Being Grateful!

I shared this on Facebook this morning and it got me thinking that I probably could do with a gratitude list - so here it is!

When I lived in the US once a year we would have what was usually an orphan's Thanksgiving dinner.  We invited anyone we knew who couldn't go to their own family... for whatever reason...  Always there were people there whom I had never met, frequently there were people who spoke no English, and usually very few of those present knew each other.  We ate - huge meals of turkey, with lashings of vegetables and then desserts; and we drank - significant quantities of wine usually.  The funniest time was when we invited this Moroccan guy, Adi, who was married to an American acquaintance... his wife was away on an academic appointment and so he was going to be home alone.  Adi was a great dinner guest but I must confess to fits of uncontrollable giggles (wine assisted I'm sure) overtaking me when he brought out his slide projector and started showing us a travelogue of the tour he was selling to Morroco!  He had printed sheets for us and our other guests to sign up there and then - everything but the credit card machine!  Another time we had two Korean students (they were at law school with a friend of ours) and one of them brought her mother who spoke no English - the poor woman (who remained sober) was quite overwhelmed by the raucous, inebriated volume of our laughter and conversation.  One of the memorable components of each of these cacophonous gatherings was the pause before we actually ate when we would go around the table and each say a few words about the things that year had delivered for which we were grateful.  I kind of miss that... the breath to think about only the benefits... the moment to rise beyond the irritations of daily life and look at the more important truths...

Charlie Brown and Snoopy can't even hope to be grateful every day for everything - but how about being grateful today for the good stuff?

I am grateful for (in non-significant order)

• being Australian
• living in a country where (in spite of constant attacks from the right wing, big money, and big finance) there is still a system of universal education, welfare, and healthcare
• having in my life a plethora of interesting, intelligent, like-minded people who believe in taking care of those who have harder roads, the earth, the animals, the ocean...  I am grateful for their passion and their staunch beliefs
• every day in every way I am grateful for my parents and my upbringing most especially my mother who is omnipresent in my thoughts in spite of the nearly 4 years that have passed since she died
• The Boy - OMG I am so grateful for The Boy - when life has reached its lowest ebb it is his existence that has enabled me to survive (as a side note he is doing incredibly well at the moment and has been promoted to supervisor only half way through his traineeship - it doubles his salary and the company has put him in the very best location in their flagship store - starting the day before his 19th birthday The Boy is on his way!)  I am so very fortunate that all my crappy decisions didn't manage to screw him up too much!
• the dogs.  Frizby and Venus add so much to my daily life especially in the production of endorphins I'm sure.  I adore the babies and I love that TLOML and I are both loving them together
• The Best Friend - anyone who has read this blog before knows what a jackpot I have won with her, I am forever in her debt for the help she has given The Boy and I am so lucky to have her friendship
• the chooks who give us lovely fresh eggs but who more importantly give me pleasure and make me feel all warm and fuzzy and entertained
• opportunity - just when I thought I was pretty much out to pasture from now on I have had yet another opportunity land in my lap - work I can do while lying in bed, that furthers my studies and enhances my resume while paying me a good casual wage... just a few hours a week but that is about all I have in me anyway...  Out of nowhere here comes another chance to feel success
• my intelligence and my ability to write - I'm not meaning to sound arrogant but I would be remiss if I failed to be thankful for these undeserved (and frequently misused) gifts
• The Nurse - how lucky am I that I come to a strange place, where I only know TLOML, and I find in her friend someone who is so wonderful and so accepting of me - someone who has been open to allow us to develop our own relationship and whom I just adore!  (she loves me too!)  Serendipity at it's finest.
• TLOML's youngest son - his presence makes me feel just a little less pain about being so far away from The Boy; his humour clicks with mine and I am grateful for the moments when our eyes meet with understanding and laughter.  I am also grateful for the fact that we just 'get' each other and that he forgives my grumpy moods.  He can be a shit of a kid (can't they all?) but I really love him and that is something worthy of gratitude!
• his father - how cool is it to really enjoy your partner's ex?
• my health - I know this sounds strange being that I have a chronic illness but it's true - even though I am in constant pain and I never feel great, I'm actually quite healthy in other ways... I rarely catch colds or viruses and my constitution is strong - good heart, low blood pressure, and all this in spite of the terrible things I have inflicted upon my system over the years...
• Facebook - without FB I would not be able to maintain solid and consistent relationships with the many friends I love all over the world - I can't hug them but we can interact and correspond and KNOW that we think of each other with love and fondness.  Also it was Facebook that brought TLOML back into my life and I will thank FB forever for that.
• my friends who are scattered so far and wide - loving them makes me feel good
• good food!  Here in Australia we are lucky to have terrific fresh produce, meats, seafood and anything else we might want.  I'm learning to cook (after decades of avoiding it vehemently), I'm almost enjoying it and we sure do get to eat well!
• TLOML - I've carried on enough in these pages about how fortunate I am to have met this crazy wonderful woman... we have our ups and downs, our moments of pique, and yet we just roll on past them - not dragging them on like extra carriages of cargo - they are shunted off onto a siding never to be seen again...  she shares without question her life, her house (which is now our home), her friends, and her family, and my life has a depth of pleasure and a richness I never expected to experience again.

I'm sure I have missed stuff, it is by no means a complete list - off the top of my head these are the biggies...

I think it's good for us all to spend time occasionally thinking only of the good stuff - let all the nasty stuff go -- for the most part, you can't change it anyway so why dwell on it?  I'm not convinced of the power of positive thinking and I can be a bit of a pessimistic optimist at times (hope for the best and plan for the worst) but really a few minutes dedicated to thinking only the stuff that feels good is really healthy!

Thanks to any of you out there who bother to read this and comment -- I love you too!

Thank Herbert for it all!

Gush, swoon, gush...melt...swoon

I have been having a wonderful time with TLOML.  We have spent time with her brother and his family and it has been really delightful to see people interacting with her and loving her.  They are a loving family and clearly she brightens their world as she does mine.

There has not been even one thing that has not gone beautifully.  I feel like I am living in a love story, I would say a romance novel but there has been no conflict or crossed wires to hang a plot upon... We are actually sickly sweet and swooningly into each other.  She is very solicitous and thoughtful; in some ways more sensitive about my need to conserve energy and take it easy than I am. I'm loving being cared for and cared about but I do get a bit stubborn about wanting to contribute.

Today we did a massive shop because tonight we are having a dinner party.  While up at the mall I took her in and introduced her to my little mate at the optometrists (he agreed with me that she is beautiful and was very happy for us).  Mostly we have been spending time with her friends and family which is wonderful for me.  I don't have to carry the conversations and I can sit back and watch her interacting with her people.  Tonight we are having two other lesbian couples for dinner.  The first couple are the people we stayed with when TLOML first arrived.  Lovely women, her long time (childhood) friend and the friend's Irish partner.  The other couple are friends of mine, my long LONG ago (early 80's) first serious girlfriend (actually the first person I was ever in love with) and her terrific current partner, who I have only met twice but who I really liked on sight.  It should be a good evening.

I'm going to make some garlic prawns and scallops and serve them over French bread and then we are also going to have roast pork, apple sauce, and some baked potatoes and pumpkin with steamed green veggies too.  It has been fun planning together and shopping for dinner.  I'm lying here getting some horizontal time while TLOML makes us some lunch.

My Gay Brother has reached out to me which is fabulous and he and his partner will be down in Sydney on Friday evening in time for us all to go and have dinner.  That will be the first and only introduction of TLOML to my family this Christmas...  Well not including The Boy - he will be getting home tomorrow (Thursday) and I'm picking him up at the train station at sparrow's fart.  I expect he will meet with TLOML some time tomorrow, maybe in the evening.

All the pieces just seem to keep falling into place for us, I can't believe how wonderful things are, how natural and perfect it all feels, how compatible we are.  I am spending a LOT of time feeling incredibly grateful to Herbert.  I was so low so recently that it is hard to believe this spectacular turn of events.  Sometimes I just smile and shake my head and I can hardly believe that it is the other Displaced from school...  Of all the people in the whole world WE have fallen in love with each other after 31 years apart.  In all honesty I am having to downplay this for you or you would all have to be taking turns at throwing up!

What a difference a month makes...

One month ago I posted a blog

11/11/11

In that blog I made a series of wishes.  Strange events have been afoot since I broadcast my wish list into The Universe (aka Herbert).  Many of my wishes were for the planet and for all people and it's hard to tell if they are coming true.  Six of the wishes were specifically for me.  At the time that I wrote the blog times were pretty tough for me.  I was seriously flaring and in a lot of pain and I was dragged down by tremendous fatigue.  I had other basic personal issues that were causing me a great deal of anxiety too.  I felt unloved and unlovable.

The 11th of November was a Friday.  I was born on a Friday.  "Friday's child is loving and giving".

The 12th of November just happened to be the birthday of one of my old friends from high school.  We were connected on Facebook and you know how you get the birthday notification?  Well I left her a brief happy birthday message.  Later that afternoon I saw, for the first time, that she was online.  I umm'd and ahhh'd about sending her a chat message; I didn't want to intrude.  Finally I decided to say "hi" and ask if her birthday was going well.  My entire world has changed because of that message.  I know that seems a little drastic but it is completely true.  My old school friend is TLOML.  We started talking and we have not stopped.  She is everything I never dared to dream of in a partner and for some strange cosmic reason she seems to adore me too.

On the 14th of November I had my first appointment with the Immunologist Professor McCool.  He has taken an aggressive approach to trying to identify all the various issues that are plaguing me.  He has also put me on an anti-depressant for pain.  I have been doing better since I started to see him and I feel a real sense of security as his patient.

Since the day I made those wishes I can honestly say that each of the six wishes, that was personal in nature, has been positively impacted.

• I am more healthy - not perfect but substantially improved
• I am loving and I am loved in return
• I have the hope of a safe and comfortable environment in which to live
• I do not have as many things that are worrying me
• I have laughed more in the last month than in the 12 months before combined
• I have been spending a lot of time with interesting, caring, socially conscious people and there is the a promise of much more to come in that area

So there you have it.  It has been quite the turnaround.  In the last month I have fallen in love with someone I have liked and respected for over 30 years.  I have gone from quite a dark and depressing situation to one of great hope.  I feel easily twice as good as I felt then.  Maybe I am just high on that drug money can't buy or maybe ... just maybe ... Herbert has decided it's my turn to have some of my dreams come true.

Makes me wonder if maybe I should have wished for buckets of money too... oh well... money is nice but it can't hold your hand when you are feeling crappy, it can't make your heart leap and your eyes glow, it can't open your mind and enlighten your conscience, it can't make a beautiful woman swoon (well not the kind of woman I would ever be interested in).

The more I talk with TLOML the more it seems that we were kind of destined to be close.  We share strange things.  Other than our time at school together there have been numerous times we were in the same places, frequenting the same haunts.  Here is a little list of some of the odd coincidences.

• We have the same unusual name
• Our Dads were both doctors
• Our Dads left our mothers when we were the same age (6)
• We both have older brothers (her one me two)
• We are both the youngest child
• We both had step-mother issues
• Though I come from completely the other side of town my step-mother took me shopping as an 8 yr old in her neighbourhood (she and my Dad lived there when they were first married)
• She knew my first cousin before she ever met me
• We swam at the same harbourside beach as kids - we might have even played together who knows?
• Then we were at school together and sat side by side in Geography and Home Room

Although we have not seen each other since school....

• We attended the same University, and took the same subject, in the same year
• We share several mutual acquaintances
• We both lived in the same rural region during the 1990's
• She worked at a place that I have been to many times

Now to the present

• Her nephew is in the same class at school as The Horsewoman's daughter (which is why I got a weird facebook friend suggestion for the lad - we had two mutual friends)
• The Horsewoman sat next to TLOML's brother and sister-in-law at a school function recently
• We are both single
• We are both 49
• We are both ready to make a relationship that buries forever the dysfunction of our previous relationships
• We are both crazy about each other!!!

Now I understand that Australia is not as heavily populated as the US but Sydney is a city of over five million people.  These kinds of things don't happen every day.  You talk about five degrees of separation.... try heaps of versions of one and two degrees of separation?  It feels like all roads lead to TLOML and I might have been a moron not to get the message any sooner!!!

In reality it is the right time and the right place... I think we are both ready to be happy and I am enjoying every second and valuing it as a gift from Herbert!

Where's the catch?

Ok... hang on... let me check...

This is strange...  I'm not sure how to respond to this...  I don't know what to say...

I can't see anything about to slam into me at the moment...

Sssshhhhh... Keep this under your hat

Things are actually going well.  (Pause for explosion.)

Ok before I float away on a cloud of euphoria I need to remember to grab my parachute.

Ten days until TLOML arrives from her tropical paradise, jetting into Sydney specially to see MOI!!!  My mother always chastised me for wishing my life away when I said things like "I can't WAIT until she gets here!"  But it feels like an eternity.  Today I didn't have any appointments or any demands or plans so I have just hung out and done some reading and had a long bath.

On the health front I am actually feeling pretty good.  My arms are still a little weak and the vertigo is still hanging around so I'm wobbly but pain is the most manageable it has been for a good few months.

You know how when you take your car to the mechanic and say "It makes a grinding sound every time I turn left" and the mechanic does a test drive and it won't make the noise?  I suspect that might be going to happen to me on Wednesday.  I will be off to the pain clinic with less pain than I have experienced in MONTHS!

Why can't they give people pills full of endorphins?  Well I guess it is just a form of self created morphine.  I'm sure that's what is making the difference.  Talk about a drug of choice!  It's interesting in all of the fitness training I did when I was younger (including going all the way through the boot camp at the Police Academy for 4 and 1/2 months) I NEVER once had an endorphin high!  I have read that people with Fibromyalgia don't experience that, or was it the bloke in the video, the one from Stanford?  Oh well somewhere in the last week or so I have read that FMS endurers don't get the "runners high"...  THANK the Goddess/Universe/Herbert that I can get an endorphin high from falling in love!!!

I can't say I feel strong but I am experiencing less pain.  I'm toying with the idea of doing something to sabotage myself before Wednesday so that I turn up there feeling as crappy as I normally do.  Maybe a game of golf tomorrow if the weather clears?  That knocked me out for a week last time I tried it!  Ok I'm half kidding.  I really am very grateful that I'm feeling OK at the moment.  I've lost about 10 lbs in the last three weeks though it feels like more.  When I moved back to Oz from the US I didn't bring all the smaller sized jeans that didn't fit me, I figured it was silly carrying things I couldn't wear.  Now I really wish I had brought them 'cause I am stuck with all my big jeans.  I think a little shopping expedition might be in order tomorrow though I would have to get a great deal cause I am trying not to spend money too.  So many competing priorities, as per usual.

Please address all correspondence care of Cloud 9.

The Universe at work...

It's a strange thing this Universe...  You can call it God or Allah or Buddha or Herbert for all I care... I tend to call anything that seems to have greater power than we mere mortals "The Universe".  Back in mid October I wrote about the kind of pessimistic optimist I can be and then showing my inconsistency only a few days later I sent  some wishes out into The Universe .  I was wishing for the woman of my dreams to come into my life.  Again on 11/11/11 I posted a blog with a wish list which included the wish "to love and to be loved in return". 


There have been some times in my life when I have been 100% certain that forces were at work that were bigger and more powerful than anything a human can cause.  Once this was a "Universe" bitch slap designed to make me pay attention, another time it was a serendipitous moment of stark perfection.  To be honest I often think I am getting messages and that I am too dumb to acknowledge them until it becomes REALLY obvious and then I think "Duh. Of course!"  


For quite some time there have been things going on that have brought someone I used to know into the front of my mind.  I have been calling her The New Connection in this blog for a while now, but I think I need to change her tagline...    More on that later though...

I'm not sure how I came to find her on facebook about a year ago but she accepted my friend request.  We didn't message or anything... maybe I said hi on her wall...  I NEVER saw her online and I am online a LOT.  Then I moved home to Australia and started reconnecting with old friends including The Best Friend who of course knew The New Connection from when we were all in high school together... so naturally her name came up...  Then a somewhat strange thing happened when I got a facebook friend suggestion for a young boy who shares her last name and it said we had two mutual friends, her nephew is in the same school class as The Horsewoman's daughter (who I live with).  She just seemed to be "front of mind" far more than at any other time.

I'm sure you know that facebook tells you when people have a birthday and I received notification of hers.  So I left a birthday message on her wall.  Later that day, for the first time ever, I saw her come online.  I vacillated between wanting to say hello and not wanting to intrude.  I even started writing and stopped before starting again...  Then I thought "Oh what the hell I'll just say a quick happy birthday".  This was the day after I wrote my 11/11/11 wish list.

Things suddenly stopped being normal.  I am really quite certain that at that moment something enormous dropped into place.  Giant gears in the machinery of my life meshed.  Jigsaw puzzle pieces fell into place.  The erratic became calm.  The poles were reversed.  Life changed.

When I look back over my adult life, all the time that The New Connection and I were not connected, I can see that I have had two really good chances at finding/making happiness.  The first was my first serious love, a really wonderful woman with whom I was incredibly compatible, but I was very young and too damn scattered and stupid to know a good thing when I saw it and I screwed it up.  About seven years after that I began a relationship that was to last almost ten years.  That relationship was very comfortable but it stagnated and we grew in different directions, I had wild oats to sow and adventures that still needed to take place.  I loved and still love both of these beautiful women and I have had the pleasure of seeing them both since I came home.

As little as three weeks ago I genuinely believed that I would never have another chance to find that kind of relationship.  Then IT happened.   We started talking and we haven't stopped.  First on chat, then text, and then on the phone.  At other times in my life when I have had relationships develop online I have always had that niggling doubt, that wondering if ... well if she has two heads, if she is a lunatic (she often was), if she has more than one personality and I'm only seeing Dr Jekyll while Ms Hyde lurks in the shadows waiting to take over as soon as I have made some kind of commitment!  There are no niggling doubts this time.  I know her,  even though we have not seen each other since we were girls, I still know her.

It's interesting, I think, that when you are just emerging from school into your adult life you are in some ways a clean slate.  I know that most of us carry some scars from our childhoods but I kind of mean that we are our real selves.  Then we embark on life and the battles and experiences we have shape us in a variety of ways.  Yet somehow when you reach a certain point in your life you stop playing other people's games and you begin to shed the elements of your personality that were assumed or adopted to please others.  You distill down to a more raw version of yourself with an attitude of "here I am - like it or lump it".  In some strange way I think we are again more truly living as our authentic selves than we have since childhood.

So here it is, The New Connection.  We are both happy alone and neither of us needs another person to complete us - and yet we are irresistibly drawn towards each other.  We both have an overwhelming sense that this is "right" that we "belong together".  Against the caution of our friends, and ourselves for that matter, we have both decided to just enjoy this experience and let it play out however it is meant to play out.  We have agreed that the worst that can come of this is a really lovely friendship.  We have agreed to take the responsibility for our own emotions in the event that something causes this to take a different path.  We have agreed that regardless of what happens we will love each other for this time if for nothing else.  We're big girls all grown up and able to handle it if something goes amiss.  We're big girls falling in love.

Soooo... From now on The New Connection is going to be known as TLOML.  My mother always said (in reference to trying to achieve something) "Punt high and follow on!" (I think it is a football metaphor LOL)  So here is my high punt.  The New Connection - The Love of My Life.  (And if I turn out to be wrong you can all tell me I'm a hopeless romantic and, as Rodgers and Hammerstein would say, a cockeyed optimist.)