OK, enough of that Pollyanna stuff of yesterday.  I'm already in need of another attitude revision.  I slept horribly last night. It wasn't so much the time change as it was the damnable leg cramps. At first, I fell half asleep for a while but then woke up too cold and when I dared to put another cover on, I got a cramp in my left calf.  Had to leap out of bed several times to stretch my calves and, of course, each time I got up, I peed thinking that perhaps that would hold me until morning.  When I last looked at the clock, it was 3 am.  I finally turned off the alarm and slept until 10 am but feel like a kicked around dog turd.

Good news - as you get older (I qualify), you do more of your peeing at night. The meds that would provide a solution are anticholinergics and would probably give me dementia.  The sleep doc recommended that I take dopamine agonists like Mirapex and Requip for the leg cramps but, once again, no thank you.  I think the allopathic cures would be worse than the afflictions.  Now I'm looking into something like Hyland's Leg Cramps.

Picture me, this morning, walking to the library, blue backpack burgeoning with books, grumbling inwardly that just a few days ago it seemed like Spring was here; but now, it's overcast and cooler than I, Supreme Majesty of the world, think it should be.

Along comes a neighbor, walking four, fawn-colored dogs at once. "Hello," I say to her and she replies "Lovely day for a walk!" We both continue on our way but now my eyes are open and I say to myself "It is, it is, it truly is!"

Everything is still the same - an occasional lost snowflake careens by, the mountains are still overhung with heavy clouds, my right foot still hurts, the book bag is still too heavy but my attitude is newly revised and I'm now thankful for the coolness and the beauty of the cloud-draped mountains.

Getting my 100,000 mile check up this year.  So far, the sleep doctor has dismissed my low nocturnal oxygen, in the 80's per an overnight nocturnal oximetry, as not bad enough for a sleep study.  He suggested taking Mirapex or Requip for my nocturnal leg cramps - no thanks!  Right now, I'm experimenting with increasing my vitamin B complex and so far that's helping.

Recent chest x-ray showed my heart was mildly enlarged so that, plus the low nocturnal oxygen and feeling that my exercise endurance has decreased, got me an echocardiogram of my heart and a treadmill stress test.  I haven't got the results but I assume that I'm not dying, (yet), because the cardiologist didn't need to see me again.

One good thing I learned from the stress test is that I'm not exercising hard enough.  What I mean is that there's a difference between daily 4 mile strolls (although I am faster than that!) and aerobic conditioning via hill repeats and intervals.  I lasted 12 minutes on the treadmill and was breathing very hard and I need to breathe that hard a couple of times a week to increase my aerobic conditioning.

Today I walked the first two miles of Camp May Road and did hill repeats x 2 on 2 of the steepest hills.  (Not sure of the correct terminology but first I walked up the hill, then walked down and then walked up again.) I feel like I accomplished something and plan to do something like that maybe twice a week.  Now that the trails are more snow-free (at least until after tonight's snow!), I will also try jogging intervals (jogging on asphalt and cement hurts my knees and my feet) but I won't make them as strenuous as the hill repeats.  They'll be mainly to practice jogging and hopefully work my way up to longer periods of jogging.  

It was very windy along Camp May Road.  I saw two ravens hanging out together in a tree, staying out of the wind.  When I tried to take their picture, they flew off from each side of the tree.

Took walk today with husband behind Larry Walkup Center.  I wanted to go to lower Water Canyon Trail outside Pajarito Acres because word is that the trails there are mostly dried out.  Instead, we got a late start, after stopping at the library which doesn't open until noon Sundays so I opted for spouse's suggestion to walk the open space trails behind the Walkup Center.

We started downhill on the Acid Canyon Trail and quickly realized that although there are some dry areas, there is also a lot of mud and snow patches.  The snow is probably very icy in early morning as the top layer melts and refreezes overnight.  We went as far as the high Pueblo Canyon bridge and turned around.  I completed the rest of my miles with back and forth to the airport while listening to a tape of Prairie Home Companion.  There is still too much mud and snow to make hiking on the trails truly carefree.  It's surprising how long the snow has stayed.  It's all melted in our yard.  Spring will come, Spring will come - just hold on!

I wrote this on 1/27/2012 and never did anything more with it so here it is:  idea of reincarnation - you'd probably never know if it really happened but it's comforting to think it might; this on hearing that by 2050, we'll need to address global climate change and saying out loud "I'll be dead" and wishing it weren't true and then thinking that maybe I'll be reincarnated but won't know - life is wonderful even when it isn't and it's hard to think that this "me" will one day be dead and no longer be entertained, horrified, in wonder, terrified, in awe of this thing called life - maybe the knowledge that our life will end is the source of depression, sadness - I guess the cure is don't dwell on it

Canyon Rim Trail really hopping yesterday.  Among the more memorable -  jogger with two big, leashed dogs, one on either side; bicyclist making multiple trips out and back; older couple walking their 12 year old white Scottish terrier, Mac; a passel of adorable little ones riding bikes and trikes.  Shall we nominate the Canyon Rim Trail as the most well-loved, well-used trail in Los Alamos?  I say "Yes!!"

Photography thoughts after taking a photo recently of shadows cast by exterior metal stairs: I'm a stickler for shadows.  Always have been ever since I got my first camera in my teens for Christmas.  It was a Polaroid Land camera.  Via a Google search, I found a photo of a Polaroid Land model 100 camera.  I don't know if that was the exact one I had but it sure looks like what I remember - bellows and all - and the era is right - early 60's.  The camera was expensive enough (or, rather, we were poor enough) that I paid for part of it with my allowance and Daddy paid the rest and bought it for me as a Christmas present.  Not sure, but it could have been the Christmas of my 15th year, after our Mom had died at age 39, three days before the previous Christmas. 

Didn't tell my father that part of the reason I wanted a Polaroid camera was to take photos of my face to instantly study what I looked like in pictures as opposed to looking in a mirror.  I felt like this would more objectively portray what I really looked like.  Being an overweight teenager and having mild acne didn't exactly bolster my self esteem but the pictures made me look worse than in real life because when I held the camera right-up-close to my face and didn't smile, it looked more like a mug shot.  Maybe I took the photos when I was home watching my younger brothers and sisters on the nights Daddy worked late?  Maybe I took the photos while Daddy was in the hospital dying of cancer?  I don't know for sure because I destroyed those photos!

I didn't only use a camera for self-portraits. I branched out to shooting "artsy" black and white photos of my brothers and sisters.  Maybe this was a different camera - an Instamatic?  I'd have to do some digging in my photo albums to figure this out.  Looking at old photos of my family makes me sad, though.  

Whatever camera I used and when, two of my photos even got into Ingenue magazine, a teen magazine in the 60's, when I sent them off for their readers' photos feature.  One was a close-up of my younger sister who was sitting on top of our dog house with her hair hanging down.  Another was of my oldest younger sister.  I got down low and took a photo of her standing with her arms akimbo.  Looking at the photos, someone would have thought we were inner-city children but we actually lived on two acres out in the country near Canton, OH.

President's Day Walk

On President's Day, since I thought West Road was still under partial closure, I decided it would be pleasant to walk there.  I didn't read the notice carefully because on that holiday, the road was scheduled to be open.  It worked out all right - most ski hill traffic came from West Jemez Road which kept West Road fairly empty.   The road's wide shoulder had mostly dried out from the fresh snow Sunday night so I had stable footing.

Starting from the intersection of Camp May Road and West Jemez Road, I walked with the wind behind me.   For my four miles, I made two out and back trips, going as far as the razor wire topped fence that blocks vehicles from West Jemez Road.  On each return trip,  I unhappily walked uphill into a fiercely cold, hat-flapping wind. 

Ventured off pavement yesterday on Kwage Mesa dirt road.  It's dried out some but there are still far too many scabs of snow and ice and mud, the kind that clumps to your shoe soles and gives makes your feet heavy!  But, I wanted to jog.  I haven't been doing that much this winter because its been impossible to get on terra firma since December.  If I jog on pavement, it's not good for my knees.  Well, true, I jogged a few times on the sewer plant road but not consistently enough.  I have to go back to consistency.  Tried jogging a little on asphalt this weekend and my right knee felt painful like it was going to lock.  It's all better now.

Today, walked bottom 2 miles of Camp May Road.  Española Valley a swath of pink with blue layer of distant Sangres rising above.  High peaks of Truchas and Las Trampas are snow covered.

Wasn't completely clear overhead but dark clouds to northwest blew further north and were replaced by mix of dark bottomed clouds, blue skies and sunlight.  Alongside Camp May Road, ice rind on snow reflected a fiery gleam.

Haven't had many brilliant thoughts ever since I bought tape recorder to which I'd hoped to impart them.  Really, I don't think I ever think my own thoughts because I'm usually force feeding someone else's thoughts into my mind - radio, CDs, DVDs, TV, books, magazines, newspapers, all the stuff on the Internet.

I did have a wry thought this morning while looking at the sunlight highlighting the dust on my car's dashboard:  "I don't like to dust - might need it some day for forensic evidence."  (Same applies to our house!)  We gave one of the senior center hikers a ride recently.  I forget how the subject came up  - maybe we joked about our car's dusty interior and then he confessed that our car was dustier than his!

Wow - how innovative can I be?  (I'm making fun of myself!)   Instead of walking the bottom two miles of Camp May Road yesterday,  I drove two miles up and walked the top two miles to the Pajarito Mountain Ski Area and all the way around the Camp May Community Park loop.  Whee!!  The upper half of Camp May Road seems less steep than the bottom half.  Camp May Road dry except past Oxbow Road parking and then there was some tamped down snow and ice on the sides of the road.  In the few shady parts, road surface was thinly snow-covered but not bad.

Interesting studying the topography from the roadway - next time, bring binoculars.  The area between Camp May Road and Los Alamos Canyon seems so spacious since all the trees burned in the Las Conchas wildfire.  Could fit in a lot of cross country ski trails and snowshoe trails and hiking trails.  Would love to explore that area when snow melts.

In this same area, and between Townsight ski run and parking for Oxbow Road, saw, just below the guardrail, one of the little house-shaped wood signs on a metal stake that the forest service uses.  Usually these appear near the beginning of forest roads off Camp May Road.  Hard to tell if there was ever a truly a forest road there because t's now a burnt, rocky area and I saw no trace of a road.  Regardless, I'll add this to my springtime explore list.

When I got to the ski hill, I was happy that the ski lodge door was unlocked.  Nice to use real bathroom!  In the dining area, I took a ski area brochure.  It shows tiny flame symbols in the burnt east and west sides of Pajarito Mountain to indicate they are closed.

Carefully made my way down all the stairs, which can be slippery, to the parking lot.  Continued past boulder barrier and up groomed hill to Camp May Community Park.  The decrepit pit toilets have been replaced with modern ones.  Saw lots of bunny tracks.  Could hear grooming machines on the mountain.

Groomed walkway ended at Mother Lift but then I followed vehicle tracks and didn't sink.  Private vehicles can't go up to Camp May Community Park until the spring melt but ski hill vehicles have obviously gone up.  Grooming started again, past uppermost parking area, for Salamander Gully, an easy ski run.  I debated going on this back down to the Mother Lift but when it got just a tad steeper, I chickened out and instead followed old snowshoe tracks at the bottom of the park road to close the loop.

I could hear whoops and hollers as I got close to the ski area parking lot.  A van load of kids from the local Y were getting ready to snowshoe the Cañada Bonita Trail.

As I walked down Camp May Road, a neighbor driving by greeted me.  He'd gone out to Cañada Bonita meadow with his dog.

It was a beautiful day.  No wind and the snow sparkled dazzlingly under a clear, blue sky.  On way down, I noticed some of the aspen trunks are turning khaki green so they probably survived the Las Conchas wildfire.