Gracie turned two on the 2nd of this month. Her official name is Petey’s Grace. For those of you who remember Gracie’s name use to be Lake-a Gray Girl but it got changed to Gracie after she lived through the a serious ordeal. We changed her name to Grace because she lived only by the grace of God. Around that same time a very loyal family dog passed away so to honor him we added his name to the front of Gracie’s name to come up with Petey’s Grace. So that is how Gracie got her name. When she turns 13 I’ll post something like PG-13 Oh How She’s Aged. But that post is a long ways off. This post is about Bella though, the gabber, the I never shut up unless I’m sleeping, I want my way and I want it now, beautiful gabber.

So, Bella turned one the 28th of this month. She actually made it to age one. I can’t believe it. She lived through being kicked by Captain Crunch. He kicks in his sleep and she only once made the mistake of napping at his feet. She’s been beaten up by Gracie more times than I can count. Continue reading ‘Beautiful Gabber’
I never would have known there was a school of thought about “objects” unless Marcy said something. It seems that some sort of strong focus is considered and the object like, the object of my desires or the object of my disapproval, of my joy, etc. Now that’s a loose explanation but that’s what I took from how Dr. T explained it. The school of thought is that anything focused on is the object so it wasn’t a slip of the tongue or even his personal belief that woman are sexual objects when he asked me about my “sexual objects”. He was speaking purely from a lingo, technical, psychology standpoint. He said he forgets sometimes that the lingo isn’t universal. He said he was careless in his speech by not being aware that not everyone is familiar with psych schools of thought. I smiled at him because it wasn’t too long ago that I did the same type of thing, assumed others had information that they didn’t have.
He and I have communication errors all the time but it’s not anything new for me. If it only happened with a few people I could say that it isn’t me but since it happens quite often with many different people from all walks of life I have t accept that most of the time the communication errors are on my end. At least this time it wasn’t my fault.
Continue reading ‘Communication Errors’
marj aka thriver Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 11:36 am Austin: I read the x-ray post from Joan of Arc and just cracked up. But, I wanted to comment on this post because I’ve been dealing with “feeling the feelings” of isolation and loneliness on my own and with my T a lot lately. I even had a dream recently that had some old “lonely” theme song playing in the background and I woke up just feeling wretched! Good grief!
I’ve been working on how my parents kept me and my twin isolated from each other. We were allowed no comfort in our torture, no sharing, no reaching out, no compassion.
Then, in line with what I call my “fucked up synchroncity,” I had someone come and attack me on my blog and then say the cruelest, most hateful things to me via e-mail. But, I decided that there’s been way more good than bad in my blogging experience and I have a lot of things to be thankful for–especially insightful, human, people speaking their truth like you.
So, I decided to pull my head out of my dissociated butt and get caught up on a lot of things that I’ve been behind on for months. The blog carnival is hitting the road again, for one thing. You came and commented with a very good idea about the carnival like months ago and I was too wigged out to follow up. I’m sorry about that. I hope you haven’t given up on me and you’ll visit my blog again. 
Joan replies:
First of all, I love the way you put that, fucked up synchronicity. That’s good.
Give up on you? No way! I had to stop visiting blogs awhile back because of issues of my own. When readers pull back from reading possibly triggering blogs it’s because they know its best for them to do so. Never does it have to do with the blog but the reader, at least in many cases its that way. I feel really bad when I don’t come to certain blogs for a bit but when I don’t its because I know I can’t handle what “might” be talked about. I tell people all the time, if you aren’t in the right space then don’t come to Sundrip Journals because you never know what’s going to be posted. I might decide to talk about my x-ray experience or some gibberish about my drunken neighbor or I could talk in depth about abuse issues and how they effect me today. A reader never knows what they’ll get on my blogs so I always suggest that the reader be in the right space when clicking my link.
Continue reading ‘Synchroncity (to Marj)’
Marcy Says:
April 25th, 2007 at 9:36 am If he is unable to work with art, he should at least be able to show respect that it’s important to you, and to be willing to hear what you have to say about the art, and talk about that, if not the art itself.
I think psychologists think very differently than most people about the word “object” and about the self. There’s a school of thought called “object relations” about the various people we’ve sort of internalized into our own self. And yes, I think there are both positive and negative ways of being self-serving. Hopefully he’ll be able to clarify what he meant, and I think it’s great that you can talk through misunderstandings and such like this.
.
Austin replies:
Marcy,
Thank you for this comment here about the word “object”. I usually copy the comments along with the entry to bring into the therapist so I shall bring this in to him and ask about it. I only bring in the comments too if the comment is constructive. If somebody calls him a jackass or something I’m not going to copy that comment along with the entry. So far the name calling has only been on my end. But he knows I call him names
on my entries cause I bring them in so that’s not a shock or anything. It’s not like he’s going to say, “Oh, Aussie calls me names? I’d never expect that from her. Aussie seems so timid and proper.” That’s one sentence you’ll never hear come out of anyone’s mouth with my name attached to it.
PS. I always remove the name when I print off a comment.
.
UPDATE REPLY Thursday, April 26, 2007-4:14pm EST
Marcy,
You were correct. He was speaking in that lingo that I didn’t understand and was coming from that school of thought that you spoke of. He explained very well what he meant and I’m satisfied that he was telling me the truth. Awhile back someone asked me how I’d know if he was just saying what I want to hear. What I told them still stands, I’ll take him at his word until he shows me I can’t. This is exactly what I expect from him, to take me at my word and think I’m lying to him or manipulating him.
Continue reading ‘School of Thought (to Marcy)’
Four flowers standing, one flower trying.

If you asked me yesterday what I felt about the world I would have told you “I’ve driven them away.” I felt so lonely yesterday, so isolated. Thankfully that feeling isn’t a daily thing anymore. Loneliness use to rip through me and mangle my heart, rendering it beatless. I use to suffer with loneliness so much that I contemplated suicide.
Continue reading ‘Four Flowers Standing’

Another day of therapy on Thursday which is today. It’s 2am. I’m to be in his office at 2pm. While I could have written some stuff about middle school and after like he wanted to talk about all I really wanted to do today was bury my face in a book and paint so that’s what I did. I figured that if I wrote out some stuff I would do it with a bit of resentment and possibly overlook details that he may need to know. So, I just took it easy today. I’m sure the assignment for next week will be to write about those years. I so look forward to that. HA!
This piece here has an Asian theme to it much like the theme in the living room at my mother’s home. She even went as far as to hire a guy to write something in Chinese on the wall for her. Every room had a different theme, her room was African with masks and lions and furs and frightening things along those lines. The woman even had a set of African drums. The living room was Chinese. It was an Oriental umbrella that I broke and lied about that haunts me to this day. You’ll never see that theme in my home. The kitchen was a Coca Cola theme. My room was mallard ducks as they called me Little Duck.
Continue reading ‘Art As Therapy’
Captain Crunch and I headed down to the x-ray department after a quick smoke break. I went in and saw the same makeshift pillow that was there back in December. The tech told me that people take hospital pillows all the time and the department was tired of replacing them so they waddled up some plastic, put tape around it and a pillow case and called it a pillow. No one has stolen it since. I wondered if I was being charged for laying on a real pillow or a fake one? This hospital is in the top 100 in the country and they have fake plastic pillows. I wondered if the x-ray machine was really just a box that hid a guy with a disposable camera. So after I was cheated out of who knows how much money from the fake pillow I got up to see my x-rays. As I rounded the corner out of my mouth came, “Good gracious, you could have warned a girl!” It seems today’s technology takes more advanced pictures. There was much more than bone in those pictures of my hips on that flat screen PC monitor. Also, the x-ray didn’t show that I’d lost 10 pounds. I was upset by that, that and the fact that as the tech explained what she saw I had to remind her to remove the cursor from areas where it didn’t need to come to rest. I was feeling quite violated. I told her we didn’t know each other well enough for her to just leave the cursor hanging any and everywhere.
So she began explaining to me what she saw. I pointed to a spot near the pelvic bone and said, “What’s that black spot?” She said, “Gas!” I thought to myself, “If she’s trying to humiliate me she is doing a great job of it. Am I being charged for the humiliation or is it free?”
Continue reading ‘What’s That Black Spot?’
When I went in I had something planned to talk about. I wanted to talk about Destiny’s decision and about how it affects the Pride. He wanted to talk about my life from middle school to high school. I told him what I needed to talk about and then he just kind of switched gears on me and went right back to middle school. Not a pause, nothing. I said to him, “Where you waiting for me to take a breath so that you could talk about middle school?” He said, “No,” that he thought I was done so he started talking about middle school. Argh! I was done but the gear switching was just so fast that it was like, um, he was waiting for me to finish my sentence so that he could jump in with something else. It’s like talking about apples and then you take a breath and the person who’s suppose to be listening says, “Lets talk about oranges.” Um!!!!! Argh!!! I had something I needed to tell him.
Continue reading ‘Therapy Discussions and Misunderstandings’
I can’t wait to tell Dr. T about Destiny and Blossom. He said something about maybe she wouldn’t change. That’s a load of crap. Maybe he wanted Morton to step up and tell her “no” just in case she didn’t come to what we felt was the right decision. I think he meant it well. Thank goodness we are in a space to see his comment for what it was. Had we not been we might have chewed his head off. Anyway, so we will tell him about the Blossom thing and then about her coming here whatever day it was, a few days ago or yesterday. I can’t remember now. But um it turned out really good for us because Continue reading ‘Destiny and Blossom’
I was highly impressed with my new medical doctor today. This was my very first appointment with her. My old doctor moved to a new location but I didn’t go with him for several reasons. That was back in December and I’m just now getting back into the doctors office for MRI results and blood test results. The new doctor read what was written about my knees and took it as truth UNTIL I had her put her hand on my knee while I raised it slowly. She jumped back and shivered a bit. She said, “That’s nothing but bone against bone.” She trashed the idea of physical therapy because the joints are too far gone for that. I’ll be seeing an orthopedic surgeon sometime soon. I don’t know when. I suppose they’ll call me in a few days. But, I was very impressed with the fact that not only did she realize it was far past physical therapy she had me go downstairs for ex-rays on both knees and my hips, something I couldn’t get the old doctor to do. It wasn’t until I demanded tests for certain things that he gave them. And after 5 years I can tell you that I’ve had one set of x-rays on my left knee and one MRI on that same knee. The lady in the x-ray room said it shouldn’t have been allowed to deteriorate this far. Yeah, tell that to the other doctor. BUT the new doc acted right away and I’m telling you, if a doc orders x-rays the first day you see her it and after feeling bone against bone then what can you say other than, thank goodness somebody’s listening. Heck, she wasn’t even distracted by the dog. Heck yeah! I like that because though Captain My Captain is the sweetest baby in the world the doctors tend to want to pay attention to him instead of listening to me. Continue reading ‘Highly Impressed- Update’
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