Black Oak's Daughter

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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Let me start this by saying that some video games become deeply entrenched when you play them for as many hours as I did as a kid.

Every time I start something new, I hear Mario from Super Mario Brothers do the “Here we go!” before he jumps into a new level, in my head.  I think it’s kind of fitting.  Mario always just jumped in. If he died, he just rez’d and tried again, and again, and again.  The little guy never gave up.

Today I went shopping. I spent a significant amount of money on groceries that did NOT include meat, eggs, cheese, or oil.  We are finishing up what we have in the house, but then it’s a go. We have almost everything needed to ease into the Heart Attack Proof diet.  Basically it’s a low fat vegan diet.  Beans and grains are the protein source, carbs are all complex and come from fruits and veggies, nutrition comes from fresh and varied ingredients, and a couple of supplements that they suggest, just in case. It can’t hurt.

My father was 7 years older than me when his heart exploded, and he wasn’t overweight. My mom was the same age when she had a 99% blocked aorta and was given 3 days to live.  I’ve had my heart checked before each of the surgeries that I had in the last few years, and it’s fine. My cholesterol is normal and my numbers are reasonable.  I’d like to keep it that way. The latest, long term, in depth research says that this is the way to go.  I’m not a big meat eater anyway. I will miss eggs and cheese, but really that’s not even 5% of my normal diet, so no big deal.

so… Here we go!

Namaste

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My birthday was this week.  It’s been a mostly fun week with a lot of work stuck in between.  I have the week off from my job, and Monday is Labor Day so that’s 10 full job free days.  I’ve done a cursory check of my e-mail every day but there’s nothing there that can’t wait until I get back, so it’s been nice to be mostly unplugged from that.

I’ve done a round with doctors while I’m off and been declared mostly normal. I have to go for a test to confirm my remaining kidney isn’t in any danger, but that seems like a smart thing to do so I don’t mind.   I have one more oncology appointment in 6 months and then I’m finished with that.  I can’t believe that journey is almost over. It changed my life, my perspective, and just as I have learned to live with it, I’ll learn to readjust my thinking from being “cancer patient” to being “cancer survivor”. It is one of the things that has come up in therapy, and my therapist is continuing to give me feedback that I can work with. Some of it is pretty hard to digest, but I’m working on it.

Minime has been in town all week too.  We have had a lot of fun.  We spent a beautiful day at the zoo. It was very uncrowded, and aside from the humidity, really couldn’t have been better.    After the zoo, we went to Happy Hour at Bahama Breeze and had a few drinks and some half priced appetizers for dinner.  We both paid for all of that the next day. Between the sun, the humidity, the drinks, and the greasy food, I spent most of the day trying to not think about how bad I felt. It was worth it   What a great day.

She and I are so much alike it’s scary sometimes.  We were in the penguin house at the zoo and both of us were disappointed that more of them weren’t out, and at the same time we both looked and said “there’s a lot of them in the hidey holes”. Then we both looked at each other and smiled.

Wednesday we went to a store where they sell fresh spices in bulk. Walking into that place is wonderful when all of the spice scent hits you, and so many things to learn and try.  It’s as sensual as you can get without sex

Thursday we saw my 92 year old aunt. It was nice seeing her. She’s really got so many stories to tell from all of her years of life. She’s also very human about her age. The last of her friends from her younger years died recently, she’s outlived everyone that she knew. That makes her a little sad, but she works at making new, younger friends. Younger being 70′s and 80′s.  She’s always been very healthy, and she’s a little frustrated about little things starting to go wrong, but she’s still got a good attitude, and she just takes it one day at a time.

Also this week, I’ve ordered some new appliances for the kitchen. It’s going to be a tight month, but I’ll have an oven that works and a new dishwasher.   I don’t mind doing dishes too much, but there are times when it’s a chore, and my dishpan hands will be thankful for the relief too.  After not having a working dishwasher for 9 months or so, it will be nice to have one again. Especially with the holidays coming.

My Big Brother’s birthday was the day after mine. That was a little hard. He and I were born 6 years and 364 days apart.  He died six months ago. All of my early birthdays were shared with him. As he got older we had separate parties, but for the most part, the good years of our lives were spent celebrating our birthdays together.  There’s no one left that really understands what he and I were to each other.  This was our first birthday that I spent without knowing he’s out there thinking of me as much as I was of him. I’ve lost all but one of my immediately family and I know what kind of empty feelings come on holidays or other anniversary dates, but this was different. I wouldn’t be able to tell you if it’s because losing him was the most recent, or because we were so close as young ones, or because we both survived the hell that we did and made some kind of peace with it and each other, but damn there’s this big empty hole in me where he should be.  My mother died 19 years ago today too. I miss her but not like I miss my brother.  Maybe it’s just a matter of time, who knows. Right now though words don’t really help.  It’s just a day to get through. Life goes on, so do I. But I’ll pause and remember, and do a little bit of wishing that I know will never come true.

I have 4 more days of vacation. Today is mostly for re-grouping, getting a few things done at home, and tending to the cat. She has cancer and gave me a good scare last weekend. Turns out it was a hairball, and I haven’t groomed her in 2+ months, so she’s in the process of getting a haircut.  Minime is running a race Sunday and I’ll go watch that. Also BFF needs to get out, so I’ll kidnap her to the arboretum and we’ll have a few laughs. The week is winding down though.  It’s been a weird mix of awesome and drudgery. I’ll remember the awesome though   I’m glad Minime came in for the week. I needed that.

I am 45 now.  My aunt is 92, I’m halfway there, right?    Roomie has done a bunch of research, and it wouldn’t hurt either of us to change our ways to be a little healthier, so in the next few days/weeks we’ll be shifting to a vegan way of life.  It can’t hurt right?  It seems like a better journey for the next few years than the one that started when I was 40 and diagnosed with cancer a few months later.  We’ll see how it goes.

Namaste.

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OK, so I’m not going to not talk about therapy anymore, because that is what my life is right now. I won’t talk about the details though, those are between me and my (awesome, spot on, intuitive) therapist.

During our first session she reminded me of a strategy that I learned a few years ago from Randy Pausch’s wife Jai.  You may remember Randy as the guy that did “The Last Lecture”.  (Google that when you have an hour and watch the most amazing lecture ever).  Randy and his wife knew that he was dying. There would be no miracle.  They were doing their best to live though, and to bring their kids to a place where losing their dad wouldn’t be completely crippling.  Their therapist gave her one strategy for when those inevitable negative thoughts came into her head.  She could either let herself be paralyzed by it, or she could take the reins, and ask herself if those thoughts were helpful.

“Is this helpful?”  It’s a simple question. Usually with a simple answer. Yes, or no.

They had a goal, and the more time she wasted wallowing in her pain and not helping her children and husband truly live through this experience, the less she was effectively moving through the steps to accomplish their goals. It really is a profoundly beautiful story about appreciating every moment.  Randy was an amazing, dynamic, fun loving guy, and just because he happened to be dying didn’t change that. She knew what was coming, she dreaded living without him, raising their kids, and somehow moving on alone. But at the point where they both had to be present in the moment, dread wasn’t helpful.  Being present, living, and happy in the moment was helpful.  She made a choice, and it was not easy a lot of the time, but she really would have lost those moments for herself, her kids, and her husband if she had gotten mired down in the loss that was coming instead of appreciating the moment as it was. She got to experience: alive, happy, wonderful, loving, and any other positive adjective you can think of.  Randy really was truly a force of life, even while he was dying. She got to experience every bit of his life, and death, consciously.

I first learned of their story when I had cancer.  It touched me to the core. My cancer was very survivable. Randy died 3 months after I became cancer free.  It was helpful then in teaching me how to keep a good attitude about living, After he died, I went back and watched all of the interviews that they did. The one thing that stuck with me then, was the strategy that Jai learned about deciding if something was helpful or not, and acting accordingly.

I have goals too.   We are still figuring out a plan of action as far as therapy goes, but even at it’s most basic level I know and can decide my own reaction when I determine something to be helpful or not.  The only thing in life that I have control over is how I react.  I can’t control what gets thrown at me. I’ve had a real overabundance of bad things thrown at me in my life too, I’m good at spotting them, seeing them coming, and bracing myself.  I get stuck though. I’m not good at moving on from there with behaviors that are helpful. So now, again, I’m reminded how not helpful some of the things that I do are.

Framing it with “is this helpful?” gives me a choice. There is a decision point. Lots of them actually. If I change direction and then discover that the direction that I chose also is not helpful, I can change again until I hit on a good strategy. It’s really very forgiving, and empowering.

And important.

if something is not helpful, the trick is to change strategies and try to find something that is.  It worked for Jai in the most tragic of situations. It can work for me too. I just have to work it

Namaste

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It’s been a couple of weeks again. It seems that I have a lot to say except when I sit down to write.

The last couple of weeks were a challenge. My partner was out at work. It was stressful but nothing horrible happened, no major mistakes were made, and I didn’t have to do more than a couple of hours of unpaid OT.  I did use it as an excuse to start drinking diet coke again. I’m paying for that this weekend, as I withdraw from caffeine again. From now on, the only caffeine I’ll drink is tea.  I have some Chai tea bags, that I can brew at work. A little milk and honey and it’s bearable. Extra cinnamon too   Starbucks Chai is 300 calories a cup. I can make it significantly less than that if I brew it myself.

I’m going to be taking some time off in the next couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to the break. I have lunch with a friend planned, and some necessary things like a follow up with the kidney doc, an oil change for my car, and other such things. I’ll spend a day getting all of that out of the way. I’ll take my camera out and shoot some beasts, and make a concerted effort to get the crap that I want to donate, donated. The list is long and boring of what Grania does on Staycation. Mostly I’ll just catch up with life, and caring for myself and my things.

That seems to be a theme lately.  The pressure relief that therapy is giving me is helping me clear my head enough to start getting on with life, taking care of stuff that desperately needs it, and to take the first baby steps into moving my life the direction that I want it to move.  Baby steps.  This weekend it’s getting off the caffeine.  I’ve also made the turn back toward healthy, unprocessed food.  The test for that will be at work tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.   I’ve been on a veggie sushi kick lately. I need to find a source closer to the office

The week that I’m taking off at the end of the month will also have a day of remembering.  My Big Brother that died in Feb would have turned 52 this year.  Our birthday’s were one day apart, we always shared the celebration. This year I’ll be alone. The only thing that I plan is to let myself have feelings about it. I’m very good at tucking my feelings in so deep that I don’t even have to admit to them. This time I won’t do that.  It’s OK to be sad. It’s OK to remember. It’s OK to grieve. I might go to the woods too. He and I shared that love. We grew up with woods literally 100 feet from our front door.  There is beauty, and solace, and life there. It seems only fitting that I take a walk through them on his birthday to honor that bond that we shared.

Namaste

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I’m not going to talk about it here   But, I like the therapist. She’s guiding me down a long scary road, giving me things to think about, and all that.  My second session was this morning.  It’s hard work, but I think maybe I’m doing OK at it. It’s not going to fix me overnight. I didn’t get this screwed up overnight either, so that’s OK.

I shared a quote with her this morning that one of the prophets that I follow posted on facebook last week:

“The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.” -Aldous Huxley

And so it begins.

-Namaste

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I made a phone call last week.

It’s something that I’ve thought a lot about. Actually, I’ve probably spent too much time thinking about it.

I excel at over analyzing things.

Analysis in itself never fixed anything. It just defines the problems.

Fixing problems is something that I am wonderful at…

…. for everyone else.

Fixing my own shit however, means facing some hard things.

Facing them, means by default, admitting them.

To myself.

Looking them in the eye and not running from them.

Defining them.

Every little detail.

Every little fucking painful detail.

Facing them.

Opening the can of worms.

Taking them out one by one and making little worm friends, somehow.

The anxiety level that I felt just picking up the phone, holy cow.

I’ve been in therapy before.

Mostly because someone else thought it was a good idea.

This time it’s because I don’t have any answers for myself anymore.

I’m a little lost girl.

I’m too afraid to even think about it because I am on the defense waiting for whatever is going to come next.

Living on the defense takes a lot of energy.

The tragic barrage of all of the life altering events of the last six or seven years has me reeling.

There is only so many times that life can kick you in the proverbial stones and you stand up, throw your shoulders back, and claim “that wasn’t so bad” and move on.

You know what, a couple of those kicks were really bad.

Staggering.

It took everything in me to keep moving on.

Except I’m not moving on anymore.

I’m just surviving.

My life outwardly is successful.

I’m very good at not letting it show and carrying on.

I’ve been doing that since I was 8 years old.

There are maybe two people on the planet that can even see through that act and be concerned.

It’s like I forgot how to breathe.

But no one notices me turning blue.

I’m the only one that can save me.

I have to remember how to breathe again.

So I reached out.

I made a phone call.

To a therapist.

She comes with great references.

My heart was still pounding.

I hope I’m making a good leap.

We’ll see what happens next.

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The other day I went for some blood tests. Nothing major, just my annual physical tests.  My doctor’s office has it’s own lab. In that lab there is the sweetest little, bald, fat, Indian man. I’ve gone to this doctor for five years now. I’ve been seeing this same lab guy for that whole time.  He is ALWAYS smiling, always humming a tune, and always very careful with his work.  His job is not glamorous. He sticks people with needles, and handles the urine tests day in and day out. It’s got to be tiring just dealing with all kinds of people that have all kinds of feelings about being stuck with needles but he does it without fail and always smiling.

I was his second patient that morning. 8:15 AM.  I got there and said hello to let him know I was there. He told me he’d be just a moment and I sat down in the waiting area.  He finished what he was doing and he said OK Dear, please come sit in my chair. He had his usual smile and I couldn’t resist a comment. I told him that I like him. He’s always smiling, always happy, always singing. Nothing bothers him.

He got all serious for a minute, still smiling of course.  He stopped what he was doing and told me a story in his wonderful Indian accent, about his mother back in India. “She used to tell me that everything costs something. Food costs money, houses cost money, clothes cost, even frowns have a cost. But, she said, there is one thing that is free! And that excited him. What could be free? She made him guess and guess, and guess, and he couldn’t think of it. So finally she told him. It costs nothing to smile.  Smiles are free. No matter what else costs, they are free, and they make people feel better.”  He never forgot that lesson.

We went on with the task at hand. He got his needle gear all together. Three tubes, the butterfly needle and the thing it is attached to. I have one vein on the surface and that’s the one that everyone tries for. It usually rolls out of the way, but never for him.

I commented on that too, he never misses. I’m not easy to draw blood from, others have had trouble. He said that God tells him where to go with the needle, he just listens.  I smiled. He has learned to trust that little voice that we all have but most of us ignore.I like this guy more and more.

The conversation went on.  I asked him if he had any vacation plans for the summer, and he shook his head and said “no, no money for vacation this year” and changed the tube that was on the other end of the needle in my arm. Still smiling. Humming his tune. I told him that I know how he feels, I’m broke too. It’s OK to be broke. Things are tight for everyone and yet we go on and learn how to enjoy life anyway.

Then a nurse came in and asked him a lab question. He helped her, with a smile of course, and changed the tube that was attached to my arm again. She left with her answer, smiling.

Then we were done and I wished him a good day. He wished me the same, with a smile.

I left smiling. Not only are they free, they’re contagious.  That’s awesome.

Smile

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I don’t know why. Maybe it’s my analytical side. I do work with numbers for a living. Every once in a while I get to thinking about how much of my life has passed with or without someone.

I remember thinking when I was 16 that I had spent 1/2 of my life without a father. If you do the math now, it’s more like 9/11ths.  It boggles me that I learned so much from a man that was only in my life for 2/11ths of my entire existence so far.

For mom the number is smaller. about 4/9ths of my life have been spent without her.  She died when I was 25. I’m still learning her lessons. Some of them better, some of them worse.

My brother died two and a half months ago, so I had him for 43.9/44ths of my life. That’s a much better fraction if you don’t count that we didn’t see each other for 12 years, then it turns into 3/11ths of my life that I was missing him, and 3 months where it’s just a big empty hole in my heart where that little piece of me knew that the world was right because I had a big brother that would defend me to the end.  God I miss him.  But his fraction will grow smaller in time too. Hopefully the hole in my heart will too.

I was married for 3/11ths of my life.  To the wrong man. Thankfully that number will get smaller as time goes on. I gave him too much of my life.  I don’t miss him, but I do miss having that kind of intimacy with someone.  Maybe someday that will come into my life again, but for now it’s not there.

There are good fractions. I’ve been a mom for nearly 7/11ths of my life. That is by far the most important thing I’ve ever done. My daughter came into this world with the odds stacked against her, but we got through it somehow and she makes me prouder every day. Being a parent is the most humbling experience I’ve ever been through. From the beginning, when I understood the great gift that the baby growing in me was, to the middle when that life that came through me stretched her wings and tried to fly so many times, to the present time, when she’s really coming into her own full adulthood. Every step along the way has been amazing with her, and I’m so thankful to have been given that gift.

My best friend has been there for all but about 3.5/11ths. For those of you that aren’t good with fractions, we’ll be celebrating our 30th anniversary in the fall.  Wow what a wild and mostly wonderful ride that’s been. She’s in a place in her life where she’s just learning to fly again too. I’m so proud of how she’s handled some really hard situations. We still laugh together. We still cry together. I believe that we have many soul mates in our lives, but she’s definitely been one of mine for the majority of my time here on this planet.  I can live without a man in my life, but I don’t know what I’d do if there were ever a time when I couldn’t call her when I needed to talk.

Roomie’s been around for about 1/9th of my life. In that 1/9th of my life, I’ve been divorced, had 3 surgeries, my girl graduated college, one of my cats died, and also my brother.  That’s a lot of things that he’s seen me through. He continues to support me in so many ways. I am grateful.

I’ve worked at the same job for 3/7ths of my life. Going on 18 years there, at a high tech company, that’s a miracle that’s rarely heard of in this day and age.

I’ve been driving the same car for 1/5 of my life. It’s as raggedy as I am these days, but it’s reliable, and when I retire it in the fall, it will be with mixed feelings.

I’ve lived in the same house  for 1/4 of my life, and before that the house that I grew up in for 3/5 of my life. There were only a couple of apartments in between those, so I’m blessed that my life has been as stable as it has been.

Those are just some of the fractions that I think about. I don’t know why but it interests me to look at my life that way sometimes.

Namaste

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