More turtles!!!!!

Soooo happy! 

This was another amazing experience and a very, very good CFIDS day.  Packed a lot in, but made it all the way through a late dinner and drive back to Waiki.  Even snorkeled twice AFTER the turtles, so a very amazing day for health.  

This is the beach I've checked for turtles each trip (but hadn't yet seen them there), and I was just thinking I'd stop real quick, "just in case" then we'd move on to other beaches, but there they were.  It was very hot and fairly crowded, so it was not as relaxing as last time, but it was amazing to see them up close and the people were excited and mostly repectful to one another and the turtles.  It was incredibly invigorating, and the fact that I did so well the rest of the day just furthers my belief that they help me.  Now I think they may even give me super powers, for how much I was able to do afterward.

These videos are of the the third turtle I watched up close, with a tiny shot of the fourth, who came out of the water as I was leaving.  A teanager that started coming last year, but I didn't hear a name or gender.

The first was Hao'Okanaka, basking by a big rock.  People around him were the funniest, beginning with a frenchman scolding the crowd in his picture for being in his picture, but waving his arms wildly in front of everyone else's picture.  It was amusing.  And a woman standing next to the turtle who kept asking where it was, who was very amused when she realized she was next to it.

 

And there were many turtles in the water close to shore.

These next pictures are of Brutus.  His rope was expanded when the third turtle came out of the water (in the video above).  The volunteers were great at keeping the crowd back without squelching curiosity or excitement and people were mostly respectful of the turtles space.  Almost entirely.

It was fun to watch the third turtle come out of the water (just meaning the third while I was there).  The volunteer in the pictures was very nice and knowledgeable.  And professional...I say volunteer but I'm not actually sure.

 

Jenni is very patient...we've been friends for at least 26 years.

And this is the teenager that came out of the water as we were leaving.

Then we went snorkeling at a couple of north shore beaches and Jenni bought me an early birthday dinner at a great Thai place.

And before turtles, found awesome food, including a NON-dairy mocha cupcake!  I haven't had a cupcake in a really, really long time.  For the sugar, it was a CFIDS mistake that I got away with, happily, because it was pretty darn cool to be eating chocolate.

Yay!

Turtle Doctor!

First of all, I made the check-in/welcome girl cry.  She asked lots and lots of questions I made a brief comment about seeing turtles.  She said she LOVED turtles, then teared up as she started to tell me about her baby tortoise.  Then she teared up more and more as she told about it getting attacked by a dog and having its shell cracked.  She called the Humane Society, who referred her to a turtle doctor across the island.  She rushed her turtle a very long way to see him, but there was nothing that could be done.  This was years ago but she was still very sad about her little turtle.

It's not likely I'll end up in that town, but I think if I do I am meant to at least look for the turtle doctor.  Maybe that's meant for another trip.  And maybe I'm just silly.  But it was interesting to learn there is 'turtle doctor' on the island.  He's got to have fascinating stories.

But here's the restaurant the baby toroise girl suggested, where you grill your own steak while watching waves and the sunset (this happens to be the restaurant we cut through before running into the turtles on our last trip).  We actually ate here on our first trip for breakfast.

More Turtles? We're in Waikiki!

We made it!

The standby passenger numbers for a flight from Seattle to Honolulu looked pretty good when we got to our gate, so I was brave enough to ask if Jenni and I could sit together if we got on.  They assured us we would definitely get on the flight, which was awesome to know in advance. Usually, flying standby we have to sit with white knuckles waiting until the last second to see for sure whether or not we'll make it onto a given flight.

So, not only did we get to sit together, but we were in FIRST CLASS!  First class to Salt Lake was fun, but first class to Honolulu was amazing!!! The seats were huge and the offered water and drinks and snacks constantly.  I didn't have time to finish my mai tai before they had to come and get the glass, but that was OK.  I ate a million biscoti (no dairy!) and it was such a fun flight.

This is the view from our room (later we'll be moving to a hotel closer to the "turtle" part of the beach).

So far, we swam and sat in the sun.  The best way to get as much sand in your suit and shorts as will possibly fit is to sit in the sand right at the edge of the waves and get hit by a few really big ones.  My shorts were so full I could barely stand up.  It was amazingly relaxing.

More turtles? Update

Made to Salt Lake unscathed.  Should make Seattle flight, too. 

Honolulu numbers:  42 seats unsold, I am number 3, Jenni is number 10

Talked too much about work with my cool seat mate.  He is active with the 4 wheeling community on my forest but on a different district.  I don't know his name and I'm not worried about it....I'm not working on any projects in that area and I can talk to people if I dang well please, and they are not paying me right now anyway (this little side rant has to do with my work situation with the Forest Service).

I do miss my job.  And I DO NEED (another) break from thinking about my work situation.  I don't think I've mentioned here that it sometimes hurts to look at the beautiful mountain view from my living room, because every place I can see is connected to something awesome I would be doing this time of year, or something I would be trying to find out during field season.  So traveling really helps me cope with both being sick and (sadly and unfairly) losing my job.

Feeling pretty good so far.  Have that CFIDS "flu" feeling, but I think it was worse than this by this time of day when I traveled in June.   I should probably caffienate soon.  No problems with my ears on the flight (even on the Bell's palsy side).

As a side note, I think non-drowsy dramamine helps with my CFIDS symptoms, which is something I noticed last fall when traveling before even being fully diagnosed.  I wonder why that would be, but it has been pretty (maybe entirely) consistent for me.

More Turtles? More Hawaii? PLEASE CROSS YOUR FINGERS FOR ME TODAY!!!!

First of all, sitting in an airport with a laptop makes me feel pretty sophisticated.  My clothes, not so much.  Though for me, they're more so than usual. I could be wearing my nicer shoes, but they're not as comfortable, so they're packed.

Anyway,  I'm headed to Seattle to spend some time with my  very, very good friend Jenni.  She's in thesis-writing mode, so I'm sooo happy to be catching her in break mode.  And happy that she has a husband who nudged her into break mode.  That makes me smile.

I'm about to start the first leg of my flight (hopefully) from Kalispell to Salt Lake to Seattle.  I fly standby through my husband's summer airport job (he's also a firefighter/paramedic full time year-round), so I never know for sure until a plane leaves whether or not I'll be getting on each plane. 

Jenni and I are listed on a flight tonight from Seattle to Honolulu.  This is our first time using a "buddy pass".  I am 2nd in line for 42 unsold seats and she is 9th in line.  If we don't make our first try, we won't be going, since she has time constraints and we don't want to get stuck anywhere.  Things can change minutes before a flight, so 42 seats can change very quickly.  We won't know until the last second whether or not we will get on.

When we get there, we have help from a friend/acquaintance in scrambling for a hotel room.  Then we have a condo for 2 nights!  Although if we don't make it, we lose the condo nights (paid for a long time ago, no knowing I would lose my job).  Jenny also loses the transfer fee she will have to pay to change her return ticket.

I love having a friend adventurous enough to try this with me. 

PLEASE KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED FOR US!!!!

They are starting to make announcements for my flight, so I'm done for now....if I don't get on this first leg I'm sunk, but I'm 2nd in line for 4 seats, so I should be OK.  I had to come in with Greg at 4:30 when his (last for the year) shift started, and its now almost 7 am.  Hope he can come in and say hi, or maybe a goodbye kiss plane side....he's so cute in his uniform.

It's so weird not traveling with the kids!

Kid Stuff: Missing Chick

Every little moment counts  : )

A very good friend of mine (and former colleague), Heidi, gave us a momma hen and five chicks early this spring (we lost our chickens and most of our ducks last summer to a neighborhood dog).  One by one, each chick except for one turned out to be a rooster (which doesn't work in our neighborhood, so Heidi was ready to take back any roosters).  The former baby was broody already this summer, so we gave her some of Heidi's eggs to sit on so she could hatch some new hens for Heidi. 

Five hatched and one disappeared.  I brought in a couple for the kids to hold recently.  One of the chicks hid before Christopher could grab it.

Turtle Medicine, part 1

I've always loved turtles, but over the last few years I gradually became obsessed with sea turtles and with the idea of seeing one.  In some places and at some times of year that is not a difficult or terribly unique thing.  And when we were on Oahu last year, I went to all the best places.  But I only had one day to go to all the best places and it was not the right day.  I had also snorkled in Kauai a couple of years earlier without luck.  On my second trip to Oahu, I planned to spend a great deal of time in areas where I was most likely to see a sea turtle.  I knew my odds were not great, being sick and having two kids in towe and without my husband there to help.  Our odds went down when we got stuck in LAX for six days, only finally making it to Oahu when trying to get home; both because we could not afford a rental car after six days of LA hotels and airport food, and because I had used up so much energy getting there.

So, it was utterly amazing, a couple days into our trip, while walking along the crowded Honolulu beaches, when we realized the tiny shapes we stopped to watch in the distance were sea turtles surfacing for air.  We watched and watched for quite a long time, hoping they would come closer.  Then a stranger approached us and told me in a hushed tone that she had seen us from down the beach, thrying so hard to catch a glimpse, and that if we went to where she had been, would be a few feet away from feeding turtles.  I can't believe she took the time to come over and tell just us where to go.

We joined the small throng of tourists sitting on a concrete wall reaching out from the beach, with sand on one side and a 5 or so foot drop to the ocean on the other.  The wall was covered in moss that three turtles were feeding on.  I had just discoverd that morning that my camera takes video, so I have lots of videos of the turtles surfacing and feeding, and of kids watching and discussing in awe, and Katie telling each new group how amazing it was that we ran into turtles when her mom had wanted to see them for such a long time.  While I stood there, I got hit a couple of times by waves, getting my purse slightly damp, which was enough to completely destroy my cell phone.  This upset Christopher greatly and he was very concerned that I was going to also ruin all of our money.  He was upset with me for saying that it was worth ruining a cell phone to see the turtles.

Christopher lost interest, but was able to sit next to me and play in the sand.  After a couple of hours, Katie finally lost interest, too, and they played in the water on the beach side of the wall, while I sat and stared for at least another hour.  It was hard not to cry as I watched them.  Toward the end of sitting there, as other watchers had thinned out, I ended up next to a woman my age who was quietly, privately sobbing.

The second I was close to them (without being disrespectfully close to them) I knew I had become obsessed with them for a reason.  They grabbed their bites from the wall ready for each wave to toss them about without their being in full control of where their bodies moved.  In so many ways I've had the magic trained out of me as a scientist.  But what I see when I observe any species eventually prevails over my biological training, because the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.  And I can feel that there is a real and true reason why so many people all through time have sensed that certain animal species have certain lessons or energies or connections meant for certain people.  I don't know enough about each tradition to say whether I'd call sea turtles totems or guides or whether there's a more appropriate term for what I experienced.  But I cried because I knew I was finding a piece of what I had been looking for.  I understood why sick people travel to all ends of the earth to be healed by something they believe will help heal them, even if they don't realize that healing is what they are seeking.

Forest Fires and CFIDS

I have seen many, many things documented to negatively impact CFIDS patients (alcohol, sugar, travel, activity, computer screens, phosphates, foods....the list goes on and on).

Although it makes sense, I have never happened to see the impacts of forest fire smoke documented.  It is now fire season in Montana and the day the smoke rolled in I began a downward trend.  And my eyes feel horrible.  I am also sleeping even more poorly than usual (I will post about sleep apnea surely at some point).

I will also go out on a limb here and say that fighting forest fires is contra indicated for CFIDS patients.  This is not a relevant limitiation for most patients, I am guessing, but I was once a wildland firefighter and until last year I kept my quals current as part of my job.  So it is just one more bummer on the list that I may not ever fight a fire again.  My subconscious (subconscience?) has been ready for a fire call since the moment I first smelled smoke.



Baker River Hot Shots (one yr before I was there)




 

Post fire research




My guard station



Couple years after me but a lot like my last night with crew

 

Great illness/CFS quote

"...the world of illness is not deathly boring, as I would have imagined from the lofty heights of health, but suprisingly interesting once you're up close and inside it, in the same way that a desolate desert landscape comes alive with night flowering cacti and scorpions under careful scrutiny. More than interesting, illness seems crucial, heavy with meaning and import..." ~Kat Duff, The Alchemy of Illness