Any GOALS or DREAMS or REFLECTIONS for the New Year? Here's mine....

[Guest guest]

Does anyone have any GOALS or DREAMS or REFLECTIONS for the New Year to share with the group? I'm going to get sappy, long-winded and very reflective here so please excuse me folks. At the age of 54, I feel the sands in the hourglass slipping away grain by grain...6.... and it causes me to reflect on the things I wish I had done in my life. AND what I want to do still. Life isn't over just because I have MS. At least it shouldn't be, should it? All my life I have always dreamed of living in a log cabin back in the woods with my family. I've also dreamed of living near the beach. Instead I've lived most of my life in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. Smack dab in the desert with barely any trees or grass. HOT and miserable to say the least. I stayed there because I was the caregiver for my grandmother, father and then my mother. After I was finally on disability and no longer tied to my job, I moved to Northern Arizona. It was wonderful to be free of my job and the resulting stresses and strains of working in Child Protective Services. I felt like MS was the best thing that ever happened to me! In Northern Arizona I lived on a small, struggling farm and raised goats, chickens and ducks. We had llamas and a milk cow too. I loved it and felt like I was thriving there. I learned to

milk goats and my hand strength improved dramatically. So did my stamina. Some of you know that I then had a near fatal rollover car wreck in 2002. I know that for a week I hovered between life and death --and life finally won. That life/death experience changed me a lot and made me want to seek out the experiences and changes I felt I needed. I wanted so much more from what's left of my life, you know? It's a long story but I ended up moving to the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. There we have 40 acres 2 miles from the road. We have a huge old drafty log cabin surrounded by tall spruce and birch and alder trees. We get our water from our creek. We are totally off-grid and have an outhouse. So there's my cabin in the woods folks! And we are just 5 miles from the ocean. There's my other dream fulfilled! It's truly utopia..except for not having my family all there with me. Now THAT brings me to

tears... I just know that I NEED that cabin in the woods. I am rejuvenated of mind and body there in our Alaska backwoods. I am in Arizona again now. Back in the desert as I was to begin with years ago. My body is aching to be out of here. I'm stiff again and I'm in so much pain. In Alaska the pain was much less for some reason and the stiffness was nearly gone. In Alaska I can even sit Indian-Style on the floor! LOL I hadn't been able to do that since I was a teenager. In Alaska we had to traverse the 2 mile trail from the road to our cabin by either hiking or 4-wheeler. After a few months we got an ARGO (a 6 wheeled tracked vehicle). To get in the ARGO I use a step stool to get up to the right level, carefully maneuver myself over to the edge of the ARGO then I scramble over, crab-like, into the ARGO. It's not pretty but it works. I don't think my body would

let me do something like that here in Arizona. So many people warned me that my pain would be terrible in the damp weather in Alaska but it's worse here in in Arizona. Why the difference? I don't know. So what do I still want to do in life? I want to dig clams on the beach. That's quite the goal, huh? But it's hard for me to walk out on the beach and then do all that bending over. LOL.. I want to catch salmon. I want to catch some big halibut but I'm afraid to go out in a boat on the ocean (working on that one). I want to learn to make really good soap. The kind that starts with lye. I want all my kids and grandkids to live around me. Since that's not going to happen I'm going to have to travel around a lot. That's not my ideal but

it's workable. AND I want to learn to make really good soap. The kind that starts with lye, you know? That's me folks. Now what about you? Sharon

Sharon (MSersLife creator/owner)

“One minute it's a giant cabbage and the next, ka-boom! You've got cole slaw all over you." V.R. , Palmer, Alaska, where Cabbages grow huge

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