GREENGREENGRASS

Sublime SoCal Autumn

In Big Bear.  Amazing weather and colors.  Lying in the middle of the forest, my first real SoCal Autumn. So still, I can hear my own heart beat and the falling leaves duet.   Autumn, my favorite season of all.  How can something so beautiful be dying at the same time?

The hour long, 3 minute ramen

Since returning from my two week out-of-town wedding fest I've been recovering.   It always takes me awhile to recover after a trip.  I came home pretty exhausted, sick and tired from traveling as well as all the bridesmaid/sister duties.  I feel like I am back at square one and trying to build myself back up again.

It just took me over an hour to get up from my desk, go to the bathroom, make a cup of ramen noodle soup and shuffle back to my desk.  Imagine spending over an hour in slow motion paranoid, with every step, that you're going to fall.  I hate the feeling and dread each journey when it comes to accomplishing a task.  It sounds strange that it could even take so long when I cook up complex dinners for large group of friends.  For those, I have my sous chef, Jason, a routine and everything is propped up, including me, like a staging area. With someone I can create mountains of food, alone simple tasks like cooking microwave ramen and getting it successfully to my desk, is my nemesis  

. It is sort of funny, but painful at the same time. I'm stubborn and try to beat "it" as if nothing can stop me, but it quickly puts me into my place. I'm stuck between sort of walking and not.

Even though it takes forever to do such a small task I must do it to maintain what walking ability I do have. Iit would be so much easier to quit.

By the way, all that and the ramen sucked.  To be expected, but alas the only thing I could make on a tired day like today.

 

 

Pick up and go

I'm so frustrated with the logistics of getting around. That's the difficult part of a progressing condition, especially as it nears going into a chair or beginning stages of one. A affects B, B affects C and everything thereafter. Any little change in a situation changes the entire plan.

I had an old pair of e-motion wheels, sensor activated motors in the wheels, loaned to me. Last week I was able to successfully get out of my apartment door, into the elevator, out the lobby door, into the disabled lift, down it, rolled myself down the steep ramp and onto the curb all because of the wheels...all by myself. It was nice. I felt like hot independent stuff

But, today they aren't working, so I had to have a neighbor come let me out. I have physical therapy from 6-8 for the next few weeks so set my Access (paratransit service) pick me up at 4:40. On a typical ride to my weekly therapy it could range from a 1.5-2.5 hr trip due to shared ride policy. However, today, Access got me to my therapy in 20 minutes. So, here I wait, an hour early, usually an hour late, in the lobby unable to push myself around, because one of the motors are broken. The wheels are really old, so I guess it was going to happen. Crap thing is I've been waiting for these loaner wheels for months so I could gain some independence. I finally get them and then they die right. Oh well, heightened independence was great while it lasted. This is how it is for everything, every minuscule chore. It's not just this situation I find frustrating, it's the entire package. It's grains of rice that lead to the entire harvest.

Frustrated. I despise the loss of freedom, the incapability to pick up and go. It's really something wonderful to have this ability. I despise depending on others to accomplish the most minute task.

I know I'm supposed to try and friend you, but the truth is, I hate you. My only desire to is to pick up and leave you, but you hang around tightening your grip on me. At times I feel jipped. I did everything "right", so what happened? Unbeknownst to me, you were always lurking there, you waited, and then suddenly you hit me at the most productive years of a young person's life. You jipped me. You have shocked me for the rest of my life. It's a recent response. I didn't used to feel this way. I've never been a, "why me?" person, because why anyone? Perspective tells me I'm ridiculous, but the "moment" tells me to feel this way. You can have clarity and yet at the same time the sensitivity of a moment can be so great that you can't see beyond your soaking eyes, reflecting some obscure amber version. Emotions, humility and feelings work that way, I suppose. They do not obey, they just do.

"Adventure is not outside man; it is within."
-George Eliot

I've been in Michigan, my hometown, for the past week thus my absence here. Both my brothers scheduled their wedding in the same October week. I have alot to share, but for now trying to drown out any usual stress or demands of everyday life and enjoy as my brothers step into a new chapter while basking, and recalling childhood memories, among the beautiful Michigan Autumn weather. I'll be back soon to share....

I spend alot of time thinking about...

I'm sitting in an airport waiting to be on my way. People watching is my favorite thing to do, I think it is for many of us, huh?

I spend alot of time thinking about...

the lives of the people I pass on the street; where they're going, where they're coming from, who is it that they really love and why are they with someone they don't...who they are going home to, why they did it or did they surprise themselves, too, what is their motivation, what scares them the most, did they really mean to do it, what were they like as children and why did they run in the opposite direction, how many of them will meet the stranger they just passed in a future moment and how many times has that happened, how each person's steps is in sync with their own heartbeat...I think alot about floating particles, how old they are and their journey...

One comes to their own self awareness through collective thoroughfares, each one its own puzzle piece adding to the completion of a scene only to be part of another scene.

I'm quite tickled by story lines and motivation...what makes them do it...what made them take a shortcut or what made them take the hard route.

I spend alot of time thinking about people whom I've never met...