Month: June 2022

Always in crisis mode

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings9 Comments

Are you ready for the next crisis? You better be because as soon as you deal with one the media wants to be sure you hear about another one. And if it isn’t the media telling you about one it’s someone on social media, or your neighbor, or your mom who calls to remind you that you can die from Lyme Disease and what the stats are on the cases this year in your area.

Can we just stop for five minutes?

Can we just put a hold on declaring a crisis every waking moment?

Can I have a cup of tea before I’m alerted to my impending doom and death?

I’d like all the statistics to be recognized for what they are and that is usually a bunch of crap that was poorly researched and then presented to the public as a reason for them to freak out, have a break down, and curl up in a little ball while crying and buying whatever everyone is selling to help them out of said crisis.

I decided to take a break from social media and news for the month of June. I thought this might slow down my thoughts, for one, but also slow down the barrage of panic porn from news and social media sights, which is ultimately what causes my thoughts to speed up in the first place.

I didn’t do great the first two days, no. I looked at a couple of news items. I read some Tweets (and I’m not even on Twitter). My panic started to rise. I turned off the news and tried to take a deep breath. That’s when the phone rang with the only person who ever calls me — my mom, who felt it was very important at that moment to read to me the latest article in her electric company magazine that informs all of us in this part of our state that we may die very soon from a tick-borne illness. (No, that’s not how the article is actually worded.)

Thank you, Mom. I love you, but was it really an emergency for you to call me and read the entire article to me, shattering what I had hoped would be a nice, calm, news free day? Welp — I guess so.

Sigh. Of course, she didn’t see it as shattering anything about my day and it wasn’t her intent. It was how I felt in my anxiety jumbled mind. She felt like she was making me aware, not so I’d panic but so we could do our best to protect ourselves and leave the rest in God’s hands.

Sometimes it feels like everyone in the world these days is thriving on panic porn, on doom scrolling even when they don’t know how to scroll or simply don’t scroll.

We are moving beyond Covid, even though cases are still around, but the media tried to tell us there is another virus coming and we have to be ready. Roll up your sleeve, it’s another vaccine that you have to have, or you will get sick (even though everyone who rolled up their sleeve to keep from getting sick from Covid is still getting sick). We are moving beyond Covid but Russia and North Korea have bombs and they aren’t afraid to use them. And China? Oh, man, don’t even get us started. They want you dead too.

The message all day long, even when you try to shut it off, is “Panic! Panic! Panic!” but when you do actually panic people mock you and suggest things like “your oxygen dropped when you had Covid because, you’re such an anxious person.” Hmmm…I’ve been anxious my entire life but my oxygen levels never dropped. Weird, huh? I guess Covid really is a hoax and didn’t cause some people to have health issues they never expected. *sarcasm alert*

At the same time I know Covid isn’t a hoax, I don’t think it is the widespread murderer so many of a certain political persuasion thinks it is and I say this even though I am someone who ended up on oxygen while having it (for two days…but you know…that’s because I just thought about it too much, not because an actual illness caused it to drop.). Here’s something – if you look for Covid with a stick in your nose every single day, you are bound to find it, symptoms or not.

I don’t know who needs to hear/read this but we are allowed to be in the middle of an opinion and choose a little from column A and a little from column B. We don’t always have to believe things are all one way or all another way when it comes to certain issues – like Covid. We can – gasp! – think for ourselves and not be a betrayer to our “party.” *eye roll*

To be quite frank, I am tired of looking for the bad and for the next thing to kill me. I am tired of the doom and gloom and the panic mode.

I am beat down. Not just emotionally and physically, but also spiritually.

I have tried faking it by watching comedies. I have tried faking it by pretending I am an author. I have tried faking it by reading fluffy, sometimes ridiculous books.

I have tried faking it by faking it but it’s hard to keep faking it when ever time you climb back out of the hole someone kicks you back into it. Those kicks are hardest when they come from the sources screaming at you to “calm down!”

Like Santa with the bottom of his black, polished boot in the middle of Ralphie’s forehead, pushing him back down the slide, I am being pushed over and over again back down the slide of doom and gloom, only instead of crying out what BB gun I want, I am crying out what level of peace I desire while I clinging with white-knuckled fingers to the top of the slide.

Sadly, unlike Ralphie, who got his BB gun for Christmas, I will only get the level of peace I desire when the Lord chooses to take me from this world.

Looking back at May in photos

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, just photos, Just the Photos Ma'm8 Comments

I don’t have a ton of photos from May but I thought I would share what I do have. I can’t even believe May is gone and we are already in June! We did get outside a little bit more in May than in other months, since it finally warmed up, but I didn’t always remember to take my camera with me or to take photos. That’s unusual for me, but, well, sometimes it does happen that I don’t have a camera with me.

A Memorial Day journey with my parents

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings7 Comments

I didn’t really think about the emotional impact of traveling with my parents to place flowers on the graves of our passed-on loved ones when they asked if my daughter and I would like to ride along Sunday.

I also forgot that every time we pile into the car with my parents, something weird happens or the adventure becomes much longer than originally planned.

This trip was no different and there were a couple of times I thought we were going to be waiting for a mechanic.

When we started out on the journey, I heard my parents speaking in hushed tones.

“Should we even be driving this?” Mom asked.

What did that mean? Was something wrong with the car? Great. Just great. Now we were on a 20-mile journey in a car that might explode or something.

“What do you mean should we be driving it? Is this a problem that could leave us breaking down on the road, or leave us flying over an embankment into a tree?”

My questions were met with a silence that spoke volumes (harkening back to the days when I was a child and my parents decided there were things I didn’t need to know) so I started to pray.

Luckily the car problem never became an issue and Dad was able to get it fixed two days later (well, today as I am writing this).

My parents decided we would make the trip after lunch on Sunday, but lunch was late so our trip was late. By the time we arrived at the cemetery about 30 minutes from my parents’ house, it was almost golden hour, the time when the sunlight is the prettiest. I always feel guilty admiring the hundreds of flags dripped in golden sun spread out across a cemetery. It’s a solemn place, not an overlook. Still, the staff of the cemetery did a nice job again this year.

My dad and Little Miss planted flowers by my grandparents’ grave and then we stood there a few minutes, not sure what to do next.

“Sometimes when I come alone, I say a little prayer,” Dad said. “Or talk to them. Should we introduce Little Miss to them?”

Oh. Right. My grandparents were there. Under the ground. I should be focused on remembering them, but I’d stowed that emotion in the back of my head to simply make it through the day without getting weepy. Here it was, though, in my face.

So, I introduced my grandparents to Little Miss, and then, as I told Grandma how much she would have loved Grace, I started to cry. I wasn’t only remembering the time I had spent with her when she was alive, but the times I used to come and sit by her grave with a bag of black jelly beans, eating them and chatting along to her like she was still around (though feeling a bit dumb about it). Grandma loved black jelly beans but wasn’t supposed to eat them because the licorice was bad for her high blood pressure, I guess.

(Unnecessary explanation number five in this post: I talk to my grandmother because I knew her the longest. I was two when my grandfather died. I was in my mid-20s when my grandmother died and I lived with her part of that time.)

Stuffing our emotions back in, we headed back to the car and then drove around the other side of the cemetery to my aunt and uncle’s grave. This is my dad’s sister and her husband. Next to their grave, is the burial spot of a friend/neighbor of my dad’s and a cousin of my uncle’s — a decorated Vietnam War veteran who reminds my dad of the darker side of being a member of the United States Army. This man (first name Guy) was a sniper, was injured, earned a Purple Heart, and then was placed on duty to escort dead soldiers home from Vietnam. Guy killed himself in 1998 in the woods behind his house, a short drive from my parents’ house, we believe to stop the memories of all he’d seen.

After my dad planted flowers at his grave, and Little Miss and I had gone back to the car, Dad, a veteran of the United States Air Force, turned and faced Guy’s grave, saluting him in the respect he probably wasn’t given when he came home from war. The sight hit me hard in the chest and as I turned to tell my mom, who’d missed Dad’s salute, I broke down and she did as well. We were a bit of a blubbering mess for a few minutes.

With the tears behind us, Dad suggested a stop at a local ice cream place and that’s where things went off the rails. First, there was a huge line at the place, second, Dad accidentally left the lights and air conditioner on, so while he was waiting in line for the ice cream, the battery in his car died. This is where living in a smaller area comes in handy, because my dad looked to our left and the man in the next car was someone he knew.

Our family has also known the man’s wife for years. The two of them managed to get the car jumped but then another man walked by who knew Dad and Little Miss, Mom, and I sat there wondering if we would get home before 10 p.m. at that point. It turned out he was the brother of the woman we knew and he’d only recently moved back to the area after being away for probably 30 years.

We might not have known when or if we were going to get out of there, but we did know we weren’t going to make it to my Uncle Billy’s grave, at a different cemetery, that night, because the sun was setting fast. My parents ended up visiting his grave the following day.

While we were waiting for our ice cream, I told Little Miss, who wanted to go play around some tables, that we couldn’t go far because we would need to help Grandpa carry the ice cream.

“Hey!” a little boy with a buzzcut and a neon green shirt declared. “My Grandpa’s name is Grandpa too!”

All in all, the trip was a success, and we did make it home before 10, but not before dark. We let anyone who gets in the car with my parents know that they might want to plan for a longer trip than expected.

There is a good chance something weird will happen or Dad will want to take them on a tour of an area he is familiar with or once visited. Either way, the trip is going to be longer, and often more interesting, than anyone expected.