Hoo, boy....

You may never see this post.  If you do see it, it means that things in my household are even weirder than normal, and this blog is going on hiatus for a little while as we prayerfully attempt to get things sorted out.

If things settle down before this goes to publication, I'll delete it and put up something much funnier in its place.

But if you're reading this, we appreciate your prayers and good thoughts.  I'll be back with something in hopefully a few weeks.

Take care, friends, and God bless.

Thankfulness

I hope I don't come off as whiny or complaining on this blog.  It's my attempt to share some of my family's life, made a little interesting by some challenges and complications many families don't deal with.  We really do try to keep a sense of humor and perspective about things, not to mention trusting God to help see us through.

So today, in honor of Thanksgiving, I wanted to list some things I'm thankful for.

1. First and foremost, for my Savior and Lord Jesus.
2. For the hope of Heaven, by the light of which all the things of this age fade into proper perspective.  I'm going to live forever and my troubles are going to fade away.  I can OUTLAST them.
3. For the joy and laughter my family and friends bring me.
4. For the many beauties and wonders of the world.
5. For the ability to walk, talk, work, and rest.
6. For the chance to make a difference in the lives of others.
7. For plenty of food to eat and clothes to wear and a safe, warm place to sleep.
8. For....sunsets, puppies, babies, chicken salad sandwiches, libraries, waterfalls, Mythbusters, hardware stores, working vehicles, store window displays, churches, Irish folk music, community theater, photographers, the military and police officers, baby hedgehogs, bad jokes, comic book superheroes, desk toys, Christmas lights, toy shops, woodcarvers, fairy tales, Pixar movies, oatmeal raisin cookies, road trips, National Geographic, Slinkies, sidewalk chalk, playgrounds, duck ponds, walking trails, power tools, computers, art exhibits.......

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

The Driving Day

Reblogged from my Facebook post:  This was my day while Adored Wife was unable to drive due to a sprained ankle.

1. 6:30 AM. Drove daughter to work.
2. Drove back home.
3. Drove son to school.
4. Drove to work.
5. Drove home for lunch and to cheer up housebound, severely-ankle-sprained wife.
6. Drove back to work.
7. Drove to daughter's work to pick her up for a doctor visit.
8. Drove to doctor visit.
9. Drove daughter back to work.
10. Drove to bank.
11. Drove back to work.
12. Drove home. Got to have supper with severely-ankle-sprained wife.
13. Drove to pick son up from friend's house.
14. Drove back home. Did some chores and chatted with severely-ankle-sprained wife.
15. Drove to grocery store for milk and bread.
16. Drove to get daughter from work. Daughter pulled extra hours today for a sick co-worker.
17. Drove. Back. Home. Arrived 9:03 PM. Daughter's kinda tired.

Very, very glad that Adored Wife is driving again.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Chinchilla Sitting

We're currently keeping a chinchilla for a family friend, who I'll refer to as Muppet Dude, because he and I share a fondness for Jim Henson's creations.

The chinchilla's name is Machias.  I'm not sure how to spell that.  Neither is Muppet Dude.  He's never written it down.  MD started out as Social Hurricane's friend, but he very quickly became a family friend and is one of those great guys you give open door and refrigerator privileges to.  He's helped us out a lot over the past few years and we've become something of a second home to him.

ANYWAY, he's in the middle of some housing transitions and needed a place to park his chinchilla for awhile.  Adored Wife and I are thinking, well, we're not sure about this, but this is, after all, Muppet Dude, and if he needs some help we're there for him.  Social Hurricane is thinking "I will go clear some space in my room RIGHT NOW.  We're getting to keep Machias!"  And she gleefully boogies off and rearranges lots of things.

So SH has Machias in her room and has assumed total responsibility for his care, which I am absolutely, totally, completely cool with.  Last night was his first night at our home.  MD had told her that if Machias wasn't happy with something he would make some noise.

Which she had assumed would be an irritated little chittering.

But no.

Apparently about two A.M. today the fluffy, cute little chinchilla turned into Megolith, fell beast from beyond the abyss.  Social Hurricane was awakened by this high-pitched, keening banshee wail.  She turned on a fan, stroked him a little, and gave him a treat, and he settled back down.

This morning she told me the story.  She's going to have a little talk with Muppet Dude about how he didn't properly prepare her for Machias' unhappy noise......

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Addicted to Snacking

This is not an abnormality.

LOTS of people deal with this one.

Okay, here goes.  My name is Henry and I'm....a snackaholic.

I'm not exactly sure how overweight I am, but let's say 25 pounds as an easy number.  If I could magically and instantly lose four newborn babies' worth of weight I might still find that I was two to three pounds too heavy, but I honestly don't think it'd be much more than that.

Ask me why I'm carrying the equivalent of a hundred cheeseburgers in my gut.  (That tends to be mainly where I store it.)  Go ahead, ask me.

I'm glad you asked.  I'm overlarge by about the weight of a decent-sized cocker spaniel because I have chosen to be.

That's it entirely.  It wasn't one choice, oh, no.  I couldn't gain twenty-five pounds as the result of one choice if I wanted to.  It's been the result of a thousand choices, to eat unhealthy when I didn't have to, over and over and over and over and........

And if I want to take the weight off, then it's going to cost me a thousand good choices.

Here goes.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Social Hurricane Sees Things

Social Hurricane has occasional visual and auditory hallucinations.  Not often--a few times a month, typically.  She's asked me to NEVER ask her to describe them, because that gives them more reality, and I'd certainly never press her.  She did tell me once "you know the monsters that lives in closets?  I've seen the one that lives in mine."

She takes a fair amount of medication already for various thingies, and her psychiatrist has offered to prescribe her a pretty potent antipsychotic that should take care of the hallucinations.  She doesn't like the list of side effects, though, and prefers to deal instead with the ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties.

I think she's starting to revisit the issue a little bit, though, because she's had a few bad days at work, and she hasn't always been able to distinguish between the "imaginary" noises and the genuine calls for help from a resident in distress.  (She works as a CNA.)  She's going to talk to her doctor about it.

You might say a prayer for her.  It can't be an easy thing to deal with.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Halloween Evening

I'm writing this while waiting on trick-or-treaters.  The lights are on, the jack-o-lantern is lit, the big honking bowl of candy bars is ready.

Canada Artist and Harbor Master are ready up in Montreal.  It's the first year Harbor Master has ever given out candy, but CA has talked him into it.

Graphics Magician is downtown with a friend, helping to take his little sister and cousin around trick-or-treating.

Social Hurricane is dressed up in skull face and cape, and is off to a small party with some friends.

Adored Wife and I are here, doing various little odds and ends.  It's the closest thing to an unscheduled evening I've had in a few weeks, and I'm kind of enjoying it.

Don't know where the cat is.  Sleeping somewhere, I suppose.  Little varmint was howling for breakfast at 5:00 AM this morning.

Fairly low-key day at work.  Staff meeting, correspondence and phone calls, some charitable aid work, shopping for the food pantry, some odds and ends of calendaring and scheduling, moving some paperwork around.  SH had the day off and slept in and did some household chores (and some video games), GM was at school, and AW was doing various household projects.

I don't think I've mentioned that she's applying for "jobs you can do from home on your computer."  It's pretty cool and she's made a few bucks already.  I'll have to devote a blog post to that.

Update:  the cat was sleeping on the stool, but all the joyful cries of "trick or treat" woke him up.  We had thirty-nine trick-or-treaters, a respectable number for our neighborhood.  Not too much leftover chocolate.  Things failed to gel in Montreal, and Canada Artist is now stuck with a bunch of Smarties and Tootsie Rolls and lollipops because Harbor Master is new to this and didn't understand about quality goodies.  CA says that next year SHE's buying the candy.

Hope all's well, friends, and God bless.

Kinda Tired Now...

After this post, I'll get back to talking about my oddball family again, because hopefully I'll be done with all the interesting stuff about myself.  The depression is under control, which is great.  I like medication.  This blog is about wrapping up a community theater show, and then my life really ought to settle down a little and I can get back to focusing on my wife and kids.

I don't know why I do this to myself.  Theater is a time-consuming hobby.  I do enjoy it, and evidence suggests I'm reasonably good at it, but, ay chihuahua, does it eat up the discretionary time.

The final weekend was exceedingly full.  I won't go into all the details, but with work, performances, family obligations, and cast parties, Friday I hit the ground running at 5:30 and didn't get to bed until nearly midnight, Saturday, same thing, Sunday, hit the ground at 5:30, actually made it home after the cast party a few minutes before ten, told Adored Wife that I was sorry, but I was absolutely done, and fell into bed about eight minutes after ten.  I vaguely remember brushing my teeth.

So, I'm pretty much done with acting in plays for at least a year, probably longer.  I did two shows this year, which is a lot and that'll have to do me for awhile.  I'll still help with set building, but that's fun, is healthy exercise and good socialization (and the occasional witnessing and ministry opportunity), and doesn't involve any great time commitment.

Plus, I can wear my wedding ring again--it felt really odd not having it on my finger.  I was playing a single man, and leaving it on during the day would have just made it likelier that I would forget to take it off for a show, so I left it off for the entire run.

Regarding facial hair:  I shaved my beard for the play, and Adored Wife, who has NEVER liked me clean-shaven, said I could do so only on the condition that I grow it back as soon as it was done.

And then, the last week of the show, she decides that she's used to how I look now and that I should keep shaving for awhile.  Go figure.  I've always given her the deciding vote on whether I went bushy or smooth, and it looks like we're going with naked upper lip and chin for now.  I'll probably miss it when the weather turns cold, but otherwise I've never much cared one way or the other.

Hope all's well out there, friend, and God bless.

Adored Wife Sprains An Ankle

Adored Wife is recovering (actually pretty well) from a nasty ankle sprain (or "strained perineal tendon with significant joint effusion.")

She's still not sure how she did it, but the doctor has found some bone spurs and he thinks that may have aggravated the tendons, depending on how she's been moving.

He wants to send her for physical therapy.  AW doesn't particularly want to go to physical therapy.  They both looked at me in the examining room and I said that I was just the chauffeur and I wasn't getting in the middle of this.

I think the doctor's going to prevail.

She's moved to smaller and less restrictive brace so she can start driving again, but it doesn't provide the support of the great big boot thingy, so she's having to be more careful how she walks.  She may swap them off a little bit.  They're both complicated contraptions to put on.

I'm looking forward to her driving again.  I can't say I've been doing all of it--we've had some great friends who have stepped up to help--but I've been doing a lot more of it than I've been accustomed to.

Prayers for her in recovery would be appreciated, friends.  Take care and God bless.

Feeling More Myself

Hi, friends!

My brain is WORKING again!  Yay!  I've hit a therapeutic level of medication, and I'm feeling much, much, much more myself.  Sleeping better and everything.

There are a couple of side effects that haven't quite gone away.  Still sweating more than usual, and a few minor issues of an (ahem) personal nature.  I am going to quite cheerfully put up with them, because I am so very happy that my brain is working again.

I am actually quite happy that I'm able to BE happy about things.  I'm sleeping mostly through the night, I'm once more waking up in a pretty good mood, the creativity is back, I'm once again interested in things.

It's pretty cool.

But, man, have I lost a lot of traction.  I feel like I'm months behind on stuff.  It's going to take me a little while to get my momentum back and get caught up.

But I'm just so very, very happy that I'm feeling more myself.  Better living through pharmacology.

I'll look forward to a much more regular posting schedule again.  Thanks for bearing with me.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Renaming the Artist

Good morning, friends, and hope all is well.

This marks, hopefully, a return to my regular Monday and Thursday posting schedule.  Now if I can just get the rest of my life back on track.....

(Things have been a little crazy, even by our standards.)

In celebrations, I shall confer upon the young-woman-formerly-known-as-Basement-Artist a new nom de blog.

I can't very well call her Basement Artist anymore, because she's not living in my basement.  She's living with her new husband, Harbor Master, in Montreal. 

BUT, she's still very much an artist, and has shared with us, by the miracle of the Internet, many wonderful examples of her whimsical artwork.

Therefore, I shall now refer to her as (ba, ba, bum) Canada Artist.

We talk and message regularly, but, yeah, I miss her.  This is the way it works, though.  We don't own our children; we only keep them in stewardship a little while.  I'm happy and proud that she's off making her own life and having adventures.

Including taking an injured seagull in a cardboard box on the subway.  But I'll have to tell you that story another time.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

(P.S.  I'm considering renaming "Graphics Magician" as "Moody Adolescent."  But, of course, that would be redundant.)

A Quick Catching Up

Okay, so here's where we are.

1. I think I'm at a good level with the antidepressive medication.  I'm no longer waking up staring into the abyss in desolate melancholy, and I actually had the other night a not-wholly-unreasonable facsimile of a decent night's sleep.  Further bulletins forthcoming.

2. The play I'm starring in is in production.  I have absolutely no idea why I do this to myself.

3. Adored Wife has a nasty ankle sprain or, as she prefers me to call it, a "severely strained perineal tendon with significant joint effusion."  She said that as bad as it hurts we're going to doggoned well use the big words.  It's her driving foot, which is kinda complicating things right now.  More bulletins forthcoming.

4. Social Hurricane actually seems to be doing pretty well, all things considered.

5. Graphics Magician (or whatever I've decided to call him these days; it's been so long) is having some adjustment difficulties with high school and being fourteen.  He'll survive.  We might.

6. The former Basement Artist and her husband Harbor Master are enjoying newlywed life.  They've assembled furniture, confronted bureaucracy, gone for lots of long walks, and rescued a seagull.  I'll look forward to telling you more about that.

7. I am so far behind on my writing projects and blogging and household chores and family obligations it's pitiful.  But maybe the end is in sight.

Hope all is well, friends, and God bless.

The Weekly Excuse

Haven't forgotten about the blog, just had everything going on.  A settling down of sorts is in sight.

I'll tell you all about it when I get the chance.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Still Over Here

Haven't forgotten about the blog, honest, I haven't.

Still getting the neurochemistry sorted out, I'm in crunch time for this play I'm in (this is the stage of the process when I wonder why I do this to myself) and I've made a few poor decisions regarding priorities and use of time.  I could blame the depression, but that'd be a cop-out.

This WILL get back on track.

All's doing pretty well, honest.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Creativity? WHAT Creativity?

We don't yet have the "major depressive disorder" under control.  We're playing around with medication.

One of the BIG problems with depression is that my creativity seems to have mostly vanished, along with my interest in my hobbies and most of my energy.  Hence, the lack of blogging.

No worries, we get the brain chemistry sorted out, I'll be back.

So, I'd wanted to post an update, and probably should have done so before now, but I was afraid it would sound all whiny and complain-y.

And I didn't want to do that.  I have a lot to be thankful for.  A loving family, a roof over my head, plenty to eat.  My physical health is good, God loves me, my sins are forgiven.  There are LOTS of people much worse off than I am.  A few things are difficult right now, so what, no big deal, right?

So, please don't hear me complaining.  But keeping up with my blogging is, just being honest, a little tough right now.  I'll make more of an effort to keep it up.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

New Posts Will Return!

Taking a few days off of the regular posting schedule, friends.

New posts will return!

Side Effects! Whee!

New medication for depression.

I've gotten, I think, every side effect on the list.

Thankfully, not all at once.

First two days:  Headache and nausea.  Dry mouth.
Third day:  No headache.  No dry mouth.  Nausea, dizziness.  Nervous energy in the mornings.  Shakes and stammers.  Excessive sweating.
Fourth day:  Very light nausea, no dizziness.  HUGE problem with nervous energy.  Couldn't sit still, concentrate, hold my hands steady or speak without stammering for a couple of hours in the morning.
Crashed out in the afternoon.  Couldn't stay awake.  Excessive sweating.
Fifth day:  Nervous energy about the same, no nausea.  Crashed out in the afternoon.  Still sweating, yay!
Sixth day:  Nervous energy still noticeable, but seems to be tapering off.  No headaches, nausea, or dizziness.  Sweating seems to be not so bad.
Seventh day: Nervous energy excessive in the morning.  Other side effects seem to be diminished.
Eight day:  Side effects very light.  A little edgy and nervous for awhile in the morning, but that's been about it.

Sleeping--haven't slept well in weeks.  Third night after taking the medicine, best night's sleep I've had in a long time.  Otherwise, fitful sleep and strange dreams.

On the depression front itself, actually feeling better.  I wake up apathetic and with feelings of extreme sadness and pessimism, make myself get out of bed and take my medicine.  I start to feel better within about twenty minutes and am pretty up for most of the day.  I can feel it wearing off in the evenings.  Bizarre--I can actually feel my brain gearing down.

I'll keep you posted.  The side effects seem to be winding down as my body gets accustomed to it, which the doctor said would likely happen.  He said it'd be a solid week to ten days before I really started to feel better, and it's only been six days and I'm noticing improvement already, so that's very encouraging.

Adventures in pharmacy.  Yay!

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

It's Official. I'm Depressed.

Okay, the doctor has confirmed it.  I'm depressed.  (He was prepared to give a lot of credit to Adored Wife's diagnosis, but I checked a lot more boxes than that.)

Let me just throw this out to get it out of the way.  I am NOT, emphatically NOT, suicidal.  It's not even on the table, haven't even considered it.

I'm going on maintenance medication for the depression, maybe for a short term, maybe for the rest of my life.  No shame in that--it's an imbalance in my brain, not something wrong with my personality or character. The fine tuning needed to find the most effective prescription combination is expected to be a bit of a pain, but that goes with the territory.

I'm actually a little relieved.  It's nice to have something concrete I can blame the bad mood on.  And Adored Wife is VERY relieved, because she's hoping I'll start acting more like myself soon.

The doctor was pleasantly surprised that a Christian and a minister would be so open about admitting to depression, and there is still a lingering societal stigma, but maybe I can do something to help change all that.  I've never been all that covert about the depressive episodes I've had, and, yes, you do run across a few people who think being depressed means that your prayer life needs to be more active.  But they're in the minority.

So, new stage in the journey.  I'll keep you posted.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Where I Was on 9/11

For some reason I'm mindful that today is the sixteenth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in addition to a third intended attack on an unknown target that was foiled by courageous and quick-thinking heroes in an airplane.

I don't tend to make much of these anniversaries. We live in a sin-stained world, it's going to get worse before it gets better, but we do have the hope of Heaven to look forward to, and the presence of Christ to sustain us in the midst of this "valley of death."  Our job is to love God, be good to one another, and spread joy, peace, and truth where we can.  Not too much point dwelling on the bad stuff.  Fix what we can, and don't let the rest of it defeat us, you know what I'm saying?

But today, it's on my mind.

I was pastoring a small church in West Virginia sixteen years ago.  We had a (completely unrelated) power outage in the village, and I was walking to the post office when a neighbor came out and told me there had been attacks.  The phones worked and word was getting around that way; lots of people in the neighborhood were going and sitting in their car with the radios on--kind of an odd sight.

I wasn't much of a television watcher, then or now, but that evening, after the power was back on, my family and I spent a few hours watching the news of the day.

How did I feel about it?  There was no personal tragedy.  I don't have any stories to tell of friends or family who were caught in the attack, although I knew people who knew people who knew people--that sort of thing.  But, yes, the world did look a little different the next day.

If you or someone you know was directly affected by those horrible attacks sixteen years ago, my condolences and sympathies.  History will eventually work its healing magic on it, as it has on so many tragedies and evils that have befallen the human race.  But it's still something to never forget.

But there is coming a day when all the aches and heartbreaks of this world will be literally meaningless, their power to hurt us forever quashed, when every tear will be wiped away.

Looking forward to that time.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless,

Depression Revisited

Okay, well, this is something new, and I don't think I like it.  But it looks like I'm going to have to accept it.

I commented a couple of posts ago that I was wondering if I was in a depressive episode.  I'm not. My "episodes of clinical depression" have definite symptoms and certain very specific tell-tale signs.  Feelings of despondency, lethargy, apathy, and pointlessness, tremendous lack of creativity and initiative, no interest in usual pursuits or pleasures, waking up early and being unable to go back to sleep, somatic preoccupation (means "fiddling with things for no reason"), eating patterns change, unable to be cheered up.

That's what a depressive episode looks like.  It's pretty bad.  I get them about every year and a half, and they last for between two and three weeks typically.  The last one was in May of  of 2016 and it was moderately severe.  I'm due for one around November.  Not looking forward to it.

However......

I've been "down" for the last couple of weeks.  Definitely not a depressive episode.  Generally pretty functional, without the indicators that let me know that "yes, I'm depressed."  I've just been in a bad mood, and I've attributed it to the external stressors of which I have my fair share.

But Adored Wife informed me the other night that I was, indeed, depressed.  And when people who live with you tell you there's an issue, you ALWAYS listen, because they often know better than you do.

So, yes, I'm depressed.  And this is new, because ongoing depression is NOT something I struggle with.  I take St. John's Wort daily (it's an herbal supplement with clinically proven effectiveness in treating mild depression) just as a preventative and it's always been pretty effective.  I've increased the dosage significantly, and I'm feeling much better.

But this means that I've entered a new stage in dealing with depression.  I really need to talk to a doctor about it, because it does tend to get worse with age, I have a family history of it, and if my baseline is to be mildly depressed, a full-blown depressive episode could be.....um.....bad.

It's entirely possible that I'll wind up going on some kind of prescription for it.  There's no shame in that--it's a neurochemical imbalance; it doesn't mean I'm a bad person.

But it's something new.  And I don't like it.  But I'll learn to live with it.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Getting Back on Stage

I act in plays very rarely (although I typically spend a couple of hours on Saturday mornings helping to build sets.)  Being involved in a play, whether directing or acting or stage managing, is a time-consuming hobby, with several weeks of rehearsals taking up three to four hours a night, four or five nights a week.

Adored Wife supported and even encouraged my current involvement, largely because we felt Social Hurricane needed some outlet for her energy and she's also involved in the play, working backstage and some other odds and ends.  So I'm also spending quite a lot of time with my daughter, which goes a long way toward making me feel better about the time involved.

But, in fairness, doing this is going to consume most of my life for the next two months--it's a big commitment.  Most of my creative pursuits are going to have to go on the back burner; I only have so much discretionary time, and I still have work responsibilities, household tasks, and a son, wife, and aging parents to keep up with.  I won't be working on my semi-budding authorial career until we wrap this show up.

I do know a man who, I kid you not, is typically involved with three or four shows  (and sometimes five) shows a year.  I don't know how he does it--I don't think he has a life.  This is my second play this year, and that's an awful lot by my standards.  I may take next year off entirely from acting (that's been known to happen, too.)

I'll keep you posted.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Wondering If I'm Depressed

For those of you reading this, I'm way ahead on blogging, so chances are that by the time you see this I'll be feeling much better.  No need to be concerned.

I'm definitely a little depressed.  But I don't know if it's clinical depression or not.  People with brain chemistry issues can have down times just like normal people can.  Not EVERYTHING is about the diagnosis.

These are the symptoms--not sleeping well, waking up early, lethargy and lack of interest in normal pleasures, irritability, pessimism and (mild) feelings of hopelessness and despondency.

Those would normally be all the hallmarks of an episode of dysthymia (clinical depression,) except for three factors:
1. It's too early to expect one (I follow a pretty regular schedule.)  I was looking for a bad couple of weeks around this coming November.
2. The symptoms are much milder than the last, full-blown, this-is-definitely-neurochemical-imbalance thingy from May of 2016.  I'm in a bad mood, but I'm perfectly functional.
3. There really are some circumstantial things going on that could account for things.  Normally dysthymia happens irrespective of my circumstances, which is always hard for people to understand who just want to make me feel better.  I appreciate it, but I'm not cheer uppable.  I've got some schedule changes and some unusual family and household and work pressures going on, and "singing the blues" may just be a perfectly rational response to the stress going on in my life right now.  It won't last forever.

I'll keep you posted.  If it really is clinical depression, I should know for sure in a day or two.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

(Update:  I'm NOT clinically depressed.  There are some very definite tell-tale signs that would have shown up by now, and they haven't.  I'm just a little overdone, and should probably take a few days off, or something.)

Various Odds and Ends

Lots of random things, just catching up.

1. At this writing Adored Wife and Graphics Magician are in Colorado spending some time with family out there.  Social Hurricane and Oscar the cat and I are holding down the fort.  Oscar doesn't know what we've done with his people and is holding us personally responsible.

2. The internet and phone service are out at our house.  Lots of storms lately and lots of equipment damaged and their technicians are covered up.  We may be out a couple of days, but it'll be fixed by the time AW and GM get back home.  We'll survive.  First world problems, but it's amazing how dependent you get on it.

3. I wound up cast as the lead in a production of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."  It wasn't accidental, but it came about kind of suddenly.  SH is also going to be involved helping with the production.

4. I spent yesterday largely with my dad, and a little bit with my mom.  Neither was feeling well and it was a bit of a difficult visit, but still good to spend time with them.

5. I'm taking a little time off this afternoon, and Social Hurricane doesn't work today, and we're going on an extensive father-daughter date.  Chinese food may be involved.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Musings On Back Trouble

Well, that wasn't too smart.

I don't precisely have a bad back.  More to the point, I really DON'T have a bad back.  It rarely gives me any trouble at all, and I do a fair amount of manual labor and heavy lifting.

But there have been a few times over the past few years when I've lifted something the wrong way and hurt myself.  The last time wasn't any permanent injury--a few days later it was fine, but for that few days I was pretty well laid up.

This most recent time I'm hoping wasn't permanent injury.  I was doing some extraordinarily heavy lifting Saturday morning, and made the mistake of turning the wrong way while carrying a heavy weight.  It didn't hurt when I did it, but then later I drove home and when I got there and tried to get out of the car....my back seized up.

And it's better today than it was a couple of days ago, but I'm still really limited in my mobility, and any kind of real lifting is just out of the picture.  With a little luck I just strained a muscle or something and it'll heal in a few more days., no troubles.

I should probably be more careful, though.  I'm a very strong guy, but I'm not getting any younger.  The real adjustment around the household, though, is that I'm accustomed to being the brawn for Adored Wife when she needs some help, because of all her physical limitations.

Sunday she was getting around a lot more comfortably than I was.  Go figure.  Took a little getting used to, and hopefully it's a short-term thing.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Social Hurricane Changes Shifts

Social Hurricane once upon a time was my people person.  Wasn't scared of anything or anybody, made friends easily, eager for adventures and activity.

She still enjoys people, and she still loves doing stuff.  But it has to be people she knows and situations she's familiar with, or the anxiety kicks in.

It's tough when you're less confident as a young adult than you were as ten year old.  To her considerable credit, she KNOWS she struggles with anxiety and she tries to combat it.  But it makes it very difficult to put herself into something new.

She's changing shifts at work, from third to first.  Most of the people she'll be working with she already knows, and, while the work responsibilities will change, they won't be substantially different than what she's already doing.

And she's going over and over these very same points in her head.  "I know these people."  "I know this place."  "I know how to do this job."  She knows the anxiety is irrational--she has nothing to worry about.

But she's as nervous about it as if she were moving to a different continent.  She keeps going over how she's going to handle things on the new shift.  And over, and over, and over.

(She'd driving me a little nuts, to be honest with you.  Anxiety is contagious.)

I'll be very happy when she's got a couple of days under her belt.  And so will she.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Obnoxious Cat

The cat's name is Oscar.  I don't feel any particular compulsion to come up with a "blog name" for him.

Although I could call him Pester.  Or Annoying Cat.  Or Ungrateful Demanding Self-Centered Feline Wretch.  Or any of a number of other things that come to mind.

....remind me why we have this cat, again?

He's spent a couple of nights in the garage lately.  We don't toss let him outside at night, because we've had flea troubles, and fleas are nocturnal.  We let him outside in the daylight.  He WANTS to go outside at night.  I mean, really, really wants to to go out.

I don't like tossing him in the garage--it's not all that comfortable in there and I know he gets lonely.  But the alternative is that he yowls outside my bedroom door all night.  (If the door's not locked, he can open it and come in.)  If he's IN my bedroom, and wants me to let him go outside, he'll meow and scratch at furniture until I pay attention to him.

I'm hoping this season of the year, or whatever it is that's driving his mad desire to flee the house, passes soon.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Things DO Get Better

A few years back, I wouldn't have called this.

My second daughter, Social Hurricane, and I are friends and enjoy doing things together.

This gives me GREAT hope when Graphics Magician is being particularly aggravating in his fourteen-year-old, hormone-driven, strong-willed, I-know-everything-and-you-just-don't-understand way.

We went through a really rough patch with SH some years back.  Rebellion, runaway, suicide attempts, hanging out with a really bad crowd, getting involved in unhealthy relationships, several hospital visits, a couple of stays in psychiatric facilities, lots and lots of counseling.  Screaming matches, tears, trouble at school.  One time I physically restrained her from leaving the house until we could talk a little sense into her, one time I knocked her door down because she'd locked it and was busily cutting her wrists on the other side, and on more than one occasion her mother and I lost sleep because she'd run away and we had no idea where she was.

It wasn't the funnest.

And now?  She's still got issues, and probably always will.  Bipolar disorder doesn't go away.  But she's gainfully employed and on a good career path, she pays rent and helps out around the house, and she and I watch superhero shows and cartoons together, talk about lots of things, and go out for breakfast or lunch every so often and have fun conversations when we do.

My troublesome daughter has become my friend.

That's actually pretty cool.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Hormone Central

Conversation between me and Graphics Magician.  If you're not a regular reader of this blog, GM is a 14 year old strong willed boy who thinks he knows everything.  As this conversation unfolds, though, I have him at a bit of a disadvantage, because I'd earlier caught him hanging out with a neighborhood girl and he's embarrassed and a bit abashed.

Me: My son, do you know what hormones do to fourteen-year-old boys?

GM: ......no.

Me: Hormones make fourteen-year-old boys stupid.  Do you know what hormones do to fourteen-year-old girls?

GM: .....make them stupid?

Me: No.  Hormones make fourteen-year-old girls mean.  She will play with your emotions just because she can, and she won't intend any harm by it.  Haven't you had enough girl trouble already?

GM: No, but, Papa, I get it, okay, but she's like my best friend.  We just talk.

Me: Uh-huh.  Plus, she's really cute and she smells nice, right?

GM: (Puts fingers in ears, blushes, grins, stops making eye contact.)

Me: Okay, I guess we're done here.

Eating My Feelings

I keep saying I'm going to lose weight and take better care of myself.  I have some incipient health troubles because of my poor eating habits that I really, really need to nip in the bud.

And I could lose weight, you know.  There's no mystery about it.  If I made better food choices the pounds would come off.  I know, because I've done it before.  I've lost ten pounds lots of times.  I'm one of the best "ten-pound-losers" you could ever hope to meet.  I've lost count of the number of times I've lost ten pounds.

KEEPING it off, well, that's another matter.

The trouble is that I eat my feelings.  If I'm stressed, I eat.  I should turn to healthier ways to deal with stress--chores, exercise, prayer, some hobby.  But no, I turn to peanut butter sandwiches and potato chips and oh, look, cookies.  My life, quite honestly, is moderately stressful, and I've explored some of the reasons for that in this blog.  But lots of people have stressful lives.

Eating my feelings temporarily does make me feel better; it really does.  If things with the family are kind of high pressure right now, some ice cream is a short-term relief.  But long term?  It's really bad for me, and it'll make me less able to cope with stress if I'm unhealthy and unwell.

I need to figure out how to do healthier things with my feelings.

"One Vice At a Time"

Social Hurricane is hoping to live a little healthier.  In the bad old days, she got into cigarettes and alcohol, and she's ALWAYS liked junk food, plus some other unhealthy habits and practices.  She never got into illegal drugs--she was taking a lot of legal medication, and she did have the sense to know that mixing the two would be a really spectacularly bad idea.  So, there's that, anyway.

But, as I said, she's trying to live a little healthier, and I applaud her for it.  It's been several weeks since her last cigarette, and she's cut way down on the alcohol intake.  The "healthy eating and more exercise" thing hasn't really kicked in yet, and she's kicking herself for it every time she slips on the stress-and-boredom eating.

I'm actually trying to get her to cut herself a little slack.  Quitting smoking is huge, and very difficult.  I'd kinda prefer she not drink at all (I don't personally), but in all honesty I don't have any moral objections to an occasional alcoholic beverage with friends, and that's pretty much where she's at now.  Solitary drinking, or drinking to intoxication?  Yeah, that's a problem, and I'm glad she's pretty much done with that and I hope she never goes back.

The phrase I use is "one vice at a time."  Making changes in habits is hard, and I'm very proud of the ones she has accomplished.  They're entirely self-motivated, and they haven't come easy.  Let's get those under control, and then turn to the next bad habit.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Filling the Pill Boxes

A Saturday night chore at my house is the filling of the medication cases for the week.

Adored Wife and Social Hurricane both take quite a lot of maintenance medication.  SH is, I think, on about four different things--I don't fully keep up with hers.  She and AW have been handling it.

Adored Wife takes six different prescription medications on a regular basis, three of them four times a day, one thrice daily, two twice daily, and one once a day.  She also takes a daily multivitamin, twice daily calcium, and a daily aspirin, all at the recommendation of her doctors.  She ALSO has three other medications she takes on an "as needed" basis, depending on whether or not various symptoms flare up.  Those stay in the bathroom and don't go in the pill case.

Lots of people, of course, have chronic health conditions and set up medication on a regular basis--it's hardly unique to us.

But it's a satisfying little chore, and the pill cases are translucent--with all the various medications in their different shapes and colors in there and set up for the week they actually look quite pretty.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Just Getting Through The Day

We're not in survival mode right now, but I thought I'd blog about it a little bit.

We have our challenges--we always have our challenges.  But sometimes they're more challenging challenges, and sometimes they're less challenging challenges.

When the challenges are at their challengiest, we say we've entered survival mode.  When you're in survival mode, you're just trying to make it through the day.  Is the house still standing at the end of the day?  Is everyone still alive and breathing?  Then you're good, and that's as much as you can hope for.

Paperwork piling up?  Oh, yeah.  Household chores not done?  You betcha.  Social and family life and contacts?  Not happening.  Creative pursuits?  On the VERY back burner.  Eating right and exercising?  Not today, buddy.  Any kind of rest or relaxation or recreation?  Yeah, right.

It's survival mode.  There's some crisis that's so big and so immediate and so urgent and so all-consuming that it occupies every ounce of energy and attention you have.

We've been in survival mode a number of times here and there over the years.  It's exhausting.

We had a couple of bad moments a few days back when it looked like we were heading for survival mode again.  We may have dodged a bullet on that one--survival mode only lasted a few hours, and I think we headed it off at the pass.  Still not quite daring to breathe a sigh of relief just yet, but hopeful.

There are lots of people living in survival mode, and if you're one of them, friend, you have my prayers and my sympathy.  It's not a fun place to be.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Adolescence, Sweet Adolescence

Adored Wife is convinced there's something wrong with Graphics Magician.

He's wanting to hang out with friends we don't entirely approve of all the time and do not much of anything with them, he's moody, uncommunicative, sleeps a lot, a little lazy, doesn't enjoy time with family, and he's not enthusiastic about a lot of the things he used to really enjoy.

I personally think that he's got a very serious condition, and the whole family is going to be suffering from it for the next four to six years.

That's right--he's an adolescent.

Now, I have to be careful about making light of AW's concerns, because there have been numerous occasions when she's been right about something that's escaped my attention.  I'll keep an eye on him.

But honestly, he reminds me a lot of me when I was that age.  And I had my own issues (as which fourteen year old doesn't?) but nothing to be alarmed about.  I got through it, although I'm sure I was a trial to my parents' patience on more than one occasion.

We may be entering a very "normal" challenging stage.  And I'm not sure we're equipped to deal with normal.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Addendum: Okay, once again AW was right and I was wrong.  GM and his friends have been getting into a little mischief beyond what we're prepared to tolerate, and we're having to nip a few tendencies in the bud.  Whee.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Praying For Guidance

I'm active on Facebook, and every once in awhile someone will make a very cryptic status update, like "things are difficult right now," or "that's it, I'm done," or, on the cheerier side, "well, that was fun," or "I can't believe I got away with that."

I don't know if it's intended as a bid for attention, but it can come off that way--almost soliciting FB friends to respond and ask "what's wrong?"

There's even a term for it: "Vaguebooking."  The typical sarcastic response is "do you think you could vague that up for me a little?"

Well, this is going to be a vague blog post.  I'm not seeking attention, and I don't want anyone to try to pry my secrets out of me.  My mood is upbeat and positive, and I'm seeing ample evidence that God is in control over even the challenges of our lives.  It's all good.

But there are some changing circumstances in our lives, affecting all our family members, and we're trying to figure out the God-pleasing way forward, and I can't really blog about this stuff..  Some of it's confidential, some of it's awkward, some of it I don't have the approval of family members to share, some of it's just not for public consumption yet.

But I know some of the people reading this are prayer warriors.

And we appreciate your prayers for God's guidance.  We know that He's going to guide us, we know that He has a plan, and we know that what He has in mind is far better than anything we could come up with on our own.

So, thanks for praying for us.  As and when I can talk about some of this, I most assuredly will.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

My Father's Sense of Humor

Happy birthday to Graphics Magician, who turns fourteen today.

Happy almost-birthday to my father, who turns ninety this coming Friday the 21st.  Wow.  I don't know a whole lot of ninety-year-olds.

I'd like to tell you a birthday-related story about my father's sense of humor.

This was several years back.  I think GM was in the neighborhood of five, which means my father would have been pushing hard on eighty.

Grand-daddy: So your birthday is July 17th?

GM:  Uh-huh.

Grand-daddy: MINE is July 21st.

GM: (This is cool.)  Ooooohhhhhh.

Grand-daddy:  So your birthday is four days before mine.

GM: Yeah.

Grand-daddy:  So you're older than I am.

GM: ........nuh uh!

Grand-daddy:  Okay, look.  July 17th, your birthday, right?

GM: ........yeah?

Grand-daddy: (counts on fingers) 18, 19, 20, 21, MY birthday.

GM: ..........yeah?

Grand-daddy:  So you're four days older than I am.

GM: .................................nuh uh!


It had the little guy tied in knots.  He knew that couldn't possibly be right, but he couldn't work out how it was wrong.

Graphics Magician is a little tougher to trick these days, and I hope he has a very happy birthday.

God bless, friends.

Family Downsizing

I know I post about the "abnormalities" of my family, but I always do that with two things in mind:

1. EVERY family is "abnormal" in some ways.
2. Along with that, a lot of the challenges we face are shared by lots of other people.

So, here's one.  We've had a child leave home.  She got married, and she's moved out.  There is absolutely nothing unique about that.  It's really going to change our family dynamics, but thousands upon thousands of families before us have faced the same issues and challenges.

I don't know what it's going to look like.  It's new to us.

So, some of the blogging will change, as we get used to the "new normal."  Lots of questions.  What am I going to call "Basement Artist" now that she's no longer in my basement?  Should we take the extra leaf out of the dining room table now that we're down to four people?  Who's going to do the recycling and the composting and the firewood?  How's the cat going to respond when he realizes she's not coming back?  Should we cut down on the amount of coffee we buy, or will Social Hurricane step up and start drinking more of it?  What are we going to do with all of the teenage and college years stuff she didn't take with her?

Who am I going to watch "Phineas and Ferb" with?  Nobody else in the family is as big a fan as BA and I are.

We'll figure it out.  In the meantime I will go ahead and select a new name for her.  Her husband is Harbor Master (reflecting his job), and Basement Artist will henceforth be known as......as......um........

I'll clearly have to give it some thought.......

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Basement Artist Heads Out

The household of me, she is going through changes.

(I'm trying to learn a little French, and the grammar is very different.)

Basement Artist and Harbor Master, newlyweds, are at this writing in the process of packing up and moving out, from North Carolina to Canada.  They both have some serious adjusting to do, particularly BA.  HM is also an introvert, and the two of them are accustomed to having their own space.  Two introverts getting married, and spending LOTS of time together in close quarters?  They're going to have to build in a little "alone time."

They'll get unpacked and moved into their apartment in Montreal, and then, oh, I don't know, figure out what the rest of their lives are going to look like.  HM will go back to his work, and BA will have to sort out what she's going to do with her time.  Volunteer, get a job, go back to school?  They're still exploring and discussing options.

I'm going to seriously see if I can't get her to write a few guest posts.

Also, given that she's no longer going to be living in my basement, I suppose I'll have to come up with a new "nom de blog" for her.  I may solicit her input on it.

I'm going to miss her.  I'm going to miss them both.  Everything changes.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Kicking Myself

There's a meme on Facebook which says "It's possible to see something you don't agree with on Facebook and scroll right by it."

I should have listened.  I know better.  Every single time I engage in a controversial topic on social media I've come to regret it.

Every.  Single.  Time.

And this time was no different.  I disagreed, respectfully, with the poster.  I could see her point and bore her no personal animus, but I believed her to be mistaken.  And I put what I considered to be a reasoned and measured response.

And NOW, I'm getting all these notifications about people who agree with me and people who agree with her, and not everyone is keeping it as civil as she and I did, and it's temporarily taken over my Facebook.

It'll settle down.  But in the meantime I'm too aggravated with myself to get anything else coherent or creative done.

Posting on Facebook does not change anybody's mind if they already have their minds made up.  It's not worth it.  I know this.

I should have just kept scrolling right on by.  I knew better.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

This post has absolutely nothing to do with "The Neighbors Think We're Normal."  But I had to vent somewhere, and this is taking up all the space in my brain anyway.  Thanks for reading.

Ah, well.  It'll settle down in a few hours.  Tomorrow somebody else will post something controversial that won't change anything.  Maybe I'll have the sense to leave it alone.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

The Happy Post

Adored Wife, I'm delighted, ecstatic, overjoyed to report, is feeling much more herself. Energy level is back up, brain is working again, she's being creative and sleeping better and wanting to get stuff done.

You can't imagine how happy I am about this. She had a ROUGH few weeks there.

So, today, I'm going to count some blessings in celebration. No doom and gloom today, friends. You want a downer post, look elsewhere.

1. I have a roof over my head.

2. I have plenty to eat.

3. I have a beautiful family and there is love in my home.

4. My oldest daughter, who was born three months early, stayed in the hospital the first 102 days of her life, and had four surgeries before she was one and a half has turned into a beautiful, intelligent, talented, morally strong young woman who recently got married.

5. My youngest daughter and second child has started on what promises to be a solid career path in health care and has shown signs of growing spiritual maturity and increasingly adult judgment after a difficult few years.

6. My teen-aged son, who still has a few things to learn, has demonstrated himself capable of apologizing and learning from mistakes, and has on occasion shown grace and humor under pressure.

7. My wife is my best friend.

8. We are surrounded by family and friends who obviously love and care about us.

9. My sins are forgiven in Jesus' name and God has promised to never leave me.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Waiting at the Hospital. (And waiting, and waiting....)

I fully and completely understand that hospitals are busy places full of people who have to get things done.  And health crises don't go according to schedule, and things come up.  I get this.

Nevertheless, there is no language on Earth in which "fast as a hospital" is a common expression.

Adored Wife was in the hospital.  About three in the afternoon the doctor said there was one more test to run, but if that came back okay he didn't see any reason she couldn't go home that day.

Now, I didn't think that meant four.  But I didn't think it meant ten o'clock at night, either.

By the time they'd gotten around to running the test, there wasn't anybody there who could READ the test.  The nursing staff had been through a shift change and there was a different doctor on call.  The new nursing staff was operating on the assumption that AW was spending another night.  The previous shift nurse had indicated she'd be going home, but that information hadn't apparently gotten around to the new crew.  And, because the first doctor hadn't actually formally done discharge orders, the new doctor had to start everything from scratch.

And, she was busy, and I respect that.  Let's be fair.  But she was also inclined to keep AW one more night just for observation.  (Because you know, she stopped breathing three times the day before.)

But AW really wanted to go home, and they weren't going to be running any more tests, and it seemed like all she needed was sleep and she wanted to do that in her own bed.  So I persisted.

And, seven hours after the doctor had said we could go home that day, we did indeed go home that day.

Hope all is well out there, friends, and God bless.

The Really Bad Monday

Okay, I think I can talk about this now.

Monday, June 5th.  I'm at work, Social Hurricane is sleeping owing to having worked her 3rd shift CNA job the night before, Adored Wife and Basement Artist are running around doing wedding stuff, and have picked up Graphics Magician from school midday.  He was done early due to testing.

GM is talking to AW in her room when all of a sudden she stops breathing.  GM reports this as her grabbing at her throat and then passing out.  GM gets the Artist, who starts CPR, and then he wakes up the Hurricane, who very sensibly calls 911 and then calls me.

I'm not giving all the details.  There are some things I may NEVER be ready to talk about.

By the time I get there, there's an ambulance, a fire truck, and several first responder cars.  I'm okay with this, and I'm very glad they got there first.  AW is semiconscious and incoherent and having convulsions, but she's being given the best of care.  A neighbor lady has come over, and I dispatch her to go give some emotional support to the kids while I'm talking to the med-techs.

Counting the time with Graphics Magician, another time after the EMTs arrive, and once more in the ambulance on the ride to the hospital, AW stops breathing at least three times.

Things start to settle down after a few hours and they get lots of powerful medication into her.  In the Emergency Room, the first coherent thing she whispers is "I don't have time for this."

They run every test in the book, and the official diagnosis, arrived at Tuesday afternoon, is "neurological episode."  Which I think is doctorese for "we don't know what happened and we don't know if it's going to happen again."

Whee.

Monday night is spent in the hospital.  Tuesday night, they'd kind of like to keep her in the hospital but she really wants me to take her home and we manage to persuade them.  Wednesday she sleeps pretty much the whole day, Thursday she sleeps a lot, Friday she's able to get a few things done, but only in ten-minute periods before having to go rest.

And this is a week before our daughter is getting married.

At this writing, seventeen days after the episode, she's still only good for about half of hour of activity at a time and she's aggravated with it.  She'd had a wedding to do, and she had to hand off LOTS of things that she'd really kind of wanted to do herself.  (Thank the Lord for wonderful friends and family.)  And quite a few little touches that she'd wanted to add just didn't happen.

I pointed out to her that she, you know, nearly died, and she should probably cut herself some slack.

She's still annoyed at not bouncing back from this more quickly.

So, that's kind of where we stand.  I'll tell more stories later.  Thanks for reading.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Giving Myself a Little Space

Happy Thursday, friends.

You know what?  It has been an intense roller coaster of a couple of weeks, and I honestly don't think I've had the time or the head space to really process things.

I'm going to cut myself some slack here.

Let me just report this:  Adored Wife is feeling considerably less bad (although her endurance is completely shot), the wedding was a joyous event despite lots of things going wrong, we have amazing and loving family, friends, and neighbors and, at this writing, Basement Artist and my new son-in-law Harbor Master are off on their honeymoon.

So, you know, it's all good.  But my tank is pretty well empty.  I'm just plain tired.

I'll get back to the serious blogging in a post or two.  I think I'm going to take a little downtime today.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Um.......

Not sure how to start posting all this.  I'm going to have some serious catching up to do to get everything blogged, friends.

The last two weeks have seen a serious health scare and crisis for Adored Wife, school troubles for Graphics Magician, and a wedding for Basement Artist.  Social Hurricane has really stepped up to the plate, and BA and GM have definitely pulled their weight around the house as well.

The neighbors don't think we're normal anymore.  It was probably the ambulance, the fire truck, and all the first responder cars that tipped them off.

It's going to take me several posts to get all this logged.  AW had a "major neurological episode" and, among other entertaining things, stopped breathing three times.

I wasn't home.  The kids almost certainly saved her life.

She's still not anywhere nearly fully recovered, although she's doing much better in comparison.

I'll write more later, after I've had a little chance to get some rest and process all this.  May I say, though, that we have WONDERFUL neighbors, friends, and church family?  There's nothing like a good crisis or two to find out how loved you are.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Wedding Bells Coming

Hi, friends!

Not much of a post today.  The wedding's in two days and we're kinda busy over here.

Instead I'll just share two funny observations I've shamelessly stolen from a hilarious guy named Dwight, a Facebook friend of mine:

1. It's impossible to tell just how many chameleons are in a room at any given time.

2. You know you're a bad driver when Siri says "In four hundred feet, stop and let me out."

Hope all's well out there today, and God bless.

How We Respond to Stress

Difficult days are not unknown for the members of my household.  Chronic health conditions, adolescence, upcoming weddings and moves, jobs and bills and school and insurance and taxes and just plain LIFE can be overwhelming. 

Three fifths of the members of my household (the extroverted contingent) have been known to generate a powerful and pervasive grouchiness field when they are experiencing difficult days.  The other two fifths of the household, of the introverted persuasion, tend rather to hole up behind closed doors or books or computer screens or get out of the house when we are having difficult days.  Getting out of the house is okay, but when the two-fifths remain in the house, they tend to radiate grouchiness fields on a slightly different frequency.

The grouchiness field is an issue.

One of the household rules says, in effect, that when you're having a bad day, don't take it out on everyone else.  This rule tends to get violated every so often.

ANOTHER household rule says that, when someone is having a bad day, do something nice for them to make them feel cared about and loved.  This rule, happily enough, tends to get followed rather more frequently, although still not consistently.

So, ideally, infractions of the first rule will be met with food, hugs, listening ears, and compassion.  It doesn't always work that way, but it's a good day when it does.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Big 5-0!

I'd like to take this blog post to wish Adored Wife a very happy fiftieth birthday!

Happy birthday to her!
Happy birthday to her!
Happy birthday, AW!
Happy birthday to her!

Okay, did that.

That's probably about it for the moment, friends.  Things have been unusually crazy around my household at the moment.  Every single flat surface has something wedding-related on it, and it's a busy time at work as well.

Hope all's well out there, and God bless.

Repeat As Often As Needed

It is my responsibility to help my thirteen year old son grow to be a good and Godly man.

That can't happen if I throw him to a pack of rabid hyenas before he has a chance to get there.

(Deep breath.)

It is my responsibility to help my thirteen year old son grow to be a good and Godly man.

That can't happen if I drop him in a volcano the next time he gives me attitude.

(Another deep breath.  Count to ten.)

It is my responsibility to help my thirteen year old son grow to be a good and Godly man.

That can't happen if I launch him into orbit, no matter how much his behavior gets on my LAST nerve.

(Okay, okay, calm down.  Be patient.  Adolescence is a difficult and challenging time.)

It is my responsibility to help my thirteen year old son grow to be a good and Godly man.

That can't happen if I........(This will pass.  Just hang in there.)

It is my responsibility..........

The Nest Starts to Empty....

Basement Artist is getting married and leaving us.  She's twenty-four--it's time.

I don't wanna talk about it.

Social Hurricane is talking about moving out.  She's twenty-two.  She's got some issues, but it's time.

I don't wanna....no, I guess I should talk about something.

Social Hurricane has wanted to spread her wings and fly for some time now.  She tried too early, kinda fell and crashed, and came limping back.  There were prices to pay, consequences, some delays and obstacles she's got to live with it.

But she thinks she's almost ready, and we think she's almost ready.  She's done lots of adulting things and is working on more.

It's a little tricky doing adulting things when you suffer from full-bore bipolar disorder, anxiety attacks, panic attacks, hallucinations, and serious dyslexia.  Plus she got hit by a car a few years back and has a few lingering issues from that.  SH is probably always going to have some challenges, some things that are a little more complicated for her than for "normal" people.

I'm a little scared at the prospect of her leaving, much more so than I am about Basement Artist.  She's a fully licensed CNA, and she's good at it and likes it, so she does have a very marketable skill.  She's pretty determined to get her driver's license this time around, and once we get past this wedding I do want to take her out for some more intensive instruction.  She's starting paying bills and keeping up with medications and doctor appointments and such already, so, you know, progress.  (Of course, there would have been a few awkward bits if her mother wasn't keeping an eye on things, but, you know, this is how we learn.)  And, in some respects, she does have a lot of practical intelligence--she'll abruptly turn around and be competent and capable at the darnedest things.

I feel better for writing all that out.  Maybe she's going to be okay?

I'm not ready for this.

Hope everything's okay out there, friends, and God bless.

Blogging Ahead

Good morning, friends, and happy Monday.

There's a bit of an oddity with blogging (or any kind of publication, for that matter.)  I schedule blog posts ahead of time; it's the only way I can insure they come out with any kind of regularity.  I like to have something up on Mondays and Thursdays as a courtesy--you have a pretty fair idea of when "The Neighbors Think We're Normal" is going to update.

But as I write this it's two weeks before it's going to go live, and it may of course be longer than that before you read it.  So there's a little bit of time travel going on here, because I'm aware that some of the things that are still in my future are in your past.  But they'll also be in MY past, because not only do I write the blog but I read it, so I know what's going live on any particular day.

I'm particularly thinking about an upcoming wedding.  It's less than five weeks from the "writing now," but it's less than three weeks from the "reading now."  If all goes according to plan, this blog will update every Monday and Thursday for the foreseeable future.  On Monday, June 19th, if all goes well, I expect to be a father-in-law and my married daughter will be off on her honeymoon.

Yikes.  And I'll be reading a blog from a three-weeks past self who still has a marriage ceremony to look forward to.

I wonder what I'll make of it.  Maybe I'll tell myself "hi," and hope that everything has gone well.

Looking back over this, it seems a bit disjointed.  Sorry.  I have LOTS of stuff on my mind.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Monday At My House

Okay, so some highlights from Monday.

Social Hurricane, who'd worked third shift the night before at the medical center, got picked up from work by a friend who'd also worked third shift.  (She could take the bus home but that would add an hour and a half to her commute so she usually tries to get a ride from somebody.)  They stopped by Wal-Mart to pick up a few things the household needed and then came to our house for breakfast, before said friend headed off to bed, and SH went to bed herself.  This happens sometimes.

I took Graphics Magician to a dentist appointment while Adored Wife and Basement Artist were going to a wedding dress fitting.  The good news is that he's probably not going to need braces, the bad news is that he does have two cavities, but we were pretty well aware of that already.

I dropped him off at school and then went to work.  Word has it the dress fitting went well.  AW had some household chores during the day but was mainly busy with wedding stuff.  A new physical thing is that her arms and hands are giving her some trouble, more than likely connected to the spinal nerve damage.  She wears wrist braces a lot because she's more comfortable with them, takes them off to do things, and forgets where she sets them down.  Then she'll be in another room, her hands will start to hurt, and she'll wonder where on earth she put the doggoned things.  That happened at least twice on Monday to my knowledge.

Basement Artist is at that "I'm-getting-married-and-moving-seventeen-hundred-miles-north" freakout stage.  There's enough stuff to keep her busy, PLUS she keeps getting breakfast and lunch invitations from all these friends who want to catch up with her before she leaves the country.  (When you work second shift at a restaurant, it's easy to make breakfast dates.  You just need extra coffee.)

Also, Adored Wife texted me late in the afternoon that GM seemed to have acquired a basketball goal.  Good for him, I guess, he's been wanting one for some time, but Social Hurricane's room is right next to the driveway and she works nights and we've made it plain to him and his friends that we don't want him playing b-ball out there while she's trying to sleep.

I got home late from work, played a little catch-up on some yard work (my weekend had been pretty full plus it had been rainy), and ran to the bank (had to get some checks deposited) and the library with Social Hurricane (and we grabbed a soda and talked a good bit).  AW did pork chops and pasta for a late supper, but it was a "food available in the kitchen" rather than a "family sit-down" kind of night.  She and I ate standing up at the kitchen counter and played a game of Farkle.

Had good talks with Basement Artist and Graphics Magician in the evening.  Adored Wife and I are overdue for a date, and I'd suggested we run out for at least a few minutes for a milkshake, but she wasn't feeling all that well and we settled for conversation and snuggles.

All in all, actually a very full and interesting day.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Conversations, Lightly Seasoned With Memory Issues

I am, let's be fair, occasionally absent-minded myself.  If I don't write it down, chances are good it won't get done.  Usually, something will jog my memory later (usually too late to do any good) and I'll have a regrettable "oh, yeah, that" moment.  Some things don't stick in my mind at all.  I don't think I forget them, I just don't think I really paid them enough attention to record them accurately in the first place.

So, yeah, I'm absent-minded.  Unfortunately I don't have any neurological issues to blame it on, but fortunately it's generally not too bad.

Adored Wife has significant memory issues, with plenty of neurochemical grounds to account for them.  Some times, things that she once knew just, purely and simply, go away, without hope or chance for recall.  No jogging her memory, no reminding her of things.  They're simply not there any more.

The awkward thing in conversations is that we'll sometimes have different recollections of how things have happened.  Usually, my version of events is more accurate than AW's, and we both know this, because of the interesting place that is her brain.

Usually.  But not always.

Because it HAS happened that I've legitimately forgotten something myself, and AW hasn't.  And that gets difficult when I'm sympathetically assuming that she's forgotten something and she's second-guessing herself, because her memory is only a rough guide to events for her.

And then something will jog my memory, and, oops.  My bad.  Sorry, AW, you were right about that one, and I was wrong.  (With a little luck, though, she'll forget that she was right and I was wrong.  Otherwise I'd never live it down.)

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Saying "No" To Stuff

We've had to say "no" to some things for peace of mind.  Sometimes we look like a normal family, and we try to act like one, but we're really kind of not.  I know every family has their own problems, and it's entirely true that "everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about," but, yeah, we have our challenges.  Adored Wife and Social Hurricane, in particular, have psychological and neurochemical issues that make it occasionally difficult to function at all, and AW has some pretty good-sized physical limits on top of that.

So there are things "normal" families can do that are a little difficult for us.

One case in point--our neighborhood had a community yard sale.  Everybody putting out tables in their front yards, enjoying the weather, socializing and hopefully making a few bucks on some unwanted treasures that were taking up space in their garages.

I'd kind of wanted to do that.  We have a LOT of unwanted treasures, and it looked like fun.  I already knew AW couldn't do any of the heavy lifting, of course, but that was no big deal.  I'd have the girls and Graphics Magician to help with that.

And then it got down to the wire, and Basement Artist was going to have to work, and AW had a very busy week with wedding planning and had been ill on top of that and was having anxiety issues and SH'd had a really bad couple of days with hallucinations and panic attacks and was doing well just to get to her job and then come home and try to keep from falling apart.

So the upshot was that I'd have to pretty much pull it all together and man it myself along with whatever I could coerce Graphics Magician into doing.  And it's not as though I didn't have other things going on that I wanted and needed to do.

And it wouldn't have been any fun to try to do it under those circumstances.

So, we took the low-stress option and said "no," to participating in the community yard sale.  Bummer, but sometimes you have to do that.  Because the neighbors only THINK we're normal.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Panic in the Sam's Club

Both Adored Wife and Social Hurricane are subject to panic attacks and anxiety attacks.

I appreciate that there are probably more precise medical definitions, but AW explained the difference to me from a sufferer's perspective-----

Anxiety attack:  Somewhere out there, someone is probably hunting for me, and he might have a knife.
Panic attack:  He has a knife.  And he's in my house.

Social Hurricane and I were out on a father-daughter date, eating pizza in Sam's Club, when she tensed up and said "I know there's nothing you can do about this, but I'm having a panic attack."

There was nothing I could do about it.  Trying to reason someone out of it doesn't help, because they KNOW it's "not real."  But the body doesn't know that, and won't be told.  I've never had them, and hope that's always true, but it doesn't look like any fun at all.

Fortunately it didn't last long, but SH was jumpy, agitated, and paranoid for several minutes there.  Increased respiration, nervously looking all around, completely distracted.  We walked around and looked at stuff, because it's better to keep on the move.

It was very good that she can recognize when she's having an attack--that helps tremendously in dealing with them (although it doesn't make them go away.)  And, a few minutes later, she was fine.

That kind of thing happens in my family all the time.  Whee!

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Just Another Weekend

So, the other weekend....

Graphics Magician had his social privileges severely curtailed, because he wasn't where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there.  Also the story he told us didn't quite line up with the observable facts, although I'm prepared to grant him the benefit of the doubt and attribute it to adolescent confusion rather than deliberate deception.  Nonetheless, it wasn't a happy conversation.

Social Hurricane had a bad hallucinatory episode, and had to put down a few lines of salt in the house to keep the monsters at bay.  It's a coping technique that works for her, and we just deal with it.  She hasn't had to do that in some time, and may be adjusting her medication.

Basement Artist had a bridal shower at church, and she was both thrilled and completely overwhelmed.  She was gracious and conducted herself admirable while there.  She got home and was completely peopled out--she had to go do some introvert recharging.

Adored Wife and I were actually okay, except for having to juggle kids.  GM's situation was a bit stressful, but the shower was grand fun.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

The Next Bill Down The Pike

Basement Artist was a little concerned, because she got a substantial medical bill for a procedure that she was under the impression insurance was supposed to cover.  She's still figuring out all the "adulting things" herself and has made great progress (she's going to be fine) but getting a notice in the mail asking you to pay several hundred dollars you don't have would rock anybody's day.

And we got to share with her the benefit of our own experience.  I don't think I've had a day in my twenty-seven years of married life when there wasn't some doctor bill I was making payments on, or some health coverage snafu I was trying to straighten out, or some prescription that hadn't been refilled, or some insurance company I needed to call about some claim that hadn't been paid on.  We've made mistakes in some of the things we've done, but sometimes doctors' offices and insurers have made errors in how they filed or processed things as well.

The upshot is, there's always something to deal with.  And no sooner do you get one matter handled than the next thing is coming down the pike.

And you can't let it get to you, and what we were trying, with some success, to get across to BA was that she couldn't let it get to her.  Yes, it was something that needed to be straightened out, but you didn't need to let that ruin your whole day.  No point fretting about it; just make the phone calls, find out what needs to be done to address the situation, and move on.  Oh, and stop to enjoy the sunsets and the kittens and the smell of fresh-baked cookies in the midst of all that.  You can't let worries about doctor bills run your life.

As it turns out, other than a modest deductible insurance IS covering this particular bill.  The doctor's office had just sent us the bill before they received the payment from our insurance company.  If we'd just waited on this one, they would have sent us another, much lower bill the next month.  But it was a five-minute phone call to buy BA some peace of mind--well worth it.

Okay, on to Social Hurricane's doctor bills......

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Going Through Midlife Crisis

I'm not exactly unhappy where I work.  There are some frustrating aspects to it, but I can't imagine anybody in any other job would say anything different.  I'm privileged to be able to associate with some very nice people and there are aspects of my occupation I quite enjoy.

But I can't see doing what I'm doing now for the rest of my life.

I'm starting to feel my age a little bit.  Forty-eight at this writing, which is hardly advanced, but it's just right for a (bum, bum, bum) MIDLIFE CRISIS.  And there are things I'm doing now which a younger man, quite honestly, could probably do better.  I was probably not a bad fit when I started my current job, eight years ago, but I think I'm aging out of it.  Some of the physical stuff is getting harder, and I'm a little crankier about some of the management policies and practices that I've never quite been on board with.

And I think I'm ready for a change.  Spread my wings a little, do something more creative, have a little more fun.

But I have to be careful and cautious.  Men in midlife have been known to do ill-advised things purely BECAUSE they're starting to feel their age, and I don't want to add my name to that list.

Also, I kinda want to go out and buy a nice car, which I'd have to finance, and that would be a really moronically bad idea.

I'll have to keep an eye on it.  I'll let you know if I start looking at toupées.  (Which would be kind of silly, because my hair is seriously graying but is otherwise intact.)

God bless, friends.

The Cat Is In Disgrace

Remind me why we have a cat, again?  I keep forgetting.

Picture this:  Adored Wife is making cookies, using sweetened condensed milk with pink food coloring as frosting.  She leaves the kitchen for a minute and comes back to find Oscar up on the counter, in kitty heaven, having eaten about half the frosting.

He is not allowed on the counter and knows he is not allowed on the counter.  She swats his furry behind and throws him outside.

(For those of you who may not know, cats tend to love dairy products, but dairy products are not good for a cat's digestion.  This fact will become relevant very shortly in the story.  Like, say, in the next paragraph.)

Sometime later, she lets him back in.  He promptly goes down the hall and upchucks bright pink barf in front of our bedroom.

He was outside for an HOUR.  He couldn't have done that outside?

Much scrubbing later, and the carpet is still slightly rose-colored......

It's a good thing he's cute.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Managing Time

Proverbs 3:6 tells us to follow and acknowledge God in all our ways and He will direct our steps.

 We think about this verse a lot when we're trying to keep our day straight,  This isn't unique to our slightly-abnormal family, but we have a lot going on.  Wedding plans, three different job schedules, doctor appointments and more doctor appointments and more doctor appointments, school, sports, household chores, church and theater, social life, paying bills and doing taxes and calling insurance companies and other sundry administrative matters, juggling vehicles, aging parents, trips and hobbies and dates and whatnot.  Also, Adored Wife, the primary household manager, has limited amounts of energy and "feeling wellness" and has to budget her time accordingly.

Frankly, there have been more than a few occasions when things have slipped through the cracks.  And yet, the house is still standing and the cat's still alive and there's still food in the refrigerator, so it can't have been all that bad.

I probably ought to look this up, but some historical figure said that he had so much to do today he just had to spend extra time in prayer.

The theory goes like this:  "I have time today to do everything God wants me to do.  I don't necessarily have time today to do everything God wants me to do PLUS everything that I personally think ought to get done."

If we commit ourselves to following Him prayerfully and obediently then He will direct our use of managing time and resources, and everything will turn out for the best.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Skipping a Concert

Apparently normal people go out to concerts and movies and restaurants and public social things on a pretty regular basis.  At least, so we've heard.

It's a bit different for us.  One, finances are just a little tight.  We're very blessed, certainly--we eat regularly, we have a roof over our heads, and I don't have to worry this month about paying the light bill.  There are lots of people who can't say these things; we're very fortunate.  But if something major breaks on a car or something like that we'll have to shuffle some things around, and we kind of have to pick and choose the luxuries a little.  No complaints, but "going out" is not something we can affored to do on a frequent basis.

Two, I don't much enjoy crowds.  I'm almost pure introvert and, while I'm not at the level of neurotically avoiding social gatherings, they're not on my fun list.  I hear people on the radio getting excited about going to big concerts and meeting celebrities and people at church talking about these things like they're something to look forward to, and it just doesn't light my fire.  I get that extroverts are wired that way, but I have a hard time seeing things from their perspective.  So, no, I don't tend to seek out concerts.

Three, Adored Wife deals with chronic pain, and she has a limited amount of "up time" before she has to go lie down.  Otherwise, she probably WOULD enjoy concerts more.

So we don't do a lot of concerts.  But we had tickets to go see one because we'd given some money to a local charity and they were putting on a benefit concert.  We believe in the charity and consider it well worth supporting.  But it wasn't a band we were all that excited about--nothing wrong with them, we just weren't particular fans.  But we'd planned to go to the concert because, after all, we had tickets.  And I could have chosen to enjoy myself; I'm good at finding fun where fun is to be had.

But AW brought up that she wasn't interested enough in the band to spend her limited "up time" on them, and I hadn't been enthusiastic about it in the first place.  So we gave the tickets away to a local couple, and they enjoyed the concert.  We also had a gift certificate to a nearby steakhouse, so we went there and had an excellent meal and then walked around the mall a little until AW had exhausted her up time, and then we went home, very satisfied with the evening.

A good time was had by all.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Easter With the Family

Happy week after Easter, friends, and hope this finds everybody well.

Nothing special today, just reporting that this past weekend was very full and more than a little tiring but it all went well.

Graphics Magician was still recovering from a three-day field trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with the eighth graders from his trip.  They had a lot of fun and didn't really get much sleep.  Saturday was the Easter Egg hunt at church and I spent most of the day either setting up for it or helping run it.  Saturday was also Social Hurricane's birthday, and we had a little get-together that evening for some family and friends.  (Graphics Magician, with permission, went to his room with his pizza.  There wasn't anybody else at the party his age and he was still exhausted.)

Easter Sunday, sunrise service, breakfast at the church, Sunday School and celebration, then Adored Wife's parents and a young man who's a family friend joined us mid-afternoon and stayed through a pretty substantial supper.  AW was pretty well worn out by the end of it, but triumphantly so.

Monday Basement Artist and I went to work, SH was off work and GM was off school, and AW slept in a little then got back onto the wedding planning and chores.

A joyously packed weekend.

Christ the Lord is risen, He is risen indeed.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Graphics Magician Picks Up the Bruises

The girls were ten and eight when Graphics Magician was born.  We've always said that ten years' of experience as the parents of daughters wasn't the SLIGHTEST preparation for having a son.

It's still true.  And, if anything, getting even truer.

It's not that the girls weren't challenging as adolescents.  We had drama, we had mood swings, we had romantic issues and angst and emotional issues.

But, man, we didn't have anywhere nearly this much sheer self-destructive dumb stuff.

Inflamed growth plate in the heel.  Sprained lower back.  Bump on the head.  Bruises and contusions and scrapes and scratches.  Pretty much all from sheer full-speed-aheadedness.  Tussling with friends turns rough, continuing to sprint when your foot already hurts, trying to acrobatically maneuver through the house without looking where you're going.  Leaping and jumping and flipping and moving, moving, moving.

I approve, actually, and I'm glad he's a boy doing boyish things.  Of course, none of his injuries bother him much when he wants to play with his friends, but when it's time to get out of bed in the morning to go to school he's all of a sudden in too much pain to move.

It'd be nice to have one day, just for a change of pace, when he didn't manage to carelessly wreak mayhem on himself.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Living a Full Life

When you deal with chronic health issues, there are simply things you are never going to get to do.

That's okay.  I heard a motivational speaker years ago, and I wish I remembered his name, who'd been in a devastating and crippling auto accident.  He said something to the effect of, "before my accident I could do a thousand different things.  Afterwards I could do five hundred things.  I chose to focus on the five hundred things I could still do than to worry about the things I'd lost."

I love that attitude, and I'd like to salute Adored Wife who largely exemplifies it.  She can't do any real lifting, she can't be on her feet or in a chair for long periods of time, she has to build any kind of activity around "will I be able to lie down for fifteen minutes every hour or so."  She also has memory issues and has to structure her whole life around copious note-taking.  She also has anomic aphasia and prosopagnosia (the inability to find the right word, and face-blindness) which give her some troubles interacting with people.  Plus occasional tics and twitches.  Plus anxiety and panic attacks.  Few other odds and ends here and there.

As you might imagine, there are any number of activities that are simply not options for AW.  There are things that, purely and simply, she's never going to be able to do.

And yet, she has a very full life.  Photographer, highly involved mother, active on social media, great at planning and organizing events and activities, excellent cook, involved in church activities, directs, produces, and manages facilities at the local community theater, keeps up with family, interested and informed about politics, history, and world events, and participates in a few online communities.

She chooses to focus on the things she CAN do, and finds her life pretty full as a result of it.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Friends With MS

Happy Monday, friends, and hope this finds everybody well.

Regular readers of this blog will know that it's mostly about the trials and tribulations my immediate family (with our various physical, neurological, and emotional issues) deals with.  But I wouldn't want you to think that we're unconcerned about the challenges other people face.

I'm thinking at the moment about multiple sclerosis.  It's a terrible condition; you can find lots more information about it at this website.

It's not a common condition, but we know two ladies in our church who deal with it, both with humor, perseverance, and faith.  One friend, who I'll call "Lots of Dogs Lady," has as a part of her every-morning routine an inventory of her physical state before she gets out of bed.  "Can I talk this morning?  Can my hands grip?  Are my legs going to hold me up when I get out of bed?"

For LODL, fortunately the answer is usually "yes."  But sometimes the answer is "no," and it's going to be a difficult day.  And maybe it's going to be a difficult couple of days, or a difficult week, until the nervous system reboots itself and she'll be getting along on a walker and having a difficult time with simple chores and trouble carrying on a conversation and all sorts of fun things.  Most of the time LODL is actually in pretty good shape, all things considered.  But she can't take that capacity for granted.  Any day could become a bad day, and she's had to build her life around that uncertainty.

The other lady, who I'll call "Montana Mom," has had a fairly mild case of MS for several years.  She's had some scary vision issues from time to time, but physically she's been pretty fortunate.  A few weeks ago she had a flare-up, and it's not easing up so far.  Muscle weakness, mumbling and slurred speech, balance problems, double vision.

And at this stage MM doesn't know if this is going to get better.  Are things going to snap back to semi-normal next week? Or is this what the rest of her life is going to look like?  She's keeping her spirits up, but it has to be terrifying.

You might pray for the both of these ladies, and for others dealing with similar circumstances.

Thanks, friends,  Hope all's well, and God bless.