06 Jan 2015 5 Comments
Today we get the pathology on my eyelid biopsy and find out where it goes from here — nowhere, or back for more carving. Either way, we dance — it’s Tuesday. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, if anything potentially negative is coloring your day, focus on the unicorns!
05 Jan 2015 6 Comments
2015 looks fine so far, relatively speaking, but there is much to do as the year rolls by. Each of the eight points delineated by Neil is a rant aimed specifically at me — a kick in the shorts toward a more focused writing experience. So on January 5, 2016, remember to ask me how I feel!
Neil Gaiman’s 8 Good Writing Practices:
02 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
“Μaybe old people were never children, like we claim with Mrs. Bentley, but, big or little, some of them were standing around at Appomattox the summer of 1865. They got Indian vision and can sight back further than you and me will ever sight ahead.”
“That sounds swell, Doug; what does it mean?”
Douglas went on writing. “It means you and me ain’t got half the chance to be far-travelers they have. If we’re lucky we’ll hit forty, forty-five, fifty. That’s just a jog around the block to them. It’s when you hit ninety, ninety-five, a hundred, that you’re far-traveling like heck.”
The flashlight went out.
They lay there in the moonlight.
“Tom,” whispered Douglas, “I got to travel all those ways. See what I can see. But most of all I got to visit Colonel Freeghleigh once, twice, three times a week. He’s better than all the other machines. He talks, you listen. And the more he talks he gets you to peering around and noticing things. He tells you you’re riding on a very special train, by gosh, and sure enough it’s true. He’s been down the track, and knows. And now here we come, you and me, along the same track, but further on, and so much looking and snuffling and handling things to do, you need old Colonel Freeleigh to shove and say look alive so you remember every second! Every darn thing there is to remember! So when kids come around when you’re real old, you can do for them what the colonel once did for you. That’s the way it is, Tom, I got to spend a lot of time visiting him and listening so I can go far-traveling with him as often as he can.”
Tom was silent a moment. Then he looked over at Douglas there in the dark.
“Far-traveling, you make that up?”
“Maybe yes and maybe no.”
“Far-traveling,” whispered Tom.
“Only one thing I’m sure of,” said Douglas, closing his eyes, “it sure sounds lonely.”
(Ray Bradbury, “Dandelion Wine”, 1946)
… grateful to my friend Angela Petraline for sharing
26 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
My blog just texted me that it was lonely. (And it spelled out each word because it’s, you know, my blog.) I feel awful — less than 24 hours after the kindest, splooshiest day of the year I wander off and forget the ones who mean the most.
But I’m back with a vengeance, launching bizarrely-benign torpedo-thoughts … configured sort of like my old paper airplanes … into what’s shaping up to be 2015. For my Faithful Facebook Friends, today’s post will be an instant rerun. Whatevs — can’t get there today, hope you didn’t have to work either!! (And sorry, because I know some who did.)
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 …
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.
14 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
If you were offered the chance to spend a week here,
would you go?
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
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.
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.”
"How did it get so late so soon?" ~Dr. Seuss
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