December 2nd, 2010 by Busy Mommy

Well- as you all know if you read this blog, I was doing a lot of hiking back in the spring of this year.  Then things went downhill again for me for awhile and I’ve been away from it for a few months.  But I’m happy to say I’m back at it.  Nolan and I did our third hike today over Mt. Diablo starting at Curry Point.  All I have to say is wow.  Mt. Diablo is beautiful- a real mountain.  A lot of places I hike are beautiful and pleasant for sure, but they’re only wannabe mountains.  Mt. Diablo doesn’t have to prove anything to anybody.  Just the drive up there makes it obvious where you’re headed.  Some photos along the fire road trail: I just can’t believe how good hiking really feels.  I feel so refreshed, happy, energetic, satisfied, and…happy (did I say that already?) during and after hiking.  If only my body matched up with my true desires when it comes to hiking I could accomplish so much more.  I could feel like giving up on life entirely one day, and if I go hiking the next day, everything feels good and livable again.  As long as my little friend Teddy is working okay that is.  T-d for thyroid, so Teddy- get it?  Although Teddy hasn’t really been a true friend to me these past few years, I have sent Teddy to “counseling” and improvements have been seen in Teddy with medication.   (Teddy still has a way to go, but on Teddy’s good days we’re able to hike like today!  Actually it makes logical sense that hiking feels good because my new Doc said that exercising regularly is extremely important to true recovery with thyroid diseases- he said you must capitalize on the increase in metabolism that taking T3 medication brings in order to really improve long term.  I have definitely noticed this.  But back to hiking.

I have always thought the bark of the Manzanita tree to be beautiful, but this one is without exception the most richly colored one I have ever seen. If it wasn’t so pretty where it was, I’d sure love to have it at my house as a dining table or coffee table or something!

The total trip was 4 miles, and in and out hike.  An old fire road with plenty of space and since most of it is high up along a ridge where the sun can get to it, the trail was for the most part unmuddy.  Yay for that.  I really don’t love when my shoes get so caked with mud on all sides that my shoes weigh 10 lbs. each and my steps leave imprints as big as Bigfoot’s (happened 2 days ago in a wet ravine-like area in San Ramon).  I’m sure in the next few months with some rain it will all be green- not quite there for now, but still beautiful none-the-less.  Well maybe a little less. On my hike in I did hear a strange animal call- not close by- but down the side of the mountain aways in the Diablo foothills.  It definitely wasn’t a bird, horse, or mountain lion.  It wasn’t a cow but kind of sounded like one, a deep guttural type sound.  On my hike out there was pickup truck with a VERY large animal cage in the back- I mean- it took up the whole truck bed and hung off the back.  Of course my mind got to wondering…hmmm…are there some mountain lions needing to be caught or something?  A li-ttle scary.  As I got closer to the car, I met up with four lovely older ladies who were also out hiking.  I asked if they hike together often and they said yes, and that they are the “slow sisters”.   Then I asked if they had seen the large animal cage in the truck going by.  They had and I mentioned my thought about the mountain lion.  One of the ladies responded, “Oh no, they wouldn’t catch mountain lions around here unless someone had been attacked or murdered by one or something.”  Umm…yeah my exact concern.  But then they went on to say this guy traps wild boars in the area and then they’re sent off to be ground up for dog food.  Nice.   Apparently the boars cause too much vegetation damage.  So that must have been a wild boar I heard.  Still, I googled mountain lions and Mt. Diablo…encouraging was this quote, “A former ranger told me that he knew they travel through the park, but in 30 years had never seen one there himself and didn’t think they lingered so much, but passed through the area.”

Saw some deer tracks though… a much less scary animal to rest one’s thoughts on:Oh but back to the “slow sisters”.  They loved Nolan of course (who doesn’t with that charming smile?)  They tried to interest him in their dog Chulita, but he was more focused grabbing for the ladies’ hiking pole. We walked the last stretch back together and after a once over I decided the ladies were not the criminal killer or kidnapper type and let one of them hold Nolan. She didn’t have any grandkids of her own, so I’m sure this was a treat, since Nolan is the best grandkid EVER. All in all it was a lovely day.  Nolan and I took a break and hung out in the back of the car as we do often now- with the 2 left seats down it creates a nice large space for us that’s kind of like a little home on wheels.  I love it!

September 8th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

I’ll be honest and admit it.  Our first family vacation was…well it was fun, but it was also tiring and required a bit of mental adjustment.  I so enjoyed watching Nolan in a new environment.  He loved the frigid stream water!  What gives?  Well, Ben and I liked it too, so I guess that’s why.  He came from us didn’t he?  Nolan was literally sitting in the freezing water without a stitch on, playing with, I mean, trying to eat, rocks.

There was a set of stairs on this trip and he got extremely good at climbing them.  Then he figured out how to climb back down.  Then he climbed up and down, up and down, up and down.  He climbs stairs with gusto by the way.  None of this weak plodding upwards.  It was hearty.  Hands smacking the dusty carpet of the stairs as he plowed upwards, excited to be climbing.  It never seemed to get less interesting.

You’re probably still wondering, what does she mean mental adjustments?

Concerning my husband: I am married to a man I call my John Muir.  To quote something mentioned in Wikipedia about him, “In September 1867, Muir undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Indiana to Florida, which he recounted in his book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the “wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find.”“  Further appropriate reference is this: “Experiencing Yosemite: Arriving in San Francisco in March 1868, Muir immediately left for a week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Marquis notes that “he was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower.”^[7] “We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us,” Muir later wrote. . . . “No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite… The grandest of all special temples of Nature.”^[14] He later returned to Yosemite and worked as a shepherd for a season. He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak, Mount Dana and hiked the old Indian trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake.”

(yes that’s a baby on his back- my baby)

Those phrases I bolded are very much my husband.  So when we go to the mountains, Ben yearns to do the types of stuff John Muir did.  He loves to study topo maps and books on Hiking and Backpacking in Yosemite before bed at night and pick out the best hikes and routes he wants to try.  Just one he had chosen (out of 4) for this vacation involved driving 2 hours one way from our cabin, hiking about 18 miles, at 9,000 feet elevation (read: no oxygen).

I love to hike.  You know that from all the blog posts I’ve done about my hikes with Nolan. But I am not in shape like my husband, my Hashimoto’s Thyroid garbage has been acting up, and hiking at sea level is COMPLETELY different than hiking at higher elevations, especially when you haven’t acclimated.  So we did 2 family hikes the first two days.  One short but steep where my legs literally felt like anvils the whole time (and we were only at 3,500 feet elevation), and one 4.5 mile hike along a river that was quite beautiful with huge pools of water at various points that people were swimming in.  It felt great, but by the end I definitely felt like I had gotten a really good workout.  The 4.5 miles was just right for Nolan in the pack- after that he was ready to crawl around, play, and explore.

By Saturday night Ben was talking about this advanced hike mentioned above and I had a sinking feeling- there was no way that either I or Nolan could handle such an excursion.  Nolan wasn’t capable of sitting in a backpack that long, and I wasn’t capable of being on my feet hiking that long at such an elevation.  Also I don’t like to be in the car, and neither does Nolan- so 2 hours each way was a definite turn off.  Ben wanted to go so badly that he was probably a little blind to these facts at first.  As he realized them, he felt pretty bummed.  I felt bummed for him, and for myself.  I really would love to go do that hike, if I could manage it in a way that was refreshing to me.

So there we were, at this really cool Cabin in Oakhurst with a nifty loft for a bedroom, a deck, bbq, and stream right outside, feeling bummed.  Nolan went to sleep.  I told Ben he should take the day Sunday and just go do it- get up early, do the hike, and be back to enjoy the evening as family.  He said maybe.  Morning comes and we all sleep in.  Sort of.  Nolan gets up at the crack of dawn almost remember? (Oh yes, and on vacation, 2-4 times each night as well- that’s the tiring part I described.)  Ben is doing his best to do what he thinks is “best” and be that “family man” he thinks he supposed to be, which somehow involves giving up everything you ever liked to do.  He doesn’t feel right about leaving me with Nolan alone all day without a car at the cabin.  It’s a sweet thought for sure, but he is still really bummed and sad.  This day isn’t going to be fun if you stay here feeling sad right?  I basically force him to leave by my good convincing skills.  In the end, every person needs to feed their soul with something they need.  He needed to go do this so he didn’t feel trapped, then he could come back and be happy with his family and have something to give back.  So off he went.  Yes, staying in the cabin all day with my 10 month old son and no where to go wasn’t the funnest day we’ve ever had- but it was a lot funner than with a sad husband around too! lol.  He came back content, which was the goal.  Now for me……

Quilt shops of course!!!  So on Monday Ben spent the day playing with Nolan and entertaining him, while I hit a couple of quilt shops on our drive back to home.

Concerning Nolan: The other thing we got a little freaked out about was how likely it was that Nolan could get Giardia from playing in the stream.  He tried to eat rocks from the stream a few times and we weren’t sure if he being a little guy could get giardia just from that, even though he wasn’t drinking the water or anything.  We had no idea but Ben got uneasy about it so then we couldn’t freely have fun with him in the stream until we did more research.  Nolan’s just fine by the way!  I figure I made it through my whole life playing in streams such as those and people were probably not as “green” minded in the 80’s and I never had a bout myself, so I felt Nolan would probably be ok too.

Concerning me: I was a little disappointed in myself that I couldn’t do as much as I wanted to physically, felt guilty that I even had to think about balancing what I wanted to do with what was best for Nolan and what he wants (just live for my son and my son only right?), and guilt that I didn’t play with and engage Nolan every single second of the trip (ahhhh- eating pretzels and reading a novel in a lounge chair on the deck with a soft breeze and the sound of it in the trees while Nolan napped was wonderful), but I’m trying to learn not to make my expectations too high.    Mommies are great but they aren’t perfect, and they have needs too.

So- that’s all really.  We had fun, we felt bummed part of it, Nolan had a great time in general, and all three of us got to do something we really enjoyed that wasn’t difficult for us (for Nolan I’d have to say it was the stairs.)

But after this trip what we parents are really looking forward to is….the extended family vacation!  We want grandma, grammy, grandpa, papou, uncle, bibi, and paman there to play with Nolan so this daddy and mommy can get a little respite folks!

July 30th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

This is the arm that Nolan sticks out to indicate his interest or excitement over something or someone.