"Good morning" takes on a new meaning.

poplar tree in our backyard

i've been having some good mornings lately.

i say this because i've never really been a morning person, but morning has been less friendly with the fibromyalgia. If you've read this blog before, you probably remember that i've whined heartily about the Fentanyl withdrawals and the fact of that experience leaving me with even less energy than before.

But changes seem to be in the wind--i've taken adrenal support supplements for a few months, and am now on Cymbalta, the pharmaceutical recently proclaimed on commercials as the answer to my fibro pain. We shall see how it goes, but whether from the time passed from initial withdrawals till now, or the adrenal improvement or the Cymbalta, i'm finally able to wake up at a decent hour and get out of bed! (By "decent" i refer to hours starting at 7, not the indecent time my hubby gets up-- 4:20am.)

The simple act of being able to wake up and get up is one i haven't been in touch with for a while. The fibromyalgia, diagnosed about 3 1/2 years ago, has changed my usual world of "i really don't want to get up" into "i feel really exhausted still and i'm too sore to move anyhow, so i really don't want to get up." They're simply different by degrees--did i mention i've never been a morning person??!

The extra good part of mornings lately is that in this end of a Castro Valley August, the weather is clear and even on the hot days the mornings are lovely and breezy. The balcony outside our second floor bedroom invites me to sit and listen.

my treehouse nook

i am a lucky girl. (Okay, a seriously over 50 girl, but still...) When our second floor was added and the balcony made, it had no covering over top. Me, being the delicate flower that i am, suggested that protection from the elements would be good. Dear hubby did that. So now i have a lovely treehouse nestled in the branches of the poplar tree, or so it seems.

Do you notice the sounds of morning are different than later in the day? And the sounds carry through the air differently in the summer? My nest asks me to shhhh and listen.....the constant soft swishing of the traffic on the freeway a mile away, the rhythmic thrum of my bedroom ceiling fan...the workman's tools two doors down...the rustling of the poplar tree's leaves. Listening has become a calming practice of feeling outside my own body and its pain, of being strictly in that moment, a meditation of sorts.

Skimmer's recap: Not a morning person. Mornings improving. Good morning to me.

The softer side of SWAT.

Enrico Colantini in Flashpoint

Apparently i'm drawn to Canadians.

First there's my dear friend Equichick8 and her totally enjoyable family from Manitoba, then came Corner Gas--introduced to me by my Canadian friend. Hubby and i have become quite addicted. It's light, it's funny, one of those things that makes me laugh out loud. Now there's Flashpoint, the new Canadian series on CBS. Here's the write-up from AOL television:

Inspired by the real-life Emergency Task Force of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, this taut police drama chronicles the efforts of the Strategic Response Unit (SRU), an elite and highly skilled group of cops charged with rescuing hostages, defusing bombs and breaking up gangs. The series title comes from another part of their job, however: getting inside a suspect's head and discoverying his emotional "flashpoint" that triggered the crisis in the first place.

i wanted to see this because i love the actor Enrico Colantoni--most recently seen as the father on Veronica Mars, the show where one could gain satisfaction from watching the cute high school outcast say all the things you always wish you'd said.

The curious bit to hubby and i in Flashpoint is the extremely sensitive overtones to the show about hard hitting SWAT team members as they go through their daily business of catching bad guys and saving lives. Now, SWAT and sensitive don't seem to readily go together in my brain, but who knows? Maybe SWAT teams regularly have the touching moments as shown on Flashpoint. Now, i do love Colantoni, but this jury is still out on the subject of the softer side of SWAT. But Corner Gas is here to stay.

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