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Light

29 Monday Dec 2014

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Can’t think of a simpler yet more profound title to this last blog post of 2014.  WOW what a year it’s been!  Transforming is the best way to describe it.  Everything except where I live and the car I drive has pretty much changed in my life…and all for the better.  New job.  New, improved body (at last count I’m down nearly 54 lbs – 24 kg – since July 2013).  A healthier outlook on life both how I take care of myself mentally and how I fuel my body with nutritious food.  Incredible new relationships…lots of friendships and a wonderful romantic one too.  I simply couldn’t be happier right now and am ready to embrace 2015 full on!

So how fitting is it to wrap up the year with a post about LIGHT.  What we crave this time of year so hungrily…yeah, we’re past the Winter Solstice and it’s been gloriously sunny (and cold!) the last few days.  Slowly we’re pulling away from that dreaded “get up and go to work in the dark / go home in the dark” rhythm that can drive us crazy.

I recently got intrigued with light therapy.  I’m not officially SAD diagnosed, but I do notice the blahs and blues sometimes when the weather is crappy and it’s rainy and dark like it is so often in the Seattle area this time of year. It’s like living in a soggy black and white TV!  So when it’s nice out and not raining torrentially it’s time to bundle up and get out there (where are my rubber boots??).  No excuses.

And I’m getting up for work about an hour and a half earlier than I used to.  Keep in mind, getting up later was a well-ingrained habit of nearly a dozen years.  So snapping into a 5:45am wake up time – a time probably more normal than not for many of us out there – has been a challenge for me to get used to.  Combine that with shorter, darker days and it’s been, well, challenging.  And for those of you who follow along in here, you know I’m not a morning person by nature.  I’m just not wired that way.  Shhh don’t tell my new co-workers.  Faking it (and a little extra coffee in the a.m.) works wonders.

So, I recently picked up a couple of light therapy devices thanks to the nice people at Amazon.com.  Take a look!

Philips blueThis is a blue light sunshine simulator from Philips (check out the link in the paragraph above).  This beauty mimics the sunshine we crave on those bright, sunny, cloudless days.  What I like about it is you can adjust how long the light sessions last as well as how bright the light is.  You don’t (and shouldn’t) look directly into it.  Rather, I just keep it at an angle (like the pic; there’s a kickstand included) and about 18 – 20″ away from me on my bathroom countertop while I dry my hair, get dressed and put on my makeup.  My session runs 45 minutes and it shuts itself off automatically (but you can set it to run between 1 and 60 minutes as you need).  It also comes with a protective cover, and it’s small enough for travel.

Philips alarmNext up is the Philips wake up alarm with sunrise simulation.  It kind of looks like a headlight yanked out of a car, but it has a nice flat surface so it won’t roll around.  I ditched my c. 2003 clock radio/CD player and started using this instead.  It’s fantastic!  The light simulates an actual sunrise, starting a deep, rich orange and slowly shifting to yellows and whites.  And you can add a soothing wake up sound too (or just wake up to the sunrise).  It’s fully customizable which is wonderful.  You can choose how long the sunrise takes and how loud the music plays (or find the FM radio station you love).  Learning the controls is a little tricky at first, but once you do it a few times it’s pretty straight forward.  Want to snooze?  Just tap anywhere on the light surface and 9 more minutes is yours.

I also like how a lot of the menu buttons don’t light up until you get your fingers near them.  Anyone else out there get annoyed with those glaring numbers and letters when you’re trying to sleep?  And amazingly, the orange clock readout in the pic above is proven to be the least glaring in the dark…and the intensity will adjust depending on how much natural light is around it.  So when you’re trying to sleep, the clock readout is a nice, soft peachy glow.

Sweet dreams…glorious mornings…and Happy New Year, everyone!

Lake Serene…Almost

02 Monday Sep 2013

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WP_000471Yep, 80% Lake Serene.  I got schooled yesterday – got a big ol’ in-your-face reminder that I probably still have a White Belt in hiking.  Well, no, I’m not a total novice…right?  I don’t remember what the next belt level is up from that. Hmmmm.

J and I were sooooo excited to get a change of scenery and get in a hike on this holiday weekend! We’ve both been working so hard – weekends too sometimes.  And this is that time of year in the Seattle area where you hold on for dear life to summer and you cherish each and every single sunny day. Now, normally September (and even parts of October sort of) are dry and sunny, but starting today (Labor Day) the forecast for the rest of the week doesn’t look too good.

When we were talking about what to do I suddenly remembered a hike I did with a former co-worker about 10 or 11 years ago:  Lake Serene and Bridal Veil Falls.  So, that was our plan!  J had never been on that hike before and I told him how cool it is, because Lake Serene just suddenly pops up at the end of the trail.  I’ve never seen anything like it!  And it’s so worth it.  I told him how, yeah, there’s a bit of a climb at the end but the lake is stunning!

So, yesterday we hit the road and headed east on Highway 2.  We stopped for a late breakfast at a little café in Gold Bar.  And we’d packed some snacks for lunch and some water.  The turnoff for the trailhead is on Mount Index Road, about 7 miles east of Gold Bar, and it’s very clearly marked.  We were absolutely surprised to find a parking spot in the early afternoon, especially on a holiday weekend!

This hike is just over 7 miles round trip.  There’s a cool fork in the trail after a little ways where you can peel off for a half mile and go get up close with Bridal Veil Falls (and cool off!) or you can just stay on the main trail to Lake Serene, which was another two miles away.  We decided to just get to Lake Serene first.  And the trail does not disappoint.  Check out that pic up top of the gorgeous rock wall and falls trickling down.  I don’t know what kind of rock that is, but I just can’t get enough of that rich, charcoal grey color! We’re hiking up Mount Index here!

The first part of the trail climbs, but it’s mostly dirt with a few rocks and some muddy places and isn’t too difficult.  Once you cross the huge wooden bridge over the falls runoff it starts getting interesting.

As in ‘steep, rocky switchbacks’ interesting.WP_000468  Picture this shot at right but with a much steeper angle uphill.  That’s what the rest of the trek is up to the lake, and there are a few places where they put stairs in the trail.  In fact, it’s a 2000-foot elevation gain in about 3.5 miles!  YOW.  Lots of heavy breathing on this trail, including the adorable dogs we saw along the way.  And a couple of whining moaning kids too.  We were expecting it to be super crowded but amazingly it was not!  And the weather was perfect – 80 degrees and sunny.

I took in the wonderful scenery all around.  The lush green moss on the trees – some trees tipped over, some reaching tall into the sky.  The craggy, rocky pointy peak of Mount Index and so many others jabbing into the sky and the steep drops down below.  The beautiful streams which are probably runoffs from glaciers much higher up.  I love the sounds of streams gurgling along.  It just sounds like…love.

After a few stops to catch our breath and gulp some water we asked people coming back down the trail how far we had to go.  “About an hour,” one couple told us.  OMG.  Another hour of rocky, steep seemingly endless switchbacks…going uphill.  The rocks are pretty stable so I never felt unsafe like I was going to trip and fall, but the incline is steep.  I pictured the stair climbing machine in the gym and can see where hours working out would make this hike a lot easier.

Then I started to feel a little woozy and light headed.  I’d been drinking enough water (I thought)…but I had that feeling just like when J and I went in the steamroom and saunas at the gym.  After the steam and sauna I felt faint and it took me awhile to get back to center.  Flash forward back to us catching our breath on the trail and I waited for that same lightheadedness to pass.  I’m glad I’d felt it once before so I didn’t panic.  I just breathed through it.  But then I wondered…if I’m already starting to feel a little out of it and we’ve got tons more rocky climbing ahead…am I really up for this?  I don’t do enough hiking to feel like taking big risks.  I didn’t want to get even more winded and risk getting injured if I was not feeling 100% and not able to pay close attention to each and every step I took up the rocks.  And we were going through our water a lot more quickly than we realized.   I’d brought a couple liters and J had an extra one already in his pack along with our food.  Hmmmm.  I told him how excited I was for us to see the lake and all…but also that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if we turned back.

So…he agreed and we did.  We knew going down the steep rocky trail would be hard on knees too, and I’m still not 100% healed from the fall I took at work in August.  I was relieved he wasn’t upset about turning back at all.  In fact, we talked about doing that hike again with better preparation.  Things like getting an earlier start in the day (we didn’t get on the trail until about 12:30pm), and bringing a lot more water and food.

I also might rethink what I wear.  I wore a sports bra, a tank top and a long-sleeved lightweight Dri-Fit mesh top over that…and my old J. Crew cotton shorts.  Dang I have a lot of synthetic workout/hiking clothing which is a much better choice than wearing cotton, but I can’t fit into a lot of it right now (not yet!).  And next time I’ll choose a more breathable baseball hat.  I’d doused myself both in sunscreen and in bug repellant because I’d read there were a lot of bugs on the trail.  How awesome…zero bug problems!  The bugs must have been from earlier in the year.  And the portion of the trail we did was mostly shady with some sunlight rippling through the trees, so I’ll ditch the long-sleeved top I brought for extra sun protection and just pack it along just in case.

Hiking boots are an absolute MUST on this trail.  Just sayin’.  What a relief my good ol’ Merrells with Gore-Tex are still trooping along.

And I had to laugh…I seriously blocked out how steep that climb was up to the lake!  And then I remembered…the last time I did that hike I was 11 years younger…and 40 lbs. lighter.

Lake Serene, we’re comin’ back!

The Joy of Mornings

23 Sunday Jun 2013

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Somehow over the years I’ve become less and less of a morning person. Nope, I don’t bounce out of bed joyfully greeting the day…I’m a happy person but notsomuch in the morning generally – I’m a little groggy and not the best conversationalist.  And it’s not unusual for me to sleep in until 10:30 or 11:00am on weekend mornings.  I used to feel a little guilty about that but then I realized no, my body needs this…I’ll savor it.  And a wonderful bed with new 1200 thread count sheets makes it blissful (but not hard on the wallet…thank you overstock.com).

Back in the early to mid 1990s I lived and worked in Seattle proper.  It was an easy walk from my apartment to catch the bus to downtown – man, I really miss those days sometimes…I miss working downtown.  I’d get up at 5:00am and would be at my desk at work by 6:30am.  I had a staff of about 15 back then and the more high maintenance portion of the bunch worked the early shift so it was good for me to be onsite when they were there and have that presence.

I now look back and think DAMN, who was that girl?  Over the years my jobs have been with companies where things started a little later than normal corporate hours.  Meaning, nothing started before 9:00 or even 9:30am.  I got used to this and I guess my body just adjusted.  Throw in hockey a few years later and you’ve got a lifestyle of late nights and weird hours.  Hockey games typically wouldn’t start until 9:00pm, 10:00pm or even 11:00pm – on a Sunday night.  At a rink that might be a 40 minute drive from my house.  Thankfully there’s no traffic that late at night on Sundays. Mondays at work were brutal but most of my co-workers were understanding.

At my current job our consulting team has to be onsite in the office between 9:00am and 3:30pm.  So we can choose to work say 6:30 – 3:30 or 8 – 5:00, or 9 – 6:00.  8:30 – 5:00 is what works for me, and I take a half hour lunch break in there too.  My commute is a mere third the length of the time my prior one was, so getting to work at 8:30 is not a huge problem.

I cherish my sleep and I’m very thankful that I don’t have problems sleeping well. It’s a little hard for me to wind down and immediately go to sleep when I get in bed but once I’m out, I’m out.

Now, I had to laugh at myself when I called my favorite spa asking for a pedicure appointment.  The only time they had on Saturday was…10:00am.  A time when I’m usually somewhat comatose in bed.  But vanity won out and I reluctantly took the appointment.  Luckily there was a Starbucks nearby…hello, double tall latte!

But as I was driving to the spa yesterday morning, I looked around at took in the scenery.  People out jogging with their dogs.  Having coffee outside and having conversations like it’s mid afternoon.  Shopkeepers getting ready to open their stores…sweeping the sidewalks and power washing. WOW…so much activity going on when I’m normally dead to the world.  Maybe I’m missing out on something here!

And this morning I rolled out of bed much earlier than usual…to my cousin J’s baby shower! J is from here but she and her husband live in LA now.  And they’re expecting twins in September!  Boys!  We are so excited…and elated!  Twins don’t run in my side of the family and neither in J’s hubby’s.  So this is truly a miracle!  I admit I did a double take when I saw the shower invitation  – 10:30am.  Wow…brunch!  Everything was amazing and it was so good to see J.  I even made it without coffee!

Wonder how late I will stay up tonight?

Beat the Bridge…Beaten

15 Sunday May 2011

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Ah, bridges.

How much we depend upon our beloved bridges around here in the beautiful Puget Sound region.  Pulsing arteries jampacked with cars, buses, bikes – and painfully clogged during those peak commuter hours.  We’ve got so much natural gorgeousness around us…lakes, the Sound (salt water), rivers, mountains – all within a short drive for most of us.  Meaning, you can’t go far without eventually running into one of those.

Today was the annual Beat the Bridge run/walk to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.  The jewelry line I represent, Silpada Designs, has JDRF as its charity of choice.  One of the girls on our local team here had a wonderful idea for us to do Beat the Bridge and pledge to donate the commission from one of our jewelry parties as part of our fundraising!  What a great idea! With 10 of us participating and an average party commission at around $300 (yes, it’s true) we were excited to set our team goal at $3000!  Which bridge you may wonder?  The University Bridge, not far from the U of W campus where the race starts and finishes. 

This was planned back in February. And yes, we had the best of intentions.  However, the Universe had other intentions, which I discovered around 6am this morning.  

Bottom line, we didn’t go.  Damn that pouring rain already!

I knew that I’d be walking most if not all of this 8K – and most of the other girls were planning to as well.  Back in February I figured this would be a great way to kickstart getting back in shape for this summer’s 5Ks by restarting the Couch to 5K plan I’ve written about in here occasionally over the past year.  It’s an 8-week running and walking program – just 3 times a week – that gets you ready to run a 5K when you’re done.  And yes, it works!

But illness and stress earlier this year really sapped my energy and my poor lungs.  I had a bad cold and cough for about two months – it just wouldn’t go away.  It was all I could do to eeek out a game of hockey, much less hit the treadmill or go outside in our (cold, shitty) winter weather.  Soggy, soggy soggy.

Nevertheless, I was ready to get out of bed super early and drive to the freeway bus stop where my carpool was going to scoop me up this morning on the way into Seattle.

But let me back up to Saturday for a minute…a glorious, sensuous, warm and sunny day – the kind of day we’ve been starving for here all spring.  Spring so far this year has been a repeat of our rain-soaked, chilly winter sans the snow.  I had a few things planned for Saturday but decided to squeeze in another mini-adventure when it dawned on me that I really should verify I know how to get to the freeway bus stop where my carpool was going to pick me up.  I had an idea in my mind of how to get there, but realized it had been – gasp – nearly 10 years since I’d ventured to that bus stop with a friend.  I’d better go drive over and check it out!  And it was a beautiful day – a perfect excuse to open the sun roof and get some vitamin D the natural way, crank some music and just drive.

So what’s the big deal about this bus stop?  Well, it’s perched literally at land’s end before the freeway turns into one of our two floating bridges that connect Seattle with the suburbs.  These bridges were built decades ago and at the time were very state of the art given they ‘float.’  Lake Washington was determined too deep to do any sort of structural building underneath, hence the floating design.  And I’ll keep it to that because I’m no expert in structural engineering.

Now, there is an oddly creepy-looking pedestrian bridge over the freeway on the east side of the lake, which is how my friend P and I last got to that bus stop nearly a decade ago.  P and I have fallen out of contact and I’d forgotten where we had parked to walk across that bridge, hence my sunny journey in the car yesterday.

Boy am I glad I checked it all out.  There are major projects underway to build a second portion of this particular floating bridge to help with congestion…and, as I soon found out, plans to remove that pedestrian bridge!  Yep, once I figured out where to park and found the foot trail that was supposed to get me to the pedestrian overpass it was all blocked off.  Wow.

So it was a neon yellow vinyl fence that stopped me from my foot journey over the freeway.  And I was not one to rebel and climb through.  Who knows – it might not be structurally sound any longer.  Actually that’s not a good feeling since thousands of cars drive under it every day, but anyway I wasn’t going to chance it.

But I looked across the freeway and could see people waiting at that elusive bus stop.  How the hell did they get over there?  There was no parking lot near it at all – just a carved out covered area in a small, grassy hillside to stand or sit. 

As I started to get a little frustrated (NOW what?) I paused for a moment and just drank in everything around me.  I’m standing on a dirt trail in beautiful sunshine.  I’m mere steps from incredibly ritzy homes (in the ‘high rent district’ neighborhood around here called Medina).  And I’m also mere steps from, well, a 20 foot drop down to a roaring river freeway, with the hillside below covered in tangled, dirty weeds from decades of car exhaust.  How rare is it we stand still so close to a freeway like this?  Thankfully my time roadside has been those rare occasions when I’ve been in a fender-bender or have a flat tire.  It’s just astonishing watching and hearing the amount of cars whizzing by every second and being so close perched at the angle above it on the foot trail.  I think back on how many thousands of times in my life I have gone back and forth over that bridge.  As a child in the back seat of my parents’ old station wagon.  On my own as a teen and a freshly-minted drivers license in an orange 1970 Volvo (LOVED that car, wow). And countless times as an adult.

I jumped back in my car and drove back to the main road.  Aha!  I found a small, gravelly parking lot for bus commuters.  The trick was to park there and walk over the main road that goes over the freeway, not the pedestrian bridge.  Then, jump onto the trail on the bus stop side and voila – you’re there!  Wow, cryptic.  Believe me I tried searching online for maps long before I got in the car.  Anyway, a little resourcefulness pays off.

I walked over the freeway, again in awe of the cars whooshing by below me.  And looked to the west toward our beautiful, shining Lake Washington and the Olympic Mountains a little hazy along the horizon.  This is our back yard.  And how awesome it was to take it in on foot rather than as a stressed out commuter.  As I stepped onto the foot trail down to the bus stop I ran into a very nice lady out walking her dog.  She was disappointed that the pedestrian bridge was now closed off – she sounded like she walked over it fairly often so this might have been a really recent closure.

After my bridge and freeway adventure I drove over to my friend M’s house.  Back in the car, I laughed to myself and thought WOW, I am SO GLAD I did all that foot trail and bus stop homework a day ahead of time.  I am a terrible morning person and I would have been a total zombie case trying to figure it out that morning, worrying my carpool would be held up. 

After a quick visit with M (she is going to host a jewelry party in combination with her new office opening and we’re so excited!), I headed back home, grabbed a bottle of pinot grigio and walked up to my neighbor A’s house.  We’re getting in a groove of watching any of The Real Housewives series (on Bravo) that she has in her Tivo a couple of times a month.  Sadly I have not yet made the switch to flat screen TV but that’s another post.  If any of you follow the New York housewives, you’ll understand the pinot grigio (it’s the signature drink of one of the cast). 

So after getting caught up with A and laughing our asses off at fabulous trainwreck TV, I headed home to carbo load with some penne and pesto and forced myself to bed early.  I knew I had to leave the house around 6am to get to that good ol’ bus stop for my carpool.

And, it started to rain.  What a huge contrast from the tease of sunny spring we had earlier in the day.  I kept optimistic – the weather forcecast for Sunday was a ‘chance of showers.’  Actually, around here you could use that forecast every day and be pretty accurate.

I was tired this morning.  But I got out of bed, got dressed in my walking/running gear and after scaring myself looking in the mirror I dabbed on a small bit of foundation (my face is naturally ruddy so anything to tone it down helps) and a little flick of mascara for those tired eyes.  Keys, hat, sunglasses (I’m eternally optimistic plus sensitive to glare)…and…phone.

Wow.  My phone had blown up with tons of voicemail and texts last night after I’d forced myself to go to bed early, but I didn’t see any of it until early this morning.  I keep my phone downstairs at night because I don’t feel a need to have it with me 24/7.  

When I saw how my carpool driver plus a ton of others in the group were going to cancel, the wind went out of my sails.  Just poof and pffffttt.  Why cancel?  Rain. Yep, it was still raining hard this morning and even still is now in the early afternoon.

So I was a sheep and I bailed too.  I felt a little dejected because I was looking forward to trying this race for the first time with friends, but I have to know that it just wasn’t meant to be.  And I won’t dig too deep for the reason right now.

‘Cause I’m tired.