Daily Bread #126
Although I got in one 5 mile hike this week and one 3 mile neighborhood walk, the air quality from the wildfire smoke has kept me indoors most of the week. With the A/C fan and air purifier both running, I have been able to use the stationary bike instead. With that, and some long walks around the house, and some push-ups and sit-ups, I have been able to keep up some with my exercise. Not as much fun as a 9 mile hike in the Sierras, but not bad, and there is no point damaging my lungs breathing bad air.
I AM in much better shape than I was last fire season though. Now I can actually ride the bike standing up to pedal faster. Not for too long, just for a minute or two, but no way could I have done it at all a year ago!
I still amaze myself most days. Body self image is hard to change. It doesn’t happen quickly. Every time I see my collar bones, I get a little shock. It is a little weird maybe, but I also find myself feeling my body or running my hands over my rib cage or down my legs. If I feel it, maybe I will see it too. My leg muscles are so much stronger, which explains being able to stand while pedaling the bike.
How we see ourselves depends on so much. Other people create mirrors that reflect back how they see us, and we take that in. Fat people are treated differently, and not as well, something that was obvious to me before and that I haven’t forgotten. People see and react differently to me now. Sometimes I feel the need to turn around and see who is standing behind me. I am the same person, still a large woman, just with a smaller body, but my spirit has not shrunk along with the rest of me. I still need my space.
It has been another week on neither being up or down on my average weight, although it fluctuates daily of course. I am still tied to the scale numbers though, wondering what it will be each day and worrying some if I am up at all. This too will pass. As I said, body image is hard to change.
L’Chaim! Week 18 of “maintenance”: My average weight this week is the same as last week’s average for a total loss of 181.2
Daily Bread #125
I am so glad I got some good hiking in the last few days during our second Yosemite trip of the summer. The sky here in the Bay Area is filled with smoke and even going outside is dangerous because of the horrible air quality. There was some smoke in the valley, but we went to higher elevations for our hikes and avoided both the smoke and most other people. On one trail, the only other mammal we saw was a bear. After staring at us for a minute or so, the bear went up the hillside away from us. Black bears are fairly timid unless you do something stupid like try and feed them. Some of the people we saw on other trails were much scarier, taking selfies next to sheer drop offs and then wandering around other people without masks. We decided we’d only talk to people that were wearing masks. Most of the others were clearly psychopaths. Much better to step off the trail and face away from them when they approached. Maybe I should write a pandemic wilderness guide?
We also did much better with food this trip. We not only brought breakfast and lunch food from home, but we also brought our camp stove and cooked our dinners on the patio outside the room. Flap steak and zucchini, precooked chicken and bok choy, ham and butternut squash were easy one pot meals and yummier and healthier than the take-out we got last time. I did spurge on a ice cream bar one afternoon though.
It is so important these days to appreciate all the joy you can find. Fires and pandemics, racism, corruption and unmitigated greed abound. I did feel hopeful for a quick minute listening to the Democratic convention, but a mountain lake, miles from the road. is much better medicine for my soul. I will, however, work like the devil to get out the vote (and get that devil out of office). I like Harris and am warming to Biden, but I would even vote for Nixon if he were the only other choice. As bad as he was, he did do some positive things, something I can’t say about the current guy.
L’Chaim! Week 18 of “maintenance”: My average weight this week is the same as last week’s average for a total loss of 181.2
Daily Bread #124
Sometimes a trail turns out to be too hard to travel the way you would like. I experienced that this week and wrote a poem about it:
Perfect Hiker
Sometimes the trail is too steep
Your boots slide
On loose rocks
At every step
Your knees shudder
Barely keeping
You upright
It might be time
To give up
Your perfect techniques
Your way of planting
Your hiking sticks just so
Just sit down and slide
Let gravity do its work
As your butt glides over the rocks
It is a dusty trail
You’ll be covered in grime
Before you are done
But it is the only way
To get down a trail
That is too steep for you
Maybe too steep for anyone
With any sense
The point is always
To make it home
In one piece
Clean doesn’t matter
In the long run.
Perfection is over-rated
I called it the “perfect hiker” partly because I was preaching this Sunday on perfection. I do believe perfection is over-rated and that perfectionism can in fact be hazardous to your well-being. A video of the sermon will be posted here, probably in a few weeks: There is a Crack in Everything
One I did last month got posted today: “It’s Great to be Gay”
I do miss preaching and the deep pastoral relationships a minister can develop with congregants when accompanying them through important life events. I also miss the prophetic social justice work that can be done in religious community. But being retired has its advantages. I don’t miss the stress about budget shortfalls, complicated and sometimes boring administrative issues, endless meetings, and I am glad that the aging buildings are someone else’s problem. I also don’t miss the conflicts that sometimes seemed to come out of nowhere. No matter the issue, a few people always seem to think it is the minister’s fault. Like maybe they created the pandemic just they could work from home via zoom? I have a lot of friends who are still working ministers. This is a very challenging time for most of them. As I said, I am glad I am retired. Be gentle with your pastors, people.
Preaching on zoom stressed me the first time; I really missed the live interaction with a congregation that wasn’t on mute. Today I kept my screen on gallery view so at least I could see some faces while I was talking. They even waved their hands at me once when I asked for a response! I am glad not to preach every Sunday, but it is really fun to do it once in awhile. And zoom worked pretty well for me, and I hope it did for them as well. Fun fact: I wore a nice top and a clerical stole, but I had flip flops on my feet.
It’s another reminder about how adaptable our species can be. We can worship on zoom. We can change a lifetime of less than helpful habits about food and exercise and create new ones that can improve our health –and our ability to work our way down even a horribly difficult trail. It isn’t easy. And, yes, the more planning you do the easier it gets, but slip-ups happened and sometimes you need to just sit down and slide. With any new thing, you need to pay a lot of attention at the beginning. Being compulsive helps. Hover your mouse over the “unmute” mutton. Weigh or measure everything you put in your mouth. I am still a beginner at zoom preaching, but it was much easier the second time around. After two plus years of consciously managing my weight, it feels almost automatic. And I will keep paying attention, but like preaching in person, I’ll plan what I want to do, but also leave some room for the Spirit to do its thing.
L’Chaim! Week 18 of “maintenance”: My average weight this week is the same as last week’s average for a total loss of 181.2
Perfect Hiker
Sometimes the trail is too steep
Your boots slide
On loose rocks
At every step
Your knees shudder
Barely keeping
You upright
It might be time
To give up
Your perfect techniques
Your way of planting
Your hiking sticks just so
Just sit down and slide
Let gravity do its work
As your butt glides over the rocks
It is a dusty trail
You’ll be covered in grime
Before you are done
But it is the only way
To get down a trail
That is too steep for you
Maybe too steep for anyone
With any sense
The point is always
To make it home
In one piece
Clean doesn’t matter
In the long run.
Perfection is over-rated
Daily Bread #123
We are back from the Sierras, but still hiking. The annual parking pass for seniors at the watershed is a deal. We can now hike around a lake under the trees rather than slogging up from the bottom of the mountain in the heat. There are a ton of different trails, so we will have a lot of exploring to do up there over the next year.
It has been 15 weeks since I decided, when I reached the “normal” weight for my height of 150 pounds, that I was done with losing weight. My body has apparently not agreed with that decision as she has lost another 10 pounds during that time all on her own. My healthier eating habits and hiking hobby are influencing her I think, but I haven’t been trying. No worries. I still weigh more than I did in my 20’s, so we will just wait and see what happens in the next few months.
I did write a poem this week. Not sure where it came from. I pretty much just write them down. Maybe I was thinking we could use more healers in this world. It would also help to have someone who could cast out the demons and heal us from racism and white supremacy.
He was a healer they said
A miracle man
It didn’t matter
Who you were
Or what you had
He’d heal your body
And drive the demons
From your soul
Let the children come
Blessed are the poor
Feed the hungry
He had grave doubts
As to the possibility
That the rich
Would ever
Find salvation
That doesn’t mean
They shouldn’t try
Miracles can happen
After all
L’Chaim! Week 15 of “maintenance” which I haven’t actually reached: My average weight this week is down another 1.2 pounds from last week’s average for a total loss of 182.4
Miracle Man
He was a healer they said
A miracle man
It didn’t matter
Who you were
Or what you had
He’d heal your body
And drive the demons
From your soul
Let the children come
Blessed are the poor
Feed the hungry
He had grave doubts
As to the possibility
That the rich
Would ever
Find salvation
That doesn’t mean
They shouldn’t try
Miracles can happen
After all
Daily Bread #122
I am a little late this week with this blog post, but I think I have an excellent excuse. We went to Yosemite for 3 days and got back yesterday evening. Three days of beauty and 3 days of great hikes. Two of the hikes were 9+ miles and over some fairly rugged trails.
The 3rd hike, on the way home, at Hetch Hetchy was less than 4 miles, but it was really hot there and my old knee was complaining about the number of granite stairs we had to navigate. Up is so much easier than down, and some of the granite rocks are just too big to easily get down without crushing the joints. I may have to get the other knee replaced at some point if I am to keep hiking.
Yosemite was great and it was wonderful to get back there after having the trip cancelled twice due to the pandemic. I was shocked my the number of mask-less people on the trails. It was mainly in crowded areas, the serious hikers seemed to have more sense and all but a few backpackers put on some kind of face covering when we passed them on a trail. Some of the tourists actually scared me more than the bear or the mountain lion we saw. Black bears aren’t very dangerous unless you do something really stupid like approach them too closely, get between them and their cubs, or interfere with their food or tempt them with yours. But to a mountain lion, you might look like lunch. This one crossed the trail in front of us and headed up the rocks. It kept going and did not turn back to stalk us. For once I was glad there were a fair number other people nearby. We were right at Mirror Lake and the crossroads with the bike path that goes there. One man who saw it said it was a bobcat, but he was wrong. With a long tail and a solid golden color, it was clearly a cougar although a fairly young one as it was on the small side. Seeing it was more thrilling than frightening.
I didn’t take a scale with me, but we had a cooler and a small fridge in the room so I ate my usual greek yogurt, nuts, prunes, and blueberries for breakfast, packed a sandwich and fruit for lunch on the trail, and ate Kind bars and cheese stick for snacks. I also had a ice cream bar one afternoon. Dinners were pretty terrible as the food options were few and all of it take out. Somehow a $50 take-out dinner from the Ahwahnee didn’t seem worth it, so for dinners I had a roast beef sandwich from the Deli at the Village (not bad), chicken tenders and fries at the Lodge (gross) and a shrimp bowl from a food truck at Curry. (pretty good.) When we got back the the room, I had a brandy and a cookie and maybe some more fruit. The hiking made me hungry. I didn’t weight myself until this morning, but my hiking pants kept falling down on the last day and I had to keep tightening the waist pack. True, I was lugging a lot of water because of the heat, which made the pack heavier than usual, but it told me I wasn’t gaining any weight. Turns out instead that I lost almost 3 pounds last week and reached a new low of 141, a number I haven’t seen since my early 30’s. Maybe I should have had an ice cream every day? So fun to have the ice cream option now and to not be afraid that small food pleasures will lead me into the temptation of regular overindulgence. Stick to the trail, that is the plan. On the Tuolumne Meadows hike, we crossed some long areas of smooth granite. Other hikers and/or the NPS had placed rocks along the trail that we would know where to go and not get lost. Watch for the rocks, go slowly when you aren’t sure. Avoid the predators. (Speaking of predators, it was so nice to be away from the news for 3 full days!)
Last week I posted about my disappointment and disgust with FitBit, both as a product and a company with shoddy customer service. I got an Apple watch instead, and I have to say, it is a whole lot of fun and seems to work MUCH better at tracking my activity. It doesn’t monitor my sleep, which my FitBit did, but it is kind of nice taking it off at night and the sleep reports weren’t that helpful. The Apple device does so many more things that it will take me awhile to figure them all out, if I ever do. I love the display being in color!
L’Chaim! Week 18 of “maintenance”: My average weight this week is the same as last week’s average for a total loss of 181.2
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