Aspartame dilemma.

I have tried to quit drinking my favorite drink.  Diet Dr. Pepper.  Now, my love of Dr. Pepper goes back to my childhood.  Dr. Pepper was the only soft drink my grandmother would drink.  She loved it.  Kept the fridge stocked with it when she could afford to.   My favorite though, is the diet version, but lately I've been reading some bad "reviews," if you will, on aspartame - the chemical that makes it taste so much like the original yet have no calories.

I can make you any drink on the Starbucks menu, yet I love Diet Dr. Pepper more.

I tried quitting the week before last, but after three days the craving was so intense I gave in.  I drank about 4 ounces, mixed it in with regular Dr. Pepper - which I had summoned from my husband during his latest grocery store run.  I have gone from drinking about 30 ounces a day to less than one, if that.  But not completely successful with the quitting thing. 

Diet Dr. Pepper isn't nicotine, or crack.  It's not even a social thing...I can drink anything, anytime.  It's a craving for ASPARTAME.  Bad stuff apparently.  I've had 3 doctors suggest that I have fibromyalgia.  I think I have aspartame disease.  Body aches all over, trouble sleeping, and there's a lot more if you drink too much of that stuff.

Let's hear from both sides of the issue.

What do you know about aspartame?  Do you drink diet sodas?  Ever tried to quit?  Know anything about the research?  Is this stuff really that horrible that the U.S. supposedly has a trust fund for all the medical lawsuits they expect to get because the FDA approved this chemical to feed to the masses?  It's in all sorts of foods now too.  Light yogurt?

Lemme hear from you.

I know you're out there somewhere.

Another sleepless but thoughtful night.  I've been meaning to come up here and write for some time now, but I have a very active child who dominates my time when I am not at work.  And when I am at work, my time is taken with sick folks or sleepy folks or folks who just need an ear either way.  Maybe that's what I need.  An ear.  Not literally - but someone to listen to all the rambling that is currently confined to the inner workings of my mind.

I've been dreaming a lot of my grandmother lately, most every night.  She has some sort of role in all my dreams, although now I cannot remember each of them.  Just her face looking at me, her eyes interacting with me, her hands in mine.  What troubles me is that I don't know what she wants.  Or is it what I want?  I said to my husband that'd I'd been dreaming of her a lot.  He had a ready explanation.  Well of course you do honey, you miss her.  I hope it is that simple.

Now don't get me wrong here.  I believe in God.  I believe in that happy place we are supposed to go if we live a good life and do right by others.  And if anyone I have ever known deserved to be in a place such as Heaven, it was my grandmother.

But what worries me is this.  What if she's stuck somewhere?  Somewhere in between?  What if she needs to tell me something?  Or is it just that I want to tell her something?  Are the dreams my mind's way of playing tricks on me, or some force larger than both of us attempting to soothe the soul's desire for another chance to meet again?

I wonder if this is the only life we live.

I wonder if I knew her before.  If I'll know her again, as someone else.  Will she come back around while I am here, or will I die and we both linger in some way off place in the distance?  Or do we just die and that's it?

I have had several relatives die since I have been alive.  People I loved.  And I wasn't there for any of their deaths.  Not one.  I was either just before or just after or completely far away hurting all the same.

A couple of weeks ago though, I was there with this little old lady in the emergency room.  Her son tried to get there in time but he couldn't make it.  She was alone except for all of us hospital staff standing around.  Normally my role is to comfort the family, deal with crowd control, help to process paperwork, call the funeral home.  All that stuff most people don't want to think about.

But this day my job was to put my hand on an old lady's shoulder, tell her it was okay to die, that we were with her and that she'd be alright.  It was sad.  Very sad.

I don't want to be alone when I die.  I have figured that much out.  Not that I'm thinking of dying.

Several days later I wondered - is what I told her true?  Was it going to be alright?  This is where some of you might say faith comes in.  Maybe that is what I lack, I'm not sure.

Then the dreams of my grandmother started again.  

I've decided that I'm going to take a different approach to this curiosity that plagues me.  I'm going to hire a psychic.  I've got to know if my grandmother is okay.  If when she died, and all the others I love died, if it really was alright.  Did they see the bright light and God's angels coming to get them?  Or is there just nothingness?

When all the people that I loved died, one by one, I squeezed my eyes shut, clenched my teeth and tried my best to shove off the feelings of sadness, anger, and regret.  But now I want to know.  

Maybe I'll never get any answers.  Maybe I'll pray to the dark silence in my house tonight.  Maybe I'll lose money and talk to a psychic.  Maybe I'll get some answers, maybe I won't.

But something's gotta give.  Even night owl's need their zzzzz's.

Rock a bye me

Sleep.  Why is such a simple, intrinsic, basic human drive so hard to get enough of.  I work hard enough, why can't I sleep?  My shoulder hurts nearly all the time, I work in an emergency room so sometimes I come home with strange stuff on my mind, I want to play with my kid when I do finally get home, but none of these are the real reasons I can't sleep.  

I'm a natural born night owl.  Plain and simple.  When I wrote my manuscript, 90% of it was between the hours of 11pm and 5am.  Anything I did during the day was editing or printing.  I think better at night.  I'm astonishingly awake.  The first time I did a 3am shift in the ER I was so nervous.  I tried to take a nap beforehand.  I worked 12 straight hours until 5 in the morning walking my tail off...yet still I was awake.  

So here I am, awake as ever, have been since yesterday at 9 am.  I have to be back at work at 7 but I'm here typing because I cannot, no matter how hard I try or how many sheep I count, sleep.  Not happening.

I want to hear from all you night owls and sleep deprived zombies with big dark circles under your eyes.  What do you to catch a few winks?

Inner Child

Something happened to me.  I'm not sure when it happened, but I realized it today.  I've started to nurture my inner child.  Now, before you laugh, consider how important it is.  

When I was a kid, I didn't really get to be a kid.  I had to work starting at age 13, and as I've said before, we only got 4 channels on our television.  I grew up without a mother, and I was largely responsible for my little brother, that is, until I got kicked out of the house at 16.  Now it wasn't all bad, but I did miss out on a lot of things other kids got to do.  For instance, like going to a New Kids on the Block concert, which I will do for the first time in October.  

Something in me snapped a few weeks ago.  Somewhere deep down in my brain just clicked on.  Something rose to the surface.  It said, I'm tired of working all the time.  I'm tired of concentrating.  I'm tired of figuring out how to be a responsible adult, a good mother, a good wife, a good daughter, a good friend, a good PAC, a good barista, a good author.  I wanna watch movies, listen to music, have fun, be a kid again.

It just so happens that I have a kid now, and therefore have good cover.  I can go into a store and buy Cinderella with my 3 year old attached and no one will think otherwise.  I can live vicariously through her.  I had never even watched Cinderella!  Or Snow White, or most of the other Disney movies.  I downloaded Enchanted for my iPhone and laughed out loud watching it late one night in bed.  I took the family to Disney World and loved every minute of it.  I bought We Are the World and the first episode of Wonder Woman on iTunes!  I went to the theatre and saw Wall-E.  Fun is my mission when I'm not at work.

I am relishing this time.  I've never allowed myself such a good time.  Maybe it's a virus I caught in the ER....

You should do it.  Just mentally kick your heels back and enjoy the ride of life.  It can really be a lot of fun if you let it.   

The Magical World of Disney

i apologize for the long absence lately, but I've been working nonstop - however, I did manage a vacation. We went to Disney World last week and let me tell you - I never had that much fun as a kid! I don't know if it was experiencing it as an adult, watching my little girl experience it, or just having 5 straight days off from work...but whatever it was, man we had a wonderful time! You should go. I've now decided that I need to watch all the Disney movies. You know, until last night, I'd never watched Cinderella? I've never seen Jungle Book, or Sleeping Beauty or countless others. How did I miss all this growing up? My mother took me to Disney, and so did my step-mother, and so did my grandfather (during the one week of my life that I spent with him), but I can't remember having as much fun as I had last week. Now I'm obsessed. Sort of. I'm wearing a Mickey Mouse tee shirt right now. :)

iPhone = mucho fun and addiction

I finally went out and purchased the iPhone last week. I've been wanting one since before they actually came onto the market, and I've waited patiently until I could semi-afford one. Lemme tell you, it is so much fun. LOVE it. But there's an issue. I think I'm going to get addicted. And my little girl is already into playing with it too. She knows that if you touch the flower you get to see the pictures and she's really into the music too. I think the Apple folks are genius. I remember when I was a teen, my father bought us an Apple IIC that took floppy disks! Haven't had an Apple product since. Now I proudly display the little white Apple sticker on my car window. I love having all my favorite pics of Sarah right there, and all my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs right there, and I love being able to surf the "real" web, and get instant access to my email accounts, and text messaging too...and then there's the PHONE! All in one. Perfect for my, at the moment, harried life! You owe it to yourself to scrounge up the $400 and get one too.

I hate my gallbladder. Let's go skating.

In some ways, I'd like to reach in there and rip the thing out myself, and in some ways I'd like to soothe it into releasing the prickly painful stones inside. But mostly, I'd just like to get a full night's sleep once in a while. I got a little complacent, stopped taking the tablets, starting eating crap again, and lo and behold, the last two weeks have been yucky.
But, on a much happier note, I got a chance to take my little Sarah rollerskating. Boy oh boy was that fun. We had a ball. I caught myself laughing out loud rather uncontrollably! My cousin's little girl was having a birthday party so we drove to South Carolina, right down the street from where we lived when Sarah was born and went to this party and I have to say, I haven't had that much fun in a long time. Even Hal got on a pair of skates and went around a time or two with me! My cousins were all giggling and reminiscing. Had it not been for my kid, I think I'd have felt like a kid again! Sarah was afraid at first, but when she saw everyone else doing it, she was ready to go. She held our hands the first time around the rink but after that she wanted to be let go. It was so cute to see her try so hard to be independent when she was doing this for the first time ever! I can't wait to teach her how to drive. :)