I apologize in advance for how long this is

I walked through the grocery store yesterday and realized that I couldn't eat the vast majority of the foods in it.  There are whole aisles that I never go down anymore.  It was a weird feeling looking at all those shelves and realizing that the contents were irrelevant to me.  They're just pointless aisles, like the miscellaneous useless crap aisle in the middle of the store.  I make brief forays into aisle land for nuts and dried fruit, but mostly I'm hanging out in produce and the tiny organic section with its even tinier gluten free shelf.  Which is near to the shelf of the one acceptable non-milk milk I've found. 

I could shop at a much smaller store.

Of course, JD does most of the shopping, so I'm not including the places he goes, like the meat place and the frozen veggie place.  And even those have to be carefully inspected for wheat, largely because of soy sauce.

At least my food selection process is simpler, if not easier.

This weekend I hit new personal bests at my local playground (i.e. the closest national park).  I achieved my fastest time for a circuit, and my longest distance hiked there.  Both on the same day.  And although I was tired-ish, and wouldn't have minded a nap, I took a shower and then JD and I headed downtown to meet friends for alcohol and hilarity.  And meat, because I was freaking HUNGRY after all that, even though I ate snacks while I was hiking.  I pretty much destroyed a bunless burger and a side of fries.  And a whole bunch of hard cider, because regular beer is verboten and gluten free beer wasn't on tap.  I could not have performed this sequence of actions in the past.

I wonder if my current reasonably healthy state (not counting my back, or my inability to digest gluten) is to be laid at the feet of my diet.  I still get sick sometimes (like anybody else), but generally I feel better in under 24 hours.  Which is way better than the 2 weeks that a cold or flu usually takes.  And I have more energy than I can remember having pretty much ever.  And also both my speed and endurance have improved measurably.  Perhaps it's just my time (WOO 42!) or maybe it's something else.  Because you know it's not like I've been slacking all these years.  I've been out there chugging away, working out and hiking and doing yoga and just generally trying my hardest.  And still being generally slow and not very strong.  If a simple (yet annoying) dietary change is responsible, well.. Okay honestly I'll be irritated, because I could have done this fifteen years ago and been much more awesome in the interim.

My folks raised me to respect hard work, and to do my best.  And I don't ALWAYS do my best because I'm not a saint, but I try very hard almost all of the time.  My job, my health, my fitness, my relationships, my dealings with anybody and everybody.  I try.  And I don't give up easily.  Which has made the last 20 years of being a steadfast but deadly slow hiker just a wee bit frustrating.  I'm trying, man!  That has been my refrain.  It's hard to tell without other hikers around, but I think that I might finally be approaching the hiking speed of a normal person.  Not a normal hiker, mind you, just a normal guy off the street.

I went to a followup appointment with my new GP today.  He reviewed my various lab results and said that if you just went by my test results, he would have to wonder why I'm wasting his time in the office.  I'm perfectly healthy, blood-chemistry-wise.  Blood chemistry like a boss!  He suggested I make sure I get my heartrate to 70% of my maximum for 30 minutes several times a week to maximize my results from exercise.  But then I went and looked up what that heartrate is, and I'm pretty sure I already do that.  At least, I do when I'm on the bike at the gym.  But JD is going to lend me his heart monitor thingie so I can check.

The doc also suggested that I am perhaps obsessive about my exercise and health, and he is of course correct.  Trying to do my best all the time includes working REALLY HARD at exercise and paying close attention to my health.  Apparently keeping copies of my own records and checking to make sure that my cholesterol isn't trending upward over a several year period counts as not quite normal.  But then again, I kept the natural gas and electricity records tabulated for the first ten years I was in my house so I could see if my energy saving changes were working.  So at least I'm not just a hypochondriac.  I am an equal opportunity obsessor.

I assume you stopped reading several paragraphs ago, because the minutia of how my mind works aren't that interesting.  If not, congratulations!  You get an A in blog reading.

Before I forget, I saw a physical therapist to be evaluated for leg length today, and my new nickname will not be Stumpy.  My legs are fine.  Apparently the break when I was six healed perfectly, lengthwise.  However, my pelvis was not fine.  The right side is tilted, likely as the result of a really nasty fall off Pluto several years ago.  Nothing was broken in the fall, but I crushed my sacroiliac a little bit and it hurt like hell at the time.  It was breathtakingly painful.  The only thing in my life that even came close was when I was kicked in the back of the head by a horse and crushed a nerve that was close to the surface at the base of my skull.  Both injuries produced the sort of paralyzing, all encompassing electric pain that goes far beyond tears and directly to inhibiting important bodily functions such as thinking, breathing, and moving.

When that healed, it apparently healed tilted forward, where it has remained ever since.  My chiropractor adjusts it often, but it goes back to its wrong position.  However this PT, bless her, has showed me two things.  1) A way to put it back myself, and 2) exercises to help it stay in the correct position.  I look forward to a less painful back / SI joint.  And to a more balanced riding position.  Pluto had been complaining that I wasn't balanced, but I didn't know why or what to do about it.  Now I know.

Also I know that it's ALL HIS FAULT. But I'm not holding a grudge.  Really.

From James Brady to hermit crabs

I have never wanted to be a celebrity.  I suspect this places me in the minority.  But being a celebrity just seems awful.  You can't go to the grocery store without somebody inspecting your cart or disparaging your panty line.  I first realized this when I was a little girl, and somehow had ended up working at a parade in Washington DC.  I'm not sure why it seemed like a good idea to have little girls volunteering to seat members of the public.  Like we had any clue what was going on, and would be able to tell anyone else?  Or would have any authority when said members of the public didn't want to sit where we told them to sit?

That wasn't my point, actually, that was a tangent.

Anyway, it rained at the parade.  We all got thoroughly soaked.  And somebody saw us all bedraggled and sad and cold and decided to invite us into the VIP tent to warm up.  There weren't any VIPs in it, yet.  And Red Cross or some other helpful organization had blankets, so they wrapped us up and we were quite a bit less miserable.  And then James Brady rolled into the tent. 

James Brady had been shot, of course.  I mean, not right then.  Before the parade.  WELL before the parade.  He was in a wheelchair.  And the press followed him in.  He looked harassed.  They were asking him pointless questions, just to make him stumble over words, as they knew he would.  And he slurred out something for them.  To make them go away, I assume, because he didn't look like he enjoyed being on national television with his wheelchair and his brain injury.

Note that since I was standing behind him, this was my one flirtation with national tv.  Wet rat wearing a wool blanket.  No idea why nobody has called my agent yet.

So that was my early experience with celebrity.  Perhaps if my early experience had involved some sort of pampering and adulation rather than sodden misery and embarrassment for the disabled guy sitting next to me, I would think it was fantastic.  But it didn't.  And although intellectually I understand that some people want everybody to look at them, I have a very hard time understanding it emotionally.

Now, I wouldn't mind being somebody so awesome that people thought I should be a celebrity.  On account of my new era moon landing, perhaps.  Or my humanitarian efforts, which had ended world hunger, overpopulation, and religious differences.  But I wouldn't want to actually BE a celebrity.  I value anonymity.  At least in a large community context.  I don't mind being in a small community and having everybody know me, and knowing everybody.  I like knowing that people know exactly who I am, that what you see is what you get.  This is me.  I don't put on airs, I don't suffer fools gladly, and I try to be nice to my fellow man.  Also I don't wear makeup, and that right there means I'll never be on anybody's tv screen.

The idea of my anonymity so engrained in me that I am constantly surprised that people remember me.  "Yes, Amy, I've known you for fifteen years."  Oh.. gosh.. I didn't think you had noticed me.

I realize that having people remember you after you've been around for fifteen years is completely unlike being a celebrity.  But in my mind somehow they're connected.  Maybe I would make a good hermit.  I mean, I'm crabby sometimes..

On the whole I have few regrets

I came across one of those "things people regret on their deathbed" sorts of things today.  I took the moment to pause and think about my life.  What have I done that I'm happy about?  What would I regret having not done, if I were at the end of my life?

Things I'm happy about:

I got a degree in physics.  In one sense I never use it (my job is not physics related), but in another I use it every day of my life.  I always wanted to know how things worked.  And to a large extent, I do thanks to that degree.

I had a really great dog.  Everybody should have at least one really great dog.

All the time I got to spend wandering around in the woods as a kid.  I made up a thousand stories, and ate as many wild berries.

I've experienced enough pain and suffering to enhance my empathy for others.  You really have to walk a mile in those shoes to know what it's like.

I had a really great horse.  Far fewer people experience this than a really great dog, but it is, if anything, more fulfilling.  Dogs are bred to want to be around humans, and their pack structure makes them nicely obedient if you're the alpha.  So they're kind of easy. Horses, on the other hand, usually don't care about people except as it relates to their dinner.  If you have a really great relationship with a horse, it means a special horse and probably a whole lot of time spent together.

I own my very own Lipizzan cross, as close as I could afford to get to nature's own dressage machine.  And I did in fact ride dressage on him for several years.  More importantly, that nutty horse and I have learned each other.  I have not yet met another horse who will play Red Light Green Light with me.

I finally told the man I loved how I felt about him, and we are now married.  

If things go as planned, we'll own our own house together before either of us is 50.  We are pretty much financially stable.  This makes me happy.  I have never been comfortable with debt.

I have some really great friends.  And they are not the ones who I expected to end up with, which makes it more special.

I have spent a LOT of time alone in nature.  I've sat on the tops of mountains - under a clear sky, in the middle of a cloud, watching a storm come in, plundering a blueberry patch, listening to absolute silence.  I've felt nature's fury against my bare skin.  I've laid out at night, far from a city, and seen too many stars to count.  I've felt the thrill of sharing a place with a wild thing.  Teaching myself the skills to be comfortable alone in the wilderness has been a wonderful experience.  Sometimes scary, but wonderful.

I've met hundreds of people hiking, and they have almost all been the sort of people you would really want to meet.

I've made some people happy and I've made some people laugh.

Things I regret:

Sometimes I was lonely when I didn't have to be.

Sometimes I've been unfair to others.  And to me.

All those times I got Lyme disease.  What a waste.

Oddly enough, I regret not meeting some people who died before I was born, or before I could meet them.  Two grandparents, and JD's dad.


********

On the whole, the likes far outweigh the regrets.  I think I'll keep going the way I'm going.

Is there anything I still want to do?  Of course!  I want to keep enjoying my life, and that means more hiking, travel, trying my best at my job, many years of laughter with JD, probably more dogs and cats, and loving my friends and family to the best of my ability.  But as far as anything that I've never done that I really wish I had?  Something I would regret missing? Nope.  Can't think of one thing.

Notice I didn't say anything about not drinking alcohol

I have had occasion to ponder, in the last couple of days, how very healthy I've been feeling.  I mean, yes, I am suffering along with everybody else in the region as pollen explodes off the trees.  And, in tandem with everybody I know, I've fallen (briefly) to the standard winter illnesses.  But I haven't been SICK sick, you know?  Not "I have to visit specialists and even they aren't really sure what's wrong" kind of sick.  Which, sadly, I have been multiple times in the last decade or two.

I don't think it's any one thing.  I think several things have come together to help me be a healthier person.  At that point I think we can call it "lifestyle".

So, not in order:

Yoga.  Yoga both relaxes me (which decreases my stress, which decreases susceptibility to illness) and strengthens my core muscles. Thanks to the latter, I haven't had a truly severe backache since before I first started yoga.  I used to have the kind of shooting, gripping pain that made just standing up its own special kind of torture.  I saw a chiropractor frequently, I had to wear a back brace often, and I was miserable to be around.  Now?  Remarkably bendy, and I actually notice the low level pain now.  Because I can.  It used to be shouted down by the hella bad pain.

Luck.  No car accidents, nobody donating this year's flu to me, that sort of thing.  Perhaps I would consider it lucky that I've never been in the right place to have children, as they seem to make all the parents sick all the time for the first N years.

Nutrition.  I don't know if my diet has improved, or just changed.  I eat a lot more salad than I used to.  I still eat too many preserved foods (hello, delicious chicken sausage) but I eat a whole lot more fresh vegetables and fruits than ever before.  And though I've never been a huge fan of vitamins, I now take a few that I think help me a lot.  B-complex, for instance.  D-3 (as I seem to be always low, despite my superhuman ability to sunburn.)  I'm not convinced how efficacious C is, but I take some.  Plus, digestive enzymes.  Digestive enzymes = I almost never have a tummyache anymore.  I heart them so much.

Marriage.  There's nothing like another person caring for you, and you caring for them, to improve your quality of life.  Plus, JD cooks all the time so I eat a lot more fresh home cooking than I used to.

Sleep.  I'd have to ask Mom if this was true when I was little, but I find that I "get by" on 8 hours.  I'm happier with 9.  I'm truly rested with 10.  I think I just plain sleep more than I used to, now.  I made it a priority to get enough rest.  I think it wasn't until I wasn't on a schedule at all, while thruhiking, that I realized that 10 hours a night made me feel great.  I'm a bit envious of those of you who only need 4 to 6 hours a night, but it's quite clear that I'm not a member of your club.

So, to sum up:  I'm a sleepy, well fed, lucky, stretchy, married woman.  And that works for me.

Peeing: You know you do it, too

I sit before you today to talk about a very serious subject:  urination.

Everybody pees.  Humans are huge bags of water, constantly adjusting their fluid levels.  We are advised to drink at least two quarts of water a day.  Which means that unless you're planning to gain four pounds every day, you're going to be peeing OUT two quarts as well.  Exercise much?  You're probably drinking more, for multiple reasons.  Well hydrated muscles move more smoothly over each other.  Without more water, you cramp.  Without more water, toxins aren't smoothly moved out of your body.  So, more water!  But it's not sticking around.  You'll sweat some out, you'll cry some out (in lubricating tears if nothing else), you'll breathe some out.  But mostly?  You'll pee.

Okay, so I've pretty much established that peeing will be going on.  For everyone.  The men.  The women.  The children.  The puppies.  The frogs.  Everyone.

Why is peeing such a big deal?  We all breathe all the time, and that's okay.  There's no fine for breathing in public.  Even if you have bad breath.  Even if you have asthma and sound like a broken bellows.  Breathe as much as you want, pal, it's free.

But peeing?  Oh my goodness no!  That's private!  That's illegal, if anybody catches you!  Except that if you go in a public restroom, EVERYBODY knows what you're doing, can hear it, can smell it, can see you in the cracks around the stupid little door to your peeing cell.  You have to keep up the appearance of pretending to not know they know you're peeing, and they have to keep up the appearance of pretending not to know you're peeing.

You may wonder why this is on my mind.  Well, I'll tell you.

There is a class of people who, through the kindness of their hearts, will let hikers camp for free on their property.  For which, thank you.  We often need a place to stay, as we are a little bit or a lot homeless while hiking, depending.  But kind people, you forget that we are functional people!  You deny access to modern plumbing!  And then you get upset when people pee outdoors!

We are people just like you!  WE ALSO PEE!  It bugs me every time I hear that hikers are no longer welcome because one of them was spotted peeing somewhere.  What did people think would happen?  Did they think the hikers would somehow be able to hold it for the 36 hours they were spending in town?  For even 6 hours in town, if it involved a meal and adding a soda to that bag-of-liquids body?

Blind.  Or stupid.  But probably blind.

Anyway.  I gotta go.  For some reason I need to pee now.

This shall not stand. Probably.

Do you think the world has too many people?  I mean, we have a *lot* of people.  Many of them live in desperate poverty.  Many don't have access to clean water, or even clean air!  Too much pollution from too much industry, too many cooking fires, just too much everything.

I don't want to die soon, of course, but I think a big old round of plague would solve a few problems.

The same problem we have here (a few immensely wealthy people, and then everybody else) applies on a larger scale around the world. A few immensely wealthy countries, and then everybody else.  And the trickle down effect never does seem to trickle all the way down to the bottom.

You'd think at some point, something would have to give.  I guess it has, in places.  The USSR took a shot at leveling the playing field.  I'm not sure how well that worked out.  I mean, I know millions died.  But I'm not sure if the daily life of the peasant was better or worse afterward.  Probably the daily life of the rich guys that didn't get killed was about the same.

I think the US is effectively a giant theme park, compared to much of the rest of the world.  There's huge excess.  It's all shiny and it keeps getting upgraded.  It's not based on anything real.  We don't make that many products anymore, I mean.  "Finance" is a very large chunk of our economy.  Not something you can smell, or taste, or feel.  We effectively pay our best and brightest to make wagers on what might or might not happen.  Weird.

By an accident of birth I live in a house probably 30 times the size of the shack that I might have lived in elsewhere on the planet.  (The yard, however, would need to be a lot larger if I were doing subsistence farming.)  And this house isn't big by US terms!  It's ludicrous when you consider it.  I very much doubt that I work harder or am more deserving than people all over the country, and yet here I sit in the American middle class.

It all seems unworkable, and yet it keeps working.  Perhaps that's why we have such a huge (and expensive) military - to keep all the other guys from trying to make us share our wealth.

Ludicrous.  Not the military (well, maybe the military), but the disparity in the lives of people all over.

All those immigrants who came here and struggled and sweated and endured racism and classism, so their children could have a chance at a better life?  Totally made the right call.  Maybe not those coming here today, because I don't think it's as easy now as it was a hundred years ago.  Our lower classes seem to be staying low.  But those guys in the first couple of hundred years vastly changed the lives of their descendants.

I wonder what will happen in the lives of ours.

I can't be an artist and stand still

I am a little bit sad that I am not an artist.  I have friends who do fantastic things with paint, chalk, and thread.  I've known the occasional person who could sing well or (more impressively, to me) write good music.  The ability to do any of these things is as far from me as the ability to walk on water.  I respect artists greatly.  I can't really imagine what it's like to have that creative impulse, to say to yourself "Today I will make something new" and then you just go and you do it.  Totally foreign.

The closest I ever got to producing something artistic was in the third grade.  I manufactured a particularly nice little snowman out of construction paper and paste.  In retrospect, the nice part of it was that it was all proportional.  Also, I did a nice job with regular shapes.  Round circles, square squares.  "I made a round circle once" is not the sort of thing you can really brag about in the art world.

I can't adequately visualize something that I would like to make, even with help.  I'm pretty much a failure in the creative vision department.  I was thinking today about my house, and how undecorated it is.  I have a few reproductions hanging on the walls.  Some of them are from Ikea.  Some are from one of the National Galleries.  I have a few small originals that friends and family have given me, but it's not as if I have anything arranged so that it's in a theme.  Or hung level.  Probably the nicest thing you could say about the interior of my house is that it's comfortable.  Which is less praise than one would normally give to the interior of a Victorian house.

I suppose I do feel a little bit artistic.  Sometimes I write things.  One time, in elementary school?  I wrote a story that somebody liked.  I was very proud.  I think it got into a literary magazine of some sort.  (An elementary level magazine.)  However, to me art seems like it should be more hands-on than sitting and thinking, and then typing.  (But then again I wouldn't say that Shakespeare didn't produce art.  Is it art before somebody voices the words?)

The other way I feel a tiny bit artistic is in movement.  Not your traditional ballet.  Not even your non-traditional getting down.  In dressage, I feel art.  Sometimes, when everything comes together and the horse and I move as one, I feel art.

I'm not sure if this counts as art, but when I'm out on a hike, and the weather is incredible, and I'm far from the sounds of civilization, and I am in the midst of natural beauty that cannot fairly be described, it feels like just existing and moving in the midst of that beauty is an expression of art.  I'm not sure why I feel that way.  It's not something that can be captured or displayed.  But it makes me feel the way a really heartfelt song, sung really well, can make me feel.  The chill on the neck, the flush of the ears, the buzzy feeling, the edge of tears. Art.

I'm reupping for five this time. My titre's pretty high.

I think the time for term marriage is long overdue in this society.  Many people are afraid to get married because the divorce rate is so high - why bother when the odds are so bad? Divorce is economically bad for pretty much everyone but a few trophy ex-wives.  With term marriage, you could re-up or you could separate (peacefully or otherwise) at the end of your contract.  I suppose you could divorce, as well, but there would be less incentive when you know that your term will end if you wait it out.

I propose that we work it like vaccination.  The first time, one year.  Second time, one year.  Third time, if it seems like it's taking, three years.

There would be no stigma and no economic disaster as from divorce, because you plan the end right from the beginning.  It makes a lot of sense.  Instead of fighting and tears and pointed fingers, you dress up and have a going away party.  "It's been great!  Call me!"

The problem, of course, is that people don't get married because they're sensible.  In some societies, people get married because their parents are sensible, and I hear that works out pretty well.  But when you choose your own partner, you're not usually thinking with your brain.

Still, I think term marriage would work really well for our society.  Shoot, term dating could too.   Not that I remember much about dating, at this point.

Emo blog post du jour

Something today got me thinking about Lyme disease.  I was thinking that one of the worst parts of it, for me, was the social withdrawal.  After I got sick and kept getting sicker, I stopped making plans.  I got tired of canceling plans with friends, and they got tired of being canceled on.  So I just stopped trying to go out and see people.  I couldn't predict if I would feel strong enough to go to the movies on Friday.  Most days I couldn't predict if I would be strong enough to sit upright and eat dinner. 

When my doctor didn't know what was wrong with me, he thought maybe depression was causing my problems.  But it was the other way around.  Being that sick *causes* depression.  Being in constant pain is depressing.  So is crushing fatigue.  Scary mystery symptoms, wondering if it's all in your head, trying to explain to people what's going one when you really don't know yourself.. all not fun.  All depressing.

I don't know how many times I looked around me and saw tasks that needed doing, and couldn't do them.  I couldn't vacuum.  I couldn't pick things up.  I couldn't scrub the toilet.  I couldn't wipe the kitchen counters.  I couldn't stand up long enough to wash dishes.  Every few weeks I would rest up and summon the energy to clean up a little bit, and then I would be wiped out again for a couple of days.

Just thinking about those times is upsetting.  I had to push people away because I didn't have the energy to deal with them, and that hurt all of us.  But with the level of fatigue I experienced, even having somebody come to the house to sit with me was beyond my endurance.  Getting up to answer the door used up maybe 10% of my energy for the day.  A few times people stopped by unannounced, and after their visits I sat trembling in fatigue, waiting for the energy to be able to climb the stairs to go to bed.  Because answering the door and reclining in a chair, not even keeping my head up, had totally drained me.

Normally this would be the point where I would offer advice to friends and family of the afflicted, but I can't think of any.  If you're so sick that just having people be there makes you worse, I don't know what helps.  I certainly didn't come up with any solutions for myself.  I had to wait until I got better.  And that was a very, very slow process.  More than a year after I got sick, and after five months of antibiotics, I started dating JD.  It was a leap of faith for me.  I still didn't know if I had the strength to carry on a social life, but it was important to me to try.  I didn't want to lose the chance I had with JD. 

JD got to witness a few crashes.  He saw how paranoid I was about energy expenditure.  I didn't want to plan long outings because I knew it was likely that midway through them I would have to be the big downer, ask to go home, and be sick and helpless.  It was years before I could have enough faith in my own body to be able to plan a day long outing and be pretty sure that I could do it all.  JD got to pick up the pieces on quite a few failed attempts - leaving me somewhere while he went to get the car, holding me while I shook in fever or fatigue, getting me an ice pack, making phone calls to cancel and apologize for me.

Despite two more bouts of Lyme since then, I feel stronger now than I did before my first go round with Lyme disease.  I am fanatical about exercise, about trying to eat right, about taking my vitamins and getting regular medical care.   I start antibiotics and herbs as soon as I suspect I have Lyme disease again.  I am hyper aware of my muscles, my joints, my lymph nodes, and my limitations.  I am careful to try not to injure myself, to try to avoid infection of any kind.  With all those precautions, I am healthier now than I have been in a long, long time. 

And I am terrified of ticks.