Writing with a brain that thoughts are plodding through like rain boots in mud is not easy. I woke this morning thinking my brain was not up for stringing words together. When rain storms roll in and roll in and don’t stop rolling in, (like they have been here in the NW), my body and brain can not handle the pressure changes and my function level drops to low lows. I’m a bit like our lawn right now-soggy. I’m soggy in brain and body.
I thought I could handle a quick check in on my blog for new comments and found that Dominique at 4 Walls With a View, had indeed left a comment and a perfect one for this particularly slow morn. She nominated my blog for an award. Thank you Dominique! In so doing, she also has given me something I think this brain can handle writing about today…receiving the award requires writing ten things about yourself that you think their readers might not know. So, I will go plodding through my mind in search of ten things about me…
-According to the NY Times approximately 12% of the population actually like fruit cake. I am in that 12 %.
-I was a lifeguard in my late teens/early twenties. Though I never saved a life and spent most of my time collecting ultra-violet rays and hoping I was looking cute in my red suit, I was so proud of myself for earning that lifeguard certificate. I had to “save” a two hundred pound dude who was laying at the bottom of the 11 foot swimming pool. This included lifting him out of the pool, with not a scratch on him. Way back then I was a little thing, 115 pounds, and I felt like one strong, little woman.
-I started out a nursing major in college. I switched majors the day before I was scheduled to do my first catheter on a guy. (My what a wimp was I!)
-Way back when, I sang so much that I drove everyone around me nuts…that is until I was on a stage…ie. at our county fair when I stood beside my guitar teacher ready to sing back up to his lead (Gordon Lightfoot-”I can see her lying there in her satin dress…”) or when I played the part of Angelique in “The Imaginary Invalid” which included a small singing solo… NO SOUND BEYOND A WHISPER could I produce. Consequently I wasn’t given many solo ops after that. (Due to a Neuromuscular condition-Probable Myasthenia Gravis, I can no longer sing. My lesson, don’t let your nerves stop ya from doing what you love!)
-I like liverwurst a lot. If it wasn’t full of nitrates and fat, I would eat a liverwurst sandwich everyday.
-I am dotted with “purple things”. They are genetic benign little tumors (”glomus tumors” officially, they grow off blood vessels and wrap around nerves). Thankfully you can’t see them unless at close range and most are in areas like the inside of my arm where they are hard to see. They are so rare, that once when I went to a foot surgeon to have one removed from my toe, the doc. called everyone in his office to see it.
-I used to be known as “The Mosaic Lady” at local thrift stores, because I would go in weekly and buy used ceramic plates to bust up and turn into art. My weak muscles have stopped me from mosaicing, but I still love that title.
-I have to write lists to remind myself about anything I need to do. CFS makes the short memory much shorter. But, I have a freakish long term memory in which I can remember every phone number and minute details about people and events from when I was a kid. Just yesterday my husband was trying to remember the name of the wife of a friend of his family that he hasn’t see in over twenty years and that I’ve never met, but must of heard of years ago, because her name came right out of my mouth. Recently I reminded my mom what my dad’s exact salary was in the early ’70’s–I had overheard them talking about it–I would have been about ten at the time. Hmmm….I guess I’m freakishly nosey too.
-During a college summer break I worked as a camp counselor, sleeping under the stars on a quarter inch pad each night. Some nights I awoke to racoons standing beside me, just staring at me.
-I who won’t watch a horror movie, love to read Stephen King’s books.
-I watch the Bachelor…even though I think it is staged, shallow and cheesy.
That was so darn much fun…you know why? Because it was all about me…how humbling to be human…and though I try to be above such things as “all about me”, I’m so not.
This is a new blogger award…I probably should be disqualified because I’ve been around awhile, but since I seem to be in an “all about me” space, I accept it with gratitude. My nominations are two new blogs…started, or at least discovered and added to my blog list this past year. (Dominiques’s blog 4 Walls and a View is an awesome new blog!) Kudos to all my favorite bloggers who I didn’t nominate. I hope you know you make this journey with ME/CFS easier and a heck of a lot more fun…and I know you understand the limits this illness puts on a CFS brain. This soggy brain of mine has fuel remaining just for nominating two new blogs today…
Tired of me
Readers, feel free to share 10 things about you in the comment section. It’s fun…let yourself be all about you!
Good morning– Time to add some sugar and sweeten up this blog! Fortunately a friend and fellow blogger sent me a six pound bag!
Maureen at Being Chronic Ill is a Pill honored my blog with this Kreative Blogger Award. (Thank you Mareen! Right back at ya cause your blog is one of my favorites!) This award comes with a condition; the receiver has to share six things that make them happy. Here’s six of my favorite things (The Sound of Music-I hear Julie Andrews singing…”brown paper packages tied up in string”):
ONE: Listening to my hubby and kids talking in the next room. If I’m laying down cause I don’t feel so good, their talking can lull me to sleep like a baby listening to a lullaby.
TWO: TRUE GRIT friends! (John Wayne in True Grit- nothing scared Rooster Cogburn. How about a chronically ill friend? Have a feeling even tough John Wayne would jump on his horse with a “Shake it off Pilgrim” and ride away into the sunset.)
So…my friends and family, who aren’t scared off by my chronic illnesses, you make me happy. Nothing like being with a friend (or someone you love) and not having to be anything but who you are, feel anything but what you feel, and together find humor everywhere!
THREE: Cooking with my daughters and/or hubby. ( Paula Deans on my mind’s tv screen, adding another stick of butter to a batter while her sons spice up buffalo wings beside her.) There’s something about reading recipes out loud, sharing tasks, filling the house with comforting smells and then eating what we make together. It fills the tummy and the soul. (I also felt happy doing dishes with my now grown up son when he was a teenager. We had some of our best conversations while the two of us did dishes…and when we were done, more happiness…a clean kitchen.)
FOUR: Riding in our canoe with my hubby. (On Golden Pond with Jane Fonda and Henry… —oops that was father and daughter, but there was a small boat and a lake scene.)
FIVE: Trees! I ask for trees for mother’s day and birthdays. My hubby plants them and I get to watch them grow. (An Inconvient Truth. Al gore is standing on the platform of the machine that lifted him to the top of his giant power point screens. He is clapping and nodding at us for reducing of our carbon footprint.)
SIX: Creating. Taking bits of nothing and making something, whether it’s letters into words and sentences, yarn into a blankets, pieces of old plates and tile into a mosaic, clay into a pot (”Ghost”—Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, creating more than a ceramic pot out of clay!)
SEVEN: Box of chocolates. (Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoch in Chocolat).
Hmmm think this is leading to a number EIGHT–Romance!
Oops, supposed to stop at six… lost track…having too much fun.
Maureen, thank you for the sugar, for honoring my blog with this fun award. Your encouragement makes me feel happy.
Now I get to pass out awards to some of my favorite blogs:
Thoughts of a Square Peg in a Round World
Grab your award badge, write about six things that make you happy and pass the award on to some of your favorite blogs.
