An Update on the Dirty Lowdown

Surgery it is. Probably in about a month. I actually have a blown ACL which is not what they initially thought, but which will continue to cause me trouble if I don't have it reconstructed. As for now, I'm getting around pretty well as long as I keep the brace on and the pain is down to a 2-3 on a scale of 1-10.

Health is the great leveler, isn't it? I know in the scheme of things a messed up knee is pretty minimal as far as actual life-threatening illnesses, but it sure is teaching me a few lessons. First, everything clicks into proper perspective. What's important? People, love, compassion, people, family, friends, people,havng a roof over your head and food on your table, people, people and people. I'm discovering some things about myself I imagine people close to me have known for awhile (sorry, ya'll!). First, I'm a terrible patient. I mean, really, I may may be worse than men! Second, even though I do it, I still don't like asking other people for help. Third, as long as I can still sweep my floor I will probably keep my sanity. And fourth, it doesn't do me much good to try and fight depression.

In my last post I valiantly declared that I would not be depressed about this. But over the weekend, like an old friend you really don't care to see again, it came knocking on the door, wanting to sit and have a cup of tea or 50. Finally, I looked at everything that's happened since Christmas. My hours at work were cut in half, my chimney crumbled and I was without heat for a few days but first the inside of my house was covered with soot, I was taken for a quick ride by a married man, I found out one of my best friends has breast cancer and then I fell and tore up my knee and could barely walk for a week. Just to put a cherry on top, the cowboy is not sure this thing with us will work out - and that's when I opened the door and invited my old friend in. I realized most everyone that had had the few weeks I had would probably be feeling a little down and I just embraced the sad mood that settled around me. I learned that when I'm depressed I don't care about much. Especially my big three pleasures: food, drinking and sex. But I knew as long as I still cared about sweeping the floor, and I did, I would probably be ok. And I am.

There's a lesson in here about those big three pleasures of mine and while I'm not entirely sure what is yet, you can be sure I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Of Knees and Friends

First, the bad news. Can you say "torn meniscus"? No? How about "medial collateral ligament tear"? One of those little terms is what happened to my knee. The treatment? Well, if it's the first, I get to have surgery. And if it's the second, I get to wear a brace for 6-8 weeks until it heals. That's 6-8 WEEKS PEOPLE! Prepare for bad language. I can't even begin to tell you how fucking depressing this is.

And just because it is that depressing, I absolutely refuse to get depressed about it. Because in my life the good news always outweighs the bad. So, here's the good news. One of my dear, dear friends had surgery for breast cancer yesterday. The surgery went well and there was no sign of cancer in her lymph nodes. Can you say, "Glory! Hallelujah!" Talk about perspective. I invite you to visit her at The Practical Vampire Slayer and send her all your good love and healing energy. This woman is practicing some principles that will work for anything. You don't want to miss out.

The cowboy (who just for the record was not the bad guy of the "Girl, you've been had!" post) came over last night, brought me dinner and had the good manners to make me totally forget for awhile that I'm in pain and can hardly walk. Then, this morning, he drove me around town to take care of errands that would've been a lot harder to do alone. These Montanan's - I swear, I want to be one of them.

Another dear friend has offered me a part-time job that will nicely supplement my income while I'm waiting for my real job to pick up again.

Tom, my co-worker and fellow deer slayer, picked up Kisster's medicine for me and then attempted to engage in some cock blocking with the cowboy which was absolutely entertaining for me.

I'm the proud new owner of a cast iron skillet bestowed upon me by a member of my writer's group as well as some vintage glass and pottery that I couldn't afford, but that magically appeared on my front porch along with a "paid" receipt. That friend with breast cancer? She also left me a container of wonderful soup before her surgery.

It is my sincere hope that I will be judged in heaven (or wherever the hell I end up) by the friends I have in this life.

Of Wolves and Women

I wanted to do something special with my parents while they were here so I went web surfing looking for activities for us. I considered snowshoeing at Glacier National Park, or visiting a hot springs I hadn't been to yet. But then I discovered something that I absolutely couldn't resist. Wolfkeep. The Wolfkeep Wildlife Sanctuary is dedicated to the preservation of the wolf and the study of wolf behavior. Their mission is to educate the public about the wolf and its place in the ecosystem.

Now, the wolf is a subject that carries a lot of emotion in these parts. The environmentalists love them, the ranchers hate them and even though there are only a little over 300 wolves in Montana today, the delisting debate continues. The gray wolf was extirpated (that means to remove or destroy something completely) from the western United States during the 1900s, primarily due to loss of habitat and conflicts with people. Wolves as a self-sustaining, breeding population were probably extinct in Montana by the 1930's.

Since moving to Montana I've had the unique opportunity to see grizzlies, black bears, moose, eagles, hawks, even a bobcat once. But I've never seen a wolf in the wild and it's not likely I will so I jumped at the chance to at least see them in a natural setting.

My mother and I have an affinity for wolves, sharing books about them: The Ninemile Wolves by Rick Bass and Shadow Mountain by Renee' Askins are a couple we have enjoyed reading. Even though they're pack animals, there's something lonely about the wolf. Their eyes hint at something longed for but never found and yet their search goes on. Their midnight howl is the music of this ache, this longing. When I watched the wolves at Wolfkeep I felt that longing in my own soul and I think my mother feels it to. It connects us to these animals and it connects us to each other. And sometimes that's as close as we'll get to understanding another person, or a wild creature, or the nature of the universe.

I leave you with a quote from Clarissa Pinkola Este's' book, Women Who Run With The Wolves:

We are filled with a longing for the wild. There are few culturally sancetioned antidotes for this yearning. We were taught to feel shame for such a desire. We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings. But the shadow of the Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.

I love you, mom.

You Make My Day

Hey! I got an award. How cool is that? And from two of my favorite bloggers, the lovely hostess of everyone's favorite OTV, Olivia andMiss Annie at My Spiritual Journey, where you can take bushwalks through the Outback of Australia. It's a "You Make My Day" award and these two always do that for me.

These are the rules: Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!

Here are my picks: Julie at S'up, Sherri at Sherri Blossoms, Rick at Hamguin's Hide-not, John Eaton at Country Don't Mean Dumb, Miss R at Tales of Inglewood, Kelly at Kikipotomaus the Hippo, Carla Sanders at Carla Sanders Touching Art, Chani at Thailand Gal, Jane at Painted House 52 and Anybeth at Swimming in Clear Water.
I know some of you have already gotten the award, but too bad, you're getting it again. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to post comments on all these blogs about the award - if you see your name here and you want it, take it, if not, no big deal. Also, it's hard to pick only a certain number of bloggers for an award. If you're on my blogroll - I'm reading you and I'm reading you because you make my day. And some of you I would've picked, but I know you don't want the award anyway - so there.

Now I have to tell ya'll something hilarious. Remember in my last post how I was re-committing to walking and yoga and all that great stuff? Well, yesterday I twisted my knee - badly. It hurt so bad when I first did it I got nauseated and actually thought I might have broken my leg. This has happened before - I have a weird tendon or ligament or something that sometimes gets popped out of place. I've had it looked at and I could have surgery, but it happens so rarely that it doesn't seem worth it. Sometimes I can ice it and stay off it for a few hours and it goes back into place and is good as new. Not this time. Last night I had to use one of my dining table chairs like a walker! Talk about humbling. Talk about irony. Talk about the Universe saying, "Hey you - learn to be still." Like, ok, I get it.

Poor Me, Poor Me, Pour Me Another Drink - or - A Lesson in Archeypal Patterns

As I re-read that last post I realized I'm beginning to play out an old pattern here. The old pattern is to get sidetracked from the things that are important in my life - get sidetracked by my struggle with alcohol, get sidetracked by boys, get sidetracked by the oh-so-intense drama of it all. Once I get sidetracked I put myself in a very vulnerable position and I often get taken advantage of by bullies and petty tyrants. Then I blame myself for all of it and usually continue a pattern of drinking too much until I literally have to stop. Learning to accept responsibility for my life without blaming and shaming myself in the process seems to be one of my big lessons. I'm at a choice point. I could do the same thing: drink and duck under the covers until I have to come out for work Monday morning. Feel awful, not solve a damn thing and make myself really sick in the process. The archetypal patterns that play out when I make that choice are Victim and Martyr.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to drink and I'm going to move out of this pattern before I'm forced to. I'm going to walk daily come snow, sleet or rain and I’m going to resume my yoga practice. I'm going to prepare myself some healthy and nourishing food and treat myself with herbal infusions. I'm going to go to work on the soot in my house and finish reading "The Kite Runner". I'm going to embrace the archetypes that feed my soul: Domestic Goddess, Friend, Storyteller. I'm going to play with my camera, love on a couple of sweet kitties and make myself available for friends in my life going through their own difficult times. I'm going to make the choice I can live with - the one that brings me back to a place of joy. I'm going to chop wood and carry water until I feel that deep sense of contentment of which I've had a taste. But first, I'm going to shovel snow.

Thanks for all your comments in the past couple of days.

Girl, You've been had!

Here's the short version of what we will call the most recent week from hell. After dealing with the heat and furnace situation and thinking the worst was over for awhile, I went into work Tuesday morning and was informed that my hours have been cut back further. I'm down to 20 hours a week, but that's not the best part. I'm now working Mon-Fri 8-12 so I got my three day weekend and my yoga class cut out on top of it. If there were a good reason for the business that this be my schedule it wouldn't be so bad. But, there's not. Not one.

To add insult to injury, I had another situation occur this week which Roberta summed up quite nicely. She said, "Girl, you've been had." Yeppers, got the wool pulled right over my eyes and never even saw it coming. I got played by a real player. What's worse is that in the process I may have hurt someone I really care about.

Now if I were just your average Jane without a clue about the real world, I may be able to wallow around is this for awhile. But I'm not so now I have to ask myself some very serious and difficult questions. Questions like, "What part of me continues to allow things like this to happen? How much does the fact that I've been drinking more than I want to perpetuate these situations? And just what, exactly, the fuck am I going to do about it?" And these: "Is this process I'm doing working or am I just becoming a happier, safer alcoholic? Am I once again allowing Neptune to lead me down the road of delusional thinking and denial? Am I still waiting for some pie-in-the-sky Higher Power to zap me into a beautiful, happy, carefree life?" And, of course, the final ultimate question: "When am I going to step into the responsibility for everything that happens in my life and take full credit for the good and the bad and the totally in-between?"

These, and other pressing concerns will be answered, one way or another, in the upcoming weeks of Eclectic Recovery. If there's one thing I'm sure about today, it's my commitment to being authentic here on this blog. It's absolutely up for grabs right now as to whether it will turn into a signpost or a warning.

Me and Mr. Murphy

Please meet two of the finest people you would ever wish to run across - my mom and dad - Eve and Luther Nolan. We had a fantastic visit which I'll be writing more about later this week. But for now I want to discuss Mr. Murphy and his dad-blasted law.

Last week I was putting up dishes I had washed the night before and I noticed this black stuff on my white plastic collander. "Well, that's odd", I thought. The next day I was noticing that this black stuff was showing up on everything white in my house - the toilet, the bathtub, the curtain hanging in my bedroom doorway and I began to realize that something was seriously amiss. I figured it must have something to do with the ancient and decrepit furnace that's in my basement and called an HVAC guy. He came to look at it Friday, the same day as my parent's arrival and sure enough, it was leaking creosote and soot and all kinds of gross stuff. Luckily I was to be out of town with mom and dad most of the weekend because he couldn't get back to work on it until today. What he thought would be a fairly quick fix turned into a day long project as the inside of the chimney had crumbled and it was totally blocked! This is only the most recent in a long list of problems I've had since moving into this house - which while beautifully remodeled, only serves to divert attention from how functionally remiss the work was. I'm still waiting to hear from the clean-up people as I am living with a fine layer of soot over almost everything. For a woman that some consider a bit of a clean freak this is a real challenge.

At the same time as this little drama was unfolding, I came home to a kaput computer monitor and have been without access to my computer since last Friday as well. I called the greatest (and most handsome) computer guy in the world and he got me hooked up with a monitor about the same time as Irwin, the greatest (but not the most handsome) HVAC guy finished up with my furnace. So I'm finally connected and my house is beginning to warm up and I guess I can live without both heat and computer access longer than I thought.

Forever the optimitst, I'd like to tell you what is great about all this. First of all, it's great that I didn't die from carbon monoxide poisoning! I now have a detector and I highly recommend everyone get one. Next, it's great this happened while my parents were here because I was scheduled to be gone with them most of the weekend and I didn't have to spend much time in a freakin' cold house! Finally, because I live in a small town with exceptionally wonderful people, I have a used computer monitor that cost me only $20 - and it's bigger than my other one which is a good thing since I'm getting older and don't see so well without my readers anymore.

None of that really compares to the greatest thing that happened over the weekend, and that's that I became great aunt to an 8-lb. boy named Chase Allen. Congratulations, Coley!

Wellness Wednesday - The Soul's Companion

From The Soul's Companion by Tian Dayton, Ph.D.

Organic Life

I am biologically programmed for development. Just as a flower grows from a seed, blooms, wilts and returns to the earth. I, too, have a life cycle. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, I will come and go, be born, bloom and die. I am organic. I eat from the earth - I am a part of it, dependent on it. This is why I will love the world, becaue this world into which I am born is my spiritual and physical home.


I come from and will return to this world.



In the laboratory we can see daily things that come into existence and then disappear, that pop into existence out of nowhere and then fade away. These are subatomic particles so it is all on a pretty small scale, but we can imagine that if we apply quantum physics to the universe as a whole, the entire thing, all the matter, energy and space could come into existence out of nowhere, spontaneously, as a gigantic quantum fluctuation . . . . . . Quantum physics' contribution is that of a universe that is not predetermined but an evolutionary pattern that is governed by probabilities, which creates a true openness.


Phil Davies



This will be my bow-out Wellness Wednesday post as well. I'm just not a stick-with-the-program kind of gal. I will, of course, continue to visit Lunar Musings and appreciate the opportunity to have participated.

I'd also like to say a fond hello to John Eaton whose blogging I miss very much and whose photo I stole for this post because I couldn't find that cool picture of The Soul's Companion that I used before.

My parents are in town from Georgia for a long weekend, but I'll be back early next week with that archetype post I promised.

Peace to all.

Sacred Sunday

This will be my final Sacred Sunday post. I haven't done very well with keeping up with my Sacred Sunday posts, so I figure it's time to bow out gracefully. I'd like to thank Carla over at Zena Musings for giving me the opportunity to embrace my Sacred Sunday's wholeheartedly. Carla is a candle practitioner of the best kind - and get this - she has Full Moon specials. Please visit her at Zena Moon.
You won't be disappointed. Plus, you get a cool little box of matches with your order!

Now, on to my Sacred Sunday. Do ya'll get that that's a man's hat on my coffee table -- in the morning!?

I think you can tell a lot about a man by the hat he wears. :)

Coming up next - the Archetypal Wheel. Happy Sacred Sunday's to you all.

Addiction and Recovery in the Natal Chart

The first thing noticeable about my natal chart is that I have a 1st House stellium in Scorpio. A stellium is four or more planets very close together, usually in the same sign or house. It's not that common an occurrence and most of us that have one wish the hell we didn't! What a stellium does is up the amps about 10 times for the house and sign in which the planets fall. A stellium suggests a challenge in the life of the individual to learn to fully integrate the energies involved.

Scorpio - a fixed water sign, is the sign of sex, hidden agendas, extremes and intensity. Also, deep loyalty, passion and commitment. How would you like to have five planets in that sign! My Scorpio stellium falls in the first house - the house of self - the most personal and powerful house in the Zodiac. In astrology, the first house is thought of as a giant lens through which the rest of the chart is interpreted.

The five planets in my stellium? The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Neptune - in order of their transit time around the sun. Knowing that both Venus and Mars reside in that Scorpio stellium will go a long way towards explaining the "sex" process of my recovery models. But that's for later reading.

Within the stellium is a Sun/Neptune conjunction. A conjunction occurs between two planets when they are within 0-9 degrees of each other. This means they're so close together that their particular energies seem to merge.

Neptune is the planet of illusion, self-deception and "smoke & mirrors." And oh yeah, addictions! Neptune conjunct my Sun has always presented a challenge to my perception of reality. Neptune is the master distractor and I've fallen directly under his spell for a lot of my life. But the higher side of Neptune is all about communing with the divine, tapping into Universal Source and achieving enlightened states of consciousness. Neptune says, "Follow me, my sweet, into the land of oneness with god and egoless love for all beings." Neptune wants to take you there though practices like yoga, meditation, chanting - any spiritual practice that gives your mind a break. But if you're not very careful and aware, he will take you there however he can - through drugs, alcohol, sex and obsession.

Neptune is a slow mover and for the past three years, his current transit has formed an exact square to my natal sun. Squares indicate tension, a sort of battle between the planets with both determined to come out on top. I've gotten used to these energies (can you tell!) and am just riding it out until 2009 when Neptune will finally move on. It's my belief that this square and my learning to work with the energies of it was the beginning of Eclectic Recovery.

There's another key placement in my natal chart related to Eclectic Recovery which I'll discuss in a later post.

Various and Sundry

While I'm working on getting an astrology post under a 5-minute read, thought I'd just write about some other things I'm working on. I purchased the domain, eclecticrecovery.com with the intention of moving the blog there. It was suggested to me that I might want to place ads and see if I can generate some income from the blog. The actual term she used was "give the Universe an opportunity to say thank you." Only the Universe is not cooperating! I've so far been unable to import into Wordpress or Typepad and have gotten very frustrated with the whole process. So, here's what I'm currently considering. I think I'll start a new blog, transfer the relevant posts (there really is a lot of fluff on this one) and keep both blogs going. If any of you have any advice, I'd love to hear it! And thank you, Miss Sherri Blossoms, for your help.

The business I began has proven to be more of a drain than an asset and I'm trying to decide whether it's worth it to keep it going. It was a fun experiment and despite the lack of sales, I'm very proud of all the work I did. At least it should help me out with my taxes this year!

And finally, on a recovery note, a friend recently asked me why I wanted to be able to drink. She made the choice long ago, due to heavy drinking within her family, to not drink and she wondered why I didn't do the same. Well, I had to think about that one and the answer I came up with was, "Why wouldn't I want to? Why wouldn't I want to be just like anyone else who enjoys a drink and goes on with their life?" The second answer, which was a little harder to admit was, "Well, I've just not been able to do that so I had to find a different way." The third answer, which I find terrifying sometimes, is "Maybe I'm not just doing it for myself."