Scattered Thoughts . . .

The weather and my health cooperated for a change so Sheila and I managed to have a relatively productive weekend. We cleaned up the yard and then I seeded the necessary areas of the lawn (lots of them for some reason) while Sheila cleaned up the flowerbed all around the house.  I pulled out the lawn mower and cut the lawn.  I worked on the putting green and added seed again.  Sheila cleaned the playhouse for the grandchildren.  I did some pruning and clearing some new growth of Sumac saplings (we hate this invasive, nasty, ugly, weedy tree).  I turned on the outdoor plumbing and found that we have a couple of very leaky ball valves.  I'll need to pickup a couple of those so I can replace them.  I had hoped to get to some woodworking but I never got to that.  The yard is looking good for this time of year though. We had two solid weeks of rain but, oddly, everything was still very dry.  The lawn mower was kicking up a dust cloud everywhere I mowed.   My bone pain and joint pain is

Whenever I go through periods of poor health, I struggle with finding ways to feel productive, useful and even nonburdensome to those around me. As any chronically ill patient will attest, far too often I'm feeling too lousy to accomplish enough to stave off feelings of inadequacy during these periods and it is incredibly difficult to find ways to feel productive. Physically, during these periods, you are fighting off pain and a complex and constantly changing myriad of debilitating symptoms. Mentally, you are fighting off being bored to the point of tears because whenever you are feeling lousy, you are sort of in a vacuum getting nothing accomplished. Emotionally, you are fighting feelings of inadequacy, being a burden and being unproductive... you struggle with not having a purpose... you even struggle with the grief of losing the healthy, strong and pain-free body you once had, the active life you once had, the career you once had... let's just say that struggling with gri

The title of this blog entry is almost meaningless since art projects are about the only thing I accomplish since developing Systemic Mastocytosis. Art has many forms and I do try to stay active in many... drawing, painting, photography, videography, music and even designing and building things like models and renovating our home.  In this case, the illness I am referring to is this miserable lingering cold (12 days at this point). I occasionally have periods of clear thinking that are driving me crazy because I am so bored (I need to stay productive and creative) but I'm still not well enough to tackle anything of significance. During these fleeting periods of clear thinking over the past few days, I've been trying to draw and paint. This particular art project is a sketch of the Empire State Building. I already created a matching piece  of the Chrysler Building   a few months ago and it is now hanging on a wall in our newly renovated bedroom. I plan to hang this new sk

The past week has been quite lousy as far as my health goes... and, as a result, I've accomplished almost nothing this week. This morning, however, was finally a productive morning! I can't begin to explain how good that feels! First, I did some weed-whacking... then mowed the lawn. The weather is considerably cooler this morning so I managed to mow the lawn and be able to breath. Usually, I am struggling to breath when I cut the lawn... weak... close to losing consciousness... my health crashing... I finished with the lawn by 9:30 am and still felt pretty good, relatively speaking. The sign of a good, clean caulking job... a nice wide bead yet it is invisible! Since it was only 9:30 am and I was still feeling fairly well, I decided to get some work accomplished in Adam's old bedroom. It still needs another coat of paint... two colors... but I decided to tackle something I've been putting off doing. The windows needed to be re-caulked.  Before I could re-caul

When it comes to art and creativity, I've been in a deep rut lately. I just can't seem to produce anything which pleases me. I'm one of those people who must be feeling fairly well and be in the right frame of mind to create or even attempt anything artistic, including creating music. As you can tell from some of my latest blog entries, my health has been rather lousy lately and this has spilled over into everything I attempt to accomplish. My health was no different this morning than it has been lately... I awoke feeling worn out, exhausted, my ability to think clearly was a muddled mess. I know I'm in pain (I think my bones are hurting deep inside) so that doesn't help matters any. My mood has been quite poor lately as well (car problems I don't want to deal with, prescription medication problems which are frustrating and causing me to run out of a few important medications compounding my health problems, not having the energy to do the things I want to d