Showing posts with label truck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truck. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 09, 2019

And The Beat Goes On

Pss. 55:6 “And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.”

And The Beat Goes On

In between all the angst of the chemo days, a lot of cruddy things happen in what seems like the beat of a drum. One thing, two thing rat a tat tat, and the beat goes on. This might be the proof I needed to show you that NEGATIVITY breeds NEGATIVITY! All of the instances below began at the beginning of the acceptance of Herceptin, it's when everything was negative to me.

In the midst of our illnesses (my hubby's and mine), our three-year-old fridge decides to make an extremely loud clanking noise in the middle of the night. Loud and irritating, (fridge not hubby) my husband decides to be jarred awake and go bang on the side of the rowdy fridge. The clanking stopped, but the momentum had the cookie jar on top of the fridge, toppling over, the lid came crashing down on the floor shattering into a million pieces, and at three o’clock in the morning, clear eyes are not to be had! Clean up. * sigh *

Then our twenty-year-old clothes dryer decides to play the fridge game and begins its own riotous annoying noise. Not at three a.m. and still heating and drying, its all good, just a pain in the EAR!

His twenty-one-year-old truck decides it’s going to do some booming and banging and as we were heading home from the doctors one day the clanking was obviously the muffler, that had fallen off, dragging behind us. We pulled into a safe place (there are no safe sides of the road here), and hubby pulls the muffler off and places it in the back of the truck. We don’t litter. More sighs are in the works with maybe a few eye-rolls. Next...

Hubby looks all over for his thirteen-year-old phone. I hear something heavy and noisy clanking (this post title should be clanking) in the washer that he had just loaded and started up. I tell him the noise doesn’t sound right from a new washer, but as a man (all men) who don’t listen, goes on with his day, until its time to get clothes out of the washer and what drops to the floor? His phone! The old phone went through the entire wash, rinse and spin cycle. He fruitlessly tries to save it, to no avail. He panics. Our phones are everything to us out here in the middle of nowhere with no landline. Besides being a shop-o-holic, the man is addicted to technology (like the rest of the world)!!!!!

I finish up the clothes, drying and folding and putting away as he runs off to the store to buy a new phone. Payment will just be added to our bill so no out of empty-pocket cash necessary. My anxiety rears its head because it just seems like everything is hitting us and hitting us hard. The fridge, the dryer, the truck, chemo crud, and a clinging cold/allergy session, and now, the phone.

Two hours later he returns with what they had to offer. A deal. UH OH! I hope he didn’t… he did. He fell for what they had to offer: a Smartphone and a FREE tablet with all the fixins and trimmings. A case, a keyboard, and they even tossed in some GPS thing for the car. Swindled. A week later he was returning, the phone shield (not free) and protective phone cover, keyboard to the tablet and the case (also not free). For what they were charging him HUNDREDS of dollars for, he purchased on Amazon for under fifty bucks!

I happen to despise the smartphone and everything that it stands for. I’ll hold my ground with my stupid phone as long as I can, but wouldn’t you know it, ironically, maybe less than two weeks later since his purchase, my phone stops working. Keys don’t function, the battery barely holds a charge, and the only key that worked in the end, was a way to get my contacts before my dumb-phone went dark, never to open its eyes again. 

I cried! I wanted my stupid phone! My only active contacts on the phone were my texts to my son, a text to hubby when he was on break at work, and two calls on the weekend to my mother. That’s it! Now the phone has gone into the ether. What will this poor woman do??

Hubby snapped into action, he ordered me a phone online and it would take two days to arrive. Thank God my son has a FB messenger app that when I write to him from Facebook, it goes right to his phone. Two days not talking to him, my lifeline, would tear me to pieces. Facebook finally came in handy! The only problem? With our phone service (I have no idea what it all entails, and I don’t care to know. Technology is a blank to me, a total blank!) the only phone they force on you is, you guessed it, the Smartphone! They offer NOTHING but smartphones! 

So my phone conveniently goes up in a puff of smoke when his phone was accidentally fried. Now I'm forced to get a new phone. It’s a conspiracy. It seems everything can and is going wrong like a train derailment skidding into a stop position but no sign of slowing any time soon.
But wait all of this began happening when my perky positive self took a turn for the worse. I’m an optimist, positive sharer of love, and giver of smiles and joy, but when I knew I was going for chemo in the vein, my world toppled! TOPPLED! I lost hope, I lost laughter and joy and optimism. Optimism is what God wanted me to have but hope was veiled, I couldn’t find positivity and every single day it is a struggle to see the Light shine, and lack of sun and warmth is no help.

Also on the familial level, I feel like a forgotten soul. Do you know how hard it is to love online Spiritual Family, that actually embraces me daily, more than any other family I'm connected to? Don’t get me wrong, I love the families God has surrounded me with but it is hard to see people as caring with an every-three-month email or visit (if that) saying I’m praying for you, hope things are okay. I’ve shut down. If you want to know how I am ask ME, I’ll be glad to tell you, if you don’t ask, I won’t, it’s that easy.

I’ve written a blog for well over ten years. My family could sure learn a lot about me if they read the pain in my words but no, they’ll wait until I pass and say, “How come I didn’t know about this?” Well, you did but you didn’t care enough to read the very heart and soul of the one you claimed to have loved.

Now to turn this around into a positive! I HAVE to see positive beauty in life, the life I WANT to live and not give up on. I have a husband, a son, and a Spiritual Family that cares for me, touches me, and gives me strength every single day to go on and be the me they know me to be! I am HER!!! It’s just hard digging her out of the trenches the sandy soil has encompassed me with.

The truck still runs, the chemo might get better, we did get new phones (that’s a whole different story) and my hardy Salvias are trying to peek their heads out and show me that life IS worth sticking around for. Until I got wind of a Blizzard Warning for the end of the week. HA HA HA HA! 

I’m looking up! I need to continue writing because that is the emotional healing that I NEED. Where you all follow along, read, and support me, my family here doesn’t know much at all and is full of questions. That pretty much sets me back because my path is NOT the path they’d choose, nor would any of you for that matter, but you RESPECT my chosen path! I love you for that. 

When I say I don’t look forward to living. The family gasps! You guys reading this understand me and know that this is just a phase and offer prayer, support and strength as I wiggle my way through this setback. You lift me up and make me WANT to live! Give me a REASON to live! And just as I typed this I peeked at Facebook before posting this and here’s what greeted me. “Our thoughts and feelings have an electromagnetic reality. Manifest wisely.” 
I think my Spiritual Family actually gets this, I thank you and love you for knowing and understanding me! Manifest positivity and it powers through! Manifest negativity and everything can and will go wrong. 

Mark 1:10  "And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:”



Sunday, September 22, 2013

Poetry Sunday ~ Destiny...no more

May 2003

 Destiny…no more

She rode into my life like the stallion of my dreams
To carry me off to sanctity it seems.
It was her stoic behavior that bustled me through
To a world of fresh life, to all things new.

It was with Destiny that my license was gotten
She carried me through tough times that were rotten.
Whisking us to Nebraska up north
And south to NASA and everywhere henceforth.

Great stamina for a fourteen-year-old truck
To ferry us through until one day she was struck.
The memories I had all flooded my mind
Like getting us through travels with him being blind.

Texas, Nebraska, and Omaha trips
Light shows, balloon fests, our loving quick quips.
Destiny was alive, it seemed to me
She knew she had a hand in setting me free.

The first time I hurt her, her airbags all blown
But out of the ditch, her true colors shown.
She started right up the very next day
And for four more years she never did sway.

Is it possible to say we lost a true friend
Who stood beside us to the very end?
An inanimate object to which we adore
Til Carma showed up, now Destiny’s no more.

Luke 2: 29 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:

Author’s note: Destiny is the name of our truck that was recently totaled in a collision.
While we understand it was ‘just a truck’, she meant so much more to us both.
Praise God, no one was hurt!
 She served us well!
RIP Destiny

Friday, April 16, 2010

Sight Unseen

Psalm 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
***

This is the emotions attached to the accident continued, if you all have been reading.

Steven wants me to get back in the saddle again, as much as I hate it, I have to agree, if I don’t get back, I’ll lose myself in the pit of depression, anxiety and fear. All things I’ve fought and overcome throughout my lifetime and here I am faced with it yet again, beckoning at my doorstep. I need time to heal but time is NOT being allotted me. I’m ‘supposed’ to just ‘get over it’, with all due respect.

We named the truck Destiny, the year she was purchased, many years ago in 2003 before Steven and I had met in person. I called her Destiny because it was that White Knight that was going to come and save me, although she was dark blue. She was going to whisk me away from the treacherous life I had been living and take me to a place warm and safe.

She made it across many states, to Maryland and then back to the land of Texas. Destiny made it to Nebraska for a wedding, back to Texas, up to Nebraska again for a funeral and back to Texas. A few more Nebraska trips and back to Texas. She’s run the gamut of successes. I always talk to her as if she is a living breathing entity and on the day of my accident I was telling her how sorry I was for wrecking her.

She gets pulled out of the ditch, and in her greatness, starts right up. That’s my Destiny. Now as I know she has to be fixed and overhauled, she’ll shine in her greatness and ride once again. What I’m wondering is, will I be in the drivers seat?

What I do know is that my destiny (future) is unknown just as the trucks. We’ll both heal and move on but will our paths continually collide? This we never know. I’m tired of the unknown. Hurt by the uncertainty. I will shine once again in my greatness and ride off once again. No white Knight this time, no warmth surrounding me, just my heart and soul.
My illusions have been shattered.

Can you tell I’ve sunken into the pit of depression? This is not me, just so you know. I’m the strong one who gets through these tough times with God gallantly carrying me on his shoulder. My Destiny is laid out, and the truck is just a truck.  To Steven, the truck is his baby. Men are different with their cars/trucks. I see the accident playing over and over and he sees how much this is going to cost him. Money we don’t have, money that will keep him from going to the doctors, money, money, money! As he loses faith, I am empowered by the very force that saved me.

I am a living breathing entity. This much I’m sure about.

You know, I realized something throughout all these years, I cost more than I’m worth. :(

Back to writing on Monday, hopefully.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

The Morning after...

NEWS FLASH: ...car swerves on gravel road, does a rollover and swerves into a ditch. 13 year old girl dead, sixteen year old brother driver hospitalized! NEITHER WERE WEARING SEAT BELTS!!!
***

Well after I came home, settled down, somewhat, I had to return to reality. I wrecked the truck. My face was burning, Adams eye began swelling, and I began feeling fortunate for not being killed. I was alive but I felt I had walked through a portal and wasn’t coming back out.

I guess it was just a simple enough accident, slick road, swerving, pounding into a ditch. Simple, right? Wrong! Anxiety swept over me like a dense fog. I could not look out the window without crying. The incident kept playing over and over and over again.

BOOM went the airbags. FISSSSSSSSS went the smoke. Ears ringing, tears falling. It was a horrible experience.

The sobbing would not stop, I’d be fine, then it would hit me in the face and I’d  begin to cry. I felt alone, in pain, ashamed, hurt, sore, weary and uncertain.  Stevens mom came over, dispersed hugs, and offered her car. “What?” I thought, “DRIVE?” Oh dear, I dread driving, dread dread dread.

All of my friends were giving me warm wishes. Isn’t it funny how the people on the computer can be more consoling and understanding? Tuesday my rest day, I checked this thing two or three times, and each time I checked, my writing friends were there hugging me, and caring for me like a mom dog with her puppies. Let me tell you, the writing community is awesome! When something happens to one of us, we circle around for support to our injured comrade. My sister called, and we both agreed, I shouldn’t tell my mother.

Steven asked his mom if we could borrow the car to go to the library/food shopping on Tuesday and being the loving woman that she is, she brought the car out here. I would have to drive her back home and then drive back here. *sob* *cry* I really wasn’t worried about food or anything else for that matter, I just wanted to rest.

I got in the car, shaking, she wanted me to drive so I could get familiar with the car. Low to the ground, feet barely reaching the pedal, eyes could hardly see over the wheel, I started the car and off I went. I drove about 10 MPH up the dirt road, 40 on the asphalt.
Great, I’m driving. Get me back home now, my brain was screaming.

I made it home and the next day, Wednesday, we went food shopping. I said if I was going to go, Steven had to come too! I won’t be alone! Another 10 MPH for two miles, passed the ditch where all this occurred, hands trembling, chest tightening, tears rolling, I made it to the asphalt! Made it to the stupid library, made it to the store.

A lot of eyes looked at me sympathetically as I passed, black eye shining, obvious pain written on my face. Adam looks no better than me but his bangs can disguise his cut up forehead. We were in the public, just two days after this life altering event. Well life altering for Adam and I. We arrived home and tears came like a flood.

Today, Thursday, I have to drive about 30 miles out to his brothers house so he can look at the truck. Me? I’d much rather take it to a garage, but his brother is a mechanic and wants to look underneath the thing. Let’s see, the headlights are dangling like eyeballs hanging out of a socket, grass clings to the underbody and all through the engine, the truck smells like a swamp, mud clings to it like a silk scarf and I’m afraid driving it, is going to do more damage since it took on so much water. Does it really matter what *I* think? How I feel? Me, me me? Well the roads are wet and slippery today, so good luck me!

Rest? No, not me. Back in the saddle once again. I’ll rest when I go home.