March 24, 2012 Greetings my Friend, Recently I had been struggling with an upset stomach and vomiting bile. This struggle went on for several months and each time I had a bout with it the length of time was longer. The first time I thought I had a bug and then when it kept happening I began to think I had something else wrong. Finally I woke up one day and said take me to the ER. I had enough and wanted an answer. At the hospital the Dr. informed me that my appendix looked bad. They felt that it had burst. Upon further study they decided I had an ovarian cyst and that is why they thought it had burst. I finally had an answer to all my stomach distress. I thought I was dealing with GERDS. I had emergency surgery and my appendix was removed. The next week though I was back to vomiting. I hate vomiting. I had thought long and hard at one point in my life about using vomiting as a means to control my weight. I chose not to use this method for weight control because of my disdain for vomiting. Through the process I also felt that a lifetime of stress had caught up with me. I still believe the stress of my life has been playing havoc on my energy level. Cancer didn’t help. The last few years I worked after cancer I struggled to do what I had been doing for years. For most of my previous marriage I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells. Being the oldest in a chaotic home didn’t help either. A lot was expected of me and if I did not measure up I felt the wrath of not being a perfect child. Depression has not helped me either. As I look back over my life I have had bouts of serious depression from childhood on. I am a feelings oriented person. I have spent a lifetime trying to not live in a feelings state. I remember I used to feel people’s feelings down in my being. When I started working I had to teach myself to not “feel’ people. I could not do that and do my job. My Junior can walk away from relationships. When someone walks out the door on Junior’s life he will close it and not look back. I can’t do that. I will walk away if I feel I must. I will struggle though. Junior’s growing up was as crazy as or even crazier than mine. His Dad moved his family several times a year. His Dad was always involved in illegal schemes and often the family took off when he would walk in the door yelling pack up we are moving. This meant Junior was the new kid on the block often and he would have to establish himself yet again. He lost friends he liked and he quickly learned to let go and shut the door to emotions. At the hospital I called my son’s voice mail to tell him about my surgery that would be that day. I knew he was at work and figured he would call when he could. He had his wife call me and get the details. I gave them to her and by that time we learned that my appendix had not burst. I had an ovarian cyst. So I gave her that information as well. Before surgery I received a call from my daughter. I was having problems with my cell phone and I had morphine in my system. I wasn’t able to figure out the phone situation so I gave the call to Junior. As I came out of the fog of all the drugs in my system after surgery I worried that my daughter may have been upset with me. My daughter called me again the next day and I explained my inability to process the previous day. She said she understood. We went on to have a 45 minute chat. It felt wonderful talking to my daughter again. I have been praying for my children and grandchildren since I have begun my faith journey. With this phone call I believe God heard my prayers and at the right time had my daughter call me. I pray that this phone call is one of many we will have. As I went through a struggle recently it seemed most people did not understand how I processed my feelings. My son called me and we talked about what was bothering me. He understood me like no one else had. He understood my hurt and acknowledged it. That helped me so much. My cousin and I will send e-mails back and forth. We explore our faith through these e-mails. Sometimes she will pose a question and we delve deeper into the faith aspect of the question. I have enjoyed these back and forth situations a whole lot. They help me grow in my faith and they sometimes help me put a ‘face” on my faith. In one of our conversations we talked about the situation in which my son had called me. I told her how he understood me like no one else had. We both came to the same conclusion and that surprised me. I was talking over the event with junior and it occurred to me that my son understood because I raised him. He would know the way I process things and more than likely he may even process to some extent the same way. The next e-mail exchange my cousin had said the same thing before I had a chance to tell her my discovery. I felt that familiar level when my daughter called me. We haven’t really talked in 12 years and then she was on the phone chatting with me like we had years ago. I raised her and she knows how I am. She is the child that would touch me as I struggled through so many tears. My daughter would hold my hand well into her teenage years. She was the piece of sanity in all the chaos of life at times. Of course my favorite moments were when we would sit on the couch with one of Great Grandma’s afghan’s over us and we were knee to knee talking about….whatever. There was a lot of chaos and dysfunction in the home when my children were growing up. It is something I grieved at my divorce. In my heart I believe my children have been processing anger. I pray that the anger issues are resolved now. I have had people tell me that I push the ones closest to me away. I disagree. Have you closed doors? Is it time to open it and explore? Forgiving the past is probably one of the most freeing things you can do. May God bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you. Love Janet

March 17, 2011 Greetings My Friend, I grew up with a small family. We didn’t have many cousins we grew up with. Mom had one brother and we knew his children who were a good ten years younger than us. There were a couple more we would interact with when they lived in the area. Their Dad was in the military and they often were out of state. We knew Mom’s mother as Grandma and we did not know Dad’s family very well. As a young woman and mother I tended to ask for pieces of furniture, pictures and even a set of old tin type photo albums and got them. These things began to be the “roots” I longed for in a family. They were reminders to me that I had a family dating back into history. As I looked at these items around the house I felt connected to a family. As we settled in VA I struggled with the estrangement of family relationships for various reasons. I was feeling like a sailboat on the water without a sail. I felt no direction or connection to others. Something inside of me was looking for that connection. One day I looked up a name in the phone directory. This name was the name of a cousin on Dad’s side of the family. I dialed the number and have met over the phone and through e-mail these cousins and their mother. My cousins are relating to me in a family kind of way. They give me a connection that I have longed for. I am learning “who” Dad was and what he came from. I even have learned to have compassion for Dad. His father was a tyrant. I find I have more compassion for Dad at this point in my life. He has been gone for 20 years now but I find that I understand why Dad was the way he was. Dad had his quirks and it was difficult to be his child. In all of that I even see the compassion Dad had. When Dad was a kid he would bring home stray animals all the time. Dad told me that often but the cousins have told me that. Their father mentioned to them about Dad’s bringing home a stray all the time ways. So we always had a pet or two as kids. Dad loved his animals. Dad even began to bring home the ‘unwanted” children who crossed his path. A neighbor lady often complained that the problem in her marriage was her step-daughter. Dad kept saying she was not the problem. Finally Dad told her she could send the step-daughter to our house and she could live with us. K came and lived with us for a few years…I can’t remember how long. We kids were always striving to feel wanted and loved. We all displayed our need in various ways. My siblings often got into trouble. I tried to be the “good” girl. I was also a tattle tale type of kid. I got into trouble if I did not tell. I got into trouble if I did tell. I was always told I had to set the example so I tried to be good. My siblings often said I was a “goody two shoes’. K wound up being sent back home because I “told on her” one too many times. It is a guilt I have lived with for decades. After K left we grew up, she grew up. In the back of my mind I have always wondered how she was. We have not seen each other since that fateful day she was sent back home to live. We have had absolutely no contact. My sister has been on a quest to find k and she found her this past year. She sent her an e-mail. Later I sent an e-mail. So far the e-mails have gone unanswered but she accepted us as a friend on FB. I find myself looking at her FB page. I see her children and her pictures as a grandmother at this point in our lives. My heart consistently asks “who are you?’ “What has your life been?’ I can gather some idea as I look at pictures and read her FB entries. There was also L. She lived with us a very short time. She was the girlfriend of the boy across the street. I loved L. She was older so I did struggle with being younger. Still I loved her in the short time she lived with us. L was pregnant and Dad asked her to leave. I was crushed and angry even. I felt that was when she needed us the most. Dad was concerned that us girls would go out and get pregnant because she may have set the example. Dad felt by asking her to leave that we would not do that. Right? Wrong? I don’t know. I think often about those years with k and l. They were a part of my growing up. They were Dad’s strays that he wanted to save from the abuses of life. They were my sisters for a time as well. After we grew up and left home Dad brought in a couple more girls throughout the years. Dad wanted to make life easier for some hurting children. Did he? I don’t know. Our home was always in chaos. It is what I know. I went from my childhood home of chaos to my own home with chaos. I feel my children may have been angry because I did not get them out of that chaos. I did not know what a home free of chaos looked like or how to get it. I worried about leaving and the potential poverty we would be in. I knew poverty as well. My kids had a roof over their heads their entire lives. They had food on the table everyday as well. They also never went without heat, electricity or water. The bills were paid. I felt like I gave them way more than I had. Junior has taught me how to live a life free of chaos. Comparatively, our life is boring. Our lives though are rich and full. We travel. We have friends. We love and respect each other. We both say that until the other walked in our lives that we never knew love. I believe it is Jesus. He teaches me how to be a wife. He teaches me to let go. When I keep Jesus at the center of my heart I find life falling into place. I have family. That feels nice. It isn’t objects any longer. It is family, sometimes a church family, sometimes it is biological and sometimes it is the wonderful friends we have made. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

March 10, 2012 Greetings My Friend, There is that old struggle again. I had it in my first marriage big time. I have it in this marriage sometimes. I think it is a struggle of a woman trying to talk to a man who hears with his blue hearing aids kind of thing. I am told I repeat myself and I don’t know that I am until I hear the comment. It has dawned on me that the repeating isn’t because I forget as much as I am trying to say something important and I am not understood and I believe when the repeating occurs is that I think I have found a way that will make sense this time. By the end of the first marriage there were some fights I wish I could have recorded and hit a button each time we re-entered into what to me was the same discussion with a new set of dressings on it. There were certain struggles that no matter how I went about it I was perceived in a certain way. The current struggle is I am seen as a hypochondriac and I am lazy. It hurts me to no end to be perceived this way. For me it took a counselor to tell me that I need to tell people when I don’t feel good. I call it reporting. I found myself telling the hospital staff as I went through appendix surgery that I was reporting and I was not looking for anything other than to inform them of what was going on inside of me. I often will tell junior that I am not feeling well. I then go lie down and pretty much want to be left alone until I feel better. I do want him to bring food though. When I don’t feel real good I often don’t want to figure out food. I do get hungry. Many times jello is something that settles my stomach etc. I feel I have reported and he feels I am looking for him to feel sorry for me. Many times in my past life I was teased as I struggled to get better. I think the teasing may have not meant to be mean but I don’t really feel up to teasing when I am sick. I also remember times where I tried to check out if you will and I couldn’t because the children needed to be tended to etc. The backup help wasn’t always given so I could take care of me. When Junior retired and I continued to work he wound up taking care of the house more than I did. The year junior retired from back problems I had cancer as well. As I state often the road back from cancer has been about the hardest road back to normalcy I have ever undertaken. After retiring I went downhill real bad. The struggle to have energy, the fight with a loved one, arthritis pain reared its ugly head and of course hypoglycemia and the headaches and vomiting that went with that. Two moves in two years topped all that out so depression was added to my struggles. I have felt like I was fighting my way out of a paper bag for years now. Each time it feels like I see myself working back to normal I feel slammed yet again. Add to this to this a very small house to live in with all the things we had in a much larger house and I found I could not find a way to keep house and find a home for everything we owned. We discovered we weren’t good renters so we bought a home that needs a ton of work and yes I am overwhelmed yet again. In the new house though I have kept up with the bedroom, the sheets being washed weekly and re-making the bed and I feel like I am making forward movement. I keep the bathroom clean. I am making most of our meals. I am keeping the cat boxes clean and I make attempts at keeping up with the sweeping. Some days are better than others. To me this is all forward movement and way more than I was doing. I am not sleeping at the drop of the hat anymore. I have learned to be up and down all night as I learn that being older for me means a disrupted sleep pattern. I have not figured out to keep house when ladders, tools and boards are part of our everyday. I don’t know how to work behind my man since he prefers to work by himself and doesn’t always know how to direct me. That brings to mind that I am writing on the polio story and my blog. I am trying to write in a state of chaos when a quiet peaceful setting would be much more helpful. I go out to check on my books where I have placed them around town. I hope to start making crafts soon so I can work craft fairs and also sell my book. I am making plans and slowly I am implementing my plans as I can and in all of this though I am considered lazy….ouch that hurts. So I make my case yet again in what I perceive as a way for my man to ‘hear’ how hard I am trying. He tells me I am repeating myself and the heart to heart connection is not made yet again. I can see as we come to an end with all the chaos of construction that I will once more step up to the plate of keeping the house in order. It is something I want badly. He has and is working real hard to bring me a beautiful home. I want to give to him as he works hard. That is why I am cooking meals in such a makeshift kitchen. That is why I am trying to keep our bedroom clean and the bathroom. So I swallow the hurt about me being lazy and a hypochondriac. He is too good of a man to hold this against him and let it simmer in my heart. Still an acknowledgement of my attempt s to come back would go far. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet

March 3, 2012 Greetings my Friend, Thoughts at large; Junior has started putting the ceiling up in the kitchen. We have liked the bead board look and feel it fits in with the age of our home nicely. At first junior took some planks of wood and hung them up as is. Then we found some cherry wood stain so junior planed the wood and put the stain on it. That looked real nice…as we thought on it though we thought it might be a bit too dark for a ceiling. So Junior found another stain with a hint of red in it and he has hung that up. So at present we have three looks going on at one time. We like the last look the best so Mr. Wonderful will finish up the ceiling with the planed light red stain and then he will go back and take down the boards up to that point and re-do the ceiling. One of our goals as Junior finishes the house is to make it easy for us as we get older. For me I am allergic to paint and he is putting up paneling and wood etc. so we don’t have to paint much if at all. Junior has the bedroom done with actual boards as opposed to paneling and it is real nice. With the stain on the ceiling we won’t have to paint that either. In the bathroom we would like to have a tin look ceiling. The ceiling is actually plastic but looks like tin. The huge holes in the kitchen ceiling are finally covered up as well. He tore some plaster down to do some work etc. Junior is also putting insulation in the attic which will help keep cold out as well. Some of the work is so behind the scenes so pretty isn’t something I get to see much of yet. Slowly though the house takes shape. Slowly pretty appears and it is exciting to see. I continue to marvel at how much I love this house. It is a whole lot of work. It is comfortable as well. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Junior is more than likely going to need to be in a wheel chair someday so we are preparing the house for that day. Part of the fun of renovating is decorating. Once the inside is done then I am excited to decorate the porch. It won’t have a lot to it and yet I find that since the porch is on all four sides then I can set up different types of areas. I think it would be fun to have a small table on the porch with an oil cloth checkered table cloth. That way we can eat outside. The back of the house faces the woods and I think I want to make this area like a sitting area. The front porch is partially screened in and I hope eventually it will be enclosed. This faces the street and across the street are more woods. I would like a stove out there and use that as a quiet place. The front of the house faces the neighbor’s house so I’d like to put a swing or glider out there. Junior also wants to put up some ceiling fans to keep the bugs from bothering us. Our dreams continue to grow as we move through the renovating process. It is fun and our dreams have changed. With the kitchen we are having an island built. We will have a spot to eat at and I like that idea. We will have a built in stove so I can visit people while I cook as well. It is so much fun dreaming and changing our dreams. My friend B has had a lump in her breast for a few years. The lump has grown and is now painful. She has not had it looked at until recently. We are going for the mammogram in the next few days. Her sister died of breast cancer. Her mom had a lump but died of a heart attack before the lump was looked at. I am concerned for her. I have walked down the road of breast cancer myself. Mine was caught very early and I only needed radiation. She also hopes that this may be the end of her life. Life has been very hard for her. She has had severe back pain due to a car accident and has not been able to work for most of her life. Money on assistance is tight. So life has been a huge struggle for her. Her home has fallen into disrepair because she hasn’t been able to finance all the repairs. Our church is looking into getting her some help with some mission teams. The process is slow. Junior and I have decided that if B has the dreaded ‘c” word then we want to have her stay with us as she needs. We want to make her comfortable etc. Sometimes those in the most desperate types of needs are right in front of us and somehow we don’t see them. They seem different and so sometimes we don’t want to be bothered with them. B has not always been accepted by the people in her community. I think sometimes it is important to reach out and be a friend to those who are a little different. The reason I have fallen in love with Jesus is because he reached out the people who were on the fringe of society. I myself have felt this way a whole lot, on the fringe and I am grateful that even the strange people in the world’s opinion are wanted by God. May God bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. Love Janet