I'm Well Now!

I think I’m well now, and I want to tell you how I know it and how I got better. This blog deserves an ending to the nine-year saga that has been my Lyme journey. How grateful I am that I can call it an ending!

In the springtime, I noticed I had some vitality. No, I wasn’t eighteen again…but I felt lighter, happier, and fatigued less quickly than I had in a long time. These sensations distilled upon me so slowly that they were almost imperceptible. I’d say it took well over a year, possibly up to two. I couldn’t look back at last month and see a change, but if I looked back two or three months, I was astonished at how much more I could do. These were simple things like picking up the kids from school, staying ahead on the laundry, and scrubbing out the toilets regularly. These tasks were victories! I hadn’t kept up on the basics in years and years. It felt good.

So anyway, in the springtime of this year, I felt like I was functioning okay. A place had even opened up in my heart to where I felt like I could accept a ministering assignment and a more demanding calling. It might be a fluke, but I felt kind of brave, and opportunities came. Things were working. I was pretty happy.

I had an experience that got me wondering whether I was healthy and if we could add to our family someday. This had been out of the question for years! I went to my Lyme doctor and got a whole bunch of labs done, including a $600 lab to test whether I was still fighting Lyme. It tested for a bunch of different strains of Lyme and was sent all the way to Germany, and guess what—it was completely negative! This blew my mind. I was no longer fighting Lyme. The other labs looked completely normal and fabulous.

It’s possible that Lyme still lives in me somewhere, like chicken pox lives in people their whole lives after they’ve had it even though they don’t manifest it every day. But I have learned a new level of self-care that will hopefully keep the Lyme at bay. Plus, I still use my rife machine nightly for seven hours. 

My Lyme doctor completely supported me having more babies. Apparently, babies can take care of Lyme with their own immune systems before they are even born. Furthermore, rife doesn’t seem to be harmful to babies and would probably even help.

Next I went to the OBGYN. Again, I was met with support. I had labs done there as well, and again, everything was perfect. 

It took some time, but we studied it out from every angle and felt good and divinely endorsed about expanding our family. That my husband would ever even think about this is a miracle in itself. Today, I am about halfway through a healthy pregnancy, and my baby is absolutely perfect and healthy. Everything is working. We feel extremely blessed.

Now to how I got better…

You may recall my rife machine. I still used it every night and feel like it’s good for me. Medically, I think this did a lot to target and kill off Lyme pathogens over many months. I’d like to credit my health to the rife machine because perhaps then it could be a one-size-fits-all solution that anyone could use to overcome Lyme. But honestly, I think there is another thing that may have helped me even more.

About a year and a half ago, I discovered that I had come from a toxic family. One day when I modeled a behavior I had learned in my family, the Holy Ghost pricked my heart and told me it was wrong (a simplistic explanation, but I don’t want to go into detail here). I searched my heart, and with this new recognition, I knew I needed to repent and change.

This led me to asking questions about things that didn’t sit well with me about a particular relationship in my family, and somehow I realized that I had been under the influence of a pathological, high conflict personality for over thirty years. I fell into a rabbit hole of information that day and read all the scholarly work I could about different psychological disorders and how they affect victims. It was mortifying, saddening, and sobering to realize I had been a victim of emotional and verbal abuse for over three decades. I thought this is just how families ran. I thought this was how order was achieved. I thought I was a bad kid.

Thank goodness I was given the opportunity to see all of this before I modeled more behaviors and affected my own little family. I was given the chance to change and to break some really destructive patterns before I could hurt my children. 

I studied and ruminated on this for about a year. I thought about cutting off my entire relationship with this person, but it seemed impossible and extreme. Instead, I exhausted all the techniques I could read about from various psychology professionals and practitioners. I kept continued contact with this person, but put up more and more boundaries with time. I felt like a failure when continued toxic interactions would put me to bed for up to two weeks. I would wrestle with massive depression and self-questioning or self-loathing, believing the nuances that were communicated to me in such a sophisticatedly covert way. I wondered if I was imagining it all and if I was as selfish and crazy as this person said I was.

I could tell these vegetative episodes in bed were beginning to affect my children. When I was so sick, these hard times blended into my physical vegetativeness. But by this time, my children had come to appreciate times of vitality. My husband never knew when I was going to be okay and when I was going to be heartsick. We were all tired of it.

One Sunday, I was determined to get some professional help. I went out driving the next morning until I found a counseling office. I walked in and asked for an appointment. Really, what I wanted to know was if I was as bad as I felt I was, and whether I was completely crazy like I was being made out to be. I wanted to know if I was a completely horrible, wrong human, and whether this person had been right about me all along. On the other hand, maybe all the things I had tried were legitimate attempts to deal with an abusive person. I didn’t know. Turns out, I was the “most prepared” client my counselor had ever worked with because of how well-read I was and how many things I had already tried. For about six months, I went in every week and did cognitive behavioral therapy with the counselor. It was hard work. The counselor supported my self-empowerment. When I said, “I just wish I could just ___,” she’d say, “Well why can’t you?” I did things I had never done to try to become healthy.

Things got really bad in the family, and I considered even more cutting off my relationship with this one person. The counselor never planted the idea; it was mine, but I wasn’t ready just yet. It was a lot to let go of. I didn’t feel I had done enough…maybe if I just tried a little longer…

Then a horrible thing happened, and sadly my children witnessed it. They asked to never have to see the person again. They saw that the person’s aim was to scare and intimidate me into doing stuff. They saw the mask slip, and since they are beyond the age of accountability, I honored their request to stay away and committed myself to be brave and cut off all ties with this person. The pain was almost unbearable, but it drove me to be strong. Today, I have absolutely zero contact with this person, and I’ve never felt better. 

I recovered with the counselor’s help. It’s devastating to lose a parent, and I couldn’t even mourn publicly. But it was a hundred times better than staying in that relationship.

We sold our home and moved away. We’re starting over—new home, new child, new traditions for our family, everything new. I’m rewriting myself. Actually, it’s more like I am recognizing my true self, the one that was always quietly a fighter in that abusive relationship.

Anyway, chronic relationship problems raise stress hormones in the body. If you live with that for decades like I did, it can absolutely manifest in illnesses that you just can’t get over. I think they slow progress I made toward wellness perfectly aligns with the growing understanding I had in my situation and hope that I could have a happy heart one day.

Today, I live a buoyant and happy life. I notice that I laugh a few dozen times a day, at least. This is a complete and total miracle! My body is less burdened. I don’t have boundless energy; I still lie down a little every day. But I have dreams and goals and things to live for again. I have things to look forward to. Life is really sweet.

I used to not know how long I could live, but now I see the decades marching out ahead of me. There is purpose there—I’m not sure what, but it certainly has nothing to do with keeping that parent happy. Not my job!

It’s possible I could write on this blog again, but I don’t know what else I could add. I think I can maintain my life as it is now; it’s not super vivacious, and I still have a load of struggles to work through. But everyone does, and I like my load just fine. I’m blessed.

I hope this blog helps people and can continue to be a resource for people. It’s just one person’s journey. I believe each person has their own journey to wellness. It took me nine years to find light after darkness took over, but it ended. It could come back. But I like my life right now, and I’m going to go live it. 

What Now? In Pursuit of a New Dream

I’m going to skip the cliché of “Wow, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been here” and go right to welcoming my new arrivals.

Hello! I run this blog. 

I get a lot of texts from people I know asking if I could please talk to someone they know who was just diagnosed with Lyme disease. I always give this blog address first because I remember very little of my experience (#lymebrain #selectivememory), but I blogged a lot of details in real time, right here. I hope this helps. Beyond that, hopefully you have my digits. Or know how to leave a comment.

But anyway, I am doing pretty well. Probably. About a month ago, my energy spiked. It was amazing! I felt not-dead. I took the extra energy and started lifting weights, figuring that if I increased my muscle cell count, I would increase my mitochondria, and they’d make me more ATP energy so I could keep my energy up. Science!

At the same time, I put on ten to fifteen pounds overnight. All on my upper body.

I’m in the process of finding out whether the levothyroxine I started taking right around the time of my arm diameter- and ATP-increase has anything to do with these changes. If so, I need to decide whether to be soft and tired OR more soft and energized.

#dilemma #shallow

Anyway, my life has been pretty good. I can’t believe I’m writing that, since only a few years ago I thought maybe I was maybe dying. The hardest part of a massive difficulty for me is not knowing if there is a finish line. We’ve talked about this. In school, I thrived knowing that this class HAD to end in four months when the university declared the semester over and professors submitted their final grades. But chronic illness is nothing like that, and it irks me. Stop dangling a carrot in front of my fizace!

Recently I discovered a book called The Life you were Born to Live in the thrift store, and with my new spurt of energy and no vector in which to direct it, I bought the book solely by its title and read it. Turns out it was a book about numerology, a woo-woo “science” based on your birthdate and a bunch of other numbers in your life. It was like reading one of those paper fortune tellers you make in fourth grade, and the MASH games you played in sixth, but over four hundred pages. However, a lot of stuff was right for me! It was fun to read.

Certain concept really rang true (note: I don’t believe this stuff, but stick with me). Like, apparently, maybe our lives run in nine-year cycles. Um, okay…so that means that maybe I’m pulling out of the nine-year (debilitatingly symptomatic) chronic illness slump I fell into upon conception of my first child? I therefore declare that I crossed the finish line a year ago.

I don’t know if I actually crossed the finish line and now get to gain weight and move on to the next nine years (knitting phenom? Mother of the Year? snorkel designer?). But whether my Lyme tenure is up (symptomatically) or not, I do feel I have “a new lease on life.”

What does one pursue after slapping Death in the face?

Likewise, I am entirely retired from my nursing profession, childbearing, and even my social media accounts (R.I.P.). I am recovering from major psychological juju that accompanied the nine years of trying to stay positive, plus a lifetime of mistaken ideas about myself and my potential (#perfectionism). I know I still hate the color purple, but not much else about myself.

Let us brainstorm what I could do with my next nine years:

As a little kid, I really wanted to work at a shoe store…but ew, effort, chemicals, and inventory.

As a tween, I wanted to teach swimming lessons…but ew, human soup, chlorine, and spandex.

In high school, I loved long periods of solitary study time…but ew, tests, teachers, and group projects. #introvert

College was my time for geeking out on anything written in medical jargon…but ew, germs and medical PTSD.

Sickie days were filled with wanderlust…but ew, germs, and expensive.

I used to be such an optimist…and then a realist…and now I consider daily the virtues of becoming a pessimist, such as foreseeing disaster and preventing disappointment when things don’t work out.

Maybe I feel lost because I’ve sort of achieved most of my early life’s goals:

--get scholarships

--go to my preferred university

--become a nurse

--get married to the perfect man

--have childrens

--get work experience

--adopt many critters

--don’t die of a chronic illness (I tacked that one on later)

Is this the part where I move on to the shoe store bit?

I planned to have many childrens, but we had to stop at two. Which is why I think we have three critters, all varying in size, fat percentage, and dorkiness. #mymalamuteisadork Maybe my work is to hold down the fort, which I'm trying to do, and lurve my childrens the most, which I definitely do. I could do that. But maybe add in some hobbies too.

Updates to follow when I Rapunzel this life and pick a new dream. Suggestions welcome.

Existential Crisis

I've been morphing into a new person. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that my old self has been dying off, bit by bit. The new bits of me are tender, like the fragile pink skin under a wound. It's so sensitive. And I don't know myself at all.

Most of my core beliefs in the gospel of Jesus Christ are the same. My marriage is rock solid and my relationships with my kids continue to be great. These are blessing. But everything else sways like a boat out to sea, and sometimes it makes me seasick.

Here are some of the lies I've believed all my life:
—Heavenly Father is like a really mean teacher who won't let me into heaven if I don't earn enough points.
—My worth is based on my achievements.
—My personal preferences don't matter.
—And agency is just an illusion, and there really is only one way for me to be saved...OR ELSE.


I'm having an existential crisis. I sit quietly with my psyche, and we grieve together. That new skin near the wound is so sensitive that it is painful to be around many people.

Now I see that some of my minimalism comes from wanting to let go of things that hurt me. Often it's stuff that reminds me of the past. But usually it's stuff that represents the fantasy self I aspired to be but never lived up. My fantasy self is a lie too, and she makes me feel false guilt.

Guilt says, "I did something bad." Shame says, "I am bad." But I hope it's a lie. I hope it's okay that I can barely run a sewing machine, and I could never get through all that enriching but BORING literature that I sold off. I hope it's okay that I can't turn out beautiful cakes and that I'm terrible at deep cleaning.

That shouldn't stop me from feeling like I contribute to the world, but it does. When my grandpa was sick for decades, there was a song that said, "Only he who does something has reason to live," and it made him feel so badly about himself. They've changed the words: "Only he who does something helps others to live." I have to remember that I'm good at some things, like snuggling, and listening, and getting my husband and kids to laugh.


One lie I used to believe is the one about Heavenly Father being mean and not letting me into heaven, even if I want to be there and I'm kind-of-an-okay person.

I always noticed my faults as a child. I knew I was bad. I thought I could make up for my badness by doing the most heavenly thing in the world someday: be a mother. My mom told us that she could have been a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or anything else, but she chose to be our mom because it's the most important work.

Once when my friend came over to play dolls with me, we played hospital, and she said she wanted to be a nurse. I thought that was a great idea. And as I got older, I decided I could earn extra heavenly points by using my natural talents of taking care of people. I could not only be a mother—I could be a nurse too and save the WHOLE WORLD!!! That would give me some extra points and maybe put me over the top to qualify for heaven despite being bad.

I worked and made things happen, and my plan worked. I became a mother just before I passed the nursing board exam. But working as a nurse was hell for me. I hated it (I don't use that word unless I really mean it). I felt my gifts come through when I asked for them. But I hated leaving my kids. I hated caring for other people instead of them. And it made me so sick in my heart that my body soon followed. Organs started failing so I would finally listen, and I finally, finally quit. And now I'm talking to you.

I grieve that I ever believed God wouldn't want me. I think He's actually a parent, and He thinks we're adorable when we fall down and try again, as many tries as it takes. I think He regards us with mercy and trust.

I could have done something that would have fed my heart. I mourn this. And this is only one story. Every one of those lies and a host of others have dozens of stories attached to each. Existential crisis, folks. But the truth comes through. I don't have enough threads to weave anything substantial yet, but as I process the lies, and any manipulation and bamboozlement and I abuse I've ever felt, I sometimes drop burdens and feel better. I honor those who see beyond my scabby grossness and let me change, especially my Heavenly Father.

Summer 2017 Update

Oh, hey guys! It's been a long time since I've written. It's hard to find Lyme people who are doing a lot better because they stop putting their journey on the internet and instead focus somewhere, anywhere, else.

So I apologize for abandoning you and humbly return as one who feels yet again unwell. I had more vigor and stamina the last several months than I had in years, but summer came and made my Lyme multiply in the heat (at least that's how I perceived it). Right now, the dream is to spend my summers in the cool, wet, and mild Pacific Northwest, where temperatures rarely rise above 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

During my recent "months of plenty," I knew I was better based on how much I was able to do. When I was the most ill, I could do one thing per day: pick up kids from school, OR shower, OR cook some food, etc. (It all feels so familiar as I lie here in my nightgown from two days ago.) But then I started doing three things. Then eight. And sometimes even a good dozen! To increase productivity by 1200% is amazing. I ran errands and cooked our dinners and chauffeured my children place to place. I purged my house of even more stuff. Yes, I lied down about twice daily for a good rest, but I was doing stuff. I was living. I wasn't waiting to get stuff done--I was GETTING it done.

I try to live in a perpetual present, but I admit to the rare glance at the "what-if" banner in my brain. What if this energy didn't last? Nah, things are good, I'd think. I've got my rife and better nutrition...this should work out.

But this summer has cut my legs from under me. I can't do all the stuff, and it's sad. Back in the early spring, I verbally hoped I could help with my sister's impending twins in the summer because I would have oodles of healing time in between. Mid spring, I felt no increase in energy and retracted my hopes to be their nanny. And now I lie in bed most of the time, of little use to anyone except the puppy who naps beside me. To want to be relied upon by people I care about, but being unable to deliver, is heartbreaking. Nobody wants to take a step backwards.

One thing I still do well enough is carry my own load, even if I can't help with others' loads. Yes, we've had to modify our style from having a power mom to horizontal mom, but it's working. My children have full summer days of assigned chores, assigned reading, and assigned play. We change up enough things to keep their lives new and fun, frequenting the library and showing them movies they are finally old enough to enjoy (like "National Treasure," "The Princess Bride," "The Ten Commandments," "The Sound of Music"). We participate in holiday celebrations and take a lot of drives into the mountains. They play with the dogs and splash around outside. And I am teaching them to cook and clean, play piano and swim. They are making memories.

So yeah, they're doing great even if I feel like a bum and want to move on from this. But I have to remember that they were meant to be in this family and that if I'm meant to handle this life, by extension they are too.

So that's an update. It is what it is, and it's good enough. It has to be.

Stasis

I'm okay. I'm much better than I was a year ago, and better than the year before that. We have adapted our lives to accommodate my slowness. We are fine. I am happier than before but still feel anxious and dark at times. 

That's me. 

I finished the rife 45-day Lyme protocol as 2016 ended. I am not cured and well, and I thought I wouldn't be. But I did think I'd have more energy, optimism, and clarity. I thought I'd leap to seventy percent. 

But, you know, I'm not hooked to IV's, and I can do this from home. Bless. 

These are my thoughts. 

I don't think I am going to get better. I have improved, but I don't think I'm going to get back to one hundred percent function. I am too scarred. I have been severely ill for nine years. And I have reached an apex that will probably dip and plateau from here. I've reached stasis. It's a better place than it could be, and I am grateful. 

The objective is to survive until a cure is found or I have finished my work. For now, I can improve my quality of life...

...which is already pretty great. Just today, I soaked in the tub and thought, "Man, this is luxury. I have this house and my family and my dogs and warm, clean water, and I am so fortunate." So my ideas here are first-world myopic. 

1. I reduce stress. I do less and rest more. Seeing too much stuff in my home has always bothered me, so I'm getting rid of lot. A lot. My decluttering journey has been a continuous spiral toward just the right selection of items to serve our family, and each pass around the circle I understand better what is serving us and what is not. 

This doesn't just go for items: I constantly edit what I allow into my life. Anything unwelcomed is treated like junk mail--unapologetically chucked before it can enter my inner sanctum. 

2. I increase hygge--a Danish word describing a feeling of safety, coziness, and well-being. I relish good smells, soft fabrics, delicious food, living creatures, soft lighting, sparse furnishings, clear surfaces, and enjoyable books. We have more calm and seem to get out games to play as a family more often because of our desire for togetherness, and because of the spare orderliness that is beginning to allow this. I have more help with chores because we all want that good feeling that comes with a hyggelig home. 

3. I seek doable service. I dig my fingers into the incredible, arctic coats of my grateful dogs for a good scratch. I wave at the neighbors when I pick up the kids. I comment on Instagram and do my best in my calling. From these small things, I hope to roll forward--even if only with the momentum of stiff, cooling magma--toward my hope to pay forward the kindness that has been shown to me. 

Service can sometimes take my mind off of pervasive loneliness and mourning. Who can't smile when a dog is kicking its leg because you found THE sweet scratching spot?

I can think of a lot of things I'll probably never do, like run a marathon, get a PhD, or have more children. But I live a good life, a simple life, a small life. I didn't think that would happen to me, a small life. I planned to walk the whole world and be a big influencer in it. 

But maybe I'm meant to be the steady home base from which my family can leap. 

Rife and an Update

I am long overdue for an update, and a lot has changed!

I have read a lot of books. Here are the ones I have read but not reviewed.

36) Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
37) Doctrine and Covenants
38) Pearl of Great Price
39) The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase) by Rick Riordan
40) Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt
41) A Grimm Warning (The Land of Stories) by Chris Colfer
42) Beyond the Kingdoms (The Land of Stories) by Chris Colfer
43) The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
44) Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Howard W. Hunter, published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
45) Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Ok, on to Lyme updates.

I told you that I quit treatment, right? It's been months and months. My husband was doing our taxes, and he quantified how much we had spent on healthcare in 2015. We were shocked, floored, maybe even devastated.

That was the last straw for me. My guts were worlds better than they had been when I started treatment, but nothing else had made that much money's worth of progress, and I was fed up. So I gradually took myself off of EVERYTHING I was taking except for the two cheap prescriptions. I got some salt lamps and bath bombs and a free library app. I determined to maintain myself through self care, etc. In the back of my mind, I knew there was one modality called rife with a rife practitioner that I had meant to try, but I didn't want to drop fifty dollars to try something that might not work. I was done.

I was content. We had modified our lives to my level of energy, and it was working. I still spent more time in bed than out, but I was okay. Our kids were happy. My husband was productive. I rarely had pain; I just had no energy. The summer heat made me really sick, but we had puppies the kids could play with all summer long.

After many months of doing well enough but not progressing, I heard my son praying one night. He asked Heavenly Father to help me feel better. I noticed he asked every night thereafter. The requests were specific to days and then events and then the entire month. This boy is endlessly patient with his slow mother, but I though that maybe I should try to step up my game to not just maintain myself, but maybe even improve. Maybe I should try to manifest some of his hopeful prayer.

An invitation to the state-wide Lyme support group meeting appeared in my email inbox, and it said someone would be demonstrating a rife machine. Rife--that thing I'd never tried. If I went, I could try it for free. So I drank some caffeine to get me there, and I went.

A man who had had Lyme showed us his machine and explained how he had been well for eight years, having used rife intensively for one year at the start plus a couple years of maintenance. Rife is a frequency generator, manifesting in radio and light waves, that can be tuned to different frequencies to heal or to kill, depending on the need. He demonstrated a couple healing channels on us, one for sleep and one for increasing energy. I was extremely sensitive to both. Then he put the machine on a kill channel for Lyme. I felt sick to my stomach and anxious, but it went away once the short cycle was over.

These energies don't care that Lyme spirochetes can manipulate their DNA to hide from the immune system or build biofilms to protect them or burrow deep into tissues where antibiotics can't find them. The right kill frequencies can find the spirochetes and blast them apart. Done. And all you have to do is clean up the mess and manifest exacerbated Lyme symptoms in a process called herxing. With time, these reactions lessen as there is less to clean up. Slam bam, thank you ma'am--you're on your way to wellness.

It took me two weeks to recover from this short demonstration. From what I remember, this manifested in migraines, severe gut pain, foggy brain, insomnia, mood issues, and involuntary bedrest. That's how badly I herxed.

Rife worked for me.

I decided to look up the rife person from my contacts that I'd managed to avoid for a year, and I made an appointment. The practitioner seemed nice at first, but she was so motivated by fear that she seemed impassioned about scolding and scaring me into submission with different treatments she recommended. Furthermore, she only scanned me for problems and didn't actually let me try their rife at all. I left, $250 poorer and frustrated. She tried to get me to come back in with a courtesy call, but it was barbed with warnings and expressions of doubt. I fired her services from my life.

I turned to my online support group to see if anyone knew of a practitioner in the area who could let me try rife again so I could decide whether to buy one. I expected an office situation, but a woman in the group reached out and said I could come to her house. When I arrived, she ran a cycle on me and another gal. We talked and found true empathy in each other. We discussed how our purpose is to survive until a cure is found. I went home comforted, but with a splitting migraine from the treatment. I felt terrible for a day, but then I had increased energy for about three days after that.

Miraculously, and in time, we were able to get a machine, and the woman who helped me in her home graciously answers any questions I have as they come up. I'm doing a 45-day treatment protocol which includes detoxifying foot baths using the machine, and overnight rife treatments that take about eight hours. I use the machine at least twice daily. It is busy, but far more comfortable than any treatment I've ever done. The machine is a miracle. It isn't just good for Lyme--it helped my son get over a fever last week. It has hundreds of channels that are being updated or added to every week. I'm so happy and impressed with this modality. I feel hope, like maybe my son's prayers for a healthy mom will be answered someday.

I'm only a week into my Rife program, but I feel a difference. I tried a self-designed program, but I herxed. The 45-day program doesn't make me react so severely, so I am actually functional at least part of every day--sometimes all day!!!

Further, I am exercising twice a week. I found an inexpensive pair of figure skates online, and I go to the ice skating rink to do laps and try new skills. The laps are my cardio; the skills build additional muscle. My rationale is that exercise adds muscle, which adds mitochondria and ATP, and therefore, it creates more energy for a fitter mom. As a dancer, I loved working my lower body and feeling those muscles burn, so skating is a thrill that way and also because the icy air that moves past me as I skate is exhilarating. I usually zone out and listen to an audio book while I glide along.

What inspired me to skate was the older gentleman I spied doing laps when I took my kids skating one day. Since then, he has actually skated alongside me and helped me with a skill I struggled with. The same people seem to come during the public skate hours I attend--students taking a class for university, the older gentleman, and some figure skaters with a coach in the middle of the rink who are actively training. I love going; it is such a joy. It's a miracle that I can endure some exercise.

That is a sufficient update for now. Let me know if you have questions. I struggle to explain rife, so try googling the nitty gritties of how it works. The machine was expensive, but only a small fraction compared to what we spent on healthcare in 2015. I feel tremendously blessed and hope this information can help you too.

Bags

I love bags. Maybe I need to start attending a twelve step program, because I am obsessed. All my life, I have loved bags. 

The first experience I remember with bags and containers was around age four. My mom gave me a blue-gray, plastic box with a handle. It snapped shut and held my dolly and all her necessities perfectly so I could take it with me to my friend's house. I still have and use that container. 

In sixth grade, I had a weirdly awesome language arts teacher with a M&Ms paraphernalia obsession displayed along one classroom wall. We did loooong units on random things, like frogs, the Iditarod, science fiction, and Savage Sam. One of our units was on bags of all things. We read about them. We designed them. We made art projects out of paper sacks. Oh, the joy! I was in heaven. I was about this age when I started carrying my spending money and a Chapstick in a little purse. Bags!

I come by this affinity for bags naturally. My dad loves to contain and organize his stuff. My mom has occasionally enjoyed finding the perfect purse over the years. And then there's me. I love all bags of every kind. If it contains stuff, I want to know about it. I have sewed many of my own designs over the years. I read reviews and specs of pre made items. I compare and imagine. What would be the best bag for backpacking Europe? How much should a carryon weigh? What safety features would you want in South America? Which kind of backpack straps are the most ergonomic? Are the zippers on that purse of the best quality?

The thing about bags that is so attractive to me is their potential and the sometimes subtle ways they are vital to our lives. Every hike I've taken has included a backpack with water in it. Every testimony-building experience I've had had included a scripture case. Every trip I've taken has involved a duffel or suitcase. Every mall outing has a purse or wallet involved. College was all about the books and work I lugged around in my backpack. Every outing ever with a baby included a diaper bag. And every grocery haul comes home in paper or plastic. 

Bags are sustenance and adventure and experiences and new ideas. Bags are magical. Bags matter. 

Hermione Granger had a purple, beaded bag with an undetectable extension charm during the Deathly Hallows. Mary Poppins used the same kind of magic on her own mysterious bag. Anne Shirley toted a carpet bag with a broken handle to her many new homes. Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman, cured folks out of her doctor's bag. These ladies are fictional, but I truly believe that a girl and her bag can change her world. Heck, Duchess Kate carries a clutch everywhere she goes, and she's real. 

I don't think I'm too weird for being obsessed about bags. It could be seeds, or computer parts, or carpentry. 

Nephi loved metallurgy. Notice how he admired his family's treasures, Laban's sword, the brass plates, and the Liahona. See how he had an extremely unusual bow--made of steel of all things. Do you know how hard it is to make something out of steel by hand? It's more than 24 hours of continuous pounding, and one single step at the end could shatter your work if you haven't done a good job. It is an art! Same with a single sword, and Nephi made swords like Laban's for his people. He asked where to find ore when commanded to build a ship. He fashioned plates out of metal to write upon. There are no shortcuts for this man! It's all about the metals. He loves them, and they changed his world and ours. To this day, unusual metal craft is found all over North and South America. 

I'm that way with bags, though my influence will not be felt like Nephi's. If I'd written the scriptures though, I would have noted the stitching and fabrics and cubic liters and pockets of bags. Did the women sling babies across them? Did the plates go in a camel skin lumbar pack with security features? 

I've often fantasized about getting to be around new bags for my work. Companies could send me their bags for review. I could start a YouTube channel for bag enthusiasts like me and show people bags. The joy of unzipping pockets! The thrill of sweet features! Id beam. I'd be delighted. It wouldn't even be work; it would be sheer glee. BAGS!

I just love bags, no apologies. And even though they aren't life, they matter because they go places and haul stuff. They silently serve all their days. Bags rock. Bags are my bag!