Living with Pain: Grace Under Pressure

I don't talk about it much (because, dude--BORING), but I live with pain 24/7 and have since I was twenty-four. I'm Fifty-three now...you do the math. That's when I developed fibromyalgia, which is basically Latin for "ow, everything hurts and they don't know why." And recently I got hit with a new pain thingy, which is just too irksome and weird to go into here, but it seriously effects my ability to travel and exercise, and is just generally Not Fun.

Mostly, there isn't much that can be done about either of these issues (or the tendonitis that comes from being a writer who also uses a computer at work). I do stretches and some mild exercise, use a number of non-traditional approaches like acupuncture, massage, Reiki, and hypnotherapy, and on the very worst days, take Tylenol with codeine, which is so mild it pretty much does nothing. Frankly, a glass of wine with dinner is usually more effective, and much more pleasant. For the most part, I just live with it all and do the best I can.

So if I don't usually talk about it--why bring it up now?

A couple of reasons. For one, I'm having the fibro flare-up of the century; probably the worst I've dealt with in ten years or so. I blame it on the crazy weather patterns we've had here recently (I find that my fibro tends to respond badly to drastic barometric pressure changes...I can tell you when a storm is coming before the Weather Channel ever puts up an alert). And maybe hormones. I blame everything on menopause hormones. Go ahead; prove I'm wrong.

But mostly, it is because I've been thinking a lot about pain lately. Not just physical pain, because sometimes that's the least of our worries. The Boston bombing started me off, and then I had a major crisis with one of my most important friendships, and I have two friends who are dealing with the pain of having seriously ill husbands, and then yesterday, my pal Bryan had to bury his smart, sweet, 18 year old son. I'm pretty sure that his pain far outreaches mine at the moment, and will for a long time.

Here's the thing about chronic pain, whether it is physical, emotional, or spiritual: for the most part, you just have to live with it. There's no choice. No magic wand to whisk it away, no miracle pill to cure what ails you. It just IS.

But you do have a choice about HOW you live with it. My earlier years of dealing with chronic illness (there was other stuff too) were miserable. I was miserable, and I'm pretty sure anyone who was unlucky enough to be in the same room with me was miserable too. There might have been whining...

These days, I try, as much as possible, to deal with the pain with a little more grace. This doesn't mean I never have a bad day, or complain to one of my friends, or even spend a few minutes first thing in the morning cursing out loud as I try to get my body moving. (The cats don't seem to care, as long as I am moving towards their food bowls.) But mostly, I just get on with things.

That's what it comes down to, really. My friends whose husbands are ill are a perfect example of this. They're unhappy, and worried, and scared, and feel helpless in the face of the pain of those they love, but they are doing the best they can to put one foot in front of the other, and just live their lives the best they can.

Grace under pressure.

I learned a long time ago that attitude is everything. You can't always choose what crap life will throw at you next, but you can choose how you deal with it. I try to keep a positive attitude, and a sense of humor, and not to take my pain out on those around me. I remind myself often that there is always someone who is way worse off than me. (If you have seen any of the videos of the Boston victims, vowing from their hospital beds that this isn't going to ruin their lives, you know what I mean. Grace under pressure, many of them.)

For people like my friend Bryan, it will be a long time before life returns to anything resembling normal, and even longer before the pain begins to subside. But when I saw him yesterday, greeting the long line of people who had come to pay their respects, and share his pain in what small ways they could, it reminded me that the people I respect the most have this trait in particular. Grace under pressure.

I don't always pull it off perfectly, and I sometimes have to struggle to keep a positive attitude in the face of (as the Irish say) shite. But pain isn't who I am; it is just something I live with. I have a new motto that I'm using to help me try and hold on to that attitude:

I choose happiness and health.

Whenever I feel whiny or resentful about the pain (physical or otherwise), I say it to myself: I choose happiness and health. 

What do you choose? And do you have a motto that helps to get you through? I'd love to hear it if you do.

Feline Friday: The Rat Report

I am still fighting the good fight against the rat incursion. (RATS!) So far the count is Deborah 9, Rats 2 --the washer hose and my good garden boots, which I went to pull out of a corner of the mudroom yesterday and discovered THIS

Rats. We hates them, my Precious...

But I'm hearing less noise in the walls, so hopefully I've made a sizable dent in their population.

In the meanwhile, I still haz the cute kitties to console me. Here's your Friday Feline fix. I hope your Friday is fabulous and your weekend lovely.

 Magic, feeling that my row of birthday cards was missing something somehow.

Samhain, giving me the "you aren't REALLY going to stick me with that giant needle again" look. Poor baby, she's a trooper.

RATS!!!

I got 'em.

Last Wednesday, I went down into my basement, a place I tend to avoid whenever possible, on account of it is dim, dirty, and a little creepy. Not to mention full of spiderwebs. Bleh. But I was overdue to change the filter on the water cleaner, so I dutifully marched down there to take care of it.

[Side note: it is moments like this when I think, "Damn, it would be handy to have a guy around to do this crap." Just sayin'.]

I got part of the way down the narrow stairs and saw a piece of wood (from the dirt and lathe wall that has the kitchen on the other side) lying on the 4th step down. Huh. Then I got another couple of steps down, and could see that there was a bunch of dirt on the bottom steps. Clearly, something had dug through the wall. Bother. I've got a critter, I thought. Then I got to the bottom and looked across the basement, which has a stone foundation with concrete over the outside walls, low ceilings strung with wires,huge open beams,  and two not-very-bright dangling light bulbs. (I believe you now understand why I avoid the place.) There were swaths of pink insulation that had been flush to the beams that were now hanging down because something had been running across them. Crap, I said out loud. That's not good. I figured it was probably a squirrel or something, like the one that had gotten into my mudroom last fall and eaten all my spaghetti squash.

Still, not a big deal. I said something on Facebook, and one of my friends very kindly offered to lend me a couple of havaheart traps to catch whatever it was and get it the heck outa my house. At this point, I was figuring that if it was a squirrel, I could drive it a few miles down the road and release it. [I later found out that it is illegal to move critters off of your property, but nevermind.]

Checked the traps on Friday. Nothing. Checked on Saturday. Nothing. Went down to have a look on Sunday morning, and one of the traps had been sprung. So I tiptoed bravely over to look inside at what I'd caught, and said in a very loud voice, "DUDE. You are NOT a squirrel!" And then I uttered a few more words, none of which can be repeated here.

I had caught a rat. A BIG rat. Oh, the joy.

Mind you, I'm not one of those women who stands on a chair and shrieks when she sees a rodent. (And it's a damned good thing. Did I mention the rat was BIG?) For one thing, I've had cats my whole life. And when you have cats, you are occasionally going to be presented with mice, in various degrees of alive-ness. Also, I think rodents are cute. I don't want them in my damned house, but I think they're cute, and I'll rescue the mice from the cats whenever I can, despite the fact that they almost always die later from shock, and if they don't they'll probably turn right around and come back into the house. What can I say? I'm a big softy.

But not when it comes to RATS. (This is said in a low, growly voice with extra RRRRRR in it.) I had a pet rat in college when I took the "Introduction to Psych for geniuses" class (not it's official title) and got to train one in a Skinner box. Lovely rat--very smart, and pleasant company. But there is a huge difference between pet or lab rats and dirty, nasty, wild rats. Especially when they're in your freaking house. Reproducing like...rats.

They chew through wires in the walls, and hoses (yes, I discovered that the washer hose had been chewed through again, when I went to do the laundry on Saturday morning--this before I know it was rats--and almost certainly this is what chewed through both the washer hose and ALL THREE dishwasher hoses back in February, causing the Great Kitchen Flood of '13 which resulted in me having to replace the kitchen floor...RATS!). And they're dirty and carry diseases. And poop all over the place. UGH.

So I looked at that very large rat in the cage, and he looked at me, and I looked up rats on the internet, and I decided that no matter how self-sufficient I tend to be, this one was above my pay grade, and I called the local Wildlife Pest Guy, Doug. Who came over on Monday morning and gave me the Rats 101 course, and a bunch of instant-kill traps (not poison, which is nasty and kills them slowly, and often results in dead rats rotting in your walls....double UGH) and showed me how to bait and set them.

Sigh. Like I said, it is a good thing I'm not squeamish about this sort of thing. Because it was expensive enough for the first visit, and if he'd had to come out every day to empty and reset the traps, it would have cost me a lot more. (As it is, I'll have to have him come back out eventually to clean up the basement, since he has the know-how and the equipment to do it without making himself sick.)

So I baited the traps (without setting them, to make sure they were in the right place and the rats would go to them). And when they got emptied out, I went back down yesterday afternoon, and refilled and set them. This morning? Six dead rats. Again with the UGH, but those suckers have got to go. I can't even have the washer fixed until I am fairly sure that nothing is going to chew through the hose again right away. So now the traps are re-baited and waiting for the next bunch. Hopefully there aren't that many left, right?

Jeez. RATS!!!!!!

And yes, I do see the irony of having FIVE CATS and still having a rat infestation. In their defense, the cats aren't allowed into the basement (see dirty and creepy, above) and they can't reach the rats in the walls, although Magic has been staring at the kitchen wall behind the dishwasher for weeks. I assumed it was just the usual mice. But alas, no.

RATS. No thank you very much.

Feline Friday: Here's Looking at You

Happy Friday, all--here's looking at you kid!

The Birthday Weekend Report

I hadn't really planned to do anything special for my birthday this year--let's face it, turning 53 (gasp!) isn't exactly one of those big exciting occasions. But then people kept saying, "Why don't we...?" And somehow I ended up with plans for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

None of it was very fancy, but all added up together, it really made for a stellar birthday.

Friday, my friend Ellie (who runs The Artisans' Guild with me), took me and our mutual friend Bobbie, whose birthday is May 2nd, out for a shared birthday lunch at the wonderful Cajun restaurant down the street from the shop. I had this insanely good burger topped with bacon and sauteed onions and apples...

Ellie also bought me one of the best, most appropriate cards I ever saw...

 On Saturday, my fabulous blogger pal Rebecca Elson, from The Magical Buffet, came up from Clifton Park (about 2 hours away) with her husband Jim, who is an absolute sweetie. As was the amazing cake they brought with them from a local bakery, Dolce and Biscotti. It was a Guinness stout chocolate cake with Bailey's buttercream frosting. OH MY GOD. They also took me out to lunch at The Farmhouse, a terrific restaurant about 3 miles from my house, and then we just hung out and talked and talked and talked. It was a lovely day.

Then on Sunday, the actual day of my birthday, I spent the morning working in the garden with my best pal Ellen and then in the afternoon went to the movies with my friend John to watch Tom Cruise blow things up in Oblivion. Neither of those activities were particularly birthday oriented, but being with friends was the thing that made them great. Well, and John bought the popcorn :-)

All in all, it was a wonderful low-keyed three day celebration, topped off with lots of lovely birthday greetings both online and off. It made me feel all happy-shiny to know I had such great friends. There is no present better than that.

Contest Winners Announcement!

Thanks to everyone who took part in my Celebration Palooza Contest last week and helped me celebrate the new book deal and my birthday.

The winners are.... (drumroll please)

Lariss LaBrant -- The copy of Everyday Witch Book of Rituals
Robert Dix -- 10 pages of your work edited
Stephanie Wurtz -- a handcrafted necklace
Lenora -- your name used for a character in my next book

Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to everyone who entered the contest. You all rock!

Emails have gone out to the winners, but if you don't get yours for some reason, you can contact me at magicmysticminerva at yahoo to arrange for your prize.

YAY!

Feline Friday: The Big Changes Version

Here is one reality of life--some things never change. For instance, here is Magic the Cat, waiting (somewhat impatiently) for me to bring my breakfast into the living room, where I eat every morning because the light is amazing and I can watch the birds out the window. She's excited because I am eating cereal with cut up strawberries, and she loves strawberries. Yes, my Magic is Not Your Average Cat. You're just figuring this out? (In case you were wondering, that is Kim Harrison's new book I'm reading. Fab, as always.)

On the other hand, change is necessary for growth, and periodically we tend to hit times of major change and shift. This can be unsettling, especially if you are an uber-rooted Taurus (snort). I'll admit it--I'm not good with change.

Except right now.

Things are definitely changing and shifting, and not always in comfortable easy ways. But I am embracing the change, because it just feels like TIME.

I've finally gotten a fiction book deal after 7 years (interestingly, 7 is not only a traditional number for change--like the 7 year itch people in relationships are said to get--but also a biological fact...every 7 years, all the cells in your body have changed. You are literally a new person.).

And achieving that goal, after being focused on it for so long, frees me up to look around and see what else I need to be doing. Don't get me wrong: the hard work is just starting. But I don't have to be quite as driven in that particular direction and so now I am working at getting rid of old patterns that don't work for me and setting up new ones that do.

I'm now on an "internet diet" -- no Facebook, Twitter, or blogging on the weekends. If it is possible (within my obligations), I won't be on the internet at all on Saturdays and Sundays. If there is something I have to do, I'm zipping on and off again. It's amazing how much time this has freed up, and how much more relaxed I feel.

I am also back to a regular (although not yet every day) meditation practice, working at increasing my exercise, and taking a close look at the people and patterns in my life to see what works, and what doesn't.

Change is scary, but sometimes good. Are you working on any changes in your life? Does it feel good, or scare you...or both?

Oh, and don't forget to enter my Celebration Palooza Giveaway to help me celebrate both the book deal, and my birthday this Sunday. (And yes, I might pop onto Facebook for ten minutes to thank people for any birthday greetings...)

Here's something I hope doesn't change for a long time--a reasonably healthy Samhain, lazing in the sun.
Happy Friday, all!