The Tolling of the Bells - Ringing my own bell

Hey there, time to sound off again.  I know I'm a day early but I really wanted to share!

    Big news this week!  I’ve regained the use of my knee!!  This is beyond wonderful.  A little over a year ago, right when we were moving in here on our little farm, I did something to my knee while trying to move furniture.  I went to the doctor after the swelling wouldn’t go down in a week or so and my range of motion was actually getting worse.  They sent me for x-rays and an MRI which both showed up nothing.  I still believe I tore my meniscus, but since the MRI couldn’t see anything due to all the fluid and swelling, they gave me some steroids, told me to do squats, and sent me home. 

    Squats.  With a busted knee.  I suck at squats anyway, but when I couldn’t even support the usual amount of weight on my knee without stabbing and intense pains, how was I supposed to do squats?  When I told them I couldn’t do squats, they said to do lunges.  These folks.  I swear.  And before anyone wonders why I didn’t try a different doctor to get some better advice, as a Tricare Prime customer, I don’t get that option.  The alternative would be Tricare Standard, which would give me more flexibility to who I go see but wouldn’t cover as much and costs almost as much, so there you go.  Government healthcare at its supposed finest, and we want to force everyone to do this, because government. 

     Anyway, political and governmental snarks aside, I felt pretty stuck.  I couldn’t use my knee.  I couldn’t get help to use my knee.  We tried walking, but that raised hell with my knee, hips, and back, because I’m just a bundle of fun problems and the knee was exacerbating all the rest.  Changing the sheets made me cry with the pain in various body parts.  Doing the laundry or dishes had to be done in fits and starts, often with my husband and I tag teaming the chore so neither of us was forced to do the whole thing.  My little boy would beg me to hold him, and I just couldn’t. 

     I was moody, feisty, depressed, and downright miserable.  I just didn’t quite realize how miserable, because life is actually really good.  I didn’t feel like I had a right to be miserable, but pain does that to a person.  We tried short walks around the property to recondition it, but that made everything hurt worse.  We tried yoga once.  Just once.  Five minutes in, after cow and cat and while the lady was telling us to “relax back on our heels into child’s pose,” the pain reached a crescendo that felt like ice, electricity, and something tearing all at once, and that was just my knee.  My hip felt like I had hot wires down my sacroiliac, and my lower back felt like I was wearing a belt of rusty nails.  So yoga was out.  Completely out.

     A guy I used to know was into Kung Fu.  He told me about Qigong.  That was almost 10 years ago, and it kind of just slipped my mind until now.  I used to do martial arts with my dad, and my husband trained with his dad, too, back when we were both in high school.  We were from different schools of martial arts with me being more heavily into Judo and grappling styles while my husband was Yoshukai, but the idea of discipline and body control is pretty universal, even if styles are different.  The catas were always something we both enjoyed, so Qigong came back into my mind. 

     That night, against Pa’s better judgement because we were both in a state from the morning’s yoga misadventure, I sweet talked him into trying the Eight Brocades with me.  Specifically, we did this video.  At the very start, during the warmup something in my knee made a weird movement, not quite a pop, not quite a crunch, but something moved.  After completing the entirety of the Eight Brocades, I was sweating and out of breath, despite how slow and gentle it is, but we both managed nearly all of it with some modifications to allow for our strength and flexibility levels. 

     I was a bit achy, but who wouldn’t be after basically three years of mostly inactivity.  Between pregnancy, surgery, recovery, injury, recovery, injury, recovery, and a very sedentary job, I haven’t been exactly the paragon of physical fitness over here.  I figured I’d give it till the next morning to see for sure how my knee responded. 

     The next morning, I had full range of motion back in my knee.  Read that again.  Full.  Range.  Of.  Motion.  After over a year of not being able to bend it past 90 degrees and not being able to straighten it fully, I had full range of motion back in my knee.  I could bear weight on it.  I kept catching myself standing funny to cater to my bad knee, and I would correct myself, stand up straight, do a little dance of pure joy, and stand on both feet.  My back, consequently, doesn’t hurt as back, because it’s not cocked funny due to poor posture.  Even my hip doesn’t hurt as bad, because I don’t have excess pressure on one hip versus the other constantly.  I was able to stand at the sink, do a whole sink of dishes and do laundry without having to take a break. 

     Pa says his back is unchanged, but that is still better than hurting worse like it did the day after our yoga misadventure.  We have been doing Qigong every other day.  I found a better video here that explains the moves and the breathing.  We’re hoping to move up to every day soon.  I still get out of breath and can’t do the meditative breathing properly, but that will come.  And in the meantime, I CAN USE MY KNEE!!!  Holy crap!  My attitude is improved.  My depression is gone.  I have more patience with my husband and my little boy.  This is a huge deal for me, and really for all of us.  I am not a super nice person when I am cranky, and I have been cranky for almost a solid year.

     Relief, happiness, peace, joy, excitement, all the good words you can think of, apply to me right now.  I want to find more forms to do.  In addition to the Eight Brocades, I've found the Five Elements and the Five Animals.  I imagine there are more.  I mean, it's a 5,000-year-old tradition.  I imagine there are a few more than 18 forms, but I could be wrong.  Maybe they refined and perfected and this is all that is needed.  We're going to focus on the Brocades until we have them down in muscle memory, then move on to the Elements.  The Animals are more complex and will require much more flexibility, strength, and focus.  I'm excited.  This may not be a weight-loss journey, but it will be a health-improving one, and that is more important, I think.  

Tolling of the Bells: Perspective

     Has it really been a week with nothing new posted?  There for a while I was on a daily roll, but life happened again. 

     I’ve had more scoping to do the past couple of weeks, and I haven’t had as much time for blogging or projects.  Most days I consider it good if the dishes get done and a load of laundry goes in the wash.  Scoping is a type of transcription.  I contract under a court reporter who sends me audio files to transcribe into text documents, formatted based on Morson’s English Guide for Court Reporters.  It’s exacting, and I’m not perfect at it, but fortunately my sister-in-law is the court reporter and she is perfect at punctuation, so between the two of us, we git ‘er done. 

     As a former deputy, I have had glimpses of criminal law and spent 5 years as one of many tending to almost 1,000 inmates.  One thing about scoping is it gives me windows into the civil disputes and divorce proceedings that people bring against one another.  It's quite different from the criminal side at times, but sometimes not so much.  Some of the things people do to one another, say about one another, hold against one another, it can be astonishing, sad, petty, awful, and utterly ridiculous.  But no matter what the scenario, what the context, it always gives me a perspective against which to hold my relationship and to realize that even though we have our moments, I am a very, very lucky woman. 

     Most anyone who knows me knows I turned away from the church pretty early on.  I couldn’t handle the utter hypocrisy, backstabbing, backbiting, mudslinging, trash talking, bad mouthing, hurtful, hateful, and utterly poisonous environment that was every church I had ever been forced to attend.  But that is not to say that I don’t believe that there are lessons to be learned in the Bible.  I just have no faith or calling towards organized religion.  I believe there are valuable lessons to be learned in many of the world's benign religions.  I consider myself a pagan, a heathen in the original sense:  one who dwells among the heath, a country person, rural; and also in the literal sense of one not belonging to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. 

     I don’t hold to any of their tenants, although (with the exception of Islam which I have never and never intend to study) I do feel that there are valuable lessons to be learned.  Casting pearls before swine, as it were, seemed to be what was happening in every church I attended. 

     One of those strings of pearls is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. 

4.  Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful,

5.  not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.

6.  Love does not gloat over other people’s sins but takes its delight in the truth.

7.  Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.

8.  Love never ends; but prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, knowledge will pass.

     I am not all these things.  I am not always kind or patient.  I can be jealous and rude.  I am occasionally boastful and selfish, and all the gods know I have a quick and fiery temper.  I can be honest to a fault and frequently lack tact, so I guess that’s a mixed blessing.  I have known lack of trust and the complete shattering of it, though not with my husband.  He’s never abused my trust.  I have many hopes.  I am fiercely protective, I will endure, and I have endured. 

     But my husband?  He is all of these things and more.  He is my teddy bear and my rock.  He’s my soft place to hide and the kick in the ass I need when I need it.  He is humble and generous and the best daddy in the world.  And yes, I am boasting.  I will brag about him to the moon and back.  He deserves it.  He puts up with so much crap from me.  He puts up with my anxiety and perfectionism.  He puts up with my crazy high standards for everything I do that sometimes makes me come across as a bit crazy and fixated.  Maybe I am crazy and fixated.  He tells me that I am good enough.  He shows me that I am good enough. 

     And some would say that we’ve only been married for a few years and are still in the honeymoon stage, maybe I'll get jaded.  I scoff at that.  Five years isn’t all that long to be married, but we’ve known each other for over 20 years.  He’s seen all my ugly, and I’ve seen all his pitiful.  We’ve seen each other’s mistakes, triumphs, wrongdoing, and watched helpless while the other was wronged.  We’ve been friends a lot longer than we’ve been anything else, and that’s, I think, the most important thing.  Friends don’t cheat one another, lie to one another, abuse one another or one another’s trust.  Friendship is love, and love can’t happen without friendship. 

     We both have our imperfections, and we both have to forgive one another on a regular basis, over and over again, for little things, petty things.  We both have bad days and lose our tempers.  We both wake up grumpy or grate on each other’s nerves.  We get even more opportunity to do that since he’s retired and I work from home.  We are *always* together, under one another’s feet, and that is quite a bit different than spending the majority of our days apart, only seeing each other in the evenings like many couples do and like we used to do. 

     But I know this:

I know he loves our little boy. 

I know that I never have to be afraid of him. 

I know that he will protect us as long as he is able. 

I know that he is a good man. 

I know that he is trustworthy. 

I know that I am a very lucky woman.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that he loves me.  

The Tolling of the Bells - Wants vs. Needs

     I thought I would try to actually do a weekly blog post.  I know in the past I usually have just done a post when I have something particular to share, like a successfully completed project, progress on a goal, a delicious recipe, et cetera.  But there are often times that I have no successes to share, or even failures.  There are weeks when all I’ve accomplished is just another successful week of life.  I suppose that’s really not something to sneer at, huh?  I mean, if I hadn’t managed to do that much, I’d be dead, so here’s to another week alive! *holds up her mason jar of sweet tea in salute*

     I know I'll probably forget, because good intentions have a way of getting derailed by life's interventions, but today I do actually have something on my mind.  Wants versus needs.  Folks are clamoring for higher minimum wage, because they just can’t seem to live on what they earn.  Then when they get the higher minimum wages, prices go up, hours get cut, benefits suffer, and they still can’t live on what they earn.  You know what the problem is?  No one taught them how to live on what they earn.

     We’ve gone from a culture where it was shame and dishonor on a family to be on the dole to a culture that considers it some kind of a mark of pride to exploit the system and get as much as they can out of it.  I’m of the old-school mindset.  I’ve never been on food stamps or welfare or any form of government assistance other than a year and a half on WIC while my son was eating us out of house and home in baby food.  And do you know my conscience ate me alive every time I used that card?  I felt like I was stealing.  As soon as he started eating solids, I quit redeeming the vouchers. 

     Folks say they can’t live on minimum wage, but the thing is folks just don’t know how to make do.  I lost count of how many times someone expressed surprise that a dish or dessert I sent with my husband to some function or other was homemade.  It was astounding to some of them, like it never occurred to them that *somebody* had to make the dish from scratch before it became a prefab convenience item in the grocery store’s freezer or boxed on the shelf. 

     Do you know what the average cost of a loaf of bread in the USA is?  According to Google, it’s around $2.37.  Do you know how much it costs to make a simple bread recipe?  About 50 to 75 cents, and that’s two standard loaves.  Folks will say, “But it takes too long.”  No, it doesn’t take that long.  I have an excellent on-demand recipe that takes five minutes to throw together.  Let it rise two hours, stick it in the fridge, and pull off a lump to bake whenever you want it.  I’ve smooshed it out into sandwich rounds that take 10-15 minutes to bake and make wonderful lunches.  Time is what you make of it.

     But learning to cook and saving on groceries is only part of it.  We’ve become such an instant gratification society that folks mistake their wants with needs.  Do we need Internet?  Some would argue yes, because so much nowadays demands that we have access to the Internet.  We can’t even get our Tricare information in paper form anymore.  We have to go online and have an e-mail address.  But do I really need Internet?  No.  McDonalds, the coffee shop, two or three gas stations, the cell phone store, the library, even the churches have Wi-Fi, and we live near a T-I-N-Y town.  If I can go jack some free Wi-Fi in Tinytown, Texas, I’m pretty sure folks can jack Wi-Fi most anywhere except possibly rural Montana and remote Alaska.  There’s $60-$80 a month that could stretch the grocery budget, pay a utility, or get put in savings.

     Do folks need cable TV, Netflix, Hulu, a smartphone, that data plan on your cell phone, all those minutes?  No, probably not.  We dumped our smartphones and cut our monthly bills by $120 by downgrading back to flip phones with no data plan.  We don’t have any TV subscription, no subscription movie services, no Game Fly or any of that.  Those are wants.  Folks can live without them just fine, they just don’t want to.

     Folks don’t need their hair professionally done, fancy nails, a steady supply of new clothes, that brand new car, an iPad, expensive sneakers, or that new gaming system.  Folks don’t need a million different beauty supplies, half a dozen cleaning supplies for every room, little chemical pots to plug into outlets and make their house smell.  If it comes down to it, it’s not necessary to shave every night, buy smelly lotions from fancy stores that you can smell before you can even see them, or have that moisturizing body wash that costs $5 or more for less than two cups.

     You know what folks need:  A roof overhead, food on the table, warmth in the winter, and a way to pay for those things.  Learn to cook, buy real food or, even better, grow it.  Buy in bulk and eat at home.  Skip the cafeteria and pack a lunch.  Ditch the smart phone, clean with vinegar or bleach, and ditch the fancy, smelly stuff.  Jewelry can’t be eaten.  That $20 worth of makeup won’t help cover the electric bill.  $10 a month for a Hulu or Netflix subscription doesn’t sound like much, but it boggles my brain when people say they can’t afford groceries but they keep shelling out for streaming movies. 

     Don’t say “I can’t afford food,” but go out on Friday nights.  Don’t say “I can’t live within my means,” then buy a new shirt instead of sewing on a lost button or buying new jeans instead of patching the old ones.  Don’t trade up for a new car every year, then complain because the electric got cut off again due to late payments.

     People love to talk about “the struggle” but in truth many have never struggled a day in their lives.  They need to take their entitled tails to a place where people really are struggling to live.  They need to recognize that it is no one else’s responsibility to bail them out.  Giving “government” funds to sinking businesses is stealing from one to pay for someone else’s bad choices.  Giving “government” funds to able-bodied people who won’t earn it is penalizing producers and rewarding laziness.  Government ordering businesses to double their payroll is just as bad, because it still has to come from somewhere.  The trickledown lands on the head of the people at the bottom, and those cost increases are going to hurt the little folks more than anyone else.  And guess what?  They still won’t be able to afford to live, because suddenly the cost of everything will have gone up, their hours will have been cut, their benefits will cost more, and they’ll still be yelling for more money, because they don’t seem to understand that. 

     People need to find their dignity again.  That’s most definitely a need. 

     These are some of the things we’re trying to withdraw from on our little homestead.  We want to reduce our dependence on the rat-race as well as reduce our contribution to it.  We’re evaluating our wants and our needs, deciding if those wants are even really worth it, merging them together where we can.  We’re still painfully in our infancy in this.  It’s amazing how much more capable my grandparents were than I am.  In just a single generation, we as an entire culture have lost so much knowledge and skills and abilities. 

     Once it was a matter of necessity to put away enough food for your family for the year.  Then it became a matter of pride to not have to work in the earth.  That fast, we lost so much, and trying to learn with no mentor to guise us is trial and error.  I still haven’t even successfully grown my first tomato plant, though I am trying again this year.  We will get there, if only through sheer determination and a heck of a lot of trial and error.  We’ll get there.  And you know what?  We’ll be danged proud of ourselves.