IT'S SURELY A SIGN OF SOMETHING...

I never was a numbers person. I always was more of a words person. I did well in Math in high school. I did not do well in Statistics in college. I do not know what I was thinking when I took that course. There was an offering of algebra-type math that was intended for English majors. It was the Math for Dummies. Why didn't I take that? So many questions. So few answers.




My ex-husband was a numbers person. He was one of those people who remembered the dates of every significant event in his life. If any other significant event happened to fall on that date... well, it was fate. Or destiny. The universe was sending him a sign. It turns out that our first date was also the date his divorce came through from his first wife. I didn't know that when I said, "Yes," to that date. Do you know how many times I have relived in my head him asking me out? You can't possibly know this. They all end with me saying "NO," in a variety of ways. Some of them are fairly harsh and hit below the belt. In other words, I am a badass bitch. Better yet, I walk away, get in my car, and feel very proud of myself as I peel out of the parking lot. I look in my rearview mirror and he is still standing there wearing a dumb look. It is very gratifying.

If you are actually keeping up with this blog, you know that I am having to pull paperwork together for lawyers (bankruptcy and SSD) and I discovered something that I didn't know. I should have known it. However, when I got divorced, my migraines were so horrible that I just pulled the divorce decree out of its envelope and stuck it in the legal folder. It was done. Finally.

I got married on July 27, 2002. My divorce became final on July 27, 2005. That was the day it came across the desk and it got tagged by the rubber stamp. July 27. Exactly three years later. I didn't know that until about ten days ago. I don't know if my ex knows it at all. Probably not. I don't feel obligated to enlighten him.

I told you yesterday about some cool book giveaways going on over on Simon's page at Constant Revision. I laughed when I saw the last day you could turn in your submission form. Any guesses? July 27. These are the two books up for grabs if you hustle it up and get your form filled out posthaste.




I started following another writer, Alexandra Shostak at The Publication Follies of Alexandra Shostak. She writes YA and Adult fantasy. She is also doing some book giveaways (these are only two of several ~ I have forgotten how many). Obviously, the books are in her genre. Guess what day her deadline for submission entries ends? This is too easy. July 27.




Before I remembered Alexandra's book giveaways, I was going to call this a trifecta. Now, it has to be considered the perfect storm. The thing is that I know there are other things out there that I am forgetting.... things that I have read or seen about July 27 and it just bounced off. Numbers don't matter a whole lot to me. It's words. It's actions. Anyway...

I follow an agent, Janet Reid, who posted yesterday about another agent taking a break from query letters in July. She had a link to this other agent's site, BookEnds, LLC. I was afraid to look. Could it be? If she chose July 27, of all days, to stop accepting query letters, I thought I might just hurl. It turns out that her magic date was July 19.

I leave you with these thoughts:

1) If you are interested in winning some free books, enter the contests. You can't win, if you don't enter.

2) If you are a writer looking to read the blogs of other writers, then it is worth your time to check all of these links out. I have handed you two writers and two agents. Don't kick a gift horse in the mouth. (Even if you don't give a rat's ass about the contests...)

3) Even if you are not a writer, but enjoy reading the blogs of people who write well, it is worth taking a peek. Tell them I sent you. That won't get you very far because they have NO IDEA who I am. I am this little cricket in a huge forest. I chirp occasionally in their comments, but my voice is high pitched and very annoying. I am really not making a sound argument for recommending me as the person who sent you, am I? *sigh* Okay, leave a kickass comment and then tell them I sent you. Whew. Problem solved.

SHOOTING STARS

I know that there is a metaphor that is going to illustrate my point. I hope that I figure it out by the time I get to the end of this post. Yeah, it is one of those kind of days. The ideas are swirling around in my brain and I am reaching around and plucking them out, but I am not catching them in the "right" order so they aren't making a whole lot of sense. I know that once I have them all there will be a picture. Well, let's see what we get and go from there.

I always was this sickly kid. Turns out that I have tons of allergies. None of them are bad enough to kill me in singular doses, so I don't have to carry around an Eppi-Pen. However, my immune system is under constant attack ~ and frequently breaks down. It usually manifests itself in a sinus infection, sometimes bronchitis, occasionally pneumonia.

Obviously, allergies can be a serious business because they can be severe enough to kill a person. See the aforementioned Eppi-Pen. Some people have a severe enough reaction to a food that it shuts off their airway in minutes and they die. Allergies. People talk about them like they aren't a big deal. Not true. They can be a very big deal. If you have other problems, they can be an even bigger deal.

One more thing on someone with a host of allergies... They wear out the adrenal system. By making it work overtime (because the immune system is under constant attack), the adrenal system breaks down. This leads to chronic fatigue and hormonal imbalance and probably other problems. It's like a car breaking down. One system doesn't go down without it affecting other systems.

My grandpa was a verbal abuser. On Thanksgiving Day 1995, he was dressing down my mother, and I verbally let him have it. No one had ever done that before. It wouldn't be the last time I verbally knocked him out when I felt like he was out of bounds. The days of me standing around listening to him verbally beat people up ended that day.

I married a verbally abusive person. I never was able to stand up for myself, to him, the way that I stood up to my grandpa for other people. I don't understand that even now. I hope to get a handle on that one day. I was married to that guy for three years.

Eventually I dated another verbally abusive person. After I divorced the verbally abusive husband. Apparently, there was still a lesson that needed learning. His abuse was more manipulative than the husbands. It was different, but still bad. There was theft, cheating, lying, and he had a way of making me feel like I brought all of those things on myself. That is where the abuse part came in.

I have been dealing with migraines for years. Migraines are a disease. They have triggers. Some of them you can control. You can try to control them. I had the migraines more or less under control until I got married. Since then, they have not been under control. Actually, they started slipping out of my control before I got married. That should have been a sign. Stress is a big trigger. I kept telling myself that weddings are stressful.

People asked me for years if I had fibromyalgia. I told them no. I had no idea what it was. I looked it up on the Internet about three months ago after talking to a friend who had it because she thought my symptoms sounded a lot like fibromyalgia. Turns out that about 90% of the symptoms on the list were things that were my other aches and pains. Turns out you really shouldn't say "no" to something if you don't know what it is.

I think we are here for a reason. We experience every single thing for a reason. All things, good and bad, are giving us something to bring to the table for something in the future. It's a big picture thing that I don't have a handle on.

In Third World countries the doctors don't tell terminal patients that they are dying and how long that they have to live. Because they don't tell them, their brain doesn't hear that message and they don't die. Because they don't hear that they only have six months to live, they end up living five years. Our brains are very powerful.

Our brains can beat disease. Migraines are a disease. Fibromyalgia is a disease. Even battered women's syndrome is a mindset.

Am I pushing forward with the SSD to get the medicaid? Yes. Am I filing for bankruptcy? Yes. Am I going to continue to take my medication and see my doctors? Yes. I think I have good doctors. They are both willing to travel traditional and non-traditional paths. They both are interested in the root. They both understand that this is a system breakdown and they have their parts to play in helping my system get better.

Chris, over at A Deliberate Life, has written over and over again that her weightloss journey has been mind over matter. Obviously, just thinking about exercising is not what I am talking about. The most crucial moments in keeping going happened in her head. It was a mental battle. Isn't that the case with all of us? Quit or keep going? That decision-making happens in our heads. Am I going to give up or keep fighting?

And so am I back to what I said before. Our brains can beat disease. Damned if I know how. But I know it is possible because it has happened. People have done it. There is living proof out there. So, while the lawyers do their thing and the doctors do their thing, I am going to do my thing. I am going to figure this shit out. Thank you Linda Pressman for this song. Before this is said and done I might start liking something I used to hate. Egads. There is no "video." It's just the song. It's about what happens if you don't take chances. If you quit. So, no way am I quitting.

Don't forget to turn off my music player at the bottom of the page.