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Posts Tagged ‘Wellness’

Party Planning

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Bob and I have been known to throw a good party over the years. We’ve done a clambake in our Jersey Shore backyard, we did Bob’s infamous 40th “Come as You Were in the 60s” birthday bash, and of course the post-flood homecoming in Rumson, not to mention the Big Chill Thanksgivings and numerous Grandma Ada birthday parties – and the 2000 Millennial New Year’s Eve. There’s nothing I love better than cooking for a crowd, well maybe catering…

I had to laugh when I overheard one political commentator say, “The Democrats have to throw the kind of party you want to go to.” A light went off in my head!

Of course, we don’t want to be all doom and gloom. But I also don’t do raves either, luckily that trend has skipped my generation. Still, turn on Fox News and their anchors are actually having questionable fun. I don’t stay on Fox for long, but everyone is sitting around telling jokes, instead of stating facts or analyzing policy. They are not worried about the end of democracy while their president and his oligarch, tech-bro, side-kick go about trampling everything in their path like two giant Gullivers run amok.

So what kind of party would you want to attend? I hear that Rubrik’s Cube parties are all the rage in Paris. I’m not quite sure how you play, but wearing articles of clothing in the cube’s colors is de rigeur. Or what about a Knives Out mystery party? Maybe we should leave weapons out of the equation. An escape room? I’d love to escape reality, forget this past year, a year of nearly dying from a simple fall that happened the day before our election.

Well, both splints are off my hands and the Aspen collar has been packed away. I look perfectly normal, if not shorter, but that is an illusion. I’m tempered. I’ve had to face mortality and my head still feels like a bowling ball. My right hand doesn’t work the way it used to, but then again, pretty much nothing else does either. Ah, to be seventy again!

Let’s plan on throwing a party for the Dems. Let’s brainstorm all the things we want to happen, like getting egg prices down, controlling bird flu, and not whether or not to buy Greenland. Let’s talk about the positive things we can do to help the climate, and help families with childcare. We need to make our party fun again and build community.

We need to party like it’s 1999! And Happy Anniversary to these two!

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Cheerio!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2025| 6 Comments »

Today’s the day. It’s been three months since my family room fall. Today I see the spine doctor for X-rays of my neck – extension and flexion or tilting my head up and down. My fracture at C2, sometimes called a hangman’s fracture, has not exactly healed. It’s difficult if not impossible for older people to grow new bone, but the doctor tells me that fibrous tissue has bridged the gap, like a spider’s web of scar tissue. “No more roller coasters for you,” he tells me.

“And no bumper cars!”

I should feel lucky, if not downright jubilant that I’ll be free of the cervical Aspen collar. Goodbye, Ciao, Cheerio! So why do I feel conflicted?

Yesterday I shared a table for lunch with a widow. Her opening question, “What happened to you?” wasn’t new. Most people assume it was surgery that resulted in this head immobilization. But Bob had to leave to take a call, and before long the young widow and I were immersed in a deep conversation about life, our daughters, the choices we make, and her fall (totally alone and without her phone) off a ladder in the small storage unit of her high-rise condo in the Gulch.

INTERMISSION FOR 9 AM DOCTOR APPOINTMENT

I’ve just returned from the doctor collar-free. I had a rendezvous with death, but I tricked the grim reaper. My head is sitting on its axis just fine. Here’s a little anatomy lesson:

“The axis, also known as the epistropheus, is the second cervical vertebra (C2) that has some similarities to a typical cervical vertebra but is categorized as an atypical vertebra because of its unique features. Its most characteristic feature is the prominent superior projection known as the dens axis, or odontoid process. The dens axis plays an important function for the movement of the head, acting as a stable pivot around which the atlas and head rotate.“

It figures that I broke an atypical vertebra. Last week was my last hand therapy appointment, so now what do I do? I’m not allowed to drive for a few months, or play football…. “tackle” football. I started a book in California, “The Last Lecture,” by Randy Pausch, that I’d like to finish. He received a terminal cancer diagnosis and his book is a look back at his exceptional life. If you’ve never heard of him, check this out:

I guess my joy at being cut-loose from doctors and therapy is being blunted by the daily assaults on our democratic process by a president who would be king. The Groom’s critical care funding from NIH may be in jeopardy. One of their friends who works for the government has been asked to sign a “loyalty” pledge. This is real, Mr T’s crazy missives, his crazier “special government employee” Elon’s directives are all engineered to foment fear. Do not lose faith. It’s time to pull out those old pink pussy hats and resist dear readers.

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The Diet Diatribe

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2023| 3 Comments »

I just had my annual physical with Dr M, an internist/palliative care doctor I love. She sits and faces me, not the computer, she talks about life in general and listens to me, she asks questions about my health and the family (spoiler – she’s a friend of the Bride and Groom). My doctor looks in my ears, listens to my heart and figures out what immunizations I need, like the pneumonia vaccine. Ouch, that hurts going in! Then just before giving me a clean bill of health, right as I was about to hop off the table, she looked at the weight her nurse had noted in my chart that day.

In fact, she flipped all the way back to 2016 and spoke aloud my weight each year…

It wasn’t an actual surprise and I should have seen it coming. After all, I rarely get on a scale and the past 18 months has seen my mobility greatly compromised by my bone density. In other words, I knew I needed to work on building up my strength and endurance, on walking more and starting to lift small weights again. And I’d just gone through my closet for the winter, unearthing sweaters that did feel a bit snug. Subconsciously I knew it was time to move more and eat less. Still, having my doctor point out the obvious facts in such a kind, non-judgmental way was edifying.

I need to lose weight! My AHA moment had arrived. No more blaming the incremental, ballooning pounds on a Mr T presidency, a Pandemic, and my osteoporosis. It’s time to try to pull up those big girl pants and get down to business. Dr M suggested smaller portions while also telling me not to worry about it until after the holidays. Sure, right at the bell of a New Year I could join the throngs of people starting their weight loss journey like salmon swimming upstream. Until then, don’t worry about it.

Well if you know me, telling me NOT to worry about something is a perfect way to keep me worrying, especially since I hadn’t been worrying about my weight so much to begin with. I was just avoiding scales! Call me a humbug, but I’m not starting a food journal, never did and never will. I’m not paying someone else to keep me on track, like Weight Watchers (WW) or Noom. And I told Dr M that I absolutely won’t take Ozempic, and she immediately agreed with me… even if Oprah has decided to jump onboard the diabetes drug weight loss train.

I’ve watched Oprah pull a wagon of fat across the stage in her heyday. Oprah is the Phil Donahue to my generation of women; the second wave of feminists who threw out pantyhose and girdles but decided to try and emulate Twiggy anyway. The big O is still on WW’s Board and stands to make millions more by endorsing an easy fix – the shot that costs hundreds of dollars and promises to curb your appetite. It’s like our whole country has just given up, willpower and lifestyle be damned. And Oprah has given us her blessing to shoot up (It’s not a magic pill, it’s a once-weekly injection for Type 2 diabetes). Let’s see what Sima Sistani, the new CEO of WW had to say when she spoke with All Things Considered:

Ms. Winfrey, along with the rest of our board, stands by our business vision and our program offerings. But we all know that her story has been one that has been a generational story and one that mimics so many people who, on a day to day basis, struggle with the same shame and bias where weight loss has been associated with a preoccupation around thinness. And what we’re trying to do is reshape that conversation around weight health. It’s not a matter of vanity. This is about the degree to which weight impacts your health and your quality of life. And for decades, we’ve discussed weight and dieting and obesity in terms that isolate people and often demotivate them.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/18/1219710239/weightwatchers-oprah-ozempic-drugs-wegovy

When I confessed my conversation with Dr M to the Bride, she said, “DIETS DON’T WORK!” She knew Sistani at Duke; they were undergrads together and Sistani belonged to the same sorority as the Bride’s roomie. Disordered eating was everywhere on the Duke campus in the 90s, but when wasn’t a woman trying to fit into her culture’s idea of beauty? Tattoos, piercings, foot-binding, neck-lengthening chokers, corsets. Even Egyptian women wore eyeliner! So why shouldn’t we starve ourselves today? The thing is, I’m already injecting a drug to build back bone, I’d rather not inject something else for a disease I don’t have.

I’m not here to shame you if Ozempic or Wegovy are your golden tickets. Just don’t think any of these companies are acting as your fiduciary. Maybe the problem is simply capitalism. After all the pharmaceutical industry wins, Weight Watchers wins, and the consumer pays to lose weight. I told the Bride to fight back, weave her yoga teaching into her medical practice for an integrative approach to health and wellness. Borrow from the East and practice preventative medicine. Let’s all eat like we live in a Blue Zone. Break the next generation of feminists free of body dysmorphia, our last self-loathing trap.

At least my shoe size hasn’t changed! Merry Christmas Everyone, be kind to yourselves.

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It’s All About Ethics

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on May 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Last week I was helping the Bug study for a science test on human reproduction.

She was learning about puberty, menstruation, and sex. There was not an ounce of self-consciousness or body shaming in my beautiful granddaughter, who is only one inch shorter than I am. I can vaguely remember my big sister Kay filling me in on such things. It was certainly not in my Catholic school’s 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th grade curriculum. However, the Bride was taught about reproduction in her public school, albeit mostly about anatomy and to fear AIDs as the latest STD. I’m happy to say my Grands are the children of doctors, who never shied away from difficult questions.

Then the Pumpkin who hears everything, asked how old you have to be to have a baby?

And I immediately thought about an Ob-Gyn who did her best with a patient, and her state medical board reprimanded her. They fined her $3,000 – for saving a patient’s life. They came very close to taking her license away. Would you think this doctor must live in a developing country? Wrong; this courageous woman physician lives in Indiana where there is a Republican AG, and she had the audacity to perform an abortion on her 10 year old patient.

“The board cleared Bernard on two other counts, determining that she did not improperly report child abuse and that she is fit to practice medicine.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/10/27/abortion-doctor-indiana-caitlin-bernard/

We tried to answer the Pumpkin’s question, but honestly we were stumped. Sure once menstruation starts, the uterus is signaling its ability to carry a fetus, but when is it advisable? Certainly not in the teenage years, right?

Dr Caitlyn Bernard followed protocol. She reported the procedure involving a minor in the time frame required – three days. This speedy reporting process has been determined to help police find and prosecute a rapist, a child rapist – which they eventually did. What exactly did this doctor do wrong? She spoke to the press about it. She spoke in generalized terms to a reporter about her patient’s age and the consequential influx of young girls to Indiana from Ohio after the Dobbs decision. Even the Chair of the Board called Bernard a “good doctor.”

There was no HIPAA violation, all docs talk in general terms about their interesting patients. So long as a patient isn’t named, or identified, doctors have freedom to speak. But telling a reporter that a child had to cross state lines in order to receive life-saving care is a bridge too far?

Dr Bernard’s patient is the same age as our Bug. She aced her science test on the last day of school, and will be turning 11 this summer. Of course I didn’t bring up the Indiana court case while studying human reproduction. I didn’t talk about an extreme Christian anti-woman agenda in our home state. Instead I suggested we all go to the movies!

It was my first time back to a movie theatre since the pandemic. Three generations of girls / women sat through all the ads and trailers, I told the Bug how it used to be full-length cartoons before a movie in my day… and I immediately feel ten times older every time I say something like that. Note to Self – “When I was a girl…” must be eliminated from my vocabulary! Then the movie started, and the thrill of being surrounded by strangers in a dark cavern returned.

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” unfolded in classic pre-teen angst. A rising 6th grader (just like the Bug) must leave her grandmother, Kathy Bates who was channeling Grandma Ada to a T, her friends and her NYC apartment and move to the suburbs. The actress playing Margaret, Abby Ryder Fortson, even resembles the Love Bug with her piercing dark eyes. Her first prayer is pretty concise – “Please don’t let New Jersey be too horrible” and we laughed though southerners didn’t get the joke. Bras and menstrual periods were discussed willy nilly. Margaret has decided she must choose a religion, Judaism or Christianity? And she learns how to navigate new friendships.

If only our country could learn how to keep religion out of politics.

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On Balance

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on September 17, 2021| 8 Comments »

It was a Wednesday like any other. I was having my morning coffee and noticed the mourning dove diner atop the tree stump outside of my window was empty. One lone dove stared out into space, wondering where his breakfast might be… so I threw on a rain jacket because there was a dewy mist to the air, and headed outside with replacement seeds and nuts.

Feeding the birds has become a pleasurable pandemic habit. I love watching them squabble over position and seeing a cardinal can become the highlight of my day. Sometimes I worry that I’m becoming “That Old Lady,” but at least I’m not walking out of the house in my bedroom slippers anymore.

The fancy slip-on UGG shearling slippers contributed to the mishap last Wednesday. I was wearing them as I waltzed out to feed the city’s wildlife, since squirrels take their equal share of the dove diner. On balance, I was in great shape. Thanks to Pilates, my hips didn’t ache and my knees were less crumbly. In short, I didn’t stop before climbing stairs to wonder which foot should go first anymore. A breakthrough in our quest to age gracefully!

To say I lost my balance would be wrong.

I simply turned away from the feeder and put my right foot up on the deck’s rain-slicked step. In less than a second I landed right-side-down on the deck with my right arm extended. BOOM. I wondered if I’d broken my hip. My ankle hurt a little and I yelled for Bob, “BOB!”

Thankfully he came out to examine me and deemed me very lucky indeed. My hip was fine and he put a band-aid on my ankle. I have some road rash on my right elbow – this is how fast it happened, I never put my hand down – and a bruise on the right side of my thigh that’s about to turn all shades of purple. Mercy prevailed, as the Bride was working that Wednesday morning and I really didn’t want to be wheeled into her hospital’s ER.

My pride was hurt. Still no dog walkers saw my slipped n fell routine; even our neighbor didn’t come out of his house. It was just a hump day like every other in a pandemic. We were going to pick up the Frenchie puppy for his Nana and PopBob day camp since both doctors were working.

Would this be a good time to remind you that TN has the distinction of being number ONE in the country for new Covid cases per capita?!

The latest milestone is one of several records the state has reached in the past several weeks, stemming from a spike in cases and hospitalizations among school-aged children.

Hundreds of students throughout Tennessee have been forced to quarantine or isolate due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Some schools have closed classrooms due to staffing shortages, while others have temporarily asked the state to switch to virtual learning.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/tennessee/articles/2021-09-14/tennessee-covid-19-cases-climb-to-top-in-the-country

On Yom Kippur we Jews are supposed to do a performance review of the past year. Last night, Bob and I hiked to a flowing creek by a golf course to throw our sins away. He had warned me I may be feeling the after effects of a fall, and I did. Thank you God for not breaking my hip. Despite my sore back, I cooked the last of our garden’s eggplant beforehand and delivered some to the Grands since both doctor-parents were working again.

On Balance, I’d rather not give our un-vaccinated grandchildren a deadly virus. I’d rather not hear what the twice impeached ex-president has to say. And I promise to only wear real shoes while feeding the birds.

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The Bird is the Word

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2018| 1 Comment »

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and I’ve heard that more and more Americans will NOT be serving turkey this year! Millennials seem to be leading the charge/change to a more vegetarian diet, replete with seeds and nuts. Like squirrels.

Well, you can count me out – I’m a purist on “Turkey Day,” and will be assembling my famous corn bread stuffing along with plenty of sides for the main attraction. I tried talking Bob into making ravioli, but he feels his pasta needs a night all its own!

Since when did food become political? Tofurky aside, I remember my first meeting with two vegetarians in college (vegans came into being much later). They were purists, absolutists too, they didn’t wear leather shoes. I looked down at their feet, under the cafeteria table laden with plastic wrappers. Then they told me they wouldn’t use honey, unless they knew the beekeeper! In the 1970s I thought this was absurd, who would mistreat bees?

Ever since, I’ve abhorred anything in the extreme; politics, religion, whatever. I would never cook Kosher because I always ate meat on Friday! I hope you’ve seen that episode of Portlandia, the one where they are ordering dinner in a farm-to-table restaurant and they end up at the farm with the waitress!

Most of you know I’ll eat just about anything, except sushi. Raw sushi, aka bait. But it wasn’t until I read this fascinating article about the intersection of food and politics with a feminist slant that our current obsession with everything gastronomic made sense.

“…the eco-food movement, also known as the eco-gastronomy or alternative-food movement, was busy embracing the war on obesity, joining the front lines of the fight. And food became something to categorize — whole or processed, real or fake, clean or dirty — and to fear. Pretty soon almost every food and health writer I knew was dropping gluten or white sugar from her diet, then bringing it back, then dropping something else. Now that trend has gone mainstream; even my 88-year-old grandmother knows what gluten is and why half her family isn’t eating it on any given day.”  https://medium.com/s/story/how-the-eco-food-movement-mass-markets-eating-disorders-d0302e0e0b85

When we categorize a certain food as “good” or “bad” we are unleashing our inner critic and jumping on the “Oh I only try to eat (insert whatever word you like – whole, healthy, slow) food.” In the article, Virginia Sole-Smith, a self-described recovering food writer, admits that such extreme food restricting is another form of body dysmorphia. Many food writers, and bloggers as magazines and newspapers died, became nutritionists who would try to sell us some image of clean food that is linked to conservation and social justice; not just another vain attempt at losing weight through the latest diet scheme.

We can save the ozone layer if we only give up __________.

Save the ocean, only eat wild caught __________.

Once the organic farming movement joined forces with the health and wellness community, and Oprah took on cattle farmers, we were prime for a revolution. Food could cure just about anything! “The Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit based in Miami, Florida, which conducts industry research, calculates that the worldwide “wellness economy” is now worth $3.7 trillion.”

The Bride and I were just discussing how easily integrative medicine, with an evidence-based practice, can slide into quackery. This was while I was drinking my chai tea, and after my T’ai Chi class!

The Flapper taught me that food is love… And So It Is… in all its pesky forms. There may be some “Toxic” chemicals you want to clean off veggies before serving – “Toxic” being the “Word of the Year.” And I was so sure it was going to be “Curate;” as in, you don’t have to be a museum director to curate things anymore.

If you haven’t watched “Salt Fat Acid Heat” on Netflix, you must do so NOW!! And for my Tuscany peeps – the first episode is in ITALY!!! https://www.netflix.com/title/80198288

Happy Thanksgiving to all y’all! Here is a picture from Italy which explains why I hope no one in our family will ever be vegan. All hail our Pecorino Cheesemaker

IMG_3571

 

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the Sounds of Dunkirk

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Christopher Nolan’s new movie Dunkirk will open in July, but you can watch the trailer now. The Rolling Stone called it “Gripping,” and said the trailer moves forward with, “…white-knuckle intensity.” Seeing as the Rocker composed the music and sound design for this one, I can understand why:

Nolan wrote and directed the movie, which takes place in 1940, when 400,000 Allied troops were surrounded on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, caught between the English channel at their backs and the German army on land. Civilian sailors joined the English navy and air force for an all-hands-on-deck evacuation operation. http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/see-gripping-new-trailer-for-christopher-nolans-dunkirk-w480901

I’d never heard of this story, about simple Sunday sailors and fishermen setting sail across the channel to rescue their British troops. If Hitler had turned his army toward that edge of sand, the war might have been over before we got our chance to jump in after Pearl Harbor.

Great Grandpa Hudson remembers seeing kamikaze pilots in the Pacific even after Hiroshima. He was retelling some of his war stories this week while we were visiting, and Great Grandma Ada told us some of her frustration with the VA. She’d been trying to get her WWII Vet a new set of hearing aides for months.

Hudson just turned 91 in April. He is one of two men left from the ship he served on in the Pacific. The Navy made him the cobbler onboard when he was a teenager, which probably sparked his interest in woodcarving. Totem poles abound around their property that he has painstakingly carved over the years. He is starting to slow down now, but still has a twinkle in his eye!

I was struck again at how profoundly deaf Hudson has become, and how isolating that can be for him and all our seniors. He and Grandma waited months for a new set of hearing aides to arrive, making calls to no avail, until finally Ada wrote to the Administrator, the Boss of the whole operation. All of a sudden, she received emails and calls tracking the package, a semi-apology, and supposedly the hearing aides are actually in the mail and on the way.

Did the package actually ship? Was their address correct? Who knows, but not many 90+ year olds are married to such a feisty 93 year old!

It’s Memorial Day weekend and if you’re not traveling, you’re probably barbequing something. But let’s not forget our Veterans, the men and women who risked life and limb only to return home to staggering “wait times” in order to see a doctor at their local VA. The proposed new budget from Mr T’s administration may look good to some, but is in reality a typical GOP move to outsource services:  “We are very concerned the administration’s request to make the Veterans Choice Program a permanent, mandatory program could lead to a gradual erosion of the VA health care system,” the VFW stated Wednesday in written testimony.'” It’s kind of like eroding the public school system by pushing charter schools. http://taskandpurpose.com/veterans-groups-criticize-proposed-va-budget-cuts-elderly-vets-benefits/

Funding for medical research will be reduced by 30 Million, and the new priorities will be Gulf War Vets and opioid and suicide prevention. This is all well and good, but let’s not forget our elderly Vets. When I found out that Medicare doesn’t pay for hearing aides, or audiology testing, I was dumbfounded. Bob told us that soon enough we will be able to purchase hearing aides over the counter. Ada said, “But will they be any good?”

A feeling of not being heard would land me into a state of deep despair. It’s such an important sense, not just for communicating by phone that a set of hearing aides have not yet arrived, but for our ability to connect with others.

When the call went out to send as many sea-worthy vessels as possible to evacuate the British soldiers from Dunkirk, 933 ships responded including battleships from the Royal Navy and a 14 ft open-topped fishing boat. They brought back 338,226 Allied soldiers over eight days while being bombarded by Nazi planes.

What if they never heard the call?

Cville Wedding Tastings 055

 

 

 

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