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.

A chipped tooth and forgotten dreams

I chipped my tooth while I was eating lunch today. Sometimes when I'm chewing I accidentally bite down on the bar. Today it chipped one of my molars. I guess I should take that thing out for good, I've had it for about 15 years. I'm too old for that shit anyway.

I start my second job tomorrow. I have to be there at 5 p.m. and I get off at my regular job at 5 p.m. I told my boss I had to leave early and he was very understanding. So by the time I get off work at about 10 tomorrow night I'll have put in about 14 hours. I'm not complaining, it's only temporary, just seasonal. I know I can handle it. I was working full time and going to school full time during the last few months of college.  . . and I had a toddler at home.

I can't believe how  much we've gone through the last couple of years . . . Mike breaking his foot, getting into a car accident, hiring a lawyer to fight the insurance and not getting the claim settled and having one vehicle for 7 months, Aria moving to Kansas City, my unexpected surgery, my car engine blowing up and costing roughly a grand to fix, Mike's vehicle  breaking down and costing us $650 to fix (so we did not have a running vehicle for about a week), now my phone is on the fritz. I've gone back and forth between being on the verge of breaking down and wondering what I did to deserve all this to being just kind of numb to it. There's only so much I have control over. This will pass, things will get better.

I miss Aria so much. I can't believe I have not seen her since July 11. I'm counting the days 'til I can hold her. For awhile in our lives it was just the two of us and she's taught me alot.

Since my phone has been messed up for a couple of days I haven't been on Facebook with the exception of the post about getting a second job. It's been great, all that political crap was making me crazy.

The last week or so I have not wanted to talk to anybody, and I mean anybody, including close friends and family. I want to hide in my office at work and shut the door and then come home and close all the blind and lock the doors and just hibernate. I don't want to be social. I hope no one takes it personal. I guess this is what a "normal" person's depression is like, I'm not depressed, not by my standards anyway. I am actually holding up better than I would have thought. I'm just overwhelmed and I don't want a lot of outside . . . err  . . . ness to make me more overwhelmed. If you know me at all you know that I tend to absorb everything around me. . . the good, the bad and the ugly. My senses are constantly on overload, most people just don't notice it. I watch the ants on the sidewalk, I can usually tell what kind of wood is burning by the smell of the smoke coming from the nearby chimney. I can close my eyes and isolate sounds . ..  the bird chirping in the tree on the other side of the river from my secret bench, the motorcycle accelerating from the stop light a couple of streets behind me. It's harder than it sounds, no pun intended (but that was a pretty good pun, am I right?!).

The point is I need the quiet sometimes.

I have had so much to say lately. I could fill the pages of an entire notebook with all the thoughts and poetic phrases bouncing around in my head. I come up with some of the most beautiful, clever, thought provoking things during the mysterious moments in between closing my eyes and falling asleep. The moments when I can still hear the box fan humming but am starting to lose the ability to distinguish which direction it's coming from. Some of the stuff I've come up with is epic, and it is hard for me to say anything good about my writing. I try my best to remember it so I can write it down in the morning. By the time this stuff magically pops into my brain I'm at the point where I am so close to sleep that I can't make myself get up and pull out a notebook. It's very vexing, but I'm grateful for the poetry and prose while it lasts.

I have really intense Stephen King style dreams. A lot of stuff that would make great movies. I dream a lot about situations that require making a big and difficult decision. I dream about fire a lot too. There's usually something stalking, like a monster, sometimes real and sometimes metaphorical. Sometimes when I close my eyes and focus I can remember bits and pieces, but I wish the recollections were as clear as the original showing.

It's cold outside today. Then again I'm always cold. I must be a woman.

Watch the weather change

I already miss the sun, but I'm looking forward to the serenity that winter brings. Everything has seasons, everything cycles.

I've been drawing a lot lately. There has not been a moment in the last few weeks that I have not felt like creating. Not sure why, but I have to learn to not question everything and just let some things be.

Busy day

Busy day today, too much going on.

I am meeting with my head doctor at 10 a.m. I am not sure what to call her. She's not a counselor, she's a psychiatrist. I guess that is the same thing.  She just checks in on me every few months to make sure that the medications are working for me. I am out of my anxiety pills. It took me a long time to go through them, I guess that is a good thing.

But I have needed them more lately than I did when they were first prescribed. Like I said, a lot going on.

I have another appointment at 11:20, but I am not at liberty to discuss that one at this time. Nothing bad, just a bit unexpected.

Just when I think my strength will give out I surprise myself. I often feel like I am just going to break, and some times I do, about twice a year I have a major depressive episode. My last one was a few months ago. We talk of physical pain in terms of its severity, 1-10 with ten being the worst, but being in pain mentally can be just be as bad. I woke up as a different person. . . I do some times. And I knew, I knew. I curled up on my bed, as tightly as I could, and just cried for hours. No rhyme or reason. It physically hurts because you're imploding. And you can't do anything but let it run it's course, just like an illness, you can't rush it away. Then when you "wake up" it is difficult to remember those few hours.  It's like those few hours of your life are just gone, they didn't exist, it's just a black hole.

But my strength always comes back. I can say honestly that I am determined, and when I'm "sane" I'm incredibly focused. I'm more passionate than most people, and in some respects much more calm and reserved.

I fight to stay optimistic, and I'm surprised to say that it is getting easier. Optimism is a word that was once not in my vocabulary. I don't know where it comes from, but I guess everyone has a secret reserve of strength that comes out when they need it most.

Today will be a good day, right?

Divided we fall

I remember, as a child, seeing several major events play out on TV.

I remember watching east and west Germans chip away at the Berlin Wall, eventually removing whole slabs at a time. I remember a man wearing blue jeans and a windbreaker jacket, the kind that everyone owned in the '80s, swinging one leg over the wall and then the other while thousands of people cheered. 

I remember when they pulled baby Jessica out of the well, bandaged up and wide-eyed.

I remember watching Ronald Regan on TV. I knew him only as a president. It was not until many years later that I learned that he had also been an actor. 

I remember the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. The one that happened during the World Series and was hence broadcast on live TV from Candlestick Park. (Mike's uncle was at that game). I remember seeing the images of the freeway that had collapsed onto the other. It literally looked like a sandwich.

I remember hearing about HIV and AIDS for the first time, and that poor kid who contracted it when he got a blood transfusion.

I remember bits and pieces of the fall of the Soviet Union, though I had no idea what it meant at the time. 

I remember the Oklahoma City bombing. I walked in to my 8th grade art class and it was on the TV, the entire side of the building just gone. 

I remember WACO, the FBI and various other law enforcement teams staged outside the compound.
I remember when the smoke first started rising from the building, then becoming fully engulfed minutes later. 

I remember the Unabomber guy, Ted Kczynsky. The cabin he had been living in in the Montana wilderness was loaded onto a trailer and transported to wherever the trial was being held for evidence. It passed through Pocatello on its way there.

I remember Ruby Ridge unfolding.  That was when I learned that northern Idaho was known for white supremacist nuts.

I remember when the space shuttle Columbia exploded upon re-entry in 2003, when the Gulf War was declared, when there were riots in Los Angeles. I remember watching Rodney King on TV, then OJ Simpson years later. 

I remember the Lewinsky scandal, then the Y2K hype.

I remember the shooting at Columbine High School and listening to the media and so-called experts try to figure out why the Eric and Dylan did what they did.

Also the deadly Great White nightclub fire, the capture of Saddam Hussein, Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, both of the Bush presidential campaigns, Bill Clinton's campaign, Obama's campaign, Al Gore trying to bring attention to global warming.

And of course, 9/11. Everyone remembers that day more than most others. Who they were with, where they were standing and of course that sinking, sick feeling that still manifests on each anniversary.

This week's events have made me think about a lot of things. I've thought about how scared my mom and dad must have been during the recession in the 80s, the seemingly constant war in the Middle East, the way that, despite everything we've learned, everything we've been through we aren't really better off. 

There have only been three times that I was afraid, genuinely worried and scared to the point that I can actually feel it in my body: April 20, 1999, September 11, 2001 and November 9, 2016.

I'm trying to be optimistic.

I believe in the freedom of assembly, free speech, the right to bear arms . . .
but I also believe in liberty and justice for all.

It's horrible to think that the person we've choose to lead us has assaulted women, thinks Mexicans are rapists and Muslims are terrorists.

I am not a raging feminist or anything, but it makes me sick to think that the guy making decisions regarding women's rights has said that flat-chested women can't be "tens," that he can do anything he wants to them because he's famous, and that they don't need to be respected. How does someone say things like that and then get elected president?

And then ban an entire religion? Muslims are not all terrorists any more than all Christians are members of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Mexicans are rapists and murderers? So are many caucasian American-born citizens, should we kick them out too?

We've spent years, decades working toward equality.  All men are created equal. . . . all of that is now being threatened by someone who thinks he can buy people.

Calls to suicide and LGBT hotlines have more than doubled in volume since Tuesday. Many people now have the idea that discriminating against people because of the color of their skin, religion or sexual preference is OK. He's endorsed by the KKK for hell's sakes. But that's Ok, right?

A friend of mine married a Hispanic man and they have three awesome kids. Their nine-year-old was told by classmates that he better go start building the wall and then climb over it. These are elementary school aged kids. My gay and lesbian friends are scared and confused. No one is born with hate, it's taught, and now it's being taught on one of the biggest stages in the world — American politics.

We tell our daughters that they are beautiful no matter what, that the size of your waist and chest don't matter, and yet we'll soon be governed by someone who basically thinks women are sexual objects. I can't be OK with that.

I think what terrifies me the most is that we've gotten to the point where many people feel that this is our best option. What have we become as a society that we're willing to not only accept this but endorse it?  How is it that we have gotten so out of control that we feel we need something this radical? JFK is rolling in his grave.

People are desperate for change, and I get that. Believe me I am all for some drastic changes in the way our government handles things. But it seems like a giant rift has opened, and instead of trying to fix it or figure out what caused it to open in the first place people are picking sides and are not willing to build a bridge until the other side admits they're wrong.

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." We're supposed to be making things better for EVERYBODY, we are supposed to be UNITED.  We have not been this divided since the Civil War.

United we stand. Divided we fall.

This is still a democracy, and I'll take that over a dictatorship any day. The fact that we had an election is proof that we are free, and I don't take that for granted. I don't care who you voted for, I have friends and family on both sides of this divide. I'm just a bit freaked out.

But like I said, I am being optimistic. Maybe optimism is for fools, I don't know, but some times you have to be or you'll go nuts. The sun will come out tomorrow!

There's a few things I like to conclude with: Don't rely on someone else to prompt you to be a good person. Don't hate some one just because they voted the way they did, hating a person based on who he or she voted for makes you no better than people who hate others because they are gay or straight. You don't have to agree with someone to respect them. Many people think this really sucks, and I have to admit I am one of them, but all we can do now is move forward, change what we can, accept what we can't change, and be wise enough to know the difference.

You cannot change who is president. You can donate to your local food bank. You can't change whether or not we go to war — again. You can start a coat drive at your place of work. Take this frustration and anger you're feeling right now and apply it to something positive.