Hiking in the Snowies

We finally got to spend some time in one of our favorite places, the Snowy Range Mountains and the Medicine bow National Forest west of Laramie Wyoming on highway 130. We finished all our weekend chores on Saturday so that we could enjoy two guiltless days away. We had impulsively made a last minute reservation to stay the night at an old Hotel in Centennial near the old stomping grounds of the VC clan. The folks used to own a cabin in town and we spent many a family weekend there when the children were younger. They might remember it from the photos.

Sunday we packed up our picnic supplies and loaded up the dog and headed out west. We decided to take the road to Albany and Keystone instead of driving directly to Centennial as we had extra time and wanted to see the area around Lake Owen and The Rob Roy Reservoir. I also have a friend whose family owns cabins in the Keystone area and we thought we might stop by there if we could find it.

The gravel road to Lake Owen is dry and dusty. Off-road vehicles were out in force with the long holiday weekend. When a car encounters a string of such vehicles the lead driver holds up a hand showing how many more are following in the dust cloud behind him or her. Many of the drivers are young and drive way too fast crossing over the center line around the curves. It is an accident waiting to happen.

We walked part way around the lake when we got to Lake Owen which seems to be primarily a destination for camping and fishing. We had a nice picnic there. Penelope proceeded to jump in the lake to cool off and had a great time.

Driving on west to Keystone we took a few lucky turns and managed to find the place we were looking for but no one was home. It is in a beautiful forest area alongside a creek with rustic log cabin homes. We found another road on a map to take us on a short cut to Centennial a distance of about 15 miles. It was an unimproved jeep trail and quite rocky and bumpy, it took an hour to get there but was a nice adventure as long as we didn’t get stuck.  It was fun to see a different part of the forest as we drove north. It got steep on the downhill side and there were some drop-offs on my side as we neared Centennial. We got to town just in time to check in to the Buffalo Roam room of the 100 year old hotel and have dinner across the street at The Old Corral.

The rest of the evening was spent up the mountain at the lakes and the overlooks waiting for the sky to darken so we could see the stars in all their splendor at ten thousand feet. The Milky Way gradually appeared overhead. It was cold but there was no wind which is highly unusual. The drive back to town only takes about fifteen minutes. Penelope settled in on her bed at the hotel and thankfully did not bark at any strange noises in the night.

 Monday was spent taking more photographs and hiking the alpine trails from the Sugarloaf area. We tried a new portion of a trail that climbs and then levels out and follows along to view several alpine lakes at the base of the mountain range. The day was perfectly sunny and cool and quite a few mountain flowers were still flowering in the sheltered areas. Penelope ran miles and swam and drank from every lake. The scenery was spectacular! A good time was had by all. All three of us are extra stiff and sore today.

Lou

Thoughts triggered by the movie “The Help”

S. and I went to the movie recently and it triggered memories of my girlhood and our black housekeeper Ida Mae. I grew up in Omaha in the 1960’s so some of my life is similar to the time setting of the movie, but it wasn’t the deep south. Ida Mae had her employers deduct her social security from her wages and she did not wear a uniform. She had no childcare responsibilities only housekeeping ones. She took the bus to our neighborhood and my mom picked her up at the bus stop. She was our friend and I recall my mom working alongside her on cleaning days doing chores of her own. I loved Ida Mae and still feel sad that I wasn’t really able to say a goodbye. I heard of her illness and death well after the fact. She had moved back to her “people” in Port Arthur, Texas in her senior years after she could no longer work and no doubt lived on her meager social security checks. 

Ida Mae called me “Miss Lou” even though I had told her she did not have to. That was her background, I do not know how much actual education she had but she had a dyslexic signature like a child. We exchanged Christmas cards long after I left home to go to college and then married. I sent her photos of my kids. She wrote back asking for prayers and including little bits of wisdom and news. She was humble and gentle and laughed easily. She had no spite in her yet she would tell stories of doing the housekeeping and cooking for orthodox Jewish women and all the extra work that was involved in keeping the Kosher rules during holidays. I can’t imagine her ever baking the infamous chocolate pie like Millie in the movie. She had a difficult life, I don’t know whether she was widowed or divorced but one of her son’s had mental disabilities from his service in the Vietnam war I think and she was raising a grandson who gave her trouble. She had a strong faith and her church meant a great deal to her. She had funny ways of saying things. I remember her telling me “don’t take any wooden nickels” when I started college. She cleaned the old fashioned way scrubbing floors on her arthritic hands and knees, she wouldn’t use a mop. She could make a bathroom shine.

When I saw the scene in the movie where the main character is given a copy of the book signed by all the other maids and noticed all the perfect cursive signatures I knew that wasn’t authentic. I knew Ida Mae’s signature and bet most of the other maids of her era would have signed similarly given their lack of educational opportunities. 

The movie is a portrayal of a certain time and place and it is good for people today to know how things were then. It was a sad time for our nation, things are different now but the poverty and lack of opportunity continue for many today. Injustices will always remain this side of heaven, what matters is how we deal with what we are given.

I still love Ida Mae for her way of encouraging others and making the best of things. She trusted in her Lord Jesus and leaned on Him. She was a gentle soul. 

Lou

Interesting New Study

E#1 was given lots of IV fluid during her recent labor and C-section delivery. My grandson Mav weighed in at 8 lbs at birth then dropped to nearly 7 lbs in the NICU where he spent two days for observation for infection. E#1 had to deal with all the excess fluids in her legs and ankles for two weeks after the birth. There were no shoes that she could wear other than flip flops and slippers and those were still uncomfortably tight over her insteps.

This study out today makes it sound as though the baby’s true weight was probably his weight at 24 hours after birth because he got over hydrated by the IV fluids too. "It appears neonates exposed to increased fluids before birth might be born overhydrated, requiring the baby to regulate his or her fluid levels during the first 24 hours after birth." Here is the article from ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110814223805.htm Also though he isn’t back to his birth weight yet my grandson is probably getting good nourishment from his mom. As a grandma I can vouch that he is producing lots of wet and poopy diapers a sign of good nutrition.

There is a real pressure put on the mom’s to feed more often (every one to two hours followed by pumping) to produce more breast milk during the time frame (several days post-op) when it is the hardest to do so. Getting the baby back to his birth weight is a mantra. Maybe with this study the “lactation Nazi’s” will back off a little.

They (the experts in lactation) also had the new family coming in twice a week after they were discharged for appointments for lactation consultation and would like them to return again each time to weigh the baby after 24 hours. Holy cow she just had surgery people, lay off. The young couple balked at returning just for a weigh-in. She also had an appointment to check on her healing incision that first week too. That’s a lot of comings and goings when you feel lousy. 

In my day just making it to the standard two week appointment for the baby following a standard delivery was a monumental task for the new mom.

Then there is the young woman at our church who had her third baby in four years on a Thursday and was attending services on Sunday morning with the whole family. That’s nuts!!

Lou   

A tree flowering in August

The yard took quite a battering from the huge hailstorm in July but the landscape is rebounding nicely. The Canada red cherry tree that starts out with green leaves in the spring that change over to a wine color is re-blossoming now. Not every branch has blooms but enough that I can smell the lovely fragrance of spring again. The little oak has also put out new green leaves, but I worry about it still because of the damage on the bark of the branches where the hailstones opened big cracks. I hope it can withstand the next winter’s wind and cold. The flower boxes all came back too despite being reduced to stems. Nature is pretty remarkable in healing itself. I never tire of seeing the wonders.

The house needs a new roof, too bad it can’t heal itself!

From my “God’s Creation calendar for 2011” this month. “Look. . .and be utterly amazed.” Habakkuk 1:5

Lou

He shares a birthday with Mick Jagger and Sandra Bullock

Things have been busy around here! Our second grandchild arrived into the world on July 26^th after keeping his mom, dad and grandparents up all night at the hospital.  At the end his O2 level fell and he was born quickly by c-section. It was scary for everyone, but little Maverick Stephen is a beautiful healthy little guy and much loved by his extended family. His mom E#1 did a heck of a job and is recovering from the surgery and an infection and is so happy to be out of the hospital after a six day stay.

I was curious as to who little Mav shares a birthday with so I Googled it and found this site that seems to have the most complete listing of historical figures and present day celebrities. Click on the link to read the long list, many of whom I’ve never heard of.

http://holidayyear.com/birthdays-July-26.php

Some that stick out the most to me are actresses like Helen Mirren, Sandra Bullock and Bette Davis and creative musicians/composers like Wolfgang Mozart, Keiko Matsui and Mick Jagger. There is the groundbreaking film director Stanley Kubrick who directed “2001 A Space Odyssey.” There is also Aldous Huxley who wrote “Brave New World” a pessimistic portrayal of the future that was required reading at my high school. A couple more interesting people who share this birthday are the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who wrote about dream analysis and George Bernard Shaw an Irish writer who was famous a humanist and thinker in his day.

Quite a diverse list! Welcome to the world little Maverick, may you grow strong and healthy and be exactly what God intends for you to be and discover and use the skills and abilities He has given you.

Love always,

Grandma Lou

The Timid Activist

An article ran this week on the front page of the Cheyenne paper entitled “Are vaccines safe for kids?” It was a bad article as it pitted the local experts (a pediatrician and a state epidemiologist) against some activists from Wyoming with no credentials who are against vaccines blah blah blah. It gave five websites for people to check out the supposed pros and cons, two were good, WebMD and the CDC but three were awful, conspiracy theory sites, vaccines cause autism and brain damage etc. stuff. There was no mention of the importance of herd immunity nor the very recent outbreaks in our country of whooping cough and other preventable diseases due to the lowered herd immunity from larger numbers of people choosing not to vaccinate their children.

Anyway, I made a comment in the comments section for the article online (along with many anti-vaccination activists who thought the article was” balanced” and “fair”) about what was missing in the article and that children’s lives were at stake. In a second comment I gave a link for an OP-ED piece that I had just seen in the LA Times that was excellent and I said this is what the journalist could have written and did the paper need to find a good science adviser? If you want to read the original article here is a link and you can read through the comments if you want to. http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2011/07/17/news/01top_07-17-11.txt

 

But, the kind of interesting thing is that the Cheyenne paper ran than same OP-ED piece that I had mentioned in my comment today on the opinion page. Here is the link to the original piece. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ropeik-vaccines-20110718,0,4240440.story

 

Maybe someone listened, or they were going to run it anyway and I am just imagining that I had anything to do with it. It won’t change the minds of the committed anti-vaccination activists but maybe a local person swayed away from vaccinations by the original article will think twice about that after reading the OP-ED piece. I hope so.

Lou

Here Today Gone Today

The delphinium were starting to bloom, the columbine were still going strong, the tomato was getting taller by the day and was starting to produce some green tomatoes, now all are gone or in shreds. We had a powerful thunderstorm just now that produced pea to quarter size hail over the top of us for twenty minutes. The street and yard were covered in white. It is sad because everything was getting so pretty, Oh well that is nature for you. We’ve got nothing to complain about though compared to the people in Joplin, Missouri and in the flooded areas of the Midwest.

The funny thing is that for every other storm recently, I’ve gone out and moved the tomato in its pot under the shelter of the pergola and pulled the planters in front of the garage into the garage, but this time I didn’t as I expected only rain. I could have saved them but I didn’t!

At least both cars were in the garage. We have a fairly new roof so hopefully it wasn’t damaged. We were also just about to walk down the street to the annual “Neighborhood Night Out” with the cake I baked to meet the neighbors from the surrounding area. I’m glad we were not down there when it started, there would have been no shelter at all when the ceiling fell out of the sky.

They are still going to try to grill some burgers once the rain stops. Maybe we should wear our snow boots for better traction. Ha.

Lou