Month: July 2018

I’ve never been good at keeping New Years resolutions, up until this year. Paula got me an Apple Watch for Christmas. I’ve been wearing a Fitbit for several years (and I still do…people ask why I wear two fitness watches. I tell them they do different things). Anyway….

For New Years I resolved to walk my 10,500 steps a day for a year. That’s just over 5 Miles a day. So far, through six months I’ve kept that resolution. (Knock on wood) Those of you friends who follow me have seen my photos. Woodstation road, Ringgold Nature Trail, round and round the neighborhood. On days I can’t get outside, I walk in the house…run in place, or walk room to room. At the beach, I used the gym some, but preferred to walk the two miles down to the state park and back. The last day I didn’t reach my goal was December 30th.

I hope I can make it through the next six months. If I can, it will be the first time I have been able to keep a resolution for a year. I’m somewhat a creature of habit, and my schedule is at a point where I might just be able to…

I almost got derailed last week by a creature just larger than a pin head. I went to take a shower on Thursday, and found a tick embedded in my upper thigh. Normally, I would have been able to feel the little “sucker” but that part of my leg is numb because of a back injury. He was already embedded deeply and I had a big red infected spot on the leg. I took a set of fine tweezers and did like the google results said: “grasp as close to the head as possible, and put slow steady pressure on while pulling, so the head does not get left embedded in the skin”. Well…it did. It’s neck stretched and “pop” it went.  Ecch….

That necessitated a call and trip to my doctors office, where they dug the ticks head out…leaving a nice size hole. They left a nice size hole because they only had some regular tweezers with which they were first trying to get the rest of the little critter out.  I finally suggested using a suture needle…and the doctor agreed that would probably be a better idea.  I should have brought my own tweezers…anyway….

That night, I did not feel like finishing 5000 steps…but I did. They weren’t fun or easy, but I got them done.

Who woulda’ known that a tiny little creature like that biting you could make you feel so bad? I hadn’t had a tick bite in 30 years, so I didn’t remember….plus I was a lot younger 30 years ago (weren’t you?) I got a spray bottle of deep woods OFF sitting next to the back door now, and I spray up good with that stuff now if I’m going to be outside for any length of time.

I think about this thing with the exercise and I wonder how different my life would have been if I had shown such resolve in a lot of other things in my life. I think I have done pretty good with most of my familial relationships, but there were a lot of things I could have done better if I’d have done them with the same “resolve”  I have set about doing my New Year’s resolution.  I could have done better with grades.  I probably could have done better with some jobs.  I have learned later in life than I probably should have that a person has to have a certain amount of stubbornness in order to do certain things.  I imagine that people who are champions in any sort of area learn that quality….or perhaps innately have that quality, a lot earlier in life.

As for me, I’m going to keep on walking until I cannot do it anymore.  I’m going to take photos of my mini adventures, because it’s so easy to do.  I’ve been doing it regularly for almost five years now, and I think it’s helped me physically.  I know for sure it’s helped me mentally, as a walk is as good a therapy for things which are bothering a body as anything I have ever found.

 

 

When I was in school I took a pencil and paper with me every day. Right up until the day I graduated High School, and even my last year in college in 1974 it was pencil and paper or pen and paper. I never imagined any other way.

When the electronic age started, I was a Manager in a bedspread and blanket factory. I think I got my first computer in ’87 or ’88. Spreadsheets soon followed, along with emails and memo’s via the internet. I adapted to these things and I kept up. I had to, or have someone else take my job.

Back when I was still using pencil and paper in classes…often boring repetitive classes, I doodled. It was fun and it made the teacher think you were furiously taking notes. I did some great doodles that I wish I had kept. Some epic doodles. Most often I liked starting with a simply pattern and making it more and more complex as the doodle developed. I found patterns interesting, I found them fascinating. I began to believe there was something more to patterns than I knew, something more than I could even imagine.

I was never a good math student. I’ll admit I had a lot of trouble with Algebra. I really like Geometry however, and actually made B’s in that area. It seemed more pattern oriented to me. I took a course at Georgia in “Philosophy and Logic” which continued to focus my interest and belief in patterns. It was one of the most difficult courses I ever took. Try an advanced course in Logic sometime if you don’t believe me.

The more I look at our world, the more I see that patterns are in everything, from the macro photos of plants and insects that one of my Facebook friends so beautifully takes, to the posts which show galaxy after gorgeous galaxy. The more I study, the more I see repeated patterns. Similar patterns in nature. Similar patterns in all things, from the cells in our body, to our Universe.

There is a pattern.

There are patterns which were used to create all things.

There will be patterns which affect the future of all things.

Perhaps everything started off with a doodle somewhere by our creator.

Since patterns are repeated, perhaps at some point in the huge pool of time our existence will be repeated.

I am one that does not believe in an end to things. Call me crazy, a lot of people do, but that’s just the way I see it.

I traveled to New York City a couple of years back, and got very acquainted with the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the World Trade Tower site, and all that area thereabouts.  We were staying close by, within walking distance, and we took long walks to all of these places and more.

I was reminded of the trip I took to NYC back in 1974, back when the World Trade Towers were new..just operational enough for 4 adventurous budding Professional District Scout Executives who were visiting for the weekend to take the elevator up as far as it would go.  What a ride, and what a site.  And then…when I looked at it last year all gone except for the foundation and nearly 3000 innocent people dead, it was hard to bear.

Then there was the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  On Ellis Island were the records of thousands of people who had immigrated into our country.  Sometimes waiting for weeks, or even months in the harshests of conditions to get into this wonderful country they had heard so much about.  All of them, waiting their turn, waiting patiently and going through all the pangs of being a new immigrant coming into the land of opportunity.  Irish, German, Polish, Italian, you name it…they all came and they waited their turn and they filled out their papers and they came into this new world legally.  Under the system of law, like they were supposed to do.  “Give me your tired your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, give these, the homeless tempess tossed to me” that’s what Lady Liberty stood for.  And for all the people who have built a life in this country through hard work, respect for the LAW of the Land, and respect for others.  There are so many of them, and the great city of New York embodies it all! 

Now the rule of law seems to be thrown out the door.  The sacredness of the Lady of Liberty is trashed by those who would break the law, and by those who support them.  What good is it to live in a country where we are supposed to be bound by the rule of law, when many look the other way EVERY DAY so that their profits may soar, their pockets may fill, all to the detriment and loss of those whose families came in through Ellis Island those years ago…legally, and worked so hard to make a life in this country.  How easy it seems now to some, when they can ride the streets in brand new cars and trucks within days or weeks of gracing our shores.  They can band together and rent huge houses and take the money they earn and buy luxuries with it.  Send it back home you say?  Maybe, but what good does that do our country?

I know that many ARE here to try and better their lives.  There are not just the gold diggers.  But, when the law of the land is broken so blatantly with such impunity even by those whose intentions are good, does that make it right?  Does that make it legal, just because their need is great?  There are many who crossed Ellis Island whose need was just as great…perhaps greater.  How many Irishmen starved to death back in Ireland during the famine waiting THEIR turn to get into America?  And how many would have bristled had you told them you were going to smuggle them in illegally, as criminals?

Sometimes, somedays I look at the pictures of the Statue of Liberty which I took in New York, and remember looking at that hole in the ground where all those Americans diied, and I just wonder when we are going to wake up and find that the invasion that is going to finish us off didn’t come from Al Quaeda, but from a bit further South.