1. Interesting Things Around The Internet Dept: This week's 7 Things on Friday title is from a post on Megan Coakley's blog. Go read it, it's a great addition to the discussion about midlife. Since I don't have much intelligent to say this week, I can at least point you to other resources. :-) It's a different take on the discussion a few weeks ago about realizing that certain dreams you've had just aren't going to happen. Some dreams are really hard to give up, some are easy. Some feel like you're giving away a piece of yourself, some feel like a sigh of a relief. But if we're re-focusing down to what we can do, what is still important to us, it may feel smaller, but it might also be more important. The older I get, the more sure I am that the real way we make a difference in the world is in the way that we live, the way we interact with other friends and family, the way we are with the network of our people. (Cue It's a Wonderful Life). The big splashy stuff? maybe not such a big deal.
2. Part of the reason I don't have anything intelligent to say this week (do I ever?) is that I've felt like crap. I've had a bad time with the migraines recently. It's made me realize that I judge all of the food/health trends (fads) I've tried based on how they affect migraines. Gluten-free, dairy-free, caffeine-free, sugar-free, yeah, yeah, yeah. People do them for all sorts of reasons, but the reason I try them is to see what affect they have on the frequency of my migraines. So far, I've been unable to come up with any food or drink or category of ingestible items that has a long-term effect. For awhile, avoiding caffeine seemed to help, but the last time I went caffeine free, it didn't seem to make any difference at all. Given the steady stream of research showing that moderate caffeine intake is actually good for you, I'm back having caffeine once or twice a day now. Work in progress.
3. These headaches are slightly different than my usual--they are much more involved with my neck. I won't bore you with the blow-by-blow of the past couple of weeks, but I ended up going to see a physical therapist today to see what they could do about my neck. It was really interesting--he pulled out his Atlas of Human Anatomy and showed me pictures of the inner workings of the cerebral vertebrae. My neck often feels stiff and tight, but apparently the stretches I've been doing are exactly the wrong ones--I've been trying to stretch the large muscles that I can feel when I reach back to my neck and shoulders, but apparently the ones that I need to work on are the tiny ones that run between the vertebrae. Fascinating.
4. Hence, he recommended one of these (which of course they conveniently sell right there in their office), and let me tell you, it is fabulous. Like brownie fudge ice cream for your neck.
5. Wildlife sightings: two bears (or one bear that can move really fast, there was disagreement among the ranks) last weekend out at the lake, two deer running through our backyard Tuesday, and the heron was back today. Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough with the camera to get pictures of any of them. We almost never see bears, so that was pretty cool--and we were in the car, so relatively safe.
6. Late one night recently, I was clicking around and I ended up at some guy's blog in something called the manosphere. Or maybe he was complaining about the manosphere, I don't know. I'd never heard of it, and after reading two or three of his posts, I was uninterested in further exploration. He was so blatantly, militantly hateful that I felt like I was staggering away from reading it, buried under the weight of his negativity and bitterness. I spent several days trying to figure out how to respond. At one point I had mapped out in my head a three-part series of posts, but I still couldn't figure out how to say what I wanted to say. It got me so tied up in knots that I was practically losing sleep over it. And then I thought, you know what? I am not responsible for responding to his crap. Especially since he'd probably never see it. So... moving on. The manosphere or anti-manosphere or whatever it was will just have to get along without me.
7. Happy Anniversary to us! Thirty-one years. Dean is a saint.
Manosphere--come on! Just remember: you can't fix stupid. MKJ
ReplyDeleteMuriel--I know, right? That should have been my first clue. I should have clicked away without going any further.
ReplyDeleteAnd just in case anyone was motivated to by a "Real Ease" based on my plug above, I will say after a few days of using it that I've started folding a hand towel into it to add another half an inch or so of height--the curve didn't seem to be quite enough for my neck.
31 years!
ReplyDeleteTHe only food I've seen affect my migraines is dairy, if I eat it consistently. But I am thankful that my neurologist eventually found me the right meds. I don't even care if they've affected my weight, or whatever. Hallelujah for a clear head.