Tag Archives: Camp Menogyn

Who Is Coming Home?

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I think it’s fair to say I’d always wanted to have kids.  I was one of those little girls who dreamed of having my own babies (I told my mom once that I’d have two and give her one!)

Often in my misspent youth, when faced with a challenging situation my criteria for the ‘right thing to do’ would be:

1) What would my mom do?
2) What would my future children think of it?

Sometimes I’d wonder what my future kids might be like, but any preconceived (literally) concepts  I may have held have been blown out the window by my two teens.

Max is introspective, sometimes a bit of an introvert, skilled in ways I could never dream and, ironically, always seems to have a friend around when he wants one.

Hannah is extroverted, lively, chatty and independent.  But in spite of a tight group of friends, she’ll often find herself wanting a friend to hang out with only to find they’re otherwise occupied (planning is not her strong suit, and we live a distance from her ‘group’)

Tonight Hannah gets home from her longest trip away.

She’s been canoeing at Quetico in the Boundary Waters (BWCA) in Canada for 22 days, hanging with the same group of girls, working hard and being part of a team.

I’m so eager to see her, so anxious to hear how everything went, certain that – once again – she’ll have grown in ways I can’t even imagine.

The first time she went away to sleep away camp, she came home so confident and mature.  Gerry and I were blown away, and Max was in awe.

Ironically, the first time Max went to camp in the boundary waters, he hated it and got Lyme disease.  Go figure.

Hannah is definitely in her ELEMENT when she’s at camp.  I cannot WAIT to see my girl and meet the person she grown into this time.

In other, just-as-important-news, Max received his FIRST paycheck from his part time job at SPNN (St. Paul Neighborhood Network, our local access station) and proud enough for two boys! 

Sorry the picture’s so bad, sloppy photographer!

 

Did you miss me?

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I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet.  When weeks pass and I don’t post on my blog, I sometimes think, “Why do I even HAVE a blog…”

Then someone writes me, tells me how much they gained from reading back posts, and I realize that I won’t always be in this slow, slow period in my life.

I’ll speed up and post more regularly when I’m mentally and physically more in tune with everything.

Right now I’m just feeling a bit blah (perhaps Rick Santorum was speaking about me?) and at the same time a bit harried and confused.  An odd and unsettling mix.

I’ve been feeling exceptionally depressed some recent days, and I can’t help but feel it’s strongly tied to the fibro.  A rheumatologist I saw in Nov said that I was doing much better than many of her other patients, and I’ve been getting good light and taking my Vit D3 (although on her suggestion I cut back – maybe I need to increase it again?) 

It’s a silly kind of depressive feeling where I know I need help with some things, but I’m feeling just foolish and worthless enough to NOT ask for help.

Yes, I know how dopey that sounds, and unhelpful, please don’t scold me in the comments – you won’t tell me anything I don’t already know.

I think I also took a backspin on our weekend up to Camp Menogyn.  It was lovely, but physically it was so far beyond what I was capable of (the long walk across the lake in the dark upon our arrival winded me and cramped up my muscles in an odd way) 

I can do a long walk slowly, but dragging a sled of luggage and having no idea exactly how FAR we were walking was disorienting and unsettling.

Once at the lodge the folks were nice, but I had the feeling I’d wandered into someone else’s family reunion – and I wasn’t exactly part of the family.

A few other folks felt the same way (more knitters than I’d expected) so we made a small band of crafters in a very loud environment – what I wouldn’t have given for a smaller, quiet room with some decent light!

The cook was absolutely wonderful at creating something gluten free for me at each meal, so kind of her!

But I felt as if I were – useless?  Not able to keep up?  An outsider?  Most of those feeling sprang from within me, I know.  A lot of it was probably ‘first timer syndrome’, too!

So while I muse about a good blog post to put up in the next few days, here’s a short video about one of my favorite places in the Twin Cities – the Midtown Greenway Bike Trail.

As the temps will be hitting the high 40’s today (this is Minnesota, right?) I’m going out for a long ride today to try to clear my mind, relax my body and lose the cobwebs that have been clouding every part of my existence. 


Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway by Streetfilms

Biking is SO much easier for me than walking.  I’d rather bike 10 miles than walk a block, the pain when I bike is negligible, but when I walk I feel sore all over.  And this, of course, makes me feel guilty in some niggling way.