Home alone for two weeks!

Yesterday morning my family started on their journey to Kenya. They won't be there yet, since it takes about 22 hours on the plane, plus time for stop-overs.

I had a very difficult weekend, seeing them get ready to leave. And then, my aunt, who has migraines and fibromyalgia, and should understand bad heath, really got on me to do more, saying that if I only wanted to do something I could. My cousin's wife, whom I met for the first time, had suggested finding a singles' group at a church, but I said that I can't drive, my schedule of being well enough to go is so erratic that I can't commit, & they usually play loud music, which really hurts me more than any other trigger. My aunt's response? I'm just making excuses not to go and should drive myself so my parents dont have to do so for me!

But I know that I'm not safe on the road. My migraines are in bad enough shape that it hurts to change where I'm looking as fast as you have to on the streets or freeway.

Then, just after I said good night to my mom and was therefore on the verge of tears, my aunt gave me a sermon, showing me how she collects little shells with heart shapes and how the shells were once rough but were smoothed and shaped by the ocean and sand. That's the same with problems in life, such as health. They shape us into better people and teach us valuable lessons. I really did not need a sermon right then!

My aunt semi-apologized to me the next morning just before leaving, saying that she knows what it is like to be left at home when her husband went to Kenya his first time. But then, she had chosen not to go, so it's nothing like the same thing!

It helped a lot to have a friend come over yesterday with her sweet 11 year old daughter. So I wasn't home alone when it really started to hit me that they were gone without me. And then I crashed as soon as they left because the stress had kept me awake the night before.

I'm just really feeling my disability all the more now that they are all going without me. And it hurts a lot. I'll have plenty to talk to my therapist about this afternoon.

Hi Vicki,

It sounds to me that your aunt was a little insensitive, especially as she has suffered with this herself. I'm sure at the time she had your best interests at heart, but still it was unfair to have a go at you. I'm glad she kind of apologised, it's good she realised she was in the wrong.

I very much agree with you that you should stay off the road if you are not safe to drive. You don't want to end up hurting yourself of have hurting someone else on your conscience. Please do not let anyone pressure you if you know yourself that you shouldn't

I don't know what I would do if one came on while I was driving. I would just have to stop, regardless of where I was. The thought terrifies me often!

Do you have much else planned for while your family are away?

How are you doing by yourself Vicky?

My daughter doesn't cope well by herself either. When she had to move to another city for work for several months she didn't enjoy it at all.

She did learn to knit and cook really well though.

Do you have hobbies that keep you occupied?

Well, I've made it through the first couple of days being alone. Mostly, I've just been sleeping lately. I had gotten so little sleep the week before they left and especially the weekend before that I really have needed it. The dogs weren't too happy to have me sleep through their breakfast yesterday, but they survived. They are a bit overweight now as it is, so I am not too worried about them.

Tomorrow a friend is taking me to the pharmacy to fill my percocet prescription. Because I have a hard time holding out and not taking all my pills too fast, my doctor prescribes it to me on a weekly basis. We arranged for her to mail them to me, but this week she is out of town, so her nurse practitioner wrote it and mailed it to me. Another nurse got involved and tried to stop her from being allowed to mail it to me, even though he shouldn't have that kind of authority. So I was going to have to go to Hollywood to get the prescription. But the nurse had already mailed it, so I have the prescription today and can get it filled in the Pasadena pharmacy instead of having to go to the Hollywood Kaiser facility to pick it up.

Saturday, the international students are coming over to go swimming and watch a DVD. So I'll have more to do then.

I also have a couple things scheduled for next week, so I'm trying to keep from being too alone. Mostly, now, I'm just trying to survive holding up with my head!

Sounds like you are doing pretty good. You have things planned which is the best way to keep your self from getting too anxious. Keep it up! You're doing great!

Isn't it a shame we are so spread out from each other? We get to know each other and care about each other, but we are worlds apart.

Although it's really funny that the closest Ronda person is fifteen minutes from me, and we have never met. We talk on the phone once in a while and have for years now. He never posted much at Ronda's. But from what little he did post, we found out we are "neighbors."

He has an intrathecal pain pump now for his migraines, and he is doing so well. It has been a lifesaver for him.

Vicki, I wish I could visit you and help you. I send you my love via cyberspace.

I hope the mission trip is awesome for all.

Cheryl

Yesterday I had to have a friend take me to Pasadena Kaiser to fill my prescription, so because I wasn't feeling well, I went ahead and had one of my morphine shots. It helped quite a bit. I wasn't as bad as I usually am when I go in, but I knew the clinic wouldn't be open on the weekend, so I'd have to drag someone to the ER, and I really didn't want to have to do that.

I've heard third hand just briefly about the group in Kenya. Some of the college students from my church found an internet cafe there, so they emailed their parents. One of those parents emailed me that they said my mom isn't doing very well. I was afraid of that, since she has fibromyalgia as well as migraines, and she had a pretty rough week before she left. I just hope they all hold up well!

vikky, as you believe in prayer you can pray for your mom and trust she will be ok. also prayng will take your eye off yourself and your difficult situation and focus on God! there are also so many good christian books aroud that you could read, maybe go on amazon or visit a book store and pick one up??

Hi Vicky. How are you today? I am glad you are hanging in there. I was just thinking about you today.

Hope your mom is feeling better.

Mary Anne

Vicki,

Praying for your mother and you.

Hal

Hey there, Vicki, just stopping in to say hi and see how you are.

How is your group from church? Have you had any meetings lately?

Hope the morphine shot helped and you are feeling better. Drop us a line and let us know how you are fairing.

The morphine shot did some good. I slept the rest of Friday and until 2:30 Saturday, when I had to get up because some international students were coming over.

We haven't had any formal meetings this summer, but we have done a LOT of informal stuff together. Just about every week we have people over for dinner and a movie.

This time, some of the students wanted to come over and get in the pool, so they came about 3:00, while the rest came with my aunt about 6:00. I prefer the water in the pool to be quite warm; 80 degrees is too cold for my taste, so I didn't do much in the pool. Jasmine really wanted to see me swim because she can't swim, and her roommate, Joyce, can't do the formal strokes. But I was too cold to put my whole head under the water. Besides, I don't generally put my ears under the water anyway because it will trigger my headache. But I did get in the water up to my shoulders.

Then, since we were tired of always ordering pizza for our meetings, I found a menu from a Chinese restaurant that advertised that they deliver. So we ordered some Chinese food, and it was pretty good! I wasn't sure if it would be too Americanized, since most of our students are from China. If you go a few miles south of us into Alhambra, you'll get real Chinese food, but in our area, it's hit or miss. This will definitely be something to utilize in the future, especially because their portion sizes were such that we probably could be fine ordering one dish for every two people, since we had so many leftovers. And that wouldn't cost much more than a pizza anyway. This will also be a useful resource to use if I'm not feeling up to cooking during one of our regular meetings during the school year. We try to cook Asian food, to make them feel at home, and I usually do my own cooking, but if I'm sick, this would be a good means of being able to order food.

After dinner, I gave them all a choice of four movies to watch: The Sting; IQ; No Deposit, No Return; and Son of Paleface (one of the funniest movies ever, starring Bob Hope, Roy Rogers, Jane Russell, and Trigger). I didn't do a very good job of selling Son of Paleface because it got no votes, but I was happy with No Deposit, No Return. That's a classic Disney movie with Don Knotts, David Niven, and Darren McGavin. Knotts and McGavin are the world's best safecrackers, but they also are the world's unluckiest safe crackers; they always end up getting nothing. They come out of retirement (where their choice had been to go straight or go broke) to rob the safe at LAX because a loan shark is breathing on them. Meanwhile, two kids are being sent to spend Easter vacation with their grandfather (Niven), and neither side likes that. So the kids convince the safe crackers to take them in, and then they send a ransom note to their grandfather to get money for the safe crackers and to go to Hong Kong, where their mother is. But since the grandfather has followed them to the safe house, he won't pay up. It's a very enjoyable, hilarious Disney movie.

We've actually been introducing our students to the older "classic" comedies. They tend to prefer comedies, so I'm stocking up on some more. So far, we have shown them The Princess Bride (not exactly a comedy, but it was for "girls' night"); It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; North Avenue Irregulars (another classic Disney comedy); and No Deposit, No Return. An older woman from our group wants to show them Singin in the Rain, which I have never seen, but she loves and thinks would be a good introduction for them to the American musical, so I have that in my shopping cart in Amazon. We'll show that when she and my parents get back from Kenya, late in August.

Then, once they left Saturday, I went straight to bed and got up only to feed the dogs and when they were barking at 1 a.m. because they really needed to go outside. I've been up since then, but will probably go back to bed soon (it's 6:14 now). It seems that anytime people come over, the next day, I don't get out of bed. That's the price I have to pay for doing something with somebody. But it's a reasonable price when I don't have so many things to do in the first place.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be going to Huntington Beach to have lunch with one of my two best friends. She has serious health issues of her own and can't drive up to L.A. to visit me, and I don't drive, so we hardly ever see each other. The last time was when my parents went with my other best friend to help her and her husband sample the food for their wedding reception. My parents dropped me off at Jessica's house then, so it's been over a year. But I haven't been able to reach Jessica, and she hasn't responded to my email, so I don't know if I'll get to see her or not. Then, tomorrow evening, a friend is coming over to watch a DVD with me. My mom and I got her hooked on the Monk series and on the Hercule Poirot mysteries. So we'll watch one of those.

And then, on Wednesday, I am going out to lunch with a high school friend. I got back in touch with him recently, and we had lunch a few weeks ago. It was the third time I'd seen him since we graduated in 1995. We had said we'd go out again when my parents were in Kenya, but I wasn't sure how much he was interested in doing so, but he contacted me! So that was a nice thing. I got afraid later that I might have overwhelmed him a bit with my migraines. But apparently not too much because we're going out to lunch again on Wednesday. To be honest, I've been kind of hoping that somehow, we'd find a spark between us because he's the right kind of guy for me to date, and he already knew me before the migraines, so I'd have a better chance of getting him interested without being scared off by the migraines. But I didn't sense much last time. But we have a lot in common, and I really appreciated the fact that he has a Ph.D. in French literature, so we had a lot in common intellectually too, since my interest is English, and they're both languages.

I'll probably try to invite at least some of the international students over on Friday or Saturday this week. It's fun for me to have them here, and they really enjoy coming. I think I'll post a separate thread on some comments I got from them that were really touching.

So thanks for your concern and prayers. I haven't heard anything more about my family. I didn't even expect to hear the little that I did hear. A friend suggested I email them and ask what is going on or ask the friend whose daughters wrote to her to ask them to tell my family I'd like to hear from them, but I suspect that they are just too busy to email again.

Their schedules have them visiting two different villages each day this week, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and teaching the same program with each. My mom already planned everything out so that the others could do the teaching, in case she wasn't well enough. They sing songs with the kids, although that is usually having them sing in their own language (and they LOVE to sing and DANCE!), so the Americans (and my Brazilian SIL) don't do that. Then, they teach them a simple Bible story, such as how God made the world or Daniel in the lion's den (my mom chose that one in particular because they really know about lions!).

Finally, they do a craft with the children, related to the story. So the first day, they make a scene of the world on a paper plate. The second day is the cute one because they make lions masks out of paper plates. The children look so cute wearing their masks and growling! And then, the second day, the people from the team take pictures of each of the children and print them out that night on full-sized printers that they took with them, so the third day, they make a picture frame and add their picture to it. That is particularly special to them because they don't have any access to having their own pictures. They don't even have electricity in the village, let alone cameras and printers! We used to take polaroid cameras, but this way is even better because you can print out really good quality pictures of the kids.

In total, they are going to four different villages and doing the same program in each of the four, so they are really busy. They'll take a day out for going on safari, since you have to go on safari if you are in Africa! I should add that my mom's group is the first and second graders, while other groups are working with other age levels.

I'll try to check in again soon! Thanks once again for your support! I've so far managed to get through this without too much difficulty.

great to hear your news, you sound like youve got an amazing social life!!!!!!