Staying Warm when it’s Cold Outside

It is cold most days in Maryland this time of year - so all my strategies for staying warm are being applied.

Indoors

Our house is pretty well insulated and the windows are double paned….but we keep our thermostat adjusted for comfort assuming we are dressed for the season.

• Layers of clothing - My favorite clothes this time of year are pants with a long sleeved sweatshirt or tunic sweater….or a lighter weight top and a fleece vest/cardigan. I keep a cardigan in the coolest room of the house (first floor, vaulted ceiling, North West side of the house….it’s nippy in the early morning!).
• Socks or Slippers - I prefer not to wear shoes in the house so I wear thick socks…and sometimes Isotoner slippers. When my feet are comfortably warm, the rest of me feels warm too! (In the summer, I find that when I go barefoot so that my feet are cooler….I feel cooler overall…so it works both ways for me.)
• Hot tea or chocolate - Anything hot to drink is warming. My favorite I hot tea having never developed the taste for coffee and deciding that hot chocolate I too laden with calories to have more than a cup each day. I have a large mug that I take with me just about everywhere in the house on really cold days.
• Homemade Soup - Soup is the salad of winter. I make a homemade soup for at least one meal on every cold day. That means buying kale (I buy a large pre-washed bag of leaves and put it in the freezer, taking out just the amount I need for a meal. It tears very easily when it is frozen) instead of lettuce and getting creative about other ingredients from the produce section (onion, peppers, butternut squash, mushrooms, carrots), canned goods (beans, diced tomatoes) and frozen foods (cauliflower, broccoli, peas, corn). Sometimes I use bouillon and sometimes I simply stir in some water thinned roasted garlic hummus with stir fried veggies to make ‘chunky’ soup.
• Sunny windows - Take a lesson from cats - enjoy sitting in the sunshine coming through a window on a cold winter’s day. I have my favorite places to catch the sun and I have started opening drapery on sunny days to let the sun warm rooms. They become the warmest places in the house!
• Upper flours - The top floor of our house is always the warmest (warm air rises!) so I arrange my day to spend most of my day there - looking out from my office into the winter forest or in front of a sunny window.

Venturing outside

Getting outdoors when it is very cold is often unavoidable. The strategy is to dress appropriately and minimize the time exposed.

• Coat - I have two coats that I wear for different activities. One is large enough that I can put a heavy hooded fleece under it. I wear it for when I need to shovel the driveway. The other coat is longer - not as good for working but better for walking.
• Boots - My favorite shoes this winter have been my hiking boots. They have thick soles and lots of padding. They also are waterproof for those days when there is a cold rain or slush.
• Hat and scarf - Hats and scarves can give warmth and color. I tend to only wear them when I am not wearing my hooded fleece.
• Gloves  - Gloves are another story. I have a very warm pair of gloves, heavily padded, that I use or shoveling snow or other outside work. They are too cumbersome for driving so I have lined Isotoner gloves that I wear for errands. The challenge is to always take the time to put on gloves even when I am going to be out for a short period of time. It is surprising how fast the hands get cold and the skin becomes overly dry.

Here’s wishing you warmth on a winter’s day!

The Day after Christmas 2013

What is your usual activity for the day after Christmas? I am realizing that I do have a few traditions for this day.

I write thank you notes. This year they are all e-mails rather than cards send through snail mail.

I shop after Christmas sales. This year I am steering clear of wrapping paper and Christmas cards - but will pick up dark chocolate and nuts if the clearance price is good. If the holiday patterned ziplocks are priced less than the regular ones, I’ll do that too. I’m looking for sheets too - sometimes those sales are so good that there are none left by the time I get to store. I’m not an early bird shopper after Christmas.

I begin eating the leftovers. It happens every year: more food is prepared than can actually be eaten on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

I pick up around the house. This mostly consists of packing away gift bags and recycling wrapping paper. In past years I’ve packed up tissue paper along with the gift bags but this year it too is going into the recycling bin. Sometimes there are still presents unwrapped the previous day that need to be stowed….increasing the ‘stuff’ we’ve accumulated.

By the end of the day after Christmas the house still looks festive and the lights still glow on the tree - and we are enjoying the lull between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 21, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Radiation Physicist Beautifully Colorizes X-Ray Images of Nature - The color adds to the images - making them much more art-like.

Important Bird Areas - An interactive US map that shows areas marked as of global, continental, or state importance. Zoom in or enter an address to see detail in a particular location.

Behind the Headline: Even Gifted Students Can’t Keep Up - A summary article prompted by a recent story in New York Times about gifted students. Follow the links to dig deeper into the story.

An Optical Illusion You'll Swear Is Moving. It Isn't. - Watch the video….and read the explanation.

23 Women CEOs Running Fortune 500 Firms - A list published by the Associated Press. I would be interesting to know how the number of women CEOs running Fortune 500 firms has changed over the past decades. In 2009, it was 15. The first woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company was Catharine Graham of the Washington Post in 1972.

Fake it ’til you become it: Amy Cuddy’s power poses, visualized - My daughter was the first to tell me about ‘power poses.’ If you haven’t heard about them before - take a look at the Infographic in the article and/or follow the links for details.

Architectural Breakthroughs that Changed the World - It’s always interesting to see what gets selected for posts like this….and the suggestions for additions in the comments section are worth a look too.

Worth a Watch: Climate Change - the state of the science - A 4 minute film produced with UN funding and based on the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.

Redefining What It Means to be a Successful School - Measuring schools through the lens of student outcomes rather than compliance models

Mapping 400,000 Hours of U.S. TV News - Which areas of the world do we hear and see on the news frequently….which areas are almost never ‘in the news.’ From an analysis of the Internet Archive’s television news research service collection.

10 Elements of Next-Generation Higher Education - It seems like the changes are coming quickly to higher education. Some are technology enabled….others are forced by the change in perspective to view outcomes rather than just the traditional examination/compliance model to determine the quality of education.

Census Bureau Introduces New Interactive Mapping Tool along with Latest American Community Survey Statistics - Take a look at the Census Explorer. It is easier to look at a county or state level rather than an address. The measures that can be selected are: total population, 65 and over, foreign born, high school graduate or more, bachelor’s degree or more, in labor force, owner occupied, and median household income.

Becoming 60 - Part IV

Through the end of the year - I’m writing one post a month about my thoughts on becoming 60. The theme for this month is my perception of conflict and happiness at this point in my life.

Conflict

I’ve read that many of us become less confrontational as we get older; there is a tendency to avoid conflict as much as possible. When I was in elementary school, I remember going on a family vacation and my grandparents agreeing with everything, always saying ‘whatever you want’ in response to a question about their preference. It was so different than my parents or my sisters or my own response to such questions that I noticed it and the episode stands out with clarity in my mind now. My grandparents would have been around 60 at the time. Why did they let everyone else decide what they wanted to do?

• Maybe they had decided that being on vacation with family was all that mattered - that what we actually did was of much lesser importance and it was really true that any of the choices would be equally enjoyable to them.
• Maybe they did have a preference but did not feel strongly enough about it to articulate it. All the choices were acceptable to them so they opted to let others choose.
• Maybe they felt overwhelmed by the choices - the place was new to them and they simply could not be comfortable choosing.

I never asked my grandparents about it later and they may not have even remembered the time as significant as it was in perception. I know that now that I am becoming 60 that I still make a lot of choices as I interact with other people but I also find myself being equally satisfied with several alternatives so it makes it easier for close relationships to move along with no conflict.

I am less tolerant of people that are very confrontational or are passive aggressive confrontational (seemingly agree, avoiding confrontation, and then do something completely different). During my career I was adept at diffusing conflicts of this type but I never enjoyed it. Not having to tolerate certain types of conflict may be the aspect of being post-career that I savor the most!

Happiness

A lot has been said about happiness - about how to measure it, about how people strive for happiness. At 60, what I want is not just ‘happiness’ - I want

• Meaning to living
• Comfort
• Good health
• Satisfaction
• New things to learn and experience
• Close family relationships
• Ability to contribute toward a better world
• Multiple paths into the future

There is probably more I will add to the list over time. I notice now that the things I put on the list are of longer duration than ‘happiness.’ Perhaps any emotion is too fleeting to be a goal. What if the only way we could achieve it 100% of the time was through modifying ourselves in some way….and would we still be human if we did?

Earlier posts:

Part I theme: The future looks bright

Part II theme: An interlude to choose the best for the rest of my life

Part III: Pleasures 

Becoming 60 - Part III

Through the end of the year - I’m writing one post a month about my thoughts on becoming 60. The theme for this month is about pleasure. Articulating the aspects of my life that I find pleasurable gives me added opportunity to savor how plentiful they are - which is also a way of being thankful (Isn’t that the overall theme for November with the Thanksgiving holiday coming up?).

As I started thinking about the pleasures of my days I realized that most of them are not complicated or expensive. Some of them must be sought or require effort on my part…some just happen and all I need to do is notice. Here are 5 pleasures I’m acknowledging today - November 1, 2013.

Seeing beautiful images of nature - in photographs, through a window, in paintings. Being able to capture the moment with a photograph of my own, reinforces the image in my memory. I have become a much more visual person in the past few years. I think it is caused by spending time collecting historical botanical prints (electronically) and then taking 1000s of photographs.

Sharing life experiences via conversation. I am an introvert so initial meeting of someone new is never easy for me….but I forge ahead because I enjoy the conversations that come afterwards and the possibility of new friends.

Accepting family. Everyone in my family assumes we are together for the long haul and, to make that assumption possible, accepts family members as they are. There are family members that have known me my whole life. I’ll probably outlive them. There are the ones born after me that I have known their whole life and expect that they may very well outlive me. It is the cycle of family. We don’t choose each other…but we accept. What a pleasure it is to know that there is always at least one group of the world where I will always belong!

Shopping for groceries. I usually do not like shopping; shopping for the sake of shopping is not something I do; grocery shopping is the only ‘shopping therapy’ I can imagine as a pleasure. I make sure I get to the store when it is not crowded so I can move at my own pace - which is usually brisk unless I am researching something new and taking time to read labels. I’ve added quite a few new items over the past few years: quinoa, kale, hummus, almond milk, and frozen blueberries. It takes creativity to buy the right amount of food to last a week and not buy the same things all the time.

Reading a good book. Once I admitted to being an introvert - most people should have guessed that this one would be on my list of pleasures. It is easier now that it used to be to keep good books near at hand. There are so many free books online (Internet Archive or my library) and paperbackswap  has filled up my ‘to read’ space (and I’m still working down my wish list).

Earlier posts:

Part I theme: The future looks bright

Part II theme: an interlude to choose the best for the rest of my life

Becoming 60 - Part II

Part I of this series on becoming 60 was posted almost a month ago. I was prompted to write about what I was thinking as I approached by 60th birthday this year after reading May Sarton’s book about the same time period in her life. In this second post on the topic - I am focusing on how I see this time as the staging for the rest of my life in a similar way that my early 20s were the staging time for my career. The new staging was initiated by leaving a 40 year career behind and beginning to make choices about the future I wanted rather than simply proceeding the same way my career decisions of 40 years ago directed. There are similarities between now and when I was in my early 20s: 

• Lots of decisions in a short period of time
• Perceiving an abundance of opportunities
• Good health 

There are some differences too: 

• Decisions made early in my life (like college major, when/who to marry, when/if to have children) tended to be narrowing while now the decisions tend to be broadening.
• Financial considerations were high on the list for most decisions in my 20s; now they are still a consideration but they are not major and often not limiting.
• Now I am more aware that the elders that have known me my whole life will not be there for my whole lifetime and that awareness influences my decisions about spending time with them. 

I’m not nearly at the end of the bevy of decisions but there are themes that are emerging.

Getting rid of excess baggage. The initial aspects have been in terms of my weight and the years of accumulated stuff filling up the house. But I see this theme continuing - moving to a house that is better suited to our needs (and not as large), thinking about the number and kind of vehicles we need, etc.

Building in variety. Change and life are so mingled; finding a comfortable amount of variety is probably one of the keys to happiness and, for me, I am happiest when I make choices about at least some of the changes coming my way. Continuing to taking Coursera courses - and looking for other similar learning opportunities - is one way to build in variety. Volunteering is a wonderful way to meet new people and ‘do good’ for the community at the same time. Taking classes and volunteering are probably going to be the pillars of change I choose over the next few years but  I also hope there are some happy surprises too. What if I become a grandmother?

Reducing waste. Over the past few years, I have become more conscious of waste related to lots of things - but food is the one I have done the most about. Being very aware of getting the most from the food I buy: 

• Eating food before it spoils and has to be thrown away. This requires that food is purchased in a way that it can be easily consumed within the time is fresh.
• Paying attention to food preparation so that there are few that are ‘failed’ (i.e. no burned toast, no muffins where a key ingredient was left out, etc.).
• Learning to freeze portions to eat much later if I won’t be eating it quickly enough otherwise. I’ve even learned to freeze sliced bananas if I buy too many to eat fresh (they make excellent additions to smoothies).
• Not buying non-foods (like soft drinks and other foods that have calories but no nutritional value otherwise). In my mind, these have become ‘waste’ because they have no value to my body but leave behind plastic (or aluminum). Yes - recycling is better than trash but it is still waste. Why should we even have items to recycle for non-foods? 

In the first post in the series I ended by saying that I perceived the future as bright. I’ll add to it this month: I am enthusiastic about becoming 60. It is a great age to be in 2013!

Volunteering in the Community

As I’ve posted about earlier this month September is the time of year to get back to school and be energized at home; it is also a good time to take a look at opportunities to ‘do good’ close to home. This year I took a little more systematic approach than I have previously; I thought more about the value to the community and the elements of the activity that would be satisfying to me as well. I looked at the organizations requesting volunteers through my county government’s coordination center and picked several to investigate more closely by looking at their website and talking to the organization. Eventually, I picked two and filled out the volunteer application forms. The themes for my volunteer work for the next year or so are going to be: 

• Nature/conservation
• Nature and elementary age children
• Senior citizens independence 

I’m full of positive vibes about the volunteer opportunities - the needs are real, I’m confident that I can contribute, and that I’ll enjoy the whole experience. It's a matriarch thing to do.

Volunteering is another ‘start’ in September!

Becoming 60 - Part I

I read May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude recently - her journal from the years leading up to her 60th birthday. Published in 1973, it was full of angst caused by the recognition of the delta between what she wanted in life and reality. She wanted to be a poet but had become more successful as a writer of journals and memoirs - and not as well-known as a writer in either genre as she had envisioned.  Her personal life had not turned out well either; she found herself living alone and realizing that her relationships with people were best in short bursts rather than full-time living in close proximity….but also feeling profoundly lonely when there was no one to share something very good (or very bad) just as it happened to her. The version of the book I read was a paperback from the 70s and the glue cracked, releasing the pages as I read. It felt symbolic of the different way I feel as I approach 60.

Letting go of old angst left from career or personal relationships is very easy for me. It flutters away like the pages falling out of the book - not forgotten but simply a part of my history. There is less of it in my life than Sarton’s although it may be that my outlook on life has always been more positive than hers. The future has always looked full of fabulous opportunities and most of the time the present does too. It helps that I have a lot of family living --- and 40+ years of marriage and a child. Sharing joy somehow increases the highs; and maybe the lows never get quite as low in the environment I’ve helped created for myself and for them.

Sarton’s descriptions of the outdoors around her house in Nelson, NH were the parts of the book where I feel the most affinity with her: the beauty seen through a window, the cycles, the fight against animals eating the garden (she had wood chucks, I have deer), and enjoying cutting flowers to bring indoors.

Sarton would live more than 20 years after writing this book but there is a foreboding in this book that implies that she views the best of her life as ‘over.’ In contrast, I see 30 or 40 years of life ahead and the tenor of my life now most resembles that time in my 20s when I was making a lot of decisions about what I wanted to be. The interlocking components of life are shifting and, in some ways, the decisions are more my own than back when I needed to choose a career that I could enjoy and support my family. What a boon the advent of Coursera and the Internet Archive has been as I indulge interests that I’ve not had time in the past 40 years to pursue as often as I wanted.

I chose a September sunrise picture to illustrate this post because I perceive the future as bright as the morning’s east horizon.

The Psychology of Weight Loss

I am now within 2 pounds of the weight I was in my early-30s and I am confident of reaching the goal. It has taken me several years to get here. When I first started, the way I approached weight loss was quiet different that it is now. This blog post documents the transitions in my thinking over the past few years.

The goals I started with were:  

• Take at least 7,000 steps per day. I had a simple pedometer to count my steps. It had some oddities (sometimes didn’t count when I was walking) so I replaced it with a Fitbit. I quickly discovered that the bounces on my Swopper chair counted as a step and, very briefly, decided that maybe I should take the Fitbit off so that they would not be counted. Then I decided that it was OK if they were counted…that the relative activity between days and the spread of activity throughout the day were a good measure. I still have a form of this goal although it is 12,000 or more steps and the calories burned measure is more important at this point.
• Eat only when and while you are hungry. This will always be a challenge - particularly when I am not at home and sometimes there too. I enjoy good food tremendously and it is intertwined with family gatherings and celebrations. The psychological challenge is to not think like a Stone Age hunter gatherer that needed to gorge any time food became available because there would be lean times just ahead. The probability of not having food readily available any time I am hungry is practically 0 - but it is hard to remember that when something delicious is in front of me. I’ve learned to savor a taste - but not overindulge.
• Reduce weight to what it was when I was 45. I thought it was a realistic goal - about 20 pounds. I’d held steady at that weight for about 5 years so I knew it should be a comfortable weight for me. I started weighing myself first thing every morning and devising little rewards for when I was at a ‘new low.’

Those three goals did work for the first 20 pounds and the weight came off easily enough that I established a new goal: 

• Reduce weight to what it was with I was 35. It was another 10 pounds to come off.

And the pounds didn’t come off. I maintained my weight easily but could not seem to take off any more pounds. A year or so went by and I was prompted by a nutrition course to update my goals: 

• Burn 2000 calories per day. The Fitbit estimates the number of calories burned so I used that as my key indicator.
• Stay below the calorie level recommended to lose 1 pound per week. The cronometer.com tool calculates the calorie level allowed based on my height and weight. I logged my food into the tool to determine how many calories I was consuming. The tool also helped me internalize the portion size for a ‘serving.’
• Get at least 90% of my nutritional needs from food. The cronometer.com tool helped with this goal too. It totals up the nutrients from the food log. Initially, I was in the 80 percent range but learned very quickly how to improve my diet. I stopped taking supplements for vitamins and minerals that I readily get from the foods I eat.

Those goals got me to where I am now and are still working very well. But I’ve added a new goal now that I am nearing the weight goal: 

• Achieve body proportions close to what they were when I was 35. I found a table of measurements I had made of myself at 35 - stored away in an old journal - and decided to see how close I was getting to that size again. There are some differences - enough that I’ve started exercises to hone some muscles (particularly tummy and upper arms). Otherwise - the measurements are very similar.

I’m close enough to my goal that I am already thinking about what is next. Sustaining a new weight will probably take some effort but probably won’t be as hard as getting there in the first place. Maybe my next goal - with the added calories allowed in sustain mode - will be to: 

• Get 100% of my nutritional needs from food.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - August 2013

A year ago I posted about finding something to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and the habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations;’ here are my top 10.

Hummingbirds. The zinnas and cardinal flowers on our deck have been magnets for hummingbirds all during August. I love watching them from my kitchen window. They are the flying jewels of the garden.

Laurie Colwin. I had read most of her books years ago but finally read Home Cooking this month. I celebrated the books she wrote - wishing she had lived to produce more.

Declining weight. It is a wonderful thing when a diet has the desired effect. I celebrated a major milestone with a piece of cheesecake and each lower weight with small piece of dark chocolate. Of course - those celebratory calories have to be included in the total for the day….no backsliding allowed.

Goldfinches. The seeds on the blazing stars are ripening enough to be attractive to goldfinches. I am anticipating that we will see more of them as it gets cooler.

Gardening. It is unusual to have the flowerbeds weed free at the same time. I’m celebrating the accomplishment…..and the room it gives me to try propagating the overgrown hydrangea bushes.

Flip flops. I found 2 flip flops in my size on sale - and it was the sale tax free week too!

Open window. It was wonderfully cool on quite a few mornings this August and I opened my office window to the sounds of the outdoors. How much more connected people were with the outdoors before air conditioning!

Morning snack ritual. I enjoy sitting outside while eating my fruit at mid-morning. The deck is in heavy shade at that time of day and I light the shelf fungus wick in a plate of oil. The large, bell toned chimes add to the sounds of insects and birds with every little breeze.

Coursera History of Humankind. It is probably the most thought provoking course I’ve taken so far….and I am celebrating that it lasts for 17 weeks!

Fresh mint tea. I have harvest mint twice this summer already and there will be another harvest before frost. My favorite beverage is made with a chopped mint leaves and black tea in the filter of my tea maker (a coffee maker that has never made coffee). Most of the crop is dried but the pots made with the freshly chopped leaves are always the most fragrant and flavorful.

Tangents from a Book

I just finished reading Marilyn French’s Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals. It was written in the 1980s and is somewhat dated. There were quite a few items that surprised me as I read and made me realize how naïve I was about the limitations on women in the US while I was growing up. For example - women were not allowed to serve on juries in Alabama until 1966 when the Supreme Court struck down the state law. There were still many limitations on property ownership in the 1960s as well. But much had improved by the 1980s and early 1990s. Somewhere along the line, progress slowed and increased limitations on women are the new trend - once again, as it has many times before in history.

As I read, my mind jumped very easily to related topics from my own life (since this book was written) or the news:

• I was part of the peak of women entering the computer field. That happened in the mid-80s and has been declining ever since. When I was in school, the college courses for people that wanted to go into programming were in various departments: math, business, and engineering. It was new field and there was an excitement about it. In my classes there were about equal numbers of men and women. The same was true when I started work. Over the years, there were fewer women. I’m sure there are many reasons for the decline - but the move to put computer science almost universally in the engineering department is probably a significant factor.
• Years later, my daughter was in an engineering physics course - one of two women in the class. The professor was not a problem (but was not helpful either). The male students picked on the other woman (said that she wasn’t qualified to be in the class) but fortunately left my daughter alone. She had to beg the other woman to stay in the course….and then study hard without the benefit of a study group. What does this say about what these men will be like once they are in the work force? It causes me to shudder.
• Another experience my daughter had was on a geology field trip - in a van full of people, only two of them women. The guys talked about ‘hot’ women all during the trip. My daughter chose to stay silent and hope they would stop soon. It was not a pleasant field trip. Are the guys rude or just clueless? I assume that it is probably a little of both.
• And in the news - Lindy Boggs died recently. What a great lady she was --- and a champion for the cause of women’s economic rights! Her efforts came after this book was written.

For much of my career, I assumed that the trends toward increasing opportunities for women were on the right track….that the progress made had an unstoppable momentum and that, in time, the perspective of women would be fully integrated into our culture. For the past 10 years or so - I am no longer as certain that is true - and there is a possibility that the trend has reversed. Reading this book reminded me of that.

Noticing Matriarchs

I am noticing matriarchs more these days…now that I am setting a pace that is my own rather than meeting the demands of a challenging career overlaid on family life. When I travel I see them on everywhere - sometimes alone, sometimes with a partner or sibling, sometimes with a grandchild. Most of them seem as comfortable as I am to reach this part of their life. Here are some that I noticed on my recent travel between Baltimore and Tucson: 

• She was sitting in the row in front of me on the flight from Denver to Baltimore - holding a grandchild that was probably between 1 and 2 years old. The child must have slept most of the flight because I didn’t notice her until we were getting off the plane when the matriarch handed the child to the man next to her (I assume the grandfather of the child) with a smile and he chuckled that the child tasted like cheesy crackers when he kissed the little girl before standing up to get off the plane.
• The two women were standing in front of the booth with materials for Arizona State Parks when I went to pick up a brochure for a park we would tour later in the week. I asked about what might be blooming at the park and they both were full of information on what to look for when we got to the park.
• The helper for our tour of a cavern - bringing up the end of the group - was a matriarch. She must have led the tours on occasion because she knew about as much as the guide, helping people understand what the guide had explained and even adding information for those around her. 

The baby boomer women are already - or will be soon - joining the matriarch ranks….and bringing their zest for life and huge talents into this stage of life. Some of us may continue in careers; others may try something completely different from their primary career either to earn money or keep from being bored; still others may become full-time grandmothers, savoring the time with young children; or some will simply do all those things they didn’t have time to do while in their primary career. Maybe we still can have it all (or at the part that we really want)!

Sandwiched Matriarch

Are you a sandwiched matriarch - one with an elderly mother and a daughter in the stress of early or mid-career? I am. And I am celebrating that I can play the role of the luscious center to the sandwich. It’s exhilarating to realize that I can be the glue that mends whatever needs develop in the generation before and after my own.

Many women live into their 80s or 90s…and that means that their daughters are often in their 50s and 60s. Even a healthy elder requires more support from their children than they did when they were in their 60s and 70s. For example, my mother opted not to drive after her 80th birthday; it was a proactive decision on her part. My sisters and I supported the idea and its ramifications. We have also become much more knowledgeable about maneuvering through the health care system and support mechanisms for older people. The goal is to keep our mothers active and engage in our lives for as long as possible. I particularly enjoy the challenge to make the most of my mother’s current interest and physical ability to see things like the annual cherry blossoms around the Washington Monument and large museums. We need to learn to accept the sometimes rapid changes in older people as easily as we accept the growth of young children; we cannot let the relative stability of mid-life set the standard expectation as a person passes into their 80s and 90s. There has already been one instance when I was away from home for more than a month to help my mother through a difficult health issue.

I also have a career oriented daughter. She lives far away; phone calls and emails are not the same as seeing her in person. At least one vacation a year is planned around a time that I can spend some time with her. And the interaction will come much greater if she and her husband decide to have children. I’ve already committed to being close enough to be the child care provider so that my daughter can continue in her career. It’s an advantage I can give that benefits her and the next generation. I had my own career as she was growing up; the child care we employed for her was excellent - but I can do even better for her children and it is something I want to do.

The sandwiched matriarch gets pulled or squashed (a stressful time either way) if both mother and daughter have concurrent needs. That has not happened so far in my life….and I’ll just deal with it if and when it does.

The Healthy Matriarch

Many of us enter our 60s without major health problems and have refined our strategies to sustain that health as long as possible. What are the top 5 things you are doing toward a healthy you? Mine are: 

• Take at least 12,000 steps per day (using a Fitbit to measure ‘steps’)
• Sleep 7-8 (but not more than 8) hours per day (also measured by the Fitbit )
• Eat a healthy diet - lots of fruits and veggies, some meat and grains, some fat (olive oil and nuts) - and take reasonable supplements
• Sustain or reduce weight to ‘normal’ for my height
• Continue a high level of continuous learning 

OK - I combined a whole lot in the ‘eat a healthy diet’ item and the ‘continuous learning’ items.

Eating a healthy diet requires tweaking. Your food should help you feel good - not bloated, tired, or break out in hives! Supplements are the backup of diet - not the main event. Take supplements for those vitamins and minerals that you cannot get through diet and keep up with the research. For example, recently there has been quite a lot in the media about the pluses and minuses of taking calcium supplements…with the minuses currently winning when it comes to people that do not have bone density issues already.

‘Continuous learning’ makes it to my top 5 for sustaining health because healthy mind is so closely linked to healthy body. Whatever one does for ‘continuous learning’ needs occasional tweaking too. This year I have added Coursera to my regime and reduced the number of physical books that I read (even though the net books read is about the same…it is just a shift in media type). And I am on the lookout for volunteer activities that will be ‘learning experiences.’

The gist of all this is - articulate what you are doing to sustain your good health. It’s a way to make sure you are focused on the things that are right for you.

Matriarch Inflection Points

Today’s post is about inflection points of life. I got the idea of inflection points from a book by Andrew Grove - Only the Paranoid Survive  - that I read years ago. Or course, his book was about strategic inflection points for business and ways to anticipate those inflection points. He defined a strategic inflection point as ‘a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change.’ The inflection point is much easier to see looking backward. The idea stuck in my mind.  I like the notion of recognizing that some changes in life are more than a milestone - they are an inflection point because your life is forever changed afterwards.

Thinking about inflection points of my life - there are some that are pretty common life changing points: marriage and having child (many years later). Others I forced because of a decision I made - switching to an entirely different area of study for graduate school, moving half-way across the country from my family to pursue my career, and deciding to leave my primary career in my late 50s rather than waiting until my mid-60s. Those inflection points are ones I see looking back. They are slightly skewed toward the earlier decades of my life: 2 happened in my 20s, 2 in my 30s, and 1 in my 50s. It’s interesting that I don’t see inflection points inside my career; the 40 years was a gradual path that included increased technical savvy and responsibility that didn’t have any sharp turns of an inflection point.

Now I am anticipating inflection points over the next 30 years. What might they be: the first arrival of the next generation (either grandchild or grandniece/nephew), moving to be close to family and living in a smaller space, not driving? Of course - there could be ones that involve injury, disease, and other loss. Those things are worth some contingency planning….but not too much focus.

 I’m too busy enjoying the present and anticipating the inflection points that I choose for my life.

Matriarch Beauty

Between the age of 20 years old and becoming a matriarch, some pretty significant changes take place. At 20 we probably all wanted to look a little older so that we would be taken seriously in our work and relationships. We wanted to be more than our teenaged selves. Now, as matriarchs, we want to look our age or younger. More importantly - we want to look and feel healthy. We want to have the stamina and energy to do what we want during the matriarch years of lives.

Does our perception of beauty in ourselves change over the years? Most of us become more self-confident. We grow into the best we will be. It is not denial to think that we are still beautiful; we likely do not look the same as we did at 20 since the beauty we have now is the story of our life shining from our eyes and from the patterns life has etched on our faces. What are the things that make you beautiful? 

• Your eyebrows arching over mischievous eyes?
• The expression on your face when you are listening to a grandchild?
• The laugh you share with your elderly parent?
• Daring to wear a bright scarf swirled around you on a cool day?
• The wave of your hair over dangly earrings? 

In our culture - the prevalent message is that the aging body is ‘not as beautiful’ as the 20 year old body. Realize that it is a matter of perspective and, as a matriarch, you have your own view that is likely at odds with the mass media on this and a many other issues. 

There may even be items on your ‘things that make you beautiful’ list that actually do look better now than they did when you were 20. For example - my fingernails at 20 were brittle and split easily (perhaps from the combination of fingernail polish and its removal). Now I let them grow naturally, shape them with an emery board as they grow, and buff them occasionally to give them a natural shine. They look better than they did when I was 20 years old! And I still wear rings I wore at 20 too!

Here’s to celebrating the beauty in ourselves at every age!

Matriarch - Changes in the Last 100 Years

There are many more matriarch women alive and healthy today than there were 100 years ago. How are we different from those matriarchs of 1913? 

• Many more of us have worked outside the home and farm for most of our adult lives….careers that were separate from family life although we were challenged to ‘balance’ work and life. In 1913, the dominate roles that women played were home based.
• When our children were young we often paid for child care or carefully planned our work for when they were in school rather than always being close to home. We may be more likely to provide day care for our grandchild than we did for our children. That may be something we have in common with the women in 1913 that survived until their matriarch years - that desire for a deep involvement with our grandchildren.
• Now we have our own money and property. In 1913, there were legal barriers to both. Women were dependent on their male relatives for just about everything. We have our own credit history and retirement plans now with both the responsibility and independence that comes with them.
• Women could not vote in 1913 in the US. Now the cohort of women matriarchs is vocal in many issues of the day. As women come to the phase of their lives where the frenzy children at home and career stress wanes, current issues get increased focus. Matriarchs vote at polling places and with purchases/contributions.
• Matriarchs are mobile now. Technology and legal/financial changes have made it easier for us to stay in touch with our family even if they are not living nearby. However, many of us would prefer living near our family just as the matriarchs of 1913 preferred.
• We spend less time with food than the matriarchs in 1913 did. We purchase most of our food rather than grow it. Technology development has given us refrigerators and microwaves. And we are much less formal at meal times. There is a common goal with the women in 1913 though: we want to eat good, well prepared food that helps us stay healthy.
• Another area where a lot has changed since 1913 is in reproductive health. One of the reasons there are so many more matriarchs today is the improvements in pre-natal and child birth care….and the advent of birth control. Women no longer have children until they die. We do have new worries for our sons and daughters about hormone mimicking pollutants impacts reproduction - which may guide us to look harder at how the way we live impacts the planet. 

A lot has changed for matriarchs in the past 100 years but a lot has stayed the same as well. We are women that have lived long enough to have a personal, well-developed philosophy of life. I apply mine by noticing something worth celebrating every day.

Low Sodium Diet Journey - Part 1

How hard is it to consume 2 grams or less of sodium per day? I started out thinking it would be difficult when a low sodium diet was recommended for one of my family members but it has been easier than I anticipated. This is the first post in a series that documents our family’s ‘learning experience.’ 

• Keep a running total of sodium consumption each day at the beginning. The purpose is to develop a good sense of the sodium content in various foods. Make changes to your normal diet so that it is easy to stay under the 2,000 mg per day goal.
• Use labels on packaging or the internet to get sodium amounts (per serving) for foods. I like http://nutritiondata.self.com/ - a clip of the screen from that site for ‘celery’ is below. Celery is one of the higher sodium vegetables.

• Experiment with no-salt blends (like Mrs. Dash) in lieu of salt. My favorite Mrs. Dash blend is Caribbean Citrus.
• ‘Hint of Salt’ crackers are tasty. We’ve tried Triscuit, Wheat Thins, and Ritz. Keep the portion size in mind!
• Generally - processed foods are high in sodium because they have a lot of added salt. Read labels carefully. Bottles salad dressings and ready-to-eat meats are almost always very high; develop alternatives for these in your diet.
• Buy salt free (i.e. 0 sodium) versions of products like butter/margarine and peanut butter. These are products that are available in most grocery stores. The flavor will be different but is often quite acceptable and even appealing.

The First of 2013

I did not stay up to celebrate the first minutes of 2013. I enjoy getting up to see the first sunrise instead (although it was cloudy so I took the picture at the left of wind chimes and winter trees at the time of 'sunrise').

New beginnings are so full of potential. Just as sunrise is a prompt to review the plan for the day, New Year’s day is a good prompt for writing some goals for the upcoming year. This year I am using a start - stop - continue grouping. I’ve learned over the years to include specific ways to measure the goal in the goal statement itself or as an associated note.  Here are some examples from my list for 2013.

Start 

• Losing the last few pounds to get down into the ‘normal’ range for my height by April 1.
• Upgrading landscaping and garden around the house by early summer

Stop 

• Drinking soft drinks (diet Pepsi is my downfall!)

Continue 

• Volunteering with the Friends of a local nature center (4-8 hours per week).
• Reading about even numbers of fiction - history - arts/social - technical books at about the same rate as previous years.
• Writing 3000 words per day when I am at home.
• Gardening in pots on the deck
• Using travel or hosting guests to break up the year.
  • Monthly visits to public gardens or conservatories
  • Tucson in the early spring
  • House guests in the early spring
  • South Carolina in the early summer
  • West Virginia in the fall