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Thank you… You took me dancing

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Not doing well tonight. In bed at 9pm, dizzy, extraordinary pain, diseased muscles. This illness doesn’t take a holiday. But I want you all to know how thankful I am for what you give to me. Thank you for reading, thank you for your support and your advice. Thank you for your sympathy and your words of encouragement. Thank you for making me laugh and forgiving my silence. Thank you for holding Hope for me. Thanksgiving didn’t happen this year, but, I’m probably more thankful today than I’ve ever been before.

This is what I want you all to hear: cherish your health, listen to your body, be kind to each other, forgive the little things… And the big things, too. Honour the parts of you that work well, be grateful for strength, flexibility, joy, laughter. NOTICE these things: I’m thankful I can pick up my child. I’m thankful I can cook dinner. I’m thankful I can walk the dog, clean the house, talk for hours… Pay attention to the good times, consciously live each moment and never forget how short our roads here are and how lucky we are to walk them.

I mean this with all sincerity, with love and affection.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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The Finale! Liebster Award Part 3 ~ Answering Questions

I think I will finally have the energy to finish fulfilling the criteria for the Liebster Award by answering Reva’s questions:

What are you proudest of?

This is a hard one. Being proud is so personal. It’s all about you and something you’ve accomplished.  I guess I could be proud of my children ~ if I had any. Or proud of my garden if I had created one. Or proud of how I’ve given back to the community or something, but I haven’t. I am proud that I get up every day and don’t give up. I am proud that I am self-aware and honest in my relationships. I am proud that I have dropped insecurities, achieved forgiveness and notice gratitude each day.

What is your favourite colour?

Red. No, green! Ahhhhh… (that’s me being thrown off the bridge)

What inspires you to blog?

The constant, incessant, noisy, obsessive, clamouring, chattering, clattering thoughts in my brain. I have hundreds of unfinished posts, essays, poems, articles and novels bouncing around up there with not enough energy to tame them, groom them, edit them and write them. Also, I really want to keep my family and friends informed about how I’m doing since I’m not usually up for emails and phone calls.

What three things would you grab if your house was burning down?

Well, my two dogs and my husband, of course.

Can you resist chocolate?

No, it’s actually quite bad. My doctor wanted me to stop eating sugar for my elimination diet and, once she saw my yeast levels, reiterated how important this was. But I didn’t do it. I did give up ice cream (except for Almond Bites) and Cadbury’s and Toberlone and Junior Mints… But I still have chocolate every single day, only now it is the Theo bars with 70% cocao. It’s actually quite amazing how quickly your body can change its cravings.

Where did you spend your favourite holiday?

This is a really hard question. There were so many lovely holidays when I was younger and so many in recent years with my whole family together, but I always think back to a trip to Lanzarote with my husband in 2000. We’d left freezing Ireland in January, had a lovely visit with his family in freezing England, been tourists in freezing Scotland and, the day before flying back to America, we walked past one of those discount package-holiday places and they had some cheap two-week all-inclusive deal to the Canary Islands leaving the next day. What made it so wonderful was, we decided there and then, standing on the street, to go to the sun. We sent messages to our jobs, changed our flights (we were flying stand-by, so no charge) and the next day we were in this completely foreign, beautiful volcanic landscape off the coast of Africa with nothing but winter clothes. The food was crappy and neither of us particularly likes sand, so we spent our days reading books in the sun on the balcony. Relaxing and reading book after book. Playing hilarious bingo each night in the hotel bar. No mobile phones, no responsibilities, no illnesses, no allergies, no pills, no fear.

Finish this sentence: One day I will…

…walk on the beach with my dogs again.
…have the energy to cook.
…sleep well.
…eat bread and cheese again.
…be in one place with all my siblings.
…have the energy to get dressed, put on make up, talk, laugh and socialise.
…not be in pain.

If you could be anyone for a day, who would you be?

A dancer. I’d love to be able to twirl and leap and bend and shimmy with abandon ~ and with no repercussions.

Tea or coffee?

Tea. Lyons with milk and sugar. Or, these days, with soy creamer and stevia.

What is one of your oldest memories?

Putting on Kiss concerts with my brothers when we lived in Illinois in… 1978?

What is your favourite movie?

Oh, I can’t answer that! There are so many!! I love Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Mike Leigh, Scorsese, Tarantino, Coen Brothers, Cameron Crowe, Danny Boyle, Coppola, Kubrik, Almodovar, Hitchcock, Fincher, Wilder, Rob Reiner, John Hughes. I could go on… Because it is almost Christmas, I will give a special shout-out to It’s a Wonderful Life, which I watch every single year, no matter what.

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Liebster Award Part 2 ~ My Nominees and Questions

Like I said, I’m new to the blogging world, so it was very hard for me to come up with 11 blogs to nominate (and how do you know if they have fewer than 200 followers?!). But I tried. I really wanted to nominate a few blogs that weren’t about ME/CFS, but, since that has been all-consuming this year, those are mostly the blogs that I have read. So, here goes:

  1. Sam and ME
  2. Emotional Umbrella
  3. Dreams At Stake
  4. Chronically Living
  5. Living in Dreamland
  6. Get Up. Dress Up. Turn Up.
  7. Best Foot Forward
  8. No Poster Girl
  9. MeaningfulSuffering
  10. restaurantbastards
  11. Christie Voos (shout out!)

And now for my questions:

  1. Finish this sentence: “One day I will…”
  2. What sound or noise do you hate?
  3. What is your favourite animal?
  4. What is your perfect birthday meal?
  5. What part of your body do you like the most?
  6. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?
  7. What three people, dead or alive, would you like to have at a dinner party?
  8. Where do you want to be or how do you see your life 20 years from now?
  9. What is your biggest vice?
  10. Name one book and/or movie that made a difference in your life.
  11. Finish this sentence: “I am thankful for…”

Apologies for the truncated posts ~ I published this before I had finished it!

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Liebster Award Part 1 ~ 11 Things About Myself

I’m afraid I have to fulfill the Liebster Award criteria in increments since I’m not having the best week. So, here’s the first part.

List 11 things about yourself:

1. I was born in Japan.

2. I spent the majority of my formative years in Dublin, Ireland and pine for that city every single day.

3. I’ve been in 27 countries. One of those was an airplane stop (El Salvador) and some of those were only for a day or two (Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco), but I am so grateful that I traveled where I did while I could. Highlights: Soviet Union, Austria, France, Costa Rica, Morocco.

4. My friends and I were mugged when we were in Morocco. He said, “If I had a black heart, I would kill you and take your money. But, I have a white heart, so I just ask you to give it to me.”

5. Surprisingly, I think the thing I miss most about my pre-M.E. life is laughing. I would laugh so much at work. I miss the banter of those crazy personalities. No matter how bad my day was, I loved my co-workers fiercely. We accepted each other fundamentally, even when we argued… and we always wound up laughing. It’s hard to find opportunities for laughter when you are housebound with no social interaction.

6. I love good movies, books and food in a way that is…voracious. I crave the experiences, revel in the moments and treasure the memories.

7. I used to write poetry. A lot.

8. I cannot abide illogical arguments and will debate to a fault. I want everyone to be fair, just, logical and see all sides~ even if they don’t agree with them.

9. I have two (small, pathetic) tattoos. One done in my teen years with my best friends E. and K. and one done with a needle and Indian ink in a dorm room in college.

10. I was given a brand new Harley Davidson motorbike, plus helmet and leathers by one of my customers when I was a server (no strings attached, I swear!).

11. I have number obsessions. 519 has been following me around for years (and May 19th wound up being the day of my father-in-law’s funeral as well as the first day of my non-working life). 28 has always been significant ~ to the point that I had to sit my fairly-new boyfriend down on the eve of my 28th birthday and explain that I was worried this might be the year I would die (I know, morbid). Interestingly, ten days later, I was in the emergency room with my first case of anaphylactic shock. Even more interesting, I never, ever put that together until right this minute when I looked at my health records. That really was the beginning of the end of my health. My records say: 1977-78: chronic cough; 1987: tonsillectomy; 2001: anaphylaxsis… and then, every year, thereafter, there is something significant.