My Me day.

I took a break today.  Its a normal day off for me, but I usually am running errands for the better part of the day. I decided on some Me time.  I had a two hour session with a great gal and got my holiday pedicure done.  I had a client call last minute right in the middle of relaxing time, pleading for me to squeeze her into my day. 
Back story:  I work limited hours a week as a massage therapist.  The hours and days coincide with my daughter's school schedule and family time.  Times and days that were negotiated by the three of us. Also, Massage Therapy is not a 40 hour a week job.  If you want any sort of staying power, you have to use your time wisely.  By wisely, I mean, slow and steady, not too much that can lead to physical breakdown.  It was hard for Hubby to let go of days and times for me to open, start and make a successful business grow.  But, we decided on guidelines, and I was willing to stick to them.  I don't think I really knew how much my little business would grow, how passionate I would become about helping or how much it would actually help the ones who took the time to see me. 
I normally sacrifice the me time and squeeze them in.  Thinking to myself, 'Its okay, you can take care of yourself later, at least its not cutting into time with Hubby and Baby.'  However, I said no today.  I had already pushed through two Fridays of "squeeze-ins".  And really, these people know my schedule and just push to what works for them.  The last two Fridays I let them push me.  This Friday, no so much.  I'm not supposed to work any Fridays. I felt awful.  I even had the sweet one doing my toes tell me that I wasn't going to take anyone today, that I needed a minute to myself.  Bless her.  She is a good girl.  And I needed to hear that at that moment. I called Hubby and vented, I called Hayley and vented.  I felt better, but couldn't help to think that my Me day of relaxation was shot.
Then I got a text from my Mom, reminding me we were going to Skype.  Time to visit, see my niece,which my mom watches on weekdays and catch up with her and Dad.  I took sometime and visited.  Glad I did.  Mom needed to vent.   Dad's new cancer treatment is making food not have flavor.  He's not eating.  Not much at all.  He's lost more weight and his oncologist has told him he needs to pick up weight or he will have to come into more meds to make him hungry.  Mom's worried. 
I got a chance to talk to Dad about it.  And he says its true.  Food tasted like cardboard, why eat it?  So I suggested a few things and he promised me he would try it. 
I got to see Curly (my niece), she's 17 months.  She sang and talked and played for me to see. 
I told them I loved them, then said my good byes,  hung up with them.
Then, I called Gran.  It had been awhile.  I needed to hear her voice.  Man, was that exactly what I needed.  The right words, all filled with Love.  The news about others, good and bad.  She is patient with me, I know she is.  Let's me get to her when I get that minute to talk. 
I even got to text my Aunt J this week too.  Keeping connected even if it just a few short texts.  But boy do those words keep the wind under my wings for just that much longer.
So, you see, I said no today.  I needed a Me day.  I don't feel so bad about it now as I write this, because my Me day helped me charge my batteries with Love from some of the ones that matter the most.  I needed this. Uplifted and recharged.
The lesson? One, sometimes when people say No, it has absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.  Everything to do with them.  Two, respect an others boundaries.  You may not have any, but others do and most times, they are for a really, really good reason.

Happy Birthday Pop

Well Pop, Happy Birthday.  She will be celebrating here seventh Christmas this year.  Seven.  I know you can see her.  I know very well that you had a hand in moving things around to make it so we could do right by her.  I know you come to visit.

I promised you then and I tell you now that I will do all I can to keep her safe and growing healthy.  We are thriving here.  I can't thank you enough for all you have done to give me the tools I needed to help us along our journey.  Want to know what has helped us the most?  Kindness.  You taught me a lot about that.  How much it counts to help and be kind at what ever chances we can.  

I can't imagine all the things you are accomplishing there.  All the buildings and plans, I'm sure he was good on his promise to make you part of his Army.  I know you are a perfect fit.

I miss you, I love you.

Happy Birthday Charles Floyd

Hope

The events of Human Kind have left me broken-hearted today.

I don't know if it is that the events hit closer to Heart and Home for me today, or if today my most-often strong constitution was just warn down.  It may be that a few things have hit very close to home, like within the confines of my wee little Family, and just outside to my immediate Family, and even yet to the vicinity of my family on the map.  While others hit close to my heart and the turmoil that rises from its dust is a test of my Sanity, Patience, Strength and Positive Outlook.

It leaves me in worry, upset, and really, to be honest, sad.

Our world is changing, we must change with it. How much will we sacrifice before we realize we have gone too far?  There is so much going on.  I could go on and on about what is happening to the people I love and the struggles we go through in our everyday Lives.  Yet, the Triumphs through those struggles are what should really make us Thrive.


For so many, everything is Black and White, with clear answers for either side.

I am not one of those.  My world is every shade of Grey.  I can see the point from 22 different angles.  I stay silent when most draw opinions on things that I believe are not theirs only to draw a conclusion from.  One, because, they are entitled to their own opinion.  Two, it is a test for me.  To see if I am really getting the idea behind the concepts I so swear by.  Three, and most importantly, to lash out in a negative manner, feeds hate.  It feeds the very thing that creates the issue in the first place. 

I worry that I won't be able to give my daughter all the tools she will needs to stand up in society as it is now, in the state that it is in.  I think of my tools and know that half of them came from going to places in my head where demons, monsters, stress and anxiety live.  I dread the thought of her having to go to that place too to gain the skill set to make her that tough for our society.

How can we teach Love, Compassion, Joy, Kindness, and Helpfulness to our children when the world keeps handing us images of the opposite?  Hope.  As I write the very word, I can already feel the renewing starting.  I know when I wake tomorrow, although I will still be saddened, the Hope will have grown.  And restored enough of me to myself that I can keep believing that maybe one day Hope in Humanity can be restored too. That even if it won't evoke any World Peace, I can maybe try to teach her to find Peace on her own, and give Hope to others as well.

Happy Sunday. Just when you think the Light at the end of the tunnel has gone out...

As a writer of a very tinny tiny blog, and those who can relate to writing, I sometimes have to wait for inspiration.  Contrary to those who really don't enjoy writing, we aren't always full of ideas to write about.  So, being human, I wait.  And sometimes I have to wait quite awhile.  So then, I start to look, to search maybe is a better way to put it.

I don't always know I'm looking for it either, and most times I don't know what I will write about next until its sitting right in front of me.  I have been wanting to put words to screen since I wrote about Dad, just that the words and the meaning of the next blog weren't quite there in my head yet.

I look for it in the wee hours of the morning, with that first cup of coffee before the kiddo gets up to start her day and I jump into my roll as support staff.  I look in the sunset, I look in the sunrise.  I look at my pack of animals, I look in my husbands words and eyes.

I try to see into this world we live in with not just my sight, but with my heart as well.

I believe today the inspiration is there, and in just the right order.  I see it as an other lesson learned, more enlightenment to add to my belt.  Just more reasons why staying Positive helps.

The last week, there has been a build up of stress for me.  I try to find its source, but for the Life of me, I just couldn't get a hold of where it was coming from.  It was the first full week back to school, my week was pretty full at the studio, and then there is juggling family Life.  I think it might just be getting back to the grind.

Yesterday was the the threshold, I couldn't keep it in anymore.  And the dear one that he is, Hubby could tell.  I let it out, probably not as Gracefully as I could have.  But, like the amazing person he is, he let me just get it out.

I ended the tirade with,' I don't know why I do this to myself, I should know that it always seems the hardest right before it gets better.'  Guess what?  Life did just that.  It showed me possibilities this week that we couldn't even stop to dream of last week or last month.

It showed us kindness, and humanity, and hope and strength.  Life reminded me once again, to 'relax, we got this.'

I am human like everyone else.  I have an acute belief, because of my Life experiences, that if I just keep Positive, learn Happy, and be Honest, I will get it back, tenfold.  But its always the darkest before the dawn.  That is usually when I doubt myself and my efforts the most.

Then good people and good deeds start to show themselves.  And I am where I am today, completely humbled and taken back with Gratitude.  Then all the things that didn't work out in the past, start to make me see that there was maybe something great planned for me and mine.

Sunday for most is the end of a week.  For my family its our day to rest, relax and renew.  Sometimes, I'm lucky enough to reflect and gain wisdom.  Really, Sunday is the beginning of the week.

Never underestimate the power of Positive.  Mind frame, thoughts, Living.  Never think that Honest ways don't get you far.  People watch and they see.  And sometimes that is how you get your lucky breaks.

In other news.....
Dad is bouncing back good.  Having a wee bit of trouble with getting on course with pain meds, but he believes that this surgery has taken away the migraines for good! Yay.
 I have a niece and nephew who are growing like weeds, every picture posted and video I see helps me know that their parents are doing all they can to aid them in becoming amazing people.  I'm so proud of them and their parents.
Football has started.  Enough said. LOL

Happy Sunday, Bright Blessings,
Norma

The walking Miracle that is my Dad.

In the winter of 2003, my Dad, Chuck/Keven/Charles/Tiny,  was diagnosed with Renal Cell Carcinoma.  The most common of kidney cancers.  It affects 3% of adults in the United States.  Its common and his luck, a very slow growing cancer.  Which meant that it was very treatable, survival rates for Rena Cell are very high.  But what they don't tell you, my Dad found out almost 10 years later, is that it is like a weed.  It keeps coming back, and like a weed, you have to keep pulling the cancer out.

Seven days after I was married,that Spring,  my Dad went into surgery to remove the cancer from his kidney.  What the doctors found was alarming and unbeknownst to us, a huge break through for Renal Cell.  He lost is left kidney that day, but what he gained was his Life.

My dad had always complained of lower back pain, it was hard to sit in the air ride chairs in the trucks he drove for long ours at a time.  Well, this day in 2003, we found out why.  My Dad's kidney was the size of a football.  We would later find out that all the cancer was contained in his kidney.  No signs of cancer in his lymphatic system or in his blood.

When Dad told us it was cancer, back in the winter, all I could hear in my head is 'No way, he's not going anywhere.' 'There is too much left for the man to do, too much for him to pay back to the family for having to be away so much to make ends meet.

When we finally heard back about Dad being cancer free, it was a relief.  And a sign that he wasn't going anywhere.  No Chemo,  no radiation.  He was so hell bent on recovering quickly so he could get back in the Truck and drive.

He stayed his healthy stubborn self until the spring of 2007, on his routine yearly tests, they found spots on his lungs.  I had no idea that Renal Cell could grow any other place but the kidneys.  But, it can.  It just moves around your body trolling for a weak point.  It found it, his lungs.

Why was that a weak point?  Yeah, well.  He never stopped smoking.  An action that has made me so angry, upset, and anxious every since the first surgery.  It hurt to think that Dad wouldn't just quit, that he was given this clean bill of health and he was just gonna send it up in smoke...literally.   It didn't present a bright future for my father making it to Grandad status or Poppy status as his is so adoringly called now.  I thought it was a pretty careless move, and it broke my heart. Yet, I know that personal demons are just that personal.  His to battle, and my job to love him through it.

In the late fall of 2007, he had the first of two more surgeries.  To pluck out the Renal Cell in his lungs.  The first lung surgery didn't go as planned, it collapsed and went from a minor procedure to a major one.  He was in a lot of pain after that one, and they had already gone ahead and scheduled the other lung for the early spring of 2008.

He was mean, and surly, and rude to his nurses.  I called Delene to vent.  Mom and Dad's bests friends in the whole world, my adopted grandparents.   She informed me that the Morphine made her  just like that, to check if that's what they gave him, it was.  She told me to have him ask about an other form of pain med, and she told me that I needed to tell him how horrible he was to everyone on it.

Oh my, I was raised you don't talk back.  I had to do it, I wasn't gonna walk into an other recovery room hearing him talk to the staff and my Momma like that again.  I did it.  I was terrified, and he was ashamed and even through that, he asked for different meds.  And he was an angel the next surgery through.  Typical, I had to work for that one!  :)  At least Mom and the girls got a better Dad for that one when he woke up.  Thank goodness I called Delene.

In the late fall of 2010, my wee little family moved to the Mid-West.  Dad was relieved, we were on his winter route.  Leading him literally, two blocks from the house.  January of 2011, Dad visited and was complaining of headaches, bad ones.  Border line migraines.  They got worse.  He tried to push through, but in the late summer of 2011, my father's physician pulled him form working.  Saying that the kidney cancer medication he was on, which by the way was formulated from the kidney he donated to research nearly 8 years before, was finally taking its toll and it side effects were doing him in.

The rest of 2011 and most of 2012 were hard on Dad.  He had worked for 40 years of his 57, he was lost, hurting, always tired from the slow chemo he was taking every two weeks at home.  I asked them to come have Christmas with us.  It would be their last year as grandparents just to Naenah, my Charlie was preggo and the following Christmas was going to be my niece's 1st.  They were there for Nae's 1st, I wanted them there for Caroline's and after that for Reza's.

It was a wonderful visit.  Lots of laughing, some happy crying, a few excursions, but mainly snuggling up warm at home.  Dad relaxed, he slept, he ate well.  I think him and Mom went home with a new perspective on how Life was gonna be.

Two weeks before June 15th 2013, Dad went in for his routine MRI for the year.  They found a meningioma between the hemisphere's of his brain, small and not of any concern to his doctors.  Until they changed his kidney medication in an effort to subdue the excruciating headaches he was having, and it made no difference.  Then, they turned back to the meningioma.  They watched it, and it kept growing, and he kept hurting.

June 15th 2013, he welcomed his second granddaughter into the world, Caroline Darling. Six months later, January 20th 2014, he got to hold his first grandson, Reza Dayas.  With Naenah Delane as the oldest of three grand kids.  Three kids, he never thought he would be around to see when all of this started in 2003, eleven years ago.

So, in the Spring of this year, my Dad had had enough.  He took his own health into his hands and went to his oncologist to tell him enough was enough.  It was time to take that lump out (his words, not mine).  If it wasn't supposed to be there in the first place, it needed to come out. Again, his words, not mine.  Dad thought that it was the cause of all his pain, his doctors agreed.

But before they would do the surgery, Dad had to undergo intensive radiation for a spot on his voice box.  Yup, potential cancer spot again.  He did it, so stubborn, he drove himself to and fro for 12 days.  He rested, he healed, and as far as we know, that spot is gone now too.

So here we are, the Summer of 2014.  Dad went in for the removal of this said meningioma, in hopes that it alleviates the piercing headaches he has dealt with for almost four years, yesterday.  Surgeries are complicated and one involving the brain just that bit more tricky.  There will always be worry when a loved one is undergoing surgery.

I got to talk to my Dad two nights ago.  I told him that so long as this is what he wanted to do, I was behind him.  I told him I loved him. That I would chat with him when he was up and about after surgery.

Today he is in ICU recovering very well from what the Doctor and his nurses are telling my Mom, sisters and Gran.  1600 miles is a long way to be from him at this point in time, but boy am I relieved that it went well.  The next few weeks will be painful as far as recovery goes, but he is due to make a full recovery and be back to himself in no time, which, I'm sure he is reminding everyone of how stubborn he is at this very moment.

I talked to my Mom this morning, she told me that there was not one doubt in my Dad's head that he was doing the right thing, and that he would pull through just fine.  He knew he had a fine set of doctors on his side.  He was right.  Now, only time will tell if those horrible headaches will be a thing of the past.

Times like these are what make a person like me, trying to live in Gratitude, fall to their knees.  Some of it is relief, but most of it is humbling Gratefulness for what I have been given.  Most people will look at my Life and think there isn't very much.  But the lot of you who really try to Live like I do, we will share a smile knowing just how much I actually have.

Hug those you love the next time you get the chance, because you just never know if it might be the last time you get to.

So, off I go, to get through my day, probably pumped up on coffee.  Thank the Goddess for Coffee.

Love and Bright Blessings,
Norms

Loss.....

I have a foreboding feeling I cannot shake.  Since my last sorrow-filled entry, I have been witness to another husband taken form his family.  The sweet little girls are so young that the memory of Daddy will have to be something that Mom and all the ones that loved him will have to fill in for them.  So young, too soon.

Others close to me, in these last few weeks, have lost aunts, uncles, grandparents and mothers.  It is a reality that is sometimes hard to face.  I am now approaching an age where death is just as common as new Life.  It makes this tiny little blog mean that much more to me.  I've noticed that in times of Happy and Sad, I have turned to this blog as an outlet.  It has never failed me.  Thank you for that.

I try to help heal bodies all week long.  Life in its purest, most raw form.  Breathing in and breathing out. It is a wonder to me how the human body can support in all different forms, yet how fragile it really is.  What it can hide from the outside world.

Robin Williams left our plane of Living today.  It is said he took his own Life.  Do you know how many Lives that man touched?  How much Brightness he brought to the world.  Yet, he was terribly sad on the inside.  He fought a constant battle internally the world knew nothing about.  All that Light he inside, it was still dimmed by depression.  Where even though he knew who Loved him, his special people still couldn't help him enough to dig him out of it.

I think he was too hard on himself.  I think he demanded things of himself no one on earth could live up to. To what end to we keep holding ourselves to standards that are unattainable? To death? To illness of both mind and body?

This man had kindness and compassion for everyone he met.  But he was unable to give it to himself.  How?

We need to stop being so hard on ourselves.  We need to give our souls compassion and kindness.

And here is where Gratitude plays in....

If you can look out into the World and have Gratitude, it gives back and resonates in your very being.  If at your very core all you want is to Love and Help, that is what you will get in return.  That doesn't mean that Life isn't going to throw you curve balls.  It means that Life is waiting to see how you handle them.

At my very basic belief platform, I have to believe that Grief, Heartache, Pain, and Loss  are trials to Happiness and Gratitude.  These roads are rocky, hard and unrelenting.   They can seem endless.  I can only imagine that the way we get out of them is One Thankful moment to the next, minute to minute, day by day.

~Norma

A sad day, a very sad day...

I don't write much about what is wrong and sad in this World.  There is just too much of it.  If we are inclined to believe that what we put out in the universe, we then receive back I'm careful with I put out.  There are some things in Life, I cannot wrap my brain around. 

Today, I learned of a wonderful friend's husband passing away.  It has taken the wind right out of my sails today.  There is no shortage of tears today.  So very sad.  I cannot stop the tears.  I know that they are not mine.  I'm on my knees with Gratitude that I have my loved ones healthy and safe.

Yet the tears just keep on coming.

She told me a couple times before all this that he was her True Match.  That they were best friends.  That he could get to the girls when even she couldn't.  Now that is gone.  There is no physical being left for these ladies to wrap there arms around and be protected.  Do I believe he is still here, sure, of course I do.  But to the minds of the Living, it is easier to grasp when we can see it, hold it, feel it.

I can't even imagine, nor do I ever want to.

So my sweet few followers of this tiny little blog, if you are reading this my girl needs your prayers, good thoughts and healing light.  Give it all you got, she needs and deserves it.

Thank you,
Norms