Rebuild from Depression Blog

"I am a rugged mountain woman and rugged mountain women just handle these things," I declared as I stared at the overflowing washing machine.

I turned off the water to the machine, pulled the front housing off the washer, and used a screwdriver to remove the clamp on the hose. I pulled the hose off the drain and let the water run freely out of the wash house door. Most of the water landed temporarily on my sneakers before flowing down the hillside.

"Rugged mountain women do not work outside in wet sneakers." I walked inside, removed my shoes, placed them by the fire, and reported to my husband that the washer was drained and in need of repair. I worked by the fire. My shoes dried next to me and were cleaner than they had been in months.

My muscles began to speak to me because I had spent over two hours clearing brush outside. It was the first time I worked that long and hard in a very long time. Rugged mountain women do not usually take such a long hiatus but when they do, they bounce back quickly.

I would work the next day on the brush project as well and wipe away the tears anticipating two funerals the following day with a visit in between to the hospital to say goodbye to a dying friend. It has been a month of funerals.

There does not appear to be an emotional economy of scale in clustering five funerals in a six week period of time.

There really was no better time than now to come out of my long slumber and live the rugged life my body was made to handle. My body is strong and builds muscle very quickly. I can thank my football player father for this quality, a quality I did not appreciate until many years into my life.

Back from the hiatus

In the long nights of winter here in California Hot Springs, without television service and without central heat, we have been sitting around the fire waxing philosophical. The topic of late is the movie "The Secret" and the general philosophy of "The Law of Attraction." My mom studies scripture as is evident from her website Pray the Scriptures. In fact, one soon to be launched CD is "Prayer Affirmations for the Journey," a collection of scripture-based affirmations. Sander and I quiz her about the Christian interpretation of this-or-that as we watch the movie.

After about the third time through the movie, I paused the movie and said "for well over a year I have been focused on trying to lose weight. I obsess over fat." The premise of The Secret is that we attract what we are focused on. So as I obsess over fat, I attract fat.

Sander said "just picture yourself thin."

"It won't work. When my mind is picturing myself thin, my obsessive side will remember the fat. I can't think thin without thinking fat."

"Oh come on, just picture yourself thin. You can do it."

A few curse words formed in my brain even if they did not make it past my tonsils. I am sure my looks, if not words, conveyed my disgust at a man who could be a garbage disposal and maintain his weight.

"I have to focus on the good part of what I am and what I know to be true. Otherwise, my mind will drift to unwanted territories."

I thought for a moment and I announced "I am a rugged mountain woman."

Rugged Mountain Women

Rugged mountain women do not weigh themselves. They do not worry about their weight.

In my first day in full cognition of my rugged nature, I decided that it was time to clear the north side of the hill of brush. The hill is steep and hard to work, but a fire on that side of the house is the biggest natural disaster threat to the property. Rugged mountain women take these matters into their own hands.

Before heading out to work, I decided I should eat a quick lunch before starting the work and wondered what rugged mountain women eat. "They probably do not worry as much about carbs as you have worried in the past. Go see what's in the kitchen."

I could not imagine what I would eat for lunch since I had nothing prepared and do not keep convenience food around. As I opened the kitchen door, Sander was helping himself to a hot pizza. "I have manifested a pizza!" I proclaimed, using the vocabulary of The Law of Attraction.

I sat in the sun eating my pizza and used the pizza's energy to prune a lot of bushes and move a whole lot of brush.

Better than therapy?

The last funeral in this current funeral blast is this coming Saturday, two weeks after the funeral marathon day. I was able to say goodbye to Felix, in between those two funerals. He was cognizant and could speak. And he would have known we were there anyway, somewhere inside.

With the stress of the funeral marathon and the goodbyes, I got sick. A few days later, Frederick got an ear infection. We spent an entire week being sick and many days before being unable to focus. I have wondered what is wrong with me. I usually get more work done.

As I struggled to work today, I sat at my computer and looked out the window. It was a warm, sunny winter day. I put on my work clothes and moved some more brush. "Rugged mountain women get plenty of sunshine and fresh air when they have been sick." I pruned brush and moved firewood.

"Mom, this fresh air and sunshine are really helping me from sliding into the abyss."

"Mandy, why do you think I spent years cutting the terraces and road all by myself, with only a small shovel?"

Thank you dad for the muscles. Thank you mom for the rugged.

I have spent a lot of money in gym memberships over the years. (And, yes, I know, it is a little bit difficult to see that at this point in my life.) The day before I found out I was pregnant with Frederick, I leg-pressed 325 pounds. I expect I am good for two full sets of 500 should I work up to it and should I ever have access to a gym again.

Gym access is a big deal when you live in the wilderness. We are nearly a full hour from a regular grocery store, to give you some perspective.

But then again, when you live in the wilderness, you really don't need a gym. This is my recent discovery.

In the past three weeks I have worked on one small part of our property clearing brush. If you have undeveloped land that has not been grazed and you find parts are filled with so much brush from downed limbs and dead bushes that you cannot walk, you will have a mental picture of this area.

For three days only I spent about two hours with a hand saw and pruners working on that area. I created such a mountain of brush that I started to picture "burn day" in my mind as I was going to sleep. The bonfire would turn to ash all of the evidence of that six or seven hours of work.

With a small amount of February rain, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District finally allowed me some satisfaction. After spending three long days at the World Ag Expo, I decided to shock my travel-weary body into a long work day.

My mom and I had the fire started by 9:30. I hauled the brush in as she monitored the fire.

"You did all of this in six hours?"

"And did you know I can leg press 325 pounds?"

We marveled at our progress and discussed the huge amount of clearing to be done on the property. The work is surely good for at least 175,000 calories (if I were counting) and a whole lot of core muscle development.

About 25 years ago on one of my mom's late 30-something birthdays, she asked for a cement mixer. My dad obliged.

On the day of her birthday, he happened to be at the barber shop to get his haircut and happened to mention "today is Jeanie's birthday."

"What did you get her?"

"A cement mixer," he said.

"Bhahahahaha. Really, Dwaine, what did you get her?"

Being rugged in mind is great. I have been working on outside projects more than ever. I will not be intimidated by any project. I've started on a few minor construction projects and have learned to use three power tools (the chainsaw, an electric drill, and a circular saw). In just a month, I am more limber and I have more energy.

However, I have a little problem.

It started as one small spot on my left forearm and, as these things happen, spots have turned into regions. My arms and legs look like they have second degree burns.

Poison oak is native to California Hot Springs and, in the winter, it is dormant. You know it only by its small red stick-like shape and by the spots that appear all over your body from its oils. The stick might scratch you and leave its oil behind. You touch the oil on your skin or on the stick and then you scratch your head. You scratch your neck. Give it a few days and a mosaic of red spots appear wherever you scratched.

If you burned the poison oak in a controlled burn and breath the smoke, you can damage your lungs. Poison oak can affect you all over. It is a really bad choice in toilet paper. Luckily, I'm not so rugged: I used the indoor facilities.

And here's my point: I've got it bad.

I thought it was a mild case back when the first spot appeared. The first spot is now a three-inch circle. All of my limbs, my chest, and my neck are affected.

Does anyone have a good home remedy?

It is affecting my sleep.

I have to sit through a five hour meeting in Sacramento Friday. Any suggestions for not looking like I have ants in my pants?

I asked the ladies at The Rabbit Foot in Pine Flat for a remedy and they said

"Stay away from it."

"Wear long sleeves."

Thank you. I have learned those lessons.

I read in a Google search that a bleach solution is effective. I am not that desperate.

I tried an oatmeal bath and it did work for a while. It won't be an option in Sacramento.

Should I break down and get a prescription for a steroid cream? I will be in civilization on the way to Sacramento and could actually get it filled. I estimate that I have about a week left of a whole lot of scratching.

I'm on the road to recovery. Thank you all for your suggestions. They have helped me survive the last week. If I did not continue to re-infect myself, I would probably be free of the rashes about now. I expect I have another week. As I continue to scratch, I thought I'd reflect on what I learned.

1. You might be tiny and you may have lost all of your leaves, but dang, you can pack a punch.

In the winter, poison oak looks like a red stick.

That's it. It's dormant and has no leaves.

You might never notice it at all if it were not for the rashes it leaves all over your body.

I went out the other day to look for my nemesis. It was no where to be seen. You hear stories of people coming down with poison oak with no known contact: mowing a lawn in the city. It makes no sense frankly and, in my case, I expect I got it on the north side of the hill on the day I wore shorts, a t-shirt, and scratched myself up something fierce on a bunch of brush.

The day after my last campaign the tiny spot appeared and I announced naively:

"One spot. I got lucky."

A week later I was at a meeting in Sacramento looking like a burn victim. My face had only a spot or two - more acne looking than second-degree-burn looking. I'm sure people thought that I was lucky my face was spared in the fire.

Spots continued to pop up for a week. Luckily, I was the only one "working" who was affected.

Watch out for little red sticks. And in the summer, their leaves are a very bad choice in hiker's toilet paper.

2. Pay attention to basic sanitation

I posted here on the blog about my poison oak problem and I realized that my own "lifestyle practices" were contributing to my problem. You see, the washing machine has been broken for about six weeks. In fact, you might have noticed that fact in my first rugged mountain woman post ("I stared at the overflowing washing machine").

So for various reasons, my stack of clean clothes is pretty small these days. To make matters worse, Sander decided he could "trick" the washer into working and washed a couple of loads of clothes. Sander's "trick" happened the day after I met my nemesis. All of those work clothes got swished around in soapy water. None of the clothes were clean.

"Heck, let's wear them anyway."

That's not always the best decision.

Every day a new itchy spot appeared until I made a fieldtrip to the Laundromat. We were away from home for four days and no new spots appeared. When we returned home I intended to change the sheets as well. Of course, I was too tired and decided it would be obsessive to change those sheets in my exhausted state.

Scratch scratch.

I've changed the sheets.

3. Even rugged women need to shop

I just don't picture "rugged" and "shopping" together. And in general, I don't like to picture "shopping" at all, for anything. Unless it's an antique, I am not interested in shopping for it.

But the whole clothes shopping issue sure can reach a crisis state when all of your clothes are infected with poison oak. I hauled all of the clothes to the Laundromat but had nothing to wear that wasn't potentially infected.

It reminded me of a story back in the 1970s from my hometown of Delano. Right across the street from the tiny Kern County Branch Library in Delano was a coin-operated Laundromat. One night a man was arrested at 3 am for indecent exposure. They found him naked in the Laundromat.

His defense? He had no change of clothes and wanted to wash them.

I thought about that as an option, but it was the middle of the day in a town about ten times the size of Delano in those days. And I don't know if I would have been arrested for indecent exposure or hauled off to the hospital as a burn victim because of the burn-like rashes.

I need a few more pieces of clothing.

4. Frugality is great, a good washing machine is better

Before this winter of washing machine problems, it has been a while since we've used a Laundromat. They have these great new inventions called "front loaders." The front window gives you a view of all of the dirt in your wash water.

I could not believe the difference in the clothes. They didn't seem dingy, not before Sander's experiment anyway. But apparently they were.

"Mom, we are getting a new washing machine. The old one hasn't worked well for a while."

"It's been so long since I've been able to use it, I don't remember how it worked. I'll take your word for it," Mom said.

So we're on the look-out for a scratch-and-dent washer. I'm probably still too cheap for a front-loader, but we'll see what we find.

5. It's what's under the rash that counts

A few days ago I was scratching around and thought,

"Dang, a muscle!"

I have inherited a whole lot of things from my parents - good, bad, everything in between. The one I am focusing on these days is the muscle. My mom is pretty solid, but my dad is in a league of his own. He was recruited into high school football when the coach saw him do 200 sit-ups in high school P.E. class. He stopped at 200 out of embarrassment. He had worked in the potato fields (and every other place my grandpa could find work) from the time he was about ten. Sit ups in P.E. class were nothing for him. But I digress.

If you look at me now, in a coffee house, with the rashes on my arms and what a polite personal trainer would call my "stored energy" covering the muscles, you probably would not notice that the muscles are well on their way. Thanks, Dad.

~~~~~

So, it's all good. The rash is on the way out. The homeopathic remedy, calendula cream, and oatmeal recommended in the previous post have made a big difference. I still wake in the middle of the night with a powerful itch, but I'll be catching up on sleep soon and might even be able to write a real research article for the website very soon. I can always hope. :)

I am told that I use the word too much. And for the first time this week my son started using the word. "Mama, why are you ...?"

"Well, you and I can talk about it, but I don't want you to ask anyone else that question because it might hurt their feelings." The conversations proceeded, linked back to previous discussions about other physical differences, and ended with the dramatic conclusion that it's a lot worse to be boring.

But this is where I get into trouble with my use of the word.

A medical doctor called me the other day with a wake up call.

"You really exaggerate your weight in your book."

It is the job of medical professionals to hound you about your weight, so I have never had such a discussion with a medical professional. After all, I'm the one who had to have my 20 week ultrasound at 22 weeks so that the baby would be more developed when those sound waves started on their very long journey from the ultrasound device on my skin through all of my "stored energy" to the baby inside my uterus. That was the last conversation I had with a medical professional about my weight. (Well, actually, I've had quite a few since, but none so memorable.)

"Your descriptions are funny, really, but for someone who doesn't know you, they will get the wrong impression. You know, you really are not..."

She gave a slight pause.

"...fat."

Annell read the book back in the fall for the first time and mentioned something in passing about the topic. We were never able to engage in the subject, but I assumed she was going to ask when I'd lose all of the damned weight. She did not meet my expectation, apparently.

I felt very defensive. "Come on! Don't yank my chain! I am too!"

But I know what she meant.

I have what my grandpa would have called "a high class problem."

It's not a health risk really, though any doctor doing her due diligence would tell me to lose twenty or so. Some of those charts we all despise would want to cut me in half.

A high class problem
I spent the first couple of decades of my life not using the word at all. Perhaps avoiding the word and eating plastic cheese would also help avoid the problem.

Then the next couple of decades I focused on taking back the word, overusing it to blunt its impact. I didn't even flinch when my son asked me about it, nor when his friend used it to describe my backside. "No truer words have ever been spoken," was my response.

But it's a new day with a new focus. If I make that word part of my identity it does bring more importance to it as a descriptor and it makes no distinction between my case and someone with a medical problem. And frankly, if we all didn't pay so much damned attention to it, there would be fewer medical cases out there. Fellow yo-yo dieters understand what I mean.

There is actually an interesting memoir on this topic written by Richard Morris called A Life Unburdened. It makes the point that having beneficial fats and nutrients is critical to optimal health. Richard, who did have a medical problem weighing in at 400 pounds, makes the point that we try to avoid that word by avoiding food. But the irony is that our bodies hang on to its reserves if it is not getting the nutrients it needs. Richard's before and after picture are inspirational.

Rebuilding
As I rapidly approach a new decade of my life, my focus is on building. After eating non-fat bagels and plastic cheese in my 20s and then facing major depression, my focus for the last few years has been on eating actual food. What is amazing is that as I've started on my five acres of "yard work" in rugged mountain woman mode, I have put on muscle with a speed I have never witnessed. That's apparently why body builders eat all of those protein bars. The funny thing is that a steak works too.

[Warning: This entry is about grief]

When I was a young girl I used to visit Mr. Scott across the street. With each visit he would give me one of those cookie sandwiches with white icing in the middle. I scraped off the icing, placed it on my bare knee in the summer, and saved it until I finished the cookies. I still do that with dessert, it's just not usually a cookie and I don't tend to put it on my knee.

When I was about six, a neighbor visited my mother with the news that Mr. Scott died. Mr. Scott's death was my first lesson about death. I lost a grandmother about six years later, a grandpa ten years after that, as most young people do. My mom took advantage of each opportunity to teach us about life and death but, luckily, she didn't have a whole lot of opportunities.

For my son Frederick, the first death in his memory is approaching its first anniversary. Uncle Mike died just before Frederick's fourth birthday last year. For Frederick, Uncle Mike's death was the first major discussion of the life cycle. When Frederick mentions heaven, he invariably mentions Uncle Mike (and to my amusement, he often mentions Ella Fitzgerald).

Uncle Mike was ear-marked to teach Frederick Botany and they were to start this spring, around Frederick's 5th birthday. Uncle Mike taught Botany for thirty years at Delano High School, a rural school in a poor town. His students did college-level work as sophomores primarily because he never bothered to tell us it was college-level work. We thought all sophomores used the Jepson Manual to key California wildflowers.

Since Uncle Mike's death, heaven has gotten awfully crowded. Over the summer we lost Daralyn and Linda, Carla in the fall, and then in the time between the Thanksgiving season and Valentine's Day, we lost Padmini, Shirley, Mr. Stahl, Jim, Pete, and Felix. Someone close to us lost a baby we were eagerly expecting. Besides Felix (who was a centenarian), everyone died well before their time.

As a result of our friends' passing, the topic of death and dying has become quite normal these days. Our discussions have strayed into issues of the food chain and the life cycle for animals and plants. Frederick asks questions so specific that he is now charged with burying my body here on the property, wrapped in a traditional burial cloth, with a grave covered in granite stones. He plans for his preschool friends Natasha and Matthew to help with the ceremony. Of course, no adult will entertain my plan primarily because it's illegal and sounds a little crazy (particularly when I add a discussion about the link between my funeral plan and keeping the soil fertile). But Frederick is game.

We sent out annual holiday newsletters three months late and, for the first time, had to edit about 10% of our addresses. Heaven doesn't get the U.S. Mail and, as my mom taught me, folks up there stay on top of our news anyway.

This year also brought the first time I've had two funerals to attend on the same day. I managed to squeeze in a hospital visit in between. That day was way back I January and I still stay up nights staring at the ceiling. There does not seem to be an emotional economy of scale in bundling all of the deaths together.

Tonight (or this morning as it has become), I thought I would at least do something more productive than toss and turn. I could write something about wild fish or Omega-3 eggs, but it's the wildflowers that are on my mind. Spring is here to my great relief - the fresh air and sunshine have been good for me. But as healing as sun exercise can be, those wildflowers have been stealing my sleep.

The golden fiddle neck and the early popcorn flowers -- the first flowers to make a show every spring -- are in bloom in the low foothills and just starting to bloom on the property. When Sander and Frederick return from their weekend outing (the outing which was supposed to allow me time to sleep and work), we will begin to collect the wildflower specimens. I was "Botanist of the Year," after all, way back in Uncle Mike's Botany class. When I ask "who is going to teach Frederick about Botany?" the fingers point my way. This was to be our season to start and so we will.

Spring flowers provide a great opportunity to learn about the life cycle to a little boy who has become fascinated with life and death. The topic is wearing on me, but I'll do my part. I am ordering a scalpel and a magnifying glass to get started and can surely conjure up some great speeches about flowers, seeds, and decomposition.

"Mama, I'm going to be as old as Felix when I go to heaven."

"From your lips to God's ears, honey."

I've spent a lot of years working on my skill set.

In my 20s I got far more schooling than any reasonable human being needs. The schooling came with some of those very general skills like writing and analysis. But I got some very specific skills as well that most people have never heard of. Most of my research data was survey data and required statistical models for categorical dependent variables such as the multinomial logit model. Back in the day, not only did I walk ten miles in the snow to get to my classes, I actually wrote programs to create the graphic representations of these logit models.

Somewhere around here I have a published paper using some sort of times series technique to model what I called the "extraordinary politics" in Poland in the early 1990s. And my friend Burt and I did a paper on the effect of variation in district magnitude in countries with an urban/rural cleavage.

Stop laughing because these issues are very important to academics and actually have important policy implications should anyone ever read them.

So I was struck by the irony of all of this Tuesday when my dad came up to help me reconstruct what may be the world's most interesting domestic sandbox.

"Hey Dad, I need to put holes in that wood to secure it to the ground with rebar."

My dad looked through the workshop for a drill bit. He explained:

"Look at this one, it's for metal. This one is for wood. Do you see the difference?"

Of course I could see the difference, but I don't remember the difference now.

And after a rather long hunt for drill bit I said,

"This is all well and good but what in the heck do you put on the other end of that bit to make it drill a hole?"

I wish I had documented the look on his face but these sorts of moments are not all that predictable.

It was far better than the time I told him I used the circular saw to cut some wood. I was quite proud that I did it without help and that I knew the name of the saw. He looked a little shocked and said "remind me to show you the rotary arm saw you have."

"What in the heck do you put on the other end of that bit to make it drill a hole?"

His look was mostly astonishment.

"You used the drill the other day."

"No, I drove screws in the other day."

His look turned into amusement.

Back when I was in graduate school a common discussion among students was that the program did not prepare students for "the real world." Discussions were too philosophical, research did not have strong policy implications, research designs were too quantitative to capture real-world processes, and research designs were too qualitative to capture real-world processes.

No one ever pointed out that none of us knew the bit end of a drill. My guess is that about ten percent of the men in the program had used power tools. The percent of women with such experience surely approached zero.

I wish I could say that "All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Graduate School," but the real school came later. It came when a planned and much anticipated pregnancy turned my life on its head and apparently it's still coming. In this month alone I learned to use a drill, a chainsaw, a circular saw, and a rotary arm saw.

I finally came to my sense on the big brush-clearing project I began about a year ago: I hired help in the form of two teenage cowboys. They can get a whole lot more done than an out-of-shape 39-year-old who spends her weeks exercising her fingers in front of the computer.

They have helped two Saturdays in a row and having them outside with my mom and me reminds me of a story of two dogs we had here when I was a teenager. “Ladybear” was the mama dog who had “Arsha” when she was about five years old. Ladybear’s maternal age for a dog was probably on-par with a human 40+ year old mom. When I took Ladybear and Arsha on mountain walks (unleashed), Ladybear walked from shade spot to shade spot. She also knew how far I usually walked and would stop short of our end point (in a shade spot) and wait for Arsha and I to climb back up the hill to meet her.

Arsha always looked like a puppy compared to Ladybear until my mom brought home “Rugby,” a stray she found in town. I took the three dogs on a walk and Rugby ran circles around me while Arsha joined Ladybear walking from shade spot to shade spot. Arsha never looked “old” until Rugby came along.

For the past two weeks we have brought in the proverbial “Rugbys,” and I have joined my mom walking from shade spot to shade spot. We worked on a mountain slope Saturday that was probably at least 60 degrees. You couldn’t find a slope much steeper and still be able to work on it. When these guys wanted a cup of coffee, they just bounded back up and got it. They thought it was odd that I tossed bags of pine needles down to the burn area rather than carry them down. Of course, carrying the down wasn’t the problem. It was the return trip that I tried not to do too often.