Time Flying

The good news is, I'm sleeping better again. However, I'm still crazy busy at work, and my usual 3-5 times per week morning workouts have instead become showing up at work at 7:30 AM.

Yay.

However, Jason and I did this on Sunday night:

Last night we decorated the outside of our house, and I'll take a picture of that someday. In the meantime it was, like, 70 degrees here in Rhode Island today and that's not helping my disbelief that the last day of November is tomorrow.

Sick of Being Sick

Jason and I are in Vermont.  It's 3:49 am and I have been awake since 1:15 am.  There are a couple of reasons.

One is some family drama that has been swirling around in my head and preventing me from getting a solid night's sleep for almost 2 weeks now.  No fun when work is also busy and I need to be able to focus.  Last week when Jason and I were out running errands one night I actually took off from a stop straight into the intersection when the green arrow came on, but my light was still red.  Thank goodness the drivers who were turning left and would have been completely justified in running into me were paying attention.

I'm sure that wasn't related to sleep deprivation AT ALL. 

Needless to say, after we ran our errand, Jason drove home.  I think he could tell it really shook me up because he's gone pretty easy on the teasing about it.

The other reason I'm up is because despite taking my prescription meds, today's migraine wouldn't go away.  I'm out of the prescription drugs, so I popped a couple excedrin.  The headache is waning a little, but now I'm buzzing from the caffeine.

Basically I'm a hot mess.

The migraine thing had been a huge issue lately.  I think it's due to my overall stress level, but also to my lack of attention to my diet.  Even though I've come to the conclusion that wheat seems to be a migraine trigger for me, I've kept on merrily eating wheat in some form pretty much every day.  And I've been getting migraines every couple of days.

Also, my jeans continue to get tighter.

This needs to stop. 

Right now, at 4:03 in the morning, I'm not feeling strong-willed enough to make powerful, enthusiastic declarations, but I do know that I need to make some changes and that I'm just really tired of feeling semi-ill most of the time.

Costumes!

So usually I'm kind of ambivalent about Halloween - at least the costuming aspect of it. I'm wearing an orange sweater and a black skirt today. On Saturday at our ward Halloween party, I wore all black and these little black and orange kitty ears.

(Hilariously, the cat ears freaked Tiny right the heck out. He got all low to the ground and his tail puffed up to about 3 times its normal size while he looked at me with wide eyes. I kept trying to freak him out, though, so now he's kind of used to the ears. He still doesn't like them and stares at me until I take them off, but his tail doesn't puff up anymore.)

The point is, my Halloween costumes of late have been either completely half-a**ed, or nonexistent.

On Friday I was IMing with a friend of mine and she sent me a link to a discount costume shop. I immediately started going through the costumes, looking for pretty things. I'm kind of annoyed generally by the whole slutty costume phenomenon, which seems to get worse every year. I saw a costume for a slutty Harry Potter this year. What?! That doesn't even make sense.

Anyway, I like the pretty costumes. When I was in high school, I actually rented a Southern belle costume one year. The hoop skirt was a major drag to sit at a desk in, but I felt lovely and all day long the cute outgoing boys (you know, the ones who were frat boys in college and are now lawyers or finance types) would do things like take my gloved hand and kiss it while complimenting me in a fake Southern drawl. So that was fun.

Friday I bought this costume:
And this costume, which I hoped would match a pretty headpiece I bought on a lark several years ago when I went to my one and only Renaissance Faire (it was a hoot):
And they just arrived! All weekend long I felt kind of silly about buying them, but now I'm so excited to go home and try them on after work. I may need to wear them even when it's not Halloween.

Swim Across America 9/10/11

Every so often I post something on my healthy living blog that Jason informs me is of general interest and I should post on my regular blog. This is one of those posts. So if you think you've already read this on my other blog, that's because you probably did. For everyone else, I did an open water swim! Here's the report.

Saturday I swam my first open water swim with Swim Across America! I raised $920 for cancer research at Women and Infants Hospital right here in Providence. At the end of last week, I was getting a little nervous. Hurricane Katia was creating big swells on the Rhode Island beaches, and rumors of rip tides were floating around.

However, the water on Saturday morning couldn't have been better:

Not only did the swells really die down, but unbeknownst to me, the beach at Wheeler State Beach is protected by a breakwater because it's also the same area where the ferries head out to Block Island and Martha's Vineyard. So the water was actually pretty smooth - much smoother than any of my practice swims.

Here's the route for the swim (we mile swimmers made the loop twice)I signed in and got my yellow cap and my number

Plus, a sweet tat (which is still secured firmly on my shoulder, despite several showers and a workout swim yesterday morning)

I ran into my Masters coach and introduced her to Jason, but she was a little distracted because she had been assigned to watch over Clara Walker, the 86 year-old former Olympian. Clara is a native Rhode Islander who swam in the 1948 London Olympics. Amazing! She swam a half mile on Saturday. Clara Walker is my new hero!

After I registered there wasn't much to do besides wait.I also snagged a pineapple Chobani for Jason, since he didn't have the chance to eat before we left, and they had food for the swimmers.

Jason snapped this picture while I was dutifully listening to the announcements and safety instructions.Right after the announcements, I bumped into a woman from my Masters group. We wound up having a mutual-appreciation conversation (I complimented her speed, she complimented my kick) and she made me feel much less nervous about the upcoming swim. It's always nice to have a buddy. She and I lined up together and ran into the water together, then she took off (because she's super fast).

The 1-mile start (the half-mile swimmers had pink caps and started about 10 minutes after us).After the 1st loop, I thought, "I have to do that again?! Maybe I should have done the 1/2 mile...", but then the 2nd loop flew by and before I knew it, I was finished.

Done!I met both of my goals, which were, (1) Finish, and (2) Don't be last.

About 30 seconds in, I realized I hadn't asked Jason to time me, and I had forgotten my waterproof watch. Darn it! However, Jason said we started at exactly 9:00 and he's pretty sure I came out of the water at 9:29 almost exactly. So I swam the open-water mile in 29 minutes, which I'm very pleased with, considering it's only about 10 seconds off my fastest pool time.

Jason and I spent the rest of the day at the beach. We stayed at Wheeler for awhile, then headed over to Scarborough, where the lack of breakwater meant we had some fun waves to jump. We also both got completely fried. Note to self: Jason hates touching sunscreen and will thus not apply it evenly, or even completely, on my back. My back is currently 3 different colors of tan.

All in all, the swim was fun and I'm glad I challenged myself. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of events I can swim next season.

Garden!

We live in an old industrial city in New England, which means the soil probably has lead and chromium and all sorts of fun things in it. So even though we now have a house with a yard, we're all about the container gardening, at least when it comes to vegetables and herbs.

Our backyard is lovely and shaded by 2 big oak trees and a maple, which is fantastic for dozing in the hammock on a warm Summer's day, but not so conducive to growing things. All of our gardening has to be done on the front stoop and in the front yard. I think we have done a pretty good job with keeping things looking tidy even though it's all right in view of the street.

We got started a little late this year. I planted the seeds in the little peat pods in a timely manner and they grew and grew, and then they started to die because I was really busy and didn't transplant them quickly enough. But I managed to salvage some of them.

Here's where we started, with little seedlings in containers on the front stoop.
The plants love the sun and being outside. We just have to stay on top of the watering because they drink like crazy.

Here are the pepper seedlings from several weeks ago:

Here are the peppers now:
I planted 3 types of pepper seeds and have no idea what is growing. There are a few flowers now, so hopefully we'll have some fruit soon. I'm hoping for banana peppers, but I may be way off.

Tomato seedlings from a few weeks ago:

Tomato plant now:
The tomato plant is HUGE and has a ton of baby tomatoes and flowers all over it. Not to mention we have two more tomato plants growing elsewhere in the yard that we planted a bit later than this one. I see some tomato canning in my future.

Originally I had one cucumber seedling that survived my earlier neglect. It looked a little puny so I dug a hole in the container and planted a bunch more seeds just to see what would happen.

Here's what happened (the original plant is on the left, and all the new seedlings are in the middle and on the right):

I think every single one of those cucumber seeds decided to grow. Jason and I knew we needed to cull the herd, so I pulled out all of the new seedlings except for a couple. Then we felt guilty about the cucumber deaths on our hands and I replanted the majority of them into two other containers we had.

Now the cucumbers are taking over the world.

Or at least our yard.

Seriously, they wind all over the place and grab onto other plants and just climb up them. We have one plant next to the big tomato and a few days ago I had to untangle the cucumber from the tomato and redirect it before it took over completely.

So far we only have one cucumber, which is just about ready to be picked, but all of our cucumber plants have about 37 blossoms each, so I think we'll be drowning in cucumbers in a couple of weeks. Anyone have a good pickle recipe?

Even though I don't want to plant anything we're going to eat in the yard, I'm happy to plant flowers. Earlier this summer I bought and planted three red dahlia bulbs. Then the squirrels and/or rabbits dug up 2 of the bulbs. One of them disappeared after it had already sprouted a stem and some leaves. But they left me with 1 and the first blossom showed up just the other day.

Dahlias are one of my favorite flowers! The plant has a bunch of buds on it now and I can't wait for when they all bloom.

Franconia Ridge

(I posted this on my other blog, but Jason said I should post it here too, since it's general interest and not just about exercise. Okay then. Just a warning, this is long. If you want to skip my storytelling, just scroll down to the pretty pictures below.)

This past weekend we went up to New Hampshire for a hiking and camping adventure in the White Mountains. We hiked the Franconia Ridge loop trail, climbing up the Falling Waters trail, summiting at Little Haystack, Mt. Lincoln and Mt Lafayette, and coming down the Bridle Path trail. The hike was a personal victory for me since last year I begged off this same hike.

My hiking history is complicated. Jason LOVES hiking. Going up a mountain is his favorite thing ever and I feel really bad that I haven't quite caught the vision. Last year we hiked up the Beaver Brook Trail to Mt. Moosilauke in the White Mountains. The trail starts out all nice and casual in the woods and then ascends almost 2000 feet in a little more than a mile. Which kind of means you're going straight up. They don't mess around in New Hampshire. No sissy switchbacks in New England. It's straight up the mountain, every time.

I fully admit that I did not listen to Jason and take the proper precautions, and I wound up dehydrated about halfway up the mountain. Which means I went the rest of the way up the mountain, then back down that super steep trail feeling like I was going to die. FYI, in the mountains, Gatorade is your friend. The first and last 2 1/2 miles of the trail consist of these giant granite boulders. Going up, you scramble up and over them. Going down, you have to step on each and every boulder and maintain your balance. It's brutal on your quads, calves and ankles on a normal day. That day, my legs were already shaking like crazy from getting dehydrated, so every time I took a giant step down to the next boulder, I fully expected to just fall over.

For 2 1/2 miles.

Super fun.

And it's not like you can just stop because, you know, you're halfway up a mountain.

Fast forward a couple months later and we were back up in the Whites with a group from Jason's lab. We decided to hike the Franconia Ridge loop trail and everyone started out all excited and fearless and feeling like, yeah, we can conquer the mountain! After hiking for 1.4 miles, we reached Cloudland Falls and took a break for pictures and to assess. One of our group looked at the coming trail and said, "Now we start going up." One person in our group had never been hiking before and his face completely fell. He asked, "What have we been doing so far?!" Because even though the trail hadn't been too bad yet, there had already been a few scrambles and a few out-of-breath breaks (for those of us not in primo hiking condition).

Ultimately, he and his girlfriend decided to turn back. They had seen the beautiful falls, and would get in almost a 3-mile hike this way. They were okay with that. I decided to go back with them.

And it's eaten at me ever since. My experience on the Beaver Brook Trail had scared me out of finishing the trail with the group.

So Jason and I decided to go for it again. At the falls, I almost quit again. Almost. Then I saw a bunch of people up above the falls and decided I would like to see that view so we scrambled up there. Then we kept going.

Two things kept me going. One, on the way up to the top of the falls, there was this really annoying narrow, slippery ledge of rock that I had to scramble over. I did not want to go back down that (which is kind of hilarious to think about now, considering the rock faces I had to slide down going down the other side of the ridge several hours later).

The second thing, and this is really the main one, was Jason. He was being such a dear and assuring me that we could turn back if I wanted to. But I knew he would be so incredibly disappointed. I knew he was already worried that this trip was his last chance to convince me to, if not like, then at least not hate hiking. He loves it so much, and after I pushed myself to go up the trail over the falls, I just couldn't turn around.

He gave me a couple of more chances on our way up the mountain to turn back, but at that point, I was determined to do it for myself.

So I did it. It's kind of an amazing route. In one loop, you can get in 3 4,000 foot peaks - though technically Little Haystack doesn't count since there is less than a 200 foot descent between it and Mt. Lincoln, the next peak on the ridge. Whatever. It's the first summit you get to from the Falling Waters Trail and in my mind, it counts.

Starting out - take the Bridle Path .2 miles to Falling Waters (or you can go straight up the Bridle Path to Greenleaf Hut and on to Mt. Lafayette).

The Falling Waters Trail runs parallel to the river, interspersed by lovely waterfalls. The water was pretty low this time of year, but the Cloudland Falls were still lovely.
After this point, the trail veers away from the water and starts going up. New Hampshire is called the Granite State for a reason. There are huge granite boulders everywhere, including on the trail.
Heading up, still fairly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, even if I am a sweaty beast. It was about 75-80 degrees the whole time and pretty muggy (there were storms coming).

One of the reasons I am not the biggest fan of hiking is because I am extremely self-conscious. I've written on here so much about my struggles to lose weight. On Thursday night I tried on the hiking pants I wore last year and they are too small. Such an awful feeling, especially when I've been working so hard with my swimming. So I feel like I'm the fat girl on the mountain and everyone must be looking at me thinking, What is she doing here? (Though if I've learned anything from my experiences at the gym and the pool, it's that people are nothing but encouraging).

Here's the thing, though. Despite my extra weight, despite my flab and cellulite, I was right there with everyone else. I was keeping the same pace as the guys and the skinny girls. They were feeling just as much pain as I was.

The trail is pretty popular so we kept bumping into the same groups of people. We would slog along and come across one or two groups resting. Then we would rest and they would pass us. We would all smile at and say things like, "Slow and steady" or "We're getting there". There's a great camaraderie on the mountain.

First peak! At the top of Little Haystack
Cairn on the ridge.It was my understanding going in that once you get to the ridge, bagging 3 peaks is cake. That's not entirely true. Yes, all 3 peaks run along the ridge. What other people neglected to tell me is that in between each peak is a descent and another ascent. I suppose that's only fair if you're going to count them, but when I was looking up that rocky slope to the summit of Mt. Lafayette, having already come up the trail to Little Haystack, and then gone up again to Mt. Lincoln, I admit to feeling a little defeated.

My motto became "slow and steady" because, really, that's the only way to do it.

We did it! At the top of Mt. Lafayette, the final peak at 5,260 feet.
We ran into an Appalachian Trail thru hiker and his friend at the top, who kindly offered to take the above picture, if we would take theirs. He had a big bushy beard and a huge, beat-up frame pack with camp shoes dangling off the back and when I initially saw him I wondered if he was a thru hiker. Turns out he started in Georgia on March 20th. Amazing!
After resting for awhile at the top of Mt. Lafayette, we started down. It's easy to forget that what you just came up, you now have to go down. 1,000 feet down from the summit of Mt. Lafayette is Greenleaf Hut, which is maintained by the Appalachian Mountain Club. Partway to the hut, we started hearing bagpipes on the wind. When we arrived, a man was standing outside of the hut, playing his bagpipes, which he had carried up with him on the trail

Last year Jason and his dad did a multi-day trek and stayed at 3 huts along the way. Jason had suggested earlier in the week that he and I stay at Greenleaf Hut for the night and hike down the next day, but I thought it seemed silly to stop when we were only 3 miles from the car at that point.

Yeah, by the time we got there, it didn't seem so silly anymore. Alas, Jason had listened to me, and we had no reservations for the hut. We made a quick pit stop, and soldiered on down the Bridle Path. Jason took this picture of a lovely flat section of path just as we came back into the scrub forest.

In reality, this is what most of the way down looked like:
Yes, that is a trail.

I actually love this next picture.
Jason took it when I wasn't really paying attention to him, I was just trying to get down the freaking mountain.

The best way to describe the granite is "unrelenting". That was the word we settled on as we made our way down.

Here's our final shot of the hike, back at the start of the trail. Exhausted, but satisfied.
We went for our celebratory dinner at The Common Man, which is becoming a post-hike tradition, and then headed back to camp, where it promptly started raining. It proceeded to rain for the next 15-20 hours. We went to sleep to the rain and woke up to the rain. We packed up camp in the rain and drove out of camp in the rain.

After we left camp, we went into Lincoln, NH for breakfast, then headed back up to the mountains for some more low-key sightseeing. I'll post more about that next time.

The original plan was to camp for 3 nights. I'm sure it would have been very peaceful at the campsites last night since Rhode Island is the only state that has today, a random Monday in August, for a holiday, but Jason took pity on me and agreed to come home early. I was starting to get really sore and had a headache that wouldn't quit. I knew every campsite would be quiet, but very soggy after the hours and hours of rain.

Besides, I'm not exactly sure what we would have done today if we were still up there since another hike is totally out of the question. Probably would have just laid in the tent all day, trying to will enough strength into our legs to actually get out of the tent. No mean feat after a big hike.

I've learned from strength training and past hikes that the 2nd day after is the worst. I was kind of pleased when I woke up yesterday morning and wasn't in as much pain as I thought I would be. Today is worse. Going upstairs is bad, but going downstairs is just brutal. I feel like an absolute hero for walking up and down the stairs 4 times so far today to take care of laundry and other necessities. I deserve a medal.

Sitting here, comfortable in my house, I feel a huge amount of self-satisfaction. I did the trail that scared me last year. I bagged 3 more 4,000-footers so now I have 5 (Camel's Hump in Vermont and Moosilauke are my other 2). I am sore in that satisfying, wow, I really pushed myself hard way. I shared a neat experience with my husband. I saw views that only a small percentage of people ever see.

But, man, was it brutal.

I have a love/hate relationship with hiking up mountains. I'll leave it at that for now.

Thinking

- What is up with all shirts being long enough to fit a woman who is 8 feet tall? I understand that everyone still wears low-rise jeans and so the shirts need to be a bit longer, but I seriously can't even try on half the shirts in the stores because they're really long. And I even have a pretty long torso. They always hit me about mid-bum and since I'm curvy they just look terrible because either they're super clingy or if I try them on so that they're large enough to fit my bum, very tent-like. Where do they hit on the normal-torsoed, non-curvy girl - mid-thigh? I bought a couple shirts last week that I like, but am kind of thinking about taking to a tailor to get hemmed a couple of inches shorter.

- We went to the Cape a couple of weekends ago and I decided I might not really mind so much being one of those ladies who leaves the city for the summer to stay at the beach house with the nanny and the kids and spends her days at the beach, getting spa treatments and lunching with friends while hubby works and comes out on weekends. Yes, I just deducted about 500 points from my feminist score.

England!

I didn't want to talk about this too much and be all, "Hi, we're going to be in England for 10 days. Rob us, please!", but Jason and I were in England for 10 days. I'm using the MBTA's wireless and writing this on the train back to Providence. We were in England on tour with the Christ Church Cambridge Evensong Choir, where we sang in 6 different cathedrals throughout England.

Despite the sore feet and my ultimately ragged singing voice, it was an amazing experience and I'm so glad Jason and I got to do it together. We made some new friends and got to know our old friends better. Each of the cathedrals and the towns they were in had their own feel and flavor, and we got to sample a bit of them all. We stayed in London, Lincoln and Bath and had fun exploring those towns on our down time. I would love to go back to them all! We ate lots of fish and chips, savory pies, pasties, sausage rolls and various puddings.

The whole thing was organized through a tour company, so we stayed in much swankier hotels than Jason and I would have stayed in if we were traveling solo. Everything was planned for us, which was actually pretty nice. Also, we had an amazingly wonderful tour guide (dare I say, "delicious"? That was one of her favorite words to describe, well, most things. Cathedrals, castles, towns, people. Pretty much anything except food.) She was hilarious and fit in very well with our group. I plan to give her high marks with the tour company.

The whole trip really made me wish we still lived in Cambridge so that we could hang out with everyone on a regular basis. One of the ladies is already talking about having a choir tour reunion potluck over the summer and I really hope she follows through.

If you're interested, one of the members of the choir posted a bit on a blog while we were gone. There's a flickr stream on the blog with lots of great photos of the choristers, the cathedrals, the towns and our extracurricular excursions. Also, he says he's going to try to post mp3s of us singing in the next few days.

Day 8: Maui, May 2, 2010

On Day 8, we moved from the hotel to the timeshare resort. Holy fancy!

It was seriously like those tropical resorts you see pictures of, but think, I could never stay at a place like that (or at least that's how it goes down in my head). Well, with in-laws who made a fortuitous timeshare swap 3 years in advance, you can!

Just check out the grounds

And the view of the beach

It was one of a strip of fancy resorts on the beach, but from what I could see of the other places, where we stayed had the most awesome giant grotto pool (with water slides!)

We hot tubbed it every night, just because we could.

We had some time to kill before we could officially check in, so we stashed our bags with the concierge and went exploring.

Sarah and I wanted to hit the beach. So we and Brandon and Jason got suited up. The only problem was, the water looked fantastic, but about 4 feet off the beach were a bunch of rocks. Not so much a swimming beach, but judging by the number of tourists sunning themselves in chairs on the beach and by the pool for hours on end, I have a feeling we were the only ones who ever discovered that. So we walked down the beach a bit and checked out the other resorts. Further down were some great swimming spots.

Meanwhile, Lorraine, Steve, Marissa and Taylor checked out the local artisan market.

I really want the giant wooden turtle on the left to hang on my office wall. That would be awesome.

This woman made these amazing baskets out of local plants.

Marissa and Tay were all over the shave ice.

(The one regret I have is not getting the chance to try shave ice while I was in Hawaii. Next time...)

That night, Sarah, Brandon, Jason and I went to a luau. I know it's a totally touristy thing to do, but I wanted the experience while I was in Hawaii. So I managed to convince Jason, and Brandon and Sarah decided to come too (Baby Anya stayed with the rest of the family).

You walk in and immediately they put a lei on you (I was hoping for that at the airport a la The Brady Bunch, but alas...)

You come through the door into a large green space right on the ocean with pathways winding through it.
There are also two big huts for getting drinks. Since drinks were included in the admission price, I had many, many, fruity nonalcoholic drinks. (My favorite was the frozen pina colada slush mixed with passion fruit juice. You know, for future reference if you ever find yourself in such circumstances.)

Our seats were on the ground near the stage.
The pig in the pit!
Digging out the pig.



Ta-dah! It tasted amazing, by the way.
Sunset and fruity drinks. It's like a postcard.

Enjoying the fantastic buffet. My favorite was the pork wrapped in taro leaves.

After we finished dinner, the servers brought around dessert platters. The little white squares were this lightly-sweetened coconut dessert. I have no idea what they were, but I loved them.
The show begins. The luau we went to featured the history of the Polynesian people, displaying different styles of dancing over the years.

We discovered it's hard to catch dancers in low light.

The show was fun and I'm glad we got the chance to go. And now I can say I've tried poi. Not a fan.

Back at the resort, we found out Baby Anya had kind of a rough evening. But at least she took some cute pictures first.