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STOP THE CHAOS NOW

( I want to repeat this one) Silence from my end is not a good thing being a poor blogger, but my excuse, if you even care, is that I have been in a total state of shock as I have watched and listened to the stories of violence and destruction that have exploded all over this country.

How do I even have a conversation with you when there are so many earth-shattering events occurring? The feelings that are surging through each one of us, every single day is so toxic. I’ve sat back for months watching, listening, crying, shaking my head so disturbed by what has been happening that I am left speechless.  Frozen. I move through the day like a robot functioning on auto pilot. 

I ask myself is there anything of value that I might have to share? Who gives a shit what some no name individual thinks or feels?  Who am I to talk about any of this it is so horrible.?

I want to know how do we overcome these wounds? How do we heal from these profound injuries to our hearts? How do we stop the chaos?

I know that anything I might say to you has probably blown through your mind at one time or another just as it has mine. Somehow, some way we must come together.

There is so much hatred spewing out into the world I can’t even imagine how we can contain it. We humans are so vile to each other in so many ways that I fear for my life. For your lives. For my children lives. The fear is unimageable.

Stories pour out of every news outlet available. Some offer vivid pictures if you can’t imagine it yourself. I have no doubt everyone is talking about all the destruction that is and has been occurring. There can’t be anyone who isn’t shocked, ashamed, and disgusted by what one human can inflict on another.

I move through my day-to-day business in a state of shock.  I interact with my family and friends. I go to work, pay my bills, but there is this impending feeling of doom inside my chest that is so new to me that I can’t even grasp how to express it or to eliminate it. This fear is embedded deep in my heart.

Saying we must come together is not enough. The words are meaningless. The horror that has happened in the last of couple years has shaken all of us to our very core. Sometimes I stand and just stare at the television feeling like a trapped animal. I don’t know how to make things better. I don’t have any answers on how to change it except for platitudes like “We need to love each other. We need to help each other.  We need to come together. “  Bullshit, we need to stop the violence on all spectrums, against ALL PEOPLE.

I know that there are great individuals out there doing wonderful things. There are organizations and groups of people that are plugging along trying to make it a better place, but I think we all feel so helpless, and for me it’s not a feeling that I’ve often felt, so I am frozen and frightened and don’t know where to turn. Our leaders don’t have an answer, and the tide keeps moving in. How is it going to end?  How can we make it end?

How do we as individuals, and as a group take control of this violence?  How do we step into the storm of hatred and bigotry to bring an end to this? People are dying, children are being murdered, strangers are assaulting strangers for no other reason than they feel hate at what they see .

The color of one’s skin is something to hate.  The nationality of another is something to loathe.  People’s sexuality is despised. Rich hate poor, and poor hate rich.  Your religion is a reason to hate despite what your holy book preaches, and someone just doesn’t like the way you look.

I’m not a religious person. I don’t go to church. I have not had great experiences with preachers who run churches, and although I was raised a Catholic, I gave that up because the nuns and priest looked down their noses at the poor in our parish with no money to give. We were a very poor family.  Not a good experience for us.

In the past I was not one to believe in the end of the world theories told by religious leaders to keep us all in tow.  Discussions by those leaders that the world was going to come to an end in fire and brimstone. These preachers and such liked to fire up the fear and hysteria in its congregants.  It was part of the reward of being a “leader” the power to evoke sinners to be less sinful. But after witnessing all this violence. The hatred. The bombings and wars. Murders, rape, and genocide, I think those prophets who have said the world is going to end are correct.

We humans are going to be the catalyst that ends our world. This world that has been given to us is going to be destroyed by us because we are so foolish and stupid that we let our extremism, our extreme racism, are extreme sexism, our extreme religiousism get in our way of appreciating all that has been given to us. I mean you add any ISM to any bigoted idea that you have and that’s what we’ve become, a people of intolerance and hatred who disrespect their world, and each other with total disregard for human life, total disregard for the animal kingdom, total disregard for the oceans of the world, and the planet that God gave for our safe keeping.

Despite my personal feelings I will share with you that I do believe in a higher power.  I do believe in a God, and I think it is time for all of us to come together and offer up a prayer to our God for the strength, knowledge, and courage to evoke a change in our world right now.

I ask that together we stop everything that we are doing and say a prayer in whatever language we speak, asking whatever higher power we pray to, to help us heal this world. Those of a scientific mind probably are aware that there have been many studies that verify that prayer can and does make a difference.  Put aside your doubt and be open to that fact that as a massive world of people we can come together in prayer, and perhaps jump start our humanity back on track.

I will pick a time and together we will say a prayer to bring these horrible events to an end and bring us all back into balance because right now, we are tilting out of orbit as humans.

Let us get together tomorrow at sunrise, or any sunrise that works for you as (there are 7,868,872,451 people on this planet right now as listed on google so there will be a multitude standing by your side whatever time you say your prayer.)  Get up, face the rising sun, and offer a prayer to God that sanity will be restored to our people. Image the multitudes standing beside you as you say your prayer for our world and each other as well. And as I always say, have a great day today, you and I deserve it.

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What We Do Matters!

Happy Sunday, this is Kris wishing you a great day today. Hope everything has been going well.

I want to go in a different direction. I want to get away from some of the sad stories that I have been talking about, like incest and rape.  Those can bring us down for sure.

I want to talk about the effect our actions have on everything around us. Sometimes we think in our day-to-day interactions with each other that most things do not matter, when in reality they really do.

Each little thing that we do has an influence on everything and everyone around us.

There is a wonderful story that I want to tell you so just sit back and listen. I am not going to write it down.  It is a starfish tale.

So we need to remember that our actions even though they may seem simple, and people might ask “ what difference does it make.” Everything we do makes a difference.

Every interaction we have with each other affects that life force in some way.  We get to decide if it is good or not by how we interact.

Are we being kind, or are we being a jerk?  Have we said something nice to someone or have we been mean?  Each thing matters.  Each interaction matters.  And remember our words matter just as well.

I am going to tell you another story.  It is about my experience with a store clerk so again you can sit back and relax while I tell my tale.

And that was the end of my going to that store. I felt I did not need to frequent a place where the cashier was going to treat me poorly.  Did my not going back hurt the store.  Probably not, it was a large chain, but perhaps my retelling of the story will enlightened others to not tolerate someone being unkind to them.

We must be mindful in our interactions with others. We need to be aware of how we treat another person as it does matter.  Your actions can influence that person in a good or bad way.  We have that power.

Keep that in mind when you are interacting with your friends and family. Remember that each little interaction that you have has an impact on that relationship. It affects their day. Effects how they may feel for the rest of the day.

If you can think of that and be mindful of being kind and gentle with someone you may have a great day yourself.  I believe what goes around comes around.  We get back what we give out.  

So, for today I want you to have a great day.  Enjoy whatever is going on inside or out and remember that you do have the power to influence others.

Offer a smile or a kind word.  Be a positive influence. Do not be a negative person. Look at your blessings, be glad of what you have today.

Each day is another opportunity to get things right.  We are the directors of our lives. We are the guides on this journey called life.

So, as I always say have a great day today, you and I deserve it. And smile at someone just for today.

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Plastic People, Plastic Robots.

Which one should I pick for “me”

Hello this is Kris, and welcome to my blog.  Today I am re-releasing a blog I wrote several years ago.  I feel this blog says today, what it did back in 2017.  And it starts with the question, “why are all these stars cutting up their faces to look like some creature out of a toy story?”  I must ask, are we real or imagination? Does our skin melt away only to be replaced by plastic?  Is this a dream? Foolish questions really, but when I look at many of the stars and people of “importance.” I am seeing plastic dolls. What has happened to their faces?

I will not name names here because I don’t want to get my butt kicked by said people but, after viewing Yahoo time and time again with its many pictures of the stars, I am shocked at what stares back at me from the pages. I see stars that I haven’t seen in years, and I don’t recognize them. What the hell are they doing to their faces? Who wants a face that looks like it is frozen in time with a mouth like Heath Ledger from Batman? Even the men are in on it. Some of my favorites look hideous. Do they even look in the mirror when the plastic surgeon is done with their face?

I am disgusted with the stars as there is nothing wrong with getting a little older. Our bodies are going to do what it does as it ages, and that is wrinkle and sag. I bet underneath a lot of the dresses and suits their skin is just as marked with age spots as mine.  The flesh on their thigh’s sags just like mine because that is what it does, it loses its elasticity and sags.  And their skin is just as thin as mine even though their faces are frozen in some weird time period.  Do they think that that we don’t know they have a neck like a Turkey with those scarves and high button collars?

What about all that face paint and blinding white light that these producers douse their announcers and stars in?  These people are cast in bright lights so we can’t really see all the lines and wrinkles. And it hides their necks,

They use to call me shrimp, after leg surgery I am called Tall.

What is wrong with just being ourselves? When I look at some of the stars that I stood in awe of with their frozen looking faces I am so disappointed. How can we look up to them when they refuse to remain human and grow old like us?

We have all seen the pictures when plastic surgery has gone wrong for some of these famous beauties. There isn’t one of them that looks natural and lovely. Oh, if they do a tiny little bit, they get by with it, but once they get started, they come away looking like something out of a toy factory. Some even look like they are wearing a mask!

I don’t go to the movies or watch a lot of television so it might be years before I see one of my favorite stars again, so when the show comes on and I see what they have done in the last several years I am often shocked, and a little pissed! Where did the person I fell in love with go? Who is that standing on stage?

Now I would love to look beautiful all the time, but it goes against nature, and I would rather have my health than look in the mirror and not see me anymore. If some news person would do a slideshow of some of these famous people as they aged with their plastic surgery and showed what they have done to their faces over the years, it might even shock these stars. I know it does me.

Who says all of us must look like dolls out of Walmart? When did all this start and why do we buy into it? We are amazing creatures! No, we are not all brilliant or beautiful, or talented but, we are all wonderful, unique, and very special in our own way. We should not strive to be one of the “Stepford” wives, but instead let our inner self shine through.

How can we teach young girls and boys to love and appreciate themselves when all around are these walking, talking dolls trying to look perfect in every way? The sad thing is we know that this is not really how they feel inside. No way. If they did, they would not cut away pieces of themselves to fit into a certain mold

They call me Curvy!

Did I tell you I can see into the future? What I see is that we will be able to walk into a designer shop somewhere and pick a face off the wall just like we can pick out a wig we want to wear, and that is who we will become instead of who we are.  It will be like a Stephen King movie. Steven don’t steal my idea!

This is another frightening thought as I have never been in a plastic surgeon’s office but, I would imagine the plastic surgeons have books just like the beauty shops so you can pick out your cheeks, eyes, lips, breasts, and buttocks. Anything that can be replaced is offered.

Maybe they could open a big shop like a Walmart only call it Plastic Mart where all they sell will be the things you could hope to replace on your body through surgery or just try out the replacement parts like face mask, bra stuffers, and booty pants.

Sadly, while I’m trying to be humorous, I am sure it will happen at some point in time.  Did you know that in China they have made a female robot that is lovely, walks, and converses with you? There is also a company somewhere where you can order your own favorite robot star doll to have as your companion. And, on Yahoo awhile back some organization or such reported that it is predicted by the year 2030 humans will be marrying and mating with robots. What do you think of that? Not only will our parts be replaced, but we will be replaced as well. 

None of us are perfect and we shouldn’t want or expect that from each other. Our own uniqueness is what puts such flavor in the world. If we were all dolls out of a factory, I think humanity would come to a standstill. Don’t let any institution sway you to change how you look and feel. Do not let them take away your specialness. That is what we love about each other, that is the attraction. If we take away what is us, we might as well be mating with robots!

This is a real face, isn’t it cute!

I say it’s time to take control and be who we are through our real appearances, and our behaviors towards each other, period.  I’m going to steal someone’s saying here or part of it and say, “people will not necessarily remember how you look, but they will remember how you made them feel.” Make us feel happy, excited, and glad to be part of humanity.  Leave all your parts in place and focus on giving your inner loveliness to the world. And if Hollywood doesn’t like it, then form your own company called “Real People”, and use real people, not plastic looking dolls. So, for today appreciate your beauty and the beauty in others, and as I always say, have a great day today, you and I deserve it!

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Expectations

I screamed at my bird this evening. He was out on his perch playing like he does most evenings, and I lost it.  Coco is an African grey parrot who likes to imitate the beeping of my alarm clock, my cell phone, and even the microwave. He has a whole array of noises he likes to share whenever I’m trying to sleep or take a nap and he thinks I should be up. Well, there I lay sprawled on the couch trying to get some shut eye and that bird was filling the silence with his whole vocabulary.  Did I mention that he also talks, but not as much as he likes to make sounds.  I will reveal his less polite sounds like burping and farting, noises that sound just like my granddaughters, the little pigs.

I’m not sure if you know that I usually work nights which is probably the worst shift to work for any human being wanting to get a good night’s sleep. I’m one of those people that can only nap for about 3 hours. My body won’t let me sleep any longer even with a little medicinal help. I wake up and then take a two-hour nap before I leave for work. Giving me a grand total of five hours of sleep a day that is usually split up. Do I need to admit that sometimes I am a GROUCH. Understandable, right.

I also have a very ailing old dog and I’m goanna admit that sometimes my patience runs thin with her needs as well. And I don’t know what was wrong with me today but for sure I yelled at the bird, yelled at the dog, got up angry for being disturbed then yelled “Oh my God can I have some peace and quiet” and then I realized what I was doing.

How can we expect anything to be other than what it is?  Why would I expect my talkative bird to be quiet when I’m sleeping during the day, and it’s his wake time. It’s cruel to try to get my dog to not bother me when I’m lying around trying to nap. She needs love, affection, food, and potty breaks. I felt like such a meanie.

She loved to wrestle with the baby.

Imagine how people must feel in the human world when others around them expects them to be something other than what they are. The song about rose colored glasses is really true because until we take those glasses off, we don’t see clearly. We may not realize who or what that person is before us in our relationship until we remove the glasses. Our expectations of who they should be often outshines who they actually are, and eventually if that is the case, we become disappointed, grumpy, and annoyed, which is crazy, a bird is a bird right!

If you are having relationship problems, I want you to stop and look at that person. I want you to see who you” think” that person should be. Are you seeing the real person or the one you imagine they should be?  Ask yourself is this a clear picture of this person or am I just putting my desires of what I need onto their shoulders. I believe this is what happens in many relationships. We expect the other person that we share our life with to be different than who they are.  We see those rose-colored glasses come on and love gets in the way as our heart fills with joy, blinding us like a ray of sunshine.  But, when the clouds come overhead, and we get a good look and we realize we might have imagined these elements of who they are we start picking, and picking, and picking.

I was married to my second husband for thirty something years. We are still friends. He is the same person he always was. And I can tell you that when we first got together, I had some heavily tinted glasses on. Along the way as I grew up and grew older, I realized that just because I had expectations of who this person was supposed to be, did not make it so. That was a very enlightening “ aha” moment because we were going through some serious storms in our relationship.

It takes time to really get to know someone, be it friends or sweethearts. The main reason is we usually put our best foot forward trying to impress and win over that special person we want in our life.  Eventually though the glasses come off and we see what we see, and that may not be a good thing for anyone.

They have to come off sometime.

But here’s where I come to my ex-husband’s defense and say that  he was being 100% of who he was with all his little flaws, all his little kindnesses, all his bias ideas, and I was not going to change any of that by throwing a tantrum or pulling out the silence card or withdrawing from him because he was who he was and he didn’t understand why I didn’t understand him.  He was just being himself. A bird is a bird!

Eventually I came to understand that we cannot expect other people to change to please us. If there is a change in a relationship it must come through a change in ourselves. We have to change our expectations and make them real.  We must open our eyes and be fair to that other person.

Our marriage didn’t work out as the differences were too difficult, but I did learn to accept him for who he was, and we are still friends. I have my flaws, he has his flaws, and we care about each other. I came to realize how unjust I was being by expecting anything else.

Now I’m not saying that things can’t change in a relationship, but it has to be something you both agree on.  Things can’t change if one partner is saying “ it has to be my way” or saying “if only you would do it this way, if only you were that way, if only you were more thoughtful, if only you were neater or kinder or cleaner or happier” or whatever it is that we are trying to lay on their shoulders that we think would make us a happier person,  and that’s wrong.

Ta Da.

All we can do is learn to change ourselves to find peace within. To accept others for who they are and accept ourselves or if we don’t like what we see improve what we find wrong within in ourselves, not criticize the other person.

They say when you look at other people in your life you are seeing reflections of yourself.  I tell myself that often if I’m struggling or being too judgmental.  I say that is me looking back at me and that is what I need to take care of, perhaps what I need to change in myself. 

If you believe in the ripple effect, I wrote a piece about that, you might get lucky and that other person may change a little bit too, but it won’t be because they see that we think there is something wrong, if may be because we have become a better person to be around therefore they are able to relax into who they are and enjoy our company, hopefully we can enjoy their company too.

Yelling at my bird didn’t solve a single thing. If birds could think, and I don’t know if they do, he probably thought I was crazy.  I think his little birdie brain was saying “Doesn’t she know I always do this when I’m out and about. What’s wrong with her, why’s she’s so grumpy today.” Okay that was too much dialogue for a bird, but I will admit that I felt ashamed of my reaction to both of my lovely pets.  I was upset with my bird for being a bird, and my dog for being dog.  Please don’t be angry at those in your life be it people or pets for being who are.  Be angry with yourself because you have the wrong expectations leading you astray, and it’s causing conflict in that relationship. The fix is for us to change our outlook, our reactions to life so that we can be a happier people. And may that happiness reflect outward, and hopefully others will find joy being with us.  So, as I always say, have a great day today, you and I deserve it!

Change can happen.

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Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Hello, this is Kris, welcome to my blog cast, this is part two of my rant on breast cancer awareness month.

Sometimes the monster starts as a little tiny bump, a lump or scratch. Sometimes it catches our eye right away, and at other times it goes unnoticed for days, weeks or months. But once that creature has caught our attention we are very aware from then on that there is something abnormally wrong inside our bodies, be it small or large. It could even be some funky lab results.  Whatever!

If you have paid  attention to Yahoo or any of the other news networks there have been a plethora of stories telling about doctors who missed the boat and misdiagnosed patients for months, even years as they slowly died or almost died from cancer.

I cannot tell you the number of people that I have personally known, because the list has gotten very long, that have had something abnormally wrong in their bodies and were told to watch and wait.

Some days I just want to scream when I hear the stories of women and men who have been told “ let’s watch it” and then were later diagnosed with cancer. Young mothers told they were “just tired.”  Young men who were scoffed at and told to come back in a few months.  The list goes on and on.

What is it?

I had a lump in my breast.  I noticed it one time when I was showering, isn’t that the story we always hear, it’s true. And I did what anyone else would do, I watched it for a few months.  Did I mention that the lump was tender, it was, so I assumed I had hurt myself helping my son move.

The first thing my doctor said was that I needed to have a mammogram as the lump shouldn’t be there as if I didn’t already know that.  I had the test which showed a small lump in my right breast.  I followed recommendation after recommendation after recommendation for almost two years. I had ultrasounds, mammograms, saw a surgeon who told me it was nothing “it’s too tiny to even bother with.”  I saw a breast specialist in Kansas City at a great cancer treatment center which I was so excited about because that is the place to go, “right?” the specialty place.  That’s where they will get things right!

Let me just say I was dumbfounded when she told me it was “nothing, nothing” and treated me as if I was a great bother to her.  She informed me when I mentioned that my lump was tender that “breast cancer isn’t tender, it isn’t tender, that is why we teach self-breast exams, it isn’t tender.”  Well God Dam it, mine was tender and stayed tender until they cut the bastard out.  Excuse my language.

Are you nuts, don’t wait.

Sadly, this specialist treated me like I was a complete idiot bothering her with this tiny lump.  She told me to go ahead and quit my job of 21 years with good health insurance to go to school and have horrible health insurance which is exactly what I did as I heard her voice saying, “it is nothing, nothing.”  She even stated that if it was her that she would do just go to school. Now I will share that she said, and I swear this is true, “I can go in and traumatize your body, but if it was me, I wouldn’t bother.”

Can I ask who out there would say, “oh, okay, yeah, traumatize my body.”  My reaction was hell no I don’t want you to traumatize my body if there is no reason.  I just want to go to school.  I just want to get my nursing degree, and in my second full semester I also got to do chemotherapy which almost killed me, and radiation.  What a success story!  And what hell those months were for myself and my son.

So, the theme for today’s blog is that if you have something wrong in your body rather it’s a lump in your breast, in your testicle, in your neck, under your armpits or in your groin have it checked out, please.

If your doctor says let’s watch it, that’s OK. It’s OK to wait a little bit and see what happens, but my push for you is that you strongly encourage your doctor to run tests and find out what this abnormal foreign body is inside of you. 

You could end up here.

It could just be a fatty cyst, but a fatty cyst can grow and attach to the muscle causing you problems. If it’s just a swollen lymph node watch it and figure out why the hell it’s swollen because our lymph nodes shouldn’t be swollen. If it’s your blood work and your labs are abnormal go back for your rechecks. Don’t wait!

I must admit as a nurse I know patients who do not return for their follow ups like they are told, and honestly doctors are too damn busy to chase you down.

My book is about taking action, doing something now, don’t just watch and wait and wait and wait. Almost two years after I found that lump, I finally found out what it was.  Need I say I was so furious.  This lump that had been so small in the beginning had grown because I did as they said and “watched and waited.” By watching and waiting it had grown, moved out of the duct into the breast tissue resulting in me suffering through chemotherapy and radiation in my second and third semesters of school.

There is more to the story that I will cover through the month of October, or you can read my book that is for sale on Amazon.  The most important thing for you to understand is to take action sooner rather than later so that you don’t have to fight the monster in your body.

Let’s start a new mantra this year, and for all the years to come.  Let us shout it from the rooftops, TAKE ACTION NOW against any cancer so that you will live another day and not have to fight the demon that may be hiding out in your body. And as I always say, have a great day today, you and I deserve it..