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If I Only Had a Brain…..

02 Sep

If I only had a brain.....

The Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz is one of my hero’s. Actually I truly love all the characters from the movies and the books. During my life I have often identified with the each one of the characters. Currently, it’s Tin Man I understand the most.

I and all the people around me are currently dealing with my problem: I have menopause brain. Now, you would think that means that I still have a functioning cerebral cortex, but….you would be WRONG! I too sadly sing the song of the Tin Man, “If I only had a brain…” Why you ask? Well, let me answer that query for you….

Long long ago in a place far far away Little Miss Angela had to have a hysterectomy, at 25 no less! No gory details, but suffice it to say some of the parts had to go, a couple of small parts stayed. So I didn’t immediately begin ‘pausing’, but the surgeon told me I would experience it a little early probably. Not sure what early means, but now I find myself in the throws of the blasted thing at 48. Joy unspeakable, just ask my family and friends .

I’ve spent all these years praying for a ‘mini’ pause, nothing too dramatic. I have found if I drink soy milk every day I don’t have the wonderful hot flashes. Mine did not cause me to sweat. I felt like the upper third of my body had been plunged into an oven and Iwas slowly being broiled to death. I understand all the comedic scenes in movies and TV where the menopausal woman is running screaming through the house, yard, mall, whatever, yanking off all her clothes. You just can’t take the heat. So thank God for soy milk. I do quite regularly. But, what was I writing about, oh yeah. This post was about a brain…

I have been researching this menopause thing. Come to find out one of the symptoms of menopause is problems with memory. Problems with memory. No one has ever mentioned that to me. At least I don’t think they have. Now, thanks to my Dad I have a family trait already of being slightly forgetful (my daughter is guffawing at the slightly I’m sure). If I don’t put things back in their designated spots, I won’t remember leaving them in the other odd spots we find them in. Thus ensues a search that can last for days. Really. Sometimes weeks. Then there are all the faces I remember collectively in said brain. Faces of schoolmates, old work companions, teachers, former bosses, family that live very far away, current customers of mine that work in the vicinity of my office. Faces, but no names. None. I will know that I know you, and try to stumble around to remember your name, but everyone usually figures out that I can’t recall it, and they obligingly offer up their own name for me and whomever I am trying to introduce them to. So, seems like I already have enough memory issues, right? Well, let’s just see about that. Let me explain my life with the current additional memory issues.

with creme and sugar, perfection!

I love coffee. I have discovered that it is one of the great loves of my life. Boyfriend has acknowledge and accepted this fact (at least I think he has). I have been making coffee since I was 15 or 16. As I stated earlier I am now 48, so that’s a long time. How hard is it really? Wee-ee-eel…..let me tell you.

This morning I’m at work and decide it’s time to have a good hot cuppa. Put filter in basket. Scoop out desired amount of coffee. Pour in sufficient amount of water for brewing. Turn on pot, walk away, wait. A few minutes later, we have coffee. I am sitting at my desk, really enjoying the wonderful aroma of fresh coffee wafting around me. What a pleasure it is to have coffee in my life. Sigh. Just another minute or two, and I will be imbibing on my cherished drink. Hold on there kiddies! Houston discovers a problem. What the frail? Urp. Ahhh. Oops. Where’s the pot? I neglected to place the coffee POT under the spigot for the coffee that was brewing. So, coffee slowly built up in the basket, with the filter and the GROUNDS, and then proceeded to pour out and all around the coffee maker, all over counters, down cabinets, into the floor…..need I go on? It took almost a full roll of paper towels to clean up my mess. Why would I not remember to put the POT on the coffee maker? One day I didn’t remember to turn it on, and I sat for quite a while waiting for coffee that was not gonna happen. Oh well. I finally figured that part out too. So, again, I sing the song of the Tin Man: “… if I only had a brain.”

Guess I will write out the instructions for making coffee on some sticky notes and put them on the pot….ummm….huh? what were we talking about? Lunch, oh yeah. That’s it. Lunch.

Ok, I will try to remember to show up more often and write posts too, k? I won’t forget. I promise.

1 Comment

Posted in humor, memories, menopause, Ponderings

Where Does Your Worth Come From?

18 Aug

How do you value yourself? Where does your sense of worth come from? Is it from the validation of others? This is something we want, whether we will admit it or not. We seek it through others agreeing with us on a matter, or acknowledging us in something we have done. There! A stamp of approval! It’s done! I’m validated, real, have value and worth….because someone or something tells me I do.

But what about the days when none of those things come? The lonely empty days when we feel lost, or alone, and wonder if all of life is just a pointless practice of lying down and getting up and starting all over again?

Then there are other days when the winds of adversity blow, the rain falls down….sometimes as quiet tears rolling down our face, into our hearts. Someone doesn’t like us, they didn’t approve of what we did or what we said. We were too harsh, or too quick, or maybe just too different from the other and a clash ensues, an argument begins, or we get rejected in one way or another.

“See?”, a little voice inside whispers. “See? They know the truth now – you’re wrong. You’re worthless. You have little or no value. So there!” We catch ourselves listening to that little voice that lies to us, that lives inside of us: the voice of insecurity.

I struggle with these types of things from time to time. Failures and losses in my life have led me to these feelings. I sometimes will go for several days, not even knowing I’ve wandered back into this little lonely hole where I feel lost and all alone. Then one day it will begin to dawn on me, and I will slowly start climbing my way out again. I’ve suffered several losses in my life. Had more than a few failures. Watched a grandparent get eaten by cancer when I was around 12. She was 74. I loved all my grandparents dearly; none of them lived past my 13th year. Lost my mom when I was 25, she was only 54. I had 3 beautiful children that missed their Nana as much as I missed my mom. Broke my back, literally, around 34. Lost a home around 35. Lost a marriage of 28 years around 46. Had to start over in every area of my life. New home, new job, new church, new state. Lots of rebuilding, and I’m still working on that. Last year had the unexpected loss of a very dear friend who was only 53. She was my oldest friend. We talked every day, now I just think about her often and miss her greatly. I wish the losses and failures had helped me be less like Schleprock and Eeyore, and be more optimistic and strong. But I don’t bounce back as well as I want to. Okay, that’s enough. I’m sure you understand and have suffered the same or similar things, and our worth is not determined by these losses or how we deal with them. What things do you allow to validate you? Where does your sense of worth come from? Please share your stories with me, share your testimonies of love and life and how you climb out of your hole as well about the losses you are also overcoming.

I am going to start something new for myself. I think it will help stop this eternal wheel of blah I seem to get trapped on. I am going to start a gratitude list. A friend of mine does this. She has a little notebook she uses to record large and small things she is grateful for, or happy about, or just blessings she has received. When she fills one book up, she finds another to start all over again. She reads her blessings on bad days, and when she has one or two filled up, she mails them to her daughters or friends so they can share the gratitude too.

Ann Voskamp has a community that does this as well. Would you like to start your own list? I’ll start mine with this:

Things I Am Grateful For:

1.Grandkids that run at me every day when I get home that act like it’s been weeks since they have seen me.
2. A Boyfriend who’s sweet and thinks I’m great.
3. Hugs and kisses from Boyfriend and Grandkids.
4. A daughter who keeps things clean and a son-in-law that mows grass. That means I don’t have to.
5. Friends who cook and play board games and card games and video games and drinking games.
6. Laughter with said friends that actually makes my face hurt and tummy sore from the sheer quantity of it.
7. My Daddy. He is the best man I know.
8. My job, when so many don’t have one right now.
9. The ability to pay my bills due to the job.
10. God, who I think gave me all these wonderful things.

Now, where’s yours? Let me know. Let’s encourage each other today.

2 Comments

Posted in gratitude, lists, Ponderings, recovery

Cruisin’ The Drive Thru

07 Aug

I am so excited! It’s our vacation and I am psyched up and ready to go! I wanted to drive but Boyfriend wouldn’t let me. I like to drive faster than him. So I am navigating. We’ll see how long that lasts! I wanna go!

Anyway, we decide to go to a drive thru for breakfast, drive in, order, pay and get food – fast, right? Weeellllll….not exactly boys and girls. Let me share our story…..

We pull in and wait for the second car in front of us to order, which takes a little longer than you would think, but not too bad. Then the car in front of us places its order, pretty quickly. Our turn! We want 2 biscuits, a coffee, an OJ and a cup of ice. How complicated is that, right? We see small water, hold the water, on the order screen for the cup of ice. No kidding here. Small water, hold the water? Real simple huh? Translation = small cup of ice. They read the rest of the order back to us and ask if it is correct. We move to the pay window.

When I was a teenager, I was a cashier at a local grocery store. Being able to make change was part of the job requirements. I had to be able to do a little math in my head. It took a few weeks but I caught on, and soon could have change figured out before my OLD register could. This was not a computerized model, uh-uh. It was the ancient hand crank kind. Really. No, thank you, I’m NOT that old, but the store I worked in was.

So, why do I digress down memory lane? We pull up to the pay window and Boyfriend doesn’t have exact change, so he gives the girl a twenty and change so she owes him a $13 and a nickel. She couldn’t do it. The nickle blew her mind. I don’t think you have to understand math concepts anymore to run a register. She had to go get more change (?) for him, and comes back shortly with the few dollars and a nickle. I think someone helped her figure it out.

So we finally got the change, and she apologizes for the delay, and I try to make a joke about the fact that the line hasn’t moved at all because of the second car in front of us. They still hadn’t got whatever they ordered, what was it? The whole frickin’ restaurant? I dunno. Boyfriend got my joke but she didn’t. Must have been a bad joke. We sit for another 10 minutes or so. Fast food huh?

Finally – really long time here – the second car has their order and we are 1 step closer to our food. I notice as they hand the bag of food to the car ahead of us that they also ordered OJ. Nothing unusual here as OJ is a breakfast standard, just normal stuff. Next I see that something must be wrong with their order. They call the lady at the window back, and a new bag of food appears. They drive away. Yay! Our turn!

We pull up for our turn at the delivery window. What do we get first? Drumroll please…….a small glass of ice water, with the water! Whaaaat? We also get the OJ and coffee. Boyfriend knocks on the drive through window to let the lady know we need help. She comes back, he tells her ice only please. She fixes it, and gives us straws and closes the window and disappears. We think she is getting our biscuits, but that’s not it folks. She comes back in 2 or 3 minutes and asks us what we want? Why are we still there? We look at each other and then at her and BF tells her we would like our biscuits please. She leaves and comes back again, this time with the manager, who also asks, why are we still there. Really. This happened. We’re going, Huh? Is this a prank? Is someone punking us? What do we want? I dunno. Maybe we want to get our food and leave. Which is what BF tells them, ‘We ordered a sausage egg and cheese and an egg and cheese biscuit. That’s all. We paid for them already.’ The window girl doesn’t remember she didn’t give us our food. Then it dawns on me. The first bag of food she gave the car in front of us was wrong. She must have given the biscuit part of our order to the car ahead of us. Wow. What can I say.

We finally do get two biscuits, but Boyfriend’s sausage and egg had no cheese. At this point we cut our losses. We have a vacation to start! Get me the heck outta Dodge please!

So, aren’t drive thru’s fun? I have had 3 meals screwed up this week alone. You probably have the same kinda stuff happen too. It’s really kinda miraculous when we do get what we order isn’t it? Hope you have better luck driving thru than we did. But that’s all in the past now. We’re at the BEACH! Later!

2 Comments

Posted in humor, venting

In Overdrive, Overwhelmed and Frustrated….

15 Jul

So, what to do when I feel overwhelmed with life? Sometimes I feel the need to hire someone to take care of some of my incidentals, but who really has the money for that? I’m still trying to figure out this blog stuff, working on drafts that don’t make it to this page. I am like you and have my regular life pulling on me always, this week my daughter had a serious cut to her hand we had to take care of, and she is a mom so her little ones also had to be taken care in the interim. One is 6, and the other is 1 year old, and of course when Mommy got hurt both babies got upset. It was an interesting evening that is for sure

So, how do you handle the stress of everyday life? Do you take long baths to relax, drink lots of coffee to have energy to deal, or something else? I am realizing I need to get back to some old habits I’ve used in the past. One is making lists for things I want to accomplish. Write it out, make it plain. Then as I finish these written tasks, I can check them off the list and give myself a feeling of accomplishment! Yay! One done, a couple hundred to go….

Another thing I need to start doing is to stop kicking myself around so much when I don’t accomplish the things I mean to. I waste an enormous! amount of time doing that, I bet you do too. We are constantly badgering ourselves for things we don’t get done, things we don’t have time to do, things we drop the ball on. I think a better use of time and energy for all of us would be to simply pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and spend the energy starting over instead of beating ourselves up. I think I’ll add that to my lists…..

I also took a course earlier this year called HeartMath from Bonnie Tollison with Creative Health. It has been very helpful in helping me learn to control my body’s bad habits like jumping into overdrive every time something happens. I have tools I use on those crazy car rides home not knowing if my daughter’s finger is attached or not so I can keep myself together enough to be a help and not a burden in stressful situations. Check it out. It’s very scientifically documented that we can override the old ruts in our brains with new information, and it can really help our health. If you are in the area and can work with Bonnie, she is one of those rare jewels you only find once in a while in life.

What are some things you do to try to help yourself with the everyday stresses? I’d love to hear your ideas too! Post a comment to share with all of us…

So, I don’t think you need to hire a life coach necessarily to help you, I am going to get a new notebook and start writing things down again, and I can at least give myself a little feeling of accomplishment by checking them off when done…..

On a lighter note, the 6 year old granddaughter shared this with me too: Potatoes come from French Fries! I hope you find that as useful as I do, have a smile on me ok? Hope some of this is helpful to you too! Talk to you soon….

3 Comments

Posted in Ponderings