looking at the new from the old

my brother, Mr Wogglebug (HM.TE) was here on a visit and left me with a gift.  It seems  like I am looking back from such a long ways off.
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,
who is that looking out at me?
what are the secrets behind her eyes?

where are the hidden lies?

A preview

 

Somebody  wanted Something Zombie.

the clown car effect

Sometimes when I deal with Mr Footless and Insulin shock I seem to switch over to some alternate reality where the furniture seems to be the same but people seem to be operating from the twilight zone.
I was talking to someone about this and called it the clown car effect.  Its as if a car full of clowns pull up in front of your place and pile out and there is no figuring out what will happen next. Here are several of these that stand out in my mind as unforgettable and amazing episodes of Chinese fire drill.

1. The day we found the cat that had fallen down the chimney which involved a cherry picker and four fire guys.
2. The day I came home from work to find a grocery cart in the living room with a cryptic note from a police officer informing me that my produce was in the refrigerator and a missing husband.
3. The epic line up outside the house that involved a city bus, a police car, a fire truck, an ambulance, the mail van, The UPS van and a friend's car.
4. The episode in a coffee shop where the guy concluded that Mr Footless was possessed by demons and began pulling out all the stops including the bible and calling on Jesus to help this poor soul.
5. The time Mr Footless went out in his daughters bathroom and we got the graduated sized fireman and EMT parade all of whom wanted to try fitting themselves into a bathroom the size of a refrigerator carton
6. And then the latest one where Mr Footless collapsed in a restaurant during the five o'clock rush and we had the whole mess happening in a bar on the floor, wherein the Manager after the thing was over offered me two shots of tequila to take the edge off.  

considering all that. it has become very hard to upset me I guess I have been worked over by experts.

When things calm down you can see through the confetti

Mr Footless sat down to examine all the data that we have gathered this past few weeks and what needed to be done about the pump and the incredible time problems that we were looking at.  Somehow it has all come together in our understanding  as to how to deal with the problems with the pump.
 You need to understand that there are real advantages to it.  Mr Footless and I have both known that he really should be injecting two boluses a day to smooth out the lumps in his delivery system.  There was no way in hell that Mr Footless was going to do it. The cruel truth is/was that he is afraid of needles.  Once a day was all he was going to manage and that was that.  Well the pumps delivery system has taken the horror out of injections.  Once the infusion set is in place, getting the insulin on time and properly dosed is a matter of five punches of a button.  One ouch, every three days.  Smooth delivery and minimal issue.
The real problem was what we had no clue about.  Nobody knew and nobody could predict the length of time insulin was lingering in his system.  In the end this is what was causing the crashes and the craziness.
We know now that he can manage the pump, his food, and stabilize the routine because he understands that it isn't all that foreign to his way of managing.  He just has much more accurate knowledge of what is going on and a much more accurate calculation and delivery system.  Hurray.  I think he is riding it, instead of it riding him.

In which I get a vacation whether I want it or not

Let's state the obvious.
the last few weeks have been stressful. very very stressful.  they have included steep learning curves.
finding out just how odd Mr Footless's metabolism is. broken sleep, emergency runs. and Mr Footless after too many insulin shocks where his cognitive ability has slipped.  I have been feeling voiceless and run down. as if I have to make unpopular choices and can't get them across in a way that states that I mean business.  So I have  laryngitis.  I can not make myself heard.  I have been struck dumb.
I rescheduled almost everyone and hunkered down for a day of silence, rest and reading.  All the connective tissue in my head swoll  up and it hurt to put on my glasses. Ah silence.
  the strange thing about it is that I have found a way to communicate with Mr Footless that  he can hear what I want to tell him and he doesn't block it out.  Mr Footless is beginning to understand just why text messages are a really good thing..  I lost my voice so that I could say what I needed to say and as a positive note Mr Footless has partly entered the newer communication age.  He can't send them but he can get them.

Another piece of the puzzle

 The following is the rushes on my making sense out of my last experiences over the weekend.

 Dear Diabetic expert that is the age of my son.

MR. Footless did not respond well to the original parameters of the pump set up.  What could not have been taken into consideration was :

1)      MR. Footless is high blood sugar phobic.  He will not tolerate extended periods of blood sugars running over 180mg/dl

a)      His body responds to extended highs with nausea and vomiting so his refusing to tolerate them is entirely understandable.

b)      His lifetime manner of dealing with this is to refuse to eat, to take bolus insulin and wait until the blood sugar drops.  At present this is making him miserable.

c)     ( He is no bundle of joy to live with either.)

d)     I put the pieces together to figure this out about two weeks ago, and after twenty years of life together.

2)      MR. Foot less's insulin processing is very idiosyncratic. 

a)      This may be due to his extended life as an insulin dependent diabetic. After 70 years his body responses are what they are in part due to the long term and life long habits that have allowed him to survive and in part to thrive while injecting insulin.

b)        they aren’t normal.

c)      Apparently he has an extra long onset time, and a much extended active insulin period. It begins to make sense of the 4 am crash and burns and the wild variations over the years.

3)      The active Insulin period of Humalog is supposed to be four hours.  For MR. Footless it is ten hours.  This is the reason that he has the blood sugar crashes in the wee morning hours and the reason that the night time basal has been dropped to nonexistent.  With the pump calculating for four hours he has been inadvertently been stacking his dosages which all hit at somewhere around 4 AM (lucky Me)

a)      During the latest emergency I was able to get enough information to re-calibrate the information in the pump using the numbers that repeated testing over a ten hour period helped to confirm

4)      The following chart is the recalibration as Mr. Footless’s present numbers have indicated.  It has a much lower basal which may need raising and a much larger carb factor in line with both the blood glucose results and the crash and burn episodes in the early morning.  Todays  blood glucose results do not thrill Mr. White but they seem to be taking into account the long time that insulin is active in his system.  I have some questions.

1.      The pump does not have a ten hour insulin time. eight is as high as it goes.  While this is better than the stacking effect that four hours applied to Mr. Footless, is there shorter acting insulin?

2.      We are pretty sure that there is an hour delay before the insulin begins to show in the system, and we know that it begins to peak after four hours and continues to work for another four hours. How do you plan meals around that?

Mr. Footless would like more sex

Yesterday Mr. Footless woke me up from a tired sleep at 5:30 am with a blood sugar of 26.  Anything under 40 means ambulance call due to being either totally non compus or combative and uncooperative.  So they lined him and packed him off to the emergency room.
I picked him up about 7:30.  He was apologetic, sort of, and told me that he had a lovely day of my driving him around on errands set up. 
I had a day with visiting a friend and doing a bit of shopping with no one in the car with me in mind
  I got back about three and was altering a dress and adding the snaps and hemming down the facings when Mr Footless asked me to go down to the pawn shop and let him look at a new telly as the one we have had for the last ten years is giving notice that it is soon to be on it's way to the recycle.
He added that he would like to take me out to dinner.  So OK that's nice and the dress and I got into the truck and we went down to the pawn shop, and then we went off to eat.  He said that he was feeling a bit funny and when he got to the restaurant he was showing signs of having a low.  I fed him a glucose and got inside with him.  Mr. Footless likes the salad bar at this place and he made noises about picking up a salad and it wasn't until he got to the end of the bar minus any food that I realized that he was in a lot more trouble than I might have thought   
The upshot of all this preliminary history is that about 5:00 pm I was putting in a second call to 911 and they were treating Mr. Footless in the middle of this restaurant in the middle of the evening rush on a Saturday night.  His Blood sugar was 30. Of course they bundled him off to the Emergency room again leaving me to figure out what to do next. 
The manager couldn't have been nicer.  The waitress was utterly kind.  I ordered my (and his) meal to go and sat at the bar until it was ready.  They offered me a shot of tequila to calm my nerves.  Too bad I don't drink. I can just imagine what that might have been like on an empty stomach, Me being all of 105 pounds of completely pissed off. That wouldn't have ended well.
It turns out that Mr. Footless had an object lesson in why you don't take a bolus dose for food until you are heading down to the restaurant, and what happens if you do.
Much later, after bed time when I was sinking into sleep Mr. Footless suggested that we hadn't been close for a few weeks and maybe we should......
And you wouldn't want to be there for what I said. 

Enlightenment happens

Mr Footless has been struggling with the pump.  I finally realized something about Mr Footless that will make dealing with things much easier.
Mr Footless is high blood sugar phobic.  The struggles that he has had are there because he fears high blood sugar and the complications so much that he prefers to put his life in danger by going low.
So the" leave things high and work them out slowly" approach really really doesn't work.
Today I set his bolus settings to something that is going to overdose him.  He will be much better about tapering things from low to high than high to low. 
The professionals don't get this. I do. 

Steeeep learning curve with random remarks.

Things have been moving along.  The pump is working but not as well as we would like.  There are still too many lows.  When lows happen on the pump at least you can shut it down  so that you aren't fighting the infusing insulin on top of the low.  none the less, we have been cutting the amount of base that Mr Footless gets at night.  We are still too high but this takes time.  The programmed amounts for food and getting down from the highs are too small.  we have improved this by a lot but it still isn't right. Another piece of unexpected education; infusion sets and hairy bellies make for horrible defoliation scenes when you take the old set off.  The way to make it work right is to take the tube off the set,draw around the adhesive with a sharpie, choose the site for the next set. shave it, insert the new set. and only then remove the old one.
We got the first electric and gas bills that mean something since the weatherization. after the first month with the heat on consistently our gas bill (Last year at this time 124.00) was..... 43.00.  The electric bill dropped by 16 dollars with the new refrigerator.  Hurrah.

Mr Footless continues to wrestle the pump into submission

Mr Footless is not terribly happy with me.  The problem is that I read and comprehend direction and procedure easily and well. I am also a lot more at home with technology than he is.  The idea that the pump can make the calculations and administer the right bolus faster and easier than he can is counter to his life view.
This morning I helped him change the tubing and put in a new reservoir.  He discovered that eating and not administering a bolus dose is not a good idea, over all, and he begins to have a handle on it.  His morning blood sugars are still too low but over all he's doing good.

in which I consider whacking Mr Footless upside the head

Mr Footless Man has a number of things that I admire.  He is gentle, compassionate and he never teases me on a sore point.  He has among his more interesting qualities the ability to persist.  He doesn't back up any better than a pig, and he will apply himself to a problem and come to some sort of resolution by sheer stubborn bull hardheadedness. 
The fact that he has survived in as good health as he has is a tribute to his participation in his own care.  He put the pro in proactive back when MD meant Minor Deity (and the patient was supposed to do what the doctor said and no argument) and has participated in his care mostly to his better health and sometimes to his detriment.
After an intensive class and a week of studying the manuals, Mr Footless decided to begin using the insulin pump.  The first thing he told me was that he wanted to reprogram the basal dose and approximately double it.
I refrained from screaming (you have no idea how this is going to affect you and you want to fiddle with the numbers because you think they are wrong???? )and suggested through clenched teeth that he not mess with the programs until he had been on the pump for at least 48 hours.
  He grumphed but did as I suggested.  Good thing too.  Twelve hours in and I am pretty sure that he may need the base dose dialed back a bit.  It looks good so far.  His blood sugars are within reason and he seems to be getting the idea of letting the machine do the thinking.
I will be checking on him in a minute before I head in to bed.  it has been a long day.

Letting go, moving on.

Yesterday I went up to Conifer hill and began packing in the things that I wanted to get down before the beginning of the year.  The day was lovely.  The cabin is partly disassembled and many things of great sentimental value have been incorporated into my house.  I am still digesting what this means to me.
Both the boys made it up and took things that they wanted and needed home as well.  I am tired and sad to let this enormous part of my life go.
But it is true.  The cabin needs more time and energy and money than anyone in the family can give it.  It needs structural work that is critical for safety and the attic is infested with wood rats.  it was a wonderful part of our lives.  I am so glad it was there, so much of who I am and how I think both good and bad grew up there.  I will carry it in my heart all my life.
bless the land, bless us all good bye and good luck.

Poke at it from a distance

The Footless Man has had his insulin pump delivered.  It is a very spiffy number and it came with a choice of colors, so it is purple.  It came in a box with lots and lots of sinister looking packaged thingummies that turn out to be connector doohickeys and flasklets that hold insulin.
In the spirit of nine year old boy inquiry Mr Footless opened one of the packages to examine the slightly sinister occupant.  After eying it carefully, twiddling all the bits, removing all the removable pieces and re assembling the works afterwords, He concluded that he has no idea how it installs the wee plastic tube that delivers the insulin in carefully measured doses. 
This thing comes with a tome approximately 12 times its volume which was unable to enlighten him.*  It spoke of many things, just not that.  He remained mystified for a week and a half until the trainer called to set up a training session.  She sweetly directed him to the company website and the training videos contained therein.
Last night Footless and I sat and looked at the training vids.  It was very informative.  The mystery is solved to his satisfaction and mine as well.
*I am wary of any technical thingy that has an instruction booklet bigger than the object, or that weighs more than the object.  This does both.

Morning Meditation

I was sitting here this morning and playing solitare while I was waiting for the computer to finish its internal scan.  It struck me very hard to realize how damaging and painful judgement is, and how much we need to be loved.  Problem is, that judgement is easy.  Loving is hard.
In all the struggles that I have had, underneath it all I have wanted to be seen and to be recognized.
More than that I have wanted to be loved. 
Where I can be helpful to the people that I see is not in what I can do for them but in the quality of the loving that I can give them. 
Now that I understand that, how does it change who I am and how I act in the world?

What to get for someone who doesn't want another thingy

The Footless Man is a romantic.  He likes to give me jewelry.  I wear the same pieces of jewelry constantly.  My neck and ring fingers are in use.  He likes to give me snarky T shirts.  I have too many of them and wear them only on weekends in the summer.  He asked me what I would like to mark our twentieth anniversary because he was stuck.  I thought it over and I told him.  I want a pedicure.  So he gave me a pedicure.  The extra special kind with all the bells and whistles.  My feet have been scrubbed and salted and filed and creamed and massaged. The toenails were filed and primped and painted purple.  They look adorable and I feel pampered and loved.  I can wear it for a month or two, and get another one when this one wears out.  I feel wickedly decadent.  I like it.

The last of the pictures of the wedding

I finally found the pictures that I unearthed and then lost.

 

 

What hits me in these pictures is how utterly happy we are, and  how young and handsome the footless man looks.  We were besotted with each other and it showed. 

It was twenty years ago come Thursday

 Here we are when Footless Man had both feet and his eyesight.  Here I am, before school, training, and all the challenges of everything in between.
and look at us.  We are so radiant, so happy.  It took so much to get even there. If you look at the things against us it looked like it would never work.  All the obstacles all the hoops.  It seemed like it took forever to happen and it looked so impossible for so long.  And there we were.  
I think about all the challenges we faced, what we accomplished both together and alone.  For one thing we both expected that I would be widowed within five years.  Given that, the other losses seemed, well not minor, but more cope able.  Some how a prosthesis is a better choice than a coffin. 
Kids are raised,  School is mostly done,  We passed the expected five year limit four times. We have moved into middle and old age.
What an amazing journey.
There are very few photos of that day.  I went and dug around to find them.  I came up with this.

bouquet

hair wreath

And this proves beyond a doubt that mom is a sentimental pack rat.
So here we are twenty years later.  It has been one wild ride.  Next stop, 25.  Five years out.  Always five years out.  I can think about five years, it's manageable.
I will put up more photos later because they promptly went into the fifth dimension shortly after they showed up. 

Some things to think about

I re read my copy of Parenting With Love and Logic.  The one that helped me raise my kids without killing them.
I have been applying the love and logic methods of interaction to the Footless Man.  Suddenly we are getting on much better .  Footless Man sat down in the computer room and I was able to show him

The barking cat,

Maru
 and several other delightful pieces that he has been missing.
today The Footless Man removed the cherry paneling from the front of the refrigerator revealing it in its almond glory.  I have word that it is leaving next week.  Footless Man wants to figure out how to put the panels on the new refrigerator.  I sympathized. Sometimes reality is a hard place to live.

That was some grasshopper

Last week I was wondering what might be the result of the grasshopper sacrifice at the grand poo-bahs.
This week I am assessing the results.
Tuesday I got a call from the crew chief telling me that he had two crews loose and could he send them over to begin work at the house.  I OKed it and asked that they call The Footless Man and give him a head's up.  (I also clued them that the door bell is a decoy set up for sales men and Jehovah's witnesses, and that the standard is knock and yell.)
The Footless Man had the time of his life over the next two days supervising three crews.  Over the two days they sealed the main floor attic, removed and replaced our furnace with a new high efficiency one, blew the attic full of insulation, gave us a new thermostat, smoke detectors in every room, a CO detector in the upper hall, blanketed the hot water heater and put insulation around the cement edges of the crawl space.
Pictures will arrive when I get new batteries for the camera.
The new refrigerator is ordered.  The house feels different.  It is quieter, cooler in the heat, more solid.
I realized that over the years I have gained an intimate understanding of the houses innards.  I have been in all the attics. I know where the wires run.  I installed a lot of the plumbing and electric upgrades as well as the cabinets, the dishwasher, and the thermostat. 
I know the difference between a doorbell wire and a thermostat wire, how to light a hot water tank and the mechanics of a toilet.  I can tighten the cables to the TV satellite dish, and change out the outdoor faucet petcocks if I must.
This is a summer that is the beginning/ending of an era.  Michael the cat is gone, Edith has been given to a new owner.  James is moving out.  My responsibilities have begun to disburse.
Come this fall, things will be more stable.  we seem to be getting ready for something.  I wonder what.

Keeping an eye on the neighbors

This morning my eastward neighbor woke me up as usual.  I don't talk about the neighbors much. The house is a rental and seems to rent to a pretty tatty demographic.  The selection gets worse with every new set that moves in.  The latest ones are pretty impressive. 
They are oil patch workers, and their hobby is a truck that they take to shows.  The tires on the truck would pay for a furnace, and the rest of the truck seems to be of the same sort, fearfully expensive and high maintenance.
I have talked to the guys on occasion.  They are polite and pleasant and look like they spend their time off drinking and playing music that would sterilize frogs at forty paces at a decibel volume just under a jet takeoff. 
They are gone for a week, here for a week, with someone who stays here to keep care of everything. 
I have seen her twice in the seven months they have lived here.  The first time was seeing her out on the back porch shrieking and banging on the patio door about " lemme have my stuff! I need my stuff! Goddammit you almighty f^(%head, Gimme my Stuff!"  This was about 11 at night in February with the below zero temps.
she did get in and who knows what it was about.
The second time I saw her she was shit faced drunk and fell off the back porch.
So, not someone that I would find a kindred spirit.

So at 7 am this morning, when I would like to take the one day I can to sleep in a bit, I hear one of the guys coughing and hacking with a rising volume until he begins to retch.  This is loud enough to sound like he is on the back porch.  I check out the window.  Nope.  He is producing his magnificent volume of noise from the bedroom.
It's been a long summer living next to them.  I hope the heat breaks soon. 

sacrificing grasshoppers to the poo bah

some how after a very long time in stagnation things are moving along with a vengeance.
A long time ago I applied for weatherization and we had our application accepted.  Not very long ago we called and asked if anyone would be coming out to do anything ever. I guess that we poked them in a tender place because we got a notice not long after, that someone would be out on the 24th, which at 8:30 this morning they were. 
Three guys examined and tested and climbed into attic spaces and looked (god help us ) at the furnace.  Some of the numbers are in, and some of the numbers depend on how many grasshoppers they sacrifice to the grand government Poo bahs.  If the grasshoppers and the numbers add up we get a new furnace, the attic insulated, the crawl space vapor barriered, and a new refrigerator.  We might also get a new hot water heater, it depends on the government to grasshopper ratio.
My water says that the furnace is a go and the heater is a maybe, but they have guaranteed that I will by gum get a new refrigerator.
The Footless Man supervised all this from his wheelchair looking as forlorn and crippled up as possible, as well as footless.  They told him that they would clean out underneath the house to put in the vapor barrier, so he gets the crud pile under the house removed and doesn't have to hire it done.
I await developments breathlessly.

That was wierd

I wanted to go down and have an afternoon with the Erstwhile Child.  We thought that a treat such as the Real Pirates would be a nice decompressing afternoon.
Somehow the nice calm afternoon together turned into an outing at the Museum that included the Mother-out-law (a very nice lady) and the youngest son.  The family tree is messy.  Anyway I spent a lot of time with two people that I never thought I would be able to spend time with at all, due to some circumstances that could only be engineered by God. Then I got tangled in traffic and ended up spending the night in Boulder with my parents, Nothing I had planned at all.  I got back to find that we have been approved for weatherization on the 24th.  God's Steering cause I sure ain't.

Retro fitting

The process of taking a reasonable but meh piece of clothing and making it fit, removing things that make it look frumpy and generally making it over in your better image.
I have come to the conclusion that the mid summer weeks deserve a wardrobe of their own.  This is a new idea to me, but I come to things slow.
My usual manner of getting a wardrobe begins by taking a tour of a thrift shop.  My usual budget runs about twenty bucks.  Then I take my findings and do whatever needs to be done to make them into things that I would wear.  I like capri pants for summer wear.  I prefer cargo pockets.  Baggy is ok up to a point, the point being looking like I am wearing  clothes that belong to my mom. (she has excellent taste but she is bigger by six sizes)
Shopping in a thrift store means that sizing is as varied as the brands that land there.  I am looking specifically for linen.  It wicks sweat and it does not cling.  I actually found a pair of linen pants that it would be easy to take up around the waist.  It has a cargo pocket and looked like a simple retro fit.  Then I looked at the hems.  Oh holy heavens what designer thought this up?  The bottom of the pants had ruffles.  army green linen pants with ruffles.  Then I found a nice shirt.  Purple is a good color and the tag says XS.  again, right fiber it was linen.  so I get my goodies home.
The pants took about an hour to tighten the elastic, remove the ruffles and shorten and finish them off with a bias band.
I think the extra small was the size of the whale the shirt was supposed to fit.  I looked like I was second hand Rose.  It took three hours to open the seams and get the sleeves off and to cut four inches out of each side.  It took fifteen minutes to resew it all.  next week I visit another store and do it again.  By the mid week in August when the heat breaks, I will have a whole mid summer wardrobe of linen shirts and pants good for the next year.  I can pack it into a box and let it wait until the thermometer hits the ninety's next summer.

I don't know what to say

Time has come to address the issue of the cabin at Conifer Hill.  I know it, I understand it, I get it.  However.  I also am dealing with the following things. Work and work related issues including sharing my office with two other people,  Bills and finances, Brad and the increasing unstable blood sugar problems.  The heat and my health. refinancing the house and the repairs that will take.  I am tired, tapped out and overwhelmed.
We don't need to do anything until this fall, back off and cool off. of all the things I need to do this one can wait.  We need to get things down and distributed but we don't need to do it now. 
Mom, please don't tell several people that they can have the same things, it causes confusion and discord. 
Boys, please have a think about what would be important for you to have.  nothing there is worth a fight, trust me this is so.  I am thinking about what can be done to make this as fair as possible.  please back up it isn't the end of the world and we have time.
love, Mom

RELEASE THE FLYING MONKEYS AND BRING ME MY BICYCLE!

For Michael

Light a candle for Michael

who dive bombed heads and toes

and was mightily plagued by bed mice and laundry lumps

Light a candle for Michael

Who played peck-a-tail with magpies

and tag team chased squirrels with Merry

Light a candle far Michael

who came bearing gifts of snakes and mice

and decorated chairs with feathers

For Michael who slept on James

and followed him,

a shadow in the grass

a tail tip above the seed heads

escorting him out to play.

For Michael who stayed behind 

as his brother and sisters slipped away

who stayed on as his people grew up and moved on

and kept company with the ones left behind.

Light a candle for Michael 

who stayed on with aching hips

and dimming eyes and muffled ears

to love and cuddle and keep company

Light a candle for Michael

sitting at the edge of life

looking into the distance

waiting for the fading night to set him free.

To the Erst While Child

Yesterday was a great day The Erst While Child  Graduated From College.
Here he is between the Footless Man and I.  He looks so handsome and grown up it breaks my heart.

Here he is in funny hat and dowdy dress and antique style clothing.  He always did have a style of his own.
you can watch his work

 and marvel at how much he can do.
So as a last thing to tell him because I can't tell him much, here is this;

--Mother to Son, Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now --
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It wasn't a crystal stair for him either.  Congratulations Child O Mine you done real good.
Love, Mom

Who is this really?

Yesterday was a culmination day for a project that I suddenly was told to do by Those I will call the Powers That Be shortened to PTB or The PA (public address system). 
one morning early (5:30 to be exact) as I was bumbling along to be with Friday's Child, (whom I stay with on Tuesdays and Fridays from 6 to 2) and thinking about a birthday bike ride and picnic for me and some other like minded ladies.
The PA switched in and informed me that I would be having this on a Sunday after my birthday.  They gave me a specific guest list and told me not only who to invite but what the subject of the meeting would be.  Not only that they told me how to facilitate the meeting.  I posted the invite I wrote earlier here.  As time went on it became obvious that The Powers were in charge, and I was not.  it came together like it was waxed.
Sunday the meeting/gathering/party happened.  It was amazing.  It was delightful.  It was warm and loving and heart felt all the way around.  Everybody came.  We brought delicious food.  We began to connect and to talk and then to laugh.  We have the beginnings of a community.  Now  When Shall We Eight meet again?  soon.  The PTB says so.

So where did you learn that?

More and more of the time that I spend working with clients I spend examining what we believe, why and how we learned it and what it does in our life.  It is a little like my first training in spirit releasement work when I found out that how we perceive the next world is flat, two dimensional and mostly only vaguely related to what may be out there. 
All these years later, I also am beginning to understand, that a whole lot of what people understand and do in their lives has a whole lot less to do with what is rational and a whole lot more to do with what we learned the world was like before we had words to articulate it.
Our beliefs are formed pre words and pre-rational thought.  Getting to the core takes a lot of work because the part of the brain that speaks in words isn't where the belief is being stored and acted on.
Welcome to the lizard brain.  It is the world of primitive belief and involved in keeping the body safe and alive.  It is why we can know beyond a shadow that we need to change our actions and rationally understand that time is past and gone.... and still behave as if we are two and this is our mommy.

It is the strangest feeling to sit with someone and hear them voicing a set of beliefs that they would like to make their own,  while their body is crying out "No, No, No, That's not how it goes and that's not what I will act on."
The reason that I use EMDR, trained in it and love it is that it works better than most therapies to actually change the lizard brain core.
My personal problem is that it is the most boring form of therapy because it is also the least interactive. The way I tolerate its boredom factor for me is by knitting to time the intervals.  I am beginning to find a way to isolate and understand those survival imperatives that uses a combination of  brain integration, somato-emotional release and EMDR.  It is pretty effective and has some helpful parts for things like weight loss. 
This is pretty neat.  I love learning things like this.