I’m all for gratitude. I know how lucky I am. There is beauty all around, and I see it. Life is magic, and I mean that. I take note of the good often…like, every day. I’ve had a great life, all things considered. Mother nature, animals, children and music – there’s a lot to be grateful for.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way I need to also say that Thanksgiving and the Holiday Season can be a little rough.

Growing up I went to my grandparents. I don’t know what my divorced parents did. I never gave it a thought. There was a kid table with my cousins and we had mashed potatoes and green beens and ham. Then my grandmother died and Thanksgiving moved.

It’s been at my mom’s since, except the year I was with Natalie on Maui and last year, when I was crying so hard I had to bow out.

Last year was a doozy.

Much has worked out but a three day notice to vacate my office of 15 years right before the holidays pretty much ruined everything. My people – some I didn’t even know would be there for me – rallied and I am now in an even better space, but it was rough, and scary.

I still haven’t quite stabilized. It turns out money does matter, a bit, and I’m currently paying for years of not worrying too much about any of it.

I chose private practice. I’ve lived a lot of little spectacular moments that I wouldn’t trade for Kaiser, not even with their hefty retirement. Still, there are bills and I am chronically behind and it’s stressful.

I’m busy in my once a month therapy sesh-ions learning to accept the fact that the movie I am living in real life now is different than the one I thought I paid to see.

My kids are spread out and not on linear paths….not at all. I miss my daughter and haven’t been able to see her for months. Maui flights have doubled in price. Owen always house sits over the holidays so he just left for Sal’s. Sal is a dog. And Will is in Chicago. I’m here with a (still) dying pig, four rowdy dogs, a gecko, and a tortoise who I am creatively keeping warm on these colder nights – and my least favorite…perma-darkness.

I’ll go to my mom’s but with her support of Trump it has become tricky. She is happy not to talk about it; I am the problem. It will just be four of us, if Owen makes it. I’m hoping to go into some fugue state of denial of everything going on in the world and since we can’t discuss what’s going on in the world, the kids or my work which is now an identified “problem”, I just hope I can channel something good.

I have a boyfriend and I have chosen to adore him. He doesnt like my pig, or my dogs – so I either go to his house or it’s not happening. Right now it’s not happening, though I will head to his place tomorrow for a second Thanksgiving.

I have to rally.

I have to enjoy this movie, because it’s what I’ve got.

I’m starting with some chilling out in bed with the Thanksgiving Day parade. The dogs are rowdy and wish I’d take them to Point Isabel already but I’m not doing that today.

There is sun. Thank goodness for that.

Last year I didnt celebrate anything and I didnt have a tree but this year I think I should rally. So maybe I’ll get a tree. Tomorrow.

Today I think I should just breathe. There’s a lot on my to do list. I’ve been to-do-ing non-stop this year. Very little carefree down time. Lot’s of worries, and I am an expert non-worrier. But it’s been hard not to fret.

Right now my phone doesn’t recognize my face because I took off my strip lashes. The hardest thing I’ll do today is glue some back on, if I’m lucky. I need to come out from under this weight.

The truth is that most lives are harder than mine. The truth also is that I am facing challenges I never expected.

If we live long enough life changes up our stories in ways we never imagined, and maybe never agreed to.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is, oddly enough, lending a little holiday cheer as I type this.

I am grateful that two of my babies in the hospital this year are going to be okay. And I am keeping in my thoughts two other families who are spending their first Thanksgiving without a child they thought they’d grow old with. It’s been quite a year for some of my families.

So… breathe in, breathe out.

And, Namaste.

I’m rebooting this little blog because I need to vent.

I do have a Better Help therapist, so you don’t have to worry (too hard) about me.

Jeannie is my best friend. I go deep with her for 45 minutes a week. She laughs at my jokes, she cares when I tear up and the woman is on my side. Score.

But it has gotten so bad that even our little sessions have become difficult. I told her yesterday through a big ugly cry that thinking about my current list of issues and problems is too much. So therapy is now a double-edged sword.

Time to blog.

I got the best advice from my twenty year old patient who forced herself on me this summer and is running my office, barefoot. She is on her phone, listens to podcasts and watches TV on the computer and is involved in intrigue with friends and family all day long – but somehow she gets things done. She is seriously on top of things.

I came to work Monday morning all sniffly and teary. I told her I was trying to pull it together and she grabbed me by the shoulders and said to me, “If you can’t do anything about it right now do NOT think about it.”

Bam!

I heeded her instruction and set about my day. It worked. Until I started thinking about things again.

The next morning I was just as hysterical as I was the morning before so I called my boyfriend. Our relationship is complicated and I knew better so when he said at the end of my rant, “I don’t know what to say,” I braced myself, said thanks for listening and sucked it up.

There is nothing like being slapped with the realization that no one is going to save you. When you are on your own it’s sink or swim. Get moving.

I have come to learn that people can help and do want to. So a huge shout out to everyone who has lent a hand this year. But I still have to keep the balls in the air.

By Wednesday I managed to rally. My work is pretty fun, the patients are cute, and with Cassidy helping me, it is manageable.

I started the day with a much overdue dog walk at Point Isabel. But instead of tiring the dogs out, it amped them up.

I got to work with both dogs on leashes and had an elevator accident that almost snapped Rayna’s neck. I still can’t figure out how she survived.

Rex (who rides the elevator like a champ) got in with Rayna. I was lugging laundry and at the last minute Rayna exited and the doors shut on the leash and the elevator took off.

I panicked and hit the alarm that stopped the elevator but it wouldnt allow me to open the doors to release the leash.

I remembered that Rayna could slip her collar and had no choice but to pray she would free herself as I resumed my trip up to the third floor. At the very top the leash pulled out of the door but by then we were pretty far up.

We found her running around with her collar and leash still on, and alive.

I was again hysterical. My patients who were waiting for me, the Johal kids, hugged me. Maya my patient, and a student who is shadowing me hugged me, and Cassidy laughed.

I was shakey but got moving.

Lately I’ve been losing keys, getting locked out, almost killing my dogs and the pig keeps threatening to die.

Garth passed and I got a really naughty puppy (Rex) who is chewing up everything I own.

And those aren’t even my actual problems. We’ll get to that as I do intend to whine and bitch and overshare – a lot.

For now I’ll try and find a bra and some clean clothes and get to work.

Because all you can do is keep going.

Namaste.

47gurlyblues.wordpress.com/2025/06/07/water/

I used to do this thing that felt like failure. I still do it but it doesn’t feel like failure anymore. It feels like life.

Here is what I used to do, and still do. I plan to do a lot of things I rarely get to or finish.

But it’s okay.

It’s okay to throw a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

Here’s an example: I saw a blip about making sunscreen at home so I ordered raspberry seed oil, coconut oil, shea butter, beeswax, fig essential oil and zinc from Amazon.

I probably did this at midnight when I couldn’t or wouldn’t sleep. I ordered all the stuff up including little jars to put the sunscreen in.

It all arrived and what happened next? I left it stacked on my dining room table for two weeks before stashing it in the corner of my junk-slash-workout room.

As we do….

But last weekend I was cleaning and found all the supplies and since cleaning is worse than making sunscreen I got distracted and made a bunch of moisturizer and a bunch of sunscreen. A huge bucket full. Finally.

I was able to make the sunscreen when it was the more attractive of two options. I made the sunscreen when making it WAS AVAILABLE TO ME.

I have written and published various versions of this same blog post because it’s such an ongoing revelation to realize that timing often IS actually everything and sometimes you can only do what is AVAILABLE to you at the time.

This weekend I was able to weed the front yard after months of neglect. It became an available option and I did it.

I haven’t finished the crochet blanket I started several years ago or gotten very far with the paint by numbers that looked cool but are actually somewhat tedious to complete. I have a potters wheel that was pretty affordable but haven’t located a community kiln or learned anything about glazes ….. yet.

I’ve lost 25 pounds in 18 months but it didn’t happen any of the times I swore it would – it has happened slowly through little bursts of determination to change some habits and create new and better routines.

I never became an aging ballerina en pointe in an adult ballet class (I wrote about that a ways back if you recall) but I do remember to stand up straight pretty often.

My big aha – the thing I have realized is that by tossing so many balls in the air I do manage to catch a few.

That’s my process and I think all the pop psychology and admonitions that address procrastination and not finishing what we start – for some of us we need to start a bunch of things to see what’s gonna stick.

Some of us are masters at having too many irons in the fire and we like it that way.

I want to be someone who goes deeper with fewer endeavors but to be honest my work is one giant deep dive and sometimes I have ignore a lot else just to get through the week.

Right now my biggest challenge is to find time and space 1) to play my violin 2) to workout and 3) to read novels.

I always read one book in the few days I’m on Maui and maybe that’s the only place I am relaxed enough to be able to read. Maybe that’s all that’s available.

Sometimes we have to put it out in the universe and we have to be patient until we can move forward with something we want to do.

I am reminding myself of this today because I forgot about the available thing and put pressure on myself last week to finish a list of tasks and I almost had a breakdown.

Almost having a breakdown for me looks like stubbed toes, bonking my car on curbs, spilling drinks – when I push myself too hard I start having little accidents and I know it’s time to slow down and chill.

That’s when I have to remind myself that some things won’t get done until the time is right and pushing isn’t the answer.

The answer is to stay gently in motion with grit and determination and grace and to do what is available every day.

That’s enough. And the rest should not be some problem to solve.

It’s life.

For fun, here’s more thoughts on the topic. After you read the New Yorker article you can beat yourself up knowing you’re in good company – or you can reread my words that allow you forgiveness 🩷 I don’t frame it as procrastination anymore – Again – It’s life.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/later

I’m gonna have to call a spade a spade: technology has ruined my life.

I know that’s hyperbole – my life is hardly ruined when it’s all said and done.

But in the moment, when I’m wrestling with some kind of issue, it sure feels like my head might explode at any minute and kill me dead.

I’m writing this on my iphone and not a computer. Why? I seem to have misplaced my laptop charger. Grrrr.

Yesterday was a good example of the price I pay to live in this futuristic world that looks less like the Jetsons and more like that post-body kid movie Wall-E.

Starting around Tuesday the code I use to send controlled substance prescriptions to pharmacies quit working. Once it quit working I tried various combinations of the code to no avail. I could only assume someone hacked me, the software malfunctioned, or I had a mini-stroke involving just the part of my brain involved in remembering such codes.

I have been using this passcode (they call it a passcode and not a password for some odd reason meant to confuse me further) for a couple of years. Suddenly all I got was error messages and notices that I would be locked out for 15 minutes as a punishment for getting the code wrong too many times. You get three tries before being temporarily locked out.

The fifteen minute lockout is annoying when a) you need to refill a damn prescription for someone and b) you know in your heart that anyone trying to hack in has fifteen minutes to spare AND YOU DON’T.

It’s dumb!

This went on an on with me trying to login to different computers, wracking my brain about the passcode and finally throwing up my hands and asking Kristine to help me figure out how to reset the whole thing.

When finally I got help from my medical software company (I hate them..more later on that) it took three phone calls and five people to reset the code because I needed to come up with an S/N code or credentials that no one could find anywhere (not on the back of my token like it was supposed to be).

What’s a token??

It’s a little FOB thing that generates one time codes (OTCs) that are used along with the passcode to tell the pharmacy that an actual person with a DEA license is drugging your children.

Why am I drugging our children?? I’m probably having to drug everyone in part because technology has created a world not everyone can keep up with.

Some people need more nature, more free relaxed brain time, less busy busy and less time living inside electronic devices. I’m one of those people and so are a bunch of kids and because we can’t slow down the world or change this predicament we have to find ways of calming down our brains enough to focus and get through life.

I have a fair number of kids on these meds because they work. I wasn’t a person who thought I’d whip out a pill for everything and mostly I don’t. But honestly if you can keep a kid learning and engaged and feeling some mastery over their lives, well, you do it.

I don’t want to hear it because my overriding commitment to medicine and kids is to do no harm and so I work hard to help everyone understand this is a tool to handle a brain/culture mismatch. Most people don’t “have” ADHD. Instead, the world has an accessibility issue. Not every brain can take the sort of stimulation we live with every day and it’s……technology’s fault.

By Friday I was desperate to get my passcode working. The pile of prescription refill requests was beginning to tower over me. Come on already.

As society’s legal drug dealer, the rule is I must send all the prescriptions monthly – every month – for each of my patients who needs this kind of help.

Again, I don’t want to hear how all this meth we are pumping into kids is wrong. Teeny tiny doses help their brains stay on task so everyone including the kid isn’t miserable. It might not be ideal but until you have a better idea get off your soapbox. I live it with these kids and families and no one is taking the easy road. Everyone is doing their best and none of us have the ticket to getting off this merry-go-round so meantime, we do no harm and we cope.

I don’t believe a computer prescribing system like this make us safe from drug abuse but the government eats this kind of thing up.

So every month I have to send a new prescription in for each person who takes these drugs and I have to do it by computer which is funny because technology has been a big part of creating the need for these meds in the first place.

Kids are supposed to run free like maniacs part of the day and sit still and learn some things for a few hours in school, too. They should do some chores, eat some fresh foods, talk to their family and friends in the neighborhood and get some decent sleep.

Those are the things that are good for kids. Those things plus some of what I call “face down in the shag rug time.”

FDITSRT is the time we used to spend prostrate, bored, napping or daydreaming on the floor – breathing in a ton of allergens before we all became allergic – face down on the avocado green rug while our parents were ignoring us.

Frickin’ ALL of this has been disrupted by technology.

And you aren’t supposed to have carpet anymore now that we understand dust mites but whatever.

I finally got my passcode changed using an OTC from the FOB token and some mystery moves the lady who finally was able to help me walked me through. And note…she struggled too to find just the right combo of buttons to click on.

We don’t push buttons anymore – we click on them. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

I ordered three new laptop chargers. Not sure why three but I was jangly from all the technology wrangling when I placed the Amazon order and I just wanted to be safe. Like the time I ordered five iphone fast chargers so maybe just maybe I’d be able to find at least ONE at any given time of need.

I do not advocate raising kids in a world without screens when we live in a world dominated by them. Your son or daughter needs to know how to operate a joystick and a video thingie if they are going to ever become a surgeon or whiz inventor.

We can’t all be construction workers but I’m gonna say right now the trades are full of mentally healthy people who live in the real world and use their bodies the way God intended and not just the parts from the wrist down that type into search engines.

I’m sorry to start off the day so grouchy but dang it to hell I’ve had a week.

I am about to get up and start my day with nature’s remedy…pulling weeds.

Garden like your life depends on it because from where this technophobe stands, it does!

Right now I’m in a struggle as to whether to call a window washer or blog. Hold on.

I got up to find a window washer and then my son woke up and handed me our deaf and blind newly adopted Tito dog and he needed to eat. The rest of the dogs already ate and so I had to feed Tito and make sure our obese rescue Max wasn’t able to steal his food. That secured, I contacted a window service and they are now inspecting my home on Google Earth in order to generate an estimate. My guess is 550 but we will see. I used to pay 350 but it’s been awhile (years?) and so I have no idea what they will charge.

I also realized I somehow am still hungry after a surprise morning ceviche so I added my usual yogurt, granola thing and some Baru nuts to the mix and feeling more like I am ready to meet the day.

It’s Wednesday, my “work from home” day. Lately it’s been a day to power through all the missed odds and ends I can’t seem to fit in on the other days. It’s been a day to come up for air. My vision was for Wednesdays was for it to be a sanctuary in the middle of the week but there’s stuff I need to do. Stuff I got behind on. Stuff I can’t put off any longer.

The estimate just came back at $415 for just the outside and $655 for inside and out. If I’m going to do it I need to just bite the bullet and do the whole thing. I should get three estimates and pick the best and I never do that. I always pick the most eager and they have good reviews and were on it in a flash getting me the estimate so here we go. I’m thinking after they do it once maybe I can find a way to keep up with it myself. I have a scrubber on a pole and some garden windex but we are beyond that. Like I said, it’s been years.

I live in a super old house. Built in 1904. Al Jolson lived here. My driveway is narrow because it used to lead to a stable for the horse and buggy. Must have been a small horse and a tiny buggy but that’s the truth. Unfortunately the people who owned the house before me and before that took out most of the old windows and put in aluminum garbage. I got an estimate to put in nice windows years ago and it was between $80,000 and 100,000 dollars. Ha, ha, ha – yeah, no. If I do put in windows it will be one at a time mismatched salvaged old windows, the kind wear the glass is wavy and uneven. I don’t believe in hermetically sealed homes and even if I did I have too many animals to make that practical. I must say that the fires – smoke from the fires – has made my open window air exchange policy less than ideal. I may have to get gas masks or something for smokey days. I’m also so old (sixty, did I tell you?) that I might just breathe the air and hope for the best.

So I am ready to start the day and it’s a compromise day. I did not get up early to go in to the office to chart so I’d be done by my 1pm weekly Nico workout. That was my ambitious plan but instead I stayed in bed a bit late and got up when the furnace repairman showed up. I have an American Home Shield whole house plan. I pay $100 when something breaks and they either fix it or if they can’t they give me a new one of whatever it is. I can’t remember the monthly insurance premium but it’s not much. My old therapist recommended it when I came in crying one day because my washing machine broke and then recounted how once when my kids were little we lived without refrigeration for two months until o a friend got fed up and put an olive green old fridge in the basement. We had another year or so of “fridge in the basement” until I managed to afford another big stainless steel monster. I make okay money but there’s always things that need paying for and I pick and choose in some funny ways sometimes according to what seems more important. So, I do have to thsnk my therapist for the recommrndation.

An example of my approach to money is that I got my kids horses instead of paying my taxes. I eventually paid it all with fees and interest but at the time my kids were only going to be kids once and I wanted them to have horses. That’s a whole other ball of wax and I’ll just leave it there for now but I hold money loosely, if at all.

I’m in this old house and the furnace guy says blah blah, cracked heat compressor this or that, carbon monoxide risk, blah blah – new furnace. He said I need a new furnace and I was not the least bit surprised or shaken by this even though he broke the news like he was trying to prepare me. Now we are waiting for American Home Shield to approve replacing the furnace and I am waiting to feel smug for having a whole house plan until they confirm that the furnace is, indeed, covered on my plan.

A younger me would have immediately called AHS to verify coverage (ASAP !) to determine the degree of financial heating disaster but old me is just going to wait the 24 hours it’s going to take for them to text me back. New me isn’t going to waste any energy when all I need is a little calm and patience to have them sort it out on my behalf. Ah, wisdom. But I am a teeny bit tense about the outcome.

For some reason dealing with things can cause anxiety so I always put off stuff. Our furnace was on the blink all last winter. It would turn itself off and then you’d have to flip the switch back and forth three or four times to get it going again. I dunno I just got used to the whole process and I sort of liked the auto-turnoff because it’s impossible to heat this house anyway. The most you can do is take the chill off then get under blanket.

I only have about fifteen more minutes to blog so what I want to share today is that I have this old house and I never was quite able to restore it properly so I started just living in it and doing weird things like you can’t do with more proper homes. I put stickers on my front door inside and collaged the side facing the street. I have a lot of silly things on the walls and hanging down. Nothing is super valuable and yet it’s all priceless. It’s taken years but my house is homey and funky and vibrant and fluid. It’s working for me.

What I am most pumped about today is fungi. Turns out that decorative mushrooms make me feel like I am living in an enchanted forest and it normalizes my pack of dogs, pig, gecko, tortoise, rats and squirrels and critters in the back, screaming crows, flock of pigeons, dive-bombing hummingbird abode. It creates the right vibe and here are some photos of what I mean.

There’s my Fungi Goddess – a newly acquired work of art that no one is neutral about. I love her. I got some mushroom solar lights I ringed around my redwoods and I also have some ones I stuck on the wall from Temu that were dirt cheap. I don’t know how to explain or justify Temu. It’s my guilty pleasure. I try not to over-consume and have decided not to worry about remodeling my kitchen or home (more on that later, too…). All my furniture is used or salvaged from the trash. So if I buy a few silly items off Temu that might involve unethical sourcing – I don’t know what to say about it.

I have to close up shop now and get on with the productivity part of my day. Hope you enjoyed some of my enchanted magic house and the lesson of the day which is there’s more than one way to have a nice home so if you can’t have a fancy remodeled thing of elegance make what you have your own, make it unique and fun and be damn grateful you have a house. And if you think you need to spend a lot of money redecorating maybe draw a picture or do something cheap and consider giving money to help others meet some basic minimums of food and shelter and healthcare. Fancy stuff doesnt matter unless you say it does.

Just a thought.

We don’t need the things we’ve been taught that we need and most of it won’t make you happy. My little collection of fungi makes me happy and I’m glad I’m sixty so I can just let it go at that.

Namaste and off we go.

My friend killed himself. Not abruptly, or all at once. Apparently he had been killing himself for years with alchohol but I didn’t know it.

I got a bit of the story from another friend. How he almost died once and quit the bottle – for years. How he said his liver looked better and then started back, not long ago.

It was shockingly fast. It’s now October and I saw him in August and did not know. In hind sight there were clues. His eyes were red and tiny, His skin wasn’t its beautiful milk chocolate and he had more belly and less muscle than before. We are getting old, I thought. His smile was still so blinding that I didn’t see it. My daughter did though, immediately. She said – mom, he doesn’t look good.

He called me a few weeks before he died. He was slurry. He wanted advice about a pain in his leg. He didnt want to hear me say he should go to the doctor. I was talking about blood clots, etc. Little did I know his blood would cease to be able to clot forever, and he would die a brief but difficult death in a matter of weeks. Thank goodness for morphine.

I said – Hey, I’m worried about you. You’re slurry …. and he said – “yeah, well that’s a whole other thing.”

I didn’t push. I didn’t force him to explain. We weren’t that kind of friends.

We had always known each other, but not that well. Still, sixty years of not-that-well is enough to make you pretty close – like cousins you hardly ever see but are related to. We were related.

I was born to his mother’s best friend when he was still in diapers. That’s when I met him. He was fifth in a family of six while I ended up being one of one.

Being dropped down in that family of loosely controlled chaos was exhilerating. I felt like a wild child, turned out amongst the natives.

I only have a few memories of those years. One is that they had a hotwheel track that went out one window and in the neighboring one. It made everyone laugh and run around as the little cars zoomed between the rooms. I also remember being locked out of their house, on purpose I think, when I was babysat. I don’t know where their mom was but no one seemed to care much. We spent the afternoon rock-climbing the front of the house where there was that boulder siding. Over and over.

There’s more and some of it will stay private but every now and again we’d hear snippets of each other’s life and occasionally our paths would cross.

The past five years I saw more of him because life landed us in the same zipcode when I visited my daughter.

He was a force of nature. He was a friend to everyone and a protector and a guardian to all. I am afraid of big fish but I asked him to take me down to try and find some nurse sharks he said were like puppies. You could scratch them on the head.

He looked after us all when we were in his presence. He kept up safe, and laughing.

Maybe because we had known each other our whole lives he would sometimes fall quiet or serious. There was a lot going on behind his goofy demeanor and he was a serious person.

But what everyone can not let go of – what his friends and all the lives he touched are now talking about the most – is that he was the embodiment of joy. Pure joy. Not silly joy but a grounded joy and zest for life.

Sometimes he would break from the go go go and he and his wife and cats would draw the curtain and watch movies all day. It was always interesting to see him cocooned up like that.

The rest of the time he was managing tourists (whom he treated like old pals), hauling stuff around, jumping in the water, cooking for his neighbors, shouting out to all his people (that’s so and so who works over there and used to be at that restaurant – now let’s go get your parking validated by my buddy over there). He knew everyone and made it his business to see that what needed to happen got done. Even when he wasn’t working he was still on when he left the house. Always in motion.

So far no one as best I can tell is feeling sorry for him. He lived so much bigger than most of us that we’ll spend the rest of our lives trying in vain just to catch up.

What everyone is saying is that we will miss him so much. It’s us we feel sorry for. But he wouldn’t like that. The only thing he would ever accept is for us to go out and seize every day, balls up, face to the wind.

Good-bye my friend. ❤️