another year over...

"time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."  woody allen

i have to admit that i no longer spend much time thinking about the passage of time, the meaning of life or the words of "auld lang syne."  time is different for me now.  just like all things are.  the last nearly 20 months (yes, i had to count on my fingers because i can no longer do simple math in my head) have passed almost without notice.  the time is lost.  though my pre-flood life seems much more distant than that. 

i skipped the last family function of the Christmas season today.  i feel like maybe i should have gone but i couldn't make myself.  i was so anxious.  i guess it's good that i decided not to go because i've spent the better part of today trying to gain access to my own car.  i went out this morning to get winston's milkbones from the trunk and couldn't open the car.  i tried several times then just gave up.  hours later, after walking winston, i tried again, same result, the key would not turn.  (i don't have power locks and the only way to unlock the car is with the actual key.)  on the third and final try i realized my mistake...i was using my house key instead of my car key.  now my house key is next to the car key (the big black key with "nissan" stamped right on there!) but i didn't notice.  okay, so now i'm in the car but have no memory of why i wanted in the car.  as of now, almost 4:00 p.m. i still don't have the milkbones i went to get this morning at 6:30.  our evening walk will be soon and i will try one last time.  he's not even supposed to have milkbones but they were a gift!!!!!!!!!

see how hard everything is?  no wonder i have no idea what day/month/year it is when i can't even open my car!  considering i haven't been anywhere today that car has consumed most of my day.  i did manage to write a little while listening to my radio station play the top 100 songs of 2011.  i only heard 35-1.  don't ask me what any of them were...

grace and peace and hope for the new year

rocks vs. hard places

it happened today...the inevitable phone call with my mortgage company.  none of my options are attractive:

1.  pay a reduced amount and watch my excellent credit score start a steady decline as early as january 1;

2.  pay nothing, watch my credit nosedive and prepare for foreclosure to start in april (just in time for my birthday!);

3.  borrow against my line of credit at the credit union to keep the bills paid for another 3-4 months and pray that if/when i get a job it allows me to ADD another bill to my unmanageable finances;

4.  declare bankruptcy (eventually);

5.  run away!

i suppose i could add:

6.  attempt to sell this house, wretched, unfinished hellhole that it is, and THEN run away!

let's not forget that i can't grocery shop alone, i get lost to and from my own house, i live on no sleep and constant anxiety--i do not feel at all equipped to choose the correct thing (if there were a correct thing to be chosen.)  i have until mid-january to decide but i can't imagine being any more prepared then. 

on a lighter note:  i promised myself that i would start running again today and i chickened out.  i did make myself get on the hated elliptical machine for a couple of miles.  i have regretted replacing my flooded treadmill with that damn torture machine since i bought it.  it's supposed to be 60 degrees tomorrow and i'm gonna try to talk myself into running. 

hopefully tonight i will remember to take my meds on time.  if i take my sleeping pill too late (which i almost always do) then i'm useless until well past midday.  i'm awake but drugged.  i'm supposed to take the sleeping pill at about 7:00 so i don't feel hungover the next day but i never remember to take it until bedtime so last night i took it at 11:30 and was up until 3:00 a.m.

grace and peace

  

how the grinch survived Christmas...

i wrote a little, read a little, watched all the frasier Christmas episodes that were available on netflix, watched die hard (yippie-ki-yay!), prayed the phone wouldn’t ring, took winston for a long walk since the weather was so nice (high 50s), played with kentucky, talked to no one (i did respond to a couple of texts), treated myself to a peppermint mocha from mcdonald’s, took a 45 minute nap (!), drank a little wine, ate a little brie, spoke to a father and his little girl on her new bike (complete with training wheels, streamers and a bell!) on my walk, missed my aunt jenny, skipped the family function (natch!) and watched winston devour a pigs' ear (a Christmas gift from my mom!) i don’t buy them, of course, since i’m a vegetarian! 

i ate too much even though i didn't go anywhere and i have been maudlin and anxious all day.  i'm glad it's over and all i have to do is go see my niece and nephew later this week and see what santa got them.  they are used to my anti-Christmas stance and no longer question it, they just lump it in with my vegetarianism and my bookishness and write it off...bless their hearts!

i wish i could have made it to church this morning but i settled for watching it on-line.  it was a beautiful service; i sang along, right out loud, just like i were there.  i hope to be able to get past my anxiety and make it there in person next week. 

grace and peace

a surprise in every sack

a hard day but a good day.  getting to therapy was hard, meeting my friends for coffee was hard but i got through them both.  i don't know which was better counselling...

my friends (a married couple) are flood victims too.  our stories are quite different yet so much the same that we are able to commiserate and offer small and clumsy comforts to each other.  today they gave me a wonderful gift:  they spent a lot of time shopping and hundreds of dollars on groceries and staples for me.

pre-flood i would have been embarrassed, perhaps mortified, to accept this kind of help, let alone share it with any and everyone reading this, but times change and i have changed.  last may, after losing everything, i stood in a church gym down the street with an empty box and a broken heart and realized that i didn't own a toothbrush, a fork, toilet paper, sheets, food.  i had nothing.  i was grateful to accept those things that others had so generously and lovingly given.  it changed me in a way i can't put into words.

my kitchen cabinet this morning with a box of cereal, peanut butter and crackers and one box of organic macaroni and cheese...

i know now that i will be thankful for aluminum foil and toothpaste and light bulbs in ways that i never could have before.  i take nothing for granted because i know what it feels like to be without.  my friends loaded me up with all kinds of great things and i was thrilled as i opened each sack to see all that they had done for me (almost like a kid on Christmas morning, if you will allow me the use of that phrase since you know my feelings about Christmas!)  they got me treats too, things i don't buy for myself:  nutella, diet coke, pepperidge farm cookies (yum!)

the same cabinet now...

see the nutella?!!!!  i am blessed.

grace and peace       

alternate hot and cold

i'm very anxious today.  i've been overwhelmed with job hunting on-line and worrying about the fact that i do not own a fireproof box for my important papers (those that weren't destroyed in the flood, that is!)  there is no particular reason that i thought of said fireproof box but once the thought occurred to me i have been unable to think of much else.

my headache is better today though not totally gone.  i've spent a good part of the day with a cold pack on top of my head (i.e., like a southern belle with a book on her head perfecting her posture in etiquette class.)  i'm sure i look utterly ridiculous but i think it's helped a little.  that and sleeping (ha!) with a heating pad on my neck all night.

okay, i finally broke down and joined facebook.  i've been avoiding it forever and if i weren't so obsessed with pinterest i wouldn't have done it.  anyway, i will now be sharing these posts there as well (hopefully i'll remember.)

i have therapy tomorrow and for the life of me i can't think of any valid, believable way to get out of it.  i don't think the headache is gonna keep me from it.  i dread it more so this week than most.  i suppose it's my sheer and utter hatred of Christmas and the subsequent and ever-present green hills traffic that have added to the dread. 

grace and peace

 

i've got a headache THIS big...

day 3 of this headache and i'm useless.  i have done nothing at all for 72 hours.  can't read, can't watch tv.  i managed to load and run the dishwasher because it's quiet but i had to stop the washing machine mid-cycle because it's too loud.  i let the cycle finish when i went outside with winston.  the several times i've gone out to walk him (in my pajamas) constitutes the sum total of my time outside the house.  i won't go as far as to say it's a migraine because it's not that bad but it's bad enough.  hurts to turn my head at all and feels like my skull with implode at any given moment. 

when i'm alert enough to do anything i waste time on the computer and talk quietly to the pets (both in the dark.)  i continue to live on the post-flood diet of toast and coffee, bananas and peanut butter and veggies and hummus.  it's not fancy but it's enough.  it's amazing to me that i continue to gain weight like that.  i suppose it is the medicine!  just one more stressor!

i did get good news yesterday:  my little sister is pregnant with her 3rd child!  3rd!!!!  congrats to her, my brother-in-law and my 7 year old nephew and 4 year old niece. 

no sight of meave.  kentucky seems at home.  winston wishes it would stop raining.

grace and peace

once again...

i'm touched by the death of a public figure, vaclav havel.  when i was a teenager and in love with politics, music, books and writing i joined amnesty international and learned of this activist playwright in jail in czechoslovakia.  i wrote letters on his behalf and read all i could about him in the pre-internet world of books in a one-library, small southern town.  when he later became president i felt elated and not a little responsible.  i was 15.  he was a writer, a lover of rock and roll and a nominee for the nobel peace prize on several occasions.  i am mindful of much about him that i admired then and still do today.  my favorite quote, though, has to be a funny one...

"if you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become president."

grace and peace