Ah, today we went to early mass so Chano our son could go to his protestant service later in the morning. Now fred is sleeping.
I have been waching again a movie, out of africa...the cinemetography is beautiful, and makes Africa look beautiful instead of dry and dusty and hot.
I just keep remembering Sister agnetis snide remark about a German newspaper article on a woman doctor who decided to join a cloister: why is she so busy praying when we need doctors so much.
I am old, and not in good health (AKA lazy and easily fatigued with overwork) Use my hands lord.
The sermon today was the woman at the well...and today is "oscar night"...ah well, hope for even hollywood types with five husbands and living with those who are not their husbands...

bloinkie 2 23

I am reading Kathleen Norris' book Amazing grace, which she discusses the vocabulary of protestantism, with a little Benedictine common sense put in for good balance.
Salvation means an army's victory over evil, a patient's turn around and healing of a sickness.
My sickness is negative paranoid bitterness.
I was very bitter in the past over many things, the most being I am not perfect, and others don't like me since I am imperfect.
At the IOTL prayer group, I was redeemed of this feeling of not being loved, and started to recognize that even my own faults have a purpose (Madeline L'Engle's book A wrinkle in time has this theme: we are often saved by our faults).
I did not keep up with the prayer group, parly because I was now married but mainly because I recognized I was still too bossy and know it all to become an intercessor.
Here in my leisure, I am again becoming bitter and negative.
I am sure I saved some people and helped others in medicine, but when I think of medicine, I think only of the bitter cases: The ones where I didn't find the cancer soon enough, or when I was so weak I could not respond to a call ( I work until I collapse, then become very emotional because my body is too tired and my mind too weak to do the work).
Ah, Lord, you gave me these hands to work, but here I am not wanted. And looking back on my chosen profession, I feel that I was a failure there too.
But my prayer says that much of this negativity is a mirage, a way to wallow in bitterness, which is a lot of fun. (no body loves me, everybody hates me, I want to go out and eat worms).
So I have been saved from a deep rooted bitterness in the past, and now I know I must not wallow back into that pool of mire.
Dear Lord, teach me true humility, which is to see myself not as the lowest wretch on earth(which a lot of Catholic books insist we need to think of ourselves) nor that I'm ok you're ok (the self help fuzzy oprah self realization type thinking that is the real religion of the USA). But humility, which (thanks to Murray) I see: Seeing myself as God sees me, flawed but loved, our work as nothing but knowing that daily everyday service is a prayer that binds common people.
This is what Levin discovers at the end of Anna Karenina: The prayer of every day life is where you find the Lord.
But remember, Lord, I have a Martha's hand, and a nervous temperment. Either make me patient or find work for my idle hands, Amen.

DL:
How can I serve you in this luxury, where we are

the master of so many servants and staff?
Yet I am not the master, merely a "hanger on" who

sucks up money and causes expenses without

inputting the work of my hands.
I do not believe in this work, and all I see is a

building of pride that will come down with the next

earthquake or revolution.
Yet I do not fit in with the help either, since they

need to work for their families, and getting too

close will result in their losing money.
Lord, help me find a middle way, where I can give

joy to my husband without being in the way, and to

use the talents of my hand.
Perhaps you are asking that I give them up...
I am reminded of Kristin Lavrensdattir, who retires

to a convent so her daughter in law will be free to

run the estate...she did not quite fit in, but when the

plague hit, her hands, which for years served and

nursed and cleaned and organized, were put to

work. You did indeed place her in the situation

where she was needed...and even her knowledge of

evil served to save a child.
Speaking of Kristin, when they ask what books

would you bring to a desert island, that book is

one.

Ah, but right now I am reading "trustee from the toolroom", a nevil shute novel. Would make a decent movie if cast correctly (Shute did On the Beach, which was done well, and Pied Piper, which was miscast by Peter OToole as the lead, and the earlier version not much better).

But not "Hollywood" I guess.
Like the newspaper, the bias is not so much in the opinions as the stories they chose...Vera Drake, an abortionist, not Dame Cecily who founded the hospice movement, or the very interesting life of the RAF officer in Dambusters, who was at Hiroshima and also worked with the dying after the war...or of John B. who after the war was a "streetperson" or lost person and hanger on in the missions who was killed when I was there working in a leper colony...and it was him, not all these productive missionaries who also were martyred, who was immediately proclaimed a saint by the local people...who wudda thought?
Guess that's a lesson for me...

Well, Fred is in a good mood...I am purely lazy today. Read a book, walked a bit. Prayed a bit. Lady of leisure.
I identify with the help, and am used to working...
I worry that between the rich life and the leisure I will become lazy, and there is so much religion I will become an athiest.
Ah well.

Alas I am acting like a spoiled child...I am still lost but okay.
My meditation is Philippians: Do I actually count everything a loss except for Jsus? Do I seek his way or my way? Do I talk the talk or walk the walk?
Alas, with jet lag I can't think straight.
But I am reading about how Cathocism finds grace and God's mercy in everything, so have trust in that grace...

Boinkie
we have arrived in the Philippines, and the simple bodega is now a palace with meeting rooms and guest rooms and a clock tower.
My husband' s son has a gift for making beauty-- with of course my husband's money.
I am a bit of a Philistine who says why waste money when there are poor around, and of course the answer I always hear form my conscience is that the poor are always with you, but I am not...meaning my husband will enjoy the beauty, and he will not always be with us.
Making jobs and working as a business is, of course, a God given task. as Michael novak points out, making prosperity for the poor and using your talents is not an evil-- catholics ae not puritans-- but a good, since it mirrors the creativity of the creator and in the long run helps the poor much more than giving to charity.
Alas, I am still old school, meaning I think in my heart making money is "WRONG", ergo I never make much...but am grasping and greedy in my own way, of course.

well, did nothing today...repacked my suitcase. posted a lot of photos on my official blog. Slept a bit.

I am still tired due to fighting off a cold, but sloth is a major problem. When I move, I am going to have to make a schedule so as not to waste time.

I didn't even pray, although we did go to church. I will have to call everyone before I leave.

testing 

Let's see...
I packed my large suitcase and got it shut...
We shipped off Fred's large Filippino oil paintings to his neice and I sent the computer off to my son...
Bought milk on the way home.
Watched the end of Hellboy and the National Geographic on Hurricaines.
Now we are watching Chisum, a John Wayne western.
We used to life in Ruidoso, where Billy the kid hid out. The Licoln county wars were fought nearby. Beautiful land, like the movies, with dry grassland but mountains in the backgroud with cool pine trees. We had a cabin on a creek. Not much land, but back far enough from the road for privacy.
I wish I didn't have to sell it, but we were too busy and I was losing my health working 60 plus hour weeks.
I am sad to leave here, and I think I am liked. But I have no friends but my husband and some of the neighboring kids who come up to work for money...and the little ones who ask for apples from our apple tree and for flowers.
Right now, there are no flowers, but I did put out artificial flowers until the daffodils come up.
The first yellow crocus plants are starting to bloom...and it feels like spring, although it is only February.
After living in Minnesota, one appreciates the mild winters and early spring, even though when it's 101 in the shade, it isn't that pleasent.

going away party time
Posted by Hello

party time. sorry for the fuzzy photo
Posted by Hello

party time...I'm retiring. Sorry for the fuzzy photos...will post better ones later
Posted by Hello

Ah, retired.

We are moving to the Philippines because of my husband's health. So I had to retire. My last day is today, but the tribe is holding a celebration and so we will be closed. SO I had my retirement party yesterday.

But I kept getting interrupted.

I went to the start, but had a patient unrobed ready for her pap smear. Can't leave her sit too long, so I did that. Of course, she had other problems, so that took awhile. When I came out, I heard vomiting. One patient with migraine was in the midst of a headache. So we ordered her a shot of narcotics.

THen one on my patients, who has anemia from Rheumatoid arthritis and after a long fight we put her on procrit, came to say goodbye. She is now chipper, and her blood count is so high that we had to decrease her procrit dose...no longer sitting around listless and requiring transfusions every three months. The other good news is that her lymph nodes we had biopsied three weeks ago were not cancerous, although we have been looking for a cancer on her for two years as the cause of her anemia.

Finally back to the party, where I got a letter of appreciation and lots of money on a money tree and flowers.

I took photos, but they all came blurred. They will send me the rest later.

SO now here I am coughing and depressed, waiting for my husband to come back from his jog. Have to finish packing.

Well, today lots of patients but only one flu patient, and he had the shot so it was a mild case.

One new patient came for referral. A huge 400 lb woman--although at 5'10" she was huge in several ways...came in for an abnormal mammogram, to get referred for a close up view and ultrasound to see if it needs a biopsy.

On exam, she had several boils. Yup. She had a high blood sugar, but no medicine. So we started metformin for her 170 fasting sugar. And her hygiene was not of the best. Since she now has medicare, I told her to get a shower chair. Her sister does her feet, so they were in good shape.

We could barely move her...bad hip. And a sore shoulder that improved after a shot of cortisone.

Now, obesity is blamed on the patient. But furthur history shows that this lady was a ranch wife, and had done a man's work for 40 years. And she had fought her weight for about the same amount of time, until severe arthritic hip, probably from an injury, limited her walking.

We asked the home heath nurse to check on her.

When you see a fat person, do you laugh? Or do you see someone whose body is worn out from work, who lost a life long fight against metabolic syndrome, and who still fights to be independent?