Early this morning I had a dream. I was in a volkswagon "bug" and was going somewhere to do something and I got lost on the way. I pulled over to the side of the road and the ground seemed unstable, so I pulled farther ahead in a place that looked like it was a safer place to park. I got out of the car and walked up to the road to try to get my bearings and to call for help. On the way to my parking spot, I had passed a police car and the thought didn't occur to me to ask for help, but I was just wondering if I was doing anything wrong that I'd get pulled over for (of if I had a brake light out or something that wasn't my fault, but I was just unaware of), As I got up to the road, I saw the ground open up where I had first parked my car, but moved away from, then I saw a sinkhole partially swallow my car. I could not believe it. For some reason, there was a long rope trailing from behind the bumper of my car, and somehow I dragged the car, all by myself, to where I could drive it. As I was standing beside the car thinking about what had happened and what I would do next, the policeman I had passed, who was on the top of the hill and had been watching me the whole time, drove up and asked me if he could help. Then I woke up.
Lots of emotional/mental turmoil for me the past couple of weeks. Many family members are doing/thinking things I don't approve of, but I can't control. Last week's news wrung me out so badly emotionally, I feel like I am "dazed and confused" after the latest revelation.
Early this morning I had a dream. I was in a volkswagon "bug" and was going somewhere to do something and I got lost on the way. I pulled over to the side of the road and the ground seemed unstable, so I pulled farther ahead in a place that looked like it was a safer place to park. I got out of the car and walked up to the road to try to get my bearings and to call for help. On the way to my parking spot, I had passed a police car and the thought didn't occur to me to ask for help, but I was just wondering if I was doing anything wrong that I'd get pulled over for (of if I had a brake light out or something that wasn't my fault, but I was just unaware of), As I got up to the road, I saw the ground open up where I had first parked my car, but moved away from, then I saw a sinkhole partially swallow my car. I could not believe it. For some reason, there was a long rope trailing from behind the bumper of my car, and somehow I dragged the car, all by myself, to where I could drive it. As I was standing beside the car thinking about what had happened and what I would do next, the policeman I had passed, who was on the top of the hill and had been watching me the whole time, drove up and asked me if he could help. Then I woke up.
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House organization/cleanup is coming along very slowly, but surely. I am having a hard this week. I am eating my Xocai Healthy Chocolate daily. I am quite sure it is something I need for the rest of my life. I just hope that someday I can get it for free....I just need 3 preferred customers, and mine is free. I love the new XoLove Bites (sounds like "show love') and I hope they are big sellers. We already have so many great products, I know more people would be using them, except that they are so expensive. I am having issues related to weather changes and some perimenopausal symptoms, but I think I will be fine in a few days.
I have gotten my garden off to a good start. I have plants to share with friends. I am going to be using 2 of the community garden plots that are 4 x 12 feet each. I have started many plants. I am very interested in permaculture and edible landscaping and I know it will take years to get to where I want to be, and it will always be a work in progress. I have just found a great website http://jubilee101.com/ that has a ton of free info on all kinds of things that interest me. Dilara wants a heart-shaped garden and/or a peace sign garden, in addition to a sunflower fort. I want to build a solar cooker to help keep from heating my house up this summer. Looks like it can be used to "can" fruits and tomatoes, like a water bath canner. I am going to be growing a lot of San Marzano tomatoes and I am hoping to make paste. I am going to try really hard to grow and preserve as much of my own food as I can. I am going to be hard up financially when Dilara grows up and I lose the child support money, which helps me pay for housing expenses. My house will not be paid off by that point and I don't want to lose it. I said when I bought my house that I want to die here, and I still feel that way. I never want to move again. If my house was paid off, I could live quite comfortably on Social Security income. My house takes up too much of my monthly income, but I will never be able to buy another house that would best meet my needs. I have been here almost 11 years. I hope my kids will be in a position to help me out financially until my mortgage is paid, if I have urgent needs. I just hope and pray that my roof won't spring a leak and that my HVAC will hold up until there is someone in my life who can help with that type of major expense. My plumbing needs to be replaced, but epoxy glue and fiberglass cloth will probably work as emergency repairs for several more years. My iron pipes that carry waste water from my house are literally rusting through. I patched up a hole that was at least as big as a nickel several years ago and that stretch of pipe is still not leaking. I really hope that my kids will be successful financially and will have money to spare to help me out, I certainly want to do all I can to need as little help as possible. I need to fence in the end of my yard to make a run for my dogs so that I can get them off their cables. I hope they are old enough to not jump or climb a 4 foot fence. I plan to use part of the area where one of the dogs is to plant something edible. There was a mimosa tree over there for a while. It died and I took it down. The dogs need some shade. I think if they are fenced in, they will be able to get into a shaded corner at any time of day. I am really excited about some of the projects Dilara and I can do together. We can be real Renaissance Women between all the things we will be learning and doing. It is nice to develop skills and talents. It will be fun to see what opportunities God opens up for us. I do not have as close of a relationship with my teenagers as I would like, at this point. I guess I had might as well accept it, since I can't change it, but I hope that Dilara and I will continue to share interests and enjoy each others' company even when she is a teenager. We shall see. At this point in my life, I have absolutely no interest in getting married again. Who knows how I will feel in a month or a year, though. I am trusting God to provide a suitable mate if it is truly in my best interest to have one. As long as my sex drive is in low gear, I don't have much motivation to find a "mate." I have plenty of friends and interests, so I don't think I could ever be too bored or too lonely. My ex-husband has someone and Dilara's dad has someone, and I am getting used to being without a partner. I have been divorced for 12 years or so, so I guess I ought to be used to it by now. I am so extremely busy with Dilara. I would rather be spending more time with my teenagers, but Dilara likes getting their share of my time and attention, which they don't seem to want or need anymore. It is so hard to get all 4 of us together for a family activity that everyone wants to do and will make time for. I have been working for years to be content in whatever situation I am in. If I can't change my situation, I can at least change my attitude. I'll always be sad that things didn't work out in a way that I think would have been better for my kids, but I have to trust that God is in control and he's working things out better than I could. Maybe I'm having a happier and healthier life than I would have been if my husband had not divorced me. I think about that a lot. I would not have Dilara if my ex had not remarried. Is she my consolation? Dilara's dad and I are not enjoying a cooperative parenting relationship, but we are not having a lot of conflict at this point. I thought the home schooling issue was going to me a major point of contention, but I guess not. He seems to be happy in his life/work/relationship and he and I have frequent, but brief contact. It is a blessing to be spared the conflict and stress a lot of women deal with, and that I have dealt with in the past. Yes, it is better to be in no relationship than in a painful relationship, but there is no reason human beings can't live in harmony together if they want to. Until I find someone who is as dedicated to building a healthy and happy relationship, I will find a way to remain content without a life partner. I am forced to be independent. Not my choice, but my reality. One reason I love homeschooling is because there is no need to stick to a rigid schedule...we can "go with the flow" in a way that an institutional classroom setting could never accomodate. "Classroom Management" strategies are not meant to focus on an individual's needs. Dilara finally got some Sea Monkeys when I found some half-price the other day. We bought some a few weeks ago for one of her classmate's birthday and she was very interested in them. We did "step 1" of preparing the water Saturday night and Sunday night we added the eggs. She is already wanting to draw pictures of them, even though I don't even think they have hatched yet, so she drew a picture of the little aquarium they are in. We read all the information in the kit and were looking up information about them online and we were reading about "the Instant Life crystals in which they eggs are enclosed" and she said, "That sounds like shark egg cases!" and so I looked up "shark egg cases" which led us to page that showed a lot of different shark and stingray egg cases and she pointed to one and asked me what creature grew in it, and it was an egg case for a "Spotted Ray," so I googled that and when she saw a picture of it, she said "It looks like it has eyes on it, like an Owl Butterfly!" and I googled "Owl Butterfly." We did make it back to the Sea Monkeys, but what a wonderful detour! I pointed out to her that that was something nice about homeschooling. I used to teach preschool and I know how in the interest of "Classroom Management" you can't really let kids chime in and take you down "rabbit trails" like that during class time, or else you'd never get your plans for the day accomplished. It is actually "disruptive behavior." Dilara told me about when they were in circle time and her teacher was talking about things that float and how boats float, Dilara raised her hand and said, "People float!" and, of course, the teacher said something like, "We're not talking about people floating, we're talking about boats floating." Why should I limit my child to that kind of "traditional" educational experience when I have a better option???
I got married when I was 20 and my husband was 23. I know lots of people who married in their late teens and early 20's. I personally think people should keep sex within marriage and it makes a lot of sense to marry closer to the age or sexual maturity. People should be emotionally mature, responsible, and have a degree of independence and self-sufficiency before they graduate from high school.
It's all about choices. I can't make other people's choices for them, and I know different people have different priorities. I don't think it is that people can't afford to marry, but rather they don't WANT to marry at an early age. You don't have to have a $200,000 house and high utility bills and property taxes. You don't have to have the latest gadgets. I need internet, but I don't need an Iphone. Who does, really? People are stressed out, I think, because of poor choices. People should avoid debt as much as possible, live within their means. I often feel VERY POOR, and I do without a lot of what I WANT, but I honestly say that I have more than I NEED. I have plenty of food in my cupboards and I do not go hungry. I can't afford a lot of things I would LIKE to eat, but I have plenty of stuff I CAN eat. Eating out is very expensive. But preparing food at home and cleaning up the kitchen afterwards takes time and energy. Time really isn't a good argument...it takes time to go to restaurants and wait on your food and drive home. BUT, it often seems easier. If more homes had two-parent families, with one parent being a full-time homemaker, life would be easier. Not everyone wants that kind of lifestyle, and it seems foreign to many, but it is a better, less stressful way to live for most people, I think. But so few people feel like they can't even try. Housing seems expensive, food, transportation, etc. and don't even mention healthcare! I do believe that if people had less stressful lives, healthier lifestyle habits, and happy relationships, there would be DRASTICALLY less health problems, especially in people under 80 years old or so. Marriage is a good thing for almost everyone. Really. I want my children to be the kind of people who make good spouses and parents. I am sorry that they did not enjoy the kind of home life I wanted for them. I never wanted to be a single mother, but maybe they can see how hard things have been for me and for them because of divorce. They can do better. I saw this online http://simondale.net/hobbit.htm we can take care of the earth and take care of our families. We don't have to slave away at jobs we hate. There are too many "working poor" but we can fix it. Look for alternative lifestyles. Be counter-culture. Our culture isn't so great in so many ways. In my dream, it was the first day of school. I guess I was in 8th or 9th grade. I had all my back-to-school supplies and I had my list of classes and I arrived early. Well-prepared, I thought, and ready to go.
So... I go to my first class and I am when they called roll, my name was not called. When I asked about that, I was told that that class was full and I got bumped to another teacher's class for that subject. Okay. So, I head to her classroom to find that due to a sprinkler system leak, that class had been moved to another room. Where? Nobody could tell me. So, I went door to door till I found the right class, but I was very late. The teacher was very sweet and understanding and helped me find a desk and pointed to a stack of papers on the desk that I wasc to choose from for a writing exercise. The assignment was to write a one-page story using the three elements on the assignment page. Every page was different. I took one, sat down, nothing came to me for some reason. I can't remember the details, but it was something like, "Write a story that incorporates a road trip, 3 apples, and a cousin." I had total writer's block and I got up and took another page from the stack, thinking I might have better luck with a different list of required elements. I came up with something and just as I was folding up my story with the assignment page I was working from...you know how you fold a notebook paper page vertically and write your name, date, class, etc. on the top front side...I happened to see on the back of the assignment page (bottom of the back side), "Be sure to start your story with this phrase: ..." (I don't remember what it was, something like: "I had been looking forward to this day for....") I looked up at the clock then I looked at my paper and panicked. The bell was about to ring for me to go to the next class and I did not have room to insert this required sentence at the beginning of my story nor did I have time to rewrite the entire story before the bell rang. Just then, my alarm went off, and I woke up. My heart was pounding just like it was in the dream. I was so stressed out. I got up and started getting ready to get the kids off to school. The 2 high-schoolers had spent the night with their Dad and I was getting my preschooler's things together. 6:15 I get a call from my ex saying that he left my son behind because he had to go back into the house to get something and they didn't have time to wait on him without being late. It would make my daughter 20 minutes later than she had meant to be getting to school and my ex told me it was not fair to make her late because of her brother not being prepared. So, I drove my daughter to school, stopped to get gas, picked up my son and drove him to the bus stop then came home. I had already spent over an hour and a half in the car and I was too exhausted to take my preschooler to her school until I had rested. That is a 45 minute round trip by itself. My son up being a half-hour late and I took my preschooler in much later, but that wasn't a big deal. I still feel like my body is being flooded with stress hormones and it is now just a few Even with insurance, counseling is expensive. I really wish more people would try harder, sooner, to try to change themselves so their unhappy relationships might change. This looked like a good program and I know a lot of women who could benefit from it. It takes work, though. But it is usually easier to fix a relationship than to start over. A new relationship will just have a new set of problems, right?
CLICK ON THIS LINK; http://calnodi03.melturman.hop.clickbank.net Helen Andelin said in "Fascinating Womanhood" that women need love and men need admiration. Well, of course, we have LOTS of needs, but it makes sense to me that men require admiration and respect and when relationships are troubled, I wonder if it is a "chicken or the egg" situation.I guess the best thing to do is to notice and to ask what makes a particular man feel admired or respected, so we can ensure that he gets his "daily dose." Here are some things I found through Google:
http://advancedlifeskills.com/blog/67-ways-to-make-him-feel-super-respected/ and this led me to this article: http://advancedlifeskills.com/blog/transform-your-relationship/ and: http://advancedlifeskills.com/blog/more-love-in-your-relationship/ and http://advancedlifeskills.com/blog/30-ways-to-quickly-improve-your-life/ and http://advancedlifeskills.com/blog/30-ways-to-quickly-improve-your-life/ She was 30 years old and her doctor told her "tomorrow is the day" she would have her diseased colon removed to try to save her life.The doctor had been treating her for 2 years and during that time all she could eat was baby food. She had such severe ulcerative colitis she weighed 87 pounds and had been in the hospital for a week and was given blood and fluids to replace what her body was losing through her diseased colon. She was allergic to the medication that normally would have been given to help the bowel to heal. There was nothing else to be done by the doctors besides this drastic surgical procedure.
Her doctor warned her husband to not upset her. She was so weak unless she had the will to live, she might not make it through the surgery. There had been a tragic car wreck involving family members, but nobody dared tell her until after the surgery. She had a mental health consultation and had talked to people who had had colostomies who were supposed to help her feel okay about "life after colostomy," but she was praying to God to either heal her or just let her die because she did not want to have to wear a bag against her abdomen to collect feces every day for the rest of her life.She turned on the television in her room and one of the channels she saw a man who was preaching about healing and James 5. She felt God tell her, "If you do this, I will heal you." She called her husband and told him to bring some deacons and some oil and follow the instructions that were given in the Bible in James 5:14-16. "We don't do that! We're Baptists!" She insisted that if they wouldn't do this for her, she'd call every church of every denomination in the phone book until she found someone who would. Remembering what the doctor had said about not letting her get upset, her husband and deacons soon showed up at her bedside with a bottle of olive oil which they "anointed" her with and prayed for her to be healed. The next morning, the morning of the surgery, the Dr. did a final pre-op colonoscopy to see how much of her bowel would need to be removed. It had only been one week since her last colonoscopy and she had only been given clear fluids and blood transfusions. No medication to help heal the bowel, because she was allergic to it. As the doctor was looking through the colonoscope, he kept saying, "Oh, my! Oh, my!" and my stepmother asked what the "Oh, My-ing" was all about. Her doctor told her, " If I had not been the one treating you for the past 2 years and the one who had done all your colonoscopies, I would not believe this." Her bowel was as perfect as a baby's, he said. No ulcerations, no lesions, no scarring. Perfect. There was no need for the colostomy because there was no disease anymore. What could she eat? Anything. She was sent home and she stopped at the store and her first solid food she was able to eat in 2 years was some Bing cherries. After 2 years of suffering, she was totally healed and has not had a recurrence in 40-plus years. Her name is Mary Anne Missick and she can tell you the story herself, but I think I got all the facts straight. She believes God healed her in response to her following the instructions in James 5:14-16. |
AuthorLydia, single mom of 3 Archives
January 2016
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