Half a Century

Oh, it’s been too long! I know that’s true, but after my birthday last year, I just lost enthusiasm for keeping up with my blog. To be honest, I lost enthusiasm for a lot of things. I’m sure I’m not alone in that respect. In fact, my web-hosting was up for renewal this month, and I even debated whether or not to renew. I finally decided to do it, but then I had to switch providers to get a better deal, and I’ve spent the last few weeks stressing over migrating my blog. I even spent time on my birthday yesterday dealing with it, but when I discovered I had over 70,000 files to transfer, I just threw my hands up and walked away. I figured I’d just let the files transfer and deal with the rest another day. I was surprised when I woke up this morning and saw that I had a comment to moderate, which apparently meant that I had done the migration correctly! Then I figured if someone was taking the time to make a comment after a year of no posts, maybe I should provide an update. So thanks, Jessica. 🙂

It was a long, hard winter for many people, myself included. I know I shouldn’t complain, because it was not nearly as hard for my family as it was for many. We did not lose any family members to the virus, thankfully. Unfortunately, we did know several people who passed away, including two people from my church. One was a sweet patriarch in his 90s, but the other was a 22-year-old young woman. It was so very sad. She fought for seven weeks before we received the word that she’d passed away. It was such a shock! She became ill back in March, unfortunately before she was eligible for the vaccine. I don’t know that she would’ve taken the vaccine had it been available to her, but I know that her family is feeling her loss this year.

The last time I posted was my birthday last year, in early October. Things weren’t looking too bad then, and we even had a chance to get family photos done at the University of Michigan at the end of October.

But then, everything started going downhill in November, when cases in Michigan spiked high enough that the governor shut down restaurants and other businesses again. For our family, the biggest impact came with the closure of the high schools and universities. JJ was forced to spend the last three weeks of the first semester learning online. That was hard for him, because he is such a social person. They also shut down winter sports, which meant no hockey for him. That was worse than school for him, as you can imagine. We had just started the season on November 1, when I took the team pictures, and they had two or three practices before everything was shut down. Because they had to finish the school semester at home, they eeven canceled all the final exams. I don’t think that upset him so much, ha ha!

Jamie had to come home right before Thanksgiving and finish his first semester from his bedroom. They actually kicked all the students at the University of Michigan out of the dorms, and would not let them go back the second semester unless they had extenuating circumstances. That was a rough four weeks for our family, with me working from home and the two boys learning from home. Our house is not big, and finding room for everyone was challenging. I was kind of ready to kill them both by the time mid December rolled around.

Christmas was kind of a downer. No family gatherings, and in fact, when we went to midnight service on Christmas Eve, our family of four was literally the only family in attendance. I was so happy they had made arrangements for us to be able to do a Christmas Eve service, but I felt kind of bad that they did it only for our family. We got to sing silent night outside in the snow, though, and that was kind of cool.

When January rolled around, things were still challenging. Again, keeping it in perspective, because no one in our family got Covid. For us, it was about the lack of normalcy. JJ still couldn’t play hockey, but he did get to go back to class, which helped his mental health.

Jamie, meanwhile, was still doing virtual learning, but we made the decision to send him back to campus to live in an apartment. Those three weeks when he was studying from his bedroom were pretty rough on him, and I knew he needed to get out and get back to campus, even if the situation wasn’t what he had hoped for. Here’s a photo of him on the steps of the apartment that we rented for him:

We went in blind with this apartment, taking a chance that putting him in a house with five other strangers would be OK. I had lots of friends and coworkers tell me that they had met some of the best friends in their lives in this manner. Not so much for Jamie. It wasn’t a terrible experience (well, except for that one time when he woke up in the morning and found the main entry door had been bashed in), but the five inhabitants turned out to be pretty antisocial, so he didn’t make any lasting friendships. But he survived.

In January, they finally scheduled the championship games for the fall sports that had been put on hold when they close down the schools in November. Our volleyball team was vying for a state championship at the time, so when they restarted in January, the team had a state final game to play in Kalamazoo. Because they had rescheduled it several times, the paper’s main photographer was unable to go to the championship game, and I was surprised to be asked to fill in. They even offered to pay me, but to be honest, that would’ve been more hassle than it was worth, so I drove out to Kalamazoo, spent four hours photographing volleyball, and then came home and sent the pictures off. It was actually a really cool experience. They treat the press really well at these big championship events! My pictures were all over the paper the next day, and I even had one land on the front page for the first time ever.

That was super cool.

With the exception of those fall sports that were finally able to complete their seasons (with lots of testing of the student athletes and coaches), no other sports were allowed to play in January. I hated watching my son and many of his classmates deal with the waiting and postponements day after day. There was a rally at the Capitol to get winter sports restarted in late January. Regardless of your opinion on the subject, my opinion was that my kid needed to be playing his favorite sport because his mental health was severely impacted. I went and took pictures for the paper, and it was actually a pretty impressive event. They let the students do most of the speaking, and I was extremely impressed with the poise and maturity of all of these high school young men and women.

I can’t say that the rally made a difference, but I can say that within about 10 days, the governor announced that winter sports would finally be able to start for real. (This was the third or fourth time that we had been given a start date since they were closed down in early November.) This one held true, though, and hockey finally started in mid February. Unfortunately, the season had to be cut extremely short, so that they would only be able to play 14 games instead of the normal 30 to 40 in season. But at that point, we were just happy for the kids to be able to play. Unfortunately, within a few days of hockey starting, JJ ended up being quarantined. Not because he was sick with Covid, but because he was a close contact of someone who came down with Covid. He was out for 10 days, and then he went back to school. Two days later, we got an email late on a Sunday night, telling us that he had been in close contact with another student who tested positive, and therefore had to quarantine again. He was so distraught. As I’ve mentioned, he is a social kid, and he especially loves his sports. When we got the email that Sunday night, he actually cried. “But I just got back into school!” he said. “Why do I have to stay home again? I feel perfectly fine!” It was so heartbreaking as a mom to see him like that and have no answers.

Besides missing school and his friends, the hardest part of the challenging year for him was missing hockey. Out of the 14 games that the team was able to play, he missed seven. It was pretty hard on all of us.

Winter turned into spring, which began Michigan’s third wave. Thankfully, we made it through with no more quarantines for JJ. He was able to play in every lacrosse game during the spring season, which is very important, because he is the team’s one and only goalie. He was my little freshman goalie, who hadn’t played since seventh grade, going up against 18-year-old seniors (grown men)! But he did great; they even won several games, and I was so proud of him.

He finished out the school year without any other issues, and I’m happy to say that he did very well, both academically and socially, and we were glad to finally put his freshman year behind us.

Jamie survived his freshman year of college, although he will be the first to tell you it didn’t go how he had planned. Michigan is tough, but Michigan online is excruciating. He barely passed two of his four classes, and actually failed a third. (It’s OK, he told me he doesn’t care who knows.) I can tell you that what he had last year was nothing like the “Michigan experience“ that we had been sold when he applied and was accepted. I heard another Michigan mom put it well: “I’m paying an awful lot of money for a lackluster experience at best.”

Jamie came home in late April, and I’m happy to say that he was actually in a much-improved mood. He also had some other changes. You saw him above in the family photo from last October. Now I will show you a photo of him in August, after he told me he was going to go out and get his hair trimmed before going back to school.

I know, right?! He walked in the house while I was on a conference call, and I was the moderator, so I couldn’t even go on mute, so I just had to sit there with my mouth wide-open in shock when I saw him. I actually thought for a split second and somebody had broken in my house, that’s how unrecognizable he was! For five years I had to deal with that shaggy hockey hair that I’ve always hated (and made no secret about), but he finally made the decision on his own to hack it all off. I was so happy!!

And of course, the other change is in his weight. I knew he had been losing weight when I first saw him in April when he came home, but with the short hair it really became apparent. He told me he’s lost 70 pounds since last fall, and I believe it. When I asked him what happened, he said he finally just realized that he needed to be healthy. I know that last year was hard on him, being stuck in the dorm all the time and then living in that house with strangers who were not at all friendly, so I’m sure that had an effect on his eating habits. He joined a fraternity in the second semester and really started engaging with them in the last couple of months of that term, and I think that made a difference as well. He’s so much happier now, and we get along so much better. I won’t say he’s perfect, but he has matured quite a bit in the last five or six months, and I’m really proud of him and all that he overcame last year.

Although things are not perfect in our house, they are definitely better this fall than they were last fall. JJ is playing football, and he’s doing very well. He was even named a captain of the JV team.

(He’s #71, participating in the coin toss with the other captains before the game.)

Jamie is now living in the fraternity house, working on his room constantly, because there’s always one more improvement to make (I think it’s a hold out from the summer he volunteered with Habitat for Humanity…he loves to work on houses). He’s also taking on leadership roles within the fraternity. And of course, he’s enjoying going to football games every weekend. I’m so happy to see him finally enjoying college life. He texted me on his first day of class and sent me a photo so that I could see what class at Michigan actually looked like. (He had never had an in-person lecture during his freshman year.) He even FaceTimed me after he got out of class and I “walked“ with him on the way to the coffee shop as he told me all about his day. I was shocked that he did it, but it just goes to show how happy he was to finally get to experience some semblance of normal college life.

It’s still an uncertain time right now, as we wait to see if we’ll have a repeat of last fall with the rising case counts. Right now, our county is one of the few counties in the state that is not mandating masks in schools, and there are no other mask mandates around the state, except for certain businesses who choose to require it. (Like mine, which sucks, because I’m going in almost every day right now to run an in-person clinic.) Overall, though, there’s a lot more normalcy now than there has been in the last 18 months. In fact, for my 50th birthday, which was yesterday, I took my three running girlfriends to Traverse City and we had a girls wine-tasting weekend. Of course, there were some people who chose to wear masks, and a lot of places were closed or closed early because of staffing shortages, but for the most part, it was a wonderfully normal weekend.

As you can see, my friends even had matching shirts made for us! I felt so very loved!! (Mine says “50 and fabulous” and theirs say “50 Party Crew.”) It was so fun to wear my shirt all day, especially when more than one person told me I couldn’t possibly be 50. 😉

In our family, everyone is vaccinated. Jason was among the first vaccinated in January, because he’s a first responder, then I got mine as soon as I could on April 1, and the boys got theirs in May and June. About a month ago, JJ admitted to me that he had been on the fence about getting the vaccine. He said he wasn’t really sure he wanted to, but he did it “because I knew it would make you happy.” But then he admitted that the first time a group of football teammates had been quarantined due to close contact (because none of them were vaccinated), forcing them all to miss a game, he was suddenly very glad that I had “forced” him to get vaccinated.

I still don’t like the masks, but I definitely believe in vaccination. I personally think that we should focus less on masks and more on helping people see that vaccination is the only way that we’re going to get out of this. I get frustrated when some people belittle those who have chosen not to get vaccinated yet, calling them dumb and stupid and other very derogatory names. While I firmly believe that vaccination is safe and the most effective solution to the problem we are all facing, I don’t think it helps to insult and belittle people who have genuine questions. The longer we fight about this, the longer it’s going to take before we finally get out of this pandemic.

But let’s not talk about that. You might want to know how I’m doing healthwise, since this blog is supposed about me being healthy and maintaining a healthy weight. A year after my last post, I’m still running five days a week, and I’ve even started working out three days a week. That’s a big improvement for me, because I really don’t like working out. 😛 But my running girlfriends have convinced me that it’s good for me, so I try to keep up with it as best I can. I’m running solo a lot more now, because all my girlfriends are members of a gym, and they like to spend their weekdays doing spin class and barre class and other crazy stuff like that. Me, I just do my free weights out in the barn, but I run even on the days when I work out.

Last year at this time, I weighed a little less than 125 on my birthday, which was a great weight for me. My goal is 125, so it was just right. I was doing well into the winter, but then at Christmas time, I got really sick. No, I did not have Covid, I just had a terrible sinus infection. I went two days without getting out of bed because my head hurt so much I could hardly think. That really messed with my healthy habits, because it was hard to get back to running and eating healthy. I struggled pretty much all winter until I began training for the Glass City Half Marathon.

Oh yeah, that’s right, I forgot that I ran the Glass City Half Marathon! The only reason I ran it was because it was free, because I had deferred from last year. I ran it with my friend Renee, who made the most wonderful pacer.

My goal was to finish it under 2:20, and she got me in at 2:18:40! I don’t think I’m ever going to run another race without a pacing friend. Or at least, I know I won’t meet my goal in another race if I don’t, ha ha!

With all that running, I ended up getting back down to 125 in the spring, but then summer came and I just kind of fell apart. I was up above 135 for most of the summer. Toward the end of July, I had a goal to get below 130 before my 50th birthday. It was a real struggle, but the day before I left for my trip, I stepped on the scale and saw…

Talk about cutting it close, ha ha, but I will take it! I’m not anywhere close to that after a weekend of alcohol and many restaurant meals, but it was my birthday, so who cares? I’ll get back to it now that I’m back home and back to a routine.

It was definitely a year full of ups and downs, and one I won’t forget. There were some really down moments, but they were some good moments too. One in particular that I remember was in December, when both boys were home because school was online. The families on the hockey team had arranged for the players to go skate in Ohio (where hockey rinks were still open), just so that they could keep skating. They boys had to be on the ice at 6 AM, and God bless him, Jamie actually offered to drive JJ to the 6 AM practices so that he could skate, too. That was some real brotherly bonding when they had to leave at 5am!

I remember one day in particular they came back from skating, and it was a really cold morning. I had run 4 miles, and even after showering, I just couldn’t get warm. When the boys arrived home at 7:30 AM, I was lying on the couch with a couple of blankets on me. When he realized I was cold, Jamie started putting more blankets on me, and the boys made it a game to see how many blankets they could pile on top of me, with Jamie basically doing a play by play as they hunted around the house for them. I think they ended up with nine before they finally ran out. They were laughing and having so much fun, and at a time when so many things in life were challenging, it felt so good to see them enjoying themselves. It was a moment I’ll always remember.

I don’t know how often I’ll update my blog from here on out. I’ll admit that I do miss it, because it isn’t just very cathartic, but it’s also a great way for me to document our family history. And you know I am all about history!
Speaking of which, I forgot to mention something else I did recently: I got to do a reenactment for a local cemetery walk, and I had the honor of portraying Libby Custer, the wife of General George Custer. George Custer is a Monroe native, and although controversial, his wife was a truly wonderful woman. They made a dress for me and everything.

It was actually tons of fun, which should be no surprise, since that’s pretty much me in my element right there. I loved pretending I was a historical figure for a night!

By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, the cover picture is a collage of photos of me as I began each new “decade” of my life. Here’s the most recent one:

Not too bad for a 50-year-old broad!

Thank you so much for reading, especially for sticking around after my very long hiatus. I appreciate you!