I'm not sure I'm ready for this

I just got home from work and in today's mail is a save-the-date card from Mr. A's niece, who's getting married this summer. On a cruise ship in Mexico.

They had been planning to do it right here in my quaint little town. People come from all over the world to get married here and it's got all the accommodations, services, romantic locations, leisure activities (etc.) that people want to build in to their destination weddings. I loved that idea – celebrate the wedding and party with the family, and head home on my own schedule, to sleep in my own bed. I even could've ridden my bike to the ceremony!

The only trouble is, the day they picked for the wedding has turned out to be on the same weekend as some ginormous NASCAR thing, and the whole town is booked. Rescheduling the wedding is not an option. So Mexico it is.

I'm fine with it, I guess, except the cruise ship part doesn't really sound that fun to me. Most of my impressions of cruise ship life, I will admit, were formed while watching endless reruns of The Love Boat during my formative years ... and maybe it really isn't like that. Still, I can't help envisioning it as a small-scale Las Vegas on the water, except that unlike Las Vegas, you can't leave when you want to – you're basically trapped in a gigantic hotel in the middle of the ocean. Lots of noise and activity, strange, perky people everywhere trying to convince me to do "fun" things I have no desire to do, no place to escape for privacy except back to the room which has a weird smell and/or no fresh air ...

When I imagine a fun vacation, I think of hiking in the shade of enormous redwoods in a cool, silent forest carpeted with moss and ferns. Or walking up a foggy, boulder-strewn beach with the dogs, toward a rustic cabin with a huge fireplace and a long shelf of interesting books. Mesa Verde and Arches were fun. A snowed-in ski lodge could work, if there were enough food that we didn't have to leave (and I could bring my own pillows). I could be convinced to try the tropics, as long as I was sure I wasn't going to be stung by a poisonous sea animal, sunburned, or forced to drink margaritas.

But – this is not a vacation, exactly. It's a wedding! And I do love weddings. And aren't I the one who's always reminding myself to break out of my routines every once in awhile and try something different, something to broaden my horizons and reawaken me to the wonder and beauty that is my own life? Surely on a boat that size there must be at least a few things I could enjoy doing – there's a pool and a hot tub, and a bistro, and a yoga class, and if nothing else it might be nice just to sit in a deck chair and read.

And I guess at some point the ship docks in Mexico and you can get off and look around on shore. I can just imagine the kinds of shopping and tourist-oriented activities they'll have set up for people to do though ... not really my bag. When I picture exploring Mexico I usually think more of jungles, mountains, ruins, villages – you know, like Che Guevara, or Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg in On The Road. Not "Ye Olde Tequilarium, Sombrero Shoppe & Tanning Beds, Inc."

On the other hand – Mr. A hates to travel, and June is going to be busy for both of us already, and this is not going to be a cheap trip. Maybe we'll end up not going at all. Maybe we'll just send a really, really nice present instead, and take them out for dinner after they get back from their honeymoon.

Or maybe we'll go and it'll be super fun! Most everyone I know who's ever been on a cruise has said it was a blast. I'm going to keep my mind open.

Back to our regularly scheduled stupidity

Okay, time for some diversion. The search for the ultimate badass boots has been resumed, and today I came across these beauties:


Oh my.

Actually I'm thinking just the regular old shortie engineer boots ought to do just fine.

Although really, if the winter continues the way it's been going so far, I'll be back in sandals before I get a chance to break these babies in. It was over 85º here today, with more warmth forecast for the rest of the week. In fact, it's 10:30 at night right now, and the thermometer in the middle of our back yard reads 71º!

This might sound great to people who are trapped in snow or ice or freezing wind, but actually it's kind of scary. Where's the rain this year? Last night I walked all the way across a creek that's usually waist-deep at this time of year – without getting my feet wet. It's not just that the water is low. There is no water.

Mr. A is in the know about things like this and he says that actually the snow pack and other sources are at about 90% of their usual levels for mid-January – it's just that the water table's so low, all the snow melt is percolating straight into the ground instead of flowing on the surface. And actually, the creek we live on is still flowing under the ground – you can see a few inches of water seeping out in at least one or two places where the creek bed takes a dive.

I'd still like to see some rain again though.

Living in the body

It seems like for the last several weeks all I've been doing is waking up, going to work, and then – the day really begins – with these amazing bike rides home.

It's what I live for right now. I can't believe how good it feels.

For many years people told me that endorphins were better than drugs, better than anything. I never believed them.

If I believed in regrets I would consider regretting all the years I wasted Not feeling this good every single day.

Today Mr. A and I threw the bikes in the truck and drove over to Napa, spent the afternoon riding up and down the river in the sunshine. Shared a pulled pork sandwich, a diet Coke and a long embrace on the waterfront.

Tonight I rode into town to meet a group of friends for a birthday celebration – drinks, dinner, dancing at a bar. I haven't been to a real bar like that in ten years, easy. Everybody was young, the band was your typical rock bar band, I watched the competition for World's Strongest Man on the tv over the bar while dancing but not drinking. Nevertheless my friends made a great fuss over the fact that I was planning to ride home instead of taking a cab. But that moon – how could I not ride under that incredible moon?

Has it really always been this easy to feel this way? I think back over all the years I spent struggling with clinical depression, anxiety, unbearable darkness .... Was all that really necessary?

I learned a lot from those experiences, though I hope never to repeat them. I'm so grateful for what I'm learning now, as well. About trusting the body. Taking care of first things first. Speaking my heart. Letting go of what doesn't matter.

Letting go of what does matter.

I said goodbye today to someone who's meant a lot to me for a long time. He gave me a choice between friendship with him, and honesty with myself. I choose the obvious.

It's the only thing I can do. Even though it breaks my heart to lose him.

I'll miss you, man.

Unmindful me

This one starts with a quote – the Fourth Wonderful Precept:

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and to relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.

Yesterday something reminded me of my friend who assaulted my other friend in November, and I decided to go back and re-read the emails I sent to the group right after the shit hit the fan. I was really surprised at how angry and condemning my messages sounded, and dismayed to find in them almost no trace of the kindness, compassion and willingness to listen and engage even in the face of great obstacles that I have supposedly been trying to integrate into my life for lo these many years.

The opinions I expressed then have not changed, but my feelings have, somewhat. Now that the shock has worn off a bit and the reality of the situation is sinking in – this person is never going to be in my life the way he was before, if at all – I'm still angry, but mostly just sad. To try to work through it, I've been reviewing the whole situation again, looking for ways I might channel those kinds of feelings in a more positive direction if I ever have to deal with something like this again. Which I really hope I don't. But – things happen. I know so many people who've been molested or abused, or victimized in some way by someone they trusted ... you can't always just cut the offender out of your life and forget about them, even if you wanted to. And even if you could, that doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

I've read probably hundreds of books about how people heal from the various kinds of damage we all experience. But this incident has re-ignited my curiosity about how perpetrators might also be healed. A few years ago I read this book on engaged Buddhism and restorative justice (among other things), which I've just started reading again. In the introduction, the editor talks about how easy it is, in our eagerness to alleviate suffering in the world, to try to "leapfrog over our own situation – as if the pickle we ourselves are in doesn't count." As an example she mentions Mrs. Jellyby, from Dickens's Bleak House (one of my favorite books of all time) – a woman who spends all her time working for the education of African natives, while her own children fall ill from neglect.

That made me think. What does all my study and practice really mean, if the moment somebody I care about fucks up – really seriously fucks up something that really matters – my only "official" response is to angrily condemn their actions and sever the friendship and never speak to that person again? Even if those relationships can't be repaired, there must still be some way to ... I don't know. Let go of the anger? Say good-bye with love? Forgive? What does that mean, exactly? How do you actually DO that? And what do you do afterwards?

I keep coming back to that phrase, "to speak ... with words that inspire self-confidence, joy and hope." What would those words have been, under those circumstances? I've felt haunted by the memory of several different moments during that weekend when I wanted to say something about what was going on, and decided not to. Why did I do that? To put it in the plainest terms, it was because I valued my own comfort more than my friend's distress. I felt concerned, but also annoyed at him for making people uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable. I felt compassion, and I also wanted to control his mood so everyone could enjoy the weekend – and then I identified that thought as "codependent" and disengaged. I reminded myself that he's a grown man, he's responsible for his own feelings and behavior. I still think that. But it wouldn't have cost me anything to find a private moment to let him know I was aware of his pain, and offer a little support. Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference in what happened. But maybe it would have. I wish I'd done it.

The other part of mindful speech that I will be working with again for awhile is the "deep listening" part. I wonder what would have happened if I'd been willing to really listen.

Also: completeness. I was relieved in reading those emails to see that even though the feelings I expressed were extreme, I'd been able to refrain from exaggerating or overstating them. But there were other things I also felt and thought that I didn't say, that might have been worth saying. Like the fact that my own personal experience with this person has been that he's always respected the boundaries I've set, when I've made them clear. I didn't say it because it didn't seem relative to what he had just done, and because I didn't want to seem to be blaming his victims for not being clear about their boundaries – not least of all because I know many of them were clear with him. And with me. A lot of people knew about this person's "habits." So why didn't I just say what was on my mind?

My point though was that I personally have not felt exploited or abused by him, and the few times when I have felt uncomfortable about some conversation or something, he always dialed it down as soon as I said something. I felt he respected me. Was I deluded? Was he just different with me? If so, why? Why does it seem so important to understand his point of view about all this? Why do I still feel so invested in trying to work out some kind of reconciliation?

Is this the kind of thing I should not be blogging about? Is it too personal? Is it a violation of other people's privacy, even if I don't use anybody's names (even my own)? Is this unmindful speech? I somehow doubt it's going to inspire joy or happiness in the person I'm writing about, or relieve his suffering. Although I would dearly love to do that, too. First I need to get clear with my own self, and this is one of the ways I do that.

I think in this case I'm going to go with my dad's advice about mindful speech, though that's not what he calls it. He says if you're ever wondering whether or not to say something, ask yourself whether it's true, kind and necessary. If it isn't at least two out of the three, you probably shouldn't say it.

Some of what I'm saying here will probably be painful for certain people to read, but I don't think that necessarily makes it unkind. It's also true, and for me, necessary.

Sharing these thoughts in a public blog may not seem necessary to some, but that's part of my process, too. I'm going to go ahead and post this. If anyone out in the blogosphere gets any benefit from following my story as it unfolds, well ... that would make me happy.

A new tool

I had a weird day today. Everything was normal until lunch, which I later realized contained around 40 grams of carbs – almost twice as much as I'd thought. My BG shot way, way up and stayed high for over an hour, then dropped over a hundred points in about 25 minutes. It continued to drop for another hour after that, to the point where I found myself scrounging around the office for leftover Christmas candy to get me high enough to ride home without crashing.

In the end I found and consumed three stale mini truffles (for a total of 7.5 grams of carb, according to the box) and rode only as far as the grocery store, where I roamed the aisles in a stupor, in search of something more appropriate than candy to get me the rest of the way home. That was when I ran into my friend J., a fellow diabetic and one of my personal heroes, a wonderful writer and editor and all-around talented, smart, funny and compassionate person who reached into her bag and commanded, "Eat these."

Well! I was in no condition to argue. I gulped them down. As I chewed she explained that each tab has 4 grams of glucose – no fat or protein (like in chocolate) to get in the way of absorption, which is what you need when you've got to get back to your senses as quickly as possible.

I knew about the tabs but always thought they were only for people with Type 1, whose blood glucose can drop low enough to kill them. That's not the situation with Type 2, at least not with me, because my pancreas still works. Well, sort of. What happens when my BG goes too low* is that my liver goes on red alert and starts pouring glucose back in (although it's actually a little more complicated than that – you can read more about it here), resulting in a sort of boomerang effect – most unpleasant, and supposedly very destructive to nerves and capillaries and other crucial body parts.

Now that I've tried the tabs I can't believe I never used them before. I'm still stunned at how effective they were, and how fast. Within just a few minutes I was feeling totally back to normal. It's cool to know there's such an easy way to raise my BG by a predictable amount in a predictable amount of time – definitely a cool tool to add to my "wellness toolbox."

* Someone wanted to know what it's like to be low. To me, it feels kind of like watching tv in the middle of the night with the sound off. Spacey, dreamy, easily distracted ... hard to concentrate, impossible to engage. I stood in the snack aisle for several minutes staring at the cookies I knew I wanted, and couldn't make myself decide to reach out and pick them up and put them in my basket. It's easy to understand how people who are really crashing could be mistaken for drunk – a good reason to wear medical ID, just in case.

Have you ever wondered if you too might have glucose metabolism issues? If so, I strongly encourage you to stop worrying and find out for sure. This company is doing a promotion right now where they'll send you a free meter and 60 test strips (that's a lot of strips, by the way) – so click the link and get a meter, and do the test. It's easy. Do it first thing in the morning, before you eat or drink anything. Wash and dry your hands, and then test. Normal is around 85. If it's much higher than about 100 you probably ought to talk to your doctor. If it's over 140, you definitely need to go in.

Really, though, if you have serious concerns about whether you might be diabetic, you really ought to talk to your doctor anyway. Just make an appointment and get in there and find out. It's scary to hear that the answer is yes. But the earlier you know, the sooner you can start working on getting it controlled.

The reason I bring this up is because ever since I was diagnosed with diabetes, I've been surprised at the number of people who've confided to me how scared they are that they might be diabetic, too. I don't know what people want me to say to that. Am I supposed to reassure them? "Oh, never! You look GREAT! I'm SURE that YOU couldn't possibly have it." (Most people still seem to believe that diabetes happens as some kind of punishment for getting fat.) Do they want my permission to Not face their fears and live in denial while they possibly suffer irreparable but mostly totally avoidable damage to their organs, nerves and capillaries?

I've offered to help people test their blood sugars and interpret their results, and never once has anyone taken me up on it. Mostly, I guess, they either don't really want to know, or would rather handle it privately. I can't blame them for that. I felt the same way.

The point is, if you're really worried – stop it. Find out what's going on, and then deal with it. It can be done.

[steps off soap box]

An authentic exchangebetween two objects of amusement

In an attempt to mix it up a bit and get more exercise out of my daily bike time, I've been exploring some alternate routes on my ride home lately. Pedaling along at night on quiet, unlit country roads is one of my favorite things to do and I mostly feel pretty safe doing it. There are very few cars and no pedestrians at all out there – just me and my bike and my glow-in-the-dark jacket, and my bike lights. If someone wants to run out of the bushes and jam a stick in my spokes, that would be awful, but I don't worry too much about a thing like that happening; mostly what I try to take precautions against is getting creamed by a car. Being highly visible helps a lot with that, especially at night.

It does strike me as funny that a person as averse to being "seen" as I am would think nothing of walking around the grocery store in a blaring neon jacket, or riding down a long open road, all lit up like a Christmas tree. Just goes to show a person can get used to anything – good to remember.

On New Year's Eve I was heading home post-pub, and was waiting for a light to change so I could turn left onto the county road that takes me the last half-mile before the turn-off to our road. As I stood there a blue truck pulled up next to me, waiting to turn right. It was a big, practical farm truck of the kind that actually gets used to haul stuff around and pull things out of bogs, and it was driven by a big, practical-looking farm-type boy in his early 20s, wearing a straw-flecked Carhart jacket and a pair of enormous sideburns. I nodded the usual greeting, then turned back to watch the light. Then I felt that feeling you get when somebody is staring at you, and I looked again, and he was still looking at me.

My first thought was, "Did I do something stupid on the road back there? Is he going to yell at me and call me an idiot and tell me I should be riding on the sidewalk?" This has been known to happen. But it didn't happen that night. Instead, he smiled.

"You're sure all flared up!" he said.

Maybe because I'd been half-expecting abuse, it was just thrilling to hear that. It made me want to laugh with happiness! He'd obviously come up the road behind me, on a half-mile section that is straight and level, but also narrow, unlit and closely crowded with trees. And he had seen me up ahead of him, all flared up as he said, probably from a long way off. And he didn't tell me I'm an idiot. He smiled, and seemed to be amused by me. And I was amused by him, too. The truck, the jacket, the sideburns – I have a real soft spot for this style of hippie-redneck farm-boy kind of kid.

Not knowing what else to say, I smiled back and said: "Yes, I am!"

Then he did the two-fingered salute, and nodded and smiled again, and made his turn. And I did the same, and made mine.