Moving Home

6:53am                            Writing Practice                              55°  Boise


Yep, that's right, it's that early and I'm up. I've been up since 4am, or at least awake since 4am. I didn't actually rise until 5:30, at which point Rocky sat up on the bed blinking at the light I had just turned on, wondering what the heck was going on. It's just now light enough to let the cats go out but it's still chilly.

The whole month of August I've been lazy as can be. My house is so dusty I can hardly stand it and yet I do. Stand it, I mean. I've done outside work, renovating the back yard and the deck, getting it all cleaned up, the new deck sealed, the house painted where the old deck used to be. It's almost finished out there but now the inside needs attention and I'm about to rip into it. But back to the lazy part ... it's been so hot in the afternoons, I get Rocky in and then he and I lay on my bed napping and reading under the ceiling fan for several hours. It's been wonderful. Probably the most relaxing time I've ever had. However, I think I may be rested up now and that's why I'm waking up so early. This is the second time in a week that I've woken up predawn and not been able to go back to sleep.

I've been writing in my other journal and I only have enough pages left for one more entry. Then I'll have to start another notebook. Or I can give up the handwritten pages for a while and only do these typed pages. That's probably the best idea right now while I'm working on writing a book. I'll need to type stuff. I can always go back to handwritten pages if I need to at some point ... So I'll finish up the last entry over there and put all that away for a while.

I'm thinking of starting a new blog for Self-Empowered Health and then blog my way into that book. I have plenty of notes and info already done up to start. I don't have to advertise it, I can just start in and do that every day instead of these random pages. Although there's nothing wrong with random, it's just that it won't get me a book. But random writing for a half hour each day for a warm up is a fine idea and I can still do that right here. So when I finish here, I'll set up a new blog site. That will make blog number six, I think. There's
1) Practice Happiness.blogspot
2) RandySandknop.blogspot
3) FunnySighted.blog.com .... except that site seems to be down permanently
4) Grief Space.blogspot
5) The Art of Kindness.blogspot

And now Self-Empowered Health.someblog.com

Do I need a 6th blog?! I've been working on bloging or trying to blog for years --- at least 8 years! And I have yet to take off with one. Should I just keep creating stuff until something finally sticks?

Another decision was made this morning before I got up. I'm going to give notice on my studio and move it all home. I'll have a driveway sale in September and sell everything I no longer need, which means I have to go through everything and figure out what to keep and what to move along. I'm tired of all this stuff plugging up my life, I want simplicity. I was space. I want to feel renewed here without having to move. So now that I've rested up fully and gotten the back yard almost finished, I can set about cleaning and clearing and refreshing my inside space. I'll take the bed out of the back bedroom and make it into an office only. I don't need a guest room and as long as I have these cats, I can't have a roommate. Plus, in the summer, that door sticks and doesn't close all the way. Between the cats and the door issues, there's just no way to use that room for another person.

So I've had my studio for a year and I've used it very little. Sad but true. I gave it a shot and now it's time to make a change again and move it all home. I'm taking a break from photography while I write my book and I do my writing sitting right here in my own living room. I bought a new desk top computer and have yet to actually use it. I may use it here. But I just remembered, I bought it to use mainly for photography. OK, that's fine. No loss there. I'll downsize again and save that $154 a month. I'm glad I got to try it, I always love the idea of an office or studio away from home, but it's a waste of space.

Well, this will be exciting. I'll email Horace today and give him my notice. Then I'll start cleaning and sorting. I'm having a party a week from today, my 24 year Sober Day party. I'll need the house clean for that anyway. And then I'll begin creating space for the move back home. I'll need to sell stuff and I have no place to store things while I prepare for a yard sale. I hope an idea comes while I'm taking action.

When I look back on all my writing, I hope I don't come off as an idiot. A ditherer. But I'm afraid I will. Oh well ... we're all just doing the best we can on a daily basis, it's just that I write about it all on a daily basis. I have proof that I suffer from indecision and uncertainty. What I don't say on a daily basis is that I cry every day, some days more than others. So in a way, the very fact that I'm still here trying is amazing. I'm amazing. Every day that I stay alive after Stephen died is a testament to the power of my will. I may be a ditherer but I'm still here.

Sunday

9:51am                              Writing Warm-ups                             70°  Boise

Boy, is it smoky today! There's been a fire up by Idaho City for over a week and they still haven't got it under control. You can practically see the smoke roiling through the streets when you look out the window.

Random thoughts today: My house is dirty. I need to clean and dust but I'm having a party in two weeks and I don't want to do it twice. So I'll give myself permission to put up with it or clean in spots until it's time to begin the real cleaning. It will take two days to really get after it around here, everything is so dusty. Tomorrow I take my four photos to enter at the fair but today I have to print and add the labels to each one. Then on Wednesday they will be judged and I'll find out Friday if any of them won a ribbon. I have high hopes of getting a big ribbon this time with my new strategy. And my photo, Eye of the Horse, is a contender for the winner-takes-all competition as an abstract. Wouldn't that just be too fun to win a big something this year?

Tuesday the gravel for the back yard is being delivered and I'd like to get out there and clean up the side lot and get it all ready to have two yards of gravel dumped on it. I'd also like to really blow and clean all the gravel areas around the house where new gravel will be added. Of course, it may be Wednesday before the gravel is delivered and so I can't really plan for Rio until Thursday. I need to send him a message to let him know what's going on.

Summer is almost over and I'm cool with it. I'm ready for another fall and the cooler weather, the leaves turning, the season turning. Stephen will be gone three years in October and I'm still here, which is a miracle. In fact, I'm actually doing pretty OK these days. I'm getting things done to my house and I'm writing and taking notes for the book I'm working on. The cats are still around, still healthy, still my little buddies. I cry a little each day at least once but it's not heavy grief anymore. Just so you know, I never stop missing him, never stop thinking about him and remembering his life and what happened to him --- I can still hear his voice and imagine him walking in the door or imagine him coming out of the back bedroom and rummaging around, getting his coffee started. He's still here with me and he always will be. However, I'm getting used to this new reality. Just like I got used to having him around after he was born, I'm now getting used to him only being around in my imagination. Too bad he's not here to help me clean this house. He was a great helper kid! For the most part, I loved living with him and I hope he knows that.

OK, that's it for the random thoughts. Now I can move on to the writing that needs to be done toward completing a book. I talked to an editor yesterday, she didn't like the idea of combining a memoir with a self-help book. She says they're two different audiences and it will be tricky to market. As usual, I have come up with a non-standard idea just like the Practice Happiness CD and the expert is telling me to do it differently. Karie warned me to produce the CD as separate tracks, not all on one CD, and I didn't listen. I'm not finished with that CD, it will be included in this book with a whole chapter on its creation and then how to use it.

Dang, I just remembered that I have to do something about my website. It's old and doesn't work anymore but I don't have the money at this time to create a new one. I'll wait. Surely an idea will come to me about what to do next and it will be set up to market my services, workshops and to sell books. I don't know what's to become of Practice Happiness. I'll probably always keep it and just point it at the new website, whatever it will be called. It may be randysandknop.com.

Self-Empowered Health Story Ideas

8:50am                                 Writing Practice                               61°   Boise

I've been hand-writing in my spiral journal. Very enjoyable but today feels like a typing-it-out day and so I'm here. The busy summer continues. My backyard renovation is almost complete. I have to go find gravel as soon as I finish my morning chores. I have to take a handful of what I've got with me and try to match it. I think it's granite gravel and common, so that's good. And also cheap. I should be able to get two yards of gravel delivered for under $100. Then Rio will spread it all for me for under $100. So for less than $200, my backyard will be completely redone and ready for pots and a glider bench and that won't happen until next spring.

I'm having a party on the 28th to celebrate 24 years of sober living. My new deck will be the star and I'd love to hang some white fairy lights out there but the party will be over before dark. But I'll see about doing that anyway. So may details to take care of still. Plus I'll have to clean my house. Pretty bad in here, it will take two days of concerted effort but then it will all be really clean and ready for fall. I'll even wash the windows. I still have some paint to repair before I can schedule an appraisal. That's the goal of all this work ... get an appraisal for $160k and then get the mortgage insurance taken off my monthly payments, thereby saving me $112 a month. In 9 years, I've already paid over $12,000 for mortgage insurance and what does that get me? Nothing, that's what! I want to get rid of that and have a total house payment of $701 a month. Then I can put that extra hundred toward my principle and it will do some good!

OK, off I went dithering around on Facebook and talking on the phone. It's now 10:20am I have little to show for my writing efforts today except some posts for my suicide group on Facebook. Those are always valuable and never a waste of time.

The writing project, Self-Empowered Health, is still in the works. I keep getting ideas about what to write, what stories to add, how to format the information. For instance, the book will have two parts. Part One will be memoir, Part Two will be information and instructions, all easy to access. I've already written the prologue and have started the introduction for Part One but since it's a memoir, I may have to just begin writing the stories. Early life stories to start with, like the ones I put in the prologue which my not actually be a prologue at all, but a beginning. I don't have to get it right, I just have to get it written. Time is a factor. If I took 1-2 hours a day to write my stories, I'd have Part One finished in no time. And Part Two is already outlined and well begun as the Healing Sampler Class. When I write it out and look at it like this, the book starts to take shape in my mind and it even makes sense.

The personal stories include:
1) My sugar addiction at an early age, all the cavities I had, why I was motivated to work to get candy money, how I started my first business at age 11.
2) How my mother was so good at some parts of mothering and so bad at others. She was a hypochondriac and I was well on my way to being one, too, and why (seeking attention and approval from Mom).
3) My first experience with a muscle spasm in my neck, what caused it and how it affected my life. (8th grade tumbling class in PE, Leotta Nelson reaching over to crack my neck as I sat next to her on Donna Warden's stairs, years worth of chiropractic care, exams and visits all to hold off the degeneration of my spine caused by the injury.
4) Mental illness and depression set in at puberty, escalating into a suicide attempt at age 18. I already have that story written, although it's not finished. How I left Baker with strangers and began the uphill climb to sanity in a whole new life in Portland.
5) Then as an adult trying to deal with depression and loss with no help or guidance. Met and married Bob, moved to LaGrande, had a baby, got back into the JW religion and all was pretty good for a while. Then we moved to Hermiston and within a year, my life fell apart again. Turns out religion is no substitute for a solid mental health practice.

That takes me up to 1977 --- the first 24 years.

Thursday

9:25am                         Writing Practice                               64°  Boise

I sat down here to write days ago and then got sideswiped by life and left it all sitting here blank. In the past few days, more work has been done on my back yard: the deck is now sealed and beautiful, the paint has been repaired from where the old deck was attached to the house and the pergola is rebuilt and solid again. The only things left to do are rearranging the flag stones and maybe adding some more and then doing a thorough clean up before adding more pebbles back there and all around the house. A few more hundred dollars and the back yard renovation will be complete! And then I'll have a party on the 28th to celebrate 24 years of sober living --- the first Sober Day party in many years.

Wow, I got bored and wandered off again. Sheesh. Time for breakfast!

Self-Empowered Health ... the beginning

9:40am                                Writing Practice                          69°  Boise

Gorgeous day. Been awake since 6am and up since 7:30. The white load is in the dryer, the ocean is on the TV, the cats are out playing and I've already spent 45 minutes on Facebook. But it's OK because I wrote a post about colloidal silver and I consider that time well spent, since I'll be writing a chapter on it in my book. Yes, my BOOK! I woke up with an idea last week and I've been working on it ever since. The working title is

Self-Empowered Health: A Memoir of Sorts* 

*Instructions included

I already have the basics sketched out and I wrote the prologue on Friday. I keep getting ideas and memories to include in the book somewhere. I see this as a memoir and also a self-help book. When I look at my life and all I've been through and then take time to appreciate my great health in spite of it all, it begins to make sense that I've created my healthy life with all the little things I do and have done over the years. 

Also, I found this in my On This Day timeline: (I wrote this)

Here's my Little Bit Plan for Healthy Living:
*Eat healthy a little bit
*Exercise a little bit
*Have a positive attitude a little bit
*Love all your people a little bit
It doesn't take much, our bodies are so very forgiving 

that even a little bit of care will make a big difference over time.

I have the information and syllabus from my Healing Sampler Class, all of that can and will be used for this book. As far as structure goes, I think I'll use Part One as the memoir. I can set up the information that will come in Part Two. I've read books and memoirs that include recipes and those always interest me. This will be a memoir with easy-to-follow instructions and simple-to-do exercises and techniques. I've got:

Move More, Eat Less

The Family Motto: If a little is good, a lot must be wonderful!

And more to be listed when I remember them ....

And I've got stories! Lots and lots of stories! Oh my yes, I've got plenty of material for a book and then workshops and coaching programs! And the whole point will be what I have been saying all along: "I teach self-empowerment tools so that each person I work with can become their own personal health coach." When you take responsibility for your own health and well-being, you pick up the reins of your life and begin to trust the direction of your healthcare. 

In many ways, I've been working toward this project for years. The emotional response and excitement I felt when I first heard about Quantum-Touch, when I heard Richard Gordon speak about healing, gives me a clue as to what my heart really wanted. Yes, it's been diminished somewhat over the years as I became disillusioned with Richard Gordon and when I became aware that others were not eager to let me help them heal, especially my own family. The heartbreak of losing my mother, my son and then my brother has really knocked hell out of me. And the truth is, I'm tired of offering to help people and having them ignore me or blow me off. I've come to understand a basic truth here: you can't make people get well, you can only offer to help and then back off. Pain and illness is a messenger and until each one is ready to hear the message and take action, there's really not much that someone like me can do except love them. The medical model we have right now is perfect for the majority of sick people who want to be "fixed" without digging any deeper into the core and causes of illness. What I want to do is tell my stories and offer hope, point a direction and continue on my own path to trusting my intuition. Because that's really what it's all about --- listening to the inner self and trusting the truth of what is heard and then being willing to take the action necessary to get on a more healthy path.

Here's the link to the article about Colloidal Silver:

http://consciouslifenews.com/colloidal-silver-benefits-truth-about-colloidal-silver/1161840/?fb_action_ids=697507770265005&fb_action_types=og.likes

Thursday

10:10am                             Writing Practice                           75°  Boise

Hot already today but there's a nice breeze blowing and it's really quite perfect out there. In here, in my little house, the temperature is just right after having had all the windows open all night. Now it's closed up and the A/C won't kick on until afternoon. My last electric bill was only $40 so I'm doing a good job of managing my cool around here.

Yesterday I woke up with any idea for a memoir/self-help book called Self-Empowered Health. Richard Gordon has a workshop he teaches called Self Created Health but I don't really know what that is, except that when he was working on the first ideas for that workshop, he called me and went over the whole thing. It sounded too vague, I didn't really get a sense of what he wanted to do except he intended to pull together all of his favorite modalities and teach them in one workshop. Lazarus was mentioned, as was EFT. I had already been using EFT with the QT techniques to relieve the emotional overcharge of the client and had found it very effective. It sounded like Rickard was going to take that idea of mine and combine all sorts of techniques and claim them all under the umbrella of Quantun-Touch and Self Created Health. So you know what? I'm going to do the same thing! I've already created and taught a healing sampler class and have the syllabus and outline.

The 45 year High School Reunion and Senior Prom

9:16am                             Writing Practice                           70°  Boise

The 45 year reunion of the Baker High Class of 1971 was ten days ago and I have yet to write one thing about it. I woke up this morning thinking about telling some of my stories to Jan Jones when she stayed the night with me and we went out to dinner. I told her about how I went to prom. I had also told part of that story at the reunion but I had left out the Big Secret part.

It occurs to me now that I could start my personal memoir right there in high school --- tell the story up to arriving at the gym in my Navy blue crepe dress with the plunging, ruffled neckline, holding the school camera, alone. And then go from there to my early years. By the time I get the story back to the gym, it will be quite apparent why I'm at the prom alone as the photographer. Then I can go home with Louis Kingman and drink a rum and coke and have my first kisses, my first stirrings of passion, on my 18th birthday.

And from there I can move the story forward with graduation and my attempt at leaving home in one piece, only to suffer my first suicide attempt instead. Then the summer of '71 where I was barely sane enough to get by and could find no help. My first sex with Louis and what a bust that was, a bus ride to Portland for two weeks and then back to Baker, the job at Fancy Dan's and finally meeting Bob Turner and Jeff Geisler and hopping in with them in their VW van with no heater and leaving for Portland again, for real, never returning to Baker to live --- at least not for 31 years. I moved there in 2002 after my second divorce and tried to make a home and a life. That lasted all of 18 months before I caved and moved to Boise. A suicide attempt precipitated that move, too, but not mine that time. Stephen tried to end his life at his dad's house in Lemoore, CA in early November 2003 and I realized that we were going to lose him if something wasn't done, just like I almost lost my life, all alone and no one to help or understand all those years ago.

Does suicide run in a family? Is it genetic? Is depression passed from one generation to the next? They say the predisposition for addiction is genetic, why not mental illness as well? I'm pretty sure my mother had it. Maybe Granny did too but she found a way to deal with it on her own, sort of like I did. Maybe her mother suffered from chronic depression. Understandable with the life she had. But that's as far back as I can go, Emma Pennington. Emma's mother, Abigail, is a mystery --- my grandmother's maternal grandmother. Rachel Riley was Granny's paternal grandmother and I know more about her but I know nothing of her family or where they came from or even what their names were. I think it's pretty cool that I know as much as I do about ancestors who were born in the mid-1800's. I would hazard a guess that any depression or mental illness issues that were handed down came through the mothers. I could be wrong but I have no way to know the fathers. Granny's first husband and the father of her children was Harlan Adams and he's really tricky to track. His baby brother, Frank, is still alive but he knows nothing except that the family arrived in the west from Independence, MO but he doesn't know when or even how. Harlan Adams died of liver cancer when I was two, I didn't know him. I knew Granny's second husband, Larry Cook, he was my Gramp.

So I can begin my story with the prom. It can begin with my telling the story at the 45 year reunion or as I'm telling the story to Jan Jones or I can begin it in 1971 on the very weekend of the prom. I had hatched my plan earlier that week when I found out that my parents were going to be out of town and they were going to leave me home alone with the family car for the weekend. What an amazing opportunity they handed me! After being squashed for my entire high school experience, I was going to have a brief window of freedom. Holy Cow!