As I see it.

Maybe it is all about grace under pressure. No, that's not me in the photo, I just empathize.

I'm not a guy and I don't smoke. I have less facial hair and my car is slightly cleaner.

I haven't been watching the news much. I trust the President to do the right thing. I know he never had all the answers, but I do have the sense that he will surround himself with the variety of people who DO have solid answers.

I have no desire to watch him make the sausage. I try not to worry about things I can't change. I just voted for the person I believe in.

Was talking to Good Randy last night about Michigan and Florida. He says there is no doubt in his mind that Florida will come back to financial health as the rest of the Baby Boomers start creaking and limping and hating the cold.

That's part of why I want to hang onto my condo like my life depended on it. Well, in a way it does. This is where I got my health back. The weather and health resources in this area have literally shaved 20 years off how I feel; especially the nearby yoga center (Health & Harmony on McGregor) that teaches the Iyengar method. It's giving me more strength with every passing month.

At 58 I am the most flexible and limber I've ever been. I am very close to what I was in high school, when I was doing balance beam and uneven parallel bars. Well, then I had more upper body strength and could easily do the splits, but now I'm more flexible. The masseuse at Health & Harmony said "wow, you're LOOSE."

The weight is coming off, more as the side-effect of an incredibly healthy lifestyle than actual INTENT. Well, it helps that I won't be able to afford to buy food for a while.

We talked about Michigan. Good Randy said it will come back in a year. I told him I went onto the GM website this past week expecting to find bold new plans for selling those vehicles they can't sell. And damned if I didn't see why nothing is selling. NOTHING has really changed. NOTHING since I was writing that shit for the car company websites YEARS AGO. That is a total shock.

Sure, there are large rebates and some zero interest for a time, but it's all for PEOPLE WITH STELLAR CREDIT. Who has stellar credit?

Good Randy says it all has to start with the banks getting their act together.

This country's manufacturers need to borrow a page from Hyundai and their offer to TAKE THE CAR BACK for people who lose their jobs. That's an expression of faith in themselves. That makes me want to buy a Hyundai. EXCEPT I WANT TO BUY AMERICAN. AND I WANT TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT!

If enough people with jobs (92% of the population?) have a guarantee like that, more people will BUY the cars and auto workers will KEEP their jobs and the country will start to STABILIZE.

People will be less afraid to spend.

I'm feeling a little less traumatized today. Praying more. Glad that I went from hermit to social butterfly over the past year, I now have many contacts. I just have to take it one day at a time. (Only I'm such an obsessor it's more like one HOUR at a time.)

Immediate goals ... freelance (working on it constantly) and enough money set aside to rent a Uhaul to head back up north if I have to.

I pray that day never comes. And I pray for coworkers and others who suddenly find themselves in the same boat. And I can't imagine what it feels like to be one of the people who is still looking for work after losing their job a year ago.

Namaste.

Trapped in Paradise

The evening I took this photo on Fort Myers Beach the air temp, water temp and my body temp were about 98.6. It was SURREAL. I have never felt or seen anything like it.

Trapped in Paradise.

I know, that sounds like a strange concept.

Went to yoga yesterday at Health & Harmony on McGregor and my Canadian friend Connie - a nurse and former professor - joined me for the first time.

She has fibromyalgia, I have Lyme Disease ... Gretchen, another friend at yoga, has CFS.

Gretchen and I have had significant relief from Iyengar Yoga. (Iyengar still teaches in his 90s. In his youth he was so ill he nearly died. His type of yoga is especially gentle and employs props.)

http://www.bksiyengar.com/

For Michigan friends - Iyengar was introduced to this country by a woman in Ann Arbor. When I sent my son a CD, I told him the CD was going back where it all began.

Anyway ... it is my hope that Connie will find some relief from this program. She did sign on for a series.

During our session she could hardly kneel and I heard her joints crack. I was very worried - and surprised since she has been investing a lot of time in other exercises.

Afterwards we went to Sakura on McGregor for soup & Chinese.

Connie told me she went to Washington DC last week to put out feelers for a new job. She seemed optimistic, but I knew she's at least as sensitive to climate change as I am. I asked her if she could survive up north again and she broke down and cried. (Our poor waitress thought there was something wrong with her General Tso's.)

Truth is - it doesn't matter if she can find a job there, she can't handle it. She said she was so cold she had to stand in a hot shower until she was warm enough to move again.

What a nice concept, to imagine you could move anywhere for work. It's just an unrealistic dream for some of us.

The temperature dropped 25 degrees in the last 24 hours. I am too cheap to mess with the thermostat and I'm damned if I will live in Southwest Florida and EVER use the furnace.

This morning I woke at 9 feeling like a stone. A stone in pain.

It's Sunday, I told myself I could sleep another 20 minutes. I finally limped downstairs and looked at my watch, thinking it had broken. It said 2:15.

I had breakfast well past lunchtime, fed the dogs, took them outside and had to go back to bed. I am 100 years old. Everything hurts. Thankfully, it's Godfather Marathon day on AMC and I caught True Blood and Californication tonight.

At this exact moment I think I'll be OK to go to work tomorrow. Everything I watch on cable ... I think about how I can apply ideas to our advertising campaigns. So it's not like I'm a 9 to 5-er. It's like they rent the demented portion of my brain 24/7.

But it's embarrassing to be coping with this shit, it makes me seem my age at the office. I am the oldest one there - although I don't think I seem like it.

I have enough vacation time left that I could easily go back to Michigan and see family over the holidays - but it would hit me so hard physically, I fear for the repurcussions. Last time I went north - August - I survived the giant temperature changes up there, came home and was sick for two months.

It saps my energy, leaving me susceptible to bugs and viruses.

My granddaughters are growing up without me. I have friends I'll probably never see again.

If I ever have to go back there to live year-round, I imagine I would be like a cripple. Or - like Connie and I agreed - we would shave 15 years off our lives.

It just sort of amazes me that nobody ever talks about this, about people who have to move here because they cannot survive in the cold.

Or - on a more positive level - about the people up north who endure cold and darkness who could be living fuller, more active, FAR more productive lives down here.