Done In

or In Which We Wage an Epic Battle

Actually, the subtitle is a little misleading.  The epic battle has already been waged and won, and now the biggest sand cherry and I are off nursing our wounds.  I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow replay, but our opponent was the hunk of concrete below:

It's a little over a foot long, about six inches wide, and four deep.  I hadn't meant to start a tussle, but then, who does?  Yesterday while I was loosening the soil under the cherry to plant some dwarf columbines (Aquilegia chrysantha var. chaplinei 'Golden Treasure'), my trowel came across the hunk of cement about eight inches down, not wanting to be loosened.  (Where was it five years ago, when I dug through the whole garden twice just to get rid of such things?)  Thirty minutes of root- and branch-breaking, vocabulary-stretching work later, victory was ours.  The sand cherry and I are both done in, but it will have been worth it.  At least, it had better be.

I'm off to bed again for a while.  A pity.  I was thinking so many exciting thoughts about mulch, just perfect for a sparkling post.  Another time, I suppose.

In the meanwhile, I have some vocabulary to unlearn.

Conserving Energy

Is this really an Agastache 'Pstessene' 
CORONADO® Red?  We won't find out today.

or Thrills and Adventures, Postponed

I'm in the middle of an "energy crisis" this week and have been lying quietly on the sofa rather than (noisily?) reading, enjoying, and commenting on your blogs or adding my two cents to your Facebook witticisms.  I hope to be back in form visiting with you all again soon.

If everything goes well, by Sunday I should also be ready to offer you the nail-biting, suspenseful, cliff-hanging tale of an unexpected—well, not to spoil the end of the story or anything, but it turned out to be a primrose.  Things don't get much more exciting than that.  Or maybe we'll share a chuckle over that one goldfinch who talks to herself while she eats.  Then again, if we're up for the drama, we might witness a few days in the life of a Ratibida columnifera.  Thrills and adventures await!

But not until I'm functional again.

Out of Commission

But Not Quite Down for the Count

Most of you probably remember pre-cable television days.  Every so often in the middle of a program the screen would go blank or snowy for a minute or two, and then a blocky, rainbow-striped backdrop would appear, with the phrase "Technical Difficulties.  Please stand by."

I'm having technical difficulties myself today—not with actual technology, more with my brain.  Another head-cold has brought on a big fibromyalgia and CFS flare, and suddenly trying to combine words into sentences has become very, very complicated, and resting seems like a very, very wise alternativve.

I promise that when I get back to writing a real post, I won't do what they did in pre-cable television days and "resume the regularly scheduled program in progress," skipping over all the important, juicy bits and cuing back in just in time for the commercial break and end credits. 

[Open to ideas for clinching one-liner here...]

Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella

(Because I Seem to Have Left All of Mine in Vermont)

The first time I read Winnie the Pooh and came across Christopher Robin wandering up and down under the honey tree saying, "Tut-tut, it looks like rain," I was deeply perplexed by two things:

1. I could not see the point of saying "tut-tut."
2. I did not know what an umbrella was.

I had never seen one.  My family didn't own one, nor did anyone else I knew.  Growing up in Colorado, with its 300+ days of sunshine a year, an umbrella wasn't exactly a necessity, and I couldn't even begin to imagine a place where rain was such a steady feature of the climate that one needed a shield against it.  After having Winnie the Pooh explained to me, umbrellas seemed like the height of exotic mystery, curios owned by people in far-away lands where people said "tut-tut," and did stoutness exercises in their spare time.

What with all the mystique surrounding them, I naturally asked my parents for an umbrella of my very own; just as naturally (to them), they said no.  I thought they were unreasonable—it wasn't as though I'd asked for a Hundred Acre Wood, after all, or to live under the name of Sanders; I just wanted an umbrella.  What my parents didn't say, but no doubt thought, was that I would probably poke my eye out with it, fight my sister over and/or with it, break a few knick-knacks by playing games with it in the house, and generally get in trouble, but I sure wouldn't need to use it against actual rain.  Some eventualities don't need to be prepared for, and others—well, let's just say that my parents knew which eventualities were the most likely to happen in this instance.   What with the aura of disapproval surrounding them, umbrellas became even more alluring and desirable...

Then I moved to the northeastern United States, and that pretty much took care of that.  Umbrellas became one of the drearier facts of life, and I owned far too many of them:  the light-weight golf umbrella I took to walk Luther T. Dog in the rain; the heavy-weight golf umbrella for walks in rain and wind; the collapsible; the mini-collapsible; the other collapsible I bought when I thought I'd lost the first one; the dressy umbrella (for formal rainstorms?  Don't ask me what I was thinking, because I don't know.); the broken umbrella to be used in Desperate Need.

I have been in Albuquerque for five years this month, and this past week had one of those moments of realization when you're suddenly struck by how your life has changed. Both your former set of expectations and the new reality stand side by side in equal detail, and somehow an umbrella summed them both up.  We've had record-setting rainfall here—the most that has ever fallen in a 24-hour period (get ready to be impressed):  1.77 inches.  That beats the last record of 1.05 inches, set in 1929, by a walloping margin, and most of it fell as good, steady, soaking rain—the kind tailor-made for umbrellas.

But I don't know where mine are.  I'm pretty sure I moved them with me from Vermont, but beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.  In five years, I have not needed an umbrella; a smile really has been adequate protection—that or simply waiting out the storm.  Probably they're buried in a closet somewhere, no doubt behind the snow boots, parkas, wool sweaters, and other useless things.  I could look for them, but why?  If it's another 81 years before we get this much rain again, my needing an umbrella is an unlikely eventuality, the kind I probably don't need to be prepared for.

Vermont is a beautiful state—you have to hunt long and hard to find anything that isn't breath-takingly lovely (until mud-season, at any rate).  But it is not a kind climate for someone with CFS and fibromyalgia, both of which are made worse by cold, damp weather.  I spent every September there in dread of the coming months, hunting for new ways to protect myself from pain and exhaustion, trying to hedge myself against the loneliness of being trapped inside for every leisure hour of a long, nasty winter—battles that would get harder each year and leave me less resilient, more wounded, and ever wearier of having to carry on a battle at all.  I don't really believe in spending a lot of time looking backward, but I have occasionally wondered whether the decision to leave academia and move to New Mexico was a wise one.  To realize that all my umbrellas have gone missing, and that that is just fine, is a big thumbs up as far as I'm concerned.

As I walked out the door the other day in the lightly falling rain, for a brief moment I wanted an umbrella.  Then, for the first time in my life, I found myself channeling my grandmother.  In exactly the same irritated tone she reserved for those who tried to take care of her, in exactly her gruff alto, I heard myself growling, "I'm not made out of sugar or salt."  Grandma would have been mildly annoyed that we were trying to shelter her from a sudden shower, that we would dare to think that she, a woman in her mid-90's, was not perfectly stout, that she needed protection from something that just didn't matter.

Isn't that lovely?  The rain just doesn't matter.

If I ever find my umbrellas, I shall show them to my youngest nephew, who has probably never seen one.  They will be rusty and faded and open complainingly, and we will look at them, shake our heads sadly, and say "tut-tut" together.

Because a smile is really all the umbrella we need.

Cranking Up the Volume

or Wild Thing, I Think You Move Me

Weddings don't seem to be for the faint of heart.   Even simple weddings in one's own family home with a frighteningly competent mother in charge have truckloads of small details that can't be pulled together until the last minute, frazzling brides who are normally calm and ultra-together.   I attended a wedding like that many years ago now (and, if anyone knows where all those years have gone, by all means let me know).   One of my dearest friends, whom we shall call S, was marrying an easy-going sweetheart of a gentleman out of her parents' home in California.

S is such a sensible person that, if she weren't also warm and generous and impulsive and loving, she would drive you insane by being sane all the time.   As a mutual friend put it, "She is the kind of person who sees that something is bad for her and so doesn't want it."   She considers eating small amounts of dark chocolate to be a vice; she has no other.   She doesn't procrastinate; she accepts criticism well; she runs five miles a day.   Even with all those strikes against her, however, somehow she's still quite lovable, but like the rest of us, S has her moments of human frailty.  Everything on the day of her wedding was going well and under control, but there were enough extra thises and thats demanding her attention—just extra, extra, EXTRA—that she began to fray around the edges.

In the midst of all the activity, S's 4-year-old niece had gotten wound up to bursting point and was racing around making a world-class racket.   The noise set S's teeth on edge, but when she asked her niece to be quiet, the little girl plumped down on a bench in a swirl of flouncing skirts, and with the wickedest twinkle in her eye that it has ever been my privilege to see, began chanting, "BE LOUD!   BE LOUD!   BE LOUD!" at the top of her lungs.

A part of me understood my friend's irritation and was pretty irritated myself;  the rest of me was filled with awe and envy:   awe that a 4-year-old should have such fearless confidence, should be so certain of her right to make a noise in the world; envy that she should feel so gleeful about being herself in the face of disapproval from every adult in the room.   Yes, I concurred, she needed to be sent to her room and put on bread and water for—well, for years; but secretly I was cheering her on.   While I hope she's learned better timing and a little consideration for others since then (now that she's starting college and all), I hope she still has the capacity to live at the top of her bent.   I don't know that I've ever been loud like that in my life, and I think it's a mighty fine thing for a girl to be.   Especially when she lives thousands of miles away from me.

We wind up our celebration of botanical vulgarity this week with a look at the loudest plant in my garden, one that puts even orange marigolds to shame—Wild Thing autumn sage (Salvia greggii Wild Thing).

It really is that color.

The funny thing is that, since being saddled with CFS and fibromyalgia, I can't handle noise at all, whether aural, mental, or visual; whatever mechanism we have to sort through stimuli and prioritize them seems to have gone awry.   All the useful "how to cope" materials, which the better kinds of physicians give you, offer tips for dealing with a broad range of situations, but when it comes to noise, they just say, "AVOID THIS."   (Oops—but not in block caps, because that's the online equivalent of shouting, which is very noisy.   Sorry.)   I generally seek out peace, quiet, tranquility; cool watery blues, gentle forest greens, pale buttery yellows.   Calm colors.   Serene colors.   But there are always exceptions that I can't explain, like orange marigolds and Wild Thing autumn sage.

I fell in love with this plant the first time I saw it, and I don't even like pink.   Yet now I have an entire baby hedgelet of astonishingly noisy flowers blooming in the garden.   Even at noon in mid-summer, when paler colors look faded and washed out under the New Mexico sun, Wild Thing is gleefully shouting, "Pink!   Pink!   Pink!"   It is the equivalent of a noisy little girl who, yes, was way too loud, but by golly, was loud with a vengeance.

I wouldn't call its contrast with the garden walls a subtle one.

Is loudness vulgarity, or is it vividness?   Garishness or glee?   Misbehavior or joie de vivre?   None of those options is mutually exclusive; the admirable qualities live side by side with those we turn our noses up at.   (So sorry—with those at which we turn up our noses.)   Do you really want to forgo the glee to avoid the garish?   Lose vividness to whatever passes for today's good taste?   Stifle joie de vivre in the name of good behavior?   If everyone is equally loud, of course, you can't hear anyone over the clamor; I suspect Wild Thing makes me so happy because it takes all the solos, while the greens and buttery yellows croon a chorus of "oohs" and "aahs" in the background.   So by all means be smart in your timing, and definitely be considerate of others.

But go live loud today.   Make a noise in the world.

For what it's worth, I promise not to send you to your room.

Qwitcherbellyakin

or
Stacy's Top 10 Tips for Living with Chronic Illness
or
Joy Doesn't Just Happen On Its Own

I'm sorry to depart from my normal format for today, but I've just read one too many posts that did nothing but whine and complain on various CFS and Fibromyalgia (FM) Facebook pages, and I've had it up to here. Admittedly, I am one of the "lucky" ones and can function at about 75% of my former capacity; but even when I was at 25% I didn't see the point of shooting myself in the foot over and over again, if at all. (Harping on your symptoms doesn't make you less aware of them!) As a counterweight, I would like to offer some positive tips for living with CFS, FM, and many other chronic illnesses. They are not suggestions for medications or supplements or life-style changes or therapies--the web has plenty of other sources for that. Rather, they are some of my strategies for accepting illness as part of my life while not allowing it to rule my life. (And I apologize if they sound a little irritated at the moment.)

1. Prioritize. Illness does offer us gifts, if we just have the good sense to recognize them. One of the most powerful gifts is also one of the nastiest afflictions--the incapacity to do everything (or almost anything) we used to do. The bad side of that is clear and does not need to be belabored here. The good side of it is that we really have to figure out what matters to us at the very deepest levels. What are your core values? What principles do you hold most dear? Not what do you enjoy doing the most, but what do you care about the most? Healthy people can engage in all sorts of activities whether they express their values or not. People with chronic illnesses do not have that luxury. We cannot expend energy on things that don't matter. So figure out what you value--what your mission is, what your vision is. Find the activities that you can do that further your values, and don't waste precious energy on the things that don't. You may be surprised to discover that you can live out your values no matter what your current abilities.

2. Learn the difference between complaining and acknowledging--facing facts honestly and objectively. Don't complain. It doesn't help, and it lands you endlessly in a victim's role. Acknowledge, yes. When your parents ask how you're doing, chances are they actually want to know. So tell them--two or three sentences MAX ought to do it, and your voice really does not need to whine in the telling--and then move on. Mourn your losses, yes. They're real, and they hurt, and they matter. Move on. With the same amount of energy that it takes to complain, you could also tell your sister that you love her, or ask about a dear friend's day. If you give complaining priority, what does that say about what you value? Considered another way, what do you want people to say about you at your funeral, many years hence? That illness embittered you? That you used to be so wonderful before you came down with CFS? Or that you were an inspiration, because despite illness you knew how to give love and joy and life to those around you?

3. Practice gratitude. If you are reading this online, you already have blessings of awe-inspiring magnitude--an education (twelve years of which probably cost you nothing), electricity, running water, a temperature controlled environment, a refrigerator, foods from all over the planet, internet access to a world of ideas. We take all those things for granted, but just imagine trying to live with chronic illness without them, even for a day. And that list of wonders doesn't even include the most wonderful things: supportive, loving family and friends. Focusing on your blessings--and you have them, if you will just look--will help shift your awareness from the victim's endless litany of "poor me, poor me, poor me" back to the things that you really do care about, and make you alert to other good things as they happen. Gratitude is the first step toward joy.

4. Live your enjoyments to the hilt. Many of the things you enjoy now may not be your first choice, and they may be smaller than they used to be--an hour on the patio rather than a day in the mountains--but it's silly not to enjoy them fully because of that. Learn to savor every pleasure, no matter how small.

5. Do something for someone else. Anything. We are meant to be givers, and life can seem pointless when we feel that we have nothing to offer. Believe that you matter, despite how much of your life you spend lying in bed, or in soul-numbing isolation, and give something of what you have inside you away. It can be as simple as a smile for someone who needs it. Giving helps. Immensely.

6. Melt down occasionally with a trusted friend. We all lose our perspective now and then, and we all lose our way forward. Be truthful about your fears and frustrations and griefs. Be honest. But don't get bogged down in complaints, and let your friend help you find your footing again. In those circumstances, he or she is probably happy to be supportive. (Thank you, R.S.!)

7. If at all possible, put your bed and sofa where you can look out at trees or some other greenery. (Studies have shown that people in hospitals recover from surgery faster, use less pain medication, and are better patients when they have trees to look at.) In my current home, I don't really have that option at the moment, and it makes a surprisingly huge difference. We deal with enough pain and unpleasantness. Looking outside at something beautiful and alive can substitute pleasure for pain, even if it's only a little bit. It also reminds us that life does continue, and that we are a part of it.

8. Also if at all possible, spend time outside. As one of my friends likes to say, "Sitting inside is just sitting. Sitting outside is an activity." If you have a porch or patio or balcony, use it on every nice day that you can. You'll be part of life in ways that you never can be inside a house. You can observe the changing seasons in intimate detail, follow the lives of bumblebees or hummingbirds or toads, watch flowers go from bud to bloom to seed. Because sitting outside is an activity, no matter how gentle, someone with CFS may not always be able to manage it. But if you're able to read a book or watch TV, take your cup of tea out onto the patio for a while instead, and soak up some of the good kind of reality for a while. Adirondack chairs are wonderful things.

9. Spend time relaxing. For those of us who lie on sofas a lot, that may seem like a stupid thing to say, but I find that I can be lying down and still not be relaxed. When I was healthy and worked and played hard, it was easy to relax, because the difference between the two states was so clear. But reading (for example) as a nice, calm way to end a busy day is a much different thing than reading as a way to mark time until the day is over and you can officially go to bed. The one is relaxing, the other--not so much. It may only be light activity, but it's not unwinding. Make a point of doing whatever helps you unwind every day. Your body and spirit are stressed by illness. Give them a breather.

10. Be gentle with your friends and acquaintances. (Possibly even with your medical doctors.) They will fail you, believe me, if they haven't already. At some point, someone you trusted will say, "Well, we all feel tired sometimes. I'm tired right now." (And then you'll watch them walk up five flights of stairs without stopping, and still be functional at the top.) They'll desert you when you need them, they'll be ready for you to be over this because they are, they'll say all the wrong things. You know what? I've failed my friends, too. There are times when I have just refused to be who they needed me to be, for no good reason. There are times when I've said thoughtless things to an acquaintance because I didn't have the imagination or experience to understand his or her situation. We are all human. If a "friend" is out and out cruel, of course, abandon that friendship, and the sooner the better. If someone takes energy you can't afford to give, then reset the boundaries. But if they're doing their best under the circumstances and just don't get it... Be gentle. Be willing to forgive and forget. The world of the chronically ill is small enough--don't make it smaller by excluding people you care about just because they have human limitations.

Which leads me to this bonus tip, which sums up most of the others: Always remember--even your illness is not all about you.