We Are Soldiers (a serious note) continued...part two

Once a year we all come out of the trenches for a moment and we join together; we march, we walk. In over 600 towns across this country, we gather in groups and walk to show our support for all the work that is being done to fight this horrible disease. We march in memory of loved ones, in honor of those who are being cared for and in celebration of the efforts put together to raise awareness and funds to help us with this battle. It’s a day of reminding ourselves that we are not alone and that we are making a difference. If you would like to help and join forces in time, support or even with finances, you can go to www.alz.org and look for the Walk To End Alzheimer’s in your area. There are many teams from healthcare organizations, caregivers and families. For my mom, Ann Perry, we are www.thememoryjoggers.com .

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the funds to help out financially.  There are other organizations that require nothing more than a click . One great organization that is working hard to get the government to increase the funding for Alzheimer’s research is http://www.usagainstalzheimers.org  .This is a powerful group that is really starting to make things happen by making our government understand the epidemic situation we are facing and the economic impact it will have on our future. Another that I love is the grassroots campaign to get a postage stamp (much like the one for breast cancer) for Alzheimer’s. These type stamps have raised millions in the past. That site is https://www.facebook.com/HelpStampOutAlzheimers  .Whatever you can do, do it. Do it for those you love and do it for future generations so that years from now, the Walk to End Alzheimer’s will be nothing more than a distant memory.

We Are Soldiers (a serious note)

For those of you who have had an experience with someone with Alzheimer’s, you are fully aware of the toll it can take on you. I recently saw pictures of soldiers that had been in Afghanistan; they were before and after pictures. It was obvious that the constant worry and stress of their situations as well as the loneliness of missing their loved ones back home, had taken its toll on them. It reminded me a bit of what I see in the mirror every day. I know I haven’t had to go through the horrors of what our soldiers have gone through and I haven’t had the stress of literally fearing for my own life on a daily basis, but in the mirror, I can see what a long drawn out battle has done to me and the toll it has taken.

I can see it in the faces of people who are taking care of their parents and their spouses.  We are at war; we are in a battle. We are fighting something bigger than ourselves that we cannot defeat. Our days are long and drawn out and we are forced to do things we never thought we could do mentally or physically. We are fighting a disease that knows no enemies and has never been defeated. We fight to keep our loved ones safe from harming themselves, wandering off, or simply from falling down. We fight to keep them involved while fighting to protect their dignity. We fight our frustrations in them not knowing who we are. We fight the urge to argue when they want to go home even though they are already in their own home. We fight to convince them to do the basics of daily life like changing their clothes when they have been wearing the same clothes day after day. We fight to keep it together when they tell us the same thing every five minutes. We fight to not break down each time they go into the hospital to battle some other illness that could end their lives. We fight to not give up when we are at our wits end and the day has just begun.

We struggle daily with the guilt of our bad decisions and letting someone else help to take care of our loved ones. We worry when we leave them alone with caretakers that they will be watched after and cared for and that no one will show them their own anger and frustration. At night we lie awake and worry about the day we just had and how we will handle the next one. We worry that we are not doing the right thing, or doing enough, or that we might just snap under the pressure. But each day, we gear up and face the battle. We do it to protect our loved ones. We do it because we have to and we want to and we are scared to death not to. The toll it takes on us is great. We can see it in the mirror. We can feel it on the inside. We know we are isolated from many of the people we love as our lives are immersed and focused on making the best of fighting a losing battle. As hard as we try, our minds never really wander away from our task at hand.

 

Just like a soldier that comes back from war, when our loved ones have passed away, we need time. We need time to re-adjust when it is all over. We need time to heal, time to learn how to let go of our experience and time to enter back into the normal thoughts of a day. We are soldiers who have fought the good fight, to defend what we love and believe in. We are battered, shell-shocked and tired, but in time, we will pick up the pieces and find the good to remember and take pride in knowing that we made a difference; we did our best, and even though probably never expressed, it was appreciated. No one can really understand unless they have been through it. We can’t expect them too. What we must do is continue to pursue a happy life that we know our loved ones would so desperately want us to have. We  continue to fight this disease so that future generations do not have to fight this same war for us all over again. We are soldiers, and we have our battle scars both inside and out.

Don't You Hate it When: Smartphone

Don’t you hate it when you interject  yourself into someone else’s conversation only to find that you are in way over your head and that you have no idea what anyone is talking about but you try to keep up anyway and while you are rambling out of control like a train wreck  you start having flashbacks from your childhood when you went down a hill on your bike that went from a steep slope to a ninety degree angle and you were no longer riding your bike but hanging on for dear life which then reminds you of the time that you hopped on the wrong ski slope and you were going so fast that you had no idea how you were ever going to stop and that the most you could hope for was to  fall and not break anything or get run over by the experts but you didn’t want to go ahead and fall and cut your losses because you were  too scared to do it because you knew it was going to be ugly and as you remember all these things you realize that your mouth is still running and that the left side of your  brain has no idea what the ride side of your  brain is talking about and suddenly you hear someone say “Let me see your phone and I can probably figure it out” and as you hand it to them you snap an instant replay tape into your head and recall that everyone was talking about the glitches in their smartphones and that you were also trying to complain but couldn’t answer what you thought the problem was because you didn’t understand any of the lingo so you tried to “wing it” and before you knew it you were heading down that steep hill/ski slope/runaway train and your brain was spinning out of control until everything came to a quick, sudden stop because the person who was holding your cheap phone announced “This isn’t a smartphone” and everyone is silent and you can hear the clock  ticking on the wall and it hits you that you actually have no idea what makes a smartphone a smartpone and that yours isn’t actually smart at all and may only be average at best,  and that phrase you have heard a million times about “It is better to remain silent and have everyone think  you are an idiot than to open your mouth and confirm it” ,or something like that, starts running through your head and it bothers you that you can never remember  exactly how that phrase goes  which probably is a reflection on how badly you should not ever try to use that phrase as you are only acting out the words as you speak them offering up yourself as a  personal example for the phrase and all you want to do is find a computer so that you can Google “what makes a smartphone a smartphone”  and you try to end the conversation by shaking your phone to make it work better and all you can think about is that it would be a perfect time for somebody to break out into a flash mob to “All You Single Ladies” but it is not happening so you just shake your phone harder while the people you were talking to watch  and that tingling part of your brain is thinking all by itself wondering how you could make everyone within earshot forget the last five minutes or why there isn’t something like “rapture on demand” or how cool it would be if Harry Potter’s cloaking device was real and the next thing you know you realize that your mouth is still running while your brain is having its own internal audit…? Yeah, I hate it when that happens.

 

Cutting Back

Cutting back

 

 

I had to go to the doctor yesterday just for a routine check up and he informed me that it was that magic time of my life when I needed to get a physical. Yeah, I don’t see that happening any time soon.  Anyway, at the end of the appointment he said those six little words that I have never heard from a doctor before, “You need to lose 20 lbs”……………how could he tell? I had on my “hide-a-fat” clothes the whole time and he never grabbed my love handles….oh yeah, the scales…those darn scales! He went on to add, “Do you remember where you were 10-15 years ago?  You were 35lbs lighter. Let’s start with 20lbs.”  I felt  horrified and insulted...I was horrisulted.

 

I couldn’t believe it. It seems that pretending I am in shape while overeating isn’t doing the trick. So last night, while watching TV,  I was thinking about all this and what I was going to have to do . I heard the timer go off in the kitchen so I sat down my bowl of chocolate peanut butter ice cream (with an extra spoonful of peanut butter for flavor) and went into the kitchen to check on my blackberry/blueberry/raspberry cobbler (it needed ten more minutes) and gave my crockzilla full of cabbage/bean/Italian sausage soup a stir and then went back into the den, sat back down and picked up my bowl of ice cream. I thought about it all and realized that it was time, time to make a change. I consider myself to be health conscious and it was time to make a difficult yet important decision about cutting unnecessary things out of my life. It was time to find a new doctor…Bon appétit !

 

Dear People: Getting the boot, getting the pill

Dear Personal Trainer Guy (who is not on my payroll),

Thank you for pointing out to me…and your client…and everyone else standing around that my brand new, favorite exercise that I do at least twice a week is called the “fat man’s pull-up”…nice. A little side note here, I didn’t ask you what it was called. You came up and asked if you and your client could work in with me while I was doing the FMPU. Your client got a kick out of it, grrrr, you almost got a kick out of it, right in the seat of your high tech, water wicking sweat pants.

Now I am perrynoid. What else am I doing? My workouts are pretty much a morphed version of some kind of exercise that are a cross between what I CAN do and what I am WILLING to do. My fear is that there are names for my other marxercises. Am I doing the “lazy leg press”, “chubby chest press”, “girlie glutes”, “crack head crunches” , “the pansy pushup”…the list goes on and on in my head. I may just have to make up my own names and announce them while I am doing them. I can hear me know, “Wow, this Def Con Dip I am doing it going to hurt tomorrow, especially after that set of Power Ranger Pull-ups.” Wait a minute…I think Power Ranger Pull-ups are a brand of training diapers for little boys….never mind…that’s not so impressive. Hmmm, I may end up doing more harm than good. Maybe I might just recommend to “said trainer” that such negative names for exercises are not the best choice for him to use in his chosen profession, especially since he works with a lot of overweight people. I also need to start stretching so that I can get my foot up higher just in case I might need to kick “said trainer” in the seat of his high tech pants.

Dear Yaz Telemarketer,

No, I have not been using Yaz, the female birth control pill. Thanks for calling me for the second time and letting me know about the harmful side effects of this pill designed for young girls 14 and up ( but not recommended for anyone over the age of 35), that treats acne and also allows them to sleep around responsibly. But no, I have different plumbing and have no use for this product and do not need to be part of the pending class action lawsuit. On the other hand, if I do start to notice headaches, swelling, dizziness, blood clots, chest pain or if I have a heart attack or a stroke, I will keep your number and have someone call for me. I could have been drugged and not known it; you never know. Is that how you got my name and cell phone number? Really…how did you get my name and number? Did someone turn me in? Has someone Yaz-roofied me and then confessed? Should I be perrynoid? I’ll bet it was someone at the gym. Somebody saw me doing my 10lb dumb bell curls and my overhead press that looks more like a cheerleader move and slipped me a Yaz-roofie in my strawberry flavored water (darn you Dasani and your delicious fruity flavored water)….I never tasted a thing…except strawberry. This explains everything. My inability to gain muscle, my 14 year old girl arms….it’s all coming together now. While I have been at the gym surrounded my juicing, testosterone reeking gym rat comrades, I have been “unjuicing” with and strawberry flavored estrogen cocktail. OMG…I’ve been Yazzercising!

Hmmmm, maybe I should CSI this and come to the conclusion that this is all that trainer’s fault…that’s got to be it. I’m going to start stretching today. I’ve got some very high, seemingly rock hard glutes to kick; I may need some boots. If any of you see me walk in to the gym in the near future wearing combat boots, you will know what is about to go down.

The Evolution of Art

A new scientific breakthrough has happened and it has left  the art world spinning. The Sistine Chapel has long been cursed with water and dampness issues. Parts were rebuilt and redesigned early on, as water runoff became a big problem in this structure. Mold was also a problem that they had to deal with, in what is one of the most beautiful interior buildings in the world. Recently, while looking to clean areas around the artwork on the ceiling, scientists were brought in to figure out some unusual looking areas on the paintings. What they discovered is that what we currently know about those famous paintings may be completely wrong. The discoveries were of several types of mold but there are three that have opened up and whole new Pandora's box in the scientific and art communities.

The first, for reader's sake, we will call the "red mold". You can see here that it is a true red and is considered to be in the "slime mold" family. It loves damp, wet areas.

 

. The next mold we will call the "yellow mold". Yellow mold can also be one of the slime molds. Yellow mold,  like the red mold, also loves places that stay damp and moist.

 

 The third type of mold is the blue mold. The blue mold is called a "mildew mold" and just like the other molds, thrives in damp areas.

 These threes molds were all found in the ceiling and other areas of the Sistine Chapel and were growing on the plaster as well as the stone. So what does all of this mean? Why is this important? This is why: these are the three primary colors. At several points in the investigation , scientists noted an overlap of the molds thus creating every color in the color spectrum. Some areas resembled sunsets while other areas looked like green fields and flowers, much like the works of Monet. Upon further investigation of the ingredients in the plaster, scientists have come to the conclusion that what we have considered for so long to be the  work of artist Michelangelo, is  a lie. One cornerstone of the structure was studied and an embedded fossil was found that dated 500,000 years old. It seems the structure must have been started many years ago by prehistoric man. Wood tested in the beams was found to be over 1,000 years old. It is now believed that the Sistine Chapel may have been the inspiration for Solomon's Temple built about 2,500 years ago. We have no exact date on the building of the Sistine Chapel other than it was built in stages . It seems the written history of this building has been handed down and reinterpreted to fit the story of the church congregation that moved into it. Even though the occurrences post 1470's are probably true, the creation of the building, the real history of who built it and the origins of the art on the ceiling are up for new interpretations.

 

What is important about all of this is that Scientists have been able to conclude that the molds, over hundreds of years, slowly blended and grew and morphed into what we see on the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel. What we have generally thought to be the works of the artist Michelangelo, are simply the creations of mold over hundreds of years. Part of what we see is our brain making sense of it all and "filling in the blanks" of the visual field.

 

Michelangelo was a sculptor and we know did some plaster work there in that old building. We know he was an artist. It is now thought that once he saw the molds he took claim of them as his own paintings. It is a bit staggering to realize that all those beautiful scenes up on the ceiling are merely the accidental mixing of different types of mold, but science has proved it. There are also naturally occurring pigments that have come in through rain, evaporation, heat,pollens, etc. Some theorist believe that Michelangelo may have added some pigments to help brighten or shape some of the pictures that had already been created.

 

The art world is stunned and many are fighting this discovery to the bitter end. Some artists, even educated ones, are refusing to believe what science can prove. Many say that these two dimensional pieces of art are just too complex to be accidental mold configurations. Lobbyist for the scientific community are currently working hard , before it even hits the press, to get the creators of textbooks in our public schools changed. Leaders in the education unions are behind this, claiming we can no longer stand by and give Michelangelo credit for something that just happened by accident. Years from now, after the history books have been rewritten and the younger generations are taught the truth about the Sistine Chapel and the origins of its colorful ceilings, I have a feeling the older generations and some religious factions will still be holding on to what they were taught when they grew up. No amount of scientific evidence or proof will make them budge. I am not sure why they will be like this, but I predict it. Let's face it, you can't argue with science, its findings, or how it is interpreted. It might be a bit hard to believe that those works of art "just happened" but it could happen and it did happen. They are just colors on plaster.

 

Millions of dollars of funding has been provided from the United States for research to see if possibly these molds do have some level of intelligence which could open up and whole new world of research. This new approach to looking at art could change everything we know about art today. To some, the works on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel will never look the same. For some, those images will bring about even more wonder and amazement and to others they will have lost their appeal because the "art" has gone from being created by a skilled artist to just being patches of mold that were allowed to roam free and collide.

I'm Chipper

I know better than to have any kind of “snacky” food in the house. I obsess over it like it is something that needs to be checked off of some kind of “to do” list. My recent obsession was a box of Frosted Mini Wheats. I’ve had a long running relationship with these little critters. They actually never make it to a bowl of any kind; I just eat them like popcorn…highly frosted, packed in calorie popcorn. I eventually vowed to break off this relationship as it was causing more harm than good.

So yesterday I had a giant box of Frosted Mini Wheats sitting in the passenger seat, wearing a seatbelt (don’t judge). I am still a bit paranoid after the road kill incident from the other night. Heaven forbid I should have to hit the brakes and lose an entire box of candied wheat (I have a strict “no eating off the floor mat” policy).

I am not sure if I was telling myself that I would just have one or two every now and then when I got the munchies or not. I know better. I knew that box was going to be empty by the end of the day. I am also not sure why they were there. It’s not like I was on some kind of road trip and might have to go for miles without seeing a gas station or something (do those areas even exist anymore) but I had my survivalist box of Frosted Mini Wheats there by my side…just in case.

Once that box was opened, it was all over. I was riding down the road running through those tasty squares and happy as the city wood chipper the week after Christmas. At the end of the day, there was Frosted Mini Wheat shrapnel all over the car. When I got out of the car in the gym parking lot last night, after a fifteen minute sugar coma nap, I noticed that I had a mini wheat up on my dashboard. I have no idea how it got up there. I opened the back door to get out my gym bag and there on the back seat was another mini wheat. Seriously? How in the world did it get back there? Did I, at some point, just start throwing them at my face? Oh my word; I hope I am not on someone’s Facebook page today in a video titled “ The human woodchipper”. It’s a good thing I don’t have any kids. They would hate me. Their bags of Cheerios and Fruitloops would never make it through a church service…as a matter of fact, they would probably arrive at church with empty bags.

I was worn out when I got to the gym. I was blaming it on the fact that I had just taken in month’s worth of sugar in a matter of hours but it could have been all that chewing. I was exhausted. New rule: no more desert cereals allowed. I wish Kroger had a way of cutting a person off. You know, like a way you could go online and set up an account and put a list of things on there that it won’t let you buy. I think that might work. It would be like, if I tried to buy something on the hit list, it would sound an “alarm of shame” and not let me scan the item. I know it sounds extreme but maybe it’s time large corporations took a little personal responsibility for their customers. Maybe it’s time for Kellogg to also step up to the plate and show some personal responsibility and not put Frosted Mini Wheats in such big boxes. Who knows, I might even sue. I am concerned that the increased sugar and subsequent weight gain might be detrimental to my health. Maybe this would be a wakeup call to big business. Personal responsibility, it seems to be a thing of the past and such a hard thing to teach. All I know is that I have got to go to the $5 car wash today with the unlimited time slot vacuum. I have work to do; there is wheat to harvest.