Month: September 2014

I usually keep my nails very nice.  If possible, I have professional manicures done, in gel, because it can withstand anything and often lasts for several weeks.

It makes me feel as though I am put together somehow.  Even if the rest of me looks and feels likes dog poo, the nails are an outward sign that I am OK., I have myself under control.

In the last few months we have been in money saving mode so I have been doing my own manicures.  I have gotten better at them.  I went on YouTube like everyone else and watched a how to video.

But lately I have been swimming in a rehab pool and learning a great deal from the simplicity that is the warm, welcoming water.  This has been life changing for me.  I do all I can to never miss an appointment and work- out session.  I feel as though these work outs are holding me together just now.

The consequences of this new obsession are more flexibility and sore muscles, as as well as ruined nails and the occasional hang nail.

Hang nails, I believe ,are a symbol of something else entirely.  The physical hangnails I can take care of with money.  I just have to go back to the nail salon.  I finally caved in and did that.

So wonderful!  I look down at my hands and there is order.  No hangnails.  Just beautiful regularity and a perfect 10.  Don’t ask me why this is so important to me: I have no idea.

Okay, I lied.  I do have an idea.

Hangnails are a physical manifestation of my inner imbalance.  Inside of me there are many hangnails just now and I desperately want to chew them off or cut at them with sharp scissors. Unfortunately, I can’t reach them.

This is why I obsess on my outside.

I look at myself in the mirror and I see all of the hangnails.  I can fix the ones on my hands but I cannot fix the lines near my eyes or the way my arms look at 49.  I cannot seem to lose weight and my tummy is too round.  I can go on and on berating myself for hours.

I am not nice to myself.  I am angry with my body.  It has betrayed me.  I don’t feel like it even belongs to me anymore.  The endless aching muscles and shooting pain and fatigue are definitely not mine.  They landed like space aliens on me several years ago and have taken up residence.  I am ready to do anything to be rid of them. Each one is a damned hang nail unto itself, irritated and irritating.

No one outside this screwed up body of mine can understand what I see in the mirror or what I feel like on the inside.  Nor, can I do that for them.

But, we have to be gentle with one another, don’t we?

We should always assume that the nail biters are biting for a reason.  And the ones with the perfectly manicured nails might be giving us a clue to the chaos that lies just beneath the surface.

We all have irritated pieces of ourselves that we cannot reconcile to the whole of us.

It is in my nature to fight these things with anger.  Perhaps it is in another person’s nature to fight these things with aggressiveness. I don’t know.

I just know we all have hangnails: within and without.

I need help with mine.

Please remind me that I cannot tear them all out because they are a part of me.  I will try to do the same for you.

Maybe, together, we can learn to love all of our jagged, hanging, bits of self: Even the ones we don’t like.

 

Do you ever get the feeling that your life is spinning so, so fast that it is actually slow?

I think of it like the rotation of the planet or something.  The earth is spinning so fast that we don’t even feel it.  Life is sort of the same, I think.

It makes me think of the old Steve Miller Band song, “Fly Like An Eagle”

“Time keeps on slipping  into the future/ time keeps on slippin’ , slippin, into the future,

I want to fly like an eagle, to the sea.

Fly like and eagle

Let my spirit carry me.”

Kinda trippy mid ’70’s stuff , but the older I get the more sense it makes.  (I just want to say for the record, I was eleven years old when that song came out.)

It isn’t a new idea, the thought time isn’t linear.  It is probably a rounded thing, a parabola or according to the great Dr. Who; “timey wimey wibbley wobbley.”

I believe this to be true.  Many days and nights I feel as though I am a hamster or some other small, stinky rodent that travels a wheel over and over, hoping for treats, and yet seldom getting anywhere but back to where I started.

Or maybe I am remembering past lives and my spirit self has actually done all of this living before, in other times and places.  I have often wondered if God is not the Great Recycler.

I can’t imagine God being wasteful.  After all, our souls are here to learn.  Perhaps we have to learn and learn again, much as the Buddhists believe, in order to move on to a more elevated plane of existence.

Just in case you are wondering, dear reader, I am not smoking anything while I write this.  I am infected, but nothing else.

I am contemplating another surgery, but hoping to put it off.

I am frustrated as hell with several things in my life that I cannot control but nothing else.

Time just keeps on slipping into the future, but nothing else.

It is all just ordinary in its extra-ordinariness.

“I want to fly like an eagle, to the sea. Fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me.”

That line makes more sense if I re-write beagle for eagle.  I can actually visualize myself as a beagle.  I was raised by beagles.  We had two when I was growing up and they were my companions. They are much more closely aligned to my spirit self than eagles.

Beagles are bull headed, sort of funny looking, fiercely loyal, and they really love to howl and dig.  They have great, floppy ears and soulful eyes. If you tell them to do something, they consider it and then stick their tails in the air, not unlike cats, and go the opposite direction.

Yes, I much more beagle than eagle.

And the thought of flying, as a beagle, to the sea, gives me real pleasure.

So, as the world spins on and on and tilts out of control; particularly my little corner of it, I think I shall amuse myself by thinking of flying beagles, spirit beagles, heading out to sea.

And as those packs of tri-colored hounds make for the waves, my spirit; obstinate, floppy eared and loyal to a fault, shall soar along with them.

 

 

 

That is a totally random title.  I only wrote it because as usual, the cat is on the table, helping me work.

The only true tidbit is ‘little boy blue.’  I have been doing a lot of thinking of late about the nature of public education in reference to my son.  I am wondering if I have what it takes to home school him.  I know I have what it takes in the academic way.  But do I have what it takes in the energy department?

Hell, I don’t even know if it is the right thing to do?  Just thinking….

Well, I made a very reluctant ER trip this week.

My side is achy again.  I am having pain in the old spot.  It got really, really bad on Tuesday night and I folded.  Between no sleep for nights on end and pain, I just couldn’t take it.

Sort of odd, I keep having a low bilirubin count.  They also found an ‘artefact’ on my CT scan.  It could be an air pocket in my biliary tree area.  Or, it could be sludge….

I vote for sludge, just because it’s me!

I have a great, new idea though.  I have decided to tell the specialist when I see him on Monday that I have figured out a permanent fix for my crooked bile duct….

Put in a straight PVC pipe!

Or, rubber.  Or, metal… Or whatever.  Just bypass the crooked one that is in there.

It stands to reason, to me at least, that I am having this trouble because the biliary duct is “S” shaped instead of straight.  I mean, we know that now.

It would also stand to reason that I feel better when the stents are in because the stupid-assed thing can drain then, right?

So?  WHY NOT FIX THE MOTHERDUCKER???

I realize I am not a doctor and therefore know nothing.  But, crap… it IS my body after all.

Last time I saw the specialist and asked him why I improved with the stents in there, he said, “it could be psychosomatic.”

I wanted to do him physical harm at that point.

He is a nice person so I didn’t.  Besides, I am sure he is faster than me.

So, Monday we meet again and I have questions.  Lots and Lots of questions….

I am sure he is sick and tired of me.  I don’t blame him a bit on that one.  I am sick and tired of me too.

But, my baby girl is coming home from college this weekend and I just infused my go go juice (igg) so I am going to have a good weekend.

Monday will get here soon enough!

To one and all I say, “Shabbat Shalom.”

Peaceful Sabbath.

 

 

I am mother.

I am wife.

I am niece.

I am sister.

I am aunt.

I am not much of anything at this point.

But, it doesn’t really matter anymore.  I do my thing.  I care for others and I fall asleep.  I go to the store and buy the groceries.

I try to keep myself facing forwards at all times.

No time to stumble.

I have to lead the little army although I am just a tiny, crooked snail.

I leave a little trail of of wet, disappointing slime wherever I go.

But, you know, who cares?

I see lots of other snails, sliming along their trails.

We slowly turn our awkward little heads,

Reach out our antennae and acknowledge one another.

Silently we transmit: “Should we all just drown ourselves in a beer?”

Then one of us say,s “No dear. We can’t.  There is too much work to be done here.”

So, we trudge along.  All of us.

Wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts,

Snails.

I don’t.

You don’t.

We won’t.

Stop.

Even when our shells feel too tight and we run the risk of being stepped on.

“It isn’t fair! It isn’t right!”  We chant in squeaky protest.

But it really doesn’t matter what we think.

After all, we are only snails.

Mothers.

Sisters.

Wives.

Nieces.

Daughters.

Others.

We keep sliming along.

To the store.

Making dinner.

Washing clothes.

Goodness knows… the life of a snail is hard, just like her shell.

But inside is she is gooey, wet, so slimy and very, very, fragile.