VACATION UPDATE

Not sure how much time I have, but I wanted to do a bit of a vacation update. We are still in Orlando at my timeshare (aka the financial noose around my neck). However, for these couple of weeks it has been pleasant instead of painful. My mom and I drove down and were here for a few days on our lonesome last week, which was nice. We got to relax, buy groceries, and more or less gear up for the arrival of everybody else.

My dad, brother, and sister-in-law flew in from Ohio on Thursday of last week. My mom and dad were married 22 years and have been divorced 22 years. This was a strange anniversary, of sorts, for them. I don't like to think about those numbers too long, because then it starts going places I really don't want to go. I really shouldn't have brought that up... Anyway, they get along really well now.

I hadn't seen my dad in a while, and really talked to him at length in a much longer time than that. He's lost chunks of his memory. It's not like with Alzheimer's when you forget what you ate this morning, but can remember 30 years ago with clarity. He remembers what he ate for breakfast just fine. The first inkling we had was when he got it wrong about his job history from 1960-1966, and where he was living at those times. My mom knew him then. He also completely forgot a roommate he had at that time. That person is just wiped from his memory ~ gone. She finally got him straight on his resume. But he could be just as mixed up about it a week from now. Those memories aren't sticking.

Later we were talking about this pretty traumatic experience when my brother broke his leg when he was a toddler. It ended up being traumatic for my dad because it happened while he was at work. He came home to find blood in the driveway, with a blood trail through the garage, and into the kitchen, and no one home. That is enough to scare anyone. What happened was that my little brother was napping, and woke up just in time when it was time to get me at the bus stop. Long story short: Mom put him on the back of the bike and told him to stick his feet out. He didn't. She felt terribly guilty, I walked home from the stop by myself, and Tim broke his leg. Anyway, dad not only doesn't remember that... he doesn't remember Tim's broken leg at all. Nothing about it. It has also been wiped.

The more we talk, the more things we find that are wiped from my dad's memory. Significant stuff has just been erased. My dad thinks it is because of his severe adrenal problems back in 1978. Of course, he wasn't the only one. It was sort of like watching a bizarro episode of The Four Stooges. One person would say, "Do you remember when thus and such happened?" And pretty much every time we could never get a concensus on it. In other words, it was really tough to find even one event that all of us remembered happening the same way. Or, in some cases, at all. The only thing that everyone nodded and agreed on was my brother's ongoing determination that one day he would fly. He had the red Superman cape from Halloween, and my mother relegated a coffee table to the back porch. My brother decided that was his ramp. I don't know how many times he got on that coffee table, ran down it with his arms held out in front of him like he was going to take off Superman style, and then landed with a thud and an expression on his face that was somewhere between dazed and confused. He did reveal to us that he had a dream that he could fly, which was why he was so persistent about the whole thing. My parents looked at each other and gave thanks that he never thought to climb to the roof of the house!

I am fairly certain that most of my problems stem from my severe adrenal problems. My adrenals pretty well crashed back in 2003. I still haven't bounced. My dad found a way to bounce back much faster with his because he didn't have migraines. When your adrenals go down, they can hit you "bad" in specific areas. His was his blood sugar. There was a time that he thought that the low blood sugar was going to kill him. It hit me in the hormones. It just keeps moving mine around and manipulating them so that my levels are always off and inducing a constant migraine. However, I am already getting a taste of the memory loss. That started back in 2005 and comes calling like an unwanted guest whenever it is inconvenient. If I am in the middle of a migraine, my speech is often impaired. I think it is because my ability to grasp and hold onto a thought or word is difficult. I suppose that gift is located somewhere close to where memories are stored, and something happens that causes the circuits to simply short out.

So, we discussed a vitamin protocol that he would have taken back then had he been the wiser. When I get home, I am going to try it. If I could pick and choose the people and events that I could wipe, well, then it might be worth it. But, I know it doesn't work like that... so I am going with the revised vitamin protocol.

So, this vacation has been full of some revelation for me. However, we also spent some time at The Hard Rock Casino in Tampa. Luck was not a lady. She was mean and nasty and took our money without even saying, "Thank You." Those machines were as tight as I've ever experienced them! We had several rousing games of Uno Attack. If you haven't played it and you like games, it really is fun. We laughed a lot! I also played shuffleboard for the first time. Friday and Saturday were long days and full of stuff. That is why Saturday night I got this HUGE migraine that carried over into Sunday. And the days since have been getting back to my regularly scheduled migraine.

Now, it is just Mom, Steve (my step-dad), and me. Things will be a lot more settled, since I live with them all of the time anyway. Everyone feels pretty free to go and do as they want. In other words, I don't feel pressured to knock myself out, even if I don't feel good, because I only have limited time with these people, and I probably won't see them again for a year.

And here you thought this was going to be a concise post. I would have made this shorter, but I didn't have the time! Oh, and I am thinking about doing something really weird for HERE'S TO YOU THURSDAY. So brace yourselves.

I WANT TO BE A ROCKSTAR

I have this really superb choral singing voice. I'm an alto, if you wanted to know. When I say choral singing voice, what I mean is that I am an excellent singer for a choir. I can harmonize and I blend. My voice doesn't have vibrato in it so that I stand out. This is wonderful news for a choir. Remember when I mentioned all that about wanting to major in music in college? Well, I still had these visions of me being Cher. That just wasn't going to happen. Cher stands out. Cher is a soloist. I can hold my own in a karaoke joint, which means people aren't going to throw things or run for the door like the place is on fire, but I'm not ever going to be Cher. I bet you're thinking that we covered this blog already with the hairbrush and curling iron. The thing is, I left out this cool graphic. See below. Isn't that awesome? I just wanted you know I always wanted to be a rockstar. Now we can move on.


I've also been thinking about what I wrote about my book writing a few days ago. Yeah, that conversation with my mom happened pretty much like I described it. But, here's the deal. Ever since my fingers started tapping on the keys, the book has been for me and no one else. What happened when mom and I had that conversation was this: pretty much everything in my life was derailing and I was having an anxiety attack. Have you ever had one of those? They don't happen unless pretty much everything blows up all at once. Well, they can happen to me if I'm having a bad migraine and am hit with a load of crap, but that wasn't the case. In this case, it was everything blowing up all at once. So, what I needed to do was start nailing things down one at a time. Basically, what that meant was gaining control over the stuff in my life one thing at a time. I started with my book. Yeah, I sounded nuts. And, I probably was a little nuts, but it was because it was the first thing I nailed down. Once I got that in place, it made it possible to start dealing with everything else. Unfortunately, some of the stuff was kinda out of my control. I just had to stop reacting to it. That is a toughie all by itself. Just stopping. Then I became proactive. I tell you what, though, it feels so much better to be proactive than reactive.

The other thing about me that is tough for people is this: the migraine. If you've never had one, you don't get it. Just like I don't get a lot of chronic pain that other people have. Or the weight loss journey that some of my fellow bloggers are on. I am encouraging them like crazy, but I don't get it like the other people who are also sharing that journey. The thing about my current migraine is this: it started in July 2009 and I don't know when it will end. I am living on pain pills. When I tell you that I keep track of pain pills on a notepad so that I don't OD, I am not joshing you. Imitrex, and drugs like that, only work at the start of a migraine, and mine started almost a year ago. There is not a chance of those drugs stopping it now. The last time I went through this, my migraine last four years. Four years. I want you to think about that and let it resonate in your head. It stopped when I moved to Florida and got on a drug and vitamin protocol and out of a stressful situation.

I know what you're thinking. Why aren't you back on the drug and vitamin protocol? I am. I am as destressed as I can be. It doesn't matter. The overwhelming allergic reaction that I had to the mattress/box spring nuked my immune system. I'm not whining and complaining and saying woe is me. I'm still hopeful. However, I think that the answer is time. My body needs me to keep doing what I'm doing and give it time to repair itself. In the meantime, I have a migraine all of the time and I deal. And I write. Sometimes I sing. I'm so glad I'm not a rockstar. It's so loud. I can't imagine what that would do to my migraine!