please allow me to just send out a huge love shout out your way!

it's almost 2 am.  should be fast asleep, but well y'all know how it can be.  the steroids are keeping me wired, the antibiotics affect me too......and the cough meds he gave me, something nicknamed "pearls" don't seem to pearlize this cough at all.

i try to stay still and quiet and just keep on slowly breathing......but now that i'm wired to the hilt.....well it's a dilemma. 

look......i love you.  you are my friend.  you lend me compassion, you send joy and hope and kindness out into this bit of world we share here at DS and you are good.....to me, to others, to yourself.  you share moments of your life, your own struggles, your thoughts, beliefs, bits and pieces of your life.......and i am touched, grateful.......and unable to do what i want to do.

which is sit down and read each journal, send out individual hugs........notes to individually thank each and every one of you......as far away as i am, and as far away as i feel......i feel calmer and steadier and connected to the world because of you......because i find hope and faith deepening because of the way you are, the person that you are, your experiences, your bravery, the amazing way you seek out ways to cope with difficult challenges and loss.......all of it, every stick and bit of bone and blood that makes you YOU......i'm just so honored and blessed, thankful and grateful.

i would like to continue to carry hope that i will be able to be the better friend that i aspire and continue to pray for the strength to be......to be able to bless you in little ways as you continue to bless my life with your own ways of shining light into the darkness that we've all had to face at times.  so please know that i pray for you.......that i pray and pray and pray.......because that is something that i can do.......while i sit up cause lying down causes the cough monster to rear his ugly noisy bone jarring head..........but i know that sooner or later i will fall out and catch some much needed zzzz's.  i pray to be stronger. tonight i made a list......and then i titled it stuff i have to do (like bills and such) and stuff i pray for the added strength to be able to do in the next bye and bye....like paint the kitchen doors and finish the photo albums and well to be that person deserving of your friendship.

recently my daughter posted a picture of me from our recent mountain trip on fakebook.......sorry, facebook......she meant well, i know she did......there i stood in a field of sunflowers.  she titled it "Happy Momma"......when i saw it i started to cry.  it was hurt, sorrow, anger......pain.......so much feeling that i couldn't hardly bear it.......not because of the photo so much, but that it was there on facebook......and that people commented on it......

for example, one former friend from real life wrote.....you look great Ruthie.....really great! (this best friend of more than ten years let me go six years ago......she wasn't there for me at one of the worst times of my life.  and hasn't been there all these six years......why did she write anything at all?  is it odd for me to hurt so much over this?  another longtime friend wrote i miss you terribly ruthie.........i saw her two years ago, she told me the next time she would come to me, but she hasn't tried to put a visit together at all........and in all these six years she has never come to see me.

i know they have lives too, i know they have problems and pressing concerns, but out of all those little comments and general likes i cried over the pain of fakebook........it reopened old wounds that are still too close to the surface and i suppose it's easier to bleed through the bandages when you're sick and on top of that get a stupid freaking bout of sinusitis and bronchitis and can't sleep worth two flips of a toad's nose for ten days.......so now you sit here in your kitchen in the middle of the night feeling rotten and yet hopeful cause you know there are good people like you out in the world......and that makes life worth while........know what i mean chili bean?

so while this started as a happy thing it ran into a bit of a vent.......and well i hope you can take this all with a grain of salt and a load of love........for being there, for being you......for being a thing of beauty and dignity and wonder and for being so precious.

that's all for now lovebuckets........and i do you know, love you buckets and buckets and buckets.

nightie night!