What It Is

The name of this blog has lived in my mind for 20 years now. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, West Africa, where top-heavy transport vehicles called "lorries" carry all types of live animals dangling above the passengers. Ghanaians paint names across the front of their lorries. "Sweet Not Always" used to come careening down the dirt road in my town scattering chickens, goats and children like billiard balls. The children laughed as they ran, leaping open sewers or flattening themselves against the buildings. It was all great fun for them, outrunning death and bursting into breathless giggles when they saw faces like mine grow (even more) pale with shock.

I always knew I'd find a use for that lorry name.

About 3 years ago, my life--which had been sailing along with the typical smattering of drama-- took a left turn onto You Gotta Be Kiddin' Me Street. It began with thumb pain and ended up 8 months later with me being driven to the ER by a 6-foot-something doctor folded ridiculously into the driver's seat of my tiny Subaru. As I gasped for breath, he informed me that I had just been diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called Wegener's Granulomatosis. Though it is deadly if not treated, the treatment he laid out was brutal, and I actually laughed out loud at what seemed an absurd exchange. Within a half hour, separate IV's dripped blood and steroids into me, and I was granted membership into the exclusive club of People With Weird Diseases.

It's pretty bad, I won't deny it. Some days it gets on top of me. Other days I'm able to give it a good Whop! on the head and enjoy life anyway. But the moments where I can forget about it altogether are few and far between. The symptoms are too widespread and numerous to be ignored. At least right now. There are benefits to living with a day-to-day prognosis. You delight in good things more. Every night before I cover his cage, I look my little bird right in the eye, and allow the floodgates of my heart to open with gratitude for having heard his sweet voice that day.

At this point, depending on your own life circumstances, you might be fearing or hoping that this blog is going to be all about Wegener's! Though it's permanently changed my view in life, it's not the whole of me. This blog is about all the things I care about-- Buddhism, animals, my companion animals, humor, politics, other cultures, global consciousness, wholistic health, living green, and sure, living with a rare chronic illness. All kinds of things. I don't know how it'll shake out. Might be sweet. Maybe not always!