Tamara Unleashed

This is day 5 in Krakow and I feel adjusted to the time. I took a walk on my own in the city and felt totally comfortable. We are staying not far from Old Town. Old Town is surrounded by and narrow park and walkway. I walked around Old Town and then walked through it. It was gray and the mist turned to light rain. Aside from not being able to understand the spoken language, it is like walking around city in the US except that everything I much older. The population is primarily Caucasian with a smattering of black people and Asians. I have not picked up any sense of fear amongst the Polish people. Poland borders western Ukraine and all of the fighting is in eastern Ukraine.

From discussions with the Refugee Center director yesterday, I think the social safety net here is pretty good. I have seen only one homeless person in 5 days. He was sleeping on a bench as I walked around Old Town. There are trams, scooters bicycles and pedestrians all sharing the streets and sidewalks pretty seamlessly. Cyclists with helmets are rare. Pedestrians have the absolute right of way in Krakow except if there is traffic light with a pedestrian signal – which pedestrians obey.

Krakow is a clean city and this is spite of having these small public waste containers that have almost nothing in them. Can you imagine what this would look like in the US – overflowing to be sure. How can this be? I did not see one person walking while eating and few people were drinking so there is much less trash that needs disposed of.

These pictures at one end of Old Town made me imagine what it would have been like in medival times.

The keyholes in the walls above would protect the guards head while providing room for him to aim/fire a weapon.

This tower sits at the opposite side of Old Town on one edge of the Plaza

I found a coffee and dessert bar while walking and asked for 2 traditional Polish desserts to take “home”. We had a big Polish lunch so dinner will be dessert. There is not a lot of flavor associated with Polish food especially since I do not eat meat. I know I will enjoy the chocolate of this dessert.

I am done buying souvenirs for myself. I saw this ring today made by a local artist. It reminded me of large pearl I once had. I really loved the setting so I decided to get it. The prices here are reasonable compared to the US.

I am definitely going to have to start getting my nails done to help this ring look fabulous on my hand.

Tomorrow is a guided tour of Karkow and Saturday we will be going to Auschwitz. The weather for the remainder of our stay is cloudy with rain predicted on most days. After my walk, I can imagine how beautiful this city would be in the spring with new flowers and sunshine.

Krakow is a beautiful old city that seems to be thriving. We have not detected any sense of fear associated with a shared border with Ukraine. This may in part be due to the fact that the shared border is on western Ukraine – far from the war activity. Ukraine is a very large country with a series of lakes running north to south pretty much in the middle of the country.

My rash decision to color my hair did not take into consideration the possibility that all of the Polish people were “behind” the Ukrainian refugees. As in the US, there is a spectrum of feelings about the influx of refugees that are being supported by the their government. I have been mistaken for a Ukrainian which is clearly dispelled the minute I open my mouth. I have not noted any overt hostility but there may be comments that I cannot understand.

While I am at the stage of my life that I am downsizing and do not want to accumulate any more things, I realized that it is important for us to support the Polish economy while I am here. Amber is a very BIG deal here. The yellow/gold/brown of amber is not anywhere in the colors I wear so I was in a quandary until I found some red amber in a uniquely designed earrings. They do not take up much space.

Today we will do our first visit to one of the refugee centers. We will see if the hair color brings smiles to the faces of the refugees which is the hope.

My undergraduate college is Luther College in Decorah Iowa. It is a great small liberal arts college that had a great acceptance rate for the University of Iowa Medical School. Between my junior and senior year of high school I took Biochemistry 101 with college kids on campus. I had a blast and decided to go there. It was a great experience. Earlier this year, I was informed that I would be receiving a Distinguished Service Award during Homecoming Weekend for the Class of 1977. I had to do the math to realize this is 45 years since graduation and I was shocked by that. The award presentation is October 7th, shortly after I return from Poland.

Last night, I had the idea of getting the Ukrainian flag colors (solid blue on top of solid yellow) put in my hair when I got it cut today. Fellow traveler Kay decided to do it as well. She has longer hair so she was able to mix the colors which was my vision for my hair. But with my short hair that had to be pulled through a special cap, having blue hairs next to yellow hair would likely lead to some green hair during the 30 minutes of processing. So I have the flag – blue on top of yellow. This is a picture while waiting for the blue to process.

The yellow was put in on the sides, processed for 30 minutes and then hair was trimmed. Everyone in the salon was entertained and heard the story behind the colors. We had a blast and after we got home it hit me that this was permanent color so I will be accepting my DSA with blue and yellow hair. Oh well.

We truly hope that this will bring as many smiles to the faces of the Ukrainian refugees as we had getting it done.

After starting the 4women4URS.com blog, I realized how much I missed blogging. I am driving toSpartanburg SC today, the first leg of my journey to Krakow. I had a goal of having my home organized before I left and while I have fallen short, I have unpacked all of the boxes/containers that I brought from MD, redistributed a lot of it butI am not quite done. What I have is all organized in containers so I can attack one container a day and hopefully be done by the end of October – in time for my planned bathroom renovation. I am hoping to convert my Jack and Jill into 2 complete bathrooms which is one thing that will increase the value of the property. I have pictures up on the walls.

I have been through so many photographs. I digitized many and disposed of more of them than I kept. I found my diary from my trip to Malta the first semester of my senior year of college. I have not read it yet, but I will. I found letters from a resident named John who was in Flint MI at the time and I have not been able to access any memories of who he is. I am guessing he was someone I met when I spent a month at Gundersen Clinic in LaCrosse, WI my sophomore or junior year in college. I have not come across anything else that I have drawn a total blank on.

My life has been nothing like I imagined it would be. I think I was 18-24 months in the picture above preparing to ride off to a new adventure as I am today. Over the next weeks most if not all of my blogging will be at 4women4URS.com

I have a hernia in my right lower abdomen on the right. I have had it for at least 15 years and it hasn’t bothered me enough to fix it. Habitat has changed that and I have a support I wear at Habitat. Wednesday there was an extra work day for “finishing activities” so I didn’t wear the support- bad decision. Within the first 2 hours I had to lay down on floor twice “fortunately they were carpeted) and reduce the hernia. I was so uncomfortable I thought I might have to leave.

Then I decided to try to come up with something to substitute for the support. I came up with 2 plastic coffee cup lids carefully placed over the area of hernia and held it in place with 2 layers. Fortunately I wore my workout leggings that day. IT WORKED GREAT. I was very comfortable for the rest of the day.

I had it evaluated by a surgeon two years ago (pre-Habitat) and he thought it was not causing me enough problems to. warrant fixing it. It is clearly causing me problems now, but if it is fixed, I will likely still wear the support at Habitat to protect the repair. So I think I will wait awhile and keep my coffee cup lids handy.

I often awake thinking of what I want to blog and then never get around to it. Today I woke up a 4 AM with my bladder per usual. When I was still awake at 5 I decided to do this blog rather than think about it. My summer has been overall good. I have had several near exposures to Covid and have not gotten it again – or at least been symptomatic enough to cause me to test. The heat/humidity in Nashville was horrible midMay to early August. For the past 3 weeks, it has been OK for summer. In June I took a car trip to Minneapolis and Iowa and was able to cycle in both places. It was spring temps in Minneapolis so it was a welcome respite from Nashville. In July I went to Seattle or 10 days and hit the weather perfectly. In my 10 days I caught up with 17 friends, had 4 wonderful bike rides and 2 hikes in the Cascades. I stayed with friends who are avid cyclists and I soaked up as much knowledge as I could. It was very difficult returning to Nashville. While I am an introvert and like/need a certain amount of alone time, I have had enough already.

My kitchen renovation is complete and I am still finishing getting settled. I did not unpack much of the stuff I packed 2 years ago until after the renovation. I am still going through things and trying to get rid of anything that doesn’t have a place/need and bring me joy. I have gone through so many photos – thrown away or digitized many. Pictures are hung throughout and it feels much more like home. Not surprisingly, I have decided I cannot wait to upgrade my bathrooms so I hope to do that before winter..

I continued to do my find woodworking with Harry at Nashville Tools for Schools. Below is one of the coffee tables we build from shop scraps. The tables we build go to organizations that move homeless to housing. I am gradually learning and retaining some of the principles of woodworking but I have a long way to go.

The rest of my time has been spent preparing for a 2 week trip to Krakow Poland with 3 other women to provide aid to Ukrainian refugees. We leave on September 10 and return on the 24th. You can follow the trip at 4women4URS.com While we are self funding our costs, we decided to fund raise to increase our ability to acquire goods for the refugees. None of us had ever done fundraising before so we learned a lot. We did not really have time to create a nonprofit. We were unsure if that would be a deterrent to donating. We created a bank account specifically for the money raised and had to figure out how to accept electronic donations. We needed a concise fundraising letter and we needed an identity.

Our identity became 4 women 4 Ukraine Refugee Support (4women4URS). A talented graphic artist donated time to create logos and we raised more money than we ever dreamed of. Donations are still coming in and we will exceed over $30K. The need really hit home for many and we are all so grateful of the generosity shown. If anyone still wants to donate, the best way is https://app.autobooks.co/pay/ukraine-refugee-support where the money goes directly into the URS account.

I leave Nashville on September 6 for Spartanburg SC where I will finish final prep and fly out of Charlette NC with Kay. We will meet up with Mary in Dulles and 3 of us will fly over together. The 4th, Teresa is a native of Poland and is flying over on September 6th to line things up so we can hit the ground running. We plan to do anything and everything we can to provide assistance to the refugees while we are there. I am sure we will gain more from the experience than we will give.

When I selected the title of my blog early 2021, I thought those were 3 words that reflected who I am. I assumed they would be relevant for the next stage of my life. Unleashed was because I felt so constrained by the restrictions on what I could say to whom as a government employee AND I was unleashed to discover the path ahead.

I am still on a path of discovery but feel like Nashville has become my home. My kitchen renovation that I planned from the minute I decided to buy the condo in September 2020 is almost done. I will show before and after pics in a later blog. Over the summer when I am not traveling, I will be able to get fully unpacked and settled. Any THING that does not have a obvious place in my home will need to find a new one. I am committed to being as free of possessions as possible.

What I never could have predicted is my fascination with learning carpentry and fine woodworking which is how I spend much of my time. I have been building on site for Habitat for Humanity https://www.habitatnashville.org 2 days a week and working 2-3 mornings a week at Nashville Tools for Schools https://nashvilletoolsforschools.org.

This is what the Habitat Sherman Commons build site looked like last August when I started with Habitat.

This is what the first of 5 buildings looked like at the dedication with their homeowners last week. All buildings will be completed by the end of the summer. It has been so educational and rewarding to be a small part of the process.

At Tools for Schools, I spend most of my time working with Harry Baird, a legend in Nashville with respect to carpentry and woodworking. We make furniture pieces for individuals that are in need – end tables, coffee tables, etc from left over and donated wood from the Tools for Schools projects. Harry is 91 and a great teacher.

This is our current project – a bit of a eclectic design made of mostly floor boards.

I am getting pretty good with the many different power saws. Nail guns are challenging for me. Today I was so focused on getting the nail gun (for finishing nails) to fire so the head would not stick out that I forgot and put one finger behind what I was shooting. The nail was longer than the board I was nailing into and I shot the nail through the flesh next to the nail. I was very lucky. Harry said – everyone does it – ONCE. We cleaned it up and finished our work.

I have had several misadventures on the Habitat site as well – last week I fell after stepping off a stoop onto an uneven surface. I hit my shin and it immediately swelled up like a goose egg. The crew of volunteers had ice over it within a couple of minutes. After icing while sitting, I decided I wanted to continue to ice it while getting back to work so they rigged this up. I iced it continuously for at least 90 minutes and I had no swelling or bruising the next day. Amazing!

I really do try to be careful but……

I am having a great time learning new skills and staying active.

I have started many posts over the last several months. They serve as a bit of a diary for me. I am not entirely sure why I never finished them. It has been almost 2 years since I moved to Nashville and it has become my home. I have mentally constructed a bubble so I can survive in a deeply “Red” state. The only other challenge for me is that this is not a particularly bike friendly city but it is working to get with creating ways to ride safely on the streets with bike lanes.

I have found a couple of groups to cycle with and have gotten reasonable familiar with biking safely in many parts of Nashville. This was not a good spring for riding. When I got the announcement for the Tour de Nash on May 21st, I was excited and signed up for the 46 mile ride which would take me through parts of Nashville I had never been. One of my young male friends was “game” to do it with me. When I saw that the route was riding completely around East Nashville, I knew I would likely be walking a few of the steepest hills. In my mind I had pictured a lovely spring day of weather in the 70-low 80s with thin cloud cover.

It was 84 degrees when we took off yesterday at 0730. I was carrying everything I thought we would need including pickle juice. It seemed like there were adequate Rest Stops so I decided to not use my Camelback. I used my new automatic tire pump just before we took off and decided to inflate to the top the range for the tire – not entirely sure why except that it was easy with he automatic pump. We took off about 7:50 AM. Two and a half miles into the ride, my front tire blew out. I had a spare tube and a patch kit and my friend was adept at changing tires. The tube had split longitudinally for several inches so patch was not going to work. We (he) got the tube I was carrying on. When it was almost inflated, the stem on the tube just sheared off. Fortunately he was carrying a tube as well so he changed it again. This was at least a 30 minute delay and the warm morning got warmer.

There was a spot in West Nashville where the route split the 25 mile ride from he 46 mile ride. I seriously thought about taking the shorter ride, but we had mentally committed to the long route. I had to walk up part of one hill before there first rest stop and was feeling pretty good about the ride – except that I was clearly holding my riding partner back. We kept going and while there were many challenging hills, they were fairly short and not a problem. The second rest stop was along the Cumberland River and we hydrated, got calories and felt good about our chances of finishing. The temperature was climbing and there was no cloud cover. I was starting to struggle more than I ever have on a ride after the first couple of East Nashville hills. I knew much of it was a mental game and I did make it up several that I was sure I wasn’t going to be able to when I was at the bottom. Midday, at about the 4th hill I had to walk part way up with over 10 miles to go, we realized we were a half a mile away for Red Headed Stranger, a Mexican restaurant with great margaritas and we went off course. The GPS topography showed that there was still quite a few climbs to come, and I knew I would barely be able to walk them.

Water, a spicy margarita, con queso with warm tortillas were restorative but not enough to get me back on bike for the rest of the ride. My friend got his partner to get his car in West Nashville where we started the ride and drive to East Nashville to pick us up. We got a second margarita because we were going to need to sit there another hour or so waiting for the ride. Not far into the second margarita I realized I was feeling not the edge of being drunk which was very unusual. I stopped drinking because I was going to need to drive home once I got back to my car. Nearly two hours passed before we were back to the cars and I knew I was still not be safe behind the wheel. My friends drove me home. It took another couple of hours before I felt “normalish” but my face was still warm to touch until about 9 PM. Fortunately I had the sense to stop before I got into real trouble. Not sure margaritas were the best choice for the state my body was in but we had a good time.

I clearly was not ready for that ride and my friends were good sports to take such good care of me. Next year, I will choose the 26 mile route. I do not think my body has fully recovered – I woke up at 4 AM in spite of being exhausted. My muscles are not as sore as I expected – we will see what tomorrow brings.

The beginning:

The end:

During my 4 weeks of being homebound, I had too much time on my hands to observe Carli’s eating and digestion. Her first episode of “being unwell” was in August. She spent about 12 hours lying on the couch sleeping and not being interested in eating or drinking anything until she suddenly jumped up and ate and acted like all was normal. She had a similar episode about a month later and then they started getting closer together. She would have a day where she slept and refused to eat or drink until she was suddenly well. During these episodes she ignores her favorite treats. I was very worried for the first couple and then just expected her to be better late in the day.

On New Year’s eve, she had another episode except this time she vomited her undigested breakfast in the late afternoon. While she was drinking by bedtime, she did not come back to normal. I could hear loud sounds from her GI tract. An hour or so after she would eat, she would start moaning and her little legs would jerk in her sleep like she was uncomfortable. She was belching more and her finicky eating was worse. Her favorite treat was sweet potatoes and she refused to eat them.

I put her on a boiled chicken and rice which she would eat. I got some special kibble for digestive health and gradually added that to her rice and chicken with some success. She then seemed to start drinking more water and peeing indoors.

As I had really nothing else to think about I have diagnosed her with reflux, irritable bowel syndrome with a little bit of diabetes. I need my life back.

Last week I had a couple of Zoom calls. Normally when I put the computer on my lap, she will move and lay beside me. She has had so much access to my lap the past month that she refused to move and I actually used her as a computer table for at least 30 minutes. She is a funny little dog.

Addendum – a part of the journey of Carli’s GI distress was a trial of white rice and boiled chicken which she would happily eat. I have had a couple of weeks now of trying to gradually get her back on her dry food. I got some special digestive health kibble. Every time I think we are making progress she stops eating. She used to love sweet potatoes; now she will not eat them. She now loves peanut butter. Peanut butter started the vehicle to get her to take her monthly pills. Then it became a reward for exercising more recently as appetite stimulant. She changes the rules constantly and openly defies my sense of “now I understand”.

Yesterday was the “great standoff”. I made her mix of chicken, rice and kibble that she had eaten the day before and she ignored it. After several hours, I gave her a small amount of peanut butter as a enticer. She ate the peanut butter; ate a very small amount of food and wanted more peanut butter. I added a small amount of cheese to her food; she didn’t blink. After a couple of hours, I added some more chicken and she didn’t blink. I made a scrambled egg and mixed it with the food and she didn’t blink. She continued to drink throughout the day so it wasn’t one of her “sick days”. I did not give in and give her more peanut butter but about 9 PM, I mixed up some more rice and chicken and put it on top of the other food. She ate this and then went on to finish all of the food. She immediately started her bullying behavior for peanut butter. I held out for 30 minutes and then she got peanut butter and some more snacks. Have I mentioned that a big part of her bullying behavior is her immense cuteness and the amount of affection she gives me.

Today is another day in the life of Tamara versus Carli.

Today my temperature was “normal for me” for the first time in a month. A very depressing 4 weeks of feeling unwell, being fearful that my body would not be able to fully recover “this time” While I never recovered most of my taste and smell from one year ago which means I do have Post Acute Sequelae of Covid (PASC), I was so happy that I did not have fatigue, heart or lung issues or longstanding brain fog that I considered myself fully recovered. Even though I was not nearly as sick as I was a year ago, the ongoing sense of lethargy and “not giving a shit” were getting worrisome. Today I finished a course of antibiotics for a sinus infection. Is the normal temperature related to the antibiotics or just coincidental? Was this Covid, a different viral syndrome, a primary or secondary sinus infection? No one knows. I do not want to stress my body out with any virus for a long, long time. The only way I can think to proceed is to wear a mask except when I am in my apartment. The adventure continues.

This past week I decided to watch the Sopranos. I have watched the first episode 2 or 3 times over the years and each time I didn’t like it enough to watch the second episode. I am not sure why it seemed important to try to get into this time but enough people that I know/respect really loved the show so I thought must not be giving it a fair chance. I committed to watching it last Saturday and finished it yesterday. When I was a few seasons in, I still did like the show and was going to give it up until a friend said “oh you have to finish and make sure you make it to the last episode.” So I continued to “hate watch” the Sopranos. I am not sure what I was expecting for the ending but I was hoping that there would have been some real personal growth in at least one of the characters by the end.

What did I learn from The Sopranos? it is good to be born into a boring family in the Mideast without a strong ethnic identity. Sociopaths are born and nurtured. Anyone can create elaborate justifications for despicable acts which are then normalized. It is possible to say the right things, do the wrong things and never have any insight into this huge discrepancy. If something sounds too good to be true – it probably is. The show was well done and memorable. It is not something I would ever consider rewatching.

I hope I will not choose to “hate watch” another series. It was a fitting end to this miserable month!