Feeling stuck

I clip coupons.  I believe that if there are coupons for the things you buy, you should use them.  Nick doesn't like to use them because they are often confusing.  Well, they are.  I had a great coupon recently that was for 10% off of your entire purchase at Target.  Well, it actually said   10% (maybe it was even 20% I don't remember) off "Up and Up" labeled products.  I had no idea that was a product name.  I know now, it is the Target store brand.   So, yes, coupons can be confusing.   On the other hand, there was a coupon for Tide (which we use) with a great discount on two bottles and your get a $5.00 gift card too.  Well, it was a smaller size bottle than we usually use, but when I compared the price with the bigger bottle, the smaller ones with the coupon came out to costing less ounce for ounce.   Right now we are down to the last drops of dish soap.  I have coupon for Ajax dish soap for 89 cents for a big bottle.  Seems like a great deal. 

I am sitting here thinking about all the things I would like to do.  That I know would make me feel better and more energized.   Chores.   I want to clean and vacuum and dust and scrub floors and bathrooms.  Empty trash cans.   But, I just sit here.  I play solitaire on the computer.   I check email.  I check it again- as if anything world-shaking will have changed in 5 minutes, or if it had, what could I do about it anyway.

Yes, I am feeling blue..   Once again, our income seems to go so fast I wonder how we will cover our expenses.   As always, I know that we will get through this and everything will turn out alright.  But in the thick of it I worry and feel responsible.  

Yesterday, I moved some large branches that have fallen across my front garden.  Some have been there for months.  I love my front garden.   I worked really hard on designing it and having it put all together.  Nasty sticks and branches look awful there.  It looks better now.   I am overwhelmed by how much needs to be done to have the yard looking really nice and neat.  And then you have to do it all over again.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  Yes it is.

I love my husband so much it is impossible to say.  He is my friend.  We share the same taste- mostly- in British drama.  We have the same values about the important things- like how we raised and are raising our kids.  We both feel the same anxiety about our children when they are struggling.   We struggle too.

Nick tries hard, I know.  He makes a conscious effort to keep the kitchen clean and dishes done.   He has gotten some nice grass to grow in the front yard- nothing short of a miracle!  And I made fun of him for sitting and pulling up the weeds.  It seems to have worked.

Vanity I suppose

For lack of a better word.  Vanity.  Most of the people I know, care about how they look.  At least when they are going out with friends, or even out  just to the store.

I tend to be very casual in what I wear around the house.  I never wear a bra in the house unless we have company.  But, even if I am wearing bleach stained jeans and a stained up t-shirt, I want to feel clean and reasonably groomed.  If I skip a shower, I feel really grubby.   If I take a shower but don't wash my hair, same thing.

I have joked that it must be hard to be a real beauty because when you start losing your looks you start loosing your identity.   I never thought that I was any kind of great beauty.  I knew I was attractive enough to get the attention I wanted when I wanted it.

I read a funny thing on Facebook the other day.  It said "if only I could be a skinny as I was when I thought I was fat".     Boy did I ever used to be self conscious because  I had what I now know were curves.   Then I just felt fat.

So, yesterday evening I went to a meeting at my sister's place.  I looked around the room thinking how old all the people there were.  I certainly didn't belong with these old people.    Well, guess what?  I do.  This is my tribe, the silver haired, hearing aid set.  Oh yeah.

This morning I went to the gym to meet up with my new trainer and work out a plan.  I have not been in months because of my brain surgery, so I am re-entering slowly.

I went in feeling all pleased with my workout clothes, my water bottle, and wearing my sneakers.

I worked in the elliptical for a while.  Then I met with Kate, my trainer.  The place where we were talking has a big wall mirror.  When I looked in the mirror, at first I wasn't sure who I was seeing in there.  A tired looking, puffy face.  A face with ridges from my c-pap and the puffiness from not getting enough sleep.  Plus I need a hair cut, so I feel shaggy.

Yes, I have entered a new stage in my life/ development.        I am getting old.  I am aging.  Everyone can see that.  And I am surprising myself.

I also feel that I am entering into the stage where most conversation revolves about one's health.  We all go to the doctor more and have more issues that just linger

I have a friend who was diagnosed with lung cancer recently that has spread into one breast.  She is getting a port put in and will start chemo.

Another dear dear friend has discovered something "in situ"   She has breast cancer over 20 years ago when she was still breastfeeding.  It was so sad and difficult.  She had chemo and lost all of her hair. Now, next week, she is having a double mastectomy.  I am so sad that she has to do this.

Another friend is having a hysterectomy, not sure why.  But that's another part of the train ride. 

 
I know some tricks to help me be beautiful.  Make up..  Enough sleep.  Eating well

Okay, I am falling asleep here.  Gotta go.  Good night.

Shakespeare

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
   But if thou live, remembered not to be,
   Die single and thine image dies with thee.

Always pondering

Well, not always, but, I am often pondering.  Yesterday Nick and I went to a memorial service for a man we have known for almost 40 years.  And didn't really know at all.   Dr. Warren Yates was a linguist at FSI ( the State Dept's Foreign Service Institute)...Nick had just started working for the State Department in 1975, were assigned our first overseas tour- Thailand.  Part of preparing for our transition to living there, we studied Thai at FSI.  We studied  Thai for 10 months  We met Dr Yates back then and we saw him, either when he was instructing us, or just passing in the hall.  He was an every day presence in our lives.

Fast forward to 1998.  I started attending UUCF (Universal Unitarian Congregation of Fairfax) .  The first day I went to church there, who should I see by Dr Yates.  Better known as Warren.

He was a "character", an overused word.  He had some history.  Farm kid from Georgia.  Soldier and POW in WWII. A scholar.  A father, a friend.  He was loved and he loved.   He was a sort of Will Rogers from the sounds of it- to paraphrase, he never met a man he didn't like.

As so often happens, we learn more about a person after they are gone than we ever knew during their life

It is enlightening to learn.  Learning about someone's life is almost a sort of voyeurism, but in a good way.  Looking at a life past and seeing so many points of view for the first time.

Warren died just short of his 95th birthday.  So full of intellect to the end.   

ลา  (good bye Warren)

Friday!

I'm never even sure what day it is, most of the time.  I look at my phone and it tells me that day, date, and time.  And it is an "old fashioned" flip phone!

I had a semi busy day.  Went to the chiropractor.  My sciatica has been killing me, so that was a good thing- going to see the chiropractor that is. Then I went to the gym and got my membership started up again.  I had it halted when I was waiting for surgery and as I recovered.    I am planning to start going in and working out slowly, next week I hope.  I also called the Breastfeeding Center and told them that I am ready to start working again.   We can use some money.  And I get to do what I love while getting paid for it!  

The guy from Sears was supposed to come and work on the dryer between 1 and 5 today.  He came at 11:00.  I was not home.  Nick was here.  But we had timed our activities to be here during the hours we were told.  Oh well.  There was a service charge- which we knew about.  But Nick said that the guy took about a ton of lint and fuzz out of the inside of the dryer.  I saw it in the trash bag.  Amazing!  repairing the dryer will cost over $400.00.  Or, I should say "would".  We are going to have to go and buy a new dryer.     I even have to re-wash last weeks laundry because it has a burned smell from the dryer.   Oh well.

Somewhere, somehow I came across a web site with pictures of Shamian Island.   This is an island inside the city of Guangzhou, China.  The US Consulate in Guangzhou is (or was) on this island, and we lived there.  I felt so many feelings looking at these pictures.   I have seen many of the places where the pictures were taken.  We lived in the annex to the White Swan Hotel and used the pools and the restaurant there a lot.  We could even call for room service.   I was just starting to know my way around, and had enough of the language to get a taxi and to shop at the market- more or less.  I'm sure that if we had been there for the whole two years we were assigned to be, I would have really gotten to know my way around really well.

A few months ago I started to write about the various kitchens we have had in the places we have lived.  I need to go back and read my blog posts to see how far I got on that project.   I said back then that I would like to write about the bathrooms in our various homes.

There are things I have liked, and things I have disliked about everywhere we have lived.  There have even been things I loved about the places we've lived.  I have gained something and left pieces of myself everywhere we have spent time.

Tomorrow we plan to attend the memorial service of the man who was our linguist at the State Department when we studied Thai in 1975.  When we came back from Australia in 1998, and I joined the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax, imagine my surprise when I saw this man at my church!  And so, tomorrow we will share memories and learn things about a man we knew for almost 40 years and probably didn't really know at all.

It's all good!

Nick and I went to Baltimore this week for my three month post op MRI.  

Yesterday I got a call from Hopkins saying that there are no signs of any brain tumors, and that the surgery looks to be healing well.

How about that!

You are at the right place!

I have been fooling around with back grounds and various templates for my blog, which is why it is a different color.  I'm still here, Just greener with a touch of blue.  Everybody needs some change from time to time!

I slept so well last night.  I got up at about 8:00am to go to the bathroom, and then I went back to bed and slept until noon!  It feelt so good!

Carol came over with her two dogs.  We took all the dogs, her 2 and my one, to the dog park.   It was a really nice day for it and the dogs got to run around a lot.  That was great.

We met a woman (youngish- she said she's 48).  She told us about the myriad of medical problems she has.   Poor thing!  It was interesting to hear her talk and explain her conditions and the medications etc that she uses to make her life livable.  At one point, when she was talking, she want into a "stall" which I am guessing was a petit mal seizure seizure.  She was alright after though.  I wish I had given her my phone number.  Oh well, maybe we will meet there again.

Tuesday this week, I go in for my three month, post-op MRI.  I have Daizapam to take so I can keep calm inside the tube.   I am mostly thinking all is well and I will get a clean bill of health.   On the other hand, I have been having some bad headaches the last few days.  So I cannot help but think that maybe there are more tumors inside my skull!   I have been weaning off of my seizure medication, so that may have something to do with the headaches.

I can hardly keep my eyes open.  It's off to bed now for me.