Stumbling Through Adulthood

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!

1. I'm devastated at what the media and some leading Dems did to Joe Biden. And disgusted. Some of them were people that I respected. Others were people I sent money to. I will be more than happy to send money to their primary opponents next time they run. I do love that those disgusting people wanted an open primary at the Convention, and Joe Biden, in a Dark Brandon move, denied them that by endorsing her. It was brilliant.

2. I love Kamala Harris. I supported her in 2020 and was looking forward to supporting her in 2028. I've spent this past week, however, in an up-then-down sort of way. There is a lot of excitement about her candidacy, and it's infectious. But then... I honestly don't think she can win. I think that, like Clinton, she'll blow out the popular vote easy but fail in the Electoral College. I hate this. I think in 2028, after four more years of capable and stable leadership and Trump -either dead or completely mush-for-brains- out of the picture, she could win. This year? I don't think so. They're motivated by hate and they have a systemic electoral college advantage. I think we'll also lose the Senate. By not doing any partisan gerrymandering, NY may have cost us the ability to retake the House and after the Supreme Court's decision about racial gerrymandering the few districts we could have grabbed either in 24 or 26 are in jeopardy. So I'm no longer hopeful about our chances this year, and some of the polls are already scaring me (there is evidence that a) Biden significantly outpolls Harris in some swing states, b) that the most reliable voting block doesn't like her -their mistake, imo-, and c) the never-Trump vote might not follow Harris.) I'll donate and maybe even volunteer and be positive etc when out in public but this -with my two or three readers, and three maybe be an overestimate, 🤣- I'm being honest about my feelings. Ugh.

3. Work is sucking these days. I'm bored.

4. Continuing to plug away at the weight loss thing with Zeppy. That drug is a fucking miracle. I've been eating the same way for over a year now and last fall, I'd pretty much stopped losing more than a few ounces here or there. Zepbound restarted that, I suspect with some biochemical tinkering of my set point, leaving my body no longer defending a very high weight. I've lost more than I ever thought I would or could and I'm less than 10lbs from a dream goal, which might or might not happen: being able to ride Icelandic horses here, right down the road from me! If I get there, I'll be thrilled, but even if I don't, it'll be fine, I'll just have to ride them in Iceland where the weight limit they allow is higher, LOL. I feel so much more relaxed about the day-to-day ins and outs of dieting and eating and exercising. I've always hated and mistrusted the addiction framing on people being fat, for various reasons (*), and at first, I was a bit surprised at the data that show that GLP-1 drugs are effective at helping with addiction. They seem to, which is great and I've seen some commentary about how yeah, fatties are just addicts but... GLP-1 are also being shown to be effective in Parkinson's disease and in a phase 3 trial, Alzheimer's. I don't think we're "there" yet on figuring out exactly how they work and how they help people, though they clearly do. (*) Hard to be addicted to something that you need to actually survive. In addition, the arguments seem very much which came first the chicken or the egg to me. Anyhow, as more research into GLP-1 drugs come out, I hope the addiction model gets ditched wholesale, and hopefully we'll get some insight into the brain biochemistry that is very clearly involved. It always was, as many of us fatties have long suspected, just a little bit more complicated that Calories In Calories Out, which, while try, is elides the whole "how the calories are processed".

5. In light of that, I'll share this review: Trapped fat: Obesity pathogenesis as an intrinsic disorder in metabolic fuel partitioning. Normally I'd steer clear of anything with Gary Taubes's name on it (his agenda has led him down some pretty tortuous paths) but this is nevertheless interesting, though I haven't done enough of a deep dive or search on primary sources to trust it all. Still worth a read, if only to be familiar with this reframing.

6. This is in pink! My baby girl turned 21 this week! OMG, how the eff did that happen, she was just a baby two minutes ago! She's an extraordinary young person!

7. We have a few days of camping booked for late September at Crater Lake. The boat tours will have shut down by then. 😢 Why do they stop those a full 10 days before they close the campground? Still, looking forward to that. And we booked two nights (and a previous one so we can get an early start) at a campground near Mt Baker for early September. Had to book Sunday and Monday night, which was the best I could do for minimizing vacation days. We'll get up early Tuesday morning and hopefully I can get into work in time for a solid half day. Tomorrow, we have to drive Linnea to Bellingham so she can start packing hrr place up, since her old and new places don't overlap, sigh, but we'll be taking her furniture down. Anyhow, plan is to leave her the trailer and head out to go on three short hikes in the area.

8. Perry is leaving for a regatta in Canada tomorrow at 5am. I should get some sleep, we have to drive him to the airport. He'll be pretty close to Niagara Falls, and he's hoping to get a group of athletes together to go visit. I hope he does, and I really want to go back there one of these years, I loved going when I was a kid.

9. Still looking for a plan to get my novel moving towards publication. I know I need an agent, but each time I look at agents/agencies, I realize my poor little book doesn't quite fit into any category. Yes, romance, but it's too long to fit their size requirements. One of these days, I'll figure out my next steps. Maybe I should find someone to put it in audiobook format, since that seems to be a good way to get traction. Anyhow.

Three things? I think there are more I need to talk about!

1. Starting with the most exciting: Linnea got into the Computer Science major!!!!!. Tbh, quite unexpected, but being a girl with learning disabilities probably helped. So yay for that, I'm so excited for her. One of the differences between her and Perry's long quest to get into the Biochem major? She has an excellent department advisor (as opposed to one who not only did not help but indeed... fibbed a bit on a few things) who helped her pick classes and supported her a lot. But yay! So relieved for her. Her boyfriend did not get in (despite good grades etc) so is looking at trying to get in for a Masters.

2. Last month on Zeppy, maintaining the lowest dose, I did not lose anything, I've been playing with the same two pounds since end of May. I'll go up in dosage this week and see if it makes a diff. But. Nothing fits. Things that fit less than a month ago are all of a sudden baggy to the point that I cannot wear them. Which yay, but I did not need to find out that two pair of leggings and three pair of jeans no longer fit on... Monday morning. I currently have one pair that fits (thanks Value Village), one pair that I can wear for two days, it has spandex or whatever in it, something I usually hate but nobody does 100% cotton in black that I have found, and I hope my yoga pants will still fit but I didn't try them on this morning, so who knows? Again, I'm not unhappy about this, it's part of the package of losing weight but not today? I tried on one of the pairs of jeans last week and I swear it fit.

3. We have park entry tickets to Rainier on Wednesday. We found a campsite for Tuesday night. Yay? Only the weather forecast has gone to sh*t and I'm not sure I really want to go. Plan was to camp, get up to catch first light at Reflection Lakes, and then do a hike up into a cirque with incredible views of the mountain on the way down. Oh, and some night photography the evening before if we weren't too tired. None of which will happen if the weather is crummy, so I don't know what to do.

4. I did book camping for late September in Crater Lake. It's not managed by Recreation.gov so the bots don't seem to book every single effing campsite as soon as they're available.

5. We went on a bike ride yesterday. First in more than a few years. It was great! Dh found out he needs new shoes, and we couldn't find his helmet, so he ordered new ones (he borrowed Perry's for yesterday). We kept it to 10 miles because of lessons learned in years past, we started out the season one year with a 40-mile ride. None of us, and that included Anne-Chloe and Perry, were happy the next day! It was good and we're planning on more rides this summer.

These are the photos dh or I took while on the hike:



The area burned just a few years back, not completely, but still and there are bits of places with burnt out trees.

I really love this selfie of the two of us!



Even with the iffiness, it was a great hike!

Maybe it'll be three things. Maybe it'll be more. I don't know.

1. This past week was... interesting. Worked the full week, mostly doing training. From only mentioning "neuronal cell culturing" I'm now finding out there is a lot of mouse work (*), something he'd mentioned during the second interview, but implied was a lot less than it's going to be, and some work with -no I am not kidding- monkey brains. 😐 (*) Basically, the implication was that I'd have to do some mouse euthanasia. I interviewed for a job that required that a while back and read up a bit on it. I didn't feel totally happy with the idea, but I figured I could euthanize mice with CO2, which seemed to be, from my reading, a common method. Well, no. It's mouse pups with scissors, and yes, I'll have to be trained but I'm not sure even then I've got the guts. So this job may go not further than me crying in front of a case of mouse pups. We shall see. And tbh, I don't think he was trying to hide the info. It's just that he was really enthusiastic about another aspect of the job, as was I, and we were both focused on that. So.

2. White fonted for weight loss Well. Alas, this is bad data collection. First full week on Zepbound, I was up 1lb. Second week, this past week? Down almost 3. Is it the meds, or is it the in a lab all day with only the food I've brought it? It's going to be hard to tell. I think I'm dealing with less "food noise" but is that data or placebo? I probably won't know. But I'll take the weight loss and hope for more!

3. Linnea and team were at a regatta yesterday, she was bow in the Varsity 8, yay her! They came in second, which is fine, and the boat looked really good.

Here are the last 30 seconds or so of the race.

4. Seems like Anne-Chloe is the youngest or one of the youngest lab directors they've ever had at Fred Hutch. Yay, but she still really needs to get a freaking PhD or MD. I've only spent a week at UW and I'm already feeling strangely uneducated and dumb.

5. As if things weren't bad enough... My sister brings my mom up on 14 Mar. She leaves 16 Mar, comes back 30 Mar. 31 Mar is Easter Sunday. We leave Friday 5 Apr for Louisiana before we drive to TX to attempt to see the 8 April Eclipse. This was all going to be a bit stressful what with me being gone all day, but then the folks helping my aunt in Vancouver BC decided that... they want to put the house on the market early April and JoAnn agrees. That's nice. When we suggested those dates, they all said no, we can wait until late spring or early summer. Now it's a crisis to go through everything she has left there and figure out what we want -a lot of her stuff is -thank goodness- at the assisted living place with her, but the last two or three times we were up, everyone (including me) agreed that no, we should wait, it wasn't like the house was going on the market right away. My sister was the only one who'd initially pushed for an earlier time to market and to go through JoAnn's stuff. Now I have no idea what we're going to do. I guess dh and I will have to go up at some point, leave my mom at the assisted living place, and start to weed stuff now. Tbf, the folks up there promised to box of anything we wanted/thought we'd want and store it for us in one of their garages, but really, just fucking no. Sigh.

6. Drove Linnea up to Bellingham today and then went on a hike at the Stimsom Family Nature Preserve. About 3.5 miles on well maintained and graded hiking trail.... in the pouring rain! We looked like drowned rats at the end, but smiling drowned rats! Only iffy moment: tree over the trail. No way to go off trail easier to go around, it was too high for me to get easily over and too long for me to easily get under. I had to do under. At one point, I was essentially in a plank trying to move sideways. At least it was dh, and not the kids... they would have taken video, I'm sure, not to post on Instagram but to show either sibling not present.

1. Quarter starts this week and we drove Linnea up, after a Very Expensive stop at Costco, LOL. On our way down, we drove Chuckanut Drive and stopped for a quick walk at Larabee State Park. Some photos I uploaded to flickr album. We probably spent about 30 minutes there, but it's the first "out" that we've done since August so it felt wonderful!

2. Preparing for our trip to Norway. One thing we were planning on doing got cancelled, so we're kinda scrambling to re-figure stuff out. Also. REI. Women's snowboots: 155 choices. Add in the "Wide" filter: 5. Of which only 2 are actual snowboots. Also. I'm at the exact limit of an XL and 1X. Which means, since I want to layer, that the 1X is the better bet. But same thing. Zillions of choices in XL. Almost none in 1X. I'll figure it out, but such an annoying little pain in the butt. But hey. Grateful that this past year of dieting has paid off and I actually have choices at all.

3. This cracked me up. There are chocolates in a bowl on the counter. I've told my mom many times to help herself, and she does (oh does she ever! What the fuck does she DO with all those calories?) Anyhow. Perry has also been eating the chocolates so there is always a pile of wrappers by his computer. I noticed over the past few days that my mom has been surreptitiously adding her wrappers to his pile rather than piling them next to HER computer like she'd been doing before. 🤣

Full set of photos from our Bridal Veil Falls hike, complete with some video, regular and slow motion, of the Falls.

Bridal Veil Falls.