One in a Million

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I’ve mentioned here and there how we have so many bizarre and unusual things in our house, but I don’t think I’ve ever listed them all in one place here.  I think we’ve actually gone way past “one in a million” at this point.  I don’t even want to multiply the odds out.

First off, we have triplets.  They were not completely natural triplets, so the odds on that aren’t as high as they would be otherwise, but still pretty high even for taking Clomid.  They started out as quadruplets, which bumps the conception odds up to 1 in 333.  I don’t have any idea what the numbers are for a set where one spontaneously aborts.  Moving along, the triplets were born at 26 weeks 2 days, very early even for triplets.  Average birth weight at 26 weeks is 760 grams, or about 1 lb 12 oz, and multiples are usually smaller for gestational age due to crowding.  My kids were 900g (2 lbs), 830g (1 lb 13 oz), and 810g (1 lb 13 oz), making them a bit big for their age and huge for triplets their age and giving them a leg up in the NICU.  At 26 weeks, they each had about a 30% chance of some long-term disability.  With only one having cerebral palsy so mild you can’t tell it today, and a few scars here and there, I think we beat those odds.

In the process of having triplets and the multiple surgeries that entailed, I found out that I am resistant to anesthesia.  The triplets were born in what ended up being essentially unmedicated major abdominal surgery, and subsequent surgeries, while not as traumatic, have confirmed my resistance.  I am also resistant to analgesia medications, even the heavy-duty ones.  I have no idea what the odds on this is.  Every time I try to look into it (most recently out of concern for a child of mine), I run into a wall of disbelief from doctors.  Either it’s really rare, or they’re really good at covering it up.

When the triplets were three and we were expecting number 4, Brian got laid off.  Seven months and another baby later, he found a job across the country, and they paid to move us there.  That’s right, we left Texas and came to Michigan for the money.  (Anybody in Michigan knows how crazy that is!)

After moving to the Great White North, we found out that one of our kids was allergic to the cold.  No, really.  It started with swimming pools; he would break out in hives whenever we went swimming…except when we were in Texas.  Eventually, he started wheezing in cold air, and developing stomach cramps and body aches if he spent to much time in the cold without enough protection.  It’s a real condition, called cold urticaria, with an incidence rate of 0.05% according to one study.

On the positive side of the odds game, I managed to have 2 all-natural, out-of-hospital VBA2Cs with pretty big babies.  The rate of successful VBA2Cs is somewhere around 30%.  Booya.

On to the eyeballs: Brian’s eyes are so unusual, he ended up being seen by every doctor on staff at Bascom Palmer when he was two years old (awake, poor guy!) (and he still got the wrong diagnosis!).  He’s been stopped in bars by ophthalmologists who just wanted to have a quick look.  We were told it was not genetic, no way, not possible, we’d be in the record books if our kids inherited his eyes.  Oops.  It’s genetic, and four of our kids have it. It’s rare enough that most optometrists and even ophthalmologists will be lucky to see even one case in their entire careers.  Research papers state that they believe only 10% of the carriers of our mutation will ever show symptoms; in our family, it is 100%.

A couple of years ago, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, specifically acute myeloid leukemia caused by the 15:17 translocation.  It almost killed her, but her oncologist said at the time, “If you are going to get cancer, this is the one you want to get, because this is the only cancer we use the word ‘cure’ for.”

But wait! There’s more!  Kender was diagnosed with autism last year.  There’s no real sure answer on how unusual this is.  The autism rate in the general population has passed 1%, but it has historically been overdiagnosed in blind children.  Many blindisms look just like autisms.  We were lucky to find a psychologist who was willing to learn and work with us to tease out the differences.

There you have it, our one-in-a-million family.  Who knows what lightning is going to strike next? I just spent way more time writing that up than I originally intended, mostly because I kept finding these awesome articles and papers to read as I looked up statistics.  If the end is a bit scattered and abbreviated, it’s because I’m cross-eyed.  Good night!

Tornadoes

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Organizations that are helping the community of Monroe, OK:

I watched the Oklahoma storms roll through as I watched storms roll over my head.  I have family in Oklahoma, and they appeared to be in the path of the storm that hit Moore, but it broke up before reaching them.  As I watched the coverage of Moore unfold, storms were building and approaching us here in Michigan, too.  The light dimmed, and a constant rumble or roar could be heard outside.  This went on for several minutes without letting up once, a noise that was eerie, not something we’ve heard up here before.  Then the storm hit, and it hit so hard that even inside, we had to all back away from the windows and eventually close the ones facing the storm.  Hail came pouring down, some of it dime sized, littering the porch.  Branches came down all over the neighborhood, rain pouring so hard it washed most of the window paint off the van.  But within 5 minutes or so, it was mostly over, although the roaring rumble lasted for another 5 or 10 minutes after the hail stopped.  Just big enough to be exciting, not big enough to cause much damage (although somebody up the road had half a tree land on their front porch).

I do love storms.  I love being in them, even when it gets scary.  I’ve been thinking all day about how I reconcile that love and thrill with the pain and sorrow I feel for the folks in Moore.  I think the best I can say is that it is yet another example of light and dark.  The storms are a force of nature.  They bring life, and they destroy.  They scare, and they excite.  The storms themselves are a mix of dark, sun-blocking clouds and bright streaks of lightning, of warm rain and cold hail, of eerie silence and crashing thunder.  Yesterday, a storm brought me pleasure, while another storm was destroying lives.  Another day, it may be my life turned upside-down or ended by a storm, while another storm-chaser watches in the distance.  So it goes.  As with any natural disaster, we clean up and help those we can.  Please take a look at the organizations I listed above and help if you can, even if you are far away like I am.

Tapped on the Shoulder by Loki

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Having a patron god seems a bit like the “in” thing to do as a pagan these days.  I don’t recall encountering the concept before a few years ago, but now it is everywhere.  The idea, I think, behind having a patron god or goddess is to have a focus or a lens for viewing your life and its lessons, as well as a guide to future action and development.  Some people choose their patron after much searching and seeking.  Others will say their patron chose them, sometimes quite firmly.

I never expected to fall into the second camp.

I first thought of Loki a little more than two years ago, during a trip to Texas. As is usual in my life, we were in a swirl of really strange, random, unlikely events.  My mother developed a very fast moving, rare cancer that almost killed her within a week, only to find out that it was the one type that could actually be cured, but then she almost died from the treatment despite being very healthy to start.  My grandfather almost died at the same time.  We went to Texas to visit him, and got caught in an ice storm.  When we got there, we got put into a cabin that was not big enough for the nine of us (me, the kids, my mom and my brother) because the resort was actually packed in the middle of February.  Then the pipes burst, and we got moved into a bigger unit…but the heater didn’t work.  The temperatures during that couple of days were actually the same in Houston as they were in Lansing, Michigan! They fixed the heater…and then Kender learned how to open doors, something he had never done before, and we had our first wandering event.  Kender ended up being gone for over 10 minutes, walked all the way across a parking lot (in front of a row of buildings that were the only thing between him and a lake), and was picked up by some other guests, who called security, who led me to believe when I came out and got him that they were going to have the police come.

I spent the rest of that day holed up in our unit with the shades drawn tight, terrified to leave, afraid to show my face.  I had visions of the Texas authorities taking my children away for negligence. My mind was whirling, and I couldn’t understand how, over and over, these strange and bizarre things had to keep happening to me and my family.  And a little voice in my head whispered, “Loki,” and I wanted to shout, “Loki, knock it off!”

I didn’t have much understanding of Loki at that time, other than a general knowledge that he was the Norse trickster god.  Rather than use the name of a god I knew so little about, I decided to look him up and see who he really was.  My first look was cursory, a few quick wiki readings and browsing around.  I ran into the opinion that he was evil and chaos set against the general order of the gods, and I thought, I don’t want to have anything to do with this.  I turned my back, and I left Him alone.

Over the next two years, I kept hearing that prompting.  Loki’s name would not leave my mind.  I’d never met anybody who spoke of Him as a god, or who called upon Him, and patronage never even occurred to me.  When asked if I had a patron god, I thought I would settle on Athena, as the embodiment of ideals I strived for, but she never solidified into a patron.  Every once in a while, my mind would suddenly focus on the Norse pantheon, and I would do intense research for a day or two.  I thought I was looking into my ancestral heritage, and that may be a part of it, but I had never been that interested in my ancestors before.  I had always been drawn to other cultures, not Swedish.  Each trip down that path brought a little more knowledge into my head, but then it would fade and I would go back to life as usual.

Then, a few months ago, I met a devoted Lokean, and it was like something I had been seeing through a blurred lens suddenly snapped into focus.  All the connections between myself and Loki suddenly lit up in my mind.  All the ways I saw myself, all the pieces of my life, all the strange characteristics and occurrences, all of it suddenly seemed part of a bigger pattern.  And I thought, “Oh, so this is what it is like to be hit over the head with a clue-by-4 by your patron god saying HELLO!”

As I said in the beginning, I see patronage as both a way to see and interpret yourself and your life, and a way to find guidance for future action, growth, and development.  Loki provides this for me, in a way no other god has.  It is a huge shift in my thinking, from constantly striving to be perfect and ideal, to sifting through my flaws and accepting them, accepting my imperfections, accepting my imperfect self as still being holy and worthy and good and capable of great things. Working with Loki has led to a greater understanding of myself, and has gotten me off the treadmill of frustration, stagnation, and despair and led me back to the path of growth and joy, of finding peace and comfort in my crazy life and nurturing my spiritual development.

Taking Stock

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Kender had his biggest fundraiser yet planned for yesterday.  We planned a Zumbathon, combined with having Chris Cakes come out and serve their flying pancakes.  We tried to do everything right this time to get the community involved, which is part of the point of the fundraising requirement. We handed out several hundred flyers.  We walked into every place that we do business with, handing out flyers and asking for sponsorships and silent auction donations. We bought coupon books and t-shirts and concessions to sell.  We got a banner and signs made.  We went door to door through the town, handing out flyers and spreading the word.  We got on the community calendars with the Chamber of Commerce and the local papers.  We went into city hall and invited the mayor.  We put up signs. We even got Brian’s employer and a couple other businesses to spread the word to thousands of people online.  We rented the big pavilion at the biggest park in town, and we bought tarps to build walls on it for Chris Cakes.  We bought special gluten-free pancake mix so almost anybody could come and catch pancakes. We borrowed coolers and tables, bought ice.  We painted up the bus so it would be a mobile sign. We bought extra balls so that kids could play games. We spent hours yesterday setting everything up so that everything could go smoothly and everybody could have fun.

The Zumba was fun.  The Zumba people got up into the not-quite-finished band shell, so the Zumba music could be heard all over the park while the dancers had shade.  Near the end of the day, the kids went up and danced along.  Chris Cakes was fun.  They got set up so fast, they hardly needed any help.  In fact, I don’t think we would have had to do anything at all if we hadn’t been mixing the gluten-free batter ourselves for them to pour.  They really put on a show with it, throwing those pancakes and making everybody smile and laugh.

Sad_Clown_by_MARTY_iceAngel

In the end, we got 18 people to buy pancake plates, and 13 people to do Zumba.  We sold 5 t-shirts and 2 coupon books.  We lost money. Even with my mother stepping up and buying shirts and pancakes for the whole family, we still lost money.  Even after she bailed us out and paid off Chris Cakes (we didn’t come anywhere near their minimum), we still lost money.  We worked our butts off, we tried to do everything right, took everybody’s advice.  And we still lost money.  Quite a lot of money, if we can’t sell some more of the books and shirts over the next few weeks.

Part of me wishes we could do this every year, like a regular fundraiser.  I wouldn’t mind continuing to do that for 4 Paws even after Kender meets his minimum.  It was such a fun party, and even though it was a lot of work, it was really pretty awesome to see it happen, and to see the performers and have some fun.  It would be a blast to, say, combine it with some inflatables and balloons and some other fun entertainment.  But the rest of me knows that’s foolish.  If we did the same things with the same results, we’d basically be spending a thousand dollars a year (because Mom isn’t always going to be there to bail us out) to have a very small gathering of a few friends in the park, with really expensive entertainment.

I’m not sure what lesson to take from this.  Quit trying to step outside my shell, to engage strangers?  Don’t I know better than to try and sell anything, even a cute little curly-headed boy and some life-saving dogs?  Or pancakes? Is the lesson, “The harder you try, the worse the results, so stop trying anything at all”? (That doesn’t seem likely, but you never know.)  What do my efforts and questionable success at getting people to come to these events and buy valuable products mean for me down the road with starting a new church, selling my own craftsmanship, or helping Brian start his new business? I feel like the touch of death to any kind of sales.  Even though I know that we will have Kender’s dog by next summer, yesterday was a huge emotional hit for me that will take a tremendous amount of processing and healing to integrate and move on.

Regrets

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“Regrets. I have a few.  But then again, too few to mention…” — Frank Sinatra

I’m going to mention some, though.

I regret not being more forceful in trying to figure out what was wrong with Caitlin’s and Jarod’s eyes before Kender was born.  Ever since Jarod was a baby, and his eyes seemed to be going down the same path as Caitlin’s, we knew there had to be something genetic going on.  Obviously Caitlin’s eyes weren’t just the result of ROP and cerebral palsy.  I remember in the two weeks before Kender was born, we had an appointment with our pediatric ophthalmologist.  I sent Brian, both because I was in pre-labor and not really up to the all-day trip required, and because I thought Brian, with his better communication and people skills, might finally be able to wring an answer to this question out of her.  Even Brian could only get, “I don’t know.”  I still don’t know how, after more than 2 years of looking into Jarod’s eyes every 4 months, she never once saw that he had a retinal fold blocking his bad eye.  There are so few pediatric ophthalmalogists around here, though, that we never sought a second opinion.

I regret trying to patch Jarod’s eyes.  Although we now know that he has stage IV FEVR in his bad eye, and that it would never be able to just magically get stronger, at the time our ophthalmologist said it was just lazy eye.  We tried patching, but he fought and screamed and hollered every time we put the patch on.  (Obviously…we were effectively blindfolding him!)  Since just patching didn’t seem like it was going to do any good with a child who was essentially throwing a hissy fit the whole time, we tried using atropine drops, which dilate and blur the vision in the good eye to force the child to use the bad eye.  Remember, that bad eye had Stage IV FEVR, with a retinal fold that covered more than half of his lens capsule.  That eye was blind. But we put drops in his good eye to force him to use the bad one.  I know that we were only operating on the knowledge we had at the time, but dear gods I regret that more than anything else I did to my children in the name of medicine.

I regret the two surgeries that Caitlin had before receiving her FEVR diagnosis.  They kept insisting that she just had some strabismus because of her cerebral palsy, and if they just went in and snipped a nerve or a tendon here and there, they could straighten out her eye.  Caitlin has Stage III FEVR in her bad eye, with a peripheral retinal fold and a dragged macula.  These days, she is still losing vision in that eye, with active disease along the fold that is worsening the dragging and decreasing her vision.  The first surgery she had didn’t do the trick, so they wanted to do a second one, and I went along.  Again, I was only operating (no pun intended) on the knowledge I had at the time.  But those unnecessary surgeries are probably near the top of my regret list.

I deeply, terribly, horribly regret that I waited so gods-damned long to force the issue of Kender’s eyes, and his autism.  With his eyes, in his bad eye he has had a vitrectomy, a retinal membrane peel to pull a fold off his lens capsule, and a lensectomy after a cataract developed in response to the first surgeries.  Then the disease in that eye continued to progress, and he blew the pupil out (uveal ectropion).  Then he developed a bleed, along with glaucoma.  The blown pupil removed his ability for his pupils to contract in response to light.  If you’ve ever had your eyes dilated for an exam, and then walked outside into the daylight, imagine that NEVER GOING AWAY.  That’s what he lived with for 2 years, from the time he was 18 months until he was nearly 4, before I started investigating pain as a contributor to his developmental delays.  We finally got him started on atropine drops a year ago.  Atropine is a dilating drop, which seems counterintuitive (after all, he’s permanently dilated).  However, the problem with his bad eye is that, even though the pupil is blown and can’t contract, the muscles are still there, and they still respond to the light stimulus.  Even though that eye is now effectively blocked by the remnants and scarring from the last bad bleed, it still responds to light, forcing the muscles of the pupil to try to contract.  But they can’t, and so they cramp.  He was in constant pain. The changes we saw in him once we started the atropine drops were nothing short of phenomenal.  It was like he’d been stuck as a baby, and suddenly he started to progress.  He went from constantly being in a little ball, not interacting with anything or anybody, to finally exploring the world.  Gods, do I regret those 2 years.  What did we cost him?  What pathways in his brain might have solidified in immaturity, or atrophied from disuse?

I regret that it took so long to get Kender’s autism diagnosis.  Part of that was the confounding factors of his blindness, and the delays caused by the chronic pain.  However, I suspecting the autism from the time he turned three, and I took him to the psychologist who originally diagnosed Caitlin with Asperger’s.  That…that man…had the gall to look me in the face and tell me that my child was just stubborn.  That it was impossible for an autistic child to show affection for his mother, or to play games, or to explore a room.  I wish I could face him now, although I don’t know what I would say.  We have the diagnosis now, which gives us new tools to work with in helping Kender.  But that man…I trusted him, because he first looked at Caitlin and said, “No way,” but then he tested her and admitted that she was absolutely on the spectrum as Asperger’s, that her condition was initially clouded by the fact that she was a triplet with NT triplet siblings.  I trusted him, and so even though I felt in my heart that he was wrong, I waited almost another year before seeking out another opinion.  A whole year wasted, waiting, when we could have had his dog already by now, we could have known.  Maybe not my biggest regret, but it still makes me mad.

Yeah.  I have a few regrets.  Maybe some of our doctors should have them, too, although they probably never give me and my children a second thought.  One day, I know, I’ll get over it.  The PTSD from the triplets’ birth has faded after 13 years, although it is not gone entirely.  This will pass, too.  Someday.

Self-Consciousness and Validity

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Self-consciousness is a big issue for me in my religious practice, and one that I am working hard to overcome.  I suspect it will be a long process.

My religious self-consciousness is probably tied into my general issues of self-esteem and the social experiences I have had since childhood.  I spent most of my childhood and adulthood feeling like an outsider, and I received many, many messages that my words, thoughts, and behaviors were not acceptable to others. As a result, I learned to question everything I do around others.  Alone, when nobody is watching, I am completely comfortable in my practice.  All that changes the minute there are eyes upon me.

That must change.

I’m not entirely sure how I get to that place of public comfort.  Participation in my church is helping.  Each time something new is discussed, or some new practice arises in ritual, I feel like I get a little bit of validation.  I shouldn’t need that, quite.  It helps even so to know that, in one place at least, I am not alone, I am not “other”, I am not unacceptable.  Strength should come from within, though.  I need to find the path for my inner confidence to come through to the outside.

It may just be a matter of doing it.  I still feel very new at this public practice thing.  I was solitary my whole adult life, never practicing with others, never even attending festivals.  My self-consciousness may just be the hesitancy of a hermit, venturing back out into the world for the first time.  The knowledge is there, inside, but the gears of interaction are rusty and need smoothing.

Time in my communities may also help.  These days, I don’t receive many of those messages of rejection anymore.  I have two wonderful, loving communities, one centered around my family and homeschooling, and one centered around my church and religious practice.  Both have welcomed me and my family with open arms, never exclusionary, never judging.  The past few years in these places have done wonders for healing those old wounds.  May the scars continue to melt and fade away, leaving strength behind.

In the meantime, as I continue to heal and practice, I will continue to center myself in myself, to be sure of my foundations as I begin to stretch my branches out into new territory.

It’s All About the Money

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941368_496006360468075_687420229_nWell, really, it’s all about Kender, but this week, it’s all about the money.  We are in the final push for this month’s big fundraiser, Zumba and Cakes for Kender in our local park. For those who don’t know, Kender is our youngest son and is blind and autistic.  We are working to raise money for 4 Paws for Ability, which was the only agency in the country willing to train an autism service dog for a child who was also blind. Once we raise $13,000, Kender will be qualified to receive his service dog.

Fundraising has been a very scary proposition.  I have never been good at sales.  I have thoroughly failed at every sales job I’ve tried, even when it was charitable.  I couldn’t even sell Girl Scout cookies! Now I’m supposed to raise all this money, and it feels like begging because I’m doing it for my son.  I am trying, but it is hard.  Our efforts are hampered somewhat by confusion regarding other local service dog agencies.  Many people can’t quite seem to believe that those agencies won’t train a dog for Kender, and since those agencies don’t require their clients to fundraise, people don’t feel we should be asking for donations, either.

This will be our third fundraiser.  We were approved for the dog in October.  In January, the local paper did a brief story on us, and in February, we had our first fundraiser, a pancake breakfast at Applebee’s.  Our second fundraiser was a ham dinner at A&W. Both times, we kind of forgot about the whole planning thing until the last minute.  Then, in the week before the event, that was when we really started putting up fliers and posting a lot on facebook and trying to gather more interest.  Neither event brought in over a thousand dollars, but somehow we’ve managed to creep along anyhow, and as of May 1, we were just under $9,000.

Being so close, we’re hoping that this last fundraiser will really be our last, and we’ll be done.  With that goal in mind, we’ve gone all out.  We reserved the park pavilion a month in advance, hired a nationally known company to come out and serve food, gathered Zumba instructors, and started handing out fliers two weeks ahead.  We went around to local businesses and asked for sponsorships so that we could print t-shirts.  We ordered coupon books to resell alongside our t-shirts and silent auction.  We’ve put a ton of time and effort into this one, and this entire week is being consumed by it.  I still have a huge laundry list of things to do.

I am so scared, though.  I’m getting really scared that it won’t work.  We put a lot of money into this one up front, in the hopes of creating more interest and getting more attention, expecting it to bring in more donation money through sales and stuff.  We only got two paying sponsors, so a lot of the t-shirt money was out of pocket.  The coupon books will be money out of our pockets if we don’t sell a certain number by next month, and I was counting on lots of people who said they were going to buy them.  If we don’t have a good turnout, we could end up not making any money for Kender, or even losing the money we’ve put in and promised.  The stress is high.

I would much rather see this pay off, get us that last little bit we need, so we can be done.

Mother’s Day

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margaret yard20080920 Mom (3)

My mother, and her mother, taught me many things.  How to read.  How to put others before myself.  How to knit and crochet and paint ceramics and hook rugs.  How to cook gumbo and fry oysters.  How to make that ear-piercing alarm noise that somehow stops a misbehaving child in his tracks. That love and respect for others is more important than slavish devotion to dogma (an awesome lesson to get out of the Bible Belt, looking back). To keep digging for answers and solutions when faced with a problem.  That a home is always a work in progress, not a finished showpiece. The mothers of my ancestry gave me life, each giving birth to the next, as I then gave birth to my own children.  Each mother handed down a piece of herself, bits of her knowledge and heart to be passed on.  I am grateful and proud to be part of that lineage of motherhood.

I always wanted to be a mother.  It was always there, on top of my other dreams and thoughts about the future.  I’m glad I got what I wanted.  It may not look like what I expected, but life never does.  My path through motherhood presented me with lots of challenges, lots of opportunities to grow, and put not just one or two but SIX people under my care, six little persons that came as my responsibility to teach and help grow.  Sometimes I still can’t quite believe that.  I said once, before the triplets were born, that I would probably be watching them graduate from college and still be saying, “I can’t believe I’m a mother.”  Boy, was that ever accurate!  I’m so glad that my children chose me, that they believed in me enough to choose me for their mother.

If I Had $1,000,000

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It’s a cute song, but what I want to take it a little more seriously.  “If I had a million dollars” is another way of saying, “If I didn’t have to worry about money.”  What would you do if money were not a concern, if you were relatively healthy and always had food and clothing taken care of?  I think once you answer that question, you have, perhaps, something to organize your life around, something you can use to help get the food on the table if need be, or something to help relieve the stress caused by how you do get the food on the table.

What do you do in your free time?  What makes you smile? What do you look forward to more than anything else? What do you do when you get vacation time without the kids or the cellphone? (Or what would you do if you could get that time?) What would you do if nobody had any prior claims on your time and your body?

I know I would make things.  All the little yarnie hobbies I’ve had all my life would come back to the surface.  That’s how I spent my weekends before I had kids: stitching of some kind and watching the Discovery channel (back when it still had brains).  I love making detailed, intricate things.  To follow my earlier statement, I should seek to find ways to earn money by making things.  That’s easier said than done!  It’s nearly impossible to find people willing to spend the amount of money an item would cost if I were to make even the government’s definition of “minimum wage” for the time I spent making it, for most crafts.  But there are some things I can do, even though I enjoy them less, that can bring in better money.  My friends set me a goal this year of making enough things to stock a table at Convocation next year.  My plans are to make that primarily ritual wear, nice robes made out of natural fabrics and available in a wide range of sizes, something that is not commonly available.  For this year, then, I need to move toward organizing my table around building this stockpile.

Another thing I have done with my free time is spending time outside.  I always used to enjoy hiking and biking.  I borked myself running this year, but I’d get back out there on a bike if I could just get hold of a good bike that wouldn’t kill my rear end.  When I was a kid, that’s how I spent most of my time.  On any given afternoon or weekend, I would throw a snack and a book into a backpack, or I’d ride up to the Jiffy Mart and grab a snack, and then I would go ride my bike.  I’d ride to the edge of the housing developments, along the ranches, near the airport, out by the lake.  Sometimes I’d park my bike and start hiking, always leaving the “real” trail to follow some side path, until I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere.  Then I would read, write in a journal, things like that.  I would love to have more time for these things.  Not much money in it, though, just pure joy.

I like challenges.  I like to compete.  I enjoy racing, even though I am always outclassed.  I like my current knitting competition, even though I know I’m going to get knocked out soon because I’m up against people without kids.  I love dancing, although I’ve never had a partner to really learn ballroom dancing with and I want to. I love to sing, live or karaoke, alone or with a band or choir; I haven’t gotten to do any of that really in YEARS.  I miss band and choir and orchestra competitions.  I miss having a whole collection of instruments laying about that I could pick up and play.  I miss being on stage.

If I had a million dollars, we’d have a dog for Kender and a bedroom for every child.  We’d go on road trips and go camping.  Everybody would have a bike. We’d open a brewery for Brian, and run a karaoke and jazz lounge in the back.  We wouldn’t be buying a mansion, although we might get a sports car.  We wouldn’t be blowing it on jewelry or designer clothes.  We’d just use it to enable us to enjoy the simply things we do enjoy.

Time to go a buy a lottery ticket and indulge my fantasies.

Daily Meditation

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I mentioned before that my current task for myself was to keep a daily meditation practice.  I’ve been doing this for two weeks now, and I am amazed at the results.

First, probably the biggest thing that kept me from doing this regularly before was my environment.  I have six children, and we homeschool, so they are home all day long.  I am never alone in my house.  When my children go to bed, it’s husband time.  There is really never a time when I can focus on something alone and undisturbed; even if I get a chance to sit and work on something, I will still be expected to talk and respond to others.  I saw this as a nearly insurmountable obstacle to daily spiritual practice, and I’ve spent the last couple of years just sitting around and whining to myself about it.

When I stopped whining and just started doing…it worked.

I chose to have my meditation in the living room, with music playing.  Within just a couple of days, my children saw and understood my practice, and they began to work to protect my space. Younger children would be shooed away by the older ones.  Phone calls were answered and messages taken.  Even my husband just took it at face value and left me alone while I was in my meditation seat.

This was the last thing I expected to happen.  I am just shocked and amazed at how this fell out.  I feel like a whole new world has opened up to me, with the possibility finally of building and expanding a daily practice, even beyond the meditation.

The past two weeks have certainly been pleasant.  I can’t necessarily attribute this entirely to the meditation, because I made some changes in my sleep patterns as well. (I have been allowing myself to wake naturally, instead of at a set time on an alarm clock, whenever possible.)  However, my mood and my outlook have taken an enormous change toward the positive.  I’ve developed this incredible glowing feeling of peace.  I hope it lasts.