Saturday, October 22, 2011

Am I still on planet Earth?

These have got to be the strangest flowers I've ever seen. Thick, waxy magenta petals, and a hard teal ball in the center. They grow on a tree that is a few blocks down from me, on 26th, and I'm told that it is a 'clerodendrum'. Very strange looking plant. Pretty, in it's own strange way, but it is the sort of thing that you have to stop and look at, because it looks so unreal!

I've been walking regularly, which is why I've seen these flowers. I found that from here to the T at Dekum, and back, is one mile. So I've been walking a mile. If I pop a tape into my Walkman (old-school, I know) and walk to music, I can keep going and not think so much about what hurts while I'm doing it. I have been ahving some problems with shin splints off and on, and the bad knee, but at least I'm out of the house for a half hour or so, and moving about.

Life continues to be unreal. I'm still feeling lousy. The sleeping thing is off and on better- the new sleeping pills help some. I'm having problems again with the twitching thing, so I'm upping the gabapentin for a bit to see if it calms down. (But no levo-dopa. I have no desire to puke on a duke again!) My doctor says that considering the stress I'm under, I'm doing pretty well. Well, that's an awfully big 'considering'...

The situation down south is still not resolved and the babies are still not home where they belong. I have made some careful contacts that may result in some movement on this, but we don't know what may or may not happen. In the meantime the kids are having problems with Support Enforcement. That I can't help with. The whole mess is just so frustrating and makes me so angry, and all I can do is sit up here and worry. And pray. It's frustrating, because I'm still so very angry about it, especially towards one person, and I'm still having a hard time dealing with it. Someone suggested that i pray for that person. And I just can't. And I feel guilty for being so angry, and I find myself sitting in church, during the Prayers for the People, and the general Confession, and the tears slop over... How do you forgive someone who continues to hurt you, and deliberately so? How do you pray for someone you've come to hate? I haven't found anything in Alcuin that can direct me, and Aquinas is like wading through waist-deep mud lookig for a lost tricycle- I might stumble across something, or I may simply have to wait until the mud ebbs away...but I need some resolution before the mud ebbs.

In the meantime, I bought a rocking horse for the girls, and hope to have it done for their birthday. It's currently on my work table upstairs. The room smells of stripper and paint, but I can run the fan. It's kind of nice to do something different for a bit.

I'm working on a tunic for James, and embroidering the yoke and cuffs, in a style similar to the pattern on Queen Arnegunde's gown. The tunic is a lovely teal blue, and the embroidery is in a dull mustard gold, a cranberry, and some warm sage green. It's looking really nice so far. I've mostly been working on it on Tuesdays, at the ladies group at church. I love going- it's informal, I can chat and get to know people, and it is just a nice time. We're also holding Evening Prayer on Thursdays, and I've been going to that too- a nice break mid-week. Last week a bunch of us went out to dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant afterwards, and that was a lot of fun.

Still working my way through a bunch of Carolingian theology (pre-destination!) and more modern stuff in The New Yorker. Sometimes I'm reading because I can't sleep, and sometimes I fall asleep reading! Wish my body could make up it's mind!

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