This is surely a first... the snow got lost.

Now, just to be clear, I am perfectly fine with this.  I do not miss adjusting my life for weather one single bit.  We've had maybe an inch of snow so far this year.  It's cooling down now, but for my region, it's been downright balmy. 

Of course, all of this is supposed to change starting tomorrow night... when lake effect snow is scheduled to rear it's ugly hydra head.  Did I mention that I was fine without all of this?  For the first time, I've learned that mud is perfect for the holidays.  No need for the white stuff. 

Generally lake effect snow is found where cold air (thanks Canada!) is forced over warm, open water.  (Once Lake Erie freezes, the threat of lake effect snow is pretty much gone, but we still get our collective asses kicked.)  In addition to the Great Lakes region, there are a few other places like the Great Salt Lake, Japan, Scandinavia, and Korea, but it is limited as to where it occurs.  As they say, it's location, location, location.   Which totally make me wonder why my Sonata (Korean) is only sold with one standard wiper blade, which is a wimpy summer blade.  Look, Korea, I'm ON to you... I KNOW you get the same stuff we do, so what gives?!?!  And aftermarket winter blades don't fit properly.  So really, why are you holding out in the wiper blade department?

I might need to keep this in mind.  If I have a possible move in my future, this is a useful piece of information.  Although thundersnow is uber cool, I am rather sure I could live without that, too.

You've got such a pretty smile (revisited)*

It's a shame the things you hide behind it... [Jude]


The girl sat alone at the table; close enough that her elbows gained stability from the thick glass top yet far enough to keep her legs free from inadvertently kicking the base of it. Head tilted forward, hands clamped over her ears, the tears flowed in hot saline trails, ultimately coming to rest in asymmetrical pools of moist, shimmering light on the surface below. In that moment, there was less fear, more disbelief. Either way she knew this was all her doing. Hers were the only shoulders this surreal burden would come to rest upon.

When the reason for this morphing new reality became clear, she knew she was the only one to blame. Recollection reminded that she was always one to feel alot and often rather intensely. Occasionally that build up required an outlet of sorts and resulted in conversations with others that would, with a little luck, temporarily ease her internal conflict, if even for a moment. But the day eventually came when she simply couldn't do it any longer - this sharing of herself, admitting her deepest, most fragile feelings - this sense of burdening others. A vow was made: no more.

From that moment on she'd kept it all in. Until now.

When she sat down to balance her checkbook, as always, she found her mind wandering. It wasn't painful, really; just a peculiar, slithery sensation that caused her to brush absently at her ear. When the slight movement caught her eye she could not quite make sense of what she was actually seeing. Letters. Everywhere. Piling and tumbling as if the typeset tray from an old printing press had capsized; on the table, her lap, the floor...


Immediate shock gave way to curiosity and she saw it wasn't just letters; there were words, followed by sentences. She knew them. Intimately. These were the words she vowed to hold in endlessly. With that thought the literary flood gates opened and the words stacked high, partially occluding her view. Windows cracked, doors bulged and she had no idea how or when this would end. Her hands went instinctively to her ears to stop this uninvited deluge but that only rerouted them through her nose.

Her head shook side to side in denial with that realization but the motion only caused the words to slip in her tears and collide with one another with soft thuds and audible crunches. Now she knew why she never balanced her checkbook.

~

And this is what I wrote here on September 1, 2005.  Creativity has been staunched of late, so I figured a repost would be acceptable. 

I've contemplated getting rid of this blog

We probably all have at some point along the way; some did, some didn't. 

Having lived a very private sort of life, I always felt safe here.  But with one thing linking to the next, I hate the feeling of possible exposure.  I have two friends from BlogLand that are on my Facebook account, but I don't ever worry about them linking to this place.  It's a given.  But there is a part of me that has this horrible fear that if I comment on a blog post of a friend that is not aware of this blog and forget to make it 'anonymous', my cover is blown, so to speak.  I've got alot in here.  More than I want the majority of people knowing.

Moslty though, I want to delete it because it reminds me of who I was.  Funny.  That's the same reason I've chosen to keep it thus far.

Big Sugar "If Santa Don't Bring You No Funk"

Not your typical Christmas carol... by far. Just listen. ;)

Happy Holidays

For whichever ones you celebrate.  I'm just looking forward to sleep.  Back in a few days.

Even better than waiting for Godot...

I'm waiting for my sedative to kick in.  This individual needs sleep.

But before sleep comes, I have to say something I'm pretty sure I never thought I'd say.  I wish I could exercise now.  No need to adjust your monitors, you read correctly.  And technically I don't mean 'now' (remember the sleep thing) but tomorrow would be nice.  But it's not going to happen.

History lesson for those that may not recall.  A handful of years back I lost 100 pounds.  Yes, and I'm still fat.  But anyway.  After my arthroscopic knee surgery five+ years ago, I had to be completely non-weight bearing for six+ weeks.  I'm here to tell you, no matter how little you eat, if you are sedentary (isn't that a type of *camel?) you are going to gain weight.  So I added about 30# back.  It has been an up and down battle - mainly due to my health and limitations that have come about because of it.  By all rights, I am due for a total knee replacement, which my chicken-shit self is not ready to do.  Really limits treadmill time, bike time and the elliptical will cause intense pain in 8 seconds flat.  But I learned to deal with that doing alot of strength training.  Let me tell you, I had some hard abs - unfortunately they were cleverly protected by a layer of fat, but still... I was rockin' the muscle tone!

Just over a year ago I was diagnosed with Lithium toxicity for the first time and was dealing with Dr. Sadist (the Demon Psychiatrist of Seville) trying to mentally undo me.  Who, by the way, is leaving this month.  Seven months later, another bout of LT, but worse.  A month after that, I was in the hospital with that damned adverse drug reaction... to the 'replacement' drug.  During the Lithium toxicity era, I was just sick and didn't know why as each time it presented itself differently.  Going to the gym was a chore and made me feel worse.  Six months ago when the Seroquel tried to kill me, well, I'm sure I've mentioned that my life hasn't been the same since.  Again tonight my heart decided to take on a new beat for about 15-20 seconds (Lady Gaga, I think...) and I could barely breathe.  Of course no one can find the problem.  We have to consider permanent damage from either the Lithium or the Seroquel although I'd bet on the Seroquel as I had NO cardiac symptoms until that little bitch entered my system.

Here's the thing.  I've been aching to incorporate some more physical activity, which I did today, and got my heart rate up slowly, but surely, in fairly short spurts.  Intentionally.  Then it held a coup and did that on it's own while I was sitting there minding my own business.  

I can't wait another six months to be able to exercise!  Right now I'm about 19# above what I was when I lost the weight.  I want to be able to strength train and feel strong again.  I never thought I'd say that, but I truly miss being able to exercise... even if it's just dancing around like a fool!

Such a simple thing, that so many take for granted, or even try to find ways out of, but I am trying to find a way to get back to it.  I'm just afraid.  Since no one knows the real deal with my lingering symptoms, no one can say for sure if it's safe or not.  One thing is for sure, I don't like when my heart goes off on a tangent and the only thing I can do is sit there and wonder if it's going to stop, or explode, or whatever.  Not cool.

So I've actually been thanking my body daily for persevering through such a trying time and hopefully we can reach an accord some time in the near future.  This inactivity is not to my liking.  At all.  And it still surprises me to see that I've put that into words.

I wanna get my chunky-monkey butt back in gear!  =)

*I'm well aware that 'sedentary' isn't a camel but for some reason that just flew into my head.

Looking back.

First, let me just say that my previous post was my 500th post.  Interesting.

Anyway.  I woke up this morning to some rough news on the radio.  Local stuff.  Sort of local anyway - almost an hour away in a very rural area.  Some people say you can lose yourself in the city and that is one reason there will always be some sort of appeal for me.  The downside ~ all those damn people.  But you really can't lose yourself in a town of, say, 1000, now, can you?  I do like the anonymity a city offers.  I've recently come to terms and accepted the fact that I've lived the majority of my life as if I were in the Witness Protection Program.  Moving frequently, rarely getting close to anyone, avoiding connections and making it a point to maintain privacy.  There was a reason, but the reason is gone now.  Part of it was due to hiding/running/staying elusive out of maintaining safety from a family member (basically being on the run), but some of it is because of what I'm referring to below.  Still, it is most likely how I will continue on; it is simply how I learned to be.

So.  I started thinking about something.  I'm not sure if I've talked about this before, but it just seemed to settle on me this morning and I have to speak.  When I was small, we lived in a very small coal-mining town.  The houses were basically depression era houses that were meant to support the miners and their families.  The little town was booming (before I was even born) but as the mining industry faded, so did the town.  The homes that were there, rented, were very basic.  It was like the property owners were slumlords before that became a common term.  The houses were two floors, some with an enclosed porch, and covered in drab, grainy shingles.  The windows were the old wood/single pane wavy glass that would literally accumulate 1/4" of ice on the inside in the winter.  The doors were such an ill fit that during the cold winters, we'd use a butter knife to stuff strips of rags to fill the gaps or you would feel the cold air blowing in.  Every time someone had to go out, you had to repeat the entire process. 

Part of the issue there is that about 20% of the houses did not have indoor toilets or showers.  If they did, it was due to a 'remodel' done by the person living there, not the owner.  The house my mother and I lived in for a couple of years had a regular bathroom but my grandmother's house, until she left in 1992, had no indoor bathroom or shower.  There was an outhouse and the shower was in the cellar.  Not a basement, a cellar.  The access was from outside only.  The floor was a crude cement slab with dirt walls.  Half of it contained the canning my grandparents did and the other half had a shower head, bar of soap, bottle of shampoo and a hook for your clothes, all partially sectioned off with an ugly yellow gold tarp so as not to invoke a mudslide under the house.  It was underground.  It was cold.  There were spiders.  (Nuff said there..) 

The big thing was always having a 'lookout'.  Someone would pound on the door after they heard the water shut off so you could slip out, hopefully unnoticed, before another car came up the street.  Same way with the outhouse.  You'd peer through an opening in the boards to make sure no one was coming.  See, most people still had their old outhouses, never bothering to knock them down, so it was a common thing to see.  It was not so common to have them in use.  You never wanted to be seen going there or returning.  In the winter, there was an actual chamber pot kept in a bedroom upstairs.  So even as late as 1992, in the morning, someone had to 'sneak' out and empty it in the outhouse and hopefully return before anyone saw you.  To this day I despise the scent of Pine-sol. 

We didn't have company.  How do you explain the lack of indoor plumbing?  The secrecy; shame.  Now, we always had plenty of food and my grandfather bought a new car every two years.  It wasn't that we were impoverished.  It was that they were fine living in the way they had for many years and never found reason to update things.  Living with them for many years, their ways became my ways.

So here I sit, at the age of 41, wondering why I have such a hard time spending money on a new winter coat.  The one I've got I bought on clearance probably 11 years ago.  The zipper broke about three or four years ago so it unzips from the bottom up, yet I can't find it in me to buy a new one.  Ok, in my defense, it IS an Eddie Bauer coat and can still probably kick almost any other coats ass.  Well, if coats had asses.  I do not own the things that most people own.  I have an mp3 player that was given to me.... just a little thing.  I've wanted to buy an iPod Touch, and now I've decided I'd prefer a tablet instead.  But let's think for a minute on how hard that is going to be for me to do.  I grew up patching doors and using a chamber pot; had spiders in my underground shower.  Some things you can't change.  I was brought up with the 'make do' mind set.

No mistake, I spend money.  But I tend to spend it on experiences, as I would call it.  Music, concerts, hockey games, travel.  Perhaps because I find more comfort in doing things as opposed to having things.  There is still some sort of guilt associated with having.  Experiences are things no one can take away from you.  Things can be lost, taken, broken.  But what you experience is with you forever.

Looking back,  I suppose that can go both ways, really.