Exercise in Bites

Exercise in Bites

There has been a lot of talk lately about staying active and not sitting for prolonged periods of time. Supposedly, activity that raises the heart rate or works one or more muscles can be done throughout the day in smaller increments rather than in a one-time thirty to one-hour workout. Taking smaller exercise breaks every few hours may prevent the fatigue and boredom that often causes us to give up regular workouts and actually encourage more activity for the day. Even if this winds up being another one of those health beliefs touted for years and then abandoned as false, anything that makes being active an easier habit, as well as giving us a more agile body, has to be a good thing.

Strengthening the Core

Your core muscles—most consider these the abdominal muscles; I’m including the thighs and buttocks—help in bending, lifting, walking, pretty much any activity that requires movement. Strong cores help to prevent lower back pain and other problems caused when back muscles are aggravated by conditions such as arthritis and knee pain.

As with any exercise, start with less time or fewer repeats if you are new at exercising, more if you feel able and work up to the recommended amounts by adding five repeats or minutes every week or two. Varying exercises gives better results. Muscles get efficient at doing the same thing and stop working as hard. The goal is to move for ten to fifteen minutes every hour or two, and it doesn’t have to be formal exercises. March in place, dance, wash the floor, the dishes, etc.  

Formal Exercise Bites

One:  Fitness experts suggest walking for fifteen minutes after a meal to keep sugar levels from spiking in the blood. If a walk isn’t feasible or comfortable for you, this exercise will give the same benefit and exercise the core muscles. Sit on a chair, hold abdominal muscles in—I especially like a rocking chair—and extend one leg straight out, toes pointed, while bending the other knee, toes flexed up, and pulling that knee toward your chest to whatever degree is comfortable. Switch legs and work up to fifteen minutes while watching TV, listening to music, or reading, though holding a book steady may prove difficult.

Two:  Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and lower the upper body into a semi-squat. Keep the back straight, the butt at about a forty-five-degree angle from the knees. Hold arms bent to ninety degrees at either side of the body, hands in loose fists. Moving only at the waist, twist to the left and punch right arm straight out to the left side. Return to original position and twist to the right, punching straight out to the right. Repeat twenty times and work up to three sets of twenty with a few second of rest between each set. (Good for the oblique or side muscles of the torso.) You can vary this by punching upward.

Even with knee pain, most people can do squats, which work the thighs, butt and abdominal muscles and help with any knee problems. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, hold in abdominal muscles and keeping back straight, bend knees and lower as though sitting. Do not go past ninety degrees. The torso will automatically bend forward a bit. Bring the arms forward to help keep your balance. Work up to twenty repeats.

Women especially tend to overlook the arms and upper back. Pushups work these as well as the core muscles and don’t have to be done on the floor. Stand at a counter, keep the body in a straight line, the hands shoulder-width apart on the counter, lean forward letting the elbows bend outward, and push back to the standing position. Work up to twenty repeats and standing an arm’s length away from the counter. Standing on the toes adds difficulty.  

You may need to add exercises as you get better at these and don’t take as much time. Be creative.

Under a Black Cloud

Under a Black Cloud

I have a very close friend whose life seems to play out under a black cloud of endless bad things happening to her. She suffers from a rare, congenital immune disorder that generally manifests in middle age. Her daughter and one of her grandsons also have the disorder.

My friend, who use to be a ball of energy, now moves with painful steps from rheumatoid arthritis and widespread neuropathy—pain along a nerve path. She had an operation years ago to sever the main nerves running from her groin down to her legs. The procedure kept her out of a wheelchair but not away from monthly infusions of gamma globulin that bolster her immune system, repeated bouts of bronchitis and/or pneumonia, and pain that requires hefty doses of narcotics to manage some quality of life.

She is an addict and her personality has changed. Her medical condition has become who she is. She has COPD and smokes, does not eat a particularly healthy diet, though no worse than most Americans, so has herself to blame for parts of her condition. Nevertheless she is courageous and persistent. She knows the disorder will kill her early and the pain will only worsen. Her mobility has become severely curtailed and she finally agreed to a walker. At least she’s still walking, the loss of that, in her mind, the final straw. Mostly, I think, because of the loss of independence.

She lost her husband five years ago to cancer associated with Agent Orange from his years in Vietnam. She now faces doctor appointments and scary procedures and tests alone. A friend’s support is not the same as a husband’s. She hasn’t seen her son, who suffers from mental illness, in a number of years, nor the children he has with a second wife, ever, a very deep hurt.

I started this blog with the idea of writing about the difficult time my family is going through at the moment and saying I better understood my friend’s difficulties. I don’t. Our problems will most likely be momentary in the totality of our lives and our family stays glued together. So I think I’ll just tell my friend’s story as an homage to her and check on her after I post this.

Paycheck to Paycheck

Paycheck to Paycheck

Too many of us live paycheck to paycheck with insufficient savings to see us through an emergency and only a prayer in our hearts to see us through an interruption in the money flow. It catches you off-guard when that emergency or interruption happens, no matter how many times you have considered it and tried to plan ahead. Financial experts suggest having savings to cover at least six months of expenses. For us, it was save for retirement or this emergency account. We couldn’t do both, chose retirement, and now it has come around to bite us.

My husband had a fender bender while backing up out of our driveway to run some errands. Somehow he managed to go through a narrow opening between a decorative wooden fence and an apple tree in our neighbor’s front yard across the street. He ended up with the back bumper of our car in the door of the neighbor’s car. He doesn’t remember it happening.

Medical vs. Legal Suspension

The neighbors called the paramedics since my husband was incoherent. Of course this occurred on a Friday evening, so our doctor’s office was closed. We refused the ambulance drive to the Emergency Room but, on the advice of the doctor who still happened to be in the office, we took my husband to the hospital.

Upshot is that despite no medical evidence of a seizure and, instead, reason to think his unconsciousness was caused by a morning incident with our cat where a varicose vein got opened and bled profusely and elevated blood sugar—he unwisely ate a brownie before going out on the errand instead of a healthy snack—his license is now medically suspended until the Department of Motor Vehicles says otherwise. (See: http://bonniearnot.blogspot.com/2016/08/dont-tease-cat.html)

If you have a DUI or OUI, the DMV may allow you to keep a hardship license, which means you may drive back and forth to certain locations only, work and maybe a doctor’s office, I assume. With a medical suspension—is there an acronym for this?—I doubt they will allow any driving, but we will see.

Hidden Costs

Having a suspended license has caused secondary complications. My husband did not at first inform his work superiors of the suspension. He had rides back and forth to work. They found out and suspended him without pay. A valid driver’s license is a prerequisite to employment. The fact that he has worked for them for nearly twenty years with good reviews and was not missing work means nothing. He has one month to rectify the situation or face being fired. The DMV usually requires six months before considering lifting a medical suspension.

Experts don’t generally mention hidden expenses you must plan for in those six months. Medical and life insurance premiums are often taken directly out of a paycheck, so you might not remember them when planning. I know COBRA laws allow people to keep their current insurance for a specified period if they pay the full group rate. It’s less than paying as a single customer but still much more than what you may be used to if your employer pays part of the expense.

I guess the moral of the story is to put aside funds for both retirement and emergencies even if that means skimping on the retirement at first or vacations, clothes—whatever you don’t absolutely need. After you have the amount required in the emergency fund, funnel those funds into your retirement plan. What you do if you legitimately have no discretionary funds and little recourse to getting more, which many of us don’t, I wish I knew. I have faith and God has always seen us through. Be interesting to see what He has in mind.

Novels About Prehistoric Times

The Earth Children Series

I am a fan of Jean Auel’s Earth Children Series, which started with Clan of the Cave Bear. The first two books in particular gave myriad details on the topography, flora, fauna, and possible societies of prehistoric times. I know the author put in a great deal of research. How its accuracy has held up over time and new archeological findings, I don’t know. The next books became more speculative—magic, clairvoyance, etc.—and, in one person’s view that I read, cave porn. There certainly started to be a lot of repetition. The last book made it clear that the story was not finished, but Ms. Auel has not written that final book, a disappointment to her fans.

The series follow a little girl separated from her modern-man parents during an earthquake and raised by an earlier people who are going extinct. The stories show the girl growing up and struggling to fit in, first with her adopted people and then with her own. She has skills and ways unknown to them and is looked on either with suspicion or admiration, neither of which she is comfortable with.

Song of the Axe

Written by John R. Dann, this story is advertised as in the tradition of the Earth Children Series. I saw little similarity other than the time period. This book is much more fantastical and less historically detailed. It is obvious the writer intended at least two books. Part II goes over incidents from Part I as you would in a sequel, and the beginning of this 600 page tomb is very choppy, as though hastily lopped off to bring down the word count.

The dialogue is blunt and simple, no doubt to sound like a simpler people and time, but it makes the characters all sound alike. Nevertheless, I became engaged with the two main characters who considered themselves mated for life as they face evil—the evil ran in tribes and families, which was unbelievable, and promising characters were often quickly killed, but I did care what happened to the main characters and kept reading.

The Prehistoric in a Young-Adult Novel

Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff was written in 1958 but holds up perfectly since it is about prehistory. This book caught my interest and imagination more than most. Diem is a disabled boy in the Bronze Age who must overcome his handicap to survive and be accepted. Truthfully, he probably never would have been allowed to live in the real world, but his struggles made for a sympathetic but not maudlin story and created a great deal of tension as he traversed the mine field of tribal expectations. The story is about a boy but not written from a childish perspective. Riveting.