These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

My answers to some of the questions from Cee’s Share Your World

1. Fond childhood places?  My childhood places that I liked the most, were the woods up behind our house, and the caves we would dig in the snowbanks around the driveway.
2. Thing(s) you are most proud of?  I think what I am most proud of was going back to school at the age of 28, and getting my degree five years later.
3. Have you been through any official rites of passage?   My one and only official rite of passage, I believe, was when I was baptized in early 2008.    Another was when I was sworn into the US Military. How about unofficial?  I cannot think of any unofficial ones.  My life has been pretty boring, I guess.
4. What is your role in your family?  I am the oldest of three children, the only girl.  I was also the one to get into more trouble than my brothers.
5. Define family.  I believe family is not what I was born into, but rather those around me, who love me and share life with me.
6. Do you get on with your siblings?  One of my brothers, I have not heard from since the day after our mother’s funeral.  That was more than four years ago.  I am in contact with my youngest brother and text with his wife.  Our plan, is for me to move in with them in Texas, when the MS has gotten to a point where I can no longer live by myself.  The only problem with that, is that I’m heat sensitive, and it can get pretty darn warm in Texas during the summer.
7. What small things have you seen or taken note of today?  I noticed the spaghetti sauce that had run down the front of my cabinet beneath the microwave.  I had a small disaster incident last night while trying to put my ravioli into the microwave to heat the sauce.  Due to my wonderful lack of coordination, there were ravioli here and ravioli there, and on the floor, with sauce everywhere from here to next week.
8. What makes you happy?  Being out in (is that an oxymoron?) the spring and fall weather, with a breeze blowing and the leaves rustling.
9. Do you have good self-control?  It depends on the situation.  If I feel I’m being treated inappropriately, or that no one is listening to me, then no, I don’t.  I can’t seem to keep my mouth closed and my opinions to myself.  But I have good self-control when it comes to not picking up that first drink (I am an alcoholic, sober 17 years now.), and when I’m trying to teach someone something, I have good self-control.
10. Are you good at making decisions?  I am good at making bad decisions . . . and then when I do make good decisions, I’m always second guessing myself.
11. How often do you cry?  I rarely cry.  The one thing that will make me cry is when I get extremely angry, usually over something I have no control over.
12. Have you ever had any altercations with the police?  I think there have been three, maybe four.  There were three, due to my drinking and driving, resulting in spending the night in jail.  The other was when I sideswiped a police car that was sitting in the middle of a 4-lane road, right on the yellow line.
13. How do your relieve stress?  Sitting down with my laptop, and playing Sudoku until I reach the point where I can’t make any sense of the puzzle.
14. What did you once love, but now hate?
15. Is doing nothing a waste of time?  Not at all.  Sometimes I need to just sit here, and fall asleep in my recliner with the cat asleep in my lap.
16. What is cluttering your life?  All the stuff I have in my apartment, that doesn’t have a permanent home.  I like the living room tables, and the dining table to be completely cleared off except for lamps, the phone, and the wooden napkin holder in the center of my dining table.
17. How do you help people, in small ways, in large ways, however?  I help people by carefully explaining or even showing them how to do something which is confusing them to no end.
18. When’s the last time you did something nice for a stranger?  Being a single woman, in a wheelchair, I try to avoid strangers.  But when waiting in line at the grocery store, letting someone in line ahead of me because I have a lot of time to do nothing anyway.
19. Who inspires you the most?  I think the person who inspires me the most is the pastor of my church.  He does not go up to a pulpit, and preach at us, but stands in front of us, teaching us about the Bible.
20. Do Apps help or waste your time?  I think, for the most part, Apps waste my time.  Usually when I get caught up in an app and can’t stop, and put it to the side.
21. Does Facebook make you feel bad?  I enjoy Facebook.  It gives me the opportunity to showcase some of my photography, serves as a place where people have access to my writing.
22. What music are you listening to right now?  Absolutely nothing.  Except for the cat complaining in the background, and the leaves blowing around outside my open window, it is quiet in here.  If I do listen to music, it would be Contemporary Christian of music from the 60’s and 70’s.

Share Your World #40

Share Your World #40

Why did you start blogging?
Why did I start blogging?  I really can’t remember how I even stumbled across WordPress. I have since taken two classes, Building Better Webpages I & II. It started out as a sounding board for my little pet peeves, like when someone who doesn’t need it, parks in a handicap zone, forcing my driver to spend a lot more time, looking for another place where we can park. But it evolved into a place where I could explore, express, and pass on my feelings about my childhood sexual/physical/emotional abuse.

A piece of clothing you still remember?  I remember a pair of overalls that my mother made for me. This was in the 70’s, mind you. The basic color was sort of beige, with vertical, red and orange stripes. My mother had us wear our school clothes, the first set, Mon-Wed, and the second set, Thurs&Fri. Since this item of clothing really stood out among other people, someone was always making fun of me about how many days in a row, that I wore those. I was already being picked on, and this just made my time at school even worse. It didn’t matter that I got real good grades.

Who are you trying to reach with your blog?  I write about child abuse, specifically my own. My writing has evolved into a great place where I can explore my own feelings, and hopefully reach others who have survived child abuse of any kind. I want to give them a place to vent their own feelings, and hopefully they can feel free to explore their own abuse, their feelings, PTSD, and other mental illnesses that can result from childhood abuse.

Is there a stuffed animal in your bedroom?  I used to have a lot of stuffed animals, especially large ones. I now have only one, a small stuffed bear, that was given to me by one of my aides for Valentines Day, and now sits proudly in my recliner with me. His name is Jasper.

The best birthday present ever?  Having to share birthdays with Halloween makes it a little difficult to remember birthday gifts, but I would have to go with my very first guitar, when I turned 21. It was an acoustic guitar with nylon strings, and I had never even played one before. My ability has become much more proficient and I bought myself a good acoustic guitar, with steel strings. That’s not as bad as having to share it with Christmas, but parties were always rushed, so that we could go trick-or-treating.

What would surprise me about you? I think what might surprise you, is that I spent two months in one of our state mental houses, and it was not by choice. The county I now live in, had me hospitalized, due to extreme, chronic depression, accompanied by three suicide attempts. Obviously, I survived and am here to tell you about it today. I have come a long way, from that dark period of my life. But I am a survivor, and while I still have mental health issues, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you met me, or came to know me. I am stable on the medications I take, and have not been hospitalized for that since 2006 or 2007.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up? I am grateful that I had the opportunity to fly to San Antonio, take part in adaptive sports for disabled veterans.  I did not win any medals – the MS is progressing and I have less stability with my hands and arms.  Also that despite complications, landing at O’Hare, and first having to wait for a gate to open up, and then waiting about an hour for them to get my chair to me.  They had trouble getting it off the plane, then the elevator they were going to use to bring it up was under construction, so they had to go the long way around.  I’m also grateful for the passengers and driver got me on/off the bus, and the shuttle van was waiting for me, despite the fact that I was almost 15 minutes.  The driver knew who I was and didn’t want to leave me stranded out there, in the rain, with no other means available to get me and my chair home. (It probably weighs close to 400 pounds)  There was no other way to get me and my chair home.  All other forms of public transport don’t come out as far as that bus stop.

I am looking forward to a quiet, relaxing, week, without all the stress I had before and during my trip to San Antonio.  I am also looking forward to doing a little shopping, if my budget allows it this month.  And I am also looking forward to going to church again this weekend.  I went last week.  That was probably the first time I went since Easter.

Cee’s Share Your World is a weekly feature and all are welcome to play along.

What’s going on in your world?

Share Your World #37

Have you ever owned a rock, pet rock, or gem that is not jewelry?  I used to carry around a Tigers Eye, oh, back in the 80’s I guess.  I loved that stone, and I still do if I happen to see one.  But as far as pet rocks?  I was too old for those (or so I thought).  When I was younger (quite a bit), I used to collect interesting rocks, particularly during the summer of 1989, when I was taking a 2-week Geology class.  We packed up our camping gear, and spent two weeks, roaming through the rocks and geological formations in southern Illinois.  I know, who would have thought there were any kind of hills or canyons in Illinois?  I still have pictures to prove it, but not the rocks.

What is your greatest strength or weakness?  I believe my greatest strength, which is my mind, is also my greatest weakness.  Due to mental illness, even as a young child, my weakness was the mind, and that as I grew into adulthood, was plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, fears of things, real or imagined, which prevented me from living a fulfilling childhood, and caused me to live as an adult, still caught up in the mire of mental illness.  This lead to alcoholism and other behaviors that caused me to lose one job after another.  I believe that my mental illness was caused by both parents, as well as a gene carried by my mother.  My father was a pedophile of the worst kind, not that I’m sure there are varying degrees of pedophilia, and I was his victim – at least the only one I knew about.  My mother was a narcissist, who I believe also carried the gene believed to be needed in order to develop Borderline Personality Disorder.  This form of mental illness continues to plague me even today, causing irrational fears, inappropriate emotional responses to certain triggers, short, highly emotional relationships, fear of abandonment, and many other symptoms.  I also suffer from anxiety and depression.  Combine those with the MS, stomach issues, thyroid, parathyroids, and gall bladder problems and the results of all these problems, and I take 22 medications every day.

But my mind is also my greatest strength.  It got me through school with high grades, and then making the Deans list when I went back to school in the late 1980’s.  It is where my love of music, singing it and playing the guitar, saxophone, clarinet and the piano, originates from.  It is where my creativity stems from, allowing me to take a good look at myself, learning, understanding, and growing from my past.  My creativity has led me to writing, and then writing poetry, but also the ability to sit and look at an abstract design on the page and color it in, never knowing from the starting point where I will end up, but it is almost always something I feel is really good. 

What makes you feel grounded?  I think what makes me feel grounded, is being out in the country, or the woods or a forest, all of which make me more aware of this world that God created, and created me to live in, enjoying the ‘fruits of His bounty’.  Watching the fireflies blink bright green in the darkness of my campsite, or in the back yard when I was growing up (I don’t see them much now, since I’ve become city-fied. I don’t even have a backyard now.).  Or rolling down the bike path in my power chair, with only the sounds of the birds and insects that are all around me, when I am in areas that are overgrown once again with grass and bushes, and in wooded areas that I pass through.  The feel of the sun on my face in the Spring and the Fall, since I can’t be out much during the summer due to the MS, as I sit, stretched out in my chair, talking with others whom have come out to enjoy the nice weather, and the company as well.  Nature is what it is that makes me feel grounded, I guess I’d have to say if I was to put it all in one boring sentence.  😄

 

Would you rather never be able to eat warm food or never be able to eat cold food?  Oh this is an easy one.  You’ve all heard of comfort food?  Well, to me, comfort food is food that makes me feel good, and this is warm food.  Don’t get me wrong – I love my bowl of ice cream in the evening, no matter if it is in the middle of summer or the middle of winter.  But cold food can get warm, and then definitely loses its appeal so just does not apply when talking about comfort food.  You can reheat a cold dish of chili, but you can’t put melted ice cream back onto the cone.  😬

 

 

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?  From last week, I am grateful for that monthly government check which just plops itself right into my bank account every month.  I’m grateful I was able to pay all my bills for the month, and still have some money left for groceries, as well some to put towards my upcoming trip to San Antonio, TX.  

This week I am looking forward to cooler temperatures, when I will be able to go outside and enjoy myself once again.  I look forward to practicing for the events I will be taking part in, at the Valor Games Southwest, in San Antonio, TX.  The Valor Games are adaptive sports competition for disabled veterans as well as Active Duty members.  It is a time to celebrate old friends and make new ones.  I need to be able to get outside and practice for the air rifle event, find a Senior Center where I can practice my table tennis from a wheelchair, and to just go bowling.  A healthy body is a happy body.

Cee’s Share Your World is a weekly feature and all are welcome to play along.

What’s going on in your world?

 

Share Your World #31

What is your favorite part of the town/city you live in.  And what Country do you live in?
I live in a mid-sized city, which is a change from ‘Hicksville, upstate NY’, where I grew up.  From the first city on to the present, I have always liked the bustle of being in the middle of a city.  But I would have to say that my favorite part is where the city lies along the coast of Lake Michigan, especially when there is no one nearby.

I live in the United States.

Would you rather wear clown shoes every day or a clown wig every day?
I would have to say the shoes. I always kick them off as soon as possible anyway.

Which way does the toilet paper roll go? Over or under?
Over. If it’s under, I never seem to be able to find the end of the roll.

What do you do to make a living or during the day?  If you are retired what mostly occupies your day? Or if you are a student what are you studying?
I do not work due to disability, yet I do have a set schedule, for most days. The alarm goes off. The cat gets up, I get up. I take my first round of meds and feed the cat. An hour later, the second alarm goes off, and I take the rest of my morning meds, make the coffee and have breakfast. Then I move from my power chair to my recliner, after I’ve gotten dressed, turn on the computer, and spend most all day and evening, first going through all the email, reading my batch of blogs that I follow, and then I turn to my favorite Sudoku website, and that’s pretty much all I do for the rest of the day and the evening. Though lately, I’ve become inspired to get out of the recliner and go to the gym, and try to strengthen my upper body, so that I can take part in some adaptive sports for wheelchair users, which would be more of a challenge (Haven’t made it to the gym yet, and I got back from a week of games in Salt Lake City a month ago today.) My next round of events is in three weeks, in Chicago, and I need to build up my strength and endurance for the coming events there. Then my life goes back to recliner mode until near the end of September, when I go to San Antonio, TX for three days of events there, but nothing strenuous due to the heat and humidity there.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I think this may sound a little strange, but I’m grateful for Mother Nature last week, when she put on some mighty fine fireworks (thunder and lightning), which I love dearly, as long as it’s not one of those where the wind is bending the trees over, and the rain is moving sideways rather than  down. Those are a little scary. But I’m grateful to be here, able to watch, and listen and listen to a heavy downpour of water.

In the week coming up, I’m looking forward to an entire week with absolutely, not one single appointment for the entire week. When this happens, I can vegetate relax in the shade, without any pressures to go somewhere except for the grocery store.

Cee’s Share Your World is a weekly feature and all are welcome to play along.

What’s going on in your world?