If nothing else, diabetes has provided me with stories to tell.

Like the time before diagnosis when I peed my pants.  Or the time I told a classmate if they weren't careful, I'd put insulin in their milk and make them diabetic.  Or the time I socked a kid who called a diabetic friend of mine "sugar-freak."  Or the times I've made a donkey of myself during a low.  

In my mind, storytelling is the most important thing we have in life.  It defines family, history, culture.  It draws pictures of the past and shapes our values and ideals.  It is an art-form that I think is (sadly) fading away with the dawn of "information now," twitter and facebook updates, texting, and the like.  I don't know how to explain to my thirteen year old nephew that "I m Sk8in and LOL" is not a story.  

At any rate.  Today I'd like to share a story about goal-setting.   (READ MORE)

There are some days when a person ought to just stay in bed. 

Under the covers.

Cuddled with the cat.

Warm and safe and happy and comfortable.

There are some days when staying in bed is the best possible option.  Of course, those days are often realized in hindsight.  When the proverbial ball is already rolling in the absolute wrong direction.

Today has been, without a doubt, one of those days.

I got up this morning feeling alright.  Fairly well-rested, actually, and not fighting - as I'm wont to do - the inevitable reality that another day has dawned and it can't be spent in the paradise of slumber.

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I spent Saturday at the Providence Convention Center.  Getting tattooed.  The product of my inking can be seen in the photo attached to this post.  The picture, I can assure you, doesn't do it justice.  It's really beautiful.  And it means a lot to me.  The script says "I don't need sleep to dream" and I think the winged goddess looks like something out of a daydream - and like a daydreamer herself.  

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Did you ever have one of those days at work when you just couldn't make time for a break?  One of those days when you didn't stop to eat, drink, or go to the restroom?  One of those days when you were fully aware of the need to take a break, but you just couldn't stop for one?

Right about now, that's how life with diabetes is feeling for me. 

I just need a minute to breathe.  A minute to not think about this.  A minute wherein my mind isn't  consumed with my last inexplicable, frustrating number - or with the next test and the mystery and aggravation it could hold.  A minute to not think about the destruction this disease causes - the destruction that it is causing in me. 

And I know that I'm not going to get that minute. 

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His hands move over my waist to my hips.  He brushes by my insulin pump, which feels to me about fifty times its actual size.  I wonder, does he notice it there beneath my clothes, beneath his hand? 

My bloodsugar is 355 mg/dl.  I feel yucky.  I know I'm spilling ketones.  When he kisses me, do I taste like fruit, like wine, like the acetone that's eating away at me?  Does he see the awful dry feeling behind my eyes; is he thinking I look as horrible as I feel? 

He takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine.  I trace his palm with my fingertips.  Why do these calluses feel so obvious, so hard and unfeminine? 

We are heated and intense.  I am lost in this embrace. My head is floating somewhere in a passionate, dizzy ether. Or am I low?  And if I am, how can I stop and ask for time at this particular moment?  (READ MORE)

Having been away for a weekend of fun since Friday morning, I feel like I've been living under a rock! Albeit a really fun rock, with a little alcohol, BBQ, and great music, but still a rock.

So, as I watched Barack Obama introduce his first Supreme Court appointment, Sonia Sotomayor, this morning, I was taken aback to discover that she has type 1 diabetes. That she was diagnosed at eight years old. That she's lived with type 1 for 46 years.

How incredibly inspiring for people with diabetes. Even more inspiring, I would imagine, for those raising children with type 1.

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