All of my natural grandparents have passed away. Both my paternal grandmother, whom hereafter I shall refer to as Grandma, and my maternal grandmother, whom hereafter I shall refer to as Babi (the Czech translation), lived long enough to have a significant impact on my life, my values, and my views of how upbringing can shape a child’s growth and future choices.  I love both of these grandmothers a great deal. Because of the memory loss from my ECT, the loss of Grandma at the age of 96 in late Spring of 2008 is practically as fresh as the loss of Babi this past December.

Just as an aside, I am extremely lucky to have been so warmly adopted by my husband’s very active, talented, and loving maternal grandmother and her husband nearly 8 years ago (when Peter and I adopted two kittens together) as well as welcomed into the very large extended family of my husband, although I feel myself keeping my distance from the matriarch, who was beginning to show the first stages of Alzheimer’s when I first met her, and I just had too much experience slowly losing Babi to the same disease. I do feel very close to the family I married into, for which I am extremely lucky and grateful.

But the focus of this is on the two grandmothers who have so recently passed. The loss of these two strong women hits me at odd times. The oddest is when I joke about whom my cats inherited various traits from. When I thought about it, it became very clear that many of their most ingrained traits correlated to those of my grandmothers… so much so, that I decided to dedicate a post to it.

Leela and Grandma

Leela and Grandma are very alike. They take pride in their appearance and the image they show to the world. They also both have positioned themselves as Queen of their respective people. Be it a circle of friends or a family, they are the sun around which the others orbit. Both Grandma and Leela are extremely talkative, with large vocabularies, and have the astounding ability to complain or kibbutz while showing happiness or appreciation. They are both loving, but it is often a slightly more distant love. In Grandma because she lived so far away and was infirm for such a large part of my life and I was born so much later than her other grandchildren, and in Leela because I am, after all, just a servant.

Stewie and Babi

Both Stewie and Babi have issues with anxiety. Babi was always very concerned about social mis-steps and being destroyed socially by any minor mistake. This came out in many, many ways and touched me by my forming a long, long list of rules(which is constantly being updated and amended) for appropriate behavior (actions, reactions, and inaction) in various social situations. Stewie has anxiety over everything, often acting like a spy in enemy territory (I like to call it “playing Secret Agent Man”). When he’s in anxiety mode, he will jump at a moved shadow, will use a mirrored door to see around corners, has a special way of walking up and down our stairs so he doesn’t make it creak (which made me worry about his joints for a short while), will not allow himself to be touched, and will sit only in specific places. (Other times, he will lie in front of a window on his back with his belly exposed, purring as I walk by. He’s an enigma.) In addition, due to both stress and, possibly, allergies, Stewie has licked his belly and inner thighs completely bare. (Which I will come back to in the third major similarity.) In addition, both Stewie and Babi give of their whole selves when they do express their love which is occasionally overwhelming, but always deeply appreciated and reciprocated. Lastly, both speak with an accent.

Stewie’s Thighs and Both Grandmothers

Like most cats, Stewie often presents his butt to me at eye-level for no apparent reason. Also like most cats, he has extra skin at his thighs which allows for greater range of motion. Unlike most cats, however, this extra skin is not furry. Instead, looking at his behind, I see pale, pinkish wrinkly flesh starting at the knees and meeting at the middle (although he left that part untouched). It seems slightly inappropriate and reminds me way too much of all the times I saw my grandmothers naked and could not look away from what might one day happen to my body. (For this reason, I am looking into ways to clothe that part of his body. Chaps? A doggie shirt on backward, with cut-outs so he can use the litterbox? I will find a way!)

I hope this was at least mildly entertaining.

I have come to realize that one of the largest issues with harmoniously living together and cleaning up both the house and my car is dealing with “my room.” You see, the townhome we own has 4 bedrooms: one is the master bedroom, one is the guest/cats’ room, one is Peter’s man-cave, and the fourth is my room, an office/reflection room which was to hold all my toys and educational materials and give me somewhere to sit and quietly read. The feminine version of a man-cave.

In the summer of 2008, I cleaned it up and organized it and began to use it again. But once I got a full-time job doing curriculum work, it once again became a dumping ground.

I’ve been finding quite often that I wish I could have somewhere to go and read, or just remove myself from the living room but not hang out in the bedroom (where I’d inevitably fall asleep). Furthermore, because I don’t have a room of my own to go to, Peter’s activities seem to be cramped by my taking over the living room.

Although I could probably sit in the chair by the window in my room, entering the room and maneuvering around in it is quite hazardous to my health. It’s not that it would take more than a couple of hours to clear up, but then I have more stuff that needs to go in, and a lot of it is on-the-floor work, and it does involve moving some heavy stuff. Also, some things need decisions to be made about them, and some things need to be stored (else I’ll need another bookcase). Then there are the things in my car and in the kitchen, all of which would need to be gone through and possibly would belong in my room. Perhaps I can have a bookcase and storage of some sort in the rec room in the basement, where things could go without being “dumped” there.

Regardless, I cannot physically do this on my own. In fact, in order to remove the table from my room and bring it downstairs (which I’d hoped the burly 1-800-GOT-JUNK would do, along with moving the romance novels and bookcases into the basement, when we decided on a date and I properly prepared for it… but the next day it was sprung upon me with no notice, and I just occasionally hope that this part of my walker or that large gold-framed mirror were not taken).

I find myself looking at various rooms and considering tasks, but discarding them because (1) too much physical labor is involved, (2) I can’t do it alone, or (3) I worry a large part of the task would involve putting items in a room that can’t fit anything.

So, I’m going to selfishly ignore the kitchen and our bedroom and the guest room and everything else (just trying to maintain the living room) and focus on doing a tiny bit in my room each day. I assume that, once I’ve organized to a certain point, Peter will help me out if I can say definitively and concisely what should be moved elsewhere (with a plan for storing/organizing it), what can be thrown out or donated, and what I need help putting away.

However, I’m on my own with going through it. My husband won’t help me, no matter how I ask. My mother will only help by hiring help – I begged her several times in the summer and fall to come help me, but she was overwhelmed by my brother’s move and the holidays and now just either offers to hire someone or argues about my husband not helping and has even asked me to help her go through my grandmother’s stuff. Oddly enough, my older sister is the only person I can think of who might be able and willing to pick up and come down and help… in fact, my car would probably wind up empty & clean, but it would probably all wind up in the basement, and I don’t know if she’d be able to help me sort my stuff or understand saving this item or that book…  but I am definitely keeping her in mind if it’s March and I still don’t have an empty car.

In any event, I’m focusing on my stuff and my room and the rest can just wait. After all, once my room is in order, I can decide what to do with other items (although now I’m definitely thinking a giant bookcase in the rec room with inexpensive cubby-bins would be awesome). This also will give me something to focus on that doesn’t get edited depending on whether we’re moving this summer or next.

I’m off to Amazon.com now to research inexpensive big bookcases and cubbies.

My doctors all suggest exercise as a necessary part of fibromyalgia pain relief. A good article to read regarding fibromyalgia and exercise is from Web MD. Basically, all studies suggest that lack of exercise leads to more pain and degenerated muscles. The goal is low-impact, low-stress exercise.

My family is oddly insisting that I sit and do NOTHING, which is also what my body keeps asking me to do. My older brother’s wife had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Later, she developed Fibromyalgia as well. The pain she had due to muscle degeneration was off the charts. Also, it took something like 10 years for her to get better, and I am not willing to wait that long. So my goal is to not have that happen. Losing weight and improving muscle strength and flexibility will all lessen my pain. If nothing else, it will also make me more in tune with my body.

So I have been working on the Wii for at least 15 minutes each day, unless I do significant exercise that day (a big outing with a lot of walking, such as grocery shopping, would count). But I’m finding Yoga on the Wii to be less than relaxing, regardless of the program. However, tomorrow I will try the regular exercises from Your Shape, and that may be better. Regardless, Wii will be my fitness backup. My primary fitness source will be a local program that gives residents of my town a 60-day membership, complete with two 30-minute personal training sessions each week, freedom to sign up for any of their classes (such as beginner’s yoga, water aerobics) and use their facilities (pools, hot water therapy, fitness equipment, etc.) at any time. I’m hoping to do yoga and water aerobics on the two days that I’m not with a personal trainer, and then I will do Wii’s Your Shape or Wii Fit Plus for 15-30 minutes on the other three days (although any sexual activity may shorten that time, I’ve decided that I will not count it toward my exercise).

I don’t know what will happen in the near or distant future if I’m let go from my job, but I do know that this will help my situation no matter what, and hopefully I can use it in conjunction with CBT to improve my stress and pain management skills, and who can beat such personalized treatment for $60!? As you may know by now, I’m a planner, so at least this is one part of my life that I can control and will get me out of bed and out of the house in the morning.

After discussing the “Chuck” season 3 premiere, I’ve come to realize that my vision of my place in the world is drastically different from my mother’s. She lives in a fall-in-love-and-live-happily-ever-after world, where very little is of any importance outside family. I, as you read in the previous post, believe that God put us each on this Earth to make life just a little bit better. How we each interpret that and achieve it differs, but I believe that if the opportunity comes to make the lives of millions better, our personal desires get put on hold for the common good.

In high school, we joked about going to college for our MRS degrees. Just to put this in context, it was a girls’ school in Greenwich, CT. The joke was that, in many minds, regardless of how brilliant we each were, the point of the making-the-grade and getting-into-college warfare was to get into the best possible school so we could meet the highest caliber man with whom to fall in love. A degree and career of our own was secondary to this and really only a fall-back position for economy or, possibly, meeting a man in the workplace if you don’t snag one in college.

This sounds like something from the 50s or from the odd world that is Greenwich, CT. However, my grandmother taught my mother and myself that women were put on Earth to serve men. We must never make their lives uncomfortable, but should endeavor to meet their every need. She also believed that a woman’s status hinged on what man she was connected to: tall, dark, handsome, and well-connected. My mother rebelled, in a way; she chose a man with a mind superior to that of his peers, despite the fact that he was short, poorly-dressed, had 2 children, and less than gorgeous. However, she did conform to ideal expectations because she fell in love with and married a prime specimen (just not what her mother had considered prime) and has devoted herself to house and home, going on what I jokingly call “extended maternity leave” since giving birth to me over 29 years ago.

When I chose my college, I did it for the academic and social aspects that appealed to me, the ability of an individual to be seen by their professors and to do great things on campus, and because it just felt right. It wasn’t the best school I got into, but it was the best school for me. I didn’t go to college to get my MRS degree, but I did see men as potential spouses, and happily-ever-after (as any Disney Princess will tell you) is just a heartfelt sigh away. I met Peter and he was tall and handsome and perfect for me. He was hot and a sweetheart and remembered my name the day after we met. He was thoughtful and caring and honest. He was brilliant enough in his own right not to be intimidated or threatened by my own natural genius. He also loved to learn. He didn’t love school, but he loved learning. So, like my mother, I fell in love with a man’s brain, and his hot body was just a nice extra. His parents belong to a country club and have connections. However, they live modestly (with plenty of very fun extras, like international travel) and they live in Buffalo. Peter’s family, and Peter himself, aren’t NY or LA jet-setters, and they aren’t New England’s Old Money. But after going to high school in Greenwich, CT, despite my mother’s heartfelt dreams, I knew that that was not a world I wanted to be in. I wanted to be part of a family of down-to-Earth, intelligent, fun, genuine people.

My mother once warned me that my nebulous-future-husband will either have to make $200,000/yr or we’d have to make that much together, in order to live comfortably. We don’t even make $100k combined, but that hasn’t cramped our style.

The thing is, I love my husband so very much that he is a living, breathing part of me. We’ve been together for over a decade. However, I still feel the need to “save the world.” If, before we married, I was given the option of cutting all ties and running away with him or a way to make the world a better place that only I could do, well… I guess everyone has their own fairy tale.

Luckily (very, very, very luckily), I have the luxury of being able to love and be loved, and to eventually raise my own family, while still working to save my little piece of the world, even if it’s just one person at a time.

Eleven years ago, in January of 1999, I was in a car accident. It happened just before spring semester of my freshman year of college, and I wound up having to take the semester off. However, I was alive and relatively well despite the mangled wreckage of the little red Mazda coupe I walked away from, and I was fervently grateful (compared to two years earlier, when I was deeply depressed and actually cursed having lived to see my 17th birthday).

This was the beginning of a great deal of introspection. Although I didn’t rediscover religion and (my version of) God until taking Chaos Theory two years later, I did begin to truly etch into being my understanding of my reason for being. I was no longer just living because my death would hurt others, but deciding what my life is. Then again, this is what all college students do after their first semester, when a teenager realizes she is now an adult and is living and learning toward the molding of her own future. In any event, that semester off is when I etched into the stoniest part of my mind my reason for living:

I am here to enrich the lives of others.

In other words, I’m not out to change the world, but if I can make the lives of those whose paths I cross a little bit sunnier, or at least suck a little less… well, that is what I’m here for.

So I became less interested in the diagnosis as in the prognosis. I became less overwhelmed by trying to solve my own problems as I became obsessed with trying to find solutions so other people I meet with similar problems might not have to flounder, or at least not feel alone. I became the person you know now. I became a math teacher for special needs students. I became a disability rights advocate. I became a better daughter and sister and friend. 

Fast-forward to a year ago. I was in severe pain constantly. I was struggling with attendance and performance at my cubicle-based curriculum job but could no longer be a classroom teacher. Just knowing me and my situation made friends and family sad. But worse was my home life: because of me, both my husband and my cat were losing hair and I had completely derailed the future we had set out for ourselves. By May, I had worked in physical therapy for over 6 months with little-to-no progress and all my prescriptions were refilled simultaneously. I recognized I was depressed but I was out of new medications to try. I had determined that everyone’s  life would be better if I was just removed from the equation, and that could only be done by a horrible accident. I stopped wearing my seatbelt, started driving less safely, and had started to research dosages each of my medications that would be safe if taken alone, but fatal in combination.

So I checked myself into Sheppard-Pratt, got 10 sessions of uni-lateral ECT (electro-convulsive therapy of a single hemisphere), and now find myself in the same place with a completely different mindset.

I have come to realize that it wasn’t my physical situation that made me a drain on people’s lives a year ago, it was my absolute, soul-deep despair.

Right now, I see options. I see being on disability an opportunity to be a better me, to better fulfill my other roles in life, as well as a chance to feel better. I have accepted the fact that I can’t be everything I want to be and that trying to just hurts the students I want to help and keeps me from being a good wife or being there for friends and family.

So once again, I look at why I was put on this Earth and remind myself that I am here to make others’ lives sunnier, happier, easier, or at least less sucky. I am here to be a good wife, cat-mommy, sister, daughter, aunt, friend, and more… and if I have to put the role of educator on the back-burner and put off the role of mother, well, I should focus on what I can do with the energy I have and be happy that I can afford to be so many things to so many wonderful people, and I will cherish and enjoy the time I can spend with them.