we’re hitting the open road again. tomorrow. the pouring down rain and temps in the 40s today–classic ‘burgh springtime–is chasing us to the desert. hueco tanks is calling us back for another climbing adventure, a revisiting of last year. the young ones have shorn heads to accommodate the heat. 88 degrees fahrenheit on saturday, our first day in the park.

this year, texas is first, but from there we’ll take a quick jaunt to tuscon, az, for a visit with our friends paul and april and baby silas before embarking upon a really long drive to santa cruz, ca, for the beach! we have a couple of ideas to fill in the time between santa cruz and denver (which will again be our final destination before returning home): what will it be, bishop, ca? a tried and true bouldering mecca at the foot of the sierras. or will it be salt lake city, ut? a yet untried bouldering spot that touts some shade and cooler temps and, of course, rocks galore. we’re not sure yet. ideas keep bouncing back and forth between brian and me. but that’s the beauty of taking a long trip; you can wait and see where the spirit moves you.

and hopefully the spirit will also move me to write about our on-the-road shenanigans. maybe some occasional emails from you all who read this post will encourage me to do it? so drop me a line… no, not many, many lines. a line. just one line at a time!

Posted on April 12th, 2011

Here is a little slideshow of photos my friend JOhn took one day in July of me working on Apollo.

Posted on November 23rd, 2010

oren: the other day i lost my brain cap.

everyone else: huh?

me: imagining his brains spilling out of a hole while he’s bending over looking around for the cap. (can you blame me?)

oren: you know, i couldn’t remember something. i lost my brain cap.

some of us: ooooooh, you mean your thinking cap?

oren: yeah, thinking cap. that’s it.

Posted on November 19th, 2010

one of my favorite essays from my thesis has been published!

check out “Born to Climb” at Stymie Magazine, on page 51. this takes you to a strange online reader, and if you do a little bit of looking around, you can make some adjustments so it’s in a format that works best for you. that is, if you want to read it.

Posted on November 19th, 2010

(disclaimer: this post might only be exciting to me, but that’s okay. here is my place to spray instead of facebook.)

i have been waiting all year to write this post. i had the title picked out sometime in january.

13.1 miles. in january, i decided to train for a half marathon.  i trained to finish it without dying, no real time goal in mind. and on saturday, march 28, 2010, i ran (mostly) and finished 13.1 miles in 2:34. not a great time, but i did not die! goal accomplished.

5.13a. after climbing for 3 years, i was able to finally break into the 5.12 grade. but by the time i had sebastien, 7  years later, i still had not been able to climb 5.13a. i had given up hope and any expectation to. not a big deal, it had never truly been a goal of mine. but this year, after another 7 years have past, i sent my first 5.13a. saturday, october 9, 2010. a route called apollo reed at the colluseum, summersville lake, wv. woo! if you had asked me when i was 27 years old if i thought i would be stronger in 10 years at 37, i would have said, “no way, i’m in my prime! i’ll be almost dead when i’m 37 (or something similarly obnoxious)!” i’m kind of glad i would have been wrong.

i don’t know how to compare these accomplishments for people who do not run or climb. certainly, running 13.1 miles is nothing to scoff at–had i actually been racing, and not hobbling. but lots of people can finish 13.1 miles. in fact, i’m surprised at who can run 13.1 miles faster than me. not that i’m a great runner. i’ll be the first to admit that i am terrible at running. i’m slow, and when it hurts i want to quit. but i’m fit. i’m in pretty good shape for a gal my age, and people older and less fit than me make running look like a breeze. so there is really no way to compare running 13.1 miles with climbing a 5.13a. i have needed all 16+ years of climbing experience to get to this level. granted, i’m probably as slow in gaining strength in climbing as i am in running, i just happen to have more stick-to-it-iveness when it comes to climbing. out of the percentage of people who climb, many have climbed 5.13 with less experience than me. much less. but your average joe or jane shmo cannot hop off the couch and decide to train for a 5.13 and do it in a year or so. so is climbing 5.13 harder than running 13.1 miles? i would have to say, yup, yeah. hello, oh yes. but i could be wrong.

and was this my point to start out with? no. i don’t know. i don’t think i had much of a point except to brag a little bit. and i swear, this is the last time i’ll do it. maybe.

but this post can’t end here. i have one more thing to add to my short list of 13s.

13 years of marriage. august 9, 2010. harder but much much more fulfilling and rewarding than either climbing or running. and this one is not all about me. it takes team work.

Posted on November 19th, 2010

just now, oren was having trouble getting out of his chair, so he exclaimed, “oh man, my bum is SO big!”

Posted on July 15th, 2010

at things both of my kids said to me today.

me: oren just take the bag down to the kitchen. food doesn’t belong in my room or yours.

oren: but mommy! all the crackers (read: cwackows) will fall out of the bag all over the floor (read: ovow the flow)! because everything is hangin’ out like the tongue of a dog!!

this was after seb tried to convince oren to come play– oren, let’s go play with our similar jets!–and oren had been horrified–not our similar (simiwaw) jets!!–but then he was convinced it was a good thing and was on his way downstairs when i waylaid him about his bag o’ goodies.

we are just coming out of a 10-day visit of my sisters from out of town. we were blessed with the presence of jackie (who is my little sister–i’m taller and older than her!) and luke, their kids noah and lily, and their grayhound, jasper here at our house. it was fun to have the dog, except when his bum was stinky. so maybe this is where oren’s tongue of a dog comment came from–jasper has quite the lolling tongue.

Posted on June 25th, 2010

oren had a ct scan and follow up with his neurosurgeon today. he handled getting the iv well (for the contrast fluid to be pumped into his veins for the ct scan to show blood flow). he was still for the scan and they got a good picture–he’s an old pro, i suppose.

at the neurosurgeon’s office we met up with the resident who we saw most often while we stayed at the hospital in december. she and oren get along well even though she gave him his stitches without any anesthesia and then removed them too. they are happy with his progress. she showed me the scans from 12/14 and today. there are two blood vessels at the site of the dent (fracture) that have gotten much bigger, so it is very apparent that the brain is doing its work and increasing circulation where it is needed. that amazes me, quite frankly. it amazes me that it was something i could witness too, and not just take the doc’s word for it. to me, even something like this that is considered the normal healing process is miraculous.

the main doc said that he’s passing along oren to a neurologist since he doesn’t think he’s a surgical case anymore (yay!). he said that they are familiar and comfortable with weaning a patient off of diamox, something that he admits he is not comfortable doing. we will probably see the neurologist in a month, and another appt with the opthomologist in that time frame too, so i hope that by then we actually WILL start weaning oren off the meds. the drug itself is harmless, but oren really doesn’t like getting blood sucked out of him once a week (he has to have his electrolytes regularly checked because diamox is a diuretic). so far, after a month, his electrolytes have been fine… we wish now they didn’t have to check so often.

i was reminded today by one of the technicians who scanned oren of what a unique case his was… she and some other people remembered him, the kid who fractured his skull from falling backward in his chair. the kid they didn’t want to operate on. it was a bad accident, but here on the other side, we’re feeling very blessed at how far that seems from us now because oren is doing so well. at some moments, we can witness that God made our bodies amazing. even here and now, we are still able to see the goodness of creation peeking out through the dark places.

Posted on February 1st, 2010

when i walked down the steps this morning first thing, i was met with a view of my two sons sitting together on the couch. it isn’t that this never happens, but what made it so special was that the older had a book open and was reading to the younger. and no one had asked him to.

now, before i had ever convinced myself that homeschooling was for our family, i asked my oldest sister why she did it. she said, one of the reasons was there was a sort of life-affirming feeling you get when you teach your kids how to read. she may not have said it in those exact words, but that is how i remember and put it in my own.

i was saying some of these things to a friend of mine on the phone later today, and seb piped up, “mommy, you didn’t even have to do anything!” so maybe we’re in disagreement as to who did all the work of teaching him to read–it seemed to happen on its own. i will concede this much–if i did the work of teaching, he did that of learning.

this is good work.

Posted on January 25th, 2010

the temps today are in the 30s, and if there wasn’t snow on the ground, i think we’d be running around without jackets and mittens on. well, at least the mittens. i just sent oren and seb to play outside, because what good is homeschooling if we don’t play outside while everyone in school is stuck inside? especially on a day like today with the sun melting the snow away and making MUD.

on the way down the back steps, seb grabbed oren’s hand to help him out since there is no railing. i didn’t even have to ask him to! he’s been such a good big brother lately, in between all the fighting and arguing and telling oren what to do, of course. he has embraced his role as protector of his little brother so he doesn’t hurt himself again.

things seem normal now, except that we are still careful with oren going down steps, etc. thankfully, he’s his own best caretaker. he is very cognizant about what he should and shouldn’t be doing, and i’m glad i don’t have to be the one to draw the lines. he’s become very vocal about warning people not to do things to him because he has a head injury (don’t touch me, i have a head injury… don’t look at me like that because i have a head injury). we play with friends and we play at home and we don’t do things that require a helmet. or should require a helmet. although who knew that eating dinner at the dining room table at home should require a helmet? (no, we don’t all sit around eating dinner now with helmets on!)

we’ve battled through most items on the list i posted previous to this. a lot of those bad habits were easy to break because we just didn’t do those things at home. like, peeing in a bottle while laying in bed. the ones that are a little harder are screaming at the help (namely, anyone who tells oren to do something), and not watching TV every day. my explanation, “we just don’t do that” doesn’t always suffice. oh well. i’ve been saying, “suck it up!” to them A LOT in the past few weeks. “just go PLAY, for CRYING OUT LOUD!” parents have to say (holler) the strangest things.

friends of mine have asked me, recently, “are you still paranoid that something is going to happen?” by this, i assume they mean “something” by his head suddenly emploding. believe me, at one point i was totally paranoid about that very thing. my answer now is, “no… as long as he doesn’t hit his head.” but i’m still surprised how often that actually happens. maybe in my life PHI (pre head injury), a bump on the head never caused a second thought. now, AHI (after head injury), a bump on the head can bring back the evil Hover-Mommy from the hospital days. are you okay? can you see? how many fingers am i holding up? does your head hurt? why are you tired?

time goes on and life is becoming much less PHI and AHI, but our lives will always be colored by it in some way, i think. especially for oren. his current way of delineating time now centers around his accident. he’ll say, “remember when we did thus-and-such (okay, so he doesn’t himself say thus-and-such)? it was before i had a head injury.” or, as i like to think of it, before he received blunt-force trauma to his skull and bled all over the dining room. some things are not easily forgotten, should not be easily forgotten. oren is also more focused on blood in his play time. blood, and getting nails driven into different body parts (which is how he described his IVs at the hospital). i’m glad in a way that he can so easily work it into normal parts of life. i think it means he’s dealing with it well and accepting that it happened. though i doubt he’ll ever have a great opinion about hospitals, those disgusting, gross and stinky bastions of pain and torture.

Posted on January 14th, 2010