Black Oak's Daughter

If you can see this you’re on my new server.  I’ve got some clean up, theme tweaking, and ad replacing to do. Bear with me.

There’s a good reason for the move.  I’ll explain more later. I have work to do now.

Namaste.

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I’ve spent probably 18 hours in the last week going through stuff in my junk room, bagging it, and yesterday we put all of them out on the driveway for pick up by a local charity today. Minime needs a book case, so I started there and emptied one.

I don’t know why I haven’t done this sooner, other than the ridiculous amount of stuff in that room is just plain intimidating.  In everything that I bagged for charity, there was only one thing that I thought twice about, and I still let it go. There’s no need to keep so much of this stuff.  Yesterday alone I emptied an entire bookshelf, a double sized laundry basket, and 2 boxes of stuff, and out of all of that I kept one box of momentos, 3 stuffed animals, and a couple of area rugs that were at the bottom of the basket. I can USE those and I totally forgot about them because they were BURIED.

My mom was a hoarder.  Hard core.  We lived in a 3000 square foot house. The basement had an 18″ wide path from front to back, the rest was stuff that mom “saved”.  Under all of that stuff was a professional billiards table, a fully functional beautifully tiled and mirrored wet bar, and lots of other cool playthings that we never could play with. There were rooms upstairs too that were like that. We never really had people over, other than our neighbor who was mom’s good friend and didn’t care about the house. I never had a lot of friends to begin with, I didn’t want them, but those that I had rarely got to go inside the house.  We had a great back yard, and we hung out there all summer, but in the house was kind of embarrassing and therefore mostly forbidden to my friends by my hoarder mother.

I DO NOT want to live this way. My house is half the size of hers. I have three not very large bedrooms and this one that I’m cleaning out is significantly better after just one days effort.  It will take a couple more days, but there’s progress, and I’m loving that. There’s an empty dresser in there that will be filled with the mementos that I found, and also photographs and the little bit of craft stuff that I’m keeping.  That’s it. Simple. I need the storage space, I don’t need the insignificant crap that’s in there taking up room instead of the treasures that live precariously in bags and boxes piled everywhere.  My treasures will have their home.

I’m loving letting go of this crap that’s been encumbering my soul as well as my house. I have a starting point and that’s awesome.  The next project is clearing off the desk that’s in there. It’s buried under boxes full of more stuff. That desk is where I can do some sewing when I need to.  I will probably take another 20 bags out of there before I’m finished, and that’s fine. What will be left is what is important. The rest of this stuff just piled up as the years went on.  That’s what happened to Mom too. But she never cleared out a room. She never let go. She had to hold on to everything because it might be useful someday.  Well, it might have been, if she could have found it. I doubt it.

After Mom died, it took my step-dad two years, making trips every day to the recycle station by the house, to empty the basement. Most of it was newspapers and magazines travel sections and cooking sections.  The coupon sections took up a whole room upstairs, so this was just the left overs that she’d get to someday.  Her someday never came, and she left a big mess for us.  I don’t want to do that. I want a respectable house that I can enjoy while I’m living and healthy. Mom died a hoarder. That makes me sad and angry, but mostly sad.  She’d lost so much in life, just like I have, but her PTSD manifested in hoarding.  Mine has other ways, but I’m working on that too.

My house is slowly getting organized.  It’s still a little messy, and that’s OK,  it’s MY house and I’m not a neat freak. I’m also not a hoarder, so it mostly feels really freeing to get rid of this pile that I’m getting rid of today. I was talking to my therapist about this whole effort and she was astonished that I was ready to take this leap.  When I was talking about it, it felt like it would be emotionally difficult to let go of this stuff, but the thing I’ve found while doing it is that I’m not attached to 3/4 of the crap in that room.  I found one box that had some serious family treasures in it. I kept everything in that box and today it will be sorted into a couple of dresser drawers. The rest of it was just stuff that had collected over the years, and since I never learned how to get rid of anything as a kid, I never thought about it as an adult.  My mom trained me well. Every time I threw something out I hear her in my head going “Save That!”  and then I tossed it faster There was a lot of Mom in My Head yesterday.  At one level I feel like I’m dishonoring her by donating/tossing this crap, a few things of which even came from her.  On every other level, I feel like I’m becoming the person that she always wanted to be. Someone that I want to become, that would make my parents proud. Maybe I’m taking a few steps closer to being a little proud of myself too. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything remotely like that.

Besides, Mom in My Head,  the stuff that is going to charity will find a much more useful place than my junk room. They can sell it and support themselves. That’s cool.  I’m not just throwing it out. There’s only one bag of trash for 20+ of give away stuff. I don’t think that’s bad. So there!

I can rid myself of possessions that do nothing for me and support myself emotionally into a much better place than I was when I cringed every time I walked past that room. That cringe was learned early in life. It’s time to unlearn it.  It will take some work, but I’ll start in this room. It’s a good Winter project.

Next task: the basement. It’s not nearly as bad as mom’s, but there’s a bunch of junk down there that can go too.

One project at a time, right?

Namaste

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Wow time flies.

Time for a random thoughts post.

Christmas was good. It was hard too. New Years was harder.  Good riddance to last year. Really. Too much loss, death, sickness, brokeness. For PTSD’d me it was all kind of the last straw.  I got a therapist. A really good therapist that makes me think, and laugh, and cry, and everything that I need to do to get less shell shocked.  But then she took a couple of weeks off. Holy bad timing Batman.  But good timing too. It forced me to cope with a couple of things on my own.  God I miss my family, but I have moved forward even if it’s just a little bit.  I’m still alive and no one in my past would want me to wallow, so I don’t, but there might have been a tear or two for Big Brother over new years. I can’t figure out how to make the world feel right without him in it. I know that gets better with time, but I’m not there yet.

We all got the plague for Christmas too, that wasn’t fun. The family all shared a nasty strain of bronchitis. Two of my old people were very ill. The little kid in me cowered, praying they’d recover. They did. My 84 year old aunt spent a few days in the hospital, and my 93 year old aunt stuck it out at home.  I wanted to strangle her when she told me that all she wanted for the three days before I found out she was sick was a warm bowl of chicken soup.  I gave her a piece of my mind about that. She will call me next time. She better.

The best thing about the holidays is that I’ve seen Minime several times in the last few weeks. I met her new boyfriend yesterday. He seems nice.  I’ll see them again next weekend too. I’m going to deliver the rest of her newly bought IKEA sofa that didn’t fit in her car and see her new place.  I’ve heard good things.  She’s got a new job too. So far so good. Go Minime!

Also next weekend, I’ve committed to giving at least 15 bags of stuff away. They’ll pick them up sometime after 7 am saturday.  I have about half of them ready, so this week will be busy. Most of what I’m getting rid of is books and stuff out of my junk room. Clearing some space, de-junking, call it what you will. Simplifying is what it really is.  Something in me clicked a while back. I don’t need to keep myself buried in this junk anymore.  It feels good to be getting rid of it, but actually doing it takes energy, so it hasn’t happened yet. I’m pushing myself to fill 2 bags a night.

Also, I’m purging Christmas stuff that I haven’t used in a couple of years.  I took the plunge and bought a really nice fake Christmas tree on a really good sale after New Years, so I need to make a little room in the crawl space that it will live in for 11 months a year. This is another move toward “normal” for me.  I’ve had a little 4 ft prelit one for the few years since my divorce. Before then, my ex and his idiocy ruled Christmas with his tree through the roof stunt.  Now all of that is behind me and I’ll have a nice normal 7.5 foot tree that all of my ornaments will fit on and everything. I’m psyched.  They wanted $100 more for lights, so I’ll be stringing it with lights myself, but I don’t mind. It’s going to be gorgeous. I’ve already decided. So there.

There has been one REALLY GOOD thing too.  Roomie, after 50+ years of smoking, just up and quit. He decided to do it on his own.  He didn’t tell me he was going to, but I noticed after the first day for two reasons. First, there’s a noticeable lack of smoke when you walk in the front door now, and second, the ashtray in the kitchen is gone.   I’m really proud of him.  He made it through a week so far. He’s doing great. It’s a good thing I got him the hot air popper that he requested for Christmas, he’s been munching on popcorn a lot. At least it’s relatively healthy air popped stuff.  He’s doing great, and I’ll do anything I can to help if he asks. The old smoke smell lingers in the house, but I’ll start cleaning room by room and get rid of that as I can. The important thing is that he’s made this major leap towards good health and I’m really proud that he’s doing it.

The Vegan effort also continues. I kind of crashed and burned during the holidays, between being sick for 3 weeks and the whole emotional thing it got kind of hard for me to care much. But now, between finding a couple of new interesting recipes (thanks to Pinterest), and knowing that eating this way is part of a bigger picture that I’m working on in therapy, I’m getting back on the wagon. Making better decisions for myself and stopping the self destructive behaviors that have worked their way in to my brain is important. And FREAKING HARD. I seem to be going for longer and longer periods of time without slipping back into the old behaviors, so maybe this therapy stuff is helping.  I’m committed to sticking with it. I spent a buttload of money today on everything that we need that is healthy and good. I made a really yummy dinner for us too. We’re both kind of tired of eating Tex-Mex style. It seems that all the plant based believers haven’t figured out how to do anything but beans and rice and corn and peppers, combined in an infinite number of ways that all kind of taste the same.  We’re going to try and find some Asian style stuff that fits with the plan too.  We need more variety, so we’ll find some and carry on.  I really don’t even want to see another burrito for at least a couple of weeks.

Another big change coming: I’ll be making some changes to this site.  Minime works for a hosting company now, so we’re going to host together (translation, she’s getting a reseller account for stupid cheap, and I’m done with paying $120 a year for my little hosting service that only gives me one slot on a server).  Once that all happens, I’ve got some fresh ideas for how to proceed here. We’ll see how much time I’ll have to throw at that, but it will be fun, and a learning experience, and hey, I gave birth to my tech support, so it will be kind of cool (for me).

I think that’s it for now, and I just crossed 1100 words, so thanks for hanging in there with my ramblings.

Namaste

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BFF reminded me at dinner last night that I hadn’t written since Thanksgiving.  So here I am, 4:27 AM, Christmas Day morning, waiting for more cold meds to take effect, writing. At least it’s Christmas and there’s good TV on. I’ve been enjoying several concerts on public television. Andre’ Bocelli, and separately a Christmas concert from Norway have topped the list, after I got tired of watching A Christmas Story, of course. Three times is enough in one evening. I’ll probably watch it again once I wake up from the sleep that I hope is coming with the help of a second dose of Nyquil, some nose spray, inhaler, and cough medicine.  I might go to the emergency center tomorrow and get some codeine cough medicine so I can sleep before I have to be at work on Tuesday.

Dinner last night was a success, in no small part to Roomie’s efforts. I’ve been coughing my lungs up for a few days now, and let me tell you how old that gets and how fast. I’ve had the week off and there has been a lot of activity, with quite a bit of resting in between, trying to shake this damn cold, but it hasn’t worked.  Yesterday Minime showed up to save the day, and after I cooked all morning and Roomie cooked all afternoon while I finished the cleaning that had to get done, Minime helped with set up and stair running and things that tired old mom wasn’t up for.YAY Minime!  My Niece jumped right in to help with the cleanup, and her mother and my BFF helped with dishes while I put food away.  It was definitely a team effort and I truly appreciated it.

The meal was awesome, and I didn’t even cheat on the vegan plan much.  Roomie made Game hens  for our guests and our vegan burritos, and I made Lasagna. Between the two of us (mostly him) we also had roasted asparagus, cornbread stuffing, salad, pickled veggies, and chocolate banana cake that everyone was too stuffed to eat. For appetizers, minime bought a few cheeses, I made roasted garlic, and cranberry salsa.  There were corn chips and gluten free crackers. Everyone ate what they wanted, all were well fed, and everyone went home with goodie bags so all that we have left here are the dishes that comply with our health requirements.

Presents went well, teenagers were happy. My brother’s wife outdid herself again, and Roomie totally outclassed my gift to him.  He got 2 LL Bean shirts from me, and for me, he’s building me a dresser, from scratch, by hand. These presents can’t even compare. He sometimes amazes me. He got me good last night.  He printed a pic, and we discussed a couple of modifications.  OMG he’s making me a dresser!  How cool is that?  My current bedroom set belongs to BFF. She has my mom’s dining room set at her house and I have her dad’s bedroom set at mine. It’s just another way our lives intertwine.  Now that her life has changed a bit, and her father passed away recently, she’s asked me for the tall dresser back because it would fit better in the space that she’s got a long dresser in at her new place, and it’s got sentimental value that means more to her now. I have no problem with that, it’s just a matter of logistics getting it there.

I told Roomie about her wanting it back and he is building me a beautiful new one with purple heart wood detail. It’s going to be awesome.  I’m beyond thrilled.

As for my brother, this evening was something that I’d been preparing for with my therapist, roomie, and minime for a few weeks.  My brother, we’ve decided in therapy, is quite a bit like keeping a scorpion on a leash.  Usually they’ll keep their distance but you never know when the little bastard is going to turn back around and sting you.  He tried a few times. We shut him down for the most part. He proceeded to make nearly appropriate conversation and mostly not ruin the evening.  It was a family effort, and I appreciate the support that Roomie and Minime provided.

All in all, the evening was successful, and aside from this illness, Christmas is, so far, one of the better ones in recent days.

Tomorrow’s festivities have been postponed until new years because everyone in the family has this bug, and it’s put my elderly aunt into the hospital with pneumonia.  She’s fairly infirm and has many other problems, so a little bug like this can put her over the top pretty easily. My 93 year old aunt also has the bug, but so far she’s fighting it at home. She’s really very healthy, so it will hopefully just work it’s way out of her and she’ll be fine. My plans for Christmas day are to just hang out with roomie, and maybe minime before she goes back to her place. We’ll see what works out. For now I’m going back to bed.

Merry Christmas!

Namaste.

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Wow, I’ve had an overnight to digest that Thanksgiving was kind of a very successful experiment. I looked around for a few weeks for the couple of recipes that I made.  We will be entertaining Others for Christmas, so I had one holiday meal as a vegetarian to find the perfect recipes.  I didn’t do too badly.  The cornbread  and poblano stuffing was a hit, and the roasted lasagna didn’t suck, although the gluten free noodles were a new experience that won’t be experienced again, the flavor was there, and it will only get better the next time I make it. There were also garlic mashed potatoes (really looking forward to potato pancakes today!), sweet potato fries (spicy) and slices (sweet),  Vegetarian gravy, green beans with onion and garlic, and …

I completely forgot the cranberry sauce.  LOL Christmas dinner item #1 procured.

For Christmas there will be some form of meat, Roomie’s pushing game hens, and if I don’t serve my mom’s lasagna I will be lynched, but the rest of the meal will secretly be the kind of yummy wholesome healthy food we had yesterday.  I have a month to plan, and test cook another veggie lasagna. I’m on a mission. I have the perfect meat lasagna recipe. Now the challenge is to take the meat out and still have something flavorful and delicious that is also healthy.  It can be done, fairly easily as it turns out.

Who knew?

This stuff is fun for me. I’m a foodie, and also a midwestern girl that was raised on bacon, eggs, steak and potatoes.  It’s a radical shift from what I know and it’s been really joyful making the discoveries that I have that are redefining my concept of delicious and wonderful.

I’m calling the Thanksgiving meal a success.  It was also a learning experience, a good one.

YAY!

Namaste

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Embracing the change that has become the norm in my life, there is no turkey on our table today.

I’m surprisingly OK with it.

I thought a couple of months ago, when I started down this vegetarian road, that missing The Turkey would make me bitter and resentful.  Here’s the thing though. Every time I’ve tried my old diet for a meal or two it’s made a considerably negative difference in how I feel.

I think that’s the thing that surprised me the most.  I feel better, all of the time. Feeling better sort of creeped up on me because it’s a very NORMAL feeling. It’s not something you notice. I feel good. I haven’t felt good in years. I almost always felt draggy, tired, and blah before. I only notice it when I don’t feel good now.

I thought because I’d been through so much surgery and recovery, that I’d just become weak and blah.  That’s not what explains it though.  I can reproduce that feeling just by having a bowl of orange chicken with greasy lo mein like I did yesterday.

BLAH <– how i felt for hours after that.

I don’t miss turkey today because I had that reminder yesterday of what that kind of diet does to me.

That overstuffed, catatonic, post turkey dinner feeling?  Not gonna happen.

This “new” way of eating NEVER leaves you feeling overfull. On the flipside of that, I have rarely been hungry. So this eating thing?  It’s not a Diet.  I eat as much as I want until I feel satisfied. That’s something that’s new too. Being satisfied.  Even more suprising: being satisfied on 1/2 of the amount of food that I used to eat and was rarely satisfied. I don’t count calories. I don’t measure anything except to follow a recipe. What goes on my plate is my estimation of how much I’ll need to feel nourished and well. I still overestimate that quite a bit.  Being so satisfied that I reject more of what made me feel that way, being so satisfied that I don’t WANT to finish what’s on my plate is a brand new thing for me.  Walking away from More, in exchange for Enough that I’m Fully Satisfied, is astonishing to me.

It’s all about quality.

Let me repeat that because it shocked the hell out of me:

Being satisfied is ?DIRECTLY CORRELATED with the quality of the food that I eat.  For example. A breakfast of whole grain cereal (Grape nuts, or oatmeal), almond milk, and a banana will hold me for 4-5 hours, where a breakfast of sugary processed cereal with skim milk and maybe even a toasted bagel left me hungry an hour or two later. Dinner last night was some amazing burritos. Whole grain tortillas, two kinds of beans, salsa, chiles, onions, and spices, SO GOOD!  Our dinners previous to this change weren’t “unhealthy”. They were usually some kind of meat and veg, rice or potatoes, and Roomie has a thing for gravy, he is a southern boy at heart, so there was gravy and butter. The thought of that now makes me want to nap. Because that’s what it did to me. I thought that was NORMAL.

That processed food, the sugared cereal, the frozen box lunches, etc. also triggered so many cravings.  After I ate it, I’d just keep eating because it’s what my body screamed for.  Those cravings are mostly shut down now.  It’s been a huge learning process, and sure I still mostly enjoy a bag of processed chip crap as much as the next guy, but I know the price that I pay for it now, so more and more often, I’m choosing not to do that to myself.  Thank my therapist, KYB,  for illuminating that last little point for me.

It’s about choices.

I like feeling good, I notice it now when I don’t feel good. I didn’t notice it when it was the norm to not feel good. I’m choosing to feel good.  Consciously. Deliberately. More often than not.

I’m still not 100% there. I’m still working on some really hard things within. Therapy is helping, but it’s not overnight. I’ve come a good part of the way toward a healthier outlook, but there are still things that I beat myself up about, and for me the beatings include food. That’s pretty much the definition of an eating disorder.  It’s funny how something that brings so much (false) comfort can also bestow (improperly self imposed) punishment too.  Another unexpected consequence of shifting my diet is that the emotional part of eating really, truly, wholeheartedly demonstrates it’s negative consequences much more clearly now.  I know clearly when I’m doing myself in. Those times are less and less, but there’s a little shellshocked girl in me that still likes to try and validate her scared little girl feelings.  She’s growing up, a little at a time. We’re slowly learning to work together a little bit too.  It’s a hard road to travel, but I can already see the value in it, so I’ll keep working.

Our meal today will be wonderful.  I’m making roasted veggie lasagna.  It’s a grand experiment, but really, you can do just about anything with (whole grain) noodles and (organic vegetable) sauce and it will be good, so I’m not worried.  Also, because I love stuffing, I’m making cornbread and poblano stuffing and veggie gravy to go over it.  We’ll also have some green beans and potatoes with garlic, some cranberry sauce, and Roomie’s making a peach cobbler for dessert. I might bake and apple or two too.  Not a bad meal.  And, one custom that’s traditional to Thanksgiving: I’m sure there will be enough leftovers so that neither of us will have to cook for the rest of the weekend

I’m off to the kitchen.

Be thankful today.  For life, for health, for loved ones, and so many other things.  Appreciate what you have. Start from where you are, right now, in this moment, and be truly thankful.

Namaste

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Did you ever feel like you’re on a pendulum, and one side of the arc is sheer hell and the other is total bliss?  Well after a couple of weeks of the bad stuff, the good has not only begun, it’s snowballing into a massive mountain of goodness. I’m hoping the pendulum gets stuck over here for a while

That loan I wrote about last time has cleared, and now I’m through step 2 of the Financial Fix Up.  This plan has 5 steps, the first of which is the hardest – getting the cash. The rest is just waiting time for things to clear so I can jump through the next hoop.  I should be done with all of it in about 2 more weeks.  YAY!

Also, my bonus from work came in at just the right time. Most of the bonus is earmarked for responsible grown up stuff, (bills, vets, shoes that won’t hurt my sore foot, and new glasses) but I was saving a few hundred for something fun for myself. I hadn’t quite figured out what yet…. but then the universe took me on a little ride.

I learned Thursday that Minime was selling her DSLR camera gear. She had planned a 2 week trip to visit some friends over Thanksgiving, and that had to be cancelled unless she could make up some of the money that their broken water heater took. As a side note: She’s also got a very nice point and shoot cam that she’s been using 95% of the time for the last year, so her DSLR gear has mostly been collecting dust while life goes on around her.  I felt bad about her selling her DSLR until she told me that. She hadn’t really put any effort into furthering her photography for a while, so better to sell the gear while it’s still worth something.

Backstory:  She bought her camera shortly after I bought mine. It was a step up from my camera gear, and also was the camera that I should have bought in the first place but couldn’t afford at the time. She let me mess with it a few times when we went places together, and it’s the same make as mine (Nikon) so I am somewhat familiar with it.  It also happens to do the one thing that my lesser camera didn’t do that would allow me to branch into the part of photography that I’m dying to get into.  I’ve been trying to figure out how to get that level of cam into my camera bag for a couple of years, but the price tag was just unreachable for something that wasn’t a necessity in my life. /end backstory

So after I learned that it was available and why, and that the price she was asking almost exactly equaled my available cash + the going rate for my old gear,  we talked and I made her a deal. I’d give her the cash that I had available now, and then sell my gear and give her that money whenever it came in. She agreed to that, because it allowed her to go on the trip that she had planned. She didn’t need ALL the cash up front.  So it worked out, literally perfectly, for both of us.  She drove in Friday to have lunch and make the trade. I came home with new gear.  Literally that whole plan was hatched and executed in about 24 hours.  She’s also already sold most of her other gear that I didn’t buy, and now has enough of a cushion that I won’t be too worried about her on this trip too. She leaves tomorrow. Awesomeness abounds.

Also, Thursday, as soon as minime and I worked this plan out,  I texted my photography mentor, lets call him “BL” here, to tell him that I was selling my original DSLR and asked that if he knew anyone that was looking for beginner gear to let me know. BL then texted one friend. BL texted me back not very long after and asked me to send an e-mail description of exactly what was included. I sent that e-mail, and after very little back and forth with them, two hours after I got home with minime’s gear Friday, I got an e-mail that my camera kit had sold, and the money was in my paypal account.  HOLY BOVINE!  BL’s friend that bought it wrote me a very nice e-mail that this is all very serendipitous for her, just perfect timing. I wrote her back that it felt that way for me too.  When the universe wants things to happen, it doesn’t really take it’s time, does it?

So, in the end, I upgraded my gear to exactly what I’d been wanting, for the exact amount of money that I had available which makes me happy, and in the process I got to make two other people really happy.  Minime gets to spend her holiday where she’s happy, and BL’s friend gets to start down a wonderful road of creativity.

I love happy endings.

Namaste

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I’m writing this the day after a trip to see Minime.  It’s her birthday week, and yes we’re cornball and celebrate the whole week instead of just a birthDAY because we roll like that, and it’s fun!  We need more  fun! everyone does, so what the heck. Fun!

So yesterday, BFF and I drove 4 hours, picked up her minime who lives 10 miles from my minime 220 miles away from both of us.  We went to a stir fry place where we could all (well, me and my minime) eat our respective dietary ways, and then went back to the house for some serious sitting around, talking, playing video games, etc.  We had to leave before the actual party because of said 220 miles, but it was nice just to have a relaxed afternoon and I think both minime’s needed their respective moms for a few hours.

It was a nice end to a really busy, one hell of a rollercoaster, week.

The rollercoaster had already started the week before.  I had taken a day off to get my car fixed and help my 93 year old aunt with some tech support.  Round one of both of those didn’t work on Wednesday, so I had to repeat the whole thing Sunday. Success! on both accounts! My car has a clean windshield again and my aunt knows how to fix the thing that she keeps accidentally doing.

My aunt was one of a couple of family members that knew the financial struggle that’s been snowballing in my life. She also knew that I’d found a solution for it but the solution involved a very large, very short term loan so that I could turn a loan around and get a bigger one.  Well, like a lot of other families, my extended family is very loving, very hard working, and mostly broke.  My immediate family consists of my daughter who’s getting divorced, and one brother and he’s broke and has a teenager, so neither of them are an option. We all get by, but in this economy no one’s getting ahead.  I have precisely one family member that might have the ability to loan me said wad of cash, and my aunt told me that they were going to be in town for approximately 2 weeks before snowbirding off to their winter abode. I had been hesitating to ask them, but my aunt said it wouldn’t hurt, and might help.  She also reminded me again that my time to get to them was limited, so I went home last Wednesday thinking about it, and stayed up late writing then an e-mail with enough of the info that they’d understand but not so much as to blurt out every little detail.   Long story short, the snowball of debt that’s been getting fatter and fatter is going to be melted by about 2/3 in a week or two when I can make magic happen once their check clears.  That other 1/3 of debt can then be knocked down by several hundred dollars every month until it’s gone. I have a 5 year plan to be debt free except for my house, and I’ll start working on that after the other debts are gone. YAY!  Unbelievable relief , and Happy Dancing ensues, even to just get the first part of the debt paid. I’ve been running the rat race barely paying minimums since the banks all collectively cut everyone’s limits then raised the interest rates because everyone was close to their limits a couple of years ago. Bastards. I have learned that lesson. If I can’t pay cash, it’s not going to happen. Screw the 1%, they can’t have my money anymore.

So, Sunday, I picked up a check that was dated Tuesday. It went into the bank at 9:01 AM Tuesday because the bank opens at 9   Then they told me that since it’s over the limit for clearing in 3 days it will be 7 full business days until I can access that money.  That’s OK. I’ll just admire my bank account online until I can actually use the cash to start fixing things next Friday. YAY!

This week I also had a very old and dear friend in town. We tried to get together a couple of times, but the fates were against us. He was with a group for 3 days of training, and they had something planned every evening because when you’re from Kentucky, Chicago is All Kinds of Big City Fun.  We have those tall buildings! and Traffic! and People! My God THE FOOD!!! Chicago is definitely a foodies dream. They ate at Navy Pier one night, Greek the next, and Italian the next.  They did pretty good being tourists, but getting an hour or two to catch up with my friend was somewhat tricky. He abandoned them for a second night in the city to spend a couple of hours with me. He’s seen the city before.

He had called Tuesday to let me know that the reason he was calling a week ago and never got me, was to remind me that he told me 2 months ago that he’d be in town in November and now he was here.. D’OH!  So, he’s a foodie and his goals for food were to get Lou’s pizza, and to try an Italian Beef Sandwich.  Well, it turns out, the last evening after training that they’d have in the city, they went to Lous for pizza (WITHOUT ME! the nerve…) and since we’d planned to go there for dinner but they went straight from the training instead we had to improvise our plans. I didn’t pick him up until after 6, they were late getting back,  and he hadn’t yet tasted Italian Beef, so an hour after eating 2 full pieces of Lous deep dish, we went to Portillos to get him his Italian Beef, with sweet peppers and mozz.   He made it through 2/3rds of it before he cried uncle. Such a champ!  We talked for a bit and got caught up, and then I showed him around my neck of the woods like he did for me 2 years ago in his neck of the woods. He was back at his hotel by 8, I was home by 8:20, and that was that. Mission Accomplished. Hospitality repaid. YAY!

Also, in the middle of the week was an interesting visit with my therapist. Things are going decently there. This stuff is hard work. The amount of trauma in my life is astounding when I stop to look at all of it collectively, and that’s sort of what we do. After this past week, it’s evident that it’s working. Some of the conclusions that she’s pulling out of all of it are really giving me things to think about.  One of the main themes lately is that sitting at home all of the time is doing nothing for me to get past the serious amount of trauma and anxiety that has built up so much the past few years that it got me into therapy in the first place.  I have a nice safe little haven at home. I never want to leave. I never have to deal with anything as long as life is stopped and I’m not doing anything. I don’t even like working outside in the yard. I don’t know why that makes me so anxious, but it does.  That I’m generally nervous about leaving the house has only cropped up in recent years, and that’s what got me to therapy. Roomie sort of unknowingly caters to staying home too because he refuses to go out together. We haven’t even been to the store together in a couple of years.  So, here at home I have a safe little haven with basic reinforcement that it’s OK to stay that way, but it’s really not. I wasn’t built to be a hermit. I’ve never been exactly a social butterfly, but it’s nice to experience something besides the same four walls occasionally.  If he won’t do that with me, I’ll go with other friends, or even.. GASP… alone.  Winter is bearing down quickly, so I’m taking advantage of the freaky 60 degree November weather and doing things.  The bottom line is that I shouldn’t be afraid to go to the store, or to see a friend, or freakin mow my own lawn. That’s seriously ridiculous and I know it but it doesn’t make me less anxious about it, so I put my big girl panties on, took a deap breath, and left the house a few times this week.

My therapist is happy if i get out to do something once a week, and I sort of blew that away this week. So if you’re keeping score (like I am, and being proud of myself), that’s a trip to my aunt’s an hour away on Sunday, I also hit my brother’s on the way home from there, Tuesday was the bank, Wednesday was the therapist, Thursday was hosting my Kentucky friend for a quick second dinner (just call us Hobbits. Instead of Elevensies, it was more like Sevensies, but you get the point), Friday was shopping after work at my favorite grocery store, and Saturday was a trip to see Minime. Today I have to get to Walmart and the pet store, so there’s more Out Of The House time.  I need to do something with the leaves in front of the house too. Oh the Joy. 

I think I went a little overboard with the getting out this week, but I did pretty well with it all from an anxiety level perspective too. I haven’t had dinner with Roomie since Tuesday and I miss it when we don’t sit and talk every day, and actually most of my anxiety was about leaving him alone at home, but sometimes life is busy and this week felt really good from a theraputic perspective. He’s a big boy, he’ll get over it.  Also, after falling off the vegan bandwagon for a few days after halloween, I’m back on it and I’ve found a few new recipes to make this afternoon. I think I’ll wait another week before getting on the scale. This isn’t about weight, and that mean little machine just deflates my will every time I get on it. So no scale for at least another week. I may go to a monthly weighing, just so I can see some progress.

That’s it for now. I have to go OUT

Namaste.

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This past week was horrible.

My best friend learned what it was like to lose a parent. Her father lived in Guatemala.  She got the news and was on a flight six hours later. There’s very little that I can do for her from here. She told me it was payback for getting divorced while she lived in Tennessee.  Only friends like us could joke about stuff like that and get the humor in it.  She’s still down there, and probably will be for another week settling his estate, and visiting with relatives that she didn’t know she had.

Another good friend flew 5000 miles to be with his family as his father faces very serious surgery after a heart attack that he had the same day best friend lost her dad.

This past week, a short term loan that would solve a lot of problems for me fell through.

This past week I went to the store for carrots, celery, and bread. I picked up a few other things, and went home to discover that the bag with the carrots, celery, and bread were still at the store.

This past week work was pretty rough between people traveling and being out of reach, and my partner taking a vacation day. Someday I’ll catch up.

This past week I completely forgot my chiropractor appointment, and my therapist fell ill and cancelled our session too. Both are two things that I do for me. They keep me sane, they keep me out of pain, physical and emotional, and they didn’t happen.

This past week was seriously negative.

It’s been really hard to shake that vibe. The anxiety level has been high. I’m worried for my friends, I’m frustrated with my financial situation, and hell if I’m not partially impaired myself, walking away from a full bag in the grocery cart when I left the store.

This morning I really just wanted to stay in. Relax, regroup. I needed to not have anything go wrong today. But I had one mission and it had to be done this morning.  My car tags expire next week.  My state requires an emissions test before you can buy the tags, so the challenge was to get to the emissions place 5 miles east of me, get through that line, drive through 10 miles of construction to the DMV that’s open on saturday, and get the tags before they closed at noon.

I got up, showered, dressed, and headed out.  The emissions place gets crowded toward the end of the month, so it was kind of a gamble but I got there and was pleasantly surprised. I was the second car in line in my row. In and out in less than 10 minutes. My car that has 123k miles on it passed the test like a champ.  I keep saying I’m going to drive it until the wheels fall off. The noise that my suspension is making probably should get fixed soon before that happens huh? At least the exhaust system, and engine are solid.

After the emissions place, it was quite the trek to get to the DMV.  I’d heard horror stories from more than one person in the last few weeks about the stretch of road that I had to travel to get there. It’s a road that I don’t have to use often, so I didn’t know what to expect.  Again I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t 55 MPH, but it wasn’t slow either. The worst part of it all was the traffic backed up coming OUT of the DMV that I passed going IN to the DMV.  Oh well, gotta do it, right?

Keep going, chugging right on through all the steps to get to the goal of having tags that aren’t expired, realizing that most of the things that could have gone wrong didn’t…

I got to the building, parked fairly close, grabbed my paperwork and got myself inside. It was 11:45. They close at 12 on saturday.  I headed down the long hallway walking rather quickly considering the crowd. I was on a mission dammit.  Then a really tall guy came out of a door immediately to my right, going full speed. COLLISION COURSE!!! He stopped himself, making his own sqweeling break sound effects (!) and didn’t run me down. YAY! I was smiling, so was he. We both slowed down.  I got back to the window where they sell the tags, and one more guy made it in behind me. After him the clerk shut the line down.  WHEW! I’d made it. Victory Dance commenced (in my head)

I walked out with my shiny new tags, back to the car, and put my most patient face on for the 20 car line to get out of the place that was there when I’d arrived.  I got around to the other side of the parking lot where I could see where that line was before, and it was gone.  YAY!  I still had to wait to enter the traffic flow in the construction zone, but after seeing the line that was there before, that had cleared in the five minutes that I’d been inside, suddenly that didn’t seem so bad.

I got home and relayed the whole adventure to Roomie. He was unphased.  He has no idea how much I needed things to be non-stressful today. I was still mentally happy dancing.

After another while, I went back to the store where I’d left my groceries a couple of days ago. I had called when I realized that I didn’t have them, and they took my name and told me to come to the service desk the next time I was there. So I went back today. First I shopped a bit for new things that we needed, and in the process also picked up replacements for the stuff I’d left.  I went to the service desk and the lady that I had spoken to was there. She was so glad that I’d come back. They had listed the items that were in the bag that they found (right where I left it), and then took the items from my full cart that matched their list, bagged them up for me, then wrote “PAID” on the bag and told me that if I had any trouble, to send the cashier over to them.  I didn’t have any trouble.

It’s nice when a store keeps their customers first.  Granted, this is a hippie loving, organic having, healthy people store. Love peace, recycle everything and all that. But that’s how every store should be, right? No hard time, no telling me I was the idiot for leaving a full bag behind, and then happily, eagerly replacing stuff that I’d been completely in the wrong for leaving behind.

YAY  Whole Foods! I need to write them a thank you.  They Rock. They’re always helpful. Not pushy. And their organic stuff might be a little pricey, it usually is in any store, but theirs is FRESH, not wilty, ever, and it’s fun going there and discovering new things every time.  Their website is good too, with lots of recipes and ideas.

What a good day. I needed that break.

Whew.

Here’s hoping tomorrow goes as well.

Namaste

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Wow, time flies.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve gone from the standard meat/junk/dairy/American diet, to being about 95% vegan.  The funny thing is I don’t really miss meat.

Two things happen when you give up meat/dairy.

Roomie and I have both noticed how much more energy we have. Along with that, I’m sleeping better too. In nearly 5 years since my hysterectomy I’ve slept better in the last week than I have since the surgery. That’s just the first thing.

The other thing that happens is that you get to play with food. OMG the flavors.  We used to use a lot of meat, cheese, butter, etc for more than half of our calories. When you give that up, you’re forced to learn new ways with food, spices, seasonings, and the natural flavor of whole, organic food.

It’s a fun challenge finding new recipes and things to try that we both like. I am a foodie. I have fun trying new things. Probably 3/4 of what I try doesn’t get a second chance, but at least I tried.  I made chocolate banana bread yesterday that will get many more chances, while I tweak it to get it perfect. We’ve also found a really good burrito recipe (called “Fabulous Burritos”) and roomie’s working on his pickles.

This is a work in progress.  We’ve started with a few things that we know are good, and we are finding other new stuff to try all of the time.

We also try to buy mostly organic ingredients, and no my grocery bill hasn’t gone up, and yes, that shocked me too.  When all that you eat is plant based, it’s important to eat less of the chemicals  that todays modern farming uses. So we’ve gone organic, for better or worse.  Previously, my grocery bill was around $300 a month. When you give up $75 of meat, cheese, butter, and other dairy a month and put an extra $25 or $30 of that toward the more expensive Organic ingredients, it’s actually easier on the budget. Like $50ish easier. Also eliminated: fast food. More savings there.  I’m still broke, but I can pay off a $50 water bill or something else to that effect.  Also, once you learn to listen to your body, and start eating whole grain, whole food, organic stuff, it shocked me how much less we are actually eating. Where a month ago, we’d pile a plate full of chicken, veggies, rice, gravy, etc, now it’s a smaller portion of better quality, more filling, more satisfying stuff.

All in all, it hasn’t been that traumatic. I’m not evangelizing being a fat free vegan yet. It’s not something for everyone, but so far it’s going OK.  I’m having fun with food. I’ve lost a few pounds already, and definitely feeling better. Take that for what its worth. If I can do this, anyone can. You just have to be open to it. I’ve never approached this as “I can’t live without meat and cheese” I’ve always looked at it as a challenge to see what we can do with a whole range of new food. That’s where the fun is.

It’s all about attitude.

And health.

That’s the real reason behind all of this. I’m 45. My aunt is 93, my grandmothers were both in their late 80′s when they died. There are several people of that age group still living well in my family. I’m not going to make it to 65 if I don’t make some changes. My dad dropped over when he was 52. Mom didn’t do much better. She lived longer, but only at a high cost, heart surgery after heart surgery.  Dad was a white collar worker, he got little exercise. He was never fat, but you can be thin and unhealthy too. Mom fed him what she had grown up with as “Healthy food”. It was only healthy because the amount of exercise that my grandparents got counteracted the fatty rich foods that they ate.  Honestly, I’d really prefer that none of what happened to my parents happens to me (other than the being goofy in love part )   Genetics have an influence, but it’s more about lifestyle and how well you treat your body. If cancer wasn’t my wake up call, losing my kidney is scary enough on its own.  I joke that it’s less to go wrong later, but I’m living without the protective hormones, or the spare kidney that most people live take advantage of. It’s less to support me later. If something goes wrong…I don’t even want to think about that…

It only makes sense to start living how I want to live, instead of how I have been, spinning my wheels, slowly sinking deeper into ill health.  If this is what it takes, then I’ll make the best of it, have fun finding and learning new things, and just going with it.

Namaste

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