My Grandpa Meyer had a heart attack around 1am today.  It was very severe.  He’s stable, but still in critical condition after 12 hours of fighting with medications.  He has a heart condition called IHSS which other members of my family has.  His medication conflicts with what they wanted to use to treat the heart attack.  The attack itself is in the same side of the heart as the IHSS affects.  Since his heart wasn’t working, his kidneys weren’t able to work.  They have him sedated, a machine pumping his heart (I think), a ventilator, and I’m guessing they’ll do dialisys as necessary.  My family is all pretty scared.  Heck, it’s scary for me too if I allow myself to get to that place.  Instead I’m doing my best to follow the advice of the guides – Trust my faith.  That leads me to a bigger question – what is my faith? lol  Is it my faith that everything works out for the best in the end?  The faith that everyone happens for a reason, to propel us forward on our life plan?  Or faith that he’ll be ok and survive this?  Because everyone working out for the best does not mean someone lives, if living is not the best option. (on ambien, this may not make sense lol)

I do wonder where he’s going while sedated.  Maybe he got to have a nice long chat with my Aunt Sallie, or his first wife who died before I was born?  Don’t take this the wrong way, but hopefully he’ll gain some wisdom and bring more love and less judgment within the family.  To speak up against judging one another, thinking badly of each other, and try to heal the rifts that have formed over the years.  After all, who are we without a strong loving family?  We are always a bit less because we lack that kind of energy within us, a strength that comes from knowing there are those who love you unconditionally.  So many of us want that – a real extended family instead of the small nuclear families we return to.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re continuing our new tradition of a Christmas Eve early dinner with Turkey and all the fixins.  It’ll be the nuclear family, my parents, me and my brother, plus spouses (both named Carrie, no way that’ll be confusing lol) and hopefully his son who is 6 now.  We will probably also have my mom’s mom over, since she lives just down the road, but that’s up to my mom.  Grandma is a delicate subject at times, and the goal is to avoid negative influences.  We’re also going to my Aunt Diane’s to make candy together.  It should be a very fun bonding experience in her huge but old kitchen.  It’s a bit of nostalgia with a new tradition as well.

I struggle with it, but I want connection.  I just don’t know how to get that connection with the average person.  I’m hoping Andrea and Karen will have some Reiki treatment or something that will help me begin this process before it bites me in the ass.  *hint hint*

I think the ambien is really kicking in, the typing is harder.  That means it’s time for bed.  Teaching Ascans in the morning, which is going to be awesome!  They’re all so enthusiastic because they haven’t been ground down by years of training before they fly.

Today we finally saw the psychiatrist to see how we can improve Carrie’s medications to get her to sleep.  The doctor was really nice, gave her a full hour, and made some initial changes.  First, she figures Carrie’s on too much anti-depressant which is causing her to not sleep well.  She also doesn’t want her taking her medication in the evening which can cause her to be too ‘up’.  We have 2 weeks before the next appointment, and that should be enough time to see if a new strategy is working for her sleep needs.  Then they’re going to take her off the depakote and switch to lamictal, assuming the seizures don’t act up again.  It’ll be a tricky situation, but hopefully it works because lamictal isn’t as harsh.  She’s also supposed to start going to some therapy which will not only help her (possibly) but shows that she’s committed to her own treatment in ways that the outside world understands.  This will help her when we go to foster and adopt.  I hope these changes help because she’s made so many good changes that having the right medication should put her over the top to healing and living the life she wants to live.

I’m hopeful.  For the first time in a while I’m thinking about children.  Even though I don’t want to take on added responsibility right now, I don’t want to be 35 and a first time parent.  Of course, if that’s when things work out, I’ll roll with it.  But for now, we need to get her as stable as possible.  :-)

This is over a week late.  I’m just not quite in the right head space to write I guess.  Last Sunday I went to the Wings Over Houston air show for the first time.  I’ve only been to one other air show before, while I was in MOS school in Pensacola, Fl.  It’s a little strange, since I grew up only 40 minutes from the EAA air show, but it was expensive so we never went.  This one is interesting because the majority of the planes are old war planes from WWII through Vietnam, all refurbished.  It’s really amazing to see this old planes fly!  Honestly, I find military planes more thrilling than the aerobatic fliers, so this made the air show even more fun than a civilian focused one.  It doesn’t matter that the war planes are slower or anything, but they touch something inside of me that makes it all matter a bit more I guess.

Carrie’s knee hurt too much to go, so I went by myself.  I took pictures of virtually all the planes on the ground and then very bad, small video of the Tora Tora Tora and pilot rescue re-enactment.  It was really interesting to see the Air Force heritage flights, which gave a visual history of US aviation.  There’s no way to compare where we were at to the F-15 without them being in the air.  It dwarfs the old planes, which I was really surprised with.  And of course, the F-15 demonstration flight was absolutely phenomenal.  It’s very hard to imagine a plane climb 3 miles in 20 seconds, even after seeing it happen!  But what’s funny is, even after seeing that, I’m still more thrilled with Marine Corps aviation – F-18 and Harrier.  They’ll always remain near and dear to my heart and are impressive in their own way.

The Blue Angels closed the show.  They’re always amazing and a great end to the weekend.  I’m going to make time to take Carrie to the Lone Start Flight Museum in Galveston, since many of the warbirds are located there.  Maybe someday I’ll get a really big bonus and buy a flight!  It’s a few hundred for 20-30 minutes of flight, but so worth it.  There aren’t many flight worthy planes like this that are available to fly, so I really want to take advantage of it.

My pictures can be found on facebook.

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?

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 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.

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…

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*

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 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.