FOOL ME TWICE?—NO WAY, mr. trump

People are terrified that trump is going to steal this election right from under our noses as was true four years ago when most of us were blindsided.  Having heard that very fear aired, time and again, here’s my take on what lies straight ahead:
 If we know that something of great value has been stolen in the past and if the thief has been named then under the laws of this nation, said thief is eventually jailed, most especially if that thieving liar tries to steal for personal gain, yet again.  And in order to sleep at night, that’s the belief in which I’ve chosen to place my faith🙋🏻‍♀️🇺🇸

HIGH TIME TO AWAKEN FROM MORE THAN ONE NIGHTMARE

 It’s hard to believe all of the medical events that have taken place, over this past year, inside my body, which, like a Timex, is still ticking after surviving quite a few lickings.  Hopefully, as stitches dissolve, the vice-like feeling around my chest will ease up, as well.

I’ve truly enjoyed watching the National Democratic  Convention unfold, over this past week, as listening to strong speeches has encouraged me to believe that this nation can muster the host of strengths necessary to bring trump’s evil reign of terror to its knees.  Barry and David are insistent that after having enjoyed the upbeat nature of this past week’s nationally unifying speeches, I would do well to turn off the TV so as to keep my personal mindset on a positively focused roll, which has been pumping up my spirit’s self empowered, internal capacity to heal the woundedness that has been undermining my ability to restrengthen, little by little, layer by layer, day by day, deep inside my mind and body for more than a year.  And as their reasoning makes sense, my homecoming, at the end of this week, may be very well timed.

Just as I love the virtual thought of gathering and trashing as many red hats as can be found before we grab hold of a pole that will steady our virtual ride on Biden’s and Harris’s red, white and blue band wagon, I can feel our drive toward The White House picking up steam until the polls close on November 3rd, at which time trump will be sent packing in the aftermath of four straight years of insanity turning The Oval Office into a three ring circus’s side show, and now that we’ve had more than enough of that dog and pony act, let’s offer a standing ovation to the fact that once sanity reigns supreme, I’ll not be the only U.S. citizen who, finding herself healing from having had a cancerous tumor removed from her heart, knows, without a doubt, that better days lie directly ahead for one and all unless thy name rhymes with—rump!
🙋🏻‍♀️❤️🇺🇸Annie

UPBEAT UPDATE #25

 Recently, I’ve been more quiet than not, based upon the fact that my heightened pain level (which was expected), has remained a problem, clashing with my cultivated state of peaceful patience.  And I’ve been unable to write of misery until the massive portion of it has passed.

At this point,  I’m so ready to rest in my own bed after spending these past several weeks in Houston

To our good fortune, the Airbnb has proved comfortable in terms of space and adequate in terms of meeting our needs.  And now, as we advance toward the next stage of our most current adventure into The Great Unknown, we’ll soon be readying our Hazmat suits, face shields and masks to convey us through the airport in hopes of making our uneventful way home, safely, again.

Hopefully, the most difficult  portion of this challenging experience has passed.  And had you been with me from the start, you’d probably be surprised to see how much I’ve improved when considering my present level of independence concerning walking, grooming, dressing, and hours spent sitting on a comfortably padded couch, where, for the most part, we’ve been binging on The Americans, evenings while, personally, I’ve been contemplating my good fortunate at the fact that Will and David demonstrate NO impatience whatsoever with how much help I still need from them as we three continue to derive emotional strength from one another’s generosity of spirit.  

Each time I envision warm smiles lighting up loving faces waiting eagerly to welcome us home, (standing just beyond our patio’s Arcadia door in The Southwestern Desert) or I imagine smiles, greeting our own, doubling the love light conveyed from within the depths of every heart on FaceTime, I can actually feel my smile plug into a natural, mega watt energy source, which I call The Universal Spirit, that always feels as remarkable as was the first electrical circuit devised by Thomas Edison, which, with one flip of a carefully wired switch, brightened an entire room that had been dark only moments before.  

And being a woman, whose dark, shoulder length hair had been shorn, last December, during one of several hospitalizations, I’m happy to see soft, shining tuffets of pewter sprouting all over my scalp as summer temps continue to sizzle toward record breaking intensities across the nation while eggs, frying atop steaks, broiling on sidewalks offer up a minor exaggeration of what The Southwestern Portion of The USA has felt like over these brutal months of summer as if trump has literally been readying his fire breathing oratory to make his descent into the bowels of hell.

On the other hand, as Houston offers both extreme heat and humidity, I actually give thanks every time the air conditioner compressor is heard recharging itself.

Last night, my physical pain, though cradled ever so gently within the fluffy pillows that make their way from living room couch to Airbnb bed, gave me reason to experience a teary meltdown, lasting several minutes, before a powerful sleeping aid switched my last wakeful thoughts toward the fact that the surgery we’d flown here for was two weeks passed.  And soon, I’ll be home.  And no matter the intensity of heat and pain, never before in my life has my spirit felt more buoyed on the wings of love than has been true, over this past year.

As for now 

Tis time to groom, so

Please—

Be safe

Stay well

Wear masks

Vote blue

And offer your

Home schooled

Munchkins the same Admirable patience and humorous attitude You’ve expected of their teachers, every day, Throughout each school year, Monday-Friday, because if you expect the best of your children during trying times then it’s not too much for our little ones to expect the best from adults, whose love lines must run with the same level of consistency as did Edison’s wires when his goal was to re-energize the level of brightness in a room, whereas your goal and mine is to steady our focus toward re-energizing the currents of loving patience, which brighten each pair of eyes that meet our own as your circle of love and mine expand ever so naturally, with a lightness of being, day by day ...

🙋🏻‍♀️❤️😘Annie

PS. In order to keep today’s smile naturally recharged with the spirit of generosity, which, for the most part, keeps both sides of my personality balanced, I simply remind myself that today’s stranger may very well become tomorrow’s treasured friend, and based in the fact that ‘attitude is everything‘, my assumption, concerning opening my heart to welcomIng new friends, generally suggests why, during life’s most trying times, my cup runneth over with kindnesses, offered openly, generously and freely, by my family and friends 

🙋🏻‍♀️❤️🧚🏻‍♂️✍🏼🥰

MANY BEGINNINGS LEAD TO ENDINGS THAT ARE SURPRISING

 So, today, dear friend, I began to write this heartfelt message to you, because the strength of our forever friendship invites pretty much every emotion felt deep inside, even those that are too testy to bare to the world, to express themselves naturally, as though these emotions are so strong as to have hearts and minds of their own, which encourage me to accept the fact that this emotion or that one feels need to emerge and converse, openly, from time to time, with another person’s compassionate heart, and in our case, I have the benefit of knowing that your mind has been well trained in discerning which primary emotion is pushing a secondary emotion out of the way so as to fully expose itself on center stage instead of continuing to suppress its presence in the wings, where its deeper truth has been repressed for so long a time that no one remembers when or why pain, insecurity or sadness got stuffed so deep inside, out of sight in the first place.

I thought the photo posted below was a perfect metaphor showing both sides of me—the well groomed side I choose to show to the world and the churning information-seeker who retrieves forgotten details of past events that had been too complex or painful for a child to work through so as to strengthen from within at an age that proves younger than most.  And thus are both sides of me—The questioning Annie and the self assured Annie—clearly seen sharing brain space wherever we go.  However, if an innocent party, who is engaging in conversation with the secure side of my mind,  unknowingly jangles an emotionally injured nerve ending that remains unhealed then the questioning Annie may withdraw momentarily until the mature portion of my brainwaves grabs the switch, which rewires my newly exposed, negatively focused attitude so quickly that very few would have seen me stumble over insecurity, since my reset button is pressed so quickly as to pick up the slack before most have any awareness of mental changes zooming back and forth through my head.  Anyway, I wanted you to know that over this past year, both Annies feel so emotionally safe in your presence that all of my posts will come directly from the inner sanctum of my being where conversations between security and insecurity blend together so naturally that inner truths, which I’m not yet ready to tell myself, pop out of my processor’s intuitive side and filter through my wall of denial into my conscious awareness before my defense system can stuff those ‘forgotten’ details back inside one of the dark pockets of my mind.

Interesting fact—

Most details that scared me so much as to bury their existence deep within my subconscious are not nearly as scary to the adult whom I’ve chosen to grow to be, so far, today.  And as personal growth can advance forward, pretty much forever, here is why some youngsters are rightfully called ‘old souls’—Morsels of wisdom that have been planted into my brain’s memory bank will have been passed to my sons, whose open minds seem ever more ready to engage in conversations with my think tank than would be expected of men who have leaped toward middle age in the same unencumbered way as had been true of me, being that we four had walked over that threshold without leaving our intimate, good natured connection to childhood behind us—offering each of us plenty of time to coach our current generation of little ones about life during playtime so that they’re often unaware as to how much coaching is taking place.  And though I have no clue as to how today’s post began at its starting point and ended up over here, my mind has tired enough to thank you for listening right up until I choose to finish for today with three of life’s most peace sustaining words—I love you!

                ❤️😘Annie

IN RETROSPECT ...

 It’s not as if I knew I was doing far too much while we were out of the house, yesterday.  I mean, all I did was walk with walker from house to car where our tires bounced along the street until it came time to transfer me into a wheelchair outside the doctors’ offices into which I ‘stayed put’ throughout my appointments until David picked us up, at which time my smile transferred from wheelchair to front bucket seat in our small, rented, SUB and then to my walker as I made my way up the driveway toward the front door of our Airbnb and down the hall to our bedroom, first making a beeline for the small master bathroom where my kidneys clamored for relief, after which I managed to sit on the edge of our king sized bed in such a way as to catch my breath before swinging each leg solo over the mattress in slow mo, so as to lie myself down and smother my upper body in pillows so strategically placed as to help me to pretend that my sternum, front to back, was not throbbing like an electrified drum (you know, out of sight, out of mind’). 

At any rate, the Ativan swallowed about an hour ago is taking the edge off my pain, and in five minutes time, a hydro codone will offer my smile reason to hangout on my face, until, hour by hour, another day, post op, shall pass, offering my immune system time to refortify personal strengths, which had been mine before the tumor had mustered their hutzpah to invade my lung uninvited ...

A HEARTFELT SENSE OF GRATITUDE

I wrote this reply to a text received from a dear friend, who is an active member of my neighborhood book group:

Hi Renee,

Once the complexity of my answers, written to family and friends while my head is still swirling with pain meds, simplifies, over time,  I’m certain to offer up quiet smiles, which will express the depths of my heartfelt gratitude to everyone whose love or expertise took part in buoying my spirit and saving my life.

Then, acknowledging that at this late stage in our lives, we’re all pretty much recovering from some age related surgical malady, I wished my friend well in hopes that her recovery from total knee surgery continues to offer up less pain and greater motility.

🙋🏻‍♀️💐Annie

KEEPIN’ IT TOGETHER

 As it’s natural for everyone to ask how I feel, here is my reply—

If anyone knocks on your door and asks to break your sternum, front and back, simply smile and reply—

No fricking way!

Then without delay

Say—Good day!

And fast as you can

Lock yourself up safe inside.

For the first couple days after discharge, my pain meds were spaced 6 hrs apart, which saw me struggling with intense pain throughout the day.  Yesterday, my surgeon, heeding my plea, spaced doses 4 hours apart, and much to my relief, I’ve been tolerating that change much better.

To my good fortune, Will and David are the best, most patient care givers I’ve ever encountered, and one by one, the days are passing, each one improving in some infinitesimal way or another because of everyone’s loving kindnesses, which keep our cups running over with soothing thoughts of gratitude!

🙋🏻‍♀️❤️😘