Clean the Sink

Last month I spent a few days with my daughter (see Start Stepping) and grandkids who live a plane-ride away. Three small kids and her place was spotless. Everything was organized. I've been trying to get organized for well longer than I want to admit. She introduced me to a website called flylady.com. Check it out. I've read more magazine article and self-help books in the last few years than I can count and not one of them gave me any usable advice or motivated me to get started. Since that visit, I've cleaned my office at work. There are now 6 boxes under the desk and four drawers that need sorting yet. I plan to do one per week.
The most important thing I've learned from my daughter and from flylady is to clean my sink and put out the hotspots. At first I thought I was going to go nuts trying this program. It seems soooooo slow, "Day one: clean your sink."
Please--really! So everynight last thing before I go to bed, I clean my sink--actually I clean all of them. A funny thing happens. Flylady says if the sink is full of dishes, take them out and clean your sink. The idea is when I wake up in the morning and walk into the kitchen, I will feel good about looking at a clean sink. Well, I can't just take everything out of the sink. That seems kind of silly, so I put all of the dishes in the dishwasher before I clean the sink. In the morning I have a clean countertop and I have a shiny sink.
One of the other silly things she suggests is making my bed. I haven't made my bed since I lived at home and my parents made me do it. Really what's the point. I'm just going to crawl back into it at the end of the day. Yep I've been saying this since I was probably six. The big deal is when I come home to my shiny sink and my tidy bed, I don't feel overwhelmed. The other thing is hot spots. You know those places where folks like me pile the mail, my keys, my bag, everything I just dragged from my car to the house--my diningroom table. Well actually it's my whole hose, but flylady says to put out one fire at a time. When I cleaned off the diningroom table and made a new rule that NOTHING is allowed to spend the night on the diningroom table another funny thing happened. The nearby furniture which was the only place left to put the laundry to fold later and the newspaper to read later and well you know, suddenly doesn't have anything on it either, except the dog, who after nine years will not quit sleeping on the chair. She a very small dog and despite that I have kept the chair and the sofa clean for three weeks, she still sleeps on top of the back of the chair. Now I can fold the laundry quickly on top of the diningroom table and put it all away before I go to bed. So I have three hotspots undercontrol and these three are the places where I need the most space: my office, the dining room table, and gotta have someplace to sit down, so the sofa.
My son came home for winter break and was quickly introduced to flylady and my mission. If he stays up later than me, he has to clean the sink. And when he walks in the door--nothing--is allowed on the diningroom table. I asked him to take a quick look at the website so that he would know what my goals were and not undo everything. Suddenly I can almost see the floor in his room. It's catching both ways. Get overwhelmed with clutter and your kids learn to do the same thing. Fortunately my daughter is motivating an end to the clutter madness. Be sure to find her blog in my favorites and subscribe so you can share in her next life changing adventure. 100 hundred pounds in one year. It took me a year to lose 25 pounds, but I have no doubt she will do it. Meanwhile, I gotta go clean my sink.

Getting restarted

Today was terrific: a beautiful fall ride with friends. We rode to breakfast and then headed out to the trails with our bikes. We only rode about ten miles today but it’s an important ten miles. About a month ago I caught a virus, which flared up the fibromyalgia and turned into a sinus infection. I have been totally wiped out until today. For me, it works like this, as long as I am actively riding my bike, I have very little pain and no fibromyalgia symptoms. But if I get busy or as in this case, get sick, and I don’t continue to ride, then the pain comes back. When the pain comes back, the last thing my body want to do is get on a bicycle. But in my head, I know that I might be sore if I over do it, but in a few days I’ll be back in my routine and feeling great.
So this morning, I woke up with good energy and decided I was the day to get started again. Maybe because we only rode 10 miles rather than our usual 20-60 mile Sunday ride, but I’m not sore and I feel great.
My riding group consists of mostly photographers, and we shot some great images along the way today. The leaves are at that stage where every color from green to yellow to gold to red to brown is out there on the tail at the same time. There are still butterflies and the ducks and geese never leave. Almost wish I'd stayed out longer, but I don't want to overdo it and I have a photography opening the first Friday in November and want enough time to work on framing without feeling pressure and frustration, that said, it's time to get back to those frames.

A Tail of Two Roads

My daughter, writes of the battle for her health at her blog, which you will find linked here. Please read her story. I half-heartedly started this blog 3 years ago, but listening to the trials and triumphs of her battle and seeing how much these stories encourage others, I decide to return to this blog and start over. You will see that we are as different as we are similar. I’m a vegetarian, earth hugging, buddhist and her lifestyle involves meat and christianity. But we were both active kids, love the outdoors, and most of all find the determination to succeed through the support of our friends, our faith, and our own self determination.
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I’d always biked as a kid and as an adult. While most moms put their babies in the car for a short ride to put them to sleep on a restless night, I put mine in a baby carrier on the back of my yellow Schwinn Continental that I bought with babysitting money back when I was 14. The bike is a tank, but it took me to every corner of Omaha. When I added the baby carrier, I used it to haul groceries. When I first started having chronic pain and fatigue, I began to feel less sure of myself on my bike. It’s a racing style, and I couldn’t bend my head without pain or turn my head to see the traffic behind me. I had fibromyalgia and not much hope for relief other than pills and less hope for continuing my favorite past-time of long bike rides.
I also liked backpacking and while carrying a backpack was out of the question, I could take long day hikes and daily power walks. I seemed to be doing better, until one day just a few yards short of the trailhead, I felt as though my hip couldn’t hold me up. A few weeks later, I found out that I had osteoarthritis and that my hip was worn down, probably needing a replacement in a few years. Through clinical pain management, injections, prescriptions, PT, pool therapy, and chiropractic care, I managed another year. Suddenly things were rapidly getting worse. I was using a cane, my posture was putting stress on my knees, I wore a knee braces, and I stopped sleeping. I began seeing an arthritis doctor who sent me to two different surgeons in Omaha who said I was too young for a hip replacement. I tried everything to get comfortable at night and function at work.
One night, I went to sleep thinking this just had to end. I woke up shimmied up to the head of the bed, literally scooting away from my pain. I could only think of stories of wild animals chewing off their own legs to escape a trap. I closed my eyes thinking, “somebody help me.” I dreamed I was visiting a healer I knew. I was in his kitchen and the family was busy getting ready to go to work and school. He told me I need marshmallow and I would find it in my kitchen. Then he said next time I stopped by he wanted to check the tires on my car. I woke up thinking I don’t have marshmallow and why am I dreaming about my car. Still desperately in pain, I searched through herbs in the kitchen. Finally, I opened the cupboard where I kept several teas and found it. It was an ingredient in a tea for sore throats and I knew nothing about it. I made a compress and drank a cup of tea for good measure and fell asleep. I woke up suddenly remembering the doctor I had seen two years earlier who first said I would someday need a replacement. I decided it was someday. I was scheduled for surgery within a few weeks, and just for good measure decided to have my car looked at. The brakes were shot and so were the tires.
By the time I went to surgery, I was in a walker and now had spondylolysis, another type of arthritis that was mostly affecting my fingers and toes. I also had used up my PT benefits for the year. After surgery, the staff taught me my PT routine and sent me home with some printouts. My friends helped me get in and out of bed and the shower and helped with my PT until I was able to walk up and down the stairs and up the street to my mailbox and back. As winter was ending, they convinced me that I could cycle again. I climbed on one friend’s bike while another held the bike, the way my parents did when I was first learning to bike. I was terrified and realized I would have to overcome this fear. Another of our friends had had a stroke six months prior to my surgery. Together we went bike shopping to find bikes that we could get on and off from with our disabilities.
We both bought Trek step through bikes, added big cushy seats, mirrors and a basket. I could sit up avoiding neck pain, and after a few short rides, I started gaining strength and distance. I hung on every word of Lance Armstrong’s recovery. The following summer 2007, I prepared for my first bike tour 350 miles in 5 days. My Trek Navigator is not a road bike. It’s a tooling around town bike. But despite everyones’ doubts, I made it through the tour, very late at the end of each day, but I made it each and every day to the end of that first tour.

Sixty Miles Later: part one

A few weeks ago, a writer for our local paper rode all 91 miles of official bike trails in our city in two days. My plan for this weekend was the same but in three days rather than two, since after all I am a month shy of my one year anniversary since my hip replacement. Together with different combinations each day of my cycling friends, we covered 2/3 of the trails, and I added 60 miles to my bike, and nearly 8 hours of trail time not counting rests and eating.

A short history to start:
Four of us have been riding together since I bought my Trek Navigator 100. It is undeniably a grandma bicycle, but then after all I am a grandmother. If I thought I could do it, I’d put a wicker basket on the front of my bike and ride with my shi tzu in the basket and look like Dorothy of Oz 30 years later.
We have been the core group of what I have come to call the Breakfast club. Every Sunday morning those who can, select a restaurant and have breakfast together. On Fridays the group shifts members a bit and makes breakfast together. I’ve been part of the Sunday group for nearly two years. Last October, after reaching the point of needing a walker and having had to give up my love of hiking, I had my hip replaced. This occurred after two specialists told me I was too young (48) to have my hip replaced, despite the fact that I could no longer walk. Doctor number three, told me he didn’t know there was an age requirement and the rest is history which those of you who have been reading since the start are all too aware of.
In the spring, I decided that I was ready to start hiking again and suggested that the Breakfast Club add hiking to our repertoire. It only took a few hikes before I realized that even hiking was too much impact and thus too painful. All of the other breakfast members rode bikes. Some of them like myself, also drive, but most do not own cars nor want to own cars. I was convinced that I could not ever ride a bike again, but decided on a whim to try one of theirs. It was terribly frightening, but do-able. With two of our breakfast friends, we went shopping until we finally found the perfect bike. Since then Sunday has become our breakfast and bicycling day, and we have ridden several miles of trails and roads. Last month a reporter road all of the cities trails in two days. So I suggested that we could do it in three and thus labor day weekend was spent mostly on the trails.
Day One:
Saturday of labor day weekend began the great adventure to ride all of the city’s trails in three days. After some discussion with the group of guys I ride with. We decided at the least each day of the three-day weekend we would find and ride one trail we had not explored before. Saturday we started out with myself and two other folks and breakfast downtown at Kuhl's restaurant. Kuhl’s is an old fashioned, family owned diner that does a hell of a business. Packed in a sea of red hats, t-shirts, shoes, pants, probably even socks and panties, Husker fans pumped up for the first game of the year hooped and hollered over their pancakes and eggs, while our table, our totally not red table talked about bikes and exchanged conversations with the waitresses about not football.
Following breakfast, we quickly rode away from the thickening Go Big Red traffic converging on the city. One of our members in his sixties, had a stroke about 2 years ago. He started with us, but decided a few miles out that his knees were killing him, so two of us continued the ride. Mike and I started out on the Rock Island Trail which connects to the SouthPointe Trail. The Rock Island trail is scenic but nothing compared to what was to come. The SouthPointe Trail is a fairly boring trail that runs along Pine Lake Road and to the Mall, very suburban—lots of cars. However, both trails are well kept, concrete, marked divided lane except for a block or two of unmarked lanes on south 14th street that almost lead us to believe we had lost our trail, but we picked it up again on Pine Lake.
The SouthPointe Trail T’s into the Tierra Williamsburg Trail, the find of the weekend. We headed south, despite knowing that it would soon dead-end. It took us past a pond, under a bridge and through huge willows and cottonwoods lining the backside of large homes. The scenery had us both in awe and then it suddenly ended. We turned around and took the route north past the spectacular view only to find that on the other side it was even more fantastic. More lakes, fountains, parks, kids playing, riding bikes, fishing. It was Norman Mailer set in the suburbs without quite the nauseam. Sorry not a fan.
The height of the day was as we passed the largest of the lakes, a huge wingspan overhead caught our eyes. My brain scrambled to identify it, hawk—not small enough, Eagle—still not small enough, sounds of ohhs and ahhs drifted over the lake, until I heard “crane.” The Sandhill crane has a wingspan of about 7 feet, yet only weighs about 7 pounds. By the time my brain registered and I grabbed my camera, it had swooped a fish out of the water and had landed on the other side of the lake to dissect its lunch. Unfortunately, my camera is not capable of that distance and my attempts to get a photo were futile.
The Sandhill cranes migrate through Nebraska in spring and fall. Their migration pattern forms an hour glass, wide up into Canada and down into the gulf coast. The thinnest and most concentrated part of the migration happens along the Platte River in South-Central Nebraska where hundred of thousands of cranes share the river with thousands of ducks and geese. The sound and view bring tourists from everywhere. One of my English professors once described a tour she took where she suddenly became overwhelmed as to which part of the moment was the most exciting: the thousands and thousands of birds or the fact that Burt Reynolds rode on her tour bus and at the moment she stood viewing the birds, he stood next to her.
Mike and I waited several lovely minutes waiting for the crane to take off again so that I could snap my picture, but lunch apparently took a very long undertaking, and so we rode on while still heady in the moment. From Tierra Williamsburg we found our way to the western end of the Hwy 2 trail, one of the oldest trails in Lincoln, now renamed the Helen Boosalis Trail in honor of one of our former mayors, a democrat AND the first woman mayor of Lincoln, who later ran against Kay Orr the first republican governor in the US and the first only woman governor to date in Nebraska. This also marked the first gubernatorial election in the US in which both the demoncratic and republican parties were represented by women. Enough of politics.
The intersection where we picked up the Boosalis trail marks one of the busiest intersection in Lincoln, but one might assume safety in its clearly marked bike crossing with a clearly marked lane to cross the very busy Pioneer’s Blvd, but despite having the crossing light to go north, a very large truck in the eastbound right turn lane buzzed through totally oblivious to our existance or our placement near his truck. Fortunately, we weren’t in our big ole pickup listening to the Huskers make a touchdown, so paying attention saved our lives. Please--don't Husker and drive--go home--be safe.
The Boosalis trail is old, blacktop, narrow, and littered with lots of bike thorns—a very lovely looking viney plant that creeps out of concrete and blacktop and hides very large thorns that look similar to sandburrs only larger, stronger, pointier, and most importantly capable of puncturing innertubes. There ended our trail and we made our way back to our starting spot and my car. Total miles 19.2 including starting point, breakfast, and ending point, total drive time 2.10 not including breakfast, rests, and a Sandhill crane. The weekend doesn’t get any more breathe-taking than this ride, but do stay tuned for the heart pounding end of the three day tour.
Note: Fast forward to the end of the cranecam link above to see and hear the cranes in flight