Spring at Last

After a long, miserable, cold winter it’s heavenly to feel the sun warming up everything in its path and green beginning to appear on lawns. At long last we can make the best of the good weather by exercising outdoors. When it’s not raining, of course. But why complain? All that rain will mean flowers very shortly in areas where they have not yet come to life.

            It’s no accident that spring is the time dedicated to improving health through exercise. May is National Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month when people, especially older adults, are encouraged to exercise to build up bone and muscle strength. Lifting weights targets bones in the arms, wrists and upper back, while aerobic exercises like walking and dancing benefit the legs, hips and lower back. But bones also need vitamin D which is triggered by sunlight and promotes the absorption of calcium. We should all spend ten minutes or so every few days exposing arms, legs or back to sunshine before splashing on the UV-protecting sunblock.

            May is also a month dedicated to older adults, a good time to look at other benefits of regular exercise. We all know that being active not only reduces the risks of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, it also protects memory and thinking skills while reducing brain fog experienced by so many of us as we age.

A study at the University of British Columbia concluded that regular moderate intensity exercise increases the volume of some brain regions. The study showed that aerobic exercise boosts the size of the hippocampus, an area of the brain for verbal memory and learning. Another benefit of exercise is that it reduces stress and anxiety which often contribute of cognitive impairment. Something to keep in mind when we consider that a new case of dementia is detected every four seconds globally.

            Spring is here at last, so there’s no time to waste. Let’s step outside and enjoy the new season. Happy Spring.

 

Our Children’s Lives

We all want our children to be happy, but at times the only way this is going to happen, or so we believe, is if we butt in. We seek perfection in our children on our own terms, expecting our children to be extensions of ourselves, so we panic if they don’t take the road we feel they should take. We’re older and wiser and we are certain that we know better than our children.

          We may have raised our children, but they are different from us and they follow their own instincts, their own road, just as we did. The trick for us older souls is to accept that fact. While the perfect mother-in-law may be the one who keeps her opinions to herself, in my view this also applies to moms and dads, although they may not always succeed.                                            

The urge to tell our children where they’re wrong can be the strongest when a child introduces his/her new mate/fiancé/lover. We may have an immediate negative feeling toward that person and may conclude that our child is headed for trouble if the relationship continues.

While we may very well be right, we must not forget that telling an adult child how we really feel could prevent him/her from keeping their eyes open for signs of trouble. Even if we think we do, we do not know the new person as well as our child does. At the end of the day, our children have to make their own mistakes, just as we did. That’s how everyone learns and grows.

That doesn’t mean that we cannot express some concerns when we feel a child’s choice of mate will not survive the test of time. The secret is to know how to broach the subject. Questions can make the adult child reflect. For example: is Joe/Mary always this talkative? this shy? this conservative? this liberal? are certainly non-threatening questions that can open a dialogue. But even if the child’s choice is terribly wrong, the last word is the child’s. For better or for worse.

As parents all we can do is have as close a relationship with our adult children as possible, guide gently, offer advice when asked, and, just as we did when they were younger, be there to tell them everything will be fine. In time.

 

 

Styles Today

When women model the latest fashions, more often than not these days the models seem to have a fear of food.  I suppose this is a subliminal message which states that the smaller the dress size a woman wears, the better and happier she’ll be. Not so, say the latest surveys. It would seem that women who wear an average size 12 are happier than those who wear size 6 or smaller. 

And I wonder if the idea of small sizes has any impact on today’s younger people. All they want is to be comfortable in whatever they choose to wear. Of course, they should realize the “comfortable” has it limits. Case in point, at the funeral of a family friend, I was somewhat shocked to see a youngish couple arrive for the church service wearing jeans and t-shirts. While fully realizing that the days when people never left the house without the woman wearing a dress and white gloves and the man a suit and tie are long gone, a certain amount of care is needed when dressing for special occasions. And a funeral is certainly a special occasion.

For us, the generation with more life experience, the constant of life is change.  But not all change is perfect. While dressing casually makes a lot more sense than the “stiff” fashion styles of the past in many situations, I don’t know that, for example, wearing jeans full of holes or wearing shorts that hang down past the knees are any better.

It seems to me that young people are not properly schooled on how to show respect through what they wear. When I was young, some time ago for sure, men removed their hats when they went inside a home, a restaurant, etc. I was recently eating out with friends when I saw a young man at the next table wearing a baseball cap in today’s reverse style. I wanted to go over and tell him that it was not a very good look inside a busy restaurant, but I controlled myself. Before we left I asked myself how that young man would fare when he went for a job interview? Would he dress properly for that?

Wrong styles can still have an impact on many aspects of life. Something we older folks should be willing to discuss openly with those that are following.

 

Time For a Bit of Fun

So I said to a friend, I have nothing to say. She replied, You should blog about that!

People don’t stop laughing because they grow old, they grow old because they stop laughing. And besides, laughter is contagious. Share a joke with your spouse, your neighbor or your friend and the day is bound to be brighter.

Dyslexic man walks into a bra.

My grandchildren think I’m very funny. One of the reasons I can make them laugh is that I’m quite relaxed when I’m around them. They fill my life with love and it colors my world mirthful. Although I do not feel like it at all times, I do make an effort to look at the funny side of life.

            I bought a packet of peanuts, and on the packet it says ''may contain nuts.'' I’d be annoyed if an apple fell out!''  

Nobody wants to be around people who are always complaining about something or the other, no matter their age – or perhaps especially when they’re on the downhill side of 50. The longer we live, the more physical problems we face, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a bit of sunshine even in a long cloudy cycle.

A man walks into a bar with a roll of tarmac under his arm and says: Pint please, and one for the road.

The cliché Laughter is the Best Medicine may be overused, but that does not make it less true. Medical research shows that laughter has an immediate positive effect on the main organs of the human body. In my experience those who have mastered the art of laughing at life and its foibles have an easier time than people who focus all their energy on the less-than-perfect moments we all experience. One of the reasons is certainly that laughter relaxes the whole being.

So the man said, My mother-in-law fell in the wishing well. Boy, was I surprised that it actually worked.

I have always found it interesting that we are all inclined to compare ourselves to others, in one way or another. The neighbor is prettier, richer, happier, and so on, we think. What we tend to forget is that we are all different, and that appearances can be quite deceiving. The prettier neighbor might be estranged from her children. The richer neighbor could very well a secret drunk.

Slept like a log last night. Woke up in the fireplace.

It seems to me that to be happy, we have to dwell on the good things in our lives at this moment in time. And laugh at the rest. An arthritic knee should not prevent us from enjoying life. And we can all use humor to diffuse the irritations of life.

Two doctors are conferring. One of them said, She hasn’t been able to get pregnant, but with both of us on her case, that should change.

Notes on medical charts:

The patient refused an autopsy.

           On the second day, the knee was better, and on the third day disappeared completely. 

The patient has been depressed ever since she began seeing me in 1990.

The patient has no past history of suicides.     

 

 

 

April Fool

I don’t know about you, but I think spring is playing a trick on us this year. Looking outside my window as I write this, snow is falling – again – which has me convinced that the season has decided that, although it’s more than a week old, it should play an April fool joke on everyone. It’s not very funny as far as I am concerned. I mean I had put my winter boots away relying on my short rubber ones to get me through the spring thaw.

Looking up the street yesterday at the piles of snow accumulated into a huge hill over the last few months, I was wondering how long it would take for all of it to melt. My neighbor reassured me that I shouldn’t worry because, she said, it would be all gone for the July celebrations in the park. Nice to know!!

We all complain about the weather although we can’t do a darn thing about it. When seasonal changes bring unexpected weather, I find it’s a good time to tackle closets and inventory the clothes we’ll need for the new season. It is therapeutic to examine our clothes and get rid of what we no longer wear even when we’re sure that style will come back soon or that sweater will fit once again before long. What delusions we cling to! Of course, in my case, I usually hang on to clothes that I’ve especially enjoyed wearing or that remind me of a special event, so getting rid of them is not always easy.

But I reward myself by buying something new for the season ahead, something that says today. Mind you, a piece of clothing that may say today today could very well say yesterday tomorrow, so I try to shop for classic lines rather than trendy looks that may not last for more than a season. That way I hope to have fewer pieces of clothing to get rid of in next seasonal changes.

Spring weather may take its time getting here, but it doesn’t mean we can’t dream of the hot weather just around the corner and have our clothes all ready.

Happy Spring!