Still Smoke Free but Weigh Way More!

Sept 2008 marked my 2nd year anniversary being smoke free after 40 years being a smoker. Quitting was not as difficult as my imagination told me it would be and I sure wish I had done it 20 years earlier or 30 years earlier or never started. But what is done is done.

I'm used to having a somewhat thin body, and the combination of going through menopause and quitting smoking around the same time has left me with weight I didn't have even during my three preganancies. Horrors!

In my mind, I simply imagine doing some of the exercises I used to do as a young dancer (ballet, jazz, aerobics) and all will be well again. Well my imagination is active, but it is not getting the job done. What is it about aging that makes physical activity less agreeable and something I have to work at to make myself do....

I admit it, I'm struggling with this stage of my life. Much as I am trying to adapt, it is not going so well. My mind's eye still embraces my young woman-ness, rejecting my middle age woman-ness. The mirror tells me a different story than my mind's eye and there is internal disharmony. Until I get to a place of resolve and acceptance, my inner world continues to fight within itself.

I didn't intend for this to be a woe is me blog post and I hope it doesn't sound like it is. These are new challenges for me and while it is creating some chaos and confusion in my inner vision of my identity and self, they are nonetheless positive challenges. Embracing new challenges, finding new reasons to look at the blessings of life, living within the framework of a new identity as a middle-age woman -- life is good.

Christmas when the family grows and is gone.

he holidays are coming! The holidays are coming! I like to enjoy the celebration part of the holidays, keeping the holiday cheer, without overdoing it and turning it into holiday stress. And since it is a long holiday season, somewhere about midstream I began to fade a little and lose some of my jubilance. The thing is that in my mind's eye, I make plans to do so many things that I lose my focus and do fewer things. I'd like to do some things this year and maybe not do other things and see if I can get a different outcome.

The children are grown, adults now, and have left home, are well into their own lives with their own children and families. When they were young children I liked the idea of a big tree with lots and lots of decorations, not particularly themed, but particularly full. We have now a big artificial tree and the years of decorations. One Christmas I remember we took 2 days to put up the tree, a week to decorate it and the house looked so fantastically Christmas. There were no visitors to our home that year and somehow so much bling seemed kind of lonely, sad and overmuch without the full house of children.

The next year we bought a smaller, slimmer tree and I put on much fewer decorations. In fact, did not even unpack the boxes and boxes of stored Christmas ornaments and decor. Last year I found what I call one of those artificial 'Northern Exposure' kind of Christmas tree or could also be called 'Pacific Northwest' kind of Christmas tree. Three trunks side by side with branches, and overall skinny, not taking up very much room.

We had my mother stay with us last holiday - Thanksgiving to Christmas. Had many festive outings planned, but those plans got nixed and cancelled with the early December storm of the century we had here last year. They don't use the word hurricane, but it was hurricane force winds at 140 mph or more over 2 days. Mom is in her 70s now, and was a real trooper throughout the storm and the long winter days that followed in clean up. It was rather an unforgettable holiday season.


This, a year later, and well we will have our usual winter wind and rain storms or more of the 'big ones', but I plan to go into this holiday season with high and joyful thoughts. It's taken about a decade, but I'm adapting to the reality that our children are grown and gone, involved with their own families, and it's just the two of us now. It will be a happy holiday as we find new traditions for how we want to spend the holidays.

07-07-08, still smoke-free. Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my birthday = 57 years old. I'm pleased and proud to report that I am still smoke free, having smoked my last cigarette September 2006. Means that I passed my one year anniversary of no smoking September 2007 and am on my way to second anniversary smoke free this year.

It's been entirely 'natural' to give it up without regret, and without much in the way of pangs or temptation to take it up again. Very much, absolutely wish I had given it up 20 years earlier.

Recording this post into my blog because my memory is experiencing holes now or 'senior moments' and I couldn't recollect which year I quit. Asked hubby when he quit and knew it was one year later that I quit. So he quit Nov 2005, and I quit Sept 2006. There now, if I forget again, it is recorded here.

I haven't thought much about it at all, but visited my account Eon because I received a birthday greeting from one of the members. Haven't been back to my Eon account, forgot I had subscription here. But when I did return, I see my one and only blog entry was about quitting smoking. So thought I'd update on that post and then go on from there.

Law & Order, South Bend, Mexico, Patience and Extradition

blogged by my husband, Arthur Ruger to Willapa Magazine


from an article published in Seattle PI Fugitive's capture turned into mission.

For 13 years, accused drug kingpin eluded the law -- until last week

I took this picture last year from out the back door at the office where I work in South Bend. About 50 yards from that door the Willapa River flows from my right westward to Willapa Bay, less than 3 miles away. Almost in the center of the photo on the river's left bank you can see the large bright roof of what is now South Bend Packers, a seafood processor. That's the "fishhouse with no ice" mentioned in the story.

[Excerpts] and my comments.

Friday, April 6, 2007
By COLIN McDONALD
P-I REPORTER

He was the most prolific hashish smuggler the Northwest has ever seen, say U.S. marshals and federal investigators.

For years, they say, Jeffery Jay Warren orchestrated the rapid movement of the drug from Southeast Asia by ocean freighters, a fleet of Willapa Bay "fishing" boats and trucks. Tons of the illicit cargo were hauled through Washington en route to East Coast and Canadian markets.

... A coast-to-coast bust in 1994 nailed most of Warren's operatives -- but he managed to elude capture. Since then, a copy of Warren's wanted poster slowly yellowed on the bulletin board in the Marshals Service's Seattle office.

... His pursuers chased down tantalizing rumors of the kingpin's whereabouts: his favorite haunts, the luxury resort towns in coastal Mexico where he was reputed to be taking residence. The trail led investigators across the globe. There was evidence that Warren had been traveling extensively in South America and Europe. He apparently liked being near the ocean and in warm climates.

... He's now sitting in a jail cell in Mexico City facing extradition to the U.S. -- and a possible life sentence.

... When the indictment was handed down in 1994, 16 people -- including Warren -- were charged in connection with the drug-smuggling ring.

Two years earlier, federal agents had estimated the ring had moved 40 tons of hashish through the fishing port of South Bend in southwest Washington. The estimated wholesale value: $120 million.

... "These guys had been dumping big loads for at least four years," Lanier said.

He called them "old hippies," now in their mid- to late-50s, who had been smuggling marijuana and hashish into the country since the 1970s.

But the smugglers had their act together. Using fishing boats and an old fishing dock and warehouse at the head of Willapa Bay as a false front, Warren's team of ship captains, deckhands, truck drivers and radio operators moved the drugs from ocean freighters sitting hundreds of miles off the coast to waiting semis. Within a week, the drugs would be in New York.

Everyone I spoke to who lived in the area at that time remembers this big drug bust. Several chuckled when they said that the local police had no clue what was going on because the tight-lipped Feds weren't telling nobody nothing.

Others however thought that locally there was some other problem where the county knew what was up but didn't tell the city of South Bend or something like that. Either way, it doesn't seem to have been much the local's show.

Locals thought the fishhouse with no ice was odd but didn't ask many questions. The strangers paid for the equipment and service with crisp $100 bills.

That fishhouse is not much more than 1/4 mile from my office and I've been walking to it as part of the exercise regimen I use during my breaks now for a couple of months.

A co-worker said that as a teenage she went walking in the evening with her mother and sister past that ice-less fishhouse every night and they thought it was not only strange with no ice, but also strangely mysterious in that lighting was either absence or seriously restricted for a warehouse doing late-night and early-morning fishing operations.

She also remembered learning that there was a house up on the hill above the riverbank that was always dark but from which the crooks had been keeping lookout with with binoculars while watching for Coast Guard vessels and law enforcement.

"The (fishing) market was bad and anyone who came in and wanted to make a go of it got treated real good," said Jerry Benning, retired Pacific County sheriff. In 1994, Benning was the local law enforcement contact for the federal agents who raided the warehouse.

"By the time we got there, there was nothing but empty sacks," Benning recalled.

Which makes more sense than a city police department totally kept in the dark about something like this. My own impression is that the locals had the more difficult local job in keeping a lid on the whole activity long enough for the Feds to make their move.

...Cash-filled suitcases

Speed and deception was at the core of Warren's operation.

His group could unload 45 tons of drugs in an evening and have it in and out of Washington in less then 12 hours, authorities say.

U.S. Highway 101 runs right through South Bend North-to-South. As it has always been, day or night, it is not surprising to see semi-trucks backing refrigerated trailers into one of several fishhouse docks or pulling out with them and heading off up the road.

The group would send out decoy fishing boats so the Coast Guard wouldn't know which boat to track, said Fran Dyer, a retired agent from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, who started working on the Warren case in the early 1990s.

"They were very good fishermen, but there is a hell of a lot more money to be made in moving 50,000 pounds of hashish in one night than fishing," Dyer said.

There wasn't anything in the article that indicated how many, if any, of those originally arrested in the raid were locals to Pacific County. But as an alternative to the shrinking seafood markets that have continually gotten smaller and smaller, I can see a few easy recruits responding to another more lucrative way to put food on the table, keep the roof overhead and include perhaps some genuine excitement.

40 tons of hashish?

May it would have been like Pacific County's West Coast version of moonshine.

Maybe the feds should have used this to help out:


Grampus or Pike on the Willapa River, at Raymond, Washington, circa 1912.
The A class subs were fitted with a bow fairing to improve sea keeping, this can be seen by the dark shadow area forward of the conning tower.
Both submarines were placed in reserve in 1912 at Bremerton. This photo was probably taken on the trip up the coast to Bremerton. The stern of the USS Chattanooga can be seen in front of the sub.

Photo provided by Steve Hubbard of the Pacific County Historical Society , Washington State

From Through the looking glass: a photo essay of submarines 1900-1940

Adding 'balance' to our lifestyle - after four years of activism on Iraq occupation

I've been wanting to get back to this blog to figure out how I want to use it. Originally, I had thought I would use it to reflect my thoughts on my 'serious side', but I've been 'serious' now for so many years in the intense level of activism I have put into trying to end Iraq occupation, get our troops out of there. I am imposing upon myself some time out and away from activism and with that in mind have been playing around with my more creative and fun side. I've been working on couple other blogs - Everything Old is New Again and Bundelz.

We are tackling some lifestyle changes for ourselves and I tend to want to 'research' a thing before I actually start 'doing' a thing. We both have quit smoking - he after 13 years, me after (I'm embarrassed to say) 40 years. Okay that is done. I'm giving attention to our food lifestyle, and shifting it to vegetarian. That is not new for me and I'm using the Bundelz blog to give that area of our life attention. We are both giving attention to some 'exercise' so to speak, just gentle stuff, nothing too heavy duty, so walking, gardening, that sort of thing.

For me, I find it's true that what I've lost in breathing capacity from smoking all these years has done harm. I don't have the capacity for much enthusiastic movement and need to build up what I do have via re-introduction to exercise regimen. It' hard to believe I used to teach aerobics and was a trained dancer. If I were to gauge my capacity to dance, move, do aerobic exercises now....well, let's just say smoking has taken it's toll over the years. And it is far more noticeable to me now post menopause than it was during and before. Something about post-menopause has really thrown me out of whack. I should write to that someday.

Now that sustainable living is gaining popularity, I'm feeling enthusiasm about returning to the idea of 'frugal', 'meaningful living', 'off the grid', self-sustaining kind of homesteading type lifestyle. Oh, no, we aren't anywhere close to self sustaining, homesteading or otherwise, but I am fascinated with thinking we can head in that direction and have made many lifestyle changes since I began that project for us back in 2003. My attention and activism to the military invasion and occupation of Iraq has consumed huge quantities of my time over the past 4 years. I am so disappointed that four years later we are still in Iraq - that is not something I anticipated and was most willing to give everything those first three years to do what I could to help bring it to a quick end. But four years later, and I recognize I will have to give balance to my life to sustain over the long haul as it seems our military will be in Iraq for years, if not decades to come -- according to the very words of this President and Commander-in-Chief.

I think, then, this blog will be sprinkled with thoughts from our every day life, sometimes serious, sometimes political, sometimes light, sometimes simple, sometimes just the thoughts of a silly old woman.