Ahhhh.  The kiss of a summer breeze sailing right through my work room window.  So delicious.  We got up to almost 100 degrees yesterday for the first time this year, but we’re on our way back down again and should be into the high 60′s to low 70′s within a week (?!).  Right now, it’s just about perfect out there.

I’m almost at the end of my second week of school being in session.  The boys are doing fine, which is a relief for as long as it lasts.  Nathan really loves his teacher and being in middle school.  He’s a kid who doesn’t do well being a kid and really needs to be older and have more control over his life to be comfortable in his own skin.  Dylan is just the opposite.  He’s so relaxed and kicked back that he’s happy no matter where he is.   Nathan is intense.  Neither boy felt particularly well this morning.  Dylan had a headache and Nathan’s throat was scratchy.  I pushed them out the door anyway and hoped for the best. 

Delena enjoys college very much.  She scheduled her class load so that she has a very, very long day ever Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but is off on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Eric has classes 5 days a week and works at his work/study program at the VA on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well.  He has kept up the pace pretty well this week. 

I am just enjoying the quiet.  Having the house to myself now and then gives me some off duty time to relax and regroup from the stresses of the past several years.  I want to sleep all of the time, which is the only downside.  After sleeping fitfully for so long, I now go deeply into sleep and stay there until I’m yoinked out of it by some demand or another, usually a ringing phone.  I feel my spirit and my body slowly healing from a lot of stress and I am very grateful for that opportunity. 

This weekend was interesting.  The grandkids came up to visit and it was a few days before Aiden’s 6th birthday, so we did the presents and cake thing.  My first (who is also my second) husband was in California to climb Mt Whitney and he came to this area to see Josh, David and the grandkids.  Since Josh lives here, David brought him up to visit for the day.  He and I did not speak unless it was absolutely necessary for the 10 years following our divorce.  The main reason was because of the tremendous jealousy and insecurity of his next wife.  After he divorced her, he got in contact with me and we managed to gingerly form a friendship of sorts.  He came up briefly at Christmas. 

This time, he and Eric acted like they were old friends and ended up spending most of their time together, with and without Josh and David.  It was like a bizarre colliding of the worlds.  At one point when they were deep in conversation, I went outside and made the obvious comment, “Surely the two of you are talking about what a fantastic wife I am.”  Eric didn’t miss a beat and said, “Well, that goes without saying, so we were just talking about cars.”  Paul looked more like a deer caught in headlights (haha).  Despite being an odd day, it was a good day and I am grateful that Eric is the kind of person who can jump right into a situation like that without making it a big issue.

Paul brought me a computer disk with video files on it.  My ex-sister-in-law, Berta, and her husband Bill had visited us around 1987-1988 or so and took home movies, which she had recently converted to DVD.  These were among them, so she passed them on to Paul, who copied them for me and for the big boys.  I watched them yesterday and it was enormously uncomfortable.

Seeing me at that time, weighing around 125 or so and with the weight of the world on my shoulders was awful.  Hearing the voices and seeing the house, the kids, Paul and such caused it to slam into me how much pain I was in all the time.  There was so much personal and spiritual pain.  Paul’s brother, Lee, and his wife were also there and seeing him alive and well tore my heart out.  Lee was one of the finest men I have ever known and I loved him dearly.  He died in I believe 1999 from agent-orange related cancer. 

The hardest part was seeing my beautiful, precious little boys, who were around 5, 7 and 9 at the time.  In nearly every frame, they were fighting each other.  So much pain.  So much anger.  So much fear.  They were competing for attention they so badly needed while Paul and I pretty much walked around each other and tried not to touch or think or feel.  Both of us were unplugged.  At one point, Paul was encouraging the boys to fight, calling David a baby for not getting into the fray when he was already taking the brunt of it.  I honestly wanted to throw up just watching it. 

The whole experience took my breath away and left me feeling like a goose had walked over my grave for the rest of the day.  Every now and then, I’d feel myself tearing up and would have to stop and take a breath so that I didn’t get washed away in emotion. 

I’m not sure why I was supposed to see those things right now.  Obviously, it served some purpose.  I tried to show them to Eric once he got home and talk to him about the experience, but he quickly hurried himself away and I let it go.  Evidently, it was something that I was supposed to process on my own.  Truthfully, I still don’t know what to do with it and when I even think of it, my stomach pitches and my heart hurts and my eyes fill with tears.  I’m not packing it away just yet, even though I really want to.  I’ll let it sit around and see what comes to me. 

Right now, the corollary I am drawing comes with that Iyanla Vanzant clip that I posted in the video section of this site.  I was actually looking for a different clip, but came around this one instead.  In it, she talks about going to Lens Crafters who was having a two for one on eye exams.  She took her grandson in and ended up getting checked herself only to find that her own eyesight was in pretty bad shape.  She asked the optician why she wouldn’t have known that her sight had deteriorated so badly and was told, “Your eyes will adjust to compensate for the deficit.”  That means that your brain will also get used to seeing things badly and think that is normal.  The implications are fairly breath-taking.  We get so used to seeing things as they are and as they degenerate around us over time that we stop realizing what is “normal” and what is really whacked.

I mean seriously, think about it:  “Your eyes will adjust to compensate for the deficiency.”  You will begin to think that “not good enough” is absolutely fine and normal and right.

Shit.

During the time I was living the life that I just re-watched on that video file, I thought sure, we struggle like any other family, but we’re OK.  Things are hard, but life is hard.  Is it?  Really?  Or do our spirits simply adjust to compensate for the deficiencies in our lives that stop seeing the crazy, the wrong, the immoral, the impractical?

When I look back on my Then Life now, I know I should have scooped my my little boys in my arms and told Paul that I love him, but I gotta jam.  I would then have gone back to Kentucky to my equally (or more) dysfunctional home family and tried to make it on my own.  Because my eyes were adjusted for the deficiency, I couldn’t see what to do or how to fix anything or even that anything was wrong.  It was simply my life.

You have No Idea How Much I Wish I Could Have Seen Clearly And Taken Action.

How different all of our lives would have been.

I bless where life took me, the good and the bad, and I am grateful that those little boys fared even as well as they did.  Truly, it could have been much worse and I want nothing more than to just hold those little guys and bury my face in their little necks and tummies and tell them how very important they are, how much they mean to me, how much I love them with all my soul.  Oh to have those years back to relive differently.

This doesn’t mean that I am no longer living in the now and I’m focusing on the past.  It simply means that in the midst of living in the now, The Universe chose to remind me that there are lessons in the past that can affect our “now.” 

I love my mother tremendously.  I love my father tremendously.  Some of my memories of them are precious and warm and cause me to swell with pride.  There was, however, another side and that was a side that involved mental illness on both of their parts.  I can only look back with a child’s input since I left home at the age of 16 and rarely returned.  I would guess that there was a good bit of clinical depression, some paranoid schitzophrenia (mostly on Dad’s part) and God only knows what plethora of other psychoses mixed in there.  Mom was a HUGE exaggerater to the point that it was hard to know when she would relate a story what really happened and what she thought happened.  Dad was the same and they built on one another’s stories.  They were good people, don’t get me wrong.  They were just rarely not always in the real world.  Granted, we all know that “there is no reality; only perception,” but suffice it to say, if my mom and dad were in a room for 20 people, the other 18 would have been stunned to hear what Mom and Dad thought happened after all 20 of them experienced something together.

The end result is that we kids grew up basically drinking the Kool-aid of delusion.  We learned to shift our perception and understanding of what happened at any given time based entirely on what Mom and Dad were saying had actually happened.  We learned to willfully adjust our eyes to compensate for the deficiency. 

 It

Was

Madness.

Mostly, we learned to never, ever trust our own impressions or perceptions.  We got to the point that we would wait to be told what was real and what wasn’t so we knew what we should remember.  Then the next time they told the story, it would change again and we kids would adapt our eyes again to a new reality.

By the time I got married and left home, I was perfectly willing to hand over 99% of my thinking to someone else to fill in the blanks and tell me what to feel or think.  I was completely incapable of formulating an opinion, saying shit if I had a mouth full of it or sparking up any kind of original thought.

That lasted for a very, very long time.

I do feel like a completely different person now and as I write about how I was back then or in those home movies or even 15 years ago, it feels like I am talking about a completely different person than myself.  It *feels* very objectified and removed, but intellectually, I know it happened to me and that it helped to form who I am now on some level and the base level of response to which I will sometimes return.

I had the rare privilege (and I do not use the word loosely) to sit down and talk to my mother’s two sisters and brother-in-law (the patriarch of our family) in June and have the courage to tell them how terrified I am of being like Mom and Dad and not being able to tell what’s real and what’s not.  Being crazy on any level is one of my greatest fears after growing up the way I did.  They were so wonderful about it and as much as they loved my mother and father, it took an act of great will for me to even voice those fears to them.  My uncle was sweet enough to point out that my mother had a tumor removed from her brain later in life (From Mom, I heard the tumor starting out to be the size of a jack ball and within a few months, she had it up to the size of a lemon) and that we could never know how long or to what degree that affected her perceptions.  Dad painted cars for a living for most of his adult life and had a bad case of claustrophobia, so he refused to wear a mask, so he had a lot of lead based paint residue built up in him which can also cause delusions. 

All of that made me feel better since it provided an alternative explanation for how they were in the world. 

Then I watch those movies and see how immersed I was in the crazy and how I can so clearly see now (at a point where I can do nothing to fix it) that there were big, big problems that were never really addressed.  These were problems that changed who we were forever and created enormous challenges for my kids, both then and when they got older.

There may be other reasons why this lesson, however painful, was brought to me, but it has been my experience that when we  are suddenly confronted with issues from our past, it’s because we are supposed to revisit some lesson we should have learned back then and need to know now.

For the moment, I am going with the idea that my eyes are way out of whack and I need to learn to see more clearly.  Until something better comes to light, I’m going with that.

That’s the name of one of my favorite books.  It’s by Iyanla Vanzant and through it and a couple of her other books, ”Yesterday I Cried” and “Value in the Valley,” she relays her own personal story and gives valuable words of insight and wisdom.  She also specifies fairly often in her books that they are for “women of color.”  Since I am a Caucasian, we all know I have no color, but I cheat and read them any way because I adore what she says.  I just pretend her words apply to me as well, being all white and all as I am.  I know I’m not really in the club, but I hide in the corner and watch.

The title is based on a poem by her daughter, Gemmia, which is here.  This website attributes the poem to Iyanla herself, but that is inaccurate.

I had an experience last Wednesday that quite frankly, I am only now starting to fully process.   It was very, very simple, but it had a profound effect on me.  Despite all of my writing about it here, I know that I had never really understood what I had become until this happened.

I was in my back room working when the boys came home from school.  I’d had a good day and slept well the night before, which is always a blessing.  Nathan came in to say hello and I greeted him with a hug and asked him how his day had gone.  He looked at me, genuinely puzzled, and said, “Did something happen today?”  I asked him what he meant.  He said, “I figured something really great happened today because you’re smiling and happy.”

Oh dear.

This is not good at all.

I told him I was just happy to see him and that everthing was just really good.  I’m still kind of haunted by his words.  I have been really, really miserable and I guess it shows.

Around the same time, I had two bits of Divine Message come to me.  One was rather lengthy and I kept having to read it and walk away and think about it and then come back to it and read a bit more and come back to it again. 

With those three power house hits in the span of less than 24 hours, I knew God was talking to me directly and I had to stand up and take noticed.  It’s hard to stand after you’ve been crawling on your belly for months, but I did manage.  More divine info kept appearing and I knew I was existing in a sacred space.  I will take you through them as I encountered them and that will tell you a little bit about how I got to where I am now and what my mindset is currently. 

Truly, many of you have been through this cycle with me before, but I just want to say that it’s nice to be back on the topside again.

First came Nathan’s “out of the mouths of babes” observation.

Next came a very simple Facebook update from one of my favorite authors and doctors, Dr. Christiane Northrup.  She posted (paraphrased), “The only real power you have is in now.”  Isn’t that just the truth?  I’ve heard it many times before, but it really resonated with me this time.  We are powerless to change the past except by means of shifting perspective.  We are fairly helpless in regard to the future.  We can create our own reality.  We can plan.  We can divine and get a basic idea.  We are, however, pretty much at the mercy of fate and things unseen as to what tomorrow holds.  Any power we think we have over the future is an illusion.  The only true power is in our “now.”

We have the power to create the best “now” we can, despite outside influences and despite what other people need, want or think.  Now is all we have that is real.

I used to tell my students that the most powerful words ever are the two that are, “Until now…” because that implies the power of self-awareness and change.  It defines the critical, explosive moment of awareness meeting intent.  Within those two words, all things are possible.

I can’t change the people around me.  I can’t fix how they are or what they think.  That’s on them.  I can’t go back and have them experience different realities than the ones that shape them into the people they are in this moment.  I can’t re-create their perspective.  All I can do is be mindful of my own reaction and where their behavior takes me – or doesn’t – as I allow.  I have to be self-possessed enough and self-aware enough to be responsible for how I behave and how I feel and how I allow myself to be in response to what happens around me.  I also have to be pro-active enough to change the things in my life that do not serve me, but to do so in an honorable way. 

I also have to be willing and able to draw the line and let people know when they have hit a boundary, then take action to defend that boundary. 

That brings me to bullies.  (More on the Divine Messages in a bit)

I was bullied my whole childhood and so I am very sensitive to bullying.  In the past couple of months, I have had several instances where I was in situations that involved a bully who pushed and pushed and pushed their agenda, their wants, their interests above anyone elses, refusing to back down, refusing to listen to reason, refusing to see any other way but the one they had in their minds.  In each situation, I responded badly, mostly because of the weakened mindset I’ve had for several months now.  To say that I have not been my self is quite an understatement.

One of the bullying experiences was at the GH Fan Club Weekend where a well known guy (well known for his massive tantrums and being abusive to people as well as being a fantastic photographer) was honestly pretty terrible to me in public and I took it like an idiot.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve got back to that moment and rewritten the script.  I was stunned.  I was busy.  I was unprepared completely.  I let him do it and I shouldn’t have.  That actually did color a lot of my weekend.

I should have trusted myself and stood up for myself.  I WAS doing a good job.  Hell, I was doing a GREAT job and I know from a long standing history with this man that he has major psychological issues.  What happened there was his deal, not mine, and I should not have allowed myself to be victimized.  I should not have allowed myself to be intimidated.  I should not have given him the power to humiliate me in front of people.  Trust me, I won’t again in the future.

In my compromised state, I allowed myself to be run over and to let that resentment build up to the point that it became intolerable.  I got into the state of just doing my best to give everyone else what they wanted so they would just shut up.  It didn’t matter how much it infringed on my plans or my wants or needs.  Just as long as they would shut up.  That’s how bullies get their way is by just pushing and pushing and pushing until people give in and give them what they want, but I started cutting things off at the pass by giving in right away so as to avoid the conflict and pushing.

In that situation I described, I believed that if I did not give in to the man’s intimidation, he would make things difficult for my boss or for me or for the dear man this bully represents.  So I gave in and did as I was told to do.  I left.  I let myself be “fired” by him when I in no way worked for him.

For months now, I have felt surrounded by conflict and the selfish demands of others every single where I turned.  There was no soft place to fall.  There was no safe retreat.  There was no port in the storm. 

After internalizing the messages I’ve gotten recently, I have finally been able to separate “their issue” from “my issues” and not let the two both become mine.  Theirs stays theirs and I don’t let myself wrap up in it.  I can sympathize.  I can lend advice.  I can hug.  I can walk away.  I don’t have to incestuously marry up into it.  This goes for my kids, my husband, my friends, my enemies, whoever.  No more internalizing other people’s shit.

I’m currently in the king daddy of all bullying situations and I am so grateful that the insights I received that shook me out of that weak, victim place happened before this most recent test.

Now, in this situation, I am trying to be my best self and to take things as objectively and kindly as I can without being run over by the steam roller.  Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

I saw something in myself and I didn’t like it, so I am working hard to change it.  It’s not that I ever really passed the bullying test before, even though it has been presented to me repeatedly through my life.  If I passed the test and it went away, I passed with a D- and it kept coming back until I made honor roll.  We’ll see how that works out because it’s very much in progress as we speak.

I’m sort of in summer school.

The second bit of wisdom I got was the lengthy one I got before, which is here.  It is a piece written by an elderly retired Methodist minister about God and it echos many of my own sentiments.  In fact, it put me back in touch with my own spirituality, which had been diminished by my recent depression.

That was further cemented by this wonderful piece by a gal named Sylvie about the process and intricacies of manifestation.  It is one of the most well written explanations and directives I have ever seen in over 20 years of study specifically about creating your own reality and manifesting situations and things into your own life.  It reminded me of strengths I had put aside and got me back in touch with a side of my life that had been seriously faltering.  The Attitudes of Gratitude site was a pre-emptive start to that process (see links to the right), but I had not fully internalized the lesson until I read Sylvie’s article.

As a result of these revelations, I picked up two familiar books from my shelf.  One was the aforementioned, “One Day My Soul Just Opened Up” and I began to read the book for the 4th or 5th time in my life.  It starts with this:

“This book is dedicated to Ego, that part of us that continues to worry, lives in doubt, is afraid, judges other people, is afraid to trust, needs proof, believes only when it is convenient, fails to follow up, refuses to practice what it preaches, needs to be rescued, wants to be a victim, beats up on “self,” needs to be right all the time, and continues to hold onto what does not work.  You are now put on notice that YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED!”

Oh how I have been guilty of letting Ego drive the car, to the detriment of me and those people I love so much.

I really fell off the bridge into the drink and got carried away by the Ego undertow, bigger than anything.

I am working hard to repair that now and have been doing so for several days now.  I am intent on enjoying the happiness that is in every moment.  I refuse to entertain fear or worry about the future.  I refuse to entertain guilt or concern about the past.  I am in the Now.

Eric has very much felt the difference and he and I have discussed at length how his obsession on the future and what he does and does not have and is and is not entitled to affects our life and always has.  He has been very open to the conversation and has started to work on the idea himself.  It has tremendously turned our home life around in a positive way and we started to see results immediately on all levels.

Our lives began to change profoundly like chess pieces playing a game on their own.  It was fascinating to watch odd things start to shift and change without our direct involvement and to be able to understand clearly and profoundly why that was happening.  When you’re out of sync and you step back into the natural rhythm that is your life, suddenly, everything starts to click and hum and flow exactly as it should.  Life begins to feel more effortless because you are working with the natural flow and not against it.

Granted, this is all just a matter of a few days, but each day has been blessed and joyful rather than dark and dismal.  I can actually sleep at night, which I greatly appreciate.

I feel strong and empowered, but at the same time, a sense of surrender.  I have truly “let go and let God” and I’m open to the experiences and adventures that await me.

…and yes, the lessons.

The second book I picked up is one called “The Sacred Portable Now” by Daniel Singer and Marcella Bakur Weiner.  Although it is a little more glib and new-agey than what I typically enjoy, it does have some good premises and so I am reading mostly its intent rather than its exact words and absorbing the energy of the book.

As I look back in retrospect, I can see where my life has been setting itself up to take me to this point.  Going back to my experiences last October when I went to Kentucky and had that experience of being surrounded by unconditional love for the first time that I can remember in my whole life.  There was one betrayal of trust, one gal who had been a friend in high school with whom I’d reconnected, ignored some red (big) flags and sure enough, the newly rekindled friendship ended in a big, dramatic mess.  Because I was enveloped in all of this love and acceptance, I was able to understand right away that these were her issues.  She was reacting to programming put in place by her own life experiences and even though the things she did were fairly unforgivable and I had no interest in having her remain in my life, it in no way ruined my trip or really was anything more than a blip on the radar.  I was sad it happened, but it was her deal and all about her own misperceptions and choices.  She did not want to listen to the clarification of her misperceptions and that, again, was her deal, not mine.  I bless her. I love her for who she is.  I wish her well and I hope she ends up with the kinds of relationships she wants.

Had I been paying attention at the time, I could have seen that the atmosphere of love and acceptance, even from the self, is what gives us the clarity and self-awareness to understand where we end and someone else begins.  Without those two critical elements, we begin the self-doubt process (sooo different than self-awareness).  “Did I do enough?”  “Am I wrong?”  “What if it really is my fault?”  “How can I make them feel better?”  “How can I fix this?”  and so on and so on until you are immersed in their problems and ignoring your own.

I really don’t think that when we’re operating in our best mindset, it’s that hard to see the giant, four-lane-highway of a line between “self-trust” and “arrogance.”

We have to trust ourselves more.

Like the stupid title to the stupid car I looked for last week.  The car needed to be registered and I could not find the title that had been sitting on my desk for 2 weeks straight.  I spent 6 hours pulling my back room apart, going through desk drawers, pulling out the desk, looking behind it, beside it, going through bins that had not been opened in weeks, looking through mounds of envelopes, bills and paperwork over and over and over, certain I’d overlooked it because it was just here.  Most of that time was spent RElooking in places I’d already looked.  Maybe I had not looked hard enough or thoroughly enough.   Ultimately, Delena found it days later with the flip of a visor in the Jeep Liberty.  The title fluttered down where it had been slipped between the visor and the top of the car.  Neither Eric nor I remember putting it there.  The point is that had I trusted myself more, I could have spent maybe 90 minutes tearing the back room apart to look for the title and just said, “Well, it’s not here, obviously” and moved on to something more productive rather than blasting out the entire day in an exhaustive repeat of prior actions with no result to show for it other than being tired and frustrated.

The adventures I went out to find were an excuse not to fix the “now” I live in.  If I have an adventure planned, I look forward to that instead of fixing the “now” where I am.  If I’m having an adventure, I can live in that “now” instead of the one I exist in every day that is so messed up.  Mind you, I still plan to have adventures; I will just enjoy them more because they will become the “now” for that moment in time rather than the escape I’m running to.

It’s Harvest time and I do trust the process completely.  I now trust myself completely and refuse to let self-doubt, self-recrimination, resentfulness and anger cloud my “now.”  “Now” is just one letter off from “No,” as in “No, I can’t let that happen to myself.”

My time of being self-ish (hyphen intentional) has grown up and blossomed into something pretty big.  I’m about me now, in terms of taking care of myself and in terms of being responsible for how I am in the world and how I let the issues of others affect me.  I certainly will no longer let them define me, especially to myself.

One day, and I’m not sure which day in the past week it was, my soul just opened up.  It came out of hiding and reached for the warm sunlight.  It refused to be denied any more.  It refused to cower and simper any more.  It refused to be bullied and intimidated any longer.  It insisted on being strong and vibrant and alive despite my best efforts to subdue it with negative talk and thoughts.

One day my soul just opened up and embraced an enormous capacity of love and forgiveness.  After blanketing others with all of that love and forgiveness, one day, my soul turned that magnificent power onto me and I wept from the beauty of it.

One day, my soul just opened up and the day was warm and welcoming. 

One day, my soul just opened up and I was consumed with gratitude for the life I am living and for the blessings that God has bestowed upon me.  I laughed with the sheer delight of feeling life course through me, rich and aware.

One day, my soul just opened up and I felt overwhelmed by the love I am offered from so many.

One day, my soul just opened up and in surrendering ego and control, I was given empowerment and tremendous strength.

One day, my soul just opened up and a peace like no other began to flow through it and from it.

One day, my soul just opened up and I felt the magnificence of God, strong and powerful, and She said, “Hey, I remember you.  Will you walk with me, old friend?” and I said, “Yes, please, do you have cookies?” and She said, “You bet and ice cold Dr. Pepper” and I said, “Oh yeah” and off we went.

I actually look forward to the Mercury Retrograde that hits in 3 days.  Things have been so jacked up that I figured any incoming energy can only make it better.  Since Mercury usually sets things right on its ass, maybe this time, it will turn it right side up again.  Things have been so bad lately, that it has gotten to the point that there’s nothing to do but laugh.  Sometimes, it’s weakly (or weekly), but it’s still just funny in some ways. 

Most of you know me and know how much I overthink things and try to give them meaning and figure out the root of what’s going on when I see a trend going on, but lately, I have started giving very heavy consideration to Occam’s Razor which is a principle set forth by people far wiser than I am that states that the simplest answer is usually the correct answer.  That means that for the time being, I have pretty much given up the analyzing that is so prominent in we Virgos and I’m just going with, “Pfft.  Whatever.”

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Cut for boringness (mine, not hers)

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“Well you really got me this time and the hardest part is knowing I’ll survive.”   Emmylou Harris, “Boulder to Birmingham”

Emmylou wrote those words to express her grief over the death of her singing partner and mentor, Graham Parsons.  The song is rife with pain and heartache, as most good country songs should be.  Still, it speaks to a real point of pain for many of us; knowing that whatever happens, we’ll be forced to live through it no matter how much damage it does to us.

I agree with the immediate response of most rational people who would counter that life shouldn’t be something you have to endure and survive, but about the wonderful things that hold it all together.  Sometimes, though, it’s really hard to keep walking when you’re just so damned tired.  Whether there is an afterlife or not – a concept I am still processing – the allure of death and having everything just stopping and some kind of ongoing rest from strife sounds so very seductive. 

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Every day since it first turned up missing, Monday, I have combed the house for my wedding ring, trying to imagine new and original places where it could be hiding.  Surely it’s in the pocket of this blazer in the back of the closet that I haven’t worn in 7 years.  Perhaps it fell into the plastic bag of Kotex sanitary napkins that is wedged in behind the bed.  I have, of course, looked many times in the obvious places.  Now, I have started my foray into the bizarre places.  Just this minute, I looked in my desk drawer (no, it wasn’t there).  Mind you, I know good and well that I took off all of my rings together while talking to Eric and put them in the little glass chicken on my dresser.  He watched me do it.  Looking in my desk just seemed to be – well – not quite as weird as the blazer.  In my desk drawer, which I have be in many times a day for the past couple of years, I found a gold wedding band.  I have no idea whose it is.  It fits me perfectly. It’s not mine.  Mine has beveled edges and this one has smooth edges.  It’s also a mm or so wider than mine and it’s engraved inside.  HP.31.12.59  It is similar to the wedding ring I had when I married Paul the second time, but that one is buried in the back yard of a house on Mountain Home Air Force Base and it is not engraved. 

Just talked to Eric, who has no idea how a phantom ring would materialize in my desk drawer.  He is often at his mining claims and such and just spent the weekend with a high powered metal detector, so I thought maybe he’d turned one up from the river.  Nope.  It was in one of the little white organizer baskets with pencils and spare pennies and such.  So strange. 

As my dearly loved Lizard King sang:  “This is the strangest life I’ve ever known.”

Yesterday was a beautiful lotus flower floating on a stagnant pond of fetid swamp water.  It was a peaceful oasis of joy and tranquility.  My skin tingled with the joy of it all.

I am so grateful for that day.

My life doesn’t suck, not nearly as much as it could. I am completely aware of that.  Still, as Dr. Phil says, having a man in the hospital bed beside you with two broken legs and two broken arms doesn’t make your one broken leg and one broken arm hurt any less. 

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It’s a false peace, mind you, because nothing is resolved or managed.  There’s just quiet calm and for now, I’ll take it.

I looked forward to the boys returning to school and knew that they really, really needed it.  There are no two different personalities on earth than my two youngest sons nad because we only have a three bedroom house, they are forced to share a (very large) room.  In the past month or so, likely due to some kind of insane testosterone flood, their differences have really taken hold and it felt like they were fighting and arguing and bickering like two old women all the time.  Overall, I don’t tolerate infighting.  Work it out and get along.  This was way past my ability to manage without killing them, so I started hiding which is, of course, not good.  Gotta be out there and be a plugged in, fully functioning parent or you’ve already lost the battle without them firing a single shot in your direction.

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Last weekend, I went on my annual trip to Southern California to the General Hospital Fan Club Weekend.  Most of my photos ended up being of the field trip we took to Santa Monica, so I’ll just include those.

Here they are:  http://www.katrinarasbold.com/santamonica.htm

It started out with feeling like I just don’t have one more thing to give.  I’ve hit the ceiling of my sacrifice room and there is nowhere else to go.  Where does “I can’t give” go to when it wants to go?  It gets its wings and moves on to “I don’t give…”   as in   “…a damn.”  Those of you who know me well know that “damn” was not my first choice of delicious words to use, but this journal cross-posts to my primary Facebook account and I have aunts and cousins and clients and such on there who are sensitive to such things. 

I don’t know how many of you have been a mom of advanced age.  If you were or are, I don’t know how many of you have been a mom of advanced age who has been raising children since she was a mom of a very unprepared, unadvanced age.  I started at 16 and before that, I did a good bit of taking care of my mother’s family.  I turn 49 this year and I gotta tell ya, there is a reason why people who give and give and give until they die of very old age are celebrated.  It’s because not all of us can do it. 

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