Reality Check

 So once again, I’m bummed out as I have failed to keep up the pace during my 4th attempt to complete a 25-mi event this year… This week I will complete my 8-week course of PT for my back, which has been helpful for my comfort level even if not so much for my fitness. Also, early Thursday morning I go to see the cardiologist although I have no great hopes that he has much to offer me (just following through).

Last night as I wallowed in self-pity, I printed out my complete endurance riding history, which of course has been far from perfect! This season I am batting 0.200 as I have attempted 5 rides but only completed a single one successfully (February’s San Antonio event: mild weather & a great comfortable pace on the first loop, riding with my friend Kathy) But other than my failure to keep up the pace on Thursday, my summer pilgrimage to New Mexico was overall a net positive - even as I describe the bumps in the road!

Christina had previously told me that Catie would be unable to go as she was up to her earlobes in band activities, but she texted me on the 4th to say that Catie could come after all. Great! I only had to do some minor repacking &, most importantly, find a farrier for Baraq as my new guy had already come & gone the previous week. Thankfully, it all worked out as Hope (fellow rider & amateur farrier) would be attending (isn’t her name appropriate?)

I had already planned for myself to attempt the 25-miler on Thursday, have Friday off for my R&R, & just do the Intro ride on Saturday as I knew I would be starting my return trip. Thankfully I was able to transfer Catie to my friend Kathy on Friday for sponsorship** as she was going for her 3-day Pioneer ride. (They had a great time)

** all junior riders under the age of 16 must have an adult sponsor

I drove all the way there Tuesday so we would have a full day Wednesday to relax & recuperate (& get Baraq shod as I mentioned above). I had just stretched out for a brief nap mid day, but then poor Tina Fea fell off the bunk & suffered a grand mal seizure. She scared the heck out of Catie, nor did it make me feel good either - one category of medications I do not carry in my emergency kit are anticonvulsants! I made do the best I could with sedatives - what I could not answer is the chicken-or-egg question: did she start to have a seizure & fall out of the bunk, or fall from the bunk & hit her head to trigger the seizure? The ominous wildcard factor is that she has developed acute glaucoma in her right eye, which could be a sign of an underlying tumor…

At any rate, my poor baby continues to struggle, but I will not allow her to linger if the situation appears hopeless. Her appetite is poor, she’s lost more weight which she couldn’t afford in the first place! & when I got her back to the clinic to run some bloodwork, her kidney function is in decline…

I rode the Intro Saturday with an old friend Dawn, who was very nervous riding her green colt - but as it turned out, Twoie was the one who dumped me when we approached the tunnel under the highway coming back to camp. (He was startled by another rider’s sudden appearance) No harm, no foul as I landed upside down on the slope - I joked with Dawn that it was another unofficial bone density test! (Dawn is about my age & has had her fair share of injuries too)

I didn’t take very many pictures but here’s a few:

Don’t disturb the napping teenager!

Another Loop on the Rollercoaster

 Whelp it’s kinda like TX weather - all I’ve gotta do is wait a little bit… Z called me yesterday  evening all bummed out & telling me he’s “Done”. (He’s had 2 therapy sessions, to see how he got along w/2 different therapists. Part of it is frustration on all the time “wasted” on filling in history - the simplest question of “Where are you from?” is complicated since Z was a “homeless” child of divorce. He never knew life outside of fractured households since M divorced me when Z was 11 mos old) I don’t know what to tell him, other than apologizing while offering to pay for said therapy?

While I must admit, I was never impressed w/V: I thought she was superficial, immature & very high-maintenance - I still wanted Z to find love & I cannot shoehorn him into my expectations. He seemed to find purpose in months past, trying to make V happy. But life can’t be an endless series of vacations, restaurant meals, & shopping trips…

Z was meeting his friend Josef (who served dual purpose as Best Man & “Bridesman” - what do you call a male bridal attendant? - since Josef is friends w/both of them) for dinner, so I hope his input is helpful…

Sunk Cost Fallacy

 I’ve made it through Hump Day; in many ways feeling as if I’m barely hanging on… Folks, this has been a rough month & we’ve still got one more week to go!

§ swirling marital drama with the kids: I should not allow it to affect me to this degree, but I can’t help getting sucked in (right now they are reconciled; Zach started seeing his own therapist so I suppose “no news is good news”) Ironic laugh related to all the years I offered to pay for his therapy, but I didn’t expect it to turn out quite like this!

§ poor lil’ Tina Fea has developed acute glaucoma in her left eye -I’m no ophthalmologist but I suspect her lens has become dislocated. I’m struggling to keep her comfortable; her appetite waxes & wanes - I’m torn between taking her to a specialist for a consultation**, but if the globe is blind & painful my only option may be surgical enucleation. It’s just been a week for sad/tragic cases - my lil’ waif is the least of it! But speaking of sunk cost fallacies, the time is probably going to come where I decide it’s best not to subject my tiny, frail, elderly dog to any more medical or surgical interventions. 

** I could easily invest a couple more $K in surgical intervention for her glaucoma, although as I said, if she is irreversibly blind it seems pointless to keep the globe.

§ My body is slowly & irrevocably showing me what it needs: cut out the junk food, do some yoga, give ye olde carcass adequate rest… I made an appointment with a cardiologist which isn’t until next month -good thing it wasn’t anything “urgent”, as I struggle with worsening shortness of breath & what feels like a constant weight over my sternum. At my lowest points, I wonder what I’m even doing wasting time & resources hauling off to New Mexico in 2 short wks, where I may not be able to complete my rides? But this gal’s gotta do what I desperately want to do - or at least make the attempt “one more time” before I hang up my chaps…

§ & this weekend will mark DH’s big 6-0; our neighbor is hosting some sort of luncheon on Saturday “the day itself” so I won’t shoehorn onto his event - instead I’m scheming to throw him a surprise party on Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately all of the steakhouses & BBQ joints which I know P would like best are closed on Sundays, so I made my next best selection. Let’s hope the Birthday Boy likes it…

Up & Down the Scale

 I lurched out of bed this morning in a frantic race to get to the toilet; my stomach had been unsettled all night. Straight to the shower for a thorough washup & there went today’s plans for any sort of ride - BTDT!

Probable causes: lapses in dietary judgment topped off by yesterday’s Braum’s cheeseburger. Doors seem to be closing off to me - Chick-Fil-A, Mickey D’s, now Braum’s. Of course it’s “good riddance”, all that fast food crap is no bueno… 

Z let V back home under the humanitarian flag of illness - staying out of it (of course) w/only one ironic comment about this being the “in sickness” part of his vows. Z called me Friday night to report that poor Adela (V’s grandma) had been hospitalized with a UTI & pneumonia. Like a good little drone**, I headed across town yesterday, planning to visit her in the hospital, only to find that she had been discharged! Thankfully, it was not very far out of the way so I just proceeded on to Andy & Adela’s house to deliver my flowers & fruit, & a small care pkg of brisket which P had smoked… I dropped by Z’s to deliver his last belated birthday gift: an AI art-replica book of our dear friend Charles; I thought it was something special. “The power of advertising”, I suppose.

** I consider Andy & Adela family members now, no matter how things turn out between Z & V. Adela called me last night to thank me kindly for the brisket; she said it was wonderful! (which it was, even though I could take no particular credit for that: you should’ve seen all the hopeful doggy eyes when P was carving it up, looking for scraps!)

Z expressed an interest in attending the Buddhist temple - I said I would be glad to accompany him, but I didn’t hear anything from him this morning. I made P a poached-eggs-on-toast Father’s Day brunch which he seem to appreciate. Thankfully my own GI tract seems to have settled down. I read Mayim Bialik’s miserable account of her experience with GLP-1’s & count myself lucky to be part of that black-box warning (medullary thyroid cancer). It brought back echoes of when I was misdiagnosed at age 25: part of me envisioned becoming an ethereal waif on chemotherapy. Yeah, thanks but I’d rather be alive! While diarrhea is one of the hallmarks of my disease, I blame my mishaps on dietary indiscretions & my own souvenir of childbirth, a third-degree perineal tear…

“Weeks after I took that single shot, I found myself frantically pulling off the 405—to my law-abiding son’s horror—to lock myself in a convenience store bathroom for an indeterminate amount of time. “

A Day of Rest

 Absolving myself of the guilt from lazing around yesterday - treating Sunday like a true “day of rest”. My sole accomplishments were laundering my bed clothes (including the mattress pad) & clearing the kitchen counter of junk mail so it’s actually a usable surface. My subconscious rewarded me with a pleasant dream about my mother early this morning (I awakened at 5 AM but stayed in bed dozing lightly since I didn’t want to disturb mah little dogs!), even as the guilt over my increasingly rare visits towers over me like a tidal wave…

Z’s relationship seems to be in the ICU after what he described to me as “cheating”, which he later explained was “emotional but not physical” on V’s part. That roller coaster whipsaws around the tracks - they went on Z’s mini-birthday trip back to Vegas (6/06 - 09). Z had to hop a plane for a business trip to Midland Wed & Thurs, but started texting me as he was boarding his plane Thursday evening that he was “done”; he was coming home to evict V & be done with it. Yet they reconciled & immediately took another tiny staycation at a downtown Dallas hotel Fri & Sat. I met them for an early dinner Saturday to give Zach his belated birthday gifts - but most of all I wanted to see him with my own eyes to assess the situation. Z looked pale & haggard, but in a few brief moments I got w/him when Ms V went to the ladies room, he swore things were alright & they were trying to work it out.

Barely four months in & this prognosis appears grave to me... Of course I cannot fix these issues for my son, all I can do is "be here" as a semi-neutral sounding board. I carried on with my plans to ride w/Julz at the beautiful Wyatt Ranch Sat morning. I can only pray that Zach might experience the therapeutic benefits of a nice ride sometime soon.

                                           A slightly different perspective on Ye Olde Rugged Cross

Wasted Days & Wasted Nights

 (Subtitled: “Val pays the toll for peer pressure”)

My trail-riding crew had a campout planned for last weekend - “Return to Ebenezer”, a nice campground on the shores of Lake Sam Rayburn deep down in SE Texas… however, I originally was not planning on going since tomorrow shall be my son‘s 28th birthday; I had vague hopes that we might do “something” - at least dinner if not a day trip? (Z keeps speaking about the sights he’s been seeing during his travels for work, to which I have replied there are many day or short weekend trips we could take around N Texas to see & do some things! Hope springs eternal & all that)

My friends were all urging me to come on the campout, so I figured I could ask Dr W & let him be the deciding factor - when he asserted that he could work for me, all seemed well. Then the ominous weather forecast started piling up like thunder clouds: my fair-weather riders canceled! My Trail Husband Sam & I wound up hauling to LBJ Grasslands for a day ride Friday - I drove through one minor shower going up there & the rest of the day was just fine. The big storms actually didn’t come through until Friday & Saturday nights.

On Thursday I had the lagniappe of having a late lunch with my son when he was in Ennis to service equipment at one of the manufacturing plants; he was taking Monday & Tuesday off for his birthday (must be nice! I never had the luxury of taking a day off for my BD!?!) & he & his bride would be celebrating with another mini-weekend trip to Vegas. But then Friday evening, I fielded a disturbing series of phone calls - there was trouble in paradise. Z was in tears by the time we finished talking, but he declined my offer to come over - V was due home from work soon. Obviously they settled their differences since they boarded their flight to LAS Sat morning. V sent me a couple of photos last night, apparently Z pulled a few winning slots! Let us hope he is as lucky in the marital lottery...

Here's my friend Jonni's lush green photo of the Red Trail at the Grasslands which she took last Wed. If only I could stay out in the woods & avoid the travails of civilization! Gotta get on with my workday so I will suspend my whinging for now...

A Tour of Bristol

 “One name - many meanings”

An annoying husband-habit which dear Peran has worn completely out is wryly answering “E Texas!” when folks ask about his charming accent. Bristol is our tiny unincorporated settlement as well as a prominent industrial center & port in the UK. (It annoys me bcz P is telling a little white lie, implying he’s from Bristol when he’s actually a Cornishman, but why should I care if he’s impugning his homeland?!? It’s like a Texan looking down her nose at a Californian…)

The middle schooler in me is amused that Bristol is also the name of the human fecal chart, a diagnostic tool to figure out your bowel problems. My body more & more is insisting on better treatment (dietary-wise), as I think over this past week I’ve experienced the whole spectrum: from mild constipation over the weekend (I did not want to have to sneak off into the woods when we were out on trail, setting up our judging checkpoints for the riders), to a couple of oscillations of diarrhea, bloating, & indigestion. Ugh!

I know last weekend I ate too many carbs & too much of it thanks to our excellent camp cook. Alanna made chicken enchilada casserole Fri night & lasagne Sat night. I feared that dear little Tina Fea was gonna rupture herself eating so much - I had to limit her since she did make herself sick on some rice w/onion gravy from a new recipe I tried 2 wks ago (the flavors were great, but next time I need to find a more tender yet economical cut of beef - brisket was not the correct choice!) 

Heading into week 3 of PT for my back - I have not been terribly consistent on doing my exercises, but they seem to be helping. More concerning is my ongoing shortness of breath - I started using a new inhaler (Breztri) but can’t really tell much improvement (yet?). It is what it is - the dull realization has dawned on me that I’m just gonna have to manage, the cavalry’s not coming over the hill! It was discouraging when even MD-effing-Anderson had no good answers for me: “see ya in 6 mos” - yet I’ll won’t even have my co-pays paid off by then, so they will get to see me next year… Complicated by a little toxic nostalgia - Monday would’ve marked my 41st wedding anniversary if I had stayed married to H1. What a maroon I’d have been if that had happened! And Mijo’s 28th BD is coming up June 9 hopefully I will get to celebrate with him, but that old canard “A son is a son till he takes a wife” is absolute FACT. I refuse to be that overbearing, intrusive MIL, so I just text him interesting links to this & that, while waiting for him to call me. I know what William Shatner would say: GET A LIFE!!!

I need to line up my big photo dump, that gives me something nice to look back upon…

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2044138569645280/?fs=e&fs=e

If this links works, it shows one of our obstacles negotiated by riders last weekend.