Ten Thoughts Sunday

I'm a little late getting to this, but ten thoughts Wednesday will have to do this week.

One: A friend's teenager is a cutter.  I know the mother very well and the teenager fairly well and it's one of the most upsetting things I've run across.  Not so long back I learned that one of my daughters was a cutter when she was in high school and right under my nose I hadn't even known it.  There were no "signs" as such but the idea of my precious beautiful child hurting herself for relief from inner and outter turmoil is horrindous.  From the mother's viewpoint it's a heavy weight to bear.  I can't imagine what dispair the child who is driven to this must feel.  If you're reading this please pray and/or send positive thoughts for my friend's child and for my own.

Two: My four month old kitten has reached a size I consider large for an adult cat.  I keep wondering what type of monster she'll turn out to be if she grows for another two to six months.  The idea was not just for me to have a cat but for the cat to be a companion for my mini-pin/chihuahua who is sometimes destructive out of boredom.  Now the cat outweighs him and loves to pounce tiger-like onto Tai for the fun of it.  He doesn't seem to mind but if she grows much more this pouncing game could be dangerous for the little dog.

Three: So today, my thoughts aren't lofty at all but selfish and rather down to earth.  That's the nature of life though, a cycle of thoughts where you end up on yourself from time to time.  Today I'm on "me".  I was feeling rough and finally went to the doctor where I found out it wasn't depression but a UTI, anemea and diverticulitis all combined.  A round of antibiotics later I'm feeling better but still not feeling up to par.  As my daughter says, "It is what it is".

Four:  My sister died May 12th.  We had just moved in together in December so we had really just settled down and gotten used to being together every day.  We always got along well: at least from my viewpoint and halving the bills allowed us both to live a nicer life than we could alone.  It was good in theory.  We planned to stay put for about ten years before hopefully we would have enough saved to buy a small place, probably a condo, for our "older" years.  So I'm feeling a little unsettled and a lot insecure, having had to move into a friend's spare bedroom, do my mourning privately and try to gather my forces to start out on my own once again.

Five: I come from wealthy families and am struggling with the fact that two bad marriages wiped me out financially, emotionally, and physically.  The nice middle class me is gone.  Working and achieving middle class standing with my home and new car, my middle class job as an accountant with a small air conditioning and heating distributor.  The pay was below average but with a pre-existing condition, I was afraid to leave for fear of losing my insurance.  Sometimes I fantasize about the owner sending me a check for all the years of underpaying me.  Wouldn't that be nice?  It would also never happen for the same reason he chose to underpay me in the first place; he could get by with it since I obviously was willing to work for less.  I loved his children and his wife and respected him on most levels.  It finally dawned on me that I wasn't "loved" back.  I was a easily replaceable office machine that could break down or become outdated.  I was brought up being taught the "old" values and work ethic.  I treated his business like I would my own family's, my work like I would if I were working for my own family's business.  It was a bitter pill when I realized a new accounting clerk who didn't even have a high school degree was brought in at a much higher pay level than I was being paid after 15 years of hard work and loyalty.  I'd climbed their ladder in every way but financially.  It made all the financial struggles a bitter pill as well.  Then my health took a dive and I've ended up on disability. I hadn't planned for this so young.

Six:  Anyone who believes a person would go on disability to "get out of working" is definitely not in the know of how this works.  On disability I don't have enough income to live on, much less live like a comfortably retired worker.  I make in a month about half what I did working and that was a struggle.  So complaining about it hasn't worked to my advantage.  I went back to school through a local school that offers everything I need in online classes.  I've decided I want to teach online English at a high school or preferably a college level.  The hesitation there is that I'm not sure I could pass the Graduate Record Exam to get into a Masters program which you have to do to be able to teach on a college level.  I can only try.

Seven:  Trying is a struggle.  There are always stumbling blocks, but the trick is to keep getting up and going forward.  This semester I can't go because I was sent a notice that I owed the college for a class I was given a "no show" status in which is a failing grade.  When my sister died I withdrew from the four classes I planned to take knowing I wouldn't be able to concentrate well enough to make good grades.  I didn't want to overload.  Somehow the computer dropped only three of the classes.  Trying to convince these people I dropped all four and only knew about the fourth class not being dropped when I got the notice that I owed for it is like trying to walk through a brick wall.  Stay tuned for the outcome.

Eight:  My sister, Jessica, had been on a self-improvement plan for about a year and was doing very well.  She had surgery for a nagging back problem, had breast reduction surgery and was getting her teeth fixed.  She was in fine health.  The morning was just like any other.  She passed by the bathroom where I was doing some cleaning and went to the kitchen for breakfast.  She evidently decided to have a piece of cake that we'd gotten the day before.  There were odd coughing sounds coming from the kitchen and I really thought it was the dog choking or barking in an odd way.  I went to see and my sister was choking.  I tried to do the Heimlich maneuver several times and she was getting less and less air.  No panic, as if she thought this was something we could handle.  I called 911 and urged them to hurry, but my sister's life slipped away with me holding her, telling her to hold on and breathe, 911 was on the way.  It was horrible and traumatic.  Before the emergency response team arrived, I had watched the life slip from my sister's eyes.  They made it worse trying to revive her for thirty minutes to an hour - I couldn't say for sure how long they took getting there or working on Jessica as my sense of time was off.  Again at the hospital they worked for a long while trying to revive her even though I told them she wouldn't want to live if her brain was that damaged.  So saying goodbye to my sister hasn't been easy and I see her birthday coming at me on Sept. 20th.  She would have been 65, and looking forward to life for the first time since her failed marriage in the 1980's.  I miss who my sister was to me since childhood.  Sixty years is a long time to know someone.

Nine:  I'm just about down to the proper weight.  I was on prednisone for a long while and the weight piled on me easily.  Getting it off again has been harder than I would have expected but it's finally coming off at a good speed.  Just thirty pounds to go to reach my goal weight.  Try to avoid taking prednisone if you can and find yourself faced with the need to take it.  The side effects for me were as bad if not worse than the problems it was supposed to correct, which it didn't do.  My doctor gets frustrated with me because I don't believe in pills, but think the body tries its best to heal itself if given the right food and enough stress free time to cope with a problem.  I do take medicines but not because I want to, believe me.

Ten: We are certainly a pill popping country.  I wonder about the why of it and worry that the pharmaceutical companies are pushing unnecessary medications that only mask problems or cause worse problems with their side-effects.  Like I said, I take medicine, but wonder if I'm doing right by myself to do so.  I remember in a time before CAT scans and open-heart surgery, when there were few medicines and few people taking any.  This was before Tylenol.  A well stocked medicine cabinet had iodine for cuts, epson salts for aches and pains, baking soda for indigestion and for cleaning your teeth when you wanted them whiter, and aspirine for headaches or fever.  There were home remedies for most everything.  Mustard plasters for chest congestion and Mentholadum for stuffy noses.  And salt.  There was gargling with salt water for sore throats, putting your head under a towel over a pot of steaming salt water to clear out your sinuses and salt water eye wash all that you made from the canister of salt in the kitchen.  I could walk for hours on memory lane but will spare you and me. 

Sorry that the ten thoughts for today were all about me.