Something in my Pants

When I first started wearing the insulin pump, I put it in the black, pseudo-leather case the rep had given me and attached it to my belt or the top of my skirt. The tubing protruded from the case, and I attempted to tuck it beneath my clothes as much as possible.

I did this for a week or two until I found out about the baby-sock method. I now slip the pump sans case into a baby sock and tuck it into my undies. This works especially well when I'm wearing a skirt or a dress, as my panty hose keeps the pump in place.

When I'm wearing jeans or dress slacks, however, it's a different matter. The pump starts out at my side, placed against my hip bone. After a while--especially if I'm walking quite a bit--it slips down my panties and becomes lodged in my crotch.

Sometimes I attempt to get it back in place, and I must look like a guy grabbing at his thing. In fact, with the insulin pump riding next to my hootch, I wonder if it looks like I've got something extra in my pants.

Exercise as a Means of Giving Thanks

I am so incredibly grateful for my new lease on life. Six weeks ago, I was dying, struggling to walk a few feet, exhausted after making my bed, dreading staircases. Then suddenly--truly overnight--I had a complete turnaround. I can now walk miles with no problem and bound up stairs. I feel light and free and 20 years younger. A miracle if ever there has been one.

Because of my impaired physical condition, I had been unable to exercise much during the past few years. Sure, every once in a while, I would be able to take a walk in the woods, but eventually I would get chest pain and have to slow down. In short, I had sharply curtailed my exercise because I simply was not capable of accomplishing much of anything.

That has changed. Now I am so happy that I am in the land of the living again. I can walk! I can do household chores! I can climb stairs! Yippee! And as my way of giving thanks for being able to exercise, I AM exercising.

This morning I walked to the beach, then snaked around the quiet streets in the Rose Park district. Probably 2 1/2 miles all told.

What a fantastic feeling! I must have had a smile on my face the whole way because everyone I encountered smiled back. I was simply smiling to the world, and the world responded.

As I walked, I chanted, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." A million times thank you.

Of course, exercise will also help me maintain this renewed health. It's all working so perfectly. I am so happy and so thankful.

As I said to my son, "The prayers you say for me every night finally reached critical mass and BAM! A miracle!" Whether it was Aaron or something I did or the concern of friends or the intercession of a passing angel, who knows. But now it is up to me to sustain the miracle through exercise and smiles.

My Mom is Introduced to the Internet, Though She Really Wanted the Oracle at Delphi

My mother is 86 years old. She grew up on a Minnesota farm and remembers when her house was wired for electricity.

For years I've been encouraging her to learn some computer skills. I have told her how much fun she could have on the Internet. She could chat with other people who have attended one-room schoolhouses. She could track down old friends. She could read the news from papers around the world. She could improve her German.

But her resistance to learning about the Web, indeed learning anything new--card games, a handicraft, her fellow seniors' names--is frustrating, so I mostly just let her be.

A few days ago, however, she and I were looking for some place to eat on Thanksgiving Eve. The only place that was open in downtown Racine, Wisc., was a coffeehouse. There we had sandwiches, and there I introduced her to the Web.

As we ate, I enticed her with: "Think of a question, Mom, any question, and I'll show you how we can find the answer on the Internet." This confused her. "A question?" she asked. (Well, I guess that was a question, right? Hmmm...) "Yes, Mom, like how many gallons of water leave the mouth of the Nile River every minute or how many one-room schoolhouses are left in America. What are you interested in finding out?"

After much prodding on my part and much confusion on hers, she finally hit upon: "Why did my brother die so young?"

Wow, of all the questions in the world, this was on her mind. "I'm sorry, Mom, but it has to be something we can actually find on the Internet."

She tried again: "Where's my grandson at this moment?" And: "What are you and I going to do tomorrow?"

Obviously, she thought she was standing before the Oracle at Delphi. "Mom, computers aren't that sophisticated yet," I said. "They can't answer such personal questions like that. It has to be something concrete and public."

She finally hit upon "How far is it to the moon?" Bingo!

After that, she got really excited. We looked up her grandson, Aaron Ziolkowski, and found a review he had written for Music Connection magazine posted on the band's Web site and a letter to the editor at Thrasher, a skateboarding magazine.

I let her type in one of her queries, but for every letter, she typed a dozen. "You'd have to develop a much lighter touch, Mom. You don't have to bang it like you do a typewriter."

This was a freak experience, to be sure. My mother has already gone back to her shell, uninterested in doing anything except take her pills and shuffle about with her walker, saying she's lived too long and making herself as helpless and weak as possible.

But for a few moments in a coffeehouse in Racine, Wisc., on Thanksgiving Eve 2007, her face was lit up to a brand-new, wired world.

Messages That Inform my Waking Life

Almost every night before dropping into sleep, I say aloud, "Dear seraphim, protect me from all interference from the astral plane and guide me directly to realms of light and love of ascended masters and angelic beings, where I will receive messages that I will recall upon waking and which will inform and guide my waking life."

Usually this has worked very well, but since last December, when I had my uterus scraped (a uterine oblation) because I was bleeding up to a pint a day, my psychic ability has diminished to nil. I hadn't made the connection before between the ground of my sexual being and psychic experiences. For example, I have not seen beings of light in my living room or out and about in the world for almost a year now, whereas I used to see them several times a day.

An intuitive healer recommended that I try nutripuncture, which is a blend of acupuncture theory and homeopathy. He prescribed yin-yang, uterine, and thyroid combinations for me, and I've been taking them for the past two weeks.

Immediately, my dreams became much more vibrant and real. And I am beginning to remember the messages upon waking, like the one this morning: "Things that you need to shout to the world, even though the world may not be listening."

I have also begun to see energy fields again, not yet full-blown beings of light, angels, some might call them, but at least energy fields. These vibrations are very clearly discernible against the backdrop of objects and persons in the "normal world."

As I have done in the past to make them glow more brightly, I send them messages of love as I look upon them, and they will certainly respond in kind by sending out stronger vibrations and enveloping me with love of their own--in time, all in good time. Much like when you smile at someone and he smiles back at you, increasing the love vibration in both of you and in the world as a whole. Why don't you give this a whirl?

Roger, a Most Remarkable Man

Roger has been my friend since Thanksgiving weekend 1990 when I met him in the ghost town he was caretaking. Recently separated from my husband, I had long wanted to explore Death Valley and the surrounding desert, and as I had no invitations for turkey dinner, I felt this was the time to do it. I spent four or five days exploring some lonesome spots, Ballarat being one of them.

Triple A marks populated towns in the same way it marks ghost towns on its maps. One never knows for certain whether one will find live souls or a few abandoned buildings when one ventures into a town marked on a Triple A map. I have often wondered if its cartographers have not revised remote sections of the California map in many decades, simply transferring the names of now-deceased burgs onto current maps.

Whatever the reason, I ended up in Ballarat on the Friday following Thanksgiving, 1990. I had long looked at my Triple A map and wondered what went on in Ballarat. This was my opportunity to find out.

On that November afternoon, I met Roger, a very quiet man who appreciated silence, so much so that he would enter abandoned mines to attain absolute stillness. He once told me that even in such an environment, someone who is used to the constant din of modern life will still hear echoes of urban noise within his head, like the sound of the ocean caught inside a conch shell. With time, though, that inner chatter dies and true silence emerges.

Roger and I exchanged addresses, and over the years, we have exchanged hundreds of letters. One of the most beautiful gifts anyone ever gave me arrived from Roger in the spring of 1991. Through a soft rain, I had bicycled home from work to find Roger's package at my doorstep. In the gentle, golden light of early evening, I opened the box to find it filled with desert plants. The smells of the sage and juniper filled the room. I was instantly transported to the desert after a rainstorm.

In the 17 years I've known Roger, he has found two wives, both of whom started out as pen pals. Roger and I, however, have maybe made physical contact only once or twice. A pat on his back. A touch to his shoulder. That sort of thing, but nothing more.

Like many men in rural areas, Roger is a jack of all trades. All about the extremely strange town of Randsburg--which bills itself as a living ghost town--are the fruits of Roger's labor. Hand-crafted weather vanes. Signs painted for the general store and for antique shops on Main Street. Tile work here. Concrete work there.

He once had a tiny house he purchased for $5,000 in Red Mountain, but his "commute" to Randsburg--a three-mile walk over the mountain to his workshop in town--became too difficult. He told me he wanted to give the house away to a deserving artist, but instead someone approached him about buying it. Never overly concerned with money, Roger probably gave the buyer a deal. He now lives in a room off his workshop, fitted with a galvanized container that doubles as a sink and a bath tub. Here is another testament to Roger's resourcefulness and simplicity, traits I greatly admire about him.

Once upon a time, Roger had two pickups from the '50s, but he sold both when he moved into town. He now drives a tractor from the year of his birth--1953--once a week to the Randsburg General Store to pick up groceries. As the store is a little more than a block away, the tractor's seven-gallon gas tank only has to be filled once a year. Aaron and I drove to Randsburg last weekend to see if Roger was OK, since I had not heard from him for many months. During that visit, Roger fired up the tractor and let Aaron and me ride it around his back lot. "This was one week's worth of gas, huh, Roger," I teased.

In all the years I've known Roger, I have only visited him six times. Otherwise, we have known each other through letters alone, as Roger doesn't have a phone or Internet service.

Though I had last seen Roger about four years ago, when Aaron and I approached him outside the building he's remodeling and living in, he was not surprised. His expression didn't change. He spoke in his slow, deliberate way, unphased. I commented on how long it had been since our last encounter, and he said, "And maybe it was only a day ago." I told him I was happy to see that he was still "on this planet." He said he was glad I was still here too.

Roger's limp is worse than I remember. I once asked him how the limp had developed, and he matter-of-factly informed me that someone had shot him in the leg, but that he deserved it and so had not had the bullet removed. As Aaron commented when I told him this, "An old-fashioned sense of justice." Indeed.

I care about my friend, and I wish he would take care of his leg. But I also admire this about him--his dedication to his principles, how he lives his life in accordance with his philosophy. He is a man of integrity. He lives by his own code, and I respect that, even though his code may not be mine.

Roger, a most remarkable man.

A Small Miracle

For almost eight years, I have been unable to sleep on my side. Prior to this, I did nothing but sleep on my side. But as I developed cardiac problems, I had to retrain my body, putting a pillow beneath my knees so that I wouldn't roll over during the night.

Ever since then, almost every night, I have attempted to sleep as I prefer to sleep--one pillow beneath my head, one sandwiched between my knees and thighs, and a third held to my chest, while sleeping on my side. And every night for the past eight years, I have only been able to hold this position for a minute or so before the pressure built up on my heart and I had to go back to the prone position. The weight of my body would press on my heart, no matter if I tried the left or the right side, making breathing uncomfortable.

These past few nights, however, I have tried the preferred position and have been amazed that, after thousands of attempts in the past years, I am now able to side-sleep as I did when I was a child and a young adult and a 30ish adult before my heart started acting up. I feel no discomfort; my heart is not constricted.

I am so grateful for this shift, so grateful that I have said "thank you" by cutting back on my heart meds. A healing is in progress, and I wish to facilitate it by offering a tangible sign of my trust in this miraculous transformation.