Tuesday. August 8

Up with leg cramps, very painful. Have to walk and walk and walk and chug water. Would walk outside but the bear may be having the same idea and am not that brave.

am in the kitchen and a child is baking cupcakes. Smell is delicious but not going to bite.

work was busy and most of the tourists that came in were running away from smoke in their area. Apparently we are way better then most but have not seen blue sky for some 10 days. Thanks Diane for thinking of us.

Have a great Tuesday everyone. Saw Dunkirk yesterday. Grim.

Positive thoughts for your cramps and smoke.

Yes, I hope those leg cramps resolve and the smoke clears. I just googled the fire - apparently you are expecting at least 5 days more of it. Tough to deal with especially when this is usually the most beautiful time of year there.

Weight 114.75, calories 798. I'm finding that a hot drink at night is curbing my desire to snack. I've always planned one snack between dinner and bed, but sometimes that awakens my nighttime snack cravings. Last night (and a couple of days ago), I tried having a hot drink when the cravings started and it nipped them in the bud. Maybe this will become a routine (I like routine).

My snack last night was Yoplait Oui French yogurt (plain). It was okay (very creamy), but I think I like Greek yogurt better. I got it for free at the grocery store, so it was worth trying. Most of the free stuff they offer is junky, carby stuff so I don't get it but this time it was worth trying. Though it is probably quite expensive with the fancy packaging (little glass jar).

Tomorrow will be a drive by if I post as I am in the office, then leaving at 3 to get home at 4:30, pick up DH, and continue on for another hour to a "****tail party" further down Cape Cod. It is hosted by a member of DH's Alzheimer's support group. I bet it is a gorgeous home though, as it is in an expensive area of the Cape. I love looking at homes (especially seaside homes), so that part should be fun!

Have a great skinny day!

Good Morning!

My ipad is still on airplane mode and my alarm went off on Iowa time.....2 hours earlier than it needed to. I'll go back to bed for a bit but wanted to say HELLO and I HAVE MISSED YOU! I was already behind in reading posts at the start of the Iowa trip and am really behind now. I hope you all are well. Paula, I did read Caring bridge, hope recovery is progressing. Ouch!

About smoke: Seattle is a smoggy haze. I knew the BC smoke was hanging around but still surprising to see in person. Carbon, I am sorry for what your lovely province must be going thru. Those with breathing issues can't be doing well. I need to leave a note for DD to remember to take her asthma controller.

About food. Friends, I have regain, not sure how much. I had deliberately allowed myself to go up in July, part of making sure I had strength. Not a ton (ha!) but then with the lack of hiking/exercise for two weeks and not-great eating around Crater Lake and atrocious eating in Iowa this last week and MY CLOTHES ARE TIGHT! Ok, time to practice being a sane human and dial it back. I preloaded MFP for the next couple of days and plan on keeping up with that for the foreseeable future.

About grazing: having been back to the family home, I see that I grew up in a grazing environment. Geez Louise. My mom was a skinny kid/adult that had problems keeping weight on so it was never a personal issue for her. Dad's weight went up when he switched from being a farmer to an office job, but dutifully followed his doc's advise to "reduce whites" when there was concern about weight/pre-diabetes. (I am continually amazed that my dad is a person who "of course" does what his doctor says.) Both mom and dad eat in a manner I like......wide variety of foods, very few processed. Mom includes a few more treats than dad but their treats are small portioned.

Dad has figured out low cal ways to eat all day. My mom is a metabolism machine, I have no idea how many calories she eats a day but she maintains a healthy, low BMI. I could have done ok, BUT found a Costco sized bag of chocolate chips and I already knew where the processed carbs were kept. Who care if pretzels and graham crackers are a tiny bit stale.

About memory....I think my dad's is slipping a tiny bit and even mom made a comment about it. That she would open the door on the subject, even just a crack, is highly telling. If it exists, it appears quite mild. He will be someone who finds coping mechanisms that hides it, tho. Before the trip, I mentioned my concerns to someone at work, and we joked about slipping him a memory test. One of the components of the test is drawing a clock face. As it turns out, dad has been in a clock making faze and the garage contained many clocks, all with perfect faces. We watched LaLa land and I was thrilled that dad immediately commented that he preferred the imagined ending to the real ending. I realize that figuring out movies is not the same as short term memory, but it still made me happy that he has his baseline smarts.

About my mom....boy does she irritate me. No sense of personal boundaries -- not just for me, but for anyone. But, I am happy that she is here and fully present. I wish had had more patience in the moment. I don't lash out (anymore,) but I wish I could be more neutral internally. Part of her not respecting boundaries is not allowing one to take a break from her presence. Ever. Quite a conundrum. Sneaking chocolate chips helped.

About sounds: I love Iowa evening summer sounds....cicadas and a bird's call that sounds like a dove tho I don't think it is a dove. Eventually, it all dissolves into crickets. Add humid warmth and I feel like I am fully enveloped in home. Ann, loved your picture of the stand of trees you enjoy during sun salutations.

Ok, back to bed for a few. Then off to the races.

Shel

Carbon, is your last name Keebler? Is your house a large tree full of baking elves? Honestly, who can sleep when that aroma wafts thru?

I have eaten So. Much. Very alarming. I have been very hungry (not just head hunger). But I also haven't been making great choices. Great choices sound gross. Up to 162.8. I simply cannot be one of those women who gain 70lbs. during pregnancy. Not gonna happen. But how do I stop it?

Yesterday started out with me barfing on myself in the car. Unfortunately even with nausea I'm still hungry and feel the need to eat.

Today didn't start out much better. My grandmother has consistently been saying bizarre things like "not remembering" my granddad (they were married for 57 years and he passed away 7 years ago) and she didn't want to "dwell on the bad." I found these statements to be really hurtful because my granddad has been one of the central figures in my life. Surely she's losing it, I thought. So today when she started in about that I said something about "I think it's really sad you cannot remember 57 years together. I sure hope I remember my husband." In the past when she'd said something about not wanting to dwell on the bad, she'd suggested, and I'd assumed, that she was talking about his death. Well today I got a totally unexpected answer. She told me that he'd had an affair. So I asked my dad point blank and the answer I got was essentially yes he believes that is true but never had the guts to ask his dad point blank. I feel pretty shaken. This guy was on the pedestal. He seemed to be everything I thought a man, and a patriarch, should be. It's totally believable, but I just didn't think he was that man. I'm mad. And sad. My dad is upset that my grandmother told me. I guess I'm sad to know but I don't blame her. I feel bad for her. Certainly gives context. Sure they stayed together and maybe I can try and convince myself it's a real-life success story and it's real and raw and I should be more impressed by their humanness and sticking it out. But right now I'm at minimum disappointed that he was just as human as anyone else, and kind of disgusted and defensive now of my grandma. Did they stick it out because of love and kids and time, or did she have no other options? She was the stereotypical 50s housewife. She LIVED and breathed for her spouse and kids. Ugh I'm just so sickened. And gosh darnit I'm MAD. I wish he were here to have to answer to his sweet, innocent granddaughter. No one ever thinks about who they hurt when they cheat. Who would've imagined he'd be hurting me, his granddaughter, 7 years after his death? Pedestal sits empty for now :(

I'm so sorry, I can't even imagine if I found out something like that about my Poppy! or my dad! It is very sad.

Hoo boy! There's very often a world of difference between our childhood interpretations of the adults around us and the lives they're actually living. And learning about and reconciling those differences is part of growing up. Just for the record, "growing up" is never finished -- at least not so far in my 71 years.

Yes, good people have affairs. Yes, good people make decisions to stay with their spouses for economic and child rearing and stability reasons and, sometimes, simply because they promised they would. Yes, yes, yes to everything else you can imagine. And our unwillingness to share our stumbles and the stumbles of those we love is why there is such a thing as Unspeakable Family Secrets. And then those secrets become the source of even greater poisons -- because the pain and trauma gets concreted over and gets nastier and relief and grief and forgiveness are never, ever possible.

Just think about all the subjects about which there are family secrets:

Mental illness
Cancer
Other physical illnesses
Suicide and suicide attempts
Children born "out of wedlock" (as we used to say)
Abortion
Rape
Child abuse
Academic stumbles
Gambling
PTSD from wars, crime, family traumas
Drug addictions
Divorce (yes, divorce -- even today that can be a "secret")
Financial shenanigans
Career failures
Religious disputes
Political disputes
Homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender issues
People who "let themselves go" in various ways
People who are simply "different" from the rest of their families

The list goes on and on!

So much of our lives are private, as they should be. But this can mean that the people we love deeply often become cardboard characters in our simplified, decades-long acquaintance with them.

My advice (at 71 years old) is to welcome the truth about those we love. Chances are, the truth about them might help us navigate some of life's decades and issues still to come.

Not a single person in the world is perfect. But chances are, most of the time they are trying to do the very best that they can in messy situations.

That's the most I can ever attempt.

Your 71 years of life experience have made you a wise woman. Your words about this subject are spot on and up lifting.

In the 1950s my mother was a young immigrant woman doing her best to make her way in the USA after being essentially abandoned by her GI husband. Before moving to GA and meeting my father, my mother lived in NY. It was during this time she was raped by a doctor while sedated. She believed this was the price she "had to pay" for an abortion and lived with it. Several days later she began to hemorrhage and ended up in an NYC ER. The attending doctor upon examination immediately recognized signs of back alley procedure. My mother wept with shame and fear. This caring doctor promised to not report my mother to the authorities. He also had to tell her she had not been pregnant at all, but had huge cysts on her ovaries and needed emergency surgery before they ruptured and caused reproductive damage.

I was so terribly upset by this story. I was angered beyond belief. My mother had never told anyone except her sisters and me. My dad didn't know, nor did my brother. I realized that she had felt ashamed then, but had grown enough to know wrongly and dangerously she had been treated. I am not a personal supporter of abortion, but I am a staunch, unwavering supporter of a woman's right to choose to legally and safely terminate a pregnancy. I want no other woman to have to endure what my mother did.

I don't know why my mother told me this story, but I'm grateful she did. Knowing that piece of her history helped shape my future thinking and perceptions. Sometimes knowledge is power.

BB, I think some good has already come from the knowledge of your grandfather's indiscretion. You have grown closer to and more compassionate and empathetic of your grandmother's experience. That is good.

Thank you for letting me Vent here.

I guess the trouble is I don't think he was trying to do his best. Not for one minute. I think he was being very self-serving and didn't care about the consequences of his actions. No doubt he didn't imagine they would be so far-reaching. That 7 years after his death he would hurt his granddaughter to this extent. I don't see him as human; I see him as another disgusting cheater-cliche. And I have no patience for cheaters.

I do see adultery as quite distinct from the other items on your list. Cheating is definitely a choice. Cheaters have their justifications, but at the end of the day it is a choice to put yourself ahead of the ones you swear to God to love and honor most.

I will agree that the situation/choice for my grandmother is much more complex. Perhaps she wanted to stick it out, for her family, for her marriage oath. That's laudable. Or perhaps she felt stuck, as so many housewives did. And that makes me very sad.