welcome charcoal gray insulin pump

I have an insulin pump in charcoal gray! It's bigger than I thought! I am not going to be able to hide this thing in my bra as previously hoped. All my friends and family can attest to the fact that I have been a loser diabetic! Hopefully my days of A1C scores of 13, glucose readings swinging from 590 to 41 in the same day, and 8-10 daily shots in my legs and stomach are OVER!!
Why a pump? Glad you asked! Here's what the doc told me:

Benefits of Insulin Pump Therapy

Insulin pump therapy provides more flexibility for your lifestyle while giving you greater control of your diabetes:

More Flexibility

Since the insulin pump uses only more predictable rapid-acting insulin, you will not need to follow a strict schedule for eating, activity, and insulin injections. You can eat when you are hungry, delay a meal if you want, even broaden your food choices. If you do activities that lower your blood sugar such as riding your bike, playing with your kids, or gardening, you can reduce your basal rate so that your blood sugar does not drop too low. If you are sick or have an infection and tend to have an increase in your blood sugar, you can increase your basal rate so that your blood sugar does not go up too high. You can also change your meal bolus based on the foods you choose to eat.

Fewer Injections

With multiple daily injections, you can give yourself at least 120 injections per month. With insulin pump therapy, you can reduce this by 108 injections—you just change your infusion set 12 times per month.

Tighter Control, Fewer Long-term Complications

With more precise insulin delivery, you can also gain better control of your diabetes. With proper insulin pump use, you can be four times more likely to achieve your target A1C and potentially reduce your low blood sugars by 84%! Since insulin pump therapy can help you achieve better control, you can reduce your long-term complications of diabetes such as eye, heart, kidney, and nerve damage.

Better Predictability

Insulin pump therapy provides more predictability in the way your insulin works in your body than multiple daily injections (MDI). Traditional, long-acting insulin can “pool” under the skin, resulting in uneven absorption rates causing unpredictable lows and highs. Insulin pumps use only rapid-acting insulin, which is absorbed with more predictability so you can deliver smaller, more precise doses of insulin when that’s all your body needs.

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~Derek Walcott

A Purification

At the start of spring I open a trench
in the ground. I put into it
the winter's accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors. And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun, growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.

Source: Teaching With Fire
Wendell Berry

clouds in my coffee

i am a coffee lover....from way back. i remember drinking coffee with my grandpa bates at the breakfast table. he would pour the hot, black java from his cup into his saucer and would slurp it from there. and so did i. grandma explained to me that he did that to cool it down. he and i would sit in silence, drinking the heavenly elixir from our saucers, perfect morning light streaming in through the windows of the old white farmhouse and sounds of my grandma in the kitchen, making homemade biscuits and fried apples.
i have loved coffee ever since. those marvelous beans wrapped in rich brown, with the power to invigorate every sense....an aromatic elixir that warms a channel clear to the soul.

BUT for the past two years, i've had a weird and persistent hangup about making my own coffee. my "coffeemaker" moved out nearly two years ago. for whatever pathological reason, i have been unable to make my own coffee here at my house. i have consequently become tim horton's best customer.

today, all that has changed! i took the plunge and bought a mini plus keurig coffee brewer. this morning marked a new phase of my life as i popped in a k-cup of green mountain lake and lodge java, a warm and toasty blend with sweet, pungent aromatics. in two minutes, i was drinking an amazing cup of freshly brewed, dark roast coffee...and i made it myself in my own kitchen..
the clouds in my coffee rolling in a new day.
i feel invincible.


some of my favorite coffee quotes:

Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven. ~Jessi Lane Adams

See how special you are? I serve you coffee in the parlor. ( :( ) - Anthony Quinn

Coffee is real good when you drink it it gives you time to think. It's a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup. - Gertrude Stein

If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee; it is the intelligent beverage. - Sydney Smith

The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce. - Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr.

Coffee is to the body what the Word of the Lord is to the soul. - Isak Dinesen

We would take something old and tired and common -- coffee -- and weave a sense of romance and community around it. We would rediscover the mystique and charm that had swirled around coffee throughout the centuries. - Howard Schutz, CEO of Starbucks, 1997

I orchestrate my mornings to the tune of coffee. ~Harry Mahtar

And if you're like me
You need hope, coffee, and melody... ~Robbie Seay, New Day

Actually, this seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis - a good hot cup of coffee. ~Alexander King

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go.
To the valley below. ~Bob Dylan

I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee. ~Carly Simon

happy love day

happy love day, originally uploaded by jaki good.

A Prayer For the Journey

The following text in italic print is my blog entry from December 31, 2008, exactly two years ago Click on the preceding link to see the original post.

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
- Thomas Merton

the sentiment of my heart as i think about my life on this eve of a new year.
i took this picture while sitting on a rock in the middle of the stream - thinking about the same.


WOW! when i added the above post to my blog exactly two years ago on December 31, 2008, i had no idea of the perils and trials that the new year would bring. i loved Merton's prayer, but was unaware of how powerfully relevant the words were about to become in my life. i believe God gave me that prayer because He knew how desperately i would need it. He certainly heals the wounds of our past and gives us strength for today, but how amazing is it that He also goes before us, preparing us for the unpredicatable future?!

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6
These verses could perhaps be the best advice ever.

prayer for the new year

"Most merciful God help us step into the coming days with gentleness, knowing that all your creation is both fragile and cherished and that all You have made should be handled with care.

Guide us, O God, toward peace. Peace in our homes, in our workplace and in our communities. Help us always to keep in mind that the best chance for living into that peace is to open ourselves to your love, and trust in your power of transformation.

We begin the year with kisses and sparklers. Keep the dancing flame of possibilities alive within us, even as life's trials dampen our spirit and make us tired and anxious. Give us faith. Give us hope. Give us awareness of your gracious presence in all life's circumstances.

Teach us to be joyful and guide us in how to spread that joy to others. Let us become the hands and feet, the mouth and ears that show those around us what love looks like, sounds like, and how it feels.

A new year symbolizes another chance for seeing our lives through the lens of gratitude. Thank you, O God, for all you have given us. And thank you most of all for the newness of mind and soul that you offer to us always!"

prayer found at explorefaith.com

autumn

open flower

"There are times when God feels as palpable and near as the breath passing through our nostrils. Perhaps we’ve had some kind of religious experience, or we’ve suddenly recognized an answer to prayer, or we’ve felt hope in the midst of hopelessness. We cherish those moments like we do the first feelings of love, and try to keep them close by, where they will be safe and continue to nourish us.

But the days pass along. New encounters slip into our lives, pain encroaches and leaves us raw, arguments tamper with our peace, and stress coils snakelike in our soul, squeezing out joy. As we respond to all these changes, we find ourselves losing our hold on the memories of closeness with God that once were so potent and real. We hardly notice at first.

Then a moment comes when we start to feel something akin to thirst. Our souls feel arid and scratchy. Our inner life seems as cavernous as a dark, dry cave rugged with sharp stones. We feel drained of the moisture of God’s grace. We cast about trying to see what situations and people in our lives are to blame for our malaise, when what is really needed is to turn ourselves away from the situations, the encounters, and the stress and enter a space where we can meet again the One who fills the thirst of our soul with love and hope. It is not action but non-action that is required.

We need a time to refrain from analysis in order to feel the spirit of heaven. We need to be the open flower ready to drink in the sun."
-Renee Miller

God Only Asks That I Respond

"As long as I respond, God can continue to shape my own individual path in me. God is forever introducing me to new and exciting challenges. God only asks that I respond. I need to be flexible and open to the new creation and the new call that is forming within me. God can form a huge pitcher out of me and fill it with water to pour on the dry stones. I must wait to be renewed and reshaped. The more clay is worked, the more pliable it becomes in the experienced hands of the potter. I must remember that I, too, am called to be a potter, creator of love. I feel a deep peace and sense of something being created, or being brought to birth. Perhaps the God will show me his face and show me how the clay becomes the potter."

Source: I Hear a Seed Growing by Edwina Gateley

Where to Find Our Real Selves

"We are warmed by fire, not by the smoke of the fire. We are carried over the sea by a ship, not by the wake of a ship. So too, what we are is to be sought in the invisble depths of our own being, not in our outward reflection in our own acts. We must find our real selves not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul which is the principle of all our acts."


Thomas Merton
Source: No Man Is an Island

Ongoing Adventure

"Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. We leave our homes for work, acting and even believing that we will reach our destinations with no unusual event startling us out of our set expectations. The truth is we know nothing, not where our cars will fail or when our buses will stall, whether our places of employment will be there when we arrive, or whether, in fact, we ourselves will arrive whole and alive at the end of our journeys.

Life is pure adventure and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed."

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
Maya Angelou