NATIONAL HUG DAY

Here's an appropriate reposting from three years ago - let's hear it for hugging!

and on a cold day, what better guys to hug than polar bears.

 

 

Any day is a good day for a hug, but on a cold, late January day, a good, warm hug is more than welcome.  Thus, January 21^st is National Hug Day.  We’re talking ‘official’ now: my research tells me that the day is officially recognized by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A hug is one of the best things known to mankind.  Ecologically speaking, its warmth is a renewable source of energy. Psychologically speaking it is a marvelous mood and morale booster.  Physically speaking, we just love the feel of a good, strong hug.

 

One of my favorite authors was the late Anne McCaffrey, and I’ve read just about everything she wrote.  Unbeknown to me, I waited on her when I was a bank teller back in the early 60’s.  One day I was telling a fellow employee about one of the books I was reading, and she told me that the author was a good customer of ours and had just moved to Ireland.  Every once in a while I think about the opportunities I missed to tell her how much I loved her stories.  She wrote under her maiden name, so I never realize I’d waited on her. In The Ship Who Searched, a book she co-authored with Mercedes Lackey in 1992, I learned about wonderful Zen Hugs.  These hugs are a relatively little-known phenomenon and should be more widely distributed. 

 

We are very fond of hugging in our family, and we are very big senders of Zen Hugs. Zen Hugs are “the hugs that you would get, if we were there, if we could hug you, but we aren't, and we can't.”  ‘Zen Hugs’ and ‘I Love You’ end every phone call, every email, and, abbreviated to ZH, every text message.  Every birthday card and every little Post-it gets the Zen Hug finishing touch.  Sometimes we just call them ‘Zenners’.  As holidays or family ‘state occasions’ come due, we anticipate visits from far away family members by counting the ‘sleeps’ until we get ‘real’ hugs. Meanwhile, the Zen variety are just as heartfelt and welcomed.

 

I think Zen Hugs are wonderful things to explain to children.  They don’t understand the Zen part, and they don’t have to, but they understand hugs and they like the idea that they can get special hugs over the phone. They like to send them too. Zen Hugs are great to send to college students. They are a special tie to home.  Zen Hugs are thoughtful, inexpensive gifts that mean you really love the recipient. 

 

For your family living close by, you really should give consideration to giving lots more hugs, especially at this chilly time of year. Why not just stop by for a quick hug? For anyone you love who is further afield, why not start to cultivate Zen Hugs? But beware: they can be habit-forming. 

 

 

 

 

 

GUIDES TO LIFE and LITTLE GRIEFS

Though I was in data processing back in the late 60’s when the “tiny minded” computer was as big as a refrigerator, I still have to keep that hard copy “just in case”. I was going through and organizing the files of essays I’ve written and I found slotted just behind them, a folder I’ve had for years, a folder titled “Guides to Life!”  - note that exclamation point.  Perhaps I marked it that way to signal to anyone in the future who’d have to go through and clean out my files: “This is some good stuff.” 

The oldest article, Lessons from Aunt Grace, dates back to a Reader’s Digest from 1984. The wonderful essay, written by Nardi Reeder Campion, and later included in a compendium of life lessons called Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul, was a lesson in how to conduct a simple, fulfilling life. 

 

 

The latest article, by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is from Time magazine in 2010, and is “an essay exclusively adapted for Time from his new memoir.”  He was writing about the American Presidents he’s known and about our country. The one line I thought outstanding was this one about the American ideal, our optimism and achievement: “There is always one…test of a nation’s position: Are people trying to get into it, or to get out of it? I think we know the answer to that in America’s case, and that ideal is the reason.”  Wonderful comment, don’t you think?

In these past few years, unlike with my own works that I’ve got to safeguard on paper – talk about an obsession! – I’ve also amassed a larger, but maybe less selective and less important group of articles bookmarked on line. To paraphrase the saying about books: so many articles, so much information for an information junkie; so little time.”

The printed articles I’ve collected – I counted them, there are only a dozen in the folder – are on such subjects as nice ways to say no, choosing the right words to help you help others, how to write effective letters, and how one woman shed her shame and obsession about her body. (I really related to that one.)

At this point, the most interesting to me of those saved articles is one from Woman’s Day in 1994 titled “Little Griefs.”  If you’re a regular follower of this blog you might have read the essay I called “Smashing”.  That one concerned big griefs and big beefs.  Little griefs, this old article says, also deserve rituals: perhaps not the big deals required for a death or a divorce, but small, personally designed ceremonies.

 

Such rituals, whether or not they have an audience, and usually they don’t, provide comfort and solace when little griefs, like the death of a pet, the loss of a treasured item, or even having your feelings hurt, strike home. “Feelings need acknowledgement, and will pester us when we give them their due.”  The old rhyme of “Sticks and stones may break my bones…” can be wrong: names can harm people.  Having a personal ritual to help dispel little griefs is an excellent idea.  Wouldn’t it be a nice idea to work with a child on their own grief-dispelling ritual? That’s something you could give them to help carry them all through life. 
 

I just may work on a little ritual of my own.

 

 

TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM...

...ay, there’s the rub – the rub for us seniors, that is.   Very rarely can we say we slept like a baby because we usually sleep like a senior.   We have a hard time getting to sleep and staying asleep.

Some studies say that a third of Americans don’t get enough sleep, others say it’s about 49%. Wherever you look they’re throwing numbers at the problem.  We all know that good sleep is essential to our health and well-being and that our ability to sleep changes as we age.  Health problems can plague us and keep us awake at night. They say that you should establish regular, calming routines to lull yourself to sleep.  I say “Nonsense! It’s time to shake it up, not wake it up.”

You may be able to think up your own routine-shaking changes; meanwhile here are some you may want to try.  As someone’s Mama might have said: “It couldn’t hurt.”

Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing

Flush your worries before you turn off the bathroom light or they’ll come in to bed with you. Don’t worry about the kids and grandkids. Lying awake to worry on their behalf won’t make any difference in the long run.  Try not to think about health problems: worrying about them isn’t an accepted medical treatment. Don’t make any major decisions while you’re trying to get to sleep.  Make decisions just after waking up when your brain is fresh.

The mind’s eye is a useful tool.  Don’t just lie there: think of something. Try reading an interesting article before bedtime.  Read a bit from magazines like Smithsonian, National Geographic, Popular Mechanics, or whatever publication caters to your interests. Think about any recent book you’ve read or movie you’ve seen: what happened after The End?  Revisit great places you’ve been or rerun great times you’ve had with family or friends.  Start the plot outline for a book you could write. (You might want to keep a pad and lighted pen on your night stand.) As you prepare for bed be planning the topic for your train of thought – let the train take you away into sleep.

Don’t Knock it if You Haven’t Tried It

Eat two slices of bread before bed – before you brush your teeth, of course.  Just bread, no butter or jam, but maybe a teaspoon or two of honey which is said to be a sleeping aid.

Sleep in the buff.  Nightgowns and PJ’s can be constricting and lumpy, and you have to fight with them when you turn over, and you get aggravated and…!  Try a night without them.

Keep cool. Turn down the thermostat at night in the warm weather.  Which comes first: your sleep and your health or the electric bill?  Keep cool in winter too.

Move the alarm clock.  Turn its face away from you so that you don’t watch the clock and agonize over all the time you think you’ve been awake.  Ignorance is bliss.

Get rid of your old-faithful easy chair.  If you’re one of those who fall asleep in front of the TV in your comfy chair you're robbing yourself of proper sleep in bed.  Rearrange your living room if you have to.  If TV bores you to sleep why watch it?  If you’re falling asleep go to bed.  You might want to change your regular bedtime to an earlier hour.  

When I was little I usually had to take a nap, especially if were doing something special that night. My Mother always told me that I didn’t have to sleep but did have to rest.  Nine times out of ten I’d fall right to sleep.  Don’t worry about sleeping – get it off your mind: just rest.  Try some of the sleep routine-shaking changes above.  They might just work for you.

SPRING CLOTHES-KEEPING IN WRINKLE CITY

The other night, my husband and I caught the end of a sports commentary show. (When the one you were watching on ETV or PBS ends early, you catch the end of a number of odd shows.) One young man on the panel was sporting a very, very wrinkled button-down shirt. Where was his mother?? What was he thinking?  What was the producer thinking? To what depths have our dress codes fallen? 

    

We all remember flying in ‘the good days’. We dressed for a plane trip as though we were going to church. Not these days, although I imagine it is easier to go through security checks in slip-ons and flip-flops instead of lace-ups. Flying is certainly more comfortable now that we’ve ditched the suits and ties, the panty hose, hats and gloves, and (egad!) the girdles. Now we dress for flying as though we were going to clean the garage. I’m all for comfort these days, but neat, clean, wrinkle-free comfort. 

We all do it when we’re shopping: we cringe at the dirty underwear showing above a droopy pair of jeans, or the grungy grey bra strap showing from under a tank shirt. We wonder if they really, truly believe they look good. Have you received an email about these folks, or visited The People of Walmart website? Oh, do check it out. You will be amazed, you’ll be truly awestruck, you’ll laugh yourself sick!

        

All this got me to thinking that maybe that wrinkled young man might have just grabbed a shirt from the ironing pile. Perhaps he was just overwhelmed by all the clothes in his closet, and opted to grab and wear ‘old faithful’. It happens to the best of us. While our dress codes have fallen into the depths, our need for clothes has risen to unmanageable heights. Perhaps that guy had so many clothes in his closet that all of them were wrinkled. Nah! That many clothes would act like a press. Relative to the varied sizes of our homes here, I believe the clothes closet space is quite generous. Ah, you disagree?  Ah, you have too many clothes!

I know of some men who are to golf shirts what Imelda Marcos is to shoes.  When you get this many clothes they become a collection, not a wardrobe. You should be displaying the best ones in your living room! Not ready to do that? Well, it’s time to do some judicious editing.  Start with a big plastic bag or two.  All the ousted items are going to get folded and put directly into a bag.  There are several methods for sorting the wheat from the chaff. There’s the old trick of going through the closet and pulling out anything you’ve not worn in a year or two. There’s the ‘three-piles’ method: first pile for old, beyond repair, never liked, too small, too big (this last one never happens to me!), haven’t worn in ages clothing; the second for ‘maybe I can still get some use out of this’ or ‘I’m undecided'; and the third pile for in-style items, classics, must-keep garments.  Perhaps best of all, there’s the spouse method: stand back and let your partner do the gleaning and cleaning out.

    

If you are sentimentally attached to a piece - and this applies to all our possessions, not just clothes - why not take a picture of it, and then you’ll ‘have’ it forever. Then get it into that big, black plastic bag.  Go back and tackle the undecided stuff.  Be big, be brave, make a decision. Do the same culling in the shoe, jewelry, undergarments, and accessories departments of your wardrobe. The custom-closet ads can be a bit ridiculous: who can get along with just those small collections of clothes? But they do have the right ideas for organizing and protecting your clothes. Once you’ve gotten down to the best of the bunch, treat them to proper hangers and garment covers or bags where necessary; shoe boxes, bags, or racks; drawer liners, maybe even some sachet? You’ll add length to the life of the clothes you do keep.

See that?!  You really do have enough closet space in your house! Makes you start to wonder where else in your life you can use these same tactics.

                                                                                          

NATIONAL HUG DAY

Any day is a good day for a hug, but on a cold, late January day, a good, warm hug is more than welcome.  Thus, January 21^st is National Hug Day.  We’re talking ‘official’ now: my research tells me that the day is officially recognized by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A hug is one of the best things known to mankind.  Ecologically speaking, its warmth is a renewable source of energy. Psychologically speaking it is a marvelous mood and morale booster.  Physically speaking, we just love the feel of a good, strong hug.

One of my favorite authors is Anne McCaffrey, and I’ve read just about everything she has written.  Unbeknown to me, I waited on her when I was a bank teller back in the early 60’s.  One day I was telling a fellow employee about one of the books I was reading, and she told me that the author was a good customer of ours and had just moved to Ireland.  Every once in a while I think about the opportunities I missed to tell her how much I loved her stories.  She wrote under her maiden name, so I never realize I’d waited on her. In The Ship Who Searched,  a book she co-authored with Mercedes Lackey in 1992, I learned about wonderful Zen Hugs.  These hugs are a relatively little-known phenomenon and should be more widely distributed. 

We are very fond of hugging in our family, and we are very big senders of Zen Hugs. Zen Hugs are “the hugs that you would get, if we were there, if we could hug you, but we aren't, and we can't.”  ‘Zen Hugs’ and ‘I Love You’ end every phone call, every email, and, abbreviated to ZH, every text message.  Every birthday card and every little Post-it gets the Zen Hug finishing touch.  Sometimes we just call them ‘Zenners’.  As holidays or family ‘state occasions’ come due, we anticipate visits from far away family members by counting the ‘sleeps’ until we get ‘real’ hugs. Meanwhile, the Zen variety are just as heartfelt and welcomed.

I think Zen Hugs are wonderful things to explain to children.  They don’t understand the Zen part, and they don’t have to, but they understand hugs and they like the idea that they can get special hugs over the phone. They like to send them too. Zen Hugs are great to send to college students. They are a special tie to home.  Zen Hugs are thoughtful,  inexpensive gifts that mean you really love the recipient. 

For your family living close by, you really should give consideration to giving lots more hugs, especially at this chilly time of year. Why not just stop by for a quick hug? For anyone you love who is further a field, why not start to cultivate Zen Hugs? But beware: they can be habit-forming. 

(originally posted January 21, 2011)

A STRESS-FREE HOLIDAY

 

National Stress-Free Holiday Month - is there such a thing as a stress-free December? Many families have begun to simplify the whole process in several ways, some of which might work for your own family.

An introduction to my first article might be in order here.  This is an article I wrote in response to what I see as the often hectic, even manic, process of getting ready for Christmas - here politically correctly referred to as 'the holidays'.  It really shouldn't be so stressful that once the big day arrives you are ready to collapse. Over the years I've managed to streamline things for myself, and I offer a hint or two to help make the season easier, if not brighter for Seniors - for everybody.

　
First category on our lists: Gifts! I’m sure that if you are at the base of a very large family tree you are having a hard time just thinking of suitable gifts for everyone on those branches and twigs, much less going out to buy, and then wrap and, perhaps, mail the gifts. It’s no longer fun when it becomes a chore or when the monetary end of it gets out of hand.  Some families stop giving gifts to those married or over twenty-one, those no longer children. In some families they do a grab bag swap, in others the adult exchange gifts under a certain dollar amount. Many families have eliminated gifts for all but those in their own households - after all, is it great fun to open them - and they make instead a nice charitable contribution in the name of the family.


Next: Holiday Cards. Many folks streamline the card process by having them printed with their names, and then use printed labels for the addresses. Good for them! Good for me! I then can streamline my own list by eliminating them from it. When you care to send the very least, without even a hand-written “Hi, how are you?”, it says to me that we must not mean too much to each other. Cards are one of my favorite parts of the holidays. I make, write and address them all by hand, so I am less than appreciative of the shortcuts.
Then there are those almost ubiquitous holiday letters. I read this recently: “Holiday letters are a lot like fruitcake. People either love them or hate them.” Too true! I can love ‘em or hate ‘em, depending on how well they’re done. I’ve retired friends who are great travelers and who send letters filled with wonderful pictures and highlights of their experiences. I’ve other retired friends who regale their readers with pages of the minutiae of their own, their children’s, and grandchildren’s daily lives - boring, to be truthful. Can you guess which ones I keep and which I toss right out? 

Cards or letters, you can make life easier for yourself by tackling the job early - everything begins in January. Update your card list early in the new year (be ruthless!), then save money by buying your cards at the January sales. Begin working on your holiday letter as the newsworthy events occur. Start writing the cards and wrapping up the holiday letter just after Thanksgiving. Sounds easy and, when you start early and stick to it, it is.

Here’s a good topic: Decorations. To do or over-do, that is up to you. When we moved to Sun City, though our house here is bigger, it was the perfect opportunity to cut down on the ornamentation. I passed on their favorite ornaments to our children, and gave away a lot of the extraneous décor. What I kept, for indoors and out, now fits in three 14-gallon totes. This year I may decide to pare down even further, using more fresh flowers because they don’t require future storage! It can be counterproductive to use all your decorative pieces just because you always have. Pass most of them down, cull out a lot, and cherish the very best of the rest. It’s always fun to pull out the decorations, saying hello to old favorites. It’s less fun to have to take everything down, dust it all off, find the right boxes, and pack it up again. Revel in the simplicity of minimal décor and less to store! Oh - that rhymes!


Last, but not least in our hearts: Food!! Are you still cooking the whole meal from soup to nuts? You are either a glutton for punishment or a control freak. Let some of the younger generation start to hone their culinary skills. Pass the torch, and then promise to bring along your specialty - the family favorite appetizer, zesty carrots, or praline pumpkin pie. How’s that for stress-free!?
Many families are choosing to have their major holiday feast cooked by others. Some have it catered and brought to the house - a great idea, but there is still the clean-up to be done. Others go all out and go out. Many like to have a festive restaurant meal on the night before, then rest and recuperate and open some presents the next day. Many must have the main meal on the main day. Either way, you can use Google to search for restaurants in our area that will be open on the various holidays. This is the least work, the least worry all ‘round.


December is a month for all - enjoy all thirty-one days! You can do it!

(originally entered December 5, 2010)