Summer Break Quarantine Goals Wrap-up

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Thistle

Back in May, I decided to make a “summer break” set of goals – a bit of irony during a quarantine period where my kids had been home full time since early March and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. This “summer break” lasted for the days that the boys were officially off school for the summer. The dates of the personal challenge thus went from 5/23 to 8/17. I drew the goals out in my sketchbook, and have been coloring them in as I went along. Here’s how the challenge went!

Finished: 15 of 18

In order of completion:

Support a local small business: Mildfire, 5/24. (Also: Salsalitos, Buon Giorno Cafe, Rehoboth Eritrean-Ethiopian Cuisine, Matenga’s Pizzeria, Instant Donuts) (Also, non-local small businesses: Superfit Hero, Lipslut, Vush) – Links out to all these awesome businesses!!

Try a new-to-me fitness or workout: I tried out several, the first of which was boxing on 5/26 – absolutely love it!!

Finish Couch to 5K: ran more than given in the last workout, nonstop, on 5/30

Throw a virtual graduation party for Ambrose: done, 5/31

Print photos for frames and birthday coasters: done, first week of June

Go to a new-to-me location: Medina River Natural Area, 6/14 – and I drove there myself!! Woohoo for beating my biggest agoraphobia fear!

Crochet a bag for my Modern Witch Tarot Deck: I did this on 6/27, but I’ve gotta be honest. I discovered in this process that I really don’t like crocheting anymore. Because the motion in my right arm causes tension/pain in my neck and shoulder blade, I’ve only crocheted a handful of times since 2017. I believe this is the sixth item I’ve made since moving back to Texas three years ago. The bag only took a few hours to make – with distractions in between, like watching a movie – but the entire thing was an exercise in pain. In the end, while the bag looked perfectly fine, I despised it just because of how I felt making it, so I tossed it. It’s good to know – I’ve been slowly paring down my crochet supplies for years now, and I’ll probably still keep a few bare minimums. But this is likely the last time I’ll pick up a hook for a long, long time. If ever.

Finish the Real Life Ghost Stories Patreon backlog: done, early July

Go swimming: I said this could be nixed re: covid, and as it stands, all pools are closed in both areas I lived at this summer. However, I did go kayaking with my family, which involved some falling out of kayaks and swimming in the river (ha!), so this will have to count. Not what I’d intended when I made this list, and I wish I could go swimming for real, but hey. Done 7/18

(photo credit: Emmy)

Complete at 100% my 20-20 in 2020 Goals in June and July: Finished both as of July 28th

Go on four (or more!) dates with Jason: 8/2 – having a month away from home made this take forever! Not to mention all our dates were at home…

Apply to SNHU for the fall semester: done 8/8

Build a cat wall (for scratching!): 8/8 – I’ve wanted to do this for ages and finally we got it on, and on International Cat Day, no less! It looks awesome and includes cardboard, carpet, rough turf scratchy material, foam, three kinds of wood, and a wire to hang cat toys from. Not to mention Jason’s awesome freestyle painting!

Finish my runner’s board (for bibs, medals, motivation, etc): done 8/8 – This is a project that I’ve wanted to do for ages now, but didn’t have all the things I needed to create it. Jason gave me a bunch of the individual items (like hooks) as one of my Christmas gifts, but my original attempt at a board background got inadvertently destroyed by one of my kids, and then the pandemic kept me from acquiring something new. I kept debating with different ideas, shifting around as I saw other runners’ boards, until finally I came to a decision in July. The picture below is the running corner of my bedroom. It has my vision board, my mileage goal, and now my runner’s board with all the bibs I’ve had and medals I’ve earned since the Elf Run 5K in December that started this whole path for me. “Journey before destination” is a nod toward my favorite series, the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Eventually, I’ll get some photos to clip into the mini-clothespins. I absolutely love it!! Can’t wait to get more medals to fill out all those hooks. (Also, those are all finisher medals. I’m too slow for anything else, haha!)

Finish my Yoga With Adriene backlog: Last one done on 8/9. This backlog included roughly 45 sessions going all the way back to April 2019. This is a massive amount of yoga to get through in just under three months, especially with all the other exercise I do. However, since I began using yoga as a dynamic warmup, plus I had a bunch of extra days where yoga was my primary exercise while I was in WI, not only did I get through the backlog, but I kept current through the summer, too!

Those I didn’t finish:

Finish the next phase of xeriscaping the front yard (which includes digging, leveling, and paving a path and seating area): Since I spent a month away from home, this was just not meant to be this summer. Especially once it got into the sweltering months. I’m forwarding this to my fall list!

Start learning Spanish again: With as much as happened this summer, I decided to nix this goal early on as adding an extra daily goal – and learning a language has to be almost daily – was just going to stress me out.

Play Just Dance with the boys: I would have gladly done this, but my boys didn’t seem interested any time I brought this up. This goal was more about them than me, so I let it go.

I really enjoyed this project, and hey, maybe I’ll even make fall-based goals all drawn out to color in again!

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Sunday Coffee – Back to school, for me this time

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Thistle

I despise the University of Houston. I chose to attend there for all the wrong reasons (fear, mostly, which kept me away from the school I really wanted to attend, USC), and I regretted it even before I began. I managed to stick it out for almost four full years, at which point I had to leave to get a job and take care of my six-month-old son. Ever since then, UH has been a plague. They keep putting imaginary fees – sometimes upwards of hundreds of dollars – on my account that I have to pay if I want access to my transcripts. It’s not malicious – they’re just so badly run that none of their departments talk to each other and their systems contradict themselves. I knew this even before I began, when I received an application to the school from the housing department, who told me they couldn’t process my housing application until after I was accepted by UH, even though I’d been accepted for months at that point.

Anyway, I’m not going to go a full round with UH again in this post. I’ve done that enough over the last 12 years of blogging. I hate the school and want nothing more to do with them ever again, but sadly had to interact with them again this week. Once again, there was another hold on my account, with more money to pay even though I’ve had nothing to do with the school in 11 years since my last attempt to get free of them. Ironically, when IT set me up with an online account, it literally said I owed nothing, but I still had to put through a payment of $20 just so they would take the hold off and let my transcripts go through to SNHU. Whatever. I just paid the extortion money, and hopefully I’ll never have to deal with UH again.

I’m going back to school this fall. I’ll be honest: the idea of returning to school is not one that I treasure. The biggest thing my 3.75 years at UH taught me was that I despise university learning. Would I have learned this had I gone to a competent school that didn’t make me feel like I was repeating high school all over again? Unlikely. But that’s what I learned, and in the 20 years since I left, I’ve had recurring nightmares about returning to school that have reinforced the revulsion.

It’s not that I don’t love learning, because I really do! Frankly, if I could GED my way out of undergrad classes and start straight on grad school, I’d look on the whole situation far more favorably. But alas that’s not how this works, and I don’t know how many terms I’m going to have to complete at SNHU before I can get a basic degree and then move on to library school. I’ll find out soon. The application process is complete, and I’ll have the “decision” soon – I’m 99.9% sure I’ll be accepted – and then I can figure out which two classes I’ll take for the first term starting Aug 31st. Hopefully, enough of my 106 completed hours from UH will be able to transfer across to SNHU that I won’t have too many repeats along the way. I’d like to be done with undergrad school ASAP.

So wish me luck. I’m not worried about the classes themselves. Mostly I just need to overcome the revulsion and antagonism and wariness that I feel about classroom learning. Thankfully SNHU is fully asynchronous, so I can learn on my own time and in my own way, which is far more like the self-taught courses I’ve continually given myself over the last 20 years since I left UH anyway. Hopefully, SNHU can help me recover some faith in academia and reawaken the love of school that UH murdered in me.

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Quarantine Diaries – Week 22

Posted on August 14, 2020 by Thistle

We are officially 150 days into the pandemic here in San Antonio. August 9th was 150 days from our first diagnosed case on March 13th. We also hit five full months at the end of this week. Things are thankfully slowing down in San Antonio over the last few weeks – thank you, mask order! I hope we can continue the positive trend going forward.

Because things are slowing down here, I’m going to stop posting weekly. This was my plan way back in early June around week 14, but then we had a spike. With things getting under control again, I feel okay documenting this on an every-few-weeks basis. This feels like a really good sign, I’ll admit – a positive light going forward.

Things are mostly positive in this post, but: If your mental health is at a point where you cannot bear to hear more about quarantine stuff, skip to the bottom of this post for a list of positives and highlights and Nice Things. We all need some of that right now!

This week in numbers
We began the week at 41,939 cases, a 329-case daily average, and 406 deaths. The following numbers are misleading. Like the last few weeks, daily death numbers aren’t current and go back at least a month. Apparently, the state has reported several hundred extra deaths attributed to our county, but our local health authorities won’t count them toward our totals until they have been investigated (to make sure there are no duplicates, or that these are actually folks with residency in our county, etc). Each day includes current deaths as well as those confirmed during the verification process.

  • Friday, August 7th: 42,299 (+360), 422 deaths
  • Saturday, August 8th: 42,531 (+232), 432 deaths
  • Sunday, August 9th: 42,873 (+252), 445 deaths
  • Monday, August 10th: 42,959 (+176), 455 deaths
  • Tuesday, August 11th: 43,164 (+205), 519 deaths
  • Wednesday, August 12th: 43,455 (+291), 545 deaths
  • Thursday, August 13th: 43,673 (+218), 560 deaths

We had a total of 1,734 cases this week – daily average 248 – which continues our downward trend. 154 deaths were reported this week, but again, I have no idea how many were actually from this week. Many were from July. Because of these skewed death numbers, and last week’s weird change in case numbers, my graphs are no longer even remotely accurate, so I’m not including them here anymore. Here instead is a graph of our cases from June to present, courtesy of local news station KSAT 12:

Weekly stats, updated each Monday, continue to show mostly positive trends as well. Doubling rate is up to 24 days and positivity rate is down to 12.7%. There has been a steady decline in hospital admissions as well. The only bad news, continuing the trend of the last few weeks, is the increase in pediatric cases, up to 16% this week. The city further broke down those numbers this week into 0-9 years (6%), and 10-19 years (10%).

This week in San Antonio
Very little news to report this week, which is always a good thing! We finally got the results of the asymptomatic tests in June, with nothing really to glean from the random testing. Oh well. The city announced it will close its parks during the Labor Day holiday weekend, a precautionary measure that I approve of wholeheartedly despite my annoyance at being unable to use the trails. Over the last week or two, the number of people requesting covid tests here has started declining – another good sign, if you remember just how impossible it was to get tests a month ago when my friend Natalie’s family was sick! Perhaps they’ll open to people with no symptoms again soon. The one bit of worrisome news is that some bars are being reclassified as restaurants, in order to reopen again – and we know that bars were a big contributor to the spike in June.

This week at home
School starts for Laurence on Monday, and so much is being done last-minute. He only got his schedule mid-week, and most of his classes were wrong, so we had to figure that out. Also, the school suddenly changed to an A/B schedule with some classes on MWF and others on TTh. It would have been nice to find this out more than a week before school started! I don’t blame the teachers, of course. And I know the district has been dealing with the flip-flopping TEA guidelines for the last month. But our district in particular has delayed releasing plans for MONTHS, which is frustrating. Beyond that, we also filled out a form stating our choice of virtual-only instruction for Laurence this semester.

Morrigan began working again this week, since the numbers have been getting progressively lower. He only has two weeks to work before going up to college again, but his employer was happy to have him back and has told him he can come work over all the summers. Ambrose wants to start working as well, but he needs to renew his license first. DPS is requiring appointments now, and he had his this week…but they said he had a temperature of over 100 degrees, so he couldn’t come in! It was faulty equipment, though – we checked when he got home, and he didn’t actually have a fever. But now we have to wait until late September to get him in again. Sigh.

Other things this week:

  • Our quarantine was up on Tuesday, so Laurence and I were able to see the chiropractor on Wednesday. Thank goodness. My back really needed that! (Also, they took our temps, which is new for them, but thankfully they had non-faulty equipment!)
  • Laurence buzz-cut his hair at home this week despite getting a new haircut a couple weeks back.
  • One of my mom’s high school friends died of covid this week. Even still, she can’t get my grandparents to take this seriously. They continue to shop for themselves despite their vulnerability and the rising number of cases in their small-town area.
  • I received word that NaNoWriMo is going full-on virtual this year. It’s unlikely I’ll be participating, so this won’t affect me directly, but I’m sad for my fellow InSANowrimos who will lose that wonderful IRL connection that is so great during NaNo.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
Ironically, most of the positive this week is in the covid-trend! But here are a few things from home, too.

  • this awesome video about the “truth” about masks
  • we finished our cat-scratch wall! –>
  • I also finished my runner’s board (bibs, medals, etc)
  • I applied to return to school this semester! First time going back since I had to leave when Morrigan was an infant!
  • Back in March (pre-pandemic), I was fitted for shoes at Fleet Feet. There were two pairs that fit well, and I decided to go with Hoka One One as it was new to me. But I was smart and took a picture of the other pair, so now that I needed a second pair to rotate with, I was able to order the right size/fit/model without needing a full-on fitting during the pandemic. Woohoo!
  • my hiking group decided to re-open hikes in September! Let’s not screw this up again, San Antonio!

How are all of you?

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Wellness Wednesday – Overtraining. Again.

Posted on August 12, 2020 by Thistle

I’ve talked about this time and time again. Fitness has long been one of my passions. I was an active kid, who grew into an adolescent competitive swimmer who did 3-4 daily hours of training and cross-training five times a week, to an adult who got in exercise when she could around work and chasing toddlers around the house. The major sports (basketball, volleyball, soccer, etc) never much interested me growing up, but I spent hours playing at hula hoop, skip-it, jump rope, pogo sticks, perfecting headstands, my own fake version of gymnastics (ha!), building obstacle courses for my siblings and me, biking for hours, and general active play. My weight loss journey in 2011-2013 was an exploration in fitness as well: running, kayaking, trikke, elliptical, biking, water aerobics, strength training, walking, hiking, badminton, dancing, and really just about every other exercise you could throw at me. I just like exercise!!

Sometimes too much. Hence: overtraining.

(and boxing, and dancing, and water sports, and…)

I try to be good about striking a balance between getting in the exercise I want, and resting enough to not overtax my body. Sometimes, though, I go overboard in what I want to do, and what goals I make, and eventually things begin to snowball. Let’s just take the two-week period from when I got home from Wisconsin until my body crashed a couple days ago. During that two weeks, I exercised on 12 days, with 2 rest days. That might not sound bad – in fact, it sounds pretty normal for me – until I get a bit deeper into the numbers. Those two weeks included:

  • 790 fitness minutes (13:10) – averaging over an hour per day excluding rest days, and roughly 6.5 hrs of exercise per week
  • 29 miles walked, run, or hiked
  • 10 yoga workouts, many of them strength-heavy
  • 4 ST-focused non-yoga workouts, with increased intensity levels because I transitioned to using heavy weights instead of bands for several exercises
  • 8 days with multiple workout sessions (this doesn’t mean multiple types of exercise done in a row – this is exercise done at multiple times of the day)
  • 5 days with extra “non-exercise” slow-walking sessions for additional mileage, which don’t count toward the fitness minutes noted above (though does count toward the miles), and also often happened on my two “rest” days
  • multiple days with over 1.5 hours of exercise in a single day

Several months this year, I managed fewer fitness minutes in an entire month than I did altogether in these two weeks. Granted, I tend to shoot for at least 1000 fitness mins per month, but generally, my body does better with 4-4.5 hours of exercise per week rather than 6+ hours!

So. Looking back at the cause of this overtraining, and it comes down to several factors.

  1. I’m following a personal training plan for prescribed heavy strength-training, which includes two days per week. I use a dynamic yoga warmup before each one. This alone should be fine and easy to work into my normal schedule.
  2. My goal this summer was to finish my backlog of YWA yoga workouts, of which there were roughly 45 of them going back over a year. Now, many of them could be used as dynamic warmups for the above ST and any of my runs, but this backlog also included longer, complete workouts that would be too heavy for warmups. Somehow I had to fit those in, too. I finished this goal toward the end of this two-week period.
  3. I’ve been very excited about running and happy to get back out on my normal trails. I’ve also wanted to do some experimenting after reading some things in Run to the Finish. So when I can, I’ve been going out and both running and hiking, weather permitting. (And in defiance of the weather, some days.)
  4. Last – and definitely not least – my August mileage goal. This is what has put me over the edge into overtraining. Many runners can easily go 100 miles in a month, if not 100 miles in a week, but this isn’t me. First, I’m an eclectic exerciser and I prefer a variety of fitnes (see above photo!). Second, I’m a very slow runner, so these miles take a lot more time. Third, it’s frickin’ blazing outside in August here – literally already “feels like 84 degrees” an hour before the sun even begins to rise – and those miles take more out of a person in that weather. Not only have I been pushing myself too long and hard out in all that, I’ve been sneaking in extra miles as “non-exercise” super slow walking around my house, which is further contributing to the wear-and-tear on my body.

(the reasons I use these exercises, which I need to remember instead of overtraining with them!)

Something has to give. The yoga goal is done, at least, but I’ll still be using yoga as a dynamic warmup. That has been an awesome tool. But I’m dropping the mileage goal. I’ll still walk, run, hike, etc, but not to the point of overtraining. When my body starts holding onto weight while my appetite drops to zero, that’s a danger sign and a clear indicator that something is wrong. Along with the hollow-bone-and-joint feeling even after rest, and a general crankiness toward life that make me despise my workouts, I definitely need some time off. REAL time off.

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What’s Left of Me is Yours, by Stephanie Scott

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Thistle

Sumi is what’s known as a “forgotten party” in Japan – a person whose life was directly affected by a crime, but who is kept away from the details of trial, punishment, etc. In Sumi’s case, the crime is the murder of her mother. She has grown up with her grandfather, and for twenty years believes that her mother died in a car accident. An unexpected phone call leads her to the truth, and the unraveling of both an old story, and of the lies that have made up the fabric of her life.

I’m honestly not sure what to think about this book. It’s FAR out of my comfort zone. I’m not generally prone to reading slow, languorous books heavy on setting, poetic language, and literary themes. I tend to prefer my literary books in classics form. A couple places online describe this one as a “mystery” or “thriller,” but these descriptions couldn’t be further from the truth. Make no mistake: this one is a ponderous, character-driven story with very little plot. This isn’t a bad thing, and it is written with some of the most beautiful language I’ve ever read, but you shouldn’t go into it thinking that it’ll be something gripping or quick or thrilling.

I think my favorite thing about the book was the look at Japanese culture. There is so much about the way the law, justice, prisons, businesses, marriage, divorce, education, and other systems work. My knowledge about Japan is limited, and I know absolutely nothing about many of these areas. It was exploring an entirely new world for me. Every night, I would pick up the book and read another chapter or three before bed, the full book spreading out over several weeks. Every night, there would be something new to learn.

On the reverse side, I ended the book feeling dissatisfied. The “climax” of sorts didn’t work for me. Whereas the psychology through so much of the story was spot-on, I didn’t really buy the motivation behind Sumi’s mother’s murder. It felt…off. I kept expecting to discover some twist or misdirect. Not because the book was advertised as a thriller/mystery – I’d long before realized this was a purely literary novel – but because certain details seemed to be missing in Sumi’s research, and the motivation just made no sense. The book’s afterword says that this story originated in a true crime, and I wonder if perhaps the disconnect came from changing so many details, but not others. I don’t know.

All I know is that by the end, I wasn’t sure why I read the book. Sure, it was lovely as a reading experience, all those beautiful phrases that were pure poetry. And it was fun to learn so much about Japan. Plus I loved the experience of reading just a little bit each night before bed, instead of rushing through the book. I just don’t know if those things make up for what felt, in the end, like an incomplete or missing story. Like taking a bite of a food that tastes lovely, but which disappears before you can swallow. I imagine that my feelings on the book will ultimately be determined by how long it lingers, whether it percolates and takes root deep inside me, or disappears from my imagination as if I never read it at all.

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Sunday Coffee – Meltdown

Posted on August 9, 2020 by Thistle

Thursday morning, my alarm went off at 6 am. Even though I’d had bad insomnia the day before, I’d set the alarm early because I wanted to get in some quick yoga as a dynamic warmup, and head out to the trails for five miles or so of hiking/walking/running. As things go, the morning started fine – in fact, more than fine. I felt good on waking, full of energy from my rest day the day before, excited to try out the new Camelbak I bought in June and the new cooling towel I’d received the day before. Quickly, I went through my morning routine, got into my workout clothes, and did my yoga. Then I packed up the Camelbak, filled it with ice water, wetted the cooling towel, and made to leave the house. Only…I tried to drink from the Camelbak, and it wouldn’t let any water through.

Some fiddling followed. I thought maybe I had the lock/unlock setting wrong, or missed a removable plastic tab somewhere that was blocking the tube, or something. Or that maybe I needed to compress the bladder to get the water flowing at first, even though that hasn’t been my experience with any other Camelbak. I could see a few spots of water in the tube, but the most I could get into my mouth was a drop. For time’s sake, I checked if my old Camelbak’s mouthpiece would work on the new tube, but they were different sizes. Frustrated, I poured as much of the ice water into my old Camelbak as would fit (it’s much smaller), and then began to ease the bladder out to dump it the rest of the way. Part of the plastic casing snapped off.

So at that point, I got a big ragey. Not only was my new Camelbak defective, it had also broken the first time I tried to use it. Plus, since I bought it over a month ago, I had no idea if I could get a refund for it, despite this being the first time I’d even taken off the tags. (Who could predict that all the rest of June hikes would be canceled after my order, then that I’d be in Wisconsin for most of July?) Beyond all that, it was now almost 9am, after waking early for the second day in a row, and I still didn’t have what I needed to go out on my five-mile workout.

With that in mind, I gave up on the defective equipment, pared down my supplies to what I could fit in the one tiny pocket of my old Camelbak, and set out. The heat plowed over me on walking outside, but with determination fueled by anger, I began to drive down to the trails. Partway there, the sun came out from dissipating clouds, the last of my protection gone. The temp was over 80 degrees plus heat index. Defeated, I circled back and drove home, where I proceeded to have a bizarre and inexplicable** hypoglycemia attack despite having eaten not long before. The day just went downhill from there.

Rage. I don’t get angry often. Irritated, yes; frustrated, yes. But ragey growling full-throttled anger? No. And when I do, when the sensation is all-consuming, I have the worst of coping mechanisms: I attack myself with food. Being well-aware of this tendency, I was able to strike a certain balance that day – I ate total crap food, but kept myself from binging on it. It’s the closest I’ve been to a binge since early June 2019. But even though I stopped just shy of binging, it wasn’t a good day. Every little thing that could go wrong did so. Stupid stuff. Like, when I was trying to hang up my old Camelbak to dry, it took six attempts before it stopped falling to the floor after hanging. Just enough stupid crap to keep me ragey. Some good came of the day – REI for instance gave us a full refund for the defective Camelbak no questions asked – but for the most part, things kept spiraling down.

After the refund from REI, I began looking online for something to replace my Camelbak. You know what drives me crazy? Companies that think all runners (and all people who exercise generally) are thin and small-chested. Which is just about all fitness-wear companies. I decided to get a hydration vest instead of a pack (the difference is having the pockets in the front rather than just on your back), and despite HOURS of research, could only find ONE vest that would might fit on my chest. (Hopefully, at least. I can’t even be sure it will. This might have to be returned, too.) Just like sports bras and running shorts and all the rest, companies assume that bigger bodies = “you don’t exercise enough to need specialized equipment.” Well, f— you then. Bigger bodies run, too! UGH.

Anyway. I have a new hydration vest on the way, and we’ll see if it works out. Wish me luck.

**Re: hypoglycemia – I’m pretty sure that this was a combination of my body’s hormone reaction to rage and the kind of coffee I’d had that morning. Awhile back, I mentioned that a prolonged period of drinking iced coffee hadn’t changed my body in any way. However, during that experiment, I was drinking half traditional iced coffee – chilled brewed coffee, so the acidity is the same as hot coffee – rather than all cold brew. For the month that I was in WI, I drank 95% cold brew, and I have seen a tiny shift in my body. Might be unrelated, but it warrants further investigation. This week, HEB was out of cold brew, so we picked up regular iced coffee. I drank traditional iced coffee on both Wednesday and this ragey Thursday. My digestive system felt really OFF on Wednesday, and then I had this hypoglycemia attack on Thursday that came in a time when my blood sugar should have been stable. I’ve experienced hypoglycemia following (hot and cold) coffee consumption in the past; it’s one of the warning signs that made me think coffee is related to my bodily woes. So I’m returning to the cold-brew experiment while continuing to cut back on overall consumption.

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Quarantine Diaries – Week 21

Posted on August 7, 2020 by Thistle

I’m happy to report an extremely light news week with low numbers and very little happening. Yay! I hope this is a good sign as we transition from July to August!

As always: If your mental health is at a point where you cannot bear to hear more about quarantine stuff, skip to the bottom of this post for a list of positives and highlights and Nice Things. We all need some of that right now!

This week in numbers
We began the week with 40,253 cases, a weekly case average of 803 new daily cases, and a total of 347 deaths. There were some sharp drops this week, and I’m a bit wary…

  • Friday, July 31st: 40,803 (+550), 349 deaths
  • Saturday, August 1st: 41,177 (+374), 352 deaths
  • Sunday, August 2nd: 41,082 (+524), 368 deaths**
  • Monday, August 3rd: 41,138 (+56), 370 deaths
  • Tuesday, August 4th: 41,274 (+136), 380 deaths**
  • Wednesday, August 5th: 41,614 (+340), 394 deaths
  • Thursday, August 6th: 41,939 (+325), 406 deaths

**The numbers were a mess this week. The city transitioned to a different system for compatibility with the state’s reporting, so there were duplication errors leading to a drop in overall total, and a certain amount of backlog. Supposedly, any backlog due to transition should be gone now. Plus, we’ve found out that a bunch of deaths haven’t been reported in a timely manner, and deaths on the two stared dates go back through late April.

But in any case, doing the best I can with the data I have this week, we had a total of 2,305 new cases reported this week (329 daily average – less than half last week’s average), and 59 deaths (not all from this week).

Weekly stats, which are updated each Monday, continue to show a positive trend: positivity rate down to 14.8%, and doubling rate is up to 21 days. Just like last week, pediatric cases (under age 18) continues to increase, this week up to 15%.

Totals for July: First, let me give a bit of perspective. From March 13th to May 31st, we had a total of 2,830 cases and 74 deaths. In June, we had an additional 9,235 cases and 36 deaths, putting us at a total of 12,065 cases and 110 deaths. June saw 77% of all our total cases at that point. Then we moved into July. Following the exponential rise we saw in June, July saw an additional 28,738 cases and 239 deaths! That’s 70% of our total 40,803 cases and 68% of our 349 deaths in a single month. It’s an average of 927 cases per day – more than the 795 we had on June 27th that prompted the emergency alert sent to all the phones in San Antonio and sent the boys and me up to Wisconsin a day earlier than planned – and 8 daily deaths. It’s more than 10x the total number of cases we had in the first 2.5 months of this pandemic. That’s effin’ insane, to put it mildly. Please let August be better than this!! [Note: These numbers are likely skewed slightly due to the updates in reporting from Aug 2nd onwards.]

This week in San Antonio
The biggest news article again this week is the war-against-schools. The governor released a statement on 7/31 saying that local health authorities can’t mandate that schools be virtual in anticipation of covid-19 outbreaks. Only school districts can do that, but if they do so, they can only receive funding for the first eight weeks of classes, at which point they’ll have to go through the TEA for a special waiver and approval to continue virtual learning funds. Local health authorities, however, can close down a specific school if there is an outbreak there. Just no pre-emptive authority. Which of course is a bunch of crap. Our local government and lawyers have stated that they disagree with the governor’s interpretation of the law and could sue, but rather than going this route, they’re going to just hope the school districts are smart about things and follow the local health authorities’ recommendations.

We know that our local school district will be virtual-only for three weeks, and it looks like they’ll be providing virtual options afterwards (which we’ll take). But it also looks like this is going to be a continual battle all year, with the poor kids caught in the middle.

Other news from the week:

  • multiple teachers resigning, or making wills in advance of the school year, or in some cases, passing away from covid already this summer 😦
  • siclovia officially canceled this fall
  • 100+ HEB employees tested positive in July

This week at home
Honestly, there is very little to report from home. My dad, stepmom, and half-sister came to visit this weekend, dropping off a belated present for Ambrose’s birthday. We all sat outside in the 100-degree heat, more than six feet apart and in masks besides, since three of us are still under quarantine. I’ll be so glad when this isn’t a thing anymore! Masks in the heat = no fun. In fact, one evening, Jason and I spent half an hour trying to rescue four siamese-mix kittens from running in the road near our house, in masks because we had to approach houses to try to find out where they belonged.

Otherwise, Morrigan set his schedule for the next semester. His classes are all half-online, half-in-person, except one fully-online course. So at least that should minimize some of the danger. He’ll be living on campus, though; I guess we’ll see how that goes. Ambrose’s college still hasn’t let him choose classes, so we have no idea what will happen with that. They haven’t even put his financial aid package up yet, and school starts in 2.5 weeks.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
It was a relatively good week, quiet and calm with very little news and lots of fun little things happening:

  • Instant Donut, our local hole-in-the-wall donut and kolache shop, re-opened after closing back in May re: covid – yay!
  • Dunkin Donuts has indoor service again, so I can go order inside even if I won’t stay to drink my iced coffee there (won’t do that until after I’m out of quarantine though!)
  • ordered a couple items (like a running watch!) that I’ve wanted for a long time, excited to get them
  • new Ninja blender that makes fast and easy recovery protein shakes post-strength training
  • a secondary birthday party for Ambrose
  • a new one-mile PR of 15:01!
  • 30 Days of Terror from Real Life Ghost Stories Podcast began this week

How was your week?

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Run to the Finish, by Amanda Brooks (audio)

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Thistle

Subtitled: The Everyday Runner’s Guide to Avoiding Injury, Ignoring the Clock, and Loving the Run

This is a nonfiction book about being a “middle of the pack” runner: how to enjoy being an average runner while avoiding injury, burnout, and running stress. Of course, Brooks’ idea of “average” means someone who runs at an average pace while running and training for half-marathons and marathons – she calls those who run 5Ks “sprinters” – so it’s not exactly the “average” runner. Still, even though my “long runs” are 5Ks and my “average pace” is a walking pace for most, I found this book to be quite useful and interesting. In fact, I think this would be a good guidebook even for walkers and people who enjoy exercise – or want to enjoy exercise. A lot of the advice on avoiding injury/burnout and on getting the most out of your workouts is universal.

The thing I didn’t enjoy about this book: I listened to this on audio. Now, the audio narration – performed by Dana Dae – was quite good. I enjoyed it and found it pleasant to listen to especially while out on my walks/runs. But there are parts of this book that involve lists of exercises, equipment, schedules, etc that are difficult to process in audio format. They are very useful lists…thus I ordered a physical copy of this book as soon as I finished listening to it. I doubt I’ll reread the entire physical book, but I will definitely refer back to a lot of the information.

I learned a LOT that I didn’t know previously from this book. Examples: how sunglasses can help you to not tire while running, and why regular (aka: cheap) sunglasses make me feel nauseous; why a hydration belt or vest is worth the investment because the handheld water bottle like I have can mess with your hip alignment and lead to injury; the importance of a dynamic warmup before a run (ha! fun that I just learned that a week before reading it here). Lots more than this; these are just the first few things that came to mind.

Like I said before, I think a lot of this book could be universal even though it’s technically about running. Brooks’ writing is down to earth, a bit funny and silly at times, and casual enough that it feels like conversing with a friend even as you discuss lists of strengthening exercises. I don’t read a lot of nonfiction, but I’m glad I gave this one a try!

Posted in 2020, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

July 2020 in Review

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Thistle

It was a rather peculiar month. All but the last few days of July were spent up north at my in-laws’ house with my two younger kids, while Jason and my oldest son stayed in San Antonio. I admit, I didn’t fare well mentally with my family separated that way. I spent a lot of time in my guest room, reading or exercising or simply doing meaningless tasks to keep me occupied and out of a spiral downwards. It felt very surreal, like a constant time slip – the same day over and over, no time passing at all. Part of that was being away from home, part was pandemic-living. Then about three weeks into the month, I had a peculiar day filled with pointless anxiety, and it pushed me over the edge into “I need to go home right now.” We left later that week and arrived home a month to the day after we’d left San Antonio.

(doggos keeping me company in WI)

Because of the long stay up north, I didn’t do very much in July. Most of my exercise was focused on yoga and strength training – stuff I could do in my room. I hardly went out of the house except to run a few errands. My agoraphobia started taking over again – another reason I needed to come home where I could expand my comfort zone wider. So once again, I’m glad we went, but I’m also glad to be home.

Speaking of home, there were two ridiculous house issues this month. I already discussed the water heater issue last week, but on the last day of July, we discovered another problem. As we made a grocery list for the week, Ambrose found that our chest freezer, which is in our garage, was completely defrosted. Apparently the GFCI had popped at some point recently, and all the food inside thawed out. Laurence had been out in the garage the day before and said that the front panel of the freezer was burning hot, which tells us that it had obviously had a short or some other issue. It was old and cheap to begin with, and had been through multiple cross-country moves. We were looking to replace it with an upright freezer anyway. Now we have to. Would have been nice to choose to, and not lose all the food inside, but at least Jason spent the month we were in WI using up stuff out of deep freeze, so we didn’t lose too much! Unfortunately, due to all the grocery-hoarding going on, there isn’t a freezer of any kind in town available, and online orders give arrival dates of October to December. !!! But I’m happy to say that yesterday, Jason snatched up a newly-arrived freezer that showed up on Best Buy’s website, and it should be delivered to us later this week. Whew!

Reading and Watching
After months of hardly reading anything (since about mid-February), July was an amazing reading month. I don’t know if it was the change in environment, the availability of holds coming in, or just getting my reading mojo back. Either way, I read six books this month, five of them fantastic. It is really difficult to choose my favorite of the month because three of these involved going back to revisit long-loved characters and worlds! I think I’m going to have to call it a tie between Empire of Dreams and The Lantern Men. And in a complete reversal of the last six-ish months, I read tons and watched almost nothing TV-wise – just the new Unsolved Mysteries series on Netflix, which was fun (though I miss the multi-story episodes and (of course) Robert Stack!), and a few episodes of the Murdoch Mysteries toward the end of the month.

Goals
Not much progress this month. Much of what I have left on my 2020 Goals is either on hold re: covid or plain old stuck (like my body refusing to lose any weight at all this year!). But there are two places where my goals continued to go well. First, Jason and I finished his car refinance, which takes off a huge chunk of unnecessary interest that we were paying and puts us in a better financial place. We’ll continue to work to make this even better. Second, my goal this year was to become a runner, and I made another great stride forward by running my first full 5K in years! That wasn’t even on my goal list because I didn’t think it would be possible yet, but I did it!

Health
This month, I began the Girls Gone Strong personal training program that I joined at the end of June. So far, what we’ve done in terms of nutrition and mindset has been entry-level for me. Not much new to learn. But I’ve been working hard at starting the beginning stages of strength training, because I know that muscle-building is a critical factor in longterm health. My means were limited for most of the month (mostly bodyweight and stretch-band modifications for anything that used dumbbells), but I still worked hard. I learned that I can control DOMS with yoga as my dynamic warm-up, which has also helped me with running. Woohoo! And with little to do while I was up in WI, I got quite a huge chunk of exercise done, the most of any month in 2020 so far.

On the reverse side of things, thanks to two cross-country trips, my sciatica has been really bad. I’m really looking forward to seeing my chiropractor on the 12th to get it sorted out! The one I saw in WI was awful! I also haven’t seen any loss on the scale – in fact, I’m exactly the same as I was before I left, both in weight and measurements. (So it’s not just building muscle or something. I wouldn’t expect that, but people tend to point this out as a possibility.) At least I didn’t gain while up north, right? Honestly, I do feel like I’m getting stronger generally, beyond just these last four weeks. I saw an old facebook memory this month from 2011, about an hour of kayaking being a real workout that wore me out completely. By contrast, even 30 lbs heavier now, I kayaked for three hours a few weeks ago and was barely sore the next day – probably wouldn’t have been sore at all except for the twenty minutes I spent wrestling a submerged kayak underwater against a current!! So even though I weigh more now, I’m definitely stronger than I was nine years ago!

Highlights of July
It was a weird month, y’all, with a lot of mental health troubles due to being apart from my family for most of the month. But a lot of good things happened, too:

  • masks finally mandatory in TX
  • Wally the kitty keeping me company in WI
  • Zooming with my Australian friend, Oisin, for the first time after 14 years of email-friendship
  • running a full 5K for the first time since 2013, and first time ever at this weight (before was always 70-80 lbs lighter!)
  • some really great, highly-anticipated books
  • meeting my sis-in-law Emmy in person for the first time
  • kayaking down the river with my extended family
  • my second-most anticipated book of the year finally released and was a great read!
  • an awesome haircut
  • pre-release chapters of Rhythm of War began to post!
  • backing Brandon Sanderson’s kickstarter and scheduled to get a future set of fun stuff, including a new novella in my favorite series –> (pic courtesy of the kickstarter, design not final)
  • Ambrose turned 18! I have two adult children now!
  • arriving home and seeing family/kitties again, plus visiting my sister on the way down
  • when I went to review the school calendar for the year, I saw that instead of a holiday for Columbus Day that they usually have, they have one for Indigenous People’s Day – woo-hoo!
  • discovering that our local donut/kolache shop, Instant Donuts, is going to reopen after going out of business back in May

Coming up in August
Morrigan leaves for Kansas on the 21st, and Ambrose is supposed to start college on the 24th if all that comes together (lots of last-minute stuff with the community college plans). And somehow – guidelines have been unclear and contradictory – school is supposed to start for Laurence again on the 17th… And I’m torn about what I’m going to do, as I’m also supposed to start school this fall but have yet to apply (they have rolling admissions) because of all this pandemic stuff…

I also have a few goals for August. That shoe above is a color-by-mile challenge that I discovered in mid-June. I was already behind where I should be, and haven’t managed to catch up yet. My goal for August is to walk, hike, and/or run at least 60 miles to get a little closer to where I’m supposed to be to hit 500 miles this year. That’s going to be HARD in this heat! I’m also planning to further cut down my coffee consumption. One good thing about being in WI was that I had limited access to coffee, and so cut it down from three tumblers to two most days. I’m going to work on getting that to only one on most days. There are also only a few weeks left of my Summer Break Quarantine Goals, and have seven left to finish. Some won’t get done due to being in WI for a month, but I think I have a reasonable chance to accomplish most of them!

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Sunday Coffee – Favorite Photos of July

Posted on August 2, 2020 by Thistle

My photos for July are going to look quite different since I spent most of the month in Wisconsin! But here they are – and as always, these are taken by me with no filters on them. I’m not a good photographer and I don’t claim these are all great photos, but I love each of them for one reason or another!

Left to right: I clicked to take a photo of Lexie, who was lying calmly on my shoulder, when she stealth-licked me on the mouth and this was what the camera caught (ha!!); my in-laws’ front porch that I love so much; a celebratory breakfast of stuffed french toast with fruit

Left to right: Ash looking far healthier than he did when we left; Laurence’s haircut with Ambrose photobombing behind him; homemade cherry pie

Left to right: Wally enjoying the sidewalk; a beautiful purple flower with tiny bee in the center; my new awesome haircut

Left to right: fun flowers in my MIL’s garden; out on the trails now that I’m home; the one time I “hiked” in WI, photo of the canopy above us

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