Dear God! The pain was awful. I’d had my eyebrows waxed before (as well as my bikini line), but nothing compared to the line of fire and itchiness that took residence on my brow and my upper lip. Within an hour of the threading, huge red hives replaced the diminutive peach fuzz that had previously occupied that region of my face. Upon seeing my blooming upper lip, my father told me that I finally looked like the native-looking Puerto Rican son he’d always wanted. Luckily, the joke was funnier than the insult delivered.

I learned my lesson then, or so I thought. I found a way to navigate through my ever-changing life. I made time to do other things - going to college, getting a great job, and having another child. But the weight came back. I was okay; I made peace with the weight and with my happy home. Then another hardship came about that had the unintended (but very welcome) consequence of removing thirty pounds of unwanted weight from my body. I made the decision to keep the weight off my body and stuck with it, thankfully.

Still, the peach fuzz remains. I stare at it in the mirror sometimes and wonder if it is as glaring to others as it is to me. My husband says that he doesn’t care one way or the other, but that he’d be supportive of any permanent hair removal method I’d want to undertake. I’m not so sure, though.

I think that my peach fuzz acts as a shield of sorts. It protects me from obsessing about my looks too much; if it were to disappear, things would happen. Who knows what aspect of my appearance I would attack next? Will I look more closely at the greys on my head? Will I think about how sparse my eyebrows are? Would the sagging skin under my chin engross me to the point of distraction? I don’t know the answer to that, which is for the best. My peach fuzz reminds that I cannot stop nature from taking its course. All I can do is enjoy what I have and manage what comes my way as best I can.  

Many Kind Regards,
Cyndia


Sometimes our outer appearance can be more than skin deep. Read Jeanette's struggle with vanity here.

Original image credit: Calsidyrose

Recording something on your DVR? If it is on Tivo, the folks there know what you are watching. Comcast keeps track, too. To prepare for my tech fast, I called the folks at DirecTV to see if they kept track of what I watched. They said that they know what we watch live, but have no idea what makes it onto our DVRs (this knowledge will be instrumental to my tech-fast amusement). iTunes knows what we are listening to, Kindle knows what we are reading, as do the folks at Nook. 

I decided that I needed a break from being tracked. For five days, I did not get on the internet. I did not turn on my cell phone. I did not watch live TV. I did not send mail. I did not use the navigation system on my phone. I did not pay for anything with a check-card either. 

It was liberating. Within me, unique thoughts and odd observations began to take place.

Day One:
Thursday, October 16th, 2014

The tech hunger pains are very mild. If I had to get online, I guess I would go on Facebook. Probably check my e-mail. Interestingly enough, I don’t feel the urge to visit CNN or USA Today. I have no idea what is going on with ISIS, Ebola victims, or the enterovirus. 

There are a few things I know about the news today:

My husband is outside working on our doorbell. 

Our neighbors, Keith and Ilsa, are putting a new vinyl fence up. Well, not personally. The guys who are next to the big truck filled with cement bags and white planks will probably do the work. 

It is sunny here, but not sweltering. The Southern California drought is still in force. 

Not having national or international news to discuss with my husband has made me share some of my odd face-to-face encounters. Like the unhelmeted cyclist who didn’t consider the fact that she was getting pissy with the driver of a 3000 lb. Wrangler (me), who was only trying to make sure that there was enough room on the road. Or the two golden retriever puppies at the Jeep dealership. Or the exchange with the 7/11 cashier who tried to test my Spanish. Or the fact that I was able to impart some wine and IPA knowledge on a fellow swim parent. It makes me wonder what else I will see that will be newsworthy. It makes me wonder what else my internet far-sightedness has made me miss.

The anesthesia that the internet had me under has worn off - and it feels good. 

Day Two
Friday, October 17th, 2014

I have no idea where my husband is. I thought he’d be home about half an hour ago. No tech means that I can't track him down.

* A half hour later *

The breeze feels good, despite the heat the California sun is delivering to us. Nearby, the trill of a phone interrupts the moment of peace. Then I remember that it is not my phone that it is ringing, as mine is off. I smile and carry on with my peaceful moment.

Day Three
Saturday, October 18th, 2014

Discoveries made while driving through town:

·         A new Nothing Bundt Cakes store location opened nearby! Right before my birthday!

·         Having no tech means that you can’t be Google for your spouse. Awesomeness.

·         Watched House Hunters International on my DVR and couldn’t help being scared for the girl on the episode. An American girl gave up EVERYTHING in Boston to move to Honduras with Scottish boyfriend. She had no job, no friends, no family, and no ring. She bent over backwards to make sure they found a place her boyfriend liked. During the “catching up” part at the end, he commented that he found her a job where he works and that she is no longer mooching off of him and he loves coming home to his dog and his awesome waterfront rental. No mention of affection for his girlfriend. Why is this hitting me so hard?

Day Five
Monday, October 20th, 2014

On the to-do list for when the tech-fast ends:

Look up X-Men: Days of Future Past to see who directed it. Send said director a message to tell them how much I enjoyed it. 

Download Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce.

Get to the source of my husband’s Catholic ancestry. Were his Northern European Catholic ancestors as violent as mine were (Spaniards)?

Random thought:

I am glad that I made the time to wash our windows. If we build a house from scratch, we will build it from brick. 

I mourn the fact that my time without tech is coming to an end. 

Day One - Back to Tech
Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Wow, I got a lot of FB mentions. And messages. Jiminy Christmas. Lots of emails in my inbox, but most of them are junk. Time to pay a bill. Time to text my sister to tell her that I am well, and that I cleaned the windows like I said I would. 

I’m having a hard time balancing non-tech pastimes with tech ones. It is making me grouchy. 

I balanced that discord by cleaning up the back patio. It was going well until I found the Brown Widow eggs under all of my patio chairs. I swear there should be a spider on the California state flag and not a bear. Went to the hardware store to buy good old Raid to kill them. It was like a shootout in the old west. We won. 

Currently

Prior to my experiment, technology was my constant companion - the background noise to my quiet life. I yearned for technology to be used only as a tool; however, life changes, as it always does. 

Today, I no longer live in a house that I own, but in Navy housing. It has been incredibly boring and bland. Technology silenced the voice in my head that told me that I wasn't happy here. 

A change in my son's interests and plans has consequently changed my daily routine. Now, because of technology, I've landed employment (from home) which is largely reliant on the use of technology. I guess that you could say that I've come full circle with my technology beefs. 

I am hoping that my work will fill me with the stimulation that Facebook and other internet content streams did. I'll keep you posted!!

Many Kind Regards,
Cyndia

Have you wondered what would happen if you made a change in your social media routine? Katie did, and this is what happened.

image credit: beautyleg2015 via Flickr

The incidences of Shingles and even Labyrinthitis pale in comparison to the bodily agony coupled with the heartbreak that I suffered many years past.  Hives covered my body and pain assailed my chest at odd times of the day.  I went to the ER out of fear, and discovered that my health was completely solid.  It was grief, theorized the ER doctor. The passing of my daughter only three months prior caused physical manifestations of grief.  I couldn’t make sense of it, though.  Sometimes, the pains would come and the itchy hives covered my body when I was thinking of trivial things such as television or dinner.

I got pills to numb me; they didn’t work.  I had wine to calm my nerves; that didn’t work, either.  Finally, I succumbed to the need to speak to a psychologist regarding my grief.  The talks were not helpful, though, as I did not feel like I was divesting myself of a secret pain; I’d made my unhealing disrepair well known.  My friends and family knew and felt my devastation and commiserated with me.  My husband was wonderful, too, even grieving as he was.  Finally, I was over the farce of speaking to the psychologist.  I politely thanked her, but told her that I would no longer need her services.  She politely disputed my decision, but I stayed on the course I’d set for myself.

Only two days after speaking to the psychologist did the funniest thing happen.  My hives stopped.  The chest pains reduced a bit.

Online literature suggests that time and talk are good cures for stress.  Shingles, Labyrinthitis, and hives and chest pains are only cured by time, too.  Perhaps my long term prescription for stress is time; time to know that pain will come, and time to know that the painful things will go away, too. 

Many Kind Regards,
Cyndia


Cyndia is combatting stress. Read here how Editor-in-Chief, Katie, copes with her ADD.

We saw lots of traffic while we were close to land - ships, aircraft and submarines, too.  As soon as we headed out to the open ocean and away from the coastlines of whatever body of land we were near, the traffic would decrease significantly.

We kept a constant eye on the picture, of course, but diminished contacts (what we called the blips on the radar pictures) meant more time to daydream, snack, and talk.  We watchstanders learned about each other’s educations, families, favorite foods, what we’d do after we pulled back into our homeport, and what we wanted to do at liberty ports, too.

What roused me the most was the talk of music.  It was my opinion that one could learn a lot about someone depending on the music that moved him or her.  Sailors (and all other service members) are brave souls, but I had a lot of admiration for the ones who could actually belt out a few bars of their favorite tunes.  I’d do it too, depending on how amused or how delirious with exhaustion I might be, which happened a lot as I stood many, many hours of watch.

One sailor, an FC2 (Fire Controlman Second Class Petty Officer), mentioned a song that was popular right before we went out to sea for that pre-deployment training exercise.  It was called “Back At One,” and it was by a musician by the name of Brian McKnight.  He asked us if we’d seen the video for it yet.  Most of us had not.  He then proceeded to describe it in detail.  In the video, the protagonist is singing the solemn, bittersweet tune as he rides in a car with other people.  The FC2 was a natural storyteller, though, so I knew that there was more to the video.  With his details, I made the connection that the people riding in the car together were from different walks of life, and would probably not ride along with each other during any other day.  The FC2 nodded and smiled at me.  He then got to the “climax” of his story, and the video.  The singer and everyone else in the car were dead - perished in a plane crash.  The rest of the video featured flashbacks of the flight and what the passengers did for their remaining time.  The protagonist gets on an airphone to call his lady love and tell her how much he loves her.  She was devastated, of course.

After hearing about the video, the sweet song haunted me just a bit more.  I thanked the FC2 for his story and went on to thinking of other things.  The next day, while eating supper on the mess decks, I heard the commanding officer come over the 1MC (the general announcing system).  Apparently, there had been a passenger airline crash near the area where our ship had been sailing and we were to cease our Middle Eastern Force exercises to go on site to assist the Coast Guard with their search and rescue efforts.  I felt the ship turn and then quickly speed up to its maximum speed of 30 knots.  After finishing my meal, I hit my rack.  The severity of the situation kept me awake for a while, but eventually I fell asleep.  I woke up five minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off and I swear that I felt the ocean talking to me.  In many voices it said, “Look at me!  I am here!  Please look at me,” the voices begged.  Chilled, I showered and went up to Combat.

Combat was full of people that were usually only there during drills and other training scenarios.  Speakers that were usually quiet erupted with different voices coming from different vessels, as well as different land-based stations.  A watch supervisor told me that for the time being, we were under the command of the Coast Guard.  That was okay by us, though, as we wanted to do what we could to help.  Our ship did spanning square searches in order to find debris.  We found plenty of that.  Hours later, the search status changed from a search and rescue one, to a search and recovery (SAR) one.  I sat on a desk by the radios and kept the log books that recorded the information that I heard.  The most chilling thing I learned was how debris - human and synthetic - were measured; by weight.

We remained tasked to the SAR area for as long as we could, but left a few days after as we had to resume our pre-deployment training exercises.  A few days after the training, we pulled into San Francisco for liberty.  Before we could leave the ship for some fun liberty, a representative from the airline came to our ship and spoke on the 1MC (1 main circuit, the public address system aboard a Navy vessel) to thank us for our assistance during the SAR efforts.  The words rang hollow to me, though, or maybe it was just the way his voice bounced off the steel bulkheads in the passageways of our ship.  It was an awful thing, I thought.  Was that representative privy to the information spoken on the radios in the search area?  Did he know that our ship’s lookouts kept spotting seat cushions, even as we sped away from the SAR area?  

Did he hear about the child’s red shoe that was found floating in the water?

But I’d heard the reports.  I’d heard the anguish of the ocean in my heart.  And thanks to a late hour combat conversation, I would forever have a sad song playing in my memory of the most heartbreaking service event I’d ever been witness to.

Original Photo Credit: Flickr