Dieting not always key to weight loss

Dieting not always key to weight loss

I Want Summer

I want summer! I want it to come. I am tired of rain and fog, rain and clouds, rain and … you get the idea. I want it to be summer, and I want it now.

I want the flowers; the roses and honeysuckle that sweeten the air. I want to see fields glowing with greens, from the first fuzzy yellow haze of beans to the grass green of corn. I want to watch the colors of the treetops deepen; from spring green to their deep summer shades.

I want it to be warm. No, I want it to be HOT. I want to sweat, I want the air to sweat, and bring closer all the sweet perfumes of growth.

I want the dry scent of dust to clog my nose and tickle my throat. I want to smell the ripening of tomatoes and blackberries. I want to open the window and know that some neighbor has freshly mown his lawn.

I want days that linger, even after the sun has gone. I want light to remain in the sky, coloring the white puffy clouds above me. I want long gorgeous sunsets that last for hours, painting the brilliant blue skies with petal pinks and vivid oranges. I want to listen to the children playing up and down the street, to hear the roar of the crowd at the Little League games behind the school. I want to go to sleep to the purr of a weed-eater, and waken to the roar of a lawn mower. I want to hear the gentle spitter-spat of water sprinklers and the splashings from swimming pools. I even want to hear the nerve-grating chorus of cicadas as I try to sleep.

Come, summer, with your warmth and your beauty. Chase away these rainclouds that cause the days to drag and the nights to blur. Bring to me your clear sharp colors, your clean, crisp scents, and your soul-awakening sounds. Bring me your warmth, your light, your joy.

Bethel - Asian Longhorned Beetles

Bethel - Asian Longhorned Beetles

Making it work

Sometimes it seems that the easier we make it to do things, the more complicated the resulting problems. I'm talking about machinery, like automobiles. Remember when any person with a hammer, a screwdriver, and a piece of baling wire could solve your problem? You didn't get to reach 70 miles in an eye-blink, and you didn't have refrigerated air freezing your eyeballs in that same time span, but you could get to where you needed to go, and repair was cheap, easy, and available. (If you couldn't do it yourself.)

My particular mechanical Nemesis is a riding lawn mower. We have a mower that won't start, turn over, cough -- anything. It's like trying to start a car in 'Drive'. Nothing happens.
We've done and checked the obvious stuff. The safety switches, at least those we know of. The battery has been replaced, and we paid to have the starter system replaced. It worked for us one time after that.

We have a push mower, but my husband can't push. He can barely walk from the front room to the bathroom, carrying nothing more than his own skin and bones. I can push the mower, but I'll be darned if I can start the darned thing. Pulling and pushing at the same time requires a degree of coordination that is not in my make-up.

Then there are environmental issues, gas emissions and all that. If you can smell it, you're breathing it. Not a good option for anyone, but there's something seriously bad about a breathing-disabled person spending time on this undertaking.

I'd love to get an old fashioned mower, with blades that go round and round on a reel. The newer ones are not as heavy as they used to be, but I don't even mind that. I find  pushing a motor around to be a pretty heavy chore. And there's that breathing thing to contend with while walking behind.

This is a big debate in my household. My husband is in eager-beaver favor of all the mechanical devices and luxuries (that don't work, or break down repeatedly.) I prefer simpler things. If one must walk behind a lawn mower, one may as well be directing it. It's nice to be able to reverse direction when needed by simply backing up, too.

Yeah, I really want one of those push mowers. They are called reel mowers, and come in a variety of sizes and abilities, just like the polluting motor varieties that are easier only until the first break down. They are surprisingly affordable (at least for people who actually have money) -- smaller sizes typically run from 70 to 90 dollars (US).

If you're in the market for a mower, and especially if you're looking at walk-behinds, do some research. Maybe a reel mower would work for you, and you will never have to buy gas for it. Maintenance is usually minimal and simple. You will get a little extra exercise, and with the reel mower, you won't be breathing in poison straight to your muscles.

When it comes to lawn care, let's all get reel.

Good Deed for the Next Generation.

I've done another good deed for the next generation. I introduced my daughter's not-yet-four -year-old to the public library. A few weeks ago, circumstances made it necessary for her to accompany me to a writers group meeting

Hailey had one question. "Are there toys?"

The meeting was in a room just off the children's section, so it was easy for me to keep an ear and an eye on her.

At first she just sat in a chair with her hands folded in her lap. I came out and showed her the toys, and told her she could play. She said "Okay, Mammaw," and folded her hands and sat in her little chair.

Fortunately there was another little girl at the library with her daddy. The other little girl brought  Hailey puzzles and puppets, and got paper from the librarian  so Hailey could write with the crayons. The daddy got her to play in the castle. (I really had to keep an eye when he got involved, although I knew he was probably harmless. These days, probably just isn't good enough. Sad fact.)

They left, and Hailey worked kid sized wooden puzzles, one after the other after the other. She had them stacked neatly on the table, and the stack was nearly as high as her head.

We left early -- watching the kid and attending the meeting was a little more difficult and disruptive than I had expected.

Today, my daughter came by, and she asked me what happened when I took Hailey to writers group with me. It seems that now, every time they go to town, Hailey hollers out, "There's the berry, Mom. Are we going to the berry? I want to go to the berry."

So, another generation introduced to the magic of the public library.

Now, we just have to keep the libraries open for them.

Jeanieology

I've found a new way to spend my time and exercise my brain, while I hope for work and stave off health crises. Thanks to two of my sisters, I've been introduced to the addictive world of genealogy.


My sister Rita has long been the family switchboard. She knows who to call, how to inform, and when and where and why of multiple generations. It's one of the things she does.

My sister Jean is the Family Archivist. This is a job she sort of inherited, sort of fell into, and definitely made her own. If she can't tell you about the dead people in the family, probably no one knows. But Jean will try to find out. She's the one for the job. She knows who to ask for help and how to get others interested.

Between the two of them, I've been seduced into the pastime. They became my drug pushers, and Jean has become my supplier, and I need a regular fix.


Everyone grows up with family stories, hearing about odd aunts and whispered about cousins and disappearing uncles. Have you never wanted to solve those mysteries? Everyone has some vague nobility in their lineage, whether it be an Indian Princess, a German Baron, a gypsy queen. Wouldn't you like to find out the truth about that?
 The medical climate today almost insists that if you don't know about these people, you need to find out. Too much disease is being discovered as genetically linked. Too many character traits are being uncovered as symptoms of diseases, syndromes, etc. There is a social imperative to know where and who you came from.

Besides that, it's just plain fun.

Natural Writing

I enjoy writing my blogs.

Of course, I like writing. It's as natural to me as breathing, and as necessary.

That's not a bad comparison. Over time, we sometimes have to train our breathing back to its easy, natural state. We begin to breathe more shallowly as soon as we begin to talk. We star gulping air into our stomachs instead of our lungs as soon as we begin to eat -- and that starts pretty soon. We hold our breath to get into clothes, we remodel our insides, squashing our lungs, cramping our diaphragm, to conform in our appearance.

Soon, we are no longer breathing naturally, although it is adequately for our survival. We go to doctors, we take exercise classes, we learn yoga. We do these things to get back to the natural and easy way of breathing.

Learning to breathe correctly is not easy, after years of doing it wrong and years of lazy breathing. It feels unnatural, to push out our stomachs as we breathe in. It's painful to fully expand the ribcage. It takes training, work, and lots of practice.
Aching muscles and sore abs and later on, we are improved by the improved oxygenation in our blood. We look better, we feel better, we are better.

It's not enough to breathe. We need to breathe correctly to be at our best.

This helps explain why a natural talent for writing isn't always enough. We may have the words flood and flow through our brains, tremble off our fingertips, but it just isn't enough. The words have to come out in proper order, in proper form, to be what they should be.

We need to write correctly to be at our best.

There are people who think that writing cannot be taught, that there is no need for training or practice.
There are people who think that the only good writing is easy writing.

Writing, they think, should be as natural as breathing.

Food

A discussion last night on Facebook about food got me thinking about -- you guessed it, food. The discussion started with an innocent (I assume) question: Do you have any family food stories?
The answers came slowly at first, and were about a word here a misunderstanding there, and then one person's memory sparked something that happened in another family, and the conversation was up and running.

I think everyone has food memories. That's why there is such a thing as comfort food. Every family has food memories, and possibly even food fights. Somebody changed a recipe. To an aunt this change is a delightful discovery; to a sibling it's an act of sacrilege; to an in-law it's a who-cares issue.

Food mobilizes us in a way other things don't. The only other thing as stirring (hee hee) is, in fact, family. Oh, we can get upset over our love life -- or someone else's. We can worry about a roof overhead and room mate issues, even money matters can make us crazy. But not even money has the emotional impact of food and family.

Our first urge is to find food. After the ordeal of being born, we start sucking. We want fed.
And so we go through life. We want our bodies fed, we want our minds fed, we want our sould fed, we want our spirit fed.

While we are feeding our minds we ate milk and cookies, or thought about them. Most churches have communion service on a regular basis. While this is admittedly no great feast for the body, it shows the importance of food. Primitive rituals like breaking bread or sharing salt are important.

As important now, in the land of too much and the time of too many, as when they meant friend or foe.

Nowadays our emphasis is on not eating too much, or too much of the wrong things. It's important to keep in mind, though, that eating is an imperative we are born with. We can't change that.

Why not "Go Gently"?

More and more people are mindlessly chanting"Do not go gently" as if there is some special virtue in fighting on endlessly and senselessly, and futilely, as the end is, at some time, inevitable. It seems as if the only thing that matters is to fight, never mind quality of life or even if there's any reason to fight on.

Now, I am not advocating a 'not fight' attitude, either, although there are some who will read only that message in what I say. In fighting the good fight, who decides what is good? And does the 'good fight' refer to weapons, or attitude, or intelligence, or exactly what? What makes the fight good?

I'm not saying that anyone should just quit. No one should go without trying. But I am in no one's head or heart or soul -- I don't know what their struggles have been. I don't know that they didn't fight. There are reasons to lay down the weapons.

Is no one allowed to become fatigued? If someone chooses to go to sleep, are they chickening out by going gently? If one has struggled all life long, is it a requirement to continue fighting, even though the only fight is to keep fighting?

What of terminal illnesses? What if it's all been done, but the disease remains?

No one knows what anyone else's fight has been. They may think they do, they may have seen this or that part of the fight, but they don't know. They can't know. There's truth in the saying that we all die alone.

The "Do not go gently" has become so ingrained in our culture, that hospice workers and other death attendants have to advise people to tell their loved ones "It's okay. You can go." Without this permission from their loved ones, people will stay beyond their need. They will suffer. They will endure. They will fight on, although the time of succeeding has passed.

When I go, I hope that I do indeed go gently. I would not want my family, my children to have to watch my death throes, maybe for years and years. Maybe even my body living on long after my Presence has gone from it.

When that happens, this will be my prayer.

Now I lay me Down to Sleep.
A Peaceful Passing let me keep.
I will 'go gently into that good night'
I have finished with the fight.

Should RDA be RYA?

The experts are quick to blame our expanding waistlines and backsides on a lot of things, including sedentary lifetimes and overprocessed foods.

It never seems to occur to them that it may be their advice that's stuffing us.

Some commercials once came close to addressing this problem, showing people pulling and tugging overloaded groceries carts of broccoli commenting about how much of this you have to get to get the RDA (Recommended Daily Allotment) of a specific nutrient.

The truth is, no one can get ALL the RDA nutrients, even if they eat all day every day and eat only 'good' food.

The RDA is something created by statisticians. In some laboratory somewhere, after months and years of study, it was discovered that if people eat nutritionum monthly, they won't fall ill fron nutritionum deficiency. However, a medium sized person has to ingest a medium sized portion. One applies math and realizes that this amounts to 30portion sizes per pound (pspp). If you extend the math out, that means that in a month, the person needs 1 pspp per day. Then the body won't have to store anything, if you just eat your 1 pspp per day.

They are forgetting that the human body was made to store nutrients. That's what's making us all fat. Our bodies just keep on doing their job no matter how hard we make them work to do so.

Let's forget RDA. If we can't do it right away, maybe we can try for RWA -- a weekly dose of what we don't need every day.

Humans are adapted -- or were -- to live in a seasonal world. Fruits in the summer, veggies whenever they can be found, meat when it is available. Many a person living some form of vegetarianism will tell you -- you don't need all that 'stuff'\.' You don't need vitamins if you eat right.

If you do eat by the charts, even cutting out fats and processed foods, you will still get fat and your body will still take early retirement because of overwork.

Don't eat well -- eat REAL.
And heal.