Women of a certain age . . .

. . . have to deal with changes.  It's a study in in impermanence, this whole ageing thing, really it is.  Over the last year or so I've noticed that my once perfect, no, better than perfect, eyesight has moved toward the average for my age?  It's particularly noticeable when cycling and driving. For the most part it's only really my non-dominant eye, and it's not significant, but enough to be annoying.

So in March, after not having had an eye exam in six years, I went to Lenscrafters figuring I knew them and had always had my eyes checked there.  Plus six years ago I dropped a big chunk of money on nonprescription sunglasses there.  You know, scratch resistant, non glare, uv coated, transition lenses in a nice Ray Ban metal frame.  So I thought if I was going to need a prescription, that I'd be able to get new lenses for the frames I already had.

Had the eye exam done, and no big shock, my right eye needed correction just as I thought, the slight surprise was that my left eye could do with a very minor bit of correction too.  So, that done I set about having new glasses made.  After a song and a dance about how they couldn't really do anything with my existing frames I had to pick new ones.  Strike one right there.  I got measured, fitted, found nice frames that brought out my green eyes, and then got the price tag.  One pair of glasses again was going to be several hundreds of dollars with the non glare, uv, scratch resistant, transition lenses.  Damn!!! And that was with a 50% off sale that was going to be ending shortly. If I waited until I could afford the options I wanted, the sale would have been over and the price would have been close to seven hundred dollars for one pair of glasses.  Double damn, so I settled on plain lenses in the frames and figured I'd have to get some clip on sunglasses for them or something like that. Strike TWO!!!

An hour and  $245 dollars later I had new glasses. The first pair of corrective lenses I've ever needed. Lovely. $210 for the glasses, $35 for the exam.

Riding and driving were of course different, "better."  Not having transitions lenses a real pain in the tush. Driving at night, quite the pain because of the reflections and glare of oncoming traffic. Sure, I could see "better" but there were some serious issues with just plain lenses. So I started looking at my options, online. You know, doing some serious research as I got used to having and wearing glasses.  I also started to notice that while much improved, my right eye, was still not quite as good as my non corrected left eye. Corrected, my left eye was even better.  So there was a distinct imbalance there that I thought shouldn't be. It became clear through March and April that we'd rushed my eye exam and that my right eye prescription still needed work. Damn! Triple Damn even. Strike THREE!!!

My research last night culminated with finding multiple less expensive options for glasses including a place on line that would give, with a proper prescription, the first pair of glasses free for single vision plain lenses.  FREE!!! For the options I want on the free pair, another $130 dollars.  America's Best, two pair of single vision plain lenses starting at $69 with a free eye exam. So I drove over there today to look at frames and see if I'd be able to find anything I could live with, and to price the option I wanted. To get all everything I want, that I had on the non prescription glasses, a total of $280 dollars. For TWO pair.  WITH a free eye exam.

So today, while still within the 90 day return policy at Lenscrafters, I did just that. Returned the glasses and had the $210 dollars credited back to my account.  Wednesday of next week, I'll head over to America's Best, have another eye exam, and place my order for two new sets of glasses with all the options.  While at America's best today I looked at the selection of frames and found some wonderful looking ones, so that's not a concern. in fact one set of frames I picked out are Amethyst.  Oh such a happy thing.  So I'll get those, and another pair of midnight blue ones, and that way I'll have two pair of glasses, with all the coatings and transitions lenses.  Mind you I don't spend that much time in the sun in general, but I do get some, and the transitions make a big difference. As does the non glare and UV coatings. Especially the non glare, which makes a big difference at night, and one doesn't have to experience distracting reflections from the lenses while doing other things even during the day.

So yeah, as a woman of a certain age that now needs glasses, at least I'm not having to spend almost seven hundred dollars for a single pair that do what I want and need.

It's like coming home ...

P4C-427 Great Room Sketch

Despite there being so much wrong with it, I'm honestly thrilled with this little sketch of mine, because it is recognizably a room I wasn't standing in at the time.  It's part illustration, part "story board" sketch and part getting back into the swing of something that left my life a long, long time ago.  Art. Or I should say something I left behind me that I'm just now welcoming back?

Even more interesting is that this was a huge leap for me, from paper and implements of drawing, to a tablet computer and taking art to a whole new place for me. When last I was near art school, I could "see" in my minds eye, the day when one could just draw directly onto a computer screen like it was paper, and that is exactly what this is.  That day I envisioned more than two decades ago is now as real and present as my keyboard while I type this.  Mind you all those years ago when I "saw" that day in my minds eye?  Folks told me I was crazy.  Whose crazy now I wonder?

For those of whom have never been to this room, while there is everything wrong with this drawing, at the same time it is still recognizably a room, drawn by a human hand. My hand.  It is still clearly a representation of a place, with a sense of space, depth and substance, not just mindless squiggles on paper.  It is clearly something drawn by hand, not painted with a mouse on a screen.

For me, it's new freedom.  For me it's growth, and evolution of a medium without taking away what makes me an artist.  It's just another tool of expression.  That it is all virtual, inside a computer stored as electrons?  That doesn't both me near as much as even I'd have thought, or at all.  In fact, it's a certain amount of additional freedom.  Because I know that should I choose to do so, I could print this onto paper, or velum, or whatever media I can put through a printer.  So I don't need to spend lots of money and room on art supplies I cannot realistically justify right now.

For me, this means despite not having really drawn anything in more than 2 decades, I've not lost the hand or the eye for it.  Sure I'm rusty, but I can still render something I can see in my minds eye into something real, solid, and easy to share with you.  For me, this is a first step back to skills and feelings I'd left so far in my past as to almost having been forgotten.  So this is me, picking up something I'd thought lost to me decades ago.  For me this is exactly like a home coming of sorts.  On more than one level.  This is a room I know well.  A room I've been to many times.  A second home for me, far from the troubles of this tiny little world.

This sketch is of a room I've been to many times.  A safe place, a home, a haven by the sea.  Through the double doors is a balcony and deck that looks out over a sea. Off to the left is a bedroom, my bedroom, with closets and a bathroom, also on the left is a largish open, welcoming kitchen.  To the right, another set of doors out to a larger deck area, and another bedroom and bathroom.  Behind me the front door.  Many an hour I've spent on that deck beyond the doors eating fruit, drinking tea, and watching the sunset into the sea.  This is a place of light, love, warmth and "old world charm" like it might be somewhere on the coast of Italy.

So this is a sketch, drawn by my hand, of a place that feels like, and is, a home.  And being able to once again share with you what my eyes alone have seen?  Well that's a homecoming of a different sort.  I have more than one of my sisters to thank for this post, and the confluence of thought that brings me too it.  But that's for another day me thinks.  For now, this is about home, my home, my heart.  About finding once again something I thought I'd lost.  It's said you can never go home again, but this experience makes me see this is simply not so.  It has been said "home is where the heart is."  My heart in this moment is weaving together different bits of things to share this room you'll probably never stand in, via my ability to freeze moments in time in my minds eye, and then put them on paper.

So it's very much like coming home.  Because despite the fact that the last time I drew anything was more than a dozen years before I'd set foot in the room pictured, I get to share it with you quickly now.  This room?  It's my Polonia, my Bramasole made manifest.  It's a place of my heart.  That I can make it real and share with you is the promise of a light still shining.  It's very now, and very Zen.  It's like coming home ... for me!

Christmas Eve, Eve, Now, And Zen.

Six years ago today the Social Security Administration after horribly traumatizing and an already traumatized woman who was living in fear, even terror, most of the time, had this same woman involuntarily placed in a locked padded room staring at the possibility of being there through Christmas.  This was after letting her drive in hysterical tears from the SSA office, to her therapist's office, where her therapist managed to get her calmed down enough that she wasn't ready to take her own life.  This also involved having her take double her usual dose of tranquilizer and sending her home.

Still, the SSA sent the local police to her house with the lights on with orders to either take her to the hospital, or supervise her until EMS could come pick her up.  She was given no choice. Either go to the hospital willingly, or wait for EMS.  She went with the nice policeman and was locked into a padded room.   She sat in that locked padded room as people came wandering in and out, asking her questions and trying to decide if she was a danger to herself or anyone else.  She managed to get released and not have to spend the holiday locked up, but that damage was done.

It's now six years later.

So she lives in a different kind of fear. Yet she does a marginally better job of managing that fear.  It's good not to be locked away on Christmas Eve, Eve.  By the same token she sometimes wonders if she might be safer locked away.  Not safer from herself, but from the kind of dark, lunatic, fringe that doesn't seem to be the fringe anymore.  People everywhere are becoming increasingly dangerous and hostile over things they cannot control and know little or nothing about.  Conspiracy theorists are popping up everywhere, not just on the far right, but everywhere. And they have conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories.  It's bedlam.  This includes Facebook, especially Facebook.

So while she does her absolute best to stay calm, present, and focused on what is, and is not real, and treating everyone with love, compassion and empathy, many people just go completely off the reservation trying to spread insanity to her.  The anger, pain, and lack of stability makes her wonder if she might not be safer in a locked room with no access to (self proclaimed) seemingly "normal" people who suddenly turn into mindless zombies ranting about things that may or may not be real, all while they refuse to see what is plainly before them.

On Facebook, she's become particularly adept at completely blocking people when it becomes clear they are interested only in being right, and shoving their own brand of rage down her throat.  She's not suffering fools gladly anymore and that's a big change from then.  She's a whole bunch more Zen.  Mainly because it's a defense against the growing madness of entire classes of people who have come unhinged.

She's taken to blocking friends of friends because they have lost the ability to manage their own impulses and have to be right about something that had nothing to do with the topic at hand.  Meditation and an eye on history that many seem to have lost keeps her from losing what little of her mind is left, keeps her focused on this moment, and helps her to see that quite often what she might once have thought was her own shortcoming really has nothing to do with her.

If you engage fear, let it smolder within you, and fan that smoke into flames you will succeed in setting yourself aflame for no good reason.  If you wish to burn yourself down on a heady dose of the toxic soup of misinformation, lies and pure full on paranoia, I will say a silent prayer to the universe for your lost soul, and go back to my own life, trying to make the best of it I can with what I have to work with.  The woman above?  Yeah, that was me, and I spent the day locked inside my own little corner of reality staying away from dangerous people as best I could.  I blocked someone else's friend so that I cannot see his posts, and he cannot see mine, because he's set on setting himself on fire.  I wish him well with that, but want no part of it.

"Bring It On" and dream fulfilled.

So when I was growing up, and all through high school, I wanted to be a cheerleader.  I mean really.  But I was the invisible, outcast, almost alien child.  Sure I was in great shape, I used to ride at least 100 miles a week on a bike, up and down all sorts of really gnarly hills and was in great shape.  Tall, thin, flexible, coordinated, and worked the baton whicked fast.  My sister hated me.  I had the hair, skills, energy and strength, heck I could have been a flier, or one heck of a base. I had enthusiasm.  I was almost the whole package.  But I was horribly shy and about as social as an abused cat.  But even today “Bring It On” and “Bring It On Again” are two of my favorite movies.  “Hellcats,” when I remember to watch it, is also a favorite.  But that was just a place in my life I could never get to.

So today I realized, somewhat late, but better than never I’d say, that I got my wish.  My inner cheerleader is feeling fulfilled, happy and proud.  Because life threw me the spirit stick and I DID NOT drop it!  That’s a big thing, I mean huge.  You drop the spirit stick and it’s a curse not just on you, but the whole team.  So while I may not have the body I once did, and 100 miles a week is not quite something I can pull off these days, I’m still, FINALLY, a cheerleader!

Because I support my team, my friends, the people I adore with loving, positive energy any chance I can.  I help people see past the negatives and encourage them to find the sunshine in any situation.  And I can still do a split.  Not that I have any reason to these days, but I can so stick the landing.

But I bring energy, enthusiasm, sunshine and as positive an outlook as I can to anyone that needs it.  I’m Bringing It On every chance I get! And I still think spirit fingers is kinda, well, lame? :)

For those who are so inclined, I was moved to actually read my own blog outloud.  Now let's see if I can post it here.

On the values of meditation . . .

I meditate regularly, at least 30 minutes a day or more.  Why?  Because it feels good, and that feeling lasts.  Whether one is counting rosary and saying Avi Maria, or chanting Om-Mani-Pad-Me-hung meditation has some measurable results on one's body, and this is why I posted sometime back about prayer being meditation in fact, if not in name.

Studies have indicated that using either other these two methods can easily slow a persons respiration rate to 6 breaths per minute in experienced meditators.  With slower respiration comes an overall slowing of one's entire body, including heart rate and blood pressure.  Advanced meditators with practice can go even slower than 6 breaths per minute.  The average resting normal range is somewhere in the realm of 12 to 18 breaths per minute.

After a conversation with a friend yesterday about age, and my joking that I'm slowing my aging process down, on purpose, I thought to see, by way of a simply counting breaths meditation how I was doing.

It was an interesting experience for me. Especially since while meditating it's not uncommon for me to have experiences/visions/dreams what have you.  So as I'm counting, I find myself on a quiet street in a town somewhere, and people start showing up, LOTS of people start showing up which can tend to make me very skittish to say the least.  Being crowded by strangers making noisy and causing me to feel trapped is something I've been fighting with for some years.  It has in the past caused me to have panic attacks, and well I'm not much fond of them.  But I stayed focused on what I was doing and noticed with each breath more and more people were vanishing.  All this while staying focused on counting my breaths.  So I didn't let the crow get to me, and I thought this a particularly cruel joke my mind was playing on me while I was trying to determine my meditating respiration rate.  The key here however was that like any meditation, a key is to not engage the thoughts that crowd ones mind.  Not get involved, just let them wander through without thought or judgement, which is exactly what I did.  But as this was going on the thought dawned that this may throw off my test by adding stress to my meditation.  Once again, I let this though pass through without engaging it either.

I'd set my timer for a short ten minute meditation which would give me a large enough sample to determine easily what my per minute respiration rate was.  Much to my amazement and great comfort it was three. Yes, 3 breaths per minute, while I didn't bother to check my heart rate, I know medically that with a respiration of 3 breaths per minute, my heart was probably looping along nice and slow at maybe 15-20 beats per minute as well.  I know my average resting, non-meditating heart rate is usually in the 50-60 beats per minute range, and exercise rate significantly higher than that in the 120-130 range I'll have to think about checking it while meditating since it's pretty much a given it will be much slower than my average resting rate.

So doing 3 breaths per minute, not bad at all.  Being "tested" with stress while meditating very not bad! :)

What would you do?

The accomplished and brilliant author Sevastian Winters recently asked as a general question to his fans the following question:

$50 Million dollars in non-traceable cash sitting on a table in front of you. Cash's owner is in horrible pain, dying of cancer. He hands you a gun and tells you the cash is yours if you blow his brains out. You will never be caught. Would you take the shot?

I was, for something that bubbled up out of me, pleased enough with my answer that I thought I'd share it here:

I would sit with him. I would share his pain and lessen it. I'd get to know him. I'd use the considerable resources at my command to take as much of his pain from him as I could. And I'd listen. I'd give him my full compassion, empathy and love. I would ease his suffering, not just from the cancer, but from a life that got him there. I'd share with him in great detail the beauty and grandeur of where he was going. I'd share with him my own suicide in 1961 and what it cost me, and what I'd gained from it. I'd take him on a journey into his own future to see what his life would be life if he forced an exit point, and if he didn't. Then if he was utterly certain, I'd induce a medical coma so that he didn't have to feel his own impending demise.

I am a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, Certified Reiki Master, and a Buddhist. I'd respect his wishes by taking his pain, and I assure you I can and have done the same for others in horrific agony, but his life is not mine to take, and even if he spends the last days, weeks or months of his life in a coma, it would be better for him to pass when the time is right, not from the trauma of a gunshot to the head. Plus with a medically induced coma he'd have the opportunity to awaken from it anytime he wanted. While he was in said coma, I'd taken his hand, and take him on a spirit walk to some places I'm fond of and find peace in. I'd share them with him and how to get there himself. I'd give him options, ease his pain, and help him grow. I'd even in that state teach him how he could heal himself, and make a decision from there. Free from the pain, and with an understanding of more to the universe and time/space then he'd ever dreamed of, I'd sit down with him again and see where he wanted to go from there. That would be after letting him meet his spirit guides, and my Lucia, Xa'els, and Tak'aya and let him see what they would have to share with him. I would, should he choose it, help him Ascend by helping him reach the state inside himself that could make it possible. It would be his choice.  

When, if he passed, if he was utterly serious about it I'd donate at least 47 of the 50 million dollars to causes that need it in his name. The remaining 3 million I would invest in something that generates simple interest, and use the interest to live and set up a foundation to teach more people how to be of true service to other people suffering. I would set up the foundation in his name, and organize it so that it would continue long after I passed from this life into the next.

In short, I would show him a much greater universe outside his own pain and limited existence. I would listen, I would heal him body and soul to where he could make an informed decision. I would provide him the tools and compassion to allow him to do what he needed without judgement. I'd share what Karma REALLY is and how it works, and let him take his last steps from this life into the next empowered and free of the limitations of the false gods of pain, suffering and money.

So, I ask you, what might you do?  There is no wrong or right answer here, only one that feels like it works for you.  For more of Sev's whit, style, and writing that almost insists one think, you can find him on Facebook, his Homepage, Blog or on Amazon.com  

Header image Property and Copyright Sevastian Winters 2011 All Rights Reserved.

It just dawned on me . . .

. . . that when I am down to the wire, and ready to move I'm going to get everything loaded up, packed away in the jumper, tied down, and then spend one last night here so that I get a fresh and early start on the drive the next morning.  My trusty air mattress, which I spent so much time sleeping on when I first moved here will be where I sleep that last night in a big, empty, apartment.  Much like the first night or so that I was here.

It will be symbolic on so many levels, and it will be the closing of this chapter, in this part of my life.  The real closing chapter will be when I get home.  Then I'll be able to fully, finally, start putting Earl behind me.  Not so much in a deliberate "doing" kind of way, but the more spiritual, soul enriching NOT DOING.

Being here has been all about rebuilding after the damage.  Nary a step I take, or a day goes by that I'm not reminded in one way or another what this has cost me.  How much I've lost, since I said yes when he asked me to take some vacation time to fly out and meet him all those years ago.  Getting back home, getting back to a place that hasn't really been tainted by Earl, and the swath of destruction he cut through my heart, mind, body and soul, will be a great goodness.

So yeah, last night here when that comes, will be on the air mattress.  First night in the new place, will be on the air mattress for the symbolism of it.  And then I'll set up my bed, in my new home, and not look back so much.  Speaking of beds.  When the end came, I gave the brand new king side bed from the master bedroom to my sister.  She was thrilled, overjoyed on the one hand to get so much of the furniture she'd been ogling at our house, every time she was there, sad on the other what it meant for me.  The brand new king size mattress was just the top of the list in ways.

Me, I'd been sleeping for years in the guest room, and had finally, after being tired of the pull out sofa bed bought a tempurpedic mattress and slept on the on the floor for the last year of our marriage.  Of course my plan had been to get it out of storage when I moved, and sleep on that.  Problem of course was with the storage locker being 1000 miles away you see.  In the three years I've been here, I've not been back there to get stuff, let alone the bed, out of the locker.  So there it sits.

After sleeping on the tempurpedic at Laura's house in the beginning of the year, and having her lecture me, mercilessly about being "stuck" and otherwise finding all sorts of fault with my existence in general because I wasn't her, and not capable of being her, I decided to do something about the bed.  I really was tired, past tired, of spending three years on an inflatable camping mattress.

My new bedroom set. Squee!

So I set about finding a new tempuredic mattress I could afford and that would help me sleep better.  I'd already long since bought a frame that the air mattress had been on top of now for a while, so it was ready for a real mattress.  In May I squeezed the money out of my meager income and savings to get the mattress, this month I finally found and purchased a comforter, really one of those whole bed in a bag things, including curtains and so forth that I liked.  The colors and pattern was all rich, earthy and inviting, and it color coordinated well with the other sheet and pillow case sets I'd previous bought, giving me a range of options, and meaning I didn't have to wash the same set of sheets every week just to have a clean bed to sleep in.  Now, between the bed in the bag, and the stuff I already had, I only have to wash the bed clothes once a month.  Makes me a happy girl.  Though truth to tell, having three sets already meant I wasn't washing them every week as it was.  But now, now I have something I've not had in years and years, a complete homey feel to the bedroom, something warm, inviting and earthy.  Since my bedroom is my sanctuary, and I not only sleep there, but meditate and read as well, I want it to look nice, to be welcoming.  This fit the bill quite well in my opinion.

It's a long, long, long way from an inflatable mattress on the floor isn't it?  And the comforter is reversible, the other side is the green with dried grass colored lines running through it like the throw pillows, bed skirt, and valence.  And it's all mine.  So it just dawned on me I've come some distance from where I was three years ago, and my place is losing that homeless chic feeling to it more and more.  Instead of those two square pictures hanging over my bed I have a native american dream catcher, which adds to the warm homey feeling for me, and so fits me personally.  So progress is once again, not a dirty word.

I went to the bank in . . .

my birthday suit!

There, I said it.  I needed to deposit a check, and rather then go through all the trouble of getting dressed after my shower, I just went into the bank without so much as a towel.  Deposited my check, and off I went to the rest of my errands for the day.

It was liberating, and not all awkward.

Okay, so I should probably also point out that my phone is one of the new Android based pieces of iPhone death, and as such, I can deposit checks by simply logging into my account, snapping the front and back of the check, and hitting send.  The bank does the rest, and the money's in my account before I've even left the house, or in this case, my bedroom.  Gotta tell you, it was awful convenient!

He wasn't perfect ... but he was perfect for me.

As to predictions ...

... I have an unerring record with those.  Which is why I can relate to the name Cassandra so well.  But for those of you watching, who probably don't even know who Cassandra is, go look it up, and don't blame me when I turn out to be right.  Unlike Harold "The world is going to end on May 21st 2011" Camping.  Yeah, oops!  He missed ... AGAIN!  Just like I predicted he would.