"Come and listen to a story 'bout a gal named Sue,
A ten-mile bike ride seemed like the thing to do,
And then that day on the way back from the beach,
She damned near killed herself and she is here to teach:
Over 50, dodging cars, 97 degrees...
See the one thing forgot was a bottle from to drink,
'Cuz the lack of concessions was a thought she didn't think,
And that oversight? The beginning of the end,
For the beat of the heat landed her a case of bends:
Head pounding, stomach churning, seeing stars...
No gears, but Hill Abilities!"
(Yes, I think, in retrospect, I'd better get a mountain bike, or a new bike at any rate...with a few gears. I'm too old for this shit...)
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Thursday, June 27, 2013
May the Road Rise Up To Meet You...
Today was a good day, in no small part because I survived it. The afternoon went from the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat in no time at all. So I can't ride a bike uphill in 97 degree heat for more than an hour. I made it to my destination, had a nice, long game of water frisbee in the lake, hung out on what passes for "beach" in Colorado, then nearly died on the way back. It happens.
I've had a few nearly died situations (or those perceived so at the time) and most all of them come while hiking. Why? Because I am a hard-headed individual and I will not turn around when I should. Two of these occurrences came in my youth: as a pre-teen I nearly slid over the edge at Stone Mountain in Georgia--I didn't understand what that was all about at the time...just thought the South had a Mount Rushmore-type attraction--and my parents and I were on some Smokey Mountains trail somewhere FAR off the beaten track when we, and by we I mean my mom and I (dad was busy laughing at us nearby), clung to life on a 70+ degree-angled hillside with only a tiny sapling between us and sure death below. Sapling? It was an overgrown weed really, maybe even a single stalk of grass as time finishes the story for us. Once we'd traversed that horror, we met with a stream or a snake or something--maybe mom would recall--that made my dad wonder if we should turn back. My mother told him no. Not in those words, but in many, many other words. We pressed on ahead, successfully.
Then there was the time I decided on an all-day hike at our local State Park here. All day, like nine, eleven hours all day. I could't tell the difference between the ground and my own face and folks, that's the definition of draggin' low! And there were several times when I said to hubby and the Bouvier, "just one more curve" at what used to be our local lake until last year's wildfire closed it. It takes a lot of miles to circumnavigate a reservoir by the way, when you've got land to build a big one, and one thing we got a lot of out here is land.
You'd think that last story, The Reservoir Episodes, would've stuck with me. They obviously eluded me today. Then again I'm fifteen years older today, too. (That's fifteen having-kids-writing-novels years, not normal time passages.) But I made it around a good 70% of this res today before the water play and the return trip. I even made the first twenty minutes or so of retracing our fat tire tracks okay, until I didn't.
Humility, in my experience, comes upon you quickly, like a sudden rogue lightning flash that precedes any thunder or storm. Your mind (and in my case, head and stomach) make decisions for you concerning matters you had no idea were "pressing" as it were. And if you're 51 and it's 97, well, the math doesn't add up after a certain point. In the interest of saving you from such a fate I will tell you here and now that this certain point I speak of is microscopic. You will never see it before it sees you. And you know what, it hates you. It wants to sneak up, smash your skull in with a pounding headache and force you to remove some bile from your digestive system without benefit of privacy. Call it Napoleon Complex if you will, but respect the little bastard, I'm warning you. Your day on the Road to Dumbass Cuss will come, mark my words.
But I live to tell the tale, and am entirely healed thanks to the magic of the Coca-Cola Company (you'll recall this has occurred for me before in the backseat of the car story...) and a good, long nap. Heatstroke? Nah, just hardheadedness again and a young girl with a deficient memory trapped inside a little old lady with too much gumption.
May your trails be happy...and healthy ones!
I've had a few nearly died situations (or those perceived so at the time) and most all of them come while hiking. Why? Because I am a hard-headed individual and I will not turn around when I should. Two of these occurrences came in my youth: as a pre-teen I nearly slid over the edge at Stone Mountain in Georgia--I didn't understand what that was all about at the time...just thought the South had a Mount Rushmore-type attraction--and my parents and I were on some Smokey Mountains trail somewhere FAR off the beaten track when we, and by we I mean my mom and I (dad was busy laughing at us nearby), clung to life on a 70+ degree-angled hillside with only a tiny sapling between us and sure death below. Sapling? It was an overgrown weed really, maybe even a single stalk of grass as time finishes the story for us. Once we'd traversed that horror, we met with a stream or a snake or something--maybe mom would recall--that made my dad wonder if we should turn back. My mother told him no. Not in those words, but in many, many other words. We pressed on ahead, successfully.
Then there was the time I decided on an all-day hike at our local State Park here. All day, like nine, eleven hours all day. I could't tell the difference between the ground and my own face and folks, that's the definition of draggin' low! And there were several times when I said to hubby and the Bouvier, "just one more curve" at what used to be our local lake until last year's wildfire closed it. It takes a lot of miles to circumnavigate a reservoir by the way, when you've got land to build a big one, and one thing we got a lot of out here is land.
You'd think that last story, The Reservoir Episodes, would've stuck with me. They obviously eluded me today. Then again I'm fifteen years older today, too. (That's fifteen having-kids-writing-novels years, not normal time passages.) But I made it around a good 70% of this res today before the water play and the return trip. I even made the first twenty minutes or so of retracing our fat tire tracks okay, until I didn't.
Humility, in my experience, comes upon you quickly, like a sudden rogue lightning flash that precedes any thunder or storm. Your mind (and in my case, head and stomach) make decisions for you concerning matters you had no idea were "pressing" as it were. And if you're 51 and it's 97, well, the math doesn't add up after a certain point. In the interest of saving you from such a fate I will tell you here and now that this certain point I speak of is microscopic. You will never see it before it sees you. And you know what, it hates you. It wants to sneak up, smash your skull in with a pounding headache and force you to remove some bile from your digestive system without benefit of privacy. Call it Napoleon Complex if you will, but respect the little bastard, I'm warning you. Your day on the Road to Dumbass Cuss will come, mark my words.
But I live to tell the tale, and am entirely healed thanks to the magic of the Coca-Cola Company (you'll recall this has occurred for me before in the backseat of the car story...) and a good, long nap. Heatstroke? Nah, just hardheadedness again and a young girl with a deficient memory trapped inside a little old lady with too much gumption.
May your trails be happy...and healthy ones!
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Water Music
Lying on the v-berth, my ear to the pillow, I can hear the soft, tiny sound the water makes as it gentle strokes the spot where the hull meets the surface of the lake. It's something you might expect from snowflakes, acutely amplified, as they fall to the ground. A bubbling, dripping almost.
That slight sound, taken together with the shimmering, dancing sunlight off the water as it paints the ceiling overhead with the afternoon, almost makes me feel like I've traveled, not just a few counties away, but back in time to The Lawrence Welk show with its champagne bubbles and twinkling, sequined outfits, glinting toward the camera. If I let it, the little sound becomes a xylophone under the mallet of a jazz master and if I don't, it's more like someone playing their cheek with the bowl of a spoon. Both "music" no doubt, but with very different venues and audiences.
It's warm below and I have a very big fan keeping our little trapped piece of air moving. It reminds me of all those hot car rides back in the South, lying on the backseat somewhere between a Stuckey's and a peach orchard, praying that some day my Coke would come, while trying hard against the odds and the elements to take a nap. This was, of course, long before air conditioning came to our houses much less our cars. Back then all you could hope for was the wind as you tooled along and maybe the shade of a cloud every hundred or so miles. An afternoon shower request would just be getting greedy with God.
My parents like to tell the story of me, very young and dying of thirst in the backseat on one such outing, suffering for the miles between the last Coke and the next, swearing that I was just not going to make it. Finally, after what must have seemed like years of waiting, I got my little sea glass green bottle of ice-cold soda, took a few sips, and fell sound asleep. They tried to softly wrestle the bottle from my hand as I drifted off without success. I had a "death grip" on it they'd say as they related the tale.
I'm here relaxing through the heat of the day with my son, wondering what it is he'll remember, what markers he'll take with him from childhood into adult life. We take memory photographs we aren't even aware of, and how we choose what to keep, who really knows? So many images are just shiny shards of this and that, made into a collage that becomes a Cliff's Notes version we can pass along as our stories. Most of it's true, but perspective has a way of adding a new coat of paint to our portraits every now and again. And the farther we age away from our memories the more the art morphs from a vivid, primary-colored finger painting to a blurry watercolor of romanticism; the sort of pieces that hang in museums because they are visually pleasing and require very little concentration.
My pretend xylophone is slowing a bit, seemingly coming to a new movement or maybe even arriving at the end of the piece. There's a harpish quality to it now, flowery translucent like those ancient watercolors. Like something soft and pleasing, happily trapped with nowhere else to go.
That slight sound, taken together with the shimmering, dancing sunlight off the water as it paints the ceiling overhead with the afternoon, almost makes me feel like I've traveled, not just a few counties away, but back in time to The Lawrence Welk show with its champagne bubbles and twinkling, sequined outfits, glinting toward the camera. If I let it, the little sound becomes a xylophone under the mallet of a jazz master and if I don't, it's more like someone playing their cheek with the bowl of a spoon. Both "music" no doubt, but with very different venues and audiences.
It's warm below and I have a very big fan keeping our little trapped piece of air moving. It reminds me of all those hot car rides back in the South, lying on the backseat somewhere between a Stuckey's and a peach orchard, praying that some day my Coke would come, while trying hard against the odds and the elements to take a nap. This was, of course, long before air conditioning came to our houses much less our cars. Back then all you could hope for was the wind as you tooled along and maybe the shade of a cloud every hundred or so miles. An afternoon shower request would just be getting greedy with God.
My parents like to tell the story of me, very young and dying of thirst in the backseat on one such outing, suffering for the miles between the last Coke and the next, swearing that I was just not going to make it. Finally, after what must have seemed like years of waiting, I got my little sea glass green bottle of ice-cold soda, took a few sips, and fell sound asleep. They tried to softly wrestle the bottle from my hand as I drifted off without success. I had a "death grip" on it they'd say as they related the tale.
I'm here relaxing through the heat of the day with my son, wondering what it is he'll remember, what markers he'll take with him from childhood into adult life. We take memory photographs we aren't even aware of, and how we choose what to keep, who really knows? So many images are just shiny shards of this and that, made into a collage that becomes a Cliff's Notes version we can pass along as our stories. Most of it's true, but perspective has a way of adding a new coat of paint to our portraits every now and again. And the farther we age away from our memories the more the art morphs from a vivid, primary-colored finger painting to a blurry watercolor of romanticism; the sort of pieces that hang in museums because they are visually pleasing and require very little concentration.
My pretend xylophone is slowing a bit, seemingly coming to a new movement or maybe even arriving at the end of the piece. There's a harpish quality to it now, flowery translucent like those ancient watercolors. Like something soft and pleasing, happily trapped with nowhere else to go.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Slip Sliding...No Way
I've only been up to the boat once this season and that was just for the day. Tomorrow, after I finish my gig handing out pup and cat food, I'll be grabbing the boy child and heading up the highway to the lake.
It's been a couple of years since I spent the night--we're gonna spend two--and I am thoroughly looking forward to that aspect in particular. What a wonderful way to sleep, rocking gently to and fro (and it will be gentle, I checked the wind outlook), with no sound other than the lapping of the water. Even after just one night, I can still feel the effects for a good four nights on, finding it easy to convince myself back home in my bed that I'm still on the water.
I'm not a boater per se, I am a docker. I like "slip life" just fine, thank you very much. I get scared out of my wits when we're underway. I'm sure there's a reason, all I know is I've been this way since childhood. I can sit on the "beach" with the best of them should the family need to feel the freshwater wind in their hair.
But this will be a mother-son outing only, and that's a good thing. Kids need a healthy dose of one-on-one when they have siblings, and when they are about to embark on big new things in a couple of months...like high school. (Gyad help us.) He's a good boy, a great student, and a ton of fun to be with when he isn't feeling like a teenager, but then again, aren't we all.
I'm going to give the wi-fi a shot up there so I can check in with you as the week--and our trip-- progresses. But I tend to go all moonbeams and heron calls when I'm near the water so I apologize in advance if it gets a little deep and syrupy. Hopefully, just when I need grounding, a "teenior moment" will strike the boy and bring me hurtling back to reality.
Ahoy, maties: I'll be docked and boated! See you at the lake...
It's been a couple of years since I spent the night--we're gonna spend two--and I am thoroughly looking forward to that aspect in particular. What a wonderful way to sleep, rocking gently to and fro (and it will be gentle, I checked the wind outlook), with no sound other than the lapping of the water. Even after just one night, I can still feel the effects for a good four nights on, finding it easy to convince myself back home in my bed that I'm still on the water.
I'm not a boater per se, I am a docker. I like "slip life" just fine, thank you very much. I get scared out of my wits when we're underway. I'm sure there's a reason, all I know is I've been this way since childhood. I can sit on the "beach" with the best of them should the family need to feel the freshwater wind in their hair.
But this will be a mother-son outing only, and that's a good thing. Kids need a healthy dose of one-on-one when they have siblings, and when they are about to embark on big new things in a couple of months...like high school. (Gyad help us.) He's a good boy, a great student, and a ton of fun to be with when he isn't feeling like a teenager, but then again, aren't we all.
I'm going to give the wi-fi a shot up there so I can check in with you as the week--and our trip-- progresses. But I tend to go all moonbeams and heron calls when I'm near the water so I apologize in advance if it gets a little deep and syrupy. Hopefully, just when I need grounding, a "teenior moment" will strike the boy and bring me hurtling back to reality.
Ahoy, maties: I'll be docked and boated! See you at the lake...
Monday, June 24, 2013
Get Out!
I have been getting so many yard and garden projects completed so far this summer that it's almost become an obsession. I think passion is a better word. Being outdoors, working in the yard is such a sublime and precious way to pass the time. After so much lethargy and in the midst of so many fires, I want the yard to feel how much I love it, to know how much joy and simple pleasure it gives me everyday.
Laughter may be the best medicine for some--and I do include healthy doses of tomfoolery into every day that passes--but for me, nature is the key, even nature close to the city limits. I don't have to be in the middle of the forest, miles away from any structure to get my fix--though I do imbibe in that prescription whenever I'm able--I can receive miraculous healings from one square foot of land if need be.
Everyone should have a natural place they go to reconnect with their own rhythm. It can be the ocean or a potted plant on a balcony off the 100th floor; anywhere will work. Nature gives you not only solace but perspective: Yes you are unique and no you're not terribly important. Take comfort in that knowledge. The weight is lifted, momentarily.
I may find myself on my home equipment or in a gym during the long winter to come, but for now hauling rocks, hoeing beds, repotting plants, pulling weeds, building a fountain and waterfall from something between "scratch" and "nothing", excavating pavers, installing yard hardscapes, protecting everything from the deer, and watering nearly all of it are the components of my workout. And for every achy muscle, for two black dirt-stained feet, for dusty mustaches and streams of sweat, I lose a worry or an aggravation. In every paint-splattered tee-shirt, I somehow find my soul.
Laughter may be the best medicine for some--and I do include healthy doses of tomfoolery into every day that passes--but for me, nature is the key, even nature close to the city limits. I don't have to be in the middle of the forest, miles away from any structure to get my fix--though I do imbibe in that prescription whenever I'm able--I can receive miraculous healings from one square foot of land if need be.
Everyone should have a natural place they go to reconnect with their own rhythm. It can be the ocean or a potted plant on a balcony off the 100th floor; anywhere will work. Nature gives you not only solace but perspective: Yes you are unique and no you're not terribly important. Take comfort in that knowledge. The weight is lifted, momentarily.
I may find myself on my home equipment or in a gym during the long winter to come, but for now hauling rocks, hoeing beds, repotting plants, pulling weeds, building a fountain and waterfall from something between "scratch" and "nothing", excavating pavers, installing yard hardscapes, protecting everything from the deer, and watering nearly all of it are the components of my workout. And for every achy muscle, for two black dirt-stained feet, for dusty mustaches and streams of sweat, I lose a worry or an aggravation. In every paint-splattered tee-shirt, I somehow find my soul.
Literary FYI
If you're interested in reading some of my short works, I'll be blogging essays over at susanbranham.blogspot.com for your dining and dancing pleasure. Thanks for checking it out!
Sunday, June 23, 2013
To Be Fair, Everybody Must Get Stoned
Recently I blogged about mental health and how we all possess some form of "offness". I mean come on, you know you do. And when Melissa Harris-Perry began leading a panel on the discussions of the morning--young black men in our society, obesity as a disease--I harkened back to that posting. Everyone has a problem, just not necessarily of their own making. Not everyone in our wealthy society has access to the things I take for granted: good cheap fresh food (well, setting aside Monsanto's monied influence), low risk of being shot at, sidewalks. Too many good people among us do not begin to have enough to arrive at nor survive with the level of day-to-day health many of us sustain. Everything from prejudice to lack of education to a society overgrown with corporate interests has doomed the days of our brethren.
We have a lot of questions to answer: Why I am advantaged because I'm a white, middle-class (yes it still exists, but only barely) person with nothing else to recommend me but that? I'm "educated" but I do not draw on that knowledge to contribute to society. I make no money. I do not fill my everyday with the wishes of any particular group of people. And why do I not do these things? Simply put, I'm not able. I still have nightmares about the days when I did go to jobs and do "work". Serious nightmares. For a big, strong girl, I am very fragile in that way. I don't handle being a captive audience very well. And along the same line of questioning, why is a young man disadvantaged because he is walking around in a city while being black? If just 14% of black youth make up drug users in total, why are they nearly 38% of the incarcerated drug offense population? That's nearly three-times the rate of other drug using demographics. That's not on them, that's on us. That's on a profiling, prejudiced society that stalks young black men.
Nearly half of us are poor and nearly half of us are obese. We don't do much better with the second group than we do with the first. We blame the victim for being victimized. We take away the
conscience of a society to do the bidding of ADM, Monsanto, the Koch Brothers and others and let the processed potato chips fall where they may. We do not hold the makers of our food and energy to the example to which we hold our ill-equipped population. Our Supreme Court gives personhood to businesses and those businesses give the business to the people. And we blame the people for what we have caused to be wrought upon them.
Melissa and her panelists put it well, and I paraphrase: No one on Wall Street has gone to jail for defrauding people out of their homes and their pensions, but you can go to jail for life in Georgia for stealing a beer. We did that. We let that happen. Everyone who is overweight doesn't choose to be overweight any more than everyone caught stealing chooses to steal. We create an environment of--pick your poison--poverty, lack of mental health care, negative messaging, fear and loathing. We take money away from cities and states and schools, we have a holy shit-fit about Obamacare and pass out guns like candy. We let George Zimmerman be afraid of a very accomplished student who happened to deign to go out for some candy one night, his last night on this earth...while he happened to dare to be black.
None of this is a white-people's problem, it's a society's problem. It's what happens after generations of trickle-down-I-trust-big business-but-not-big government nonsense among other factors. It's not up to white people to do the honorable thing. Who the hell died and put white people in charge of the moral compass in the first place?! It's up to people to see a wrong and help right it. It's up to people to look out for each other's needs. It's up to people to speak up when some asshat says or does something vile. We don't need to count the number of this kind of person or that kind of person on television shows to decide we can sleep well that night. We'd do better to count the profiled victims in the CCA-privatized jails that make up our Prison Industrial Complex, or the number of children who ate three meals that day, or the number of funerals that didn't happen in Chicago or Connecticut.
We all suffer from something. Some of us simply have a more acceptable "illness" than others. And some of us weren't hurting a soul when someone somewhere, uniformed or not, decided they needed to be stopped from what they were doing. From being themselves. From not being like you or me or some idea we got from a place we don't even remember.
I've done good things in my time on this experimental planet we share and I've done things I'm damned glad no one knows about. It isn't about who's caught, it's about who's hunted. And a kid in a rural classroom or an immigrant without papers or a child living on the streets by his wits all have some bruised version of love and light to shed on us all. Damn us for not accepting their faults AND their gifts. Damn us for causing them pain we don't see for looking at ourselves in the mirror too rarely.
We have a lot of questions to answer: Why I am advantaged because I'm a white, middle-class (yes it still exists, but only barely) person with nothing else to recommend me but that? I'm "educated" but I do not draw on that knowledge to contribute to society. I make no money. I do not fill my everyday with the wishes of any particular group of people. And why do I not do these things? Simply put, I'm not able. I still have nightmares about the days when I did go to jobs and do "work". Serious nightmares. For a big, strong girl, I am very fragile in that way. I don't handle being a captive audience very well. And along the same line of questioning, why is a young man disadvantaged because he is walking around in a city while being black? If just 14% of black youth make up drug users in total, why are they nearly 38% of the incarcerated drug offense population? That's nearly three-times the rate of other drug using demographics. That's not on them, that's on us. That's on a profiling, prejudiced society that stalks young black men.
Nearly half of us are poor and nearly half of us are obese. We don't do much better with the second group than we do with the first. We blame the victim for being victimized. We take away the
conscience of a society to do the bidding of ADM, Monsanto, the Koch Brothers and others and let the processed potato chips fall where they may. We do not hold the makers of our food and energy to the example to which we hold our ill-equipped population. Our Supreme Court gives personhood to businesses and those businesses give the business to the people. And we blame the people for what we have caused to be wrought upon them.
Melissa and her panelists put it well, and I paraphrase: No one on Wall Street has gone to jail for defrauding people out of their homes and their pensions, but you can go to jail for life in Georgia for stealing a beer. We did that. We let that happen. Everyone who is overweight doesn't choose to be overweight any more than everyone caught stealing chooses to steal. We create an environment of--pick your poison--poverty, lack of mental health care, negative messaging, fear and loathing. We take money away from cities and states and schools, we have a holy shit-fit about Obamacare and pass out guns like candy. We let George Zimmerman be afraid of a very accomplished student who happened to deign to go out for some candy one night, his last night on this earth...while he happened to dare to be black.
None of this is a white-people's problem, it's a society's problem. It's what happens after generations of trickle-down-I-trust-big business-but-not-big government nonsense among other factors. It's not up to white people to do the honorable thing. Who the hell died and put white people in charge of the moral compass in the first place?! It's up to people to see a wrong and help right it. It's up to people to look out for each other's needs. It's up to people to speak up when some asshat says or does something vile. We don't need to count the number of this kind of person or that kind of person on television shows to decide we can sleep well that night. We'd do better to count the profiled victims in the CCA-privatized jails that make up our Prison Industrial Complex, or the number of children who ate three meals that day, or the number of funerals that didn't happen in Chicago or Connecticut.
We all suffer from something. Some of us simply have a more acceptable "illness" than others. And some of us weren't hurting a soul when someone somewhere, uniformed or not, decided they needed to be stopped from what they were doing. From being themselves. From not being like you or me or some idea we got from a place we don't even remember.
I've done good things in my time on this experimental planet we share and I've done things I'm damned glad no one knows about. It isn't about who's caught, it's about who's hunted. And a kid in a rural classroom or an immigrant without papers or a child living on the streets by his wits all have some bruised version of love and light to shed on us all. Damn us for not accepting their faults AND their gifts. Damn us for causing them pain we don't see for looking at ourselves in the mirror too rarely.
DETOURS: The Road Curves Away From the Destination
If you know me, you know that in addition to Easter and Spring Equinox, I have bad luck with Mothers Day. Really bad luck. I suppose it's good to know that tradition continues, a continuity of sorts.
This year I spent Mothers Day, two days in fact, in hospital. Hospitals, for those of you lucky enough to never have been in one, operate (pun intended) on their own time schedule, in their own reality, of their own world. You lose track of reality faster in a hospital than falling asleep will get your veins poked.
I'd been feeling "off" for weeks--months or years now that I look back on it--and had just a week previously consulted with a friend in the profession. My main symptom was a pain in the neck accompanied with swelling. (I have very few truly skinny things on my body and the neck area is one of them. It's pretty easy to see when it isn't its normal size.) My friend did agree that there was some girth that hadn't been there before but didn't think it was too serious, which at that time, it wasn't. So I followed up with my NP and was pleasantly surprised when she ordered not just bloodwork, but an ECG and an ultrasound. But by the time I got the reports from those tests, I knew something was up. I couldn't eat ANYTHING for five days. This progressed to having a hard time swallowing clear liquids, which devolved into the inability to even drink water. I was breathy like a Texan who comes up to our altitude for the first time. Once the weekend arrived, I was in bad shape. I went back to the same friend, waking her early that morning. When she saw my neck, she struck a more serious facial expression than I associated with her. "We need to go to the ER now," was how she put it.
She drove me down the pass to one of the main hospitals in the Springs and helped me fill in the paperwork. I don't remember very much about the next ten or twelve hours, but I spent them in a private ER room (I remember the days when it was communal triage so this was a blessing) getting close to ten or twelve tests. I do not recall many of them. Eventually day became night and I was admitted. I spent that Saturday night into Mothers Day morning in a fog of aggravation and paranoia. It was hours before I was to know what was going on with me. But I could breathe, the pain was better, and soon I would be able to swallow again.
I have an auto-immune disease called Graves Disease. (Why Doctor Sexypants couldn't have discovered the disorder in the late 1800s is just my bad luck of the draw.) But, according to the late, great Mr. Graves, my thyroid gland has turned against itself, and thereby, me. And it turns out that the little butterfly in your neck is a pretty important little sucker. They don't call it "the master gland" for no reason. In a nutshell, the thyroid takes the energy you put into your body and tells every single cell you possess exactly what to do with said energy. Explains a lot looking back on my recent history. And during the three-week period leading up to what I experienced that weekend, a "thyroid storm", my thyroid was making me hyperthyroid to the point that I had unwittingly been in tachycardia for the entire three weeks. Kinda scary to know that now. My heart, and the rest of me, was on overdrive for a very long time. In retrospect, I'm lucky I didn't get myself into any trouble in that state!
So life goes on and so do the meds, for the rest of mine anyway, but that's okay. Taking four pills three times a day I can handle. Shying away from conversations and activities when I become overwhelmed I can carry out with a measure of grace. I'm even beginning to reclaim a somewhat "normal" energy level and have thoroughly enjoyed working in the yard and gardens this month. I'm also back to work at both of my doggie non-profits.
May was tough, Mothers Day was tough, but hell, that's par on my golf course. And if I keep taking my meds and keep having some of the best friends (both here and in this virtual world) on the planet, I'll be fine. I'll have life's averages of waining and waxing days, and I'll get some of things that make me the happiest accomplished. All will be as well as it can be.
(At least until the Fall Equinox, that is.)
This year I spent Mothers Day, two days in fact, in hospital. Hospitals, for those of you lucky enough to never have been in one, operate (pun intended) on their own time schedule, in their own reality, of their own world. You lose track of reality faster in a hospital than falling asleep will get your veins poked.
I'd been feeling "off" for weeks--months or years now that I look back on it--and had just a week previously consulted with a friend in the profession. My main symptom was a pain in the neck accompanied with swelling. (I have very few truly skinny things on my body and the neck area is one of them. It's pretty easy to see when it isn't its normal size.) My friend did agree that there was some girth that hadn't been there before but didn't think it was too serious, which at that time, it wasn't. So I followed up with my NP and was pleasantly surprised when she ordered not just bloodwork, but an ECG and an ultrasound. But by the time I got the reports from those tests, I knew something was up. I couldn't eat ANYTHING for five days. This progressed to having a hard time swallowing clear liquids, which devolved into the inability to even drink water. I was breathy like a Texan who comes up to our altitude for the first time. Once the weekend arrived, I was in bad shape. I went back to the same friend, waking her early that morning. When she saw my neck, she struck a more serious facial expression than I associated with her. "We need to go to the ER now," was how she put it.
She drove me down the pass to one of the main hospitals in the Springs and helped me fill in the paperwork. I don't remember very much about the next ten or twelve hours, but I spent them in a private ER room (I remember the days when it was communal triage so this was a blessing) getting close to ten or twelve tests. I do not recall many of them. Eventually day became night and I was admitted. I spent that Saturday night into Mothers Day morning in a fog of aggravation and paranoia. It was hours before I was to know what was going on with me. But I could breathe, the pain was better, and soon I would be able to swallow again.
I have an auto-immune disease called Graves Disease. (Why Doctor Sexypants couldn't have discovered the disorder in the late 1800s is just my bad luck of the draw.) But, according to the late, great Mr. Graves, my thyroid gland has turned against itself, and thereby, me. And it turns out that the little butterfly in your neck is a pretty important little sucker. They don't call it "the master gland" for no reason. In a nutshell, the thyroid takes the energy you put into your body and tells every single cell you possess exactly what to do with said energy. Explains a lot looking back on my recent history. And during the three-week period leading up to what I experienced that weekend, a "thyroid storm", my thyroid was making me hyperthyroid to the point that I had unwittingly been in tachycardia for the entire three weeks. Kinda scary to know that now. My heart, and the rest of me, was on overdrive for a very long time. In retrospect, I'm lucky I didn't get myself into any trouble in that state!
So life goes on and so do the meds, for the rest of mine anyway, but that's okay. Taking four pills three times a day I can handle. Shying away from conversations and activities when I become overwhelmed I can carry out with a measure of grace. I'm even beginning to reclaim a somewhat "normal" energy level and have thoroughly enjoyed working in the yard and gardens this month. I'm also back to work at both of my doggie non-profits.
May was tough, Mothers Day was tough, but hell, that's par on my golf course. And if I keep taking my meds and keep having some of the best friends (both here and in this virtual world) on the planet, I'll be fine. I'll have life's averages of waining and waxing days, and I'll get some of things that make me the happiest accomplished. All will be as well as it can be.
(At least until the Fall Equinox, that is.)
Sunday's Child Has Lots to Say
I had already decided that today was the day I was going to come out of my sabbatical and blog again. And, I had already decided that this morning's MSNBC installment of the Melissa Harris-Perry show was one of the most important I'd seen in quite a while. That seemed plenty enough prodding and fodder to write a fairly good quality blogpost.
Then, at the end of the show, Melissa spoke of Pam Spaulding and her blog, Pam's House Blend, which I was not familiar with though this lady's beautiful face did seem familiar to me. Seems Pam has been blogging since 2004 about being Southern, being a woman of color, and being a member of the LGBT community. In just those short years between Bush, The Second Coming, and Obama, The Second Attempt (successful, thank heavens), Pam went from letting loose some steam to being a credentialed citizen reporter at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She made some waves. She got some attention. And this week, she decided that working full-time, blogging, and fighting RA was one thing more than she had the stamina to handle.
Pam has decided to end the daily grind of blogging much to the chagrin but no doubt full understanding of her many followers, to include MHP herself. When Melissa reached out to ask what Pam would want to come from her blog, what, in effect, the legacy should be, Pam answered that those of us who do this (erstwhile or regularly) need to keep going, and need to be heard from.
Well, as we say in Southland Speak, "I hear that!" And I'll try harder to do so. Not that I am so enamored of myself to think I NEED to be heard, but I do have things I often need to say. I'd love it if I made my blogging into more of a journalling atmosphere: My daily take on all things me and my view of the world. But I'd also love to keep banging out the politics, the issues, the things that I don't necessarily wake up feeling but that grab my attention during the day and create the traffic jams of words and thoughts in my head, hourly. In other words, the sublime but also the serious.
I could make promises to myself, but I know where that would lead and they keep the light on for me there already. I'll just say "I wanna" to myself and see where and for how long it goes. If I've learned anything over the past few months it is that you have to be easy on yourself. You just have to choose to be.
Then, at the end of the show, Melissa spoke of Pam Spaulding and her blog, Pam's House Blend, which I was not familiar with though this lady's beautiful face did seem familiar to me. Seems Pam has been blogging since 2004 about being Southern, being a woman of color, and being a member of the LGBT community. In just those short years between Bush, The Second Coming, and Obama, The Second Attempt (successful, thank heavens), Pam went from letting loose some steam to being a credentialed citizen reporter at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She made some waves. She got some attention. And this week, she decided that working full-time, blogging, and fighting RA was one thing more than she had the stamina to handle.
Pam has decided to end the daily grind of blogging much to the chagrin but no doubt full understanding of her many followers, to include MHP herself. When Melissa reached out to ask what Pam would want to come from her blog, what, in effect, the legacy should be, Pam answered that those of us who do this (erstwhile or regularly) need to keep going, and need to be heard from.
Well, as we say in Southland Speak, "I hear that!" And I'll try harder to do so. Not that I am so enamored of myself to think I NEED to be heard, but I do have things I often need to say. I'd love it if I made my blogging into more of a journalling atmosphere: My daily take on all things me and my view of the world. But I'd also love to keep banging out the politics, the issues, the things that I don't necessarily wake up feeling but that grab my attention during the day and create the traffic jams of words and thoughts in my head, hourly. In other words, the sublime but also the serious.
I could make promises to myself, but I know where that would lead and they keep the light on for me there already. I'll just say "I wanna" to myself and see where and for how long it goes. If I've learned anything over the past few months it is that you have to be easy on yourself. You just have to choose to be.
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