Aging, Injuries, Yearning, and Skunks

I haven't been posting much here lately (or on any social media platform) because I've been struggling with life of late. I'm finding parenting teenagers to be more challenging than the younger years. The thing is, I have very clear memories of the way I felt at that age, so I fully understand where my kids are coming from. But that doesn't change the fact that it's extremely frustrating to know what is best for my children and have them refuse to hear me. I want to be a good mother, but feel like I frequently fall short of that goal, so I've been feeling pretty low. But I'm working on it, and trying to remember that I need to be a good role model so I have to overcome those feelings.

I still haven't finished losing the last 5 - 6 pounds that I need to shed in order to reach my final goal weight, but the good news is that I haven't put any weight back on in the interim. The team of co-workers that worked together to lose the weight is about ready to do a final push, so hopefully it'll take less than a month to lose those last few pounds once I get serious again.

I had a fitness goal that I thought would really help to keep me motivated. My cousin and his family come out to visit us every summer, and my cousin's wife asked me to run in a 4-mile race with her in August. I was excited to bump up my training for it and have it as a new goal...until I got shin splints!! I've never had them before, and am feeling really old now. It's been slow to heal, I think primarily because it's my left leg and I'm an idiot and drive a manual transmission vehicle. When I picked out my truck I thought it would be so fun to drive (and it is) and that it would be a good skill to teach my kids. But my daughter has zero interest so just isn't motivated to learn to drive it. I think if she was in an emergency she could do it, but she's not smooth because she doesn't want to drive it very often. So the upshot is that I made a frivolous choice and now I get to pay for it. Sigh...

This morning I went on a walk/jog (since I can't run right now) and desperately wished I had my camera and tripod with me. The eastern sky was just beautiful with the sliver of the moon and Venus lighting up the morning. I knew there was no point in trying to capture it with my cell phone because it would have just been blurs of light against a dark background. I was motivated to move pretty quickly though when I was almost home. I was jogging down the path in the final 100 feet to my house when I heard a sound and a noticed a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked and realized I was rapidly approaching a skunk just off the path who was looking pretty bristly and nervous. I turned around and ran back up the path at a very good clip and took the long way home. Since this is now the third time I've seen the skunk this summer, I think I may need to run to Costco and stock up on tomato juice just in case.

Road Trip to Grandma's Farm

This is still a working farm. My uncle was getting some of the stored grains to sell.

Over the plains and through the fields to Grandmother's house we go.  I had to change the lyrics because while there are a few rolling hills and some scattered woods, those are not the predominant features between Colorado and Illinois. We just got back home yesterday from making the 1,000 mile trek each way to rural Illinois to see my grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was pretty heavenly to sleep in my own bed last night!

My grandma as a young woman.

My grandma now.

When we visit we stay at my aunt and uncle's house, which was my great-grandparent's house. I even get to sleep in the room that belonged my grandma when she was young. It's less than 1/2 mile from my grandma's house so most days I walked back and forth a few times. My grandma is a pretty amazing lady. She's 90 (she'll be 91 in November) and still lives on her farm. She also refused to let me help with the dishes, and she doesn't have a dishwasher, just an old farmhouse drainboard sink that was most likely installed in the late forties.

This isn't her actual sink, but this image shows pretty much the same setup that she has, minus the dishwasher they have in this photo.

I offered to pick black raspberries for her one morning in truly enlightened self-interest, and she made me 5 jars of her homemade black raspberry jelly one night, after cooking chicken pot pie, corn, potatoes, and apple crisp for lunch (and hand-washing all the dishes herself). She did let me mash the potatoes for her, but I think it's only because she knows I enjoy doing that. She told my aunt she was going to be lonely when we left, but she might also get a little more rest.

Sunset on the plains.

Stormy sky late one evening.

The old chicken house in my grandma's yard.

The one thing that's always a little hard for me is missing my grandpa. He was such a kind, gentle, patient person. While I always miss him, being out at the farm and not seeing him there always makes it more poignant and raw. But I'm still glad we went and spent some time with all of my family.

My kiddos in the tree at my Grandma's house.

A pretty barn down the road from my grandma's farm.

My grandma's "little" garden. She still takes care of this one herself.

On the way out we did a little sight-seeing. We spent the first night on the road in Omaha and they have a very cute downtown area. We ate a local brew pub and had some amazing ice cream at a little shop that makes small batches, so was erasing flavors that they ran out of as we were standing in line (a very long line, always a good sign). There was also a nice river walk in the city, so I was pleasantly surprised with our evening there.

The next night we drove into a Chicago suburb and took the train into Chicago the next morning to spend the day. We shopped, ate lunch at Giordano's, and were planning on eating dinner at Frontera. But it got really rainy in the afternoon, and my husband is slowly recovering from plantar fasciitis and I was dealing with recent shin splints. So after walking 10 miles and narrowly avoiding an impressive rain storm because we went into the atrium area at Navy Pier right before it became a downpour, we decided to cancel our reservations at Frontera. My husband made those in April and we still couldn't get in until 8:30 at night. We took the train back early and ate at a little suburban restaurant. I'm sure it wasn't as tasty, but we were better rested.

On the way home we just made time, although we did have dinner at Al's Chickenette in Hays, Kansas where we ate last summer when we visited my brother-in-law in Oklahoma. That may be some of the best mid-western fried chicken I've ever tasted. Obviously instead of having about 4 pounds to lose to hit my ultimate goal like I did before we left, I now have about 8 pounds to lose!

Happy Memorial Day

It's a beautiful evening here with filtered sun coming through the blue clouds and green leaves. The unofficial start to summer wasn't very summery on our hike today though. We had a thunderstorm with with some pretty heavy snow/hail. We hiked up to Devil's Head, but the lightening was too close to walk up the metal fire tower. (So we'll just have to go back and do it again!) The views probably wouldn't have been that great anyway with the low-hanging clouds. The sun did come back out at the end of the hike though and dried us out before we had to get back in the car.

My daughter, son, and nephew at the "half way point." This was before the weather moved in.

One of the pretty views along the trail. Here you can see the weather that was on the way.

Yesterday we got our garden planted and our whiskey barrels filled with flowers. This daisy is one of my favorites this year.

I hope all my readers have a nice start to the summer!

Random Check-In

It's been awhile again since I've had the gumption to post here. I have a little more time than usual today because I'm sitting at home with a horrible cold. My son had it at the end of last week, and he's just not very good about containing his germs. I've been doing so well about hitting my goal of 60 minutes of exercise every day for months now, but since doing some gentle dance moves for about three minutes left me worn out, I'm thinking I might have to break my streak today. 😦However, I would like to kiss the person who invented cold medicine; after I'm no longer contagious of course. That medicine is currently making the difference between feeling bad and feeling awful.

In better news, I only have about four more pounds to go to reach the lower-end of my goal weight range.. Our weight-loss contest at work is over, so now I'm on my own. But I'm glad; while that team competition was just what I needed to get started, I'm ready to do this on my own terms now. The competition cost $70 to participate in, with a $10,000 prize for the 1st place team. We ended up being 19th out of 251 teams, so not too shabby. Although I wasn't ever going for the prize; none of the people on my team started off big enough to make that realistic. I was going for losing 10% of my body weight and keeping it off for 6 months which means that the entry fee is returned. I lost over 13% during the competition, and I intend to keep it plus a little more off indefinitely, so I should end up with a net $0 investment.

I charted my weight-loss and calculated the regression line, and determined that I should reach my goal weight of 122 pounds by May 13th if I keep on the same trajectory. But weight-loss isn't necessarily linear, so at this point I'm just hoping for about two or three more weeks, or mid-May to go on to maintenance mode.

Now for a rant because I'm mad at Netflix. (Like the title indicated, this is a random check-in.) I love horror books and movies. Horror books are generally pretty good, and it's fairly easy to spot the pulp. But horror movies can be a real crap-shoot as to whether or not they're even watchable. The best horror movies are fairly intellectual like The Exorcist, The Omen, The Conjuring, The Others, or the first 7/8ths of Insidious (the ending of that movie would have been better if they continued to leave the monsters in the dark and allowed the viewer's imagination to do the work). There are campy horror movies that are also enjoyable because they acknowledge and embrace their campy nature, movies like the original Nightmare on Elm Street, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Housebound, or the Blade trilogy (although I could argue that the eye-candy might be part of the appeal here.)

When Netflix still used the star rating system, I could better gauge how bad a horror movie was going to be. If they had much below 3 stars, I'd just pass. But Netflix changed to a thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating, and it's harder to tell now if a horror movie is going to be really awful. So I started watching American Poltergeist and couldn't even finish it. The acting was wooden. The script was minimal and the story-telling practically non-existent. The characters made these tremendous leaps of logic with very little information, almost like an episode of Scooby Doo, but not as good. I also noticed that Netflix has American Poltergeist II. Who finances these things?! I guess from now on when I feel like watching a horror movie on Netflix, I'll have to go look it up on IMDB before I can watch. I know, this is the classic definition of a "first-world problem." But it's an annoyance nonetheless.

We've been having a beautiful spring here. It got really warm for a time, but lately it's been cooler again with regular rain. My husband trimmed our lilac bushes back last year, and they're blooming better than they have in a few years.

I hope wherever you are you're enjoying beautiful spring weather and the blooming of the trees and plants.

Spring Afternoon Photos

We've been getting some much needed rain here lately, but this afternoon the sun is out and the sky is bright blue. It's starting to look like spring around here, so I headed out with my camera on f/5.6 this afternoon to grab a few photos. Enjoy!

Crabapple tree on the creek behind our house.

The lilacs are just about ready to bloom. They should be gorgeous in a couple of weeks.

Chokecherry tree with a busy little bee flitting around.

Winter Fading Into Spring

Wow, it's been quite awhile since I posted here. Life has been getting in the way lately.

We just got back from our annual weekend in Estes Park. We weren't able to get up the mountain until later this winter, so the snowshoeing wasn't great. In preparation for next year, we went ahead and reserved a weekend earlier in the winter. We had a few other occurrences that also impacted our snowshoeing experience. I told my husband that he and the kids should get yaktrax like I had in case there wasn't enough snow for the snowshoes. So everyone else had their yaxtrax; and I couldn't find mine anywhere. I'm tempted to buy a new pair, but know that mine will turn up as soon I get the new pair. My brother and his wife forgot their snow boots. So I used snowshoes this weekend, and my brother and his wife wore yaxtrax over tennis shoes. But we still had a good time!

My husband and me at the top of a steep climb with an amazing view.

In Estes Park itself there was almost no snow. We went for a short hike yesterday afternoon, and my poor son come back covered in ticks. There were like 10 ticks on the boy. We think he must have brushed up again some sort of foliage where they had a nest or something.

The sunny side of the mountain with no snow.

The moon going down behind the mountain this morning.

We got home today and it is 82 degrees. We all had to change into shorts, and it's not even officially spring yet. While I know that some people like this weather, I feel cheated out of winter this year, and I think we're going to have a rough fire season this year. We had to drive home past a bad fire in Boulder Canyon this morning.

These flower photos are all from my yard over the past week. Whether the calendar is ready or not, spring is arriving.

My daughter is turning 16 years old tomorrow. She's so excited to get her license. It's different than it was when I turned 16 though. The kids have to drive with a permit for a full year now, so she has to wait until this coming weekend to take her driving test. But it's going to be a spring break of freedom for her the following week!

We finally seem to have a handle on my son's medication and behavior needs, both at home and at school, and I'm thrilled to report that things have been so much better lately. We still have our challenges (he's an almost 13-year old boy after all), but he's been so much more successful and happier which makes all of us happier. He's been voluntarily doing homework again, and we've been getting through chores without an all-out war each week.

I'm also doing really well with my weight-loss. I'm down 15 pounds since January, and only have 8 more to go to get back to my goal weight. Doing a team weight-loss competition was what I needed to get going. At this point my success is motivating enough, but at the beginning when I wanted to eat a milkshake because I was stressed out, knowing that others were counting on me stopped me from making such a poor choice.

So overall things are looking up. Life still throws us curve balls when we least expect it, just like everyone else. But we're navigating and figuring things out. I'm not going promise more posts because I don't want to make a liar of myself; but I will try to be more consistent.

Winter Update

We haven't had much snow lately, which makes me a little sad. I know everyone around me is eagerly anticipating the arrival of spring, but I like winter. Even without the snow I've been able to get a few good winter photos lately.

I've been enjoying watching the colorful sunsets from my back deck.

These pictures are from a little walk around my neighborhood. As you can see, everything that isn't an evergreen is bare, but still beautiful in its own way.

There's also this awesome, old work truck parked in our neighborhood. Yesterday when I was working from home I happened to look out the widow right as it was driving by, so I know it's operational.

I'm also really happy to share that the team weight-loss challenge is working for me. I've had a few times when I was feeling really stressed out lately when I wanted to just down junk food. But since I know other people are counting me, I was able to refrain. It won't keep going this fast, but I lost 7.7 pounds this week.

I hope everyone is finding some beauty in the winter weather right now. Goodness knows, we all need it these days given how much vitriol and hatred is flying and how divided everyone is. Nature continues to be my solace, and I intend to spend as much time communing with plants and animals as is humanly possible, so I don't totally lose my mind.