Janet's Blog

Lately, when people ask me what I do all day, I am somewhat embarrassed to give an answer because, some days, it seems like all I do is self care. I often long for those mornings, long ago, when I could hop out of bed, throw on some clothes, eat a leisurely breakfast, brush my teeth, and head out the door for school, all in half an hour. Those days are long gone. Now, I wake up at a reasonable time in the morning, but I often find myself adjusting the bed to a comfortable reading position and turning on the built-in massage feature while I catch up on some reading and play a game or two on my phone. Realistically, I'm just putting off that inevitable morning routine that seems to take forever these days but, in reality, takes me 30-40 minutes in the bathroom before I can even think about sitting down for breakfast. (And, if I take a shower, that adds even more time, because those long, hot showers soothe my aching joints.) Getting dressed is the easy part, although I fumble around ...

I have been counting the days since last week's oral surgery, until I am allowed to exercise again. Today's the day! When the weather cooled off a little this evening, I was out the door with Jackson to walk the neighborhood. In the summer, the best time to walk is often just after the sun sets, when the air is cool and still. It's only been the last three or four years that I've been making a conscious effort to walk regularly. At first, I used the Health App on my phone to track my steps, but I have been more motivated since Bill brought me a FitBit from some convention he had attended. This time of year, I walk more than 10,000 steps nearly every day. It's become a habit now, except when I'm sick, or when the weather is nasty. When I was growing up, first in northeastern Nebraska, then in Fairbury in the southeastern part of the state, exercise was not a priority for most people, probably because it just wasn't necessary. Farmers and their families got pl...

I was working in the yard about three weeks ago, moving some mulch, when I got a sliver under my fingernail. It hurt like the dickens, and was visible, a black line just beneath the nail, where it extended nearly three quarters of the way up. None of the sliver was reachable with a tweezers, a needle, or anything else. It didn't help that this particular nail has a ridge that dips down, right along the path of the sliver, making it that much harder to see the end of the sliver under the nail, let alone get ahold of it.  As soon as I came into the house, I washed my hands with soap and doused the offending finger with hydrogen peroxide, which bubbled up just like it was supposed to, killing any bacteria that dared to accompany the sliver. When Bill got home, he tried to remove it, with no success, and with much pain on my part, so he gave up because he didn't want to hurt me. I googled how to remove a sliver from under a nail, and tried soaking my finger in a solution of baking ...