?`s and ANNEswers

Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

A Perfect Ten

Posted on July 28, 2010

When I came home from the hospital a few weeks back, all I could think about was sleep. Sleep without being interrupted by a nurse who wanted to take my blood pressure or a technician from the lab who wanted a sample of my blood.

At that time I probably slept twelve to sixteen hours a day, waking up only to roll over and return to Dreamland. Or eat something. I felt entitled to be a slug, since I’d been hit by the virtual surgical Mack truck. Besides, I was told sleep enhances the healing process, and I accepted this as irrefutable truth.

Yet when I’m “healed,” if I want to have enough hours in the day to do the things I enjoy, I’m going to have to cut down on sleeping. It’s true some of this is happening naturally as I gain strength and stamina. Last night, for instance, I slept only nine and a half hours; and today I took only a forty-five minute naps. Which adds to a little over ten hours of sleep in a 24 hour period.

My first goal is to sleep ten hours or less a day. It doesn’t matter how it’s apportioned between night rest and nap. It will be a milestone. My second goal is to do this consecutively for several days. Then I’ll know I’m heading in the right direction.

For me, a perfect ten has nothing to do with a gymnastic competition or Bo Derek’s body a few decades back. Or even a special manicure. It’s all about staying awake.

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Food for Thought

Posted on July 27, 2010

I was standing in the check-out line yesterday staring blindly at the magazine rack while the lady in front of me doled out her coupons and her coins. She may have saved money, but I succumbed to purchasing a magazine devoted to food.

I’m a sucker for information about food: recipes, calories, carbs, short cuts, crock pot tips, cuts of meat, fresh vegetables, easy desserts for company, freezing leftovers, substituting something for sugar or butter, handy gadgets, you name it. So I can’t fault the woman in front of me for the fact that I purchased a food magazine.

I brought it home and spent part of the evening reading various recipes. By the time I got to the staple that indicates the middle, I saw a definite pattern emerging. And it was this: This food magazine has no interest in healthy eating or portion control or even sharing caloric content. It’s all about promoting the advertisers’ products. And, of course, the advertisers are primarily companies with many, many food lines.

Like cream cheese which you can add to your chicken dishes. And your macaroni and cheese dishes (on top of the usual cheese you’d use). Then there’s the hamburger noodle bake that includes cottage cheese, cream cheese, and parmesan. And a new combination of two comfort foods to create macaroni and cheese pizza.

I won’t name this magazine, but I will say the slogan on the front cover is “#1 Cooking Magazine in the World.” If this is true, then I predict other countries could soon have the same issues with obesity, childhood diabetes, and heart disease that have come to plague the United States.

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Getting Along Swimmingly

Posted on July 26, 2010

Before my surgery last month I had become interested in swimming. Took six months’ worth of lessons and determined I would master that most difficult of strokes, the butterfly. Was moving along quite well in that direction too.

But the trip to St. Joseph Memorial Hospital in South Bend slowed me down as far as the butterfly was concerned. In fact, it slowed me down as far as any kind of swimming stroke is concerned, because my doctor told me not to swim for six weeks after surgery.

I felt – if you’ll pardon the expression – like a fish out of water. Like a beached whale. Or maybe like one of those poor creatures covered in oil in the Gulf. Except that I didn’t have to rely on a bevy of environmentalists to get me back in the water. I only had to convince my doctor it would enhance my recovery rather than impede it.

Of course he was skeptical, but I argued for the qualities of relaxation and weightlessness that come with being in the water. I promised only to float back and forth in the pool and not put undue strain on my core muscles. I must have been convincing because he relented at week two. In appreciation, I waited until week three to don my suit and flippers and goggles and hit the pool.

It was wonderful, even if I lasted just fifteen minutes before tiring. That was three weeks ago, and I’m coming up on the magical six week number soon. I can then go back to lifting weights and biking and maybe rollerblading too. After I perfect my butterfly.

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Sunday

Posted on July 25, 2010

When I was a child, Sundays dragged. We went to church; sometimes we went out for breakfast, but the rest of the afternoon sped by in slow motion. In those days, there were no repeats on television, few sporting events on view, and only Lawrence Welk to look forward to as the sun set. My Mother couldn’t wait for him, while I used his show to catch up on homework. Or chat on the phone.

Time has passed. I suspect that Earl’s and my Sunday regime is as boring as the one I just described even though it’s forty years later and neither of us is a teenager longing for the phone to ring.

He goes to church; I visit a friend in an independent living facility. Sometimes we meet for breakfast after that. Sometimes not. Then we spend the afternoon reading the local paper and napping. Upon awakening, he surfs the TV guide; I read. Along the way we head toward supper. Salad and garlic bread; baked salmon and fresh corn on the cob. Nothing gourmet, but certainly representative of what Michigan has to offer in the way of fresh produce this time of year.

The thing about Sundays that I like best is that there is very little interruption. Nobody from my business world calls with a question; by mid-afternoon nobody from Earl’s does either. We hibernate without being bears in the middle of winter. We have our afternoon nap, and nobody is any the wiser. It’s the way it should be for at least one afternoon a week.

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This Day in History

Posted on July 24, 2010

It’s an easy way out: Research the Internet and find out what happened on this date in other years. It’s instant fodder for a blog without much creativity involved. I don’t resort to it very often. Today I did. Here’s what I learned . . .

In 2005, Lance Armstrong retired after winning his seventh straight Tour de France. The thing is, he’s back at it again this year. Retirement has a short shelf life.

In 1993, actor Richard Moll of Night Court wed Susan Brown. Don’t really know him; don’t know her at all. What are the odds they’re still married? I wasn’t interested enough to Google® the answer.

In 1979, Red Sox Carl Yastrzemski hit his four hundredth home run; a year before that Pete Rose tied the National League hitting streak of thirty-seven games in a row and Billy Martin resigned as Yankee manager in a political war of words. Not much has changed in baseball, except George Steinbrenner is no longer with us.

In 1969, Apollo 11 returned to Earth and Mohammad Ali was convicted for refusing induction into the U.S. Army.

In 1944, three hundred Allied bombers dropped fire bombs on Allied/German positions while Soviet forces liberated the concentration camp at Majdanek. This same year I was born, although it isn’t recorded in any Internet history chronology. Not that I care. I’m still here and many people whose dossiers are far more impressive than mine have gone to the great Google® in the sky.

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Uncle Sam Wants Your Gift Cards

Posted on July 23, 2010

You can’t help knowing that many states in this country are verging on bankruptcy and are searching relentlessly for creative ways to offset their red ink. What you might not know is that there are rules on many states’ books that govern lost or abandoned property and that there is a legal precedent going back to the nineteen sixties that considers gift cards with a balance as abandoned property after a certain period of time. It’s a nightmare in the making for any business that offers gift cards to customers.

In addition, the federal government has issued rules for gift cards that went into effect recently. Briefly they state that a gift card must not expire in less than five years and that merchants cannot charges fees or reduce the amount on the card for lack of use.

The thing you’re not told is that any balance owing at the end of the five year period must be paid to the state, although there are also rules in place to determine which state. It might be the state where the purchaser of the gift card lives or it might be state where the merchant’s business was incorporated. And if the state involved has stricter rules than the federal guidelines, the merchant must follow those rules. Some states want the money after three years.

This affects not only the merchant’s bottom line but also the customer’s. In many cases, the merchant is forced to hand over any balance on a gift card to the state, and the customer might not even know it. Imagine everyone’s frustration when a customer finds a long lost gift card and tries to redeem it. In an effort to offer sterling customer service, a merchant could honor the gift card and lose out twice: once to the government and once again to keep a customer.

I’m not sure what can be done about this, other than that merchants should mount a campaign alerting their customers that it’s really important to use gift cards in a timely fashion. It’s really not so much about the merchant’s bottom line either, as it is about various governments eyeing ways to make money from uninformed businesses and their clientele. After all, do you want any money left on your gift card to pay for highway reconstruction or water purification or environmental research without being aware of it?

You might think that the buck ninety-eight on that card isn’t important, but the gift card industry is a mega-billion dollar one. Surely you can see why, if everyone left a couple bucks on a gift card, the various governmental agencies are salivating.

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ConEd

Posted on July 22, 2010

This is the third day I’ve tried to contact a human being at the electric company. Maybe there are no human beings at the electric company anymore. All I get is one of those annoying automated messages telling me the options have changed and to listen carefully before making my choice. Then once I decide which button to push, I get a request to enter my account number.

It’s not that I don’t have it handy. I do. But I never key account numbers into my phone, because my experience is that the human I finally reach has no access to them. Perhaps the automated menu uses the account number to rout my call, but I’ve often asked the human – when at last we’ve met – if he or she can pull up my account. The answer has always been “No.”

So I push “O” and am told that is not a valid account number. I push “O” again. And again. Finally, I hear the longed-for “I’ll transfer you to a representative who can help you now.” But I know I’m still minutes away from reaching a human.

Next comes the admonition that if I want faster service I should go to the company’s website, which has been designed to be user-friendly. I hate this ad for any website; because if I wanted to go to there, I would have done it in the first place.

Public service announcements follow. I learn what to do if I smell gas (although I’m calling the electric company), that I should never use an oven to heat my home (although it’s the middle of July and we’re having a heat wave), and that if I’m experiencing a power outage I’ve called the wrong number. Finally, there’s chirpy music.

I hang in there, answering emails and paying bills, putting the dead time to use. Sometimes I even give myself a manicure or write thank you notes. Time passes. At last I hear the recognizable click that means a real live (redundant terminology here, but oh such relief) person has come on the line. By this time I must work hard not to take my frustration out on this customer service representative who can help me.

In the end, he really is helpful; and, after all, it’s not his fault he’s the last human at ConEd.

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I’ve Been Gone

Posted on July 21, 2010

Two months ago today I wrote my last blog. In those two months various family events and issues have overridden any desire to write for the public domain. And to a certain extent, I still feel like I want to be private. At the same time, many ideas force themselves into my head, urging me to write, to explore and explain. So, on this two month anniversary of my last blog, I’m here . . . struggling with what to reveal about my absence and also what to make of it.

Suffice to say the past two months have seen one wedding, two anniversaries, and a special birthday celebrated in fine fashion. They were the highlights of the times, events many will remember in the years to come.

Then there was the surgery I had on June 17. Ostensibly it was to remove an ovarian tumor, one which most pre-surgical tests suggested was benign. There was the CA 125 test, the CT scan, and the various blood function tests. I passed them all with flying colors. The statistical predictions said that what I had could only be a ten percent chance of cancer.

However, the reality was – er . . . is – that I fell into that ten percent. Earl and I learned this when we went for a follow-up visit with the oncologist who performed my surgery two weeks after my coming home. Even he admitted that he’d thought I would be in the clear. It was the final pathology report that said otherwise in bold black print. It also said my cancer had not spread beyond one ovary. I don’t have to have chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and survival statistics for patients in this situation are listed at ninety-five percent for five years.

There has been a lot to celebrate these past two months, and I rank making the right decisions about the surgery right up there with the other joyous events our family had.

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Glory Night

Posted on May 21, 2010

The days are reaching their zenith with exactly a month to go. I’m sitting in our home and watching the sun spread its afternoon warmth both outside and in.

Our home faces west, and – as the day wanes – we are treated to wonderful sunsets. It’s worth it to have our air conditioning working full blast to offset the heat that bounces off our windows on this side of the home. It’s worth it to keep the blinds closed and go outside to see the sun’s demise. It’s even worth it when we pay the electric bill.

Living in southwestern Michigan can be challenging many months of the year, so when Spring/Summer finally arrives we revel in it. In addition, we are located at the very western end of the Eastern Time zone, which means that summer nights are particularly long and the sun doesn’t set until after 9 PM. So the nights are heavenly, especially if you’re a night owl like me and love to stay up late.

For some reason, tonight was particularly beautiful; and I was in a particularly sentimental mood. I recall one summer my son Keith and I explored sunsets on Cape Cod; other times Earl and I have watched them from the bow of a cruise ship. Then there’s the ten years’ worth of sunsets we viewed at our previous home, and the ones we watched in Chicago before that.

No matter how many I see, I am always taken with their beauty and individuality. No two sunsets are alike.

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Bird Fight

Posted on May 20, 2010

The builder of our new condo stopped by today with a worried look on his face. I answered the bell and stepped outside to chat in the bright afternoon sun. He hemmed and hawed and finally came to the point.
The builder of our new condo stopped by today with a worried look on his face. I answered the bell and stepped outside to chat in the bright afternoon sun. He hemmed and hawed and finally came to the point.

The bird feeders we have outside our patio are distasteful to a neighbor. She is concerned that there will be bird droppings everywhere, although I read ‘everywhere’ to mean around her condo. I agreed to remove one feeder altogether and to relocate the other two as far away from her property as possible. This seemed like a reasonable compromise to me. It did to the builder too. At least for now.

Then he said there’s a fight looming between the condo owners who love birds and bird feeders and the condo owners who want to take the bylaws literally. Those bylaws currently state that no feeders are allowed. At the same time, feeders have been unofficially sanctioned for the past three years – long before we showed up with ours – so the by-laws have been overlooked for the same time period. When this is the case, it’s hard to backtrack and make everyone fall in line.

I remember a similar controversy when we lived in a Chicago condo, only it was between the dog owners and the non-dog owners over what elevators dogs should be allowed to ride in. I shook my head then; I shake it now.

I don’t have an answer to how people of opposing views get along in a condo development. We all read the same condo documents; we all had the opportunity to understand what we were getting into. So if I need to remove my unofficially sanctioned feeders, I will. It’s not worth fighting over.

The bird feeders we have outside our patio are distasteful to a neighbor. She is concerned that there will be bird droppings everywhere, although I read ‘everywhere’ to mean around her condo. I agreed to remove one feeder altogether and to relocate the other two as far away from her property as possible. This seemed like a reasonable compromise to me. It did to the builder too. At least for now.

Then he said there’s a fight looming between the condo owners who love birds and bird feeders and the condo owners who want to take the bylaws literally. Those bylaws currently state that no feeders are allowed. At the same time, feeders have been unofficially sanctioned for the past three years – long before we showed up with ours – so the by-laws have been overlooked for the same time period. When this is the case, it’s hard to backtrack and make everyone fall in line.

I remember a similar controversy when we lived in a Chicago condo, only it was between the dog owners and the non-dog owners over what elevators dogs should be allowed to ride in. I shook my head then; I shake it now.

I don’t have an answer to how people of opposing views get along in a condo development. We all read the same condo documents; we all had the opportunity to understand what we were getting into. So if I need to remove my unofficially sanctioned feeders, I will. It’s not worth fighting over.

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