Quiet day, new focus

Thank you for the support in the last post.


Mother's Day grief for me is not & has never been about not receiving cards or gifts.  Nor has it been not wanting others to celebrate it.  I'm not offended by it.   It is simply the deep ache of knowing that i will never be called "mama" & now the thought - i'll never be called "nana" either.  It has always been a difficult day for me as well, as i find it very difficult to desire to honor my own mother.  I've sat in too many services where the wonderful & selfless acts of our mothers is extolled, as well as "God choosing the perfect mother for you."  Between the two - desire to be a mama but knowing i never will be & the feeling that i don't have one & never did, it is just a not fun day.


Pamela of another blog wrote a guest post here:  A Non-Mother's Day.  As always (she's guest posted here several times), what i find most distressing & telling is the many ugly comments which follow. (Tho, to be honest, these comments have many more replies from people who understand than those who don't.  Some of her guest posts in the past have been filled with really ugly responses to her sadness.)  


In case there is any misunderstanding, my sadness is not wanting to remove the honor from other women, or being offended that others have this honor, but simply that God will not "bless" us with children & the sadness that i will never have that joy.  (Please, if you are visiting, don't tell me i could "just adopt."  We have been down that road as far as we can & we are not able.  There are reasons we can not; that is not an easy road.)
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Even as i was in shock about the Trooper, i knew that something would work out.  It just is that our budget is rather tight right now & the thought of additional cost of repairs or replacing it - the idea that it wasn't good for much more than scrap - overwhelmed me.  Frank fact is that my body doesn't handle stress at all right now, & it flattened me.  All week long i've struggled with the aftermath of that stress.


Honestly, after the first thought of "We can't put more money into this vehicle than it is worth" i realized that it might be worth it to put in the repairs.  We won't be able to replace the car for less than a couple of thousand.  If that amount would keep the Trooper going for us for another 4 years or so, it would be worth it.  But it would also be a gamble that something else bad didn't happen to it & need even MORE money thrown at it.

The timing has worked out well, ultimately.  Duane has long wanted a Jeep.  We've debated the pros & cons of this.   


Duane decided to go see our neighbor who has a Jeep Wrangler.  His granddaughter has been driving it for a couple of years, but is soon to go to college.  Turns out that he had just put it up for sale a couple of days before.  Now, personally, i don't think this is our best solution.  But i think it is a "good enough" solution for now.  The Jeep is a '95 & is an automatic transmission (i haven't any regard for automatics, whatsoever.)  Its engine isn't all that strong.  It is a 4 cylinder & doesn't go over 60 MPH, tho we won't use it for highway driving, so that's not an issue.  But it wouldn't be able to tow much (because it hasn't room to haul stuff we eventually would want a trailer).  And, of course, it will be cash out of pocket.   (I'm kind of sad to see that money go to a vehicle when i'd much rather put it toward remodeling the upstairs bath.)


However, it will give us a vehicle that we can drive.  It is 4WD, so we don't have to worry about that.  And, in my mind, it will give us the chance to see if we really want a Jeep or if the idea is better than the reality.  If we find that it is what we really want, eventually (in a few years) we can replace it with a more powerful, more useful vehicle.  


What is funny, we've known for some time that a large portion of the vehicles up here are Jeeps.  But for the past couple of days it has seemed that 50% of what we see on the road are Jeeps (this IS an exaggeration) & that half of those are Wranglers. 


Dear friends Jessica & Jerry - (please go visit her new blog His Scribe, she's writing about their love story & about her cats; i love her stories) have a ritual about "snug bugs" instead of "slug bugs" (Jes, you need to write about this).  



Duane said, "We've got to come up with a rhyme for Jeep to use when we see them."


Until we started reviewing such words. We came up with asleep, beep, bleep, cheep, cheap, creep, deep, eep (a form of "eek"), heap, keep, leap, peep, Philip, reap, seep, sheep, sleep, steep, VIP (as in "veep"), weep, none of which he liked.  I was very tired & rather silly & kept saying "EEP!  A JEEP!" & laughing myself silly (you had to be there, oh, no even that wasn't much help because Duane didn't find it funny at all).  Duane was sorry he started this.  I've now been banned on rhyming words with Jeep on threat of having to walk home.  :(


Duane is also sorry he suggested the name "Philip" (pronounced in the French manner of "fileep") as he does NOT want that the name of his Jeep.  (I think it is too late.)  LMSS (laughing myself silly)
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The CFIDS Association recently published an article about handling fatigue/energy expenditure.   The suggestion was to picture your energy like a bowl of polished rocks & that when you used the energy, it was transferred out of the bowl & no longer available.  I think they had another suggestion, a possible visualization, as well.


Well, i've decided not to have it be theoretical.  I took $6 in quarters & literally have transferred them away as i spend my time.  I did it yesterday.  Some things "cost" more than others.  I probably won't keep doing this literally for too long, but for now it is a good daily reminder of how i spend my time & energy.  


That said, Duane & i need to clean out/organize the garage today.  That will probably use most of my $6!
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Oh, P.S. - Blogger won't keep me signed in & nothing i do has changed that.  At some places i've had no trouble posting comments, but the blogs with multiple choices for sign in won't post my comments & they simply disappear into the ether.  For those blogs i can only comment as "guest" or "anonymous" & if anonymous is not allowed, i can't post at all.  Just letting you know.  If i used to comment at your site & am not doing it now, this might be why.  Or if i forget to sign the anonymous post, it might have been me.  :p




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