Does anyone else hate or at least dread the holiday New Year's Eve?
 

I got my first two Christmas cards today. And who they were from gave me pause. The first was a friend, a long time, friend. She was never the one to return a call, keep in touch, send a thank you card on time,

I did not expect my first Christmas card to be from her.

My second was from my sister. Despite everything she is going through and everything that has happened my sister has stayed true to form -being the first as usual to send out cards. My sister was always good at stuff like that.
 

I haven't written in this blog in a while. However, I have been doing a lot of writing.

In the morning, I write in my Don't Sweat the Small Stuff Journal or in what I call my moth journal.

I do this with a cup of tea as I had to give up coffee because it bothers my daughter who is breastfed. Decaffeinated or Caffeinated does not seem to make a difference. I also can't drink milk or cream.

My moth journal is where a write about my imaginary moths that live inside of me that flutter up when bad occasions happen or flutter up and cause bad things to happen. These moths could have many names: anxiety, stress, insecurity, anger, depression, worry, compulsiveness, ... I just call them moths. They are toxic, but they also help me write. Giving me stuff to write about.


I've been on my laptop working on two different short stories. My laptop is not connected to the World Wide Web.

I have complained about this.

I had planned on connecting it, but I kept procrastinating this task.

Now I think maybe it is better -and nice the way it is.

I get on my laptop and alls I can do is write.

I can't surf the web,
shop,
read WDC blogs,
read emails, write emails,...

I have moved from a 1 to 2 thanks to WDC support for giving me a merit badge for reviewing.

Thank you WDC support.

Positive recognition is so important. I hadn't been on this site lately writing or reviewing, and now, thanks to the nice surprise of receiving a merit badge, I am motivated once again.

My father who is turning 67 this January is sleeping over his daughter's house, who is 41, so that she won't be alone.

She drank this weekend and than called my parents today suicidal. This I hear filtered through my mother who has many key words for my sister's drinking :

"She's not doing well."
"She's just so depressed."
"She's just in a deep depression."
"It's like she can't move forward."
"We had another situation with _____ today."
"It's not for us to understand."
"She doesn't want to be this way."
"I think she is in the midst of a breakdown."

My mother was offered to have an ambulance pick my sister up, because she was talking suicide. My sister did not want that. She instead settled for Dad coming over to spend the night.

This is not the first time he has done this.

I am not sure exactly what I am trying to write about here, but it has something to do with this:

Thursday, I brought my daughter to my mother's. She was going to babysit so I could work one day.

My daughter keeps waking up. I just went to settle her down for the second time, and I think I am getting too tired to finish this entry. So I am going to quicken it up.

I worry about my mother and father's health. This stress and sadness concerning their daughter is not good for them.

I worry it is taking years off their life.

and it makes me angry with my sister. She's sucking the life right out of them.

and all she seems to radiate is

Poor me
poor me
poor me.


A poem by Robert Creely:

Versions

Why would she come to him,
come to him,
in such disquise

to look again at him -
look again -
with vacant eyes -

and why the pain still,
the pain -
still useless to them -

as if to begin again -
again begin -
what had never been?

*

Why be
persistently
hurtful -
no truth
to tell
or wish to?
Why?

*

The weather's still grey
and the clouds gather
where they once walked
out together,

greeted the world with
a faint happiness,
watched it die
in the same place.







 

For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving: Happy Thanksgiving.

I wish everyone a great day tomorrow - whether you're a Thanksgiving celebrator or not.

I'm off to bed -going to think about all the things I'm grateful for untill I drift off to sleep.
 

My favorite poem I've found so far on WDC. It's by VerySara. I love her poems, and I am going to miss reading more.

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I just spent the last part of this evening writing in my journal - something I have been doing a lot lately which is why I have not been blogging. There's something about a pen and journal some times.

I had the kind of day that produces a lot of reflection.

It was the poignant kind of day that showed the passage of time, contrasted happy moments with sad, and offered hope and despair right next to eachother.

I was visiting my sister who was sober today, and I have been thinking about her ever since.

And I haven't prayed in a long time, but tonight I prayed for her. I realized how very important it is to me, and to my whole family, that she survives all this.

I have been looking at pictures and reading through old stuff.

I looked through a book of poems by fifth graders I use to work with.

I was hit by this one. His first name was Ian.



Dreams


On my bed sitting
Looking at the mirror
Seeing my reflection
In a dream.

A key chain on my finger
Bouncing back and forth
Back and forth
In the dream.

Waiting for the sky to fall
Just to end my day
Waiting for the sun to set
In this dream.

As the creeping shadows rise
Watching, Waiting
Wondering if this will end
In my dream.


Funny, how a poem I read years ago didn't find me till now.



 

Yesterday I had gotten off the highway and was on an exit ramp, when I began thinking again of the power of addiction and reincarnation.

I remember many years ago, in my childhood, when I was first introduced to the idea of reincarnation in a movie, I was horrified and indignant. Everything that was I believed in the importance of just one - of individuality- could not let my life - this life- be stolen and stripped of its individuality by being linked to a chain of multiple lives. I was me, therfore, I could be noone else.

But my concept of me has evolved over the years, and I have often thought of the idea of reincarantion over the years again and again.

However, I come from a Roman Catholic Background which believes in the resurrection of one body, believes in heaven and hell, and a place called purgatory. I taught at a catholic middle school, and even though I was a history and English teacher, I got in a conversation with my sixth grade class about religion and the afterlife. One sixth grader came up to my desk afterwards privately and told me he thought purgatory was this life - being here on earth.

So in the blending of Roman Catholic heritage and my newly adopted eastern philosophies, I started years ago putting heaven and purgatory and hell in different places.

I too, like the sixth grader, had often thought that here is our purgatory - our place to wait- to become better - to get ready for heaven. It fits in nicely with the idea of reincarantion where a soul comes back again and again and who he is in one life depends upon his last. Souls come back to grow and evolve -to eventual become connected with much higher spirits - closer and closer a soul will get to its ultimate transformation. Seems to me you could call this heaven.

But as I drove off the exit ramp, I thought differently. I've been thinking so much about the power of addiction.

I remember in middle school, we were taught an unit of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. (I've always found interesting how alcohol and cigarettes are always somehow set apart from drugs .) Anyways, I became fascinated with what constitutes a physical addiction vs. what constitutes a psychological addiction. Pot always seemed less harmful because I was told it was psycholocally addicting only. Also, people who seemed addicted to pot seemed potentially weaker. Afterall, it was only psychological so psychologically they must be weak. On the other hand, it is an addiction that should be easy to overcome as it was only psychological, shouldn't it?


I also felt relieved when I read about the tobacco industry's maniplulation of the ingredients of cigarettes over the years. It helped me explain my increasing addiction over the years. When a year or two ago, I read that the withdrawal from cigarette smoking was comparable to heroin withdrawal.( I wonder what a herion addict would say to that, but on the flip side when I finally did quit it wasn't pretty and I still get cravings and what feels like physical responses a year later) Well, I told the heroin comparison to everyone. My many attemps to quit made sense to me now.

And with my sister's addiction to alchohol, I've been thinking a lot about what constitutes a drinking problem vs alcoholism. Why do some have only one beer and others can't have just one? Are the roots of alcholism gentic (physical) or environmental (psychological)? And again I found myself fascinated with the distinction between physical and psychological addiction. But after having a conversation with my parents about all the different types of addictions, I was suddenly hit with how many addictions there are, and that some of them have no physical stimulant.

Let's take gambling - a powerfull addiction who many loose everything with not being able to stop. There is even a gamblers anoynomous. There are shopholics, sex addicts, cross word addicts, sport addicts,..., tv addicts, ... . You can even consider a serial killer an addict of sorts. And I recently read a book that described domestic abuse in new way - as another form of addiction. The abuser is addicted to abusing: the abused is addicted to being abused. So that opened up even more addictions for me. What about people addicted to noncommittal relationships, failed relationship, risky relationships, relationships that don't stand a chance,... ? All of these are drug free - nothing you smoke, swallow, or shoot up.

And suddenly the distinction between what is physical and pychological seemed to blur.

And suddenly addictions seemed everywhere, in every facet of our lives. It just suddenly seemed everywhere and in everyone.-

people who can't stop themselves from snooping, checking their email, procrastinating, chewing gum, watching television,...

So what does this have to do with reincarnation and my drive off the exit ramp? What was I thinking at that moment?

I was thinking of my daughter and boyfriend. I was thinking of how for many years I was single and childless eventhough I wished for children - or so I thought- maybe I also was afraid. I wrote to my brother on email recently that maybe I stayed single so long, because I was afraid of repeating the cycle that was our family - the cycle that started for me in my childhood and that started for my parents in theirs. And then my mind branched out even further. Was it more than that? Did my soul wrestle with whether or not to have a family of my own? To have child? Or not? In this life?

And then I felt like that sixth grader, without the teacher's desk to approach, and my ideas of reincarnation shifted in my mind. What if we weren't coming back to learn lessons? What if it didn't have to do with karma? What if we weren't evolving?

What if coming to be alive (again and again) was an addiction- the ultimate physical and pychological and spiritual addiction? What if God or the universe was trying to call us home ? - to give up this addiction of being human, being physically alive. What if my soul wrestled with the decision to be a mother again, because it was trying to let go, and move on. And that is why you see so much addiction in this world - everywhere - greed, money, cyclical relationships, nation building,...

What if the reason why addiction was everywhere, and come so easily for all of us, was that we are inherently from the moment of our conception or birth, addicted souls.

But then I picture my daughter's beautiful face and think:

Not all addictions are bad.
 

I think these blogs are dangerous. I was just working on an essay, and when I had just gotten to a difficult part, I decided to do a blog entry instead.

It is the perfect form of procrastination. It is easy to justify. Afterall, a blog entry IS writing and can be very creative. So I am still writing,and therefore the guilt is easy to diminish.

But I have not finished the goals I have set for myself, I have a short story I need to finish by Friday. I've only written one page.

When I write, I need to do something from start to finish - even if I have to stay up all night.

Stopping and starting doesn't work well with me. If it is a second or third draft, I can do stop and start somewhat. But if it is a first draft and newly inspired, I need to write from start to finish or something, or the thing as a whole gets permanently lost.

It's funny how one type of writing, or creative outlet, can take from another.

I use to teach and too many creative lesson plans or units would completely suck up all my creative juices.

If I was writing a lot, my teaching would go to the wayside.

I also have an interest in photograph and painting. These creative outlets have definetely been left on the curb.

It so hard to be disciplined or balanced.



My sister went to court today concerning the custody of her children. As things stand now, their father has full custody, and my sister can not even visit with them unless she is supervised. Which she must have found shocking.

She's been sober for over a week and got a silver chip at AA for it.

This is good.

(I still have not talked to her as she is very angry with me, and I am still sorting through my feelings towards her.I hear info filtered through my mother)

But in some ways, I still wonder.

It is good that she has been sober.

Although, she was given medication to help her not drink.

It is good that she is going to AA.

However, she still has not spoken at AA.

And from what I hear and have interpreted , I think she feels their stories are different than hers.

A woman she took to AA (and that's ironic for me - she took a woman she just met to AA to try to help her when she had only been sober a few days -and we had been trying to get HER to go to AA for years) told a story of how her bestfriend and her two children got killed by a drunk driver. My sister just said how sad.

My sister often drove drunk with her kids or in the throws of an alcohol induced panic attack - or with her hands shaking because she hadn't drank - or thinking she was sober because she hadn't drank that day but it was still in her system from the night before. In any of these situations, it is not safe for her to drive.

She blames me and the rest of our family for interferring. It is our fault, she thinks, that her kids got taken away.

I don't think she thinks they should have been taken away. I think she is incapable of seeing and understanding the damage she was doing to her children.

On and off,

she be really drunk for days at a time

and for weeks at a time,


and she was always drinking somewhat. She drank every day.

My nephew was only six when she started drinking really bad. She stopped tucking him in a bedtime, making him breakfast in the morning,and eventually dinners became something of the past too.

This past summer she started trying to put her nine-year-old and twelve -year -old to bed at four or five in the afternoon,

Because she was confused,

Because she was drunk.

But somewhere along the way, it became normal to my sister to be drunk for a whole weekend with her kids in the house - to yell and scream at them, call her daughter a bitch,or :

Her son went to his school counselor claiming physcial abuse. She made him tell DSS when they showed up that he lied.

He told me it wasn't a lie.

What do I think?

She wasn't the worst case scenerio . She didn't burn them with cigarettes or punch them, but sometimes I think she was too rough with them.

She said she just squeezed their arms sometimes. I saw her squeezing hard her son's head once,

She stopped that after DSS visited the first time.


It became normal to drive under the influence with them - to endanger their lives and frighten them.

And she'll just say over and over again, "They're my kids."

In other words, noone else can interfere and she can do whatever she wants.

DSS and the local police showed her otherwise.

I thought. I think. I don't know.

I just don't think she gets it.

"They're my kids."
"They're my kids."

And this gives you a right to what,

and why?

My mother had asked her, "if J____ hadn't called the police on you, would you have stopped drinking."

She answered, "I was thinking about it."



 

My boyfriend and I uploaded a few baby pictures of our daughter :

ID: 1027657   (Rated: E) Baby Pictures  Baby pictures by morrow

My daughter got the first dose of immunization shots today. She got three shots. There were six different vacinnes in these three shots.

Now each time she goes to the doctors she'll receive shots.
I got a fact sheet for each one.

Fact # 7 for each one is titled : The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and it reads as follows:

In the rare case that you or child has a serious reaction to a vaccine, there is a federal program that can help pay for the care of those who have been harmed.

Each fact sheet says "serious allergic reactions are extremely rare with any vaccine".

But then #3 of each fact sheet says, " Any child who had a life-threatening allergic reation after a dose of __________ should not get another dose."

The DTaP fact sheet is particulary cautionary in tone. It recommends giving Childrens Tylenol when the shot is taken and for the next 24 hrs.

It lists risks in three catagories: Mild Problems (Common), Moderate Problems (Uncommon), and Severe Problems (Very Rare).

Here are just SOME examples:

Mild/ Common:

-Fever

-Redness or Swelling ( for some children their entire leg lasting 1-7 days)

-Fuzziness, tiredness,lack of appetite, vomiting

Moderate/ Uncommon

-Seizure

-nonstop crying

-high fever, over 105 degrees

Severe /Rare

- serious allergic reaction
- long term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness
- permanent brain damage

(It of course goes on to say because the severe problems are so rare, "it is hard to tell if they are caused by the vaccine".)

It then goes on to say that controlling fevers are very important for children who have seizures. (It describes a seizure as jerking or staring ???? )

My mother knows a woman whose daughter got a very high fever right around the time of her shots. They never got the fever done. She's permanently brain damaged.

My sister had a neighbor whose baby had a pretty strong reaction to their first set of shots. The doctor went ahead with the second set of shots. She ended up in childrens hospital - in a coma. She five now & permantly brain damaged.

My cousin thinks one dose of shots ( the mmr which they now space out in three doses -as most shots ) triggered Autism in her son, because of the mercury.

All these children,as babies, were born developmentally normal.

My daughter is not her usual self tonight. She felt hot at one point. She's fussy even when eating. (And she's never fussy when eating. She loves to eat!) And she keeps waking up crying.

Needless to say, I keep taken her temperature.



Next time I think I might go with the precautionary Children's Tylenol suggestion.