It was two weeks ago ─ January 14 ─ that I was stricken with a bad flu. And as last night displayed, my sleep is still troubled with bouts of prolonged, nearly-violent coughing.
It was almost 1:00 a.m. when I went to bed; and when I was curious enough this morning to lift my blindfold and peek at the time, I was surprised to see that it was 6:44 a.m.
I had no more time to spend in bed! Apart from having to get at the day's content assignment for the post I am far behind on at one of my six hosted websites, I had a letter to mail.
So I slipped on a pair of boots and donned a heavy coat, and braved the frosty morning on the walk to a mailbox maybe a block from here.
The moist, chill air did set me to some coughing, as I had previously wondered ─ it is the primary reason now that I have not risked doing some local grocery shopping at a market approximately four blocks from here. I am concerned that the four-block walk in cool, moist air will result in heavy coughing triggered by the dry environment in the market, proving a great embarrassment.
But I have felt rather well today.
I remained up and did indeed finish the content assignment, work that takes three or so hours at the best of times. Today, it probably took about 3½ hours at minimum.
My wife had to work late this morning, so she rose at 10:00 a.m., and was on her drive to Langley by at least 10:30 a.m. (she has an 11:00 a.m. start time).
And although I was ready for some further sleep, I joined my younger brother to watch some T.V. via our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box.
The morning was unexpectedly sunny, by the way.
And by 12:24 p.m. I was back into my bed to catch some needed sleep. My brother had already sought some in his own bedroom.
I slept very deeply, even if I wasn't in bed too very far beyond an hour. I had such a vivid dream that I awoke from it still thinking that I was going to order new joggers from Amazon Canada and get back into an enhanced fitness programme that would involve nocturnal forays to the Bear Creek Park jogging track.
I had used that track for a period that probably spanned three decades, mostly running there at night after either hiking to it, or else cycling.
But in recent years, Surrey's parks all have an enforced nighttime ban on their occupation by the public ─ transgression is punishable by a nasty fine.
If such a restriction existed during the years I used to run at the jogging track, it was never enforced in my experience.
Life just gets more and more unpalatable around here.
And even if such bans were not in place, this is no longer the Surrey of my younger adult life when the nighttime parks were a place of refuge and privacy. Now, they would be haunted by gangs, and not a place for a solitary fitness enthusiast to venture at night.
But I am a prisoner of my environment, and essentially under a sort of house arrest with my thrice-mortgaged home as my debtors' prison. As a 69-year-old pensioner, I haven't the means to be free of this place and able to go and live anywhere else.
I am shackled.
But on to other matters.
The only surgery I have undergone in recent years was to reattach my left leg's quadriceps tendon to my kneecap after the tendon had been totally avulsed (i.e., it was ripped right off).
That was in early November 2010. I cannot recall now that my surgeon warned me beforehand not to be taking anything that might enhance bleeding, but maybe that sort of surgery is not as dire for bleeding as would be any sort of abdominal or thoracic surgery.
Evidently patients facing surgery are frequently told not to be taking fish oil supplements, for the concern is that such supplementation can encourage unwanted post-surgical bleeding.
Well, a recent study has found this to be fallacious:
JacksDailyDose.com
EurekAlert.org
I found the first article's concluding caution to be rather curious.
I say that because I cannot imagine a surgeon ─ upon being apprised by a patient of any such fish oil study ─ would suddenly entertain the correcting of longstanding wrongful thinking of a medical nature merely because some patient brought up a fish oil study the surgeon had never heard about.
I just do not see that happening, except in some rare and progressive-minded cases.
Something else about the study seems worth mentioning ─ the heavy fish oil doses in the study were only given to the patients for a relatively short period of time.
What if a patient has been taking a gram or two of fish oil daily as a habitual practice long, long before the surgery? What if it was the patient's norm?
Many people take a few grams of fish oil daily as a regular practice, and one doctor I know of recommends six grams daily.
Anyway, it's all very interesting.
I keep finding myself impressed by the number of different plant-based treatments there are for alleviating (and sometimes helping to cure) type 2 diabetes.
This article speaks of one such plant which I am unsure that I have before read could be used for this purpose:
HSIonline.com
I certainly didn't realize that German chamomile was more commonly used here in North America ─ heck, I even never knew that there were more than one kind of chamomile.
The Roman or English variety (Chamaemelum nobile) seems to have primacy over the German variety where blood sugar control is concerned.
Anyway, here are some other websites talking of chamomile, if you're interested ─ and of course, you can find far more such articles on your own:
- HealthyEating.SFGate.com: Does Chamomile Tea Affect Blood Sugar Levels?
- Wellness.BuddhasHerbs.com: This is why Chamomile Tea belongs in EVERY home!
- JnJFarmKY.com: Roman Chamomile Essential Oil - A History & Benefits
I have one last health-related topic to touch upon ─ ADHD. And this article does a beautifully magnificent job of presenting a case for why it is being approached in an entirely wrongheaded fashion:
DrMicozzi.com
I have always believed that I was probably out of my element when I went to school as a child, and then as an adult had to allow myself to become enslaved in an office environment because it was the only means I had of employment and eventually a retirement pension.
I agree that classrooms tend to be utterly unnatural ─ young people are not designed to be caged like they are for so many hours each day.
And that goes for work environments such as office buildings.
This makes so much sense to me:
Often, the behavioral problems that were the targets of treatment in one’s childhood are never fully “remedied,” and continue right into adulthood.Indeed, even after college, many young adults now still struggle to focus in work environments. Especially in the staid, mind-numbing, bureaucratic, and highly structured corporate and government workplaces. And I can’t blame them…Of course, I always found it interesting to see which kind of people actually succeed in this kind of “carpentered” adult world. I came into contact with leading lights in business, medicine, philanthropy, and politics, and earlier in my career, I used to listen to the “higher-ups” to try to learn something about the secret of their success.But in time I realized they often didn’t really have any special talent, creativity, or intelligence — unless you consider tolerating and perpetuating the mundane a talent. They succeeded in the highly unusual and unnatural environment of the modern, crony corporate or government world.And not because they had something more than the rest of humanity, but rather, that they seemed to be missing something the rest of humanity has…
I was a Country Boy at heart. I did not deserve to end up where I did once I finally became 'gainfully employed' and trapped into what was for me an entirely unnatural environment.
And now here I am on a retirement pension, but helpless and virtually ruined. I see no escape from the stagnation and oppression that my retirement life has brought as a result of my inadequate income disallowing me the freedom that I had always dreamed of having.
Since at least the age of 14 back in 1964, I have longed to move away from Surrey and live somewhere where Nature prevailed. But here I am 55 years later, likely sentenced to die in this wretched area that I have wanted to be free of throughout most of my life.
It is something I cannot spend more time talking about. I still have to make a post at my private blog ─ a venue where I am able to speak more personally than I am able to here.
I have a few further photos to present, though, which were taken just about a year ago when my wife and her two sons arranged a small reunion in Bali with five of their Thailand family members.
All of the photos below were probably taken on January 30, 2018; and the first two feature my youngest stepson who was 20 years old at the time:
Judging by that menu in the third photo just above, would this area be around The Wharf Restaurant, then? I was not there, so I do not know.
Well, folks, the afternoon here proved to be sunny also ─ not just the morning.
I had some exercise this afternoon, doing some one-arm knee-curls and some feeble overhead 'jerks' from shoulder level with my 43½-pound dumbbell.
I almost feel like I am healthy enough to brave that local grocery shopping.
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