2018

2018

This year sort of sucked.
Trump.
Kavanaugh.
And then Minnesota for the summer.

Was chilly and rainy for the 2nd year in a row in Minnesota. I'd been so happy to have scored a cheap summer home near the kids after we quit hauling an RV around. Too late. The kids and grandkids have busy lives and we hardly saw anybody all summer. Kind of like how we treated our own parents...

I had two eye surgeries and a bladder surgery, spent the summer in clinics, doctors' offices and recuperating.

Came home in October with good vision (can drive again!) and less-problematic bladder, where after much reflection led us to selling the Minnesota mobile home. Ron drove back up there and brought our stuff home, which we've been STUFFING into our two homes here. That's a work in progress. Our financial picture improves drastically without the year-round expenses (lot rent and heat) of the Minnesota home, and instead we'll fly up there every July. Can rent a car and a cabin there for three weeks for tons less money. In time, the family will maybe realize if they want to see us more, they're welcome here WHERE WE BUILT THEM A GUESTHOUSE TO STAY IN FREE!

Actually, the one that DOES visit is expected in a week or two, gonna stay 6 weeks.  They've been here, they know.

So we'll be living fulltime in Mexico. It truly is paradise, except for July-August-September when it's hotter'n hades and we just stay inside in the AC. 

Today's my son's birthday. I made the traditional lasagna he always got on his birthday. It was terrific. His dad made him one at home too, and I talked to them all on video-call. Not the same, but felt good.

Cooked all day for that and for upcoming holiday celebrations. We have good friends here, feels almost like family sometimes. Mitigates my annual holiday blues.

Yesterday I ordered this, it'll be the topper on my Christmas tree:

Haven't been making any art, feeling exhausted and self-isolating up til now. Netflix. I do feel that lifting lately, so hope to begin again. Ordered myself a Flamingos Paint-By-Number for Christmas!

The Guesthouse

Just realized I never blogged about our guesthouse. I actually rarely blog at all anymore, as most of my friends and family know it all any way.

We used to have an RV out on the pad for guests, but got rid of it when we bought a mobile home in Minnesota for summers. This left us with just a one-bedroom house with no guest accommodations. Not that we ever have guests, but IN CASE, we built a guesthouse.

Actually, Buddha built it. This is Buddha, real name Luis.

We had him build it on top of our garage, with just a vague floorplan we made, plus a covered deck overlooking the ocean view.

Garage far left

We had him make it out of lladrillos, an adobe-like local brick. What I didn't understand until much later is that lladrillos are not waterproof, and we'd have stucco covering the outside. I thought I'd be looking at a rustic brick exterior. Oh well.

It took a year. Buddha works kind of slowly, plus finances demanded the work proceed as the money came in. Here are some in-progress photos.

Lovely rustic brick, alas, had to get covered up.

As you see, there were huge swaths of concrete on my lovely rustic brick interior, which I wasn't happy with. So I showed Buddha some google images of the "Exposed Brick" concept of decor. He got it perfectly, although it seemed to cement his opinion of me as a crazy gringa.

So here's what we ended up with. You can click on them to enlarge for more detail.

View from the deck!

Ta-DA!

Still needs floor covering, that's just the concrete garage roof. We furnished it on a dime, all Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace stuff. Plus stuff I made: counter skirts, shower curtain, kitschy stuff for the walls. It's already been christened, when Ron's daughter Caprice and her husband Don visited us in April.

Sleeps 4 with the futon and bed. Tiny minimal kitchen, propane cooker with oven, shelves behind counter skirting. Tiny fridge under counter. Tiniest toilet I ever saw since kindergarten. Best view in the hood. Bringing home a normal table and chairs from Minnesota next month, the set that's there is made from pallets and is supremely uncomfortably stiff and heavy. With exposed nails. Also a big dresser with mirror to go next to front door where the smoking cat picture is, and a small corner TV stand (and TV) for corner of living area by the patio door.

Will install a minisplit AC unit upon our return, and do something to boost our wifi signal from the house because currently you can only get a signal when kneeling on the sofa by the window.

This guesthouse isn't a guesthouse as in "Accommodations for Rent". It's for close friends and family only, people that would probably be sharing meals next door with us, and spending time with us. I'd be too embarrassed to have strangers there with its minimal comforts. Family and close friends, sure, because they love us.

Loads of thanks to friends who helped with donated cast-offs and bargains: Tunkes, Parkers, Bensons, Patricia, Cathie, and of course Marisela.

Opioid addiction. I get it.

Opioids. Opiates. I kind of get it now.

I've tried drugs before, never truly liked any of them. Have appreciated post-op pain meds before, for the brief healing interval, but never had issues once healed.

This seems different.

I had a minor procedure 4 days ago (a Friday) to repair a bladder-leakage-when-coughing problem I've had for several years. At the risk of EW! TMI!, he goes in through the vagina and makes an incision. Then inserts a long mesh ribbon, wraps it around the urethra (pee tube) and tunnels the two ends of the ribbon through the abdomen, exiting at the bikini line. Adjusts the tension, then sutures and snips off the ends.

Didn't sound TOO bad in theory. OMG.

Can barely walk. No position sitting or lying is comfortable. Intense back pain from contorted positions and long-deteriorated vertebra in my lower spine.

Hence the 10 Hydrocodone tablets they gave me. Relief from nearly all of it within 30 minutes. But back in 3 hours.

Called the surgeon's office panicked on Monday morning, so scared because I only had 2 Hydrocodone tablets left and there had been no improvement, plus they stop your bowels. Not that I have any appetite, but 4 days nada adds to the general discomfort. No call back all day. Actually had a friend of mine offer to overnight some of her stash from New Mexico (Thanks Beck!).

They finally ordered it yesterday, so I caught Beck before she went to the post office. I was so extra miserable from trying to delay pain control until I had more. Plus had sent my husband to Walgreens for a quick-acting laxative. He brought me suppositories...Which work.  On the plus side? The urine leakage has nearly stopped. No trouble peeing, just pooping. I now have stool softeners in tablet form as well.

Hydrocodone provides immediate and near-total escape from what ails you. I can totally understand wanting to take 1 or 2 every 3 hours round the clock. No way do I want another addiction: gin and cigarettes are two too many as it is. But I totally get the temptation.

New Chapter!

Buoyant mood!
Just had my sight restored, albeit temporarily. My Macular Degeneration had me not able to see well enough to drive for over a year. The loss of freedom was devastating. Turned out there were huge cataracts compounding the vision loss. Bilateral cataract surgery now has me at 20/20 without the coke-bottle glasses I've worn since I was 5. Still need readers for anything closer than 4 feet, but DAMN!
This should last a couple of years, the doc thinks, til the MD advances more. And no, it's the dry kind of MD they can't do anything for. But maybe within 2 years they'll find something?

AND, at risk of imparting TMI, am set to have my bladder integrity restored later this month through a minor surgical correction.

LOOK OUT WORLD! A liberal-atheist-continent-sighted-elderly woman is about to debark!

The Mom in me

Girl, woman, nurse, mother, wife, grandmother. Some of my titles through life. To me, the greatest of these is Mom, and I know my last sentient thoughts will be of Jon.

I was 23 years old when I became a mom, a naive Minnesota white girl who had only witnessed great moms (my own didn't like me very much). I knew little other than this boy would know he was loved.

I made horrific mistakes. Alcohol. My sketchy friends. Permissiveness. Blind acceptance of his desires and decisions through an ill-conceived effort to allow him to learn by consequence. I didn't often know where he was at 10 PM. He survived it all with aplomb.

In his 40s now, and despite me, he's the kindest, gentlest, most giving son, man, and dad of two I've ever known. And his children know they are loved.

Maybe that's enough sometimes. Just love them.

My Dream

It's rare I remember my dreams at all, but I want to get this one down while I do.

I am standing outside my theater-size classroom, 10 minutes early. No clue what age I am. Sit down on a bench and open my laptop and read the assignment for today, which I hadn't done. I was to write one or two typewritten pages on What and Where Am I In 10 Years. So I start banging it out.

I write about wilderness and mountains, some sort of helper or attendant in the background. A life of audio books, cats, good smells of the earth/trees/food, warmth and comfort, ease and solitude and cerebral pursuits. There is a white cane. No other people aside from the unseen but devoted caretaker.

It feels peaceful, contented.

Then all the doors bang open, students and noise streaming by. As I gather my things to go into class,  I wake up having to pee.

So in this dream at least, I've accepted and adapted to being blind, and it can still be good. The being alone part was a surprise, but not entirely repugnant to an old tired woman, if you get my drift. Maybe the kids and grandkids visit a lot.

Stopping Sexual Abuse

After 50 years, I'm learning you have to talk about it to SOMEONE to begin to heal from it. AND to help prevent it from happening again to someone else.

My mother was sexually abused and never talked about it to anyone. She was so damaged by it, her personality so fundamentally altered, that she sent me to spend unsupervised time with him.

"The blame that roars out of their violence sticks to the child’s spirit like super glue. The fight, for the rest of that child’s life, for some sense of belief in one’s own worth is a steep uphill grind. Shame of what others will think of them “if they knew” haunts them. If they don’t become haters and blamers themselves. Which, if they don’t, is miraculous. And a testament to a more than resilient spirit." Dr. Margaret Rutherford

My mother's spirit was less than resilient.

 

 
Women may tell themselves it's too private, too shameful to share. Or even that it's over, done, why rehash it, why pick the scab?

Two reasons.

To understand and deal with how it changed you. And it DID change you. 

Control issues and powerlessness.
Insecurity and validation and self-worth.
Fear (and loathing) of intimacy.
Trust.

To prevent it from happening to others.

If even ONE woman can hear your story, feel a smidgen of "Ah! She knows!" maybe she'll feel the weight of it all begin to lift an inch or two. Shared trauma is a shared burden, and confronting it is the beginning to surviving it. To alter the outcome. If your spouse or older children can begin to understand what happened, why you are what you are,  they can maybe take steps to prevent it's happening to them or to others.

Be the safe place your daughter or granddaughter knows. Ensure that she'll trust you. Have the conversation, often, so she'll tell you if she's scared or hurt. Abusers are powerfully skilled at ensuring silence.

My sexual abuse happened between the ages of 9 and 16. I'm 65 now, and to this day I still view men at best as Pickle-Jar-Openers. I struggle to find value in men. I know it's there (in most men), but I've hard-wired myself to only see their flaws. To see the threat. It's terribly unfair and absolutely undeserved, but it's there.

I dread physical contact. It's a violation, abhorrent, and a trigger.

My eyes narrow when I see men with children. I watch, measure, evaluate.

I want it to stop. The recent Me Too movement has been helpful in dissolving the "I'm so alone" feeling. I want to heal. I'm reading, talking to some people, writing about it. Beginning to heal.

One in three. How many do you know?