BFF COMBO POST

Have I lost my mind?  #180
Little question there, it's on its way out, I fear. My memory of long ago is so haphazard so as not to be very helpful.  I can sometimes be prompted into remembering and sometimes, no clue. I seem to remember strange things. Maybe things that hurt me or confused me or made me giggle. I seem to not remember a lot of things that made me happy. I seem not to remember a lot of things my sister and brother remember, though I might once they begin to tell the story. Or perhaps, I remember them reminding me another time, not sure. It's annoying though and I try not to dwell on this short coming because it makes me think ...
Never mind, I don't want to even write it out.

The short answer: I haven't lost it exactly, but it does wander off quite often.

No Particular Place To Go  #181

I love a good road trip with no particular place to go. I can pack up and drive for hours and find a place to sleep when I get tired and then start the next day. Something along the way may or may not catch my eye. If it does, I'm stopping and maybe staying. If I see a sign heading in another direction, I'll go there now. It's fun and I always see new things.

I like to travel a new and different route even when I have a destination in mind, if time is not an issue. You never know what you might see and what might beckon you to pull over and have a look. I enjoy that a lot.
I do that when I am coming home from Nashville; on the way, I am too anxious to see my family to mess around with unnecessary gawking stops, but coming home, I have time!  Love doing that.

In my life, I have a path, always. I know where I am going and how I'm getting there. I like my life to be that way, but when traveling, I have no rules. Well, just the ones that keep me relatively safe.

Patience #182

I have this now. I have NOT always had this. I was once quite short tempered. I believe that came from stress. My period of no patience was when I was raising my kids alone. When my life had disintegrated right before my eyes. When the man I imagined being with til death do us, part was gone. When I made the decision that to be on my own was better. When I then doubted, for a short time, if I would ever be sure of that decision. I had taken on such responsibility and had no good plan as to how to support all of us and had no time to prepare because I just packed us up and left. I had a minimum wage job and secured a 40 hour schedule which paid my rent with three full checks. One check for everything else. Oh boy. I had no patience then because I made another decision. I started working a second shift on top of my first shift. At the end of the week I was logging 75 to 80 hours on two separate time cards, no overtime allowed on this job, and then could barely make the bills because now I had to pay a sitter for all those hours. It was very difficult and I was very stressed and very thin and was not eating. I mean not eating. I drank coffee, it was free at my job. I smoked a lot, they were cheaper then. I nibbled at the kids leftovers now and then, but the food I bought had to feed them. I was fine.

Until I wasn't. One day I bit into a cheeseburger my co-worker had made "by mistake" (she knew I wasn't eating and I was seriously stick thin) and I found I could NOT swallow it. I was literally choking on it. I drank some coffee and got one bite down with great effort. I wrapped it up to take home. She thought I had eaten it.

I went to the doctor thinking I had something wrong with my throat or my esophagus. The problem was that I had trained my body not to eat. It was a long road back to normal from there. I had to start with broth. Add some crackers. Add some noodles.  Add shredded veggies. Move to oatmeal. On to peanut butter. Then beans. Finally able to eat a burger, no bun. It took almost a year before I could eat anything like meat or even bologna. I now call it my financial anorexia.

I never decided not to eat.  I just fed my kids first.

I had no patience until I had a semi-normal life again. One job and a decent paycheck and my patience returned.I managed to buy a house and even save a small bit. My kids finally learned that tuna sandwiches and chips was NOT meat and potatoes. I gained patience with security and self-confidence.

I think I am quite patient now. I don't think very many things in life are worth getting all freaky over. I am pretty good at holding my temper~if not my tongue.

There we go...all caught up and back to reading.

Jo