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Hello dear reader.

I got home yesterday from my visit with my daughter. It was incredible to get to spend time with her and my son-in-law. I’m extremely thankful that my pain levels stayed where I could push through them for the majority of the visit.

The pain started getting bad the day before I left. I don’t know about any of you, but I can usually tell if it’s just a bad day or settling in to stay for awhile. This was the settling in kind of pain. My daughter and husband both asked me about staying one more day to see if it would ease up, but I didn’t think it would help.  The drive home was not fun.  Wednesday was painful, but yesterday was much worse.

There are so many times I deal with flare-ups for no reason at all.  This one is worth it. I got to visit Louissa. We spent the weekend just hanging out around the house and talking.  We have many of the same interests, so that itself was worth the drive.  I got to go meet a couple of her kids on Monday, which was a lot of fun.  When we left the school she brought me up to the Holy City .  Here’s a link to pictures and the story of it in case you missed it:  The Holy City of the Wichitas .  Then Tuesday evening I got to go to the school’s 4th of July pageant.  It was great!

I’m planning to spend this weekend sitting around the house with Tim and the dogs and taking long naps.   I’m going to read (or listen to) a good book and relax.  I think that’s part of finding life too.

We’ll be checking in on the Escape Book Club the beginning of next week.  Check that out if you haven’t gotten involved with it yet.  We’re going to have a good time with it.  Here’s our first book:  Escape Book Club Book

Until next time…

Happy

Hello dear reader.

I’m laying down for a little rest, trying hard to keep the headaches under control. So far, so good. It’s definitely there, but they’re staying manageable.

Anyway, I thought I’d take this opportunity to sort of check in and update you on my visit.

Yesterday we didn’t do much, sat around the house, but I enjoyed every minute of it. It’s so good just to be here with my daughter. The best thing has been seeing how happy she is. She and her husband are doing great. They recently moved into a new house which she loves (with good reason, this place is gorgeous). She’s been working as a teacher at a daycare/school for a little over a year now. It’s the perfect job for her. She loves it and is extremely good at it. Tomorrow she’s bringing me to the school to meet her kids (she took the day off) and I can’t wait. I’ve heard so many stories about these kids I feel like I already know them.

Originally, I was going to leave for home Tuesday morning. That’s changed. Her kids are doing a “program” Tuesday evening. They’ve been practicing their songs and dances. So I’m going to stay another day so I can go to that. It’ll work out well because she and her husband will be at work during the day, so I can spend it resting. Then I’ll get back on the road Wednesday morning.

I have to brag about my husband a little bit. When I talked to him about extending my stay here he wasn’t just okay with it, he was happy for me that I would get to go see the program. He told me that I should soak up every opportunity to enjoy myself. I’m truly a fortunate woman to have such a caring and understanding man.

Until next time…

The Trip

Hello dear reader.

As I write this, I’m in a hotel room seven hours from home. Tomorrow I’ll do four more hours and be at my daughter’s house. Louissa said I are very close and I haven’t seen her in over a year.

I did better than I expected to today. My head started hurting about three hours in, but the meds helped and it hasn’t gotten insane. I’m exhausted, but laying in a bed relaxing. I’ll be going to sleep very soon, I’m sure.

I’m very thankful to have a wonderful husband who is completely supportive of me doing this. He worries because of my health issues, but is happy for me that I get to go spend time with my daughter.

This is finding life through pain. Right now, laying in this hotel room bed writing this post, I’m feeling thankful.

Until next time…

Book Escape Club

Hello dear reader.

Books have always been an escape for me, and I love hearing others’ thoughts about them. So I’m very excited that the Book Escape Club is going to happen! 😄 I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. If you haven’t gotten involved yet, you still have time. You really don’t want to miss out on this!

I’ve been thinking about how much time we should spend reading each book. I know everyone has a lot going on and I want this to be fun, an escape, not something that causes pressure and stress. So I’m thinking flexibility. A week after we start a new book we’ll all check in to see how it’s going. We’ll do the same thing the next week. No spoilers allowed. When everyone is ready, the questions will be posted and we’ll discuss them for the next week. I think allowing a month for each book, reading and discussion, should be good. That’s about three weeks to read and one for discussion. Again, however, it’s about flexibility and fun. I’m totally open to any suggestions about what will work best.

I’ll announce our first book at the beginning of July. That choice will be made by someone different for the next book so everyone gets to choose a book. Is that okay with everyone?

I’m very excited about this. I hope it turns out to be something we all enjoy.

I’m even more excited that I’m leaving tomorrow to go visit my daughter! I miss her so much and can’t wait to spend time with her.

Until next time…

Game Rules

Hello dear reader.

I had three good days in a row! That’s something to celebrate for sure!

Today is the fourth day in a row I’ve been in too much pain to function. I’m trying very hard to focus on the three good days I had and remind myself that I will have more. I just have to get through this stretch. It’s amazing to me how difficult that is to see when my entire body hurts like this. Right now hope feels like a fool’s game. But you know what? I’m going to play it anyway.

Here are the rules. First, and most important, remember that the pain is not who I am. It’s something I have to deal with. Second, my memory may be all kinds of screwed up, but I have wonderful memories that are still there. Third, I have a lot more amazing memories to make.

There’s the rules, now let’s get to the game. I’m really excited that I’m going to see my daughter in 18 days, 18 hours, and 40 minu.tes. I have a countdown timer on my phone. That translates into I’m leaving at 9 AM on the 28th. It’s a 12 hour drive, but I’m going to split it into two days. The plan is to drive 7-8 hours on Thursday (depending on how I do) and get a room for the night wherever that ends up. I’m going to sleep in as late as possible Friday morning and be back on the road around noon. I’ll only have 4-5 hours of driving, and will get to her house right after she gets off work. I’ll be there all day Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I’ll leave Tuesday morning and do the same thing in reverse. I’ll get home on Wednesday (the fourth of July) in the early afternoon and will go watch the fireworks with Tim that evening. Thursday and Friday of that week are scheduled for recuperation. So that’s the plan, and definitely an amazing memory.

There’s rule number three. Yes, I do know I’m going backwards, but nothing said I had to do them in order ;-). Let’s think about a wonderful memory I already have. There are tons to choose from! Here’s one I think you’ll like. When my youngest daughter had been going to kindergarten for about two weeks she came home very upset one day. I, of course, asked her what was wrong. She said, “Mommy, we have to start eating liver!” I hate liver, don’t eat it and won’t cook it. So I told her no, it was okay, and we didn’t have to eat liver. She cried even harder when I told her this, and said she didn’t want the guards to get us. Of course, I asked, “What guards?” She looked at me like I was the stupidest person she’d ever seen and said, “The invisible ones!” I had to get to the bottom of this and asked her who had told her this. She said it was her teacher. Completely confused I told her to tell me exactly what her teacher had said. “She makes us say it every day….I pledge to the flag of America and to the Public it stands…one nation, under guard, invisible, with liver and just this for all.” I pulled her into a big hug, laughing so hard I couldn’t talk, then explained her mistake to her. I got a ton of these, and if they don’t make you laugh, you need to go have your funny bone x-rayed.

What was the other one? Oh yeah, the pain is not who I am. Telling you a good memory and something I’m looking forward to made the pain back off a little bit. That proves it isn’t who I am, doesn’t it?

I know I left you hanging with Home and Family part 1 and I will return to that next time. This just wasn’t the time for it.

What do you do when the pain tries to take over? Do you have memories you draw on? Are you looking forward to something? Please let me know in the comment box below. We can never have too many tools to use.

Thanks for helping me through this one.

Until next time…

Beautiful poetry!

Hello dear reader.

I read something this morning that started my day with a smile. I’ve spoken many times about how much I’ve always loved being in the woods. This poem, written by AISHWARYA SHAH is a wonderful reminder of all the reasons why. It was simply too beautiful for me not to share!

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Walk With Me Through The Forest

Until next time…

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Important Update to this Post:

I received a comment on this post last night informing me that the poem had been plagiarized from the website Family Friends Poems. It was published by and copyrighted to Belinda Stotler on December 31,2017.

I was, of course, unaware of this at the time I wrote this post. I want to apologize to all of my readers as well as to the true author, Belinda Stotler.

Poetry

Hello dear reader.

I want to tell you about a new adventure I’ve started. A better way to say that might be that I’ve rediscovered an old adventure. When I was younger I wrote a lot of poetry. I remember winning a poetry contest when I was in the 3rd or 4th grade. I got an ice cream sundae for a prize. What a treat!!

Recently I joined a site called FanStory. They have writing contests on there for poetry, flash fiction, essay, etc. I entered one and took 2nd place. It’s a cinquain poem, which has the following parameters:

The traditional cinquain has five lines and a strict structure based on syllable count.

Line 1 – 2 syllables
Line 2 – 4 syllables
Line 3 – 6 syllables
Line 4 – 8 syllables
Line 5 – 2 syllables

My FanStory bio shows up on this link. I can’t figure out how to get it off, so just scroll past that, or read it too if you’d like. The poem is right under it.

Cinquain Poem

There are two more contests I’m signed up for which are essay instead of poetry. I’ll let you know how those go.

There isn’t a big life lesson or any words of wisdom today. I just wanted to share my poem with you. This is a big deal for me, putting my writing out there to be judged. It’s different from the blog. I don’t feel that what I write on here is judged.

Anyway, I hope the poem brightens your day a little bit.

Until next time…

My Husband (part IV)

Hello dear reader.

Today I’m going to finish the love story I’ve been writing for you. No, that doesn’t sound right. Let’s say today I’m going to finish the story of how this relationship became what it is now. The love story continues.

Where were we? Oh yes, the Christmas Eve proposal. There’s one more piece of that still to be told. My daughter and son-in-law were on their was to spend Christmas with us. They had been in Texas visiting with his family. That’s a really long drive and I knew they’d be exhausted. So even though the plan was for them to meet us at the church, I texted Louissa and told her they should just go to the house and relax. At the same time, Tim was texting her telling her they needed to come to the church even if they were late and for her not to tell me that he said that. In other words, I was telling her not to come to the church at the same time Tim was telling her to make sure she did come to the church. She told me later that she had a pretty good idea what was going on. Thank God she’s smart! They arrived a little bit late, but they were there and got to see it. Needless to say, we had a wonderful Christmas that year!

Tim and I have called each other husband and wife since we moved in together. The joke was that we got demoted. He went from being my husband to my fiance and I went from wife to fiance.

We decided to have the wedding in August, right after Tim’s birthday. However, August is the busiest month of the year in Leadville. There’s something going on every weekend, from Boom Days to races like the Leadville 100 race. I’ll tell you more about those another time, but you can click on the links and find out what they are if you don’t want to wait. The bottom line was we couldn’t get a wedding cake made in August. So we moved it up to July 27th. Tim had never been married and he turned 50 just over a week after the wedding. Good timing!

This is where my best friend, Heather, comes in. Even though Tim hadn’t told her he was going to propose (he didn’t think she’d be able to keep from letting me know) and she wasn’t there for it (she still fusses at him about that) she jumped in with both feet to help pull things together. She was incredible!

You know, I just realized that I was writing this blog when Tim and I got married. Anyone who’s interested can go back to those posts and read what I was feeling and doing leading up the wedding.

Our wedding was wonderful. It was sacred and meaningful, but it was also a blast. We had a great time! I don’t know why I don’t have pictures on the blog, but I’m going to fix that today.

There have been very few days that hasn’t happened. So it was fitting that our wedding was full of laughter.

Somehow, once again, this post got long very quickly. I could write about Tim for days at a time. You’ll be reading more about him as this blog continues, but the bottom line is that I’m a very fortunate woman. Tim and I are very happy together and neither of us takes that for granted. We have a lot of fun together, and that’s important.

I’m going to put up pictures as promised, and please feel free to read the posts from that time. I’ll get back to writing about other things, I promise. But I hope you’ve enjoyed this little bit of our love story.

Until next time…

My Husband part II

Hello dear reader.

I kind of left you hanging with my last post about my husband. I told you I’d give you more of the story the next day. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but I’m here now.

Refresher… Tim and I met at church and spent two years getting to know each other and building a friendship before we got together. Now I think you’re all caught up. Ready to continue? Here we go:

When we told Ali, our priest, that we we’re seeing each other she gave us an assignment. Tim had to cook for me and I had to let him. For most people, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but Ali knew it would be a challenge for us.

First of all, Tim doesn’t cook. He survived primarily off TV dinners and pizza. The first time I looked in his freezer, the only thing in it was an elk leg. Yes, you did read that right.. the leg from an elk, fur and all. One of his friends was a hunter and would save the legs for Tim’s big (100 lbs), beautiful dog, Sampson.

The other reason it was such a challenge was I love cooking and I normally would have been cooking this for him, not the other way around. I’m also just a tiny bit of a control freak in certain areas of my life, and cooking happens to be one of them.

But we did it out of love and respect for Ali. So I sat in Tim’s living room and he cooked. I was hearing things banging around and ‘not nice’ words coming from the kitchen. I can’t begin to tell you how hard it was for me not to go into that kitchen! Eventually, I was presented with a steak dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans. Surprisingly, it was good!

We decided after several months that it was insane for us to be paying rent and utilities on two places when we were together every night either at his house or mine. So we rented a very small house together. Poor Sampson had to back out of anywhere he walked. There wasn’t any room for him to turn around.

I had my first Chiari decompression surgery 9 or 10 months before we moved. I was working three jobs (the General Store/Post Office, cleaning houses, and cooking one of the community meals at the church) when we moved into our house together. Within a month, the surgery failed and I was in worse shape than before. I couldn’t function at all. A good day meant I had made it from the bed to the couch. All of a sudden it was all on Tim. I told him several times that this wasn’t what he’d signed up for and I’d understand if he wanted out. He reassured me that he wasn’t going anywhere.

Eventually (almost a year later) I had another brain surgery. This one was much more invasive. When it was all said and done, they had removed 12 cm from my skull, the C-1 and C-2 from my neck, and cauterized the back of my brain so it wasn’t pinching off my brain stem anymore. They placed a plastic mesh of some sort to hold my brain in place.

I know it sounds like I’m going of on a tangent, but I’m actually not (for a change) this time. I’m trying to express what Tim ended up dealing with very soon in our relationship.

That surgery took about two years for me to recover from. I had to re-learn so many things. But Tim was beside me holding my hand through it. It was as hard for him as it was for me. The woman he fell in love with, his friend, had vanished, in her place was a stranger. I had him to lean on. He was on his own with it.

Once again, this has gotten long very quickly. I won’t keep you waiting so long for the next part.

Until next time…

News

Hello dear reader.

I got my biopsy results yesterday. The pollups they found were pre- cancerous. Since they’ve been removed, I’m fine. I have to have another colonoscopy in five years.

Honestly, I’m not sure which is the better news; that I have nothing to worry about or that I don’t have to do another colonoscopy for five whole years! Either way, things are good.

On another note, I started a novel several years ago called The Gatherer. I wrote about 50 pages of it and then reached a point where I got stuck. I had no idea where the story should go from there. So I put it away. Over the years I’ve pulled it out and thought about different ways to get it going again. Life would get busy and I’d put it away again. Lately the story’s been in my head a lot. I realized life will always get busy and I will always have too many things to do. I decided if I really wanted to do anything with my story I was going to have to make it a priority. So that’s what I’m doing. I pulled it out yesterday and worked on character bios and an outline. I put the first chapter through an editing program, then onto this program called Novel. It’s like Scrivener, but much simpler to use. I also put my bios on there and part of the outline.

While I’m working on finishing my novel, I’m also going to write some short stories to put into writing contests and submit to magazines. I’ll have a much better chance of a publisher accepting the novel if I’ve already had short stories published.

This is where you, dear reader, come in. I’m looking for short story ideas. There are many sites with story prompts, but I want to know what you think I should write. Why? Because you know me and you know how I write. So I think you’ll have more personalized ideas than a random story prompt. I’ll make you a deal. If you give me an idea I use, I’ll dedicate the story to you.

So I’m giving you good news and asking for your help all in the same blog 😮.

What do you think? What kind of short stories should I write? Leave your ideas in the comments section below. I’ll really appreciate it!

Until next time…