A year ago, I wrote about the resilience of the people of Galveston just a few months after Hurricane Ike. When a place in a natural disaster area has one of those natural disasters, there is always a lot of speculation about whether it should be rebuilt. I've noticed that people make choices for reasons and, if something changes the situation people will try to make to original choice work. That is true in Galveston. The city is not only being rebuilt but is getting better and better. The old Victorian houses are being updated and refurbished by the dozens, dead trees stumps are being transormed into works of art, beaches are clean and new parks are springing up.

Today is the 20th anniversary of my 29th birthday. I pray I'll be like Galveston, New Orleans, San Francisco and so many other places and be better than ever the older I get, no matter what disasters come.

A Long Strange Road

Welcome! If you've come back or are checking in for the first time. I've been away for a bit. This year has been eventful - 'A Long Strange Road'. I saw that phrase for the first time on the bumper sticker on the back of a black SUV in traffic in Sacramento, California in 2001. When I used it as the title of my dating profile, I got some very strange responses from boys who had some very unexpected ideas of what 'strange road' might be.

Thankfully, I am moving from my corporate, engineering, communication focus to a living fueled by creativity and spirituality. My art is showing at Christ the Redeemer Catholic Chuch in the Spring Festival Auction and Emerson Universalist Unitarian Church. Please stay tuned for mosre posts and many more images of my windows.

Yo Yo Ma, Lectio Devina, American Violets...

48, 64, 179, 2, 22, 12, 6, 10, 5, 3, 2, 1.. These are some of my numbers. Meaningless to you, they reflect some of the parameters of my reality. They are a very few facts that tell you nothing about who I am, how I experience life and the quality of woman I am. We can not know each other through our statistics and we can not know God by the numbers.

What do Yo Yo Ma, Lectio Devina and American Violets have in common? Last Tuesday, still early in withdrawal from Effexor, my blessed mother held her breath and her tongue as I drove us downtown to see the cellist Yo Yo Ma in concert with the Houston Symphony. Most of us live our lives as an obligation or trial. Yo Yo Ma lived every measure, felt every note. When others were playing he moved to their music, encouraged them smiling, nodding, swaying. His passion for the music brought the entire symphony to a higher level.

Life must be lived as a prayer and beauty appreciated where we find it. I have always tried to be good, to do the right thing. My life, my children do not fit into the narrow definition we have accepted of success. I think we lose our divinity in our quest for conformance. Maybe that is what makes medicating ourselves and our sons acceptable. We are all unique, special and individual. God did not make us to conform to the world.

Excuses, excuses, excuses (or) Holy Crap Batman

One in three American women are taking anti-depressants. If it isn't you, it is someone you know. If your doctor tells you need one of the anti-anxiety or anti-depressant drugs, ask lots of questions, do your research and then talk to someone who has taken them AND stopped.

I'm way off topic but I need to share what has been going on. I've been writing much, much less often than I had promised myself and feel like I've let myself and you down. It seems to me like I offer many, many excuses for not being or doing what I had promised or what you, quite possibly, expected. My dad teases me with the line, "excuses, excuses, excuses" when I explain why things didn't go as planned. I feel like I've been making a lot of excuses by way of explanation.

Last month, I had my first appointment with my new physician. She read my list of symptoms and said, "one word: menopause." Oh, yippee! Not like it was a big suprise but it was startling to have my new state of being confirmed so abruptly. I can't take hormones to soften the symptoms so when I was offered an anti-depressant I thought, "why not?"

It took me weeks to adjust to the meds. I won't go into the full side show of symptoms I wandered through. If you were to search on Effexor side effects you'd have a pretty good picture of what I experienced. It occurred to me somewhere in the midst of this symptom odyssey that I hadn't asked the plan to come off medication.

If you don't read Olive Branch Bloggings I suggest you start. Sara has saved my ass more than once. This time, by sharing her own struggles, she pulled my tit out of the wringer. That's an Okie-ism: doing laundry used to be hot, sweaty business so women wore house dresses and little underneath. As the repetitive work of pulling the clothes out of the washer and putting them into the wringer wore on through the day, minds began to drift and if the house dress was pulled with the wet clothes into the wringer, so also the bare breast underneath. Old wringer washers could only be turned off by unplugging them. If you aren't paying attention you might get your tit caught in the wringer. If you get your tit caught in the wringer you are in an embarrassing, painful situation... unless you have a good friend to pull the plug. Sara pulled the plug.

In my teens and early 20's I stopped and started many mind/mood altering chemicals. I would have never believed anyone who claimed that at 48 I would deal with the kind of soul wrenching, debilitating drug effects I have wrestled with recently. I am angry. Really, really pissed. I did not know that by trying to relieve normal symptoms of life change I could traumatize myself and my family in this way.

I have only taken the stuff for a few weeks. My heart breaks for all who were not warned. The only reason I knew to stop, was because Sara threw a flag up. We are medicating our kids for ADD and women for depression. Why? Isn't what we have a cultural problem?

Prayers for the lost

I'm celebrating my birthday this week. My family indulged me yesterday, today and will tomorrow. I've sat by the pool in my jammies, drinking wine, eating strawberries and reading a vampire romance novel, enjoyed barbeque pork ribs and cole slaw and watched goofy girl movies. Today, I'm in Galveston at the San Luis resort enjoying a fabulous view of the gulf, walks on the beach, great food and more trashy reading. I'm a very lucky girl.

My room is on the 16th floor overlooking the gulf. I have no idea how I was upgraded to the top floor, consierge level of the resort. From here I have a bird eye view of the beach. I know that is true because the pelicans fly in from below me and cross at eye level to ride the currents on their hunt.

I am in complete appreciation of the wonder, power and mystery of God. I walked the beach today. It's not the first time this year but it was different. This is the stormy season on the north Texas gulf coast. Not hurricane season. That starts in June. Unlike our summer hurricanes, the spring and fall storms originate in the north. Today the gulf and sky were the color of grey flannel, the waves crested in beige foam and left white lace wakes. Maybe because of the change of currents or winds, there is a startling amount of debris on the beach.

This is not my first time here after Hurricane Ike. I am not a macabre tourist in this town. Like the rest of Houston, Galveston is my extended neighborhood. It has been suprising how much progress has been made here following the devastation. Today, however, it has been suprising what the sea is giving back. The beaches are full of rebar, concrete, broken plastic. I saw a 30 gallon trash can buried in the sand, a wooden door stuck in the rocks, building facing bricks along the beach. Tonight it's raining again. I wonder what else we be stirred out of the gulf or washed further away.

More than a hundred people remain missing. My prayers are with them and thier families and those who are still recovering from the losses of their homes and property. It could have been any of us.

Stand up, sit down, kneel... oops

Well, who knew. Sometimes I get a good dose of just how much I have left to learn. Yesterday, I entered full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, feeling very much a part of the community. This morning I attended weekday mass for the first time. Maybe I should have anticipated that the weekday format would be different. Clearly I am an entering freshman, at best. There is much to know.

I live to learn and grow. I love comfort and laughter. Very often the two combine in unexpected ways or are at odds in extremely unpleasant ways. I will be 48 years old this week and find myself in the position of remaking myself...again. When I was young, I thought I would be fully baked by now. Yesterday, I thought I was on my way. Today I begin again.

Thank you for joining me on this new journey. It will be a long strange trip. I promise we will laugh along the way.

One holy catholic and apostolic Church

I've been asked recently if I have enjoyed the process leading up to becoming a full member of the Roman Catholic Church. It has been a remarkable time marked by soul-wrenching, uncertain, self-doubting, faithless, joyful, enlightening, confusing and peaceful moments.

Several years ago, I went on a business trip to Singapore, India, Indonesia and Hong Kong. When I got back I was asked the same question, did I enjoy the trip. Not to be picky, but enjoy is not the word I would choose. I have always said it was the best trip I ever had that I did not enjoy having. It was eventful: being tested by our Chinese hosts to see what they could get us to eat, India with the Taj Mahal, pollution, snake charmers, color, chaos, poverty, disease and promise, in the midst of the Bataam jungle shown the Indonesian cook's special choice for my lunch - a live, 3 foot iguana held in a Tupperware tub out back that he wanted to butcher and prepare at my table, the web of dark alleys full of shops and life woven behind the high-rent, high-rises of pre-China Hong Kong. It was fascinating, mind-numbing, revelatory, exhausting, funny and horrifying. And I will never experience it again.

Now, that is the second best trip I have ever had. Today, I and my two children were confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church and recieved our first communion. It's interesting to me that a trip to the most foreign place I have experienced and joining the Catholic Church somehow equate in my mind and heart. I am a military brat. New and different is not new and different for me. It is a way of life. I feel as though I have come home and I feel as though, while I may not have walked through the fires of hell to do so, it did get a bit warm and there was definately a whiff or two of brimstone.

I gave this decision, maybe because of my age, or maybe the because of the process to get here, much more prayerful consideration than my marriages. Becoming a member of the Roman Catholic Church is a sacrament, one of seven visible signs of an invisible reality in which God is uniquely active. As a Protestant, there were two - Baptism and Eucharist (Holy Communion). Because they weren't sacraments, I could move my church membership or divorce at will, and did. Today, I was welcomed into a faith that I will embrace to death and beyond. That's kind of a big deal.

It's been an amazing few weeks. I want to thank Arlene, our loving friend who gently guided us through our journey, my daughter for following her heart, being persistant in her belief and encouraging us along the way and my son for his openess, faith and humor.

Tonight, after many weeks, I sit here writing to you peaceful, tired and, finally, with much to say.