Staying healthy as we age

Of course we’ve all heard this many times.  Exercise regularly.  This includes walking, which is good exercise.

Stay socially active with friends and family.  If you don’t have family nearby, you could volunteer at various things in the community where you live.

Eat a healthy, well-balanced diet.  Dump the junk food and include greens in your meals.  Salads are very good for you.  We need to think about eating enough fiber, eating foods that are low in fat and also low in cholesterol.

Of course we all know that drinking too much or using drugs is a bad thing, as well as smoking.  There are many health issues attributed to smoking, so if you smoke quitting should be at the top of your list for a healthier lifestyle.

I always say everything in moderation is probably okay.  I would never give up having a glass of wine once in a while.  I don’t think anyone should do this daily, or get behind the wheel to drive anywhere if you’ve been drinking. 

I exercise daily; eat moderately and also as healthy as I can.  It helps keep the weight down, which is also another health issue.  Drinking enough water daily is also another important consideration.

One should also keep their mind active too.  This is a new focus for me, not that my mind isn’t active enough to run away with itself all the time anyway, but since my mother was diagnosed with dementia, I feel it’s doubly important to exercise your brain daily.  You can do this by reading regularly, doing puzzles and word games, writing, playing card games, or any other thing that‘ll make you think.

We may as well be healthy, old people instead of ones with numerous issues to deal with.  I think old age is hard enough anyway without adding on other problems that maybe we can control now.

I is for the Idols we had as Teens

My sister, Scherri, and I were close growing up and many times, we had the same set of friends.  We’re only a year and a day apart.  Once we finally moved to town and off the farm, we got our own room for the first time.  Boy did we have fun decorating it to our liking.  I was about fifteen and she was fourteen.

Our decorating included plastering the walls with photos of “hot” rock stars we found in the teen magazines in the fifties.  We didn’t have any money to save from cotton picking then, but occasionally we would babysit and we always saved some of our lunch money, as there was no such thing as an allowance in our house.  We got about thirty-five cents a day for a cafeteria lunch, so we usually always had about twenty cents a day left over to put toward our records and teen magazines.

 Teen Magazine cover - 1965

Back then, we existed on cokes and a bag of chips from the cafeteria at school.  Looking back, I imagine this wasn’t very healthy but you do what you have to do.  We had a goal in mind.

We got a small square blue and white record player one year for Christmas.  We were ecstatic.  We would crank it up, listen to records, and dance in our room amongst the poster-covered walls while we talked about boys.

We didn’t allow any of the younger kids into our space.  It was our escape from the mad house.  Yes, our house was noisy and bustling with activity all the time because of so many kids and we could actually bring friends home once we were living in a small town and off the farm.

I guess we worked off all our horrid lunches by walking all over town.  It was nothing to go out and walk ten or twelve blocks each way to look in the stores.  Those were the days and some good times.