Time and the River Flowing

When we moved from Bartlett into this house, June 1998, we were welcomed by two neighbor girls, ages 5 and 11. They brought me a plate of cookies and we chatted for a few minutes. We've watched them, and their older brother, grow through the years. We've watched all three go off to college. A few weeks ago their mother told me the boy was going off to the Marine Corps in August. He wants to be a helo pilot. The baby is on summer break from her freshman year of college. The shocker was the parents were hauling freight for their older girl, who is off to Florida to start medical school. Where does the time go?

This morning, as she does every morning when she wakes up, Pooh came downstairs and crawled up into my lap. Every time she does this I think back to the first time I came downstairs before she woke up. Before that morning I had lay in bed and waited for her to wake up and crawl in with me. But for whatever reason, this particular morning I didn't. Pooh came downstairs crying because I wasn't where she expected to find me. I held her and comforted her and said that if I wasn't in bed I would be downstairs, and that "I would never leave her or forsake her." I said the same thing every morning until she was no longer crying when she came downstairs. As long as I was where she expected to find me, she was okay.

I think about how much a child needs consistency in his or her life. A child's entire view of the world and whether or not it's a trustworthy place depends on consistency. When Pooh was a baby, I only had to hear her fuss and I was there for her. Diaper changes, bottles, getting her up from her nap, holding her on my lap all happened as soon as possible after I knew she needed them. I wanted her to be secure knowing that I was always there for her.

I'm not sure there's a point to all this, except to realize that, at least as I see it, a baby's caretaker (which I was for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week), if he or she cares at all about the child, has to be ready, even eager, to drop whatever they're doing to care for the child, especially, say, until the child is 3 or so. It's as though one has to give up everything else for the time the baby is awake. It was a real awakening for me, even though we'd raised three girls of our own. Of course, like almost every sacrifice, there's a reward. For me, it's knowing that, following closely behind her mother, I'm the epitome of her comfort zone. I don't think I could ask for more than that.

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A Strange Narrative

I have been an avid reader of Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne since childhood, and have enjoyed H.P. Lovecraft since I was a teen. Last March, through an accidental double order, I acquired a Nook Color, to which I added an N2A card to turn the Nook into an Android tablet.

One of several apps I installed was Aldiko, a book reader. Among the free books on Aldiko were many works of Verne. After reading two of Verne's works that I had not read before, I began to read An Antarctic Adventure. Upon reading the introduction, imagine my surprise to discover that this book was written as a continuation to Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket!

Owing to my obsessive/compulsive tendencies, I now was obligated to first read Poe. Which I did. Having read the book on my Nook, I was then driven to do a bit of web-crawling. (The Wikipedia article on this book may be found here.) Next, I read An Antarctic Adventure. Parentically, I had previously read H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness two or three times, so the cry noted in Pym, tekeli-li, was immediately familiar since it figures prominently in the final chapters of Mountains.

What is strange about this, my narrative, is that while I had read almost all of Poe and many works by Verne, I had never read these two particular novels. Moreover, two of my life-long favorite authors had written stories that were intimately connected. Verne's book was set 13 years after Poe's, and is a search for those unaccounted for at the end of Poe's. Verne was, apparently, having been a great admirer of Poe and had drawn on Poe for several of his (Verne's) works -- this connection also being formerly unknown to me. And, "Poe's novel was also an influence on Lovecraft, whose 1936 novel At the Mountains of Madness follows similar thematic direction and borrows the cry tekeli-li from the novel." Wikipedia.

A fourth novel, A Strange Discovery, by Charles Romeyn Dake, follows a branch of Pym, accounts for the missing years of one of the Pym/Adventure characters, Dirk Peters. I have this bookmarked at Project Gutenburg for reading next.

Yet another strange connection is that between Pym and Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Critic Patrick F. Quinn writes that there were enough similarities that Melville must have studied Poe's novel and, if not, it would be "one of the most extraordinary accidents in literature." I should note that I have read Moby Dick at least once a decade since I was 10.

I find all this weird.

Yesterday's Activities

In the morning, Marilyn took Johnathon to a church youth group outing at Putt-Putt. I guess they had fun, as our group of youth (Johnathon, Sierra, and Sierra's friend Sara) wanted to stay longer. They got back about 1600. Still full of beans, the girls jumped in the pool. Sara and Sierra spent the night. I made bean soup for lupper (the afternoon/evening version of brunch). We watched the "Murder She Wrote" pilot on the ROKU, followed by an episode of "The World's Most Amazing Homes."

Wednesday Morning

This morning's results:

Treadmill:
Speed:     2 mph
Incline:     3.5 degrees
Time:       61 minutes
Distance:  2+ miles
Calories:  421

Bike:
Interval Training
Speed:     14.4 mph (avg)
Level:       3 - 8
Time:       34 minutes
Distance:  8.2 miles
Calories:  216

Total time:  95 minutes
Total miles:  10.2
Total Calories: 637

Weight-in: 254#

Tuesday Morning

This morning's results:

Treadmill:
Speed:     2 mph
Incline:     3 degrees - 1st mile
               3.5 degrees - 2nd mile
Time:       60 minutes
Distance:  2 miles
Calories:  414

Bike:
Interval Training
Speed:     14.4 mph (avg)
Level:       3 - 8
Time:       30 minutes
Distance:  7 miles
Calories:  184

Total time:  90 minutes
Total miles:  7
Total Calories: 598

Evening

Not much else has happened. Johnathon and Pooh went swimming this afternoon; Marilyn was late to pick up Kerry from work; Marilyn ran out to her reunion group meeting; Kerry brought home pizza for the kids; Kerry finished up the potato soup; clouds formed and thunder rolled, but with as little effect as yesterday.

I thought I probably should start some sort of upper body exercises. I have two dumbbells, one 15# and one 20#, so I did some curls and presses. I discovered, yes, I definitely need some upper body exercises. Now to do some research and figure out exactly what.

Monday Morning, 9:00 A.M.

So after yesterday's rest day I'm back on the equipment. Today:

Treadmill:
Speed:     2 mph
Incline:     3 degrees
Time:       60 minutes
Distance:  2 miles

Calories:  414

Bike:
Interval Training
Speed:     14 mph (avg)
Level:       2 - 8

Time:       30 minutes
Distance:  7 miles

Calories:  182

Total Calories: 596

Sunday's Hang Fire

So today went totally as planned. Or not. First, Pooh woke me up about an hour after I went to sleep. She wanted me to come downstairs with her so she could play and watch Johnny Test cartoons. Marilyn tried to shoo her away, but she started crying. Naturally, Grandpa surrendered. We watched cartoons until about 0330. Pooh started getting cold -- her and Marilyn's reaction to shutting down for sleep. So, finally back to bed.

I had intended on going to church this morning, but lack of sleep makes me (a) feel rotten and (b) aggravates my dizziness. So gave up on church. Marilyn did get out for church and Johnathon went with her. No surprise that Pooh slept in.

While Marilyn was getting ready for church we heard thundering and, with the darkness outside, were expecting rain. What we got wasn't even a good try at rain -- merely pavement dampening.

When Marilyn got back, around 1400, she had Alex with her as well as Johnathon. Karen was not well and neither was Kelly, so the get together was cancelled.

The kids spent the afternoon in the pool, while Marilyn started stuffing envelopes for Kerry and we watched the 1940s version of Great Expectations, which we've been trying to get to for about a month. It was well done -- of course it would be hard to go wrong with John Mills and Alec Guiness -- but no matter how good a movie is, it never lives up to the book.

Then Marilyn had to take Alex home and I put on potato soup.

Kerry spent the afternoon working on cleaning out her closet. Pooh came downstairs at one point and said, "Mommy's cleaning the closet and our room is a disaster area."

After Marilyn got back we watched, first, season 2 episode 1 of Sherlock. Now we're watching last week's episode of Rizzoli & Isles.

Exercising

Sometime in late May, Marilyn started using our recumbent exercise bike, which had been sitting idle for quite a while. Finally, on June 4th, I was shamed into climbing aboard too.

I started off using one of the bike's built-in programs, the "Pikes Peak." This starts off at low resistance (I started at level 2) and builds up gradually to level seven -- the sprint to the top, I suspect -- and then tapers gradually back down to the starting level for a cool-down. I biked for 20 minutes and was pretty well wiped out at the end. This shows the sad state of non-fitness I had deteriorated into.

Nevertheless I persisted. By Friday I was up to 30 minutes, had lost four pounds, and discovered that my newly-purchased, very tight around the waist, shorts were fitting better. Huzzah!

I continued this routine until the 14th. All the while, Marilyn was doing 20 minutes of manual intervals, starting at level 1 for a minute, level 3 for a minute, level 5 for a minute, level 7 for a minute, and then starting over at level 1. This way she was doing 5 intervals and a cool-down. Marilyn was enthusiastic about the intervals because her heart doctor had told her he had read up on it and it was supposed to work better than other forms of training.

In the meantime, I also found myself on the treadmill on the 9th, walking at first at the slow pace of 1.5 mph. I accidentally pushed 2 mph to speed up from 1 mph and almost had to break into a trot. Back to 1.5 mph (I found I could increase and decrease by 1/10 mph) I did walk a mile in 40 minutes. Never gonna win any races, but I was moving. I didn't walk at all the following week, but I did continue on the bike, working up to 30 minutes.

Well, Marilyn enthused so much about her interval work that on the 14th I graphed out 20-minute and 30-minute interval workouts, and, leaving Pike's Peak behind, began doing the 30-minute interval workout on the bike, beginning at level 2, then 3, 5, 7, and back to 2. Let it be known that level 7 for a minute is not easy!

This worked out so well, that on the 16th I added 1 mile (40 minutes) on the treadmill, followed by the interval workout on the bike.

On the 21st, I started pushing up the speed of the treadmill, doing a little over a mile and a third in 45 minutes.

The next breakthrough came on July 3rd, when I set the treadmill at 2 mph. Whereas before I felt like I was about to fly off the back of the machine, now, three weeks later, it was a comfortable stroll. Ah, progress!

So, since the 3rd, my (pretty much) daily routine is 45 minutes (1.5 miles) on the treadmill, followed by 30 minutes (ca. 6.7-7.1 miles) of intervals on the bike. This works out to ca. 480 calories. Weighing after this morning's workout, I've lost 10 pounds, the improvement in my energy level is amazing, and I think my workouts helped me bear with the heat and feel comfortable during our recent A/C outage.

I'll try to post my daily results from now on.

Sunday is a day of rest, as scripture provides.

A/C and the Heat Wave

Our downstairs A/C went out sometime Tuesday. Outside high temperatures have been in the 3 digits, so I was surprised that I actually didn't notice until mid-afternoon, when I glanced at the clock (which also has a digital thermometer) and it was 81 degrees. Oddly (at least for me), I wasn't uncomfortable. Wife called the HVAC folks, who came out and discovered a burned-out blower motor. Of course, it was a peculiar motor with a dual shaft arrangement that wasn't immediately available either on the truck or back at the shop.

Wednesday was, of course, a holiday, but our repairman tried a couple of suppliers who would have opened up had they had the motor which, of course, they didn't. We had planned our annual 4th of July family get-together, but cancelled that as too many people in the house cooking and carousing, and going in and out to grill and swim, would doubtless have raised the temperature indoors to where it was uncomfortable. The get-together will be tomorrow.

The shop ordered a replacement motor from the manufacturer on Thursday, and bright and early Friday morning they were out to install it. Bright and early because as soon as the sun hits the attic (where the furnaces and blowers are) the attic becomes comparable to the interior of an active volcano. The A/C was up and running by mid-morning. One would think we'd be heaving great sighs of relief, but even though the temperature got as high as 83 degrees indoors, it only became uncomfortable for Marilyn if she was moving about. Indolent wretch that I am, it didn't bother me at all. We do say continued thanks that the upstairs A/C continued to work, so we slept comfortably.

Other than the replacement cost, which was significant, we gleaned one benefit from 3 days of A/C-less-ness. That is that we can get along with a warmer temperature setting than we had previously been using. Maybe having the temperature set higher for the rest of the summer will help offset the cost of the new motor.