Not going down without a rant …
22 Dec 2014 6 Comments
My tolerance for whining is minimal, so I try not to do it.
Just the facts then.
If you’ve never experienced an auto-immune disorder there’s no way to explain it to you, but I’m willing to try because at least a dozen people on my Facebook feed, including me, deal with fibromyalgia and/or other auto-immune malfunctions on a daily basis. If you’ve somehow formed the opinion that we’re lazy, unmotivated, hopeless weenies, at least scan the information below. Most of us, like you, have dreams and plans, if only our bodies would get in the game.
Part of the frustration that comes with fibro is its unpredictability — one day you’re flying high, the next you can’t get out of bed. More often, the transition takes place between one hour and the next. A second frustration is that, plan as you might, there will be social opportunities missed and projects that never really get off the ground. A third, if you can call it a frustration, is that when flares hit they’re fairly relentless and the prolonged pain and hypersensitivity in bones, joints, muscles, tendons and other soft tissues let you know that everything is on hold for a while. A fourth is that while researchers are on the brink of several breakthroughs, the root causes of fibromyalgia remain elusive, ergo no effective treatment yet.
I’m blessed that my husband gets it and doesn’t see me as dead weight to haul around, but not all are so fortunate. It can be a lonely walk, so for friends and family who have to carry the burden of all we DON’T know about the auto-immune spectrum in general and fibromyalgia in particular, here are the fruits of my highly-personal, mostly-unscientific research into the disorder known among the ranks as “the invisible beating.” (Click pics to enlarge.)
Omigosh, you’re still here? You are either a really caring soul or you have a vested interest in the subject, or both. We can all help make things better for each other — that’s the truth. I’m glad you’re a part of that …
Sometimes you just go ahead and dance …
16 Dec 2014 3 Comments
So I noticed a weird little goober on my lower eyelid, oh, months and months ago and when it started to resemble an expanding snot bubble I made an appointment with a specialist — I’m not one to rush into things unless it’s something I really want. Anyway, today was as much fun as a poke in the eye with a sharp needle — biopsy done and now we have the inevitable wait. But even if it’s basal cell, as Dr. Specialist surmises, it won’t be a biggie — Dr. Specialist #2 will biopsy the whole thing in layers and if I end up with a divot in my eyelid Dr. Specialist #1 will Bondo it for me and my eye will be good as new. Also basal cell carcinoma doesn’t metastasize or send out runners. Yay!
Hey, it’s Tuesday, the day we dahnce, dahlings, and I say we get on with it. Choose your libation — I’m having NZ Starborough Sauv Blanc — and distract me while the anesthetic wears off and reality hits. That’s what friends do.
Time for the Monday rant …
15 Dec 2014 2 Comments
Someone I used to respect told me several months ago that he’s an Ayn Rand devotee, which is entirely his business. For years, though, and maybe still, he was an evangelical Christian minister, so, the two philosophies being mutually exclusive, I hardly knew what to do with that information other than dismiss it out of hand. Dude, pick a hero — if it’s the biblical Jesus your life will look a certain way. If it’s Ms. Rand, good luck, you’re already morphing into the polar opposite of a Christ-follower. Please don’t think I necessarily care one way or the other — I don’t have a horse in the race, beyond knowing that truth still matters and it never disavows itself. At the end of this post there’s a link to a Salon article, brief-ish and succinct, that illustrates the disconnect required to be both a Christian and a disciple of Randian Philosophy aka Objectivism. Not enough Xanax in the world, lollipop.
Key quote from the article:
“Rand … stated on national television, ‘I am against God. I don’t approve of religion. It is a sign of a psychological weakness. I regard it as an evil.’ Actually … Rand did have a God. It was herself. She said: ‘I am done with the monster of *we,* the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: *I.*‘” So, yeah, that happened.
Having been stalked by tragedy and pain over the past three decades, both physical and existential, the road forward was in trying to make sense of the human experience in time to survive it, as a result of which I’m no longer an authority on the subject of a God like the one the evangelicals paint for us. IF, however, just say, there WERE to be such a God who cared, loved, nurtured, was intimately engaged in the human sojourn on this planet and took a personal hand in events great and small … then it should be excruciatingly, ostentatiously, nakedly clear, despite Ms. Rand’s deistic stance, that *I* would not be that god, ergo neither would you, and — I know this like I know the universe is ginormous — nor would Ayn Rand. What in hell would be more terrifying, overwhelming, and totally ludicrous than to think that I am/we are/she was in charge, amirite?
You get where I’m coming from, you can’t have it both ways! Either there’s no god, as a true atheist asserts, or there’s an Infinite God who actually gives a flip about every molecule. Or maybe somebody something somewhere between — a Force. A Power. A Powerful Life Force. Or … as Ms. Rand apparently believed … god is/was her, therefore you and me. But probably just her. So that’s more than two ways, yeah — just … really not an expert anymore, but pretty sure the *I* thing can’t be right.
Here’s another quote from the Salon article:
“Ayn Rand removed Americans’ guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Not only did Rand make it ‘moral’ for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she ‘liberated’ millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children. The good news is that I’ve seen ex-Rand fans grasp the damage that Rand’s philosophy has done to their lives and to then exorcize it from their psyche. Can the United States as a nation do the same thing?”
I don’t know, see, because the generally-accepted rallying cry is that we’re a Christian nation, which clearly gives us a leg up on the rest of the world because we’re right. We can torture choke shoot tase beat and otherwise dispatch fellow persons including animals and it doesn’t make us any less Christian or right because WE’RE CHRISTIAN AND WE’RE RIGHT, dammit!! We’re Christian, man, serious, but you know, things have changed and we’re supposed to just care about ourselves now anyway.
And so she did — cared foremost, apparently, about herself and what she wanted, and anointed herself her own god. A god that stood appropriately god-like against Social Security and Medicare and other government spoils until said god was in need of same. A god that some of my Christian acquaintances seem to co-worship now in a strange brew of sudden jarring philosophical ninety-degree right turns. Whatevs. I don’t even know what the “C” word is currently supposed to mean, I just don’t want my name associated with whatever it is. That’s me talking, not Salon.
Article in the link:
Just in time …
09 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
… for the annual “War on Christmas,” a handy flow chart from Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans, who writes “The whole story of Advent is the story of how God can’t be kept out. God is present. God is with us. God shows up—not with a parade but with the whimper of a baby, not among the powerful but among the marginalized, not to the demanding but to the humble. From Advent to Easter, the story of Jesus should teach us that God doesn’t need a mention in our pledge or on our money or over the loudspeaker at the mall to be present, and when we fight like spoiled children to ‘keep’ God in those things, we are fighting for idols. We’re chasing wind.”
Whatever your take on all of that, or mine, she also says, “For a long, long time Christianity was dominant in the United States and represented the civic religion of the country. But America is about the people who are here now, and that is a much more diverse group. And that’s good! It is time to stop insisting that everything revolves around us. Instead, let’s join the wider circle of the many traditions that make up our country. Besides, any Christian knows that Christmas is not about displays in shopping malls, or capitols, or schools, it is about a spiritual event that we honor most in our families and our homes.”
What scares you?
08 Dec 2014 5 Comments
Not BOOGA-BOOGA pants-crapping scared, where your skin crinkles up and makes little screeching noises with sparklers on the ends. More like what are you AFRAID of … that fundamental sense of dread that a cog will drop into a random sprocket somewhere and life will change. Fear of loss is a keen motivator — what else drives us with that same force?
But what if life changed and you lived through it? And what if that happened over and over ’til you realized how brave you were and then you just started doing things and saying things you didn’t know you could do and say? What if people didn’t get any of that at all and you didn’t care? What if you just started kicking ass, including your own, and life really did change and you wouldn’t change it back if you had the chance? WHAT IF? Not the question I want to be asking myself when I’m gearing up for the choir eternal. What if I’d done all those things I knew I could do? What if I’d let myself be who I knew I was? And to quote Captain Obvious, what if I’d just been nicer? Regret, let’s not go there.
Holy balls, I’ve survived too long to let fear force me back into the box, and by now he’s like an old friend anyway, sort of. You know, keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your powder dry.
“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.” ~Dawna Markova
A Fairytale for Throwback Thursday
04 Dec 2014 6 Comments
Once upon a time, there lived a handsome young man of steel who told a little white lie about his age, joined the Army at seventeen, fought at the front during The War to End All Wars on many fields of battle, came home intact in mind and body, swept a lovely fifteen-year-old store clerk off her feet, married her straightaway, and started a dynasty. Thus reads the CliffsNotes version, you may thank me after the test.
But before that, a lot of other things happened.
And while those things were happening, the young man was growing steely because clearly he had good genes plus a step-father who was certifiably unhinged. When the lad in our tale was less than twelve years old, his step-dad took him to the barren plains of eastern Colorado to “prove up a claim” and homestead it, worked him like a dog, left him there and went home to Kansas. But not before taking a pot-shot at him off the porch that put a hole through his hat and knocked him flat in the hard Colorado dirt.
The boy lived out there in that little shack by himself, with the heat and the wind and the wildlife, until somebody came for him. Whatever steel he wasn’t born with must have crawled into his bones in those months, and it never left him. I know this because he was my grandfather and I know he never lost his metal, his discipline, or his looks. He and my grandmother raised six sons and three daughters, all worth knowing in their own right. Grandpa knew how to do everything and Grandma knew the rest, so there was always food on the table and a good roof on a house full of voices laughing, crying, arguing, singing, talking, yelling, but mostly laughing. Smart funny people, this dynasty.
It’s my favorite fairytale to slip into on cold gray days because it’s all true. And a thing to love is that with everything Grandpa survived in his years, he never got smelly and mean-spirited and old on the inside. He and my grandmother both figured out how to stay alive and BE alive and how to pass that on. Pretty cool.
If I’m lyin’ I’m flyin’ …
03 Dec 2014 6 Comments
My grandma, who had to tolerate me a lot since I lived within rock-throwing distance and never knew when to go home, used to tell me that I was as happy as if I had good sense. That is, when she wasn’t accusing me of lacking the sense God gave a goose. Clearly she noticed a certain deficit in the reasoning department. Time and experience have predictably sharpened my perceptions, but if I have to base my mood on whatever life’s currently dishing out, I’m done. Hey, I KNOW things suck, generally speaking. I’m perfectly aware we’re all headed to hell in a disintegrating hand basket at warp speed. You know the drill: our atmosphere is imploding, our ground water’s drying up, our oceans are gunked up with plastic and sewage and a sick radioactive glow, the whole planet’s at war in one way or another, and disease and pestilence stalk the land. But I can’t shake the feeling that life is good, gosh darn it, all indications to the contrary. What can I say, things just have a way of working out, and it’s always too early to give up. To quote the great Lucimar Santos de Lima (it’s okay, even Wikipedia can’t find him), “It doesn’t hurt to be optimistic, you can always cry later.”
Making a list …
02 Dec 2014 2 Comments
So Tuesday around here is evolving into a day for thankfulness and dancing, but will one day a week be enough? I think not! And on that note, I hope you’re making only HAPPY LISTS this winter.
Going now …
28 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
you couldn’t let go
didn’t know how
so freedom is extracted
at the price of tears you cannot shed.
don’t grovel
reject mawkishness
you had time to get it right
density is no alibi.
you built this
don’t even think of crying
hot tears ice over
if they can’t be shared.
all good just late
but
better late than never.
The giving of the thanks …
26 Nov 2014 2 Comments
A hearty … Boy-We-Sure-Put-One-Over-on-Those-Stupid-Indians Day … to one and all!
“Fine meal, chaps. Burrrp. The corn was a nice touch. Sweet little country ya’ got here.
Be a shame if somethin’ were ta’ happen to it.”
Playing for Time 
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