Home From Nashville. No heat in the house.

Just a few pics of my sweet grandbabies. It is 50 degrees in here. Too cold to do much.

Life Without Facebook, cont.

I had all of the pictures from my phone transferred to discs (or is that disks? I'm going with disks). Now, I can start deleting photos from my phone to free up some space for--guess?--more photos! My phone is very old (Samsung S3), and it is out of storage, so I can't put any apps on it, but when I delete these 3,880 photos off, I will probably have some room. What I am trying to figure out now is how to transfer them directly to my blog and how to delete them. So far, I have only learned how to transfer them to my desktop and then to my blog. I am not completely computer illiterate, but I am always fearful to try something thinking I may lose my pictures or delete my blog or something, so I am apprehensive to try to do things I have not been shown how to do and have never learned how to do. So, I'll share some pics today.

It's been a low-key morning. I didn't sleep well last night and have been very tired all day. I have been reading more of The Naked and The Dead, playing Solitaire on my phone, and I cooked a nice lunch--baked lemon pepper cod, herbed rice, and a stir fry medley of veggies (yellow squash, onion, red pepper, broccoli, sliced green onion, and cilantro). I'm still really bummed that I can't taste much, and what I can taste, does not taste like it once did. More about that at another time. I don't feel like getting into it today.

Flowers

Trying to figure out how to post on my blog again. It's been a long time. Sanja and Wes came to visit this past weekend, and Sanja brought me flowers. She gave me some for my birthday, and I told her how much I love getting flowers and how infrequently I get them. I think she was listening. It was sweet of her to remember and to bring me a bouquet of flowers.

This is my second day of no FB. It's been raining all day, and normally there is nothing I like much better than an all day rain, but today, it is just enhancing the loneliness and low mood. I don't feel very inspired to do anything. I don't want to read, and I don't want to clean anything up, and I don't want to make anything, and I don't want to call anyone, and I don't want to watch a movie. I guess I will just go get in bed. Too early to drink. I did figure out that I can email myself a picture from my phone and then save it to my computer. I can then upload the picture from my computer to my blog. I couldn't figure out how to load to my blog directly from my phone.

Snagging an aeon

Deactivate, deactivate, deactivate

I decided to deactivate my Facebook account today.  There are several reasons why I chose to do that. I'll make a list in order of priority:

1. I do not want some of my family members to know anything about me (this does not apply to my children).  I would unfriend them and leave it at that, but that would cause more emotional turmoil, and I have so much of that going on right now that I am not sure I could take much more.

2. I spend too much time on there or too much time thinking about what someone on there is going to think about what I post. I also spend too much time thinking of their posts particularly if they have said something to me that makes me feel defensive or slighted in any way.

3. I need to know if any of the people I know in "real" life would and will actually contact me if I am not on Facebook. There are times I run into people I actually know, and they act as if they don't know me or they feel uncomfortable talking to me when I see them, but on FB, they gush or easily share their feelings. Is it because they feel safer without face-to-face contact? Do I feel safer with F-to-F contact? Do I know how to be comfortable just being myself with others? The answer to that question is a resounding no. I have terribly social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. It has been hard for me to ever be with people unless I am drinking. FB has made it easier for me to reach out, just as going online years ago to workshop my poetry was far easier than being around poets. I need time to consider if I can change that aspect of my personality. At 60, I would say that is going to be difficult.

4. I need to engage in more meaningful and worthy activities. I need to volunteer somewhere in the community. I need to start exercising. I need to get back to reading. I need to start writing poetry again. I need to have a hobby--knitting, needlepoint, painting, learning to play the piano, gardening, etc.  FB holds me back because I am only thinking that I need some immediate feedback in order to feel good about some aspect of myself.

5. Facebook has provided personal information to people without my permission. I am not comfortable with that and think it's not wise to put myself out there like that.


That's all I can think of right now.  I feel sad about this.  I liked sharing my pictures, and, as a matter of fact, I don't know what I am going to do with all of my pictures now because I don't know how to share them from my phone to this blog. I do know how to share from my phone to FB and Instagram, but if I am going to try to stay off social media sites, I need to stay away from Instagram, too.

*sigh*

Extremities

Extremities

Beneath the ice, seeds sleep,
buds await--

Morning finds me searching
for warmth and some semblance

of spring. Flashlights line the bedside
table, replace moisturizer and books.

You lie next to me. Steady snores
comfort me as sleet meets pain.

Fear wants to make its claim
in these moments between bitter

cold and desired warmth. I pull
another afghan around my shoulders,

think of my grandmother's hands,
my grandfather's death, pray

in the quiet gathering of ice on limbs.
How frail the hours that support

the expected worry of one more season,
low-laden and fraught with winter's weight.

*******************************************

This is updated from 2005

Blue snake

A blue snake was chasing me in one of my dreams last night. In the dream, Robin was going to someone's house to get tomatoes. It was dark out, and even though I was across the highway from the road that led to the house, I could see a blue snake behind him. I ran across the road to tell him to be on the lookout for the snake before he started walking home. I could see the snake winding its way around a screen door which had been left ajar. I was still trying to call out to Robin, who was nowhere in sight and not answering, when the snake noticed the flashlight from my phone. It slithered off the screen and started coming toward me. I started running and trying to remember what I had been told about snakes. I ran straight ahead and then turned around in an attempt to confuse the snake, but it just kept following me. When I woke up, I was breathless from running. I have never seen a blue snake, so I looked up snakes this morning. There is a beautiful blue snake known as a racer snake. They are non-venomous and largely stay far away from people. I also looked up what it means when a blue snake appears in your dream and I looked up the animal spirit meaning of snake. It's actually quite positive to dream of one--especially a blue one. I don't fear snakes, but I respect them and don't want to come across a rattlesnake nor a water moccasin/cottonmouth.

"But then the color blue is indicative of the conscience and evolution in somebody. So perhaps the dream is hinting at a new found consciousness that is deploying this energy in a positive way, because the snake in and of itself is a ‘’cold’’ energy that requires to be warmed up in a loving context, to be chanelled and transformed this way."