Truth Sees the Light

Inspirational song: Sad Songs (Intermission) (AJJ/Andrew Jackson Jihad)

No matter how many times I try to give myself permission to have bad days, the conditioning is still there to say that everything is fine. I don't want to burden people with how I feel every damned day of my life, so I overstate it when I'm feeling good, and I hide it when I'm in pain. Over my lifetime I've been told by multiple people close to me that even so, I complain too much because I admit it that things hurt and I say it out loud. Really? You're tired of hearing it? Try living it. When I was little, I was too young to feel this bad. When I was in my young adult years I was a drama queen to speak openly when the pain was at a constant 10 out of 10 all over, but I had kids to raise and money to earn. Even now, I still get it, from people who know better. It always hurts. Always. Burying that inside so that I don't offend people by speaking my truth just makes it worse, so stop being surprised when the words bubble up every few hours.

Over the weekend I ordered a t-shirt from a chronic illness support group to wear on days like this when I am feeling obligated to put on a happy face when I am anything but. It says "I'm FINE" but the letters are made up of smaller type words that say what "fine" really means. I probably wouldn't have even worn it today, though. I have been laid out with a fever most of the day, having to stop everything I'm trying to accomplish about every 30-40 minutes to lie back down and feel like crap. Tomorrow is a busy day for me, and I am not going to get everything I need to do done before then. I've stopped caring. Everything hurts too much for me to give a rat's ass what won't be done.

I don't like writing posts that are just me bitching for a few paragraphs. I really don't. But to lie and say everything's super awesome every day is more than I can handle. I have a commitment to the truth, even if I'm the only one who wants to tell it. Apparently truth is not everyone's friend. But we have a devil's bargain, the truth and I, and like clockwork, I have to bow down and let it see the light of day.

My nephew provided today's inspirational music, and in so doing, he flipped open the door that lets the truth out. The song is great. And as it says, I'm happy that you're happier than me. Tonight I needed to write a sad song.

Dog Day of Summer

Inspirational song: Wig in a Box (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

I really should pre-write these things if I'm going to do something exhausting on a given day. Granted, I've gotten a lot more proficient at hiking up that mountain than I was a few years ago, but even so, I'm pretty wiped out now. I was feeling all proud of myself for how quickly I went up and down, and how flexible I was over the bumps and around the curves. It gave me hope that my world is expanding beyond the confines of the rigidity that I live in out of sheer necessity. But what goes up must come down, and now I'm physically, mentally, and emotionally wrung out. If I could just shut it all down and go to sleep I would. If only it were that simple. Something things I can't just turn off, and most of the effects of today are several of them.

It was a beautiful day for an outing, I will grant that. Long before we opened the gate to the back yard and told the dogs to get in the truck, they were bouncing around, like they knew what we were packing for. Don't let anyone convince you that dogs are not smart. They knew ahead of time what was up, and they knew where we were headed while we were on our way there. Once parked, they knew exactly where to go. They led me to where I needed to be. I was bringing up the rear, sometimes literally, when I had to pick up the crossbar of Murray's wheels and help him over several obstacles on the way up. He and I have been getting along much better since he got sick several weeks ago, and I helped him recover. He stayed close to me for much of the trip in and out, and he groomed me a little while we were on the mountain, so that wild animals weren't alerted by my stinky human smell. (I'm guessing he didn't calculate how his particular variety of parfum de chien might read to those wild animals.) On the way back down, we stopped for a while, and came back to the car with French fries. I fed some to Murray through the side window of the truck, and it was like inserting dollar bills into a vending machine. (Not really sure I got what I wanted out of the machine, though...)

Bump had the best day ever. By halfway up the canyon, Murray and Elsa were lying down, chilling out for the ride. Bump went back and forth to the side windows, sticking his whole head out and letting every single molecule of scent roll through his skull. He never stopped, the whole day. He loves the wind in his face on the highway, and he keeps a blissful expression like he feels like he is flying. Well, almost always blissful. Bring out a camera and he either gets wiggly or he goes full-on doofus.

There was actual work to be done today, not just doggie fun and games. Somewhere in the last month, the tent and the teepee were pulled apart by a bear. We debated on what kind of animal could have been responsible for all of the damage, until we found damning evidence in the remnants of the insect screen of the tent. It also made me think the bear was left handed, but I'm willing to hold judgement on that one. I'd really rather not find out conclusively. In all the trips up there, I've seen very few actual animals live and in the flesh... er... fur. Last time I saw some bunnies and a deer. This time I saw the deer that crossed in front of us on the way down (and so did Bump!), but I didn't catch the split-second glimpse of the unknown predator that Mr S-P saw. He thinks it was a mountain lion disappearing under a guard rail, but when he pulled over to try to look for it out the car window, we saw nothing.

Transported

Inspirational song: I Still Believe (The Call)

I want to write a movie review tonight. I've done it before in this space but not very often. I'd really love to give a cogent synopsis of the film I saw this afternoon, with a deep, insightful analysis. Unfortunately, the combination of products I have used to try to combat pain today have left me somewhat loose around the edges. It's going to be much shorter and a lot less comprehensive a review than it would be from someone who does this for a living.

For months, people I know have been waiting for Dunkirk to come out. I kind of smiled and nodded. I apparently skipped that part of history, and I really knew nothing at all about this amazing story from World War II. For the last week, I have heard a whole lot of buzz about it, from people close to me and people I will never meet in real life. I knew the Mr had expressed interest in it, so I suggested it for this afternoon. I will never regret spending my time today on this movie.

It tells one story from three different perspectives, crossing timelines back and forth like long hair in a French braid. It took me a while to understand that eventually all of these differently-timed events would arrive at the same moment together, but as they got closer to it, my tension increased. I couldn't look away from the screen. I'm fairly sure that by the last twenty or thirty minutes, I did not blink once. I certainly didn't get out of my seat for the bathroom break I really needed.

There were some big stars sprinkled among the actors, but the ones who really shined were the youngest men, the relative unknowns. One pivotal character does not speak through most of the movie, but his role is incredibly deep and compelling.

There has been a trend in war movies to be as graphic as possible, to show the true horrors of war in the bloodiest way possible. Such shocking gore was not necessary to build tension or express how desperate was the struggle to survive. I didn't need any of that to feel real fear for thousands of troops who were trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk some 77 years ago. I really don't want to give away the end, in case some of you are like me, and don't know this piece of history. Go see it yourself, and feel yourself absolutely transported to a different time and place. I recommend it.

Ultimate Destiny

Inspirational song: The Ultimate Showdown (Lemon Demon)

Friends of mine were sharing a meme today that got me thinking. It was an amusing thought experiment about what would happen if Mr Rogers encountered Thor and his hammer, and how it would turn into an inspirational teaching moment wherein they enacted the greatest Habitat for Humanity build of all time. Immediately I went searching for the video for the Ultimate Showdown ("This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny; Good guys, bad guys, and explosions, as far as the eye can see; And only one will survive; I wonder who it will be...") In that video, every famous hero, villain, and pop culture superstar battles each other in a violent, bloody battle of ridiculous proportions. At the end, the only hero standing is a bloodied Mr Rogers, with a thousand-yard stare.

The song has now been stuck in my head all day, and I feel like this is what I have been watching play out for the last several months. Everyone with any thread of fame or power is engaged. Everyone lands a punch here and there. Some participants have been vanquished, either in heroic symbolic deaths, or in ignominy and shame. No bystander can look away. Unlikely heroes are rising to the top. The darling combatant of the last twenty-four hours is John McCain, after he had been briefly cast as a villain of this piece. Secondary and tertiary characters on the entire political spectrum are surprising all of us with unexpected realignments of their alliances and beliefs. Good guys have had misdeeds revealed. Pigeonholed figures on the extremes are breaking out to speak sanity in the middle. I have found myself following (on Twitter) former staffers of presidential administrations I thought I could never relate to, and pundits I thought I actually hated. Hate is a very strong word, and to find out that they were really relatable people, not two-dimensional sketches of bad guys, was a revelation.

And the Mr Rogers of this whole thing is a man whose reputation in this country is absolutely unassailable, although some people are trying hard to find a speck of tarnish on it. Left, right, and center, Special Counsel Mueller is respected by millions of Americans for his service to the country and his unwillingness to lower his standards of behavior. I saw someone write that if Hollywood has taught us anything over the last century, is that everyone loves a G man hero. If he were a little bit younger, I might predict that when everything is over, for better or for worse, the survivors of the political mess would look to him to be our champion, to be a white knight who deserves to win the next election. I can imagine a push from the center to do such a thing. But by the time he is done with his job, months or years from now, he may decide that his service to his country is done, and he could walk off into the sunset, into the pages of the history books. I expect to wave to him as he goes, and wish him godspeed, after it's all over, when we usher in a whole new cast of characters for the next round of this play.

The Skinny

Inspirational song: Karn Evil 9 (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)

I don't typically turn on CSPAN at quarter to eleven at night. But I figure the way Twitter is blowing up, I ought to watch the spectacle, as one small group of Americans votes to kill tens of thousands of Americans slowly, without remorse.

In the early 1990s, I had zero access to health care. I could not afford a doctor, not even once, after nearly bleeding to death having my second child, going back to my "temp" job three weeks later, getting massive infections, and having what I did not know was a months or years long lupus flare that destroyed my figure for the rest of my adult life. My family was living on a knife's edge of poverty. Two visits to the emergency room, one for stitches in my daughter's ear and one for when my husband was working on the car and the jack gave out and the car settled on his chest, each ended up with us getting sent to a collections agency, because we couldn't come up with the few hundred dollars that was left on our bill when the hospital decided that time had run out for us to pay. After 1994 became "The Year Daddy Was At Work" (3 jobs, concurrently), my husband signed up for the air force, mostly so that his children would have some hope of health care.

In the early 2000s, the air force was going through one of its periods where it would shed people it had already trained for certain career fields, who were just at the wrong point in their time-in-service, so that they could bring in others who were in the pipeline, training for those same jobs. They called it a "reduction in force" or "RIF." It might as well have been "RIP" to me, because by that time I had an inkling of how sick I really was, and the idea of us being ushered out of the air force without retirement benefits and no chance of getting health insurance with my catalog of preexisting conditions scared the shit out of me. I knew it would kill me.

Mr S-P survived the personnel slashing, just barely, and we made it to twenty years and lifetime health care for both of us. Well, I hope it is still lifetime health care. We pay premiums to have Tricare Prime, but if the Republicans in the Senate get their wish and destroy the Affordable Care Act, throwing 16,000,000 people off of health insurance as the CBO says, all bets are off. The common assumption is that this will destroy the individual health insurance market. If that happens, that will surely ripple through all of the other markets. I can't assume that my health coverage will stay the same. My copays will probably not stay at $12 per visit, $10 for prescriptions, or nearly full coverage for hospitalizations and procedures.

For those of you with large deductibles and bigger copays, I want you to think about something. I have lupus. I have other conditions as well. I have surgery scars and arthritic damage on the inside that alters how I think, eat, and behave (and FTR, my food is probably more expensive than yours because I can't eat cheap wheat). I take five different prescription drugs every single day (a total of 14 pills) plus I have two prescription painkillers that I take multiple times a week. That runs between 50 and 70 dollars a month, before you count in the ten vitamins, minerals, amino acids, supplements, and probiotics I take every day on my own dime, and things like vitamin K are not cheap. Every single time I see a doctor it is $12, and every single time I get an x-ray it is $12, and every time I go to a physical therapy visit it is $12... Normal people go to a doctor two or three times a year. I have a primary care physician who I have to pay to visit every time I need a new referral. I see a rheumatologist every quarter. I see an ophthalmologist twice a year. I had 16 physical therapy visits this spring. I recently started seeing a gastroenterologist, who did an upper GI endoscopy in May and who will catch me on the flip side after my half-century birthday this fall. My rheumatologist asked me to go to a neurologist for nerve problems. If only my absolutely necessary monthly (every three weeks when I can afford it) deep tissue massages were covered by insurance, I'd be in business.

Without quality health insurance, my world would reduce to just my darkened bedroom and unending, untreated pain. Imagine what life is like for lupus patients whose spouses didn't sell their bodies and souls to Uncle Sam for 20 years in exchange for the chance to see a doctor when needed. Are they awake with me now, watching these senators even more anxiously than I am?

I spent all day long trying to fight my lupus so I could clean my living room. I have someone coming here next week, and I have to have the house as clean as possible before he comes. I'm exhausted and so sore I can barely move. But I cannot close my eyes. I have to witness what happens tonight. My life may well depend on it.

Chewy

Inspirational song: Breaking Out (Oscar Drill and the Bits)

Oh, I just can't stand it. The circus was too much for me today. I was useless for work. I kind of played at getting documents signed, answered a long-distance client who is a great correspondent, and took almost all day to remember to make a call that probably should have been done very first thing. I didn't necessarily have space in my schedule for a wasted day, but it came along anyway.

I have to work my way through a bunch of the things I have stored in my pantry, so we can organize and maybe--just maybe--finish painting in there, after abandoning it more than a year ago. I took stock of things that are open and need to be used up, and decided that the giant bag of brown sugar from Costco was taking up too much space. I bought it thinking I wanted to make candies, and I never tried. It was time to try making caramel. At least, I thought it was time. Perhaps I should have waited until it wasn't quite so hot and humid. Not that I have any real knowledge of the intricacies of candy-making.

I knew I had open bags of pistachios and dark chocolate drops for melting. They seemed perfect to top the caramel. I chopped pistachios and put the chocolate in a microwavable dish, and then poked through Pinterest for a jumping off point. I saw a couple of recipes, and thought I'd try to combine their techniques. This was my first mistake. One was a two-step process, first bringing the sugar, syrup, and water past the hard crack stage, over 320 degrees F. Then one adds the dairy ingredients (in that case, heavy cream and melted butter) and brings the temp back to the soft ball stage (240, roughly). It is a NO STIR recipe, and to melt down any sugar crystals on the side of the pan, it says to put the lid over boiling sugar for a minute to melt them back into the mix. The other recipe was the complete opposite. All ingredients in from the beginning (except vanilla), and you're supposed to stir constantly until it reaches 235-240. They said this would take 16-18 minutes. Hm. Not so much.

I was stupid and thought I'd try the trick of putting the lid on the recipe that had the butter and sweetened condensed milk in it from the beginning. I watched it for maybe two and a half minutes, wondering whether enough steam was forming to wash the sides of the pot. I didn't stir in all that time. I took the lid off, saying forget it, I am going to stir. Lesson learned: if the recipe says stir constantly, DO IT. All kinds of browned bits came off the bottom of the pan, and I had to pick out most of them. Some just got blended back in as well as I could. I don't know whether it was my early mistake responsible for the difficulty from there, or because I was doing this on the wrong sort of day. I had to stand at the stove for over half an hour, waiting for the candy thermometer to get remotely close to the soft ball stage.

I assembled the caramel as I intended, pouring it in an oiled, parchment paper lined, glass dish. It cooled a while before I put the chocolate and pistachios on top, but probably not as long as it should have. This was a symphony of errors, this candy. It eventually had to chill in the refrigerator so that I could cut it, and even then it was sticky and soft. I couldn't cut it in even squares. I did the best I could and came up with somewhere close to 50 small pieces, of which I ate one and a half. It tasted good, but wow, was it rich. I think I need to practice before I get this nonsense right, but until then, what am I going to do with two or three pounds of practice candy each time?

Hen and Chicks

Inspirational song: Entangled (Genesis)

Every time I close my eyes, I see the same thing. I see spears of green shooting out from a central point. I want to reach out and grab that center star, and yank it out of the dirt. This happens every time I get into the groove of pulling weeds. If I spend more than thirty seconds at it, I might as well be at it all day. I have been putting off cleaning up the front flower beds while every day was too hot and sunny, but today was overcast from morning until night. I thought I'd only do a little bit up front, mostly moving the pots full of kitchen herbs a little farther back under the porch roof, so they stop scorching. To make room, I had to move the potting soil that had been tucked away behind the tea olive, putting it back in the garage where it belonged. The steps needed to be swept, so I tidied that up. While I was at it, I was tired of seeing the black leaf and lawn bag that we had been filling with snapped-off spent geranium blooms and fast food trash that drunks keep throwing out of their car windows within wind-blowing distance of my house. I moved it to the garage too, and with it out of reach, I found myself filling it further, picking out a few random coils of vineweed out of the lavender bushes, or clumps of that spade-shaped scourge, whose name I have already forgotten. It's not calendula, or campanula, but it is something like that. Whatever its name, it is pure evil and it will take years to eradicate as long as I am not willing to glyphosate the snot out of it. Once I got going, I couldn't stop. There was a little crabgrass. Some dandelions. Thistles. Some sort of tree sprouts. I kept going, and kept going, and kept going. I filled up a handful and marched it over to the bag in the garage, then came back for more. I was obsessed, and inefficient. My calves ached, and I told myself I'd stop...after I cleaned out just this one spot. And then this one. I knelt on the porch and reached down to re-clean the area that I had completely denuded of weeds a month ago. I never bothered to tie up my hair, so I struggled behind the sandy curtain. I could barely see what I was after, and still I could not stop.

I am finding a way to be useful for all of my children this summer. After so long of being ill and upset and needy, it's awfully nice to feel emotionally healthy, physically adequate, and financially flexible. I prefer to be in the position of giver, of help, advice, money, time, etc. I don't like to be a taker. I'm working hard to help one of them now, I got to help create the wedding dress for another last spring, and next month I get to go see the eldest, for the first time at her home instead of mine. I feel like the world is right side up again.

How Did I Get Here?

Inspirational song: Fight the Good Fight (Triumph)

Who didn't see this coming? Raise your hand. (No hands go up.) I overdid it yesterday, and I had the down day I expected. I kind of knew I'd have to struggle to get out of jammies sometime in the afternoon. That's exactly what happened. My muscles are sore, and every inch of my skin still feels like there is an uncomfortable electric current running through it. Been here before. Still waiting for the new medication for the nerve thing, and I know that the muscles will calm down eventually.

I had to really push myself to do any work today. I have two contracts that had to be checked on, and I have a couple on the east coast who wants mountain property who have been exchanging some entertaining emails with me. You know you're wiped out when just entering the password to open your laptop is exhausting. I did it a couple times, but it sapped my will to live. I had to crash out, but it took several tries before I successfully napped. Every time I remembered something super important I had to pull myself back out of a stupor, to change the address for the automatic HOA payments or cancel CenturyLink now that I have better fiber optic internet.

Once I did sleep, things got weird. I was out, dreaming crazy dreams, for maybe an hour. I woke to the sensation of Rabbit jumping off of the window sill, onto my hair. I had no idea where I was, when it was, or what day it is. I barely knew who I was. I have struggled ever since, but I've at least come to the end of the day feeling like I took care of 85-90% of the things I needed to get to. Not sure how or when I did these things. Yet here I am, among a ton of completed tasks. I win.

Meeting Goals

Inspirational song: Living in the Past (Jethro Tull)

Usually I lump all of my photos at the end of my stories. Today, the photos really tell the story. Of course, you know that I have words as well, but I need to put in lots of illustrations this time.

I started this morning as I spent much of yesterday, shoveling literal tons of rock into wheelbarrows. There were more people recruited to help this time, and four wheelbarrows to work with. Things went much faster. I stayed at the rock pile, and filled every cart put in front of me. The whole time I was amazed by my ability to keep going. And of course, I had that perfect deadpan line from Mystery Men running through my head:

"Lucille, God gave me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well."

At one point we got ahead of ourselves. All four wheelbarrows were full, but the ground was not fully prepped to receive the rocks. We waited while they dug out some more ground, smoothed it, and put down weed barrier. It was then that I realized, if nothing else, we managed to slow down traffic on that stupid raceway of a street, in the two blocks between the stop sign and the traffic signal.

I was careful to stay in the shade and keep hydrated. By late morning we had stopped with that project and showered (in very cool water, on purpose), and we took our postponed trip up to Estes Park. The traffic in yesterday was hideous, I learned from a friend, so I am glad we ended up waiting a day. At the turn in town to go up the main drag up to Rocky Mountain National Park, Mr S-P was in the wrong lane and ended up going straight through the light, toward the Stanley hotel. He almost turned around to go the other way, when he remembered we could go in the Fall River Road entrance. It was still a bit of a cluster to get through the toll booths, but far better than the main entrance. While we were on that side, he asked whether I was up for taking the actual Fall River Road steep climb up to the top of Trail Ridge Road, where we were headed anyway. He said it was a dirt road, but a good one, so I agreed to take my little car up it. The road was far better than I expected it to be, and while we drove we tried to remember the last time we took this route. We are pretty sure that it was when the girls were little and my parents came to visit, to spend one night in the Stanley and a week at a cabin in the woods. My dad took a rental minivan up this road, and it did just fine. Except for the part where we had to pull over, so daughter number one could barf on the side of he road. At least that's the way I remember it. I think it was that drive, but then, for the first several years of her life, she had a startling habit of getting violently carsick almost every time she was in a car with my dad at the wheel. We all felt so bad about that. Never did figure out what the connection was.

My main goal for getting to the Trail Ridge visitor's center was not to go buy RMNP sanctioned souvenirs. What I wanted to do was climb to the top of the ridge, like I had done two years ago when we first arrived from South Carolina. That time my sea-level-adjusted lungs did very poorly, and the climb took forever. Last year, the one time we were there, the trail was closed for weather. This time, I was bound and determined to prove my progress after living at 5000 feet of altitude for years.

Those tiny lines along the top of the mountain are people, climbing the trail.

I was thrilled to note that once we parked and started up, the clouds had completely taken over, so I didn't have to worry about being cold and having the sun burn my skin at the same time. The UV rays were still coming through, but the pain wasn't there.

The first stopping point was still quite a ways from the 

top, but I made it farther in one shot than I expected.

It was about this point that I started repeating the same phrase in 

my head, like a mantra: "I am stronger than my disease."

"Beware of false summits," says Mr S-P.

It wasn't until almost the very top that I started getting a twinge of a headache. I was a little thirsty, but not nearly as dehydrated or loopy as I was two years ago. It took very little time for me to regain my breath at the top. I could not have been more thrilled.

We had to wait in line -- yes, wait in line -- to get to take a photo with the altitude sign. There were that many people crowded into the top circle. But even knowing that I have gained 30 pounds since October, there was no way I was going to hide from a camera. I made it there, and I wanted proof.

On the way back down, I started making goals for myself. I am not ready to climb Longs Peak yet, as it is a very advanced level 14er. But it is the closest one to us, so I am itching to make some attempts at it. First, I want to work up to being able to be on it at all. In conversation, we broke the climb into sections. My first goal is to be able to hike in the valley on the north side, eventually reaching the Chasm Lake cutoff. (I think that's what it was called. I made notes in my phone and apparently didn't save them.) Eventually, I'd like to make it to the boulder fields. If I make huge progress physically, someday I'd like to traverse the boulder fields to the keyhole. I am not sure I will ever have the strength and the lack of acrophobia to make it to the summit, but if I do, I will have conquered the entire mountain.

Long's Peak is the highest point, about two-thirds of the way over to the left.

To achieve all of these goals, I have to start with the basics. I haven't been walking since last fall, when I started getting sicker and heavier. The main hope I had with the new medication for nerve pain was to feel well enough to start exercising again. That means walking around the neighborhood after sundown again. When Mr S-P announced he was walking up to WalMart for a tube for his flat bike tire, I decided there was no time like the present to start. By car, WalMart is just over a mile from our house. It's a little more direct walking straight up the street we live on, that dead ends with no car access to the big road one crosses to get there, and it's a steady but gentle uphill the whole way. I used to walk up this way several nights a week, so I knew it wasn't hard. I didn't know how it would go, after shoveling rocks for an hour and a half, and then hiking at 12,000 feet in lieu of taking a lunch. I was a little slow a few times, but I think that was because I'm not used to the new meds yet, and I was zig-zagging a little, like a drunk or a toddler. I didn't have to stop, and I had no trouble shopping and coming back down. As I sit propped on the pillows on my bed, I can feel that I used my muscles, but other than a warm sensation in one knee, absolutely nothing hurts worse than on any normal day. This is the most encouraging sign yet that life after lupus is still possible.

I Am Stronger Than My Disease.

Tapped Out

Inspirational song: Sixteen Tons (Tennessee Ernie Ford)

I've been a bad cat mom. Everyone was all current with vet visits right before we left Charleston two years ago, and everyone's records were transferred to the really nice clinic not far from our new house. But in the intervening two years, only Jackie got to have a checkup. The other three have been without exams or booster shots since we got here, which is probably okay for indoor cats, but that became less tenable this month. Alfred and Rabbit have been making their discomfort known, in the only ways they could: jumping on our bellies (especially first thing in the morning when our bladders are full or when I'm sleeping sprawled out and vulnerable on my back, when a collection of bunny paws punching my solar plexus hurts more) and putting sharp claws on our arms and making meaningful eye contact for longer than normal. Both of them have been bothered by icky ears, and today their horrible mother finally prioritized them instead of work or her own health. They both had to be held for what seemed like hours, while the tech and doc squirted goo into their ears and dug and dug with cotton swabs. Alfred went first, until neither he nor the vets could handle it anymore, and then they turned him loose and went after Rabbit. She enjoyed it much less than he did. But by evening they both seemed to have forgiven me for my delay in seeking treatment, and for subjecting them to the treatments once they were offered.

We thought after the vet we were going to go up to Rocky Mountain National Park, but by the time we got home, I needed a nap and the Mr went up the street to help our one of our neighbors. She was completely re-landscaping, with new sod surrounded by a wide perimeter of pebbles to cut down on water needs and maintenance. Unfortunately, the landscaper left the sod on pallets for too long, and much of it died back, and some miscommunication with scheduling (I assume) left 14,000 pounds of gravel piled in the street in front of her house. The city issued a warning, so she had to move it all herself this weekend. While I napped, the Mr helped fill wheelbarrows full of rock and move it to the back yard, where she was putting down weed barrier and edging herself. When I woke, I wandered down and learned the full scope of the project. Over her objections (another person who thinks my health challenges mean that I am more fragile than I really am), I picked up a shovel and started helping too. It was fine while it was overcast, but once the sun came out, I started having less fun. I was probably on the job less than two hours before I gave up completely and came back here for ice cream and TV in the cool basement.

I've been spending money like there is no tomorrow. I've bought several toys, already discussed in this space. I've also been playing the Bank of Mommy and I'm the one to reach for my credit cards first when we go to restaurants or Costco ever since I started having a real (if irregular) income. I'm almost completely tapped out. I need to stop making it rain and find some cheap thrills for a month or two, until I've had more closings and absorbed some of my expenses. Today's $350 trip to the vet drove home that need. I have a lot of things around the house that I bought to use as projects, that are still in the bags they came home in. Maybe staying home and making curtains or clothes or something might be advisable. I'll still have things to write about, and I won't feel like such a frivolous consumer if I stop swiping those cards for a few weeks. Time to behave.

Struggling

Inspirational song: Fire and Rain (James Taylor)

I have a lot on my mind tonight. I'm struggling with some familiar demons, and a few who don't come along often, who I'd prefer would just go away without causing any mayhem. I'm really not sure how much I could or should divulge. I have a remarkable habit of over-sharing, but once in a while I want to use caution. I'll wade through gently and see what happens.

I've had five doses now of the new medication so far. I will start ramping up tomorrow, taking more until I hit the threshold the rheumatologist suggested. I wanted to think it would be a magic substance, and I'd find immediate relief. Not so much. I Googled how long it takes to work, and it seems that I should wait a week to see results. Until then, every nerve in my body is still firing at once. My skin feels electrified. I had to psych myself up mid-afternoon to finally take a shower and dress, and when I peeled off the tank top I'd slept in, I felt like my upper body was being flayed. The sensation was over quickly, only reverberating a few seconds after I tossed aside the shirt. This sensitivity is both a recent development and a long-standing battle. I've had waves of this come at me since I was 18 years old, but they never lasted more than an hour or so, usually less. This is the second round since summer started that has gone on for multiple days. I am hoping for significant progress in this fight by the middle of next week.

I've hit that point during the growing season that I dread. It comes once it gets too hot for me to be outside in the middle of the day, when all I want to do is hide inside in refrigerated air. It becomes more difficult to keep up with all the flowers and vegetables I planted in the spring when I had hopes and dreams. I need to water more often and I need to fertilize all the container pots. I don't. My beautiful flowers start to struggle to stay alive. It always breaks my heart when they start turning brown and crispy. Even when I know they're annuals that fizzle out by July, it makes me sad to see them go. I replaced two of the calibrachoa in the hanging pots already, to keep them looking good. But they need more replacements sooner than later. I have completely given up on the bleeding heart that I overwatered, of all things. I'm not sure whether I can find one exactly like it. I want to keep the arrangement exactly like it was before.

I have more pages in the book of my life to thumb through, but I'm going to dog-ear a page, and come back to the rest later. Those battles can wait.

Blood Pressure

Inspirational song: Highest Ground (Stevie Wonder)

I was nervous as hell when I woke up this morning. This was inspection day, and I always dread inspection day. To date, I had had as many deals fall apart at inspection as I had make it to closing. I will probably always fear this day above all others in the process of buying and selling houses. Granted, this deal is a bit more special than all of the others, but that gave me no less pause going in. There still could be a catastrophic failure of the structure, or evidence that the house was previously used for the manufacture of illegal drugs, or something else to blow up the process. There were a bunch of us present this morning: both buyers, me, and Mr S-P, plus the two home inspectors (the owner of the business and his assistant). Rumor was that the appraiser was supposed to be around too, but we never saw him. I think he rescheduled, but I'm waiting for confirmation of that.

The inspectors were cordial and very knowledgeable. Best of all, they were soothing. As they showed us things that needed replacement or that were in serviceable condition, they spoke calmly, with approachable, open faces. There was no sign of dire material defects, nothing to make them wince before they pointed anything out. I've said before this house isn't perfect, and this inspection was more to solidify and prioritize the post-closing to-do list than anything. By the time they left, we were all smiles, and I decided that these guys would get lots of referrals from me. (Seriously. If you're buying a home in northern Colorado, hit me up for their contact information.)

I visited with my rheumatologist this afternoon. My blood pressure was still a tiny bit elevated by the time I got there, but I was tired already and nervous about the long list of complaints I had to share. I told her everything, and we made good progress. She wants me to see another specialist, so I have to start that process. I'm trying a new medication that gives me hope. We negotiated a bit to find the right one (one that doesn't cause significant weight gain, for one -- having more to carry around would not reduce my pain!). It will probably have to build up in my system like the anti-malarial drugs did, but if it makes my feet hurt just a little less, it could revolutionize my life. Best case scenario, it would make it so that I could start exercising again. Fingers crossed.

You know what a political junkie I am. I made the mistake of watching TV and reading Twitter tonight. If you even glanced at Twitter or MSM, you probably know why my blood pressure spiked this evening. I actually had to watch one more episode of Game of Thrones to calm myself down. (Almost through last season, so we can be current with everyone else.) I picked the wrong month to give up popcorn.

Talk Talk

Inspirational song: Talking in Your Sleep (The Romantics)

I'm not sure whether it's easier or harder to compose essays when one is in an altered state of mind. I'm definitely there, now that a muscle relaxer has worked its magic on my mind and body, and I went from having no idea what I was going to write to having three paragraphs plotted out in the time it took for my computer to boot up. I suppose that makes it easier. It also means I give fewer monkey's tosses how proper my language is or how exact is my grammar. Mind your step. This could get obscene before I notice what I'm doing. I'll try to delete it before it slips through, however.

The home inspection is scheduled for tomorrow morning, and it also turns out that the appraisal is going to be happening at the same time. I got that phone call this afternoon, waking me from a dead sleep in a nap I really needed. I'd left the tv going on news, and zonked out, and had to sound fully awake and competent in a split second once I saw it was the listing agent on the phone. We are all planning on being at the inspection, but now I have cautioned everyone to use their inside voices. No shouting out questions or complaining about things that are broken or missing. We want to know what needs fixing from the inspector, and we will have a ton of questions for him. But if the appraiser is in earshot while that is going on, we need to be careful not to point out defects that might make us miss our target valuation. If the house doesn't meet appraisal, it might make it impossible to get the loan without someone forking over more cash, something that none of us have on hand right now. The main thing that we feared would sink the deal was the back patio slab (well, two of them, technically--the original and the addition) has been removed. It was 8 or 10 inches too low, because of expansive soils that weren't amended properly when it was poured. It has been completely chopped up and removed, with redwood stairs in its place. This is the best, most cost-effective solution we could imagine, until the house is in the family and a proper deck can be built. I hope the appraiser sees it as the right solution as well.

While I tried to sleep, the news on tv kept getting weirder and weirder to listen to. News of all sorts kept breaking. It has been a crazy day. I am continually amazed by the horrible things that are said in Washington, by people who are old enough to know better. I heard recordings of threats, evidence of lies and coverups, and witnesses scheduled to testify before Congress. I barely had time to absorb one new piece of scandal before another one dropped. My favorite reality show has jumped so many sharks, it could be a horrible Sci-Fi movie franchise. I was saddened to hear confirmation of what the nation whispered about Senator McCain when he stumbled through his befuddled line of questioning at the end of Comey day. He acted like he was having a brain event, and he was. All scandals and partisan posturing aside for now. I wish him well, as I do Representative Scalise, who had so many surgeries on his pelvic organs. Having had so many of mine removed and resectioned, I wish him comfort and peaceful healing also.

Pretty sure I made it through the whole thing without cussing. Yay, me! Now I can rest in the sweet arms of my muscle relaxer, to the sounds of night time punditry. And now, flower pictures.