Weaning Off Prednisone

A poem has secrets that the poet knows nothing of. –Stanley Kunitz

I’ve now been weaning off prednisone since March. Slowly, to be sure. More slowly than I want. I’m anxious, impatient. Aren’t we all when we want so much to be ‘normal’? (It’s very hard for us humans to get the idea that there is a new normal, always.)

There have been setbacks. A staph infection in my elbow and of all things, around my fingernails, a terrible cold. Then, a sore hip/back, so I couldn’t keep up my 2 mile walks, (done for health and peace) but what do you do when you walk and get so sore you’re done for the day, or not walk and maybe, be able to go through your day without too much pain. I fought it, which seems to be my MO and then, finally I surrendered again.

I cuss ‘em all and regrouped. I’ve been doing that a lot. I hate it, I’m learning. I’m too dang stubborn. But, bright spot, as I’ve come off the meds. I’ve actually started writing again. Not typing, but working on poetry.

Though of all I write, poetry is the hardest, it is also the smallest and I needed small. Right now, a novel has just too many details to keep track of to work on. And I have several in need of good editing, which I don’t trust myself to do…, yet. So, poetry has been my go to. My salvation, as always.

That and this blog, that no one reads.

Small, concise contained pieces of writing. And I was right; there was something there, something waiting from all the typing I’ve been doing. It was not wasted time. Much of the little shadow work, which is what I call ideas and notes, are producing poems I’m pleased with, poems that are deeper than I once thought they would be, poems that ease my heart, somehow.

Plus, I’ve been having fun. No stress. No rush to get anything done, no pressure applied to self to be published, prove to myself and everyone else that my time has not being wasted. I’ve just been writing and loving it, so grateful for it, just like I use to before I stressed about publishing or trying to earn a little money with my work.

I’ve decided that idea is banned from this computer, this house, this mind. I’m too old to worry about proof, or acknowledgement. What I think of myself is going to have to do. I know I was born to be a writer. I knew it before I was ten years old. Why else do I see things the way I do and always have? Why else have I always notice the things/details  I do, did? I’ve always been an observer—a stand on the sidelines and witness kind of person. (I reminded myself of that scene from Gone With The Wind, where Scarlett is watching everyone dance, but can’t as she is in mourning, but her feet are playing happy. That is me, only it’s my thoughts doing the dance, my body is just fine watching.

Though I’ve always felt a misfit, I love my view and wouldn’t have traded it for popularity or less angst, then or especially now. It’s just me wanting to find the secrets I know nothing of.

What Has Music Got To Do With It

For me, the act of writing is oftentimes more juggling family needs with my writing, then anything. It is a marathon of interruptions of other obligations and necessary chores, but a writer observes and records life’s little vignettes and stories and writer mind never really quits. That can be bane or boon. Necessary , but often, in the midst of the good and bad of life, there is this removed part of your mind, analyzing, sorting, observing a ‘story.’

Often I’ve wished I could silent it because it interrupts much like a neighbor calling just as your writing starts to flow. It distracts from both crises and joys, taking away a part, somehow. It seems I’m always either in the middle of writing a scene, writing wildly, afraid to lose the words, the momentum, that joy of flow when the phone rings, my mother needs something, or the toilet overflows and silently screaming, “no, no, I’ll lose this. I’ll lose the words, the scene…” Or I’m enjoying time with my husband, in the garden and the perfect word, scene or story pops into my mind…the one I’d been trying to find all morning, but now, now I’m busy with not writing and…

It is so much of the time an uncomfortable existence, being not fully…any one, anywhere. So in the midst of helping my son, during a sale at his music store http://musicvillageusa.com, dozens of vignette’s played across my writer’s mind: The little girl going out the door with her new purple and pink paisley ukulele, the young mother with her teenage son, looking at electric guitars, then guitar straps with skeletons marching across the black leather (was she praying this was not a mistake?), the teenage girl telling her mom: ‘this was my best day ever. I’ve got to update my facebook’, the jumble of music notes-my dog has fleas, or the first notes of The House of The Rising Sun all jumbled up together. That softly spoken, thank you, dad, from a young teen boy, that brought tears in my eyes, for some reason.

The little germs of stories bombarded me all day and I had not one minute to write them down. All I can hope is the cream rises to the top and and have faith that my mind would remember those that connect with something in me that could use it.

And isn’t that the blessing of changing up your normal routine once in a while. Do something different. A story is sure to follow.

Plan B and School Bells

Disappointment, changed plans, frustration. That about describes the last several years. You’d think I would get used to it. It really is the norm, isn’t it? I’ve said it before, life is plan B.

I was all set to trot on over to the hospital today with my mom and get our annual breast exam. Fun times, to be sure, but I really did want it done and over. You know, that checked of the list of things to do. But I’ve been fighting a little cold that just keeps giving and giving. The cold never really put me completely under the weather. I haven’t yet felt really bad, but Saturday and Sunday night I ended up awake most of the night, coughing and sometime around Thursday I lost my voice.

Talk about frustrating. No, I’m not talking. That’s just the problem. Or one of them. I just didn’t want to get around my mom with this cold or anyone up at the hospital that had to be around me. I get into these coughing jags and…I wouldn’t be able to talk to the people helping us anyway. I sound like a sick squeak toy. I can’t help my mom know what’s going on. No, I just cancelled.

I worried about doing that. It will make later this month even crazier and I’m not looking forward to that. The weather is just plain, the pits. I’m so behind in my gardening that…, but you know what? I’m reminded of an epiphany I had many years ago.

I try to accommodate the other guy. I always have. When I was a stay-at-home mom, I adjusted my schedule for everyone else because in my head I always thought: I’m just a mom, this or that person’s time is so much more important. I devalued myself. When I started writing I had to try to learn to put myself and my writing, at least, equal to everyone else.

It has been a tough lesson. I still find myself going back to that other thinking. Only this time it goes like this: I’m just a struggling writer. It’s not like I’m making tons of money here, or anyone’s waiting for me to finish. It’s not like it’s the next greatest novel, I’m writing. It’s….

I have to give myself a good mental shake. Tell myself that what I do and my time is every bit as important as anyone’s.

Ordinarily I would have broken my neck to get me and my mom to the appointment, because I made the appointment, therefore I must drag myself there and not inconvenience anyone. There was just no excuse for being sick on the day this or that was schedule. What is wrong with me…? And on and on…But I learned, in a not so good way, that you just don’t get to schedule sick days. You can say all day long you don’t have time to be sick, but sick has other ideas. And has sway, too.

On another note: Do you know how hard it is to get along without your voice? Every cold or throat problem I have goes straight to my voice. We now have great technology that can take the place of it, but it doesn’t work for every circumstance and I’m not much of a texter. So, I’ve struggled not to talk so not to damage my voice. But…how do you get someone (or your dog and cat) to listen to you when you can’t call their name or get their attention? I’m a writer, I can write notes to my husband, but the dog is not impressed and quite frankly, the cats ignore me. Well, actually, the cats ignore me anyway.

By the way, that old school bell my husband thought I was crazy to buy at the flea market last year ( What in _ _ _ _ are you getting that for) has come in real handy. Bless my heart.

Always Something

I read Kaki Warner’s blog entry, laughed, made a comment about Basenji’s. We raised them years ago and knew a few things about their personality quirks. Loved the dogs. They are really sweet, but as she said, hardheaded. Most hounds are because they were breed to think for their selves. Our two were great with our boys, too.

Never did I expect a bit of her holiday mishaps to bite me.

But I couldn’t quite deny the pain in my tooth. Not too bad, it could wait. Besides I couldn’t seem to tell which tooth actually hurt, if it was in the tooth or the gum.

1:30 in the morning my husband is called for work. I needed to fix coffee and his lunch. I ran downstairs to get a loaf of bread from the freeze and got half way back up the stairs before I realized that loaf wasn’t at all that it should be—such as, frozen. Back down I go, check things out. Puzzle over why some things seem to be thawing and some things remain frozen. Gasket seems fine, nothing keeping the door from closing, can hear the motor running, but some things have definitely begun to thaw out. It’s 1:30 in the morning. I’m not working on all cylinders.

Husband checks things out, says the door must have been left ajar. Ok, that happens. I’m vigilant about it because when the boys were at home, it happened a few times. An expensive accident at a time when money was ever tight.

Next day (Sunday) tooth is killing me. Pretty sure by now, it’s a broken tooth (the third this year.) I check the freezer, set a thermometer on the bottom shelf and wait thirty minutes. It reads 20°. Still, the stuff in the bottom bin is thawing out, no matter what the thing says.

Upsetting for several reasons. The stuff thawing out is things I have on hand for quick meals for when my husband is called at the last minute or I’m too tired to cook, or in a white heat of writing because even then, we have to eat. I have sliced turkey from Thanksgiving for divan or sandwiches, sliced standing rib from Christmas for French dips, Ham from New Year’s for casseroles, sandwiches, and frizzled ham dinners.

I called one of my sons and he helped move what was still frozen into my other freezer. (Yes, two freezers.)

The 4th falling on a Sunday, everyone seems to be celebrating a different day. I get the feeling my dentist is celebrating today. I’m waiting a call, debating whether they’re in the office and busy like their message says or if this qualifies as an emergency because they are out of the office for the holiday. And waiting for my husband to get home from his trip to pick out another freezer.

Holiday weekend cost: $400 for our portion of the crown (thank heavens for insurance), $600 or so for new freeze (that one was over 12 years old) and still nothing close to Kaki’s worst holiday.

What I’ve learned: It’s always something. Keep writing anyway.

The Music Changed

The snow is welcome, the cold isn’t. Snow has been falling off and on since yesterday morning. Travel was frightening. I don’t go out in snowy weather if I don’t have to, but I had a test at the hospital. Real fun, too. I got to drink some yukky stuff(technical term) and get a CAT scan on my bladder. Of course, it took longer than it was suppose to. So, I had to rush to get my mother and take her for her H1N1 shot.(Another frustrating situation. Especially since, I just heard from a daughter-in-law that my clinic now has the shots available there. There is a great convoluted story I should relate here but I’m still so frustrated about the whole thing I can’t seem to organize my words into something coherent. Uuuugggg, expresses it pretty much the way it’s in my head today.)

Then, next week, a scope for the same. It’s all to make sure the tiny bit of blood still in my urine is from the MPGN. Not something more serious. So, I worry(stress) and say a bunch more prayers, try to remember all I have to be grateful for(wonderful kids and grandkids, my mother, my husband, a great sister, loving and loyal pets, writing, and enough) cuss from writing plan upheavals and then, I plug along.

So, I’ve been thinking (if my husband was reading this, he'd shudder)…I’m starting to want to expand my writing. Finally, I’m getting the itch to write something bigger. I’m wanting to write a novel again. This is at once, wonderful and scary. (Do I dare when I could get sick again? Damn it, TiGi, you can’t let this run your life.) There is all the old things that need working on and submitting. I know I should do that. Anything that rise to the top, you know, things that are really good but for a little fixing, really should get out into the world.

And yet, I read this quote: When the music changes, so does the dance. —Hausa Proverb, and feel the truth in that for me. Though things are much the same, everything has changed, too. The last two years have put me in such a different place.

An idea for a new story has been hovering, knocking around in my mind for the last few weeks. Very faint, but tantalizing. One thought that doesn’t ever let go, though, is how short a time we all have and most likely, it’s shorter than we think and much shorter than we want. To me, this means I strike out toward the writing I most want to do, the writing that stirs me. So, to quote a song from my son's rock and roll days: An' here I go again on my own, going down the only road I've ever known.

Life Is Plan B

Snow—from my office window everywhere I look white and stark or brown and weathered meets my eye. The contrast pleasing but I feel estranged, isolated in my office garret. And I’ve been thinking…

On CBS Sunday Morning yesterday, in a piece on Dustin Hoffman, Hoffman mentioned he never intended to be an actor. His dream was to be a jazz musician. He has become a very successful actor, struggled through rejection and criticism to do it. He said, even now, he would kill to be a jazz musician. His word struck a chord.

We’re all given a treasure chest full of talents. Through the years we use them under various means and circumstances—some thrust upon us by life, finances, timing. Some we capitalize on in hopes of success. Mostly we make the best of things. Sometimes, we succeed beyond our wildest dreams and hopes. Sometimes, we do something; decide something that sets a path along a road we never intended to go.

Most people look back and wonder, maybe even grieve about that path not taken. That is human nature. They may regret what they did instead of what they intended. One always wonders if things would have turned out better.

A lot of self-help books encourage us to find that thing we dreamed of and reach for it again. A great idea, but in the process I say, honor the plan B life you’ve had. Think back—remember why decisions were made, realize you were making choices because of many outside influences. Honor your choices. Hind sight is a different perspective. Remember you made your choice because of what you knew at the time.

Life does not have to follow your carefully thought out plan to be great. Think of all you would have missed—beautiful, wonderful, unplanned things that slipped into your life you would have missed if things had gone according to plan.

And if you’ve decided to pursue your waylaid, set aside dream of writing—wonderful. Be thankful because every minute of your plan B life can be used to fuel, contribute, enhance your writing. Nothing you’ve done, learned, experienced needs go to waste. Grab all the stuff you’ve gone through and use it for fodder—you just can’t make that stuff up.