Damascus

Found Judd in Damascus, Virginia!!!

As my Susan friend says:

Yeayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!

Finally Melanies blog and Judd and Melanies excellent adventure combines!!!!!

Stories to follow.

SIgned myself in....

I need remedial work. That meditating thing isn't working for me yet.
I've signed myself up for a week long camp. Yoga Camp.

Last month I needed to rack up 30 CMEs (Continuing Medical Education credits) (these required to renew my license in December. ) I went to the Mind Body Institute at Harvard for a 5 day course in The New Science of Resiliency. They had days of scientists and physicians showing and citing research to show that people who overcome adversity, be it, depression, headaches, PTSD, chronic pain, etc, use the 3 legged stool of health, not relying solely on medication or procedures:  

www.americanmeditation.org 

The "Individual Self Care" can be boiled down to all the things you knew about:
1) sleep enough (every night)
2) exercise "regularly"
3) "good" diet

and one you might not have thought necessary:

4) meditation (or whatever practice allows you to separate the negative self-talk from your conscious mind.)

I have been practicing power sleeping for a week: sleeping at least 8 hours a night-- sleeping until I woke up on my own, sleeping without an alarm telling me to wake up. Nine days of it. Now it's back to setting the alarm for 5:30am. 

I can track my exercise and eating pretty well and it's never enough or good enough but I can work on it.  That's 3 of the 4 "self-care" musts.

It's the meditation piece I can't lick. I can't find 20 min a day or can't sustain focus 20 min a day or I worry more about doing it wrong than calming my mind. 

So, I've signed myself up for camp for the next 5 mornings to help.  Maybe if I do something for 5 days consecutively, it will become a habit. Wouldn't yoga/stretching and meditation help calm my brain ( and blood pressure and heart rate and stress response) --wouldn't that be a good life skill? 

October at Great Wass Island Camp

I haven't been to camp in a couple summers as there never seems to be enough time. So here I am at camp alone (with Daisy) with enough time.  Unlike previous years, there is now some cell phone reception right in the cabin (1 to 2 bars)  sometimes 3 bars if you get down the path. I do not feel entirely "off the grid" and can text civilization when I get really lonely. RIght now, I'm in Machias for the free wi-fi at Dunkin Donuts.  

I tried to have my mapquest find Jasper Beach but it led me down an island road where I only found PRIVATE-KEEP OUT signs accessing the beach.  Daisy and I walked around one public access beach (rocky beach) in Bucksport but the highlight (for my white dog) was rolling in some dead carcass remains of a sea animal and now her only blanket )which I brought to protect my car from hair) smells like very old rotting fish. Maybe the stench will wear off before she needs to sleep on my feet tonight.

The cabin is warm enough--warmer still when I turn on the space heater. It's overcast and humid (my hair-barometer can tell) but not raining yet and the sun is trying to peep through tiny holes in the cloud mantle.

the coffee rock out front- Slate Island in the distance

Here's the DAILY plan:
coffee on the rock looking at the ocean
read
write
meditate
walk the dog
knit/sew
clean or sort something
exercise
get 8 hours of sleep

Here's how meditation on the rock goes for me:
breathe in , breathe out, Daisy will wait for me, now the lobster boat is gone it will be quiet except for the lapping of the waves on the rocks, except now the seagulls fighting are so loud, acknowledge them and bring my focus back to my breathing, in and out, regular like the waves, except the waves are irregular because another boat just went by, am I supposed to acknowledge that my bottom is getting cold on this rock? bring my focus back to my breathing, I'm supposed to do this 20 min a day minimum, I wonder if I should set an alarm in case I get too focused, slow my breathing down, is my time up yet....

thus, I "meditate" for about 6 minutes ...
I'll try to relax harder tomorrow.

An emotional roller coaster day*

This was my last week at the VA Maine - Veterans Affairs Medical Center. People were so sweet to throw me a reception where many well-wishers came to say good bye. There was a luncheon pot luck, and letters, emails, flowers, gifts and gift cards. It was all quite overwhelming but also validating that I'd done some things right. And as happy and excited as I am to have a new job, I'm sad about leaving the many good people I worked with at the VA. 

It seemed a premonition of some unrecognizable sort, but yesterday at work, my government ID badge slipped off my lapel and fell into the "clean" water of the toilet.....I nearly flushed it away.... It did scrub up nicely and it did work today to open doors and turn on computers, but it got turned in with all the keys and government blackberry, etc.  I hope no one tells the NEXT acting /COS where that PIV card holder has been!

Janie picked out an extra treasure from the loot she received from so many people--a magical-looking glass orb that is art but can double as a sun-catcher or a reminder to attract positivity and shield my space from negativity. It will sit on my next desk and I will always think of my Togus colleagues. 

Oh fine! Now I bet everyone will want one.

Thank you !Thank you !-- You are super and you know who you are!

*From the Urban Dictionary:

1. Emotional [Rollercoaster]

The term Emotional Rollercoaster was coined by Dr. N. Amundson in dealing with unemployment, first in a research article: Amundson, N.E., & Borgen, W. (1982). The dynamics of unemployment: Job loss and job search. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 60, 562-564. It was most likely made popular when Nelson Canada published their booklet At the Controls:Charting your course through unemployment in 1987. Approximately 960,000 copies of this book were bought by the Gov't of Canada and distributed to people dealing withunemployment between 1987 and 1996.

"Shock! Relief! Sadness! Excitement! Frustration! Lack of energy! Hopelessness! Determination! People feel many different emotions when they are out of work. these feelings may be a bit different from one person to another depending on how you lost your job, how long you have been out of work, your future possibilities, and whether you can provide for your family or others who depend on you.

However, many of the unemployed people we talked with described similar patterns of emotions. They described these feelings as an "emotional rollercoaster" that kept them off balance… " (Amundson and Borgen, At the Controls, 1987)

Baxter in the Autumn

Oct. 4,5, 6

 I took Friday off to pack for Baxter. It was a reservation from 6 months ago and Judd is now, not here to help.  I had to put the ice chest in the back of the truck empty and carry loads of food to the truck bed (because I could not lift the ice chest into the truck full.) As recommended, my kitchen Rubbermaid Box matched my dry good Rubbermaid box and my extra-drinks Rubbermaid box so they would stack in the truck bed.  I had arranged to pick up Kelcy at his apartment at 2:30 and Ryley at his dorm at 3:00. Everyone was ready for me. We made it to Kidney Pond before the sun went down.   We drove over miles of the dirt Tote Road, red carpeted with leaves, orange and yellow canopy overhead. The check-in Ranger at Kidney Pond( Dean) said he’d be around til 8pm in case we had any questions (or just wanted to visit.) We didn’t really want to visit.  We wanted to cook our steak strips and sautéed onions/mushrooms before it got dark. Thank you Omer for the 2 burner Coleman. Stove.  I know how to turn that on. The boys were sweet to build a fire in the cabin stove so it would be warm at dinner time. The hot chocolate I brought in double envelopes was actually half hot chocolate and half freeze-dried marshmallows so we ran out early in the weekend. We had to warm up Arnold Palmer Iced Tea and turn it into hot lemon tea. I also had all the Judd-on-the-AT-rejected-Starbucks instant coffee. It was fine with the organic ½ and ½ I brought.`

Both boys were in various stages of a rhinovirus and weren’t sure they’d be up for hiking in the morning. We decided we didn’t need to be in a morning-hurry.

Saturday

We woke up leisurely around 8:30 and had bacon and eggs breakfast and packed three day-packs with sandwiches and gorp.  We could literally walk from the car to the trail head of Sentinel Mountain in .5 miles and that seemed easier than moving any cars for a harder hike. We were the first to register and were alone most of the hike. We saw many toads, and amazing mushrooms.  Kelcy called the white mushrooms, “angel wings” and the rest of the fungi looked like toad stools  (both toad poop-y looking and toad sit-up-on-looking.)    I did scream once and the boys didn’t know what I ‘d discovered, but they were sure impressed when it was a pretty long snake, side-winding down the path.  We sought trail names for each other: Kelcy had forgotten his hiking boots and I said he could walk in sneakers.  He said, he hadn’t brought sneakers, he had Birkenstocks.  I said Pat Harrison, a Peace Corps friend,  had hiked Mt. Kenya in Birkenstocks and she had.  Kelcy was up for the challenge.  We named him Big “Bootless” Foot. Ryley was training his OiS 7-phone  Siri in Spanish so someone named him “Swimming with Spaniards.”   I said I wanted my name to have Princess and Chipmunk in my name.  One of the boys said the trail name should include an adjective/adverb, an animal, and a body part.  One choice was Princess Chipmunk Turd. I pointed out turd was not a body part.  Other suggestions were Goat Princess or “It’s a Snake”-yeller. No one decided.

We ended up requiring several stops for tissues. I finally made myself a snot scarf – I had brought a scarf in case it was cold—it wasn’t THAT cold.   So, the scarf ended up like one of those “endless” towels in public restrooms, that you pull down for a clean spot…. I just needed to remember to not use the same  4 inches  of scarf twice…

At the top of Sentinel, there’s a small loop around the top for views in every direction.  We tried to find the most comfortable, best view for our lunch. We did end up seeing a couple other humans.  Up high, we had nanoseconds of  cell service and could blast out some FB and Instagram pics.  We were back at camp by 2:00 and happily relaxing on our own porch. We explored the library with it’s many books, board (or “bored” ) games and an odd bowling ball collection. We opted NOT to canoe or kayak.  The boys played horseshoes a bit.  We never figured out the real name of the “Bear Claw Mountain” we witnessed from Kidney Pond.

 Animals sighted:

Squirrels, loads

one fearless chipmunk

2 toads

1 snake

Spontaneous comments:

“look at the moss”

"look at the view"

"look at the leaves"   

Geography quiz at the peak :

where’s Kidney Pond?     point there

where’s Daicy Pond?      point there

Where’s Sentinel  Peak?–  epic fail !!!!….. as Kelcy looked around for it.  “ We’re standing on it!”

After noodles and “salad in a bag,” we warmed apple-raspberry pie on the top of the indoor wood stove.I taught the boys my remembrance of Judd’s parents’ couples card game:  “Up the river- down the river”  and we had a good time with our own version…. Ryley, laying Kelcy and I in the dust….

I loved all the slapstick humor of the weekend:  when Ryley asked if we had Twizzlers, I passed him the bag and said “knock yourself out”  and he hit himself in the forehead with the bag of licorice.

Sunday

We all slept in as long as we wanted.  I got up by 8:00 to a brilliant, bright sunrise in the front window.  It was still cold enough in the little cabin that I could build a fire in the wood stove and read my book with my “hobo gloves.”  (This is what Kelcy called my partial gloves/mitten tops.)  The boys were up by 9:00, tired of not-sleeping-well on the camp mattresses that squeaked every time you rolled over or got up to blow your nose. We opted to have pie/granola breakfast and to NOT make bacon and pancakes to dirt-ify all the dishes before packing up.  The boys lugged all the gear out to the truck while I swept and we were on the road by 10:21.  Good thing ,  because it turned out, both boys had Sunday homework. I was back in China by 2:30 and all unpacked, doing laundry.

Family roots in Keota

Susan always leaves flowers and chocolates and magazines by my bed when I visit her. She moved from Pittsburgh to Coralville, Iowa this year, so this is my first visit here. It's like a perfect bed and breakfast inn. Susan and I left for Keota about 8:20am after her twins were on the bus to high school. Susan was plugged into her Garmin and I was plugged in to my iPhone Mapquest. The two GPSs synched the journey most of the way—both had us going one hour and 11 minutes over miles of dirt/rocky roads through expansive fields of dried up corn and soybean fields. The dirt roads weren’t bad-- we just kept saying to each other that there must have been a less-direct, more-paved way there.  Susan had seen a table at her Iowa City farmers’ market, selling soap from Keota and she had mentioned my grandmother’s house to them before I ever arrived. The folks seemed to recognize the house picture I gave her or they recalled a story that the particular Keota house had burned down.  They told Susan what street to go look on: Ellis Street across from the church, near the copper-roofed house. 

the 40 miles between Iowa City and Keota

Downtown Keota

I did get a bit excited to see the Welcome to Keota sign and the Keota-labeled water tower over head.  On the web map, it had looked like Keota was about 12 blocks big—3 big streets times 4 smaller streets in a nice regular, rectangular grid. Downtown still has a Maytag Man and Zenith TV stores as well as a shop called Timeless Treasures. Our first stop was the Post Office where I had to mail a package. I showed Postmaster Diane Glandon my homestead photos and asked if she knew any Page family members still around. She called up Dean Ridley whom she thought would know because of his work on the Keota Eagle Newspaper.  He knew the house. He believed a picture had been in the Keota Centennial book.  Diane thought Stibe Peter might recall the family and he should be right along for his mail.  I left my cell number and we followed their direction to Ellis St and to the local cemetery down by the schoolhouse.  I took a picture of a lot next to “the copper roofed house.”  It seems my greatgrandparents’ house might have been big enough to take up two lots –one where there is now an apartment building on the corner and this empty-ish lot next door. Stibe did not  call.

Vintage photos of my Grandmother's house

the present day lot

The big find was at the cemetery.  I didn’t know if my ancestors were buried there at all, let alone in the Catholic vs. Protestant sides of the cemetery.  Susan drove past the schoolhouse right onto the cemetery road and we parked a little off the grass. We heard children laughing and playing in the distance as we each walked a row of gravestones.  The stones were situated, some facing east some west some north some south,  some flat facing heaven-ward, all in the same row so you literally had to walk in circles or weave in and out to see a family name on each stone.  One could easily miss the one family name you were seeking.  I followed Susan across the road to one plot up on the hill overlooking more dried up cornfields.  I went back across a different road while Susan moved the car.  About 4/5ths done with the looking, I found a large stone marked PAGE and beckoned Susan to join me with the papers and crayons she had pre- packed.  In front of the PAGE marker, I found a marker for my grandmother Eva, married to both August Schmitt (father of her 4 children) and later in life to Robert Kerndt. There were two flat stones for Eva’s two children, deceased in childhood, Donald – died in an airplane accident and Marilyn who died at 3 years old of pneumonia. Geraldine  (my mother) and her sister Greta were her two surviving children, though now, both deceased. A separate marker named my Grandmother Eva’s first husband, August Schmitt. Susan and I rubbed gravestones, took pictures, and Instagrams and posted to Facebook.  I really couldn’t believe it.

Some questions remain: of all the Page family names on the genealogy paper** I have, were these the last Pages in the area? Had none of those Keota Pages my grandmother’s age had children?   Why were there markers for Pages who had married into other families? (i.e. the matriarchs NOT the patriarchs of the clan?)

Susan, combing the cemetery for Pages

Why was there no place-saver for Grandmother Eva’s other two children (my mother and my aunt Greta)  AND, I’m pretty sure Grandmother Eva was cremated in San Diego as I attended her memorial (pretty in purple, pregnant with  Kelcy—I can find THAT picture) so, had my mother mailed Eva’s urn to Keota?  Or was this just a nice stone marker with the correct date?

**When looking in my cellar for my Grandmother Eva’s birthday book, I found an old letter from a William C. Page. I had mailed him back in 1978 about my genealogy. I had no recollection of this. He said I’d do better to look to my father’s genealogy if I was looking for DAR(Daughters of the American Revolution) membership. Anyway, he included a family tree dating back to 1765 from the cover of a family Bible from Brattleboro, Vermont.  I’ll include it next when I figure out how to format a family tree.

It was a happy sad feeling to find my roots, albeit so late in life.  I think it would have made my mother and Aunt Greta very happy to know I’d made this effort.  I can still share with my living relatives:  my brother Brent in Los Angeles, my five cousins Donna, Tracy, Monier, Kim and Kristie (Greta’s daughters) in Chicago and my surrogate grandmother, Ruth Morrison, who knew Eva when I was still growing up in San Diego.