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Monday, April 07, 2014. I just tried out my daughter’s pedometer. I walked 45 minutes on “a track” around this small apartment for 45 minutes, burned 165 calories, walked 4900 steps which equaled about 2.4 miles. Too bad I have become addicted to Snickers candy bars! I would have to walk 6 or more hours per day to get rid of those calories!

Actually, on my all-green organic vegetable “diet” I lost 45 pounds in less than 3 months. That losing got a little scary – so, back to eating basic crap for the most part. I had actually discovered that not even 1% of what’s sold in grocery stores is GOOD for me. So, for now, I gave up and decided, “What the ever-lovin’ HECK! I’ll just eat dang Snickers!”

Too high of a stress level is evidently nearly as bad for one’s health as is improper diet – and my stress level remains ridiculously high! I figure – “Snickers are good anti-stress agents!”

AND, when I do my walking in the house I can practice with my drumsticks the entire time, strengthening my hands and fingers, etc.  Not sure I’m quite up for doing all of THAT out on the public sidewalks yet.

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Overall I am sad at the ending in the next few hours of support for Windows XP. It ran SO WELL!! My poor only Suzy Cute, old computer – too bad, so sad….

I am with her until the bitter end. Captainess going down with her ship?

Nearly so.

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A friend sent me a great link today that reinforces my own thinking about the harm of daycare centers. This is a British article. (I challenge my friend to find a comparable American take on this condition!)

Infants ‘institutionalised’ by overexposure to childcare

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), says that pressure on parents to work for long hours is damaging family life and failing to meet the needs of children

I don’t think very many people have a clue what this article is talking about. Although I do use the term “day orphanages” I had not directly connected the situation considered by this article to “institutionalization” but I clearly get the point.

As one commenter to this article mentioned, “…the state agenda is all about controlling future generations by becoming their parent instead.”

The reality of the neurophysiological consequences to infants and preschoolers who are being robbed of close safe and secure attachment relationships means that how these children develop will be different than it would be if the attachment relationships were present. To continue to use the argument that “poor and disadvantaged” and “abused and neglected” children are “better off being cared for outside of the home” and in “early schooling environments” simply carries NO weight when it comes to applying it to ALL THE REST of the children!

Personally, at least at this moment, I am not thinking too highly of those people who occupy “mainstream America.” Maybe not their parallel in Britain, either.

(Insitutionalized: That’s what people used to say about what happened to those locked up in mental hospitals. It’s what happens to prisoners whose institutionalization keeps them permanent returnees. It’s what Red China used, what Hitler used….. The truth of the matter is that MANY, MANY mothers would NEVER choose to stay home to care for their children, not even their newborns, not their children under five or of any age. Their fathers would not make that choice, either. These parents do not WANT to stay home with their children. DO-NOT-WANT-TO. So, blaming “the state” is exactly – how helpful to the little ones growing up most of their waking hours of their lives in these day orphanages?)

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job).  Click here to view or purchase – 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site

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Please click here to read or to LEAVE A COMMENT

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Saturday, April 5, 2014.  I did not sleep well last night.  Today is the day of the big percussion extravaganza I so want to attend at one of the local colleges here.  I am moments away from my daughter’s arrival to take me over there.  Am I nervous?  Yes.  Nearly unreasonably so.

Something in my dreams last night, dreams that I will never consciously remember, told me when I woke up the last time as morning arrived that I am dangerously missing one of the most essential ingredients to having a good life.  Self-confidence.

Oh what a blessed attribute of self self-confidence is.  Now that this concept has arisen to the surface of my thoughts I am understanding something differently about myself in my life.

Few things – other than disappointment itself – can hurt and hinder me as much as having my extremely fragile sense of self-confidence threatened.

Suddenly this morning hosts of situations from my life going all the way back to my so-abusive childhood have arisen to show me exactly where, when and how my self-confidence was destroyed.  I have so LITTLE of it from the beginning of my life my self-confidence might be the most valuable, precious, scarce, necessary and missing resource I so barely have.

I sure don’t have enough of it to comfortably take me out my apartment door this morning to attend a (to me) strange event in a strange place swarming with strange people.

For one thing I have lived long enough to be growing old – and I look it.  Being this old – all by itself – brings to mind how my having been diagnosed with advanced aggressive breast cancer in July 2007 tumbled my perceptions of myself in my body and therefore in this lifetime into the ground.

Added to that, after a year of fighting that cancer, the very person who should have been most in support of my continued survival, my oncologist, said to me at my last visit to him, “I wouldn’t bother having breast reconstruction if I were you.  You won’t live long enough to enjoy them.  And besides, we’d just have to cut them off when the cancer comes back again.”

8:00 am.  My daughter is here to pick me up to take me over to the college.

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Monday, April 7, 2014. Here I am perched on top of the fat book I ordered online to help me plow my way through Windows 8.1 on my new laptop. The book sits on top of the usual stool I use at my makeshift computer table (high, to keep baby fingers off of my keyboard), but today I am writing on my old laptop whose support for Windows XP expires today. The old computer is sitting on top of the new computer – which has been nothing but a pain in the you-know-what since I first turned it on.

My office? A shambles, actually. I have no idea how to make this area user-friendly for me, the person who is supposed to function as something else other than grandma babysitter. My body-brain is in no better shape. Scrambled. Off-key and off-kilter. That’s me.

Backing up to the percussion event I attended last Saturday. All went remarkably well! The set-up on the college campus was perfect. A large instrument staging area sat on the floor of the auditorium that doubles as a basketball court. It was surrounded by sound panels. The permanent seating went up above it in steps that allowed me to situate myself at a distance from the moderate crowd of about 150 interested people.

At one point the MC asked everyone to “please move to the area over there” as he pointed. 99% of the crowd got up and shifted as directed. Not me. And the place where I remained was the perfect spot to witness the unfolding, note by note, of a perfect musical extravaganza in percussion.

Interspersed between the performances were clinics on sight reading for snare drum and drumming technique by a visiting fantastic drummer from the east coast. I soaked it all up, wandering alone around areas of the campus during the “lunch on your own” (I ate Snickers) portion of the day.

I called my daughter to pick me up 2 hours before that day ended. We took the little ones to a park for an hour and then I was dropped off for my drumming lesson. I walked home across parking lots in the midst of roaring traffic. But I made it.

(I also slept 12 exhausted hours Saturday night in consequence.)

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Yesterday began the nightmare of the NEW COMPUTER. The computer is the nicest I have ever had but Windows 8.1 is insane. Just saying. I am eternally grateful to my 28-year-old son for his help yesterday as he accessed my computer remotely and set it up to run as smoothly as possible. He is of the techno-love generation. I am not.

I hate change for the most part under the best of circumstances. I, along with everyone else running an older computer with Windows XP is being FORCED to abandon ship and jump into shark infested waters while I bleed techno-incompetence into the churning polluted waters. (Just saying.)

“All good things come to an end,” question mark?

I have never used a Mac computer nor do I have the finances to own one. I hear my tolerance for computer mayhem would be better served by that technology. In the meantime I have exactly TODAY to safely navigate the internet world on this old computer. If I could have gotten – FINALLY – a decent computer, which the new one is – that simply ran Windows XP I would be just fine. But sharks and barracudas do run the entire globe where money is concerned.

If it did any good to complain, inwardly and outwardly, I assure you I would be at the top of the heap.

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Drumming. My Saturday lesson was fantastic. My fingers were not, however, remotely cooperative with their instruction. “SAY WHAT?” I had to tell my teacher as he positioned my fingers properly on my drumsticks for their next new move, “I am sorry. I kid you not, but those fingers are not connected to my brain! Therefore, I CANNOT DO THAT!”

So, my practice this week will not be particularly fun unless I sneak away from teach’s instructions to bouncing around willy-nilly to beats I enjoy. I have to snap my attention back to those errant fingers of mine, “Pay attention! I am TALKING TO YOU!”

The point is I am supposed to learn to separate signals to the digits between my thumb and my pinky so that the lightly and responsively roll in their balancing of the stick. The point is that I need to learn meticulously correct form in order to move into the direction of eventually being able to create 120 beats a measure in clearly defined 2-distinct-movement movements!

Something to aim for. So is being able to smoothly boss my new computer around.

Long ways to go? Am I confident I can reach my goals? I have to be. I can’t come up with another choice.

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(Later I might write about my realization yesterday that I feel like a wild animal confined in a zoo living in a city.)

(Meanwhile, I will spend a chunk of this day watching YouTube videos about how to make peace with Windows 8.1 — ha.)

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job).  Click here to view or purchase – 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site

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Please click here to read or to LEAVE A COMMENT

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Friday, April 04, 2014. I am not fond of days when I have nothing constructive to say. I do not see that I am even able to think constructively today. I cannot even define for myself what I think constructive thought even is. But whatever it may be I am identifying its existence by its absence.

It is warmer here in the north but yet again it is cloudy. I do not do well in cloudy climates any more than I do in frigid ones. I continually struggle to think and feel positively in this place, as I have mentioned many times in my posts since I returned here last fall after a 20-year absence from the northland.

I have to try to focus on miniscule aspects of my existence right now to find the positives. There ARE positives. I am having a hard time tuning into them so that I can feel positive resonating within. Like trying to listen to a radio station that is too far out of range to dial into. Static. Neuroscientists might even describe what captures my attention as “brain noise.”

I am never a fan of noise!

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Two words popped into my thoughts: chattering tires. I cannot remember the last time those two words appeared in my thoughts. No doubt they are tied to a message I am receiving from my creative right brain hemisphere in some kind of an image form.

I Googled the words. What is tire chatter?

One site defines it this way: “It is when you are trail braking hard on the front, and you get a nasty vibration or even sometimes a hopping sensation from the front tire!”

Another site says this: “Wide, ultra-performance radials when turning sharp at slow speeds may “chatter” a bit. The severity depends on the surface, but some chatter is to be expected.”

Or, do I want to learn what aviation experts have to say about brakes, tires and landing gear?

Not so much…..

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I can tell from even this simple search that what I am experiencing has to do with GOING, rate of speed, STOPPING…. Oh, I get it. My stress response system is out of whack. Surprising?

Not so much….

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I Googled “brain noise” and received many thought provoking replies.

How about Wickipedia on NEURONAL NOISE? “Neuronal noise or neural noise refers to the random intrinsic electrical fluctuations within neuronal networks. These fluctuations are not associated with encoding a response to internal or external stimuli and can be from one to two orders of magnitude. Most noise commonly occurs below a voltage-threshold that is needed for an action potential to occur, but sometimes it can be present in the form of an action potential; for example, stochastic oscillations in pacemaker neurons in suprachiasmatic nucleus are partially responsible for the organization of circadian rhythms.”

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How about, “Our Startle Response and Noise?” Oh, I bet this one is getting closer to a description of my current state!

“Crucial to survival, this instinctual reaction to noise enables us to go from a deep sleep to a quick sprint in a matter of seconds. . . or to do battle with surprising strength. Today, however, our stress response is getting knee-jerked around by all the bells and whistles of modern civilization. From the clatter and jar of diesels and dump trucks, to chest-thumping teenage car tunes, noise is almost impossible to block. It’s very uncontrollability further adds to the stressful impact.”

I have NO silence solace in this place I live in – inside or out. The ventilation system in this building drones with a dull roar throughout my walls and ceiling. In this tiny place I cannot escape the noise of my refrigerator, either. I timed it yesterday. It runs every 15 minutes for 15 minutes 24/7.

There is NO quiet outside. NOTHING but traffic noise. I have also lost all the privacy I created for myself in my walled Arizona garden. No privacy outside. Not good for me.

My stress response system is NEVER quiet where I live. I hate cities. Period. My body tells me why and how all of the time.

Is this CHATTERING? Yes! I cannot stop the sound here. I tried earplugs. I can hear the droning in my apartment wearing them. I created 3 fountains that run all of the time in this one room I am living in. The water chatters as it flows – but at least I CREATED those fountains. I manage them. But this is all wearing on me.

I am on edge.

I need to remind myself that this is normal for me here.

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From ScienceDaily: Brain Noise Is Good: New Study Overturns Notion That Brain Noise Quiets Down With Maturity

Date: July 7, 2008 Source:Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care

Summary: Canadian scientists have shown that a noisy brain is a healthy brain. “Brain noise” is a term that has been used by neuroscientists to describe random brain activity that is not important to mental function. Intuitive notions of brain-behavior relationships would suggest that this brain noise quiets down as children mature into adults and become more efficient and consistent in their cognitive processing. But new research overturns this notion.

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Does Background Noise Make Consumers Buy More Innovative Products?

June 19, 2012 — Moderate background noise enhances creativity and makes consumers more likely to buy new and innovative products, according to a new … full story

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Brain Waves Control the Impact of Noise on Sleep

Sep. 6, 2011 — During sleep, our perception of the environment decreases. However the extent to which the human brain responds to surrounding noises during sleep remains unclear. Researchers have now used brain … full story

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Playing White Noise in Class Can Help Inattentive Children Learn, but Hinder Others

Sep. 28, 2010 — Playing white noise in class can help inattentive children learn. Researchers tested the effect of the meaningless random noise on a group of 51 schoolchildren, finding that although it hindered the … full story

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Oh, and there’s this –

‘Butterfly Effect’ in the Brain Makes the Brain Intrinsically Unreliable

June 30, 2010 — Next time your brain plays tricks on you, you have an excuse: according to new research, the brain is intrinsically … full story

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The Noisy Brain – Edmund T Rolls

http://www.oxcns.org/b9_text.html Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-958786-5. The activity
of neurons in the brain is noisy in that their firing times are random when they are
 …

Brain ‘Noise‘ Increases With Age | LiveScience

http://www.livescience.com/2662-brain–noise-increases-age.html2008 … Noise in brain increases with age, could be sign of normal functioning.

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So. I recognize that I feel trapped in this apartment in this city in this climate. I recognize that the feeling state that resonates within me about being TRAPPED goes all the way through the 18 years of psychotic abuse I suffered from Mother. She trapped me nearly ALL of the time one way or the other, which included massive amounts of isolation and confinements.  TRAPPED is hard for me to ignore.

I have to turn to choices. I chose to come here. At some point I imagine I will choose to leave, hopefully to return to the region I left last October, although are many complications, nearly all of them tied to my poverty, about how any such transition can happen for me in the future.

Meanwhile I do look forward to the very NOISY percussion day event I plan to attend tomorrow followed at 4:30 in the afternoon by my second drumming lesson. I DO want to learn how to “chatter” my drumsticks as fast as I want to! Meanwhile….

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job).  Click here to view or purchase – 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site

++++

Please click here to read or to LEAVE A COMMENT

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