Life in the 50s

My Thanksgiving Break has been incredible in terms of rest and relaxation. My stress level has been medium to low most of the week, according to my Garmin . There were a few times it elevated but otherwise, it was lower than what I average. Once at work, my stress level rockets up and hovers around 100. The charting on my watch is actually a little concerning.  This morning, something scary happened. I have a dental appointment at 8:40 in the morning tomorrow. While thinking about the dental appointment and returning to work, even though I'll be working from home tomorrow, I got light-headed and almost passed out on my feet.  I was "with it" enough to hurry over to the couch before collapsing for a couple of seconds and "coming to."  I have felt nerves and anxiety before over work but I can't remember the last time I felt light-headed/nearly passing out before.  Minutes before my first class at Aurora High School , I went to the Nurse's clinic and thre...

I am on Thanksgiving Break . My break started Wednesday at 4:30. Yep, outside of my office, I don't know many people who were working on Wednesday. But oh well....such is life.  My Garmin watch tells a story about my daily life and the data it collects are amazing. Over break so far, my body battery recharged once all the way to 100%. My stress levels have been consistently low to medium overall. It feels amazing. I have been going on 2-3 1.15 mile walks a day now for the past two weeks.  I need to do better NOT eating past 8 pm. I am sabotaging any process I can make by eating in the evening.  I made a lot of food for Thanksgiving. It feels good to not have to worry about making food. 

For as long as I can remember, I have been reading a newspaper. Growing up, Mom and Dad had THREE subscriptions:   The Massillon Independent , The Canton Repository , and the Akron Beacon Journal .  Over the years, I have been a subscriber to all three of those. Now, I just get the Akron Beacon Journal. I have also been a subscriber of The (Toledo) Blade and the Times-Reporter (out of the Dover-New Philadelphia area) and The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer .  As my generation gets older, the readership of newspapers continues to plummet. I get most of my news online on social media apps along with whatever the Beacon Journal produces on its app.  I find it important to stay informed.  However, I believe that most people now just don't give a shit about local events and politics and things going on. More traction can be gained by political candidates' social media accounts.  My parents reading habits were fun to follow. Mom and Dad followed the news of the Massil...

When I was young, every so often Mom would make creamed chipped beef one toast. She would make the cream and cut up the chipped beef from packets of it from the grocery deli. I'm too impatient for all of that production. The Stouffer's version of this from the freezer section at the store is close enough. I made it for lunch today and it was delicious. It tasted like Mom's version.  Other dinners and meals my Mom made that were good.... browned rice , which was ground beef with rice and some kind of juice in it. Simple and good.  Green Bean Delight ! Ground beef, green beans and mushroom soup with torn up toast on top. Excellent! I am going to make this soon.  I still make pork and sauerkraut for myself even though Kim says sauerkraut smells so bad. I love it. The mix of the tender and juicy pork with sauerkraut and the juices from those two things over mashed potatoes .....all of that is so good.  Pork chops and mashed potatoes is also a good dinner.  Thi...

As I've gotten older, holidays don't mean anything close to what they were when I was a kid living with Mom and Dad.  Mom was an awesome cook. Cooking is a chore but Mom seemed to genuinely enjoy making meals. I miss the family dinners. Thanksgiving was so good. We had food to last throughout the weekend.  The grocery shopping alone was an event. Mom would special order a turkey at Fishers Foods , a local grocery chain. Ordering a turkey felt like we were getting a special bird just for us. At least that's what I felt. With Mom and Dad gone and me so engrossed in work....even though I've been with Kim since 2018, Thanksgiving has meant more for sleep and just being off the clock. This, sleep and being off the clock, saddens me.  Kim and I will be ordering Bob Evans Thanksgiving dinners , mostly because Claire will be with her Dad. So it'll be just Kim and me...until Friday or Saturday morning.  This coming Thanksgiving, I'm hoping we can put Christmas decoratio...

I can remember as a high school senior in 1989 seeing $1.10 a gallon gas thinking, "it will never be this low again." And I was right. I had no idea how the cost of things that we use every day would dramatically go up.  Ever since I was much younger and Dad brought pop ( Pepsi ) home, I have mentally kept track of the cost of pop. .89 for a 2-liter was a good price. Then it went to $1. Then $1.50. Then $2! Now, 2-liters of pop are between $3 and $3.69!!!! Come on! Fast food combo meals used to be $2.99. That's long gone. Most are between $8 and $10. Haircuts used to be $10. Now $20.  I don't know when body wash became a thing. But when I started buying it, $3 was a regular price for a standard size (24 ounces) bottle. 24 ounces now runs $7.  My salary has gone up since I was a lot younger obviously but it hasn't kept up with the cost of things. 

In a previous post, I mentioned how our deceased loved ones communicate with us and one of the ways is through songs. Today, I heard " Flashdance, What a Feeling " by Irene Cara on the way home. That was one of Mom's favorite songs. I heard it on 80s on 8 on XM . A few minutes later, " Down Under " by Men At Work came on. That's one of my favorites. :)

My Dad passed away at 80 years old in 2009 from cardiac arrest , brought on by diabetes . His Dad died from diabetes (at 53) well before I was born. As my Dad approached his fifties, I remember he kept saying how he was going to die soon because his Dad died young and Mom always told him to shut up. LOL Through my work benefits, I signed up for a DPP ( Diabetes Prevention Program ) and got a free bathroom scale. It goes with an app called Lark . It's like Noom but Lark is free. I downloaded the app and answered a few questions to get started. The app is helping me with stress levels, my eating, and weight. It says that cutting 5% of my body weight will decrease my chances of getting diabetes by 50%! 5% of my weight off would put me in the mid 170s! Cutting this much is going to require a lot of discipline! Lark also recommends cutting out sugary drinks. Shit! That means drop the Mountain Dew . That will be hard.  Also connected to diabetes, a really close friend of mine has been ...

If you are in the same demographic as me, you probably know what I am about to say.  As we age, our bladder shrinks! LOL! Long gone are the days where I can sleep through the night without having to get up to go to the bathroom.  Long gone are the days where I can go long stretches of work without needing to step out to go to the bathroom.  I'm still amazed I can run half-marathons and run 2 plus hours without peeing.  I don't remember the time when this bladder thing started. It's not like when I go, it's a weak stream. When I go, I really have to go.  Maybe one of the more strange feelings I have about peeing is that for some reason, if Kim and I go out to eat or go to the movies, I have to pee once we get to the restaurant or theater because you know......I must eat and see the movie on an empty bladder. 

As I've gotten older, I really appreciate good health. In my 40s, I ran several half and full marathons a year. That helped get me through grad school. It was great stress relief.  Six months after my Mom passed, I met the woman who I would eventually marry, Kim. We ran and worked out together. But when her Mom passed, we adopted her Mom's 3 horses. Eventually, Kim and I sold the house we were living in and bought a house with a barn. This marked the end of my marathon training and running. But I could still do half marathons . I still run two a year.  In the new house, we bought, we installed a workout area with all free weights and a Joe Weider Crossbow (think of a the competitor to Bowflex ). We also have a battle rope . I lift 4-5 times a week. I lift about 10 minutes each day. Not a lot. I superset 3-4 exercises. I usually do arms, shoulders, and chest as those areas get a lot of work when I'm in the barn.  I try to hit my step goal of 15,000 steps every day. I ...

When you're young, you want a job with a good salary and benefits....and retirement. As you age, more weight gets placed on the importance on the benefits and retirement parts. At my last job at Hiram College , the benefits were not good. For a regular dental cleaning, insurance picked up a small portion of it. I was afraid of going to the dentist and having the doc finding something wrong because I would have to pay more out of pocket.  At my current job, I have much better insurance. I had a routine cleaning a week ago. In two days, the claim was processed and I was emailed that I owed nothing! I've never been so happy after a dental appointment.  Someone I know was laid off two days ago. She's almost 60 and had some costly medical issues this year. Her workplace laid off several workers. She was one of the cuts. She believes that she was targeted due to her rising healthcare costs /medical claims and that she is approaching 60.  I feel badly for her. Some things you ju...

During my job, which I mostly sit at my desk, I have my home laptop open to iheart radio and listen to a station called " Sunny Radio ." It's pretty much the same 20 easy listening songs over and over. Air Supply , Phil Collins , Whitney Houston , etc. with some Neil Diamond , Elton John , Billy Joel and other really light pop music mixed in.  Today, Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler came on. This was one of my Mom's favorite songs, along with Piano Man by Billy Joel and What a Feeling - The Flashdance theme by Irene Cara .  Wind Beneath My Wings really hit home when my Mom passed away.  The first line goes:  It must have been cold there in my shadow..."  And then at the end when Bette Midler sings.... Fly, fly, so high against the sky So high I almost touch the sky Thank you, thank you Thank God for you, the wind beneath my wings I feel like that's Mom's message to me. The song brings tears to my eyes every time.  AI/Google says the dead commun...

Since I passed 50 years old awhile ago, I get emails and junk mail in the regular mail for all kinds of things for us "older people." AARP mailers . Golden Buckeye card . Health insurance. You name it.  This came in the mail today. It hits home since my Mom had a stroke , which led to her passing. My Mom didn't smoke or drink. She was active. What I mean by active is that she did yard work around the house, she loved planting flowers and trimming the hedges/bushes/little plants. She paid someone to cut the grass.  Mom was on the school board and was at events at least 5 days out of the week most weeks. And yet, still got breast cancer and had a stroke (likely brought on by high blood pressure ).  Anyway, I workout a lot. I stay active. I don't drink or smoke. Every time I get something like this, I think about how many years of quality life I have left. When I told friends of mine about my parents, their ages and when they passed, they had an interesting thought. The...

 In my first blog post, I mentioned:  Both of my parents passed away. Dad in 2009. Mom in 2017. I think about them, especially Mom, everyday. Both were around 80.....so the 55 number is not that far off.  Growing up, I thought my parents could do and survive anything. When I was about 12, my Mom tried to light the pilot light in furnace and it exploded in her face. Her face was burned, eyebrows singed, etc. Dad and I rushed Mom to the hospital where they treated her. She was in so much pain. Somehow, her eyesight was not affected! Over a couple of months, she rebounded great and looked like nothing happened.  My Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after I was let go from WJER in August of 2000. I took care of her as she did multiple rounds of chemo , had a lumpectomy , and ended it with radiation . She survived. She fought hard. She felt so guilty for not being able to move off the couch some days and I assured her that it was ok. I cooked and did the laun...