Quarantine Diaries – Week 20

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Thistle

I’m home!!!!!!!

There was really only one major news item in SA this week, so I’ve flipped back to my secondary formatting for this post. I really hope that the news cycle will remain low-key, and that things will slowly get better on a more permanent basis.

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 34,633 cases, a weekly case average of 1,084 new daily cases, and a total of 298 deaths. Thankfully, there was some slight improvement this week!

  • Friday, July 24th: 34,932 (+299), 313 deaths
  • Saturday, July 25th: 35,690 (+758), 322 deaths
  • Sunday, July 26th: 36,083 (+393), 323 deaths
  • Monday, July 27th: 36,438 (+355), 323 deaths
  • Tuesday, July 28th: 37,984 (+1,546), 335 deaths
  • Wednesday, July 29th: 38,930 (946), 342 deaths
  • Thursday, July 30th: 40,253 (+1,323), 347 deaths

Total cases for the week: 5,620 new cases, 49 deaths. Both of those numbers are down quite a bit from last week, though I admit, it can get very difficult to tell how things are truly going when one day there are fewer than 300 cases reported and another, there’s over 1500! So the weekly average is becoming important – and this week we had a daily average of 803 new cases. That’s down almost 300 cases a day on average from last week! Our hospital trend is very slowly going down as well – we actually had under 1000 cases in the hospital yesterday for the first time since June 30th! This is a graphic of hospital and ICU daily numbers from late March until this past Wednesday:

Weekly stats, updated every Monday, are also mostly good: positivity rate is down quite a bit to 17.7%; doubling rate is up slightly to 18 days. Sadly, pediatric cases now make up 12% of all our total numbers here (up 1% from last week), and another child under 18 has died. That makes three children dead from covid in SA. And yet, read on for the insanity that is the school battle below!

This week in San Antonio
The big news this week is the ridiculous battle over whether or not schools need to open in person. Recently, the TEA put out guidelines that said schools will still receive funding if they are closed (open virtually) due to local health directives. Our local area formed a team to deal with this, and after some discussions, they mandated that schools must remain virtual until September 7th. But this made people go crazy. School districts in neighboring counties objected to having their 1-2 schools in our county virtual. One of the mega-churches decided to file a lawsuit, claiming they should be exempt due to religion or some such nonsense.

(school supplies, 2020-style, grr…)

Then the idiot attorney general got involved, again, and wrote some blustering letter about how local officials had no authority to mandate anything for schools, despite the TEA’s guidelines. The TEA responded by reversing said guidelines, now telling schools that they can’t get funding if they are virtual solely for covid-prevention. Now there are new lawsuits from other school districts here saying that they should be able to get funds while doing virtual learning, and our mayor has written the governor, asking him to intervene against the attorney general. OMG it’s insane. School is supposed to start on the 17th for us, and our district still says that the first three weeks will be virtual. I suspect there will be a lot more battling and wrangling over the next few weeks!

Other notable happenings in the SA area:

  • Wurstfest this fall is officially cancelled
  • major covid outbreak at the local children’s shelter, which probably accounts for some of the increase in pediatric numbers
  • a hurricane blew through the coast, and SA had to prepare for evacuees while their normal evacuee shelter is currently being used as covid patient overflow; thankfully, no evacuation was needed (this time at least!) // pic is of our windshield while parked to wait out some major rain caused by hurricane bands – it was like being in a carwash!
  • library increased its book-quarantine from three to four days after they’ve been turned in – not sure what prompted this, but I hope no one has gotten sick from returned items!
  • another SA congressman came out to say covid is a hoax – these people are unbelievable!!!!!

This week at home
Up in Wisconsin, the covid numbers in my in-laws’ county are starting to skyrocket. When we arrived in late June, there were 31 cases in the county (population 45,000). As of a week ago, there were 96. Yesterday, there were 207. And yet, still no one is paying attention. On my last walk there, I saw dozens of high school students and teachers practicing for some kind of ceremony, all grouped in a large mass, no masks or distancing. This reinforced my resolve to head back to TX, a trip which we started on the 26th (after a fun birthday party for Ambrose on our last night there!). We split the trip into three days, stopping on the second day in Dallas to visit my sister and brother-in-law (wearing masks the whole time!!). It was great to see them, and then it was great to finally arrive HOME!!!!!

Of course, it was still a mess of few-people-wearing-masks every place we stopped on the way down. I don’t understand why people are acting so cavalier about all this. At least some places, like Buc-ee’s, was better on this trip than on the leg up (since Abbott finally made masks mandatory in TX not long after we left). In any case, because of the risk, we’re gently quarantining for the next two weeks. This means that we’re not really staying apart from Jason and Morrigan, since we all live in the same house, but I’m not going to go see my chiropractor, for instance, until I’ve had 14 clear days, even if my sciatica is begging for it!

But generally, covid aside, I’m so happy to be home again, enjoying my parks for hiking and running, upgrading my strength workouts with weights, having Jason-hugs for the first time in a month, petting my kitties. It was a good decision to go up north when things were crazy and Morrigan was still working, but it was also a good time to come home.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
It was one of those weeks that blurred by due to travel, but there was a lot of good too:

  • Ambrose’s birthday celebrations
  • seeing my sister and brother-in-law on the way home, plus meeting all her kitties in person and her new foster kitten (poor baby has ringworm, hence the gloves)
  • My boys got hooked on my favorite series (the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson) via audio of The Way of Kings on the trip southward!
  • We are home!! Hugging Jason, seeing Morrigan and the house and all the kitties…so many good things!
  • an absolutely amazing ST workout with dumbbells and a phenomenal recovery shake afterwards (adding fresh lemon = !!!!!!!)

I really hope this next week continues to bring lowered numbers and less news – and hopefully some sanity in terms of schools! What are they doing in y’all’s areas? Let me know how you’re all doing!

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The Shadows, by Alex North

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Thistle

Paul hasn’t been back to his hometown since he left for college 25 years ago. It was too difficult after the murder – a murder he was initially accused of committing – and the disappearance of another boy, Charlie. Charlie had once been Paul’s friend, but he was domineering, malicious, and power-hungry; obsessed with lucid dreams, shared dreams, and a fantasy dream-world led by a monster with a black shadow for a face and blood red hands. Now, there have been copycat murders, people hoping to “follow in Charlie’s footsteps,” but Paul knows nothing about this. He only knows that his mother is in hospice care and he must return home, bad memories or no. But the past can’t stay buried, and this tangled past of dreams and fantasies and murder is ready to sweep Paul under the moment he arrives.

This is my July Book of the Month selection. It’s funny, because I’ve kept an eye on BotM for the last few years, and have never really had an interest in their monthly selections. I signed up in June purely to get my hands on Home Before Dark, and figured I wouldn’t want to continue afterwards. Then July’s selections came, and several of them sounded really interesting. Considering that right now, I’m extremely book-oriented toward mystery, crime, and the (at least vaguely) supernatural, this sounded perfect for me. And it really was!

The description I saw prior to reading the book stated nothing about lucid dreaming or shared dreams. Honestly, if I’d known that this was a major thematic element of the book, I would have been even more excited. I’ve been fascinated by dreams, REM sleep, and all kinds of paranormal dream stuff since I was a preteen. When I was 15, I thought I’d base my career on studying the science of sleep, which even 25 years later is still highly understudied. Maybe my young self anticipated my future self’s troubles with severe insomnia disorders, eh? But beyond the science, I was interested in lucid dreaming, dream projections, shared dreams, etc. Not as a science, just as an interest. I used to play games with friends where we would try to “send each other dreams.” It was similar to playing on a Ouija board (something my sister and I did as well). And while I can’t say I believe in any of that stuff as an adult – or at least, not that it’s paranormal, because I think the subconscious can influence a lot of what a person dreams about and also remembers from their dreams – I still love reading stories about it. In other words, this book was right up my alley!

Mystery, with a touch of thriller, and a touch of the supernatural. Atmospheric. Dual narratives from the past and the present, and dual narrators of Paul and a detective who happens to share my name! It was a fascinating look into how a strong personality can pull others their orbit, the way a cult leader can gather a following. Charlie’s twisted personality went well beyond interest in the paranormal aspects of dreaming. He was a master manipulator, and remained so for a quarter century after disappearing. I think we’ve all come across a nasty personality like that, been tainted by it in a way that allows that person to haunt us well into adulthood, long after they’ve disappeared from our lives and have probably long forgotten us as well. This is a story of the things that make deep impressions on us in a formative time of our lives, and the way those impressions steer us onto the paths we take.

So there was a lot to think about, while also just being a really good creepy mystery. I will admit, I was blindsided at one point in this book so completely that I had to stop and go back and reread a bunch of things. It’s very rare for me to be blindsided like that in a book, and I imagine some readers would see everything clearly in a way I didn’t. It was quite cleverly done, and a treat for me!

I will definitely be going back to read The Whisper Man by North. The detective, Amanda, is featured there as well, and the case in that book is hinted at mildly in this story. Unrelated, but same setting, some of the same characters. It’ll make a perfect RIP book, as would this one if I’d waited to read it in Sept/Oct. I highly recommend it going on to some of y’all’s RIP lists! It’s a doozy.

Posted in 2020, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Lantern Men, by Elly Griffiths (audio)

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Thistle

I’m not going to leave a specific description of this book. It’s the 12th in the Ruth Galloway series, and I worry that anything I say will give spoilers for previous books. I would hate to do that, because this is one of those series that is absolutely lovely to devour. They’re mysteries, but the mysteries are kinda beside the point. The point is what happens to Ruth, and Kate, and Nelson, and Cathbad, and all the many other recurring characters who have been living through a decade of their lives since The Crossing Places (book 1). This is why I can’t give a synopsis. Each mystery is self-contained and wouldn’t spoil previous mysteries, but the circumstances under which each occur will give away spoilers for the characters!

What I can say is this: The Lantern Men was one of my top two most-anticipated books of 2020. I thought it was coming out in February, and then that turned out to be the release date in the UK only. The US had a June release date. Then that got pushed back to July re: covid. I’ve been going mental waiting for this book! I downloaded it from Audible the moment my pre-order was ready, and listened to the book twice through in a few days. It was everything I’d hoped it would be, and I’m already craving Book #13 (which doesn’t even exist yet on GoodReads!). I’ve not enjoyed every book in the series with equal fervor, but this one was particularly good, both mystery and the character-drama. Plus, I got my MIL addicted to the series since I’ve been up in Wisconsin, so now I have someone to discuss these with! Woohoo!

Performance: The audiobook was read by Jane McDowell. Like others from the series that I’ve discussed in the past, there were some sound effect manipulations (like phone calls sounding distant, to make it as if you’re hearing through a phone in reality) that aren’t my favorite. The reading itself is sound, though, even if it wouldn’t be my first choice of format.

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Sunday Coffee – Chaos and Celebrations

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Thistle

The last week and a half have been a bit nuts. Some good things, some less good, but lots of stuff happening both here and at home in SA. I needed a little catch-up post (one which has absolutely nothing to do with the Virus).

Family Reunion
Last weekend, my extended in-law family got together. Guests who were able to come included Jeremy (Jason’s older brother), Emmy (Jeremy’s wife, who I met in person for the first time), Tenille (Jason’s older sister), and Xarissa (Tenille’s daughter, my niece). Plus three additional doggos. There were walks, board games, lots of food, and general fun, but the big event was the kayaking. This part of WI is filled with lakes and rivers (hence the high humidity), and kayaking is a big thing. I last kayaked in 2012 because somehow I never did in the 2016-2017 year that we lived here. The boys last kayaked in 2016. Everyone was pretty experienced at this, even if our experience was a few years old. The river we went on was pretty shallow and had a low, lazy current. There was no reason for our trip to go chaotic, and yet…

(photo credit: Emmy)

Somehow, at least four of us got flipped over at one point or another. One kayak got caught in a tree. Two sets of keys were lost and found. One phone was lost and found. One wallet was lost but never found. What is normally an hour-long trip turned into three hours under full sun in 90-degree weather. Despite sunscreen and hats, quite a number of us got burns (though thankfully mild). Some of us (like me!) weren’t smart enough to wear swimsuits, and thus ended up soaked in all sorts of river water in normal clothes. Others of us (not me!) forgot that river rocks hurt and river shoes are a good thing. Despite all of that, it was quite a fun outing minus the few parts that involved escaping kayaks and lost items and cuts/bruises. We’ve never had quite so many Incidents. Perhaps we were just cursed that day!

Books
After months and months of not really reading, I suddenly read a huge spurt of books in July. It helps that a bunch of them involved revisiting some of my favorite worlds, including:

  • Empire of Dreams (from the Girl of Fire and Thorns series)
  • Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (from the Hunger Games series)
  • Lantern Men (from the Ruth Galloway series)

I also managed to stumble onto quite a few holds that actually caught my attention, so I didn’t immediately cull them and return them to the library. Perhaps my six-month long reading slump is over!

Water Heater
Back at home in San Antonio, the water heater went out on July 11th. It was the original that came with the house 23 years ago, and it rusted through. Jason ordered a new one, but it wasn’t available to pick up, and Jason’s car is pretty small, so he set it for delivery. It was supposed to take 2-3 days, but at that point, he got a call saying it would arrive by August 21st. !!! So he opted to rent a truck and pick the thing up himself, now that it was in stock. He was able to do so on the 18th, so one week after he and Morrigan lost all hot water.

(photo credit: Jason)

That day, he drained our old water heater first, to remove it. (Meanwhile, Atticus escaped the house and trotted back five mins later with a newly-dead bird in his jaws. He was quite upset, with a lot of hissing, when Jason took the bird away from him!) When Jason tried to remove the old, empty water heater, a pipe that had connected it to the a/c unit above disintegrated. So he had to call out a plumber/HVAC specialist. The guy arrived and fixed up the pipe so that they could at least have water in the house, if not hot water yet. The next day he returned to install the actual heater. Only 1) it turns out that while the hardware store sells this style of water heater (the squat kind for a lower cabinet, which is now against code but our house is grandfathered in), it doesn’t sell drip pans wide enough for it. That’s a specialty item that must be ordered. And 2) the closet was built around the water heater, so in order to get it out and put the new one in, they had to remove part of the wall. UGH. Pan was acquired and water heater installed on Monday, leaving just the wall to rebuild and the cabinet door to put back on. Jason finished this on Tuesday. In the pic, you can see where there will need to be wall-patches and paint. Sigh.

Haircuts
We figured this would be best to do in Wisconsin, in a county that’s had fewer than 100 cases (as of then, anyway), than to wait to do this in San Antonio again! My FIL recommended Fantastic Sams in Rice Lake, where they do an excellent job with safety: no bags/purses, max three customers, wait outside until called in, masks for everyone, etc. Ambrose cut off 5-6 inches, to get the deader ends off and make care easier while staying long. Laurence got his trimmed slightly and thinned out so there’s less poof. I decided to go a little extreme. I went back to my favorite haircut ever – an undercut with an inverted bob that I had in the summer of 2016 – only I also got bangs.

It’s shorter than I expected (I’d wanted chin-length dry, not wet) but I really like it! I’m super happy that my curls/spirals are back. They went away in 2014/2015 due to protein structure changes when I began drinking alcohol, but I cut alcohol from my diet over a year ago and everything left after this cut is new growth. To give a comparison – here is my haircut from 2016 vs now. (Since I don’t have a direct side comparison, I’ve shown two pics from 2016 – partial side and back.) I haven’t straightened or curled my hair in either photo – just washed it and put mousse in and let it air dry as I always do. Both pictures were taken day-of cut after first wash. The difference is insane.

Car Refinance
In June, Jason and I began the process of refinancing his car, because it had a ridiculously high interest rate (nearly 8%!!). Our loan officer was not the best communicator, and his lack of communication caused a lot of delays in the process. Nearly six weeks after we began, the refinance finally went through on the 13th. The check was cut and sent to the previous bank. By the time our automated car payment went through on the 15th, the old loan hadn’t been paid off yet. We figured it was going to take a few days. So we checked the accounts on the 19th…and it turned out that somehow a BIG mistake was made. The payoff got applied to my car instead of Jason’s. They had about the same amount of loan on them, so maybe that’s how the mixup happened? Either way, suddenly we had no loans on my car, and two loans on Jason’s, including one with an exorbitant interest rate. Thankfully, Jason called the bank Monday and they immediately said they’d fix the problem, and it should show up correctly within 7-10 business days.

Birthday
Yesterday, Ambrose turned 18. Two of my three boys are “officially” adults now. It was a very low-key celebration day. We had a birthday breakfast of sausage-egg-and-potato burritos. Ambrose discovered that in this household, the tradition is to find money in your breakfast. He got $1.80 in various change for his 18th birthday. He loved this and was laughing the whole time, and then opened up his gift from his grandparents: a shirt with a picture of a peanut on it, with the words, “Whoa! Stay back! I’ve got a people allergy.” Just last week he was talking about having a hard time making a birthday list, because he only wants “weird things like a shirt with peanuts on it.” It’s classic Ambrose, and he was delighted with the gift. And with the wrapping, which he turned into a “hat/mask.”

In the evening, we made shrimp alfredo, Caesar salad, green and yellow beans from the garden, and lemonade. There was an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen as well, and a few more gifts. Ambrose was in fine form all evening, doing all the Ambrose-things. It was a nice way to spend our last night in Wisconsin!

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Quarantine Diaries – Week 19

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Thistle

My mental health is poorly right now. Even though some quite nice things happened this week, I’ve been overwhelmed with anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, and general malaise. I finally hit my personal limit: It’s time to go home. I really appreciate that my in-laws have let us live up here with them for the last month, for our safety. I really do. But at some point, the need to be home – with Jason and Morrigan and my kitties and in my own home – starts to outweigh the need to be away from the pandemic spike in SA. I need to go home.

For those who feel a bit like me right now: 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!

-Friday, July 17th:
Local count: 27,525 (+478), 240 deaths. Texas had a jump of 15K cases, by far their highest daily increase. Official local health order put out today saying all schools need to be online-only at least through September 7th, with the possibility of being extended longer. Here in Wisconsin, my brother-in-law and his wife arrived for a weekend that involved a full extended-family gathering. Not exactly the thing you’re supposed to do during a pandemic, so I admit to being really worried about this, but it’s not my house, so there’s also nothing really I can do about it. At least it’s nice to see people again, and I know everyone is being super safe!

-Saturday, July 18th:
Local count: 28,633 (+1,108), 251 deaths. There actually isn’t much news to report today other than the gigantic total of new cases for the day. I have no idea when if ever this is going to get under control. We’re now two weeks out from the 4th of July, so we’ll see soon if people were careful or not. Up here, the whole family was together, kayaking and hanging out and generally having fun. And I have some good news: Natalie was feeling well enough to video-chat with me today, which is big improvement! Everyone seems to be getting better at her house, thank goodness!

(photo credit: Emmy)

-Sunday, July 19th:
Local count: 30,835 (+2,202), 257 deaths. That is not a backlogged number. That’s over 2k positive tests in the last 24 hours. It took us until May 17th, over two months, to reach that as our TOTAL cases, and now this. Our mayor’s facebook page tonight said, “With a sharp spike in identified cases over the last few days, it’s clear that our community didn’t take the Fourth of July weekend as seriously as we’d hoped.” This is what I’ve been dreading. Especially as this is only the beginning.

-Monday, July 20th:
Local count: 31,316 (+481), 262 deaths. New weekly indicator numbers are out: 22.9% positivity rate (slightly down), 16 days doubling rate (no change), and ~35% hospital admissions are covid-related (about the same). Children and teenagers now make up 1 in 7 cases (up from about 1 in 10).

-Tuesday, July 21st:
Local count: 31,867 (+551), 274 deaths. The numbers came out regarding children’s cases, showing that we’ve had 211 cases among infants under one year old. Oy. Additionally, the SA Symphony announced that it will cancel all its fall concerts and furlough all musicians and staff. It’s a decision that makes sense – they already did this for the spring concerts – but my stepmom is one of those furloughed musicians, so this hits home. // It was a tough day for me personally. I was jolted awake from dreams by a song (playing in my head, not aloud) from my teen years. With it came a severe presentiment that something was wrong with someone – not sure who – in my family. I’ve had a few presentiments like this in my life and they’re never good. The last time I was woken by a song interrupting my dreams was in 2014, the night my aunt passed away. Needless to say, I was quite scattered, anxious, and unproductive today. Too much coffee was consumed. (As far as I could find out, everyone was okay, though it took until evening to get that information.)

-Wednesday, July 22nd:
Local count: 33,555 (+1,688), 283 deaths. Bexar County Medical Society has come out and said they’re against in-person reopening of schools until the positivity rate is under 5% and there has been a persistent decline in cases for at least two weeks. Not sure they have any authority or say-so, but it’s nice to have another sane group advocating. As for us, we made the decision to leave this weekend or Monday to go back to Texas. Wish things had gotten safer instead of worse, but we need our family back together again.

-Thursday, July 23rd:
Local count: 34,633 (+1,078), 298 deaths. The county jail is current becoming overcrowded as the state STILL isn’t taking prisoners into the state system like they’re supposed to. This is creating an extra 300+ necessary beds at present and covid cases are picking up again due to the overcrowding there. Another new statistic came out as well today – 1 in 4 cases of people admitted to ICU for covid later pass away from it, as well as more than 40% of those on ventilators. Aaaand to make things even more fun, there’s a hurricane on the way to San Antonio!

We ended last week’s horrific numbers at 27,047 cases and 229 deaths. It was another big week, with a total of 7,586 new cases (daily average 1,084) and 69 more deaths. As you can see from the graph, this is fewer cases than reported last week. However, last week included about 5,000 backlogged cases. If those are removed, this is still trending upwards, with daily average higher than the last two weeks, and our weekly death number is our highest yet. Not nearly out of the woods.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
As I said in the beginning of this post, I’m struggling to keep my head in a good space right now. Here are the highlights that I tried to focus on this week.

  • meeting my sis-in-law Emmy for the first time in person (she of the red hair in the photo near the top of this post)
  • an afternoon kayaking adventure
  • getting my second-best 5K time
  • Natalie feeling well enough to video-chat with me!
  • an actual cold front up here, beautiful temps like the 50s and 60s that I never experience in San Antonio July
  • the most amazing homemade sour cherry pie (which I did not make, only enjoyed)
  • an awesome new haircut
  • Culver’s picnic with the boys and their grandparents
  • watching my sister’s foster kitties untie her shoes !!!
  • The read-along chapters for Rhythm of War (Nov release) have arrived! Every week will be another 1-2 chapters to read up until the book is released. This is my most-anticipated book of the year and I loved the read-along experience with the previous book – super excited that this has started!

I really hope y’all are faring better than me right now. By the time I see y’all in next week’s quarantine diaries, my family will be together again, hopefully without picking up covid along the way home.

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Wellness Wednesday – Personal Ah-ha! Moments

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Thistle

Last week, on my third day of severe insomnia and a bit delirious from having been awake since 4:15am, I had four major ah-ha! moments throughout the day. Probably due to the delirium, I could only remember three of these moments the next day (sigh). I’m not sure what made this particular day so productive in terms of mental clicking, but hey! I’ll take it!

Revelation the First: Strength Training

As a competitive swimmer through adolescence, cross-training was a big deal. We did all kinds of exercises ranging from simple cardio workouts to basic weight-lifting. There was a weight room by the pool where we used stations consisting of hydraulic machines, weighted cable machines, and bodyweight equipment (like pull-up bars). We did not do free weights – there was probably an insurance reason for this – and perhaps because of this reason, I have never been enamored of barbells and such. I follow a great many women who lift weights, and I see them getting super excited by squatting heavier barbells and deadlifting more weight etc. And I have no desire whatsoever to do these things, the same way I can be happy running 5Ks without ever being tempted to train for a marathon. So for years, I’ve kinda just thought of ST as supplemental to my workouts. A thing I have to do, the same way I have to eat those veggies I don’t particularly like in order to get in the right nutrition.

(2013)

The ah-ha moment: Actually, I DO have particular strength-related desires and goals. No, I don’t care about deadlifts or squats or that bizarre Turkish get-up thing. You know what I care about? Pull-ups. I remember being an 11-year-old kid in sixth grade, looking up at the record board in the gym. Pull-up records were recorded as such: Boys – 18 (6th grade), 21 (7th), 18 (8th). Girls – 1 (6th), 0 (7th), 1 (8th). F— that! I decided right then and there that I would not only break the girls’ records, but I’d get up to that 21 pull-ups that was the highest record. And I did. In 8th grade, I did 21 pull-ups nonstop. (Notably, the coach didn’t care or count it, despite watching me do it. That record board, last I saw, remains 1-0-1 for the girls, grr.) In 10th grade, I again did 21 pull-ups nonstop, after two sets of 10 pull-ups during a cross-training session. Y’all: I LOVE pull-ups. When I began losing weight a decade ago, my goal was to be able to do at least five of them again, and I was up to four before my major abdominal surgery in Jan 2014. This goal – plus others like being able to do skater/pistol squats, and crow pose, and headstands – is my focus in strength. Maybe I don’t like free-weights, but I DO love being strong and achieving big things in ST!

Revelation the Second: Modification

After five years of yoga practice, I know what my body can/can’t do. My shoulders, for example, are not very flexible. There’s this practice that involves a forward fold with your hands clasped behind your back. They’re supposed to raise toward the ceiling when you lean forward. I can barely raise mine an inch above my back, and it’s awkward and painful. It’s just one of those things my body can’t handle, or so I’ve thought for years. Then on this particular insomnia-fueled day, I was talking to my friend Stephanie, and as part of our conversation, I happened to look up photos of this pose. In one of them, there was a modification included. Y’all – I thought I knew all the various modifications in yoga by now, but clearly not. Immediately, I tried it out. Lo and behold, my arms went way up toward the ceiling the way they’re supposed to! I’ve been skipping this exercise for years, and now I don’t have to anymore!

Revelation the Third: Coffee

I’ve been talking about trying to quit drinking coffee for months now, and I’ve been thinking about it for years. For a long time, I’ve suspected that the coffee is deep at the root of why I suddenly started gaining weight rapidly in 2014, and why I haven’t been able to lose weight in all the years since. Particularly as the times when I’ve cut back to a single cup per day, I have been able to lose. And yet, for all my talk, I haven’t quit. I’ve barely cut back. I keep putting it off, trying other things, blaming circumstances and addiction and who knows what else. I thought admitting this was an addition problem was honest and brave. It wasn’t. Because the true reason finally came through to me on the evening of this insomnia-driven day.

(2016)

I have not – cannot – give up coffee because I’m terrified of what will happen when I do. This is my last and best hope for my body. If I give up coffee and that proves to be unrelated to my inability to lose weight, I have nothing left. No hope, no answers, nothing to try. This is my last grasp at some control. I’ve experienced total lack of control when it comes to my weight. During my 11-year illness from 1998 to 2009, my body paid no heed to the things I ate or the exercise I sweated through. That is a completely demoralizing and terrifying mental place to be in. After ten years of it, I gave up, and spent the last year of my illness not trying at all. It wasn’t good for my mind or my body, and I cannot bear to get back to that place of hopelessness again. So I cling to my coffee, because while I do, I still have hope that there may be an answer out there, and I’m not just out of luck.

This is a major mental breakthrough, y’all. Just knowing the root of my mental blocks is a huge step toward overcoming them. I still have to work through that fear, but now at least I know what I’m working with.

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Final Girls, by Riley Sager

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Thistle

A decade ago, Quincy barely survived a massacre. The media lumps her in with two other massacre-survivors, dubbed “final girls” in a nod to horror movies, as the things these women have survived are that horrific. Quincy remembers next to nothing about the night five of her friends were slaughtered in front of her, and she wants nothing to do with the other two “final girls.” But then one of them dies under suspicious circumstances, and the other ends up on her doorstep.

As far as I can tell, this is Sager’s debut novel under this particular pseudonym, though he’s apparently published under his real name before. It’s also the third book of his that I’ve read, only missing one of the four published since this one in 2017. In Lock Every Door (2019), I had mixed feelings – a fascinating book that went a direction I disliked. Home Before Dark (2020) was flat-out awesome, a mystery with psuedo-paranormal elements and a dual narrative. Final Girls (2017) came highly recommended by Steph the Bookworm, and since I liked Home Before Dark so much, I decided to give it a chance. My end-feelings are mixed much the way they were for Lock Every Door, but not for the same reasons.

This feels like a debut novel, even if it technically isn’t. It’s also not a mystery, but a thriller, and my longtime readers will know that I find many, many tropes in thrillers to be excruciating. Luckily, the book didn’t rely on too many of those tropes! Unfortunately, I fell into the trap I always fall into with thrillers: reading way too fast, until I feel sick and oversaturated with the story. This is the number one way a book will be ruined purely by the reading experience, regardless of what’s inside. If I don’t slow down a little, I’ll regret it. And I do regret it with this book, because as thrillers go, it’s an interesting one. Sure, the culprit(s) were pretty obvious from the beginning – there aren’t a whole lot of choices, after all – but most of the action, characterization, and psychology felt spot-on, with only a few tiny off-moments. As far as thrillers go, I’ll take this one over The Girl on the Train any day.

I’m just not really a fan of thrillers, as I’ve learned over the years. I probably won’t read the one Sager book I haven’t yet tried, because it sounds like it trends more thriller than mystery. Perhaps his genre** is evolving over time. Maybe the next one will be as wonderful to me as Home Before Dark. I guess we’ll see. However, if you enjoy thrillers, I do highly recommend this one. It didn’t work for me so much, but it may be awesome for you!

**I have since discovered that Sager’s previous books, published under his real name, were what looks to be mystery/crime fiction, so perhaps it’s less like “evolving” and more like “bringing in elements of previously published genres.” In any case, I might go take a look at that particular series (Kat Campbell series by Todd Ritter, which starts with Death Notice), and see if it works for me during RIP season. I’d love to have another good crime/mystery series to devour!

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

Race Report: Gabriella’s Cupcake 5K (Virtual) + Personal Milestone

Posted on July 19, 2020 by Thistle

This was the last 5K that I signed up for in 2020 before the plague took over. It was meant to be a non-virtual race in May that I was walking with Jason and several hiking friends. Then the event was moved to July with a virtual option, and later switched to full-on virtual after San Antonio’s caseload began to spike in June. Like I said before, I wasn’t planning on running this 5K, but walking it with friends. However, there was no reason not to run it now, seeing as I’m all solo up here in northern Wisconsin!

About the 5K: Gabriella’s 5K Cupcake Run started a few years back by a family whose daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer. This 5K raises money for brain cancer research. One of my best friends’ mother has had brain cancer four times, so this is a cause dear to my heart. You can read more about Gabriella and her 5K here.

Pic shows the race swag that is waiting for me at home: Shirt, bib, medal, bracelet, glasses, phone-holder, and a homemade sugar cookie that is replacing the traditional cupcake given out at the end of the run. Sadly, I will have to let Jason eat mine in addition to his because I don’t know if I’ll be home before it goes bad. Boo! I bought myself one of those cups of mini-Oreos as a substitute!

About my route: Not long after I first arrived in WI, I mapped out a course to walk/run (not for this event, just generally). I didn’t map the distance, only the course, and it turned out to be 3.2 miles – just over a 5K. It also had a few good-sized hills in it. I did this course both on 7/7 and 7/11. During the first training run, I did 5:00/3:00 run/walk intervals, and finished the 5K in 51:00. In the second, I ran all but 7 mins (split into three breaks), for a total of about 2.8 miles running (but not nonstop). My time was 50:23, my second fastest 5K ever. After these two training runs, I used a google-maps builder to map out an exact 5K, this time on mostly level ground, for the official race. I did a trial run of this route on 7/15.

Personal Milestone: When I went out on 7/15 for the trial run, I didn’t plan to run the full 5K. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I was up to that yet. Even on 7/11, when I ran 44 of the 51 mins, the longest nonstop section was 21 mins. I haven’t been able to run longer nonstop times/distances since I finished C25K in May (where I ran 2 miles in 33 mins, a 16:43/mi pace). But I felt really good, and I went out slow and careful, and by the time I was a mile into the run, I decided to try to run the whole thing. AND I DID IT!!! I ran the entire 5K. It may have been super slow – 51:45, a 16:42/mi pace – but I ran the entire thing, and kept my heart rate steady around 162 bpm, and it felt AWESOME! It felt even more awesome when I discovered that I finished the run in the exact same time as my Elf Run 5K. The Elf Run was on Dec 15, exactly seven months prior, and it was the walked/run 5K that made me want to become a runner again. That day led to this one, seven months later, and I was just absolutely thrilled to have accomplished this milestone!

The Cupcake 5K: Technically, I was supposed to sign up with a specific app and run live with everyone else. The app looked sketchy and required an account, so I decided to just do this one on my own. Doesn’t matter where my time slots in with everyone else! The morning dawned mild and super-humid (literally, the weather channel said 100% humidity!). Not my favorite weather to run in, but I got out there. I decided to walk/run this one, pushing the running sections a bit more to try to get a good time. My goal was to beat 50 mins, and in the back of my mind, I was hoping to beat my current 5K PR of 47:54. That second one didn’t happen – humidity is BAD FOR ME – but I did come close, finishing in 48:46, a 15:44/mi pace. It’s my second-fastest 5K now – only my second 5K under 50 mins – and I’m super happy with that time, especially in a virtual setting without all the hoopla of the race environment to get you pumped up! (I love and miss real races!)

Afterwards – and after stretching, showering, more stretching, and more stretching – I ate this amazing breakfast of stuffed French toast with all kinds of fruit, plus a cinnamon bun for good measure. Who needs mini-Oreos, eh? I’ll save those for another time!

This race crosses off the fourth square in my Running Bingo. I had a lot of different options for which square to cross off, and I’ve decided on the “virtual” option. This wasn’t meant to be a run, and it wasn’t meant to be virtual, but that’s what it ended up being, so this seems a good fit. Plus, I’ve realized that I’m not a super huge fan of virtual races, so unless I have a specific Bingo category in mind, I doubt I’ll sign up for another one. This can go ahead and cross it off the list. I’ll update this post with my new Running Bingo sheet after I’m home and can color it in. Here is my updated Bingo sheet:

PS – Jason also signed up for this race, and he decided to walk it this morning due to scheduling complications yesterday. I think originally he was planning to run parts, but he wasn’t feeling the best this morning with itchy legs, feet, and hips (a weird condition he gets if he’s not exercising as regularly as he should be). Not to mention it’s ridiculously HOT in San Antonio! He ended up doing most of the 5K without shoes because of the itchiness, despite the heat. Oy! But that’s my Jason – not a fan of shoes no matter the weather. Heh. He sent me this picture afterwards. I think he’s only pretending to be happy. 😀

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Quarantine Diaries – Week 18

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Thistle

This week (July 13th) makes four months since our first covid-positive case in SA. Back then, my family took precautions, canceling/rescheduling appointments, setting ourselves up to be at home for some time. Imagine: my well-woman’s exam was scheduled for April, and I pushed it back to July for safety’s sake. Ha. Ha. Ha. (It’s now pushed back again until September, will likely get delayed again.) I remember Stephanie telling me that she thought we would have rolling lockdowns for the next two years until we had a vaccine available. It all seemed so surreal. How could we NOT get things under control by summer? But I forgot. Americans are led by a narcissistic dumpster fire who couldn’t make a good decision if his life depended on it, and there’s a whole parade of politicians licking the guy’s feet. Additionally, our culture is obsessed with individualism, instant gratification, and one-upping each other. Disease management has become a political minefield. Ugh ugh ugh.

It would have been so easy to respond to the initial threat with quick pandemic guidelines and solid medical advice, to alter said advice and guidelines as we learned more, and keep people safe while also not crashing the economy. Anyone who says otherwise needs to open their eyes and look at what most of the rest of the world has done. I have a friend in Australia who told me last week that they’re going back into lockdown for six weeks. He hadn’t looked at the numbers for awhile, and when he did, he bugged out about Texas. Texas has 29 million people, Australia has 25 million. The day he looked, AU had just over 9k cases; Texas had 241k cases. I pointed out that San Antonio – population 2 million – had almost 18k cases that same day, twice the number of Australia even though AU has 12.5x the population. The mind boggles. Or really, it doesn’t, because what else can you expect of a country that has divided itself the way we have over the last 12 years?

Ugh, this, yes, because mental health is kinda poorly right now for many of us: 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!

-Friday, July 10th:
Local count: 18,602 (+923), 166 deaths. Today’s single new death is another child in their late teens. Another – not from today, but recently – was a 30 year old man who attended another of those horrid “covid parties,” thinking it was all a hoax. Not long before he died, he said, “I think I made a mistake.” Close by in Corpus Christi, a six-WEEK-old baby died of covid. I cannot fathom why folks aren’t taking this seriously!! It feels like we’re back at the beginning again, and in so many ways, we are. I remember when this all started in mid-March, and San Antonio’s big annual festival, Fiesta, was postponed from April to November. Today, it was canceled for 2020 altogether. It’s a good decision, but symbolically, it’s a blow. Nat’s brother FINALLY got his results today – positive – and they told Nat there was no reason for her to retest since she’s got all the symptoms and all four of the other people in her household are confirmed positive. (Pic: Isolating for safety’s sake.)

-Saturday, July 11th:
Local count: 19,137 (+535), 175 deaths. Another nine deaths today, including three in my age range. My heart hurts. At least the hospital admission numbers are starting to flatten out pretty visibly in the data now, and DOD medical personnel are headed to different counties in TX, including Bexar. (I just had a thought – for those of you not in Texas, “Bexar” is pronounced “Bear.”) I have to roll my eyes at the governor, who is waggling his finger at us and saying that he’ll have to send the state into lockdown if the spread doesn’t slow soon. If he ever gets to that point, it’ll be far too late. We already have parts of the state that have more patients than hospital availability, and we had another record high number of cases throughout the state again today. It’s so frustrating, because I really want to go HOME. I want it to be SAFE to go home! (Pic: more Wally cuddles as I miss my kitties)

-Sunday, July 12th:
Local count: 19,648 (+511), 184 deaths. The numbers continue to climb. Several reports in from around the country about people getting re-infected with covid months after recovering. Near the beginning of this whole thing, I went on a bit of a rant about the so-called covid parties attempting to get “herd immunity,” and now not only have covid parties proved to be deadly, herd immunity has proved to be a fantasy with this disease. I don’t know what this does to our prospects for vaccine, but this just sucks. I’m feeling grumpy today after waking up at 4:15 am for the third night of major insomnia in a row grr.

-Monday, July 13th:
Local count: 20,213 (+565), 195 deaths. New weekly numbers tonight: positivity rate up again, now at 24%, but our doubling rate has bumped up from 11 to 16 days, which is a good sign. Very little else to report, though I did see today some interesting news from the homeless community in SA. Apparently despite the city’s high positivity rate, the rate is only 1% among the homeless shelters and encampments, with only 10-12 people infected over the last four months. Makes me wonder if this is the trend nationwide. Meanwhile, I’m up in the land of no-one-cares-about-the-pandemic, and I was frickin’ annoyed that while I managed to get in to see a chiropractor for my sciatica today, not a single person including the chiropractor was wearing a mask besides me. Grr.

(screenshot from my facetime call home tonight)

-Tuesday, July 14th:
Local count: 21,067 (+854), 201 deaths. Another record high case day for TX with almost 11K. Some new stats from SA: 36% all hospital admissions are now covid-related, and 30% of all cases are folks with no underlying conditions. Also, homicides this year are nearly double what they were at this time last year in SA, many of them domestic-related. Gah!!! And to give an idea of how serious the hospital situation is getting here, there are now refrigerated trucks on standby for the dead when morgues overflow. In other news, there is now bubonic plague squirrels in Colorado, because 2020…

-Wednesday, July 15th:
Local count: 21,546 (+479), 208 deaths. After a bunch of threats from the TEA that schools won’t receive state funding if they don’t open this fall, there’s finally an exception in place. If local health officials order schools to be closed for in-person classes, funding will still be available for students in online classes. Local health officials in SA want to discuss this with the heads of school districts first before making any orders, but I’m hopeful about this. Also, Ambrose’s college put out guidelines, and most classes – hopefully all of his specific classes, but we don’t know yet – will be online. (Pic: I ran a full 5K today. Completely unrelated to covid but I had to celebrate!)

-Thursday, July 16th:
Local count: 27,047 (+5,501), 229 deaths. Note: Only 691 cases reported today are from the last day. The rest is a backlog of reporting from state labs. So…apparently we were doing even worse than we knew. A couple pieces of local news today. 1) The city has announced that city pools will not open at all this summer. 2) SA researchers are looking for participants in a vaccine trial, with the hope that a vaccine will be ready late this year to early next year (far earlier than I’d personally anticipate!). 3) Pregnant women in SA are testing 10-20% covid positive right now, despite being mostly asymptomatic, and with this comes the possibility of known-placenta-microclots leading to future problems with the newborns. This disease!! 4) Our school district has announced that for at least the first three weeks, all classes will be online, whew!

This week, we started with 17,679 cases and 165 deaths, and ended at 27,047 cases with 229 deaths. Apparently those case numbers were inaccurate, though, as we found out at the end of this 18th week of quarantine. There’s no way to know how many cases came when, so I just have to say okay, we had 9368 cases and 64 deaths this week. (We were looking at a slight improvement before that backlog, too!) Since we know those cases came from the last two weeks, I’m going to lump the two weeks of numbers together for average. This puts us at 14,169 cases in two weeks – notably, that’s more than 50% of our total cases – and 115 deaths (half!), for an average of 1012 cases per day. This is NUTS. It’s so bad, y’all. So bad. Top graph is the weekly numbers (non-cumulative), bottom is the cumulative weekly numbers.

An update on Natalie’s family
I’ve gotten periodic text updates from Natalie, whose entire family is desperately sick with covid. All five of them are in the vulnerable category, which makes this particularly scary. Her dad (sick two weeks now) has almost no fever left, has a bit of appetite back, and actually felt good enough to shower on his own on Wednesday. Her mom (who was largely asymptomatic in the beginning) had a couple bad days of symptoms but is mostly feeling better now, thank goodness (she has brain shunts!). Her brother is mostly doing better by now. Her husband is to the point where most of the chest pressure is gone and he’s mostly with joint pain, but overall feeling on the mend. And Nat herself, who was one of the last to get symptoms, is unfortunately still in the thick of it. She had the “felt better one day only to have it get much worse” in mid-week, with high fevers, terrible headaches, and on-and-off delirium. She’s also on an inhaler with specialized meds because of her asthma. I really hope she’ll also be on the mend soon! (Pic: Nat and me in May 2016)

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
It was a very discouraging week in terms of covid news. These are the few highlights that helped me to get through it.

  • my mom Polo-ed us video of a particular Hallmark Christmas movie scene that we always enjoy getting (long story, involves a mute button and Jason improving rom-com dialogue…in other words, a good laugh for us!)
  • one of my two most anticipated books of 2020 (The Lantern Men) finally released after several delays! (Yes, I finished it. Yes, it was delightful!)
  • That friend in Australia I mentioned above? His name is Oisin, and this week we talked via Zoom. It was the first time we’ve talked live in the 14 years we’ve been email penpals!
  • I RAN A FULL 5K!!! –>

What is your good news for the week? I need some positives!!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Warm-ups

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Thistle

When I was a preteen, on a day when I felt sluggish and tired, my dad gave me a piece of advice that I promptly filed away under the “whatever, dad” label. He told me that if he didn’t warm up properly before he practiced (playing trumpet) each day, he felt terrible. Not only would his practice be heavy, clunky, and clumsy, but the rest of his day would be as well. As I had been a competitive swimmer for nearly a year at that point in my life, he was trying to make a parallel to my swim practice. I didn’t see the value or relevance of what he said, and promptly ignored it.

As an adult who does a LOT of exercise, I still rarely make use of any kind of warmup. Sure, the yoga videos I follow have warmups built in, and before a 5K, I’ll stretch and jog in place a little and try to make sure my muscles aren’t cold before the start, but I don’t want to do too much and tire myself out beforehand. Otherwise, though, I’ve never seen much of a use for it, especially when it comes to strength-training. This probably sounds a bit stupid, especially coming from someone who does so much exercise (and has done so for nearly 30 years), but there’s a reason for it. It starts with The New Rules of Lifting for Women, which I read in late summer of 2012.

TNRoLfW laid out a seven-stage plan that lasted about six months, and in early September that year, I began to follow it with the intention of finishing around my 34th birthday in March. I didn’t make it through stage 1. Partly, that was the lack of proper equipment. It’s hard to squat heavier and heavier weights when you don’t have a squat rack and you have to start by getting the heavy bar from ground to over your shoulders. (At one point, I strained a muscle in my forearm and had to take time off!) Another big factor was the time. Even though the workout itself wasn’t too long, the workout + warmup + workout-warmup was over an hour! All of that left me feeling sore, exhausted, tired, and dreading the exercises. And the warmup was the absolute worst. Frankly, I didn’t see the point of doing bodyweight squats as a pre-warmup for low-weight squats as a workout-warmup for heavy-weight squats. That’s too many gd squats!!

(2013, before another ST program attempt)

Since giving up/failing the NRoLfW plan, I’ve attempted about half a dozen other strength training plans of varying levels and complexities. In the beginning, I always followed instructions and did the accompanying warmup. Inevitably, said warmup would tack on an extra 20-30 mins to the session and I’d be physical exhausted even before the real workout began. Needless to say, I never made it very far. So I started skipping the warmups instead. Now, the workouts didn’t take as long, but the inevitable fatigue, soreness, and days-long regret continued to linger. The last time I attempted this was back in May, with a very VERY beginner level workout. I think I made it through one of six weeks before I decided that I’m just not meant to do heavy ST and quit.

(except I actually do love feeling strong, especially doing pullups! Pic: 2014)

So that’s where I was in late June when I joined this GGS personal coaching plan. My biggest reservations about the program was the strength training portion. I know that muscle-building resistance workouts are crucial to build metabolism and keep your body healthy – I just prefer to do that as part of my yoga practice! So I chose the easiest program I could, for the easiest beginner level, with only two workouts per week. Unfortunately, those workouts came with a “warmup.” You know, a warmup that consists of mountain climbers, side planks, and walking lunges in addition to another seven exercises and/or stretches. The warmup looked harder than the actual workout! I knew I would never make it, and I dreaded having to try.

There is a lot of reading material that comes with this program, and part of it discussed the purpose of warming up before strength training. Supposedly, if you warm up, it prevents delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). Obviously, this had never been the case for me! I got the same amount of DOMS with or without a warmup. In my mind, avoiding that excruciating soreness was out of the question. But I thought, perhaps I could warm up using light yoga instead of the battery of bodyweight ST. After all, I enjoy yoga, prefer it to regular ST, didn’t want to remove it from my regular exercise routine to accommodate the new ST, and have experienced firsthand how much easier walks are if I’m already warmed up via yoga. (You’d think the expression “warmed up” would have clued me in earlier, but no matter.) I asked my coaches if I could sub the yoga in for the dynamic warmup, and they agreed.

Oh. Wow. I had no idea the magical effect a proper warmup can have. All those bodyweight ST warmups? They were too much for me, even back in 2014 at the height of fitness and strength. (T-pushups? No prob! Swiss ball inverted crunches? Can’t even feel them. Stupid frickin’ inchworm warmup? Oh god I’m gonna die…) It was like doing two to three ST workouts in a row back in the days of NRoLfW. I needed a warmup for the warmup for the program-warmup for the program… But using yoga to stretch and get my muscles loosened and ready to go? That has been incredible. I’ve been doing these ST workouts for several weeks now, and I’ve had absolutely no DOMS whatsoever. You know how you sometimes squat or lunge down – even in real life, not exercising – and you feel a muscle pull a bit and you know you’re going to be in pain and unable to sit easily for days? That moment of, “Oh crap, I pushed myself too far.” Even when I’ve felt that, which is most workouts because I have a tendency to push hard, I still haven’t gotten any residual soreness. I’ve spent the last eight years avoiding warmups because they didn’t help, and turned out all along that I was just doing the wrong kind!!

I’ve been doing light yoga before my runs these last few weeks, too, and it has made a substantial difference in how much I can run, and how much burning I do/don’t feel in my legs/hips/back while running. It’s nuts. What a discovery! Makes me wish I’d studied this all more carefully, or headed the advice of my dad all those nearly-30-years ago…

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