My 5 year old was jumping around last night just before dinner and landed on grandpa’s walking stick. Wailing erupted immediately.
I launched into fix it mode and sprayed it with arnica and ace bandaged it. I then gave him Tylenol and arnica pellets.
Since it was dinner time, he was parked on the sofa with his foot elevated and fed. Because he was in so much pain he didn’t eat well. We knew he couldn’t climb up into his bed, so we used a floor mat and made it into a bed.
Around 4 am he woke crying because he needed to potty and couldn’t make it on his own. After helping him to the restroom, I dosed him with Tylenol again and decided in the morning I bad better find out how badly he hurt himself.
Nathan drove us 3 to the clinic where I work and I asked doc to take an x-ray. Sure enough the kiddo has gotten himself a couple tiny hairline fractures. Nothing needing set, but definitely needing babied for weeks.
It’s a poor photo because Nathan took the shot after it was off of the light box. If you’re good at reading x-rays you might be able to see the two tiny cracks.
My poor kiddo did not like it when doc told him no jumping for at least a couple of weeks. I reminded him I tried to warn him, and maybe now he’ll listen to us. (Probably not, but I can hope right!)
Anyway, I had started a drawing for a friend last week. It’s of his two pups. I finally finished it today, and thought I would share.
This is the original image I worked from, but I reoriented the positioning of doglegs for a better art layout:
This is the progression of the drawing, beginning, middle, and end. It is Micron Pigma ink pen on 8×10 Bristol paper.
May you have good days and may your kids stay unscathed. May you enjoy time to be creative and have good solutions to all your concerns. May you find gratitude for all the moments where you have all the tools and knowledge you need. May you see everything works out okay.
Ian was at it again this evening. I suspect God aka Shiva was helping us through him again.
I had sat my children at the dinner table with blank paper and Crayola markers to fill time until dinner.
Grandpa was in my office, now his room, working on catching up his bills and paperwork. Not a huge deal, but at least a week overdue.
Ian drew a picture of a heart with lines on it. Then he proceeded to start telling me they were grandpa’s heart beats and that they weren’t good. Ian said: I wouldn’t want those heart beats. One sounds like a bad drum and the other sounds like a train noise.
My spidy senses responded immediately and I grabbed my phone and took a picture.
Later I noticed another drawing he had done in the same vane.
I immediately texted my one brother that works in medicine and has done quite a bit with geriatrics. I also knew my son’s psychic talents wouldn’t freak him out too much. This was our conversation:
I am not surprised that my son got accurate information. However, I am surprised that it was about grandpa’s heart problems.
It also now leaves me with homework to attempt to get the doctor to aim for a solution, even though I am certain my dad doesn’t care or want to do anything else. I am definitely walking a very fine line trying to honor my father, but also honor God passing us information. On one hand God could just be warning us about an incoming heart attack so it isn’t a shock. On the other it could be intended to help prevent or solve, and that is where I am currently responsible for doing my best to ensure measures are at least attempted.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.
My father is that horse, already having turned away food, failing to drink water even when coaxed, only drinking soda or crystal light, and making mostly horrible food choices. Then he backs everything up with things he’s read, from who knows how many years ago and with no evidence of accuracy. It’s a mess I am doing my best to handle with compassion.
I’m finding that the patience I have with other people’s grand parents is strangely absent with my father. Perhaps it is the emotional tug of war I’ve played with him my entire life, perhaps it is all the mental damage he caused as a child finally backfiring, and perhaps it is just my exasperation over being the only child that could actually handle dad in the present moment. Regardless, I find that most of my interactions seem to be through gritted teeth and I find situations easier to handle when I just smile and nod and glaze over his repeat loops of conversation.
Then I step away, find a moment of quiet, take some herbs if needed, and meditate my way back to better emotional and vibrational alignment. It’s a repetitive cycle, but one that is getting me through.
I did manage two days of my seaweed fast. Today was not completely successful on that front, but what I did eat was minimal and very healthy. I will attempt more fasting this week. I am carrying 80 pounds of fat and extra skin beyond the ideal body weight for my height and gender. I suspect that at least a month of fasting would be needed to drop that weight. That is based off of Ghandi’s long fast, and the fact that I am consuming some calories with the seaweed and drinks. Ghandi did strict fasts of only tea or water, and his longest was 21 days but he started much closer to my ideal weight than I am, and he ended the fast as just skin and bones. I also know I am not that adept at fasting. I have done a 60 day juice fast, but this is the first time my caloric intake is this low, so I am not certain I will be able to maintain it for an extended period. My goal is simply to break the momentum hump of loosing the weight and get the momentum rolling in my favor. So I’m aiming for 30 days or as long as I can muster. Once I concede needing to resume eating, I will go back to my diet of the last 7 months: mostly salads and clean veggies.
My hardest challenge right now is keeping up with my own needs while still trying to meet all of my previous commitments and adding in my dad. It’s definitely a lot, and I am having to practice the new balancing act to attempt to make everything fit correctly. It will get there, and I suspect as soon as I seem to master the new set everything will change again. That’s how it has been going for the last couple of years and as I’ve said before, I will continue to do my best to keep up and learn whatever is needed of me.
May you see God’s guidance. May you understand messages that make their way into your experience. My you find your balance and have patience with yourself and others. May you always find a way to meet your needs first. May you have understanding and compassion even when you disagree with someone’s choices. May you know you are doing your best to honor yourself and God. May you know you are loved and supported.
I’m on day one of my seaweed and fluids fast. 4 hours of massage went mostly okay. I have been on the emotional rollercoaster because I forgot to take my usual lunch supplements in the gap I had just before lunch. So 12 to 2 pm was pretty rough. Once I remembered that and then had a chance to take them, my mood stabilized.
However, the dip caused some sort of release. I’m still processing, but this is my only chance to write in the quiet solitude of Minor Park. A heron decided to join me and landed on the sandbar as I was finding my tree seat, I took that as a good sign. In between sighs and watching water and birds I will attempt to make sense of the mess in my thoughts here.
I can not stop factions of our society picking sides and fighting. It is an endless war of neither side wanting to budge. There is a vast area of middle and common ground that we all could reach for and none of us choose to do so, at least enough to matter for real long-term solutions.
On the same token, I see that a similar battle rages within the cells of my body. Masculine and Feminine halves of my bisexual self can’t agree on what healthy is and how healthy functions. It is a symptom of things both learned and genetic. And this battle too seems to be beyond my control and may kill me.
This week I learned that my grandmother also had a dysfunctional thyroid and dad never filled us in. At least until doctors finally told him his was broken and he had to take the medicine. Him, his mother and his sister all had end of life mental problems including dementia and some straight up crazy. So I’m fighting a genetic generational karmic problem. That is if you see it that way…. Perhaps my family never learned how our bodies were supposed to function, and I am the one with enough intelligence to attempt to solve it. Perhaps I will at least manage to guide my children to more success.
Yet, my problem is more than thyroid function. Immune system on high alert. Ovaries that don’t produce hormones correctly. Old needing and wanting to die, and new doing it’s best to start fresh, which is a seemingly impossible conundrum because new relies on old for reproduction.
My masculine self learned too well from my father: fat is bad- terribly horrible, and I can do nothing right. I will never be beautiful because I was born a woman with bad genetics. I let my father beat all of the negatives into my brain from a very early age, because as a baby I felt his love. I’m sure my young brain thought if I did everything he said then maybe that love would come back. Yet it never did.
My feminine self doesn’t know how to act. What is really me? What are women supposed to look like? According to my father women are supposed to look like super models, dress sexy but not too sexy- that is trashy, and never have an opinion or really matter in any way other than producing children and cleaning house.
But I want so desperately to love every ounce of myself and know that being me is okay.
Yet my masculine self protected and supported my family when we needed it. And my feminine self gave birth to two beautiful babies.
My masculine self kicks ass on the weight machines, but my Feminine self just wants a pint of ice cream and halmark movies.
My masculine self can’t imagine not going to work, simply needing something to occupy my time in a constructive sort of way, and I do like getting paid well- it’s a sign of respect of my work. My Feminine self just wants to spend time playing with my kids and enjoying life.
My masculine self wants my feminine to do it’s duty and produce kids and make a nice home. My Feminine self knows that children wreck my already-a-mess body even worse and I am perfectly happy with the two I’ve got and the home I already made.
My Feminine self wants the masculine to keep supporting and working hard, but she just wants to relax on a beach and stop stressing so much.
Feminine wants to be pretty, would love to be beautiful, but masculine says it never helped anyway- remember the boy taking advantage of you?!
My two halves can not find common ground. I literally tried to talk myself through hormones to get them in balance between male and female, and then talked through acknowledging fat as stored food.
This is an uphill battle I’m not sure I can win.
I saw Shiva and Kali facing off at odds. The stories never go well. Kali usually wins and Shiva ends up dead to be reborn as a baby.
I don’t want that story. I want my own.
In my own, I relax half the time and I work half the time. I have enough testosterone to keep fat reserves low and enough estrogen to function just as a woman’s body should. In my own story, my body is miraculously healed and I can eat normally again- slim and fit and God gets the two sides to stop fighting. In my story a normal diet plus seaweed is all I have to think about. In my story, I work because I want to, not because I need so much money every month to support a family. In my story I am done having children, I have two beautiful healthy kids and I know I don’t have to have any others. In my story, I don’t owe anyone anything. In my story I have already done enough and I get to do what I want now. In my story it’s okay to be half and half and live a healthy life. In my story, I am loved unconditionally by both genders. In my story the old died long ago and the new is finding it’s way to better living. In my story all of me is important and useful and helpful, and I am loved, honored and respected as if I was the adored old hag, but I do look like a model because I want to be visibly healthy. In my story my dome is by a stream so my seat by the tree is right outside my door. In my story I find my inner peace and maintain it mostly. In my story everyone can see my progress and health.
I am neither and I am both, yet my body is a woman. I owe no one anything, and I owe myself everything. I respect myself, I love myself, and I honor myself. I am on one of the hardest journeys that mankind has ever experienced and it matters to no one but me and God. Even if I fail, God knows I tried. Somehow there is a way to get the fighting to cease and find Life, and I sincerely hope I find it.
In case I don’t, someone please tell my kids when they are older that I really tried and I always thought they were beautiful, healthy, and super smart.
Fat is not evil, it is merely stored calories. It is the result of an overabundance of food. We just need to learn how to find a healthy balance before it is too hard to fix. Please, please teach your kids that. Fat is not sinister, it is not ugly, it is not the devil. Once there is too much, you can still fix it, but the more you accumulate the longer it takes and the harder it becomes to regain balance.
Having fat should never be a conversation of self worth.
All women are beautiful beings that give life to humanity, we are not objects to redicule, criticize, control, own, or manhandle.
Men can do great things in this world too, but must honor and respect all people or they eventually become the disrespected.
Please, I can’t stop the fighting amongst my cells or humanity, but I beg you to try and find the middle ground. Find common ground for God, for the good of our planet, for the future of our race. If the fighting doesn’t stop none of us will live much longer. God will see to it that reconciliation is met one way or another.
May you reconcile differences in yourself and your world. May you find peace in your body and your experience. May you know God wants good for us all. May you know there is a way, somehow. May you love yourself for trying.
