Covid on Campus and Exercise Woes

Thursday morning I sat waiting for the results of a rapid-Covid test because a married couple here on the continuum care campus has it and is under quarantine. Contact tracing of their whereabouts put them within one degree of someone I sat next to at a recent meal and she’d been in their unit with them the day before they got sick. The dining areas in both restaurants were closed (until Monday) and that night they got thoroughly cleaned which included the use of a large ultrasonic UV-C cleaning machine that the company describes at a “dual emitter UV-C sterilizer specifically designed to work in tandem to emit germ deactivating UV energy.” It supposedly cleans the very air we breathe and every surface with lights so strong you can’t look at it without special goggles thus it’s done during times when all good little soldiers are no where around. It’s same machine they use to disinfect airplanes and hospitals. The management applied for a special grant to buy it and this was the first time it was used.

Everything on our calendar got canceled for Thursday including I was supposed to get my apartment cleaned in the morning and I set my alarm at the crack of dawn to be ready for the guy. But he’s the only one trained on our new ultrasonic UV-C machine so I’ve been put on hold while he gears up for being The Germ Terminator. By the end of the day when the results of everyone’s rapid covid tests were known we all breathed a sigh of relief because they proved that the only ones with it are the couple with covid symptoms plus three others who’d been in close contact and tested positive but they don’t have symptoms. All are under house arrest until they test negative again. And yes, the One Degree Woman was one of "the three others."

The rest of us could resume normal routines but masks and public distancing through out the place are required and we can only get our food in to-go boxes until Monday. I’ve already gotten my first boxed meal and it was so good I wouldn’t mind emergence rations every day. In the box was a thick steak to die for (poor choice of words considering), mashed potatoes and broccoli. All we had to do is place an order by phone from a three item menu and then pick it up 30 minutes later, disregarding the normal 11:30 to 1:00 and 4:00 to 7:00 hours when the kitchen is generally serving.

Topic Change: When I moved into this place in October my weight had dropped eight pounds due to the packing and unpacking and forgetting to eat during those craziness days but the holidays put them right back on again. So I dug out my I-pod with my treadmill playlist and I’ve been on that machine every day for the past five days. Going to a gym that is virtually across the hall is handy and when I get off the treadmill I walk the distance of our hall and back to Helen Reddy singing I am Woman and that always makes me feel like---well, I could do anything. Anything but stay on that treadmill for that last song on my playlist...but I'll get there. 

I have such a love/hate relationship with exercise---mostly the latter. I love the fact that it helps me lose weight but I have to work myself up to do it, get thoroughly disgusted with myself. It just doesn’t stick as life style routine. Never has, never will. It’s always been punishment for being fat from the time I was 14 and my mom took me to my first gym aka fat camp where one of the things they did to me was wrap me in wet cloth and stick me in a sauna.

There’s a woman here who is a perky and petite blonde who I nicknamed The Cheerleader the first time I saw here at a tailgate party. She was knitting and throwing her arms up in the air often enough that I was sure she was loosing stitches. Turns out she really was a cheerleader in both high school and college. Married the star quarterback. Divorced the star quarterback. Then she married twice more, both times apparently to nice guys who ended up dying on her. She’s an exercise fiend. She’s always got her Nordic poles with her walking her little feet off outside inside, good weather and bad weather. She says it’s her job to stay healthy and walking with her Nordic poles keeps her arm bones strong. She doesn’t believe in popping pills like I do for my bones. I don’t believe in spending several hours a day doing something I’d absolutely hate.

It the past I had the typical stereotype for cheerleaders in my head---stuck up and shallow---but our cheerleader is nothing like that. Whenever someone new walks into to the cafe` or the lobby she’s on them with a greeting---a regular little welcome wagon. She’s not the least bit shy which I both admire and recoiled from at first. I kept looking for a hidden agenda like maybe she’s noisy and her perky little welcome wagon covered that up. But, nope, she genuinely seems to care about people. For example when she found out I like art she told me about the art professor living here and she made sure to point her out to me when we happened to all be at the same dinner table. The Cheerleader does that sort of thing all the time, matches people up with like interests.

There are two people here on campus who are tuned into what everyone else is doing, and The Cheerleader one of them. If you want to know something you know who to ask. But the two of them are opposing forces. Our cheerleader is all about spreading positive energy and the other is all about spreading discontent.

Since I wrote the above I got a request from the management to go to the office to get a second Covid test because contact tracing---again---put me at a party earlier in the month where someone in attendance just tested positive. I passed this test too, but it makes me want to google where I can get a bi-hazardous suit so I can socialize without fear that we're playing Russian Roulette.  ©

My latest 600 piece jigsaw puzzle, started is Saturday night, finished Monday morning. Fairly easy but still fun and different than others.

Jump Ropes, Book Club and Flowers

Next week is my bi-annual appointment with my internist and it’s been the driving force in making me go to the YMCA to help me lose the weight I gained recently. When I saw him last fall I was up five pounds since spring, then I added another four over the holidays and I knew he wouldn’t ignore that kind of weight gain two appointments in a row. Well, guess what! He’ll never know. I’m back to the same weight I was a year ago. He might even praise me for the five (really nine) pound loss and I will light up like a jar of lightning bugs on a warm summer night. It’s not that he’s a tyrant of a doctor, quite the opposite. He’s so nice that I hated the idea of disappointing him with a broken promise. I have a ton more to lose so I’ll try to ride the Diet & Exercise train for as long as I can. Picture me with “Iowa Blackie,” the wandering hobo poet---him with his paper and pens and me with a set of dumbbells.

Going to the gym is fertile ground for people watching and maybe that will keep me going, like Blackie writing about the people he met as he rode the rails across the country. For example, I haven’t seen people jumping ropes since grade school but they're a common sight at the Y. The ropes they use aren’t like the clothes lines we used back in the good old days. They come in different materials: plastic beaded, "licorice" whips, clothe, vinyl cords, cables, leather and with lights embedded---$5.00 to $80.00. You pick a rope by the surface where you’re going to jump and the speed you want to do it at. Lighted ropes are for night but they would be good in public places. Those wire-thin cable jump ropes are so hard to see when in action that I didn’t even realize that’s what people were doing the first few times I saw them used at the gym. I thought they were just jumping up and down. Online there are plenty of directions for how to jump rope and for picking the right length rope. (With one foot standing on it, you lift the handles and they shouldn’t go past your armpits.) How did we ever manage to learn how to jump rope before the internet? 

A good jump rope workout, according to what I’ve read, is ten minutes which burns 135 calories. How depressing is that? A scoop of vanilla ice cream is 137 calories. You’d have to jump two hours for a banana split. Still, I wanted to try. How hard can it be? I thought, remembering my days on the playground where we 'Double Dutch' jumped. (Two girls twirled two ropes while two other girls jumped in unison.) Fast forward sixty-five years to this week when I tried jumping rope again and I couldn’t propel myself up in the air more than a half inch off the floor! I was glad no one was around to see my feeble attempts. And I felt ashamed of myself for laughing in my head at Boxer Boy, a kid in his early twenties at the gym who wears a baggy hoodie with the hood pulled up over his head and so close around his face that no one could ever pick him out in a lineup. He couldn’t keep the rope going more than six-seven times before missing the rhythm. He’d alternate his jumping attempts with shadow boxing using five pound dumbbells and he must have been boxing with a pretend comic book character because his verbal sound effects echoed around the strength training room, “Wham!” “Bam!” “Pow!” 

This week my book club met and we discussed Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. With 531 pages, at first I dreaded reading it but it was easily polished off in a week because it was so good I couldn’t put it down. It was set during WWII when the Nazis occupy France. The two main characters were: 1) A blind French girl whose family took part in the Resistance by broadcasting coded messages to the Allies, and 2) a German boy who had a talent for working with the new-back-then radio technology and he was assigned to a unit that tracked down where the radio transmissions were coming from so they could be destroyed. Half the group didn’t finish the book but we still had an interesting discussion void any of the disagreements we’ve had with a few other books. And for the bonus round, I got a chocolate rabbit from the facilitator of the book club for having an April birthday. Even when I try to avoid them, temptations keep finding me!

I came home from book club to find a bouquet of flowers on my porch from my oldest niece. She is so thoughtful and loving, not just to me but to everyone. The arrangement has miniature pussy willows in it and I’m hoping I can root them to plant outside. We had them in our yard and at our cottage when I was growing up and if there is such a thing as comfort flowers (like comfort foods) pussy willows, lily of the valley and lilacs would be mine. All and all, the week ended so much better than it started and it’s not over yet. Friday I’m having lunch with friends I’ve known for nearly fifty years. They’re in town from out of state and I always feel honored when I’m included on their list of people to see while they’re here. ©

 

World Champions with Jump Ropes

Red Hats, Purses and Stair Climbing

High winds on Sunday made the neighborhood and beyond lose power for five hours. The outside temperature was in the low ‘40s so I knew the water pipes wouldn’t burst nor would the dog and I freeze to death. I put on two layers of clothing and struggled to get a sweater on the dog who no doubt thinks his naked body is too cute to cover up, then I snuggled down in bed for a reading marathon. That’s making lemonade out of lemons; my book club meets next week and without the power outage I might not have finished the book. Within ten minutes of the power coming back on, the cable went out. I had heat and lights, thankfully because it was getting dark but no computer, Wi-Fi, landline or TV for the rest of the evening. It was 1950 all over again, trying to find something on the radio to fill the house with noise. Silence in the day light is one thing, but something altogether different after dark.

I’ve missed so many Red Hat Society teas lately that I made a real effort to get to Wednesday’s and I will do the same with the St. Patrick’s Day lunch later in the month. There were eleven of us in attendance and I found out they’ve been planning a three day trip to the other side of the state---to the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village and a car factory tour. I doubt I’ll go. Been there, done all that several times and the idea of carpooling around Detroit with old women who may (or may not) be over estimating their driving skills in a strange town isn’t my cup of tea. On the way to the meeting I got trapped behind an old woman who was driving 15 miles an hour on a hilly, curvy road with a posted speed limit of 38 miles per hour. There was no place to get around her for two long miles! If I ever get to the point where I’m driving less than half the speed limit I hope some kindly police officer will stop me and call the Old Fogy's Brigade to get me off the roads. Heck, a cop on a bicycle could have caught up with that woman! 

Have you heard of The Purse Project? I hadn’t until the Red Hat Society tea. You take a gently used purse and pack it with things that would be useful to a woman living on the streets. A local Woman’s City Club spearheaded the project in town and the first year they distributed 75 purses, the second year 150. We’re going to contact them and see if we can donate packed purses. For many years at Christmas time we’ve had a similar project of packing shoe boxes for homeless veterans and all of us in attendance were enthusiastic about taking part in the Purse Project. I can’t image living on the streets but it could happen to anyone. Back during the banking meltdown that started at the tail end of the Bush Administration, Don and I were in real danger of losing our healthcare insurance and pension. The stress was a ball-buster---if I'd had a pair but saying an 'ovary-buster' just doesn’t evoke the same visual, does it. Anyway, our healthcare benefits and pension did get cut down but, thankfully, those safety nets are still in place for me. However, I’d seen enough people struggle through bankruptcies when I was a mentor in the stroke support community to know that no matter how well off you think you're doing financially, a major medical crisis paired with no insurance can put you at the mercy of the gods of spit and vinegar to keep you from moving to a highway underpass. 

Well, isn’t that a Debby Downer thought. On to something more upbeat. If anyone had told me two weeks ago that I would be able to walk up three LONG flights of steps and back down again and do it four days in a row---one foot in front of the other rather than always leading with my left---I wouldn’t have believed them. I’ve been doing the left lead on steps for well over two decades. Strength training is working! I’m also now up to 30 minutes on the treadmill. I’ll be adding five minutes every third time I go to the YMCA. My trainer says, for me, that distance and speed aren’t as important as lengthening my time spent on the treadmill. Still, I have a hard time ignoring those numbers. Once when the William Tell Overture played on my iPod, I actually RAN for 30-40 seconds before I had to punch the machine back down to a safe speed so I didn’t go flying off the end like a cartoon lady. That day when I left the treadmill I sat in a chair at the head of the last set of stairs going down to the locker room and I must have looked as tired as I felt because someone passing by asked if I was okay. “I’m just resting up to tackle that staircase,” I said, “but thanks for asking.” The elevator with its shiny, stainless steel doors was calling my name like a would-be lover trying to seduce me with roses and champagne, but I got up and made my way down the steps instead. ©

Serendipitous Inspiration

Saturday morning I couldn’t decide if I needed a shower or not before taking myself out to lunch on a dark, raining day. Dermatologists don’t recommend daily showers for old people if you’re not doing stuff to get sweaty and dirty. Our thinning skin apparently is chronically too dry which exposes us to all kinds of nasty skin ailments, the least of which is wrinkles. I don’t care about wrinkles but I’d like to avoid cracking skin and eczema, thank you very much, so I listen to my doctor. I hadn’t been doing much but sitting at the computer so I stuffed my iPod buds in my ears and made a decision to get sweaty with music and exercise so I’d have a good reason to hit the shower. 

It felt good to listen to my old 'power walking' playlist. In my world that meant it was time to strut around inside my house, arms swinging and knees pumping high. I stop at certain places where I have something to hold on to to do a few leg lifts, squats or old-people dance moves---anything to get my heart rate up and my muscles working. My 'power walking' playlist includes: Stayin’ Alive, The 5^th of Beethoven, The William Tell Overture, Night Fever, Gangham Style, Hooked on Tchaikovsky and All These Things That I’ve Done. As you might guess I don’t have any ‘50s music on my iPod and I dread the day when I’m in a nursing home and the activity director thinks she’s doing a good thing by flooding the place with Elvis, Pat Boone and Bobby Darin. That’s what they do---match the music to the era in which the majority of their residents came of age. Actually, I should have ended that sentence with, “I dread the day when I’m in a nursing home.” Well, I’m not there yet and I’d better not forget it!

Exercise is supposed to be good for your mental health, too, a perk that I could use right now. I haven’t been doing much since last spring which is one of the reasons why I dug out my iPod and put it on the charger a few days before resurrecting my old power walking routine. According to HelpGuide.com exercise “promotes all kinds of changes in the brain, including neural growth, reduced inflammation, and new activity patterns that promote feelings of calm and well-being. It also releases endorphins, powerful chemicals in your brain that energize your spirits and make you feel good. Finally, exercise can also serve as a distraction, allowing you to find some quiet time to break out of the cycle of negative thoughts that feed depression.” I’ve always hated exercise but I’m willing to get out that big ugly gun to ward off the winter blues that I’ve somehow managed to acquire in August.

As I do my power walking around my house the dog thinks I’m the Pied Piper and there’s a good reason for that. I leave a trail of dog treats as I move through the house so Levi will stay behind me instead of getting in front of me the way he does when we do “doggie dancing.” (And why I don’t play more music in the house is a mystery I need to solve. It does lift my spirits.) The only song Levi gets to hear is, Stand by Me. I used to play it on my computer every night as a way of entertaining my husband and exercising the dog with obedience commands disguised as dance moves---leg weaves, circles, standing up on two legs, walking backward and forward. We’re not good at it like you'd see in dog dancing competitions---I shouldn't even call what we do dancing---but my goal was never perfection but rather to have fun and giving the dog five minutes of undivided attention. Since last winter we’d only been doing it three-four times a month and I need to give that activity back to him more often, if only because he’s got a more boring life than I do. 

Do you believe that inspirational messages come into our lives when we need them in a serendipitous manner or do you believe they’re always out there like white noise, ignored until our minds and hearts are ready to accept the lessons they teach? After I wrote the first draft of this post I was on Facebook where one of my friends had just posted a video of a Chinese guy in his eighties. I scrapped the original ending so I could write about Deshun Wang, a man who took up doing an intense workout late in life. He also walks the fashion catwalk with kids a quarter of his age---his gray hair flowing down to his shoulders and looking full of life. His easy smile and kick-ass attitude earned him the nickname of the ‘hottest grandpa’ and he became an instant internet sensation.

He says in the video, “At 80 I still have something left in me. I still have dreams to achieve. Believe me, potential can be explored. When you think it’s too late, be careful you don’t let that be your excuse for giving up.” Now, that’s an inspirational message I truly needed to hear! I've spent my entire life working towards goals and dreams but since my husband died I’ve let my age limit my dreams. I don’t have enough time left to do such and such, I’ve told myself. What’s the point of trying? Watching one video, of course, can’t change the trajectory of anyone's life but Mr. Wang gives me mega much to think about. How about you? Do you let your age edit the potentials you could explore? ©

Fitbit Mania

I’ll admit it. I’m in love with my new Fitbit. If you’ve been living under a rock you might not be aware of this monitoring device you wear on your wrist and it syncs to your smart phone or computer to give you fascinating statistics as often as you care to look. You can also go to the Fitbit community and compare your statistics with others people’s---sleep patterns, pulse rates, steps you take in a day, your calories in vs. calories out and what color unit you bought. I got the plum Charger HR. The first thing I found out is it takes me 70 steps to go from my computer to the bathroom and back again. If I was willing to walk to the gas station’s bathroom several blocks away, think how much more exercise I’d get. I pee a million times a day.

In my first week of wearing the Fitbit I didn’t change my routine, didn’t add or subtract any physical activities from my days---I’m pretty sedentary. I didn’t even take the dog for a walk because it was too hot or rainy all week. Still, I walked more than I imagined just doing average things around the house. Fitbit just sent me an email summary of my first week’s statistics and it read like this: 

Total Steps: 42,270 - 6,039 daily average (I need a smaller house.)

Total Distance: 17.7 miles – 2.53 daily average (No wonder my carpet’s wearing out!)

Total Floors Climbed: 8 – 1 floor daily average (A side benefit of purging stuff in the basement.)

Total Calories Burned: 16,640 – 2,377 daily average 

Total Calories Eaten: 10,124 – 1,446 daily average

Weight Change: 1.4 pounds lost

Average Sleep Duration: 5 hours, 2 minutes – average times awakened 10 

What I like the most about the Fitbit is your ability to see your calories in vs your calories out at any given time of the day (assuming you log your food eaten on your dashboard). It did stop me from eating things late at night a few times which has always been an issue with me. Now that I have a baseline, first week of statistics I want to add steps to my day, assuming the weather is cooperative and I can get outside to walk. And I plan to drop my calorie intake down to a diet mode of 1,000 to 1,100 a day. Then I need to learn how to push a grocery cart one handed otherwise your steps in the store don’t count. Bummer! I do my best walking behind a grocery cart and that’s a great skill to have in case I ever become homeless and need to carry my life around in one. (Yes, I'm an old lady who worries too much.)

I read a thread on Fitbit’s community message board titled: How to tell if you’re addicted to your Fitbit. One woman wrote, “You know you’re addicted when you pace the house at bedtime just to get your goal in.” Ohmygod, I did that once! I was near the 6,000 steps goal I’d set and I wanted to feel the ‘happy dance’ shock go off on my wrist. Even though I knew it was coming, it---well---shocked me. If I’d been carrying a glass of water at the time, it would have been all over me. That worked like Pavlov’s Dog in reverse. I immediately reset my goal to 6,500 steps. Another person wrote that he knew he was addicted to his Fitbit when he first made sure he was sitting down while his Fitbit was charging so he wouldn’t “waste the steps walking without it on.” Ohmygod, I did that too! I thought about posting on the thread that I knew I was addicted to my Fitbit when I woke up in the middle of the night and checked my Fitbit because I wanted to see low my pulse gets when I’ve been asleep. Sixty-one in case you want to compare.

Like most gadgets and devices, I will probably lose interest in my Fitbit when the novelty wears off, but I hope not. I want to keep it going at least until I see my doctor in October when I’ll bring in a few monthly reports from Fitbit and say, “See, I’ve been very good. Now, put a gold star on my Little Old Lady card!” ©