The Carolina Anole

The Carolina anole lizard is not a true Chameleon, although, it does change colors. Variations can range from shades of brown to hues of green. A Chameleon has a much wider range including blues, reds, oranges and more. Being called a Chameleon in human form is usually an insult. I won’t go so far as to say I am a Chameleon; but, I feel like a Carolina anole this election season. For ease of understanding in my own mind and probably yours: donkey/democrat = brown and elephant/republican = green. My basic foundation of beliefs remain donkey but sometimes I feel more elephant. I have spent most of my life in several shades of brown with hints of green. Most of my election history has been for the donkey. This election I find my head is brown but my heart is green.

Now that you are thoroughly confused, I have you caught in my web of also thoroughly confused; hopefully, that will be the right frame of mind to relate to what I am about to say. I think I should vote for Hilary Clinton but Donald Trump is tempting my vote.

I have watched and read many, many, many opinions and facts, ( I hope they are fact). Here’s the crux of my problem – I find myself agreeing with both sides and disagreeing with both sides almost equally. James T. Harris, google him if you don’t know him, makes good points and I start to turn into a bright green elephant. Then again, I watched Frank Schaeffer and my brown donkey started kicking, yeah!

This is the first election in my voting history that I don’t feel a deep conviction towards either candidate. The first election I was old enough to vote in was 1980, Jimmy Carter, the incumbent democrat vs. Ronald Reagan, Republican. I am not ashamed to say that I voted for Jimmy Carter. I was nineteen-years-old, very excited to vote, highly influenced by my mother and grandmother from Georgia, and had done my homework. To this day, I think I made the right choice. Since then, I have never voted for a Republican for president, though I have for some state and local elections.

Tonight’s debate has been on my calendar since it was announced. I’m excited, afraid, expectant and ready! I’m feeling brownish, but oh jeepers, I am afraid I will look down and be bright green all over. I wish I was a Chameleon, I’d like to be pink or purple sitting on a beach chair somewhere rotating my eyes between Jimmy Buffet and Kenny Chesney.

The Change of Life

The tears you stop, the rest you bring,
My evening friend with your crystal glass.
My cobwebbed womb a withered thing,
The tears you stop, the rest you bring.
Through this time each woman does pass,
The small pink pill saves my ass.
The tears you stop, the rest you bring
My evening friend with your crystal glass

I hope this is a Triolet, it’s my attempt anyway.

Streams of Profanity

Over here runs the creek muddy with confusing thoughts, anger, and depression. The waters churn over rocks called bipolar, OCD and anxiety. Navigation is nearly impossible. Small pockets of calm rest just beyond reach. Other’s have named this creek for me. It is called Shit Creek.

Just there, barely flowing, is a small stream. Just a trickle really of what it once was, the cool stream of hopes. Dammed up now by progress. The water is mostly red and viscous. Oh sure it still says it is happy to assist you onto your destination but you will have to be patient with its slow progress. Promising great destinations of financial freedom, or at least financial survival. I tip-toed in with hope. Along the way, I curse the course that claims to appreciate my time. Damn Red Tape Dam.

From behind, you can hear the wild rushing river threatening. Picking up debris along its mighty route. Deadlines, debt, health, obligations, and relationships litter the rushing waters. It’s always back there getting closer. You can not escape the ever approaching path of Sucking River.

My Life In Lists

 

This post was written by my husband…

My Life in Lists
A biographical letter to my friends and family that turned into something else.

An attempt to put on paper many of my thoughts about me.
Feeling unworthy is a recurring theme. My parents helped me to understand that my worth came from my accomplishments or lack there of. I began work at an early age. My father knew that I would not be college material when I was but seven. I lacked the passion to prove him wrong. I became my work. When I worked hard and did well my parents were content if not proud. When I failed my parents withdrew from me.
I grew older. My parents were no longer central. But my early training ran deep.
I measure my life in accomplishments. If I want to assure myself that I am still relevant and need to find some self-worth, I list the accomplishments of my prime…
30 years working in the paper industry
Raising three daughters
Softball, basketball, weight lifting, running, coaching
Recalled feelings from my prime consist mostly of pride, anxiety, anger, fear, and contentment. It was the best time of my life.
I became a person with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes when I was 40 years old.
I ran and played sports and I worked hard.
I loved my children and my wife. I loved my dogs.
I ran 5K’s with my oldest daughter. My form wasn’t pretty, but I was swept up in emotions every time I saw my beautiful daughter flying by with such grace.
While putting up a fence with my son-in- law a major life event happened. I got sick with Rhabdomyolysis an extreme form of heat stroke. I was in acute kidney failure. I spent 4 days in the hospital. A week later I was re-admitted to the hospital with congestive heart failure, while still in the hospital I had a heart attack. Two stents were put into an artery in my heart.
Eventually, I had to stop working.
I felt worthless.
I became the kind of person I had never admired: retired early with disability.
I searched for productivity and self-worth and eventually found it in wood working. I collected the tools of the trade and began making useful things in my garage. People were proud of me. I was proud of myself.
I had another heart attack. Another stent.
I am a person with coronary artery disease, severe depression with anxiety, latent autoimmune diabetes of the adult, chronic congestive heart failure, neuropathy, memory loss, high triglycerides, kidney damage, high blood pressure and little self-worth. I think about these things every single day.
One day while driving I could not find my way home.
I have forgotten what kind of vehicle I drive.
Sometimes written words do not make any sense to me.
I have felt hopeless.
I am really angry.
I dwell on all the wrongs.
I keep thinking if I eat right, exercise, take my medications I will get better. I am very frustrated when I don’t get better.
I know other people are worse off than me. But my glass is half empty.
I can no longer do wood working. I also had to sell my precious tools. My medical bills are mounting.
I had another stent placed for a 95% blocked artery.
I am now a soap maker. I like it. It is not tiring. I can obsess over it with little disturbance to others. People are proud of me and my soaps.
People who help me get up in the mornings:
My wife. I appreciate my wife and all she does for me and for putting up with me
through all of this. It is not what I had planned.
Katherine. Always encouraging, and knowledgable. Willing to drop everything to come
help.
Hannah. The voice of reason and my rock. She treats me the same as ever, not like the
unworthy person I think I am.
Claire. The sunshine on my cloudiest days.
Jeff. His tireless listening when I complain about all my ailments. Putting up with me
saying “when I came down with the Rhabdo.”
Ben. He has made it possible to enjoy the outdoors inviting me on hunting expeditions. He checks on me often and even carries extra medicine for me in his pack.
Ron. He is always there with kind words, a kind card or note or just a good laugh and a pat on the back.
Mark and Angie. They both suffer chronic health issues of their own but always find time for me in their thoughts and prayers.
I love my dogs, they offer unconditional love every minute of every day.
I know what it feels like to be humbled by emotions that are good. My three daughters are instant sources of pride and happy feelings. They are the best thing I have ever done.
My glass is half empty but I strive to see it as half full. I pray to overcome the shadow of depression that hangs over everything. I pray to accept what is.
My doctor told me that I have a multi-faceted disease process. There is no cure, but there is slowing it down. I think I finally get this. It will never go away.
I will never run another race with my daughter. The sadness threatens to over take me.
I am finding a new life, a new way to accept myself, and a new way to value the people and things I have in this life. I want to be done with anger.
I go to bed at night and wonder if I will wake up in the morning.
My grandchildren bring me such peace and joy. But there is such profound sadness too. Will I see them all grow up? Does everyone think this? Does everyone find themselves in tears almost daily thinking about all that they might miss?
My pain also rises when I think of my wife. I feel such despair for putting her through all of this. She did not deserve this.
I will have good days and bad. Everyone does. Right?

Nightlife

Late at night the anxiety creeps into my belly. Restless legs tangle the sheet.  Damp hair clings.  Furtive glances at the glowing green light reveal the same time as last night, a repeat nocturnal performance.
I am not entirely new to this breach in sleep. I have not been on the Sandman’s list periodically since high school. Mid-terms, finals, wedding, birthing, crying babies, money, fights, allergies and every other common sleep demon jar me awake in the wee hours. Type A personality also requires playing out various scenarios in the middle of the night until satisfied that plans A through at least D are firmly in place. “Wonderfully spontaneous,” reads one feed back card after leading a women’s retreat. What a fake I can be!
Sudden sleep arrest and my dance with sheets and pillows begins. I lay there as waves of fear wash over me.  I live in a camper. I have no address.  Does that make me homeless? I roll over, punch the pillow and take a deep breath. My husband is ill. Mental illness lies in wait, threatening and menacing the life we have built.  Will tomorrow be a good day or a bad day? Kicking the sheets off now. Do we have enough in our account for the prescriptions and gas for the truck? Is a  big bottle of wine a week too much?  Mental note to take alcoholic test on internet tomorrow.  Cold sweat brings the sheets back up.  What if I gain ten pounds every year until I die? No fair, I walk a lot, I bike, I swim. I eat too much. The sky light over our bed shows the slightest graying of sky. I rise and make coffee.
Coffee cup in hand, I step outside into the world. It’s so quiet. I smell damp earth and last night’s wood smoke.  Birds take up their chorus in the spreading light.  Squirrels stare  me down.  The warm mug reminds me of the sweet friend who made it. We have been friends since elementary school. Then I think of other friends. I am not alone.
Sneaking back inside for the second cup of my daily allowance, I see that the dogs are awake.  They come outside with me.  Early in the morning we break the leash rules. No one to see us. A quick pee and they sit by me watching the morning roll in.  My mind wanders to grandchildren soon arriving for a camping overnight.  We have recently discovered the beauty of  toasted marshmallows and chocolate in an ice cream cone. Crying over sticky fingers only a memory.The camper door opens and my husband steps out. He is smiling. Last night’s fears join the sticky fingers. Today will be a good day.

*Why does the night makes more out of our fears than the day?

Lessons Learned

My husband and I sold our home to become full-time RV’rs in July of 2014. We are in our fifties, the parents of three grown daughters, grandparents to four girls and one boy. Family camping vacations are some of the best memories we have. My husband’s early medical retirement prompted a lot of soul searching on how we wanted to spend this new phase of our life. We came up with a three year plan to live the camping life, we figured it would take at least that long to visit our list of top ten places to go. Good-bye yard work, broken dish-washer, homeowners association! Hello new life!
October marked the beginning of a six month stationary journey. Getting our “sea-legs” before hitting the open road. We parked our little home on wheels in a beach front campground in South Carolina. The winter home to Canadians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers (lots and lots of New Yorkers), and other Yankees smart enough to escape the cold and snow. April is the bookend to October. We are pulling up stakes, literally, and heading out for some road adventures. But first, a review of the things I have learned thus far…
1. Coffee tables are not a good idea in a space only eleven feet wide. Stubbing my toe elicits the f-word everytime.
2. Avoid food with other people’s pet hair baked in. In other words, do not sign up for every pot-luck the campground hosts. Added benefit: saving money by not feeling compelled to buy sweet Miss Betty’s hand-made sequined tee-shirts on sale at every pot-luck.
3. Cleaning supplies require their own budget line. Purchasing candles, wax melts, bio-degradable soap, and other fresh smelling cleaning supplies really adds up. Two hundred and ninety square feet with two dogs and a husband whose sweat smells like B.K. Whoppers with onions festers really quickly.
4. We are not good at corn-hole. Not familiar with corn-hole? Google it. There are such things as corn-hole tournaments, with t-shirts and everything.
5. People really do run meth-labs in campers. An almost certain meth-lab parked next to us for a little over a week. Strange comings and goings, lots of trash and the crock pot was on all the time. ( I know about the crock pot because they parked so close to us that I could see in one window. The crock pot’s little “on” light glowed orange day and night.)
6. White Boxers scare people. Our white Boxer, Snow, came in handy with #5, I felt safer. I have gotten really good at explaining to people that she is not a pit-bull, but if she was, I would love her just the same.
7. Coffee tastes better when camping. No explanation needed.
8. My husband is friendly, I am not. I always thought it was the other way around. This adventure has taught me otherwise. I am annoyed when people stop by to chat and I am trying to read or write…or drink wine. My husband initiates waving at passersby. If they should stop, he will further encourage them by asking, “where do you hail from?”
9. I do not like the phrase, “hail from.”
10. Negative is funnier than positive. See above list. Turning negatives into something you can laugh about really helps in almost all situtions. Positive things are just… well…positive.
I loved daily walks on the beach; salty air; roaring ocean; campfires; being outdoors, etc. But these things I already knew from vacation camping. I am an experienced vacation camper. Living full time in an RV with no other home is like, without a net, free-falling, no helmet , X-games extreme sport. I have a lot to learn. Looking forward to the journey.

Letting Go

Purging of things, people, food, and words is hard for me. I am a keeper. I have letters from the 1960’s and 70’s. My favorite pair of jeans from high school resides in a box alongside other mementos from the longest four years of my life. I still cherish people that only reach out at Christmas time. I have been known to search for long lost friends on facebook late at night while drinking a glass of wine. My refrigerator would make the witch-hunting, date-checkers orgasm. Books are the most popular thing in my house. Long story short is always my goal, I often fail. Even now I ramble as I get to the point. Downsizing from a 1600 square foot home with a garage and an attic to a not quite 300 square foot travel trailer is the reason for my current conflict. I, borderline hoarder, am embarking on a three year voyage as a full-time RV’er. I must lesson the load.

I am reminded of my luck at being the mother to three beautiful daughters as I begin sorting my things. Many of my collections of stuff find their origins in those three girls. Special baby clothes, pottery art projects, school papers, baseball cards, stuffed animals, have all found their way into my attic. Awesome! These items will find their way back to their rightful owners. Now that I think of it, they may be grateful to not have to wait for my demise in order to be beneficiary of some of my treasures. I am so blessed to have three girls with homes of their own to assist me with this downsizing. Phew! I have escaped the true ridding of things by the “things relocation program.”

The amount of square footage should not require the removal of people in my life as I only live with my husband and he gets to stay. Alas, homeostasis in the current friend category can not be totally achieved. We have two friends who are occasional house guests. They stay with us when they want to stay near the beach on the cheap. We may have to loose them though. They do not seem to know that toilets flush. Okayish in a home with bathrooms removed from living areas, not okay in a tiny camper. I am happy to have friends that still want to stay with us and have good hygiene and manners.

Fortunately, our new refrigerator will be self limiting. It is only 8.2 cubic feet. As I am not fond of jars of old olives falling out of the refrigerator onto my toe upon opening the door, I think I can keep up with this task. (wow, what a sentence!) Which leads me to my final problem.

Words! I own more than 1000 books. Not bragging, I love books. Many people will no doubt sympathize with my plight. I have managed to sort the books into four piles: donate, keep, keep at daughter’s houses, keep at mom’s house. Again, those daughters sure do come in handy. Not only can I pass on some of my favorite collected authors, I can also visit them and borrow them anytime I want. Plus, my overlarge bookcases will look fantastic in their living rooms! My love of books was encouraged by my mom at an early age. It is to her that I owe my love affair with historical fiction and modern poetry. When I remind her of this, how can she refuse the storage of a few books at her house, right? (more on my collection of journals in another post.)

I think I may have this problem licked. My husband says our new home can bear a load of about 4000 lbs. I must go now to make sure he knows what he is talking about and then figure how to go about weighing my remaining stuff.

Change What You Are Looking For

I am a devotee of signs. Sometimes the sign is revealed in the typical fashion of letters and words on a placard. Cosmic signs are mostly what I subscribe to. I have been lucky enough to see them at various crossroads pointing me in the way I should go. On occasion the signs appear as confirmation of decisions already made. Largely, the signs bring with them simple comfort and nothing more. I confess to looking for endorsement signs only. If there is no yay sign, I pursue the hunt.

I have felt suspended in my life of late. I am neither moving forward nor backward. My signs have abandoned me for the moment I think. I am a grandmother who is just now trying to cut the mothering apron strings. The grandmother role came easily to me, but the mother role to grown women is confounding. To offer advice or not to offer advice is indeed the question. I am damned either way. My post raising children life is self interrupted by poor judgement on the phone and by proximity to my children. I want to have my life while maintaining a healthy connection to my children. They wobble between needing my help and blessed independence. We have had a delayed mother child fly be free I will give you roots stage in our relationship. Limbo is not limited to this changing tide however.

My husband of 34 years is unwell. Forced into early retirement.  We have sold our home and are living in an RV. The last eight months have seemed like some long Salvador Dali vacation. Guilt creeps quietly through our devotion to health. Dreams of retirement and traveling have become reality too soon. This new freedom should be enjoyed, but our time together is shadowed by mortality. I have some traitorous thoughts, I’m not sick; I could be working; I want my house back. Yet I know we are a unit, he needs me and I need him. Nothing is as it seems and nothing is rightly placed. I feel I am on a path with no end because I don’t know where I am going.

Could I have a sign please? Nothing echoes from my beloved elements. Is that my answer? No peace for this season of life.

Yesterday, I heard the tide and the moon phase were just right for finding the coveted large whelk and conch shells gifted by the sea. I have combed the beaches for these prizes since we began our camping odyssey. Frustrations mounted each time I saw another striding back from the beach, buckets laden with fossilized beauties. My husband went with me on my trek this time. We walked for more than an hour; we were empty-handed. And then…my husband said, “Maybe we should change what we are looking for.” A moment later he held up a lovely bit of sea glass.

A mere day has passed since our sea glass moment. I cannot get his simple statement out of my overworked mind. I recognize it and embrace it fully as only a sign dogmatist can! Looking for a thing to happen in a prescribed finite way has kept me pinned down; stalled by my own seeking. How many signs have I walked right by while looking for something else? Looking for, is out. Looking at, is in. I hope. Maybe. Could I have just one small sign?

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