DIY canvas photo transfer using gel medium

Photo Transfer with Acrylic Gel Medium

It's been an exciting few days around here. I am doing fine now, but it's been rough. I am doing some research on TGA (Transient Global Amnesia) to understand why it happened to me. My research says "5.2 cases per 100,000 population. However, among individuals older than 50 years, the incidence was 23.5 cases per 100,000 population per year.

Weird, huh? No one in the family has had this, that I know of.... how did I rate? More of my research:

No sex predilection has been observed. However, one study found that particular triggers may be associated with men and women. For men, transient global amnesia occurs more often after a physical precipitating event. In women, episodes may be more associated with emotional precipitating events, a history of anxiety, or pathological personality.

So, that day was a day like any other. My roommate came home and we chatted about my new idea to paint the entire house. Omigod, what a job that would be! This place is HUGE! Frankly, I would rather sell it than paint it. Ha! What's new? Anyway, I don't remember that conversation or anything I did that night. Before I "woke up" to myself again, I had also texted Laine saying that I had just had the best night's sleep! Note that that was before I actually came out of the TGA.... I wonder what was different about that night's sleep? 

Okay. The TGA happened on Wednesday and Thursday. I spent the entire day in the hospital (again) on Thursday. For some reason, I can't remember Thursday night or Friday all day. I was home, no vehicle, so what COULD I have done? The house is no cleaner. The dishes were as always. Nothing special was cooked and waiting for me in the refrigerator. Hmmm. Oh! I was definitely depressed. Posted on FB way too much information. Got some wonderful love from Cindy and David. Love those guys.

Saturday was different. I got up and Laine and I hit the road. It was great! We went as far north as Anderson for the Renaissance Faire. A lot of fun, good loving people all around. Then we went to Corning and checked out The Olive Pit. Omigosh, good stuff! And we also drove in and out of several state park areas. It made me wish I had a trailer so that I could go camping!! Maybe one day soon.

Yesterday, I just couldn't do a thing. Don't know why. I ate ravenously all day. I tried drinking but it wasn't feeding whatever was hungry in me. And I watched a silly series about a silly woman who had to grow up in order to stay in Heaven. Sheesh. It would appear that at least some of my health issues are related to my tendency for depression. I am already on 150 mg of Effexor. I can't imagine going off of it without a medical/psych person monitoring me. But maybe I need to do that? In the past, my drugs worked for awhile and then I had to move to something else. I have been on this one for the longest -- probably 10 years? Maybe longer? Maybe it's time for a change?

Enough for today. Nothing brilliant. Nothing sad. I call that progress!!

Where do I want to be?

Where do I want to be? Today's Daily On asks:

This course invites you to embark on an adventure of discovery as you gently unwind and shed the layers of your tangled self.

You know which self I'm talking about: that overwhelmed, sometimes grumpy, and fragmented self that has lost the ability to live fully and think big; the self that is fully padded with all kinds of protections (and stuff) to ward off the calamities which "are certain to come at any moment"; the self that feels like there is a simpler way, but can't seem to figure out where it is and how to cultivate it. Yes, these are the layers that will be melting away.

Take a few moments today to reflect on your goals for this course using the prompts below. Use the time, too, to release any apprehensions, worries, and reflect on what it would mean to feel more spacious in your home and life.

• How I hope to feel as a result of clearing what no longer serves and supports me is______

It's true that I do seek "a simpler way," but I think I have been seeking it forever. Or it seems that way. Now I guess I see the clutter as stopping me from doing what I thought I always wanted to do: paint, sew, create! So why am I still no doing that?

• What I hope to let go of is______

First I need to let go of my desperate need to understand Marina and her choice to keep me from seeing the girls. I will never understand it and she seems determined not to explain it to me. This means I must first "let go" of everything that has ever mattered to me! How does one do that? I have started with the "stuff" of our lives -- the furniture, the decorations, the memorabilia. I hope the girls will understand some day why there are so few reminders of them in the house and in my remaining possessions. It's not because I don't love them anymore but because I do love them and can't face the pain any longer. My life has to go on.

• What I hope to attract is______

I suppose what I want to attract is a sense of normalcy, of peace, of perhaps a little joy in life again. To not break down into tears with complete strangers everytime I think of what I have lost? Love and romance are not even in the shadows of my mind. That used to be important but no longer.

Perhaps decluttering will force me to slow down the wind-up toy and allow me to find peace of mind? It's all I can hope for now. 

I'm back! It's been years and there have been many changes in my life, but I am retired and what a story it is. I've just been reviewing the first six posts in this blog and realizing how idealistic I was as well as overwhelmed. I'm still overwhelmed in many ways but I'm on a new path ... Seeking to attain minimalism in my life. It's a long story so let's let it reveal itself in bits and pieces as I begin this new blog again.

Recently I joined a sort of self help group online that is designed to help me get in touch with what's important and to let go of what's not important. This is particularly necessary at this point in my life because my own daughter has rejected me, denied me access to my granddaughters, and broken my heart in more ways than she can imagine. To this day I don't know what I've done wrong except that she says I am a bad role model. To deal with this I have joined the Daily Om. It includes Daily Reflections and ideas about what is important in life, particularly in my own life, and I think it provides a good start on a Daily Journal. I hope someday my granddaughters will read this and no a little bit better who I am and how much I love them.

Today's Daily Om starts with a famous quote bye one of my earlier influences, Joseph Campbell.

"The call to adventure is the point in a person's life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not."-Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey

Absolutely, I know that everything is about to change. With a whole lot of encouragement, read pushing and insisting and promising and assuring, Marina convinced me to buy this house on Compton Drive. She denies that now, says it was 100% my decision, but as I drive around this town and note the many houses that I loved and they hated, it's hard for me not to recognize her undue influence in my life and my decisions.

So here I am, living on my Social Security, and house that cost more than that. Add to that the fact that I no longer have a family and it's hard not to be depressed. But I have a plan! I am going to survive! More on that later.

I guess the point is, as I noted when I first began this blog, we baby boomers did not prepare for our old age. We coddled our children, giving them everything they asked, sometimes at great personal and financial expense, and we assumed they would be there for us when we needed them. We confused our parents and our grandparents with this new generation that faces so many more challenges and so much more commercial power, and it is hard put to make sense of their own lives much less anyone elses.

I am going to do my best to make sense of this world we live in while trying to figure out how I am going to survive. Plus I want to do more than survive -- I want to thrive! As my dear sister Kim reminds me, I should be doing the fun things now, painting, artwork, crafting, walking Bentley! But what am I doing? I'm worrying about stuff. What stuff? Kim asked. And I said the stuff of what I will be leaving behind. The messes I don't want someone else to have to clean up when I'm gone. The things that weigh me down and that I yearn to be free of. This new de-cluttering process is intended to get me there. I will deal with the physical things first, and then the others.

Today is September 1st. I pledged with my online support group to get rid of one thing today in my search for a clutter-free life. Today I gave away the giant blow-up lit up Christmas decoration that Tommy and Marina bought for the house and for the girls. I don't think I'll be celebrating Christmas for a while. Without my girls in my life, Christmas has lost its meaning. I will have to find a new meaning for it now.

Tomorrow it will be my job to give up two things. September 2, two things. The adventure begins.

Below I have provided some pictures of the people I consider my best friends.

Getting Serious Now

Well, I have tried this before and failed, again and again, but this time I am serious. I am a writer (for crissakes) and it's about time I start writing and regularly! So, in the spirit of Ernest Hemingway, I am going to write even when I have nothing to write. Daily.

After a month of medical leave from my job as a community college English teacher and department chair (read: division, as in English, Art, Humanities, Communications, Spanish, American Sign Language, Theatre, and Music), I am back with a new attitude. Take better care of yourself so you will be around to enjoy retirement. Don't let the job kill you. It's only a job. Save your passion for what matters!

On that note, what DOES matter? That is the .... what is it? My brain is telling me the "Golden Question," but I think I mean the "Million Dollar Question." The problem is that the last sixty years have resulted in a totally disorganized collection of ideas, phrases, images, memories, and other impressions that have begun to blend into one another. The Million Dollar Question is actually an off-shoot of the Sixty-Four-Thousand-Dollar Question, which I think came from a TV show. This is actually considered an idiom, so I didn't make that one up. Then I checked the web for the Golden Question and it turns out that it is a Mormon thing: "What do you know of the Mormon Church?" and "Would you like to know more?" Basically, this is a door opener to conversion for the Church of the Latter-Day Saints. It is also a reference to a set of important questions such as Who, What, and Why. And, finally, it is a reference to Liberation Psychotherapy, which is really scary. So, back on track. The Million Dollar Question is this: what matters?

Money? On money, we have to be honest with ourselves. Some of us in the Baby Boomer generation did not prepare for retirement. I know I didn't. I tried, but I got sucked into the technology, the houses, the cars, the "stuff" that advertisers told us we needed. I raised a child alone and made decisions for her that cost more money, money spent on camps and opportunities that I hoped would make up for my absence in her life. And I invested badly. An interesting presentation I found on the web talks about some of the characteristics of Boomers. It's old info, but it bears review, especially this page:

What happens at 60? Am I reading this right? Three-quarters of us are working and, as we make up about a quarter of the population, that means that a lot of us will have to keep working in order for the country to fill all of the jobs that ensure everything gets done. I don't want to work this hard for much longer. I want to have fun! And, on that note, shouldn't work be fun in the first place? When it isn't, isn't it time to find something else to do??? Apparently, the differences between us and the Y-Generation are huge and they are the ones who will be filling our shoes in the jobs we leave. 

Check out this article about us and them, and be prepared to be sad. Twenty Differences Between Baby Boomers and Generation-Y. The images are hilarious, if not a little ironic. Generation Y is also known as The Millenial Generation and as Echo-Boomers (because they were born to Baby Boomers). They are 20+ and making important decisions about their futures. Some think we didn't give them very good training (or advice), but this chart says otherwise.

They want to be good parents, which is half the battle. But do they have the skills to do so? Let's hope they do. They are smart. They are going to college. They are staying single longer. They appear to be realistic (don't need to be famous). Maybe things are not as bad as some suggest?

Another image I came across recently made me shudder. It concerns Medicare. 

I was counting on Medicare. I figured if I could make enough money to pay my rent and buy groceries, I was okay. But apparently I am wrong. How much does all this medical stuff cost? 

Well, that's it for today. I have written and, even if I have solved nothing, I have considered a few new ideas about my future. Onward!

Dignity Restored!

     Check out a great read if you love dogs: Inside of a Dog What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz. I have learned some surprising things about humans and our relationships with dogs, as well as a lot more about myself and my dogs. It's scientific research but it is also written in plain English for those of us who want the research and the facts but don't have time to learn all of the lingo of the animal psychology world. It makes sense and I am sure, in fact, that Sissy IS communicating with me after all.

Inside of a Dog