I Need Another Reminder of the Happiest Days

 This was the day we got Mona back in 2002. Another day I can recall for a happiness reminder.

I'm Moving To India To Become A Model

Here are some highlights from India Fashion Week 2011

When She's 64

Sunny and her musical theater troupe performed to "When I'm 64" at the Morro Bay Harborfest.

Making Halloween Happen

  

War Is Over If You Want It

Obama announces full American military withdrawal from Iraq


President Barack Obama announced on Friday a nearly complete withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq by the end of the year.


"Today, I can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home from Iraq at the end of this year," Obama said. "After nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over. Over the next two months our troops in Iraq--tens of thousands of them--will pack up their gear and board convoys for the journey home."

Obama affirmed that he has been in talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and that the Iraqi government supported the American withdrawal.

"We are in full agreement about how to move forward," Obama said.

Although it was extended several times, the timeline for withdrawal was originally drafted under former President George W. Bush and implementing it was a key campaign promise for Obama when he was running for president in 2007 and 2008.

The military will keep about 160 servicemen and women in Baghdad to provide security for the embassy there.

Since the invasion in 2003, the war has claimed the lives of 4,478 American service members.

from July 4, 2009 Guess they were wrong

She Is My Favorite Student

Sunny's birthday 12/03/2003

There were so many babies born the day Sunny was born that they ran out of recovery rooms and I was stationed in a hallway with a curtain around me for five days. Nurses from all over the hospital kept coming in the curtain to look at Sunny because there was a rapid-spreading rumor of a china doll baby. She is amazing to behold.

Her reading partner at school is a new fan of Sunny's charms.

Don't Touch Me

Cystal Gayle -- My Childhood Hero

Sexual Abuse Recovery Anonymous

Healing The Split  [how Sexual Abuse Survivors In Recovery Anonymous helps victims]


As sexual abuse survivors, we let the power of the group help us heal what we call “The Split.” The split is our tendency to disassociate from our bodies during the sexual act. The split is a psychological phenomenon. To survive the abuse, we suspend high above the experience. It is now scientifically proven that children who are being abused leave their bodies. Here are a few more terms for “The Split.”
· Disassociation
· Freezing or numbing emotions
· Blocking out periods of time
· An inability to live in the moment
- Anxiety attacks

From this impaired perspective, without the awareness that recovery brings, we are locked into self-destructive patterns. For example, we might project the experiences of victimization onto our sexual experience. Perhaps sex has become an act, or something we feel is expected of us. We learned from our perpetrators that we were expected to “produce” on demand, and that we didn’t have the right to say no.

Whatever our personal experiences might have been, as we participate in the recovery process, we learn that we do have the right to define our sexual experience in our own best interests. In the safety of our group, we will learn together how to make healthier choices with regards to our personal relationships and sexuality. We begin to set new boundaries, or choose a time of abstinence to allow ourselves to heal. By listening to other survivor’s stories, we have the opportunity to become whole, to heal the split. As Survivors In Recovery, we tell our stories as one of the methods of re-integration.

Those dark secrets that we kept buried deep within can come out. Once exposed to the sunlight of the spirit, our dark past becomes an asset that helps us bond with other survivors. We find new ways to experience our sexuality that empowers and is life-enhancing. We become whole.

emphasis added by Candi

One of the Happiest Days

On these difficult days, Pat urges me to think on the happiest days. Well, ok then. When I ask myself what was the happiest day I can feel, smell and see this particular day in Yosemite in November of 2000. I didn't know I was at the top of the emotional hill but now I look back up that hill and can see myself smiling down at me. And there is a redwood tree towering even higher than my smiling face. But the tree does not look down at me. It looks off in the distance toward other tall trees. Wondering how they managed to break through the  foilage and join the actual clouds.

Baby Clay and Lucy

When my best friend Christy had Clay, I had just moved back to my parents' house from Sin-Sin-natty. I was a college dropout runaway suicidal addict headcase.
Baby Clay and my cat Lucy were my prescription salve. They were the lavender-infused royal jelly in a cut glass jar that I could apply to my heart area three times a day until symptoms decrease.

The day these pictures were taken my parents were in Indianapolis at a play and I made dinner for Christy and Clay. It was special like girls playing house with invisible tea and scones. We listened to some soulful funk music and sprawled on the floor watching Clay. We couldn't stop touching his hair.

Grandma Guilt Letters



Grandma Guilt



"I long for you to be completely submitted to God in all your heart and so I pray"..."My time on this earth is limited. That's why it is important to urge you to get everything in your life right with Jesus."

"Will you ask God to open your heart to forgive what it is you feel they have done to you?"..."Life is short for me on this earth, because of my age but this is something I desire before God takes me home. Please???"

Sexual Abuse Not Treated

If childhood sexual abuse is not treated, long-term symptoms can go on through adulthood. These may include:


■PTSD and anxiety

■Depression and thoughts of suicide

■Sexual anxiety and disorders, including having too many or unsafe sexual partners

■Difficulty setting safe limits with others (e.g., saying no to people) and relationship problems

■Poor body image and low self-esteem

■Unhealthy behaviors, such as alcohol, drugs, self-harm, or eating problems. These behaviors are often used to try to hide painful emotions related to the abuse

If you were sexually abused as a child and have some of these symptoms, it is important for you to get help.



painted by Candi

 from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Center for PTSD

Slaves with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Made your Iphone

Mark Kennedy, AP Drama Writer, On Thursday October 13, 2011, 4:50 pm EDT


NEW YORK (AP) -- Normally, the launch of a new Apple device such as the iPhone 4S would make Mike Daisey salivate. But not this year.

Daisey, a monologuist in the vein of Spalding Gray and a recovering "Apple fanboy," hasn't upgraded his phone since flying to China to investigate how those smooth, beautifully designed hand-held gizmos are made.

What he found was horrific labor conditions, impossibly long hours and the use of crippling, repetitive motions. He met very young factory workers whose joints in their hands were damaged because they performed the same action thousands of times a shift.

"I was woefully ignorant most of my life. Even though I love the devices deeply, I never had any idea how they were made and never thought about it in the least," says Daisey, who had assumed robots put together his iPad and iPhone.

"I know that people in charge know about these things and chose not to address them," he adds. "And that's hard to swallow when you see the damage it does and you know how little it would take to ameliorate a high degree of human suffering."

Daisey's undercover investigation forms the backbone of his latest monologue, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," which he began working on 16 months ago and has had to alter to acknowledge the death this month of the Apple co-founder.

"In a profound way, this will reinvent the monologue," Daisey says. "The context of it shifts so much that it will be like blowing a wind through it. I think it's going to stir up a lot of things."

While the piece specifically targets Apple, most of what he discovered is applicable to all high-tech manufacturers. Daisey has performed the new monologue for some 50,000 people from Seattle to Washington, D.C., and it is now at The Public Theater until mid-November.

The death of Jobs hasn't prompted Daisey to pull any punches. While he considers the man a visionary, he also calls him a "brutal tyrant" who "failed to think different about anything."

"When the design is really good, it connects to the human and actually creates empathy with the devices, so it's really absurd how there's no empathy between the people running the company and their own workers," says Daisey.

Jean-Michele Gregory, Daisey's frequent director and also his wife, says her husband's sense of betrayal is heightened by his great respect for Apple and his belief that Jobs could have fundamentally changed the lives of his workers but chose not to.

"Steve Jobs really was a hero to Mike and I think there was a part of him that really hoped that perhaps the fact of this monologue might actually cause Steve to change the way that he practices business," she says.

Daisey's eyes were opened when, posing as a businessman, he traveled to the Chinese industrial zone of Shenzhen and interviewed hundreds of workers outside the gates of the secretive Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer. A string of suicides at the heavily regimented factories also have drawn attention to conditions faced by workers inside.

Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, says the company has long required its suppliers to commit to a code of conduct. Its representatives visit suppliers to check compliance and do follow-up audits to verify that corrections are made. It has also implemented training initiatives to educate workers on the rights and protections available to them.

"Apple is committed to driving the highest standards of social responsibility throughout our supply chain," Dowling said. "We require that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made."

Daisey isn't holding his breath. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak saw the monologue and apparently cried, but Daisey says Apple hasn't changed its practices. And Daisey says that Tim Cook, Jobs' hand-picked successor, is part of the problem. "Tim Cook is personally responsible for the deals with Foxconn and the way things are set up today," he says.

Having to confront how his beloved devices are assembled has profoundly changed Daisey, who, simply as a way to relax, used to strip his MacBook Pro down to its 43 component parts and then reassemble it.

"It ruined my hobby," says Daisey. "It died the way that things we love often die: We still go through the motions, but fundamentally the connection is not what it was. And so I don't take the pleasure that I used to from my devices at all."

To those who argue that improving conditions for workers will only jack up the costs of our phones and tablets, Daisey shakes his head. "The labor cost of an iPhone is about $8," he says. "Eight dollars! We do this thing to ourselves where we make excuses for why we don't do anything, why we don't hold anyone accountable."

Daisey, who performs his monologues seated at a desk and using notes, has previously tackled everything from dysfunctional dot-coms to the international financial crisis. A movie has been made of his monologue "If You See Something Say Something" and Daisey recently pushed the boundaries of his art with a 24-hour performance in Portland, Ore.

His work, which combines personal insight, historical digressions and gonzo journalism, has propelled him across the world, from the South Pacific island of Tanna to the site in the New Mexico desert where an atomic bomb was tested. His style is pugnacious, but he's also funny and touching.

"I see my job is to search for the things in my life that I'm obsessed with and look for things that are in collision in the world and then look for things that I think my society isn't talking about," he says.

The burly former Maine native says he doesn't judge his audience, even if they decide to pick up the new iPhone 4S after the show. Daisey says he'd be perfectly satisfied if everyone who buys a high-tech gadget knows how it was made.

"My job is to shine a light on and through something," he says. "My job isn't actually to stop people from buying devices. My job is to ensure that these circumstances are part of the conversation."

He hopes one day all factories that make devices will be open to inspectors and that the world of technology will follow the lead of the organic food movement and demand changes in the way goods are manufactured. After all, a cage-free egg is more expensive to create than a cage-free iPhone.

"I do believe that, in time, there will be the electronics version of a sweatshop-free certification," says Daisey, who adds that it also makes good business sense.

These days, Daisey upgrades his software but won't shell out hundreds of dollars for a new iPad or iPhone. He knows this stance can't last forever, but there's a silver lining.

"I have to say, all the mourning for my hobby aside, there's a real joy to being freed from the infantilism of the tech world. There's a real infantilism in being obsessed with just how fast you can render a web page," he says. "I never really appreciated how imbedded I was until I stepped out of it."

My Husband on a Bull

As an embedded reporter Pat took a Zen Bullriding course. You should have seen the bruises.

Super Cool Sunny

Feed Me

PastaFarian (in progress) -- handmade by Candi

There is a pocket on the back of his head. It's for me to put ideas into his head later when I understand who he is.

Prison Tatts Childhood Dog -- embroidered by Candi

Jehovah Witnesses Three Times This Week

My 7-year-old Sunny made these cards for me so I would know what to say to the Jehovah Witnesses that keep coming to my door.

I have panic attacks every time they come. Most of the times I do not answer the door. Other times the door is open for the breeze to come through and they just come up and start talking to me through the screen. And still other times I become enraged and think that I'm not going to hide inside my house like a mouse and I open the door and talk to them.

Talking to them has proven to be detrimental to my mental health 100% of the times I've tried it.

Last time I opened the door and talked to them. While the conversation was happening I thought that I was doing really well and staying on point. I told them that I had also been raised in a religious cult where several pastors were engaging in pedophilia or other sexual perversions and that the members of the church turned a blind eye when I asked for help as a child. I was sexually abused multiple times in my childhood and asked for help and did not get it and the abuse continued for years.

When I ask my family or other authority figures in the church to acknowledge these abuses I have been told to be quiet because I have mental illness and to pray for God to take away my sinful nature.

I was also told repeatedly that I was a liar. Every chance to shame me for lying was seized upon and magnified with venom. One time my mother said she was "so sorry that I was a chronic liar" because I would never be without sin. My church's doctrine espouses that after being saved the true Christian will go through a purification process wherein God removes any and all desire to sin. And that true Christian will change radically in behavior and become so chaste and pure that they will shine as an example of Christ unto the world.

Until only a few months ago I accepted this doctrine in relation to myself. Meaning that I believed that I had failed in this process of purification and was stunted in some hinterland of knowing about God but not being good enough for Him to Love me and therefore doomed to an eternity of being burned in a fire. And I believed that even though my uncle and grandfather molested children while preaching purification to their congregations they would go to Heaven for eternity.

The Jehovah Witnesses I talked to last time cried when I told them this story. After they were crying, I told them I have been diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression and am being treated for panic and anxiety. I am on disability for these problems. I lost the business I owned and operated because of my panic disorder. We had to declare bankruptcy and move in with my parents and my husband worked two full-time jobs and barely slept for two years.

Living with my parents meant being 24-7 immersed in my family of origin neurotic behavioral dynamics for the first time since I was 21. Under the pressure to revert to earlier self-destructive defense mechanisms my psyche shattered and I became suicidal and non-functional for several months.

I explained that when they come to my door I am triggered into thinking about those pedophile pastors and by a web of PTSD symptoms all the trauma I've endured over the years. I said that I do not have bad feelings for them as people but that their actions are triggering defensive emotions that are bad for my well-being.

But Jehovah Badgers don't give a shit. They are taught to hone in on any vulnerability they can sense.

So, this time I'll just blog about them until they leave.

Now Why Would You Embroider Pink Cat?

Because if my family can revise history

Then so can I