Role Models

I thought I would give everyone an update about my weight loss. I joined medical weight loss at the end of Feb. So far, I've lost 18 pounds. It's not probably the fastest but, in reality, if I lose 10 pounds a month, I'll be at my goal by the end of the year.

I've had a few set backs; for instance, traveling really set me back. I gained 5 pounds on that trip. I've taken it off, plus 4 extra pounds, so I'm back on track.

I did get really motivated while I was on my trip by my two aunts. Both are in their mid 80s and I can only hope and pray that I can be as healthy as they are when I'm that age.

My Aunt Pauline, who lives in Ohio, lives alone, drives all over, exercises, does yard work, volunteers at her church and lives a very active life.

Here she is in her yard, showing me buds on her tree.

While we were visiting her, she took us on a quick tour of her town. Her age hasn't slowed her down a bit, as she zoomed up and down the country roads pointing out historical homes and the surrounding farmlands. At one point, she whipped into her church parking lot and I'm sure the car was driving on two wheels like a stunt car in an action movie.

My aunt exercises daily, sometimes walking around her house several times until she's reached a mile. She can get up out of a chair without holding on to anything, something I haven't been able to do in awhile.

She's an avid computer geek and can zip around the Internet like a twenty year old. She does crossword puzzles and plays computer games to exercise her brain. I told her several times how much I admired her. I am truly inspired by her.

My other aunt, Aunt Hellen, lives in West Virginia. I stayed with her on my trip. Aunt Hellen also is in her 80s and still drives to church. Her knees are bad now and she's had some health issues, but every day she gets up and goes out to get her newspaper. Sometimes she strolls up and down the creek lined road. She loves nature and sits out on her porch watching the hummingbirds and chickadees feed from her bird feeders. She was eager for any adventure we went on and never complained about a thing.



What I love about my Aunt Hellen is her country wisdom and stories. She was born in a small town in West Virginia, never travelled much in her lifetime, but her wisdom could fill books.
She's kind and loving and spending time with her is always a blessing.

Being around these two great women made me realize that I have to take better care of myself. Their quality of life is good. Both of my aunts are calm, God-fearing women who take pleasure in the simple things that life has to offer.

I learned a lot from them and came home with a new resolve to work harder and exercise more. Something I have in common with them both is that I do take time to stop and smell the roses and to listen to the birds sing. I enjoy the simple pleasures in life like them.

I hope they both get a chance to read this blog so that they both know how much they mean to me and how grateful I am to have them as my aunts. Love you Aunt Pauline and Aunt Hellen!

It was just my imagination...

Whenever we go to West Virginia my cousin Bobby takes us Ridge Running. He packs us into his truck and takes us up on the hills that surround the "hollar". There he drives along the ridges and edges explaining how well his brakes will hold up or how someone last year went over a cliff.

My cousin is mild mannered and sweet and so I trust him, so when he suggested that he was going to drop me off at a shed on top of the mountain because some of the ridges up ahead were treacherous, I took his advice.

The area we were traveling in is owned by Buck, a good friend of Bob's and my cousin is allowed to drive around the mountain. Many years ago, his relatives owned it, but sold parts of it when times got rough. Buck has video cameras hidden all around the mountain as it's private property and Buck is doing a lot of conservation on it. He plants trees, feeds the animals and takes care of the area.

I felt pretty safe then when my cousin dropped me off. "We'll be back later to pick you up," he assured me. I watched as my cousin Bob, my sister, my nephew and my cousin Tim drove away and told myself it would be an adventure.

I wandered around the shed taking pictures for a few minutes before I got bored, so I started to walk down the path that the truck has just taken.

As I got further and further from the shed, I told myself, "Just a few more feet."

Other than the noise of the birds and a slight breeze, there was no sound and that started to bother me. I saw a pile of rocks up on a bluff and wanted to take a picture so I moved in that direction.


After I took the picture, I heard something crashing through the brush down the hill from me.

I immediately remembered what my cousin had told me the day before. He had heard a loud scream come down from the mountain and said that in all his years he had never heard anything like it before.

Why I hadn't thought of that sooner is beyond me, but I started to worry. "What the heck am I doing up here," I said aloud. I started to look around for a heavy branch that I could use as a club if need be. I found one and banged it against a tree to see it's strength. It held up and I started back to the shed. The whole time I continued to hear something thrashing through the woods below.

It was then, as I hurried back to the shed, that my imagination started to work overtime. I thought of movies like The Blair Witch Project, Deliverance, The Cat People and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I could feel my heart start to beat faster as I made the trek back up the hill towards the shed.

I knew the shed was wide open, but I had seen some rakes and tools inside and figured I could use them to protect myself. Protect myself from what? I wasn't sure, but I couldn't get back fast enough.

It then felt that I was being watched. Was something on the hills above watching me? I wasn't sure, but I stopped and scanned the hill tops and ridges to see if anything moved.

Once again, I heard something big moving through the brush. I searched for a large rock and threw it down into the brush and trees. I went to the edge as closely as I could to see what was down there but saw nothing.



The entire time the woods were getting a little grayer and shadows were growing a little bigger.
Then I noticed something hanging at the entrance of the shed. At first I thought it was a carcass of a deer, which made sense to me. (?) Then I realized the spine was attached to a pelvis. It seemed human to me, but that didn't make sense.



I knew that the owner was trying to scare people away and that he had hung a skeleton by the shed, but I had found it lying in the leaves. But the thing hanging by the shed looked like rotting meat.



By now my adrenaline was at high speed and I started to pace back and forth. Thoughts of "what if" started to build in my head. What if something is watching me? What if they don't come back? What if I have to walk down the mountain? There were so many different roads I didn't think I could find my way back before dark!

I kept looking at the trees as dusk started to move in and wondered whatever possessed me to agree to stay here alone. 40 minutes had gone by and I was just about ready to have a panic attack when suddenly I heard the beautiful sound of the truck returning. At least I hoped it was my cousin's truck.

It was! I was never so happy to see anyone in my life as I was to see them. I hurriedly showed my cousin the "rotting corpse" and did he get a laugh.

"That's the skeleton I told you about!" he chuckled.

I showed him the skeleton in the leaves but he explained that it had broken in two and what I thought was a rotting corpse was really the bottom half. I wasn't sure but upon closer inspection saw that it was made from foam! I almost was let down that it wasn't some horrific thing left behind to scare the owner.

As we drove back down the mountain my cousin continued to laugh at my silliness.

I guess he didn't understand what a wild imagination can do to a girl.

In the end, if he asked me to do it again I probably would. Sometimes I need a little adventure in my life to keep the heart ticking and the imagination spinning!


P.S. Remember if you comment on my blog you are put in my contest drawing.. Good Luck

Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

One of the highlights of my trip was visiting the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia. To quote their website..

"The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, constructed between 1858 and 1881, is the largest hand-cut stone masonry building in North America, and is purportedly the second largest in the world, next to the Kremlin. It was designed by the renowned architect Richard Andrews following the Kirkbride plan, which called for long rambling wings arranged in a staggered formation, assuring that each of the connecting structures received an abundance of therapeutic sunlight and fresh air. The original hospital, designed to house 250 souls, was open to patients in 1864 and reached its peak in the 1950's with 2,400 patients in overcrowded and generally poor conditions. Changes in the treatment of mental illness and the physical deterioration of the facility forced its closure in 1994 inflicting a devastating effect on the local economy, from which it has yet to recover."

The building is 1/4 mile long and was so big I couldn't get a good picture of the entire structure.

As we drove into Weston and crossed South Forks River we were shocked at how massive the structure is. It is the focal point of the town. It was not difficult to be admitted to a mental hospital 100 years ago and I could only imagine that living in the shadow of this huge building would be a constant reminder to the residents of the area to "be on their best behavior."

Some strange reasons to be admitted to an asylum were some of the following:

• over eating
• hard study
• seduction
• reading the bible too much
• affairs
• infatuations
• excitability
• falling off a horse
• political excitement
• novel reading
• female problems

Our guide told us that if a man wanted to have an affair or get rid of his wife because she had money, all he had to do was get a witness to go with him to the asylum and his wife would be admitted.

The Tour

For $30 we each were allowed to tour all four floors. I was a little hesitant to go up the many flights of stairs, due to my knee, but I knew if I didn't go, I would be mad at myself. The guide was patient with me as I took my time climbing the stairs.

This picture was taken from the main floor looking up the stairwell. This is called a coffin style stairway. Once a patient tried to commit suicide by jumping from the top of the stairs down the stairwell, but all he did was bounce and bang his way down and ended up breaking his leg.

View from the top of the stairs looking down

When the sun shone through the leaded glass at the front entrance
it formed rainbows on the floor, calming the patients.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum followed the Kirkbride plan of treatment, Building as Cure, which provided patients with long, sun lite hallways, lots of windows and spacious grounds. The idea came from
Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride's theory that patients should be treated in humane conditions with comfortable living quarters and plenty of activities. At one time there were over 300 facilities across the country built in the Kirkbride style.

Here our tour guide, Ted, demonstrates how a patient in the criminally insane ward would be restrained, by being handcuffed to the wall, spread eagle. Not all the treatment would be considered to be humane. However, some of the more dangerous patients were treated in this manner.

A dark corridor leads to the isolation rooms were the worst patients,
the criminally insane, were placed.

When this hospital had patients, their doors were kept open to keep the hallways bright and sunny. The light still shines in, but the rooms are empty.

In 1994 the Asylum closed and the utilities were turned off. The building was very cold. In the corner of a window, where it was wet and damp, wild mushrooms thrive.





Ted, our guide, shows us the living quarters of the doctors. Although the walls are badly damaged, I loved the texture and color.


In 15 years, vandals have done a lot of damage.



The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum offers haunted tours and a haunted house. Here someone has written "ghost" on a bulletin board. As much fun as it was to tour the place, I never saw or heard anything unusual. However, being there in the evening, during the haunted tours, might be a different story!


I found this to be a very informative and fun afternoon. We have come so far in the treatment of the mentally handicapped that it didn't bother me to wander around the halls of an institution where the mentally ill might not have been so kindly treated. As someone who has been in therapy herself, and who has taken anti-depressants in the past, I wondered if someone like me would have been a patient in a place like this. If the criteria was too much novel reading, excitability or female problems, I'm sure I would have had my own room.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is trying to raise money to renovate the hospital back to it's original look. It's a big undertaking and I wish them luck. If historical buildings fascinate you and you'd like to contribute to the renovation, here's a link to their website.

Here's an eerie video I found..

Country Roads..

At 6 a.m. I'll be hitting the road to go to West Virginia with my sister, my nephew and my cousin. We will be staying with relatives in Blue Creek...Elk View. I can't wait.

As hard as I tried to blog today about something creative, which I've been doing a lot of lately, I had to pack and clean, go to work, then to a meeting, and finally, drop my car off to get the brakes fixed. (My sister is driving her car on the trip).

While I'm in West Virginia, I will be blogging. I plan on making artists trading cards on the trip. ATCs don't take up much room and I'll be inspired by my surroundings.

I'll be posting soon!

Reformat....Relief!

After almost of week of h*ll with a really bad computer virus, I had to reformat my computer. So, I'm back in the business of blogging. I lost a lot of programs, so I have to spend some time loading them onto my machine, but I don't mind. It's just great to be back.

I will be going on a vacation in a few days (West Virginia), but hopefully I can blog a couple of times before I go and maybe even while I'm there.

Thanks for your patience and be careful of downloading games and applications. There might be a sneaky virus there waiting for you.