just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive...... just a bit overwhelmed of late.  More soon, I promise.

“I am ill at these numbers”

7 days… 168 hours… 10,080 seconds….

That how long I’ve been trying to adapt to a whole new lifestyle.

No, I’m not gay now [not that there’s anything wrong with that].   I found out last Monday that I have Type 2 Diabetes.    Yep, lucky me, I get to take medicine 3x a day and poke my finger 4x.      Aren’t you jealous?

I blame my knee injury two years ago.    I was heavy before my accident, but I had started going to Curves 2 or 3 times a week in the hopes of losing weight.     I had only been going for about 6 weeks [I used my work bonus to pay for 6 months worth] when my knee got destroyed.      I was on crutches for 3 months and could barely walk for about 5 months after that.      The pound piled on—and the comfort eating too.      I tried, but…… well, the spirit was as weak as the flesh, to paraphrase something.

And it’s my weight that has pushed me into this newest ailment/challenge.      I must eat properly, take my meds and exercise—I have no choice.       I don’t.

The past week has been spent processing all of this—and going thru chocolate withdrawal.      I’ve had to struggle my way through the initial nausea and other side effects.   It seems to be getting better, so I’ll just grit my teeth and keep on keeping on.

I’ve had to overcome my heebee jeebies at sticking a pin in my finger to test my blood’s glucose levels 3—4 times a day.    [Those lancets hurt like a mo-fo.]

I’ll have to attend classes on nutrition and the like so I know what choices to make when it comes to meals.

Yeah—it’s fun times ahead for me.

On the one hand I keep thinking “How much more crap am I expected to deal with?”  

BUT

—on the other I do know it could be so much worse.

So, I will keep trying to see the good in everything—and find the funny.    But I may have my off days.

More sinned against than sinning ~ King Lear

One rite of passage in my Catholic youth was going to confession for the first time.



Very scary…


Sister took our class over to the empty darkened church with its shadowy secrets and pools of multi-colored light.    We were then told to line up outside the confessional, so many on either side of the little grouping of three doors.    Father N. would then walk very seriously and very piously across the sanctuary to take his place in the middle section—sending shivers through our little 7-year-old souls.    One by one, we took our turns going into the little enclosed space to wait for that screen to slide back so we could tell the priest all of the things we had done wrong.


Very, very scary…


I remember one poor girl being so freaked out by the prospect that first time that she peed all over the church floor.


As this whole ritual was repeated on a regular basis during my school years, I would find myself mentally timing how long my classmates spent in that little room.    Boy, So&So must be REALLY bad.


My biggest issue was “I fought with my brothers X number of times.”    Of course, I wanted to tell him that they usually started it, but that wasn’t part of the game.


You’d give your little litany of wrongs and then get absolution and penance from the priest. It was usually “Say 3 Hail Mary’s and 1 Act of Contrition.”    [Nowadays, I would be hard pressed to remember the words to either of those.    I'd also be tempted to add "And call me in the morning."   Don't ask me why....]


It seems like such an odd practice doesn’t it?     I remember the whole explanation of sin in our Baltimore Catechisms [and, why did Baltimore get a catechism named after it by the way?].     The whole breakdown of venial sins and mortal sins—complete with illustrations of milk bottles filled to certain points.    When I played "Sister" in Christopher Durang's Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, her riff on all of this was my favorite part.

One of my teachers actually said that a mortal sin would be to steal $5.00 from a poor man, while stealing it from a rich man was a venial sin.    Seriously?    Ballsy little kid that I was, I remember blurting out “But isn’t stealing stealing no matter who you take it from?”   [That was before I knew about the IRS and our tax system]


And, I have to admit that the whole idea of original sin just never worked for me.   How could an innocent newborn have sin?




And now we’ve come to this.
For a mere $1.99 you can receive absolution via your iPhone.    Really, I’m not shitting you. And the Church has approved it too.


Who said there are no more miracles…..

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind..."

Snow and ice, ice and snow;

It’s everywhere I look and everywhere I go.

Piled high—a story at least,

No one seems able to tame this beast.

Cars covered with ugly salt stains—

Not washed away by the sleety rains.

We shovel and dig until we ache,

But we can’t seem to get a break.

Driving on roads that are often slick

Can be a death-defying trick.

A NASCAR driver I am not—and

I really want to keep the limbs that I’ve got.

Eight storms since the start of this year—

Trust me, we’ve had it up to here.

Of winter, we are sincerely sick—

We want to give its ass a swift kick.

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

that's all I've got for now.....

And seem a saint when most I play the devil…

—or “the Religious Wrong”

I almost had an accident on my way to work this morning. I had to go get blood work done, so I was driving a route that I don’t normally take. And I passed by a local church that leans toward the fundamentalist side of things…

Now, it isn’t a “talking in tongues, here comes the rapture” kind of church to my knowledge, but they’re Jerry Falwellesque in philosophy. And I’m not being critical here, I’m just trying to set the scene.

 

So, anywho…

As I drive past this establishment, I notice the sign out front:

“The bible that Jesus read.”

Um,… uh,… what?

Now, I freely admit that I have not darkened the door of any church in close to 20 years. Life circumstances and all that. I was raised Catholic and attended a Baptist church for a bit, but I have become disillusioned by formal religion. Their attitudes towards gays and the like doesn’t jive with the whole “all-loving God” thing. All this is to show that I know a little bit about religions….

So, anywho…

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the Bible written well after Jesus’ death?

… and to be boy eternal… ~ The Winter’s Tale

My inner 12-year-old boy seems to be breaking free more and more frequently these days.

Just within the past month I have found myself giggling as I encountered the following names:

                Anita Head

                Dick Johnson

                Ms. Sackrider

Why?   Why do I go instantly into Beavis and Butthead mode at these?

And can anyone explain my chuckles at the wording of an ad on Facebook for a dating site for those of us over 50:

                “Our mature male members….”

There have been others, but I can’t remember them now…   And I am not alone in this; I have several co-workers—doctors no less—who are right there with me in these giggle fests.    Of course, the fact that I feel compelled to share these gems with them is another frightening thing.     I have raised children, people.   I am a grandmother—I am supposed to have decorum.

I need help.