Author: Katie

Ah, the holiday letter;  I have been averse to writing, even here.  So many thoughts, so much emotion, packed into a couple of stupid weeks.  No matter how well I think I have prepared myself, it always comes up and bites me in the hiney.

This year is no different.  And yet, I like to think that I have made some forward progress.  I have learned many things from being chronically ill:

1. I have to do the things I really want/can do; no more.

2. I have to sleep.

3. Saying, “No” is a good and healthy thing.

4. Family drama helps no one and is to be avoided at all costs.  However, it will happen anyway.

5. Make good memories whenever and wherever you can.  Life will give you plenty of the other kind anyway.

6. You cannot please everyone, all the time.

7. Listen to what my body is trying to tell me, even if it is inconvenient.

Numbers 4 and 7 are particularly hard for me.  I would think that with the little bit of family I have left, number 4 would be a shoe in but, nah! Families have a way of becoming complicated and not just because people are  weird, but also due to the fact that having a member who is chronically ill is a burden on the whole family.  And, this is where number 7 comes in.  I have to listen to my body’s signals, which I am far better at doing now than a few years ago, even when they are horribly inconvenient.  By doing this, I have so far managed to stay out of the ER and hospital for a few months.

But, I have been told, quite clearly ,by my family, that my illness is the family dysfunction.  I think I knew that.  But, it is very, very hard to hear.  So, when there is drama, it is often created by me ignoring rule number 7.

That makes it kind of complicated.  Because, sometimes I literally cannot hear what my body is saying to me or it sneaks up on me.

Or, more commonly, I will get a rash all over and not even know it that is a symptom of fatigue: or, is it? It could be a new drug allergy or a flare or part of a virus or an infection of some sort.

I don’t always get simple 1+1=2  signals.  Things pile up on me.  I feel like a blade of grass that is fine with some rain and some cold and a light frost but when the temperature dives one too many times and I keep getting trammeled by the dogs and god-knows-what bugs are living in my roots; I start to fail.

That does not mean I can’t be brought back around with the right weed killer and some sunshine and water:  I can.

I am hearty after all. I am unbelievably resilient for a girl who was told all of her life that she was a weakling, that she was a just too big a whiner.

Nope.

The crap I have been through and go through continually (and those of you who share these lovely things will agree) is most definitely not for whiners.

Because if you chose the path of self pity, you will die and yet continue to live.

It is better to try and learn the rules that govern this new world you find yourself in; even during the damned expectation- filled holidays.

You let go of stuff you don’t need.

You rest a lot.

You try to not get stressed by anything or anyone.

You let go of more stuff.

You rest more.

And then, things still go awry.

That is hard, hard, hard reality to accept.  But, we have no choice.  We have to choose to live ahead and not behind. And this is a reality for everyone, not just the chronically ill: The holidays are never made up of perfect vignettes designed by Hallmark.   (Besides, those are scary looking:)

I chose to live like the St. Augustine grass in my central Texas yard: I suck down water and pesticide and all kinds of nasty things to stay alive, but I always, always come back:

Ageless and Evergreen.

Just like the song….

 

 

 

If any of you have experience with the 12 steps, and I do, you will recognize the three words in that title.

If not, good for you.  For me, it has been echoing through my addled little brain for the last 24 hours.   (I will self reveal and tell you I was a member of OA , Overeater’s Anonymous, for many years and that it is an amazing group.)

What does the word, “powerless” actually mean?  It means I have no way to act on my own behalf.

I don’t even think G–d can help me on this one.  Not unless he can make the bureaucracy that runs health insurance and the murky depths of Cobra and Human Resources and who-knows-what- run faster.  Somehow I think the Divine would get put on hold too.

But, I would like to see that.

Anyway, let me explain.  We are currently ‘between’ insurance policies in the sense that Stan’s former company does not pay our premium so we had to pay it ourselves, which by law, is our right.  As of January 1, 2015, his new company will add us on to their insurance.

So, we were allowed to write two checks, totalling around 2k, to a third party that pays our insurance to our current carrier so there is no lapse in care.  This is a big deal if you are me.

My weekly infusions cost thousands of dollars.

So, all of our medical stuff has been proceeding a pace.  I have been to the doctor, the kids have been, and we have picked up prescriptions.  Everything is all good.

But, when I called to re-order my home infusion supplies, they suddenly had no record of our checks, nor were they ‘allowed’ to send us my medicine.

I thought that was kinda ironic and pointed that out to as many people I could get on the line at the insurance company.

Guess what? They didn’t care!

So down the rabbit hole I went.  Four hours later I emerged with the number, e-mail and fax number of a federal government advocate that runs interference on this kind of thing.  This nice person informed me that Stan’s former employer had not done their job in sending on some sort of paper work.  She would start there and then untangle my mess.

I faxed all the pertinent information I could find and she (my rep) called Human Resources at the old company.  As of Friday, they had not responded.

The next step is that they get a letter from the feds.  She promised me they will respond, because they have to.  It just may take a while.

In the meantime, with each day I have no medication, I run a fever and my fatigue and pain level ratchet up.  But, I cannot really explain that to my family.  No one who doesn’t have this stupid disease can quite get it.

I understand that, I really do.

So, I march forward and do the best I can.

But I feel more powerless than ever.

What will happen?  When will I get my meds?  Will I get really sick?  Why am I running a fever all the time?

Why do I feel like a boa constrictor is squeezing the life out of me?  Is that all about the infusion meds or something deeper?

Possibly something deeper that I won’t share here.  But again, I feel powerless to overcome.

I am trying desperately to remember what it is you are supposed to do in the 12 steps to overcome powerlessness.

Ah, I know: turn it over to a power greater than yourself. Admit you cannot control these things and let go of them by asking a higher power for help.

Okay then, I keep thinking the higher power is not happy with me these days either.  I guess that is sort of stupid.  It doesn’t even jive with my own theology.

I believe in G–d.  I pray.  I just have had trouble believing lately that my personal troubles and doings are of any interest to Him/Her.

I am powerless to overcome.  Powerless to overcome so many things in my life.  This struggle over my most basic of needs, my infusion meds, is symbolic.

Life is full of struggles, of powerlessness, for all of us.  How we deal with it is what makes us who we are.  I believe that.

Certainly, Judaism, is a story of powerlessness and a struggle for understanding how G–d can chose a people and then let them suffer so much. Yet, I know we are not abandoned.

I know this in my head.  We are here to learn.

I just can’t accept it in my heart most days.

Today I will practice acceptance, but not hopelessness in the face of being powerless.

No.  I am here to learn.

I have not been abandoned.  But I am alive in this imperfect and messed up world.  I have to take whatever it throws my way.

 

 

Let’s see… I am supposed to be thinking of all the things for which I am grateful, right?  How sweet.

But we all know the real goal of Thanksgiving: overindulging in foods we don’t normally eat or cook.

That was certainly what it meant to me for many years.  In the days leading up to Thanksgiving I would worry that I was: A. prepared for my part in the feast;  B. psyched up and out about what I could and could not eat.  I even did the weight watchers thing where you visualize your plate as 3/4 full of veggie and one quarter full of goodies.

The weight watchers idea is a good one but I always took it too far.  I worried about the shape of the plate: width and diameter.  And it didn’t matter in the end what shape the plate was or how well I had done, I always, always, felt defeated.

Food has been my nemesis for as long as I can remember.

I suppose that is why Thanksgiving is just not my favorite holiday.  I eat a restricted diet now, with no gluten, low fat and very little meat, but I still have trouble with my weight..  I have spoken to many doctors and the honest ones have told me that all the medications I have had to take the last few years have severely messed up my ability to metabolize calories; something I was never stellar at to begin with.

So, I am locked in a war with myself. It seems I cannot accept this version of me.  Being this heavy, for whatever reason, means I am a failure.

I have spoken with several of my doctors about some sort of bariatric surgery and most have told me that my crappy immune system will not do well and I will create a monster that could infect and kill me.

That makes me mad.

So what to do besides trying to eat well and exercise, which I do most of the time.

I am back to the grateful thing.

I think my relationship with myself requires that I finally accept me the way I am… even now.  I tend to talk to myself in pretty nasty terms.  I have been pretty irritated with my body, especially the last few years. On top of everything else, I am overweight and feel really, really bad about it.  So, I berate myself and punish myself and think about how hellish I look.

What is really going on is a bid for control of my body.  The body that is sick and hurts all the time and is fatigued and doesn’t do what I want it to.

Plus, I thought if your health was less that ideal,  you were supposed to look all frail and thin:) Not Me!

I have decide to start loving myself by eating what I need and what is healthy and no more.  I am not going to use food as a weapon against myself.

I am also going to work on being grateful for this body I have;  all of it.  I have to accept the shape that I am and love it or I will never love myself in other shapes.

Oh, but it is hard!!!

Mirrors and photos are the pits but I am trying to remember: grateful, grateful.

If I wake up and I am not in the hospital and I am able to get out of bed; it s a good day.

So, this Thanksgiving, as I cook the turkey and make the stuffing, I am going to try and be grateful I am able to stand up and get the job done.  I will reward myself by being kind to myself and dressing nice, putting on my make-up and eating what I need and no more.

That is the best I can do.

I will be grateful for the health and the body G–D has given me and I will be grateful for all the wonderful things in this world: None of which have to do with the size of my butt!

 

(My boob is fine. In case you are interested…)

My big Golden Retriever, Rufus McDufus the Third, hums when he is trying to get his point across or when he is getting a particularly nice belly rub.  Sometimes, he just stares at you while you are eating and hums.

We think he must have a lot of room in is doggy sinus cavity.  Perhaps this is the sort of noise the dinosaurs made.  (Don’t worry, I am going somewhere with this).

I use to be a really good hummer myself.  I could sing, hum, chirp and fa la la with the best of them.  But in the last few years I seem to have lost my mojo in that department.  I can’t get enough breath control to really sing the way I once did.  I also keep having more grief from my off-operated on sinuses.

Is this an excuse?  I don’t know.

I miss choir and I miss singing like crazy.  It feels like a whole half of me is shut down.  I figure I am using my creative parts in other ways.

I write this blog.

I try to work on my novel.

I am trying to teach and raise my son… who, believe me, requires creative techniques.

But, Oh! The music!  I weep when I hear it.  I literally cannot listen.

I am trying to hold the faith that in the next few years my time will free up and my body will cooperate and will again find a place to sing.

It may not be like before;   I will never be the chirping bird I was.

I guess that will just have to be ok.

I know what I want to sing.  I want to learn all the music that goes down in Temple.  I want to learn everything that they sing there for High Holy days.  I want to learn all the Hebrew responses.

I have a whole world of new liturgy and tunes to learn.

That makes my heart leap with joy.  (I am weird.)

But all the liturgical music of my Christian past is still with me.  I know so much of it:

The chants: how I love them.

The hymns: I love them too.

The canticles and rounds and the early music, Palestrina and Bach and Mozart and Verdi’s Requiem.

Everyone’s Requiem.

I don’t want to lose those.

I think I am overwhelmed just thinking of all the music that is already in me and all of the music left to come.

Maybe Blah Humdog is not the right title for this little ditty.  Perhaps it is better to say: (See, I don’t know what to write here… )

Maybe I should just call this, “Hummmmm”

Or, “Blaaaaaah”

Make it a vocal exercise.  I could use one  of those.

In the meantime, I think it is time to learn how to download music to my I-phone so I can listen in the car.  I have not done that yet.  Either there is a teenager who wants me to hear their music, or the news, or I bliss out in the utter silence of being alone for a few minutes.

Maybe I will start humming new tunes….

Maybe that will chase the Blahs away………

Or maybe I will just chant “Blah, Humdog” over and over until my stress and my over active imagination give way to a blessed unity with the One who makes the music.

For that is what I seek, after all, blessed unity and calm with the Blah, Humdog that is sitting, looking at me with soulful eyes, at the very center of my being.

 

 

October is breast cancer awareness month.  It is pink and boobies all over.  I think that is great.  We all need to be reminded of the presence of our breasts.

Personally, I tend to notice mine a lot.  Really; they are lumpy and they scare me.  My mom died of not one, but two kinds of breast cancer.  Her mom, my grandma, also had breast cancer, before she had a few other cancers.  Both of them lived until their late 70’s.

So, I am a good girl and I put the twins in the booby smasher every year and get them checked.  I have been doing this since my twenties.  I have had biopsies done before; one in my late twenties and one in my mid thirties.

I think I am about to get another.  My mammogram came back ‘inconclusive’ and the doctor wants me to go in for an ultrasound and a diagnostic mammogram.  When she did my exam the other day, she kept saying, “hmmmmmm, ohhh, and hmmmm.”

This has me feeling kind of reflective and weird.  I have known I had a new lump but I did not really want to report it for a few months.  Why did I do that?

I have felt overwhelmed.  I have been thinking, illogically, that I cannot have something else.

That is of course, stupid. A. I probably don’t. B. If I do, it is likely curable; just nasty.

So, here I am in no girl’s land: waiting for the next step.  I have to make my mind go blank.  I cannot go around thinking about my boob.  I cannot contemplate the fact that people with my host of immune and autoimmune disease are much more likely to have cancer…

I want to run to the radiology place and say, “Here I am.  Look at my boob right now and tell me what the deal is!  I will not wait!”

But they don’t actually have an appointment for a couple of weeks.  I will try tomorrow to move things up.

The deal is I should know this game by heart now: NO CONTROL.

Life just veers around and takes you along for the ride.  Maybe life takes your boob because your cells do something weird in your body and it is called cancer and that sucks.  I don’t know.

Maybe you miss that bullet and you wait until the booby smasher comes around again next year.

I dunno.

To Breast or not to Breast?  That is a silly question.

Think of all the weight I could lose if I got rid of ’em?

Ha! Take that you stupid, lumpy boobies!

 

I have been guilty of late. Guilty of telescoping my life down to my problems and worries.

I instinctively know this is wrong.  I have never liked thinking small.  It makes me depressed.

I have never liked it when my animals chase their tails for too long.  I want to help them out.  But, usually it’s too funny to stop.

But with me, it’s different.  If I get lost in chasing my own tail or the tails of those around me, everyone just gets crankier.

Suddenly it seems there is no way out; no way up.  We are all swirling together down the giant toilet bowl of life.

It takes a lot of work to stop that downward, sucking spiral.  I have to literally hit the brakes.

Last week it became blindingly apparent to me that something, some of the stress in our lives, had to go.  I did not know what or where or when but I knew I was cracking up.

I also knew that my cracking up and my husband’s cracking up and job loss was doing our son in.  He was fighting just to keep his head up.  He has been depressed, anxious, missing school, in the hospital, at the therapist and the psychiatrist, for weeks and weeks.  And, I have known, deep in my gut, that our stress was causing his.

That knowledge made me sick.

A family is a system, right?

Our system has been through hell the last few years.

I knew we had to make a big change.

Over the last months I have caught myself fantasizing about teaching my son at home.  I have been a teacher for over twenty years.  It is what I was born to do.

For the last three years, I have been sidelined by my health.

I kept asking myself, “could I, should I, homeschool?”

There have been lots and lots of voices saying “NO!”

These voices were worth listening to.  I didn’t want to give my son an easy out.  I didn’t want to overburden myself when I am already sick.  I didn’t want to possibly cheat my son out of any experiences he needs to grow and mature.

Finally, this last week, the voice in my head saying, “Do it, Do it, Do it! ” won.

I can do this.  We can do this.

I have a lot to offer him.  I realize I cannot offer all subjects so some will be taken online through University high school programs or tutoring.

Above all: There will be no more sobbing and screaming and pulling and yanking.

There will be: Peace. Interest. Intellectual Stimulation and Personal Growth.

I have the tools.  My son has the thirst for knowledge.  So far, he is happy as a clam with what we are doing.

I am not an easy teacher!

He has a five page research paper that started the day we decided to do this.  He has other assignments and responsibilities as well.

The goal is to love what we are learning.

My greatest hope is that we can travel and learn together.  He wants to see the Smithsonian and go to all the museums in NYC.  I am down for that!

I figure it is only a few precious years here.  He is already 15.  I am going to milk this thing for all it is worth.

It is a big place out there: We are going to explore it.

 

I really do.  I hate pricks; specifically of the needle kind.

Let me be clear, I am totally cool around needles and don’t have a problem in the world with doing my own infusions every week (which requires four small needles that I insert across my belly and tape down).  I have done home allergy shots over the years as well.  It was no biggie.

I have never minded blood draws or IV starts or any of it.  I am always;  Ms. Oh-So-Cheerful when the nurses are poking around to get at an IV started, even when they have to do multiple sticks.

But I think I have finally cracked.  I can’t take it anymore.  Needles are what they are: they are little, pointy pricks. They are cruel  and they make you bleed.

(I don’t hate all pricks, but I won’t draw that distinction here.)

When I was on IVIG (Intravenous Immunoglobulin )  every month, the hunt for a vein good enough for eight hours of medicine was a tough one and I know now that some of the medicines that were  put in my monthly IV’s were vein killers.  I took a lot of Benedryl and Promathazine  right in the IV, undiluted, because that is what my nurses did.  Finally it became too difficult, so I switched to the subcutaneous method of delivery I use now. The idea was that my veins could “rest” and would somehow be fine.

I had begged my doctor to give me a port a cath, which is a central intravenous line that is placed by a surgeon and has an open outlet so you can have access to a vein quite easily.  Many people with my disease get a port but my immunologist at the time refused to let any of his patients to get ports because of his concern about infection risk. My rheumatologist is in agreement and says that people with my disease spectrum almost always end up with infected ports.  This is really scary because the actual vein they use runs next to your heart.  I understand their perspective and have put his off basically as long as I could.

However, I have just come to the road less traveled.  I can no longer provide blood for lab work.  Before a minor surgical procedure this week, it took two hours, nine sticks and five people to get an IV to stay in.  The rest of them that were successful, blew out in seconds.

During my last ER visit, I waiting four hours for an IV and was finally given one through the groin area by the doctor.  It worked but was kind of dramatic.

I cannot count on my veins to cooperate in an emergency.  I will have to have a pic line; which is an IV placed along the heart (just like the port but temporary) or another one through the groin.

I feel like I have been assaulted.  I feel like a piece of meat.  I feel like a freak.

I feel like the patient they all go outside the door to whisper about.

I have to convey this to my doctor.  It is time I got a port.  I cannot do this anymore.

I have had enough pricks.

I hate pricks.

” I think it is possible that most of your issues are from the neck up.”

This is what the gastroenterologist told me the other day after surgery. Generally, he has been a nice and well balanced guy.  However, he has been unable to fix my problem.  I must say, he has been more resourceful than most but  is obviously frustrated, so thus his clinical conclusion, “you are crazy.”

I don’t appreciate this.  I also know better. I was told I was crazy for twenty years before I was diagnosed with CVID.  After having three sinus surgeries in a period of five years and being told a. I was a princess.  and b. (by another doctor) that I had an incurable infection. and c. I needed an immunologist but there wasn’t one in Austin.  I was finally diagnosed with low to non-existent immunoglobulins and got better with treatment.  The jury is still out on whether to call it CVID or SCID.  I don’t know or care.  The stuff works. I no longer have sinus infections or pneumonia.

I do, however, have the disease progression of a person with a primary immune disease.  That is, all the other parts of me are falling apart.  In 2011, I was diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder and since then I have been coming apart at the seams with a whole menu of things.  This is not unusual when taken in the context of people with primary immune disease or CVID.  But, very few doctors know how to treat a patient with this underlying condition or how it even works.  Even the best doctors don’t know much because it never, ever, follows a straight course.  It is different in every individual.  Instead, it is mostly shrugged off as ‘one of those things crazy people get,’ or ‘not as bad as she says’.

I have had upper right quadrant gastric pain on and off but mostly on for three years.  It began when I had an allergic reaction to the drug Cymbalta.  Cymbalta tried to eat my liver and put me in the hospital with sky high liver enzymes.  Since then, I have been told I have a fatty liver and fatty pancreas and yada, yada, yada. The assumption is: why wouldn’t those parts of me be fatty?  I am, after all, fat.

Here is the catch… I never had those issues before the Cymbalta incident.  Something happened to me then.  I know that.

However, that is a bygone.

Just like my gallbladder;  That is also a bygone.  I had it out when I was 35.

Since this past January, I have had five ERCP procedures.  These are attempts to open up my biliary duct and pancreas and let them drain better.  There are huge risks associated with these procedures.  However, I have been  desperate enough to try it anyway.  Several of them have worked well.  During the ERCP, the surgeon places a stent either in the biliary duct or pancreas and the stent lets the bile flow freely.  Apparently, each time, I have had a back up of ‘gunk.’  Also, my biliary tree is ‘tortuous’ or not well formed, so it is difficult for it to work.  This is all per my understanding.

Yet, despite all of this, when the stents come out, as they must, I have the problem again and again. I have tried diet and exercise and YES! I see a therapist and a psychiatrist and I do all I can to keep my head on straight. Both of the mental health professionals I see have confirmed I am no crazier than I should be.

My doctor’s last little ray of hope is that I have a gallstone that is tucked away in a duct no one can get an  image of and that is causing all of this.  Who knows?

All I know is I had the surgery again on Thursday.  The doctor saw me on Friday in the hospital and repeated his latest idea for the fifth or sixth time that, “it is from the head up,” and then released me.

I feel belittled and sick and in pain. The pain is worse today and I should probably go get an x-ray to make sure the effing stent has not migrated, which is a real danger.  However, I think I would rather not go.

I don’t want to spend the money.  I don’t want to get poked nine times to get an IV in and I don’t want to be told I am crazy.

Oh, and God forbid I have an anxiety attack as I did last Thursday in ER.  The doctor used that as part of his ammunition to prove his point about the crazies.

I am tired.  I am tired of being in pain and being alone in pain and being told I am crazy.

If this sounds like one, long, whine. I apologize.  Please skip it.  Don’t read it.  Unread it if you need to.  NO comments necessary.

 

 

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.