Spring Bouquet

In spite of the lack of sunshine through my windows, my pot of flowers keeps showing new blooms.  I'll plant the bulbs in the yard when the time comes.  I went to Home Depot (fondly known as Ho Depot from a time they lost part of their sign in a wind storm) and checked out the plants there.  I was there to get a light fixture and some other things as the electrician is coming tomorrow to put in extra outlets and fix a fried light fixture.  Last week it was the plumber.  A couple in front of me bought a couple of boxes of assorted bedding plants.  I hope they aren't out there trying to plant them though.  The wind has kicked up, gusts around 35mph, and rain is right behind it.  If they get them right into the ground they won't have to water.

Saw my doctor and she talked me back onto Zoloft with a plan for tapering off it more gently doing cold turkey.  I agreed to it, the abrupt way was making me dizzy and now I feel better.  I'm not generally a good pill taker but I'm not interested in falling flat on my face again like I did last week.  Fortunately I didn't hurt anything but my own feelings.  So apparently there's a reason for following directions. Snicker.

Now the house smells delicious, I just took two loaves of banana bread out of the oven.  They have almonds and apricots in them.  Yum.  Just going to have some bread, finish watching my Netflix film, and then off to the gym.  Nice quiet day, tomorrow I'll have 4 grandgirls here besides the electrician, and I'm cooking dinner for them and their daddy.  Also fun, but definitely not quiet.

I love these little violet crocus, crocuses, crocii?  These are in a pot of bulbs sent for my birthday.  It was supposed to be tulips and there are some in there but there are jonquils, and tiny iris, and something I haven't identified yet.  It's been fun watching them push up the dirt and stick their little heads out.  There's a parable there somewhere.  Something about me sticking my head up out of the sand.

Thanks for all the comments about my last post.  Anytime I post something that personal I feel sort of exposed and I appreciate the thoughfulness and kind words from all.  Brighid, I had to look up the Sweet Potato Queens and I haven't stopped laughing yet.  I'm sure you must be a candidate for a Sweet Potato Queens Revirgination kit, me too!?  And as Rain remarked, I thought Zoloft tamped my creativity down to slow go, to almost no go.  It hasn't been around that long and I have my doubts that all that needs to be known about SSRI's is known, much like with estrogen, or coffee, or chocolate.  It filled the bill at the time.

Dreams & Medication

During my travel from married to single I experienced some health problems, a jittery heartbeat with chest pains ending in a trip to the ER.  They kept me overnight, ack!  Many tests later my heart was pronounced healthy with an odd early heartbeat called a PVC, GERD, and severe stress.  My doctor put me on a small dose of Z*loft, an SSRI, not my favorite thing to do but I needed more peace than I could give myself.  It worked.  Then it started keeping me awake at night so I tapered off a little and then just quit.  I've replaced it with nearly daily trips to the gym.  Now I'm sleeping, a lot, and having odd dreams that are probably related to stopping the Z*loft. 

Last night I dreamed I was an newly minted Orthodox nun, except we were all dressed in white and the orthodox nuns are usually dressed in black as far as I know.  I was assigned to hand out medications to the poor but whoever was in charge was just giving me handfuls of assorted pills with verbal instructions to give this to so and so and that to so and so.  All of which I promptly forgot so no one got anything as I wasn't allowed to write instructions down.  That was disturbing.  But there is a repetitive theme that has appeared in this dream and all the others over the week, having the ground crumble out from under me.  I drive down a dream road and when I try to drive back up it has washed away or fallen over the edge.  When I walk somewhere in my dream the same thing, or I open my front door and there is a huge hole in front of the place I'm living.  I think its SSRI withdrawal and a belated reaction to a failed marriage which was like the ground crumbling under me.  Some years ago I took Z*loft after my mother died, and while it perked me up, it also made it nearly impossible for me to sleep.  I'd forgotten that.  Still I think less drugs is better for me, and probably I need to process what happened to my life the last few years further and continue jumping on that treadmill in the gym.  Nothing is over until its over.

A Dazzle of Dragonflies

Deep among the flowers, butterflies press their way;

The slow winged dragonflies dot the water.

I'd whisper to the wind and light: "together let us tarry;"

We shall enjoy the moment, and never contrary be.

Tu Fu - Chinese poet 712-770

***

Lonesomely clings the Dragonfly to the underside of the leaf.

 Ah! The Spring rain.

Anonymous Japanese poet

Though the purity

Of the moonlight has silenced

Both nightingale and

Cricket, the mourning dove alone

Sings all the white night.

- Anonymous

I was up in the middle of the night last night for no good reason.  Tossed and turned and finally got up after 1am, checked out the TV and gave up and read a book until about 4am.  It's " Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons:Tales of Redemption from an Irish Mailbox," by Greg Fitzsimmons a comedian, and 100% Irish.  I myself am 50% Irish or so via two little grandmothers with dark curly hair and rosaries.  The book is pretty funny but reminded me of the years of notes and phone calls from my grade school to my parents.  Fitzsimmons calls them Irish Merit Badges.  Now I'm tired and inert.  And the delete key on my new keyboard is in a different place.  The familiar place is occupied by a key that sends me to the end of a typed line.  So I think I'm deleting and the cursor scoots off into the margin.  Grrr. And gray weather is like a soft, blanket, zzz.  Not at all energizing. 

Gray, gloomy, wet, March.  The month of my birth and of my two years younger sister who was a blond little girl who used to whistle in church.  Three of my grandgirls' birthday are in March, and one grandson.  So many of us popped out in this end of the winter month, the products of summer unions and affections.  Were we sunny reminders of a happy past, a bright spot in winter, or was it "Omigod, look what we've done?"  Perhaps a little of both.  I know my own parents were clueless about babies, especially our mother, an only child with zero infant experience.  Or sibling experience.  I think my sisters and I delivered endless shocks to her at times. "Why do you girls fight?" she cry, "I'd loved to had a sister."  And she was right; I wouldn't like to be an only child.  And, I'm glad we were all girls, gave us opportunities we might not have had with some sons in the mix.  Although I've often wondered if it had some deleterious effect on my two marriages.  Both to younger brothers of eldest sisters.  Being the alpha girl I haven't always been very flexible.  Oh well, who cares?

The next two sisters were much younger and both born in May, a more welcoming time of year.  I was nine when third one came, sweet little red headed girl.  The fourth and youngest sister is 20 years younger and we have a loving, entwined relationship. She was in my care a lot as a baby and toddler and sometimes we have a parent/child view as well as sister/sister and friends as well.  I think the parent/child thing has become a two way street at this point in our lives.  I believe we are spiritual twins.  It's her young son who is my grandson as his sister is my granddaughter.  They are in the age group the rest of my grandkids though in fact they are my grown sons cousins.  I felt honored to be at the hospital with her and her husband both times when her children were born.  Lots of sisters there.  The staff called us the Birkenstock sisters the last time around.

All this remembering is making me hungry.  Or maybe I'm just tired.  The youngest sister with the dark, curly hair will be here with her kids for spring break so maybe I will shock them and clean up the house.  After my nap.

Hooray for public libraries.  This is of course a summer picture; there are no leaves on the trees here right now.  Now that my PC is bug free, my keyboard has died.  I've hauled my library card out and gotten online and taken out a few books to while I'm at it.  I've been reading Wallace Stegner and they had two of those I hadn't gotten to yet. 

I just read a quote from Stegner's "All The Little Live Things." I don't know what he meant, but it keeps running through my mind as I try decide what it means to me.  His protagonist Joe is 65, mourning the loss of his only son and examining his own life from his new home in a rural area, "and it used to comfort me to know that these little mountains, like everything else around, are very lively, very Californian.  The range grows, they say, a half inch or so a year, and in the same time moves about that distance northward.  It is a parable for the retired.  Sit still and let the world do the moving."  I wonder how many people retire this way.  I was never a mover and shaker though I did give my money and time to various causes, tutoring and literacy, political campaigns, Patty Murray in particular.  I picketed with the farm workers and Chavez in my younger days and then again with his daughter when I was in my fifties.  Did that make any difference?  Do I make any difference right now?  I have grandchildren who I'm hoping to help send out into the world with an education and a moral compass based on love and compassion.  So the world keeps moving on with or without us but I still think all of our inputs may count for something in the aggregate.  In a way we all are living on the fault line.