The Science of Sweet Slumber

It wasn’t too long ago that I would have done just about anything to get a good night’s sleep. Seriously.

I can’t remember any period of my life when I felt so exhausted and out of sorts. And, the worst part was I saw no end in sight.

Every single night, I’d get ready for bed, eye my comfortable mattress with affection, position my favorite pillow just so, and pull back the blankets…then just stand there. Internally, as much as I longed for sleep, I knew I wasn’t going to get much of it during the night.

It became a battle of the wills to lay down and try to sleep.

Eventually, after more battle of the wills, I stepped back and decided I needed something to help me sleep better, sounder, longer…and it wasn’t sleeping pills.

I finally opted for a short-stint on HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and of course, this was yet another concession I had to make in my muddled mind because I always swore I would never go on this “stuff.”

I guess I can just add this choice to the long list of “nevers” I’ve already had to eat my words on in the past few years…aging does some mighty strange things to us.

Back to the sleep issue. Thankfully, within days I was sleeping again. AMAZING. I felt like a new woman inside and out…and when bedtime arrived I wasn’t hem hawing around anymore, I jumped into bed pulled the blankets up to my neck and drifted into sweet slumber.

I can tell you firsthand that when you’re not sleeping (for whatever reason)…you lose your ability to reason well.

It’s an awful reality to know that sleep is just beyond your grasp…and so allusive, but oh so needed for good health (mental/emotional/physical.)

Which is why when I ran across this book by author David K. Randall, Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, I was intrigued.

A few of the stranger facts this author uncovered regarding sleep include this one. Did you know that before we had electricity that people went to bed when it got dark, stayed asleep until about midnight, then got up for about an hour before going back to sleep for the rest of the night? They call it the first and second sleep. Since none of us lives without artificial light, they tested this pattern on a group of individuals over a period of weeks and no kidding, after awhile the test participants began adopting this strange nocturnal habit. Interesting.

As the book’s subtitle suggests, there is so much scientists don’t know or understand about how the brain works during slumber but they’re watching and observing through sleep studies which is a good thing since one out of four people now uses sleep aids at night. Some people sleepwalk, sleep and drive, sleep and eat, or sleep and get violent.

If you’re interested in the study of sleep, this is a fascinating look at the science of sleep…and guaranteed…the reading won’t put you to sleep once you get started. Maybe that last part isn’t such a good thing for the sleep-deprived among us?

Why It Is Better to Give Than Loan

Money changes people.

Money changes things between people.

Money sometimes (oftentimes) costs too much.

Which is why, I think it’s better to give than loan…money.

If you can afford to do so, that is.

When you give someone a loan, they become in debt to…you.

They don’t just owe you a lump sum…they owe you.

And believe me, they feel it.

They think about it every time they spend money on something other than paying you back (if they have a conscience, that is…)

They feel a sense of being subservient to you and your preferences, enslaved might even be a good word to describe the emotional response to owing someone money.

Once they pay it back…freedom.

Then and only then does the relationship get back on even footing.

How do I know this?

I’ve been in both positions.

I’ve been the borrower and the lender.

And, in all honesty, I don’t like either one (but it sure is fun to give!)

It’s never fun to owe someone money.

It’s never fun to remember that someone owes you money (especially when you could use it) and they don’t pay you back.

I’d much rather make that loan a gift and then put it completely out of my mind and memory and move on.

Otherwise, it can end up costing you a friendship at the worst; or a strained relationship at the best.

The only exceptions to this principle is between family members.

I have loaned my kids money (and done so happily) and I’ve borrowed money from my parents (and done so thankfully.)

And I’ve expected my children to repay the loans (because it builds their character and sense of responsibility toward money) and I’ve repaid my parents (because I said I would.)

But in the general scheme of life, I maintain that the giving/lending of money should be given rather than loaned…because sometimes (oftentimes) money just costs too much.

Do you agree?

Bringing a Private Battle to the Public – Denise’s Breast Cancer Story

I sat waiting in a doctor’s office this week and did something I never do…looked around for the latest issue of a woman’s magazine.

Ladies Home Journal, October 2012, to be exact.

Why?

Because in an amazing turn of seemingly incidental (at the time) events, my dear friend, Denise McCroskey, who now blogs about her breast cancer journey, tells her story on pages 124-126 of this issue.

How often is it that someone you love is featured in a national women’s publication and their story is displayed for millions to read and learn from?

Amazing.

Ever since my good friend Denise was diagnosed with breast cancer last year she’s been blogging about her experience…and doing a fantastic job of detailing the highs/lows and every emotion/fear/setback/triumph in between.

I read her accounts of whatever aspect of the breast cancer fight she’s feeling especially passionate about sharing and consistently think to myself…so our small bookclub was right after all….Denise is a writer like the rest of us…she just didn’t know it yet!

Second, I have an intellectual/educational response because Denise is informing readers with an insider’s look at the various procedures/processes/treatments/side-effects of cancer treatment from a real woman’s perspective…not simply a clinical one.

Third, because I love Denise dearly, my emotions seem to run riot whenever I read her accounts and that means some tears fall with each and every story she shares.

Finally, by the end of her storytelling/account giving…I feel a burst of pride that this amazing and courageous woman is my friend and she’s committed to helping educate/encourage other women across our country…while she’s still in the battle.

Amazing.

So, if you’re out running errands or will be sitting in a waiting room this week, please do buy/borrow and then read Denise’s story in Ladies Home Journal…oh, and have a tissue handy.

Hey! You’re Just Like Me (and other unalterable truths about friendship)

Like is attracted to like.

It’s a known fact.

We’re attracted to people most like us.

We find comfort, connection, and consolation in getting close to those who are most similar to us.

But that doesn’t mean our friends of choice are necessarily good for us.

Which is sort of comforting, sort of scary.

While I can envision a world of people who run their hours and days in military-like fashion (which is where I am most comfortable) getting lots accomplished, checking off items on their to-do lists, and marching steadily onward and upward to achieving their goals; I do, at times, get really tired of myself and long for a more relaxed approach to life.

Which is where my friends come in….thankfully.

While I’m busy marching along getting stuff done, some of my friends (who are way smarter than me) are setting aside their to-do lists and living a life (that I sometimes only write about)…can you see the problem here?

Some of us (who shall remain nameless) are so content in their routines that we miss the joy of surprises, of the unexpected, and even of the mundane that gets interjected into our regular days.

This is where having friends (five friends?) who are completely opposite in temperament from you comes in handy.

Friends who will call you on the spur of the moment to drop what you’re doing and say, “Come with me!” to whatever. (I am not one of those people…although I aspire to be.)

Friends who actually plan fun get togethers…(I’ll plan a meeting, or a get together for a purpose…but one just for fun? Maybe next year…)

Friends who feel no shame in inviting you to dinner for….leftovers (I’m happy to eat someone else’s leftovers…but if you’re not family, I’m not offering my leftovers to you without a fight.)

Friends who hug and kiss with abandon (going to Italy helped me with this…still, I’m not a hugger by nature and if I’ve hugged you, consider that proof that I care deeply about you.)

Friends who make you laugh for no reason at all (oh boy, do I ever need this…)

So here’s the challenge.

Make a list of the five people you spend the most time with…and it’s probably not your family. Sad, but true.

Study this list and ask yourself if the people on it are mirror reflections of yourself? If they are scarily similar and clone-like replications of you, then muster up some courage and try to branch out and befriend someone different from yourself…just for the adventure of it all.

Remember, we’re not looking for friends who are dis-similar in character/values…we are on the hunt for those with different temperaments. People who bring balance to our lives (and to whom we can offer a different type of balance.)

I’m willing, are you?

Weighing In On the Wheat Controversy

I don’t know about you but I get weary of hearing this phrase, “New scientific evidence shows…reveals…proves….”

Whatever. (And whenever I say whatever I’m not suddenly demonstrating an attitude of anything goes, easy-breezy, everything’s just fine with me.)

What I’m really saying is… “I give up. Do it your way because clearly I have no say in the matter.”

So when someone told me about the newest health book rising to the top of the charts, I was a tad skeptical. Then a good friend told me she was reading it and shared how much she was discovering about the history of wheat/its genetic engineering/and how wheat today isn’t really “wheat” in the truest definition anymore. That got my attention.

The rest is history. I got the book and felt slammed with medical/chemical/biological information from the first page onward. Mind you, I’m not a medically trained person, so I have to carefully wade through technical info like this book holds or I fail to grasp everything the author is attempting to communicate.

That said, I finished the book over the weekend and then promptly ordered two copies (one for myself and another to pass around to people I love dearly.) If you haven’t heard of this book yet, it’s called, Wheat Belly, and I recommend that you run, don’t walk to order it. Filled with lots of scientific data/case studies/clinical tests that support the author’s premise that our current day wheat (because it has been genetically altered) does us more harm than good.

The author, who is a cardiologist, described countless illnesses/conditions that result from eating our modern day wheat bread and other products with wheat as a partial ingredient.

For sure, it sounds blasphemous to stop eating wheat (because it’s supposed to be healthy, right?)

I’ll let you decide after you read Wheat Belly for yourself.

I’m on day eight of being completely wheat-free and committed to staying that way for as long as I can (or until someone can prove this doctor wrong…which in our county could be next week.) Whatever.

Grace Happens Here – There and Everywhere

Wonder of wonders I ended up with not one book on the subject of grace but two this month. Even more wondrous, both titles were written by America’s master storyteller, Max Lucado.

What grace.

Two books on grace.
Two books by Lucado.
Grace upon grace.

So instead of trying to decide amongst my list of topics I want to write on today, I decided to share a little Lucado with you.

Here’s an excerpt from Lucado’s newest, Grace Happens Here.

Grace.
Let it so seep into the crusty cracks of your life that everything softens. Then let it bubble to the surface, like a spring in the Sahara, in words of kindness and deeds of generosity.

Such Kindness

“We will celebrate forty-four years tomorrow,” Jack said, feeding his wife.

She was bald. Her eyes were sunken, and her speech was slurred. She looked straight ahead, only opening her mouth when he brought the fork near. He wiped her cheek. He wiped his brow.

“She has been sick for five years,” he told me. “She can’t walk. She can’t take care of herself. She can’t even feed herself, but I love her. And,” he spoke louder so she could hear, “we are going to beat this thing, aren’t we, Honey?”

He fed her a few bites and spoke again, “We don’t have insurance. When I could afford it, I thought I wouldn’t need it. Now I owe this hospital more than $50.000.” He was quiet for a few moments as he gave her a drink. Then he continued, “But they don’t pester me. They know I can’t pay, but they admitted us with no questions asked. The doctors treat us like we are their best-paying patients. Who would’ve imagined such kindness?”

I had to agree with him. Who would’ve imagined such kindness? In a thorny world of high-tech, expensive, often criticized health care, it is reassuring to find professionals who would serve two who had nothing to give in return.”

Give grace, one more time.
Be generous, one more time.

No Easy Day

I just started reading, No Easy Day: The Autobiography of a Navy Seal, and as a reviewer I’ve adopted two habits before I begin reading any book.

I check out the back matter by thumbing through the last pages of the book. The appendix, source page, author bios, and whatever else ends up there. Why? Because I’ve found that I can tell a lot about the book’s content and the philosophy of the author by where he gets his information, those he decides to quote from, and by looking at his personal history.

Second, I look to see how the book begins by reading the opening quotes, the author’s notes and the acknowledgements. Again, you can tell a lot about a person by who they value enough (and why) to thank and what brief quotation or statement they select as the main premise for writing the book.

Mark Owen begins No Easy Day with this quote.

The only easy day was yesterday. Navy Seal Philosophy

Followed by –

Long live the Brotherhood.

Right then and there he had me hooked.

Why?

Because in all honesty, I could have written that line. And if I’m correct, so could you.

Life is hard.
Every single day is difficult.
There are no easy days.

I think once we accept this truth about life, we are far less apt to grow jaded, discouraged, depressed, or defeated.

For myself, once I adopted the mindset that life is a war zone of intersecting good/evil, it made sense to me why I often felt like I was living in the middle of it.

Because I am.
You are.
There’s no escaping it.

And if you don’t believe me, listen to the nightly news, turn on the radio, or read the daily newspaper. Any television station, any radio frequency, any paper. Any day. Never easy.

The only peace we come by on this planet is the peace we find inside.

Even that doesn’t come easy.

Someone or something is always trying to steal it away from us.

But more than anything else, peace is the highest prize, the truest winning, the timeless treasure, because no one or nothing can take it from us (no matter how hard they try.)

Here’s to resting deeply in the peace that passes all understanding today and every day.

Easy day not withstanding.

Crying Foul (I’m getting way too good at it)

I’ve always thought I would make a great trial lawyer (and an even better judge.)

I have this strong sense of justice…it just eeks out of me.

I love the law (grace is a much harder concept for me to grasp.)

To my mind, I can look at a situation and sum it up pretty fast.

Right.
Wrong.
Black.
White.
Innocent.
Guilty.

These words comfort my soul (and also constrict it.)
These concepts help me feel in control (and also confine me.)

I can scare myself sometimes with how easily my mind cries out, “That’s not fair!”

Of course, you can see the problems inherent in this type of thinking.

First of all, life on a broken planet filled with bruised and broken people is rarely going to be fair and we’re foolish to think otherwise.

Still, don’t we all cherish the hope that despite all odds people will treat us fairly? Graciously? Kindly? Deferring to our wishes, just because?

Now you get the picture of my little fantasy world.

One I’m determined to abandon once and for all because lately I’ve been guilty of crying foul way too often.

So now I give up.

I don’t have energy or the desire to be the judge or the jury, so you don’t have any worries with me.

I have too many questions and not enough answers.

Too many mysteries and not enough solutions.

As a close friend said to me yesterday, “The older I get the less I understand and the less I judge people for their choices.”

This felt like a safety net to me because I had just confessed a whole series of doubts, discouragements, unanswered questions, and the temptation to give up to her.

And like the faithful friend she is…she didn’t offer me any easy answers or 1,2,3 steps to set my wrestling aright.

She just smiled at me – right up to her eyes.

You know that look.
The one that speaks louder than any words.
The one that says, I understand you (and your pain.)

And for that brief space in time, it felt like all was right in my world again.

I think we under-estimate the restorative power of being listened to and then validated.

Those two simple acts of grace really can change a person’s world because no matter what, mercy always triumphs over judgment.

The Gift of Left-Handedness in a Right-Handed World

I’ve been thinking lately about the little person in this photo and wondering what he will be like.

Will he be a lot like his older brother? Or a complete opposite? Someone who leans heavily toward sports? music? reading? an extrovert or an introvert?

Will he be left-handed or right?

Secretly, I’m hoping for another leftie because the world needs more of us.

In a world where only one out of every ten persons is left-handed…I’m generally in the minority.

But not in my family.

Both of my grandfathers were left-handed.
Both of my uncles were left-handed.
Both of my aunts claim left-handedness until their teachers forced them to use their right hands.
Two of my cousins are left-handed.
My nephew is left-handed.
My brother is left-handed.
So am I.

I’m wondering how strong a familial connection there is toward left-handedness?

Or hard headedness? (but let’s not go there…)

It’s never bothered me to be left-handed even though most of the world is geared toward righties.

I learned to adapt (which is possibly the most important skill of all in our ever-changing crazy world of technology.) Still, facts are facts and sometimes being left-handed has its advantages as well as disadvantages.

Buzzle.com shares some interesting facts about us lefties. See if you’ve ever heard of them.

Advantages

►► Left-handed people may have very good visual and imaginary skills.
►► They may possibly be more intelligent as compared to their right-handed counterparts.
►► Some surveys suggest that, more number of artists, musicians and all those in creative fields are predominantly lefties.
►► Left-handed people could have a lesser risk of developing arthritis.
►► There is a possibility that, left-handed persons could recover faster from heart strokes than the righties.
►► They may have a better advantage in the field of sports.
►► They could be better multitaskers.

Disadvantages

►► Left-handers may be more prone to problems associated with reading.
►► They may not be as good in phonology (the sound system of languages) tasks, as their right-handed counterparts.
►► Their writing could lead to smudginess while writing the left-to-right languages. However, they fare pretty well with right-to-left languages like the Hebrew and Arabic.
►► They may have shorter adult height and lower weight.
►► Left-handed women may experience puberty at a later stage.
►► Left-handedness may cause shorter life expectancy.
►► They may have an increased risk of some neurological and immunological disorders.
►► Lefties may face a problem with handshakes, as we traditionally use the right hand for handshakes.

Amusing Facts

►► Left-handedness is more common among twins. It is often found that one among the twins is going to be left-handed, and the other one will be right-handed.
►► While drawing figures, most left-handers tend to draw the images, facing to the right.
►► Dyslexia is likely to develop in a left-handed person, if he is forced to use his right hand instead of the left one.
►► Those who are left-handed have a natural tendency to chew their food on the left side, and the right-handed people mostly use their right side.
►► Lefties find it slightly difficult to buckle up the chin-strap of their bike helmet.
►► Trousers with only one back pocket, are generally on the right side, thereby making it tedious for the lefties to use their wrong hand.
►► One in four astronauts of the Apollo mission were left-handers.
►► The British royal family consists of many lefties, which include the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, and Prince William.
►► Every left-handed person among the Eskimos is considered to be a magician or a sorcerer.

Defining Deployment: Stepping Up When the Order Comes

According to the Free Dictionary (interesting, eh?) deploy is defined in several ways.

de·ploy (d-ploi)
v. de·ployed, de·ploy·ing, de·ploys
v.tr.
1.
a. To position (troops) in readiness for combat, as along a front or line.
b. To bring (forces or material) into action.
c. To base (a weapons system) in the field.
2. To distribute (persons or forces) systematically or strategically.
3. To put into use or action

In the last few weeks the topic of deployment has been coming up time and time again.

My daughter’s friend is soon to be deployed to Afghanistan.
Another friend’s son in law recently came back from Iraq.
I just completed a lengthy read that dealt with all the nitty grittys of deployment from both perspectives (the soldier leaving home and the family being left behind.)

I started thinking about all the pressures, stresses, worries, and repercussions of loving someone who is leaving the safety of the U.S. to serve our country. Next, I began contemplating how that same decision impacts everyone who says goodbye and stays behind.

Then, I realized that whichever position you find yourself, you have a job to do, a mission to accomplish, a duty to fulfill.

And it won’t be easy.

I’m still wrapping my mind around it all but I have this sneaking suspicion that the upcoming weeks and months will be filled with lots of learn as we go moments.

Maybe that’s best. Too much, too soon, easily overwhelms.

Better to live fully and well each day, one day at a time.