The Year of the Horse!

Or as many of us know it, just another typical year. 

Ha! Ha! Ha!

My hubby and I were born in the year of the Tiger. And you know what? Our son was also born in a year of the Tiger.  So if I was the kind of person who believed in coincidences, there'd be something to that. 

We were also all three born on Tuesdays.  And now that I think more about it, we were all three born in odd hours, too.  The boy was born in the 9am hour, I was born in the 5pm hour, and the hubby was born in the 7pm hour.  

I'm really not superstitious. I just like finding patterns and things in common. According to one of the doctors I work with, whenever I point out the Theme of the Day to him.  Because a lot of our clinic days end up having Themes.  And not obvious Themes like "people with epilepsy".  

But, I digress.

I have been missing my horse lately. Late 2023 and the entirety of 2024 were such effed up years, loss-wise, for me.  Our last dog died a few days before Thanksgiving 2023, and then my first horse died Memorial Day weekend 2024, and then of course my Dad died in August 2024.  I feel like all I did was wait for my loved ones to die that year, except I didn't expect my horse to die.  I mean, it wasn't a total and complete surprise, because she was 31 years old, but she still died pretty suddenly, considering.  

And of course, I'm in the horse video and post algorithms on all of the socials.  For a long while, I couldn't watch any of them.  For a long while, it was even painful to still take care of the horse we still have, and my dearest, darlingest hubby took over most of that responsibility for me.  For a while, I never wanted anything to do with horses ever again.  Which was a completely new emotion for me, for the first time in 49 years.  

I'm over that now, too.

I love watching the videos and seeing the posts again, but man, it makes me miss Nicker.  I know I still have Shasta, but Shasta and I don't have the same relationship that Nicker and I had.  Don't get me wrong, I love Shasta with all my heart. But Nic and I were, like, she was my heart horse. 

People ask me if I'm going to get another horse. I think that even if my hubby was agreeable to it (which he isn't, lol), I don't know if I would right now. Our new place isn't as set up for horsekeeping as our old place was. My body isn't as set up for working with horses as it used to be, ha ha ha.  The ground is a lot harder now.  I don't know. I will forever be a horse crazy little girl but I think my days of horse ownership will be over when Shasta decides to join Nicker at the Rainbow Bridge.

Which I don't want to think about right now. Shasta's 29 years old now.

So I'm hanging out at my Mom's house today. I hate that it feels natural to just call it my Mom's house now instead of calling it, you know, my parents' house.  I hate that there are none of my Dad's shoes or jackets by the back door anymore.  I know, I know, it doesn't make sense to leave such items around anymore, but it doesn't make it feel any less weird.  

So far it's going okay, I guess.  My Mom complains a lot.  This is not anything new.  Seriously.  I've learned in the last few years to just let her vent for a while because I know that she doesn't talk to many other adults during the day anymore, but it can still be a struggle for me to sit here and listen to someone complain about just about every single thing that happens. Especially things that don't make a difference at all in the grand scheme of things. 

Alright, I don't want to come on here and just complain about my Mom, either. I know I'm lucky to still have her in my life, and I thank God every day that I can be here for her.  But I also pray for Him to help me to know what to say and when to say it. And most of the time I pray for Him to just help me keep my mouth shut. If it is His will. Which it must be, because that's what I do.

I wonder if it would be His will for me to keep my mouth shut if my sister showed up?!  Heh heh heh...

Anyway...

Tomorrow I get to WFH. Or WFM as the case may be. The last time I did that (two weeks ago), she got mad at me (not really) because I wasn't eating. She kept trying to feed me every time she walked out to the kitchen, where I set up my little temporary workspace.  Every time she'd come out there - Do you want a breakfast bar? A banana? Some yogurt? A sandwich? No, Mom, I'm not hungry. (I'm really not. And plus I bring my own snacky snacks on which to graze -- not because I don't like what she has, but because it's habit to put such things in my work bag.)  It makes me laugh on the inside, because when I was growing up, food was very regulated here.  I don't know what that was about, but I like to think it had something to do with why I developed a binge eating habit later in my life - because when I was suddenly allowed to eat whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted, I went nuts and wanted to eat as much of whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.  And, boom! Now I have unhealthy relationships with food and issues with impulse control. Yay me!

Alright, I'm gonna sign off for now. TTYL!

Sometimes it's better to receive...

So the other night, I was playing on my phone before I fell asleep, like I usually do.  

Don't judge! I'm improving, in baby steps. I used to play games on my phone instead of going to sleep.  I haven't done that for a few months now, thank you very much. Now I just watch videos and read random articles and sometimes get caught up in searching random things that may have crossed my mind at some point during the day and made me think, I should look that up later.  (I think they call that "doom scrolling" and it may or may not be better for my health than playing games, but that is not the point right now.)

On this particular night, I noticed that there was a number by my telephone icon.  I hardly ever use my phone as an actual telephone, so this caught my attention.  A few clicks taps later, I had discovered a file called "Deleted Voicemails" that apparently contained 666 messages.  That's an odd number, I thought, although of course by definition it is, indeed, an even number.  Religious and somewhat superstitious that I am, I decided I had to do something about that, like maybe delete all of the "Deleted" voicemails.  Because I'm also the kind of person who likes to delete "Deleted" anything files, because if I said I wanted them deleted, why aren't they already deleted?! Annoying.

But 666 is a big number for a person who doesn't use their phone as a telephone, so I thought, I wonder how long it took me to amass 666 deleted voicemails? So I started scrolling down the list which, of course, also shows names/numbers, dates and times, and transcriptions of questionable but somewhat decipherable quality.  

And then it hit me: these go back for years.  One of the things I was bummed about after my Dad died was that I didn't have any saved voicemails from him -- my Mom was always the one who called on their behalf to wish me happy birthday or whatever, and they changed the greeting on their own voicemail a long, long time ago to go with the mechanized generic voice instead of his.  It seemed like a long shot, but what if somewhere in those 666 messages was one from my Dad?  It was a chance I was willing to take.

And...I found one!  Not just one, but I actually found about six of them! Oh my gosh.  I felt like I had just won the lottery.  I listened to them, of course.  It was so amazing, hearing his voice again!  Not the strange, quiet voice he had at the end, but the robust, happy voice he used to have.  They weren't very long messages, and in fact they were all kind of about the same thing, but still...hearing him say my name again, hearing him laugh, hearing him say, "Talk to you later, love you, bye" again...I genuinely cannot put into words all of the emotions I was flooded with. I thought I would never hear his voice again! So the surprise of finding these treasures, and the tremendous joy and extreme sadness of listening to the messages...I was such a bawling mess after that.  I've never been that happy but crying so hard in all my life.  

I literally could not stop just thanking God after that.  I couldn't even find succinct ways to express my thanks, which I usually make an effort to do.  It was just a non-stop stream of, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you" until I fell asleep.  And when I woke up to empty my bladder, I started thanking Him again, and in the morning when I woke up, I started thanking Him again.  Because I just have, like, no other explanation for finding those messages at that moment when they've obviously been there for a while.  

I haven't listened to them again yet. This happened a week ago, last Friday night.  Honestly? I'm afraid to listen again.  The emotions that overtook me when I listened the first time were so intense, I don't think I'm ready to feel that again right now.  Hearing his voice was so comforting, and of course I saved those voicemails in a couple different places so I don't lose them again (I hope!) now.  Knowing I have them is also comforting.  But hearing his voice was also very painful, and that's the part I don't want to revisit again yet.  I'm sure that some day I will want to listen to them again, but not today.

It feels weird, almost "wrong" as if there was such a thing, to admit that. Like I should be saying I want to listen to it over and over and over again.  Like that's what I'd have expected someone in my position to be saying if I wasn't the one in my position.  The things you can't know about grieving until you go through it yourself, I tell ya...

Anyway. Once again I have managed to finish my point in the allotted time, and now work is beckoning me back.  I suppose I should go take care of that; the sooner I finish, the sooner I can get my weekend started! And I was ready for the weekend to start on Monday!

Toodles...

And so it goes...

I had another vivid dream the other night.

Actually, I have vivid dreams pretty often. I think it's a side effect of my medication, or something.

Anyway, this particular dream involved several recurring elements, the main one being my Dad; and the other one being that we were in Grand Rapids, the town where both my parents were born and raised.  Okay, there was another recurring element as well: we were at my Godparents' house -- in this case, my Godparents being my Dad's best friend from high school and into adulthood and his then-wife, "then" meaning the time when I was a kid and we were spending a lot of weekends up there with them (yes, I feel I must clarify this because I have two sets of Godparents or at least two Godmothers, I don't know, families are confusing).  Only we were the ages we are now, and my Godparents weren't living in that house anymore, but apparently we were.  

Anyway, so my Dad was back again, alive but not exactly well, but walking on his own and mentally coherent and stuff.  But in the dream, we all (and by "all" I mean the only other people I remember being there were my Mom and my hubby) knew -- including my Dad -- that he was only there for a short time and wasn't going to be staying very long. I mean, it really was like he had come back to visit.  Anyway, I remember in the dream, he was sitting on the couch in the living room and I was trying to find a phone for him. Then I found one and I was like, "Who do you want to talk to first? Uncle Joel or Cousins Davies?" and he was like, "I don't know, whoever you call first, it doesn't matter to me," so I called my cousin (and yes, we call him Cousins Davies in real life, it's a long story) (oh and for that matter, Uncle Joel isn't really my flesh and blood uncle, he's the aforementioned Godfather with whom my Dad was friends with from childhood) and gave the phone to my Dad, and that's about all I remember of that part.  I also remember that while my Dad was on the phone, my Mom was sitting outside on a park bench in the yard just zoning out, and I was like, Don't you want to come inside and spend some time with Dad before he leaves again? And she just looked right through me and kept staring off into space.  So I went back in the house and while my Dad was finishing up his call, I was trying to think of all the things I've thought of in the last, what, 17+ months that I've wanted to ask him so I could ask him but I couldn't recall a darn one and it was frustrating because I know there have been a ton of things I've wanted to ask him or talk to him about, and there I had the chance and couldn't think of anything. 

And that's about all I remember.

I have a lot of dreams about my Dad.  I think I've mentioned that before. I remember, a few weeks after he died, I admitted that to my Mom because she said she wished he'd come visit her in a dream. And I blurted out that I'd had several dreams like that already. And then she looked sad and I didn't want to make her feel worse than she already did, so I stopped mentioning that around her.  Because, I don't know why she wouldn't have dreams about him, but I would.  It didn't make sense to me.  Except that I want to believe with all my heart and soul that I was his favorite person in the whole wide world, but you can't say something like that to your own mother, ever in your life, especially not right after your father (and her husband of 60+ years) has passed away.  That's just downright cruel.  So I keep it to myself.

Anyway...

We were having a discussion the other day. Sort of.  Not my Mom and I, because that would be silly! But we were talking about mental health illness and demonic possession.  And now you're like, Whoa! That escalated quickly!  It stemmed from this week's sermon, where I actually felt compelled to write down a few notes (and I am not implying by that that the sermons aren't usually interesting, because they are; I just mean that usually I'm sitting in the AV booth listening for key words so I know when to advance to the next slide, and in the meantime I'm listening to the sermon but trying not to get so lost in it that I forget to listen for the key words, or if I'm not understanding or relating to what he's saying, or if the AV booth is particularly messy I'll start tidying up or I'll grab some Clorox wipes or alcohol wipes and start cleaning things.  But this week, some concepts such as, sometimes people do bad things just because they do bad things -- not because the devil was involved.  Um, what? I have to ponder that for a while.  Me and my un-Biblically-educated self.  I'm working on that part.  For the second year in a row now, I'm reading the Bible in a year. I think I could do the Bible in a year for about ten years in a row and still feel like I don't know much about it.  But, I digress; unlike my hubby, many of my beliefs have come about from experience and not through teachings.  (I don't mean that he hasn't experienced them; I mean that he grew up being taught these concepts first and then seeing them played out in real life, where I've kind of seen a lot of crapola played out in real life and then learned later that there are actual names for these things, such as Grace and Mercy and Sin and such.  It makes more sense in my head than it does in words.)  

Because for a long time, I struggled with wondering why people do bad things.  Not even just bad things, but really malicious, cruel things to other people.  I don't mean, like, serial killer things, either.  I mean, things like lying for no apparent reason.  Hurting another person for no apparent reason.  What's the underlying "apparent reason"?  And then I learned that it could be Satan.  That made a lot of sense to me.  And now, I'm learning that it might not be, after all?  That people might just be that evil at heart?  I don't know. There's a lot of depth here that I can't formulate into words.  I'm not as completely shattered as I might sound like I am, it's just something else I have to think about.

Which, I don't know if you've ever read the Bible or not, but that will definitely give you something to think about.  Like just when you think you understand something, you don't.  It's definitely interesting and thought-provoking.

Anyway...

That's about all I've got for now.  I'm blogging after work because I had to get this off my mind before I lost it.  There were other things I wanted to write about from this week's sermon but I can't remember what they were, dangit.  I should actually keep my notes next time so I can refer back to them, I suppose.

Another point I wanted to make is that depression just sucks. I'm not in a down cycle right now, but I am definitely fighting one off. I wonder what it's like to not be constantly fighting off a depressive down cycle?  I wonder what it's like to be one of those people that always has to be moving, always has to be doing something, instead of someone who can be content just sitting around like a blob and not doing anything?  Or one of those people who can see that something needs to be done and just does it?  Like the dishes, or putting clean clothes away, or mopping the floor, or changing the cat litter box... sometimes I just hear people complaining about how it sucks being chronically ill and I'm like yep, I know what that's like.  I don't think of depression as a chronic illness, but it is.  And somehow I manage to live with it, and I have for almost 40 years.  40 years of fighting this stupid mental illness.  Sometimes it feels like it's going to break me, and sometimes it does break me.  But it hasn't won.  And it's not going to win.  I am going to win.  Even when I don't feel like a winner, I am going to keep fighting.  Even if I have to fight from the couch, or my bed, or behind a mountain of clothes that need to be put away or an even bigger mountain of clothes that need to be washed.  

Tell me that's not the devil sneaking in and trying to break me.  Tell me, if that's not the evil one, why I feel better and stronger after I pray about it, and ask God for help. Tell me why I feel more like a "normal" person the more time I spend reading Scripture and serving others in God's name and glorifying His name? 

That's what I thought.

I'm gonna sign off now. I've been sitting in front of this computer waaaaaaaay too long today!

Another year of blogging.

I had two of the oddest and most vivid dreams last night.

In one of them, I was driving my Equinox on the highway. I believe it was supposed to be 94, just before Spaghetti Junction, heading west.  I was alone in the car, and the traffic was moderate, and suddenly someone up ahead lost a trailer. A metal utility trailer, with nothing on it.  I knew this because, in the far right lane, this trailer was just, you know, cruising along by itself.  The rest of us were attempting to continue to drive at speed, as the trailer was pretty much still staying in the right lane, but it was slowing down enough that we knew it was going to be a hazard at some point and we didn't want to be there when it was.

But of course, it wouldn't be a vivid and odd dream if that happened, so the next thing I knew, I looked over and it was sparking - because the tongue was starting to drag on the asphalt.  I also noticed that it was veering toward the guardrail on the right side, so I was at least glad that it wasn't veering into traffic, and I kept trying to sneak around it, but there was just too much traffic and the other drivers were leery of driving next to it as well since it was starting to swerve.  Then, it happened -- the wheels broke off, and sparks were flying everywhere, and pieces of broken trailer were flying everywhere, and I was just praying that I would make it through (I was in the left lane, so as far away from it as I could get).  But it was like we were in a war zone suddenly, pieces of burning tire and metal were flying around and landing on the road, and we were trying not to drive over it. I thought I had made it and was clear, and then BAM! I heard something hit my back tire and I had this sinking feeling that I had been hit. 

Nothing happened right away, but a few seconds later the car next to me had it's rear tire explode and it went careening off out of control into another car and sliding sideways down the road. And I was praying that the same thing wasn't going to happen to me, and then all of a sudden I heard a loud explosion and the next thing I knew, I was trying to wake up (it's weird, trying to wake up when you're in a dream) and I was laying in the back seat of the Equinox, which was all crumpled up and lying in a ditch on it's side. I managed to crawl out and everything was like black and burned out and there were smoldering piles of cars everywhere, but I recognized that it was my Equinox because I could still see the Ewok sticker on what was left of the rear window.  And I was like, Crap! They got me! I have to get out of here!

The rest of that part wasn't quite as vividly detailed. I somehow ended up with my parents (because in the dream that made sense) and we went to the ER but we were there for my Mom even though I was clearly in rough shape, but my Mom kept insisting that nothing was wrong with me and it was all in my head and she was the one who needed to be seen, even though I could barely stand up and barely keep my eyes open and I was really, really sore. I don't know, there's probably something subconscious to that...lol

Anyway. The other weird, vivid dream I had last night wasn't as storylike as that one was. It was that my sister and her new husband had decided to buy a horse farm, but neither one of them knows anything at all about horses, so they invited my Mom and I over to see their new place.  (Which would so not happen in real life. None of it. ha ha ha.)  And I thought they just meant that they had like a horse or two, but we got there and it was like this big facility with like hundreds of horses, and they had taken over as the owners and had all this staff of trainers and hired hands and everything, and it turned out they weren't hands-on with the horses at all but just wanted to say that they owned horses.  And in the dream I was like, that's really dumb, you don't even like horses.  And my sister was like, That doesn't matter, I own all of them now.  

I don't know. They were both just so vivid, that I felt like they really happened.  I woke up from the one amazed that I wasn't sore anymore.

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Maybe the one was mildly prophetic.  I was sitting here at my desk working this morning, and I heard a delivery truck driving down our driveway (which surprised me, and in fact I had been texting the hubby about it earlier because he said he was expecting a delivery and he hoped they didn't just leave it up by the mailbox like they have been doing lately, and I replied with something like I was pretty sure they would because no one in their right mind would try to drive a delivery truck down our driveway of glare ice right now) and then I heard the sounds of a delivery truck crashing into a snow bank and, to my surprise, I could look out my office window and see the front of a delivery truck!  (Which I should NOT be able to do!)  You know that feeling I described a few entries ago of sitting in my car at a complete stop on 35W, hoping that the car behind me was going to stop in time to not hit me? It was a feeling a lot like that, only it's a little different when you are hoping the delivery truck is going to stop in time to not hit your freaking house!

It didn't hit the house. But it was close. Like within 5 feet. If there wasn't a pile of snow in front of my window, it could have very well hit the house.  Our driveway is like a big, icy slide right now.  It would almost be funny, except the truck demolished my favorite bucket o' flowery crap that I had out there. The one with the "Welcome" sign that my Dad made, and the horse and dog yard thingy that my parents gifted me, and no I don't put these things away in the winter because the bucket thingy was full of dirt and super heavy and I had it off the beaten path where it was out of the way of the plow so it WOULDN'T get hit by anything. Except wayward delivery trucks, I guess.  

And now, the delivery truck can't get back up the driveway. They called another truck to come help them and apparently that didn't work either. Can you get banned from receiving packages from certain carriers for things like this? I don't know.  I guess we'll find out! 

But seriously. My take is, shouldn't professional drivers know better?  I'm not even a professional driver and I wouldn't have taken a big delivery truck like that down a hilly driveway.  You can see that it's icy.  In the past, drivers have left their trucks at the top of the driveway and walked the packages down to the door, or even left them at the mailbox at the top of the driveway.  Or, hear me out, refused to deliver them. But what do I know? I'm not a delivery person, I'm just a nurse.

They've got tow truck #2 here now. Hopefully the second try is the charm!

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It looks like someone put the bucket o' dirt and the Welcome sign and the horse thingy back up. I'm so happy that they weren't ruined. Thanks be to God and I actually do feel bad that the rest of their day was probably ruined because of our driveway. And I felt that way before I knew that my little yard thingies weren't ruined, just to be clear. I just feel bad because there really isn't anything I can do to help this situation. I don't know how to run the tractor, and even if I did, I don't know how to use it to get a delivery truck pushed up an icy hill.  I have a horse...but she wouldn't be any help at pulling a truck up a hill, either.  I would just be standing out there freezing my ass off, shrugging my shoulders and looking around as if the solution was going to magically appear in front of me.

And no one likes that.

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All righty. Back to work now. TTYL!