DID YOU HEAR THAT?

That loud noise you just heard was a new leaf turning over. It's my leaf. So far, so good. I'm still in the process of formulating my final healthy life plan, so I have more reading to do. I have a stack of books here next to me on my computer desk. There are others I will consult, but I'm starting with these. I'll give you a list: "Strong Women Stay Young," "The Sugar Solution," "Strong Women, Strong Hearts," "Ageless Face, Ageless Mind," "Age Erasers for Women," "You: Staying Young," "The South Beach Diet," "Power Aging," and "Strength Training for Women." It may seem that I'm obsessed with staying young, but that's not true. I wouldn't want to be 20 years old again for anything in the world. Now, I would like to be 32 again, because I consider that my prime year. I have to admit that in 1976, I was a real cutie....sigh. But, seriously, my concern is to stay strong, healthy and look good for whatever my age is as the years pass. I don't consider it vain to strive to look as good as possible. I don't think women should just give up as they age. A 60-year old woman should never try to look or dress like she's still 25. It just doesn't work, but she should try to be the best-looking 60 year old she can be. So, yes, looking good for the rest of my life is important, because looking good generally means that a woman feels good too. If she takes care of her outward appearance, chances are she takes care of her health too. Like everybody else, if I look good, I'm more confident and out-going, and I'll get out of the house and do something. That's healthy too.

I'm in good health. No real problems. I had blood work done in August, and the results concerned me. My cholesterol was high. My blood sugar was high. My potassium was low. Blood pressure, for which I've taken medicine for years, was border-line high. I weigh too much.
The doctor told me to start the South Beach Diet because it would help me lose weight and eliminate the fat on my tummy, and regulate my blood sugar. He gave me a prescription for Tricor and Potassium. The Tricor is to lower my triglycerides, which would, in turn, lower my cholesterol. I went back for more blood work a few weeks ago and my cholesterol and triglycerides are lot lower! I'm very pleased about that. They didn't test for the potassium and blood sugar. I don't know if those counts have improved or not. I suspect that my potassium count is fine because I have faithfully mixed a tablespoon of liquid potassium into a glass of orange juice every day since August. When I go back to the doctor in 6 months, I hope to have lost a lot of weight and, hopefully, will have cut out sugar, salt and a lot of processed foods from my diet.

I feel good except for the fact that the extra weight I'm wagging around makes me tire sooner. I'm not telling you how much I weigh right now. For one thing, I've avoided the scales for months, so I don't really know myself. I wasn't ready to face the truth this morning, so I didn't get on the scales. All you need to know is that I weigh more than Don, but less than your average humpback whale. I'm not telling you how much more I weigh than Don does, or how much less than a whale I weigh, but that will give you a range. As my magical transformation continues, and I am closer to a Homo Sapien's weight, I'll tell you how much I weigh. I will even post photos.

I'm getting breathless more often than I like. Carrying things upstairs is a killer sometimes. I don't like that. I'm taking more puffs of Don's Albuterol than I care to take, but breathing is important to me, so I use it when I need it. So many things could be the cause of this breathlessness.....excess weight and the companion problem of probably needing breast reduction surgery. Am I being smothered by my own boobs? That is a real possibility. Then there is the fact that there are now 13 cats residing in this household. I've been around cats....mostly multiple cats....all my life, but this is the first time I've owned 13 of them. There's nothing to be done about this except to not allow anymore into the household.....no matter how pitiful their tales of woe are.....and know that in the coming years their numbers will diminish as they travel on to the Rainbow Bridge to wait for me there in a land where no one has allergies. That's sad to think about, but inevitable.

My breathing problems might be traceable to this old Victorian house we live in. Underneath the house, is not a crawl space; there is a walk space tall enough for a tall man like Don to easily stand up to full height. Bare, damp earth seven feet underneath our floors! This house was built approximately in 1898. There is probably more than a 100 years' worth of mold and mildew down there. The house is not airtight, so spores from these organisms can easily seep into my house and then find my poor lungs.

Also, I'm bothered more by the pretty smells that are in everything from soaps to cosmetics to incense to cleaning supplies, perfumes etc. Carcinogen additives. Many household products choke me up....Windex, Clorox, Pledge. (Imagine that I have put that cute little copyright mark behind those names. Thank you) Nice smells have always given me so much pleasure, but I think I must start cutting them out of my life. That's a bummer! I'll start looking for the word "unscented" on products from now on. I'll miss the pleasure that scented products give me, but breathing is more important.

We haven't joined the community center yet, but we will tomorrow. Don has a dentist appointment at noon in Berryville, so we thought we'd make one trip count. It will only cost $95 for a year's membership for the two of us. Not a bad deal. Indoor track and resistance machines. Yoga classes too, I think.

I thought I would post this morning, but we slept in and got a late start today. We didn't eat lunch until 2:00 this afternoon. It was a healthy lunch: salmon salad, steamed broccoli, and kidney bean salad (an old Baldridge family favorite). I drank organic fat-free milk, and Don had cranberry juice....sugar-free. So we did good on our eating. I'm not having any trouble adjusting to the organic milk. I bought a carton of vanilla-flavored soy milk also. I think I can benefit by getting a little soy into my system. I've had two cups of green tea today ... sweetened with honey. That's all you hear these days....green tea....green tea. I've noticed that black tea is also "in" and white tea is starting to show up on the grocery shelves. I'm trying to drink the recommended amount of green tea every day, but since I'm paranoid about stains on my teeth, I'm brushing them ten times a day now. One thing leads to another. I think I'll check into teeth bleaching at the dentist office.

Vitamins? Yep, I'm slowly getting back into that regimen. I wasn't taking anything for a month or so, and even though some people believe they are worthless, I know I feel better when I take them. I'm easing back into them though. Today I took a multiple, something for hair, skin, and nails, a Co Q-10 capsule, a 81 mg aspirin, a Super-B Complex tablet, Vitamin E with Selenium. It's a start. I was getting concerned about a vitamin deficiency because I'm having a big problem with dry lips. I've never had chaffed lips before in my life, but, all of a sudden, I find myself with lips that feel like sandpaper and cracks in the corners of my mouth. I searched the Internet and discovered that the problem could be a B-2 (Riboflavin) deficiency or an Iron deficiency. A multiple should take care of that. Riboflavin isn't stored in our bodies and must be replenished every day in a supplement or in food. We pee out what we don't need. When you take a B-Complex Vitamin and see bright yellow pee in an hour or so, you can just wave good-bye to your Riboflavin. During my search I learned that the Latin word "flavius" means yellow. I don't know where "Ribo" in Riboflavin comes from, but whatever it is, you can take my word for it.....it's yellow. My lips are better today, thank you for asking. Internet research told me to make sure I'm drinking enough water, and I am now, and that rubbing olive oil on my dry lips would help. After doing that for 4 days, I must say it has.

Another aspect of turning over a new leaf is my desire to become a more spiritual person. I've been signed up on DailyOm.com for two years with the intention of taking one or two of its daily spiritual messages and horoscopes to a quiet place every day to meditate on them. So what's been happening is that I don't read them, I just save them into a Daily OM folder on my computer. I counted them today. I now have 436 unread Daily OM's! They are not doing me any good in a folder in the computer. I'll share some of them with you soon when I start dragging them out ....one or two a day.

So, healthy eating, exercise, spiritual growth, staying young in spirit and strong in body.....those are the goals for this year. Day One....I'm still optimistic that I can reach these goals. One day at a time. I can do this.

I hope your New Year's Eve was nice. Ours was very quiet. No traffic. No fireworks. No party. When I was a young hottie --- out on a date on New Year's Eve --- I never dreamed that I would be content to stay at home, alone with my husband, looking at videos on YouTube of people playing washboards and/or rubboards. I'm not making this up. That is what we did last night. Don has just about talked himself out of buying a drum set. I think that's probably for the best. I don't think he would stick with it, and then we'd have a drum set to sell. He knows how to play a trumpet, and so I tried to steer him towards a saxophone, which I think is one of the coolest instruments in the world. Think Bill Clinton. It's definitely cooler than a French Horn, you have to admit that. But he's not interested in a sax. No, that would be too easy since he already knows about treble clefs, whatever they are. I have a vague idea of a what a clef is from music classes in junior high school, but worrying too much about them wasn't high on my agenda. Anyway, Don seems bound and determined to learn to play an instrument he knows nothing about. That man loves a challenge!

We spent a lot of time talking about musical instruments last night....drums, squeeze boxes, horns, fiddles, etc. Now Don seems determined to play a washboard like one of his all-time heroes, Washboard Leo. So off to YouTube.com we went in search of videos. Word: the washboard and its Zydeco cousin, the rubboard, are fantastic instruments when they accompany other instruments. It's fascinating to watch a washboard player, and they really add a lot to the rhythm of a song, but, as a solo instrument, a little goes a long way. Too much washboard, and you'll have a brain seizure. In my opinion, like drum solos, washboard solos should be limited to 2 minutes.

That's all I have to report today. Signing off.