All tricks, no treat.

So it seems every time I commit myself to these blog events ( like NaBloWriMo, 30 days of truth, etc ) something major happens and I am unable to write as I should...so I do not think I will "officially" do them anymore, I will just write and maybe it will all work out.

Yes, I have been gone for a few days again, but for good ( well, bad ) reason. My oldest friend, 27 years of friendship, was rocked to the core a couple of days ago. My 33 year old best friend J went to bed one night, and when she woke up the next morning, she had lost 15 to 20 years of her memory. She woke up and knew her husband, but did not know where she was, who her children were, her sibling in laws, her nieces and nephews, none of them. Any friends she made over the last 15 years, gone. Her church, which she was very active in, gone. Poof. I have been thanking the stars that I have been here for 27 years, because she remembers me, but to her, it is 1997-98 and I just recently had my oldest daughter. ( Who is now just a couple of months shy of 15 )

She had been diagnosed with pneumonia and pleurisy the day or two before, and they put her on a pain med and Ambien at night. A 10 mg Ambien. She weighs like 95 pounds, and is only 4 feet 10 inches tall. She is tiny. My Mother, who is about 180, only takes TWO mg. SO 10 is much to much for someone J's size. Anyway, she did not lose herself, I mean she knows who she is, her parents, her siblings, her husband and anyone who was in her life back then. Just no one or any events from the last 15 to 20 years. Her husband took her to the doc and they thought it might be a combo of fibro fog and the mega dose of Ambien, and since she was lucid, functional and still had her faculties about her she was sent home to basically ride out the meds.

Late that night she woke up in severe pain and thought she was having a stroke. So she and her husband went to the hospital, where she had CT scans of her head and the whole nine yards done. Her brain is fine. No stroke, no tumors, no aneurisms, nothing like that. Her bloodwork came back fine. So they diagnosed her with Retrograde Amnesia, which basically means they have no clue why her mind went on a vacation, and the mother of all migraines, which they gave her a shot for. They told her it is most likely temporary, but to be prepared because there was also a chance it might never come back.

I have been on the phone for two days straight. Back to back calls, callers beeping in while I was already on a call, it was bedlam. No one had any concrete information and we were all going nuts. I finally got to talk to her myself on the second day, she called me ( thank goodness for cell phone phone books lol ) and it was all I could do at first to keep it together. I was so terrified she would call and say " I am sorry, I do not remember you.." I would have died a thousand deaths had that happened. I spent an hour basically trying to give her the readers digest version of MY life over the last 15 years and I thought to myself as it was happening " Jeez...having to explain this to what is essentially a stranger as far as my life goes makes me sound so horrible...she is going to ask herself why in the hell was she even friends with me" and it scared me because she was right there through 98% of it, she understood...so now, she did NOT understand and I must have seemed like a friggen train wreck to her. Which, I guess, for a while I was...but she does not even remember how pivotal she was in my life for so many years. I mean she helped me when I bottomed out on cocaine, she and I lived together for a while, we were pregnant together ( her first and my second ) and so many other battles and victories, and she remembers none of it. I shudder at the thought of what she must think of me.

On the upside, she is exactly as she was before life got stressful for her..which makes ME think that her illness combined with the meds and the stress she was under ( she home schools her three kids, 12, 10, and 6, very active in church, she is the glue for her family, which included all her siblings and parents and in laws and nieces and nephews ) just made her mind say " Okay, time for a little break, lets go back and party like its 1999 " Prince sang about it, but she actually did it lol. It has been, for me, AWESOME to talk to her over the last few days. She is back for lack of a better term. SO much has happened in just her life over the last decade, things that changed her, and now, to see her quiet calmness, that FIRE back in her voice and words...I actually felt the need to apologize to her last night because I knew I sounded almost gleeful that this happened..and of course I was not, I am devastated that it happened, but since I could not change what happened, I was loving what I was hearing. She was not so jaded and cynical and waiting for the other shoe to drop ( which is a feeling you all know I can relate to ) she was almost vibrant and strong willed and ready to kick some ass and get things back to the way they should be, even though she could not remember why they got so bad in the first place. I do not know whether to laugh or cry when I talk to her lol. I am certainly not sad, since she does remember me, but I am heartbroken for her kids and nieces and nephews that she does not remember. I can't even imagine how they must feel, and my heart goes out for J as well, because she has to watch all these little people she loved, three of which she gave birth to, and knowing intellectually and in her heart there is a connection, but she can not remember it. Not to mention those friends she does NOT remember, such as P, whom I talked to for quite some time last night. In all the ruckus and being on the phone all the time, I forgot to let a few of our mutual friends we have made over the last decade or so know and so I have been doing that. P to her is sort of like a male version of me, he is also her best friend, in a different way because their history is different than the one she and I have. He was stunned to say the least and was doing his best to wrap his mind around it.

It has been so surreal.

I do not know if she will come out of it or not, but I am hoping and praying she does...and if any of you wonderful people wanted to add your prayer, healing, candles and energy to the mix, we would all be eternally grateful. I will tell you a secret though. I am praying for her full memory to come back, but I am also praying that when she does get it back, she keeps that fire that has been long absent from her mind.

So that, in a very small nutshell, is what I have been doing over the last few days. There is more things happening in the background of my own life, but none of those are anything major, just day to day stuff.

So until next time, keep my friend J in your heart and mind, as well as her family. It is much appreciated.

I leave you with a pic of the beautiful sister of my heart:

Ok Universe, I get it.....

Hello guys and gals. I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend. It has been a very very rainy one for me, but that is ok, we needed it and it kept things cool today. It also gave me a lot of time to reflect upon some very obvious signs the Universe has been hitting me over the head with.


For the last few weeks I have been trying to mentally and emotionally heal from the passing of 2 family members, being sick, quitting smoking, and some parental strife (between my parents, not Jack and myself lol). I have been longing for Fall so much it almost hurts. Fall and Winter are when I come alive. The colder it is, the happier I am, the more energy I am filled with...this Summer....hell, this whole YEAR... has been a tough one...and I am over it...ready for the next phase.

Many people "Spring Clean" every year. I "Fall Clean" instead. As the temps tease me by getting into the mid to low 60's a couple of nights a week, my thoughts have turned inward again, as they do this time of year, when I start planning my mental lists of things I want to get done. A huge part of that every year is trying to de-clutter my house. I see articles about it everywhere, I see things that remind me of the projects I want to get done, and then I find this post over at The Domestic Witch, and it really made me stop and think.

This year I have so much more to get rid of than the usual accumulation of crap hanging around. I have a lot of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual clutter to get rid of. A lot has happened over the last year, some good, and a lot of it bad, but all of it has left me cluttered up inside. Things happened so fast I had no time to process one thing before the next one happened. So instead of trying to work through it at all, I just kept pushing it down deeper and deeper inside of me, adding more and more on top of it month by month, until finally I felt like I was literally up to my eyebrows with internal garbage. I tried to finally start working through everything, and I found that I was unable to. I was numb. Totally devoid of emotions other than apathy. I could not seem to care about anything. I did not want to talk to anyone, email anyone, chat with anyone. It took Herculean effort to answer even the shortest of emails. I started avoiding everyone, I just could not deal with one more thing, no more drama, from my side or from anyone else either.I was/am tired of hearing it. I had nothing left to give.

The same day that I read that post from The Domestic Witch ( Not to be confused with Domestic Witch lol ) both my husband and my best friend asked me when they could have the old me back. This really shook me up, and I ended up spilling my guts to my best friend and bawled my eyes out. I felt a little better afterwords, and it gave me enough release so I could think about what was wrong and how could I fix it.

The answer is, as the one woman said during the banishing scene in Practical Magic: "Let's clean house!"

Not just my physical house, although it needs it too, ( and I was working on that at 2 a.m. this morning lol ) but my mind, heart, and spirit. I have felt so lifeless and apathetic about everything in my life, moving  through my day in a fog, not really focusing on anything. I have not felt like anything was magical in my life, or took steps to create magic in my life, in SO long. I do not like the person I had become, and as the energy I feel this time of year starts to slowly ( achingly slow!) fill me up, it is time to let go of all that has been building up inside of me, choking me of life.

I took steps to start that process over the last 24 hours. I spent time last night after everyone was in bed cleaning. Dusting, running the vac, sweeping and mopping, dishes, deep cleaning the stove, cleaning the glass and  bric-a-brac  we have, and I cleaned and refreshed my living room altar for the first time in ages.

Today was my 11 year old son's birthday party, which was nice, and all the kids stayed at Mom's so Jack and I got a very rare chance to be alone. We left there and went to the flea market (We got some squash and zucchini, 4 books, and I replenished my Nag Champa and Egyptian Musk incense) and then we went grocery shopping together (which hardly EVER happens) and really got a chance to reconnect with each other. Later as we were watching the race, he even got up in the middle and whipped up some fresh egg salad and we ate it on crackers lol. It was a nice evening, and long over due.

So in conclusion, I am about to start the de-cluttering of my life phase, and it might be a little rough at times. There is some pretty heavy stuff I need to let go of, and part of me is very afraid to do so, because once I let it go, I am scared that I will forget...and that a part of me will somehow be missing. I know that is not actually the case, but it is still a formidable thing to face...

Skeletons in the closet, Demons of the soul, Monsters under the bed...joy, love, hope, pain, agony, defeat, anger....all being reflected through my eyes back to me as I stare in the mirror....

Have you looked at what lies in the space behind your eyes today?


*Music of the Moment: Southern Cross ( Jimmy Buffet version)*