Blond Girl Motivation....

After reading my friends blog post over at Highlights of Blond GirL I realized that I too miss writing.  Not that I'm a great writer or anything of the sort.  I guess it's mostly that I really just need a way to express myself? 

So, I'll be visiting her blog to read her posts, and commenting on them.  I'm going to see if Miss Blond Girl is willing to do the same for me.  Maybe we'll both be the inspiration we need to start back up blogging?  That would be so cool, at least in my opinion. 

It took me a long time to get the readership I had before.  I often wonder whatever happened to those people that I shared my heart, my soul and my life with.  Are they okay?  Have they faced tragedies or loss?

I know for me, life has not been fun over the last three years.  It sure has changed.  Oh, believe me, I still try to put on that smile that says 'all is well in my little world', while internally breaking apart at the seams.  It takes so much energy to do that, I must say!  Yikes, it's incredibly exhausting! 

So, I was thinking about myself tonight, as usual...and wondering what exactly is IT that I'm looking for to make me happy?  Wow, such a huge question, ya know?

And then I was thinking, is anybody out there truly happy with all aspects of their lives?  Another deep subject. 

Oh well...maybe I'll figure it all out eventually...and when I do, I'll write about it.  What else is there to do, but share anyway, and try to make others burdens easier to carry?  I'm not really sure about that answer either.  What do you think?   

Enlighten Moi'

So, I'm starting to think that I've become what the following article was describing.  <big, deep, sigh.....ready to admit it?  Yeah, I guess so....> 

Okay, so I think I might have fallen into the trap of the 'desperate dater'.  Yikes!!  How can that be, I ask myself oh so coyly.  I mean, come on, I'm the one that DOESN'T like clingy guys.  Geez...seems like since my divorce became legal, all of a sudden I've become the one that's clingy! 

If anyone else wants to read the article, please do...for me, it was eye opening.  Hopefully for a few others, it will help you as well.

 Are YOU a Desperate Dater?

Enjoy! 

Copaxone....all the bells and whistles of it....

So my little guy tells me tonight that he can tell things with me have changed, physically speaking, that is.  I asked him exactly what he meant when he said that....he explains that I'm walking better, and I'm more 'awake'.  Ha...funny, I always think that I'm in some sort of fog, but apparently he doesn't see that in me.  He also said my feet seem to be better, no pain.  And another good thing?  He said, 'You aren't taking naps like you used to."  Hmmm....I am happy that he's seeing changes but seriously, can it be from the Copaxone shots?  Or is it due to the fact that my divorce is over and I'm not carrying around this 300lb guy that can lash out at me at his will and turn things upside down with one phone call?

I hate to say it, but I can't do the shots in certain area's of my body.  The backs of my arm's for instance; can't reach back there to hit the spot that I need it to be inserted into.  So, tonight, I asked the not so little guy to assist me.  He's become really very good at giving me those shots.  But dayum....they hurt so bad!  I NEVER have issue's with needles.  Even when I was injecting myself with the Avonex, even as that shot was very unpleasant due to being an intra-muscular injection, and the horrid side effects for the next 24 hours, I was still able to tolerate it and NOT cringe when I thought of it.  For some reason, with this Copaxone, I hate thinking of it.  I hate the shot.  It hurts...stings a bit, welts up so big and red, and just plain 'ol hurts like a bi*** afterwards.  Darn thing even hurts for hours afterwards.  Ughh.

I should be grateful, I know.  And truly I am.  Or am I?  Ha!  I guess this calls for a change in attitude? Yep...I would like to look at this treatment in a different light.  Time to change that thought process is NOW.  :)

For Better, For Worse

Since the breakup of my marriage three years ago, I've lived one year in hell, and have spent the past two years trying to break out of that hell.  Yes, me, the strong, independent, smart woman that I thought I was, was down for the count for a full years worth of 'rounds'.  No boxing ring involved.....no bell....no referee.  Just me and this 'fear' thing hanging on my back, that wouldn't let me rest without having nightmares and panic attacks every single night. Yes, I paid dearly to ComEd for my electric bill...I couldn't sleep without the light on, or multiple lights and a TV, too.  I was always afraid!! Never did I think 'he' would leave me to deal with Multiple Sclerosis alone, $20,000 a month shot costs, lesions, spinal cord problems, yadda yadda yadda....yet he did it...left me high and dry. 

What a relief I was given at my 30th year High School Class reunion last October when I was granted freedom from that whole 'hell' thing I was living through. 

Yes, imagine it like this:  your soon to be ex was your high school sweet heart, you've been with him for 32 years, AND even worse, he brings his live in girlfriend, whom was an old friend of yours and also a classmate at our high school, to the reunion.  Ouch. It was brutal.

Anyway, I was so blessed last year, that a wonderful and STRONG group of girls from high school rallied around me for months prior to the reunion.  They were like Angels that came to rescue me, and I saw them as such!!  They were in a pretty pink box, wrapped up especially for me.  The gift tag read this:

Especially For Sonya

I love you!

Love, God

So, now as we all go through some really rough waters with health issue's, I am reminded of the blessings of these girls.  One of them is healing from a nasty surgery weeks ago to remove large fibroids, another is having some financial problems because of job losses, and yet another is in a terrible Rheumatoid-Arthritis flare up.  When I say flare up, those words don't even compare to what my friend is going through!  Feet that are so swollen she cannot put on her shoes....hands so swollen that she can't bend her fingers....and incredible pain that even morphine won't dissolve it.  I cry when I think of her pain! 

So, I'm on a mission to learn about Inflammation and Auto Immune Disorders, and what role our diet plays in the onset of these disorders.  I've stumbled upon so many great websites and blogs with some great sounding recipes and idea's, that it's almost over-whelming.  HOWEVER, it appears that our SAD (sad American diet) plays some huge vital roles in how we feel and IF our bodies get ill and diseased.  It's information that's definitely worth reading for me. 

After all, even though the 'ex husband' didn't play true to his vows of 'for better or for worse', these girlfriends of mine have walked the walk, and held my hand through some whoppers....so I will read as much as I can to help each of these girls in some small way.  Knowledge is power.  Yup, we're gonna get us some power.  :)



 

"You have brains in your head......."

....... You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go."     Dr. Suess, lol, Motivational Speaker.

I figure it's time to stop the pity party for myself and get out there and walk, whether my feet hurt or not! 

Dr. Suess says it all pretty clearly doesn't he?  He makes it sound quite simple actually.  Maybe that's my problem, over analyzing and making it MORE than what it is, SIMPLE. 

So I'll lace up my Nike's and go for a walk in this heat and humidity.  And when I get back home, I know I'll feel proud of myself, like Nike says, for 'just doing it'.  :) 

Mr. Pain

"Pain Is Inevitable, Misery Is Optional"

When I was an online junky I used to 'hang out' at a well known Poker Site that allowed you to play poker with 'play' money.  It was amazing the shenanigan's that the folks there partook in during their 'poker playing' time.  I soon learned that this site was like many others out there....a site where people became pretty tight with strangers from all over the country.  There were 'groups' of people that would hang out together sort of like the days in high school and heaven forbid you'd tick off anyone that was friends with this person or that person.  Eventually I'd noticed that people would get into actual 'cyber' relationships'!  I didn't get that part of it...the cyber relationships part.  After all, I was there to learn to play the game of poker and maybe laugh a time or two.  While playing there, I soon started to become friends with this guy whom called himself Mr. Pain.  I didn't know his real name, only the name he chose for this particular site, nor did I know what he looked like in real life form.  I did know though, that he would often have my back if others would pick on me and step out of 'cyber' line.  He was quite the 'cyber friend'! 

During these days spent there, I often wondered why he decided to call himself Mr. Pain.  I mean, really, we could choose any name in the whole universe to use, and he chose Mr. Pain?  Oftentimes I'd log into the site, see him at a poker table,notice that he had a seat next to him reserved, and before I knew it, he'd be messaging me asking me to join him at the table he was playing at.  We'd chat during the game, some sort of silly talk about our daily lives.  We didn't have any kind of rampant online love affair or anything like that, but we became pretty good cyber friends.  Wierd how that sounds, isn't it?  So there I'd sit, cyberly speaking, at a poker table with him while playing poker and chatting an hour away here and there. 

It wasn't too long before I started wondering, non-stop, about that name he chose.  Does he hurt physically and is he in pain?  Does he want people to know that he can create pain within you if he really wanted to?   Is his heart broken and is he in a severe depression kind of pain?   Maybe he's a bouncer at some club somewhere and causes people pain on a regular basis.  Geez....the things you can think if you have an overly busy brain like me!  Did I ever ask him about this Mr. Pain name he chose?  Nope.  I felt like that would be getting too personal, so I'd just wonder about it while we chatted and played poker. 

Pain.  Now that I'm in it, I often wonder what is the chemical nature or breakdown in the body that causes it.  There are many different types of pain as we all know, but the pain I'm talking about is muscular and nerve based.  If I do ONE THING different during my week, like for instance, take the dog for a walk, I pay for that walk it in the form of pain for the next two days in my entire body.  If I stand on my feet too long, the nerves in my feet freak out when I go to bed, and thus, again, I pay for putting my nerves under that kind of pressure and I pay dearly, in the form of pain in my feet for the entire night!  Try this on for yourself....try sleeping through the night as your feet, ankles and legs are being attacked by hot pokes with some sort of invisible needle.  Grrr....., trust me, this type of pain sucks!

So I wonder again, yup I do a lot of wondering, but anyway.... I wondered again since pain has become my close friend, what do people do, when they are in constant pain?  I mean narcotics are out of the question if you want to be able to think clearly.  And pot smoking is still illegal here in my state, and even if it wasn't, would it ease my nerve pain?  What do people do to get ahead of the game of pain?  I'd like to exercise, yet any time I try to get started, the pain is there, quickly and instantly, letting me know that it's not liking whatever it is that I'm doing and either I stop then and there, or pay the consequences. 

So this is the question I pose; how does someone in pain help to bring the level of it down a few notches?  I know I don't have any readers like I did with my last blog, so I'm going to have to google this and try to find out.  In the mean time, if someone does stumble on to my little ol' blog and knows the answer to this question, feel free to share.  After all....as I've said before, sharing is caring.  If I come up with anything in the mean time I will share too.   :-)

Here sits I....

Today I woke up to a puppy that needed to relieve himself.  I looked at the clock and it was 3:30am.  Ugh.  I get up, take him out, and then come back in, trying to decide if I should just stay up or go back to bed for the next hour and a half before my son wakes up.  I decide to try the bed and at least make the attempt for some much needed sleep.  Apparently Solomon, our puppy, hadn't relieved himself to his content, because before too long he was barking again.  I get up and take him back out and sure enough, he poops. 

So, here sit's I...trying to figure out what to do next, so that I can keep my coffayy appointment with my mother and a friend today.  I keep counting....how many hours is it before I can go back to bed?  What time will they be here for coffayy?  How long will they stay?  And what the heck is wrong with me?  Why do I treasure sleep soooo much?  I used to hate to sleep, always afraid of missing out of something exciting happening in the world.  But lately, I'm tired ALL THE TIME. 

I started reading up on sleep and MS.  According to the The Sleep Foundation, fatigue is "one of the most common symptoms of MS, and can be profoundly disabling." Well, I'm profoundly disliking the fact that I'm constantly tired.  Grrr!

My aunt swears by the powers of Melatonin , and after reading the article that I have linked in this post, and the 'maybe's' that associate Melatonin with helping the immune system, I just might try it.  If you have found something that helps you sleep, aside from prescription drugs, please comment and let me know what you've found that helps you....after all, sharing is caring.  :-)

The First Time.....ever I saw your face.....I felt the earth, ughhhh...

Yes, this is how my brain automatically thinks.  Everything is in song form.  Each time I start a thought process, it ends up with some silly song that I've heard before and then the darn song plays over and over again and again in my head until a new song appears.  I wonder if this is a 'disorder' listed in the Psychiatrist DSM Index ?  I'll hafta check that one out sometime and get back to ya on that.  I also wonder if I'm the only one that 'thinks' like this.  Don't get me wrong...I'm not 'weird' or anything.  I just wonder at times if my ever so slight musical background genetically predisposes me to think in 'song form', ya know?  Maybe a little?  (ha, if you only knew how slight that background was, you'd say nah....it don't!)

So, anyway, I wanted to warn any future readers that I actually do have several diagnostic disorders, really I do (!) and they may at times warrant you to try to decipher what I'm actually writing in a blog post.  One thing I've been diagnosed with is Multiple Sclerosis.   For me, it's a funny disorder that prompts me at several times during the day to actually laugh out loud at myself.  Yes, at least I'm entertaining to myself and that's a good thing!  If I'm not flubbing up the words that are coming out of my mouth, I'm bumping into something, or tripping over my own foot, a symptom of MS called foot drop.  Basically, your foot isn't picking up off the floor as it should, so your toes, which usually come up off the floor first during a step, well, they don't.  So you end up tripping over your own toes.  I do that almost daily.  Sometimes I'm lucky and fall into something that is soft and plush or catch myself on a wall, and other times I don't.  I fall down, and then as I lay there on the ground I try to figure out if I'm actually hurt, if I should cry real tears because I am really hurt....or if I should repeat that infamous commercial.  You know the one...."Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!"  (Sorry...I honestly don't mean to make fun of anyone...only myself.  )  :-)

So, this blogging thing for me isn't really 'new' , so to speak.  I used to blog daily.  Matter of fact, I was proud of the readership I had back in those days.  Many things were different back then, too.  I was happily married during those days to my high school sweet heart, which apparently, won't be the case anymore as of next week.  The big 'D' is supposed to be final in a few days....or so I'm told. 

Also, back then, I was in pretty good health and on a quest to get to the healthiest place I could be, physically speaking.  Then MS struck....all hell broke loose, and here I am....five years later, almost divorced and learning new things about life, being single, being single and broke, being single and disabled, and being single.  Ahh...being single.  Quite a weird feeling for a girl that has been in a relationship for 3/4 of her life!  Truly it is quite weird!

So, if you'll hang with me for a while, you might be entertained by me, like I'm entertained by myself.....you might learn some new things about this life we're living by another person's wacky viewpoint....or maybe I'll learn something new about this life we're living from you, the reader.  After all, sharing is caring, doncha know?  And I'm trying to learn this time around to be less selfish, more giving,  less negative, more appreciative,  less angry,  and really, to take much more time to eat chocolate.  After all....life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're going to get.  Eh?  ~~hugs~~