Retire and exercise

I've been reading and scanning a book called How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free.  No I'm not old enough to retire but life transitions can be difficult and stressful even when they're planned so I want to be prepared.  Think about the stress of buying your first house, having your first baby, and getting a new job.  These life events are full of promise but are some of life's top stressors nonetheless.

I thought I'd take the bull by the horns and see what I could do to make the transition to not working (yippee) easier and more successful.  Firstly, the amount of money one has accrued is not the single most important part of being happily not working.  In fact, according to the book, you need much less money than you think you do, so retire ASAP.  The author says you need to do something meaningful, have a good circle of friends and exercise. I can agree with all of that. He advocates planning between one and two hours a day of vigorous exercise.  That will give structure to your days, keep you slim, and ensure good health.  He goes on to give examples of people in their nineties who are still vigorous and active.

And by vigorous exercise he means things like running and swimming.  No walking around the neighborhood with Fido or soothing yoga practice.  You've got to get out there and run for an hour! Well really, I'm all for exercise (especially if someone else is doing it)  but like many authors giving advice on how to live well, he spends a huge amount of time on exercise. I know it's important but the reality is it won't get you out of this life alive.  You can exercise for hours every day and the end will still find you.

In our society, we don't do death. Death is an aberration, the result of bad habits or crime or bad luck. There are books upon books and celebrity doctors galore giving us advice on what to eat, what to think (positive attitude), and how much exercise we need.  They seem to be saying, "If you just follow our advice you can live forever."  I have news for them no matter how perfectly you treat your body and how positive your outlook you are still going to die.  In fact you might even get a serious illness like cancer.  Broccoli and exercise won't cure or prevent serious illness. Even scarier for some,  recent studies have found no link between having a positive attitude and cancer outcomes.  In other words you can be the most  positive, sunny person in the world and the big C can still get you.  On the flip side you can be a depressed pessimist and still recover from cancer.  That makes me feel much better because I'm naturally a "glass half empty" kind of person and have been all my life.  I hate to think that I'd succumb to a disease simply because of how I'm wired.

What does all this talk of exercise and death have to do with retirement? Maybe nothing but maybe I don't want to spend so much of my retirement chasing the impossible dream of eternal life.  I do of course want to be healthy until I drop dead, preferably in the middle of a good book. Life is certainly more fun when you're healthy and vigorous. But structuring my non-working days around EXERCISE sounds suspiciously like A JOB.  Having flexible time will be the greatest part of retiring, I'm not going to mess it up with a strict exercise routine.  I'm done with routine, give me spontaneous and I might even see the glass as half full.

Blogging for Dummies

So, I started this blog for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to encourage myself to write on a regular basis.  In the course of setting up the blog and finding out about blogging I've discovered some interesting features.  If you are young you already know about these features because you read blogs. Honestly, I never read one until I created this one. I really should find one or two that interest me just to see what's out there.

But I did find out a couple of interesting things. Did you know I can add advertisements to the sidebar of my blog and make a few cents? Really, I could advertise diet aids, other websites and entertainment.  But, yuck, I hate advertising and can't imagine promoting more of it.  Of course there is the money.... No, no ads.

I could also set up a PayPal icon and readers could "donate" to my blog.  I can already hear you laughing.  Believe me, I laughed just as hard.  But really that's what it's called, "donate".  Am I a charity? Am I trying to raise money for a cause?  Maybe, I'd certainly like to retire soon.  Would you like to help me do that? That's what I thought, no effing way!

So I have no videos, pictures, or music as many blogs do.  I have no links to other sites (like what?).  There's just me and my musings. Words, words, and more words. That's all folks!

Mothers

Mother. The word conjures up all sorts of meanings and emotions depending on who your mother was or is, and if you are a mother.  I've met lots of mothers in private life and in my job.  The ones in my private life were, no surprise, a lot like me. We were anxious to do a good job which meant raising well-loved, secure, and independent children. We encouraged our progeny to do well, behave, and absorb our values. Our children lacked for nothing in the realm of parental attention and support.  Some mothers and fathers ran themselves ragged with children's activities.  We were and still are our children's biggest fans and most loyal supporters.

For most of my life I've thought that mothers by their very nature were like mine, nurturing with unconditional love and endless support.  But in the course of meeting many mothers over the last 17 years I've come to realize that the idea of "mother" that I carried around with me was too narrow a description. I haven't met any mothers that didn't appear to love their child no matter his/her shortcomings, but the way mothers show love varies from person to person and culture to culture.

There are mothers who smother their children, continuing to spoon feed them lunch at school at the age of 8.  Mothers who deliver homework to irresponsible children failing to teach them that actions have consequences.  Then there are mothers who berate their child for bad behavior in front of others but fail to act and correct the behavior.  Strange as it may seem there are mothers and fathers who have ceded control of their family to their child and cannot figure out how to regain their standing as "parents-in-charge."  Some mothers require their children to work as if they were going to Harvard next year, leaving only Sunday as a day without academic instruction.  As awful as it sounds to me there are mothers and fathers who never take their children out of their neighborhood. Parents who fail utterly to provide their children with new life experiences. Other mothers fight for their children as if they are the only children who count selfishly regarding other children as expendable and unimportant.

When women talk about their own mothers I have discovered that other women have mothers as unlike mine as they could possibly be.  Women whose mothers were hyper-critical so that no matter what they did it was never enough for mom. I've met women whose mothers were self-absorbed and neglectful or consciously hurtful.  Others had mothers whom they loved but with whom they did not enjoy a particularly close relationship.

Lots of mothers strive to be unlike their own mothers which I find very sad.  Not that they want to be good mothers but that they felt "unmothered" in some deep part of themselves. That in some deep part of themselves they didn't feel unconditional love and acceptance from the one person who is supposed to love you most no matter what.

To my own mother, gone almost 20 years now, I owe a profound debt of gratitude.  She loved her children unconditionally and showed it every day. We were lucky to have had such love and emotional intimacy from our mother who loved us best of all.

Mismanaged Care

Years ago I belonged to an HMO and had a good experience.  Of course that HMO no longer exists so maybe they were doing such a great job of patient care the company went under. Since then I have had no experience with HMO's but I know someone who has.

Today you must see your primary physician whom you select from  a list without knowing anything about him or her.  Okay, now you've got a doctor but you KNOW you need a referral to two specialists. You are intelligent and knowledgeable about your own health and have seen specialists previously under a different health care plan. So you leave work and trot yourself down to the primary doc.  The primary doctor is very candid and admits she doesn't know anything about your problems and doesn't appear to be concerned about them. But she can't give you a referral until you've tried some over-the-counter remedies. Furthermore her limited advice about your condition is insulting and presumes you are ignorant about basic health care.  So you will have to try the OTC remedy and go back in a couple of weeks to get a referral to the specialist.  Of course you will have to take off work again and see the primary before getting the referral. She has to make sure the OTC medicine didn't work.

To summarize: in order to save money in this system you will have seen the primary doctor twice before getting the referral. You will also be missing hours at work, and that very same company that provided you with such wonderful health care docks you for going to the doctor. If you had just been allowed to make that specialist appointment yourself,  you would have avoided the expense of two useless appointments.

But that would be too rational and keeping costs down is not really what managed care does. At least I can't see how adding two extra doctor visits is efficient. Nor does it protect patient health. While you wait for OTC medicine to work, your condition gets worse and your health declines.  Now you need a specialist in a hurry.  Can you see an HMO physician if you need one right away? I don't know the answer to that and hope I don't have to find out the answer.

Fruit and nuts

California's finally back to its usual self so we natives can breathe a sigh of relief.  Jerry Brown is governor again, the outgoing movie star governor admits to fathering a "love child" and some San Franciscans have taken the initiative process to a new low.


Who can believe that Jerry Brown is governor again? It's not necessarily a bad thing, that's yet to be determined.  Unfortunately he looks like a lot of us look now, older, less hair, and needing little things removed from our California skin.  He really shows our age.


And Arnold, there's got to be some space for the governator.  The media is calling his 5th child a "love child".  Have you seen the mother? I think it's more like an "oops, I had too much to drink child". Catty, but true especially when you consider that he could have had Maria Shriver instead. He's been a sleaze from the very beginning and I'll bet Maria is kicking herself for being such a schmuck and standing by while he's groped his way through Hollywood and beyond.


Who or what can beat San Francisco, the city that's stranger than fiction?  Somehow, a group that calls itself, "intactivists" managed to get 12,000 signatures (outside Wal-Mart no doubt) to put an initiative on the ballot making it illegal to circumcise boys/men under 18 years of age. Are they serious? Yes they are, but what they don't seem to understand is that even a new law can't restore what urologists and rabbis have put asunder.  They need therapy not a new law. Of course this initiative, were it to pass, is unconstitutional as it violates religious freedoms as well as common sense.


So, welcome back California, you're still the land of fruits and nuts!

Hearing Voices

I am a Law and Order junkie. I like the mystery but I also like the neat wrap up of most of the shows. On the other hand sometimes the story lines are so unreal as to be dangerous.  Dangerous in that uninformed people take the characters and situations portrayed as not only possible but probable.  The episode I watched the other night was dangerous in that regard. It involved a schizophrenic arrested for murdering 7 people under the delusion that one of them had his nonexistent daughter. The state put the man away for life while letting him appear in court unmedicated and delusional despite a ten years old diagnosis and history of schizophrenia.


This kind of blatant misinformation about mental illness is common in both TV and film.  It contributes to the fear and lack of care and services available to the mentally ill.  Writers will say everyone knows it's just fiction but  everyone doesn't know.  In point of fact few people know anything about severe mental illness. People with mental illness are stigmatized as dangerous and undeserving of care in part because of their portrayal in the media.


Years ago, a cousin of mine married a lovely young woman in her early twenties.  On their honeymoon she experienced the first symptoms of schizophrenia.  In those days medication was in its infancy and doctors posited that she suffered from a niacin deficiency.  I was pretty young but I did know that she had to be monitored because she burned herself with cigarettes. On purpose. She also hurt herself in other ways and the drugs she took impaired her thinking and memory.  The last time I saw her she didn't know who I was.  My cousin eventually divorced her and she went back to live with her parents. I don't know whatever happened to her.


Schizophrenics are far more dangerous to themselves than others.  They forget to eat and sleep.  They lack any sense of personal hygiene.  The medication they have to take to keep the fears and voices quiet has unpleasant and sometimes devastating and permanent neurological side effects.


Recently I read the memoir of a woman who is now a professor at USC and also a schizophrenic.  She was lucky in that her family had the means to provide hospitalization when she needed it and weekly talk therapy with a psychiatrist. However, like most mentally ill people, she would go off her meds thinking she wasn't ill and descend into a world of fear and delusions that incapacitated her.  It took her years to accept the fact that she was chronically ill and would need medication and therapy for life.  It's hard to overstate how lucky this woman was.  She is extremely intelligent, has wonderful friends who do not scare easily, and a family willing to pay for her health care.


I should mention too that she didn't tell many people that she was schizophrenic.  In fact until her book came out most of her colleagues at USC didn't know about her illness.  Probably a good thing since most people, even educated people, associate schizophrenia with crime and homelessness.


We think insane people commit the most heinous crimes but usually they are not crazy in the "hearing voices" kind of crazy but rather are seriously emotionally disturbed due to childhood neglect and abuse. Or there just happens to be a weapon around when they get seriously angry and they turn into criminals.


I think TV and film writers have an obligation to portray the mentally ill in a compassionate light.  I imagine they could come up with story lines just as interesting but without the ignorant stereotyping.

Guess who's coming to work?

A colleague of mine noted that there is  a lot of talk these days about budgets and saving jobs in education, specifically teacher's jobs, as if teachers are the only ones employed by schools. We're not!  This week is Classified Week, when we honor those who work in schools as custodians, secretaries, librarians, computer lab aides, health aides, bilingual aides, special education aides, clerks, bus drivers, gardeners, painters, and maintenance personnel. 


In fact, at my workplace, classified employees outnumber certificated employees (teachers) by a margin of 2 to 1. And no, none of them works in my room. There are 5 full or part-time employees in the office but only one of me in the classroom.  Something is surely wrong with this picture.


So when we talk about money for education, don't forget about all the diverse and numerous people who operate schools.  Remember schools aren't just for teachers!