It's been 3 weeks now since my move here to California and my brother has been on the road for a week ... so I took the time to rest my weary and pain riddled body and mind , continuing therapy over the phone has proved helpful in my regaining control of things ..

My therapist , concerned over my situation has made subtle suggestions as to what I "need" in my life .. and as I rested I thought about what I "need" .. having MS , Fibro and my anxiety/depression disorders prove too much to overcome at one time ..

So I broke it down to needing to rest my brain .. Sunday is what I called my "no thinking" day .. but last week I made the whole week my "no thinking" week and rested my brain from all the rapid thoughts that run through it at one time ..

Writing down what seemed to be important and with each day broke that list down to my "needs" ... while there are many things I need to do , what I need most was to feel useful , for myself ..

So I planned for this week , the plan ? Call it gardening , clearing out the debris , trimming up the bushes , arranging the plants that were left here , organizing where and how I was going to plant bulbs my bro bought ...

Each day I tackled one job, each day I accomplished that job it felt good .. painful but good .. with each day a different job , feeling the sun on my face , warming my body , having my hands in the soil ..

So, is there such a thing as "good pain" ? I do believe there is .. Pain usually has you mesmerized ... sometimes stopping you from even trying , doing as little as possible as to not feel more twisted up than usual ..

As an avid stretcher of excersize , the muscles that I could stretch did okay , the ones I couldn't really ached , cramped up and had me near tears ..

Physically , I expected this .. so I made sure to do all the necessary steps to ease the pain .. hot bath or shower , put my legs up and rest and do my stretching ..

Night time is proving to be a bad situation , actually the early morning hours .. around 3:30 to 4 a.m. , my legs and arms are numblike and then either become pained and throbbing or cramped up ..

The only thing I can do is get up .. don't take my meds though , wait until my normal time ... just moving and light stretches seem to help until then ... yet it does seem to feel "good" at the same time to know that if I am to be in pain , I am at least doing something I enjoy ..

I envision the front yard as a park , my park .. with it's huge shade trees, fig trees, lemon trees and soon to blossom tulips and daffydills  ... of course the cacti and queen ann palms that are sprinkled along the side of the drive will soon be a part of this landscape ..

As for the mental angle , well, it was at first just a distraction .. taking my mind slowly down , what usually is a jumble of awful rushing panicky thoughts becomes dulled and forgotten as I rake or plant or trim ..