Put Your Back Into It, Save your Strength!

The other day I was looking at something on the internet and came across my OWN blog! YES, it's been that long since I've even thought about it. I sort of forgot I had one. Which for me is normal these days. My illness does keep me in a "brain fog" most of the time.  As a matter of fact my illness (s), (there are more than one) have taken up most of my life these days....and to tell the truth...I'm tired of sickness taking everything.

I am a shadow of my former self. I've spent my time trying to figure out how to live with these disabilities. What can I do now that my body is really messed up? What can I not do, that I used to do so easily? I am learning I can do things, just in small chunks not long marathons. If I try to do a marathon....well then it's going to be a marathon recovery for DAYS. I can work eight hours as long as I'm given 24 to 36 hours to do the eight in! 

My days are full of trying to accomplish one or two things, then rest, do something else, then rest and hopefully at the end of the day not be in any pain so I can sleep which is a whole other problem. So many symptoms it's boring, daunting and sometimes downright depressing.

But in trying to deal with this new life situation something came to mind. I'm the family historian and I've still work to do. How do I do it in this shape?  I remember my mother loved to rearrange furniture at least once a year. I might rearrange once in a blue moon and I think that is because in my childhood, being a military family, we moved all the time. Add mother like to move furniture just for kicks and there you go.... once in a blue moon was enough for me. I have scars for life because in doing this task she would require all us children to help.

Dad did not participate in the moving but would notice this moving of furniture when he came home late at night and tripped over something that had been somewhere else when he left. 

Yet I remembered in the moving of the furniture my mother was quite creative. She would use blankets placed under heavy furniture on a wood floor and we would slide things in place. She would take anything on rollers and use it as a dolly. One plant stand comes to mind because we would have to wrestle the tree off of it and use it and then it took three of us to put it back!

But one thing she would tell us instead of using our arms to push something heavy was to, "Put your back into it, save your strength". Meaning place your back against the furniture and push or use your hip not your arms.  Well with these disabilities, I feel as if it is like moving heavy furniture with even the most mundane tasks.  I just have to learn how to put my back into it and save my strength. Do what I can do the best way I can. Find my blankets and roller plant stands and not to worry about how it looks just as long as things move!! 

We are an OLD Appalachian family with many, many stories. The blog has a draft mode and I can use that. But I have boxes of stories to tell. Thousands of pictures to share. Piles of research I've accomplished in 30 years. Tons of topics to explore.

I started this blog with the intention of telling those stories of family and places I know. Well I still want to do that. So what if I only get out a post a month or every other month? It's the effort that matters. I'm not dead yet...just sick. I can still live with that!