Thoughts on Retirement

Posted on June 3, 2018 by favoritephilosopher

I am ECSTATIC to be retiring, make no mistake (!) Nevertheless, I am having definite feelings of grief I need to reconcile given the nature of my work and career path.

The biggest challenge I face is the knowledge that I am obviously a better physical therapist than I have ever been, that it took a lifetime to get here and I almost feel as if I am deserting my self, abandoning my soul.    “What? You mean I worked so hard and you’re leaving NOW, just when we’re getting good at this?  Where is your dedication?  You could still get better! Do more! You owe it to yourself and the people who need you!” (Insert get-over-yourself here)   I suppose it is a testament to my passion (both love and hate) about my chosen career.

Then there’s that whole “where has the time gone” aspect of this as well:

– the excitement back in 1978 in New York when this philosophy degree girl fell headfirst into circumstances which landed me into a world I never knew existed. Suddenly I had true and undeniable purpose and direction.

– the thrill of enrolling in community college to take (gulp) chemistry. Getting an A (barely passed in high school).  Moving back to Illinois to pursue the path in earnest.

– the ecstasy of realizing physics and math wasn’t so scary and was not above my intelligence grade.

– the satisfaction of getting into PT school after all my hard work and dispelling once and for all the Mary Myth that I couldn’t do math and science.

So there’s that, but it’s more than that. It’s sifting through my office; how the practice has changed in 36 years. My file full of standardized functional tests – how helpful those would have been early in my career, but the profession had not progressed that far when I first began.  The profession progressed and I with it. I’m proud of that.

Although I sometimes hated the drudgery (read: documentation paperwork which, for for teachers, nurses, doctors and lord knows who else, has become a modern day scourge) I never lost passion for the practice itself, working with patients to heal what ails ’em.

The internet brought more information to my fingertips and suddenly scientific journals were not hard to access.  I could readily get lost in a rabbit hole of PT knowledge.

I know the door is not locked. I am not burning my license. I just renewed my CPR just in case (it WILL be the last time- I think every two years for 36 years is about enough.)

The truth is, though, that I don’t want to go back.  It is that feeling that grieves me.  It was so good. It was so fulfilling.  It stretched me and challenged me and allowed me to realize that nothing was really outside my intellectual ability if I really wanted it.  Indeed, formed and defined me.

I need to reconcile that feeling that I am somehow betraying that 26 year old lamb who was lost and then found her way.  I’m leaving her behind to pursue music – my first passion but due to shyness and lack of confidence I didn’t nurture it for many years except for late night piano concertos to nobody or singing my lungs out to an empty house.  I’m also  leaving her  to go to my hobby happy place – the quilting room.

I’m leaving her, but not without a great sense of gratitude, pride, love and yes, grief. You did good, girl.  Now go forth and  do more. Love you.

 

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Fixer Upper

Posted on May 28, 2018 by favoritephilosopher

For the five and a half years we’ve lived here I have procrastinated cleaning out the nook on our patio eave that contains an old bird’s nest.  Every spring I would be about to do it when I’d see a cute finch couple come by for an open house tour.  So I’d leave it, but apparently the run down nest was never good enough for our mama to be.

I didn’t understand. It is well hidden from the predators in the area and because we go in and out a lot, if a predator came by it would have to face my wrath.  I realize the house hunters don’t know this but still it seemed short sighted for them to pass up a nice protected half built nesting site.

This year was going to be the year.  The only thing stopping me was dragging out the ladder.  Good thing.  Yesterday a nice young couple looking for a starter home dropped by. At first I thought they were just eating the bugs that must surely be living in the nest, until a second male popped in to see what was going on and it was a full on bird fight.  I’ve seen that kind of ruckus at my bird feeders before so continued to hold on to my original theory.

Then today. More activity. Little bits of twigs and feathers in its beak. Can it be?

This may be the year of the birds.  The other day I was commenting to my sister that we don’t have California quail down here and I miss them.  Not two days later, a couple were spotted eating in my back yard.

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Bird heaven, that’s what I’m in!

 

 

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Safe Place

Posted on February 9, 2018 by favoritephilosopher

It is appropriate, I suppose, that the day after the first anniversary of my Mother’s passing it appears I am taking on one of her more challenging characteristics. For the fourth time this week I have lost and eventually found something that I put “in a safe place.”

To say this habit is frustrating is really nowhere near an adequate description.  Inevitably the something I’m  looking for and can not find is something important and more times than not I need it quickly – my passport or a piece of jewelry that I  rarely wear and this would be the perfect opportunity but it’s hidden so deeply that not only can burglars not find it, neither can I.  I run around the house sifting through likely hiding spots, tearing my hair out and asking “why do I do this?” Today it happened TWICE.

There is probably stuff hidden so deep in my childhood home, in a place that is so safe that it still has not been found and may never be found.  We used to laugh at Mom and then when I married Al he did similar things – e.g. put our return plane tickets in a safe place in Mom’s house. We had to buy new tickets. She found them months later in the very front of the little file cabinet in the guest room.

The worst part of this predicament is that, unlike my mother, I am kind of a clutter bug, so it means I will find what I am looking for when and only when I tidy up likely hiding places. Closets? Drawers? Those are for amateurs.  My stuff is hidden in Christmas wrapping boxes and boxes of miniature making supplies. Possible under a pile of old makeup or in the unused fireplace stuck between some fake logs.

As an aside, yesterday I actually got online to look for a possible psychological, scientific explanation of why asking for St. Anthony’s help in finding lost items works as well as it does and could find nothing.  Terri got me believing in that childhood practice again and I don’t understand, but it works every time.  I’m sure there must be a rational explanation, but frankly I don’t want to hear it.

I like believing in miracles!

 

 

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Personal Training “Review”

Posted on January 27, 2018 by favoritephilosopher

BecauseI I torture my personal trainer, Joe the Trainer, (to distinguish from Joe the Son)  much more than he tortures me, he asked if I was being nice to him on my blog. I had to admit I hadn’t been journaling as promised.  How can one journal when you have to come home and get into an ice bath and then sleep for 48 hours?

See how I torture him? He’s learning never to take me too seriously with my grousing and I had to promise I will let him know if I really DO have to get into an ice bath.  We’re getting along just fine and I’m learning so much, not just about all the mysterious gym equipment but also about how I’ve been underestimating my abilities – which is of course why I signed up for these biweekly sessions.

Last session I ‘fessed up that my biggest concern was that when training sessions are done I will revert to my lazy ways and not get there.  This is a real fear for The World’s Laziest Physical Therapist.  It’s not so much a problem of not wanting to do it as it is a problem of wanting to head up to my quilt room and dual-task watch basketball or football or Say Yes to the Dress or, of course Hoarders, which is ironic considering the condition of my sewing room at any given moment.  I’m sure I will use all that fabric someday….

It really comes down to being a procrastinator, I think.  I can head upstairs and knock out a few quilt squares and feel like I’ve accomplished something and it’s easy and meditative and fun.  All the other stuff like doing work documentation, working out – well the operative word there is “work.”  The only thing easy is blowing it off.

As I write that I realize I need to change my attitude  I need to find another way to look at and describe “working out.”  “Playing out” doesn’t work. “Body sculpting” might be okay because I do like what is happening to my body,  except that Joe the Trainer is reading this and I can feel him rolling his eyes even before this heads into the hyperspace.

“Get Ready For Fun”? Too unwieldy.  So I guess at this point I’m opening this is to the crowd.  I have lots of writer friends out there – help me out here! Two words no more than three syllables is what I need.

In the meantime, here is a link to a youtube video of diving off Laguna Beach – i.e. RIGHT HERE.  Notice how with beach diving you have to lug all that gear from your car.  It was that which made me realize I needed to get in better shape.

Oh? Did I say this was a review?  Joe the Trainer: crazy knowledge and skills, keeps in mind my “functional goals” (sorry Joe the Trainer, had to throw that word in there) which really does inspire me to clean lift that kettle bell- “this is how you’ll be picking up that 02 tank…,” patient, funny, patient, careful, patient, straightforward, patient. Did I mention patient?

So now fellow writers, humorists and smart alecks, you’re up.  Please post your suggestions for the new name for “workout” under the FB comments.

Now I’m going to get out of bed.

 

 

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Yes? No? Yes? No?

Posted on January 17, 2018 by favoritephilosopher

Disclaimer: This in no way approves of powerful men taking advantage of women in a less powerful professional situation or women who clearly have been assaulted or raped.

My comments apply to the girls who head out on a date, have a “good time” and then the next morning have buyers remorse (Ive been there, I get it). If you think you are going to feel “uncomfortable” the morning after having consensual sex a la Tinder, then act like a gentlewoman and don’t go into a man’s apartment or invite him into yours after having a few drinks.

This used to be the norm of gentlewomen everywhere and the hippy generation made it a “liberation” thing to bonk whomever you wanted whenever you wanted and not expect a ring and a date. Either save it for marriage or shut the hell up.

My advice to the guys: stop buying into the liberation line you’ve been fed. Give her a good night kiss at the door.  Go home and take care of yourself. Discern whether this is the woman with whom you want to live the rest of your life. Rinse and repeat. That way you avoid having a stupid woman who thought you loved her because you bonked her after dinner and drinks come back the next day saying “I know I said yes but I really meant no and you are an evil person.”  I’ve said yes and changed my mind and never had any decent man keep going when I said no.  Had that happened, it definitely would have been assault or rape and he would not have been a decent man.  But you can’t not even give the guy a chance to do the right thing by communicating your change of heart and then call him an asshole.  Better yet? Find out if he’s a decent man BEFORE you go to bed with him.  Even better yet? Say goodnight at the door. That’s why we have appliances.

Let’s face it hippie generation: we screwed up. We went too far. We were young. Sex is fun. Our parents were dinosaurs. Free love! This Salem Witch Hunt is a result of the blurred lines we created. There are rapists. There are Harvey Weinsteins. And there are young men being given serious mixed messages and being hurt   They are human too, not evil automatons as ultra feminists would have you believe.

And THAT is on us. We women owe it to ourselves and our daughters to not only speak up when we have been harassed but ALSO to take responsibility for how we act and respond long before the morning after.

So sick of stupidity and cowardice.

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Mary, Be Kind to Yourself

Posted on January 13, 2018 by favoritephilosopher

It’s all creeping in on me now. This time last year Ed the Dog, my best dog EVER, was ten days away from me having to say goodbye. Then, not two weeks later, I said goodbye to my Mother. I need to remember to be kind to myself and others. And to expect fatigue. And to expect “trap doors” as everything from the length of the shadows to the flowers that are blooming this time of the year remind me on a subliminal level that I have experienced great loss and that now, a year later, it is not a bad dream, but the reality for the rest of my life.

“They” say the year anniversary of loss is worse than initial grief for that very reason.  There is no more shock, only cold and brutal acceptance.  This has always been true in my experience and I am not looking forward to it.

I believe in the spiritual world. I believe I am not really left behind.  But last night hosting my mah jongg group at my home I missed my Mom so desperately – she was really old and grouchy when she taught me to play mah jongg after she moved here, but taught me she did, and when I win or take joy in gazing on someone else’s win (mah jongg is truly an aesthetically beautiful game) I both know that she is “there” but I miss her laugh of delight when she would say, as I did last night: “It’s so much fun, isn’t it?”

Even writing this I recognize that the emotions are running wild without direction or reason.

Be kind to yourself, Mary, be kind to yourself.

 

 

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Not My New Years Resolution

Posted on January 6, 2018 by favoritephilosopher

So. Yesterday I hired a personal trainer at my gym.  This is not some New Years Resolution.  This is the realization that at age 63 if I want to learn to scuba dive I need to be in better shape.  I’ve been researching scuba and although it is certainly within my capabilities even if I were an older woman, I would be looking at, if not outright failure, certainly discouragement.

What stopped me dead in my tracks was this: carrying a 25 pound O2 tank from the car to the waves.  You’re reading about a woman who presently is nursing a tendinitis in her thumb from….knitting.  That prospect just sounded like something that would make me not enjoy it at all.  Yet I will not go to my deathbed thinking “wish I’d gone under the sea.”  I can’t go to outer space which would have been my first choice, and it has been described as exactly that – the closest thing we can get to the experience of rocketing out of the atmosphere.

I take a step back and have another epiphany.  I am, by many accounts of satisfied customers, an excellent physical therapist.  I’ve been doing it for 35+ years.  However, this is my experience (abridged)  : 1)SF General trauma center –  head injuries, major burns, AIDS in its infancy, med-surg post op. 2) Mt Diablo hospital – post coronary bypass graft, i.e. getting them out of bed day two, dialysis patients. more ICU, more med-surg. 3) Skilled nursing facility – rehab of mostly frail or otherwise incapacitated elderly. 4) Home health – out of the hospital or skilled nursing but not ready for intensive outpatient (and many never would be, total hips, knees, fractures excluded)  and now 5) private practice with mostly frail elderly in their homes.  Sprinkling among this is some outpatient orthopedic which is just not my thing, reason being I find it incredibly boring and after working with incapacitated sick people I had no patience with a jock who would come in and “still have a twinge of pain.”. I understand that could be standing in the way of the jock returning to tennis but I just didn’t enjoy it.  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t good at it, it just means I don’t have tons of experience because I didn’t pursue sports medicine.

What does all this have in common? It was not a required skill set to progress weight training beyond ten pounds except for the forays into outpatient. The focus is on healing bodily functions, balance, walking again for heaven’s sake. I watch for proper form of course and can spot a fall about to happen by a slight change in arm position.  In some cases, I was providing an opportunity for improved quality of life as a disease process takes them down for the final count.

Where does the epiphany come in? For years I have avoided the gym because I am intimidated by it all and was too embarrassed to admit I wouldn’t know where to start. (I’m a physical therapist. Shouldn’t I know everything about everything? Never mind that there are as many specialties in PT as there are cars in a mall parking lot on Black Friday.).

Well, I know where to start but always felt I was being too easy on myself. I also worried that because it is impossible to watch myself while I pump iron that I cannot assess my own form.  Doctors shouldn’t treat themselves   Neither should physical therapists   And yet that is exactly what I have been doing or should I say not doing.

I have chosen a personal trainer who speaks my language- he has a Masters in Human Movement from ATStill University – and his bio states: “I enjoy the challenge  of developing a program to address each goal and need that a client has.”  Well, yeah they all say that.  But it’s this ” I like to find ways to make the program fun, fun programs are followed, followed programs are successful.”  THIS IS  MY PHILOSOPHY IN A NUTSHELL.  I have never, in my home health experience, gone in and given cookie cutter exercises.  I give a “menu” of exercises that accomplish the same goals.  The patient is the boss, I am the guide. (Some of my patients would strongly disagree that I’m not the boss. I’m a demanding guide for sure).

Sometimes I have had to establish rapport with patients who are reluctant or say they are too old or they don’t like to exercise by admitting to them that I hold the undisputed title “World’s Laziest Physical Therapist.”  I’m human. I would rather knit, quilt, read, watch Survivor, garden or who knows what all than get my sorry ass to the gym.

I don’t know how I’m going to establish that rapport now. However, it may be that I will still be the World’s Laziest Physical Therapist but will get to the gym just so I can fulfill my dream of floating underwater – my idea of heaven on earth.

Stay tuned.  I guarantee this is a blog saga that will continue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Merry Christmas Bluegrass Style

Posted on December 24, 2017 by favoritephilosopher

Since the birdies left the nest, Christmas has been a bit of a downer at times. The bittersweet of not being in Illinois way back when was replaced with the fun of little ones and Santa Claus and Baby Jesus. Then it was back to bittersweet when they left the nest and last year not everyone could make it home. I felt I wanted to consider Christmas travel going forward.

This year we all met up in Richmond VA because Andy is in med school and has zero time/money. After our week before Christmas partying with Kelsey’s family and ours, Al and I drove down to Charlotte NC to see old friends. Stopped at the campuses of our respected basketball rivals over the years – Duke and UNC – on our way. At one rest stop we were greeted with free food and drinks and hot dogs by a local Christian community -they do it every year and “we’ve met some wonderful people.”

Now we are taking the BlueRidge Parkway with Sirius radio blue grass Christmas on the radio, on our way back to spend Christmas Eve with Andy and Kelsey before flying home on Christmas Day.

For the first time in a long time I don’t feel blue (“blue”grass music will do that for you) and am now convinced that traveling and seeing the bright beautiful world and people outside my home may be the answer to my holiday blues. Doesn’t have to be extravagant. Road trip works – the woman in her Santa hat and sweater at the rest stop and saying Merry Christmas as we passed, breakfast in the restaurant with Tammy and Patrick where the servers appeared to be competing in a best/ugliest sweater contest today before closing early at 2 pm. Put it all together and you have a new perspective.

This is th first Christmas as an orphan, without both Mom and Dad. They who taught me to travel by road and air, are here after all with perhaps a new message of how to celebrate Christmas going forward.

Merry Christmas and may 2018 be all things bright and joyful to you and yours.

 

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What about Bill?

Posted on November 16, 2017 by favoritephilosopher

My lingering anger about the harassing sexual abuser Bill Clinton may finally get some resolution. For years my anger at the hypocrisy of defending his disgusting behavior, ie taking advantage of a young woman who thought the most powerful man on earth might really be in love with her, has been brushed off by friends.  As I said at a dinner party recently where EVERYONE was mentioned except him: everyone who knows me, knows I am a “middle of the roader.” I don’t hate his politics or what the Democrats might stand for.  Both parties stand for some good and some bad.

In those past conversation I was told “I get it, you can’t get past that” but “he did so much good.”   Absolutely correct.  I can’t get past it. What I particularly can’t get past is all the powerful WOMEN who supported him and somehow Monica became a silly little girl who should have known better.

It is the same thing in Hollywood.  I was told the women didn’t do anything about the “open secret” because women have so little power in Hollywood   Really? Meryl Streep has little power in Hollywood? Angelina Jolie has little power in Hollywood? Tatum O’neal has little power in Hollywood?

Power. Yes, it is always about power. Power of men over women who desperately need a job.  Power lust of women who want to be president of the US.  Excuses that your powerful cause is greater than the destroyed psyche if not the life of a woman who has been groped and harassed and then disbelieved.

Who among us cannot seriously imagine what is was like for Monica Lewinsky (not to mention all the other women who came forward and were called “Republican plants”) to hear the man she thought she fell in love with say on national TV “I did not have sex with that woman.”  To hear him not even have the decency to call her by her name   To call her “that woman.”  Just a throwaway: 20 minutes of action.  Monica says she was a willing participant.  It doesn’t matter that she thought she was in love and wanted to do what they did.  He was a man of power. He should not have taken advantage of her youth and naïveté in that way.  That she doesn’t see it that way is irrelevant.

It is time to name him with all the others. Bill Clinton. Serial harasser. Democrats, Republicans, construction workers, studio execs, priests and Presidents of the United States of America.  We women aren’t backing down on it this time and I implore my friends on both left and right to say “no” to this behavior take out the pitchforks and torches regardless of what other good the perpetrators might do.  Many good men do good things without thinking women are their personal playthings or porn magazines (do these guys really make women stand there while they beat off? Who thinks that is ok?  Oh well, it’s not “sex” I guess. Bill made that distinction clear.)

And yes, I get the same want-to-throw-up feeling in my stomach when I look at Trump as I do when I look at Clinton. They both make me sick.

Rant will never be over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Gentle on My Mind

Posted on August 11, 2017 by favoritephilosopher

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ58YOgZi4M

Wow. I have been so inexplicably sad the last few days over the death of Glen Campbell. The wonderful videos of his talent floating around have given me that sense that I wish I had paid more attention. This video of his daughter makes me realize we can’t pay attention to everything, everyone, all the time. What a lovely legacy he left behind in this woman. In the end it’s all we can leave behind – our goodness, whether it be through our own children or the thousands of people we encounter in a lifetime.

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