Sherri Cornelius

Got to sleep in this morning, and it was nice. The kids are old enough to occupy themselves until I get up (though whether or not they choose to occupy themselves is another story) so if I need an extra hour I can usually get it. Usually I feel rushed the rest of the day, but today I feel like I'm floating on an ocean of good feeling, where worry and strife is waving from yonder shore. My dreams last night were normal; don't know why I feel so peaceful. Maybe it's because I've been delving into Buddhism more lately.

I guess I need to go to yet another town to find some scent-free items. Maybe I'll try K-Mart first, but if that doesn't pan out the next step is the big city, 40 miles away. It's also school clothes time, that's always fun. Well, that was sarcastic, but this time it might actually be fun, because DH got a little bonus at work. We might be able to buy things the kids like instead of whatever's left on the $3 rack.

Maybe that's what I'm feeling today. Monetary ease. I'm going to let the feeling sink in and carry it around with me forever.

The migraine cycle is like driving a Kansas highway at night. You can go for miles in a straight line, the road gently sloping up toward the sky, the night air growing cooler as you get higher. But you can't see the apex of the hill, it's so subtle, so eventually you realize you've passed your healthy time and you're going downhill again. It's too late to go back at that point, you're already rolling steadily into the next shallow valley, but you can't tell where the bottom is until you hit it. Sometimes it's an hour later, sometimes seconds.

Luckily, I'm on the upward slope right now.

Thank you all for being so supportive and kind when I complain about my bad health. I just feel like crap all the time, you know? I guess that's one reason why I stopped blogging so much (before this month). The only thing I have to talk about is how crappy I feel. My low vitality is related to one thing: my inability to have fun. I'm bored and stressed and have no outlet, really. Every corner of my homestead reminds me how much I have to do, yet going elsewhere for pure fun would require funds I don't have. Even if I could work around the fragrance thing.

Goddangit, I need to make some money! A job would give me something to do, even if it's not for fun, at least I'd be occupied. I just feel like my hands are tied. If I get a job, the constant headaches will undoubtedly come back. I have no skills that could translate to working at home. Besides writing, that is, and I've tried freelancing and it's definitely not for me. If I made even a little bit from my novels it would ease the noose. I contemplate going back to school, but I couldn't swing it, for lots of reasons. So I go around and around my few futile options and feel like there's something I'm missing.

Do you feel successful where you are? Have you ever been really poor? What do you consider "poor", and by that I mean personally, what is the line for you. If you ever came out of poverty, did you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, or was there some deus ex machina involved?

Wow, my head feels even better now that I let off some steam. I should do that more often.

• I'm fat. Can't deny it any longer. I feel skinny, but I'm just not. I think I've been able to deny it so long because I had pretty good muscle tone. The muscles are leaving and the fat is replacing it, so even though the needle on the scale has been stationary for a couple of years, I am increasing in size. My lower body has been getting bigger since I started exercising, I think, because my muscles are getting bigger but I'm not losing any fat. Hopefully this public declaration will help push me into a proper diet. I'm don't like diet helpers like pills or drinks, because I know when I go off them I'll simply gain the weight back. No yo-yo dieting for me. I'd like to eat natural foods and very little sugar and literally exercise my ass off. 50 lbs is my goal. I'll even post my starting weight to properly embarrass myself into decreasing the number: 178.


• Having a teenage step-daughter in my life (Hi, Z) makes me think about love. What is it, really? Is it based in the physical, i.e. a hormonal imbalance leading to temporary delusion? Based in a higher power, moving us toward our soul mate? A karmic fulfillment of your purpose as a human being? I take a different view for each of the different types of love, and I wish to hell we had a different word for each one. LOVE is too broad.


• Which leads me to the question: Should you feel guilty about your feelings? In any case, love is not a conscious decision, so if you "fall in love" with someone (whatever the eff that means) at an inopportune time, is that something to regret, or to celebrate no matter what? The emotion itself is a good thing, right? Or is romantic love inherently disruptive?


• Bohemian Rhapsody just came on my media player. Woo!


• Also thinking about the recent economic downturn as portrayed by the media. People are saying things like, "People can't even send their kids to college anymore!" "This guy can't pay his $7,000 mortagage and may have to go to a smaller house! It's a tragedy!" "They've had to forgo their yearly vacation to the Bahamas! In my world, people don't send kids to college. The kids do it themselves. People live in very modest dwellings and buy their clothes at Goodwill to save money for entertainment. They have no savings. They don't take vacations.  I'm not saying it's fun to have the rug pulled out of you at any income level, and I hate what it's doing to our economy as a whole, but on a personal level I guess I just can't fathom having that much money in the first place, and so I can't sympathize as much as the media wants me to. That makes me sound like a total bitch, probably. From where I am, the middle class is a myth. Am I middle class? I think I am, barely. But the middle class I see represented on tv as the "average"? Those people are rich to me. To say there's a huge difference between $30,000/yr and #100,000/yr is a massive understatement, but they're lumped into the same category. My mind is boggled, that's all.

This was a heavy TftT, huh? Discuss among yourselves.