Being sick makes you think about things.

I got screwed this weekend. I had made plans (and hotel reservations) to go to my high school reunion out-of-state. First my Sunday night plans dissolved, and then a day later I was smacked down by a sinus infection the size of Alaska (and we all know how formidable Alaska is, complete with its view of Russia) which relegated me firmly in bed. For. The. Whole. Weekend. !!!

This was a BIG deal. The trip & reunion were not only an epic mental & emotional test (PTSD-wise), but in “normal” terms, I miss my former classmates very much, and haven’t seen them since the day we graduated. I didn’t realize back then just how permanent and deep the fracture of graduation would be in the bigger picture of life.

There are people who couldn’t care less about seeing their high school & college classmates again (my mother being at the front of that line) but I’m not one of them. Social matters were heinously awkward and painful in school, but my friends have always been my chosen family. And, with age I’ve found a forgiveness and tolerance that makes me appreciate the quirks & qualities of many of the people I didn’t like when I was younger. I was genuinely looking forward to seeing everyone.

But the really big deal was the “test” part. I have been locked in a geographically & mentally tiny box for over five years now. I am finally starting to feel better, sharper, clearer and more confident. I wanted to prove to myself that I could bust geographic limits and would emotionally thrive on (rather than collapse from) seeing old friends. I was eagerly anticipating the self-confidence that would have developed as a result of the trip. But now it’s Monday morning and I am in the same old place, untested and unproven. That old familiar self-doubt and fear leadens my feet right where I’m at.

By far, the safest thing to do is just lay back into the familiar insulating fear and do nothing. Inertia. A body at rest stays at rest. It’s what I know. There is safety in familiarity and in no risk. I could float here quietly for a while and it’d be okay.

But there is this little nagging thing poking me in the side. Poke, poke! Don’t forget me! it whispers. I know what it is… it’s the world “out there.” It’s out there all the time. Waiting for me. And I want to see it. I want to feel it, experience it. It plays as colors and music and life in my mind. And I want it!!

It’s this constant war between wanting to FLY!! and the nagging heaviness of doubt that see-saws in my brain every waking moment right now. I waffle between working on forward-facing projects enthusiastically, and then mentally cowering as I’m intimidated by the expectations of success. What if I’m not strong enough to follow through? Then what? Do I fold again? Again? How can my customers — how can I — endure that again??? I don’t think I can go through that again. I think it would break me forever.

In a calculated world, a reasonable person might say not to embark on something if you can’t do it, particularly when it comes to business, because of the very real ramifications of failure. Maybe it’s just me (maybe I feel overly accountable to perfect strangers? Hmmmm…) but I have a hard time knowingly leading people down a primrose path of promises without knowing whether I can actually deliver. It feels like borderline fraud. After all, I’ve been through years of not being able to deliver. I had to break dozens of important (important to me) promises with good people, and I was crushed by the mountain of emotional wreckage from that for a long time. Since that is my most recent experience and it was supremely ugly, yeah, I’m gun-shy. Sue me.

Of course, every entrepreneur on the planet would scream “screw that!” as they ran for the surf with their hair on fire.

Of course, I’m not every entrepreneur. I’m a tender fledgling, just finding my wings after a long, long illness that kept me in a tiny, crippling cage. For years I was so sick, I couldn’t even conceive of the world outside my window. And when I tried to, it scared the shit out of me. (Literally) Think about that. Think about how small your life would be if you could only wrap your brain around the four walls around you….. or less. It puts my young, earnest desire to fly into great perspective.

I know the answer, as do you. Forward. A hop. A leap. A jump. A skip. And finally, flight. Sometimes it’s just so damn hard to push through the fear that keeps your little-birdie feet clinging tightly to the nest. But push through I will, maybe a little wobbly at first, but I will fly again. ##

Severe thunderstorm outside of Egg Harbor, Wis.

As a child I was frightened of thunderstorms. I was afraid of other loud noises too — fireworks, backfiring cars and sirens all made me jump, startled, and feel like a small wild animal being shot at. I ran to my Mom, crying, and every time she would hold me close and reassure me that they were just noises and everything was okay. I was okay.

She would carefully explain them to me. Fireworks were far away and wouldn’t get me. Backfiring cars were just noisy engines having a big burp, and they couldn’t hurt me. Sirens were from the sound of trucks that made me safe, they weren’t something to fear.

With thunder, she tried every sort of explanation, day and night. As I look back now, the nighttime explanations were probably out of sheer desperation so she could go back to sleep :) but there wasn’t going to be a wink of sleep for me. I didn’t buy any of it. Not the cold air rushing into the warm air created by the electrical discharge of the lightning. Not the angels rearranging furniture in heaven. Not Mother Nature washing away the dirt. None of it. It was loud, random, sudden, and sometimes it was way too close… and it scared the bejeezus me.

By college I’d gotten over most of the hair-on-fire fear, although I did lay awake through storms, listening intently for a tornado, and sometimes even fell asleep with the pillow over my head. The pillow, God bless it, drowned out the thunder enough that sometimes I could sleep… if the worry about a tornado didn’t keep me awake.

Strong winds & downpour from storm in Egg Harbor

In my mid-20′s I finally made pseudo-peace with the damn things. I met people who thought it was fun to hop in the truck and drive around them, reporting what they saw to the National Weather Service, all in the name of public safety. I studied and learned about them. I befriended a real Great Plains storm chaser and painstakingly read all of his accounts. I learned an appreciation and enjoyment of these great marvels of science.

But my respect fear grew large at night. Darkness cloaks wall clouds and hides tornadoes. Darkness shrouds a severe storm’s structure, hiding its telltale signs that show danger is imminent. A storm’s sneak attack is sharpest at night. That was a fear that never went away. I had zero trust for something I could not see.

In my 30′s, nighttime storms were really no biggie if I had my windows closed. (Which I usually didn’t, but quickly remedied once the thunder woke me up.)

Then came PTSD, and the quasi-truce I’d established with storms went straight out the window. Now I was a 35-year-old woman who cowered on the floor in the car, jumping at every lightning bolt, my body shaking and tears rolling down my face as I begged my Mom to ‘please, drive faster, get away from it, PLEASE!!’.  I was a grown adult wadded in a ball under the furniture, deep in the middle of the house, tucked in the safest possible place away from windows and large open rooms. I was thirty-something, jumping like a five-year-old. I was terrified.

Wowza.

Better than four years have passed since that worst point. Over time, storms have gradually become less intimidating. The sense of reason and study has slowly eased its was back into my mind, replacing the raw fear that turned me into a wadded-up panicky mess. Some days I can even chase storms near home again, although I give them wider berth and am mindful of being next to lightning magnets (and power lines). ;)

At night, I close the windows, and my eyes, tightly. The flashes aren’t as bright or startling with the lights on. The thunder rumbles relentlessly, deep into my core, speaking to a primal bit of my soul. It’s only the close cracks that still scare the bejeezus out of me, shattering that uneasy acceptance of the storm and its noise, making the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

You’ve been here long enough, storm. Go away, roll away, slink into the night. ##

Thirty-nine. Damn.

I remember when 37 arrived. I panicked. Ditto for 38.

Now at 39, well… I’m kind of quiet. It’s the last shot at the 30s. I always viewed the 30s as the decade of energy, resilience, fertility, a young family, joy, going out and doing. My 30s turned out much differently from that. I had very little of most of that for most of the decade. Maybe a smidge in the early part, but remarkably little even then. And now, I’m 39, and I can’t go back. I can’t get a do-over. I’m stuck with a laundry list of crap with checkmarks next to it. The pang of disappointment is palpable. And deep.

I’d trade all of it for one day of loving a baby… my baby. One day of happiness, highlighted by a smile from the man who lights up my world and makes my heart dance just by looking at me. I pray for a day of truly sound health, resilience and energy, for I haven’t had that in many years. I pray, period.

I’m not where I expected to be, and I’m not where I want to be. I haven’t accomplished what I wanted to do and I haven’t even started at the things that are most important to me.

39.

And yet in many ways, I’m wise far beyond 39. Not because I’ve read great books or traveled to the corners of the world, but because I’m war-torn, battle-scarred, been through the wringer (several times), made BIG mistakes, saw really bad things, drew the short straw, and finally suffered an internal hardware failure of epic proportions… not just a piece or part, mind you… the motherboard, people. My motherboard failed. Serious ugh.

Thirty. Nine.

Ryan Newman’s number, 39. There are so many new things in life that I never saw coming. If you had told me at age 10 that I’d be a die-hard NASCAR fan, I’d have laughed in your face. Or that I’d love driving, myself, and would do it for a living if I could. Or that I could name 25 little brown birds just by the songs they sing.  Or that I’d work with computers professionally, building something called “websites” that people from all around the world would read. Wow! If you’d told me that I’d be really good at deciphering the broken English of people from the Middle East, or had a client from Sri Lanka, I’d have looked at you like you’d fallen off your rocker.

I wouldn’t have wanted to know that I would hold my Grandma’s hand and sob as I watched her take her last breaths.  Nor that I would cradle two of our little kitties in my arms as they died. I’d have been astonished to learn that I’d someday know what a burned-up human being looks like because I’d seen it with my own two eyes. I’d be truly sad to learn the number of dead people I’d see by the time I was 39. Sad, and I’d probably ask, “why?”

That’s a good question, honey. Why, indeed.

39.

So many lessons would be completely lost on that 10-year-old though. She wouldn’t understand how being stripped of my business and its accomplishments was perhaps necessary to learn that true happiness comes from within, and exists regardless of stuff and plaques and papers. She wouldn’t understand how some of the deepest wounds are on the inside, or how some of the healthiest looking people are the ones who hurt the most. She wouldn’t recognize the measuring stick meted off in “baby steps” and that one person’s huge progress could be imperceptible to someone else. She wouldn’t truly grasp how you can’t run away from the gremlins inside of you no matter how hard you try or how far you go. And she’d be positively indignant how another person’s mistakes could completely screw up your life.

A 10-year-old doesn’t understand a “calling,” or that you just pick up your stuff and go when God calls you. A 10-year-old can be taught the building blocks of caring, but she cannot understand the true compassion of a woman holding the hand of a grandparent, sharing a moment of comfort, heart to heart, soul to soul, love to love… whether it’s her own grandparent or someone else’s. A child cannot understand how some people are the communicators of the world, whose job it is to teach and show others things they don’t (or can’t) see… sometimes paying the ultimate price in the course of doing so.

But every 10-year-old expects that a 39-year-old knows the answers and can take care of whatever situation they come across, and they seem to think that we snap our fingers and POOF! we’ve got it under control. Maybe they’ve got something there. Maybe at 39 there’s a certain decorum that we should have by now, and it should come fairly naturally. Maybe by 39 we shouldn’t be hellbent on making ourselves so damn miserable. How much more do we have to live through before we can finally say, “yeah, I can do that” … and do it. Calmly.

I mean, really?? If we aren’t doing that at 39, what are we doing wrong?

Thirty-nine.

The fortunate thing is that 39 is not the end of the road. (Assuming I wake up in the morning, of course)  I still have eggs, hopefully a few of them viable. I still believe that my soulmate is out there, that we will meet, and that our lives will be better for having joined them together. Every day, I heal a little more. Every day the Lord guides, protects and loves me… and calls me to serve Him by doing His work and embracing His will.

The time and experiences of 39 years create a certain calmness and reassurance. Thirty-nine years has created a colorful and rich history that keeps today in clear perspective.

Welcome, 39. Let’s make it a good year. ##

It’s Friday of 4th of July weekend, and to quote a neighbor, I can feel the peninsula slowly sinking as the great mass of tourists arrives. :) I smile because it’s a cute thought, not because I am happy all these people are here.

I feel sort of held hostage on our own property. If I value my safety or sanity, I won’t stray out there. God knows I have no desire to rub elbows with people, people, people, PEOPLE! EVERYWHERE!! People, people…

And yet I feel like I must, for some reason, lest I miss something, and don’t I need something?? Something…

I’m behind the eight ball because I slept all day today, just like I did yesterday and the day before that. I am exhausted from being PTSD-triggered much of the last 2 weeks. I know my brain is healing, and it is a relief to wake up feeling safe, just deeply tired. I’ve had a migraine/sinus thing going on the last 48 hours, but even that is no big deal compared to the junk ripping apart my head last week. What a deep relief it is to just SLEEP.

Darkness has now fallen, and unlike most people, I feel even safer now than in daylight. The tourists have brought piles and piles of fireworks with them, and they are popping off nearly constantly. Play-babies. Whatever would they do if they didn’t have things to blow up and make noise, to break up the perfect peace of our beautiful sanctuary? So glad they came up here to trample our landscape, clog our roads, and wreck the peace & quiet that they supposedly came here to enjoy! :-P

Thankfully they will take this cluster of noise and garbage with them when they leave. I keep telling myself it’s just a few days, it’s just a few days… Right? It’s just a few days!

Ahhhhh, I love living in Touristville USA. Really. I swear, I do!! LOL :)

It’s just a few days, and then normalcy will return. ##

One word: SMOOTH.

I don’t do a mass one-time operation that upgrades everybody at once. I know there are hosting co’s that have written custom scripts to do that. I don’t trust a mass script to touch & modify many websites without a person’s direct & express interaction. I believe it is imperative that a human being physically looks at the website post-upgrade to make sure it’s not broken… or if it is broken, to do some basic troubleshooting and let the site owner know what’s going on. Can you imagine opening your website one morning and finding it had been broken by an “upgrade” done by your hosting company?  UGGHHHH. No way do I want us doing that kind of thing. So I sit with my laptop, SPEED Channel on, and toggle back & forth between a terminal window and cPanel. Back, forth, back, forth. It is relaxing sort of “work” … to be honest, I don’t even consider it work.

But the actual upgrade process to WP 3 is as smooth and trouble-free as any of the version 2 upgrades were. I am really impressed with how the WP team built in so many core changes and updates, and yet they didn’t break themes, and they didn’t break the essential functionality of the script! I also haven’t yet run into a plug-in that it has broken (at least, not that I use… but I try very hard to use as few plug-ins as possible).

It literally has not added any extra steps or any work to the process. It is just like any other upgrade. :) Start-to-finish, it takes a smidge over 60 seconds to upgrade the script. Of course that doesn’t include going back & forth, marking things off on the spreadsheet, sending upgrade notifications, or cleaning out extra copies of old versions folks have tucked away here & there. (Backups are great, but there’s no technical reason to keep an old version of a script. I promise. *grin*)

If you are an Agile Hosting customer and are running WordPress, we’re happy to upgrade your WordPress to version 3 for FREE! Just open a support ticket here and we’ll take care of it right away. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s FREE :) and it won’t break your stuff. ##

Vice President Dick Cheney, fresh from his days at Halliburton, had presided over the weakening of drilling regulations, including the exclusion of remote-shut-off switches (commonly used in the North Sea oil fields), which might have prevented the disaster. The Bush Administration’s petro-bias and antigovernment sensibility soiled the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency charged with regulating offshore drilling.

An outstanding (if uncomfortable) analysis by Joe Klein at TIME.COM:

1. Pick up cat and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat’s mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand.  As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away.
4. Take new pill from foil wrap, crad le cat in left arm, holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.
5. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse in from the garden.
6. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat.  Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth.  Drop pill down ruler and rub cat’s throat vigorously.
7. Retrieve cat from curtain rail. Get another pill from foil wrap.  Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains.  Carefully sweep shattered figurines and vases from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.
8. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.
9. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans and drink one beer to take taste away.  Apply band-aid to spouse’s forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.
10. Retrieve cat from neighbor’s shed.  Get another pill.  Open another beer.  Place cat in cupboard, and close door onto neck, to leave head showing.  Force mouth open with dessert spoon.  Flick pill down throat with elastic band.
11. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges.  Drink beer.  Fetch bottle of scotch.  Pour shot, drink. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot.  Apply whiskey compress to cheek to disinfect.  Toss back another shot.  Throw tee-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.
12. Call fire department to retrieve the damn cat from the top of the tree across the road.  Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap.
13. Using heavy-duty pruning gloves from shed, tie the little *&#%^’s front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table.  Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of filet steak.  Be rough about it.  Hold head vertically and pour two pints of water down throat to wash pill down.
14. Consume remainder of scotch.  Get spouse to drive you to the emergency room.  Sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye.  Call furniture shop on way home to order new table.
15. Arrange for ASPCA to collect mutant cat from hell and call local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.

Bonus Instructions: How To Give A Dog A Pill

1. Wrap it in bacon.
2. Toss it in the air.

These fat cats (oil companies) have millions of dollars to lobby congress, have millions of dollars to buy off our (the peoples’) elected officials, millions of dollars for insane executive salaries, and they show profits in the billions every year. When is the last time you heard of an oil company taking a loss? Seriously? And people, THAT’S AFTER THEY STACKED THE BOOKS in the most advantageous way possible, to make it look like they didn’t make as much money as they did — because that’s what every business does, so they don’t have to pay a penny more taxes than they absolutely have to.

But apparently they don’t have enough money to install a damn shut-off valve. You know, like you have in your basement? Under your sinks? BEHIND YOUR TOILET? Yes, turns out our toilets are better executed than the damn oil wells.

And don’t think for a minute that these guys give a shit. They don’t. They drive around in their limos, fly their private jets, “work” from plush offices, live in their mansions… all they care about is that the housekeeper and pool boy are keeping up appearances (and spotlessly so!). When is the last time you heard of any multi-million dollar exec saying “I don’t think my company did well enough at our job this year, so I’m putting my salary back into R&D so we can do better next year.” LOL!!! Yeah, right.

I’ve had it. I am so afraid of upsetting my own shadow by doing any teeny-tiny thing wrong in business, let alone brazenly and intentionally (e.g., not “accidentally”) doing a shitty job. So I’m calling these guys out..

They have a mountain of money. If I can act with integrity and ethics on a shoestring budget, there is NO excuse for what they’re doing. Enough is enough! Let’s DO something about it. Let’s ensure the job gets done RIGHT.