For the Love of Reading Glasses

I spent a couple of weeks in Utah with family this past Christmas and because my eyes have an astigmatism that shifts, I have a hard time reading when wearing my contacts. It's like I am very drunk, you know, when the room is spinning and everything is blurry. My sister wanted me to read something she wrote and I told her I couldn't.

She handed me her reading glasses and said, "Try these."

I told her several times, "Trust me, these aren't going to help," but she continued to encourage me to just try them so I did.

Lo and behold!!! I could read! I could read the words as clear as if I were sitting in the ophthalmologist's chair, you know, when the one is better than the two and the three is better than the four. Oh, for a bookworm, this was as close to a miracle as me attempting yard work, getting pricked by something sharp through my thick gloves and not dying from it (if you read my previous post, you'd know I don't do yard work).

Okay, so I'm fairly young and the idea of wearing reading glasses made me feel... well, resignation. I'm not sure I would've come home after the holiday and bought a pair of reading glasses, even if they did make reading possible. I just wasn't there yet, you know? Buying reading glasses was like saying, "I'm old." Just don't think I woulda, but when I opened my sister's Christmas gift, neatly tucked in a box full of goodies were a pair of zebra printed reading glasses in a zebra printed carrying case.

Zebra print. My sister knows me well. After my mission trip and safari in Kenya, I am in love with everything African. It was such a magical time for me. The mission part was magical, too, but the safari! The animals were migrating and there were thousands of zebras and elephants and giraffes and topis and wildebeests and a bazillion more animal species. Seeing the world just as God created it, with a lioness hunting gazelles and vultures cleaning up the mess, with elephant herds protecting their young from our vehicles and the hilarious snorting sounds the hippos make while bathing themselves in the rivers. Just magical. I felt God in that place. All over Africa, really, I felt God's presence. So naturally, I was only too happy to wear my stylish zebra reading glasses!

I have since come to love reading glasses and even recently bought another pair. I was at the book store and forgot to bring my zebra readers. The clerk was going to let me borrow a pair while I was browsing, but the beautifully marbled purples and blues and greens that framed them left me reluctant to let them go. I'm wearing them now as I type this.

So folks, don't think of reading glasses as the end of your youth. Instead, think of them as just another way to look cool. Reading glasses are just another way to express the colorful you that the world doesn't always see. AND, with your fashionable readers, now you'll be able to see the world in the words you can once again read.

(A friend took this photo at a writer's get-together held a few days after I wrote the above post. I was preparing to read the story I wrote to the group. We all later read some of our work at our local library two days later. You can read my story here on my blog.)

If I Die from Something Poisonous

I attempted yard work today. Everyone who knows me knows I don't do yard work. However, my little yard boy graduated high school so there is no one else to do it and the weeds were as tall as my neighbor's children. The weeds were lurking around my A/C unit like some of the stalker-like men I've had the misfortune of knowing.

So I attempted yard work. Got my sunny and colorful gloves out of storage. They look almost new. Got my little, red cutters (also out of storage), and outside I went to take some anger out on the vicious Audrey II-like weeds. I began hacking away when something mysterious pierced me right through my gloves. I'm sure it's nothing but a very strong thorn, but if by chance I am found dead in a few days (or weeks or months since I live alone), it should be noted that I attempted yard work today and nothing more.

What to Write When Your Brain Is Highjacked?

NOTE (written after I posted the below verbiage): Being technologically challenged, I can't figure out why this blog, when posted, has 2-3 spaces between each paragraph when my editing page has no paragraph spacing and is spaced just as the previous post was spaced. I have OCD and this is driving me nuts!


I realized today that the reason I don't blog is because of my health situation. I'm not choosing not to blog because of it. Rather, certain health conditions frequently highjack my brain and writing something that might actually mean something to someone else just hasn't been possible (there are days I'm lucky I remember my name). However, I really want to make a habit of blogging, kind of like the bible study my church is doing, 91 Weeks with Jesus (a.k.a. Know the Word). For approximately twenty minutes a day, five days a week, you read portions of the Bible and listen to audio commentary on it. About 1,000 people at my church are doing the study together and there has been something really powerful about it. For most of the 19 weeks that we've been doing the study, I have kept up. It's the only routine in my life that I've been able to maintain week after week. Okay, 91 Weeks and morning coffee.


So what can I handle as far as blogging is concerned? I haven't been able to blog about health and nutrition because the research requires too much ... well, thinking. I haven't been able to interview people and write about it for the senior newsletter I report for because again, that requires a creativity and intellect that slips in and out whenever if feels instead of whenever I would like it to. I haven't been able to blog any book reviews because I've struggled for almost a year now with getting my beloved books even read. So sad.


Random thoughts. Random thoughts are about all I can handle right now. Random thoughts float around my head like garbage floats around on the waves of the beaches of Virginia. Non-stop floating. Day and night the disorganized thoughts in my head tease me as they come and go and meander in and out of my head. "Look at me," they shout before disappearing behind the murky clouds that fill the Pittsburgh skies day after day after day.


But writing is the thing I enjoy the most next to studying the cultural history and Christian theology found in the Holy Bible. My idea is to blog random thoughts when I have them and if, by chance, I wrest control of my brain out of the hands of chronic illness, then I will blog something intellectual.


Stay tuned!

Keeping A Journal & Genealogy

I received my first journal for Christmas when I was ten years old. As a writer from as far back as I can remember, this was one of the greatest gifts I've ever received. I faithfully wrote in a journal on a daily basis until my late twenties. Since then, my entries have been scarce and sporadic, but I have managed to save most of these journals over the years.

Recently, it was in talking with a long-lost aunt that I rediscovered this treasure trove of history. We were talking about a bible in my possession that was passed down since before I was born. It is a memorial bible in honor of my grandmother and one I have never used because I didn't want to ruin it. My aunt told me that yes, I should absolutely use it and that my grandmother would want me to.

This started the digging in my garage for the boxes containing memorabilia as far back as my birth. I uncovered a wealth of riches that have blessed me tremendously. All week, I have been pestering family members and friends with photos and text messages containing tidbits of the jewels unearthed in these boxes. An heirloom plate I did not even realize I had, a cherished Lady and the Tramp record my sisters and I played until it wouldn't play anymore, and all the beloved journals I've kept since I was ten years old.

I opened one journal from high school and immediately sent quotes of it to my dear friend who was a "bff" back then. For my beloved sisters, I've shared lots of photos (via Facebook) of the many journal entries about our times together or how I missed them when we were apart. To their surprise, they also received a photo of a doll we each had at birth. My sister from another mother has gotten non-stop texts about our crazy twenties as I read through these journals documenting our escapades.

We've shared some of those good memories with a laugh, some of those really bad ones with a tear, but the most precious gift from this "journey into the past" is the recording of visits and conversations with departed loved ones. In these journals are words I had long since forgotten, stories told to me of the days gone by, the days before my own, stories I couldn't otherwise hear again.

This is the purpose of today's blog, to remind you of the preciousness of life and the importance of somehow recording the "mundane" that may one day become treasures to you (and the generations that follow). I have often wished I had recorded conversations I had with my grandfather, my great aunts and uncles, and even friends who left this world way too soon. As I began a quest of researching my genealogy late last year, I have wished even more that I could remember those conversations detailing the history of my family. There are few left that can remember enough to answer my many questions and those left often tell different versions of what they remember. However, in these journals recording the daily events in my life, I have found some answers. There are certainly many entries detailing events, emotions, experiences that I'd rather burn than have another come across, but they are littered throughout cherished memories and history that I would otherwise be without.

In all of this, I have become inspired to journal again in the consistent manner I did as a child and as a young woman. I have been reminded of how important it was for me as I grew and learned and lived. As a writer, it kept my words flowing as it cleared my mind to focus on my art. Most importantly, I want to add to the memories, to the history of my family, the conversations and moments that may one day bless me again.

A New Day and the Sun is Shining

Since my last post, things have changed quite rapidly in my health. I believe that because I finally faced my fears and shared transparently in this blog, many have been praying for me. For those of you faithful friends, I thank you more than I can say. I had a reassessment of my muscle strength last week and I have improved at 23%. Let me add that when I first began seeing this doctor, some of my muscles were only working at 16-25%. My doctor said that at first assessment, he wants 25-35% improvement, but for the condition that I was in, 23% is really good.

In addition to this, my lower back pain has subsided enough that I am being weaned off the back brace. As I type this now, I am free of it and I credit your prayers for this. I still wear it a little each day, but I am amazed that I can drive and sit without it and without the excruciating pain of doing so.

Side note: A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia. To make matters worse, she overheard her boss say that fibromyalgia is not a real condition, but is in the head. I want to smack people who say this, especially since the ones who say this are typically the ones with no medical education. My new doctor, the one who has helped me so much, did his dissertation on fibromyalgia. I'd like these ignorant people to tell him it isn't a real condition. I'd like these people to feel my physical pain and to live with the impossible, debilitating fatigue that has plagued me these last years for just one day. One day and they would change their tunes.

While there is no way to "test for" fibromyalgia, it is assumed that the physical injury I sustained in my lower back is what produced this enigmatic condition in me - and people, it is NOT in my head! Anyone who knows me knows that I am not one to be idle. I was a very active woman, one who has worked one or two jobs while attending college and getting A's and volunteering and having an active social life. I danced, I ran, I worked out. Being laid up in bed is not my idea of a good time, especially when the fatigue has even kept me from reading my beloved books. Again, anyone who knows me knows if I'm not out and about, my nose is in a book, but sometimes, even books are kept from me because the fibro-fog makes it impossible to focus.

Anyway, back to the good news...

So then I had a follow-up with my PCP. He is overseeing the medical leave and has been my doctor since before the back injury. He said, "In three years, this is the most positive appointment we've had." I realized then that he has never seen me in any other mood than miserable in three years. Sad, miserable, crying - this is all he has known of me. So many tests and exams and drugs and doctor referrals... But on Tuesday, he was smiling, I was smiling... 

AND he is allowing me to go back to work part-time, two four-hour shifts a week! I went straight to work and let my boss know. There really isn't anything he could do, however, since my position has been filled, but he sent me to his boss and that was encouraging because his boss is the pastor who has walked with me through this whole ordeal. He has helped me in so many ways over the months and he told me, "You have made my day." He was smiling, I was smiling...

He said he will check with our department heads to see if there are any gaps I can fill for eight hours a week. All empty positions were eliminated due to budget cuts, but no matter what the outcome, I am trusting God. I haven't been paid in over three months because one UPMC office has held up my disability claim. I won't get into the ridiculousness of it all because my feelings about the incompetence of UPMC will have me flying through the roof, so let me just share that I have instead learned to lean on God and trust in Him and His provision. Until this month, all my bills have been paid, but trusting in Him also includes whether or not a position is found for me at my current/previous job or whether God has something else for me. I have only been praying about being obedient to Him and doing His Will, not Kathy's will. I still think He has some stuff for me to learn about taking it easy because I was doing so much on Tuesday and Wednesday that I couldn't get out of bed on Thursday and most of Friday. The hurricane weather those two days didn't help, I'm sure, but I know I still have a tendency to overdue it, especially on the days I feel good and hopeful. Yesterday, I was depressed about it, about the debilitating fatigue hitting me again. But today, today is a new day, and the sun is shining.

My Bed, My Brace, & My Burden

There are many days I rarely leave my bed. In the midst of the good and the bad, it has become my place - my place of peace, my place of pity; the place I want to be most on the good days and least on the bad. I begrudge my bed when I have no choice but to be here and delight in it when I am able to choose it of my own cognition.

On days like today, it is with apathy that I am here typing. My body is as it always is, sluggish and thick, and I fantasize there is someone who will soon bring me coffee. But there is no one so I pop a couple Excedrin with the bottled water on my nightstand knowing the caffeine injection will shortly give me a gust. Then will I be able to rise from my bed and hobble my way down the stairs to the coffee pot or the Klondikes or the new scenery. What I want most is to shower, but it is too much too soon and so I sit in my stink until my body gives me the okay to exert the energy a shower requires.

For too long, I can't sit without my brace. As I tried exercising without a therapist and tried rinsing out my tub without a clue, I sat last Thursday without my brace. Feeling strong, feeling the pain scale of nine reduced to a five, I wanted to be ... me. The me I once was, active, strong, but the brace that was such a blessing and brought me such joy is now a noose around my neck; a monkey on my back, and I spent three days back up the scale at nine.

I am impatient. I want to be free of it. I want to be free of this body that is such a contradiction to my mind. I want to run and dance and walk with grace. I want to speak my mind at the time I want to speak it, to free the imprisoned words and memories held without ransom behind some invisible shroud. I want my friends to remember who I am, to remember I exist, or I want to make new ones in a world I haven't seen for awhile. I want to work and play and write and learn. I want to care about something, and I really, really want to take a shower.

My Balcony Flower Pot

I once had a green thumb.  Friends would walk in my home and feel the beauty of the outside in the confines of whichever apartment I currently occupied.  I even recall feeling a tad upset when I visited Utah for the first time after I moved across the country.  My dear friend Adam asked if he could have all my luscious plants because there was no way they would survive the 1,800+ miles in the back of my U-haul.  He promised to take very good care of them so I relented, but when I returned for my first vacation home, there were none left alive to visit.

I once had a green thumb.  Give me any withering, growing thing and I would have it blooming in a short period of time.  Eventually, the relocating and traveling so much in the corporate world took it's toll on my nature friends and they became fewer and fewer.  Then one day I chose to settle and bought a house with many, many stairs and levels.  I worked full-time, part-time, and worked diligently to finish my degree as an honor student.  In my "spare" time, I didn't take care of plants (that required many trips up and down many stairs), but instead volunteered for various non-profit organizations that were near to my heart (or just happened to be short a few hands).  It wasn't long before only one green friend remained.

I can proudly say this one green friend is still thriving in my home.  It might have something to do with being on the same level as the kitchen or with the promise I made to my best friend that I wouldn't kill it.  For fun, I periodically email her pictures so she knows I kept my promise.

On my balcony, however, there is a large flower pot.  I must say it was blooming quite beautifully and for some time!  Of course, the plant had long died and the bloomers were very lively weeds.

That flower pot, now trimmed of Seymour (sounds way better than Audrey II), still sits on my balcony filled to the brim with rich soil.  It, unfortunately, does not hold anything more precious than some cigarette butts (etc., etc.).

"What is that?" asked my neighbor, Audra, to her husband.  Gene picked up something from their yard as I balanced our other neighbor Christy's baby on my hip.

"I think it's a clump of deer fur," Gene replied, analyzing the mass.

With a sheepish grin, I piped up, "No, it's not deer fur.  It's Zeusy fur."  I was brushing him on the balcony and stuffing the fur balls pulled off the brush into my flower pot.  Apparently with strong winds, cat fur travels!  I would have been happier knowing it traveled on the other side of my house (to the neighbor I don't care for), but c'est la vie.

Tonight, my flower pot boasts a fancy blue pen.  The damn thing is practically new but skips like Raggedy Ann on Raggedy Andy's face.  So, I pitched it into the garbage abyss of my balcony flower pot.

And I just felt you all should know.

Recommendations for the Road

It has been interesting, taking a journey going nowhere.  I have fought and screamed, ranted and raved, smoked a cigarette or two while camping out in my aunt's studio apartment.  We were worried about me and there was no one I could trust myself with but her.  I deactivated my Facebook account and praised God many drunken evenings for doing so!!  Tried changing my phone number even, but work and house-hunters have kept me too busy to make it to Verizon.  Instead, it's been turned off most days.

I don't know if I would recommend this to anyone.  Let's face it (or let me face it, admit it): some day I would like to marry and have baby-Raes running around (or baby-whomever is strong enough to marry me).  Yes, love and babies, but ain't gunna happen if I don't let a man in (into my heart, gutters-heads!).  So, I've had to go inside my heart all by myself and IT IS PAINFUL.  It hurts.  It's like everything you have ever felt in your life exploding at the drop of a comment, a sound, my unshed tears.  Swearing became my new language, so offensive, so automatic, and Pandora's box was opened and dumped out on my balcony.  My neighbors know a lot more about me now.

Would I recommend this?  You hate yourself until you realize you hate everyone else instead until you realize you don't hate anyone, you're just really, really hurt.  Bruised, not broken, but's it's the large, dark bruise on your calf that starts turning green.  Unlike the last time, I didn't have a big sister near to rush me to the hospital.

So, although necessary in my life to truly live, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who is alone (praise God I had my aunt).  If someone does choose to take this kind of journey (and you have someone like an aunt or a therapist), here is my advice:

When in this phase of your healing, do not listen to metal no matter how much you love Quiet Riot.  I learned from experience, trust me.  I would not recommend it.

I would, however, recommend journaling.  Lots and lots of journaling (especially when your therapist seems to be out of the country every time you need her most).  No need for systems and fancy stuff.  Girlfriend, when you goin' crazy, just grab the nearest napkin and take it out on that.  I wrote some pretty ugly stuff in notebooks, but for once, the ugly stuff wasn't about me.  Yes, there were a few pages directed at the man currently holding my jewelry hostage, but I can't even be mad at him for long.  He has no clue who I am and I have no clue who he is.  I misdiagnosed us from the start, protected myself accordingly, and scared him away like I do best, before we could ever decide if we wanted to give us a chance.  Journal.

Lastly, don't try finding a safe place in someone who has never gone through the stuff you've gone through.  No matter how much they love you, they'll never get it and they'll never be able to understand the chaotic, inner roller coaster you are on.  Seriously, it can ruin a friendship.

Why blog about this?  Really, I don't know.  I believe God gave me the gift of writing for a reason, but when I've shut down all that made me vulnerable, my words couldn't get through the steel demeanors I built around me.  Without vulnerability, I couldn't write, but I'm writing again and I thank God for it.  I even found a poem I wrote forever ago about how writing has saved my life.  Maybe blogging about this is a way to remind someone else how writing can save lives.  And there's no need for me to share all the personal stuff in my notebooks.  I think a nice summary blog post will suffice.  If not, of course, you can always go talk to my neighbors!  ;-)

Freedom-Bound I Be

Do you ever want to just hit the trail and go?  Put the car in drive and speed towards the horizon as though you'll catch the sun.  Run away from it all, start again.  Find a hut on a beach, sell lots of coconuts, and make lots of babies who run around half naked and tan in the freedom of the wind and seas.

Oh, how I want to run, but this time I'm just too tired.  Tired of being everything for everybody when I don't even know how to be anything for myself.  Tired of people dying.  Tired of not being able to grieve because I have to be strong for everyone else.  I'm tired of having to smile at you when I really wish you'd never looked my way in the first place because I feel like a donkey's ass today.  Donkey's asses do not smile.  I'm tired of having to be nice to you when I know you'll be the first one to tell my boss's boss that I swore in my personal blog.  I'm tired of being the strong one and I'm tired of being afraid no matter how strong I act.  Tired of the fear that is so deep in me, as deep as the Nile is long.  I just want to be real, and raw - authentic in my skin without being considered crazy or dramatic or un-Christian.  More than anything, I want to be FREE...

Away from it all, run far away, never to look back, and I'm always happy to do so (I've been known to cross state lines from time to time).  But not anymore.  Not anymore.  I am weary and God won't let me run again.  I would go and never look back, but He says no.  "No, you're not running anymore.  You're going to sit still and be.  No, you're not going anymore.  You're going to sit still and listen.  You're going to look back and see why, then you're going to peel back every putrid layer of decaying history and see why some more.  You're going to see who you truly are - real, raw, authentic in your skin.  It's going to hurt, but I promise you that you will finally be free.  Free to love, free to be, free to truly follow me."

So here I go, my first journey taken without ever going.  Here I be, sitting still to chase the horizon and catch the sun.  Here I am - real, raw, authentic in my skin...  and freedom-bound I be.

Am I Back Yet?

It is the day after Labor Day and my favorite time of year.  Like the leaves on the trees, I feel the season changing.  A new housemate, new test results, and a new air-rave box, I feel the solitary days of laying in bed are coming to an end.

I have missed blogging.  I've missed the sharing of blogging that journal writing doesn't provide and have realized when I couldn't bring myself to cancel this blog that I need this.  With school out, I need it even more as I'm still praying to God about His next step for me.

I've spent a lot of time alone this summer, a lot of time with God as my body has gone on hiatus from the abuse I've put it through over the last couple of years.  I've spent days in bed with weakness, fatigue, and pain being my constant companions.  No amount of eating raw has helped and as always, blood work and other tests I've been sent to do have come back negative (until recently).  The rheumatologist trying to fix me with meds and more meds, I stopped seeing her and went back to my PCP and am now on almost half the meds I was on a month or two ago.  I've also reached out to others for prayer and help and spent a lot of time reading the Word of God and journaling my thoughts and prayers to Him.

Am I healed?  Not yet, but I feel more focused and less pained.  I'm still fatigued, but not as weak.  I have a new housemate.  Her rent is free so long as she does the housekeeping for me and this is an answer to many months of prayer.  She is a blessing to me and in return, I'm able to be a blessing to her.

She moved in yesterday and Zeus doesn't know what to think.  Yes, Readers (if there are any of you left after my hiatus), I know the biggest question your inquiring minds have is wondering how Zeus has been these months.  Let's face it, he's a celebrity!  :0)

With so many aunties that come to Pittsburgh to visit us, he does not know her.  He knows Auntie Pam and Auntie Deb, he knows Auntie Dijah, he knows Auntie Des who will be staying with us later this month from Seattle, and of course, Auntie Jane, Auntie Leslie, Auntie Kelly, Aunt P...  the list goes on and on, but he doesn't know her and mom didn't run around like a crackhead scrubbing the house down like normal when we have guests so he's a little confused.  Too afraid to go to sleep because he might miss something, he sat dozing by the bedroom door instead of sleeping in his basket-bed.

I'm a little confused, too, as I keep wanting to run around and clean up after everyone. That Sicilian in me that sets the alarm off in my brain, "We have a guest!"  I had to stop myself from doing dishes this morning and praise God she was leaving as I got up because I really wanted to feed her breakfast... And even though I didn't scrub the house down, I did overdo it cleaning before she arrived... and, well, cleaning most of the weekend.  I mean, I had to scrub the toilets and you would've, too.  I couldn't let her move in with them dirty.  And I had to wash towels and blankets, change the sheets in the spare room, clean out the fridge... there are just some habits that never go away.  I pulled something or activated something and my back hurt so bad yesterday I had to pop muscle relaxers and pull out the lumbar machine again.  I hope I can get through a day of work before dying of pain.  As long as I sit at my desk without moving, I think I'll be okay.

Anyway, I think I'm back blogging, at least for now.