Tipping Point

I have much anger in me. It's so overwhelming and ever present that it eclipses everything positive that I aspire to be and do. My anger has been with me a long time. It's habitual. I am comfortable in it, like wearing an old sweater. I am immersed in it. Saturated. It runs deep in me. My anger festers. It wells up from unknown springs. From past hurts. It's never ending. All encompassing.

I want you to imagine a bathtub. Now fill that bathtub to to the brim with love, compassion, tolerance, patience, peace, support and encouragement. If you will now, imagine my anger as a hulking, fat, mass of a body lowering down into that tub. Brutally displacing that healing water. Imagine then what's left when my anger disappears. Not much. I'm spent. Ravaged. Stripped bare.

That anger leaves a void that fills with despair. It leaves me with an ache that makes me cry out. My anger makes me want to do rash things.

I can't always stop it or control it. I'm not always mindful of it. I haven't learned to let it go. Sometimes it comes and goes in the blink of an eye. Some of it has seemed to have lasted my entire lifetime. I've carried it with me for so long in fact there are times I don't even notice it. Or the damage it does. But there are times, like today, that it is an obvious crushing burden.

And it reminded me of a story. The story of The Town Mule and The Country Mule.

One day, long ago, a prospector from the mountains came down into a bustling town to sell his gold. The prospector was riding a horse and had a mule in tow. He tied up his horse and mule at the hitching post next to a mule from the town. The man removed several large satchels and packs from his mule and entered a building to sell his gold. The town mule watched all this and saw that the country mule's back was terribly bowed from the constant burden he carried. The town mule felt horrible about this for his own back was not bowed. The town mule disliked having to carry anything and was curious as to how the country mule could stand to carry such a weight.
So the town mule asked, "Hey mule, how do you bear such a heavy burden?"
And the country mule replied, "What burden?"

I too have been that country mule that is so used to the heavy load he carries that he is no longer even aware that it is a burden. My anger is that heavy load and I was made painfully aware of it today.

I have been working on ridding myself of that burden for some time now but obviously not hard enough.
That is going to change.

Today I say YES to perseverance.

BIRTHDAY PARTY HIJACKED

I've been sanctioned to my bedroom. I had to trade birthday cake for the use of the laptop. I don't have much time. There's dancing and chatting on-line with boys and screaming and laughter and Glee. Lots and lots of Glee. I really need a drink...

I really really need a drink.

This is what happens when you don't want to write a blog.

So deal.

So I'm NOT dying...

So death has not come for my young-ish body yet. Last week I wrote about how I was having heart palpitations and such. If you haven't read it, you can now. I've been feeling generally crappy and run down and different stuff was piling up and my body wasn't handling it well.

In the past, any physical problem I have had has been written off as being all in my head. (I have a lot going on in there.) But I hate that things are automatically dismissed because of my existing mental status. (To put it nicely. One day I will elaborate on this. I promise.) So when the 'heart' thing came up I was determined to advocate for myself and have something concrete done about it. And I did...sort of.
I didn't get the heart monitor that I wanted. I agreed with the doctor that, in my case, since I was able to do physical stuff like going up stairs and such, that a heart monitor would be jumping the gun. So we settled on blood work.

I don't particularly like getting blood work done. I'm sure no one does. But since I've gained weight and I have scars on my arms, I hate pushing up my sleeves. It takes a while to find my vein under the blubber and if they don't get it right away, they want to check my other arm and then I get that 'Oh those are scars. That took me off guard. Try not to look put off by them. Be cool. For God's sake don't stare!' look from the lady taking my blood. Like seriously, I already had to pee in a tiny jar and carry it out through the sea of people in the waiting room, I've reached my quota for uncomfortable. But it's gotta be done, so I do it and go home with a fresh headache.

I get a call from the nurse at my doctor's office yesterday telling me that my B12 is low and I can come in for a shot. I'll also have to pick up a 'sublingual' supplement that I will have to take daily.(That's a pill I put under my tongue so the B12 is absorbed better.) No big deal. I think it's really funny that a lot of the symptoms of a B12 deficiency also match a lot of the symptoms of depression. And can also worsen depression. Could it be that for the past 6-12 months since my last blood tests the symptoms I've been experiencing were because of the lack of a vitamin and not my depression? Anyway here is some reading about B12 deficiency. I have a lot of those symptoms, even the bleeding gums eww. Since I have IBS, I figure that's what is causing the deficiency. I didn't get any solid answers when I went for my shot today other than it's an absorption problem. I thought maybe I had Pernicious Anemia but my blood count seems to be in range for it just to be a deficiency. So now I have a new pill to add to my regime. And hope that it rights itself. I get blood work done in 2 months so I'll know then.

I'm stoked that for once the 'something-wrong-with-me' isn't all in my head. I was so excited that I called my girlfriend, the Ex and the Mother. I know, it sounds really strange that I'm happy about it but I can't help it. Everything else that I've ever had wrong with me was because I'm mental. But not this time. So there!!

I am disappointed that the B12 shot didn't perk me up right away. I was hoping that after I left the doctor's office this morning I would feel like had taken some quality street drugs and maybe be a little like this...

Instead of like this...

Time will tell. It was after all just my first day...

Chocolate Trauma

Cadbury Creme Eggs. I loved these things when I was a kid. I still love the chocolate but the sticky center is too sweet for me now. They're out for a limited time only and have a clucking rabbit as a mascot. Great.

I have a problem with Cadbury's current advertising campaign.

Cadbury has taken a much loved childhood treat and turned it into an exuberant psychotic with suicidal tendencies. The Cadbury Creme Egg now looks for new and interesting ways to undress and bring itself to an end and does so with happiness and relief...WTF? Happy to be suicidal chocolate. Keep that in mind while you watch the following.

This last one I find to be most disturbing. It's the chocolate Jim Jones and his 'disciples' of Jonestown.
Mass chocolate suicide much??

Dinner

So I was making meatballs this afternoon for the spaghetti I was going to be having for dinner and started thinking about my friend Karen (who enjoys making meatballs) over at Ow, my angst. She is known as 'The Tired Gourmet'. She has some really great recipes and she's funny and you should check her out...I mean, check out her blog.
Anyway, I thought maybe you would like to see what I was making for dinner. I am not a gourmet but the Kid likes the stuff I cook and that's good enough for me. It's nothing fancy just spaghetti and meatballs.

So much meat....those are the homemade meatballs and hot Italian sausage that I fried up while talking to Karen on the phone today.

Mmm lots of mushrooms are needed, always.

When onions go bad....

The meat juice I will be cooking the veggies in.

My Sous Chef. Oh ya.

THAT is sexy.

There's usually celery and two types of peppers here too but I got lazy.

Add the veggies.

Chop the sausage.

Now I prefer a smooth sauce so I take all the veggies and add beef broth and give it a spin in the blender.

Don't worry that it looks like Linda Blair vomit. This is the flavour base and the colour is temporary.

Add the tomatoes and spices.

See it looks like sauce and it has all that hidden goodness.

Add the meat.

I clean up while it simmers away.

After a couple of hours I put it on our favourite pasta, tonight it's whole wheat bow ties.

And now we have happy bellies.

Screw you Diaphragm!!!

This diaphragm....

...not this diaphragm. (My eggs are no longer of any use. They are similar to the shells you put in your compost. So I don't need one of those.)






Yesterday my own personal need- it- to- breathe diaphragm was on the fritz. In other words, I had the hiccups. They were the type of hiccups that you seem to wake up with and they go away for a bit and they come back for no reason and go away for a bit and come back again and make you sound like an idiot and go away again and so on. There's all sorts of ways to allegedly get rid of the hiccups. Holding your breath. Drinking water really fast or upside down or something. Getting them scared out of you. This last one is my personal favourite for when the Kid gets the hiccups. I scare the poop out of her and she complains and I say I was only trying to help and she yells at me and we both laugh. Me more than her but whatever, it's good bonding for us.
I have found that these methods are either a crock or they just don't work for me. So over the years I have developed a deep breathing/visualization method that works for my hiccups almost all the time. Yesterday was not one of those times. And the longer the hiccups went on, the more frustrated I got. But what can I do but simply accept that I had the damn hiccups and try my best to ignore them. All day long whenever the hiccups reared their ugly head, I tried to let go of my frustration and find that small peaceful place within and told myself that if I didn't give in to my irrational anger they would just go away. I did that ALL day. ALL DAY.

And guess what?

It didn't fucking work.

Here it was a Monday, which I find naturally to be the most annoying day of the week. Then let's add in that I have a lot of random aches and pains, including headaches, that get exacerbated by things like hiccups. I had to go to the doctor to essentially be told "There's nothing wrong here, you're being silly". (Not because I had the hiccups, something unrelated.) And had to go to Wal-mart....twice. So the hiccups turned into a major annoyance.

But I fixed their wagon eventually. Not by holding my breath. Or my deep breathing. No one jumped out at me and screamed "BOO!". It was really quite simple and only cost me around 5 dollars.

Drank me 2 cans of Guinness and they were all gone. Is there nothing that sweet elixir can't do?

Say YES to homeopathic remedies!