The season overwhelmed her with its nearly crushing amount of joyous work and decorating that had both been done and still needed completed. All the joyous work somebody, at some time, from somewhere had told people they had to accomplish so that there was a chance to make their lives even better during the holiday season than they were any other time of the year. Those rule makers of old had succeeded in making it so everyone felt their season of giving, joy, and love couldn’t be complete without all the things that needed to be placed and hung all over their home were accomplished in time. As she looked over the half dozen plastic totes full of Halloween decorations ready to put away she had a fleeting thought. Would all this joy happen without all these silly trinkets we put on the inside and outside of our houses? As soon as the thought formed she knew the answer and the answer was yes the joy would happen but the beauty wouldn’t be up to par without the hanging, draping, assembling, wrapping, and taping complete.
Within the next half hour, the totes for Halloween had been returned to their year-long shelf area and been replaced by a new pile. Another pile of totes to empty and assemble in various areas of her home had been constructed. This replacement pile was full of totes filled to the brim with Christmas decorations. As she’d persuaded her family members to put the old holiday away and immediately take the new holiday down for transporting into the house, her mind went over where and how the many decorations were to be assembled and placed. Then she went over whether or not she wanted to move any of those items from what she considered to be their locations because she’d placed them in those spots for at least one of the past few years to new areas this year. In reality, she hadn’t fooled herself at all. She was fully aware that she was trying to distract herself by considering the placement of many of the items the totes contained. But no matter how many items she mentally moved it didn’t keep her body from physically reacting to the situation. The physical irritation was too much to be distracted away. Because it made her hands and arms itch with lack of use and her mind fill unwillingly with frustration and irritation as a result of her inability to do anything physical with the totes before her. While she tried to calm her internal unrest by reminding herself there wasn’t a single thing to be done without the help of another, her mind wouldn’t have it. At least half of her mind, truthfully it was most likely much higher than half, rebelled against the reasoning she was pointing out to herself. She had no trouble perceiving the truth but it didn’t make her feel any different no matter what she did, or didn’t do………………………………..
TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW 12/7/217
Sundowners Another Alzhiemers Issue
All adults and most children know that when you get out of bed in the morning, the day’s begun. There’s no question about it. The way most of our lives are lived revolves around the rising and setting of our life-giving sun. There are of course exceptions, some of the population live their lives by the rising and setting of our moon. I have no idea if humans are reliant on the astrology around our planet because we have to be or if its just because it’s the easiest way for us to live our lives. I’ll be the first one to admit by using the astrological objects so prominent in our skies as a sign for us to begin our day there’s no way anyone can argue that they weren’t able to see it. But, I’ve come to find out that not everyone is as affected by the sun and moon as the rest of us are. No, I’m not talking about teenagers who sleep all day on the weekend, after all, I’m as bad if not worse than they are most of the time hating mornings as I do. But, I’m not talking about me I’m talking about many people in our elderly population. You see there’s a syndrome I never knew existed that can affect the elderly that are linked to the horrible disease of Alzheimer’s. The syndrome is called sun-downers and even though it doesn’t sound that bad when you read about it living along side it is truly frustrating.
When you look it up, you’ll get a zillion or two sites that basically all give you the same answer. For those of you who don’t know anything about it I’ll add the definition in now:
SUNDOWNERS SYNDROME: is a neurological phenomenon associated with increased confusion and restlessness in patients with delirium or some form of dementia. Most commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease, but also found in those with other forms of dementia, the term “sundowning” was coined due to the timing of the patient’s confusion. For patients with sundowning syndrome, a multitude of behavioral problems begin to occur in the evening or while the sun is setting. thanks, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundowning
When you read the definition, it doesn’t sound that bad. But like everything else you read about what it sounds like isn’t what it feels like to live alongside it. When it starts to get later in the afternoon Papa is much more easily irritated. I’ve seen and heard it a million times now. He’ll argue with Nana over nothing. There are many times I’ll be cooking or straightening up in the kitchen and hear him say something out of the blue. Something like he’s gonna drive to the store tomorrow. Of course, the answers he’s given, that he can’t drive anymore, will make him mad. Next, he’ll start hollering that he can do whatever he wants and that he can take any of the keys hanging in the dining room and drive wherever he wants whenever he wants to. When anyone in the house explains to him that first there are no car keys hanging in the dining room that go to any of the vehicles outside, and second he doesn’t have a valid drivers license anymore, he’ll argue that we’re full of shit and stomp away. He’ll either stomp into the bedroom and shut the door usually falling asleep for a short time, or he’ll argue with anyone and everyone he meets on his way to the bathroom where he’ll stay for what seems like hours and come back acting like nothing happened. But if he falls asleep within an hour or two he’s back up. As soon as he gets up, he starts telling people good morning and making coffee. We all inform him that it’s not morning and we’re all getting ready to go to bed, and that confuses him even more.
He goes to bed many times a day and takes a nap; Nana tries to stop him when it’s getting later in the day, but she usually can’t persuade him to stay up. He says he can sleep when he wants to and goes to be anyway. This intermittent napping and waking at all hours is an amazingly frustrating thing. He gets up, and every time makes coffee and tells anyone he sees good morning. Unfortunately, nothing we’ve tried seems to work. We just have to deal with the fact that he’s going to go to sleep and get back up a million times a day. And another million times at night when most of us are all sleeping (frightening thought I know)the main time he isn’t watched because nobody knows exactly when he’s going to get up or even how long he’ll be up once he’s woken that time.
Yet, the part that worries me about him making coffee at all hours is that sometimes he gets confused and messes up the coffee while other times he leaves the coffee pot on and goes back to bed. Everyone has turned that damn coffee pot off a million times. I’m afraid that one night he’s going to get so confused while making a pot of coffee that he somehow messes it up so bad that it becomes a hazard to the rest of our health. I want to get rid of it and swap it with a smaller one cup coffee pot. I know he gets confused when we change anything but for the safety of everyone in the house I feel its a must. We need to have something that not only stops him from making and leaving coffee on at all hours but also something that turns off after a certain amount of time.
The Road to No Where…….pt 1
After a morning filled with sun and beautifully warm breezes, the weather suddenly changed. So, just as Dylan drove past a sign telling him he was finally leaving the tiny town of Portico, Florida the weather took a turn more to his liking. As he looked at the back of the sign in his rearview mirror that read “Thanks For Visiting Florida’s Tiniest Town” he found himself letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Then he patted the dashboard of his car before telling it “That’s it, Luna, keep going. We’ve made it out of hell town, now we just have to make it to the next, hopefully, larger town. Much larger.” He quickly glanced at the road and sky in front of him then back at his rearview so he could see the sign and scenery he was gladly leaving behind. As much as he’d love to watch it disappear the road in front of him needed watching. He put almost all of his attention to where he was going. As he focused on what lay ahead of him a few unwanted images flashed in his mind and he had to force them down so that he could continue studying the road during the rain.
Even though he tried to keep his attention on the road in front of him his eyes kept diverting. And he’d find himself looking back through his rearview mirror. And each time he realized he was still way too close to Portico for him to feel comfortable at all. After that flashback, he’d made himself promise to only look at where he was going for at least the next ten minutes but to also try and keep his mind as free of the last five days as possible. He let his mind wander to places far from where he’d been the last five days places that made him feel good again. As a smile that lit up his hazel eyes formed he looked different. The joy on his face changed his appearance so slightly but it was amazing. The smile in his eyes and on his face turned him from a person of irritation and unhappiness to one of someone who even if they don’t love life, still find it and everything it has to give a very happy thing.
The look of irritation and unhappiness he’d been carrying around had attached itself to his face on the second day he’d been trapped in a tiny town with nothing to do besides swimming or fishing for what felt like eternity instead of the actual five days he’d been there. His transformed look of happiness was there for many different reasons. First of all, he’d been able to leave Portico for the first time since he’d had the misfortune of stumbling upon it when his car overheated. Secondly, the ceaseless five days of nothing but blue skies coupled with intensely fierce sunlight looked to finally be over. Third, even though he was driving he knew he’d be able to see the storm either up close and personal while driving through it or at least along the sidelines if it were to storm anywhere near but not on top of him. He was so thankful that the stretch of six-days sickeningly beautifully sunny days seem to be coming to an end. What made that even better was that the weather changed on the same day and at the same time he was leaving Portico. While he was pretty sure the townspeople wouldn’t like the storm he was thrilled to be on the road headed towards what he hoped would be a new start and an easier life especially during a time when mother nature was showing everyone and everything around just how amazing and strong she could be.
He loved the way the clouds slowly rolled in as if they were strolling across the sky before they made it far enough across to cover the glaring sun and just about every boring inch of endless blue sky. While stranded he’d hated the intensely warm sunshine but as he’d looked around he found himself hating the sky more and more. The sky over Portico had been nothing but plain blue. He hadn’t seen a cloud, not even a long skinny cirrus cloud had bothered to visit the little town that time left behind. He’d never realized just how boring the sky could be. Yeah, he’d heard of people who love blue sky’s and sunny weather but he found them to be boring and frankly lazy looking. The sky always made him think of a large painted canvas someone had taken the time to paint a beautiful shade of blue before they set it aside to dry and forgot about it. The lack of imagination from the sky had made him turn to other things that turned out to be almost as boring as the “perfect” sky and he’d quickly become sick of the entire place opting to sit in the shade where someone had hung a hammock for guests of the little four-room hotel he’d stayed at. At least he’d been able to read a book, not that he’d packed one for his trip because he’d been supposed to be on the road the entire time not in a hammock with nothing useful or interesting to do. Thankfully at least one or two of the strange people who lived in town liked the same kind of books he liked and he’d found one he hadn’t read yet at one of the four stores that looked like they covered most of if not all of the towns shopping needs. He shook his head to try and dislodge the feelings and thoughts from his mind. Yes, he’d been bored. Yes, the town was a little odd, well no, not a little odd it was quite frankly the oddest place he’d ever stayed in his life. But why did he get the feeling something horrible was going on there?
He managed to accomplish shoving all the things that left him feeling dubious about Portico towards the back of his mind into an awaiting box he managed to mentally shut. After a second or two he went back to that box in his mind and sat the largest boulder he could come up with atop it while hoping he’d never have a reason to open it again. He shuddered at the thought of some of the more frightening things he’d trapped in the box, they’d been so troublesome they’d managed to keep him awake long into the night he’d been so spooked.
With the weather change, his car fixed, all the things about Portico boxed and hidden away, and realizing he no longer had to squint behind his glasses from the glare his mood changed rapidly. For a second he thought he felt the box tremble as if it were trying to open making his breath catch in his throat and his body stiffened with fear. After holding his breath until he absolutely had to breathe he finally let it out and told himself there is no way a box inside your head can open on its own. Besides, there is a huge boulder on top of it for extra precaution anyway he assured himself. He took a few deep breaths and regained a morsel of his happiness from before while making himself think of what he’d been thinking of before he’d interrupted himself with such an unpleasant subject.
In order to calm himself, he looked around at the scenery, the road, and finally the sky. Suddenly all the fear and uncertainty was gone. His thoughts about the storm and mother natures furry began to interest him again. And as if the unsettling occurrences a few minutes prior hadn’t happened he was back to feeling like a little kid on Christmas morning. He couldn’t wait to watch the sheer power when the clouds that had moved slowly from all around him and converged into one massive cloud. The thing was a spectacular shade of dark gray so dark in some areas that it looked almost black. But, these didn’t look like normal rain clouds to him. And even though he knew very little about the different types of storms he could tell this one would be one that reminded human beings just how mighty mother nature could be.
Lifeish
As I sat in the quiet room and listened to the nothingness all around my heartbeat. It was beating so hard and so fast I was surprised it hadn’t taken over as the sole sound in my ears. My thoughts raced left and right and there wasn’t really a reason for them to do it. There was only one option I had and no matter how much I hatted it I was going to have to do it. My mind flipped from the most pressing problem at hand the bills that needed paid. The ones I wished I had a credit card to stick them on for the three weeks I’d need to be able to cover them. The money would be there, in the bank soon, but the trick was it wouldn’t be there soon enough to cover the dates the bills required it.
First came the stupid insurance. That one had less than 24hrs to be paid. Unless I had a fairy godmother who was rather helpful In the money department I was screwed because I needed over seven hundred dollars to pay the main one I was worried about. Then there came the electric that was only five hundred and the cell phones that were about two eighty but at least those two could hopefully wait until my damn retirement or disability or whatever the company called it, check hit the bank on Tuesday. Today was Friday. That left the car payment that could wait for its money the week after next or the paycheck after next whenever that one was. The date wouldn’t be after the last day of the damn month so It wouldn’t be late enough at that point to charge a late fee or go against the credit rating. Then all that would be left was the cable/internet bill. Well shit I forgot one. There was of course the stupid house insurance that’s almost one seventy-five and I always forget when that damn thing is gonna come out of the account. Well hell.
My household bills. My son of bitchen household bills. If I’m to be completely honest the bills kind of belong to everyone in the house. I’m just in charge of paying for them. Seriously I’m not the only one who uses the internet, television, car insurance, house insurance, electricity, and I don’t use the car we pay on at all, unless of course it needs gas in it and I’m not out the door quick enough for my man to ask me to put gas in it since I’m going there anyway, and let’s face it he’s not wrong. He always asks right after I tell him I’m off to the gas station.
*Okay back to the damn bills. Even though I’m not the sole user of all the things we’re billed for and I honestly feel I use less of some of the things we pay for, the uh internet for instance, I somehow got the irritatingly ungrateful job of being bill payer. Please don’t forget with bill payer comes the job of fixer of service. This one involves call company (wait for human for what feels like purgatory) jump through many hoops without one sorry ass treat I mean that the music and looped recordings blow something fierce, then schedule an appointment for a technician to visit sometime in the far far away future between seven in the morning and nine at night. Talk about the call from hell and a major ugheroooo
The Gulf
After all this time I look at the bed and am saddened by what I see.
There has always been space in the bed.
That space has always equaled vast amounts of room left over after we’ve lain down and gone to sleep.
But, in the past the space resided in a different place.
The space isn’t where it used to live.
That massive amount of space of old, the space that lived on the outsides of bodies, as if signifying our love with our closeness has moved.
Over the years the space has managed to relocate until it was placed between us.
When I look at the bed what I see saddens me.
My mind sees images of where we sleep and how far apart, we now are.
The gulf of space between us is larger than it should ever be.
The space that used to consist of mere inches or less has eroded away, pushing us further and further towards are own sides of the bed until a gulf finally formed between our sleeping bodies.
Where once the children would appear in the night and lie at our sides for protection from nightly terrors and imagined monsters the space has grown so much. Before the children always found it easy to slide in bed and breach the edges between their parent and the edge. There was always enough room to snuggle up and be safe. And now, the edges are no longer vacant. The vacancy they would need to climb to would be in the gulf of space between. And yet the space is so large neither of us would be in need of moving.
Yet that is no longer a problem. The children are all grown, their midnight trips to the safety of their parents’ bed ended many years ago. Did that change our love? Did it somehow allow the gulf to begin?
Has our love withered as the nightly space between us grew further and further apart? With each inch further away has our past love faded with time.
Is the gulf keeping us away or are we causing the gulf?
Is this gulf normal? Does age cause these things to appear or is it just people after their children leave the nest? Do the gulfs always grow between two who’ve loved for so long?
Life
I’m in one hell of a mood tonight. I woke up today in the happiest mood I’ve been in in a long time. at least it feels like it’s been a long time. But, within a few hours i was back to being sort of bummed out. No not sort of bummed-out. I was just plain bummed out to the point that i wanted to roll up in a corner and cry for a while. I just wanted to let it all out.
What happened to make me feel this way???? What could have possibly happened for me to go from happy as a lark to down in the dumps? It was quite simple really the answer to that little question was life. Nothing happened except life. Or to be a little bit more specific my life.
I don’t hate my life. It’s not awful at all it really isn’t. I think it’s the sheer fact that sometimes I just feel the want to be heard by people. I feel like the people who live and interact with me every single day don’t understand me even the slightest little bit.
I’m well aware i’m a doer and a giver. I know I have the most annoying habit of doing and giving of things and myself to everyone I can. I know this is sometimes a foolhardy thing to do but it’s just part of me. I have an inner drive that feels the need to not only listen to other people but to do little things that make them happy all the time. I want the people i live with and love to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I love them and would do anything for them including go to the ends of the earth to make their lives more comfortable.
But, this has a few down sides. At my age i’m aware of the down sides and I know they shouldn’t get to me as much as they do. And yet this too is another part of me. It’s a part of me I can’t, and don’t really want to, shake. Just like the giving part of me is a part of me, I can’t and don’t ever want to rid myself of, is a part of me that i can’t shake.
The reason I don’t want to get rid of those parts of myself is because of just that. They are parts of myself. I feel like they are very important parts of me.
Knowing I give myself to others so freely is nice is so many ways. I love people and I want them to be happy. When I say I give them things I don’t mean physical items, although sometimes they are physical things, I’m talking about the little everyday things I try to do for them that might make them happier.
So, in reality I know this storm inside will pass. I know if the tears appear and run down my cheeks they will be doing so because I don’t have the strength to ask for what I want. I wish the people I love would realize what I really want from them sometimes is just an ear to listen to me even when they don’t agree. Or a shoulder to cry on without any advice. They don’t have to think I just wish they were there for me a sixteenth of the time I’m there for them no matter what they ask for.
OK, rant over i’ll be fine. I always am. Thankfully nobody i know reads this so it should be save on my WordPress. If I find out it’s not I’ll delete it. Or maybe not they may read it and just think that I’m in one of my moods. But just in case I’d like to say thanks for the grocery trip you took for me last week my darling daughter. You’ll never know how much that meant to me. It was one thing I got to take off the monotony of life I sometime get so very tired of having to deal with.
Pixie Village
Have you ever looked at the world around you? I mean really looked? There are so many things that are interesting it’s a wonder we ever get down the entire street without stopping all the time. That’s what I thought as a parent watching my child walk through the back yard one day. Everything made them stop. It seemed as if everything were new and interesting. As a watcher I realized how much I missed as an adult. While I thought about this my eyes wandered towards the ground. I was standing in the shade under a large oak tree and happened to notice how many acorns were on the ground around me. As I looked at them a silly thought struck me.
While there were many acorns that included their tops there were also many that didn’t. I glanced at my child for a moment and saw that he was playing on the swings batting a flower lightly with his fingertips each time he passed it. His attention to nature and the swing allowed me to turn both my attention and my imagination back to the acorns among my feet.
While I could see them quite plainly from where I was standing, I felt the urge to kneel down and take a closer look. When I did, I could see something that made me think of myself as a child. I could remember numerous days I’d spent gathering acorns and their little tops. I’d take the tops and hoard them like a squirrel in all my pockets then I’d take them inside with me and build things with them during the evening. But now, the acorns had molded into something different in my mind.
The acorn tops were the perfect shape to become little roofs for houses. I picked up a few random sticks and poked them into the ground, so they stood upright and placed the acorn top on it. When I was done there were four little acorn topped sticks standing in a row. I decided to pretend those four acorn top topped sticks were the beginnings of homes for tiny little pixies or maybe pixie children, they were very small after all and I wasn’t sure what size a pixie might be never having seen one. Next, I picked up all the acorns I could find that had been broken open. Some of the had the seeds still inside so I picked the middle out and turned them cracked side down on top of the dirt. Making sure to put one next to each of the half built huts. With the extras I kept them in a line making sure to leave room for little acorn houses when I got back to making those. When I was done with that, I had the beginning of four little acorn topped huts and seven little half acorn dwellings. Those I decided would have to be for roly-poly bugs. I’d decided my imaginary pixies used roly-poly bugs as vehicles. They rode on them when they wanted to get somewhere without flying or walking.
I checked on my child again and saw he’d swapped his attention from the swing to the slide. Now he was using up some of his energy by climbing up the ladder and sliding down the slide over and over. He seemed very happy and very entertained. Seeing him entertaining himself and without need of my assistance for anything I turned my attention back to my little village and continued building.
The little area of ground under the acorn tree had become my own little pixie development. I remember being happy that I was such an economically sensible builder. I’d only been using discarded materials after all. With that thought I shook my head at my own absurdity before going on with my building only now with a smile on my face.
Next, I picked up a few of the fallen leaves and rolled them up longways before picking up the acorn top and placing the leaf under it and letting it unwind before quickly placing them back on the stick. Now my little houses had walls. No windows or doors, well a few windows because some of the leaves had tiny holes in them but no doors. I tried to figure out a way to make doors but trying to tear the leaves to the right length didn’t work out so well so I decided I’d figure that one out later. Once I’d finished the walls as best I could I decided to work on the rest of the village a little bit. Since I hadn’t figured out yet how to build anything else, I went with the roads and driveways. I had the houses and garages after all. Those pixies needed somewhere to drive their roly-polys on didn’t they. So, I started digging out a little road and connecting driveways leading from each of the acorns out to the road.
When I was finished with about half of the driveways and the road was a little past halfway, I looked up to check on my son and was surprised to see him standing, completely quiet and still a few feet away from me. He was leaning over with his hands on his knees watching me very closely. He looked like he was afraid he’d miss something if he looked away and it took me a few tries to get his attention when I asked him if everything was okay. While he looked okay to me and I hadn’t heard anything from him that would have signified he was hurt I was still weary, he didn’t usually stand still and quiet like that. By the third time I asked him if he was okay, I’d become afraid he’d cut himself or hit his head while I’d been messing around in the dirt with the acorns and sticks. But after I asked him a third time his attention flickered to my face for a second before returning to the little houses I’d built. Then he shook his head to tell me no he didn’t get hurt and whispered that he was fine. Then he slowly pointed to the area I’d been messing around in and looked at me eyes wide with wonder before whispering, so so quietly, “Mommy, who are all the little houses and roads for? Did I scare them away with noise?”
I almost laughed at my own silliness for playing with the leaves and acorns, and in relief that he was perfectly fine. I almost told him I’d just been messing around and decided to play with the acorns for something to do. I probably would have tried to explain it off by telling him it was kind of like him playing in the sandbox but the look on his face and his awed whisper made me think twice. In that instance I changed my mind completely.
I’ve always believed a child should have a very healthy imagination. While I can’t argue that there are many other important things children need to be taught to survive in an adult world imagination is something they already have. I believe a child’s imagination needs to be allowed even encouraged to grow. That’s why I at the last second, I changed my mind about what I was going to tell my son. It wasn’t because I thought about what might happen if he liked it. It was purely because he was interested and this silly little village of acorns, sticks, leaves, and dirt had given him a look of wonder and quiet possibly joy. Those are the reasons I chose to say what I did. Some people might think my decision was wrong, but I don’t feel like it was.
You see, I told him I’d heard there was a family or two of pixies who were thinking about moving to the area. But when they’d come to look at property near us they couldn’t find any houses built for them to move into. Since they were having such a problem, they were thinking about moving somewhere else. I informed him of how lovely I thought this area was and I thought the pixies might agree. That’s why I’d decided to try and make a few temporary houses. I told him these weren’t permanent houses of course, just houses they could use while they figured out if they liked the area, and where their new houses were going to be.
Then I looked at them with a critical eye. I made a not very impressed face and told him it might have been a bad idea. I said I wasn’t the best house builder because these weren’t the greatest houses I’d ever seen at all. Just as I was about to tell him we could build them better houses maybe I lifted my hand and moved it to brush them away and start over. But, just as my arm started to touch the first little garage, he yelled for me to stop and leave the pretty little houses I’d made. There were tears in his little eyes. I stopped immediately and tried to explain what I’d been going to do. He quickly sat crossed leg next to me before leaning closer to the little houses and putting his chin in his hands. He stared at them for a minute before telling me the little houses I’d made were perfect little houses.
I sat there in shock listening to everything he had to say. He told me my little houses were great. He said that pixies are magic, and they don’t need doors when I tried to tell him there were no doors on the houses. He said they know how to get in and out with magic and they were fine. Next, I saw him studying the acorn garages. After a minute or so he told me they were perfect for a pixie’s roly-poly bug car. That was when I realized my four-year-old son hadn’t been all the way asleep when I’d made up a pixie story about six months ago to put him to sleep. The more he looked at the little row of houses the more ideas he came up with. When he was done looking at it, he turned to me and asked in a whisper. “Mommy, can I help build the pixie houses? I promise to be careful.” With tears in my eyes I hugged him and answered. “You can help me build any pixie building you want to. And we both have to be careful you know mommy can be very clumsy. I’m sometimes clumsier than anybody.” He giggled as he hugged me back.
That was an amazing evening. No, that was the start of many many amazing evenings. The things we came up with for our little pixie roly-poly village were wonderful. But the most wonderful part about the whole thing was the imagination and love we shared. And all we needed was the world around us. That’s because we came up with a rule in the beginning, actually my son came up with it. We weren’t allowed to use anything that we hadn’t found, and it also had to be part of nature. No bottles, caps, plastic, or glass. Well we cleaned a lot of it up while we looked for additions to our little village, but we never added anything nature didn’t drop or grow to our little Pixie Town. I love to sit back and think about the hours upon hours we spent building and shaping and imagining our little pixies over the next year and a half. We worked our minds, our imagination, and grew our love for each other and creature’s imaginary and real all at the same time. That little pixie village may be gone in life, but it will live in my memory forever. Thank you oak tree, acorns, pixies, and roly-poly bugs.
Can Ya’ll Give A Helping Hand To Beverly & Her Family??
One of the easiest things we do as adults we don’t even think about. We all go to the bathroom and wipe our own behinds. I know its crude sounding but its something so easy and also something that Beverly hasn’t been able to do in over six months. In addition to everything else that’s one of the little things we actually take for granted. That as well as having the ability to clean our homes, cook dinner for our family, go to church, sing in the church choir, grocery shop, even answer the door of our home when someone comes to visit. Well Beverly’s lost the ability to do so many things in the last six months. She’s also found that the price a person has to pay when they’re bbed-bound is so much more expensive than most people, certainly herself before this, realize. She’s in need of financial help. She needs a ramp for the wheelchair at her house, her truck just broke, and the cost of adult pull-ups, wipes, bed protection pads, and the numerous non-emergency transport fees are financially crippling her.
Please help if you can. Every little bit will help in more ways than you can ever imagine. Here’s a little bit of her life in the last few months……………..
Imagine for a second waking up one day and finding that you’ve broken your ankle and need pins and screws and hardware to keep it together. Then I want you to imagine that your back is in severe pain and you get taken to the doctor by non-emergency transport (because you can’t ride in your car with your husband driving because of your ankles and the back pain) only to find that you need immediate surgery on your lower spine. Then after the spine surgery as you lay in the rehab room at Walton Rehab you find that you can tell your toes to wiggle and your leg to rotate but they won’t listen to you. Nothing you do will make them move. You’re paralyzed from the lower back down. They immediately take you back in for surgery and “try to fix” the problem and five months later you find that you’re still stuck in bed and aren’t able to walk. See More @ https://www.gofundme.com/HelpingHand4Bev
The Time As It Is After It’s Over
I never really thought about how it would be after the end. I knew on some level that it would hurt and be difficult but I didn’t quite let myself face the way it would really be.
I’d know what the loss would be like. I’d been through it once already. True it had been a bit different last time but it had still been a loss that I’d felt all the way to the core of my being. That feeling of waking up and thinking for at least a few minutes that nothing had changed. The feeling that when I walked out of my room nothing would be changed and I’d have to deal with the problems again. Thinking I’d have to deal with whatever occurred while I slept.
But no matter how many times my mind let me forget what was missing I’d look around at the day and realization would dawn on me.
I’d know that the loss was still there. It was always sudden the knowing or remembering whatever you want to call it. The puzzle piece that had been missing when I went to sleep was still a missing puzzle piece. That one piece of my household was still missing and wouldn’t be back no matter how many times I slept and awoke without remembering.
The truth of the difficulty all of us was living with for the last couple of years wasn’t gone and didn’t dull. However, the loss made the memories of even the most difficult of past days seem as if they’d been a part of another life. The increasing oddities and confusion of the last few years seem to pale in comparison to the loss everyone now feels.
Along with the feeling of loss, there’s a feeling of thankfulness. Along with the thankfulness, there’s a feeling of guilt. This feeling of guilt is directly related to the feeling of thankfulness. I hate the way my minds sending all these thoughts and feelings through my head circle after circle. This perpetual ring of feelings is so encompassing I find them almost physically painful.
How can I feel sad of the loss, thankful its over and guilty for being thankful? How is it possible to feel all three at the same time?
I know the loss is because no matter when I wake up and walk around he won’t be there. I know I’m thankful he was taken before the disease robbed him of all comprehension and life. And I know I feel guilty for feeling thankful and even released by the fact that he’s gone now instead of later. I’m so glad he didn’t hang on long enough to experience the tremendous loss of the many memories of everything he’d ever done his entire life. There is no way living 77 years didn’t make memories upon memories only he held in his head.
CONTINUE TOMORROW………
Florians…..(beginning of chapter2)
When I was a small child somewhere around the age of five, I learned something so important it’s managed to stick with me throughout everything. As well as I can remember not a day’s gone by without at least the thought of what I learned that day going through my head. There were many days it gave me the little boost of encouragement or hope in the times I needed it most. What that means is for the last eight years one lesson was enough to give me the strength to go on during those times in life I was close to giving in and letting the Florians who thought they were running everything in my entire life actually have my life and everything in it. I’m aware there are many people who might believe a child between the ages of five and thirteen has no business even thinking they’re in charge of their life, but I still need to tell my story as it stands up until now. No, wait a sec, I just realized what I said before is wrong. There’s absolutely no way I was five when I learned the lesson I’m getting ready to tell you. As I’ve been talking, I’ve also been sifting through my memories, trying to sort them all out, I want to do everything I can to make sure what I’m sharing with you and my life’s timeline match. By doing this, I feel more reassured that what I’m sharing is somewhere between ninety and one hundred percent confident that what I’m having you write down for me is actually what happened at the age I said it did. Now that I’ve taken the time to pair many of my lifes interesting occurrences with the appropriate ages I’ve found I errored with the telling of the first story. Anyway, what I’m trying to say, without sounding completely idiotic, is that while I was doing the pairing, I realized there is no possible way I could’ve been five when this particular lesson presented itself to me. I was when they occurred I’m much more confident about the things I’m going to share with you. That was when I realized there was why I couldn’t have been five during this section of my life. So if I wasn’t five then I’d have to have been either three or four. Even though I’ve tried to figure it out in every way I could think of I wasn’t fortunate enough to make an accurate match no matter what I did. While I’m not sure which age is right, I think it’s safest for me to go with age four. There are a couple of reasons I chose four, one of them is that I don’t remember very many things from when I was three, but if I’m being truthful then I have to tell you the actual reason I chose the age of four. So, in all honesty, with all other reasons pushed aside I chose to use the age four because it happens to sit right smack in the middle of the first two ages I’d chosen from the start. So the age of four it becomes. Ok, now that I’ve straightened that up, which makes me feel better even if it doesn’t do anything for anybody else I think I can finally stop wasting your time and get on with what happens to be the beginning of my memories. What’s a story without a morsel of confusion to start it off right? Ok, back to the beginning.
Firstly, I’d like it to be known that I’m fully aware of the enormous risk, both to myself and the people I love, and possible danger I could cause myself by talking about my families “religion.”
Sleepish
Exhausted I lie my head on my pillow and close my weary eyes. My body starts to relax, and my mind goes over things that happened today. My thoughts hitch and spiral a little bit about the things that bothered or worried me, but thankfully after a few twirls they pass on and allow the next thoughts to come through. Today didn’t seem to have too many things for my mind to worry about. So, I relax a little bit more and start to breathe a little bit deeper.
Next, my mind starts to go through things that I feel like I have to remind myself of before I go to sleep. As I’m peacefully going through the next day something happens. My thoughts suddenly switch from tomorrows to do list to the things I need to get done for the next week. I try and redirect my thoughts, but it’s not working like its supposed to.
Within seconds I’ve gone from being a second away from falling off that edge into blissful dreamland to standing on a narrow precipice that’s crumbling underneath my weight. With each new thought my heartbeat races faster and faster. There’s no possible way I’m going to fall asleep now I think.
My eyes fly open and I look at the clock. It can’t have been only fifteen minutes since I laid down. The entire weeks horrabilites have all passed into and through my mind. They’ve taken my peace and turned it into this mindless madness made of nothing but fear and anguish.
How can I make it through the night like this? No not the night how can I make it through the rest of the week with such horrible outcomes ahead? Wait slow down heart this body isn’t running a race. This body is supposed to be going to sleep. Stop beating like you’ve got to beat as fast as you possibly can heart. Stop running in circles mind. Oh, why won’t this stop?
I get up and take the medicine for anxiety hoping it’ll work in time for me to get some semblance of sleep before morning. Then I lay back down making sure my legs and arms aren’t touching each other or the sides of my body (I don’t know why but it helps). Next, I slowly close my eyes and try to concentrate on breathing in as deep as I can before exhaling slowly. While I do this I imagine my heart slowing down and the anxiety slowly working its way out of my head. The racing thoughts I breathe out of my mind and into the cosmos making them leave my body via my fingers and toes. After a while, either the medicine or the breathing manage to relax me enough to sleep (at least for a few hours but three or four hours is better than none) hoping that those kinds of thoughts won’t ever come again.
By Julie Lutz.... 