I’m all packed up and ready to go. It feels like I must be missing something because the car isn’t absolutely stuffed, but I guess it’s just different packing for one person instead of two. And I’m not taking either of the big chairs. I’ll make do with my little chair for camping when I don’t have other options.
I got out of bed relatively well this morning. I thought about walking to the mailbox, but I decided to do a pre-trip chore instead while it was still cool outside. I selected all my clothing that I’d be taking on the trip – easy for the backpacking, and a bit more involved for the camping – and then took them outside for a spray down with permethrin. It keeps away mosquitos and ticks and sometimes biting flies. The biting flies tend to prefer skin to clothing anyway. I left my clothes outside on the deck to dry and went inside to do my exercises.
I’ve been working through week 6 of Shoulders & Arms level 2 again, and I’m really starting to feel my lats engaging with my pushups. I don’t remember ever feeling that before. I think I managed to do ten years of CrossFit without ever having truly good form on my pushups. I found a workaround, and that didn’t help me at all. I worked up a sweat and showered.
After the shower, I started a load of laundry with sheets and towels. Today is payday, which means it’s time to change my sheets. I usually rotate through three sets in the summer: orange, black, and green. I took off the orange and forgot whether I was doing green or black next. I decided that black should go on for the anniversary of Ambrose’s death in 15 days at the next change so I put the green ones on.
I didn’t have much time for breakfast, but I had enough. I treated myself to an espresso to help me get through the work day. For once in I don’t know how long, I didn’t have a single meeting. I just worked through report development and troubleshooting and some catching up on emails.
I’m trying to keep up with a goal of doing 5 walks a week (the goal for 3 runs per week is out, and I might be making the 5 hours of total activity, but not on the app because I don’t time or record my Move U workouts). To that end, I took a walk to the mailbox at lunchtime even though it was hot and the air smelled smokey. I’m not sure where the smoke is coming from, but I hope it’s not present where I’m going tomorrow. I also decided that I should water my trees, but I didn’t want to haul the hose over to the other side of the house, so I tried moving the 50 foot hose to the front and making the 100 foot reach the potato bed and the lilac. It seems to work, so I gave the trees 30 minutes of water while I ate a peanut butter & jelly croissant for lunch. I bought a 6 pack of croissants when I shopped last weekend because they didn’t sell singles so I’m planning to make a couple more of those for the drive tomorrow.
After work, I ate dinner and told myself that I’d get to work on packing after giving the trees another 30 minutes (there are three trees, so I gave 30 minutes between the two nearest at lunch, and 30 minutes to the farther space at dinner). But I couldn’t get myself to get started. I watched TV and played Solitaire and it was after 8 before I got myself into motion. I cried a bit, too. Packing up for a trip that he’s not here for isn’t going to be easy for me for a long time I think.
I’m continually shocked that it’s almost been a year since he died. One year ago, we were in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. We hiked down to Copper Camp, a piece of the trail we’d been meaning to take for years and we finally did it. Then we found a shady spot to camp off the trail where we hadn’t camped before. It was so hot. Our last full day out there. And he knew what was coming.
When I got to the cook kit in my packing, I remembered that I have a new tool called a FlipFuel. Instead of taking out two partially full fuel canisters, or continually buying new full ones, I can move fuel from one canister to another. Ambrose bought it and I think he used it once, but I hadn’t used it yet. It worked perfectly, and I don’t have to take two canister out because now I have a full one.
My new compression sack seemed really fat to me, but when I got everything into the pack I found I had a lot more room than last time. That might partially be because I was able to stuff my down jacket into the sack with my quilt because it had a bit more capacity. I’m taking Ambrose’s orange down jacket on this trip instead of my heavier black one. My pack weighed in at 28.6 pounds, which is 1.6 pounds heavier than the last trip. I think I overdid it on the snacks, but that’s okay. It’s good practice for the next trip, which will be 5 days. I need to pay attention to how much snackagae I bring back and try to dial my snacks in for that trip.
Once the pack was done, I packed up the car, including the flute. Almost everything is packed up now. My camping clothes are still out, and I’m planning on bringing this laptop as well as my toiletry kit, a purse, and my Yeti travel mug full of tea. I’m planning to get a latte at the coffee shop in town when I head out. No later than 10, no earlier than 7. I might not even be up at 7 with how late I’m up today. And I still need to do dishes, because I really don’t like coming home to stale dishes in the sink (figured that out after the last trip).
I ordered photos last night. Mostly photos of Ambrose, but a few landscape ones that I’ll enter in the county fair if they get here in time. And if they don’t, then I can still enter the ones I ordered for last year’s fair and never entered because I was too busy watching Ambrose die. They got bent in shipping. I hope the new ones don’t get bent.
I don’t like the haze in the sky, but it does make for pretty sunrises and sunsets.
