sewhappy woman

FOOD

2010-06-26T02:13:00.000-05:00

I'm hungry and it's bedtime for me. That's 2 AM. But so much went on in my life tonight that I never really ate enough to last through the night. I am hungry. And what do I want? Me? A woman from Fort Worth? I want Mexican food, of course. Anything would suit, but it really is too late to sit down to tacos with lots of fresh, crisp vegetables. I do like my tacos to have cold, crisp, curly, green leaf lettuce and ripe, red tomatoes that taste like real tomatoes, sweet onion, and hunks of avocado, with lime juice and salsa, all tucked inside a crisp yellow corn tortilla.

Not at 2 AM. Something about this hour doesn't want all that crunching. What I am truly HUNGRY for tonight is enchiladas, hot beef enchiladas, smothered in chili and melted cheddar cheese, Fort Worth style. On top of all that, fresh picadillo or chunky salsa, topped with cold sour cream.

That's what I want right now! And I am thinking about just what I do have in the kitchen that might assuage this hunger. (David and I used to keep one particular brand of frozen Mexican dinner just for nights like this one.) But I have nothing that would even fake it as enchiladas.

But I do have corn tortillas and cheese and a ripe avocado and salsa, tomato and onion. Oh, I'm going to come up with something. But first, I need to see just how many calories I have left for Friday.

Pause while I check this out.....

Oh, I have 500 calories not eaten today. I really do need food before I can go to sleep. And so, as you read this one, know that I ate right before I went to bed. Not always real smart, but tonight, quite necessary.

I'm gone ..... to the kitchen.

TIME TO WRITE AND TIME TO EAT

2010-06-02T11:40:00.001-05:00

I have absolutely no idea where the time goes. Does that sound like you? I do want to write and I have much to say. But somehow, those on my email list get all of the comments I have about the world. I must begin to bring them here.

Ah well ...... right now, I am timing the color on my hair. And it is just about time. It was terribly yukky this morning: not white, not silver, not even a real grey, although the dead center top is getting more and more pure white, not me at all. Were it that color all over, I would leave it as is. But it isn't and I am cooking it as we speak.

I have been thinking today about food again. True enough. I have lost another three pounds. I am very thankful, but oh, it goes so slowly. There are days when I think that I haven't eaten enough calories; and yet, other days I almost eat too much; therefore it cannot be that.

To explain, I post everything I eat at Myplate.com and that totals calories, grams carbohydrate, grams fat, grams protein, grams fiber, grams everything. Most days, I see that I have gone over the suggested amount of protein and fats and am under the suggested amount of carbs. Surely, that wold be easy enough to change. All I need to do is eat more veggies; but some days I can eat NO MORE veggies. As it is, I spend an hour eating that 3 or 4 cup salad every night. I suppose that I could just eat all afternoon!

I am learning several very good tips about dieting, such as eating an ounce or so of nuts about 30 minutes before my evening meal. Now, that is supposed to blunt the appetite by giving the body a small amount of fat and protein; and you know what? I think it works. Three or found ounces of protein at a meal is just about all I want to eat ... unless something is super delicious and I haven't had it in a very long time.

It is very difficult to leave half a sirloin strip steak for another meal; and it is almost as difficult to leave a beautiful piece of grilled orange roughy. Besides, when things cost that much, I want to eat it as the peak of its perfection, not as a left over. Grilled chicken is not so difficult to leave.

I do have a wonderful recipe for that fish and I will try to remember to stick it on at the end of this. And there are several vegetables that should be lightly cooked before eating them, even though I really prefer them raw. The various nutrients in them need some cooking to make them bioavailable. But raw spinach is so much better than cooked.

Yet, I have yet to eat properly prepared bitter greens. I read over and again that the best way to do that is to quickly sauté them in a tiny bit of very hot olive oil containing garlic and onions and perhaps a bit of red pepper flakes; and then to add a tablespoon of liquid and steam them for a couple of minutes. It sounds so good; but I have not yet done that. Somebody tell me just how good it all is and I will try.

You know, I want to eat bitter greens, not because of the low calories, but because they have so much antioxidant and other plant nutrients we may not even know about yet. The more I study, the more I know that plant foods have so much more in them than simply the vitamins and minerals which we have all known forever that we need. Of course, there are vitamins, with lots of the B vitamins and many minerals such as magnesium, calcium, and iron. Why, calorie for calorie, leafy green vegetables like spinach with its delicate texture and jade green color provide more nutrients than any other food.

Did you know that the anticancer properties of spinach flavonoids have been sufficiently impressive to prompt researchers to create specialized spinach extracts that could be used in controlled studies? One called kaempferol had a 40% reduction in risk of ovarian cancer. Additionally, friendly bacteria in our intestines convert vitamin K1, which spinach brings us, into vitamin K2, which activates osteocalcin that helps build strong bones! Further, spinach contains lutein, a carotenoid protective against eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and folate is needed by the body to help convert a potentially dangerous chemical called homocysteine that can lead to heart attack.

Now, you see why I want to learn to eat lightly cooked fresh spinach. And I will. Yes, you see, I am teaching or leading a class here at the apartments on Aging Gently, including reversing and repairing damage done by years of incorrect eating and other poor lifestyle choices. And we are doing it. Several have told me that they have changed shopping habits at the grocery, going more to the fresh vegetables and raw fruit.

And not corn, potatoes, bananas, and apples only. Those are good. But we now know that because each of the rainbow of colors our fresh foods contain has different plant nutrients, we have to eat a wide variety to get those things that G-d has provided for our health and our healing, for us to remain young and in His service as long as we can.

I, for one, am trying as much a variety as I can in order to remain as young in body as I feel in spirit. And so, I am eating a combination of strawberries, blackberries, banana, pineapple, grapes, cherries, peaches... Doesn't that sound good? Watermelon? Oh yes!

And my salads contain spring mix lettuces, romaine, baby spinach, sweet onion, celery, cucumber (I prefer the pickling cukes), cauliflower and broccoli florets, cherub tomatoes. It is all soooooo good. And I have my very own special vinegarette that adds a wonderful dressing to those veggies. I know that the broccoli and cauliflower should be lightly cooked, but they are oh so good in there with the others.

Were you wondering why no carrots? I don't like vinegar with carrots; I really prefer something with a mayo base for carrots and so I make a veggie slaw based on broccoli slaw to which I add shredded red cabbage and carrots in equal amounts. Oh yum! I love that one and the ingredients last longer in the fridge than the more delicate lettuces.

Okay! That's what I needed to say about foods today. Tomorrow, I will probably write about freedom of speech again. Who knows?

And now, for the recipe:

Okay, I take fish filets, more often tilapia as it is less expensive and has more Omega 3 oils than the fish I really prefer, orange roughy. Since they are usually frozen, I put them in the fridge for a short while to thaw.

After I take them out, I pat them dry with paper towels and sprinkle them with unrefined sea salt and black pepper. Then, I coat them in egg white.

Next, I dust them with a light flour coating and put them into a plate with the following mixture: finely chopped pecan pieces, panko bread crumbs, garlic, paprika, parsley, whatever you would like .... and press those into the flesh.

At this point, if you have time to refrigerate them for an hour to let the coating become firm and a part of the fish, it is best. (Over night is wonderful and so sometimes, I prepare several pieces at the time to have them for two nights.)

I get a cast iron or stainless skillet hot, add a little olive oil and a little butter; and when that melts, carefully lay the fish into the hot fat.

I let it brown there about 3-4 minutes, turn it carefully with a wide spatula, and after turning off the heat, let it cook there in the still hot skillet for about 2 minutes or until it is brown on the other side.

The usual piece of fish will then flake as it is quite done, but not in any way, over done. In fact, it is crisp and delicious. A squeeze of lemon is all you could add.......

I AM FINALLY BACK HOME

2010-05-18T00:54:00.001-05:00

Or at least, I feel at home, now that my desk again has a computer sitting here ready for me to write. There have been so many things about which I have wanted to make comments, many of them destined to get me in trouble somewhere.

But at my age, who cares? I generally say just what I think. And tomorrow I shall begin some of the comments that have been building up inside with no where to go. Are you ready for that? Hope so, for you are about to get a mild version of me...

I am so glad to have a computer again. I have missed everything about it. The problem is that in the meantime, I have lost control of my fingers and sometimes type the strangest things.

I will try to slow the thoughts down and make fewer mistakes and soon you will be reading my nonsense once again.

It just feels sooooooooooo good to be here.

AND NOW, ABOUT THAT FOOD

2010-03-11T22:02:00.000-06:00

January 24, I wrote about my journaling everything I eat on MyPLate.com, explaining exactly how it is done so that anyone of you wanting to do something like that could have a good idea of what is out there for you. That is the site where I can understand what I am eating and the nutrition I am consuming (or not consuming). Tonight, I wrote about the books I am reading that have influenced my choice of those foods that I eat.

I have been reading books about what I should and should not eat for years; and for the most part, I have eaten the things that are good for me. That is beginning to be more and more difficult as they are finding more and more things that I should eat that I simply do not like and more and more things I should not eat that I dearly love. Sad, isn't it? I believe that is probably true about most of us, with the exception of those who simply eat because they should and therefore eat what they should eat and are done with it. No real joy of the food, no great feeling of exhilaration from baking something simply sinfully delicious, no letting their mouths fill with the abundance of tastes in a beautifully prepared roast of beef with the accompanying rich au jus with the vegetables gleaming in their unctuous gorgeousness.

And there I am, watching Dr. Oz teach us not to eat beef, much less with the potatoes that have roasted in the lovely beef fat that roasted out of that piece of meat. Perfectly delicious food; and it is not healthful, it is not good for us to eat. And is there anything more delicious than fresh home baked bread, straight from the oven, sliced and slathered with sweet cream butter? That should be on our do-not-eat list also. What else? If you, as did I, grew up in this part of Texas before fast food took over, good food meant my mother's chicken and dumplings, home made dumplings; or a supper of real fried chicken; black eyed peas from the back yard garden; along with sliced tomatoes that tasted like real tomatoes; mashed potatoes, mashed with cream, swimming in butter; fresh corn on the cob.

And church suppers with tables filled with those wonderful home baked desserts: tall coconut cakes, lemon meringue pies, fudgy chocolate pies, and cakes covered with seven minute frosting. Oh, yum. And not one bite of that wonderful food could make the list of things these doctors endorse in their books. Not one of those things is really good for the human body. And that is so sad. Those were wonderfully good things to eat that we now know are NOT good for us. We understand that and we have heard every reason why they aren't. Many people today never ate them and so, do not miss them. I did and I do.

But I am seventy years old and I do not intend to be a sickly old person. I do intend to be healthy; and so I must eat those things that promote good health and not eat those things that destroy good health. Over and again, I have read that I must learn a new way of eating, an eating plan for the rest of my life. I absolutely cannot eat correctly for a while and then return to those foods of my childhood. I must leave them in my memory. And so because I do intend to have a healthy seventh decade, I have devised a plan for eating that allows me to have a few of those things I love while allowing me to continue to lose weight and build a healthy body for my future.

Because I do journal every bite and it is there on the Internet for anyone to see and know what I eat, I shall continue to eat those things that are good for me to eat. To begin, I shall follow Dr. Oz's very good idea that dieters should limit 2 of their 3 daily meals to 2 or 2 choices only, seriously eating the same things over and over and over. That will be my breakfast and lunch every day. He also tells us (all of us, not just dieters) to eat small meals in order to add snacks into our daily meal plan. The idea is not to allow ourselves ever to be hungry, but to eat those things which satisfy and give enough energy to keep going and going. That makes very good sense.

Dinner, which I must begin to eat far earlier than I have since before I married 50 years ago, will be meatless one or two days a week. That is nothing new. David and I did that for years. When I can afford fish, that will be another night. Beef and chicken I will eat one or two nights a week each. You know, affording beef only four times a month means that I can eat good beef, either better cuts or better beef, beef that hasn't been injected with hormones or antibiotics. That would be very good for me. And that would be delicious as I know how to cook good beef. And since all of the research shows that four ounces of meat is all the protein that one needs at the time, it won't even be that expensive. This is OK.

Of course, as always before, I will eat vegetables and fruit. And because I love both and because one-half cup is a serving, five servings is not that difficult to have in a day. I can do that. Over and over, the doctors tell us to eat those vegetables related to cabbage as they contain all of the good things we need to prevent and to fight cancer, to furnish the necessary vitamins for good skin and good bones and all of those important things.

And those veggies? Both red and white/green cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and all of those strange cabbages there in the produce aisle. They tell us to have some every day and I don't know anyone who does that; but I do have something from that group several times a week. Of course, I prefer my cabbage and cauliflower raw and that isn't as good for our health as is the lightly cooked; but I get something from all those raw veggies. And you know, I believe that cauliflower may well be the only white food of which those doctors all approve!

And something I have known forever, but now am beginning to understand more about are the colorful foods. I have always known that we should eat colorful vegetables and fruit; but only in the recent years have we understood that those colors are brought about by the different nutrients in each, the antioxidants, the phytochemicals, the polyphenols, all of those things that we are learning influence our health. So many of those can be found only in the food that comes in a particular color and if we do not eat that food, we may well miss something which we may not understand, but we still need. And so I am trying to rotate those things I love the most and eat as many different colors a week as I can! Never before thought In would choose food by color.

And now, about those things I mentioned that I love so much that we are not supposed to eat, I have made a decision to eat as correctly as I can most of the time and from time to time to eat one of those things I love and miss. If I constantly aim to eat only those things I should, surely I will be healthy enough that my body can deal with a day of my own home baked sweet rolls or another day that includes fried chicken, real fried chicken and not boneless, skinless chicken breasts oven baked and bland. That is my intent and thus far, I have been somewhat successful. I am still slowly and continually losing weight (I did explain that one in an earlier post about food). And the numbers that come from the medical testing are good ones.

I do intend for those numbers to be better, but I shall do that while occasionally eating something not so good for me, yet so very good for me. And every bite will be recorded at

http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/users/myplate/

MORE ABOUT THAT GLORIOUS FOOD

2010-03-11T20:21:00.000-06:00

I have not written this month, and that is bad! I have so much to say and so many other people get dumped on with all of those things I have to say. They get long email epistles and I fail to write here where my wonderful words could be way more wide spread. And so, I need to say what it is I have been doing rather than writing.

And what have I been doing? Mostly, I have been reading and eating, reading the books of Dr. Oz and Dr. Whitaker and Dr. Amen and Dr. Teitelbaum and several other physicians who have left the straight and narrow path and speak to various ideas from alternative medicine. Yes, even Dr. Oz, "American's most beloved doctor" as the PR blurbs so often call him, advocates several of the tenets so often attributed to doctors who are derided as quacks and scam artists. Not so. So many of the things that these doctors have written about and said in public for many years are now being accepted as conventional. Once, only the nuts in California took vitamin supplements and ate yogurt; today, you can find both in almost every household and supermarket, drugstore, mini-mart, and gas station.

That is what I have been reading. Why? Well, for one reason, I live with three syndromes for which modern medicine has no answer: Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, and Myofascial Pain. At least, some of those in alternative medicine are actively engaged in trying to find relief for those of us with these 'orphan" diseases. Dr. Teitelbaum, who has both Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia, has revised his first book, From Fatigued to Fantastic, and in it, has advocated the use of D-ribose to help the body develop more energy. He wrote,

For years, I talked about the importance of B vitamins, which are a key component of these molecules. These helped to a degree, but it was clear that a key component was missing. In looking at the biochemistry of these energy molecules, they are also made of 2 other key components-adenine and ribose. Adenine is plentiful in the body and supplementing with adenine did not help CFS. We then turned our attention to Ribose. Ribose is made in your body in a slow, laborious process and cannot be found in food. We knew that CFS/FMS causes your body to dump other key energy molecules like acetyl-l-carnitine. We then found that the body did the same with Ribose, making it hard to get your furnaces working again even after the other problems were treated.

Not having Ribose would be like trying to build a fire without kindling—nothing would happen. We wondered if giving Ribose to people with CFS would jump-start their energy furnaces. The answer was a resounding yes!

http://www.endfatigue.com/tools-support/D-ribose.html

And so, having read his discussion of D-ribose and how it works to fire up the furnace, I am taking it every day. Now, if you all remember, I journal what I eat every day on the MyPLate website, every bite that I eat. And so, I entered the name of the product, Corvalen-M, and lo! there it was, listed as a food that others using the site must also be using. If it provides the energy that I have not had since 1980, you all will be among the first to hear about it. I am actually looking forward to feeling good enough to do some of the things I have wanted to do for several years.

And, oh yes, all of those doctors are writing about the food I should and should not eat; and I am about to write about what I am eating.

HOW TO LIVE TO A HEALTHY OLD AGE

2010-02-27T19:51:00.000-06:00

Today, we live longer and longer. It is up to us to see that we live a healthy life so that in our older years, we can have a healthy old age. The following ides are from Tri Vita vitamins and I have copied them here so that I can talk about them with those of you who read these.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THOSE WHO LIVE TO 100 AND PAST
Good longevity genes
Emotional resilience – ability to adapt to life's events
Resistance to stress – excellent coping skills
Self-sufficiency
Intellectual activity
Good sense of humor, including about themselves
Religious beliefs
Strong connections with other people
Low blood pressure
Appreciation of simple pleasures and experiences
Women tend to have borne children after age 40
Zest for life
Don't currently smoke or drink heavily
Many play musical instruments
Follow an anti-inflammatory diet that has been linked with longevity (eg, Mediterranean diet)
SOME ARE GENETICALLY PRIVILEGED
If any of your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings have lived to extreme old age and if your family has a low incidence of diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and heart disease, congratulations! You are considered to have optimal anti-aging genes and have a great chance to make it to 100 if you take reasonable care of yourself

TUNE UP YOUR ATTITUDE
REDUCE STRESS. Try meditation, exercise or yoga. You can learn to modify your responses to negative situations even if you can't change your basic personality.
STAY CONNECTED WITH OTHER PEOPLE: Social support is vital and maintaining close relationships is associated with better physical and mental health.
CULTIVATE OPTIMISM: A Mayo Clinic study shows that optimists live longer and have better health, because pessimism may lower immune system responsiveness and enhance tumor growth. Good news: an excessively pessimistic outlook on life is changeable. Brief programs can change your thinking about life events and lower the risk for physical illness and even death.

WATCH YOUR DIET
EMPHASIZE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES, whole grains, fiber and polyunsaturated fats.
AVOID CHOLESTEROL, SATURATED FAT AND HYDROGENATED FAT (red meat, egg yolks, fast food burgers and fries, etc), which are linked to heart disease, breast cancer and prostate cancer.
AVOID REFINED SUGAR and excessive calorie intake.
AVOID PROCESSED FOODS and those supplemented with high fructose corn syrup.
ONE GLASS OF RED WINE A DAY still appears to lower the risk of heart disease.
DRINK GREEN TEA, which has antioxidants that may fight cancers.
CONSIDER TAKING ANTIOXIDANT SUPPLEMENTS like Vitamin C, Vitamin E and selenium. But if you choose this path, be sure to follow the medical literature on vitamin risks.
CONSIDER SUPPLEMENTING YOUR DIET with omega-3 fatty acids.
EXERCISE: even a little helps

Just 15-30 minutes a day of walking or bicycling is enough to gain longevity benefits and reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Resistance exercise, for example, walking up stairs or hills, guards against loss of muscle mass and benefits the heart. Exercise also provides a sense of well-being and helps maintain an agile and alert brain.

USE YOUR HEAD
According to the NECS researchers, retaining cognitive capacity "most often determines whether people can attain extreme old age while remaining active." Here is a sampling of mental workouts that can keep the brain razor-sharp as you age:

Crossword and jigsaw puzzles
Playing bridge
Learning foreign languages
Playing musical instruments
Learning dance steps
Writing
Sports, including yoga and tai chi
Taking classes
Traveling
Memory training
Experiencing the new and unfamiliar

THE GOD-SHAPED HOLE WITHIN US

2010-02-26T00:13:00.000-06:00

If I may synthesize the words of Blaise Pascal, a great thinker of the 17th century, and a theory of Dr. Mehmet Oz, contemporary America’s most trusted doctor, there is a God-shaped hole within us that we are forever restless in trying to fill. And in order to fill that hole, we long for something in our lives that is greater and deeper than our everyday reality of sleep, eat, work, home, repeat; knowing that filling that longing will give us a sense of purpose and raise our self-esteem. Some try to fill that hole with money, some with achievement, others turn to alcohol or drugs, still others to shopping and accumulating things, and some to food.

Scientists say there are biochemical reasons for this need for soul level satisfaction we seek, that we need oxytocin or nitric oxide, two chemicals that give us a feeling of satisfaction and reduce anxiety and stress. And although this soul- level of satisfaction is biochemical, it is still a drive, not for food or things, money or drugs, but a drive to fill the needs of our soul, the need to put God in the God-shaped hole deep within us.

And when we have placed God in His rightful place in our lives and continue to see Him there, we no longer crave the money, the fame, the luxuries, the food in amounts far beyond our needs.

FRENCH BREAD EXTRAORDINAIRE

2010-02-19T01:03:00.003-06:00

in her own words by bj, my friend

1 1/2 pound loaf bread machine - finishes out to one large round or oblong hand shaped loaf or two long baguettes.

1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons salt
1.5 pounds or 4 2/3 cups unbleached white bread flour

2 1/2 t. dry yeast

Place ingredients in bread pan - set machine for dough cycle, start.

When dough cycle ends, machine will beep. I just leave the dough alone for as
long as 6 hours and just go do my life.

Give it a good punch and turn it out of the pan. I don't mess around with it much when I turn it out - just plop it out on counter and start to shape. Either shape into one large round loaf (flattening slightly with hands) or two long baguettes.

I hand shape and put on an unheated baking stone.

Alternatively you could use a cookie sheet -- just keep an eye on it so the bottom does not burn if you are using a cookie sheet. Cover loosely with dish towel –

Let rise again about 1 hour. If the dough is sticky, sprinkle with a little flour so you can work it - just a little - and remember -- you are in charge of your dough!!!!

While bread is rising - preheat oven to 500 degrees.

Have a spray bottle full of water before you put this in the oven.

At this point I slash the bread with a very sharp knife or a razor deeply and IMMEDIATELY put it in the oven –

I am spraying with the water in the mister as I am doing this. The bread will look like it is collapsing from the slash - but it should come back up.
Just be sure you do not slash it until RIGHT BEFORE you place in oven.

Place in 500 degree oven, spraying oven and briefly lightly over bread with water in a mister. Set timer for 5 mins.

Spray well again, reduce heat to 450 degrees for 20 mins., spraying one or two more times with water early in the 20 mins. Just open the oven and start spraying.

Remove bread from oven and remove from baking stone or cookie sheet - cool
on rack to cool. Wrap well in Saran and freeze.

Notes

I shape this into either a round loaf, an oblong loaf or two long baguettes
- -- this is our house bread -- i make this many times a week - we love it. It
is also fat free.

I actually spray more frequently than this - especially in that first five
mins and then the early part of the 20 mins. at 450. I do not like the pan
of water deal that some people use - i recommend the use of this mister. I
spray everywhere - the heating element, the sides of the oven - i am fast -

Just before putting bread in oven, brush the bread all over top and sides with egg white (I keep these in the fridge in a covered jar - they will last for a few weeks –

and sprinkle with sesame and/or poppy seeds, if desired.

You can also make it without slashing. You can also not do the egg white /seed thing and leave plain or give it a good sifting of flour on the top before cutting.

And my notes ... from Linda:

I follow this pretty closely, using a scale to weigh the flour. That can make a big difference. I also spray several times in the first 15 minutes. That makes a good crust on the outside, the one that I often hear cracking as it cools.

And unless you are very strong, you will need a brad machine to knead the almost 5 cups of flour into a cup and a half of water.

I also finally bought a bread lame, a device that slashes the bread loaf just right to leave room for the bread to expand as it needs.

I make this for all occasions as it is wonderful with all food and it smells so good while baking. You all do enjoy.

THE SAGA OF THE BREAD, PART NEXT

2010-02-19T00:46:00.003-06:00

You have to understand. I make a wonderful loaf of French Bread. I make a terrific Milk and Honey Bread. Years ago, when I taught in Quanah, I made wonderful sourdough bread which I often took to school for my students. And beautiful sourdough rolls.

Thus, when King Arthur advertised its New England sourdough starter from 1763, I wanted to once more bake beautiful sourdough rolls. They can be so lovely in the morning. And so began my attempts to reproduce what I had baked so many years ago. No longer having that recipe and having no idea who might have it, I turned to the Internet. From that and the King Arthur Flour website, I collected about 20 sourdough bread recipes and then chose three or four to try.

I have written about my earlier attempts with the sourdough starter and how none of them was what I was looking for; but nothing was as "blogworthy" as this last attempt at sourdough bread. Selecting an aptly named Old San Francisco Sourdough Bread recipe, I took the starter from the refrigerator Tuesday morning and went through the sequence of throwing away a portion, feeding the rest with a half cup of water and a cup of flour, stirring it together, and leaving it several hours to proof.

Now, the truth is that you usually leave the starter to ripen for about four hours; and although I knew that I had a very busy day ahead, I thought I could handle it all. And off I went to dash across town to the bank and back to Central Market for fresh produce and extra "goodies." Of course, everything took much more time than I had planned; and by the time I had all of the food in the house Tuesday afternoon, it was later than I had planned.

Of course, friends stopped by to chat, the telephone rang, I needed to chart my eating on MYPLATE.com, I was hungry, and the doorbell rang. By the time I got back to the kitchen to wash the various fruits and vegetables and package them for storage, the starter had been ripening to the point that I feared it might be overly ripe! Have you ever smelled sourdough starter? Have you ever smelled bad sourdough starter? Ripe is NOT the right word. And I was sinking. I had not eaten in hours. I was hungry. I knew that the blood glucose was down. I wanted food.

And I was tired. Very tired. With Fibro, there are rules about just what you should do in one day. One of those rules says that grocery shopping should be done on a day when you do nothing else at all. This wasn't going to be that day. I had things to do. I had to eat. And so I took another look at the ripe starter and it was still quite fine. I hastily prepared one of those meals that I do when I have no time and I have to eat: a slice of roast turkey and canned green beans warmed together in the oven. It's fast and it tastes good as I season it well. That taken care of, I began dealing with the produce; and about two in the morning, I turned to the starter. It smelled good; it looked fine. All was going to be wonderful. There would be fresh bread tomorrow.

Running to the computer, I dug into the recipe collection there: documents>written documents>recipes>bread>sourdough breads>SAN FRANCISCO STYLE SOURDOUGH BREAD. It was simple. I could do that one in the bread machine. That's how I do my French bread: set it up at night to make dough and leave it there to rise about six hours, wake up, take out the beautiful dough, make out the bread, set it to rise, set an alarm, take a nap, wake, and bake bread. That's how I did it forty years ago; that's how I would do it now.

And I went to sleep. (If you remember how my sleeping med works, I take a dose, sleep 4 hours, wake, take a second dose, sleep about three hours, and wake again.) I woke a little after noon, feeling terrible, stumbling around like fibro people do on a bad day. I went into the kitchen and remembered what I had forgotten as I slept all through the night: there sat the bread machine and I knew there was bread dough inside. But after sitting there for ten or eleven hours, what sort of state it would be in I was about to discover.

I could see on the sides of the machine bread pan where it had risen up and fallen back. That might be OK. But the dough looked funny. Something didn't look right. It wasn't as much bread dough as it was a batter of some sort. I read the instructions to knead the dough and shape it into a round boule. The stuff in that bread pan was not going to shape into anything. Perhaps, I should reread the recipe.

Well, first of all, for this one recipe using a sourdough starter, the instructions said to measure the starter cold, straight from the refrigerator. That would certainly make a difference. In other words, instead of using one and a half cups of cold starter, I had used one and a half cups of ripened starter. That would make a big difference as the dough went together. Oh my ...

And so, I laid out the silicone mat on which I knead and shape and all that, covered it with a layer of bench flour into which to pour whatever it was in that bread machine pan, and did just that. And that dough did pour out onto the mat ... as if it were batter! Can't you just see that thick batter sprawling out all over the mat? It spread faster than I could contain it. What was I going to do with that mess? Scoop it up and into the prepared bread pan? What would that bake into?

As I looked at it, inching its way to the edge of the counter, I decided to add more flour and perhaps work it into the mass to make it more like dough. I folded the mat over the creeping mass of whatever it was and turned to get the flour. As I picked up the scoop inside the bread flour container, I read the handle which read 3/4 cup! Well, another error there in the exhaustion of the night before: for every cup of flour the recipe had called for, I had put in only three-fourths of a cup. I was a cup off what was called for. No wonder, I had such a mess of flour paste there on the counter. What on earth could I do to save this?

I worked a cup of flour into the stuff there, poured it into the bread pan, covered it, set it to rise for an hour, and left it to do its thing. I had things to do. But I felt so bad. I wanted only to sleep or sit and stare at the TV or anything that was nothing. I came to the computer. Might as well read some of my email. Somehow, it was 5:30. The TV news came and went and I continued on the computer. The Olympics came on and I got so wrapped up in what I was seeing that I forgot all about watching American Idol. Besides, it was now about 9:30 and I was hungry.

Funny. Coming down the hall heading for the kitchen, I could smell something in the oven. The oven! The thoughts washed over me: I turned on the oven to heat in order to bake the bread. The bread! I had again forgotten the bread! As I looked at it, I could tell that this was going to be very interesting. It had risen to the top of the bread pan and no higher. I suppose that the yeast had been completely worn out the night before. Oh well. I might as well bake it. And so I did. And so I did.

I have never before taken a fresh loaf of bread from the oven and not wanted to cut it right then while it was hot, wanted to slather butter all over it and eat it right then. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with this stuff. Do you want to know what it was like? Well, not bad. Not too good, but not bad. It had the consistency of batter bread, except maybe twice as heavy. And it needed more salt ... and I had used more than the recipe called for.

And this morning, I made toast from it. Not bad. Still not good enough to spend my carbohydrate count on it. I think that there is something wrong with the recipe. I need to stay with the King Arthur recipes. I shall toss this experiment in confusion and make a good loaf of my French Bread Extraordinaire. I'll post the recipe for that one so that you all can share the good bread. This is a French bread that you will want to eat straight from the oven. It is crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. Sometimes, you can hear the crust cracking as it cools just out from the oven. Oh, it is so good.

A good diagonal slice across one end and I get the "Pope's nose," the very best part of the bread and this one I will slather with lots of sweet cream butter, maybe even some apricot jam ... or honey that somehow will get on my elbows while I am eating. Sometimes, it is so good that I have to have another thick slice. You are invited to join me with that one also.

THE SAGA OF THE BREAD

2010-02-18T00:25:00.001-06:00

is not being written tonight. Because I think of myself as a writer, having been doing this since high school and having been a member of Sigma Tau Delta, I can't just toss something down. I work at it. And since I really need some sleep, writing must wait until tomorrow. It's better that way. Believe me.

HELP FOR FIBROMYALGIA?

2010-02-16T20:37:00.001-06:00

I should have read these articles sooner, but I had read Dr. Teitelbaum before and he hadn't told me anything that new. But something sent me to his web site today. I don't know that I know what... something I read on the Real Age web site sent me looking for information on D-Ribose. The name rang a very distant bell, but it really didn't mean that much to me.

What I learned is that D-Ribose is a natural sugar that the body produces. The body then uses this to create adenosine triphosphat, ATP, which in turn creates energy for every part of the body: muscles and brain. If the body fails to produce Ribose, then the body experiences fatigue and the brain doesn't always function the way it once did. Now, all that I had known for years is that energy was produced by B vitamins and sugar. I had tried all the B vitamins one could take with no result. I had simply given up, assuming that the Fibro had taken away all of the energy the B's could give. Now, I was reading about the real source of energy in the body.

B vitamins are a key component of this energy, but Dr Teitelbaum felt that a key component was missing. When he studied the biochemistry of energy molecules, he saw that they are also made of 2 other key components — adenine and Ribose. Adenine is plentiful in the body and supplementing with adenine had not helped CFS. And so he and his research team turned to Ribose. Ribose is made in the body in a slow, laborious process and cannot be found in food. He knew that CFS/FMS causes the body to dump other key energy molecules like Acetyl-L-Carnitine. And then he found that the body did the same with Ribose, making it hard to get the furnaces working again even after the other problems were treated. Without Ribose, the fire was out.

The more Dr. Teitelbaum had researched, the more he had become convinced that D-Ribose could make a difference in the lives of patients with CFS and FMS, Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia. And it did. Reading this, I got excited. What if there were something else to try, something that might actually work? After all, I am 71 (Real Age 65). How much energy am I looking for? I continued to read.

Dr. Teitelbaum's experiments with real patients showed that 2/3 of his patients experienced increased energy, well being, and/or decreased pain with regular use. Decreased pain? Increased energy? Why had I not heard about this? Why hadn't I read this article months before when I had been to this website. A recently concluded study showed a 59% increase in energy for the participants who used Ribose.

That was it. That was his conclusion. He is now using this product in clinics all over the United States, one of which is right here in Fort Worth. I had known about it, but ... Well, they do not file insurance. I have no idea whether Medicare would pay any of it; and if they did, Medicare wouldn't pay what the doctors in that clinic wanted to charge. Dr. Larry Sharpe here uses it; but I would have to pay him up front also, and then wait to be reimbursed. He had told me that I would need $2000 to start the program in his clinic. I didn't go to his clinic either.

Now, I might possibly be able to do it by myself ... with the help of my current doctor and the expense of a great deal of money to purchase the products, none of them covered by insurance. None of them needs a prescription for which insurance would reimburse. All can be purchased at the different health food stores. And Dr. Teitelbaum has posted his program on his web site for anyone to follow. There is a support group for his program here in Fort Worth ... in MY zip code.

And so, because I never give up, I am going to try one more time to find something that might make a major difference in my life, something that promises to give me more energy and less pain. First, I have to purchase the big product, D-Ribose $45.00 and the other vitamins that will complete it, another $40.00. But his website returned the information that they are OUT of product.

I had made up my mind. I was ready to try something. It felt like NOW or never. I did a search and found the right product, Corvalens, at Amazon. And Amazon was OUT. Finally, I went to the manufacturer's site and ordered the product I decided that I was going to try. As I paid for it, I thought of all the new products I had decided to try this month: a vitamin D drink, an antioxidant product, a multi-vitamin and mineral, and now, this.

But if all this works, if adding this to the work at Carter Fitness Center and the recumbent bike at home, and the air stepper at home, and the so carefully prepared meals, and to the Probiotic and to the glucose control products, and the real attempt to sleep 7 or 8 hours every night no matter what else I really want to do, if any or if all of this works, I shall be a new woman, free of the pain and fatigue of Fibromyalgia. And you ALL will hear about it, probably every day for the rest of my life.

OUR WINTER WONDERLAND

2010-02-13T19:54:00.002-06:00

There are no sleigh bells, no ice skating on the ponds, but there is snow, lovely white, fluffy, wet snow, lots of it. For the first time that I can ever remember, we have had a real snow in Fort Worth, officially twelve inches, in several places, fourteen inches of real snow. Not sleet, not ice pellets, not snow grains, not wintry mix, but real, very real snow. And, to me, it was beautiful.

I don't think that I had ever seen anything so lovely. I didn't have to drive in it; I didn't have to work in it. All I had to do was watch it; and I did just that. It began Thursday morning just before four o'clock, just about the time I went to sleep. Wednesday afternoon it had been cold, cold and damp, the wind stinging when it hit my face; but I didn't think about that as I went to bed. I didn't look to see if the promised snow were beginning.

When I woke Thursday morning, my world was covered in snow, snow deep enough to have covered everything completely. Why, the meteorologists had predicted snow, but only enough to cover the grass somewhat, not enough to stick in the streets. Besides, the temperature wasn't going to go below thirty-three, not cold enough for the snow to even stay around. But here it was, piled up on everything. I grabbed my camera and went outside. Each time, I looked at the temperature, it continued to read 33.

But once back inside, I got busy, doing I know not what; but I did think about the snow from time to time and when I would look out, the snow was still falling, big flakes, thick snow, covering everything. Snow piled up on tree branches, covered cars, completely blanketed the streets. It continued to snow, pausing only briefly for a few minutes in the afternoon.

Before dark, I went outside to find two of the guys who live around here building a wall of snow, block by block stacking the snow brick laying style into a flat pyramid as tall as they were. Yes, they had messed up the beautiful snow, but what they had built was a very good wall. On another lawn, someone else had attempted a snowman, but had apparently not known how and simply made a mess and ended with a very scrawny looking snow man. Not good.

Later that night, those same meteorologists were saying that the snow would surely end by midnight; but at midnight, it still continued to fall. Quiet, beautiful, still, the world I live in was completely covered in snow.

On FaceBook, everyone was posting their photos of the world in the snow. Snow for us was such a new thing, such an unusual thing, something we only see on TV news, that everyone was rushing to document this anyway they could. I wrote about it on FaceBook so that Friends from California to Florida to upper New York State could see our snow.
Everywhere else, the snow had left drifts in feet, not our inches; but our few inches were such a new thing for us that we compared our snow to their snow, even when they scoffed.

Several of us had wondered why the snow continued to fall and yet when we measured the snow, it did not seem to really change. I never measured above four inches. And then I realized that with the temperature at 33 and 34, the snow was melting from the bottom. Only those with cumulative rain gauges would get a correct measurement. Only after everything was all over could we hear that we had had an official 12 1/2 inches of snow.

Friday morning, the sun was shining, the snow having stopped about four in the morning. It was still quiet, but the streets were rutted and the cars were moving. The main streets were clear; the sides streets, ice ruts; and everywhere the big trees so common in my part of town were heavily laden with snow ... and breaking.

It seems that those trees with long branches loaded with leaves, the Live Oak and the Magnolias, held so much snow that the branches simply couldn't bear the weight and were splitting from the tree trunks and falling into the streets and into the yards. These were beautiful trees that had been such striking features in the yards of the lovely homes in this area. Now, so much of their branches were firewood.

And so, today, it has ended. The sun shines brightly and the constant drip of melting snow tells me that the snow will soon be gone. The temperature is in the forties today; will reach the fifties by Monday; and once again it will be Texas in the winter with most days, sunny days, green buds on many trees, and Spring, just around the corner.

MAGIC JACK

2010-02-11T02:51:00.001-06:00

Of course, I have to watch my pennies. I'm a retired teacher and as such, the amount of my retirement check is determined by the legislature; and the last time that we had a raise was 2001. I could ask if you know just how much prices have changed since that year; but of course, you do. You are living with this economy as well. And this isn't easy at all.

Anyway, recently, I, just like so many others, have been looking for ways to reduce expenses in order to have a little money at the end of the month. My Internet I had to keep and I really like my connection through Charter and wanted to keep that. And the cable TV is the only recreation and entertainment expense I have had for a long time, having let magazine subscriptions go, even finally letting the newspaper go .. and I have been reading the Fort Worth Star Telegram since 1942.

My telephone connection is very important to me, but I simply could no longer afford that one. Even though I tried to keep it under $100 a month, it kept inching up and up. Finally, I bought MagicJack; and after looking at it for 6 months, I installed it. You know what? I am very happy with it. It works... well. My calls are crisp and clear. My telephone does work just as it always has worked. You know what? I like MagicJack.

For those who are questioning, I do have a telephone to use just in case something happens and the computer connection goes down. Yes, I have a cell phone, a Tracfone, so that I can control that expense also. I couldn't deal with the contracts with the big charges for those others. Sprint made me crazy.

So, here I sit tonight, quite contentedly, happy with my Tracfone and my MagicJack, ready to talk to anyone at anytime. My costs for communication are finally controlled and I am a happy woman.

I AM WELL CONTENTED

2010-02-04T00:34:00.002-06:00

The Gallup organization (yes, the same one that does all of the political polls) is developing materials concerning the well-being of individuals and groups all over the world. To that end, they have sent out polls for several months asking questions to rate well-being and I have filled them out each time.

Tonight, as I answered the questions, I kept thinking about the fact that I was answering honestly and yet, my answers were not giving a true picture of my well-being. You know how polls are: multiple choice answers with no place for comment; and thus, I was thoroughly frustrated. And so, at the end of the poll, when the editors commented that we could call and talk or send email to make comments about the poll and its questions, I did just that: I wrote to him ... or them.

It was important to me that people know that I am a very happy woman even when my answers would seem to point in a different direction. And so, as these thoughts are important to me, I am adding them here.

"Because of the wording of the questions on the well-being survey, I am quite certain that my responses have caused me to sound further down on the well-being scale than I actually am.

For example, because I have several of those physical problems that cause me to be unable to do as much as others or do as much as I once did, that cause me to be in pain, cause me to be less involved in civic affairs, activities that bring me pleasure, admiration, a feeling of complete satisfaction etc., I sound dissatisfied with life.

And yet, I am quite satisfied with the life I have led. I know what I have done in the past and how very good I was at it, how much applause I have received, the admiration I have known; and I am quite happy about the life I have lived and I rest in that. My former students frequently write me and still express gratitude or admiration for the things I once did. (Almost 250 have sought me out on FaceBook and I have messages from several of them almost every day.)

Further, I am a widow, but I once had a wonderful, rich, very fulfilling relationship with a wonderful husband. That is no more; but I have the memories. I have no children, but I do have a niece who has allowed me to step in for her mother who died. In other words, although I must appear to have a non fulfilled life, the opposite is true.

You see, I have accepted the fact that much of this is over in my life; and yet, I never know what may be around the corner. I teach people every day about something; people come to me with questions and seek advice; I blog; and as I said, I am on FaceBook with many, many people and I am NOT just playing Farmville.

I am a retired teacher. I have little money for buying things or taking vacations. Sometimes, I have to put off buying things I really need until the next end-of-the-month infusion of money. But I do not stress over that. I have accepted that there isn't a lot I can do about it. I enjoy the good things that do happen and the good things I do have.

And the proof of all that is that since I retired from a very busy, very full life that I truly enjoyed, my blood pressure has returned to the low-normal it was forty years ago and the weight that I struggled to lose all those years is now steadily, although slowly, dropping every month.

I can no longer do the things I once could do and as things stand, that will never change. I cannot go to the symphony or eat out at a very nice restaurant. But just this week one of those wonderful former students sent me two tickets for the Symphony concert on Saturday night. Others have taken me out to eat; and at Christmas, another former student brought and set up a Christmas tree which I decorated to my heart's content and in doing so, encouraged several other retirees around me to do the same.

But nowhere on the survey could I answer the question of whether I was happy with my life, whether I was contented. I am all of those things. There is no way I can see my way of life changing. That probably made me sound low on the well-being scale; but I am entirely otherwise. I am fine, for God has given me complete contentment in my situation.

Yes, I wish I were not in pain every day; and yes, I wish I had about a thousand dollars more a month; and yes, I wish my apartment were larger and more comfortable, more pleasing to the eye, more convenient, modernized. But I am fine. Although I have never been wealthy, I have never been this broke and unable to do fairly common things. But life could be so much worse.

I am a very happy and very contented woman and I needed for someone to know, for those questions gave me no place to say that, after I answered the given questions very honestly. Yes, I am happy and contented. I read, watch TV, talk on the telephone, and spend entirely too much time on the computer ... sometimes all at the same time. I enjoy life even though my situation on paper screams out that I should not. And I needed for you to know that. Knowing that someone will read this and know that a person can score low on the well-being scale and yet be very well, truly pushes me higher on the scale of well-being."

CHOCOLATE CAKE DAY

2010-01-28T02:01:00.002-06:00

Oh yes, today was Chocolate Cake Day or, that is, yesterday was, or I am still on Wednesday time; but the computer knows it is Thursday and so everything gets all confused when I talk about days. Anyway, Wednesday, January 27, was Chocolate Cake Day. And I celebrated with brownies. Well, it made good sense to me.

I didn't set out to eat chocolate cake (or brownies) today. I started out with very good intentions. About 11 in the morning, I ate a very good breakfast with lots of protein, too much fat, and good carbohydrates. I know that sounds late; but when I woke, I came to the computer and spent entirely too much time here and realized that the morning was over too late for a real breakfast.

Anyway, my plans were to go to the fitness center about two or three and stay for an hour, then come home and get some things done. Because I planned to take my neighbor to the clinic to pick up her medication and be back home in time to go, I put on jeans and a sweat shirt over my swim suit to facilitate the whole thing. And off we went to accomplish it all this afternoon.

Thus, we arrived at Viola Pitts clinic about1:30 and from there everything went downhill. I have no idea just what all went on down in the pharmacy. All I know is that my friend came back to where I was sitting around 3:30, totally disgusted and promising to write the hospital board about the situation in the pharmacy. By the time I drove her home, it was four in the afternoon and I gave up the trip to the center. A class takes over the water at 5:15 and I didn't want to fight the crowded time or the crowded pool.

That means that I did not get in my afternoon exercise, did not earn my 350 calorie extension, and didn't follow up on my plans. Instead, I made brownies in order to celebrate Chocolate Cake Day and to give my friend something to compensate for her terrible afternoon. It's OK: I knew that neither of us would eat more than two brownies today. Dieters have to indulge once in a great while. My problem? I indulge altogether too often.

Therefore, I took down a box of Ghiradelli Dark Chocolate Brownie mix and proceeded to mix brownies. But when I use a mix, I never leave it alone. Tonight, I INDULGED with capital letters. I added a cup of pecan pieces. I love pecans with chocolate. I added cappuccino chips and dark chocolate chips and white chocolate chips and even some Heath bar chips. I think that I doubled the amount of the batter in adding all of that. But the result was oh, so good.

I baked those brownies in one of the silicone all edges pans, that is, a pan with dividers, so that every brownie was two inches wide and had an outside edge on two sides. Of course, these brownies needed almost twice as long to cook because they were so packed with goodies; but who cares? When they were finally cool and I removed them from the pan, they were crunchy on the edges and moist and fudgy inside, filled with bits of melted chocolate and crunchy nut and candy bits. Delicious. But even before that, while they were entirely too hot to remove from the pan, I cut out a two inch wide piece about 1/2 an inch in depth (not a 2" X 2" piece) and tried it. Oh ... we all know there is nothing quite as good as hot, thick, runny chocolate. And it was good.

Then, I had to wait so that I could cut them correctly and take them over to my neighbor. You are right. I had to leave the room while they were warm and smelling so of some chocolate Heaven. They are right now sitting on the cabinet calling to me with all of their dark brown chocolaty goodness. And I am resisting with everything I have. In the first place, because I didn't get to the water and earn my 350 extra calories, I went over my chosen calorie count for the day, 200 calories over! Even though those 2"X 2" brownies have a calorie count of 110 calories, the way I made them at least doubled that! Made by the box directions, they are an innocent indulgence; the way I make them is anything but innocent. It is pure INDULGENCE. And I love it.

FOOD, AGAIN!

2010-01-24T06:54:00.001-06:00

The other night I wrote that I love good food. I should have said as a dear friend said about herself, I didn't get this fat on junk food. These pounds are good food pounds. And now I am taking these pounds off with good food. That is so much more difficult. But to do this I have enlisted the help of two web sites: Livestrong.com/thedailyplate/ and Realage.com. These two sites have given me what I needed to lose my good food weight.

For a long time, I had known that something other than just food was involved in my weight gain. Finally, I found the answer only AFTER I began to lose. You see, after my husband, who had been so very ill, died and after I had moved back to Fort Worth and settled in, I found that I was losing weight for no particular reason. I was just losing weight. And my blood pressure which had spiked the winter of 1980 (when I taught one particular class) returned to normal, actually low normal. Something was going on.

And then I saw an advertisement for some miracle pill that was going to help everyone lose weight. I was not as interested in the pill as I was in their comment that stress causes women to produce more cortisol (a hormone produced by the adrenal gland) and that cortisol caused women to add fat around the middle and to gain weight rapidly. Well, I thought if stress causes cortisol that causes weight gain, then a lack of stress must act in reverse. I knew that I wasn't eating enough to gain weight before and that I wasn't eating enough now to retain the fat I had. Finally, something was going on. For the first time in many, many years, what I was eating was allowing me to lose weight.

I knew that probably wouldn't last forever because the body sometimes thinks it is going to starve, particularly those of us with bodies with a Northern European heritage. My ancestors lived in an area where food was extremely scarce throughout the winter months and my inheritance from them is a body which, if it thinks it isn't going to be fed, holds on to every ounce of fat that it can. And so I had to do more than depend on lack of stress to lose the rest of the weight.

I'm not sure how I found it, but I did find the My Plate website, which is a part of Lance Armstrong's Livestrong.com website. His site is a source of all kinds of health and fitness information and is a place where everyone can find whatever they need that has to do with these two topics. At the My Plate site, a person wanting to lose, gain, or stay at their weight can find all of the tools he might want or need.

First of all, he can go in and set up a daily calorie goal that suits his individual situation. For example, I put in my height, weight, activity level, and desired goal. The site quickly determined the number of calories I should consume each day and sent me to a MYPLATE page all my own where I entered whatever food I had eaten.

There I found a box into which I typed the each food I had eaten. From there, I went to a page where I could narrow down that food in exact terms, including brand names and restaurant names. When I prepared my own food, I entered the recipe and the site treated it as any other food, coming up with the calories, the grams of fat, carbohydrate, protein, fiber, salt, cholesterol, almost anything anyone might want to count. That information was then entered on a chart on my myplate page; and I was on my way.

As I charted each food, the page told me how many more calories I could eat that day; and if I didn't plan ahead, I did have a warning ahead of time about what I could eat yet during the day. After I had been charting my food for a week or so, a list was added to the page that contained those foods I seemed to list the most, so that rather than typing in the same food every day, I only had to click on the food in the list and it was entered into my chart. At the end of each day, I had the totals of all I had eaten that day as well as the totals for the last seven days.

But that is not all. I could also chart all of the activities during that day that were above my usual day's work. For example, I listed my activity level as sedentary, meaning that although I do get up and walk around, mostly I sit and read or type, or watch TV. That means that whenever I have done something else, I entered that as an activity. The site calculated the calories burned during 30 minutes of that particular activity, prorated it to the number of minutes I did the activity, and subtracted that number of calories from the total number of calories I had eaten that day.

For me, that means that if I go to the Fitness Center and work or if I do laundry or iron or vacuum or clean the kitchen, the number of calories burned in those activities is virtually added to the number of calories I can have that day. That's good! And so after every meal, I come to the computer and enter the food I have eaten. By now, most of the things I regularly eat are on my list and it goes fast. If I do eat something new and it does not have a listing, I can add it to the list. If it is some product I have here at home, I add it from the back of the package. If I eat out, which I seldom do, most of the time, that restaurant's foods are listed; and if not, there are several things I can do. I can go to the restaurant's website and add the foods from there. I have found very few foods that do not have nutritional facts listed somewhere. All of those daily charts are kept on site on a page called Food Diary. I can go back and check what I ate a year ago or last week if I wonder why the scale doesn't read the way I wish it did.

And so, for all those who have asked, this is how I am continuing to lose weight: I write down everything. I always knew that was important; but before, writing down the food did little unless I knew what was in it. Now, all of us have a resource which knows it all and I gladly use it every day. Come on in and join me.

WATER WOMAN

2010-01-21T01:16:00.005-06:00

When I first began going to Carter Rehab and Fitness Center (hereafter known as Cater), the therapist with whom I was working said that I really was a "water baby," meaning that I seemed to love being in the water. And I do. There is absolutely nothing I have found that brings such a tranquil and peaceful feeling as that I get when I am walking in the water at Carter.

It all began when I went to my primary physician and told her that I had lost all the strength, stamina, flexibility, and balance I had once had. I needed help. She sent me to Carter where I was assigned to the most wonderful therapist in the business, Glenda. In other words, she was exactly the right one for me. When we first met, she had read my background, knew my situation, that I had Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue, that I was over 70, that my knees were shot, that there is arthritis in all too many joints; and everything she did with me, she determined from what she knew about me.

Not once did I ever hurt, not once was I ever angry or defensive. Nothing she did was anything but the very best way to "handle" me. And she gave me the weapons with which to fight allowing "old age" to completely take away all of my ability to move. She gave me stretching exercises which were easy on my poor knees and balancing exercises that I finally mastered after a year. The end of January marks two years that I have been going to Carter and all that, I owe to Glenda. She made everything so enjoyable, so pleasant. How could I not go at every opportunity?

Now, look at that pool. It is just as beautiful and blue as it looks and the pool is almost always just as uncrowded as it is in the photo. Everyone is happy and pleasant from the students who work at the front desk checking in those of us who go to Carter for all sorts of reasons to the household staff who clean the facilities at the end of the day. Everyone cares about the people who go to Carter. And a lot goes on at Carter. There are therapy rooms and class rooms; a huge, mirrored room where yoga, pilates, floor exercises, and tai chi classes have plenty of room to work ; there is the pool area where I work; and the big gym that contains all of the machines I have heard about for years and where the personal trainers work with those who want to do that. The dressing areas, the showers, the locker area: everything is so nicely appointed that going to Carter is a real joy ... even before I get into the water!

I don't think that I could ever have walked into a 24 hour fitness center and just started. I do not look like someone who would go to a fitness center. I am old and overweight, I cannot walk well, cannot climb stairs, would look horrendous in the cute little leotards they wear. But Glenda took me around and showed me every area in the Center and talked about how to become a part of it all, what I could do, and what it would cost. After two months of working with her, I knew that I wanted to go to Carter for the rest of my life and that I could. It was something I could do.

And so ever since that time two years ago when I joined the aquatics program, I have gone to Carter and done those stretches in the warm, comforting water. I have stretched muscles that won't even move out of the water and used joints that are so stiff and painful I fear having to step up on a curb or walk around Wal*Mart. I step down into the warm pool and begin to work. The two or three women, who are usually there at the same time, and I briefly exchange the pleasantries and I begin to stretch those muscles and prepare to walk. And that is the way it is: pleasant, comfortable, non-threatening, doable.

The primary focus of my being at Carter is all about teaching my legs to walk. Oh, I could walk before, but I hurt and I could walk a short distance and call it over; since about four months after I began at Carter, I can walk far longer and in much less pain. I walk in the warm 88 degree water that is chest high. That is the optimum depth for getting the very best use of my time there.

Good posture, head up, shoulders back, slowly and gracefully, I walk the first lane of the pool, up and down each lane for about 30 laps. I can walk 30 laps in 45 minutes if I do not stop and talk or slow down, but stick to it. 53 laps makes a mile and thus you can see that I am walking more slowly in the water than I would be on a track. That chest high water really provides resistance, much more resistance than air. It is sometimes hard to just keep pushing through the water. Water walking is a great easy, effective, low-impact exercise that anyone can do, no matter their physical fitness level; and depending on just how fast you walk, it burns about 500 calories an hour.

As you look at the photographs of Carter, I hope you can see the reason I so enjoy going there and how wonderful the afternoons are there in the warm water.

GOLDEN PULL- APART DINNER ROLLS

2010-01-19T20:17:00.000-06:00

14 3/4 ounces King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 Tblsp potato flour or instant potato flakes

3 Tblsp Baker's Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk

2 Tblsp sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

4 Tbsp soft butter

2/3 cup lukewarm water

½ cup lukewarm milk

1 ounce melted butter

Combine all of the dough ingredients in a large bowl, and mix and knead — using your hands, a stand mixer, or a bread machine set on the dough cycle — to make a soft, smooth dough.

Place the dough in a lightly greased container — an 8-cup measure works well here — and allow the dough to rise for 60 to 90 minutes, until it's just about doubled in bulk.

Gently deflate the dough, and transfer it to a lightly greased work surface.

Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces, by dividing in half, then in halves again, etc. Round each piece into a smooth ball.

Lightly grease two 8" round cake pans.

Space 8 buns in each pan.

Cover the pans, and allow the buns to rise till they're crowded against one another and quite puffy, about 60 to 90 minutes.

Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.

Uncover the buns, and bake them for 22 to 24 minutes, until they're golden brown on top and the edges of the center bun spring back lightly when you touch it.

An instant-read thermometer inserted into the middle of the center bun should register at least 190°F.

Remove the buns from the oven, and brush with the melted butter.

After a couple of minutes, turn them out of the pan onto a cooling rack.

Serve warm.

Store leftovers well-wrapped, at room temperature.

Yield: 16 buns.

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

2010-01-19T19:58:00.003-06:00

I love good food. I love to cook. I love to cook simple home made good food and feed people at my table. I love to bake and roast and saute. I don't care much for cleaning the big K, but I do love to cook. And so in addition to the recipes I sometimes blog about ... or as a former English teacher, should I write, "about which I sometimes blog," I also think that I shall write about my real enjoyment of food that is not only good, but good for us.

Since 1971, I have dabbled in healthy foods. Now, I had always eaten more correctly than that with which the American and especially the Texan diet is credited. My mother brought me up on the small protein/ one carb/ green veggies meal plan; and when I married, I took that plan with me. I didn’t know that one was expected to have a stack of bread at the table with the meal and so I didn’t put one out. And that was the way our meals began: my very first meal I cooked that Sunday after we were married consisted of a small broiled steak, a baked potato, and a large salad of lettuce, onion, bell pepper, cucumber, tomatoes, you know … the works. No bread. And that is the way we ate most of the time.

Of course, when we had an “occasion,” we had fresh bread, something special; and that was my doom. I loved fresh bread and soon began to bake, having first begun baking fresh breads when I was 12 years old. That was my summer home making project: baking homemade yeast bread. And it was good. And, of course, when the holiday season, Christmas, came around, I baked a fruitcake… that first year. And it was good also. Friends came to eat with us, students came in to eat with us, family came to eat. We enjoyed the delights of food. Too much so, it seems. But there was always fresh fruit and green vegetables in the house and we did eat those.

As years went on, food became a subject of the news and health and foods were seen as related; and we ate better and better. And it cost more and more. Remember that first piece of steak I cooked? I remember that I bought those from the very best source in town, Pip’s to be exact, and I bought two for about 80 cents! Those were the days. Now, truth is that we didn’t eat chicken or fish or pork at my house as my dear husband didn’t like them; but we didn’t have beef every night either. Frequently, we had all veggies for dinner: fresh corn as the carb and lots of salad vegetables to accompany it, or a baked potato or a pasta or even home made bread and always the big tossed salads with a little of everything tossed in there or the big vegetable platter of raw veggies.

Now, that I am alone and cook mostly for myself only, I do eat chicken and fish; but oh my, the price of fish is horrendous. How can anyone expect retired persons to eat fish 3 or 4 times a week? I try to eat fish or seafood only once or twice a month as it is far more expensive than other things. Of course, I lightly sauté my fish very quickly and that means that I have to have good fish. Were I frying it or dousing it in butter, a la Julia Child (did you see that fish in all that butter in the movie?), it could be almost anything. But when I try to buy fish that is high in Omega 3’s, then we are talking $10 a pound. Thank goodness, 3 cooked ounces is a portion. That means I could eat three times for that $10 were the fish not so delicious. So often, I simply give in and eat half a pound and love every bite.

Yes, this is just the first of several comments about food and health and you may expect more to accompany the recipes that have been and will be. In memory of Julia, bon appetite.

SLEEP

2010-01-19T04:51:00.005-06:00

"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care/ ... sore labour's bath/Balm of hurt minds "

Ah yes, sleep is such a good thing. Researchers have long proved that Shakespeare was quite correct when he wrote that sleep heals the wounds of the day, smooths over the mind's hurts, rebuilds the used muscles, restores the body in every way. They have gone on to find that those who do not sleep well have more pain, more weaknesses, less mental alertness. Sad, isn't it... And yet, that is the state in which I find myself all too often.

You see, at bedtime, I am wide awake. It doesn't matter what I have done during the day. At everyone's usual bedtime, I am wide awake; and if I do go to bed at 10 or 11, or midnight, I do not go to sleep as do most people. Rather, I lie there wide awake and think of everything I have done that day, everything I might do the next day, and everything I want to do for the next year. I have spent hours at night replaying things I had done during the day whether that was weaving a lamp shade or teaching grammatical constructions. I have held long, involved conversations with people I might encounter the next day. I have replayed conversations from the past day. Everything except sleep.

Oh, I finally sleep after a night or two of this, but that sleep never has seemed to help. My 'ravelled sleeve' of care simply was never 'knit up;' my tired muscles never were restored. I would wake in the mornings as tired as I had been the night before. Mornings were terrible for me. I felt like Garfield without his coffee. And then, I read that those with Fibromyalgia had the problem of non-restorative sleep and I immediately identified that as my problem. I could sleep and sleep (as I so often did on weekends trying to 'catch up' ) and still feel as if I needed to sleep even more. Sleep was not restoring that which had been used up in living and I did not know what to do about it.

For years, I tried everything: valerian, melatonin, herbs of every kind; trytophan, Benadryl; everything anyone thought might help. At one time I resorted to Valium for a short while, another time to Xanax. Finally, my doctor gave me Soma to help the hurting muscles relax at night and I could sleep with that; but still it wasn't the answer. After I retired and it was no longer so important to be wide awake in the morning, I gave up and sat up at night to watch TV and drift when possible, finally sleeping at daylight.

Five years ago, I went to see a sleep specialist who listened to my sad story, told me that most people with Fibro had that same problem, but that he, perhaps, had a solution. He sent me for a sleep study. It was a very good situation: the room was very nice; the bed, quite comfortable; even the electrodes didn't bother me at all. I went to sleep, but I slept the same way I did most nights, waking over and over, suddenly aware of the fact that I was not sleeping. The next morning, the technicians told me that I had actually been awake 80% of the time. And so now we knew. Apparently, much of my 'intractable insomnia' (the diagnosis) is because of Alpha Wave Intrusion which means that as soon as I go to sleep and the brain waves begin to take me down into Delta sleep, those Alpha waves pop up and I am again awake.

All I know is that I simply do not grow sleepy until about 5 in the morning. And so the sleep specialist prescribed a new medication that works, a very expensive medication derived from a herbal remedy once found in every health food store, now a controlled substance. (If I had only known about it when it was inexpensive and sold openly.) I take it and within ten minutes, I am sleeping soundly. I sleep for four hours and wake again. I take the second dose and sleep another four hours. But sometimes, after that second four hours, I still want to sleep on and on and occasionally I sleep another four hours. I hate that.

To do the right thing, the smart thing, the thing that will make me seem 'normal,' I need to stop whatever I am doing at 11 or 12 PM and while I am working well, so often feeling better than I have felt all day, take the prescription and 'knock myself out.' That bothers me also. I hate to do that. So often, I do my best work after midnight, writing, cleaning, designing, sewing, embroidering, reading: all things I have done well into the long night hours. And yet, when I do that, I often then find it just as difficult to sleep during the day, not because I cannot, but more often because I feel that I shouldn't be asleep when things are gong on. Everyone is up and busy. Why shouldn't I be doing the same. It is a very confusing way to live.

Tonight, I should have gone to bed long, long ago; and yet, it is now 6 in the morning and I am wide awake and still going. I haven't slept since 9 yesterday morning and I feel fine. This is ridiculous and I have things to do today; but I had things to do last night that I did. Staying up allowed me to accomplish some things that needed to be done. Of course, I cannot do this over and over every day. I can only hope that staying up all night once in a while will not harm me and that my sleeve of care will not become too unraveled before I sleep tonight. And I will sleep tonight. I will stop whatever I am doing at midnight and take that wonderful medication and sleep. Perhaps, I should do that every night and sleep like most people do.

HOW TEACHERS TEACH

2010-01-17T16:52:00.001-06:00

I think that most teachers start out teaching the way they have been taught, developing their teaching methods by imitation of things they liked or saw as successful. A high school math teacher whose algebra II teacher began every class with a fast test over essential basics is very likely to start each of his own classes the very same way. And the English IV teacher whose favorite English teacher began each literature discussion with a quick test over the details of the assigned literature will do the same.

It's how we learn to teach. And it isn't always the best way to accomplish our one desire: to have students who understand and appreciate the matter we have set before them. It wasn't until about ten years before I retired that I really learned how to teach most of what I taught.

First, I finally realized that student's learning the smallest precise details of the plot of a piece of literature was not the important thing, but rather, learning how to read that piece of literature and understand the ideas in it, so that they might enjoy it and possibly become what we have always said we wanted to encourage: life long readers. To that end, I learned to begin a novel or a play much more slowly than "teaching guides" seemed to direct.

Taking time at the beginning of a novel to show students how to see those things they had been shown in short stories such as the beginnings of character development, the background of what would develop into the plot, foreshadowing, all the things we had labored with before, really made a big difference as they read further into the book. If they could see the beginnings of conflict, they could then follow that and see the development of the plot, be seduced into the rising action, be caught off guard by red herrings and blind leads, and enjoy the working out of the story.

That entire focus would be more on learning to make inferences, the one reading goal so many cannot pass on the standardized reading comprehension tests and the primary problem behind the fact that so many high school students cannot "catch" the humor found in comic strips. Good readers who have read everything set before them forever unconsciously infer from their reading all of the time and never give it a thought. But those whose reading experience has mostly been assigned have not learned to think past what is said to what is meant.

I had never thought about the fact that my students, reading a passage in a story, did not have any idea just what that passage was telling them about what was happening or what was about to happen. And so, I learned, far too late, to begin teaching inference very early, with those comics, showing students a strip and asking, "What happened just before this?" or "What is this character going to say/do next?" This way, they became aware of something they had never thought of: the significance of small details, details not to be memorized, but to be understood.

In this way, teaching how to read lengthy literature such as a novel or a play became one of the five or six major objectives I wanted my students to master before they left my ninth grade class. Inference was the primary part of that objective and one I have never found emphasized in any book or guide or class. Yes, it had been mentioned that students were unable to do this, at least on those reading comprehension tests, but I had never seen or heard anything about how to teach students to infer from their reading. That was how I discovered that when they were able to draw inferences, then their understanding of character, the importance of the setting and background, and the conflict and rising action seemed to be much easier. I have no idea why I had not seen that forty years before I did.

There is so much more that I learned in those last ten years of teaching, truly something new every year once my eyes were opened to the fact that what I had always done and what I had seen others do might not be the very best of methods. Those I will save for another time. Right now, I wonder whether my writing a book for beginning teachers would have any meaning or use whatsoever. If so, perhaps, I have found the beginnings of one in what I learned from my students in those last few years.

BAKING AGAIN

2010-01-15T01:35:00.004-06:00

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, when I was young and newly wedded and living and teaching in a town far, far from here, someone, and I am so sorry that I do not remember who, gave me a sourdough starter ... and a recipe for sourdough biscuit. Oh my, the result of that was several years of baking what I remember as soft, fluffy hot rolls that smelled so very good when baking.

Because the process of using a starter is more time consuming than complicated, I baked them more often at some time in the middle of the night than any time during the day. That meant they were frequently a breakfast treat; but just as often, they went to school with me and someone other than just family ate them. I can remember taking them to my first period senior English class or sharing them with other teachers who had come to school without breakfast or anything else. (I don't remember who was more hungry, students or teachers.)

Other times, I baked sourdough breads in the middle of the night and I can remember the smell of baking bread in the dark and the sound of the alarm so that I didn't burn the bread. Who else would bake in the middle of the night? But I did. That was the time when it was easy, it was convenient, and there was plenty of time to get it done. Just remembering the smell of that baked bread makes me hungry even tonight.

And for that reason alone, when I saw sourdough starter for sale in the King Arthur baking catalog, I couldn't ignore it. I bought it. Now, I had never taken a dry starter and gone through the process of turning it into the bubbling, sour concoction with which one bakes bread. I certainly didn't know what I was getting myself into when I started one Saturday afternoon before Christmas or possibly I would have waited a month or so. But I read and followed the directions, adding a half cup water here and a cup of flour there for several steps until I had a sourdough starter crock filled with something very close to flour and water paste ... except this paste had a most distinctive odor.

I don't remember just how long that took, but it was mix and let it sit for four hours and then add flour and water and let it sit for another four hours; and add more water and flour and wait for twelve hours; and then do it all again. Oh, perhaps, it wasn't that much; but it was several repetitions of the same several steps several times! And finally, I had that bubbling starter I so remembered.

Now, to make bread. I had several recipes and not one was the one I had used so many years ago; and I really wanted that same wonderful bread I remembered with such fondness. The first batch of sourdough rolls (as the recipe called them) was not bad for biscuit. Fresh from the oven they were delicious. Thirty minutes later, they needed help. They were neither soft nor fluffy. Some I split and called toasted biscuit; some I shared with my unsuspecting neighbor; some, the last dozen or so, were so hard, I tossed.

Back to the Internet and more recipes; but there was no way to determine which would be the ones I wanted. Should I try one with added yeast or not? one with milk or one with water? Finally, I chose a recipe that, although not what I remembered, sounded as if it might be very good for it contained beaten egg and melted butter, the starter, flour, salt, and a little yeast. The dough was soft and yielding; it felt good in my hands, ready to be bread. The recipe said it would make 24 rolls, but there was nothing near that much dough there. I patted it out, too thin it turned out, and cut the rolls quickly with a biscuit cutter, not the usual way to make rolls, but ...

When they came out of the oven, they did smell wonderful; and with butter, they tasted terrific. But they weren't as soft and fluffy as I remembered. What did they need? I should have patted the dough out into a much thicker round; and I should have made the rolls much thicker to begin. 24? I made a dozen and they needed to be much thicker and not so big around. And now, six hours later, they are flat biscuit with nothing fluffy about them.

I shall try that one again, never fear. But when I hunger for soft, fluffy dinner rolls, I have a wonderful recipe for that. It just isn't made with sourdough and that disappoints me. I remember those rolls from the sixties and how wonderful they were. I'll try one or two more times before I give up and go on with the King Arthur Flour Golden Pull Apart Dinner Rolls. Those are delightfully delicious and everything we should not eat. I can be perfectly contented with those. And I suppose that I can use my bubbling starter for paste ... if I had any need for flour paste.

FEMINIST? OR WHAT?

2010-01-13T20:15:00.003-06:00

Now, I have never associated myself with the women who refer to themselves as feminists. In fact, so much of what they have said and done I have disagreed with vehemently. But the more that I think about it, the more I realize that in so many ways I am and have been for many, many years a real feminist of my own kind.

In the first place, I am definitely not what most women my age have seen themselves as. I never hated my mother, never broke free from her and tried to forget her, never saw her as any kind of enemy. Funny, but that is almost always the first impression I have gotten from the writings of most feminists and that was never me.

I am a child of the 40's, a teen from the '50's, and my childhood was nearly perfect. Although I always think of my mother as a working mother, she did not work during the years when I was between 5-13. She was an RN and she worked when I was quite young and began to work again when I entered high school. I always saw her as a very successful woman who even during the years when she didn't work was always in demand in our little town for her skills, not only for her nursing skills, but when our church had a visiting minister, she was the hostess. She was the room mother who made the most interesting goodies for us and the Bible teacher who made Scripture come alive in the minds of her students.

Besides that, she was a very good role model for me as she was a very involved woman in town, organizing the first PTA in our school system and serving as its president, organizing the women's group at the church and serving as that president as well as being very active in the Sunday School of the church, teaching teens and organizing the classes for that age.

It seemed that mother could do everything: she sewed, making all of our clothing; she crocheted, she painted china, she baked delicious goodies for everyone; she made handcrafted centerpieces, even making a wonderful abstract Christmas tree for our wall one year. I cannot think of anything that was ever written about in a woman's magazine that she was not quite successful at doing. One year she shaped and painted marzipan fruit and vegetables just to see if she could do it. They were so very lifelike and far better than any I have ever seen done since then.

And yet, uppermost in my mind is the fact that she was a working mother long before that was a common thing. She began working at the local hospital when I was first in high school and two years later, she was a floor supervisor in that hospital. By the time I was in college, she was the nursing supervisor at night for the entire hospital and those who worked with her and for her seemed to admire her as much as I did.

I wanted to be just like her. She was everything I wanted to be: a good wife, a wonderful mother, a great cook, a delightful hostess, an excellent teacher, and such a beautiful person. My husband loved her and all of his friends enjoyed going to her house for coffee and her fruit cake during the holidays. She was a very complete woman who brought me up to know that I would and could be the very same.

There was never any other thought in my mind than that I would attend college and have a profession, this is those days when supposedly, all women were learning that all they needed to do was to get married. You know, that was never a part of my education. My mother taught me from the days when I could first understand that I had to be able to take care of myself, that I did not need to depend on anyone else ever. Seems that I was brought up to be a feminist.

And yet, when feminism became the rage, what those women were saying was NOT what I wanted to say. They did NOT define me. I suppose that I have always been my own woman and I always will be.

FINALLY

2010-01-13T20:08:00.004-06:00

I am at long last able to write in my blogspot. For so long, I had not been able to use this, for it was all scrambled and I could not access my "Dashboard." Now, all is well. Some volunteer at Google did something and here I am again.

Now, to make up for all of that lost time, I may be commenting every day. Until later, I am back.

SHOPPING AND LOVING IT

2009-10-12T01:33:00.004-05:00

Yes, tonight, I am shopping and loving it. Not buying anything, just shopping. That is why I do enjoy QVC. When I want to shop, I can turn it on and shop to my heart's content. Today is the last Fashion Day before Christmas and so all kinds of things are being shown. And I am looking and longing and looking and longing. But not buying. The fun is in the looking, the window shopping. It is eye candy for the lover of clothing.

First, there are the Anne Klein shooties. Oooh, in red patent and 3 inch heels. I couldn't wear them at all. But they are gorgeous and make me long for the days when I was young and wore such things. Deep red patent .. oh my.

And then there is the Bob Mackie velvet burnout long blouse with long, full sleeves and a wonderful, intricate print in red and purples, ready to wear with the Bob Mackie purple velvet pants. I would love to have these for wearing during the holidays. Don't know where; but if I had them, I would find somewhere to go where this outfit would really shine. I love QVC's Bob Mackie designs. They are so fashionable, so glamorous, so elegant, and always so flattering.

There are the short pull-on suede boots with a soft lining that means they will keep your feet warm all winter. And with such colors: pale lilac, pale blue, grey, black, chocolate, all kinds of colors to keep feet warm for every female. And pointed toe, 3 1/2 inch high, croco print ankle boots. The pair in grey is to die for, but they all look great on the models who wear them with leggings and short skirts.

At two AM, they will be selling coats and at three, Quacker Factory. Jeanne Bice sells some of the greatest tees for everyday wear. They are made from a good fabric that washes and wears like a dream and she always selects the most luscious colors. I cannot wait to see what she has tonight; but I am not going to for I am about to go to bed and give up the shopping for the night.

But if I were up to it, I could continue shopping all night long. At five AM, I could watch Denim & Co and see the best fitting jeans to be found at prices we can afford and wonderful sweaters and sweatshirts that always look good with those jeans. And at 8 AM I could watch Susan Graver, the designer who got me started shopping at QVC. That is a story in itself.

In October of 1990, I had just begun teaching in a new school (administrators had moved several of us from 9th grade at a junior high to 9th grade at a high school) and of course, all of us wanted to put our best feet forward by dressing our very best. I had just learned how much fun it is to wear combinations of colors and I had some dark teal pants and a strawberry colored silk blazer. I wanted a pale lilac silk blouse to put with that. I had shopped all summer for short sleeved silk or silky shells in purples, teals, and fuschias. I had looked everywhere: shops, catalogs, everywhere.

One morning I turned on the TV to keep me awake while I got ready for school; and there they were. A woman was on TV selling exactly what I had been looking for and at a great price. Oh my. I hurriedly grabbed the phone and made the call. And that was it. I would guess that for the rest of my teaching career, I wore garments designed by Susan Graver and sold on QVC. And they looked terrific.

Yes, I admit, I bought entirely too many things. I still do. I can still wear those first garments I bought and they still look brand new. Their design is classic and so, they are not that out of date. A shell is a shell and a pant is pretty much a pant! And so, I absolutely do NOT need another new garment. Therefore, I shop and so not buy. I shop and get all of the kick from it that we women do have in looking at new things and imagining ourselves wearing then.

I do enjoy this kind of shopping. I love just seeing the every nice things, the beautiful designs, the gorgeous colors; and I enjoy seeing how the stylists have put things together. Every time I watch a fashion shopping show, I learn something new about using my older things and making them look new and up to date. And that is the practical reason for watching I suppose (as if I needed an excuse).

But now it is time to stop the shopping and take myself to bed. You all shop through the night and find something you cannot live without. I will see you tomorrow in time to watch Susan Graver at 8. See you then.

I AM IRONING

2009-10-08T19:31:00.005-05:00

Yes, for the last three days, I have been ironing, steaming, and pressing. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But you know what? I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. I may continue doing this until everything is sleek and shiny and in the closet. (As opposed to being in a pile beside the ironing board or in a chair or at the foot of my bed.)

At least, they aren't still in the refrigerator. Back in the olden days, when people did things like sprinkle clothing and let them sit until they were damp throughout each garment so that when hit with the hot iron, they would smooth nicely, if one didn't get all of the ironing completed, the damp clothes had to be put somewhere so they wouldn't grow sour. The fridge was my favorite place. Those days are long gone.

Along with sprinkling, I no longer starch my white shirts, dry them outside on a line, and bring them in to be sprinkled and ironed with a hot iron. No longer do we have to have uniformly damp clothing to be ironed smooth. With the wonderful fabrics that we have these days and the terrific appliances we own, ironing is really a very enjoyable time.

I have in all of those piles are cotton and cotton/poly tees as well as cotton and cotton/poly shirts, and jeans and silk blouses and polyester blouses and all kinds of other lovely fabrics that come from the laundry looking fresh and almost ready to wear.

And I have the most wonderful appliance for taking out the few remaining wrinkles and leaving my garments with a lovely finish. I have a Rowenta 1800 watt professional iron with 100 steam holes. That thing breezes through garments like the trite old hot knife through butter. It is lots of hot steam right through those wrinkles. And I love it. I can make a tee or a pair of jeans look brand new in less than a minute and a silky poly blouse in not much more. Creases are sharp with just one pass and most things can be ironed while doubled and the steam goes right through and does its job. I do love it.

And why do I steam those tees? Those $12 tees from Wal*Mart look brand new each time I steam them; and the steamed ones that have had a little sizing sprayed on them first don't pick up stains and the short fiber cotton lies down and so that the tee looks as if it were made from long staple cotton! If I didn't get bleach on then while cleaning the kitchen, they might last forever.

I have completed a stack of ironing and I may well be half finished. Have no idea what tomorrow may bring other than rain; but I do inten d to complete this job this year!

SELF-TALK AND POSITIVE THINKING

2009-09-19T20:46:00.007-05:00

Do you listen to the thoughts that are constantly flying through your mind? It's a funny thing when you stop and listen to the things you are constantly telling yourself. Although we always think that our minds are filled with gibberish, the truth is that all of those things we are telling ourselves remain in our minds and often shape how we feel.

Yes, some morning, just stop what you are doing and listen to yourself. Are you just babbling on about things you plan to do today or are you working out full conversations with someone you need to talk to later on? All of us do that, you know. You aren't the only one who works out complete dialog as if you had any idea what that other person might really say.

But that's not the kind of self-talk that I am thinking about tonight. I am talking about all those things we say to ourselves while we are washing dishes or heading for that last turn before the last of your 50 lap walk around the little gym or as David is tying his tie before he heads out the door to conquer the world.

Some people, like David, have a constant run of criticisms of themselves, the brain mumbling things about how he should have listened to his mother all those years ago as she tried to teach him to make the perfect knot. Oh, but he was too busy to do it the right way, and he simply never learned how.

As David goes out the door, his mind has a running list of all the things he sees that should have been done over the weekend and he tells himself that had he not been so lazy, the garage door would have been repaired, the rose garden fertilized, the car taken in for its inspection. And as he rehearses each offense, he rebukes himself for not being a better provider, a better father, a better neighbor.

By the time he has backed the car down the drive, his mind is back to the bill paying that he had done the night before; and once more, he is telling himself that he is a poor provider for his family and berating himself over choices he made many years before. Can you even imagine what a storm of unhappy bumble bees conflict within his brain as he tries to think?

All of that is the result of negative self-talk, perhaps one of the most devastating habits adults allow themselves. Sometime in the late '80's, I read a book on the subject of self-talk and decided to do something different in my own life and began a very determined effort to change my way of thinking. I know, you are thinking that your thoughts are automatic. There isn't much you can do to stop them.

True. Thought is automatic. But the fact that you have thought about something doesn’t mean that it is true or good or even useful. In fact, the opposite is often true as those thoughts can often be destructive; but self-talk can be changed. To begin, you have to be aware of the fact that this self talk goes on inside your brain all of the time and at lightening speed. When you notice, you discover that you are constantly in conversation with yourself, everything from congratulations to beating up on yourself. But until you stop and think about what you are telling yourself, you may not be aware that what you tell yourself automatically all the time does have an effect on how you feel about what you do, what you are.

If you will begin to check up on yourself from time to time and listen to what you are telling yourself about yourself, you can begin to change any negative thoughts you have and add a strong positive line of thought in your life. When you get to the point that you believe that everything is all wrong, ask yourself just what you are saying to yourself. And remember that just thinking something does not make it a fact. It is simply a thought.

When one of those common negative thoughts comes along, remembering that it is ONLY a thought takes much of its power away. Don't listen; tell it that it has no power against you. And change that thought to something more realistic. On a day when you are fine and thinking good thoughts, look at the things you have been hearing yourself say. How many are completely unrealistic negativity and need to be tossed out? How many are completely unreal and almost ridiculously positive? Identify those. And keep only those thoughts that are realistic and can help you grow.

Now, you have determined that you know that you talk to yourself all of the time and those things that come into your mind are simply thoughts and not facts. You can analyze your thoughts and separate those which are valid from those which are not. And last, you should replace those thoughts that lie to you with good thoughts, valid thoughts, positive thoughts, thoughts that will allow you to grow, be a better mother, a better student, a happier person.

When you have tossed out all of those negative thoughts that disturb and prevent your being the very best person you can be, and have replaced them with valid, positive thoughts, you will learn that you can become your own best friend, your own cheerleader. I used to tell my students that I was their greatest cheerleader; but it took me a very long time to learn to be my own cheerleader. And now I have changed. Most of my self-talk is positive. I no longer beat myself up over those things I cannot do. I try to recognize those things I can do and those I cannot do and be realistic about the choices I make.

And when I see something I feel that I NEED to do, such as get my personal bath room sparkly clean and organized, rather than beat myself up over what I simply never seem to get done, I tell myself that I will eventually complete the job, but I will do it in small bits, a little every day, until it is done. I still don’t like the fact that it isn’t done yet; but I am not talking myself into deep depression. I am encouraging myself to get it done, planning, mentally preparing, cheering myself on.

I am learning. Even on one of the very bad days when the Fibromyalgia is beating me up, I do not let my thoughts add to that. I have long given up the indulgence of thinking about how bad I feel, how much I hurt, how little I am able to do, how seldom I am able to do things with other people. Instead, I have learned to spend that time, doing those things that allow me to pamper myself so that I will be over this episode sooner, feel much better a day earlier than usual, get back on my feet, and accomplish something I want to do.

That’s so much better than lying around, feeling bad and complaining, telling myself all those things about myself that are NOT good, just feeling bad and wishing it were not so, thinking about other people who do so much more, comparing myself to friends who are my age and are so much better at accomplishing things. Now when a day of doing that is over, where am I? Feeling sorry for myself, crying, feeling worse emotionally, wanting to hide in bed somewhere until it is all over. And what does a day like that lead to? Too often, another one just like it. At that rate, it takes much longer to begin to have good days, truly productive days.

Those of you who discover that you are talking to yourself with negative self talk can change all that by planning deliberately positive things to say to yourself, just as you have learned to use coping skills effectively. And as you reassure yourself, encourage yourself, and cheer yourself on, you will find yourself achieving at a much higher level and loving yourself through your efforts.

FREE SPEECH?

2009-06-23T16:18:00.007-05:00

I have not written recently; not because I didn't have something to say, but because I had too much to say, too much that has come rushing at me so that I feared babbling and saying things in the wrong way so that others brushed aside my ideas without thinking about them. I want what I write to cause thought and discussion, not immediate denial of my point of view.

And so as I sit now to write, I hesitate to say what I want to say for that same reason. Before you deny what I am saying, think about it, please. For several years, I have wondered about something I have believed in for many years and that is the right of an American citizen to speak his opinion.

For years, as a teacher, I believe that I never preached my ideas to my students. I did answer any question a student might ask about my opinion and I never felt any way but good about that. We were told that as teachers, we should answer our students honestly when they asked our opinion, but never to tell them that our opinion was the only opinion. I believe that was the way I conducted my classes.

I know that I had students in my classes who disagreed with me, and I believe that I never made them feel any way but good about having their own opinions. I know that I never made fun of them, or belittled them for disagreeing with me. And believe me, many subjects came up that we could have argued about. I hope that I always allowed for all of the varied opinions in free discussion.

I do know that doesn't go on much any more. There are teachers who are adamant that theirs is the only right opinion and insist that the class come to their ideas while there are other teachers who fear to state an opinion due to the fact that we are no longer a nation that honors the differing opinion. Have you noticed that?

There are some subjects on which we must all have the same answer, topics on which we have to agree, names we all must use. Have you noticed? It began innocently enough with a desire to remove a certain amount of rudeness from our culture. We wanted others not to use old derogatory terms about people. That was a good thing. From there, it seemed to go in all directions so that almost any term used to describe a person offended someone. At one time, the Mrs. in front of a woman's name was anathema as many feminists were incensed to have that and demanded that everyone use MS. I didn't want MS. I wasn't a MS; I was a Mrs.

From there, it went to the ridiculous use of he/she every time we wanted to refer to the unknown singular person. For years, we had used 'he' and suddenly we had to use he/she or we were ostracized. That is ridiculous, especially when English teachers demanded the use, as we had known forever that the 'he' referred to a singular person, not necessarily one of the male gender.

Frankly, I thought all of the political correctness was just short of silly; but this year, the entire thing has passed silly and arrived at anti-American. No matter what my opinion, I have never destroyed someone for voicing an opinion differing from mine.

This year when a judge asked Miss California her opinion about marriage and she gave her honest opinion, not only did he take time to blast her in every way about what she had said, but thereafter, every entertainment columnist also had something derisive to say about her. And it didn’t stop after she did not win the contest. Instead, it went on and on with the various writers deriding her for not agreeing with the majority of people in California. Oh … that’s not right. The people of California voted to keep Proposition 8. Oh .. . she seems to have had an opinion that disagreed with … entertainers.

Now, if that is the way we are going to treat those who disagree with those who have the microphones, we are all in trouble. Any one of us could be heard saying something with which others disagree. I could. We seem to be losing our ‘right of freedom of speech.’ I do know that teachers have lost that right. Perhaps, it has come because so many teachers abused it by drumming their own opinions into their students; perhaps, it has come because we are afraid that the teachers might disagree with our own opinions.

All I know is that fifteen years ago, I was not afraid to answer the question of what I thought about any given subject that came up in the classroom. Today, teachers are warned not to do so. Warned? Perhaps, threatened is more like it. I am afraid that it won’t end with teachers fearing to express an opinion that differs from the government or the school board or the students. What happens when newspapers or radio commentators fear expressing an opinion?

FIBROMYALGIA

2009-06-01T03:30:00.004-05:00

Some days, fibromyalgia is a true dragon and it takes me over completely so that I can think of little else. Today was one of those. No matter that I wanted to do some fun summer type things. I hurt too bad to do almost anything. That is one of the bad things about the disease.

Last night, it prevented me from sleeping well. No, I didn't stay awake. In fact, I slept in great huge blocks of three and four hours; but each time I woke, I was in pain and felt all crippled up as if I had slept in some terrible position. Besides, each time I woke, I immediately went back to sleep as if drugged and again slept for several hours only to wake in some sort of cramped position and hurting.

Finally, I gave up and attempted to sit up on the sofa and stay awake with the heating pad covering the parts that hurt the most and a blanket keeping any air from touching the skin. And then, I would wake in that position with my head lolling in some sort of strange direction and that adding to the pain.

That is the problem with fibro. The pain simply will not go away. And this wasn't even the flu-like pain that is the worst part of having fibromyalgia. This was just simple pain. About 10 PM or so, I had taken enough pain medication and heated the muscles enough that I finally felt like doing something other than just sitting.

Of course, by that time at night, it is really too late to accomplish much, but I did work in my bedroom some and put away some of the great heaps of clean laundry that are stacked everywhere. Tomorrow is going to be much better. Of that I am certain. And so perhaps, tomorrow I will come in here and write something wonderful on one of those topics that is rattling around in my brain. I do hope so.

The other day, one of my former students who writes to me on FaceBook asked me about Fibromyalgia, saying that she had been diagnosed with it and that now it was really beginning to bother her. I did try to give her as honest a description of what to expect and what works to help as I could.

I am sure that by now she has discovered these fibro days that come along when nothing works, but I hope also that she had learned that they do not last forever and that a good day does come along from time to time; and that the very best thing to do is to look forward to those good days and to make the most of them when they do come along.

I'm going to have a good one tomorrow; and I do hope that you all have a good day also.

OH, BY THE WAY

2009-05-25T00:52:00.003-05:00

About that stress test, when I went in to see my primary physician, she had not heard the result and so looked it up on the computer right then, acknowledging that if she hadn't heard anything, then the news must be good. She looked at the page with the result and simply said, "Normal."

Told you all there was nothing wrong with my heart, but it is so nice to know it. Now, I have had almost every test they give to women "of a certain age"and I believe that they can now leave me alone for a while. I am quite happy with where I am. I think.

Writing and Thinking ... or should it be Thinking and Writing

2009-05-25T00:41:00.002-05:00

I suppose that I should think before I write; and thus far, I have been thinking for about three weeks on things I want to write about here. I do try to get the ideas straight in my head before I begin; and sometimes that leaves long, empty spaces between Blogs. I don't mean to do that, but I am simply not one to write a comment about what I had for supper and call it a blog. I cannot do that. I blog because I want to say something and I want to share that with whomever wants to read what I write.

I really want to write about the economic situation and that one goes round and round in my head. I also want to write about writing when the readers so often know that I was an English teacher as well as about reading others' blogs when yes, the writers also know that I was an English teacher. Something else that goes round and round in my head is my idea of patriotism as opposed to much of what I read and hear these days.

And I think I would like to write some things about my childhood. About some of my favorite places. About other memories. I would hate to make this just a place where I relive much of my past, but there are things I remember that I want to write about. I will get there. What sounds good to you, anyone reading? Guess I am a little too late to write about American Idol; but I may anyway.

At least, this gives me a list to work from so that tomorrow some time I might write something. Or not. We shall see.

FOLLOW UP TO MY APRIL 29 POST

2009-05-07T02:24:00.005-05:00

Guess what? Today I had a Nuclear Stress Test. My doctor felt that as a woman of "a certain age" and after all of last week's excitement, I needed to have a stress test to make certain that my heart was just fine. Now, I know that all is well; but for some reasons, doctors need proof!

It was a very simple thing. All I had to do was sit still, first while the technician took nuclear pictures -- or something equally magnificent -- of my heart muscle at work. She had injected a small amount of a radioactive substance into my veins so that when I lay on the table underneath the gamma camera, it was able to produce images of my heart at rest. Then she took me into the stress test room where rather than walking on the treadmill, I was given a medication that caused my heart to react as if I were actually exercising, causing the coronary arteries to widen and the blood flow to increase.

After that, a second set of images were taken with the gamma camera so that the two sets could be compared to determine whether there were any heart damage or any place blood was not flowing correctly. It was all very simple and although it took about three hours, it was quite an easy thing to do.

It was the actual stressing of the heart that told me something, that gave me information about myself and the experience that I had had last week. When the technician injected me with the medication that would simulate exercise, I felt all of the effects she had told me that I would: cold, shortness of breath, shaking, tears (well, she didn't mention the tears, but I had them) and I felt just as I had felt last week when I went to the Emergency Room. To me, that was very interesting. Although nothing had shown up as being wrong with my heart when I was checked in the ER, I felt the same effects that night as I felt today.

The tech didn't seem too concerned about that and I'm not either. What I have decided is that what I felt the other night was a good reason to go to the ER, as I did feel the same way that I felt today when my heart was working hard. It might have been an overworked heart, but it wasn't. It was some sort of panic attack set off by American Idol. (Well, not really. It was some sort of a fake panic attack that I will recognize next time.) And you know what? After my experience today, I will probably go right back to the ER if I ever feel that way again. I have learned that it might be real. My heart might be working too hard.

SWINE FLU, OH MY

2009-05-06T23:25:00.003-05:00

So much has been written and so much more has been said about this year's flu scare that I decided to get my voice in on this! Now, I know that it isn't swine flu ... really; it's A/H1N1. Actually, swine flu came through the United States three times in the twentieth century and twice it got me. That's why I have been upset when so many people pooh-poohed the whole thing and could see no reason in anyone's or any school district's taking any preventative measures that they wouldn't ordinarily take for the seasonal flu.

I don't think that most people who have complained knew that there was any relationship whatsoever between the swine flu of 1918 and that which we might yet have in 2009. The pandemic of 1918 was called Spanish flu because the Spanish people spoke up and declared that Spain had a major epidemic on their hands and thus the flu that year was called Spanish flu. It really wasn't theirs. In fact, it probably began in China just as did the swine flu of 1957 and the swine flu of 1968. (And did you know that the Spanish flu was A/H1N1? Sound familiar?)

The Asian flu (we called it) in 1957 is one of which I have a very personal memory. I was in college, living in a dormitory, a dormitory that suddenly one week was filled with very sick females. One day, Peggy and Bert began making potato soup for those unable to walk to the dining hall; and the next day, those two were out trying to recruit others to help them as the number of sick had doubled. (I don't have any idea whether the school knew just how many were ill yet. It was a weekend and school activities continued.)

What I do remember was waking up in the middle of the night to walk around the corner to the bathroom and hearing my head hit the concrete floor of the hall. Yes, apparently, I had fainted; and when Peggy, who lived right there on the corner, heard me crash, she came running with a thermometer and I was put to bed.

I was sick, very sick. High fever. Horrible headache. In fact, I ached everywhere. And violent chills. It's the chills that I remember most. Fever. Chills. Wet sheets. And debilitating fatigue. Monday morning, I made my way to the infirmary only to discover there was no place to sit. Women everywhere were sitting in the floor waiting to be seen. Finally, at some point the doctor came out and told us that he was asking that the school be closed.

In those days, communication was by long distance operator and coins in the pay telephone. And transportation was by parents. There were few cars on campus and mostly seniors owned those few. I don't remember just how the word got around. I do remember the doctor telling us to call our parents to come and get us and I remember that my mother did come. She took a car filled with others who could meet their parents in Cleburne and get home that way.

I don't remember how many or who, but I know that those who were not sick weren't feeling too good at that time. Medication for the flu in those days at the school was Benadryl and the original antibiotic, sulfa. My mother was an RN and at least, I know that I was well cared for at home, but I don't remember any of it.

At home, there were stories about the flu on TV; and even though we didn't have 24/7 news as we do these days, we had enough news programs that I remember seeing what looked like gyms filled with cots containing sick college students in other states who had not been able to get home and were being cared for in large groups. That picture alone made me quite alert when I heard this year that once again swine flu was alive in Texas and prowling the state. And it is photographs like that that caused officials this year to close entire school districts.

When we went back to school that year, we all went back exhausted. It seems that most of the schools closed for that week as the swine flu that we knew as Asian flu ravaged the college campuses in Texas and most of us who had it were weak for the rest of the semester. But all of us did come back and that was far better for us than being one of the more than 70,000 in the United States who died that fall.

In 1968, swine flu came around again and this time it was called Hong Kong flu; and this time I was teaching school. One of my very favorite students was being married and I was determined not to get sick so that I could be there for her wedding. This time, I fainted again; but my head didn't bounce off a concrete floor. No, this time, I was coming down the stairs (in straight skirt, girdle, stockings, high heels, the entire works: that's how we did it in those days) and I fell to the bottom of those stairs.

It didn't seem to hurt anything other than my vanity; but I did leave and go home. And oh was I sick again. This time it seemed to last and last; and I did go to the wedding somewhere in the midst of all that: before, after, or in the middle of having the flu I don't know. I was just sick an awfully long time. Again it was high fever and chills, horrible headaches, body aches, extreme fatigue; and it went on and on, night and day, only abating for a short while each time I took aspirin.

Every day, I heard about more teachers going home sick; and one day Mr. Jones, my principal, called and asked if I could come back to school. He was a wonderful principal and I would have done anything for him and thus, I went back. I didn't last an entire day before I was back home: fever, chills, ache.

Oh, I know what the real flu feels like; I also know that the flu isn't something that lasts two or three days and you are right back to work. Flu is a two-week monster. After two weeks I went to my doctor for that official piece of paper that said that I had really been ill and out of school. When he asked whether I felt as if a freight train had run over me and left me there to die, I knew that he understood just how I felt; and so I felt free to ask him just how long I would feel this bad. When he told me that I probably would not feel well for at least six months, I swore that I was not going to do this ever again.

And now, perhaps, you understand why I have become upset each time someone said something like, "Oh we have flu every year. What's the big deal?" Well, the big deal, my dear, is that swine flu isn’t like the seasonal flu that we see every year. The big deal is that swine flu is virulent. When one in the family has it, everyone else has it. In 1957 entire towns had it at the same time.

And the symptoms that go along with swine flu are more violent than for the seasonal flu. There is always fever, usually well over 100 degrees; and with the fever, there come chills, body aches, terrible headaches, and extreme fatigue. And it goes on and on. You aren't over it in a weekend of good sleep. Swine flu as experienced in the United States lingers; and then when you finally feel well enough to go back to work, it hangs on just enough to make you feel terrible as you work.

Nope, I have had it ... twice; and I do not want it ever again. And I know that this year’s swine flu isn’t finished. When it starts in the spring, it continues in the fall and finishes only as spring comes 'round again; and we yet have next fall and winter yet to live through. Thank goodness, the CDC seems to believe that those of us who had swine flu in 1957 are immune to this flu from now on. I do hope so, for except for Tamiflu, which seems to work if it is taken in the first 24 hours to lessen the symptoms, we aren't much beyond the sulfa drugs of 1957.

At least, we have gone beyond the things which were used in 1918 when doctors were unable to find anything which really worked and people who lived away from city doctors made their own medications, coming up which such palliatives as a liniment, warmed and applied to the chest, made of hog lard, kerosene, and camphor or a cough syrup made from boiled cherry tree bark, sweetened with sugar and whisky. Nope, not interested in ever having swine flu again.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MUSIC THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN

2009-05-04T01:04:00.009-05:00

As you know, I have said before that I am very selective about the music to which I listen; and in particular, I am very particular / discriminating / picky about the sacred music with which I surround myself. I have always found a drawing near to G-d in much of the liturgical classical music, as in Bach's many chorales and in his oratorio. And although I grew up in the Broadman Hymnal and could play and sing everything in the book something there was always lacking.

Of course, as a musician and church soloist, I frequently sang in many of the local churches; and whenever I sang in the church of a different denomination from the one in which I usually sang, I enjoyed singing the hymns from all those other churches, so rich in their history and liturgy. That way, I found several other hymns that I found meant so much to me. But still, something was missing in the music ministry.

And then, several years ago, I found what I had always missed: music taken completely from the scripture. Oh yes, there are many of the great hymns which draw much of their words or phrases directly from the Bible; but they were the grand hymns of the great hymn writers of Christianity and so often contained so many ideas and so much scripture that it was often difficult to take from them one specific scriptural idea.

But some time in the 70's I found a series of albums called Scripture in Song; and in them I found what I had been looking for, songs in which one specific scriptural idea was expressed, songs that a non-singing congregation could easily sing and remember, songs they could take home in their hearts and souls and sing in the car and in the kitchen. I'm sure that by now you have heard some of them and either you liked the use of a simple scripture song from time to time or you felt that such music was too simple, not really musical enough.

Nevertheless, in the church which I attended in those days, these songs were used from time to time; and it seemed to me, used in exactly the right way. At communion, the choir might sing "Oh Sacred Head now wounded / With grief and shame weighed down / Now scornfully surrounded / With thorns Thy only crown," one of my very favorite hymns, followed by "When I survey the wondrous cross / On which the Prince of Glory died / My richest gain I count but loss / And pour contempt on all my pride."

And then they would begin a simple song with words taken directly from the Psalms, words of simple praise that were sung straight from the heart of the worshippers. "Oh, magnify the L-rd with me / Let us exhalt His name together," words that expressed their response to the true meaning of communion, words that allowed the people to pour out their response to G-d, a simple song of praise which they could carry in their hearts and sing to themselves and to G-d. I had found the music that I had missed during all those years.

And it all blended so beautifully and made so much sense liturgically and spiritually. It was so right. That is what I had always missed in the church hymns, a simple melody, easy to sing and a lyric from the scripture itself that we could remember whenever we needed the assurance of our faith and sing to ourselves, part prayer, part affirmation, part ministry. Here were the songs that would come to me when I needed G-d, needed to pray, needed prayer. Here were songs to which I could remember all the words as I drove down the long highway toward a doctor's office or sat waiting for anticipated results, songs I could sing alone in the kitchen as I celebrated success or anticipated a terrific afternoon. Scripture I could sing. For me, it was the most beautiful music this side of Heaven.

And if that sounds like some radio advertisement, well, it is the description of the music to which I listen while on the computer, a radio station on the computer at PBNRadio.com. There, the most beautiful music being written today plays 24 hours a day, praise and worship music that lifts up the weary soul and brings the worshipping believer near to the Throne of G-d. Now, not every song is a direct quotation from scripture, but every song does come directly from the Word of G-d and every song does give the listener scripture he can sing back to G-d in praise. I know. I listen and I am a happier person for having that sound go deep within to become a real part of me. And I invite you to come there and listen with me. You will be blessed beyond your belief.

TIME MEANS NOTHING TO ME

2009-05-02T06:26:00.003-05:00

Apparently, time means nothing to me. Here I am at 4:30 in the morning sitting at my computer and watching QVC on the nearby TV. Now, this would ordinarily be ridiculous and I would not tell anyone; but today is Fashion Day on QVC and even when I cannot afford to buy, I do enjoy watching to see what is out there, what is being worn, and what is being sold.

Now, QVC is not what you may think. It isn't a lot of junk being pushed by a few celebrity wanna be's, no matter what you have heard from the smart mouths on TV. The hosts are truely talented, as well as warm and friendly people you would actually enjoy knowing. Yes, some very funny (silly) things happen from time to time that are shown (and laughed at ) on (Talk) Soup; but for the most part, the shows are genuinely entertaining. And that is what I am looking for at 4:30 in the morning.

Besides, as I said, it is Fashion Day and that means good looking clothes and shoes and leather jackets and sunglasses and handbags (oh my gosh! the handbags), all at prices most of us can afford. It isn't like trying to purchase something at the mall. First of all, there is a huge selection and a lot of variety. While everything is up to the minute, there is still something for everyone. You can find whatever it is that you need or want, from soft silky sexy blouses to cotton gauze shirts or from well tailored pencil skirts in good men's wear fabric to linen slacks in a dozen colors: it is all there.

And it fits. The sizing is standardized through all of the various lines. Whether I purchase something from one of QVC's own lines or something from a well known New York designer, every garment in a size fits the same way. If I wear a size medium (oh for the day) in Denim and Company, I can wear a medium in Pamela Dennis or George Simonton. That means that if I see something I want, I can simply order it and not worry about whether it will fit. It will fit. And if, for the sake of argument, it doesn't fit, I can always return it for a full refund, no questions asked.

Besides that, the clothing is well made. I own several items of clothing that I purchased in the early 90's that look as good today as they did when I first bought them. And that is quite unusual for clothing. From time to time, they show some of the testing the garments go through before they are accepted for sale. If all garments that we can buy were so tested, we wouldn't need to buy as many things as we do. Instead, our clothing would wear and wear and not wear out!

The prices are wonderful even after I add in the tax and the shipping cost. I cannot buy a well made pair of dress pants in my size in a wonderful, wearable fabric, with a choice of half a dozen colors for less than $30 anywhere at the local mall. I can buy cheaply made pants in one or two colors (maybe) that last perhaps for a year; but a nice pair of well made slacks begins at $60 and may well go on to $200 for a good brand of clothing. The highest price I have seen on a pair of slacks was on a pair of designer made lined summer weight wool slacks. They were $109. Try that at Macy's.

The whole thing makes such good sense. I have wonderful pieces of clothing that no one else has. I never see myself out in public. I seem to have my own personal designer who makes certain that I dress very well and quite inexpensively. So, this morning I am sitting here looking at things that are made just for me. I have quite a choice of styles and every style comes in a great choice of colors. Just how many garments do you think will be for sale in the 25 hours of today's Fashion Day? And each of those will be in my size. Every one of them comes in my size. And in a great choice of colors. Now, you know why I haven't shopped in the mall since 1990 and I am very well dressed.

Fashion Day doesn't end until midnight Eastern time tonight, and I do plan to watch most of it. I can sleep tonight sometime. After all, I'm retired. I don't really have to do anything that I don't want to do now, do I? So, I am doing exactly what I want to do: enjoying life.

ANOTHER WORD

2009-04-30T00:06:00.004-05:00

Tonight, I want to think about another of the many Words by which I try to live and this one comes from the book of James. Here, the author has told me that whenever I don't know what I should do, I should simply ask G-d; and if I believe, He will give me the answer.

Isn't that a wonderful thought? Don't you wish that it were really true? That if you didn't know what to do about some serious situation in your life, that all you had to do was ask G-d and He would just tell you what to do? Wouldn't that be exciting: to come to G-d and ask what to do, where to go, what to spend; and we would know?

But that is what it says. Can I really do that? Does it work? Well, yes, but not like the magic act some seem to expect when they ask. Let's look at what the word does say, "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask G-d, ... and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."

That means that if I need wisdom about something in particular, if I really need to know whether I should or should not take a trip or take a class, put off an appointment or buy another car, if I need wisdom and really need to know from G-d, if I haven't already made up my mind and am not simply waiting for something to encourage me in the direction I already want to go, if I am truly looking for wisdom and not permission to do something I already know I should not do, I should ask G-d.

If I lack wisdom and truly want not an excuse, not permission, not encouragement, but wisdom -- if I lack wisdom and want wisdom about any specific thing, then I should ask of G-d, go to Him with my mind open to His wisdom, go to Him with a real desire for His will, and I should go to Him believing and not doubting. I should go without any idea of "if it works..." or "If He cares ..." or any of the multitude of doubts which we take along witih us every day; if we do believe that He will give us that wisdom, then we will be answered, we will have the wisdom we need.

If we need wisdom and we ask for that wisdom, believing, then G-d will give us that wisdom. And here is where we get in the way again. Sometimes, we expect a big answer booming through the sky or spelled oud in gold letters in front of our eyes; but that isn't the way it often comes. G-d gives us that wisdom which we need and often it IS in that small quite voice deep within our spirit, and sometimes it is given to us in the words of some other person in conversation, in a commentary in a book, in a speech or a sermon, even in a novel or a movie, the words of a song or a poem we read.

Suddenly, we have our answer; the wisdom is a part of our thinking; we know what we must do. And that wisdom has come from G-d because we asked. Isn't G-d good? If only we had the wisdom in the first place to quiet ourselves and come before Him and without any preconditions, simply ask. Wisdom can be ours. The wisdom written about in the Proverbs can be ours. The wisdom Solomon asked for can be ours. We only need ask, believing.

I DID NOT HAVE A HEART ATTACK

2009-04-29T02:08:00.003-05:00

It is a long story and so I begin... Monday, I stumbled against a groove in the ramped sidewalk and fell hard on my right side, breaking my glasses. (We will talk about $400 for glasses later.) Nothing else seemed to be hurt and so I went on about my day. Tuesday, about 4 in the afternoon, I begin to hurt in the right side of my neck and chest wall.

As it grew stronger, it reminded me of a time when I have taken a capsule only to have it begin to dissolve somewhere in my throat, rather than further down. Always, when that has happened, it has caused a burning in my throat, neck and upper chest until I drank an enormous amount of water or ate something to push it on down. And that IS what I was feeling. Worse, it widened out, moving into the sides of my neck and on into the bottom of my jaw. Then, it moved down into the front of my chest and suddenly, I remembered that I had felt that before.

In the spring of 2003 while in Childress, I had felt the same thing while preparing brunch for David one Sunday. As I sat down to eat with him, I realized that I could not eat. I was choking. I could not swallow at all. And I was beginning to have trouble breathing or speaking. I was scared and all I could do was sit and attempt to chew or swallow. I had then begun to shake and I was truly scared.

The pain that had been in my jaw and neck and the front of my chest grew worse, and I called Regina to ask whether she remembered the symptoms of a heart attack in a woman. We had talked about that earlier in the week; but she couldn't remember them either and so she took me to the ER.

All that came flooding back as I felt the very same way once again: I couldn't breath, I couldn't talk, I couldn't swallow. All I could do was shake and cry. And thus I asked Jim, my apartment manager to take me to the Emergency Room. I knew from that experience before that I probably was not having a heart attach, but I hurt badly and I had no idea of what was wrong with me. And alone with no family, I wanted a doctor and a hospital.

Sending out a request for prayer from a dear friend, I went to the ER and admitted myself, shaking all over and probably scaring someone in the waiting room. But the Triage nurse quickly took me to a trauma room and a doctor came in with his questions. After I explained the situation and had told him that I was definitely NOT a hysterical old woman, he gave me over to his nurses who checked once again everything which had been checked in the last three months. One thing I do know now: there is nothing wrong with me that I do not know all about.

Later, he came in with the very same solution that my doctor in Childress had: and IV solution of anti-anxiety medication. I had not been anxious about anything. That was not my problem; but the medication slowed everything down and reduced the pain to almost none at all. After he had watched me for two or more hours, he sent me home with a prescription for that medication should this ever happen again. I was calm and quite ready to be home.

It was as I got out of Romona’s car in front of my apartment that I felt that same pain in my jaw and chest on the right side. Not again. I was completely relaxed and ready do be at home. And then, as she and I talked about my fall of the preceding day, I realized just why my right chest wall was still in pain, still felt as if it were agitated: I had fallen on my right side the day before; the pain was from the chest wall's being bruised inside.

I don't know whether that pain set off some sort of anxiety that led to the entire problem or whether the pain mimicked the pain that might come with a panic attack; whatever the problem had been, I have now been checked and rechecked: my heart is in fine shape. My arteries have been checked. Right now, as of this very moment, I am well! I'm simply sore.

And this, it is two o'clock in the morning and I am at home, letting those of you who were concerned with me know that I am fine. I now do know what those pains that often accompany a woman's heart attack do feel like and although I had the pain, I did not have the heart attack.

HAMBURGERS AGAIN ...

2009-04-28T16:02:00.003-05:00

As I have said here before, I do like my own cooking; and today, I would love to have one of my own home made hamburgers. They are simple enough to make, but it messes up the kitchen and takes quite a long time when you think that all I am getting is one little sandwich. But oh, is it ever worth the time and the mess. When I make my hamburger, I make a good, old-fashioned one, beginning with some good ground steak. (Sometimes, I chop my own and sometimes I have it ground for me; but I don't start with ground beef from the counter, that's for sure.)

Before I even begin to cook the hamburger, I prepare my condiments: my veggies. I want two or three slices of a very good red tomato and two or three very thin (almost paper thin) slices of sweet onion to which I add a couple of leaves of curly green leaf lettuce (the good stuff with lots of vitamins) and two or three long slices of dill pickle (I really like Stackers.)

I keep cooked bacon in my refridgerator and so I reheat that (it is very crisp from the way I cook bacon ... more about that another day) and have it ready to put on my burger. And I also have nice, thin slices of cheddar cheese ready to go. Over on the side I get the plain yellow mustard and the real mayonnaise ready. And thus, I am prepared to cook my supper.

I prefer my beef patty more thin than the thick ones that everyone seems to prefer. So I make out a relatively thin patty with only about a fourth of a pound of beef and I don't add anything to it. (Oh yes, I, at times, have added spices, chopped onions, steak sauce; but this isn't what I really want.) So, I put that beef patty on my sizzling hot griddle (yes, cast iron, well seasoned) and let it cook. I don't touch it, don't smash it, don't mash it, nothing. It cooks to DONE. Because I cook it fast on that hot griddle, it is still quite juicy and just fine (and it isn't going to make me sick).

As soon as the meat is done, I put it to one side and get the bun ready to heat. I really like the buns baked at Central Market, the ones that taste more like real home baked bread; and I slice them in two and place them cut side down on the griddle right where the meat was just cooked. (Yes, I know, sometimes, grease gets on the bun and that makes it taste even better as it adds to the quality of my bun.) And then : Ta Da .... it is time to put the whole thing together.

And so I buid it: my idea of the perfect hamburger: warm bun with mayo, leafy, crunchy lettuce, great beef patty, crisp bacon, real cheese that really melts, tomatoes, onions, pickles, another leaf of lettuce, and the topper, the bun slatherd with just the right amount of mustard. I love it.

Others like their burgers with all kinds of things added to them. I've watched the Cook-off's on the Food Network. I've seen burgers that began with ground shrimp or ground lamb and contained pineapple chunks and yogurt and who knows what else? Those, for me, are not hamburgers. Sorry. They may well be sandwiches; but they are NOT hamburgers.

I am not thrilled with McDonald's as a place to get a great meal or even as a place to find a good burger, but at least they do know the definition of a hamburger. I have heard children sing it: all beef patties, pickles, sesame seed buns. You know: the works. MickeyD's gets it right: it begins with beef. That's right: BEEF. The Food Channel I love; but they have truly missed it when it comes to my favorite home cooked meal: a real home made, beefy hamburger.

BE STILL

2009-04-28T02:40:00.002-05:00

Another of the Words by which I live also comes from the Psalms, Psalms 37:7, "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him." How many times I have read that one and tried and tried and tried. And then I learned that it does not say to try. It says to "be still and wait.""

I think that may well be the most difficult thing there is for those of us who are filled with ideas that need to be shared and music that must be heard and art that must be seen and cakes that must be tasted, even for those who have business that must be completed. Be still and wait ... patiently. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have things I want to do ... NOW. I don't want to wait until things seem to work out so that I can do whatever it is I need to do. Oh no ... I NEED to do it now. But that is not what the words say and that is not what makes the things I want to do succeed.

Be still. That is the first part. Some days I am so very busy just doing ... doing, reading, watching TV, calling a friend, running to the market, doing laundry. That is not being still; but neither is sitting and doing nothing, turning the pages in a mag and flipping the remote control to one thing after another. Neither is that is not being still.

Being still is so difficult, and yet I am learning. Being still is going somewhere and settling my mind, getting quiet within myself, settling my spirit, allowing everything else to go. And that word continues, "before the L-rd." Just being still is one thing; but it is being still before the L-rd with our mind fixed on Him that brings us our reward. "Before the L-rd" means that our minds are not blank, but are fixed on Him, on His words, on His action, on His praises. Sometimes, for me, that means that I may be singing while my mind is fixed on Him.

And then it means that while in that state of quiet, I am listening to G-d as He speaks to me about what I have recently read or seen or heard or experienced for myself. Oh yes, He does speak to us. It is just that we are so seldom quiet that we fail to hear His voice. But the voice does come and we know what G-d has for us: an idea, a path, a dream, a goal. It comes to us while we are quiet and still before HIm.

And then, it follows that we should "wait patiently" for Him. That is another very difficult thing for most of us. We may sit quietly and fix our minds on G-d and then expect things to come to us quickly ... NOW. But no, that is not what the word says. We must wait patiently. And that doesn't mean thinking about a dozen other things while waiting. This is so difficult for all of us that I am certain that is must be difficult for the most devoted follower, the most inspired of His disciples.

Patience doesn't come easily to any of us. Oh, perhaps, to those who have grown older and have more time, perhaps, they find it easier to be patient. It surely looks that way. But for those of us who are full of ideas and plans and things to say and things to do, patience sometimes feels like wasted time. But that word says to "wait patiently" and so we must do. And waiting patiently is waiting in stillness and quiet, completely at ease, without a thought of hurry or wasted time.

And last, the word says that we must "wait patiently for Him" and therein lies the secret to creativity. If we wait for His creative idea, his music, his thought, his poetry, his design, his business plan, we will have success. Only when I am able to hear His voice and know that I have the right direction can I know that I am on the right path. Only then can I truly believe that my "Äh-Ha" moment is real, that my plan will succeed, that the song will touch the right person, that the essay will reach the one who needs it, that my plan for the day will please Him, and that whatever I have to do that day will be the right thing to do, the one thing that will bring success or touch the most people.

That is G-d's way for us to make decisions, not exactly our way. Do I always do that? Of course, not. Last night, I bought a pair of shoes, Birki's, from QVC. There they were, the perfect color of pink, just the right style, extremely comfortable footbed, just the right thing for summer ... and winter. I saw it. I picked up the phone, hit the speed dial for automatic ordering; and in less than a minute, a pair of pink sandals were headed my way. I didn't get still and wait patiently to learn whether I should order the shoes. I simply ordered them. Was that the OK? Probably. Was that the better way? No. Oh, I can afford them and I shall wear them with joy.

But had I waited and listened, I probably would not have gone back later and cancelled the order so that I could order a different pair that suited me better. And had I been still and waited, I might not have even bought anything at all. I don't know. I just bought them. I am human. I don't always follow G-d's directions for successful living. But when I do, when I take the time to get still before HIm and wait patiently for Him, I don't make mistakes and I usually do those things which are very successful.

When I was teaching, I tried to do this often, to be still before Him and to wait for Him. Those were the days when the concepts I wanted my students to understand were more clear to them and my teaching seemed inspired, unlike the times when I flew into the classroom in a hurry and my explanations went right over their heads. G-d did make me a better teacher when I looked to Him for the inspiration and acknowledged His leading. I know that now. It has taken a while to realize just what made me a better teacher than I might have been: I learned to be still before Him and to wait patiently for Him. May I remember that in all that I choose to do.