Back to school

I didn't realize the school mascot had a name. The nearby pond always had 3 herons and one egret. The last time I looked, the egrets seemed to be taking over

Maya didn't want to go to school today (stranger danger!) but was thrilled to sit next to her favorite boy. What percent is her school 'white'? 40 % Lots of Asians.

Off to kindergarten, 4th, and 2nd grade for just a half day

Hannah still isn't happy with me picking her up but doesn't mind the boys

Shanna's family

Well one kid out of 6 is looking at me

8 months old yesterday

The rain held off long enough for the kids to be tired of playing outside at our Labor Day BBQ yesterday so yay for that. Lots of kids running around which is fine though I kept trying to direct them to be either outside or in the basement. The girls played dress up as I have several costumes and fancy dresses for them. Should have taken a photo.

I had Maya for a while the day before. She kept asking for her cousins to come over. Each time I would reply, tomorrow. And then tomorrow came and she was playing 'shy' again.

Most of the changes have been positive due to my weight loss except one: postural hypotension. It's not a problem most of the time except when I've sitting around too much and then try to get up. I black out briefly but I hold on to something for a few seconds and I am fine. Yesterday I got up where there was nothing to hold on to and almost crumpled to the floor.

Days are shorter. I took off early Sunday covered with my flashers. It was too dark to even read my odometer though my trusty  Apple watch tracks all plus I know all the distances from my house. It started to rain. I briefly considered going back as it was a bit chilly but it stopped. Went through two flocks of turkeys. One of the turkeys was albino.  I am seeing more deer in my travels too. Today I came across a doe and her still spotted fawn. I guess she was late to deliver. And a whole flock of deer yesterday morning.

I now have pretty coral nails due to my Saturday night mani-pedi. Lots of others had the same idea so I had a wait. Sunday night I was at a friend's drinking wine and watching birds until it was dark, which is sadly earlier and earlier.

I am up to 27% proficiency in Spanish. I will see how far I can go before our big trip.

thirty-five years of running

Me 33 years ago after losing a race to a co-worker. I should have made it a 5K instead of a mile as I have endurance, not speed whereas my co-worker was the opposite. Also, I had run a marathon the week before and had not recovered as I know I could have run a 6 minute mile in those days, which still probably wasn't enough to win versus 6:30. Now I couldn't run that fast for 10 feet. Sadly this co-worker is now dead crashing on his bike on a very steep hill, which I don't forget as I plunge down hills myself

The top 3 photos were taken by my niece who has many photos from her recent trip to Taiwan. Perhaps I could go with my sister-in-law someday and take my own photos? She goes at least once a year.

Thirty-five years ago I was returning to work after having Josh. I had just given up nursing, which theoretically should have been a weight loss opportunity but as usual, I use any excuse to gain weight. Usually I swam laps to keep fit but with 2 babies, I didn't have much time. Self disgust was sinking in. We worked on top of a hill. Perhaps instead of eating lunch, I would run down the hill towards the river and then walk up.

Yeah anyone can run down a hill, this same co-worker said.

Soon I was huffing and puffing up the hill walking a bit on the steepest section. Then I started running around the track after work to measure exactly how far I was going. After 5 weeks, I had worked up to 5 miles at a time and entered my first 10K. The running team was going to do a race in the Irish Hills. Didn't like the sound of 'hills' so I opted to do the Ann Arbor -Dexter race, 6.2 miles to the cider mill in the river valley (fairly flat but slightly uphill; the reverse of the much more popular Dexter-Ann Arbor race). I figured I'd have to walk the last half mile but I pressed onward finishing in an hour. A year later, I could do it 14 minutes faster. I almost didn't do the race because I thought it was too cold, 45 degrees, which is what it was when I took off early this morning. I didn't realize how much heat I can generate running.

I thought I would run until all the excess weight was gone, which did come off fairly quickly but then I discovered I was good at running and was winning my age group often despite not having a runner's body. I did my first marathon 2 years after I started being lucky to finish under 4 hours (by 2 minutes). I got faster at that too.

So I have been running or doing some kind of motion that I told myself was running even though it was barely faster than a walk during the Decade Of Obesity since then. I had to switch to swimming for the last 2.5 months of being pregnant with Naomi, I had to take another month off due to having thyroid storm with severe Grave's Disease. I tried to run during chemo but was losing more and more red blood cells so I quit while I was taking taxol. I also could not run when I had a broken arm for 3 months or barely walk as motion was so painful.(more reasons for obesity)

I am now thin but still I am slow. Yeah I am in my sixties but I think my form is bad. I will try to improve.

The last weekend of summer. Sigh. All the kids and their kids will come here Monday and then off to school the next day. Later in the week Steve's brother and sister-in-law are visiting, which should be fun though one of the days I will be visiting my aunt who I haven't seen in 5 years. She is my mom's youngest sister versus the oldest one that I have seen more regularly.

My long time doctor has retired this month before I could have one last physical. I had to find a new doctor carefully reading their biographies. Hopefully the young woman I chose will be a good match . Bonus, the office is 4 miles away versus 15. Naomi's and Maya's insurance was mysteriously cut-off so she had to re-apply. We worried if Maya would be able to get her expensive medicine she is so dependent on. Yes, fortunately. Insurance better be re-instated before the end of this month though. She will have to skip her therapy sessions though. Not too sorry about that as I think they are fairly useless.

Who gets a mani-pedi on a Saturday night? Apparently no-one so a discount is offered. Also wine is included. Well that's where I will be.

The deluge

Well it was no Hurricane Harvey but we did get about 4 inches of rain in a short period of time. Afterwards a rainbow as it was still raining

colorful Taiwanese temple by my niece

the view from the north bathroom window  Lots of soggy plants

Maya and her pink haired mama. Lots of annoying issues to deal with this week and the next. As I type, she is at her school's orientation. summer has almost ended. Sigh.

I bought all these dahlia roots with pretty red pictures on them. All are yellow

I have killed numerous seedlings yet some morning glories have managed to survive

tropical hibiscus was covered with numerous blossoms today

Yep I have been absent from the blogsphere. Not much to report. Summer is sadly slipping away. I continue my 2 exercise sessions a day and can lift more and more weights. Come winter, I will have to cut down on the exercise but by then, I will be finished. Yep I was finished losing weight as I reached my initial goal in the middle of June. But since then, I lost another 10 pounds so I am at that magic weight I was when I married. Still can't fit into the wedding dress as my weight has either shifted or I am not as compact as I used to be. But I never dreamed I would be this weight again. I would have been happy to be at the upper end of 'normal' 28 pounds ago.

We have been taking care of business. Going to the financial planner...he is nice but I rather bury my head in the sand than make all these decisions.

Maya's father decided to move 150 miles away, 50 miles more than the court allows without permission. Yet he wants Maya every weekend. Something has got to give. Somehow I am the negotiator.

We had a wonderful Moms meeting out on my friend's farm on a beautiful summer night last week. I roasted Japanese eggplant and squash and onions to put over my crust made of mashed cauliflower. For a sauce, I just spread pesto. and added fresh mozzarella cheese. I thought it was tasty.

Still teaching myself Spanish. I am up to 16% proficiency versus starting at 15%. Hmmmmm.

And Harvey..what hell. Houston is a place I would never want to live. Hot, humid, crowded, no scenery, full of oil smokestacks, no planning whatsoever. They covered almost every inch with cement and left tiny 'bayous' for excess water to go. I do feel for the people. I can't imagine 50 inches of rain. 4 inches was enough.

Spanish dreams

I was so excited to find this presumed red tailed hawk feather on my run today (fun to carry it back tucked into my shorts) but perhaps it is a turkey feather as it is about 2 inches too long for a hawk plus I found it in a wooded area and red tailed hawks are out in the open

one of my butternut squashes. Lots of spaghetti squash too

marigolds

roses

Me and one of the Chosen Sisters at our last Mom's dinner. We have one tonight too. Normally I bring dessert but will bring a cauliflower crust pizza

In 1992 I watched the Summer Olympics in Barcelona. The marathon went through  La Rambla and Passeig  Gracia where many of Gaudi's buildings are. That's where I want to be if I ever got to Europe I thought. Ten years later, one of the Moms had a daughter going to school in Paris. 4 of us went out to visit her. I didn't want to spend the whole time in Paris so two of us took off in an overnight train to Barcelona. I went back a few years later with other friends.

But Steve has never been there and it will be our 40th anniversary in December. We made the arrangements this week to be there on our anniversary in the W hotel on a peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean , no hostals for us this time. We will also be in Madrid and Seville, places I have been but he hasn't and I didn't see everything I could while there. For my 2nd trip there, I did learn a little Spanish as I kept encountering people who didn't speak English but later while learning Italian, I found the Spanish got me confused and so I tried to forget it. I am now relearning it on an app. I am allegedly 15% fluent according to some screening test I took. The principal language in Barcelona is Catalan which looks a lot like French (night is nit versus nuit versus noches) but sounds more like Portuguese but most people know Spanish even though all the signs are in Catalan. So this trip will make me less fearful of the doom and gloom of our winter.

First step, renew passport. It won't expire until 8 months from now but it will be less than 6 months when we leave, which for some stupid reason is unacceptable. When I went to Italy for 8 weeks, I needed to get a visa, buy health insurance and prove I have money .

What is the easiest flower to grow? I would say cosmos. They tended to overwhelm everything else I planted back at the old house but here, they keep dying. I suspect a cosmos virus of some sort. Too bad as they are so pretty. I did go to two nurseries yesterday with a friend to pick up some budget perennials which I planted today. More foxglove, delphinium, hollyhocks and bluets. We went by the huge field of sunflowers I had photographed days before. But alas, the heads hung down as it was cloudy.

The day of the eclipse

We were to get only 80% coverage here in SE Michigan. And looming clouds threatened visibility. Steve's photo

No I can't see the sclipse in this either. iPhone attempt. Also failure, taking photos of mirror images. I could see the bite the moon was taking out of the sun but couldn't photograph it

the boys looking at the sclipse

one of the hairy donkeys on my bike ride got a haircut

acres and acres of sunflowers. The farmer said too many people trespassing and stealing his crop. The barrier of poison ivy was enough to keep me out

Nearby neighbors find any occasion to light off fireworks and fire crackers. Today's excuse: the eclipse. No I didn't travel down to the bands of totality though I know those who did. Would have to settle with the 80.5% predicted. It was also very cloudy this afternoon making the eclipse not all that visible.

I found a way to complete my favorite loop though it involves more dirt roads. Still the new route was nice and only a mile longer than my favored but closed due to construction loop. And extra bonus, the dirt road is fairly smooth and goes through a dense forest. I took off on my bike ride right before dawn. As I ride due north for 5 miles, I can watch the sun rise to my right, a giant orange ball.

Summer is winding down. Spent a pleasant evening with a friend drinking fancy beers and watching warring hummingbirds.

8 years old

Daniel blows out his birthday cupcake

years ago with Shanna

Allie who just got her staples removed from her head injury

Daniel and his siblings in Chicago last week

When I used to make  photo calendars, August 18. 19 and 20 would all be filled in: Daniel's birthday followed by Josh and Julia's anniversary followed by Naomi and Don'tae's anniversary. The marriages are no more.

Summer is leaving. It is dark when I wake up. No more bicycling before 6 am. The wrens have fledged so the parent wrens no longer attack the chipmunks on the nearby feeders though the chipmunks were getting used to being pecked as they ran off with the food. The hummingbird wars have become more intense.

Shanna had various relatives over to help celebrate Daniel's birthday last night. Lots of kids running around. The night before, Josh and Allie went out to dinner with us. It has been a while since I saw Ms. Hannah.

It was a cool morning to run which is how I like it. Much easier to go faster. and then I biked. I saw deer during both times on different sections of Cherryhill Road. I didn't see any during the entire week we were up north but they are all over the place here.

Cooking for survival

Maya at the therapist office the other day. We get to take a 2 week break from this. Yay!

for my primitive doll collection: homemade angel

Tessa at the Bean in Millennium Park

Well at least I don't have to water today. Finally some relief. Extra bonus: it stopped raining long enough for me to get a run in though as it was so hot and humid, I didn't feel well.

I went to my monthly cooking class at the Cancer Support Community last night. Subject: healthy pita sandwiches. I am not a fan of pita bread, too cardboardy and 'healthy' pita is even more so. My new rule about carbs; they better be good if I am going to risk obesity eating them and pita bread doesn't pass the test. I have added some carbs to my 'maintenance ' plan such as the mushroom pasta I had for lunch today but if I start to gain weight, out they go. So she made 4 fillings: egg salad which I could barely tolerate smelling so no to that one; roasted eggplant, tomato and asaigio cheese (the winner by far); a white peach and corn salad (tasted better than it sounds), and a zucchini fritter with roasted pepper hummus number (also good but too much work to prepare).  She always introduces herself to the newbies how she has been a dietician for years at the nearby hospital and had breast cancer twice (two kinds). Someone asked what hope is there for them if she, presumably eating healthy all the time, got cancer twice. But there are many causes of cancer and many advantages of eating healthier even if one takes cancer out of the equation.

My friend was able to make it there.  I had met her there 4 years ago. We bonded when it turned out we were going to Italy (she is Italian-American) at the same time. Although she was feeling fairly good last night, her permanent lung disorder is getting worse. Sadly no cure for that. She is considering a clinical trial for treatment that now cystic fibrosis patients get for clearing their lungs of sticky mucus. It won't stop the fibrotic lesions though.

The class is for survivors and the supporters of someone going through treatment but sometimes the strangest people show up. A woman returned who does not have cancer nor is not close to anyone that does but for a while thought she might have cancer because certain things didn't seem right but she was too afraid to get them checked out because she is so afraid of actually having cancer. She is mostly deaf so the instructor has to repeat things numerous times and has a huge list of foods she won't eat and expects to be accommodated. Annoying. There are foods that are difficult for those in treatment to handle ( I couldn't even abide the smell of my beloved coffee) and some people actually do have allergies but OMG, how crazy some people get. For the record, I did not ask for the eggs to be left out of the egg salad . The instructor has too much patience  though she was getting irritated when a certain someone would not shut-up when others had the floor. 

Since we did not see Josh's family last weekend, we are going out to dinner with them tonight. Tomorrow is the former preemie Daniel's birthday. Tuesday night, the Moms and I had Happy Hour next to the train tracks. Blackberry IPA, yum. Steve took in Naomi's car that had only 240 miles left on the warranty. The problem seemed to disappear. They could not find the defect. Hopefully it will not come back.

Went resaling yet again for some smaller clothes. Size 4, can you believe it? I can't.