Month: October 2019

I’ve been dormant for over a year on my blog posts. Shocking but true. Many might wonder where I was. What was I doing that I couldn’t tap a few computer keys and write a few interesting lines.

Life has a way of tripping you up every once in a while and by tripping you up I mean knocking you down, dragging you along and beating you senseless. At least that has been what life does to me.

It starts out with small things, then in my experience it rolls that snowball into an avalanche that comes crashing down on top of you leaving you breathless and struggling to free yourself from it’s crushing weight.

I won’t go into all the details, but know that I have been trying to dig myself out from under this last avalanche with a plastic teaspoon all while it’s continuing to snow on me. It’s exhausting and to have to sit at a computer keyboard and try to be creative at the same time was just more than my brain cells could accomplish.

So what’s changed? Not much on the "life under an avalanche" side of things, but several friends and people in my life have reminded me of God’s promises and encouraged me to keep scooping away. A recent post by dear friends reminded me that if small children can overcome life threatening surgeries and live through pain and struggles I can’t even fathom, (JL) then I can pull up my big girl panties and get myself back on the planet. Bless the little children, for reminding me I need to be pro-active in my life and get my passions back in order.

"Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

I am passionate about protecting those who can’t protect themselves; children, animals, victims, elderly. It makes no sense to me that in today’s world we aren’t all passionate about these same things.

For instance, why do we allow domestic violence victims to continue to be overlooked in our courts and for judges to hand over their innocent children to the same man who abused them all?

Why do we continue to allow large "animal rescue leagues"

to make millions of dollars on the lies they tell while hiding victimized animals in the back rooms? Why do we continue to allow the elderly to suffer abuse and poor health care and basic living needs?

Why must victims continue to suffer in our failed court systems while criminals get more rights? Why must our veterans continue to be lost victims of a failed health care system? Why? Why? Why?

For most of these it’s the "almighty dollar". Those who have the money and the means often don’t use it to help those who do not. Those who have the money continue to victimize those who can’t afford to fight against these injustices. Our court systems are corrupt,broken and costly, our health care system is a joke, our animal welfare often suffers at hands of those who abuse it, victims are ignored and unheard.

Too often if it doesn’t directly affect us, we chose to pretend we don’t know it exists. I call it the "ostrich syndrome" – hiding our head in the sand. The trouble is the problem is still there and the sand is hard to get out of your ears.

What can we do? We can speak out and speak up! We can pick something that speaks to us, to our passions and fight to right the wrongs. I’m working with my youngest daughter to change Iowa’s child custody laws to keep domestic violence victims and their often abused children safe from the abusers. #SafeChildAct

Whatever your passion, I hope you will write to your legislators, governors, whoever and do whatever you need to do to help those who cannot speak up for themselves. It’s time that we baby boomers showed the world the stuff we are made of! We did great things in our youth, lets go out with a bang! Peace!

Until next time…Toni

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(This was from last September! I feel like I fell off the blog wagon, and I apologize to those few faithful readers who enjoy my tales. I debated if I should publish this one, and thought why not? I hope you find a bit of humor in it and may it brighten your day. By the way – this year so far, I am well. -Toni)

Not feeling well is something everyone can relate to. I would even hazard a guess that it is most people’s least favorite thing. I loathe being ill. Whether it’s a cold, a flu, a headache, whatever the ailment, I’m against it one hundred percent.

Some people rarely get ill. I’m not a fan of them either. Sorry, just being honest here. My husband of forty-two years is one of those people. I think in his lifetime he has only missed work or school due to illness once. Once! Who is this guy?

When our children were small I recall one Christmas we were all ill with a nasty flu bug and it was the only time in my life I’ve seen my husband sick other than a bad cold. Each of us sat around on Christmas morning with our

and could have cared less about opening presents, even the ones from Santa.

* A “puke buddy pail” is an empty plastic ice cream bucket, usually from Schwan’s in our house. I sometimes drew a smiley face on it, I have a weird sense of humor.

I, on the other hand, have always been the one who catches every single germ floating anywhere near me. I also don’t seem to outgrow childhood illnesses. Well into my forties, fifties and beyond I have turned a cold or sinus infection into tonsillitis. Yup, that’s the kind of fun I have. I become almost hermit-like over the winter cold season to avoid germs.

I take my daily vitamins, get my flu shot every year like a champ and had a pneumonia shot that’s still effective, or so they tell me. Recently I became very ill with lower abdominal pain and a bad stomach ache. I was worried I may have some food poisoning from the pepperoni I had used on a pizza. I felt off the entire next day and the following day I could tell as the day wore on it was only getting worse.

I hadn’t been able to eat either day but was trying to keep water down. As the hours ticked slowly by my body was telling me things were not right. Let’s just say there were fluids escaping my body that shouldn’t be and in a manner that was not normal. Later that second day I gave in and realized I may need to see a doctor. This was at ten o’clock at night, I didn’t say anything about making quick decisive decisions, in case you were wondering.

I decided to go to my local small county hospital rather than one of the several larger ones in the nearby cities. Good choice. Not only did I get excellent care, I’m pretty sure I was the only one in the ER the entire couple of hours I was there. They were very attentive, happy to have someone to use their skills on. I felt miserable, so I was happy to give them all the blood they needed and didn’t balk at the IV port in one arm or the blood taken out of the other hand when they couldn’t get a good vein. Normally these things concern me. I am a chicken through and through and am happy to admit it.

They sent me home after pronouncing it was not my gall bladder, thanks to a scan, but was colitis, which the very handsome nurse practitioner said was like having a really bad flu. After finishing up giving me fluids and several pills and prescriptions for more, I got to go home. Two antibiotics they said should do the trick, take them all.

At home I spent the next six days taking my pills as prescribed, drinking lots of water, drinking broth first then working my way up to the B.R.A.T. diet (bananas, white rice, applesauce, white toast) all the things they normally tell you not to eat are apparently the only things you can eat when ill. Caffeine is a no go, so decaf coffee is now making it’s way onto my slowly increasing diet. It’s still mostly bland foods and I’m craving tacos for some reason.

For you females, you will understand and sympathize with me here. Antibiotics are wonderful drugs that help our bodies heal, however, if you are a female they do not play nice with the good bacteria in your female system and you have a good chance of getting a yeast infection. I was well prepared for this and had been eating yogurt and drinking tons of water, however, I did not manage to avoid that inevitable outcome because I don’t have that kind of luck.

The second thing that happened to me while recovering was that the nasty cold my husband recently got, now landed on me. It started with two days of constant sneezing which I was very thankful had not occurred earlier in the week when my lower GI was doing flip flops. Yesterday the sneezing was replaced with a stuffy nose and today I have a full-blown sinus cold with sneezing, stuffy sinuses, watery eyes. Hurray for me! Too bad antibiotics still can’t kill the common cold!

At this moment in time I can say with some amount of confidence that only my pinky fingers don’t hurt but give it time. Tomorrow I plan on doing nothing. I’d like to tell you that I’m going to spend the day reading or catching up on some TV shows I’ve missed, but that hurts my watery eyes so that’s all a no. I’d like to think I’ll rest but my sinuses are painful and draining, so that doesn’t sound promising either. I’d also like to tell you that a day of doing nothing is hard for me, being such a workaholic and all, it’s not and I’m not.

There is a ray of sunshine in all this. Tomorrow we are getting homemade pies. A friend goes and gets pies every once in a while, and I happen to know Jay ordered two, peach for him, apple for me. I’m going to expand my bland diet tomorrow to include a larger piece of apple pie. See, there was a happy ending after all.

Until next time…Toni

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