Living Healthy

Keep It Simple. Eat A Banana.

/ Ally Bean / 12 Comments

1399483290ieyhm

~ • ~

I awakened this morning with a charley horse in my right calf.  Not the smoothest way to start the day.  But one that got me thinking about a woman who I used to know who had some fascinating ideas about the nature of reality.

~ • ~

This woman who I’ll call K, was one of the nicest, calmest, most supportive human beings I’ve ever met.  She was a mother of 4, wife of a physician, lived in a charming older home that she filled with pets, overstuffed furniture & amazing meals.

K, who was born in the late 1940s and influenced by the 1960s hippie movement, was a nurturing person who grooved on Dr. Wayne Dyer and healing crystals.  And it was from this perspective that she viewed reality.

For instance, one of K’s beliefs was that when a person awoke with a pain in his or her body, the pain was a result of the sleeper’s body being used by some celestial force in a different plane of existence during the night.  This made sense to her and she shared this idea with anyone who’d listen to her.

~ • ~

Now I cannot conclusively say that K’s idea is totally wrong.  Who knows, eh?  But I can tell you, my gentle readers, that my father was a small town doctor who had slightly different take on charley horses in the middle of the night.

His simple, straight-to-the-point explanation of why a person had a charley horse was that said person wasn’t eating enough magnesium potassium.  And to remedy this situation he’d just say: “Eat a banana.“

~ • ~

And so it is as I sit here this morning typing this story that I find myself eating a banana– and reflecting upon the wonderful people who I’ve known in my life.  Some a little more based in my idea of reality, than others.

When Your Morning Starts With The Wrong Angel Singing

/ Ally Bean / 17 Comments

Talk about being disoriented.  As if getting up pre-dawncrack isn’t difficult enough, I now have worm of the ear going on… and it’s the wrong worm.

Botheration.

# # #

Here’s the deal.  Zen-Den sets our clock radio to wake us at 5:30 a.m. each morning.  But last night he changed the wake-up time to 5:15 a.m. because he needed to get going earlier than usual.

He did not tell me about the change.

So this morning the alarm, which is set to a local radio station, went off earlier than normal. When the alarm/radio goes off at its usual time I’m already a little bit awake so it’s not too much of a shock to me.  But this morning the alarm/radio startled me out of my deep sleep.

Obviously.

# # #

And in my sleepy mind it seemed like the radio was LOUDER than usual as it played an oldie: “Angel of the Morning.”  Not a bad tune, but slowly as I began to wake up I realized that it wasn’t the right woman singing the song.

Who are you?  And what are you doing in my morning?

So I laid there in bed trying to figure out what the heck was going on.  I could confirm with a glance at the clock radio that it was the wrong wake-up time, but the singer/angel situation flummoxed me.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

# # #

So now, later in the morning after a few mugs of coffee, I have been able to make sense of what happened.  Come to find out there are many versions of “Angel of the Morning.”

The first one, the right one, the best one, the one that my mind would have accepted without confusion, sung by Juice Newton, is:

The second one that I was familiar with but didn’t grow up listening to, sung by Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, is:

But the wrongest one, the one that was forced on me this morning and is still lurking in its worm-ear-y way within my brain, the one that apparently is the original version, sung by Merrilee Rush and the Turnabouts, is:

And I don’t like it.

Improving Ms. Bean: One Step At A Time

/ Ally Bean / 21 Comments

And now for something different…

I’VE NEVER been one to talk about medical issues on my blog, and I’m not about to change that policy now.  But today, by bending my own personal blogging rules just a bit, I’m going to share with you, my gentle readers, that I am overweight.  Not much, actually.  But enough for me to decide that it is time for me to change some of my evil less-than-healthy ways.

TO WIT, and finally getting to the point of this post, I bought a fitbit.  I chose the Zip one, which is a small pedometer that you attach to yourself each day.  Then it does all the work for you by keeping track of your steps.  All you have to do is walk.  A lot.  And have a desktop computer or a smart phone that you use to see all of your stats.

– • –

Screen Shot 2014-05-05 at 8.24.05 AM

– • –

IF I were a cynical woman, at this point in my post I’d tell you that this little gadget has confirmed that I do move.  Most days.  More than I can believe.  Yet I am plump.  Which I kind of like, but that’s the sort of statement that could get my Woman Card revoked, so I won’t focus on the body image topic today.  Nor will I be cynical, because I am a paragon of good health and positive thinking.

I’M ENJOYING my Zip.  It’s a groovy fuchsia color, and has this cute little [mostly] smiley face on it.  Sometimes the smiley face sticks its tongue out at me when I’ve been sedentary for too long.  I like that.  Technology with a bit of motivational attitude is exactly the sort of thing to get me stepping more.  And maybe, just maybe, weighing a few pounds less.

I’ll let you know. 

– • –

[A message to the FTC: I didn’t receive any compensation of any kind for my opinion here about this device.  I know that you worry about such things, so you can rest assured that, as usual, there is nothing here for you to see.]

– • –

Links For Eggheads: Health & Beauty Edition

/ Ally Bean / 18 Comments

… because information is FUN dammit.

• • •

[But before I begin, an aside:

When I find something interesting online I try to keep the link.  I do this because I adore it when I go to someone else’s blog and find that he or she has taken the time to curate a list of links, so once in a while I try to do the same thing here.

Although now that I think about it, I feel a bit like Sheldon Cooper presenting his lame video podcast series, Fun With Flags.  But I have no Amy Farrah Fowler here to help me, so this is all different from that.

Right?!!]

• • •

√  to look your best in photographs (and you know that you want to), go here.  USEFUL.

√  to get a better grip on your own sanity, go here.  PROFOUND.

√  to change your arms from lunch lady to gym rat, go here.  INSPIRING.

√  to style curly hair so that you don’t look like a poodle gone wild, go here.  HOPEFUL.

√  to understand why you trip up when you attempt to make changes, go here.  INSIGHTFUL.

√  to have a toned tummy while living a crunch-free life, go here.  DOABLE.

√  to keep your happy heart healthy (which we all know is a good thing), go here.  IMPORTANT.

• • •