Category Archives: Blog

Musings, momentary insights and sometimes mundane details of life as a 50 something single female at the beginning of the 21st Century.

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Second Morning of Phoenix Comicon

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It is 0855 and I am waiting for my roommate to leave so I can use the bathroom, shower and get on with my day, but mostly so I can have some time “my by self”. This is how I know I am an introvert. The woman is a fellow staffer on the Science Track and as absolutely as perfect a room mate as I could ask for in a hotel room. She is clean, courteous, and even more introverted than I am, also a wee bit more negative, but no loud snoring or wild parties. However I am sharing a room with someone else and my batteries charge in solitude.  Anyway I though I would blog a bit while she showers and uses the bathroom to become beautiful.

This is actually my first year as a volunteer at Phoenix Comicon. It is not my first rodeo as a “behind the scene”-er at a Con as I have volunteered, been payed staff, and even been a featured guest at other Geek Conventions in the days of yore. However, it is my first working PHXCC as well as my first on-site stay from end to end; and I am oh so favourably impressed.  Biggest Kudos so far go to Joe Boudrie, whose “yes, and” style of leadership trickles down to even wee minions such as I in enough force to create a fun and respectful environment, but also to Lee Whiteside and his crew who integrates panels with the well known and well spoken lesser known writers to create funny and informative panels for both the fanboys and the would be authors.

Roommate out the door to get food and I have about 20 minute to get ready and get to my panel. So more later!

 

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S.O.F.T. is becoming one tough Mudder!

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This Slow Old Fat Try-athlete is gonna be a Tough Mudder or die trying! I am preregistered for 2014, this is a cut and paste from my very own in-box!  “We’ve received your preregistration for a Tough Mudder challenge in 2014. Good work. You’ve taken the first step towards becoming a Mudder.”

I am a little scared. But very motivated. And the current state of my broken heart means that the endorphins are needed. I have a 5K and a sprint triathlon under my belt but know I need a few more events between now and then, preferably triathlons. I need to be able to lift my own body weight with my arms multiple times, endure temperature and medium (mud, water, etc) changes and of course be able to actually run an obstacle course.

My current state of affairs are age 50+, Height 5’5″,  weight 213 lbs. I broke the 200 barrier in January, bought new clothes, got rid of all size 20 or greater clothing. Then I injured myself,  and then one of the two most important smiles I got up to see each morning, died.  Then the other was taken out of my life. (If you are new to my blog, I take care of fragile pediatric patients in their own homes and had these two boys as patients for over two years).  Its amazing how with minimal exercise and carbed up grief eating those 20 lbs just reappeared. Unfortunately due to the cortisol load from the stress most of it went on my middle, a place I never usually gain fat.  Not that my thighs aren’t also a little gloopier, as evidenced by my reflection when I am lifting weights.

But that is enough about the composition, how is my performance these days. In general I am better than at my initial foray into being SOFT when I was a 50+yo, 250+lb couch potato who was afraid to put my face in the water, couldn’t run a block, and never in my life rode a bike. I can currently run a mile and swim a half mile. Biking I still suck at, but I do know how to ride and own two bikes (beach cruiser and mountain bike). I like weights, due a couple preseated squats whenever I sit down, can pop out 50 pushups on a waist level counter and love to walk, walk, walk.

I also have multiple phone apps working for me, like Endomondo, My Fitness Works, and the Nike Run Video Game, which gives me power ups for any running I do. These help me keep track and keep me motivated. To gear back up on the distance and endurance I have the official C25K app on my phone as well, which then will become a 10k app in 8 weeks.

On a side note, I am always flabbergasted when I hear a young mind slam shut so very hard and fast, a woman was talking about how dairy bothers her, and well I mentioned trying organic, then she said she was on a juice fast now (how dairy figures in that, she does smoothies), and I said organic is still preferable.   She said the usual about it being too expensive, I mentioned Bountifulbaskets.org; she mentioned Ranchers Market and Walmart. Long story short we hit the topic of GMO and infant mortality and she said we were the “best in the world, anyway” and I said actually we are barely  in the top third. I didn’t even get the sentence completely out and the clang of her mind closing resounded a city block wide. (If you are reading this and do still hold to the myth that the US is somehow at the top of the human food chain, check out the CIA list of worldwide infant mortality rates, or literacy rates. Although they do rate the US higher than WHO or the United Nations we are still 34th in the world).  I am shocked. Her defense. “I just know we are the best, and you’re losing me now, with that statement, and I am sorry if that upsets you but that’s how I feel with you democrats.”

FTR: Telling her that I am worse than a democrat did not seem like the best option at that moment.

Blog, Licking Your LIterary Labito

After the apocalypse I get all the Oreos I want!

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I hated them, and began, last and worst degradation, to hate myself. I clung to my ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my war against civilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to it.” from “The Last Man” by Mary Shelley.
Triple Double Stuff Oreos are proof that vegan food can be totally unhealthy; it is this non-food food that have, with the demise of the Hostess Twinkie, become my first choice for post-apocalyptic binges. Yup, I think about those things even while eating cookies and tea. I have been sort of obsessed with apocalypse and isolation since childhood. Anybody else remember “On the Beach” the Kramer movie that saps up and dumbs down the Shute’s book of the same name (with still pretty spectacular results I must add but as usual, the book is better.) I do. I was much too young to understand all the relational nuances I got watching it as an adult, but I got it, and it stuck with me the same way Hitchcock’s “The Birds” did.
Apocalypse and isolation, people living outside the structures of civilization, oh and dystopia; these are always my favorite stories even today, but as a child and adolescent, even more so. From Robinson Crusoe to Swiss Family Robinson, the tails of Captain Nemo, “My Side of the Mountain,” or the truly apocalyptic ones like “The Scarlet Plague” by Jack London, “Earth Abides” by George Stewart, or “A Canticle for Leibowitz”, “Alas, Babylon,” “Shadow on the Hearth” or in its own way “Planet of the Apes.” these and the fantasy stories were the works I could not get enough of, weedling the librarian to get me copies to check out (not available in the children’s section my card was valid in) or reading them behind the paperback shelves in the 5 and Dime. (They never kicked me out, although I rarely bought more than my 10 cent weekly milk money worth of candy; in return, I never stole a book from them, or anything else for that matter.)

When I was still pretty young and on a car trip to My Grandma Clegg’s; my little brother was on the way because we kept having to stop for Mommy to pee and Roxanne always got to hold the baby who couldn’t quite stand, so I’d say maybe 5; I told my family that when I grew up I wanted to go live on an “uninhibited” island, I meant uninhabited but my vocabulary often got ahead of my pronunciation. I didn’t realize why they were all laughing so loudly, until my oldest sister felt compelled to explain the difference in the most shaming way possible, however I did understand that they were illustrating why I wished to live away from everyone and why I have always been certain the apocalypse would come.

I still don’t get meanness; I still believe in love, compassion and kindness. In fact one of my loves of classics like Verne’s tales of Nemo and Shelley’s “Last Man” stems from their humanist faith that love can change and redeem a hard and angry heart, however both authors having moved past their era’s romanticism know that a rescued heart can still cease to beat inside an old or battered body and the delineation of good/bad/right/wrong is not as simple as birth, power, money or spiritual affiliation. In their books science is both friend and foe, the problem and the answer; just like many of my favorite modern novels.

They say “Last Man” is the first post-apocalyptic novel, but I posit it is far from the first apocalypse story. I suggest Gilgamesh and Noah are both stories of apocalypse, and any well read geek will realize I have also skipped over the writer’s we all read in school like Vonnegut and Bradbury, or any of the external act ends of the world, or the “cozy” ends of the world. Pandemic or nuclear holocaust or environmental destruction/infrastructure failure are my obsession. Man ends through his own inattention and acts of unkindness; and begins anew if any beginning is allowed (not all books allow our species to survive) because of the heroine/hero’s ability to see possibility and practice compassion.

And always, always the story is accompanied by the Cerdd Dant harp of isolation.

If you are one of the many modern readers who are a bit obsessed with zombies and plagues and isolation and the end of the world, go read “Last Man,” you will thank me later. Also if you are unfamiliar with any other titles here I can thoroughly recommend them.

What is your favorite post-apocalyptic novel? I always can use another good book!

By the way, if we both survive the apocalypse, I still get all the Oreos I want, but since there will be many Oreos and only us left, no worries, there will be some for you as well!

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Panelists needed……feel free to suggest someone or volunteer!

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Today My energy IS Focused

Yea, I am trying to put together a panel for May’s Phoenix Comicon, with this title and description,

“GMO’s: The Key to Ending World Hunger or a Profit Driven End to Personal Well Being?”
“The future of Genetically Modified Organisms, specifically as they effect American food sources, is the latest war of words between big business and the social watchdogs. Open-source GMO’s versus secrecy surrounding patents; and legally mandated labeling are the battlegrounds. Both sides claim sustainability as their ideal, and both sides are using all the emotional tools our media soaked society have available. So what is the truth? So come learn the science behind the hype as panelists look at the question of what a GMO actually is, what their ramifications are, the question of secrecy as a necessary tool or hindrance to science, and what labeling or its lack means to the consumers.”

Also putting together a less factual, but potentially more fun(?) panel that will postulate which current science research might be most useful in beginning the ever popular Zombie Apocalypse.

All I can say at this moment is finding speakers is a challenge and especially since I could spend every moment I’m awake reading articles at Science 2.0. instead of cold calling prospects.

🙂
I hope this year’s  science track panels will help awaken the nascent science interest (beyond the horror and the fiction) in at least a few adolescent or adult geeks.

The third panel I will actually be on and for which I am also seeking more panelists, like maybe a nutritionist and  a chef or two, is entitled “Molecular Gastronomy: The Science of 5 Star Cooking.”

Blog, Licking Your LIterary Labito, Triathlon Training

Thriving…

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So I can honestly say that “thriving” is not the first word that came to mind when I put blogging on my list of things I choose to do today, but “Thrive” is my “word of 2013”.  My first word was actually “overwhelmed.” “Overwhelmed” was also my first conscious thought upon waking,  I almost rolled back over, snuggled with my dogs and went back to sleep; running back into my less than restful dreams, running away from the miasma of sadness, pain and responsibilities looming within that cloudy word. Key word is “almost”; instead I got up and put on my running clothes. If I was gonna run, it was going to be toward something, two somethings actually. I cut two carrots with one knife when I run in the morning. My dogs get some much needed exercise and attention, and I get healthier heart and lungs (as well as firmer thighs, so OK 2.5.)

I made my list of things to do today in my head as I started to walk. Like tangled yarn, I pulled the unusable pieces of my life apart and neatly wound tasks back up on themselves looking for the thread that would begin this day in a pattern with which I could live.  Organizing and prioritizing kept me from focusing on the pain in my hips and feet.  I know this pain, and know it is the kind I have to run through (as opposed to the kind I get in my knee or lungs that say walk awhile). I set my Endomondo goal as 3 miles (5K) and started to trot  with Cozi. By half a mile I was in my zone, no longer hurting or planning but just loving the sound and smell of the infant day.  “I can do this easy,” I though, but Cozi had other ideas.

I have been neglecting my four legged children as seriously as I have been neglecting myself and everything else, and his old dog body had had enough at 1 mile and Cozi began sitting down and staring at me about every half block. Cozi is one hundred and seven pounds of very adorable, very stubborn giant golden retriever  so I called it good and took him home. I then put Yeager on leash. Where neglect makes Cozi drag, neglect makes Yeager lunge. He and I spent 20 minutes walking circles (if you have ever leash trained a labrador retriever to heel, you can relate to this) and almost making it to the end of the block.  I fell short of my 5K, but I did my morning run. Achievement unlocked. Next it was time to physically write my list.

My list does two things, it helps me remember and it helps me focus.  I start the list with my word of the year. That is my focus. Focus is what makes plans and goals form from that miasma of “overwhelmed” into a restful sleep of I am achieving. I struggle each day to remember to not trade what I want most, for what I want in the moment, hence my word, “Thrive” at the top of the list.  Then I write everything I think I need to do, or want to do today. Also to help with focus, if something comes to mind as I am doing something else I add it to the list and go back to what I was doing until it is completed.

So “Thrive!,” I write. What that word means to me would be a whole blog in itself and today’s writing time is almost over so I can’t go into it now, just suffice it to say that for me thriving encompasses a particular picture of health, my religion of kindness, a commitment to building connection, a new commitment to integrity and to intellectual growth.  Blogging is my brief ode to connection today, as today is my first day home without any outside obligation in more than two months and I plan to recharge my seriously depleted introvert battery by not going anywhere or talking to anyone if  I can help it.  I need time alone as much as I need social connection to thrive, once again, two carrots with one knife

Anyway, Back to thriving, having a word for the year is something I borrowed/learned from one of my favorite genre writers, Debbie Maccomber. A romance writer of that kind of  book I generally refer to as a bag of verbal potato chips, where the vocabulary requires no dictionary. A reader can always spot genre fiction because the plot is interspersed every third page with sucking wounds or sucking face.  Like potato chips, genre fiction is addictive, I keep reading just five more pages until the whole book is devoured in one sitting. It amuses my slightly snobbish mind that Ms. Maccomber’s mental snack food has also been the source of two of my more useful self-help skills, that of the 20 Wishes Book and the Word of the Year. Maybe snacks of the right quality, consumed in moderation do have a place in my diet.

THRIVE. 

I could digress here into a hundred things that have been weeds in my garden of thrive, and why I am here a week into April, finally writing about it, but that would not help you or me, or anyone really. What we give energy to grows stronger, so instead I will talk about thriving.

Tomorrow.

My timer has gone off and another thing “thriving” around here is a mess of weeds in the front yard so I am off to pull them. Will check back later with my crock-pot recipe and any updates on this SOFT (Slow Old Fat Try-athlete) training achievements today. And FTR, I have been to the gym Monday and Wednesday and lifted weights!

 

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Lame little post about priorities

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I really want to blog tonight, about lots of things, but I am not going too. Instead I will weed the front lawn a bit, five good handfuls; brush my dogs who are doin’ the springtime shed; eat a salad, and go to bed early so I can hit the gym before work tomorrow.

Because what I really want is to be healthy, happy, care for the commitments I have made to human and four-legged familymembers, self-sufficient, out of debt, and better educated.

Most of the things weighing on my mind tonight is because I forgot the very important lesson of not trading what I want most for what I want right now, so even though I want to poor my heart out in a poem, or write a recipe generating another 100 hits, I realize that if I do stick to my real goals instead of my current gratuitous need for validation, I’ll actually have something worth saying when I come, and I will say it just for the pleasure, not for the ego strokes.

So good-night, I am off to complete my priorities.

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Re-entry

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Things I love

I love science for the way one idea slides like a feather  beneath the first until I am lifted on a new paradigms wing beyond my preconceptions.

I love math for the way numbers align themselves sharply between all the rules, never surprising me but often challenging me to determine if a bit of imagination is needed to solve the problem and balance all the parts.

I love fresh flowers on the table, especially daisies, for sunshine wherever its needed.

I love all things corvid from the blue jays to the nutcracker but hold as favorite the smart and loyal crow for no other reason than that I love them.

I love words and books and writers of poetry, prose and fictions for no other reason than they have always loved me back.

 

Blog, Licking Your LIterary Labito

Looking for a little creative insanity for myself….thoughts on life and Don Quixote

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I have drafts all over the place on this site and so few new posts. I will admit to being in a blue funk. Death has been house sharing with me, or so it seems the last couple years. Family members and close friends, and now my young patient have all stepped out of life, leaving small rents in the fabric of my heart and universe. All this has happened while I have survived against the odds and I have been given a new lease on life.

So many times, when the news of another death has reached my ears, have I questioned why them and not me and tried to bargain for a do over. “It should have been me,” I tell my deity  “I have had a great life, pretty much done my bucket list so thoroughly I had to make new lists. No one’s life would be as impacted by my absence as the large hole this death has left.” Of course, I may tell my gods that, but I don’t know that for sure either. “Truly,” I say,  “no one really depends on me these days with all my children grown and independent; I have no significant other, no one sharing my heart or bed or paycheck, sometimes I go days with all my conversations work or retail related.”

That is what I tell them.

And nine months ago, in an interview with someone I still hope to ghost write a memoir for (on hold due to me, not him), one simple phrase knocked me to the ground and made me realize that I had some serious work to do again. That is when the crying really started. I made myself as small and as distant from everyone as only a compassionate person can, and in doing so had somehow stopped really living my inner life. I was Sancho not Don Quixote. I was outwardly still tilting at windmills in hope of an outcome, but knowing they were windmills, so I tried to find ways to avoid the bruises, the pain and the tears.

Commitment to a dream is a special kind of creative insanity. An important feature of all the happiest characters in Cervantes extensive literary work is their adherence to a path that has little or no reason to it. Another important feature of their paths is the number of times they are beaten, bloodied, robbed or otherwise betrayed before just as randomly rewarded. Joy (survival) is merely the acceptance of their having survived another day to pick up their lance and shield and golden helmet (shaving basin) to again serve that which they love.

Two weeks ago today, a smile and a laugh that was worth getting up and getting dressed for (on even the worst day,) was permanently taken out of  life.  I don’t know if I will ever be able to sing “Eeesny Weensy Spider” again dry eyed. I miss him terribly and my heart breaks for his mother and family. Ironically it was the chain of “bad” things happening in my life 2009 and 2010 that led me to this home, this job, and that young man and his brother and their amazing family.

I dreamed about him last night. We were all going to someplace, they sent me ahead to set up the oxygen and equipment, the family was told they had to travel in their own vehicle. (FTR, their mom would never have let them out of her sight like this but it was a dream) and when they got there both wheelchairs were empty. The chairs were being pushed through the mall to the facility by two attendants (my youngest sister and oldest sister, a whole other story). I freaked out and ran back to find them, the little boy who just died was on the floor, and stood up, he was a little taller than me. He hugged me, and then pushed me away, “Go find T****,” he said, “he needs you now, I don’t.” Then he laughed and said, “Thank you,” winked, and sang with hands “and the stupid little spider went up the spout again.” He strolled away tossing over his shoulder “Find T**** and then get back before my Mom kills somebody for losing us.”  A little further on I found T**** and started yelling for someone to help, for someone to go to the nursing home at the end of the mall and get a wheelchair, get the family, but everyone had an excuse for why they couldn’t help, and he was laughing but he had no oxygen so time was of the essence; I picked him up and started carrying him. Each time I thought I would drop him, a chair showed up for us to rest in, and then as I came around the corner I found his sister T******, and his Mom V******* and they said there were no wheelchairs but they had an office chair, the rolling kind.  I sat in it and held him and they rolled me up the stairs and to where his bed was. It was hairy but he was okay. I told his mom and sister that D***** was out walking in the mall, and they set out to find him as I settled T**** and told him we wouldn’t be seeing D***** again, that he was all better now. I woke up crying. I cried a few times writing this.

I don’t know how long this pot of Tear Soup will need to stew, and I don’t know what other losses I will face. I do know this year will continue to be challenging as I deal with the sad of multiple losses and legally address some of the things that have broken me in the far past.

What I do know is that I am singing for the dragons again, and this may look like a broken shaving basin to you but I can see that it IS the Golden Helmet of Mambrino.

In more pedantic terms, I will choose to hope and dream as I pick up the tools I acquired in PCT and grief therapy, recommit one meal at a time to healthy, kind diet; train for another race; serve as a nurse where the universe sends me; use my gift of words and laughter when opportunity permits; and most importantly, be open to the risk and love.

I would not trade a single moment I had with any of those I have lost, to avoid the emotional carpeting their death has brought.

Today my house is hairier and messier than ever, my Wednesday lunch containers are in bits about the yard (yes I forgot my lunch again, and the dogs managed to unzip the lunchpack and pull everything out while not destroying the bag, I need a video camera for when I am gone!), I have dishes to do, costume completion and knitting calling my name, as well as some cooking and baking for Fairhaven to fit in my day. So I will set this pot on the back burner for awhile, soup can be ignored for hours. I know it will call me back for a stir or two today, and there are many pots more to be made before it becomes just a seasonal dish again, but for now I am done with my Tear Soup. Thank-you for listening and sharing a dish if you read this whole blog, and I promise a better offering tomorrow. I have not yet done my annual itinerary for Fairhaven visitors and I have some lovely recipes just waiting to be shared.

 

If you have never read “Tear Soup” by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen, it is a children’s book I recommend for all ages dealing with loss, or dealing with someone who has had a loss. You can buy your own copy at http://changinghands.com/.

Namaste.

 

 

Blog, Licking Your LIterary Labito

Daniel Defoe, despicable moral ambivalent or daring, dogged dreamer?

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I first met Defoe (who was actually born Daniel Foe, adding the more aristrocratic “de” to separate himself from his very common father a tallow chandler) in a Children’s Illustrated Classics Robinson Crusoe. For those born to late to experience these wonderful introduction to the great stories of literature, they were chapter books with every few pages a lovely pencil action shot or charming evocative landscape. The pictures were part of the story, leading me both towards the original authors works and comic books. The footprint will stay forever with me, both in printed word and line drawing.

I found him again as a history and journalism enthusiast in my early adulthood, but as then I found the world so clearly devided between the good guys and the bad guys, his apparent ambivalence and choice to survive at all costs did not endear him to me even if he was one of the fathers of the novel and of modern journalism.

In this century Mr Defoe and I became reacquainted through the works of one of the great storytellers of this century, James A Owen. I compare his literary realities to Tolkien and Lewis.  In another time he would certainly have been an Inkling. If you have not read the series yet, begin now. If you have read them, then begin again as the last volume appears later this year.

In the Imaginarium Geographica series, that begins with “Here There Be Dragons,” Defoe is somewhat of a villain  although his real life adventures as a spy have always made me wonder of his true allegiance.  Like the Potter series, or most aptly referenced here “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Chronicles of Narnia”, good and evil are most clearly delineated at the start and grow more shades of gray as the story progresses.

I will reread Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe again but thought to try his more controversial novel and am just about to finish “The Fortunes and Misfortunes of  the Famous Moll Flanders,” and have to says I am pleasantly surprised at the strong feminist tone of this novel and cannot wait to find a good biography of the man to help flesh out my picture of him. I still think he was a man whose instinct to survive was greater than his ethical adherence, whose need to be admired, liked and seen as “somebody” was bent by a youth of being a “nobody” and led to many of his own misfortunes. However, it was that uncanny ability to survive and thrive in a time of great change and social turmoil that helped bring into fruition the modern novel and journalism so I can only be grateful.

I recommend “Robinson Crusoe” for the easier and more moving read (yes, I have read the unabridged version and was just as enthralled) but recommend “Moll Flanders” for its social context and for those who like reality TV, I mean this was the Jersey Shore of its time!

Most importantly I recommend reading, turn off the TV tonight and open a book, any book, and let the screen in your mind light up with all the wonderful pictures and places the words can lead you. I have started a Book Club over on FaceBook called the “Imaginarium Geographica Classics Club” that I hope you all will join. Pick any author running about those pages and one book he wrote and add it to the comments section on the page. An exciting contest is soon to be revealed revolving around these books and authors.