On the Lake

The houseboat trip went well. It could have been better. Boats are fickle beasts, and we had our share of issues with the runabout and one of the skis, but by the end of the week everything was working properly. One of the two fridges on the boat didn't work very well. The weather was really beautiful the first few days, then one really hot day, then it started to cool off and get really windy by the end of the week. Of course, on Saturday as we were docking the houseboat and getting all our stuff out to go home, it was again perfect.

I wasn’t feeling 100% the entire week. Part of this was not getting enough sleep. Between the cries of a 5 year-old in the middle of the night and dogs barking early in the morning and the constant noises associated with being on a boat, I felt tired most of the time. Daily naps helped but I’m sure I still ended the week with a sleep debt. We decided to bring our dogs at the last minute instead of paying $350 for a pet-sitter. They have a great time and we were glad we brought them.

My hormones continue to wreak havoc on my emotions and my physical well-being, and vacation didn’t stop this phenomenon. Wonder Boy with cast who couldn’t get wet didn’t have a good week. Or maybe he did, I'm not a good judge of that. I'm sure like any little boy, he can be annoying and manipulative and a plain brat, but he can also be loving and funny and smart. You would have thought by the fourth day of non-stop 5 year-old boy that I would be thinking, Geez, maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t have a baby after all. Yeah, that would have made some sense. Instead, I had a meltdown and sobbed. I’m riding my ski and crying, hoping that nobody will notice, but I had to stop and wipe the tears away so I could see where I was going. Wonder Boy is out skiing with his Mom and makes her pull close to me to ask if I am OK, which just makes me cry even more. D stops on his ski and I ask him how much longer I am going to be sad about this. He tells me we are getting there. This wound will never heal completely, I suppose.

All week long I am struck by the fact that the Blond Family is just that, a family. I watch the three of them on one ski, their symmetry and likenesses undeniable. D and I are a couple. Which isn’t necessarily a lesser thing, it’s just different.

Anyway, I had never been to Shasta and was pleasantly surprised at how clean the water was, how beautiful the scenery and how much wildlife there was. We saw a golden eagle, blue herons, tons of bats, blacktail deer and fish jump. We saw black bear tracks but thankfully didn’t run into any live ones.

We live in a densely wooded area and I found being out in the open very satisfying. As the day wears on the sun throws different colored paths of glitter onto the water: white in the morning, gold in the afternoon and pink or orange in the early evening. In spots the water was so clear and calm the reflection of the clouds on the surface made it seem like I was flying instead of skiing. Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Better Days

This has not been a good week. I won't bore you with the gory details, suffice it to say my car is in the shop (again) and one of our dogs had to make a trip to the emergency vet (again).

I've been driving a rental since Tuesday but I should be able to pick up my car tomorrow. I picked up over $250 worth of dog medicine today, and that was after D shelled out over twice that at the vet's yesterday. Ka-ching.

The dog is going to be fine. My car is going to be fine. I am going to be fine. Deep breath.

Saturday morning we leave for a long-planned weeks' vacation on a houseboat on Lake Shasta. This will be our third houseboat trip but my first time to this location. We're sharing the boat with our best friends and Wonder Boy, who has a cast on his right arm and therefore cannot go in the water. What a huge bummer, being 5, on a houseboat for a week and not being able to get wet. D's son and grandson are hoping to join us for a day or two, so at least Wonder Boy will have a small playmate for part of the time.

If things go as planned I will be doing plenty of nothing for a week. And by nothing I mean reading, listening to music, eating, drinking and playing on my jet ski. I will take lots of pictures to share with you all. In the meantime, here are a few of where we're going, where we're staying and what I'll be doing.

Yes, that is the actual boat we are renting, and yes, I am going very fast in this picture. Catch me if you can.

When did THIS happen?

I’m still very involved in the lives of many friends who are still trying to have a baby. I wish them all success, but I have to say I am glad that I’m not living in that space anymore. In early 2005 we pushed forward with our last IUIs (our 15th and 16th) even though the injectible drugs had little effect on follicle production and my hormone levels weren’t near where they needed to be. In fact, based on my abysmal FSH level and the lack of response to the drugs, my doctor spoke these words I will never forget: I don’t think you’re ovulating anymore, it looks like you’ve entered perimenopause. Just a few months before he was still a cheerleader for our success, now he was basically saying I should hang it up. Which we did. Not easily and not without a lot of sadness, but since we had agreed up front we weren’t going to do IVF, this was the end of the road.

Since then and especially in the last 3 months or so, the symptoms have been piling up. Since September is Menopause Awareness Month (like we need to be more aware?) I started doing a little research on this, my latest albatross. According to experts, there are at least 35 known symptoms of menopause or perimenopause:

1. Hot flashes, flushes, night sweats and/or cold flashes, clammy feeling
2. Bouts of rapid heart beat
3. Irritability
4. Mood swings, sudden tears
5. Trouble sleeping through the night (with or without night sweats)
6. Irregular periods; shorter, lighter periods; heavier periods, flooding; phantom periods, shorter cycles, longer cycles
7. Loss of libido
8. Dry vagina
9. Crashing fatigue
10.Anxiety, feeling ill at ease
11.Feelings of dread, apprehension, doom
12.Difficulty concentrating, disorientation, mental confusion
13.Disturbing memory lapses and simple forgetfulness
14.Incontinence, especially upon sneezing or laughing; urge incontinence
15.Itchy, crawly skin
16.Aching, sore joints, muscles and tendons
17.Increased tension in muscles
18.Breast tenderness
19.Headache change: increase or decrease
20.Gastrointestinal distress, indigestion, flatulence, gas pain, nausea
21.Sudden bouts of bloat
22.Depression
23.Exacerbation of existing conditions
24.Increase in allergies
25.Weight gain
26.Hair loss or thinning, head, pubic, or whole body; increase in facial hair
27.Dizziness, light-headedness, episodes of loss of balance
28.Changes in body odor
29.Electric shock sensation under the skin and in the head
30.Tingling in the extremities
31.Gum problems, increased bleeding
32.Burning tongue, burning roof of mouth, bad taste in mouth, change in breath odor 33.Osteoporosis (after several years)
34.Changes in fingernails (or toenails): softer, crack or break easier
35.Tinnitus: ringing in ears, bells, 'whooshing' buzzing etc.

I have 25 of these. 25! I am only 42, how is that possible? I can’t look to family history for guidance, since my mother had a complete (and probably completely medically unnecessary) hysterectomy in her mid-30s. If I am going to be suffering all these slings and arrows I would like to request that my period just stop all together. It has been getting shorter and lighter, but even that feeds the evil endometriosis monster. Seriously, who do I talk to about this? Doctor Ruth?

Because this is such a fun topic and we all need to laugh at ourselves in a public forum, there is (of course), Menopause The Musical. In Canada it’s called Menopause Out Loud due to some copyright issue, I think it’s still playing in Toronto.

From the National Post: “The baby-boomer tuner features four characters named Earth Mother, Iowa Housewife, Soap Star and Power Woman (actresses Nicole Robert, Rose Ryan, Jayne Lewis and Cynthia Jones) singing and dancing about hot flashes and mood swings via re-lyricized pop tunes from the '60s, '70s and '80s. Stayin' Alive becomes Stayin' Awake. Puff the Magic Dragon becomes Puff, My God, I'm Dragging. And then there's Looking for Food in All the Wrong Places."

If I rolled my eyes any harder I would cause a migraine, so I am going to stop reading about it now.

I also ran across this article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about a book recently published called “The Female Brain” written by Dr. Louann Brizendine.

She says, “Women have these extra “antenna” almost sticking out the sides of their cheeks and ears for emotional details and emotional nuance, and their brains are always feeling for emotional information at a level that men can’t even perceive. Therefore, things she may think are very important, he misses completely. Also, there are new things [in the book] about the mature female brain, when a woman’s brain circuit becomes fired up with doing her own thing. Her antenna for emotional information about the needs of others wilts a little, and she forges ahead with her own life.”

If I’m reading this correctly, she is saying that estrogen = empathy. No wonder I just don’t care anymore and have become so focused on making sure me and my needs are taken care of. See, there’s that silver lining.

On a totally unrelated topic, I am very excited that the Nip/Tuck season premier is on Tuesday! Julian McMahon is near the top of my list. You know what I mean.

Rainbows & Ice Cream

I guess there isn’t much you can say about a post like that last one, is there? No worries, gentle readers, this post is about shopping, and horses, and rainbows and ice cream.

My husband and I share an unfortunate disease. It’s called shopaphilia. We both love to shop, and this sometimes gets us into trouble. It’s not limited to one passion, like shoes, for example, which is fortunate, since that means that buying just about anything feeds the monster.

I get intensely focused on one item that I.must.have and I can’t rest until I find the perfect version of it. Last week that was a chocolate brown pencil skirt. A simple request, in theory, but in reality it was very difficult to accomplish this shopping mission. That’s because all department stores right now look like Stevie Nicks’ closet. You know what I am talking about: the broom skirt with the lace edge and just a hint of hand-dye distress; the long crochet cardigan with the self-tie belt of turquoise beads; the skinny jeans with the slouchy boot; the tunic top with the empire waist…all of it, just NO.

I also seem to have entered a twilight zone where there are few clothes that actually fit me and are age-appropriate. While I am immensely grateful that I no longer have to see belly-buttons on a daily basis, I don’t think we need to dress like the Amish all of a sudden. America does this in times of stress – we whip back and forth between extremes in everything from clothing to music.

I’ve yet to come up with a good explanation as to why I am buying new work clothes when I am generally only in a client’s office one or two days a week. In my own defense I am replacing pants and tops that I can’t wear because they are too small (ugh) and shoes that are too scuffed and worn to be appropriate for the office anymore. I am actually throwing things away from my closet as I put the new stuff in. I’m also buying on sale and/or at places like R0ss for the most part. Oh what the hell, I can afford it, and as they say, I’m worth it!

On to the horse talk. Once again it was a picture perfect day at the farm for my lesson yesterday. Every single time I’ve been there, every week for going on 12 weeks, it has been sunny with a cool breeze, like I ordered it up from the weather catalogue. I’m beginning to think there’s some sort of wish vortex at work there, a supernatural force beyond the gate that ensures I will have a good experience. Talk about a great marketing ploy!

For the last two lessons I’ve been on a somewhat lazy horse named Huey. It takes a lot to keep him going, even at the walk, you have to really get after him to establish any kind of rhythm, which I am not good at. But, once you get a little pissed off at him and really give him some hard kicks he realizes he’s fighting a losing battle and will start responding to more subtle clues. He does love to canter though! The first time I cantered I felt like my feet were flying out of the stirrups, so this time I shortened them up a notch so I would be pushing down harder, which worked wonders! I had several short stretches of time at canter when I felt completely in control and in the right position, a wonderful, if fleeting, feeling.

I had my first scary moment on horseback yesterday. Huey got spooked by someone coming out of the barn while at canter and pushed into a gallop with a little buck, just for a second. It was enough to send me soaring up out of the saddle and I came down hard, leaning way forward and grabbing at his mane. He calmed right down and I was able to regain my balance without falling, but my heart was in my throat. My teacher congratulated me for staying on the horse and attributed that to my balance. I attributed it to good luck and my deep desire not to break my arm or my back or anything else.

Speaking of...my surrogate California family have had a run of bad luck lately, in which Mom has broken both an arm and a leg (by falling off the washing machine in the garage), Dad has had a pacemaker installed and Aunt broke her arm while ice skating. Today I got a call from J, he was in the ER with 5 year-old Wonder Boy -- he broke his arm and dislocated his elbow falling off the monkey bars at kindergarten. I can't tell you how thankful I am that I've avoided this trend.

Sorry, I lied before, there are no rainbows or ice cream in this post. I hope you will forgive me and keep reading.

Breaking the Cycle

Last night I watched the Dateline special about “outsiders”, although it could have been called “Sexual Abuse is Rampant in America”.

The first story was about an Amish girl who was raped more than 100 times by her brothers and cousins. Here’s a good article on the whole awful story. She escaped and prosecuted her brothers and other members of her family who assaulted her, but they got such light sentences it’s almost laughable. In one court appearance the brothers were disputing their sister’s recollections, not of the events in general, but about the number of times they had raped their. Mary said between 100 and 150, they said it’s more like 75 to 100. Are you screaming into your computer yet?

The second story was about the arrest of Warren Jeffs, the so-called prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which has polygamous communities in Arizona, Utah, Texas and Canada. He’s wanted in Arizona and Utah on felony sex charges in connection with polygamous marriages involving minor girls. These girls are expected to produce a baby a year as their “duty” to their husbands, who in almost all cases are 3 or 4 times older than their child brides.

The third story was about a 29-year-old named Ricky “Davidito” Rodriguez, who was born into a group called The Family (aka The Family International, Children of God, or God’s Salvation Church). From The Wave magazine: “Started in the ’60s in Oakland as a community devoted to sexual liberation (they even claimed that sexual relations could exist between adults and children, until public scrutiny forced the group to issue a declaration of condemnation against pedophilia in 1986), the Family promotes awareness of the impending apocalypse in which Family members will lead the battle against Satan as Jesus Christ returns. Today, the Family boasts 8,000 “full-time missionaries” in more than 100 countries. [One of the scariest sentences I've read in a long time.]

Ricky stabbed a Family board member to death before killing himself in an attempt to track down the secret location of his parents. Turns out he wanted to kill them, too, in revenge for raising him amidst alleged rampant sexual abuse. Rodriguez claimed that by the age of nine, he was having daily forced sex with scores of women to prepare him for becoming a group leader. In a video he made the night before the murder, Rodriguez is seen loading bullets into his gun and saying, “Anger does not begin to describe how I feel about these people. I’ve seen how ugly humans can get.”

Being abused changes you. You can rise above it if you are lucky enough to have a good support system and are willing to face the pain of healing, but for some people there is no escape other than to hurt themselves or others.

All this on the heels of the dropping of charges in the JonBenet Ramsey case against the now infamous John Mark Karr. Have you heard the recordings that are allegedly Karr speaking about JonBenet and how it would feel for the killer? Creeeee-py. At least California is willing to prosecute him for the child pornography charges he fled the Bay Area in 2001 to avoid. Where did he go? To Thailand, one of the world’s biggest playgrounds for pedophiles.

Angela Shelton’s words never rang so true: you can’t tell what a person is like or what they’ve been through just by looking at them. This is doubly true for perpetrators. I generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but if I had a child, all bets would be off when it came to protecting them.

*sigh* There is still so much work to be done to break the cycles of abuse and sickness that pervade our society.

The Roots of Riding

All my family live in Canada, most in BC but there are others sprinkled across Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario as well. I'm one of those people who feel the need to be in contact on a regular basis, with both friends and family (my mother excluded). I'm much better at it than anyone else I know, which is often disappointing. But, it's not about what I get back, it's about what I give. Since riding has become a passion of mine I've been sending pictures and updates and the universal response I've gotten back is "Who knew?". I don't know why this irks me a little. I realize that I wasn't a horse-crazy pre-teen with a poster of Black Beauty above my bed, but I don't think it's so far out of the realm of possibility that I would enjoy horses and riding.

In fact, I come by it quite naturally. I've always been a huge animal lover and always been athletic. My crazy grandparents had horses on their farm in Manitoba and I’m quite sure my paternal grandparents had horses on their sheep farm in Northern Ireland. Here’s a photograph of my aunt Anne at about age 10 standing on the back of Prince, with the mare Jessie in the background. Today she raises Arabians and her daughter also raises and trains horses.

My teacher called this morning to postpone today’s lesson to Wednesday. I’m bummed. I was so looking forward to entering that idyllic place where all my cares vanish as the gates open and I catch my first glimpse of a flick of a tail or hear a whinny in the wind.

According to this site, horses make six basic sounds: snort, squeal, nicker (three different kinds), neigh, roar and blow. Go to the site and listen to all the sounds, they’re fantastic, especially the Ranch Cat and the Turkey.

One thing I’ve already done some research on is going on a vacation that involves riding. I found one in Tuscany called the Centro Ippico della Berardenga (the Riding Center of the Berardenga). Make sure you check out the pictures on their site. For $150 a day you can stay in a renovated farmhouse, take lessons in the morning, a trail ride in the afternoon and spend the evening wandering through the narrow medieval streets of Siena, enjoying a glass of Chianti at its birthplace, the Castello di Brolio (pictured below).

*sigh* A girl can dream, can’t she?

I Prevail

If you’ve been reading for a while you know that I am an incest and rape survivor. This isn’t something I shout from the rooftops, but I am not ashamed or embarrassed to tell people my story, and when the situation is right, I do. I’ve been reading Angela Shelton’s blog for a while now. If you don’t know who she is, here’s part of your biography from her site:

"At the age of twenty-seven, writer and actress, Angela Shelton, who had already received accolades for her previous movie, Tumbleweeds, set out to create a documentary during the Writer's Strike. Her goal was to survey women in America by interviewing the women who shared her name. She threw a party to raise funds and convinced a crew of four to go on the road for 60 days in a rented motor home.

As Angela started interviewing other Angela Sheltons she found that 70% had been victims of rape, childhood sexual assault and/or domestic violence. This surprising journey also led Angela to confront her own abusive past and her pedophile father on Father's Day. The multi-award winning documentary Searching for Angela Shelton has started a grassroots movement of healing for survivors of abuse of all genders."

This should be shocking: 70% of this random selection of women had been sexually assaulted. Unfortunately, it is not, at least, not to me. Too often when I tell my story, the person either tells me they were also victimized, or at the very least, they know someone who was.

Yesterday I watched the video Angela recently posted on her site of a speaking engagement at NC State University. For a half hour I laughed and cried while she told her story and invited a woman from the audience to tell hers. I highly recommend watching it even if you aren’t an incest or rape survivor. She promotes some very important concepts that we could all use.

You can’t tell just by looking at someone what their background is. If you run into someone who is angry and hateful, they are probably fearful and hurting – show them some love.

Deal with your own stuff and don’t “litter” the world with it.

Tell your story.

Stop hurting yourself. I often ignore the most basic signals my body gives me – I’m hungry – I’m thirsty – I have to pee. Somehow whatever I am doing is more important than taking care of my own needs. I never resorted to cutting or burning, but I’ve been a life-long nail bitter, which is just a more acceptable form of self-mutilation. I’m a lot better than I used to be but I still fidget with my cuticles and often draw blood. I can’t count the times I’ve lain in bed trying to fall asleep while my fingers throbbed, my body trying to heal itself by pushing extra blood to the damaged tissue.

Don’t carry about anger, get it out (in a controlled and safe environment).

If the people who hurt you deny it or it’s affects, you will never be able to change them. Make peace with your relationship with him/her/them and find people who are healing.

Finally, she says -- don’t just survive, prevail.


Photo by Dan Beigel
The Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation, Inc.
Annapolis, Maryland