Obesity has become a real problem in this country; we all know that. I’ve heard a lot of theories about why that is. Some of them make sense, but I have my own theory that I haven’t heard voiced elsewhere. I believe people began getting fatter in direct proportion to the length of commercial breaks on television. Think about it! We all have to do something to fill the one-third of airtime that is now devoted to advertisements. Makes sense to me.
I didn’t say anything about the passing of Robin Williams yesterday, because it was news to me when I was updating this page. I just didn’t know much. Plus, I knew there’d be a lot said by others, and I was right. There was a third reason, maybe. I didn’t want to make any comment that might be construed as negative at such a time. That comment would have been: I have always thought Robin Williams was best as a dramatic actor. Of course, that isn’t a negative thing to say, but with so many emphasizing his original and frenetic approach to comedy, I just didn’t see going into it. Also, let us remember Betty Bacall, who left us yesterday.
334 responses to “Back after This…”
Taking a break from gardening to cool down, we are supposed to have rain tomorrow and I want to get as many herb pots planted as I can which requires adding dirt and fertilizer and weeding pots. Is that not insane, I have to weed pots?
Funny comment here, husband walked into kitchen late last night where I was enthralled in sorting and unpacking a new box of seeds from Johnny’s. I love those guys and buy tons of seeds when they have a clearance sale.
He said, “Every time I come in here and see you, you look like a drug dealer sorting out his inventory”. It’s all the little white packets I guess, I have never seen drugs in envelopes.
I think I look like Janis when she gets her gardening catalogs and all her seeds and she gets on the table with them just raring to put them in the ground! Laughs at herself here……….
Love, Jackie Monies
Charlotte, when my good friend died last year from leukemia he did same thing, donated to University of Virginia I believe as he had rare cancer and an adverse reaction to stem cell. They sent his ashes back to family, who brought about half here and we had a funeral service in my back yard for him with all our boater friends who took little packets home all over America to help him continue his journey through the waters of the world.
I took rest of his ashes with me to North Carolina (because I was going there) and mailed ashes out all over the world except to the north and south poles. My friend went to some interesting places and continues a journey for eternity.
Should Mike not survive his battle with cancer, I plan to do same thing except our daughters want some ashes to bury with them.
Love, Jackie Monies
My mom had us deposit her ashes in the river at Great Falls, MT. She’s taking a nice, slow cruise to New Orleans.
I put in my will cremate me, and throw my ashes into the wind on a fall day. That will do it for me.
A word on kidney donations, one can be a living donor. One of my step grandfathers very good friends was a perfect match and donated a kidney to him. Her wonderful gift has now given him an additional 12 years so far. He was too old for the list, and he still keeps going despite multiple health problems.
And a final word of obesity. Yes a sedentary life, and high fat diets do contribute greatly to the problem, but there are some of us who take medications that make it much, much more difficult to lose weight and keep it off. Out of 14 pills a day, 5 of mine make weight a real issue. Yes discuss it with your primary care physician, but sometimes it is just unavoidable.
I am all typed, but I am not gonna give a kidney to the first Tom, Dick, or Harriet that asks, so I have asked for privacy. They asked if the could phone me or write me if an extreme need arose but I said no. It would have to be a very good friend or relative.
Spot on, Ursen. That’s why my semi-snarky comment “poor food choices + insufficient exercise = weight gain and/or obesity” the other day was prefaced with “For most people,”.
I had never seriously thought about final arrangements (or even, you know, like most people, dying) prior to the loss of my sister late last year. She chose to be cremated and interred between where our father’s casket is buried and where her husband’s ashes will be interred one day. I now plan to be cremated as well and interred beside them. (I never intended to have an open casket anyway, as I personally consider that unseemly.)
As for a portion of my ashes, well, if it was good enough for Gordo Cooper and Gene Roddenberry…
http://www.celestis.com/
I am a donor, and with what is left, I want to be returned to the sea as a reef. I defended from the sea, let me return there and help the environment. -http://eternalreefs.com
Oops! That’a me about the reef. Got the tablet I won, and forgot I had no info yet. I should be packing. I blame you all – way more interesting.
Have been in kitchen with my mom, me cutting open lettuce seed packages and making a mix to fling into some of the pots. That is a tedious chore, emptying seed but I keep reminding myself that someone had some tweezers and an magnifying glass to put those 10 tiny seeds in a glassine tiny folded packet inside the sealed foil packages.
I will note that lettuce seeds are always more than 10 but the dang Wave petunias and Wave violas are rarely more than 15 tiny dots.
Ghost, if you have a deck you can grow your herbs in pots easily.
Large parts of the new raised bed gardens are out of ground and looking pretty good on germination, which is the hard part in August.
Mike says he plans to mix my ashes in with the kitty litter, as it looks the same and will be utilitarian to recycle.
Love, Jackie Monies
Ursen, I take close to two dozen different meds per day and I fight with them every appointment to try to lose some or explain why they want to add more. Of those, nine say do not drink any form of alcoholic beverage and another seven say not to go out in sunlight, while about a half dozen like steroids contribute to weight problems.
I fight now when they are trying to prescribe things to counter a side effect of another I am taking. Then I argue, “No more” and they may take away another doctor’s med but give me three of their choosing!
Bless the insurance agent who studied all my health issues and medication when I turned 65 and found me policies that cover all this stuff. Mike always says I will be at the top of the list when they decide who doesn’t get treated!
It takes courage to live.
Love, Jackie
Somewhat similarly to Jackie’s situation, I take seven prescription meds, three as protocol treatment for a medical condition, and the other four to treat various side effects of the first three. To paraphrase what Arlo once said, “Does this in anyway strike anyone as insane?”
Jackie, Mike’s remark about ashes and kitty litter was mean. Funny, but mean. 🙂
I don’t take anything but a multivitamin. Gummi-vitamins. Okay, laugh, they taste good. http://www.amazon.com/VitaFusion-MultiVites-Gummy-Vitamins-Adults/dp/B005KSIGKI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408140766&sr=8-1&keywords=gummy+vitamins
The man In My Life takes a BP med and Allopurinol for gout. I bought him some Gummi-vitamins for his birthday and try to make sure he takes them, so he won’t get macular degeneration. He forgets I was with him last time he went to the opthalmologist. I don’t wanna drive him around again, and he is almost 70.
The Boss Of My Life takes no medications except Laphroaig on the rocks.
Gummy Vitamins? OK… 🙂
Hey! I still love Flintstone Kids.
If you have good health, be grateful and thank your ancestors for good genes. My mom at 93 has incredible good health and our goal is to keep tricking her into taking her flu shot so she doesn’t get pneumonia again. I on the other hand got born with DNA that causes a high percentage of all the autoimmune diseases in the world. Like Lily I expected to die young. Surprise, here I am at 70 still plodding onward.
I got a cute/funny photo essay from an octogenarian friend but what really struck me was the signature. “Be kinder than necessary to all you meet for all are fighting some kind of battle.”
Love, Jackie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZOQd_6xd14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFAsAVj7bKc
You’re all a bunch of friggin’ amateurs! Currently, I take 30 pills per day, all but four by prescription, and another one every Saturday morning. (This is down, slightly; there was a time it was 33.) Add on to that checking my blood sugar twice a day and injecting insulin every night at bed time. Of course, the main reason I take so many pills is that I take some of them more than once a day, and in some cases, more than one at a time. And with all this, I’m proud to say that most people guess from my appearance that I’m in my mid-50s, rather than closing in on my 65th birthday as I actually am. I suppose that the fact that my hair hasn’t started to go grey except in my long, luxuriant sideburns, is probably a big factor in that.
Jackie, my father lived into his mid-80s, and my mother reached 90, so there’s still hope for me.
My Gummi-Vitamins laugh at your prescriptions. 😛
Jackie, my ancestors pretty much pegged out in their late 50s-early 60s. No cause for alarm, there. I have “ridiculously good health” according to a sometime-friend who is in her 30s and is flabby already, though she is a pretty woman. She complains of all these joint pains and back pains. I tell her to come running with me and quit eating all that junk she eats and she will feel much better. She envied a coat of mine and wanted to borrow it, but I told her no dice unless she ran three miles. But she would rather complain.
Hey, Jackie!
“Wounded Warrior Project Alumni and their families participated in sailing, cycling and a foam-roller exercise clinic during the second day of the Chicago Air & Water Show event.” 😀
Lily, when I moved here 20 years ago at age 50 I was still running and walking at least four miles per day. Sorry but lack of any cartilage in knees and five types of arthritis killed that! But being from Houston I was still trying to stay mobile. I was running through neighborhood for first time and six people stopped to help because they thought something was wrong! Then I fell in a giant pothole one day and tore ligament in ankle, lay there for a half hour with my giant Newfoundland until I was able to pull myself up with dog’s help and hobble home. I cannot get medical clearance for knee or hip surgery unless perhaps I do it under local anesthesia. I am brave but not that brave!
So I am probably heading for a wheel chair before I go because heart doctor says he’d rather see me in a chair than with two perfect knees and dead. This from a man who had both his knees done on same day and returned to surgery in four weeks.
My designer friend from NZ is designing a cruising boat with a front like a landing craft for wheelchair or walker. I told him I wasn’t the only one needing one and he will probably sell a lot.
But we commissioned it so I can still get aboard.
Love, Jackie
Yep, don’t know who taught this one but Mike’s sailing partner teaches at the Wooden Boat School in Maine and he is involved with the Wounded Warrior Project. We were supposed to go to Florida and help him build boats with a group and instead Mike had his lung removed.
There is a program going on to teach sailing, building and boating thru the WW Project.
Love, Jackie
Jackie, I had some trouble with my right knee till I found out I had patellar chondromalacia. I got fitted for a brace and started leg lifts and squats and now it is fine enough to do ten miles with just the occasional twinge.