15. Friends (Evidence)

Maybe you're not like doubting Thomas, but I hope you'll forgive me if I assume if a little documentation should bolster my credibility. So I'm giving you a few pictures that correspond with some of the things I told you yesterday. (If anyone recognizes themselves in any of the pictures I post here, please forgive me if they are less than perfect in their depiction of you).


While I'm scanning the pictures, I'll continue chatting with you a bit. Here's how my morning went today, which is pretty typical. I got up and made sure I got all my morning non-oral meds (Nasonex, QVAR, Restasis). Then I pulled out my baggies of today's meds and supplements, and got out my pre-breakfast mini pill-baggie and heated my coffee in the microwave. While that was heating I got out my big glass of water and set up my stimulator and got some homemade crackers out to help me take my pre-breakfast pills. By that time the coffee was ready, so I sat down at the computer and hooked up my stimulator to wherever was hurting the most, which is often my neck, shoulders and back, as it was this morning. Then I sat down at the computer for the 45 minutes that my stimulator is set for (by my physiatrist's Rx instructions to the manufacturer). After that I could finally have breakfast, so I heated up my homemade oatmeal packets (I think I'll share the recipe with you soon) and sat down at the computer again. Only after that did I start cleaning up and getting dressed. I still haven't cleaned the nose piece and water container of my CPAP though, so I need to do that soon. After I was presentable I went out to my little garden to see how my babies (i.e., plants) were doing, I moved the hose and also noted that the food container for the stray cats was empty so I filled it and their water dish too. I just took, my temperature and it 99.3F. Grrr...


I've been fighting this bug since December and every time I undergo some treatment for it it gets better, then within a month or so it gets worse again. I see the infectious disease doctor next week, and I understand she's going to have some more tests done to try to figure out what's going on. It seems everyone's agreed though that it's something viral.


My brother in NY (we'll call him "Dr. brother) would look at me and see that I can do thus-and-so, so I must be healthy. Thankfully, though, he's not my doctor and I WON'T give him access to my medical records (although he'll later say "But I didn't know that..." He can just keep on no knowing, because he's already got a track record with me and I don't trust him any more.



Yesterday I told you that I was the maid of honor for a friend, and here's a picture of her with her bridesmaids. I'm the one to the left of center. I've since learned more about what a bridesmaid should do and I feel badly because I probably wasn't the best bridesmaid. She's very gracious though, and has never said or done anything to make me feel that way.



This next picture is taken at the buffet party I told you about where people came from north and south just for the evening gathering. Here are two friends, one from Seattle and the other from Vancouver, BC. I don't remember what they were discussing about but it sure looks like they found something of mutual interest to talk about. They didn't know each other before theatevening though.



This picture just shows both of the completed Doodle Art picture I told you about. The poster on the left is the one my friend and I were working on in yesterday's picture. I'm not an artist by any means, but I at least have a sense of color and can color within the lines.

I'm holding a pillow my first roommate made for me my freshman year of college. That roommate was really smart; she never hardly had to study but always got A's and the real frustrating thing was that she didn't particularly want a career, not that homemaking couldn't be thought of a career, but I mean one that you have to study and go to college for in order to enter the field. I think I just dug myself deeper in that hole. I'm a bit of a feminist, but I don't have any problems with women wanting to be homemakers, as I think that's very important. I just don't like it when all women are sort of stuffed in a mold and expected to be the same. Last I knew she was happily married and had something like 5 children, and I'm sure her studies helped her as a parent. But I still found it frustrating that it came so easy to her. Don't get me wrong - I'm not stupid by any means, but I'm also not a genius and have always had to work for my grades. Certain subjects, like languages, did come easier to me though than others.



This picture is my Swedish friend from high school. She was just in the States one year, but this picture is taken when she and a friend of hers came to the States a few years later and they visited me while I was in Bible school in the Midwest.



Last, but not least, here are a few friends from church from when I was in high school, on a light hike/walk that I sort of organized. Some of us were more physically active than others, but this was a walk that we could all enjoy and have fun together on.

My favorite hike of all time is Indian Henry's Hunting Ground on Mt. Rainier. Here's a link to a description of it: http://www.attrition.ws/index~Hike_Review~Indian_Henry's_Hunting_Ground_Mt._Rainier_National_Park_Washington~page~hikeoverview~HikeInstanceID~42.cfm . One time a friend from Seattle and I met my friend in Olympia there and we hiked it.

Another great hiking memory I have is from when I was in Vienna, Austria. This is actually sort of amusing, although it wasn't exactly so at the time. I invited a gal I was working with over and we were going to go for a hike in the Wienerwald (Viennese Forest), which was just about 1/2 a mile from my apartment, and then when we came back to my place we'd have a nice big bowl of chili. The only problem was that I never really figured out the trail marking system there, which I think is similar to other systems elsewhere in Europe. So we ended out getting lost. We finally came to a road and there was a sign what had a telephone number on it that we knew to be of a suburb were some of our colleagues lived! We had walked clear to another suburb of Vienna! It was getting dark by that time too, so it's a good thing we at least made it out of the woods by then. I think we ended out taking a bus back to my place, but we were really tired and hungry by then. Not one of my more successful entertaining ventures, I must say.

This was one of my fears about mushroom picking alone in Russia when I lived there. I mean, can you imaging getting lost in the Taiga - the huge expanse of Siberian forest? When I got the urge to go alone I generally stuck within ear-shot of the road between sectors of the city (a 20-25 mile long stretch of pretty much nothing but forest, with a few exceptions here and there). Needless to say, that was a well-walked trail and was already picked-over, so I never got many mushrooms on those jaunts. But that's another story...

The day is marching on, so I'd better go for now. I'll leave you with this word of wisdom: whatever you do today, try not to get lost.

~ Meg

14. Friends

I'm posting again tonight because I forgot that I'd decided to shower this evening so now I have to let my hair dry. I'm actually 3 hours later than the time stated here, which must be Pacific time.

I think I mentioned before that I had lots of friends in my youth. It wasn't until I went to work in Vienna, Austria with a mission organization (actually there were a bunch of organizations in this one project).

Before that, it seemed that everything I got involved in gave me new friends. In high school and as an undergraduate I had several parties (not the wild ones you might think of though). For example, I put on a buffet party where friends came from 3 hours north and over an hour from the south just for a one-evening party! And a lot of people didn't know each other before, but everyone got along just great!

Another time, when I was house-sitting for my grandmother, I had a pool party with lunch and all. I only remember I made strawberry shortcake with pound cake for dessert.

I also organized a couple hikes, and went on short trips with friends during that time.

I also had friends all over the place. For example, I already mentioned the Swedish exchange student, but I also met up with a Belgian friend a couple times, once in London, that I remember most specifically. I corresponded with a gal from Australia that I'd met on a 500th anniversary of Martin Luther tour in East Germany. When I lived in Austria I visited friends in Istanbul that I went to Bible school with. I could go on, but you get the picture.

That first began to change when I was in Vienna. I was asked specifically to shorten my prayer letter list. We all had to submit our prayer letters for approval before sending them out to people, and the leadership of this multi-mission group didn't like that I sent my letters to so many people. I wanted to keep in touch with these people, though, and this was a good way to do it, and the vast majority of people on my list were Christians anyway, so at the very least they could pray for me and the work I was involved in. So keeping in touch with these people became a little harder (it's not like I had massive amounts of free time). Also, sanding out the prayer letters came out of my own budget anyway, so it's not like they had to pay for the extra letters to be sent out.

Then they made it more difficult in other ways to keep in touch with friends. One really dramatic thing they did involved a couple friends who visited me in Vienna. The formal policy of the mission was to let people have some time off if financial supporters came to visit, and it so happened that these friends were also financial supporters, but I didn't get time off when they came. It was very difficult, and I would like to have spent more time with them.

Another time another friend wanted to come and asked if there was something she could do if she used her vacation time to come. Now it was not unusual for workers to have people come who wanted to help out and usually something was found for them to do, but in this case this was not even up for discussion - she wouldn't be able to help out.

Then I was going to use some vacation time to visit friends in East Germany that I'd met while studying German in West Berlin. But that was also nixed.

Then gradually I was excluded from social things at the mission and sort of sidelined in my work there too. It was really awful for me because I'd really worked hard for this career and then to see this happen.

But my life in Vienna outside the mission wasn't so bad. I went to a little German-speaking Austrian church (i.e., not an expat church) most of the time until the end when I got tired of fighting their pressures on me. I also had other friends outside the mission. One Austrian lady and I got together several times. I remember having lunch at her place and us going swimming at a public pool near her. I also had a Canadian friend there who was a music student at a conservatory in Vienna.

After Vienna I was pretty broken in spirit and that was the first big thing (not really an event) in my life that began to change my outlook, values and beliefs. So that, in a nutshell, is how I got to where I am with few friends.

I've tried throughout the years to make friends one way or another, but the constant moving around has also taken its toll and now my health makes it hard for me to do a lot, which doesn't help either.

Through all my experiences, each time learning something new and changing in some way(s) or another, I've become sort of a hybrid that doesn't really fit in anywhere ideologically. Of course, on a surface level I could probably find people to do things with and try not to get into beliefs and values, but that would be hard for me too because, as you might by now have guessed, I'm somewhat cerebral. (I'm not saying I'm a genius; just that I like to think about things).

I think the few friends I do have from a long time ago are a bit confused and might feel somewhat estranged from me. I think it would be just about impossible, though, to have gone through some of the things I have and not be changed somewhat by them.

I think that's enough on that topic for now, but my hair's still wet and it's almost midnight. I'll probably have to blow dry it some to speed it up a bit.

Good night.

~ Meg

13. Work (Part I of Who-Knows-How-Many)

So fine, that was Dad's work - for over 30 years with the same company, but what about me? What about my work? Good question; I thought you'd never ask (that's tongue in cheek, in case you didn't understand that).

I started taking French in 7th grade and took it through the 10th grade and then picked it up again in my undergraduate studies, and even took a class while studying for my second master's degree. I dropped it for 11th and 12th grades because the school levy failures (that's how schools are funded in Washington State) resulted in the loss of one class hour in my school district. So it was French I decided to cut.

But taking French made me realize that I like learning languages and then in high school I became friends with a Swedish exchange student, who I later visited in Sweden and who later visited me in the Midwest. So when I entered college I was thinking I'd go the route of international business, but then the fall of my sophomore year (I just double-checked this on my transcript) I had Principles of Accounting I, Introduction to Statistics and French. I realized then that I didn't like so much working with numbers and that that didn't bode well for me in international business. So I've always told people that I ended out dropping the "business" and keeping the "international", by majoring in European Studies.

My intention was to become a professional missionary to Eastern Europe, so after graduating I continued on to Bible school, where I studied 2 more years.

This might sound very nice and well-intentioned, but you have to remember that this was all between 1978 and 1985 and Eastern Europe was still the big Red enemy, the focus of our Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") that my dad worked with.

I don't know how much of what happened as things unfurled was related to my dad's work and how much was due to other things, but I do know that missions had their own issues, too, as you can see from that FOIA letter I posted earlier.

I do know, however, that I went in to this all very naively. I never really realized before I started off on this that my dad was in military-related work. My brothers find this hard to believe, but then dad had shared at the boys' AWANA club at church, and they both had posters of the space system, which was very cool, I'm sure. I just never paid any attention and I only remember in adult conversations dad talking about the civilian side of Boeing's work.

I also never thought that missions could be so messed up. I mean, if you think about it, the Communist countries were at least partially right in claiming that Western Christian groups knocking at their doors worked for the CIA. And I haven't even told you the half of it either.

I really haven't told you anything about my actual work, only about my preparations for work. But the thing is, I've had 2 career changes even since that one initial profession. Believe it or not, there's still a lot to tell you before you'll really understand me and my life. And if you ever do get to that point, you may be the only person on this planet who does.

There's a joke I'd like to leave you with for tonight. I heard this joke in Dresden (the former East Germany) at a monthly youth meeting in the early fall of 1983.

There were 2 Jews on a tram. They were mostly silent, broken only with the occasional "oi", to which the other would respond "oi, oi, oi" and this went on for some time. Finally one of them ended this dialogue by saying they had to stop talking politics.

~ Meg

12. Dad

In all of this, there's a ghost in the closet (well, at least one). I haven't said anything yet about my father.

He was basically a very good man, and it would be very difficult to find someone to testify otherwise. He was thoughtful, sacrificial, never lost his temper, was trustworthy... well, you get the picture.

He started college but before he could finish he was drafted into the Korean War. But by the time he finished boot camp the war had ended so he never had to see battle, thankfully. I can't remember why he never finished college, but he was very smart and that never seemed a detriment to his professional success, as you can tell by his business card.

I guess it wasn't long after leaving the military that he went to work for Boeing. I can't expect you to know this about the history of Seattle, but in the early 1970s Boeing was laying off a lot of people when the energy crisis hit and airlines weren't buying airplanes.. At that time Boeing and Weyerhauser were the two major employers in the area (again, this was before Microsoft and Starbucks). A lot of people left the area due to losing their jobs at Boeing or other companies benefiting from Boeing's presence in the area. There was a famous billboard during that era saying "Will the last person in Seattle please turn the lights out?" (you can see a picture of it here: http://geoffhom.blogspot.com/2008/11/will-last-person-leaving-seattle.html). My dad was fortunate to make it through that time unscathed.

But as the city rebounded and traffic worsened as a result, he got to really dislike the commute and tried to get a transfer to another unit so he could have a shorter commute, but that would have meant leaving the aerospace division of Boeing, and as I understand it, Boeing found him too valuable in aerospace, so he had to stay where he was. If I recollect correctly, his time in the military (even though it was just 3 years) laid a good foundation for him to work in the military end of Boeing's work.

The reason why I'm focusing on Dad's work, although he was certainly much more than his profession, was that, as you'll see, his work and my interests conflicted and we both suffered from it, but I think I did more so.

That's all I want to say about this for now. Thinking about this is raising my stress level, which is in turn affecting my fibromyalgia. Besides, I have a lot of errands I have to do today, so I'd better get going.

Till next time...

~Meg

11. Childhood (with Photos)

Here's a break from the "heavy" stuff. I try to keep my promises, although sometimes something happens where I can't, but I said that my next post would be lighter, so here it is.

I had a pretty nice childhood and adolescence. Of course, there's always something that might have been better, but over all, I had it pretty good.

The first picture (above) is of my cabin-mates and counselor at camp the summer of 1973, when I was 13. We (my brothers too) went to church camp every year from when we became eligible, which was something like 3rd grade. It was a week in the summer and brought together young people from our sister churches around the state. We always had a lot of fun at camp and it was also a chance to step back and grow spiritually too. It was a time to re-commit ourselves to Christ and consciously choose to live for Him.

But we also had crafts, various competitions, swimming and boating, and as we got older water skiing was also an option. It was a lot of fun. I'm the girl at the end on the left with the short blond hair.

Holidays were also fun times. I think many families have a lot of drama (disagreements, or whatever) around holiday gatherings, but we didn't. Usually we alternated spending Christmas in Seattle with us and Dad's family and other years in British Columbia with Mom's family. Either way it was a pleasant time. It was fun to see the cousins and participate in all the festivities.

In this picture (above) I'm 16 and decorating the Christmas tree. I'm also wearing a smock that I sewed. I used to sew a lot and was reasonably accomplished. I even made at least one lined suit that I can remember, made of Pendelton wool. This smock you see here wasn't anything particularly special though.





The above picture is of me and a very good friend coloring in a Doodle Art poster. I had 2 of them and this one here is the one of a big doll house with dolls from around the world. I had another one that was an ornate bouquet of flowers. I had both laminated, but I don't have them any more.

This friend in the picture went to my church, but her family moved to the Olympia, WA area, so when I got a car (my parents sold me an old-but-good one they had) I would drive down and spend weekends with her. This was one such weekend in Jan. 1977. Later I was the maid of honor in her wedding.

So you can see, at least a little here, that I had a pretty nice growing up. I was pretty happy and had no major problems with anything. My relationships were fine, my school was okay, there wasn't really anything to give a hint of problems to come. And I don't really think I was very equipped to deal with them either coming out of this sort of idyllic life, which lasted at least through my undergraduate years, till I was 22. From 22 to 25 I had it hard financially, but other than that things were okay still, although I was beginning to get some hints of problems to come and it started affecting how I related to my parents. But until then, as these pictures show, life was really pretty great.

10. Addendum to Last Post

After thinking about my last post, I realized I probably come across somewhat bitter or even angry towards my mom, and I guess that's not completely inaccurate. I mean, I think she was wrong to suggest that I'm just here enjoying the high life (and that's not the only recent erroneous assumption she's revealed about me). It hurts to think that that's what she really thinks about me, too.

I don't really know what's going on between mom and my brothers because I've had to back away from them while I try to just deal with my own situation and try to keep myself from drowning (that's figurative, of course). But I really hold my brother in New York state more responsible for framing the issues and giving my other brother and mom in Seattle conceptions about me.

But even that's not so simple either. I do think my brother in NY has done some things I think are wrong, but I think he feels cornered and he's just trying to keep his life together. Maybe a comparison to something else will help.

When I was living in Russia I was twice attacked (briefly in both instances, thankfully) by German shepherds (which many people keep as watch dogs at least in the area where I was living). Where I was winter days could get as little as about 5 hours daylight, so I might not actually have been out that early, but it was still dark outside. I was heading to the tram stop and was walking on the sidewalk along the street. There must have been a good 3 to 5 yards (meters) between the sidewalk and the apartment building, but I think the dog felt threatened because he was sort of cornered or something, but he just lunged at me and made teeth holes in my knee-high winter boots. I was sure glad I was wearing those boots!

I think my brother might be in a situation sort of like that dog: to protect himself he's lashed out at me, making me the fall guy.

I'm not a psychologist, but I know that the mind can do funny things as far as justifying actions or finding reasons for things. I don't want to go into detail right now about what happened last year when I was living in his apartment, but let's just say it ended very badly, which is how I ended out back here. I think he's been desperately trying to hold his life together, and I saw some things that I thought were wrong, and I couldn't ignore. I don't think he's a bad person, but I do think he feels emasculated and, to a certain extent, powerless, so he lashes out like that dog that bit my boot. But the long and the short of it is that now he's framing the issues with the rest of my family, so that they can help uphold the public image he wants to portray. At least that's what I think, but that's also somewhat of an over-simplification of things too.

The problem with the way he's handling this, though, is that I've already paid very heavy prices (repeatedly) in my life for standing up for what I believe in (although I haven't always done it perhaps the best way), and one thing that's helped me keep my head together is the thought that at least I've tried to be true to my values and beliefs despite sometimes very heavy pressure to acquiesce. I still believe that the things that were bothering me in New York are wrong, and at this point I saw too much to easily dissuade me from that view. So I'm a threat to him, and the question is what will it take to break me to get me to give in and change my mind. Once you get to know me better, you'll understand that it would really take a lot for that to happen.

I don't want to ruin my brother's life, and I wanted to find a better way to address my concerns, but I didn't know how, and then mom opened the can of worms and I've paid the price for it.

One theme I wanted to bring up eventually in these posts, is the idea of "Capalini-isms". Every social group has their social norms and ways to uphold them. They also have collective stories and histories, rituals and the like. In this vein, I wanted at some point to begin to address some "Capalini-isms", at least they''re family truths/norms as I understand the family. I wasn't really going to start on this kind of discussion yet, but I think this would be a good place to say that recently I've been thinking that the family has sort of a "win-lose" approach to relations within the family. That is, in any given area or aspect of life, in relation to each other, someone is a "winner" (comes out on top) and someone is a "loser" (comes out on bottom). This goes for supposedly good or desirable areas, such as wealth or good health, as well as bad or problem areas, such as poor health or "blameless" victimization.

The positive areas are probably pretty easy to understand, but the negative ones might need a bit of explanation. Here are some examples of how this thinking goes: "I'm sicker than you, so more deserving of the family's sympathy, help and attention" or "I've been nustreated worse than you (and obviously faultless in the matter) so my bad situation is more obviously not my fault than your situation - what's your excuse?". There are alternatives to this way of looking at things, which maybe I'll discuss in a later post.

I think maybe because of my position in the family (oldest child, only daughter) I never really understood this social rule in the family until this past year. I didn't realize there was such a strong "win-lose" mentality. I don't like that at all, but it would be hard for me at the moment to express that, because part of this mentality says that if someone disagrees with this system, it's most likely because that person is jealous of someone else in the family who is better/worse off than s/he. And if a person disagrees with the system who is actually coming out on top in such comparisons it's most likely because s/he is too modest. At the moment I'm coming out on bottom, but they also don't know about my new health problems. However, it really is fine with me that they don't know about them, because that's not the main issue here. The main issue is that this whole system and also the things I disagreed with my brother in New York about are the real issues in my opinion.

But I feel trapped in this whole thing not only because I can't figure how to get this self-perpetuating system to stop so we can reconfigure it all to be what I think as a healthier way of thinking and relating to each other, but I also am not in a health position to be able to take on the extra stress to face this all head-on as it needs to be addressed (although even if it were to be addressed head-on, I think it should also be addressed delicately so as to find a constructive way to deal with it and not just crush the whole family thing to smithereens. I'm not sure exactly how to do that.)

Of course, as I say this, I know there is a lot that you don't know and so this probably sounds rather cryptic. I don't really mean to be cryptic, except that it really is a mess, and I can't explain everything here right now, so you'll have to get it in bits and pieces. Also, I can feel my fibromyalgia reacting to this stress and it's also time for me to get on with my daily activities (although I already did my morning stimulator session and had 2 rounds or meds/supplements, so it's not like I've not done anything).

Sorry to subject you to this mess. Next post will be a pleasant one, I promise.

~ Meg

9. Here & Now

After such an exciting and eventful life, especially my adult life (most of which you still don't know about yet), where am I now?

Well, I've hinted at it a bit, but for the last few years my whole life seems to revolve around my health. I finally got disability last summer after losing 2 good career jobs due to health. The judge at my SSDI hearing determined that those jobs were "failed work attempts".

So I'm living on a very limited income and hang on to a hope that I can at least eventually work part-time again. But it may be difficult to even find part-time professional work within the income limits to keep SSDI and health insurance that comes with that.

I guess it's not unusual for people like me on disability to have people wonder what we do all day. My mom, on the phone, a couple months ago asked me if I was spending all my time at the beaches here! HAH!! That's a big joke... I did my first "fun" thing tonight that I've done since returning here last March, and that was to go to a free classical concert. Then I promptly returned home and I'm doing my evening 45 minute session on the stimulator (like a souped-up tens unit) as I write this.

And when I'm not on the stimulator (1 1/2 hours a day), then I'm managing my medicines and supplements, doing physical therapy (self-managed or at a formal p/t session), doing extra cleaning to try to deal with my dust mite allergy (eventually I'll get immunized for that), etc., etc.

Today at church I had trouble singing; my voice went all hoarse and I felt sort of out of breath. So I had to sit down in the middle of singing to deal with that. Then this afternoon my temperature went up to 99.3 again. I've had some virus that they can't figure out what it is since last December. I've been on 4 rounds of antibiotics (I evidently got secondary infections along the way) and also 2 rounds of methylprednisone dose-pack. Each time it helps for a while then I start deteriorating again. I'm also on Nasonex and QVAR, and take Mucinex and do saline nasal cleanses and drink a detox tea all to help deal with this bug. Before I went on the last round of antibiotics and methylprednisone my temperature was around 100 often. Then it came down and it's creeping back up again.

Yeah, mom, I spend all my time at the beaches...

To help me feel like there's more to life than just health management, I work on a little kitchen garden and like to try finding new recipes to cook my crops in. Today I'm making a homemade cracker recipe using thyme (I grow several herbs). I've never really done gardening like this before, so it's somewhat new to me. I want it to be something that I can dabble at, though, so it's not stressful.

Now I think my thyroid is acting up again, so I got tested last Friday. I had Grave's disease, but it went into remission so I haven't been on methimazole for about 3 years now. If it's acting up again as I think it is, I imagine we'll look more seriously at having the thyroid taken out. I've been loosing a lot of hair, especially after I shower, and I've also been losing weight and I'm starting to feel a bit jumpy, which are all signs of hyperthyroid. If I hold my hand out it's not shaking though, at least not that I can notice. I also don't have insomnia or diarrhea yet, which are all symptoms of hyperthyroid. I'll learn in a week or two what the lab test results are.

So that's really my life now, at least a good chunk of it. Not very exciting, especially when you consider where I've come from. I guess you could say I'm sort of a "has been". I suppose I can live with that. But the hard part is always feeling like there's no one that really understands me. I mean, I don't really fit into any mold. You could say I'm a bit of an enigma... Okay, maybe more than "a bit of" an enigma. Hopefully, though, I'll become less of an enigma as you find out more about me.

Ciao for now... I hear my crackers calling (the ones I'm making)

~ Meg