Update

Aria's home for a few more days . . . it is going by far too quickly. I wish she could just stay, I'd love for her to move back to Pocatello. But, after spending some time with her in Kansas City I've seen how much she likes it there, and she's doing well, so I don't think that will happen. I want what is best for her, and if it is there then so be it, as hard as that is. . .  she's on the honor roll and is continuing with her violin playing. She's so much more outgoing than I ever was, and I'm grateful for that.

Kansas City is pretty cool. We went to Arrowhead Stadium, and I hoped to go in but we couldn't, I think they were practicing, so we just drove up to the front and I took a photo. But it is still pretty cool to say that I was there.

The downtown part of the city is so beautiful. It was decorated with Christmas lights and there were several large decorated trees. There is a place called Union Station and it is absolutely gorgeous. There is a museum and the outside is lit up in lights that switch between red and green. There's a skywalk that goes over to Crown Center where there are tons of little shops and restaurants.

One of the best parts, other than hanging out with Aria, of course, was going to an art museum. I was able to see real, actual, authentic Monet and Van Gogh paintings. Call me a nerd, but it gave me chills. I can cross that off my bucket list. However, I still really want to see "Starry Night" in person. That would be fantastic.

The flights there and back were Ok. I was terrified to fly at first, it had been awhile, but after take-off I was Ok. On the way back to Salt Lake City we hit some pretty nasty turbulence during the landing that freaked Aria and I out a bit, but we made it to the ground safely.

Aria has matured a lot, she had become more patient with her brother. She's definitely a teenager though! I've gotten a few eye rolls and "don't embarrass me"comments, which of course makes me want to embarrass her by dancing in line at the grocery store and other such tomfoolery.  Ha ha! I've been wanting to use "tomfoolery" in a sentence!

We had a great Christmas. Devin got his own tablet and tons of Legos. Aria got an iPad and a violin. And I got her "Attack on Titan" Monopoly. She's really into anime. We went to visit my family in Blackfoot on Christmas Eve, and I was able to see some of my aunts and cousins that I have not seen in a long time. We were going to drive to Utah on Christmas day to visit Mike's family but the storm made the roads icy so we stayed. We'll stop by when we take Aria to the airport on Monday.

Devin is growing up too fast too. He's still a sweet little boy but he's had a bit of an attitude lately. I guess it is just because he's getting older but it sure is not fun to deal with. He gets frustrated some times when he can't get a Lego piece to fit the way he wants it to or if  his drawing does not turn out the way he wants. I have to remind him to be patient and to practice, but at the same time I know that getting frustrated is part of being human so I have to let him sort it out by himself sometimes.

Have you ever notice that we discourage children from doing and acting in very normal human ways like being sad, frustrated, angry, etc? Instead of saying "don't be mad," shouldn't we instead teach them that it is normal to get angry sometimes and give them tools for dealing with it? By telling them not to allow themselves to have these basic emotions are we not setting them up to think they are doing something wrong when they feel these things? That's another blog for another day.

Mike's been off work for a bit, not a lot of painting jobs right now. He needs the break, he works hard. He got bored one day and repainted the bathroom. It's nice having a professional painter in the house! He and Devin have been spending a lot of time together since he's been out of school. He rides the bus home from school now, which is something I never thought he'd be confident enough to do. He surprises me.

As for me, well, I am in a substantial amount of physical pain today, but that will pass. Mentally I'm in a weird place. I'm feeling very reclusive, but not in a bad way, I just want to stay home and draw and read and not really go out and deal with society. Some days it really gets to me . . . all the people who are all for themselves and don't give two shits about anyone else. It's nice to get away from that.

This is long enough. I'm done.

This is the Van Gogh I saw. It's one of the paintings in the "Olive Orchard" series that he painted while he was institutionalized at Saint-Remy.

Time doesn't tell

Time is a system made up by man as a way to create a sense of order, of structure, of control. Minutes direct our days, days direct our months and months decide our years.

What if things that happened a year ago aren't as far away as they seem? We've been conditioned to believe that a year is the ultimate decider in a person's success or lack thereof.  We've been conditioned to compare our years side by side, to make this year better than the last. . . make more money, lose ten pounds . . . all by next year.

Ten years, a decade, a century, all used to express the long ago. What if we weren't held hostage by minutes, hours, years? What if time is not a tunnel that gets deeper and deeper the further you go, but layers of events stacked on top of each other with transparent floors? A song, a smell, a face brings back a specific event and it is resurrected, revived, brought back to the surface. The word "past" connotes something that can never happen again, a moment that is lost. It's a word that brings longing, regret or indifference.

What if we're moving backwards? What if when we lose the people we love they are just being born in another world, on another plain of existence? What if this is all just smoke and mirrors, rushed along by the threat of running out of time?

How can we be so quick to believe that things we cannot see, touch and feel don't exist when time's invisibility has such a hold?

Knowing this has made it easier to believe that my ghosts are real, that we have senses that have been dulled by fear and the need for what the majority believes to be normal.

Missing my white circles

I ran out of one of my prescriptions today. Only one of several, but each is like a sort of piece to my puzzle.

I have to order my meds by mail, it is the way my insurance requires them to be received because they are "maintenance medications." Does that make me high maintenance?  I try to order more in time, but life gets crazy, the mail gets slow . . . they used to automatically ship them off when I was getting low  . . . the system logged that they were sending out 90 days worth and would automatically send more out when the end of that time frame neared. Insurance changes put an end to that.

The bottle had been getting lighter every morning, then a few days ago when I could see the partially clear, yellow-orange mishmash colored plastic bottom of the bottle I hoped more than the day before that the bubble-wrapped package containing my "anti" everything-people-fear-and-don't-want-to-deal with medicine would be carefully folded inside my mailbox when I got home.

The rattle in the bottle gets smaller and smaller, weaker as more and more of the little white tablets are enlisted to help me fight my war. When one is left the clickity clack of itself smacking the sides of the preformed plastic is a sad little sound. It's almost gone. This medicine I have become accustomed to having to function everyday is now one small compressed circle of powder in a large, otherwise empty pharmacy bottle.

It ran out yesterday, so I could not take it today. That one, we'll call it part b of the anti-psychotic cocktail I've trained myself to ingest before I leave the house each day. I still have a and c, but getting the three to work without the middle is a bit difficult.

It's only when I am without some of the medicine I have been (strongly) recommended that I realize that I am chemically dependent. If I go one day without the little lifesavers I feel  . . . not real.

Today I am spinning and the threads and patterns in the carpet seem to be moving back and forth against each other. Some sounds seem to be louder, while others are much more quiet, though on a normal day they are the same. I can't focus, everything is a fog. I won't remember what you just told me, so I hope it wasn't important.

My skin feels numb, and I the last two hours went by in 10 minutes. I'm itchy and my heart is pounding and racing . . . can they hear it in the next room?

I'll keep this to myself, and you'll never know because I've become so skilled at pushing through.

It's like being hungover and you just want it to go away but you have to let it run its course.
It's like those first few moments after you wake up when the room spins and it takes a moment to come to your senses, out of the sleep fog. . .. but being without a long-term medication for day or more means you stay in the fog all day. That is what it feels like.

I just want to sleep. Sleep is the only thing that pushes this all away. Sleep wraps me up like an angel and kicks everything else out. Sleep is the only safe place from this.

I hope it's in my mail box when I get home.

Behind his eyes

Everyone has a story. Don't believe it? Start up a conversation with a stranger. Or better yet, let them start one with you.

I went Christmas and grocery shopping on Saturday, maybe too much ambition for one afternoon, but I prefer to get a lot done in one swoop than in little bits and pieces.

I went to the gym post shopping to get a little soak in the hot tub and it was empty save one older man. I picked a corner and settled into the bubbles and jets (that is such an amazing feeling). We made eye contact at one point and acknowledged each others' presence through small but polite smiles.

I got the sense that he wanted to chat but was not sure if I'd be open to a conversation with a stranger.

After a few moments of nothing but the sound of the bubbles in the spa and some kids splashing in the pool he spoke up. He asked me if I had a lot of people to shop for this year, and I told him that my family is spread out all over the place . . . Washington, Utah, California, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina . . . but that my immediate family would be close by.

We talked about our families for awhile. He talked about his three daughters and one son and his seven grandchildren. We talked about his wife having a hard time after the youngest child moved out of the house because she had the whole empty nest thing going on. Just your average, generic, home town friendly chatter.

Then he brought up being drafted into the Vietnam War when he was 19. He'd just been married. He told me about some of the horrific things he saw . . . his best friend getting blown up right in front of him, for example, and having someone shot and killed right next to him. He told me that the Viet Cong would fight at night, so his unit would be getting shot at and they'd have to shoot back into the jungle without seeing who they were shooting at. The Viet Cong would arm their children with machine guns, so when daylight came they'd discovered that they'd been shooting at children. He told me that he watched reporters come and kick the guns away from the bodies of the kids before doing their report so it looked like the children had been unarmed.

But, he said the worst part of the whole thing was coming back to America and being spit on and called a baby killer. That, he said, was worse than being in the war.

He's telling me all of this, and I don't really know what to say. It really came out of no where. He continued that it took him more than 20 years to finally talk about it, and now he enjoys talking about it because it is a release, a therapy for him because he held it in for so long. He and his wife are still married, by the way.

He now works to help soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan get the help that they need, both physical and mental. He drives vets to Salt Lake to the Veteran's Hospital and makes sure they have someone to talk to.

He was a genuinely all around good guy. He loves his wife, daughters, son and grandkids, and seemed like the kind of guy who help a complete stranger in a time of need.

It would be easy for him to be angry and bitter and just all around mad at the world, and maybe he was for awhile. But on Saturday he was a friendly grandpa getting excited to see his grandkids for Christmas.

If he had not told me about his time in the war I would have never known he'd been there. I would not have heard stories from someone who was literally in the line of fire in one of the darkest times of our country's past.

Things that this reinforced to me are: 1. You can go through something horrific and still chose to be a kind and compassionate individual. 2. You can't always trust what the media tells you. They show you want they want you to see.

I hope I see him there again sometime. He seems like an old friend.