Tuesday, May 29, 2012

I'm tired

I'm tired.

I'm tired of the anxiety and the worry and the not knowing.

I'm tired of finding out so many people have hidden agendas that they want to wrap you up in like that giant, post-to-post, spider web I walked into the other night when I came home from shopping @ Lion King to have a good 'feed'.

I'm tired - I'm just so dammed - tired. 

Later P.S. to this .... When I slept, I had one of my very telling///full of symbolism, dreams --- essentially, I was trying to talk -- but people from the past kept stealing my voice ..........

Friday, May 25, 2012

Book review

In my quest to study forgiveness (which began circa 2008), one of the books that I read was by a man named Kent Whitaker, who wrote "Murder by Family" ...

As he and his family were coming back to the beautiful home they had, after a celebration supper for one of his sons who was about to graduate college, an intruder shot at them ... Kent lost his wife and his youngest son; he and his oldest son, Bart, were gravely injured ... That night, in the hospital, Kent - already a fine example of a Christian - talked to God and forgave the then-unknown shooter - something he clung to even when police revealed it was Bart who was the mastermind!!! ... 

So I was in a bookstore the other day and I happened upon "Savage Son", by Corey Mitchell ; it wasn't too long into reading the outside statements that I realized -oh! THIS is the true-crime treatment of "Murder by Family"!!!  Had to have it !!!

The book was excellent, and revealing ... I applaud Mitchell for stating word for word from actual court transcripts what Kent Whitaker said about forgiveness of his son - it was like having a handheld American flag, when the color guard in a parade is walking past you with a two-handed American flag ...

Where it was revealing was to show me that Bart - well, if Bart was transformed by Christ, it was (a) between him and the Almighty and (b) happened fully while he sat in a jail cell awaiting the needle ... that earlier, he had a form of Godliness but didn't actually walk it out.  In other words, he read like a master manipulator as well as a young man who put half his family in a cemetery, and twisted so many lives looking for co-conspirators, because of - well, sir, I recommend you read it -- along w/ "Murder by Family" - they are two bookends, I rightly feel!!!  If you're not feeling well and just want crawl into bed and can't stand daytime tv, this is the pair to have /w y'all!!!

Today, btw, Kent Whitaker has remarried, has a website, and is a speaker, one very much worth doing a Google on.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Dear Debbie's comment ...

Everyone, please go check out Debbie's blog, which has the name of my favorite color:  It's All About Purple!  She is an excellent photographer! ... has a wonderful life! ... and lives right around hometown for me, so I both recognize and am astonished! when I see her pictures! ...

Debbie, you & I are in a very different category, even tho we are both women w/ disabilities ... Debbie, you have the most lovely home, w/ a husband in it, as well as two sons .... When I say we have different lives, I mean it more so than just the obvious differences - let me explain ; please allow me to use my blog as a forum for what has been creating anger and anxiety in me over the past several years as I've realized what the "trend" is ....

Public housing.  HUD housing.  Seniors housing.  Being on disability -yes, I qualify.  Some of them are very decent!  In fact, my whole idea on "where to live?!" was formulated like so:  I could afford this apt for a year ... and ... during that time ... I would jump on the waiting list for a specific apt in this area that I know from the last time I lived here, is very decent!

I figured the worst thing was that I smoke cigarettes, and you can't smoke in someplace federally owned (oh I suppose Obama can, but I'm just Jeannee!) ... but how wrong I was!!!

It used to be that the majority of said housing was based solely on your actual income ... so, for example (using a number that's actually on the high end for me solely living on my check BUT its a number that has frequently come up for me), say, they would say -Jeannee, your rent is $222.  Well ... ok - I would need food stamps again, but I would be able to still have a vehicle, internet, and may even be able to put a ring around some special upcoming event on a calender!

Except the trend is - we now assign you rent, no matter how little you make.  And so the rents I've been seeing - including for the place here in this part of Virginia (and I'm the opposite end of the Beltway, out here in the country) - have literally priced me out ... if I would want a small apt the size of my laundry basket, thereabouts, with no ability to sit indoors and have a cigarette and coffee after a meal - I would have to stop driving, or not have the computer, or give up something (or sell things) that keep this disabled woman connected to the world!!!

I AM OUTRAGED!  And scared half to death!  Where is my 'family' - my elderly dog and myself - going to go after the lease is up here?!  There is just about no place open to us!  The one and only place I have found, over the past several years scouring online, that is still income-based, is so close to Canada, I could walk the bridge and have yummy Tim Horton's daily -- and as much as I love T.H., I have no desire to live way upstate NY!!!

Everyone says -oh go on and put yourself on the list, anyway ... which -if I can just pull myself out of the mire of anxiety I'm in! - I'll do that.  I mean - I have to do SOMETHING. 

Even if it means I have to pull myself off the computer or pull myself up on a city bus w/ groceries ...well, who sees the poor, anyway?!  And, when people do, it's usually to ask probing questions, like -"don't you have family?!"

To which I say -take a look at your own and answer me if you're helping them out - if you're even open to doing so.

49

In less than a month, I'm going to be 49 ...

.... and let's not even begin that whole song about how much differently I thought my life was going to be galloping along - family, multiple children, long-term relationship w/ someone who wasn't abusive in any sense of that word -- how much of this life I have now is about limited to no choices -- instead --

Let's talk about what's not in that 'life I would have much preferred' list, and mebbe should be :

health

Becoming disabled when I was standing firmly in the middle of my 20s (yet already living a life with such things in it that people hadn't even experienced by forty, with a life scale stress test that was off the charts, quite literally, no exaggeration) was something I had less adjustment and acceptance about than a whole lot of people I know of personally ... with a caveat :

As long as I was disabled in a similar way all the time.

Add anything new and outrageous - like let's say 'teeth' - and I about lost my mind ;-  

I can deal w/ the slow-moving, body pain every day since 1988, tires easily, disability

But as I approach 49, I'm becoming even more and more disabled ... I'm starting to realize, to survey my landscape and realize that HEY I may not be able to continue to do things even on a slow and limited basis, like shopping for myself, the limited cooking I do, alot of day to day stuff

And now I'm going into my birthday scared out of my mind, sucking down coffee and looking into a future with no possible family close to house or help me as my needs get more and more

Yeahhh ... Happy Birthday, indeed ;-

Friday, May 11, 2012

A morning in the life of someone w/ depression & anxiety

This whole dammed Mother's Day thing is making 'the usual suspects' (that create the anxiety, that slides me down that slippery slope into depression) harder to work w/ ... I was sitting here having coffee and thinking 'gee if K. had just been a real good soul I would do something wild for this holiday, like drive six hours to NJ to sit and sip tea w/ his mum! just celebrating the holiday, you know!' ...and that wasn't helping! and then CoCo had to go for a "w", so --

-- so this seemed like my solution!  A nice walk -beautiful sunshine -not even chilly like it was yesterday (ok, I might have preferred that, but nevertheless - a nice day! plenty of vitamin D !) ... and there are my mountains - very clear skies today, big green trees like broccoli's - I suppose if I had given it deep thought, I might have said they looked 'peaceful' - but even with surface thoughts, I was thinking I already felt happier !  And I was walking CoCo and I was feeling - calm.  In fact, I wasn't even thinking of how hurtful the holiday is (Mom gone - daughter estranged - if I'm very fortunate I get a one liner from the kids via their stepmom on a social networking site, and -I'm sorry! I just never thought being a Grandma was going to be so - I couldn't even tell you the name of their school, what they like, what they're into - it hurts every day, and holidays only make it worse--) -- I was putting all of that *stuff* down, walking my dog -- now, here's a necessary interjection to that:

I live on a small block that has my apt building and three houses - very small block!  So CoCo knows that unless I'm 'almost dead' physically she can usually get a "w" literally around the block :) ...... CoCo is someone very much into her 'comfort zone' - she'll only go where she sees 'home' and no where else, even if it makes her sick ...one day last week, she completely surprised me: one of the houses around our block!  boom!  I wasn't prepared (outside of her 'comfort zone').  And later it rained.  And to be honest when I thought about it at all it was 'gee! she's getting very comfortable here and her comfort zone is expanding!'

So we're walking along ... niiiiice day!  I'm watching CoCo (she's on a leash) and I'm praying for a friend's son, Tyler, he came to mind today, and I know he has -reasons for prayer ... and we get to the front lawn area of one of the houses ...CoCo is a big sniffer (especially as her eyesight has gone downhill) so she's sniffing, sniffing, and

"M'AM?"

Since there was about no one else on the block, I figured it had to be me? so I turned around 

"PLEASE DON'T LET YOUR DOG MESS ON MY YARD!"

Now, surely - she said what she meant and she didn't say it mean.  And I didn't "start trouble" - I simply nodded, reined CoCo in, and walked away ... with hot tears in my eyes 

I didn't need this.

Yeah she was polite ok great give her a dammed award ferchrissakes the first time she ever talks to me is about something like this?! And she couldn't at least try to make it a conversation?!  Come out and pet the dog, mebbe?  I promise (well, almost ...) that if she had initiated a conversation mebbe I wouldn't have even said anything about the bird feeders she has stuck all over her fence that are for bluebirds that -yes, bluebirds are pretty! AND very protective - a few times I've had to shorten CoCo's leash so she didn't get divebombed just sniffing ...

And mebbe if we had an actual conversation she would have discerned that I'm feeling so fragile right now, so much fighting the feeling of wanting to stay in bed and hide and pull the covers over my head ... well, to paraphrase a classic movie - 'dog poop doesn't really mean a hill of  beans in this old world, does it?!'

 

West Quoddy!!! They even have West Quoddy!!!

"If you only go to the beach once a year, make sure there's a full moon so you can see it shine across the water.  It sets the water rippling and stirs the soul, making both a  little more restless, tender, and wild."  Julianna Baggott


When I walked into my local Goodwill the other day, I was absolutely bowled over by the sheer number they had of very big, color photograph, 2012 calenders of one of my favorite subjects - lighthouses!  - and when I realized there was even my favorite, West Quoddy, it was 'more than sold'!

But how?! and why?!! were they in Goodwill?!!

They became a donation when they became 'manufacturer's rejects' ... the hang-hole, which was supposed to be a solid round circle, was instead - open.

Oh.  So you have to stick the thumbtack through the pages, huh?

THAT'S FRIGGIN IT?!!!

As I looked this over and was astonished, I realized - here sits a life metaphor, doesn't it?!!  About how often we reject things because they aren't up to standards, to some predetermined "but this is always how it's worked" standard - especially (and as I'm one, I can damm well say it!) - disabled people ...

Think about this (please) & let me know (in the comments) where this metaphor applies in your life ...

Saturday, May 5, 2012

‘Healing Sexual Wounds’: Dawn Eden interview about new book

‘Healing Sexual Wounds’: Dawn Eden interview about new book | LifeSiteNews.com

Some very fascinating things are described in this interview and I would actually do a cut and paste BUT - my doggy has to go out - again!  It sounds like a very excellent read!!!

Friday, May 4, 2012

Nebraska football coach: I’d rather be fired than retract homosexuality remarks |

Nebraska football coach: I’d rather be fired than retract homosexuality remarks | LifeSiteNews.com

He makes some pretty interesting statements, including: For those of you on this council who have a relationship with Christ, and you know if you do, you will be held to great accountability for the decision you make,” Brown concluded in his three-minute address to the council.

Now, here's my political incorrect question:  He's a black man in Nebraska ... has he ever known discrimination for something he couldn't help but to be?