Hiding in My Room

My brother has anxiety issues. The truth be told, everyone in my family suffers from an anxiety disorder of one form or another. But his look a lot like mine and are triggered by changes in his environment.

Last week Ghost got sick and it took a bit to get a vet to see him. And they gave Ken a promotion at work. He now supervises 4 new people. Then the three little kittens came over last weekend. They were on the wild side and broke several things that we weren't happy about. One was the small electric fireplace that we purchased in June and have just started using. Actually, they didn't break it. But one of them was turning it on when the halogen light bulbs blew out. And then of course it was the full moon. So this week I wasn't paying attention to his warning behaviors and I made a few more changes. While a new desk in my room doesn't really change things for him, the desk replaced a chair that he really likes and doesn't have room anywhere else in the house for it. It is in the shed now. I should have been more sensitive to his moods. It's easier when we try to notice when the other is having problems.

So today Ken's anxiety has been jumping on my last nerve. It jumped on Karen's too and sparked an outburst from her. That didn't make things any better.

When Ken got up this morning his dog wasn't sleeping on his bed where he normally is. Bear went into Karen's room sometime during the night and was trying to sleep on the cat's bed. Ken panicked and woke us both up fussing that Bear had gotten out during the night. Neither Karen nor I really got back to sleep after that.

The new halogen bulbs came in the mail today. Ken brought them in from the mailbox when he got home at noon. He only works a half day on Fridays. He was annoyed that I ordered them. He wanted to get a large Amazon cart going and order everything at once. I understand this is the way he likes to do things, but it doesn't make sense to me. Amazon sends everything in different packages anyway. Changing the bulbs was easy, but I could see the tension building every minute that he was working on it. I had told him that I could handle it but to him fixing things is his job. Some things aren't worth the breath it would take to argue the point. I learned long ago to give this one a rest. It doesn't mean that I shy away from fixing the things I can. But if he has it, I just don't get in his way.

It took all of 10 minutes to replace the bulbs and wouldn't have taken that long if he'd used the magnetic screw driver. But his anxiety took over after it was finished and he just wouldn't leave it alone. First he turned on the fire to make sure it was working. Then he kept adjusting the brightness of the flame. Then the room was a bit chilly so he turned the heater on low. But that wasn't enough for him so he kept turning it up. After a half hour the room was getting a little toasty so Karen turned the heat back down to low. So Ken's anxiety took over and the whole thing had to go off. Even having the flame on was throwing him into anxiety overdrive. I was more than annoyed that I wasn't being allowed to enjoy the fireplace after all the trouble to get it working again. I went to the kitchen to get dinner started.

I decided that the cold rainy evening we here having would call for comfort food, so I made Shepherd's Pie. We don't have a hand mixer, so I got the large Kitchen Aid out of the cabinet and set it on the counter. As I was pealing the potatoes, Ken came into the kitchen and started putting the mixer back in the cabinet. I told him to leave it because I needed it for the mashed potatoes. While I prepared the meat, vegetable and gravy layer I was boiling the potatoes. Ken came into the kitchen again and started to put the mixer back in the cabinet. I asked him if he had a problem with the mixer. That was the wrong thing to do, and I should know it. His feelings got a little hurt. The told me that the mixer takes too much room on the counter. I know this, but I still need to use it. I softened my tone and told him I'd let him know when I was finished. He kept checking to make sure that it wasn't in my way. He was happier when I had the pie in the oven and had finished washing out the bowl and beater. I finally let him clear the mixer off the counter.

At dinner he announced that he had next Friday off. Karen will only be working 2 hours that day and she suggested that we should do something together. He said that we should go to Point Defiance. It's a nice place, but it's supposed to be chilly and raining that day. So I said "Or, we could go to Joint Base Lewis-McChord and tour the base and infantry museum. Our father went to basic training there and was stationed there several times. He had wanted to bring the family out to live  there, but was never able to get a permanent station. I'd really like to see it and Karen was enthusiastic about it. Then Ken's anxiety took over and he said "But I'd like to get a good amount of yard work done before we go. We could wait until the kittens are out of school and go then." I lost it. This is just a stalling tactic. He has a day off and he is anxious about spending it away from home.  I pointed out that the tours end at 5:00 and by the time we picked the kittens up and got there it would be a half hour before it closed. I didn't want to make the trip and not be able to have enough time to enjoy it.  Besides, it really isn't the kind of thing little girls are into. He snapped that we could just go on Saturday. But Saturday we are picking the kittens up to take them to the community Trunk or Treat both here and in Enumclaw. Then  he kept throwing out all kinds of other plans on when we could go.

After dinner I finally had enough of his anxiety and came to hide in my room. I know it. I do understand it. His anxiety causes him to fixate on one thing and he can't relax until that thing is put right for him. He was tired when he came home. It would have been better to not have seen the bulbs for the fireplace. But having them made him anxious and until it was fixed and he had control of it, there was no calm place for him. It was the same for the mixer. It was out of it's place and on the counter. His anxiety made him fixate on it until it was back in the cabinet where it belonged.  While he wants to get out and do fun things, his anxiety holds him to a fixed regime of home and work.  Actually agreeing on an plan caused him to fixate on the trip and his need to sabotage it so it wouldn't happen.

My anxiety acts in similar ways. In the kitchen pots, pans, utensils have to be washed and put away while I'm working or it becomes overwhelming for me. Taking the kittens to something that isn't child friendly, even a restaurant makes me not want to even go. I would be so conscious of where they were and what they were doing that none of us would enjoy it. I would find a way to make sure that I wasn't on that trip. I can tell myself that the world isn't going to end if the climb under the table or wander off to the gumball machines. But it doesn't stop my anxiety.

We have apologized to each other. And we do understand it. But while it makes us aware that we need to be kind to each other, it doesn't change the anxiety or our poor coping skills for it.  The funny thing is that Karen says she doesn't suffer from anxiety. Believe me she does. It just manifests itself differently than it does with Ken and I.

One of the things I truly appreciated about living alone was that the only anxiety I had to deal with was my own.

Dancing With the Angels

 

A great American died last night. With his passing some of the hope that The United States of American can return to the core values that made us a great nation has passed with him. Not the divisive hatred that has had a strangle hold us for the past several years. But the true greatness that this country possessed, a true understanding of right from wrong and a willingness to do the right thing. At this point in history we are woefully short of that high standard. It is to our utter shame. 

Rep. Elijah Cummings, while you are dancing with the angles, please ask them to petition the Throne of Heaven on our behalf; that we can find the path of righteousness again. And that we will always remember that the people we come in contact with are humans who are endowed by their Creator with the same inalienable rights that we share in this country; Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

New Desk

I have been trying to work from the couch or propped up on my bed. It just hasn't worked well for me. The bed makes my back hurt, and the cats think that it's automatically lap time. How dare I pay attention to the computer when they want to snuggle. They consider the couch snuggle time too and like to walk on the keyboard. But more than that, being in the main room invites my brother and sister into conversations. I haven't been able to set up a good routine with either space. I need a space that is set apart.

Today I decided to fix it. I went to the thrift store and found a desk and a chair that are in excellent condition. This particular thrift store has half off on Wednesdays for seniors, so it was extremely affordable. Best of all, it gave me an excuse to remove the recliner that had become a junk dump station. I was never able to sit in it because it was filled with my purse and rain coat and reusable bags and whatever else didn't have a proper place.

I love roll top desks. I have always wanted one. But most that I have seen are huge. This one is about the size of a secretary desk. It fits well into the space, even opening up some space in the center of the room.

The down side is that Max and Ghost don't know what to make of it. They come in to get reassurance head scratches while I'm here. But they don't seem to think that it's okay to be on the bed if I'm not there with them. Which is strange, because they have no problem with being on my bed if I'm not in the room. The only cat who does not seem to have a problem with it is Pippi. That is strange too because she considered the chair her domain, but had no issue with taking up her reign on the bed.

I'm getting my bedroom in order and now I have no real reason to not blog. And I have no excuse to not keep the business end of my life in order. I have a place to put the important things so they don't get lost. And now I have a place to go to work on a project that has been brewing in my head for a while. I will talk more about that later. And if nothing else, I have another shelf to collect my pretty things.

Update on Ghost

He is currently sleeping on his chosen spot on my bed. My sister and niece took him into the vet on Monday, (the one I was told couldn't see him until Tuesday, and then was told she was out of town.) She checked him out and decided he had an infection in the paw that was spreading into the leg. She gave him one of those super antibiotic shots and they brought him home. He immediately jumped out of the carrier and hobbled as fast as he could back to my bed to take up residence for the remainder of the day. In  the early morning hours he decided he'd like to roam around the house a bit, jumped off the bed and ran out the door as if there was never anything wrong with him to begin with. It is amazing how fast antibiotics work in an animal  that rarely receives them. He spent today between resting and  reclaiming all of the spots he's ignored while he was lame and lying about on my bed. Now he prefers spending the late evening hours with me. I think my room is officially the cat room.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends. I hope that this holiday finds you well. And that you will have a wonderful day filled with family and friends.

The holiday in the US is still several weeks off. This year, I am grateful for that for many reasons. I have thought in the past that the holidays feel like Happy Hallothanksmasnewyear. Once October starts the year runs non-stop, full speed through the holidays and right into the next year. Often not giving me time to reflect on or fully appreciate the day that I should be celebrating. As much as I want to make this year different, I'm not sure that can happen. I will spend this year without my children, or grandchildren. And without the friends, co-workers and church family that I spent my life around. It is an opportunity for me to make new memories and new traditions, but I miss everyone. And I'm a bit homesick. Being here is good for me. And there are many reasons that staying wouldn't have worked. But holidays are a transition, and I'm going to have to work through this one.

Part of the reason the nostalgia has hit me so hard this weekend is a bit of sleep deprivation. Our black cat, Ghost has been injured and has been hanging out in my room. I noticed him limping on Wednesday after I came home from Sit and Knit. I tried to get him to let me see the paw, but he refused. It was a really cold night and he was lying by the door in the living room. I picked him up and brought him to the chair in my room. It's one of his favorite places. Thursday morning he was favoring his paw, but still getting around. I finally got a look at it. From what I can tell it seems he's split the hind claw. I called the number for the vet, but since he isn't technically my cat, she wouldn't give me an appointment. My sister called my niece who came over and disagreed with me over the cause of his limping. She looked it up on Google and said that he most likely had a strained paw. He let us take turns holding him with a wash cloth soaked in Epson salts on it.

By Friday morning he'd quit putting weight on the paw and it is swollen, a little more than twice the size it normally is. My niece called the vet again, and was told that she was out of town, we should take him somewhere else. The only options were to take him to an emergency animal hospital or wait until Monday. We can't afford the emergency vet, so the poor kitty has had to suffer since Wednesday. In the mean time, he's gotten really attached to me and very used to my bed. I think he may have  taken it over.

The other thing that happened this weekend is that Jess got married in Georgia. As planned, Mollie was her Maid of Honor.  Mollie wanted to give the speech of her life for Jess's toast. And to do that, she instant messanged and Facetimed me all night on Friday. The toast had to be perfect for her friend. And it was. Her boyfriend, Chris filmed it for me and I saw it. She did a fabulous job.

These girls, born on the same day. Friends forever and joined at the hip even though they now live nearly a thousand miles apart. And their lives are so different.

I feel sad that we all live so far from each other. And still I'm glad for the technology that keeps us all together.

Cats and the Three Little Kittens

The weather has been getting cooler and it has turned the cats into snugglers even more than normal. The place that they love to snuggle most seems to be my bed. I have had two or three of them sleeping with me almost every night. That being said, I am really not much of a pet in the bed person. But discouraging them would take more energy than I have to give it.

yYou know, taking over my bed is one thing. But now they seem to want to take over my computer too...

The weekend is coming up. This will be the first one in three that we haven't had the three little kittens over. Last weekend a group called Flight Club had an event, mostly for children at the community center. Flight Club is a travelling aviarium. The kittens loved seeing the birds during the Main Street Festival, and more so at the community center. They were able to interact with the birds indoors in ways that wasn't possible while they were located outside.

To say the least, they had a wonderful time. They came home from the center, ate dinner and were in bed watching a movie by 8:00.  The next day we went to a pumpkin patch and corn maze. The kittens had a blast. We went on the hay ride, walked through the children's maze, played farm games, fed goats and rabbits and played in the corn and hay bins.

We had a beautiful fall day to do it. The weather was a bit nippy, and mostly sunny where we were at. But as we were out enjoying the day on the horizon we could see the snowfall that was happening not even 50 miles away in the mountains.

I have seen storms roll in over the Atlantic ocean and over the great plains, but this was a first for me. It was fascinating and beautiful.

I don't have much planned for this weekend. The Puget Sound Yarn Crawl will be happening, but I haven't signed up for any more of it other than helping out for a few hours at A Little Knitty. If the nice weather holds tomorrow, I may go out and take some photos for another post that I keep thinking about. 

Whatever your weekend holds, I hope it's something that will make great memories for you.

Goodbye September, Hello October...

Well, it's been a few days. The excuse of course is that I've been far to busy watching the shenanigans going on in D.C. I would love to say that all my friends and relatives have seen the light and the Kool-Aid that they've been drinking for the past several years has warn off. Unfortunately they are even more virulently assertive that the man-child tyrant is being persecuted and falsely accused by hearsay. They refuse to acknowledge that THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES! Even though it is being shouted down the street by every self-respecting citizen available. What's more, they refuse to understand that he has sold out the integrity of his office and that of our country to serve himself and his wallet, and to Russia no less. It will be fascinating to see who is willing to go down with this traitorous ship. Already the clown-in-chief has declared that this will help his re-election campaign. Really? Thank you Loveable Susan Riepenhoff for doing such a fantastic job of teaching eleventh grade Government and Civics that I am not under any illusion that I have anything to fear. Impeachment, which will happen, guarantees that there will be no possibility that the Gambino wannabe will ever have the option to hold office again.

Stay tuned. I am told by the liberal false news agencies that this will only get better. :)

Karen's Birthday

Today is my sister's birthday. So of course I couldn't let the day pass without notice. I gave her, her actual present several weeks ago She had been sleeping on the couch in the living room for who knows how long because it had the only television in the house. She really wanted one in her bedroom, but wouldn't buy it for herself. Then we were in one of the local stores and they had smart TVs for almost black Friday prices. My brother and I went halves to get one for her. She has been enjoying it and sleeping on her bed, in her room ever since. But still, she needs a bit of something to mark the day. I left her a goody bag on her key chain hook after she went to sleep. And I adorned her FB page with this cartoon. You know, I just have to remind her I'm THAT SISTER...

Yeah. you've just got to celebrate the day, ya know.

Happy Thursday.

Early Morning Conversations

I was knitting and watching a documentary on Netflix about how the brain works. It was about 11:00 pm Pacific time and I was thinking that I needed to get to bed so I could be up in time for the Wednesday Sit and Knit group. Then I got a text message from Mollie.

"It's a bit strange but I just watched Stepmom with a couple of friends after work. I want to know what you thought of it when you first saw it, when you were sick, and now."

What a loaded question. The movie came out when I was getting a divorce from my ex-husband. Within two years, I was a single mom battling cancer. Mollie was roughly the age of the daughter in the movie. That was about as similar as the movie got to our own realities. But she found a dvd of it at a second hand store and watched it incessantly.

We talked until 5 am Pacific time, discussing a lot of our perceptions and feelings around the time. What we decided is that Hollywood is very good at making life look neat and pretty; wrapped up in great houses and happy endings. It rarely gets divorce or cancer right, and wasn't a good measure of what our reality was. Does divorce ever leave peoples lives that unscathed?  I'm fairly sure that it would have been impossible to hide my cancer treatments. Especially after my hair fell out. Magical mid-night horse rides on snowy nights are hard to come by. And people who are dying do not have the energy to create memory quilts. Or even the time between medical appointments.

Mollie told me that she was embarrassed to be re-hashing 11 year old feelings again. I told her that she was 11 and that the situation she was in was too complex for an 11 year old to deal with. She needs to work it out now that she can comprehend the reality of it.

The good thing for her is that I didn't die, leaving her to be raised by the evil stepmom...;0)

I Stand Corrected

After I read from everyone that they didn't think people could get colds from pets, I did the logical thing. I Googled it. Turns out, in fact people can't get colds from pets. Pets do get colds, but they aren't the same viruses that infect people.

This shows the kind of thinking I grew up with concerning health. With seven kids we were taught to cover our coughs and sneezes, wash our hands and not to share food or drink to prevent spreading whatever grunge that was going around. But we were also told a lot that can only add up to superstition. You know the kind of things like covering our ears in cold weather to prevent ear infections and not going outside in cold weather with wet hair to keep from getting colds and flus. If we did get sick, it had better be able to be cured with baby aspirin and gingerale, or we'd likely die from it. So as a result, my sister and I have some strange ideas about health. Disabusing myself from most of it has taken time. And as you can see, the process is ongoing. My apologies for spreading false information.