Posts Tagged ‘aging’
Instant Aging
I have developed an unmistakable hunched-over gait that instantly adds years to my appearance. Even though I have been able to carry on with a wide variety of chores, my recent disc flare up has slowed my motions dramatically.
I didn’t have too much discomfort mowing the lawn on the small tractor. I did mostly okay using the power trimmer to cut back the overgrowth along the trail outside our southern fence line. I raked. I used the pitchfork to turn composting manure.
Oh, the chickens love that task. We uncover a lot of crawly insects when disturbing the compost piles. We do the scratching for them. They just show up to reap the rewards.
Funny how they turn those creepy bugs into eggs we find irresistibly delicious.
Regarding my difficulty with standing straight after I’ve been sitting for a while, I’ve got a hunch. Without actually being able to see how the degenerating disc is causing me pain, I can only guess using the sensations I feel.
For the most part, there is nothing more than a dull sense that something is amiss. I never know what movement or gesture is going to result in the feeling of electric shock, when I presume the bulging disc suddenly reaches a nerve.
It seems to me that my body takes it upon itself to protect me from the possibility of the shock by locking up the muscles in the vicinity. This happens unconsciously, and when I try to stand up, those frozen muscles are no help. The remaining muscles have to do all the work, and my movements look incredibly labored.
Eventually the rest of my back, neck, and shoulders become stressed and fatigued from essentially fighting against the frozen lower back muscles that are trying to protect me from the feeling of being stabbed.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy my body is trying to save itself from the stabbing shocks, but it reaches a point where the protection is as bad as the injury.
Today, I have new respect for the stilted shuffle of an old body. It’s probably busy protecting itself best as it knows how.
I’m hoping the continued addition of yoga strengthening and stretching positions will provide added information for my body to reign in the extreme reaction of seizing up completely.
Have you ever noticed how easy it is for aging to come on instantly, but regaining youthfulness requires a lot of effort over a relatively long period of time?
I fail to see the harmonious balance of nature in that.
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Karmic Humility
Today is Friday, so I was able to sleep in because I don’t commute to the day-job on Fridays. The final minutes of my slumber this morning were filled with a dream about our cattle.
We don’t have any cattle.
Made me think of the saying, “all hat, no cattle.”
I would have said I was dreaming about cows, but after the great escape and tromping of our property by our neighbor’s bovine ten earlier this summer, we learned he didn’t have cows. His herd was all steers, so the term to use was, cattle.
I’m thinking my mind was dreaming of cattle to distract me from what is stabbing me in the back during my waking hours these last two days: degenerating discs again.
In a twist of karmic humility, instead of boasting about the progress of five consecutive months of daily plank exercises, I find myself focused on a debilitating flare up of stabbing back pains. The precious positive thread woven into this tale is the noticeable difference in level of disruption this time. I truly believe it is the result of the strength built up in my core from my string of consecutive days of planking.
When my series of painful back injuries were diagnosed as degenerating disc disease years ago, I was given a regimen of recommended exercises to treat the symptoms. The easiest was to walk a half an hour a day. Stretching and plank exercises were also advised.
I was all about the walking, but the exercises weren’t activities that I easily maintained.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t my degenerating discs that inspired my decision to finally get serious about planking. It was more about vanity. I was unhappy that none of my healthy efforts ever seemed to put a dent in the paunch and love handles that graced my midsection.
Cutting the amount of sugar in my daily diet had gone a long way to trim out my overall plumpness, but that classic paunch persisted.
I also credit the annual Tour of Minnesota bike trip for inspiring me to plank. Knowing I was at a risk of not having enough opportunities to bike in preparation for the mid-June trip, I decided to try planking every day in April to at least build up my core strength.
My butt might not be ready for the trip, but the rest of me would be resilient and strong. Knowing that planking was also advised to ward off back problems did help maintain my motivation at the time. Who wants to bike all day and sleep on the ground at night with an ailing back?
So, I succeeded in planking all through April, twice a day, in fact. It’s said that doing something for 30 consecutive days goes a long way to creating a habit. I planked through May, June –taking a week off during the bike ride– and have continued pretty much every day since.
Sometimes I miss an occasional day, or skip a morning or night, but the habit has been established, and the developing results are noticeable. The paunch and love handles are losing ground. As the planking has gotten easier with accumulated strength, my routine has expanded to longer duration, two-point planks, side planks, and more yoga stretching.
This morning, the routine is greatly modified to accommodate a recently unhappy, worn out disc.
Consider me duly humbled.
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Rare Occasion
Like an orbiting comet that passes through our outer atmosphere several times in a person’s life, every five to seven years, I have been known to cut my hair short. I haven’t done so since January of 2011, when I convinced Cyndie to cut off my dreadlocks.
Last night was one of those rare occasions.
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I have no idea if I will wait another five or seven years for a follow-up haircut, but I have an inkling I’ll never again produce the color that was on the end of the length that Cyndie cut off for me last night.
Even though I am not even 59-years-old yet. (I refer to my age as, “way down in my 50s still” to Cyndie, despite the lack of appreciation she shows for my youthful vigor.)
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Different Behavior
Yesterday was the second time in two weeks that I noticed something uncharacteristic about Legacy’s behavior. I’m not a guy with any history of horse experience, but after living with our herd for the last 4 years, I am able to perceive when their behavior changes.
Not knowing enough to make an educated guess, all I have to rely on is my intuition.
Last week, I came upon the three chestnuts grazing and lounging out in the hay-field, without their herd leader. Where was he?
Standing up under the barn overhang.
It was odd. I got the impression that he just didn’t want to walk all that way. Or, he’d rather stay out of the sun. I got the sense maybe he was feeling old.
It might be a reflection of my own issues, I’ll admit, but he is getting on in years. Not crazy old, but old enough that his arthritis might be sapping his interest in staying connected with the rest of the herd non-stop when they choose to venture so far away.
Yesterday, the oddity was more profound.
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I came out with a wheelbarrow full of hay to fill the box where Legacy always stands. I usually have to shoosh him away while I work, and he always starts eating before I can finish latching the chain over the grate. This time, I was surprised to find him down by the waterer, just standing, as if lost in thought.
My presence, with a fresh load of hay, didn’t engage his attention whatsoever.
Desirea almost didn’t know what to do with first access. She usually has to wait until he lets her in.
Legacy’s aloof behavior was so uncharacteristic, it startled me into taking pictures of the occasion.
I’m hoping Cyndie will be able to spend some quality time with the herd this week to see what she senses. Maybe she will be able to learn what is on Legacy’s mind.
It would be great if he would just tell her.
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So This
I admit, I have never done this before. I have never been as old as I am today and faced everything that November 2017 is presenting. Is that why this season’s onset of freezing temperatures feels more jarring than ever before? My blood is definitely not winter-thick yet.
Maybe I’m off my game because of how unsettling the last year under the current U.S. leadership has been. The increasing turmoil of extreme storms from the warming planet has definitely contributed.
Sometimes, looking back for reference provides some insight on present day issues, but there are so many unique technologies now woven into our lives, it feels difficult to compare events from decades ago. This weekend, our Netflix queue offered up a documentary DVD about the Freedom Riders of 1961.
I was two years old at the time of those civil rights dramas playing out in the deep south. I suppose the white supremacists at that time were terrified their racist version of society was being threatened.
It has me trying to fathom how history might perceive people and events of 2017 some fifty or a hundred years from now.
The next movie that showed up was a documentary about the Rwandan cycling team that rose from the ashes of genocide that country experienced in 1994. Nineteen Ninety Four. I wish such human carnage wasn’t something that still occurs.
It all serves to put my travails in perspective. Feeling weak against the cold air? I’ll get over it.
I can go out and hug our horses, absorb some of their warmth, and see if I can pick up some of their energy and perspective on the present moment.
They can help me to breathe and get back to grazing.
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Subtle Change
For most of my adult life I have maintained a pattern of growing my hair long for a several years and then in an abrupt change, having Cyndie crop it close to my scalp. One haircut every five to seven years suits me just right.
The years that I kept my hair in dreadlocks were a temporary deviation from the norm which I particularly enjoyed. Those came off at the beginning of 2011 (see it here) and I haven’t had an extreme cut since then. In the last year, I have had a few days when I wanted to take it all off again, but something kept me from following through.
Earlier this week I was searching images for current hairstyles and found the ones that appealed the most to me were all long. Of course, the primary trend for 2017 was long on the top and cropped on the sides, but I can’t quite pull that off because my top is disappearing with age.
The difference in color between my long ends, which are rich with a reddish-brown hue, and the new growth that is increasingly gray-tinged is dramatic.
I searched images to find haircuts for graying and thinning hair with a receding hairline, but the results were a bust.
After a consultation with my barber, Cyndie, we decided to keep it long, but give me a healthy trim. Usually she takes off the frayed ends a few times a year, but this time we opted for several inches at once. She also trimmed around the temples and along the neckline, which almost always gets neglected in my usual unrefined version of styling.
I figure it’s a pretty low-risk experiment. If I find myself still thinking I’m ready to be done with the length, I know I will enjoy the feeling of rubbing the stubble again after I convince Cyndie to go to that extreme.
I think both of us know that the next time she cuts it all off, each passing year there’s a chance it will never make it back to long again. For now, we’ll enjoy it while I’ve got it.
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Nostalgia Happens
Nostalgia. I can’t help it. Against my own wishes to deny the inevitable chronological orientation of my being, which fits precisely in the place where nostalgia begins to dominate ones attention, I am powerless. For years and years I enjoyed living in defiance of marketers who flooded the airwaves with attempts to bait and hook the primary buying demographic.
My tastes and interests were usually out of sync with the times or just far enough from center to be of little consequence to the purveyors of must-have products and services. My hobbies and interests leaned toward the years of my older siblings more than they matched what was aimed at me and my peers while we were coming into our prime.
Or so I like to think. In reality, there is every likelihood that the cunning advertisers of the products that I did fall for were deftly plying their trade to make me think I was forging my own bold path on the journey of maturation. I blindly wandered directly into the cross-hairs of their financial machine which worked its grips for brand loyalty deep into my unconscious.
With each passing year I have to work harder to deny that my value as a consumer is fading fast from the ever-changing entertainment industry and flying headlong for the entry gates of the AARP and pharmaceutical marketers.
During this wonderful NCAA basketball tournament month, my primary radio station for music has decided to run their own playoff bracket pitting match-ups of record albums from the 1990s. Yawn. How come I don’t care about any of these artists? I get the hint. I’m getting old, thank you very much.
In the same week that I was going through that realization, Cyndie turned on the television in our bedroom to see what was on and landed on a mesmerizing review of my home state, Minnesota in the ’70s. Produced with the Minnesota Historical Society Press and inspired by authors Dave Kenney and Thomas Saylor, the incredibly familiar scenes dredged up completely neglected memories of the world I experienced as a teenager.
I couldn’t look away for fear of missing something. I wanted to soak in every last morsel of what was appearing on the screen.
Did these images trigger my latest re-fascination with long-lost music memories or is the timing incidental? Again, just last week, I was pulling out old vinyl albums that weren’t to be found anywhere in digital form, hoping to feed the hunger to listen to songs from my collection that I haven’t heard in decades.
There was an old Loggins & Messina album in the bunch that I realized was totally available for download, and after giving it a spin on the turntable, I went right to the iTunes store and bought it. That should definitely be in rotation on my iPod.
The advertising genius of showing other similar albums at the bottom of my screen found me powerless to its allure. I hadn’t thought about Seals & Crofts for so long that I’d forgotten they existed! I bought that, too. Jim Seals and Dash Crofts’ voices together are a spectacular combination.
Since I hadn’t listened to that harmony for what feels like forever, it sounded good as new to me again.
It also makes me feel like I might be getting a little old.
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Passing Middle
As long as I am writing about calendar days, it occurs to me that, not only are we passing the middle of the month of January, we are essentially heading into the second half of our long winter.
There are several ways that I can gauge this. We have almost devoured the first full rack of firewood that we stacked on the deck.
We are about halfway through the hay stored in our hay shed.
We have filled just over half the space where we store composting manure during the cold months.
In terms of weather, this weekend we are due to receive the coldest blast of Arctic air of the winter. There are warnings posted about dangerous wind chills on Sunday through Monday morning.
After we get through this, it is expected to warm up to El Niño-driven-warmer-than-usual temperatures for this time of year. I’m okay with that. Even if I live a long and healthy life, by conventional standards, it is reasonable to think that I am past the middle of my years on this planet. I am growing more satisfied with mild weather than I was in my younger days.
I checked the level of propane in our big tank yesterday, to make sure we don’t need to order more yet. It is less than half full, but there is enough to get through the winter at the rate we use it.
I have a sense of being on the downhill side of things, which provides an impression things should be easier. We get to coast.
Could it be that we are even passing the middle of a change in our climate? Thinking about the coldest possible temperature of the winter reminded me of the remarkable graphic posted by Paul Huttner in his weather blog, “Updraft.”
Look at the trend line of the oscillating minimum temperatures recorded in the Twin Cities in my lifetime. If this keeps going, I could live during a year when temperatures here don’t even dip below zero.
That would seem like coasting through a winter.
In my advancing years, I think I will enjoy the ride. In the mean time, bring on today’s deep freeze.
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Leading Legacy
I have devised a way to check whether you are aging, or not. It is nothing particularly complicated, even though the subject in and of itself can often be ridiculously complicated. It doesn’t hurt to have the availability of someone approximately 40-years younger than you to aid in setting up for this check, but it’s probably not required.
All you have to do is go outside and engage in routine outdoor winter activities like you have done your entire life without difficulty. Next, go back inside and sit down for period of time, something along the lines of how long it would take to eat dinner. At this point, you should be well prepared to run the aging check. Simply attempt to move your body from one place to another. If you have lost the ability to move, that is a strong indicator that you have aged.
Much of the day yesterday can be described as being an acclimatization day for our guests. We had a pretty short night of rest on Tuesday evening and they had traveled all day long to get here, so they deserved a day of rest. We found a few activities to do in the snow and cold, but we also did some lounging inside, watching a movie, playing guitars, and doing some napping.
The back yard is now a series of sled runs that have been firming up all night. I expect that today will present the opportunity to crash into a few trees, as we test whether the sleds which resist being steered will follow the routes we have laid out.
Our animals seem quite pleased to have company giving them good attention. I have already learned some new skills for communicating to Legacy that although he is the “alpha” leader of the herd, he does not lead me. It was insightful, causing me to recognize where I have been neglecting to assert my authority and allowing him to behave in ways that might give him the wrong impression.
He tests his herd with some frequency, to communicate his dominance. One way he might do this is to chase them off their food. It seems like much ado about nothing to me, but the horses accept this message easily, and then just as quickly as the fracas starts, they all calmly return to eating. Message sent and received.
I have not had any such urge to chase Legacy off the food I just delivered for him to eat. It would be very horse-like of me if I did, to let him know that I am in charge. He wouldn’t hold a grudge. He would go right back to eating, message received.
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Relative Something 