Salad Days 

It’s finally happening!  Remember back, after The Fourth of July, when I suddenly went from 193-204 over a weekend, then proceeded to gain three more pounds?  No?  Why would you.  You’re living your own life, but it happened.  Trust me.  Anyhow…  I spent last month flushing my system with water, exercising regularly and trying to eat right in hopes that it was water weight but nothing changed.  I fell off the wagon a number of times, but I got right back on and…  Continued to gain weight or stay right around 205.  Finally, on Saturday, I decided to just let it go and get back to a fat-loss system in September when I have a reliable schedule, and lo and behold!  Guess what happened all of the sudden?  I weighed 200 last night and 203 this morning!  Who knows how I gained three pounds while sleeping and weighing in after I used the restroom, but it’s not 205!  My weight budged in the direction I wanted it to go in, finally!!!  If I’m honest, I think it’s a result of getting on the bladder pill thinger-mc-bobber.  I think it’s helping my body to regulate a bit better and not be in a fluid flush-rush panic all the time, and I’m letting the fluids go, now.  That or all the miles I’m running are finally paying off and I’m using some fat resources to support myself.  I don’t care.  It just made me happy. 🙂


Gigi and I ran five miles yesterday, bless her little pointed head.  She’s full of chutzpah, moxie, youth and arrogance, as any 12 year old should be, and just keeps insisting that all this running is easy.  She’s not rude about it, just confident and proud, like she should be.  But she thinks she can run a long ways and she thinks she has the stamina to sustain it for multiple days in a row.  Or at least she thought she did.  I’m not mocking her, mostly her growth is fascinating because it reflects so much of what I went through and that surprises me.  My daughter is young and so capable, so when she says she can go run nine miles without training I pretty much agree, assuming her training will be different than that of a 40-something mother.  Easier, somehow.  Like she should be able to leapfrog over stages that I plateaued at, so seeing her start to lag around 1.5 miles and tell me she was ‘over it’ at 2.5 miles and start complaining about how this was taking forever at three miles and just.  Wanting.  It.  Over.  The run got long on her yesterday and she really had to push through it.  She was a little whiny.  Still sweet, but whiny and tired.  Oh-so-tired.  I’ve been there a million times.  It shouldn’t surprise me to see her slow down and feel the distance as we train, but when I see her push past it and get through, I’m so proud of her.  Five miles was long yesterday and seven miles is going to feel long on Thursday or Friday, but I am proud, Proud, PROUD of my girl and her runner bean legs.

I just love having her as a running partner.  Yesterday she asked me how should she tell me she’s had her first kiss. Because it will be awkward to tell me but she thinks she really will want to tell me once it happens.  The things that we talk about on our runs are precious and wonderful and wouldn’t come out any other way.    I feel honored that I get to do this with her. We will both remember this when we are old, and the more I age the more I see the value in these kinds of opportunities.  These will be some of our salad days.

Good Things


Between the hiking and running this week, we met our goals!  Wahoo!  That is a great feeling!  I may have fudged a tiny bit on the very last mile by about 1/4 of a mile, but I’m going to call it a success.  Next week we are planning to run a 3,3,5,7 week, upping our long run by one more.  We can do this!  Gigi already feels like moving on up to nine miles, but I don’t think we are quite there, yet.  I did get a kind reminder that I need to start practicing on-run nutrition, though.  That’s something to think about…


{The location of my street side accident showed no evidence of the prior day’s abuse! Plus scenes from a concert.}

After my exciting run the other day I made a doctors appointment to discuss my legitimate concerns about not being able to hold my pee.  My doctor did all the tests she could and came up with no infections at all, which was a great relief, then she prescribed my first-ever ‘you have to potentially take this for the rest of your life’ medication.  I cried a little because that means I am getting old.  A common issue among people with major weightloss is that your fat ends up supporting your organs, and when you lose the fat your organs lose their support, feel the gravitational pull and go with the flow.  When I am running or hiking, this means that all of my organs are literally bouncing on my unprepared bladder, stressing it to the point of incontinence.  The good news is that I’m not a lost cause.  First, I don’t pee on the regular like a lot of women.  Apparently, many women, post-childbirth, leak when they walk, run, jump, sneeze, cough, laugh, roll over in the middle of the night, blink- whatever.  We often have leakage but somehow I escaped that misery and I was sorry to learn that so many people have to deal with that!  I also learned that I can start doing kegals like crazy and that might help things, too.  So when you pull up next to me at a red light next time and I have a weird look on my face, know it’s now because I’m holding a kegal for the duration of the light.  Lol!  

I knew getting old was coming and assumed that I would gracefully accept my bill as it came due, but some of these things are not nearly as minor as I would have thought they’d be.  Glasses suck, peeing all the time is life altering and even though my back hurts there’s nothing wrong with it except that it’s 42 years old!  Get meh cane!


I don’t even know where this all came from.  I’ve always been a maker, but the last few years of raising children and working has taken its toll and I’ve not been the maker I once was.  I used to have a soap business, I used to make paper out of junk mail plus preschool paper scraps to sell, I made wreaths, floral swags, cards, canned fruits and vegetables, made jam, candles, quilts, beer, clothes, gift tags, books- if it involved making stuff on the cheap you could count me in!  Gardening was a passion of mine but more than anything I was just never still and always had several projects going at a time.  Parenting refocused me entirely and teaching absorbed the cruft of remaining creativity…

Until this summer.  I sat here for a few weeks in that recovery daze that one has after spending 180 days with 25, 8-year-olds, but then I almost had a feeling of anger.  I’ve redirected that into a passionate feeling, now, but initially I was mad that I was bored.  Irritated that Hulu and Netflix had nothing new of interest for me.  Agitated that a car accident halted so many of our summer plans.  Annoyed that running and writing were all that I had in front of me for the next month. Jealous of my 20 year old self who was never bored because she could do whatever she wanted when she wanted.  Then I looked around and realized I was bored because Gigi was busy reading or drawing, Jude was immersed in a world of imaginative Lego building or was reading Harry Potter, while Bradley was composing, writing and drawing.  I was the only one not engaged with something so I went on Pinterest and found something to do.  Only boring people get bored, as the saying goes, and I’m determined to not be boring!  I came across some charming dioramas and decided that making them is my new thing and I’m enchanted.  Obsessed.  Collecting sticks, moss and lichen like a fiend and then retreating to my laboratory with my finds, during every spare second, to glue on some moss or sculpt a house or paint a toadstool or simply admire.  They’re totally silly, but my four year old comes out when I look at them and she gets lost in that place, in that story.  I literally stand in wonder and just look, switching favorites over and over and agreeing with myself that I love the wooded ones best, filled with moss and sticks.  They make me happy to the ridiculous degree, so, for now, what’s wrong with that, I ask?  At this point, they’re all unfinished but I’m continuing to roll forward and am making more.  I have a theater in process right now and absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with them all.  Time will tell!  🙂

Yellow


We were all about the long run today.  Training has been difficult.  It’s not like we don’t have the time, it’s just that who wants to go run around for 90 minutes in the heat in preparation for a half marathon in a month?  I mean, I do but I also really don’t.  You understand what I mean!  I was getting a little nervous, truth be told.  We have been pretty consistent with our short runs, but the longer runs have been harder.  Last year I thought that if I could run a 10k that it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to run a half marathon.  I was both right and wrong.  Right in that, yes.  I can do it without too much training.  Wrong in that I really paid the price in pain for a week afterwards as well as during the race.  So, anyhow, I was getting nervous that, with about five weeks left we are a little behind, but today’s 6.5 totally made up for that.

And Guinevere ran her furthest distance of 6.5 miles!  After today’s run, it’s all new distances for us.  I’m really proud of her tenacity and willingness to train for this race!  Yahoo!  We just got the info for My Better Half Marathon and I’m going to let her decide what her distance will be this year.  Something tells me that she’s going to be a half marathon girl from now on, which is pretty cool if you ask me.


While out for our run, my potty problem arose again.  We stopped after three miles, our first loop, at the house so I could go pee.  Then when we got to the QFC (hence the QFC selfie), I had to go again!  Afterwards,  I happily ran past my favorite rose ever, the yellow rose of Kenmore, and there was the urgency again!  Then, after another mile, I had to go so bad that I literally peed myself right there on the street.  Guinevere ran home while I sat on the street corner in my wet pants and called Bradley to come fetch me and to bring a towel.  I also have an appointment with my doctor.  This is so outside of normal- I should not have to pee right before I leave the house, run three miles, pee again, run two miles, pee again and then, after another mile, pee myself on the street.  I wasn’t embarrassed or horrified, it just looked like I sat down, but when I got up, there was a puddle under me!  😂😂😂 This is not conducive to the lifestyle I want to live and must be fixed!  UTI?  Bladder infection?  OAB?  We will soon find out!  I’ve been waiting for that day when I reverted back to my infant ways and actually had an accident as an adult!  I’m just glad it was so close to home and resources!

Bridal Veil Falls

We FINALLY got our first ‘outside of St. Edwards Park’ hike in today!  Yayyyyy!


I always read about hikes and fall in love with pretty much every single one, so I posted on Facebook to get some suggestions beyond what we’ve already accomplished and got a short list in return that are going to be gorgeous!  Today we started out with a shorter hike and realized how very nice it is to get back on the trail!


Bridal Veil Falls is on the way out to Steven’s Pass, right outside of Index.  If you’re not from Seattle, that’s about 90 minutes northeast of Seattle ;).  If you’re interested, you’re welcome to take advantage of our state’s relaxed ganja laws by stopping at the ‘Legal Weed’ store along the way to buy more marijuana than could ever be toked on the way to the trail by, say, a random selection of four 20-something dudes in a tiny, hotbox of a Honda, in an hour, but that’s what the trail is for!  Blaze on, hike up and blaze some more!  It seriously felt like we were walking through Hempfest 2016.  The smell of dank never left the air.  It was not an issue for me – I think weed is better smelling than cigarettes and you can try to fool yourself that it’s skunk cabbage- but it did make us giggle quite a bit.  Those college boys thought they were being so sneaky.  Tee hee!  Oh, to be so young and ‘daring’.  It’s funny, how you really think you’re breaking rules back then and now, when you watch all those ‘kids’ being silly like that from your forty-something perspective, you’re really just laughing along with them.  Silently laughing and without expression, but it’s there.  Any sense of disapproval, really, is for the sake of a potential teachable moment for any littles in the area, but is generally nonexistent and imagined.  Anyhow, that was kind of entertaining and cute.  And, as the top area at the falls is a decidedly smallish, shared space, the little copse of trees they went behind to light up one more time before they headed back down the hill did little to disguise what was happening.  Like I said- precious and cute, like naughty little puppies or toddlers.


Other than the MMJ aromatics, the hike was blessedly uneventful.  The scenery was beautiful in that very typical, Western Washington kind of landscape of lots of water features, beautiful plants and interesting trail path.  Lots of vine maples and deciduous trees, some old growth logging evidence from the olden days, greenery like crazy.  It could be a nice autumnal hike.  I always am fascinated at the diversity of terrain on trail- from perfectly flat to climbing over boulders to bridges to millions of roots- it’s all there.


 The waterfalls were gorgeous, but if I’m perfectly honest, the bathrooms at the base of the trail were so bad that I really couldn’t use them at the start of the trail and I ended up compromising my experience.  Peeing has become a ‘thing’ for me lately- I just go to the bathroom and within 15-25 minutes my bladder is full again.  It’s really put a crimp on my running and hiking-SERIOUSLY!  Anyhow…  I’m not kidding when I say that I could smell the toilet from 25 paces and the flies that were swarming the toilet left me with the feeling that I would also be leaving with fly larvae embedded in rather sensitive places… So I started the trail with a full bladder and by the time I got to the top I had to do it all, 1,2 and everything else- it’s also shark week!  I practically ran down the hill after hoovering down my sandwich next to the waterfall just to jump in the car that, and I’m not kidding, Bradley ran ahead to open up and start becasue things were that desperate. We stopped at the nearest grocery store for another disgusting bathroom, but without the flies, at least it was palatable! So, word to the wise, when you stop for your weed, also use the toilet! Kidding, of course. There’s a McDonald’s on the way out- stop there and use it. It’s the last nice toilet. Seriously.  


It was a beautiful, fun, adventurous day with a few funny stories thrown in to boot!

My review on the WTA Bridal Veil Falls Site.

Future hikes planned:

***And let me just say that all the stoner talk was just for silliness.  I’m certainly NOT encouraging anyone to get high and hike or even just get high.  Getting used to the new laws regarding marijuana is just interesting to observe, and this is the first time I’ve really seen it out and about so publicly that it simply became a big part of our adventure.  😉