So this is Christmas...

May you all find a moment of peace held within the frantic Christmas celebrations. Mine was found while sitting vigil with my grandfather Friday night. He will remain in the hospital until Tuesday and will enter hospice Wednesday. For those of you who pray, please pray for us as a family, for us to be at peace with the difficult decisions regarding what defines peaceful end of life (in conflict of the doctor's definition- their definition involves needles and ventilators and ours does not), and for grandpa Martin to pass peacefully without further suffering, should that be God's will.

We are discovering our strength as a family unit this Christmas, and are managing some proper merriness despite the evolving situation.

Better Than Therapy

I'm stressed and I'm reaching back to all of life's lessons from college. When stressed, BURN something.



It just so happens I came apon a whole box of old checks from my old bank account that I've recently closed. Well, we can't have someone piecing together my ripped up checks. I don't have a shredder. Those checks obviously needed burning.

There's a coal grill outside of my door by the playground and I had flames 2 feet high from those checks. I poked the fire every once in awhile just because you must poke fire to be completely happy with it. No, I didn't use an accelerator. I'm not an elmstreet GUY, I'm an elmstreet GIRL and that means flames 2 feet high are quite enough. I had that lovely smell of just burned leaves (or checks, in this case) clinging to my clothes until I popped them into the washer for one of my last loads of wash. It was just getting dark when I set out on my check burning endeavor, and it was completely dark 20 minutes later when I scraped through the ashes to see if I had left any intact strips of numbers anywhere. The last few pieces looked like black flaky skin with bright orange fingerprint lines converging and pulsating. And then it was all dark.

It was cool. I feel better. Onward with the move.

Keep In Your Prayers...

My grandfather was supposed to have lasar surgery today in order to remove a bladder stone that was causing bleeding. They couldn't get it with the lasar, then they couldn't get it laproscopically, so they did a more invasive incision. They removed a 6 cm stone from his bladder that would have ruptured the organ if not removed. He's got some tubes now, and he's not in good health (this is Grandpa Martin- the one with Alzheimer's), and it's not looking good. At best we've got a hospital stay with family members taking turns to keep him from pulling out the tubes. At worst, his health may fail.

Please keep him in your prayers.

And now, your moment of zen

Brought to you by one of my second graders:

"Ms. K, I have to tell you something. I've been farting allllllllll day. My dad farts a lot and I think he gave it to me."

Sleep Disturbances

I'm vastly amused and a little weirded out by the discovery of a new website. Long story short, I was looking up sleep disturbances for mom (she'll wake up sometimes with the sensation that she's looking in the wrong direction in bed, but then she's not-- proprioceptive type disturbances) and stumbled on a website that has perfect descriptions of...

dum dum duuuuuummmmmmmm....

My trenchcoat dreams. Yep, all these years I've been fighting alien abductions.

Who knew? Apparently, I'm both a "close the door" type person (I struggle to move a finger in order to awaken) and a "defend yourself" type person (sometimes if the finger thing doesn't work, I pray really hard and eventually wake up and/or calm the heck down).

So why are my alien abducters wearing trenchcoats? I'm not quite sure. I think I'll voice that question aloud next time I have an episode. Since I'm changing contracts, attending a wedding, frantically Christmas shopping and otherwise stressing out, a trenchcoat dream is overdue! "Pardon me, but exactly how bad do you think the weather IS here, Mr. Alien. Geesh, trenchcoats are so OUT!"

Seriously though, the descriptions of the paralysis are dead-on for my trechcoat dreams. Especially disturbing is the fact that moving a finger is EXACTLY how I deal with them. And the paranoia afterwards... usually merits a good look in every closet and under the bed prior to settling back down. And a door lock check.

Stay tuned. I'll tell you if the visitors open their trenchcoats to reveal the "grays". :-)