Uncategorized – Page 27

Memory – 9/10/2019

The brain is a miraculous organ. It keeps our bodies functioning even when disease robs us of our memories. We use only a portion of this amazing living computer. Sometimes an accident or illness cause it to glitch.

There are many historical events in my life that I remember with clarity, where I was, what I was doing having lived through 7 decades so far. I was sitting in typing class in high school when the P.A. crackled to life to tell us that our President had been shot, it was the day after my 16th birthday and a party had been planned and then cancelled. I was an occupational counselor in a high school when the space shuttle Challenger blew up over our country on re-entry and all activity stopped as we watched on the handful of TVs in the library. The 9/11/2001 terrorists attacks occurred when I was a high school counselor in a brand new High School and Technology Center with a TV in every classroom and public place in the building. In a city that was a major military hub of the east coast of the USA, many of our student’s having parents working in the Pentagon as we watched horrified as the Twin Towers burned and fell and the Pentagon burned from the strike on it. There are dozen of events etched in my mind, Nixon resigning, Saigon evacuation, Reagan shot, Bobby Kennedy assassinated, the Cuba missile crisis, etc.

But a glitch in the form of a ski fall a few years ago resulting in a concussion, followed by an auto accident this past February with another concussion and now I can’t remember a simple 8 line knitting pattern that I have knit 3 prior times. Every line has to be marked as I knit. It is not a complicated lace, simply remembering which end of the row to increase until the 8th row, binding off some stitches and then repeat. It is frustrating, it is making doing more complex lace pattern almost impossible. Most of the symptoms, such as headache and dizziness are rare now, some simple tasks like releasing the parking brake on the car before backing up have resolved, the occular migraines are much less occurrent, but basic math functions require a calculator, and knitting requires a magnetic marker. I don’t know if these functions will ever fully return or if I will have to keep my knitting simpler and keep my smart phone nearby for it’s calculator function (who still has a real calculator except high school and college math students.) I hope it heals, but at least I have tools to help me through.

A Day of Retirement – 9/7/2019

I wonder how I managed when I worked outside of the home. I have been retired for almost a decade now and time to sit and not do anything but rest just doesn’t seem to be in my day. That may be because I generally can’t sit calmly and do nothing, I have to be reading, knitting, spinning, or up gardening, cooking, or cleaning the house or the laundry.

Hubby is a night owl that prefers to sleep later, I live by the sun, ready for bed by 9:30 p.m. and awake with first light. That morning time is used to do animal chores, garden, or sit and spin.

Once we are both about the house, the other household chores are tackled. With two large dogs, there is always vacuuming or mopping to be done. Most of the rugs in the house have been discarded over the years, except for the Oriental in the living room. The wood floors are easier to keep clean than rugs. The living room rug needs professional cleaning, but gets vacuumed several times a week until there are no dogs in the house.

Each day, we try to get in a brisk walk of more than 2 miles. Most of those walks are taken on an old paved rail grade that begins at the Blackburg library and ends in Christiansburg with a side leg that goes off of it at about the 3 mile mark in the opposite direction to an old farm that is now a park. Other days, we go to the local pond that has a graded soil and gravel path around it and is almost a mile, so we do it twice, with the path down to it and back, it gives us our two miles. On these walks, I often take seasonal photos. When I am solo, I wander the hills around our house or if visiting eldest son, try to walk their road or hike with the grandson.

Today the photos were mostly wild flowers, it seems that most of them are shades of purple, though I didn’t take the time to try to identify them.

And a barely flowing creek, another victim of our current drought.

Being retired does provide more freedom to attend events during the week, to grocery shop when needed, not just on weekends, and to help out with grandchildren.

Aging and food-8/28/2019

From an early age when processed foods were really digging into families diets, I have preferred whole foods. In my early to late 20s even eating as an Ovo-lacto vegetarian as it was called in those days before Vegan was added and vegetarian described my diet. Hubby has a meat and starch preference to his diet, so meat was re-introduced to mine when we became a couple. I still don’t really care for meat and will prepare meat for him and not for me if it isn’t a stew, goulash, or casserole where the meat is part of the dish. I will eat it then and will eat vegetarian or shrimp when we eat dinner out generally.

I don’t buy mixes and canned goods (other than organic cream of soups for sauces and gravies), cooking from whole ingredients, produce that I grow or purchased from local farmers at the Farmers’ Market, even getting as much of my dairy from local farms as possible. We do like many international foods and use spices and herbs, but generally making spice mixes myself so that they don’t contain fillers and flavor enhancers. And I do like coffee and tea.

Beginning about 2 decades ago, certain foods produced unpleasant after effects including sending me to the Emergency Room thinking I was having a heart attack almost a decade ago. GERD and gas have been a bane with increasing frequency to the point that certain foods and most anything with peppers, sweet or hot, have been avoided. For a while I was purchasing low acid coffee, but really didn’t care for it and returned to drinking whatever was readily available.

After my return from last weekend’s trip, I quit on the coffee and have started my morning with a single cup of tea. I have reduced the amount of cold or hot tea during the day, have reduced portion sizes, and limited curcurbits, peppers, and heavy spices. I don’t want a life of bland boring food, but neither do I want to rely on antacids, PPI drugs or other unnatural solutions.

I have tried the raw apple cider vinegar trick, the eating a green apple a day trick, even trying aloe juice in small quantities, but avoidance seems to be the most effective relief. I remember my Dad complaining that he loved certain foods but they didn’t like him. Now I understand.