Author: Doris

This is the regular morning dog walking crew. Maxi, Ruby and Lizzie.

Hey Lizzie, where did you go?

Lizzie’s human, Sharon, moved away this week.  Lizzie is still in the neighborhood, but now our schedules are totally off and I’m afraid there won’t be much walking together anymore.  We need to find some new walking partners.

I’ve been trying since the beginning of the year to get to the middle of the normal range for my BMI, which is (to me) an incredibly small weight of 123 pounds. I have not weighed that little since Edda was diagnosed with Rett Syndrome over 7 years ago now. And that was not the healthiest way to lose weight – I basically stopped eating due to all the stress around me. Around Thanksgiving of last year, I weighed 140 which made my pants just too tight and I coincidentally started taking a nutrition class as a pre-req for nursing school which was amazing and made me want to eat better and feed the family kale and liver. Anyways, with all the running and the eating well, I’m down to about 131 which is great, I never weighed this little and felt happy at the same time. I’ve really never been in better shape in my life than I am now.

I’d still like to lose another 5-7 pounds, but about a month ago, after running 10 miles in the Cherry Blossom, I’ve just started eating so much! And so many sweets. And once I start, it’s hard to stop eating a lot. Also I’m running a lot training for the half marathon, so I’m just constantly hungry. I just have to remind myself to eat more veggies and lean meats and not something like a pear tart I just had 15 minutes ago.

OK! OK, so maybe someday we can take Edda hiking in the Rockies. We’ve come up with a chariot design for her wheelchair and we have to find a good old wheelchair to convert to a mountain hiking machine.

Did I mention that I’m training for a half marathon? Somehow in the past year or so, I’ve become a pretty serious running. Serious meaning that I get up at 5:30 am to go running at 5:45 am in the cold and dark of winter. I can only do this because I have a good pal a few houses down and we get each other up and going. Anyways, we started to do some neighborhood races, 5Ks and then 10Ks and finally a few weeks ago, the Cherry Blossom 10 miler.

We walked not a single step of this crazy race and we did well considering that for the few weeks before the race, I had gotten really sick and basically stopped running for three weeks. So since we did so well at the 10 miler and it’s only another 3 miles to do the half marathon, we are training for it now. We’ll do it in a few weeks.

One of the things that I focus on when I think about Edda’s disability is that we can’t really go hiking as a family. I love to hike – we took a hiking honeymoon in the Rockies where we had our first argument as a married couple on Mt. Bierstadt. I love hiking because it puts me in the middle of nature and it’s cheap and there is nothing else really to do except talk or walk. It makes me really sad that we probably will never hike the Rocky Mountains as a family.

But this is not a story of sadness, it is the story of triumph! This weekend, with the beautiful weather and Vince off at Six Flags with a pal, we took Edda to part of the Maryland Appalachian Trail and probably hiked 3/4 of a mile with her. We have a large jogging stroller and we managed to go up rocky paths, ford a river and listen to Edda laugh her head off the whole time.

It was not a very challenging hike, we did see some folks who were enjoying a cold beer while hiking on the trail, but it made me very, very happy. It was not a very crowded, but we did see 3 or 4 other sets of hikers who all looked at us with a bit of curiosity and I think the beer drinking group even enthusiastically cheered us on by saying – GO YOU! Go us indeed…

I got into nursing school today!

I have this strong desire to go backwards towards non-electronic
devices. Photos on paper, scraps of paper notes, mementos that need to
be glued into a scrapbook.  Books on paper! I’ve been trying to get board games back
into regular rotation (instead of little games on iPhone screens). We’ve moved out coffee table back out to the
middle of the living room, we had it shoved against a wall for years
because we were afraid that Edda couldn’t navigate around it, but she
seems to do OK with it in the middle of the room. It’s been out for a while and she hasn’t fallen over it yet.  That coffee table
helps me pull out some games at a moments notice.

Both the kids were home sick today – slight fever, a little grumpy. I wouldn’t have taken either of them in to see the pediatrician, however, Vince already had a standing appointment for his annual check-up this morning. So he actually did see the doctor today. He got a tetanus shot today. I wasn’t there to see it, but apparently he did not cry in anticipation, nor did he cry during the shot. Brave boy.

Ruby enjoying a bone this weekend.

Dog treats galore! For my loyal blog reader, Sheila.