Free Rice

I found this over at SUM with Kerri - thank you!!!

Free Rice - you can play a fun online word game - and at the same time you'll be helping to "earn" donated rice to help feed hungry people. So - go there today - you might learn something - and you'll certainly find yourself feeling pretty good about having made a difference.

Writing it Down

I've had many bosses who've lived by the motto "If it's not (the phone call, the meeting, etc) in the database, it didn't happen." Don't I wish that were true of some bloodsugars... Even if I don't write them down, they've still happened. Of course, not keeping a log does make it easier to pretend that lousy numbers don't exist...

I write more about this at Blogabetes today - check it out if you like...

Surrender

This may surprise you.

But some days I feel like throwing up the white flag.

Cowering in a corner.

Some days I'm just too tired, too emotional, and too angry to go on.

Some days I give up.

Today is one of those days.

*****EDIT*****

Turns out - there is no surrender. Not on this battlefield....

I appreciate very much your words of support - and love - they helped me to realize the above. Again.

Awesome...

It was such a great day for the JDRF walk in Providence. And Team Six Until Me was on the scene again. Read more here (not up as of 9:13 on Sunday - but I bet a million dollars there will be something there soon) or at Blogabetes!

Awesome.

By Request...

I cannot believe I am still up at 3am. Especially given that tomorrow, I have to meet Kerri and Shannon for the Providence JDRF Walk. But I can't sleep... So here I am.

Tonight was awesome... And as promised, Amylia, a photo of the outfit... I'm disappointed, you can't really see the shoes... And really, I think the whole outfit is cuter in person.

Also - this photo made me realize how much my body has changed over the past few months - I might need to rethink my clothing purchases - I'm pretty sure I can be getting away with things that are a bit more fitted.

Addicted

I think I might be addicted to buying shoes.

I DO love fashion. Of all kinds. I am tres' disappointed with the Simply Vera Wang collection at Kohls, though. Most of it is loose and flowy (read: does nothing to compliment anything but a wiry frame, and even then, not so much), like this:



And what isn't loose and flowy looks a little like something Sister Mary Catherine would wear... Ala this:



Not to mention that the colors are just blah. Too much oatmeal, too much grey, too much blech.

BUT - and this is where my shoe addiction becomes important - because I really didn't NEED another pair of shoes - I HAD to buy these today:



The photo doesn't even do them justice. They are so freaking cute. And I'm going to wear them with the most adorable cobalt blue baby-dollish type dress and black opaque tights on Saturday night... Because it's alright for fighting - but it's also alright for looking super duper adorable. A perfect fall outfit - hopefully for a perfect fall evening.

Think....

Something new here.

Those Days...

There are days when I long for a moment of true Zen...

I write about those days here... Hope you all will check it out.

In other news... The diabetes meets spider bite rollercoaster continues. I finished up with the steroid cream for the bite - and reduced the gigantic basal rate - but I can't figure out what the hell is happening. I've had several in-ranges, a 28 mg/dl, a 210 mg/dl and a host of other bouncy sugars in the past couple of days.. Ack!

La La La

Yeah. I got bit by a spider yesterday. I still have the creepy crawlies. I ended up at the Urgent Care to get epi and antibiotic... These thing were given in my body's biggest muscle. And I'm not talking about my brain. Ack! Stingy. Ouch.

Steroid cream has calmed the rash on my leg from the allergic reaction, but my bloodsugars are being kept in line with a drastically increased basal rate and correction ratio. Ug.

New pump arrived this morning. I have been directed that I MUST send back both the broken 1800 and the 1700 that I had kept when they sent my upgrade. I'm not feeling confident, given the 1 month lifespan of my first 1800. Also, since my infrared adapter doesn't work anymore, I have to program everything by hand. Double Ug.

For those interested readers, a couple of new things here: Think On Things...

And although I have nothing new at Blogabetes, my fellow bloggers do - check them out, please... I'll be posting something new tomorrow.

Guess whose pump died?

Again.

The new one.

The upgrade.

That is one. month. old.

Gr.

This sucks.

And why exactly does my pump always decide to do this on the weekend?

I Run For Life

"They cut into my skin, they cut into my body, but they'll never get a piece of my soul."

This song, played at Making Strides in Providence today, is amazing. I'm sure many of you have heard it.

Bob and I talk often about certain artists that have voices that are rather otherwordly - not only that you know right away, but that touch something in your core. They are goosebump artists. Melissa Etheridge, in my opinion, is one of those artists. She clearly writes and performs from her heart - exposing her weakness, her strength, her everything.

This video isn't the best quality and you'll have to get over Oprah's little dance, but if you imagine this song playing as more than 10,000 people start out walking - running - for life, for those they'd lost - and those who still fight, for hope - you'll get an idea of the kind of day I had.

Inspiring. Beautiful. Exactly what I needed.

This Weekend is All About the Ta-Tas....

The boobies, the bazongas, the breasts.



A warm thank you to everyone who has supported my efforts so far - both online and offline.

If you can - and you haven't - and you want to - please consider making a gift to support my efforts in the fight against breast cancer with Making Strides Against Breast Cancer in Providence.

This year, I walk for my Aunty Kaye, who has been battling the disease for years. And for her daughter, who, we found out last weekend has waged her own war in silence and may be in the final throws.

Do it for the ta-tas.

Crashing Birds and Another Venue

As I readied for work this morning, I heard a loud "thump" coming from the living room. I recognized it as one of the wild birds that frequent our feeder crashing clumsily into our front picture window. It happens with some frequency, this kamikaze throttling. Thankfully, we’ve only had two birds actually die from their crashing into the glass - typically, they simply shake their stunned selves off and take to the skies again.

Traits of evolution and adaptation account for why birds fly into our windows. Birds don’t see things as we – and other mammals – do. Most have eyes set on either side of their head, to give them a wide field of vision – which helps them to see predators and survive. This advantage, though, comes at the expense of the depth perception that results from the overlapping fields of view produced by eyes that are narrow set. Because of their lack of depth perception, birds are unable to recognize reflections as such. They believe the reflections to be sky, clouds, trees, birdfeeders, or other birds and they believe they can fly into those things – or attack them, as the case may be. The way birds perceive color only furthers the trouble between these flying creatures and our windows. Colors are brighter and more intense seen through the eyes of a bird – so reflections don’t have the same muted, faded coloration that they have for humans and other mammals. To a bird, a reflection might have the same lifelike quality that a well-conceived and well-painted portrait has for us.

I thought of my bird friends and their window attacks this morning on my way to work. And I thought of how I am so much like them – in some ways. I mean, I’ve never walked into a window thinking I was headed toward something other than glass – but I’ve certainly spent parts of my life striving for things that, in the end, turned out to be stunning, disconcerting, disappointing, and unexpected. I’ve certainly flown like the wind toward something that looked attractive, beautiful, or threatening – I’ve flown toward those things with intensity – wanting to have them or to destroy them - and in the end hit my head – or my heart - on a figurative pane of glass. And, much like a bird who has already flown into a hundred windows or more, my very nature – the way I’m made – keeps me from learning my lesson. Over and over, I strive for the reflection - of myself, of the boundless sky, of a world that seems brighter and bigger and better, and I land up crashing – hard – into a boundary I couldn’t have fathomed.

I wish sometimes that I could change the way the vision of my heart works – that I could put up defenses against my own desire for more, my own natural tendency to see so much of the world, my own inability to know when something is not what it seems. And I wish, sometimes, that people would pull down the blinds of their hearts, and that ideas could shade themselves more effectively, making boundaries more clear to me, not tempting my crash into something I couldn’t see. My heart hurts from the bumping, thumping – and I fear, that one day, I’ll crash and not recover – that my heart will simply wither and cease to fly altogether. As much as I don’t like crashing, I believe that a critical injury that would keep my heart from soaring – and the inevitable and resultant shut down of my heart, would be far worse.

So, I’ll fly like the birds (What else would I do? Like the birds, it’s all my heart knows, that state of flight) – taking as much care as I can to shirk my natural and somewhat dangerous tendencies. I’ll do my best to look before I leap into something that might be simply an illusion. And when – (because it’s really not an if, it’s a when) – I crash, I’ll do my best to get up and fly again – and I’ll remember that unlike the birds – I get more out of the crashes than a stunned moment – I get a lifetime of experiences – both good and bad – that feed my soul.

****
This piece is a sample of what I'll be writing at a new venue - Think On Things . I'm keeping this place private - so, if you're interested - drop me an email or leave a comment and I'll add you to the readers list. I will need an email address affiliated with blogger to do this.

I'll be putting up meditations, thoughts, poetry, and other things there.

Also - if you're interested in writing a piece for the venue - philosophy, theology, poetry, short stories, anything that you don't want to put up at your blog or that you'd like thought/feedback on, are welcome - let me know and I'll add you as an author.

Posting Machine - Better Late Than Never - Word Geek

OK - so why didn't this make it to the blog back in July when I wrote it? Distraction? Idiocy? Who knows... But here it is now - for your reading pleasure....I even went back and found the relevant links so that it made sense...

Merriam-Webster just came out with its new word list...

Here it is:

1. agnolotti
2. Bollywood
3. chaebol
4. crunk
5. DVR
6. flex-cuff
7. ginormous
8. gray literature
9. hardscape
10. IED
11. microgreen
12. nocebo
13. perfect storm
14. RPG
15. smackdown
16. snowboardcross
17. speed dating
18. sudoku
19. telenovela
20. viewshed

If you go here, you can find definitions for all twenty "new" words.

I love - and I know you will too, Shannon and Kerri, that "smackdown" made the list. For those who have to refer to the link to get a definition - I'll use the word in a sentence (or sentences) - "Kerri laid the smackdown on diabetes during her recent rafting trip." and "Shannon lays the smackdown on grown men when she triathlons."

My other favorites this year: Bollywood, perfect storm, speed dating and sudoku.

I'm a sudoku maniac...

The word that was most jarring for me this year was IED - Improvised Explosive Device.

Oh, this list seems rather cheap though. Shall we try to use them all in a paragraph? Maybe not... But here's a couple of good opening sentences if we were to try:

I went to Bollywood last year, just after the perfect storm, where I met up with two ginormous speed dating freaks who were eating massive bowls of agnolotti. They weren't much fun, the two freaks, with their secretive ways, they went to the bathroom a lot too - like diabetics who liked to crunk. In the end, I decided that they must be secret agents with lots of gray literature about IEDs to discuss and I retired to my hotel to watch a telenovela and lay the smackdown on a five-star sudoku puzzle.

Demolition

I'm really not much of a poet... But I've had some lines running through my head and figured I'd try to use them. Since I know folks will ask - it's about the loss of a friendship. So here they are...

I built a shelter in my heart
Where you stayed with me on nights it was cold
You would lie beneath the blanket of my comfort
And take refuge in the words I spoke, soft and clear
The shelter constructed of shared experience and mutual respect,
Of support and dreams, it stood strong and inviting
Sometimes, you would stay for an hour, sometimes a day
And when we left to venture back into the stormy, dark weather of life
I didn’t weep, because I knew we would return
And when we did, I took solace in lending you my safe space

Though I knew you’d never stay for good,
I thought that I would always keep our shelter warm and ready
Assuming it was the one place where we were truly secure
Assuming you felt the same
Telling myself lies in the face of the obvious, painful truth
All for the sake of those hours I felt out of harm’s way
Realizing and ignoring that you took shelter where you could
That you found company and comfort where you could
That my words were nothing special
And your replies were never really mine

Even as you faded
Even as you waned
Even as you came less often and less open,
Those days I couldn’t bear to take down the walls of that place
I couldn’t think of letting my heart release you for good

But things have changed.
Now I believe you were never really as weak or as needful as you seemed
Nor as warm or as comforting as I had perceived you to be
It’s funny what people do when they feel cold
Searching for anything to provide warmth

You should never have stumbled into my shelter
I should never have opened the door

The Dear John Letter I've Always Wanted To Write

Over at Blogabetes today, I've written a Dear John letter. Yeah, I know you're curious. Just like me.

So - go check it out, will you?

What do you think?

Diabetes?




OR


Or maybe a little of both? Please check out my post at Blogabetes today - it was a hell of day.

Beautiful Dreamers....

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. - Virgina Woolf



My fellow dreamers. Please take a look at this post over at Blogabetes. It's about dreams and the effect? that bloodsugar level has on them.

Would love to see your thoughts and opinions!

Transformations...

What has diabetes done for you lately?

Are there pieces of yourself that without diabetes in your life, you may never have discovered or nurtured? Do your efforts at good control bring out sides of yourself that you didn't know existed - or that you had underestimated?

Please pop on over to Blogabetes - and take a look at today's post about the evolution of my Numbers-side...

Then tell me - there or here - what sides of YOU have popped up in relation to your having diabetes?