I am sitting here in my Magical Writing Haven watching and hearing magic.  We are in the midst of a storm and fortunately, it’s not an especially violent one…nearby counties to the east and south of us are in a tornado watch but we are not.  That doesn’t mean that a tornado definitely won’t happen, just that statistically it’s not as likely to happen.  In Texas during the springtime, we go on high alert when the skies begin to grow dark, the wind picks up and grows calm and it becomes eerily quiet and then the silence is broken by the crash of thunder and the darkening skies are illuminated by strike after strike of lightning.  But in this moment, the thunder and lightning are so just amazing…so loud and bright.  And in the midst of all that, there are doves cooing outside my window.  Such a juxtaposition between the violence of a storm and the peace that is implied by the presence of the doves.  While we Texans are hunkered down and trepidatious in the midst of a spring storm, nature just keeps doing its thing with little to no worries.  Maybe we all need to internalize that message…no matter how chaotic and scary life is, we can’t spend all of our time worrying about it.  We have to address the chaos and fear, then move on and be our best self.  Turn those things into something positive.  Like so many people have pointed out, our lives are not a dress rehearsal…this is it…opening night and everyone that loves and hates us, as well as complete strangers, your critics, and people that are just hoping that you’ll trip and fall flat on your face when you emerge from the wings of the stage are here.  So step onto the stage, hit your mark, and give them the show of a lifetime.  And then wait for the applause.

Today has actually been pretty calm and uneventful.  No emergencies to be handled.  No blood lost.  No excitement at all.  I like it but also worry about the proverbial calm before the storm so I can’t let myself relax just yet.  I will feel better once I get out of here and get home.  Then I’ll be able to breathe.  I’m hoping that the weekend is just as quiet so I can get some creativity flowing and actually complete something.  I think that I’ll spend some time doing a little “me” work as well.  But right now, I am going to get a couple of things finished here, get some way too expensive gas, head home, feed my strays and ferals, get inside, get comfortable while Rick fixes fried cod, and homemade onion rings.  After that, I’ll either get creative or go to bed so I can get an early start tomorrow.  Depends on how I feel.  I’ll let you know tomorrow!       

It’s 9:00pm and I’ve been home for about 45 minutes. Work went crazy today. I had a stack of paperwork to fill out for a couple of municipal bids but I had to put that aside because there was a bit of an emergency at work and, since I’m over operations and safety, it all fell on me to handle it. I had to get plumbers, Atmos Energy (natural gas) emergency people out as well Dallas’s emergency water utilities personnel to come out…all after 3:00pm. And you know what? I got it done. Of course, I was there until after 8:00pm. I haven’t eaten dinner. I’m tired. I already dread my alarms going off tomorrow morning. But I am so happy that tomorrow is Friday! I just can’t catch a break though. There’s either a work emergency or home emergency. Rick is still struggling because of his low blood pressure but we’ve gone over 48 hours with no blood loss. I told him today that I’m going to get a sign like places have that say no accidents in x# of days except it will say no blood lost in x# of days. You have to have a sense of humor about it or it will really get you down. Well, that’s about all I have to say. And I still need to find something to eat. Have a great night!

I am running on about 2 hours of sleep and am about half brain dead after taking a required online safety training class that took most of the day and I still have material that I have to study offline.  At least it was interesting…to me anyway.  So, why did I only get a couple of hours of sleep last night?  Rick.  After I published my blog yesterday afternoon, I decided to take a nap.  About 15 minutes into the nap, I’m just about asleep when I hear Rick screaming, “DONNA, DONNA, HELP ME, I NEED YOUR HELP!”  So, I jump up and run out of the bedroom and I see him sitting on a stool with his back to me.  Just as I come around the counter into the kitchen, I see an arc of blood squirt across the kitchen and my 1st thought was that he’d somehow opened the previous wound but, now, it was a new 1 on his other leg.  He’s holding a blood-soaked wad of paper towels against it and I grabbed our newly expanded first aid kit that includes the same kind of bandages that the EMTs used on Thursday to stop the blood flow as well as some Israeli battle ready compression bandages.    I grabbed the EMT type bandage and went to work.  Got it on, topped it with a wide ACE bandage and that stopped it.  If it hadn’t, I don’t know that I had another trip to the ER left in me.  He’s doing well.  Blood pressure is still really low so his doctor took him off of some of his blood pressure medication.  Hopefully, that will help.  Now, I am going home, getting things done, and go to bed early.  Hopefully, there will be no more of Rick’s blood spilled tonight or any other night.    

Rick’s procedure was moved to May 29th because his blood pressure is still too low for them to do it today.  I decided to stay home anyway since I had the day off planned for over a month.  I don’t have anything urgent or pending because after the 1st business day of the month when we’re closing out the previous month, most of my workload is made up of spur of the moment things that someone else was supposed to deal with but didn’t, municipal bids, special projects, helping others, and printing our documents and plans for projects that we’re going to bid.  From the middle of the month to the end, it becomes mostly safety-centric.  My busiest day of the month is usually the last day when I’m putting together all of my reports and paperwork that has to be scanned or emailed to our corporate office in Houston. The good thing is that the days go by so much faster when I’m really crazy busy.  The highlight of yesterday happened when I got home and checked the snail mail.  There was an envelope from the U.S. District Court for the Northen District of Texas.  It was a notice that I had to go online and complete the questionnaire for federal jury service to see if I qualify for said jury service.  I did and I am.  So, for a period of 2 years, I will be in the federal court jury pool.  It kind of sucks but there are a couple of pluses…you get paid $50/day from the 1st day plus $20/day reimbursement for having to travel to and park at the courthouse and federal cases would have to be more interesting that DUI cases which are all I’ve ever been chosen for at the county level.  But there is something a little bit interesting about this and I’m going to sound like a conspiracy theorist when I do tell you.  I received a county jury summons last month, which I got postponed until June and then I receive this questionnaire on April 1st.  This all happened within a couple of weeks of my completion of defensive driving to have a speeding ticket dismissed.  All that I need is a city jury summons to complete the trifecta and make me start wearing a tin foil hat and encrypting all of my emails and data.  Seriously though, it’s quite a coincidence.  Well, it’s almost 4:00pm and I want to work on some things so I think I’ll do that now.  Have a great evening!           

Ebb and flow tells us that things happen in their own time…things are taken away and things are given.  There are things that we as humans have absolutely no control over.  Many times we think that we have that control, but we really do not and that feeling of control will die away only after we are taught the harsh lesson of “you have absolutely no control” by the universe.  Maybe that lesson will come in the form of an illness or a tragic accident or a senseless act of violence.  33 years ago last week, I was taught that extremely harsh lesson when my fiance was killed in a plane crash.  He was there 1 minute and gone the next.  16 years ago last week, I was in a very bad head-on collision and fractured my pelvis, broke several ribs, and my clavicle.  I was 1 gigantic bruise.  And, of course, my car was demolished.  I had always felt like I had at least a modicum of control while driving and even when I saw that truck heading right at me in my lane, I still felt that way as I moved to the far right lane.  But the universe said, “haha” and he went to that lane as well.  Who knows why, but he did.  To this day, I still worry about opposing traffic.  In my life, I’ve had 4 cars totaled by men in trucks…1 rear-end collision while I was sitting at a stop sign and the truck was going between 65mph – 75mph, t-boned twice on my side, and the head-on collision.  But the head-on collision was the 1 that took my feeling of being in control away from me.  Maybe this whole ebb and flow thing is why I keep procrastinating about finishing Rapture.  Maybe the fear of being rejected or of not being good enough or of poor book sales or of bad reviews is what’s stopping me.  People and things have been yanked away from me with little to no warning…why not this dream of mine?  As long as my book is in limbo, I don’t have to worry about any of those things.  But the second I sit down to actually work on the book, I’m moving closer to fulfilling my goal and closer to possible failure and I hit that proverbial brick wall.  The thing is, I erected that freaking wall so I obviously have the ability to tear it the hell down.  I just have to get past the fear of failure.  I also have to think about the fact that by not completing Rapture, I am ensuring my failure as a writer.  Maybe that’s my way of having control.  Who knows?  All I do know is that since we can’t control the external ebb and flow, we need to just accept that and move forward.  We can’t relinquish control of the things that are ours to control.  And we can’t be afraid to move forward and head toward our dreams full speed ahead.  We owe that to ourselves.          

It’s a new day and a new week.  The sun is shining again and it’s a nice day even though it’s a bit cooler out there…but there’s no wind so that is pretty awesome.  And, I saw my 1st dragonfly of the year.  Hopefully, that’s a good sign.  Rick is doing so much better.  He’s regaining his strength and the wound is healing very well.  He’s trying to do too much though and he gets lightheaded.  I keep trying to impress upon him just how much blood he lost and I think that I finally got through to him today.  But now he’s trying to figure out a way to postpone the cardiac ablation on Tuesday.  I’m fighting him every step of the way though.  It has to be done and, if it works like it’s supposed to, it should take him out of A-fib and he’ll feel so much better.  But he hates hospitals with a passion!  And he makes that known to every nurse, CNA, doctor, etc…  I spend most of my time while there apologizing to everyone that has come into contact with him.  Funny thing though, he was nice the entire time he was at Parkland.  I chalk that up to the blood loss.  I’ve been doing a little rearranging here in my Magical Writing Haven.  Of course, that really means that I’m finding space to bring more of my writing books in here.  I think that I’ve exceeded the weight-bearing limit of my new shelves.  I could die any minute if they suddenly break apart and all of the books come down like a bound paper avalanche.  I might not be able to dig my way out from under them.  Oh well, as people have a tendency to say…I will have died doing what I love.  I am so wanting to take a nap now but I have to be strong and resist the temptation if I am to have any hope of going to sleep tonight even close to when I should.  Monday is always a bit of a beatdown and adding lack of sleep into the equation makes it unbearable.  And I’ve got some things that I have to get done fast tomorrow morning so I need to be awake…or at least as awake as I can be on a Monday morning.  While my body is tired at night, my brain goes into hyperdrive and shutting it down is an almost impossible task.  And it’s even worse now that I’m off of my sleep schedule.  Well, if I don’t get up and move around right now, I’m going to fall asleep in my chair.  I hope that we all have a good Monday.  And, with that, I’m hitting publish.       

 

After shaking up my very necessarily rigid sleep schedule, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get back on it.  Sleep is such an f’d up thing for me…insomnia at night, delayed sleep syndrome, and then narcolepsy during the day.  Taking Trazodone to sleep, Gabapentin to stay asleep, and Nuvigil to stay awake.  Why is something that should be so normal and natural such a difficult thing for me?  What is wrong with my brain that causes all of this?  And, dammit, isn’t 1 sleep disorder enough?  Why do I have to have 3?  And why does 1 bad night have to throw my pattern off for days?  I just had to get that out of my system or I’d be standing out in the yard in the middle of the night screaming it loudly to the universe…and waking up my neighbors.  I didn’t fall asleep until 1:30am Friday morning even though I was exhausted and couldn’t wake up at my regular time Friday morning so I was late for work and had to drag myself through the day.  Then I had to go buy more bandaging materials for Rick after work.  I swore I’d fall asleep early but didn’t until after 12:30am.  And I slept through my alarm this morning so I didn’t wake up until after 11:30.  The good news is that I feel so much better than I did yesterday.  The bad news is that my sleep schedule is still screwed up.  I’ll be working on it for a while just trying to get back in the right pattern, but I’m rested right now.  Rick is doing better.  It was a little touch and go yesterday because he was bleeding quite a bit but after we got his leg cleaned up and rebandaged the bleeding slowed down a lot.  He is feeling stronger today.  He just couldn’t understand why he was feeling so weak Thursday and yesterday so I broke it down for him…he lost 3 – 4 pints of blood and that’s 1/4 – 1/3 of all the blood in his system.  What I don’t understand is why he didn’t receive any blood while at the hospital.  Oh well, he’s on the mend after all that he went through and that’s all that matters.  All he has to do now is get through the cardiac ablation on Tuesday.  I dread it though because I’ll be apologizing to nurses right and left the entire time he’s there.  He is the absolute worst patient.  But I love him so I’ll do whatever I need to do for him just like he does for me.  We’re a pretty good team.

Well, I missed a day of my 365-day blogging challenge but there was a reason for it.  My poor husband who is on 2 heavy duty blood thinners…Plavix and Xarelto…lacerated his inner thigh at 1:00am yesterday morning and began to bleed out.  I was sound asleep after taking Trazodone for my insomnia and gabapentin for my delayed sleep phase syndrome and it took him almost 10 minutes to rouse me because he wouldn’t come into the bedroom and track blood on the carpet.  When I got to the hallway, there was a trail of blood leading into the kitchen.  Nothing could have prepared me for what was in the kitchen…giant pools of blood and bloody gauze and bandages everywhere.  By the time I’d get him bandaged, it would be soaked through again.  Finally, he called 911 while I got dressed and the EMT rig and a fire truck arrived 5 minutes later…thank God they are just around the corner.  We had already cleaned up so much blood and there was already that much more on the floor again.  They took 1 look and got him on the stretcher and in their rig and headed to Parkland which is the county hospital here in Dallas as well as a top-rated trauma hospital.  The 3 firemen actually stayed there and cleaned up all the blood even though I told them that they didn’t need to do it.  1 of them told me that they didn’t have anywhere to be and kept cleaning.  Bless their hearts and I don’t mean that in the snarky way that it’s usually used here in Texas.  While they were doing that, I finished dressing and got our menagerie situated.  They left and I headed to Parkland.  By the time I turned off of our street, the EMTs were already pulling back into the fire station because Parkland is only about 10 minutes away from us.  I got to Parkland and hurried inside.  They took me down to his hallway and pointed me in the right direction.  I finally found my way through the maze and found him being pumped full of liquids…3 bags…because his blood pressure was dangerously low because he’d lost around 2 liters of blood.  They slowed the blood flow but couldn’t stop it completely because they didn’t want to stitch it because of the possibility of infection.  After he’d received all of the fluids, they removed the dressing, cleaned both of his legs and feet with betadine then bandaged him again.  We got home around 6:30am…on my birthday.  Happy birthday to me!  He is still super weak and he called me earlier to tell me it’s full on bleeding again…not like yesterday but steady.  So I’m going to get more first aid supplies on the way home and see if we can get this slowed down.  If not, we’re going back to the ER.  He’s being a little more bullheaded about because he has a shoot tomorrow and wants to be there to supervise his photographers and customer service people.  So I might have to knock him out and drag him to my car and drive him to the ER!  We aren’t going to play around with this.  I’m tired and really grumpy and he’s weak so I think I could take him if necessary.  The thing that’s so scary to me is that it wasn’t a big or deep laceration yet he was bleeding out!  Fortunately, he has a cardiac ablation scheduled next Tuesday for his A-fib and he has to stop taking the Plavix today so that might help.  Anyway, I have to get to the pharmacy and get a lot more gauze, pads, and ACE bandages so I’m going to close now so I can go take care of Rick.  Wish us luck!

I realized today that I am more comfortable when life is chaotic.  I also realized that, with a few exceptions, I’ve never really known anything but chaos.  My childhood was chaotic because of my parents’ relationship.  My 20’s were chaotic because of my abusive marriage.  My 30’s were chaotic because I was just beginning to do the things that most people do in their teens and 20’s.  It was also chaotic because if it wasn’t, I would find a way to cause chaos.  I didn’t know how to have a healthy romantic relationship because my models were my parents, other relatives with screwed up relationships, and my own marriage and what was I going to do with that?  When I was in a relationship I would usually end up sabotaging it.  And it wasn’t because I wanted to, it was just what I did.  I hurt some really nice guys and I regret that.  I did some really stupid things, as well.  I got involved with men that wanted to control me and I let them which I still find to be strange because I am a strong-willed person.  I didn’t want to be my mother…a stay at home housewife and mother that had almost no outside interests, that had better have dinner on the table by the time my dad was home, was cheated on, knew it, and stayed, and was depressed but did nothing about it.  As she got older, she began to change, became more outspoken and independent, and stood up to my dad.  And, as a result, their marriage and relationship actually improved.  But I didn’t want to be in my late 50’s and just learning how to be in a relationship.  I dated one man right after my separation and it was very organic, not forced, not rushed into and I had a momentary glimpse into a real, healthy relationship.  But, as with most of my choices, there was an impediment.  He’d just gotten out of the Air Force and wanted to feel free so he worked the renaissance fairs all across the country.  He asked me to go with him but was so bound to my family that I just couldn’t do it.  We’d see each other every few months and we’d write and call…we still had an amazing connection and I didn’t do anything to sabotage it because I didn’t have to…the circumstances sabotaged it.  Eventually, we realized that it was never going to work because he couldn’t stay in one place and I could only stay in one place.  When I met Rick, my husband, there were a few things that stood in our way…he was going through a vicious divorce that was sucking the life out of him, we lived about 45 minutes away from each other, his kids hated me because their mother told them that I was the reason the marriage broke up even though I didn’t know Rick until the divorce was in its second year because she was more interested in hurting him than actually divorcing him, and all of that and more made him a bit gun shy when it came to a relationship.  But he sent me letters and cards and flowers because deep down, he wanted a relationship.  When things were settling down, I started acting out…conjuring up the chaos because now the relationship was becoming viable.  I would push his buttons, do things that pissed him off, etc…  One night, I had really pushed those buttons and then started an argument…for no reason other than things were so good and I didn’t know how to deal with that.  I kept pushing and I got right up in his face and pushed some more.  He looked me in the eye and said, “I am not going to hit you to make you feel better about what you did”.  It was like a punch to the gut.  So much became clear that night.  He saw so deeply into my chaotic mind and latched onto the main reason that I had been a raging sabotaging bitch spreading chaos wherever I went…I didn’t know how to be loved or how to return that love because love and chaos were so entwined.  And Paul, my first husband, had helped to slip something else into the mix…abuse and pain.  I am a very intelligent, empathic person that has always looked deep within herself but I was completely blind to all of this.  How many other people are out there doing the exact same thing and will never have someone call them on their bullshit so they just go through life sabotaging everything that feels too safe and comfortable?  Yes, I’m sure there are hundreds of self-help books out there that in some way touch on this subject but if these are like me, they don’t even know that they need the book.  Or, better yet, therapy.  Who is going to make them understand this?  I was very fortunate to have someone that made me see it and I am so glad because I honestly cannot see my life without Rick in it.  We’ve been married for a little over 23 years.  We seldom argue, as long as we don’t talk about politics.  We make each other a better person.  Outwardly, we have very little in common.  He’s 12 years older than me and when I was in first grade, he was in Vietnam.  When I was 12, he was starting his business.  When I started college, he was starting a family.  We basically are from two different generations.  I’m liberal, he’s conservative.  He doesn’t like the same music as I do.  I’m Catholic and a little witchy while he’s more agnostic.  We do like similar types of TV shows and movies.  I read, he doesn’t.  I have hobbies, he gardens.  I could go on for another page about our differences but what it boils down to is that we genuinely like each other as well as love each other.  I enjoy our conversations and time together.  We do have one thing in common and that’s animals…we both love animals.  My mother told me…after he and I married and I moved all of my critters into the house with us and he was totally fine with it…that I had married a good man and that I was so fortunate to have found someone that loved animals as much I did.  Our current critter count is 6 cats and 3 dogs, all of which are inside-outside pets…we have an acre of land with a fence so the dogs are always in the yard when their out and the cats don’t tend to wander either.  And, of course, I have my strays and ferals that I care for at work and at home.  And he doesn’t give me any grief over the money that I spend to feed them. Anyway, back to chaos.  I still have issues with it but it’s also has a positive side…my job is chaotic and I deal with it all very calmly because chaos is part of who I am.  I’ve made friends with it and we peacefully coexist…most days.