Category Archives: Health

Cooking, Great Work, Health, permaculture, Politics, Weather +Climate

Working At It

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                Waning Thanksgiving Moon

All day today at the Sierra Club finishing up the first round of interviews for the new policy position.  A bit much for me in terms of people interaction, though very interesting in terms of the people I met.

Afterward, I had to eat dinner in the city because we ended at 4:3o, the gut of rush hour.  I knew I needed a good hour and a half, so I chose the Red Stag, a full sit-down meal with dessert.  The Red Stag serves local beef, lamb, vegetables and I imagine, fish, though I don’t know that for sure.  The food is excellent.  I had the grilled lamb on chopped leeks with carrots and kale.  Following through on my decision to eat more vegetables and fruit, I have also chosen to eat only half of what I would have normally of the entree.  That means I have a small box of lamb and leeks with one whole carrot of the six on the plate in the fridge.

This time I made it up the driveway with no problem thanks to the quarry derived granite grit I put on the slope yesterday.  The night has turned colder, heading down perhaps below 10 degrees by tonight.  9 degrees Acuweather describes as extreme cold; 4 degrees, predicted for tomorrow night is extremely cold.  These folks are not from here.

Cinema and Television, Family, Health, Retirement

Up Again

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                  Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Here I am, at it again.  Don’t know why this damned tooth/jaw deal has interfered with my sleep this last two nights and not before, but there you are.

Got pretty serious there on the post below, so I’ll try to stay a bit lighter here in the dark.

Finished my Latin, english to Latin, yesterday, early, partly because I got up at 4 am or 5 or whatever.  Went back to bed at 9, got up at 11:30.  The whole day seemed off, sort of out of kilter.  Now I’m up again, an insomniac spurred on by the loss of wisdom.  Which, come to think of it, out to do it.

As Kate comes closer and closer to retirement, January 7th is her date, I can sense a change, a sort of gathering in, nesting beginning.  I just ordered a few books on movies, for example, thinking we might use our Netflix account to watch movies together one night a week, a date but at home.  We’ve also gotten Kate’s quilt operation set up in a sewing room, upstairs, her long arm quilter, downstairs where her sewing room used to be and her piecing table cum storage in the spot we once had a pool table.

We’ve spent a good bit of time, as I’m sure most do, on our retirement finances, a project not yet finished, with my pension numbers yet to come and Kate’s medicare part D, but we’ll finish before the end of December.

Given the adequate, but tight fit of our budget in the coming years, we’ll probably travel less, a thought that at one time would have jarred me, but that now I find manageable.  Short trips to visit family, perhaps longer ones up north or down to Chicago, not quite so far away, so much money.  We’ll save up for a trip or two to somewhere interesting:  Churchill, Ontario, the Southwest, but cruises and foreign travel will be difficult.

In the growing season, of course, we have the bees, the orchard, the vegetable gardens and the flower gardens that we care for together.  We’ll get into the city to the museums, theatre and music more than we have.

Mostly, though, we’ll enjoy each others company and live not a good deal differently from what we do right now.

Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Writing

Night Talk

Leave a comment

Samhain                                   Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Though the pain has subsided, it still keeps me awake without medication.  So, I’m up at 6 am, a rarity for me these days.  When Kate shifts off regular work, no longer comes home around 10 pm, then I’ll go back to an earlier bed time and 6 might not be so unusual.

I understand the attraction of the night.  I feel it myself.  The quiet, the dark has a friendly feel to it, a time when the home becomes a hermitage or a studio or a writing garret, far off from the demands of mundane life.  Reading late has an appeal, the book, the words float up and occupy the whole, not reading anymore, but traveling along, carried on a river of narrative.  Writing has the same free, anchors away momentum.  The ship sails away from the dock, following the rhythm of an ocean current, one that runs just along the border between the conscious and unconscious realm, between the warmer, busier, lighter waters near the surface and the benthic deeps, unvisited, stygian, fecund, down there the ocean reaches its source, the collective unconscious, yet deeper and universally expansive, the holy well from which archetypes, genetic memory, forces creative enough to bring life itself into existence make their slow way.

Night talk.  Or, rather, very early morning talk.

Aging, Great Work, Health, Politics, Weather +Climate

Bad to the Bone

Leave a comment

Samhain                                            Full Thanksgiving Moon

Losing my wisdom impacted my jaw bone.  Bad.  It still hurts.  Very distracting and annoying.

Sierra Club tonight working on a hiring committee and then the Legcom, still trying to suss out what the elections meant.

In a strange way I think the challenge of a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor will make us think again about the whole political process and how we can make things happen.

Very nasty weather headed our way for the day tomorrow, a day when many people travel by car.  Glad I don’t have to go out and Kate only has to go to work and back.

Aging, Health, Retirement

Life

Leave a comment

Samhain                                       Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

Another morning spent worrying our post-retirement budget, trying to make it fit our post-retirement income.  We’ll be able to do it and we’ll be fine: enough to eat, space and place to do things we love, but, like most folks, we won’t have as much as we would like.  Fancy trips don’t look too likely anymore.   Instead we’ll be splurging on long term care insurance, medicare part d and automobile insurance.  See a theme here?

In this recession or technically post recessionary time those are huge pluses.  We’ll be able to contribute to the health of the planet, too, as well as sharing the arts with others, each in our own way.  Life continues and that, by itself, is good.

Health, Sport, Weather +Climate

Extreme Cold?

Leave a comment

Samhain                                         Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

Cool today, even cooler tomorrow.  Then it begins to get chilly near the end of next week, just in time for Thanksgiving.  The accuweather folks call 9 degrees, the predicted low for November 24th, extreme cold.  Hmmm.  Can’t wait to see the adjectives in January.

(now this is extreme cold)

Got a good nights sleep last night, feeling pretty good today.  Just some residual thrumming, a low grade event.

I continue uninterested in the Vikings.  I’m taking this a Sunday at a time, but I feel my football habit beginning to weaken.  Hopefully, by the end of the season it will drop off and leave me alone.  On the other hand the Gopher’s basketball team…

Aging, Health, Politics

Getting Over the Pain

Leave a comment

 

Samhain                                             Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

Well.  A good night’s sleep, little swelling this morning and no discernible pain.  So far this recovery has had no bite other than fatigue and disorientation, some of which continues this morning.  Still taking the ibuprofen but I only used one of the vicodin.

The new political reality has us all shuffling from meeting to meeting, trying to figure out what comes next.  Tomorrow afternoon I’ll attend a meeting of Minnesota progressives (leftists) to discuss the impact on a wider progressive agenda.  It’s not good, at least not in the short run.  If we can use the next two years to define and energize those who would benefit, we could find ourselves stronger in 2012 than we were 2010.  That’s a big if and it will take considerable work to make it happen.

Aging, Health

Here Comes the Pain

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                 Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

The gauze is out and the long acting anesthetic still has control of the pain.  Cold packs on my right every half hour, ibuprofen and vicodin for bedtime.  Should be ok, though tomorrow could be worse than today.  Cheer up, things could be worse.  I cheered up and, sure enough, things got worse.

Right now I’m thinking this recovery will proceed pretty smoothly and I’m happy about that.

Kate sat out in the waiting room, tense, because she knows the things that can go wrong.  Meanwhile, I floated softly as a cloud among the daffodils.

Though I do try to avoid the medical world as much as possible, I am glad we have their work available.  It makes life easier and, often, even possible.

As I’ve written this, the analgesic from the procedure has begun to wear off and my jaw has a touch of ache to it.   It probably will not stay subsided for long now.  Have to roll out the heavier meds.  Not much more clear thinking now.  Adios.

Aging, Health

Apres Versid

Leave a comment

Samhain                                           Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

Woke up on a blue plastic couch, a bit chilly.  A woman filled a syringe, I could see her through a small window.  There was a slight fog in my perception, a kind of garbling to my thought, courtesy of the versid and fentanyl.  Took me a moment to orient myself, feel the gauze on my right, filling up my mouth, giving me an overfull sensation.  A bit later a nurse took my blood pressure, put me in a wheel chair and wheeled me to the elevator then down to Kate who waited in the truck.

Back home now with pain meds.  The teeth came out smoothly which lessens the risk of complications.  A good thing.  Vicodin and ibuprofen for the rest of the day, a bit hazy as the day progresses.

Glad it’s over with and will be even gladder when the healing process finishes.

Aging, Health, Retirement

The Better Part of Wisdom?

Leave a comment

Samhain                                               Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

 

Wisdom teeth.  Well, I still have a couple.  A while back I had the first two yanked out, but the ensuing weekend and week made me hold off on the other two.  Until now.  Faced with the imminent loss of dental insurance, or at least a changed plan, I asked my dentist what he thought I could do now to help my dental health long term.  The wisdom teeth, he said, out.

So, this morning out they come.  I woke up early this morning, a bit nervous I guess.  My goal, in general, is to stay away from the medical profession (except for my lovely wife), but once in a while it’s unavoidable.  Like today.

Wondering about wisdom teeth, I took a quick poke around the web and found a dentistry site that identified wisdom teeth as vestigial.  Interesting.  Seems at one point our diet consisted of much more abrasive material which needed the third molar to help grind it down.  Back then we didn’t need extra fiber in the diet, I’m guessing.  Now jaws stay fuller*, our diet’s smoother and we don’t create space by losing permanent teeth, thanks to modern dentistry.

Around 9:15 the procedure begins.  Oh, boy.

*Until quite recently, our diet included mostly very coarse food, as well as impurities such as dirt and sand. This coarseness would abrade teeth so significantly that they would take up less space in the jaw.