Perspective

How tiny we are as we sidle up along side the Johns Hopkins Glacier.  We aren't as close as these pictures look.  It calved while we were watching the enormous side of ice pitching forward, coming loose, and falling into Glacier Bay.  Then seconds later the Wagnerian cracking explosion of sound reached us while the wave from its fall into the bay rocked our ship.  Sad these giants of ice are disappearing, Götterdämmerung indeed.

Alaska and Mysteries

 Glacier Bay 2011

July 3rd the four friends boarded the Oosterdam en route to Alaska:  After spending the night and the next day at sea being rocked and rolled in a storm we came into Glacier Bay.  The weather was cool but dry and views were astonishing.  This visit is tied for first place in my mind with our later visit to Juneau and a whale watching venture.  The mountains are huge but the crisp air seems to magnify them and they aren't even the biggest ones around.  They opened access to the foredeck (where the crew gets to gather without us passengers) and gave us a park ranger to talk about the glaciers and point out what we were seeing.  It turns out the picked her up during the night to do this and then on our way back out they returned her in a skiff.  How many of us have had a job where we are whisked away by an ocean liner in the wee hours.  Kind of cool.  And she was good, informative and fun to listen too.  I am in love with SE Alaska.

I am also a devotee of murder mysteries of many kinds.  I started out on Agatha Christie when I was around 10 and found "Death on The Nile" in my grandmother's books.  This year after I came home from Alaska a good friend of mine asked me if I'd ever read any of Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak mysteries.  They are set in and around a fictional area resembling the Chugach National Park north and out of the SE panhandle of  Alaska where our trip occurred.  She suggested I start with the oldest and read in chronological order so as not to miss the developing relationships and personal story of the protagonist.  Our little rural library didn't have the first one so I got it used from Amazon for about a dollar + shipping.  Now I'm hooked on Kate Shugak and Amazon's dollar or less books.  Being also a hoarder of maps, I have some of Alaska so I can follow the path of our heroine, as well as the path of my vacation trip.  Feels like the best of everything.

Yesterday evening I sat on my back porch, read, and watched the thunder and lightning that blew through here.  A smattering of rain fell and I went inside.  Today the sky is blue and there is a light breeze and it probably won't break 85 in my yard.  I am a blessed old girl.

Down the Rabbit Hole or Better Living Through Chemistry?

Don't know if this is a rabbit hole or some other critter entirely.  I found it along a forested trail at the Heritage Museum in Ketchikan, Alaska.  Lovely, green, and peaceful. 

Its been just about a year since my marriage ended.  In January I was bummed, then I perked up.  I started doing things again, planned a great summer vacation with my sister and a friend from high school, and started a painting.

I came home from my vacation and began having panic attacks alternating with the inability to get myself out of the sack easily.  Just wanted to sleep my life away.  I went to the doctor for my regular checkup and mentioned how I was feeling.  I was pretty sure I knew why it was happening just not how to stop it.   My doctor recommended antidepressants.  It took awhile to find one as I don't have much tolerance for drugs of any kinds and experience some bizarre side effects at times.  With misgivings I started on antidepressants for the second time, and down the rabbit hole I went and into the dark.  Some days would be fine and some days I slept all day and night unless I had to be somewhere.  Then I began sleeping less and less, down to 2-3 hours a night at best, that's how they torture prisoners of war, sleep deprivation, ugh.  My doctor was out of town so I called the druggist who said to take them every other day for a week and then stop, which I did.

It's been some weeks now and the side effects seem to have wore off except I have an occasion sleepless night.  No more panic attacks so maybe the meds accomplished something or the panicking was temporary.  I don't know.  And I wonder how many older people can't tolerate the doses tested on much younger people, some 200 pound 35 year old man for instance.  I know I felt mostly normal except for the sleep thing on the every other day regimine which was 1/2 the very minium dose.  How many older people are drugged right out of their lives this way?  They aren't feeling bad, they aren't feeling anything at all.  I lost about 6 pounds in two weeks because I forgot to eat.  I'll be 70 in the winter and in spite of the diabetes and asthma I am relatively healthy, and within 5 pounds of a normal weight. If medicines do this to me, what do they do to the frail and/or elderly?  I can tell you some years ago when my now departed Dad came home from a surgery having hallucinations we looked up all the meds they sent home with him for side effects.  Three of the six could cause hallucinations.  He knew he was seeing things that weren't real but they were disturbing.  We called his doctor and he said "stop giving them to him, he doesn't need those anyway." Problem solved.  What if you don't have four daughters to watch out for you like he did?  

I'm better and if I'm feeling anxious I go for a walk or go to the gym and work it off.  Thank the Lord I can do that.