Sunshine on My Shoulders

When I was younger, I never gave much thought to what getting older would look like. I figured I'd never make it past Y2K, being 40 and all. That seemed ancient. My parents were youngsters when they had me, so I was done married and having babies before they got their first wrinkle. 

I've been listening to YouTube videos about brain function (because I'd like to keep some of that) and aging. This week, I heard all sorts of theories and results from the virtues of Vitamin D. Did you know that it's not even a vitamin? It's a hormone or something like that. Either way, all these years, we've been hammered about wearing sunscreen. One of my doctors even told me to put it on me and my children every day in the winter. Now we are hearing that we are all D-deficient and that we need to get out in the sun. Once again, everybody on the planet should be doing most everything that old Dr. Leila Denmark told us to do. She was my children's first pediatrician and she lived to be 113 years old. I assumed it was because she had amazing genes, but it turns out her (many) siblings didn't live nearly that long. She advocated things like fresh air, feeding babies on a schedule, breastfeeding (even when it wasn't cool), and yes, putting your babies out in the sunshine. She told me to build a porch onto our house, screen it and to put my infants out there as much as I could. She also said that they should be out in the open sunshine at least 20 minutes a day, even in the winter. Another thing she advocated was to get off dairy completely, and that a weaned baby did not need milk. "We're not cows, why would we be drinking their milk?" That's what she said. She posited that if we got outside and got all that good Vitamin D, it would muster up the calcium in the food we eat and that nobody needed milk. Some people thought she was crazy. She once told me, when I whined about my baby fat, that I needed to go out in the yard in the morning, dig a hole, then fill it up (all to say that I needed to break a sweat in the morning). Then I was supposed to never snack, and eat only one carbohydrate per meal. Get out in the sun. Drink water, not tea or milk. Be happy. 

I got the "be happy" part right, but hardly anything else. I shoulda listened to her. Then I could be jolly and pain-free all at the same time. 

The Trials of Rhinos, Human and Otherwise

Good night a-livin'...  I've been thinking all day about how imperfect the world is. Whoever came up with that "Murphy's Law" makes me want to laugh. Surely they had a video of my life when they came up with that. If I drop my phone, it's most definitely wobbling its way underneath my car at the gas station. And not close to the edge, but pert-near to the middle and of course I have on a skirt. I don't even fit under there and of course forgot to bring my shepherd's hook. This is the way of it. The whole universe is catty-wampus.

God made it all perfect in the beginning, then Eve decided to eat something she wasn't supposed to. Mama shoulda named me Eve, apparently. I'm trying, I really am, but there are sugar plum fairies on the corner and Sprinkles Donuts is on the way to everywhere. Believe it or not, I was able to get through one day (today) without one drop of sugar. Let's make it two days tomorrow. Don't get excited, I'm not going to the gym yet. One thing at a time. I told Pa last week that I was starting Monday, so we had to eat up everything in the house that had sugar in it by Sunday night. Yeehaw, it's all gone now. I think I gained four pounds in the process. That'll only take a month to remove.

 There are all these tests you can do on the internet, about what kind of body type you are (Mesomorph, Ectomorph, Endomorph -- morph being the operative word here. I apparently need to morph into something other than what I'm currently rocking), what kind of Ayurvedic body you have (Vata, Pitta, Kasha -- I am kind of in the Pittabout my body, and I thought Kasha was some kind of cereal), or if you have an apple, pear or banana-shaped body (really?). There are all these rules about what, when, how much, how often...and then a new set of rules about maybe not eating at all, sometimes for days in a row. And if you do that, you have to add salt and magnesium to your delicious drinking water, in case your electrolytes get whack. Half of us are as fat as Rhinoceros. They eat lily pads and pond scum. What hope do we have? Meanwhile, I'm doing this exercise of envisioning my 10-year-old self, where I was lithe and free, skipping about the pasture like a colt. What happened to her? I liked her a lot and she didn't have to think about all these things. That was the 1970s where everybody was skinny except that one lady at church (it's her glands, honey)... and the word is that something mysterious happened in the 80s and we all got fat. The only mystery I experienced was that I got distracted having four kids in rapid succession and ate a whole lot of Nutty Bars. 

I think that the answer to this is that Pa needs to buy me a swimming hole to put in the backyard. I really think that's it. Then if they would just shut down that Sprinkles place...

Sweet Summer Time

   Sometimes you just need to remember who you were. Life can get way too serious, us being all responsible and grave about our jobs, the future, our cholesterol. I bought some party lights two years ago, dreaming about them being all strung up on my front porch. Somebody told me they'd look tacky. Somebody else said they belonged on the back porch. Well, this last week, me and daughter Liz got everything on that porch pulled off, cleaned, laundered, scrubbed and painted. While all the furniture was languishing in the front yard, looking only slightly tacky, we hung the lights. They'd been waiting patiently in their boxes for their first soiree. Liz stood up on the railing and moved them ten times before we got it right. We danced to Jack Johnson on the iPhone speakers and laughed like kids. Then we got the pond pump cleaned out, filled up all the fountains and turned everything on. When Papa got home, we all sat out there like buzzed puppies, so excited about it. It's really taken some years to get that porch to where I wanted it, but now it's perfect. Southern Living ain't got nothing on us. Think of it, somebody ought to call them on over. 

On another kid note, for Pa's birthday this year, I bought him a used golf cart. It's so cute, and after we got the kinks out, we took her for a whirl tonight. (I'm saying "her." Papa named her Maggie, since we live on Magnolia Street, our house is named "Magnolia Rose" and she needed a name.) We swung down to that new little restaurant, "Roosters" in Villa Rica, ate some yummy comfort food, and then took a tour in our buggy. We cackled and it felt like we were doing something naughty, taking a golf cart to the city streets. The wind kicked through our hair and we saw stuff we had never noticed before. 

Life is short. Find a way to giggle.