When blessings pour in.

This is not a picture of Mexico, but it could be. Rain poured down on us last night and more is expected for the next ten days, with a brief respite over the weekend.

Rain poured into my house last night, as well. In fact, last night my house looked very much like the entire rain-soaked week after Thanksgiving, when I first learned that I was living in a  sieve. Towels, mops, buckets, plastic tarps...Well, this is a converted garage, after all. Every time one leak got plugged, another popped up. It was like living in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

I dozed on and off until after midnight, getting up every half-hour to check the floor with a flashlight. The rain seems to have abated after that -- or maybe it was the patch job -- and I finally got some sleep.

This morning, the living room looked like a Mexican thrift shop. Rocker on top of easy chair, kitty tree on table, and everything (especially tapestry loom!) shoved as far from the water as possible. But a dry floor, and I thank the Lord for that.

Fibro just loves it when you mop and wring and stack furniture for hours long after your bedtime. Whatever measly adrenaline I had on store I used up last night. Now the pain is setting in. So here I am, in the rocker (which is back on the floor), enjoying a frumpy sweater day, taking my work very, very slowly, and hoping I'm ready for the rain that's sure to come again tonight. No self-recrimination or fear of the future, just listening to my body and knowing that everything will get done in God's own time.

FIBRO-TIP: Don't live in a leaky house. Oh yes, and thank heavens for small blessings:

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It's amazing what one can do.

The rain is pouring down. It's gray as far as the eye can see. But I've made my cottage a cozy little nest. I feel positively Dickensian.

Sick of my own sad-sack attitude lately, I went out before breakfast today, dodging raindrops, and carried my tapestry loom in pieces from the weaving shed to the living room. Don't ask how I made room for it.

This gray weather has my creativity gushing. I'm a winter lover who struggles in the balmy climate of Baja. Still, it's probably best not to have too much gushing at once. My greatest downfall is to try to enact everything that flies into my mind.

Believe it or not, fibro has been a helpful friend in this regard. Among other things, it's taught me the value of limitations. One...all right, maybe two or three...projects at a time, but no more than that. I get more done, have a better chance of actually finishing something, and avoid total collapse.

As New Year approaches, however, I can't help but think about resolutions. I don't write them---I've disappointed myself too many times. I'd rather add up what I've accomplished at the end of the year and call them fulfilled resolutions. It makes me feel much better.

But every year, like clockwork, a new theme presents itself of its own accord. This last year's theme turned out to be hopes and dreams: what I wanted for myself and what would get me up in the morning. This, it turns out, is still a work in progress. Yet now there are rumblings from the deep, and they're even more colorful than last year's. I sense an increasingly creative time ahead, and I'm excited.

After this last series of difficult flares, I'm embarking on my new journey with care. Yes, it's true, I hauled my loom cross-country this morning. But now that it's here, it will assemble itself piece by piece, and I can---finally---get back to work.

As the rain rages outside, I'm snuggling down in my bastion of warmth and tea. I may need to take my creative journey a step at a time, but soon there will be projects that get me up in the morning.

I'm ready to amaze myself again.

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Of hope chests and moonlight.

This is me: shaking my fist at the rock that hides the moon.


Among the too many things I try to do in my life is weaving---and I'm going somewhere with this, so please bear with me. I have floor looms I'm constantly trying to work on and dozens of projects aswirl in my head, most of which never materialize. I'm also on a weaving chat list, and today a fellow weaver said something that crept into my heart like a ray of moonlight.


She'd just finished weaving a set of towels for her teenaged daughter to put in a hope chest. When she told us this, she remarked that she didn't know if people had hope chests anymore, but there it was, the towels were for a hope chest.


Apart from my mother, I personally don't know anyone who has a hope chest, or who ever had one. Of course, when I was of hope-chest age, I was traveling in rebellious circles that rejected anything of real value, so I'm not the best judge. Still, I think she's right. A hope chest is an old-fashioned tradition. A beautiful one, though. And, I'm thinking, a helpful one.


I'm emerging from a difficult few weeks. I won't bore you with the details, but I'm only now starting to think about the sunnier things of life. To be honest, I've rather lost a sense of myself over the whole last two years. I've been spending a lot of time shaking my fist at rocks.


A hope chest suddenly feels like a loving, comforting thing to do for myself. I've had enough of rocks. How about some moonlight, soft and easy on the heart?


So I'm starting one. Not for marriage, but for life. I can fill it over time with carefully chosen, beautiful items to remind me that I do have dreams, I do have hope, and there are things to live for.


And the first thing that's going in my chest is a note to myself: Take a step to the side, dear, because the moon is just behind the rocks.


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Good grief.

I just read that, on average, children laugh 146 times a day. Adults laugh four times. FOUR times. Good grief!


No wonder we're sick.


I'm pretty much on the other side of this latest flare. Still, when I look in the mirror, I see my grandmother, who would be just about 100 if she were alive. I have no idea if what I'm seeing in the mirror is what others are seeing. All the same, I smile at the apparition and hope it helps.


Fibromyalgia will take your sense of humor and stomp it to death if you let it. I've always loved to laugh. But stick me in the middle of a flare and I'm nasty as winter on the steppes.


How do you keep smiling when it hurts so bad? You just do. There's always something to smile about. Under the waves, in the middle of pain, everywhere. I write in part to remind myself of this, because I'm the first one to forget.


One thing I know for sure: Smiling through the fog is like driving with your headlights on. You never know what you'll see.


FIBRO TIP: Smile.


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Hey, I swept the floor.

You'd think it would take a certain amount of chutzpah (or idiocy) to start a blog in the middle of a fibro flare. Actually, it gives me a great excuse to sit here and stare at the screen.

Well, I did manage to get something done today, and that brings me to a new feature here on Foghorn...

FIBRO TIP: I learned a long time ago that writing To-Do lists is futile. A better idea is to wait until the end of the day, write down everything I actually did, and then cross each one off.

So here's my list: Sweep the floor. Huzzah!

A dear friend of mine wrote me recently about checking something out on Facebook and I had to admit that I'm not a member. I don't do Twitter, either. I don't think Twitter was created for folks like me. "8 a.m. Put on socks by lying on floor." "12:30 p.m. Dusted one shelf." I mean, what's the point?

This may change, of course, as I build my writing empire as a way to cope with not being part of the corporate world. However, I feel this is one of the benefits of having fibromyalgia. I'll never have to work on Wall Street.

To celebrate this fact, I joined Bukisa yesterday and posted my first article. Bukisa is a site where it's possible to make some money by writing what I love to write. If you've got something to get off your chest but just don't have the wherewithal to start a blog, you still might like to upload an article once in a while and pick up a few pennies.

If, like me, you're a creative soul who also has to work--somehow or other--you might enjoy the article I just posted there. I wrote 11 Tips For Surviving a Day Job With Your Creativity Intact a couple of years ago already, but the points it covers will probably never die. Fibro or not, day jobs aren't easy when you want to be doing something else.

Like sweeping the floor.