Monthly Archives: December 2012

Dec 29 2012
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reduce, renew

Cleaner

On January 3, the next stage of Clean in ’14 begins. In 2012, Monday breakfast through Friday breakfast were clean and Friday lunch through Sunday dinner were fair game.

This year, all meals Sunday breakfast through Friday breakfast are clean. In 2014, all but one day of the week will be clean.

Clean (to me) simply means as unprocessed, whole and organic as possible.

In addition, we’ll continue to move to a more plant-based diet. This year, I’m also aiming to sneak in one vegan meal a week.  ‘Sneak’ because its just easier with my handsome counterpart. As learned with the introduction of tofu, he will eat almost anything in front of him and it’s best to not complicate that with a bunch of preparatory conversation about alternative food.

I’ve never (knowingly) cooked an animal-free meal and I’m excited to decrease both meat and animal products in my diet. Inspirations have come from this blog and this athlete’s semi-vegan diet. Though it’s doubtful I’ll ever be categorized as a veg-anything, I do envision a heavily plant-based diet down the road.

And I’m sure as I sneak more tofu into the menu at home, as TB will no doubt be sneaking out more for burgers. Pick your battles. He drinks significantly less Diet Coke today than he did six months ago. That’s a check in the win column.

Dec 21 2012
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cancer

Tipping Point

The biopsy confirmed that the pea-sized lump S discovered last week is cancer.

Fuck.

WHY couldn’t it be harmless?

I want to be positive. I want to be hopeful. But this feels like the tipping point.  Today’s PET scan will reveal any other spots of cancer lurking below the surface.  Just let this be isolated…

S is “moving forward” calmly, while I’m quietly falling apart.  By no means do I want to die, but with everything in me, I wish this was happening to me instead. It’s a goddamn nightmare being the bystander. The survivor. The one left behind.

I’m so tired of realizing mortality.  Bug died when we were 26 years old. She was beautiful and caring, loving and to be married six months from then.  We haven’t forgotten the lesson learned from her death yet.  We appreciate life. We understand how precious it is. We learned to value every day.  We fucking get it, alright?

I may as well be swinging and punching and screaming and cursing in the middle of the ocean.  Though, with the energy expelled in doing so, it may be far more productive than composing the turmoil brewing in my chest.

Stop taking my people.

Dec 20 2012
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cancer, mental illness, reduce

Good Rather Than God

There are so many reasons I don’t believe in God – at least not the kind of ‘Christian God’ I keep being told to believe in.  I believe there is something responsible for all of this, but I can’t get behind organized religion’s version of ‘God.’

And the funny part is that I want to believe. I actually admire people with blind faith.  But for me, it’s like believing in Santa. Once I knew to know better, the blissful innocence was lost.

First, the Bible. A document translated thousands of times by thousands of men over thousands of years in every language short of Pig Latin.*  If any given group of people can’t correctly execute a first-grade game of telephone, how on Earth would the Bible be a different situation?

Last, any omnipotent being would not let horrific things happen. TB wouldn’t have watched his dad die at 18. S wouldn’t be dying of cancer before she’s had a chance to live the second and third parts of her life. My mom wouldn’t be dying a horrible death lost in her own head. I certainly wouldn’t have been subjected to the abuse I was during most of my young life. And things like Sandy Hook and 9/11 and Hiroshima and child sex rings wouldn’t have happened.

And the generic ‘free will’ answer is horseshit. After a couple of decades of that nonsense, a good leader would step back in and say, ‘Yeah…we’re going to take this organization in another direction.  Killers, rapists, and sociopaths report immediately to Lucifer. You’re fired.”

Instead of faking it through church’s God, I’ll just be a good person. That way, whomever I meet at the end of this road will be happy.  For now, I’m just going to love the shit out of S and my mom – and everyone important to me – before they learn the truth about a higher power.

*I stand corrected. The Bible has been translated into Pig Latin.

Dec 19 2012
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renew

Scroogey

The tree is trimmed. The wreath is hung. Bing Crosby is on the iPod. The only thing missing is me.  I’ve had trouble getting into the holidays since the first Christmas I spent without my family eight years ago.

What I once loved, is now a laborious. It’s a chore to decorate. It’s arduous to celebrate. Sadly, I look most forward to December 26  when every trace of Christmas is stuffed back into the containers from whence it came to be banished to the bowels of the basement for another year.

Ugh.

Perhaps I should try to channel this elusive spirit into another holiday.  Thanksgiving would be the obvious choice, but it was again another big family holiday. So that’s out.  Independence Day has potential with fireworks and grilling, but the lack of substantial light-up decorations and cards immediately disqualifies it. Easter is out. Perhaps Valentine’s Day?  Cookies – check. Cards and decor – check.  Meh. It’s not the same. The twinkle lights, the wonderment, the parties, the gifts under the tree…

I think I’m just going to have to figure out a way to make Christmas work.  That would be an interesting story: How I Got My Christmas Groove Back.  What? Stella did it.

 

Dec 14 2012
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renew

It

Never having been one to appreciate poetry (see: I don’t get it), imagine the surprise to be moved by one today on NPR.  During an interview about her recently published work, Life on Mars, Tracy K. Smith recited, It & Co.

We are a part of It. Not guests.
Is It us, or what contains us?
How can It be anything but an idea,
Something teetering on the spine
Of the number i? It is elegant
But coy. It avoids the blunt ends
Of our fingers as we point. We
Have gone looking for It everywhere:
In Bibles and bandwidth, blooming
Like a wound from the ocean floor.
Still, It resists the matter of false vs. real.
Unconvinced by our zeal, It is un-
Appeasable. It is like some novels:
Vast and unreadable.

She emphasized every ‘It’ as she read and I knew exactly of what she was speaking. It. I have been in search of It for a long time.  I immediately found her poem and emailed it to myself, not wanting to forget this moment. The first time in memory I enjoyed a poem that wasn’t written for a fourth grader (thank you Shel Silverstein), but a piece that resonated deeply about something I’ve yet been able to verbalize.

Perhaps the NY Times‘ Joel Brouwer explained it best. “Smith’s enigmatic “it” is in fact her way of teasing us for our insatiable itch for explanations…Religion, science, art: we turn to them for answers, but the questions persist, especially in times of grief.”

Life on Mars was a work Ms. Smith wrote after the loss of her father.  No wonder it resonated.

Beauty is rarely found in ambiguity. It was a pleasure to find it here.

Dec 13 2012
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mental illness

Perpetual Lump

My mom has been moved from the psychiatric unit to the ICU.  A rapid heartbeat and high blood sugar spell big trouble for someone with diabetes and a family history of heart disease.  The nurse assures me that there is no need to rush to the hospital.  Regardless, ‘ICU’ is a scary acronym that has left me swallowing hard all day.

Awhile ago, VP and I had coincidentally both started writing eulogies for mom.  Okay, he actually started whereas I couldn’t get past the idea to do it.  I want to. I want to write about the hand that reached through the water and saved me from drowning. I want to write about how she never swore at us.  And about how it was the greatest thing to get my mom to laugh. I want to tell everyone how she’d say “you turkey” as she chuckled at our antics. I want her to make the yam balls she used to make at Thanksgiving that no one would eat.  I want to hear her laugh again – I mean really laugh – I haven’t heard that in years. Mostly I want to preserve all of the memories with my mom that don’t start with mental illness.

In the last four years, we’ve lost a lot of my mom to mental illness and a stroke.  I’m so ready for her to be out of misery.  As of late, I’ve often wondered if death is the only way out of the darkness of her mind.  Now that the reality of the ICU is involved, it’s clear that I’m not ready to lose the rest of my mom.

 

Dec 11 2012
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mental illness

Commitment

Commitment has a good connotation, right? One is committed to school or one is committed to her craft. Marriage is a commitment. Every time you make plans, you commit to them.

Commitment is good. Unless the commitment we’re talking about civil commitment. Then commitment becomes evil. Albeit a necessary evil.

Thursday, my sweet, sweet mom will be taken by police to the courthouse to stand before a judge as the county attorney makes a case for her civil commitment.

The big advantage will be that she will finally have access to more outpatient care. She will also be required to be hospitalized as prescribed by the psychiatric team rather than the insurance company. Once at home, a case manager will regularly come to the house to check on her medication and if she’s uncooperative, she goes straight to the hospital.

The big drawback is that my mom will be physically forced to take her meds if she refuses.  Is that trauma better or worse than the trauma she endures every day by the delusions?

I don’t know. But I do know that her 75-year-old husband cannot care for her anymore. I know that my brothers and I can’t care for her. And I know that her insurance company has been doing the same thing with her mental illness over and over again expecting different results every time (who’s the crazy one in this situation??)

I just want my mom to be as healthy and happy as she can be and if this type of commitment brings us closer to that goal, perhaps it will be good after all.

 

Dec 06 2012
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adventure, renew

Cautiously Optimistic

On Tuesday, it took ten minutes exactly to row 500m, push up 30 times, squat 20, and pull up 20.  The push ups and pull ups were assisted, but the post-workout endorphins were all mine. In one month, we’ll be timed again with workout to measure progress.

After spending far too much ‘thinking about it,’ I started the intro classes to CrossFit.  It fulfills what I’ve come to realize are important for personal success in a fitness regiment: direction, accountability, and accomplishment.

Before signing on, I consulted an old college acquaintance, who frequently posts about her CrossFit experience.  She mentioned that she has lost little weight, but seen dramatic changes in her measurements. So I decided to measure myself and report back in six months.

Measurements 12/5/12
30″ Waist
37.5″ Hips
23.5″ Thigh
11″ Arm
140lbs

I also just ran across a CrossFit member who was asked to write what success looked like to her. A terrific idea for reflection in June.

To me, success would be countering the malaise with endorphins and energy, feeling confident about my body, and accomplishing new things I never knew I could do every day.  A flat stomach and defined arms would be nice too.

But first, I’ll go to my second intro class tonight…cautiously optimistic.

Dec 03 2012
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mental illness

Where My Mom Begins

She won’t drink water.

Its unclear where mental illness stops and my mom begins.  There used to be a clear line. When she would open up all of the windows in the house to ‘air it out’ on a day the mercury barely reached 50 °, we knew the wheels had come off the wagon.  When she started obsessing about the Bible, we knew her meds were off.  When there were too many tears for no apparent reason, we knew it was time for the hospital.  But ever since the sly fox of paranoia bellied up to the table fifteen years ago, we found ourselves caught in a game we can’t possibly win.

We used to know when mom started and crazy stopped.  Now, there is a mucky grey area instead of a line.  Now we simply measure shallow end versus deep end of the crazy pool as she hasn’t stopped treading in years.

“The city water is bad,” she says and she won’t drink it in any form. Not from the tap, not from a filter, not from a bottle allegedly from the French Alps.  A tiny breath of relief escapes as she finds nothing wrong with milk at this time.

Perhaps the insurance company will finally see, after four hospitalizations this year, that her mental illness will not get any better (or any cheaper for them) without significant changes to her outpatient care.

Oh mental illness, I hate you.