Saying Goodbye Is Often The Hardest Thing To Do

This weekend proved to be harder than I thought it could be, because even though I was warned, I wasn't quite prepared for someone posting photos on Facebook - and they hurt in a way I can't really describe, despite the fact that I have a dictionary and thesaurus easily available. There are just some times that the pain is so intense, so deep, that even the darkest of words can't really hit the nail on the head...

This is what I'm talking about:

This photo, taken shortly after the current owner of the property took possession, is the place where I grew up in a small town called Exeter, Maine. Not to be confused with the big city of Exeter, New Hampshire, the town I grew up in was mostly farms, the largest of which belongs currently to Crane Brothers Potatoes.

As you can see, it's nothing special, just a house with an always shabby looking garage where my dad used to spend a lot of time working on things like old television sets and things. My sister's room (and briefly at times over the years, my room) would be the two upstairs windows that face the road. My bedroom, for most of my life, was around the back side of the building with a window that looked out at the back yard. To the right edge of this photo, that building and roof are part of the former general store, where everyone in town came to shop unless there was something special they had to buy in Dexter or Bangor.

The red metal roof was brand new at the time I took this photo, which was after visiting with my mom at her new home and hearing her tell me "I didn't raise you in Howard Johnsons!" (A famous restaurant/hotel that featured a red roof when I was growing up.) I've driven past several times since I left home in 1981 to move to Fryeburg with my then-boyfriend (now husband), as my dad's grave is just a half a mile from here. I've witnessed the way the town is slowly changing from a center of commerce, as there used to be auctions at a big barn that stood on the property to the left of this shot and a rooming house across the street - both torn down now - and saw the general store become a sandwich shop, because EVERYBODY drives to the larger towns to grocery shop these days....

So I got to see the work in progress when the new owner painted the house a dark grey (which my mom hated), then the other work he did, such as removing sheds where we used to pile wood for the wood stoves in order to build a deck overlooking the back yard. As others noted over the years, it seemed to be smaller all the time, especially the "back forty", as we called the acre or so that we had to mow every summer...

Then, via Facebook and my mom, I was informed that the new owner had rented the place to people who really didn't care for it. They let the furnace blow out one winter, and instead of doing anything to repair it, they broke holes in walls and removed all the copper piping in the place to turn in for scrap. By the time the owner realized what had been done to the place by his tenants and got them removed, it was going to cost him more to fix the place than he'd paid for it in the first place...

So this past weekend, it was burned down by the local fire department as a training exercise - and some days, it doesn't pay to have relatives who are firemen, policemen, etc. who have never left the local area...

I had purposefully avoided going to see the "festivities", as the house held so many memories, including being the place where my father breathed his last when cancer got the upper hand in July 1980. Jim included photos and a couple of videos of the "training exercise" - and even trying to share these here, I have tears flowing down my face three days later...

The little boarded up window above the space we always called the "porch" was my brother's bedroom for a number of years, and it was the window Dad always insisted we should crawl out of if there was a fire, as the drop from the edge of the porch roof was less likely to injure us if we had to jump. Even if we couldn't get to that window, however, he always emphasized that it would be better to have a broken leg than to burn to death. The boarded over windows on the lower floor looked in on the cot where he lay the night he passed away...

This picture hit particularly hard, as there was one blizzard when I was a child in which the snow was piled up to the edge of this roof - and we all (meaning my sibs, myself, and a half-dozen of the neighborhood kids we played with) got into MAJOR trouble climbing up with our sleds and sliding down the back into the drifted snow in the back yard...

The last shot Jim posted before going to video to tape the "final burn" - and for some reason I can't seem to fathom, this seems to be the worst of them all. As when Dad last painted the house, the back side never got finished, and from that little vent on the wall, this strikes me as the window in the former shed that Dad and Pepere and remodeled into a laundry room/the place where Mom had her stove. The little vent cover would have been from the hood that took the steam (and occasionally smoke) that came off the stove.

What has been eating at me is this: it's the fourth place I've lived that is no longer there. The home in Fryeburg where my husband spent most of his life from the age of 11 until we moved into an apartment at the far side of his folks place burned flat after someone left a candle burning. 7 Oxford Street/6 Smith Street in Fryeburg was never rebuilt after it burned in the early 90's and is a parking lot. 

The place we were living when his mother died and where we had our second baby was taken down a few years ago when the guy who owned it after us sold it to Poland Springs for their new, wide driveway to their bottling plant in Fryeburg. Poland Springs had jumped the gun a little, buying the property and taking down the house before they had permission to put in the road, so it also is nothing but a cleared space of lawn. Although Google Earth still shows a photo that includes the house and garage at 46 Portland Street, it's been gone almost 2 years now.

The place in Gorham that we only lived for one year, which had multiple code violations for a rental, got torn down and turned into a parking lot as well. I had less of an emotional tie to that one, but it IS where we "adopted" a white cat we named "Zippy" and where our elderly black cat, Avatar, suddenly started coming to the door and calling "Hello" when he wanted to come in....

Maybe I should look up our old addresses and, after confirming that THEY are still there, I should notify current owners/residents to be careful. I seem to have cursed the places I've lived to total destruction......

In the meantime, I'm going to give the earth some time to heal once they've pushed the remainder of the house into the old cellar hole, dumped dirt over, and put in grass seed before I go visit for another photo. After watching the homes of both grandparents fall into neglect and slowly fall down piece by piece, I'm much happier that we won't watch that happen in the home where I grew up...but I'll never be able to go back like this song from Miranda Lambert speaks of...

There's no place for me to "touch this place and feel it"...not any more, anyway.....(Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me" is at the other end of the link)

https://youtu.be/DQYNM6SjD_o

ADDENDUM April 4, 2016:  Going to visit my mom for her birthday with the grandkids, I took a ride through Exeter on a mission. I wanted to get pictures of "the places I used to live" for a tongue-in-cheek post later this year showing all the parking lots and grassy knolls that have taken the place of some of the places I used to live in. I was hoping that the current owners of the "old homestead" would have the dirt pushed over the remains....but I was wrong and it became a very hard task to take the photos below....

Taken from roughly the same angle as the pic at the top of this post, the lack of the house is a little disturbing, but livable. I noted a very burnt tree that I didn't recall being that close to the house, so I walked several feet over, to where there used to be a garage that housed the oil delivery trucks that my dad drove when I was young, and took a "straight back" shot (below). As I was looking at it from this angle, I realized that the giant pine tree was one my sister planted when we were kids, and was once short enough that we were playing "Leap Frog" over the top of it. It's been 35 years since I moved out, so it's entirely possible that the unfamiliar tree was planted by an owner after Mom sold the place......

Then I moved in for some close-up shots.....

This was the one that hurt my heart, as that crumbled bit of metal was the hot air furnace that Mom and Dad had put in shortly after they bought the house. As you can see, the cellar didn't go all the way across the length of the house, so there was just cellar under the living room and dining room areas, and crawl space under the kitchen, porch and sheds. The small blue building near the trees marks where we used to slip down into the "woods"  between our house and the neighbors cow field and have "adventures" - mostly living out stories we were making up as we went along....

As I was taking this last shot, I almost started laughing at myself, remembering when I was given the duty of going down into the basement to get potatoes from the large wooden bins where we dumped them each fall after collecting them from local potato fields (the "leavings" after the harvester had worked the field were free for the taking, so we took a lot.....). I always hurried, because I was certain a velociraptor lived somewhere in the basement. The fact that there were no velociraptor bones in the cellar hole should have made me feel better, but I'm wondering where it moved to before they burned the place.....

So, I'm going to call it an end to this particular post and try to make another trip out in a year or so to take the photo I was hoping to have this time, with all the "remains" properly buried and the grass starting to grow. In the meantime, I'm making a list of all the places I've lived so I can do a complete "warning system" for those who happen to be living in places I used to live. Considering that this makes the FIFTH place to be taken down, I feel it's only fair to let those who might be caught in my House Karma Backlash to be aware that they should be VERY careful.....

*grin*

All That Glitters Must Be Fool's Gold

I just opened an email that I probably shouldn't have opened before coffee. It was titled "Get your book noticed by libraries and bookstores", and since that's what I've been trying to find a marketer to find out how one does such things, I opened it....

Surprise, surprise, surprise, as the old character, Gomer Pyle, used to say on the Andy Griffith Show.

The email says that a review needs to be placed in a certain magazine in order for the bookstores and libraries to see my books and note that they are worth buying. The review needs to be done by one of the magazines staff members. The staff member needs to be paid $350 for each month one wants the review to appear for this magazine.

Obviously, the company that hit up my email address for this kind of cash infusion into their business so that I can get mine off the ground doesn't realize that, although I doubled my income between the re-issues of two books and the publication of the third over the past 18 months, I still only made $50 on the year in royalties for the books and Kindles sold on Amazon. No one at all bought my books from Barnes & Noble over the year.

Considering that I'm spending more per month than I made on the year for the business credit card that I used to hire the models for the front covers, and that I took a HUGE gamble to try to boost sales (which didn't happen as I'd hoped, so I gambled and lost), this "marketing scheme" doesn't appeal to me at all, even on the off chance that someone would actually put my books into a library should this magazine ACTUALLY be a legit thing that gets into the hands of those in charge of buying for the libraries. I'm thinking I'd be better off to do as I did before, and just get a couple of copies of the books to put into the libraries in the towns where I lived and grew up here in the state. At least if people in Gray, Bangor, and Dexter can pick up a book at the local library and pass the reviews on by word of mouth, should they like them, I might manage to get a few more people to go and pick up copies at Amazon or Barnes & Noble for next year - and it certainly WOULDN'T cost me $350 per month to do so.....

So, for those who follow this blog in the hope that I'm going to spill the beans on some major secret of how to get your books into bookstores and libraries, therefore giving your indie book a chance at becoming a New York Times Bestseller (which is ENTIRELY based on book sales through book stores, mind), I'm going to leave you with a word of caution, as I've obviously skipped something along the way that would encourage people to buy, buy, buy......

Be very careful where you spend your money when you start gambling on ideas of how to boost sales. In my own experience, the beautiful covers I have from hiring models and the sweet people who've modeled for me (and brought TONS of engagement to my Facebook fan pages when I post their photos as the characters I asked them to portray) didn't pan out as sales, but I've made some very marvelous friends. The advertising schemes also didn't pan out as well as simply keeping this blog and writing about such things as I've shared this morning. In short, for the indie authors and publishers out there, the best thing that can happen to you is to gain free advertising from those who have purchased the books and put their reviews in places like Goodreads or Amazon.

Now I'm off to file my tax paperwork, produce the proof that I had a major loss in my business (with proper documentation for the US government so I get a little tax break because of the gamble that didn't pay off), and pray that somehow, some day, I'll be able to get my books into at least the LOCAL bookstores and libraries so that my fellow Mainers can at least wander through and find one on the rack. Otherwise, that cover gambit won't EVER pay off......

Blessed be, and thank you for the almost 3000 views that I've gathered on this blog since I started it in 2013. Even if the books aren't selling, it's still a major thrill to see how many people in other countries come and visit this place where I can share my thoughts with y'all.....

Name That Ism!

I'm not really into politics. If you were to ask me what was happening in Washington on any given day, I would look at you blankly and ask you "What?"

But it's an election year. There's no escaping it. And the one most of the people I speak to on a daily basis want to be in the Presidency isn't doing well with the big money "superdelegates", and big money is the biggest reason why the popular vote no longer counts for anything any more...

And the other reason hinges on a pair of words that to some mean the return to things as they used to be BEFORE big money took over our country....and to others, the same two words mean we're all going to Hell in a handbasket:

Democratic Socialism

If one looks it up in a dictionary, this would be the definition:

Democratic socialism is a political ideology advocating a democratic political system alongside a socialist economic system, involving a combination of political democracy with social ownership of the means of production. Sometimes used synonymously with "socialism", the adjective "democratic" is often added to distinguish itself from the Marxist-Leninist brand of socialism, which is widely viewed as being non-democratic (from Wikipedia)

Now, to me, this kind of goes hand in hand with how the country was MEANT to be run when our forefathers and our first ever President, George Washington, were getting everyone working in unison to chase out the British and establish a new nation. But I took a lovely class in my senior year of high school called "Worldisms". I know how to tell the difference from one of those other -isms that some people think is socialism:

Marxism: The political, economic, and social theories of Karl Marx including the belief that the struggle between social classes is a major force in history and that there should eventually be a society in which there are no classes. (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

Or even worse, they insist it is the same as:

Communism: a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property. (once again, Merriam Webster)

Their solution to the cry that we need the government to stop allowing the already rich to just keep getting richer and pay their fair shaire with people who display a few other of those -isms I learned about.

Fascism: a way of organizing society in which a government, ruled by a dictator, controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government. ) 

One hopeful candidates has said "I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money." in response to negative press. The scary part is that no one seems to realize that the President can't just make laws...

Racism: Do I really have to define this?

But I suspect the worst of the election year has to be the debates, especially with some of the candidates we've had.

When I was a child and we only had three stations that came in on the old rabbit ears (held on the head of the tricerotops, for those who wish to believe that living in such times was absolutely primitive), I used to watch the debates because they were on all three stations. They were calm. They were polite. They were dignified. Each candidate was given questions to answer and a moderator controlled the whole show as each strove to describe what he could do to help the country become a better place.

Watching even a few minutes of this year's debates is like watching a train wreck in action. Calm? The candidates yell over each other. Polite? Name calling is the least of the foulness displayed. Dignified? These candidates wouldn't know the word if it walked up behind them and took a chunk out of their rich derrieres!

I've been allowed to vote since 1979, but each time I need to assist my country in putting someone into a special place we call The Oval Office, I get more and more depressed. The more history I read in research for an historical romance I'm writing, the more depressed I get about what this country has become and the fact that we no longer seem to be a country By the People, For the People, but more of a land of rich people buying the vote so that they can continue to get richer while the poor are ground under their heels.

We the People, if you happen to be the party that calls themselves Democrats, can be voted down by a group of Superdelegates, who pretty much have already chosen who will represent the Democrat side even before the popular vote is finished. In the general election, it isn't the popular vote that choses the President any more, it's the points earned in the Electoral College.

Perhaps it's time for me to practice one more -ism:

Escapism: a mental dicversion by means of entertainment of recreation, as an "escape" or dissociation from the pereived unpleasantries of daily life. (kind of Wikipedia, but edited)

"The world was never meant for one as beautiful as you" (from Vincent sung by Don Mclean)

I've had a lot of discussions over my lifetime about success and all the trappings that go a long with it. Most define success in the sense of monetary legacies left to ones family, like the Winchester fortune that allowed a woman to continue building on her house, even when the new space made no sense to anyone but the heir. But not all of those who influenced the world gained success in their lives while they were here on Earth, yet their legacies live on even though they died as paupers.

Let me go deeper into my thought process here, but before we go, here's a lunch sack with some food in case we get separated and a flashlight, because the dark recesses of my mind where we're going to delve can be pretty scary at times....

I have always heard that old saw "Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it". That's what happened to some of the "success stories" from my era like Samuel George Davis Jr - who everyone knew as "Sammy Davis Jr", a brilliantly talented gentleman who was a singer, dancer, actor, musician and impressionist. He started his career at the tender age of three in vaudeville with his father and one of his father's friends. He lost his left eye in a car accident in 1954 and often used that injury as a joke in his act. He made millions throughout his lifetime, but because of extravagant spending habits and poor management of his finances by his financial advisors, he died 15 million dolars in debt, mostly to the IRS. Despite his rise to the top in a pre-Civil Rights for blacks era that is still looked upon as an example of what can be achieved even when faced with hatred throughout ones life for nothing more provocative than the color of ones skin, he is also one example of those who achieve their life's wish, but still don't leave that monetary legacy for the family. There are many such "successful with their wish for fame but not successful at managing money" stories that one can find, especially in this era of being able to look up everything on the internet, but I'm just going to move on to the next type of artist. (I'll leave a link at the bottom of this post should you wish to look at Sammy and some of the others I'm going to mention in closer detail, okay?)

I've also heard about those who were brilliant talents during their lifetimes, but who didn't gain any sort of fame while they were still with us. My mother-in-law, in particular, loved to bring up these people as examples of why I needed to "stop goofing around with writing" and put my energy into things that truly mattered - like caring for her son and any offspring we produced. In her humble opinion, anyone who had children to raise had no business indulging in any form of art that would never see any monetary achievement in the real world.

One of her favorite subjects in this "live your dreams and die in poverty" speeches was the man who inspired the title for today: Vincent Van Gogh. I thought everyone knew the story of this marvelous talent whom modern psychologists are still trying to figure out, as he was brilliant, but also a prime example of mental illness in his short 37 years on the planet. His paintings have inspired the artistic endeavors of millions of artists and musicians, yet the critics of his time thought him unbalanced. Because his work was very different from what was popular at the time, he never found the critical acclaim while he was alive that would have made him a wealthy man, and when he purportedly shot himself in the chest with a revolver (which was never found) and walked to a hospital, where he died 23 hours after the shooting with the bullet lodged next to his spine, he was also penniless.

So now comes the question that keeps me awake some nights and sometimes causes me to walk away from my writing - at least until the characters become so adamant that I complete their stories that I am forced to sit and write for my own sanity.

Which is better "success"? To gain the material wealth that would have convinced my mother-in-law that I was "successful" in my writing career, or to leave behind the work, perhaps to be later discovered by a future generation as a hidden talent that escaped the critical acclaim of the time, yet left a learning legacy for them to follow?

From my current status, I am as poor as a church mouse, but still occasionally getting a marvelous thrill when my work is mentioned, even in passing, in someone elses speech about following ones dreams. (One of the book covers from Northern Bard Publications was mentioned by an author who had one of the models at his talk in an axample of "how to catch the eye of your readership by showing the characters you're writing about". I didn't get to see it, but she was very pleased that we were both mentioned despite the fact that I haven't become a "New York Times Best Seller" - which involves getting bookstores to put out the books of indie publishers so that the books can be sold in the confines of a brick-and-mortar store instead of just online as Kindles, Nooks and such.)

As I noted for my husband when he recently opened one of my credit card statements and blew a gasket about how much money I've spent trying to get Northern Bard off the planning board and into the money-making status that his mother taught him was the only measure of success, I've made a bet on myself that I can eventually make enough in book sales to pay off the gamble of self-publishing. Just in the past year, I've doubled my meager income from book sales from an average of $20 per year. He, of course, schooled by his mother that the only form of success that matters isn't the nickle-and-dime variety that I've been enjoying over the past 19 years, but "the big payday", is of her same opinion that I'm "wasting my time" on my writing. If I can't make enough in the next year to bring my credit card balance for the business down to zero and show a profit, I should "stop wasting time" and concentrate entirely on making money so that we can leave a financial legacy for our children to be proud of when we die...

And please don't tell me to bring up the fact that there are millions upon millions who have "hobbies" upon which they spend tons of money, tons of time, and see not even a single thin dime in return, as with his fly tying fetish. (He does "side work" for people who can't afford the professional rates charged by many in the career he's chosen, so he's making enough to support his "hobby" while helping out the poor at the same time. In order to qualify my "hobby" in his mind, I need to stop spending more money than I earn on my "hobby" in order to make it worth the time I spend at it.)

In short, my daily life at the moment is trying to balance my "struggling artist syndrome" with my "need to make the money to pay the bills syndrome", and long conversations with friends and relations about those whom I admire, but who died before they became well known, give me a constant cause to keep rethinking my chosen career. Even as I sit here this morning, writing this blog and aching in every muscle from the physical aspects of the job I'm currently holding to help pay off those bills while the characters from the current work in progress are trying to gain my attention and tell me that THIER story should matter more to me that getting the groceries and doing the laundry and catching up on yesterdays dishes, I find myself torn between the real world and the "hobby" that keeps me awake at night, seeing scenes that I should have written out during my busy day. I keep telling myself that there is a "happy medium", where I can balance out the fiscal need for money with the mental need to get these stories out of that tiny little dark space where they live and breed when I'm not watching.....

But then a little voice, sounding very much like my deceased mother-in-law, speaks up from the darkest of the dark recesses, where I firmly believe that there is a well like the one in the horror movie "The Ring" that houses all of those who have been hyper-critical of me all my life.

"How are you ever going to make money at writing when you couldn't even get a single person to show up at your first and only book signing two years ago?"

Have you ever wanted to shout out loud, regardless of any strange looks you get at the time, "Shut up, you!" in an attempt to get one of those inner voices to go away for a while?

*le sigh*

So, here is the link I promised above to assist you, should you wish to investigate some of those "struggling artists of the past" who have influenced the world around us, but not while they still lived. I'd dearly love to hear from some of you as to your opinions on whether we should concentrate on only financial success or if we should, in the interest of possibly being the voice in the desert for some artist of the future, continue to produce the works that we are driven by some inner demon to "waste time" on. I'd also love some links to some of your works, particularly if my words here have encouraged you to purge your own inner demons whether you're making money at the venture or not....

http://mentalfloss.com/article/28010/10-cultural-giants-who-died-coinless

Blessed be, my constant readers, and may you find the place where you and your demons can live together in peace and harmony.

Perhaps I should go back to a typewriter - or a pad and a pencil - or maybe a rock and chisel....

For many years, I've blamed a lot on the moon phases. It's hard not to believe that the full moon makes people a little "loonie" when one works in retail, because all of the craziest phone calls of each month happen when the moon is full...

and the current full moon seems to be bothering my home computers.....

Last week, in preparation for the "season", I downloaded all the forms and instructions for doing my taxes, as the last paperwork (which I had been warned was incorrect in the first mailing) arrived and I want to get it over with. (I learned long ago that having someone who is busily trying to do taxes on a LOT of people doesn't always have your best interests at mind, and when we ended up owing the IRS to the point that they kept three years of refunds to pay them back for one "professional's" mistake? Yeah. I do my own now.) I tried to print it off, but there seemed to be an issue in connecting the Wifi printer to the computer, so after several attempts, I took the advice from the printer program that told me to recover some information from a couple of files that had been lost....

and it reset the upstairs computer to it's original factory settings. Luckily, I had just done my monthly backup on February first....

and discovered that, although I've been faithfully saving the backup to a single USB drive, it didn't overwrite anything that it backed up the very first time I did the backup, it's just been saving anything new that was added.

Because the factory settings don't include ANY of the programs I've added, such as the newest anti-virus, the printer, the newest internet modem, etc.....

suffice to say that I've had a long week reinstalling everything I've been using the upstairs desktop for. And then, yesterday, when I tried to update Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 (which I had been using before the "recovery"), nothing wanted to update. I've had to bite the bullet and install Windows 10 this morning.

So, while that was all happening upstairs, I came downstairs to the laptop to do a few things while waiting for the installations and such to finish. The laptop has been running like a champ with the exception of a couple of days when it didn't feel like connecting to the internet.....

until this morning, when, instead of opening the internet to my normal page, it opened something totally unexpected in the form of a brand-new looking Internet Explorer page. (I kept having issues with Google Chrome, so I uninstalled it for a few days to see if there was just a minor glitch in Chrome.) Since I'm normally looking at Google search, I was a little thrown by the regular Microsoft page. Then, when I was able to load Google, I was unable to get the page to load because of "script errors" - and it was locked on my daughter's sign in page, even though she only used my laptop a couple of times and the last time was over two years ago.

Between the upstairs desktop and the downstairs laptop, I'm starting to feel like an IT Tech with a serious static electricity issue, as I haven't managed to touch either computer for the past 5 hours without having something go totally bonkers.....even though, between the two computers, there is a weather station that tells me that my heat and humidity ratio is exactly right for the machines to be able to run at their max without harm.

I'm not sure whether the weather station is programmed to lie or if I can seriously blame this latest computer glitch on the moon. It may just be that I've started editing the historical romance that I started in a notebook while pregnant with my daughter and, since it was begun well before there was such a thing as an internet and no real "home computer" short of a word processor, it wants to be finished in another medium....

But I suspect that's not it. "Fireblossom and the Dream Weaver" was quite content to be put into the computer between other novels to the point that I'm only about half-way through the rough draft in the notebooks and, with all the history I was trying to include, it's grown to over 400 pages already.

Maybe it's that I intend on doing what Stephen King calls "killing my darlings" that everything is suddenly not working well for me? Maybe Max, Amy, and the natives outside of Portsmouth, New Hampshire WANT a 1000 page plus book for me to have to try to market when it's done?

Let's see once this full moon has started waning.

Perhaps it's just the moon phase.....

I'm too young to be this old!

I'm sure there are ladies who read this blog who would gladly agree with that statement, especially those who are going through that ever-popular bane of the female existence: Menopause!

Yes, I'm THAT old, and have been having mild to moderate experiences with some of the 34 symptoms that all the doctors have been telling me about - and asking about when they see me each year. For those who don't know the list of 34, here they are in no particular order:

1. Hot Flashes - one of the most popular in all the jokes about menopause. One minute, you're comfortable. The next, you're visiting a tropical island with the sun beating down on you - and you haven't done anything to cause that temperature change.

2. Night Sweats - similar to the above, but waking the subject from a comfortable sleep for that sudden trip to the Bermuda Triangle.

3. Irregular Periods - which needs no real explanation, does it? In my case, I've been able to count out four weeks from one month to the next to be able to know almost to the exact day when my next visit from Mother Nature is going to come ever since I had an ovary removed and the other fallopian tube cut and cauterized in 1993 after my fourth miscarriage. And then I skipped past the "normal day" in December....and then did it again in January, finally getting my "visit" on January 24 - and then again on February 3rd. (I just spent an entire day being poked, prodded, having blood drawn and undergoing an ultrasound, as the last "visit" is still going on....to the point that I'm even having a dizzy spell as I sit here typing this. Later, I need to get squeezed in to see a specialist to go over what all of the poking and prodding shows.)

4, Loss of Libido - um.....yeah. Kind of wishing that this would hit the man in my life, but.... *laughing*

5. Vaginal Dryness - and this one I won't even comment on....  *smile*

6. Mood Swings - Let's not go here, either. I'm not sure I should put in writing where I want to wrap the chain from my mood swing at times, in other words......

7. Fatigue. (And I just thought I was pushing myself too hard....)

8. Hair Loss or Thinning - and to my husband, I'm truly sorry for all the hairy sandwiches I've put into your lunch pail over the past couple of years. No matter how I roll up my hair into a baseball hat, this is becoming a bigger problem each morning. (Maybe I should consider just shaving my head?)

9. Sleep Disorders - as if the insomnia I've suffered through my whole life isn't disruptive enough?

10. Difficulty Concentrating - now, where was I going with this?

11. Memory Lapses - I think, therefore I can't think......lol

12. Dizziness - as opposed to my normal dizzy self?

13. Weight Gain - which, obviously, wasn't just because I was sitting behind a desk? (I went back into a more physical job to combat this one, so it doesn't NEED to happen if one is diligent.)

14. Incontinence - No comment.....

15. Bloating - Again, no comment......

16. Allergies - I've always been allergic to all kinds of things, so this isn't new.

17. Brittle Nails - again, I just thought I was having to trim off "torn spots" because of the job I've been doing.

18. Changes in Body Odor - Ahah! Again, I thought I was imagining that my deodorant was failing me!

19. Irregular Heartbeat - So this doesn't have anything to do with the Pulminary Arterio Tachycardia I was diagnosed with in my mid-twenties?

20. Depression.

21. Anxiety

22. Irritability.

23. Panic Disorder - all four of these I've thought came with the vagina, as I've had all of these since before Mother Nature decided that I really was a woman and needed the breasts to pop out.....

24. Breast Pain - and here I've been blaming my Shih Tzu/Pomeranian for standing on the nipples when I wake up with them hurting.....or I've been joking that I must have stood on one myself when sliding out of bed still half asleep.....

25. Headaches - again, different from the ones I get from stress every day how?

26. Joint Pain - another "Ahah", as I've been insisting that the arthritis I have from being less than kind to my hands when I was younger is simply getting worse.

27. Burning Tongue - which I thought was because I overdid the spice in that last batch of Jambalaya and my husband insisted was the andouille sausage, so is he going through menopause, too?

28,. Electric Shock Sensation - and once again, I thought that this had no relation to my menopause, as we get the electric shock sensation every winter until I get the humidifiers filled and working.

29. Digestive Problems - Another one of those "symptoms" that I had written off to other issues, such as the bad habits I got into while working a desk job.

30. Gum Problems - which was another thing I wrote off to genetics. My dad had all his teeth pulled when joining the Navy to fight in Korea, as that was one of the ways that the Koreans "punished" those captured on the battlefield. Mom also had bad teeth. So when I went for dentures due to all my teeth breaking into bits when I was 50, I just thought I was like my parents, not that I was beginning menopause....

31/ Muscle Tension - as opposed to the pains from working too hard?

32. Itchy, Crawly Skin - it's NOT a psychosomatic reaction to seeing a tick on my husband or dog? Imagine that!

33. Tingling Extremities - With nerve damage from a back injury, this has also been ongoing for 20 years now.....

34. Osteiporosis - seeing my mom "shrinking" because hers is so severe that she has developed a hump, I was again writing this off to genetics....

If any of you would like to see this list without my commentary, the link is here: http://www.34-menopause-symptoms.com/  In the meantime, I'm out of work until Monday because my latest visit from Mother Nature doesn't want to end, I've been horribly light headed for several days (which worries the doctors when they hear that I have to climb ladders on the job), and there is talk of beginning me on hormone therapy.

Maybe it's time to pull out the soundtrack for Menopause, The Musical and start learning some of the songs while I'm being kept home until the medroxyprogesterone that I was prescribed yesterday takes effect.

And of course, I have a new adult coloring book that I recently purchased that can entertain me for a while while I watch some of the cartoon that I've been getting on dvd and blue ray for my grandkids....

Just because it's become obvious that I'm going through menopause, that doesn't mean I have to grow up, does it???

Looking for a new place to work out and other tasks of an aging writer

As I approach what a lot of people call the "Double Nickles Birthday" in May - and having just discovered that my driver's license will have to be renewed for the event - I'm having a lot of thoughts running through my head and am making some decisions for my future....

One of the biggest of these, much as I hate to have to give up my "pallet workout" that helped me lose the 40 pounds I had put on due to a stressful job, is to actually LISTEN to what my doctors are telling me and seek a new position that's a little less physical. Darn. And just when I was starting to see that ever-popular "six pack" starting to show itself under the scars from last year's hernia surgery....

Let me explain this....

When I was working as a janitor back in 1997, I developed a bulge in a disc way low in my back. At the time, I considered myself in the best shape I'd ever been in, tipping the scales at 140 pounds, but I didn't know about such things as adding protein to my diet to allow the muscles to grow, so I was lighter than I am right now, but didn't have the muscle structure...

Due to severe work restrictions resulting from the damage I'd done to myself, I had to change jobs, as there was no way that being a janitor would allow me to do the light duty work that I was told would be permanent. As a result, I started working through a temp agency that eventually got me into an office position at a veterinary clinic.

And, because I wasn't as active, I quickly started putting on weight.

By the time I got into an argument with my boss that made me quit the veterinary field, I had been working desk jobs for 15 years. I was weighing in at 192 pounds and was sincerely upset with myself for letting myself get that fat. With special permission from my nerve specialist and a promise "not to overdo", I went back into retail, which eventually led to working in my current position, which requires me to do a lot of heavy lifting. I'm back down weight wise (usually 155-160), I've been adding whey protein to my diet on the heavier "workout days", but after last year's hernia surgery, I'm a little more prone to pain-filled nights when I'm pushing myself too hard.....

And my body is starting to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that I'm breaking the promise I made to my nerve specialist. I'm starting to have regular evenings in which I'm having muscle spasms again and there are spots on my belly that the doctor who did the hernia surgery is telling me may be the mesh she put in last year trying to pull free...so on doctor's orders, I'm having to reconsider my job choice, as I still have a minimum of 10 years before I retire (which is, of course, contingent on our next presidential choice, since the Social Security retirement fund I've been paying into since I first started working may well be taken away if the Republicans get their nominees into office).

Despite liking the co-workers I currently have and the fact that, instead of paying for a gym membership, the "gym" pays me, I seriously have to look at the fact that my husband, who is three years older and has all kinds of health issues creeping up on him as well, may not be able to be our primary source of income within the next 5 years....

*BIG sigh*

So, over the past week, I've re-vamped my resume, posted it on a jobs site, and am applying for positions that might still keep me more active than my receptionist job, yet allow me to back down from the "pallet workouts". I've found a few places to put in my resume that will offer the opportunity of moving up in the company, should I find the right fit, but I'm looking for your suggestions as well.

Here are my demands before I put myself into another "hostage situation" at a new company:

1) Since we're half-way through a mortgage on our current home, the job needs to be within easy driving distance of Gray - or needs to pay enough that I can pay off the house and put it on the market to move to another part of the state.

2) It needs to involve SOME physical activity, but not so much that I'll need another hernia repaired in the next six months to a year.

3) I need to be able to relax around the co-workers, as I really have become less and less interested in the stress of working for someone I dislike.

Um, yeah. I think I may as well wish for a unicorn to ride to work, right?

However, if any of my constant readers hears of a position in Maine for this soon-to-be-55-year-old, PLEASE drop me a line in the comments below, or hit me up on Facebook, or email me through The Northern Bard web site.

Of course, if you just want to "help" by making Northern Bard Publications successful, buying my books would work as well, since editing and publishing is something that fulfills all those "demands" and gives me the opportunity to work longer hours with two very sweet ladies whom I see eye-to-eye with.....

Blessed be, and welcome to all the new folks visiting my blog from other countries.