The poems the Holy Spirit creates (cont'd)...

[For Fred...]

I was thinking more about how the Transactional Theory of Reading applies to readers of the Bible.  With Rosenblatt's stance that meaning lies not solely with the text nor with the reader, but meaning is made in the transaction, or interaction, between text and reader might be in conflict with the Lutheran stance that the Scriptures are literal and are not dependent upon man's thinking.  After all, the Christian Book of Concord, our beloved Confessions, were created because of a need to make clear what we believe the Scriptures teach, what God has set forth, not man's theories and suppositions.  So, clearly, the meaning is not open to interpretation (no Lutheran bible study or Sunday school class would ever be having people go around the room and sharing what the Bible verses meant to them).  Or better put: "The true rule is this: God's Word shall establish the articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel can do so" (BOC, SA, II, 15).

We also believe that the Bible is the Living Word.  As I have been savoring of late, John teaches us: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it" (John 1:1-5).  Jesus is the Word of God.  The Scriptures are the visual representation, the words that teach and speak of the Word of God.  They are living and dynamic.

One of my favorite bits of the Book of Concord (okay, roll your eyes over favorites, I will wait) is found in the Large Catechism.  Luther teaches that the Living Word "has and is able to do all that God is and has done" (LC, IV, 17).  Our faith is created and sustained by the hearing of the Living Word creates and sustains faith, by receiving it.  The Living Word sanctifies us.  The Living Word offends and repels our foe.  The Living Word is a sanctuary above all sanctuaries.  All of these things are not because of man, not because of the reader, but because of the text.  

[Not incidentally, all of this, as I have written before, is why I believe all throughout my beloved Psalter we are admonish, encouraged, advised to have the Living Word in our mouths, on our tongues, falling from our lips, and in our ears.]

Our Confessions also teach that man cannot fear or know or trust God apart from receiving faith, as we are taught: "All of these things are the reason why we made mention of concupiscense in our description of original sin, and why we deny to human nature the ability to fear and trust in God.  We wanted to show that original sin contains these diseases: ignorance of God, not having fear and trust in God, the inability to love God. These are the chief faults of human nature because they conflict with the First Table of the Ten Commandments" [AP, II, (I), 14].  

We further learn:  "The knowledge of original sin is absolutely necessary. The magnitude of Christ's grace cannot be understood unless our diseases are recognized" [AP, II, (I), 33].  However, the Formula of the Solid Declaration underscores the depth of the corruption:  "On the other hand, we believe, teach, and confess that original sin is not a minor corruption.  It is so deep a corruption of human nature that nothing healthy or uncorrupt remains in man's body or soul, in his inward or outward powers....This damage cannot be fully described. It cannot be understood by reason, but only from God's Word" (FSD, I, 14).  Thus, Original Sin underscores that the meaning lies in the text, that man cannot in and of himself make meaning or bring meaning to the text.  

Therefore, the truth, the power, the meaning of the Living Word lies in Jesus Christ, not man.  No matter how many transactions between reader and text, the meaning will always remain the same.  Would that not negate the application of this theory of reading engagement?

But wait.  Consider that the meaning of the Living Word is the salvation of mankind.  In order give faith so that salvation can take place, there has to be a receiver.  After all, God did not cause man to pen the Living Word for Him because He wanted a book for Himself.  The Bible is not for God.  The Bible, the Word of God, the spoken and written Word, is how, is the means, God uses to give the gift of Faith.

"Therefore we constantly maintain this point:  God does not want to deal with us in any other way that through the spoken Word and through the Sacraments  Whatever is praised as from the Spirit--without the Word and Sacraments--is the devil himself.  God wanted to appear even to Moses through the bush and spoken Word. No prophet, neither Elijah nor Elisha, received the Spirit without the Ten Commandments or the spoken Word.  John the Baptist was not conceived without the word of Gabriel coming first, nor did he leap in his mother's womb without Mary's voice.  Peter says, 'For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit' (2 Peter 1:21).  Without the outward Word, however, they were not holy.  Much less would the Holy Spirit have moved them to speak when they were still unholy.  They were holy, says he, since the Holy Spirit spoke through them" (BOC, SA, III, IX, 10-13). 

As referenced above, the Holy Spirit comes to us through the Living Word and Sacraments--which are themselves created through the joining of the Word--and creates faith.   More clearly:  "Through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Spirit is given. He works faith, when and where it pleases God, in those who hear the good news that God justifies those who believe that they are received into grace for Christ's sake. This happens not through our own merits, but for Christ's sake" (AC, V, 2-4).

Therefore, I would argue that there still remains a transaction between the reader and the text.  I would argue that the fruition of meaning of the Bible is made through the creation of Rosenblatt's poem, the poems the Holy Spirit creates in the hearts of mankind as we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, Jesus Christ who is the Living Word.

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

A kind of cheat...

I learned a kind of cheat when it comes to these small meals I have to eat.  Whatever I have for breakfast, I can eat more without great consequences.  So, I have started having lunch or dinner food for "breakfast." Yesterday, I had pizza.

Now, before you start lecturing me for eating pizza after the last fiasco, what I ate was a Totino's pizza that was  higher in protein and thin crust. It was also a smaller amount.  And, well, it was $0.75.

The idea that edible food could be manufactured, shipped, and sold at a profit at less than a dollar seems a tad inconceivable. After all, the pizzas are usually a whopping $1.25.  However, I was rash and bought the economical pizza because a life without pizza would be so very hollow!

I was a bit worried that it would be too much food even so, but I had no problem digesting it and had even smaller meals the rest of the day.  I am already wishing to eat the other one I purchased just in case.  However, I thought I should wait at least a few days, if not a whole week.  Of course, we know just how much will power I have.

I am sure Bettina would support my search for a pizza I could still eat.

What I also found was a way to have sandwiches again.  Those tiny bagels make for a means by which I would not have too many carbohydrates and less sugar in them.  What helps, too, is my approach to meat on sandwiches.  Never have I met anyone other than myself who has a proper understanding of what the proportion of meat to other ingredients should be. Think: humongous pile!

A proper sandwich has a smear of mayo, a stack of lettuce chucks, meat that is as high as both slices of bread, cheddar cheese, then lots of yellow mustard.  Key is having the mayo next to the lettuce and the mustard next to the cheese.  And, of course, piles and piles and piles of meat...roasted turkey or chicken.

It has been ever so long since I have had a sandwich...especially since those grilled cheese now makes me ill and those BLTs (minus the T) were not always welcome either.  [Of course, I have never really thought to put piles of bacon on them.]  The bag of tiny bagels is nearly gone and not once has a sandwich made me ill!

The other bonus to this is that a small sandwich is a great option for one of the small meals I need to have.  A great option and a new option. I still do not yet have enough options to eat balanced meals throughout the day.  While I am in no danger of blowing away, I have lost six pounds over the past two weeks. The medication problems and migraines and everything else piling up makes remembering to eat regularly difficult and interest in food low.

I have enjoyed the sandwiches, though.
And the pizza.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Still puzzling...

Devastating, unexpected, harsh news on Thursday left my body trembling violently until some time during last night.  Even when the tears stopped falling, my body still mirrored the great upset in my mind.  I tried to calm down.  Truly, I did.  And I was rather bothered Friday afternoon when I was still trembling.  However, by Friday night, still trembling despite having John 6 fall into my ears via Fred and several doses of Xanax, I decided that I would just have to wait it out.  I did so because for all the puzzling I have done over my cold spells, I simply have to wait them out.

Eating such small meals is rather tiresome, as is trying to remember what I have eaten when so as to balance things out.  However, having spent far, far less time writhing on the bathroom floor has made the battle of accepting the permanent change to my body, learning how to deal with my dysautonomia-wrecked innards, a blessing.  Would that it were I could do the same for the cold spells.

Last night, while still trembling from swallowing the news, I was lying in bed with chills spreading across my body.  They are deep chills, nothing akin to goose bumps.  Almost...almost...they are painful.  At times they are like waves crashing upon a shore, one after another, overlapping, relentless. Truly, I have no words to clearly describe what I feel, what my body experiences. Or the frustration...discouragement...even despair that washes over me as well.

Last night, I was wearing two pairs of socks (one cotton, one wool), bike shorts, leggings, pajama pants, sweats, two tank tops (one tight, one loose), a long sleeve cotton pajama top, a sweat jacket, ear muffs, and gloves.  I was lying beneath a cotton blanket, a wool blanket, and the heaviest weight down comforter sold by the Company Store. And yet for nearly two hours I was so unbearably cold that all I could do was wait it out...no reading, no listening to music, no watching online television. My nose grows so cold that really, at such times, all I do is wish for some sort of cover for it.

Part of the reason for all the layers of fabric is because my skin becomes so cold that any part of my body touching another part makes the cold seem worse, brings about even more chills.  Part of the reason for all the layers of fabric is because any part of exposed skin, any part of skin not completely covered with fabric so that not a single molecule of air passes across it, expands the misery, heightens the cold.  Air, even that trapped beneath all the blankets and such, feels like a mighty Arctic gale blowing against my skin.

I will often lay on my side and draw my knees up to my chest in an attempt to concentrate my own body heat, tucking all the layers as tightly as possible.  Doing so does not make that much of a difference, but still I try.  I will also often curl my body about Amos, trying to leach off his body heat.  Am I a churlish wretch for bemoaning the fact, for even resenting the fact, that Amos simply doesn't radiate enough heat to help me?

All day yesterday, I could not handle the cold.  Winter has been fairly mild to me, less snow and warmer temperatures than my first one here.  We have had days, though, this winter than have been far colder. It was 36, a day usually almost balmy to me.  However, each time I took Amos out for his business, I found myself racing to huddle over the grate on the kitchen floor with a blanket wrapped around me to trap the heat blasting about my body once back inside.  Teeth rattling, body trembling, a pitiful figure one might expect to find on a mountain top in the Swiss Alps.  My tepee solution does warm me up after being outside, but it does not help when the waves of chills begin.

The fainting, I understand.  The disruption to the autonomic process makes sense.  The digestive issues, I (now) understand.  The disruption to the autonomic process makes sense.  However, the cold spells remain a puzzle to me as to what is taking place in my body. I struggle mightily not merely with the misery but also with the mystery...the mystery that feels like a betrayal of sorts.

I gave up the battle of the anguish tremors.  I accepted that there was little I could do, that this is part of my life now, where my body reflects the things I would rather keep hidden, where my internal processes are oft made external, even against the strongest act of my will.  I wonder, then, why it is that I cannot accept the cold spells, the chills, the misery.
 

I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

The poems the Holy Spirit creates...

The very best bit of my doctoral studies began with a glimpse whilst getting my master's degree.  It was then I first heard of the Secondary World.  Basically, this is when you get lost in a book, any text really.  Technically, it is the willing suspension of disbelief.  When I spend time in PERN, for example, in the world Anne McCaffrey created where dragons fly and share a telepathic lifelong bond with their chosen riders, I am willingly setting aside my very strong belief that dragons do not exist in order that I might eat and fly and fight alongside them.  Those who enter fully the Secondary World are the ones who lose sight of the world in which they really exist...the ones who do not hear someone enter the room or sit down next to them whilst reading. You have Michael Benton (1980) to thank for that lesson.

As amazing as it was to learn what was happening to me when I got lost in a book, the best bit of my studies came later, when I "met" Louise Rosenblat, the most brilliant of all brilliant reading scholars.  Back in the dark ages, she wrote Literature as Exploration (1938).  Forty years later, the culmination of her Transactional Theory of reading was published as The Reader, The Text, and the Poem (1978).  It is no hyperbole, to me, to state that everything that can be understood about reader engagement stems from her work.

She believed that every reading experience is an interactive event between the reader and the text, that meaning is made through that interaction.  Meaning does not lie merely in the words of the author.  Nor does meaning lie solely within the reader.  Instead meaning is made, meaning is created, in the interaction that takes place between the text and the reader.  Therefore, each event was unique because every reader is unique.  That transaction, that exchange, she termed a poem.  [A wonderful metaphor if you think about it.]  The very best part of her theory is the understanding that each poem is also unique to the reader.  By this I mean that when you re-read a text a new poem is created, because while you are still you, the you that you are in the next reading is unique from the you that you were in the previous reading.

The poem is created from your knowledge, your experience, your feelings...everything about you.  Every day of our lives we change, we grow.  Even the densest of us, even the most stuck-in-the-mud oafs, are still different because we have lived more, tasted more, heard more, felt more, seen more. Perhaps is it too blatant an example, but I read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time before I was given the gift of faith and then again after.  Imagine my surprise when I realized this was a story of faith and the Mrs Who, Mrs Which, and Mrs Whatsit are angels, not witches! How much more profound was experiencing anew The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe once I knew, once I was able to believe the work of the cross.

Of course, I also find fascinating how two Christians who are authors chose to wield their pens.  I admire them both. One wrote as a Christian author; one wrote as an author whose faith, as a Christian, colored her work but did not desire to write only Christian literature.  L'Engle's The Arm of the Starfish has one of the most profound poems I have ever experienced, one that created anew is deeper and richer each time I visit the story.  In a nutshell, there is a despicable man who causes the death of much beloved, innocent man.  When the evil man's daughter is injured, he turns to the main character's father for help.  The daughter is saved.  The main character is incensed that her father would help the enemy, angry and betrayed.  When she flings her anger and her betrayal at him, her father tells her that if you are going to care about the fall of the sparrow, you cannot pick or choose who the sparrow is going to be.

SIGH.  Good stuff there.

I re-read all the time.  All the time.  I have favorite series I visit often.  [Who wouldn't want regular doses of the brilliant pen of James Herriot?] I have authors for whom I own every single book that they published.  When reading the next book in a series, my "rule" is that I first re-read all the books that came before it. For one series, that count is currently at 22!  In this way, I prepare myself for the next serving by tasting again from the feast offered me.

Right now, I am currently re-reading a series that has floored me in the new poems that are being created.  They are not profound, I think, for anyone but me.  The fall of the sparrow truth, well, the whole world could take note of that one. But Kaylin's battles?  Well, I have been thinking of late that Michelle Sagara wrote this entire series just for me.

Here are a few excerpts...for me to remember...later:

Cast in Silence
It never went away. The regret. The guilt. Sometimes it ebbed for long enough that she could believe she was beyond it, but that was wishful thinking, another way of lying to herself. She didn't want to share this with Teela and Tain. Sharing bar brawls and near-death, yes. But this? [p.52]


~~~~
"Stop judging your life by the failures," he whispered.
 "What should I do?" she whispered, "I'm always going to fail."
"We all do," he said softly, his voice closer now. "We all fail, but none of us fail all the time." [p. 178]


~~~~
"I think," she added, "that's why you can't see what I see; I never let you. It's dark, it's horrible – it's everything I believe about myself. The tower is speaking to me, yes. Bit by bit, it's unraveling all the lies of omission, even the ones I told myself. Maybe especially those. It's pulling out the things that I kept hidden because I couldn't stand to think about them.


"I don't know who I am, Severn. I don't think I've ever known who I am. But I know who I want to be, now. Maybe that's all I'll ever know. What I was is so large in my own mind I can't break through it if it's hidden. And I keep it hidden because I'm afraid. Of what it says about me. Of what it'll say about me to people whose opinion I actually care about.


"I'm not proud of it," she added." But I can pretend I accept it – as long as I never have to acknowledge it. And this," she said, throwing her arms wide, "is what it is. It's too big. I need to let it be what it was." [p. 296]




Cast in Secret
Epharim waited until she had joined them again and said softly, "You fear discovery. You fear your own thoughts." And he said it with pity. Kaylin was not the world's biggest pity fan."Fear, we all know," he added. "And we all know rejection and pain. But none of us have ever suffered this fear of being revealed, this fear of being seen as we are." He was serene, and without judgment. [p. 80]


~~~~
[Kaylin] "Would you change your past?"
[Severn] "Parts of it. In a heartbeat."
He shrugged again.
"You wouldn't?"
"I can't. I don't waste time thinking about changing what can't be changed."
"And you're never afraid that someone won't judge you? That they won't misunderstand you or misconstrue you as you are now?"
"People judge me all the time. Be careful of that," he added, pointed at a trellis that grew near the roadside. Vines were wrapped around it, and they rustled in the nonexistent breeze.
"But they don't have the right –"
"They have the right to form their own opinions. I have the right to disagree with them in a fashion that doesn't break the Imperial Laws."
"But-"
"I'm not afraid of the judgment of strangers," he told her quietly. "I live with my own judgment. That's enough. And I judge others, and live by those judgments, as well."
"I don't-" want to be despised or hated. She couldn't quite frame the words with her lips, they sounded so pathetic as a thought. But Severn had her name; she felt it had between them, it's foreign symbols not so much as sound as a texture. Ellariayn.
He stopped walking and caught her face in his hands, pulling it up. She met his eyes. "Then stop despising and hating yourself, Kaylin. We're not what we were.  We're not what we will be. Everyone changes. Everyone can change. Let it go. If you're always afraid to be known, you'll never understand anyone else. If you never understand anyone else, you're never going be a good Hawk. You'll see what others see, or what they want you to see. You won't see what's there." [pp. 99–100]




Cast in Chaos
"I...I don't know how." It was hard, to say it. To admit it. Especially to Nightshade.   Ignorance was weakness.
No, she thought. Ignorance was only weakness if you clung to the damn thing. [p. 107]


In re-reading this series, in having all of these things I had not noticed before reach up and grab my heart, shake my soul, very much trouble my waters, it suddenly struck me why it is...from my scholar's view...that I love the Psalter so very much.

Each time I pray my beloved Psalter, each time it is prayed to me and for me, the Holy Spirit is conducting a new transaction with and within me, creating a new poem.  The reason those poems are so very powerful is that they are living transactions, my experience with the text is changing not merely because I have changed, because I have lived more and experienced more, but because the text itself is also living, the text itself, the Living Word, is changing me in the process.

It seems too small to say that every day I will read/speak/hear a psalm and find myself in disbelief.  Again. Not the secondary world, but struggling to believe that the Creator, the Lord of the Universe, could and would cause men to write down words thousands of years ago that are for me each and every time they are voiced, each and every encounter, for me that I might taste and see that He is good, that I might have faith kindled in my heart, that my soul might be washed clean of my sin and the sins committed against me.  That this might be so always.


Rosenblat was a genius in a way I believe few understand.  Yes, she had her day in the sun, but scholars have this distressing tendency to chase after the latest and the greatest, leaving behind truths that could continue to inform and frame new academic discourse, new discovery.  The true depths of her work have yet to be plumbed.  Its profundity never truly measured.

But...here's a thought.  I am no longer Dr. So and So.  My tenure as a college professor was too brief, my addition to the academic discourse of literacy studies but a flash in the pan.  It is not arrogant to say that my dissertation was and remains rather unique.  The ideas I proferred would still stand out despite the literacy world spinning round for years and years since my study.  But I never published.  I never did the work it would take to drive my stake into the ground, to post the banns of my work to the world.

For that, I oft feel the failure.  My doctorate really does not matter to anyone but me.  No one really pays attention to the scholarship I acquired or what I can still leverage from it.  Failure thrums through every thought I have about the diploma hanging on the wall and the limp cowl crumpled in a bin in the attic.

However, what if...

What if what I studied, what I learned, was never more than this grand lessoning I needed so that in the fullness of His time, God would bring me to the pure doctrine and the truth that the Psalter is not really a collection of Hebrew poetry no one is ever really expected to understand, but a collection of prayers that Christ prayed and prays for me, a collection of prayers that are inexplicably, ineffably the very words of my heart given to me, for me so that even when I am lost in darkness, even when I am so very overwhelmed by the wounds I bear I would still be able to pray in confidence, to know that they are words okay to speak, to whisper, to cry out because God created me, loves me, and knows that I would and will need them, because God's greatest desire is that I might be saved.

What if I needed two degrees, needed to explore the journeys of Benton and Rosenblat, so that I might understand the Holy Spirit is creating poems in me, for me, through the Living Word, in order that I might receive faith and believe in a way that speaks to the very academic, the very thinking mind God created in me.

I am His beloved.
I am forgiven.
I am pure and spotless...even now.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!

Everywhere...

It began when she was  five.
For these boys, it began at eight.
Here, it appears five children may not have been enough.
Children are not safe from anyone, not even those whom they are expected to trust, even parents.
And it often does not stop when they grow up.
For so many children, it is because of the silence, because it is easier to avoid addressing the problem, to skirt the issue, to be expedient.
Would that it were every single state, every single city has this campaign.


Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.

I simply do not understand...

I saw this article.  I knew I shouldn't read it.  I did anyway.  Sometimes, I simply do not understand my own stupidity.  I read this article.  I knew the story would be skewed.  I expected it not to be anyway.  I simply do not understand the stupidity of others. Truly, I do not.

I suppose I am not capable of understanding a human rights group more concerned for the physical and mental consequences of sex offenders than the physical and mental consequences of both their current victims and those they are likely to hurt again.

"Research for the report revealed that of the 104 people operated on between 1970 and 1980, only 3% reoffended, compared with nearly half of those who refused castration or were denied it by the authorities."

47% more victims do not matter to human rights advocates.  Victims who face a lifetime of pain and anguish, whose bodies are affected in ways few understand...even the victims...such as this or this or this or this.  This is a past that rarely remains in the past.  And it not just those whom the sexual offender hurts, but also those who love and care for the victims and those whom the victims might unfortunately hurt themselves because the wounded often only understand life with wounds, because the wounded often were wounded by those who bear the same wounds themselves.  The depths of this evil perpetrated upon God's creation truly have not been plumbed.  Put another way, most ever only really see the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Even then, there is the silence on the matter.  Most sex offenders go unpunished.  Most victims remain silent.  We will never truly know the whole of this scourge upon the human race.

The harshest part of my soul will never understand why it is that those who bear such terrible wounds seemingly matter not, why the world prefers to look away from them under the guise of considering other, more pressing problems.

Hate crimes are often pursed with unrelenting passion and a quest for uncompromising vengeance by our legal system.  Publicly, intolerance for differences is held as an abomination to humanity and civility and society.  Would that it were a fraction of that legal stance were shown against sexual offenders.  For it is not merely the understandable silence of the victims that plagues our world, but the incomprehensible silence of those who know what is happening and choose transfer, retirement, moving, etc. over publicly acknowledging the egregious perfidy committed against mind, body, and soul and holding accountable sex offenders.  

That is why this is the way of the world in the year 2012, why child pornography and prostitution is a thriving industry world wide, why one of the most common weapons of wars waged today is rape.  Why the common mentality regarding sexual abuse is to let sleeping dogs lie, for the past is over.

But it isn't.  Over.


Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.

Just things...

I have been meaning to post this article for a while. Even though I have been hard at reducing, recycling, and reorganizing for a over a year, really, I still thought it is a solid, supportive piece.  Helpful even to someone quite determined to shed her excess stuff.

By moving things around, I was able to empty off three shelves from the far left unit.  That should be plenty of space for groceries and such should I end up having renters.  Primarily, I simply moved things around, but I did choose some games to donate and I decided I still had too many extension cords and power strips.  Since the latter are in a box, I really did not save space there, but I added the spares to the box I packed up for The Mustard Seed, along with a flashlight that is really too heavy for me to hold.

If only I could find another place where I can donate some of my binders.  Four bankers' boxes of them is too many to keep...even for me!  The non-profit counseling center where I have taken the bulk of my office supplies is, in large part to my distribution of excess, no longer in need of binders at the moment.

I also carried the outdoor, lighted Christmas tree up to the attic and moved a few of the bricks to the garage.  Along with these utility space changes, I better organized all the painting supplies.

Yesterday, needing to not think about the words spoken during my appointment, I threw myself into cleaning those stacking shelves I mentioned.  Sixteen of them are now assembled in three rows behind the curtain.  I still have several of the longer, shallower ones, which are good for shoes, to wash.  They do not fit in the laundry sink as well, so I will have to soak them, rotate them, soak them more, and then scrub them clean.  I used very hot water, 409, and dishwashing soap for my soaking mixture.  After wearing out two sponges, I got the rather brilliant idea of using the steel wool I have been hanging on to ever since the basement renovation at my old house.  You see, that is an example of something I could have down-sized, but saved because I thought it might come in useful one day.  The steel wool made the scrubbing much, much easier.

Two positive notes:  The other day Fred edited a piece of writing for me. I could dwell upon the fact that I missed two small edits and therefore had too errors go out in the eBlast.  But I am actually so very thankful for the privilege of having such a talented writer edit me.  I can learn so much from how often he demonstrates the power of simple word order changes.  I also savor how skilled he is at being gentle with strident thoughts, yet retaining their essence.  Sometimes, when I get a piece back from him, I just gape at it with open mouth, a tad envious of his craftsmanship and very much in awe that he would gift me so with the time it takes to edit my pieces of writing.

The other positive is that Sandra had lunch with me today.  The normalcy of going out to lunch was so very welcome.  Plus, though I did talk too much for what I wanted the time to be, I did have such a thrill listening to her talk about her doctoral studies.  She really has a fine mind, an intriguing mind.  So, the gift of her time was equally special to me. Plus, well, she gave me her French fries.  Truly, is there a greater act of mercy at lunch than withholding not a single fry from a friend?

Of course, I had to go and open my mouth to her about how it has been a week since my last migraine.  I believe I am well on my way toward another one.  I have yet to figure out my triggers, but a part of me is wondering if one might be my contacts. I have had such trouble with my vision.  I doubt it was anything I ate since what I ate was not unusual, but I suppose nothing should be ruled out.

Amos is sitting in my lap with his new GREEN Gorilla Baby.  For the past two days, Gorilla has gone everywhere with him, even to bed.  Last night, I couldn't stop laughing for a while because he kept trying to get both Gorilla Baby and Flower Baby tucked beneath his chin to sleep, only his head kept falling to either side of the stack of babies.  Between his snoring and his love of babies, Amos brings such laughter into my life.  Add in the absolute comfort of his constant snuggling and utter need to be with me at every moment of the day and I am daily overwhelmed with this merciful gift of my Creator.

Off to down the concoction of all my migraine pills and huddle in the dark and silence for a while. May the grace of this migraine be the focus of a week of freedom rather than the pain that is building within my skull.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Kick 'em when they're down...

I have never really understood why this is acceptable...common.  I mean, we live in a sinful world.  But people sure do like to tout the goodness of man.  It's all bunk.  My passenger mirror had a key piece inside that meant repair rather than replacement...the difference between tens of dollars and hundreds, according to Toyota.  Somebody stole it.

Wanting to accomplish something positive, but too weary to work more on the stuff shelves, I ventured out to the car to try and replace the windshield wiper blades.  I have had the new ones for over a month, but have always struggled with the "easy-release" mechanism when it comes to taking the old ones off and putting the new ones on.  So, I have avoided the task.  However, I thought that I could have Amos with me, on the leash, and accomplish two birds with one stone.

Amos refused to walk a single step in the leash once off the porch.
I failed the get the blades on before dark fell.
I discovered the innards to my mirror had been stolen.

When I pulled up to the house Thursday, I had contemplated folding the mirror back against the car so folk wouldn't notice the damage.  However, a part of me wondered if I was thinking prudently or pridefully.  So shaken--as shattered as my mirror really--after what had happened, I left the mirror as is and simply slunk into the house. While it may have been prideful, apparently it might also have been prudent.

I did learn three things I could do while driving to minimize the chance of having a flashback: 1) listen to loud music; 2) have a strong odor; and 3) have something prickly to hold while at lights and such.  The idea is to heighten your senses, to focus them on things that are not triggers.  A pine cone was suggested as a best option for touch and one of those Christmas tree car air fresheners for smell.

I am not sure where to get a pine cone.
I don't blame Amos about the leash.
At this point, I am afraid to walk and to drive.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

For the visual...

The other curtains hung. I have some wire stacking shelf pieces that I used in my other closets in Alexandria.  They are rather sticky with age; the ones I put in my closet upstairs took a bit of cleaning.  However, should I tackle such a project, I was thinking, while looking at the photo, that I could create a more useful storage space behind the curtains if I lined the two walls with some of those shelves.  [See my lonesome golf clubs?]

The filing cabinets in their new home. The shelves in the background hold my painting supplies.  While organized, I am sure they could use some more work.  The frames stacked on the filing cabinet are the rest of my "honors."  I hung my three diplomas, but since I opted not to have a real study in the house, the rest of those fancy certificates saying how smart I used to be have been sitting around since I moved. One thought I did have:  were I really, really aggressive in downsizing the things I would like to keep in filing cabinets...we are talking bloody ruthless about it...I could reduce my ownership of filing cabinets by one.  However, if I did give away the two-drawer one, I could easily envision a time when I really only need the smaller one because my brain will be completely mush instead of partly mush and all that will remain will be financial and legal files. So, both remain.  [Note:  Please ignore the fact that the Christmas tree that had been residing behind the couch really belongs in the attic with the other Christmas lights. I did not want to carry them up two flights of stairs just yet.]

The study shelf improved somewhat. If you squint real hard, you will see that the second shelf from the top has two less binders.  Actually, four of the ones in the middle are empty.  And you can easily see the vertical stack of lesson plan ideas I am studiously ignoring during in all these little distraction excursions to the basement. The books and such to the left of that second shelf are all my publications.

Sometimes I wonder if I should even bother keeping them anymore.  To me, they are like the battered trophies you might find on the back of someone's closet shelves, echoing past glory that no longer matters not.  Life is more than a high school track meet or football game.  Or, for me, life is less than I thought it would be when my mind and my pen were garnering public attention.

Myrtle's Stuff, in total.  Too much still, eh?  I think, other than working on the study shelf, I should reduce enough out of the middle section to move the two shelves of games from the far left shelf unit over to the middle one so that the far shelf is dedicated to overflow food and household goods only.  Of course, some judicious rearranging--like moving the cooler to the top shelf--might also garner a bit more space.  In any case, that way, should renters come, they would have space for their own stuff there. [In case you are wondering...no, I do not particularly believe that I have a sufficient supply of Dr Pepper on hand.]

I suppose the silver lining in the battles I am facing is that heavy use of one of my coping mechanisms means I shall eventually have the most organized stuff in Indiana and the most streamlined stuff of my existence on the planet.

Stuff.  Stuff.  Stuff.

A wee bit more...

Amos wrote on his blog about The Grand Experiment we are trying just now.  By this I mean that I have rather reluctantly given in to his whining and pleading and granted him the freedom of the dining room once more. When he was much younger, the dining room was his favorite place for activities that should be taking place out of doors.  After cleaning up a gazillion accidents, I got rather frustrated and just blocked it off from him.

So, yesterday I opened the pocket French doors and put up the baby gate that had been blocking the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room.  Amos is beside himself with dining room joy.

Needing some more distraction today, I ventured down to the basement once more.  Today, I made a good dent in reducing and removing my things still remaining in the living space.  Too tired for another photo, I shall have to rely on mere words.

In the living space, tucked back by the stairs, were my two filing cabinets, one 2-drawers and one 4-drawers.  First, I reduced down two drawers from the larger one, letting go primarily of more teaching and professional history things, from back when I was college professor.  Needless to say, the recycling bin is half full of papers.  I then cleared off a spare metal shelf that I had stuck in the utility closet (the owner left 5 of those things behind).  After moving it out of the way, I then moved my two filing cabinets to the utility closet.  This is something that I had wanted to do for a long time.  Primarily, because that would mean I would have no reason to go into living space other than the printer.  Much thought has gone in to trying to move the modem and printer, but for now I will just leave them.  I do not often print, so fetching something should not be a problem.

The larger filing cabinet is on wheels, so moving it, especially with less than half the contents, was rather easy.  I used my expo dolly for the smaller filing cabinet.  The things that I had had on the metal shelving then fit either into the larger filing cabinet or on top of both of them.  All in all, it was an even-ish sort of exchange other than the initial ruthless memory-lane reducing.

I then fetched two more of those striped curtains and hung them over the space between the wall and the stairwell. I was thinking that this area could then become storage or a closet.  For now, I put the empty metal shelf in there.  Eventually, it would be nice to have that area walled off with a door, but the curtains provide a nice visual, if you ask me.  I had already hung a pair directly behind the couch to block the back of the stairs.  This way, the area "matches."

For the other reducing that I accomplished, I sat down and went through all the samples of my professional work, especially the pieces of collateral.  I was dismayed to see that I had not gotten samples of my most recent newsletters, which were quite impressive.  However, I managed to reduce three binders into one by removing all the extra samples.  I won't be giving them out at interviews and such anymore, so I just kept one of each.  I also organized them into categories within the remaining binder.  During this process, I collected the extraneous professional writing samples to put into a binder for those that I already started a few years ago.  And, yes, I now have many, many, many more empty top-loading sheet protectors.

Other than those two work product binders, I still have several other examples that I have wondered about.  For example, I have small binders of: a corporate communications plan, a day-of event binder (agenda, bios, collateral, etc.), a comprehensive out-reach messaging plan (on foster care) with coordinating collateral, and print-out of a non-profit introduction PowerPoint.  I was thinking that perhaps the communications plan binder is the only one really worth keeping.

What I did not touch was that large vertical stack of teaching materials binders.  Getting those all into the computer still seems sort of ambitious.  However, I just do not wish to throw them away.  I suppose I should concentrate on the fact that they are not taking up too much space.  

Anyway, Amos was a champ throughout this latest Myrtle-Stuff-Attack.  He only found two things to chew to assuage his boredom.  I cared not about one of them, but the other has me worried.  I do not know where he got it.  It was this black cap with a rubber ring.  My fingers are crossed that the cap was not something important.  After all, I would not be surprised if he pulled it off either the washer or the dryer.  Something behind those machines fascinates him.  SIGH.

The fun part was that Amos discovered he could peer down at me from above by looking through the wooden return grates in the dining room floor.  One of them is directly over the bookshelf with all of my professional/teaching/family history stuff.  Amos would sniff and snort and yip at me, then come running down the stairs to give me kisses, before going back upstairs to peer down once more.  He had a grand old time.

When I was working on the filing cabinets and curtains in the living space, he spent the entire time on the bed.  [Boy, does he ever love that bed!] So, basically, unless that black cap turns out to be something rather critical, Amos was a very good puppy today, despite the fact that his momma spent a rather long time not snuggling with him in the GREEN chair.

I also decided that the one box of kitchen things I had held onto really ought to be donated, so I brought those things upstairs.  To the box, I added two of the three phones that I have in the basement.  After all, I do not have a home phone anymore and there are still two of them hanging on the wall.

As far as the utility closet goes, I would like to get all of the bricks stacked in there (it is an old coal bin) moved to behind garage to serve as a base for the trash and recycling bins so they are not sitting in mud.  That, however, will be a lot of work...especially the kind that will inflame the tendinitis in my elbows, which is still rather painful.  The study shelving, of course, still needs those lesson plan materials addressed, and more reducing of examples and papers and such.  The filing cabinets could probably be thinned more, as well as the storage shelving.  After all, I might possibly have three (or maybe even four) bankers' boxes of binders on there).  And the job I am completely avoiding is my clothing.  Probably 95% of my wardrobe no longer fits with that weight loss.  However, since I cannot afford to replace even a fraction of the clothing, I have avoided dealing with the whole mess.

So, in sum, I do believe that other than the antique bottles atop the empty desk (these can be moved at the drop of a hat), the books on the "shelves" made from antique wooden crates (I can pack those away when renters come), my golf clubs (I have no idea where to put them), and my guitar case (this can go to the attic when needed), all of my things are out of the living space.  I have moved four trash bags full of paper to the recycling bin.  And I have packed up another box of donation items for people to use rather than gather dust in my home.  A much-needed victory for my day, eh?


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Electrical joy...

I have the world's greatest electrician.  Seriously, the entire world should be jealous...except for those good folk in Fort Wayne who are able to avail themselves of his services!

Here are the "before" photos.  They are wretched quality, I know.  But I did not take them.  If I had any good brain cells left in my head, I would have taken my own photos right after moving here.  Still, you can see there was a lot of junk, stuff, and odd & ends. The toilet was broken.  That black shelf is the one I painted brown for my new bathroom storage.  The cabinet with the Formica top (seen closer in the photo on the right) is the one I used next to the new laundry sink since I had to remove the entire sink cabinet unit of the broken one that had been in the laundry.  The snaked silver piping is gone, too.

Here you can see my finished "bathroom."  Today, Ben put in the bathroom light, plug, and a switch over by the door between the two spaces that you cannot really see right now.  Being the infernally kind and generous man that he is, Ben also hung the mirrored cabinet for me.  And he taught me how to use his drill so that I could hang the toilet paper holder, the hand towel ring, and a towel bar over by the shower.  Even though I asked for help at Lowe's, I purchased the wrong kind of screws.  So that I could accomplish my part of the work, Ben traded me my tapcon screws for the anchors and screws he said was proper for my sort of concrete block walls.  I know that my photos are not all that great either (I should not be lazy just using the phone camera), but you can see the painted walls best in the photo on the left.  Plus, in that photo, you will see I cleared the items from off the floor beneath the shelves in my latest round of reducing and organizing that I mentioned yesterday.

Personally, I really, really, really like how it all turned out.  Once the room divider screen is up, coming down the stairs you will not be able to see the bathroom.  It is clean and neat and quite serviceable.  I wish I could have better flooring, but eventually, the concrete is going to get a good scrubbing...a really good scrubbing.  My dream would be to have it stained a swirly brown in both rooms and then have a large area rug in the living space.

Here is the living space.  Again, the photo on the left is more representative of the color of paint on the wall.  The couch and bed are on opposite ends/sides, while the desk wall is on the front wall of the house.  If you peer closely, you can see the door dividing the space next to the bed.  The one item still missing is a dresser.

Something serendipitous about today is not in one of these photos, but I shall try to explain anyway.  There was hanging near the free standing closet across from the bed this very, very old black plug about five feet off the ground.  It was not grounded and was not in use, given that all the other electrical outlets in the basement are new, grounded ones I added.  I did not want to pay to have it removed, so it was just this...eyesore...to me at least.  Lying in the bed, I would have been staring at it whilst trying to fall asleep, trying to understand why someone would put one up like that a gazillion years ago and for what it possibly could have been used.

Well, Ben had planned to put the bathroom light switch together with the plug.  However, I figured that someone wanting to use the bathroom at night might wish to have a switch just on the other side of the door. Ben agreed mine was a good idea, but he had only one single work box.  Then we thought of using the one just sitting there on the wall.  It is a circuit used only for one other purpose, so the bathroom electricity would be primarily isolated in case there was some crazy blow drying of hair and shaving marathon going on at the same time.  So, we demo-ed that stupid plug and the old junction box in the ceiling above it and pulled the wiring out of the room.  I painted the wall where the strip of wood holding the wiring was and touched up the ceiling as well.  Now, there is no distracting weird plug to keep my visitors/renters awake at night!  Plus, the bathroom did not have to be shared out with anything else in the basement save for a battery back-up for the Fios connection.

Great electrical work gets me downright giddy!  I have me some great electrical goings on in the basement, parlor bath, my bedroom, living room, back yard, and garage.  That is a lot of giddiness for one gal!  SIGH. [I know...I am rather weird.]


The basement needs three-way switches for both sections so that no matter how you enter them you can control the light.  But I am not going to do that work, along with two final plugs, unless the seminary couple decides that they would like to use my space as their short-term living option.  If they do, Ben will return and work some more electrical magic and I will have to find someone to add a deadbolt to the basement entrance door.  Right now, you can lock it (with about four or five different slide bolts) from the inside, but not from the outside. Basically, their rent will mostly cover what I am doing to make the space really livable for them.  That is a fair bargain for me, I believe.  The viewing is the 13th.  Need I mention that I am nervous about it?

[In case you need a reminder, here is the updated laundry space that is at the opposite end/side from the bathroom space. I will have a tiny refrigerator and a microwave oven at the end of the counter by the bottom of the stairs.]

Today's work was primarily funded by selling things on Craig's List.  Ben raised his eyebrows at all the cash.  For me, I have never paid someone like that.  It was weird and a bit fun.

A final note about the world's greatest electrician:  Ben brings me chili from Wendy's when he comes to do work, because he likes for me to have company for lunch and knows that the chili is a good and tasty sodium option for me.  Of course, I keep him generously supplied in Dr Pepper as he works.  I get to hear all about his beloved and his cherubs and this most spectacular barn he has.  Owning a barn has to be a most awesome experience.  Today, he told me about making this play space for the children and lit it up with all these can lights in the rafters that he got in an enviable shopping bargain coup.  A cool effect he had to admit.

Anyway, for the space of his work, I am a normal person. Yes, he had plenty of Myrtle tears in the first few stages of work, but Ben never minded them or labeled me crazy.  Mostly, I think I am like one of his old biddies (he has a collection of them among his customers), ones whom he visits with as much as he works for them so they are not quite so lonely. Whether I am weak and shaky, weepy, or discouraged, Ben treats me as if am none of those things...just normal folk...well, eccentric normal folk. Hence, the label of the world's greatest electrician.

Besides, any contractor who lets me use his power tools is going to be a fantastic one in my book.  Next time, if need be, I get to work the conduit bender as well.  While not electric, it is a way cool tool.

Today's work was twice delayed, once by an emergency of one of his other customers and once by my emergency trip to the hospital.  However, this was a day during which I contemplated the idea of the fullness of time.  I savor Ben praying over our lunch, rest in the knowledge that the work he is doing is always triple-checked (since he knows the idea of an electrical fire sort of haunts me), and relish the bit of normalcy.

Yesterday was a wretched day (thus the dire need for that organizing fix) that ended with a migraine for which I had to break out every single pill in my arsenal, including the wondrous Zofran.  I write for the recordation, though the memory still deeply disturbs me.  Among other challenges, I had a flashback while driving.  One moment I was in the car; the next I was not.  I came back as I hit a road sign, smashing my mirror.  I over-corrected into the other lane, thankfully just between a car that had passed and one that was on-coming.

Were I different sort of person, I would be dancing about the house in joy that God protected me from greater harm and that all those pills stopped the migraines after many hours.  There was an end.  And I have already been educated over what I can do in the car to help prevent another flashback while driving.  Still, I am terrified of the things in my life, on all sorts of fronts.  And weary.  So very weary.

However, it was this day that was the fullness of time for a fellow believer to shower me with the blessings of his vocation and his company, freely sharing/showing mercy and grace.  The sweetness of that Gospel is richer, I think, than it would have been had the delays not happened.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. ~John 1:1-5


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

A fix or hit or whatever it is that I am doing...

I needed something, anything, to step outside a bad moment.  So, I filed all the paperwork that had been piled in the tray downstairs, organized and reduced one and a half shelves on that particular shelf, reduced stuff from the bottom tray and the tray on another filing bin stack, and was able to move all the stuff that I had stored on the floor beneath the research/professional/personal book shelf to the black shelf that holds the filing bin, a basket of stationary paper for printers, and two baskets of things below it.  That shelf now holds all the blank CDs and cases, as well as the spare hole punchers.  I was thinking, though, I ought to donate at least one of the three-hole punches.

In doing so, I found two more past medical doctor's names and addresses to add to my medical history app, Amos' micro chip certificate, a story that I had forgotten that I had written, and the most loving email ever sent to me by Bettina...from 1997!  The wild part was that she was re-writing a bad day for me without either one of us knowing about the re-writing of nightmares yet!

After this therapy, I ended up with cleaner shelves, greater access to information, and a shopping bag full of recycled paper to take outside.

It struck me that what I am doing with all of those papers and supplies is a sort of winnowing, getting rid of the chaff of needless paper work and painful reminders. It is a process of letting go, of learning to accept the place where I have come to find myself.

A good future project for another moment of distress would be to take all the professional samples of my work, reduce the duplicates and keep only those things that reflect positively about my skills rather than serve as reminders of the feelings of failure that overwhelm me, along with the grief over the abilities I have lost.  Were anyone ever to ask, I could still teach/train about such things internal/external communications, literacy, operational documentation and organization, knowledge management, strategic planning, and board development.  Samples of work that would augment such an opportunity are all that I need to keep.  The rest matters not anymore.  I am no longer the one who created those materials.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. ~John 1:1-5



I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

The nearest EDA group...

Pickles keep getting recommended as a good source of salt. Back in the dark ages, when I was less of a hermit and more of a mere wallflower, back in Texas, where Bible Belt folk had parties that were more talking and hors d'oeuvres than drinking and carousing, I would spending my time being social by chowing down on two particular tidbits: 1) the Bisquick sausage and cheese balls (whenever a tray came out of the oven I was right there hovering over the host's shoulder) and 2) luncheon meat-cream cheese-dill pickle pinwheel slices.  In fact, I would sometimes make the later for myself as lunch.

These days, it is often hard to figure out why I am feeling a quart low (sodium, sugar, headache, etc.), but with the wild ride my heart was taking, I eschewed the high sodium diet I am on for the dysautonomia.  Given that I have been near-fainting quite often the past few days, last night when my blood sugar crashed and I needed to eat, I thought I would break out the jar of dill pickles that has been sitting in the cabinet and make some of those pinwheels.

I fetched the jar, meat, and cream cheese. I picked up the jar. I opened it. I sniffed. All seemed well. I decided to check the expiration date, even though I was certain I got them just before moving here. 2007.

Seriously, I need to find the nearest Expiration Date Anonymous Group.

I suppose getting those pickles just before I moved here really meant purchasing them in 2005 or 2006, thinking at the time I might make some of those party pinwheels.  I really was surprised to find them that out of date.  After all, I did a kitchen cabinet cleansing just last month, one that was preceded by a refrigerator cleansing the week before, and a similar effort was also done both before I even packed the contents of my kitchen to move here and again when I was packing up all the kitchen items (non-food) for donating.  Yes, I did have items from the 1980s still with me in late January, but being shocked to find those, I--ruthless in my assessment of what might be edible in times of nuclear war or something--was certain nothing really old remained.  I was wrong.

Discouraged by pickle jar still sitting on the counter awaiting emptying and recycling, I consoled myself with sauteing asparagus in olive oil and Kulp's homemade organic garlic seasoning salt and then warming up the luncheon meat in the pan to soak up the leftover seasoned oil for my lunch.  And I downed a Dr Pepper.

At the hospital, I met this nurse who is battling migraines, seizure migraines.  [At least I do not have those.]  Anyway, I told her that I had dutifully weaned myself down from two Dr Peppers a day to one.  She told me that very well could be a mistake.  People who are used to higher amounts of caffeine and then reduce that because of migraines can actually make them worse.  Given that caffeine does not bother me in the least unless I stop drinking it--by that I mean I can drink a Dr Pepper at midnight and go right to sleep afterwards--I decided that I would go back to my two-a-day habit without guilt.

With Monday's abject failure in trying to accomplish something positive still weighing heavily upon me, since then I have now paid all my outstanding medical bills, entered them into my medical expense spreadsheet, created a spreadsheet of my blood pressure readings, sent the latter off to my doctor, written two business letters I had been avoiding, and written, addressed, stamped, and mailed eight small notecards, five of which were long overdue.

Also, I created a bag for any future emergency hospital trips (NOT that I am eager to return).  Bettina sewed a small bag for me for Christmas (a GREEN pattern, of course).  Since the sight of it would most certainly cheer me in a similarly frightening and stressful situation as last week's unexpected outing, I chose it to fill with some key items:  a change of clothing, a toothbrush, a book, a spare charger for my phone (external brain) and one day's supply of my medications.  I will need to remember to set up an alarm  (I want to do it on Fridays) to switch out the pills each week so that they are never old.  The bag is hanging on the back of the door to the kitchen, which someone years ago thoughtfully covered with hooks.  The door is always open, so no one sees the things hanging there, but the hooks provide a bit of a closet space for the first floor.

What I need to do next is create a Caring for Amos binder.  It is not like I can pack up any of his babies or anything in advance.  But I can make a packing list for him, detail his routine, provide feeding instructions, give a few of helpful hints on managing the beast, and list his vet, license, and microchip information.

Right now, though, I am still resting from polishing the small table next to the couch just before lunch.  While my heart rate is blessedly back to normal, for me, if I am sitting or lying down, the smallest bit of activity still leaves me short of breath and with a pounding heart.  The poor antique wooden inlaid table was rather dirty and dry though.  It very much needed the attention.

Surely, the pickles were the last expiration date embarrassment, right?  Surely, there is...there will be...an end to ridding myself of the unhealthy things from the past, right?


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

The Hollywood fight...

I have never been to a fight, nor have I seen a real one televised. So, I have no true understanding of how fighters really move or what experiences they might have. All I have to go by are the few fight scenes that have invaded the kinds of movies and television shows I prefer to watch.

But...picture the guy about to go down.  You know, the bloody one.  The one beaten, though he refuses to acknowledge it.  The one stumbling about as he struggles to stay on his feet.  When showing the audience his perspective, the sound is usually muted, vision blurred.

That is how it was for me the night of the pit bull attack.  Each time I stumbled back to my feet after the pit bull pulled me down, the effort was harder, the direction I was to go less clear.  The last time, as I have written before, I knew that I would not be getting up again.  Three, maybe four times, I had lurched sideways as much as I lurched vertical.  That final effort to rise surprised even me.  I knew it was my last.  Confusion dominated every thought, every sense.  Confusion and pain.  Confusion and pain and abject terror.

Again, as I have written, I do not remember anything past that final lurch to my feet, that final thought I was going to fail Amos, that once on the ground his end would surely come if it had not already. And, if not mine, more pain than I could bear as the pit bull turned his feast to me.  I no longer heard Amos' cries or my own screams.  I knew nothing.  I fled some place in my mind that I have yet to find again.  I did not plan to do so.  I did not want to do so.  I just fled.  I was wounded, terrified, overwhelmed, could not face what was coming next...not alone...and so I disappeared.

I want to remember what came next. I want to remember how the pit bull was stopped. I want to remember how Amos and I ended up on the grass in a yard next to where we were in the middle of the intersection. And I want to know where my mind went.

Where can I go from Thy Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, Though are there.
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Thy hand will lead me,
And Thy right hand will lay hold of me.
~Psalm 139:7-10


What if the fleeing is involuntary?  Or rather, what if the fleeing is a choice you are not aware you are making?  Do you think the places the psalmist penned, the places Christ prayed, include the places of our mind of which we know not?  Even there could His Spirit be?


If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,"
Even the darkness is not dark to Thee,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to Thee.
~Psalm 139:11-12


Could the darkness include the darkness of the mind, of the heart, of the soul?


I want to remember what came next. I want to remember how the pit bull was stopped. I want to remember how Amos and I ended up on the grass in a yard next to where we were in the middle of the intersection. And I want to know where my mind went...where I went when I fled.



I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Still standing on the corner...

The truth of me is that I am still standing on the corner, stuck in the moment when the pit bull spotted Amos and I.  I knew what was going to happen.  I knew there was no escaping what was to come.

I have not walked Amos since July 12th.  I try looking at the sidewalk heading off in the opposite direction and picture us walking along the block.  I tremble.  I think about snapping on his leash and heading outside.  My stomach churns.  I have tried and tried, once my foot was well enough to venture out in the second walking cast, to walk my beloved puppy dog, but I could not.

Sandra had a good idea: go to Foster Park.  I could drive over, walk just a bit, and scurry back home. She was thinking that people would be much less likely to flaunt leash laws since it is attached to a golf course.  Sandra really does have a good mind.

I, however, do not.

The whole outing was a disaster, one made worse by the knowledge I must try again.  My head was blessedly pain free, so I thought I could try walking just a bit.  I wanted something, anything positive after the past few weeks.  I wanted to accomplish something.  I wanted to move forward in the smallest of ways whilst mired in facing the past. Little did I know the actual walking would be the absolute least of my worries.

While Amos is still no fan of the leash, he did allow me to put it on.  I parked close to a path and then had pick up Amos to force him to leave the car when dragging did not work.  I suppose I did not realize he had already spotted the other dogs in the park.  My poor puppy dog is still very much afraid of other dogs, save for Neighbor Dog.  [I am not all that certain Amos ever realized that the 1.4 lb Chihuahua puppy actually was a dog, rather than some new type of Baby with which he could play.]

As we walked across an expanse of grass toward the path, a group of excited young adults came up behind us, racing each other toward some swings.  Before I knew it, Amos was in my arms, shaking like an aspen leaf in the wind.  I calmed him down, set him back on his own four feet, and we tried this taking a walk again.

Not long on the path, a jogger came up behind me, surprising me, and I screamed in terror.  Amos leapt up again and this time, I had to really struggle to put him down.  I very much wanted to hold him.  When we started walking again, Amos spent more time putting his paws up on my legs trying to get me to pick him up than actually walking.  I was so intent on trying to get him to walk that I failed to notice another jogger, who brushed my body slightly.

I screamed again and fell to the ground shaking and sobbing. Amos crawled in my lap and started licking the tears falling down my face.  Determined to try once more, I reluctantly rose and forced my feet to start moving, fervently hoping the third time would be the charm.  It was not.

A couple being dragged each by a large dog topped the rise and were headed our way before I could think where to flee.  Once again, Amos was in my arms before I knew it, but he didn't stop climbing until he was atop my shoulders, shaking as violently as was I a few moments before.  I stumbled off the path into the woods by the water and waited for the couple to pass.  One of them let go of a dog, which came running toward us, but was caught before it reached us.  My back turned, I had no idea how close we came to a friendly canine encounter.  All I could do was listen to both of them holler at Buster to come back.  For surely I must believe it would have been friendly.  After they had finally passed us, my trembling legs gave way and we both fell to the mud at our feet.  At least I managed to keep Amos atop my body so that he was not covered in mud.

All I wanted to do was have someone rescue us, someone come lead us to the safety of the car and take us back to the haven of our home.  There was no rescue.  I had to reach deep within my Texan roots and pull myself up by my own boot straps.

On the way back, I was openly crying the entire time.  Once he realized we had reversed direction, Amos dragged me back toward the car with every fiber of his being.  I didn't run because I could not.  And even if I could I should not.  At least we had not gone very far at all.  My heart is still far, far too jumpy. Trying to push the unlock button, I dropped my keys six times because my shaking had morphed into violent tremors.  Before I could even finish opening the door, Amos was shimmying his body beneath the door and into the sliver of space so he could crawl into the car.

Back home, Amos jumped up in the GREEN chair and buried himself beneath the three blankets I have been using.  This is the first time I have seen him hide like that.  I joined him.  Ashamed.

Ashamed of my blood curdling screams.
Ashamed of my violent tremors.
Ashamed of my abject terror that lingers still though we are safe back inside.

I tried.  I truly did.  I held out hope over Sandra's idea.  I started with a positive attitude.  I poured on the encouragement after his first set-back.  But I failed.  Utterly.

Whilst still terrified, trembling, and weeping in the GREEN chair, I took Fred's call to read me the first chapter of John.  To me, it seems as if I heard not a single Word, but I know that the Holy Spirit is greater than my PTSD and the Living Word was received.

Hours later, I am struggling to calm down, to step away from the corner.  We are home.  We are safe.  Nothing happened.  Yet my body doesn't seem to know that.  The tears spill forth.  The tremors renew.  The fear washes over me in relentless waves.

And yet I need to do this again.  Amos is a puppy dog.  He needs to be walked, to get exercise.  He also needs to learn that people and dogs are not his enemy.  I suppose I need to learn the same.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. ~John 1:1-5


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Would that I were...

More positive. More faithful.  More patient.
Alas, I am none of these things.

I had hoped that because I felt better late yesterday, that I was on a better track.
Alas, I am not.

This day.  Oh, this day has been so utterly awful.  At one point, curled in a ball, all I wanted was for someone to read John to me.  I don't know why.  I am not even sure I could have born the sound.  Right now, typing is excruciating.  But I don't want to lose this day, too.

Thinking I was better, I took a shower last night.  After just five minutes, I was gasping for breath and  was so very scared of my racing heart.  I felt like I had run a marathon or something.  Laying on the floor, trying to recover, I called myself all kinds of stupid.  But I just wanted to be clean.

Amos, bless his puppy heart, let me sleep longer and has not had to go outside hardly at all today.  I fear that means should I stumble about the house to look, I will find spots of outside inside.

Tuesday's worse migraine ever does not even touch today's.  The altered dosage of Imitrex helped for a while, but it is gone and I cannot take any more until tomorrow.  I have swallowed everything possible and spent the day in the dark, constantly switching out ice packs and clutching my puppy dog, as I whimper like a baby. At least my heart rate is now normal for me...as long as I don't try to do anything. Never did the number 55 look so good to me.  And I can feel my lips again.  I just really and truly want someone, anyone, to literally cut off my head.  The throbbing, stabbing, imploding, exploding agony made worse by light and sound and movement is unbearable.  Really, I am not strong enough to endure this.  Nor, apparently, does my body care for any sorts of migraine medications.

I keep saying that I didn't know it was possible to be this miserable, and then I learn that actually I had not yet discovered the true depths of miserable. It is as if misery is an onion and I am but a few layers in.

I don't know why I want to hear it, but I do.  In the beginning was the Word...


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!

Is it live or is it memorex?

If you read about Topamax side effects, you might think that I was bonkers for ever swallowing a single pill.  The more I do, the more I am very, very much hoping that the miracle migraine pill is the source of all recent ills in my body.

Just a couple of hours after falling asleep Tuesday night, I awoke suddenly.  I thought it was early Wednesday morning and time for my thyroid medication, so I got up and took it.  But once back in bed, I realized I was feeling...odd.  First my jaw started hurting.  Then my left arm.  My lower back.  Then, I watched my heart rate climb and climb and climb and climb. By 188, I was swallowing baby aspirin and calling for help, both 911 and Sandra...for Amos at least. Another episode in the ER led to being admitted to the only opening on the cardiac floor: the heart failure unit. With negative tests and a heart rate down to the 100s, I was finally discharged late Wednesday night.

I kept getting...well..strongly chastised for taking four Imitrex; the doctors kept telling me my heart problems were from an overdose of Imitrex.  One cardiologist said that my theophylline levels were too high and that I should not be taking it at all, but then she didn't know anything about dysautonomia (mispronouncing it) and so I should ignore her advice anyway.  Seriously, what does one do with such care as that?  Once home, I confirmed that I had, indeed, followed the directions.

The next day, I collapsed at Target whilst asking the pharmacist to check my medications as she was filling two more prescriptions.  Fred had been hanging out on the phone with me for a while. I am sure if he had known how long I was standing trying to go through the papers on the different drugs the pharmacist had gathered for me, he would have hit me upside the head.  Pretty much anyone would have.  Bettina surely would have been forbidding all over the place.  The assistant turned out to be a nurse on the unit where I was, so she saw me going downhill even as she was asking me lots of questions (chief among them was why in the world I was discharged).  The assistant/nurse wanted to call an ambulance, but I just wanted to go home.  By then I knew my heart rate would eventually go down and I just wanted to be home.  The pharmacist did have a very good thought about why it might be the Topamax: how I was absorbing it, since I do not absorb Theophylline easily (hence my large dose to achieve a therapeutic level).  The assistant helped me to my car and Bettina stayed on the phone with me as I struggled to stifle my panic as my heart rate rose and rose and rose again.

Yesterday, I dragged myself to the doctor's office, earning three offers to help me on over to the hospital between car and waiting room.  I guess I looked pretty bad.  Considering that I couldn't take but a few steps without huffing and puffing, I didn't care.  The nurse wanted to admit me, but I was much better by the time the doctor saw me in the room since I napped for a while.  She told me that she had looked up my prescription and had seen that I had followed the directions given to me, had not mistakenly overdosed, and was actually not getting enough medication.  However, my prescription was written for 50mg every two hours up to 4 doses.  I should have had 100 mg up to 2 doses.  So, I was trying to stop my migraines with half doses. Perhaps...perhaps...this means I might be able to conquer the next one instead of having it linger as they all do.

That is the rub.  Most of the time, I cannot tell.  Is it live or is it memorex?

That is also the rub about Tuesday night.  I stopped the migraine!  I stopped the blasted, bloody migraine.  I stopped it.  Afterward, I put myself to bed with a bit of Xanax to be sure to get some good sleep before my appointment with the surgeon.  I was going to go the surgeon and have a hard conversation about hormones and migraines and next steps.  I was going to go to church for the first time in forever.  I had told Mary, Sandra, and Fred & Ethel about my church plan.  Wednesday was the day!

Wednesday was not the day.

My doctor agreed that Topamax seemed to be the culprit, given the timing of the onset of symptoms and pharmacist's confirmation that Topamax and Loestrin do not like each other and we already knew that Loestrin and Theophylline are not the best of friends, leading her to re-order all my medication. Being re-admitted, I would have been under observation as the Topamax leaves my system, but I wanted to be home.  No matter how wretched I feel and how scared I am.  I talked my way into being wheeled back to my car and allowed to go home.  I suppose money shouldn't dictate medical care, but I missed Amos ever so much while I was in the hospital, the hospital did not get my medications to me until nearly 5:00 PM (which meant no food since I had no Acarbose), and hospitals are very, very, very lonely places.

Basically, other than my ventures out to Target and the doctor, I have been languishing on the GREEN chair.  I miss my bed.  I am still huffing and puffing.  My face is still numb.  I am still having intermittent chest pains.  My heart rate still jumps with the slightest bit of movement, but it did not spike last night.  [Thus far, the highest I have seen my heart climb is 221.  Egads!] Christ be praised the unbelievably intense nausea has eased and I am no longer taking the most AWESOME medicine called Zofran, a MIRACLE drug that takes away nausea without knocking you out!  It does not last long with my body, so the nausea would return, building and building until I could take the next pill, but Zofran meant that for the first time since taking Topamax, I did not have that 16 or 18 hours of straight, horrid nausea.  [Seriously, when Myrtle cannot even look at a Dr Pepper, you know the nausea is pretty bad.]

We also opted to forgo Theophylline last night as well, since my heart is basically the Energizer bunny on Red Bull.  Tonight, I will resume that medication.  By Monday, the Topamax should all be gone.  And by the end of this next week, I should know if all is going to be quiet on the western front.  However, that means I am back to square one regarding the migraines.

The neurologist spent approximately 10 minutes with me, as a new patient.  I was appalled and felt a bit like dirt, sitting in the parking lot.  I certainly didn't matter much as a suffering human being in need of medical care.  But I filled the prescription and wrote down my appointment for a 3-month follow-up.

However, I have a very complex history and have these wretched, new intense migraines that are unresponsive to medication.  In between them, the memorex part, I have constant shadow migraines. I am on a medication that raises my heart rate because of dysautonomia's impact on my autonomic cardiac functions and this doctor prescribed a medication that has a primary side effect of a rapid heart rate.

The reason I was at her office was because the medication I was taking for a severe hormonal imbalance causing emotional and mental problems means adding hormones to a body with a neurological disease that twists hormones into migraines.  And yet this doctor prescribed a medication that has a primary side effects of depression and suicidal thoughts.  Thirteen percent of patients experience those side effects!

Dysautonomia also causes anxiety and cognitive dysfunction and confusion.  More of Topamax's side effects are anxiety, memory problems, and difficulty concentrating.

Forget the fact that the numbness is also a side effect of Topamax, surely the reason why I could no longer feel first my lips and then my face.  Simply add up the rapid heart rate, depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, memory problems, and difficulty concentrating.  Why in the world would you choose a medication with such serious side effects that mirror the problems your patient already has due to a neurological disease that is incurable and essentially untreatable?  Life with dysautonomia is all about trying to manage symptoms and find medications with side effects that might help you, not make your life worse.

Did I err because I did not insist that she look up the medication and review all the side effects with me right then and there?  Or perhaps I needed to ask her to tell me how each of my current medications interact as is and how adding Topamax might affect one or all of them?  Only...which one of is is the doctor?

The good news is that I am not in heart failure (really good news since all four grandparents had heart disease and both of my grandfathers died relatively young from it). The bad news is that I have been quite ill, I am still ill, and I am not sure when I will be better.  Plus, I do not know how the migraines can be treated.

The other medication the neurologist offered was Nortriptyline.  I had already read a bit about that one, so I chose the unknown, I chose the Topamax when told the decision was six-in-one-half-a-dozen-in-another.  I am not a doctor.  I am not a medical professional in any way, shape, or form.  But from the ER to the cardiac failure unit, not a single nurse or doctor knew what dysautonomia was beyond a disease once mentioned in a class.  From this experience and some other past distress, I want to draw a line in the sand and say that unless my life is at stake, I am not taking any more medication that has side effects that are neurological in nature, for lack of a better term, such as dizziness, anxiety, cognitive, etc. Nor am I willing to take any medication that has a side effect that includes rapid heart rate!

I suppose the bottom line is that all the migraine treatments seem to be about systemic approaches that muck about with things better left untouched in my body.  Straight pain relief is not really an option either, because hard core narcotics need to be an option of last resort with me due to the fact that they completely stop my innards for days on end now.  And I really, really, really need to find a neurologist who will savor the challenge of an unfamiliar disease.

Since I am still rather frightened, ill, and filled with gloom, I should note some positives about this episode: 1) I learned about Zofran, help with nausea that will not leave me incapacitated from drowsiness; 2) I learned that I was not prescribed Imitrex correctly, hope that I might be able to finally stop migraines even if I cannot prevent them; and 3) I was proscribed Toradol, another NSAID, help with the headaches between migraines--which helped somewhat and completely erased the tendinitis pain even though it wore off and I cannot take it full time.

And...since I know you have been grieving with me over the loss of cable, which also means the loss of all the NASCAR races that are only shown on ESPN, I thought I would note that I found a $0.99 app that has the radio broadcasts of the races.  I am listening to the Nationwide Daytona race at the moment.  Truly, concentrating on a spoken auto race is near impossible, but those announcers get so very excited.  One cannot help but join in with their enthusiasm.  Tomorrow, the race is on a main station.  Tomorrow, my heart should be slower so the excitement of all those awesome crashes won't send me back to the hospital. And, tomorrow, I might even be able to leap out of the GREEN chair and jump up and down cheering for Junior without huffing and puffing too much!


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!