Flat Out

                   

                                 Throw'd Off and flat out.........

Most of us know those words.... we use flat out a lot.  Laid up is another.  Laid up in the bed. Squalling.  Setting on the porch.  I'm always "fixing to..."  after I reckon something.
I thought about the list too.  Like Mindy's.  
Things have been flat out and throw'd for a while.  Too long.  Word prompts sometimes press a button with me.  Intertwined pushed me over the edge I was teetering on.  Throw'd off and flat out for 4 or 5 days, enough for me to tell my Dr. my concern about my well being.
My mental health.  My spiritual life went to hell months ago.  It's getting better.  
I needed another round of stems.  I caved in and let them put a line in.  It was a good choice this time.  Cramped my water time, but the weather turned as foul as my mood and it didn't matter.  They pulled my line this past friday.  
I'm tired.  Still.... weary.  
I'm tired of people I love and care about getting sick. 
Tired of people I love and care about dying.  2 suicides in a month.
Tired of bitchy judgmental women.
Shame, fear, punishment and guilt.
Tired of grief.
Tired of the disgusted feeling I have when I look at my kitchen table and all the things piled up there and I am too paralyzed to clear it off.  Ditto the computer desk.
Tired of getting blind sided by crap... and it is just that-crap. Nonsense.
Tired of feeling sad.
Tired.  

I read things that give me some pause.  Diane's John numbering the days..... reminds me of the Psalm... then I think counting is a good thing.  

And the day my intertwined rope with the ball on the end of tangled mess just flat out fell off, after I had asked Papa something... I thought damn, fast answer.  I could see the ends of this beautiful twist looked like they had been cut.  And it was then realized the door had opened.  I had let go of some of the things that throw'd me off in my relationship with the old boyfriend.  I let him go... I had been busy building walls to protect myself.... another distraction to keep me from doing what I needed to be doing.  The insistent debate in my head over staying here or going to Virginia or both.  Not wanting to be here.  Not wanting to be here at all... not wanting to be anywhere.  Not wanting to be.  

Yet knowing somehow that no matter how many times I get throw'd off, I get back up.  Even if only to my knees.  I'm not so eager to stand anymore when my self tells me sit.  
Reading last weeks notes from everyone pressed my sense of frustration, not with myself, but for you all.  Because we all have a voice and we all need to be heard.  Especially when it comes to our bodies and choices in health care.  The decisions we make have long term effects.  There are options and like every thing else we have a right to say No.  And if we say yes, we have a right to change our minds.  One of my close friends here messaged me the other night, she's having surgery this week in Tampa, same as Diane.  They found it when they took her appendix out.. which wasn't her appendix it was a tumor.  

I'm rambling, I don't care.  It's as much as I can spit out without falling apart yet again.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

                                The Third Weekend of July
                      The Best Of What's Around

Every year... it's what I live for, it is for us... it's a girls weekend and includes this guy....

DJM

And I almost always volunteer for either Reverb or Rock the Earth... I love Rock The Earth.

They rock me....

It's a weekend of staying up late, singing until you lose your voice, and because it's the dead of summer, losing 10 lbs of water weight from sweating.  We shoot for the best seats we can get.

We stay at the hotel where the band stays... because it's part of the whole weekend and because it's fun.  Even though I live 20 minutes away... we still do that.  

Somewhere in my photos is the hotel.  Which in itself is the creme off the top.  I know a lot of people who will travel to see the band numerous times and go to great lengths to see them... cross country.

For me I am content with this ONE weekend. Once a year. With my girlfriends.  It's what we do.  And it's enough to hold me until next year.  It's the all out unspoken permission to be crazy time, that we as adults maybe don't or won't allow ourselves to be or do.  It is for me... that cut loose time..  

It's drinking in the bar at 2 a.m (me-coffee) Dave-beer, with the guys... forgetting to put underwear on because your girlfriends are yelling to hurry up!!!  It's the first impression of how soft his hands really are... how funny he is... It's coffee with Timmy talking about drunks and laughing.  It's a smile, the endless laughter, and eyeballing the girlfriend you love, praying she doesn't barf on your flip flops.  It's getting up early to swim, room service and meeting people from all over, you have only met online through other friends and instantly you know them... because they are part of a larger family..

It is listening to a group of men, sing close enough to almost everyone's life story, at one time or another... and they love the crowd and the crowd loves them back.  It's mesmerizing.  It's a high, no drug or alcohol can induce...

It is that once in a lifetime weekend, we do every year.... 

This is Sugar Man shot in South Africa last month.  It's a first for him even though he was born there, the first time the band toured there.  Sugar Man was written and recorded by Sixto Rodriquez who left the US to live in South Africa...he's a legend in his own right.

Saying something about David, he is a father, a husband, a talented musician songwriter.  He donates his time and money to multiple charities.  He's changed the way many concert venues serve, dispose of and use the ecosystem... His impact on recycling alone is significant.  He worries about what he will leave behind for his children... what kind of world.  And in what shape.  He's a soft, yet wild man... he's not alone in the band.. he isn't even really the backbone.. they function as a unit... they move together in one beautiful flow.. mistakes turn into a new song... that's a good lesson for all of us..

As he said... 

See you and me
Have a better time than most can dream
Have it better than the best

And if nothing can be done

We'll make the best of what's around

Fifty Seven

This is the way it looks to me.  I don't always like what I see.  I look and see how the last year has taken a toll on me... it shows in my face.  My eyes.  No one notices.  I do.

It took me 50 years to like the way I looked. Yes, I was always that pretty blonde... but my sense of discomfort came from my growing up hearing, you're too fat, too short, too.... too everything... and nothing of that "too" was ever good.  You reach a point in your life where it doesn't matter... but, you still don't love yourself.  That for me came at 50.  When surrounded by people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and looking mostly like the circus was in town (not kidding) after spending the a couple months on the beach in St Pete... I looked around one day and said, "Lori, all these people are happy. What's wrong with you?"  
From that moment on I learned to love my tummy.

And the rest of me.  I hear now... you're too thin... too this, too that... "I'll fatten you up"  I'm not a farm animal...  I know I need to put on ten pounds.
I also know how out of shape I am... and you will look at me and think "you have got to be joking??"  No, I'm not.. I need exercise.. like we all do... I need it because it helps my body... not so I can look good... it's healthier for me..  
I am lean... I have never been a large person... I will be always be short.  
Does it really matter?  I look at people when they say these things.. and wonder... through my squinted eyes... "what the hell are you really saying?"
What sort of vision of me do you have, since you really don't know me...
judged by appearance. 

I didn't intend for this to sound like this... it's my temporary fugue state this week....  
I'm going to add a couple more photos... I'm going to preface them by saying I hate having my photo taken... much less take myself.... however... some of them are fun.... for me....

What beach hair really looks like

Oh yes and naked... 

The End... 

Love

Sometimes love looks different when your older...

I got this note today, that he asked me this morning to remind him to tell me of something he thought of at 4:30 a.m driving home from taking his son to the airport.  He said it was about he and I.  Us he said.  I really didn't know what to expect.

What I got surprised me


 **Ok, this is kinda heavy duty(at least for me it was)-I was thinking how great it was that we got back in touch and how wonderful you are to me and what a cruel twist of fate it would be that now I finally found my happiness and just as we're to get together all the stuff you're fighting with in your physical life snatches you away from! It freaked me out and I got to talking to God about "it ain't right after all I've put up with and all you've been through too! It was just such a scarey thought!**


We talked a little about it after he sent that.  He was afraid to say anything because he worried that I would badly of his projecting my death.. I said oh you know me better.

I asked him what God said back to him.. after he signed off and went to sleep. In the morning there will likely be an answer..

My response to him was in part things we had already talked about, but in fragments... why after all these years.. and how it was a gift for both of us.  It's not only the remembering what was then, but that there is love that never changes... I loved that boy..all those years ago... and because of both our lives, while in tandem were going to end up going in different directions.. there was a peaceful parting.  I talked to him before I got married to tell him. He was happy for me.  

There was always a place of residence in my heart for him... just because... it was that unconditional love that is so rare and so hard to find and truly is a gift.  And that is what we have today.  That no matter, we still have that.

What prompted that fear thought was that my kidneys were in trouble last week, I had a rough week.  I didn't tell him, but mentioned something last night about having a meltdown, to which he inquired the nature thereof, and I could never lie to this guy, I can't soft soap or fool him.... that's how well he knows me.  And how well I know him.
I just hit the highlights, but he's smart enough to know what it all meant.  Thus his thought process this morning and getting little sleep too.

And for love... I don't know..not anymore.  I thank God this man, that boy who I fell so hard for so many years ago, is a man who talks to God... and who listens.  He was a gift then and he still is.  It is that.. one thing that in life, is unconditional.  Like God's love for us, that we have so much trouble accepting... so many people can't even look at it... for fear they are not worthy.  If I am loved by God as I know that I am, then I can turn with that love to someone else, and give them that very same thing.  That's is what we are called to do.  I didn't say it was easy... but it's a gift... and when you ask God for something and he hands you a box wrapped up all neatly and lovely... and your hands are open and receiving. And he places that gift in your hands and says to you..here's the deal...  he's part of the package.  It does give you pause... oh yes it does... but oh is it worth it.. yes. On both.

Things

Things... the word for the week... and I sit here laughing at how many times I have thought of that word this past week.

Things imply to me a word of broad coverage... somewhat equal to "stuff"... we use things as a word to described almost any"thing".  "How are things?"  One day I will say "Which things?"  There are many things.

There are things we have, treasures, trinkets, clothes, shoes, dishes, tangible things.

Then there are the semi tangible.. in the realm of stuff... things that we deal with, think, have to do, don't want to do, are asked about, don't talk about.  Just things... things we put off, set aside or simply ignore.

Sometimes people treat others as things.  Yes, and we have all done it... we look at them and think; "you are just one more thing."  Moreover, we look at ourselves and say those exact same words... knowing fully well, that we are that one thing that needs the most and gets the least.  Because  of stuff... things.  We include ourselves quite often in the scheme of things.  

And how many times have we used:

Things didn't quite go the way I planned..

I couldn't/didn't/ et al because I had things to......

Some things don't matter  (and yes they do, those things matter the most)

I just had things to do and didn't get to...

Things aren't looking good...

I have no thing to wear, eat, do, say, fill in your own blank

The list is endless... what's on your mind?  Oh stuff.. things...   really?  And what things are those?

Please elaborate on your things.... sometimes when you do, you get a little peek inside yourself.

And suddenly things take on a different appearance.