A Writer's Diary

Today, America ushers in a new age. I don’t know about you, but to me this seems like the most exciting beginning ever. And I’ve een pulling the lever in the voting booth for a really long time.

Barack Obama is only the third president I voted for who actually won. The first president I voted for was Jimmy Carter. I still love him. It was sad that he didn’t allow wine at the White House, but he was the first President I remember who tried to get us to conserve energy by dialing down our thermostats and wearing sweaters in winter. A visionary, even then. And now he builds houses for homeless people!  

I’ve endured an actor as President who started the trickle down economics and deregulation that led to unfettered greed, not to mention our current financial crisis. Then there was the war-monger, and after a all-too-brief respite, his son, who took Clinton’s balanced budget (Bill is the second guy I voted for) and gave everyone a check, and also tried to finish the war his dad started. Now we’re trillions in debt.

Obama’s got a hard row to hoe. But he’s committed and sharply intelligent and I have great faith that he and his advisors will get the job done. The right way. 

If it’s true that we can read people, see into the core of them, beneath all the scial stuff, what I read in Obama is utter and complete goodness, and a determination to make this country better than he found it.

We’re in a mess, no doubt about it. And so many politicians would take advantage of that. So many would use methods that weren’t exactly morally correct to get a little something extra, a million or two, for themselves and their pals. Not Obama. He will do what is best for all of us, not just the rich, not just his cronies. He doesn’t even have cronies! He’s a guy with friends and advisors and I think he knows the difference between them.

Which is why he’s appointed Hillary Clinton, his bitter primary opponent, as Secretary of State. Because he has no enemies, he holds no grudges, and he wants the right people in place to do the best job they can to make us once again a country that will be given respect in the world’s eyes.

He’s filling his cabinet with diverse figures, giving people of color and women their chances to shine. He sees beyond color, beyond gender. He gets it. We’re all in this together. We are a nation that is bleeding and he’s about to apply the necessary skills to bring us back to health, and he asks us to start by helping one another.

Dare I hope that the color of his skin signifies a racial healing in this country as well? I do, and even more, I know it. By electing this man who takes the highest office in the land this day, my country has declared loud and clear that the age of color discrimination and blatant racial hatred is over.

I see all good things from this election. If anyone can stop our country from crumbling from within, it is Obama. He has energy and the youth on his side, and he’s gonna need them both. Also have you noticed how calm he is? He’s like an enlightened master. He does not fluster. He simply gathers intel and gets down to work.

He’s not afraid of hard work. He’s been working relentlessly behind the scenes from the day he won the election. Now it’s time for him to take his rightful place in the White House. Welcome home, Mr. President. And may all the forces of good be with you, and with this beloved country you now lead.

all the christmas decorations are up! and my review has been turned in. now i’m checking essays. (too exhausted to capitalize.) my latest 50-something blog, about the auto mess, is here. back soon.

1. Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!

2. Progress was made this a.m. on Chapter 3 of WIP.

3. And I’m still blogging at 50-Something. Read the sad saga of my recent painting experience in “Door Story.”

A national goal met! And a personal one!

Yesterday was a highly emotional day, but I still managed to write. I voted early, only waiting a little over an hour to cast my historical ballot. Obama was not my first choice, but I believe he is a good man, a man of superior intellect and compassion, and I have forgiven him for not being Hillary;-)

I went to bed at 10, with Obama ahead and woke at 2 a.m. wanting to run to the computer. I resisted until 4 a.m. when I got up and made a pot of tea while watching Obama’s acceptance speech on C-SPAN. It made me cry. I have so much hope for our country now. Things are bad in Detroit, and everyone says we haven’t hit bottom yet. But I think that with this new president, we will be fine. We matter to him. You can see it in his face. 

And I love it that I met my goal of 70,000 words plus this morning, right after I watched history being made. It’s a good day.

Even though I’m voting for Obama, when I saw who John McCain had chosen for his running mate, I was hopeful, just in case the worst happened. A woman, after all, couldn’t be all bad. And she had a nice smile. Then she opened her mouth and I learned she’s everything I’m not. Pro-war and anti-choice. Enemy of the environment. Worse, her intellect doesn’t go soul-deep. She’s all surface charisma. And since people vote for personality and not character, that worries me.

And I never would have said any of this if I hadn’t been inspired by my friend’s post here.

I’m beside myself with happiness. Mike and Jessica are getting married!!!!!!!!! 

I am loving the soundtrack to Swingtown! Can’t get this song off my mind. So I’m flowing with it in a connect.the.dots way as I share this story about  some spiritual change agents in my life, and how they’ve helped me cope with a really huge shift that is giving me the health and happiness I’ve been craving for so long. One of them, my best-ever writing friend Pat, is not of this realm anymore, but she reached out from the spirit world to help me help myself.

Pat died because she had a sore throat that wouldn’t go away. It turned out to be cancer of the esophagus, which eventually spread elsewhere. She’d had her damaged esophagus removed and part of her stomach trimmed off to form a new one. She had to force a thick rubber tube several feet long down her throat every day to condition the transplant tissue to behave like an esophagus, and every night she slept upright to keep the bile down.

She could not eat many foods, or much of it, without severe consequences, and so lost a lot of weight, which she loved, because for the first time in a long time, she was skinny. She worked the silver lining at the poetry mic, wearing mini skirts and other flirty outfits at age 60 plus, shouting out her sexy poems to the world. She was amazing, and the surgery gave her a few wonderful years. Then cancer showed up elsewhere and she decided not to pursue an aggressive approach. She couldn’t handle chemo on top of all she’d already been through and simply chose to let her life end naturally. She lived longer than any doctor expected, but finally, she made that big transition to the spirit in the sky.

When I got my own diagnosis of Barrett’s Esophagus, an irreversible pre-cancer condition, I thought about Pat. Of course I did. I think about her all the time. But I went into denial about what was happening to me and continued to eat and drink almost as I had before the diagnosis. Hey, I took a pill every day. I figured that would do the work. And I’d just been through a big thing having my gall bladder removed and was unable to tolerate fatty or fried food, so I didn’t really want to think about giving up chocolate and wine and caffeine and tomatoes!

Years ago, I’d tested positive for hypoglycemia, the precursor to diabetes, and mostly gave up sugar. For a while. After the gall bladder thing, sugar slunk back into my diet, and I gained back a lot of weight I’d lost after that first sugar scare. I talked myself into believing that I’d corrected the hypoglycemia by my sugar fast. And I did try to be more careful with sugar. But between menopause, medication, and two sedentary jobs, I was overweight again.

Then Dr. Oz had to go and show us that belly fat on television. Gross. So I asked Sara, the second change agent in this story, for help. She talked to me about my weight issues. Then she sent me a recording to listen to as I enter a light trance-like state. Part of the recording discusses preferring fruit and vegetables to other foods and choosing water over other drinks. I listened to that recording and noticed a slow, subtle shift in my food and beverage choices. What I didn’t know is that the message had been deeply embedded into my consciousness and would flower more spectacularly than I ever expected.  

It took a full year to face up to the Barrett’s diagnosis. I finally read the recommended eating list (now posted on my fridge), and I am doing a cleanse that goes a bit beyond my prescribed post-treatment diet. That’s from another Oprah show. I figure if Oprah can do a cleanse with her busy life, I can do one on my summer vacation. The cleanse is from Kathy Freston’s book Quantum Wellness and it involves giving up sugar, alcohol, caffeine, gluten, and animal products for 1-3 weeks. I love it. I feel so good, despite the headaches from caffeine withdrawl.

This cleanse is setting me up for a new way of eating, one that serves my heath. But when you’ve dieted (and failed) as much as I have, there’s this little voice that says, oh you’ll gain it all back. You won’t stick to it. Then Mark died last Saturday night and that was hard. Mortality is so fragile. 

All last week, mourning Mark, I was reminded of Pat. I’d pick up a bookmark and see that she’d signed it with love three years before her death. I’d remember a funny poem she used to read. I’d hear a song she used to sing. And I finally got it. I was lucky to be alive. I had been given the warning Pat never got. In fact, I’d had more than one. I’d had three nudges from the universe concerning my diet and health. What was I going to do with the information? Continue on my mindless way or get conscious?

It’s simple. I choose life. I choose to change my diet and lose the weight. I choose not to eat or drink things that irritate my still semi-healthy esophagus. But the biggest surprise is that I’m choosing veganism. Me? Vegan? Absolutely. Thanks to a series of seemingly unconnected events starring Sara and my own friendly ghost.

It’s been a week since Mark died.

I’m working my way through the stages of grief, hoping his family finds peace in his passing. My husband Al was close friends with Mark for 40 years. Since 7th grade! A tight band of buddies still to this day hang out together. I heard a lot of Mark stories last week, some for the first time, some for the hundredth. I saw how the stories comforted Al. I noticed how friends riffed on each other’s memories, adding to the bridge we were building, across time and space, to where Mark lives for us now, in our hearts.  

I think of those who have touched our lives in some profound way and then transition into the next adventure as spiritual change agents. I think of them as personal angels. And all week I have been thinking about a special friend and change agent I lost to cancer almost ten years ago. Not just thinking about her, but receiving messages from her about the next profound change I need to make in my life. I hear you, girlfriend, and I’m grateful.

Change agents don’t have to be of heaven, they can live here on earth. The relationship doesn’t have to be a long one, or a happy one. It just has to help you change and grow. Some of the most powerful change agents in my life have been people who betrayed me, left me, pushed me away. They forced me to look deeply at life, forced me to find the courage to face my fears.

My biggest fear used to be that I was, at my core, unlovable. And my fear sought out every dark corner in each of my relationships for any hint of unacceptance. If I looked hard enough, and long enough, I always found it. The change happened when I quit looking, when I realized that the only person whose love I could control was my own, so I started working on loving and accepting myself, and that helped me love and accept others without demanding love or even approval in return. 

Not everyone we meet is a change agent, but everyone has something to teach us if we’re open to the lesson. At Mark’s wake, I learned that story is important, it connects us and soothes us and helps us along the stages of grief. And every life is a story filled with change agents.     

I wanted to write but I didn’t know what to say. Death takes all the words away.

Then I read Charles Leck’s purpose in blogging. He loves to write, but also wants to keep ”a record by which my grandchildren and their grandchildren may know their old and odd grandpa.” I admire that.

And it hit me…that’s why I wanted to write today, because a friend has died, and entering it into the record is a way to honor him. I will miss you, Mark Gilbert. 

Short road trip without electronics. Will be back at weekend!