1. I've forgotten what it's like not to be consumed with exhaustion at the end of each day. I can no longer remember what it's like to have arms and legs that aren't completely floppy from tiredness and a time when a headache was an extremely rare occurrence for me.

2. There's something to this super-complicated life that's made me see the value of classical and smooth pop music. Because the world outside is so violent, the music helps calms the world inside and makes it peaceful, not the battle the daily struggle can be.

3. I'm going to have to completely abandon the writing project, which makes me feel glad in the sense that I never signed up to join in the first place but... damn it, I would love to do this just once! But I can never find the time or opportunity to. I guess I'm just never meant to do it.

4. That thought makes me sad because I really wish I could publish some novels or books, and I have some pretty good story ideas either way. But every time I transfer that idea over to print, it just falls flat, or I'm so tired by the time I can get to a computer that I... simply can't.

5. I'm trying very hard to find time in my life for mindless fun, but every time I think I have any I find it's being preoccupied by some obligation or errand or chore or what have you. I'm starting to think that I'm not meant to have that, either, not even now that I've snatched some time away for myself. And that's pretty much the only way I can get any time for "me" stuff, is to wrest it away and claim it forcefully. And even then it has to be for some purpose or obligation or need. I can't simply get away just for fun stuff, stuff that would assuage my tempestuous soul.

6. Why can't I have had two healthy, living parents? Life would be so much easier for me if I did. I would have loved to have moved away and carved my own life when I was supposed to. But now I have to spend it taking care of Mom, being shackled to her as a slave.

7. No, I can't drop her or just go off on my own. If my guilt at that wouldn't get me, the cackles of the family gossips flapping their gums about my "irresponsible" behavior would. So no, abandoning her would not at all be feasable. Not for awhile, it seems.

8. I hate that we have these family gossip fiends. They got on Mom's case for putting Grandma in a nursing home for the last year of her life in spite of the fact that we'd been trying to take care of her for years and her Alzheimer's was worsening by the day. We (Mom, Dad, and I) simply could not do it any longer, and those vultures couldn't spend one moment dropping their soaps and other trivialities and helping us for just one day, just to see what we were going through. I bitterly resent their presence in my family's life. BITTERLY. RESENT.

9. My God I've needed to get that out for such a long time. These people also make up the most ridiculous, over the top lies about others. They are familial poison and do this only because they've never known what it's like to live productive lives. I hope they rot in hell.

10. So that's my little list entry for the day, all done up and packaged in a pretty little blue bow and sent out for another day's worth of journaling. Hopefully I can steal enough time away for another one of these tomorrow. It's been incredibly helpful for me.

I am so exhausted I can't even see straight. I feel like I have literally been dragged around outside for days and days and I've been actively fighting all that time to avoid getting my skin burned off. Or like I've stayed up for days and days and am trynig to hang on for another day. I cannot sand for this. I feel like I'm barely clinging onto consciousness. I haven't had a truly restful day in so long, I can't even remember it. I also haven't been able to go on vacation or step away from worries in many, many years. I'm coming up on 14 straight months of an extremely hectic schedule and I can't recall a day therein when I didn't have to hustle throughout the day. I feel as though if I were to fall asleep for enough of a period of time to make me feel rested again, I might never wake up. I'm at my wits' end; I can't do this anymore if I want to keep sane. Help.

Today I had to wake up early so I could take Mom to a 9:00 AM doctor's appointment, then I had to pick up some prescriptions of mine before we ate an Arby's to-go meal in the car because Mom's still not that comfortable with going inside very many places, then we came home and I started cooking a pot roast for tomorrow's dinner while I went back and forth with the PT and OT specialists who dropped by this afternoon, made mashed potatoes and carrots, washed innumerable dishes, had to apply some ointment on a wound on Mom's leg, fetched the mail, sat down for a brief spell, finished the pot roast meal up, put everything away for tomorrow, made oatmeal and a piece of toast for Mom's dinner, warmed up a couple of frozen waffles and topped them off with a chocolate hazlenut spread for my own dinner, washed up a final time from all of that, had to be going back and forth between everything and whatever Mom had me fetch or do for her, killed some flies with this new flying insect spray I purchased at the supermarket a couple of weeks back, and have just now settled down to truly relax for the first time since waking up at about 6:30 this morning, a long, tough, endless, relentless day. FML.

But I did finally get to search for the theme tune alluded to in the previous LJ entry title on YT and viewed said program's opening titles a few times during a spare few moments I managed to catch while the pot roast was simmering away on the stove. So, well, you know. And now if you will, I must retire to my bedchamber because I'm starting to feel like the room's spinning and it feels like my neck is having to support a thousand pound boulder.

Dear brain, please work normally for me again.

Dear digestive system, please stop kicking my ass.

Dear head, please stop throbbing.

Dear time, please stop moving so gosh-darned fast so I can do more in a day.

Dear hands, please stop drinking the Hateorade.

Dear right arm, please stop cramping so I can type more.

Dear neck, please don't be so tense.

Dear me, please stop aging so I don't have to feel like my body's going to break down.

Dear world, please stop spinning -- I want to get off.

No love, me.

Hello, this is D_____ the Introverted Extrovert.  (Or is it the Extroverted Introvert?  Same difference?)  Sorry I can't come to the LJ right now, but if you'll leave your name, number, and a brief message (you don't really have to leave your number) I'll get back to you as soon as I can.  Thanks!

BTW, have busy life, will cogitate.  I don't even know if "cogitate" is the right word here but I'm just going to cast it out to the open skies and cross my fingers that I'm remembering properly from my vocabulary lessons of old.

(I had an exceptionally long day today, not even enough to leave me with enough time to jot down anything for this LJ.  Sorry.)

(Oh, and ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble apple and bramble crumble.)

I think I was meant for the 1970s.  I'd like to think I was supposed to be born 20 years before I actually was; the '70s suits me far more than the '90s or today do or did.  I've been listening almost exclusively to '70s pop music for the past few months, in a move one might consider a regression to early childhood but which just fits me so well, like a warm and cozy glove.



Doesn't THIS look like a lovely mall hallway to be strolling through?  And don't the people have a more dignified air than the shoppers you normally encounter these days?



This hallway has such a warm feel to it; the white signifies cleanliness and orderlines and there are plenty of earth tones on view.  Doesn't it look like a great place to pass one's time?  I should be here.

(all photos courtesy the Penn Can Mall website)

One of the little benefits of the Internet as it's presented today is the fact that one can conceivably lose oneself in a particular era.  One could listen to an era-specific streaming online radio station, look up era-specific footage and music (as well as select home movies/videos) on YouTube, peruse nostalgic websites dating to the era, gaze at photos taken by regular people and professionals during the period, and gaze upon period-specific advertising.  That's as close as I can get to the 1970s until someone figures out how to travel across the third dimension and move through time and space.  And if that happens before I'm too old to enjoy said period, I'll be right there to take a time travel journey!

I really feel I was meant for the 1970s.  I'm not going to fight it anymore -- *that* is my true decade.

(This is my little attempt at not overthinking anything.  Hi!)

(btw, if you want to check out my '70s and other favorites on YT, feel free to check out my profile!)

I've been thinking of a lot of things ever since I've been reconnecting with my inner self in an attempt to be creative.  This reconnection has dredged up a lot of thoughts that I've not addressed for many, many years, and some of them are a bit disturbing.

I do wish I could have had a different life.  A less complicated, much happier one that worked in my favor.  I would have been able to cope with an emergency or two and am aware of what I've faced has built my character up and made me stronger, but there are times when I don't want to have this character and I would actually appreciate being weaker.  I don't know why I had to have all that character built up inside me in the first place; for what purpose?  Why was I chosen to have to cope with all the things I've coped with throughout my life?

Also, I do wonder why I haven't had quite the level of fun and excitement in my life that most people seem to have been blessed with.  My entire life seems to have been preoccupied with worry and I think my inability to fully relax has something to do with that, and has hindered me from being able to decompress enough to where I wouldn't be able to let other stressors affect me as much.  I do wish I had been shown from early on that it was okay to have fun and be a kid, that I could be a bookworm and "fit in" in the playground as well.  I wish I hadn't had eyeglasses at such a young age, because I worried so much about the damage a potential fracture of said glasses would inflict upon said glasses, my parents' budget, and my face, that I wasn't as willing to take physical risks as most other children, so I couldn't fully enjoy playtime or other physical pursuits, e.g. rollerskating.

There's also a drawback to being considered smarter than one's peers.  You automatically become disconnected from them, and if that happens when you're very young it messes up your sociability pretty much for life.  I tend to practice my socialization skills online now because they were so lacking pre-online days that I simply could not converse with other people.  I would shut down or tend to think of their queries as oral examinations, answering in complete sentences as would be appropriate.  If I hadn't been considered "odd" or "different" at the age I became such (around 4 or 5 years old), I imagine I might've been able to learn a little bit about how to make friends and had some happy childhood memories playing with some of my peers before being locked away in the gilded cage that my brain forced me into.  Also, I always have this panicked attitude about my own intellect in the sense that if I ever felt like I'd lose it, I would lose my whole identity.  It's like how a model might feel about losing his or her "looks" -- that's what you bank on and what you base your whole identity upon, so to lose that would be to lose your whole self.  I think I would become incredibly depressed should I sustain a massive injury that would render me less able to process information.

Sometimes I do dearly wish I could have had at least one point in my life where I could have just cut loose and been irresponsible.  I would have loved to have behaved as if I wasn't worried about the consequences and filled my inner self with pure adrenaline and exhiliration.  But I suppose at my age I'm too old for that; I'm supposed to be responsible and grown up.  Thing is, I've always been responsible and grown up.  I'd like to be allowed to go back in time and relive my childhood so I could learn to be a child and then approach my adulthood committed to maturity.

Ok, that's it from me.  Writers' block as far as fiction goes is still ongoing.  I don't think I'll pull out of it anytime soon.  Sad panda time.  (But thanks, Syldath; I did read your comment.)

Why has writing become the hardest thing I can possibly do?  Why can't I seem to get any words out?  What is wrong with me?  I want to write so terribly bad but I try to think of the words to write concerning a particular subject/topic and they just fail me.  The only reason I'm doing even this is because this is just rambling stream of consciousness stuff lamenting my inability to write, and I can express myself there because it's been truly bedeviling me over the past several days.  I would love to have the entirety of my days open to where I could simply write myself out of these holes, but every time I think I'm going to have a decent block of time to work with it turns out that there's some committment I have to meet up with or some chore I have to do or errand I have to run or what have you.  I think I need to acknowledge that writing just isn't for me.  I'm not talented enough to be creative.  I try writing song lyrics and they come across as crap or half-arsed.  I've lost my ability to express myself through visual art, and I'm not extroverted enough to do any performance art.  The only saving grace I had when I was doing choral singing was that I could kinda use the hymnal as a sort of shield to block me from the other people out there.  I desperately want to be creative and artistic because that's the only way I'm going to be able to achieve immortality but I just can't.  No matter how hard I try, I just can't.

So sorry about this, but I just can't seem to be write-happy today.  I think I'm seriously burnt out.  So in place, I'll copy and paste this list that I made a short while back (maybe a month ago) that was inspired by going to one particular message board community and combing/poring through the posts therein.

Words of wisdom from an older person to the younger people out there:

Teenagers think they know everything because in all actuality, they know nothing.  The more you know, the more you know you DON'T know.  The most educated minds are often the least self-assured about what they do know, or don't feel what they know is worth bragging about.

It's never worth it to try to be something/someone you're not.  Eventually people will find out you're not who you claim to be, or you'll grow weary of keeping up a façade, and you'll either give up and become who you truly are or you'll wear yourself out from the inside, to where you'll become just a hollow shell.

You need to keep most of your twenties free to figure out who you are on the inside.  This is absolutely vital.  If you don't spend until at least your 26th birthday sorting yourself out and figuring who you are as an individual, you are going to be prone to identity crises later on.

Being popular in your youth never counts for anything.  Nor does being prom king/queen, the varsity quarterback (unless you plan on a pro football career)/head cheerleader (unless you're a serious gymnast), etc.  What counts in your life is what's happening in it NOW.

Attending your senior prom may not matter for much, but at least make a deal out of the evening.  Even if you stay at home and throw an anti-prom event (one where people show up in pajamas, say), at least make it a fun and memorable event for yourself/your friends.

Learn how to make all the dishes your parents/grandparents make that you really enjoy eating while they're still around to teach you how.  There are few sadder things than recalling a dish you grew up adoring and having to guess at how to make it because you never learned how to make it while your mom or dad was still around.

Enjoy the simple pleasures in life.  Take the time to engage your mind in imaginative play and be a voracious reader.  Enjoy a warm bowl of soup in the winter and a cool salad in the summer.  Laugh heartily and often.  Don't be afraid to cry.  Live each day as it comes.

Adulthood will last for many, many decades.  You only get a limited time to be a child.  When you're a child, it's perfectly acceptable to play and engage in other childish behavior.  When you're an adult you have to be serious and responsible.  Don't wish for that when your time as a child is so precious and limited!

There are fewer things more rewarding and lasting than appreciating the joy of learning.  True learning goes beyond the boundaries of school and lasts a lifetime.  The truly wise person learns throughout his/her life.  Don't be satisfied with what you already know but be on a quest to learn more.

The idea of becoming "older" is so feared in this youth-obsessed society that it ignores the reality that almost all of us will grow older.  Become comfortable with that idea and seek inspiration in it and relish the wisdom of your favored elders.  If not, you will become one of those bitter, angry old cranks you avoid today in your youth.

I say all these because these are things I would like to pass on to my own children, but I fear I may never have the ability to have any.  So I share these with you so others might learn from what I've learned throughout the years.

To replace today's scheduled text entry. Inspired by the PostSecret project:

I just can't.  Not tonight.  I'm too tired and my fingers ache.  Sad panda time.

RIP Fort Hood soldiers who died in today's massacre.  And if the fucker who committed this crime is still alive, I want to be the one to pull the switch.

Okay, story time people...

Sometimes, when things are particularly tough, I slip into a reoccurring dream world.  It will often happen when I'm taking a nap, but sometimes it washes over me when I'm settled down for the evening.  It's not terribly original but its distinctness is in being so familiar to me.

I am walking down a corridor that will sometimes change into a hallway with many, many closed doors.  I'll be looking for a specific doorway throughout the dream but always wake up before I find it; I don't know precisely what the characteristics are supposed to be for the doorway I'm searching for, but I do know I'll know it's the right one when I see it.  What always gets me is that I'll think I'm close to finally discovering this mysterious and elusive doorway when I'll wake up.  And usually the weather inside these dreams is similar to whatever weather we're experiencing at the moment; if it's during the summer, I'll struggle to not become overwhelmed by the oppressive humidity, and if it's during the winter I'll shiver and shake as I make my way through, frustrated at my inability to think things through and wear a sweater, for God's sake.

If I were a big believer in dream analysis I would describe this dream to a cousin of mine who believes that every dream has a reason and a purpose behind it, but I don't.  I would love it if there were some messages that were dying to get out from this reoccurring dream but I can't make myself believe.

These dreams aren't the ones that confuse me enough to the point where I'll wake up and wish for enough strength to cry.  One such dream occurred to me at about the midpoint of my mother's year-long surgical dramas and it gave me real pause for thought.  This dream was so real and vivid that I had a hard time believing for awhile that it wasn't real.  It began on a picturesque, leaf-strewn suburban middle class neighborhood somewhere in the upper midwest.  I was driving in what felt to me like a luxurious but not "luxury" vehicle, in what I sensed was a tailored suit such as the ones I used to envision for my future self when I was a little girl.  I pull into a charming driveway that leads to the facade of a gorgeous two-story, comfortably prosperous-looking brick house with a basketball hoop on the side and mature oak and maple trees on the perfectly cluttered front lawn.  I exit the vehicle and walk toward the back entrance of the house, where I discover a patio, tarp-covered swimming pool, and playground equipment, and turn into the kitchen.  As I begin to recognize the warm, comforting aromas of soup bubbling away on the stovetop and cookies baking in the oven, two small children run up to greet me.  I am apparently their mother and they, still clad in their school uniforms (which resemble mine at that age), are running from their homework to greet me.  I react in a manner that indicates I'm happy to see them, scooping the youngest up and carrying her.  Or him; the gender here is unclear.

Then I wind my way around the corner and see whom I guess to be my husband working in the downstairs office, which borders the dining room my children have rushed from.  His tie is partially undone and the cuffs from his dress shirt are rolled up, but his shirt is still tucked into his black dress pants and he's still wearing a pair of patent leather shoes.  He sports a pair of wire-rim glasses and his hair is neatly shorn but slightly tousled.  His briefcase is off to the side of the computer desk he's stationed at and there's a stereo in this room that's on some vague radio channel.  I'm not sure anymore which one it is.  As I hear myself begin to greet him, I wake up.  This frustrating fact leaves me both disappointed and haunted.  I feel as if I am some starving homeless person presented at first with a tantalizing gourmet meal that is later snatched away from me.

I never seem to dream aything ruly happy.  Not even when I was much younger and more innocent were my dreams giddy places full of fairyland creatures and cheery animals from Happyland, all there to greet me to some idyll of twinkly stars and magical rainbows.  I was a cynical child who consumed more than her fill of televised world news and dreamed of war-torn countries and entire continents besieged by terrorism, if I wasn't dreaming about a world similar to my own, filled with the disappointments and setbacks I fought not to let me down.  As I grew older and life presented me with fewer opportunities to see the world at its worst, I began having more of those mundane dreams where life in my dream world was just as life in my real world was, proving that my waking world was so potent that it could and did invade my dream world.  Then I became for all intents and purposes an "adult" and I stopped having memorable dreams altogether as I didn't so much settle into bed to go to sleep but rather stumbled -- as a drunk might -- into bed to give my weary bones a rest and slip immediately into a state of deep unconsciousness where I lay motionless until I begrudgingly awake the next morning to face yet another day's worth of all too realistic drudgery, no comforting imagery to be found anywhere in the process.

Which would be preferrable, though -- to sleep a dead, dreamless sleep, or to be presented with aspirational dreams so realistic yet so unreachable?  I'm unsure, but do know that I have hit a brick wall and must pause for a moment to figure out a way to scale it and bring us back to the here and now.

[total word count:  3,850]

With apologies to Carly Simon.

Had a Day From Hell (tm) today so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to post anything for NaNoWriMo tonight, but I will post this little meme I did last night to fulfill tonight's NaNoPoMo requirements:

arcana07's Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 10
Average number of words per sentence:	22.45
Average number of syllables per word:	1.43
Total words in sample:	15112
Analyze your journal! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern

It's dawned on me that in order to effectively tell this story, I need to go back a long, long time to when my mom was first diagnosed with diabetes.  I don't precisely recall when this took place, but I do remember growing up knowing that high-sugar content foods and drinks were heavily restricted in my household.  I was not allowed sugary childrens' cereals except for rare occasions when my mother was feeling benevolent and finally acquiesced to my desire for Frosted Flakes or Froot Loops.  During those weeks Tony the Tiger or Toucan Sam were my breakfast companions, my mother would stress portion control so that I wouldn't consume too much of whatever bedeviling sugar cereal I'd desirously won for myself that week.  Candy was also not a regular household visitor save for around the holidays, when it simply could not be avoided, and the same could be said for cookies or most other baked goods.  My mother would allow me to snack on the cheap duplex cremes my grandmother kept around the house, but its nasty artifical taste repelled me from overconsumption, and when my parents wanted roasted peanuts they would buy two jars for themselves and a honey roasted one for me, which effectively were my childhood "candy".  And I subsisted on purely diet-only soft drinks.  TaB Cola holds a special place in my culinary memory as my first soda experience and to this day I consider TaB a special treat.

The first memories I have of my being aware of my mom living with diabetes, however, involve her testing her blood sugar.  I remember the big, bulky meter with its own container that resembled Mom's makeup bag or the bag she used to store her rollers.  Now glucose meters are so tiny that one could easily slip the whole case, test strips and all, into a purse, but this was the 1980s and glucose testing technology hadn't evolved to that point yet.  I remember wincing inside while observing my mother prick one of her fingers with the forbidding-looking device used to extract the blood necessary to load the strip with a sample to test.  Later on, when my mom started testing my own glucose levels, I winced on the outside when I felt the angry needle pierce my skin and spent the rest of the day protective of the abused finger.  These days, however, the holes needed are much smaller and so the pricks are barely noticeable.

At some point in my early adolescence I started becoming cognizant of the prescription drugs my parents took on a daily basis.  I think this was in the aftermath of my father's original cancer diagnosis, when I was made aware of just how many pills my dad took in order to live as normal a life as possible.  When I progressed to my mother, I became aware that there were these little vials of some clear-looking solution that she had to store in the top shelf of the refrigerator and that there was always a big bag of needles stashed away in a corner of the kitchen next to the recipe card box and hanging wooden spoons.  According to Mom, this would be about the time she started giving herself regular injections of some kind of insulin.  You know, it's funny that I wouldn't even know what kind of insulin she was using at the time because I don't even remember when she would give herself her shots, so I couldn't tell you if it was the fast-acting or slow-release kind.  Eventually, however, Mom started taking both, as I started noticing two different colored vials of the clear liquid I had learned at that time was insulin, stacked up at the very top of the fridge, keeping the corn tortillas and fast food jelly packets company.

During my childhood and adolescence we as a family were about as healthy as we could possibly be.  We weren't a family that exercised together nor did we take vitamin supplements, but we ate an admirable diet and because of our packed schedules were all pretty much on the go.  Mine was, as was the case with everyone else in my peer set at school, a two-income earning household, and when I wasn't spending time after school with my grandparents I was alone at home, a "latchkey kid", which made the unfavorable news reports regarding same (a blunt effort to demonize the working mother, perhaps?) that much more difficult to swallow.  The only true downtime I remember back then was when I was given full reign of the house during summer vacations spent alone, doing nothing, sleeping late and eating whatever I could fix for myself, usually scrambled eggs or tuna salad.

But I digress.  The point is, we ate rather healthfully while I was growing up and burned a lot of calories running errands, cleaning the house, going to and from work or school, etc.  I don't remember very many of my meals back then coming from fast food outlets, with the exception of my last year in high school, when my parents were starting to slow down with age and thus fast food started to become an attractive alternative to fixing a meal after a long day at work.  And our collective familial health benefitted from this healthier way of living, so the only health issues that were of any concern to us were my dad's aforementioned and my maternal grandmother's struggle with Alzheimer's, which ceased becoming a personal life narrative when it took her away from us in my freshman year of high school.  (And thus ended the "cheap duplex cremes" chapter of my own culinary life.)  So I didn't really give much pause to the idea that one's health could be an all-consuming part of one's life until my dad started getting weaker and my mom, alarmed by this change, took early retirement from her job.  One fateful doctor's appointment -- shortly after my dad decided not to fight it any longer and retired from his own job -- meant that my family could no longer escape the life of a family only all too consumed with health issues and cognizant of how they can completely paint over the canvas of a family's life with their own singular color.

We could not at the time anticipate just how much this one event would affect all of us, but affect us it did and in ways that are still noticeable.  Because this one health crisis was such a powerful part of our lives, we could only focus on it alone, which meant my mother could no longer concentrate on her diabetic health, nor I any health issues I might have needed addressing.  So during this time my mother's diabetes worsened and, unknown to anyone at the time but discovered a few years later, her glucose levels became uncontrollable.  Finally, after my father's illness consumed him completely and my mother and I went through our own periods of mourning, we found out precisely how much damage was waged by the life we were forced to live during this time of living on fast and convenience foods and for my dad alone.

You see, my mother and I simply could not spend any of the precious little free time we had at this period in our lives toward eating home-cooked foods, particularly in the final six months' time period when the illness had such an overbearing stranglehold on all our lives.  To make matters more complicated, my mom's diabetes, which had already gone unchecked for over two years, started waging awr against her nerves and eyesight, to the point where she could no longer drive, so I was my household's sole driver.  Ergo, we would altogether as a family arise at the same early hour each morning to get our morning fast food breakfast before whatever doctor's appointment awaited us that day, then we would come home, warm up something that took as little effort as possible, or on days when Dad had his thrice-weekly dates with the dialysis machine, we would pick up a fast food dinner, typically from a popular fried chicken eatery that had one of its franchises located conveniently close to home.  There was no thought to exercise, to leisurely eating, or to paying attention to anything else but this one thing that had become my family's whole life.  Thus, by the time my mother could pay attention to her own health again, her diabetes was able to have a strong influence on many more other aspects of her life than it had previously.

Now I feel is a good time for a quick lesson on some select ailments.  Neuropathy is a disease that diminishes the ability the nerves in one's body have to pick up sensations -- to act as nerves do.  The severely diabetic can become afflicted by this, developing the condition known as diabetic neuropathy.  Severe diabetics can also develop a specific foot ailment called Charcot foot, in which one foot or both feet experiences collapsed joints, leaving the sufferer with a reversed arch, the ankle bones where the heel would ordinarily be, and little fractures throughout the entire foot.  Doctors, typically diabetic-attuned podiatrists, will usually advise for this to be stabilized via casts or outer framework or for surgery to be performed on this lest it develop into something more serious.

About a year after my father passed away, my mom started going to doctors again.  This is when we found out just how severe her diabetes had gotten and in fact she had to be hospitalized at one point for a blood glucose so high it was potentially fatal.  After being administered a constant IV of insulin and being put on a restricted diet, she started maintaining her diabetes again.  Then she went to other specialists, who told her she had diabetic neuropathy and Charcot foot in her right foot, and the specialists she saw for that highlighted the importance of taking special care of her right foot.  Her first podiatrist even said that if she was not careful, she could step on her foot in such a manner that would leave it fractured.  At times it felt like Mom was seeing so many specialists that we couldn't keep them all straight in our heads.  It was a constant effort to try to catch up to where Mom should be in her medical life and at times it felt like Mom was going to get back to the same robust physical health she experienced back when I was little, while other times it felt like we were never going to catch up and that Mom was always going to be destined to feeling as out of it as she did on the day of my dad's burial, which was its own saving grace.

This is about as effective a summation of the back story I feel is necessary.

[total word count:  2,843]

NaNoWriMo poses a seemingly unscalable goal for someone not naturally attuned to the art of writing -- 50,000 words or more in a month.  NaNoPoMo poses a slightly less challenging, but still quite difficult goal of posting one blog post per month for the entire month of November.  I thought I'd combine the two with a part-autobiographical, part-fictional series of blog posts that both relate what's been happening in my life and a fiction that I'd like to incorporate into this.  Maybe I won't fulfill one goal, or maybe I won't fulfill both goals, but I do want to give this an honest try, especially since this November will prove to be less dramatic than the last.

I have always been told that if you have a close immediate relative who's suffering through something truly debilitating that the whole household suffers that ailment along with the person.  If so, I've really gone through a lot.  The biggest one by far is what happened to my dad in 1988 and from 2000 - 2003, but I experienced a great deal of hospital-based drama over the past 13 months -- and even the few years leading up to the October 1, 2008, starting date -- with my mother.  Perhaps it felt bigger because it was something my mom and I were going through on our own, but it did truly feel like we were trying to reach for something held closer to the heavens than down on Earth while we were left standing on the plain with no ladders in sight, tiptoeing as close as we could get to the carrot that was danging over us.

In the process of going through what we went through, my mother and I have learned some lessons.  Some hard lessons, learned the hard way through experience and suffering and roadblocks.  If it hadn't have been for the people in our lives, we would have doubtless gone insane with the overwhelming quality of it all, but people have come to the rescue time and time again.  Sometimes these people have been unsurprising in who they've turned out to be, while other times these people have completely shocked us as far as who they were and our preconceptions of what they would end up being.

People are important when coping with struggles such as the one Mom and I went through, but another important outlet is the outlet ofnothingness, of time stood still for brief and fleeting moments and of breaths allowed to be caught and savored inside our chest cavities.  This usually comes in the form of outside help, those not-quite-Florence Nightingales who with their immense expertise have been able to save my mom from unnecessary strife and confusion and me from having to be a superwoman for all seasons, a clone meant to be all things to all people and everywhere doing everything.  One may think this is the same as the "people being there" referenced above, but in fact it's a slightly nuanced variant of such, professionals doing things instead of relatives and friends being there, people offering up physical versus emotional support and thus also in a sense offering up a different type of emotional support.

On the other hand, things can be made almost unnecessarily impossible by the intricate pieces of life's puzzle not falling where they should.  Life itself is a complicated dance, and coping in the midst of a life crisis adds so many more steps to that dance that even the most sure-footed person (I'd like to acknowledge my sheer two left footedness right now for clarification's sake) can and will stumble and fall and cause major injury to oneself, thus hobbling their ability to be there for the person(s) they need to be there for.

Now, before you say I'm getting carried away with the similies and metaphors in this, please be clear that I am trying to establish the "why?" part of this particular puzzle, why I'm going to be going on about what I will go on about throughout the next however many days or nights it will take to communicate that which has floated in my head at least since that first day of October 2008 when my mother's and my worlds seemed to change in a way that was never overtly apparent before.

On that day, my mother sustained a fall.  A seemingly ordinary and routine fall in our eyes, since Mom had become prone to falling and had in fact just two weeks prior fallen in the garage.  At that time it only seemed to lead to bruised knees and a bruised ego.  There was no indication things would be any different with this fall and, in fact, there was an attempt to help get Mom back up again using the same techniques we'd used those two weeks prior to successfully lift my mother off the ground and onto her feet again.  Even when it ended up taking an ambulance crew to lift her up off the ground and onto a stretcher, there was no indication any of us had that it wasn't just going to be a badly sprained right ankle that was refusing to be stood upon; a simple overnight observational visit to the hospital and back at home with a stabilizing cast around the ankle, nothing more, nothing less.

Little were we to know of what was waiting for us starting from that unseasonably warm October afternoon.  Were we to know of the long journey that awaited us, would we have been able to cope?  Would we have laughed in the face of such a prognosticator?  Was this truly an accident or was there some design to this?  And what lessons were there for us to learn throughout the whole ordeal?  I hope to answer at least some of these questions in a satisfactory manner throughout the next couple of dozen days or so, and maybe work in a little fictional narrative now and again to serve as the commercial breaks to this real-life reality series.

[total word count:  1,010]

I am learning to live and grow and develop into someone who takes full advantage of the full individual I am.  I am starting to learn how to embrace all that I am and all that causes me to have roadblocks on my path to a sort of "normal life" that I have yearned for for so long, but am realizing that the reasoning behind such yearning is simply that it's just the easiest way to be.  It requires no difficulties, no pain, no complications, and I know that someone's going to turn around and say that "average" lives are full of their own complications and stressors, but from my vantage point those are miniscule at most and incomparable to that which I've had to cope with for the past decade or so, at least.

The thing I think I need to keep in my mind is that all of the innovators and pioneers start off their lives very similar to how I started mine off.  People such as myself (and you may look at this as egotism, but whatever) are the people who make waves in the present and go down in history in the future.  We are the people who are remembered, and part of that will include a much harder path in life than those who melt into the center of averageness and relative ease of existence.  They may have more fun in the present, but they're also the ones least likely to change the world.  But once more, this will involve a lot of work.

Work is something I sometimes tire of.  Sometimes I get so tired that my mind turns to deep melancholy and wanders down a path that leads me to the demons I thought I'd lost forever.  I think I should keep in mind that at times, these demons will try to find a way to make their presences known in my life again, disturbing me and causing great anguish and pain.  Perhaps one way of defeating them is anticipating their upcoming presence anytime I'm caught in a pattern that will lead to the kind of exhaustion that opens those floodgates, and perhaps eventually I will find mental strategies to at least temporarily fend off these demons once they make their presences known.

I am having a great time inputting my thoughts and ideas onto Twitter.  140 characters per entry suits my busy schedule a lot more than thinking out essay-length entries onto LJ.  But I always thought I could turn Twitter into a tool that will inspire and lead me to more and better LJ entries, so maybe I should attempt to gear some of my Twitter updates toward that goal.  I shall not beat myself up if I fail at this at first, because it is a strange way to utilize Twitter IMO, but I found it helped out immensely with at least one LJ entry so hopefully it will do me that favor again sometime soon.  In fact, I do wonder if some of my more recent Twitter updates have led me to type this entry out, and if so which ones.  It would be great if this were true; or perhaps this is pure insomnia talking?

Speaking of, I don't know why my circadian rhythms are all out of whack.  Instead of taking advantage of having extra hours of sleep, I've been tossing and turning in my bed, unable to fall asleep.  This has become ever more so a problem since I discovered one of those rare songs that I have to listen to at least 25 times in order to "get enough" out of said song.  You who follow my Twitter updates or are my FB friends will know which song this is; I will eventually get to linking to it on this venue as well.  But -- that's another thing that I find odd about myself.  If I find myself really adoring a song, I have to listen to it at least two dozen times.  Does this happen to anyone else or is it another one of those "It's just you, Diane"s?

Anyway, I'm kinda rambling on and I should be making some points but aren't doing a very good job with them, so basically this is a sort of "hello LJ world I'm still alive" type thing.  Maybe I should remark tomorrow about some of the more remarkable elements of my present life, from the aforementioned song to something that happened in FB land to... well, whatever else I happen to think of while attempting to make such a list.  In the meantime, perhaps it's time I listen to something very calming and mild to lull me into sleep at long last.

Inspired by some recent soul searching and the ever-pressing need to actually pay attention to this thing.

I tend to think that I hold rather cynical opinions and views on the world because my life has been so tumultuous and filled with hardships -- not the same kinds that befall an impoverished homeless person anywhere in the world, but still light years beyond what the vast majority of comfortable, "average" (and I know I'm getting a slap from Syldath for mentioning average here) living their comfortable, "average" lives, could even for one moment fathom happening to them.  I have lived a difficult life, so difficult that few people know precisely just *how* difficult it truly has been.  I don't let many people know how problematic it is because I don't let many people into the part of my life that consists of suffering.

I theorize that a long, long time ago, I learned the value of holding things in, of not complaining about the stuff really worth complaining about but instead maybe, if pushed enough, complaining about the tiniest little things.  I don't let people into the stabbing pains so severe that my breath is shallow as a result; I let them into the tiny little cut on my finger that wouldn't bother me if I simply applied some salve and a bandage on it.  Likewise, I don't let people into the crises moments of my life that I have no idea how to overcome, but I do let out the tiny little frustrations about traffic congestion or how hot it's been.  This is who I traditionally am, and how I'll be for the remainder of my life.

So whenever I do deal with those things that are so vast in scope they seem to be beyond me, I usually tackle them on my own.  There are very few people who are even cognizant of these occasions or trials, and I really dislike any but the most urgent assistance coming my way.  This is how I've always lived, and how my mind has been molded from a gentler, more "peace and love" kind of mind to a harder-edged, cynical, dubious, and "peace is ridiculous" kind.  I believe that the challenges I have faced, and perhaps even more how I've faced them, have turned me into the kind of person the childhood me might have been afraid of or run away from.

I must also fault in part some of the literature I've read in the past.  If anyone wants a clear and (as what usually follows "clear") concise explanation of my ideologies in book form, I'd direct them to The Coming Anarchy, a polemic written by Robert D. Kaplan that includes essays that describe things such as why "world peace" is a fearsome goal, instead of an aspirational one, and another about how we as a planet are devolving into a more anarchic one.  Kaplan's geopolitical philosophies pervade my own and help explain why I cannot take seriously any politician whose stated aims include "establishing world peace".  And because Kaplan is a controversial figure, my thoughts and ideas will likewise be controversial.

But I must not lay all the blame on Kaplan.  If I didn't find credence with Kaplan's thoughts and idea(l)s in my own inner being, I would have never let him influence me the way I have.  There has to have been something inside me that already believed all of what Kaplan espoused in The Coming Anarchy and other books to have sublimated them so easily and readily into my own global political ideals, something about me that lends itself to controversial thinking.  That's where all my past cynic-making must lie, all of the tribulations that whittled away my thought processes and made them harder-edged and bitter.

There is a flip side to all of this, a "spanner in the works" as the Brits might say.  In spite of all my controversy and cynicism, I genuinely am still the kind of person who does not crave personal dischord.  I truly and deep within, in spite of everything, want people to like me.  However, my unpopular world views and my avid editorializing about them make it difficult for most people to like me.  Like it or not, politics does play a key role in most people's personal opinions of others, and I cannot aggregate my innate need to be liked with my innate need to expound upon opinions that few seem to agree with.  If I can just work this one thing out, that would be revolutionary, because it's caused me a lot of aggro.

And therein lies a deep contradiction and a little more insight into the person I am.

Five things to be grateful for:

- The rains we experienced earlier this week.  Please don't let that be the end of it; I want this to signify the end of our long drought and maybe we can have real grass on our lawns now.

- The Whataburger meal I enjoyed today for lunch.  The #5 meal, sized as is, with mayo *and* mustard and extra pickles.  Hard to beat.  Also, that we live in a Whataburger zone in the first place.

- Waking Life being on Ovation TV.  And repeating later this afternoon.  This is one of my top five favorite movies and I adore its ability to keep my brain engaged.  I wish there were more movies like this available outside NYC and LA.  I'd go to the movies a lot more if there were.

- Being able to peer into our freezer and fridge and see a lot of dinner possibilities.  I already know that tomorrow I want to fix pork chops, mashed potatoes, and roasted carrots for dinner.

- SGE (Sweetest Guy Ever).  Formerly known as "The Boy", rechristened a more appropriate nom de Internet, the one person who understands everything weird and crazy about me and relates to it as well.

I haven't been doing much living these days.  I've just mainly been existing, scraping by and not really doing much in terms of observing the outside world or engaging in the worlds of philosophy or literature.  Which is why I haven't been here in a day and an age; I've just not have the mental or creative energy or spark left at the end of each of my days to press on in that direction.  Any little muses I may do throughout these last several weeks or so has been done through the short attention span world of Twitter, which I've fallen into with my usual "off the starting block" fervor.  If you'd wish, you can look through the archives and figure out what I've been doing since last I engaged in this medium to any degree of interest or fervor.  As for Facebook -- I've been willfully ignoring those grounds, not even tempted to post a status update; by early May it just seemed not very much worth it, and by mid-May I was horrified to find that FB was the online equivalent of a typical high school setting.  If there's anything more creative or literary or anything else that would factor into a FB equivalent *not* turning into Online High School Recreation, I would be highly appreciative of that.

I don't know what else to do with myself, really.  I tried for ages to pretend to be like everyone else, but failed.  Then I attempted to truly change my oddness and reform myself into someone genuinely "normal", but failed there too.  Then I tried embracing my "different" status, and am failing at that too, even though I'm currently connecting with someone who understands me to a degree that only I could and mirrors my thought processes and ideas to an astounding degree.  So I am still quite grateful to him for that and nothing about my struggles to be proud of who I am should reflect upon him or his being; rather, it's just my independent streak combined with a need to define my own self and find my own place in a world that seems to be fighting that at every opportunity.

I really should be asleep at this time.  I should be resting happily, but even rest is not so much happy as accidental or sudden.  I don't know what I should be doing in order to make rest more restful.  I'd love to have a dream tonight, but even that seems questionable.  I'd also love to have enough time to take off for a restful break somewhere even just fifteen miles away from this place, but I never seem to be able to be able to afford such luxuries of life.  I'm starting to wonder if this is my hell and I should live through it in order to get to the rewards awaiting me in heaven, but what would that do as far as explaining away the presence of the newly-rechristened Sweetest Guy Ever?  Perhaps his geographical distance and the schedule differences we've had as well as the fact that it's taken ages for us to discover each other is a continuation of this "Earth = hell" thing and this is all a part of the expectant suffering according to such an equation.  It's just so unfair that so many people out there would be having such a great time with life and I'm stuck here with my struggles and life difficulties and not really living, merely existing.

I'm so very weary.  So very weary of everything.  When are things going to break even for me?  Is there going to be any transitioning into a life that is fair for me?  And why did God make me face one of the biggest struggles anyone could ever face during a time period of life when I was supposed to be out having fun and living it up instead?  Is it possible for a kind and benevolent God to exist when I have yet to live through a year when I wasn't faced with nothing but wall-to-wall, pure responsibilities?  I weary of these responsibilities.  I want to be irresponsible for once, to live it up and be wild.  But now I can't.  Now that train has long passed my depot.  And if I don't go to sleep soon, I'll miss the dream train too.

I haven't felt especially inspired to write anything into this LJ for awhile and for that I do apologize.  I'm not sure why I'm writing in it now when I have so much to do here at work, but I suppose I figure I might as well sneak away time now before I leave this LJ untouched for ages and ages, it gathering dust and slowly slipping off my radar altogether.  I haven't been feeling particularly well over the past week or so; I caught a cold from the draft and from the various cold germies being around, and it's been sticking around a lot longer than I wanted it to, and now the nasty sticky stuff is resident in my lungs, which is why as much as I hate to do it, I have to take my Mucinex.  That combined with the stress and upset feelings I've been feeling since the beginning of this past weekend have meant my breathing has been more labored than usual and I do very much wish I had a nebulizer at home so I could at least have a temporary reprieve from it.

I'm about ready to head on out to pick up something for lunch.  I didn't have the greatest of breakfasts this morning -- a couple of graham crackers and a banana -- but that's because I couldn't have cereal for breakfast because of the milk I'd inevitably have to pour in it and because milk plus "sticky stuff" isn't necessary the best combination one should be thinking of.  Also, we've been experiencing plumbing problems pretty much throughout the house, which has affected my ability to eat things at home.  I can't really go about eating things that are definitely going to require a good cleaning up afterward in the sink until I know that the sink isn't going to leak its water down to the floor.  Also a concern for us:  the washer spilling water out into the washroom floor, Mom's toilet backing up, and our sinks spraying water in spite of our cleaning the spigots with vinegar.  So, you know, major headaches and drama galore back at the house, which is a large part of why I've been under so much stress recently.

This stress hasn't benefited my asthma any, for sure, as I alluded to a bit earlier in this post, but it also hasn't helped my coping without The Boy's nightly presence.  Whenever he and I chat on a nightly basis, I feel as though I've been richly rewarded for going through whatever I went through throughout the day and thus all prior stresses and headaches seem reduced or erased away.  But now... I know it's because this week is his finals period and I would be a fool to demand anything this week, but it is terrible timing on the part of the universe to have all this happen and no way to really feel like I have that rich reward at the end of it all.  I guess I'm going to have to figure out what I did before I started chatting regularly with The Boy.  There are other things I can discuss, but you will just have to pardon my reticence about revealing them as they are incredibly private.

Also what's adding to my personal aggro and "angst" (in the popular definition vs. the Webster's dictionary definition of the word) is the fact that my writing journals have led me to a story idea that hits so close to home and my soul that it's as if I were reliving some of the worst years of my life.  In fact, that's what I think I am doing, in recollecting those activities and actions and realizing that my giddy overoptimistic view of the world and my hyperpacked personal schedule were the two preserving factors in my not having gone completely insane during this particular part of my life, and now that I don't have either in my life anymore, facing what happened to me during that time is like experiencing everything without that protective barrier.  And I realize that I will probably never again be so positive toward humanity/other people, that there will always be an element of my being that will feel coldness and callousness toward people because of what happened back then and the traumas that made me not trust others by default.

Ok, gotta run now.  Lunchtime's up and I've got to figure out what I'm going to eat.