Talking to Fish

Ready for a rant today...here ya go, then?

In the recent season premiere of the show "Necessary Roughness," therapist Dr. Dani is in her kitchen at 2 in the morning talking to the fish in a blender that her daughter brought home from a visit to her father's house. Dani is baking biscotti and talking to herself, essentially, but it helps her to direct her thoughts to an outside entity. When caught by her daughter and son, she asks,"Which sounds worse, that I was talking myself or to the fish?"

I'm going to confess. I talk to myself. Sometimes it just helps to get the words out there. Sometimes I do it in the car while I'm driving. Sometimes I do it as a prayer to God. Sometimes I have "conversations" with my cats. In the case of my cats, they tend to talk back to me.

Wait! Wait! I am not the crazy cat lady, I swear! I don't mean they SPEAK ENGLISH to me or anything. Actually, they speak Spanish. No...No! I am joking, of course. I just mean they respond. We've taken great care to talk to our cats to encourage them to vocalize back to us when they want something...or when they are caught behind the hamper in the closet and can't get out.  Believe me, it comes in handy then.

The point is...language is important. Sometimes, it just helps to hear the words out there. Like trying to remember how to pronounce a word. You say it out loud and go "does that sound RIGHT?" Sometimes words that need to be said need to be practiced before you say them to someone's face...or through the phone. I have no proof of this myself, but I believe that language is an essential human instinct. We desperately need to communicate.  Verbal language developed as a means to do that. I imagine the "cave men" making singing noises in praise of their deity at this point in the discussion, because it feels really good to make noise sometimes. Look at Tom Hanks in "Castaway", for instance. Desperate for companionship and communication, he develops "Wilson" out of a volleyball so he has someone to talk to!

I wonder what the internet is going to do to language, actually. I've SEEN what it's done to written language.  "LOL OMG wut's u up 2? " *shudders * To be fair, I don't know what people's language skills were like before this, so that may be an improvement.  I heard there is talk of discontinuing cursive writing lessons in schools now. I go on record as believing that to be a bad move. I remember being a young child and I couldn't WAIT to learn this secret language of CURSIVE WRITING. (insert Dum Dum Da music here). I scribbled everywhere pretending to write it.  I can't imagine taking cursive writing out of the world. They'll have to give special medical school classes to doctors so they can learn to use it to write prescriptions, I guess. How can we ever sign our ineligible signatures without it!?

Hm...I know I started with a point. What was it again?

Oh, yeah, I remember. Talking to Fish...and cats...and inanimate objects...

Just remember, if you don't learn to be comfortable with it now...you'll never be able to be okay talking to apparently thin air when you go travelling back in time and Al comes to you as a hologram... Or when you move into a house and find you're rooming with a ghost that only you can see because you've been turned into a werewolf....

Just sayin'...

Tax Collectors AND Debtors

Someone shared something Faith-based with me recently that I never thought of before. I am used to thinking in terms of being like Christ - ministering to the poor and those in need. I've always gotten that message. That I should be like Christ. Growing up in a church, I always saw myself as the evangelist. Lately I've been going through a lot of rough times in my life and I've been feeling ashamed because it's meant that I haven't really had much to give back to others, even to the point of not attending a church regularly.  This woman pointed out "Look who Jesus associated with". I've never thought about myself as someone whom Jesus is ministering TO.

I have kept thinking about that every since.  I remember learning that Jesus was friends with the tax collectors (like Matthew) and the harlots and the drunkards. After Kim mentioned this to me, I kept thinking about it. If these were the people no one wanted to be around, isn't it likely that debtors would be in that category, too? One of the things I've been ashamed of myself is not being able to pay bills, or having to depend upon others for things when I feel like I'm not carrying my own weight. In Jesus' time, the less respectable people would have included divorcees as well, right? People who lived in ways that were considered sinful. I mean, wow, is there anyone amongst us who can say they have never fallen into that category? But also, those who were looking for comfort and to know that they were not worthless. That just because they were lame or blind, they were still worth something to the Lord.

Could it be that, rather than just listening to Jesus' message as a list of tasks and requirements, I should be listening for the comfort He was bringing, too? For the uplifting of my spirits by his gentle words? 

I grew up as a Christian. I've always assumed that meant that I'm the elder brother of the Prodigal Son story. Could it be Jesus was saying that the fatted calf could be meant for me to share, too?

For years, I have shied away from the messages that have said "God cares about YOU." Maybe I couldn't believe them. Maybe my own depression, anxiety, and low self-worth got in the way. I heard it, but I don't think I listened. The idea that God is a loving God was something I embraced as a child. After my mother died, I think I may come to doubt that.

For years, I have felt that God hasn't been talking to me. Maybe He's been trying to reach me all this time, saying "I love you. Come home" and I've been deleting the voicemail messages.

I Am Not A Book

I had a dream. Not unusal at all for me. I sometimes think I am always dreaming. Sometimes I wake up and I just KNOW that the dream I was dreaming was important in some way. It has been this way since I was a child.  I have had visions this way. I have had what I sometimes see as messages from the Dreamtime  (and sometimes I just dream that the Doctor has dropped me home at Hogwarts after a trip to see the city of Atlantis in the Pegasus Galaxy and then I worry I've been watching too much TV...)
What I want to share with you from that dream was the realization, when I awoke, that my life is not stagnant and that I will not find the answers to my questions inside myself. My life is spark of light and I have to live it to see how it goes.  I realized that I cannot write the story of my life and live it at the same time. 
I was seventeen when my mother died. I learned something then. I learned what it means to sum up a life lived.  I heard the stories of my mother's life and realized that someday people would be talking about my life the same way. I picked up a bad habit at that point. I started to try to live my life with an eye to how people would view me - when I died and in history. All those literature classes in college did not help. I had an internal editor working on my life the way it works on a writer's work. If a writer does not suspend the internal editor, she never gets anything written down. She questions every word, every line. I wanted to be a writer that got studied in colleges! I thought, "how cool would that be?" and I shifted my focus. The result has been devastating to my life and my work. Talk about putting pressure on yourself! Everything I did, I decided that I had to look toward the whole picture.  So everytime I "wasted" a day playing a computer game or watching TV, I berated myself for not working on what I "should be" doing.
Ah, the dreaded "should be"...my nemesis. At this risk of sounding like Sheldon Cooper, it's my mortal enemy - the Khan to my Captain Kirk, if you will.
What it comes down to is expectations. I worry that I'm being arrogant when I say it, but it's true. I have great expectations for myself. I believe God has put me on this earth for a purpose. And, like Clark Kent, I don't think it's to kick footballs. I think I have a greater purpose.
But the truth is, I think everyone has a purpose. And, for each person, that purpose is a great one. 
I read a book once called "Embraced by the Light" by Betty Eadie. I've thought of it often in the years since I've read it. Ms. Eadie claimed to have had a near-death experience where she went to heaven, was allowed to see and remember important parts, and return to tell everyone. Now, firstly I was point out that that in itself is a pretty great purpose.  But, also, one of the things she reports when she returns is that souls get to meet each other in heaven before coming to Earth. And they agree to act in certain ways in each other's lives. It may be something that seems unimportant, like a smile or a gesture or some kind of "bumping into them" on one particular day. What I remember is that even that small interaction was deemed extremely important in Heaven.  I've seen this in action in my own life. I'm sure you have as well. Sometimes we impact other people's lives without really comprehending how much of an impact we've made.  We do it every day. Some interactions we're never going to realize were important until the day we die. Some interactions we learn years later made more of an impact than we knew at the time.  I guess sometimes we begin a work in someone's life and sometimes we are the ones that help the person finish it.

Prayer for Enough

I keep a box on my desk marked "SFGTD." It's a trick I picked up years ago. It stands for "Something For God To Do." Originally, I think I read it as a metaphor in an e-mail, but I found an old, small tissue box and started doing this. I take a piece of paper, write a prayer to God on it, something I am struggling with, then put it in "His In-Box". The idea is that I then "walk away" from the worry, and give it up to God. I'm not saying it always works, but you'd be surprised the number of times, when I, infrequently, dump all the papers out and look through them, that they are prayers that have been answered. Today I did this again, and found this prayer from 2009. I thought it might be time to share it!

Dear Lord,
Please give me enough.

Enough money to live moderately
Enough love to sustain me
Enough friendship not to be lonely without being crowded
Enough patience to ease others' trials and pains
Enough intelligence to understand
Enough faith not to need to understand everything
Enough food to not be hungry
Enough want to not be gluttonous
Enough generousity to share the blessings you give me with others
Enough power to never be a victim
Enough will never to be a slave
Enough humility to never be a tyrant
Enough honour never to cheat or lie
Enough sex with love to stave off lustfulness
Enough pain to make me appreciate pleasure & peace
Enough activity to keep me stimulated
Enough rest to make me strong
Enough weakness to make me humble
Enough darkness to recognize light
Enough work to appreciate what I have
Enough sweet to make me not feel deprived
Enough savory to keep me nourished
Enough family to make me feel at home, wanted, and safe
Enough danger to recognize safety
Enough travel to appreciate home
Enough relaxation to ease my tension
Enough tears to appreciate smiles
Enough water to keep me from being thirsty
Enough contact with You to remind me always that I am your child

Love,
Ilene

"Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day"
2 Corinthians 4:16 (NIV)

I Grew Up In a Library

I don't like to look at it often. It prompted a neurologist once to cluck, shake her head, and sympathetically say "such TRAGEDY". Despite my estranged husband's claims, I do not live in it. And I've mostly accepted it.
It's my past. Everyone has one. Some are fraught with misdeeds, some contain nothing but petty dramas, some are shrouded in mystery because the person "just doesn't want to talk about it". It's probably what really made me a writer.
One of my first memories (aside from that one when I was throwing a fit because I couldn't go to school with my sisters), is of sitting at my oldest sister's writing desk scribbling. I knew I wasn't really writing. But I was pretending to be writing. Now, if that didn't mark me as a writer, I'm hard pressed to find something that would!  (Well, there are those years and years of cognitive behavioral therapy...)
All that aside, when I do actually look at my past, I'm tempted to look only my childhood, because that was the happiest time of my life. As it should be, I would guess. I was loved and protected, and I had the distinct advantage, to my mind, of being born into a family of thinkers.  By that I mean, they were all about the education of the mind and body. My father had a degree in Business, followed up by a Master's Degree in Education. Born to a nurse and machinist, he took business classes in high school and then went into the Army. He was smart enough to use the GI Bill to his advantage, and wound up teaching high school business for 33 years. My mother was born to a Master Carpenter and a former teacher who raised 9 children (5 of them boys who towered over her). She got her own degree in teaching, certifying in both math and English. Now, it is common knowledge that those who excel in math usually do not excel in English and vice versa. I asked my father about that once. He laughingly repsonded "Oh, she was definitely better at one than the other." I have a vague recollection of looking at one of her college transcripts once. I defnitely take after my mother in this regard. While Mom did substitute teach for awhile after college, shortly after I came along, she was offered a position as the pioneering librarian in our little valley, and she never looked back. Librarian suited her immensely. I'd even go so far as to say it was her calling in life. 
As for me, I begin my memories of life in that library. To begin with, it was only a few rooms in the front of an old yellow house on main street. The front two rooms - living room and parlor area, the kitchen, and a long sun room off to the side.  I remember the smell, though. The downstairs of that house were a veterinary office. Thinking about it now, it seems an unlikely set up. But they were willing to rent the space to the fledgling library. And it had the advantage of catty-corner across the street from our own house.
I played in that library from the time I was three years old. Everyone in that valley knew me as the librarian's daughter. Kids used to come in with their parents and we'd play. I especially remember Rachel Morgan and I playing with pinkish red plastic "Barrel o' Monkeys" monkeys, linking them together by their little bent arms, making chains of them that lifted up and up until they finally fell off their precarious perches. I remember that the music was out on the sunporch in bins. At that time, it was Vinyl. Beautiful black plastic long playing records - "78s"- with lovely, decorative cardboard cases. We had an album of Kiss, and I remembering staring at the faces in make-up and trying to figure it out. I used to spend so much time growing up wandering amongst books and music, and puppets, because we had crafts, too, in the kitchen, and a Junior Puppet group.
Shortly after I went to school, the library had grown enough to need a new location. That caused some confusion for me and my bus drivers, trying to figure out where I should be dropped after school. My sisters had a different schedule than me because they went to school all day and I had half-day kindergarten.  I remembering peering out a bus window to see Mom waiting on the beaten sidewalk in front of the library...and watching the bus drive away with her standing there. Eventually, the routine was decided and I got dropped at the new library location, which was further up in town, beside the fire station. 
The weird thing about time and places is that, well, time passes, and locations that live in your memory one way become other things to other people. A family actual moved in to the old library location, and the "new" library location eventually became an insurance agency. MY insurance agency. It was a strange experience to walk in to talk with people and stand on the other side of a counter under and over which I once played.  I looked at the counter and all I could see for a moment was the cool paperclip magnet Mom once had there. I loved to play with this thing. With a true child's fascination for magnets, I would make paperclip trains that extended off the magnets to see how far I could take them before they lost the magnetism. And that  big clunker of a "check out" machine that I learned to use - you slide in a card and heard a satisfying CLUNK when it took a bite out of the card (so it seemed to me) and printed the date it was due back. Back behind my mom's monstrosity of a metal desk (where she kept that plastic cube containing all our pictures), was the children's section. Looking at it now in my mind's eye it was TINY, but back then I could sit for hours reading and re-reading my favorite books and picture books. My favorite for awhile was one involving a boy and his imaginary friend. I can still see the pictures, but, with all due respect to the author, I have a feeling I made up a better story for it than what was actually in it. At least a better story for me, because I still have this warm attachment to that story that defies description. It was like my security blanket.
A good number of years was spent at that library...all through grade school we were there. I spent afternoons and weekend and evenings there. I read Garfield cartoons, Dr. Seuss books, "Dicey's Song," Judy Blume, "A Wrinkle In Time," "The Language of the Goldfish," "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret," hygiene books, "Sweet Valley High" books, watched "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. ...somebody-or-other" and "Cat Ballou" films on a screen in the main room, joined the Junior Puppeteers and wrote puppet plays, and had Girl Scout meetings. I got caught stealing candy and punished for being unkind and rude in that library. I played "diving competition" off the steps along the side of the library, too, which had such a charm for me at the time, but I couldn't adequately explain to you now. 


(continued)

My 2011 Letter to Santa

December 12, 2011

Dear Santa Claus,

It's that time of year again. I'm trying so hard to get into the Christmas Spirit this year. I celebrate the existence of Jesus year-round, so there's nothing new in that. But feeling the magic that comes from Christmastime is something I look forward to feeling every year. This year has been so hard on me that I'm having a little trouble.  There are so many things I'd like to have and to do, and cheap gifts of candy and books and Christmas socks just aren't doing it this year.  I haven't written a letter to you in many years, so I thought I might as well try it again this year.

I do believe in you. My mother told me once that you are the embodiment of the Christmas Spirit that exists in all of us. I remember her and my father at this time of year more than any other.  I celebrate them in you.

So, if it's possible, if I'm not too old for a Christmas Miracle, then I'd like you to grant this Christmas list for me, if you can. Most of it can't be wrapped and put beneath a tree (of any size), but it's what I really want for Christmas.

1.       A job. A career would be nice, but I'm not trying to reach too far with this. I know I need to do a lot of this stuff myself. A job that I can do with my illness so that I can pay the bills would be fine.

2.       Something I can invest myself in (career-wise).  You know what I mean, I think.   I'm looking for a mission.

3.       Healing in my relationship with my husband, however it turns out.  By this I mean peace and hope for the future.

4.       A treadmill (used is just fine). I just need something I can exercise on in the winter. I watch so much TV these days and have to read, too, that a treadmill would be great because I could do those things while exercising.

5.       A Smart phone

6.       A Kindle Fire

7.       A tablet computer

8.       An MP3 player

9.       A GPS for my car (this will help me when I search for jobs or travel for meetings and what-have-you)

10.   Clothes (snazzy clothes for the job I need to get and some comfortable jeans would be nice too!)

11.   A trip to Ireland, Scotland & England (this one is reaching, I know, but I've ALWAYS wanted to go)

12.   Blessings for my family and friends and all those people who have helped me to stay afloat thus far.

I won't ask for healing of my illness because I think I have it for a reason. I won't ask for my pain to be taken away or for my parents to be alive again. I know these are things I have to accept. But I see the things I am asking for as building blocks and tools to help me do what I need to do to move forward.  Of course, if you let me win the lottery, I could probably take care of everything myself except for #2 and #3. If I win a million dollars, I won't need #1, at least for awhile. It would sure take the pressure off.  Is it silly to say I'm a pragmatist when I'm writing to Santa Claus for these things? :L I don't want to ask for much more than I need.  A little surplus would be a nice offset to that constantly-going-into-the-red bank account.  Whatever you can do, if anything, is appreciated ,Mr. Kringle. I wish I could give you more than cookies and milk. Maybe when you stop by, you could spend a few minute with my kitties on your lap purring? There's nothing like that sound to help you relax before heading off to do more good in the world. 

All my love,

Ilene Danielle

P.S.  Could you bring some catnip, feathery balls on string, and fishy treats for the kitties (Oreo and Lizzie)? I know they'd appreciate it, too! Thanks for all you do!

...in a blaze of colour and light, taking flight!

My most recent Facebook post:

So I'm lying there trying to sleep and failing. I reread the latest article i have on how the first thing to do to treat Fibromyalgia is to get a good night's sleep (and walk). I decide to get online and look up the one neurotransmitter they discuss in the report and there's my cousin-by-marriage, who has described the events of Christmas a few years ago. Talk about a "wake-up" call. I may be jobless, involved a rocky romance/marriage, sick and tired of being sick and tired, and feeling sorry for myself because I've lost my parents and the sense of myself that I had. BUT...I have friends and family who love me and would never let me go hungry, a roof over my head, electricity and (holy cow!) CABLE and internet, and my relative sanity. Doug and I may have problems, but he has not left this earth, or left me with children to raise on my own. The icing on the cake? I still have my faith in the Almighty to pull me through all of this and put me where I need to be when I need to be there. I still am certain that there is, indeed, a place for me in this world. I just don't know what it is or where it is yet. I'd say I'm Blessed Beyond Belief. God's giving me the opportunity for something brand new in my life. And I may be hibernating, or cocooning like a butterfly right now, but I'm gonna burst outta that cocoon in a blaze of color and light and take flight when I'm done with it!!!!!!

And that does a pretty good job of summing up what has been happening in my life recently. Not completely, of course. It doesn't say I am now back in school getting a degree in Business Administration, for instance.  Or that I've adopted 2 adorable kittens who are now about 6 months old. Hopefully that helps explain why my posts have been nonexistent since early July. The few times I did find I had something I wanted to post, I couldn't find the location of my blog anymore! (and isn't that a sad commentary!).

I read over my old posts, though, and I wish I had something enlightening or clever to say this time. I really do.

The sad fact is, I have Fibromyalgia. I haven't had insurance since November of last year, so I am dealing with it with over-the-counter supplements and other "homeopathic" remedies.  All the stress in my life derailed my progress since I found out about it (just before I lost my insurance, ironically enough).  There are days when it has taken all my strength just to do what I need to do in the real world.  Those are the days I hate the "real" world.  Practical is all well and good and honourable. However, for someone like me, it can be totally overwhelming.  It's a sad and sometimes depressing fact.  But I meant what I said in that Facebook post - I plan to come out of this in the end. Probably a better person for it all, too! So, I'm taking it a day at a time. I'll try to write more. I really will. I'd like to think someone is actually reading it other than me! :)