Long time...

Wow, looks like my last post was over 4 months ago!  I guess going back to work, even though only 2 days a week, has kept me occupied!  That's a good thing.  It's kept me from focusing so much on my back/hip pain.  And thankfully, that has gotten better.  I think some of that is because I've been distracted by work.  I noticed immediately that when I was at work, I didn't hurt as much.  Abraham says focus amplifies - whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.  I'm convinced!  On my work days, I feel better.  When I'm home all day, I notice all the little aches and pains.  I think this is why people decline once retired...

Anyway, I am better.  I'm now done with the intense decompression therapy that I was doing 2x a week.  The improvement has been soooo slow, and back and forth... that it has been hard to see the progress.  I would have one "good" day (which means less pain, not no pain) here and there.  Then it became a little more frequent, like maybe 2 "good" days in a week.  These good days have gotten more frequent, and now I have more of those than "bad" days (and "bad" days are not as bad as they were 6 months ago...)  And the pain I'm having now, I believe, is more about weakness from lack of use than whatever it was before.  I think (I should say Dr. Corey believes, so I'm convinced) that it is/was a pinched nerve, and (hopefully) the decompression has relieved that.  So now I'm going every 2 weeks for "maintenance".  Expensive, but doable.  

I also added soft-wave therapy a few weeks ago.  I'm sure that has something to do with the improvement as well.  I've got 3 more treatments of that. Here is how google defines soft-wave... 

SoftWave Therapy is a non-invasive, regenerative treatment that uses broad-focused acoustic shockwaves to stimulate tissue healing, reduce pain and improve mobility. 

As it has been explained to me, the waves draw blood flow into the area (which induces healing) and causes the body to produce stem cells that also heal.  As much time and money as I've committed to this, I SHOULD be feeling better!  And I can honestly say that for the first time in a long, long time, I feel real hope that maybe, just maybe, I have a gimp-free future coming!  My next commitment needs to be about building my strength and repairing those weakened muscles.

Now, on to other things!  The winter has been... well, not bad.  More warm days that normal, seems like.  A lot of back-and-forth.  Warm spells followed by cold spells.  This weekend, we had a little snow storm that looked rather blizzard-ish, but really didn't amount to much snow.  But the wind blew like a mother!  I don't think it was quite as bad as they thought it would be, but boy did it HOWL.  It got terribly cold overnight - it was 8 degrees this morning with a wind chill in the negative teens.  The GH and kitchen were sooo cold!  Probably down into the 50s.  Today, it's sunny and will get to 25, but by Friday, the forecast says it will be in the mid-80s!!!  Wow...

I've lost a lot of plants this winter.  My pain kept me from giving them the care they really needed, so I've had losses.  This is the kind of thing that shows you which ones are really tough and which ones... not so much.  And it's fine.  I've decided to see it as a blessing in disguise.  I'm getting older and it's getting harder to keep up.  It's ok to thin the herd, tune in on what I really want to keep.  Less is more.  I'd like to spend more time enjoying them, maybe a little less time watering and grooming them.  I'm not going to invest in any more fussy plants. I won't say "no more Hoyas", but I think I'm kind of "over" my obsession with them.  So I'm going to focus more on my "little" plants... Haworthias and small succs.  Any Hoyas that aren't SPECTACULAR will be whacked back and set on the back porch.  If they come back by fall gloriously, great.  If not, into the trash bin they go!

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A couple weeks ago, Laurie and I went over to Lincoln where Kevin, our favorite psychic, spent the day at a "new age" store called Euphoria.  He was doing sessions for $40/15 minutes and we sat with him for half an hour.  It was, as usual, amazing!  Both Mark and Mom came through.  He said they sit on the front porch "smoking" and watching me come and go.  Of course, they both spent so much time out there smoking...  And of course we all know they don't really "smoke" in the afterlife, but it's a good way for them to show him what's familiar to me.  I get mostly the same messages each time, and that's ok... it's just very comforting to know they're here.  Laurie heard from her dad, a message she really needed to hear telling her she needs to limit her contact with her daughter, who treats her like shit.  I hope she listens...

And this last week, I had so many messages from all of them... Mark, Mom, Wes, and even Thelma!!!  So many that I'm starting to worry they're trying to warn me about something.  Wed. was the first day - I was out and about and I kept seeing the numbers they often show me.  Over and over.  So many in such a short time that I thought "I need to be wary of something, but what?"  And I paid careful attention all the way home with no close calls.  But then I got home and as I was walking to the house, I tripped and went careening into the porch shelf right by the mailbox!!  I didn't fall, but it was close!  There was another moment a bit later when I was a little... well, not exactly dizzy, but I faltered just a bit when I was walking.  Now mind you, my footing is unstable because of my back and these things can happen when we're not operating at 100%.  But I thought maybe the message is to be mindful...

Like that wasn't enough, I worked on Thurs. and while in Des Moines with my chase driver Pat, I saw a license plate with 777.  I pointed it out to Pat and explained that triple numbers are a message from my brother.  And 7s are my "favorite" numbers, so it was kind of an extra "feel good" message.  Pat smirked a bit, which is typical for a lot of people, especially religious people who have a more traditional view of what happens after death.  So we headed back to Omaha and it wasn't 20 minutes later we come up behind a car with... 777 again!  I pointed it out and Pat just said "HUH!"  I saw this happen once before.  I get plenty of triple numbers, but rarely do I get the same two in a row.  (Once I was sitting at a stop light behind a car with triple 7s and a truck came around the corner with triple 7s!  It was one of those real attention-getters!!)  So maybe another half our down the road, we came up behind a big-rig - they all have a number stamped on the back, I assume it identifies that specific cargo container and it's usually a 6 digit number.  Well, this one ended in 777!!!  Pat's response this time was, "Well, that's a little weird!"  LOL!

So the clincher happened on Friday.  I was off and home most of the day.  About mid-morning, I noticed a penny right in the middle of one of my leather chairs.  The leather is kind of ecru, so the penny was a stark contrast.  I was sitting at the table and just kind of shrugged it off.  Maybe it fell out of my pocket?  I don't really sit on that chair, but I do sit there for a moment each morning when I put on my pants and shoes and my first thought was that the penny fell out of my pocket.  I often wear the same pants 2 days in a row, but later I thought, wait a minute - I brought up fresh pants last night.  Hmm.  Then my next thought was, what are the chances it's a wheat penny?  So I'll explain that thought...

Back in the late 90's, Ann Landers had a letter about "pennies from heaven".  Someone who was convinced that she got a message from a passed relative when she found a pile of pennies someplace unusual...  This evoked an avalanche of letters from people over the next several months, about coins that were "messages." When Mark's mom died... this was Xmas time 1998... I was hoping for a sign from her, but I told Mark, "How would I ever know if she sent pennies from heaven when you shed change constantly??"  And he did!  I was constantly picking up his change, and when we finished the basement and he spent all his time down there (where I insisted it was HIS job to clean up!), the floor was always covered with change!  Anyway, after she died, I suddenly started finding wheat pennies.  Over the next couple months, I probably found a dozen or so.  If you watch for them, you will find a wheat penny now and then.  I've watched for them the last quarter of a century since she died and I may, MAY find one or two a year.  So I always felt I could safely say those dozen pennies were an "I'm ok" message from Thelma...

Now that I've told this story, it's obvious that the mystery penny on the chair was, indeed, a wheat penny.  Which easily could have been one of those "one or two" I find a year because I can't remember the last time I found one.  But it's happenstance placement kind of screamed "message!"  Many of the others I'd gotten came that same way - one sat squarely in the middle of my seat in the car.  They were always somewhere by themselves, in a "weird" place.  So a bit later that same day, I walk through the kitchen and there's a penny on the floor.  I walked by it several times, thinking there wasn't s snowball's chance in hell that it would be another wheat penny, but my curiosity got the better of me eventually and I picked it up.  Another wheat penny!  First one was 1957, this one was 1953.  

So 3 days in a row.  Very, very distinct, almost shouting messages.  What are they trying to say?  I stayed home Saturday and Sunday, and haven't gone anywhere today.  Maybe I've avoided whatever it may be telling me.  Or maybe they're trying to say something positive?  "Play the lottery?"  "You're about to cross paths with someone who will change your life?"  "Trust your instincts that your physical well-being is improving?"  I just don't know what to think!!

And that's how I will end today's ramblings.  I hope to have lots of fun things to report soon about my plants!