A Beautiful Day For A Dog Walk

I went for a walk today.  With the dog.  Just me and the dog.  I understand that doesn't sound like much of an accomplishment but, it is one to me.  I'm proud.  I think it has been a year since I've done that.  I've experienced changes in my limitations that I've adapted to and but being alone anywhere in the world with said limitations is cause for acute awareness.  It is a beautiful day.  Maybe in the 50s or high 60s.  Clear blue sky.  Gorgeous.  A bit of breeze.  I miss being out in the sunshine.  I have missed walking Oscar but, he can still be tuggy and the instability was not a combo I was willing to take on.  So, this morning I became fed up with the overload of dog energy in the backyard in the form of barking that I just threw up my hands and said, ok, we're going.  I used his martingale collar which helps him with tugging but, I also put his backpack on him which we haven't used since he was 1, back in 2012.  I hoped, and it happened this way, that the unusual feeling of the backpack would be more puzzling to him than the confidence he'd have to pull away to smell things.  I started out from the house with 1 lb. in each side of the pack.  He really wouldn't abide that.  We got just a few houses away and I realized I would do more coaxing than walking so, we went back and I took the cans of beans out, leaving the backpack empty.  Upon this action, he was willing to walk.  Also, we walked in the street, which I usually don't do either.  If we are on the sidewalk, he tugs to smell things.  I know the pulling is a result of poor training but, that's where I'm at.

So, in gratitude for the courage to push my body and trust myself and my preparation, and for the peaceful quiet now that O is asleep, feeling fatigued but better than upon waking.

Have happy days!

Maybe inside the bell curve

Since my world these days is much quieter than it used to be, I have more space in my brain for thinking.  I have had the desire to write for several days, but not taken the effort to sit down and let myself actually do it.  Then, I began to wonder why I want to write.  Who is reading this stuff?  What does anybody care if I had to start taking magnesium again.  And it came to me while I was pureeing butternut squash for a pie that it is a craft.  A form of expression, like music and dance.  I have that creative, lets call it a gene, but  I don't know if that's anywhere near correct or not.  I have had the desire to express whatever is in me for as long as I can produce memories.  I have rocks which I colored with crayons when I was probably 5 or 6.  I have a ribbon I won at a local art show as a child.  Music was always all around me.  Always.  I can't remember ever going to the church we attended as a child and not singing in the choir with my parents and my brother.  I just do stuff, expressive stuff.  I guess the question now is what am I trying to express.  Well, isn't that the question of every life on this globe?  Today alone, there are probably 4 or 5 people in the homes of recently deceased loved ones who were also creative and expressive.  My money is on the fact that there are notebooks upon notebooks of writing.  Canvases stacked and paintbrushes all over.  Or guitars.  How many guitars does one person need, really?  If they were recorded for posterity's sake, we get to enjoy their gene too.  People with the gene do stuff because they are called to do it.  I am one of them.  I have no idea if anybody reads my words save one beloved aunt, one sibling, and one good friend.  Maybe they are the only 3 and maybe they even only do it occasionally.  But, in fact, I just write for me now.  It is the way I express that gene.  It is my outlet.  I don't really know how the quality of my "prose" measures against any real writer but, I do know this.  It flows naturally out of me as if it were carbon dioxide.    And it helps me to clear out something in my head akin to cobwebs, which is always feels nice.  Exactly like getting into a bed with clean sheets.

I sent some of my writing to an uncle who is not virtually connected to the world, hoping it would not be too depressing for him.  That last bit was specifically instructed by my mother.  I didn't sift through to find any depressing parts to omit.  It is what it is.  If some of it strikes him as sad, that's OK.  Let him express that feeling.  Why are we trying to protect other people from feeling stuff that's hard?  That's the only time we grow, when we burst through something that was difficult to get through.  Otherwise, we're surfing along in our life journey, and it's only in the stumbling that we get our scabby knees and scars of wisdom.

My plan to omit extraneous chemicals in the form of all those vitamins and supplements has worked.  Also, I have very minimal exposure time to audio during my day.  I am not feeling so foggy as I had been and during the last month I didn't have any back sliding into it.  I let myself listen to some audio book while I'm washing dishes only or while I'm falling asleep.  No other times.  I have not turned the morning news on for 3 weeks or more.  When I sit down to watch something recorded on TV, I watch it and do nothing else.  Then, I turn it off.  I really only spend my mornings alone.  Tim goes into work each day before 5am, I get up about 8 am.  I do household things as much as I can in that time, bathe, cook, at 11:30 or 12, I've got to eat again.  After lunch, I go nap.  Skipping naps is a mistake I have made more than once and I am determined to finally learn the lesson. Nap from 12-3pm  So, he comes home from his workday while I am napping and I wake up to him here, ready and waiting to share his day with me.  So, my afternoons and evenings, I am not alone.  Which is lovely.  But, the affect of omitting others voices from my home, no TV on in the background or music, does leave me feeling a bit lonelier in my mornings.  Maybe I'm still getting used to it.

No one could write a list of blessings longer than mine.  Truly, I believe that.  And, this journey and my scabby knees have shaped me into who I am, and she rocks, by the way.  I function, in the few hours that I am awake and out of my bed, a little bit within the normal section of the bell curve currently.  Now, if I were to decrease the sleep to what is within the bell curve for others, the house of cards would surely fall.  But, just having days like today, where there was nothing that I felt I suffered from, it feels like there may just be some magic around us.

Have happy days!

~M  

PS:  You know who you are; I used poor judgement in my actions last week and I will not make the mistake again.  I love you and the others.

Decisions, decisions

January 11, 2015

Some of you who know me well, will agree that I am quite decisive.  I rarely debate something in my head or with another person once I already have a plan of action I want to take.  Now, if I am without any plan, I will seek advice.  But, this decisiveness and call to immediate action has been with me for as long as I know.  Also, I rarely second guess myself.  If things went wrong, well, they went wrong and if I'm to blame then I apologize and try to correct what I can correct and move back into the present moment.

Recently, the decisiveness went wrong.  On Monday, I had such a completely clueless day that it frightened me.  I became convinced that I did not want to live in such a fog because I might indeed accidentally hurt myself, or burn my house down, or whatever.  In an effort at action in the face of "battle" I decided abruptly to stop taking everything I take which is not prescribed to me by my doctors.  That amounts to an entire hand full of vitamins and supplements.  I took only my meds.  Well, the fog has cleared in my head.  Although, I have no way to know if that is related to the fact.....

had to stop and am picking up later....

if it is related to the extra chemicals in the supplements being gone or if the extraneous stimulating sounds  are the key but, probably it is come combo of the two.  I am having many more clear headed days now than I had when I first began this entry.

Grateful for courage to decide.  And the ability to take it on the chin when the decision goes badly.