A Change in Attitude

Years ago there was a card out that said something like:

I hate my hair, i hate my nose, i hate my arms, 

i hate my lips, i hate my ribs, i hate my thighs, i hate my shins, 

i hate my eyebrows, i hate my teeth, i hate my skin, i hate my hips . . . 

If i could just lose 10 pounds i'd be perfect!

This, of course, is a typical American attitude!  If that person lost 10 pounds, or 20 or 50, they probably still would not be content.  There are a lot of things about my life currently that i don't like.  Several of them are also things over which i have no control.  So i need to change my attitude, but i'm really struggling with that.  

I think i need to re-read Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and Mister God, This is Anna by Fynn for good measure, too. Probably go back and review some of the things Gitz (Sara) wrote, too.  I struggle with what Sara wrote, sometimes, tho.  Her experience was just so outside my own experience and her attitude is beyond what i think i could expect.  In fact, sometimes all her writing does is put me to shame for my lack of faith and acceptance.   

Attitude is a choice, and i need to be making better choices, but it is a challenge, sometimes.  

If you are reading this, have you struggled with this?  What did you do?  Was it successful?

Wishing blessings on your day. 


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Wednesday

We are in OC right now.  There is a storm coming this weekend, but i hope it holds off until we get home. 

It has been a couple of weeks since we had snow.  It was warm in the meantime, and then it rained.  But here is a look at some previous opportunities we've had to take pics near home.  

On our way off the mountain, not far from Angeles Oaks.

San Gorgonio, from the top of the pass, Onyx Summit. 

Sugarloaf Mountain.  

This pic is just down the street from us.  We don't have a good view of it from Sugarbear.

I think this is Snow Summit.  Bear Mountain is to the right.

San Gorgonio again, with clouds and the wind blowing.

(Funny, Blogger seems to give me whatever font it feels like at the moment.  I don't mind - as long as it is NOT Times New Roman!)

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Not Christmas

We usually buy at least one ornament a year, and i generally make a couple too.  This year that didn't happen (and this year we never got around to putting ornaments on the tree).  However, we didn't need to purchase any.  We were given several lovely ornaments.  

From dear Merrilee at church.

From Carol and Candice at my OC knit group.

From Melissa, also of the OC knit group.

From my dear friend Cindy.  This is olive wood from the Holy Land.

(I got this after our tree was down, so i took the pic in the juniper bushes.)

This is from Lori at work.  It is a bookmark, but i tend to lose those.

I think it will look lovely as an ornament.  

(Also after the tree was down.)

From N and our family of "rent-a-kids."

(Also after the tree was down, this is in the pinion pine outside our bedroom.)

From dear Olivia.  

It is a keychain, but i'll love it on my tree.

I've always been a huge Snoopy fan.

Isn't this cunning?  Duane's cousin Sheree made it from 

wine corks, nails, pipe cleaners and beads.  

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Dieting - again

I really hate my weight.  I also think that maybe, maybe i wouldn't be so tired if i was 30 or 50 pounds lighter.  I did drop 30 pounds on the hCG diet a couple of years ago, but with my thyroid a mess, i gained most of it back. However, i've been taking thyroid supplement for a year now, and i've seen a couple of positive changes, so i hope this time to keep it off. 

Three weeks ago i started the Ketogenic diet - eating mostly fat.  It is very successful for people with a lot of weight to lose, and also for certain conditions.  People with epileptic seizures are sometimes able to control that with this diet, and i've a friend with Type I diabetes who is able to control the illness with this diet alone.  

The idea behind it is that our bodies use what is easiest - glucose.  When eating carbs and sugar, that is what they utilize.  This removes almost all carbs from the diet, also most protein (because our bodies can convert protein to glucose).  The idea is that when your body makes the transformation, then you will be burning fat (ketones) instead of carbs.  

My body hasn't made the transformation yet. I didn't do extremely low carbs (below 5% of the diet) for the first couple of weeks.  This may have been beneficial as i've read that doing it too suddenly can cause thyroid problems.  I've been doing really low carbs (but still 6-9% - i'm having a hard time getting lower than that) for about 4 days.  I'm told that it can take 3-4 weeks before your body makes this change in metabolism.

In the meantime, i'm pretty exhausted.  Just showering used most of my energy yesterday.  The house is a mess and i haven't the energy to do anything about it.  I'm going to push on, however for two reasons:

1  I really, really want to lose weight

2.  I have high hopes that this could give me more energy

 I don't want to give up just as things are nearing the turning point!  I may still have 3 weeks or so to go, as i didn't do the very low carb until now.  I took off 5 pounds very quickly early on, but i'm told this is all water weight.  I plateaued for a week or so, and now i'm slowly beginning to drop again.  So far my total is 8.5 pounds.  Weird thing, tho.  My clothes don't fit much differently.  Still, i'm on my way!  


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Super Bowl Sunday

I'm not much of a football fan (or any other sport).  Duane's family are all Green Bay fans as his mama grew up just outside of Green Bay.  So i enjoy the game as much as any.  I understand the basic rules and when to cheer and cat-call.  

Yesterday Duane was at the bank and the young man who was his teller asked who he favored for the Super Bowl.  

"Green Bay," Duane replied, "But the odds are bad."  

The teller appreciated his wit, but the lady behind him, not realizing who is playing this Bowl was surprised.  "Green Bay is playing?" she asked.  Of course, they are not, which is why the odds are so bad.  This game is the 49ers and the Ravens.

Considering i'm not much of a sports fan, i view the Super Bowl a family holiday much like Christmas or Thanksgiving.  It is a time to get together with friends and family and have fun.  A few years ago we stayed home and i had a meltdown because we were "suppose" to be with people.  But a couple of attempts to go to the party with his family have proven to me that the fun is all anticipated but not realized.

It is a four-hour round trip to his step-brother's house where the friends and family gather.  And i never have anyone to talk to while there.  The kids are off pursuing their own interests and the sisters-in-law and cousins wives and aunts all have their own history.  And they talk about kids a lot, so i can't join in.  They aren't mean to me, they try to be nice, but it just doesn't work.  It isn't unusual for me to try to join their group and have them stop talking.  I don't think they are talking about me, but private things between them and i don't belong.  In being there for about 4 hours total, i probably have 15 minutes of real conversation.

So, i've decided to "give up."  I told Duane whatever he wants to do today, we will do.  If he wanted to join the friends and family, i'd go.  If he wanted to create a group, we would.  Whatever..

I think we are staying home.  So be it.  We don't have any allegiance in this game, anyway.  Although, to me it isn't the game so much as being with folks.  

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The New Office

I never posted pics of the new office.

Duane came and took these for me, then composed the various shots into an expanded panoramic view.  Thus, the results look a little bigger than they actually are.

The color of the walls doesn't really show up here.  It is a light sage green.  The far right of the top pic comes the closest.

This was not at all my vision of how i wanted the room to be.  I wanted it to be blue and white with some greens and purples mixed in so that it was rather a flower-garden, relaxing effect.  However, this turned out elegant and it does "match" the rest of the office (which i was told was a requirement.)  I wasn't thrilled to paint all my white furniture black, but it turned out well.


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A New Month!

My posts have been too long - going to try writing shorter ones more often, at least for a while.

I just finished the last of the Harry Potter series today (again).  I know some folks never re-read books, but i love doing that.  For me it is like visiting an old friend.

I always experience a sense of loss when it is over.  Keep going!  What happens next?  We're old friends, i want to hear more!

I really like the Harry Potter series.  It has so much in it that i find attractive in writing.  Rowling does a very good job.  The one flaw that i see in it is that Riddle/Voldemort is entirely, purely evil.  It makes him a good bad guy, but most folks are a combination of good and bad.  Few people are purely, entirely evil.  

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Welcome, New Year

Oh, the times they are a changing. 

A lot has happened.  I've not managed it all that well.  

Duane's company is struggling and they have let people go.  When this happened before, Duane covered 5 days a week for about 9 months.  In those days we went down on Monday, came home Wednesday.  Then he went back for Thursday, Friday.  He's been worried they would ask him to cover 5 days again.  However, we now go down together Tuesday, Wednesday and come home Thursday.  To try and cover the week would create a number of problems for us.

But his boss just asked him to come earlier Tuesday, which we can do, and stay later Thursday.  This one is a bit harder for me.  Duane says "it's just a few more hours." That is true.  However, i've been pushing myself to the limit the way we've been doing it.  I found out over Christmas, when we were there for an extra day, just how greatly this depletes me.  Plus, if i have to be there the extra afternoon anyway, i think i'll expand my hours at work.  The result of this, however, is that i may have to change the schedule in other ways.  Currently, in order not to burn out, i've been working 6 weeks and taking the 7th off.  It is very possible i may have to start working 4 weeks and taking the 5th off.  We'll see.

This week we stayed until Friday morning and left this AM around 7.  I didn't want to do it that way, but we'd had a storm last night and decided it would be safer not to travel those roads at night.  This may not seem like a big change to Duane, but i'm afraid i find it to be.  I'm in much more pain tonight, and doing this may drive me closer to non-functioning.  But it is important to do this and not to complain because i need to support Duane and not add more to his stress.

I've been seeing a therapist from time to time.  He said that if i choose to see this as a gift i'm giving Duane rather than something to endure or force myself thru, it could help with my attitude and the way my body responds.

Duane's brother and his new wife and step son were suppose to come visit in December and help trim our tree.  They weren't able to come.  The tree never got finished.  Then they were suppose to come last weekend.  They didn't come.  They didn't let us know until Saturday morning, and i didn't manage that very well.

I've written of it before, but i have a long history of people i care for not making much of an effort to carry thru plans.  I have story after story after story - that i won't bother the writing of.  

For many years i wanted to believe that "friends are the family you choose for yourself." I wasn't very happy in my own family and wanted another.  I believed i would have children and husband and create this.  Well, the children didn't happen.  I've tried thru my years to collect friends i could consider family.  What i've found is that i may see them that way, but the feeling is not mutual.  My expectations have evidently not been reasonable.  The pain behind this is much more than i want to put down.  However, i don't have a very good reaction sometimes when these disappointments come.  I'm always hurt but sometimes i can handle it better than others.  

Saturday was a "not handle it well" day.  I leaked all day long.  However, i think this disappointment was a deeper one.  You see, when Duane's brother got married, he said, "If we can't have our own, i'll just steal Sam's kid."  Twice making plans with us and then finding that they just don't have time seems to set a pattern that i can foresee continuing in the future.  I don't think we'll be able to borrow this kid often.  Too many other things will come up and, in spite of the best intentions, it just won't happen.  We will be shunted aside to the periphery of the child's life.  He'll be glad to see us when he does, but that won't be often and we won't develop a real relationship with him.  

And so, yes, i'm crushed and i was broken most of the day.

But a new day keeps coming with its new blessings.

I'm thankful Duane's work will continue, at least for now, and that they are not asking him to be there on Monday or Friday.


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Welcome To Our World

Songwriters: Rice, Chris, Michael W. Smith?

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child
Welcome Holy Child

Hope that you don't mind our manger
How I wish we would have known
But long awaited Holy Stranger
Make yourself at home
Please make yourself at home

Bring your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
World now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome to our world
Welcome to our world

Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born
Unto us is born

So wrap our injured flesh around
You Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Perfect Son of God
Welcome to our world

I tried to add a vid - having some problems with it.  The address is:  Michael W. Smith Welcome to Our World

Another month passed with little said from me. 

We had much of the family here for Thanksgiving, tho for the actual meal we go to Duane's Uncle's house. But people stay here to sleep, and of course there are other meals to be made.  Because i had not been up and around with my foot much, the house needed some major work.  It was quite a challenge to get it done, particularly the laundry.

Olivia was suppose to come help with making food and clean up.  I cried when she called and could not come, largely because i was in a lot of pain with the funny way i've been walking.  But i called another friend,  Debi.  She came over and helped with the cooking - chopping and such.  We made GF stuffing/dressing (what Duane said he'd miss the most in a Thanksgiving meal), and a tuna-corn-jalapeño dip, a Mexican Lasagna, and the crust for pumpkin pies (made from ginger snaps).  I had other things to do on my list; they didn't get done, but it didn't matter in the long run.  The following day i was able to do a lot of clean up in the rest of the house and make the pumpkin pies and Kimmy came and cleaned the kitchen for me. Blessings on my dear friends who help.  

We had Duane's parents on Wed. night;  Duane's parents plus my sis Elsa and her friend Frye on Thur. night; Duane's parents plus my sis Elsa and her friend Frye plus Duane's brother Sam and his new wife Loren and stepson Zane plus our dear friends J & J on Fri. night.  Saturday night we thought J & J would still be with us, but everyone was gone.  

Sunday i spent all day in bed and by the end of the day i had a sore throat.  Up until that time i was very pleased with how i'd been doing.  I had a bit of a "crash" on Friday PM, and rested a while, but otherwise seemed to do pretty well.  

The cold hasn't been bad, but exhausting.  I've spent most of the time in bed, which i think was good for my foot, too.  I took a lot of things trying to boost my immune system, but i also strongly agree with this post by Sarah Pope:  Traditional Remedies for Childhood Illnesses. The short version of this:  let it run its course without intervention.  I can say, it isn't easy !  I did this when i had the flu in June, too.  When you are feeling poorly, time becomes very elastic and stretches out to infinity.  

I seemed to be very emotional with this cold, too, and did a fair amount of crying.  I discovered that crying clears the sinuses very well !  I cried over Sarah's post when she said:  

I find that holding your child is the best home remedy for fever.  When they are feverish, they want to be with you.  Put on a light robe and crash on the couch with your child and hold her for hours if you need to . . . 

She is so very right !  I remember the one thing i really wanted when i was sick as a child was someone just to be there, to help those long, elastic hours to pass.  I don't remember wanting my mother so much - by then i knew better, but i did want someone to be there.  My mother tended to panic and take us to the doc for antibiotics right away, and then pretty much (in my memory) we were on our own until we got better.  

I got off her roller-coaster when i was 10 or 11.  I refused to be taken to the doctor.  After that, i think she tended to treat me as if any illness i had was psychosomatic.  I wouldn't play her game anymore, so obviously i wasn't sick !  I think my mother was not too far from Munchhausen's by Proxy.  She wasn't that far gone, but it wouldn't have taken much for her to arrive.  My mother preferred a doc who gave antibiotics for everything, and when one in the family had something (they claimed Elsa had strep multiple times) everyone in the family was given antibiotics.  I had prophylactic antibiotics at least 5 times before i began refusing them.  

I do remember her coming in my room once when i was down with really killer cramps.  I must have been about 14.  I was shocked when she sat down by the bed.  What i had always desired!  Until she opened her mouth.  

"Why is it that all the girls at church consider you stuck-up?" she asked me.

"What?"

"I was telling Mrs. B how that you're not very involved and don't have friends in your Sunday school class and she said they don't want to be your friends because you are so stuck up."

I don't remember how the conversation went from there, but i have to say that the cruelty of saying this to an extremely timid and shy child, who wanted friends but didn't know how to make them, was one of the worst blows my mother ever delivered.  

There was a reason i didn't desire to be near my mother at any time, but particularly when i was ill.

Of course, i believed then that when i had my own children i could "do it right."  I knew i would love, and hug, and "be there" for my own children.  I think i believed that this would heal something inside of me, too.  I think a lot of people believe this about their children, and so go on to damage those children, too, though not always in the same way.  I think if i'd had children young, as i so deeply desired, i probably would have been an unhealthy mama.  I wouldn't have wanted to, but i don't think i had the skills to by-pass it.  I do believe that if our children (who would be 6-1/2, 4, and 3-1/2 now) had lived, i could be an emotionally healthy mother.  And i think doing for them what couldn't be done for me would help heal some of that hurt.  But that is neither here nor there.

Thinking this through made something even clearer to me.  

I lived with, my sisters did too, the knowledge each and every day that i was a disappointment to my mother.  She did the same with all three of us - comparing us unfavorably to someone else.  She always asked why i couldn't be like or have the grades of or do as well as Brenda or Lisa or Laurie or any other child she saw who had the attributes she desired for me.  Some of those comparisons were particularly cruel as the people she chose were the very ones who tormented me the most (although, to give her credit, i'm sure she was not aware of this).  

Lisa, in particular, was someone who said ugly, hateful things to me at school and she ran in the popular chick clique.  Lisa moved into our neighborhood and my mother couldn't understand why i wasn't good friends with this delightful girl.  

I frequently said to myself (i think my sisters did the same), "I wish she WAS your daughter."  I think i even said this to her once and was punished for it.

Sometime in my 20s i asked my mother why she would compare me so severely to these girls, my mother replied in surprise, "Why you were so much smarter than they were.  I couldn't understand why they had (the grades, the friends, the memory ability, etc.) when you didn't."  So, she meant well.

Still, i lived each and every day knowing that i was not the child my mother wanted, and it became clear to me very early on that i never could be.  I even came to the epiphany at age 17 that the problem really was not me.  It was them and their expectations.  I wasn't really able to hold on to that, though.  I still had 6 months i had to live with them.  For some people that realization would have helped them hold on, but for me it was a crazy-making thought.  Besides, my parents were quite invested in me being a black sheep by then, for other alternatives would have made our family dynamics and their part of it public.  They had a huge vested interest in ours being the "happy family" and me being the trouble-maker.

Why does this matter?  It was long, long ago.  

There are times when i want to beat myself up for feeling this way.  Worthless, useless reaction.

I think some people are of the blithe, savior faire, placid demeanor to go through life unaffected by this.  I've known some people who are just like that.  Nothing seems to rattle them or to break their confidence of their place in the world.  I honestly think it is a personality thing.  Much is said about nature vs. nurture, but i do believe that much of that comes down to personality.  Some people have a staid calmness about them and handle good or bad nurture.  It seems to be their nature to do so.  Other people can seem to be ruined by either good or bad nurture.  

I think that i could have been taught (by someone who knows and understands themselves) to handle life's ups and downs better.  My parents did not have those skills.  But even if i had been taught how to handle those things, my personality/nature would be still such that i would tend to react in a certain way, but i might have better tools.  

So, the story matters because each and every day i fight with an inborn weed that tells me i'm not wanted.  I feel it in most of the groups to which i belong, Facebook, girlfriends, knit groups, church, family.  I have to fight that what my inside tells me is not accurate (and largely i believe it is not).  

I am trying to make headway against this.  I posted at the List blog Don Miguel Ruiz's Four Agreements.  In a nutshell they are:  Speak with integrity.  Don't take anything personally.  Don't make assumptions.  Always do your best.  I do pretty well with the first and fourth, but the second and third are a struggle for me.  As i learn to make headway with these, i think i will better manage being "blithe, savior faire, placid" - to be myself and less affected by the feeling that no one wants me.



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