Turning51

Blogging about blogging

I’ve put up about 15 blog posts in just a few days! I assume I won’t continue to blog at that pace. But if I do, I will not have time to keep up with my life!

Then there will be nothing to blog about, other than me blogging.

This blog is about ordinary life. But sometimes ordinary life is not all happy and light. Nightmares are part of my migraine cycle. Last night the theme was not feeling safe in my own home. I faced the threat of acquaintance rape and, in a separate incident in the same dream, home burglary.

In the dream I was trying to call John but couldn’t get through (he works in a highly secure area and is hard to reach). Plus I knew that even if I could reach him, he would get home way too late.

Psst, Kristina, next time in your dreams, CALL 911 when stuff like that happens!

Also, quit researching home security systems and just buy one already!

It got THAT bad

You know when your house gets so dirty that you don’t even want to call housekeepers to rescue you, because you don’t want them to see how bad it got? (What? You don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, everyone else does!)

So anyway, THAT happened. Complete with a mouse trap that had nothing but mouse fur in it. Ewww! I know! How did that happen? I don’t know! John is in charge of mouse trapping and he’s on a business trip. I just found it. (No, sorry, no picture, come on, that’s gross!)

We just got too busy. We went on a 2-week driving trip and then got home and had to sell and buy houses (our sale fell through yesterday, btw, so I’m SCRAMBLING to rescue our contingent purchase, but that that’s for a different post.) So then the weed emergency happened. And now John is on yet another business trip. Luckily. Because he’s going to get home and all the furniture is going to be rearranged. Because who can clean without rearranging furniture?

He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t come home to find a new pet CAT! Because…CAT FUR IS BETTER THAN MOUSE FUR!

No, I didn’t actually adopt this cat, it’s just a picture off the internet. BUT YOU CAN TELL JOHN I DID!

And these are…? And they go…where?

I admit, my husband isn’t the only person in our household who leaves stuff laying around. In fact, I leave a lot more stuff laying around than he does. The difference is, when I leave clutter on the counter, I know what it is and where it should go. And in theory, I could put it wherever it belongs anytime I want. So I’m in complete control of my own clutter…even though it doesn’t look like it.

I mean seriously, what ARE these?

Why no comments?

People are asking me why I disabled the comments feature on this blog. (Yes, I did. I deliberately searched for, downloaded, and installed a plugin to completely disable comments, before I even published my first post.)

I don’t actually know why. I can guess why. Here are some guesses:

The Aspie side of me just wants to monologue*
There are certain friends and family members whose comments I don’t want to read**
If I allowed comments, then there wouldn’t be any, and then I’d be sad
It would be too much like Facebook, which is currently on my shit list

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*Aspie is short for Asperger’s Syndrome, with which I have self-identified (to a slight extent). It is no longer an officially sanctioned term, but generally refers to having some autistic-like traits, without actually having enough traits to qualify for an autism diagnosis. One of those traits, that some Aspies have, is a tendency to talk at people, at length, about one’s own interests, rather than engaging in small talk or other kinds of back-and-forth conversations with lower content value and/or less depth. Some Aspies just like to think hard and then share in detail.

**You’re worried this refers to you, aren’t you? No, it’s not you. Of course it’s not you. Geez!

Kristina has a chronic illness

I don’t mean to scare you, but that’s what migraines are – when they’re bad and when they’re frequent. A chronic illness. It’s important that I remember that, because otherwise I’ll try to hard to cure what isn’t curable, dooming myself to guilt and failure. And I’ll try to hard to do what others can do, without even thinking about it. Also resulting in guilt and failure.

Today my daughter sent me this supportive quote from http://thebloggess.com/2017/04/18/sometimes-you-can-go-home-again/

“My family knows that my mental and physical issues cause chronic exhaustion so often I’d have to go to bed just when the night got exciting, but that’s just a part of being me and I’ve come to accept that if I push myself too hard I might end up in a pit too deep to come out of. And it was fine. Disappointing, of course, but fine. Until Easter Sunday when I woke up and realized that I had no spoons left. Hailey and I got dressed in our new Easter dresses and I helped my nieces get ready but already I could tell that I could either go to my uncle’s for Easter and visit with a giant house full of dozens of people I love, or I could safely stay awake for the hours I would be driving back home that day. But not both. So as I helped my family load up into their cars I told them I had to leave. And they understood instantly and supported my decision as only people who truly love you can do. And I felt so lucky. And so unlucky. And sad for Hailey whose Easter dress would go to waste and who was so sad but so instantly understanding when I explained that I just didn’t have it in me to do something that normal people could do without thinking.” –by thebloggess.com

Thank you Laura, and thank you, Bloggess.

Kristina tries church

The title makes it sound like I’ve never been to church before! I was raised in a Presbyterian church, which was a bright spot in a generally difficult childhood. Then when my own kids were growing up, we regularly attended a Quaker meeting (quick explanatory note – despite the old-fashioned sounding name, Quakers are liberal progressives who champion civil rights for the underprivileged in our society, and their meetings are similar to a Buddhist meditation service).

But since I met John, I haven’t regularly attended anywhere. He doesn’t like to attend any kind of service, and I really value our weekends together. But…I’m now working from home in a rural area, and I really need to be connected to my community. Placitas has two churches, the Las Placitas Presbyterian Church, and the San Antonio Catholic Mission. So the Presbyterian church is my obvious choice (unless John wanted to go back to his Catholic roots, which would be fine with me, but he doesn’t.)

I’m not a stickler for creed or denomination. My own religion is “Why would we imagine that we could somehow understand the vast workings of the universe?” Every religion out there is wrong. But “no religion” is probably not an accurate or useful answer either. My opinion is; the more we try to define it, the more wrong we are. Accuracy decreases as precision is increased. Right? Ok, that’s getting a little geeky and I’m trying to keep these posts short.

Anyway, I really liked the service yesterday. The theme was Earth Day (in particular, the importance of bees). Apparently the pastor is also a bee keeper. Being an environmental scientist, the earth day theme really resonated with me.

The other thing I liked about it was the frequent use of Spanish in the service. The service was conducted in English, but we sang two songs in Spanish and also did two readings in Spanish. Given that most of us were middle-aged or older white English speakers, I could imagine that someone could criticize it by saying it was contrived. But it is in keeping with this church’s heritage, est. 1893 by José Gurulé and Rev. José Ynés Perea. I thought the inclusion of the Spanish language was done respectfully, and I appreciated it.

Oh, and I almost forgot. They just bought a bunch of solar panels for their roof, and yesterday was the “Dedication of the Solar Array.” The church is now “Net Zero.” Way to go!

Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre. Venga tu reino. Hágase tu voluntad, así en la tierra como en el cielo. El pan nuestro de cada día, dánoslo hoy. Y perdónanos nuestras deudas, así como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores. Y no nos dejes caer en la tentación, mas líbranos del mal. Porque tuyo es el reino, el poder, y la gloria, ahora y por siempre. Amén.

In case you’re wondering why there are NO PEOPLE IN THE PICTURES, I took the photos on Monday (today), when I went back to buy a book I saw advertised last night on their website.

They have beautiful quilt art currently displaying in the large hall outside the sanctuary.

I love how there’s a recycling box casually set in front of this historic kiva, and folding chairs piled behind it. Everyone’s got kivas around here, no big deal!