Come See My New Layout!

Yay! I did it!

When I added the share buttons on my blog I somehow messed up my html code and it wouldn't let me add any more gadgets. The little gadgets like one that offers you a space to subscribe by e-mail to my blog. When I would think about this, it would make me sad.

But then!! But then I mentioned the problem to a very nice guy, +Mathew W. Weaver and he said, "Why not change your template?" Bingo! He is so smart. Thank you Mathew! It worked.

Now you will notice that you can subscribe by e-mail to my blog posts and you can also search my blog for items of interest to you. It also lists my most popular posts now.

I am excited. This is a new level for me and I cannot wait to see how it turns out.

Thank you so much for visiting my new layout. If you have any suggestions, please leave me a comment.

And thank you again, Mathew!

My Little Old Man

My feelings have been hurt for a couple of weeks now.

Max, my 14 year old cocker, is my life. He has helped me through some pretty bad times. When I was recovering from surgery to have my right inner ear removed he stayed by my side 24 hours a day even though I had to crawl for the first two weeks that I was home (I had to learn to balance with only one inner ear).

Well, for a couple of weeks now, when I would go to tousle his little top knot, he would shy away from my hand for a moment. It was really like he was afraid I was going to strike him. Since he has never been hit in his life I was wondering what it was that I could have done.

Then yesterday I was looking deep into his eyes (yes, I do that) and I realized something. Although his eyes have been cloudy with age for some time now I suddenly saw just how bad they really are. So now I move more slowly when I go to pet him on the top of his head and he has no problem. I feel bad, thinking that I was scaring him. My heart hurts knowing that he is going blind. I knew it would probably come as he got older but this is a lot for me to handle. I suffer from major depressive disorder and anxiety and he helps me with dealing with going outside and when I have panic attacks.

He is already going deaf. He no longer hears a soft knock at the door like he used to. I have been around older cocker spaniels before, so I knew this would be a part of his aging. But realizing his blindness in a flash like I did has left me so sad. It makes me love him even more, if that is possible, as now I realize that he will need me to be more careful with him.

That dog bed was the best $36.00 I ever spent! I miss him snuggling on the couch with me but he would no longer jump up by himself and, once I helped him up, I was afraid of him hurting himself by jumping down.

I will try to push the knowledge of his mortality out of my mind until it must be faced. I should still have a few years with him and I need to concentrate on making his life easier in his old age. He has been there for me, now it is my turn to be there for him.

Sarge and D-Day

My grandfather. William Miller Fletcher. He was called Sarge. I have such wonderful memories of him. He passed away when I was a child. He would buy me entire cases of those orange push-up popsicles. He always made sure they had Kellogg's Frosted Flakes in the house when I visited because that was my favorite breakfast. He used to have to rest a lot. I recall getting the pillows propping up his feet just right as he lay on the bed and then kissing his stubbly cheek.

My cousin shared this photo of him with me when I joined Facebook. He pointed out to me that the nice, heavy coat he is wearing is not army issue but rather of German design and that he most likely liberated it from a German soldier.

He came back from the war changed forever. I miss him. I wish I had had more time with him.

He is just one of the thousands of men that should be honored today, the anniversary of D-Day. The men, the young men, who answered the call of duty when the world needed them. The men who were so brave in the face of danger. The men who gave up their life so that so many others could live free from a ghastly tyranny. The men who endured the bone-shilling cold and the sweltering heat. The men who were somebody's son, somebody's husband, somebody's father.

Sarge, I miss you and I love you.

Argh! Here There Be Monsters!

Now I apparently have a monster.

It's just been one of those times. I have had to up the frequency of my psychologist visits due to having a pretty severe rise in my anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed.

She might have read a new article because today I was told, "Don't feed your anxiety monster!" Evidently my anxiety monster eats my resolve to do something, like leave my apartment, and grows each time I "feed it". Rowr.

I'm supposed to picture it and think of what it wants me to do and then do the opposite.

I am a big fan of horror movies and novels. I believe I have imagined every monster available on page and seen every one on screen. Yet at first my attempts to picture my anxiety monster provided me with a familiar purple dinosaur that the kiddies love. Then I thought, "Feed me!". Of course - Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors! Needless to say, both these renditions leave me chuckling.

And that's okay. When you're in the throes of a panic attack and certain of impending doom sometimes a little chuckle helps.

So when my anxiety monster is telling me to stay on the couch, don't go outside, I will not feed it and do as it says. I will go outside and enjoy the glorious day. When it tells me not to write, that it won't be any good, I will write until I can write no more.

I'm sure there will be times when I fail and the little bugger will grow fat on my doubt and insecurities. But that won't stop me from trying to put him on a diet. I think I am having more fun with this than I had intended.

But - rowr - a monster. Makes me giggle.

If you have an anxiety monster I hope you succeed in starving yours. Perhaps this visualization could help you, too.

Boy, I sure am glad she read that article.

Beautiful Quote

I often look back fondly on my sailing days. I've experienced the view in this picture many, many times.

Of course, I was also rained on and tossed about like a cork in a flushing toilet.

Ah, memories.

5 Ways I Wrestle With The White Bear

I recently saw an article on Psychology Today's site about how to get your brain to quit nagging you. It was about intrusive thoughts and ways to deal with them.

Referring to a test, the intrusive thought used was a white bear. Subjects were asked to either not think of a white bear or to think of a white bear.

My head is polar bear central!

Please click here to refer to the article. It is worth a read.

I'll go through the recommendations and how they work (or don't work) for me.

Invite the bear in

Embrace the intrusive thought and write it down or talk about it. Ha! yeah. All that does with me is justify the thought and give it dimensions I could only imagine it having before. My cat's idea to turn up her nose at her wet food becomes a horrible disease that will somehow spread to my dog and then to me.

Assign "worry time"

All day every day is "worry time"! How about I set aside 10 to 15 minutes to NOT worry! Wait - if I could do that then keeping the white bears at bay would be a cinch.

Immerse yourself

This idea is actually the only one that works for me. I have to get so involved with something else that the white bear is slowly pushed from my peripheral vision and out into the cold. The idea is for me to become so obsessed with, oh, I don't know, let's say watching the entire series "Breaking Bad", that I really forget what color that bear was anyway. I may see other bears! Oh, yes! But - they won't be the white bear that drove me to the Netflix in the first place.

Make a plan

This doesn't work for me for the reason that writing it down just makes me think of more little white bears to add to the first. And then I have a whole group of them. Taunting me.

Do it

While this would be good if my white bears were actual actions that needed doing, mine are more ethereal in nature. And since I have a PhD in procrastination - no, wait, I forgot to pick that up - I have learned that my timetable is not the world's timetable.

All in all the suggestions were very good for someone who doesn't suffer from my degree of crazy. For that occasional, worrisome little white bear, the ideas should work. Having just climbed out of bed after a two day jaunt through "Breaking Bad" land, I know that at least one of them, immersing myself, works for my jumbo size polar bears.

And now I have something cute to call my intrusive thoughts. White bears.

How do you handle your white bears?

Grab Your Towels!

It's Towel Day! A day designated to honor Douglas Adams, creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy!

Hitchhiker is a five book trilogy that stars mild mannered Arthur Dent as the hero in his many adventures around the galaxy

The actual Hitchhiker's Guide is an electronic book that is just that, a guide to the galaxy for intergalactic hitchhikers. Mind you, this was from Douglas Adams' mind in the late 1970's. He was way ahead of his time. It was easy to use, and comforting to have because on the cover, in big letters, were the words Don't Panic!

And the reason that the day memorializing Douglas Adams is called Towel Day? In the first book, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Arthur meets a human like alien named Ford Prefect. He is going to take Arthur with him just before the earth is to be destroyed. Ford tells him to be sure to get his towel. The guide has quite a few things to say about towels.

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." It goes on to list how it can be used for warmth, as a beach towel, as a sail, as a tent, and as a head wrap. But perhaps the most important usage is psychological. Knowing where your towel is means you have got it together. A non-hitchhiker will think that anyone who travels the cosmos and can keep track of his towel must be someone to be reckoned with.

When I was sailing to the BVI and up and down the eastern seaboard I would always make sure that I knew where my towel was. Occasionally I would run into others who also saw the importance of having your towel. It was like an inside joke among us Douglas Adams fans.

If you haven't yet, please give The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy a read. It is easy to read and even easier to love.

I find the instructions Don't Panic to be quite helpful in many situations.

Happy Towel Day! Now, where is mine?