Oct. 8, 2017

I have an idea for the next M. Night Shyamalan movie: A small, adorable, doe-eyed child leans toward the camera and whispers “I see stress.”

And then, from the child’s point of view, you can see the gibbering, capering stress demons that follows people around. Little miniaturized ones for people who generally have their act together but are freaked by the idea of an increase in the cost of health insurance or the fact that the roof has begun to leak. Huge, slimy ogre-like monsters for anyone who works in the service industry and has to smile politely at jerks day in and day out.

Skinny, saucer-eyed vampire monsters with mouth like straws for sucking the life away from anyone who is caring for a sick person who isn’t getting better – an aged parent, a mate sinking into depression, a child with an addiction.

Unlike a movie, no-one can see the stress in their lives. You know it’s there, but you can’t measure it; you can’t throttle it, you can’t truly understand just how invasive it is to your physical health and sanity…unless it suddenly vanishes.

My husband’s decline was slow and hard to track; then he died. That was horrible; it’s the price to a different kind of life that I cannot recommend paying. But the departure of a huge stressor was like releasing the pull on a high-tension line. I was made to hold up under that pressure; I could have continued. I WOULD have continued.

But the sudden absence is – well, it’s the reason I can spend so much time taking care of my health.

It’s odd that spending all this time and money at Body Dynamics would feel selfish. I’m still working through the fact – no, the emotion; I’ve got the logic firmly in hand – that I’m taking time away from something important; something I probably ought to be doing instead. And that’s self-defeating, because nothing relieves stress like exercise (as long as the exercise itself isn’t a stressor).

I believe that every single person is doing the absolute best he or she can every day. We take on what we can handle, and we have to prioritize. Sometimes staring slack-jawed at the TV is critical for down-time, and to add to the padding around nerve endings too often rubbed raw. We find our relief where we can…

…but from my position on the other side of a big stressor, I can say that (a) the time I spend caring for my body is important and hugely valuable and (b) I really like the relief of giving up something that made my brain wrinkle in a MOST unattractive way – that is, stress.

And now I’m making other changes to reduce stress in my life. They say stress is a killer; that may well be true. I think stress is a demon – always hungry, always on duty, always right behind you, draining your joy and your energy and your determination.

If you can find a way to reduce your stress (by exercise or by some other life change), I hope you can make that work for you. To state the very obvious, less stress is better.

 

Oct. 7, 2017

If you put the heels of your hands on your temples and your fingers in your hair, that’s generally accompanied by a sort of “Arghh!” soundtrack – right? Maybe you’re massaging in the fruitless attempt to banish a headache. Or maybe your great big skull is just too heavy on your neck and you’re looking for a moment’s relief.

I can’t remember which of the above motivations caused me to assume this pose, but there I was, doing a melodramatic, thrilling little pantomime of Oh What I Suffer Through For You, and I suddenly felt something…

My temples divot inward.

Not like I took a two-by-four to the head; more like a never-before-identified little puddle of fat had quietly evaporated, leaving the contours of my head a tad more in-and-outy.

(Yes, I am a professional writer. Kids, don’t try to pull off a phrase like “in-and-outy” without parental supervision, and certainly not without stretching first.)

My scale is stubbornly stuck at 236; it seems determined to sit there, mocking me for the fact that I was 234 a few days ago… but I’m also feeling like my belly muscles are made of that super-dense goo they put in heating pads; the kind you microwave. Even at rest, my stomach muscles are… I’m searching for a good word to make up for the dismal failure of “in-and-outy,” and the best I can come up with is “quick.”

Not “quick” as in “I had to be quick or someone else would have grabbed that last chocolate chip cookie.” No, I mean “quick” as in “quick with life” – vibrant. Vital. Very much alive. (This now-archaic definition makes sense of the phrase “the quick and the dead.”)

My stomach muscles feel quick. Dense and strong and lively. And I think all this focus on working on the core is burning fat but adding muscle, which of course weighs far more than fat, as any fat person will rush to tell you. My pants are baggy, my belts are on the last notch, and my temples dent inward. So giving vent to a deep and heartfelt “argh!” wasn’t as satisfying as it might have been, as I was suddenly bathed in a feeling of victory and startled delight.

And I’m good with that!

The image is from the time Jonathan tried a chiropractor, who x-rayed his Atlas bone; isn’t his skull gorgeous? And isn’t it curious that once you get past superficial things like skin color and weight, we are all held up by this stunning, elegant skeleton? Just below the skin, we are every one of us absolute marvels, and very, very beautiful. That’s a nice thing to remember.

Oct. 5, 2017

Remarkably, I’m about to finish up my first jar of wheat germ.

Pumpkin seeds? I go back to Whole Foods regularly to replenish my stock; THEY know who’s in charge.

In my youth, my sister Twig would get bored of carving pumpkins at Halloween. She would meticulously sift through the goo and tease out pumpkin seeds, which she would bake on trays in the oven while my younger sister and I were still arguing over whether we could carve our own pumpkins, or if Mum or Dad had to wield the knife. Then Twig would appear with hot, salty pumpkin seeds, which we ate because they were there. Pumpkin seeds, while never prominent, are in my realm of experience.

But wheat germ? No way. That’s Euell Gibbons time. That’s for seriously crunchy granola types in granny glasses and clogs. That’s for communes and hippies and odd stores with creaky wooden floors smelling of Patchouli.

So to discover that I have somehow consumed, one tablespoon at a time in my morning yogurt, an entire jar of wheat germ is… surprising.

Maybe I need to go pin an Indian print bedspread to my wall and dance around a bonfire in the moonlight. The bonfire part sounds like fun, actually!

I raise my nearly-empty jar of wheat germ to you in a toast. To your good health – and mine!

 

 

Oct. 4, 2017

As I groaned and yipped and complained yesterday, I was thinking about George Bailey… or rather, about Clarence, George’s not-very-competent angel in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

You know the story. Clarence is sent to a despairing Jimmy Stewart, to show him what life WOULD have been like if Jimmy hadn’t been there to “aw, shucks” his way through life.

I was wishing for a Clarence because Chad, the stretch class teacher at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA, had found a new place on some aging bodies where he could extract the groans and yips of discomfort that he, a strange new breed of vampire, secretly feeds on to stay looking so fit and young.

The new place was what he called “the TFL.” He’ll tell you what that stands for, if you care; I decided it stood for “Too… Long to be lying in this position on the foam roller.”

Lie on your belly. Cant one hip up far enough to shove one end of the foam roller under you, so the foam roller sticks out to your side like a child’s drawing of a spear to the belly. Get the edge right under your hip. Roll around a little; experience every possible nuance of agony you can wrench out. “Good stuff!” says Chad, rubbing his hands together and visibly getting younger as he bathes in the moans.

Why do I need to anger some never-before angry part of my body? What would happen if I never rolled a TFL to which I had never previously been introduced? Would anything be different??

And that’s when George Bailey’s angel Clarence ghosted in and sat cross-legged on the floor beside me.

In his mild little almost-British voice, he told me an “It’s a Wonderful Life” story about my TFLs. Clarence knows even less than I do about anatomy, but he still had a lesson to share.

“When you were younger, Prudence – when you were fresh and springy and still under factory warrantee – your TFLs (and shame on you for the “too… long” comment) were broad, stretchy rubber bands.

“But then you got older, and spent all your time sitting in front of a computer. Don’t glare at me, my girl; I know that’s the nature of modern life.

“Your TFLs slowly thickened, like a nice broadcloth shirt ironed with too much starch. And then the starch solidified. That’s fine right now, because your over-starched TFLs are as long as you need them. For now.”

Clarence watched me curiously as Chad had us switch to the other hip, and fresh groans filled the room.

“But when you’re 82,” Clarence the ghost angel went on, “you’re going to trip over your son’s pet bear, Jedediah. Yes, he gets the bear. Pay attention.

“You’re going to trip over Jedediah, stretched sleeping on the rug in front of the plasma fire, and you’re going to fall. And your TFLs, so starchy and stiff, aren’t going to give when you need them to give, and you’re going to break your hip.

“No, Jedediah won’t eat you as you lie there. But that is the beginning of the end for you. You’ll never be quite the same, and from then on, the old age that COULD have been vibrant and entertaining and filled with grandchildren and grandbears and the opportunity to become a concert pianist and the author of a noted series of very steamy bodice-ripper novels (shame on you) – that’s gone. Your future is pretty much sitting around waiting for the Grim Reaper.

“Now. Are you really willing to give all that up because you don’t want to feed that perfectly nice vampire man over there? Roll that TFL – roll it, I say!”

And so I rolled it.

You can’t prove a negative; you can’t say “I definitely avoided THIS because I went to stretch class today.” But you can do what you can to live long enough to see a grandbear. And I DO have the vague outline of a pretty steamy series of bodice rippers in mind. So I’m following Clarence. And Chad.

Oct. 3, 2017

In “The Right Stuff,” Tom Wolfe said that when yet another test pilot would inevitably auger into the earth in an extremely lethal program, all the other pilots would discuss it to reason out why it happened – and to find the logic that proved it wouldn’t happen to THEM, too.

“He lost his cool. He didn’t try A or B or C. He didn’t have the right stuff.”

I think I’m guilty of the same whistling past the graveyard. I see what happens to other people and I figure out what I can do to avoid the same. I’ll work on my health so THAT won’t happen to ME. (You can swap in any number of scenarios for “that;” it’s not ALL my husband ignoring his own health. We’re all getting older and body parts are wont to break down over time.)

And then people who did nothing wrong – people who just wanted to gather together to hear some country music – are slaughtered. I confess, I suffer from defeatism. Why fuss over pelvic alignment when a bullet can shatter a body no matter how fit or toned or flexible it is?

Then Tom Petty died (in a very similar fashion to my husband six months ago, including the turning off of life support and then waiting, grimly, for a tenacious spirit to get the message to let go), and it seems like some basic goodness has spiraled out of life like water through the bathtub drain.

I’m going to Body Dynamics today. I have Barbara at 11 and Chad’s stretch class at noon. I’m hoping the endogenous morphine (ie, “endorphins”) that exercise brings will help. I know it couldn’t hurt.

But I’m a little defeated today.

October 1, 2017

I have been to the mountaintop. Literally.

I drove from Virginia to New Hampshire and back again in the last five days. 1,200 miles, three charming and nutritionally-superior hostesses, and one small dent in the hood of my new car that my handsome friend Gerry Whitaker estimates will cost about $4,000 for someone else’s insurance to repair. (The other two cars in the three-car accident on a highway in northern Massachusetts had to be towed away, so believe me when I say that I consider myself extremely fortunate.)

Now I’m home again and all my muscles are singing faintly, sympathetic vibrations from 11 hours in the car, and I’m here to report about the ever-present question of ROAD FOOD.

Is it possible to eat pumpkin seeds on a road trip?

In a word, no. Not for me.

Yes, for Chip; I’m sure he packs his own.

But I equipped myself only with TWO water bottles and made my round trip with the one essential without which no solo-driver car trip can be safely contemplated:

Full-sugar, full-caffeine Coca-Cola.

Yes, I know it’s not even sugar – it’s corn syrup. And on the way up, when I stopped at Burger King (because there is NO use trying to pretend one drive-up window is any better nutritionally than any other), and they asked me “Small-medium-large?” I said “Medium” out of habit and they handed me a SWIMMING POOL filled with Coke.

“My lord,” I gasped. “How many ounces IS this?”

The counter girls gapes at me and then at each other. A supervisor bustled over. “Yes?”

“Oh – I’m just wondering: How many ounces is this soda?”

“Um… well… yeah, I think the medium is 32 ounces and the large is 48.”

A quick flip over to Google tells me that a gallon is 128 ounces, so I’d been given a quarter of a gallon of Coke. ONE QUARTER OF A GALLON. That’s a lot of Coke.

I sipped it nervously for the rest of my journey up and dumped most of it down my hostess’ drain when I arrived. After a few months of eating pumpkin seeds and drinking water, I thought a Coke would taste WONDERFUL; instead it tasted like… a whole swimming pool filled with false promises.

The drive home was my marathon – the whole trip in one day. I got Combos (which really cheese your hunger away, I’m told) and a packet of Bordeaux cookies. A TERRIBLE choice. But I had 585 miles to go, so you can judge someone else.

And a Coke, which I didn’t open for 200 miles.

For a very late lunch, I had a Caprese sandwich (mozzarella, tomato, pesto, and a whole field of arugula on a ciabatta role) from somewhere a long way down the New Jersey Turnpike; it was incredibly good. And I bought a Snickers bar, out of weakness.

For dinner, I got a 20-ounce cup of hot Earl Grey with lots of sugar and milk from the Delaware House. That’s where I threw out a few left-over Combos, the empty Bordeaux bag (nom, nom – delicious), and about half the Coke.

And when I finally pulled into my own parking place, 11 hours and 4 minutes after setting off, I ceremoniously threw away the untouched Snickers bar.

So we see some poor choices and some not-so-poor choices. We see no sleepiness on the journey. We see one dent in the hood and a great deal of gratitude for that being the only visible damage from my trip.

I’m getting pretty good at eating well at home. Now I need a few lessons from Chip, my Body Dynamics nutritional guru, on how to be smart when the road trip mentality clicks into gear.

Glad to be home!

Photo note: I got detoured all the way into Manhattan, which was both exciting and very annoying – and look at what my new car’s GPS looks like in the Big City. Is that not the coolest??