This April has turned into one busy month for me. My youngest turned 12. My oldest is leaving on Thursday for a jazz festival in Reno, Nevada, with the high school band. The property manager of my apartment building decided to ask tenants to clean up all of the "stuff" from the floor of the car ports.
Oh! I forgot Easter and tax day. This ends up for a bunch of stuff for me to do. Right now I am feeling the after effects. Every muscle in my body aches. I can't relax so end up unable to sleep well. Then the pain is worse the next morning and the cycle continues. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 1984, a long time before most physicians knew what it was. I live with it by pacing myself as much as possible. Migraines and fatigue are symptoms that I deal with, too. Research continues on the causes of fibro. In my own learning about it I have read of traumatic and stressful events of the past bring it on, cruciferous vegetables aggravate it, it's caused by parasites (!?), or, the one that rings the truest to me, soul weariness. I have medication I can use if it becomes unbearable although I rarely use the muscle relaxants. I drink tonic water because the quinine is relaxing. Quinine also can cause a dirty result in a drug test for morphine or heroin.
My life certainly changed over the years with fibromyalgia. From an active life including dance and exercise, I've been brought to a point where a 10 minute, easy walk is sometimes "just not in me." My sons are probably tired of hearing me say "I just don't have it in me." Fibro and the reduction of active hours in me had something to do with my marriage ending, too. What was that phrase, 'til death us do part? About 50% don't mean it when they say it, or one might write the vows as "a 50% chance that 'til death do us part".
From the getting ready for party/sleepover on Friday, and the clean-up after, I am in a bunch of pain. I'm in a "world of hurt", as Bill Handel says. I listen to Bill Handel on KFI am radio each morning which comes out of Los Angeles and he uses that phrase often.
But without fibromyalgia, I probably wouldn't be able to sit here reading and writing most of the day. As "luck" would have it, I am best working for 1/2 hour then resting for 15 minutes. That leaves me 15 minutes of each hour for laundry, dishes, or what tasks may call. The best part of this plan is my ability to get up at 1 or 2 a.m. to do these things. My schedule is basically my own. I do have to bend with the school schedule my sons live with!
This also gives me a chance to listen to talk shows during the day. I listen to the political shows on the radio and I try to listen to all viewpoints. I confess that some of these people just grate on my nerves to the point that I listen less to them. How many times can I hear women referred to an femi-nazis? I look forward to when the echo machine loses it's voice. It will no longer be needed. Bush and co. have screwed things up so bad, the GOP readily admits that it has a snowball's chance in h*ll of pulling out the presidency again in 2008.
I have completely lost track of just how many tricky, illegal, unethical, UN-Christ-like things these people have managed to do. Many others are keeping track. Only in the past week I have heard Bush use the memorial service of the Virginia Tech. students who died because of a gun-toting, mentally ill student to further spread Rove's plan to divide and conquer, use words which promote fear in every speech he's given, McCain singing about bombing Iran as if it was a commercial for the flavor of pie offered at the local Marie Callendar's (to Beach Boys' Barbara Ann), Cheney goes to the hospital on the morning impeachment papers are supposed to be filed against him, Rove hissing at Sheryl Crowe that he works for the American people (all 10% of them, maybe, that still favor what this administration is doing), and I have learned how the fundamentalist Christians are taking over the military that we support with taxes. I do not want my tax money going toward death warrants signed by God. My taxes CAN go toward food, shelter, and health care for those needing help getting it for themselves.
I wonder what my great, great........grandparents and family, the ones who were here for the Revolution, would say about what has become of America? Guns, corporations, pharmaceuticals, lobbyists, lies, cover-ups, near dismantling of the social security and medicare programs, hypocrisy, bait-and-switch war plans, ignorance of warnings from friendly countries about imminent attacks on American soil, elimination of capable professionals to do a job in favor of a political crony that has one coming, election fraud, and on and on...
Ah, now I feel a bit better. I am anxiously awaiting my Gilded Tarot Deck. If you saw my gallery a few months ago, you saw a tarot card with the caption "I want this tarot deck" underneath. I found it on e-bay and from the money I received by selling some of my things, I was able to pay my seller's fees, buy something my son wanted for his Nintendo DS, and get a little something for myself. The tarot deck! It is beautiful, with rich dark colors and a golden touch. I am very happy about it. I've wanted that deck for some time, but it was out of my budget. I would like to add one tarot deck that has some of the saints on the individual cards, too. I am selling some decks from my collection of about 43. So many new tarot decks have come out in the last 10 or 15 years that I have to cut out the ones I really don't "need" to make room for the new ones I find so fascinating and attractive.
I enjoy looking at the art on the cards. Once the basic symbols are familiar, the cards truly speak to you. Clouds, mountains, water, and other backgrounds included in various scenes represent a certain "energy" or vibration in the interpretation of a card spread and reading. My recent discovery and appreciation of the field of "visual literacy" is intimately involved with my love of the art of tarot cards. A traditional deck of 78 cards will get out of order easily and often. I find it very "centering" to put them all back in order. That suggests, and correctly so, that a visual soul journey through the human archetypes of antiquity is the foundation of the cards and their order. Each card has a story to tell and if we listen, as though we were interpreting our dream, we can gain understanding of those secrets of life and the universe.
Blessings, Lulublue
