It Goes Down Best With Bullets.

This is by no means a regular deal ~ yet ~ but I have gotten your lovely emails and whatnot and I miss you, too. The thing is that reading is difficult for me right now. Writing (aka typing) is also not a walk in the park. So, I feel a bit guilty throwing out a post with no intention of reading what you have going on in your blogs. With that in mind, you need to catch me up in your comments or send me an email. I just can't do a whole lot of reading these days. I am hoping that will change soon. The other reason I haven't posted is that I really haven't felt like it. That is as honest as I know to be. I am just not really thinking in a straight line and it always seemed "hard" when I thought about it. With that in mind, I did have some blogging ideas for the future that I will mention as you will see....

So, let's do this post the way that I do best when I don't really think straight: yep, bullet style. That way I can just throw it out there.

• I have mostly been playing memory games on facebook. I got the idea about a year ago when my memory sucked so bad that I was grasping at words. It has helped. I think working that memory muscle is like every other one.
  
• That is not to say that I still don't get stuck on spelling words that I should know how spell or other things equally annoying. It just doesn't happen all of the time like it used to, which is something of a relief. For instance, right now the word hundred is in my head. Did I spell that right? It feels right, but I am just not sure. And that crap makes me nuts. I used to KNOW.
• I just finished the first season of THE PRACTICE on DVD. It was written by David E. Kelley (the same guy who wrote Ally McBeal). I didn't watch it from the beginning so a lot of the shows were new to me. However, I loved that show. And still do. He is such an amazing writer, with amazing characters, storylines, and always leaves you debating yourself over some moral question at the end. Love it. I wish more shows did that. I love a show that makes you think.
• Of course, I moved on to MY NAME IS EARL. Yeah, I finally got Season 2 on Amazon on sale. That show is Hilarious. Not sure it makes me think a whole lot, but it makes me laugh a ton. And I really need that. Laughter is good for the soul.
• My mom switched our regular TV from DirectTV over to cable. Eventually the cable in this area will pick up more channels. The only big loss as far as I am concerned is OWN. Yeah, that is the Oprah Winfrey Network.
  
• And that brings me to the blog I was thinking of writing, but could never think in a straight line long enough to do it... Actually it was a series of blogs based on Oprah's Lifeclass. Yeah, that show hit me in a PROFOUND way. I didn't know this until Oprah stopped interviewing and started talking that she is Amazing.
  
• Anyway, she did this show called Oprah's Lifeclass that was on at 8:00 on OWN (it's in reruns now) and she chose a few "lessons" that she learned from her guests and then picked footage from her shows to highlight these lessons. Talk about Eye Opening. I had an "A Ha" moment every night at 8:00 pm.
• Meanwhile, I thought, "I have to share this awesomeness with my blogger friends." Her page has clips from each show. So, my idea was to have Life Class right here with the video and my thoughts and then to challenge each of you to post the video and right your own thoughts on it. (Look what I just did. "right your own thoughts" This is why I am not writing anymore!!!!! I am an English major. This mutilation of the language makes me insane!) And then sit back and watch the "A Ha" moments spread across the world.
  
• No point in dreaming small.
• For the record, I haven't given up on that one. I have merely shelved it until I can think in a straight line again.
• So what is my biggest problem, you ask?
• Right now, I am freaking dizzy. As in my spacial orientation sucks. As in I am holding onto walls. Like right now I have head planted into the back of this recliner to keep the world in check. And, of course, my migraines are freaking off the charts.
• Due to this ear thing, I have a test called an ENG scheduled for next week that requires that I be off of all my migraine and other meds. You read that right. So, I am titrating down right now and go cold turkey on Friday.
  
• As I have quit them, the dizzy, the migraines, and the general pain has gotten worse. As has my ability to think clearly (hence the bullets).
  
• On a totally different note, I feel almost completely certain that Mr. Electric is thinking about me (aka Right Guy turned Not Right Guy after I gave up on him). However, I think he might still be Right Guy. Don't know about that. Definitely Mr. Electric.
  
• Anyway, it just came to me a few days ago. I haven't even thought about him in forever. And I KNEW he was thinking about me. For those of you who doubt my psychic ability, feel free. Anyway, this has happened before, but it was several years ago.
  
• That time I repeatedly imagined him calling me. Well, he did. Only I left the house and forgot my cell phone and my stepdad and answered it. It was the one and only time my stepdad has ever answered my cell. Mr. Electric has trust issues and that tore it for him. He was convinced I will still involved with the liar, cheater, ex-boyfriend.
• Anyway, I am back to imagining him calling me and me answering my phone. Sometimes you have to take the imagery further.
• For a long time I was really ticked about how that went down. Now I realize that he wasn't ready for me and I had yet to fully understand (aka process) the lessons that both of my exes taught. There was a lot of stuff in there. In fact, I am not really sure I got it all until recently. Hmmm. Timing really is everything, no?

Well, I will try to keep you in the loop about my test sooner. That means posting something next week or so, rather than next month or so. I don't know when I will be back to reading your blogs. Just bear with me. Let me know what you think about the series of blogs on the LifeClass. I will probably do my own thing anyway, but I am still curious. I have found it is good to get the opinions of others, but best to do WHAT YOU FEEL in your own gut.

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.