Time in a bottle

If I could save time in a bottle, I would put it on a high shelf and keep it away from my staff and everyone else on the planet with the exception of my children and my friends.

The unfortunate problem is that I don't even have time to write a blog entry, as I have 5 people in my office talking to me all at once.... maybe I will get a chance to try again this weekend.

June, Writing, the Will of a Higher Power

Welcome to the lovely, hot month of June. Already this summer is proving to be a hot one as we look at our first full week of 90+ degree days here in the capital city. And last night I came home in the 92 degree heat to a house that was 88 degrees. Yep, the air conditioning has died for the second time this summer. Good times.

Prior to the air conditioning fiasco, I had spent the better part of the day at an Al-Anon 12 Step Workshop. It is one of those rubber meets the road opportunities for those of us who know that the spiritual solution to living with those who have addictions lies in the Steps themselves. The same Steps that addicts and alcoholics have to work if they are to be able to survive with their disease.

I have worked the Steps before. I worked them with the help of two sponsors and a group of Al-Anons - some of them black-belt Al-Anons. But this time it was different. For one, I was there with a group of about 20 who were working the Steps themselves. And we were being led to take the Steps by a person with 30 days in his program. And just from talking to him, I think his program was not the kind, gentle kind, but the kind that truly knows that the Steps are the Steps to survival - failure to work and take the Steps is just a choice to die with the disease.

See, in Al-Anon, we are not addicted to alcohol. We are just enmeshed, intertwined, and mired down into the life of an alcoholic to the point that it hijacks our own lives and experiences and takes us to an ugly, desperate, evil, frantic, obsessing, miserable, dank, dark, deadly place. And drops us off. Without cab fare.

We fool ourselves and say that we are the ones who have to hold the family, the household, the household budget, and the alcoholic/addict together. When in reality, all it does is tear us down and apart.

Deconstruction at its most efficient.

And so, with the same Steps that the alcoholic/addict has available to him/her to see a glimmer of light, we can claw ourselves out.

It is clawing, because it is a fight for survival, the same as it is for the alcoholic.

I am drifting off into a place I want to do a separate blog post about....

Yesterday, one of the exercises was to do a free writing exercise after a meditation/prayer opening of asking for your God's/Higher Power's will. We wrote whatever came into our minds for five minutes. At the end of the exercise I could no longer read my own handwriting - carpal tunnel be damned. Then we read out loud the phrases that we had written. This part was so we could know if someone else had a thought that could be meant for, or used by us.

Knowing me, you know that I loved this exercise. I have been doing freewriting since I started educating myself in the craft of writing at the age 17 by reading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones.And of course, being a fan/student of Doreen Virtue, I *knew* that someone else had gotten a thought I could use.

My own knockout: "Live not in fear."

The line I got from someone else: "Writing is what makes me sane."

So without further ado, I knew immediately at least some of my Higher Power's will.

I have made it thus far. WIth my current health and lifestyle, I've probably made it at least 60-75% of my current travail here on this planet. And so there's really nothing I have to fear or dread. Or as one of my friends says, "What are they going to do? Eat me?"

And there is a message out there waiting for me. For all I know, there is a message hiding in that miasma of a synapse between my brain and finger for someone else.

Writing keeps me sane.

So that's what I'm going to do.

May flowers...

This blog has suffered from me being so overwhelmed with work and all the other things that have been going on in my life. By the time I get home each night from work it is usually 8PM at the earliest, and 10PM at the latest, and I am too tired to do anything but get something to eat and go to bed. My days start around 6 or 7AM, so it makes for long days. On the weekends, work stuff still keeps happening, and then I have to do cooking, cleaning and try to spend a few minutes interacting with my kids. I spend Saturdays running around like crazy and then spend Sundays stressed out that I have lost the ability to take any time off. I spend Sundays in an angry funk. Needless to say, this type of life does not lend itself to many opportunities to engage in creative, life-affirming, pursuits.

On the bright side, I have a job. I am trying to still get to a couple of Al-Anon meetings a week.

This has helped me keep some semblance of sanity as my resentments are still breeding other resentment... I am still overwhelmed as I try single-handedly to support my family and handle the household and all the minutiae of keeping a household running.

At any rate....

I continue to want to be someone else when I grow up. I continue to try to stake my claim to tiny bits of time to explore just who this person is.

Lately I have been shopping for a bicycle. I really want to ride a bike as I live a 1/2 mile from my office and this would be a way for me to get my head together and some exercise as well. There is a bike shop here in town where I could build my own bike with a small donation of cash and time. I would love to do this. I would enjoy it, and I could learn how to fix my bike if there was every any mechanical problem with it. Once again, I am resenting that I cannot figure out a way to take the time to do this. It is a really neat place called Folkbike Re-cyclery. Check it out online, and if you feel strongly about community building and teaching someone to fish (metaphorically, of course!) rather than giving them a fish, then send some cash their way. They are non-profit and the money will go to a great cause.

I love where I live. There is a community here - even outside of Al-Anon meetings - that shares the same values and concerns I do. For example, one group Walk/Bike Frankfort sees that this town has the same potential that I see. And of course, there is the history and the old buildings and all the other things that make me happy.... If only I could spend more time working towards these causes....

Oh well, it's late and I am making the promise to work on the blog more, do more writing, and get more done... more enjoyable things done. However, tonight, I think I am ready to fall asleep with a book. I am still slogging through the Angelology novel. Underwhelmed so far with it, but trying to slog through.

Don't Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers by Adriana Trigiani

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read this as an ebook on my Kindle.

Reading this book was more an exercise in revisiting and appreciating what my grandmothers brought into my life and awareness. It was less about what new or interesting value I got from Trigiani's grandmothers. After all, we learned similar lessons and values, and it was nice to see someone else appreciating them as well.
Trigiani is an entertaining writer. Her Big Stone Gap novels were a guilty pleasure for me in my thirties, and I still feel she has a great style and writes with heart.



View all my reviews

340th Post.

Well, today St Timothy turned 48.
Funds are fairly limited but I wanted to do something nice for him. He was sick most of the day, but tonight he agreed to go to a crappy supper at a chain restaurant. I got him a piece of cheesecake after dinner and he seemed happy with it. Tara went with us to dinner, and she sang Happy Birthday to him.
I just had higher expectations for him, or at least wanted more for him that what we had to offer today.
Expectations being just premeditated resentments, I realize that I am setting myself up to have them on someone else's behalf! How messed up is that?
Well, maybe I don't want an answer to that.

At any rate, happy birthday, Tim. I hope this year is whatever you need it to be to be happy, healthy and wealthy and wise. Peace out, my man.

When do I get a minute?

Well, tomorrow I am planning my first day off since Thanksgiving. Well, actually I cleaned and cooked all Thanksgiving day, so maybe "day off" is not the right terminology. I am exhausted beyond belief, too tired to face much of anything.
And of course, a low-grade fever, fibro flare, and coughing and congestion really make me want to crawl under the nearest rock and not emerge for a few weeks or months.

This has been a hard week. My younger daughter has been really ill with yet another set of ear infections and I have been powerless to help her in any way. I went ahead and took her to the ER, and so without health insurance we now owe the local hospital over $5000 for that visit. And then we were given an antibiotic that cost almost $200 so we could not buy it for her. So after the $5000 is paid, she still won't have an antibiotic or treatment. And people say we don't need to change the health care system in this country. Of course, those are always people who have health care.

Then my older daughter drops the bomb that her grades are cruising into the toilet. She is highly intelligent, a great writer, and very wily, so I am kind of shocked. However, she has been spending way too much time worrying about spending every spare moment with her friends, and has been posting from her cell phone to facebook when she is at school. She blames her worst grade on "not having time" to put her assignment together. So that tells me that time management is chiefly the issue. As a parent, I get to be the bad guy again and adjust accordingly.

Otherwise, nothing changes at Chez Terre. (house of dirt, how ironic.)

Checking in....

Being busy is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I am blessed to have something to do, and to get paid to do it. Especially in these tough times when lots of people don't have jobs. It also keeps me from obsessing, over-analyzing and basically hanging out too long in that scary neighborhood that is my head.
On the other hand, being busy seems to bring out my innate, inane and useless character defects of PERFECTIONISM and IMPATIENCE.

I am a perfectionist. The reasons for this are many, and start way back in my childhood. However, looking back and getting stuck in overanalyzing it doesn't really do anything good for me. So I will not go there.
However, my perfectionism makes me even more impatient that usual.
I am least patient with myself.
And then I take it out on everyone else - and myself.

I have noticed this week I am very much into my disease of compulsive eating. At the end of last week I decided to "go on a diet." Every attempt to stick to that plan of eating has just triggered more and more (unhealthy) eating. This, in turn, has triggered me to be more critical and impatient with myself. And then I take it out on others - and myself.

So I am going to do more reading, talk to my sponsor, and otherwise try to get my side of the street clean.

I don't know the next right thing beyond that.