Aging with Benefits

I see myself as a couch potato. I don't exercise enough. My favorite activity in the daytime is reading and in the evening I watch TV.

But it seem as though everything I read in the newspaper or hear on the TV screams Exercise! Exercise! Exercise!

I am plagued with guilt.

So you can imagine my glee when Jane Brody, in her NY Times column, quoted a Dr. Jungwha Lee, “You don't need a gym membership to promote good health. Build movement into your daily routine. Don't park right next to the store. If your job involves prolonged sitting, set an alarm and stand up every twenty minutes. Use a remote printer. Take a lap around the floor after using the restroom. Go for a walk during lunch.” *

Hey! I’m not doing so badly after all. I am sure I am more fit than I was five years ago and I have been losing a little weight lately too.

After reading that article I figured out why. It’s memory loss.

Yes, memory loss has accelerated the amount of walking I do each and every day.

Think about my typical day. I walk around my apartment at least five times a day in search of my glasses. Then there is the time I put in going from closet to closet trying to remember where I hung my coat. I have to look for keys, gloves, and scarves not just in the closet but anywhere I might have deposited them when I used them last.

The timer I set to remind me something is on the stove repeatedly summons me to the kitchen.

And since I can’t remember recipes, I keep resetting the timer over and over. I must get up from the couch at least 15 times to check on a casserole baking.

My appliances are aging too and don't work as well as they used to. Take my oven. I can’t trust the temperature gauge any more and because I can’t see well enough to recalibrate it, I get more exercise getting up and down to check the temperature while I am baking.

When my TV remote broke, did I fix it? Of course not. I kept forgetting to get it repaired so I have to get up off my couch to change stations. See what I mean?

The old cold water tap in one bathroom is so hard to turn I use two bathrooms every day. One for hot water activities like washing my hands the other for drinking water and brushing my teeth. Coupled with the fact that I don't remember where I left my toothbrush, soap or towel, I get a lot of exercise roaming from bathroom to bathroom to locate things.

Then there is searching for pens and pencils. That takes miles of steps.

I am in shape before I ever get to the door to go out.

And all l had to do was grow old and lose my memory.

I think I’ll get a pedometer to scientifically track how many steps I take each day so

I can write a book and go on the “Dr. Oz” show to tout my new exercise routine: “You Can Get All the Exercise You Need Through Age Related Memory Loss.” I would make millions.

There are so many advantages to aging, I don’t why I didn't age sooner.

*Jane Brody, “Keep Moving to Stay Ahead of Arthritis,” New York Times, April 27, 2015.

10,000 Steps

I have been walking almost every day now for over a year. I’ve worked up to three miles.

This seems like plenty to me but the current ideal for fitness is to walk 10,000 steps each day.

I have thought of buying a “Fitbit” or some other pedometer to see if I actually do walk those 10,000 steps  that are so highly recommended. Apparently, the magic number is 10,000. If you take that many steps each day, you are guaranteed good cardiovascular health.

Why not buy a cute little gadget to tell me how many steps I really am racking up?

I have many reasons for not purchasing one:

1.   I have tried pedometers before and they never work.

2.   Hooking one up to my computer is daunting. I have so many other problems with the darn computer, adding a new gadget seems like asking for trouble.

3.   .I know I will tire of it and it will become another expensive plaything staring at me accusingly in a few months.

4.   .Figuring out how far I have walked by various routes gives me something to think about on my walks.

Pushing me further toward such a purchase was a spate of articles declaring that walking in the morning doesn't carry one through the whole day. Sitting for the rest of the day will still wreak havoc with your poor veins.

You have to be up and about all day.

This is really depressing. For these reasons:

1.   .I feel like I deserve to fall down onto the couch the minute I return home from my walk.

2.    I read an awful lot. This is an activity I do not associate with walking.

3.     I mean, I don't even sit up to read. I lie down.

All my virtue gone.

It’s not like I am completely sedentary after my morning walk. I never watch TV until the evening. I perform household tasks, run errands, meet friends in other neighborhoods etc.

But now I feel like I am lying down on the job of keeping those veins open and healthy.

So I will get a pedometer.

Or not.

Maybe I can do this without one.

On my most recent walk, I counted how many steps I took in one block. Approximately 100. So, that means my 60 block walk would account for 6,000 of the 10,000 steps I need to keep my veins open. 

So how to get in the rest?

I counted how many steps it takes to walk from my computer into the kitchen and back. It was 50 steps. So if my math is correct, in order to get my additional 4000 steps, I only need to make 80 round trips into the kitchen and back.

For snacks maybe.

Dialogue With My Dishwasher

My appliances are for the most part an amiable bunch. I get along with most of them just fine.

My stove is an easygoing sort. Not a high-end type, just a good solid stove. The burner tops are a little hard to clean but we’ve never come to blows over that.

As for my refrigerator, it may be taller than I am and lacking in those important self defrost areas but we get along.  I mean I like them both. They do their jobs and keep quiet about it.

But that dishwasher is another hunk of parts altogether.

I adored my dishwasher. You might say I worship at her altar. You might also ask why I anthropomorphize her. It’s easy. She has real presence.  She rules the kitchen.

I welcomed her with open arms. I embraced everything about her. She changed my dreary dishpan saddled life into one of orderliness and simplicity. No longer am I faced with a sink full of yucky dishes. No longer do my hands look pruney and wizened. No longer do I soak pot and pans.

Now that I am totally dependent upon her, I am a slave to her whims.

“Don't whine to me about your dumb Portuguese dishware,” she seems to be saying as I grudgingly wash my pretty ceramic cups by hand.

“Did I say anything?” I retort. “I know you will attack these poor pieces of pottery and scratch them to death so I don't let you wash them anymore. Couldn't you take it easy on a few of my favorites?”

“Too bad you have to make such a big deal about foreign dishware. Look here. I’m ready to accept all the made-in-America-certified-dishwasher-safe cookware you can find and wash them to perfection and you kibitz about earthenware. Who needs the stuff?”

“These ‘foreign’ dishes are beautiful! It's a joy to look at them. They make food taste better. And besides, that serviceable dishware you like isn’t particularly pretty.”

“Pretty! All you talk about it pretty! It’s about function my dear. After all, isn't it really about the food you’re eating not what you are eating off of?”

“I consider what I eat off of very important aesthetically.”

“Oh my god and a snob to boot!”

 “Come on. Just because you can’t handle the good stuff, don't judge me because I have good taste, you xenophobic dish mangler you.”

“Well, I just might stop working. That will show you

As I recall, my predecessor passed on the day before Christmas?”

“You’re blackmailing me? Go ahead. A lot of good you do me on Christmas anyway. You won’t accept 90% of my good dinnerware.”

“There you go again. Picky picky.”

“Or my mother’s silverware! You've made me give up wooden spoons. Buy very expensive stainless steel pots and pans. You've taken over my kitchen!! You are a tyrant.”

“Like I said, I can just go on strike. You can go back to washing stacks and stacks of dirty disgusting pots and pans. See if I care.”

“Oh go suck a lemon.”

“I’m a machine. I don't eat.”

See? She’s incorrigible. She has me cornered. I either do things her way or do the dishes myself.

I already wash my cast iron skillets by hand. She so thoroughly cleaned and dried them they had to be re-seasoned after every wash. Since cast iron is truly the best cookware I absolutely refuse to give them up.

Or take knives. If I want my knives to stay sharp I have to forget the dishwasher.  She will emasculate them in a trice.

And then there is all the stuff I wash by hand so she won’t be over stuffed. I look out for her why can’t she do me a favor or two?"

It seems that now I have to do everything her way. I finally replaced my aluminum cookie sheets. I had to buy new stronger cutlery.  My wooden chopping boards stay in the closet afraid to come out.  And she really did do a number on my Portuguese pottery. She chewed most of them up and spit them out at me.

So I surrendered. She won. I got rid of them just to shut her up.

Actually that's not the truth. I couldn’t really get rid of them. But after a look at my pruney hands I did put those adorable dishes at the top of the cupboard where she can’t see them and I can look at them longingly.