in the kitchen

Hello Peeps…

It is an absolutely beautiful day here today… sunshine and green for miles… it is so strange… just a couple weeks ago that ridge to the southeast was covered in snow… now it is a lush spring day… it rained about another ½ inch here last night…

I am spending most of the day in the house today… a couple friends are coming for dinner this evening… and I have been cooking… beef roast and ribs… with mushrooms and onions… slow cooked in a dutch oven… asparagus… zuchinni tossed in olive oil seasoned then spread out to bake… wild rice cooked in the beef and mushroom broth… and I came up with a dessert recipe… so yes I baked today… pecans, raw honey, coconut oil, bit of vanilla, dates, eggs, coconut… topped with pecans… yes I am staying out of it until dinner… the asparagus is out of my field… I am going to roll it in olive oil season it and lay it out in a baking dish and bake it… both the zucchini and asparagus should be able to bake side by side in the smaller oven… the beef mushrooms and onions have been in the oven since around 8:30 this morning… should be falling off the bone tender by dinner…

Hit a new low weight today… 248.2 lbs… moving on down…yay… want to get some laundry folded and put away… then head out for ranch rounds… and then get back in here and put the asparagus and zucchini in the oven… and get the wild rice started… actually start that wild rice before the other since it takes around an hour… time to put the pecan dessert in the frig to chill… I’ll pull it out about an hour before dinner … I hope it comes out good… I just kinda made up the recipe as I went along… no I did not do a crust… I baked it in custard cups… and do not eat gluten… could have made a ground almond crust though… did not think of that… well maybe next time… or maybe not… maybe just do an almond dessert rather than pecan… yes I have been trying to think of a way to make a pecan pie type dessert without sugar… or corn syrup… or flour… this is what I came up with…

Washing bedding today as well… the washing machine is working away on the porch… Mow Mow tat is stretched out on one of her shelves… her kitty condo door are open… but she has gotten her snuggles and now is hanging out in her room… so to speak… the baby Muscovy ducks are setting up on a table under the evergreen tree in the front yard… by the cockatiels… the mastiffs and Pominators are out in their yards…

Last night I was listening to the baby Muscovy ducks contentedly peeping as they ate their dinner and played in their little tin of water… they are still small enough to live in the pet carrier and were sitting on the kitchen floor…

I have been anxiously awaiting my Kaizen drum… I did not get anxious about it until he told me he was shipping it… now I can hardly stand it I want it in my hands so bad… lol…

Need to get back out in that asparagus field and pick again… it’s a lot of work but I actually enjoy it… really feels good to be able to do it… plus it is calming to me… kinda feel the connection to the earth as I am out there collecting her bounty…

Feels really good to have a bit of internal peace today… yesterday and the day before my mind was like hot static all day … all night… forget having a decent night’s sleep… major rollercoaster ride on the emotion scale… pppphhhhtttt…. Listened to some native American flute… and some hang drum… and kaizen drum … and some other music… and it leveled off… feels good to just let the music wash over me… through me…

Tried some coconut oil on my hands arms face and neck… wow that really feels good… and an added bonus… no toxic ingredients… and no allergic reaction… yay…

Ok… gonna put some gunsmoke on in the back ground and attack that pile of laundry… so peeps can have a place to sit on the couch… hehehe…

May your minds be as cool waters…

Gratitudes: trusted friends coming for dinner… you tube: music tracks… a beautiful day…

Later taters…

 

Mary E. Robbins

facebook

twitter

Another day In this life after my husband passed

picture is the view to the southeast from my front yard this morning

Major coughing fit this morning. Sad this morning…. Said grace as I was going to eat breakfast and started crying again. David always said grace….and he used to reach out to take my hand. Chest hurts this morning… I am sitting at the table and I can hear the big dogs snoring. Trying to eat my breakfast… kinda slow going… having a half a cup of old fashioned oatmeal with walnuts, apple pie spice, apples, raisins, and ground flax seed… and a cup of coffee.

The sun is not up yet… totally dark on the eastern horizon. Wow! According to weather.com it is 30 degrees F outside. That is so much easier on the animals… me too for that matter. Although this morning I am having a rather hard time finding much joy in anything.

I cooked enough oatmeal to last probably a week… I’ll just microwave servings as I go along. I figured I would be more apt to eat something nutritious if it was fixed and in the frig…. ½ cup at a time. I know it’s fine I’ve fixed it like this innumerable times for the 2 of us…. This morning I managed to eat ½ cup pushing down my gag reflex with each bite.

I took some saint johns wort… it should help me even out a bit. I promised to take my cousin and her mom into town to get supplies for the month. Their vehicle is not reliable and my truck is working fine. Just the thought of going into that store is enough to make my chest tighten. I am going to take some more saint johns wort before I leave… keeping the dosages low and spreading them out. I need to pick up a load of feed for the dogs as well. The animals need to be taken care of whether I feel like crawling in a hole or not.

The eastern sky is starting to lighten… streaks of gray are spreading across it… Time to greet the day… give thanks for another day of life… yes that is a conscious choice… give praise for the granting of another day…

David and I… or rather David had agreed to start Tai Cheng with me… ok… so here goes… I am starting Tai Cheng today. It’s amazing just how difficult it can be to tear a little plastic wrapper off a set of dvds. Not because the plastic was so tough… but because we were to do this together. Perhaps we still can… one in physical… one in spirit.

If I am to continue in this life in this body… then doing what can be done to heal and strengthen this body needs to be done… so here goes… Tai Cheng.

A bit later: Well… I DID IT! I did day one of Tai Cheng. Need to make a video of the initial testing… do not know how to do that… so here comes another learning experience. Need to take beginning of 90 day series photos as well and measurements. David used to take those pics for me. You know there was nothing in our lives that was not integrated with one another or interrelated. Makes this adjustment extremely difficult… but also is a huge part of what made our marriage work. We were truly partners in every sense of the word. There was a constant give and take between us. Frankly I never realized how much until now.

Clean dirt in for the kitties… that was interesting… I am out of kitty litter so I tried to dig up some soil… managed to scrape up some… that ground is certainly frozen…

Off to take Auntie and Cuz into town.

Emotions swinging like a pendulum… but I am up and moving…

May you walk in peace…

Mary E. Robbins
307.788.0202
find me on facebook

Thanks For Your Friendship

We are going full on into the Holiday Season. Of course everything is in a rush, no matter what your religious beliefs are. So much of this season has turned into rush rush buy buy buy.

Here in the United States the next big holiday on the calendar is Thanksgiving. I had this full on gluttony rant bouncing around in my head, but I think I'll take another tack.

Thanksgiving, beautiful dinner, eat till you puke and eat again, ugh. Makes me think of the Roman empire not to long before it fell. OK I know I said I wasn't doing a gluttony rant, I didn't it was ... shall we say a brief comment.

Truly what is Thanksgiving actually about. When it first started; it was about being thankful for having enough food to eat through the winter. Because someone helped you. Someone who owed you nothing, reached out a hand and helped you. It was actually about their survival through the winter.

There is much I am thankful for. I am thankful for my health. I know we hear people say that all the time. If you have your health you have everything. Up until recently I had no idea what that actually meant. I found out what it means. No the meaning didn't just pop into my head.

I still wouldn't have any real idea what it meant if I hadn't lost my health.

Adhesions bowel blockage (frankly throwing up feces is just nasty-that and the unreal pain changes your perspective on things) surgery, more adhesions, West Nile Virus, (pain that would make me puke uncontrollably, muscle spasms, partial paralysis, blackouts,) cancer (on my face happily the doc got it all before it spread), depression, more surgery-a total clean up job in my abdominal and pelvic cavity. enlarged ovary (size of a large cantaloupe) split and was draining some sort of crud that was crystallizing, enlarged uterus, the other ovary was trying to catch up to the first one in that it was the size of a grapefruit. More cancer scare, the docs were concerned that the mess in me was cancer related. So they did the cancer talk several times before surgery trying to prepare me. From what I understand if you cut into a cancerous mass it tends to spread the cancer very rapidly. They were concerned at what they would find when they cut me open. (side note: the mess inside of me was benign-yay!)

At that point I already had one leg in a body bag, so it was just do the surgery before my body is a corpse and I can no longer be here. (Believe me there are worse things than death-some of you know what I mean. Those of you that don't know what I mean by that, be glad that you don't.)

After 6 hours of surgery, an incision from my navel to below my bikini line, the docs cleaned up everything inside of me that they could. Removing the malfunctioning parts, cleaning up the adhesions, cleaning out the crystallized gunk, detaching and reattaching my bladder, putting my intestines back inside after working on them... they sewed me up, sent me to recovery then the post op floor in the hospital and it was all over. NOT!

The surgeons did a good job, don't misunderstand me. Without their skilled work I would have been dead. No question about it; dead.

After surgery I had some kind of infection, more than likely from the crud that had been draining into me. Stink, ugh, a very strong course of antibiotics got rid of that nastiness. I smelled like a rotting corpse that had been out in the sun for about a week. That will make your eyes water.

When I came home from the hospital (yes to the ranch and kennel) I couldn't even pick up my coffee pot. I couldn't get out of bed. Forget rolling over in bed, that was nearly impossible. So forget the bed for a couple of months. I slept in a lift chair.

In order to remove the mass inside of me they had cut my abdominal muscles, the ones they hadn't cut they had used a spreader on and pulled and strained them beyond use. My abdominal girdle could no longer support my back, or anything else for that matter. I knew that abdominals supported everything, but I had no idea what not having any strength there would do. Oh my, hello back pain. The strain on my muscles that weren't compromised caused even more muscle spasms. (side note: if you are having back pain-strengthen your abdominal muscles, weak abdominals equals back strain and pain)

Before surgery I had been on pain killers and muscle relaxants. Even stacking the Vicodin , Skelaxin, and Codeine didn't block the pain and spasms before surgery.

While I was in the hospital it was morphine, on a pump. Got rid of the pump then went to pills.

I was up and walking in the hospital, of course I was using morphine too, lol. It is a must to get up and move. If you don't move you won't regain your strength and you won't be able to move. It's your choice. Pain or no pain, move, rebuild your muscle structure.

Your digestive system needs movement to work right as well. Yes I know, ha ha ha a movement. That's not what I'm talking about, well it is sort of. Get up and walk (unless you are wheelchair ridden-if you are in a wheelchair do as much exercise as you can), or your digestive system will not work right. Even with walking, after that surgery I bloated something awful. It was pretty scary I had steri strips over the incision as well as staples and I still thought is was going to rip open from the bloating. Wow, walking helps to get rid of the gas.

I wasn't prepared for the swelling either. Wow, I swelled up all over. From my face through my feet. Sometimes I woke up looking like a puffer fish, sometimes my body would swell up during the course of the day. I felt like a big balloon that was being overinflated. I couldn't get my shoes on if my feet swelled up, or oh my if I had them on when they did...ouch. So wore athletic sandals with Velcro straps.

Forget wearing regular clothes. Same thing happened, so I used over sized sweat pants with drawstrings. Yes drawstrings, I couldn't keep them on when the swelling went down with out cinching up the waist with the drawstrings. I did get some over sized elastic waist pants and use suspenders with them. Bras were a nightmare, I am not flat chested, and that was not a good scene. That's all I'm going to say about that.


I'm not swelling up so much now. I still have some swelling but nothing like it was. There were a lot of toxins in my body. I think the swelling has something to do with that. They even worked their way out through the skin on my face. A thick red, cracking, painful, crust developed in/on my face.

I went to the doctors, they didn't know. My dermatologist suggested burning it off with a laser. That idea did not appeal to me, maybe as a last resort. I heard an advertisement for proactiv I tried it, it worked. The stuff on my face wasn't acne. I think it was demodex taking advantage of my compromised immune system. Frankly I'm not sure what it was, I just know that I can keep it off my face with the proactiv. I do know that I never had anything like it before all this. proactiv was not the first thing I tried, but it is what worked. I've tried not using it and within a few days the crust starts coming back, usually just between my eyebrows. So I'm just going to continue with the proactiv.


The bloating is gone for the most part. Every once in a while it will flare up but not very often.


Within the last 6 months or so the fatigue has gotten remarkably better. I still crash, but not as much. It's not as extreme either. The crashes started before surgery, they were wicked during the West Nile, I would just black out. If I didn't black out I could barely walk, couldn't talk. Try to think and there was nothing there but static or a deafening silence where my thoughts should be. When I am at full speed I am a multitasking freak with a relatively high IQ.

Clients would call to ask about Pomeranians, or affiliate marketing and I couldn't speak. I remember trying to get my mouth around the words to speak and it coming out like a stroke victim or someone completely drunk. With huge gaps between words in my mind. A word then nothing then another word.


In contrast, usually I think much faster than I speak; and I naturally speak at a very rapid rate. By the way, if we are chatting, and I am speaking too fast, tell me to slow down. You will not insult me. If it sounds like I left something out, say so. I'll go back over it again at a slower rate. No I'm not being condescending, people have different rates of speech and comprehension. We all function a bit differently. Not to mention the wide variety of languages, slang, speech patterns, dialects and accents. So, just keep at it, keep adjusting until communication is successful. That pretty much sums up communication around the world...lol.

This has been a learning experience, especially the fatigue. So you learn, you take care of what is most pressing, you do as much as you can. Then you stop. That's it, you stop and let your body rest. When it has had it's required rest you can function again. If you don't rest it, take care of it, nourish it, it will fail, Crash-die.


Abuse it and lose it. Don't use it and you will lose it. Pay attention to what you body is telling you. Moderation. You know there is a reason you hear "moderation in all things in the scriptures" That you will find no matter what holy book you read.

It's been a long recovery, my surgery was September 9th, 2005. I was ill for years before that. The West Nile virus compounded things. I contracted it late spring/early summer 2003. There is a difference in my immune system since that nasty bug moved in.

I've dealt with the depression, I've dealt with the suicidal drive for years and years. On and off since I was a small child. Dealt with years of abuse, compulsive behavior, date rape, miscarriage, self destructive behavior, addictive behavior, co dependent behavior... and on and on. So tied up emotionally that I couldn't function. Over and over some abusive behavior, sometimes even an event, (holidays for instance) could/would trigger a Fugue state, spiral into a black depression, on into a suicidal/homicidal drive then work through to stabilize.

It was like walking through a mine field where you couldn't see where the mines were, maybe they weren't there then step on one and boom. Life is shattered, with shards of pain once again.

Some of you know what I'm talking about, some of you don't- if you don't be glad that you don't.

You know the saying? Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm not talking about your body, I am talking about you. I am at peace within myself for the first time in over 40 years.

I live a proactive life rather than a reactive one now. I am free. I am at peace with me. I actually like who I am. It's amazing what course life development takes. It's so different in each of us, yet the same.

Physically, my body is healing. I can feel the muscles in my back, my arms, legs, glutes, abdominals. The scar on my stomach is healing flat, not puckered and thick like they thought it would. I've listened to my body and managed to build strength without any ruptures or hernias. That was a concern.

I no longer take Vicodin, Codeine, Skelaxin, or Morphine.

Side note: be careful of Skelaxin. It is a very effective muscle relaxant. But, it has a rebound effect actually making the painful muscle spasms more frequent and intense. It also causes muscle degeneration and vision loss over time. Yes I experienced those side effects. Happily my vision has improved, and stabilized since I no longer take it. There has been an increase in my muscle development since stopping the skelaxin as well. It has taken 4 or 5 months to stabilize after stopping the drug.

I am still here. That means I still have something left to do in this life. When my time has come I will go home in peace.

When I started this blog post today I had no intention of writing this. I've never written it before. Perhaps it is just cathartic for me. Perhaps it will be a blessing to someone else. There must be some reason for it, since it poured out of my fingertips.


I wish you peace and wholeness. Happy Thanksgiving ...throughout your life. An attitude of gratitude.


Below is what I had originally planned to post... an email from a wonderful friend, Opal Louise.


Life is a journey... sometimes there twists in the road leading to new discoveries...
Mary E. Robbins & the Hairballs




What would you do if for every moment you were truly happy there would
be 10 moments of sadness?

What would you do if your best friend died tomorrow and you never got to tell them how you felt?

So, I just wanted to say, even if I never talk to you again in my life,
you are special to me and you have made a difference in my life.

I look up to you, respect you, and truly cherish you.

Let old friends know you haven't forgotten them,
and tell new friends
you never will.
Remember, everyone needs a friend, someday you might feel like you have
NO FRIENDS at all, just remember this e-mail and take comfort in knowing somebody out there cares about you and always will.

In times of trouble,
In times of need,
If you are feeling SAD,
You can count on me.
I will give you a wink,
Until you smile,

give you a hug,

And stand by your side.

I'll be there for you till the end, I'll always and forever, be your friend!
It's true, sometimes we forget to tell our special people that we love them.