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

• I work for a wholly American owned subsidiary of a division of a very large Japanese company. We work very closely with our Japanese parent company. Part of my job is working with my global counterparts in other foreign subsidiaries that are also owned by our parent company.  The disaster in Japan that is still happening as I write this, does not affect our supply chain, but it has significantly slowed communication between us and Tokyo. My heart goes out to them. Most of them are safe in Tokyo, and have been able to get word out to us that they are just having difficulty traveling to the office and things like that.  We will keep our business going and be patient as they clean up after the earthquake and tsunami. We will, with our hearts in our throats, watch, and hope with every bit of hope that can be mustered, that the nuke plants will somehow not melt down through the containment vessels and horribly contaminate things there.

• My brother’s death a few weeks ago was a shock, but in the couple of days that followed, thanks to my other brother, I got some clarity about why things were so bad when we were growing up.  It was a hard situation. I won’t go into the gory details here, but what became clear to me was the source of the ongoing pain for all of us. It wasn’t my father’s death, or my mother’s ongoing illness. Those things were something that we could have dealt with much better if we had been a unified family. We were never that. I knew that my brothers never got along, what I didn’t know was that my oldest brother was the source of that. My oldest brother did something the week after our middle brother died that clarified his role in the pain that has always been part of our lives. He is unforgiving, unrepentant, and relentless in his pursuit of proving that he’s won. In his mind, he’s the better brother, he always has been, and now he’s victorious merely by surviving longer than my other brother. Knowing what he did a couple of weeks ago, and reframing our childhood with that knowledge, makes it so much easier to understand why my beautiful big hearted middle brother was so tortured his whole life, and why when it was just the two of us together without our oldest brother, there was so much love there. I’m unbelievably angry, and unbearably sad about that whole situation. I can’t even think about forgiveness yet. It’s going to take me a while to work through this one.

• On a good note: My best friend is making me proud. She’s moved into her own place, worked out custody with her soon to be ex, gotten a decent pat on the back at work and is being moved laterally into a new position that will open more doors for her. She’s also stayed relatively healthy considering she’s still battling a lupus flare, through all of it.  She did all of that as gracefully and maturely as possible, and is focusing forward on making her future much happier and less complicated.  I’m a proud cheerleader for her. She’s really shown what she’s made of through it all.

• Minime and her husband TechSupport (how’s that for a blogname?) are landing on their feet after some changes in their lives too. He’s employed again. It’s not his dream job but it will pay the bills while he looks for his dream job, and she got a job offer this morning for a position that starts next month.  This all means that they aren’t moving 2 days drive from me yet, for which I’m both happy and sad. I think they’d be really happy in their destination city, it’s beautiful and the lifestyle is much more active there, but it’s also very far from me and I’d miss my little girl very much.  It’s inevitable that it will happen eventually, but for the next year, maybe, she’s still within a distance where I can drive out and have lunch with her if I feel like it. So YAY! and Boo!. Such is life.

So, life is a little intense right now. I’m doing my best to get through it.

There are lots of little things making me smile. I’ve been playing a game online where I’m in a group of mostly older gamers that have all reached a level of success in life.  I’ve actually uncovered a pretty cool business opportunity there with a great guy that happens to run 6 facilities for a major manufacturer.  He’s buying about $1500 in equipment from my company. It’s a small sale, but it’s been so long since I’ve been an actual sales rep, I’d forgotten how much of a charge I get out of helping people find solutions for their problems with our stuff.   It’s a small world, and you never know where your next customer will come from huh? who would have ever thought Warcraft was a business opportunity

Roomie has been working on building his business, and sharing with me all of the things that he’s learning. I enjoy that on a lot of levels. I love to witness people struggling through the learning process enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and almost invariably, Roomie gets one thing figured out and that leads him to the next issue. Then he tells me about the next issue that he’s stumbled on that he’ll need to figure out, and a few days later he’ll have figured it out and tells me all about it. Wash, rinse, repeat.  I get a charge out of seeing him learn. He may have 20 years on me, but he’s still engaged with learning and living. I need to take a lesson from him on that.

My life has been kind of stalled lately and I need to kick it into gear and soon.  I’ve never felt so old as I do right now. I need to re-engage with something that I can be passionate about. Spring is coming, my camera will come out soon, that’s one thing.  I’m also thinking about getting into a personal training program to get some of the stamina back that I’ve lost over the past few years recovering from surgery after surgery.

The agenda of things like that is long, but the energy to pursue it is being sucked down by this wave of depression, grief, and just having no energy physically for anything other than functioning at work, and keeping the house going and bills mostly paid.  I’m really pushing for a promotion at work too. That would at least alleviate the financial pressure and give me space to focus on anything else for a while.

That’s it for now. This got longer than I thought it would. I guess there’s a lot rolling around in my head, huh?

Namaste.

I made this today. Except I used organic whole wheat flour, organic bananas, and a little milk instead of the sour cream. It was Better Than Mom’s, even without the chocolate chips.  You really don’t need the honey butter, which is good because I didn’t make it,  The bread just happened to come out of the oven right before dinner, so dinner was way too much banana bread and some of the home made chicken/veggie salad that roomie  made earlier.  Belly is happy.

In other news… I think I’ve figured out my financial mess enough to say that if the plan flies, I will be debt free in a couple of years. After the past few months of just barely making it to the bank finally breaking this month and having to borrow the electric bill money, there is light at the end of that tunnel. I really hope the plan flies. I’ll know next week. Maybe the Lunar new year will bring me a little luck

We are slowly becoming raw dieters at home. There are a few necessities that we’ve been gathering over the last couple of months, the grocery budget has been restricted by the need to not be homeless or cold, so that’s been a little slow. We have been eating better, fresher, healthier when the budget allows, and soon it will allow a little better. I have discovered a few things already.

• Organic beef gives me a stomach ache faster than regular beef. I think giving up beef won’t be difficult at all.
• You can flavor a bowl of chopped up raw veggies with nearly any dressing and it’s yummy.
• Eating this way has killed 95% of my cravings. That is kind of amazing.
• Cats don’t beg much when they don’t smell meat cooking first.

So life goes on at Casa Grania. Tomorrow I’ll be helping my best friend move. She’s got a whole new life ahead of her and I’m really proud of how she’s been handling some really tough things. She is who I haven’t been writing about, and I’ll continue that, except to highlight the good things. We haven’t been walking lately, more out of midwinter in the midwest necessity, but we have been getting together almost weekly and talking through the messier things. I’ve been helping with what guidance I can give, and offering a shoulder when there’s nothing else to do but be quiet together and know that life will get better even if right now sucks royally.  We’re a pair, the two of us. When life goes bad, it goes really bad, but the pay off happens when we hit the other end of that scale and life is good. We are both very blessed, and very focused on that, and the more you give something your full attention, the more it propagates itself. It’s working, things are getting better.

Oh.. yesterday, Minime was in town.  She took me to lunch at the mall where the Apple store is (because my power cord went bad, they replaced it) and then after lunch we ran around to a few stores and she spoiled me rotten. I got lotions (75% off!), and 2 bath bombs that I love, and a few lego keychains to complete the set, and a couple of hugs, all from her.  Awesome!  We usually get little trinkets for each other on holidays, but I’ve been seriously broke, so Christmas was lean and I haven’t even thought about any of the upcoming ones. She really had fun making me happy too. She handed me the lotions and said “Happy Valentines Day” and then the legos were for St Nicks, etc. She rocks. We have all of these seemingly silly traditions like little gifts for little holidays, and she’s carrying them on. That makes me happy too.

Today she got a new (used) car that is pretty cool. The timing’s a bit strange for a new car, but things will work out. She got a deal, and a friend bought her old car, so the situation kind of just happened and they jumped at it. Her husband is very close to a new job (as in through several phone interviews, checked his references, and now they’re flying him down there to meet him), and then it’s all good.  I’ll stop worrying when he signs on there.

OK BFF, I blogged. Now what??

I am glad I did it though. I learned a lot, and the software that I used worked up to it’s potential. It did everything it says that it does and I’m really pleased about that.  It’s called My Memories Suite, and it’s really robust as far as what you can do with it.  It came with a coupon for free templates, so I downloaded a couple that helped me with this last project, and another one that’s for making a cookbook, so I think that will be my next project.  It’s fun to play with it to see what I can create.

I haven’t been felling very creative lately.  The post-surgical depression got a pretty good grip on me for a long enough time that my creative juices were buried by my desire to just lay low and figure things out. That’s a big part of the reason I haven’t been writing too.  I’m starting to feel like maybe I’m beginning to see the light at the end of that tunnel.  This last surgery hit me harder than I expected. I still hurt, and now that I’m exercising more, I hurt more, but it’s necessary. I have to get back on the healthy train. I was doing really well, and I’m getting my head back into that mindset slowly.  The first thing is that I have to lead with exercise. Dieting doesn’t work alone, and the motivation to eat well, for me, comes from the fact that I put a hell of a lot of effort into moving my body and getting my muscles back into shape. I’ve been doing what I was advised and am working my way back up to an elliptical routine that is tough enough to release the endorphans that I need. I have to balance that with care so it’s not killer on my knees, my remaining kidney, or any other body parts. I’m nothing if not patient, with everyone but myself. This is an exercise in learning patience with myself. I’ll get there eventually. I’ve been sleeping a little better because of the exercise too, so it has multiple benefits.

This week has been jam packed with real life too. One friend in divorce court for unnecessary hearings brought on by her uncompromising ex, my son in law was laid off (with the best severance package I’ve ever heard of short of him being a bank executive), a friend at work is transferring out to the field and struggling a little about being on her own. It will be SO good for her, she’s just got to get there. There’s just STUFF  happening everywhere. Things are changing quickly for a lot of people, and my job is support staff. I don’t mind a bit, each of those people was there to support me through some hard things, but dang the universe is busy. I don’t mind, it makes me feel useful sometimes just to listen and offer support. I only have 2 ears though.  Today I had my friend on the phone, my daughter was IMing me, and of course all of this was while I was at work trying to keep things going there. It gets interesting sometimes.

One good thing: I spent a good part of today writing checks to pay off every freakin doctor bill (except the one I’m contesting) and one other bill that’s been hanging over me for nearly a year. They’re all paid.  The spendable part of my bonus is mostly gone, but I HATE having bills hanging over my head so I’ll look at it as a blessing that I have the means to pay them, even if it is my fun money.  I spent a bit of the project money that I’ve earned on a new coat, and a new shirt. I need a few more new things to mix into my wardrobe, but I’m good at surfing clearance racks and stuff so I’m giving myself $100 for clothes. After that,  I might have enough left to carpet the living room. I have to sit down and crunch some numbers before I commit to that.  It might wait until my next bonus in the spring, but I’d really like new carpet for the holidays. We’ll see what I can work out.  My next financial project is to pay off one credit card in the next year.  It’s doable, but I’ll have to live broke for a while. I feel better about that now that my savings account has a little buffer in it again.

Another good thing: My friends from Virginia will be in town this weekend. Hopefully we can get together and do something fun.

Namaste

Tell us the story of a piece of jewelry you own. Where did it come from, and what does it mean to you?

I wear three rings that each have a story. 

#1. I created a set of matching rings for minime and me last year.  Those rings are made from a 50% mix of the gold in my mom and stepdad’s wedding set and 50% new gold, and the diamond from my mom’s ring went into Minime’s ring.  With half of the gold and gems that went into them coming from those rings and a few others that I had laying around, they weren’t terribly expensive to create, and they have meaning for both of us. My stepdad helped me raise my daughter for the first 7 years of her life, and a few years after my mom died, he remarried. Before he remarried, he left his and mom’s wedding sets with me to give to Minime when she was old enough. The were pretty, but very old school, and not at all a style that was just wearable, so Minime and I talked about what to do with them. Creating these rings is the end result of that. Grandpa also left Minime a note with their wedding sets about the love and joy that she brought them while we lived with them.  I had the jeweler engrave “Love and Joy” in both of the rings and gave my daughter her ring the morning she got married.  So on her wedding day, which was coincidently my parents anniversary, I got to give her something that comes from 2 generations of love for her.  They’re cool rings too. Celtic style with white gold celtic braids around the sides of the band, and diamonds and green Tsavorite garnets set in the crown. I’m really glad that she likes it and wears hers all of the time.

#2 I wear that fist ring on the same finger with a gold band that I got in Hawaii. I bought that ring in a little open air shop in Kilua Kona the day after hiking out on Kileaua while it was erupting.  My gym shoes were leaving hot rubber foot prints on the lava, we were that close to the lava flow.  That was an intense experience.  The power of nature, the beauty of the island, the pounding surf, and the volcano made that one of the most significant weeks in my life. I came home with a simple white and yellow gold ring that has a hibiscus flower engraved on it as a remembrance of that time.

Those two rings are on my right ring finger.

#3 The third ring, that I wear on my left ring finger,  belonged to Roomie’s mother. It’s silver and torquoise and beautiful. I’ve spent 5+ years of my life with him and he gave me that ring early on as a gift for helping him with something. That ring is very special to me, it touched me when he gave it to me and he continues to touch me in so many ways.  I’ve owned a very similar ring to it before, but that was tourist junk compared to this one. The silver is much thicker and more durable, and the torquoise is deeply colored and speckled. It’s a very good quality stone compared to the touristy crap you get at the reservations these days.  The ring has his mom’s name stamped into the back of it and the words “sterling” and “navajo”.  His parents were in the state department for many years, and I’m sure that there’s a story on how she came by such a beautiful ring that was custom made for her, but that story is lost, and that ring is now just something special that her very special son passed on to me out of the kindness of his heart.

 I have a gold chain that I wear too, with a few different pendants on it, but those are a story for another day.

Namaste.

Namaste

• Attended an awesome family party. My aunt and uncle celebrated their 60th anniversary last week. Many cousins came in from all over the country. It was so cool to see everyone. There’s so much love in our family, it’s really uplifting when everyone is in the same place at the same time.
• BFF and I took them to lunch the sunday after the party too. They’re hilarious fun to be around. They are in their early 80′s and she’s nearly blind, and he’s got his hands full caring for her, but they have their own routine worked out and they laugh a lot. It’s inspiring.
• I also have new glasses, they’re progressive, they don’t look bad, but dang, old people need them. When did I get old? I wouldn’t mind age so much but I don’t seem to be doing it as well as my aunt and uncle.
• I’ve reinjured my knee, actually the ligament on the outside of my right knee, the knee itself is fine.  It’s getting better. My chiropracter, who is also a runner and knows knees gave me some exercises and they’re working. Unfortunately he told me to lay off the walking for a couple of weeks. Fortunately, my weekend walking partner won’t be around next weekend, so I won’t be letting her down.
• this past Sunday BFF and I drove to Iowa and back in 9 hours, then I got home, cleaned, mopped floors, and just generally wore myself into the ground.  That was two days ago. One more night of sleep and I may be back to myself again.  After three surgeries in three years, my bounce back isn’t so bounce-backy anymore. 
• BFF is still figuring out her Lupus, and I’m still figuring out how much to push her to slow down and how much to let her learn her own limits that seem to vary hour to hour.  The whole thing sucks, but we’re still us. We talk and comiserate, and laugh at the most morbid stuff, but we laugh, and love, and life goes on somehow.
• I was given a really nice, ergonomic, completely adjustable, professional, $600 office chair for free from my work place.  Next weekend’s plan is to move a few things around in the house, including the old office chair out to the curb. 
• Also next weekend, the elliptical definitely comes out of hiding. If I can’t walk that’s all I have left, and doc said it was OK, so my options are do it, or don’t and be a slug. I’m tired of being a slug. The diet will come back once I start exercising again. I’ve learned that I have to lead with the workouts or I don’t have the will to keep the food healthy.
• I’ve taken a couple of steps to cut my bills a little.  Cable’s been downgraded to no movie channels, except by doing that I got HBO and Cinemax free for three months. I get to catch up on True Blood season 3, and Boardwalk Empire.  I also finally cancelled my satelite radio. I live in a place that has a couple hundred radio stations, satelite was a nice idea, but there really aren’t less commercials, and the only benefit was not losing the channel on road trips. I can live with that.  I’m also selling the unit to a friend. That money will go toward doctor bills. I’m still paying them…
• I’ve been selective about the new TV season too. I spend my evenings talking to Roomie so my TV time is limited to an hour or two as I wind down at night.  Mostly I’ve stuck with my standards: Big Bang Theory, House, Grays, NCIS,  They didn’t disappoint. Jimmy Smits’ new show “Outlaw” is a really good concept, and I totally have a crush on him, but the writing is weak. Hopefully it gets better.  I have Tom Selleck’s new cop show on DVR, I hope it’s good. The other new one is William Shatner’s new comedy. It’s ok. I’ll give it a chance.  I mostly DVR everything and watch it when I can.  Biggest Loser has started up again, I avoided watching it for so long because I don’t need to see what fat people go through, I’m one of them. I’m sorry I missed the last few seasons. It’s pretty inspiring, and educational.
• I’m also slowly working on a project for my cousins. It involves photographs, video, and several hours of organizing, in my spare time, when I have enough brain left to work on it at the end of the day, and my laptop cooperates and doesn’t overheat and shut down. My next big purchase will be a MacBook. I’m really tired of systems that can’t handle graphics, since that’s about 75% of what I do on them.
• Next weekend is my other aunt’s 92nd birthday. She lives about an hour from me, so I’m going to try and go see her for an hour or two, and stop by the spice shop near her to stock up on a few things.
• My website template broke, and I’m getting ready to do a complete revamp on this site.
• I’m putting together a business plan for another site that has potential to be income generating and figuring out how much it will cost for the software to do it right. Roomie’s got me looking into some pretty progressive funding methods for things like that. Maybe it will all come together and work for me. It’s worth a shot.

I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting, but this is already the lamest post ever. Suffice it to say it’s been a little busy around Casa Grania and every time I sit down to write something here it comes out as a “dear diary, today i did this and this and this. The End” kind of post, and I mever meant for this to be a log of my daily life. It’s supposed to be where I come to write the thoughts that mean more to me than just getting through the day.  That’s my life right now though. I’m actually pretty disappointed on how focused I still am on just getting through the day. That last surgery  really did me in much more than I anticipated. It’s been three and a half months and my stamina is still in the gutter, but I’m getting there.  My belly is much less sore. My knee will heal and I’ll be able to walk again soon. I just have to be patient with my body and let it heal properly.

Fall is here, and my usual fall events have all been cancelled. I’m a little bummed about that. My company isn’t sponsoring the Ringo Gari Apple Picking this year (it’s a Japanese thing), and I don’t have the cash to do the fall color cruise on the Mississippi that I love to do.  The leaves will still be there next year though. The photo trip to the Adorandacks  that I dreamed up in the spring is not going to happen this year either. Hopefully by next year I’ll have better equipment to do that trip with, so I don’t mind delaying that one.

In an attempt to find something different and new to do,  I looked around online last week. I found a few new local places to check out and take pics while the leaves are changing that don’t involve too much walking.  Maybe I can coax Roomie out for an hour or two to check out a Japanese garden that I found that is fairly near home. We’ll see.  I’d enjoy the time out with him, we haven’t gone anywhere in a while.   That would be nice to do before we become hermits for the winter. 

Namaste

Yesterday I had my annual optometrist visit.  This is the second time I’ve seen this guy and he continues to impress me in a big way.  My last optometrist was horrible. After going back twice to get a prescription fixed, I asked around among my friends last year to see if I could find a better doc.  Dr B is an old fashioned eye doc in modern day dress. He’s only a few years older than me, but he does his job consciously and consciensciously. He loves what he does, and it shows.  I turned down the retina photograph this year because I’m really broke and my insurance doesn’t cover it.  Both he and his aide that did the initial testing on me told me that if he felt that it was necessary, they often comp the retinal image.  He did the vision exam and then looked into my eyes the old fashioned way, with a light and his eyes. No machines, just real doctorin’.  Then, since I was the last patient, he came out and helped me find glasses, and while I was working with the tech, he put back all of the frames that we had chosen and then eliminated.  When I asked about my sunglasses that I got somewhere else, he asked me to go get them, and he fixed them for me.  Apparently my astigmatism is bad enough that I can’t wear frames that wrap around my face. The RayBans that I have are definitely curved. He took them in back, checked the prescription, and uncurved them a little bit, They are so much better now. No Charge.  I walked out of there only paying my $10 copay and with them ordering the two frames that we narrowed down to in a different size that will fit me better.  They spent a good hour+ with me, and addressed every concern that I had.  I’ll go back in a few days when the frames that they ordered come in and pick one to make into my new glasses.

Dr B is also an activist. The whole conversation between exam questions was about who pays for terrorist weapons (many are Made in the USA) and how he does house calls to shut ins that would benefit tremendously if a little of that money that’s going to further warfare went to further welfare instead.  He’s passionate, involved, and as a bonus, really good at his job.  It’s sad how rarely I find someone like him. It gave me such a charge to spend time with someone like that.  He’s one of the good guys.

Tomorrow my BFF will hopefully get a diagnosis that she can work with to regain her health.  I know she reads this.  I’ll be thinking about you all day, please call me when you have any answers. xo

This coming weekend is a significant party. My sort of Aunt and Uncle (we’re only related by marriage) are celebrating their 60th anniversary.  This is the couple that I’ve spent every Christmas Day with since I was a teenager or earlier.  They are truly special people. Minime and her man are coming in. Lots of cousins are descending from the four corners of the planet. Everyone’s chipping in their bit of food, and there will be laughter and dancing and good times.  The happy couple are in their early 80′s now,  slowing down, but nothing makes them happier than to be surrounded by loved ones, whatever the occasion.  I have nothing but fondness and respect for them. It will be fun to see everyone too.

I also re-started my healthy living plan again.  Last weekend I walked a couple of miles, and I’ve been eating better. There’s still a ways to go before I’m back to where I was, but until I get paid, I have to eat the food that I have.  I make decent choices most of the time. It will get better as time goes on.  I don’t think I’ll lose another 50 pounds before Christmas, but maybe 25 or 30 is possible.  I’ll just take that a day at a time and do my best with the exercising and decision making.

That’s all anyone can do right?

Namaste

In the last week I’ve been consciously re-engaging with life.  I’ve spent the last couple of months doing nothing but planning for, having, and recovering from surgery. I’m very tired of all of that. I still have a couple of weeks to go as far as restrictions from exercise and lifting, but I’m taking on more and more as I can. It is wearing me out, I still have no stamina, but the only way to get that back is to continue to push myself into working more and more, without pushing myself too hard and causing more damage. It’s a delicate balance.  This morning, my bff and I resumed our Sunday morning walking at the arboretum.  This was the first real walking I’ve done in 5 weeks. The last time we went was the sunday before surgery. Today, we hiked 2 different half mile trails.  There was a short break between them, and I had to stop about 2/3 of the way through the second one, but there was a nice bench in the shade and a nice breeze over the meadow lake that we were next to, so we sat there and talked for a while. 

It’s funny how my body tells me that I need to sit down RIGHT NOW!  I told her not 30 yards before that bench that I’d be fine and make it the rest of the way back to the car. My body had other plans.  I keep reminding myself to have patience. They said 6-8 weeks before I felt back to normal. It’s been 4.5. I’m getting there, but I’m not there yet.  The last hike we took last month was 2+ miles on rougher terrain (we mostly stayed on pavement today) and at a much harder pace, but all things considered, I can live with a mile that took the better part of an hour with 2 decent breaks in the middle. It’s a start.

BFF is going through something awful that has a remarkable amount of things in common with what I went through a few years ago. It’s hard for her right now, and it completely sucks in general, but having been through it myself is at least useful for giving her feedback and different ideas on how to look at things.  She’s been there for me through so many things, it’s comforting for me to know that I can be there for her through this. 

Our Sunday morning’s are very closely guarded girl friend time. We went for years not seeing each other for months at a time. We talked on the phone, but that’s not the same. It feels so good to have a couple of hours every week to just get away from everything and talk, or not, and hike, or not. The Arboretum has become a sanctuary for that.  When I became a member there I just wanted to have a nice place to hike a couple of times a week.

We also usually do something responsible after our hikes like grocery shopping after a healthy brunch, or today, she helped me with a little housework.  I like when we go shopping. We’re both living healthy lives now, and we get more tips from each other just walking through a grocery store than I get from reading a good magazine or website.  We didn’t shop today, but she was helpful. I’m still restricted from things like vacuuming, so she hoovered the house while I swept and mopped the kitchen floor. I feel like a helpless, fragile little thang asking my friends for help with the housework, but this too shall pass, and for now, the place is clean enough. I’ve got 5 loads of laundry to do today, but I can mostly do it myself. I drag the full baskets down to the laundry room, so I’m not lifting anything, just dragging. Roomie will help me carry them back upstairs if I need it. I should be OK though, I just bring up a load at a time as it finishes, and they’re not huge loads, so the weight is within my carrying limit.

One of the cats is sick again. I just have to figure out which one.  I think it’s my old guy, but I’m not sure.  I have some high maintenance pets. One gets insulin twice a day, one gets a pill every evening, and the other has just been psycho for the last couple of days which isn’t so normal for him, so it really could be any of them that’s leaving me presents outside of the litterbox.  Hopefully I’ll catch one of them in the act before it gets worse.  Cats are very good at hiding when they need medical care.  Dammit.  I really don’t have the cash for more than a blood test or two, so hopefully whatever it is shows up on that.

Also last week, Minime cancelled the wedding celebration in Jamaica.  They’re already married, but they wanted to take a couple dozen people down there to party this coming midwinter.  Too many people are strapped for cash right now though, including me, although I wasn’t one that spoke up about it.  I am a little relieved that the pressure is off to make that trip, but it’s a bummer for her and my son in law – HeWhoStillDoesn’tHaveABlogname.   Because of the cancellation though, I’ll get the money that I’ve paid toward the trip back, and that will cover 85% of my unexpected out of pocket expenses for the surgery, so there’s a blessing in disguise. I’ll make it to the Carribean one of these winters. I have family that has property on Anguilla and they winter down there, so all I have to do is get there and I’ll have a place to stay for a week. One of these years…

Instead of Jamaica, they are having a celebration of their marriage at their house in a couple of weeks, right near their first anniversary.  They’re renting a tent and chairs and inviting half of the planet to a BBQ, but it should be fun.  I’m bringing a few things, and offering the suggestions that I think she will consider. It’s their party though, so I’m mostly just doing what’s been asked of me.  I am considering changing one of the dishes that I’ve been asked to bring, just because it’s a lot of work for a little bit of food, but I’ll talk to her about that before I do it.  It might also be another good piece of time to spend with BFF and her oldest daughter. That would make it extra cool, if they can get away.

I was looking into getting a passport too. I’ve never been out of the country, but the possibility exists that I’ll visit my friend in NY in the fall for a photo walk through the Adorandacks, and while I’m up there I’d like to see Niagra Falls from both sides. Crossing into Canada now requires either a passport or a passport card.  The fees for them go up Tuesday, so I blew it by not getting that done while I was off, but I’m thinking that I’ll just get the passport card, because that’s all you need to drive through any border near us. It’s good for Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas on the one condition that you arrive by land based craft, so either car or boat. If I fly I’ll need a real passport. I need to apply soon though because it takes a month or two to get it in the mail. 

I was also reading about the passport cards and how they have RFID chips in them. They come in a pouch that supposedly blocks the signal.  That’s probably crap, unless the pouch is made out of some kind of thin metal. I thought about it though, and I carry a smart phone that tracks everywhere I go and pretty much everything that I do anyway.  I suppose that if I were doing something wrong, I’d care more, but the price of the technology these days is giving up certain privacies, and I have nothing to hide. There is also safety in these devices. If something happens, they can track my location by just a phone signal, so it goes both ways.  In any case, I don’t think that a card with an RFID in it, that will live at my house in my safe unless I’m traveling, is a problem.  Bummer that I now have to pay a bunch more to get one, but such is life.

I guess that’s it for now. I’m too tired to be profound. I do have some thoughts that I’m putting together though. Maybe next time… Have a good week.

2. I tried to wear jeans yesterday. This weekend I’ll be washing a few skirts so that I can avoid pants for a couple more weeks. My belly is just too tender for anything pressing on it. The jeans aren’t even tight, and I took them off after about 45 min, but I hurt all day because of them.

3. I have a new mobile phone. I dropped my AT&T service because I refuse to pay that much for a service that drops every other call, so my iPhone is now an iPod touch, and my new phone is a Droid Incredible.  It’s pretty slick.  I also have a new policy of not buying any apps. The free ones are fine, and abundant. I left more than $100 of apps on my iphone, and the most expensive one doesn’t even work now that I don’t have cell service to it anymore. Lesson learned. Also Verizon service is about $15 cheaper per month, and they have better coverage when I travel.  I’ve been slowly gettingthe new phone set up. Yesterday I got all of my e-mail accounts onto it. The Droid OS handles mail differently than the Apple OS, so I have to figure that out too. The last things that I have to do is figure out how it handles pictures and music files. Once that’s done, I’m all set to go.  I’m glad I got the phone while I have time to learn my way around it.

4. I’m doing a little financial clean up and slimming down my electronics diet.  All the services that I’m paying for are adding up and I’ve been pretty strapped lately.  I have a friend that is buying my satelite radio, so I can cancel that subscription and put the money toward paying down a credit card.  I’m reducing my cable package too, but I have to decide which way to go with that. If I drop down to the next lower package, I save $15 a month and only lose about 3 channels that I watch consistently, and the movie channels.  The next package lower than that would save me $30 a month, but then I’d lose nearly all the channels that Roomie and I both watch. If I do the first, and only go down one package, I’ll also kill my Netflix subscription, so I save $24 a month total.  If I kill it down to just the basic “family” package, I lose most of the stations that I watch, so I’d keep Netflix because I can stream it on my Wii to my TV but the savings by doing it that way is only $21 a month, but I get any movies that I want to see for that $3 difference.   Decisions decisions.

Between doing all of that and switching from AT&T to Verizon, I cut my bills by more than $50 a month with really not a lot of pain.  All that I’m really still paying for on an ongoing basis that I don’t consider a “required for living” bill is my web hosting, it’s less than $10 a month and I’ll keep that going.  I am going to change it from going on a credit card, to coming out of my bank account though. The bigger picture here is to stop bleeding financially, pay off the credit cards for the last time, and live on a cash basis.   I’m also going to sell a few things too. I have a bunch of old video games, and the only one I every use is my Wii. They can all go to Gamestop. I might get $50 out of them. I also don’t really need the iPhone anymore once my new phone is set up to play music, so I have another friend that will buy that.  All the little things add up and I’ll have a couple hundred $$ to throw at medical bills next month, so good for me for getting that stuff out of the way that much quicker.

5. I still have plenty of toys.  There becomes a point where living with the excess is just pointless and expensive. It’s a bad habit that I got from my ex. That is what #4 is all about. That stuff doesn’t add enough quality to my life to justify the cost.  I’m really just simplifying things, like I’ve been doing for months now.   I think that tomorrow’s project will be to clean another bag of crap out of my junk room. I haven’t done one of those in a while.  In a few weeks I’ll be able to use my elliptical agian too. It has been stored in there for months because my kidney couldn’t handle the strain. Now that the kidney is gone, my heart will appreciate the aerobics, and I’ll be back to my favorite machine.  Yay!

6.   I’ve been doing my monthly cat grooming this week. My female Maine Coon has IBS, so her getting hairballs causes issues. I keep her fur trimmed to short fur length and then she doesn’t get hairballs, but it’s a pain, and it takes a few hours over 3 or 4 days before she’s completely groomed. I think she likes her coat shorter like I keep it. It’s much easier for her to clean. Boy does it make a mess though. 

7. Five days until I return to working.  I’ll be thankful to have something that’s not mind numbing to do with my brain all day again, but I’m a little worried about my physical condition and state of recuperation. I have a new laptop from the office to work on from now on, and I have it at home to give it a test run for a week before I go back into the office. We’ll see how I do, starting next wednesday.  

That’s it for now.
Namaste