~Defining Myself
{Minus Labels}
Anxious impressions,
Dreamt Strength,
Mindful goodbyes.

~Defining Myself
{Minus Labels}
Anxious impressions,
Dreamt Strength,
Mindful goodbyes.
It’s tough to watch
And I wonder
“What’s next”?
The USA Education
is a bust today.
But, can everyone
say “I did my best”?
~~~~
We know about
the original policies,
And we see the one
room school houses
The latest policies
and real academics
have no place
and have since eased,
We teach to
Standardized Tests,📝
bubbles,
number 2 pencils✏️
and a bunch of
changing rules.✅
~~~~
Teachers and staff
are forbidden
to discipline,
And yet, parents
want/ need someone to blame.
All of this is tiresome
and gets under my skin,
My mind can only see
the Federally banned novel📚
by Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (‘s)
🔥flame.🔥
~~~~
It’s not the guns,🔫
drugs💊
or violent games,🕹
It’s the kids📰
always pushing the limits
and the relentless
childish arguing🗯
for their rights
which means
calling the
“adults'” bluff.
~~~~
Therefore, empty threats,
the toys,
the distinction
and the fears
of what a child may claim
to law enforcement
and be separated
for years and years.
We all need to stand up,
learn the word “No“,
mean it,
have powerful support⚙️
and scream “Enough!”
~~~~
The USA Dept. of Education
needs a major
makeover,
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.),
Technology,
Wireless,
software,
hardware
,
upgrades
and cell…
~~~~~
However, staying out of touch,
ignoring the confrontation,
being politically correct,
loses the purpose
of the brick & mortar,
Community, safe place.
All of this
Really puts today’s students
into a decision:
real life vs. hell?
~~~~
I am aghast
at the thought
of arming school staff,
We have classes of 40+ students now.
All hyped up on sugar
and shots of caf (feine)…
I was brought up
in a different time.
Now it’s too easy to get lost
& feel contempt,
toward those who take
the class down.
This is NOT
what I went to college for.
~~~~
So this retired
Kindergarten, Grades 7-12 Teacher
implores,
With the U.S. Dept. of Education
to stop putting the future
in our past,
It doesn’t belong there.
This and those
future generations
will only
go elsewhere.
—
Oh!!,
And remember
that one kid
who got lost
and allowed the hate
to last?
~~~~
Won’t accept any blame.
Because it’s tough out there.
The attention and fame,
Are all sudden,
impulsive,
and wonderously
rare.
~~~~
Fifteen minutes of fame
taste oh-so-sweet.
The media’s view above
and below
cannot be beat.
The echoes of Sirens will
sound up and down
the streets.
The past
and future
finally meet.
⚡️👩🏼💻👨🏻💻 🌎🧝🏼♀️🧝🏽♂️⚡️🤼♂️🗽 🏰⚔️⚖️
This is one of those word games that English Teacher’s just love…
Game: place the word “only” anywhere within the sentence.
She told him that she loved him.
Looking forward to comments and responses on this one.
The Search:
Given my current situation, I decided to try to find a Physician who is informed, specialized in, and was challenge worthy of curing what ails me. I have been filling out forms galore! I went through one entire Health Park and one Internal Medicine Hospital.
Let’s see, I have traveled all over my state in the USA. The money for fuel, hotels, dinner, co-pays, prescriptions, job loss and overall mental stress is not what I am upset about. That’s just collateral damage. One’s Health is priceless. So I pushed from one end to the other of specialists, general, and …
Well, you name it, I was there. Husband in hand. Mother as a barracuda. Even a very close friend from work -all to be my “Rock”. I am always thankful to them. ❤️
What?
My research is self-sustaining (when I don’t have brain fog, or a headache, or simply exhausted). It is also self-torture. I have gone through Social Media, Libraries and Journals.
I know a lot about Hypothyroidism. Throw some Auto Immune Disease in there too. Oops, don’t forget the Hashimoto’s Disease, Migraines, Hormonal Imbalances, Anxiety, Depression, Hopelessness, PTSD, Seizures, Food Intolerances, hair loss, Vertigo and Concussions due to falling. have had all of these symptoms/experiences in the past four years. This past year January 1, 2016 through today my “experiences” have become a million
times worse than when all of this started.
Kinda Cool Part<<<<<
ed that blood tests are not really necessary in my case, because they don’t test the cells which make up the body. The cells which make us human don’t get tested. Blood does. Thus getting a normal lab result is counter-intuitive to discovering the cause of my woes.
Declined<<<<<
, I was declined by both attempts of becoming a patient of an Internal Medicine Hospital as well as the ENTIRE Health Park. Hmmmm. As Shakespeare would say, “Much Ado About Nothing”.
Now What?<<<<<
paign called “The Broken Brain” by Dr. Hyman. I watched the trailer, then I signed up for the free online Docu-series. There are eight episodes and over fifty doctors who attest to the information presented:
“With 1.1 BILLION lives compromised by brain issues EVERY day, I know this documentary series will provide vital new information, expert connections and most of all, hope.”
Fees<<<
e wellness center in MA. They don’t accept insurance. They charge approximately $10,000.00 for their two days of service.
The similar wellness clinic in my state (as there are many centers across the country) also does not take insurance either.
Rock Robbins<<<<<
o an article I read this evening, those involved were exasperated and out of money. You should read it. Alas, they have hope!
I like how the author states “When one doctor or specialist had tried everything in his or her repertoire, we’d move on to someone else.After enough traditional doctors couldn’t dial her health in, we eventually moved on to alternative doctors and treatments – chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal supplements, meditation, and on and on…”That’s (This is) the reality (body image, weight gain) for some women. With multiple issues and body systems affecting each other and playing off each other, it can be pretty challenging to get everything into balance.blockquote>We found that this condition involved so much more than just physiology. So many elements played into this diagnosis – it was about stress, food, lifestyle, belief systems, relationships and more.We have spent the last 20 years, and almost $300,000, diving deep into this dis-ease. <<<<<<<<<
ut my future, as well as my husband and family’s future. Watch the attached video shared from YouTube. It’s thought provoking. I may not have a cure or a new place to dig in and research, but I have hope (kinda, sorta, maybe; depends on the day).
I’ve always loved flowers.
As I have rolled myself into “adulthood”, I have discovered that I prefer flowers in their semi-natural beds. A lot of people, and I mean A LOT of people, in my town, are Master Gardeners. I figured that growing my own flowers would be a nice hobby.
Plus, I would have a reason to go outside and get my Vitamin D too. Win, win!
I decided to try gardening. The key word here is try.
I now understand why gardeners threaten trespassers with their lives. The frustration and anger of one little, beautiful and helpless flower being stepped on is a legitimate defense – or at least it should be.
Dear Master Gardeners, I apologize for dancing on your Daffodils and ignoring the placement of your Irises.
Day One: First we (me, husband, mother). had to weed and Roto-till the spaces for the separate areas for the different beds. Within ten minutes we voted and all chipped in to hire the neighbor kid to do it. He did. Whew!
Day Two: Cover all exposed areas with black paper…. “hey neighbor!”
Day Three: My mother came over to help me roll out pre-seeded lavender bed rolls ordered from Groupon. I supposedly had 50,000 seeds so at least one seedling had to work.
Create amazing decor for the flower beds: ummm… skip.
Maintenance: Keep checking on the Groupon guaranteed Rolls. Luckily I could look into my garden from the air conditioned living room to check on it daily.
Water: We still have our timer from Christmas lights, that will work. Or so I thought… Ok not really… my garden was flooded by; oh I’d say five days into this. We now had quicksand.
I could see the neighbor kids’ foot prints in the sand puddling with water. I simply needed to turn off the timer… Done.
It was supposed to be a very rainy week anyway.
Weeds: The weeds grew and grew. They were taller than me and had nothing to do with or about the water or lavender.
I have NOT seen even one plant of my Groupon 💯 guarantee. My neighbor kid is going to be so mad when he comes back from Boot Camp!
All involved read the directions from Groupon carefully…
My mother and I re-read the directions… no lavender.
Well… it wasn’t until I realized that I physically couldn’t do much more than trap my neighbor kid, tell him how sick I am, get him to do the hard stuff, and then flood everything while he was in boot camp; that maybe I was a bit overzealous about my new hobby.
I couldn’t muster up the energy to be a gardener. I am just too sensitive to temperatures, brightness, bug bites, bending over and everything it takes to grow flowers purposefully.
I had one job. One ☝️. Discover and create a beautiful garden. I failed. My husband knew how upsetting it was for me. He took me to the cute little store in Bay City and I found a bunch of fake flowers (lavender of course) to purchase and enjoy at home.
Sometimes mental health is brushed aside when a physical task fails. I mean, who goes through the fuss and anticipation of a project wanting to be a failure? It’s a tough pill to swallow. His actions, my mom’s help and of course the neighbor kid were here working their butts off because my symptoms made me miserable while the heat only exasperated them. They did all of that in my best interest. So Thank You!
I guess my body health (brain included) needs some more time to hopefully heal. When it will let me know; remains to be seen.
Emails.
Yep, that’s right. My email address is getting way too many messages. Anyone else in this boat?
I’m not putting this out there for bragging about or fishing for compliments. I’m putting this out there because I am not going to read them all. Any coupons, weekly ads, going out of sale ads, or relisting of items that I was outbid on previously are going to my trash and junk.
—-UPDATE—- 112 Emails as of 1:43 pm —-
I prefer emails from family or friends. There, I said it. The biggest offenders in my inbox are WalMart and GFS. Hint*. There’s only two of us and we are not interested in 5 gallons of potato salad, nor products for infants. I know, I know, I am not the only person they send ads and emails too. But they can take me off of their lists, for like, ever-ish. (That’s a word… ever-ish. I add ish to a lot of words now. Given that American English is a living language I can make up all kinds of words -if I wanted to; alas I shall stick with ish words for the time being.)
ANYWAY
Which brings me to my main objective in this rant… if brick and mortar stores and webstores are insisting on emailing me, I would at the very least want the information to relate to either me or my husband. I know that there are algorithms that exist for this very purpose. They’re imbedded in those fun, little, member cards.
Again, don’t get me wrong… if you are a real, human, family member or friend, I promise not to put your communications in Junk. It’s bad enough that I refuse to answer my phones anymore because of the crazy spamming going on.
Honestly I am not sure about which is worse…🤔. The phone ringing incessantly or my inbox stretching itself out so much.
It’s obvious to consumer’s that sellers are desperately trying to communicate with us all. Did they all invest in the Nigerian Prince with a great opportunity? (Haha).
ATTENTION SPAMMERS:
Oh the list is endless at this point… Sadly so is my patience. So I shall leave you with these parting words of wisdom.
Ready?
WORDS OF WISDOM BY ME:
How do you explain
Butterflies in your tummy?
Or how you just know
That it’s all going to be ok?
How do you accept an unexpected
loss which shatters your soul?
Why didn’t you know?
—–
The title of this post references one of my favorite pieces of writing, The Desiderata. No one can confirm or deny the author and date of publication, but I don’t think that I would have it differently regardless of those details.
I have not heeded it’s simple words.
I am not gentle with myself. I am cruel, degrading and relentless in my mind to myself.
~~~~~
True story: I received a compliment from a retail worker. (She claims that I always wear the cutest tops.). I was in a gourmet cupcake shoppe. I smiled at her, thanked her, and then in the same tone of voice -calm, quiet, sweet, and said “I hate myself actually, mostly my body. I shop for tops all of the time. My arms are the worst. So I try to only get 3/4 length sleeves…
It took a few more moments of drivel before I noticed her again. I had gone inside myself and starting pointing to various areas of imperfection; kind of like a flight attendant pointing out emergency exits.
Back to reality. She was still there and I was honestly surprised that she hadn’t moved on to another customer. I didn’t say all of that to garner an unearned second compliment. Which is good because I think she was too surprised with my response, she didn’t know what to say. I smiled, lowered my head to acknowledge that days’ blouse.
I apologized for the commentary and reached for my cupcake. Which, by the way, I had lost interest in. It was only going to make things worse.
(Why is this blue?)
~~~~~
See what I mean about failing to be gentle with myself? I’m pretty sure that I had offended her and quickly added that to my self degradation list. (Loser, quit offending nice people).
I don’t have some awful sin to atone. I just said what I was thinking and am always thinking. I have to be more careful in the future with this type of situation. I would rather fix my response than use that energy on accepting myself. Oh the irony.
Does everyone else do this too? You know, hate themselves 24/7? Is there a brain cell that allows this? Is it a depression thing? How about female? Maybe a need for perfection sets me off.
~~~~~~~~
Today I was trying to laminate a card with packaging tape so that I could hang it up somewhere… I wanted it to be in it’s original state for as long as possible. But the stupid tape wasn’t very cooperative. Here I am, trying to get control of the tape and it sticks to the card all weird. Bubbles, creases, imperfect lines which show overlapping. I could just kick myself. The oh-so precious card wasn’t perfect anymore. I had screwed that up too. Upon closer inspection I noticed that there is black dog hair stuck too. Check it out…
Curious about the front of the card? I mean, it mattered so much that I was trying to preserve it…
See? I told you I messed it up. Again with irony. (*sigh)
Creases and tears in the tape. It will never be perfect now. Which is okay -for a card, right?
I think that I have a friend or two who genuinely care about me and my illnesses. I believe that I have some acquaintances who would be certain to talk to me if we were in the same place, coincidently.
Thanks to Pastor Trisha Peach, blog peacht, via Hypothyroid Mom, I caught a few of her comments to be very true for me, currently.
Like this… “It makes planning nearly impossible. Many humans take for granted that they will wake up feeling “normal”, go to work, go see friends, go to their child’s sports game – same as always. 🌅👩🏻🏫👩🏼⚕️👨🏼💻👩🏻🏫👩🎤👮🏻👯♂️
For someone battling a chronic illness, you just don’t know. Instead of “planning”, it’s more like “hoping”. You “hope” you wake up feeling ok, you “hope” you can make it through work, you “hope” you can make it through your child’s play…..and each event takes its toll on your energy and health.
You cannot predict the day before how you will feel. So the world makes plans and prepares for events and you…..”hope” to be a part of them.”
She goes on to write, “It is not because you no longer care or because the event is not important to you or the person is not important to you. You are missing out because your body has given out.
In fact, your body may be 4 or 5 events PAST too many by the time you just give out. It’s like driving a car that is running out of gas….you lasted on fumes, but finally despite all your efforts, the fumes have run out. The gas pedal is all the way to the floor, but she’s not going any further.”
My doctor had requested some blood work from me…, which, upon return, explained a plethora of my health problems. She was speaking another language (Greek? Latin? Dr. Speak?), regardless I needed Google. And here I am. 🌎.
Meghan O’Rourke has an essay called “I had Autoimmune Disease and then it had me.” It was printed in The New Yorker Magazine, Aug. 26, 2013. It came up in a Google Search for Hypothyroidism. She was speaking my language.
So, for my friends, I hope to keep our plans but I need to be full; not on fumes.
💩. I don’t even like me when I’m on fumes. 👺
I experienced Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass through removal of a portion of the stomach (sleeve gastrectomy or biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch) or by resecting and re-routing the small intestine to a small stomach pouch.
I needed to be smaller than I was. I had a great job, my own apartment, a strong family, a very nice Infinity QX4. Life was grand, until I opened my mouth to eat. You see, in 2000, I was diagnosed as being morbidly obese. I think that my BMI was in the 40’s.
My last year of undergrad was interesting. I had my first real relationship, student teaching and no cash. So I ate the cheap food from gas stations, dollar stores, and CostCo. Bulk was definitely the way to go. By the year 2000, I was going to end up with diabetes and heart disease.
The gossip magazine’s were all doting on Carney Wilson of Wilson Philips. She had an “Easy surgery and the fat just melted off of her”. No pills, drinks, fad diets or exercise programs ever again. Hey I can handle that!
I got the surgery in October of 2001 -insurance companies are just so easygoing (*Sarcasm). I laid on my dad’s couch for two weeks and followed the new diets prescribed by my surgeon. (Clear liquid, regular liquids, soft solids, and then in 6 months normal food, just in very small amounts. My stomach was now the size of an egg. The pounds were indeed melting off. I ended up losing 150 lbs in less than a year.
The fact that I loved smoothies and coffee; the ideal weight loss was fairly easy to maintain. I would drink Protein shakes from the local GNC, drank the Jamba Juice’s “Mocha Moo’s” with extra protein powder, and Starbucks Caramel Macchiato. I never bothered with cooking. My idea of cooking was making a pb&j (if I really had to). I took my dog for walks, farther and farther as weeks went by.
I started going to “clubs” within the very end of my first year. It didn’t matter which génère the music was. I just wanted to dance and feel the rhythm of it all. I felt alive.
After the six months, I had a calzone (black olive, mushrooms, ham, and extra cheese). Mmmm. It was really good. I needed a whole week to finish one… but I didn’t care. Dancing on the weekends would burn off the calzone calories.
I moved out of my home state and started a new life with my (then) boyfriend, (now) husband, in a new state 2003. Alas, as I have mentioned in other posts, my new “home” was missing out on Jamba Juice chain stores and Starbucks (Coffee Shops). I went through withdrawals.
I was definitely depressed (whenever I had a craving for a Mocha Moo) . And since I’m an emotional eater, I ate. I started with the homemade food at the school, where I taught. That led to eating solid food everywhere! I even got cooking lessons with, like, a real chef person!
It was getting harder and harder to maintain the ideal weight/ BMI. This means that I was gaining the weight back. I honestly believed that the operation was to essentially banish the ability to gain weight. Yet, here I sit, knowing it is possible. Luckily I have plateaued at a number I can live with.
I often wonder if the Bariatric Surgery has/ had something to do with the Hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s, Adrenal Fatigue, etc. that I am going through now.