Confession, prediabetes, motivation

I have a confession to make. I fell off the "vegan wagon". On December 22, 2017 I blogged about becoming a vegan 98% of the time. My blood work for my cholesterol numbers had gone down from 236 to 213 because of my new diet. I was excited about how what I ate affected the numbers. The months went on and slowly, very slowly, I allowed many of the old foods I used to eat back into my life. I probably ate vegan about 50% of the time. I was curious to see how this would affect my blood work this coming November 2018. I had my blood work done and held my breath. Now my cholesterol was the highest it has ever been 238-closer to that 240 danger zone! And to top it all off I was now prediabetic. Actually, I looked at the estimated average glucose numbers for the last 4 years and I have always been in the prediabetic range. I wonder why no one said anything until now? My glucose numbers in 2017 were less than they were in 2016-so the vegan diet was helping. Anyway the glucose numbers are currently closer to type 2 diabetes than they have ever been. It is currently 120 mg/dL after fasting. It's supposed to be under 100 mg/dL and between 100 and 125 mg/dL is prediabetes. So now what to do? I decided that I shouldn't have "fallen off the wagon". I now have even more motivation to stay vegan.

I was surprised by the prediabetes diagnosis. I'm a tall, thin, active person that didn't eat a lot of sugar. I guess my genetics are catching up with me. My maternal grandmother had type 2 diabetes as she got older and 1 of her siblings had type 2 diabetes and 2 of her siblings had type 1 diabetes. My mother and brother don't have it. As far as I know none of my cousins have it. They say there are many things one can do to reverse this diagnosis.
1. Loose weight if you're overweight-check, I'm fine there
2. Don't smoke-check, I don't smoke
3. Reduce stress in your life-check, I'm retired now, much less stress
4. Exercise regularly-check, I run 3 days a week, ride horses once a week, do my exercise videos 2 days a week or hike or kayak. I guess I could do better at elevating my heart rate on some of those days.
5. Change your diet-this is the only thing I have left in my arsenal to reverse this disease.

I've said "reverse" diabetes twice now. Reverse is the correct word because it will always be with me my whole life. "Reverse" is not the same thing as "cure". I can reverse it's affect on me thru my diet but I can't cure it.

Prediabetes is not the same as diabetes, but from all my reading it is a serious condition in and of itself. According to the CDC about 84 million American adults, more than 1 out of 3, have prediabetes and 90% of them don't even know they have it. Prediabetes usually flies under the radar. There are no clear symptoms, so it often goes undetected for years. It's linked to a great risk of heart disease and stroke due to the chronic damage that elevated blood sugar can cause to heart and blood vessels. It puts me at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke, neuropathy, kidney failure, blindness. It's a wake up call to make some changes so that I don't develop type 2 diabetes with all of its complications. Prediabetes is a fork in the road, if I ignore it I will probably end up with type 2 diabetes down the road. If I actively do something about it, I could prevent or delay type 2 diabetes. Hence, I've now got plenty of motivation to stay on my diet and always get my exercise.

So now I'm more motivated than ever to work on my diet, it's the only thing I have left in my arsenal to hopefully reverse diabetes. And it will help to reduce the cholesterol numbers. I like the vegan diet. I also have more support this time around. I've started eating like a diabetic, watching what I eat and how it affects my blood sugar. I find that it's not only the sugar I eat but the type of carbs that I eat that affect my blood sugar levels. So I've started testing my own blood sugar levels. There are many at home meters you can get to test your own levels, mine is Contour. I figured I could guess how to eat and hopefully have lower blood sugar numbers, wait a year for my next test, and hope the numbers would be good. Or I could actually test myself, see how particular foods affect my numbers, make adjustments based on some facts-so hopefully I'll see some good numbers next November.

Prediabetes is an important condition not to be ignored. I hope that by sharing others will know to take this seriously and get help if they have this. Vegan isn't the only path to take, there are many ways to deal with this disease. The point I'm trying to make is to DO SOMETHING, don't ignore it. Please educate yourself and take care of yourself.

Catch up

I haven't blogged anything since October and now it's almost Christmas. It is time to catch up with what's been going on with us. 

In October we went to a local park, to the Hoyt Arboretum, to hopefully see some fall color. We were surprised by a few trees that were beautiful and one-the Birch-Bark Cherry Tree from China- that was unusual-it had rings around it. The Oregon Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial was also there and it was a beautiful and serene place, truly a place for reflection. 

      

   

Oct 22 we took our last kayak trip for the year. We went on our local river. Now it is too cold for this person to go. It was a nice trip with a beautiful clear day. 

   

In November we went to McIver State Park. We've been there a few times and it's a good place to go for a hike. We tried some of the trails that we hadn't done before. Mr UAW saw a huge deer and there are views of Mt Hood, Mt Adams and Mt St. Helens. 

         

   

Thanksgiving week we took a trip to CA to visit relatives and friends. Every year after Thanksgiving we go on a family hike. This years hike was great. It was in the Squaw Leap Recreation area. It's in the middle of CA in the Sierras. The Sierras have so much granite, something that is not prevalent here in the pacific northwest. It was nice to see. 

      

Every year the grandkids make a candy house. It's a ginger bread house but has soooo much candy on it they named it a candy house. It's interesting to see their creative work every year. 

      

My vegetable garden is done for the year. We now have frost in the mornings. It is now the beginning of December and the highs are in the 40's and the lows in the low 30's. Lately the wind has been blowing which makes all things colder. As I write this at 8:24pm it is 35 outside and the RealFeel temp is 24. We will be getting some rain in the next few days. When it rains it might get a bit warmer. We are enjoying the all the different seasons, something that we missed where we used to live in CA. 

I have a few projects that I'm work on and will save a blog post for each one. I guess that's it for now. 

Clear Lake

I have been wanting to hike around Clear Lake for about a year. I heard about it last year. I heard that the water was very clear and that about the second week of October was great to see fall color. The Forest Service says it is the headwaters of the McKenzie River. It is a lake "born of fire" because it's formed from a dam caused by a lava flow from the Sand Mountain. When the lake was formed it covered up the forest that was there and those trees are still visible. The water is so cold (31-41 degrees), with low nutrients, fed by water filtered through volcanic rock or the year round spring that is crystal clear. These factors help to preserve the trees in the water. It's not a "dead" lake. It has native cutthroat trout and it's also stocked with trout for fisherman. I noticed the fish as I hiked around it. They were very easy to spot, which means they can see me too. I'm not sure how successful I would be fishing there. The lake has a temperate forest on one side and sunbaked lava trails on the other side. There's a little bit of everything there. And we did manage to catch some fall color, it had peaked the week before we got there but it still had nice color. The trail around the lake is about 5.5 miles long and was not difficult for us.

   
            The water was so clear

We could see the 3 Sisters Mts 

Trail through some lava flows 

Some of the fall color 

We found a door!!!

One of the many bridges around the lake 

We would like to come back next year and bring the kayaks. It takes about 2 hours for us to get here. There is a camp ground so maybe we will camp and go kayaking. If so we'll have more pictures...

                 

                                         

Saddle Mountain Summit Trail

In September we decided to try the Saddle Mountain Summit Trail. The weather was starting to change and with the smoke from the fires gone it seemed like a good time to do this trail. I read up about it on my trail app. It said it was 4.5 miles out and back, rated as difficult, is the highest point in NW Oregon, on a clear day has views from the ocean to Mt St. Helens and in May and June has a great floral display. The hardest part of the trail was to be towards the end as the trail gets steeper as it gains height. So we felt up for a challenge and headed for Saddle Mountain.

Sign detailing trail challenges

The beginning of the trail was a nice zig-zag through nicely forested areas

And as promised the trail was more arduous above the tree line and had great views. 

If you enlarge this you might be able to see that the tiny colorful dots at the top of the hill are really people 

And here we are at the top

The day we went the view was obscured by haze, so we didn't see any mountains in the cascade range. And the ocean was hidden by a nice fog bank. We could see the Columbia River and Washington. The views were still great. Because we went in September there were really no flowers. We would like to come back in May or June before school lets out and try it again. The steeper parts of the climb were well maintained. They had an obvious path leading to the top and many places along the way had wire or chain link fencing down on the ground to help grip the trail. There wasn't much railing along the way but railing was everywhere on the very top. Next time we do this trail we will take our trekking poles-this hike would be a good one to use them. All in all it was a nice hike and I'm looking forward to doing it again. 

Kitchen project

We wanted a new kitchen counter, sink and backsplash but we didn't want to spend too much money. We priced out what it would cost for various types of counter tops and found that to outsource the project would cost too much. We were hoping to keep it under $1000 by doing it ourselves. That lead us to thinking-what did we feel comfortable installing? We came up with butcher block-the real thing not a laminate butcher block. Then we had to figure out where to purchase this. We checked out 4 stores and ended up with one in Portland. It was a great hardwood store, it sold many different kinds of hardwood but also had unfinished birch butcher block countertops sold in various lengths. That was what we wanted. We could have fitted together wood to come up with a wood countertop, building it and installing it but decided that if the price was right, we would prefer to buy it already done and just deal with installing it. So before I get too far into this story...we need a before picture.

   

The old counter top was a do it yourself laminate job that wasn't so good. Parts of it were lifting off the counter. Some of the counter sounded solid when setting down a glass but some parts sounded hollow.

So we bought all our supplies: counter top, wood glue, joint fasteners, oil for the top and a sink and faucet. We weren't sure about the backsplash so we decided to install the countertops and sink and maybe that would help us decide. We went on a trip to CA and when we came back, started our project.



I found I like destroying things. It was so nice to get rid of those old counters and sink.



We had to cut the countertops to fit our kitchen. Then we drilled all the holes for the joint fasteners to join the different sections together. We glued and tightened up the fasteners and waited 24 hours for everything to set. Some of the counters were very heavy so we had our son-in-law help us lift that part of the project.



Even the grandson (with the faithful supervisor in the background) got involved. He sanded some of the smaller pieces for us and was handy tightening joint fasteners in those hard to reach places.



While some people only put pictures up about the project install and the steps involved, I thought some reality would be a good thing. Here's what the rest of the house looked like as we worked on the kitchen.



So here are the countertops oiled and the sink installed. It was scary to cut the hole for the sink, but it all turned out good. Mr WAU did the plumbing under the sink. The previous sink was a single one, this one is a double. So things needed to be moved around down there. This is the third time we have installed countertops in a house. In our previous house we did it twice. One time we installed laminated butcher block, then in time we changed it up to granite tile. Anyway back to this house, now that this part was done we could stand back and think about the backsplash. We decided on subway tile. Our local hardware store had it predone in 1 foot sheets. Perfect. I just cut the sheets in half to go around the counters and did a larger section in back of the stove.



Mr WAU did much of the work up to this point. It was my turn to do the tile work, which I did not mind. In fact I like doing it. We left it like this to set up, went on another trip, then came back to do the grout work.

 

And there it is finished. A big difference from the start. Now how much did all this cost? It came close to $850. Could it be done cheaper? Yes, if we made our own wooden countertops, and did our own individual tiles. We could have kept the old sink but that wouldn't have looked very good. We are happy with how it turned out and were glad we spent the extra money on the unfinished countertops, pre done tile squares and the new sink and faucet. We chose not to varnish the tops but to oil them instead. We liked the idea of being able to sand out spots that were problems as time went on. We know that we will have dings and slight marks on these tops and were okay with that, but for the big problems we liked the idea of just being able to sand out problem areas and redo the oil. It seemed easier than refinishing a whole varnished countertop to get it looking good again. So far I find that oiling them has been perfect for keeping them clean. Spills are no problem. So far we've spilled coffee, grape juice, various foods and it all wipes up-even if left overnight. We also own many of the tools to get this project done so that helped to keep the cost down. The major addition to the tools was a new hardwood saw blade for the skill saw and table saw. This new blade made all the difference in the world in the quality of the cuts. How many trips to the local hardware store for this project? We made 7...but there's still one more. We need paint for the cabinets. It will be the same color so no big difference there. There's always more to do...

More camping trips

We got back from backpacking and visiting people in CA, dove into a kitchen project for a few weeks (more on that later), then went car camping in 2 places. These camping trips were back to back. There was only a 19 hour stop at home between trips. Normally I would not have done that but two big reasons lead to this decision. One-all the camping stuff was already out, I just had to do some wash, restock the ice chest (I planned the same meals for both trips simplifying the shopping, meal prep and packing) and load up the kayaks for the second trip. Two-we wanted to do something with the family before school started up again and this was the time that worked for everyone. So off we went.

The first trip was to Cape Lookout. I booked this trip about 2 months before we went. I was surprised to get a spot under the trees in this campground. We took grandkids, their mom (dad was on a hunting trip), and Jack, their dog. We had rain/drizzle the first night but thereafter was great weather. The kids had fun on the beach, running in the waves, playing in the sand. We explored caves and creatures that lived on the rocks at the southern end of the beach. We followed the park's nature trail, discovering different trees and plants that grow in the area. The kids enjoyed roasting marshmallows. Jack is an older dog and enjoyed laying around. All in all a good trip.

     

      



The second trip was to Trillium Lake in the Mt Hood Wilderness. Just Mr WAU and I went on this trip. The views of Mt Hood were fabulous, the mountain looked different depending on the time of day or the weather. I took way too many pictures of that mountain. They had just restocked the lake before we got there so we took our fishing poles in addition to the kayaks. We forgot our fishing net so we lost some of the fish that we caught. Have to remember that next time. All in all we hooked 11 fish but only came back with 5. So now we have plenty of "the one that got away" stories. There is a nice trail around the lake, it is 2 miles and pretty easy to do. Each morning we could watch an eagle scope out the lake on a tall dead tree next to the shore, take to flight, swoop down to catch a meal and fly off to eat it. It was a relaxing trip. It did drizzle one night but not so bad that things were damp. The next night the wind came up, it was nice to go to sleep with the sound of the wind blowing thru the pine trees. And the stars at night were dazzling. It is a trip that we will do again.