Be Still and Know...Then and Now

Some days my brain and thought process works just fine, like today. I was able to follow through with several projects and actually get them completed.  Other days, if feels like my brain is stuffed with an enormous wad of hormonally soaked cotton. I teeter on bursting into tears over not being able to remember to remove the dryer lint from the lint trap or resisting the urge to break all my dinner plates by smashing them against the kitchen floor.  Toss into the mix a mouthy teenage daughter and by the end of the day the administration of a medicinal cocktail is a requirement not a luxury! The other side effect of all of this is that my tolerance for complications is almost non existent. Case in point, now that the girlchild had gradated high school the next logical step is collage. However, almost everything about the process of getting her enrolled into college has been an exercise complications, errors and a big fat waste of time and energy. None of wh...

I would love to be able to share that I am out of my hormonal funk. Unfortunately this nasty cloud of toxic thinking still hovers. It feels as if it is stuck to me with super glue.  On the upside I do recognize that being the mature grown woman I am I do not have to let it invade all areas of my life. I may feel crappy emotionally as well as physically, this does not give license to make the others with in my sphere of influence miserable. I may want to inflict bodily harm and I am trying my best to keep it to myself. But I digress. I was looking for some relevant scripture to post over on the facebook page I set up for our pottery studio this morning. If you want to go over and take a look at our page here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/WildcatPottery . I try to keep it updated with all our current inventory. But I digress again… maintaining focus also seems to be influenced by hormonal deficiencies… Anyhoooo, I found this piece of scripture from Jeremiah. Jeremiah 1...

It started very early, before I even got out of bed. My thought life was going places it just did not need to go. As it does from time to time I woke with thoughts of doom and gloom. Thoughts that no mother ever wants to ponder upon. I lay there for several minutes allowing the thoughts to weigh heavy upon me, then I recognized it for what it was. Away from me Satan, it’s Sunday and I need to get ready for church. The evil one is persistent. It was a series of very small things, however it was just enough to shift my mood, my thoughts to a place where they should not have been. I got myself ready for church, I was ready to go, purse on my shoulder and the Girlchild points to my chin and announces “You have a GIANT white hair right there!” From the look on my face she then follows with “Well it’s better than waiting to point it out to you at church!” I concede to her logic and redeposit my purse and other things to the counter and go on a hair plucking mission. We managed to hit...

Which for me can be a bit dangerous. However with my fluctuating hormonal state I have to take the functional brain activity when I can get it. The other day at the pottery studio we were talking, that is not unusual, we are always chattering about all sorts of things, however one of our newest Pottery Peep’s commented on a picture I had posted on Facebook of my latest painting. She and I had been friend for years but apparently it had never come up in conversation “I had no idea you were an artist!” she said. There are things that may be, at times, to personal to share about ones self for fear that you place your heart out there for all the world to see. Plus sometime I just think the whole thing is just not noteworthy enough to bring up in conversation. Also at the age I am I am finding that I am less and less concerned of what other folks think of me, however I am a bit more sensitive where my creative endeavors are concerned. It is sort of like wanting to please your favorite a...

Sometimes when my son is out of town on a job they call it quits on Thursday and then he has Friday off. His day off mean I have the morning off as well and Muffinhead is not here. I so enjoy my time with her but I also am enjoying the quiet and having a morning to myself. The Hubs comes home this afternoon from a business trip as well, so after I hit the post button I have a bit of pick up to do to get the house in order for his arrival. When the Hubs is away the wife will be….very lazy! I have my shopping list to make today and then a trip to the store. I am not having thanksgiving at my house this year. It has been many years since I have been able to actually have a thanksgiving at my house and sit at my table. All things in good time, yes I know but I will confess I am longing for a simple uncomplicated holiday time of being at home and doing what I want to do and not having to yield to the wishes of extended family. In years past I have opted for having my own Thanksgiving cel...

A long, long time ago in a land far far away an old woman picked up a paint brush….. For my second foray into painting I have chosen a landscape I took while we vacationed in San Francisco. This picture was taken at Golden Gate Park in the Japanese Tea Garden. It was one of the most beautiful gardens I have seen in a very long time. The tranquil beauty and Japanese simplicity was stunning. October 2, 2010 I have found that if I do a few preliminary sketches first then I have a better sense of what the focal point of the painting needs to be. I also took the time to make a grid, which I did not do last time. I really regretted not taking the time to do this. My perspective suffered and there were many times as I painted over certain parts of my last painting that I whished I had taken the time to get my perspective right before diving in. October 26, 2010 I was finally able to transfer my grid to my canvas and get the main structure of the painting sketched out!   Decembe...

It was a week of working on the clay and getting in the kitchen. I was thankful for the many distractions to keep my mind off political disappointments this week. Not to mention a heavy dose of hormones tossed in for good measure. However I have little photographic evidence to show for it. I do have lot’s of picture of wet drying clay, but as promised I will spare you the riveting details of drying clay! No pictures on Sunday, October 4 Monday, October 5 It was time to go to the dentist. Unfortunately I had to fire my old dentist. We loved him, but it became cost prohibitive as he was not in our insurance network and it was just to expensive. Laziness and just plane forgetting to do it kept pushing the task of finding a new dentist lower and lower down on my list of things to do. Finally I made myself sit down and find a new dentist. Thankfully both myself and the girlchild escaped without incident. The Hub’s however has some major dental work in his future….YIKES! Tuesday, Octo...

Good P365 Morning to y’all! As luck would have it my alarm clock automatically updates the time! This is a good thing because I totally forgot to set my clocks back last night. But as most days my internal alarm clock has for some time thought I was a farmer and wakes me up well before the sun even begin to think of poking it’s head above the horizon. I was up and making coffee and fixing all the no automatic clocks at 6:00 a, this morning…Yea for me! I was actually up at 6:30 but I refused to get out of bed on principle just to be a bit rebellious! Sunday, October 28 I was forced to go to the grocery store on Sunday. We were down to our last cracker and since the Girlchild does not consider cereal an appropriate dinner substitute I headed to the grocery store after church. I have shared with y'all before about the wonders of my peri-menopausal state of being. Well it had been several months, so long that I was in that altered state of euphoria wishing and praying that all the wo...

Yesterday was one of those days. If I picked it up I dropped it. If I walked into a room I forgot what I went into the room for. I couldn't focus on anything for more than a few moments. I had a headache all day. My child said “I heard you the first time!” and it was a supreme battle of self control not to walk over to her and rip her sweet little head right off her neck! All day long there was a rolling internal dialog of negative, angry, irrational and down right nasty thoughts rolling upon the shores of my life. Thankfully the girlchild has taken to sequestering herself behind her bedroom door for most of the day. The only thing that draws her out these days is hunger, vanity (one can not neglect ones hair or makeup) and the Taylor Lautner movie she wanted to see that was on the DVR. At the end of the day, the girlchild was still in her room and the Hubs had retired for the night I found myself alone in my quiet house. I administered a cocktail and breathed in the quiet...

The sun has just come up, the birds are enjoying themselves with a racket of chirping and calling back and forth, the dog is curled up next to me and the grandbaby is still fast asleep….for now anyway. I have begun to wonder if there may be some biological connection between waning hormones and brain function. Last night I was trying to describe how I felt to the ladies in my accountability group. They were listening and had the automatic head bobbing in the affirmative as they either remembered  similar feelings or were experiencing them as well. I felt mildly comforted knowing that this “OFF” feeling is not unique, however it did little in actually making me feel better. Attempting to describe the feelings………it’s like being surrounded by a thick fog that is charged with a negative emotions. The internal dialogue within my head is extremely loud. The things I’m thinking y’all……it is a constant ongoing opportunity for repentance and then asking for forgiveness. Throw in the mix a...

I pulled up in my drive way after a marathon grocery shopping excursion. I notice a county water truck across the street. I think to myself “Self have you paid the water bill this month?” Given the less than reliable state of my memory during this time of my life it is entirely possible that I have forgotten an odd household utility bill. I have an irrational fear that due to my forgetfulness I will at any moment have all my household necessary function shut off. I have a basis for this fear due to the reality of having my gas cut off a few years ago simply because I forgot to pay the bill. I had the money to pay it, it just did not get done. Ever since that shameful occurrence I have had this lingering fear that I am forgetting some odd bill that has fallen down behind my computer desk. I saw the utility truck parked on my street and I immediately think…..”Did I pay the water bill????” I hop out of the car and grab a few bags of groceries and head to the kitchen. I check the faucet…...

Well almost….I got four out of seven days this week. I will make a disclaimer ahead of time. Due to the particularly unpleasant nature of certain female bodily function this weeks P365 post is decidedly hormonally driven. In an attempt to be completely real and transparent to all aspect of the peri-menopausal process I have decided to adapt a full discloser policy…….those with weak constitutions may want to jump straight to Thursday where my selections are of a more acceptable topic and not hormonally motivated! Monday, November 7 Just call me Gomer….SUPRISE, SUPRISE, SUPRISE……. I woke up Monday morning feeling awful. Hence the photograph of the Homemade Whole Wheat toast with a drizzle of honey. It hit the spot as well as putting something in my tummy so I could take the necessary meds to help with the awful I woke up with. In addition to feeling awful I was also really really, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY ticked. The reason for my awfulness had not reared it’s ugly head since July...

She sat there patiently waiting. The banana she had eater about 45 minutes ago no longer kept the hunger pangs at bay. Doing the mental tally in her mind she pressed the button on her phone and saw that there was less than a few minutes until her child would be done and she could go home. She had done all of her bible study, she was hungry, she was borderline hormonal and she was a bit irritated that she no longer was able to get her afternoon naps on Sunday but chalked it up to the sacrifices of motherhood. Choir practice was minutes, possible even seconds away from being done. She could hear the other children slowly filleting down the hall and out the door. Her bag was sitting on the table ready to grab and then she was heading out the door. . She did this every week, week after week, quietly waiting at the table (the very same table I might add) for the children to finish making their joyful noise. Today however unbeknownst to her she was about to encounter devil in disguise or po...

I’ve been thinking….which for me at this stage in my life is a real accomplishment. I was watching Regis and Kelly this morning and Jan Fonda was on. She was commenting on the fact that she is now seventy plus years old. I then began to physically hate her for looking so good at the age of 70something. She was on the show to promote her latest book which I probably will not read. However her conversation did give me pause to think about a few things. I have two more decade to get under my belt before I hit my 70’s. That fact alone kind of makes me tired just thinking about it (there’s that word again!) If I am honest the process of pondering where my life has been, where it is going and what it is I really want out of the remainder of my years on this planet, well let’s just say that for today I don’t have a plan beyond dinner time. When you are in your 20something you have your whole life in front of you and you have this wonderful feeling of invincibility. Now, today I recognize t...

So I get up this morning and have my coffee. Now the coffee was good which was odd seeing as just about everything else that happen today was CRAP! I had a conversation with skoots1mom yesterday about the tedious accounting tasks that needed to be finished. I had multiple bills that we on deck to be paid, a paycheck to be entered into quicken and the monthly bank statement needed reconciling. If I managed to get it all done then I would be at prayer shawl in the morning. Well I managed to get most of it done the night before but my energy level as well as my mental capacity for logical thought left me by about 8:30 so I opted to forgo any further tasks that required columns of numbers and the ability to think clearly until morning. With a cup of coffee under my belt I began to check off the bank statement tick mark by tick mark. The numbers however were not in a good place. Twice I went over the statement and twice there was a massive error to the tune of several thousands of dollar...

Once upon a time there lived a woman who loved to participle in Project 365. Each week she would gleefully post all her pictures and have a wonderful time looking at everyone else's’. Weeks and weeks went by and life was good. The good and happy fairies danced and flitted about sprinkling their sparkly happy fairy dust upon everything leaving a lovely a iridescent glow on her life. Then one day a dark and evil cloud lumbered over her sweet fairy dust covered life. How could this be? She sat looking at the computer in utter amazement as it proceeded to download the one and only picture she took all week? Surely this can’t be right, but alas it was true. Could she blame it on the evil fairies, that could be a plausible explanation. However in looking at her hormonally charged week full of up’s and down’s and all manner of emotional upheavals, this was more than likely the culprit. But my money is on the evil fairies… Seriously here is my one and only picture for the entire week. ...

It seams I can no longer form a complete thought. For the past few days I will walk over to the computer and open up my profile and click on my lovely live writer icon and then just sit and stare at the blank page. Being determined to post something just so that I can say that I did complete at least one task this week I will attempt to bang out a few thoughts. I am sure I have a thought in my head but right now they revolve around wanting to submerge myself in a chocolate sundae or pomegranate martini while ignoring all the important aspects of my maternal and wifely duties. The DD is getting ready to go on a church choir tour, she leaves on Sunday and she was having a mild panic attack at the concept of not having the proper eye shadow or coordinating headbands to take on the trip. So it was of CRITICAL importance that we go shopping. We did get the eye shadow but alas there were NO CUTE headbands, the choir tour may be in danger of being a major disaster speaking from a strictly f...