Random 5 Friday: Exercise and TV

Fence along Route 24 in either Bedford County or Roanoke County, June 22, 2013.

Happy Friday, everyone! I’m once again joining in with Nancy of A Rural Journal for Random 5 Friday, where “you can share 5 random facts about you, your day, your pets, your kids, whatever!”

One

I want to give a grateful shout-out to my friend Lisa of Two Bears Farm. Lisa had some extra orthopedic inserts and graciously gave me pair, along with a special insert for plantar fasciitis. I received the package Wednesday, along with a kind and encouraging note from Lisa.

These will help me tremendously.

Lisa is a wonderful person and I’m so glad I found her great blog, where she writes about life in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Thank you, Lisa!

Two

I had a physical therapy session on Thursday for the tendonitis in my elbow/arm. No, I’m not really falling apart. I’m just suffering the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle.

Anyway, I learned some exercises to do to help the tendons in my arm and the muscles in my shoulders.

I’ve been walking at the Y on the track twice this week so far for a total of 64 minutes of walking. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the most I’ve walked this year. A combination of a fractured foot and inertia kept me from doing much, so my body isn’t yet used to moving so much. It lets me know, too. I’ve had ice on my heel and my knee today.

Three

After I got home from the Y Thursday (I was off work), Larry asked me to go to lunch with him and his mother to a restaurant in Gretna, a town in the next county. It’s a restaurant that serves heavy, buttery, greasy, fried food on a buffet.

I didn’t need that kind of food. But Larry wanted me to go, and sometimes we do what others want us to do, right? And we had a nice time and a nice visit with his mother.

Four

On the way to Gretna, we passed the business that belongs to a friend of Larry’s and noticed a film crew outside it.

There’s a show on the Discovery channel called Tickle that’s being filmed in Gretna and the surrounding area in Pittsylvania County. It’s fiction but done like a reality show. Larry’s friend plays “Grandpa Bill” in the show.

I don’t like the show. It’s just plain silly. And I wonder if people watching it think everyone in the South acts that way. But I have watched a little to see Bill and to look for recognizable spots in it.

Five

One difference between Larry and me is our taste in TV shows. Oh, we share some favorites. For example, we just finished watching another season of Longmire on A&E—we love that show! And we enjoy some other shows, mostly crime dramas.

But Larry loves science fiction. I don’t. He watches movies on the SyFy channel that I can only shake my head at. We both end up laughing at some of the computer-generated mess and the dialogue in some of the movies.

Thursday night, as I sat writing this post in the room next to the den, I heard this line from one of Larry’s movies: “We have to get past the dinosaurs.” I couldn’t help but laugh and tease Larry about it: “Larry, we have to get past the dinosaurs!”

I hope you all have a great weekend! And to my readers in the U.S., enjoy the Labor Day holiday!

Expectations

I’ve been thinking for months about an interview with actor Michael J. Fox that I read in the April/May issue of AARP Magazine. I also found the interview online here.

Fox has Parkinson’s disease, and he addressed its effect on his life in the following passage:

“'There's an idea I came across a few years ago that I love,' he says. 'My happiness grows in direct proportion [to] my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations. . . . That's the key for me. If I can accept the truth of “This is what I'm facing — not what can I expect but what I am experiencing now” — then I have all this freedom to do other things.'”

I’ve been pondering this passage from the interview for months. I wanted to understand it. I intuitively felt that it could be an important concept for me to grasp.

I copied and pasted it in a Word document and kept going back to it.

I didn’t understand how expectations could be hurtful. Shouldn’t we expect certain things to be a certain way? Aren’t we supposed to have expectations of others?

I finally had a realization about this one evening at home.

I was sitting at my computer, playing solitaire, feeling sad.

I had opened up my Word document earlier in the evening and read the Fox quote again.

But then I started thinking about how a person had disappointed me.

The details don’t matter. The fact is that I had expected this person to do something a certain way, and when she didn’t, I didn’t like it.

I felt terrible. I wondered what was wrong with me to cause this person to act a certain way. I wondered why things never seemed to turn out the way I wanted them to. I knew I was indulging in distorted thinking, but I just kept on and on down the negative trail.

Then the pieces came together. I realized that if I accepted the actions of this person—without judging her or myself—I felt a lot better. I could just let go of the incident.

I accepted her actions. I didn’t try to explain it to myself. I didn’t need to think about it anymore.

I just accepted it. And I couldn’t believe how better I felt. I actually felt lighter.

I create expectations based on all sorts of things, mostly on what I want. And usually the expectations are about things I cannot control.

Getting upset over things I can’t control just doesn’t make sense anymore.

Acceptance of what I can’t control, letting go of expectations—I felt it in action sitting there playing solitaire.

Now I just have to keep on accepting.

I’m still pondering this and thinking about Fox’s statement. What do you think about what he said about expectations and acceptance?

Gathering inspiration

Have you ever received inspiration even when you didn’t realize you needed it?

I didn’t go looking for inspiration on Saturday morning, but I got some.

I didn't have any photos of the Y that I could use on the blog, but I'm showing some photos from my usual outside walking route.

I was up early and out taking photographs for a special project we’re doing for the newspaper. I spent some time at the Altavista Area YMCA, the wonderful local Y in our town.

Larry and I belong to Y, but we haven’t been using our membership much lately. It’s one of those things that we pay for every month, but forget about using.

Or, rather, we don’t make it priority to use it.

Or, rather, we drive by after eating dinner out and tell each other, “You know, we really need to go to the Y.”

I got some photos of people doing what they do at the Y—lifting weights, taking a class, using the exercise machines.

I also had a couple of conversations with people about why they exercise.

Being around people working out reminds me of how good it feels when I work out.

Hearing about why others exercise reminds me that people have many reasons for moving their bodies in deliberate ways: to improve their health, to fight the effects of aging, to feel better.

In a recent post, I wrote about my need to lose weight. I’ve been making small steps in eating less, but I haven’t done much on the exercise front except doing the plantar fasciitis exercises.

On Saturday at the Y, I picked up the new class schedules for the fall. On Sunday, I sat down and made out a schedule for my exercise for this week. It includes using the Y.

And if I feel my motivation faltering? I’ll just go hang out with others who are working out and get inspired again.

What inspires you to keep working towards a goal?

Random 5: A look back at back to school

It’s the time of year when children and teens and adults are returning to school. I’ve been thinking about my own school experiences and remembering how excited I always was to start a new year or a new semester.

So my Random 5 this week is about back to school.

I’m joining with Nancy of A Rural Journal in her Random 5 Friday, where, as Nancy says, “you can share 5 random facts about you, your day, your pets, your kids, whatever!”

My first grade picture. My mother made the dress I'm wearing.

One

I started school when I was six years old. Kindergarten wasn’t available in public school when I was a child, and my parents didn’t send me to private kindergarten. But I learned my numbers, the alphabet, my colors, etc. at home.

Two

I went to school for 21 years straight: first through 12^th grades plus four years of college plus five years of graduate school, where I got my master’s in English and worked on (but never finished) my doctorate in English.

Three

I was excited to start elementary school. I rode bus number 41 the first day of school and sat beside a neighbor girl who was in about the seventh grade. She seemed so grown up to me, and I couldn’t imagine ever being that old.

Four

For the most part, I loved school and hated to miss a day. I had perfect attendance in sixth grade and in my senior year of high school.

But in first grade, I missed two weeks of school: one week for the chicken pox and one week for the mumps. This was before vaccines were developed for those diseases.

Me on my family's sofa in our living room when I was in first grade. I had the mumps, and my family teased me about my plump cheeks. 

Five

The year I started school, 1969, was the first year of total integration in my county’s schools. I didn’t know this at the time because my parents never mentioned it to me. I’m glad they didn’t. I’m glad I was able to go to school with children of different races and think nothing was odd about it.

Did you enjoy school when you were a child? Do you ever wish you could go back to school?

Anxiety and keeping up with the news

I have a love/hate relationship with the news. I like knowing what’s going on in the world. I like to feel knowledgeable about what my government and governments around the world are doing. I like to be able to converse about current events.

But keeping up with it all drives my anxiety right up the charts.

War and other violence. Crime. Tragedy. Stories of the bad that has happened or might happen.

I get angry. I talk back to the talking heads on TV. I worry. I mull over the sad stories I hear. I feel helpless.

My reactions to the news go beyond the compassion that I try to have in response to others’ suffering. I make it too personal, and I feel the resulting anxiety and worry.

But lately, I’ve made a change in the way I take in the news.

I used to feel driven to keep up with the news. Part of it was OCD. I was obsessed with gathering knowledge. I would get fixated on a particular topic and think I had to know everything about it.

So I compulsively gathered information, searching the Internet and reading news websites; watching news broadcasts on television, trying to understand what was on the tickertape running at the bottom of the screen while taking in what was being said; reading the newspaper exhaustively, going back and rereading what I thought I hadn’t adequately understood; forgoing listening to music in the car so I could keep up with NPR broadcasts.

I had a sense that something terrible would happen if I didn’t know.

As a newspaper reporter, I of course need to keep up with what’s going on locally. But my search for information went beyond anything I needed to know for my job.

Finally, I got tired and fed up. I realized that keeping up with the news—or at least the way I was doing it—was affecting my mood and my outlook.

And the main thing I realized was that I didn’t have to know everything about everything. I could never know everything anyway. And nothing bad happened if I didn’t know everything possible.

I started experimenting with not being plugged in and tuned in to the news all the time. I worked out a system:

*I check news apps on my phone a few times a day. Two are for local news and two are for national and international news.

*I scan the headlines to get a general idea of what’s going on.

*I read some of the articles that I’m most interested in. I allow myself to skim.

*I rarely visit news websites on the computer. I stick with the apps because it’s quicker and easier to avoid getting distracted by the photos and flashing lights of the Internet.

*I scan the headlines in the local daily newspaper and read the articles that appeal to me. Again, skimming is allowed.

*I seldom sit down to watch a TV news broadcast. If I do, I listen to the first few minutes to catch the top stories, and then do something else.

*I still love NPR, but if a news story doesn’t appeal to me or upsets me, I don’t hesitate to switch to music.

I believe that I have a responsibility to learn about what’s happening in the world. To be a good citizen of the world, I need to understand it and take action when needed.

But my mental and emotional health doesn’t have to suffer because of that.

What about you? How do you keep up with the news?

Opportunity

View of some of the woods along my walking route in my neighborhood.

Thank you for your good wishes for my doctor’s visit on Friday. The doctor x-rayed my foot again and pronounced it 90 percent healed. Not what I was hoping for, but he seemed pleased because it was better than it had been in June.

During my visit, he found a couple of other problems—minor ones, really—that I will have to deal with: plantar fasciitis in my left foot and tendonitis in my left elbow (tennis elbow).

I’m going to learn some exercises to strengthen the right muscles during two sessions of physical therapy, and he gave me some other things to do to get better.

The most important thing I took with me as I left his office was this: I had an opportunity. The opportunity to get strong and fit and become physically healthier.

I have to face the fact that I have let myself go. My muscles are weak and underused. When asked to do what they normally would do, they are balking.

Also a problem is the fact that I weigh too much.

I really like this orthopedic doctor. He draws pictures to illustrate his explanations to me, and he gives me plenty of time to ask questions.

He gave me two lists, one for my foot and one for my elbow. Here’s the one for the foot:

See that phrase third from the bottom? “Weight loss.”

It’s official. I need to lose weight and the doctor has put it in writing.

I’m putting too much weight on my foot with plantar fasciitis. And extra weight is not good for the almost-healed fracture in my right foot either.

The doctor jokingly said, “You’re falling apart.”

The take-home message for me was that I better start taking better care of myself or I will have more problems like the ones I’m having now.

I don’t see this as a burden. I see this as an opportunity to get better and feel better. And if I feel good physically, I’m going to feel better mentally and emotionally, too.

So I’m starting to eat less and plan how I can more systematically eat a healthier amount of food. I’m planning how to make time in my day to exercise.

Starting out on a walk on Saturday morning.

Step by step, I’m going to lose weight and get stronger. I have this opportunity to do that, and I’m taking it.

What is one thing you’re doing now that enhances your physical health? Please share!

Random 5: Healing bones, the weather and a look at the moon

Happy Friday, everyone! Once again, I’m linking up with Nancy of A Rural Journal for Random 5 Friday, where, as Nancy says, “you can share 5 random facts about you, your day, your pets, your kids, whatever!”

One

I go back to my orthopedic doctor today to see how my fractured foot is healing. I broke it in February, so it has been a long journey. In June, my doctor said he expected it to be 95 percent healed by today. I hope it’s 100 percent healed.

Part of the road in the park where we ride our bikes.

Two

One question for my doctor is whether or not I can ride my bike. I have missed it. Larry and I enjoy riding in the park by the river.

He is going to get his bike adjusted so that he’s not leaning over so much. Doing that causes his leg to go numb because of a narrowing of a canal in his lower back. He was going to give up riding, but he enjoys it so much, he decided to try the adjustment.

Three

Thursday would have been a great day to go bike riding. I had to leave the house early in the morning for an assignment for the paper. The temperatures were in the 50s. Unbelievable in August, but so nice. Practically sweater weather.

This summer has been cooler and wetter than any summer I remember for a while. Look at the following two photos.

The first was taken in our backyard on June 30, 2012. The grass was brown and dry. The leaves on the ground are signs of the derecho that had recently blown through.

The second photo was taken in the backyard on July 14, 2013. The grass is so much greener and softer.

June 30, 2012

July 14, 2013

Four

Do you ever sense that you need an attitude adjustment? I’ve been holding on to a lot of irritation and resentment lately, and it has such a negative effect on how I feel. I’m finding that there are some situations that I just can’t talk about with others or I’ll get upset. But my mind keeps mulling over things.

I’m managing to get some relief by focusing on the moment—when I think about doing it.

Anyway, how do you adjust your attitude as needed?

 

August 15, 2013

Five

Larry and I went out to eat Thursday evening at about 7:30. I looked up and saw the moon already appearing in the sky, though the sun hadn’t set yet.

Now that’s something lovely to ponder instead of negative things, wouldn’t you agree?