Given an opportunity

I am really good at taking care of myself and my family - or so I thought. When I would chat with mum about my overall health I would assure her I was indeed looking after myself - taking care of my weight, eathing healthy, exercising. All good intentions. In reality, I always strive to eat healthy however took care of the exercising and weight when I was able to squeeze it in around family life.

Fast forward to two months ago. Physically I wasn't coping. Lifting anything even a full milk bottle, now hurt. Walking hurt. Playing was out of the question.

Part of my nature is to be optomistic. So having booked in for a 2nd epidural to help ease the back pain. I felt excited in anticipation of being pain free. After the epidural I told mum that I was going to put my health first. Her reply "you always say that then life gets busy and you put yourself on the back burner." The second epidural didn't have the effect that I desired, my participation in the Corvallis Fall Festival had me in tears walking to and from the Corvallis Art Guild marquee. I relied heavily on my gorgeous children to set up and ferry my painting to and fro. Things were going to improve, just not right now.

My beautiful, clever, loving, caring mum passed away, far too young and far too soon. My last conversation with her echoes ..." you always say that..."

A week after mums funeral, I took ill. Excruciating stomach paints reminiscent of giving birth, slung down low, washed over me. Possibilities - kidney stones or appendix. A trip to the Emergency Room at the hospital resulted in the removal of my appendix and the beginning of my recovery.

Someone was looking after me. One blessing was that all of this took place in my home country of New Zealand. Because of the health care system there my 3 day stay cost me nothing financially. That removed all the stress out of being hospitalised and allowed me to concentrate on recovery. The second blessing was that my back improved out of sight. It still ached, however I was standing straighter than ever and so much more capable. The third, I lost a ton of weight and aim to maintain. it.

I like to call it "taking care of business", so with mums words still resonating I decided on a plan The first thing that came to me was if I'm going to follow through with taking care of business first thing in the morning before the day gets busy is the most opportune time.

Taking care of business looks like
1. Apart from using the bathroom, I try to stay in my bedroom each morning until after morning stretches and exercises. It helps that the children want and are dedicated to making their own school lunch each day.
2.Committing to cycling for approximately one hour three times a week. I do this straight after the children have gone to school. It also requries me to look ahead and chose days, regardless of the weather.
3. Ensure salads, cereal and fruit are a big part of my diet. I do not beat myself up about having a cookie, however I also don't always need a whole cookie let along two or three and am happy to break a chunk off to satisfy myself.
4. monitor my weight, I bought scales, just so I'm not guessing.

Taking care of business feels like;
1. a weight off my shoulders literally.
2. being gifted an opportunity
3.setting a better example for my children
4. giving my family the best of me, a more capable, healthy mum and wife.
5. exercising control and discipline

So here I am doing it, taking care of business, taking care of me and ultimately taking care of my family in doing so. So far so good.

Anchorage here we come!

Next stop Anchorage.

Why do we have to go? That was how our trip to Anchorage started. Surprisingly it went quite quickly. First stop the tourism information center. Now, accommodation is very pricey in Alaska, and also in short supply when one hasn't booked in advance. So it was the Alaska backpackers for us. The first backpackers the children had stayed in. It was all that we needed with 4 bunk beds in a room all to ourselves.

We arrived at mid day, so decided the best plan of attack would be to drive half way to Seward and about 10 miles south of Girdwood to the Alaska conservation center. The road is mountains one side and sea the other. Bradley caught sight of a beluga whale, which apparently roam in groups of 20 to 30 in this area during the summer. Unfortunately I had to keep my eyes on the road, much to my disgust and had to wait for some distance to pull off the road.

At the Conservation Centre, I got some fantastic photos of grizzly bears, the rare musk ox, caribou which are also called reindeer – by golly they are tiny things with great racks where the antlers are about the same height as the reindeer. Two abandoned moose babies were huge despite their young age – about the size of a horse and two herds of bush bison of which one herd will be released in 2013, that was exciting to read about.



An official had just thrown some apples to the bears while we were there and they had a little cabin the bears went into to try and find it, got some great shots of that. We also saw a bald eagle which had been shot at and had to have its wing amputated, plus two owls whose home had been invaded by a silly magpie, how it got in who knows. The magpie sent the owls into a spin when someone tried to shoo it out without much luck. They were also preparing an enclosure for two female lynx cubs who were in a forest fire with paws that were badly burned. The glaciers in the background looked eerie with blue ice shining through.

Brown Bear painting, by Desray