Pix

Outside Whole Foods - they've obviously gone crazy with the fall stuff.

My newest bouquet.

Found a place for the fabulous windchime I got for my "love gift" at Heart to Heart.  It's on my back door and chimes when I go in and out.

Here I am at yoga class with my dear friend Karen who is teaching it.  I am blessed to be in a class with someone who does such gentle yoga that I can't hurt myself!

The new outline method for the book I'm writing.  Each card is a chapter.  I write for 20 minutes, and then take a 5 minute break.  Good for a disorganized writer.

Celebration

I really should throw a party.  For six years I've worked on normalizing my sleeping patterns.  I've accepted them, and then not accepted them.  I've tried pretty much everything I could think of plus any suggestions any one could give me.  So for the past six months, the patterns have steadied and fallen into a pretty liveable and predictable patterns.  I'm usually up between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. and usually asleep by 10:00 p.m.  I usually go to bed around 9:00 and read or watch television.  Sometimes I need a nap in the late afternoon.  Yay!  I think a lot of the chaos had to do with ptsd, the need for rest to heal physically and emotionally, plus the medications for pain that I took after multiple surgeries. 

A lot of stuff I tried did not work:  Setting the alarm and getting up whether I wanted to or not.  This strategy usually resulted in being exhausted and kind of freaked out emotionally.  Taking medication for sleep - as I usually experience with any kind of meds - sleeping meds kept me awake.  I could go on for awhile about the stuff I tried that didn't work. 

So - here's the stuff that worked:  I accepted that I need anywhere from 14 hours to 10 hours of sleep out of every 24 hours.  It depends on how much mental, emotional and physical activity I've expended.  It's no use trying to get out of it.  Some physical activity every day helps.  Taking a hot bath (preferably with bubbles).  Taking a Benedryl at 8:00 p.m. (I have allergies that make my breathing weird when I sleep, plus the Benedryl makes me a little sleepy.)  Last but not least:  Tempurpedic mattress and pillows and learning how to arrange my body so I have very little pain.

I am SO grateful.  My days are so much more predictable and productive.  I'm glad I persisted and didn't give in to despair!  I'm glad I've healed enough to benefit from the strategies I've tried.  I'm grateful to my Higher Power.

Simple Abundance

I'm reading Sarah Ban Breathnach's Simple Abundance again.  There are daily readings on lifestyle which were life changing at the time I first read them which was over 20 years ago.  I love her writing style plus there are 365 little essays with marvelous ideas. 

During the month of September she's writing essays about success.  Yesterday the essay was on ambition.  She said taking action on our goals is ambition in motion - there's no success without ambition because it drives action.  She also says that ambition has a bad reputation because of it's association with pride and greed.  "When the soul is impoverished, the ego is easily seduced.  Greed is a very effective pimp for the dark side."  I love it.  I can see this everywhere in our world and even sometimes in myself.  An impoverished soul = greed.  Love and light of the soul are the answers to greed. 

Today the reading was about fear.  All of us, I'm sure, are familiar with the voices inside our head that tell us we are going to fail, make a fool of ourselves, etc., etc., etc. if we take action on our heart's desires.  I was startled to read that she believes those voices come from the ego.  The ego wants to protect itself from embarrassment so it whispers to us that we are so tired and need to take care of ourselves instead of taking action.  Mindless TV, computer games, unneeded naps, "Relax," the ego says, "There's plenty of time.  Tomorrow will be soon enough."  I knew my ego was not my friend, but I've been listening to the "It's time to rest" thing because I often am REALLY tired.  Sometimes it's my ego, though.  Thanks, Sarah, for the heads up!

Stuff to be Grateful For

I'm writing this to remind me when I have a bad case of self-pity and can't remember what to be grateful for, that I have more to be grateful for than I can even ever write down:

• Hot bubble baths (thanks to the people who did the work to make my bathtub, the hot water, the Vitabath, etc.)
• God for giving me life, helping me live this long, helping me find recovery, my recovery from injuries.  Plus my surgeon, body work tech, physical therapists, etc.
• God for giving me children and grandchildren that are marvelous.
• God for giving me the stubborness it has taken for me to keep trying when things looked hopeless or impossible.
• God and everyone else who has ever loved me and shown me their love.  (Seems like thousands)
• Living in a country where good food is plentiful.
• For the good luck to have a comfortable house, in reasonably good repair, that I think is beautiful.
• For the God given talent I have for problem solving.
• For all the people who are kind to me every day.
• For my mother who taught me to read when I was four and reading has been both a pleasure and a great help throughout my life.
• For my fabulous friends.

There's a fabulous start!

Pix

Cisco lounging in my bed long past time for him to get up and for me to make the bed.

Below Cisco is toasting in the blistering sun in the bedroom window.

Above is the view outside of my living room window where the bushes are blooming at last.  The blistering heat kept even these hot weather bushes from blooming until the fall caused a cool down.  Nice to see pink flowers again.

Here's part of our Tulsa contingent at Heart to Heart.  It was purple night so we all have on purple.  Below is Liz on the last morning of the retreat when we all have balloons to release.

Here Liz and I are with our new friend, Mary Pearl.  Good grief!  She is so funny!

Denial is not a river in Egypt

This saying is not a joke!  Denial kills.  I learned about denial when I was first in recovery.  I didn't have a lot of denial - I knew I had a bad problem (I wasn't sure what it was), I knew I needed help and I was ready to accept it.  Since then, I've recovered enough to work with others who are newer in recovery than I am.  Everyone has denial.  Some of us have a worse case of it than others.  Melody Beattie talks about how breaking denial is like yanking a warm blanket off somebody in a cold room.  They just yank it back and cover up again.  You have to make the room warm first. 

I'm not very good at making the room warm.  I'm a blanket yanker.  As one of the people I work with says, "Boy, you really just cut to the chase."  As I was cleaning out a bookcase earlier today, I found a book for professional counselors on managing denial so I'm reading it so I can be a better "room warmer."  I'm working with a couple of people now who switch into denial really quickly in a couple of areas of their lives.  Because of the denial, their whole lives are affected negatively and they are in a lot of pain.  But they don't think it's denial; they think it's their circumstances that are creating the problems.

The author of the book says that denial is just a coping mechanism that has developed to protect us from emotional pain.  It keeps us from recognizing that there's a problem, that it's a very serious problem that resides within ourselves, and that we have the responsibility for solving.  I've noticed that I and the people I work with usually go to blaming other people, bad luck, etc. for their problems.  They change the subject a lot.  They get mad and yell.  They attack me (verbally).  I worked with one person whose cell phone died when she was talking to me as soon as she went into denial.  Weird. 

I'm hoping I will find some answers for "warming up the room" for myself and others who are plagued with denial and whose lives are being sabotaged by it.

New Poet

I've moved on from e.e. cummings to Billy Collins - the poet my friend told me about.  He's a simple guy.  Very accessible.  He wrote one about obsessive, compulsive neatness:

The Straightener

Even as a boy I was a straightener.
On a long table near my window
I kept a lantern, a spyglass, and my tomahawk.

Never tomahawk, lantern, and spyglass.
Always lantern, spyglass, tomahawk.

You could never tell when you would need them
but that was the order you would need them in.

On my desk pencils at attention in a cup,
foreign coins stacked by size,

a photograph of my parents,
and under the heavy green blotter,
a note from a girl I was fond of.

These days I like to stack in pyramids
the cans of soup in the pantry
and I keep the white candles in rows like logs of wax.

And if I can avoid doing my taxes
or phoning my talkative aunt
on her eighty-something birthday,

I will use a ruler to measure the space
between the comb and brush on the dresser,
the distance between shakers of salt and pepper.

Today, for example I will devote my time
to lining up my shoes in the closet,
pair by pair in chronological order

and lining up my shirts on the rack by color
to put off having to tell you, dear,
what I really think and what I now am bound to do.
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Excited to Wake Up

One of the things I always hoped would happen for me as an adult is to wake up excited about the day.  There were a few times as a child when something special was going to happen that I waked up excited.  But not so much as an adult.  I usually woke up feeling anxious about my to do list and always felt behind before I started.  But these days, after several years of working on losing my guilt and anxiety about how little energy I have and how little I get done, I've been able to focus on doing things that improve my quality of life.  That focus has started having an effect so that I look forward to my day and feel a little tingle of excitement. 

For the past several years I've had one of my televisions tuned in to a music channel pretty much 24 hours a day - sweet, soft music for the most part.  In my effort to bump up my enjoyment, I've started changing the music I listen to several times a day.  Right now it's jazz.  I had forgotten how much I enjoy smooth jazz.  And, of course, reading a poem a day is very enjoyable.  For a few days since I ditched cranky, depressed Emily Dickinson, I've been reading e.e. cummings.  He has such a great sense of humor and writes the best love poems ever!

your little voice
                         Over the wires came leaping
and i felt suddenly
dizzy
        With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
were skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
                                          or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
up
Up
with the pale important
                                     stars and the Humorous moon
dear girl
How i was crazy how i cried when i heard
                                                                     over time
and tide and death
leaping
sweetly
            your voice
        

Anger

I attended a meeting last week that was on anger.  I was almost the last one to say anything and the meeting was large so I had a long time to think about myself and anger while I listened to everyone else.  I love trying to boil everything down to just a few words because it's so much easier to remember.  I came up with kind of a mental list of things that I either used to get angry about or still do get angry about.

1.  I think people should know what I want (and follow my rules because my rules are the right ones) and if they're not, it's because they don't care about me or are just bad, lazy people who need to be set right!!! (Actually, the best solution for this one is to understand that lots of people - almost everybody, in fact - has different rules than I do and they believe theirs are the only right ones.  Setting people right has never worked.  They get mad and feel criticized which usually means they keep doing what I don't want them to do just for spite or to show they can.  On the other hand, if I ask gently, politely and without a hint of criticism - "It would be wonderful if you could or would_______)"  sometimes they will actually do what I want.  If they don't, my best bet for peace of mind is to blow it off unless it's truly life or death.)

2.  Somebody is doing something that hurts someone I love.  I am a big rescuer.  In this case I usually react as if the person I love is in a burning building.  I rush to the rescue.  Sometimes this is insulting because they think they can rescue themselves - and that's usually true.  Sometimes they don't believe they're in a burning building at all - and maybe they're not.  But in either case, they truly don't want to be rescued.  Can't rescue somebody that doesn't want to be. 

3.  People out in the world are doing things that I think are terrible and wrong.  I used to get mad when I watched the news.  Sometimes I still do.  Even though what those people are doing doesn't actually affect me, I can still get mad.  If I think it affects me - well, then I can really give myself permission to throw a fit!!.  Only thing is unless I can do something about it, there's no purpose in expending all that energy and mental pain.  Blowing it off is best.  However, often there is something I can do about it, if nothing else by writing to my legislators or the newspaper.  I usually would rather just get mad than go to all that trouble.  So I've started writing letters.  I've noticed that I get all upset around natural disasters because it's the one thing we know is going to happen, but everyone acts all shocked and it takes forever for the folks who are supposed to know what to do to do anything.  I think I'm going to write up what I think should be done in the case of natural disasters and send it off to FEMA, the Red Cross and anyplace else I can think of.  Of course I have no idea whether I actually know what should be done or not.

Those are all the reasons I could think of as to why I get angry - just three things/situations.  Usually what precedes the anger is the feeling of powerlessness.  A long time ago when my youngest two kids were in a bad situation and I felt powerless to change it, I called a wise lady who said to get down on my knees and ask God to show me what I could do that day to make their situation better.  Guess what?!  That works.  Every day I came up with something to do that made it better and eventually made it a whole lot better.  I am never really totally powerless.  I just imagine I am.

Changing Emily

Okay.  I've had it with Emily.  She is depressed and cranky.  I'll check with my friend, Karen, who says she has the world's best poetry book.  Since I wasn't reading poetry at the time, I didn't get the information about it from her.  But now I'm ready for something more uplifting.  Here's the last one of Emily's I've read.  Not too depressing but definitely cranky:

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, - you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

Poems

I've embarked on several "30 day challenges" that are ideas for bumping up quality of life.  I love poetry but rarely read it because it seems to me that reading poetry should be reserved for times when I've finished all the important stuff.  I was taught this way of doing things (do the drudgery first and then the fun), and I've been working at escaping from it ever since.  So I've started reading at least one poem a day starting with Emily Dickinson.  She wasn't the most positive, inspiring writer of all time but I still love her.  This poem perfectly describes how I felt during the most painful periods of my life:

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

I think it always seems as if pain has no beginning and no ending.  Another reason to stick close to spiritual advisors who will remind you that it will end - and more quickly if you don't try to avoid it.

Pix:

Farmer's market - very hot so not very many people.

A friend invited me to a Rotary Club fundraiser at the Outback.  Good lunch, good company.  I learned that the fundraiser was for school supplies for kids in two Tulsa schools.  Rotary also funds an international initiative to eradicate polio as well as an international initiative to train people in their mid-careers on conflict resolution.  I think they have schools in about 10 countries.

This picture is in my office as well as on the walls of a lot of AA clubhouses.  This one is in the little room where a group of us do a book study.  It says, "Should I forget the misery and the pain of where I've been, Remind me, God so I might not return there again."  Good prayer.

Here are some of the love gifts I found at Tuesday morning.  I love butterfly gifts for Heart to Heart.  They symbolize transformation (from a caterpillar to a butterfly) that takes place on that weekend.

Both of the counselors I've seen in the past six years have had beautiful spaces to sit and talk.

Hunger

I can't remember how I ran across Geneen Roth's books.  But the more I read the more I learned.  I don't believe I'm technically an overeater although I'm over weight, but Geneen doesn't talk about that.  She talks about how our concerns with body weight and appearance have taught us to treat our bodies like naughty children and thus lose touch with what it's like to eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. 

Babies and young children know when they're hungry and when they've had enough.  I used to know.  When I was a heavy smoker, I ate whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted and how ever much I wanted and stayed skinny.  Then when I quit smoking I immediately gained a lot of weight and started dieting.  That in turn led to my gaining more and more weight.  At the age of 70, it's not that easy to lose weight.  So I decided to try Geneen's way.  At first I gained, then I started losing.  I've lost about 10 lbs but stopped losing.  It's hard trying to remember to pay attention and eat only when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full.  I've had a lot of practice eating when it's time to eat and eating whatever I serve myself or whatever they serve me in restaurants.  But since I initially lost some excess fat, I'm going to keep going.

Hope

I started college after I was an adult - almost forty to be exact.  One of my first teachers was a guy with a unique teaching style.  He taught humanities - literature, film, art, etc., and he simply introduced us to various things and asked that we write about our impressions.  No tests, essays, etc.  One of the areas he taught was poetry which I had absolutely no interest in.  I couldn't see the point - it all seemed obscure for no reason.  He said that poetry wasn't supposed to be "understood."  That good poetry simply evoked universal images in the minds of readers.  This fascinated me and I started reading and writing poetry pretty much constantly.  In recent years, all that has gone by the wayside in favor of more practical ways to use my time and energy. 

Resting, for me, has become a necessary activity usually accompanied by mindless television.  The practical ways I use my time and energy usually mean feeding myself, caring for the living beings in my household and taking care of my environment.  I run out of energy quickly and so I rest a lot.  Nevertheless, even mindless television can sometimes wake me up to other ways of living.  Yesterday one of the characters in a show quoted one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems that expresses the central idea that informs my life:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.

Cisco

I didn't name my cat - he came with that name.  He doesn't answer to it so he probably doesn't regard it as his name.  I call him sugar booger.  There's a long story about how we came to have him, but it's not that interesting so I'll just say that he's a rescue cat and an odd one.  He has a very fast heartbeat, weighs almost nothing (he looks like he's almost starved if you look at him from the top), can't purr because of an injury to his neck and has the worst breath you can imagine.  He's also the most loving cat I've ever known.  I tell people he's on a mission to love as many people as he possibly can - he works really hard at it.  Since I'm often the only one here, he showers love on me every day.  He joins me in my morning meditation and his sweet spirit lifts mine. 

A few weeks ago he stopped grooming himself and began to look really scruffy.  At the same time he started peeing in places besides his cat box and drinking out of dishes soaking in the sink.  So I took him to the vet because I though he was sick.  The diagnosis?  He's old.  The vet said that sometimes when cats get old they get eccentric and want their potty boxes to be pristine before they use them, their water changed every day or more, and someone else (me) to groom them.  So...I am now the faithful servant of my sweet spirited companion.  He expects me to get to work the minute I get up.  He looks at me expectantly as I pour my first cup of coffee.  He is willing to put up with my having two cups before he gets insistent.  If I don't get to work right then, he just heaves a sigh (figuratively) and goes back to bed to wait for me to remember my duties.  I usually change his water and clean his potty box first.  Then I wipe him down with a "cat wipe" (did you know there were such things - I got them at Petsmart) and then brush him thoroughly.  As I write this he is sitting patiently at my feet waiting, so I have to go...

Pix

Pictures of my bouquets followed by a picture of Beverly and a friend whose name I do not know.  Beverly annoys me with how good she constantly looks.

Kristin in the playroom at Lynn's doctor's office.  Below - me and David.  I used to work with him many years ago and he turned up again.

Chuck is cutting limbs off the my tree in the backyard - the last storm tore it up pretty good.

I tied the left over balloons from my birthday party in the storage room.  They're still looking kind of good.  It's still a party!

Power Comes with Guidance

In my recovery program we are taught to pray for God's will and the power to carry it out (and pray for nothing else).  I do that every day, but it seems to me that I don't always get the power to carry it out.  Yesterday one of my meditation readings basically said that when we're guessing what God's will is, we don't always get the power to carry it out.  That may be because it isn't God's will.  Interesting.  Of course, this business of discerning God's will is very tricky.  Some of the world's greatest villains have said they were listening to the voice of God.  For sure, though, I can pretty much count on getting the power to carry something out if it's loving and respectful to both myself and others. 

365 Project

I really miss being in the habit of taking a picture every day.  That habit helped me look around me every day to find something worth taking a picture of.  I was ever so much aware of my surroundings.  Since I've been missing that habit, I've been telling myself that I can still take a picture when I see something worth it.  Once in  awhile I do, but mostly I don't.  So, I'm starting another 365 project today with the intention of seeing the interesting things I come across.  Probably I will take some boring, no good pictures but so what.

Rain

In Oklahoma when the drought ends, it's not with a gentle rain.  It started on Saturday with high winds, hail and power outages and continued through this week.  Right now there's incredible thunder and lightning although it doesn't seem like there's any high wind.  Many, many trees in my neighborhood and all over the city have bitten the dust.  The sound of chain saws has replaced the sound of birds.  One day we got almost 5 inches of rain in one day. Of course, with the rain, temperatures are lower which is wonderful.  Who would have thought that 96 degrees would feel cool!  Lots of drama with the weather this summer. 

Sometimes it seems to me that the drama us humans create on the planet (in my opinion, totally unnecessarily), is accompanied by dramatic weather.  It occurs to me almost every day that at my age, I'm not going to see the end of it.  All I can really accomplish is to increase the peace within myself and share that with whoever wants it.

Greed and Fear and Finance

I've been watching the stock market go nuts.  Since I don't invest in the stock market because I think it's just about guessing which way the sheep will run, I'm not personally affected.  I took a tiny bit of time to check in with CNN and Fox to see what they were saying about what was going on.  All I heard was the blame game and guesses as to why what was happening was happening.

I would love to see some psychologists make a study of what drives investors to buy or sell.  I'm guessing it's not about the logical, rational stuff the media thinks it is.  I'm guessing it's more about emotions like fear and character defects like greed.  When the market is going up, people buy stock (greed), and when it's going down, people panic and sell stock (which makes prices go down more).  What's goofy about it is that people who make money buy stock when prices are low and sell when they're going up.  That's the rational thing to do but since fear and greed seem to be the motivators...

Appreciation

A short, but typically Oklahoma thunderstorm came through just as my friend and I finished eating all we could at Golden Corral (I want to move in there so I can just keep eating).  Short, powerful wind bursts and little penny-sized hail, lots of rumbling thunder and bright lightening.  As we drove home, we saw trees, branches, a bus bench and various pieces of trash on the street.  At my house all that was blown down was a few tree limbs but my power was out.  So I sat on my front porch in my porch swing until my tail got numb.  Then I went and got an egg crate and sat on that while I watched it get dark and the solar lights come on in my yard and the neighbors' yards.  There was a breeze which, since I have a lot of windchimes hanging on my front porch, created music to go with the coolness.  Unfortunately I eventually had to go to bed in my very warm house but managed to eventually go to sleep until the power suddenly came on (does it ever come on slowly?) at 2:30 a.m.  I once again was grateful for electricity and went back to sleep without the icepack I went to sleep with.