Stumbling Through Adulthood

1. The 100 Day Project. Today I successfully (I think) added 6 stiches to my hat and transferred from one set of round needles to a bigger once. I'm annoyed that my knitting is a bit tighter than I'd like. Also, why didn't I pick thicker yarn? 🤪

Anyhow: Photos on Flickr.

I am going to mebbe post 'em on Instagram.

2. This week is the anniversary of my aunt's death. I miss her dreadfully. I'm glad she got out before she lost too many people, too many memories, too much of herself, and I remember how sad I was every time I saw my super intelligent, competent, and independent aunt as vulnerable and scared and I know she made the right choices... but god I miss her.

3. We went hiking on Sunday, on Whidbey Island. Started at West Beach, walked to the bridge, then under it, and around the point on the perimeter. After several large ups and downs, we got to Goose Rock, which is the highest point on Whidbey Island, LOL. Got to see Mt Baker, Glacier Peak (one of my faves), and a shadow in the haze that was Mt Rainier. Beautiful views from the top and it was a sunny PNW winter day. Strava did me a dirty and did not record the hike at all, grr. Anyhow, it was about 6 miles and the summit is at about 500ft, but cumulatively, it was a bit more than that. Loads of fun. Dh got a photo of me taking a photo, those always amuse me. Saw a pileated woodpecker and a bald eagle, some seals, and heard a ruby crowned kinglet, though we did not see it.

Another Flickr link: Goose Rock hike at Deception Pass.

4. Iran thing is making me sick. Don't want to write about it, it's just so upsetting. This is not going to end well, for one, and for two, we just got out of fucking Afghanistan, damn it. Oh, and the media are a bunch of sycophantic assholes. Also in current events, I was hoping Jasmine Crockett would win in TX. I don't think either of them could win the general, but I thought she had a better chance.

5. $40 for Perry to fill up the Prius.

6. I'm having a hard time with everything these days.

I haven't been to Point Defiance Park in Tacoma many times, but we've been every few years or so, at various times of year. This time was different.

It was Sunday. We didn't want to get up crazy early to get out on a hike so we decided the day before we'd head to Point Defiance. The weather was predicted to be cold and sunny.

It was absolutely fantastic.

The plan was just walking around the park and on the beach there. Which we did. We saw a few harbor seals near the main beach.

As we walked down the beach to the point encountered a gull who was eating a sea star.




We continued down along the beach since it looked like there were some rocks and probably tide pools at the end of the point, and the tide was out.

But then, as we got closer... well, the rocks weren't quite rocks and resolved into a big bunch of harbor seals. So cool. So many of them. I have video, but haven't yet looked to see which was the best clip. Next photo has them in a bit closer.... and even closer, very zoomed in. No, I did not get too close. They are big. Anyhow, so cool!





As I said. I've been to this park before. I'd always heard you could see seals there, but never actually did, beyond one or two in the water. I am still not sure if we lucked out Sunday or were just unlucky to took ill-timed trips before.

We rounded the tip of the point and there was a whole long beach of empty. Cliff on one side, no trails up. We saw one guy, but aside from that, we had the whole beach, about a mile of it? to ourselves. We saw some cool anemones closed because at low tide, they literally covered the rock which was pretty big, and a few sea stars.






So. Long beach. No way out. We could backtrack but since we had plenty of time before the tide became a problem we walked down to the houses at other side of the point. They are 100% sketch. Build on piers with large posts, we walked under the houses amid these old posts occasionally seeing barnacle covered water heaters or the like. WTF. There were boats in "dry dock" waaaaaay above beach level, maybe high tide level???, it was hard to tell how high the water would come. I should check the tide data. We saw the Tacoma Narrows Bridge from that side.




This is what the houses looked liked from afar, in a photo I stole online, to give an idea.




Anyhow, we used a legit but maybe private path to get to the top of the cliff and yeah, oops, it was private but tbf there was no signage to that effect on the beach. We then had to walk around the neighborhood and the park to get back to the car. I didn't start Strava when we left the car, I forgot but here's the path we took. It ended up being over 5 miles recorded, a lot of it on sandy and or small rock beaches so I could feel it in my hips the next day!




All in all, a good day!

Really, it wasn't all that rainy, though tomorrow might be and we're hiking, we hope.

1. Went to a No Kings protest in DT Seattle. It was... ok. I dunno, maybe it's how defeated I feel about the state of this country right now, but it just felt depressing rather than energizing. Also, it sucks that Seattle doesn't really have a central gathering place. The start is at the Space Needle, and it's... a fractured area, and we finished at a random intersection down by Pike Place. Not great plazas filled with people like NYC, or Chicago, or Denever.

2. Dh and I signed up to walk the Seattle Half Marathon again, and Perry to run the full! We'll see. We haven't been doing the systemic training we did last year, but I think we'll be ok.

3. I need to get back on track with stress eating. Zeppy is great, but right now, I'm stressed, a bit depressed, and with rowing, I think, actually hungrier than I've been in a while and I'm not making great food choices. Need to correct for this because I don't like how I feel right now.

Oh. And Perry came in 5th at Head of the Charles today. He isn't too happy -he was 4th last year- but a competitor from the men's US National team showed up, ooops. He did well, overall, I think.

1. Lost my job on Monday. I'm so pissed off. I knew this was going to happen, as more and more of my projects were given to St Elena to do, even as she never did anything with them beyond have me buy all the necessary reagents, since her health doesn't ever permit her to do even the 10 hours per week she was supposed to be in the lab. I think she wants to work half time, she only had quarter time, and her half is going to be less than my 2/3 and her quarter. The post doc, who is on a visa, is absolutely panicking. Considering that we've been picking up Elena's work for the past several months he doesn't think she is capable of doing mine and her own, and that puts his research in major jeopardy. Anyhow. The situation in the lab has been bad for a while; I could tell he was gearing up to fire me -sorry lay me off- and I've spent too much time crying in the bathroom after egregious slights from him. I doubt I'll ever get another science job, not at my age, not in this environment, so I'll probably look to pick up anything, Amazon or whatever, just to finish up my social security quarters. I never noticed that my three years working in grad school fell under some public sector thing and I wasn't paying in. I counted my quarters in the pre-easy-to-access-the-data-online days and there they were. Only they weren't. My mistake in not checking again. Anyhow. I'll be fine, but I'm pretty devastated at all this. I'm also majorly sad at losing my Husky Pass for transit, since we don't interoperate and now most trips would cost me at least $12. Right after we get a local bus, WAH. Sigh. Transit should be free, damnit.

2. Did The Trail of 10 Waterfalls in Oregon yesterday with dh, my sister and BIL. We "camped" in a cabin at the state park. LOL, my sister found it primitive, compared to her luxe RV, and dh and I were constantly "OMG, this is majorly cushy!" Hike was officially 7.8 miles and 800 ft elevation. We took all the side trails and Strava had us at about 10 miles and 1450 elevation, which felt more like it, tbh. It was really nice.

3. I'm absolutely terrified and angry and devastated at how quickly this country has deteriorated. I'm not sure we'll ever be back to even our sorry pre-Trump version of democracy. If there are even elections in 2026 and 2028, I no longer expect them to be fair. In addition, attempting to reverse course would require any Democrat that might be elected be willing to play Trump's playbook, using executive orders, ignoring the law (and SCOTUS will not support a Dem president doing the things they let Trump do), and I'm not 100% sure any Dem has it in them to do that, at least from the way it looks now. It also seem like they are on track to replace much of the top military with MAGAt loyalists (especially after the stony reaction to Trump and Pete's speeches the other day) and that would further destabilize the country, as those loyalists will no doubt not refuse orders to shoot at American citizens, something Bondi is implying they are planning on doing. Oh wait. Only to 'antifa'. The problem is.... as far as I can tell, 'antifa' is all of us on the other side.

We went on a nice hike last weekend, I'll have to write it up tomorrow.

Next week we are camping overnight, then going on a long hike in a state park in Oregon. We'll be meeting up with my sis and BIL.

And then a week after that, we'll be doing an overnight in the tent in the Methow Valley and trying to get to a nearby trailhead early enough to find parking for another hike.

It's been a rough few month. My job sitch has gone to hell, it's really bad and I cry at work pretty much every day. I'm bored and frustrated. And there are no jobs. Getting out hiking is saving what little sanity I appear to have left.

The plan was to hike to Heliotrope Ridge to get a view of the Coleman Glacier on Mt Baker, something we'd done with the kids when they were little.

This time... things did not quite go as planned, but turned out perfect anyhow.

At this point, as in the past years, Forest Service campgrounds are booked pretty much the second they open up for bookings. There might be a stray Tuesday here and there, but counting on finding one of those days when we can actually get out isn't really possible. So we tried something else: booked a "primitive tent site" at an RV park near the FS road we wanted to take. It was pretty expensive ($45/night) and pretty awful, but the restrooms -two for the whole RV park and 20 some campsites- were clean and it was available. So yay for that.

Got to the trailhead, took some photos of two guys and their teenaged sons who were just coming down from a summit climb on Baker. Pretty cool.

After a bridge over a crossing that features prominently in our family hiking lore we got to the wilderness boundary. Still looking pretty chipper here!



The trail was about as I remembered. Pretty steady up (expected is about 1500 elevation in 2.5 miles by current WTA reckoning) but nothing drastic. There are three major stream crossings. I knew they would be difficult, it's hot season so a lot of glacier melt, so I packed both my sandals and my hiking poles. Didn't bother with the sandals on the first two crossings: they were relatively uncomplicated as these things go, though tbh the waterfall right after one of them did give me pause when I got a better view of it on the way back, LOL.

We reached the point in the hike where, the first time we did it, Anne-Chloe, for some odd reason, walked straight off the trail. Dh caught her by the backpack or it would have been a nasty slide down. That's me at about that location.



We reach the West Fork of Heliotrope Creek, the one we were the most concerned about. With good reason: it was not, imo, passable without significant risk. Even with poles and water shoes, the depth and speed of the water was not safe, especially not for short me. A quick check on others' trip reports said water to mid-thigh in the deeper channels and there were taller than me. Sigh.

Click on this one for video of the stream from Flickr!



What that sucks. Because we were about 1/4 mile from the end of hike and the stupendous view of the Coleman Glacier. Grr.

Consolation wildflowers.




We decided on a quick backtrack to the climber's trail up what is known as the Hogsback Route, the plan being to get up high enough to have some nice views of Baker (which I really wish they'd name back to Kulshan), the Coleman Glacier, and the moraine.

That trail was not kidding, LOL. It has to gain like 1 mile over 5 to the summit so... it's pretty steep. We climbed about 1000 ft in short order and got some really great views. And as we got higher onto the climber's route and above the surrounding terrain, we got cell service back. With a "Welcome to Canada!" message, LOL.

Coleman Glacier



Click on this one for a video view of the area!


Dh and me with Mt Baker/Kulshan and the moraine


The general view. It was absolutely amazing.



The photo that thankfully does not exist is the one dh could have taken as I turned around and realized that that up, which was steep, but not otherwise challenging, was now a freaking down and I stood there contemplating my life choices and wondering why I always always forget that the way up is easy. I did get down without too many issues. Dh kindly took the pack for the down.

Oh yeah, saw two pairs of fighter jets above us a few minutes apart. I know what they are and what they represent, but I still think they're incredible to watch.

Anyhow, full Flickr set here.

It was a fantastic hike, overall. We'll try to get back out in September or the likes, in hopes of getting to the prize overlook! Full disclosure: I thought dh had the sunscreen in his pocket, but he did not take it, so we didn't have any. He was fine, I burned, and my arms are still sensitive today. I also got bit by two horse flies and numerous mosquitoes! Still 100% worth it. Though... I will admit, I sometimes miss the drama and fun of hiking with my kids!

Exhausting, but fun. It was a whirlwind of a week before leaving: I got home from Bend Sunday evening, and we left again Thursday AM. Dh was at trains Fri-Sat-Sun so pretty much got nothing done, Perry will do things if asked but isn't great -to say the least- at being proactive so I came home to a house that was in the same shape as when I left: chaotic. At least, unlike the lab, they didn't leave a mess for me to clean up. Anyhow.

We managed to get out relatively early Thursday morning and pretty much drove all day, from our place all the way to Redding. This is where, in, what? 2017? we picked up Twisp and Auri.

Nothing much of note that day. I did manage, via quick stops and lunch to get my steppies in for the day. We had dinner -mediocre pizza, and proof that even wood-fired pizza can be crappy- outside, which completely blew our conditioned-to-chilly-PNW-springs minds. And stayed at a La Quinta Inn which was borderline disgusting. I mean... The linens were clean, but it felt overall... just grody. Not just old, but old and not clean enough. We kept everything on hard surfaces.

The next day. Oh man, that was fantastic. Dh's stupid app (yes, Google maps) sent him to the wrong place so we ended up at the wrong entrance to Lassen National Park. So the snowshoe hike -we think?- we had hoped to do was out and we just checked out the maps to see what else we could do. Up we headed to a place called Chaos Crags Lake. It wasn't a lake, but a tarn, and it was incredible. We were in a small bowl at the bottom of said towering crags with an enormous scree slope (or talus slope?) above us. Periodically we'd hear rocks breaking off and glance up, but nothing made it down even remotely close. When we got to the tarn, there were frogs croaking but they quieted when they heard us. We stayed very still for a long while and they started up again, but then it was back to quiet when someone moved. The hike wasn't hard at all (NPS rated moderate) but it was a gorgeous reward for such small effort, even though there were patches of the s-word that we had to go over. Well worth it. I don't know how long it actually ended up being because I forgot to turn off stupid Strava and when I finally did remember, it had me doing a 689 mile hike at some ridic average speed, sigh. Deleted that real quick.

After that we continued our way down to Lake Natoma, east of Sacramento. Last time we went we were able to get out to Lake Tahoe, so we didn't even consider that this time. We arrived at our hotel, went out to dinner, and went to bed.

We were at the venue early and got to see Linnea, all bouncy and happy, before they launched. Yeah, she wasn't in the V4 she helped get there, but as always, she's positive and gives her all.

And they kicked ass. They were rowing in the open event, so no points, but they crushed the competition. As in, open water crushed. They were pretty fast, and the boat looked really good.

The V4 came in third, in a photo finish with SPU. With Linnea and Lex in the boat, they beat SPU last two times, but hey, I'm not the coach. Linnea is especially bitter about being out of the V4 boat because she was not given the option to seat race for her spot like the other girls were. Lex lost their seat race. Tbh, Perry said it was probably because with her insane weight to power ratio, Linnea would win the seat race and the coach appears to want a taller/heavier girl in that seat. So whatever. She's not going to Nationals either, and she's pretty devastated.

The V4 performance cost them the championship (which they won last year), despite the 8 kicking ass, as per usual so there were some pretty disappointed kids.

GNACs is three races. We drove from Washington to California, essentially, to watch our kid row for 2 minutes, which is about all you can really see of the 8 or so minute race. It was so totally worth it.

After that, dh and I headed north, driving from Sacramento up to Roseberg. We stopped for an early dinner at our fave pizza spot in Medford and made good time.

The next day, Sunday, we continued north. In Vancouver, we turned east for a bit with the plan to get climb Beacon Rock. Which we did. It's a fantastic trail: 53 switchbacks and 600 ft of elevation gain on a very short trail, but it never feels like like you're doing a lot of work. I didn't realize how much we'd climbed until I had to UGH head back down. I'd love to live in an Escher world where trails only go up.

And then it was onto home!

It was a good weekend.

I'll post links to the Flickr sets when I get them uploaded.

Well, March is over and I was up about 3 pounds for the month, grr.

It's been a bit of a rough month, starting with my aunt's death, followed by celebrating a few birthdays and other good things, and then the job thing, all on a background of the stress engendered by that lying dog shit in the White House and his cadre of craven crooks. So yeah. Some stress eating, some celebration eating, some sadness eating. Zeppy helps limit but unlike for some people, it doesn't make me ill if I eat a bit much.

So. Up.

I am upping my dose to the max and so the end of weight loss is near, at least until they come out with some better meds, LOL.

That said...

We went on a hike yesterday, just a short ramble to Twin Falls. We did the same hike two years and a month ago, at the start of my weight loss. And took a selfie at the same spot. Note that one camera is the selfie camera, the other is the 0.5 lens, so there is some distortion on that, but yeah, even I can truly see how much weight I've lost.





The hike was much easier. I didn't need hiking poles. Nobody encouraged me or really paid any attention to me. The paradox of being fat: in most of society, you are invisible, aside from disgusted or contemptuous looks, but in exercise or outdoors situations, you are highly visible, your existence in their space open to comment and appraisal.

We went a bit further up on the trail to see if we could reach the Cascades to Palouse trail that we used a few times while training for our half marathon, but the trail past the falls that heads to it was, tbh, boring so we bailed after a bit. Walked down to the lower fall this time, something we didn't attempt last time, both because of me but also dh. He's in much better shape now too.

A few other photos from the hike.

Yeah, not!

But we're both fine, so eh.

We kinda put the Pilot over a berm of snow, down a ditch, and into a tree.

Not. Good. At. All.

But the other side of the road had a berm, a 15 or so foot drop-off, as many trees, and Icicle Creek, so at least we went off the road on the better side?

My poor WHALE.





Here's how it all went down, as far as we remember....

We headed out over Stevens Pass to Leavenworth to go on a snow hike. Headed down FS 7600 ie Icicle Creek Road, the road that takes you to many many wonderful trailheads. The idea was to go and do a snow hike.

The road was pretty good, mostly good snow on top of ice. There were the 3-4 in deep tire ruts in the ice. The Pilot handles like a pussy cat on snow, and dh truly is a good driver. And yet. Right before -I mean, like, 50 ft- from the parking area, there was a patch of sun that may have changed the road conditions, on a downward turn. Dh says -and this jibes with my recollection- that it felt like something grabbed the wheel and the back of the car spun out. I saw him try to correct, but no dice. We weren't going fast as all when we went through the snow berm, down the ditch -about 4 ft, maybe?- and hit a tree on the left side of the car. Airbags did not go off.

Quick assessment: we were both ok. The car? Totaled, I mean, the front left is pretty demolished, driver door hard to open, and the wheel was turned. Note that I did not check what the wheel on the other side of the car and it was deep in snow. Figured the front end was 100% toast and this would not be drivable.

My poor spouse was so upset. I mean, he was driving, but going on the hike was my idea and he wasn't going fast or driving recklessly, some conditions changed, and he didn't have time to react. But he apologized to the poor car, and I love him so much and I hate that he feels awful about this. I mean, I do too... We've had this car since about a month before Linnea was born, and we've put over 400k miles on it, and probably would never have given it up. But anyhow.

A guy showed up before we were even out of the car, to make sure we were ok. We were, and he said he'd contact towing when he got back to cell service.

Oh yeah, did I mention that? No cell service, of course. 🙄

We walked bits of the way down the trail, back and forth. It's not like there was much else we could do. Eventually, a Chelan County deputy sheriff drove up, again made sure we were ok, and used his radio to call a towing company.

We walked more. Because what else was there to do? It was too cold to stand around, and I was not about to get back into a car that still might slide further (dh says it wouldn't, but I do not trust anything to do with snow.)

Back and forth.

Dh got to talking with a guy who lived nearby and was out for a walk. I popped in to listen as I continued to walk to stay warm. I was fine, tbc, as long as I was walking, and I could have gotten my shell pants and jacket if I'd really been cold, but eh, walking felt good and served to dispel some of the nervous energy.

As I was coming back, probably 2 or so hours after the evil event, I saw the flashy lights of a tow truck. As I got closer, I could see the place where the car had been, but they got it out very quickly. As I got closer, I saw... backup lights and the car backing up, on its own power.

This was unexpected.

By the time I got to the car, they were evaluating the left front wheel well. The panel was crunched, the hood a bit messed up, but the left headlight was fine, and the wheel was straight to the eye. They shook it (dh and the two tow truck guys), checked for fluids, pulled away the broken bits of plastic, and... agreed that we should try to drive it.

Which we did. About 120 miles home. That was stressful. Nothing bad happened, but ugh, not knowing if something bad would happen.

There is significant damage, but we'll get into a collision place and have it checked out, something that was not on our radar initially, because, eh, it looked bad. It looked less bad once it was back on a level surface. The steering is off, but it will drive straight with no drift.

I really don't want to buy a new car if I don't have to. Not because of the money, but because I detest screens, and the... obtrusiveness of new cars. No, you can't access my contacts. No, I don't want Android Auto. No, please don't answer my phone. No, I don't want to use a tablet glued to my dash to access a screen three taps deep to change the volume on the stereo, I'd like a fucking knob please. And NO, OMG NO, I don't want a hole cut in my roof in the PNW where it fucking rains all the time! Or a glass roof to have the sun beating down on my head (that situation, the sun hitting the top of my head through glass, has triggered a panic attack before. I made very sure that our skylights were oriented in a way where that would not happen.) So yeah. I'd rather repair if we can. If not, ugh, expect whining when I have to buy a new car.

So yeah.

Home now, showered and warmed up. We drove home with the window cracked so dh could hear any sounds the front end was making, and that was cold, but also, I think, it was just my reaction to stress (and walking for a few hours in the snow).

Not the best start to 2025, though it could have been a lot worse.

Hotel tonight, trails and camping tomorrow and Monday. Driving home -or back to work- early Tuesday, whee!

The best kind of days are the ones when I crawl out of a tent straight into my hiking boots!

Weather is iffy, the air quality is crap, but fingers crossed it'll be ok. If it's not, we'll do some short hikes and leave it at that.

Leaving house and cats in Perry's capable hands. I may have to leave my computer password and Wordle account with him too, I'm not sure we'll have sufficient cell service for that!