June passed......

June of 2014 passed.
It flew by... in my mind.
And I am feeling better
leaving guilt  and hurt behind.

I'm trying not to let my mind go back
and dredge up all the past.
Nor think too far ahead...
but hope long my life will last.

I'm concentrating on today...
and all the beauty it might hold
as though today were all I had
as though today were gold

For time just keeps on ticking,
the seconds fleeting by.
And I cannot retrieve them
of that I can't deny.

Each day that I let pass me
without living to the full...
is a day I can't get back
no matter how hard I pull

Each day I wake up thankful
that my life is so much blessed.
Knowing full well the day
may put me to a test.

It might bring news of sadness
or bring challenges all new..
But it might also bring great joy
And skies a pure clear blue

No time to waste a minute
to have sad thoughts...that just might make me cry
I must make the most of this new day
for soon it will pass by

Pinning is winning??????

I got up this morning determined I was going to write in both of my blogs and I have spent the last
2- 1/2 hours on Pinterest.  Really Peggy!!!

For some reason Pinterest is addictive.  When I'm in it, my mind is like a kid in a gigantic candy store....Fashion, Quotes, Recipes, Hair, Makeup, Writing thoughts and ideas, Books and the list just goes on and on and on.  You read one thing and want to go to the page of the person who pinned it and you read something else there and it takes you to another page and another page and another page.

Geeze think of how much I could get done, if my mind got that excited about cleaning or working out at the gym or writing.

I think I'll work on that thought.  How to convert the thrill you get from Pinterest into other avenues of your life!!!!

PINTEREST is evil :)
OK  I'm going out to plant flowers now....
Because I've wasted so much time this morning, I'm posting this to my FitAt99 blog too. 

Sharing a post from my other blog

 For those of you who don't follow my Fit At 99 blog, I thought I'd share the post I wrote on that blog this morning.  I'm trying to make more time to write and find different things to write about on each of these blogs because they truly were set up for two different types of writing....but in the mean time, please bear with me as I share the posts on both blogs.


May 4, 2014

This morning I woke up with a queasy stomach.  That seems to happen a lot lately (no for heaven's sake...I'm not pregnant!!!) ....queasy stomach, weepy eyes, heavy sighs.  I want to wake up feeling alive, healthy, happy, motivated....I want to find the old me.  The one who lived to exercise, the one who ate healthy, the one who smiled all the time and motivated people.....the one whose daddy still lived 2 hours away....the one who could say confidently....yes I had cancer, but that was 12 years ago.

Part of that person I can't get back....so now I want to accept the decisions people have made for what they are and move on. I want to believe my daddy is in a better place and not hurting anymore.  I want to except the fact that yes I did get cancer again....but I'm still here and that no one can promise me I won't get it again....but I can't worry about that. I want to be healthy again...healthy and fit and happy....and I want to stop all this continuous crying.....I guess I never realized my heart and feelings were so fragile.  Although haven't I been told all my life that I was "thin skinned", that "I take things too seriously", that I am "too soft-hearted for my own good".

So sometimes early in the morning I get up and turn my computer on and key in the word "Pinterest" and all these wonderful motivational, inspiring, "knowing", "understanding" posters come up....that bring me comfort.....knowing that somewhere out there someone feels like I do, or has felt like I do and is trying to help me get through this....this...this...whatever this is.

This morning I found these:

                                                       

then I found this one....and it made me smile....because believe you me...
if this were true....I'd be Twiggy or Kate Moss!                                                                                                                                                                                
    I went to see my oncologist the other day....to tell her how I had been feeling and to see if perhaps
the aromatase inhibitor they have me on to inhibit the production of estrogen in my body needs to be changed.  I knew full well when I started taking them they were going to mess with my hormones....so that in itself if enough to deal with....then along with all the other things going on in my life, it's got me in a real tizzy. One thing she did tell me was something I didn't realize might well me part of my unhappiness right now....part of my feeling lost and confused....and sad......she said it is not uncommon 'at all' for people who have had cancer twice to be scared....even when they've made it through the treatment......to feel like every ache and pain and low feeling might mean that they have cancer somewhere else in their body.....and sometimes when you're in the middle of having those feelings (even if they are buried and you don't realize you are feeling them) and there are lots of other things you are dealing with..... you kind of get to the end of your rope.  Your body can take just so much stress....so much grief....and you literally come to ...as they saying goes...."your wits end".  I guess I hadn't thought of it that way....but when she said it, I actually felt better....like I wasn't going nuts....Then she suggested I talk to someone professional who might help me get on a more even keel for a while until I can once again see the light at the end of the tunnel.   There are lots of  people that have been quoted as saying "When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on"....but I'm also remembering that  "When you reach the end of your rope, you will find the hem of His garment".

I had a rather embarrassing episode of uncontrollable tears in the doctor's office when I found out I could not see that "professional" until July.....and then this morning....lovely Pinterest showed me this:
 
 So I'm working on me and I'm going to try to write more often.  It helps to get my feelings down on paper or screen....it helps me let them go....

So instead of waking up with a queasy stomach, weepy eyes, heavy sighs, I need to do what Pinterest reminds me to do .....and really....what in my heart I know I need to do.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I need to remember to say

And I need to remember what 8 year old Hannah Cheatam says:
                                                                                                    

Because after all.....yes my dad is gone and yes I miss him madley....and yes I've had cancer again and yes decisions have been made in my family that I don't understand (well I guess I understand) but that I've allowed to hurt me and yes I've regained a lot of the weight I'd lost and yes I am having to force myself to go to the gym each day and to eat healthy (when comfort food and sugar keep trying to tell me they are my friends....which they are not!) and yes yes yes....I do feel like I'm finding it harder to be strong and happy.....

What I have to remind myself is I'm the girl who loves a self challenge...I'm the girl who knows how to be strong and persevere....I'm still grieving, I'm still scared, I'm still sad, I'm still worn out from the past year and a half.....but as the wonderful saying goes....TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE....SO..........



A last thought..........some of you who have been following this blog might recall a while back that I mentioned a lady I met at the Radiation Treatment place....Sue.............yesterday I went to have a pedicure and when I got there they told me they had given me the wrong time and could I come back 45 minutes later.......no problem... it would give me a chance to scoot over to the grocery store and get my shopping done that I had planned on doing after the pedicure.  I had not seen or heard from Sue since the middle of January.  To my great pleasure I was pushing my cart and looked up and there she was smiling at me.  (I'm a believer in God's timing and being at certain places at certain times) Maybe I'm a Pollyanna, but I believe that pedicure time got changed for a reason.....because if I had gone after my pedicure I never would have seen her.  She looked happy and healthy and full of life (remember she'd had to do Chemo and Radiation).  Seeing her made my day.  Seeing her renewed my spirit....because I guess whomever said it was right about the 3 true words of life....IT GOES ON.....
And it's way too short to hold on to the past and worry about the future....today is the only day we are promised and actually this hour is the only hour we are promised.....I need to start making the best of this limited time we all have (and I have)

As many of you know I love to write....I've been writing a novel for ages and just never seem to get back to it....but Pinterest did not let me down this morning.....in all my gloom and doom and "poor pitiful me" I found this and it made me laugh and smile.....and by golly I think it is MY SIGN!



I'll get through this (maybe with the help of professionals)...maybe on my own...maybe by running into a "new friend"....maybe by forgiving and letting things go...so I can move on and maybe as Hannah says....I'll paint myself a new color
  .....and take a different view at things...

  Have a great day.....

Sharing a good read....

I've just finished reading a wonderful book .  "My Father's Eyes" by Sheila Allee


It is the touching memoir of finding a uncle she didn't know she had who was limited in his physical and mental abilities and institutionalized.  In finally finding him she learned a lot about him, a lot about her own father and found healing in herself along the way.  It is written with such truth and love that it cannot help but open your eyes to all we take for granted.  If you get the chance read it, you will not be disappointed.


I will be back soon....I promise.  Have a beautiful day.

Where does all the time go.......my selfish fun days...

I am sitting at my desk on this early Monday morning wondering where does all the time go....fleeting by each day?

There are days, many of them, when I feel like I just don't accomplish much at all.  I think it is the one thing I hate about being retired....that I feel no order or normalcy in my days....that on most days I've got no real place to be, no job, no appointments, no one wondering where I am or if I'm going to arrive on time.  I know a lot of people think that is the joy of retirement.  I hear them say over and over again, "I don't know how I had time to work".

I look at the piles of little papers on my desk and wonder why I can't get more organized...me...the one in the office, everyone said was "so organized", "so structured".  I sometimes feel like I've lost that ability. I want to have everything orderly, in one place where I know exactly where it is.  I want to have that planned schedule of a job.  I want to have someone knowing that at a certain time, I will walk in the door and I will give my 110%, that they can depend on me to do my job and do it well, that I am valued in the overall picture of a business or company.  I miss that. I want that.....and yet at the same time....

There are days (like today) when all I want to do is write and maybe read.......and yet I can barely allow myself  those days.  For some strange reason, I feel guilty (I know it's a terrible problem and fault that I have....guilt).  I am told by those who love me that I should not feel guilty...that I worked hard all my life....that I've earned this time.  That it's OK.  That I need to learn to relax!  Whenever they tell me that I am always drawn to the thought of going to get a pedicure or a manicure.  The young beautiful girls from Thailand, Vietnam, China (or where ever they are from) take your hand in their tiny hand and start to massage....and in their broken English, tell you "Relaux...Relaux"....I never realized that I am not relaxed, but they must feel tenseness in my hand.  And so it is when people tell me I need to learn to relax....I know they are so correct.  I can remember my late husband telling someone once, when Peggy takes a vacation, she needs at least two weeks.  She needs one week to relax and unwind so she can enjoy the second week.

So I've decided this morning (hopefully I will  stick to it) to restructure my time....to designate either a time of the day (a few hours), but more hopefully a full day each week when I allow myself time for myself.....to sit and write....to sit and read.....to eat if I want to or not eat if I don't want to.....to paint.....to do cross-stitch.  I used to do all those things when I was working.  I can't imagine how I found the time in my busy day to do those things.  I guess I did them in the evening....no I know I did them in the evening because I was working in the day.

I especially think about this when I think about writing.  I remember reading not too long ago a thought that writers don't talk to other people about their writing, writers don't think about their writing. Writers Write.  I wish I could have found the exact quote...it was awesome.  It was by a writer named Loraine Herring.  And in my search to find it, I spend almost an hour reading other thoughts on writing and finding the blog for Elizabeth Gilbert (author of "Eat, Pray, Live") and the wonderful book I am reading right now called "The Signature of All Things".....

And so that's how my days sometimes go.....I start out doing something...writing or reading things on the internet and jump from one thing to another, to another, to another and before I know it two, three, four hours have past......do you Pinterest.....that can be scary time consuming.....wonderful as you jump from one quote to the next, one idea to the next, one project to the next, exercise ideas, clothes, colors, decorating......it's an endless mind boggling array of things......and then the guilt sets in.....like I've squandered away that time, when I should have been cleaning closets or organizing all these scraps of paper on my desk.........

.......or no wait....maybe this was one of my mornings, one of my days when I just relax and enjoy
the time that 42 years of working....of paying my dues has now allowed me in my retirement years.
By golly, now that I think about it,  I think this could work. I'm not squandering away the time...I'm enjoying myself.......and I know where the time goes..........for a change, it goes to the person, the thing, that deserves it the most.........me. I think I will call them "My Selfish Fun Days".

Come back when you have time.....on my "Selfish Fun Days", I'll do my best to post here....