2021 in review

This has been another strange year, although the strangeness is becoming less strange and more familiar. COVID continues to be a huge global crisis, here in the US people are still angrily divided over mandatory vaccines/masking/quarrantining. I often wonder if it was this way with the Spanish Influenza pandemic over a century ago. I’m afraid it was; humans are humans, nothing’s changed there. 

What did you do in 2021 that you’d never done before? 

I joined a Crossfit gym, and am loving it. I’m getting much stronger, and know this is also great for my bones.

Did anyone close to you give birth? 

Not yet. We’re waiting for Abigail Louise to make her appearance in a couple of months to join Jordan, Amanda and Grace (oh and Leo the cat).

Did anyone close to you die? 

Yes, this has been a year of extreme loss. I have a team of seven and two of the women who are on the team lost their mothers this year. We’re a really close team, closer than any I’ve managed before so their losses affected all of us. Christine lost her mother (who was only 58) in February, and Sara lost her mother after that double organ transplant in October. Sara’s mother wasn’t all that old either, she was 64.

Horribly, I lost a woman on my team on July 31. Mary was 40 years old and just died. That loss also gutted my entire team because she hadn't been ill.

On July 2, Kent and I lost his mother, Ardis. Although she had lived a long life (she was 84), we still weren’t ready for that. Kent was able to see her earlier in the year so he takes comfort from that, that she didn’t die during the lock downs.

And while some may not understand this, losing Wally gutted me. Yes, we made the decision to euthanize him and I still believe it was the right decision. It still guts me. I miss the cat he used to be.

Did you suffer illness or injury? 

Yes, on July 5 I fell and broke two bones in my wrist. At least this wasn’t a break due to my crappy bones.

What countries did you visit? 

Hmm the countries of isolation and lock down? In other words, I didn’t visit any countries this year.

What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021? 

Better sleep? Less anxiety? At this point after hoping for each year to be better since 2019, I’m setting the bar pretty low and not saying things like “oh next year will be so much better.” 

What dates from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

July 2, when Ardis died.

July 5 when I broke my wrist.

That’s it.

What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

This isn’t really an achievement but a reframing. I have a terrible habit of getting a diagnosis and then immediately discounting whatever it is. For example, when the orthopedist called to tell me I had fractured my pelvis, my response was “I did not!” Well I did. 

And this year, when the Meniere’s disease ramped up so much, I couldn’t deny that diagnosis any more. 

Somehow that all combined together in my head and I realized yeah so the Army diagnosed me with reactive airway disease when I was 19 and I have spent the decades since saying no, I don’t have that. But the fact of the matter is I do. And I need to quit dicking around and denying it because that may end up killing me in the time of COVID, all the varieties of flu, and any other respiratory illness. 

A couple of weeks ago I asked my PCP if he would support a request for reasonable accommodation under the ADA so that I could move to fully remote work. He did, and I put in the application and it was approved.

I feel really weird about that course of action; I hope this is the right way to go. Is that an achievement? Maybe? 

What was the best thing you bought? 

At work, I had a sit/stand desk. Since I’ve been working from home, I’ve really missed it. I found one that has a small enough footprint and is quite easy to raise and lower (it’s not electric, I didn’t want that). It’s made a lot of difference for me.

What did you get really excited about? 

I was excited to be able to visit my kids again (words are inadequate to tell you how much I miss them). Kent was supposed to go with me in May to see Jordan and his family and then in July to see Ben and his family. Only of course his mom’s health took a huge nosedive in May, and then of course she died in July. So my excitement was tempered by her illness and death and also by him not being with me. 

What book(s) did you love this year? 

I continued my escapism into science fiction and some fantasy. In no particular order, here are some of my favorites:

• A Boy and His Dog at the End of the Word by C. A. Fletcher
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 
• Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
• The Goblin Emperor, also by Katherine Addison
• Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (her most recent book in the Murderbot series, all of which I adore)

What song will always remind you of 2021? 

I heard this at church, not long after Kent’s mother died, and Mary died and Sara’s mother was so gravely ill. This song brought me so much comfort.

Whatever happened to Linda Schwartz?

Last night on the drive from La Guardia to our hotel on Times Square, I thought of Linda Schwartz. I hadn’t thought of her in years, well decades actually.

She was married to Rick’s youngest brother, Ron and was from some pretty serious money here in New York. In 1979, after Rick and I got married that December, we spent some time with Ron and Linda up here (they weren’t married yet but were engaged). I vividly remember going to her parents’ penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park—the elevator just opened right in their space, no need for a separate hall or anything as they had the entire floor. She came from that kind of money.

But she wasn’t happy, I don’t know what the pain was from but it was there and she and Ron didn’t have a good relationship. Let’s be clear, he wasn’t happy either and I have a much better sense of where his pain came from, so this isn’t a bash Linda story.

What stays with me the most, all these years later, are two things:

• She didn’t care for the ring Ron bought her. If I recall correctly, it was 14k gold and she wanted 18k gold. So she replaced the ring herself. I always thought that didn’t bode well for them. There’s nothing wrong with wanting something different, it’s the not talking about it that seemed to indicate things weren’t going to end well.
• When Ben was born, she was livid about the name. That was the name she was going to use for her (as yet unborn, not even a glimmer on the horizon) son. That baffled me. OK name your kid the same thing, it will be confusing but there are worse things and oh by the way, that sure wasn’t aimed at you. But she took it as an attack.

I think they limped along together for about 8 years, maybe a bit longer, and had two children, one of each I think. But that’s all I know.

Why I like Crossfit, specifically Change Now

Last summer I’d joined a Crossfit-esque gym run by a woman who’s a national expert in exercise for cancer survivors. I loved the classes, loved the atmosphere and was gutted when she decided to retire early and travel around with her husband.

I knew I wanted to keep this kind of workout going so I looked for other options. I found a Crossfit gym that’s a lot closer to us plus it has 5:15 AM classes 4 days a week, which our previous gym did not (plus it was a good 20 minute drive away). I am most definitely a very early morning workout person so Kent and I decided to check it out.

The woman who owns this box had been out of shape and overweight most of her life. Then about 9 or 10 years ago, she decided she wanted to get in shape. In 2019, she opened her own Crossfit box.

What I love about this box has a lot to do with her:

• Form always over hitting achievements
• Encouragement but also pushing when needed
• She never gives up on us

I also really like it that I am doing things I’m horrible at doing. Case in point: 

• Jump rope. Let me tell you, the first workout of the day that used jump rope about did me in. As I told the coach that day, it had been well over half a century since I jumped rope. I’m terrible at it. But I’m going to get better.
• Also things like pull ups, or a devilish push up variation called an Archer ring row push up (we did those today, I most definitely modified it).
• Oh or the work out that had a total of 350 air squats. Boy I felt those for nearly a week.
• And Saturday we did 50 Romanian split squats with weights. Hard but good.

I relish the challenge, I love that I’m getting stronger and best of all, my left wrist is improving.

Wally

We had to say goodbye to Wally yesterday. 

Over the last several years, he’d gotten grumpier and grumpier, often attacking Eddie (who’s his litter mate). He’d also gotten a lot more feeble, not able to jump directly to our desks or the counter, things he did effortlessly when we first moved into this house in 2013.

The last three months were even worse. He started attacking Annie, randomly and with no provocation on her part other than existing. All the things that used to bring him pleasure no longer did. And then the last three or four nights, he started attacking Stevie.

These attacks were violent, not a small hiss fest with a couple of swats. Twice, Stevie ran in terror down the hall, voiding her bladder the whole way. I think if Wally had caught her, he would have tried to kill her. As it was, in addition to the urine we found tufts of her fur scattered down the hall.

We’d taken him to our vet several times during all this. We were convinced that something had to be really wrong, that he was in extreme pain, something was causing this change. But his health was good for a 14 year old cat: very early signs of kidney disease, the start of cataracts, but nothing else.

After Tuesday night’s attack, we realized we were at a decision point. We didn’t think he could be re-homed, he wasn’t nice to anyone but to the two of us. Plus he puked all the time, had always done that (apparently some cats do and his brother Eddie also pukes a lot), and then there were the aggression issues.

Our vet fully supported us with this. He told us yesterday that some cats just never quite get socialized and that with his aggression issues, we were lucky not to have been bitten ourselves. He pointed out that he and the rest of the vets there all knew Wally, that he had a reputation for violence. And I’ll tell you, those middle of the night attacks were definitely scary because Stevie sleeps up by my head. When Wally came screeching up the bed at her, he didn’t pay attention to my face being in the way.

Because he was always a screaming attacking terror at the vet, he was fully sedated when the vet brought him to us before administering the terminal drug. I realized then that I had not seen Wally that relaxed in years. He was always tense, always on edge, always wary. My heart broke and I knew this was for the best.

Even though the vet assured us Wally wouldn’t know if we were with him when he died, we both needed to be there. And I think somewhere in my Ginger Prince’s heart, he knew and felt our love as we stroked his fur and cried and told him we loved him.

Every night when I go to bed, I sit cross legged and read for a bit. And every night, Wally gets in my lap, and Eddie plasters against my right leg and I give them cheek rubs and say “wiki wiki wiki” (like the DJ sound effect) as I rub their faces. Last night, my lap was empty. 

A new grey kitty

No, not ours

A few years ago, we had a neighborhood cat who liked to loll around on our patio, our front porch, our AC dealie which is right outside our office window. He was gorgeous, a lovely dark grey with a black nose and he had cattitude for days. One time he was lying on the AC thing, and I guess he got really curious because he reached over and banged on the office window. Wally and Eddie were NOT amused.

Today I saw this grey kitty clearly hunting something at the base of the smoke tree. It’s not the same cat, this one isn’t as long and doesn’t have the black nose. But he’s sure a hunter. 

More loss, more tears, some anger

Sara works for me; she’s a really neat woman, amazing at her job, smart etc. etc. A single mom, she’s also had her mother living with her for nearly two years because her mom was diagnosed with a form of fatty liver disease that’s genetic. So Sara may have to face this for herself someday.

Anyway, Sara’s mother went downhill slowly at first, and then as often happens with organ failure, that sped up. She originally needed a liver transplant but then her kidneys also started failing (which apparently is not at all unusual to happen). In early October, she crashed hard and honestly I didn’t think she’d make it--she was in ICU for two weeks, on a vent and on dialysis.

But she rallied enough to move to rehab and then we got great news that the VA had a donor for her for both organs. So Sara and her mom were flown to Madison WI for the surgeries.

On Thursday, October 21 she had the liver transplant. That surgery was rough, so her surgeons waited until Saturday, October 23 to transplant the kidney. And she did GREAT. The next day she was off the vent, talking with her family, making urine etc.

And then she died that afternoon. The preliminary autopsy ruled out a blood clot, which is what her medical team suspected killed her. But no. She just died.

What feels so cruel is that she came through both surgeries, she was alert etc. Sara and her sister were so excited, heck all of us who work with her were too.

Rhonda’s funeral is Wednesday at Fort Leavenworth. She was an Air Force veteran and wanted a military service. I will be there.

When the answer is not clear

I have what may be competing goals:

• Run one (just one) marathon successfully
• Break no more bones

And I’m not sure how to decide. Normally I’d run off and ask my medical care team only here’s something I’ve noticed. I’m not sure if this is age or gender bias or a lack of common ground (because 99% of my medical care team clearly aren’t as into fitness as I am), but what I’ve heard since fracturing my pelvis in 2018, then struggling with side effects from radiation that affected my fitness and then breaking my foot goes something like this:

• Why don’t you just take a long walk?
• You just run to stay fit, right? So find another workout.
• How about some yoga?

To which the answers are:

• A long walk is beyond boring. Seriously boring. I would rather put that energy into mastering riding my bike.
• I run to compete, not just to stay fit. So screw that noise.
• I already do yoga. And Crossfit. And biking. 

I do have one doctor who’s as into fitness as I am: my endocrinologist. He's an avid mountain biker, totally loves it. And that he's my endocrinologist is also good because he’s the one who keeps an eye on my bone health. So I’ve thought about emailing him through the patient portal and asking his take on this. 

Because I really, really would like to run just one marathon.

Well hello

So hello. No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth although I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought I had.

This kind of hiatus strikes me every year around late summer and early fall. Normally I return after a couple of weeks. This time it’s been a couple of months.

During these times, I tend to question why I continue to write blog posts that are rarely read, and almost never commented on.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no ambition to be some wildly popular blogger whose every post generates a ton of comments. But getting next to no comments, even from a couple of family members who tell me they read my blog, yet never comment--well that’s like talking into an empty room with sound deadening properties. What’s the point? Or to paraphrase the cliche, if a blog post generates no interactions, did it even get posted?

Adding to that, Mary’s death was quickly followed by my gym closing for good. This was the gym I had just found and where I felt so comfortable and as though I would be able to achieve my fitness goals. The owners are fairly young and decided to retire early. I can’t blame them for that, not at all. But I was devastated, more than I thought I would be or even possibly should be, so much so that I cried at that loss.

And then all the losses, especially since 2017, just overwhelmed me. 

I am told all the time how strong I am, how they admire me, etc. etc. etc. Well nuts to that. 

I’m tired, I’m sad, I’m mourning what for sure is gone (like my music career from damage to my right thumb that has never resolved even after nearly 30 years), or the sense of where my potential health issues might be (which never not once included melanoma or breast cancer or osteoporosis or this fucking Meniere’s Disease--oh no, I anticipated and who knows may still get a blood cancer given that my mother has leukemia, her sister has multiple myeloma and my aunt’s identical twin sister died of acute leukemia at age 7--THAT’S what I expected).

And yes, I’m doing all the things to regenerate my joy, my contentment, my sense of peace. I write down things I’m grateful for; the journal I’m using has three spots and if I have three things, then great. But if it’s a day where there’s one or maybe even none, I’m not putting something down just to fill the line. I’m keeping it real.

Right at the most bleak time, my parish held a healing mass. I felt like I got thrown a lifeline and reader (if you’re there LOL), I went. I find the liturgy to be so comforting. The words themselves aren’t holy, but the intent is and the relief I felt at being anointed and then prayed for comforted me.

The two areas I continue to struggle with are these:

• Can I successfully train and run just one marathon? Can my body handle the load (because the mental part is not a problem) without more bones breaking?
• Meniere’s Disease. This has been a terrible few months for me, with severe vertigo pretty much every week which means I can’t walk, heck I can’t even stand up, and I throw up violently for hours (no exaggeration). In fact, I write in my gratitude list when I have just minor vertigo or go a full week without throwing up. 

Last week, I saw my regular ENT again, and asked for the referral he’s offered in the past for a more specialized ENT. I will see that doctor on November 8. In the meantime, my regular ENT prescribed Valium and a drug to stop me from throwing up. I am very, very sparing with that Valium as while I stay conscious I’m not at my sharpest. But when the world starts gyrating and spinning, you better believe I’ve taken it. I hope with all my heart this new doctor has a different solution as I really do not want to be on something like Valium. For now, though, it sure beats puking for hours while the world heaves and spins.

I'll leave you with a song that I have always loved, one that's brought me much comfort over the years.

The hardest week of my professional life

Until now, I’ve always said the hardest thing I ever had to do as a manager of people was to tell one of my 1099 employees that I had no more work for him as he’d had a psychotic break at a client site. I had to tell him that until he got help, we couldn’t send him on jobs. But that’s no longer the hardest thing I’ve gone through as a people leader (as we call it at work).

Last Saturday, I got word that a woman who worked for me had died the evening before. She hadn’t been sick, she was in reasonably good health, she just . . . died. 

People talk about work families and normally I roll my eyes hard at that idea. Work is work, family is family, and the two rarely co-exist. If they do, it can often be a highly dysfunctional and toxic work environment.

My team isn’t that way, and I take little to no credit for this. Four of them have known each other for nearly a decade; they take care of each other’s kids or house sit or go out on the weekends. Our birthday celebrations at work are full of fun, love, and affection. Take my word for it, this is an unusually tight team. So, to have Mary die like that was even more traumatic than usual. 

This past week has been a blur of emotions, tasks you just never think you’ll need to do like figuring out how to reach her mother so Benefits could talk with her, notifying everyone she’d worked with over the years, being there for my team, and also dealing with my own emotions. 

Her funeral was Thursday. She’d already been cremated so there was no casket, which was hard for some of my team as they’d hoped to actually see her to help them accept that yes, she was gone, and this wasn’t some insane prank. I think we all secretly hoped it was but of course that wasn’t the case.

On Friday my new director, Ro (who herself has only been my director for a couple of months), planned a virtual celebration of Mary as we haven’t yet returned to working in the office. We invited everyone we could think of who might want to come and share a memory of her with all of us. As part of getting to know us, Ro had asked us all to fill out a little “getting to know you” survey, and she shared what Mary had written. That virtual celebration was a good way to end an awful week. I miss Mary, I can hardly believe she’s gone.

Where I've been the last month

Two days after my mother-in-law died, I fell while on a hike with my younger son. You see, we’d had a second family trip planned this summer; this time we were going to the LA area to spend time with Ben and his family. 

Kent obviously couldn’t go as his mom was declining rapidly. As with the Memorial weekend trip, I offered (and offered a lot) to also cancel the trip to LA and be with him that week. He was clear he wanted me to go, so again I listened to what he said would be best for him and I went. 

The day I fell was the day before I was supposed to fly home. Ben and I had gone to Malibu Canyon to hike Sandstone Peak. This photo is at the start of the trail.

We took a shorter route than the one mentioned in the link, because our hike was about three miles total. It was a gorgeous day, I loved spending some time with Ben and had no problems up or down the steeper bits near the top. Nope, I fell later on the way down—hit some small loose rocks that might have well been ball bearings and down I went. This injury is called a FOOSH (falling onto outstretched hand) and can break the scaphoid or other bones. I’m lucky because my scaphoid did not break; instead I broke my wrist. I’ve got a distal radius fracture of my left wrist.

Let me tell you, it’s amazing how much you need both thumbs, even the one on your non-dominant hand. Typing, for example, was super hard especially with the first cast I had as it immobilized my thumb. I’ve been learning to do things mostly one-handed and I will be very, very glad when my wrist is healed. I go back on August 20 for the next round of x-rays, which will be about six weeks after I fell. Here’s hoping I will be cleared to get back to normal activities. 

Ardis Martin Johnson, October 3, 1936--July 2, 2021

My mother-in-law has died. 

You might recall she was diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM), which is a very aggressive brain cancer. That was true for her as she died barely a month after her diagnosis. I'm glad it was quick and as far as we could tell, relatively painless. But I will miss her.

Two quick stories about her:

After it was clear Kent and I were a thing and headed for a long-term relationship, we were visiting her in the Tulsa area. I was going on and on about Kent, how wonderful he was, etc. etc. most likely to an obnoxious degree. She looked at me and said, “You do know he’s not perfect, right?” I cracked up and assured her that yes, I most definitely did know that but that he was darn near perfect for me.

I graduated from college at 43; Kent and I were engaged but not yet married. She hopped in her car with Kent’s aunt Judy, and they drove four hours to sit in the hot sun at Memorial Stadium in Lawrence, KS to watch me and everyone else walk across that stage to graduate. She gave me a big sweaty hug, a card and then got back in her car to drive back home. She never understood why that was such a big deal to me and was honestly puzzled when I tried to thank her.

She also loved to cook and entertain—food was part of her love language and she enjoyed having us there so she could cook for us. One of her signature dishes was crawfish étouffée and a dessert she called raspberry swirl. 

I wanted to honor that part of her so last night, I made a vegan version of the étouffée. I hunted for something that would be a good stand-in for her dessert, and found a recipe for  Raspberry Chocolate Ganache Tart which was beyond good. We toasted her memory with some champagne and enjoyed the heck out of our dinner. 

Rest in peace, Ardis Martin Johnson, you were the best mother-in-law I could have ever asked for and I’m a better woman for having known you.

And the third reason I was distracted

 First, I remain gainfully employed.

Having said that, 89 people at my company do not, and we've been reorganized like crazy. We've flattened the organization, which is corporate speak for saying people leaders have more direct reports, and there are fewer of us.

A week ago Thursday, I had to tell a couple of my direct reports that while they, too, remained gainfully employed, they were being demoted back one level and were no longer going to be people leaders. Their pay and bonus structure remains the same, but make no mistake. This wasn't a great day for them (or for me).

In my larger group, our reductions made up close to 10% of those layoffs. That's a lot.

I've been through this so many times before; I worked for Sprint from 1997 to 2006, and beginning in 2001 after the dot com bust, Sprint laid off thousands and thousands. In early 2001, we had over 100k employees and when I left, we were about half that size.

So that's the last reason I have been too distracted to post here.

A second reason for being distracted

As I mentioned in my previous post, I did go to Nashville alone. That was pretty weird; not traveling alone (I’ve done a ton of that) but visiting family without Kent. Jordan and Amanda were disappointed but also knew that Kent made the right decision.

This was intended to be a little bit longer of a visit—I left Thursday and came home fairly early Tuesday. We didn’t have anything planned for Thursday, so we spent the day catching up and letting Grace come to me in her own time. Grace remains a ridiculously happy child, very good natured and affectionate so it took no time at all before she was chattering away, calling me Nana and generally being a sweetheart. The scotch in the photo is a really nice one we gave Jordan for his 40th birthday this year and he kindly shared with me.

We did get to the zoo on Saturday but it was pretty cold so the monkeys didn’t come out (apparently Grace loves the monkeys). But the kids petting zoo had baby goats and she enjoyed that a lot.

It finally got warm on Sunday so we spent some time at a nearby park, running around and swinging. On Memorial Day, we hung out with Amanda’s dad and stepmother—her dad is known for his hospitality and had invited a bunch of people over. We enjoyed the pool, the company, the food, just all of it.

I also got in a couple of runs, which was nice. Up until then, Kansas City had just been pummeled by endless thunderstorms. Even though it was chilly in Nashville (about 50 when I ran), it was dry. 

One reason I've been so distracted

My mother-in-law lives in Tulsa, in a pretty good nursing home, University Village. She's been there about four and a half years; originally she started in an assisted living apartment but kept falling and passing out. The facility had warned us that when people finally move into a facility like this, even if they'd been living in their own home (as she had) and driving (which she did), a lot of times all the hidden health issues they've got become obvious because someone is there to see them and notice.

So long story short, she ended up crashing and never really recovered from that. She moved into Skilled nursing but didn't make progress with the physical therapy. So that was no longer an option, as her insurance wouldn't pay for the sessions without some forward progress.

But she's been if not happy, then content. She's watched her shows, sometimes a little football, she's had friends and family visiting, also her former co-workers and we'd gone done periodically (Kent more than me). 

Then the pandemic hit, and we thought "well this will be it, she'll catch the coronavirus and since she stays mostly in bed, it will make short work of her." But she didn't get it, and in fact her facility did really well staying on top of the positive cases they did get.

Last fall, she had what ended up being a stage 2 melanoma removed from her arm. She was too frail for a PET scan, the gold standard to determine if cancer is elsewhere but had an MRI. That MRI came back clear.

On May 25, Kent's birthday, University Village called and said they thought she was having a stroke and they'd sent her to the ER by ambulance. The ER doctors said she wasn't having a stroke but something was clearly going on so they ran other tests.

She has a couple of malignant brain tumors. Turns out they are glioblastoma (GBM). GBM is a grade 4 fast-growing and aggressive brain tumor. She's been rated a health risk of 6 (the highest/worst rating) and her life expectancy is probably about six months-ish.

Kent ended up going to Tulsa the day after his birthday, and did not come with me to Nashville to see our family there. He made the right choice for sure, and I would have gone with him if he needed me. But he told me to go to Nashville, that it would be OK, he would be able to see our family again. I felt guilty but I went alone. 

Running behind

Hmm I’ve been a little distracted lately, sorry about that.

To follow up on my last post, I met with my new personal trainer, and this is going to be great. For the summer, I’ll work with him on Wednesday mornings and then go to the group class on Saturday mornings. And what’s even better—I asked Kent to go with me the first time in hopes this would be something we do together. And he agreed!

I will say, the day after the first group class, we were both sore but not where we thought we would be. Since we’re both runners, neither of us expected to be sore in our quads but oh my goodness we sure were. We joked about trust falls onto the toilet . . . only we weren’t really entirely joking.

Jerry had told me I'm to work out four days a week, rather than six. I tried to negotiate to five days but he asked me to give him two months at the four days a week and see how I felt. My biggest concern with losing a day of working out isn't overall fitness, it's my running base. You see, to be ready to train for a full marathon, I need to be regularly and easily running more volume than I am right now. Still, I agreed to cut back for the summer and work on the strength. He's fine with me having active recovery days, so I can cycle (as long as I'm not doing 20 mile rides--oh hey, no worries there!). 

This week, I cycled on Sunday (7 miles), ran 5.5 miles on Monday, walked I'm not sure how far but close to 3 miles yesterday, today I worked out with Jerry and I will run probably tomorrow or maybe Friday. We're in a brutal heat wave and the "low" temperatures the next two days isn't very low: 76 and 78. Then Saturday I'll be at the group class.

He also had me bring in my food diary (very easy to do since I've been tracking with My Fitness Pal for a few years), and then laughed at my protein. Yeah, he wants me to up that considerably. And that's not easy as a vegan. I'm working on it though.

I mentioned that Sami and Jerry own this gym and that she’s a nationally recognized expert in exercise for cancer patients and survivors. At the first group class (which she teaches), she asked if I wanted to stick around afterwards as she and Jerry were going to make a short video of other cancer survivors who work out there for an upcoming conference. So I did! She tossed me a logo'd tee shirt and then I worked out with the rest of them while Jerry filmed. It was so much fun and even more, I felt entirely normal there. I wasn’t the only person who had to pay attention to scar tissue or what have you.

Here’s a photo from the end—Sami is in the front row on the right, and Ruth is their adorable dog.

Next steps

Remember the issues I’ve been having with numbness in my big toe? I’ve gotten all the test results back and they don’t show a reason for that numbness. To recap, here’s what's happened:

Late February, the top of my foot hurt. Being my mother’s daughter and knowing that the tincture of time often cures aches and pains, I waited a couple of weeks, and also retied my running shoelaces so they didn’t cross that spot on my foot.

But over the next two weeks, I got pins and needles down into my toe and then a bit of numbness plus the pain on the top of my foot. I got it checked out by an NP who ordered an X-ray. Nothing showed so I shrugged and moved on.

Two months later, the numbness, pins and needles worsened, and then my foot broke while on a training run.

Obviously, I didn’t run for a while and I figured if this numbness etc. was caused by running, then the time off should give my foot time to recover. Nope, that didn’t happen. 

I went to the podiatrist both for the break, which I will say took ages to heal, and this numbness and pins and needles. She had me go back to the orthopedist; several x-rays and an MRI later, everyone agreed that my bone was very slowly healing, and no one had any clue on why I had this numbness and pins and needles in my big toe.

In December, the orthopedist referred me to a neurology consult on the off chance that the numbness etc. was caused by a nerve impingement. I saw the neurologist in April, and he ordered two tests (nerve conduction test and an EMG, both of which were very, very unpleasant). Neither test identified any issues, so he ordered an MRI of my spine to rule out any issues there. As expected, that also came back absolutely fine.

So here I am with this numbness and pins and needles and no idea what’s causing it or how to get it to stop. But I’m tired of waiting, I have fitness goals I want to work on. Today I booked my first session with a personal trainer—he and his wife are experts in fitness for people who’ve had cancer, and I'd checked out their gym right before COVID shut everything down last year.

I have two goals:

• Prep for and run the Grandma’s Marathon next June. This is the marathon I’d registered for last year only of course, it shifted to virtual (ugh) and I broke my foot. I have a discount code for it that has to be used no later than next summer’s race. I’m bound and determined to be there.
• Prep for staying as physically healthy and strong as I can during my older years. After watching how fast my mother-in-law lost all her strength, I’m committed to doing everything I can to avoid that kind of frailty. Sure, it’s not always avoidable but often it is.

More to come after my first session (which is next Wednesday).

Another anniversary

A year ago, I was out running a planned 18 mile run in training for a marathon. Only at mile 6, my foot broke (I didn’t know that’s what that pain was) and I was 4 miles from home. That ended my marathon training, of course, and I started the rehab process again.

Today, Kent and I volunteered at the Kansas City Triathlon as running marshals. Unfortunately, Kansas City had torrential rain today, and the triathlon was changed to a duathlon: 1 mile run, 20 mile bike, then a 20k run. 

Kent and I were put in separate spots, I couldn’t see him or any other marshals and there were no spectators where we were. So, I stood alone in the rain and waited and waited for the first runners to appear. Let me tell you, those elite athletes were really moving! 

I made it a point to cheer for every runner as they passed—my thinking was that I’ve always done better when someone cheers me on at a race and even if I’m not yet in racing condition, I can sure return the favor. So many of them thanked me for cheering them on, for being there, and boy that was humbling. Yes, it was miserable weather and I was cold and wet even with my running rain jacket on. But I also hadn’t run a mile, biked another 20 and then been running another 12ish miles in that weather.

This was a good way to mark a not great anniversary. Next up, I’m going to be talking with a personal trainer in the Kansas City area. I’m ready to gear up my training for the marathon I missed last year. I want to be in my best possible shape for that (and NO broken bones).

A Mezcal tasting

Tuesday night, we had a virtual mezcal tasting with The Restaurant at 1900, a restaurant we love (side note, I'm hoping we can still go there what with my shift to veganism). A friend asked me how that worked, so this post is for her.

We chose a pick-up time to get our packages; you have to pick a time, the pick-up person has to be 21 or older and show proper ID. Then we joined the session via Zoom and learned so much about how mezcal is made. 

We've done virtual tastings with this restaurant before, but this was the first time we've done something other than wine. When we saw how big the tasting bottles were, we decided we would share all but the first cocktail and the last bottle (it was a lot smaller, the restaurant's chief sommelier donated it from his own private collection).

Wally insisted on joining us and was lolling around on the counter, until Kent grabbed a cat bed and then he settled down. He stayed there the full two hours, too.

Here's what we had:

We each got one of these little cups to drink the mezcal out of:

And here's everything staged properly (chips are ours, we thought that might help clear our palates between the types of mezcal):

A Macabi review

This is mostly for some posters on the subreddit r/HerOneBag who were also interested in the Macabi skirt.

First, let me level set size etc. for me. I’m 5’4 and ½” tall, I’m slightly short-waisted and also very slightly pear shaped these days. I tend to wear size 2 in most pants, sometimes a 0. I got the XS in both skirts and that was the correct size for me.

I bought the short skirt in purple haze (no length options), and the slim long skirt, in the regular length in charcoal. Slim is possibly misleading as it still has a lot of fabric. But I’m fairly small and suspected the regular long skirt would overwhelm me. I apologize for not great pictures, but if you click the images you should be able to see better.

Let me start by saying this is not a fashion skirt. You will not win any style points wearing this unless you are with like-minded people. I got cold the day I wore the short skirt, so I ended up putting on a cardigan over my shirt. At that point, I figured I’d nailed much like the stereotypical librarian.  But it’s super comfortable.

It’s chilly again today, and I’m wearing the slim long skirt today with a new pair of boots so I can break them in. As with the short skirt, this one is very comfortable; I haven’t clipped it to make the pants or clipped up to make shorts but it’s easy enough to do.  

I can see why the photographs on the website aren’t great, this isn’t a skirt that lends itself to a form-fitted tucked-in top since the skirt itself is so voluminous. But I like it a lot with the sweater I’m wearing today and think I’ll use both of them, especially in the summer. And if I ever get to walk the El Camino de Santiago, I would take the long one for sure. That way, I would meet all the clothing/modesty requirements for seeing the churches and cathedrals along the way.

The yard is coming along

We hired a landscaping company for a couple of projects:

• The patio needed to be cleaned quite badly
• The hack job of a path behind the garage was both unsafe and ugly
• We wanted to have the beds along the sides and back of the yard moved closer to the lot line (we do NOT need giant beds full of weeds)
• We also wanted some sort transition from the path to a less structured walkway toward the garage

Most of these projects were beyond our skills and also our equipment. We don't own any sort of tiny bulldozer or the tool this company used to cut the narrow trench for the new beds. We might have been able to clean the patio, but probably not nearly as well or as efficiently as they did. And we sure wouldn't have solved the down spout issue on the side of the garage.

Here are some before/after photos:

Dirty bricks and filthy chimenea:

Hack job of a path from the previous owner (which we tried & failed to fix):

It's just an ankle twist waiting to happen:

See the chain link fence? That area was full of weeds and the downspout couldn't do a great job (downspout is off camera to the left):

Clean! And the fish is too!

Another view; also gone is the honking big grill that we used once in the last eight years. They said they have a graveyard of old grills:

Looking toward the new path:

From the path back to the patio:

New stepping stones which are shaped like slices of wood:

New sod and we hope it gets enough light that it doesn't die (we also need to trim back those bushes, that will help a lot):

MUCH improved downspout area! We hadn't even asked about that, they saw the need and did it:

Now winter weather needs to go away so we can put our sun umbrella out and start enjoying this.