Trip Pix

First stop - Lame Deer, Montana, for the 13 Grandmothers' Gathering.  The grandmothers are shaman's (healers) from indigenious people all across the world - examples:  New Zealand, South America, Africa, Nepal....  Four days of prayer for the healing of the planet and the people.

Painting on a building in Lame Deer where the gathering was held.

Lunch at the Grandmother's gathering - under one of the arbors built for the occasion.

Leaving the gathering

 

Finishing up the painting.  The artist painted this all during the gathering on a piece of canvas he stretched between the poles of the arbor near the tipi where he camped.

Sunset on the way to Spokane

Our friend, Dick's, backyard in Spokane.  Beautiful, cool, green.

Backyard barbeque at Dick's.

Gorgeous scenery in Oregon - on the way to the Pacific.

Seattle where we stopped for Eric to buy a kilt.

First sight of the Pacific.

Bridge into Oregon.

Stuff I don't have time for anymore...

A long time ago there was a guy in the recovery world who was elderly and ill.  He had a lot of respect from most who knew him for telling the exact truth and for his knowledge of living in recovery.  He used to tell people who asked him for help that he was old and sick and didn't have time to try to help people who wanted to mess around.  He said he only had time to help people who were willing to work hard.

I remember thinking that he was wise to think about how he wanted to use the time he had left.  Now that I'm over 70 myself, I've begun to think about my time in a different way.  It's the little stuff that eats up time, so I'm looking first at that.  For example, I've never been big on perfection in my housekeeping or my personal appearance, so taking even less time on those items is not a stretch for me.  Also, being more organized about errands means less time and less gas. 

On a grander scale, I've decided I don't have time to keep up with politics.  Ever since I was old enough to vote, I've worked hard at understanding issues, being familiar with candidates and felt like I did a fairly good job of being a responsible voter.  Recently, however, the rhetoric is so wild, I can't imagine that anyone really knows what's going on.  I will keep my voter registration current, but I don't have time to run to the polls every time there's an election when it doesn't seem to matter how I vote.  I will still take part in the political process assuming I can find effective ways, but trying to educate myself is something I don't have time for since I don't think it matters.

A very long time ago, I decided to believe in and live by the principle taught me in my recovery program - that the best thing for me to do is do what's best for me - when I do what is best for me it will be best for everyone else even if they don't think so.  I've done my best with this but it's been hard because I was socialized to sacrifice for others - that's what a good woman does.  I wasn't very good at that either, but it was my guiding light even if I didn't do well at it.  So when I did what was best for myself and other people were angry and didn't approve, I felt bad and guilty and wanted to make them happy.  It never worked though.  Once they were mad, they just seemed to stay that way.  So I've decided I don't have time anymore to worry about it when people get mad at me.  I wish I could please all of the people all of the time - especially the people I love, but I believe that's not possible even if I put my best efforts into it.

I also have no time to go shopping.  I have everything I need and pretty much everything I want.  From time to time I want new underwear but I order that online.  If I go in a store I'm sure to see something I want but won't want in a few days after I buy it because I will have to find a place to put it and will have to dust it or take care of it in some other way.  I just don't have time.

I also don't read a lot of my email.  I've notified a lot of people/businesses not to send me email but they keep doing it anyway.  I also don't check my email or Facebook very often.  I just don't have time. 

I talk too much.  Always have.  My new realization is that people aren't really interested in my babbling.  If they were, they would probably ask me a question.  I think people are much more interested in having a listener.  So I've decided I don't have time for all the talking I used to do.  Of course, I also don't have time for some kinds of listening - it seems to me that we all complain a lot.  We have all kinds of opinions about how things ought to be and we seem to believe we're experts in how things ought to be.  In actuality, we have absolutely no idea how things ought to be.  Only God knows that.  So taking time to complain or listen to complaints is a complete waste of the time I have left on the planet.

Getting mad/irritated/pissed/or whatever is off my list of things I have time for.  When I experience any of those feelings it's because I want my own way (my ego).  It's useless to spend time nurturing my self-righteousness - it's just a sign that I'm making someone else responsible for my happiness.  Of course there may be times when someone is doing something or not doing something that actually adversely affects me and I will need to ask them for what I want.  If they don't want to, it will then be up to me to solve the problem myself.  I can always simply stay away from people who don't have my well-being in their hearts. 

I've been thinking a lot about what I've learned and how simple it all is when it's not cluttered up with my ego and wanting to be right and wanting to have what I want.  I don't have time for complications any more.  I heard someone say in a meeting where the topic was self-esteem that she had very low self-esteem but was well defended by her self-righteousness.  I believe most of the complications I create are caused by my self-righteousness.  I really don't have time for defending my self-esteem by being self-righteous.  My self-esteem is best served by living the best way I can - especially when time is short.

How to Forgive Someone When You're Still Mad

All those spiritual gurus tell us that forgiveness is the answer to everything. 

When I first began to hear this I was in my 20s.  It irritated me.  I thought that the idea was nice for highly evolved spiritual people but I knew I wasn't one of them so it didn't apply to me.  I had no desire to be a highly evolved spiritual person.  I wanted to love and be loved, have enough money to be able to buy what I needed and some of what I wanted, and to have my children be happy.

In my 30s I was deeply devoted to being angry about all the injustices in the world - those done to me and those done to anyone.  I was in fight mode.  Forgiveness was not of interest to me at all.  In fact, if you mentioned it, I exploded and sent you somewhere else.  I was shocked at the suffering in the world.  People seemed to be bent on being cruel to each other.  Sometimes people seemed to be cruel to me.  I had no idea what to do about any of it except be angry and complain incessantly.  My life had become very, very difficult and as time went on I just wanted someone to help me.

In my 40s I began to have a crack in my closed mind, but only because I had made myself so miserable with being furious all the time that I was almost willing to listen.  I was desperate enough to concede that being so angry had not made my life better in any way and that maybe I would be better off with another way of living.  Kind of against my will I had accepted a spiritual teacher.  She was kind and sweet which were the only reasons I could tolerate her at all.   She kept saying things that I thought meant she was telling me my miserable life was all my fault.  But what she was really telling me was that I had the power to change my life and just didn't realize it.  But then she brought up the forgiveness thing.  I thought I was surely lost because I was not going to be able to do that - not even to get out of the misery I was in.

She dished out cliches like "When you stay angry with someone, you give them free rent in your head."  And "Staying angry with someone is like taking poison and hoping the person you're mad at will die."  I had no idea what she was talking about.  What finally got my mind open a bit was when we talked about the very real fact that I had made a lot of mistakes in my life that hurt other people.  I had to concede that that was right.  I knew I was very, very imperfect and one of the people I was maddest at was myself.  She pointed out that I could take action to make those mistakes as right as I possibly could and then let myself off the hook - but for it to work, I had to let everyone else off the hook.  I still resisted.  I was willing to do my best to make my mistakes right, but I didn't see why I had to forgive anybody but myself.

Finally, she brought out the big guns.  We talked about specific incidences where I felt victimized and helpless.  We prayed about what I could have done had I had the information and help that was available to me now.  I was totally amazed!  There were all kinds of solutions that I hadn't been able to see through my anger.  With her help I began to see that my fury kept me from seeing the solutions that were actually within my power.  Little by little I saw that it was a delusion that I was helpless, and I realized that all that anger was really coming from fear because I thought I was helpless.

She pointed out that I had always had a God that was looking out for me and that always would look out for me - not by making my life easy but by presenting me with ways to learn how to live in the world in peace.  She said I was angry all the time because I had the delusion that by being angry, I was doing what I could to protect myself, but that was a delusion too.   Since I didn't have to protect myself in that way, that I could let go of my condemnation of the people I was angry at even though I still thought they were wrong, I was willling to forgive them and let it go.  Of course, my anger disappeared as I realized that I was not helpless in the world.  But I was able to forgive and still be angry for awhile.

I still get angry when someone mistreats me - in my opinion.  I still get angry about injustice.  The difference is that I no longer feel helpless.  Slowly over time I've begun to realize that those people are probably angry because they are afraid just like I was.  That new perspective lets me look for solutions that positive and unjudgmental.  Not, of course, that I'm always able to do it, but most of the time, with prayerful thought, I can get there.

Okay! I Really Mean It This Time

For most of my life I was skinny except for a tiny while in my teens when I was addicted to grape pop and barbequed potato chips.  Until around 1957 when those came out I had never seen such things and I fell in love at once.  Of course, I soon was a lot rounder than the bony thing I had been before.  When I was 18 I started smoking and continued until I was 43.  By that time I was smoking five packs a day which is really hard.  I had to smoke in the shower, smoke a couple of times in the middle of the night.  It would be impossible now to smoke five packs a day and do anything else since there's no smoking almost everywhere.  Back then you could stilll smoke in college classes, in the movies, and on airplanes.  The haze of tobacco smoke was everywhere where I worked.  But I went to the doctor for a check up and he said that my heart was stopping for periods of time, probably due to my smoking, and that if I didn't quit in the next 30 days he was going to put me in the hospital where I would have to quit.  So I went to one of those "stop smoking classes" and quit.  It was hell.  I compensated by eating and promptly gained 60 pounds.

At first I was kind of happy about having curves for the first time in my life and I thought it was kind of funny that parts of me jiggled when I walked.  But soon I didn't like how I looked and went to Weight Watchers.  I learned what foods had how many calories in them and how to eat.  After a fierce battle with myself I lost almost all of the weight and kept it off for a couple of years.  Then I got a sit down job with a lot of stress and snacks in the office.  I promptly gained the weight back and have been fighting with it ever since. 

Now I'm back to square one.  I have high blood pressure and have had for several years.  I've managed to talk my doctor out of putting me on high blood pressure medications by promising to lose weight.  But recently I've been having dizzy spells and had to go to a new doctor who says he's not waiting for me to lose weight.  So I'm on blood pressure medication which also makes me dizzy.  So I really mean it this time - I went to Weight Watchers and am losing a little weight slowly.  I hate counting "points" so I'm eating a low carb diet (which includes regular exceptions).  I've lost about 5 pound in a month and a half.  I've got 25 more to go.  I really do mean it this time.

Pix - June was a busy month for celebrations

 Thien's teddy bears being cared for by in-laws during the honeymood.  Well taken care of.

Slide from Bec's graduation party.  Loved the slides.

Cisco keeping me company during my morning meditation.

First bouquest from the Farmer's Market

Pix - 3 above from Bec's graduation party.

Tammy's decorations for my birthday.

Eric's reunion with Cisco.

Remains of the birthday present wrapping.

Liz and Fred at the graduation party.

Girls at the graduation party.

Tammy wrapping Kristin's birthday present.

Kristin unwrapping her present.

Say It Now!

I've had several deaths of people close to me, and recently I've been to several funerals.  You would think that the person who died was the most wonderful person ever put on the earth from the things people say.  They usually throw in some not so good stuff for contrast but it's never very much.  It always occurs to me that it's a shame we don't say this stuff to people while they're alive.

 I was going to write a letter to the person I called my spiritual mother telling her how much she meant to me.  However, she died before I got around to it.  Not a good feeling.  So now I think it would be wonderful if we wrote those letters as soon as we think of it.  For one thing, I never been close to anybody who didn't suffer at least a little from feeling "not good enough."  My letter might be just the thing to make their whole world a good bit better.

Secrets

As I talk to people in recovery, I've learned that the newer they are in recovery, the more trouble they have revealing who they really are.  They often believe that the secrets they're holding on to are worse than anyone else's and that if anyone ever knew, they would be shunned by the world.  I think the word for this is shame because when they finally get around to telling somebody so that they don't have to carry the weight of those secrets around, they find that a lot of them are exactly the same as a lot of people's secrets and just evidence that they are imperfect humans.  

Of course, there are other secrets they have that involve hurting other people and violating their own values.  But that's guilt.  The only remedy for that is to do whatever they can to right the wrong.  A simple apology is not enough.  Many people have to go to extreme lengths to right the wrong.  I knew a guy who paid back money he owed and it took him over twenty years to get it done.  Another man served time in prison for a crime he confessed to after he got into recovery. 

In either case, when we tell the truth about ourselves to ourselves, to God and to another person and do everything we can to right any wrongs we've done, we are free.  Nothing feels like that freedom - to be who we are.  The saddest thing in the world is those that stay stuck in their shame because of mistakes they've made that cause them to greatly fear being judged, when the mistakes are just those of a normal human being.  The only way we can find that out, though, is to tell the truth.

Birthdays

In my family growing up we didn't celebrate birthdays.  The only time I remember having birthday cake and presents was when I was 16 and my Aunt Gladys was visiting.  She insisted on cake and presents and she made a "sweet 16" thing to hang on my wall.  It had 16 sugar cubes tied with ribbons and I was thrilled with it.  Since then, I've made sure that I celebrated my birthday whether anyone else remembered it or not.  This year was especially nice since my friend who lives with me, postponed a trip to fill the living room with balloons and take me to dinner.  Then another friend came to visit and took me to lunch, a movie and dinner.  I'm celebrated out!  Today is my recovery anniversary - 29 years.  I am so grateful to be alive and to be in recovery and to have wonderful family and friends who wished me well this year.

Ceremonies and Rituals

I'm now a great believer in ceremonies and rituals.  I design and carry one out nearly every day.  That probably sounds excessive but it works like a witchy charm for me.  I learned about this as part of my recovery.  Most years I attend a women's retreat for women in recovery.  There are many rituals as part of the retreat but the big, important one is on Saturday night.  There's a long guided meditation followed by a ritual and ceremonious burning of a piece of paper on which we've written something we want to let go of.  We are told that when this particular thing comes to mind, remember that we let go of it and gave it to God.  This ceremony has been very effective in helping me let go of things that I was harming myself by holding on to.  Examples:  Resentments, fears, guilt, people who have died, people who are no longer in our lives for various reasons. 

The thing that sticks out in my mind is that rituals and ceremonies imbed in my memory what I've decided.  I suspect that our brains (or at least my brain) is hard wired to use ceremonies and rituals to help us remember and to give energy to our decisions that may be challenging to carry out.  Here's an example of a "generic" ritual I might use to support a decision/change I want to make in my life:  I light a scented candle and put on music that supports me.  I write out my decision in the form of a prayer.  If there's someone or something I want to say goodbye to, I write a goodbye letter.  I ask for guidance and power to carry out my decision and the change.  Somehow these little rituals continue to help me remember and carry out decisions.

Victims

I can't remember exactly what brought this up again, but I read something that talked about the "drama triangle."  That's something a famous psychologist (whose name I can't remember) came up with in the 60s.  I can't draw a triangle on this I will have to describe it:  It's an upside down triangle with the one point at the bottom.  At the top points are "perpetrator" and "rescuer."  At the bottom point is the "victim."  According to psychological wisdom, most of us play these roles in rotation in our relationships and in our thinking.  A great many of us see ourselves as victims most of the time.  If you listen to people talking - any place - restaurants, in lines, in church - wherever - they're mostly complaining and if you're complaining, you are playing the role of a victim.  So sorry; there's no escape from that.  Think about it -  you've cast somebody or something in the role of perpetrator and you're looking for a rescuer.  The reason the perpetrator and rescuer are at the top of the triangle is because people who primarily play those roles see themselves as a cut above everybody else.  The perpetrator would not tell you that he/she was a perpetrator.  He/she would say that he/she was a victim, and the mean stuff he/she did to other people was revenge for how they victimized him/her.  They think those people just got what they deserved. 

I've been interested in these roles for many, many years.  I first was introduced to them when I was in therapy and was immediately horrified to realize I was stuck in that triangle with no idea how to get out.  I asked my therapist how to get out and he said all I needed to do was stop playing those roles.  Easier said than done.  Since then as I've worked with other people who were trying to grow spiritually and solve their problems, I've noticed that everyone I've worked with saw themselves as victims in one way or another.  The trouble with that is that if I'm a victim, I'm helpless and hopeless, because my problems are all caused by someone or something else.  I'm completely blind to the role I play in the situation and to all the myriad possibilities for solving the problem without anyone else having to do anything different.  It's extraordinarily hard to break out of those roles and it is a whole lot harder to convince someone else to see the truth - even when they've asked you for help. 

The payoff for stepping out of those roles is to be free of fear, guilt, anger, resentment and to see yourself as a capable, good person able to navigate this often difficult world and its difficult people with peace and occasional joy.

Dreams

I have some of the most amazing dreams.  Some of them are so amazing I just have to record them.  This time I dreamed that I was married to one of my ex-husbands (again) and we decided to have more children.  Now mind you, I was 70 years old in my dream just like I am now.  So he was the one who got pregnant.  I told all my friends that I knew it was odd for people to have more children at our age, never even thinking that it was odd that he was the one that was pregnant.  By the way, we had twins.

Smartest Person in the Room

There are a lot of us humans that think we are the smartest person in the room wherever we go.  It may be an illusion or it may be the truth.  The thing is that thinking that is a huge hazard!  What happens is that we begin to think everyone else is stupid and then the way we interact with them is condescending.  That does NOT make us popular.

I know a lot about this problem since I was told over and over as a kid that my best trait was that I was smart.  Somehow I translated that to mean that I was smarter than everybody else.  I was wrong about that, for sure.  Plus I learned that people are at different levels of smartness, but everybody knows and understands stuff that other people don't.  I've also learned to be patient with the other smartest people in the room who are shocked to find out that I don't know as much as they do.

Don't Believe Everything You Hear

One of the things that really bothers me as I get older is how much stuff people believe that I'm fairly sure is not true.  This is especially true in politics - if my side says something bad about the other side, it must be true, right?  Not really.  However, the number of things that are not true that many, many people believe range far beyond politics.  Some things become "common knowledge."  People say, "Everybody knows that!" 

Since I have two adult children in my life that are cognitively disabled (used to be called mental retardation but it was changed because "retard" became such a bad word that was used to hurt people), I've heard a bunch of stuff that's supposedly "common knowledge."  For example, there are a lot of people in the medical profession and even people who work in the field who believe that people who are cognitively disabled don't feel physical pain like the rest of us.  I don't know about other people, but my adult children feel pain just like anyone else and have suffered a lot at the hands of people who believed they didn't need pain medication.  I've heard a lot of other very bad stuff too that I'm not going to repeat.  Most of it is designed to make people afraid of people with disabilities.

I think the root of these beliefs came from a belief system that was common in the first half of the 20th century.  When I was in college, some class I was in had a book that mentioned "eugenics."  When I read about it, I thought, "Boy those people sure were stupid to believe that stuff.  Glad no one believes that now."  Basically, eugenics was a belief and a movement that people could be bred like animals - and by doing so "defective people" could be eliminated.   The list of defective people went on and on - people (children) with disabilties especially those with cognitive disabilities, people with mental illness, Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants from Ireland, Italy, etc.; people who were convicted of a crime, alcoholics and addicts, poor people.  How the movement functioned to eliminate these people from the population was to sterilize both men and women.  The media worked to educate the public to report and/or capture children and adults and turn them in to be locked up and sterilized. 

Good grief!  How could this have happened in the 20th Century?  I have no idea.  In fact, Oklahoma still had a sterilization program for Native American women in the 1960s.  These practices are not so far away in time.  I would have thought that this stuff would have to be carried out on the fringes of society but the Rockefeller Foundation funded a lot of it, Winston Churchill was a proponent.  Also, Margaret Sanger and Theodore Roosevelt were proponents in the United States.  Oklahoma was the 30th state to pass a law mandating compulsory sterilization and institutionalization for "undesirables."  Sterilizations were carried out at the "Institution for the Feebleminded" in Enid, Oklahoma (a facility that still exists) and at the McAlester State Prison (also still in existence).  According to statistics kept by the federal Indian Health Care system, in the 1970s there were more sterilizations of Native American women than there were births at the Claremore Indian Hospital.

It's not a surprise that Hitler in Nazi Germany took up the crusade - he loved eugenics.  Of course, that led to the rounding up of Jews AND people with disabilities, gypsies, people in prisons, etc. and getting rid of them in gas chambers.  He was "purifying the Aryan race."  A lot of people in the rest of the world talk about this as a horrible, evil thing that Hitler did and how he must have been both evil and crazy and how awful it was that the people of Germany went along with it.  The thing is, right here in the United States of America we did something similar for half a century.  Odd how since World War II no one even mentions the eugenics movement.   However, I can see every day by how people talk about people with disabilities and minorities that there are still a lot of people who regard these groups as "defective."  It isn't that far a jump to start allowing people to die without medical treatment,etc.

The conclusion I reach is that I'm not believing the latest "scientific" research or philosophy, no matter how famous and credible it's proponents.  I'm taking everything with a grain of salt. 

Wedding Pix

Rehearsal Dinner

Vietnamese tradition - the groom's family gives the bride's family a pig.  Here it is - ready to be eaten!

Dad and groom

Rebecca, groom's sister, bride's mom and sister plus groom's grandad and wife in the background.

Bride's sister and boyfriend with bride's mom in the background taking a picture.

Rebecca and Jeremy

Groom, bride's mom and bride.

Groom's brother and date

Groom's brother looking sad because it's sparkling cider and not champagne

Pig after dinner.

Lynn, Uncle Sam and Anita waiting for the ceremony.  Uncle Mike looking at the door waiting for the wedding party to come out.

And here they come - Aaron, best man, Steve, Liz (groom's mom) escorting the groom.

Bridesmaids looking for the bride

Groom and chaplain waiting for the bride.

And the bride made it!

Moms

 

Jeremy and Bec

Bride and groom eating the fabuloous food.

And a good time was had by everyone!!!

Pix

First picture - playground at the park nearest my house.  If you're older than six you can't get on this playground equipment.  Bummer.
Above - picture of the podium and stage at the Springtime in the Ozarks conference.  Very dramatic and suited for the dramatic story that followed.

Along the street in Eureka.

View from the balcony outside our room in Eureka.

My friend Cynthia's back yard of her office.  The pigeons are always happy there because they are so liberally fed.

I took this picture out the window of my car and it appears I was holding the camera crooked.  But it's still a terrific looking tree!

My friend, Phyllis, had a coupon for this Jamaican restaurant.

My hydrangea bush is blooming.

Stew with ground chicken.  Never made this stew with ground chicken before, but it's pretty good.

Anniversaries

April, May and June of each year are full of anniversaries of some of the worst tragedies I've experienced.  Some years I do better than others with those times.  I've worked through the feelings, done the grief work and still sometimes my body remembers anyway.  This has been one of those years for remembering things I don't usually have occasion to think about. 

In April of 1976 my grandmother and mother were killed in a tornado.  For some reason, this year the memories that came to me were of how my youngest son and daughter, who are very severely disabled, reacted to being left with strangers while we went to my dad after the tornado.  Both of them came to me through the foster care system and never really left.  I knew that when they arrived at my house.  The placement was supposed to be temporary but due to their disabilities, I knew they weren't going anywhere.  By the time of the tornado, they had been with me most of their lives.  My daughter stayed with friends and my son had to go to Children's Medical Center.  Both of them were unbelievabley difficult to care for so we were lucky to have had any options for them.  Both of them were about four years old at the time.

While we were gone, one of our friends who also had a child with severe disabilities, called to tell us that our daughter had laid down in her bed with her eyes closed and would not respond, not even to eat.  She said that she had been that way for three days and thought we should come back.  So my husband jumped in the car and went back.  When he got there, he just picked her up.  She immediately opened her eyes.  He fed her and held her and when she was back to herself, he returned to my dad's.  Apparently, she did fine after that.  She just needed the reassurance that we had not left her forever.

When we returned from being with my dad, I picked our son up from Children's Medical Center.  He was very quiet on the way home.  I carried him into the house and set him down on the kitchen floor just inside the back door.  He immediately lay down on the floor and began to cry softly.  He just lay there for almost an hour, crying softly - I think with relief because he was finally home.  He too probably thought he had been deserted forever.

Both of these two are now 40 years old and I am always aware of my responsibility for them.  for the past 20 years they have lived with roommates in homes in the community with 24 hour staff assistance.  Their disabilities make them vulnerable in the world and the only consistent person they have in their lives to look out for their safely and well being is me.  Sometimes that responsibility is heavy and I would rather skip some of the things that need to be done.  But I always remember that my daughter tried to die when she thought we had deserted her and my son could not stop crying with relief for an hour after he came home.

Rules

It occurred to me the other day that I should write a book called, "Rules I'm Never Going to Follow Again."  At age 70 I'm pretty sure I'm done with a lot of them.  Of course, I'm still going to stop at stoplights, use my turn signal (follow traffic laws).  I'm still going to follow most of the laws of courtesy - basically they're just about caring about other people - not a bad thing at all.  However  I no longer think I have to wear make up when going out in public.  I no longer comb my hair more than once a day.  I don't have summer and winter clothes - I wear the same stuff year round.  I buy very comfortable clothes so that they can double as pajamas.  (I know.  That's really terrible.  That means I sometimes am too lazy to put on pajamas.  OMG!)  I don't like traditional breakfast foods so I often eat spagetti, pizza, salad, hamburgers, hot dogs and other lunch type stuff for breakfast.  What's the big deal?  My sleeping patterns have been messed up for years so I sleep at odd times.  Whatever. 

I hate business meetings so I never go to them anymore.  I've been boycotting funerals unless I think they're going to be the kind I like where they just talk about the person or I need to be there for support for the person's family.  Otherwise I generally don't like funerals so I don't go.  On the other hand I go to every wedding I'm invited to - I might even start crashing them.  They're usually fun.  I feel that way even though I've decided that no one should get married unles they're prepared to accept the other person exactly as they are. 

Well, that's just a few of the rules I'm not following anymore.  When the book is published, I'll post where it can be purchased.