Pleasant

Did I mention I love, love, love this time of the year with the fall leaves and blue skies?

Yesterday after a long awkward church services (worship team members with more personal issues, that awkward with Pam still ongoing and time snafus) Jim and I decided to drive up to visit Andy at his university.

He very very rarely comes home on the weekends and I get that. He's cutting the umbilical cord with the soft nest that is home.

On the way there we made a Costco run and I picked up enough of his favorite foods to hold him quite some time along with a few things for Christmas and Halloween.

We spent the afternoon walking around the campus among the leaves softly floating to the ground like orange, red and gold confetti. It was so lowkey and relaxing, the perfect fall day.




Jim and Andy on the campus.

I am feeling most content right now, all is right with the world. I'm on my way to the mountains today, I'm going to do a little shopping at the Mennonite store plus the Plow & Hearth outlet, visit friends and take in the magnificent colors of another beautiful fall day in the Piedmont.

Hope

We finally have an answer of sorts on Jim's parathyroid glands. The only expert on that gland in the world has agreed to look at Jim's records and possibly take him for surgery. Here's the kicker, the doctor practices in sunny Florida! South Florida! Sooo.. if Jim has to have surgery this winter we'll be spending a week or so in sunny south Florida. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. I need another vacation.

A Delicate Dance

Jim is on the warpath but it's an awkward warpath. On Sunday night as we sat around in the living room like overstuffed gluttons from our meal at the local 5 star restaurant I noticed Laura looked very nervous. She kept pacing the living room and staring out of the windows. As Jim and I groaned, moaned and talked about that stupendous meal we'd just eaten Laura ran to the door to open it and her boyfriend came in, smiled uneasily at us and away they went upstairs to Laura's room.

When Laura came down ten minutes later to get sodas for them Jim asked her what was the bf doing here. Laura tried to throw me under the bus by saying, "Mom knew he was coming over." Which is only sort of true. What she told me is that a) he's in town and b) he was wanted to come over for an hour or so. He ended up staying about five hours in total.

Of all the guys Laura had dated Jim really dislikes this one. Laura has gone way out of her way to prevent any interaction between him and us and Jim doesn't like it much. I think this is because this relationship is more serious than any of the other ones she's been involved in and this guy is a couple of years older than her. Whatever it is Jim does not like it one bit but instead of saying something on Monday night while the young man is here Jim stews and frets over it and calls me up on Monday to tell me that the new rule is that they cannot go up to Laura's bedroom for hours on end.

He calls me up and rants that he's afraid Laura will end up pregnant, which puts me in a quandary because I took her to my gyno last month when she told me that she thought this boyfriend might be 'The One'. She asked me to help her get birth control, that they haven't done anything yet but she wants to be prepared. The thing is, we never told Jim about the doctor visit or the pills or anything else. Jim would lose it if he even suspected she'd been entertaining the notion of sex with anyone. But... she is over 18, she's got a responsible full time job as a bank teller and goes to college, contemplating a sexual relationship at that age is pretty normal, or perhaps even abnormal since everyone in this MTV generation seems to be knocking boots by Jr High.

I've met this young man and he seems decent enough, he also works full time and goes to college but unlike Laura he is having to pay his way through school. So there's not a lot of money for dates. Their dates are usually going to places that don't cost much or hanging out watching tv at each others houses.

So for all Jim's screaming and ranting over the phone yesterday he asked me to talk to Laura first, so I did while we were grocery shopping and fixing dinner. He said he was going to talk to her when he got home, but he didn't, he chickened out. When we went to bed he asked me how our talk had gone and I told him fine, that we agreed to implement the same rule used at the boyfriend's house, the open door policy.

I think most of this unease of Jim's is due to the fact that Laura is growing up and away from us. He misses his little girl.

Grace

I haven't posted in a while because the pain I was having from my stomach all the time was making me extremely cranky. I would have been posting "Ow, my stomach!" and not much else. I have seen the gastro, am lined up for tests in a few weeks and been put on meds for my stomach pain, which turns out to be neuropathy, nerve pain. I have nerve pain in other parts of my body so they put me on a drug that just treats nerve pain that's not narcotic. No more pot or swiping Jim's Vicodins. It's restored my normally cheerful nature.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday I could barely sit still through the droning sermon someone in our congregation gave on the subject of 'Grace', which ended up being sort of ironically funny because I ended up having to extend grace to two individuals I was itching to just go off on and issue a verbal beatdown. And no, neither were Ned Flanders.

Grace, granting favor, pardon or mercy towards someone that has earned the opposite. See, I didn't need an entire sermon to know what it is.

I'm still on worship team and yesterday morning I really did not want to go. Our furnace is on the fritz and my asthma is in high gear because we've been using the fireplace to keep from freezing in the cold sleety temps this week. We're waiting for the repairman.

Getting up to a temp of the high 30s in the house plus wheezing and coughing misery doesn't exactly make arising the most fun part of the day. I slept in, rushed around madly at the last second before leaving very late for worship team rehearsals. I got there and it was only Dwayne and I. Dwayne leads the instrumentation and I lead the singing. So while I was wheezing, honking and bolting down 7-11 biggest chum bucket of coffee trying to loosen up my voice for a somewhat respectable sound, we were also going over the order of service.

Eventually one of the singers shows up, Pam. Let me just state for the record I don't much like Pam. Pam drinks, very heavily, she even has shown up for church smelling like booze. She's also extremely dingbat, we'll be discussing some aspect of the service or song and she'll launch off into nonsecuetar land about cakes she's baked, quilts sewn and cats petted. Very frustrating. She cannot sing, she stands five feet back from the microphone and whispers off key. I don't like having her stand next to me because I have to concentrate sometimes to keep from her throwing me off key if she's whispering off key in my ear plus for an added bonus she smells like she's been rolled in an ashtray. That much cigarette smell sets off my wheezing.

Why is she there? Because both Dwayne and I agree after having been on strict worship teams at other churches that anyone wanting to help out should be allowed to try their hand at it. She also does most of the cooking for events and she is a decent cook.

So she shows up, Dwayne and I keep going over the service, talking, listening to the songs we'll be doing and she goes off into la-la land talking about some quilt she made. Dwayne mentions he needs me to be the scripture reader and she jumps up and says, "Oh, I can do that!" and Dwayne and I exchange looks. The last time Pam read the scriptures she started CRYING on the platform and got very confused.

Once our drummer and bassist show up Dwayne starts bringing them up to speed while I am writing down a chorus-verse road map for the person doing the overheads visuals of the song lyrics for the congregation. Pam decides this is the right time to talk to me and starts asking me if I've heard gossip about her. Truthfully several have alluded to her drinking to me but I hate gossip so I pretty much tell folks to shut up the moment they try to start discussing someone in the congregation. I have seen gossip destroy churches. I tell Pam no, no ones said anything to me and I hate gossip. She then goes into a long screechy screed complete with crying and run mascara about two women from our church, no names mentioned, that asked her about her sex life and accused her of being a drunken whore-slut (her word, not mine). I don't know what to say, the guys pause at the other end of the rehearsal room and there's that long awkward pause. She says she needs to go check on the breakfast cooks downstairs and departs, the rest of us sigh with relief that the super inappropriate is over.

Keep in mind that all of us have needs and issues, my and Jim's ongoing health battles, Dwayne's dad had open heart surgery on Friday, the bassist has depression issues and the drummer and his wife have fertility challenges. Plus ALL of us have laid ourselves and our needs down to focus on service to God, nothing else, there is no time or room for personal therapy or problems, right at that moment it's all about God.

We do our Sunday morning set up at breakneck speed, which Pam never participates in and get ready to do what Dwayne called, 'rock and roll for Jesus' and we take the platform. Pam shows up and comes to stand right next to me, fresh Marlboro fumes coming from her like mad along with new cologne and whatever. She's repaired the damage to her makeup. My wheezing picks up.

And I open my mouth to sing the first song and a croaking comes out. I have to drop down from the soprano range to the alto to get through the songs. My wheezing gets worse. Once the speaker starts his sermon on grace I slip out of the back door off the platform and go downstairs to use my nebulizer and drink about three cups of steamy hot Throat Coat tea so I'll be able to power through the closing song. I come back up and we start the final song of the service. Which is a powerful one, I'm swaying and singing and rocking back and forth and finally it ends.

Just as I'm breaking down the mike stands and putting everything away with Dwayne Pam approaches me again and starts to rip me a new one for all the things she says I did wrong during the service, i.e. disrespecting the speaker by not staying to listen to the sermon, says I was really fucking up the sound and breaking peoples eardrums by swaying while I sang and so on.

You just do not know how badly I was itching to turn around and tell her that she cannot carry a tune in a paper bag and other things about her that frustrate me but I simply smiled and said I'd take her advice under advisement. She's clearly got mental issues going on, I'm beginning to think.

Later she came downstairs while I was talking to the director of the biggest clinic in town who's been trying to get me to come to work there part time overseeing the switch from paper records to digital medical records. While I talked with Liz, Pam kept interrupting and trying to suck up to me. I'm still not sure what's going on in Pam's mind.

Later the son called me in panic and demanded I drive up to his college to help him with some task he'd put off to the last second. While I longed to tell him to deal with it I ended up going up to DC and helping him get through his project.

Today, I'm tired and I'm sick. Too much drama but I did find by extending grace to both Pam and Andy I feel less drained that I normally would by dealing with other peoples drama.

Ouch! My Pancreas!

For the last four months my IBS has suddenly gotten a lot worst but this week my stomach pains have reached a whole new level. I couldn't sleep Saturday night the cramping was so bad and for the past six weeks I've been continually nauseous. During yesterday's twice monthly shots and exam with my critical care doc he suggested that the majority of the pain I'm experiencing is where my pancreas should be.

Soo.. long story short, it's off to another doctor on Thursday to determine if this is possible pancreatitis, pancreatic in some way, ulcer, or merely IBS morphing into Crohns Disease. None of these things is a good option.

But I'm in constant pain now and have been living on high dose otc pain meds with little to no results. Eating makes it hurt worse, yet hunger pains bring a different set of aches. I'm ready here to start mainlining heroin if that's what it takes to turn off the pain. Close to going to the ER here. Irritated that the soonest the Internal Medicine guy could see me was Thursday morning. You try missing sleep from stomach pain and having no ability to function because you feel utterly miserable. My IBS meds barely touch it.

Last night when my youngest waved a pot brownie under my nose I was powerless to resist.

It wasn't quite like this....



but it was damn close. My pain eased, the nausea lifted for the first time in weeks and I was able to sleep the entire night through. I might have fallen off the pot wagon after 31 years of sobriety but it bought me some sleep. I don't understand why the medical community doesn't push for legalization for medical purposes.

BTW This morning it's all back, the pain, the nausea, the general malaise. But I'm going to try to resist the brownie, at least until I get desperate for sleep again.

Fall!

I'm so happy my favorite season of the year is here finally! I love autumn, I love the trees turning different colors, I love apples ripening and fresh cider and Halloween and the turquoise blue skies. I love unpacking the fall and winter bed linens and quilts. I love snuggling up to Jim on a nippy night under a down comforter. I love making soup and baking bread.

At the same time I hate having to shift the dozens of plants I have off the deck and porch to find room for them in the house. Makes the house feel crowded. It's also when I do a deep cleaning of the house and get the garden ready for it's winter slumber and I have to say I get cranky over the fact that it seems no one in the house is much inclined to help me do these things.

Speaking of which I need to get started, I've been sitting on my ass or laying around the last three or four weeks, sick with one thing or another. I'm not much improved but things still have to get done. I'm thinking though that I'm going to sneak out to the park around lunch time.

Took Laura this morning to register to vote. My little baby is all grown up.

I Finally Get It!

Sometimes I get it. Sometimes not. I am discovering some things about myself and others lately.

Life has been super busy again lately. I've started working on a project for a crafting publisher, a book of green crochet, crocheting with recyclables, like twine, shredded shopping bags, net bags product comes in, mylar balloons. I've been doing this type of recycling crocheting for about two years and teaching classes for the last year. This project is sucking every moment spare I have up. But I'm grateful for the opportunity. I'm glad a larger portion of the population finally gets that we have to start reusing and reusing instead of throwing away.

I feel like I'm finally starting to get a few things too. Like letting go and allowing my grown kids, all three of them, to make mistakes, to experiment and live with consequences. I'm just grateful Laura has trusted me enough to ask my opinion on things I'm not necessarily wild about (pot, abortion, birth control, you name it)

The classes I started a few weeks ago have been an unusually hard stretch for me because of the personal nature of what's going on. We're learning to do one on one counseling and practicing on each other. I'm learning how uncomfortable I am opening up about some of the pain in my life from the past.

Sometimes I feel like Andy seemed to feel back on our vacation on a day when we'd been surfing a great deal. At one point he swam up next to me as I waited on my board for a wave and he said, "I finally get it! I finally understand why you love this, why you're so insane for surfing. It always seemed like a lot of work when you teaching us but the moment that wave picks you up and you're flying through the sky and sea on top of the world for a few short seconds is worth all you had to go through to get to that moment." I was so proud to hear him admit he loved surfing because it doesn't seem that there's much I have in common with the younger generation in my house these days.

Occasionally it takes the wise counsel of a dear friend to make me 'get it' Yesterday I was telling one of my closest friends that I'd forever shut the door on my fan tarding over a certain C-list television actor. I'd finally tossed out the huge box of floppy discs containing the hundreds of screen caps I'd done of all his television shows and crappy Lifetime movies for the huge website I'd once had for him. I had the site for over ten years, going from a casual fan to someone that slept, drank and ate this dumb actor. I look back now quite horrified that I thought about him so much because I finally realized I was living in fantasy land and he was nothing like what I imagined.

I turned to my friend yesterday and asked her how could I have possibly been so insane and she wisely said, "You were just horny." I don't know if it was all horniness but we both got a laugh out of it. Looking back I think it was part that I was in the last gasp of fertility and hormones mixed with a sense of dissatisfaction with my own life, both conditions that are no longer true for me. I'm glad. I'm also glad I stopped fan tarding. What a waste of time that was.