A Party on the Peak

Photo: Even the universe is on board with Ha Ling Peak as a Place to Party on my 65th.


I have dropped into a trough of relatively few demands from a high that had me scatter-brained and spread in all directions like buckshot. I kept my head—mostly—by remembering that it would all pass and relative calm settle in.
And it has. ** sigh **
Time to focus on the big goal of 2010: my birthday climb of Ha Ling.
I like celebrating big birthdays with big events. The last one the boys, wives and I took on the Grand Canyon. What an unforgettable trek that was: the highlight of a very highlit year.
Ha Ling is a bald peak that towers over town. It’s impossible not to notice, and it occurred to me that I would love to see the view from the top as a place I've been. It is a suitable goal for my 65th. I would also like to join the large percentage of residents, older and younger, who have stood on the top. You can’t get lost, although some trails are better than others, and the real challenge is at the top where the scree is the old “two steps forward, one step back” slog. The trek down can be a bore on sore muscles.
The view, they tell me, is spectacular, and it seems a fitting place to raise your arms in pure joy of accomplishment.
I don’t know what the aboriginals called it, but Ha Ling was called The Beehive for much of the white man’s presence in the Bow Valley. It is possible it didn’t have a name because the natives considered the valley sacred and used it for ceremonies or quick passage.
For most of the years Canmore was used by the white man for travel, coal mining, gas station pit stops, Olympic training and tourism, it was The Beehive, which is absolutely resembles.
That changed in 1980. The story is that in 1896, some white men bet a local cook named Ha Ling that he couldn’t climb to the top in less than 10 hours. He left at 7 and was back for lunch. They wouldn’t pay because they couldn’t see the flag he'd planted and didn't believe him. So he led a party to the summit to show them his flag. He left a bigger one behind for those who declined to climb and collected his fifty bucks.
It became Chinaman’s Peak to honor his feat but the name didn’t become official until 1980. That only lasted 17 years, when it was renamed Ha Ling Peak.
His feat is way more impressive than mine since there is now a parking lot half way up and clear trails to the top. He was up and down in one day from the valley. I plan to be up and down in five hours, from half way.
I have seven months to train.
Good, the waistband on my pants has shrunk and my arms have lost their tone. I’d like to greet my 65th year in shape. I’ve invited anyone who wants to go with me for A Party on the Peak.
SLI

The Pity Me Blues

Photo: Everyone has bad days, just don't make them your life.

I love the blues. Given a choice of music, I’ll go blues, jazz, classical, depending on what I’m doing. Up here in the sublime mountains, I don’t get good reception (those peaks get in my way) but I just discovered Galaxy on my cable channels.

I’m in Heaven, a Lady Singing the Blues.

There’s one song I can sing too much, however: the Pity Me Blues.

I’m not saying the occasional breakdown isn’t warranted and even good for the soul—and tear ducks—but prolonged angst is a one-way trip down. That’s what I call the Pity Me Blues.

Take the older Safeway cashier the other day. I was headed to the self check-out when I saw him standing alone with no one in his lane. Thinking it would give him some company, something to do besides standing there bored, I plunked my basket on the conveyor belt and stepped up to the credit processing center with a smile as I got out my Safeway and credit cards.

Fixing me with an annoyed look, he barked, “So you want me to unload your basket for you?”

I was flummoxed. Defensive. Apologetic. I’m not good in accusatory situations anyway, my brain scrambling for why he was making me feel as if I’d done something wrong. Something that was Not. His. Job.

I covered my fluster by getting the cards ready as he picked my items out of the basket. He then said, “I guess I’ll have to put the basket back for you,” and brushed me back as he walked past to put the basket in the stack behind the conveyor belt.

There was still no one in his line. No one waiting. The whole store was pretty empty. I remarked about this and he said it was Monday and the storewide 10 percent off day was Tuesday. So besides making me feel like I’d demanded he do work that was not in his job description, he told me that I was either a forgetful idiot or a spendthrift.

Now I always use baskets. It’s my pathetic way of limiting what I buy to what I can carry and I have a sore elbow from lugging overloaded baskets around grocery stores. I have never been chastised for putting the basket on the belt. By anyone. At any store. Ever. Even when there are huge lines and not an empty store filled only with one disaffected clerk.

My rampageous imagination filled in his background: a former CFO either forced to work after being laid off (and who would want to lose an employee with his attitude, I wonder?) or retired and dissatisfied with his pension or working to pad his pension and fill his empty hours. Whatever his story, clearly he viewed the cashier job as a comedown, beneath him, and customers who didn’t act as he thought they should insulted him. He was singing the Pity Me Blues loudly and clearly. I never saw him again, but then I never looked. I didn’t go back to Safeway for a long time after that, preferring the friendlier store down the street.

My point, and I have one, is that everyone gets the blues, but only losers give them a permanent home. You can feel bad because you hit an unfair patch in life. Rage. Cry. Assign blame. Whine if you must.

Then get over it, get out and get on.

I can now let the tears fall, the frustration break out in sobs, the feeling of doom and gloom settle over my vision. I say “now” because I couldn’t always. I kept a rigid upper lip, a firm hand on the control knob. Now I know even cowgirls get the blues. Sometimes my energy and optimism are overwhelmed. I let them whelm until the storm is over and I can see the other side. Which is almost always another way to attack the issue, a new idea, a reset button to approach it or abandon it, whichever is better. Crying clears the brain. It’s pretty good at clearing dust from the eyes, too, so you can see that everybody faces the same fact: Life Ain’t Fair.

Singing the blues is great. I riff around the house all the time.

Just don’t let it slide into an endless Pity Me Blues loop. That’s not the blues, that’s just a bad attitude.

Stopping Traffic

Photo: Cowboy (r) and Miss Kitty express their opinion of my new whistling prowess.



In my not-quite-yet old age, I have learned stuff I always wanted to know how to do.
Like whistling. Really loudly. Piercingly. Enough to stop a New York taxi or a child intent on running across a street for ice cream.
The world is divided into the majority who cannot whistle worth spit, and those few who can produce concert quality tunes and/or ear splitting whistles.
I have known how, or at least been able to produce a loud whistle, several times in my life. Always after I browbeat a stranger who knew how until they gave in and taught me everything they knew. For that I am grateful to them all. It is not their fault I didn't retain the knack. Each time I gained the knowledge, I didn't follow up on it, and forgot. Pretty quickly.
Ah hah! You say, someone who isn’t willing to practice. I guess I have to agree, but it’s not like you want to use that whistle willy nilly. (Excuse me while I add willy nilly to my EW, endangered word, list.) I mean, the high screech can scare little kids and really bug some folks. That's my excuse for not preserving what at the time seemed so simple.
Some use an index finger at each side of their lower lip. Some make a circle of their index finger and thumb and insert it in their mouth. Others do other things. What I didn't take the time to learn was how I was producing the sound. I just copy catted (another dandy EW) til I produced a satisfactory blast.
Then one night I was researching an article for the net on how to play high notes on a trumpet. Experimenting with some of the mouth positions, I hissed, as directed, and whoooosh! There it was.
I felt like I had a new toy. Since I’d discovered the technique myself—and had clear memories of losing it so easily—I happily played around with how to produce it, how to make it higher or lower—and especially louder—both with and without fingers. The concept is to create a cavity in front of your lower teeth, arch your tongue and blow air through your bottom teeth. Experiment and find your sweet tweet spot. Now that I know, I can fancy it up with misdirection and fancy unnecessary finger moves.
My cats came to sit and stare at me. They retreated when I got better. They crept closer when I stopped.
Here I am, living in bear(and cougar and coyote)country, where a really shrill whistle could literally save my life.
I plan to keep practicing. I know the key so the door should open whenever I want it to.
I also know how to tie a shoelace three different ways.
You might want to know why I would want to know this.
The answer is because when I learned there was a way to tie your shoe other than the old standby granny knot, I wanted to learn it immediately. At least, that's the story I made up, and it's partly true.
Actually it was my mother who noticed. Her personal trainer tied his shoe not in the “normal” way. My mom was a pastmistress at thinking outside the box, so she asked him about it.
I wanted to learn how.
Over the years, I have failed to practice it and had to work it out again. (I do the same thing with magic tricks, if I don’t run through them regularly, I lose the trick and have to figure it out—which isn’t bad training for how not to give it away, actually).
I bought a pair of bright orange very long shoestrings. For a buck, they serve as a training drill for my knots and a play toy for Miss Kitty.
I learned the third knot from a movie where Harrison Ford is shot, suffers brain damage, renounces his evil lawyerly old self and becomes a great old guy who had to learn how to tie his shoes from his daughter (who learned it from him—a nice touch).
So now I know three knots.
And how to taxi-whistle is Coming Soon.
Kewl.

Cheers
SLI

EeeeeewMail & Internet Etiquette

photo: Feathered friends sharing IM chuckle.





Grunts, gestures and log pounding
Long distance by foot, smoke signals and carrier pigeons
Tin can talkies, Pony Express and snail mail
Notes in a bottle, billet deux , telegrams and telephones
Satellite phones, Dick Tracy cells, PDFs and 4G
Email, FB, chatting, IM
Texting and (back to the birds) twittering ...

Woke up this morning resolved to put into practice something I thought of a month ago. It is the opposite of those glurgy email forwards that say with words, adorable kittens and music that they appreciate your email forwards even if they never respond and how emails keep friendship going and how the bond you create through sharing forwarded emails is so strong...(ad nauseum or etc. depending on your opinion of them).
For some reason in December, I stepped back and looked at my email habit. Thought: why don’t I send out a mea culpa message and allow folks to opt out. While I, wonderful, discerning person that I am, screen the stuff I get and send on only the IMHO best, perhaps there might be someone—or even two—who disagree or don’t enjoy my Best Of, or are too busy to read or whose caches are already overflowing, or who (gasp) don’t share my sense of humor. Perhaps these sensitive souls don’t want to hurt my feelings.
Well, heck, I can take it. There might even be former soulmates in my peripatetic life who don’t feel the need to keep connected to someone they may never see again. People who got along without me before they met me and would like to do it again. No ill will, just a reluctance to request me to sever the connection.
I wondered if I am an Email stalker, persisting in unwanted attentions despite a lack of encouragement. Or it could be that the silent ones on my modest list are happy to receive and not give.
I can hear the shouts of “get a life” out there, thank you; I’m just explaining the thought that struck me last month, that Email groups are the new Christmas card list. Back in the days of snail mail and thank you notes, you kept a hardcopy address book of those who once shared your life but one of you moved, or moved on, or changed jobs, spouses, neighborhoods, tax brackets, schools, interests & passions or stopped going to the gym/yoga class/Starbucks/club/board meetings/volunteer job. Ad nauseum or etc. Once a year, you would mail out cards (sometimes accompanied by the dreaded Family Newsletter) to keep connected. Some would add a message, some just sign their name. Lists got adjusted by those meticulous or insecure enough to keep track and eliminate anyone who failed to mail one.
Email forwards, being instant, effortless, free and funny/interesting /syrupy/enlightening or full of facts or import, tend to accumulate longer lists than hand-written, stamp-required cards. I’d gathered all my friends—dear, related, virtual, former and others—into a group called “Funny” and hit send.
I try to send them in BCC mode to keep from exposing their addresses to who-the-heck-knows-who, and remove the layers of addresses from those who don’t (but fear the horse is long gone from that barn). Some reply LOL, ROFLOL, :o} or Thanks! Others send an email once in a blue moon. Others never.
I decided to clean up my list. Offer to remove without prejudice anyone who doesn’t enjoy the forwards. Create a clean IMHO Fun Group 2010. With unlimited electronic memory, the addresses will still be available for breaking news.
The annual Opt Out Email. My new Internet Etiquette.
After all, if they’re not having fun, what’s the point?

SLI

It used to be easy to worry...

photo: Cowboy used to jump on top of doors in his younger days.





I know what they say, the time you waste in worry is totally wasted because things will happen whether you worry or not (worry being different than planning or preparing).
But I'm getting to the age where things could actually be permanent. Certainly the wrinkles--sorry, character lines--are here to stay.
I've been noticing things with my faithful companion Cowboy, who will, as near as we can figure (he being a rescue), be 14 on February 14 (the arbitrary birthdate I gave him). He is slower. More deliberate. It's a good day when he engages in play combat with Miss Kitty. It warms my cockles when I see him stalking her and sticking around to stick up for himself.
He thinks about leaping up to the kitty condo seat now. Prepares himself. He of the effortless leaps four and five times his height as a tiny kitten chasing a bumblebee toy on an elastic string that I had to replace over and over. For years just hearing me open the drawer I kept it in made him come running and leaping.
Cowboy will stick around when my granddaughter is here. Miss Kitty does a Mister Mistophelees vanish. At 2 last year, the WGG squealed when she saw the kitties, scaring the bejeebers out of them. She wanted to squeeze 'em. They wanted nothing to do with that. Wouldn't get close, except when we were reading quietly on the bed.
Now she's a quieter 3 and Practical Cowboy will come for treats. He keeps a distance, belly drops when caught, stays still, allows her to come close in case she has gifts, gives her the impression he likes her while keeping an avenue of escape open.
He squeals a little himself if I don't pick him up right. Lays down next to the computer, even on it a little, rests his head gently on my mouse hand. Crawls in my lap like he did as a kitten when he was so tiny he had to be picked up. Still snuggles, purrs and sleeps.
Gets me up when he's out of his favorite food. Knocks things off the desk or rattles papers in the trash to get my attention.
He's a wise one, with me. I look into the future and my throat catches at the thought of one without him, so he gets a few more treats, more coat brushing and I refill his food a little quicker.
Even Miss K, at a mature 8 going on 9, is a little slower to jump, but still loves chasing shoe strings.
So when there is an ache, my mind worries it like a bone: could it be the Big Arthur, or tobogganing down that hill? What's the twinge in the knee? The constant need for glasses. And the big one: the mind. It seems harder to organize, retains less, has a softer focus--normal...or Alzheimer's?
It used to be easy to worry, cause what I worried about hardly ever happened.
Now? I know worrying won't stop any of it, if any of it can be stopped. It might, however, make me pay attention to something that could be.
As long as I don't let it get in the way of playing with the kitties and the WGG.

Sli

Holy Moly: Tetanus!

photo: Just like this bee, gardens can sting you.



Went to the public health nurse today so she could read my TB test. Had to get a TB test because there is tuberculosis in the area and I work with school kids. When I got the under-the-skin-shot to see if I have any antibodies, I said I should get a reaction since everyone had to get TB and polio vaccine when I was growing up (mine was a sugar cube). I mentioned I didn’t get a scar from the TB test. She checked. Sure enough: no scar. She said it must not have worked.
Humph.
No reaction. Went back in three days. She confirmed this. Guess it didn’t work. There are no effective TB vaccinations for adults. We talked about vaccinations in general and she asked if I wanted a tetanus shot. I was pretty sure I’d had one in the last ten years, but not exactly when. My records are with my doc.
She told me in 2007 three seniors who had been working in their gardens on Vancouver Island in British Columbia died of tetanus.
Died? Scraped their finger on something in the garden soil? Nope, she said, tetanus is present everywhere in soil, you don’t need a rusty nail. The victims must not have realized what was wrong, tetanus not being anything we worry about in these days of H1N1.
Lockjaw kills, pretty quickly, she said. Can’t breathe. I checked: mortality rates range from 10 to 50 percent. They were 100 percent in BC.
She said a lot of seniors were courting tetanus because they don’t keep their immunizations up. Probably don’t even think about it. More worried by the flu. Seniors should have tetanus, flu and the pneumonia shot., but many don’t know it. There aren’t any school nurses to send reminders to seniors’ homes
You need a booster every 10 years for sure, but if you know you haven’t had one in five years, you can have one without doing harm.
So I got the shot.
My goal is to be able to remember in 2020 that I need another one.

SLI

The Countdown

photo: Sometimes what you're looking for is closer than you think.





I feel a little gypped. I mean, there are few enough birthdays that “mean” anything after you turn 21. Even 21 isn’t what it used to be, but after it, the birthdays are like stacked dominoes—it doesn’t matter how many dots are on them, what matters is they keep falling.
There used to be 39, which once marked the transition into middle age—and created the excuse of “middle age crisis” for men to dump wifey #1 to mount a younger trophy model on their rec room wall—but the Boomers did away with middle age. Everyone’s young these days—until they turn “old” like milk that’s gone sour. The exact expiration date this happens keeps getting pushed upwards, what with better food and preservatives and medicine and plastic surgery and Botox and every other device known to (wo)man to fend off any appearance of “character.”
Old is how you feel. You’re not old, you’re experienced. Aged to perfection. The slogan sellers are hard at work selling the idea of eternal youth. As a newspaper columnist, I did not dare call anyone under 80 old—and as an editor, I saved several reporters who used “elderly” as a modifier for someone in their 50s from being lynched—or the paper sued. It used to be “seniors” were 65. In some cases—those that haven’t yet been taken to court—this still holds, but few public figures use any adjective relating to age accumulation before 80 without a great deal of thought.
So this year of 64 is not a countdown to much of anything. I can apply for social security or pension as early as 60. I’ve been getting the seniors discount since my hair turned silver in my 40s. Qualified for AARP at 50. The vanishing frontiers of old age keep getting pushed further away by the advancing horde of Boomers.
Which kind of makes this “When I’m 64” thing less fun. We really are healthier, wealthier, better offier, but no Scouts open doors for us, no one respects our experience, no exclusive clubs offer membership.
There are perks. There have to be. There should be rewards for living this long. When I find them I will report. I have 8 months. Stay tuned.

SLI