The rubbish left behind after Kristin opened the massive amount of loot at her birthday party.

Kristin opening her presents and her Daddy trying to get her to look at the camera instead. Didn't work, of course.

Here's Kristin at her birthday party

Beautful Rusty who came to visit for the second half of the week, posing in front of my wildflower daisies. Since Rusty is deaf, you will see Aaron's finger on the right side of this picture - he's telling Rusty to stay.

Candid picture of Liz and part of Lynn - both of them making faces at me at 5th Night.

Band and dancers at Utica Square's 5th Night. I love it that the kids and old people dance. You don't have to have a partner and no one cares that it's so hot you think you are going to die.

You have received so much from this program that you should have a vision that gives your life a direction and a purpose that gives meaning to each new day. Let us not slide along through life. Let us have a purpose for each day and let us make that purpose for something greater than just ourselves. ~Bill W

365 Project

5th night at Utica Square.

Serenity Experiment Update

I am a stubborn, hard-headed woman. That's either the good news or the bad news. In the context of the Serenity Experiment, it's good news. I have not reached serenity yet with my morning and evening routines but I'm still making progress. It is incredibly challenging to follow my routines when I'm visiting someone or when I have company. The barrier is my sleeping pattern. In the past I was an early riser - usually up - without an alarm - at between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. I haven't seen that time on the clock except when I've had to go to the bathroom. For whatever reason, I don't go to sleep right away - I may doze off and on until around midnight no matter what time I go to bed. Then I sleep until 8:00 or 9:00 - which is really not good for trying to do several things before starting the day. Especially when the rest of the household is up by 7:00 and ready to start the activities of the day about the time I stumble out of bed. Even when I'm by myself, I really want to be able to start my day at a reasonable time and that's completely impossible if I don't get up until 9:00. It's a good thing I'm stubborn and it's a good thing I'm a world-class problem solver. I will solve this problem. More later.

Liz fixed this picture so it's not so dark. So... here are Kristin and Aaron working on the kids menu puzzles at Mimi's. Another birthday dinner. We know how to stretch these birthdays out!

Ceiling in Philbrook Museum in Tulsa and Aaron standing by columns where the old entrance to Philbrook used to be. Aaron, Eric and I spent a terrific afternoon there. One of the exhibits was of tiny little drawings that could only be really seen with a magnifying glass.

Very bad picture of Bec playing with the sparkle ball I brought. June 13

365 Project catch up

My first Chick fil A sandwich on June 12.

Back from Birthday Weekend

My middle grandson and I made it in from Dallas yesterday evening, where I went to celebrate birthdays. We had fun in spite of the electricity being out from the tornado they had on Wednesday. It gave us a great excuse to eat out, hang out in malls and have coffee at the bookstore. I went directly to bed right after dinner last night and didn't get up until 8:00 this morning. But we have plans to have fun today - we're probably going to go to a local museum and see what's up there. 365 Project pictures later.

Here's my dear friend, Tony. He makes his living as a handyman and has been fixing broken stuff at my house for several years now. I call and whine that my air conditioner quit working, and he says, "Oh that's awful, babe. I'll be right there." He doesn't arrive that quickly every time but almost every time. Our friendship has taken a lot of turns over the years and we now know each other's worst faults as well as our best sides. He is crazy as a loon and he thinks I'm crazy (I'm not, of course). Nevertheless, we are somehow still friends.

Update

As of June 4 it has been a year since my last surgery - the longest time I've ever had without surgery since the wreck. I'm feeling a lot more like myself. I sleep relatively well most nights. Over 50% of the time I'm able to make it through a day without having to lie down. (The whole truth is I count it as making it through a day if I make it until after 4:00 p.m.). I am much stronger (thanks to physical therapy). My mental health is no worse than it was before the wreck - at the moment, that is. It still doesn't take much to knock me over emotionally. Unfortunately, I've had a couple of things that fell into the category of BIG that knocked me over this year. But I've come back relatively quickly. I am so very grateful!

For almost four years now my purpose has been to get as well as possible. Since I really had no idea what would help, I just threw everything I could think of or that any one suggested at it. Healthy food, physical therapy, all the sleep/rest my body seemed to be demanding, cranial-sacral manipulation, massage, fun, friendship, time with family, prayer/affirmations/meditation. Periodically I asked the Unity folks to pray for me. I'm impressed with them. In the past I've asked them to pray for specific situations that seemed to be hopeless to resolve, and they were resolved. Amazing.

I don't consider myself well yet so I'm continuing to throw everything I can think of at my healing. I still have a lot of PTSD symptoms that really interfere with my ability to live life and I still get very tired quickly. Right now I'm in love with the structure my nutritionist has added to my food life. It seems to be working for me very well. Again, I am so grateful.

The picture above is of the outside of Whole Foods, my favorite grocery store. My nutritionist made me promise when I met with her this morning that I would add a protein supplement to my diet since I need more protein for health than most people. So, off I went to get the powdered soy to put in smoothies.

365 Project - Wildflowers

The wildflowers planted probably seven years ago or so have survived complete neglect! This year I'm pulling up a few weeds and replanting some blank spots. The flowers have made it into the house a couple of times too. Yay!

365 Project

There's a tiny little green tomato on my tomato plant!

W.A.I.T.

Heard in Ala-non meeting: W.A.I.T. stands for "Why Am I Talking?" For those of us who talk before we think and need to learn "restraint of tongue and pen," this is a very good reminder!

Submit, Resent, Rebell

"Submit, resent, rebell"- the description one of my sponsors says is her pattern of behavior in her character defect of people pleasing. I admit I am somewhat like that myself, except that I rarely go for the submission part for any length of time. In fact, I probably just think about submitting but never do it! It could be that I just rebell right away. Hmmm.

Complete self-knowledge is impossible, but the "looking within" will open our eyes to many possible improvements. It is difficult because we're afraid we won't like what we see, and we may have misgivings about being able to change ourselves. Yet what we may find when we look within may be quite a surprise package - all those many good qualities tucked away under heavy layers of guilt. One Day at a Time in Ala-non

365 Project

Eric visited today and we had breakfast at the Wild Fork in Utica Square. They have the very best veggie omelet I have ever had (and it's on my diet) and the very best cheese grits and biscuits in the world (they are not on my diet).

Dissillusionment

"Disillusionment" is usually thought of as a bad thing, but I think it's a good thing to lose your illusions as early in life as possible. The sooner we're in reality, the sooner we know how to deal with it. Of course, it can be extremely unsettling. I grew up in a small town in the 40s and 50s and everything seemed pretty calm. Of course, I heard about the holocaust and the Chinese prison camps on the radio. But as a child I thought these terrible things were just a fluke and would never happen again. But then in my 20s I learned about poverty, discrimination, cruelty, in our own country, etc. and decided I had to do something about it. I didn't do a great job mostly because I had very little to give. But I did make some difference. In my 40s I learned some more things - how our world treats people with disabilities and this was the worst yet. I began to feel completely crazy. I called it the "evil world syndrome." Luckily by that time I was in recovery and had someone to ask what to do. The best advice I ever had - ask God every day what you can do to make whatever the situation is better - and then do it. I really have not found that hiding my head in the sand and refusing to look at the reality of the world has ever done me any good. Doing something about it even though I don't have much power and not a lot to give has helped me more than I can say.

365 Project - Moth Balls

Every year I try to grow some plants in the pots on my front porch and every year so far either rabbits or squirrels dig them up. But this year it looks like the plants are going to make it! The squirrels/rabbits haven't retired but the moth balls I put in with the plants apparently are driving them away. Small victories!

365 Project

My prize possesions that reside in the corner of my living room.

The tree is only a Christmas tree during Christmas time. It is too big to fit in any of my closets and would be ruined if I put it in the garage. So, it's just a tree the rest of the year. It's beautiful and I love it. The dragon is a metal wall sculpture that was made for Ron and me by an artist who exhibited here at our Mayfest. He had some smaller dragons, but we wanted a big one. We had lost all our wall decorations in the fire we had in 2000. So, we asked the artist if he would make a big one for us and here it is!

365 Project

Every Monday morning I meet with some women from my Alanon group. We are studying the Big Book (of Alcoholics Anonymous) to understand how the disease affects us. We meet in this delightful kitchen. Today - right after the meeting - I went to physical therapy. This is the room where I work out.

365 Project

Sunday in the Park with Lynn and Kristin. A terrific sunshiny day with a good breeze. We ate a little picnic lunch I brought and then Lynn and Kristin played.

365 Project

Corny as it may seem, what I ended doing was a bird flying with my heart. It seems to me that I have been extremely earth bound these past few years and I long to be free again.

Today I attended a workshop put on by my friend, Sharon, who is a nurse and an amazing artist. She does these workshops periodically to help people access their hearts through art. I'm standing next to one of her recent paintings. This picture doesn't show it very well but it's of a little child going in a door. I think it is one of her best works.

Here's the collage I made in January that represents in images something about the life I'd like to have in 2009.

Not a great picture of the collage I made on the retreat. However, it's enough to get a sense of it. The meaning is quite apparent to me and was to a couple of my friends who looked at it. Basically, it represents the images I have in relation to creativity. It was fun to make.

Serenity Experiment Update

I have an accumulation of a lot of days of following my checklist. Things are neater around my house and I feel pretty good about being ready to face the world reasonably early in the morning. My meditation practice finally got much easier and the sense of peace I used to get returned. Right now, however, I've been remiss. Since I went on the retreat... I followed my routine the first day, but the second day I slept a long time and there wasn't time. I've been my usual slug since I've been home. It's Thursday and I'm still recuperating. I hope that when I'm able to return to the routine, it will be easier to do than it was when I first began.

This is a house down the street and I envy the landscaping. This is not the greatest picture. A closer view might enable me to show it to some of my friends who know what plants are.

Initiation of the Dead

I have been listening to an audio book in the car - which is an ongoing habit of mine left over from when I traveled long distances in my last job and the one before that. I fell in love with having something wonderful to listen to instead of being bored. Now, of course, I'm just driving across town, but I can still learn a tremendous amount by having audio books available. Currently the book is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I first read this book many, many years ago at the insistence of my husband's sponsor. He used to leave books in my mail box with notes that said, "You owe me ______." I knew it was to my advantage to read whatever book he left. This particular book was a big deal. Ron and I traveled to Ft. Worth, Texas, in the middle of the night to hear a day long workshop by Don Miguel.

One of the things Don Miguel talks about in the book is how close we all are to death. We manage to forget this fact in our day to day lives, but forgetting it is a big mistake. Enough people have left my life suddenly and without warning for me to know deeply that this is the truth. Don Miguel says the "initiation of the dead" is to take the Angel of Death as our teacher and learn to live each day as if the Angel was only a couple of steps behind us. I believe this is the right way to live because most of the nonsense that I do in a day's time is not what I would be doing if I was really aware. What I would do instead is to love the people in my life.

Behind the offices of my counselor is this lovely scene where there are usually flocks of birds. This afternoon all was quiet in the shade. I want a garden like this in my back yard.

As a memento of our time together, each of us who were on the retreat received one of these candle holders with pine cones to remind us of our time in the woods.

Say hello to Shorty and Snowball - who are hopeful that someone will open the door to the log cabin where several of my friends and I spent the weekend on a retreat (the kind where you treat yourself over and over). Nobody did open the door, however. But these two had plenty of company on the front porch looking out into the woods.

My friend, Eric, is visiting today. He has become my dear friend even though we had only met once before the wreck. Ron was his sponsor. So, Eric appointed himself my caregiver and has been with me every step of my journey since the wreck. He has been the most amazing gift in my life. Today he is helping me get gardening supplies for some flowers I want to plant in my front flower bed and carrying things to the car for the trip I'm taking this afternoon to a retreat (the kind where you treat yourself over and over). Mule duty I told him. Of course most of his duties have been a bit more complex than that. He is a physician so he has provided much needed advice and has talked to my doctors. When I had my last surgery he stayed with me for almost a week. Thank you, Eric!

Here's my daughter, Bridget and her bedroom.

I went to see her today to take her some magazines that she likes to look at and for a meeting of her caregivers. It turns out the meeting isn't until tomorrow but it was a perfect time for some pictures. Bridget is almost 38 years old and has multiple disabilities. She lives just about a mile from my house in a house she rents with a roommate. Her story is too long to tell here, but she came to our family as a foster child when she was four months old. Her mother had Rubella when she was pregnant which caused Bridget to have vision and hearing loss as well as brain damage. She is enjoying her life, though, which makes me happy too.

Lomi Lomi

I've been throwing everything I could think of and anything anyone could suggest at trying to heal my leg and my psyche. One of the things I've been doing for months is getting Hawaiian massage called Lomi Lomi. It is quite different than other types of massage I've had, and it has really helped. Here is the beautiful room decorated with Hawaiian artifacts and my massage therapist, Maalia.

Dinner

Here's my friend, Dee, getting ready to eat dinner with me. One of the highlights of this day. We had a terrific dinner. Cisco the cat is looking up through the glass table to see what's going on.

I left my camera on all night and so when I tried to take the picture I planned for today, of course the batteries were dead. The picture would have been of me and my dear trauma surgeon in front of my xray that showed my femur solid as a rock. Definitely a memorable occasion!

Not everyone has a dentist with such fabulous landscaping. If my camera hadn't run out of batteries, I would have gotten some better pictures.

For years I went from dentist to dentist, hating every single one of them. Then I found Bracken. He is terrific. And a fabulous landscaper. I didn't mind going today even though they found that I need a filling replaced.

Serenity is not what I'm feeling this morning. I'm excited because it seems like I have reached a point where I can actually do the things I want to instead of just working around my physical disability. I've finished all the stuff on my morning routine and it appears that I've lost 4 lbs by eating like the nutritionist suggested (even though not perfectly). AND I've not been one bit hungry. (Picture for the 365 project later).

A Picture a Day

About two years ago (I think), my daughter and her husband gave me a wonderful digital camera for Christmas. I took some pictures under their supervision and then let the camera gather dust. Just recently I've begun to work at using it and downloading the pictures to my computer, and when appropriate, to this blog. My daughter has a post about a 365 day project of taking a picture a day. I love the idea because I want to learn more about how to use my camera. AND to take a picture a day that is meaningful will mean that I will have to pay attention.

This picture is of a bouquet given me by one of the women I sponsor. They are flowers from her yard. She said they were to thank me since she has finally lived someplace long enough to have flowers. In the past she has moved pretty much every year. Definitely a meaningful picture - to her and to me, for sure. I'm not sure what I did that helped. All I did was laugh when she told me she thought it was time to move.

Hunger

My trip to the nutritionist yielded a bunch of new information as I posted a few days ago. So, I've been monitoring my hunger level before I eat; trying to eat only when I'm hungry. Well.... I can see that I eat on an unconscious schedule. If the clock says eat, I eat. Now, if what I learned is true, every time I eat when I'm not hungry, my body processes it right to fat. No wonder I don't eat much but still gain weight.

Anger Remedy

I used to love to be angry. It made me feel powerful when I was hurt or afraid. For quite awhile now I haven't been angry. I just stay at hurt or afraid and deal with that. Apparently, I skipped something and got angry. Now I hate being angry. It makes me feel kind of crazy and out of control - feelings I no longer enjoy.

When I discovered I was furious with some people and recent events, I really wanted to be free. My sponsor suggested (and these are tools that are standard in 12 Step programs and I've used them a million times but always forget until someone reminds me) that I pray for them until I wasn't angry any more. She suggested that I write to one of the people telling him how I feel but not send it - instead read it to her and we'll decide how to handle it from there.

I'm not surprised that I'm not angry today. It works every time.

Another Serenity Experiment Update

Well, this isn't going like I pictured, but it's going. I probably have more than three months of bedmaking (I didn't make a note of the date), several weeks of being dressed right away (didn't note the date), and now about a week of resuming my meditation practice. (I did make a note of that date). So far what I'm experiencing isn't very much like serenity. Meditation was harder to get started. I kept forgetting to start so it took three days to really begin. What I remember from my past meditation practice is that it brought me a lot of peace. Not what I'm getting this time. Every day I meditate I get in touch with how furious I am about a couple of things that I've tried really hard not to be mad about. But I am really furious. As I've mentioned before, a lot of my ptsd symptoms have to do with not acknowledging how I feel. Well, it looks like my higher power has heard my prayer to be relieved of those symptoms. I'm not sure what to do about this, but I guess I will stomp around today and grrrrrrrr.

Joy

"I don't mind doing God's will now. At first I was afraid of what God's will for me would be - probably something I wouldn't like. Now I know that God's will is where my joy is." Member of AA.

I love to be reminded again and again in meetings that I my joy is in God's will. My self-will surely likes to tell me otherwise.

Aha

So, I am just back from the nutritionist and boy did I get an education in just an hour. It turns out that if you eat when you're not hungry and/or wait to eat until you are way, way too hungry, your body doesn't bother using what you eat for energy. It just immediately turns it into fat. So, as long as I eat only when I'm hungry (and not wait until I'm too hungry), eat 80 grams of high quality protein and seven servings of fruit and vegetables per day, increase my exercise, etc., I should be able to eat whatever else I want and not gain weight. Hmmm. I think the catch is eating only when hungry. BUT it is really wonderful to know exactly what I need to eat and how! Much peace of mind. As it has been, I eat pretty healthy food. But I never know if I'm doing what I should or not. Now I will at least know what I should be doing!!!

Here I am with one of my daughters. All my kids are wonderful. They're grown and this daughter and my other daughter have kids of their own. What a lovely thing being a parent is. Of course, it's been long enough from the teenager days for me to forget that part. It's totally lovely now.

More on King Tut

Here I am with the King and here's Dee with the King.

Here are Liz, Aaron and Bec. Techies all but Bec always knows when her picture is being taken.

Here we are - ready to go inside.

Serenity Experiment update

Well, let's see...the great news is that my bed has been made every day with the exception of a couple of days when I went back to bed after breakfast. I have some kind of new annoying ailment - headaches - which I've never in my life had before. So, back to bed I went and slept until they went away. And I've been dressed directly (more or less) after with the above exceptions.

I feel incredibly silly documenting this unbelievably simple exercise in self-discipline. I really think I should be doing yoga or meditation - something more fitting with the word "serenity." But...nevertheless, the truth is, unless I get some smoothness to my morning and evening routines, I will never have any serenity. I'm sure part of the trouble is my ADD and the fact that for most of my life my morning and evening rituals were prescribed by having to bust my butt to get to work and/or getting kids up and fed. Any chance I got, however, I slept in. I was always exhausted.

Now I have time. I've taken the time to heal; and to get some perspective on what to do with the time on earth remaining to me. All that sounds incredibly important and as if making my bed and getting dressed in an orderly fashion are pretty stupid. But if you knew me well, you would know that serenity is waiting just around the corner from having a little bit more discipline.

I am adding the 3rd simple thing - back to my meditation practice which I had for years and years but since the wreck have not been able to implement. It's worth trying to press through whatever keeps me from resuming it. Besides that, it makes me feel a little less stupid to have meditation practice as part of self-discipline.

King Tut

What fun! I really had never thought about it but if things were buried in a tomb in the desert, they really look pretty good even after 3,000 years. I had to keep reminding myself that the beautiful objects I was looking at at the King Tut exhibit on Saturday were 3,000 years old. Many of them were painted wood which I would have thought would have disintegrated into dust many thousands of years ago. But there they were - with the paint bright. I was left with a lot of questions, but there's always Google. I already found out that the king's mummy is in a sealed glass box in Cairo.

The rest of the weekend was wonderful too. I got to drive to Dallas and back with my friend, Dee, and I probably talked too much like I always do in the car. If there's no one with me, I just talk to myself. She seemed to be okay with it, thank goodness. I got on the subject of sociopathic killers because we watched "The Dark Knight" after we got home from seeing King Tut. I'm not sure why, but I have a bit of a fascination with sociopathic people. I've had some in my life and that's probably why. I have a theory that most of them go unnoticed and cause massive amounts of trouble for others.

It was great to be with my daughter and her family too. I am so blessed to have such a great family.

Serenity

"If I maintain an air of quiet peace, things usually go well." Hope for Today.

Whatever my goals are, I do so much better when I maintain an air of quiet peace. Now, quiet peace has nothing to do with my basic nature, so "faking it til I make it" is the way I do it. Funny how acting as if...works to make it real. Today I have grand plans to check a bunch of stuff off the todolist. I know that jumping and running at it the way my basic nature tries to lead me will just wear me out, so......

Whose Fault is It?

"For though we are made especially for the sake of one another, still each of us has his own tasks. Otherwise another's faults would harm me, which God has not willed, in order that my happiness may not depend on another." (Marcus Aurelius). From One Day At a Time in Al-Anon.

This would have been good to learn in about 7th Grade. It would have saved me from a lot of useless effort. I am grateful to know that my own faults keep me busy enough without having to pay attention to anyone else's. Of course, I used to think I could come to harm through other people's faults. Turns out - it's not true. I sure had a lot of bad information.

Serenity Experiment Part 2

Serenity is probably close to the most important thing for me in my current situation. It is easy for me to become distressed about how slow my progress is and confused about where my life is going. To address this I decided to do a serenity experiment to see what would work best to increase my serenity on a daily basis. For the first three months of the year I tried going to meetings every day or almost every day for awhile. It was a good experiment in that I got some very good help. I'm not sure about the serenity though. It became a chore to try to do it when I was feeling physically overwhelmed, and that just didn't seem like a good way to try to reach the goal. After awhile, I embarked on another experiment in serenity - I am working on developing a quick, smooth, morning and evening routine that encompasses all the things I want to get done but that seem to have eluded me all my life. Since I am an amazingly undisciplined person, this experiment might just be the most challenging of my life (joke, but not really.) So, I read some stuff on self-discipline and came away with one very useful idea to hang on to - pick out one thing that is so easy you cannot fail and practice doing that until it's a habit. Then pick out another easy thing.......Of course, with all the things on my list, I'm going to be over 100 years old before this experiment is over. However, the idea behind this is that it's like weight lifting. You start small and do more as you get stronger. Apparently, there's a self discipline muscle. So...I started with making my bed which I have never done consistently in my life and I now have about three months of a consistently made bed. My most recent thing is getting dressed right after I make my bed, do my morning prayer and meditation and eat breakfast. This is a work in progress, but I have several days when at least I achieved an approximation. Is it helping me be serene? Well, it is in a way. I can't kick myself as much because I am doing something about my situation and paving the way for more. I am distracted from obsessing about the future. By improving my self-discipline I am preparing myself from whatever the future holds. If serenity is an emotion, it's not working, but if being kind of excited and happy about my progress in an area that has been a trouble to me forever has anything to do with it, I'm serene!