Michael Jackson’s This Is It

Saturday night, Carrie and I went to see This is It at the IMAX.  We got there early, expecting crowds.  Instead there were probably 50 people in the Imax theater which I attribute to Halloween.  The good thing is we were able to get a perfect seat right in the middle and Carrie only had to climb a few stairs.

The movie starts a little slow, making me wonder just what it was going to be.  But it quickly got more interesting.  They show a few minutes of how they auditioned dancers and it was insane!  They were of course amazing.  Watching the rehearsal footage was really more like sitting in the audience during a show run through.  There are still some kinks, but minus the costuming and pyro, it’s the show you’ll see the next day.  I felt like I had a good feel for what this tour would have been, which makes me quite sad.  It was going to be amazing.  His voice is still pristine at 50.  His feel when he dances is solid.  I enjoyed watching him interact with the musicians.  He got one of the hottest female guitarists ever – Orianthi.  Check out her myspace page, her guitar work is just sick and makes me happy!

Overall, I just found myself marveling at a man who was so sweet with everyone.  He wasn’t feeling the bass line, which was critical in a funky song, and he ended his request for more of it with ‘it’s all about love’ or ‘god bless you’.  Seriously, he didn’t raise his voice, get angry…He even apologizes about having to conserve his voice so he isn’t singing out in rehearsal.  But the dancers are so into it, he can’t help but push a little more to give them a performance.  I hope everyone watches this and sees his spirit.  There’s nothing dark in it, he’s just a bright and shining light that makes you want to be better.

I find myself still very affected by his death.  I can’t figure it out.  Some of it is simply that he was so bright, and he went out when he was reaching a higher level of brightness.  Another aspect is because we know just what we lost, at least with this tour, and who knows what else he would have given us.  And third, he doesn’t get a chance to reclaim his name.  I don’t believe he ever hurt a single child because he is the most compassionate, caring, loving person I’ve ever witnessed and he wouldn’t do something that knowingly hurt a child.  He knows what it’s like to have sex pushed on you at a young age, and he’s keenly aware of how other people are feeling.  So it just doesn’t add up.  I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he was a straight man with no tendencies toward pedophilia.  I believe he was a very sensitive child who faced abuse in many ways and learned some weird coping mechanisms, but he did find a few people in the world that he loved and loved him.  And now, thankfully, he is surrounded by nothing but love back Home.  I just hope he can come back before long and bring his spirit back into our world.  We still need it.  And in the end, I guess that’s why Carrie and I have to be successful with music – because the best and brightest have been leaving us lately so we need to carry on their legacy of inspirational music.

I don’t claim to know why the Universe works the way it does.  I don’t know if there is one central intelligence that is dictating everything, or if there are just smaller committees that work with a subset of people to work out their lives and situations.  Maybe this was just a gift for MJ to finally have peace and get us to create that peace ourself in our own lives and spread it.

 

Anyway…this needs to be released on DVD soon.  I hope they have more in it that didn’t fit so we can see as much as possible.  I think I may need to use this as inspiration.  I’ve never lived my life literally spreading love everywhere I go.  I wonder how that works?

forward and back

I’ve had a rather rough few days.  I made a relatively minor mistake at work (one of those, everyone else is doing it moments) but since I’m already in trouble from before it’s a more major issue.  I don’t know what will happen until this week, but I’m not in a good situation.  While it’s a bad situation, I realize my part in getting into it and try not to focus on the parts other people played.  On the plus side, I made some big changes real fast because I had so much motivation to do so.  I just hope it’ll be enough to buy the time I need to find another job if necessary.

I’ve spent more time thinking about careers.  I’m still not in a position to transition to music with Carrie, so I need a job that is satisfying and supports us as we transition over the next few years to a new joint career.  I may not need to change jobs, but with layoffs always being considered at work, I have to be prepared.  In my last real semester of grad school I took geophysics, which was a pretty cool class.  I have always enjoyed geology but chose physics in undergrad.  I wonder if that was a bad decision, but it wasn’t really.  I walked the path I needed to.  Now I live in one of the main oil centers of the world so I’m looking at these exploration companies that need people to do geophysics work.  Quite a few will hire people with no experience and train them, which is cool.  However, so many of the jobs are in other countries, or they make you do months of training in a foreign country.  This wouldn’t be so bad if Carrie were healthy, with friends and family around to help her out.  But she’s still healing, doesn’t drive, and doesn’t know anyone around here.  To top it off, the cats wouldn’t want to be away from her so that makes things really complicated.

Overall I’ve been thinking about how I could leave Carrie alone for months (not that I have to worry about it right now), as well as why I’m self sabotaging at work.  Maybe I’m just overwhelmed and not able to make good decisions unless the consequences are really high?  Hopefully I gain some insight soon.  If nothing else, I’m going to do my best at work.  Lots of studying to do, and little else honestly which is hard for me.  Too little structure means I have enough rope to hang myself…

So, I’ve learned things about myself, for better or worse.  I’m not sure how to fix everything, but at the least Carrie is improving in many ways.  We’ve been told she’ll start to really improve once her mom leaves and she has her house to herself again while I’m at work.  It’ll be interesting!

I’m going to hope for non-anxiety filled dreams and good sleep so I can start the week on the right foot.

Carrie’s mom’s visit

Carrie’s mom arrived Friday night.  We were able to get a good deal on Southwest (as long as she flew out of Louisville) and she didn’t have to change planes so it was a straight forward process for her.  She’s here to help Carrie do things when I’m not here, plus Carrie likes having her around for short bursts of time at least.  I mean, at some point everyone gets sick of family, but it’s different when you’re sick.

Right now, Carrie and her mom are at the emergency room.  We’re still trying to make sense of her medication requirements and right now it’s not going well.  It’s improving in some ways, but the medications don’t play well with each other so it’ll take a little while to get right.  As they say, it sometimes gets worse before it gets better.  I do know she’s make incredible progress dealing with the abuse she suffered so many years ago and that will pay off.  Hopefully she’ll feel better this weekend and we can all go to the balloon festival at JSC which is only $10 for a carload of people and should be interesting.  It’s kinda funny that the big balloon boy story/hoax happened this week and now we’re having the balloon fest.  The following weekend is Wings over Houston so it should be a fun month for flight enthusiasts.  Hopefully we can enjoy it as well.

She’s home!

Blas came home tonight, literally in the 3 minutes I had before work while I dropped off a movie for Carrie.  I’m so glad she has a distinctive and loud meow.  I still don’t know how she snuck out since I never got far from the door while putting trash out but she must have been determined.  She seemed fine, real thirsty, but I didn’t have time to wait and find out about her adventure.  Monkey was so mad at her, he was hissing and yelling and growling because she smelled like other cats.  Poor Carrie had to deal with that so I wouldn’t be late for work.   She’s in trouble, but I’m still just so relieved to have her back that I can’t be too mad yet.  I was literally shaking with relief.  I cried so much thinking she was dead.  I mean, she’s 18, so she’s been with me since I was 13, more than half of my life.  When she does pass it’ll be a damn big deal for me, as I discovered yesterday.  I’m just so grateful tonight…

Blas is gone

We can’t find Blas.  Monkey last saw her during their middle of the night snack when she said she was going to take a nap.  It’s been almost 24 hours now without her coming out for water or food.  It’s not necessarily abnormal for her to miss food, but not water or treats.  I’ve been looking for her most of the night without much luck.  I’ve gone through the spare bedroom in more detail than I thought would be necessary.  I’ve looked in all the cabinets, in boxes, behind things, under things… Not only am I scared she’s dead, I’m scared I can’t find her body which is even worse.  I don’t think she could have gotten out, so I’m really at a loss.  I didn’t expect her to die suddenly, I expected she would give us a clue which means she either didn’t know or she isn’t dead.

I’m worried for Monkey.  The mice died last week, one of old age and one of a broken heart.  They were his friends and he was very sad when they died.  And now Blas.  And for Carrie, her dad had a small stroke this weekend, then she found out her cousin has stage 4 pancreatic cancer – on top of her mice dying.  And all this is coming after losing one of my best friends this summer.  Starting to run low on friends and family here…

All this on top of last night getting a promise from Kendra, Carrie’s higher guide, promised us that she will be significantly better in the next 30 days.  That’s wonderful news of course, but it’s tainted by loss.  And last night I had an unpleasant dream where I was on a bus or something with Carrie (in a separate seat and row though) and just crying and grieving over Ellen.  It makes me think Blas passed last night and I was really grieving for her.  But I don’t know, and I can’t know until a body is found.  I’ve run out of places to look so I’m completely at a loss.  *sigh*

Soul healing

Last weekend we drove to Dallas to meet with my friend Andrea and her reiki master to do a soul retrieval for Carrie.  For background, souls are ‘lost’ during traumatic events.  Part of our core being, our soul, breaks away when it can’t cope with whatever happens.  This happens more often when something very traumatic happens but it can be from anything.  When we lose part of our self we are impacted the rest of our life because we’re less than what we should be.  It can be a source of fear or illness in our life.  Since we know Carrie has had some significant traumas and struggled mentally in some areas, we needed to push for this soul retrieval.

It’s Carrie’s personal stuff, but it went well overall.  Wiped her out physically, but it took care of the pseudoseizures.  With the intense healing her body/mind is able to handle more stress.  Unfortunately her straight up epileptic seizures are still hitting her hard.  We see the neurologist wednesday when we’ll push to have her admitted.  This medicine regimen is definitely not working so she’s sick and still having seizures.  They’re impacting her brain and body more than before, so the left side of her body is often numb or limp.

I don’t know what to do to fix this. The valium is already losing effectiveness so she only gets 4 good hours out of 20 mg, which is a lot and should last 8 hours.  We’ve stayed out of the ER for a week, but really that’s not that long in normal people time.  And now she’s fighting another virus or something which makes everything worse.  Hopefully it passes quickly.

Anyway…the process of soul retrieval is one that occurs over time, with the person remembering things as days go on.  We spent a few days working on traumas that have haunted her dreams and build her trust again.  I’m pretty sure she hasn’t had those nightmares since we were able to do that.  She’s still not sleeping well though, so I’m not sure how to make that better.  We hoped to get a second round of healing this weekend but the scheduling didn’t work out.  Carrie’s mom arrives this upcoming Friday and will be here through the 28th so it’ll be a while before we get back to this healing.  At least she’ll have support when I’m at work.

On another note, we took the cats with us since we didn’t want Monkey to miss his insulin injections.  We got a hotel room up there and they stayed in the hotel.  Unfortunately it was a little too long of a trip and Monkey peed in his carrier.  His diabetes isn’t controlled completely yet so he couldn’t hold it that long.  Then the next day he got stuck in the box spring which caused some major drama.  However, we still need to do this when we drive home for Christmas so it’s a learning process.  We figure staying in hotels until we’re at my parents will be cheaper than boarding the cats.  It’ll be a complicated process but hopefully we can make it work.  Actually, I wonder if we can just keep them in the car while at Carrie’s mom’s place… good thing we have 2 months to think about it.

It’s been a long week, hopefully it doesn’t go too badly.

cleaning day

Cleaning is normally a boring blog topic.  I mean, it’s cleaning!  But for some people cleaning is more than just cleaning, and that includes me lately.  For the past few years I’ve been working on improving my physical space.  This is a two phase process.  First, get rid of things that I don’t use or need anymore.  Each time we move I get rid of things though I’m still not great at it.  I don’t like throwing things away (unless trash) but I have found freecycling isn’t as easy when you live in a gated apartment complex.  Basically, I just don’t get around to it.  There are plenty of things currently in the apartment that I’m giving away and just haven’t gotten that far.  But, overall it’s a process I’m doing better with.  I’m also bringing less into the apartment, at least for me, which helps a lot as well.  The second phase is keeping up with cleaning better.  It isn’t that I don’t want the house clean, but I have had other things I prefer to do.  Honestly, there was a part of me that expected Carrie to get better and be able to do the cleaning while I’m at work during the day.  It wasn’t until this year that I realized that she wasn’t going to do any major chores while I was gone, so I had to be the one to do them.  She’s just too sick.  So I had to come up with strategies to get things done without wearing myself out.

I started by focusing on something easy, like the dishes.  I’ve found by focusing every day or two on cleaning up the dishes I’m able to keep up and not spend hours on it by the end of the week.  I was able to expand this to spending one day a weekend cleaning one room in more detail.  I’ve started getting rid of recycling to make more room and make sure to catch up the laundry.  Then, during the week I try to pick up enough that things don’t go all crazy.  Simple, I know, but something I hadn’t been able to do consistently before.  On the surface it’s funny that I’m keeping up with the housework better when things are more hectic and I have more demands on me, but I view it as a reflection of the inner work I’m doing.  As I clean out old baggage and move through issues, I can more easily handle my external world.

If I didn’t have some other things to do tomorrow I could actually have the apartment clean enough that someone could stop by unexpectedly and it be fine.  Or, more likely the management could give us 12 hours notice (because it’s never actually 24 hours) and not have to do any real cleaning.  I think I’ll accomplish it next weekend actually.  Then the challenge will be to maintain it.  I guess as I continue to do the internal development it will be easier to maintain.

There’s an added benefit in that it’s more enjoyable to be home.  It’s also easier for EMS to come pick up Carrie when things go badly if the house is clean.  Her health is enough of a concern without adding cleanliness to the list.  My hope for tomorrow is very simple.  Carrie gets enough sleep to avoid the ER and I get just a few hours of cleaning in.  Lunch is the leftover steelhead trout (my favorite) and supper will be veggie stir fry.  The only other required agenda item is to practice the class I’m certifying in so I’m prepared for Monday morning.  And if that doesn’t happen…I’ll settle with practicing my class at least in my head.  Guess I should get some sleep now.  That’s kinda required for everything I want to do.

Meditation and dream log

Since I mentioned it in my previous post, it would be helpful to post the meditation and dream logs for those that don’t read them in their normal location.

Saturday, Sept 12

This morning I was tired but knew I needed to meditate.  If I can’t make time to meditate on the weekend, when will I?  And the only way to get answers to the persistent questions in my mind is to go within.  Since my oatmeal takes 35 minutes to cook, I decided to use that as a timer.  I burned some sage in the seashell to cleanse the energy of the living room.  I laid on the floor because my back isn’t feeling awesome and the couch isn’t supportive enough for sitting or lying.  By the time I was ready I had 20 minutes or so before my oatmeal.  I started with the microcosmic orbit (qigong exercise of circulating energy internally).  It took me a while to get through two cycles because I was tired and kept drifting, but I wanted to have some focus before I went further.  Then I just kept breathing and trying to turn down the music in my head (the danger of Beatles Rock Band is having Beatles songs stuck in your head!)  There were brief flashes of different things.  A few times I heard a few words, always different voices which is a fairly common occurrance for me now.  I’m getting better at holding onto them, but it’s still very hard to hear them and remember.  However, I don’t believe these snippets are from guides or anything.  My theory is I’m slipping to a slightly ‘deeper’ level and overhearing others on that same plane.  The only thing that may have been meant for me that I remember was mention of a door opening. I don’t remember if it was words or impression that it would open suddenly.  I don’t know what the door is for, it could be related to career, personal growth, who knows.  In this state I am unable to ask questions or even comprehend much without slipping out of it, so I just file the information away for future reference.  Visually I saw brief glimpses as well. Early on I saw a small black animal, I thought maybe my cat but he wasn’t physically walking around and certainly couldn’t walk through the couch.  I remember a visual of someone (not me) pointing to a dry erase board like they were teaching a class.  And finally there was a weird feeling about 2/3 of the way through.  I noticed it got hard to breathe all of a sudden and I got real warm (external source, not internal).  No idea why, but that’s the story of the day. lol All this happened in the first 20 minutes.  Then the timer went off, so I took the oatmeal off the stove, lit some more sage and settled back in.  I didn’t notice anything else interesting, I struggled a lot more in the second 20 minutes, but the point is that I did it.  I need to start building a practice again so I have to take advantage of quiet time.  Many times I try to meditate and get interrupted by Carrie so this was a miracle in itself.

Sunday, Sept 13

Meditation was far less interesting this morning.  Normally when I meditate I feel myself slipping into a slightly different mental state.  Today I felt like I was just stuck on the surface and couldn’t get within myself.  I tried for 15 minutes to go within, pulling out old tricks like counting breaths.  It wasn’t a lack of focus, as I could could and maintain awareness just fine, it was like my energy wouldn’t settle.  I finally gave up and decided I needed action, not stillness.  So I got up and started cleaning.  Since I don’t get enough sleep as it is, I won’t be doing morning meditations this week, but I hope to sneak in some evening meditations.

Monday, September 14

I think I know why Edgar Cayce napped a lot!  My most interesting experiences happen in mid afternoon naps.  Today I was just exhausted and couldn’t resist a nap on the couch.  Monkey, our 19 lb cat decided he would take a nap with me, settling in right on my chest once I was asleep.  That made breathing a bit tough, but I guess I can consider it strength training, lifting his weight on each breath. lol  Anyway, I was resting in a mostly asleep state when I ’saw’ a round faced woman, bright and cheerful and wearing pink waving at me through the window.  Really, it wasn’t exactly the window as it’s located physically, but I didn’t realize that at first.  I thought it was the neighbor, though this woman didn’t look like her that much.  I remember trying to wave, but being unable to open my eyes or move my physical limbs.  Quite simply, my astral body was responding somewhat, waving to her, but my consciousness was returning enough to my physical body that I was aware of my inability to move.  I felt a little fear, not because of her, but that she would come in the house to either say hello or make sure I was ok, seeing as I was lying on the couch.  It took incredibly long to get back in my body and wake up, longer than I can ever remember.  I wish I would have had the presence of mind to stay where I was and talk to her.  I find it interesting that she didn’t come in.  My guess is the perimeter of our house, especially the front door area is pretty well protected.  I had no interest in letting her in, now I’m just curious who she is.  I didn’t recognize her, and we currently don’t have any earth bound spirits in our house, so I’m at a loss.  I may never know, it depends upon Carrie’s ability to talk to the guides and whether they have any answers.

If only the naps didn’t destroy my sleep cycle, I’d take them every day because it taps into my less accessible abilities much more easily.

Seeing growth in challenges

Life has been incredibly difficult this week. However, I learned a few things, about myself from myself and from the guides.

Wednesday we went to a new neurologist with the hope that we can avoid the big county hospital that is overwhelming and very slow. While waiting, Carrie had a long seizure so we went across the street to the ER of yet another hospital (that makes 5 in the past year and a half). We had a frustrating encounter with the neurologist who didn’t seem to understand what we were trying to explain. He also ignored the sleep issue with is the biggest complication we have, so that went very badly and put me in a bad moon.

Thursday I tried calling a bunch of psychiatrists that claim to take Carrie’s medicare to no avail. It got to the point where I was crying in my car at lunch because we weren’t getting anywhere with any doctors at all, and the fear was really starting to build. Thankfully I was able to bounce back after lunch and regain my hope. That allowed me to get a few other ideas to try, which I thought got us some ideas to try.

By Friday the neurology nurse had arranged for us to talk to a psych doctor at the county hospital, we just needed to come by before the scheduled MRI. When we got there, the doctor completely backed out on seeing her and was really hostile after a while. It was quite odd actually, and the neurology nurse was as confused as we were. So we went to the mri just to find out Carrie’s shoulders were too wide, and even if she were to fit it was about a 4 hours wait, which is really behind schedule! At this point, Carrie had been up for 2 days, following 2 days with only a little sleep, so her body had little left to give. She started seizing and I tried to explain to the poor people in mri why we were here, what happened with the psych people, and I was again crying with frustration. They ended up taking her to the ER after she settled enough to move across the hospital. So, a rough week. But, once we got her into the ER system, things got better on my end. Normally I wouldn’t be able to release the frustration easily, even if people started to not piss me off. But, that wasn’t the case. Instead I found myself interacting very easily. This was probably helped by people actually listening and wanting to help, but this was deeper. I was able to move on from the frustrations in ways I’ve never experienced before. This wasn’t conscious, I was actually very surprised by it each time it happened. While this week was horrible, it allowed me to see that there are some deeper changes happening within me so I don’t have to consciously choose to react as I’d like.

On the way to the hospital we had some conversations with the guides. They told me that my astral and meditation work has been improving greatly, and the spotty nature of my results isn’t a bad thing, but just me adjusting to something new – I guess a new level of ability? They were able to explain what happened during last saturday’s meditation. Apparently I’m jumping time. The small dark shape was actually Caller, my wolf, when he was a pup. The theme of doors (the mention of spontaneous opening, as well as the person I saw in my astral dreaming) is related to me being close to walking through a door. The reason I’ve felt uneasy is because it would be overwhelming to walk through that door at this point. Since my reaction isn’t anything I can consciously control I’m not going to walk through it before I’m ready. This is a good thing, as I really can’t handle being overwhelmed more than I already am!

This is why it’s so important to have the proper outlook toward life. Part of the reason I see the growth (with or without guides) even in the midst of a horrible week is because I allow it. I know that even all the bad stuff won’t stay that way forever. In fact it can change very quickly if you allow it to. Another key is to be forgiving when you can’t train as you would like so you can take advantage of the training opportunities life throws at you. In my experience, the most difficult aspect of the Jedi path are behavioral attributes. Knowledge comes easy, changing how you interact with people and life takes a lot of time. This is why I feel knighthood takes many years, yet organized training takes only a few. The completion of organized training does not make someone a knight. I have hope that I can reach knighthood. I’m finally seeing the results I expect to see. It’ll take plenty of time and work still, but progress is motivating.

Bad day – Medical battles

Today I reached my lowest point in months.  When Carrie got disability we thought things would get better.  Carrie would see the doctors she needed and they would get her health stabilized.  First, we got the runaround about Medicaid, which apparently doesn’t exist in Texas.  Then she got medicare, and we thought that would be what we needed.  Instead I’m wasting a ton of time finding that half the psychiatrists in the plan don’t actually take patients or have appointments until October or November.  The new neurologist we tried won’t make any recommendations until she sees a psychiatrist.  In August she was given a referral to the Ben Taub clinic, and they never made a decision on it.  They should have made an appointment then, and instead I had to call and get an appointment – for November!  The only thing I had left was to call the neurology department, which takes talking to a few people before just leaving a message.  However, unlike all the other places I left messages, they actually called me back, and even listened!  I’ll hear back tomorrow and hopefully they’ll have maneuvered an earlier appointment.  Otherwise we have to wait until she’s back in the ER for insomnia triggered seizures and then get them to write up the referral so she can get in earlier.  It’s stupid…really stupid.

This makes it sound far easier than it really was though.  I called many people, all who were supposed to take her insurance but who weren’t anymore, or wouldn’t take new medicare patients for weeks.  There must be a certain amount of patients they take or something.  I know this is selfish and judgmental for me to say, but what about the people who need help?  Mental health care is horrific in America.  After multiple calls in a row that got me nowhere, I was feeling very low.  I’m incredibly hopeful but today I started to really worry that she wouldn’t get the help she needed, or that it would take so long that her body would take too much damage, significantly shortening her life span.  People are worried about death panels or the government restricting care and thus killing people if we have health care reform.  That’s completely bullshit, as no one will purposely do that.  But, right now I have an insurance company willing to pay for services but doctors unwilling to take it, and indirectly killing my wife.  That lead me to a bit of a breakdown in my car at lunch.

The thing is, I know I can’t break for long, or completely.  Dealing with this is more of a war than a battle.  Lately I’ve been losing a whole hell of a lot of battles, and that takes its toll.  This isn’t a war I can afford to lose though, so I will keep fighting until there is nothing left to fight for.  Thankfully I have a strong warrior spirit when I need it.  It’s not angry, just focused.  I would like to learn to make that shift in a more lighthearted way, but it could take a while.  Maybe that’s just a myth even, I have no clue.

In any case, I was able to pull it together, release some fear and regain my hope.  Then I started getting somewhere again.  It can still fall apart, but for now, there’s hope.  In the meantime I made an appointment for a new primary care physician who we have an appointment with on Monday.  Hopefully that goes well.

So, today was a roller coaster.  I actually like roller coasters once they get going, I just hate that first big drop.  Today was a big drop.  Hopefully this means we have momentum to finish out this ride before getting back in line.