Workout Help

I have discovered that having a puppy is a great way to keep up with one's workout schedule. A few months ago, Doug brought home a completely adorable cocker spaniel puppy that had survived a pretty abusive ordeal at the hands of not-nice owners. So we were happy to give this new critter a home.

Lemme tell ya: I have never seen a creature that just NEVER runs out of energy! She practically bounces off the ceiling. The plus side is that she loves to go out on walks with me. She's a favorite amongst the neighborhood kiddies. She also gets along with our 9-month-old kitten.

I think Stella would drag me at 20 MPH if she thought she could get away with it. She's also been unintentionally helpful in getting rid of clutter since she chews and shreds the crap out of anything she finds on the floor. She also likes to eat old paperback novels. And wallets. And stuffed toys. And DVDs. And cell phones. She also likes to chew up my socks and chew on my fingers. Egads!

I'm hoping that when she is bigger she can come on power-walks on the NCR trail. As it stands, when I go on a 3-mile neighborhood walk, I usually end up carrying her the last mile home.That would be pretty cool.

Some Family Worries

I haven't been posting lately because I've had a lot on my mind. First and foremost, I didn't know where my mom was for six weeks. No one told me she was in the hospital. My sister is basically MIA and my brother's cell phone got cut off. So I kept calling mom several times per week for the past 1.5 months until I finally reached her.

::sigh::

My brother and sister are about useless.

So mom was in a rehabilitation center because her weight had dropped to 77 pounds. Now it's back up to 92. Her target weight for her height is 100 pounds. She did sound a lot better than she has in nearly a year. But I feel bitterness towards my brother and sister for being so useless.

Doug (my spouse) has to be away for a week soon. His mom is having a surgical procedure done on her shoulder so she will need Doug's help for about a week after the surgery.

It really seems like my family (apart from Doug and his mom) will basically cease functioning as a family once mom dies. She is the only thing that me, my brother, my sister, and my uncle Jimmy have in common. I have a seething hatred for Uncle Jimmy (he's a millionaire but mom has to use food stamps for groceries because he won't give a dime to his terminally-ill sister). My sister is a lying, cheating, money-grubbing sociopath that has never done a day's honest work in her life (she's done quite a bit of dishonest work, however, since she was a loan shark for a few years as well as a check forger). My brother... well... I just don't know what's the matter with him. He has an exceedingly high IQ, is creative and funny, but he can't hold down a job for more than a few weeks. We also don't have much in common since he is about 14 years younger than me.

So, it just seems that it is unlikely that any of the four of us will have any reason to talk to each other once mom dies. It's a shame. I really would like to have a family. I sure didn't have one growing up. Dad was a sexual sadist who showered me with ceaseless, withering derision. Mom was a raving, histrionic drunk. They both cheated on each other. They both used their children as living weapons against each other. I may be genetically related to my mom and dad, but they utterly failed to fulfill the role of "parents" by any reasonable definition of the word.

And so it really feels like I don't have a family in the traditional sense.

I am grateful, however, that I have family in the non-traditional sense. I am very happy that I have Doug in my life and that we were finally able to get legally married last year. I have Doris and Clint -- two very dear friends that are very much *like* family. I have a best friend named Jeff that is as close to being a brother as two unrelated people can be. My "real" family rarely failed to fail.

It's funny how life works out sometimes, eh?

Since the world didn’t actually end this weekend

I was on vacation last week so I was pleasantly surprised that Baltimore was actually NOT a smoking, depopulated ruin. Huzzah! I rolled into town and found that it was pretty much the exact same way I left it. So I guess that the Christian fundamentalists were wrong about the “Rapture”… again.

Seriously, however, the thing I’ve always wondered is why do Christians want God to destroy the planet and murder seven billion people.And why would a loving God who knows that human beings are flawed (but willing to try hard) suddenly decide to kill everyone? It never made any sense to me.

What does make sense in a diabolical way is how the Church stokes up fear and hate in order to make a quick buck. From what I read online, Harold Camping (mastermind of Family Radio and the May 21st Doomsday) made a $30 million profit on the latest doomsday scare. People quit their jobs. People gave him their life savings. People severed ties with loved ones. For what?

I think there’s a lesson to be learned here. My take on the May 21st “Judgment Day” is this: Maybe the universal deity did judge humanity. Maybe deity decided that it’s okay to have a world filled with both gays and straights, monotheists and polytheists and atheists, liberals and conservatives, smart people and idiots. If everyone were just one religion, one ideology, one orientation, and one level of ability, the human race would be stagnant. Humanity might have its share of problems, but it is NOT stagnant!

I have a hard time believing that deity would consider a prayer aimed at Allah to be inferior to a prayer to the Goddess, or a prayer honoring Shiva is inferior to a prayer to Jesus. How we honor each other and how we honor deity is much more important than the name we use when addressing deity.

Perhaps the “judgment” is that we, as a species, still have lots to learn, plenty more to experience, and have many more avenues for growth before we’re ready for the next stage of development. But I do believe that, whatever the future brings, we are loved by deity and that deity will occasionally nudge us in the right directions so that we can become what we were destined to become. We will not be “left behind” because deity is already with us all the time – within us now, in the ecology, in rocks and seas, in the stars, and in all the possible unseen dimensions. We will never be abandoned, found unworthy, or banished by deity. And that, my friends, seems to be the “Judgment” that came down this weekend.

Blessed be

Happy and Blessed Beltane

Ok… this is a bit late, but here goes.

Last weekend was a super-Wiccan weekend for me. I had a really nice time. On Friday, we had our Beltane service at Turning Circle. It was actually a two part service, with one part being Friday night and the second part (the May Pole dance) set for Sunday morning. On Saturday night, Doug and I led a Beltane service for Candles & Cauldrons. Very life-affirming.

On the fun side, Turning Circle scheduled a “field trip” to the Pennsylvania Fairy Festival. It was really great going to an event where being Pagan/Wiccan was the *norm* and not the exception. There was a May Pole dance there that all the Pagan kiddies attended. There were a few totally awesome Pagan rock bands (I bought a CD from Telesma).

This weekend was a super-workout weekend as opposed to a super-Wiccan weekend. I did 44 mils of bicycling over a three-day period. I was pretty happy about how much Druid Hill Park has been upgraded over the past three years. The park services removed a lot of dead trees and planted new trees in their place. The bicycle paths are smoothed out. There are more goodies being sculpted. I can’t wait to see the next set of improvements. A few years ago, the park was a real dump, full of druggies and muggers. You won’t see them now (at least not during the day!)

Weekend Super-Workout

So… last year I was prescribed some dreadful heart medication that not only didn’t treat the heart condition successfully, but it made me gain 30 pounds in a 60-day period. So after two months of feeling like an appliance with dead batteries, I junked the heart meds and felt a lot better a week later. After about six months of moderately-intense exercise, I lost 15 pounds of the 30 pounds that the meds made me gain. I’m starting to almost feel “trim” again.

Lemme tell ya: I think most doctors these days are pill pushers because they are afraid of getting sued. I’ll take a prescribed medicine if it actually works, but if the side effects are worse than the condition it’s treating, I junk it.

This weekend, I walked 14.4 miles on Saturday at the NCR trail, and I did 14.4 miles on my bicycle today. Over a 7-day period, I’ve done a little over 3,000 calories worth of exercise. Obviously my heart can’t be in that bad a condition if I can do all that! Screw the pills!

I currently weigh 195 pounds. My vegetarian diet also got my blood pressure down to normal range (so maybe I don’t need the pills anyway!)  Before the meds, I weighed 180. At least I have my stamina and metabolism back. My goal is to weigh 180 again by the end of summer. I am pretty sure I can do it since I have pretty high willpower.

If you believe in the Rapture, why can't I have your cash?!

Apparently the latest "doomsday" for fundamentalist Christians is May 21, 2011. I've seen billboards all over town. Seriously! It even says "the Bible guarantees it!" So, I thought to myself, "Self? I'll bet those churches have a lot of money that's going to simply go to waste starting May 22, 2011". After all, I figured, the churches won't have any parishioners or clergy left. They'll all be up in Heaven. What's a Wiccan like myself to do?

I came up with what seemed to be a logical solution. The churches that believe in the Rapture could send me all their money via PayPal, with a preset transaction date of 5-22-2011. After all, they won't be here and we Pagans will be. And given that Pagans and Wiccans are the true stewards of the Earth, I figure that I could plant a whole lot of trees and flowers with the unused cash being hoarded in the Rapture-believing churches. I would also be able to properly care for my mother (also Pagan) who is dying of a terminal illness. And aren't Christians supposed to care about the sick and the dying?

So I wrote to the pastor of the local Rapture-believing church that had put the doomsday signs all over town. I politely explained that I, as a Wiccan, won't be getting scooped up to heaven in six weeks but would certainly look forward to doing some ecological renovation in the Baltimore area -- if only I had the financial backing. And I pointed out that the pastor and his flock *certainly* wouldn't be needing all that money in heaven!

Would you believe that the pastor turned down my request? Really! He dismissed the idea right out of hand. One might think (and surely only the most cynical of minds would think) that perhaps the pastor doesn't really believe that every Christian is going to get an Escalator To Paradise in six weeks. Oh Reverend of little faith! I'll bet that he hasn't stopped doing weekly collections on Sunday either. Maybe he thinks he can take the money with him, ha ha!

The blows keep coming

There isn’t really a roundabout way to say this.I spoke to my mom two days ago and she told me  she plans on killing herself soon. She has been terminally ill for three years. Her doctors originally gave her six months to live when she was diagnosed with COPD three years ago. I am grateful for the fact that she has had 2.5 years more than I had thought she would have. But that extra time has worn her down. She is very ill, very frail, and she said that she is coming very close to the limits of her endurance for pain, sickness, and relentless fatigue.

I will not, of course, blame her if she chooses to end her life. She has nothing to look forward to other than more sickness, pain, and fatigue. Her condition can only get worse.

I just don’t understand how my brother and sister can still smoke cigarettes after seeing how sick it has made our mother. I just don’t get it. She is dying a lingering, horrifying death and yet those two keep lighting up. It’s just unbelievable.

It frustrates me so much to know that mom is so sick and there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it. She smoked two packs a day for 40 years and drank a quart of vodka per day for 40 years. And this is the result: incurable lung disease, congestive heart failure, edema, and the beginning stages of renal failure. I wouldn't wish this illness on my worst enemy.

It also frustrates me that the people who most desire to help mom (that being my brother and myself) have few resources to offer. My brother and I are not doctors, nor do we have jobs that pay very much. We are unable to help mom financially either. She has to receive food stamps and housing assistance. I feel deeply ashamed that I usually have less than $20 in my account by the time we pay our bills. I get my bills paid on time, but there is so rarely anything left. I haven’t had a raise in three years. My brother is in a similar position.

The flip side, of course, is my knowledge that there are two family members with the resources to help but refuse to lift a finger to help my mom. I have an uncle who is a millionaire and he has literally not parted with a single dollar to help mom. Yes, that’s right, he is willing and able to let his own sister subsist on food stamp vouchers and Medicaid instead of paying for better food and better physicians. What a fine Christian he is. Then there is my sister. She had been helping mom with mundane tasks like shopping and errands. But she decided to abandon mom on Christmas Eve so that she could go back to Tennessee. No one has heard from her in four months. Personally, I don’t care if I ever hear from her again.

I’m not sure how my brother and I will pay for mom’s funeral. Fortunately, mom decided that she wants a cremation. But it is a forgone fact that my uncle won’t part with a penny to help pay for the funeral.