On Hiatus

This is my 1249th post!
I'll be on blog hiatus for several weeks.
My desk is piled so high with papers I now have to look over them to see the bottom of the computer screen. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will find my desk top.

See you in my 1250th post August 14th!


Photo Credit

Grateful

"I should be like Jillian and tell you to suck it up."

Dearest one is helping me get through my Ten Minute Workout by keeping track of the stopwatch. Meanwhile I am belly aching about my thighs being on fire and I've only been doing the first pose for day one for 30 seconds.

I've been looking for something I could do on work days that wouldn't take a lot of time and would get my exercise in. My parents are both on diabetic meds and I don't want to follow in their footsteps. If I exercise every day it seems to help my blood sugar levels stay within normal range. The first day I miss they start going up. I only have one kidney and as diabetes is not a kidney friendly disease I am determined to keep one step ahead of it. Exercise is not the whole answer but part of it. Among other things, eating too much of certain fruits seems to affect my blood sugar levels, too. I do like cherry season but it doesn't like me!

I've been trying to figure out a morning schedule that will work for me once I start back to work next month. Getting up at 5 AM used to work fine. Then the time change happened this past spring and I just couldn't seem to get rested enough to get up that early. I'm determined to get up at 5 AM for several weeks before I go back to work and fine tune my schedule. Cutting down my exercise time on work days makes room for writing and centering prayer; two things important to my well being.

This morning I went for a walk and remembered the days when going for a walk, fine tuning a schedule or considering a work out regime were out of the question for me. I was instantly filled with gratitude. Yesterday, as I was painting our bathroom I caught myself with the brush above my head and was grateful I could do it. There was a time when lifting my arms above my head to shampoo my hair was the sum total of my ability to exert energy some days.

I am ever so grateful when I have some perspective.
Today is one of those days.


Photo Credit

Quotable

Best line I've heard misread at an AA meeting:

"Probably no human power could have revealed our alcoholism."

Photo Credit

It's All Connected

The rotten floor led to new flooring and new vanity, lights, cupboard and mirror.

We both were relieved when the actual rotten part was considerably smaller than it could have been.

Dearest one and I have lived in rented houses most of our married life.
This is our first ever remodelling project in our very own home.
I feel totally spoiled.



Photo Credit

The Leg Bone's Connected To The.....

It's been a full week. Only daughter was here looking after our place while we were gone and then stayed a few extra days to visit. I got very teary after saying goodbye to her at the airport. It's been a wonderful week.

There has been so much sunshine these past few weeks that I asked myself today if I was a little bit off kilter for being continually grateful for sunshine. Because I am. I can't seem to get enough of it. On second thought that's a little like being too grateful for life itself. That's impossible. I'll continue to be grateful for the sunshine. No questions asked.

Tomorrow will come a dose of daily reality. Back to dishes and housework and writing. I look forward to the routine.

Dearest one will fix the leaky toilet. We hope it hasn't rotted the floor to kingdom come by now. We discovered the leak just before we left on holidays. We know we need to replace this 40 year old trailer we call home but we hope we still have a few years yet to do so. It may be a toilet that decides our fate. You know that ditty about the leg bone connected to the hip bone and so on? Well the floor beneath the toilet is connected to a whole lot of other floors. And walls.

Last night we welcomed friends over for the evening. We sat around the camp fire and the 6 of us laughed and talked and hashed out life as it is. I am so grateful for friends with whom I can be gut honest with and who will journey with me no matter what. We've been meeting in one another's homes on a weekly basis for 10 years now. I hope to grow old with them.

We always end our evenings together with prayer. I don't like praying out loud among other people. It's just not my thing. I can't seem to get my ego out of the way and so I stay silent. It feels like the most honest thing I can do. I rarely feel like I'm talking to God in those situations. Mostly I feel like I'm trying to impress someone. If I were to talk to God in front of others like I do on my own, well, it just seems too private of a conversation. So I don't. There are other situations and times though, when it seems the exact right thing to do, to pray with someone and so I do. I don't even know why I'm talking about this here. I feel like I'm the only Christian who has an aversion to praying aloud with others.

At an AA meeting once we had someone from the US there and we all got fouled up on the Lord's Prayer at the end of the meeting. Afterwards he informed us that we Canadians didn't have the right rhythm when we prayed it. So of course I'm as curious as anything about that. As it is now there is one guy who is often at my home group and I have to block his voice out when we pray because I lose my place. What a funny thing to do, have private pissing contests as to who is praying the Lord's Prayer right.

Lord have mercy on us all.



Photo Credit

Stinkin' Thinkin'

It is good to be home.
It took a while to get here.
On the third leg of our journey
the plane turned around 10 minutes into the flight because of mechanical problems.
As I listened to people complain
all I could think of was
that we were alive to bitch about it.
(So quit yer bitchin' people.)

As I sat waiting for our luggage to start
making its way around the carousel I watched
people reunite.
Tears lurked around the corners of my eyes
several times as I saw people so happy
to see each other.
Everybody needs somebody to miss them.

****

Dearest one and I walked miles upon miles
along the sea shore. To see mountains and ocean
in one view was incredible.

One day I left dearest one on the beach
and went back to our hotel room to get ready
to walk to an AA meeting. The cleaning lady
was in the midst of cleaning our room
but I really needed to go pee.

If I had any doubts that I needed a meeting
they disappeared as I went to yank some
toilet paper off the roll and the whole thing
went flying across the room.
My very first thought was that
the cleaning lady was being passive aggressive
and had positioned that roll just so
it would go flying when I yanked on it.

I know. Total insanity.

How grateful I am that there is a place
I can go and tell that story
and people nod in agreement
because their thinking
is just as fucked up some days.



Photo Credit

Tiggerin'

"It's okay, I'm not passing judgement on you."

I don't know if I'm saying it more for her benefit or mine although I do know I mean it. Saying those words I needed to hear when I was her age but never did. Never heard or saw it in action, either. Still don't. I've accepted that to expect attitudes and actions from people unable to deliver them is crazy making. I don't long for it like I once did. Eventually I learned to give it to myself and there have been a host of people who have modeled it for me until I was able to receive it.

In any case I say it upfront and it feels good to do so. Part of me thinks that if I'd really evolved I wouldn't have to say it at all except only daughter and I both know I have too many years of judgemental attitudes under my belt for that to be the case. She moved away from home while I was still majoring heavily on passing judgement and spouting opinions without much of a valve on my mouth.

Only daughter is here to house/Pug sit for us while we fly away on an airplane this week. She has her own cute little puppy who is in the house training stage. That puppy bounces on her feet like Tigger. What energy.

When I was only daughter's age I had three preschoolers and I put all my energy when I was visiting my mom into gaining approval and avoiding disapproval. The only problem was that I couldn't read my mom's mind but I sure thought I could read both her mind and body language. After all, I had had 25 years of practice already. And it was all about me. She frowned? It was something I did. She showed any hint of exasperation? It was my fault. This went on for the whole time my kids were growing up.

I was 38 when I stopped looking to my Mom for the lowdown on how I was doing as a parent. It only came after a nervous breakdown and a pain filled year where I cried an awful lot. I would never sign up to go through that kind of pain again. I would never trade the growth either.

I can't speak for my daughter although I doubt that hers has been any less painful of a journey to individuation. I do see her as miles ahead of where I was at her age. I don't hold myself in judgement over that either. It is what it is.

I am grateful for the open communication we can have about this stuff though. It's not all serious either.(Rule 62) When I asked her to come read this before I posted it I told her that I had written and deleted a sentence about how having a puppy is like having kids. Don't gasp, it is. She then said at least with a puppy she didn't have to feel bad about putting it in its pen and walking away when she'd had enough and how it wasn't going to end up in puppy therapy years down the road because of it.

Thank God puppies don't pass judgement on us either.(Adds only daughter.)



Photo Credit

Trippin'

In a few sleeps dearest one and I will hop on a plane and go for a bit of a holiday.I'm grateful our idea of holidays mesh.A remote cabin on a beach being ideal. Going where we know no on is a must.

Last night we sat around a campfire
with many of dearest one's siblings.
The women gathered in a circle together,
the men in another.

When the women found out where we were going they had all kinds of advice as to where we should go and what we should see. I sat there and wondered if dearest one would be interested. I didn't tell them that touristy things don't appeal to me much. I would make a scowly tourist on one of those bus tours. I just want to be left to meander on my own.

This morning when I listed off all the "must sees" of the group to dearest one he looked a little horrified. He then told me all he wanted was to relax and have fun. He didn't want to trade one kind of busy for another.
I was relieved.



Photo Credit

Perfect Timing

Someone from my AA home group is in San Antonio. It was very hard not to ask her to walk around with a placard, shouting out for Mary Christine and Pammie and a score of other bloggers. But you never know, maybe their paths will cross anyway.

A few weeks ago I went to a work related event full of hundreds of fellow employees. Most of my work communication is done by email or phone and I never meet these people face to face. I always like putting a face and name together. Dearest one was scrolling through my work site and recognized a name. Sure enough, when I contacted the person the next time, someone I email regularly, I asked if so and so was her dad. What followed was a flurry of emails about her dad, who passed away 20 years ago and memories of dearest one and I spending a lot of time with her very young sisters when we were newlyweds.

So the morning of the big work related to do I told God, "It's up to you if she and I are going to meet. I won't be able to find her in the crowd." I signed into the meeting and slapped my name tag onto my shirt. My vision is getting worse and I'm sure at my next checkup I'm going to go from wearing reading glasses to bifocals. I resisted the urge to squint at every name tag on every woman I thought might be her. Eventually I forgot about my email contact altogether.

Her eyesight is better than mine. Part way through the day I mosied along a hallway looking for a certain conference room. She was standing right outside it and recognized me from my name tag just as I was going to walk past her. Although she wasn't wearing her name tag I knew it was her instantly. As we hugged and talked I thanked God for doing His thing.


Photo Credit

Feeling Angry And Sad

There are two Pugs who will howl unabashedly when dearest one comes home tonight. One little Pug has had to be carried to bed lest he look out the window all night in hopes of dearest one coming home.

Yesterday morning I watched a doe and her two bambis, complete with spots, walk tentatively across the lawn. Later in the day a bird stopped atop a fence post and serenaded me. That was a nice antidote to the dead mouse I had to deal with earlier in the day.

Today housework and writing will fill my waking hours. Every morning I wake up thinking about the family member who committed suicide last week and how he is missing out on this brand new day. I feel angry and sad both. It's been 30+ years since I've had a suicidal feeling. I've done a lot of reading online the past week about suicide and this post has helped.

I think any time there is a death it brings to the surface all the unhealed grief within me. In all selfishness I hope I don't have to buy any more sympathy cards for a while.


Photo Credit