I think I know enough about chronic pain to say that no one knows how they will respond to it until confronted by it. My response has been food consumption and all inhibition to overeating disappeared during this experience. It was as though food was the ultimate panacea, even when I wasn’t hungry or had already over eaten to the point of, ironically enough, pain.

I have recently found myself wondering, as this urge to constantly consume has begun to leave me with the cessation of my chronic pain, whether there is a connection – physiological and psychological between chronic pain and appetite disinhibition as well as inhibition for some people: some connection between chronic pain and a loss of regulatory capability appetite-wise.

Ah well, suffice it to say: I did have surgery again and the third time was indeed charming. Now, I’ve got to pick up the pieces and move forward, which I feel I can do successfully at this point. Yippee!!!! Amazing how one’s outlook can change without incessant agony unrelentingly coloring the landscape.

I never want to forget this experience. I want it to shape my interactions with others in terms of practical, consistent, ongoing compassion.

I’ve managed to continue to go to school, fortunately. I need to find a job, though, that’s compatible with all I have going on. I rather wish I was in the same place physically that I was in when I started this blog. At least, I was moving forward. Right now, I feel so constrained by my body!

I’m struggling with myself; surgery again appears to be imminent and that scares me. I just had surgery and now back under the scalpel I’ll go. I’m none too thrilled about this, but if it’s what has to happen in order to eliminate the excruciating pain, I’m all for it.

Well, this is an old post now, but that’s okay.

I know it’s been forever since I blogged, but I’m going to have to go to bed now.  I’ll blog again this weekend! I’m promising myself because I do find it somewhat therapeutic to do this.  Okay, I just fell asleep for a minute, I swear!  Time to get off of here.  Goodnight!

There was a time in my life when I was more adept at keeping a clean house.  I remember it well, back in the misty days of being a parent for the first time.  I remember that I could really, at least sometimes, keep the house in spectacular shape.  Now?  Not so much.  In part, I suspect I was in better physical shape back then and that contributes a wee bit to my issues.  Back pain is my nemesis.  However, that said, I believe I can do a better job than I have been.  And, I think I’ve found help, which is fabulous!

I had never heard of the FlyLady before a couple of weeks ago.  I may not have accomplished anything yet, but I can feel that the positive and motivational things she’s saying are going to break through the miasma of cleaning inactivity.  Maybe that’s not quite fair to myself.  There is some cleaning going on, intermittently, haphazardly, but I think I can implement the things she says to really make positive changes.  She says a lot about how procrastination is perfectionism and I can really see that.  Like, if I can’t do this perfectly, I’m not going to do it at all.  How self-defeating is that attitude?  But, I have so been there. (Okay, I so AM there, I sheepishly admit.)  To combat this unique and unhelpful perspective, the FlyLady advocates 15 minute intervals of cleaning.  Well, she advocates a lot more than that, ultimately, but I’m not that far yet.  Some people utilizing the site refer to themselves as FlyBabies, but I don’t think I’m even there yet, which is all right.  I am a FlyInfant, a FlyNewborn if you will. Better yet, a FlyEmbryo. Yep, that’s what I am, a FlyEmbryo.

These days I’m not aiming for a perfectly clean house (although I still cringe even saying that), I just want it to be comfortably clean, dare I say habitable?  And I thought I was cringing before… I would like my home to be someplace friends can come and eat good food, play great board games sometimes, and engage in wonderful conversation.  I know I can achieve this. 15 minutes of cleaning each day.  That’s innocuous and totally doable, right?  So, today I’m going to go shine my sink like the FlyLady says to do in her first step and see where that leads.

Ah well, enough of the doldrums.  I can do this.  I’ve accomplished so much else; I’ve got to do this, successfully, for my children, for their future, so they aren’t limited by my lack of funds!  I’m definitely re-learning something about priorities.  Mine lie with my children.  I want to do the best for them, but I also want to be there for them each day. I’m discovering that I really have problems with the whole mentality of our nation in terms of not viewing staying at home with your children as imperative to the vital functioning of said children and in turn, resulting in huge, actually, enormous benefits to society as a whole.  I know that staying at home with one’s kids is not for everyone, and I am not suggesting that everyone should.  I am saying, however, that for those who wish to, it would be wise of us as a nation, to find ways to really facilitate that for people, practical ways:  more things like job-sharing, telecommuting, online links to the office, ways in which families can be together more time rather than less time, especially when children are small.  I think it’s crucial to find ways to successfully facilitate this for more people so that those options are there and truly open for folks to spend more time with their families.  We are too rigidly adherent to standard schedules and the idea that work is someplace away from home.

Hmmm… I appear to have rather more significant views on this topic than I realized.  Perhaps a subject for further exegesis later.

I have a 17-year old daughter and a 6-month old son.  This will be challenging, going back to full-time school, but it’s through an online university, so I have real hope here.  In addition to this, I’m trying to get my daughter on track for school – she’s also attending high school online.  Things are falling into place there too.  She was quite ill during her junior year at a regular high school and missed so much that it seemed best to pursue this option instead.  She will get a real diploma and graduate, which is preferable, I believe, to her obtaining a GED, especially since her avowed interest for college is Mechanical Engineering.  Somehow I think a GED might not be sufficient for that.

I’m training for a job as well, it’s an at-home venture with a real, bonafide corporation for which I am extremely grateful.  I’m nervous about this as well.  It’s difficult to make everything work from a tiny one-bedroom apartment, but it can be done.  I hope. It has to work because it’s how things are right now.  But, I’m striving, and that’s important.  I (we) are moving forward and that’s good.

Ah, this post is about education.  While I’m attempting to return to get an education, provide my daughter with an education as well, life has been busy promoting opportunities for education all over the place.  Every day with the baby is an education, even though I’ve done this before.  Funny how that works.  I’m pretty convinced he’s going to work the extra weight right off of me.  I do not remember my daughter being quite this high energy.  Is this a kid difference or a gender difference?  Education.  I’m being educated with training for this new job.  And, just living each day as it comes is an education.  Who would have thought that 41 would be such an enlightening year for me? Certainly not I.

And, in all this, I am learning something about humility, a bone-marrow deep profundity.

I feel that there are definitely companies where this is appropriate behavior, for example, credit agencies, banks, savings and loans, investment companies.  These make sense to me.  You (I) would want someone handling money who was successful at managing it.

However, for the rest of the poor distraught masses, I think it’s a shame to limit their (my – sadly, my credit is significantly less than stellar and, as soon as I make enough money to support us, it is one of my goals to fix that) ability to obtain meaningful (read sufficient to pay the bills) employment.  It seems strange that there would be a deliberate effort to stop the population group most in need of a job to pay off their debts from acquiring the best paying job possible to encourage them to, in fact, do so.

I realize this is a simplistic analysis of the issue, but I do believe simple is best sometimes.  The huge irony of the enormous fiscal debacle in the United States is that those who have the most so often deny access to the fundamental tools for positive change to those in positions of lesser advantage.  I am not trying to say that people should not work for, strive for what they need.  Rather, I am saying that additional obstacles should not be placed in the path towards financial independence.  Just because one errs does not mean one should be barred from obtaining employment.  It is becoming such a Catch-22 sort of situation.  Ah well, I’ve entered the realm of the redundant now.  Suffice it to say, I find this all intensely frustrating!  I’ve said enough.

Things that make me go “Hmmm…” or “AARGH!”

I am 41 this year, an event marked by my setting up camp in the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit of one of the local hospitals, after the birth of my son.  To be sure, we were an odd addition to the NICU.  He weighed well over 9 pounds at birth.  (See, here is the insidiousness of the mind during and after pregnancy, or its insidiousness with advancing age.  5 minutes ago, I could tell anyone the exact birth weight of both of my children.  Now, I’ve got nothing.  Gone.  Zilch.  Best I can do is over 9 pounds for my son.  AARGH!)  I digress.  The NICU is largely populated by classically premature infants.  I say classically because my son was 4 weeks early – gestational diabetes will do this I’m told, and I did have that this time around.  Classically premature is also, usually, incredibly tiny.  I felt as though I had the “bursting with radiant health” baby even with the issues that sent him to the NICU.  I recognized my good fortune and steered clear of the parents bonding over 1 and 2 and sometimes even 4-pound babies.  I was certain the last person they wanted to see was me with the unnaturally large, premature newborn.  So, I spared them that and, skirting the edges of the NICU, came upon a couple of other parents with babies there not for prematurity, but some other equally disturbing issue.

Okay.  In addition to my now 5-month old babe, I have a teenage daughter, 17 to be precise.  My 5-month old is my surprise.  You’d think that at 41, I could have avoided that sort of surprise, but no.  It’s all right though; in fact, it’s pretty fantastic although it’s intensely grueling.  There is certainly plenty I’ve forgotten about having an infant around.  But, he’s marvelous and I’m blessed with two terrific children, and, ultimately, I’m grateful.  Ragged around the edges, but grateful.  I’m one of those women who really should never have been able to easily have children, yet I’ve had two without any struggle getting pregnant.  In fact, both have been surprises.  I was 24 with the surprise of my daughter.

Again, digression, however I think this suffices for a first post to my blog.  We’ll see what the future holds.