A Full Life With An Empty Nest

The Dance of Depression

2011-10-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

If you have never had depression, then the title of this post will probably confuse you. If you are like me, and have suffered bouts of depression most of your adult life, you will most likely, understand completely.

This past year has been an eventful, sometimes stressful, exhausting battle of time, patience, health and sad news. I knew I was in trouble months ago, when I couldn't seem to kick the pneumonia and it was getting harder and harder to do things that I didn't HAVE to do. I am not blaming anyone or anything. Life is hard. Sometimes life is VERY hard and we all have to do whatever is necessary to keep things in perspective.

When you have depression, your body doesn't keep enough of the good mood hormones in your system. Then something stressful happens and the body says, 'hold up, can't dance that fast'. If you are lucky, things calm down and maybe, big maybe, you will start to recover. But more often than not, that doesn't happen and you start to slip into the darkness that is depression.

I have been on medication for awhile now. In fact, I have been on medication lots of times in my life. My doctor told me this time that I may have to realize that I will need it for the rest of my life. Now I am not the type of person to take that kind of thing laying down. To take anti-depressants for the rest of my life is giving up, right? So in my small mind, I convinced myself that I would be able to live without it. So I quit taking it when I started to feel a little better.

Yeah, not the smartest decision I have made recently.

I found out rather quickly that I wasn't any good without it right now. So I began again.

But the sinking continued.

I could not do anything that wasn't absolutely essential to survival. I wanted to watch The Hallmark Movie Channel or sleep all the time. I could only eat tomato soup and chips. I was on the verge of tears all the time. I didn't call my friends because I didn't want to bother them. I didn't do my nails, or get a massage or go for a walk because I could not imagine doing one more thing. Every little annoyance was gigantic. I could not see any light at the end of this long, dark tunnel.

I knew I was in trouble. I made another appointment with my doctor. Unfortunately, that took two weeks, but the RGH came home and at least I wasn't by myself all the time.

The doctor sent me for blood tests, which is what a good doctor does when something suddenly changes. I won't know the results until Wednesday, when I have my follow up appointment. But she changed me to a new medication. It's been 10 days now and I am starting to feel more normal again. Case in point, I am posting on my blog.

I really struggled with writing about this. No one likes the world to know they aren't perfect all the time, or any of the time. I have a good life, a loving husband, no real financial issues, and good relationships with my family. What in the world do I have to be depressed about?

Well, it isn't about that.

Patti Digh posted something on Facebook recently that said we need to bring depression out of the closet and start talking about it. When I read that, I cheered inside because I was one of those who is hiding. I was one who was running from the stigma.

I needed to own it.

So here I am:

I OWN IT.

Yes, I have had a stressful year. Yes, I have two close family members with 4th stage cancers. Yes, I have had health issues. But none of those things is the problem.

I have depression. I have danced with depression for 3 decades. I can manage it with medication and the occasional round of counseling.

I am not flawed. I am human.

I am a child of God, beautifully created for his pleasure.

This isn't a fun post. It's not full of jokes and cute photos. It is my truth and I am speaking it in the hope that someone else might be able to speak theirs. If we all speak honestly, take our humanness out of the darkness, we will have a better world to live in.

What's your truth? What are you dancing with?

Blessings,

30 Days of Lists

2011-09-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

I know I promised photos from our trip to the Longhorn Restaurant and it will happen. I am trying to figure out how to get the photos from my iPhone to my computer without emailing them one at a time. UGH!

It has been a stressful few weeks, well the whole year actually, but we are talking recently right now. I have been trying to cut myself some slack and not 'should' on myself so much. You know, I should do this or I should do that. I give myself a lot of anxiety just should-ing.

My first thing was to start taking a quiet time with God every morning. I have been doing The 40 Days of Purpose and a New Testament reading program. I am on day 36 of 40 days but have to admit that during a visit to my brother's, I got a little behind on the book but kept up the New Testament. I did not beat myself up about it, I just picked up where I left off. And no, I did not do a bunch of days at once to catch up. The point is to get something out of it, to hear what God wants me to know, so I am taking my time. It is now a habit for me.

Yay for one thing down. So I was ready to start something else. Enter, 30 Days of Lists.

I began three days ago making my lists from the prompts but just got them all put onto pretty paper today. I am going for VERY SIMPLE. I don't want to overwhelm myself with pressures that are not important. It's really about the lists and documenting where I am right now. So without further ado, here is what I have done so far:

I fell in love with A Colorful Life papers and couldn't bear to cut them. They are 8x8 so I just used them whole to make my book of lists. I love how easy it is for me, how lovely it looks and how doable it is at this time in my life.

I was thinking I might have to make another People I Love page because, well I love so many people. These are just some of my family. I have more family and oh, so many friends. Anyway, the RGH is waiting to watch a movie with me so ta-ta for now.

Blessings,

Hoover Dam with the Big J

2011-08-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to loading my photos on to the computer. Today, I am having what my grandson used to call a Ketchup Day. I told him once that Gramma was having a day to catch up and he coined the phrase 'Ketchup Day'. Of Course, I thought it was hilarious because, well, he IS my grandson. Everything he does is adorable. One of my Ketchup items is getting this blog post done. Checking it off!

We took the Big J to Hoover Dam while he was visiting with us. We had a great day and learned a lot of stuff that I quickly forgot because I didn't take notes. Our guide was kind of a jerk too and I wasn't to jiggy with paying attention to him anyway. But the Big J is sort of an info geek so he was absorbing every word.

We went down into the ground 54 stories. (Are they stories if you are going below the ground? I don't know.) We saw the transformers that crank out the electricity the dam provides to Southern Nevada, Arizona and California. Here is a photo of them, some even in action:

And check out the rock we were walking around inside:

We went deep into the ground. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Once we had the full tour, we went back topside to walk around the dam and take some photos of Big J on the dam and with his feet in two different states.

Yes, that's a road that travels along to top of the dam. It used to be the only route through but they built this awesome bridge recently, so through traffic can circumvent the dam completely. It certainly speeds things up for people driving to Phoenix and makes it easier for the tourists to walk around the dam safely. Check out this bridge:

The RGH and I saw this when it was being constructed and it totally freaked me out. At the time it didn't meet in the middle yet. YIKES! Now it looks less creepy.

I would like to show you what happens when you hand a real camera to a point and shoot person:

And then he redeemed himself:

And now it's my turn:

Big J is split between Nevada and Arizona and just so you know, this is his I am super excited face:

They built a monument for the men who worked building the dam and the men who lost their lives working on it. I thought it was beautiful.

We had a great time on our visit in spite of the temperatures being in the 100's. After the visit we hit a Restaurant in Boulder City but that will be my next post.

Blessings,

Okay, I really need to get in shape...

2011-08-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

As I am typing this, the Toby Keith song As Good As I Once Was is playing:

I gotta tell you, that is a perfect song when you are in your fifties and just spent two weeks entertaining three grandsons and their parents. I was whipped but a I still had to drive J, the 12 year old home and come back the next day. That would be about 600 miles in two days. I squeezed in a visit with my friend Chantel, friends Debbie and Andreas and had breakfast with the RGH's mom before I drove home.

Since then, I have been trying to put my house back together, do laundry, organize the linen closets and I canned pickled okra and grape jam.

Yeah, I am ready for a vacation consisting of sitting around and doing nothing but watching Netflix.

I was supposed to be doing Weight Watchers but I was cooking comfort food and baking cakes and eating at buffets. Lets just say, I haven't logged onto Weight Watchers in so long I had to have them send me my password. I am afraid to get on the scale because my clothes are telling me I am worse off than when I signed up for WW.

I guess it's time to get back on the treadmill and writing down what I eat. A trip to the Fresh and Easy to get some fruits and veggies and I'll start over.

Frankly, I am getting to the point that I don't really give a rat's @$$ how much I weigh but I really can't justify a whole new wardrobe just because I want to eat pie and Alfredo sauce. Not necessarily at the same time, but you get what I am saying.

Fortunately, the RGH doesn't love me solely for my knock out figure and hopefully not just for my mind either, since it's pretty far gone these days too.

So I am playing catch up and I haven't forgotten that I promised to give you the scoop on our week with the big J. I just haven't transferred the photos to my computer yet. I'll add that to my list.

And if you find my mind, send it back to me, will ya'?

Till next time,

Where Have You Been?

2011-08-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

You probably have been asking yourself, where is Mary? She said she was going to blog regularly. What does regularly mean anyway? Once a year?

I crack me up.

Actually, I have had a house full of company. The day after the RGH came home from work, my daughter and her family showed up. (We were expecting them) It's their annual summer visit. I had three grandchildren to spoil. Which means I cooked a lot.

I made two of my friend Nicole's 52 cakes. This one, which I changed into a bundt cake and left off the chocolate topping and this one that I also made bundt cake style. I am a lover of all things bundt. Only dirties up one pan and there is less to frost. I am not lazy, just efficient. Okay, maybe I am a little lazy.

I should have taken photos of my cakes but they didn't last long enough.

I cooked most of the favorites, including fried chicken. My poor daughter was trying to do Weight Watchers and she finally gave up. It is very hard to diet when you are presented with every childhood comfort food.

We went to the Shark Exhibit at the Mandalay Bay. Here are a couple of photos from the trip.

We also spent a lot of time in the pool. Well, the boys did. Gramma was busy cooking. The guys went to see Transformers while Amanda, Logan and I went to the outlet mall. We had an ant invasion while they were here. That was fun. They had a little car trouble so there was some back and forth with car repairs. Luckily, it wasn't anything serious. We took everyone to Bambini's and J & T made their own pizza. That was a hit.

The gang left on Tuesday, save Jacob. He has been hanging here with the old folks. I'll have the scoop on that in the next post.

Sorry I have been AWOL. Hope your day is blessed. I am off to bake another cake.

*Smooches*

The Family Wall of Fame Project

2011-07-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

We have a loooong hallway in our home. The house is set up in a big U shape with a small courtyard in the middle. The long hall separates the extra bedrooms from the main part of the house. Remember, we have an empty nest, so all but the master bedroom is unoccupied by children.

I have been promising the RGH, I would make a Family Wall of Fame in that hallway since we moved here. I finally got my rear in gear and got it started. So I am sharing my process with you today.

First, note the long, empty wall:

I told you it was a long, empty wall. See how boring it is. I had to put a picture hanger on the wall just to get the camera to focus.

It is over 12 feet long in this section alone. Room for lots of frames. The problem here is there is not enough room to lay out a bunch of frames to make my plan. So I did the layout on the floor between my dining area and the family room.

I changed a couple of things once I laid it out. First, that frame in the bottom center is unlike the others. It has a wide, flat frame and the rest have a thinner, more decorative frame. So I had to run to Michael's to get one more frame. Darn! But my scratch off coupon was 30% off. SCORE!

I also ended up leaving off the two square frames on each end. I have another, smaller section of hallway that I am planning a mini wall of fame for. I want to use those there.

It took a little bit of time to get all these frames on the wall and straight. If you have ever done this, you know that even exactly alike frames don't always hang exactly alike. But I had a gadget that helps with that. So here is the end result:

See my little ladder with my tools on the step? I guess I should have put it away so it wouldn't wreck the photo. My bad.

All the pictures in these frames are the pictures that were in them at the store. I promised the grandsons that will be here on Thursday that they could help me pick the photos. That is going to be fun. And it will also make the RGH happy to see his Family Wall of Fame finally finished.

Check off one more thing on my goals for the year list.

What project have you been putting off? Would it make you happy to get it done?

Just Do It.

Blessings,

The Rest Of The Story...

2011-07-23T16:46:00.000-07:00

The same day Logan was born, I drove home. I had stayed an extra day because the doctor told us that if he wasn't born on Tuesday, she would induce on Wednesday. The RGH came home as usual and our fabulous neighbor, Doug, picked him up at the airport.

Logan arrived about 2:20 p.m. I waited until I knew everyone was fine then I headed for home. Honestly, I wanted to go home really bad. I missed my bed and my husband and my cat. I love my grand-babies more than I can say and it would have been wonderful to spend some time getting to know Logan. But my daughter and her family needed those first few days to get accustomed to the new guy so I didn't feel guilty about leaving.

I got home around 9 or 10 p.m. I was so glad to be back home and know I could stay for awhile. I had a lot of catching up to do. But it didn't take long for the 'Now What?' to set in.

If you have children, you are familiar with the 'Now What's?'. That is that feeling that comes over you when the children are gone for more than a day or two. We moms especially, dream of the moment when we are relieved of our children long enough to take a bath and watch an episode of Sex In The City without interruption. But when we get that time, suddenly we don't know what to do with ourselves.

If you have children still at home, imagine how that would feel if you knew they were never coming back. It is a haunting feeling. Like no one needs you anymore. I had been there already and gotten over it. But here I was with the same Big Ol' Mess I had before. When I get that 'Woe is Me' thing going on, it is hard for me to make myself do anything. I had just spent 6 months taking care of people. I hadn't crafted at all. I hadn't read any books to speak of. I did cook a lot of bacon. Those boys love their bacon.

In order to pull myself out of the deep end and into shallow water, I devised a project for myself. I would re-decorate my craft room. Purge, arrange, color and cute up the space so I would be excited to work in there. I spent an entire two weeks that the RGH was gone doing that. And I did it without spending much money. I used a lot of what I already had laying around. Fabric for example. Baskets, bins, and the like. It turned out great and it made me happy.

That's when I started thinking about my blog. The poor, lonely blog that I had completely neglected. I wanted to get started again but I wanted it to be less random. I needed a purpose. So I prayed. That is when the ideas started developing.

I wanted it to be about having a full life in spite of your circumstances. My circumstances are an empty nest and a lot of time by myself. Someone else might be struggling with an illness, or caring for a parent, or recovering from an accident. Or perhaps just life is your circumstances. We all have to find ways to make our life have meaning, joy, fun and purpose.

That's what I wanted to blog about. So it might still be kind of random. I am knocking around a few ideas for challenges and stuff. But mainly, its about stuff I am doing to find fun, meaning, love and purpose. I elected to change to a new blog to get a fresh start. That's my story, folks.

Speaking of a fresh start; how do you like my new look? It is customized for me and I love it! My friend, Felecia told me about this designer and I gave her a virtual ring and she hooked me up. Her name is Shaina Longstreet (is that the coolest name or what?) and she is awesome. I gave her a few ideas, a few colors, a few things I wanted to see and *poof* she made me a blog. Her link info is at the bottom right of the posts so give her a holler. You will love her.

Till next time...

Blessings,

Welcome To My New Blog!

2011-07-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of things going on for me in the past 6 months or so. I was so wrapped up in all the things I was dealing with, blogging wasn't on my list of priorities. I wanted to blog; I missed it. But there just wasn't enough hours in the day, nor did I have the energy to invest in it.

The reasons I made the decision to start a completely new blog and abandon the old one are not that complicated in the end. Getting to that realization WAS and at the end of the 'day' I had a light bulb moment. I discovered that I was back in a place I had been before. Yet, one must still do the work even when you know the drill.

Here's the story:

Around Thanksgiving my middle daughter, Amanda discovered she was expecting their third child. We knew this was a possibility and everyone was waiting for it to happen. It was especially significant to me since Amanda has a history of pre-term labor. She was on complete bed rest from 7 months on with #1 and 4 months on with #2. Both boys were born early, #1 at thirty six weeks, #2 at thirty five weeks. So we were all pretty sure that #3 would be bed rest and an early delivery would be in the cards again.

Amanda is a kindergarten teacher. Her husband works a two week on, two week off schedule where he is away from home when working. They have two boys, 11 and 6. Enter, Gramma Vegas (that would be me).

It all began right after Christmas. I would make the 5 hour drive to California the day I took the RGH to the airport to leave for work. I spent two weeks, cooking, cleaning, taking to school, picking up from school, karate, doctor's appointments, grocery shopping, homework, and pretty much waiting on everyone hand and foot.

At the end of two weeks, I made the 5 hour drive home, cleaned the house and picked the RGH up from the airport to spend two weeks with him. Mostly, I waited on him too, but he is a good man and cut me lots of slack. When a person has been gone for two weeks though, there is a lot of catching up to do. Mail, mail, mail! Laundry, dusting, running errands, doctor appointments, car repairs, home maintenance. Basically, I had to re-acclimate to home again every time I left and came back.

In mid-March, I started getting sick. At first I thought it was allergies, so I just went on to California .But it hung on so long that when I got home, I went to the doctor. They said I had a sinus and ear infection, gave me antibiotics and prescription cough medicine and sent me on my way. I got a little better, but not completely well and after two weeks, I drove back to California.

After a few days at my daughter's, it became painfully obvious that I was not well. I was concerned mainly because I didn't want Amanda or the boys to get sick. I was coughing so much, my abs were sore as if I had worked out. I went to an Urgent Care one morning after I took the boys to school. After a breathing treatment and a chest x-ray, the doctor told me I had partially treated pneumonia. Woo-Hoo! A real diagnosis!

You would think this would set off some alarms for me. Not so. I was in mommy mode. When a mom is sick, she doesn't stop being a mom. I had had an empty nest for 7 years but once I started taking care of my daughter and the boys, I reverted back to having a full nest. I wasn't thinking about Mary at all. I was thinking that I had to keep going because they all needed me.

Apparently, this did not set well with the RGH. He called my son-in-law and asked him to try and find some help so I could go home. I had considered that I might need to go home, but honestly, the drive seemed daunting and I had antibiotics. I just planned on not working as hard while I was there. This was not agreeable to my husband, and frankly, my daughter and son-in-law were kind of worried too. So I got sent home to get well.

I did get better eventually, after my regular doctor changed my antibiotic to something stronger. When the RGH came home, he didn't let me do much. He took care of things so I could recover. During that time he made me the best chili I have ever eaten. In a future post, we'll post the recipe.

Anyway, I spent the remainder of the next few months doing what moms do and on June 1st at 37 weeks, Amanda gave birth to a healthy, beautiful, baby boy.

So I was finished my hitch of caretaker for Amanda and her brood. It wasn't all stressful. We had some stellar moments; like this one:

The boys cousin and our granddaughter, Madeline came to see us!

We had a wonderful baby shower for Amanda, who enjoyed sitting up for awhile.

Grandson Gabe came to the shower with his mom, our daughter, Cindy.

We got to eat this cake.

The boys helped Gramma make Chicken and Dumplings.

We made birds nest cupcakes for Easter...

And colored eggs.

We had a few homework meltdowns...

acted up for the camera a little too.

Gramma pulled someone's tooth for them.

I decorated the nursery with a couple of our friends.

And then we went to the hospital to have a baby.

Logan Isaac

You may be asking what this has to do with changing my blog.

My next post will explain all that. I hope you come back to get the rest of the story.

Blessings,