100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 31

Breakfast:  Nothing
Lunch #1:  Taco place, medium-sized burrito, water
Lunch #2:  Wendy's BLT salad, half dressing, 4 french fries, diet cola
Lunch #3:  Nachos, big serving, made from real and mostly scratch ingredients, amazing chips, grilled flank steak, queso fresco, avocado, onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro, water, diet cola
Dinner:  Nothing yet, but will likely have microwave popcorn and a Snapple or two, the no-sugar ones.  Note:  Added to say that I had a Snapple, did not make popcorn, but did broil a small steak that was about to go bad.  Whew...waste averted.

So, anyway, no breakfast because I knew that there would be at least two lunches today.

Meeting, mentoring, meeting.  All three were between 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.  Yikes!

I was really hungry for lunch #1, so I had a smallish burrito, not the huge ones they sell there.  I was feeling not too bad about it, at least it had beans, lettuce and tomatoes.

Lunch #2 was with my mentee.  Today was our last session of the school year.  She made a card and envelope for her mother's birthday and I gave her a pen, a click-able ball point, and asked her what other gift could come along with a pen.  She guessed paper and a book, and she was correct.  Both of those things were in the scrap-booking box that contained enough art materials to see her through the summer vacation.  She really, really liked it, but she did not like it even half as much as I enjoyed sharing and giving it to her.

The third lunch was with a gallery owner who wants me to exhibit at her place.  I am not doing that any more.  It is a long and boring story, but another gallery fucked me over in February and I do not seem to be making any forward movement in getting over it.  You know, it is difficult for anyone, engaged in any kind of work that is meaningful to them, when it, their work, is not appreciated.

It is a universal human experience.  We do what is important to us.  Yeah, we do it for the money, but if we are lucky, we also get to do it for love of the work, or at the very least, find a way to wrestle some decent experience out of a less fabulous job.

I am not saying, nor do I even believe, that art is any different from other work.  They are all the same.  We do good work, we appreciate being appreciated, we expect a fair wage/payment/fee.  It is as simple as that.  Well, no, it is as complicated at that!

So, when someone who is like, oh, the boss or supervisor or manager or gallery person, when they screw you every way possible and then expect you to thank them for it, it does not matter if you are plucking chickens, selling books or exhibiting your art.

Like I said, I no longer exhibit.  But, I did have those wonderful nachos.  She wanted to meet at her gallery and it was so hot here today, that we went to the mall where she had something fixed at Radio Shack and we ate at one of the food places, run by a family and using their own recipes.  If you want fast food, this is not where you will find it.

And, that is how I came to have three lunches in four hours in one day.

I am going to spend Sunday with my daughter, where we will go to her church, send the boys off to a car show, and then go off to do womanly things together...lunch and a gun show.  They do not let you shoot any, although it is being held in a community center and they could easily set aside a couple of the bowling lanes with targets, just saying.  Anyway, on-site shooting aside, I am looking forward to trying out a wider variety of product than I can find in a shop.  As a child I was a member of the national association, long before Charleston Heston messed them up, although, in the interest of truth, he did not do it alone.  I shot skeet as a young adult, shotguns, 22 rifles and pistols.  I kind of miss it.  I have to share, though, that I have had my eye on an awfully nice Sig Sauer, even though it might be out of my price range.

And, I am watching again, right now, Jane Goodall's When animals talk, and it is at the part where they are showing how giant, pouched rats (about the size of a house cat and very placid) are trained to scent out all the left-over land mines (more than 40 million from decades of conflict) in Africa.  I love rats and had forgotten how endearing this big rats are.  Is it selfish of me to want one?  I mean, I really, really want one.  Sigh.

All in all, a good day.

My daughter said that I sounded close to healthy today, which I am feeling and hope that this keeps moving in that direction.

I had three lunches!

No one tried to mess with me.

I am running out of stockpiled GPs, so here is another angel.  I saw one of those wooden shapes that you can paint or color of tart up any way you like.  I am not buying much these days, save for travel, but I liked the shape and so I drew my own, more suited to July, but here it is: If you feel patriotic and you know it, clap your hands.

Remembering

So, anyway, I am sitting here tonight, watching a DVD and noodling around on the computer.  My daughter and her wonderful husband and brilliant sons are on their way to Outer Middle-of-Nowhere where his parents live.  They go every year for Christmas and stay for the better part of two weeks.  We celebrated Yule on Monday and it was wonderful.

Tonight's fillum was Prince of Persia.  Not too bad, but there was an aspect of being able to...oh, if you have not yet seen this and want to, stop reading, or I will ruin something for you.  Seriously.  So, anyway, this aspect is about doing something that everyone has wished that they could do.  Go back in time, even if for a minute, and re-do something, or avoid doing something or stop something from happening.

And, once that plot device was introduced, I am not sure how much of the rest of the movie I watched.  I could not help but think about that.  About the things that could be changed, should such a thing be possible.

I have always felt, and said, that if it were possible to go back in time and change something, that I absolutely would not do it.  That I believe that every experience I have had is/was essential to becoming the person I am now.  I would keep them all, even the ones that were horrible, miserable or just generally fucked up.  Not even the couple of times that I nearly died.  Nothing little, nothing huge and nothing in between.

I meant it all of the times I said or thought it and I mean it now.

Except, now I know about another person who had a childhood and adulthood, built on abuse, similar to mine.  I can intellectualize about this with the best...done it.  But, I know her, and that makes it different somehow.  Up to this time, practically this moment, I have never met anyone who was either seriously abused or willing to share it.  It makes a difference, this knowing.  Please do not misunderstand.  I am not quantifying abuse or neglect or anything of the sort.  There is no comparing.  Each person's experience is just as terrible for them as another's experience was/is for him or her.  It is not even apples and oranges, because you simply cannot compare or measure suffering.  It is too specific to the person, too individual.

So, I spent a lot of years in therapy.  I spent a few, cumulatively speaking, mood altering with wine.  A childhood of experience in that realm formed and informed me about not going down or settling onto that path, but I dabbled every once in a while.  When I needed to.  When the pain was too great.  When I had no other resources.  I never got stuck there, not even for a few months, but I did have the occasional few days, maybe a week here and there, that were significantly more wet than dry.

I read.  I used to watch television.  I know that legions of children suffered much the way that I and my siblings did.  I know all of that.  But, now someone else is sharing a significant milestone in her journey to healing from her childhood.  She lives too far away for us to talk, but I am trying to let her know that there is survival to be found.

So, I am sitting here, movie over, very early in the morning and thinking.  No one gets out of here alive.  But, some people manage to go through their life without more than the ordinary, stream-of-life bumps.

Not everyone is tortured as a child.
Not everyone wallows in alcoholism or other substance abuse.
Not everyone suffers from the lack of basic resources.
Not everyone has significant or chronic health issues.

Yeah.  I get that.

And, I get that there is not one, single thing that any child ever did to deserve any difficulty or obstacle or challenge that his or her life presents.

We are all innocent until something takes that away.  If we are lucky, we find a way to reclaim that.

Like I did.