(I'm sleeping again, thank God, but it will be a while before i catch up.)
DIY Network is having "a chance to win 100,000 in cash" to create the kitchen/bath "you've always dreamed of!" You can enter once a day from now until 20 November.
Shoot, with $100,000 in cash we could do much more than just a kitchen or bath. We could remodel the upstairs bath so it will be a full bath. AND we could add on to the back of the house so that we'd have a full master suite upstairs (with a full bath & closet! our room currently has no closet) AND under that expansion build a complete kitchen.
It is only a dream, of course. And, with no children in this house it isn't really necessary. If we ever have kids it would be a good thing to have, that extra room. And if this sounds like i'm not content, far from it! We both love Sugarbear, tho we'd really like to have a full bath upstairs. We do plan to expand the upstairs bath eventually. We can probably do it for between $5,000 -8,000 'cause i don't need top of the line, expensive, contemporary things. Just the very basics. We might even be able to do it cheaper. And the labor, of course, will be Duane & me & volunteers. (Don't know if we'll have any, except deconstruct! Folks seem to like that.)
A couple of weeks ago i read on a Chronic Fatigue forum where a doc was recommending pacing yourself. Sounds good, right? His recommendation was 10 minutes up doing things & 15 minutes lying flat/resting to recover. That discouraged me quite a bit. Ten minutes up usually only gives me time to start something. I don't want to start something & then have to take a 15 minute rest. The whole idea is antithetical to the way i work.
So, for a while i didn't do much of anything at all. Of course, last week i was recovering from a cold.
I don't think i'm that limited. I think i could manage 45 minutes or an hour up with half an hour rest. But to make myself do it, i'll be living by timers for a while.
I've mentioned Sara Frankl (who goes by Gitz) quite often. Part of the reason is she is the only blog i read of someone more disabled than i. (Most of the blogs i read are folks who are very busy & active.) I've mentioned before that a number of the comments call her "inspirational." And she is, but i don't really like that term. It has a tinge of saying someone is . . . i don't know, beyond human. Sara is very human, but she handles her limitations & disability with much grace, & that does inspire awe within me. I struggle with it so very much. I feel sorry for myself far too often, tho i do fight that tendency. Her post today on Goals resonated with me quite a lot.
She spoke of limitations & feelings to which i can relate. Particularly about not knowing from one day to another how she will be feeling & having trouble making commitments. Also feeling like she was undependable/irresponsible if she were unable to carry thru. I do so relate to these feelings. These days Sara is home bound & unable to go out at all.
I'm feeling unreliable for committing to doing massages. I often do not know from one day to the next if i will be well enough to do a massage that requires me to take equipment (called "out call"). For the past 2 weeks i have turned down massage from Daniel (he owns "Mountain Mobile Massage") as i knew i would not be well enough to work. But often i commit to work & then struggle to do it.
The work i did a few weeks ago where i carried my own equipment was quite a wake up call. I used to do that, & on a fairly frequent basis. I had a friend where i was doing massage in her home usually about twice a month & i carried all that equipment back & forth. Duane would occasionally load the car for me, but usually i did it myself. And didn't really give it a second thought. Now, Duane almost always goes with me to carry the equipment, & when he didn't go with me recently i find that it is unthinkable that i do it myself. I can't.
I don't know why it is that i can work in my office for a few hours a week anyway, but that going on out calls, even if i don't carry the equipment, wears me out so. I honestly think it is largely psychological, but i don't know how to get over it.
Sara's post yesterday (i think it was called Crazy Love) was inspirational, & yet it disturbed me at some level, as well. It may be that i did not read what she actually wrote or intended, but it was colored by my biases & preconceptions. I honor & revere Sara a great deal for the faith she has in God & managing her multitude of medical issues & restrictions. (She can no longer open a window or go out of doors! I would find that so very hard.) But i also have some trouble with the frequent Christian admonition that you have to give up everything - including all personality - to truly belong to God. There are parts of that that i can accept, but other parts that i just feel are wrong on so many levels.
I'm sure there are plenty of folks who will disagree with me. But come on! We were created with very individual personalities, talents, & gifts. From the earliest age this is apparent. Talk to any mama & she will tell you that her child showed unique personality traces from birth if not before. Talk to anyone who works with very small children or any mama who has had more than one & they will tell you how apparent it is early on that children are unique & individual.
Did John Locke have children? I think he couldn't have, or was not around them at a young age. Otherwise he would have known how ridiculous his Tabula Rasa theory is in reality. Did B.F. Skinner have children? (Oh, i see he did.) His focus on environment/nurture over nature was sadly lacking in the real world.
It seems to me that if God created us to be such individuals he would not call us to supress the very things that make us unique. I believe he uses individuality. And the Bible itself says we are not all called to be the eye or the ear, that a body needs many parts & functions.
Anyway, i've been struggling & discouraged by realiazing how much more limited i am than i was previously. And wondering where to go with this. But tomorrow is a new day & every day i have the opportunity to make a difference, no matter how small.
This week my goal is to actually prepare meals for us, even if they are very simple & basic.
I was just laughing my head off a few minutes ago. We are out of suet for the birds currently. I'd just put out a mix of nuts/peanuts/sunflower seeds for the squirrels & a couple of jays wanted in. The squirrel chased them off over & over. If they landed on the railing he went after them. If they went in the tree he chased them there too. It was so funny, i wish i had a vid of it. Finally the squirrel took his nut elsewhere & the jays had a chance to get what they wanted.
The high today was 55F. There is still a large chunk of ice in the dish i have out for the squirrels & birds, but it has melted some.
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3 comments:
With that amount of money I could remodel my home , garden and church!
Don 't have that kind of luck.
May the lord lift up your spirits Kathryn.
He is the glory and the lifter of your head.
You know, the oddest thing happened as I was reading your post, Kathryn. I was suddenly overcome with an urge to run off and do a bunch of things on my to do list right then. I mean really, I had to almost fight to keep my butt parked in the chair, and not run off to (I kid you not) clean one of the bathrooms.
It caught me off guard, and I wondered, "What in the world is that response about? The bathroom is still going to be there when I'm done reading this, and done replying." and I realized it was my emotional response to reading about how much narrower the focus of your life has become. That it was such a deeply frightening concept to me that I wanted to run off and do, and prove that I could!
Which leads me to, oh heavens, how difficult it must be for you. You have those exact feelings all the time, don't you? It was a small flash of true empathy, Kathryn, but I really do think for just a moment, I felt how...confining, almost suffocating it must be to battle physical limitations. Empathy, vs. sympathy because, and I'm positive I have not mentioned this to you, but while recovering from a car accident many years ago, I spent five months in a wheel chair (just having bones heal, nothing terribly alarming).
I don't have any words of wisdom, or great advice. You know that I do not believe that people being ill is the direct will of any force, just a sign of how fragile our bodies are, and how much we take for granted. When it comes to belief, I think we are all stretching so hard to understand something so much bigger than we are, and that the answers we have reached are imperfect, and influenced by much that has little to do with that which we are tying to touch.
When people use the word, "inspirational" I think they really mean admirable. Recognizing something they admire, and do not think they could also achieve in that instance. Part of the reason I think "inspirational" is not the correct word choice. So often it seems the person is saying, "You just made me look at my own flaws, and you exceed my abilities in ways I can't imagine. I'm also suddenly very grateful for how well my body works at present."
The closer we come to very core truths, our deepest feelings, I think the less likely we are to express them eloquently.
As I said, I have no advice today. I'm thinking about your problem, and no solution springs to my mind. So I thought I would simply settle for saying, you are being thought of, and about.
I think one of the hardest things in life to accept in answer to "Why did this happen?" is that sometimes there isn't a satisfying answer. Sometimes there really isn't an answer, an explanation. Sometimes things just are...and I think assigning that to God is...understandable, but not accurate.
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