The Friday Five

The Friday Five at RevGal Pals today was to list 5 triumphs. Although I am not a clergyperson, I have been fairly involved in my church (my sons groaned the day that my name showed up 3 times in the Sunday bulletin…) and reasonably well studied in Bible (see my previous blog The Bible in a Year). Maybe I qualify?? So here is my play:

1. Today I cleaned out my refrig. Well, most of it. The interior but not the door. While this is not the first time this year I have cleaned it out, this is the most thorough cleaning I have done in quite some time. I’ll explain further in the post if you aren’t totally disgusted by the time I have finished my list.
2. I did read the Bible in a Year. See previous link.
3. I weigh the same today as the day I graduated from high school – 155 lbs. In high school, I thought I was fat. (5’5”). Today, I am proud to weigh that. Perspectives change.
4. I ran 4 miles on Monday stopping only 4 times for 1/10 of the mile each time. I couldn’t run for 2 minutes straight in June. And I haven’t run a mile since I was in the 8th grade at tennis camp.
5. I made it through my 50th birthday without crying, throwing a single thing or not saying my prayers that night.

Oh, I have other triumphs and pieces and parts of triumphs (one son graduated from high school, the other on the cusp) but these are RECENT ones and I am trying to stay in the moment since I seem to be on the precipice of the blues here lately.

So, here is the complete story on the refrigerator.

Don and I renovated our house for the second time (ok, we are beyond crazy) 10 years ago. The first go round 7 years before had come with a new, almond colored refrigerator. By the time of the second reno, I was ready for a new refrig. One catch – the old, ugly almond one was still going strong.

Let’s wait, my frugal husband counseled. It will surely die soon. We have a terrible track record with appliances (4 dishwashers in 20 years, 6 washing machines, 4 stoves – the list is endless). Every time it made a funky noise or whatever, I would peruse the Home Depot flyers. Black refrigerators showing no fingerprints came and went out of style. Stainless steel came in. Below freezer drawers, refrigs that opened wide so you can have party platters (how often do we have parties……?????? Like maybe once every two years….) I coveted them all. Old Almond kept plugging along. I stopped cleaning the vents on the back of the refrig. Maybe that would kill it. No, it just trapped more of Rocky’s favorite play thing the interior cap of Cole’s Silk Soy Very Vanilla Milk.

This summer, the refrig started making really loud noises. Death was surely near. I went to the Sears scratch and dent showroom and picked out a lovely $1200 model that retails for over $5000. (Yes, yes, yes, I know, I know. $1200 can buy a lot of computers for Zambia kids or medicine for The House of Moses.) Just like my friend Bethany Anderson’s new lovely that yes, I admit it, I broke the 10th commandment for. Keep your wives, oxen and asses. I want a new refrigerator like Bethany.
I quit cleaning the refrig. After all, if you are going to haul it away, why does it matter if it is dirty or not? My mother would die. My sister, Debbie Cole Guest and I were brought up by a good housekeeper. If my mother didn’t teach us how to do it, our lovely maid Sarah or the wicked Rosa surely did.
This morning, I woke up with the whole lovely day in front of me. I was off work, the sun was shining after a good rain and the air was cool. I was going to clean the house, take the recycles, and spend the day in the yard. One catch. The egg carton bottom stuck to the shelf. Several broken eggs resulted. The refrig must be cleaned.
I am proud to say that I did it. I used bleach to sanitize it. And as far as I know, no one has been made ill by anything I have prepared from it since the last time I cleaned it. In June. I checked my calendar.


By the way, Old Almond is back to the silent hum of cooling at 38 degrees .

New Computer

I got a new laptop for my birthday. The big birthday. The 5-0 birthday. And as expected, it is fabulous and fabulously frustrating. There is a reason that I defer to Don and Cole when it comes to technology issues. I am so UN-intuitive when
Okay, this is a perfect example!! I had 2 more paragraphs of lovely, spewing madness and somehow, it all disappeared with a random click! Where did it go, what did I do to make part of my post disappear?

Cole would tell me, this is why we use Word to write our posts, Mom. We need to be able to edit it in Word, then copy and paste. He is so logical. So, well, I don't know what he is. If I did, I wouldn't have had the struggles I have had to raise him partially at least to 17.

Ranting aside, I know I am going to love the dang thing when I get all the clinks and newness smoothed out.

Sort of like I am getting the clinks and the soreness of the exercise plan that I am working on currently. Yesterday, after a week of great run/walking, I did nothing. Really, not even a walk around the small block with Howler. Best it could be said was a half way trip around the mall and while that was anxiety producing, it did not even break a light sweat sweat. AND YET, I have managed on this lazy, rainy day to pull my groin muscle in my right leg. How, I do not know. But pulled it definitely is. I can barely stand without hunching over and lets don't even talk about finding a good place to sleep. Every time I roll over, it hurts. Dang.
50 year old bodies apparently do not like ramping up exercise plans of 25%. 10% is what you are supposed to do. I would use an expletive here but I am afraid it would be blocked by Blogger. Suffice it to say, I am close, but not quite incapacitated. Much as I am with the new computer.

trying hard

Well, as usual, August has taken me to task.
My dad's longtime (30 plus years) secretary was found dead August 2nd. Total surprise. Went to that funeral.
School started for Cole on August 2. While he was so excited to start and has done EXTREMELY well (he is doing his homework. ALL of his homework!!!), there is high free-floating anxiety with the college decision looming over his head. And so he is piddling with the applications.
Matthew finished up his tree-cutting job. No injuries to speak of. Huge praises for that. He is back at college, and we are back to hoping for a really strong academic showing in calculus which he had done extremely poorly in last fall.
Work is bizarrely crazy with machine downloading and machine problems that we have never had before. I feel like I have been fighting with everyone to get back on track, to fix, to get their job done so that I can do mine.
And then, last Friday, Don's dad died.
Don spent the week in Decatur, Il to help with the funeral arrangements and possibly work on getting his parents' home ready to sell. Cole and I spent the week here, feeling blue. Friday was the funeral. Saturday we drove home. I am suffused with sadness of a truly weird kind.
August.
I hate this month and and I still have a week to go.

August

August is a tough month for me.
My brother Nathan was killed in August and his birthday is in August.
School starts. Although Cole is going to be a high school senior and Matthew starts year 2 of college, I hate the whole start back. Mostly, I hate the getting up but then, I hate getting up period.
It is hot.
August is my worst month.

So, I am going to do August differently this year and I am going to use our AT adventure as the impetus.

Here is my plan:

1. Work out every day. I know. How many times have I said this/planned this/tried this. But this time I will succeed. Here is the criteria. It just has to be 15 minutes of something. Anything. Just 15 minutes and that gets the gold star.
2. Eat something wonderful every day. Plan it. Buy it. Fix it. Enjoy it. I have to say, I have a really bad tendency to eat my way through unhappy times and I don't intend to do that this month. This is the month of fabulousness in the garden and stodgy just won't cut it.
3. Find someone to praise every single day. Try to make it in writing.
4. Pause. Pause to give thanks for Nathan. Pause to give thanks that my children are doing well in school, that they are in school, that they have access to wonderful schools, that their minds are being stretched. Pause to not overload my body with heat. Pause to enjoy. Pause to be sad. Pause before I erupt. (Especially this one.)
5. Plan our next AT adventure and make it quick!

What did we learn from our first 3 trail adventures? Prepare the correct way, plan and get the right gear, relax and enjoy the ride. That is my goal for not just making it through August but making this an outstanding month period.

Beauty, Pod-casts and Athleticism

I went for a easy, loping 6 mile training hike today. Okay, I am making fun of myself but really, I did 6 miles in under 2 hours in a full July heated day starting at 2:46 Pm. Loping.

When I walk with Don, I do not wear headphones and neither does he. But when I walk alone or exercise at the gym, I find them an absolute necessity. IF I didn't wear them, I would surely quit early into the work out.

Today, I was listening to one of my recent finds in the pod-cast world "Stuff Mom never told you about". The episode, click below if you want to listen to it, featured a beauty blogger interview. I found the interview fascinating and very thought provoking but what I want to pursue here is her contention that athletes don't obsess over their body image as much as the rest of us do. And I fully admit to obsessing. And to her credit, this was a brief, oh so brief mention but I thought about it for almost the rest of the walk even though I was ostensibly listening to the rest of her interview and other pod-casts of Fresh Air.

A Lovely Conversation on Beauty & Feminism

Released Jul 15, 2013

How has Photoshop, social media and modern advertising altered the meaning of beauty? Cristen interviews beauty scholar Autumn Whitefield-Madrono of The Beheld

I have big calf muscles. People frequently ask me if I am a dancer and I have to say no, I'm not, to which everyone is always surprised. Then, I get asked if I am a runner and up until recently, I have to say no to that one too. I just have big calf muscles. In my defense, so does my dad. Okay, I really don't have nice looking legs. I can recall only one man that I enticed with my legs and that was at moment in my life when I was existing on cigarettes and white wine so I was at one of my all time thin points. Also one of my most unhealthy both emotionally and physically.

Right now, with all this walking and especially up and down hills, my strong, stocky legs are an asset. Which brings me back to Autumn's comment. Does the fact that I am so focused on this physical activity make me feel better about my body, or to not feel about its 'deficiencies' at all? Sadly, right now, I can say that I must not be much of an athlete.

What I have learned from Sherlock Holmes

Here is a little known fact about me. I LOVE Sherlock Holmes. I have read all the Conan Doyle stories, many, many of the patisches, watched all the black and white movie, PBS series, listened to archived radio programs -- you name it about Sherlock and I have probably immersed myself in it.

Currently, there are 2 representations being offered on commercial TV -- one is on CBS and is called Elementary and the other is a BBC production called simply Sherlock. Both characters exist in modern times but feature a neurotic, almost sociologically crippled Sherlock. One recent episode of Sherlock had Benedict Cumberbatch uttering "I have no friends". I love both of these series and fortunately for me, my family is really into the BBC production. We have saved the final episode of Season 2 of Sherlock for this family reunion gig we are doing this weekend.

But I have to say, I have learned a lot from Sherlock Holmes and much of it is helpful on this little Appalachian Adventure. You really have to pay attention to the little details or you will miss out on the trail. As in -- fall down a ravine, step on a snake, run out of water, choose a bad companion for your hike. None of which has happened to me -- yet. But I can easily see it happening if I start with the idle brain. That is point one.

Point two has to do with something he hasn't figured out how to overcome -- the doldrums. I recently experienced them myself (witness my disappointing post recently). In Sherlock's case, he just either self-medicates (cocaine in the Conan Doyle stories other more socially acceptable forms in the current expressions) or finds a new case. My life just doesn't work well with the first b ut the second has some merit to it. And that is what I think this whole AT adventure is for me in the broadest sense -- a new case for a stodgy person who has been in quite a rut for quite a while.

Which makes yesterday and today's hike such a departure for me.

Yesterday, we hiked 10 miles and today did almost 4 making our total for this trip 22. North Carolina is home to hundreds of waterfalls big and little and we saw many on our hike yesterday. We got no rain on us on the trail but it did rain heavily almost as soon as we got down off the mountain and back to our hotel. Perfect timing each day.
And yes, I am in better shape. I was sweaty and stinky but I am not sore. I probably will be a little tomorrow but I intend to run several miles and stretch a lot and that will be that. Still hate stairs, though. I definitely need to work on the stairmaster more.

This morning we started the day off at Wayah Bald which has a magnificent viewing tower which today was above the clouds. And we walked most of the morning in what can only be described as a meadow -- on a mountain but a meadow nonetheless. There was either a fire or some horrible storm that took the tops out of all the trees and left dead poles with wide open spaces under it. If the sun had been out, we would have been burnt. But it was misty and quite cool and a really lovely treat -- except you couldn't really see where your feet were and that worried me about snakes. Didnt see any of them either, thankfully.

But my mood has definitely lifted and I am glad to be here in Seiverville at the family reunion and to be with my boys and my family.

Trip 3

We drove up to Franklin NC after work on Monday and then got up this morning to start our hike. Today we walked from Rock Springs Gap to Mooney Gap, a nice, leisurely stroll of almost 8 miles. I would like to think that I am in better shape but Don thinks this is a much easier section of the trail. At any rate, we started at 10:10 and were off the trail at 3:03 which is great time. We spent the rest of the afternoon, taking a nap, eating dinner and then went to the local cinema "The Ruby" to watch World War Z. Probably not a great choice to watch a zombie movie just before you run off into the woods.


We saw 5 people on the trail and one massive dog. No animal sightings but some deer tracks. Don keeps hoping for another snake. I've seen all the snakes on the trail that I care to see.

The highlight of the day was the view from the fire tower atop Mt. Albert. You can see for miles and miles and unlike the weather for the last several weeks, it was actually clear. That tower is a work. There is a road that crosses the trail a half mile down from the tower but that is a scary, tough ascent from the road to that tower. We came down it, since we were walking North to South today and there were times that I actually sat on my bottom and slid down the rocks. I cannot imagine hauling the steel girders, rebar and concrete to that sight.



Because of all the rain, we spent much of the day slopping through mud and streams that either crossed the trail ro WERE the trail. That is the great thing about hiking boots. Our feet stayed dry. Can't say that about my bottom.



Tomorrow is a longer hike -- almost 10 miles. I feel great, a slight headache (I think that is from the zombies....) and I am looking forward to a great night's sleep.