Category Archives: Musings

Elder grateful month — day 6 — X marks the vote

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I didn’t even have to choose the subject today.  The day elected (get it?) the topic.  I am grateful for the fact that I live in a country where I have the ability and the right to vote for my leaders.  As long as I am not convicted of a felony, I can vote in every election until I die.

The amazing thing about this is not just that I can vote.  There are lots of countries around the world where voting takes place.  What is so astonishing and unique about an American’s voting rights are many:

Get Out and Vote

  1. My right to vote is not based on race, gender, religion or socioeconomic status
  2. I can vote without fear of retaliation against me or my family
  3. I can vote at polls that aren’t surrounded by soldiers with automatic weapons
  4. I can vote knowing that the “winner” is not a forgone conclusion and my vote is meaningless;  i.e., my vote counts
  5. I can vote in complete anonymity
  6. I vote on a predetermined schedule (every 2 to 4 years), not every time there is a coup
  7. I can belong to a political party but still vote for the other party’s candidate

And when it’s all said and done, I can complain, in the office, in a blog, in a letter to the editor of my local paper, at a city council meeting, wherever, that I am not happy with my leaders.  Even if I voted for them.

Elder grateful month — day 5 — Sleep

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Day 5 of Elder Grateful Month and there’s no slowing me down.  I’ve still got plenty for which to be grateful….and today, I’m grateful for sleep.

Sleep, catching some zzzz’s, hitting the sack, sawing some wood — whatever you call it, you gotta have it.

Source: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2009/09/picture-of-sleep-6.jpg

Did you know that chronic sleep deprivation can increase your risk of:

  1. heart disease
  2. heart attack
  3. stroke
  4. diabetes
  5. high blood pressure

And it dumbs you down.  Makes it harder for you to concentrate.  And causes, ummm, I lost my train of thought.  Oh yeah, 100,000 traffic accidents a year are caused by sleepiness.

In fact, I would be grateful for more sleep.  I have suffered from chronic insomnia for about 10 years now.  I was such a champion sleeper before I hit my mid-30s, too, that becoming a sleep-challenged person was a shock. I used to be able to sleep anywhere, anytime.

These days, I take sleeping pills and melatonin and wear a CPAP for sleep apnea.  I find myself talking about the pros and cons of different sleeping pills with people — I am firmly entrenched in middle-age.  I am so Team Jacob, but would become Team Edward solely to eliminate the need to sleep.

When I have a good’s night sleep, I feel like a MILLION BUCKS!  Those are the days where I sparkle (like Edward), I am a warrior woman, I can take on the world.  So, I am so grateful for sleep, and if you’re listening, Mr. Sleep, I miss you.  Come visit more often.

Elder grateful month — day 4 — God’s Plan

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Day 4 of Elder Grateful Month and I still have so much for which to be grateful.  Today, however, I’m all about God’s Plan for me.

I was raised in a Christian house and have always known that God loves me.  The significance of that message really sunk in during my 30s, when I was battling an episode of clinical depression.  At a time when I felt like no one in the world could possibly like me, much less love me, the message of God’s agape love penetrated my mind and heart.

Old Graveyard — Ireland — Matt Elder

I believe that God has a plan for me and I try not to worry about the future.  It is so much easier said than done.  I’m not a fatalist or someone who believes in predestination above free will.  I believe that I can (and do) make bad choices.  But I do believe that if I submit myself to His plan, then He will lead me to make the choices that He wants.

I’m not a Bible scholar nor a theologist, so my belief system may seem simple to some.  Yet, I know that when I have felt most at peace in my life is when I am talking and listening the most to God.  That’s when I feel like I am following His plan.  When I have felt the most frazzled, disconnected, overwhelmed and out-of-sorts is when I have tried to do things on my own.  When I’ve tried to convince God that I knew what I was doing and He should just stand back and watch me handle it.  It never worked out well when I was trying to control everything.

My Life and God’s Plan — A Visual

Letting go, trying not to control everything, is one of the hardest things to do.  I think we humans are wired to try to control the environment around us.  It must be a survival skill.  It’s the moments when I have said, “I can’t do this, Lord.  I’m in over my head.  You gotta take this.” — those are the moments that have made me the strongest.  Seems backwards, huh?  All a part of His plan.

Elder grateful month – day 3 – Furniture

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Day 3 of Elder Grateful Month and the last 36 hours have inspired me to be grateful for Furniture.

Furniture?  Yes, furniture.  Objects to sit upon, lay upon, sprawl upon, prop my feet upon…you get the picture.  Early man just sat on the ground, either rock or dirt, maybe covered with some sort of vegetation.  How sad–and disagreeable.

This just doesn’t look comfortable after a long day of hunting and gathering

Source:  http://thescientistgardener.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html

I’ve spent the last 24+ hours in pain with a headache and I can’t imagine what early man did when they were in pain.  You just can’t find a comfortable position on a rock.  You need chairs and sofas and beds to rest your weary and aching muscles and bones.

Doesn’t this look better than a rock?

For me, a piece of furniture can also represent safety.  Kitchen tables are where you talk over the day’s event.  Matt and I have a lot of our serious “relationship” conversations at the kitchen table or on the sofa.  The introvert in me escapes to the bed to read when I need quiet time.  And I’ve written in the past about a couch that witnessed many, many important events in my life.

I am grateful that I (1) can afford furniture, (2) live in a time where furniture has been invented (because I wouldn’t be inventing it myself) and (3) live in a country where it is readily available.  My head is thankful it had several nice places to lay itself yesterday.

Elder grateful month — day 2 — My husband

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It’s day 2 of Elder Grateful Month.  Whoop Whoop!

Today, I’m giving a shout out to my husband, Matt.  I am so grateful that I have him in my life and that he is my husband.

Ireland 2012

Matt and I will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary next month.  (What is that?  Copper? Aluminum?  If you ask me, 5 years should be something precious and valuable because the first five years are hard.)  We do not have a perfect marriage, because no one does, but I think that we have a solid marriage.  I really, really, really like my husband even when I wonder why I love him.  And I really, really, really  love my husband even when I wonder why I am not killing him.

Matt, in return, puts up with a lot by being married to me.  I’m not an easy person to live with, to be married to or to be in love with.  He has to have great patience, lots of understanding and a big heart.  He has all three in abundance.

Luckily, we both have oversized senses of humor, which helps us through most situations.

So, to Matt, here is a quote from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.  It is the Prophet’s thoughts on Love.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Second annual “official” Elder grateful month

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Today starts the 2nd Annual Elder Grateful Month. Every day, I will list one thing for which I am grateful. Brought to you with $0 funding.

I did this last year on my Tumblr blog (which was the first “official” Elder Grateful month), but I’ve tried to do it before via Facebook. I also use the Gratitude app on my iPhone everyday (not just Elder Grateful month) in an effort to be more diligent in recognizing all that I have instead of focusing on what I don’t have.

Winners in past years have included: Imitrex migraine medicine, library cards, Aretha Franklin, my husband and grocery stores. The list is varied.

To start the 2012 Elder Grateful Month, I am thankful for digital cameras and social media. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to have seen (almost instantly) my nieces and nephew in their Halloween costumes even though they live on the West Coast and I live on the East Coast.

Boo — like their blurry face costumes?

I hid their faces — I don’t think that I have the right to share their precious, beautiful images on the world wide web. Trust me–they are the prettiest children in the world.

Check in tomorrow for more.

It is Halloween time, so here is a list of scary things

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I climbed on the elevator at work today and a maintenance man followed on behind me.  As the elevator moved up the floors, it made some weird noises and shimmied and shook.  The maintenance man looked at me and said, “We’ve been having problems with a couple of elevators in the building.  Four people have already been stuck in one over on the other side of the building this morning.”

My stomach twisted.  On my list of fears, getting stuck in the elevator is right up there.

I would be on the floor of this elevator, crying like a baby

source:  http://www.aqq.to/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/panoramic_elevators2.jpg

So, naturally, I started to think about my list of fears.  In no particular order, they are:

  1. Getting stuck in an elevator
  2. Plummeting to my death in an elevator
  3. Spider crawling across my face
  4. Eating raw chicken
  5. Being mistaken for Roseanne Barr
  6. That I won’t be able to retire (due to lack of $)
  7. Sitting next to someone with bad BO on a long plane flight and it making me nauseated and then throwing up in mouth
  8. Anything to do with heights
  9. Realizing that the “Rhythm Is Going to Get Me” if I don’t run faster
  10. Bears, anywhere, anytime

That is one thing that I like about growing older.  And about taking antidepressants.  I have a lot fewer fears than I had when I was younger.

The Indigo Girls have a song called “Kid Fears” where they ask in the chorus “What would you give for your kid fears?”  I have always assumed that they mean by that question that the fears of a child are much less serious than the fears of an adult.  I have actually found the reverse to be true.  I grew up in the 80s, during the middle of the Cold War, the Iran hostage crisis, the Reagan administrations, etc.  And I remember going to bed afraid that nuclear war would break out during the middle of the night.  Such heavy fears for a 10-year-old.

Our world isn’t any more stable, but now I realize that I have the capacity to deal with a lot of the things that life throws at me.  Except for plunging elevators.  That shit scares me.

Is it ok not to forgive?

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Forgiveness is on my mind.  How long should someone have to pay for a transgression?  Are there some sins that are too dreadful to forgive?  Can people do terrible things but not be terrible people?

A couple of things have happened recently that have brought this to my mind.  I’ve mentioned in the past that I love to watch true crime TV and over the past week or so I’ve been watching a show called Prison Wives on Netflix.  Yes, yes, it’s eye candy reality TV (you can turn your nose up at my TV watching habits all you want), but it gives an interesting perspective on how the spouse and the family suffer when a member of the family is put into prison for life.

Forgiveness

Source:  http://paulocoelhoblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/forgiveness.jpg

This is the extreme example of what has made me think about forgiveness.  Most of us don’t have to deal with the trauma of a family member in prison for life; what we do have to deal with is everyday, common interactions that leave us mad and upset and angry with others.  That is my second example.

I am really good at holding a grudge.  I always have been.  And a couple of days ago, I saw a comment by someone who I “de-friended” and blocked from Facebook on a mutual friend’s page.  It forced me to think about my grudge against this person.  And I didn’t like how I felt–I felt like a 13 or 14 year old, back when you declared to your best friend, “I’m not your best friend anymore!” on an every-other-day basis.  That is, it made me feel immature and childish.

My mama used to say that holding a grudge only hurt one person:  you.  Because you were expending the energy disliking that person, you were obsessing over the reasons to be mad, you were carrying around the burden of the feud.  She used to ask, “Do you think that they are spending any time worrying and fussing and obsessing about you?  No!”

So, now I’m left with the question of what to do.  Actually, I guess I know exactly what to do.  I should forgive this person for the hurt that they caused me.  The question is:  Do I want to let it go?  And, honestly, I don’t.  At this point, I don’t want to forgive.  I’m going to be ok with feeling immature on this one a little bit longer.

Let a little light shine on me

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I have written in the past about having depression and this time of year is always hard for me.  This week my doctor told me to get a light box to help fight Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).  Starting tomorrow, I must spend 30 minutes sitting, reading, getting ready for work, etc. in front of my light box, bathed in 10,000 lux of light (whatever the hell “lux” are).

I am hopeful that the normal winter blahs will not be as bad this year with the light box.  But as with most things like this, I always think about what they used to do “back in the day”.  You know, the day before there was a pill, a machine, an app, a super-dooper widget to help you with whatever the problem is.

I read somewhere once that if you could take a time machine back 200 or more years, one of the things that would be the most surprising and disorienting is just how dark the night is.  No light pollution–no street lights, no utility lights, car headlights, house lights, etc.  I have experienced a little of this when I have traveled out West, in some of the less populated areas.  Dark is dark.

What did people do when the sun went down and the nights lasted 12 hours or more?  Sleep from the exhaustion of the hard labor of the day?  Read by the dim light of the candle?  Pray for summer and longer days?

There are a lot of times that I wish that I had been born in a “less complicated time”, but then I really think about it and realize that God put me exactly in the time that I needed to be.

___________________________

On another note, Matt took this picture of a sign in Ireland.  I think it is excellent advice at all times, on a farm or at work.

Always be on the lookout for the bull

We all need to count some sheep

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Matt and I just returned from a vacation in Ireland.  It was wonderful!  Ireland is beautiful and the Irish are so friendly.  I left for the trip with preconceived ideas of green pastures, sheep, pubs, music, scenery–I got all this and more.  It was great.

Except that this trip convinced me that man (and woman) are not the superior creatures on Earth.  We are too pampered, too dependent on our creature comforts, too soft.

Ok, at least I am.

I am exhausted and I think Matt is, too.  We didn’t sleep well the entire time we were gone.  Either it was too hot, the bed was too hard, it was too quiet, the pillows were too flat….  The list went on and on.  We’ve been back home for a couple of nights now and I’m still trying to get my zzzz’s back in line.

Do you think this sheep

cares if he sleeps under any of these trees?

Do you think the sheep has a bad night if he can’t get next to “his” rock?  Does he have a hard time counting humans if the temperature varies by more than 5 degrees?

I doubt it, and as such, sheep (and cattle and horses and on and on) are better equipped than we are to deal with variations in their environment.  Ok, again, better than I am.  I love to see new things, visit new places, meet new people, but I NEED MY SPACE and my things around me to feel 100% myself.

Is that advanced?  It sounds a little restricted.  So, while I have always heard that sheep are too dumb to come in from the rain, right now, I’m too tired to open up my umbrella.  I’m not sure who’s winning (or losing).