writing, I'm not really myself. That's an absence I will not abide.

For a couple of weeks now, I've looked at my untouched journal. I've remembered exactly which pens feel really good in my hand and have just the right flow of ink. That little, formerly calloused groove on my third finger feels soft, but it's waiting and reminding me how it got there. This blog has sat dusty and abandoned. I feel like I've forgotten how to write a clean, comprehensible sentence, and it's time to exercise those muscles again.

Time has passed, and things have changed. I no longer have the life I knew, and I'm beginning to accept that. This is my life now. Through all the changes, I know these things. I'm a woman of character, intelligence, strength and love. I've handled multiple losses and challenges for quite a few years in a row now, and a good bit of the grief each of those demanded was delayed and came due when my husband died. That doesn't minimize the mourning that was just for him. How much we hurt each other did not mitigate the deep and wonderful love we had for each other. That may be another form of balance if the universe's sense of humor is as twisted as it seems. I'm a good woman, I've lived a pretty good life, and I will continue to do so. Time is moving on, and I no longer feel stuck.

The late night meanies meet their match

2010-05-10T03:50:00.003-05:00

Really just minutes ago, I woke from a nightmare. Sweating, twisted in my sheets, bladder on the edge of crisis, I could still feel the claws of unrecalled but tenacious monsters from my dream. I knew I had to shake this off. For weeks now, I've woken every night around three a.m. with a sense of deep anxiety. It has taken hours to shake it off, and a touch has lingered through my days. Tonight, accepting this wakefulness and interior darkness that feels like my deserved lot, I signed onto Facebook and got a short, sweet message from my daughter -- "Happy Momma's Day" with the following video.

I'll be going back to bed very soon. The monsters have been banished back to their caves by the brave and tremendous warrior that is my tiny, beautiful daughter. I am a richly blessed mother.

Reflecting

2010-04-27T07:40:00.005-05:00

I don't want to be this woman. I met her yesterday at work. She was absolutely beautiful, elegant even in casual clothing, beautifully coiffed silver hair that avoided old lady cliches without being inappropriate for her age. Her voice was deep, soft and lovely, and she had the posture of a queen. She was surrounded by family and friends -- three generations of women gathered to help her grand-daughter find her wedding gown. There was obviously much love, respect and humor in this group of ladies. She was the type of woman I see and think I want to be like that when I'm her age.

As her grand-daughter was at the cash register paying for her gown, she sat at my desk, and I began the small talk that's part of my job when people are waiting. She began to tell me how everyone in the group was related, and then went on to tell me quite a bit about her husband's sudden death ... twenty years ago. Thinking about weddings and marriage in a bridal boutique is inevitable. The chain from a grand-daughter's upcoming nuptials to a grandmother's wedding and marriage is shorter than the years would indicate. I could understand why this was on her mind.

Since yesterday was the second anniversary of my husband's death, I was, shall we say, a bit obsessed with the topic. My day had begun with a visit to the cemetery where I was pleased to find that someone else had placed flowers. I later found out that they didn't come from my in-laws. I love that other people still think of my husband. For a couple of days, I've been in the long, familiar dance of memories -- good ones that made me smile and then cry and painful ones that literally made breathing hard until the tears came in shuddering gasps. The worst are the questioning ones about his mental and physical health and what could have been done. Doing the PAD challenge has made this somewhat worse. I mine my interiors to write poetry, and almost everything I've written has this in it somewhere.

Two years ... I'm still working through the 27 years my husband and I had together. It dominates my thoughts. Compare two years to 27, and it's not much, but I don't want to be here in another twenty. I don't want this to be the subject that comes up with a stranger in a random conversation because there's a wedding in the family.

My husband's death naturally left a huge void in my life, and I haven't filled it. There have been other losses of different kinds that have made this feel worse. I both respected and indulged my loss yesterday with swimming in the memories and tears, but my conversation with this beautiful woman yesterday reaffirmed the growing knowledge that I have to fill my life with something else. I will not let loss become the defining statement of my life.

PAD #18

2010-04-25T07:34:00.006-05:00

Mindfulness

To honor Earl Grey,

go slowly.

Set the water to boil,
and sit down.

The kettle's whistle will hail you.

Watch the steam rise.

The water must lose its angry edge.

Lift the teabag to your nose.
Inhale and say the word bergamot.

Blend the luxury of scent and sound.

Watch the color bloom
when you immerse the tea.
Smile at the tag lolling

on the cup's rim.

Now you wait.
Impatience means blandness;
indolence, bitterness.

Enjoy the sparkle

of sugar before it dissolves,
and the swirl of milk.

Stir gently.
Sit down again.

Go slowly.

Quietly rejoice.

The prompt for day 18 was "to ______."

PAD #17

2010-04-23T21:55:00.002-05:00

Magnets do not know
what draws them together.
Attraction is the breath inhaled,

attachment, the throbbing pulse.
Opposite poles compelled,

beyond choice, to connect.

The prompt for day 17 was science.

PAD #16

2010-04-22T20:37:00.005-05:00

When death came knocking,

I wasn't home

and so my love left.

I wait now, wondering

when the next knock will come

and what it brings for me.

Life or death,
I only know the door

will open.

The prompt for day 16 was (oh, joy!) death. I really didn't want to write about that again, and it shows.

The painting is Thinking About Death by Freida Kahlo.

PAD #15

2010-04-22T20:23:00.002-05:00

the trashcan overflows

as the deadline approaches.

bad haiku is born.

The prompt for Day 15 was deadline. Losing my modem put me so far behind in this challenge, but it's something I've really wanted to do. Like last year, I don't think most of what I've written is any good, but there are a few that I do really like. I've felt tremendous, self-applied pressure to catch up. With the trash that came flowing out of my pen over the last couple of days and really thinking about what deadlines can do to poetry (Thanks, Theresa), I've decided to ease up. The challenge is to write a poem a day, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to continue to use the prompts provided by Poetic Asides, and if I go past April 30, so what. I don't have to keep up with the other writers who are participating. I'm doing this because I love poetry. It's good for me, and sometimes I'm actually pretty good at it, but I need make it a discipline. That's why I like this challenge.

PAD #14

2010-04-21T18:57:00.002-05:00

This little island

As one would expect, the cemetery is beside a small country church. It sits on a hill alongside a country road. It's shaded by maples, oaks and pines. The older markers are stained green by moss now growing within the porous stone. It's a good place to rest and enjoy the pond dotted field across the road.

bridge tethered island.

blanketed with leaves from trees
not grown on its shores

For Day 14 of the PAD Challenge, the prompt was "_______ island." I thought I'd try another haibun.

PAD #13

2010-04-21T09:37:00.004-05:00

After the nightmare,
wake slowly
and find the buddha faced
orange cat

curled under your chin,
his blue eyed brother
under him,

the white furred sisters

surrounding him.

They rest there

until you can rise.

Accept what is given.
Know what it is.

The prompt for Day 13 was to write either a love or anti-love poem.

PAD #12

2010-04-21T01:20:00.002-05:00

Memphis

For me,

you are light,

filtered green,
through the leaves

of summer trees arching
over Poplar Avenue,

seen from the back seat

of a '65 Ford Falcon

driving west on

a Sunday morning.

The prompt for Day 12 was to pick a city and use that as the title of the poem.

PAD #11

2010-04-20T22:28:00.002-05:00

The last thing
I want to do
is go this way again.
Someone pull me
off this track.

Flip the switch,
and shift the rails

to the direction
I haven't already been.
How can I be the engineer

of this huge machine
when I'm just
carried away,
hurtling along?

The prompt for Day 11 was "the last _______."

PAD #10

2010-04-20T00:48:00.004-05:00

Poe's endless rapping,

his ceaseless tapping,
came not from some

blackbird mocking,

but his demons'

constant scratching.

Wine, ink, opium,

swirling and mingling,

our midnight reading

forever chilling.

The prompt for Day 10 was horror.

PAD #9

2010-04-19T23:20:00.002-05:00

You wonder,

are her eyes blue or green,
and just what,

exactly,
is she seeing.
One eye,

yes, it's blue,
looks into you.
The other,

is that gray or green,

wanders away,

as if into a dream.

The prompt for Day 9 was self-portrait.

PAD #8

2010-04-19T23:06:00.003-05:00

surrounded

hammers mounted and framed,

a brass bowl filled with screws,

a pocket filled with rusty nails,

a wrench hand painted electric blue,

a beer mug filled with felt tip pens,

everywhere i turn,

memories of you.

The prompt for Day #8 was tool. For years my husband's family owned a hardware store, and tools were a fascination of his since childhood. He was also a compulsive hoarder, and though I helped him keep this obsession under enough control for our home to be both livable and visitable (though messier than I liked), it was a real problem. Sorting his things after he died was incredibly hard, and with every closet, every shelf, every drawer, I'd find hand tools and hardware. It is the little things that get you.

Poem A Day Challenge

2010-04-19T21:03:00.003-05:00

OK, I started the month with the Poem A Day Challenge, and then on day seven, my modem died. I had the prompt. I wrote the poem. I had no way of getting it online. Now, it's April 19th, and I've got 12 prompts to catch up to the challenge. We'll see if I can catch up. It's going to be a lot of work, and I'll just have to see if I'm up to this.

Any way, here's the poem for Day Seven. The prompt was until...

Bad Advice

Until the stars align,

the oracle speaks,
and the graces

begin their dance --
do nothing.
You will not miss
the unsung song
or the wind
against your face

when you do not
take the dive.
Leave the blotted page
and the awkward step
for those who
merely strive.
The dream of perfection
is enough for you.

PAD Challenge, Day 6

2010-04-06T22:17:00.003-05:00

Silly mortal,

you cannot hide

from the demons
you created.

So run, flee.

We sail on the wind

of your nightmares
and laugh with

the cries torn

from your throat.
Do not doubt,

you have carried yourself away.

Today's prompt was to write an ekphrastic poem, defined as "Poetry that imitates, describes, critiques, dramatizes, reflects upon, or otherwise responds to a work of nonliterary art, especially the visual." Poetic Asides (the source of this delightful, infernal challenge) provided two paintings. I chose Flight of the Witches by Francisco de Goya.

PAD Challenge, Day 5

2010-04-06T21:10:00.006-05:00

Know that you are granite.

The water will beat upon you,

for that is what it does.
The river has no choice
but to return to the sea.

You may not feel

how the rougher edges,

ground to sand,
have escaped,

but others will.
That rub in hidden places
is a hint of the fear

that keeps you silent and standing,
holding back the bitter sea.

Mourn that you are granite.
Rejoice that others do not drown.

Today's prompt was too much information.

PAD Challenge, Day 4

2010-04-05T19:14:00.004-05:00

Begin with laughter.

Wonder why you did not kiss.

Drive miles in search of

buttercups and mimosas.
Dangle your feet in rivers.
Kiss until your lips are swollen.

Create a maze of chores and papers.

Lose each other in tech blue shadows.

Seek the mattress edge,

and say you're too hot.
Wonder how you kissed.
Sit alone in
cold no blanket can relieve.
Gather buttercups and leave them

on dirt barely covered with grass.

Trace your lips with a fingertip,

remembering each kiss.

Today's prompt was history.

PAD, Day 3

2010-04-04T08:12:00.005-05:00

Partly Awake

I saw only weeds,

demanding bent knee labor,

not noticing
that the smartweed
looked like a

bolt of purple cloth,

spread to tempt
a princess into her newest
luxury.
Those punk rock,

spiky headed dandelions

did not amuse,
and the hymn of

blue veronicas

could not reach my ears.

Called to love even when I don't want to

2010-04-03T10:02:00.002-05:00

This week, while watching the movie Jesus Christ Superstar (released in 2000, with Glen Carter as Jesus, Jerome Pradon as Judas and Fred Johanson as Pontius Pilate, not the 1973 version), I was struck by how much and how easily I could sympathize and even identify with Judas and Pilate. A lot of this is due to Pradon's and Johanson's powerful acting, but they showed me the humanity within two of the ultimate icons of evil. In seeing their vulnerabilities, their fears, their twisted logic, I could see my own betrayals and attempts to absolve myself of responsibility. Granted, there is a difference in scale, but it's still falling short of the glory of God.

If I could see the good, or at least the desire for something good, in the people I've judged from another age, if I could see myself in them, I had to ask if I could do the same thing with people from now. Can I see the quest for good in Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Fred Phelps? I'm not saying they're the Pilate and Judas of today. The circumstances and arena are so different. I've definitely judged them though, questioned their methods and motives, and felt the heat of anger and disgust for them as I have for Pilate and Judas.

Yet, as a Christian, I'm called to love them. If I am to take the directions of my God seriously and live up to calling myself a Christian, I have to do this. I've been lucky in life to have very few personal enemies, so being called to love them has rarely been tested. Yet when I expand the definition of enemy, the challenge grows. It's time like this that I truly know Christianity is not an easy path. How do you love someone whose words and actions you've found reprehensible? And just how reprehensible has my own behavior been?

I believe with gratitude that I've been forgiven by grace, not by own efforts. I could not have earned forgiveness, and neither can those whose actions part of me wants to put beyond forgiveness. That puts us in the same boat. That's not too comfortable, and it makes me marvel at a God who can truly forgive.

PAD Challenge, Day 2

2010-04-03T01:43:00.002-05:00

Let me kneel in the rain
and soak you in.

Hair rising
as light sunders sky,

your thunder echoes
in my bones.
I answer the wind,

I'll follow.

Today's prompt was water.

Poem A Day Challenge, Day 1

2010-04-01T21:52:00.002-05:00

I may be nuts, but I'm going to try this again. Today's prompt was to write a lonely poem, and haiku is a good way to break myself in to this crazy discipline again.

The sound of a knife
scraping on a single plate,

wind ruffles the curtains.

The Friday Five

2010-03-12T19:39:00.003-06:00

Today's Friday Five focuses on the differences and similarities between being religious and being spiritual. For a good chunk of my adult life, I've self identified more as spiritual than religious, even though I'm Christian. It seems there's always a hint that one is superior to the other, and that makes me very uncomfortable because there's so much overlap. But here goes...

To me, being religious means --

1. Following with discipline the teachings, dogma and hierarchy of a church.
2. Regular church attendance.
3. Regular participation in sanctioned rituals like communion, baptism, and approved schedules and methods of prayer.

4. Practices like only wearing approved clothing and hair styles or established diets.
5. Adherence to sacred texts.

Being spiritual is

1. Accepting and seeking that which is greater than what we can tangibly measure.
2. Accepting, seeking and respecting the ineffable connection to one's self, other people, animals, the physical world mentally, emotionally, and physically.
3. Aligning one's beliefs consciously and thoughtfully with one's actions. This could be just in the way that we treat people, or social, economic and political activism.
4. Practicing appreciation, empathy and self transcendence.
5. Finding these things in our daily lives.

Book # 11

2010-03-09T22:50:00.002-06:00

I've been meaning to read this book for several years now, and I really don't know why I put it off. I'm a fan of Julia Cameron. I've worked through The Artist's Way several times now, and I've always gotten something out of it. Some People Say That God Is No Laughing Matter has been sitting on my shelves for several years now. I think I've been waiting for just the right time, and this Lent has been it.

With a Lenten task of of seeking joy in all things and fighting my negative thinking and self-criticism, I realized that at least one thing that I really need to do is lighten up. That meant doing things pretty differently than my usual patterns. I'm more prone to analyze something to death than to just absorb it. Knowing that about myself, I decided to approach Cameron's book differently than I have her others, and I chose not to work through the exercises at the end of each chapter. I have the feeling that there are several that I'll go back and do sometime later, but for now, taking in her message that faith can bring happiness, contentment and joy was exactly what I needed.

The sad truth is that a lot of people have been hurt by religion. I have my own wound, but Christianity is not the only religion that can suck the joy out of faith. With humor and tenderness, Cameron discusses how people in faiths as different as Christianity, Buddhism, New Age beliefs, and ethical beliefs like veganism, can try to impose their way of spirituality on others. Spiritual Experts, Very Spiritual People, the Sisters Very Nasty, Buddha Pests, Spiritual Salesmen, Seducers and Waifs and others all receive a bit of recognition. Yeah, I noticed myself in that crowd a time or two. (Ouch.)

Cameron does more than address what can hurt and what has been misused in the world of faith. She challenges you to rethink what you "know" about God and how you relate to God. She challenges you to find spirituality within yourself even if you don't believe in God. She pushes you to seek joy, and Some People Say That God Is No Laughing Matter helped me find it.

These are just some random thoughts that came to me while reading this book.

I worship a God who loved hanging around with his friends and thought little kids were really cool.

The God I worship went to parties and enjoyed food and wine.

The God I worship created ladybugs, donkeys with their stubbornness and braying, laughing voices and lizards who can lick their eyeballs.

I worship a God who loves colors bright and dark.

I worship a God who welcomes us into the Divine world but doesn't push God-self into ours.

In reading this book, I was reminded of the importance of kindness, forgiveness, apologies, showing our appreciation, valuing our friends and valuing our selves, and appreciating imperfections. I'm glad I read it. I feel more than a glimmer of hope, and it's making it easier to be kind to myself and tell my darker thoughts to get out.

This Lenten season may be the best I've ever gone through, and this book is one of the reasons why.

Book Number Ten

2010-03-01T19:22:00.002-06:00

I knew I was going to like the book that the womanchild gave before I even opened it. It was by Bill of Wrongs, The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose. I miss Molly Ivins columns, and reading her words again was just a pleasure. Though raised a child of privilege, she was the absolute master of the down home, proudly liberal, populist voice.

Bill of Wrongs is not news. It was published after Ivin's death in 2007 and focuses on the George W. Bush administration. That's not entirely accurate. The true focus of the book is on people who either protested the administration or were suspected by it. Page after page, you read of events like arrests for wearing T-shirts or criticizing the Vice-President to his face. You read of jobs lost, homes and offices searched without warrants. You read of lawsuits that failed and those that succeeded at multiple judicial levels, including the Supreme Court. You read of deportation, extraordinary rendition and torture. This book definitely holds some scary and depressing parts that are still recent memory, and it makes me very glad that there's a new administration in town. Even with all the current problems.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that Bush was the only President that's stepped on the Bill of Rights. Ivins and Dubose do point out that incidents of suppressing free speech occurred under Clinton, the senior Bush, Reagan and Ford (albeit the one noted in this administration that I remember was crafted by Dick Cheney) and of course, Nixon. I think you could probably look at any administration and find something that tried to abridge our freedoms, sometimes in the name of security, sometimes in the name of progress. That may be one of never ending quests of a democracy -- determining just how much freedom we really want.

Bill of Wrongs also provides hope and helps you be proud of being American. You read about people who never intended to be activists who chose to fight back against the government for the simple reason that in this country, we're not supposed to be afraid of our government. We are guaranteed rights, and this book is a strong reminder of the words we've heard so many times. Freedom isn't free. You do have to stand up for it, and sometimes you have to fight for it. The battlefield isn't just always some foreign land.

Appreciations

2010-03-01T03:58:00.002-06:00

1. I work with people who truly love what they do and want to help every woman feel beautiful on her wedding day.

2. Hot Earl Grey tea with cream. It's almost heresy for a southern girl to drink her tea any way but iced, with lots of sugar and lemon, but I love it.

3. The reliability of following directions in a good recipe is a safe haven in a world of inconsistency and confusion.

4. Liking the tune that's stuck in my head.

5. Finding a star on a cloudy night.

Haibun #5

2010-02-25T23:09:00.003-06:00

I measure my commute in time, not miles. 45 minutes is just enough. An hour allows me to transition into who I'm supposed to be. I can leave my car with voice modulated, face composed, and smile ready to conceal what is within. The energy changes with the landscape as homes give way to fields, which merge with shopping malls and restaurants.

The wheels keep turning.

Inside, energy is spent

on just becoming.

Book Number Nine

2010-02-24T11:11:00.002-06:00

Yesterday afternoon, I finished The Job-Hunter's Survival Guide by Richard N. Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute. It was a Christmas gift from the womanchild, and she inscribed it, "Mom, I believe in You!! You should too. Go get 'em, Tiger. With Love, C." Yeah, my daughter knows how to get to me.

I've been working my way through this very short book for weeks, and I'll say that this is simply the best guide to job hunting I've read in ages. It's only a hundred pages, but it's so filled with good information, you want to take it in thoroughly. I worked as a recruiter for close to ten years, and I've read a lot of these books. I wanted to know which ones to recommend to my clients because one of the first things I told people was that my agency should not be the only job hunting resource they use. They also helped me hone my professional skills on behalf of other people.

Job hunting for yourself is different though. I don't have the objectivity with myself that I did with my clients though, and this book has helped me look at my job hunting in a fresh way. This book outlines different ways to job hunt and provides statistics about the effectiveness of each approach. It's full of resources you can find online to help with your job search and provides just plain solid information about how to network effectively, build a good online image (your "other" resume) for yourself, how to interview and most important of all, how to find a job that aligns with your identity, skills and personal goals. It was actually quite uplifting about a challenging, nerve wracking and often quite depressing quest. Best of all, it lays on the line just how much work is involved in finding work and provides action plans.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is not only job hunting, but who thinks they ever might have to look for a job, might want to change careers or even people who feel like they've lost sight of themselves and what they can do.

Book Number Eight

2010-02-23T19:07:00.002-06:00

The Ugly Duckling by Iris Johansen is not a recent novel, but it's the last one I got in my book swapping at work. It's a good action/adventure story, and if I'd been in a different mood, I would probably have loved it. Following Franny & Zooey in my reading though, it just fell flat. If you enjoy mysteries and action drama books, you'll enjoy it, and I don't hesitate to recommend it.

The story centers around Nell Calder, the shy, mousy wife of a rich, successful, handsome and dominating businessman. Attending a big, formal business party on an exotic island is one of her worst case scenarios in life, and it's made even worse by an armed attack on the party. Nell and her daughter are attacked by a knife wielding man. Nell is thrown over a balcony, and her daughter is killed. A mysterious man, Tanek, who holds an interest in the party's host, rescues Nell. Her face has been hideously disfigured, and this man arranges for her to have plastic surgery to restore her face and enable her to rebuild her life after the death of her husband and beloved child. The plastic surgeon with the advice of his housekeeper, another one of Tanek's rescued victims of circumstance, transforms Nell into an "unforgettable" beauty with Helen of Troy and Galatea as his inspiration. In her recuperation, she learns of the death of her child and begins a quest for vengeance on her murderer and his boss that makes her question her choices throughout her life. Tanek both helps and restrains her in this quest. The book takes you from a Mediterranean island to a western sheep ranch to a commando training camp in Florida to Paris, so the armchair adventurer can feel satisfied with the locales. It also holds enough twists and questions about the character's trustworthiness to keep you engaged. That's why I'll recommend it.

Now why I didn't really get into it is easy. If you had top of the line organic, hormone free sirloin for dinner, a Big Mac for lunch the next day just won't satisfy. Now if you really want a Big Mac read, get The Ugly Duckling. If you're in the mood for some good fluff, this is choice.

I've just had my fill for awhile. My friend at work has passed on two more novels, but I need a change of pace, and the fiction I'll read next is going to take some thought. The womanchild brought me a non-fiction book last weekend, and I plan on starting it tonight. Good fiction is calling me though, and that's going to take some thought.

Don't worry, be happy

2010-02-22T16:56:00.003-06:00

I got tagged by Redsneakz to list ten things that make me happy. When someone tags you because they say they greatly admire you and it works well with your Lenten discipline, you have excellent reasons to cooperate. So here goes in no order, just as they pop into my head...

1. My daughter. She doesn't just make me happy. She brings me deep joy, and she is an inspiration, even when she's sick and cranky like she was this weekend when she was home.

2. My dogs are always thrilled to see me when I come home. Unconditional love always brings happiness.

3. Ditto with my adopted cat (the amber eyed, redheaded stepchild in a family of beautiful and snobby white and gray blue eyed cats who deign to let me feed them). This animal thinks I'm the best thing since canned tuna.

4. The sound of children laughing. The best thing about my house is that it's across the street from a school playground.

5. My friends.

6. Laughing with my sister.

7. Candlelight.

8. Music, whether it's the oldies I grew up on, the jazz I discovered later in life, or the indie music the womanchild is sharing with me. (Side note: She asked me to go to Bonaroo with her! That wouldn't be a bad way to celebrate my fiftieth at all.)

9. Blogging. My blogging friends have enriched and broadened my life. You inspire and uplift me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

10. Books, books, books. Whether it's literature or fluff, reading makes me happy.

Bonus happiness(es)

A glimpse of the moon catching me unaware.

Being near water -- the ocean, rivers, lakes, heck, even a good, long hot shower.

The first time you catch a hint of spring or autumn in the air.

I'm supposed to tag someone who needs cheering up, but I'm just going to send this out into the ether and hope that someone will think about what makes them happy and find it.

Lent

2010-02-21T09:16:00.002-06:00

A very religious friend of mine once told me that as soon as you make or upgrade a commitment to God, the Devil increases his assaults. I know it certainly feels that way.

I've avoided Lenten disciplines for the last couple of years. I gave a little lip service to them, but I didn't really practice. When you already feel like you're in the desert, it's hard to voluntarily go deeper into a barren wasteland. This year, I wanted to rethink Lent. It's traditionally a time of fasting and penance, but this year I've made a Lenten commitment to vigorously and consciously battle negative thinking and my almost constant stream of self criticism and to seek joy in all things. That sounds quite the opposite of penitential, but it is a way of getting rid of quite a bit of the garbage I've put between me and God.

The upswing of this is that my internal battle has kicked itself into a higher gear. I'll be going along with some daily activity and a painful memory will assault from the blue. Now this happens regularly, but it's happening with much greater frequency -- several times a day. I found a stash of nuts and bolts that my husband had left in his T-shirt drawer, and one of our nastier arguments about his compulsive hoarding dropped me to my knees with tears. I pretty consistently tear myself up over my mistakes, but now, the criticism is kicking in over things I've completed successfully with reminders of how I should have done better, trying to turn a success into yet another failure. I literally have to physically stop what I'm doing and tell my inner critic to just shut the !@#$ up. It is a battle.

The same friend who warned me about the Devil upping the ante once told me to pray that God will always see me through the wounds of Christ. Now she's Catholic, and her choice of language doesn't really gel with either my fundamentalist upbringing or my own eclectic way of Christian thinking, but I get her point. She wants God to always see us as forgiven, pure, lovely and transformed by Christ's sacrifice. I think God already sees us that way, and I want to see myself the way that God sees me. In the words of another, more earthy friend, God doesn't make junk, and that includes me.

Joy is a bit harder to describe than the battle against negativity. While often used as a synonym for happiness, it's really something significantly different. I've found it to be quiet, deeper than happiness, and while sometimes just not as fun as happiness, more restorative. As a former preacher of mine once said, happiness depends on happenstance, joy depends on God. Just reading through some Christian definitions of joy, I found that joy is the perception of grace in one's life, that joy is the presence of pleasure and delight, that joy is the celebration of God, that joy lasts even through hard times -- that it abides, that joy is a consequence of faith, that it comes from forgiveness, obedience, fellowship, and service.

So to seek joy in all things, what can I really do? Practice appreciation. Mary is onto something with her Grace in Small Things. You might see some of those here.

Though I have felt the distance between God and myself to such a degree that it has felt that God has been in absent in my life, I can remind myself through both memory and reading of Divine love, greatness and glory.

Faith is a bit harder. I'm back to the state of Natalie Wood's character in Miracle on 34th Street as she's trying to convince herself of the reality of Santa Claus. I believe, I believe, I do believe.

I can work even harder on forgiveness and letting go of the past. The latter is one of the hardest things of all for me. It often feels like memory is all I have, but I'm refusing to believe that's the truth. This may involve even more physically stopping myself when old hurts and the nastiest things of all, grudges, start eating away at me.

I have the feeling that obedience is going to be tougher than I think. I know what I should do, but making myself do it often brings out the rebel that people don't realize is a big part of me.

Ah, fellowship. I don't know why this is so hard for me, but it is. My solitary life over the last year or so has made me even more awkward around people. I truly understand "silence like a cancer grows" from The Sound of Silence now. I'm going to have to really fight my fear of being judged all the time and trust that I do have a place among people where I am both welcomed and have something to contribute. I've signed up to begin some volunteer work starting Tuesday. I don't bring much to a party now, but I can still do honest and valuable work. That might help with service as well. I'd like to get involved in church again, but working Sundays and almost every Wednesday makes that hard. Somehow I'll find a way.

So, this is my plan for Lent and beyond. I want to find God again, and I want to find a better life for myself. Something tells me the two are inseparable.

Climbing

2010-02-15T20:05:00.002-06:00

I blame it on Salinger and the liturgical calendar, but for the last several days I've had two thoughts that will not leave me alone.

My spiritual life in the last couple of years has been at one of its lowest points. Coincidentally (as I've rather belabored here) conflict, poor health, loss, death and grief have dominated my days. Some people find that their spirituality grows in challenging times. I used to think of myself as one of those people, but I've found that I'm most assuredly not. I remember though what that relationship with God/dess was like, and I miss it sorely. My mind has gone repeatedly to my mountaintop experiences when I knew I was connected indelibly to the Divine, and it has created a deep hunger to know that present assurance again. I crave that mountaintop. I've been there. I need it. Not having been there in so long made me identify so strongly with Franny that I keep re-reading Zooey's advice.

I've also been reading the sermons of my online preacher friends for Transfiguration Day, and though this was not the only lesson I learned, I've been reminded that the apostles had to climb a mountain to witness Jesus' transfiguration. That was a bit of a kick in the pants. I know that I need one of those every now and then, but I've never enjoyed the experience.

That led to my other recurring thought which isn't so much a thought but a scrap of a Bible verse, "...the kingdom of heaven is within you." As a natural introvert, I know that before I've found my closest connection to God/dess by going deep inside myself. Somewhere in that process I've left myself behind and found the Holy Spirit.

That's gotten harder. I've had to fight my introspective nature to not get sucked into all the emotional muck and just drown in it. That ability to go beyond myself when I turn inward seems to have escaped me, yet, I fear that this is the mountain I must climb if my spiritual connection, the essence of my life, is to be restored.

It's a bit daunting. I don't want to go through all the garbage to get into what is real, good and life giving. I'm afraid of how I'll react. I worry I won't have the strength to persist. I'll have to depend on Divine grace. I know that consciously experiencing grace is one of those mountaintop moments, but I feel so disconnected I wonder if it's even possible any more. My lack of faith disappoints and maddens me.

Though this sounds very negative, it's really not. I've clearly identified something that I need and want. I've relearned I am not myself without consciously seeking God. This is a big step in reshaping my life from what it has been to what it can be. As scary as it might be, I'm going to trust that I'm really not alone.

Book Number Seven

2010-02-14T08:46:00.002-06:00

When you read a classic book by one of the great authors, doing a book review is a bit daunting. If you get it wrong, you reveal yourself as an idiot. Since I do that pretty regularly in a truly notable number of ways, I'm just going to jump right in and not worry about it.

When J. D. Salinger died, I went to my bookshelves and found my copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I read it once when I was a teenager. Who didn't? It didn't have the profound affect on me that it's supposed to have on every adolescent reader, but I appreciated it. (Again, who didn't?) It's One Of Those Books. What I also found, thanks to the womanchild who has excellent taste in reading material, was Franny and Zooey, which I hadn't read.

Franny and Zooey are brother and sister, who along with their older siblings, spent their childhood as famous wunderkind on a radio quiz show called "It's A Wise Child." All of their lives, they have been coached to both fame (by their parents, former vaudevillians) and high intellectual and spiritual achievement (by their older brothers, one of whom has killed himself). They have been pumped up with their superiority all of their lives and find it to be a sham. Zooey, the brother, is now an up and coming television actor. Franny, a college student, is in the middle of a nervous and religious breakdown. The book is about the brother confronting his sister about her collapse.

As you expect from Salinger, both characters are alienated and fed up with the world and hunger for something deep, sublime, ecstatic and real. They are both likable and annoying, sick of the pretentiousness and ego they see both around and in themselves. That they do point their disgust at themselves keeps them from being completely unbearable. Zooey is just rude to his friends and family. More than once, I wanted to tell him, "Don't talk to your mother that way. I don't care if she is annoying," or "You're not helping your sister that way." As he talks to her, his efforts seem to become a series of insults designed to wound his hurting sister. Zooey does want to help his sister though, and how he does to a certain degree is by increasing the distance between them. After a frustrating face to face discussion, he calls her on the phone pretending to be the brother who took responsibility for guiding and shaping their education.

Franny's nervous collapse has involved an obsession with a book about a Russian pilgrim delving into praying without ceasing as a path to enlightenment. As she seeks her own enlightenment though, her disgust with the world around her has grown. Zooey targets this in his telephone confrontation with her. He recalls to her how their father, in their radio quiz show days, would push them to shine their shoes, look their best, be their best for "The Fat Lady." Each of them had developed their personal image of "The Fat Lady" as a sad, sick and somewhat pathetic character who derived joy and meaning from having their radio appearances.

He tells her, "I'll tell you a terrible secret -- Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddamn cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddamn secret yet? And don't you know -- listen to me, now -- don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."

When a book gets something so right, even when the characters are so bloody annoying, you have to love it.

A good enough night

2010-02-09T22:35:00.002-06:00

Several months ago, in a conversation with a friend, I mentioned that inside my head was about the most dangerous place I go. She laughed and said she knew exactly what I meant and followed it up with a line I'll never forget, " Bad neighborhood, Don't go there alone."

You've got to love friends like that.

Lately, I haven't been too good at following her good advice, but something has happened. A terrible mood of tears and panic attacks occurring multiple times daily just disappeared for no good reason. I could go down the checklist of problems and challenges and find every one still there, but tonight, it's just okay. Knowing me, it will all catch up with me again, but you know, so will some happiness. So will some peace. So will some laughter, and one day I'll get to share that with my friend again.

Haibun #4

2010-02-01T03:07:00.004-06:00

Housebound for days, I've watched the snow and listened to the sleet fall. Despite the cold, I must go out. Tonight, clouds are sailing past an almost full moon. The night is silver and indigo, splashed with gold from the streetlights. So bright for there to be no stars, light reflected and refracted everywhere.

Cobalt shadows hide
each hesitant, crunching step

in the frozen snow.

Book Number Six

2010-01-28T20:20:00.003-06:00

I have a co-worker with whom I swap books. It's fun, helps us both with our limited shelf space, and it's just nice to have someone at work with whom you can connect on more than a business level. I've introduced her to the fun of Charlaine Harris' vampires, and she's gotten me into reading mysteries again.

It may not even be middle brow level reading, but it's enjoyable, and as a writer, I've found that good mysteries can really teach you about plot development. Too often I've figured out whodunit early in the book, but when a mystery makes you want to skip ahead and read the last few pages, you've got a good one. That was the case with Shiny Water by Dr. Anna Salter, a clinical psychologist known for her work in the field of sexual abuse.

Like the author, the main character of Shiny Water is a psychologist in this field. Michael Stone is a dedicated, female psychologist who has testified in a custody case where the care of the children was awarded to the father. Stone is convinced that he is a molester. The day the children have been given to their father, the children disappear are found dead in their mother's house. Since she had testified on behalf of the mother, Stone finds both her personal and professional abilities questioned by others and herself. As she delves deeper into this murder, both to find if she did miss something and to help find who murdered the kids, she finds herself at risk from both the law and the murderer.

It's a good story line, but what makes this story really work is the excellent character development of Michael Stone. You can easily visualize how this woman lives, and her internal life is revealed gradually. The wonderful tension created by Stones' efforts at self-control among predators who try to control others and their victims keeps you reading.

My friend found this book on the sale rack at a dollar store. The price ($1.25) was printed on the cover. It's a good reminder about the thing about books and covers.

Filling the time

2010-01-27T18:26:00.003-06:00

Learning how to live alone after decades of family life has been an adjustment. One of the biggest lessons I've had to learn has been not to rush. The only schedule I have to consider is my own. There's no need to push dinner later because of piano lessons or doctor's appointments or finish early because of some homework project. I don't have to push (nag) people to get ready faster so they won't be late for school or work. I've been surprised to find that it really doesn't take me two hours to go from from shower to walking out the door. I thought making myself look decent just took that long, but with no change in routine, it's minutes. It was everything else that was devouring my time.

So living alone has given me more time. Figuring out what to do with it has been surprisingly difficult. There are always books to read, a movie to pop in the DVD player, and of course the time consuming black hole of the internet.

I like having more time to write, and putting the emphasis on a handwritten journal has been good. The feel of a pen in my hand and its scratch along a piece of paper hold a pleasure that typing never will. It also slows me down. I scratch out lines, paragraphs. I toss sheets into the wicker wastepaper basket beside my favorite battered chair. I look more carefully at the visual effect of a poem on a page when it's handwritten. I just think more. Beyond that, I like having a calloused groove on my third finger that perfectly fits a pen.

I had to learn again how to cook things slowly. The quick and easy meal doesn't always satisfy, and letting a meal develop in its own time has become almost a Zen practice for me.

These are good things. They've brought me pleasure, and that is actually part of the problem. As my incessant whining in this blog has shown, I've lived a lot of the last couple of years hurting, mourning, depressed and frustrated. I've wanted these simple pleasures as a way to make my life better. The little pleasures made the pain stop for awhile. That's just not enough anymore. I need meaning. I need a purpose.

I'm not going to find it in the ongoing emotional autopsy of my life as wife and day-to-day mother. It's definitely harder to find than a re-run of Buffy. It took me months to find things that I enjoyed again after losing R. So, finding purpose and significance in this new life of mine will probably take me awhile longer. I don't take time for granted the way I used to, and I'm impatient. I want it now, and even though the thought of this makes me grind my teeth, I'm just going to have to have faith that I will find it.

What's significant about this though is that I am ready for something deeper, something substantive and real again. I haven't noticed all the steps that brought me to this point, but it's nice to know that I'm here.

Haibun #3

2010-01-25T18:29:00.004-06:00

Silence used to be the friend I rarely got to visit whose presence I sought. Now, she's more like company who has overstayed her welcome, smiling at me in the mornings before the coffee has been made and keeping me up late night. I turn to the radio or TV and get memories I don't want or people who make me angry. My old friend, annoying though she may be, is preferable.

A home, clean and warm,
the necessary comforts,
tainted with absence.

Book Number Five

2010-01-24T03:37:00.004-06:00

Just minutes ago, I finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This is a book that's worth staying up until 3:00 a.m. to read. I first heard of The Help on NPR's All Things Considered and knew that I'd have to read it. This is a story about black maids and their white employers in Jackson, Mississippi in the the 1960s. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the stories are intimate, personal, unsettling, uplifting and deeply, deeply moving. The Help captures these complicated relationships beautifully -- the ill treatment, the kindnesses from both sides, and the depth of the connections. This book excels in showing the heirarchies of the Southern social class system, all the lines that are drawn between the many levels of haves and have nots. Only a Southerner could have captured these nuances so accurately.

Told primarily in the voices of maids, Aibeleen and Minnie, the novel is centered around the relationship that develops between Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan and Aibeleen. Skeeter is a new graduate of Ole Miss returning to her family's plantation without the MRS expected of southern college girls in the sixties. She plays bridge and tennis with her old sorority sisters who now run the local Ladies League and grimly follows her mother's advice on how a tall, ungainly, frizzy headed girl can catch a man while she dreams of becoming a writer. When Skeeter lands a job writing the housekeeping advice column for the local paper, she turns to Aibeleen for information, because having had a maid all of her life, she knows nothing about keeping house.

Aibeleen has spent her life raising and loving white women's children and seeing them grow to hold racial prejudices, even though some still show their love for her. She has also recently lost her own son. That loss, including how he was treated because he was a black man, is close to the surface.The relationship is awkward. Aibeleen is scared of the potential consequences of getting too close to her employer's friend, but when Skeeter gets the idea of writing a book about the stories of black maids, the relationship grows in fits and starts. Aibeleen, who is also a writer, feels the need to tell her story, even though she knows if it gets to the wrong people (of whom Skeeter might be one), the consequences for her could be literally deadly. Over time, she brings in more maids to tell their stories, and in the process, she, Skeeter, and most particularly, Minnie, Aibeleen's closest friend change and grow.

Ever since I started reading this book, Verleen, the maid who worked for my family when I was a small girl has been on my mind. I don't even know if I'm spelling her name correctly, but I know I loved her with the intensity and purity only a small child can possess, and I still remember the last day she worked for my family and how sad her leaving made me. I'm remembering Letty, who followed Verleen. She had such great dignity and a smile that just glowed. I'm remembering the few times we would drive them to their homes after work and how they had to ride in the back seat. That is not a comfortable feeling, and it stayed with me all through the whole book. The Help made me think, remember and feel, and it will stay with me for a long, long time.

Haibun #2

2010-01-21T16:53:00.003-06:00

I didn't want to go inside today. The wind held a promise that won't be kept for several more weeks. My daydreams held floppy hats, fresh berries, bare legs and muddy feet with polished toes. Hundreds of blackbirds swooped over the field and then landed all at once, their wings, loud and sibilant. They sailed off immediately, in great arcs and curves.

Spring was conceived in
the single candle lit on
a cold winter night.

Haibun challenge

2010-01-21T08:55:00.003-06:00

Theresa challenged me to join her in keeping a haibun (a Japanese poetry form combining prose and haiku) journal. I'd never tried this form before and have found it a bit daunting. That's always a good thing when I sit down to write. I find myself doing my best work when I'm a little intimidated by what I'm writing. So, here's my first attempt.

The drive to work is rote, curves, rough road and speed traps engraved in muscle memory. My mind wanders, eating miles, and I find myself surprised by where I am. I notice the sky while going down an exit ramp. It's a richer blue than just days before, making the bareness of the trees on this cool mid-winter morning look out of place and temporary.

The wheel does not stop.

Change is inevitable,

secure as routine.

So much red

2010-01-19T21:04:00.004-06:00

Today I arrived at the home of a friend who is in her eighties to take her to the beauty salon. When I knocked on the door, she called for me to come in and said, "Watch your step." From there I had to tip-toe around literal pools of blood.

While getting ready, she scraped the top of her foot with her support stocking. Her home looked like a violent crime scene, red splatters and footprints in her living room, kitchen, bedroom, hallway and bathroom from where she tried to get bandages and new socks to stop the bleeding. As I gathered more towels, the fire department arrived after having been notified by her personal alert system. They peeled from her foot a sock so saturated it was no longer recognizable as fabric. They were able to stop the bleeding, but we decided a trip to the emergency room was in order. The firemen helped get her in my car, and we spent the next several hours in the ER for observation and re-bandaging.

While we were in the hospital, more friends came over and cleaned her house. I'm glad she didn't have to go home to an abattoir. I have never seen so much blood in my life ... and from such a tiny wound. Less than an eighth of an inch long, no wider than a cat scratch, and it was everywhere. Blood is really intensely red.

Throughout all of this, she was steadier than most people I know would be in the same situation. When the firemen asked her if she thought she could walk, she said she was a bit light-headed, then laughed, and said,"I'm just a dizzy dame."

Almost 85 years old, weak and bleeding, my friend has definitely got moxie. There might still be time for me.

Book Number Four

2010-01-17T23:55:00.002-06:00

I just finished my fourth book of the year minutes ago, and it is officially the first book of 2010 that I love. To be honest, I enjoy most books that I read. I like a lot of them. I can find something of merit in most books, but loving a book is something else. A book that I love is one that I'll come back to more than once. A book that I love will not end up in the big tote bag that I carry to the used book trade-in store every couple of months. A book that I love will always have a place on my limited shelf space and usually ends up in a stack by my favorite chair. I'm not one to usually write in or underline a book, and if I do, you can count on it being a book that I love. Loving non-fiction is extremely rare for me, but I'm planning on starting Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell again tomorrow.

The subtitle of Outliers is The Story of Success. Now I'm a sucker for motivational stories. I like learning about people who achieve goals and make something of themselves. They inspire me, at least for a little while, to get more focused and get things done. However, I also get a little nauseous when I hear someone talk about how somebody achieved great things all on their own with little or no help along the way. My first thought is usually "that ungrateful bastard."

Outliers is the very first book I've read about successful people that looks at the multiple factors, sometimes beyond an individual's control, that go into somebody being an exceptional success. The profiles include Bill Gates, Robert Oppenheimer, The Beatles, and people I've never heard of before but who have broken ground in fields like hockey, computers and corporate law. With all of the successful people it profiles, Outliers starts with talent, discipline and hard work as factors that they all possess. It doesn't minimize their importance. In fact, it gives people credit for possessing gifts beyond the ordinary. It stresses the importance of hard work. (10,000 hours of practice before mastery is achieved will stay in my mind for a long time. I confess I started calculating the number of hours I've spent writing but gave it up to get back to the book.)

Quoting Gladwell is the best way I can express why I love this book so much, "Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed. If it were, Chris Langan would be up there with Einstein. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities -- and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them." On the next page, he continues, "To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success -- the fortunate birth dates and happy accidents of history -- with a society that provides opportunity for all."

I can already hear my conservative friends snorting at the idea of fortunate birth dates. This isn't talking about astrology or something unquantifiable. Outliers explains in detail how one generation, born in a population trough, came of age when a previous boom generation was leaving a job market, and the boom following them was just beginning to show greater consumer needs. I can't help thinking about the difference between a college graduate in 2008 when new grads were a hot commodity in the employment market and someone who'll be facing the 2010 job market. That 2008 grad will have logged some professional hours in their first couple of years of adult work. How many upcoming graduates will be in dead end jobs for a couple of years trying to get some stability on their resume but not building additional skills? Two years is a blink of the eye, but if I were looking at two job candidates with identical collegiate experiences, one with a few of years experience in my field, the other with clerical work and high hopes, I know which one would have the advantage even before an interview began.

I enjoyed the research that went into this book. We have charts from scientific studies, sport stats, samples of IQ tests, airplane black box interviews, and just good documented research whether you agree with Gladwell's conclusions or not. The book has wonderful asides in the footnotes that just add to the reading pleasure. There's just so much good stuff here that it needs going over again. Outliers has also made me want to purchase Gladwell's other two books, Blink and The Tipping Point.

Outliers: The Story of Success was published by Little, Brown and Co. in 2008.

Book Number Three

2010-01-15T22:39:00.004-06:00

I'm a little embarrassed about my third book of the year. It was a gift from my sister, and I'm wondering if someone else gave it to her. She's really not a reader, and not only was this one obviously read, it had been underlined, written in and dog-eared. That alone made me curious, and I thought I'd give it a chance. Now, you might be wondering what kind of book I'm a little hesitant to talk about reading. After all, I enjoy sci-fi, horror and romance -- just the good ones, but still. Most of the books in those categories are rarely seen as literature. Self help books never are.

In general I hate self help books, but that's what I read. I only had to read a few self help books years ago to get sick of over generalizations, platitudes, mind games and just flat out bad advice. I really gave them up completely until this one when I found that a highly recommended marriage advice book had been written by someone with multiple divorces. This next confession is even a little more difficult. I also don't really enjoy most Christian books. While the advice can sometimes be sound and the basis for the advice excellent, I haven't really found many contemporary Christian writers who really engage me. (One of the reasons why I keep returning to Lewis and Bonhoeffer who consistently challenge me.) I would really appreciate suggestions on good Christian writers.

So, my third book of the year fell into a category I despise from a category of writers I don't usually enjoy. The title is even more embarrassing -- How To Get A Date Worth Keeping. Can you just imagine how badly I'm blushing now? So, yes, I'm interested in dating again, but I read this for more than that reason. I went hermit for so long I've forgotten how to meet people and make friends, and I basically like people too much for that. I thought about it a bit and realized that making friends is really a bit like dating, thus I gave this book a chance.

What I liked about this book is that it completely avoided a lot of typical dating advice about how to make yourself into somebody who attracts people. The main points were about being your self and doing what it takes to be an emotionally healthy person of character. It was really all about taking responsibility for your own issues, having realistic expectations, setting clear boundaries and not playing games. It emphasized that the point of dating is really to meet and get to know people, not necessarily progress into a relationship. This was all good stuff that reaffirmed what was in my gut. It also emphasized that dating means you have to suck up the courage to actually meet people and give them a chance. The book had very clear eyed advice without being preachy. I was also surprised by a surprisingly mature discussion of sexuality in the chapter, Unleash Your Libido or Reel It In. I did feel this book was aimed at people who weren't emotionally much past the flush of teenage dating and realizing how different adult relationships can be. Years don't have to be a factor in this.

How To Get A Date Worth Keeping was written by Dr. Henry Cloud and published by Zondervan Books in 2005. On the cover, it says "Be Dating in Six Months or Your Money Back." Well, since this was a gift (and probably a re-gift at that), I won't be finding out if that's true or not, but I am planning on trying some of the advice -- primarily about taking the responsibility to get emotionally healthy and screwing up the courage to do things and go places where I can meet people again.

Despite this good stuff, I just had to slog my way through the book. I'm a fairly quick reader, and it took me over a week to get through a book of less than three hundred pages. In comparison, I'm almost two hundred pages into my next book, and I started it yesterday. There are parts of How To Get A Date Worth Keeping that just seem overly repetitive, and more than once, I caught myself going over some pages I'd already finished. So, it's not the best read, but it has good to stuff to say.

The Friday Five

2010-01-08T22:38:00.003-06:00

I haven't done The Friday Five or any other blogging meme in a long time, and I've got the urge to blog and nothing else to write about, here goes.

1. Do you tend to daydream?
I think of daydreams as Walter Mitty-esque flights of fantasy, and I don't really indulge in those. However, I do indulge in memories, wishful thinking -- all too often about what I should have said, and thinking about things I'll write. An idea will drift across the brain, and the next thing I know, I'm trying to turn it into a poem or a story. Those can all count as daydreams though, so the answer is yes.

2. Do you usually remember your night dreams? Do you find them symbolic and meaningful or just quirky?
I don't usually remember my dreams, so when I do, I pay attention and usually find meaning. When I remember my dreams, it's usually my way of consciously accepting something that's been bothering me that I either couldn't or didn't want to identify. Often it's something I'm stressed about, and thinking through the dream's images becomes the first step to handling it instead of just worrying over it.

3. Have you ever had a life changing dream which you'll never forget?
I'm still not sure if I'd call this life changing, but it's definitely something I'll never forget. As a child, I had a recurring dream that everyone thought I was dead. I was laid out in a coffin and only had a limited time to make people realize that I was really alive before I would actually die. There were creatures (for lack of a better word) trying to thwart my efforts. The setting, the characters, the actions, even the dialogue were always the same. It terrified me then, and thinking about it still gives me the willies. I had that dream for years, my dream self aging as I did. It finally ended in my early twenties, coincidentally around the time I started developing some self-confidence.

4. Share a long term dream for one or more aspects of your life and work.
I'm just now regaining the ability to dream in the long term. I've been focused for years on just getting through the challenge of the moment. Because of that, those dreams are still a bit too delicate to share, except for one. Publication. I've taken the action step of purchasing both The Writer's Market and The Poet's Market and have begun some research. It's time to do more than dream.

5. Share a dream for 2010....How can we support you in prayer on both the short and long term dreams?
I was thinking a lot about this subject today before I read the Friday Five. A better job tops the list. The dream is a job that will use my talents, allow me opportunities to feel truly useful and return some financial stability to my life. The next biggest dream is to reconnect with people again. My hermit life has grown old, and I want to learn again how to make friends and relate well with people again. A date or two along the way wouldn't be bad either. Prayers are most definitely welcome.

Covering my rear

2010-01-07T23:11:00.002-06:00

Tonight I was reading about how the new FTC guidelines are more lenient with celebrities about endorsements than they are with "single media outlet" users, i.e. bloggers, so I thought I'd make a clear statement. I pretty much always have a book in progress. I'm also either purchasing all my books, borrowing them from my local public library or grabbing them off my own shelves, which means I've already purchased the book. I have been given books as personal gifts, but never as part of a commercial transaction with an endorsement in mind.

In short, I'm doing these reviews out of a sheer love of reading.

I'd welcome recommendations on good books to read, any type, any genre, fiction, non-fiction, any subject. Share with me what you've enjoyed reading. I'd love that.

Book Number Two

2010-01-06T19:17:00.003-06:00

Last night I finished Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton. If you don't read genre fiction, you may not know that Hamilton is up there with Anne Rice when it comes to writing about vampires. She has a smooth, literate writing style, tremendous descriptive ability, good character development and plots that keep you turning pages. Swallowing Darkness is not about the undead though. This is part of a series that focuses on the fae.

The lead character, Meredith NicEssus, is a fairy princess. Doesn't that sound sweet? Part human and part brownie as well, she's also a private detective living in L.A. The book opens with her grandmother getting killed by a curse from another grandchild. Her father, a king, was assassinated. She was raped by her uncle, the King of one court of the fairies. Her cousin and she are competing to see who gets the throne of the other court from her aunt, a mad sadist who delights in the torture of her guards. The winner will be the first to bear a child. Oh, did I mention that Meredith is pregnant with twins by three (or is that four) different fae? And every other magical creature you can think of either has a grudge against her because of her family or wants to sleep with her or both. The story line is about being caught up in politics, war, passion, and love, and what one will do for each of those things. That's what makes it interesting.

Hamilton has created a world here, one with roots in old myths and yes, fairy tales. The ties are subtle. They creep up on you until you smile with recognition at a character from one of the stories our great grandparents knew. As you read, you want to know more about how this world is structured and how it works. You see the Seelie Court, which only seems to be all sweetness, beauty and light, the Unseelie Court, the darker aspect of fairydom and the Sluagh Court, basically the kingdom of nightmares (the only place that offers the heroine anything close to safety). Like the old fairy tales, Hamilton doesn't shy away from the dark, scary, grotesque and bloody. You can tell her roots are in the world of hard boiled P.I. fiction, and she brings that gritty realism to the world of magic. Phillip Marlowe would be at home in this world where magical weapons appear by the gift of gods to those who deserve them, but he might have to work not to be wide eyed. I think that's a pretty neat literary trick.

Swallowing Darkness is also very graphically erotic, as are the rest of Hamilton's books. I nearly quit reading Hamilton because the books sometimes just turned pornographic. Write as many books as Hamilton has, and I guess you choose the easy route sometimes. I lose interest though if I have to stop and figure out who has what where. In Swallowing Darkness, Hamilton regains her balance. There's plenty of sex all right, but it has its place in the larger story.

If you're interested in Swallowing Darkness, but haven't read any other of Hamilton's books, don't start with this one. The series begins with A Kiss of Shadows. I've read a couple of the other books in the series, and after finishing this one, I want to go back and read them in order.

I've got my next book picked out. It's non fiction, and I'm not ready to say what it is yet. A little explanation might be in order, but I will be writing about it as well. I also took some time today, while waiting my turn in traffic court to read a little of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. It definitely made the court room more bearable.

Surprised

2010-01-05T21:21:00.002-06:00

Glamour magazine created some stir last year with an edition featuring a "plus size" model. (I use the quotations because the model wore a size 12, one size smaller than the average American woman. Yeah, a size 12 model is plus sized compared to a size 0 model, but I won't go off any more about that.) Apparently it's sparked a trend, and now V Magazine, which I've never read, but will very, very soon is featuring a spread with multiple plus size models as well as their skinnier counterparts.

The trend isn't that surprising, but when I looked at some of the pictures, I was delightfully shocked. The models are not surprisingly beautiful, but their bodies look real. They have not just curves, but natural folds, and they're gorgeous. Even better, they get to wear the good stuff -- Versace, Chanel, and more. The stuff I only dream of wearing.

I wish I'd been able to see something like this in a magazine when I was 16 years old. Even at my age, I get a little thrill about Seven jeans being available at Lane Bryant. Maybe the door to a more realistic image of women's bodies and a healthier standard for beauty is opening a little.

This year's first

2010-01-03T21:40:00.005-06:00

Last night, I finished my first book of the new year. OK, I started it last week, but it's still the first book of 2010. I just loved Julie & Julia by Julie Powell, so I had to check out her new book Cleaving: A Story of Meat, Marriage and Obsession. It's a strong follow up to a damn good first book, and it continues on with the themes of food, self-discovery and marriage. One of the things I really enjoy about Powell's writing is her willingness to present herself in a much less than flattering light. In Julie & Julia, her tale showed her as quirky and obsessive, sometimes a bit over the top. It was endearing in the book and cute in the movie.

In Cleaving, I got the impression that Powell could be a real piece of work, but one definitely worth knowing and enjoying. This book begins after Julie & Julia has made her a success. In it, she's pursuing an apprenticeship in a charming hippie run butcher shop. It follows her learning curve as she learns how to break down sides of meat into the cuts we carnivores enjoy. It's honest and descriptive without being unnecessarily gory, even though it does describe the entire process of a living animal becoming dinner. At the same time, she's describing an affair she had, its effects on the marriage that seemed so perfect in her first book, how the end of the affair affected her, a journey across the world, its different meats and what she found in herself. She gives the same careful, unflinching eye to her infidelity and marriage as she gives to the skill and craft of preparing meat.

This book just isn't as easy as Julie & Julia. It contains a good share of tears, and the story of a woman with a good marriage committing adultery and finding a taste for rougher sex can be just uncomfortable sometimes. I'm sure living it was even more so. As a reader, I just didn't want that to have happened. I wanted the character Julie to be easily, seamlessly married, but Powell is basically an autobiographer. Life is more complicated and richer than fiction, and Powell shows that well. The elements that inspired me so in Julie & Julia, finding a passion and becoming more sure and confident in one's self, carry on in this book. It just shows some of the darker aspects of the journey, and they're important as well.

I can't see Cleaving becoming a movie. Separating meat from bone just doesn't create as sexy an image as magnificent food coming out of an oven. Two people hurting each other while they love each other isn't as warm and fuzzy as being encouraging and supportive. It's just not Hollywood, but it's a good read that I highly recommend.

Coincidentally, a couple of days before I finished the book, a good friend gave me a roast, some beef liver and hamburger. Her father raised the Black Angus cattle they came from. It's organic, free range, grass and grain fed, top of the line beef. (Do I have good friends or what?) After Cleaving, I appreciate it even more, and I'm look forward to using Powell's recipe for liver.

I've started my second book of the year. It's Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton. I plan on writing about it as well.

Getting ready for the day

2010-01-03T08:21:00.003-06:00

This is just one of those days when I'm dreading going into work. There's nothing horrific on the agenda, but our busy season has started. While other retailers were going crazy before Christmas, I had too much time on my hands. But now, the engagement rings under the tree have been opened. The plan ahead girls with thoughts of 2011 weddings are beginning a leisurely quest for the perfect wedding dress, and June weddings suddenly seem much closer than they did a few weeks ago.

It's not the hectic pace I'm dreading. I prefer being busy to looking for something productive to fill my time or calculating just how much time I have left on the clock. It's just that something happens every day that makes me hurt. A bride will show off her engagement ring, all shiny and new. I'll smile and enjoy her excitement. Then a moment later, as I'm filling out paperwork, I'll see my own finger with only the imprint of rings worn for over 20 years. It's as empty as the house I come home to each night.

Yesterday, a woman around my age came into the store looking for a dress for her upcoming wedding. Her last husband died a month after mine did. I was a bit stunned. How did she get over it by now? I'm not suggesting my loss was greater than hers. I know that I haven't handled this loss well and haven't reached any peace about our complicated marriage and love. I just want that peace of moving forward so badly, and I'm sick of feeling stuck.

I probably unfairly put too much emphasis on the role my job has had in this. I really try not to do this, but my mind works by linking things together intuitively. A mother of the bride will be stressed out over the short time frame to organize her daughter's wedding, and I'll remember putting my own church wedding together in two weeks. A father will come in looking for something to guide him through a dance with his daughter, and I'll know that my daughter will never have that. I'll never share that certain look of pride, tenderness and love with C.'s dad again when she did something that grabbed us deep in our hearts. Several people have told me that my job must be fun. I just smile and say, "Oh, it's a happy place to work."

I want a break from memory. Amnesia feels preferable to this constant scraping of a wound, and I can't help but wonder if I would be farther along this road of healing if I hadn't taken this job. However, after having been unemployed for six months, the chance for any income at all was not something I was going to turn down. I'd been living on $38.00 a week unemployment. Yes, $38.00. That amount was based on my last few months as a mortgage broker when the housing market collapsed. Emotional torture, as disgusting as it is, is still preferable to depending on relatives to keep your utilities on and living on rice. What a choice.

But that's been my life, and despite today's bitch rant, I still think I've handled it fairly well. That I've been able to find mere moments of peace and even a laugh or two along way has been a major fucking accomplishment as far as I'm concerned. That thought alone has brought some steel back to my spine and dried my tears. I'm up to putting on the waterproof mascara now, and I can find the welcoming smile that is one of my strengths at this job.

I may not be fun now, but I know I'm strong.

I wish you a brave new year

2009-12-31T20:35:00.005-06:00

It's a little after 8:30 on New Year's Eve, and I've been in my nightgown for over an hour already. I'm ending this year much as I began it, glad to see the waning year go. The only good thing I can say about 2009 is that it was better than 2008. The last ten years have been the roughest of my life. Every one of these double zero years has been marked personally by death, illness and loss, globally by terrorism, war, natural disaster and economic crisis. Good riddance to this hurtful millennial decade.

Tonight, though I'm a wee bit sad and bitter, I'm not drowning. Underneath that negativity, there's a little hope, a tiny, battered scrap of faith, and a whisper of belief of myself. That's more than I've had in a long time, and I'm grateful. So, tomorrow I'll hang a new and beautiful calendar -- twelve months of Alphonse Mucha, a Christmas gift from the womanchild. I'll double check the new entries written in my date book. I'll start a new page in my journal. And if I'm smart, I'll make time to be still and quiet, listen for that wiser voice that guides me sometimes, and gently hold my hope as the treasure it is.

I gave up New Year's resolutions a long time ago because they became a tool for later self-flagellation. I've had enough of that stupid, time wasting, self-defeating nonsense. It can rest with this decade. Hope is good enough. So are wishes. We have a fresh new year to make them come true.

Winding down, gearing up

2009-12-28T08:21:00.003-06:00

I've been looking forward to this day for several days now. It's my first free day after Christmas. I'm not scheduled to work. Holiday prep and travel are behind me. That thought brings a sigh of pleasure, even though the freedom is an illusion. My to do list is lengthy, and people do have claims on my time today, but for the greatest part, this is a day when I have choices. I can ignore the list or enjoy the results as each item is completed. That ability to choose what you want in your day or your life is delicious.

I've missed that feeling. For the longest time, I felt like I just had to accept what came my way, whether I liked it or not. That powerlessness felt awful, but it held lessons. What truly surprised was that I found that I have a knack for finding moments of peace, happiness and humor even when my head and heart seem filled with pain. These seemed to be reactions, and it's only in hindsight, that I can see they were choices. This was my "a-ha" moment. When I realized that I was already making choices, many of them good and strong, I accepted that I could make more. Even though, I'm still dealing with loss, hurt and unwanted changes in my life, possibility has returned.

Along with my Christmas shopping, I purchased myself a new organizer for the coming year. This one is sleek and trim, bright purple leather with 2010 on the cover, a big change from the old, heavy, black one with sections for everything. I opened it yesterday and began filling in the identification essentials and birthdays. I know that it looked very mundane on the outside, but inside was childish glee. So many things can fill these pages, and some of them are going to be fun.

My wish

2009-12-16T02:25:00.004-06:00

"I wish you a hopeful christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish, pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear."

This isn't art

2009-12-10T13:48:00.003-06:00

Earlier today, I was trying to define the purpose of art a bit. It's a good way to waste some time and excess mental energy, because art has as many purposes as it has creators and viewers. Narrowing down the purpose of art is therefore pointless but intriguing. One of the things I acknowledged today is that sometimes art exists to shock and disturb.

Then I got back from the grocery store, took my break between chores online and found this, about a new social networking site created in part as an art project whose purpose is to protest social networking sites by terminating their users Facebook identity through an online ritual suicide. The site then posts a RIP page where your friends can make comments, and your status with the new site increases with the number of Facebook friends who join the new site.

I've got some issues with online social networking, and I'm working them out by spending too much time on Facebook. I've thought more than once about terminating my account there. I can understand some sort of organized protest against Facebook, MySpace and their ilk. The privacy issues are immense. The targeted advertising reminds me too much of that weirder than usual Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report. My too often consulted PC tech tells me that viruses from Facebook and MySpace keep him in business.

Disturbed from the start with this new website, here's where they lost me completely: "Seppukoo playfully attempts to subvert this mechanism by disconnecting people from each other and transforming the individual suicide experience into an exciting 'social' experience. To add insult to injury, "The RIP memorial page it offers Facebook dissidents could easily be mistaken for a real memorial for a real deceased person. But McCusker (the group's art director) rejected suggestions that that it was in bad taste and said that no one was likely to be upset." He went on to write, "Just take it easy."

I am offended, and I will not take it easy. There is nothing fun, exciting or social about suicide. It is an act of despair brought on by the tragically underestimated pain of depression, and I do not believe it is a willful choice. It leaves a wake of more pain, unanswered questions, and I'm not overstating, devastation among us who are left here among the living.

Suicide is NOT the metaphor on which to build a business, social network or pointless protest. This isn't art. It's not funny or hip. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with the integrity of one's online identity. It's just hurtful and tasteless, and I hope they lose a whole lot of money watching their endeavor fail.

Thank you very much

2009-12-09T23:20:00.003-06:00

This afternoon, I watched Scrooge, a musical version of A Christmas Carol released in 1970 by Shepperton Studios. Albert Finney played Scrooge, and Sir Alec Guinness, before he earned the Sir, played Marley's Ghost. The first time I saw this movie was on an elementary school field trip. This was in the days when movie theaters had one screen about the size of four in today's multiplex theaters. I don't think I've seen the movie since then.

What I remembered most from this childhood viewing was a happy chorus during the visitation of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Celebrating Scrooge's death, the people of London sang, "Thank you very much. Thank you very much. This is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me!" Today was the first time I realized that someone was actually tap dancing on old Ebenezer's coffin as he received his musical escort to hell.

Of course, the song was reprised with real movie gratitude after the big Christmas morning character conversion.

Being the silly, sentimental thing that I am, I cried during the final scenes of the movie. That's just what I do. I always have, and I probably always will. I cried a little harder as I remembered how R. used to fondly tease me about my movie tears. He thought they were sweet and somehow charming. That's one of the reasons I loved him so much. So I cried today, and then like any good southern woman (See Steel Magnolias -- "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion."), I smiled and laughed for a moment, grateful for a good memory.

I've had quite a few tears of more sincere origin lately. Since Thanksgiving, there have been five deaths among friends and their families, including a young friend of my daughter. Deaths touch me a little harder than they used to. My wounds, though healing, are still tender. Somberness takes up more room in my makeup now.

In a weird way, I'm particularly grateful for Charles Dickens today. In books and stories, he never ran from the shadows of the holiday season. Death, disease, hunger, disappointment and sadness claim their place in this holiday season whether we want them to or not. I've been reading Dickens since childhood. His books and the movies created from A Christmas Carol helped created a longing for some fantasy Victorian Christmas. I can so see myself in some fabulous gown, barely able to breathe in the essential corset, playing childish games at his nephew's Christmas dinner. They've also helped prepare me to handle real sadness when the rest of the world seems to be celebrating and to trust that I will celebrate again.

Unexpected inspiration

2009-12-08T12:55:00.003-06:00

This is a gray, chilly, rainy day typical of December in the South. What makes it a good day is that I'm off work today and have had the leisure to sit curled up in my favorite blanket and read. I finished Julie & Julia this morning. The book and the movie have had a lot of buzz, and I know I'm going to have to add the movie to my queue. The book was good, Streep is a genius, and Amy Adams is showing the potential to be one of the best actresses of her generation, so the movie is calling me to watch it.

What I hadn't heard in all the buzz (probably because I wasn't listening) was that Julie & Julia is about blogging as much as it is about French cooking. Julie Powell landed her book and movie deal through a blog she started in 2002, a couple of years before I started blogging. The Julie/Julia Project got started as the result of a big identity crisis. Julie was working as an underpaid, highly frustrated secretary for a government agency, out of step with her single and successful friends, living in a place she didn't like and wondering if she would ever do anything with her life.

Need I say I identified? Let's see...job frustration, low income, friends in very different life circumstances, not liking one's home, feeling like a failure whose life is passing her by, writing talent that's not getting fruitfully used. Check, check, check, check, and check. Well, Julie cracked the code. Now a successful author, she turned her life around by finding something that interested her and writing about it without the expressed goal of publication. She gave herself a project deadline, several emotional meltdowns (oops, let's add another check to the list), gained a bit of weight, a lot of insight and did it by blogging. She found friends and support in unexpected places (another check), found her sense of self and most importantly her sense of joy. Also she crushes wildly on David Straithairn (another check) and is a terrible housekeeper (yet another check, though thank goodness, I've never found maggots in my kitchen). She didn't start her blog with the expressed goal of landing a book deal. Compared to what else she found along the way, that almost seems a lucky coincidence.

So with this not so neatly checked off list of similarities, the possibility of solidifying my sense of self and finding some joy again seems a pretty strong possibility for me. I like the idea of giving myself a deadline. They've always worked well for me, but a deadline for what is the big question. I'm going to have to think about that for awhile. Right now, it's enough that I feel a sense of possibility, another thing I haven't felt in a long time.

Seeing faces

2009-12-05T21:55:00.003-06:00

Earlier this week, my city started placing American flags every few feet along the main street of our town. Tomorrow morning, a local National Guard unit is leaving for their deployment, and the community is gathering first at the high school football stadium and then along the streets to send them off as their convoy drives through town. In the last week, I've worked with at least six brides to be who moved their wedding dates from a few months away to the next couple of weeks. Their fiances', who are serving in different branches of the active military and National Guard, will all be deployed overseas by the end of the year.

The surge in troops is part of an exit plan, but it cannot be seen solely in terms of strategy. It holds thousands of faces and touches even more lives. Our troops deserve to know that we, as fellow citizens, friends and family, respect their service. They deserve to know that our government will support them better than it has shown itself to do. I can't seem to join in the flag waving though.

When I see all these flags, I feel somber. I wonder how many of those beautiful young women I've worked with will be widows before they know what it's really like to be a wife. I wonder how many funerals I'll either attend or know of that will make me think back to this week.

I have no answers to this violent mess. I'm too disquieted to even work up the years old righteous outrage about this war. This is what is on my mind: There have been 4,687 coalition deaths, including 13 civilian Department of Defense employees. 31, 575 U.S. troops have been wounded in action. 40, 000 troops have been diagnosed with PTSD, and it is feared that many others are hiding this illness.

There will never be an end to war unless the entire human race is transformed, and I just don't see that happening anytime soon. That doesn't absolve my lack of answers, and it doesn't ease the feeling of impotence I have about my prayers for peace and safety. The least I can do is remember some of the real cost of this war and treat it seriously. I won't be waving a flag tomorrow morning. I don't know if I'll be on the main road of my town tomorrow morning, but I do know that these men and women will be in my mind and heart.

Gratitude and sorrow

2009-11-28T23:15:00.003-06:00

This has been a notable Thanksgiving weekend for my family. The womanchild came home for the first time since she moved in August, and we've loved being together again. She's wanted to spend time with me, even cut short time with her friends to make time to be with me. We've talked and held each other. She's been comfortable in our home for the first time since her father died. Admitting how much we've missed each other has been easy and welcomed.

Thanksgiving afternoon, after a lunch we ate in a restaurant with her grandmother and great-aunt, C. and I went to the cemetery together. For the first time, since the day R. died, we held each other and cried. It hurt, but we've been hurting separately anyway.

On Monday of this week, the mother of one of C.'s room-mates died unexpectedly here in our home town. Naturally C. has spent a lot of time with her. Early on, her room-mate appreciated having someone with her who knew what it was like. One of their conversations brought up that her friend's mother, for years after her father's death, knew exactly how many months it had been since he died. My daughter immediately recognized that the day's date was exactly one year and seven months since her own father died. It has simultaneously been no time at all and a long, grueling span that has felt endless.

This week has held other deaths. A close friend lost his step-father. Yet another lost her father. "In the midst of life, we are in death..." says the Book of Common Prayer. The reverse is also true. Life continues, in all its mess and glory. I'm praying for my friends as they enter this valley.

I guess we all limp through this world, hiding the hurt. Tonight, I rubbed my daughter's back and then we just held each other. She was sitting on the ottoman of my chair and leaning back against me, as close as she could get to sitting in my lap like she used to. I could feel the rhythm of our breathing take on the same pace and pattern as she began to fall asleep. We've talked about things both serious and silly these days she's been home, and tonight we shared a deep and loving silence. We've seen some of the wounds we've each been hiding the last few days, and coming together, even for these few short days, I feel like we're beginning to heal.

Learning lessons

2009-11-22T23:00:00.005-06:00

I've had a difficult time writing since I lost 246 pages of a book in process. Its loss affected me harder than I've wanted to admit. To be quite frank, I didn't think it was that good, but I'd made quite a bit of progress. I thought there was a workable draft in sight. I'd edited so much that I can't really call it a first draft, but it still lacked an ending. That's what bothers me. It's one of my fears as a writer. Can I finish something that isn't short? A poem is short. So are essays, articles, blog entries. While a lot of grants aren't short, they're often broken up into smaller parts. A lot of short stories aren't even really short.

Do I basically run out of steam as a writer after just a few pages? Is this a failure of my imagination or a lack of discipline? My most critical inner voice tells me that this is just part of my inability to finish anything important. That I do have evidence to the contrary means nothing to her. She just doesn't like to be hushed.

When I can't get my inner critic to shut up, I start to live up to her expectations. Tonight, when I signed onto the blog, I headed to edit entries where I deleted several drafts I've started but dropped. They were boring. They were too whiny. They were too personal. They were too depressing. They were ideas that didn't deserve to be developed. When my critic gets going, she's very good at what she does. I let short, little blog entries drop because they weren't good enough. Then I got in trouble again for not finishing what I started. To avoid that criticism, I just didn't start anything.

That's the real problem with fighting yourself. You always lose.

I'm tired of that. I'm going to take a lesson from myself. The book I started and lost was about a musician who lost her voice and her ability to play instruments through an act of brutality. The story was about how my character grew when her primary tools for healing and understanding were taken away. She had to find another way.

I've always looked at the good novel as the pinnacle of literature. That's what real writing was all about. So, for me to be a real writer, I had to write a novel. That's a pretty destructive thought. It minimizes everything else I write. While I was trying to come up with ideas for the blog entries I deleted, I took a little time to re-read the poems I wrote for the Poem A Day Challenge in April. At the time, I didn't think much of them. After letting them cool for a few months, I realized they weren't as bad as I thought they were. There are actually a few that I like. There's some real writing there. There's some real writing in my handwritten journals. There's some real writing here in this blog.

I don't know if I have it in me to write a novel, but I'm not going to disrespect the rest of my writing if I don't. I'm not going to disrespect myself because my life hasn't followed the arc I plotted.

Tonight, I didn't fight my inner critic. I just walked away, and I feel like I won.