Do You Need a New Mattress (this is not an advertisement)

We finally bought a new mattress. The old one was 13 years old, three years past the due date for replacement. I am shocked that mattresses don’t live forever, like they seemed to when we were kids. You just slept on them (or used them as trampolines) but you did not replace them.

But Ken & I are learning about the new biology of being 50+. The slab you sleep on is picking up in importance. You would think that such a passive thing as sleeping would not wound a thing that cost $1,000 thirteen years ago, but our mattress had finally sagged into a shallow “W.” I wrote off my nightly tossing and turning, like a rotisserie chicken, as yet another signal of an aging body. I tried to deny an increasing lumpiness in my beloved pillowtop but it had succumbed to mattress old age and was taking me with it. A recent back injury forced me out of my bedroom and into the guest bed, which, since it is seldom used, is in better shape. I could sleep, more or less, through the night.

My chiropractor recommended a Chiromatic mattress. Not inexpensive. My husband drove us to the showroom because to spend an hour in the car meant I had to take serious pain medication and lay flat in the passenger seat to get there to check them out. In short, we placed an order and now have been sleeping on it for a week.

We sleep like babies now. And I am off the pain meds.

Ranting

This is a rant, so if you are not so inclined, click on….

I went to the supermarket yesterday, fulfilling the usual Saturday chores. Briefly perusing the trashy novel section, my gaze snapped over to a book cover for “The Horse Boy: A Father’s Quest to Heal His Son,” by Rupert Isaacson and published by Little, Brown and Company, no doubt available to coincide with Father’s Day.

There is a photograph of a man mounted on a big bay horse. He was holding a boy in front of him in the saddle. They were grinning and gazing up thankfully into the heavens like they had just won the lottery. No doubt the reader is supposed to believe their horse was in on the moment because he also had his head thrown back in open-mouthed joy. His eyes were closed.

Horses don’t do this.

I snatched the book from the shelf to take a closer look. A twisted wire bit was jammed against the back of that horse’s mouth so tightly you could see it cutting into the corner of its tender skin. That horse was not rejoicing with the two people on its back but screaming in silent agony, which is why the photoshop editor arranged to have its eyes closed, less we see the white-eyed terror and the reader be offended.

Ironically enough, the book is about a father’s quest to heal his son of a chronic affliction and the healing presence of horses. I confess I have not read it, nor have plans to support a publishing company that exploits the animals that are the heroes of the book.

I’m done. Thank you for reading this far.

Social Networking-The Old Fashioned Way

Ken and I are once again looking forward to Saturday mornings, not only because it’s summer and you don’t have to shovel sunshine from your driveway to go anywhere, but because the Ringwood Farmer’s Market is back in the parking lot adjacent to the public library, so we have food and books, all in one economical trip. What could be better than to feed the body and the mind at the same time?
Nina’s Red Barn Farm is back with scallions that jumped into my bag along with eggs from her hens and honey from her hives.
Pie Eyed Bar Pies is back in the corner offering samples of his pies, so I visit him every week, and every week purchase a few more jars of his marinara sauce. (It's better than mine and a lot less work). I had better stock up; winter is coming.

Sweet singers....

I'm a sucker for pottery, especially with cat faces on them.

Folks are permitted to bring their dogs to the Market, which tickles me no end. I am crazy about dogs, German Shepherds in particular, probably because they remind me of a very special dog in my life.

We have lived in this town for 14 years, but when you do not have children and work in a town over 20 miles away on “the other side of the mountain, it can be difficult to get to know fellow townspeople.The Market has become a small touchstone for me to greet those I have come to know and smile at increasingly familiar faces. It is social networking the old-fashioned way, the one where real faces smile back at you, and know your name.

Here is a recipe given to me last week that I have not tried making yet but will today with the produce purchased from our local farmers:

Bok Choy Salad
Large head bok choy, chopped
2 bunches scallions
celery to taste

Toast 2 packages of Ramon noodles (do not use seasoning)
Toast 2 ounces sliced almonds
Toast 2.5 ounces sesame seeds.

Dressing:
2 Tblsp soy sauce
½ cup sugar (or to taste)
3/4 cup olive oil
½ cup rice wine vinegar (unseasoned)
Bring to a boil no longer than one minute. Cool and toss w/salad.

Enjoy!

Coming Home to Friends

You need to have people who mean something to you, someone to whom you can turn, knowing that being with them is coming home. The one who understands where you have been, even when you don’t know yourself, the one person in the world who knows what dreams will be. You are lucky to have one of those in a lifetime, even for a brief time.

I had lunch with such a friend today. Two years ago, she retired from the company where I still work and moved to Alabama to live closer to her daughter & granddaughter. Every year, she journeys back north to visit her son and touch base with old friends. I am lucky to be one of them.

We share, we talk, we laugh, we tell the tales of our year. There is a bright energy in the air that goes past reminiscence or the telling of stories. It goes past the sharing of common experiences of our work years together. She knows my heart and plants a flag of faith there; she celebrates my private and public victories like they were her own, and spreads the blanket of compassion over my hurt places. I am more whole after being with her than I am when she arrives.

Thank you, Dee W. I can’t wait to see you again.

PS: Dee~The photo is for your snowman collection....

Left Brain, Right Brain

I’ve been reading “My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. a Harvard-trained brain scientist and neuroanatomist who suffered a stroke when she was 37 years old. She documents her awareness of her symptoms: blinding headache, sudden sensitivity to light and loss of balance. She knew which neurons were going down as a massive hemorrhage tsunami’d her brain. What she did not know at the time was that 8 years later, she would write a book about it.

There are many publications about left and right brain functions, but for some reason, Dr. Taylor’s story activates an area of my own brain, giving me an “Aha! moment” that helps defines the experiences of the past three years of my life. I move through my day assigning my thoughts and actions as “that’s left brain, that’s right brain; here they are playing nicely together, but oh—there goes left brain being critical again” which it does all too often. You know: that little brain chatter that likes to point out your legion of weaknesses.

According to Dr. Taylor: “…the character of our right mind has been ridiculed and portrayed in an extremely unflattering light, simply because it does not understand verbal language or comprehend linear thought.” “In vast contrast, our left mind has routinely been touted as linguistic, sequential, methodical, rational, smart, and the seat of our consciousness.”

My left brain gives me language and the ability to form words and sentences. It instructs my fingers on the keyboard, but the spirit of what I want to write about are messages from the innocuous right brain. My challenge is to lasso the cloud of intuition and siphon it into a sentence that can be communicated and understood to connect to you, the reader of Oak in the Seed. The purpose of all this work is to create a bridge, a relationship with someone else in the universe that I will likely never meet in person. Left brain, right brain.

Left brain is suggesting I go shower now and clean the house. It is organizing the day and prompting me to get away from the computer. Right brain agrees—I need to move my body and enjoy the cool morning air. So, we are in agreement then.

Wordless Wednesday

Ticked Off!

If you are squeamish about ticks, stop reading now. In fact, I am not going to read it either.
But while tapping away at my keyboard at work the other morning, I absentmindedly slapped my hand to the back of my neck to rub the itchy spots left by black flies from the weekend gardening tasks. It’s not enough that the little bastards wiggle around in front of your eyes when you are trying to do something; they also zero in and start chewing away on your skin and leave an annoying lump that lasts for days, which is what I was rubbing when I found…
A TICK.
The bile rose in my throat. I couldn’t see it but could feel the smooth globe of its body attached to the back of my skull. There is only so much you can ask of your colleagues. “Will you pull an engorged tick out of my head?” is not one of them.
So I did what you, dear Reader, would have done. The instant my fingers felt the plump body of this most disgusting of insects, my nails dug into my scalp and I pulled. My hands wanted to scream, “OH MY GOD! We are closing in on a TICK!” And then came away bloodied.
I'da like to have passed out. Still do, when I think of it.
So I won’t.
When I get to heaven, this is going to be on my top ten list of questions: “Why do we exist? What is death? What is the purpose of life?
What WERE you thinking when you created ticks?