Premeditated Acts of Violence

Yesterday 4 Police Officers were slain by a lone gunman who entered a coffee shop known as a police hangout in a town near where I live. He went in with the intent to kill police officers. This incident comes less than a month after a car side shooting in Seattle where an officer was targeted. They have a suspect in the Seattle killing in custody. They have a suspect in the shooting yesterday but haven't found him to arrest as yet.

I am very upset by these killings. I'm frightened. The hubs is a police officer. Although we didn't know the officers slain or their families, we know what kind of people they are. They are us.

Do I worry about my hubs job? Yes
Do I wish he wasn't a cop? No
Would I ask him to change jobs? Never

I have immense pride in him and all those in law enforcement. He loves what he does. It takes a special person to be a cop. They don't do it for the money (it's not the best paying job around). They don't do it for the glory. They do it because they believe in our country, our communities, our safety.

I hope I never have to face what the families of those officers are going through. I pray my husband and his coworkers, his friends, never have to face a crazed killer.

Muppets are the Best!

Thanksgiving is all about family

As I do most years, I'm cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my side of the family. With my brother and his family on the East Coast, it will be a much smaller affair but none the less it will be a challenging one.

My goal always in life is to make everyone happy, to cater to their wants and needs and make their time spend with me a pleasant one so they will continue to seek out my company.

This year I am striving to make a spectacular meals for all. My sister is gluten/lacto intolerant. My daughter Brianne can't have anything with corn products, including corn oil or corn syrup. My other kids are vegetarians and won't eat turkey or things made with meat or poultry products. (they are eating eggs and milk products tho, thank God.)

So on my menu I am making a Turkey and a Tofurkey. I am making a bread stuffing but not a corn bread stuffing. I'm asking my sister to take a lactate pill so I don't have to skip the butter and milk in the mashed potatoes, barring this I will hold out some potatoes from the mash and she can eat them like that. I will be making 3 kinds of gravy. One traditional with flour as a thickener, one with either corn starch or arrowroot as a thickener and one vegetarian (I saw this premade at a local store so all I will be doing is heating that up!)

Dessert is easy, pie for everyone except my sister who I will be picking up a gluten free treat for her tomorrow so she can indulge with the rest of us.

So the house is clean, I just need to go shopping for everything. Did I mention that I will be getting a fresh natural turkey and letting it sit in a brine over night so that it will be delicious?

I'm really just thankful that I will have my family together, that we will have fun and that my kids will have these traditions to draw from when they host Thanksgiving someday.

C-PAP - Fact or C-RAP?

So my pulmonary doctor is concerned about the amount of oxygen I'm getting. So he upped the amount of steroids I'm to inhale daily and had me tested for sleep apnea. The steroids I can handle, they aren't strong enough to alter my mood or grow hair on my chest but the sleep apnea? What a pain.

To determine if I had sleep apnea, they sent me home with a kit which had a chest belt with a machine attached and instruction to place it at nipple level but against the chest. Since I wasn't going to bind my chest flat, I opted for the other option of above the breast with the leads cutting into my arm pits. There was a tube with an attachment that went into my nostrils and my mouth. I put a monitor on my ring that glowed all night long. Now I was suppose to sleep naturally. The next day I returned the system for evaluation and guess what I have sleep apnea. I tried to explain that there was no way they could have gotten a correct diagnosis as I hardly slept but they seemed firm in their belief in the readings they got that they are correct. So off I go to get fitted for a CPAP machine and face mask.

The clinic went over how the damn thing works, how to keep it clean, how you might not sleep well for the first couple weeks. They fit me for a mask and get this, I'm a size SMALL, in fact they almost gave me the Petite SMALL! So finally I wear something in a SMALL. I brought home my luggage (the thing weighs a ton!) and got my distilled water for the attached humidifier and I was all set.

Come bed time, I set up my machine, adding the water as instructed, keeping the machine below the level of my head. I slip on the headgear with face mask, plug it in and lay down. Soon as I lay down, I realize I need to pee. So I disconnect the hose. The machine starts loudly blowing out air, until I find the button to turn it off. I do my business and plug myself back in and get into bed.

This machine is not made for people who sleep on their stomach and much of their face. I'm going to have to train myself to back sleep. The good thing about this machine is that it will pretty much eliminate my snoring that I do when I back sleep.

So I've had 3 nights on the MACHINE and I'm not feeling rested at all. I can't seem to adjust the humidity on it, so I'm either as dry as a bone or drowning in the accumulated condensation. I'm also trying to give up caffeine, I'm down to half caff coffee and no other caffeinated beverages. All this in pursuit of better health. I might be healthier soon if it doesn't kill me first.

Living with Cats, many Cats!

This is my life times 4.
Did I mention that we have a 16 week old kitten now? It's suppose to be Aaron's cat but I spend more time with him.

The Screaming is getting fainter

Something happened to me over the summer or maybe even sooner, I'm not sure I can pin point when it started but I know when I realized that something was wrong. About the end of August I decided I had better make my yearly appointment with my doctor. I usually try and put this off as long as possible but I was not feeling at all like myself. Not a purely physical thing but a mental thing. I was finding it harder and harder to cope with every day life. I sometimes felt like I was screaming inside my head and every day that screaming was getting louder.

I hadn't mentioned any urgency when I made my appointment so I had a couple weeks to wait. I should have made it sooner but hey, I wasn't sick, I just was a bit anxious. But as the days ticked by, my anxiety got worse and worse. Always a procrastinator, I found myself putting off things more and more. I was crying alot at Aaron's antics. One day Rob called with a great offer on a vacation in Palm Springs. He had a friend who couldn't use their condo, all we had to do is pay for our airfare and food, etc. I snapped, I couldn't be faced with making this kind of decision. Every aspect of this trip caused my chest to tighten and I felt like I couldn't breathe. The next day I saw my doctor.

I love Dr Smith. He is a very soft spoken kind man. As I weepingly told him my problems, he had me do an evaluation that helped him determine how bad I felt my life was. He prescribed an antidepressant and a mild tranquilizer to help when I felt really anxious. We also talked about other health related issues and I left feeling better about things.

The first couple weeks I started to feel a bit better. The screaming was not as loud and not as frequent. I still had some extreme bouts of anxiety but I don't like the tranqs, they make me loopy and more tired. For a while I wasn't able to go shopping for more than 10-15 minutes before I couldn't handle it any longer. I was grocery shopping almost every day as I couldn't get more than a few items at a time. This last week I finally did a fair amount of shopping. I felt that this was a huge accomplishment.

I've had to back out of some commitments and have felt I have let people down because of my mental health. My daughter Brianne has been a great support to me as she understands what I'm going thru and I now understand her inner hell that she dealt with most of her life. Rob has been there for me always, even when at my worst when I doubt that I'm worthy of his love and devotion.

The medication is working. Most days I don't hear the screaming but I can tell it's still under the surface. I set goals for myself each day but I don't feel badly when I have to edit the list because it's too much for me. Each thing I can do, I give myself a pat on the back as it might seem like nothing but to me its a big thing.

I'm sure I've alienated some of my friends during this time. I've kind of shut myself off from the outside trying to keep as much drama out of my life. And my paranoia that I don't have any real friends hasn't been helpful.

I'm better than I was a month ago, better than I was just last week. I working hard to come back to being myself. I see me peeking out now and then and it's wonderful.

Dear World

I thought I'd write something but I'm really loopy. Doctor gave me great drugs to calm me down. I think I'm going to crawl off to bed. I can't wait for the "happy" pills to kick in. At least the tranq stopped the screaming in my head.

Love
Chris

Death Star Canteen

Remember Road Tripping?

When I was a kid, my dad would take a month vacation off during the summer. Mom would provide us with a list of clothes and things to bring. We would spend a week packing up the trailer getting ready for the dreaded ROAD TRIP! I really did look forward to the trip every year because I was the kid who was always optimistic that this trip would be the best trip ever.

We always seem to plan this during the hottest part of summer and no, we never had AC in our vehicles. That would have been a waste of money! Open the damn windows and smell that dairy air! There was one particular summer that I remember with much horror now. We took a trip across the Canadian Rockies. My dad decided to treat us to a night eating out in a restaurant. My sisters were 16 (Cathy) and 4 (Carrie) , my brother was 3 (Eric) and I was 10. Cathy wouldn't let me read in the car as it made her sick to her stomach and I got stuck sitting between my youngest siblings to keep them from poking each other. No window seat for me, unless Carrie got sick or had a bloody nose (like she did this on purpose I'm sure) then she got to ride up front with Mom and Dad. The whole while she is up there she keeps peeking into the back seat and smirking that she is special. This act went on for many more trips. She was so smug!

So the night we ate at this restaurant was bedlam. Carrie and Eric are running all over the place and Dad is livid. He swore he wouldn't never take them out to a restaurant ever again. (we did finally go out when I turned 18 and I asked if we could have a family meal out, Dad was worried until I reminded him that Carrie was 12 and Eric 11 and maybe they wouldn't spend all their time under the table during dinner). On the way back to the trailer, we almost hit a horse that running loose in the road. Someone else was not so lucky and had hit another horse. I can still see it on the ground bucking in pain. We were all shook up.

A few days later we were camping in a park. We are all outside enjoying a meal when we hear the rattle of trash cans. Bears are in the park. Everyone dashes into the trailer and Dad locks the door. They hear pounding at the door. Everyone is terrified until Cathy realizes that I'm locked outside with the bears! I carried that resentment of being forgotten a long time.

Of course our car broke down in the middle of no where. Dad got a ride to town from a nice Canadian in a heating oil truck. He took Dad there and back. We got to stay with the stranded car and trailer in the hot hot sun for hours.

Another place we stopped was at the edge of a glacier. Everyone was climbing up onto the glacier to cool off. I saw this wet looking rock to step on to help me up. It was a steep step up onto the glacier. I stepped onto the rock and sunk up to my knees in mud. For that last 40 years I have been reminded by my loving family about the time I fell into a glacier. That trip is forever in my memory bank.

Another year another road trip. We had a new car, a Suburban. Again no AC, wtf? Dad did a weird little air cooler that you added ice to, plugged it into the lighter and a fan would blow cool air at you if you were lucky enough to be in the front seat. Unfortunately I was in the 3rd row seats. Cathy and Carrie got the middle seat and Eric and I were in the way back. The place where the windows don't roll down. Why didn't I get to sit in the middle? Because then Carrie and Eric would be in the back together and fight. At least I could read back there as it didn't bother Cathy. Dad loved the Suburban. He put in seat covers to protect it. These were stiff plastic bumpy patterned covers. There were so hot to sit on and when you got up, you were stuck to them so it felt like you were ripping your skin off. And you got the added bonus of the red marks of the pattern on the back of your thighs for all to see as you walked around. Over time the cover got tears in them. These gave you quite a pinch if you were bare legged on those seats.

Carrie was always getting sick on trips or a bloody nose. That girl lost gallons of blood it seemed. So up in the front with Mom and Dad she would go, getting a bit of cool relief from the lame ass air cooling system. Do you think I'd get to move up a seat? Nope, Eric got to, as he would cry if he had to be in the back alone. If Carrie was sick at night, she got to sleep with Mom in the big bed/sofa in the trailer. This forced Dad to sleep in the fold down bunk by the roof with me. Dad was a big guy and he insisted on sleeping on the edge so I was stuck behind him. Trapped! Of course I always had to get up to use the bathroom in the night so this meant that Dad had to drag out of his sleeping bag, climb down so I could go. Needless to say, Dad put a stop to his having to sleep up there after a couple of times. Carrie just had to suffer in her own bed.

I do remember these trips with fondness tho. It was good and at times bad. And the great thing is that I have forced my own kids to partake in the occasional road trip. Not as long and not as far away. It's a child rite of passage. The ROAD TRIP!

When did my home town become Dante's Inferno?

Whoo Hoo! it only got up to 97 degrees today! Yesterday it was 105. Tomorrow it might drop 10 more degrees. This is incredible. I live on the wet side of the mountains in Washington State because I have webbed feet. I truly don't mind the rain. I like how green things stay all year long. I have a moss problem in my back yard because it is usually a bog area. Do you know that when moss dries out it turns orange? So my yard is yellow (the tuffs of grass), orange (the moss) and green (the f-ing dandelions!!).

My house has old aluminum windows so that means drafty in winter and wtf hot in summer. Someday we will upgrade.... Anyway, we are trying to stay cool. I spend a lot of time looking in the freezers. The cool air is so refreshing and I didn't really want to cook all that food anyway. I figure I can take the turkey to bed with me. I got in trouble at the grocery store for checking the expiration dates on the frozen veggies. Hey there were a lot of them, I had to practically climb inside the door! And I was so going to pay for all that beer I drank. I thought it was great place for a picnic, the beverage aisle at Fred Meyer. I went to the movie theater today just so I could sit for 2 1/2 hours in A/C. It was worth the price of the ticket for that. And I hadn't seen Harry Potter so that was a bonus!

My poor kitties are taking a beating in this heat. I have been giving them lots of water and trying to reassure them that it's not my fault. They have been giving me the evil eye for a couple of days now.

The one true haven is our bedroom. We have a window A/C unit that I forced Rob to buy a couple years ago when I started the menopause. I told him that if I couldn't sleep then neither would he. He ran right out and got me that unit. Today is thanked me over and over again for making him buy it. I guess you can't even find a box fan much less an A/C in the area right now.

So maybe I will melt off a few pounds during this weather event so it will all be worth it.