Monday, March 18, 2024

Now It's After Hawaii...

Okay, so now we do all the changes I said I would do after Hawaii...

Or maybe not. 

I had expected to really get some clarity during the trip on what I wanted to do. Usually I do. I spend time swimming and walking and sitting and listening and I come away with ideas.

But this trip was not at all what I was expecting. It was nothing like what we had planned. I had in my head an idea of what I would come away with for answers. But that's not what happened.

The trip itself was unlike others we have taken over the years. 

The weather was challenging. Winds and offshore storms made the ocean a little tricky. There was one day where it was clear and calm, and we had something else planned that morning so thought we'd go snorkel in the afternoon. By the time we got back to the resort the water had churned again and it wasn't great conditions again. Most days it was really choppy and that's not great snorkel water, the one time we did go snorkeling (yes, ONE time) it was off of Lanai which is normally perfect water and visibility and it was so murky and sandy and the current was so strong that after about an hour in the water we were gassed. There were people on our tour who had a really hard time fighting through the surf and getting back up on the beach.

And I was challenged in other ways too. Not just the weather. 

Going someplace I haven't been in two years and getting a real clear snapshot of how much my physical strength has lessened was, well, let's say discouraging. I mean, I knew it was bad, I've been recovering from injuries for the past almost year. Not continual, but one after another. And I've been without being able to lift any weights at all for the past 7 months. It's been brutal. So I knew that I was not in the shape I normally am, but discovering just how off I am was tough. 

We walked everyday since we couldn't swim. Between 3-5 miles depending on the day. Just an easy pace (as an aside Brent has his own injury he's trying to recover from so we were being mindful of that as well). My achilles tendons were screaming at me after the third day. Just super angry. I walk/jog 3-4 times a week on the treadmill but without that added piece of weight training and outdoor hiking they were not okay with beach path strolls. Craziness. 

I also got a glimpse of a candid shot by one of the tour boat photographers and let's just say I'm not super happy with the way I look either. 

So...I am not jumping in with After Hawaii changes. I'm letting everything settle. Because right now my after Hawaii changes are hey, let's stop eating and start lifting weights three times a day, that would be great right? 

And it wouldn't. 

I mean, the injuries I have been recovering from, I'm still recovering from. The elbow could take another 6 or 7 months to heal, if not more. I am cleared to start lifting again, but low amounts and slow builds. And I do have some idea on how I want to change what I'm eating (basically I need to cut back on added sugar again I think) but I can't make dietary changes when that part of my head is triggered. 

So now I need to wait. April. April seems a good time to implement changes. It's a clean start. The first of new month. The first month of a new quarter. I mean, that's pretty perfect right?

Also, I know it doesn't seem like it from this blog, but Hawaii was great. Even with it not being our typical trip is was still wonderful overall. I'll write more about it tomorrow, the challenges and the benefits. But I am going to add those other goals back in in April as well so I might as well keep getting that head start on my blog numbers. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm starving...

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Short Story...

She had steeped the tea for two hours. Strained the water three times. Mixed in a cup of sugar. Reduced it on the stove for another hour to get an Earl Grey Tea syrup to use in her cupcakes. Every step took so long. Sure she could have just bought a box of cake mix and made those but with the thunderstorm raging outside she might as well do them the right way. Today she would bake, yesterday she had found the text messages and told him, "Get out of my house." This morning she had started to wonder if that had been a mistake, if she should have waited. But he would be back, he needed to get his things. And he couldn't resist her cupcakes. Taking the time to make them this way he would never taste the poison. 


Dana sent me a list the other day:

Write a scene in a novel, using these words:
1. Cupcakes
2.Wonder
3.Earl Grey Tea
4."Get out of my house."
5.Thunderstorm

I smarted off that that wasn't from a novel that was just a paragraph. And apparently my head has been thinking...hmmm...ever since. So today you got the paragraph.

And of course it was poison and death. I mean Dana knew when she sent it that it wouldn't be Betty Crocker. And the last two items to include in your scene kind of lead you that way anyway. Or at least me.

I haven't really gotten back into the swing with fiction lately. I can feel the starts back in my head though. I'm hopeful that some salt water and sun will get them to the surface. I'm also thinking about doing poetry month for April again. That was one of the hardest challenges I've ever done with my writing. It really makes me think in different ways. I'm not a great poet, but I'm not a great fiction writer either and I do that anyway. 

Skippy, you can just take a month and work with your horses. 

I'm not sure I'll do it, but I'm tossing the idea around. 

This next week in Hawaii is going to be time for all of the ideas to settle and form and get tossed around and resettle. We have fewer things planned than normal so a lot more time to sit and watch the waves. And to swim. And to feel the whale song in my chest. 

Let's hope it's as rejuvenating as I want it to be. 



Thursday, March 7, 2024

Garden State...

Once it warms up a little bit more I will be out in the garden today. I keep putting off the Spring things that need taken care of. Some trimming, some weeding, some planning for more plantings.

I don't enjoy gardening.

That's a big part of how we ended up in the townhouse before. After buying house after house with a yard for Katie to play in and then spending all of our weekend time taking care of those yards while Katie stayed inside with a video game I said  THAT'S IT! NO MORE YARDS! 

And honestly, it was kind of great. 

Except for the times you wanted a little outdoor space to yourself and it was nowhere to be found. 

We looked at house after house with small backyards, or no backyard but a good sized deck that backed up to a green space or a backyard that had been turned into a low maintenance oasis. And that's pretty much what we did with this one. We tore out the grass and put down pavers. There are a few areas of plants, but not a lot. 

It's not no maintenance, but it's pretty low. 

Which is great, except when it's time to do the maintenance. Which this year (everyone say it with me, When we get back from Hawaii) we will need to clean the pavers and re-sand them and then get new bark chips for the backyard as well. 

And we need to do a little more rearranging and planting to get it the way we want. 

And when we are sitting outside looking at the pretty blooming flowers I will love it. 

But I do not love the part that I have to do to get it that way. 

I want all of the reward without any of the work.

But that's not the way it works. So I am finding the balance between a little work with a good reward and living with a weed patch for a backyard. And of course I have to weed the front yard or the HOA will have a fit. 

I bet there's a political metaphor in there. But instead of finding it for you, I'm going to go put on a sweatshirt and dig in the dirt. 

Also probably a political metaphor in there...

Enjoy your yard, don't worry about anyone else's. Find what works for you and do that. 

Weeds are just plants that are doing their own thing...Think the HOA would accept that as an answer for why I haven't weeded the front yard?

Yeah...probably not. 


Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Slow Down...

I am doing a "Run Your First 5K" program right now with my iFit. As I mentioned I just started really slow jogging at times after being strictly a walker for years and years. I had it stuck in my head that running had to be fast and that was always hell on my knees. Tommy Rivs (trainer for iFit, world class runner, all around inspirational good guy) got me to try just running at my walking pace and it was like a light went on and I finally got it. I COULD do that. 

So for the past 6 months or so I've been slow jogging and walking. Had to stop when I got my arm worked on because the jarring of walking was too much let alone jogging. Then started to slowly build back up. 

I wrote down in January that I wanted to work toward running a 5K. (It wasn't a goal, it was a thing I wanted to do, shush!) and so when I saw this program on the iFit page I thought I'd give it a try. 

Bonus! The places we are training are all in Oregon so I'm on trails that I know. It was filmed during Covid so it's kind of amazing how empty the trails are on one hand, and how funny it still is to see people out on a trail wearing their masks. We were pretty good about masks around here. Kept our infection rates lower which then lead the, let's call them less scientifically minded, people to say "Why do we have to wear masks? Our infection rates aren't even as high as other places!"

But anyway...

Working toward running for a full 5K. 

And it's slow. Like the training program is slow. I'm running (I keep saying running but understand it's a slow jog) at a slower pace and for less time than I was on my own. But I really want to follow the program so I build up instead of burn out. Today while I was figuring out the 30 seconds on at an RPE of 5 with 60 seconds off at an RPE of 2 (TWO!) I was tempted to push it up quite a bit. But reminded myself that I wanted to actually follow the program. 

Then during the cool down portion Knox Robinson (he's the trainer for this program) said that he liked to touch base during cool downs and reinforce what we are doing. Part of what he said was to make sure I wasn't focusing on the speed. That we are always feeling like we should go faster, do more. And then we burn out and can't figure out why. 

Which is EXACTLY what I had been trying to avoid and EXACTLY what I could feel creeping in during today's workout.

Good trainer to know that I would be in that space when it's a pre taped, generic, program made for the masses. 

Or maybe it means we all need to hear that. 

Slow down. Stop thinking you need to go faster and further before you're ready. Keep an even pace. You'll be more likely to get there and not burn out on the way. 

Also, maybe partially related, yesterday was Super Tuesday and 8 months away from election day. 

Keep an even pace. Don't take it all on. Go slow. Don't burn out on the way. 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Panic in the Livingroom!

There was an outage this morning for Meta. So Facebook, Instagram and Threads were all down. But it was a weird glitchy outage. You got a message saying your session timed out but then it wouldn't let you log back in for Facebook. For Instagram it just wouldn't refresh your feed. 

I tried logging in a couple of times and then did a "Is Facebook Down?" search to see if it was just me or if it was a systemwide thing. Systemwide, cool. 

Because when I couldn't log back in I was worried for a second that either my account had been hacked or Facebook had taken it down since I got a naughty naughty warning a few weeks ago. I know you want to know what the warning was for, so do I. They don't really tell you. You just get a warning that you've been naughty and they are taking down your post but they don't tell you what post or when or what the complaint was. So I don't have any idea. 

I'm not the only one getting naughty naughty warnings right now. I guess they've been training a new AI to handle all of the complaints and then letting it run wild. So things that you posted years ago might get tagged now. Or complaints someone made about you ages ago that they hadn't ever gotten to are being looked at and if you used words like dead, or shoot, or punch you in the fucking face, you can get in trouble. 

Someone got a warning for posting a line from The Princess Bride in a thread on a post in a Princess Bride group. 

It's not a great system when you take everything out of the hands of people. 

Which it wasn't a great system when there were people involved either. 

Not just because of the things they deemed fine (scammers and hate speech) but because there were people who were having to look at the worst images to see if they violated terms and conditions. Imagine your entire day is spent looking at death, dismemberment and child porn. That's not healthy.

So the systems don't really work for what they need to do. 

We should all probably stop using it. 

But this morning when a forced stop happened a lot of people discovered how anxious they became when they couldn't access their feeds anymore. What a way to discover you're codependent with an app. 

I didn't get to the point of being actually worried. Once I figured out it was systemwide I just read a book and then got on with my day. But in those moments before I figured it out I did wonder about what it would mean if I lost access to my account. And I really do need to get those photos off. Find the program that downloads Facebook albums again and just do it. I know I've already lost a few because of Facebook dumping things, but I don't want to lose the rest.

I also thought, hunh, if it's crashed hard, like days without being able to log in maybe that would be the break I need to actually stop using it. 

But then it came back up and now I can go back to ignoring that voice...

I do really need to download those photos though.


Monday, March 4, 2024

Regulate This...

We are having a disagreement with our HOA. It's the third time we've had a disagreement with this HOA in two years. Our last HOA we didn't really ever hear from. I think we had one request that was turned down and we knew going in it probably would be but wanted to ask anyway. (We wanted to add a few inches to our front porch, we figured out a way to do it that wouldn't have looked odd with the rest of the units but because it was something that wouldn't then match we got turned down. We would have rather not been, but it was a reasonable and expected turn down.)

But our luck has run out. We are going to be arguing with these guys for as long as we live here it seems. Which if they keep coming back to us with nonsense won't be terribly long. Brent will take the loss and move rather than fight. He has zero time for drama at all and petty drama especially. And if we do move, you can guarantee it will be someplace with no HOA. Which will be really hard to find. HOAs are very popular, even neighborhoods you would not expect them often have them. And you don't know until you are in if it's a low key HOA that you rarely hear from or a we drive down the street looking for violations HOA.

When we got the notice from them this past weekend Brent said "People are too worried about regulating things they shouldn't care about and have no concern with regulations that they should care about." Then he told me, "Feel free to use that as a Facebook status." Which I will not. Instead I'll write a whole blog about it. 

We talk a lot about the nonsense people worry about and want to make laws about. Obviously having a trans child we are especially sensitive to the number of anti trans laws that are popping up. And we tried to warn people that it had nothing to do with "think of the children" and everything to do with "I hate trans people" Now that you are seeing legislatures move on from trying to regulate underage people and on to trying to get rid of trans care all together you can send your "You were right and I never should have doubted you" messages.

And it really doesn't even have anything to do with trans people. It has to do with power and what the ruling classes will do to keep it. If they can find someone to focus your hate and attention on they will. Because they do not want you to look at them. 

They want to regulate everything they can about you. Your health care choices, your body autonomy, your life, so that you don't realize that what we should be regulating is them. How did they get their money? How are they able to increase their wealth at such a rate while people are starving? Why have we decided that being a billionaire is aspirational instead of a crime against humanity? 

How many times have you been watching the news and some multinational corporation has done something awful and you find out it was legal? How many times have you read about tax rates, ACTUAL tax rates, the amount people actually paid and found out the loopholes and deductibles that are allowed for bullshit? How many times have you uttered the phrase, "I can't believe that's legal?"

If they can keep you trying to regulate if there is a book that mentions gay penguins in your child's library they can keep you from noticing they are making huge profits on necessary healthcare and medications that should have long passed out of patent protection. 

We worry about regulations on things that just don't matter. 

Ask yourself basic questions as you try to monitor someone else's life. 

Does this hurt me?

Does this hurt anybody else?

Is this really my business? (if the answer to the first two questions is no then this one is also no)

Am I being a dick about this? (if all of the above are no and you are still insisting that you should have some sort of control, then yes, yes you are)

Let people live their lives. If it's not hurting you, if it's not hurting someone else, it's not your business and you need to move on. 

Self regulate. Leave everyone else alone. 

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Rant Against the Machine...

Listening to Rage Against the Machine in the car this morning and Brent said, "It's gets harder to Rage when you are older. It's exhausting." I said,"I still rage." He said, "But do you? I mean like when you were younger? I mean you blog against the machine, sure." I told him "I generally call it ranting now. I Rant Against the Machine." He agreed that was it. Rant Against the Machine.

It's the same as raging, just with bad knees. And access to the machine. 

I think that a lot of times what needs to happen if you are a former rager, and are still ranting, you need to use your access to the machine to rage and rant from the inside. To disrupt the status. My way is to speak my mind and hope that the seeds of it take root. 

I hope that I move people off of their comfortable positions and make them wonder why they are comfortable. Who is suffering for their comfort. Is there something else they could be doing?

Could they be speaking out? Could they be stepping up and saying what needs to be said?

I look like the standard middle aged, middle class, soccer mom (or grandma). I look non threatening. I look like your best friend from third grade (if you are my age) or your best friend from third grade's mother. And because of that people aren't threatened. They let their guard down. They lean in to listen when I talk. Because clearly nothing that I say is going to be threatening to them.

And I keep using the word threatening because that's the reaction you get when you are trying to foment change. People are threatened. When you live your life comfortably, when you understand all the rules and the way the system works and someone comes in and says, yeah but no...you get uncomfortable. You feel like someone is trying to take something from you. You feel threatened.

And people who want the status quo to stay the same, or to go back in time to when it was even more geared toward people like them being super comfortable, those people are going to work really hard to make it seem like a real threat. They say things like gun control means gun confiscation and then the government can do whatever they want to you! They control you with fear of things that would be good for you, like vaccines. Because if they can get you scared of everything then you are easier to control and focus.

The machine is working overtime right now to instill fear. It's targeting everyone who isn't them. People of color. People in the LBTQIA+ community, with special focus on trans people and extra special focus on trans women. If they can point at someone who is different and get focus on them then it's easier to keep everyone else in line. 

For a few reasons. But mainly because part of you knows that once they "take care" of them they are going to need a new target. And how far off the main are you? Are you the next edge? Are you the next focus? How comfortable are you really? And if you are a woman, conservative or no, you should be worried. Because you're next. Not even next, they are coming for you right now, just the first rumblings don't seem like they are specifically just because you are woman and clearly inferior. They are couching it in reproductive rights, but it's all based on the patriarchy wanting to keep their place and control yours.

Speak out. 

My name is Denise, I use she/her pronouns. I believe in body autonomy and privacy in health care. I think the real threat to society right now is the growing fascination with fascism and authoritarianism wrapped in Christian Nationalism. I believe the government should work for the people not rule the people. I think we all need to get back to remembering what enough is and stop hero worshipping those that are hoarding more and more. And I will continue to rant against the machine for as long as I can. 

Rant on.