Flying Monkeys and the "F" Word

Denial is often a wonderful way to keep from facing the distasteful facts of life, and it can often also allow whatever one is trying to avoid to grow into something that can no longer be ignored.  Sort of like ignoring a small drip from a pipe until your basement is flooded.  It may be easy to do for a while but eventually you have to start bailing out the water.

That is what the past fifteen years have been like for me.  In 1997 I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.  There were a ton of reasons I didn’t like the diagnosis.  First of all, the medical community at that time seemed to use the syndrome as a place to put things with which they did not want to deal.  Hey, neither did I.  Especially because of the second reason I didn’t like the diagnosis.  Fibromyalgia is something that has to be managed.  You can’t just take a pill for two weeks and it goes away.  Surgery doesn’t remove it or fix it.  It just hangs around like a crazy relative that decides to move in next door.

The biggest reason I didn’t like it, though, was that no matter what was happening to me it was attributed to the fibromyalgia.  Urinary tract infections, whole body aches, irritable bowel, exhaustion, poor sleep, depression, itching, and the list goes on and on and on.  I started to worry that something would start to happen in my body that wasn’t related to the fibromyalgia but it would be disregarded and put under the fibromyalgia category until it was too late.

However, now it is because of that second reason I have to put on my big girl panties and surrender to the diagnosis but not to the illness.  I need to really dedicate myself to managing it.  I don’t want to but I have to.  I am not one to manage.  I tend to let things happen.  I take pride in doing a good job, but I am one on whom the details often get lost.  It is a struggle for me to manage car maintenance and personal finances, much less a medical condition that requires that I listen to my body.  One of the reasons I don’t do diets well is all that counting of points or calories or grams or servings or whatever makes me anxious and I end up focusing too much on the food.  I am fairly mindless in my approach to life although I have been making attempts over the past few years to be more mindful.

Why am I now ready to surrender and face the facts about this?  Flying monkeys.  Yes, those minions of the Wicked Witch of the West that swoop down on unsuspecting scarecrows, pummel them to the ground and tear the stuffing out, spreading it hither and yon.  Those damn monkeys have become a regular part of my daily life and they really need to go.  I am still trying to figure out why they appear.  I had a ton of tests done in hopes that there was something wrong that could be fixed, but no.  Again, it is attributed to the fibromyalgia and most likely the related issue of adrenal fatigue. 

I know all the reasons behind why this is happening in my body.  It probably all originates from when I had third degree burns from a very hot cup of coffee I managed to pour on myself at the age of 15 months.  Some of the research on fibromyalgia says that the body does not handle pain messages well.  My neural pathways related to pain were probably screwed up when the accident happened.  Other life stressors probably haven’t helped either. 

Fortunately, over the past fifteen years there has been enough research done on the syndrome to gie it more credibility and I now feel more confident about it.  It no longer seems to be a catch all.  New information is coming out about it all the time.  I also have a doctor who knows what to do and she also manages the syndrome for herself.   I trust her.

I have just completed the first step - admitting that I have a problem.  It is not my fault, but it is my responsibility to do those things that help my body.  I need to rest when it tells me it wants to rest.  I need to exercise when I don’t want to.  And I need to eat better.  Rumor has it that sugar and white flour (why does this keep coming up?) are fuel to the fire and need to be cut out.  I also need to continue to follow through with massage and acupuncture treatments.  I can’t overdo or under do.  Moderation is a word that does not normally describe my life style.  However, it needs to.    Or else I will continue to be fighting off flying monkeys or wondering who has made a voodoo doll of my body and is poking it with needles. 

I didn’t want to share this journey.  However, I realize it is a big part of my life, but I won’t let it define me.  As I said above, I will surrender to the diagnosis, but not to the illness.  

Linda's Summer Slaw (sugar free)

1 medium savoy cabbage chopped
1 box of golden raisins (more or less if you prefer)

Dressing made in food processor:

1/2 cup of sour cream
1 cup of lite mayonnaise
1 tbsp plus a few drops of lime juice
3 tbsps of dijon mustard
pepper to taste

Mix it all up and let it chill!!

Making Transitions the Best Way I Can

I need to make some changes at work due to grant limitations and new projects.  In order to have time to do so I have to tell at least five people whom I have been counseling long term that they only have three more visits with me.  Not all of them know this yet and the ones that do are choosing to ration out those three visits in ways that mean I have no idea when we will actually be finished.  However, I hope to work with them in ways that help them know that they are strong women with plenty of support around them.
In order to make the transition a little easier for them I have spent the last few days making them each a painted rock that reminds them of something that came out of our visits together.  I had so much fun doing this that I plan to go to the river later today and find more rocks.

This first set of rocks was courtesy of my friend, Joyce, in Maine.  Years ago her children had gathered these rocks at the seashore and left them on a large boulder in the side yard of Joyce and Roland's mountain home.  Joyce graciously allowed me to pick as many as I wanted.  I thought it would be easy but thanks to a swarm of mosquitoes, I had to make a blood sacrifice in order to take these away.

After washing and drying them I covered them with Martha Stewart acrylic paint from Michaels.  I love the colors.  The red took two extra coats but the blue and green only required two.  This took me two days.

Yesterday morning I signed the bottom in order to have them ready for painting today.

I used Craft Smart paint pens, but mostly used Pigma brush pens.  The brush pens are perfect for fine lines and Sumi-E type strokes.  I think the bamboo one turned out quite well.  Next time I will use a darker background for the photos.  It was also hard not to get the glare from the camera.

You may not be able to tell but there is cabin at the bottom of the mountain and a dock and boat on the lake.  

Unfortunately, the Mod Podge coating did smear things up a little.  I may have been too eager.  But after a most excellent cello practice I found I could go back and touch them up with the paint pens and they look pretty good.  I have a couple of favorites and one that is not so much but I won't point them out.  I will let you decide which ones you like.  I hope the women I was thinking about while I made them like them, too.

Oh, and, of course, Boo helped by just being there.  She is my therapist.

Finding What's Missing

I just got back from spending a couple of nights and a full day in Maine.  I s.Spent most of my time sitting on the glider rocker on my friend’s sun porch getting my feet licked by Macie, one of the two dogs that provide companionship to Joyce and Roland.  Some people like to sit on the beach and stare at the ocean.  I like to sit on a chair and gaze at the mountains.  I was well rewarded with a beautiful sunset last night.  I also like to walk in the woods, but the mosquitoes in Maine are well known for being blood sucking denizens and the couple of times I ventured a few feet away from the house I ended up flailing my arms wildly in the air trying to keep them away.  We took the dogs down to the lake for a quick dip, but before I was able to take my sandals off and get in the water, one of those freakishly persistent insects had flown up my nose.  It was best to stay indoors. 

This past week was pretty hectic.  Besides the usual stressors of working with domestic violence and sexual assault survivors and their advocates, things had gone awry on a conference I am planning.  Thanks to team work it is going to work out, but for a few days I was feeling a little pressure.  At times like that I tend to think that there is something missing in my life and try to fill whatever that space is with whatever is available.  Mostly food.  Used to be beer, wine, cigarettes or unhealthy relationships.  This week, however, I stayed more present with my feelings and was able to keep from diving into a pint of Chocolate Therapy ice cream. 

I thought about how I had managed that while I was gazing at the mountain.  I realized that when I think there is something missing in my life, what’s missing is me.    Stress puts me in the past, the future, but rarely in the moment.  I was more in the moment this week.  I stayed the course through my feelings.  I didn’t push it all down with food. 

Sometimes I talk about the committee in my head and the difficulty I have in making decisions.  One of the committee members is all about the quick fix.  Another likes to structure me within an inch of my life so that I can’t mess up.  Then there is the committee member who doesn’t play well with the others and prefers to run rampant until things get too scary and then she defers to her best friend, the one who likes the quick fix.  There is another who resists structure and prefers to go with the flow.  Fortunately, I also have a wise inner woman who manages to get them all to compromise or allows them to take turns in appropriate ways.  None of these committee members are the real me.  That’s a good thing.  But they all exist and if I am not present, the wise woman has a harder time managing the malcontents.  That is when I feel like something is missing.  When I feel like that it is an alarm letting me know that the wise woman is about ready to let the wild things run amok because she can’t do it all herself.  Glad I was there to help her this week.  I think it also helps that I have friends who are available to keep me grounded. 

Some Thoughts on the World

I have not been able to stop thinking about a post a friend of mine put on Facebook yesterday. 

“When the Obama 2012 sign appeared on our street, so too did the Confederate flag in short order.”

This is just two miles down the road from me, here in New Hampshire.

I used to say that the racism here was subtle as opposed to the in your face racism of the south where I lived for 26 years.  However, it seems that the hateful rhetoric of the past four years has encouraged people to use their freedom of speech in threatening ways.  As a liberal pacifist, the last time I felt threatened was right after the start of the Iraqi war when everyone but a few were believing Bush’s claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  My values were considered traitorous at that time.  There were actually a couple of times when people tried to run me off the road and the only reason I could ascertain was that they didn’t like my bumper sticker that simply said “Peace.”

I feel more threatened now.  The far right wing has become more verbal, engages in less critical thinking, and has guns.  There are certainly many conservatives with whom I could engage in open discourse who have not been spoon fed their politics by FOX news and the Tea Party.  I think that we could agree that we are of different opinions and would be respectful of each other’s viewpoint.  However, when I see Confederate flags and hear of calls to do unspeakable things to our President, and see bumper stickers and comments on news items (i.e. the death of Andy Griffith) that are spewing hatred I retreat further to the left.  When did this minority of the far right become so loud? 

I was born a liberal.  How do I know I was born this way and not indoctrinated?    I remember early on questioning the teachings of the Catholic church I attended from first to fourth grade. Also, my parents did not discuss politics so there was little chance to be indoctrinated. My sister and I were dismayed to find out many years later that our father voted for Richard Nixon.  I think I understand his decision, though.  My father was a Korean war vet who firmly believed in the cause of fighting against communism even though a lot of his thinking would have fallen into the ideals of socialism.  Like many people of his generation, he did not grasp the difference between the two.  If he was alive today, I hope he would do everything he could to understand Obamacare so that he could defend it and would not be hindered by the socialist label that so many conservatives have tagged onto it in order to raise fear. 

That is where the dividing line falls for me.  Not between conservatives and liberals, but between people who choose to carefully study the issues and make their decisions based on fact rather than the sound bites of FOX news and the color of a person’s skin, the origin of one’s name or their immigration status, and whether or not one has a vagina or a penis. 

If you are willing to stop yelling at me with your rhetoric, I am glad to listen.  Those of you who prefer to wave your Confederate flags and hide behind your guns – well, you make me fear for this country.   It doesn’t matter, though, because you probably aren’t reading this. 

In the end, whenever I am feeling discouraged, I remember what Anne Frank wrote in her diary shortly before being found by the Nazis:

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death."

Summer Has Arrived!

Summer arrived this past week and it was hot.  It was almost 100 degrees for two days and in the 90s on the third.  I complained a lot!  It only lasted 3 1/2 days but I was miserable.  The cold front came through yesterday and it is now in the low 80s with blue skies.  I decided  to use the oven for a bit.  Just long enough to roast some sweet potatoes for a salad.  Here is what I did:

I peeled and cubed 3 large sweet potatoes and tossed with olive oil and chopped rosemary.  I roasted them at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, tossing halfway through.
While the roasting was going on I cooked one cup of lentils in two cups of water.  They were just about done at the same time as the potatoes.

While those cooled I sauteed a lot of garlic, some scallions (in lieu of onions), and a chopped large organic red bell pepper in the last tablespoon of garlic flavored olive oil that I had bought in New Mexico.  I am going to miss that oil.  I tore up three large leaves of kale and put those into the sauteed veggies.  I tore up the leaves small enough so that they would wilt but still have some crunch.  Most recipes call for spinach, but I went with what I had.

I tossed that all in with the potatoes and lentils and put in the fridge to cool while I made the dressing.

Dressing:  2 tablespoons of maple syrup, 1 tsp of dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar *, and 2 tsps of lemon juice.  Salt and pepper to taste.

I mixed it all together with the veggies and took a taste.  Even slightly warm it was very good.  I couldn't wait until it was cold to taste it and I wasn't disappointed.  It can be served warm or cold.

* If you are ever in Keene, NH, stop in Your Kitchen Store.  The store has the best balsamic vinegar I have ever tasted.  You can buy a bottle and then return and have it re-filled.  If you aren't in Keene very often I would suggest buying a large bottle.  It is very good.

http://www.yourkitchenstore.com/

Looking Up My Back Door

I will be cursing at my mother for the next two days.  I will be suffering great indignities in response to my mother’s fears.  Yes, in keeping with my tradition of telling everyone my business, I am letting ya’all know that tomorrow I will be refraining from all solid food and drinking a nasty concoction that will require that I stay close to my own bathroom so that on Monday perfect strangers will be allowed to enter a place just north of that which cannot be named in Michigan.

Why do I blame my mother? I understand that I am being irrational.  It has less to do with blame than it has to do with being reminded of why she died.  If she had been willing to go through this same indignity she may still be here.  She may have been able to take that boat to Paris with my sister.  My mother feared, yes, feared, colonoscopies.   In 2006 she had a colonoscopy for which she had not prepared correctly due to her revulsion of the preparatory cocktail.  Combine that with the fact that her blood pressure skyrocketed during the procedure and they weren’t able to travel to the far reaches of her intestinal galaxy, they failed to find what eventually killed her. 

When she started experiencing abdominal pain, she refused another colonoscopy, stating that she had one the previous year (but we know how that went) and that she refused to drink the Go-Lytely (isn’t that the most ridiculous name for something that works like industrial strength Drano?).  My head still shakes at this.  Yes, I have issues.

My mother is also the same woman who let an ulcer on her leg go untreated for a year because she knew that it meant she had Type II diabetes and she didn’t want to deal with it.  I miss her, I really do.  I just wish she was here so I didn’t have to miss her.  Because of her refusal to get things looked after I don’t have a mother.  I feel jealous when I hear someone talking about their feisty 80 year old mother.  I miss the Sunday afternoon phone calls.  I wish she was here so I could fuss her out!

So, yes, I may sound like a hypochondriac at times, but having had four important people in my life die of four different forms of cancer in the past seven years, I get a little cautious about symptoms.  Three out of the four were women and they all died before the age of 70.  At 56 years old, that just seems a little too close to me.  Death doesn’t scare me.  I see that as a great adventure.  What I don’t want is cancer or any other condition that incapacitates, causes great pain, or reduces my ability to think, get to the bathroom, or take care of myself.  I don’t want my body pumped full of chemicals to kill something that shouldn’t be there and possibility destroy things that should be. 

If drinking a couple of quarts of nastiness and spending a lot of time reading on the toilet means that I can avoid all that, then I say pour me another and get me a another issue of People magazine (I think the bathroom is the perfect place for reading trash).  On Monday, I will be okay.  I like the drugs they use and I have an excuse to sleep for a good portion of the day. 

In lieu of photos of the event, I offer this video and song in honor of the occasion.

Thank you, Patricia Raymond and B.J. Liederman!!