Do I WANT to live to be 100?

Probably not, but a new article in the New York Times by Jane Brody emphasizes the benefits of walking. My favorite line in the article is when one practioner bemoans the fact that he tries to get his patients to walk and there's such resistence. "We're not prescribing chemotherapy, for pete's sake! It's WALKING!"

I am lucky to be in a walking group at work. It's important on a variety of levels but of course the first benefit is that it's a group of people encouraging you to go, even when work is piling up on your desk.

Here's the article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/health/26brody.html?src=me&ref=general

So now we're never going to stop working.....?

You know, we Baby Boomers thought we had this whole "aging" thing down pat. We were going to control the world, make everyone else do our bidding and laugh our way to the grave.

Now it turns out that society is starting to fight back. They don't want to take care of a bunch of indolent former hippies. So they're starting to write little subversive articles about how we'd better keep working or our brains will turn to mush....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/science/12retire.html?src=me&ref=general

This is NOT FAIR! Why can everyone else retire and we can't? Just because we're going to cost the society their entire nest-egg? Too bad. We EARNED IT! I've got a deck chair all picked out where I can snap my fingers at the staff and say "Hey, you there...another pina colada!" (Except I don't like coconut so it will have to be a rum punch.) And what do you mean the rum punch is going to help my brain atrophy. Doesn't anyone here have a sense of humor?

I've either been in school, been working, been taking care of tiny children or been working, working, working my whole life. When does the merry go round stop? When do I get my lifetime supply of cotton candy?

And we are going to make massage therapy one of the preventive benefits of Medicare, right?

I'M BAAAACK.....

The last time I posted to this blog was on the first day of this year...I won't exactly tell you where I've been since then. Suffice it to say that I almost ran for State Representative and then didn't, almost got a couple of jobs out of town and then didn't, and spent an awful lot of time on Cape Cod licking my wounds and soothing my soul.

So what inspires me to start writing all of a sudden? Because I have decided that really, when you come down to it, I am an expert on "healthy aging" or maybe an incipient expert. But in any case I have decided that that is where I am going to put my energies for the next period of time. This may be a month, a year, a decade. After all there are rumors around that if I had been born in the 80's I would have been diagnosed with ADHD...but it's my blog and I'll laugh or cry if I want to.

So, in the category of healthy aging, there is TODAY'S accomplishment, and the place that I've been all this year. Today I "ran" a 5K. Now, the quotes are there because I covered 5K in geography. Sometimes I was running. Most of the time I was not. But I was moving the whole time...I didn't stop....and I finished, albeit 50 minutes later, but they didn't have to send the ambulance for me. As I passed all the "spotters" I told them "you can go home now...I'm the last person."

What this has encouraged me to do is:

1. Try to make my time under 40 minutes next year (or maybe the year after that...)
2. Start a "senior" or "Masters" division for the "Fun Run" (the "race" I was in...for me it wasn't a race it was an endurance contest!)next year and encourage other semi-out-of-shape over S*x*y's to join me...
3. Perhaps see this blog or some of my professional goals as becoming an expert on "Healthy Aging."

Trust me, it's where life is going...

I looked back at the post I did on the first day of this calendar year. I vowed to:


1. Hug my granddaughters
2. Visualize whirled peas
3. Eliminate teeth-grinding and other outward manifestations of stress
4. Be thankful for what I have (no materially but spiritually and emotionally...)
5. Be careful what I wish for
6. Stay hopeful
7. Love my family and friends
8. Try to make the world a better place
9. Keep checking things off on my "I've always wanted to...." list
10. Keep moving

So OK, I've started at the bottom and I will work my way up. Peace....

Where DID that Decade go? I knew I put it somewhere.....

By this time, I am used to the passage of time and coping with the mental picture of the calendar pages flipping and the years rolling past at the speed of light.

But there was something about it being the beginning of a new DECADE (I am NOT going to get into an argument about whether the century began in 2000 or 2001 and whether this decade should begin next year....)that brought me up short.

Because I could have sworn we just celebrated the millenium.....

Remember that? In my case I was with five of my closest friends and we rang things in with a bang. I had just turned 50 and discovered that it was the best stage I'd ever been in. My daughter was in college, my son in law school and life was good. I started a new job on January 13, 2000. I still have the same job. Is that progress?

So I could deal with the idea of a new year. But then all the commentators stated talking about the DECADE. What do you mean, it was just yesterday.....and then I realized that both kids were now married, I had grandchildren and my Uncle Bob had died. The world had changed profoundly. I hadn't kept up with technology and now I was....well, s*x*y. And still lots to look forward to.

In her usual timely way, my sister-in-law Hilary sent me this post of the last column that Ellen Goodman, one of my favorites, penned. It seems to sum it up pretty well. Peace.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/letting_go_20091231/