Sunday, January 23, 2022

 Sunday, January 23, 2022

  I stayed in bed until there was light and warmth in the world. My phone said it was 66 degrees. My body told me it was lower than that. Since they use the temperature on the weather site at the airport, a good thousand feet below us, I had to take off five degrees to account for our higher elevation. Even that didn't account for the chill. It was probably below 60 during the night. I went to bed in a shirt. I usually sleep quite comfortably in my all-together. 

   My ankle was stiff when I got up. I had to limit my walking. I weighed myself this morning. 139 lbs. Yikes! I have gained three pounds since this ankle crisis started. I'm not able to walk as much. 

   Again, I meditated this morning. My response to feeling down is to go into the feeling and embrace it with equanimity. That's what the Buddhists teach. It works for me- when I can pull it off. Even trying to be equanimous is helpful. It's moving in the right direction. 

    While meditating, I got a call from an old friend in New Jersey. She hung up immediately. I called her back when I was through. It was a pocket call. She had my name up because a niece was planning to come to Hawaii. Katherine was checking where I lived. She has a serious medical problem she's dealing with right now. More seriously, her oldest daughter is dealing with some form of cancer. The girl/woman has a preschool son. Not good. 

      Katherine and I are both healers. She was inspired to do a healing on me for my ankle. She immediately went to my hip. She said it related to anger. Then she saw me sitting in a void in total darkness. A woman at the edge was sitting there, tapping her toe in annoyance, frustration, and anger.   That woman dictated I deserve to be confined to this void. Katherine tried to bring some light into the picture. It didn't feel right to me. I had to deal with that 'woman' sitting in the corner tapping her toe. I had no idea who she was. She was probably an aspect of myself. It's me who's angry at me and thinks I should be confined.

      I had to get off the phone with Katherine because I had a 9 am with the M & W sisters. I got on the link with the girls, but there was no response. Usually, Mom has them sitting there, ready to go. We start a few minutes early. I texted her, and then I remembered. Oops! It's at 4 pm today.

      I had first-grade M reread her story. I was working for accuracy. She tends to make things up to suit herself. After today's strategy, I made up a 'game' to stimulate her to make reading accuracy a goal.  

    I had her reread the story she dictated to me to find errors. I had made an error in recording her story as she dictated. She found it. To do so, she read each word diligently. I could feel that she felt like she was carrying a sack of rocks. She wasn't having a good time. Hopefully, her feeling about attending to words as she reads will improve.

  Working with the girls today was an agony. They weren't the problem; it was my mood. Oh, boy. I was the problem. I felt like my innards were weighted. I can see where terms like feeling down or having a heavy heart come from. They're not metaphorical. They're accurate descriptions of the physical sensations accompanying sadness or depression. Feeling so down that I couldn't perk up in response to the teaching situation was scary. When I saw my doctor on the 31st, I would ask her about medication.  

    I used to take medication when Mike was alive. I took it "for my husband's anxiety." His mother had been a Hilaria, a version of a drama queen. I fall on the side of being overly expressive. I appreciated it was hard for him. He could ask me to tone down. My taking the medication helped him feel safe. 

     But now, my problem was getting out of this mood. I snapped out of it in minutes. How? While checking the visitor count on my YouTube videos, I came across a video with funny moments of Betty White's Rose Nyland from the Golden Girls. Half an hour later, and a dose of laughter, I was a new person. If a small dose of comedy works, I'll skip the medication.

   However, this experience taught me a new respect for people who use avoidance to maintain their states of mind. My avoidance technique when I was younger was hyperactivity. I did everything hard and fast. It was my mother's strategy. I didn't activate that strategy now. I just let it be. I felt I was at the edge of a scary precipice of despair. I had gone too far into it. My old strategies weren't going to work. I learned to appreciate people who want to have fun as an avoidance strategy. Someone will appreciate this change in me.

       I worked on the blog and updates. The updates take up a good part of my day. I both complain about it and know I'd be lost without it. I'm an extrovert. I prefer activities relating to a wide range of stimuli. Physical work will fill that bill. That involves movement and interacting with objects larger than what is right in front of my nose.   The narrow focus leaves me feeling like I'm ill, the way I feel when I've been in bed for hours with a fever. 

   I took care of the plant Margo told me needed to be cut back and treated with sulfur because of mites. I bought the plant from her and have had some problems with this poor hibiscus. I had sent her a picture to show how well the plant was doing, finally putting out full blooms. For a while, the unopened buds would fall off the plant. After two different treatments, the plant got its act together. Then it got mowed down by a wayward car. I thought it was a goner. Margo told me to cut it back; it would be fine. Once the car was moved, the plant sprang back with all its blooms intact. I sent a picture to Margo showing her the plant's resilience. I treated it and a neighboring hibiscus that got mowed down worse with Thrive. That cures a lot of ills.