Akannie’s Weblog

 Slept in until (Oh, I hate to say it out loud!!!!!)  after 9 o’clock.  Couldn’t sleep last night, and finally dozed off after about 4 AM.  So, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I’m thinking going out and playing outside with the dogs might help….or kill me. Either way…lol

   Final week of the election and I will surely be glad when it is finished.  I walk around grinding my teeth and hating the discord I am seeing. People’s fears are such a huge thing. They make us react in abnormal ways, act ugly, and cause all sorts of aberrations of behavior.  I keep thinking I want to call John McCain and say ” You should be ashamed of yourself!” I cannot believe the things his campaign is doing and saying.  It belies everything that I thought was good and honest about this man.  The hate and fear mongering are unconscionable.

   I am trying with everything I have to not be part of the problem, but part of the solution.  I am putting my garden to bed, I am vacuuming my home.  I am trying to live within my means and pay my taxes and still put food on the table and keep the electricity turned on.  The electric bill was 200 again this month.   The bills are all coming due for next month, and every time I open an envelope my heart sinks. I am trying to believe believe believe that this is an abundant Universe, that I always have all that I need.  I may have to turn off the phone, satellite and computer for a couple of months. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt a bit, except for NaNoWriMo, which I will just put off until next year. I will miss the blogging community, but maybe I can go to the library every now and then, or my sisters and use hers. I’ll not be totally cut off…And who knows? Maybe the last payment from Social Security will finally be released, in the nick of time, to save me from all of the above.  The attorney was not timely in petitioning for fees, so SS kept about 6K of the backpay to cover the expenses.  (I like the way I have to pay for their ineptness).  I was hoping that the remainder of that would be a little something I could stick away somewhere, for myself.  Not likely. lol  I got a letter from the lawyers, something for me to sign, (the itemized bill) and it wouild leave me with a couple of thousand.  Hopefully.  That was 2-3 months ago.  The government wheels turn slowly.  That would pay my property taxes and leave some.  sigh…Life in “grown-up world” sucks sometimes.

  The beauty of all this is that through it all, I haven’t thought of picking up a drink or a mind altering chemical. And believe me, my mind could use some altering. lol  But my solutions being what they are today, alcohol and drugs just don’t fit into the picture.  I’m always telling my  sponsees  “Take an action–change a feeling!!”   Probably need to take my own advice.  Maybe I need to get outdoors and breathe in some of this pristine country air.  And play in the sunshine while the peaches are thawing out. (I have a pie to bake today).  We’ll have a lovely midwestern supper of grilled brats and sauerkraut, unpeeled red mashed garlic potatoes and applesauce.  Top that off with a beautiful peach pie.  And then I’m off to the women’s meeting.

  Even in the shadows…life is good.

 The good news is this: we are supposed to be having a warming trend in the next couple of days.  YIPPEE!!!!   It has been cold cold cold. Mornings below 30 and days never making it the top side of 40. I’m just not ready.

  I’m still not dressed and it’s almost 10 o’clock. I have on long johns, flannel pajamas and a robe. And I am toasty. lol  Even went out to feed and free the chickens in this get-up.  Is is Halloween yet??? lol

  Today I have to get my clown suit cleaned up and gathered together and ready to go. I wish I could find a mask that was okay to wear so I wouldn’t have to wear all that greasepaint. That shit is messy. And it gets all over everything.  I have a whole new respect for professional clowns now.  The biggest problem with the clown thing is I am blind as a bat, and it’s hard to wear my glasses. I need to find a big pair of plastic glasses that will fit over my real ones. I bumble around and bump into things and people laugh, thinking I am being a clown.  HAH! I am. A BLIND clown.  lol

  Hubby wanted some pie last night, so I guess I will make the man a pie today.  My choices are apple, peach or blackberry. And there may still be some cherries in the freezer, but I think I used them all., I’ll have to look.

  Had some killer chicken fajitas for supper last night. A simple meal for simple folks. I have a few bell peppers that I need to get in the freezer today…they’ve been sitting on the counter for 3 days now. I used the red and yellow ones in the fajitas last night. Today will be a vegetarian supper…not sure what just yet.   But hey–it’s only 10 o’clock in the morning and I just finished my oatmeal! Give a girl a break! lol

  Everything outside in the garden is now a dead frozen mat of tangled yuck. If it really gets up to 65 tomorrow, I’ll get out there and start cleaning up. BUt today, after another freezing night, my joints are hurting and my back is aching something terrible. So today, I’ll putter around in here.  I need to get started on this room. It needs a major overhaul. A good excuse is Thanksgiving coming up with all 40+ of my family here. That is always good incentive for me to get busy.  Not that most of them will even notice…just motivation for me.

  I have some writing to do and some emails to read and a pretty laid back day ahead. Just the way I like it….

I was thinking of something this morning after reading somebody (Pam, I think)…that a long time ago I was making noises about how ratty my Big Book looked, all dogeared and stained with coffee rings and the broken spine and scribbled up.   A  woman who was in our town speaking looked at me and smiled and said “If your Big Book’s falling apart, you’re probably not.” It was one of those light bulb moments for me.  I was only about 6 years sober at the time.  I hear people say all the time that their Big Book’s on the shelf, gathering dust.  When I was newly sober, I carried that book around with me like a life preserver airplane seat. I always took it to meetings with me. I was told by an old guy that How It Works was in that book, in Chapter 5 and that’s where I should read it from-not off xeroxed papers.  I have written quotes, made notes, written phone numbers, had epiphanies and cried real tears on that book. I have it in a bible tote right now to hold it together.  I’ve thought about getting a replacement, but I just can’t imagine. I do have copies of the 4th Edition and even a 2nd Edition, but they’re not MY Big Book.  When I am working with someone new, I pull that old book out and they invariably raise their eyebrows a little. I don’t care.  That book means more to me than anyone could ever know.

   It’s a killing freeze of a morning here. 10AM and it’s finally up to 34 degrees. This frost on the pumpkin kind of day has me wanting to stay in even though I have several errands I need to run.  I was going to try to make a 9 Am meeting I haven’t attended before , but got a call from someone needing to talk and that turned out to be more important.  So, if I get a move on, I can make the noon meeting and get my errands all done down that way. When you live out in the boonies like I do, you have to try to get all your “stuff” done when you’re in town.

   I’ve had a successful morning so far. I’ve done a little service, put out my hand, made breakfast for my husband, fed the dogs and cats and chickens.  Now I’ll get the other things done and life will roll merrily along, as it should.

   So…..off I go.

It’s a beautiful day, 61 degrees so far, and probably not destined to get too much warmer. We have a forecast for a killing freeze tomorrow night. The good news is this:  It will kill off the fleas and I won’t have to do any more canning and freezing and drying. LOL  Because, no matter what, I remain the laziest woman in Amerika. If there’s a shortcut, I will find it. If there’s a half-measure, I will do it.  If there’s a shorter distance between two points, I will take it.

  This all comes from my rebellion at having grown up in a German farming community, where the motto was Live to work and Work to live. It was an unspoken and inherited state of mind-DNA that permeated the very fabric of my existence. And I grew up being very hardworking, very loyal to employers, always going above and beyond the call….because it made me look better than you.  It also turned out to be pointless. The most I got for all that really was they just expect more from you, but when the rubber meets the road and the company sells out or goes under…you’re still unemployed. And sometimes without a single days notice. Once I worked in a place that at the end of the day on Friday, they just said, Oh, btw–no job anymore, have a great weekend, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.  I was furious–NO NOTICE ????  And one supervisor actually said, well we were afraid you guys wouldn’t finish up the week if we told you.   I wanted to slash her tires.

  I think of my dad working in the same mill for 25 years or something. He’s probably rolling in his grave right now.  (Well, if he had a grave he would be-he was cremated and scattered over a gorgeous bay in Northern California).  Things have really changed in the past 25 years or so in this country. Some of it good change, some of it not.  The main thing that I see is the effects of it mostly being that people don’t put people first anymore. The worker has become a disposable commodity. It is a sad thing, and probably the sign of a crumbling civilization. When things and money have become the main focus, it’s the beginning of the end.

  Work is scarce here in the middle part of the country.  Job fairs are drawing hundreds and hundreds of displaced workers. Employment ads are solicting the same responses…one $8.00 an hour job here had over 300 applicants. It’s some scarey times…

  Just for today, I’m laying off the television and news. It’s Sunday and I have a full day that includes a meeting tonight with a young ‘un getting a 30 day coin.  I have some outdoors work to do, putting the garden to bed for the winter. I have a bucket full of green and red bell peppers that need slicing and freezing. I have a sister needs calling.  All little things I can do to keep my little piece of the world in balance.

  And that, I think, is the only way to survive the coming tough times.

      Why is it that somedays the world seems like a crazy frenetic place and other days it seems like a walk in the park ? When nothing has really changed, all the people around you are anxious about money and jobs and their place in the Universe, but somewhere inside you have found that spot of calmness and peace ?  You wake up in the morning and everything just feels different.  You  look at the world around you through a new set of glasses, as Chuck C. wrote. The change is startling, especially if you have fallen victim to the fear mongering and the general state of the nation these days.  And lots of us have.  One of my neighbors told us yesterday that he has lost over a hundred thousand dollars from his 401k and is going to have to go back to work. He retired early at about 58  after working 40 years and working his tail off.  He’s young enough to still work, if he can find work around here, but he was done…or so he thought.

  It’s like the implosion of the American Dream…people who thought their golden years were all sewed up. That they were on easy street. Now they are having to start all over again.  While the wealthy in this country are crying about their portfolios, the rest of us regular people are trying to figure out how to pay the property taxes AND put food on the table.  And keep the internet turned on. And so it goes…

   On another hand…I have met a woman here that I have just absolutely clicked with. I cannot believe it took us so long to find weach other.  People would always say to me “I know you know her” and I’d say “no”…She told me the same thing when we finally hooked up.  lol  It feels like we are becoming great friends, and I am so grateful for her.  I have lots of acquaintences, and know lots of people here.  I even have some women friends, but no real girlfriends…not like I used to have.  We’ve been here 3 years now, and although thanks to the miracles of modern technology I am still hooked up with some of my old girlfriends, it’s not like having someone HERE, where I can go by her house for coffee, or go to lunch.  Stuff like that.

 I’m writing late becasue I have been busy with guests all day. Haven’t even checked my email. Right now everyone is fast asleep and I am catching up and will head for bed myself shortly. Have had a lovely day, and feeling very content and useful. Had a chat with my neighbor while the guests were having a little afternoon nap, and my neighbor said–did I see a little girl there? And I says yes, she’s 2. Neighbor bemusedly says…”Boy, you really have a thing for strays, don’t you? You are so generous!”  I had to laugh. Normies just don’t get how this thing works…it is ME who gets the gifts here.   It’s ME whpo benefits, every time. 

 And I am blessed to know that.

A late rising this morning, cool and grey–a perfect day for staying in bed until 8:30 or so! Hubby has no work today, and it was a nice languid morning on all fronts.

 Am making a list of my chores for this morning…one of my sponsees is coming out this evening (she gets off work at 4) and will probably spend most of the weekend.  She left the meeting abruptly last night, and I thought it was because of the chatty 2 year old, but apparently yesterday was her belly button birthday, and nobody much acknowledged it in her family. She was , as she put it, “Eat up from the neck up.”  Of course, she didn’t tell anybody else it was her birthday, so no one knew.  She called this morning and said she was so messed up last night over it all that she wanted to drink, so she went straight home and went to bed at 8:30. Pulled the covers over her head and stayed there. That works for me, lol.  Her mom died last year, and her partner is in a year long rehab and under lock and key for at leaast another month before they will even allow visitors. She has recently gone to work, and everything is just so hard for her, I know. SO…I offered to have her out here for a weekend for a little R&R, where she can get out of town, away from everything and even have a little help with the 2 year old.  I will cook her comfort foods and bake her a birthday cake and pamper her a little. Because I really do admire mothers who get sober  and live life on life’s terms with little ones. Especially when the odds are stacked against them.   God bless her.

  I don’t want to spend too much time here this morning as I do have a lot to do. I want to always check in with myself and anybody who reads here, because accountability has become very important to me and my life in sobriety.  I need to remember how much I need other people, that I can never (and never have to) do this thing alone, ever again.  I need to account for myself, and be honest and be willing and be openminded enough to know that it was my best thinking that got me here in the first place.

  I am ever thankful for the ones who came before me, who always told me that I had to watch my mind like a rattlesnake, and anytime I had a really “GOOD IDEA”  I needed to talk it over with somebody else. That a burden shared is a burden halved.  That 2 wrongs don’t make a right.  That just because everybody is doing it, doesn’t mean that I can do it.  Or should do it.

 And mostly this, that came off a Xmas card from a friend in the program:

           “No act of love, however small, is ever wasted.”

And so it is.

The rains have finally come,. and all the furry residents of this house save one, are inside and snuggled up.  The little black cat, Sam, is still out hunting or something. He won’t be long though, as it’s about 47 degrees out there and he’s the biggest wussie of all the cats. lol

  Feels like a soup day today.  I have a container in the freezer that needs to be eaten…a lentil and sausage and potato soup. Might be just the ticket for a day like this. I was thinking earlier about a tuna casserol of sorts…all nice and cheesy and fishy and comfortingly hot.  Another good idea for a day like this.

 I have started reading (behind his back, lol) the text for the class hubby is taking, put on by the EcoVista Community Gardens people.  The book is put out by the Northwest Earth Institue,  out of Portland, Oregon. The book is called Menu For The Future .  “The act of putting into your mouth what the Earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the Earth.”-Frances Moore Lappe. (I have several FML books from back in the 70’s–I never throw books away–I should get them out and read them). It is a discussion course, limited to 20 people. He is enjoying it, and I think I may do the next one.  The book has interesting articles regarding food and our relation to the earth. I’ll let you know…

  I’m thinking about having some oatmeal for breakfast. A good idea, since there is some leftover from that small pan I made for hubby’s breakfast this morning. I make it at night and then he just warms it up in the morning. That works out well …he gets a hot, nutritious breakfast and I get to stay under the big quilt.  Works for me. I just bring it back to a boil after stirring in the oats, and then I put the lid on and turn off the stove.  It pretty much cooks itself. I read a recipe once for camping, where the person writing would always do that in a wide mouth thermos at night before going to sleep. Wake up–VOILA!- hot oatmeal just waiting for you.  Another friend had sent me recipes for little omelets for camping…You just scramble the raw eggs up well, add some ingredients (onion, cheese, bell pepper, ham–whatever you like) and then pour it into little sandwich bags and freeze.  Then you just pop them (bag and all) into a pot of boiling water and they cook up like magic.  It works very well, as i tried it on one of our camping trips. I was thinking, I should have done some of those back when the hens were layiong so well and I had extra eggs. It would have been a good way to store them. Ah, well. Live and learn.

  My hens aren’t laying well at all this year. Guess maybe it’s time to replace them. Some people replace their chickens every other year. These are almost 3 years old.  I will do things a lot different next time (famous last words) lol.  I will get several different kinds of chickens, and only banty roosters.  NO big mean roosters ever again. I try to understand that he thinks he’s protecting his girls, but in the end when that big bastard is flying at me, it’s just too much. lol  I’m also thinking of trying my hand at Cornish Game hens.  That entails butchering…but maybe I need to pull up my big girl panties and get real. We have to eat. We need protein sources. And it would be good to be in charge of what’s in our chicken we eat.

  Well, I am going to maybe run the hoover and get out the feather duster for a minute. Nothing serious. I am taking a day off for the most part. Tonight is the women’s meeting, and I’m opening so I have to be there at 6:15. Just talked to my pal, one of the most wonderful women on earth (goddess of the coconut ice cream, if you remember). She has made pumpkin ice cream, and will bring me some tonight. I can’t wait !!

  Loving the energy in my house today. . .