An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during a thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
This is not a sad story, so bear with me. No one dies in this story. A car is injured, but we’re over that.
My husband has an unfortunate relationship, or anyway some unfortunate experiences with wild animals. He worked at Woodland Park Zoo and got on well with the wolf and the birds, but did suffer an injury from a frightened elephant that resulted in surgery many years later. He was not the one who frightened the elephant and he never blamed the elephant for his injury. He loves animals. There was also the time he pulled over to the side of the road because of the herd of elk, and while he sat in our nearly-new Honda wagon on the shoulder the elk ran into the car. The elk were fine, but the car almost died.
Ruby a couple years before she announced: “I’m not a baby, I’m a little girl” when she was three.
I assumed that a year was precisely 52 weeks, but had never done the math. That is odd for a lot of reasons, mostly because I was always good at arithmetic and algebra and geometry etc. I worked figures in my head back when I was running regularly in my 40s and 50s. Anyway, I created a calendar and realized that a year is more than 52 weeks. Add two days and a third during leap year.
The weather is changing. We have been grateful for rain, for cooling temperatures, and colorful leaves on our longer drives. Because nearly all my life has involved beginning school in the fall, this is the season for something new.
A year ago today, I decided to take charge of my daily habits, eat a better diet, lose weight, stop wasting food, and live a more physically active daily life. I was retired and so had time to devote to taking better care of myself, covid had forced me to shop less often and pay more attention to food in my fridge and on my pantry shelves, my Body Mass Index put me in the “overweight” category which was a risk factor for covid I could do something about (unlike my age), and I had begun winding down an intense creative production. I needed a new focus.
Three other events impressed me, one from personal experience and two from “authority” figures. When sitting and watching television, my fat pressed so hard into my belly that I sometimes experienced cramps and that seemed scary. An article suggested that humans need to fast for at least ten hours overnight to rest our digestion and that made a lot of sense to me. And Samantha Bee announced on her show (which I love) that “diets don’t work!” Well, of course they do, I thought. Nothing motivates me like a good argument. I had lost weight without trying during cross country season when I was often too tired to eat when I got home from a long day and when grief stopped me eating after my mother died.
And then I thought more about what both Bee was saying and my own experience of deliberately and successfully dieting after childbirth. The trouble with dieting is that what most people regard as “a diet” is something to do to lose (or gain) weight and then they return to the poor habits they had before. Surprise! They end up back where they started.
I needed a permanent change.
Usually Gary spots eagles after hearing them first. This one hadn’t made a sound. She was watching crows consume a dead bird. Maybe she’d already feasted, maybe it would be her turn next.
I would weigh myself every day, I would expect my weight to fluctuate, but I would track the same day of the week as the one that “counted.” I would meticulously count and cut calories, but allow for higher calorie days since that is actually helpful to maintaining a normal metabolism. Since I began on a Friday, the date that mattered would be the last day of seven, Thursdays. Over the past year my weight was stable 3 weeks, I gained weight by the end of 11 weeks, and for the other 38 weeks, I lost. Sometimes I lost a couple ounces, sometimes a pound.
I set up a chart on my computer to track what I ate each day. This was not merely a diet, but my intention to radically reform my eating habits: more vegetables and fruits, regular mealtimes, only occasional no- or low-calorie snacks. I set up a sample weekly menu (that I referred to less and less, whenever I was stuck about what to make for meals) and typical lo-cal meals, goal weight, and overall aspirations, appointments, and accomplishments—first to be “Normal Weight” according to my Body Mass Index, then to achieve my prior ideal weight during cross country season. I was in it for the long haul, and assumed it would take me at least a year to get where I wanted to be.
The chart grew more complicated as I went along. I added tracking for minutes and then miles I walked and where I went. Later I added miles run. I tracked my vitamin D and calcium. I tracked the days I went to the post office for my mail (once or twice a week) and grocery shopping (every three weeks). I measured myself so that I would know when I had a waist under 31″ because that’s supposed to be healthier for me. I regained a sense of limited control over my body and health.
My BMI is under 21,
I lost 40 pounds,
my waist measures 29″ and my hips are under 37″,
old favorite clothing stashed in a bin now fits (items I never expected to wear again but kept for their fabrics),
new LL Bean petite 6 jeans fit (in my youth, before size inflation, my measurements would have made me a size 9/10, and size 2 did not even exist),
I walk about 25 miles each week, and
I can run every other day.
A week ago I ran (most of) a 5k. I had not actually ever expected to run again, but when I hit my old cross country weight I began running short distances in June, hoping to achieve a mile, and gradually built to a couple of miles. The nearest Park Run 5k had rolling hills, but I only walked about a half mile of the 3.1 miles. My time was five or six minutes slower than what I could manage twenty years ago. That’s probably good news, but I have begun training on hills—short distances. So far, so good. My long range goal is to run an entire 5k after my 70th birthday in October of next year. Slow is okay.
Right at the end of my 5k in Hillsboro last weekend. Yeah, I was tired!
I might lose another 4 pounds or settle on the weight I am now. I know how to eat better while including treats, including ice cream (rarely and a half-cup at a time instead of an entire pint) and pie and cake and popcorn with butter (again, not so often and not as much as I used to eat). I eat what I know is enough instead of until I feel full—since it takes a long time for the brain to catch up and signal “full” and eating lunch at school for nearly all my life taught me to eat too fast. I do not feel discouraged if my weight abruptly pops up a pound or two—salted popcorn will do that, but it’s temporary. Feeling hungry might actually mean I am only thirsty or bored—I can live with that for a few hours before bedtime. I get to eat sourdough waffles (or toast with peanut butter or homemade granola) for breakfast. And I am breaking my fast each morning, because while I might eat 11 almonds as a snack before my morning walk, I do not breakfast until after I get home, lunch (my biggest meal) is around noon, and dinner (usually salad or roasted veg) is around five. If I snack beyond that, it’s tea or iced coffee with milk, 1% fat.
During our last-day-of-summer walk, I found limpets and agates, two pieces of seaglass, and a large hunk of Mt. St. Helens pumice!
The upshot? The trauma in our country and the world is completely beyond my comprehension or control, but I can behave mindfully in my own actions and choices. I feel physically better and I have regained healthy habits at a time in my life and because of covid where I felt the need to exercise such control. I am not in denial about my age, but am delighted at how much I can manage. (I nap.)
This morning I ran two miles on highway hills, more up than down since I ran up to the highway, to the top of the headland north, and then rolling hills past my marker, and back to walk down through the steep Hug Point parking lot. I found a machete in the ditch alongside the highway and carried it carefully all the way home. It needs cleaning and sharpening, but I am the person to do that.
Without meaning to brag (yet I know I’m bragging), the past year has proven a lot to me. I am proud of myself; I am both hopeful and grateful. I want to prove Samantha Bee wrong by maintaining this progress, by finding a healthy maintenance and maintaining as long as I can.
One of our tenants believes in the “good old days.” He is young. He thinks the fifties and sixties and seventies were times of idyllic freedom. I look at his long hair and think: You’d have been beaten half to death living around here in the 60s; you’d have been jailed for what you smoke. Times were only good in some ways and for some people. I had to wear a skirt to school every single day and had the bloody knees to show for it. School counselors, aptitude tests, and my own mother assumed my primary role in life was to get married and stay home with children. Gary was nearly expelled from school because his hair touched his collar and was not encouraged to pursue . . . anything beyond 9-5 employment or perhaps death in the war. (Gary graduated with honors from the UW and Phi Beta Kappa. He dropped out of grad school to care for his family while his father was dying of cancer.) Our opportunities were limited by gender and class and the draft. And we are reasonably smart and able white people. (So is our tenant, which might be another reason he’s nostalgic for a time that only looks good if you don’t look too closely.)
A crow was perched on top of what we term the “turnaround rock” because walking to and around it marks a three-mile journey from our home. That crow flew the instant I took my camera out of my pocket—the little black blot in the middle of the photo. I’ve been running a nine-minute mile three or four times a week, usually right past this rock. On the back side, the ocean goes quiet.
My 50-year high school reunion was this past weekend, about 200 miles north of where I’ve lived since soon after my undergraduate years. I did not attend. The group photo shows a fraction of my 600 fellow graduates standing shoulder to shoulder. Only a handful wear masks. A friend said she could not recall the events reported to her about shared high school experiences. But I wonder who of us can remember all events important to other people? In the group photograph she and her husband are the only people I immediately recognize.
Today is my high school reunion, the 50th delayed to year 51, and it is also my elder son’s 41st birthday. I will be baking a vegan, gluten-free, refined sugar-free cake later today. Our family is coming. They’ve had good reason to stay safe, isolated, and healthy. So that is the best reason for staying home. But there’s also the pandemic, which is the real reason.
We occasionally see crabs stranded by a high wave, especially in late summer. Usually it’s a big Dungeness so far up on the sand that it would bake before the tide came back in. Such crabs requiring two hands to carry back to a tide pool. We got this little guy—about an inch front to back of the body and furious at being noticed— back to a tide pool, and the tide was incoming. It probably lived. Continue reading →
Or perhaps the best part was this morning’s coyote tracks on the sand, the black oystercatcher pair, and Gary spotting the first hummingbird in our garden since April or May.
Gary says the best part of the 4th of July was when it was over. I’d argue that the best part was at 5:30 yesterday morning during our walk. When we got home, we opened up the house—every window and skylight. Then, in early afternoon, when people started beach fires, we shut everything back up to avoid the smoke. If we’d had company, we likely would have gone out and built a small fire on the beach. Instead we watched two episodes of a British procedural, and ignored the booms as much as possible.
Good news: The booming didn’t start until dusk instead of trailing out across the entire weekend. The bad news: The explosions were too close and didn’t end until well after ten last night. Even the echo was horrific.
There are always left-behind poop bags on the shore. And while I am here, there is a lot of recent talk about the toilet plume. Consider that anything you can smell is the result of molecules of rose petals or vomit or yeast or alcohol or whatever inside your nose. That’s the only way you can smell it—it’s inside your nose.
All persons in my county must be masked when visiting any indoor public space, beginning 1 July 2020. The county itself requested this. As a friend said to me on the phone: we’re a tourist economy and people come here from everywhere. We need some protection.
from NPR “Masks And The Outdoor Exerciser: Advice For Runners, Bikers, Walkers, Hikers”:
When outdoors: “experts I spoke to all said wearing a mask is a good thing. Now you probably don’t think you have the coronavirus if you feel good enough to exercise. But some people are asymptomatic – they never show symptoms – or presymptomatic – sick but not yet feeling it. Continue reading →
Memorial Day weekend and the sky is dangerously clearing. We might have wished that rain we woke to at dawn had gone right on. Our state is opening up next Tuesday, and the official word is: please stay home this weekend. That means that all the most aware and considerate people will stay home, but the self-important so-and-sos will be here. The whimbrels are already taking precautions. I’ve been working hard on stories cutting and fiddling, trying to catch every single error before sharing. Since I had a bowl of ice cream yesterday, I regained a pound.
But I have begun running.
When I first began running on April Fools Day of 1995, I was fully prepared to fail. Gary and I had always walked, but I am short and short-legged—nothing resembling a runner’s body. I had tried running once before in the 1970s, wearing totaling inappropriate shoes and overalls. It did not go well.
The head coach of the cross country team used to insist that cross country required no special equipment. He meant no protective gear or balls or bats, nets or courts. But running does require larger shoes, good socks, non-chaffing clothing, and for nearly all women a proper sport bra. [Fair warning—the rest of this post is mostly about running, literal running.] Continue reading →
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 