In approximately six months I will be 54 years old.

Yesterday, I got an invitation in the mail from the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) to join up – just $16 for a year’s membership – complete with a couple of fake cards for me to “keep in my records.” If I pay them some money, they’ll send me my real AARP cards and I can be a bona fide card-carrying member, eligible to receive their magazine and get all sorts of great discounts and deals.

Cool, right? Except I’m only 53 and a half, guys. I’m … I’m not a senior citizen!

My late grandparents were true senior citizens, complete with wrinkles, too much perfume, gray hair and big ears. My mother is a genuine senior citizen. She’s 77 and a half, very healthy and honestly, she looks no more than 60 to me. She has a great figure. My Dad was a senior, but he looked a lot younger than he was, too. He’d have been 82 last month if he hadn’t died from a freak bump on the head in 2005. He was basically healthy as a horse, strong and active, played golf several times a week, and had been on blood thinners for many years because of heart problems. He’d survived two separate heart valve replacements over the course of 20 years. But when he bumped his head that day, it caused a massive bleed into his brain, thanks to the coumadin. His time was up. Even almost five years after his death, it still shocks me.

So what is it, exactly, that makes us officially old? That letter from the AARP?

See, in my mind I’m the same person I was when I was 10: I’m gifted with a vivid, visual imagination that manifests itself most often in writing and drawing. I’m blonde and blue-eyed; rather tongue-tied and uncomfortable in social situations; I’m a gawky, average-sized person who loves animals and birds and star-gazing; and I’m smart, even if I’m terrible at arithmetic. I’m a whole lot tougher and braver than I look. I can be aggravatingly stubborn. I’m empathetic, loving, forgiving to a fault and compassionate, and I’m never quite convinced that I’m good enough. At anything.

That was me at 10 and it’s still me four decades, a few years and six months later. Sure, I’ve learned a lot since I was a child. Some of the lessons were very hard, but I wouldn’t change anything I did or didn’t do, looking back. I’m wiser than I was 10 years ago and a whole lot wiser than I was 30 years ago. I like me.

The most important thing I’ve learned is that I will never stop learning and will never, ever know everything, even though I did when I was 20.

I’ll concede that my body has changed. I can’t do some of the physical things I once could. I’ve had rheuma since I was 31 – practically a child! – and age has nothing to do with that. I have crinkles at the corners of my eyes and after losing 50 pounds last year, I discovered crepey skin on my neck and hands that hadn’t been there before because it was all puffed up with fat. This year, my hands started looking old to me, which is rather disconcerting, but they’re still good hands. I find gray hair not on my head but in my eyebrows, of all places. The still-blonde hair on my head is falling out and thinning alarmingly, it’s true. That’s not because I’m old, though. It’s just a side-effect of one of my rheuma meds.

And yes, even moderate exercise tires me out quite a lot faster than it used to. Once again, I blame that on RA, the bugger. Being physically un-fit doesn’t help, either. If I was fitter – and I’m determined that I will be, soon – I’ll bet I can run and jump just like the 10-year-old me once did. What fun that will be! Really, all it will take is some steady exercise, another 30 pounds of weight loss, and a whole lot of imagination. Those first two will be a real challenge, but the last will be dead easy for me.

As of today, I’m four pounds lighter on my feet than I was at this time last week. I feel better overall. My pants aren’t as tight. Yes, there’s a price. I didn’t get to eat pizza and I spent a fair number of days after walking quite sore and loose-jointed. But it’s already getting easier.

In the previous post, I linked to a man and his thoughts about healing, incurable illness, disability and living well. He’s a year older than I am. He’s got good Finnish blood and sisu* running in his veins, just like I do, except he has a bit more of the first. We’re dead even on the second. He’s lived his whole life with a disability – he’s blind – but he lives well both because of it and in spite of it. He likes the word “tempered” when it comes to describing himself. He knows he’s incredibly tough and resilient, his strength of body and mind forged in the fires of personal hardship. He has never allowed his disability slow him down much; instead he’s honed his talent with imagination and words into utterly exquisite prose and poetry. Stephen Kuusisto inspires me and others all over the world to do the same.

My body is getting older, but my mind remains very young. They’re both tempered. It’s a good thing.

*Sisu is a Finnish word I learned as a child (one of the very few Finnish words that survived from my great-grandmother, who emigrated to Canada from Finland as a very young woman. I was told it meant, basically, perseverance. Wikipedia goes further, though. Sisu, loosely translated, “means strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity. However, the word is widely considered to lack a proper translation into any language. Sisu has been described as being integral to understanding Finnish culture. The literal meaning is equivalent in English to “having guts”, and the word derives from sisus, which means something inner or interior. However sisu is defined by a long-term element in it; it is not momentary courage, but the ability to sustain an action against the odds. Deciding on a course of action and the sticking to that decision against repeated failures is sisu.”

Writer, poet and teacher Stephen Kuusisto has a wise and fascinating post up about disability and healing. He says:

… Principle One: sometimes it’s crucial to break the rules. Principle Two: We can’t always be healed but we can live well.

… We are all hoping to “get well” when we are fighting an illness or a disability. I recently attended a conference on writing and “healing” and heard lots of literary writers talking about how important their creative work was in terms of “healing” from illness. What was fascinating was the way every one of those writers assumed the easy use of “healing” or “being healed” as being analogous to the purpose behind human creativity. This is an old fashioned idea that many otherwise sensible people are still attracted to. Who would want to argue against this idea? Isn’t the goal of every therapeutic encounter to be healed?

Well no, not always. People who have disabilities or who are enduring an intractable illness are often faced with a different challenge, one that defies healing but which requires us to think about being well just the same. As a teacher with a disability who is increasingly researching the ways that culture influences our ideas about “ability” and “disability” I have come to prefer the old metallurgical term “tempering” to “healing” because it suggests that we are getting stronger without denoting a complete physical transformation.

Not every disability can be healed. I learned long ago that being “incurable” and being well are possible. But don’t go looking for this anomaly in the rule book. In effect what you need to do is break the rules that have long been established for how to think of being well. I am for instance the best blind sailor in my family. Never mind that I’m the only blind sailor in my family. I did in fact teach my sighted wife how to dock a boat. There’s no rule book for this.

Go read. It’s thought provoking and inspires attitude.

Update: In other news, yet another “late season” storm is blowing through right now. It’s cold and raining poodles and Persians out there. Really, really windy, too. It’s screaming around the eaves and making my big (really big) wind chime sing. And, I saw a poor little female hummingbird get blown away, literally, a little while ago. I hope she survives the gale!

With the drastic change in the weather comes an increase in the intensity of my hand and wrist pain, which is why I chose to link to Mr Kuusisto’s post today, along with the fact that it’s an excellent one and I love his writing and poetry. Doesn’t hurt that he’s a fellow Fin, either. He looks so much like my late grandmother it’s almost unreal. Masculine version, of course …

Time for a paraffin hand-bath. Thanks for visiting!

Today was Work in the Garden Day.

The mounds of soil to the left of the existing raised beds has to be moved to make room for the new ones. Once they're built, all that soil will go in them and we can start planting this season's vegetable garden. Whew!

OK, it was more like Work Up the Gumption to Work in the Garden Day. Breezy and 72 degrees. Sunny. I spent the morning washing, drying and hanging up clothes, since this was a chore that needed to be done, too, but I kept thinking about those rotting bales of straw from last year’s garden and how I needed to get out there and break them apart and start raking them over the weed-whacked Back 40.

This was because every time I look out the family room windows, I see the lumber Mr Wren bought and treated just prior to the last big Late Season Storm, sitting there, waiting to be turned into raised garden beds. Mr Wren was out, volunteering at the local Home and Garden Show with the Master Gardeners, something he’s done for the last three days. I knew he’d be pretty tired when he got home, but with yet another Late Season Storm scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday this week, if we’re going to get those beds done before mid-May, Stuff  Has To Happen.

So I put on my gardening jeans, my sleeveless T-shirt (might be nice to get my Vitamin D from the sun instead of a bottle of pills for a change, thinks I), slathered on SPF 50 sunblock (doesn’t that make the whole sun/Vit. D thing moot?), found my gardening gloves, stuck my gardening hat on my head, grabbed Finny and out we went.

I had two hours until Cary was to get off work, and she was making noises about wanting to go perambulating with me again. I figured I could get quite a bit done in two hours if I hustled and still have enough energy to walk two miles.

Heheheh. No… but I did get all those straw bales broken up. Turns out that after a long autumn, and a very wet winter and spring, they’re mostly rotted inside, some of them nearly into lovely black compost.

So much for actually raking the straw over the weeds. Most of it is un-rakeable. But a lot of it can be mixed into the soil to continue the process of breaking down into more rich soil, so now it’s a matter of getting it all out of the way so that the beds can actually be built. And, as the weeds come back, I figure weed-whack them down again.

Those weeds are my bane. They’re mostly foxtails, and once they put up their namesakes-like seedheads, not only do they reproduce themselves times several hundred per weed, the foxtails also get easily caught in Logan’s thick fur, his ears, his pads and maybe even his nose. The nose disaster hasn’t actually happened yet, but it has to our neighbor’s Irish Wolfhound. Cost her a fortune to get that foxtail removed from his gigantic snout, and I can only imagine the awful discomfort it must have caused him.

Why not spray the Back 40 with Round-Up, you ask? That stuff kills weeds dead! And so it does, but Mr Wren is Earth-friendly to a fault. His normally gentle lips curl into a scary snarl when such options are aired; he despises commercial, chemical herbicides and insecticides with an ardor that is truly something to see. So the solution has always been to simply weed-whack two or three times each spring, summer and fall, a hot, sticky, itchy, hellacious, two-day job. He did it. I provided band-aids, iced beverages and encouragement.

He can’t do it anymore, though. Age, osteoarthritis and degenerative disk disease prevent the kind of Supergardener escapades he was once capable of. And so I, with my own limitations from rheumatoid arthritis, ponder the task.

I think Finny was just as happy to rest today, too.

I worked for my two hours in the sun this afternoon. It felt great. The hours flew by, and by the time they were up, I was draggin’ tail again and my hands were throbbing ominously. I came inside, Finny in tow, and called Cary to see if she still wanted to walk. I was prepared to do it, really I was, but she said she’d changed her mind. Work had been frustrating and difficult (she does the production on the Monday edition of the local newspaper alone on Sundays) and while she’d met the deadline, she didn’t have much oomph left in her. I was just as glad. She might have had to carry me for the last mile.

I took another hot shower and washed the dirt and sweat away, then got started on dinner, using some spring onions and leeks that survived from last season (against all expectations) in a nice spaghetti sauce. The pasta was spinach and cheese tortillini. It wasn’t the wholegrain type (bad Wren!), but I figured I’d eat of them lightly and load up on the leftover beet-and-grapefruit-and-spring mix lettuce salad from yesterday.

And that’s what I did. Now Mr Wren is out in the garden, clearing space for the two raised beds. Each will be 16 feet long and five wide, and he’s making them 24 inches high so neither of us will have to bend much to tend them. He’s tired from his volunteer work earlier in the day, so I don’t expect him to get too far tonight. But that’s all right. We can get a lot done tomorrow (I’m ever optimistic), let the storm blow through again on Tuesday and Wednesday, and get back to garden-building on Thursday after a good rest. I’ll walk with Finny again tomorrow, too. And soon, we’ll start planting this season’s summer garden.

I can almost taste those sun-warmed Roma tomatoes now.

In the previous post, I wrote in the third update that I really, really wanted a hot bath, but that I’d have to settle for a hot shower instead (we have no bathtub; that’s another story) while the beets I’d roasted for a yummy salad cooled off enough to peel and cube.

I trudged into the shower. The steaming- hot water, falling from the wide rainfall-shower head, felt simply fabulous on my tuckered out, sore old self. OK, not as good as sinking into a deep bathtub full of hot water would have felt, but it was a definite close second.

I’d bought a jar of Neutrogena Energizing Citrus Body Scrub a few days ago on a whim; it’s made with sesame oil and granules of sugar, so they dissolve and don’t end up floating forever in the ocean or sludge up in the ground water, unlike the plastic sand that’s in a lot of other body scrubs these days. Have you ever heard of anything so completely, ecologically destructive and mindless? Check out Dr. Charles’ post on this subject when you get a minute. You’ll be appalled. Really.

But I digress.

I slathered on the citrus body scrub. It smelled wonderful, like an exploding lemon. And it felt good as I scrubbed my skin with it. Mmm. Made my skin nice and soft, too. Must be the sesame oil, I thought to myself. What a nice idea.

I turned to rinse off and my bare foot sliiiiiid on the oily residue that was now all over the shower’s tile floor, almost turning me into a shower casualty. Fortunately, I caught myself, but I was sure surprised. It was like standing on an oil slick. And not only that, my skin was like an oil slick, too. I couldn’t rinse the stuff off.

So I grabbed the bottle of  Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap. Sure, I’d smell like a lemony peppermint stick by the time I was done, but surely it would be better than the rather ripe, eye-watering, nose-hair-curling fragrance I’d been carrying around since my walk? I set to it. I love Dr. Bronner’s. It’s a wonderfully pure castille hemp soap, it cleanses gently and it never leaves any sort of residue. Plus, I have a feeling it could clean motor oil off garage cement. And the peppermint leaves you feeling all tingly …

Dr. Bronner’s got a little of the sesame oil off my skin, but not all of it. I poured some more of it onto the shower brush I keep on the window ledge for cleaning the tiles and scrubbed the floor so I wouldn’t go arse over teakettle when I got out – and so the next person into the shower also wouldn’t go unexpectedly flying. No go. I’m going to have to hang a sign on the glass shower door that says “Danger! Slick as cat sh*t in here!” and tackle that shower stall with Comet tomorrow. Sigh.

Finally, I was done. I dried off, climbed into clean jammies and slippers, dried my hair and went back to the kitchen, ready to take on the roasted beets.

I hadn’t tried the salad I’d be using them in before. I’d found Tracey’s recipe for it on her blog, “I’m Not Superhuman.” She’s a young health writer who has terrible, painful knees – and she’s a very good cook. Her recipes are always simple, out of the ordinary, healthy and really tasty.

You can find the salad, if you’re interested, at the link above. It involves roasted beets, cut-up sections of pink grapefruit, soft goat cheese, and arugula. The grocery store I went to didn’t have arugula (El Dorado County is one of the few staunch Republican enclaves left in California – and you know how Republicans feel about arugula!) so I got the spring mix (I think they sneak some of that lefty liberal arugula into it).

Tracey’s recipe called for a single beet (the recipe makes enough for two). I was going to get two of them, to feed the four of us. But the store I went to for the ingredients only had tiny beets, each about the size of an undernourished tangerine. I’d never seen such small beets before, but I went ahead and got five. I figured that would be enough (assuming the young’uns in the household would actually eat the salad. Ew, vegetables!).

The idea is to roast the beets until they’re soft enough for a fork to slide into easily, then cool them, peel them and cube them up for the salad. Easy, right?

Wrong. Not tonight. Those peels just didn’t want to come off those little beets. I finally managed it, but not without much cursing and staining my sesame oil-softened fingers and the cutting board a beautiful, deep crimson. Good thing I keep that Dr. Bronner’s handy in the kitchen, too! It de-stained my hands, but the cutting board remains pinkish. It’s sort of pretty.

So. I got the salad made. Drizzled vinegar and oil over it, as the recipe said to.

And then I broiled two nice salmon fillets. I’d gotten them at Trader Joe’s – frozen, wild Alaskan salmon in individual packets – a while back. I prefer fresh salmon when I can get it (and I do love that fish – it’s like eating life), but frozen is good enough in a pinch. Cheaper, too.

Sprinkled the filets lightly with garlic salt, ground some organic citrus seasoning over ‘em and stuck ‘em under the broiler. They were done in no time.

Finally! I could eat dinner! And I was so hungry. All this peregrination for miles has given me quite an appetite. Grizzlies fresh from their winter hibernation have nothing on me.

Well, the salad was as delicious as it sounded. Thanks, Tracey! It was worth waiting all that time for the beets to cool off, and worth the hassle of peeling them. The mix of flavors is exquisite. The only change I’ll make next time (and I will make this again) is to use crumbled feta cheese rather than the soft, mild, creamy goat cheese I bought. I think the sharp, salty tang of the feta will be delicious combined with the sweet and sour of the beets and grapefruit, and the bitter of the spring mix lettuces.

But the salmon … sniff … was simply awful. I can’t remember exactly when I bought it, but either it had been in my freezer way too long or they flash-froze old fish. It didn’t smell bad, coming out of the package, but it sure tasted nasty. Bleh. I couldn’t eat it. Logan (our elderly dog) loved it, though.

To make up for the salmon, I had a big, extra helping of the salad. And to console myself, two sublime squares of dark chocolate for dessert. And now, I’m going to toddle off to bed. Life is good even when it resembles a Three Stooges episode. Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!

Note: By the way, no one has paid me a penny to hawk their products in this post. I just wanted to share.

So, yesterday Finny and I walked again. My hips were feeling almost normal.

Sounds so mundane, doesn’t it? We walked. Maybe I should find a new word for it. “Trekked” isn’t quite right; to me it connotes an overland journey filled with obstacles, like tall hills to climb and malodorous swamps to wade through. While we did gain a few hundred feet in altitude on the outward walk up the trail, it was all downhill and swamp-less on the way back. A funny-Finny side story: Upon our return to the trailhead, I made a beeline to the Mosquito Station ladies’ room, one of those largish, tiled, single public restrooms equipped with a commode and sink. I’d no sooner sat down when Finny, wandering around, calmly lifted his leg in the corner.

“Finny! No!” I yelled. He looked sheepish.

Yes, I wiped it up. Sigh.

Anyway. Walking. Yes. Another word. How about “tramping?” That sounds a bit British; it makes me think of wild, rainy moorland, Wellies and stiles over which one must scramble. Not exactly what we were doing, considering the El Dorado Trail is nicely paved, stile-less and (yay!) it wasn’t raining. In fact, it was beautiful. Sunny and warm. I got sweaty.

March. Stroll. Peregrinate. Parade. Ramble. None of these work perfectly. You couldn’t call what I did yesterday “power walking” – I wasn’t walking very fast – but “strolling” isn’t what I did, either. Nor did we “parade.” But I did start “marching”  after 20 minutes or so; I was getting tired, and rather than dwell on it, I reverted back to my old-time trick, calling cadence beneath my breath so I could just cover ground without forever wondering when I was going to discover that small mile-marker painted on the pavement. HUP-two-three-four. LEFT, left, left-right-left. “The ants go marching one-by-one, hurrah, hurrah…” Oddly, Finny seemed to like my soft singing. He stopped pulling on his leash (my achy left hand thanks you, little guy!) and just trotted alongside me.

Then I saw the marker. Somehow I’d missed the one marking a mile. Instead, we’d shlepped a mile and a half. All uphill. Sheesh. No wonder I was getting tired.

I know, I know. That’s not much distance for those ridiculously fit people who jog daily or ride a bike for exercise. But for me, a mile and a half is pretty decent, particularly as I only started perambulating again recently.

“Good enough, Fin,” I said with relief, and we turned around. Actually, I’d planned only to do a mile out and back, thinking I’d give my cranky hips a break before trying for more distance again. But doing that unexpected extra half-mile made me feel sort of proud, too.

I sang “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” on the way back. And more left-right-left chanting. We encountered skateboarders, speeding bikers, a mom and her pigtailed little girl on a tandem bike, several inward-looking joggers with earbuds and iPods engaged, lots of other dogs and their people, and a very old couple who were literally inching along, hand-in-hand. It was good.

And by the time we made it back to the restroom and the car, we’d racked up three more miles, something over nine miles for the week thus far. Today, my daughter wants to go along. She hasn’t done any marching, strolling, trekking or striding for a long time, so we’re going to take it easy and do just two miles today. Still, when it’s done, I can say I walked nearly 12 miles since last Sunday. And a week from today, I’ll be doing the Sacramento Arthritis Walk — three miles at Land Park with a crowd of others, raising money to help find better treatments and a cure.

Now that’s not bad for a chubby, middle-aged woman with RA. I’m smiling.

Update: Breakfast/lunch today (I didn’t eat until 11:30 a.m.): Sandwich made of two slices wholegrain bread; half a Roma tomato; 1 slice Tillamook medium cheddar; a handful of spring mix lettuce; 1 tbsp. mayo. Half a Ruby Red grapefruit, in sections. 1 luscious square of Dove dark chocolate. 1 cup of coffee made with half decaf and half regular coffee, a spoon of Splenda and a tbsp. of condensed milk.

I’m full. And I’ve lost two pounds since Monday!  :o)

Update the second: The Finster and I walked (daughter got busy playing a video game and opted out) a mile, at which point my tail was seriously draggin’. So we turned around. I accomplished my two-mile mission. Now, dinner is started … we’re having broiled salmon filets and a salad made of roasted, cooled beets, grapefruit sections, goat cheese and spring salad greens. And then I’ll settle down and watch a movie. When I wake up, I’ll go to bed. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Update the third: I haven’t had my dinner yet because the !@#&*!! roasted beets took so long to roast and now they have to cool. And I’m grieving for my lost bathtub. I wanna long, hot soak in the tub. I neeeeed a long, hot soak in the tub! Oh well. I guess I’ll take a hot shower instead. The family will thank me. They’ve been waving lit sticks of incense after me when I pass. I guess I really did get sorta perspire-y today…

What an odd feeling.

The sore muscles in my hips and legs, the consequences of walking a little further Sunday and Monday than I should have, given my general out-of-shape-ness, are fine today. This I expected. Disused muscles tend to yelp for a while after being forced to do more than they’re used to, but they heal and get stronger fairly quickly. De nada.

However, both my hip joints are still vaguely achy and feel, when I stand up fromsitting and go to walk, like they’re loose and shifting a little with each step. I feel (and probably look) like a chubby Pinocchio whose strings are being moved by a half-drunk puppeteer.

While the pain level is quite low and tolerable, that strange, shifty feeling is really disconcerting. When I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, I very nearly stumbled over myself and had to grab blindly for the edge of the desk to keep from pitching forward onto my face. Of course, I was sleepy, still half in a dream, but by the time I got down the hall to the bathroom, I was wide awake, stumping along and muttering “ow” with each step.

I’ve written recently about how there are moments when the joints in my fingers feel as if they shift a bit sideways when I grasp and lift things. It doesn’t happen every time, but when it does the sensation is unmistakable. And it’s new. In the early years after I was diagnosed with RA, I had frequent pain. Sometimes it was so severe that I could barely tolerate moving the involved joint; at times even touching it made me wince. But I never felt disjointed.

It’s cold and raining/sleeting/snowing again today, so Finny and I won’t be taking another long tramp on the trail. Instead, I’ll do the exercises I was taught by my physical therapist, including the ones she gave me for the hips. When I asked for her to teach me those, I was thinking in terms of an amorphous “someday,” when it was possible my hips would join my hands, ankles and feet in the RA free-for-all. But I didn’t think I’d need them so soon.

Ah, well. This is something to ask my rheumatologist about when I see him in mid-May. But I’ll be honest: It’s times like this when I wish I could reach him by telephone or e-mail for a quick answer. But the VA medical system is such that I can’t do that. I can call the general health advice nurse, but I already know she can’t tell me much about this situation, and will only advise me to visit the VA’s version of the emergency room if it continues to bother me. I won’t do that. While shifty hips are an odd feeling, and worrisome, they’re not an emergency. I truly hate to waste an ER doctor’s time when there are so many vets that need her help far more urgently than I do.

I’m guessing that my long walks stretched the ligaments holding my hip joints in place a bit more than expected; it seems my RA is now affecting my joints in a slightly different way than it did in the past.

Like the spring weather in the mountains, RA is always changing. I guess there’s comfort to be had in knowing that change, however surprising at the moment, is always a certainty with this disease.

You know that sweet, warm spring weather I’ve been out walking in the last couple of days? Fuggedabowdit. Today’s weather:

It's snowing on my just-opened wisteria blossoms. Wahhhh!

I’ve watched the temperature drop this morning from 36 to 28. It was so nice yesterday we all forgot to bring wood in for the stove. So right now, the house is cold, and with my achy hands, I’m going to have to make Mr Wren and Matt bring a load of wood inside. And yes, I’m pretty sore from overdoing it on the trail the last two days. I’ve been worse, so I won’t complain too hard, but jeez. Spring. Blink, and the weather changes …

This where Finny and I went walking this morning. It's the mid-portion of the El Dorado Trail that runs from Placerville almost to Camino in the lower mountains of the Northern California Sierras.

First: To everyone who commented on the previous post, thank you. Thank you! And thank you again. I can hardly describe how touched and delighted I was this morning to find all those encouraging comments waiting for me. Believe me, reading them helped me get my rear in gear — I drank a chocolate diet/energy shake

Wildflowers along the trail.

as I drove 10 minutes down the mountain with Finny and my camera for another walk along the El Dorado Trail. I’d prefer to walk closer to home, but Camino has nothing but narrow, twisty, two-lane roads with ditches as shoulders and locals who drive them fast. They’re just not very safe for people on bikes or on foot.

But the El Dorado Trail has been built especially for walkers, bikers and horseback riders. It’s paved, has wide shoulders and is a good distance from road traffic. At this time of year, with everything blooming and the spring grasses painting everything a rich, lush green, it’s just beautiful. In a month the grasses will turn golden; by the end of summer they’ll be brown and nearly white from the heat. But for now, the world is a riot of wildflowers, sun and cool breezes.

We walked approximately four miles this morning. Too far, probably, since I’m no longer in very good walking shape, but once I was out there, Finny trotting along at

Finny looks up the trail after a short break for a drink of water (and for me to rest my legs).

the end of the leash, ears pricked and tail waving, it was hard to stop. Needless to say, by the time we turned around, I was feeling it, but as luck would have it, the return walk is a long, gentle downhill slope most of the way.

We met a good number of other walkers along the way and saw lots of pretty things. There were joggers; walkers in small gaggles and alone; a man on a recumbant bike (he passed us three times in both directions); several people on regular bikes; and to my delight, a woman in a cart being pulled by a pony. At least, I thought it was a pony, but Joanne, the 70-year-old cart driver, explained that Tonka is actually a rather large miniature horse. She was friendly and talkative, telling me how nice it is to get out on the trail and meet people. She said she’s out there almost every day and has been riding the trail with Tonka long enough that she’s met several regulars and knows them all by name. At home, she rides her Arabian showhorse and does dressage. Now there’s something to strive for!

Finny did great. He’s very well behaved on the leash, and while he does get excited

Tonka, the miniature horse, and Joanne pose for a shot.

and pull now and then, he’s learning quickly that it’s easier on us both if he walks at my pace. He seems to love getting out there, but like me, he’s not quite in shape for these longish walks yet. He’s snoozing peacefully right now, flopped on the bed.

And now, the Sierra Bushmen are here. Craig, Sean, Jason and Jack are tackling the overgrown hedgerow along the north side of the house (it’s a steep incline and I’m just not up to this sort of heavy yardwork anymore). They’re even going to weedeat the back garden for me and get the burn pile ready to light. Mr. Wren is out getting lumber for the new raised beds. Whooopeeeee!

Theheritage oak trees are in bloom.

I’m fighting myself these days.

Here’s the mantra: To make RA easier to cope with, and to be healthy, you must:

1. Eat mindfully (which means eating, regularly, far more vegetables and fruits than meat, grains or dairy, and decline wicked sugar in all of its forms);
2. Exercise moderately for a half to a full hour each day (fast walking plus light strength training is a good way to do this);
3. Don’t do things that aren’t good for your body (smoking; drinking to excess or doing drugs; eating fatty, sugary, salty, empty-calorie snacks).

I know the mantra inside-out. Eating mindfully helped me lose a great deal of the weight I’d gained during a career spent mainly behind a desk, my eyes fixed on a computer screen, my butt in a chair). Eating mindfully is the only way to lose excess weight or to maintain a healthy weight, and doing so takes a great deal of strain off the joints in my lower body. Being lighter on my feet also helps me move more easily. There’s simply not as much of me to cart around.

Moderate exercise is good for many reasons: It speeds up a sluggish metabolism (banana-sluggish in my case). It burns calories. It strengthens the muscles that provide vital support for my joints. It gets my heart going, strengthening it as well. And doing some exercise gets me out of the house for a good dose of sunshine and fresh air while giving me a wider, healthier view of the world.

Smoking causes a myriad of health problems; I don’t need to go into detail about that. Drinking, ditto. Snacking mindlessly causes weight gain and can cause diabetes and high blood pressure.

The idea, if one follows the mantra, is to keep the body light, flexible and strong no matter what age you are or how affected you are by rheumatoid arthritis. I could repeat it in my sleep. And yet … and yet.

Since Christmas – and it’s been long enough now since then that it no longer works as an excuse – I’ve had a terrible time living the mantra. While I try to eat mindfully, it takes no effort at all on my part to rationalize mindfulness away and eat pizza and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead. Someone brings home a sack of potato chips, and I’ve got to have my share – or more than my share. Matt makes garlic bread to go with dinner, and yes, I eat my slices of it, even though I know that the white flour the bread’s made from turns directly into sugar in my blood. Same with potatoes and white rice. I’m even having trouble passing the candy display at the checkout counter in the grocery store without buying some.

Exercise? Hah. Yes, I walk Finny. It’s a good thing he’s around, or I’d not be doing even that. But they’re short walks, certainly not the sort that get my body moving or my heart rate up. I haven’t been to Curves for a workout in forever.

I’ve stopped smoking, but I still crave cigarettes Every. Single. Day. I’ve stopped smoking but I’ve succumbed and bought a pack, smoked a couple and threw them out. Then I did it again. I’ve never been much of a drinker, so in that area I’m good to go; I allow myself a small glass of wine with a meal a couple of times a month, which isn’t a change from the bad old days. I don’t do drugs, except those I take by prescription. But the snacking. Ouch. I’m craving salt, fat and sugar in a way I haven’t for a long time. I’m losing the battle to turn those empty calories down.

I still have 40 pounds to lose to reach a good weight and BMI for my height and age. Ten of those 40 I’ve re-gained since the holidays. My “skinny” clothes feel uncomfortably tight, so I’ve been blumphing around in sweatpants.

Yet I really, really want to lost that weight. I really, really want to be smoke-free and as healthy as I can be, in spite of being middle-aged and having RA. So what’s wrong with me? Why am I fighting the mantra so hard?

Here’s what it is: I know what I should do, but it’s easier to say, “tomorrow.”

Tomorrow I’ll eat the right foods in the right amounts, and say no to the bad foods. Tomorrow I’ll hit the walking trail with Finny McCool. Tomorrow I’ll toss out my latest blip in tobacco/nicotine judgement.

No, dear. It has to be today. Not tomorrow. No more being lazy about getting out for a walk. The weather is nice – you can’t even whine that it’s raining. And if it does rain, so what? You have an umbrella.

So the battle continues. I started the day with whole grain, shredde wheat cereal and soymilk. I have salmon in the freezer I can eat for dinner, along with brown rice and fresh asparagus and salad. I have walking shoes and a delightful little dog who would absolutely love to go on a long walk with me. I can go to Curves and do a light workout any day but Sunday. I even have quit-smoking patches in my medicine cabinet, leftover from when I quit the last time. I can start wearing them again until this nasty craving works its way out of my system, this time for good.

It has to be today. And then it has to be tomorrow, and the next day. I simply have to live one day at a time. I lost 50 pounds last year one day at a time. I know it can be done, that I can do it, because I did it.

So, having confessed my sins, I’m outahere. It’s 70 degrees out today. It’s time for a walk.

A real one.

Well, believe it or not, both Laurie (Frozen Woman: Life with Rheumatoid Arthritis) and Carla (Carla’s Corner) have selected me to be one of their five recipients of the Sugar Doll Blogger Award, which originated, in the RA blogosphere, with Lana (Living It, Loving It), who in turn got it from one of her readers.

The award is a sweet way to acknowledge bloggers who go out of their way spread warmth and joy to others through their writing. I’m truly honored and humbled that you chose me as one of them; thank you Laurie and Carla! What a treat!

Along with posting about the award, the recipient must reveal 10 Things about themselves that others don’t know, and then must send the joy along by choosing five more bloggers they read who also offer inspiration, information and smiles through their writing.

Easy, right? Hmmm. It’s funny how having to come up with ten, hopefully interesting, things about oneself is such a challenge! I don’t really think of myself or my past as particularly interesting to anyone but me, but here goes nothing:

Wren’s 10 Things

1. I came into the world half-baked and rear-end first, weighing just 3 pounds and 4 ounces. I spent seven weeks in a San Francisco hospital incubator before being allowed to come home, and my Dad said I was like a baby doll, barely as long as his hand. You’d never know it now, since I eventually grew to be of average size (and then some). But the evidence shows on my left ear. If you look closely, you can see it’s “not quite done,” flattened along the outer edge and with a little point at the top. I like to think it’s a holdover from my longago elfin ancestors.
2. I spent several grade-school years learning to ride horses in the Western style, but tended to fall off when I rode with a saddle. Using stirrups threw my balance off. So when we got Barney, the big buckskin Quarterhorse my sister and I shared, I rode everywhere bareback instead. Loved it and stuck like glue. Years later, I took English-style riding lessons in Germany – with RA – and still tended to fall off a saddled horse. Unfortunately, those ultra-tall Hanoverian steeds, RA stiffness and pain, and becoming suddenly airborne didn’t mix well, so I had to give up that lovely sport. But I still love horses and miss riding and working with them to this day.
3. I volunteered with a wild-animal rescue and rehab organization for a while when I lived in Washington state. I’ve drawn a bath for an American eagle; been attacked by an elderly squirrel named, appropriately, “Killer;” got knocked over and snuffled by a humongous but friendly Roosevelt elk; and once held the legs of a dying giant blue heron (which had been cruelly shot by a fisherman who felt it was stealing his fish, the jerk) while the vet tried in vain to save its life. The experience changed me.
4. I’ve been inexplicably afraid of heights, and of flying, all my life. But as research for a novel I was trying to write, I once took a flying lesson in a single-engine Cessna. With the handsome instructor ready to take the controls if I froze or seriously messed up, I took off from the airport, flew around for about an hour learning how the plane went up and down, did figure-8s, glided with the engine off for a minute or two, was greatly relieved when it started right back up, and then landed the plane again at the airport and taxied back to the barn. The instructor never had to do anything but talk. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, an experience I’ll never forget. The instructor told me I’d make a great pilot. I said, “thanks, but um … no, thanks.”
5. More research, this time about guns. I went with a group of shooting enthusiasts to a shooting range. I fired a .22; hit a 1000-yard-out, 3-inch target with a sniping rifle fixed with a scope; and fired a .357 Magnum. My friend, who was teaching me, caught my forearms and kept me from knocking myself out when that giant gun did it’s giant kick-back. It was good experience to add to my brief practice with an M-16 in Air Force basic training, where I somehow managed to hit the target enough times to earn a marksman’s medal, even though I’d never fired any sort of gun in my life. I was rather surprised.
6. I once lived with a 4-foot boa constrictor hiding somewhere in my house for six weeks. The beloved pet of my husband and daughter’s, he’d somehow gotten out of his enclosure. We finally found him curled up inside the back of the sofa, none the worse for his long fast. Whew.
7. While working for Army public affairs in Germany, I once chased a small herd of circus elephants around a shipping harbor, where they were to be loaded onto a ship for a voyage to the U.S. It was surreal and hilarious.
8. I was the managing editor of a newspaper in a small Sierra foothill community. Once, while covering a summer wildfire, I walked across a burned-black field to interview some firefighters, only to discover that my rubber-soled shoes were melting. Lesson learned. Another time, I managed to be right in the way when a helicopter dropped its load of fire-retardant and ended up knocked flat on my stomach, soaked in purple chemical. I landed with my camera protected underneath me, so I got my photos!
9. While I was in the Air Force, I once helped to control, by radar and radio, a flight of 26 live interceptor aircraft during a region-wide exercise, sending them out to the exercise area, controlling their intercepts of “enemy” aircraft for two hours, and then brought them all back home safely. When the exercise was over, I calmly walked back to the ladies’ room and threw up.
10. Also while living in Germany, with RA and even though I was still terrified of heights, I went snow skiing in the Austrian Alps. I discovered that I could ski without fear as long as I fortified myself with cups of Jaegertee – hot black tea laced with a massive dollop of Jaegermeister liqueur.  It made looking over the edge of the steep runs through the tips of my skis much less frightening and, when I inevitably went arse-over-teakettle, I laughed instead of cried. Jaegermeister =no fear. (I wouldn’t recommend this, though.)

And that’s it, gang. Now I’m passing the Sugar Doll Blogger Award on to SB, who writes Confessions of an RA Super Bitch, Polly of Pollyanna Penguin’s RA Blog, Remicade Dream, Terry of Dual Sports Life, and Andrew of Living Life with Rheumatoid Arthritis.

I hope this finds everyone feeling decent and enjoying their Friday. The sun is back out here in the Sierras, I’m feeling great today, and I’m just about to tackle the garden again, Finny in tow. Have a great day!