Close Calls

I was walking.

I am such a caricature of myself: the doctor’s wife, in my yoga clothes, with my yoga mat slung behind me, in flip flops, clutching a latte … but I digress.

There was a lot of construction. On one side of the street, there was a fenced-off lot with a backhoe working and on the other side, a big truck was slowly backing into a driveway.

Since the sidewalk along the fence wasn’t closed, I was walking there.

The fence was about 8 feet tall. The heap of rubble behind it was much taller. It had been a brick building that morning. And it was shaking. The backhoe, which I couldn’t see, was working behind it.

It began to occur to me that, perhaps, I shouldn’t be there.

The construction worker directing the truck saw me and waved me to the other side of the street. “Just in case,” he said.

Of course, he was right.

(Also, that sidewalk should have been blocked off, hello.)

After I had walked on, I turned. As I watched, that pile of bricks tumbled over, flattening the fence and spilling all over the sidewalk.

Whew, a close call.

We all have them and have more of them, the older we get.

Once you become a certain age, it seems, doctors are always finding things that could be terrible. I continue to have doctors monitor me for possibly horrific things. In fact, I just got another all-clear after a week of worry.

Even with all these all-clears (thank God), I am left with residual fear. What about next time?

Because something will eventually get you, right?

How are we supposed to deal with that?

Yet, the bricks didn’t bother me … I am going to buy that construction worker a coffee, though.

Mental Maintenance

I once actually read how-to books about housecleaning. My goal, sort of realized, was to figure out the least I could do yet stay in the “normal” range.

I realized I've done the same when it comes to "mental maintenance."

Our minds are not machines, and even if they were, machines need maintenance, too.

Be kind to your mind!

Hokey as these sound, they work.

Keeping a Journal. I've done this since I was 12 years old. Spent a lot of time scribbling away, but the benefits outweigh the costs. It is the best way to learn how to write. And you think through your thoughts.

From the author Julia Cameron, keep a Ta Da List. Write down the things you did do.

Write down 5+ things you are grateful for. Some of mine -- "I'm grateful I'm not her" -- are clearly not in the spirit, but even they work. Any focus on the positive helps.

Meditation: Literally 5 minutes. Just breathe. And it’s not so much clearing your mind as it is simply trying to let your mind be clear. My favorite book on the subject: 10% Happier.

Learn Something Different: I spend about 5 minutes a day using a phone app (Duolingo) to learn a few words of Spanish. I got excited in the supermarket yesterday when I realized the people in front of me were talking about onions (cebollas)!

Exercise ... Particularly yoga ... Exercise helps emotionally as well as physically. Studies show that exercise can be as effective for alleviating depression as medications. The yoga pose half-pigeon, which is done near the end of yoga class and stretches things deep in your hips, seems to dispel stress especially well.

Sleep. It is shocking how much better you can feel simply from getting enough sleep.

Winning at Yoga

Is feeling competitive a good thing?

I used to think “Hell, no.” I used to avoid it in all things, at all costs.

I was the uncoordinated kid who was always picked last for teams. I wasn’t competitive as a kid in gym and sports, I came to loathe them, because I didn’t have a chance of “winning.”

Being forced into competitive situations then, when it didn’t fit, did harm.

I think this happens to a lot of people. How else do you explain why over 80% of all American adults don’t exercise?

So often, people have such bad memories that it leads to a lifelong aversion to any exercise, which is sad.

Who is at fault? The adults – gym teachers, coaches and parents – who get so caught up in vicarious competition that they forget the point. Shouldn’t we be teaching and encouraging all children about physical fitness?

I was lucky. I eventually discovered exercise can be fun.

Because my college had a PE requirement, I signed up for a student-taught dancercise class. (Hush, that was all the rage in the ‘80s.) The teacher, apparently a dancer, was just a good teacher, a nice person.

I wish I could remember her name. That class was life-changing, no exaggeration.

I have to laugh.  Recently, I asked a trainer at the local Y for advice.  I told him I wanted to be able to do the yoga poses that the most advanced students in my classes can do. You know, stuff like this. Which I am, incidentally, nowhere near doing.

“Wants to win at yoga,” wrote the trainer in his notes.

Yup, I’m finally good enough at a physical endeavor, which doesn’t even have to be that good, to experience feeling competitive as motivation.

Yay!

Sick of Fear

I went through a period of about a year and a half, with an intense stretch of about three months at the end, of health scares.

Suddenly, it seemed, I couldn’t get a routine medical test without it coming back positive, possibly indicating something dire. Literally, at one point, I was standing in line at a doctor’s office, to get a follow-up procedure for one finding, when my phone rang, to let me know of another positive test result that could indicate something else dire for which a follow-up had to be scheduled … in a few weeks.

All I had done was get the routine screening tests my doctors told me I should, the way I always did: mammogram, pap smear, eye exam, etc. But this go-round, they led to, according to my count, a follow-up mammogram, three ultrasounds, four unpleasant gynecological procedures, in which, as my doctor-husband put it, gynecologists got “way up into my business,” a urology procedure, two MRIs, a CT scan, two sets of x-rays, excisions and a skin graft.

I am not blaming anyone. My doctors are very good at what they do, were doing exactly what they are supposed to do and very possibly saved me from something bad.

But, although it was no one’s intention, I cannot think of a better way to push someone, especially someone like me, who’s kind of anxious, right off the fear cliff.

I am fine, for which I feel lucky and grateful. I know I am also lucky to have access to healthcare.

But I also ended up seeing a therapist and getting on Prozac.

(Prozac’s great, so is therapy!)

Maybe that’s a silver lining: Feeling besieged led me to seek help for the anxiety I’ve come to realize has  always been lurking inside my head. J

Life is Good

You know how it sometimes seems like the person who can tell you exactly what you need to hear at that moment in your life suddenly shows up?

Yeah, that recently happened to me.

Robert Flatt is a wonderful photographer and an amazing person.

And I wrote about him for The Buzz Magazines.

Losing Weight

Yay! I lost weight!

Needing to watch my weight is a relatively new development for me. When I was young, I was a skinny-skinny-skinny eating machine.

Well … things have changed.

Several years ago, my husband lost 60 pounds. People, he reports, kept asking him how he did it, but when he told them he watched what he ate and exercised, which is what I’ve just done, they’d say, “Yeah, I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.”

I’m no expert, but, yeah, it does … which doesn’t mean it’s easy or quick.

Things I found helpful:

Get a calorie-counting app on your phone, one that tracks calories expended on exercise as well as calories consumed.

You will need to exercise every day to keep within the calorie count. If you don’t, you will be hungry and being hungry makes you want to start killing people. And turn on the “track my activity” feature, which will minus out calories for the walking it senses you are doing.

Find exercise you will do. VERY important.

Do not let yourself get hungry. Seems counter-intuitive, but if you grit your teeth and try to use willpower to not eat, you will lose control and eat anything (and everything) within reach. Eat frequently and choose things that will keep you full, containing, in particular, protein, even though these foods aren’t the lowest in calories. Do not try to survive on lettuce.

Choose whole grains. Things like brown rice and whole-wheat pasta take your body longer to digest, leaving you feeling full longer.

Don’t make any food forbidden.  Sure, you can eat it. Just fit it into your calorie count. I drink lattes (skim milk, no sugar: an easy adjustment) and, at dinner, wine.

Be realistic: Slow and (relatively, imperfectly) steady is how this works.