Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Again With The Poo

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So today I had to go to the doctor for, um, we’ll just call it a lady problem. This concerned me because I knew I needed antibiotics for this particular problem, which I’m not supposed to be taking on account of they could reactivate the Hostile Alien Bacteria, in which case I would have to hurl myself into oncoming traffic, because there is just NO WAY I can be that sick again right now.

Happily there is another, safer, kind of antibiotic I can take, although my doctor did tell me that there is another treatment option we could try for C DIF, should the need ever arise. But when he told me what it was I thought that I might still choose the oncoming traffic, because the next level of treatment involves a stool transplant.

That of course is really too horrifying to even consider, which I told him, to which he replied, (and I SWEAR I am not making this up):

“Hey, the healing power of stool is legendary.”

LEGENDARY.

I really had nothing to say to that, but I didn’t have to because while we were on the subject he told me about this company which allows you to send poo through the mail to whomever you wish, in order to convey the message that, “Dear My Congressperson, You are full of …it.”

Happy Tuesday!

What’s Your Sign?

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I have been in a pretty un-funny place this week, but I couldn’t let the week go by without posting something. So I’m posting something from my friend, Lynne, who got it from Gary Craig’s newsletter.

Astrological Light Bulbs

How many members of your astrological sign does it take to Change A Light Bulb?

Aries: Just one. You want to make something of it?

Taurus: One, but just “try” to convince them that the burned-out bulb is useless and should be thrown away.

Gemini: Two, but the job never gets done – they just keep arguing about who is supposed to do it and how it’s supposed to be done!

Cancer: Just one. But it takes a therapist three years to help them through the grief process.

Leo: Leos don’t change light bulbs, although sometimes their agent will get a Virgo to do the job for them while they’re out.

Virgo: Approximately 1.0000000 with an error of +/- 1 millionth.

Libra: Er, two. Or maybe one. No – on second thought, make that two. Is that okay with you?

Scorpio: That information is strictly secret and shared only with the Enlightened Ones in the Star Chamber of the Ancient Hierarchical Order.

Sagittarius: The sun is shining, the day is young and we’ve got our whole lives ahead of us, and you’re inside worrying about a stupid light bulb?

Capricorn: I don’t waste my time with these childish jokes.

Aquarius: Well, you have to remember that everything is energy, so…

Pisces: Lightbulb? What lightbulb?

Author Unknown

Intelligent Design

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Given that my days are filled with writing, teaching, and managing our household, I spend a lot of my time asking questions. My question range from wondering about the meaning of life, to wondering just how so many disgusting things can come out of such small, furry beings. And why do we let them live with us, again?

But I am only one person, and so obviously I alone cannot formulate all the questions that need to be posed about our human existence.

This fact was brought home to me last night as my husband and I were watching an old episode of “Top Gear”, because I realized that never in life had it occurred to me to ask,

“Can a nun drive a monster truck?”

So clearly, in an effort to meet this evolutionary need, that is why God made boys.

That Really Takes The Pressure Off

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“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and then they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” (p.8)

“The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell. In fact, that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable. Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly.” (p.9)

-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

When I read those two passages, I felt every single cell in my body take a huge, deep breath and relax. Because what those words said to me was, “There’s no other place you’re supposed to be than exactly where you are right now, sickness, mess, low energy, uncertainty and all. So relax-you are just fine.”

Whenever I get into the story that being “enlightened” and “spiritual” means that I can only ever feel blissed out and peaceful all the time, besides making me want to gouge my eyes out with a very dull spatula (because seriously, how freaking boring would that be?!), it also makes me judge myself, my feelings, my thoughts, and my life as “wrong” on days like today when every muscle in my body hurts, I can only sit by and watch the undone housework pile up, and I just want to yell at Personal Growth and New Thought and tell them to SUCK IT! And so according to my old story of what “spiritual” looks like, this day is “wrong” and “doesn’t count”, and I have to figure out a way to get to some new, different place that is somehow “right” and “acceptable”.

But not anymore. Because if those paragraphs are true, and they certainly felt true for me when I read them, then the fact that I don’t have to hurry up and get somewhere else or try and measure up to some kind of external standard of “good enough” spirituality means that this moment right now is, in fact, enough, and good enough, and already contains infinite possibilities for lots of juicy goodness, even while I’m feeling miserable.

So I took a breath. And then I took a bath. I listened to a CD of Bach’s French Suites. And I felt sick as a dog. And-it was all good.

Edited To Add: No, I take that back. It wasn’t all good, but it was all okay. And it was all part of my spiritual life for today.

The Wall

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Every so often my life leads me to a place that I think of as The Wall, which I know are places within myself where I am not yet able to act from love. I can tell when I’ve reached another one, because I feel exactly like I’ve hurled myself headlong into an extremely solid brick wall at about 120 miles an hour. Then I pick myself up off the ground, dust myself off, and do it all over again.

I usually bash around quite a bit before I am able to find a more gentle, easier way to get past my latest wall. My first response is always to go for the sledgehammer, without even stopping to ask if there’s another tool that could possibly get the job done. I just get so frustrated whenever I am stuck in a pattern of thoughts, and I can’t find another way to see a given situation.

Sometimes the “sledgehammer method” does help me to release my frustration, but it is a pretty brutal method of navigating through life. So over the past few years I’ve started to ask if maybe there’s another way I could approach these situations in which I feel so stagnant and stuck.

Of course the Universe loves it when we ask questions like this, and so it was not long before I was inspired to pick up Martha Beck’s book on The Joy Diet. In addition to giving us 10 practices for creating a more joyful life, she also talks about Bill O’Hanlon and his suggestion to Do One Thing Differently. As in, if you find yourself having the same argument over and over again with your spouse, the next time you have the argument you have to Do One Thing Differently, like put on a hat, or have the argument while lying in the bathtub.

It sounds silly, but holy cow does it work! I guess committing to take some kind of action opens up a space for new thoughts to come in.

So I decided to apply this strategy to my latest wall, and over the weekend my inner guidance started talking to me about Pema Chodron. I saw a quote of hers on a blog I read, and suddenly she was all I could think about. Suddenly they were replaying Oprah’s radio interview with Pema Chodron on the afternoon I was listening to XM’s “Oprah and Friends” channel. Suddenly I found myself reading the descriptions of all her books on Amazon. And this whole time my inner guidance was chanting, “Get thee to a bookstore,” so I finally went, if only to get that little voice to shut up.

At the bookstore I found a little volume titled, When Things Fall Apart, which is perfect for me because that is exactly how I feel about my life right now. I feel like everything has broken open and spilled out, and maybe I can catch a few grains over here, and mop up a few drops over there, but I can’t change the fact that there’s a great big mess on the table in front of me, at least in my mind.

Pema Chodron describes her own “falling apart” in this way:

“What happened when I got to the abbey was that everything fell apart. All the ways I shield myself, all the ways I delude myself, all the ways I maintain my well-polished self-image-all of it fell apart. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t manipulate the situation. My style was driving everyone else crazy, and I couldn’t find anywhere to hide.

I had always thought of myself as a flexible, obliging person who was well liked by almost everyone. I’d been able to carry this illusion throughout most of my life. During my early years at the abbey, I discovered that I had been living in some kind of misunderstanding. It wasn’t that I didn’t have good qualities, it was just that I was not the ultimate golden girl. I had so much invested in that image of myself, and it just wasn’t holding together anymore. All my unfinished business was exposed vividly and accurately in living Technicolor, not only to myself, but to everyone else as well.” (p. 6,7).

What has come to light for me during these months of sickness and recovery is the issue of self-compassion. I can practice it up to a certain point, but then once I’ve decided that I “should” be better, and I “should” be running at 100%, and I “should” whatever, but I can’t, because I’m still physically rundown and need more time to heal, then I turn into a slave driver and constantly drive and abuse myself mentally. I would never treat another person as meanly as I’ve been treating myself. But I apparently have no problem tyrannizing myself internally to the point of despair.

So I guess it’s finally time for me to learn how to do this differently. I’m not happy about it, but I’ve reached the point where I don’t really have any other choice. Well, I guess I always have a choice, but I’m tired of repeating this same cycle of self-abuse. I guess that I have finally suffered enough. I would really like to start feeling better, and I’ve been doing this long enough now to know that in order to start feeling relief, I need to learn how to change my mind about this situation. So, okay Universe, I’m finally listening. I’m ready for a shift in perception so that I can see this situation differently. And if possible, I’d really like this new view to be sledgehammer-free.

And Then Suddenly, Your Entire Day Can Just Turn Right Around

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So this day kind of started off badly at about 5:30 am when I had to get up and take some medicine because my migraine had come roaring back.

Unfortunately it was still in full swing when my tutoring client arrived for her session.

We were working on an exercise which required her to translate a conversation between Sara and José discussing what kind of movie they wanted to go and see, when she got to the following line:

“¿Adónde quiere ir Sara?”

which means, “Where does Sara want to go?”

So my student began translating the words aloud, and I heard her say,

“Where do…you want…to DO…Sara?”, with absolutely no realization of what she had just said.

And I, rising to the occasion as the mature, responsible adult I am, burst into peals of laughter and almost fell off my chair with glee.

And suddenly, my whole entire day just turned right around.