Babies

Smile for today: 
Babies. They make me smile from the inside out.

Grandson #1 (who will be my baby until he can pick me up) experiencing the joy of freezing his hands, toes and nose in rare Texas ice.

Grand-niece, born just a couple of weeks ago. Oh, that pretty little face!

Little Things

Feb. 22, 201

Today I’m grateful that our monthly trip to Waco and Killeen wasn’t the physical beating it typically is. We leave early in the morning, which is in itself really hard, and I spend a good part of the day before making food to pack for the trip. We are gone until at least 5:00 p.m., virtually all of that time spent sitting in the car or in meetings. I come home aching all over and tired beyond belief. But not today! And that was even after being out last night and not getting to bed early. That’s a pretty big miracle for me.

I’m grateful for some other things that happened on the trip – they might seem silly or insignificant, but I see them as blessings nonetheless:

• After a meeting in Waco, we went to Killeen, where I discovered my watch wasn’t on my wrist. I had it on in Waco, and I had a panicked feeling that it fell off somewhere in Waco. I went through my bag, and there it was in one of the pockets. That watch – which is meaningful to me because Husby gave it to me when I earned my associate's degree – has never come unclasped, but there it was, wide open. It could have fallen on the floor somewhere in the stake center or in the parking lot – in the pouring rain. But it fell into the pocket of my bag. 
• It always rains on the days we go to Waco/Killeen. Today, the ice storm that weather forecasters were predicting began to blow in. It rained all the way to Waco, though not very hard; it eased up and even stopped in Killeen, but by the time we ate lunch after the meeting, it was raining in earnest. It came harder and harder, and I-35 was clogged both coming and going with 18-wheelers, and on the return trip as the rain increased, the semis sprayed it in blinding sheets. We watched the outside temperature drop from the 40s by a couple of degrees every few minutes. Traffic began to slow, and a quick check of the map app showed an accident quite a ways ahead. We got off on the frontage road and cruised along past all the traffic until we passed the wreck, saving us probably 45 minutes and a lot of aggravation. I am grateful that we traveled safely, made good time, and that the rain didn’t turn to sleet until the early hours of this morning when I was tucked safe and warm under my blankets in my sturdy, warm house. 
• I am grateful that I had ONE tissue left in my purse when we stopped for a restroom break near Waco and the stall I chose had no toilet paper. None. Not a square. The miracle is that I had given Husby the other of two tissues in my purse on the way down when a song in the CD touched him and brought tears to his eyes. Small thing, yes, but having one tissue in my purse sure felt like a blessing when I was sitting there looking at the empty TP holder.

Treats

Feb. 21, 2015

What makes a treat a treat is that it’s something enjoyed only occasionally. 

We had dinner tonight with the Friends we do dinner with every couple of months. I posted the last time we met, when I hosted – this is the Friend who appreciates eating healthy and well, so we enjoy eating good food together. Last time we included Daughter and Son-in-law and it was such a good dynamic that we all did it again this time around, at Friend's home. Being with all of them fills me with joy, and I realized that even though I would be elated to hang with them every day, part of the reason getting together like this is so sweet is because we don’t get to do it very often. I’m grateful for treats.

Energy Crisis

Feb. 8, 2015

The Friend who prompted me to start writing this journal inspired me with a positive way of viewing disappointments: “When something goes wrong in your life, just yell, ‘Plot twist!’ and move on.” Excellent advice for people who have normal energy stores. What I’ve come to learn, though, is that Plot Twists take a lot more energy than I ever realized. No one thinks about how much energy each daily activity takes until the energy tank is on empty.

When I try to explain to people that I’m not up to doing something, that I can’t do anything late in the day, or that I can’t do anything physically or intellectually strenuous, they either think I’m making excuses or they just don't get that I can't do those things.

I think of it like this: I wake up each morning with a small pocketful of coins; most other people I know start out with a wagonload of coins. When you have more coins than you’ll ever use in a day, you don’t realize how much you spend on every little thing like showering, drying your hair, dressing, fixing breakfast and cleaning up your dishes. Every step, every movement, even every thought process costs a coin or two. When the coins are gone, they’re gone. That’s it. The bank is empty until tomorrow. If you don’t sleep well, you wake up with even fewer coins. When you know you have only a few coins to spend, you plan and budget very carefully. You try to minimize steps and economize all your movements; you have a meltdown when you drop or spill something because you know cleaning up the mess will use up precious coins. Pain is very expensive, so you avoid things that cause it at all costs – for me, that's sitting or standing or doing anything for very long, as well as physical exertion, which results in muscle aches.

Aside from other energy-destitute people, few understand why something as routine as fixing a meal is such an ordeal for me. I don’t like food prep and cooking to begin with, so that’s a coin right off the bat. But consider the process, then imagine doing it after having run a marathon:

1. Coming up with a meal idea in the first place - not one dish, a meal
2. Making a shopping list
3. Going shopping, and in my case, sometimes having to hunt for Paleo ingredients – add Candida diet restrictions, and shopping becomes an exhausting proposition
4. Finding a parking space close to the door is a priority, not because I’m lazy, but because I desperately need the energy for the actual shopping
5. Hauling said groceries to the car – even more of a chore if I haven’t nabbed that coveted parking space near the door
6. Driving home – read: navigating traffic and staying alert while operating heavy machinery
7. Hauling said groceries into the house, where they sit on the counter while I drop into a recliner to regroup for a while; then I dig out a few more coins to bribe my brain into doing the puzzle that is moving food in and out of the fridge and pantry
8. Getting out ingredients, pots, bowls, utensils, then measuring and mixing everything – always frustrating because my mind has a hard time sorting and keeping things straight. I have never in my life been able to memorize a recipe or even figure out from experience how to put a dish together.
9. Cleaning up the mess
10. Starting all over again in about three hours (minus the shopping, unless I’ve forgotten an ingredient or two)

Meal prep costs me almost all of my day’s coins, which is why I don’t make lunch, why dinner is the worst part of my day, and why make-and-freeze prep for several meals at a time is a great time-saving solution for those with wagonloads of coins, but for me it simply isn’t possible.

And that’s just meals! Laundry is a coin or two, cleaning a bathroom is about five coins, having to deal with an insurance claim is a good 10 coins, and doing even small household repairs take a few coins; if they start to pile up, just thinking about tackling them can empty the pocket. Even fun things like going to visit a grandchild or a friend use up almost a day’s worth, so you don’t plan anything else for days with costly activities. 

A Plot Twist uses up a lot of coins because you have to figure out how to reroute (brain processing is often more costly than physical movement) and then physically carry out Plan B. Multiple Plot Twists in one day can easily use up all your change and land you in bed, or in a crying heap on the floor. 

It’s hard for energy-rich people to comprehend what it feels like when you run out. The closest comparison to which most people can relate is having the flu – the aching joints, the weakness and inability to move much less get out of bed. But as the term implies, Chronic Fatigue never ends. So you constantly budget your energy with as much miserly care as the financially poor budget their money, reluctant to spend on anything unnecessary. But there is no energy overdraft protection. If you’re in the middle of something when it happens, you have to try to keep going on fumes, but it’s not very pretty, and you can’t do it for long. You suddenly get irritable and irrational because your brain won’t work, you drop things and bump into things because your sense of space is off kilter. You feel like you’re melting into the ground, and “melting” is an apt metaphor, because you’ll be acting like the Wicked Witch of the North; at this point, you are quite literally shutting down. 

If functioning without energy and brainpower isn't maddening enough, you are misunderstood by strangers and friends alike. They think you're a grouch (and you are but you don't want to be), that you're lazy, that you're a hypochondriac. They begin to avoid you because within moments you can swing from feeling OK and being nice to crashing and acting irrational, snippy and even mean. But no one would know you're crashing because you look fine.  Even your friends stop calling because after you decline social invitations several times, they think you can't ever go play, or they decide you're no fun. 

I've been writing this post for several days; ironically, today Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is all over the news with the release of a year-long report. Get this:

The National Institute of Medicine on Tuesday declared chronic fatigue a legitimate disease that plagues "millions of Americans." It was also given the new name of systemic exertion intolerance disease.

I’m so relieved to know that what I’ve described in this post is now legitimate. And that giving it a different name will make it all better. 

But this is a gratitude journal, so I'm grateful if a respected institution is able to convince mainstream doctors to listen to patients who complain of debilitating fatigue and perhaps learn how to help them. I will be even more grateful if the medical community recognizes that drugs don't cure everything and if they open their minds to alternative treatments like diet, supplements and mind-body practices like Tai Chi.

Zzzzzz ...

Feb. 7, 2015

I am grateful for three consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep. Still not refreshing slumber, but it’s a really big deal for me to go to sleep and not wake up for eight or more hours!
 

Yin and Yang

Feb. 2, 2015

Last Monday night Husby was sick, so I went to Tai Chi class alone. But I had company once I got there – two women and a man. After six months of progression, to go back to a Square-One class filled me with what I learned tonight is called Yin (to the extreme): disappointment; bitterness and frustration that God would give me such a gift and then yank it away – because if new people join, Sifu has to teach to the lowest common denominator, leaving nothing in-between for Husby and me; and hopelessness – again.

But the Yin only lasted 18 hours before turning to Yang (Yin and Yang discussion to follow!) At class the next day, Husby and I were the only ones to show up, so we got one-on-one time with Sifu, one more time. It was a marvelous class full of the personalized nuances I have come to crave, and so what I needed after the Plot Twist left me fearing Tai Chi would end just as I was on the verge of realizing its healing effects. And at the end of class Sifu told us he’s working with the Rec center to add a Forms class, which is the next progression of Tai Chi study after a person learns the 45 Postures. I am utterly on-my-knees grateful for that. I knew every Monday night that if someone new came, that class would have to go back to the very beginning, and I was grateful every week that it didn’t. I knew the day would inevitably come, but when it did, I wasn’t prepared for the emotions that accompanied the realization that my progress had come to a screeching halt. A simple Plot Twist can change everything in an instant; another Plot Twist can turn everything again just as quickly.

I must insert here that the two women who “tried out” the class last week didn’t return tonight, as I figured they wouldn’t; they clearly were not feeling the Chi. The man has attended Sifu’s classes at other locations, so although he doesn’t know the Postures well, he knows what they are and has done them before. So Sifu did a new Qi Gong with the three of us and took us through the Postures with a focus on Yin and Yang.

I can’t claim to speak with any authority about Yin and Yang after one class, but I do grasp that in simple terms, Yin and Yang are two opposing yet complementary aspects of everything in the universe. Yin examples are dark, negative, night, cold and wet; Yang, then, is light, positive, day, warm and dry. 

The Tai Chi symbol

The constant interchange of Yin and Yang represents balance, as depicted in a diagram called the Tai Chi symbol. We see Yin and Yang in the crests and troughs of ocean waves, in night turning to day and winter to summer. This isn’t a new concept to me; I have been taught in my faith that we can’t appreciate good without evil, health without sickness, joy without grief. While I have appreciated the principle as truth and found some comfort in recognizing the value of trials, I have never seen it as a way of achieving balance.

In Tai Chi practice, we first learned basic postures by trying to imitate the moves Sifu made. After learning the choreography of each move, we began to learn that a Posture is actually a complex sequence of weight shifts – Yin and Yang. If we try to move before the weight has shifted, we lose balance and sometimes topple over. Chinese thought holds that Tai Chi creates balance within our body through Yin and Yang movements. The Postures felt different – and resonated more, if that makes sense – with this new perspective in mind. It’s these intricate layers that make Tai Chi increasingly satisfying – and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface!  

I’m grateful for the first Plot Twist, without which I might not fully appreciate the second one, which is, in essence, God’s assertion that He knows this class is a gift to me and His mercy in not taking it away (while reminding me that He can!) It's like they were an object lesson of Yin and Yang that prefaced the class on Yin and Yang. Both of these Twists also made me appreciate even more that Sifu is a gift from God – he was healed by practicing Tai Chi and teaches with the selfless goal of helping each of his students achieve balance and healing; if that means adding a class so two students can continue to progress and heal, he'll commit some more of his time to do that.

Writing this journal helps me find and appreciate the good, or Yang, sometimes by recognizing that things could be or have been worse, the Yin. I can see God’s hand in leading me first to lunch with a friend who inspired me to look for daily blessings, then quickly to someone who told me about the Tai Chi class; recognizing blessings plays right into the Tai Chi practice of moving Yin and Yang to create balance.

According to Chinese philosophy, anxiety, frustration, anger and fatigue I feel can be balanced by bringing in more Yang. It seems so obvious, right? What’s the quickest way to end a child’s tantrum or sulking? Tickle him! But why do I not instinctively tickle myself? Sifu says it’s the Monkey Mind that so dislikes change that it stubbornly resists.

I am grateful that Tai Chi gives me a daily practice designed to slowly loosen the Monkey Mind’s grip, unblock energy flow and restore balance. And grateful that my classes will continue for a while!

Hindsight

Feb. 1, 2015

A year ago today I was seeing spots in front of my eyes – literally, from a miniscule bit of cholesterol blocking a tiny vessel in my retina. It happened on a Friday, and for an excruciatingly long weekend, I raised my own blood pressure worrying that I had more deadly blockages floating around just waiting to hit lungs or brain (a very counterproductive thing to do when what you’re hoping not to have a cardiovascular event!). Today I’m grateful that a year later I’ve experienced no stroke or embolism, that my eyesight is mostly intact, and that the doctor I visited for the first time two weeks before the stroke recognized and treated a condition shown to increase stroke risk.

I’m also grateful we got to properly celebrate Husby’s birthday – with dinner at the restaurant where we had reservations last year but had to cancel because of the stroke. Even better, Daughter and Son-In-Law joined us … and surprised us by treating. I’m grateful for children who want to do that.