A New Adventure. A New Journey.

I have had a love/hate relationship with this whole COVID experience since day one. So much of COVID sucked right down to the depths of hell, but like with all truly bad things, there is always also something good. In this case, for me, the good has been the changes in me. I guess the conclusion I have come to is, that if you try to lock me down and break my spirit, I will rebel like hell and find a part of me that I never even knew existed. Take that COVID!

So many lessons have come out of the last 16 months for me, and one of the biggies was that I am far more competent and capable than I ever gave myself credit for. I am, for lack of a better phrase, still very teachable...even at my age. I also learned that I am worthy of at least as much care and effort as I give everyone else. Imagine that! 

Ultimately, I think I may have learned more about myself in this time period than I have in all the decades before. 

Prior to this last year or so, I have not been someone who took myself very seriously. I was an afterthought, even to myself and I looked and felt like it. I also didn't push myself to do a lot of things, because I always felt that I wasn't smart enough or capable of enough. This came from years of being told that I would never amount to anything by my dad. I think it was because I was a girl, and he just didn't think very highly of girls/women. Because of this thinking, I quit things when they got too hard as I think I felt I would fail anyway. Rather than push ahead and try to find answers, I just felt I wasn't smart enough to make it to the finish line. I don't know that I was really okay with all of this, but I did settle for this outcome more times than I would like to think about. 

This last year though, I challenged myself. Maybe it was because we were on lockdown and it was either challenge myself and learn, or die of a stagnant boredom. Since I haven't actually allowed myself to be bored since 1983, then learn and push ahead was my only practical choice. From this choice, I learned why for four decades my cookies had tasted like and had the consistency of sheetrock. I learned that the reason some of my past sewing projects didn't come out properly was not that I couldn't sew, but because I didn't take the time and/or have the patience to read the directions and sew properly. More importantly, though, I learned that taking care of myself was not the chore that I had always viewed it to be, but worth the time and effort I put in to make me feel better and in some cases make me feel more whole so that I was better for the people around me. This has been huge for me and I know that I am not alone in the difficulty (especially as a woman) of finding the desire and the energy to make myself a priority and to take care of myself. 

This particular blog, Do I Look Like a Celery Kind of Girl, was originally started as a blog to talk about health and self-care, even if I couldn't frame the right words at the time. Unfortunately, over the years, it has been ground zero for a lot of false starts with big ambitions and very little long-term follow-through. Because of this, I decided if I ever started hitting the keyboard again for this particular blog, that it wouldn't be until I had something long-term to say with some real follow-through as the end game. I think COVID may have just given me all of that and more. It also made me realize that long term may just be overrated because quite honestly long term is not the same for all of us. 

COVID and the year 2020 and the start of 2021, have put me on a journey like no other journey I have ever been on in all my years. Something was opened up inside of me that gave me a bit of childlike wonder, and a whole lot of desire to push myself and see just how far I could go. 

I have never been big on limits in the big scheme of things (David taught me that) and yet in so many ways, I have limited myself over the years and I am working very hard to stop that. Life is very short and if we don't live it on our own terms, we will end up wasting it on someone else's. That is not the life I choose to live. 

I am no longer tying myself to big ambitious goals that are usually too big to be attainable and when they fail, end up hanging over me like another missed opportunity. Instead, I am thinking and planning at best, no farther ahead than this summer and in most cases, no farther ahead than next week. This is going to give me opportunities to try things on the spur of the moment and rearrange things when something doesn't fit. My OCD where order and scheduling occur will simply have to make peace with a little bit of spontaneity, as I am allowing myself no guilt if time or situation doesn't allow for something, but I am also not allowing myself to give up, give in or quit anything I do start. 

Moving forward, I am going to use this blog to the fullest extent and I am going to take you on the journey with me, that I started several months ago.  I have no plans, very limited goals and the only thing I really know is that it is going to be about transforming me and ultimately, taking care of me, whatever that ends up looking like on any given day. 

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons, to come from all of this is that life and health are a gift. For me, it is especially so, with all the genetic issues and illnesses my family possesses. I am 58 years old and before I know it, I will soon be hitting 60. Rather than see me and my body as winding down, I prefer to see myself and my body as entering an exciting new phase of life where I don't have any expectations and everything is a new chance at a new beginning. 

So if you are like me, and ready for an adventure in life, then join me on this journey. I won't be blogging here every day, but when I do, I promise you that I will try to make it worth your read, and maybe together we will find a little joy, a little laughter, some new ideas on life, and some much-needed self-transformation. 

Until next time, may you have no expectations, may you have no guilt, and may you push yourself farther than you ever dreamed possible. 

To Vaccinate or Not....Is That the Question?

 

To COVID vaccinate or not? That seems to be the big debate right now. Well, of course, I am going to put in my two cents and figured that right here is the place to do it. Now before I continue, please know that if you get the vaccine, I support your choice in doing that 100%, and also, if you choose not to get it, I also support that choice 100%. In other words, I think that whatever you feel is medically right for you, as no one knows you better than you do, is going to be the right thing for you. 

Here is however where I stand on this subject. You do not have to agree with me, but please understand that just like you, I have my own opinions on the subject. 

I think COVID has been a crazy roller coaster ride since day one, and the way it has made human beings act, at best has made me laugh and at worst has made me sad and even afraid for them at times. This virus and all that surrounds it, has changed us all, and not at all for the better. People have just lost their perspective, their common sense and in some cases, their minds over all of this and I am not sure why. 

Back in January of 2020, when we had already heard that COVID was on its way to the US, we didn't stop going to concerts, going to stores, going out to eat, or living our lives. How many times had we faced these viruses, trudged through, and gone on with our lives? Why should this be any different? Then in February when the CDC started warning us that this one might be different, did we use our heads and start limiting our exposure to crowds, Lysol and Clorox our houses, do drive-thru instead of dine-in and just take normal preventative precautions to keep ourselves healthy? Oh no! People instead rushed out in literal hoards and started buying up toilet paper, Clorox wipes, Lysol and baby wipes. They would fight their way through crowds of people because they were sure they might not have all of these things to survive this virus that we were being warned about. What they effectively did though, was actually cause the shortages that the rest of us had to deal with for the next few months and put the virus into hyperdrive, not once using common sense and thinking that maybe fighting crowds was not their best choice. Little fun fact, these were the same people who would literally meltdown in public if they happened to see someone without a mask or saw their neighbors having more than two people at their house. 

Somehow, someway though, we managed to lockdown for 14 days to flatten the curve. These 14 days turned into months and months of people losing jobs, businesses going under,  kids not socializing, and mask makers making a fortune on masks. And yes, sadly, people got COVID and many died. The CDC did not help matters as they started out telling us that masks would not help. Then they said we needed special masks. Then they said, well we just needed masks. Then it was, we needed two masks. Finally, we worked our way back to we just needed to mask.....now maybe permanently. 

Along with this, we had restrictions on distancing and crowd size. Now just recently we have heard that the 6-foot distancing rule was basically ridiculous. If the virus is in the air, it doesn't matter whether you are 6 foot or 60 foot, it travels. Needless to say, I and many other people came to the conclusion that the CDC really had no clue what they were talking about, but....the fact that they were talking kept people nervous at best and downright scared at worst. Many just decided to err on the side of caution and go with what they considered the most protection they could get, especially those who had friends and relatives that had gotten sick and even died from it. 

Now we are a little over a year out from the time the pandemic caused by the virus started and our new conversation is, whether to get the vaccine or not. Some people are so adamant about the vaccine, that they are now wanting to demand that if you don't get it, then businesses shouldn't hire you or if you are already working someplace, the business should fire you. Now I can see this in a healthcare setting or the military, but why anyplace else? There could be definite reasons people don't or can't get the vaccine, but apparently, some feel that these people's vaccine history should dictate their hirability. This in my book is plain ridiculousness. Here is why I question this. 

What we currently know about the vaccine is that there are three on the market, about to be four. Of the current three, two of them require you to get two doses and one is a one dose. What we also know is that where most vaccines take up to a decade to be developed and tested before being approved, this one was shotgunned into existence without any testing as those currently getting the vaccine are the ones doing the testing. Not a big plus in favor of the vaccine. There have also been side effects such as blood clots and yes....even a few deaths from the vaccine, which under normal circumstances, the population would look at, raise an eyebrow and possibly be a little cautious before playing "damned if you do and damned if you don't" with your health. Instead, they are all but ignoring the side effects and rushing out to get it. I can't help but see the old picture of the wolf in sheep's clothing leading the pack of sheep as he takes them right up to the edge of the drop-off and then stands back and watches as they each run right on over the edge to their deaths. Now maybe this a bit of a dramatic visual, but bottom line, I never signed up to be a lab rat, did you? 

All that being said, if you listen to the CDC, they have told us that if you are fully vaccinated, then you are 99% safe from getting COVID. They do have the caveat that down the line we might need a booster, to keep it effective, but if the vaccine itself ends up being safe, then it should also be effective. So if you get the vaccine, and you are confident in the vaccine and its 99% effectiveness (if it's good enough for our birth control, then it should be good enough for our vaccine....right?) then why are people trying to demand that if you choose not to get it, a job should be withheld from you? We have never done this with the flu vaccine. And speaking of the flu vaccine, how many people get the flu shot and then still get the flu because they find out the vaccine they got was for a different strand of the flu than what they got? Who is to say that with the way COVID appears to be mutating that we won't run into the same thing with the COVID vaccine? You may get the vaccine right now, but by next winter, we may have a different strand to deal with. Do we just keep getting experimental vaccines every few months? What are the long-term effects of that? This is why we usually have years of testing before a vaccine is approved. Have all those rushing out to get the vaccine, even thought of any of this? 

So here is what I think (yes, this is the opinion part of this particular blog piece), I am taking the same stance on the vaccine as I have taken on wearing a mask. If you feel the need to get the vaccine for any reason, then I say GET THE VACCINE!!!!! In fact, if you need a ride to get the vaccine, I will take you! On the other hand, if you don't feel comfortable or simply don't want to get the vaccine, for any reason, then I say DON'T GET THE VACCINE!!!!! Whether you do or whether you don't will have no bearing on how I feel about you nor will I judge you one way or another. In other words, it should be your choice and no one else's. It is just that simple. 

I guess it all comes down to what you believe from the CDC, what your own health history is, and how comfortable you are with the current vaccines that are available to the public. 

Have I already or will I get the vaccine? Well, that is my business. I am not about the "look I got the vaccine" posts. I might do that over-voting, but not vaccines. For some reason that just seems a little too personal, but if I did get it, or do, it is to protect myself as that is the only one I can protect. If however, I am protected, then I am in no way worried about whether you have gotten the vaccine or not. It simply does not affect me....right? That is if they are telling us the truth and actually know....and if they are not.....then the vaccine is not going to work anyway, so........ I guess it wouldn't be the first time the government lied to us...right? 

So get the vaccine or don't get the vaccine, but don't try to dictate to others. That is just a slippery slope that will only come back to haunt us all. 

Until next time.....stay peaceful, stay educated, and get vaccinated.......if it's the right decision for you!

COVID, Planet Fitness and An Ear Infection

I decided that it was time to brush the dust off this particular blog and show it some love, and today's verbiage is perfect for the theme of this blog. 

I know most of us are beyond tired of hearing about or even thinking about COVID, and yet almost a year later, it is still a major part of our culture and our lives. It has caused illness, death, fear, and yes, in some cases, even strange and ridiculous behavior. It has also done a number on people's mental health as we have become a society that no longer can be face to face or have the human interactions we have always relied on to soothe us, guide us and help us to feel....human. 

We as a family have had COVID go through our house at least once that we are sure of, and we have been put on self-containment several times as we were closely exposed. The fact is, no matter whether you wear a mask or not, wash your hands until they are sandpaper, and/or avoid crowds like it's your job, you can still fall ill. I have always known this and because of knowing this, I have never panicked over it. I have always used common sense, but when it went through the house, it was what it was. Thankfully, we all had mild to moderate forms of it, and we all came out okay. 

I will say though, that aside from making us all physically sick, it has also changed us and our world. It has changed how we view everything from crowds to even socializing. It has caused mass fear, and with mass fear, there has also been mass irrationality. Mental health has been affected, and there has been a rise in abuse cases as well as addictions of all forms. People have hidden in their homes with nothing but delivered food, their TV's and their social media, and they have become slaves to negativity and fear. 

There are others though, like me, who weren't the most "social" people on the planet to begin with, so isolation and no contact hasn't been quite the challenge for us that has been for others. There have been changes though and yes, they have affected me. The biggest change has been helping my granddaughter with her schooling. It began last year after spring break. You remember....the never-ending spring break?! She was in first grade and teachers, students, parents, and grandparents were thrown into a tizzy over schools being shutdown. Somehow, we managed to get these kids through the end of school, never dreaming that in August, we would still be in pretty much the same boat. 

I will say, that this distance learning has been one of the more stressful things in my life. I am constantly aware that....NO! I am not smarter than a second-grader. And it is not so much what they do, but, HOW they are expected to do it. More than once there have been tears and you better bet, they weren't always hers. 

There have been a lot of positives though, that I think have come from the COVID chaos. One of those has been a sense of time slowing down a bit. For a while, many people were sidelined to work their jobs from home. People didn't feel so rushed as they didn't have to get dressed up and fight traffic to get to work. There became a more laid back feel to our lives. Sadly, there were others who lost their jobs or were laid off, so this gave them new found time with their families. Suddenly people were cooking, baking, sewing, playing games with their kids and life was feeling much like life had been in the old days (the 70's and 80's). 

I myself slowed down a bit and decided to use my daily time in the kitchen (this is where we did school work), to do some cooking, baking, and canning, while Miss W did her schooling. After years of failure, I learned to make some pretty decent cookies, and loaves of homemade bread were always available to family and friends. I even made some pretty great jelly, that lasted about five minutes in our house. 

I also noticed that how I felt about the world and what was going on in it, was also changing. I was realizing that the big things like politics and even COVID, I was very limited on what I could do or change. What I could do though, was change me and maybe here or there in some small way, change my little piece of the world. 

As we drew closer to election time, after a summer of countrywide upheaval and unrest, I grew more and more discouraged with social media and the people on all sides of the issues, as they seemed to all have become angry, hateful and so self-assured that they were right, that there was no longer anything even resembling respectful discourse. I began to shut up and just watch people implode upon themselves. Then I just gradually walked away. 

It was about this time, just after the election but before Thanksgiving, that I went to the doctor. It was my yearly visit and he looked at me with a bit of disdain. I was on two kinds of blood pressure medicine, and my BP was still 140/100. He was not pleased and truthfully, neither was I. He gave me a month to get it down, or we were going to have to have a "serious" talk. I walked out of the office numb, as I had a million reasons why it was likely so high, but I wasn't sure how or even if I was going to make any changes. With everything in the world, I was just so neutral in my emotions that I really felt kind of stuck. 

Something must have hit a chord with me though because, on that day, I made a conscious effort to "social distance" myself from social media and to make a very unplanned and unexpected stop on my way home. 

My older son Wes, for several years, had devoted at least 3-5 nights a week to working out. Sometimes he went to our local gym and sometimes he worked out in the garage, but it had become as much a part of his routine as breathing. I know the rest of us, who in his vision did nothing more than lie around the house and eat, frustrated him. He watched us get sick, struggle with our health, and live in a mess of stress. I watched him though too. His body had definitely changed over time and he was strong as an ox. He did on rare occasions catch some precarious bug flitting through the house, but while the rest of us might be down for a week, he was usually up and over it in a day or so. I knew what he was doing was working and I also knew that working out on a regular basis was keeping him sane. 

Just weeks before, about 5 minutes down the road, there was a new gym in town. It was a Planet Fitness that was now taking residence in an old Dillons building. I had driven by it tons of times as they gutted and prepped the building. They were running sign-up promotions long before the building opened and even though there were already a couple of city-run gyms within a 10-mile vicinity, people seemed to be flocking to the new kid in town. Wes was one of those and he is pretty particular about his gyms and what he expects from them. He seemed please though. 

So on that day, when the BP was high and I was blah, my car, as if having a mind of its own, drove right into the Planet Fitness parking lot and stopped. I had no idea what I was doing there, but I figured with all the hype I had seen, it wouldn't hurt to check it out. As I walked in the door, I was hit with Beyonce singing "Put a Ring on It," and purple! There was purple everywhere.....and it was pretty. 

A young adult behind the counter greeted me. I told him that I was just looking and he said, "Let me show you around." There were free weights, weight machines for every part of your body, bikes, ellipticals, treadmills, and stair climbers. There was also a 30-minute room where you could get a full-body workout in 30 minutes and other rooms with machines and pulleys and things that I had no idea what they were. They also had tanning beds, massage chairs, and hydro massage chairs and beds. I hate to say it, but this place had me at the pretty purple. 

As if my mouth had a mind of its own, I heard myself telling them to sign me up. I wanted "the black membership," which included all the bells and whistles.....especially that hydro massage chair. I had no idea what that was about, but I knew that someday in the near future, I was going to find out. 

When I drove off, and the shock of my impromptu membership hit me, I wondered if this was going to be like ALL the other gym memberships that I had joined and never used. Somehow, I didn't think so, but I wasn't going to get my hopes or anyone else's hopes up just yet. 

With Thanksgiving so close and everyone's schedules so crazy, I was only able to go to PF, a couple of times before turkey day. It was a test to see if my body would even allow me to exercise. I had visions of myself passing out in the first five minutes or worse, only going in to use the hydro massage chair and leaving. Because of this, I made a deal with myself. I could only try the chair after I had gone to the gym regularly for a month. 

I started out slow, doing only light cardio, to find out what my body was capable of. It began with 30 minutes on the treadmill. Then I began to change up speed and incline and worked my way up to 45 minutes and then an hour. When I knew my legs would not crumble or give out under me, I then added the elliptical. I started with 15 minutes and worked my way to 30 minutes, using the elliptical for 30 and the treadmill for 30. Again, I would change speeds and inclines and would try to get the biggest bang for my buck in the 30 minute time allotment. Before I knew it, it was the New Year and I had managed to get to the gym 3-5 times each week. It was time for the hydro massage chair reward. Let me just say, it is all that and a bag of chips. I only have time to use it on the weekends, but you can bet, every Saturday and Sunday, my workout ends with the chair. 

So here we are and it's almost the end of January. I am still making it work so that I get to the gym 3-5 times a week, and if I can't figure any other way, I will drag myself out of bed and get there by 4 a.m. to ensure that I am putting myself and my health first. It seems to be paying off, as I went to the doctor Friday and my BP is 110/68 and I have lost 11 pounds. The doctor said if I keep the gym up, that in a month or so, he will start weaning me off the BP meds. YAY!

Starting in February, I am going to start working with a personal trainer (all part of that black membership) and start working on my strength and muscle tone. This body has to stay strong in order to lift David's body around. 

It has been an amazing experience that I am really surprised at myself over. I honestly think that the two things that won me over were, Wes's dedication and the purple....oh, and the chair. I have now been going long enough that my body seems to crave the workout. Today though, my body will just have to be happy with rest as my bed is about as far as I am going. 

I think I have an ear infection. I can't hear, I feel water slushing in my ear and I get dizzy every time I stand up. I got up to get ready for church this morning and it took me about 2 seconds to realize that driving or even walking, weren't going to work for me today. I am trying very hard to get better about listening to my body and taking care of me. So this is me taking care of me. I can't just lay here and do nothing though, so I blog. I know the ears will be fine very soon and then I will be back to church, the gym, and my life. 

Here's hoping that you all are doing well, finding your way in this new year, and taking care of you! Until next time....be safe, be happy, be kind, and I hope you find your own pretty purple thing.