It was still cool when Elsa and I started our walk at 7. I wore a sweatshirt until it became too warm. I put my hat and my glasses on the top of a rock wall, dropped Elsa's leash so I could pull off my sweatshirt about ½ of the way into the circuit. Elsa is good. I can rely on her not to move if I drop her leash. It freaks her out as it hits the ground; she jumps, but she doesn't take the opportunity to go wandering off. Of course, I wouldn't do that if I saw another dog. I prefer to have a grip on her then. The one time she did get away from me and ran into the neighbor's yard, the four dogs there nearly killed her.
I had completed over 6,000 steps by the time I got home. I used alternate route #2. My left foot was bothering me. I felt as if a chiropractor could help and adjust the alignment of the bones in my foot. I have told practitioners that I think there is just as much trouble coming from my left calf, ankle, and foot as from the left hip. They all insist that the problem is only in the left hip. I can accept that the left hip is a problem, but not that it is the only one.
Who knows how the problem I am having evolved? It could have started with my fractured coccyx, which caused me to shift my weight to the right hip, which caused my left hip to lean too far to the right, causing the misalignment of the lower left leg, ankle, and foot. It is a cascading effect. Why then can't I correct the problem by reversing the cascade? I work on the body part that says, "I'm ready to shift." When it has gone as far as it can, then the next body part says, "Work with me in mind now." It's an unwinding requiring all the body parts involved to shift in sequence. It's not that the problem is located in one spot, and when that's fixed, everything else will miraculously fall into place.
That's the theory behind total hip replacement; one procedure fixes everything. None of the medical professionals talks about all the muscles, tendons, and ligaments realigned during surgery. Come to think of it, I do know a woman who had exactly that kind of procedure done. The doctor surgically realigned all the body parts around her hips. I called that doctor to ask if I could have a similar procedure. At the time, they didn't do it on anyone over forty. She could tell from the sound of my voice that I didn't qualify.
I called ColinColin to wish her a happy birthday. She was ready for my caterwauling version of the song, which I developed with Mike because he couldn't sing to save his life. She's already planning a big party for next year when she turns fifty.
We talked about her hot flashes. She's just had them for two weeks. They sound pretty trivial to me, one or two a day with some cold sweats. Cold sweats? Now that's interesting. I clearly turn hot, hot, hot when I have one. If Mike was in physical contact with me when I was having one, he could tell I was having one by the rise in my skin temperature.
My hot flashes started at 5 pm on April 18, 1991, on the front lawn of our house in Princeton as I was walking to the car so Mike and I could drive into NYC for my friend's fiftieth birthday party. It is a moment frozen in my mind.
I thought I wouldn't have any problems with hot flashes. After all, you can get very warm when doing healing work. This was nothing like those warm flushes. This was an alarm going off in my body. This was a panic attack. This was shock. It felt terrible. Then I had one every fifteen minutes for I don't know how long. I think that frequency finally stopped when I got on hormone replacements. That helped somewhat, but nothing brought them to a halt. I was one of the lucky ones who got to have them for the rest of her life.
When I was sixty-two, my GYN took me off the hormone replacement pills. The Women's Health Initiative Project determined the pills caused serious health problems. I can't remember now if it was with cancer or with heart disease. I was a participant in the WHI. I had seen an advertisement and went up to the hospital in New Brunswick to sign up. They had some women who were making dietary changes. I didn't volunteer for that because Mike did all the cooking, and I didn't think he would be up for it. When I heard that the WHI detected this problem, I was immediately on board with stopping the pills.
I didn't realize that the cohort of women in whom they detected this problem was very different from me. I was in my early fifties when I went on HRT. I didn't smoke, drink alcohol; I had a decent diet, all homemade food, and exercised. The women in whom WHI detected these problems only started HRT in their sixties, smoked, drank, and had lousy diets. These were Appalachian women who, among other problems, lived in poverty. Whatever, when the problem with the results came to light, no doctor would put me back on the hormones. I just had to suffer. And I did. Yes, I still have them now at 79, but they are not as bad.
Yvette directed me to an acupuncturist who also worked with Chinese herbs. Due to some misunderstandings, if not downright misrepresentations, I stopped working with her. Nothing criminal, just different assumptions and she didn't do well with it. While I never completed the treatments, I do find I have fewer hot flashes. Shortly after I got off the herbs, when I started having a hot flash, I just said, "No!" the way you might say no to a dog that is doing something inappropriate. The flash subsided. I have to catch it before it gets to a certain tipping point. Otherwise, I have lost control. Wouldn't that be great? Cyclin said she had already intuitively started with self-talk, calming herself, reminding herself that there is nothing wrong; it is only a hot flash. I notice that a hot flash can be triggered by an upsetting thought as much as a hot flash can create an unsettling feeling.
I worked on the blog and the update. Last night I worked on running the old Introduction to my book on reading and chapter 1 through Grammarly before sending it off to Sandor. I want to finish at least that chapter today. I am having problems with the suggestions that Dorothy and Shivani both made. If I follow their line of reasoning, I think my book will be very different from what I want it to be. Some of the criticisms are worthwhile listening to. They said that I wander from topic to topic; my writing was unstructured. I think some of this is because I don't show the relationship between two ideas. To me, that relationship between all these ideas is clear. I have been thinking about this topic for fifty years now. I can't expect others to see connections the way I do. I have to show how one topic relates to another.
Judy called. We chatted, mostly sharing stories of our youth and about our parents and grandparents. I told her that I am having a lot of those conversations with my friends and family. I was beginning to wonder if this was just happening to me. Judy said no, she was experiencing it with other people.
I am reading the short stories by an old commune member of mine from the seventies who died two years ago. I had lost touch after the commune experience. So far, her stories are about positive memories. I'm thinking if I were to write something similar most of mine would be about trauma. I hated my childhood. I do have some positive memories, but mostly they are overwhelmed by the constant fear I had to live with. I think I will try to think of memories that are not darkened by fear. There were some, but just thinking about my youth stirs fear in me.
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Musings:
Which is worse: not being loved or not loving? Neither is great, but I think I can live more with not being loved than not loving. I can escape a person who doesn't love me, but I can never escape myself.
I have started to wonder if my standard is a little too high. I think I have a high standard for myself because of the hatred I had to carry for my mother when I was a child. That experience left me with a fear of my own rage. My relationship with my mother was a disaster, at least for me.
In her eighties, I made some comment about her hating motherhood. She was shocked that I would think such a thing. She said she loved being a mom. How could someone enjoy a life role in which they are always screaming at someone? I guess some people don't mind living that way. I hate it. That doesn't mean I don't do it. Unfortunately, I am somewhat like my mother. It was for that reason that I resolved never to have children of my own. At the age of eighteen, I swore that this behavior would stop with me; I would not pass it on to anyone else.
I thought at first that I made that commitment for the sake of the children I would never have. I have since realized that I did it as much for my own sake. I could never have lived with myself behaving like that. I have known this fact most of my life. I have worked and worked to get control over my anger impulse. I don't mean just control my behavior, but actually, heal the part of me that responds with that type of intolerance for the behavior of others.
I'm beginning to think that my standard may be a little too high, and it's the absolute perfection that I demand of myself that is a very thing that triggers my anger. I have learned through Buddhism that aversion to something creates problems.
Believe it or not, this is actually a somewhat new thought for me.
I want to make it plain, I am not talking about my straightforward way of expressing myself and making some people angry at me. I like those qualities in myself—it's anger that upsets me, not honesty.
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