Obstacles

When I was in college, my Humanities Professor was as close to a mentor as I have ever had, outside of my father. My mentors’ mentor was Loren Eisley, a poet and naturalist that lived in the first half of the 20th century. One of the essays that Eisley is famous for is ‘The Long Loneliness’. I have never truly appreciated his point of view in that essay until now.

According to Eisley, everyone lives their entire lives alone. You may think that you have friends, are truly interacting with and influencing others but in actuality you are just all alone in your head. What reality is for you may be a totally different animal for someone else. Thus, you may think that you are ‘sharing’ your sorrows or your challenges with someone, when, in reality, you are just living your life alone in your mind.

I must remember this when I am going through the obstacles that lie in my path. I am the only one who can overcome them and I am the only one that is truly affected by them. Any help or ‘sympathy’ or ‘empathy’ I may receive is just an illusion. Only I can win my battles. Any thoughts to the contrary will only weaken my fight. I am the one that I must rely on. Me and my God. All else will fail me.

I wish only to keep this knowledge close to my breast cause in this will come my strength.

Poem of Life

My life is as one flowing stream
To find the delta of my dream.

I bob and ebb along the flow
sometime quick and sometimes slow

I know not what's around each bend
be it foe or be it friend.

Currents rip and waves shall break
But never more than I can take.

Infrequent pools lie blue and deep
There to rest but not to sleep.

Sleep will come at the end of the day
when I know I have found my way.

My life is as one flowing stream
To find the delta of my dream.

Thoughts from an Old Soul

I have started writing again.  Here is my latest:


The road untraveled, the song unsung,
Rest at the apex of each day begun.

The potential lies within our reach,
The lessons there, to learn or teach.

But each of us are guilty yet,
of passing on or collecting debt.

Our actions we choose to do or not,
are battles won, not battles fought.

Our lives are but one long debate,
To give our love or fall to hate.

All this I know is all too true,
for you are me, and I am you.

Leslie R Andrews

What's up with AARP

OK.  Just a quick post before I forget.  What the heck is up with AARP.  They have been sending me info since I turned 49.  The eligible age is 55.  Are you THAT hard up for members?  If so.  I can tell you why.  AARP stand for American Association of Retired Persons.  Really?  Retired?   Who do you know that has been able to retire at age 55.  If they want new members, that should rename the organization. the AAOPHWTTD or The AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PEOPLE WHO WORK TIL THEY DIE.  Now THAT group, I may join. 

AARP. Save the postage. 

Til next time.
L

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

(I picked this title after I wrote this piece.  I love that song! Just downloaded it too!)

Ever wonder how Edison had the time to apply for 1093 successful patents?  Or Da Vinci to be such a prolific painter, sulptor with thousands of journals accredited to him???  I'll tell you how.  NO CABLE TV!!

That right.  Without 708 channels (including pay per view and sports) they actually had  (I should say GOT) to LIVE THEIR LIFE. 

I guess you may be wondering what brought this on??  I have so many ideas and very little time.  (BACKGROUND.......  I am not supposed to be here.  I had an expiration date that passed about 6 years ago so I am feeling a little pressured to get done what I had in mind when I was young. )

Anyway, since evidently, I am not going to be a rock star, (think they have a max age limit on American Idol) and not an international sex symbol  (lol) or a nobel prize winning physisist.  (Pretty sure you have to be able to spell =physisist= to win the prize), I need to get busy on what I can realistically take on and finish.. 

I do have some ideas.  Most have to do with my photography.  (If I ever sell anything then I can die happy. ) (Just kidding God). 

Anyway,  I have several ideas of a series of photographs that I want to compile.  One is :"Death of Dixie".  This is (or will be) a pictorial of the slow decline of a way of life.  (If I had ever gone for my Masters, which I am pretty sure you have to have a Bacholors before you do that) I would have done my Thesis on how Air Conditioning ruined the Southern Way of Life.  (That is a subject for an entire other posting I will save for lalter.)

Another is "Love in the Low Country.  This is a collection of pictures of kisses.  Young lovers, old couples, mother and child, man and puppy, you know.  Just the "feel so good that you can't help but smile" moments.

I remember that once I told my first Ex Husband. (Just kidding.  Not about the Ex but the first) I wanted to be remembered.  I meant in the "listed in the history books, made a huge difference, saved mankind" kind of way.  He told me I wanted too much.  Boy, that pissed me off!!  Now I have to admit that he may have not been entirely wrong.  Not that he was RIGHT!!.  No.  Just not wrong. 

I do beleive that I have run out of time.  As much as I don't like to admit it, I may just vanish like I never was.  I think all I can hope for now is that somewhere down the line, my decendants will do something remarkable.

 Everyone wants to make a difference.  But you never know.  Maybe I already have.  Maybe my life touched someone in a way that changed the world.  Each one of us touches so many lives and we never know the efect we have.  I am sure that the young boy that was my first kiss doesn't know that I think of him everytime I here "Doctor My Eyes" or that my Grandmother, when she was still living, knew that when I smell country ham I think of Christmastime at her house.  Or that my parents know that when I hear Amazing Grace, I think of the day I was saved at age 8 and they were there with me and what they mean to me.

I need to remember that even if I never do another worthwhile act in my life, I have touched someone.  You need to remember it too!!

Til Next Time

L

My Website

OK, Just quick post since I am hard at work doing absolutely nothing.  I LOVE Saturdays.  You know what the best thing is about a Saturday?????  Tomorrow is not Monday!!

Anyway, really stoked.  My website passed 1000 page hits today.  Yippee!!!!

Now, IF SOMEONE WOULD ACTUALLY BUY SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!!!!

Enjoy the day that is not the day before Monday!!!!!

Karma Continued

OK  For those of you who are poised in anticipation on the edge of your seat waiting breathlessly for Part II of "Should Have Seen it Coming". Sorry.  Not going to happen.  Synopsis - Christmas came, dog died  bought a puppy, spent time with family Christmas was over.  End of story.

So.  Moving on.  It's been a very hectic 2011 so far.  Been meaming to write but can never seem to find the time.  However, due to the inevitability of STUFF happening just to annoy me, my computer crashed at work today so after about on hour of wandering around the office eating what candy I could beg, borrow or steal, waiting on my computer to be fixed or replaced with those small boxes they pass off as "loaner laptops', I found myself with some time on my hands.  Thus this post.  I can update my blog and still look like I am hard at work fighting the evils of the corporate world which i would be doing if I could only access my computer or even my Blackberry.  (For once, I actually remembered to plug in my BB last night so it is sitting safely at home all snug in it's charger)

Anyway, where was I?? Oh yeah, 2011.

Starting to get a bit nervous about my impending treatment for Hep C.  When I first signed up for this gruelling, but possibly unrewarding therapy, it was six months away.  Now we are down to 3 month.  Wow!  REALLY quick 3 months!!  The hardest part of the preparation (besides the no alcohol thing which happy hour  is almost considered a medical necessity for good mental health at my company) is the UNKNOWN FACTOR!!!!!  I have no idea how my body (and mind) are going to react to the treatment.  DOCTOR said that reactions for different people was like a "Bell Curve".  "Bell Curve".  Sounds like a kiddie ride at the amusement park doesn't it?  WRONG!!!
Yeah, I know.  I was surprised too!!!

Doctors "Bell Curve" means that  1.  I could feel fine and be able to go on pretty much like normal.  2. I could feel somewhat crappy but still pretty much function OK.  3 - Feel REALLY crappy and struggle to function in what passes as acceptable or 4. Be Totally wiped out and not be able to function at all to the point of being temporarily disabled during treatment.  Geez.  Wonder how many taxpayers' $'s were spent to come up with THAT study????  Course , I am not a doctor, and I would never presume to possess the vast knowledge that is floating around the Med Schools, but I am pretty sure I could have come up with those options on my own.  

Prognosis - You will either feel fine, feel crappy or feel somewhere in between fine and crappy.  REALLY glad I got that info.VERY useful for the preplanning stage!!!

Anyway, go see my ENT DOCTOR tomorrow to see if, as an extra little bonus, I need another sinus surgery before I start my treatment.
 (BACKGROUND UPDATE BULLETIN>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Have had 3 sinus surgeries= one staph infection last spring = heavy treatment of 6 weeks of levaquin = stressed liver = trip to MUSC = trans jugular liver biopsy, upper GI, lower GI, blood work, MRI = Upcoming treatment

Butterfly Effect.  What can ya do.

As my beloved mentor Rosanne Rosanna Danna once said,  It's Always Something"

Should Have Seen It Coming

 Well, I should have known that if I digressed from my original intent of this blog, the fates would find me.  After that cheery little Christmas Posting and the start of my children's book, karma found me.  Right after I decided that I was going to have a wonderful, stress free holiday for a change, disaster struck.  A little harder than usual.  Everything started to fall apart on December 17. 
Dec 17 was a Friday and the day we were to travel up to Charlotte, about a 4 hour trip, to spend the weekend with my family.  My daughter lives in Chicago, so months ago I booked her flight so she would get in early afternoon, we could start a little shopping for her and leave for Charlotte after work.  Well, I get a call that morning.  My daughter had overslept and MISSED HER FLIGHT.  Now remember, this is the weekend before Christmas and a very  busy time to fly.  8 hours and an additional $400 dollars later, I rebooked her flight but we were unable to leave for Charlotte until the next morning,  Oh course by the next morning it was raining buckets so the trip up was miserable.  The visit with the family was wonderful as always even though almost half the family couldn't make it this year. 
On the Sunday before Christmas, on our way home from Mothers, real disaster struck.  We were still about 30 minutes from home when I received a frantic hysterical phone call from the "roommate".  He had stayed home to baby sit the dogs.  My beloved Yorkie, Chloe Grace, was playing with the other dogs, ran into a chair, broke her neck, and died instantly.  We met RM at the Emergency Vet but Chloe was gone.  She had a degenerative disk in her neck so there was nothing we could have done to prevent it  I was, and still am, completely heartbroken.  She was only 4 years old and although we have 2 other dogs and more cats than we can count, she was the center of the household for humans and animals alike.  The other dogs spent the day after searching for her all over the house.  It was so sad. 
I am not through with my story just yet, but writing this has been hard so I am going to take a break.  Will pick the story up next time.  SPOILER ALERT......  It does have a somewhat happy ending but not before more karma attacks.  (Really should have been better as a teenager!!!)..

To be continued........................