After taking these photos while I was at a retreat in Union, I checked facebook and saw that a friend on holiday 35 miles away took the same picture at the same time. 🙂
Trillium are perennials, and picking the flower can damage the plant so much that it takes a few years to recover. In fact, it’s actually illegal to pick them from public lands in Michigan and Minnesota. So, just take pictures, friends.
yes, more pictures of my little adventure are on their way, but first: homework. The semester ends in two weeks, so all my procrastination is catching up with me.
I’m running away for the weekend; leaving Seattle in my wake.
Let’s just pretend that I don’t have 30 pounds of text books packed in my suitcase.
I’m headed off for a weekend of girl talk, yoga, beach combing and chick flicks with my ‘cancer girls,’ as my husband calls them. He always uses the possessive pronoun, your, as in your cancer girls. I’ve started thinking in those terms too: my cancer girls. It’s amazing, the bond you build when you go through a traumatic experience like cancer together. Maybe he’s right. I think, in a way, maybe we do belong to each other. I can’t imagine getting through cancer, or this time post-cancer (it’s never really in the past) without them.
Why is it that food purchased from the side of a truck always seems to taste better? We have some amazing food trucks in Seattle.
Seattle is making a name for itself with it’s foodie culture, but many may not know about the amazing food being served up on wheels around the area. There are, of course, the traditional taco trucks, but keep your eyes peeled for Thai trucks and Pho trucks, as well.
A day like this is heaven – Skillet and Molly Moon‘s Ice Cream food trucks parked right next to each other.
Hello Cholesterol!
And now, from around the interwebs…
Me: As Seen On…
GalTime: The Next Big One: How to be prepared – One of the best ways to help your entire community in time of crisis is to be prepared for that crisis yourself: learn first aid, get certified in CPR, and prepare a disaster kit sufficient to care for your entire household for at least three days. Each person, or family, with their own emergency food, water, and other supplies relieves the stress of support services trying to help those without. In this article, I give some guidelines and pointers for preparing yourself and your family for the next big emergency.
Awesome stuff I found while I was procrastinating on my homework
Hamster Central: One Month – I’ve been following Jen’s blog for a couple years now. She lives in Tokyo. This quick check-in, one month after the devastating earthquake and tusnami, came with news that the cherry blossoms are in full bloom. Cherry blossoms signify the ephemeral qualities of life. Hope Blooms.
All Adither: Mommy Blogger – Angie struggles with the label “Mommy Blogger.” I struggle with that, too. Sure, I write a lot about my kid these days, I consider parenting her the most important thing of everything I do, so naturally it will bleed in to my writing. But it’s not all there is to me. I also tend to struggle against labels in general, but I understand that, as humans, we like to categorize things. Where do you stand on the label?
Miss Britt: Everything you wanted to know about the big trip – I’ve written about this before, but it has really captured my imagination. Britt and her husband and kids are about to sally forth in a motor home, and explore the country for a year. Every time I think about this, my brain spins. So many questions. How to pay the bills? What about the kids? Here Britt supplies some answers, and even more fodder for my imagination as I ponder what adventure is next for my little family.
Not Martha: a weekend on Guemes Island – This post is actually a couple months old, but I’ve revisited it several times. I’ve been feeling the need to get away lately. To pack up my little family and go somewhere quiet, surrounded by nature – and the water. To hear water lapping against rocks, and birds singing and chattering in the morning. To let go of deadlines and due dates, even if just for a weekend, and sink in to a deep tub, or sink my teeth into a sinfully decadent yet simple dinner. To read a book for pleasure – without taking notes. Sigh. One of these days…
I like to think of myself as having superpowers. My favorite superpower is the ability to make things go away by not believing they are true. I’ve had a lot of practice using this superpower; I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer while I was still breastfeeding my baby.
That was practice using this superpower, but no success.
One of the first things that hits you over the head with a cancer diagnosis, after confronting your mortality, is the understanding that you are not in control. Control is an illusion. This is a very difficult concept around which to wrap your brain.
We’re constantly bombarded with messages about how we are in control. Make a plan and execute it. Just do it. We are the product of our own choices. Metaphors abound: in the drivers seat, steer the ship, drive to success, master of your domain (giggle, snort – if you got this Seinfeld reference, you’re old like me).
There is a lot of truth in these ideas. We are the product of our own choices – to an extent. But there is so much we can not control. The child with neuroblastoma did nothing to deserve that disease. They did not earn it. Neither did I.
For all this time we spend juggling – super-moms with all their balls in the air at the same time – we also live with this fear that one dropped ball will bring them all down. If we miss a ball, a deadline, a dental appointment, 50,000-mile maintenance check, the world will keep on spinning whether we pick up the peices and run to rejoin the party, or throw our hands up in the air in defeat.
Some of the balls are going to drop.
I worried so much after my diagnosis: How am I going to effectively parent my child, keep up the house, finish my degree, and battle this disease? I realized that I could not keep all those balls in the air. I made a choice. I decided that parenting and health were my priorities, housekeeping would get attention as I had any to spare, and I took a leave of absence from school. A year later my daughter is happy and healthy as she enters her twos, I’m nearly done with treatment though still battling fatigue, my hair is starting to grow back, and in January I returned to school full time. But, my house is still a mess.
I’m still making choices about my priorities. My house still isn’t winning.
Martha Stewart has a large staff of well paid employees that help her pull off all that magic. I don’t have to be Martha Stewart, and most of us have no hope of having a large, well paid staff to make us look good. What you see is what you get. It’s just me, Baby. Lovable. Imperfect. Flawed. With mutant genes running amok.
I am letting go of the illusion of control
I don’t want to give you the impression that I’ve got this fatalist attitude where there’s not much sense in trying because there is no hope of success. I don’t believe that at all. I try. I work my butt off. I pour blood, sweat, and tears into motherhood, and everything else I do. But I’m learning to distinguish between the things I can control, and the things I can’t.
I can control whether I provide a quiet time and space for my daughter to take a nap
I can not control whether she goes to sleep
I can control the amount and quality of the food that I eat, and I can control the amount and quality of my exercize.
I can not control my weight
I can control my own reactions to my toddler’s behavior, and I can control whether she has been fed, and provided ample opportunity to play and rest.
I can not control whether she has a meltdown in public
I can provide sufficient towels and a bath mat
I can not control whether my husband soaks the bathroom floor when he gets out of the shower
I can fight like hell, do everything prescribed, and more
I can not control whether this cancer comes back
Life got so much easier when I stopped trying to unbelieve what I didn’t want to be true. I can’t control whether or not I have cancer, I can only control my reaction to that fact. A huge burden lifted when I stopped trying to control things over which I had no control. I can’t control everything. I don’t need to control everything. The fact that I don’t control everything doesn’t make me less of a person, less of a woman, less of a mother. It makes me human. It makes me vulnerable. It makes me brave and scared at the same time. It makes me real. And it makes me more empathetic to everyone else around me.
Sometimes, the best things in life are unplanned. Usually, the worst things in life are unplanned. Either way, survival, thriving, requires the ability to adapt. In order to incorporate this new reality into my life, I’ve got to accept it. The more time I spend thinking it just can’t be true, trying to control the uncontrollable, the longer it takes to find a way to make the best of the situation.
I used to work for a cruise/tour company that was smaller, and a bit more intimate than most. This gave us the flexibility to chase rabbit trails, and make impromptu itinerary changes to take advantage of opportunities as mother nature provided. The director used to say “we have an itinerary so we have something from which to deviate.” That’s a little closer to the way I live my life these days. I make plans and set goals, I work towards them, but I try to stay flexible enough to change as necessary. That helps with crisis management; it also makes it possible to savor rainbows, and jump on opportunities as they arise as well.
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This week, the girls at SITS are discussing perfection and the art of letting go. Join the conversation (Linky included). We’re also using #SITSLettingGo on Twitter.
My grandparents moved to Alaska in the late 1940s. At that time, the state was very much still a rugged frontier, and everyone had an interesting story to tell. Grandma took notes, and shared them with me, asking me to publish them so the rest of the family could have easy access to these stories.
In this post, my grandparents set out into the wilderness on a train trip through central Alaska in 1947. Along the way, they encounter mountain climbers in the process of making history, and even set up a temporary dental clinic in a bathroom to help locals in need. As usual, these stories are presented in my grandmother’s own words with no editing on my part. I did, however, hunt down a few relevant links and images. You can find more of my family’s stories at McKinley Family.
I probably should have split this into two posts because it’s so long, but I felt like the most fascinating part was the second half. Incidentally, I ended up working on this railroad in 1992. One of these days I’ll have to write up my Alaska Railroad stories as well.
Once again, in her own words, Doris McKinley:
Doris McKinley – adventuring with the Lion’s Club
The only Railroad in Alaska is United States Government owned and runs from Seward, the port of entry, thru Anchorage to Fairbanks, a 471 mile life-line to the interior. It was built many years ago of Government Surplus Materials after the construction of the Panama Canal, and is in dire need of major repairs. The schedules are notoriously slow. If an engineer wants to flirt with a reprimand, a sure way to do it is to bring his train in on time! The speed limit for passenger trains on the straight-away is 25 miles per hour.
While awaiting completion of the dental offices in the new Sogn Building, my husband and I took a most interesting trip on the railroad, stopping at Curry, Mt. McKinley Park, and Healy. When we left Anchorage, we left all activity except strictly railroad behind. There are no railroad junctions or highway crossing along the entire route. Just wild hinterland!
As we were passing a rather extended, level, open area I was excited to see a complete rainbow. Both ends touching the ground – we looked but could not find pots of gold!
Several old fishermen boarded the train at Anchorage with all their paraphanalia. Then at various streams 30 to 60 miles out, they signalled the engineer, the train stopped, and they got off. A few days later, when they were ready to return, they would stand by the tracks, flag the train and ride in to Anchorage. – an easy way to get to camp!
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