Way Behind

Hello, me lovelies. I am going to make a grand attempt at playing catch-up today on my Five Minutes A Day segment. My internet has been bouncing off and on for several days and I’ve already lost several attempts at putting something here. I’ve finally wised up and have been putting everything on a notepad so I don’t lose it when the ‘net goes poof!

So once I’ve had some coffee and a sweet breakfast treat, I will attempt a fifteen minute catch-up here. No guarantees though; the ‘net’s already gone down twice this morning. The joys of modern times!

Tentative Schedule – 2017

Hello, dear readers. Below is a tentative schedule of events here on ATFWHI for 2017. This is set to begin (or continue) on January 1st.

Daily Writing/Challenges:

• My Daily Tarot
• The Daily Me Journal
• 10 Daily Currents
• End of Day Notes
• (for a while, I will continue to catch up on The Sandbox Writing Challenge and then it will become a Weekly Challenge)

Weekly Writing/Challenges:

• Share Your World – Mondays
• The Sandbox Writing Challenge – Wednesdays
• Hodge Podge – Wednesdays
• A Delicious Torment (my memoir) – Thursdays (moved date from Mon to Thurs)
• Saturday 9 – Saturdays
• Weekend Coffee Share – Saturdays
• Song Lyric Sunday – Sundays

Monthly Writing/Challenges: 

• Journaling January – January (Note: this will be posted under The Daily Me Journal posts when appropriate)
• A-to-Z Challenge – April

All of this is subject to change. It will depend on my health and other writing projects during the year. I hope you will join me for any or all of these upcoming projects and challenges. I will try to engage with you as much as possible, dear readers.

Notice – Time Away

Dear readers, I will be taking Dec 24-26 off to be with family and friends. I am not going to schedule ahead posts for those days because frankly, I am a bit exhausted at the moment. I will still do all of my posts (My Daily Tarot, The Daily Me, and The Sandbox challenges) for the next two days, but there will be none those three days. All will resume again on the 27th.

As some know, today is actually my December holiday – Winter Solstice known as Yule – and I am spending it alone, just messing around on the computer. It’s not much fun celebrating alone, as no one else around me recognizes Winter Solstice as a holiday. As I’ve already scheduled the remaining two days’ posts, this is the last actual post I will be making until the 27th, so….

To my Pagan friends, Best Wishes for a lovely, festive Yule.

For my Jewish friends, Happy Chanukah

For my Christian friends, Merry Christmas

For all others, whatever festive day you celebrate around the world this December, my dear friends, may it be filled with love, laughter, friendship, and family. 

 

Dear WordPress

You’ve done it again, WordPress – fixed some things that were NOT broken. For the love of me, I cannot figure out why you do that. I liked having my media and contact buttons SEPARATE and not clumped together under a + sign. I loved being on my blog with the dashboard running across the top and being able to click on My Sites, having the drop-down box and being able to chose one of my other blogs’ homepage. Now I am sent to a page where I have to chose a blog and get sent to the Edit page instead of my actual blog.

WHY? WordPress why? Why do you always fuck with things that work perfectly fine? You are not making my life easier or hipper. You are actually making it HARDER! Stop it. Please, just stop making customized changes that only benefit YOU. Next time you want to play the omnipotent one and make changes, why not stop and be democratic about it and ask your customers? It would be so easy to do under a Daily Post. Hmmmm?

Sincerely,
A pissed-off customer

Why Am I Screaming Expletives?

It goes something like  – sh*t, d*mn, f*ck, f*ckity f*ck f*ck f*ck. Why? My face is warm and my ears are red, I am getting incredibly weak and tired, and my taste buds have changed into something resembling gritty, bland oatmeal. What does this mean and why am I so upset about it?

Well, it is only TWO days into my return to daily writing – here on this blog and on A Whispered Wind where I am writing a novel via NaNoWriMo. And guess what those above symptoms mean? I. Have. A. Cold!

Yes, dear readers. I am sick, or at least on the verge of being sick. At 50, you just know what these kind of symptoms mean, especially since chemo 4 years ago wiped out my immune system and I get 3-4 colds per year. Usually during a climate change. Like now. It doesn’t matter how much Vitamin C I take (daily) or how much echinacea I take (almost daily), I still get sick.

I promise you, I will fight this tooth and nail so that it will  not interrupt my daily postings. It has been far too long (June), since I have done any dailies and I really, truly want to be doing this now. So, I will rest when I can. Schedule posts ahead of time when I can. And still try to do this. Muddling through.

November Happenings

The last few months have been riddled with anxiety for me. I made the mistake of following the current political climate here in the US and it has worn me down mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Sorry for the graphics, but I feel like someone has skinned me and poured gasoline on my open wounds. Yes, it has been that bad. I desperately need some love, light, laughter and joy back in my life.

So, beginning tomorrow, for the entire month of November, I will be doing a spiritual reboot, which I am calling Inspired! This may come in the form of a video, cartoon, picture, poem, quote or an inspirational story that I discover somewhere on the web. It is my hopes that what inspires me, may inspire you as well.

I am also going to try to catch up with Calen’s Sandbox Writing Challenge. I am way way way behind, but hopefully if I do one challenge per day, I will eventually catch up.

So, those are my plans for November here on this blog. How about you, dear readers? Do you have any month long plans on your blogs? Anyone doing NaNoWriMo? I’d love to hear about your plans! Drop me a comment.

Heartbreaking News

My beloved Prince has died, he was 57… my heart is torn in two…

I will miss you, Prince Rogers Nelson

Concerning My Absence

I don’t like to air my grievances. Normally, this would be written in a private journal, but I feel that I owe it to my readers to explain my absence the past two days.

Those of you who know me know that my husband and I parted ways back in October 2014 and that I moved back home to Virginia and he has remained in Oklahoma. The nine years that I lived in OK were not good ones. I was very ill, physically and mentally, during those years. Some of it was from being homesick the entire time, some of it was due to my husband being a narcissist who made my life miserable, and other parts of it was that I had few friends there to help me. The mental illness that I have suffered from for most of my life became overwhelming in those years. I was suicidal, a cutter and burner, and hospitalized numerous times. It took a lot of therapy and determination for me to leave there.

Since I’ve returned home to my beloved Virginia, my health, physical and mental, has greatly improved. In fact, I’ve gone off of all of my psych meds. I am no longer stressed or anxious all of the time and I haven’t had any depressive episodes since the first week I returned home. Until two days ago, that is…

Two days ago, I received an email from my estranged husband (he and I have been on good terms since September 2015, having worked through most of our differences via email and phone). Before I left in 2014, he and I were renovating the house we lived in. He wanted me to stay until the renovations were complete, but I just couldn’t do it. This left some HUGE messes all over the house – primarily in the kitchen, main bedroom and bathroom. He still has not completed those renovations and because he is a pack rat, things have become worse. In his email, he asked me to come back to OK and help him finish the renovations and get the house back in order. You see, he has fallen into a deep depression since I left and hasn’t been coping well. He has also made some new discoveries about his sexual identity and that too has left him in a bit of a funk.

When the email arrived and I read it, a dark cloud descended upon me. I relived our entire life from April of 2005 when we arrived in OK until October 2014 when I left. I won’t go so far as to say I’ve been depressed, because I know what depression is and I know when I am in it, but my mood has soured and a darkness has surrounded me. The mere thought of returning to OK has crippled my ability to think, concentrate and even write. It really has nothing to do with him. We are in a good place now and I wouldn’t mind seeing him again, just not in OK. It is that place… that house, that state. The thought “I nearly died there” keeps running through my head. I just cannot bring myself to go back there.

I struggled for two days about what to tell him. How to tell him no. I didn’t want to be the reason why depression would cripple him further. But the one thing I’ve had to learn about myself is my limitations. I can no longer do things to please someone else that are detrimental to my own health and well-being. So after living with this dark cloud for two days, I finally replied to his email this morning and told him NO and I told him why – because of what OK represents to me about my health. I know he will not receive the news well and I will regret hurting him and letting him down, but I will stand firm behind my answer and my reasons.

And so, dear readers, I have felt the lifting of the cloud today. Thankfully, I had scheduled ahead many of the posts you’ve all been reading the last couple of days.. here on this blog and on my other two blogs. I’ve fallen behind in the NaJoWriMo, and both of the poetry challenges. So I will likely just skip the missed posts and carry on with the upcoming prompts. As time allows today, I will try to catch up with comments and get back to reading the A2Z blogs tomorrow on our day off. Thank you, if you managed to read this in its entirety. I know it is a long post.

Love & Blessings
Lori

Notice: This Blog Is Moving!

Hello readers! For far too long, I have scattered myself across six blogs. Beginning today, May 1, 2015, I will have one blog: The Rattling Bones.

You can still catch my writings there.  Also, this blog will be listed at the top of the page and My Pages (on the right side column) under Archived Blogs.

I have some exciting new projects coming up this May, including SHOWCASE which will highlight a fellow blogger’s blog each day and a once a month Promote Your Blog where you can promote your own blogs in the comments.

I hope my readers here will follow the new blog. I look forward to this new exciting chapter in my blogging and I hope you will too!

~Lori Carlson~