Monday’s travels were intense! I was happy not to unravel, but was bleary by evening.
I packed my tent from the inside out in the rain starting at about 5 am. I packed the sleeping bag and mat and then the tent and groundcloth. I packed the fly last, so that I did not pack too much Ohio rain with me!
I left the field at 7 am and drove through rain and roads that were not flooding quite to the airport. There I spent 30 minutes shaking wet tent parts and packing them in the suitcase. I went to my plane and flew to Chicago. In Chicago I retrieved the suitcase and went by Metro to the train station. I rode a train to the next destination and then was picked up in a van. I still am using the oxygen at night and with heavy lifting, and I masked for all the travel, but I made it! A year ago that would have been way too much for one day.
I saw a rainbow spreading out from the wing of the plane and caught part of it in the photograph. A good flight!
My weekend at the Nowhereelse Festival would have delighted any frog. It rained nearly the whole time. I had a rental car, a tent and sleeping bag, and all of the music was in a much much bigger tent. I frogmarched back and forth from my small tent in a field, to the music venue, the volunteer tent and the food trucks. By the time I packed up my tent on Monday, the field was no longer absorbing water and it was 2-3 inches deep within a few feet of my tent. I hoped I would make it to the airport and not get caught by flooding roads. The fields and ditches were flooding but I was out before the roads were too bad. Whew.
The first photograph is the storm rolling in Saturday morning. The second is my tent from inside the rental car. WET.
For yesterday’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: frogmarch. If there is a frogmarch, there must be a frogseptember too, right?
I am feeling in a bit of a Pogo mood. Yes, filament is not the right word. But the flowers look like lights and like they have filaments. Or is that a filament of my imagination?
This tent looks like it has a flounce along the upper edge. I spent the weekend at the Nowhereelse Festival, camping in Ohio. The music is fabulous, hosted by Over the Rhine, and the Ohio rain was very impressive. I took the lightest camping gear I could, since I arrived by plane and rental car. My tent and sleeping bag stayed dry inside. Outside everything was sopping. I went barefoot for most of the three days except in the pokey field bits, and then I wore water slippers. None of my shoes would have stayed dry. I bought the slippers for indoors, but they are great in heavy rain and easy to take off when I was back on the grass.
Here is the tent in the evening, with clouds piling up.
My mansion is the outdoors. What could be more beautiful than the sky and the sea and the outdoors? Not only does my mansion have more rooms than I can ever explore, all over the world, but it has every mood imaginable too.
Mets could be metastases, a terrible word in cancer. But this is exercise mets. I am half way through my pulmonary rehabilitation for pneumonia and getting stronger. So what is a met? “One MET is approximately 3.5 milliliters of oxygen consumed per kilogram (kg) of body weight per minute.” (from https://www.healthline.com/health/what-are-mets#definition).
Ok, that doesn’t seem very useful. I find this way more useful, a chart of how many mets are used for certain activities:
The treadmill I am using at pulmonary rehab tells me how many mets I am using. However, last time I turned it on and didn’t enter my weight. It uses 155 pounds, which is more than I weigh. I think that then the mets are wrong. It isn’t exact anyhow. The important thing is that I am improving and off oxygen! I am now up to 5.3 mets, going at 3.3 mph, on a 4% grade, for 40 minutes. Pulmonary rehab is twelve weeks, twice a week, with a respiratory therapist and a physical therapist.
My respiratory therapist asks my goals. To bicycle distance, hike across the Olympics, and to ski again, off oxygen. That means altitude. Once we are above 5500 feet, the body really starts noticing the thinner air. I am not there yet but I am so pleased to be improving.
On the chart, I am in the moderate exercise range. To bicycle, I would have to be able to sustain 8 mets. Not yet, not yet.
Being off oxygen (except night, flute, sustained singing and heavy exercise) is GREAT! The intrinsic problem has not been fixed, thought. Fully twenty specialists since 2012 have not figured out why I get pneumonia easily and how to protect me, other than masking and not working in Family Medicine or anything people intensive. It’s annoying, my career has been blown up. I don’t have much hope of an overarching diagnosis at this point, but I’m willing to keep trying. We don’t know everything in medicine and really, I do not think we ever will. It’s endlessly complex and fascinating.
I think the mets chart should be shared with patients. I had one couple who insisted that the woman had PMS even though she was postmenopausal. I scratch my head and continue to watch her. After months something made me suspicious and I order an echocardiogram. She had congestive heart failure, seriously reduced heart output. I promptly called the cardiologist and said, “This is new, she is on NO MEDICINES.” He saw her within a week. Sometimes things do not present in a straight forward manner. She felt much better once we got her heart functioning better. If a person is losing their ability to perform moderate intensity mets, they should see their doctor. It could be spending too many hours in front of a screen (turn it off, get up, go outside, walk daily!) but it could also be something else. Heart is the number one killer still.
Stay healthy and keep those mets up!
Ha. I did use the word certain, didn’t I?And one of my favorite exercises is dancing. Listening to this right now:
I dream I am Superman flying, but I am still me and female too. It is night and I fly over a beautiful bay, with a bridge at the opening of the bay. Cars are crossing. The people on the bridge call me down, calling βHelp!β I fly down. βThere are people in the water below the bridge! What are they going to do! Stop them!β I fly down to the water. βCome in,β say the people in the water. βThe water is warm!β
I join them in the water. It is warm and the bridge is beautiful. I say, βThe people on the bridge are scared of you.β The people in the water say, βWe just like the water. They are silly. They should join us. We wonβt hurt them.β I thank them and fly back up.
I say, βThe people in the water just like the water. They say they wonβt hurt you.β The people on the bridge say, βNo, no! They will hurt us. We donβt want them in the water! They might blow up the bridge!β I shrug. βWell, the water is fine. I am going back there.β I fly down and join the people in the water.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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