Seth says that body-psych-spirit are one/connected. I especially think of that when I feel really crappy. Does my spirit have the flu too?

The people I live with and that visit our house have lousy immune systems. Their “millennial” lifestyle is almost certainly a big part of this. I fought off viral illnesses for nearly six months successfully which even I found impressive. I finally got one and a month later it’s finally past — well, that and the ‘New Zealand’ something-or-other that followed. I actually had days of hallucination during part of this, just guessing from fever. When I described my experiences to a friend they commented that “taking too much acid is just like that.”

So that’s what I did this January.

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Health update: This meant a month off diuretics, which I think six months ago would have been 10x the disaster it was now. So my health must be improving. Still fighting massive edema but my body is getting more “communicative” with me. Body made it clear that it finally thinks it can get a handle on this now, if we can just get it down low enough it can finally ‘get on top of it’ so to speak, and from then on it would be ok. This is the first time I have felt like this. It gives me hope for losing a lot more of the mass edema, a hope I had almost let go of, this long after heart surgery.

Tek has been telling me what supplements are desired and when, which is interesting. A lot of Omega 3 I didn’t expect (I never understood that fats topic). Aside from vitamins and minerals, protein powder/drinks sometimes, and digestive enzymes, I have a few things I take regularly, and I feel like I am doing better and they’re working for me. The Omega 3 (from BioScience); Co-Q10 (from Qunol); liposomal silymarin; a heart supp (Cardio Peak, that and the sily are from ‘LifeExtension’ brand); a vein/lymph supp (Venous Optimizer from Jarrow); Lung Cleanse by Dr. Tobias (that’s a new one I have no real feedback on yet except body tells me to take it); sometimes PQQ; and (totally apart from food on each side) serrapeptase.  I have other stuff that once in awhile I see and take spontaneously but those are the daily regulars.

After all the sickness, my inner world had a ‘talk with me’ that sounded rather like 3rd or Nero when they’re cranky and they weren’t even diplomatic. By the time it was over I was humbly agreeing that I would “quit eating crap that kills me” — gluten/glutin — and make a priority on “being able to breathe.” Gee, you wouldn’t think that would require spiritual intervention to get someone to think was important.

Also, body made it clear to me through half a dozen nearly identical waking mini-dreams that it wants me to eat a lot of small, nutrient-dense meals, because it can only absorb/use so much at once before it just has to vent it and move on. Because… it’s busy. That’s a little different than my normal approach, and I haven’t adapted to that at all yet, but am attempting to put it in the hopper for planning. This is part of the “rebuilding” after decades of horrific malnourishment.

So after a month of barely moving and profoundly undereating or fasting thanks to illness, I’ve been weak and seriously winded at the smallest thing. Back to lifting 10# dumbbells on a reclining weight bench, walking when I can — not easy in dead of winter in the Ozarks — and planning for SPRING in all its glory.

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Spring means restoring my property — landscape and plants and garden beds and so on — that has been profoundly neglected for so many years.

I got a cloner for christmas, I am so excited to use it. Prior to that later spring time though, I want to hijack it… I’m setting up a whole experiment with lots of different kinds of seeds and seed-starting and putting an aeroponic “intervention” into the seed starting process, we will see how that goes. I’ll put something about it on the blog as it goes on. If it works even fractionally like I think it might, it could sort of revolutionize my gardening. If this isn’t common, I think it’s just that very good, affordable, aeroponic cloners didn’t really exist for the public market until just recently. There’s been limited time for the public to get their hands on them to experiment.

The arborist comes this week to quote me on getting sun back to my back garden and front porch and tree health. And he has local contacts for getting the yard megamulched and recomposted in the garden and so on. And another for mowing/ weeding this year, since I don’t know I’m up to that yet… no. I’m not. I have no idea how I will afford all this.

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The universe has been good to me. Or something. I lived to tell so far and I thank Mark for my life every single day, still. In the spirit of passing some of that on:

I’ve had a young woman B. staying in the back room, charge free, for three moths. She had a two month infant when she arrived. Bad situation, not her doing. She is finally kind of back on her feet and is likely moving out this month, and it’s a happy ending of sorts, in that she is moving in with her dad she doesn’t really know, but he has a big family and wants to help her.

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Meanwhile, in the “life’s traumas are surely metaphysical lessons” category, we have my darling child. Since she was about 15, she has regularly reminded me of how my friends who decided not to have children may, actually, have had a perfectly valid point about it all: they have probably saved themselves at least three medical conditions worth of stress by just having their own lives and not spending most all the younger focus years on a child.

My daughter R and her boyfriend D were supposed to move out two weeks ago. I gave them two weeks extra because they’d she’d been sick for weeks. To be fair, she really didn’t get over being sick until yesterday. She told me she’s actively working on it and what she is doing, and I’m not going to argue for another week depending on the action I see, but I am dogged, so it is happening soon. They are supposed to move out to live with D’s parents but his dad requires she get a job first. She is 22, he is 27.

They lived here together for a few months, and then with his parents for six months, when she was 17, and then back here since. That’s when I was trying to get her to either get a job or go to school and they sheltered her by letting her live there and do nothing but get stoned daily for six months. It was the start of a not good slope since. And she has been unemployed for… 16 months now. She has gained an enormous amount of weight, and almost never gets up and leaves the room. She’s profoundly depressed, and I am angry that I cannot help her and he doesn’t care how obviously miserable she is.

His dad meanwhile, asks nothing of his son. He drives clear across town (on his lunch, or on his one day off) to get his son food at a drive-thru that is — I am not making this up — 700 yards from our door, literally across the street — and then brings it here, and not just here, but to their window so they don’t have to go to the door. Seriously. His dad does this. Pretty much daily, often more than once. Food, cigarettes, and so on, from stores that you can literally yell to someone at or at least use sign language and see clearly, all around us. He does this on top of a more than FT job, caring for an invalid wife, and cleaning up after their 12 cats.

There is something wrong with that man. He will get a gold star when he goes to heaven but in the meantime he is the biggest ‘enabler-martyr’ I’ve ever met in my life. He is somewhat irrational to try and talk with. In-laws, sigh.

The kids were supposed to save money and move out, that plan was three years ago. But D makes clear with no shame all he wants to do is work, play videogames, and have a girlfriend. (And he is likely headed for a surgery that will put him medically out of work for months if not forever.) He has no ambition whatever, even when his dad tried to help him with a car he promptly crashed, won’t bother to pay to fix or insure, or a phone he won’t bother to fill to avoid responsibility. I cannot relate to this. I moved out at 15 and when I was young I had too much ambition. At least to get out on my own.

Ry is not too ambitious either but it’s killing her, sitting in a room all the time, not working. Her misery pulses like a beating heart, this is not working for her at all. I have nothing against their life decisions if that’s what they want, but since they cannot be decent roommates, it has to end. I feel like I seem unreasonable for complaining over ‘trivia’, but for goddsakes, it’s pathological.

They won’t even rinse their own dishes. They smoke in the house though I beg them not to which has chronically caused me lung issues (I was a congestive heart patient with serious lung issues for godssakes). They now have four cats (which I pay to feed, they now pay for litter). I have one plus an old one so two, and they have to live in my room and outside, because the others attack them and won’t let them use litterboxes indoors, so their cats live in the main house with all of us, because they insist putting them out to the porch/garage/outside is cruel and endangering. (It is endangering for the street, true. Instead, mine have that.) Both kids but mostly D, go into the kitchen and make it into a comedy show (or nightmare). Not a single clean inch of counter, both sinks 18 inches above top with stuff haphazardly stacked, yucky and sticky and smelling, it’s insane, like over the top. They won’t bother bringing out dishes or laundry until the help is nearly or already gone, so my house has like “5 minutes” of cleanliness for a huge dose of my money. It’s so incredibly rude, to just ignore my pleading about it, and I never use my own kitchen because I won’t spend five hours and all my energy making it clean just so I can fry a fuckin’ egg.

They don’t talk to me because they don’t like me, so it’s not a bad environ but not really a pleasant one either. On the surface we are reasonably polite to one another, when they are not living on politics (omg I hate politics) — like youtube videos on the topic constantly — or ranting about how everyone who basically isn’t a marxist is an evil monster. More power to them but let them earn their own living while insulting mine, that seems only fair.

It’s not that any given thing is so horrible — they don’t throw wild parties, and they learned long ago never to fight where I can hear, that triggers me instantly to tell them both to get out, I won’t live in that environ. It’s just that they show no respect for me in behavior, in living, in conversation, they cost me money, and they are adults, so there’s no excuse for them to be here given those issues.

I would happily support my kid being here if we had a good relationship and she not only took care of her own self but actually helped with the house and property and expenses. But she doesn’t. He doesn’t and he’s even older. I feel like a martyr now, and I was very sick for years, and for probably ten months actually did need someone here so I wasn’t alone. But I’m better enough now to resent how it’s been for all these years, and that my clearly communicating what I want even now gets pretty much no result except a shrug or “whatever.” If that.

So I’m sick of it. They can go be adult-aged children somewhere else. I love my daughter a lot so it’s been hard for me to get to the point of making this happen. But it’s not good for her either, she’s unemployed and miserable and she needs to get out in the world.

As a metaphysical lesson I feel like standing up for myself finally — after years not having the energy to do so — and recognizing that sometimes, ‘helping’ someone is actually hurting them if it’s just enabling them to wallow in misery instead of get strong — I guess there is that.

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In my perfect world, that would restore both back rooms of my house to me, I would love the space back. It would resolve my house helper spending all her time cleaning up after them like they’re five, and let her spend more time helping me with house/yard projects. It would, I am pretty sure, reduce my bills a little, certainly reduce my grocery bill.

If life goes really well, within a month all the millennials are gone and I am redesigning my house and its new space, and cooking in my nice clean kitchen.

It’s Winter. It’s the season. I’m ready to let go of what isn’t working in my life and focus on what is healthy and good for ME.

Everyone moving out is to me another kind of purging.

Maybe my psych and spirit are ready for new open space and privacy and my own way too.

P