I have these gorgeous antique chairs that came from my Great-Aunt Bea. There are 3 of them. One is a regular chair with 4 legs, one is a not so regular chair with a base and a spring on it that makes it a rocker, and the third one is a large chair-and-a-half. Then there is a foot stool.
Way back in the 70s or the 80s judging by the fabric, my Aunt Bea refinished and recovered 2 of the chairs and for some reason left the chair-and-a-half alone. Let me show you photos.
I just adore the old original fabric on the larger chair but that avocado green stuff where they were updated is not so good. Sadly I checked and the original fabric is not underneath.
So I have been searching high and low for years to find something gorgeous to put on these chairs and bring them back together. And I do mean years. The upholstery needs to coordinate with the antique sofa and the rug. You can see a bit of the rug in the photos.
And one night I was in bed dozing off and what popped in to my head?!!
I have some old needlepoint canvases that my Nana gave me years and years ago and I stuffed them into my hope chest and forgot about them. I suddenly thought "what if there are enough of the needlepoints to fit the backs of the chairs?"
The very next morning I got up and got out those needlepoints and there are four of them. 2 that match that fit the chairs, one large one that will fit on the back of the larger chair and a smallish one that is perfect for that foot stool.
You can not believe how serendipitous this is!!! Now all I need to do is find a neutral fabric for the seats and the back sides of the backs that will bring this all together. So I trotted myself on down to Calico Corners and picked up some gorgeous velvet. And I am taking these all over to the refinisher/reupholsterers to have them brought to their former glory. Nay, even better than their former glory!
These chairs are going to be so beautiful that my kids will fight over who gets to inherit them. I can't wait to get them finished and show you the after photos.
Since I have been a really bad and sporadic blogger you may or may not remember that I have become quite interested in family trees and doing the research. It is tons of fun and very exciting to find things out.
I joined ancestry.com a few years ago when I was sick with the bronchitis or something that kept me glued to the house and have found a ton of ancestors. Then I was offered the special deal of $99 from ancestry to do my DNA profile and connect to others who are also registered through them. So I did that and my husband found it so interesting he did his as well.
My whole life I have always been told that I am mostly German on my mama's side and mostly all Irish on my dad's side. Not true. Those people on my mama's side may have lived in Germany but they don't test out as Germans. And all those Irish people on my dad's side? Mostly all English, a little German thrown in just for good measure. Loads of the Irish ancestry comes from my mama's side according to the family tree.
And all you 12-steppers just said "Hi Lisa Pie" in your heads, didn't you? I am a self-professed recovering codependent person. If you had told me 10 years ago that I was codependent I would have laughed at you and shown you the door. If you had suggested to me that my way of handling things wasn't working and I need to learn a new way, I would have told you that my way was just right and it was all those OTHER jack wagons who were impeding the progress I had so carefully laid out.
Fear and a need to try and control things in your life and around you and in your loved ones' lives is a full-time job. A full-time job with no benefits and lots of heart ache and resentment. And it will suck the life right out of you and leave you with sadness and sometimes bad health due to focusing so much on fixing others and ignoring your own self. That is after you damn near kill your alcoholic/addict with kindness trying to handle everything for them.
If I were to list here all the completely crazy things I have done that made perfect sense to me at the time your own head might explode. You might start to wonder how I am able to get up every day and walk around like I have good sense. And this was all back when I thought I only had one addict in my life.
You know how they say that you are given a lesson over and over again until you get it right? Just recently I was listening to what is called a "speaker tape" even though it is now on CD rather than tape. And it was a man speaking to a gathering of AA and Al-Anon members. What he said was so perfectly in tune with my life he could have been speaking directly to me and about me. And it was as if a light had been turned on in a dark corner of my brain where I was keeping all the files that would show me how codependent I really am. Now in order for that particular analogy to make any sense you should know that I picture my brain much like an old, old library with nothing but card catalog file drawers. And all my thoughts, memories, etc are all in there. So of course, as I have gotten older and older I get more and more file drawers for all of these things. That's why it sometimes takes me a while to find the right drawer and rifle through it for the exact thought I am looking for. This is my story and I am sticking with it.
So what happened when that light was turned on was this: I was suddenly aware of all the times I had chosen the addicted person, the alcoholic, the person with the most stuff to work on to be attracted to. I can pick out a person with an addictive personality at 20 paces. Now to be fair, they tend to be funny, inviting, smart, interesting people. But there is something in me that is drawn to them like a moth to a flame, or you could say like an alcoholic to a bottle of vodka. And I mean friends, boyfriends, lovers, all people. There before me was this long list of people that I had to look at and take stock of. What is the deal that I never saw this before? The speaker on the tape/CD said this "if you are ever questioning whether you think you might be an alcoholic and want an answer here is a surefire way to find out: just come up to me and ask "do you find me attractive?" and that is exactly what I do!
How did I get to be 55 years of age before I was aware of this about myself? I can't answer that. And here's a better question: how is it that my chemical makeup is such that I am drawn to the addictive person rather than to the drugs or the alcohol? I mean, I have used alcohol and cigarettes and some drugs in my life, but I could always quit. And I have. I quit smoking cigarettes 35 years ago. I quit taking drugs/smoking pot not long after that. And I have gradually cut back on my alcohol consumption to the point where I might have 6 or 8 drinks a year. That has come about due to having arthritis and other health issues that require medication and I don't want to overload my liver with the meds and the alcohol. It's just not a big deal for me. Not like eggplant parmigiana. Now, that is a big deal to give up. I am certainly not trying to make light of people who have an addiction that they are struggling with. I am only pointing out that this is one way I can see that I am not a member of that tribe. Anyhoo, I don't know how I could NOT see this as a pattern in my life except to say that it sure is easy to walk around with blinders on and not notice the big obvious elephant in the room.
I am now a loud and proud member of the struggling to improve codependent crew. This will be a life-long endeavor for me. Reading books, doing some step work, going to meetings are a part of my life. I want to be better. I want to be a healthy example of what you can be if you are willing to take the hard looks at yourself and face up to what you have done and what you can do differently. And I will most likely be a glaring example of how to fuck things up occasionally. But I am trying and learning and growing. And I am here if you ever need to talk or need something because that is part of who I am; I am a nurturer and a care-giver. As one of my friends from the meetings said "I never thought I was controlling, I always thought I was just being helpful!"
And just to be a little bit more helpful here is a list of some books that are outstanding:
Actually, if you go to Melody Beattie's website you can read all about her and all her great books. These are just 2 of hers that have been really helpful to me. The one by Sarah Hepola is new and very good. I was surprised at how many things she wrote about that applied to me. And the Daily Meditation one by Misti B I just got and am just starting it. She is taking a humorous approach to the daily meditations that are usually quite serious. I am loving what I am reading so far.
As much fun as detoxing and cleansing your body out sounds, it's not nearly that much fun. Not nearly.
I started with the 3 day juice and fruit cleanse. Hey, it's summer! There's fresh fruit everywhere and I love fruit. What could be bad about this?
Have you ever had a colonoscopy? You know the whole 24 hours ahead of that when you cleanse your whole colon of everything that has ever been inside it? This is similar to that.
Here's the good thing; I have never eaten so much in my whole life. I am continually grazing on watermelon, pineapple, grapes, honeydew and jicama. It's all been really good, but I had to throw in the jicama for a crunch and a change in texture.
Oh! I was at Central Market today to load up on more fresh fruit and vegetable goodness and there among the grapes was this:
And I was starving, so I took one to try them. OH MY GOD!
This is the most horrific thing I have ever put in my mouth! Vile, disgusting, putrid with a lingering aftertaste that will make you want to chew your own arm off if it would make that flavor go away. And I have eaten some gross things but this was just the worst.
I had to sample every other grape in the store to finally get rid of it. Even now, the memory of that flavor is making me nauseous just writing about it. Please, for the love of God, get rid of these abominations.
If I have saved even one person from this atrocity, it was worth it.
I have no idea how long it will take my body to adjust to being mostly all vegan, and gluten-free. Nor whether this will be a long-term change or just a temporary thing. I am willing and ready to give it a try to regain my health and hopefully reverse some of the inflammation going on.
If you are so inclined, give me a thought or a prayer tomorrow as I am seeing the pulmonologist at long last. I don't know if the scope and biopsy of the lungs is still a reasonable choice or if I am past the stage where that would be valuable information.
And I am off to brush my teeth again to get rid of the memory of those disgusting fake-flavored grapes.
I saw a commercial for a new Amazon Prime series called Catastrophe and it looked interesting. So last night when I got into bed I pulled out the Kindle and headphones and watched it. And let me just interject here to say that I LOVE my headphones. Love them!
Let me find a picture of them so you can see all the goodness of them.
They are wood. They make them out of all different kinds of wood. But think about it, what conducts sound better than wood?
Pianos are made of wood. Guitars are wood. Violins are all wood.
See what I mean? Anyway, these things have wonderful sound.
Back to the show.
These are the stars/writers/creators named Rob and Sharon. And their characters are named . . . .
Rob and Sharon.
Within the first few minutes I was laughing so loud I damn near woke up sleeping deaf Mr. Ed. And before I knew it, that episode was over. Of course, I clicked on episode 2. And that's how it went for 6 episodes. And that seems to be it. 6 short 24 minute episodes was Season 1.
Anyhoo, as I was watching this in one of the scenes there is a phone call between Rob and his mother. And I kept thinking her voice sounds familiar but her face, not so much. Who the hell is she?
And during the credits there was her name! First look at this picture and see if you know who it is.
Did you guess?
Did you guess Princess Leia? Because I sure as hell did not.
Yep, that's Carrie Fisher. How do people change so much?
So if I were giving stars, which I am. This show gets 5 *****. It is that good.
I decided to strike while the iron was hot. And in typing that I FINALLY understand that damn saying! Yes!
But in my case it means more about continuing to write now that I have gotten the momentum rather than being hot, sweaty and an ironworker.
I do not remember ever, ever blogging about my health or health issues. Either the physical or the emotional ones. Now, that doesn't mean I haven't it just means I don't remember it. But if you asked me I would tell you I am pretty healthy. Healthy for a short fat person anyway. I mean, my blood pressure is always low, my temp is always on the low side, my blood sugar remains level, that sort of thing. However, my ailments were mounting. First there was the flares of arthritis in my fingers. I remember clearly the first time I felt that shooting, stabbing pain in my finger. It was in 1997 when we had just moved from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile and I sort of assumed it had to do with the carrying and unpacking of boxes.
After the finger then it moved to a different finger. And occasionally, like every year or two, not anything you could really see a pattern in, my lower back would go out. Sciatica is a bitch, let me tell you. After we moved here I got sick in the fall and everyone said "oh, your body is just adjusting to all the crap in the air. Once you go through a full year you will acclimate."
This is a big fat lie. Every single spring and fall since I have been sick with all the sinus and throat stuff. And it seems to get worse every year. And this year has been the mother of all illness years. For 1 year now I have had what they call a frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) and I have done 9 months of physical therapy and have about 85 - 90% of my range of motion back. While that was going on I had the worst sciatica I have ever had kick in and I was down. It was excruciating. And before THAT healed up I started with the sinus, cough stuff.
I said to myself, "hey, let's be proactive and get this treated asap and not let it go into bronchitis like last year". This was the first of April and 4 1/2 months later and oh so many doctors and prescriptions and x-rays and finally CAT scans they finally diagnosed me with a bad sinus infection and pneumonia. I am currently on my 5th round of antibiotics along with a shit ton of other drugs. I don't like taking this stuff. I would rather keep my liver around for the rest of my hopefully long life, thank you very much. Oh, and every thing I have is an inflammatory issue. The arthritis, pneumonia, everything.
And I started doing what I do best which is to worry and project possible events in the future that could be horrible. What I was seeing is that having one health scare on top of the next and then the next before any of them could be cleared up was not boding well for the coming months. And I got determined to put myself on the top of my list and do whatever I can to get healthy.
So I talked with a friend of mine who is a nutritionist and we are working on getting my adrenals and kidneys working and my lymph moving and that seems to involve a lot of cleansing and detoxing, so far.
I am not sure how well all this is working while I am still taking the medications for the pneumonia, but I am hopefully making some good habits that will be there to kick in once the meds are finished. What it seems to entail is getting rid of the meat, dairy and gluten to get detoxed. A vegan, gluten-free diet, if you will.
I have ordered some supplements that are arriving today and once I get things going I will post some updates on what is working and what isn't. Also, I am scheduled to see the pulmonologist next week to see about biopsying the nodules in my lungs from the damn pneumonia. Which sounds scary, but if it will get rid of the coughing I have been doing since the first of April, I am all for it. This is month 5 of The Cough That Wouldn't Quit. I have become a recluse because I don't want to be annoying to others. I am so annoying to my own self with all the damn coughing. Other than the coughing, I have absolutely no energy, no stamina. I swear I get one thing done in a day and then I am wiped out. I am blaming that on running at 93% oxygen saturation for the last 4 months. Also, I am too tired to run two thoughts together. You might be shocked at how long it is taking me to just type this!
The plan is to get rid of the pneumonia and the sinus infection and the fatigue and to gain some energy, some health and good spirit. Please, wish me well and send some good thoughts my way when you can.
I want to take a few minutes of your time to tell you how special your father was way back in the day. He could not have been any sweeter or more generous with me. I have no idea what kind of man he grew into, nor husband or father. But I know this, he was funny and he was gentle and up for adventure. I always felt completely safe with him and that is a huge deal for me.
When we knew each other I was at a place in my life that was not good. I was struggling to figure out who I was and what my place in the world would be. I had no self esteem and covered that up with being loud, out-going, gregarious and having a devil-may-care attitude about tomorrow. Let's face it, I was a mess. A loud, crazy-acting person who could not find her place to fit in. And he saw me as worthy of spending time with. And as a person worthy of opening his heart and life to. I never felt judged or coming up short.
We went to the movies, restaurants that he most likely could not afford, concerts, bars, parties at the lake, all the usual high school stuff. And there was lots of craziness going on. Picture the movie, "Dazed and Confused". That was parties at the lake. But I always knew he would make sure we got home safe. He spent many hours helping me study to pass a class that I hated or I would have never graduated. I really didn't even care about school at that point, but he still helped me.
After we graduated I moved away. I moved 600 miles away. Not because I wanted to and not because I wanted to be that far, but because I had no other place to live. Circumstances being what they were, it was best that I left my home. And I am eternally grateful for the chance I was given at a fresh start and this is where I ended up meeting my husband, but it was really sad for me to leave. We had no concept of what a long distance relationship would be like, especially back in the day of super expensive long distance calls or slow hand-written letters. But we tried it for a while, a good year of writing, occasional phone calls and even less-occasional visits. And then we made the decision to just give in and call it quits.
And I missed him. There were things that came up in my life and he would be the first person in my mind to call and share these things. But that time had passed and it was just not appropriate for me to do that, so I missed the opportunity to re-connect and stay friends.
So when I came across his sister on Facebook a few years ago, I immediately friended her and was glad to get in touch with his family again. I knew that he had married and had a child, as had I and I wanted to be respectful of those boundaries and not reach out to him directly. Occasionally, when I would speak with his sister she would say that he was very glad that she and I had gotten in touch and that he was happy to get my news through her. I thought we would bridge that gap and communicate directly sometime in the future.
But life being what it is, that future was not to be. The day that I got a message saying that he had passed away from a heart attack in the middle of the night was just unbelievable. I had to read the message 3 times before it soaked in to my brain that this is what had happened. I kept putting the word "almost" in there, as in, we almost lost him last night. Why would my brain do that? Made me wonder what else I am missing. This hit me like a ton of bricks. I know people say that but it truly felt like that. And I mourned the loss of his life, I mourned the lost chance to ever get to see him and look in his eyes and say thank you. Thank you for all the times you were sweet, loving, protective and strong. Missed opportunities to tell someone how much you appreciate them are just so damn sad. For weeks afterwards I had vivid dreams of him and I could smell him.
I have been working hard the past few years with a therapist and going to Al-Anon and learning how to not be such a codependent person. And one of the things I have learned is to quit making decisions based on fear. I don't want fear of the unknown or whatever to rule me and keep me from doing the things that I know I should. One of those things that I should be doing is grabbing opportunities to say the things that should be said. Say the thank yous, say the I love yous, and mostly say the I am so sorrys.
So, to the child of my high school boyfriend, I want to say how deeply sorry I am that your father was taken from you too soon. I am sorry that he and I were not friends and didn't get to sit with you and tell you stories of when he was young, handsome, sweet and loving. The story of us driving to Ft. Worth to a Gregg Allman concert and getting lost on the way home, THAT was a great story. I hope that other friends from different stages of his life will find a way to share memories with you, too.
