HOW TO STAY YOUNG

Making the e-mail rounds:

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay "them "

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And the devil's name is senility.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person, who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9 Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county; to a foreign country but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them , at every opportunity.

What The......?

(via Superdickery)


Note: Day two without TV or Internet. Not being able to jump on the Internet anytime I want to is turning out to be more difficult than not having television. My husband and I are enjoying the quiet that comes with not having a television but no Internet access? It's killing me. If the company we are using right now wasn't the best of the three available here I would tell them to go screw themselves. You know this "one to seven days" thing is just a way for this company to keep their customers from changing their e-mail address easily because they (the company) consider it a pain in the butt. Their company motto should be: Our Customers Are Always Last.

I'm A Soul (Wo)man

You Are an Old Soul

You are an experienced soul who appreciates tradition. Mellow and wise, you like to be with others but also to be alone. Down to earth, you are sensible and impatient. A creature of habit, it takes you a while to warm up to new people. You hate injustice, and you're very protective of family and friends A bit demanding, you expect proper behavior from others. Extremely independent you don't mind living or being alone. But when you find love, you tend to want marriage right away. Souls you are most compatible with: Warrior Soul and Visionary Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Television:

A medium - so called because it is neither rare nor well done.
-Ernie Kovacs




We disconnected the satellite television dish again today. When will we learn?

Old Dogs

...like old shoes, are comfortable. They might be a bit out of shape and a little worn around the edges, but they fit well.
- Bonnie Wilcox, Old Dogs, Old Friends




My dog Kate is now in her eleventh (correction- 12th)year. Her eyes are starting to dull with the beginning signs of cataracts. The fur around her muzzle is either fading in color or turning white. With each passing year the white has creeped farther and farther up her face and has now reached the area around her eyes. She has arthritis in her hips and her knees. When I run my hands over her I feel more bone and less muscle than when she was a puppy. Getting up off the ground when she is cold is more of a struggle these days and her gait is a little stiff when she walks. Being eleven means she is somewhere around 77 years-old in human years. My baby is geriatric.

One thing I know is her mind is as sharp as ever. She is still playful, sneaky when it comes to getting extra food, smarter than my other dog Duke, personable, charming when she wants to be, and stubborn. The stubborn part has become more a part of her personality as she has aged. I see this the most when we are on a walk. Before she was pretty easy going, You want to go that way? OK, let's go that way. Now she is like a tank that cannot be turned that quickly, Kate, this way. Kate, head down and pulling on leash, No, we are going this way.

Then there are the times she makes me laugh with her doggie ways. We had to switch her to a liquid pain medication for her arthritis since the one she was on before tore her stomach up. This medication is measured out in a small plastic syringe which we then have to squirt into her mouth. The first few times I did that she seemed to hate it. Whenever she saw me with the syringe in my hand she would get a Yikes! look on her face and quickly slink out of the room. I would have to follow her and then hold her muzzle while I eased the syringe inside her cheek and then slowly push the plunger. After it was over she would wag her tail and run back to the kitchen to wait for her breakfast.

After seeing Kate's reaction to this procedure my husband suggested that we put the medication in Kate's food instead of squirting it into her mouth. I agreed so that morning I put a dab of yogurt on top of her food and squirted her medication into that. Kate sniffed her food and then walked away. I called her back and she turned around, came back, sniffed her food, looked up at me, then walked away. I called her back one more time and she went through the same routine. She stood over by the refrigerator giving me the same look she does when she is waiting for a treat after her dinner. I looked at her a minute then picked up her syringe, filled it with water, dipped the end into the yogurt, walked over to her, squirted the water into her mouth and stood back. She wagged her tail, trotted over to her food dish, and started eating.

That's when I figured out what was going on. Kate liked the taste of the medicine (it has a very stinky smell), what she didn't like was the syringe in her mouth. The last time she had stomach problems she stopped eating and drinking. When we took her to the vet she was so dehydrated he put her on a saline drip. Then he told me to give her 40cc of water every hour for the next two days to help rehydrate her completely. The only way to get the water into her was by using a large syringe. Kate hates the syringe but loves the taste of the medicine. She has connected her very tasty medicine with the syringe. So, every morning she get a squirt of medicine right before her breakfast.

Book 'em Danno!

Murder one.
-Steve McGarrett in Hawaii Five-0


While I was ill I spent a lot of my time watching TV. One thing about watching TV when you are sick is that stuff that would normally annoy the hell out of you when your are well kind of lose their annoyance factor. This is how I ended up watching CSI Miami repeats every day for almost two weeks. Usually I can not stand CSI-M because two of the actors in this show drive me crazy.

The actor who irritates me the most is David Caruso as Horatio H. Caine. This guy has a serious Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett in Hawaii Five-O vibe going on. Both of these guys take themselves and their acting way to serious. Being intense all the time is not acting. Plus I always wonder what kind of accident hurt Caruso in such a way as to not let him hold his head up and face a person straight on when he is talking to them. He always stands sideways when talking to someone and keeps his head down and at the same time turned toward the person he is talking to. That has got to hurt after a few takes.

Today I watched an episode from 2003, Blood Brothers, which told the story of a man who commits murder but cannot be arrested because he has diplomatic immunity. Why does he have immunity? Because the United States had made a deal with his father, the leader of some small country in the middle east, to allow this country (USA) to send suspected terrorists to his country to have them tortured to get information that our government (USA) needs in their war against terrorism. Sound familiar? I will point out again that this was first broadcast in 2003.

Now, we have a president who has insisted in the past (2005) that we (USA) do not torture people. He must have forgotten about this. As Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune pointed out in his column yesterday , Bush's statement that we (Americans) do not torture is ... the most convincing declaration by a president since Bill Clinton told the nation, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Then there is his attempt to get around the Geneva Conventions rules against torture. Today he was stopped, sort of. The American government would comply with the rules under the Geneva Conventions but the CIA would not be prosecuted for any illegal tactics they did use before today at those secret detention sites they don't have overseas. So, in the end, Bush got what he wanted and this f'ing farce know as the Bush administration keeps on playing.

Stress

Definition- Any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or anxious. What is stressful to one person is not necessarily stressful to another.

Yesterday morning I took the dogs for a walk and then fed them when we got home. About an hour later Kate came up to me whinnying and trembling. I could see pain in her eyes. When I reached out to touch her she pulled away and went across the room to lie down and then instantly got up again. I followed her into the bedroom where she got into her bed and, again, instantly got up and hurried out of the room. I caught up with her in the living room and started to examined her. That's when I noticed she had her backend all hunched up. When I ran my hands over her belly the muscles there felt very tight. Since she is old (12 years) and she has had stomach troubles because of her medications I immediately called her vet. I was also worried that she might be having intestinal troubles or that Duke had porpoised her (ramming his muzzle into her) causing some sort of injury.

After a 45 minute drive we made it to the vet clinic where Kate was poked, prodded and thoroughly examined. She also had a rectal exam in order to obtain a fecal sample to check for blood in her stool. Every thing looked good but the vet did think her belly was a little swollen. Since her bowel sounds were good the vet sent her home with instructions that I bring her back if she vomited or showed signs of greater distress. Kate was so stressed out by whatever was wrong with her and by being in the vet office that she was given a tranquilizer to help calm her down before we left.

When we got home she was a little better but still would not stay in one spot for long and kept following me around for the next couple of hours. Then she finally lay down and went to sleep. This is when I noticed I had two phone messages on my answering machine.

They were both from my sister in Denver. She had been in a car accident on the way to work that morning. It happened about the time I was pulling into the parking area of the vet clinic. An eighty-year-old man had made a left turn directly in front of her. She remembered seeing him pull into the turn lane but did not think anything of it. The next thing she knew he was in front of her and she was slamming on her brakes. Later she realized she had stepped on the brake petal right at the moment of impact. The cars hit head on and both airbags inflated. The impact was forceful enough to cause the front bummer on my sister's car to fall off, the hood to crumple and the engine to drop. She also told me that when the two cars hit his car bounced backward. Both my sister and the old man were taken to the hospital. My sister had aches and bruises caused by the impact of the air bag and the seat belt she was wearing. The eighty-year-old man was banged-up a little more because of the thinness of his skin.

In this cell phone age of ours my sister ended up being the first person to call 911 to report the accident. One of the paramedics told my sister that either they or the old man, I don't remember which, had called his daughter and she had said her father had just sent her something, an article maybe, about another 80-year-old man who no longer made left hand turns, only right ones, when he was driving because it was dangerous at his age.

The AMA points this out in this online article:

Declines in these functions (Vision,Cognition, Motor) make older drivers vulnerable to crashes in complex situations that require good visual perception, attention, and rapid response. As a result, older drivers are more likely to experience crashes at intersections, especially when a left-hand turn is involved.

I haven't talked to my sister this morning but she was warned that she would be feeling the full effect of this accident tomorrow- lots of muscle aches and pain. She was planning to going to work this morning and then take the afternoon off.

I don't know how the old man is doing, I hope he is OK.

My dog Kate, after a restless night, seems to be doing better this morning. She had eaten and is drinking water, both good signs.

Me, I am just tired.

Dog Is A Good Old Cat

...people what you think of that?
-Norma Tanega

George Carlin's Views on Aging

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.

"How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

"How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . .YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I Was JUST 92."

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!

Health

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
-Mark Twain

I am still sick. I think I have the honest to goodness flu. Not an intestinal virus that most people call " the stomach flu" (no such thing) but the real, starts in your throat, settles in your sinuses, slips into your chest, fever inducing, head pounding, appetite losing, energy draining, lasts more than a week, flu. I feel better than I did a week ago but anytime I try to do something I start feeling a little weak and dizzy and then need to rest for awhile.

I want to thank you all for the comments and expressions of sympathy that you left during the past week. Nice to know so many care. I feel up to reading again and plan to work my way through my Blogs I Read list this week. Then, if I feel up to it, writing more myself later in the week. Take care now.

I'm Very, Very Sick

Spent the Labor Day weekend in Denver and brought something back with me yesterday. I will be back here when I am feeling better. See you then.

Done To Soon

Dorothy Harmsen, 1914-2006

Bob Mathias, 1930-2006

Steve Irwin, 1962-2006

And each one there
Has one thing shared:
They have sweated beneath the same sun,
Looked up in wonder at the same moon,
And wept when it was all done
For bein’ done too soon.
-Neil Diamond

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night.

- Snoopy, well know author



We had an intense fast moving storm come through last night. When I looked out my bedroom window this morning I saw this section of a tree lying in the street just around the corner from me. I got dressed and walked over to take a look at it. I laughed when I saw the orange traffic cones surrounding this enormous branch.

Elderly man in a faded red beat-up old pick-up truck dives toward big branch. When he is ten feet away from it he slams on his brakes and slides another five feet before coming to a stop.

OLD MAN: Gall Darn It! Good think they put those orange traffic cones around that thing. I almost didn't see it!