Some days there isn’t a lot to say, but it is my job, with this experiment, to show up and say something. I am feeling very quiet just now, and words are not coming easily.
It has been a good day. Rachel and Jeremy came by to move all the big pots off the deck into the back yard garden area. Sadly, while the idea of a pot garden on my deck seemed like a good idea, things have not done well out there at all. Pitiful really. There is a gigantic old tree that overhangs the deck and I hadn’t really realized how little sun I got, things grew spindly and pitiful, what should have been been tall dinnerplate dahlias were so spindly they got very tall, bent over and broke, and didn’t produce flowers. The gladiolas have almost all died out completely. Many things died. I mean it was a heartbreaking mess. It is too late for these things this year but they will be out in a sunny area now and the greenery on top will feed the tubers until they all die out. There are a few small pots left on the deck but the idea of a deck garden wasn’t meant to be.
After Rachel and Jeremy left Maurice arrived to do all the yard work, cutting the grass and cleaning things up and making them tidy again. He wouldn’t usually work on a Sunday but he got rained out yesterday and hadn’t been for 3 weeks and he knew it was getting to be a jungle here. It is such a relief to have that done. It was really weighing on me. It is after 7 now, the dogs had their dinner and so did I. Now I look to the week ahead.
Tomorrow is a day I am not looking forward to. I have to go to the clinic and fill out all the paperwork again for the sliding scale for health care that I get through the clinic, and the Charity Care (I cringe at the name) that covers major medical things should that need arise. It is humiliating to be at this time of life with no medical insurance and very limited resources living on a small fixed income since the fire and this is not something I would write about here but I know that I am not alone in this and we learn to do, under very hard circumstances, what we need to do to survive. I am grateful for the clinic and have gotten good care there. Charity Care paid for my colonoscopy a year ago. I am learning, though it has been very hard, to be grateful and not ashamed. I never thought I would be in this position in my life but I am and I am doing my best with it all.
Part of me wants to delete that last paragraph. I do feel shame, and all of a sudden I am teary over having to write about that, but like having written about being almost 400 pounds at one point in my life just yesterday I keep coming back to the fact that if I write honestly I may be helping someone else. It is very difficult, heartbreaking, and scary to be growing older without the resources you had imagined you would have, not sure what will happen to you as you come into your later years. I just have to continue to be grateful for the help I have, which my daughter helped find for me after the fire. I am doing the best I can.
This is enough for now. I said more than I knew I had to say and more than I wanted to in some ways but recording all of this is part of my journey. And it has been a good weekend, a peaceful, quiet sort of weekend. I am grateful for that too. I hope you have had a good weekend too. May each day, as it comes, bring blessings, or at least a gentle peace. May we each find our way…
The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda
Maitri,
Thank you for your honesty and your heart. Your kindness helps a lot of people (and pugs). I adore you and I’m praying for abundance and great health for you my dear friend. Lots of love.
Jeanette
Oh dearest Jeanette,
Thank you so much honey, you are so kind, and I adore you too. You know that I hold you and yours in my heart and prayers and your prayers mean more to me than I can say. I, too, am sending you love and please call on me if you need me.
Maitri
Charlie is back on disability and medicare which leaves me to be on medicaid which should come out of his check.. they told him I have to prove I don’t have an income… he told them she hasn’t filed taxes in over 18 years and was on medicaid when he was on disability before. So Charlie called the IRS and they said she doesn’t have any income they should know this must be a computer glitch.. grrr so now more phone calls next week and hopefully this will be resolved in time before my meds run out … before obama care I was on charity and every three months had to fill out the paperwork… seems to me charity insurance could be called something less degrading for us.. like sliding scale supplemental. ya know you would think that those of us with mental problems should not be put through the anxiety of all this to make us worse.. anyway trying not to stress out here and breathe deeply and know it will work its way out somehow as it always does…
as for your pot garden and the light want me to look up some shade loving plants you might want to try next year?
Oh Julia honey I’m so sorry that you have to go through all of this too. It is so hard, it is humiliating, but I am grateful for the help that I do get. As I said I am trying my best to live in gratitude and not shame, but they don’t make it easy for people who need this help, endless hoops to jump through. I hope yours work out soon and with as little stress as possible.
And you know the thing is I think it is best if I don’t try to garden on my deck except for a few small pots. It had become a concern because of all the moisture on my wooden deck from having to keep things watered. I cannot afford to have my deck rot and have to replace it. I do have a lot of shade out in my yard which is like a forest with many huge old trees. I am finding myself having a hard time with keeping up with things. I was once a huge gardener. It is harder for me, since the fire, to keep up. I don’t know Julia, it’s like my heart just isn’t in it. I hope this will one day change…
as you go thru what you have to tomorrow, repeat over and over, I am alive, I am loved, i have work to do, i am grateful for family and friends, i will do what i have to do survive and live a good life. and you will indeed do what you have to! and come home to your pugs and your 700 word stories and your keto food and pick one beautiful highlight from your day that right now you won’t even know is about to exist!!! amen!
Oh Katya… oh honey…
Thank you, yes to all of that, and tomorrow I will be sending you so much love too. And what a lovely thing to think about… “and pick one beautiful highlight from your day that right now you won’t even know is about to exist!” I wish that for you too, always and always. May the beauty we don’t yet know be there to revel in…
I love you darling one…
M. xoxox
“I am alive, I am loved, I have work to do, I am grateful for family and friends, I will do what i have to do survive and live a good life.” Thanks, Katya, for that!
a wonderful quote from Joseph Campbell:
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
He is the author of many books about mythology and the golden grail, and the original author of the now famous saying “follow your bliss.” xo ka
Katya–I, too, want to thank you for your affirmation–I am alive, I am loved, I have work to do, I am grateful for my family and friends, I will do what I have to do to survive and live a good life! I,too, am an avid reader of Joseph Campbell–I share his books and philosophy with the senior high school students that I teach–specifically his “hero’s journey.” While usually the hero’s journey is applied to the movies or a book–WE ALL go on a hero’s journey everyday–Maitri shares her journey with us daily–we get up (ordinary world) we encounter challenges (this can range from having to go outside to dealing with the medical paperwork) and we OVERCOME them–and then we come back and share good things with our family and friends…we then go to sleep and get up and hit that journey again the next day…again, thank you both Maitri and Katya for sharing your thoughts online with “friends” who never would have met but for this site! Hugs to all!
Barbara – how wonderful for your students that you are their teacher, teaching them about Joseph Campbell! i was trained to be a high school english teacher but veered off into radical journalism and other pursuits before i came back around to teaching creative writing (not for grades) out in the community. i honor people like you and my writing pal eve for going in five days a week teaching five or more classes a day, and all the work that goes with it. thank you!!! xo ka
Maitri, I’m so glad that you have a small amount of additional help beyond what our government stingily provides — I’m not sure what Charity Care is, but totally glad it’s available.
Moving the pots to a sunnier spot sounds good – perhaps a few pots with shade-loving plants with saucers would be fine on the deck. The saucers would prevent any damage to the wood, I’d think. They could be evergreens/perennials with evergreen foliage, etc. so not something colorful, but soothing and low-maintenance.
I meant to comment yesterday — how excellent to feel that transformation in your body as you’re shedding layers — a remarkable thing. Kudos to you.
P.S. I love your voice — I don’t know what it was like prior to the Bell’s Palsy, but it’s delightful now.
I think so too, Lisa. Maitri has a lovely soft voice.
Thank you Marge, you are very kind…
Thank you. I have been given a tender heart and an honest one.
You surely have Marge honey… 🙂
Thank you Lisa… never in my life would I have imagined that I would have ended up with so little money and needing to use these services and I feel embarrassed and ashamed — you are made to feel so by society for using them, as if you are a drain on the economy and weighing society down — but I thank God for them and I don’t know what I would do without them. Rachel helped me get a number of services in place after the fire. It is a complicated world trying to manage it all and endless ongoing paperwork but thank God it’s there.
And yes the big pots will do better in the sun, right now I just can’t think about doing anymore out there but I appreciate your advice and will keep it in mind. And thank you re the post I wrote about my changing relationship with my body. It is a journey indeed.
And thank you so much about my voice, it is softening now, with the years. I got Bell’s in 1995 and I still feel the difference but it was awful those first few years. And it’s easier to manage a podcast, say, than to teach in front of a class where your mouth contorts in a funny, not quite right way because of the paralysis. That’s not who I ever was, it was like losing a part of myself I never got back. I was always told that I had “a real presence” when I taught, and I felt that but after the Bell’s I lost my confidence to do things in public. That confidence has never returned. And then I gained all the weight. It will be interesting to see how my life changes as I lose the weight. Until then day by day I find my way…
Never doubt that what you say doesn’t help someone….in every daily sharing from you there is a piece that resonates within me….as I “gracefully age,” it helps to know that there are safety nets such as the medical care you mentioned, that do help those who need it.–who knows what will happen to us later on down our path….your blazed trail (shared with us each day) helps us see there is a way to go! Please know that your daily messages are a true comfort to all of us…and again, I admire your courage in being able to share this message with your “online friends,” who, in some ways, I think, are more honest and caring then some of our real friends at home….Love and hugs to you and your darling Pugs….
Thank you so much dear Barb, you have no idea how much your kind comment means to me. You know in doing a blog we are really just sitting a piece of our heart out in the wilderness not knowing if anyone will ever find us. If people don’t comment I would never know. Those of you who do take the time to comment mean more to me than I can say. It’s funny, I will sometimes hear, years later, from someone that something I wrote really helped them or made a difference. It’s nice to know but a comment at the time would have been huge for me. People do what they can do I know, and I know, by the numbers of visitors on the counter that go up and up that people are coming here and reading the blog but most people rarely comment. If only people realized how much it means. Those who do take the time to comment really keep me going. So this comment of yours fills my heart this day. Please know what a difference you have made for me just now. And a warm loving hug back to you…
Darling Maitri, I wish you could rejoice and be glad for the Charity Care; I know I do.
#1, it helps me.
#2 it helps others, who might not have heard about it, until I spoke.
#3 it helps the hospital. A certain portion of their budget is earmarked for Charity Care, and it also has something to do with their tax-exempt status.
#4 it fills a community need.
Much like NeedyMeds.com, which is a clearing house for drug manufacturers and their patient assistance programs. Y’know how some ads say: “and if you cannot afford your medicine, Astra Zeneca may be able to help”? That is a way for them to help them get their meds (often very expensive ones) into the hands of those who need and cannot afford them.
I get my asthma drugs for free thru them, as my husband gets one of his heart meds, and his pleurisy meds.
These programs help the companies with tax writeoffs and good PR. They help people like me stay alive, and so I spread the good word. I have a Medicare Advantage plan, but Part D would be too expensive for me, so I thank God for Needy Meds.
Hold your head up, you are helping those who supply Charity Care; don’t forget that! <3
Love you, T
Thank you so much Trece honey and I know how much these things help. I was once on a medication that was covered like that that I got for free and it otherwise would have been $1000 a month!
You have helped me a lot here. You know when you are not raised with the thought that you will need to use these services and you spend your whole adult life having medical insurance and a kind of security I now no longer have, and society makes those of us who need the services feel like we are a burden taking advantage, there is an element of shame for many of us. But as I wrote I am working at living in gratitude, not shame, and I do appreciate these things more than I can say. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. It helped a lot…