Too soon or too late

Today is my second MRI.
*shrug*
I'm less concerned about a thing in my brain than I am about the fact that my headaches have gotten worse.  I realize the neurologist freaked out to find something they didn't expect but I came to him in the first place because of my headaches and he seems  to have forgotten about that.

Life moves ever onward and I have so much to do.  Marketing for the holidays, decorating, gathering crafts, cleaning and writing.

As far as diet....I'm still fat.  I know, shocker.  I'm working on a new plan that I'm very skeptical about but I think I'm skeptical about all diet plans/supplement miracles.  I'm trying isogenix next.  If I'm going to fit into either costume for SLC (salt lake comic con) next year I've got to find something that's going to work for me and figure out how to prioritize my life appropriately.

My Head

I can safely say the meds I'm currently on aren't working to relieve my headaches. I seem to be getting them every day now. I wake up with them, I lie sleepless in bed with them. I would like to pretend it's all my creativity trying to get out but...it's not. They're getting worse. I've tried not to be stressed about what's going on in my life right now and me and my mind think we're doing great with not getting stressed but me and my body, with whom I haven't had a good relationship EVER, thinks the end is nigh. My mind thinks I'm good and my body is totally freaking out.
 Here are a list of things my body and I not communicating has done over the years:

• Shaking uncontrollably in fear while my mind is perfectly calm. 
• Arranging my facial features to look upset or angry or snobbish when no emotion of the sort is happening in my mind 
• Arranging my facial features to reflect EXACTLY how angry or upset I am so the bullies know how I'm feeling and can delight in a job well done. 
• Causing stress reactions and health failures when I think I'm doing a great job of letting things go. 

It's very frustrating to know that part of the pain and discomfort my body is experiencing is probably a stress reaction and I don't feel stressed at all. I have no idea how to fix that. How do you convince your body you're not stressed when you're mind has thought so all along. I don't know the answer to that. I also know some of what's going on means something and I'm frightened and frustrated. I know some of what I'm experiencing is an escalation of problems I have asked the doctors to fix or figure out and they have forgotten or ignored it. I have been draining from my nose for 8 years now and, low and behold, its eroded my gag reflex so now I have to force myself not to vomit when I cough or get a tickle in my throat. I have to avoid certain foods and have ginger on hand constantly. Ah, but I'm complaining again.

I've been thinking about blogs and journals and the like. I know that "successful" blogs have a set theme and they teach or share something about that theme when they write. If I was less of a minion, I'm sure this blog could be full of those things. But I'm a servant. I am compelled to help. No matter how busy I get or how full my schedule is or how much I complain...this is my purpose. It's my happiness and fulfillment. It's not all my happiness. I also like being useful, to be heard, to have my opinions and ideas seen with value and I LOVE finding things.  So here's my tiny bit of advice for today.  Serving isn't easy.  It takes deliberate, intentional thought.  First you have to believe it's valuable and then you have to be willing to act.  Life gets in the way, just like it does for most things you want to do.  So when you have the choice of doing something pleasant for you or something pleasant for someone else, our natural inclination is self.  That's fallen humanity.  It's "normal"  So I call you to be abnormal.  Challenge your thinking.  I know I'm selfish.  I'm aware of my fallen state.  My challenges are unique and the same as everyone else's and I struggle against my flesh.  It's a struggle I will not fully win until I'm with my Savior.  That doesn't mean I give up, it just means God is teaching me better skills in spiritual combat.  I'm not even close to being a prayer ninja or a spiritual warrior but I am a soldier and I'll work at improving with every fight.

My husband has had a superhero identity for years. Captain Oblivious even has several super powers. He has a mighty sneeze that frightens friend and foe alike and he can stick just about anything to his forehead. We settled on my superhero name this week. I am Madam Astute! My super powers are finding things and observing things. TOGETHER WE ARE C.O.M.A! This has caused us no end of delight this week.

and yes, I just took time to make a very lame jpeg

Fatalism and perspective

It has been a hard couple few months. Last week my Grandma Sutherland passed away. Death is never an easy occurrence but after the funeral I had two competing thoughts. That was the best funeral and this has been a crappy year. The funeral celebrated my Grandma's life exactly how she lived it. With humor and a clear invitation to know Jesus. We laughed and cried and spent time gathered as a family sharing our favorite memories and catching up. The stuff I was asked to prepare took a little time to put together but I was pleased with how they turned out. I need to finish putting up the edited images on the shared drive so everyone has access. I was reminded that we have a unique family who has made an effort to gather as many of us together as possible as we were growing up. Cousins know and enjoy each other. We joke and tease each other. We don't get together as often as we used to when we were little but we still seem to have multiple opportunities throughout the year to gather. I hadn't really appreciated how spectacular that was until I looked around the room at the reception. What an incredible blessing! It hasn't really been a crappy year. It's just been a hard few months. Last year I had a few hard months at the end which bled over into the beginning of this year and I remember feeling the same way...."it's been a crappy year" In reality, there have been plenty of good things this year. I'm just tired, worn out, spread too thin and seemingly incapable of saying no. It's made me brusque with people and left me with an exhausted depression. Don't get me wrong, I've dealt with depression my whole life. Depression is an old friend of mine. It's just that I get overwhelmed and all of a sudden every little annoying thing that happens is the end of the world. I'm generally over dramatic anyway so you pair that with a sense of fatalism and I can get very maudlin. I try not to stay in that head space but I'm having a hard time shaking it right now. The punches keep coming this year and I'm tired. I've been working at remembering that it's not the big things that have thrown me for a loop. It's the little tiny things. It makes me wonder about how human beings cope. Some people are fine when something big happens and then lose it when an inconvenience occurs. Why is that? Is it because we know that there is nothing we can do about the big things? I can't change that there's something in my brain but I can rage that I can't lose weight because I should be able to fix that. So when I get annoyed I try and think is it something I can change? If not, then move on. I'm still trying to figure out how to battle exhausted fatalism but sometimes life is about trudging.

Tough questions

Psalm 69:1-3,13-18, Romans 5:3-4,Psalm 69:23-26

This weeks message at church presented something to me in a way I've never heard it before.  The question the pastor expressed was "Why do bad things happen to good people" or "Why does God allow suffering".  Since I have some chronic illnesses that cause pain and suffering to some degree I've had varying degrees of success at answering this question for myself.  That's why it was surprising to me to be presented an answer to this question from a new perspective.  The pastor encouraged us to be thankful to God for suffering because suffering is like exercise.  We exercise to break our body down so it will grow back stronger.  Science tells us that exercise creates micro tears in the muscle that then grows back with more muscle tissue.  That is why muscles get bigger and stronger.  This is what suffering does for us.  It hurts and is uncomfortable.  It causes strain and effort of will.  It wounds us in the moment to allow us to grow and stand stronger.  It breaks us down, sloughs off the unnecessary fat in our lives and prepares us for greater spiritual battles.  I love that picture so much.  I don't want to be a wimpy warrior.  I want to be bulked up and fully armed!  I want to be Rocky not Joxer.  So I'm going to try thinking of any suffering, trials and tests like exercise.  Not aimed at me like a weapon to wound me, but a chance to get stronger.

In regards to actual physical exercise...well I'm working on it.  I need to step up my game from small hikes and walks.  I'm only maintaining right now which isn't bad but I want to lose.  I am losing time on the deadline of my goal.  

As far as the prayer warrior thing.  God brought someone to mind yesterday and then I found out something hard was happening in their lives.  So many people are hurting.  

Starting work on the new Murder Mystery.  This one will be a much smaller cast and a single solution so this should be cake.  Pardon me while I laugh at myself mercilessly for making such a ludicrous statement.  It is a Sherlock Holmes Murder Mystery and my friend Jen and I (whose idea this was) already have some GREAT ideas.  I'm excited.  

creativity abounds

I currently have a lot of opportunities to be creative.  Crossfire has stretched me into blogging, news articles, promotional poster design, video editing and social media marketing.  Petrie's has allowed me to practice social media marketing, video editing and directing, event planning and creative writing.  El Paso County Jail has grown my familial dispute negotiation skills, respect for rules and elders and being mindful of what I say and how I say it.  All of these things have opened the door for me to walk into NANOWRIMO with another murder mystery to write/plan for New Years and a month to get the grunt work done before things will become entirely too busy to be creative.  My volunteer opportunities have also given me enough pause this year to try a different way of approaching it.  I'm a narrative kind of girl and I love reading.  I'm all about the story.  Murder mysteries are a different beast.  You need to have a plan and an idea of the outline and clues you're trying to reveal before you start working on story in anything but the broadest strokes.  So I'm going to try and do things differently this time.  Plus, I have the added benefit of not doing it alone.  It's so much more fun to bounce ideas off other poeple.  It's also so much better to be able to recognize your strengths and the strengths of another person and be able to create a work that uses both peoples strengths.

My house smells amazing

My pasta sauce looks amazing.  My apple butter smells spectacular.  My geocaching count is right on.  My diet.....well.  I didn't gain.  That's something right?  Geocaching keeps me walking and hiking but apparently it's not enough for my body to count as exercise.   My body doesn't seem to count anything as exercise.  grr

It was a long week and I've found myself tired and achy.  I woke up with a headache and the grumps but this weekend has been full of time with friends and large groups of strangers and that is my kryptonite.  If I had my druthers I would hang with 2-4 people in a quiet space with no one else around.  I can really only do that with 2 of my favorite people right now and since they are also kind of introverty....Well, since I can't hide away from everyone else, especially since I like my friends and maybe some strangers, these two are kind of my recharge button.  They're teaching me how to be bouncy again and I like bouncy JD.  Last night we taste tested really gross sodas after getting wet crossing a stream to find a hard puzzle cache in the dark!  We also took videos of us spitting out said gross soda and then re-watching them in slow mo.  We had a blast with them yesterday!

It's going to be another busy week but I'm hopeful that I can enter the tasks knowing that I have this much time to spend on it and I'll get done what I get done.  I think that's the best I can hope for at this point and that's not shabby.  It's a healthy place to be I think, at least for a minion.

So the list still remains, and I'm sure it will continue to grow, but some amazing things are going to be created in the meantime!!!!  Go go gadget BRAIN!

Minion's Truth

The truth is a minion's mind is a confused mess.  It's full of ideas and projects that need to be completed.  I often get paralyzed by choices and don't know what to do next and I know there are things bouncing around in my brain that I'll never remember later.

It's been a busy week and I've got so much to do but stuff keeps happening and then the stuff just sits and bubbles in my brain and the steam is rising and I'm losing ideas.

So, things that I'm thinking about:

1. Sherlock Murder Mystery to write/plan
2. marketing for crossfire
3. marketing for petries
4. communication/solicitation gamefest
5. commercials/podcasts
6. cleaning petries
7. cleaning house
8. nanowrimo
9. Crossfire blog
10. crossfire advert slide
11. crossfire videos
1. editing
2. posting
3. sharing
4. music

That's the start.  I have a few more things that I just can't remember right now.