Elixir of Life

My daughter Lee is on a path of trying to identify the basic nutrients that she needs, so she can create an "elixir of life", or a nutritional potion to substitute for food.  The idea is she could simply drink it and not  bother with the real food process.

 For her, one of the motivating factors was that she does not enjoy all the food related activities such as grocery shopping, cooking, washing dishes, etc.  She finds that stressful!  Her life elixir would be made entirely of soy or protein powders and spices and herbs perhaps, but no actual fruit or vegetables!

She sent me a link to a blogger who basically has the same idea.  It was a well thought out plan.  He focused on the various benefits.   He is a runner and needed to identify how much energy he needed to take in in order to expend the energy needed for running.   One of the benefits is financial.  He gave some information on what the average American spends of food.  This information I found quite fascinating.   I think his exact quote was:  The average American spends $605 a month on groceries, half of which is food.

I was not sure how that might stack up with what Google would say.  As a single male, no doubt half of his $605 a month would have been spent on eating at places other than home.

I did get the hard data from Google,  and then looked at how much we spend on groceries in a month. Very little of ours is spent eating outside the home.  Of course, the amounts given were on a chart with a range, depending on age, and whether one shops the "low budget plan" or the "liberal" plan.

Using that chart, I determined that the two of us (senior citizens) together should be spending approximately $650 a month on food, not counting eating out.   I was pleased to discover, looking back at our expenditures for last year, that we never did reach that total.  In January it was less than $400 a month, while presumably we were eating a lot of leftovers in the freezer from Christmas.  In June, it was over 600 but less than 650.  It was always between the 400 to 600 range.

Anyway, it was an interesting thing to explore and discover.

I wish my daughter well with her elixir experiment.   Occasionally, I do enjoy a smoothie for breakfast.   It is delicious, but not completely satisfying.

After a while, I need crunch, and texture and bread.   Actually, I could probably live on the bread alone, as my elixir of life.

Second Hand Pain

Second hand pain is what one experiences when they watch a loved one suffer excruciating pain.   The second hand pain has within it a sense of helpless,  of not being able to provide relief for the one you love.   It hurts to watch, observe, feel shut out, useless.

I am having this experience at the present time!

So far, my own strategy has been to just let my husband suffer his agony and pretty much stay out of the way!

I have lost track now of how many days it has been that Gerry had been dealing with a combination of muscle spasm, a pinched nerve, and insomnia.  As he says, he can deal with the pain, but not the lack of sleep.   One cannot go for days and weeks without some relief.

Gerry went to the doctor last week, and also to a physical therapist.  The medication offered by the doctor, an anti-inflammatory, has been useless in providing any relief.  The exercises suggested by the physical therapist have not lessened the pain.  Today he has an appointment with his regular doctor (who wasn't there last week).  We hope and pray that they will give him either a muscle relaxer or a sleep aid, and preferably both!!

This makes me think of caregivers, and sometimes what they must go through over a very long period of time, when a loved one suffers.  I have personally observed the long slow journey of Alzheimer's and its devastation,.  In the case of my mother, in time, she just slept.   It seemed like a peaceful sleep. Of course, she was on a variety of medications, but at least she was no longer agitated.

Medication is what I hope we can get for Gerry! Over the counter meds have not touched the pain.  

I am especially concerned about mental and emotional deterioration that comes from insomnia.

I know that this notion of "second hand pain" is nothing compared to the real thing.

But it is not easy.

Different Towns

Today daughter Lee and I drove to (fictional) Centerville to visit other daughter Eve.  The three of us talked somewhat about the differences between the towns in which we live, or have lived.

Lee lives in  (fictional) Maintown, a city which has two different colleges, and all the accompanying students and faculty and support staff.  The academic environment  produces a collection of over-achievers,  highly professional and intellectual people.  It is also trendy, environmentally conscious with a very low rate of unemployment.

Centerville, on the other hand, is in a different county, and the town itself is quite isolated---and hour at least from anywhere else.   There is a higher rate of unemployment, or underemployment, with very few opportunities.  There is a big problem with heroin and meth. (though that is true of everywhere these days).   The educational level is much lower than in Maintown.   Maintown is all about excellence and achievement.  Centerville is more about making do and getting by.  One tends to be primarily Republican, the other primarily Democrat.

I have lived and/or worked in Centerville in the past.   Before retiring and moving to  Cortland, where we now live,  I  lived in a community which was very similar to Centerville, a small isolated town.

I consider the culture of my current city somewhere in between the over-achievers and the making- doers.  The atmosphere is more laid back than Maintown and less cutthroat competitive.

It is fascinating to me how different the personality, culture, opportunities, and character of a town or city can be.

When I think about these things, I realize that I have lived in and/or served churches in the whole range of different kinds of communities.  The area in which I grew up, and the first church I served, were very rural.   I have lived in several small towns, each of which has its own unique characteristics.  I lived in a suburban area, outside of a sizable city.  (It occurs to me that I have never lived out in the country, away from any town).

Cortland is a small city.  It offers many cultural opportunities.  It is a college town, and has lots of faculty and students and sports and a performing arts center.   It is not economically depressed.   It has lots of tennis courts and is close to the ski slopes.

We did not really know anything about its culture until we had lived here a while.  It is clearly just right for us.   We chose it for its convenience and an assortment of other reasons.  We were not at all familiar with its culture or character.

Now that we have lived here a while,  we are very glad that we made this particular choice!

Sleep

Over the years, I have certainly observed  my husband struggle with sleep issues.  In fact, they can be traced back directly to a surgery he had 21 years ago.  After that, there was lots of disturbed, interrupted sleep.  Our theory has been that the insomnia was caused by post-traumatic stress from the surgery.

In the past few years, those issues have resolved themselves somewhat, and while he still does not get 8 hours of sleep all at once,  he was able to get five or six, occasionally.

It has been in the news lately, that one out of three Americans has a sleep disorder of one kind or another, and is unable to get the needed  6 or 7 hours of sleep.

Lately,  Gerry has been suffering muscle spasms in his back, which clamp down on a nerve and cause excruciating pain.  The result of that, of course, is very little sleep.   Lately, I have been more tuned in to the issues related to sleep loss, and have become aware of all the health problems that can cause, from high blood pressure to heart problems.

All of this make me aware of how much of a gift sleep is.  Honestly, until recently, I have been completely unaware of what a tremendous blessing it is to be able to easily go to sleep and sleep all night.  I have that gift and greatly enjoy that blessing.

Since retiring, I have developed exactly the pattern of sleep and wakefulness I always said I wanted. Specifically,  I go to sleep and wake up according to my internal biological clock, without the use of any alarm.  I wake up at exactly the same time every morning, and go to sleep at exactly the same time every night. I sleep soundly.  The length is more than most people need,  but it is what my body wants, given its own ability to choose.

And so I express my great appreciation and deep gratitude for the fairly uncommon ability to go to sleep easily and sleep thoroughly every single night!

My heart goes out to all those who are not so gifted!

Cousin Connection

A few years ago, I decided that I needed to make a trip to Mississippi to re-connect with, and/or visit for the last time, all family members I could locate, though they are few, at this point.  I have two very elderly uncles in poor health there. One was my father's brother, and the other, my mother's brother.   I wanted to see them again, not knowing what the situation might be later.  I had a family dinner gathering with cousins on my father's side of the family.

Somewhere along the way,  I was contacted by a first cousin on my mother's side, the Yarbrough clan.   For whatever reason,  (perhaps since the parents died so early)  the siblings in that family did not visit very much in my recollection as a child.  Anyway,  Cousin Joyce now lives in Baton Rouge.  I told her I was making that trip, and she suggested meeting somewhere in between,  which we did.  We had a lovely visit in Jackson, Mississippi.  I probably had not seen her since I was preteen.

So this time,  when Joyce and her husband were making a trip to Ohio to visit their son,  She contacted me and suggested we meet somewhere in between.   Since they come from the bayou, they were very fearful of driving in anything that slightly resembled snow.

The day we planned to meet, it was 45 degrees, so you can't get much better than that on the first day of February!

Our destination was Erie, Pennsylvania.  It was a four and a half hour drive for us, (one way) and a two and a half drive for them,  at our suggestion, given their fear of winter driving.  Monday, we drove 520 miles in one day and had a nice lunch with Cousin Joyce and her husband Richard.

It was an exhausting day,  but I thought important, since I do not have very many cousins.

I do have some, but I do not know where they are!  On my father's side at least, ours was a family that scattered all over the United States.   I do not think that is so unusual for my generation, who grew up in the 1960's.