It's 22:22:22 and my mood has tanked . . .

I feel like crap. I think I did to much today, and I know I didn't get enough sleep last night despite my new meds. For some odd reason I woke up early after only six hours of sleep. So right now I'm very tired, and feeling blue. I'm sure part of it is being tired, part of it probably because I ran a bunch of errands, and part of it was sharing a really short version of what I've been through over the last couple of decades. Making things worse, the damn computer oobliated the post.

While I made progress this year, the sheer enormity of typing and then losing a cribnotes version of my life since high school is still hard to deal with.

So now I'm crying a bit. But it's a moment, a point, a pain in time. I'm reminding myself that "this too shall pass" but I know there is still more pain to come. In the next couple of weeks I'm going to have to have to start sharing this again with a new therapist and doctor.

Okay, not crying now. It's 22:58:46. I'm scared. It's part of the process. I know that in my head, they can't help me grow and heal if they don't know what I've been through. But telling people about it, going over it, recounting it in detail is something my heart can't deal with so easily. It's like ripping the scab off, tearing open the wound, bringing back all the agony again.

My life, just wow. When I look at it, the waste and destruction, the path of suffering I'm amazed I'm still here. But I can't look too closely, because it overwhelms me and tries to drag me dack into that agony and death. Yes, death. So many people died while I was going through hell. My blog has lots of references to the past, but not a whole bunch of detail for no other reason that it take so much out of me to recount this all.

They just had a news article about "Healing Touch Therapy" that some folks are doing here in Cincinnati. Why don't they call it Reiki, that's what it is, or are they not actual Reiki practitioners who are doing something else? It sure seemed like they were talking about Reiki? Why not call it that? Anyway, these folks are offering this healing touch to Veterans for free. I think that's awesome, but what I could of have done without is the news talking about what living with Post Traumatic Stress is like. I KNOW. I'm living with it, or trying to.

Why could I do without it? Becaue they are offering it to Vets, which is good, but battered women? What, we still don't exist? Really, the belief that only War Veteran's suffer from PTSD is so short sighted, and redonculous that it boggles the mind.

Okay, it's 23:45 and the day is just about done, taking with it the year. A whole year gone. May 2009 be much, much, better than 2008. Me I'm feeling better, but writing and giving myself permission to cry helped. I got some other news today that I'm not really ready to talk about. At least not right now, and that's weighing on my heart too.

Geeze, I feel like Donna Rose right now. So many times in reading her blog over the years she's mentioned something in that fashion, and for me it's a first time. Then again, this year I've put more posts on my blog than in the previous five YEARS combined. I have no idea what's come over me.

Okay, so I'm going to go pour myself a little wine, and wait for the ball to drop in just under ten minutes. I want to thank all the wonderful people who wander through here and listen to my ramblings. To be sure, my more frequent posting is because I found out people actually read this. So thank you everyone. I love all of you. And I'm feeling much better right now. The funk is gone and I'm smiling again. Thanks for putting up with me.

Happy New Year!

I'll see you all next year.

It's 23:55, and part of this blow by blow was inspired by Riese over at "this girl called automatic win"

Happy New Year indeed!

The Two Thousand Eight Wrap party has begun!

I feel safe in saying that this year has been without reservation, one for the books. When I started the year, I was focused on escaping the horrible living situation I'd been dealing with for the last four years. Fighting to get together my wits, and the money needed to escape an impossible and seriously unhealthy environment.

I was living with my brother Jon's widow at the begining of the year, and between my own issues, and the resource problems, it seemed like I was never going to get out of there, let alone Jersey. It was flately impossible to move to someplace nearby in Jersey as rents where nothing short of insane. The 600 sqaure feet one bedroom I'm living in now, would have been double or more what I'm paying in Jersey.

In an ideal world, I'd have continued living where I was and helping my sister-in-law deal with being a widow. When Ellie was having a good day, things would be fine, when she was keeping up with her meds, things would be fine, and I'd enjoy spending time around her. I had friends in the area I didn't want to leave as well as doctors and a therapist I trusted and could deal with.

Reality however was that most of the time Ellie was impossible to live with, because she wasn't keeping up with her meds, bills, or any of the other things that are all part of daily life. The house was so bad even rats wouldn't live there, only my room stayed clean and organized. The fridge, as well as the entire kitchen should be declared a toxic waste superfund site . . . well no, really the entire three bedroom townhouse with the exception of my bedroom and my bathroom that I was forced to share with Ellie because hers? Be it enough said that if the health department saw her bathroom, or most of the rest of the house, they'd put Ellie in the hospital and condem the house. Especially given that the last time she lived alone that's exactly what happened. I wish I was kidding.

Because of the sucktard economey (Thank you Zilla for that) and the greedtards that made it all possible, Ellie had been forced in the middle of 2007 to sell her house to an investor in a buy out, buy back deal that was supported to come to term June 1st of 2008. She'd done not one of the things she was supposed to do to buy it back, had no credit . . . no, she had negative credit. She wasn't keeping up with her bills (choosing instead to spend most of her money at bookstores) and so on a very regular basis someone from one or more of the utilities companies would come along to demand money she didn't have or they'd shut off the gas, heat, electric, or water and sewer. Jersey law says any essential services get shut off, and the dwelling is unihabitable. Meaning everyone leaves, or is removed from the dwelling. So while I'm fighting to be able to save the money to escape, I keep getting forced into loaning her money for food, utilities, and life in general above and beyond being a good roommate and doing my share. My share always became her share too, and I had no real legal standing in the house in the event of eviction. Plus, Ellie was, when not medicated, extremely confrontational and abusive.

I couldn't keep living there, but trying to escape was being impossible too. I'd have gone home to Colorado, where I can afford the rents, if I'd been able to afford to get there, and then find a place. I'd been planning to move back in with my sister for six months, long enough to find a place of my own after getting back out there. The problem there was with all the issues in and around my sisters life, I didn't feel like this was the greatest idea in the world, despite the fact that we both wanted me to move out there. Plus with gas prices, it was going to be a major expense just driving the two thousand miles out there. When push came to shove, I found out I couldn't count on help on the ground, nor a staging area to be able to apartment hunt from.

The stress on me was, well, doing me physical harm. After years of having perfect blood pressure and being largely immune to stress, post nervous breakdown, I wasn't quite so lucky. My blood pressure was rising, the stress was off the wall, and the constance crisis to crisis style of living because of my sister-in-law's madness, was not good for me at all. June was bearing down on me personally, I didn't want to be there when the owner wanted Ellie to buy it back or get out. I had family in New England pushing me to come home, in NY, NJ, CO and OH but I wasn't getting much help.

Actually that's not entirely accurate, My Brother and Sister-in-law here in OH wanted me to move here, but were the only ones NOT pushing, and offering to help in any way they can. Since Mark and I have lived togehter in the past quite successfully, and he's seem some of the terrible places I've lived, having him look at places here that I was interested in made a great deal of sense. I could, and did trust him not to blow sunshine up my skirt in an effort to get me out here.

So with May coming quickly to a close and my panic becoming terror, one of the places I'd considered here had an opening. I had Mark come over and take a look around and started a conversation with the landlord. I'd managed to save enough for first month, security and moving expenses to get this far, but wouldn't have been able to make it to Colorado. I also had grown extremely frustrated with my sister's ongoing issues impairing he ability to be objective and report what was instead of what she thought something or place might be.

So, I made the decision to move here, assuming I could get the apartment. I had no history of anykind really. Back past 2006 I didn't exist at all, and I explained the short version of this to my new landlord. She checked what information was available and said that yes, I could have the apartment but that I'd need to pay a deposit. That was the very end of May. June first I started the drive out here, I stopped over night in West Virginia, and finish the second leg of the trip rolling into town Monday night. I met with my new Landlord at my new building on the third and started moving in. I spent one more night in the hotel, and then started living the first place I've lived alone for decades.

From June until now, I've been getting settled in, used to the area, and dealing with life in a whole new part of the country. It's been really good for me, I feel like I've made a great deal of progress in the bottom half of the year. I still have a long ways to go, but for now it's nice to be living somewhere safe, clean and relatively peaceful. Not living from one crisis to another, in a constant state of terror is liberating.

So if I had to sum up the last half of the year in one word it would be progress. Slow, forward progress, which for me is amazing.

Zilla's description of the economy is brilliant

Zilla has a great style, and as I was getting more familiar with it I found this post that had, what is easily one of the BEST descriptions of what's happenin here:

He went on to tout the Cafe's soups and sandwiches. Then he mentioned that the
owner is a local journalist who gave up her job at the paper to start her own
business, and she's, well, doing what owners of all new eateries do: struggling
to survive, especially in a tough market, especially-especially in a sucktard
economy (suck because it sucks, tard because it sucks because of baby boomer
greedtards).

Now if that don't make it exactly clear, well, I'm afraid there might be no hope. Anyway, I digress, but I do that sometimes, okay, even, quite often, maybe even, well regularly . . . [Okay Brook, your point is?] that Zilla just has a great way of putting things, and this really tickled my fancy. That, and thinking about hotdogs . . .

Lookout Mountain view in Golden Colorado

Day, originally uploaded by greeneyedggirl.

Two years ago in a bit of a funk, wanting to upgrade my own gear, and make one of my sister's fondest dreams come true I ordered a brand new Canon EOS 20D to replace my workhorse the EOS D30 that was now six some odd years old. Because I baby my cameras, the D30 was still in mint condition, not a scratch on it at all. It had served me extremely well, and I'd flipped the internal counter over four times during it's life. Mind you the counter counts up to 9,999 images and the flips back to 0001. So that's around 40 thousand frames on one body. Anyway, I babied it, so it still has a whole bunch of life left in it. My Sister's birthday was the end of the month, so I picked out a decent starter lens for her, the portrait/extra battery grip and a handful of other accessoires and gave her a birthday present she'll never forget.

Like me, my sister has a great interest in photography, and was even at the time majoring in it in school. Her old film based SLR was, is still great, but not having a DSLR was giving her fits. She'd been drooling over my camera for a while, so as a birthday present it was a smash hit.

Of course for me it was an extra excuse to buy a new body. My choice was the Canon EOS 20D because I have an extensive collection of canon gear and glass that I wanted to be able to keep using. Obviously, I needed to break it in and see what it could do. So this picture was a "How do you do" kind of picture. I loved the quality of the light, and obviously we'd had some snow. This gave the whole shot an old silvertone feel to it, and I shot it anticipating the real test, a night shot of this location. I'm not even kidding. I had every intension of taking this shot again with nothing more than the full moon for light. That however is a post for another day.

For now, this is the first picture I've put into my flickr account. I promise, the first of many.

Yeah, I could get used to this and other musings.

So sleeping with the new meds is like one of the best Christmas presents I've ever had. I have more energy during the day, am up at reasonable hours, and can actually get things done that otherwise I'd not have managed. Today I took a look at my credit report, now that I actually have one, and found two items on it that didn't make any sense. I started making calls to find out what the story was or is. Kinda cool that. Better still is I actually have a credit history now, and it pleases me that I'm actually listed in the GOOD range. Never had that before really, because in the years before Earl (BE) I never had credit on purpose, and in the Earl years he made an unholy mess of things because I was never allowed to have anything to do with money. Because he and his parents were stalking me, I had to start over, quite literally, and in these days if you don't have credit you don't exist and pay more for stupid things like car insurance. So I've been working on actively managing my history so to speak. So there's that.

On an even better note in talking to both my sister and sister-in-law yesterday after my post they once again expressed interest in learning how to meditate but never having been able to "get it" which only left them frustrated. Over the years I've tried more than once to teach both of them and never had any success. Not because my skills as a teacher suck, but because they weren't in a time and place of real readiness to learn. So yesterday they once again asked, and having had some recent successes with a new method of teaching it, I worked with them again.

Miracle of miracles they finally get it! My sister-in-law was stunned at how it made her feel and swore she was going to start using that to manage her stress. My sister, you doesn't tend to have really big reactions to anything said "Wow, you've done something no-one else has ever been able to do, taught me to meditate in a way that makes sense, that I can do, and actually works." For her, this was a rave.

In other news as I was sitting at my desk getting things done I was a watching some Squirrels playing in the trees outside my window. At one point I almost grabbed my camera because the sunset playing on the trees and their fur made for some great images. I'm kinda glad my eye is starting to wake up, it's been a while since I've been taking any serious pictures.

I'm actually feeling pretty good for a change, so this is a really good day.

So it just came to me...

I'm sitting at Labcorp waiting to have my bloodwork drawn and doing what I do whenever I'm sitting waiting. I'm meditating. While meditating the realization came to me that Catholic Nuns sitting there deep in prayer are actually just meditating. I don't know why it took me so long to make that connection. Kinda cool thought when it comes down to it. They arn't as far from us Buddhists as they might like to believe.

It also cleared the way for me to understand why most people consider Buddhism a Religon. Because it is. If you abstract out all the conceptual elements and framework, you'll find everything in common. Mind you I studied comparative religion in school pretty well, but I only just made the connection to Nun's in prayer.

(Update) I posted that while [after] meditating at my Lab waiting for my bloods to be drawn. I signed in at 16:40 and didn't get out of there until 18:10. One of the women who came in right after I did looked over at me and said "Excuse me Ma'am, but I'm wondering where you went? We signed in, sat down, and then you froze and didn't move. I had to look closely at one point to see if you were actually breathing." I looked over and said "I didn't necessarily GO anywhere per se, I was meditating. Gave me something useful and healthy to do while I was waiting. I looked around and said wow, where did everyone go?" She laughed and said "Didn't go anywhere my eye. The place emptied out while you were doing the zen thing. Do you realize you've been doing that for an hour?"

I looked around the room again, smiled and said "Hey, cool, I'm next aren't I?" At which point I heard 'Samantha?' and smiled. She said "Well if your name is Samantha, and I don't see anyone else here who could be then yeah..." So as I got up I said "you know what this means right?"

She smiled and said "I'm next!"

Regrettably I wasn't in and out in two minutes because I'm what's known in the trade as a hard stick. Half the time I have to draw my own blood because the techs and nurses can't get in. The Nurse today when I warned her said "That's okay, I like a challenge, plus I've never met a hard stick I can't get blood from somewhere."

Yeah, that was fun. Went into the back of my right hand three times and dug around in one of the a bit. Spent a couple of minutes trying to get into my arms, and finally said "Okay if I can't get into your left hand you're going to have to do it." Thankfully she did get in which kept her record intact. She looked at me and said "Can you really do your own draws?" "Ah, let the Mistress of the Dark show you about blood..." I said. So I took the strap off my left arm, tied it on my right, grabbed a butterfly and went right in, blood came right out. She was suitably impressed.

Oh, so much fun.

The girl who was behind me looked up when I came out and said "Oh, done so soon? So much for me being next."

"Sorry" I said "She had trouble getting my blood out, it happens now and again, I should have let you go first... But hey, now you really are next, have a great . . . Night?" As I noticed it was now dark outside... It wasn't when I went in.

One more update . . . I don't normally edit a post after folks have started commenting on it, but this one dumb mistake of mine completely screwed up the post. So above where it now says [after] it had said while, which was completely wrong. While I was meditating I was doing only that, makes it kinda hard to write a post.

Ah the power of...

...sleep! And I'll bet you thought I was going to say cheese.

Among the numerous issues I've been dealing with over the last god knows how many years, quality sleep has never really been something I could count on. Quite the opposite really, a good nights sleep for me has long been a fantasy in my life. Eight hours of sleep straight through? Yeah right, when pigs fly.

Well last night the ATC centers in the US must have been out of their skulls cause I'm telling you, pigs were flyin!

I met with my new PCP on Friday, as as we were going over the list of medications I take, including OTC stuff, she suggested I change what I was doing for sleep, since part of that involved an OTC sleep aid along with prescription meds. Saturday I slept well until my phone woke me in the morning when I wasn't ready, so that caused Saturday not to count. Last night into this morning was a very, very different story. I started off right, after having had a small glass of wine while blogging earlier, I took my meds and hour before I was going to go to sleep.

I got to bed early at 2:30 and having taken my meds an hour earlier I went right off to sleep for a change. No tossing, turning, trying to get to sleep, just wrapped my arms around Jesse and drifted off to sleep. Nine hours later, exactly nine, I woke up feeling so very strange and disoriented, I didn't feel bad per say, but just really odd and it was something I'd never experienced. I was awake, relaxed, refreshed, not in pain and ready to actually get the day started. Normally I wake up and need to take some pain killers, have a bowl of cereal or some cinnamon toast, and fight to go back to sleep.

It was the earliest I'd made it to bed - well no, it depends on how you look at time. For the past god knows how many years I'd get to bed between 4-8 in the morning, and then sleep (if you could call it that) in four to six hour spurts, tossing and turning, in pain, with horrific nightmares, popping pain killers every time I woke up and having a nosh because I couldn't get to sleep on an empty stomach. Mind you that's with the meds I was on at the time. It was a project, and the "sleep" I got was never enough, when I'd finally wake up for the "day" I was tired, hungry, in pain and sluggish from not enough sleep.

Before that, it was even worse. For the last four years of my marriage, I'd finally get to sleep around 4 or 5 in the morning and then have to be up a 7 or 8 to disconnect Earl from the Dialysis machine. Why? Because he wouldn't do it himself. I'd spend the long, hard, days holding down too many full time jobs at the same time. Housewife, Nurse, Doctor, Researcher, Therapist, Computer Programmer and Mom to a very demanding Tuxedo Cat and of course Earl himself. Not really what I'd dreamed of when I wanted to be a Wife and Mother. At the very end, when I started seeing a therapist without Earl's co-operation after giving her the highlights of what my life was like in the first session she looked at me at the end and said:

"Look Sam, I'm not going to lie to you here. You need to quit at least four or five of the full time jobs you have right now, and you must start getting at least six hours of sleep. If you don't, you are going to die. How you've lived this long is nothing short of a miracle. How you've stayed sane I just cannot begin to understand."

That kinda chilled me.

Before that, I wasn't exactly Olympic gold material when it came to sleeping. If anything, I could have taken silver in NOT sleeping.

So obviously waking up this morning after a nice, solid, uninterrupted, qaulity nine hour sleep I was startled and concerned because it was a strange feeling. To give you an idea of how soundly I slept, I woke up holding Jesse right where I went to sleep. Normally the sheets are a horrific mess, and even the bed itself has moved closer to the wall. Tossing and turning so much the whole bed shifts. Mind that's not as strange as it sounds. I haven't finished moving everything yet, and that includes my bed in a storage locker 9 hundred miles away. So right now I'm sleeping on one of those comfy elevated aerobeds that you just inflate. Which makes it really easy to go slipping and sliding around on the carpet as I toss and turn.

Not this morning. The bed was exactly where I left it with me in it. I'm not going to get my hopes up that this will become the norm on these new meds, but hey, at this point I'll be overjoyed if I get sleep like that every other day or so. If I manage to sleep like that everynight consistently for a while, well, I'll be so thrilled I won't know what to do with myself.

In other news I had a serious blonde moment tonight. I was making more of my favorite iced tea drink and knew I had a pinch left in the gallon jug I keep it in. So I poured it out to drink after I washed out my jug and refilled it. So I get a gresh batch in the fridge and sit down with my mug of tea ready to finish this entry. Took a long pull and savored the flavor going down. It tasted sweeter than I thought I'd made it, but was enjoying it so much I just kept going. Still I couldn't shake the feeling it was somehow different in taste and much sweeter.

I finished drinking and went to get some more out of the fridge when it struck me. The little bit I had left in the jug? Well it was the wrong jug I'd emptied, washed, and refilled. 100% natural Apple Juice straight up. No small wonder it seemd so sweet. I drink a lot of apple juice, something on the order of probably just over 100 gallons this year. Typically I drink about two gallons a week when I'm not making tea, which I've only just started doing again recently. Mind you I drink even the 100% natural stuff in the healiest way possible, I usually cut it at least half and half with clean, pure, filtered water. Cuts down on the amount of carbs, and gets that much more water into me. I reuse the empty bottles for ice tea, cycling them out periodically as I drink more juice. Well, that was the last of the Apple Juice, behind it, in the OTHER 100 Apple Juice container was the rest of the last batch of tea... My brother has often said I'm the worlds first naturally occuring example of artificial intelligence. Which of course is a reference to an old blonde joke:

"What do you call a blonde who dye her hair brown? Artificial Intelligence!"

While I don't usually suffer blonde jokes lightly, unfortunately his use of this one for me is often all too true. I can be a classic ditz. I mean giggle and a squeak ditzy kind of ditz. Worse yet, much of my hair is slowly going blonde instead of grey or white as I get older. It's so weird, but as my family says, well you know, it's weird yes, but for you it's perfectly normal.

Otherwise the day was light, puttering around the house, cleaning, putting stuff away nothing to really write about. Speaking of my brother, I'm trying to figure out what to get for the geek who has everything. Especially since he went out and bought the two things I was planning on getting him for his birthday. It's the seventh and I'm at a loss. All though, come to think of it, I could get him a gift certificate to his favorite pizza place, the one he doesn't go to often because it's about fourty miles away. So we'll see...

People say the nicest things sometimes...

My Sister-in-law, the mother of my namesake just said the nicest thing to me while we were talking. Back a whole bunch of years ago... Three now I'd guess come to think of it, when she and My bro were first dating, Mark was talking about me at one point. He showed Val an old (To the right from 2005) picture of me and tonight she said her first thought when she saw my picture was:

"Wow, I really want to get to know her, she's cool, and just gets it."

She said that even through the picture she could sense what a deep, old river I am.

You know, I really like that.

She was afraid I was going to think she was nuts which is why she's waited this long to say that. She said she knew before we'd met that first time two years ago that I was going to be special and a much needed and welcome addition to her life. That when we then actually met in person, she was even more certain.

She's an empath herself, and can read energy across long distances and from objects and pictures like I can. She's just been conditioned by the world, like so many of us have been, to lock that part of herself away and not share it with other people, let alone really acknowledge it herself.

So we spent a couple of hours on the phone talking about such things, and having a generally good time. Not the first time that's happened. But yeah, I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy now, cause she didn't have to say that, but it was nice to hear.

Life in the Twilight Zone

It's official, I'm living in the Twilight Zone. My downstairs neighbor, the one who'd been doing all the loud music and deep base, making my life miserable when I first moved in, knocked on my door tonight. That's not the weird part.

Me: "Is everything okay? I'm not being too loud or anything am I?"

Him: "No, no, not at all, your fine. I never know there's anyone living above me you're so quiet."

Me: "Oh, okay, are you okay?"

Him: "I'm fine, I just have this question I want to ask you without you know, like offending you or anything"

Me: "I'm pretty hard to offend, so go ahead and ask."

Him: "Well, uh, do you like men?"

Me: Laughing "Uh yeah, I'm a pretty normal girl, I like guys, though ever now and then girls can be good too."

Him: "Oh, you're a girl? Like with a thing down there and everything? I wasn't sure if you were a gay guy or a girl cause I only see you in t-shirts and jeans and stuff. So like are you seeing anyone? Do you have a boyfriend?"

Me: [Not one to volunteer personal information to a complete stranger] "Well I used to be married, but my husband died two years ago and I'm still dealing with that."

Him: "Oh. I'm sorry, that must be hard."

Me: "Well, yeah, I'm to young to be a widow. Anything else I can help you with?"

Him: "Uh, no, um thanks. I'm sorry to have bothered you."

Me: "It's okay, have a good night."

Him: "Yeah, you too, and thanks for not being bitchy about my questions. I might be back later..." as he starts walking down the hall to the stairs...

So I'm left here wondering exactly how I went from the strange person living upstairs who complains about his music to being someone he feels like he can ask inappropriate questions of. So I went back to what I was reading and tried to put the whole thing out of my mind.

About fifteen minutes later there's another soft knock on my door. Oh crap, he's back.

Me: "Hi."

Him: "Can I ask you for some advice? Get a woman's perspective on something?"

Me: [Thinking WTFOver?] "Sure, don't know if I can help, but I'll try."

Him: "What do I do if I think my wife is cheating on me? Do I confront her and just come right out and say something or what? I mean why would she? Would she freak if I asked her? How would you uh, like react if your man did that?"

Me: [So totally not what I was expecting] "Well uh, I don't know. First thing you need to do is figure out how you feel about the whole thing, and where you want to go with the relationship. Then I can give you some ideas about what to do next if you'd like. Usually I do couple's counseling with both people in the couple. But I can help you with some ideas of what to do next depending on what you want to do."

Him: "Should I read some books like that Mars and Venus stuff people always talk about?"

Me: "NO!!! John Gray is a hack, he tries to do all the right things for the wrong reason, the wrong ways. In the long run, he'd do more harm than good in my opinion."

So I won't bore y'all with the blow by blow details, but we wound up having about a half hour conversation about it. I'm kinda surprised, amazed, and bemused. Of course when we're finished he had one more question.

Him: "So can I see it? You down there?"

Me: [My first thought was to slap him, instead I said:] "Ah, no, I'm sorry, but I'm not in the habit of showing off my body parts to complete strangers. I mean, if someone else in the building knocked on your door and wanted to see your crotch, would you let them?"

So yeah, it was a night right out of the twilight zone here in Cincinnati. So very, very surreal. I'm just so lucky. I didn't feel any pressing need to complicate things with sharing all the little details of my journey to womanhood, especially since he wasn't asking the right questions. Now if he'd been honestly interested, and seemed like he wanted to learn, and asked the right questions, that would be something else. I'd give him the trans for beginners talk.

Happy Boxing Day!

So on the other side of the pond, a friend of mine is taking a slow gentle ride to her dreams, and this part of my post is a shameless plug and shout-out to Emma! So Happy Boxing day yerself! :)

Here on this side of the pond I had my first visit today with my new Primary Care Physician. My sister-in-law recommended her as someone who really listens and cares about her patients, and you know, I can see why she says that. She does. I was nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, so much so that why her nurse took my BP it was way, way high. After talking to my new doctor for a few minutes it had dropped fifty points into something much better. So that was a net positive right there.

She was a big backed up today, so the girls apologized when I got there that I might have a bit of a wait. Wasn't a problem for me, I had nothing else planned, so I sat down and proceeded to drop myself into a light trance and spent the time meditating. Susan had to call my name twice when it was time for me to go in and I looked up and smiled. She joked "Did I wake you?"

"Not at all, I was meditating" I replied, it's a good way to use time that might otherwise be wasted. She was intrigued and wanted to know more, so we talked about that for a moment. Hey, I don't mind, it gives me a chance to share the wealth so to speak. So I gave her a crash course in a great way to start meditating and had her try it. She was amazed at how it felt and how easy it was to start. So that was my girl scout good deed for the day.

Aside from the BP being slightly high, and have a few more pounds on me than I should, I'm in otherwise good shape. Never a bad thing to hear I say. The BP will come down when I lose the weight, and in the meantime, she's started me on a low dose of BP meds. Being a new patient she had all the questions for me, and started to do the usual Doctor warning of things to avoid.

I said, "If it helps, I can save you some trouble there. 20 plus years ago I decided smoking was bad for me and quit that. 8 or so years ago I decided caffene was bad for me and quit that, two years later I decided sugar was bad for me and just most of that out, a year after that I decided Soda in general was back for me and cut that out. 9 years ago I had a brief bought of my Cholesteral and Trigylerides being too high and cut them down to nice healthy numbers and have increased healthy fats to be sure my good cholesteral is high, and last but not least, decided I didn't want to have a problem with C-Reactive Protein and have pretty much removed red meat from my diet. I have a bowl of Fider-one ever morning to get fiber into my diet, plus eat lots of other stuff that keeps the fiber up, and I try to walk at least ten minutes twice a day, but have been moving up to where I can start getting in two miles a day."

She just kind blinked a few times and caught up with that and said "Well, I can see you're going to be one problem child arn't you? Gonna have to keep on you about . . . Do you drink enough water?" with a smile.

"Yeah, plus lots iced green tea with honey and lemon! And I eat a little bit of Dark Chocolate every day."

So it went well, even if I did deprive her of anything to really scold me about.

So I guess that's the utterly boring and mundane news in my life at the moment. So again, a big shout-out to Emma over in the Shire, I'm hoping maybe I can get her to start a blog... It's free, easy, and really good for seeing how far one has come over time. Plus there are so many cool people she can meet because of blogging. 'Ello Luv! Gotta run, Cheers!

One small side note as I wander off to other things for the night, I just noticed I've written as many posts this month as I did for the entire year last year. Wow, that's kinda scary. Not that I'm keeping score, I just find it amusing. I think I've written as many posts this year, as I have in all the previous years of this blog combined. Hum, I guess I've got something to say after all.