I have been worried about the homeless young lady who hurt herself the other day,and I made some phone calls. She is apparently supposed to use crutches, but the first accident that hurt her neck and shoulders is too painful to put any weight on her back to allow her to use the crutches--so someone rented a wheelchair for her for a month, but the place she's found to stay is so messy and full of different levels that she can't move. She also can't move because between her leg pain and her back pain, her muscles seem to have seized into one position. At 6:00, she advised that she had just gone to the bathroom--and that meant she was good until tomorrow, because she said there's no way she could move again to get to the bathroom.

She tried to go the local clinic, but with all her past medical bills (she's needed two emergency surgeries in the last two years and, being homeless, she has no money to pay the bills) they wouldn't see her unless she paid them at least $200. So, the only alternative was to go to the hospital's emergency room tonight. My daughter is taking her.

I told them both that no matter what, tomorrow she has to get in to apply for the state's insurance plan--but she said that she applied a couple months ago when she was working part time at a gas station, and they told her she was overincome. I told her that was then, and she hasn't been working at all for a while, and now she might meet the guideliness. And my daughter, who has been working in the field, says the hospital should have an application for the state insurance when she fills out the paperwork as she goes in. I hope so! The people around here have been discouraged from applying for any kind of state aid since the welfare reform of 1998, and her family in particular has been really hit hard by the new system. I feel so badly for her. She wants to work, but no one will hire her when they find she has no real home nor reliable transportation--and now it will be at least six months before she can stand enough to work regularly.

To make matters worse, I found out today that when she slipped and fell on the ice the other day, she asked for someone to take her to the hospital. The young people in the house had all been drinking and feared taking her in because of the legal ramifications if they were found to have been drinking. One young man was brave enough and was racing at 71 in a 55 to get her to the hospital. He was pulled over and he was given a DUI--and she was given a "minor". I don't know what her blood alcohol level was, but apparently it barely registered--but in this state, even a drop is too much for a 19-year old. I don't approve of young people drinking, and I discourage it, but I think she's had enough problems that to add this citation to the mix is just not helping at all. I also feel sorry for the young man, but I understand why he wanted to help her even when he risked the DUI. I hope the judge is lenient on him.

I also hope these injuries and the citation are a blessing in disguise. I hope they lead her to find some help to get her focused and headed in the right direction--but I no longer have faith in the social safety net we thought we had set up at one time. I truly fear she will fall through the cracks. And I will do everything I can to prevent that.

I am a tired lady. I sleep a lot. And when I arrive home from work, the last thing I want to do is housework. All I want to do is lie down and try to gather some energy. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia almost fifteen years ago, and I like to think that I have handled it very well. Fibromyalgia is very exhausting. Some people who have it cannot get out of bed at all; others have energy, but not enough to go grocery shopping--let alone carry milk from the kitchen table to the kitchen refrigerater. It is painful. Some muscles feel like they're tearing with every movement. There are side effects like migraines, horrible migraines that hurt so bad you want to cut your head off--and then, of course, you'll put it back on after the pain goes away.

While there are exercises and some anti-depressants that help some people, the only way people can really get through it is to fight against it. To work hard to get through the exhaustion and the pain to keep going another day. I like to partially explain by saying that each of us are given one cup of energy each day, and when that cup is gone, that's all there is. We can sometimes borrow from the next day's portion, but that means you'll wake up tomorrow and not get out of bed for the entire day. And sometimes, if we drink too much of the energy right away in the morning, then you won't have energy on that day either. And to force yourself to keep going, as I do, for several days can really start those side effects and migraines on their way to the forefront. It is a terrible thing.

But I like to think that I am doing a good job of working with it. I have a full time job that provides a decent income. I work to keep going every day, and I don't complain about the symptoms every minute of every day. I also try to do a lot of the housekeeping, but when Saturday comes--then there's a lot more to do on that day than on Tuesday morning. I do minimal work during the week and keep major work for Saturday.

So, why am I going on and on about this? Because my best friend, the man who asked me to marry him, the man who has known me for six years, and the man who has been educated on fibromyalgia many, many times--well, that man never outright says I'm lazy, but he has a way of letting me know that he thinks I'm making up excuses and that he thinks I'm lazy. I work very, very hard. I handle more stress at work in one day than most people do for a whole month (or so we're told as we accept this particular job), and I still do as much work at home as I'm able to do. But if I so much as head for the bedroom, he lets me know that I should not be sleeping in the middle of the day--and he says that if I didn't sleep so much, then maybe I wouldn't be so tired all the time. I understand that he thinks if I get up and move that maybe I will realize how good it feels and then I'll be wanting to get going on something energetic--but he's wrong.

He doesn't understand that if I do get into such an energetic mood--and I do--then I will keep going at that particular job without taking a break. I know that if I take a break, then I will lay down and never get up again to finish the job--so I don't take a break. And then my cup of energy is not only gone, but I've probably used all the energy from tomorrow's and maybe even the next week's cups. And that only gets him more sarcastic about how tired I am over the next few days.

I know I should just tell him what I think, but I've tried that--not only with him, but others--and it makes no difference. They think I'm just making excuses. And not only does it make me upset and mad to think that they don't believe me, but it sure doesn't make the stress levels go down. And that increases the symptoms. It's all a big cycle.

So I gave up. I simply just let them think I'm lazy. And that's what they warn you about when you get diagnosed--that people will think you are lazy and not understand. It took me a long time to really truly understand what they were saying and apply it to the reactions of the people around me, but once I understood that I could explain until I was blue in the face and they were not going to change their opinioins--well, that's when I stopped trying to explain and just let them continue thinking I'm lazy.

So, now, I write it out and hope that some of my frustration will be released in this text--to somehow communicate in some way that I really shouldn't feel guilty for being exhausted all the time. I know this to be true. But, in the end, I don't feel guilty that I have to lie down---but I do feel guilty that the house is not clean and the dishes aren't done.

So, now...I'll go try to get some cleaning done before I head back to bed....

It is the first day of the New Year. I sincerely hope that this year will help to bring peace to all.

Time heals all wounds, they say. I don't know that it truly heals them, but time does make the scars less noticeable. The pain hurts less, but the injury never goes away. Maybe with the passing of the old year, there will be more time gained to heal all the wounds we have received in all our lives.

Today a young lady I know well hurt herself. She is homeless, and every time she turns around, something worse happens. At least from my point of view, she just keeps drawing all these injuries and life circumstances that would kill me. Yet she just keeps going. She left home at 17, away from a divorcing mother and stepfater. She didn't graduatate high school, but she tries to work. Cash jobs and one regular job that ended when she couldn't get reliable transportation. Rather than risk her job at one time, she tried to drive to work without insurance and got a speeding ticket-and her car was impounded for no insurance. She knows she can live with her father, but his home is filled with marijuana plants and filth, so she wants to stay away from there. She doesn't want to go home to her mother, who she feels does not understand her. She was staying with a young man, and they split up after he couldn't earn a regular paycheck and took a lot of irresponsible risks. She's had to have two surgeries without insurance, and today she broke her leg in a way that her foot was attached to her leg only by the skin--again, without insurance. I know if I were her, I'd be crying myself to sleep each night. But she just keeps on going...

I've told her she can stay in my spare room any time. That was yesterday. Today she hurt herself and had to talk with her mother, who was called to the hospital even though she is almost 20. I hope time...and circumstances...help them talk and help to heal some of their wounds. And I'm not talking about the leg.

Whenever I feel bad, I look at others, and then my problems don't seem so bad. I hope this time and this new year will help to make every problem for every person as small as they can be.

Sadaam Hussein will die soon. He will be hanged. And he will leave this world in a manner befitting a criminal, befitting a man that felt no compunction about killing masses of numbers of people.

Some may not believe it is appropriate for him to hang. Some feel it is too easy, too simple for him. They want him to suffer and to feel the pain of every person that died at his hands.

Others would give him mercy, would offer him grace in the face of horror, would offer a prayer for him and ask that he be allowed to live and to rectify his horrific acts.

I, personally, would not kill him. For me, killing a man for any reason--even to obtain man-made justice--would not be right. The deliberate taking of a life is an act that I cannot justify in my mind.

Yet, somehow, I could not allow him to live in a world where he feels it is right to kill people for imagined infractions of a personal code of honor. I would want him to live in a world where he can learn that people are human and that we each have the ability to care for others...to care so much that we cannot fail to provide so much as a glimmer of faith in human nature.

But no such world exists, and faith cannot allow for unrealistic hope for personal growth and realization of the "truth" that provides grace to all who despise the idea that real people can be so horrible to those less able to be strong in the face of a person who feels no innate sense of right or wrong. People such as Sadaam Hussein make me question my own belief, but no matter how logical I am, I cannot think that at least one human will be killing another human--even for the sake of justice.

But, then, I find it difficult to kills insects and bugs. As I grow older, I find that I am better at killing spiders and beetle types of bugs. But, usually, I prefer to somehow capture them and release them somewhere far away from wherever I might happen to be. These creatures have a life and have done nothing to harm me, and it is my own fear that makes me want to kill these helpless creatures. I wonder if that is the way Sadaam felt...?

I've been watching PrimeTime, a show they called "Basic Instincts." It's been showing how bystanders react when coming upon an obviously inebriated person trying to get in a car with the intent of driving while intoxicated. They showed the person being a well dressed man, a casually dressed man, a woman and a woman with two little girls. There were definite differences between the way each was treated and how much it took for someone to respond and try to stop the person from driving.

Then they showed couples fighting in the park..men beating on women and then women beating on men---first a white couple and then a black couple. They all generated different reactions.

They also reviewed what people do when given a $100 bill in wrong change--instead of a single dollar. And how cab drivers treat different people differently.

It was very enlightening...not so much the people's reactions, because I think most people could have predicted the reactions. What caught my eye is that television medium was covering this topic...and covering it in a prime time situation. These should have been pretty basic reactions that shouldn't have caught our attention, but it was obvious that there are behaviors that surprise people, and that simply amazes me. I've covered most of these kinds of situations in my mind time and time again, and it didn't surprise me.

But what really kept coming to mind was the thought that if you need money, you go to a poor person--not to a rich person. I know that when I have been down and out...really down and out...I have gone to people who have money, and they typically refused to help. But if I go to poorer people, they will help me if they are able to. I always feel guilty when I know that I could never pay them back.

I also regularly work with people that have money, and I know that most of them will help anyone else if they don't have to give very much...and if it is an organized fund raiser, particularly if they get something in return. Like a dinner where a portion of the proceeds goes ot a charity. Or a school kid selling magazines for a school function. They're more than willing to help in these situations. But if that person were approached by a poor person who begged for money, they probably wouldn't look twice.

I also remember traveling once and being a tourist in an area where begging was illegal, and I refused to give a lady and her young boy any money--but I gave money to a beggar that was dressed to entertain. Even I have developed this sense that I will give money to people who make an effort to earn money, but not to those who simply beg.

Yet I have needed help in desperate situations, and I have asked for free money. And I got it--but, really, the donors were a finite group of people that I grew to know. And now that I have been working full time, I know those people that regularly helped me really didn't have much more than I did.

I also know that after my husband left me, I went on welfare. I was raised on welfare. My mother told me what welfare was when I was little--she said that every person deserved basics in life, and the money and foodstamps we received was there to help us to live with basic necessities. She said that the president had said this was OK, but that we all needed to try to work hard and earn money where we could...and always be honest and try to give honest labor for honest money. But, now, when I hear people talking about welfare, most people talk about how it is just "handouts" and that people wasted their lives by being lazy and not working.

And I noticed that when welfare reform happened about eight years ago, single mothers started to leave their children in the hands of day care workers and went to work. And every one of those family's children are in trouble as they reach teen age years. I honestly believe those "welfare mothers" did good to stay home with their children...especially since those that I know, the same ones that have problem teens, every one of them have some kind of mental disorder, diagnosis or personality disorder. Living in a rural community, I worry they will not be able to survive much longer now that their five years of benefits are starting to dwindle. At least many of them now have social security disability payments that will now last a lifetime instead of just until their children turn eighteen.

In the meantime, I hope we all one day learn to help each other--regardless of gender, race or economic standing. We all need to live with hope and respect, and I hope we all can provide the best of ourselves to help those around us become the best they can be given what they do or do not have.