re: My Lost Summer, a memoir

2008-01-22T09:46:00.000-08:00

I feel like Jack Nicholson's character on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Creativity stifled.

Water Theme

2007-08-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

My cubby-hole of an office has one window, which looks out into the hall, the main hall. Probably 700 of the 800 people who work in this building pass by my office in the morning and at the end of the day since the main entrance is just past my office.
Today as I was walking back from the cafeteria with my lunch, an older gentleman asked, “Goin’ back into the fishbowl?” And that’s exactly what it’s like, like I work in a fishbowl, and anyone can look in on me. I do have blinds I can draw, but I feel so closed off when they’re down, so they’re up most of the time.
So I’m in a waterless fishbowl while at work—and speaking of water…

…there was none at the house this morning. Thank goodness I didn’t work out and get all sweaty like I do most mornings. I woke Mark up, and he checked to make sure the basement wasn’t flooded. After he learned everything was OK there, he called Cincinnati Water Works. This was around 6:30 a.m. The person he spoke with said the problem was with 701, our next door neighbors.
I just got off the phone with Mark and he said a crew didn’t show up until 10 a.m. to fix the problem, and they broke for lunch at 11 a.m. At the end of our phone conversation he looked out and said, “There’s nobody out there. It’s obvious they’re getting paid by the hour.”
I was planning to go to yoga tonight, which is why I didn’t work out this morning, but if I can’t get a shower at home, I don’t want to go to yoga. The only time I sweat more than when I do yoga is when I pull weeds on a 100 degree day. Ashtanga yoga really takes it out of me. I'm visiting a friend in Columbus Thursday night. Can I wait that long for a shower? Mark doubts it. I do too.

MTV's Made

2007-08-20T05:43:00.001-07:00

My 18-year-old niece, Lindsey, has had the summer of her life. She is a natural thespian, writing, producing, and acting in plays since she was a little girl. However, she did none of that this summer; she spent a month learning to barrel race a horse.

Last year at her high school, MTV made a casting call for students for their emmy-winning show Made. From Wikipedia,

The series follows teens who wish to be ‘made’ into singers, athletes, dancers, skateboarders, etc. The teens are joined by a ‘Made Coach’, an expert in their chosen field, who try to help them attain their goals over the course of several weeks. Made documents the process the teens undergo as they try to achieve their goal.

Lindsey didn’t really have a goal to be “made” into anything (she’s pretty terrific as she is), she just wanted to be on the show. Being as creative as she is, she came up with something pretty original: She said she wanted to be a rodeo queen.

The producer liked the idea, and MTV found Lindsey’s alter-personality: a barrel racer who wants to be an actress. The two will share air time on a Super Made at the end of September.

Lindsey’s training culminated in her run on Saturday at a rodeo in Maryland. I won’t give away her finishing time. What I’ll do is post the show date and time when I find out for sure.

When I called yesterday, they were getting ready for the celebratory party, and MTV would be filming. My mom flew out from Ohio to see her granddaughter race. Mom used to barrel race when she was a teen, and MTV is playing up that angle. My brother told them also that his sister (me) is a coma survivor as a result of a horseback-riding accident. They might take off on that bent too, and My Lost Summer would get a plug on a nationally televised show!

I can’t wait to see Lindsey. Everyone I spoke to yesterday—Mom, my nephew, and my brother—all said she was beautiful.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

2007-08-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, a friend from work and I drove to Indianapolis to meet her parents for breakfast. They came over from Illinois, where my friend is from originally. After breakfast, we all visited the Indianapolis Zoo, where the only animals that appeared to be unaffected by the heat were the dolphins enveloped in their cool-water environs. When my friend and I got back to her place, we watched the musical Chicago, which I had gotten from Blockbuster.com, being a member.

That early evening as I gathered my things to go, even though I expressed no interest in the book, my friend handed me her copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the first in the Harry Potter series. She told me I’d like it.

I’m not really into fantasy or science fiction—things that can’t happen in real life—but I thought I’d give it a gander since my friend recommended it.

I started it a couple times in several days and got through the first two or three chapters and found it to be not quite as compelling as I expected with all the hoopla that occurs with each release of the story’s continuation.

However, once I read beyond the point where Harry is unassuming and pitiful—once he finds out that he is borne of a witch and a wizard—well, then the adventure begins.

I finished it this weekend, and my friend just stopped in my office and said she’d bring the second one. I can hardly wait.

Unsolicited Interest in Me as a Writer

2007-08-10T10:28:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I got a message from someone here at work whom I didn’t know. I’d seen her name on e-mails that are distributed building-wide, so I knew the name, but I could not put a face to that name. She’s a PR person.

In the subject line of the message was “please call me -7###.” So I did. She asked me if I sit in the corner office in the new annex. I assured her that was me, and she asked if I had time to come to her office. She said she’s not supposed to be talking to a contractor (I am a contractor; she is a federal employee) so doesn’t want to come to my office, which has a window to the hall through which any passer-by could see us chatting.

I had no idea what this was about, but I told her, “Sure, I can come to your office.” She gave her room location, and I was off. I did make a quick stop in the bathroom to make sure my braces were food free as I was eating left-over pizza when I called her. The brackets weren’t too bad as I’d only taken a couple bites as yet. A quick swish of water around my mouth was good.

I walked in her office, and she asked me to close the door. She said that she read the articles posted to my office window, the one that looks out to the hallway, and thought, “This is someone who can write.” How flattering! The articles are the ones syndicated to four weeklies in southwest Ohio and posted to my other blog, www.OurNationsTreasure.blogspot.com.

I still didn’t know where this was going. If she wanted to purchase rights to the articles to publish in EPA literature? If she wanted to hire me on a freelance basis to write for the EPA. What?

What she wanted was to find out if I were interested in becoming a fed. Of course I was! The pay! The benefits! I’d be nuts not to want to move from contractor to fed. She told me that several writing positions are to be posted soon, and she didn’t know if they would be for “all eyes” or just for feds, but she told me she’d make sure I was aware of them.

How nice, huh? What a boost to my ego too. I hope they come up soon.

An E-mail I Sent to Friends and Family

2007-07-30T04:47:00.001-07:00

Dear everybody,

Friday at 4:40 I took the call from the nurse who said my test showed I am not pregnant. It was our second insemination. I thought for sure I was pregnant this time because I felt different—really weak for about 18 hours about three or four days after ovulation, but since I’ve looked at the calendar to determine that, I know the weird feeling was not due to pregnancy because it takes an egg 10 days to attach.

Mark and I are heartbroken, but we’ve decided not to go to any more drastic measures to try to conceive. As Mark says, “We’re not giving up. We’re just not jumping through hoops anymore.”

This weekend I had my teary moments, but I’m doing OK. Mark is too.

Thank you for all your prayers.

God's hand in my recovery

2007-07-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

I believe in the cliché, “Giving credit where credit is due,” and, sure, I believe God had a hand in my recovery, but I also believe “God helps those who help themselves.”

At a signing in May, a woman heard me read from My Lost Summer:

Thanks to therapy and training from my mom, today, more than twenty years after the accident, no one besides me can tell I ever had a serious brain injury.

She voiced her disapproval that I did not credit God in my recovery. Why or how did this lady even think I believed in God? I do, but ours is a free country, I can follow any belief I want.

I consciously limited the mention of God in My Lost Summer because that’s not what the book’s about; the book’s not about my family’s faith or non-faith in God—or any higher being. The book’s about my recovery, and I wrote it for the purpose of enlightening caregivers or readers in general about the experiences of the newly conscious coma survivor.

I credit mostly my mom with my full recovery. Since I’ve written this book, lots of people say, “Wow, you must have had some wonderful doctors,” and I suppose I did have, but they were “behind the scenes” players. My mom is who worked with me every day, who changed the bulletin board in my room in ICU, even though I was comatose, in order that I might be stimulated. Once I gained consciousness, she is who challenged me with simple puzzles and games, once I was released from the hospital, she is who defied doctors’ advice and sent me on to 8th grade.

The perfect cliché to end with is “God helps those who help themselves” –or those who help their daughters.

Fluorescent v. Incandescent, Paper v. Plastic

2007-07-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

Several posts back, I told you that Mark has jumped on the “Save the Environment” bandwagon since we watched Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Last week the light bulb in our family room lamp expired, and, after learning that a fluorescent burns less energy than an incandescent, he bought a coiled up fluorescent bulb.

One fluorescent equals the burn time of 13 incandescents.
90% of energy consumed by incandescents is wasted heat.

As lights throughout the house burn out, we’ll replace with fluorescent. While the bulbs are more expensive, they are cheaper in the long run because they last longer, use less energy ot give the same amount of light, and, in the summer, they won't heat up the house. They are, overall, a savings for your pocketbook and to our environment.

A few days ago Mark asked rhetorically, “Why do they even still make incandescent bulbs?” Thankfully, the question was rhetorical because I didn’t have any answer, but it got me thinking—or wondering why, in fact, do they still manufacture incandescent lightbulbs.

The night of Mark’s enlightening question, he watched another show and learned that about 12 million barrels of oil are used to produce the nearly 100 billion plastic bags we in American use (usually just once) every year. Now he asked, “Why do they make plastic bags?”

We could all do our part and buy fluorescent and reuse our bags or buy reusable, cloth bags.
When only purchasing a handful of items, ask the cashier to skip the bag.
At restaurants, go ahead and take home your leftovers—you paid for them, after all—just box them up yourself and skip the bag. (The only restaurant I know that gives a plastic bag in which to carry home the carton patrons scoop leftovers into is The Cheesecake Factory, but surely there are others out there. Choose paper over plastic at the grocery, but…

…from www.SierraClub.org/bags, “…the difference between paper and plastic RECYCLING is small…” But they preface this with “Paper is easier to recycle, being accepted in most recycling programs. The recycling rate for plastic bags is very low.” And before that the site gives these points in support of shopping with reusable, cloth bags:

Reusing a bag meant for just one use has a big impact. A sturdy, reusable bag needs only be used 11 times to have a lower environmental impact than using 11 disposable plastic bags.
In New York City alone, one less grocery bag per person per year would reduce waste by 5 million lbs. and save $250,000 in disposal costs.
Plastic bags carry 80% of the nation's groceries, up from 5% in 1982.
When 1 ton of paper bags is reused or recycled, 3 cubic meters of landfill space is saved and 13 - 17 trees are spared! In 1997, 955,000 tons of paper bags were used in the United States.
When 1 ton of plastic bags is reused or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil are saved.

Every little thing helps, and they’re only little things.

Mmmm, naps

2007-07-18T11:01:00.001-07:00

Shhhhh. I just took a 5-minute snooze on a table out front. Don’t tell anybody I work with.

A couple ladies who were on their smoke break woke me up asking if I were OK. I thanked them for waking me. Five minutes is all I needed; I feel totally refreshed now.

I walked in with the ladies who woke me, and one said she cannot sleep in a chair. The other said she could sleep anywhere, could probably sleep standing up if she was exhausted enough. I can sleep anywhere in any position pretty much too (though I’ve never tried a standing sleep).

Mark’s parents have the family over the Sunday after Thanksgiving every year, and with all the hullabaloo—kids running around, card games going on, football on TV—I still manage to sleep curled up on the loveseat right in the middle of it all. I got the ability from my mom. We’re both out like a light when our heads hit the pillow—or whatever is available. Our husbands are jealous.

Fourth of July, 2007

2007-07-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

The 4th of July was great this year. As some of you know, July 4th, 1983 is the date of my accident that left me in a coma and the hospital for 90 days.

In ’83, my mom, some friends and I were riding our horses to be in the Franklin 4th of July parade. Franklin’s just a town over from Carlisle, where I grew up.
On our way, my horse fell, so did I, and my head hit the road. Thus, the coma.

Anyway, this year was great. I was in the Franklin parade again. I think it was my first time in the parade since 1984, when, on the one-year anniversary of my accident, the parade committee asked me to be the Grand Marshall. My two older brothers and I rode in the back seat of a classic convertible and waved to friends and relatives lining the route. In this picture the top is being brought up because it was raining.

Since our ride at the front of the parade, one of my brothers has grown a local business, Evans Excavating & Topsoil. For a decade or more he has driven a dump truck in the parade to promote his work and have fun. Several years ago, he bought a little dump truck produced in 1922. You know parades bring out all the old cars, and this year he drove his little dump truck, my sister-in-law next to him and their children and two grandchildren (twins!) in the back sitting on two bails of hay. (The twins sat on laps).

While they rode in comfort on that sunny yet not-too-hot July morning, I walked/ran the mile-and-a half route, handing out bookmarks as I went. My sister-in-law, riding in the old dump truck, had boxes of my bookmarks next to her, and she would resupply me when my stock ran short.

It’s a great way to promote my book. I handed out about 400 bookmarks in total along the mile-and-a-half route. I’m going to look into walking other area parades to get the communities talking about my book again.

Baby Update

2007-06-20T09:00:00.001-07:00

As a side story in my memoir, My Lost Summer, my dad’s cows deliver their calves that summer. Dad didn’t have a bull, so the cows got pregnant through insemination. The word “insemination” is icky to me because of the memory of watching the vet lift the virgin cows’ tails to plant the seed of the unseen bull.
Well, Monday I got (I hate to say it) inseminated with Mark’s sperm. At 7:30 a.m. Mark had to go to the fertility clinic at an area hospital to do his thing and collect the sperm. Then the sperm were washed, and Mark went to a local Mercedes dealership and walked around looking at cars. If, in fact, we cannot get pregnant, he wants a Mercedes convertible to replace his 12-year-old Mustang convertible. If we do get pregnant, he’ll have to go for something a bit more practical.
At 9:30 he collected his specimen and met me at my doctor’s office.
He held my hand and reminded me to breath during the procedure, which was pretty painful. A friend of mine from high school who used the same doctor, and who now has a beautiful baby girl, said that she barely felt hers. The doctor ordered her assistant to get a special tool to straighten me out and commented that my piping down there had more exaggerated curves than usual.
So, the deed is done. I will give blood to test for pregnancy June 29. Wish me luck.

A Classic Sweatshirt

2007-06-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

This weekend I worked at de-cluttering my dressing room. I pulled a box from the corner and sorted through papers and pictures, change purses and key chains, allotting things to the appropriate pile: recycle, garbage, keep. On top of all the mishmash in the box sat, roughly folded, my favorite sweatshirt off all time. I haven’t worn it probably since the turn of the century.

I got it in 1989, my second summer in Maine, the summer after my freshman year of college. A big, royal blue shirt with not-too-tight cuffs and a bottom that looked gathered but hung straight. On the front in white iron-on in all caps, the shirt advertised MAINE. It was not too soft and not too full and fluffy. It hung on my shoulders just right and was the perfect weight to wear year round. I’m wearing it in three quarters of the pictures taken of me in college. In the fall I wore it with jeans to cross campus. When the weather turned cooler, I wore a turtle neck under. Even with a turtle neck, my sweatshirt wasn’t too bulky to fit a fleece jacket over top for really cold weather. When I drove myself and some friends to Florida the spring just after graduation, I wore it with shorts. I also wore it with shorts when my roommates and I (and everyone else on campus) took to the streets to celebrate UD’s win and a guaranteed spot into the NCAA’s Sweet 16 in 1990.

In fall 1995, homesick and lonely, the shirt offered me comfort while I slept in it my first night in Guatemala, where I stayed with a host family for six weeks taking language instruction from a local school. In summer ‘96 it kept me warm during the cool nights on Inishmore, an Aran Island off the southwest coast of Ireland. Late in ‘94, I wore it over a thermal and under a coat on my chilly hike up Cotopaxi, the world’s highest active volcano, located in Ecuador. I could continue and list every vacation I’ve taken from the time I got the shirt to when I stopped wearing it because I took it with me everywhere.

Its royal blue has faded to a less regal shade. The MAINE lettering is now barely visible. I cut the cuffs off about a year before I retired the shirt because they were so frayed. The collar has lost its shape, like its been stretched over too many heads. But it was my favorite, and getting rid of it is hard. So many memories are wrapped up in that shirt, yet I know throwing it away will not deplete my experiences. I’ll still remember the good times I had while wearing it.

Spend the next weekend hiking in a state park or go to a festival at least a two-hour’s drive away. Wear your favorite jeans or a just-right baseball cap and make your own experiences. No shirt required.

Environmental Consciousness

2007-06-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

I dreamed up a great money-making scheme this morning, literally.

I woke up from a dream just after in my dream I’d joked about selling bottled clean air. I think there were three or four of us sitting around talking about how some people are so pretentious and how these people waste money by buying, among other unnecessary things, bottled water—when water anywhere in the United States must meet quality standards, so it’s safe and a lot cheaper from the tap. Then I suggested marketing to these people bottled clean air at $2 a quart. I remember from my dream that I meant to say “a gallon” but instead “quart” came out. I woke up right after that, and in my early morning incoherency, on my stumble to the bathroom, I thought pretentious people just might pay $8 for a gallon of clean air. But where to find clean air in this great country of ours?

The news last night reported that the reason President George W. Bush did not agree to adopt the carbon-dioxide-(the main green-house gas)-limiting standards is because China’s not adopting them. Very adult, George (said sarcastically). A good portion of the world’s CO2 emissions come from China because they keep building coal-burning power plants, and coal burning releases CO2. However, even more CO2 comes from the US. We need to lead by example rather than act like a pre-teen, “If he’s not going to do it, why should I?” Asinine reasoning.

These United States are beautiful. (If you should doubt it, please visit my travel blog at http://www.ournationstreasures.blogspot.com/.) Until we as a nation make the commitment to do what we can to clean up the environment, I am very fearful of the kind of place our children will grow up in.

Do you turn off lights when you leave a room?
Do you turn your car’s engine off if sitting idle for more than a minute?
Do you recycle?
Do you compost?

Relaxing Vacation

2007-05-26T16:01:00.001-07:00

Mark and I are in Georgia visiting my dad and step mom. They live on a salt-water creek to a river to the ocean. It takes about 10 minutes by boat to get to the ocean. So far we have caught four fish each day--that's three of us fishing and only four a day.

Because Mark and I are conserving money, we will be back here in October for this trip that costs us nearly nothing. Dad said the fishing is better then. At least the sun is out; I've been taking naps every afternoon on the boat.

In the evenings after dinner, the four of us play cards. I won a game of hearts a couple nights ago.
Woohoo!

I'm not a very strategic card player, so it was quite the accomplishment.

My single known faithfull reader of my blog may be losing her job at a small town in Michigan. Earlier this year, her company was bought by new owners, and the employees were unsure what would happen. Sophia, if they offer you a decent buy-out, take it. In 1995 I accepted a $10,000 buy-out from a company I worked at for three years. I won't say it was the best decision of my life, but I was young and single and traveled and didn't take my next job for another eight or nine months. Of course, I moved back in with my mom, rent free. We can get a lot more for free when we're young, can't we?

Dad just stuck his head in and said dinner's ready. Adios, y vaya con Dios.

Set Small Goals to Achieve Big Ones

2007-05-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted a health & fitness tip in a while. And the picture has nothing to do with the story, I just want to post it because I like it so much, yet it doesn't go with any specific story. It was taken in northern Colorado.

Many people think that setting out on the journey to a healthier self is too monumental a task to undertake. Yet we’ve all seen or read about big successes in some people—people who were obese but are now a healthy weight thanks to a wholesome lifeplan including exercise and a balanced diet.

Starting to become more fit doesn’t require you to jump right on the exercise bandwagon or to incorporate the recommended nine or even five produce servings a day. Sure, for long term weight loss, you must exercise and eat right, but those are pretty big goals, and if you don’t reach them, you may just give up all together. Setting smaller healthy goals is key to lasting weight loss and health.

Achieving smaller goals will give you a sense of accomplishment and set you on your way to reaching bigger ones. Pick one or two of the following smaller, achievable goals—or come up with your own—and try to stick to them for a month.

If you succeed, then try tackling more of the minor suggestions or a major one—like exercising regularly or eating right. Those are the two biggies. Trying to accomplish both at once will seem overwhelming, and you’ll likely give up the effort, so make sure exercise is a habit before trying to stick to a strictly healthy diet, or vise versa.

Healthy Habits to Gain
Pack a healthy lunch twice a week or more.
Consume one serving of fruit with breakfast.
Use the next floor’s bathroom—and take the stairs to get there.
Buy and read a fitness magazine: Men’s Health, SHAPE, Fitness, Self, Health, Muscle & Fitness. Reading about being healthy is very motivating.
Eat at your kitchen or dining room table but nowhere else in your house.
Rise 10 minutes earlier, and before your shower, march in place while you watch the morning news.

Anti-Healthy Habits to Lose
Visits to the vending machine
Eating after 7:30 p.m.
Second servings
One hour-long TV show (exercise instead)
Whole milk
Your need to find the closest parking space
Smoking (OK, not a small goal, but you need to quit in order to be truly healthy.)

Try to re-form habits rather than making your small goals numbers-oriented like, “I will lose 30 pounds.” The numbers on the scale will fall as a natural result of your smaller, healthier decisions.

Copyright by Elizabeth Evans Fryer

An Inconvenient Truth

2007-05-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

Mark and I watched “An Inconvenient Truth” last week. It’s a documentary of sorts; it’s Al Gore’s movie about global warming, and it was pretty scary what is projected to happen in the foreseeable future.

What I find most interesting about the experience is that I was a touch bored with the movie while Mark was entirely captivated. See, my BS is in Environmental Engineering, so I’ve known for 20 years the perils due this world if its population—mainly the United States—doesn’t “wake up” soon and limit its emissions of carbon dioxide and other green-house gases.

Since global warming is such a problem, I assumed that everyone in the general public was familiar it: what it is, what causes it, what we can do to lessen it. In fact, I remember Mark saying some years ago that he thought it was just a hoax or just a natural ebb in our environmental health that would naturally fix itself. So I thought he was basing that opinion on some knowledge of the facts.

But in “An Inconvenient Truth” Gore tells about an extensive literature review that was undertaken, the results finding that 0% of scientific papers concerning global warming were in doubt of its seriousness while 52% of articles written by the general media cast a shadow on the authenticity of the problem.

I think that was eye-opening for Mark, that he formed his opinion after reading an article written by someone ignorant on the issue, at best, or by someone spreading propaganda, at worst.

At the end of the movie, text flashed on the screen with ideas to help slow global warming. One of those ideas was to get as many people as you can to watch “An Inconvenient Truth,” and Mark, Mr. Doesn’t-Get-Excited-About-Much, is spreading the word.

Another of the ideas was to pray that our leaders realize the seriousness of the issue before it’s too late and that they legislate change. That’s what I’m doing, besides the creed by which we live:

Reducing what we need
Reusing what we have and
Recycling what we already used.

What can you do?

e-Jukebox

2007-05-04T10:19:00.000-07:00

The editing is slow at work now. There are natural dips and peaks in the work, but I don’t remember if this is a usual slow time of the year.

To keep busy, I’m doing some data entry into a chemical database for my project manager. It’s nearly mindless work, so I’m listening to music. I’m unable to listen to anything while editing; I get too distracted.

The music I’m listening to is popular music from the early 1960s. A site on the Internet lets listeners choose a music era from prior to 1940 to 1984 and listen for free. Site managers are hoping to expand into more recent years. I like 1980s music best, myself.

Check it out. http://www.tropicalglen.com/

Travel Writing

2007-05-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

Last night I sat down at the computer to write a travel story about our trip to Yellowstone. Before I started writing, I checked to see how many other travel stories I have written which are ready for publication (that have not already been published). Nine! I have already written nine fun travel stories ready for publication.

One is about our tour of the Jelly Belly Jelly Bean factory in Fairfield, CA. Another is about a day in the early 1990s I spent in NYC with my brother, including our visit to the top of one of the World Trade Center towers.

Pike’s Peak, The Great Sand Dunes, and Colorado Springs are all about places in Colorado.

Rounding out the last four are Oahu, HI; Olympic Peninsula, WA; the Cherry Festival in Traverse City, MI; and Campobello Island in Canada, just a bridge across from Lubec, ME, the easternmost city in the USA

Funfunfun stories. I love to write travel stories.

Mark is taking me to a surprise destination on June 8-10. The only clues I have are that it’s a one-and-a-half to two-hour drive and we will not be hiking and doing the general active things I like to do, but he said we would be walking around. I have also figured out that it’s not a festival that happens only that weekend.

So, hopefully I can get a travel story out of that trip too. And I’m hoping to stop at Smoky Mts. National Park on the way to my dad’s in GA when we go Memorial Day week. I’ve never been.

If you’re interested, check out my previously published travel stories—complete with pictures—at www.OurNationsTreasures.blogspot.com.

Procrastinate? Who? Me?

2007-04-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

Who procrastinates? I have NEVER procrastinated—not even in college—because I don’t like the pressure of an approaching deadline squeezing all the blood to my head. And I like my sleep.

My roommate in college almost always waited until the day before a paper was due to start working on it, and she was a “hunt and peck” typist, which took even longer to get the work done. I had always said I’d never lose sleep to help her complete a paper, but one time senior year I took pity on her and stayed up past midnight typing while she dictated. We got so caught up in our typing/dictating roles that she let some Chinese food she was reheating on the stove burn. She pulled it off the stovetop while I grabbed a towel and ran down the hall to hold it over the fire alarm until the smoke sufficiently dissipated; the other students who shared our apartment building would not be amused at being awoken and having to exit to the courtyard that late on a Tuesday night.

Though I don’t like pressure, my first boss on my first job after college thrived on it. On a Wednesday afternoon he’d step into my cubical with a 500-page document and say, “I need 16 copies of this for a meeting Friday morning.”

To complete that task, I needed to complete several steps:
1) make 16 copies of 500 pages
2) find 32 3-ring binders for the 16 copies of the two-volume document
3) print covers for the binders
4) print labels for the separators within the binders
5) find separators and insert the labels
6) collect the 16 copies of the 500 pages from the copy center
7) collate the sections
8) load them into the 32 binders.

Ugh. Not an easy task, and I was quite frazzled while completing it. I took Friday off and told my boss so when I carted the copies into his office on Thursday afternoon. Told him I was taking a personal sanity day. I went shopping.

My point is, why put off something you have to do anyway? Unless, of course, like my former boss, you do your best work when your clock is ticking louder and louder.

This morning I realized I might not be as perfect a nonprocrastinator as I’d previously thought. It’s the phone. I don’t like talking on the phone. I don’t even own a cell phone and never have, and sometimes when I have to make a call, I put it off, dreading the moment I have to punch in the numbers. Actually, number punching is fine, it’s the person on the other end answering that I dread. I like answering machines. I sound like a goof sometimes leaving a message, but at least I have an excuse to sound like a goof as the eventual listener might think, “Wow, what a goof, but I bet she’s nervous talking to a machine.” Right-o, but I’m worse when speaking in person.

Despite my trepidation of speaking on the phone, I need more bookmarks to promote My Lost Summer, and this weekend I got an e-mail from the company I ordered from last year saying that shipping rates are going up for orders placed after May 4. (Postal prices go up in mid May.) So this morning I thought about calling, then I decided to read an article on bacteria and how we humans are becoming less resistant to its ill-effects.

I thought about calling but instead went over to visit with a couple coworkers.

I thought about calling but checked my e-mail. And there was the message I’d received this weekend, the one reminding me to order before postal rates go up. So, almost reluctantly, I called. And it was painless.

I called the 1-800 #, my order was there from last year. I placed the same order for the same number of bookmarks and my same credit card was charged the same amount and I was off the phone in five minutes. Effortless.

The lesson I take from this: it never pays to procrastinate.

Another Funny Foto

2007-04-30T06:57:00.000-07:00

Is this one of the funniest pictures you've ever seen?

I learned that the cat was actually "placed" in the picture--she wasn't actually tubing with the girls. But it's still really funny.

April '07 Sales

2007-04-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

Sandy, a lady who works in the cafeteria here at work, asked me how to go about getting her hands on one of my books. Of course, I told her, “I can sell you one!”

Her daughter has started My Lost Summer but had to return it to its original owner before reaching the denouement. She would like to write a book report for health class. She showed it to the nuns at her Catholic school, and they approved it. Wouldn’t it be great if the school ordered a bunch for the students of future health classes?

Sandy is bringing a check for $15 in tomorrow for our exchange. (I sell them for $15. The retail price, however, is $16.95—or $16.67 from lulu.com.)

I’ve sold nine copies myself this month. Borders bought 15 copies from my warehouse last week too. Plus, I’ll be speaking Thursday evening to the Brain Injury Association and will likely sell a couple copies to those in attendance.

It’s really a beneficial book. I hope sales take off.

Funny Animal Pictures

2007-04-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

Cuteoverload.com is at it again--or actually, they were at it in October, and they;re always at it, every day. As a break from my drudgery, I'm seeing what's posted today--and then I checked out the October archives.

If you remember, I posted a really funny picture of a young llama or alpaca a couple weeks ago. Oh, OK, I'll post it again.

In October several people submitted pictures of their pets dressed up for Halloween. These pictures make me laugh out loud.

If you haven't checked out CuteOverload.com, you should for a laugh.

Network When You Can

2007-04-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

If you have a product to promote and someone invites you to a venue to promote it, attending is most always worth the investment of your time.

This weekend was the 2nd annual Mad Anthony’s Writer’s Conference in Hamilton, Ohio, and it’s also the 2nd year I was invited to sit and sign my book, My Lost Summer.

Last year almost 60 Ohio authors signed at the Hamiltonian Hotel near downtown Hamilton. Still, with all that competition, I sold eight books throughout the day, and not just to would-be writers attending the conference, but to the general public, who were invited to step in off the street and browse the temporary store set up by Barnes & Noble.

This year the Hamiltonian is getting a designing overhaul, so the event took place at Miami University’s Hamilton campus. Fewer authors showed up to sign—40 or so by my estimate. And because the campus is out of the way, I think that not a single person browsed the books who didn’t also attend the conference—no general public.

However, I did sell three books, which is three more than I would have sold had I not attended. Also, lots of people stopped to chat with me and took bookmarks with my book’s information, so several of those people may order later.

A woman who bought my book teaches at a nursing school, and she told me that in one of her classes, she gives the students an assignment to read a book concerning medical care and report on it. She said my book would be a good one for the students to read and asked about ordering online.

So, the lesson learned is—Even though I only sold three books during an investment of five hours, lots of people collected bookmarks, and future sales will likely increase because of the contact at the nursing school; I should take every opportunity I can to reach the public about My Lost Summer.

My Scanner Works!

2007-04-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

Let me say it again, My Scanner Works!

We got a new computer in February, and I have a scanner from 2003 that I was hoping to use with it. I’ll skip the details and say simply that I thought it was hopeless getting the two to work together—a couple mornings ago as I lay in bed waiting for my alarm to go off I thought of one last thing to try. But I forgot to try yesterday.

I just sat down here this Friday afternoon to write another travel story for The Franklin Chronicle (and three other weeklies in Southwest, Ohio) that I also post to my other blog www.ournationstreasures.blogspot.com , when I thought to try what came to me in the early morning mist of my mind two days ago.

And it worked!

The story I submitted this week (to be in next week’s paper—but it’s already posted to my other blog) is one with no pictures.

So I interrupted my reminiscences of Maine, about which I’m writing, to write this blog entry because I am so happy.

A GP, a Podiatrist, and a Chiropractor

2007-04-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

I sleep on the right side of the bed, but I get into bed on the left side, the side that’s close to the door to the bedroom. My left knee goes up and slides across the mattress and my right leg follows.

Sometime in January as I pulled my right leg up and my foot slid across the mattress, an instant of pain shot through my second toe—the one next to the big one—like a strong electric shock. It was too quick to bring tears to my eyes, but if I had to feel pain that intense for several seconds or more, I would likely cry.

Then, the following weekend I visited my second cousin and her little girl, Olivia, who was almost one. I sat on the floor for the visit. To get up, I bent my left leg, supported myself with it and pulled my right leg on the floor behind me to eventually come to standing—but I let out a yelp when the instant of pain shot through my toe again as I dragged it across the carpet.

A week and a half after that, in February, I saw my GP about it. She asked if I were wearing any new shoes—shoes that might be constricting the ball of my foot. The last pair of new shoes I had gotten were hiking boots from L.L. Bean in October or so, at least three months earlier, and I wore them for three weeks of hiking New Zealand and they were big enough at the ball. So no, no new shoes. My doctor left me with the feeling that the pain should resolve itself in a few weeks. However,..

…a few weeks later my foot got X-rayed from all angles, and a couple days later the office called me to say it’s not broken. (I knew that as it was a nerve pain, not a broken-bone pain.) The receptionist gave me the number to schedule an appointment to see a podiatrist about it.

This podiatrist is so popular, I couldn’t get an appointment for three or four weeks, which was OK as the toe didn’t hurt unless I rubbed the top of it across a surface. I was very careful with it by this time.

Last Thursday I got in to see the podiatrist. I said, “Doctor, my toe hurts when I do this,” and, using the examining table, I demonstrated getting into bed, and I sat on the tile floor and got up—to show him. After several minutes of pulling and feeling around my toe and forefoot in general, he told me, “Don’t do that.”

Cost of examining my foot
General Practitioner Co-pay - $15
X-Rays over $120
Podiatrist Co-Pay - $45

All to be told just not to do what makes it hurt. “Uh, OK.” And you know what? The podiatrist, a guy in his late 50s probably, held up his hand for a “high 5” before I left his office. “What? I’m 37,” I thought, but it would be rude to deny the guy his “high 5.” So, feeling foolish, I slapped his hand. “High 5s” are for kids six and under—or teammates. Not a 57-year-old doctor and his 37-year old patient he’d just met.

Anyway, yesterday I went to the chiropractor (co-pay $15) for the first time in over a year. My left lower back is sore. In our chitchat I mentioned my toe. A couple minutes later when I moved to the adjusting table, Dr. Steve asked me to take my shoes off. He popped every one of my toes and couldn’t believe how poppable (in need of popping) they were. I pushed my other shoe off and he did the same with those toes. He stated with confidence that he fixed my toe. Since it only hurts when I do certain things, I wasn’t positive, but I do have confidence in Dr. Steve.

Today, as I sat at my desk editing at work, I kicked my pumps off and was mindlessly curling my toes under and pressing into the carpet—and I realized, “Dr. Steve fixed my toe!” When I’ve spent almost $200 to get the diagnosis, “If it hurts when you do that, don’t do that.”

Chiropractic. Some doubt it (my husband included); not me.

Had Your Cholesterol Levels Checked Lately?

2007-04-09T16:05:00.000-07:00

I'm depending on an article I wrote for my column last year to hold you loyal readers over until something insightful, curious, or annoying hits. It's been a while since I've written anything worth reading, therefore, I'm falling back on this--to remind you that, yes, I can write about something other than my daily happenings.

Cholesterol. We’ve been conditioned to cringe at the sound of the word, yet cholesterol is naturally produced in the body and is used for cell construction and hormone production. A high level of cholesterol is cause for concern though, simply because too much of the waxy, fatty substance can clog arteries, blocking blood’s free pass to the heart. This is why high cholesterol is a leading risk factor for heart disease.

Do you know your cholesterol level?
According to the National Cholesterol Education Program, those older than 20 should get their cholesterol levels tested every five years. Medical economists and some researchers say that men with no other risk factors for heart disease* can wait until they are 35; similar women should be tested by 45.

What do the numbers mean?
Once you have your cholesterol levels checked, your doctor will report three values: your total cholesterol, the LDL and the HDL. The LDL, or bad cholesterol, is what sticks to the artery walls, hanging out to see what kind of trouble it can get into. HDL, or good cholesterol, cleanses the arteries, is the bloodstream’s bouncer, picking up the trouble-making LDL cholesterol and escorting it out of the flow.

Borderline total cholesterol is between 200 and 239. If your level is above 239, you are at high risk for heart disease.

(The table didn't copy. I hope you can figure this rough organization out.)

Risk Total Cholesterol LDL HDL
High Above 239 Above 159 Less than 35

Borderline 200 – 239 130 – 159 na

Desirable Below 200 Below 130 Above 60

How can you lower your cholesterol level?
Exercise. Just 30 minutes of aerobic exercise on most days of the week will help raise the HDL (good) cholesterol level in your bloodstream.

Eat right. Make sure the majority of the fats you consume are the unsaturated kind. Polyunsaturated fat lowers total cholesterol, meaning both HDL and LDL levels, while monounsaturates lower only the bad LDL cholesterol levels. For more information on healthy fats, please read The Skinny on Fat.

Don’t eat wrong. Reduce saturated fat intake and cholesterol by watching your intake of butter, whole milk, cheese, ice cream, red meat, palm oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil, and hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils. If you have borderline or high cholesterol, make sure to limit yourself to no more than one egg yolk per day.

We can be proactive in lowering our cholesterol levels and maintaining them below 200:
1. Exercise
2. Limit intake of less-than-good-for-you food:
*Full fat dairy products
*Hamburger, bacon, sausage
*Commercially prepared cookies, crackers, pies and cakes.

3. Select healthy snacks rather than candy and chips:
*Baby carrots
*Tangerines
*Pretzels
*Celery
*Grapes
*Radishes
*Air-popped popcorn.

4. Cook with healthy vegetable oils:
*Corn
*Canola
*Soybean
*Sunflower
*Olive.

Incorporating the above four suggestions into your lifestyle may take determination and time, but when you consider the alternative to having a desirable cholesterol level, the effort is totally worth it.

*Risk factors for heart disease include
high blood pressure
smoking
a family history of heart disease
being male
diabetes
obesity

word count 519

Resources
National Heart Lung & Blood Institute
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/chd/

Health Services at Columbia University
http://tm.wc.ask.com/r?t=c&s=a&id=30787&sv=za5cb0de8&uid=2d8442ae1d8442ae1&sid=19AD5B237BC16D614&p=%2ftop&o=0&u=http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/0880.html

Book Sales but No Baby

2007-04-06T04:39:00.000-07:00

I sold a book yesterday to the receptionist at my doctor’s office. Whenever I have any kind of appointment—hair cut, doctor—I take a couple books to pass out to other waiting folks or the receptionists. About 50% of the time I do this, I sell a book.

Last week after I spoke at the National Honor Society induction ceremony at my former high school, a couple whose daughter was just inducted told me they appreciated the message of my speech, namely that the students should be proud of themselves and know that this honor was not “given” to them, that they earned it through their scholarship, leadership, service, and character. The woman said she would get my book. I told her I had some with me that I sell for $15, and it was like I’d caught her in my headlights. She stammered and looked to her husband for rescue and came up with “Well, we don’t have the money right now, but it is at local stores, right?” I don’t like to put people on the spot like that, but I have nearly 400 books at home I need to sell.

Last Saturday my Uncle Joe called my mom. I’m sure they hadn’t spoken since the time of my accident in 1983. You see, Joe is the husband of one of my dad’s sisters. Anyway, Joe told Mom that his brother read my book, bought for him by a friend, and loved it, called Joe and told him it was a great book, however, wouldn’t part with his. My articles in the newspaper end with my byline saying my books are available at Lake’s Jewelers on Main Street in Franklin. In fact, that’s where Joe’s brother’s friend bought the one for him.

So Uncle Joe goes to Lake’s, but they’re sold out, so Joe called Mom.

Long story short, Mom and I drove over Sunday and dropped off five copies. One for Joe and my aunt and one for each of their four children, my cousins.

That’s six copies gone this week. Selling books always cheers me. I need cheering as this morning my temperature dropped, which means I’m not pregnant. I get depressed each month when I realize I’m not pregnant, and I almost cried this morning, and I’m about to cry right now, but I try to concentrate on the fact that I’ve sold six books this week. We have four more months of taking chlomid to try to get pregnant. Surely it will happen in that time.

Iran vs. Britain

2007-04-03T06:04:00.002-07:00

Iran captured and detained 15 British military personnel on March 23. Britain, of course, is in an uproar over this, and Iran wants it to be over with too.

It all started when the Britons “patrolled for smugglers near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, a waterway that long has been a disputed dividing line between Iraq and Iran (AP, April 3, 2007).”

So the Iranians thought the Britons were in their waters so nabbed them. The Britons feel they were righteously in Iraqi waters. It’s all a big misunderstanding, it seems to me.

To release the “hostages,” Iran wants Britain to apologize, but Tony Blair, Britain’s Prime Minister, is having nothing of it.

COME ON, ALREADY!! Why can he not simply say, in his cheeky way,. “We’re sorry; our sailors mistakenly thought the waters belonged to Iraq. It was simply a misunderstanding. Please release our sailors, and then let’s have some tea.”

I wonder if Margaret Thatcher, PM of Britain in—gosh, maybe the 1970s?—I wonder if the sailors already would have been released from their Iranian captivity. You see, if women ruled the world’s nations, I think things would not be so difficult, wars would be fewer, international relations more friendly.

I bet the sailors’ families are fuming at Blair: “Apologize!!! So our sons can come home to us!” I know I’d be irate if my husband were detained in a suspected terrorist country, and all that was required to secure his release would be an apology from President Bush, and Bush refused to give it.

Harumph. I’m angry now, and I’ve never even been to Britain.

Hodge Podge

2007-03-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy my Friday evenings. Mark goes bowling in a league with one of his brothers and some friends on Fridays. That’s when I get some stuff done. Or not. When the weather was colder, I’d watch girly movies, like In Her Shoes, which is my favorite girly movie. Today I napped on and off from 5 pm to 6 pm, I watched an episode of M*A*S*H and then walked to the grocery.

Snuggly into my backpack fit six yogurts, a toothpaste, two L’Oreal Wrinkle De-crease eye creams—one for night and one with SPF for the day, a box of cereal, a container of strawberries, and some grapes. Oh, and pretzels. It was quite a heavy load for the two miles back home, but when my back would start hurting, I’d remember hiking Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand on Christmas Eve—10 and a half miles between two mountains! And that inspired me; I knew I’d be home before long, and I wouldn’t be as spent as after that hike.

Tomorrow morning I’m thinking of going to a group Pilates class at 8:30 am. It’s near where I work, not far from home. Mark and I are going to his nephew’s H.S. baseball game too. And I also want to go to Kohl’s. They’re having a sale! (That’s a joke, because if you’ll notice, Kohl’s has a “sale” every freakin’ weekend.)

At Mom’s on Thursday morning, I looked at the mailer advertising what all would be on sale. There’s a thing called an anti-gravity chair that I think I want. Also, if I’m going to start going to Pilates/yoga classes on the weekends, I should get a yoga mat while I’m at Kohl’s. Who knows, maybe it’ll be on sale too.

I was at Mom’s Thursday morning because I didn’t have to be at work until noon, and the National Honor Society induction ceremony at my former high school, where I was the speaker this year, was over at 10 am. My speech went fine. My mom and my brother and sister-in-law were there—not to see me (well, Mom was) but to see Seth, their son, my nephew, get inducted. How neat was it that I got to speak the year he got inducted?

I saw plenty people I know, including Angela L, whose son, Kyle, is in NHS. And little Molly, who Angela adopted from Russia. So cute. I saw them at church on Sunday too. She’ll be four in August, and my cousin’s little girl will be four just two months prior. It’s neat knowing they’ll grow up together; anyone in the little town of Carlisle, Ohio who is the same age grows up together. See Molly and Me (if link doesn't work, go to August 07, 2006 entry) for a blog entry about her. She’s almost three in the picture. Little because of her disease, I guess. Or maybe my cousin's little girl, who I'm using as a reference, is big.

Odd, Foreign Creatures

2007-03-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

For 22 days including Christmas and the beginning of the New Year, Mark and I traveled around New Zealand on a big blue bus with a group of people. The tour company was Flying Kiwi, which is a clever name as kiwis are the national bird and they are land-bound (they do not fly). If someone took a muskmelon, covered it with spiky, dull brown hair and stuck a beak, two eyes, and some chicken feet on it, people in-the-know might actually mistake it for a kiwi—because that’s what one looks like—a brown, hairy melon with a long beak, a set of eyes, and a pair of legs.
Before visiting the Auckland Zoo, which we did the day before joining the tour, I, myself, had never even seen a picture of a kiwi. Quite the odd little creature. They’re nocturnal so were housed in their own little dark room in a building like the insect or reptile house at a zoo in the States. Their nostrils are at the end of their long beaks so that they can sniff out their prey since they can’t see well at night to hunt.

I was planning to write about a term some Englishman on the tour used to describe one of the Russians; I found it really funny. But I’ll save that story for another time as this post has turned to odd looking creatures.

We saw lots of colorful birds, and even a kookaburra, whose dirty gray and white feathers were not too vibrant. The kookaburra looked like the evolutionary middleman between a kiwi and what you and I think of as a bird today; the kookaburra had a bird shape, about the size of a large crow, only bushy. Its covering looked less like hair than the kiwi’s yet not quite a quilled feather.

Towards the end of our tour in New Zealand Mark and I visited a small sanctuary for birds native to New Zealand. One was the takahe (tock-a-HEE), actually, two were takahe, a male and female. The takahe has an amazing story of rediscovery. They were thought to have gone extinct around about the turn of the twentieth century. YET, in 1950 a doctor hiking in Fjordlands National Park, which everyone who visits New Zealand MUST SEE for the exquisite, snow-blanketed peaks, the tallest of which, Mt. Cook, dominates the rare clear sky. OK. Wait. I got off track again. OK. So a doctor—I guess a Ph.D. in avian science or something—this doctor was hiking, and A TAKAHE WONDERED ACROSS THE PATH HE WAS TRODDING! UNBELIEVABLE, RIGHT?! Can you imagine finding an animal that was, for the last 50 years, believed to be extinct? So exciting. Now there are 150 – 200 takahes in the wild in New Zealand. Go, takahes! They’re kiwi-shaped, however, a bit larger. Their plumage looks like feathers rather than hair, and they have big chicken legs and a turkey face. Odd odd.

Finally, I have to throw this picture in because an essay about odd looking creatures would not be complete without this picture.

Posted on http://www.cuteoverload.com/ about halfway down June 2006 archive is this picture of a baby llama (alpaca?) Notice the toothy grin. Some say he looks like Napoleon Dynamite, some say Barney Fife or Mr. Furley, both portrayed by comedic genius Don Knotts. This picture brings me a smile every time.

Good Baby News

2007-03-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

I’m ovulating!

Mark and I had a consultation with my gynecologist last Wednesday, expecting to hear that another cycle had passed without my ovaries giving up any of their cargo. We decided before we started trying to get pregnant that we would not do anything invasive. I’m taking clomid to help myself ovulate (but in the previous two cycles I hadn’t), and I thought even that was maybe more invasive than I wanted to go. But, obviously, I chose to take it.

Since the first two cycles resulted in ‘nada,’ I took the highest dosage of clomid that is prescribed this past cycle. During the consult, Dr. Busacco looked at the results of my blood progesterone levels and told us that I had indeed ovulated. Good news though not overjoyous yet.

Because clomid encourages eggs to exit the ovaries, sometimes more than one at a time and because a woman has only a set number of eggs in there to begin with, six months is the longest I can take the medicine. So we have five more months. I’m pretty confident it will happen in that time—though I still appreciate everyone praying for us—because Mark has lots of healthy, eager sperm, my shy eggs have decided to stop playing hard-to-get, and the procedure performed last year showed that the path Mr. Sperm must take to meet Ms. Ovum is wide open with only a couple minor curves. I wouldn’t mind if Mr. and Ms. brought friends along to double date; I am 37 and we want two. The incidence of a woman having twins is seven times higher than normal when she takes clomid.

Small-town Weeklies

2007-03-17T05:30:00.000-07:00

For those of you brand new to this blog, please check out www.OurNationsTreasures.blogspot.com There I post travel stories, usually with lots of pictures. The stories run every other week in four small-town papers in southwest Ohio.

My issue of The Franklin Chronicle is waiting in my mailbox when I get home today. After retrieving the mail, I walk into the house, kiss my husband hello, and sit at one end of the couch. Mark reclines on the other section, covered with his afghan watching basketball.

Mark makes fun of The Chronicle—because it is just a hometown paper, so any little accomplishment a resident makes gets featured. For instance, when My Lost Summer was published, The Chronicle ran half-page spreads about it two weeks in a row--not to say not to say recovering from a coma, writing a book about it, and having it published is a small accomplishment--but half-page articles two weeks in a row? Wow. And that was before I started writing for the paper.

On the front page of this week’s paper is a smiling photo of a young guy—from Franklin—who will be manager at the Wal-Mart opening on State Route 73 right behind some property my mom owns. See, he grew up in Franklin, went to U. of Cincinnati and worked at a Wal-Mart while he was in school. After he graduated he earned a spot in Wal-Mart manager’s training and then moved to a store in Dayton. Now he’s moving back to Franklin and going to be head honcho in his hometown. It is a cute story, kind of “local boy makes big.”

Mark good-naturedly comments, “That’s front page news? You are from such a ho-dunk town.”

Deeper into the paper I read a story about a Franklin man who has worked at the local mattress factory for 10 years, and it takes him just four minutes to make a hospital bed while constructing a regular mattress that you and I might sleep on requires 30 to 40 minutes. You might think this guy’s job pretty ho-hum, and he agrees that the work is monotonous, but what makes it all worthwhile are the occasional special orders for oddly shaped mattresses. Above the story is a picture of the mattress builder and the owner of the mattress store holding up a big mattress shaped kind of like a scallop shell. A home builder ordered it special for his daughter to put in a house he’s building in Indian Hills, the most up-scale neighborhood in Cincinnati. It’s where the movie Traffic was set (and filmed right here in Cinci).

When I thought about it, that made me laugh a little—that a man making a mattress made the paper. Mark just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

As the final seconds of the basketball games ticked away, I turned to the columns page to read something by Matt Reese, who lives in Pickerington, Ohio, which is not near here. His column is sponsored by Ohio’s agricultural industry and is likely syndicated to papers all over Ohio. Anyway, I like reading Matt. I’m not really an aggie but I enjoy reading good writing, and I can tell Matt has had training in how to pen words together—or he has a good editor at least.

So I’m reading along and being quiet when UNLV calls a time out. With no action to watch, Mark looks over at me and asks, “What’re you reading about now?” I turn my head to him and crack a smile at what I’m about to say.

“A raccoon dinner being organized by a local Lion’s Club.” We both get a good laugh at that one. (The dinner started in the 1940s as a joke but has grown from there. The Lions serve 500-600 people on raccoon dinner night.)

But Franklin is not such a ho-dunk town. After all, Wal-Mart opens next month.

The NHS at CHS

2007-03-02T17:28:00.000-08:00

Scholarship, service, leadership, and character—The foundation upon which the National Honor Society is built. I was selected as a member my sophomore year of high school.
Last month a teacher at my former school contacted me to see if I would speak at the induction ceremony this year. I met the three criteria: (1) I graduated from CHS, (2) I was a member of NHS, and (3) I’ve accomplished something unique—as in writing a book and gaining some local notoriety for it.

The teacher reminded me of the four foundations of NHS and told me I could speak about all four or just one, and the speech should be between 10 and 20 minutes long. I should be able to come up with something. I’m sure the speech will be to an audience larger than I’ve ever spoken to before, and I’m a little nervous about that, but, you know what, I don’t remember who spoke or what about when I was inducted, so it’s not like it has to be earth-moving.

On Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening of this week I spoke about my recovery from a coma at University Hospital to a room full of social workers. About 30 people showed for the morning session, and 12 or 15 showed the following evening. I was more nervous then because these social workers were earning Continuing Education Units for attending. However, the general depression I’ve been feeling of late dampened my nervousness somewhat. Is it possible to experience depression and nervousness at the same time? I think I never have. I think when I’m depressed, I don’t really care what happens; therefore, I’m not nervous. I knew presenting the CEU at U. Hospital would be important, but I thought, “It’s not a big deal if I mess up.” Also, my mom spoke too about her experience with my recovery, and I knew I could rely on her to carry me if I needed it. But all went well.

In April I’ll be speaking at a meeting of the Brain Injury Association of Cincinnati. The organizer said to speak about publishing my story. That’ll be easy.

Tomorrow the local Kroger store is hosting me for a book signing. I usually sell 11 copies in a couple hours at Kroger. Did I tell you that I sold 14 copies at a signing at Waldenbooks in Newark, Delaware on a Saturday in February? I sold one today to a lady at work. It’s an emotional, true story describing the family dynamics between my divorced parents, a brother who had moved to Maine just weeks before my accident, both sets of grandparents, and my 19-year-old brother, who visited me every day. It hasn’t gotten a bad review anywhere. Hurry and get yours. OK. You don’t have to hurry, but go ahead and get one!

An Analogy from the New Editor

2007-02-27T13:29:00.000-08:00

Today the new editor and I and our boss had a meeting. We talked about ways to get more papers coming our way. We talked about things we could do to prove to the scientists/authors that the service we provide has value. The new editor said, "We don't want them to think submitting a paper to us is like going to the dentist."

I thought that was a great analogy, and I told him so. People who think in analogies impress me so.

Wow, Depression Packs a Punch

2007-02-26T12:32:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the depressing, “woe is me” entry below. I deleted it from my list of posts, but it’s still there. I posted yesterday in a moment of weakness.

Today’s a better day. Have my hormones evened out? I wonder. I talked for 30 minutes with a woman at work this morning who helped me a lot. She’s a PhD-level biologist and said that she is going through menopause now and last week in a meeting, she just started crying. She said thank goodness she was with people she knows and has worked with a long time, all biologists, who, she said, “realize that we’re all just a mixture of chemicals.”

That’s a good way of looking at it: we’re just a mix of chemicals, and mine aren’t reacting well together right now.

Mark and I will meet with the doctor to see if there’s another option besides clomid—since I’m not ovulating anyway. I mean, there’s no use taking it every month (expensive, not covered by insurance) if it’s supposed to make me ovulate but doesn’t and I suffer the terrible side effect of being moody.

The woman I spoke with this morning said she knows of women who’ve tried to have children and were unable, and now they are living a pretty good life with a loving husband, a nice cabin in the woods, vacations—because children are expensive. Her point was, it’s fine either way; I’ll live a good life either way. I’m determined to.

No Baby on the Way

2007-02-15T12:17:00.000-08:00

Today I found out I’m not pregnant.

I’m still not ovulating.

Depressing.

Last month was my first month on Chlomid at 50 mg. Since I didn’t ovulate, as evidenced by my low, low progesterone level measured at day 23 of my cycle, Dr. Busacco doubled my dosage.

Even at 100 mg I think I didn’t ovulate. The results of the test of my blood taken Monday will tell. If my progesterone level is 10 or above (unknown unit) then I likely ovulated. I think I didn’t because my cycle was short again (though a day longer than the last two months) and my basal body temperature, which I’m recording every morning, did not stay above 98 degrees more than six days, when it should be that high for 10 to 14 days.

Is it in God’s plan for us to have a baby?

Please pray for me—if you feel comfortable doing that.

It All Began with a Burp

2007-02-09T07:04:00.000-08:00

Mark and I’d been dating a month or so when I asked him to a family dinner at Mom’s house. After dinner, Mom asked me to go out to her truck to get something she’d forgotten to bring in. So I walked out to the dark garage, opened up the driver’s-side door to the truck and was searching around when I let out a big burp, a testament to the meal I’d just eaten.

I found what I was after so closed the truck door—and Mark was standing right there. I was so embarrassed since I’d just belched so loudly and it reverberated off the four walls in the closed garage.

I apologized and excused myself over and over, and Mark said to me, “I don’t care what you did. You can do anything you want in front of me.”

Wow, no guy had ever said that to me, and I never felt like I could do just anything in front of any guy I’d ever dated before.

Little happenings, beginning with him telling me I could burp—or worse—in front of him, that could be overlooked on their own but couldn’t be ignored in culmination, convinced me he was “The One.”

Four months later, on my birthday, I caught him by surprise and asked him to marry me. July will mark eight years.

What to Do with Donuts

2007-02-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

You all know I work as an editor, right? The nature of the job is "hurry up and wait." Last week, this week, and next I was, am, and will be in "hurry up" mode. For about the entire month of January I was in "wait" mode and while at work wrote some great essays for my blogs (see www.OurNationsTreasures.blogspot.com about Redwoods National Park. I wrote that at work one day.) So until things ease up at work, I'll post essays from years past. The following one is from the column I wrote last year. Maybe you'll get some ideas.

What to Do with Donuts

At work you receive a memo announcing a meeting Wednesday morning. The last line of the memo reads, “Breakfast will be provided.” You are happy with that since you know eating breakfast is a healthy habit and your first step to weight loss. (See Breakfast Boon [previous blog entry] for a list of benefits from eating breakfast.) Eating at work will allow you to sleep in a little the morning of the meeting.

Wednesday morning you sashay into the conference room, all bright eyed and perky, thanks to the extra 10 minutes of shut-eye. When you see the box of donuts—what’s supposed to pass for breakfast. You deflate.

You resist temptation and take a seat at the end of the conference table, as far away as possible from the sweet, sinful pastries lying wait in the center.

Then what happens?

After an hour of PowerPoint presentations, overhead slides and endless discussion, you…

Scenario 1
…are so hungry you can’t concentrate, so you get up and politely reach between Terry and Susan and grab a napkin and a custard filled, chocolate-iced piece of heaven, which you take back to your end-of-the-table seat. Turns out you eat the sweet so quickly, without ever setting it down, you didn’t need the napkin after all. Well, maybe to dry your fingers after you licked them clean.

Scenario 2
…take a long drink of water trying to quiet your stomach. You’re so hungry and it’s growling so loudly, that it’s nearly disrupting the meeting. When the meeting lets out, you plan to take your lunch break early and go to McDonalds and get an egg mcmuffin if they’re still serving breakfast, or a chicken or fish sandwich if they’ve switched to the lunch menu. You’ll pick up a salad to take back to the office for an afternoon snack because you know eating lunch so early will inevitably leave you hungry in the early afternoon.

While planning what and when to eat, you missed the last five minutes of what Bill was saying. You hope he doesn’t ask for your opinion. You’re so hungry.

Scenario 3
…excuse yourself and go get the apple you packed.

Scenario 3 is the healthiest answer.

Scenario 1 happens to all of us at one point or another. Hopefully you have packed a healthy lunch and snacks and can cut back on your calorie intake at dinner too so that the fat and calories from the donut you scarfed in the meeting won’t bear ill effects and you won’t feel guilty. Instead of the custard filled pastry, a cake donut—or anything not filled with something else—is a healthier choice.

Scenario 2 is OK too. We should all try drinking water first when hunger pangs hit, instead of going straight for food because we may be thirsty—not hungry at all. But denying yourself a morning meal, even if it’s a donut, leads to big calories later, like the egg mcmuffin you planned to eat if you got to McDonalds in time for breakfast, or the fried fish or chicken sandwich you’d have if the restaurant had switched to its lunch menu.

So that you won’t make any food decisions “willy-nilly,” packing is always the best option. Again, packing your lunch and healthy snacks—yogurt, string cheese and wheat crackers, a piece of fruit with nuts—is always the best option.

Another good option is asking the organizer of the meetings to provide fruit, yogurt, and whole wheat bagels for breakfast at future meetings. A satisfied, well-fed workforce is better than a trans-fats filled one, functioning on a sugar buzz.

A Boon for Breakfast Eaters

2007-02-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

My Lost Summer: the blog I started in order to promote My Lost Summer: a memoir. Six months into keeping this blog, I realized how boring it was with every post having to do with my book. Since July 2006, this blog has simply been a collection of unrelated essays. Well, related in that they have something to do with me, and I do try to keep them at least tangentially related to My Lost Summer: a memoir. However, nothing has particularly moved me to write lately—and I write best when I am passionate or at least moved my something. So, until somebody pisses me off or does something surprisingly kind, enjoy this article that was run in my column last year (having to do with health & fitness).

Be healthy!

The first—and easiest—step you should take towards becoming more healthy is so, so simple; it’s eating breakfast. Breakfast eaters get myriad benefits including
*a revved up metabolism started early so that it burns the maximum number of calories to fuel your activities
*fewer total calories consumed throughout the day
*an increased leptin output.

What’s leptin? Leptin is a hormone that suppresses appetite. Eating a significant meal early in the day ensures our bodies’ leptin production, says Meg Jordan, Ph.D., R.N.—as reported to First, September 2003. The book Fit Not Fat at 40-Plus: The Shape-Up Plan That Balances Your Hormones, Boosts Your Metabolism, and Fights Female Fat in Your Forties-And Beyond has more of Dr. Jordan’s thoughts on leptin’s influence on appetite.

Since leptin suppresses appetite, it follows that those of us who eat breakfast would take in fewer calories throughout the day. In fact, researchers at the University of Texas, El Paso, studied the food diaries of 586 men and women and determined that the more food people ate in the morning, the fewer calories they consumed in an entire day. So eat up early—though what we eat for breakfast may affect what we eat later on.

That’s right. Your first step to losing weight—eating breakfast—is not as simple as just popping any convenience food into your mouth. Eating refined carbohydrates like sugary cereals, toasted white bread, waffles, or bagels, will likely begin an overeating cycle. Instead, opt for complex carbs, proteins, and fats. Whole wheat toast with peanut butter and a banana, say, or a bowl of high-fiber cereal with low-fat milk and blueberries. Both options are quick to get you out the door and on your way to starting your day.

Feeding yourself a healthy breakfast of complex carbs, proteins and fats should prevent your feeding the vending machine any money before lunch, making you thinner and your change purse fatter.

A Novel Marketing Idea

2007-01-30T05:25:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! When I got to work this morning, my coworker handed me *$60 in cash and a $15 check. Why? He sold five copies of My Lost Summer. He teaches English at a local community college, and he offered his two classes (45 students total) extra credit if they’d read my book and write their responses. They don’t know he knows me. He wants to save it as a surprise and then bring me in the last day of classes to talk about the book, answer their questions.

He sold three copies last week and thinks two more students will order on Wednesday. When he told me he was going to do this, I figured on 20% of the class going for extra credit, and I’m right on.

He said he’d keep making the offer each semester he taught. I say, “All right!”

Thanks, Cris.

*The retail price for My Lost Summer is $16.95. I sell copies from my own stash for $15.

Mark Slays Me Again

2007-01-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

The President’s State of the Union address was on TV last night. At 9 o’clock I was lying on the couch reading, and Mark was flipping through the channels. I came to the end of a chapter and said, “Let’s hear what the President has to say.”

We have DirectTV, which has a program menu that shows how much time a show is scheduled for. When Mark changed channels, I saw that stations had scheduled the address for two hours.

“Two hours! He’s gonna talk for two hours?”

Mark reminded me, “This is the one where everybody applauds all the time,” meaning the President might only have 30 minutes of worthwhile monologue, yet the politicians in attendance would intersperse his speech with an hour and a half of clapping.

(I read this morning that the President spoke for 49 minutes [including applause, I assume]. The rest of the scheduled two hours was for the news folks to analyze the speech.)

So Mark clicked on a station that was showing the address, and Bush was talking about education, saying how public schools, even in the poorer areas, should be equivalent with each other. That garnered applause. We must have tuned in too late to hear his plan to ensure that this happens.

“And the nation’s health care,” Bush said, and the gallery busted with applause at the promise of good news the fresh topic would bring. “Something has to be done about that.” Vice President Cheney, sitting behind the President’s right shoulder, clapped his hands fervently. We heard hoots and hollers, and when the camera panned the gallery, we saw a few men in suits doing fist pumps. They were really into this.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, D-California, seated next to Cheney, rolled her eyes as she recognized the empty rhetoric.

The President continued, fueled by the crowd’s enthusiasm, “That’s right,” he said, slamming his right fist to the podium, “something has to be done!”

Members of the House and the Senate, all in attendance, all went wild. People stood, clapping and shouting like they’d just heard the Stones perform their classic “Satisfaction.” Even Representative Pelosi, however hesitant, stood and clapped—though she didn’t smile. This went on for 20 seconds.

(That’s not exactly what happened, but that’s the summary.)

The whole clapping after every statement the President made was very annoying. I said so out loud, “All that clapping is annoying,” and I asked Mark to change channels. Pointing the remote at the TV and perusing the menu, Mark said, “The State of the Union address is really just a pep rally." After he'd settled on American Chopper, he added, "A pep rally for a team that sucks.”

Now, how funny is that? Read it again if you don’t think it’s funny—because you missed something.

It is funny because that's exactly what it's like. I think we need a new coach.

Gettin' His Kicks at 86

2007-01-23T06:12:00.000-08:00

My Lost Summer is dedicated to my Grandma Ann, who, during my recovery, kept the journal on which the book is based. She died unexpectedly in 2001 just as I had started writing what ended up being Chapters 10 through 13—an essay for grad school. I was going to surprise her with the finished essay, but she never even knew I was working on it.

She and Grandpa Mike had been married 61 years when she died, and of course, they were best friends, traveling often, golfing and bowling in leagues, lunching with friends and generally staying active.

Grandpa’s 88 now (86 just made the title flow easier), and he still bowls. He golfs when he can though a couple years ago he developed asthma, which lays him up some hot Ohio summer days that confine him to the house.

Naturally, since he doesn’t travel or socialize so much in the evenings any more, he watches more television. Mark and I usually visit on a Saturday or Sunday, and sports programs play while we talk. One time, a commercial for the sitcom ‘Two and a Half Men’ came on, and Grandpa asked us if we’d ever seen it.

“We’ve seen it a few times,” Mark answered.

“I watch it all the time,” said Grandpa smiling. “Some of those things they talk about...” Here Grandpa widened his eyes, “Hooh, boy. And that little boy, he doesn’t understand none of it.” Grandpa chuckled.

Mark and I watch it regularly now. The topic is always sex, the details of which are hinted at by the characters. What gives the show its appeal is the young boy missing the innuendos or understanding them too literally.

Last night’s program was especially risqué, and after one laugh Mark said, “I can’t believe your grandpa watches this.”

That made me laugh even harder, thinking of my 88-year-old grandpa laughing at the same raunchy banter. I’m glad he still gets his kicks.

No Baby on the Way - Yet

2007-01-22T05:17:00.000-08:00

When I got up Saturday morning, I discovered I wasn't pregnant--after a measly 25-day cycle. What's up with that? Last month it was short too. Oh, wait....No. Um....I don't know. It probably has something to do with the whole time thing. New Zealand is 18 hours--almost one full day--ahead of Ohio. That likely messed things up, which is why last month seemed so early and this month seems off.

Anyway, I'm seeing a specialist February 9. I do feel loyalty to the doctor I'm seeing now as he's been my gyn. since 1999. But, I'm not pregnant yet, and he doesn't specialize in that, and I'm 37--each month counts. So I'm switching to a doctor recommended by a friend of mine from high school. My friend saw this doctor and now has a little girl about one year old. Success!

a January 23 addendum to this post--

Yesterday my doctor called, the one to whom I feel loyal. He said that my estrogen level was 3.6 (unknown [to me] units). That means I didn't ovulate even though I was taking 50 mg Chlomid in order to do so. He said it needs to be at least 8 to 10 to indicate that I've ovulated, and when this whole thing started and my first estrogen level was measured at 1.8, he said a level of 10 to 14 is normal. I have a long way to go. So the doctor called in a two-month prescription for me of 100-mg Chlomid. That's only 10 pills because I only take five a month.

I asked him if he'd heard of the doctor I was planning on seeing. Yes. He said she is a fertility specialist and nothing she will provide is covered by insurance. (The Chlomid is not covered by insurance either, but my appointments are.) He said that he'll send me to a specialist once his options have run out. I'm hoping these 100-mg Chlomid send a couple eggs to the hatchery and I have twins and get it all over with, that's what I'm hoping. Mark is too.

a Hodge Podge of Topics

2007-01-18T10:35:00.000-08:00

1. Mark got in from work this morning just as I was putting on my shoes to walk out the door. We did a quick lip peck, and as I backed away to put on my jacket, he said to me, "Your hair looks good." I toyed with ending that sentence with an exclamation point, but Mark rarely gets excited about anything, but he was part-way excited about my hair. He said, "Your hair looks good," as if he meant, "Your hair is starting to look good," meaning it's looked less than good for so long now, he's come to expect sub-par hair as the norm.

I thanked him. Not until I was in the car on the way to work did I have time to think about what may lurk behind his compliment. Just kidding. I'm not one of those women. If he gives me a compliment, I'll take it as such. And I have to agree that my hair is looking better. Since November, I've had it cut twice by a new woman. It costs 50 bucks a cut, but now I have a potential Va-Va-Voom do rather than $20 ho-hum hair. I'm just starting to learn how to fix it. The key is high heat on the blow dryer. I hate using high heat though.

2. You know Mark and I are trying to get pregnant, right? Well, this month is my first month on Chlomid, a pill that's to make me ovulate. I was ovulating before, but the doctor told me they weren't quality ovulations (?) I'm supposed to give blood on day 21 of my cycle. I just read that as I was putting on my shoes this morning sitting in front of the refrigerator, where I posted this information before our trip to New Zealand last month, as Mark walked through the door. So I called the office this morning; a nurse asked the doctor if giving blood today, day 23 of my cycle, would be too late, and the doctor said today would be fine to give blood. So I'm leaving work at 2:30 to do that.

3. Today I checked out the My Lost Summer page on Lulu.com, my printer. It turns out the preview of my book that was posted is gone. How long it's been gone, I do not know. So I spent hours today figuring out what would be best to post as a preview, what would hook people in to purchasing my book. (You don't have to order online and pay shipping; most Waldenbooks Stores across the U.S. have copies. And you can order it from any bookstore.) I just completed the new preview. Please go to http://www.lulu.com/content/173173 and select the "Preview this book" link under the cover image.

The first preview, the one that is gone, was the first five chapters. I think they're the most exciting of the book. However, others find the book really gets interesting from Chapter 10 on, so I included excerpts from later chapters in the new preview.

I like Chapters 1-5 because I was unconscious for most of that time. The chapters describe my family's reactions to the news of my injury, the dynamic of my divorced parents, their routines now that I was in the hospital long-term with an unknown outcome. It's all new to me, which is why I find it so interesting.

Chapters 10 through the end of the book is based on my memories of recovery. I've lived with those memories for more than 20 years now, so they're old news to me. But most readers likely feel as both judges for the Writer's Digest self-published book awards felt:

"Chapters 10 on are just amazing. Seeing the frustrations and hearing the speech during recovery and in school was heart-breaking and triumphant. For me, this is where the story really began."

"I feel like the book really comes alive when you begin to write from your own perspective in Chapter 10. Reading about the world trough the eyes of someone with severe brain damage is fascinating."

Another Leak at Grandpa's

2007-01-17T05:37:00.000-08:00

Sunday Mark and I visited my Grandpa Mike. He’s a main player in my book. The closet door was open and the closet was empty and stuff was about. Mark asked, “Is your roof leaking again?”

Even though Grandpa had a new roof put on this past summer, it was leaking again. He had taken everything out of the closet so that it wouldn’t be damaged. There were old newspaper clippings and whole sections even that Grandma Ann had saved for some reason or other. The front of one section from 1984 showed my brothers and me as we road in the Franklin Fourth of July parade.
For those of you who haven’t yet read My Lost Summer, I’ll fill you in: my coma was the result of a horseback riding accident while I was riding my horse from Carlisle, a village where I grew up, to Franklin, the next town over, to be in the Fourth of July parade. The year was 1983, and I was 13. I didn’t make it to the parade.

Small towns being small, of course by the end of the summer, everyone knew what had happened since the local papers carried updates regularly.

In 1984 the parade committee asked me to be the Grand Marshall because of what had happened the year before. I was truly honored to have been asked. I felt like the belle of the ball until the driver put the top of the convertible up because of rain.

In this picture, the one from the Chronicle salvaged from Grandpa’s closet, my body language indicates that I’m breathing in the last bit of celebrity. I remember a photographer shouting my name from the sidewalk just before this shot was taken. I gave him a big, $10 smile, knowing the picture was for the paper because of the fancy camera, and I rode the rest of the parade route in the relative shelter of the convertible, satisfied with my showing, however regretful that the rain hadn’t held off longer.

Another Judge's Viewpoint

2007-01-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

Several entries back I shared with you one judge’s opinion of my memoir, My Lost Summer. Yesterday I got in the mail the other judge’s thoughts on the book. They are a bit more positive.

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “poor” and 5 meaning “excellent,” please evaluate the following:

Structure and organization: 3

Grammar: 5

Cover design: 5

Judge’s commentary:

1. What did you like best about this book?
The cover is just gorgeous! Is that Flash? [Yes. Flash is the horse who tripped, dropping me, resulting in a coma.] The blues and golden brown of the scenes are calming and I really like the title too. The pace and detail fo Libbi’s time in the hospital work will – I feel I get a clear picture of what is going on. The journal entries from the mother [actually, my grandmother kept the journal] are also helpful by making the story more real and inclusive to the reader. Allowing the reader to enter inside the mental state of a patient recovering from a coma is a great feat. I even wish the author would have been less cautious with pointing out what were probably accurate perceptions/memories and not. I wouldn’t have minded a mixing of the two. (Perhaps show an outside perspective with the family journals?) [While I wrote this memoir, the whole fiasco was playing out of James Frey fabricating details in his memoir, A Million Little Pieces. I didn’t want to have to go through the same thing.] Chapters 10 on are just amazing. Seeing the frustrations and hearing the speech during recovery and in school was heart-breaking and triumphant. For me, this is where the story really began.

2. How can the author improve this book?
1. What happens in chapter one might be placed between chapter 2 and 3, where it occurs chromologically. And since chapter one is a part of the same event as two and three, you might just combine these three and call it chapter one. Larger and fewer chapters are helpful in that they eliminate some transitory signs that are not needed. 2. You might try playing around with the possibilities of chapter titles throughout. Don’t worry about being less direct about what the chapter contains in these titles. Your first sentences [of the chapters] do a really good job of grounding the reader. [3.] Chapter four is interesting since it touches on the few memories of innocence before the fall as well as the gaps in those memories. Since so much of Part I is in third person with chapter four being from Libbi’s viewpoint, this chapter might be expanded quite a bit for balance. This also might make the switch in tense more purposeful.

Read the other judge's review here.

An Entertaining Blog Right Here on Blogger

2007-01-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

I just started reading a "reality" blog called Today On the Production Floor (http://todayontheproductionfloor.blogspot.com/). It’s like a blue-collar The Office (NBC, Thursday nights). The blog author is a production manager who smartly hasn’t identified the company she works for nor the area of the country she’s in–though she has given clues as she and her co-workers use the word "pop" for soft drink, which likely puts her in the Midwest somewhere, and wherever she is, a significant amount of snow has fallen already this season.

Location doesn’t matter anyway because, according to this author, the dynamics among the characters of production plants are the same everywhere. She identifies the players with affectionate names like Crazy Office Supply Jody, The New Guy, TheBearded Woman, GQ for a gay production-floor worker, and several others. She describes their antics with such detail, from Hedda working the system to get all that's rightfully hers to Mr. Brownstar asking the see her urethra (!) when he meant to say uvula, sometimes I wonder if the author herself is inventing the tales. To be honest, I doubt any fabrication because she includes the mundane ("the ever twisting audits and surveillance for our FDA / ISO re certifications") with the mania. But I don’ t care either way because it’s so entertaining. The best part may be the author’s editorial remarks concerning her employer’s and coworkers' apparent social ineptitude.

To get the most from that blog, you should read from the first entry in October so that you become familiar with the characters. Then enjoy the daily entries from the manager On the Production Floor.

Passing on the Wrong Side

2007-01-10T11:24:00.000-08:00

Drivers in New Zealand ride on the left. When Mark and I would walk across a street at an intersection, we looked left and right and up and back and left and right again before venturing out in the street, unfamiliar which way traffic was approaching. After 10 days or so in the country we got used to it and on trails took the customary left side when meeting other hikers heading in the opposite direction. When we’d meet someone head-on while we were walking on the left and the other party on their right, we figured they were Americans not yet used to the left lane travel.

I just made a trip to the cafeteria here at work to return my lunch tray, and I find that I am meeting co-workers head on as I’ve grown accustomed to walking on the left. How easily our habits change. I’ll be back to the “right” way of doing things before long.

So Much Speculation

2007-01-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

Four people besides me know my take-home pay: my husband, my boss, the HR guy with whom I negotiated my salary, and the company president. I make SIGNIFICANTLY less than the national average of someone with my background and experience. (To be fair, Ohio has one of the lowest costs of living in the country, but still, I’d like to make what I’m worth.)

Then I wonder how, when people learn that I am going on “another” vacation, they can comment, even jokingly, “You make too much,” or “You must have a nice job,” annunciating "nice job" and raising their eyebrows like I sell drugs or something.

If you’ve read my blog from the beginning, you might have noticed that my husband and I traveled to Puerto Rico, Georgia—to visit Dad—Oregon, and New Zealand in the past year.

Yes, traveling takes money, sometimes lots of money, but I’ve worked the last 15 years (minus grad school and temporary ‘between jobs’ stints) and have managed to save, manage, and grow that money, plus Mark has a salary too. And we don't have children.

People act like these trips we take are presents, vacations won on a game show. Give us some credit. They are labored-for, planned, and earned. We don't stay in luxury suites when we travel. In fact, we slept in beds only four of 19 nights in New Zealand. We shivered in sleeping bags in tents the rest of the time.

Yesterday I told Mark that I’ll strongly suggest to the next person who speculates my pay, “Perhaps, over the years, I just managed my money well.” He told me simply to tell people I married up. He is so funny.

One Judge's Take on My Lost Summer

2007-01-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

Mark and I got back the evening of Thursday, January 4 from our three weeks in New Zealand. We had only three voice mails waiting for our attention, and the first one was from a woman who read an article in the local paper about My Lost Summer. Nice (though I’m not real happy about people calling my home about the book).
In our three-weeks of back mail, among the Christmas cards and bills, from Writer’s Digest I received a certificate of participation for submitting my book to the publication’s Self Published book contest. I put the certificate in the pile of papers to be recycled because, really, at about the end of junior high school, I stopped keeping a scrapbook in which to file the minutiae of my accomplishments. The piece of mail from WD was not pointless, however, because also with the certificate were the judge’s comments on the book.

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “poor” and 5 meaning “excellent,” please evaluate the following:

Structure and organization: 3

Grammar: 3
Misspellings and some awkward phrasing.

Cover design: 5
Very arresting image.

Judge’s commentary:
1. What did you like best about this book?
I feel like the book really comes alive when you begin to write from your own perspective in Chapter 10. Reading about the world through the eyes of someone with severe brain damage is fascinating.

2. How can the author improve this book?
Be aware of tense shift in back cover description.

That’s it. Those are one person’s thoughts on My Lost Summer—though I must say nearly everyone has told me the cover is awesome. Thanks, Kathy, my graphic designer.

On Saturday I got an e-mail from a man in Illinois who read my book. This is how the message started: “I just finished your book "My Lost Summer, and I enjoyed it, and learned from it.”

I’ll resist the urge to explain my typos and defend my organization and just take the bad with the good.

Until Next Year

2006-12-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

Work has been nonstop since October 2—until last week.

October started a new fiscal year for the U.S. EPA, where I work as a contractor editing scientific documents. The new year brought a new editor and a new client: Washington DC. That’s why we’re so busy—because we are editing for both the Cincinnati and the DC offices. Thank goodness for the new editor.

Things at work eased last week, and tomorrow I am leaving for a three-week vacation to New Zealand. The new editor is concerned he’s going to get dumped on. This is usually a slow time of the year, yet I know he’s going to get the final two chapters of an involved document we’ve been working on since the beginning of October. (The author was supposed to have it in to us by Monday, two days ago so that I could have helped considerably. However…) So when the rest does come in, poor Cris, the new editor, will have a time of it. I feel sorry for him now, but in a couple days it won’t even cross my mind as I lie on the beaches of northeast New Zealand.

I need the break as stress plus the weather have done a number on my skin: it’s dry and rashy and has been for the past couple weeks. My stress rash first appeared in 1998, and experience assures me that once I step on a plane, looking forward to a new adventure, my stress rash clears up. (And people wonder why I travel so often. To waylay stress!!)

Mark’s nephew and a friend will be staying at our house while we’re away. Mark loaded the kitchen with junk food for the young men. I have left them instructions to water my plant and suggestions for places to go since they’ll be so close to the city proper.

Until next year, adios.

Reminiscences

2006-12-11T04:14:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving was so nice this year. My brother Mike and his family came from Delaware for a visit. On Wednesday night we had a big dinner with cousins, but on Thanksgiving day we rode 4-wheelers at my other brother’s house (4-wheelers being the all-terrain vehicles, like a dirt bike with four really big wheels).
After our ride we sat around the campfire and reminisced, retelling stories we tell every year. Like the one about Chris being tired of taking the trash out to the barrel to burn (this was back about 1970) so he decided to burn it in the house instead—and then not letting anyone in the house because, after he lit it, he knew he’d done something bad. Or the one about Chris throwing the coconut through the window—the closed window; he claims to this day that he thought it was a ball of yarn. Or the one about my cousin Lance and me, at about ages 6 and 7, getting caught in the upstairs shower stall paging through Grandpa’s Playboy magazine.

Mike’s stories are always funny with a hint of sad. He’s the oldest: 10 years older than me, four and a half older than Chris.

A typical Mike story usually involves him taking the responsible role, watching out for his younger siblings. For example, one cold, winter day in my brothers’ youths, they and a neighbor boy a year younger than Chris tramped back the drive, between the barns, over the field, and down the hill to the creek. The creek was great fun in the winter, but we had to be careful because some sections were pretty deep and didn’t always freeze solid.

So the three boys are down at the creek hitting each other over the head with thin ice, like theater glass, sliding along, exploring, and SPLASH! The neighbor falls in up to his ankles.

What to do, what to do?

By the time he got back to the house in those wet boots, he’d probably have frost bite. Mike could carry him maybe, if he didn’t have to go up the hill. Hmm? Being the good neighbor, Mike gives up his own boots and decides to wait on the creek bank on the condition that Chris and/or the neighbor bring him back a pair of warm, dry boots.

The walk from the creek to the house only takes about five minutes. Still, Mike waits and waits. After what seems like an hour he begrudgingly concludes that Chris and the neighbor are not coming back.

Freezing and finally, Mike gets to the house in his soggy stocking feet, walks in and sees Chris and the neighbor boy sipping hot chocolate and watching cartoons.

Every year Mike recounts the story, he imitates the wide-eyed, drop-jawed, innocent look of “Oh, I forgot,” that flashed onto Chris’s face when he saw his older brother. And every year by the end of the story Mike is seething.

I guess really cold feet are not soon forgotten.

Reminiscences (Part 2)

2006-12-11T04:08:00.000-08:00

So on gorgeous, sunny Thanksgiving day—cool enough to be comfortable in sweatshirt and jeans sitting around the fire after our 4-wheel adventure—as we tell stories about our shared youth and life on the farm, Chris starts a story that neither Mike nor I nor anyone has heard.

“You know, Mom would give us 25 cents for every mouse we caught, dead or alive. I set traps up and checked ‘em a couple times a week. Sometimes they’d still be alive in the trap, and I’d take ‘em out to the horse trough and play with ‘em before I turned ‘em in; you know, mice can’t swim. Well, then I came up with a real money maker.
I’d fill a 55-gallon drum up about a third of the way with water and smear peanut butter on the end of a section of Hot Wheels track and then balance it on the edge of the drum. When a mouse walked out to get the peanut butter, it’d tip the track into the drum along with the mouse.” Chris nodded and grinned really big.”

How ingenious! I was so impressed! (Who knew mice couldn’t swim though? Even chickens can swim.) I asked him how old he was.

Probably seven.

Mike and I both have degrees in engineering. Chris didn’t even go to college. Yet he’s the one who always concocts some simple mechanical solution to an involved problem. I wish Mom was then as impressed as I am now. Then she might have contacted the paper. I can see the headline:

“Preteen catches mice with water, peanut butter, and Hot Wheels track.”

Of course, Mom probably had no idea of more than half her little boy’s tricks. He was crafty. Still is.

Restaurant Review: Pappadeaux a Pappadud

2006-12-08T11:26:00.000-08:00

Last week my husband and I went out to eat at a fancy sea food restaurant he wanted to try: Pappadeaux in Springdale near the Rt. 4/275 interchange. We didn’t know it was so fancy until we walked into the place and felt a bit underdressed. It was early on a Wednesday and the place hadn’t filled yet so our casual attire went mostly unnoticed.

The menu was sufficient with standard as well as unique sea food fair; however, the least expensive entrée cost $19 and change. And that's without salad or bread. That’s a bit pricey for a casual meal out for us. The Caesar salad was $9, and our table tent advertised margaritas for $7.95!!!

I ordered the catfish fillet for $19+ and asked what vegetable it came with. The waiter answered, “The catfish fillet comes with rice.”
I simply stared, wondering if I should let him know that rice is not a vegetable.
Mark broke the silence, in hopes of thwarting a smart response from me: “Just order a vegetable on the side.”
I considered that, but before the waiter had come to take our orders, I checked that a side of broccoli cost $2.75. I’m not likely to pay almost three times as much for only a third of what I could (get Mark to) fix myself.

The waiter helpfully chimed in that substitutions are welcomed.

So I ordered the catfish with broccoli, thank you, and Mark got the shrimp kabob with asparagus and what the menu identified as “dirty” rice. Our waiter bragged that the asparagus wasn’t the normal asparagus you can get from the market. No, theirs was nuclear-sized asparagus.
“The smaller the asparagus the more tender,” I thought. I kept it to myself though as I had created enough tension with my silent treatment after the waiter said rice was a vegetable.

After half an hour our waiter delivered our entrees and warned us of the “hot plates.” Without fail I take warnings like that as a challenge to test the plate. Once our waiter turned, I touched my plate, then Mark’s. They were warm and not even very warm, just warm. The food was hot however.

My meal was good though I prefer my broccoli cooked a little more. Mark’s shrimp, we both agreed, was simply satisfactory; the flavoring wasn’t distinct enough. Applebee’s probably offers the same thing for $10 less. He was a little less than satisfied with his dirty rice with bits of sausage in it. And the asparagus? With the girth of an index finger and near the length of two, it was tougher than my broccoli.

Our bill came to just over $40. On the way out we each nabbed a peppermint swirl from the basket near the exit. Complimentary after-dinner mints are a nice touch, yet I thought peppermint swirls a tad unsophisticated. Individually wrapped buttermints would have better helped the establishment achieve its desired ambience.

Shall we entertain ourselves at Pappadeaux again? Pappadoubtful.

1100 Copies Out There

2006-12-07T08:30:00.000-08:00

Hey! Good news this week. A reporter with a small, neighborhood paper interviewed me about the book. The article she writes will be in next week’s College Hill Currents newspaper.

Also this week the publisher of hoi polloi , a start-up literary mag produced in Massachusetts, contacted me with some interview questions that I can complete at my leisure before returning to him. He tells me “Your story is inspiring and I believe it would be a terrific addition to our first issue of hoi polloi.” The first issue is due in the spring or summer of 2007.

Wow, Massachusetts!

Last weekend I had two signings and sold a total of 21 books. I have two this weekend too and hope I do as well or better. Only 10 boxes of My Lost Summer take up space in my house now, down from 20. That’s 400 copies gone and 400 yet to go. Of the 400 gone, I gave away close to 100 for a total of about 300 sold. LSI, the national supplier, has sold almost 800 copies. Even Great Britain’s LSI has sold a few. So in this first year about 1100 copies of My Lost Summer are out there. Yay!

My New Writing Venue

2006-11-30T11:28:00.000-08:00

ENOUGH! about the book. I just read through the last several entries and myself got bored with it. I just finished an entry, but it has to do with…yes, the book, actually, my conscious limitation of the mention of God in my book But I think it’s a bad idea to post another entry solely about my book; however, not much else is going on with me. My braces, which I got November 1, are bothering me. The wire on the lower right sticks me, Ouch! But that’s not worth writing about, any more than I have in this sentence.

What might be my best bet is to introduce you to a new column I am starting come January. It’s called “Our Nation’s Treasures” and will be syndicated to the weekly papers for Miamisburg, West Carrollton, Franklin, and Springboro, Ohio (to replace “Health Hints,” which I wrote this year).

If you don’t get one of those papers, don’t fret because I will be keeping another blog, www.OurNationsTreasures.blogspot.com, where I’ll post every story that appears in the paper along with pictures. Mark and I have traveled pretty extensively across the nation, and I always keep a travel journal on our trips so can refer to those and write stories in detail about trips we took years ago.

My very first nationally published article was a travel story--with two accompanying pictures--that appeared in February 26, 2003 issue of The Christian Science Monitor. It was about a volunteer experience I had on Ireland's Aran Isles years before I ever met Mark.

In grad school at the University of Cincinnati for three months I wrote a weekly travel column, mostly about foreign travel, which I did more of when I was single; I intentially saved the U.S. to travel with my husband, whoever he would be and whenever he would come along. I traveled solo for about five years before meeting Mark. I'm glad I saved the U.S. to share. He and I have a great time exploring new places together.

I'm looking forward to travel writing again.

Share Your Lemonade

2006-11-26T18:25:00.001-08:00

At the end of the epilog of My_Lost_Summer I give my Website and invite people to send me their thoughts on the book. This morning waiting in my inbox was an e-mail from a woman who bought the book yesterday at a signing I had locally:

Hi Libby,

I bought a copy of your book today at the Kroger store in Finneytown. I just wanted to let you know that I read the entire book this afternoon. I could not put it down. I want you to know that I have not read an entire book in one day for over 30 years, since before I had my children. Your story touched my heart and I will encourage others to read it. Thank you for sharing your story and I wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Lyn B.

How nice that she took the time to send me these kind words. Of the people I’ve talked to who have read_My_Lost_Summer, about half tell me that they do so in one day. (The book is 189 pages so reading it in one sitting would be a feat unless you have a tiny stomach [so don’t get hungry] and a large bladder.)

Another woman I talked to told me that her four-year-old granddaughter was in a coma for several days before life support was removed. I couldn’t believe this woman wasn’t tearing up as she recounted the events that lead to her granddaughter’s death, but she told me she has found peace in knowing that the pain of at least three other children was alleviated because her son chose to donate the little girl’s organs.

Amazing. Truly amazing that someone could be so strong and mentally healthy. But finding peace is so much better than the alternative: holding on to hate or wondering why.

I shared with this lady my feelings about my coma. I always wondered why God allowed it to happen, why my family and I weren’t spared the struggles, frustrations and pain of the many years of recovery. Yet when I started writing _My_Lost_Summer I, myself, found peace—or at least I started to accept that my accident happened for the greater good of others—because I wrote this book to tell family and caregivers what actually goes on in the minds of the newly conscious coma survivor. And with that information, doctors, therapists, and family can change their treatment of the patient for the better.

Through the years at different milestones in my life I’ve asked
1. Why did the coma happen?
2. Why have I been unhappy with the technical jobs I’ve held, which all pertained to my B.S. in environmental engineering? Why should I have had to struggle through earning that degree if ultimately I am unsatisfied with the work I do?
3. Why, after going back to school and earning my M.A. in Professional Writing & Editing (since I was unhappy with my B.S.), am I unemployed after more than a year of searching for work?

The one answer to all that is so that I would be prepared to write a book about my recovery that would motivate caregivers to alter their methods of care and coaching to better help six million yearly survivors of traumatic brain injury (U.S. statistic).

I encourage you to find peace within yourself by searching for answers to your life questions that will benefit the world or your community.

Why was your score too low on the police entrance exam? Maybe you’d do the community better in another line of work?
Why did you go through the pain of divorce? So your sons did not grow up learning that communication involved verbal and physical abuse.
Why did you witness the atrocities of war? So that you become an activist towards ultimate world peace.

I don’t know who said it first, and you might think this an oversimplification, but When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. And share it with the world.

I Have a Fan

2006-11-23T19:07:00.000-08:00

I honestly thought no one read my blog, that I was really just writing for myself. Sure, I’ve gotten legitimate comments from two different people, but that’s only two, and I figured they have likely lost interest by now. (I need to be a little more confident, I know.) But to my pleasant amazement, I learned differently last Sunday.

I had a book signing in Beavercreek, Ohio, the furthest from home so far (one’s coming up December 3 in Columbus!). Waldenbooks in the Fairfield Mall hosted me, and it was my best signing yet; 15 copies in two hours.

An hour or so in, a smiley woman pushing her son in a stroller with six-year-old daughter in tow, approached the table and told me she’d read about my signing on my Website. “I didn’t think anyone read my Website,” I told her, just like I didn't think anyone read my blog. “How did you find my Website?”

It turns out she gets one of the four weeklies to which my health & fitness column is syndicated, and every article gives my byline and Website at the end. She also told me she regularly reads my blog and enjoys my column in the Springboro Star Press.

We talked for five minutes or so, and I felt so honored that she came all the way from Springboro to Beavercreek (about 35 or 40 minutes). However, my new braces hurt my mouth from all the smiling I, myself, was doing at the thought of having a groupie. : )

I bet my biggest fan recognizes herself in this entry. If you do, J., please leave a comment. Let me know you’re out there.

"Extremely Touching"

2006-11-17T19:58:00.000-08:00

Today at the end of my nine-hour work day at the end of my 40-plus-hour week, brain drained, I decided to devote the last several minutes of the day to Web surfing. I hadn’t Googled myself or my book in several months so typed “My Lost Summer” into the search engine. On page four of the results (all of which are not about my book, as “my lost summer” is kind of a commonly used phrase) I opened a link to the Website for the Brain Injury Association of Wyoming. In a PDF of their Summer 2006 newsletter I found some words about My Lost Summer, a copy of which I mailed to the association.

What I noticed right away was that the book is easy to read, and extremely touching in the way it presents various family members as they learn to cope with Elizabeth’s injury.
--Dorothy Cronin

I am particularly pleased with “extremely touching.” If you haven’t read it yet, what are you waiting for?

An Analogy of My Own

2006-11-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

Do you remember in July I wrote of an analogy my husband made between a lady’s butt and two bags of dirty laundry? I was so jealous because it was a great analogy, for the lady’s butt did look like two bags of dirty laundry and I hardly ever think in analogies; I really admire people who can. In that blog entry I said that I’d work on training my brain to think that way. Well, this morning I came up with a doozie.

Please allow me to build the story. Friday night a friend and I had dinner together, and she told me that her soon-to-be-ex-husband came to the shop where she works and embarrassed her by being more than a bit obnoxious. She said she was into her second day without communication with him, which was the longest since their separation months earlier.

After our dinner of fine Chinese food and some good conversation, my friend and I watched the movie Chocolat—with dreamy Johnnie Depp. After the movie my friend showed me a text message her soon-to-be-ex had sent her that came in during the show. It was an apology for his actions the previous night, which was all fine and good, but the message continued on to say how he was readying for a date; he said he was moving on to “greener pastures.”

The message was plain hurtful. Why couldn’t he have ended the message after the apology? Because he’s a jerk, I say. I told my friend to be strong and not to communicate with him in any way unless it was imperative—like for some legal reason.

This morning I, myself, shot her off an e-mail asking if she were maintaining her show of stoicism concerning her soon-to-be-ex. I told her to resist the urge to respond to his asinine attempts at arousal. I told her (and here’s the analogy) that her soon-to-be-ex is like a rash, his text messages are the bothersome itch. As a rash goes away faster when one resists the urge to satisfy the itch, her soon-to-be-ex will go away faster if she resists the urge to satisfy her need to tell him to %&!!* off.

I am SO proud of that analogy. It’s a good one, don’t you think?

Gotta Get Rid of These Books

2006-11-12T14:15:00.000-08:00

To take advantage of the holiday gift-giving tradition, I have scheduled five signings between next Saturday and early December: one at a grocery, where I sold 11 copies of My Lost Summer at a signing in May; three at Waldenbooks in Middletown, Dayton, and Columbus, Ohio; and the fifth and most recently scheduled is at a bank, my bank.

From my experience, books do not sell well in venues where books are not sold. (The grocery where I have sold and will sell again does sell books, and people who visit the grocery are in the buying mood.) However, I will take an hour and a half from my Friday afternoon and sit at the bank hawking my book to those interested simply because the employees at the bank, several of whom have read My Lost Summer, so graciously offered me this opportunity. Wish me luck there--and everywhere else. For I still have about 500 copies of the book taking up space in my house.

To get copies moving, what I need to do is follow through with some of the marketing ideas others have given me. A friend tells me that I should contact Catholic schools—where students buy their own books. Though inebriation is not a topic in My Lost Summer, she said my book could prove a deterrent to drunk driving as it offers insight into how someone’s life can be totally changed if he gets into an accident.

Last weekend at a family function, the teenaged son of my cousin told me that he read my book and liked it. He is the first young man who I know has read my book, and I was pleased he found it interesting. He said his teacher has read it and would like me to visit the school. If speaking would be worth taking a half day off work—if I was guaranteed a sale of five books at least—then I would definitely come to his school. But I haven’t followed through with it.

I’m thinking of doing it now, and my 2006 New Year’s resolution was (is) to call people right when I think about it, so that’s what I’m off to do: to start the process of speaking at schools. Hopefully, my stash of 500 will dwindle by the spring. Again, wish me luck.

The Good Life

2006-11-08T03:53:00.000-08:00

In mid October a journalist with the Cincinnati Enquirer phoned to interview me about My_Lost_Summer. The small article appeared in the Hometown section of the October 21 edition. The last paragraph reads

Fryer says that because her injury occurred at such a young age, she isn't really sure what impact it has had on her life or her personality, but she doesn't feel that she's worse off for it. "I live a really good life," she says. "I don't know that it could be much better if this hadn't happened."

This past week has been a "My Life Sucks" week. Little things at home; a big project dumped on me (and another editor) at work near deadline; I got braces--at 37--and my teeth hurt; and I was cited for a car wreck I did not cause. This all fell at THE worst time in my cycle, and I can honestly say I've never felt more down in the dumps. I've been more depressed at other times in my life, but this week I just needed a big, teary breakdown.

The day before all this happened, I had lunch with a friend whose son is in kindergarten at a Montesori school, and his teachers are telling her he is not doing well. She's upset about that, wonders whether to pull him out and enroll him in a public school (and save $800+ in tuition). I talked to another woman at work about my bad day, and she was so empathetic and then mentioned how her husband would be accompanying her 16-year-old son to court later that day. A woman at my orthodondist's office is getting a divorce after 20+ years of a good marriage.

Wow! All that puts my petty problems in perspective: my problems will blow over in a week (and they have, more or less) while the situations my friends are dealing with are personal and perhaps life-altering.

How you choose to face life's challenges is all in your perspective.

Up the Oregon Coast - Last Day

2006-10-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

We are looking forward to this, our final full day in OR, not because it’s our last day but because we are looking forward to the stunning views as we drive up the coast. But the coast is covered in fog and is so until past 11 a.m. Quite the bummer.

We stop in a small town around 9 a.m. and walk out on the public dock and see the sea lions waking. Two ambitious sea lions that get moving before their peers each bring something up from the depths and slam it against the water. After their victims are stunned, the sea lions devour them. Honestly, what they brought up looked like crabs or some kind of crustacean, but that seems unlikely. Maybe they were birds. We’ll never know.

On our way back to the car, we stop in a candy store and buy peanut butter fudge, and Mark selects a vast variety of salt water taffy, which we enjoy on our way up the coast.

We next stop at a farmers’ market and walk around though we don’t buy anything as it’s our last day. Mark says he wishes we had a farmers’ market back home. I remind him that, “There is Findlay Market.” He says he doesn’t want to risk his life going to the market, and Findlay Market is in the seediest section of Cincinnati. I make up my mind to search out another one when we get back.

Further north we stop in Tillamook at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and have trouble finding a parking spot, it’s so crowded this Saturday morning. Since it’s a Saturday, there are no cheese-making operations to see. Mark stands in line in the store there and buys some pepper jack cheese and a little beef stick. We both get ice cream cones; I get a scoop of pistachio pecan to complement a scoop of caramel pecan atop a sugar cone. Boring Mark gets one flavor: two scoops of wild mountain raspberry on a sugar cone.

We drive up the coast towards our final destination: Fort Clatsop and the Lewis & Clark National Historic Site. All the while we’re enjoying fudge and salt water taffy and now cheese! Mark eats some of the beef stick too.

At Fort Clatsop, amazingly, we don’t feel sick. We tour the museum at the visitor center and see the informational film. This is the worst introductory film to a National Park/Monument/Historic Site I’ve ever seen. I watch the credits at the end and see that it’s written, produced, and edited by the same fellow. That’s one of the problems. I thought everyone knew that people are not good editors of their own creations. As a write, I am aware of this. Apparently educational film writers/producers/editors are not.

The second problem with the film was that the atrocious acting was all done by employees or volunteers at Fort Clatsop, which is not the original but is a recreation. Fort Clatsop is the western winter encampment of the Corps of Discovery during their final year on their amazing Journey of Discovery.

After the film, Mark and I hike a short trail from the fort to the Columbia River (I think) before aiming east to Portland. We want to get to the Borders Express in a certain mall in Portland so that I can sign copies of my book that had been ordered.

We arrive at the store, and they search, but it turns out that my books have not arrived yet. So Mark and I drive north and stay at a Holiday Inn Express near where we need to return the rental car in the morning. We settle into our separate beds and sleep well.

Rogue River Mail Jet Boat Tours - Day 8

2006-10-20T03:25:00.000-07:00

At little Breakers Motel in Gold Beach, OR, I walk to the lobby this morning for breakfast. Just juice and cereal. The proprietor is unlocking the door just as I get there. We smile our good mornings, and I give him the key to the room. I say that I made a 1-800 call last night from the room to check on my book sales and ask if there is any charge for that. He tells me no and asks about my book.

I tell him MyLost Summer is about my recovery from a coma when I was a teenager He’s very interested so I leave a card, and he says he’ll ask the bookstore owner up the street to order one for him and several others for the small town—as he’ll spread the word that an author stayed the night in Gold Beach.

Until mid afternoon today Mark and I will be on a Jet Boat touring the Rogue River, 80 miles up, then back. It’s a United States Postal Service mail boat operation, and of several boats that leave this morning, ours gets stuck with the actual mail, which we drop up river with a woman who drove a USPS SUV out on a sand bar to meet our boat.

During the ride, which is pretty chilly this morning, we see blue heron, egrets, several blacktail doe—one with fawn—and four young adult black bears that look like they just left the den. We also see juvenile and adult eagles and other things I forget. We stop to watch a crew from the Oregon DNR (or whatever it’s called up there) net fish and measure them. The young woman wrangling the fish to measure holds the fish up for those of us in the boat who want to photograph it. Mark and I notice that she gives a big smile each time she does it, like we asked her to “Say Cheese!”

We take off at 8:20 a.m. and get back at 2:30 p.m., but about two hours of that is not on the boat. We stop for half-an-hour break on the way up, and on the way back we disembark for an hour and 20 minute lunch! There is a restaurant serving buffet-style meals, but Mark and I packed Chicken of the Sea tuna snacks with apples; we don’t need 25 minutes even. After our quick picnic we walk down to the dock and put our feet in the water. I nap in the sun while Mark chats with an older fellow, a local.

Once we get back and off the boat, we continue our northern route up the Oregon coast and stop at different places in Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area for some light hiking before stopping for the night in Florence. We shower quickly and head out to a Mexican restaurant, Aztlan. Mark orders a seafood burrito, and I get a Spanish omelet, which is just a Western omelet with Mexican sauce—not quite salsa and not quite mole—and sour cream on top. Mark and I both love it.

Redwoods National Park - Day 7

2006-10-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

This morning our first stop in Redwoods National Park is at Ah Pah trail – only a quarter mile long. When Mark and I hike, if there’s anything to note, whichever of us is in front alerts the other: “Orchid.” “Mushroom.” “Thorns.”

This morning I lead the way and near the end I step over a banana pepper, which could only have come from someone’s lunch as it’s a tropical fruit, and I warn, “Pepper.”

The end of the trail is 50 feet further, and once there, we turn back, me leading yet. “Pepper,” I say again. Then Mark says to me, “It’s a slug.” I turn and look and sure enough, the pepper has horns. Mark's aiming the camera at it when I see another one further behind him on the edge of the trail. Mark gets a piece of bark and scoops the slug up and carries it over to be in the picture with the first one. It curls up, retracting its horns, but within a minute of Mark putting it down, it uncurls, and Mark gets his shot. We watch them a few seconds, struggling in opposite directions.

As we walk away, Mark says, “Those two probably spent all day yesterday trying to get away from each other.”

Back almost to the trail beginning, we encounter another couple starting the hike. We tell them about the slugs, but they don’t understand. They are French—or French Canadian. On the trusty digital camera, Mark brings up the picture he just took of the two banana pepper impersonators, and we indicate to the couple that the slugs are at the end of the short trail. Mark, who barely traveled out of the tri-state before we met, thought that little communication between the English and the French was pretty neat. (It made me think of how Lewis and Clark and the Corp of Discovery got along so well communicating with the Indians on their amazing journey out to the Pacific. Fort Clatsop, the Lewis & Clark encampment, is to be our final National Monument this trip.)

Redwoods National Park is not short on trails, and I decide that we should take the very next one south, the Ossagon Trail, simply because it leads through four separate ecosystems: forest, prairie, dune, and ocean.

We start through the forest on cushy, level land, and we see the biggest clovers we’ve ever seen!
The intro tape we saw at the Visitor Center yesterday informed us that the pinecone from a redwood, the tallest tree in the world, is the size of an olive. Based on the how big the trees are, we think it should be about the size of a cow.

Further along the easy trail, I spot a red frog. He shyly hops into the big clover. Then I see another one! And Mark spies a newt! He blends in so well with the sticks.

The first three quarters of a mile lead through the forest, but then the trail drops steeply for nearly another mile before leveling out to prairie on the way to the coast. Just before the trail opens up to the beach, we pass some wild blackberry bushes. Mark enjoys several berries (which looked like luscious redwood pinecones) before following me out to the dunes. When he’d caught up, he asked if I were going to eat any. “I don’t like blackberries. I’d eat them if I were desperate, but I don’t like them.”

We walk out to the upper beach, and I sit to empty sand from my shoe. Mark hikes onto the crest of the dune, before it slopes off to the ocean. We didn’t see a person the whole hike down, yet two fishermen stand at the shoreline tossing their lines into the sea. Their truck is parked on the beach.

The fog obstructs our view out to sea so with not much to see, we turn back after a short rest.

Remembering how steep the trail is and having my stomach growl and hearing Mark’s exclamations when he popped a sweet, juicy berry, I decide I am near desperate. At the berry patch we select the plumpest blackberries within easy reach. Mark laments that we don’t have a bucket. As he picks berries from the bush, he sees a bright green, little frog that seems less shy than the red ones I saw in the forest.

To me, the berries are more texture than taste, but I make it up the trail and back to the car (and water) without complaint from a hungry tummy or a parched throat.

We stay in the park until early afternoon, sticking with easy trails since we're worn out from the climb up Ossagon Trail. At Elk Meadow we picnic and hike to a waterfall before returning to Oregon. Redwoods National Park is one of my favorites.

Oregon Caves and California - Day 6

2006-10-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

Mostly traveling today—with one stop on our way to Redwoods Forest National Park in California: Oregon Caves National Monument. We stopped at a market and bought batteries for the flashlight. We arrived at Oregon Caves in the early afternoon and registered for the cave tour and learned that flashlights were not permitted. All the way from Ohio for nothing.

The cave was quite decorated, and inside we saw something we’d never seen before in all the caves we have traveled through: a tree root. The root was from a tree 55 feet above, and it stretched about 20 feet further along the cave floor.

Oregon Caves were discovered in 1874, by a young man hunting for bear, Elijah Davidson. Davidson found a bear, and his dog chased it into a whole on the side of a mountain. The love of a man for his dog led Davidson to follow though he could see nothing. He quickly gave up his pursuit and followed a gurgling, ice-cold stream out to safety. His dog was soon to follow, and Davidson set up camp at the cave’s exit, laying his provisions there to lure the bear. The following morning the bear made its way to daylight too, led by the scent of Davidson’s food. And BAM! Davidson shot himself a bear!

After 90 minutes the tour let out on the side of the mountain, and Mark and I continued up the trail—less than a mile—through the old growth forest—and then down again, back to the car. We grabbed our food and hiked a bit lower than the parking lot and picnicked in the forest.

On south to California. Our reservations were in Crescent City at the top tip of Redwoods National Forest. We entered California on a curvy, old logging road and so were pleasantly surprised to come across a Redwoods National Park Visitor Center, and we got there just 20 minutes or so before closing. The two rangers manning the VC seemed surprised and delighted to see us too. I’m not sure they had any visitors all the day up to that point. They told us that the VC would close for the season in a couple days; only the south VC would stay open. (Redwoods National Park runs along the California coast for about 100 miles.) One ranger helped me plan our visit for the next day. Then Mark and I watched the 12-minute introductory video and drove back to a hidden drive that the ranger turned us on to. Crescent City sat at the end of the seven-mile drive. We stopped for a short hike on our way; I took a picture of 6' 4" Mark at the bottom of an upended redwood.

After checking in to our motel, Mark and I drove down 101 to some lookouts over the ocean and then back to Anchor Way, which dead-ended at the water, and ate at a busy seafood restaurant, where we watched sea lions lazing in the cool evening air, some posing for pictures, quite used to the attention.

After dinner we drove to another bay and walked out to get a picture of the full moon, but it was chilly. Mark didn’t have a jacket, and he’s who took the picture so it’s all shaky. Turning the other way, we ran the length of the dock back to the warmth of our rental car. And from the car Mark got a really nice picture of a lighthouse backed by the lowest of sunsets.

Crater Lake – Day 5

2006-10-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

Direct from my travel journal 5 Sept. 06

Crater Lake: no inlets to deposit sediment or silt – pure snow water. World record for clarity = 143’. Depth – 1943’. It’s so blue because it’s so deep. 6.1 mi X 4.7 mi. There are hydrothermal vents to support bacteria. Still active. Dormant for 5000yrs. Deepest lake entirely above sea level, 7th deepest in world. Deepest in US. 20.42 mi2, 4.9 trillion gal, 6173’ (1882m) above sea level – surface elevation. Surface temp 32 F – 66 F (0-19 C) 38 F (4 C) at bottom yr round. 44’ avg snow fall. From author Jack London, 1911, “I thought that I had gazed upon everything beautiful in nature as I have spent many yrs traveling thousands of miles to view the beauty spots of the earth, but I have reached the climax. Never again can I gaze upon the beauty spots of the earth and enjoy them as being the finest thing I have ever seen. Crater Lake is far above them all.” –

…We drove on to Crater Lake. The Visitor Center wasn’t open yet (not till 9 am) so we drove on to the rim village and walked around the rim. The view was better than yesterday. We’d gone just a little ways and taken about 5 pictures because it was so awe inspiring, when M. suggested we drive on up to Cleetwood Trailhead to get tickets to go on the boat ride to Wizard Island. [Wizard Island is the caldera/island in Crater Lake.]

We headed up the west side of the lake and saw a fleet of Nat’l Forest Fire control trucks lined up ready to go. We saw so much smoke to the west and traffic cones prevented parking in some areas. Further on, one pullout had fire info posted. The fire was started from a lightning strike July 23 so since it was natural, it was allowed to burn. It was only a smoldering fire to burn the brush and dead wood on the forest floor.

At Cleetwood ~9:25 and we were the last 2 to get on the 10 am boat tour - $59 for the both of us [meaning each]. We booked it down the mile-long trail and rode the boat 30 mins over to W.I. There we right away hiked up a mile to the top of the volcano to the caldera and we ate lunch while looking out to lake.

On the hike up we saw views of the lake that brought tears to my eyes, it was so beautiful.

The boat was to pick us up for our return at 12:30. We got down ~12:15. M went to dock, where others were hanging out, and I went to restrooms. Then I walked to a diff. dock, took my socks and boots off and put my feet in H2O-COLD! I was considering going skinny dipping, but it was too cold. I regret that I didn’t do it now tho. The boat got us ~12:45 and we toured other areas of the lake – Phantom Ship, 2 waterfalls, the Pumice Castle, and got back to Cleetwood at 2 pm.
…
Drove to Rim Village and went to gift store and bought post cards, a magnet and a necklace and then walked to a lookout, where a young ranger was giving a lecture.

After, we drove to the Pinnacles – like hoodoos a little bit w/ a stream running beneath. Even though the Pinnacles were at the end of a 7-mi drive, it was worth it. Back at the cabin we cleaned up and went to a Mexican Restaurant on 97 that the proprietor [of Crater Lake Resort] told us about yesterday. Yummy. We found it by the Big Yellow sign w/ black lettering: Mexican Food Cocktails.

From 6 Sept 06 journal entry

I didn’t consider Oregon “the West.” Yes, it’s true that OR is a westernmost state in the continental US, but I suppose I thought of OR more as Seattle, filled w/ tech Yuppies more so than w/ farmers and blue-collar types. In Mexican Food Cocktails last night we walked into a dark room w. square tables, straight-back chairs. There was some Latin art on the walls, but most of the ambiance was provided by the other customers – 5 locals, one of them a woman, all wearing hats. Our waitress wore Wranglers.

Newberry Volcanic National Monument and Crater Lake National Park – Day 4

2006-10-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

After our fill of breakfast at Days Inn in Bend, we drove just south to Newberry Volcanic National Monument where we started a line to gain entrance to the park. At 9 a.m. the gate opened, we showed our National Parks Pass, and the ranger gave us a ticket to drive up to the caldera; the ticket gave us two hours. Because the caldera is so small, they have to monitor how many people go up at a time.

We were thinking the further south we went, the smoke from the forest fires near Mt. Hood would be less evident, yet a fire was ablaze in the Three Sisters/Mt. Bachelor area too, just southwest of Bend. So our view from the caldera, Lava Butte Lookout, was less than spectacular. But the short hike around the rim was nice. At the top friendly chipmunks begged for something to tuck away with their other winter supplies, but we heeded the warning not to feed the animals.
Back on level land, we entered the Visitor Center, I got hiking/touring advice for later, and we walked out back to the easy mile-long trail though the lava field. The top of Mt. Bachelor to the northwest peaked out of the settled smoke, yet the Three Sisters were still hidden. After the easy lava rock trail we took the easier tree trail bordering the parking lot and then drove the access road to Benham Falls. (One must first turn into the Newberry Volcanic National Monument from 97, and the road to Benham Falls is to the south before the entry gate to the NM.)

The day was beautiful, and the hike, along Deschutes River, was the prettiest, most pleasant hike I’ve ever taken. Locals fished from the banks, and plenty of tourists strolled the mile or so back to the falls, some rode bikes. Too bad smoke still hung on Mt. Bachelor, which we could see occasionally through a break in the trees. At one point I wanted to climb out on a rock on a cliff over the river and have Mark take my picture, but he said he didn’t want to encourage that type of activity so he wouldn’t do it and continued on. I climbed out anyway then climbed back and took a picture of the rock. I’ll tell people to imagine me on it. (Mark had the digital camera; I had the one with film—so no pic for the blog.)

Just before the falls, the running water was so loud, and we walked out to look up stream, and so powerful the water looked, roiling through the rock walls. I can’t imagine anyone surviving any kind of attempt to ride the rapids, whether in a vessel or not. Rough is the only way to describe it—besides beautiful and blue. I could have spent hours there, hiking down to the falls and back, enjoying the day and the calm, easy trail, however, we were on a schedule, hoping to get to Crater Lake National Park later today. So we drove south to the Lava Cave.

The tour was unescorted so Mark and I walked down to the entrance, declining the lantern rental since Mark brought a flashlight all the way from Ohio. In the mouth of the cave he discovered that the batteries barely had juice. So I trudged back up to the shack and rented a lantern to take with us.

I really enjoyed the cave. It’s the first I’ve been to without a guide, which in itself was kind of exciting. Most of the time it was just us and the latern. The temperature stays a chilly 42 degrees F throughout the year. We wore our Gortex jackets. At the entrance to the cave, the floor was rocky and uneven, like someone had dumped a truckload of petrified grapefruits, then it smoothed out in sandy bottom layers, like on a beach. We estimate to have walked a mile or so before the ceiling got too low for us to walk upright. After 100 yards or so walking in an uncomfortable, bent-over fashion, we chose to turn back.

Continuing with the lava theme, we drove further south to the Lava-Cast Forest and took an easy trail around the lava field and saw holes left where lava encased trees (and the trees are now gone). The holes reminded me of little kivas (Native American meeting places dug into the earth). On the trail we paused to look north to Mt. Bachelor, and even the Three Sisters were faintly evident through the thinning smoke.

Finally, we were on our way to Crater Lake, what we expected to be the highlight of the trip in the way of beauty. Surely the forest fires’ smoke wouldn’t reach that far south. Yet the nearer we got, the hazier the air became. We gained entrance with our Park Pass and drove south to Rim Drive and stopped there and climbed to a lookout. The caldera in which the lake sat was filled with smoke. We couldn’t see the blueness of the lake; it looked gray. We were disappointed.

We drove east around the lake, stopping frequently. The lake, even in all the smoke, was pretty and National-Park-worthy, we just expected so much more. Mark took a picture of the phantom ship, a tiny island that looks like a pirate ship.

The day was late, the air was smoky, and we had all the following day for the park, so we exited out the south and drove 25 miles east to Crater Lake resort, an RV park with about five cabins. We showered and went out to our little patio and ate the calzone, left over from dinner last night, while we watched three dogs from campers in the RV park familiarize themselves with the grounds and each other and while the mosquitos ate us up. Mosquitos in Oregon in September, Who knew?

Timberline Lodge and John Day Fossil Beds - Day 3

2006-10-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

Even though I was drunk and Mark is directionally challenged, we made it to Timberline Lodge, a National Historic Landmark, where just a couple weeks earlier our travel agent reserved for us the last available room for nearly $200! I didn’t want to pay that much, but Mark reasoned, “How often do you get to say you stayed at a place where a movie was filmed?”

That’s right. Timberline Lodge, or the outside of it, actually, is where “The Shining” was filmed. Please see my amateur review of the movie.

Room 301, with window overlooking the pool, had a twin bed and a double. I passed out on the twin within a minute of walking into the room. I’m not sure what Mark did while I was out. He eventually woke me for dinner. We cleaned up and walked around the place before deciding which one of the four dining options we’d pick.

Timberline Lodge was commissioned to be built in 1936 (finished in 1938) by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a Works Progress Administration project during the great depression. The craftsmanship throughout the lodge is something to behold, everything built or sewn by hand. The sturdy, almost immovable hardback chair in our room, the bed frames, the lounges around the fireplaces, even the stairs. Artist had carved the head of every railing into an animal’s head: a bear, a beaver, a raccoon.

We ate at Ram’s Head Bar and were lucky enough to find a table at the window with a near view of Mt. Hood. A wedding was taking place downstairs, and we could see the flower girl and bride’s maids on the patio out back. I got a chef’s salad and Mark got a BBQ pulled pork sandwich and white bean chili, which I ate half of. It was all good, however expensive.

Northern Oregon was hot in September, in the low 90’s the week we were there, and Timberline Lodge, being truly historic, has no air conditioning. It was pretty uncomfortable lying in bed in the heat, and to make it worse, the pool, just outside our window, was open until 11 p.m. I fell asleep easily but was also woken easily from the frivolity of families playing in the pool.

The next morning we chose not to eat breakfast at a restaurant in the lodge because it was a bit expensive so we checked out and in the car had Pop Tarts and fresh strawberries—from yesterday’s farmers’ market—and we shared a tasty, tangy tangelo. I wore cargo pants and a T-shirt and Mark wore shorts, but as we sat there, skiers with an aim for the lift walked through the parking lot wearing toboggans, gloves, sweaters, nylon padded pants, and ski boots. The ski lift was operating, taking skiers up to the glacier we could see. Our differing wardrobes proved quite the juxtaposition.

After our breakfast Mark and I hiked laterally on and vertically up Mt. Hood. I wanted to get to the bottom edge of the glacier, but Mark complained enough that we turned back about a mile and a half into it; he doesn’t mind hiking so long as there’s a reward at the end of the trail—like the falls we saw yesterday. But this hiking just to say we hiked to the edge of a glacier wasn’t enough for him.

Down the mountain and to SkiBowl, where I scheduled us to take Alpine sled rides down the track. I wasn’t sure how to get there and said aloud as we drove down the access road, “I hope there are signs that lead us there.”

Mark said that there was a sign—on the access road in fact.

“There is? Oh, good.”

“You were the one who saw it yesterday when we came in,” he said to me.

“I was? I don’t remember that at all.” If you remember from last entry, I thought I had gone to sleep.

SkiBowl offers several off-season activities for a price, and I chose the Alpine sled because I know of no other place that offers it. It wasn’t much really. The ride on the ski lift to get to the top was more thrilling than the ride down. Well, I did yell, “Wooooo!" around one curve, but the sled didn’t travel as fast as I’d figured. Mark’s was really slow. We guess maybe the lighter you are, the faster you go.

We aimed east to the Carno section, one of three, of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Smoke from the forest fires hung in the air. The drive was long and towns were sparse. We stopped in Shaniko, almost like a ghost town, to stretch our legs, and we found a candy store. The proprietor comes down from Vancouver, Washington, two and a half hours away, every weekend! To make her drive worthwhile, I bought half pound of Mary Janes, the candies like Bit-o-Honeys.

Less than an hour later we were at Carno. The National Monument had no Visitor Center but two lots, which were both surprisingly full. The Monument was really just the side of a mountain with some fossils in it. We drove to the far lot with some picnic tables and had lunch. Then we hiked a quarter mile back to the mountain side and all around. I climbed some rocks, to Mark's protest, and I wouldn't come down until he took my picture. It was an OK diversion since nothing else was planned for the day. However, if I’d known then what I know now—namely, that John Day Fossil Beds, Carno section is not much—I would have scheduled a full day in Bend, where we were headed to next. We did learn that Oregon, 44 million years ago, was a near-tropical region inhabited by alligators and small, four-toed horses. The area was near desert because of its location between two mountain ranges that stopped inclement weather from getting in.

In Bend we found our Days Inn relatively early so Mark relaxed with his ESPN while I lazed by the pool. Then we cleaned up and, at the suggestion of the motel clerk, walked down the street to Ernesto’s Italian Restaurant. I got a veggie calzone for $13.50. It was half the size of a medium stuffed pizza. Huge! But it wasn’t too tasty. Mark got seafood fettuccini, which was extraordinary. The best thing of the night though was the dressing to my house salad. The Best Dressing Ever. Mark dipped some bread in and agreed.

Multnomah Falls and Mt. Hood - Day 2

2006-10-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

Our first stop this Saturday morning is Pendleton Woolen Mill in Washougal, WA. The AAA Guide Book says that tours are given on the hour, but when we get there, we see that tours are offered M-F only. However, the store is open so we browse. Mark remembers that in his closet hangs a Pendleton flannel shirt, inherited (Mom gave it to him) when my grandpa died just after we started dating.

Mark finds a beautiful suede jacket that looks so good on him, but it's over $200, which is too much for us. In the women’s section, I find a nice sweater in the sale bin for $25. We buy it, leave the store, and walk to the farmer’s market in the lot across the street.

The market is small with 12 or so tents with craftsmen and gardeners offering hand-made jewelry, wood furniture, crafts and fruits and veggies. We make our way to each tent and buy a quart of fresh, organic strawberries from a fruit vendor. She lets us taste huckleberries too since we’ve never seen them before. They are the size of blueberries and are reddish brown, more red than Mt St Helens ash. They taste less sweet than blueberries.

The local animal shelter offers a kissing booth in the final tent: for a dollar donors can have their way with one of the six cuddly cats there in cages. Mark doesn’t have any ones, so he puts a $10 bill in the coffer and tells the lady to keep the change. Then she hands me the most affectionate cat, so she claims, which I hold and pet for a couple minutes, but we are on a schedule, so back to the cage goes the cat, and back to the car go we.

We aim east and are hurting for a hike so stop at the next place with possibilities: Beacon Rock State Park. A lot with parked cars sit at the base of Beacon Rock to our right, at the edge of the Columbia River, and to our left a road leads uphill into the park. We choose to check out the park before climbing Beacon Rock Trail.

At the top of the ~two mile-long access road, we decided to hike the 1.5-mile Hamilton Mountain Trail to two waterfalls: Hardy falls and Rodney Falls.

From the lot, the trail is uphill (or up mountain) the entire way to the falls. After taking in Hardy Falls and starting for Rodney Falls, we cross a bridge over a small stream. Eagle-eyed Mark sees a small garden snake on a rock. While we are fumbling with the camera, another snake joins the first one.

(Click the pic to zoom in on the snakes.)

Alrighty. We saw the falls and our knees then endure the hike down. We rest at the car and suck down some water and decid not to hike Beacon Rock because we were on a schedule with an aim for Timberline Lodge at the base of Mt. Hood. But before we checked in for the night, we have to see Multnomah Falls, at the suggestion of a co-worker who is from Oregon. So we keep moving east in Washington, eyes peeled for a bridge that leads across the river back into Oregon.

Several small recreation areas and boat launches line Columbia River. Still on the Washington side, we drive back a dirt road just west of the North Bonneville Dam, parking if front of what seems a good fishing spot because fishermen in 12 boats are here, and we ate and watch, but no one catches anything the 30 minutes we are there.

Just east of the dam, we cross the toll bridge ($1) into Oregon and stop to watch the windsurfers zipping along before we head back west to Multnomah Falls.

The lot for Multnomah Falls is packed full this Saturday afternoon, but Mark, again with his eagle-eyes, spies a couple walking and inches along just behind them to see if they are leaving. They are, and we take the spot they vacate.

Multnomah Falls is the fourth tallest waterfall in the U.S., and we hike the mile-long trail to the top of it, getting peaks of the Columbia along the way. The hike reminds me of the hike up to Timpanogos Cave in Utah with all the switchbacks and the steepness.

The falls are beautiful but the park offers nothing else. Well, at the top of the falls the trail goes back a couple miles further, but again, we don’t bring water or snacks, so again, our knees endure the hike down the steep trail and we drive back east and stop at a Coho Salmon fish hatchery; no big fish are out, only minnow-size.

Further east at the Hood River Microbrewery, we just miss the departing tour. We’ve been on several brewery tours before. We know what it’s all about, we reason. We decide to sample some of what they produce so enter the bar area, which has a sundeck overlooking the Columbia. Patrons pack both inside and outside the bar. We find a table and order up some brew. I am not a beer connoisseur, yet I order a Henry’s Hefe Weizger. Mark gets Pale Ale. Both are good. So good, in fact, that I want to taste a different brew to see if they are all good, to see if I’ve developed a taste for beer. I order an IPA (India Pale Ale), which got its name because it was brewed for the British soldiers stationed in India during WWII (please do not hold me to that, but I think that’s what the bartender told me). IPA tastes nasty so I order a different beer in hopes of covering up the taste of that one. Riptide is a good choice.

After four beers between us (Mark ordered just the one and tasted the other three I ordered), I stagger out to the car and Mark drives us south. I want to go to sleep but I’m the navigator so have to stay lucid enough to get us to the lodge. Once we’ve turned west on 26 and onto the access road to Timberline Lodge, I feel sure he can get the rest of the way without me, so I sleep—or so I thought.

Mt. St. Helens - Day 1

2006-10-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

The first national treasure we visited this trip is Mt. St. Helens just 40 miles or so into Washington from Oregon. From Portland we take Rt. 30 for a bit of scenery rather than the busy I-5. On Rt. 30 is where Mark, who is driving, notices that Oregon drivers pretty much maintain the speed limit. We take that to mean cops sit and keep drivers in check on that particular route, but we later learn that it’s like that in all parts of the state we visit.
The road into Mt. St. Helens from I-5 has three main Visitor Centers and a couple other learning centers too. At the first VC, Mark and I peruse the informative museum and see the 25-minute movie about the May 18, 1980 eruption. When we leave the VC, I stand to hear a ranger program while Mark buys us water from a kiosk there. On our way this morning, I wanted him to stop in south Washington at a market so we could load up on groceries, but he wanted to get to the mountain.

From the ranger I learn that Mt. St. Helens is the first and so far the only mountain that has erupted laterally. It quite surprised geologists, who thought volcanoes could only erupt out their tops. The ranger shows us a rock about the size of a T-bone steak that the eruption blasted 17 miles traveling at a speed of 670 mph! The eruption obliterated the top 1300 feet of the mountain and flattened 229 square miles of forest. We learn that Mt. St. Helens is continuously active today, billowing up molten lava at a rate of a dump-truck load every five to ten seconds. At that rate, the mountain will rebuild to its pre-eruption mass in about 40 years.

The VC was constructed to give a good view of the mountain, yet our view today is obstructed by ash—from the eruption 26 years ago—blowing around. It is a rare high wind day. People with trailers are warned not to go to the top because winds are recorded at 75 mph. Rangers who have been at the park for years have never experienced these high winds before. Further on up, a ranger at another VC tells us that the high winds sometimes occur in January, but this is the first summer high wind he knows of.

We ask that same ranger for some hiking suggestions, telling him we’d like hikes of four miles or less. He suggests three trails.

Right up the road from that center is the trailhead for the easy hike along Clearwater Lake, which was formed after the eruption dammed a stream. True to its name, the lake’s waters are clear and so blue. A large boulder sits in the middle, and timber lines the edges of the lake, all resulting from the eruption. We see a carcass on the trail, guessing that it used to be an elk.

Just a quarter mile up the road is the Hummocks trailhead. We are not particularly interested in seeing the hummocks, or small hills, that resulted from the eruption: we know what hills look like. Yet we want to give the wind time to die down so that we can hike up top, around the mountain. The ranger told us there was a dangerously narrow strip of rock to traverse there. I’m always up for thrilling.

The Hummock trail is moderate, but we make it strenuous as daylight is running out, and we are anticipating the final hike. In the car on the way to the last VC and the trail around Mt. St. Helens, I realize I pushed myself too far on the last trail; my legs are shaky. Wind is significantly less than what it had been earlier in the day, but gusts are still fairly strong we notice when we get out of the car at 4:55 p.m. in time to tour the VC before its 6 p.m. closing.

From the patio outside the VC through the yet ashy air, we can barely see the mountain’s current volcanic activity: the lava oozing out of a single point to the right of the caldera, like foam pouring over the sides of a beaker during a chemistry experiment gone bad. Inside the VC, Mark looks at the displays while I listen to a ranger program. He gives the same information I got from the other program upon entering the park. The unique display in that final VC concerns animals and how or if they survived the eruption. Some insects survived; few fished survived; nothing else did. But of course in the 26 years since, all species have made the mountain their home again.

We decide since we have no snacks, it is still a bit windy, the day is late, my legs are fatigued, and the trail is slightly dangerous, we will skip the hike around the mountain. So we give it one last look—majestic though reddish brown ash from the day’s winds covered the snow—before we drive out.

I-5 leads us to Kelso, where we have reservations at a chain motel. We are exhausted, not looking forward to going out again to dinner after cleaning up. If we had any food at all, we would be satisfied with a granola bar and some baby carrots. However, we don’t have any food. Luckily, in the same little business area as our motel is a grocery. Before checking in, we stop for SunChips, cheese, fruit and such. The store is big enough to have a deli so we buy sandwiches to take back to the room—so we can fall into bed after cleaning up. In addition, Mark buys two 40-ounces (beers) for himself— as I’m not a big drinker.

In our room we bring in our bags of luggage and food and transfer things to our soft-sided cooler, and Mark asks me if I’ve seen his 40-ounces. I haven’t. Turns out, he has to go back out after all.

I drop into bed, dead (until 5 a.m., when I woke up to take my basal body temperature. See first two blog entries for September.) Mark likely went to sleep soon after finishing his beer.

A Good Signing

2006-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday September 16, 2006 I signed copies of My_Lost_Summer at Waldenbooks at the mall nearest my hometown.

Before my signing, my husband took my picture under the mall marquee outside, which advertised my signing.

The day was beautiful, which means mall traffic was thin because people were out enjoying the nice weather before it turns colder in a month or so. Still, I sold 11 copies all together, and two shoppers were quite interested yet without necessary funds for the moment. I bet they buy eventually.

When my husband came to pick me up after two and a quarter hours, he took my picture next to the sign the manager made to display in the center of the mall the previous week. In that particular Waldenbooks, my book is on the local interest shelf, on the manager's suggested reads shelf, and now on the signed copies shelf.

The manager invited me back. We scheduled for December 9 so that I get some of the Christmas shopping traffic.

Gaining Fame in Cincinnati

2006-09-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I stopped at a farmer’s market. As I was buying a quart of honey and a loaf of multi-grain bread, I mentioned that I’d be signing copies of My Lost Summer in late October at a coffee house down the street. A lady handed me the bread and asked what my book was about.

“It’s a memoir about my recovery from a coma when I was a teenager.”

Then another lady said, “I’ve read your book.” She went on to explain that she checked it out from the library. She said it was a good story and she liked it a lot.

I was happy to hear it.

Does Page 1 Foretell a Great Book?

2006-09-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

In his blog, Australian author Alan Baxter (www.AlanBaxter.info) writes about a book titled How to Read a Novel. Baxter reasons that the book is a “clumsy grab for cash” as “if you buy [the] book, presumably you can read.”

Baxter later describes a suggestion made in the book: the author writes that if one reads page 69 of a novel and likes it, then he or she will enjoy the book.

I commented on Baxter’s blog entry, saying that page 1—rather than page 69—of any book is a better foreteller of a book’s worth—though I warned not to give up on a book after a single page.
I invite any author-readers of my blog to enter the first pages of their books in the “comments” area to this entry.

Following is the first page to My Lost Summer, my memoir about my recovery from a coma when I was 13.

Chapter 1
The Fall

Flash didn’t stumble as a warning he was going down. The saddle pad, which usually kept Libbi more in tune with her horse, was no help. There was nothing she could do. At one instant Flash was walking, at the next he was on the road.
Being turned, asking her mom if she could run her horse, Libbi was unprepared to catch herself or brace against the inevitable impact with the pavement. Her fall was like a dive—head first over Flash’s right shoulder. Impact was with the right side of her skull, and she was knocked unconscious. Luckily no cars were traveling on Beachler Road at the time. Equally as lucky, Flash didn’t land on her with his full weight, but he did roll over her. Then he rolled back over her to gain the momentum he needed to get his 1300-plus pounds into a standing position.
Elaine quickly and expertly regained control of her horse, who had spooked at the site of his fieldmate falling. She jumped off and, without a word, handed the reins to Earl’s son, who had doubled back when he heard the commotion. She ran to where Libbi lay and grabbed the loose reins to Flash’s bridle and pulled him away from the scene.
Already dismounted, Earl, Elaine’s boyfriend, held the reins to his horse as he knelt next to Libbi, calling her name, asking if she were okay.
Holding the ends of the reins to Flash’s bridle behind her so as not to lead him back, Elaine joined Earl—in position and activity: “Libbi? Libbi?” and then “Li-Bee,” in the singsong she used when she…

Compare page 1 with page 69:

who was shrugging on her jacket to drive him to the dance, “Why’s Mike dressed up?”
Elaine smiled down at her daughter, already in her nightgown for bed. “He’s taking a girl to a dance.”
Immediately, tears erupted. “He doesn’t need another girl. He’s got ME!!”
Automatically, laughing busted from both Mike and his mom, which only made Libbi cry harder.
Sensitive to his sister’s feelings, Mike ceased laughing and took her hand and led her around to the carpeted stairwell that led up to their rooms. The stairwell was where Mike, Chris, and Libbi held conferences among themselves.
Libbi sat on the third step up, and Mike sat on the second so that they were close to eye-to-eye, and he haltingly explained to her as best a fifteen year old could, “Libbi… You see…” He sighed. “Sometimes…Well, when boys and girls get to be my age, they like to do things together.”
Her tears still flowed.
“It doesn’t mean that we,” and here Mike pointed to his little sister and touched his own chest, “will be together less. Me going to this dance won’t take any time away from you and me….” His tone changed to playful, “…because it’s almost your bedtime anyway,” and he scooped Libbi into his arms and carried her upstairs to the big, open bedroom she shared with Chris, and he dropped her on her bed and tickled her.
Libbi laughed.
“I’m late for my date, so I gotta go.” He turned and exited the room.
Libbi hopped off her bed and trailed him down the steps. In the TV room she climbed into her father’s lap. “Bye, Mike.”
“Bye, Libbi. I’ll see you in the morning.” Their bond was secure.
A friend from Elaine’s childhood picked Mike up from the airport and drove him to his mother’s house in Carlisle. During the entire forty-minute ride neither driver nor passenger mentioned Libbi…

Page 69 describes the middle and end of a sweet story from my childhood that exemplifies the close bond between my oldest brother and me, that explains why he collapsed with emotion upon first seeing me in the hospital with tubes and lines running from my unconscious body.

If you’re not an author with a page 1 to post, or even if you are an author, cast your vote: which of the above pages do you think pulls the reader into the story more? Which is more likely to convince a reader to give this book a go?

A New Office for Me

2006-09-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve been waiting for my husband to download the pictures from our vacation before I write blog entries. But, he can’t seem to remember how to do it, and I never did know how to do it. The last two pictures are of me at my book signing, so I’ve been delaying writing about that until I can post pictures with it, but darn it, a week without an entry is too much, I think, so I’ll ramble a bit.

Friday at work I got my own office. It’s a little, irregularly shaped room with no widows to the outside, but it is quiet, which, being an editor, I appreciate. I put my big map of the U.S. up on one wall with a diagram of the Lake Powell area underneath. (Lake Powell is a National Recreation area in Arizona/Utah.) A map of Puerto Rico went up next to that. I love maps and have designated that wall my map wall. On another wall that is only about three feet wide (remember, it’s an irregularly shaped office) I posted pictures of National Parks I’ve been to. Mt. Rainier, Crater Lake, Death Valley, Acadia, Yellowstone, Redwoods, Bryce, Canyonlands (my favorite), Arches, The Great Sand Dunes, plus more. It looks really nice.

My computer hasn’t been moved yet, nor has my phone, so I’m still in my old office until October—unless I’m editing.

Hopefully sometime this week I can start posting entries concerning our trip to Oregon. We really have some beautiful photos. Please check back.

The Follow-Up Appointment with ObGyn

2006-09-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

The afternoon before we left for Oregon, Mark and I met with my ObGyn. We waited for Dr. Busacco in his personal office, the one with his framed degrees lining the walls and pictures of his children jockeying for space on the bookshelves behind his mahogany desk.

He entered fresh from surgery and shook each of our hands.

Not wanting to take anymore time than necessary, since we got in 45 minutes late even though we were the first afternoon appointment after a morning of surgery, I handed him the graphs of my basal body temperature before he even took his seat.

For the past three months of recording my basal body heat each morning, what I found interesting was how each month’s temperature pattern was consistent with the previous month’s. The first month I thought something was wrong. In fact, as I described previously, I returned a basal body thermometer to the drug store because I thought its readings had to be erroneous. My temperature was 97.7 degrees one morning and 96.9 degrees the next.

It could only go up from there. 97.1. 97.5. 97.6.

Then falling to 97.0.

Back up - 97.7.

And back down - 97.4. 97.0.

The degrees of my basal body heat, recorded at roughly the same time every morning, plotted out like that each month!

I compared the pattern with the sample graph of the perfect woman’s temperature, the one that almost looked like a straight line if you stood back far enough. The plot of my temperature looked like a heart monitor readout for an alert, perfectly healthy person, with its peaks and falls.

But one morning a couple weeks into the routine, I hit above 98 degree (ovulation!) so I stopped comparing my temperature to that of Ms. Perfect, who probably had eight kids running around and who probably got pregnant the first month she tried with each one. At least I was ovulating. That’s what was important.

Once Dr. Busacco sat down, he studied my charted temps. And he studied them. And he continued to study them for several minutes of mostly silence that Mark or I broke occasionally with a casual comment to one another.

As I looked at Dr. Busacco studying the paper, his brow furrowed, chewing on the nail of his left index finger, I wondered what it all meant.

“Did deciphering the plotted temperature always take this long? Did he always have that unreadable look? Is it a look of concern or just a general studying look? Is something wrong? Surely nothing’s wrong, for my temperature pattern has been the same for the past three months. It seems erratic to me, but it’s been consistent month after month, and who am I to say if the pattern’s erratic?”

Finally, after three minutes or so, I asked, “So, how’s it look?”

“Well, you’re ovulating, but they’re not quality ovulations,” Dr. Busacco told me straight-forwardly yet with a trifling of compassion.

Who knew there was such a thing as a ‘quality ovulation’?! I thought ovulating was like being pregnant: either you were or you weren’t.

Mark remained stoic. My response was equally unemotional: “Oh.”

Realizing that he didn’t have an emotional breakdown to avert, Dr. Busacco continued: “I’d like to do a hystophlalapertaquialogram. (OK. He didn’t say that word, but it was something equally undecipherable that started with “hysto-“ and ended “-gram.”). The test is done at the hospital, and I’ll be there for it.”

I’ll refrain from describing the test, but it will show if my tubes are open enough to allow the egg to drop properly. I’ll have it next month. Dr. Busacco told us that he’d be able to see the results right then.

As I have said for the past 15 years, I am fully recovered from my traumatic brain injury, or at least I consider myself so. When I see a new doctor and fill out the health history questionnaire, of course I write that I was in a coma in 1983, but it usually never comes up again, and some doctors don’t even find it interesting enough to ask me about upon initial examination.

My pap smears have been under Dr. Busacco’s microscope since 1999. I do not remember if he asked me about my coma; he likely did as he’s a good doctor. In any case, he knows I recently published a book about my recovery, so yes, he is aware of my head injury and expressed concern about my pituitary, which, he says, may have been damaged at the time of my injury. I understand that the pituitary regulates some pretty important pregnancy hormones.

A nurse took a blood sample that afternoon to check for hormone levels, among other things.

Before Mark and I stood to leave his office, Dr. Busacco smiled and said, “We’ll get you pregnant.”

If he has faith, so do we.

Baby Makes Three, and Babies Make Four!

2006-09-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

Mark and I have been hoping to get pregnant with twins since last October. Twins because I’m 36, we want two eventually, and we just want to get it over with.

We decided before we started trying that if it happens great; if it doesn’t, it wasn’t meant to be and we weren’t going to take drastic measures to become “with baby.” We also chose not to tell anyone we were trying. Well, I told the three people I share an office with—but no one else! Oh, and then there were two couples, friends from college, with whom we went to a UD basketball game (Go Flyers!) in December—but no one else after them!

Since I’m pretty healthy—I eat a varied diet, get adequate exercise, and maintain a healthy weight—I thought I’d have no problems getting a bun in the oven. But May rolled around—time for my annual ObGyn exam—and we were eight months in to heavy practice with no result, so I chose to tell my doctor—but no one else after him!

After my exam, the nurse (I didn’t tell her; Dr. Busacco did.) gave me a paper and directions on how to record my basal body temperature. I was to bring this for the doctor to study in three months.

The paper has four blank graphs with temperature on the vertical axis and days of the cycle on the horizontal. The bottom line on the graph represents 97.0 degrees F. The top line is 99.0, and the 19 lines between are all tenths of a degree from one to the next.

The first graph on the page is a sample. It depicts the perfect temperature fluctuation of a patient whose husband, I’m sure, hit his mark on the first attempt. Before ovulation, this woman’s temperature ranged from 97.5 to 97.8—pretty tight. She hit ovulation right at 98 degrees but more important than that, her basal body temp remained well above 98 degrees for two more weeks, just like that of most Fertile Myrtles.

On the way home from the doctor’s, I bought a basal body thermometer at CVS, the national chain drug store.

Mark and I left for my dad’s in Georgia that night—a 10-hour drive. I took my temperature around 5 a.m. but I doubt it was true since I’d gotten little sleep and only intermittently, and I was sitting, and I’d been eating junk food, like we do when we travel in the car, not that junk food would affect my temp, but you never know.

After a couple days at Dad’s house, my temperature was all over the place yet. I thought there had to be something wrong with the thermometer so I asked Dad where the nearest CVS was so I could take back the thermometer “that I’ve been using to take my basal body temperature because Mark and I are trying to get pregnant.” So I told Dad and my step mom Mary Beth—but no one else after them!

They live so far out in the boonies that the nearest CVS store is 30 minutes away, and I couldn’t find the basal body thermometers, and the high school girls behind the counter twirling their hair and chewing gum were clueless—as was the pharmacist. So I had to rely on that old (or, actually, new) out-of-whack thermometer until I got back to Ohio. (I felt like its batteries were low or something).

So we caught some fish and bought some shrimp (50 lbs. fresh from the shrimp boat to bring home and freeze) and returned to Ohio, and I got a different thermometer from the CVS near my house.

The next morning, before even lifting the covers, I took my temperature in the dark of 5 a.m.

The thermometer is digital and beeps once to indicate it’s on, beeps four times after the temperature has stabilized, and beeps a single time again when it shuts off. My left ear is deaf to high pitches, and I’m a right-side sleeper (to eliminate noises from the chirping birds and insects in the tree outside my window that would enter through my good ear). My side table is right there so for the first several mornings I would raise a bit to reach the alarm, turn it off, grab the thermometer, turn it on (I heard the beep), and then lay my head back on my pillow and wait for the temperature to register. And, of course, then I wouldn’t hear the four beeps telling me my temp had been taken. One tortuous morning, after a hot chocolate and a full glass of water before bed that previous evening, I thought my bladder would burst before the temperature registered. It was the odd night that Mark slept in the same bed (see Sleeping Arrangements for explanation), so I didn’t want to turn on the lamp to check; therefore, I got up and ran to the restroom. The thermometer wasn’t even on! In my haste and fumbling and half sleep, I hit the on/off button twice yet did not hear two beeps. Ugh.

So I dropped to the floor and stuck the thermometer under my tongue. Thankfully, my temp registered in record time, and I relieved my bladder straight away.

Now into my fourth month of morning temperature taking, I make sure I’m fairly awake before I turn on the thermometer, and since I’m awake, I no longer fumble. While its in position, I lie on my back so that my right ear is exposed and I do not miss those important four beeps, and I think how bothersome it would be for a deaf woman to take her temperature every morning: she’d basically have to wake up fully, turn on the light, SEE that the thermometer was on, and check periodically for the stable readout, which equates to trying to see the end of your nose.

Thank goodness I have one good ear.

Oh, and Mom and my brothers and my cousins, they all know we’re trying now. Mark told his family too. We had to tell those closest to us to ease the stress of the whole ordeal. The trying part is not stressful. It’s the unsuccessful part that is.

The afternoon before we left for Oregon, Mark and I met with my ObGyn. He studied my temperature pattern and ordered a blood test to check my pituitary gland’s function, possibly damaged from my head injury from 23 years ago.

Stay tuned for more infanticipating updating.

General Observations of Oregon & Oregonians

2006-09-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

We’re back from our Oregon trip. Nine days, it was, and a great time, and I didn’t plan it jammed full like most of our vacations. From Mt. St. Helens in Washington through central western Oregon to Crescent Beach, California and the Redwoods National Forest back up the Oregon coast, we still did plenty.

It may be a week or so before I get the story written, but until then, I’ll enlighten you with some general observations of Oregon and Oregonians from an outsider’s perspective.

1. Just as all small towns in central western Ohio have at least two churches and as many bars, each small town in Oregon has a Dairy Queen and at least one Mexican restaurant.
2. Hitchhiking is legal in Oregon, and middle-aged, dreadlocked white men seem to be the only ones trying to take advantage, though perhaps they are the only ones not catching rides and so are the only ones we see.
3. Many highways are paved with pebbles, which makes driving a bit deafening. If I lived here, I’d carry hearing protection in my vehicle for when I got on I-5 or another noisy road.
4. A person is not permitted to pump his or her own gasoline.
5. Lots of grasshoppers and chipmunks hang out on trails and, of course, scamper when a hiker nears.
6. Most drivers maintain or fall below the speed limit. It’s true. Even on roads through the forests where you know a policeman would not be sitting in his car aiming the radar gun. Generally, people just don’t speed there. It was refreshing and annoying at the same time.

Keep your eyes on this blog for a narrative of the trip plus pictures. We took over 100. I won’t post them all, of course. The best ones are of Crater Lake.

Wyoming to South Dakota

2006-08-30T13:54:00.000-07:00

This will be my parting entry--it's only a temporary parting! Mark and I are traveling over the Labor Day holiday. When we return I'll post one more entry about our Western trip; we visit Mt. Rushmore, where the flag is flying half-mast because of the events of the week. We also drive through The Badlands on an overcast day. I had been there when I was seven and had memories of all the spectacular, unbelievable colors, but either 25 years had altered my memories or the sun needed to be out in order to see the array. We only saw simple shades of brown. I'll include pictures.

We left Yellowstone on Thursday 13 September, just two days after the terrorist attacks. We were hoping to get to our motel in South Dakota in time for the ‘Friends’ premiere. We had no idea of the magnitude of loss. We were soon to notice how unified and patriotic our nation—or at least the farmers in Wyoming—had become as a result.

Upon leaving the northeast entrance/exit to Yellowstone, we were bid farewell by the exiting committee (the cows). We followed Rt. 14 to Cody: “The most beautiful 52 miles in America” said President Teddy Roosevelt, who was instrumental in the declaration of so many of our natural lands and National Parks. We occasionally passed large farms with flags flying conspicuously. I commented to Mark that I hadn’t seen an American flag flying at a residence since the bicentennial. It was nice to see.

Scenery along Route 14 east of Cody was even more breathtaking than Roosevelt’s proclaimed “52 miles.” We stopped at small-town museums in Buffalo and Johnson County as much to stretch our legs as anything else. The Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum had dioramas of battles between settlers and natives and other American Indian artifacts. The first jeweler who moved into the county bought a cash register from NCR in Dayton, Ohio and a safe from Hamilton, Ohio. They were both on display.

On eastward to Devil’s Tower National Monument.

The welcoming committee (prairie dogs) greeted us upon entrance to the park.

We stepped into the Visitor’s Center so that we could say, “We’ve been to Devil’s Tower,” and we paused to watch a devil—a daredevil—ascend the basaltic form, but, as I said earlier, we wanted to catch the premiere of ‘Friends’ so we hurried on our way.

We got to our room at Lantern Inn between 6:30 and 7 p.m. We settled in while Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News talked about the tragedy. We’d wanted a pizza all day so ordered one for dinner from the local place, which was the only dining option in little Hill City, SD. Hill City was so little, in fact, that there was no delivery so Mark and I drove to get it.

We got back in the room a bit after 7 p.m. and expected Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy! to be playing, but Dan Rather still introduced clips of people showing pictures and pleading for their loved ones’ beyond-all-hope, miracle survival. We realized that there had been no commercials, and the magnitude of Tuesday’s events sunk in. We watched the television as we sat on the bed eating pizza. Tears streamed down my face.

From an essay I wrote a year after the event—

I cannot not watch. Survivors are interviewed. Family members of the missing hold up pictures for the camera. Victims recuperate in hospitals. Scenes of the towers collapsing are still shown over and over. A man in a business suit jumps from an upper floor of one of the towers. I sob at the desperation he must have felt.

With the bed shaking from my sucking in breaths—like someone sobbing does—Mark said, “ We’ve seen enough.” It was the same things over and over. Luckily the small motel had cable so we watched a movie before we went to sleep.

I still think about that man who jumped. I imagine his thoughts: "OK. I have two options, and the best one is jumping out this window hundreds of feet from the ground." Would I do it? Would you?

More Yellowstone Pictures

2006-08-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

Yellowstone

2006-08-28T02:40:00.000-07:00

Mon 10 Sept – This morning it was freezing nearly in our cabin. Under 50 degrees anyway. Last night Mark moved to the other bed. I had to shower [first this morning]. It was so cold I took my whole suitcase in so I wouldn’t have to come out to dress. We drove north to Tower Falls and hiked down to the bottom. We made several stops and hiked on the way to Mammoth Hot Springs. We hiked all around Hot Springs.

Palette and Canary were most active.
They can deposit up to 2 tons of limestone/day! This is the most geyser-active area of the park.

Tue 11 Sept – I got up @ 6:45 and drove…to view wildlife. Saw 4 elk. At 7:30 I returned and woke Mark. Forgot to tell him about a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers in NY.

We drove to Sulfur Basin where things were really steamy. In car we got an update on crash. It was a terrorist attack! Two planes hit the Towers. One hit Pentagon in DC. Another plane crashed in PA – unsure if it’s related at this point. On to Old Faithful for 10 am tour. Old Faithful erupted at 9:58. A lot of people went on walk.

Before it started we saw lion geyser go off. On walk we saw anemone – big and little go off several times, plume geyser and then we went and sat by bee hive geyser. We sat there nearly an hour before deciding to walk back. ...

Then we saw the indicator for bee hive erupt… ~15 min later, bee hive went off. It was magnificent. We drove north … and had lunch. Mark noticed one of the bison was limping bad. In binoculars I could see it was his left front leg. …I told a ranger about the injured bison….We saw SO MANY geysers erupt today!...

Yesterday we saw these walls left from cooled lava into perfect basaltic cubes.

My travel journal has no entry for Wed 12 Sept. I write about the day’s activities on Thurs 13 Sept. It’s just more hiking and wildlife viewing, just like any other visitor’s day at Yellowstone, no matter that terrorists attacked the U.S. just the day before. With no TVs in Yellowstone, we weren’t bombarded with images of the towers collapsing, streets filled with debris, people running frantically and crying. We were so far removed from it all and had no idea of the degree of violence our nation suffered.

Grand Tetons National Park into Yellowstone

2006-08-26T03:29:00.000-07:00

Sat 8 Sept [continued] - Into WY and Grand Tetons and parked at 1st spot for hiking – Granite Canyon – and hiked 1.5 mi in and 1.5 mi back. On the way back I felt tired and thought I might throw up. I thought I hadn’t given myself enough recovery time as I had worked out moderately hard this morning. [Although I hadn’t eaten in five hours, I] felt full – upset stomach.

[On our drive out of the park, we saw a mother brown bear with two babies. They were up in a tree eating berries and such, we guessed. The little ones were playing.] We stopped at a small mkt and bought chicken flavor Ramen noodles, a small cheddar cheese wheel, and a pint of strawberries [for me to eat throughout the day. At the motel] I changed into sweats and got into bed. I was cold. Mark went out to find tangerines for me, and a 40 oz for him. He woke me upon returning with tangelos but said he couldn’t find any beer. [This evening I was feeling a little better, and] we drove around the square and weren’t sure if this is Jackson or Jackson Hole. Mark dropped me off and went to do laundry.

Mon 10 Sept – No entry [yesterday]. Yesterday morning we drove to Moose Visitor Center [to meet guide for float trip on the Snake River. The company was Triangle X. Another couple sat at the meeting point on the Snake River, and I asked them what tour operator they went with to see if perhaps we’d be sharing a boat. But their operator was different from ours. I mistakenly told them, “We’re taking the Triple X tour. The man said, “I wish we were going on that one.” And I realized my error. It was pretty funny.]

[The Triangle X guide was terrible. The only things we got from the trip were some good photos and some sun. No knowledge about local geology or history, which is what a good guide gives you. After our float trip,] we drove up thru the Tetons to the SW side (Old Faithful) of Yellowstone.

[We expected thick forest on the drive in, but that wasn't the case. It turns out that most of Yellowstone burned in 1988.

We got to Old Faithful just minutes before it was due to erupt—and it was right on schedule.]

NW Colorado, Utah and Idaho

2006-08-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

Nothing too exciting happened between The Great Sand Dunes National Monument (now National Park) and Yellowstone, but since you’re along for the ride and you can’t just jump from one place to the next, I’ll include some of my travel journal entries and pictures.

Mon. 3 Sept. –…We headed north! to the ghost town of St. Elmo. Dad said left at a country road just south of Nathrop. We hiked some. I saw something white on the mt. that moved. Goat? Sheep? In Nathrop we bought a disposable camera.

Faux ghost town and little shops in Fairplay, where I bought bath fizzies. On to Breckenridge where we stopped at a market and bought lunch and replenished snacks.

Through Frisco and on to Georgetown where we took a train on the Georgetown Loop. Not much to see beyond what we can see from the road.

[Tue 4 Sept] – We took ‘Oh My God’ Road to Idaho Springs—quite a harrowing drive with the straight drop offs—towards Denver in hopes of finding a place to repair my camera, … The camera guy at Super Kmart didn’t know of any place [where I could take my camera]. Instead of buying 3 more disposables, we bought a manual with 55mm zoom.

Drove to Coors Field and watched Dodgers take batting practice [before the game].

Thursday 6 Sept – [But this is what we did Sept 5] – To Leadville. We did the Leadville Historical Building tour. 15 places including a Catholic church, Tabors Opera House (restored). Saloon, other hotel, drug store. Onward West to Glenwood Springs to Vapor Caves. So hot. Estimate 120+ degrees. For 15 min. we sweated. Entrance was thru a spa. We showered and headed N to Dinosaur.

[The scenery and the late afternoon sky made this the most beautiful drive I remember ever taking. My album has 12 pictures of the sky. I used half a roll of film for sky! The rest of the disposable camera’s shots.]

We drove in the CO entrance [of Dinosaur National Park] to Echo Park Overlook and saw deer. Sky was beautiful.

[What we did the 6th] Near Salt Lake City we stopped at Timpanogos Cave Nat’l Mon. Hiked to entrance 1.5 mi – 1065’ rise – in 40 min. I about killed myself [meaning the hike was pretty strenuous]. 3 caves toured in ~45 min. [We were the only two on that particular tour, the second-to-last one of the day. The caves were breathtaking. I was expecting something like Mammoth Cave—just smooth brown walls, a stalactite here, a stalagmite there. But walking in Timpanogos was like entering a fairy-tale castle or a snow globe with glitter instead of snow. Every surface was crystally and sparkly. I took pictures, but see Fri 7 Sept. entry for our next camera disaster.]

SLC [Salt Lake City] – Temple Sq., Church of Latter Day Sts has many bldgs there. Tabernacle is Domed. Mormon Tabernacle Choir was singing. The place was beautiful and the city so clean. We saw a statue dedicated to the Mormons who came from Iowa in 1850 pulling carts of their belongings themselves because they couldn’t afford oxen. A statue dedicated to seagulls. [explanation:] Once in SLC [the people] planted crops and were near starvation when crickets were destroying crops. [But in swooped the seagulls to eat the crickets, and all ended well. Thus, the statue.]

Fri 7 Sept – North to Antelope Island [and the Great Salt Lake]. We saw lots of buffalo and one deer and birds. N to Id. to Hagerman fossil beds Nat’l Mon. [At the time, it was the newest National Monument. Very small. Not worth the trip.] Then we headed for Craters of the Moon NP. … So we get to Craters of the Moon – just 20 min. after Visitors’ Center closed. We drove the 7 mi. loop and got out and hiked 3 trails. The first was straight up a hill. I got up with my camera ahead of Mark and took a picture of a little green chicken-like plant growing out of the lava bed (plants and animals can survive on lava beds due to adaptation.) It was my last picture. Mark got up and asked if I wanted him to rewind it. I handed it over and he turned and turned. He opened it and it wasn’t rewound. He closed and turned and turned again. Not rewound. He did it again and nada. He said we ought to have read the directions. He stripped the rewind reel. [So we’re without a camera again].

Sat 8 Sept. – We stopped at Wal-mart this morning [in Idaho Falls, ID] and bought a camera and food [and a fleece jacket for me. We drove all around the small town of Idaho Falls looking for the magnificent falls after which the town was named. On that lovely Saturday morning in the center of the bustling town, we finally asked someone where the falls were.

He pointed to his left and said, “Right there.” We thought it was awfully small to have a whole big, bustling town (for Idaho) named in its honor.]

The Great Sand Dunes

2006-08-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

The parking lot is overflowing. Barefooted families picnic in the sand, men throw Frisbees for dogs to chase, and young girls sleep in the sun. On the lower dunes young children lie on their sides and roll to the bottom. Some ride plastic sleds. Higher up people-watchers sit and watch the scenes below. Higher still are trekkers with an aim for the top taking a rest.

My husband, Mark, and I are in southern Colorado at the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, one of the most awe-inspiring national beauties I’ve ever seen—after Washington’s Mt. Rainier on a sunny day and Alaska’s Inside Passage. A ranger at the visitors’ center spoke on the difference between a Park and a Monument. It’s an involved definition. Please see http://www.nps.gov/grsa/wahtsthediff.htm to learn for yourself.

The highest of the ever-changing Great Sand Dunes are over 700 feet, and daredevils on their snowboards-turned-sandboards are beginning their descents to the bottom, zigzagging down the dunes. Mark and I plan to hike to the top. After climbing several dunes we collapse for a rest. My camera case is around my neck, unzipped, and without my realizing it, my $230 zoom-lens camera falls out into the sand. I take the last four shots on the roll and listen to the auto rewind grind the film into its canister.

Even though hundreds are here, the expanse of the dunes make us feel solitary. The peacefulness sooths my burning ire of getting sand in my camera. This Sunday before Labor Day, we each have our own section of the dunes to enjoy, and there’s still plenty to go around. Mark and I sit in the sand watching little boys slide down the steep lower dunes at break neck speeds while their mothers recline with a book and enjoy the early September sun. We watch young men carry their boards ever higher to the peaks of the equally steep upper dunes and then “surf” down.

After a 10-minute rest, Mark and I hike up the next couple dunes, yet the top seems no closer. We give up our goal of the summit and head down. Mark sweetly offers to carry the camera case so that I can have some fun running down the steep sides. I brought a plastic garbage bag to try as a sled, but it doesn’t work. I really was looking forward to sledding, but running down the dunes is surprisingly fun too.

The Great Sand Dunes are in southern Colorado straight down SR 17 in Mosca, which means fly in Spanish—though we didn’t see a single insect. The park has lodgings at more than $100 a night. Alamosa, 14 miles south on 17, has less expensive lodging opportunities. Mark and I have reservations at a Bed and Breakfast in Moffat, a small town 30 miles north of Mosca, for about $60, which includes breakfast the next morning.

No matter what you pay for a chance to see and experience the Great Sand Dunes, it’s all worth it.

Pike's Peak in Colorado

2006-08-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

The curvy route to the 14,110-foot apex of Pike’s Peak is 19 miles. Each mile is represented by an animal that lives at that elevation. The animals are pictured on the mile markers. Mark and I bet on what animal would represent the final mile. I took mountain goats and all things similar. Mark went with small rodents.

The representative for mile 19 is a pika—not a rodent but close. It’s in the same family as hares and rabbits. Mark won the bet.

Snow was on the ground though the warm sun was melting it to mud. At the top, Mark and I hopped out and change into hiking boots, which were in the trunk. Dressed in shorts and sweatshirts, we stepped lively over to one side of the Peak, scrambled past the tourists to the other side, snapped some photos and hightail it back to the car. Whew, was it ever cold.

Though Mark won the 19th mile bet, I have other bets I’d rather win. We were on our way to Cripple Creek, Colorado and black jack.

In Cripple Creek we gambled for a couple hours and only lost $10.50 before we headed to our stop for the night in Can~on City, Colorado in the middle of the state.

The next morning we drove west to Salida to the cemetery to hunt for my great-grandpa’s grave, but the graveyard was so big, we never found it, but I’m glad we stopped in Salida. Downtown is north of Route 50, and is the only town for miles around, so if you’re near Salida and mealtime is approaching, stop in.

We filled up our tank and tummies and turned south on 285, which turns to 17, to the alligator farm/fish hatchery. The place was a working hatchery but had become commercialized due to the novelty of alligators in Colorado. Because of the natural springs, the water stays a certain temperature year round, warm enough for alligators. They were originally brought here to eat the fish guts that hatcheries naturally produce.

For $5 apiece we entered and saw snakes, geckos, caimans and alligators. As a money-making ploy, an employee literally shoved a baby alligator at Mark and took his picture. We didn’t buy though.

Outside was a show. An alligator wrangler roped one of the large reptiles, none of whom were eager to participate, and he drug it up to land and sat on his back and demonstrated how to get the mouth open. I say demonstrated because some fool people sat on the animal’s back and got the mouth open so that their wives or friends could take pictures for posterity. I consider myself a risk taker, but no thank you, ma’am.

After our fill of the fishery, we aimed south toward Mosca and the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, one of 10 National Parks we visited on our trip.
The dunes appear out of nothing and nowhere. They are one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in the way of scenery. These are so much more than the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes in Michigan. Those dunes are nice yet spread out while the Great Sand Dunes in Mosca, Colorado are enormous dune upon dune upon dune upon dune.

I have so much to say about them, I don’t have room here. Check next week for the follow up.

Kansas to Colorado Springs

2006-08-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

A roadside sign read “Welcome to Quinter, Kansas,” from United Methodist, Presbyterian and Catholic churches. The last on the list was the “Drunkard Brethren.” Mark and I think it was a joke. We didn’t stop in Quinter, just drove through on I-70 on our way to Colorado Springs, the true beginning of our western dream trip.

The Olympic Training Center was our first stop in Colorado Springs. We killed time in the gift shop while waiting for the next tour. I bought a red knit T-shirt for $13.77.

The tour began with a short film on past champions and current athletes-in-training. When the lights came up, our guide spoke, but we could hardly hear due to rain pounding the roof. Our group left the theater, and we saw that it was hailing, hard. The tour was canceled.

Not knowing if the bad weather would ever let up, we left for our next stop: the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. On our way, we had to pull over—partway under a tree—due to hail.

Lights were out and streets were awash, but we made it. I enjoyed the Rodeo museum. Besides displays of riders, other “notables” got their billing, including announcers, promoters, clowns and bulls. I am not particularly interested in museum art, but the pictures, paintings and sculptures in the Hall of Fame were tasteful and well placed.

After more than an hour in the Hall of Fame we found it raining harder than ever as we started towards the Air Force Academy. It was Parents’ Weekend, and everything was crowded. We stopped at the bookstore, which is more than a bookstore. It’s a museum giving information on duties of cadets and upperclassmen, on what campus life is like, and on the history of the Academy. We thought we would eat at the cafeteria on campus for a cheap meal, but then remembered that it would most likely be crowded due to Parents’ Weekend. We decide to check into our motel, then go to dinner.

Traffic on I-25 south was bumper to bumper, slow to stopped. On the radio we heard that the exit nearest our motel was closed due to flooding. We exited the highway earlier; we had a good map of downtown.

The outskirts of town weren’t that well mapped though. Between the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and the Air Force Academy, we wanted to drive through Garden of the Gods but couldn’t find it, so gave up.

Determined to see Garden of the Gods, we set out early the next morning. The sun was up and the birds were singing though we never expected such nice weather after yesterday’s torrents.

To get to the Garden, the map indicated a right turn at the crossroads just beyond Columbine High School. Since it didn’t work either of the times we tried it the day before, we took a left instead and came across the park entrance. Entrance is free, and we drove through twice because the Garden was so spectacular with its red rock formations. We hiked a little, but just a little because we were on a schedule.

We had just 15 and a half days left to explore the rest of Colorado and four other states. Pike’s Peak, just up the road, was our next intended stop.
On the way to Pike’s Peak we saw signs for Manitou Hot Springs and so stopped for a self-guided tour.
Manitou didn’t offer much. Dwellings carved out of the mountain side were open for touring through. We weren’t sure if they were original, but we doubted it. The requisite gift shop was on site too—with a small information center/museum.
Manitou Hot Springs is worth a stop but not much time. We had reservations in the center of the state for this evening and so had to keep moving.

Cinci to St. Louis, KC and Beyond

2006-08-14T17:47:00.000-07:00

The plan was for Mark to drive from our place in Cincinnati to St. Louis. After visiting the Arch and the Anhauser Busch Brewery, I would drive to Hays, in middle Kansas, for the first overnight of our 19-day trip through the American West.

We left at 6 a.m. and made it to the arch by 12:30 p.m., thanks to the time change. Before we crammed into the little car to the top, we toured the Lewis and Clark museum below the arch. Journal entries from their expeditions are posted—complete with misspellings, which adds to the authenticity.

The trip to the top of the arch takes four minutes in a small car of about 30 cubic feet at my best estimate, for five people. The fit was tight for Mark at 6’ 4”, me at 5’ 11”, two large, athletic-looking young men and their petite female companion.

The day was beautiful and so was the view from the top, but we were on a schedule, and there’s only so much to see, so we snapped some pictures and headed to the Anhauser Busch Brewery for a free tour.

The tour lasted an hour and began in the gift shop. We passed a Clydesdale colt grazing in the entrance yard on our way to the stable. The Clydesdales’ have an air-conditioned stable cleaner than most college dorm rooms. We were greeted by a Dalmatian taking it easy in the cool barn. After the stable we saw a short film concerning production and distribution of final goods. The next part of the tour was up a couple flights of steps to overlook the production area. The guide said it would be several degrees hotter than at ground level. Already too sweaty, I passed.

The day was hot, and we were eager for the product tasting at the end of the tour. Finally we entered an open area with tables with pretzels, an unmanned soda fountain, and an area with alcoholic drinks and bartenders. Mark got a small cup of Bud Lite, and I got some hard lemonade. Mark’s next taste was of Killarny’s, and I got a cup of Sprite to dilute that lemonade since I was driving next. Then I decided to try 180, the new drink that’s high in caffeine. Being wide-awake while I am driving in St. Louis traffic is a good thing. I got only half way through the 180 and got a terrible pain under my breastbone. Mark and I left right away.

I was in too much pain to drive so Mark stayed behind the wheel all the way to Kansas City at the western Missouri border. (My pain was long gone by then. It must have been the carbonation or caffeine.)

Kansas City’s Arthur Bryant’s was our aim for dinner. We saw Arthur Bryant’s featured on the Travel Channel months earlier and thought this the perfect opportunity to try it.

We got to KC right at dinner time, and the signs on Interstate 70 directed us to take exit 3C to get to Arthur Bryant’s. We found it on the corner of 18th and Brooklyn. It didn’t look like much and was in a poorer area of town, but as expected, the food was great.

I got Bar-B-Q chicken and Mark got a thick Bar-B-Q pork sandwich. Complete with fries and sodas, it cost just over $20. On the wall was an old, signed picture of Steven Spielberg, Cate Kapshaw and Sally Field eating there. There was one of President and Mrs. Carter too, and most recently, Emeril Legassi.

That night we stopped at a Motel 6 just east of Hays, Kansas, the halfway point between Cincinnati and Colorado Springs, where we had reservations for the next night. Thus the end to day one of our western trip.

Review of L.L. Bean Ice Cream Maker

2006-08-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

Several posts previous I mentioned that my husband planned to order hiking boots from L.L. Bean. Last week he called the order in and asked for an ice cream maker too – or an ice cream ball. It’s something I had seen in the catalog and pointed out to him—not because I wanted one but because it was so cute.

The makers come in pint or quart size in colors of cranberry, blueberry, green apple, grape or tangerine. No crank is involved, no electricity is involved. It’s simply a metal container for the ice cream ingredients surrounded by an insulating area into which one puts the salt and ice, all encased in a plastic sphere.
From the L.L. Bean ad-
Fill the bottom of this durable, lightweight Lexan® plastic ball with ice and rock salt, add ice cream ingredients to the top and just shake, pass or roll the ball around your campsite.

It’s not as easy as all that. I was looking forward to tossing it between us, but Mark was concerned it would break if one of us (me) dropped it. And he ordered the quart size, which was quite heavy. I didn’t mind it so much because I only shook it for the final five minutes of the 30 required. But Mark thinks he wants to return it because it was such a pain.

After 30 minutes, he unscrewed the top and into a half-gallon container we poured out the middle cream which hadn’t iced up. It took the two of us because the ball is so awkward. Then Mark scraped the ice cream from the sides of the metal container using a wood spatula. It didn’t work well. A metal spatula would have cut through the ice, but it also might scrape the container, so he tried a large plastic spoon. It didn’t work that well either. But with much effort, most of the ice cream was out in the half-gallon container. Mark lidded it the container and popped it in the freezer for 20 minutes, before scooping himself a big bowlful, while I took the ice cream ball and ate directly from it, cleaning up the ice cream that still remained on the inside.

We do not recommend the L.L. Bean ice cream ball—at least not the quart size. We’ll likely keep ours as the cost to return it is $6.

Introduction to a Trip Out West

2006-08-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Five years ago, Mark and I took our first trip out West.
We were in Yellowstone on September 11, 2001. It was a surreal experience.

Years ago I wrote travel pieces about the different places we visited. The articles were written to stand alone, but I will post them here to take you along on our trip. Because they weren’t meant to be published together, some information may overlap. Please excuse this.

I’ll post the first article next week. We travel from Cincinnati to St. Louis and on to our first overnight in Hays, Kansas (Saaaa-lud!)

Our trip takes us to Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota, including nine National Parks.

Also, I have so far written my blog following the Chicago Manual of Style, but my travel pieces are written to the AP Style Manual, and I will continue my blog using that style—in case you pay attention to that sort of thing.

Stay tuned, and enjoy the ride.

EEFryer

Spending Savvy from a True Saver

2006-08-12T09:22:00.000-07:00

This is from several years ago.

Recently I spent the weekend with a friend of mine. We’re separated by two hours of highway travel, and so see each other only a couple times a year. While we watched TV and ate popcorn, we talked like girlfriends do when they don’t see each other often. I revealed that the first thing I did when my husband and I returned from our honeymoon was pay off his car. And this was only a month and a half after putting a generous down payment on our first house.
Since I used to work for the state government, just like my girlfriend, she knew I wasn’t raking in a big salary when I got married, and she asked me how I had the funds. I told her simply, “I save my money.”
She asked me to write her a plan, some rules to help her manage money better. If my girlfriend can benefit, so can you. Here are the top 10 money-saving rules I live by (most of the time). Cut out this page and make copies. Post one by your computer to discourage frivolous on-line purchasing, put one in your purse or wallet so you’ll be reminded of the rules as you retrieve cash or your credit card, and put a copy on your refrigerator just for reinforcement.

1. Buy clothes only from the sales rack… The only articles of apparel I’ve ever bought “in season,” for which I paid full price, were my prom dresses my junior and senior years of high school …in fabric you can wear year round. No corduroy for me, thank you. I’ve gone to interviews in winter in a white cotton T-shirt, dressed up with faux pearls and a jacket. The same T-shirt I wore with cut-offs to my nephew’s ballgame the previous summer.

2. Buy only what you need or will use... My mom hasn’t realized that she’s no longer cooking for my brothers and me since we’ve moved; when she sees chuck roast on sale, she buys two. My mom lives alone in a big house with two refrigerators and a 17 cubic foot freezer—all stuffed until the doors nearly pop open. She throws out, at my best estimate, over 50% of the food she buys because it gets freezer burnt, dries out or spoils before she uses it. Even though it’s a good deal when you buy it, if you don’t use it, it’s a waste of money.

3. …but only if you will need or use it within a reasonable time period. For years my girlfriend has bought furniture for a house she doesn’t own just because it was on sale. Her tiny condo is stuffed to the gills. I know lots of people have bought exercise equipment that is used only by the dust bunnies under the bed. Before you invest in a large item, be honest with yourself. Are you going to use it? Do you really need it? Right now? A “large item” varies for different people. Many times I end up reasoning myself out of an $8 T-shirt from the sales rack let alone passing on the $350 vacuum with all the fancy attachments.

4. Stay home and cook more than you eat out… Sure, this is easy for me since my husband does most of the cooking, but if I had to cook, I would, simply for the savings. …and eat your leftovers. My husband’s a good cook, but some meals, like his minestrone soup, made in a big soup pot, become less tastefully aesthetic after the fourth time eating it in a week. Yet he and I eat up until it’s gone, just to save money on fixing something else or going out.

5. Get a subscription to your favorite magazines rather than buying from the newsstands. The newsstand price for most monthlies ranges from $2.50 to $5.00 while a year’s subscription can cost as little as $12. If you like the magazine enough to buy it more than three or four times a year, it just makes sense to subscribe.

6. Pack your lunch. That minestrone soup? I have it when my husband fixes it for dinner, eat it for lunch and dinner on the next day and lunch and maybe dinner on the following day. It’s almost more than I can take, but it does save money. Another girlfriend used to eat out every work day, just so that she could spend time with her coworkers and they could complain about their employer amongst themselves away from work. A stress-busting lunch. Since she lives so close to where she works, I suggested she invite her colleagues to her place one day a week and offer up her microwave and dining room table. She liked the idea, and now the lunch bitch-bunch has a new Friday afternoon venue.

7. Wash your own hair right before you get a cut. This saves me $5 since my hair dresser doesn’t have to do it. It also saves on the tip.

8. Invest in some home equipment rather than spending $500 or more a year for a gym membership. You can start out small; you don’t have to buy all at once. And remember to consider rules 2 and 3. A dozen years ago I started out with a video and six-pound dumbbells. Now I have a complete free-weight rack, a step, Swiss ball, medicine ball, resistance bands, a stationary bike and about 20 exercise videos, which all together cost thousand$. Spread out over 12 years, it didn't hurt at all.

9. Buy DVDs or videos only if you’ll enjoy them over and over again. Some of you reading this should consider, “When was the last time I watched ‘Speed,’ and do I really enjoy it any more?” If you answered “over two years ago” or “no” then gather up those tired tapes and DVDs and trade them for cash at the local buy-back/resell place.

10. Go to matinees. My husband and I see only two or three movies a year at the theatre. I don’t even know what the full, evening price is, just that it’s more than the matinee price. When we get an inkling to see a show, we visit the local video rental place, and those visits are few and far between too because the shows on TV and cable (yes, we do dish out for basic cable—I am married to a man who needs his ESPN) don’t cost extra.

Little savings add up. Be diligent. By trimming your costs, you’ll grow your savings.

Sleeping Arrangements

2006-08-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

My husband and I rarely share a bed. We sleep in the same bed, just mostly not at the same time. He’s had the same third-shift job since before we were married, and since our engagement, I had made my mind up that he would have to quit once we got married because I couldn’t foresee us spending much time together—what with us working opposite shifts. However, I found that after we exchanged vows and moved into our house, we were together all the time.

Mark’s is a salaried position, meaning he gets paid the same if the job takes two hours or nine, and rarely is he gone more than six or seven hours a night. That means he tucks me into bed with a goodnight kiss and he sends me off to work with a good morning kiss nearly every day. It’s really nice.

He’s almost always awake by the time I get home, and we spend the rest of the day hanging out together, until I go to bed and he heads off to work. Too much together time? Maybe, if we didn’t like each other, but we do like each other.

Mark’s work has its seasonal ups and downs and things have been slow lately, yet he sleeps on the couch rather than share the bed with me. We’ve gotten used to having the bed to ourselves so rather than disrupt my slumber whenever he might decide to come to bed, he finds comfort on our couch. He does it as much for himself as for me as he claims sleeping with me gives him a backache because he gets squinched up on the edge while I hog the middle of the mattress. Whatever, you big baby, is what I tell him. And then I smile.

The night before last he was gone before I got home and he didn’t return until I’d already retired for the night. He and his brothers helped his parents move furniture out of their house to get new carpet.

Yesterday morning I quietly got up so as not to wake him as he slept on the couch, and I went upstairs to workout. At 6:10 a.m., workout over, I started down the stairs and heard him brushing his teeth. I asked him, “Why are you up so early?”

“To spend time with you,” he said through a mouth full of toothpaste.

Now, how sweet is that? See, that afternoon he’d be gone again, at his parents’ house moving furniture back in on top of the new carpet so he got up early, something he never does unless we have a plane to catch, simply to talk with me while I got ready for work.

What a guy. I love Mark—even better than I-love-goats.

I Love Goats

2006-08-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

I was raised by goats.

Not really but that’s what came out one time early in my husband’s and my relationship when I meant to say, “I was raised with goats.” But even that’s not right for I have no childhood memories of running around the barnyard playing goat games, as kids (meaning baby goats) tend to do, or of kids sitting around the dinner table with me and the rest of my family.

What is correct and what I should have said is “My family had goats when I was growing up.” But if I’d have said that, then Mark would be without his joke, which he uses at every opportunity. A new friend of ours says, “I was raised in Boston,” and Mark chimes in, “Did you know Elizabeth was raised by goats?”

I love goats. As young ones they are adorable with their knobby knees and floppy ears, and they’re pretty darned cute as adults too. Well, not male pygmy goats. We had one for a short while, and I didn’t like him at all. He had an odor and his eyes were an evil icy blue, but that’s a different story.

When I was in eighth grade we had just one goat, Robbie. (He gets a mention in My_Lost_Summer.) In the springtime, I would let him out of the field and he would wander around the yard while I lay in the sun and did homework. One day after I’d finished some algebra problems, I took a nap in the cozy warmth of the April day. I woke up to Robbie climbing into my lap while chewing on my homework! It was salvageable, but I had some explaining to do to Mr. Combs (who also garners a mention in the book) the next day.

In 1999 my dad and step-mom retired to the Georgia coast, and up the road from them…IS A GOAT FARM!! I walk up several mornings when we visit. This past May there were babies! This one looks like Robbie. I love goats.

Molly & Me

2006-08-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

This is Molly, Molly Svetlana. She's the little one; I'm the grown-up. I just met Molly and her mom, Angela, this past Sunday at church though I read about them in our church's monthly bulletin in February and Angela and I have exchanged numerous e-mails.

Let me go back to February. I was up visiting Mom, and the monthly church bulletin was in my box, the box I think all parents keep for their adult children, where they put any mail that has come for them or articles they clip from newspapers or magazines that they think might be of interest.

So, in February I read the New Jersey Presbyterian Church (located in my hometown, Carlisle, Ohio) February Bulletin and was genuinely touched by a story about a woman who was hoping to adopt a little girl from Russia. The story included a picture of the tow-headed chubby-cheeked baby girl sitting in a room full of toys in what I assumed was her orphanage. Her name was Molly Svetlana, and she had a life-threatening disease that could, however, be controlled through a strict protein-limiting diet. The story said that Molly would likely not find a family due to her health problem. But Angela L., a church member I'd never met, wanted to adopt Molly. You see, Angela's teenaged son had this same disease; she knew how to deal with it. Angela was asking for financial help to bring Molly home because she had just gotten laid off in December from an accounting job with a local newspaper publisher and funds were running thin.

After reading the story, I vowed to myself to give $100 to Angela and Molly.

I spent the night at Mom's and went to church the next morning, the first time I'd gone in more than a year, and during the announcements, Sue W., a teacher from my former high school, said that the women's group would meet on Wednesday and brainstorm ideas to raise money for Angela and Molly.

After services that Sunday I met with the pastor to discuss presenting my memoir, My_Lost_Summer, to the congregation. As I'd grown up in the church, I thought people might be interested to hear the story. The pastor suggested we open up the presentation to the whole community, and I left that day considering it.

By the time I'd gotten home to Cincinnati, I'd formulated a plan: I could present my book to the community and, on top of what I had vowed to give to Angela and Molly, I would donate 10% of the profits from any book I sold after the presentation. My presentation would be a fundraiser to help Angela and Molly.

I e-mailed the pastor and we set a date in May. In attendance were Angela's son and her parents--but not Angela. She was in Russia visiting Molly.

The evening was a success. I knew most in attendance and most in attendance knew the story, lived right there in Carlisle when it happened twenty-three years ago. People bought my book and freely stuffed bills in the jars available to collect donations for the adoption. I know that night barely made a dent in the bills that Angela is now facing and has faced since the beginning of the year. But even a little dent is something, and hopefully my event raised awareness of Angela's situation.

Molly's new hometown is my old hometown. And from what I could see Sunday at church, she fits right in. I look forward to seeing her grow up.

Exercise Doesn’t Have To Be Expensive

2006-08-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

My August 3 blog entry concerns exercise and recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury. I write about an article in the August 2006 issue of Reader’s Digest that says making exercise a habit is a way to keep your brain healthy, and I attribute my full recovery from my coma I suffered at age thirteen partly to exercise. Some survivors of TBI may be living on government assistance and think they cannot afford exercise equipment or membership to a club. But…

Exercise doesn’t have to be expensive.

I never did own a membership to a club. In college I worked out at the physical activity center on campus, with membership included in tuition, and after college I designated a room in my home to my workout room.

In the almost twelve years I’ve have been a regular exerciser, I have amassed

*ankle weights
*a step for aerobics
*a set of 6#, 8#, 10#, 15#, and 25# dumbbells
*a stationary bike
*a Swiss ball
*an eight-pound medicine ball
*about twenty different step aerobics, floor aerobics, Pilates, yoga, and weight training videos, all from http://www.collagevideo.com/, a site that has nearly every fitness video released
*a high step
*a tennis ball
*a light resistance band.

Add all that up, and it’s probably around $600. But I didn’t spend it all at once. The cost was spread over twelve years—and some of it I got for gifts—no cost to me.

So you see, it is possible to get in shape on a budget. Just be resourceful (the shoe-shine box, above, was actually a shoe-shine box one of my brothers made in high school shop class) and smart. In 1996 I bought a set of six-pound dumbbells for $6, and the typical price for dumbbells is still only about 50 cents per pound. Buy more expensive equipment on sale (the stationary bike, above, I bought at an after-Christmas sale). When your spouse or a parent asks what you want for your birthday, give them some ideas of fitness equipment you would use.

Hop to it! Hopping is a free cardio exercise.

Characters from My Lost Summer, the Book

2006-08-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

My family members are characters in My_Lost_Summer, a story of my recovery from a coma when I was thirteen. This picture was taken one year before my horseback riding accident.

I’m the blonde to the left. My brother Chris is behind me. He is eighteen here. Though Mom remembers how much time he spent at the hospital with me, he cannot remember anything about that time—or he wasn’t willing to talk about it when I asked, perhaps. When he makes an appearance in the story, it’s due to someone else’s memory, most often mine. Therefore, he is a relatively minor character in the story though in reality he was a major one.

To Chris’s left is our brother Mike. He’s ten years older than I, which makes him twenty-two in this picture. He had moved to Maine just weeks prior to my accident and came back to see me twice during my ninety-day hospital stay. I don’t remember either of the visits. His character is a little more developed than Chris’s because Mike remembered so many significant happenings when I interviewed him. Mom and he both remember the event that most characterizes the relationship Mike and I had then, a relationship typical between the oldest and youngest of a three-child family.

Chapter 8 of My_Lost_Summer ends with Mike flying in from Maine, and the next morning he and Mom leave for the hospital to see me.

In the morning on the drive to Kettering [Hospital], Mike at the wheel, Elaine tried to equip her son with a visual picture of what his sister was now: “Now, Michael, she’s either really active or really still. I think the doctor is bringing her out of it to see how she is, and then once she gets violent, I think their drugging her to keep her under so she doesn’t hurt herself or anyone else. She’s already kicked a nurse. She usually has restraints on her arms and legs for when she gets so restless.” They passed the Miamisburg public pool with its smooth surface glistening in the morning sun.
“And she has tubes running everywhere and IV lines and monitors and all that. Okay?” Elaine searched her son for some kind of slight shock or reaction, but she’d told him the same thing over the phone every day since Libbi was admitted. He’d heard it all already.

Mike barely nodded his head up and down, keeping his eyes on the road, “Okay.”

“Her doctor assures me that she’s right on course. They say that most people who come out of a coma are active and thrashing around like she is. They say it just takes time.”

Then, in Chapter 9, he sees me for the first time:

Elaine’s warnings were insufficient to prepare Libbi’s older brother for the scene. Seeing all the lines from the machines and dripping bags that led to his sister’s body, which was lifeless for the moment, and the restraints on her arms and legs, it was all somehow a surprise despite the forewarning. Mike collapsed in a wave of emotion—like he had taken a physical blow—and he lay on the floor sobbing with abandon

Interviewing family for this book more than twenty years after the event was quite revealing to me. I had no idea Mike reacted like that, and he and I shared a cry when he told me.

In the picture next to Mike is my cousin Holly, sixteen, giving Mike the bunny ears. She didn’t make it into the book because she couldn’t remember anything from that time and I had no memories with her in them, and including extra characters, especially if they do nothing significant, simply confuses the reader. So I chose to leave her out. She understands.

In front of Holly is my cousin Noelle, who’s thirteen in the photo. I have only great memories of whenever Noelle would visit, which I remember being several times a week.

Yay! Noelle’s here! I think as I see my cousin walk through the doorway with a big, yellow smiley-face, Mylar balloon.
…
“Hi, Libbi! How are you today?!” She doesn’t expect a response. “How was your therapy this morning? Good?” She ties the balloon onto the railing.

“You know what; I bet you can’t see that, can you? Why don’t I tie it down here so you don’t have to look straight up to see it.”

She talks to my Mom: “How’d she do in therapy this morning, Aunt Lanie?”

Mom tells her I’m coming right along and then gathers her purse and a couple flower arrangements and leans over the bed and says to me as she pushes my hair back off my face, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, okay?” and she kisses me on the forehead and leaves.

Noelle is just a flurry of activity. I love love love when she comes with Grandma. …

Noelle secures the balloon to the table across from my bed, still talking: “We won our softball tournament last weekend. We played some teams from Carlisle. Tracy pitched the game we played against them. She did real good, but I got two singles off her, and we did win three to one. Lance’s team finishes up this week.

“There. How’s that?” She pulls the string to make the balloon bounce.

She flits over to the window and looks at the plants and flowers that are piling up there. She reads the cards: “These flowers are from your Aunt Frieda and Uncle Steve in North Carolina.” She turns to look at me. “That’s your dad’s brother, right?” She turns back. “And this arrangement is from…I can’t get the card out of the envel—oh, here it is. J.T. Riley and Ruppert Ruppert. Huh. What about that.” She replaces the card in the envelope and turns to me. “They’re the sponsor of our softball team.”

Noelle walks to the bedside console for bed-2, where Mom has set the lidded glass container with condensation forming on the inside walls and ivy and moss growing. “Isn’t this terrarium nice!?” Noelle exclaims as she bends to look through the glass sides. She reads the card tied to the lid with the striated pink ribbon, “It’s from everybody at Cheney’s. Where your dad works? They sponsored Stephanie and Trisha’s team. Do you remember my friends Stephanie and Trisha?”
…
Noelle makes her way to the bulletin board across from the end of my bed, above the table where she tied the Mylar balloon. She rearranges the pictures on the border. The ones of Flash and Sparky and my brother. “Is Mike going to come home again to see you?”

Again? When was he here? I wonder.

Even though I have memories of her later visits, Noelle only remembers seeing me when I was glassy-eyed and non-responsive.

Between Noelle and me in the picture is Lance, my cousin who’s a year younger than I. He doesn’t remember anything from my time in the hospital, and I don’t have any memories that include him. His one spoken line in My_Lost_Summer is “Hello?” when he answers the phone at our grandparents’ house when Mom calls to report the news that I am critically injured.

The picture of my horse, which is the front cover of my book, has field/woods in the background. It’s the same background as in the picture above. The field Flash was in when I took that photo is off the left side of the picture.

As I come across photos of family who are characters in my story, I’ll post them.

How Exercise Influences TBI Recovery

2006-08-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

August’s Reader’s Digest tells us that the No. 1 thing we can do for brain health is to get our hearts pumping. Quoted in the article “Mind Games,” Dr. Donald Stuss, a neuropsychologist, says “The best advice I can give to keep your brain healthy and young is aerobic exercise. Another doctor, Mark McDaniel, professor of psychology at St. Louis’s Washington U., adds, “I would suggest a combined program of aerobics and weight training. Studies show the best outcomes for those engaged in both types of exercise.”

Exercise is likely a contributor to what I consider my full recovery.

Fall term of my sophomore year of college there was a health clinic on campus, and, among other things, I had my body fat percentage estimated. The measurement was rough, depending on skin folds for its determination. The result was a scary number: I was over 30% fat, considered obese, though to look at me, you’d never guess. But I decided that even though I didn’t look unhealthy, I likely was. I started swimming at the YMCA on campus most every night, and for Christmas I asked for a jump rope.

I transferred schools in the middle of that school year, but I kept up my training habits: five days a week I trudged over to the PAC (physical activity center at the University of Dayton) through sun, snow, and rain. Twenty minutes of jumping rope every day followed by alternate days of thirty minutes swimming or thirty minutes lifting weights.

When I graduated, I gave up the routine and only exercised lackadaisically until November 1995 when a significant life event propelled me to start a regular exercise program once again, and almost a dozen years later, I still workout six or seven mornings a week.

I know I owe my recovery to many things:

doctors
therapists
my mom giving me simple puzzles to solve right from the start of my re-consciousness
prayers
returning to school so soon
teachers
the social support of friends and family, and
exercise.

Exercise benefits everyone but especially the TBI survivor.

Stress and Aphasia

2006-08-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

I work as a science editor, and there are some issues with my job that are causing me some serious stress. Generally, as my stress level rises, I tend to stutter and lose or confuse words, even if I’m in a relaxed setting. It’s just a symptom of stress that many people experience.

Last night after a particularly tough day at work, I stood in the bathroom flossing my teeth after a good brushing, and my husband walked in and reached around me to open the medicine cabinet to extract his toothbrush. On the sink was the case I keep my oral appliance in. (I wear a guard at night because I am suspected of grinding.) The case was due for a cleaning so I said to Mark as he was applying toothpaste, “If you do laundry tomorrow, put this in the dishwasher.”

I reached across the toilet in our tiny bathroom to throw my floss away. I righted myself and looked at my husband, who had his head tilted slightly, like dogs do when they hear odd noises, and he tried to contain his grin. Slowly, he repeated what I’d just said, with a question mark at the end: “So—if I do laundry tomorrow—you want me to put this—in the dishwasher?”

I laughed. “Oh. No. I mean…”

“I know what you mean,” he assured me reassuredly.

In the early recovery from my head injury, I had aphasia, or loss or mixing of vocabulary. My aphasia still makes its presence daily. I admit in the epilogue of My Lost Summer that I lose words all the time, and I have to ask Mark or my coworkers for help finding the right ones for the meaning I want to convey.

I wonder if the aphasia is a result of my head injury or if it’s just a natural part of my personality? If I’d never had my head injury, would I still experience this loss or confusion of words at times of stress or even every day, like I do now? Like I’ve quoted before, “[I] will never know the difference between what [I] could have been without the TBI [Traumatic Brain Injury] and what [I’ve] become.”

Aphasia wasn’t my only problem last night: after I flossed I started up the stairs to wash my face, and Mark said to me less jokey and more with concern, “Hon, haven’t you already washed your face?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

It’s stress, I tell you.

Disappointments

2006-07-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

Three things disappointed me yesterday. The biggest was finding out that only the outside of Timberline lodge near Oregon’s Mt. Hood was used in The Shining. That means no hope of finding the same bold carpet, the same lounge, the same chandeliers as in the movie. Mark told me the bad news when I returned from a book signing at our local Kroger grocery. In May I sold eleven copies of My Lost_Summer at a signing there, but yesterday I sold only four. That was my second disappointment but it wasn’t huge because I understand that the book business has its highs and lows.

The first thing I did upon returning home was eat a grapefruit. I was really hungry. The grapefruit was pink and juicy and quite delicious—not a disappointment. Disappointment #3 came when Mark and I went to the Bass Pro Shop to get him new hiking boots for our trip in a month. He didn’t see any he liked better than what he’d seen in the LL Bean catalog so he decided to order online when we got home. That’s still not my third disappointment.

We weren’t quite out of the shoe section yet when Mark reminded me that I wanted some shoes. They’re a closed-toe sports sandal and are unique. Not lots of places have them yet. They would be perfect for warm whether light hiking and beachcombing, meaning the only shoes I’d have to take to Oregon would be those shoes and hiking boots, instead of hiking boots, sneakers, and flip flops for the beach.

Sure enough, Bass Pro Shop had the shoes I was looking for in my size, and I bought them. At home I wore them around, and after a time, they hurt my feet. My feet are somewhat flat, and it is sometimes difficult to find comfortable shoes.

Three disappointments. Ah. Well. Today’s another day.

Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge

2006-07-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

Mark and I will be touring Oregon in early September. Our plans were set months ago. When we watched The Shining last weekend, Mark told me he thought the “The Overlook” resort, ficticiously set in Colorado, was actually a lodge in Oregon.

Just this week I brought home some Oregon tour books and showed him the route I had mapped out for us. (I’m the navigator. I love maps.) He voiced concern over day 1 of our trip, and I was wondering how we were going to cram all I had planned for us into day 3, so we decided to scrap Day 1 and expand day 3’s activities into two days. That meant we’d need to find lodging around Mt. Hood, Oregon the Saturday of Labor Day weekend at this late date.

Mark suggested Timberline Lodge, The Overlook in The Shining. He read in the tour book that it is now a historical landmark, but 60 rooms are available for lodging, only 50 with private baths though. I loved the idea since—you can probably tell from a couple entries ago—I loved the movie.

I phoned our travel agent to have her cancel the current reservations we have for Saturday night and to see if she could get us something at Timberline. She put me on hold, made a call out to Oregon, got back on the line with me and told me there was one room left for really a lot more than I ever want to pay for a room for one night. Mark was OK with it saying, “How many times are you going to have the opportunity to stay in a place where a movie was filmed?”

So I told our travel agent to call Timberline back and say we’ll take the room—if it’s with a private bath. She said, “At that price, it should have a private bath.”

Reservations are made, plans are set: We are staying at Timberline Lodge in Mt. Hood, Oregon, the setting of The Shining, filmed in the late ‘70s.

Mark and I watched our usual Friday night Monk at 9 pm on USA network, and during the commercials as Mark was flipping the channels, he came across The Shining, showing on A&E. After Monk ended we watched The Shining, just six days after we last saw it. We started watching just a couple minutes before Wendy found the manuscript: “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy,” over and over. Basically, we got to see the best part of the movie again, this time knowing that we will be staying in the resort in little over a month.

At last Saturday’s showing I commented on the bold carpets in the place. I love bold carpets. Last night Mark said, “I wonder if those carpets will still be there.” And I said, “I hope so.”

A few minutes later he asked, “Do you think those chandeliers will be there?” Again, I said, “I hope so.”

Later on I said, “I hope that restaurant’s still there.” Mark said, “It’s a bar.”
“Well, if it’s still there, we’re getting drinks.”

At the scene where Wendy finds the manuscript, I said, “I hope that furniture is still the same.” Then Mark, to make a point of how star struck, er... movie-set struck I was being, said, “I hope that typewriter’s still there.” I laughed.

Then it was a joke for the rest of the movie, Mark saying, “Do you think picture will still be there?”

“I hope so.”

“Do you think the restrooms will be the same color?”

“I hope so.”

“Do you think it’ll snow?” He’s so silly. Yes, I would love there to be tons of snow on the ground, just like in The Shining, but we'll be there in early September.

So I’m pretty excited about seeing this place, wandering around. I told Mark we’d have to get there early to explore everywhere. He said the maze in the movie is not there; the maze scenes were filmed elsewhere. And that’s OK. I don’t like mazes anyway; I panic.

Of course I’ll post pictures upon our return. Stay tuned.

Prelude to the Arrival of Lindsey

2006-07-27T06:03:00.000-07:00

After watching The Shining, I thought about other King classics from my youth. The weekend before Mark and I watched The Shining, we caught the last hour-plus of Carrie, which I had never seen before. I liked the ending when Carrie got her revenge against her classmates, who had mocked and ridiculed her throughout her high school years. The ultimate vindication was the crucifixion of her mother. In self defense, Carrie stabbed her mother’s hands to the wall.

Though I saw it in the theater, I don’t remember anything about Pet Sematary other than the semi running over and killing little Gage as he chased after a kite. His father was so bereft that he agreed to have his son given life again even though the re-lifing process had not yet been perfected, and previously precious Gage was evil upon his return.

I saw Pet Sematary on Friday, May 19, 1989. How can I remember that date from more than seventeen year ago? My niece was born the next morning.

The summer of ’89 was my second consecutive one spent in Windham, Maine with my brother Mike and his young bride, Ruth. I had just finished my freshman year of college and worked in the lab in the paper company where my brother worked.

The previous summer, after graduating from high school, I lived with them and only worked part time at Levinsky’s Clothing & Outerwear store and spent much of my free time down the street at the neighborhood beach. I met Brian, three years older, who was home from college for the summer and, coincidently, lived across the street from Mike and Ruth.

We dated the whole summer and were growing tired with each other by August’s end. Tired because we lived across the street from the other and so spent nearly every evening together watching videos, playing ping pong, or competing in Pictionary with either his mom and brother or with Mike and Ruth. Too much togetherness. Neither of us said anything about our increasing annoyance with the other. It wasn’t worth the effort as I’d be returning to Ohio soon.

Soon came, and Brian and I exchanged college addresses (before Internet), and I headed south with my brother Chris, who’d flown up to help me drive back.

Brian and I wrote once or twice a month, him asking for advice with the ladies and me giving it freely. Our friendship developed more in the eight months we were apart than it did during the nearly three months we were together.

The spring semester for my university—of Dayton—ended in April so I made it up to Maine before the University of Maine broke for the summer. Brian’s mom and I rode up to Orono in the family truck to haul the contents of Brian and his brother’s dorm room home. I was quite a surprise for them, and they were glad to have the help hauling furniture out to the truck.

Friday of that first week Brian was home, we went to see Pet Sematary with his friend from school, Arty, whom I’d met the previous summer.

As I admitted earlier, I don’t remember much of the movie, but I remember thinking it wasn’t that scary.

We dropped Arty off at his house and drove on to Brian’s. We got out of his powder blue Cougar and I said, “Seeya tomorrow.” We had made plans with Arty to meet at the beach. Then I walked across the street into Mike and Ruth’s big, five-bedroom house.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth and lie down in bed in my corner room to write the day’s events in my journal. Mike and Ruth’s room was upstairs. After a couple minutes, I heard a “boombloomboomboomboom” and a door slam. I walked out to the foyer, and the overhead light was on. Then in raced my brother carrying a small overnight bag. “Ruth’s water broke!” SLAM! And he ran up the stairs, the ones he’d just slid down.

I didn’t think I could offer any assistance so I sat on the love seat in the living area and continued journaling. Within a couple minutes Mike and Ruth were off to the hospital. I wished them luck and continued writing about the day.

After I’d finished, I shut my journal and looked out the sliding doors to the enclosed side porch, and there were the black cat’s yellow eyes staring back at me. I couldn’t see anything else as it was totally dark and some interior lights were on.

Now that I think about it, wasn’t there a black cat in Pet Sematary?

Anyway, I’d just written in my journal how the movie wasn’t as scary as I had hoped, but there I was alone in a big empty house with a black cat staring in at me. I was a little scared. I seriously contemplated calling Brian and asking him to come spend the night on the couch, but it was after midnight, and I didn’t want to call and wake his family just to quell my irrational fear. Instead, I checked to make sure all the doors were locked, especially the one to the porch, and I turned on every light downstairs and went to bed with the door to my room open. If the light didn’t keep the boogey man away, at least I’d hear him enter the house, and from my corner room have time to prepare myself for his attack.

Alas, the boogey man didn’t come. The rest of the night was uneventful. I got a call late Saturday morning that Lindsey no-middle-name-yet had been born about 8 a.m. I called across the street and told Brian’s mom the good news. I told Brian I’d be down to the beach later in the afternoon, after I got back from the hospital.

Lindsey no-name was the most beautiful newborn baby I had ever seen. Really, she was perfect.

If you’ve read My_Lost_Summer, you can thank Lindsey Anne (almost Brooke) Evans for the passage at the end of Chapter 14: the closure to the “hope” metaphor that had run throughout the book. She didn’t write the passage, but she did comment on the lack of a satisfying closure, which prompted me to write it. How smart for a sixteen year old?