Promises, Promises

 

Every year begins with a slew of resolutions for many people. People load up on more resolutions than they can possibly keep track of, and they’re usually just vague enough to guarantee failure by February.

Lose weight. Give up smoking. Be nicer. Exercise more.

However, those are not goals; they’re headings.

Lose weight? How much weight? What’s your strategy? What’s your time frame? Is it a sensible amount that you can reasonably expect to lose?

Give up smoking. I’m told this one is quite difficult. I don’t know since I’ve never been a smoker. Still, how to go about it? Use a non-smoking patch? Go cold turkey? Gradually decrease the amount you smoke until you’ve reached zero? Again, what’s the strategy, and is it reasonable?

What does “be nicer” mean? Nicer than what? How are you going to achieve it? How will you know when you’ve arrived?

I grew up in a time that, to quote George H.W. Bush, was a kinder, gentler time, even though we had global fears: Someone else dropping the bomb, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War. But children showed respect to their elders (or else), and were not catered to as if they were in charge. “Please” and “Thank you” were expectations, not requests. People were not seen in public in pyjamas. People held doors routinely for others.

Some people still adhere to these rules, but they appear to come as more of a surprise in a world where a large portion of the population rarely looks up from their phones.

Exercising more is easy to put into a routine. How many times a week, how long each session, and precisely what exercise will be done?  It can be as simple as taking a break every 20 minutes or so from work at the computer to stretch and walk across the room and back to start, or walking around the block. Or, it can involve a gym membership or working out with weights.

With our electronic gadgetry, many people already insist on a certain number of steps in a day. Personally, I look at mileage instead. I have a goal of 2 miles a day as a minimum, although some days that doesn’t happen.

The problem appears when the resolution remains too vague or the individual is too gung-ho to begin with and takes on too much. Jumping into weight training with too heavy a weight can lead to sore muscles or even injuries, and that, in turn, leads to slacking until the pain subsides. Sometimes, even after the muscles stop hurting, the exercise program is forgotten.  Gym memberships are at a peak in January, but gyms are far emptier by the middle of February, even when snow isn’t a factor.

Overcoming procrastination is the biggest obstacle to success where New Year’s resolutions are concerned.

I’m in the “lose weight” category. My strategy is that I have a fixed amount I wish to lose. I know approximately how much I generally lose per week when I’m trying, and I have figured out when I expect to reach the goal weight. Of course, I’ve always been plagued by plateaus, so I still have to figure out how to make weight loss work for me when I hit a plateau.

One thing I absolutely will not be doing is using the highly popular diabetes medications currently being touted as weight loss drugs. I am not diabetic, and I prefer the “less is more” attitude about weight loss. I don’t want to have to rely on a drug for the rest of my life to maintain weight loss. I don’t want to treat myself for a disease I don’t have.

Granted, some people can only achieve weight loss that way, but I’ve demonstrated in the past that I am able to lose weight with a proper eating plan and no drugs. I’m not putting anyone down for using them. They’re just not for me.

I also have reasons for wanting to lose weight, and being the hottest-looking senior on the beach is not one of them. Besides, that’s not even an achievable goal for me. Instead, I want to reach a point where I won’t have to take medications I’m currently prescribed, and I’m also trying to keep from developing type 2 diabetes. So, the eating program is of key importance in my weight loss journey. It’s part of an overall health improvement goal.

My second goal is related.  I want to become more consistent with my exercise routine, both number of times per week that I go to the gym and types of exercises I do. I need to add exercises to improve my postural muscle function, balance, and flexibility. I’ve been thinking about adding tai chi to what I already do, but I need to find out more about it. I already have a variety of exercises I plan to use.

I have also decided to learn French. I know, Irish and Welsh aren’t enough? But I can’t find classes in either of those, and the programs, either online or in apps don’t meet my needs as far as learning strategies go. For example, I completed the Rosetta Stone program in Welsh (which has been discontinued) and still can’t speak the language beyond a few phrases. Our local high school’s evening adult program offers the basic foreign languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian, and now Chinese) in classes over three levels and two conversation classes. With instruction, I stand a better chance of learning. I know how I best learn a foreign language. This will involve more than a year, but resolutions don’t have to end with the New Year’s Eve party.

I think three is the absolute maximum – for me, at least – number of resolutions. More than that, and the whole idea of turning over a new leaf turns into planting an entire tree (i.e. overwhelming and unachievable).

I’ll check back in next year to report on whether or not I’ve succeeded in following my own advice.

If You Could Change Anything

 

 

I go through cycles of wishing I could change things in the past.

Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed by some of the mistakes I’ve made, I wish I could do that time over, and perhaps be a bit more cautious or take a moment to think a little longer before I took any action.

I still feel all of the embarrassment of having made those mistakes, even decades later. In remembering some things – especially in the middle of the night – the feelings I had at the time come rushing back as if I’d only just done them.

Sometimes it’s not something I’ve done; it’s something I wish I’d done. There were things done to me by others that I wish I’d spoken up about at the time. It might have caused someone else to get into trouble, but that might have been better for my life.

Sometimes I think about how I worried about speaking up because I was afraid it would cause a rift in the family, and everyone would blame me. I shudder to think about being hated by the people I loved the most.

I’ve never done or said anything intentionally to hurt anyone. What I have done is said or done things that were clumsy, and ended up being hurtful. That’s what’s so baffling. 

When I should have spoken up and didn’t, it was because I was afraid of others being angry with me, or getting retribution, yet I’ve managed to make clumsy statements that have at times made others angry with me, and have embarrassed me for the rest of my life.

I’ve been told people reach a certain age where they don’t worry about speaking their mind. I don’t know what that age that is. Maybe it’s not an age, but a level of maturity that, so far, I haven’t achieved.

There are other do-overs I would wish for myself. Those are when others have done or said something deeply hurtful to me.  I wish I could have confronted those people.

I’m sure sometimes it was something the other person didn’t think was all that, only a momentary criticism, or a frustration at me being me.

Some of those times were people doing what I can only believe were intentionally hurtful things .

There are times I should have just walked away, discarded someone from my life. But I didn’t, hopeful that things would change. Things never changed, and those people left my life anyway. But by then, damage had been done, regrets accumulated.

If I had the chance to go back, I definitely would. Imagine being able to make a different decision that would save a world of hurt in my life!

But then you wouldn’t be who you are today, some would say.

Looking at who I am today, I can honestly say I could live without some past embarrassment. I could be happy not lying awake replaying certain episodes of my life. And I can definitely see how avoiding certain situations would mean that other unfortunate situations would never have happened. Perhaps I’d be a better person without some of those experiences.

I’ve been told, “Well, you just start from today and do better.” Mm-hmm.

Sometimes this is difficult, not because I don’t want to change, but because I don’t think people will believe that I have.

I’m not the person I was at 11. I wish I’d been feistier then.

I’m not the person I was at 16. I wish I’d been less shy then.

I’m not the person I was at 19. I wish I’d felt more worthy of respect then.

I’m not the person I was at 21. I wish I’d been able to stand up for myself then.

I’m not the person I was at 25. I wish I hadn’t cared so much about finally belonging to a group of friends. They didn’t turn out to be friends, anyway.

I wish seeing people get away with things I never could, seeing them not be judged for doing a wrong that was far worse than things I was chastised for hadn’t made me so angry. It wasted a lot of time on anger in my life.

But I’m not any of those people now. Of course, the real me is someone that very, very few people are aware of. I sometimes wonder: If you knew who I really was, would you hate me? Or would you think I was kind of cool?

I don’t suppose it matters. I’ve been called a liar for telling the truth. And I’ve been given a pass for saying nothing when I should have spoken up.

I think part of the problem is that I’m angry with myself for understanding what it is people want me to say and saying that instead of what I should have, just to keep the peace. And every time I determine never to do that again, I find myself falling into the same trap.

I sometimes think I’m driven by the desire not to be hated.

So often I have been made to feel like the fifth wheel.  I don’t want to bother people. I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted. When people tell me no, I assume they're not interested, ever, so I don't ask again. And I still struggle to feel like I’m wanted anywhere.

It’s not poor, poor pitiful me. I’ve felt uncomfortable in so many situations, felt, “they really don’t want me to be here,” as if I were intruding, even if I was invited. It's not being comfortable in my own skin.

Maybe it’s just part and parcel of being an introvert. Maybe I just wish I could be the me I wanted to be.

I know whenever I talk with someone about getting my writing out there and they tell me I need to sell my ideas to people, I need to market my ideas, I’m filled with such dread because I don’t know how to do that, that I’ve been brought to tears by the very thought of it. I suppose I don’t deserve to be a famous author if I don’t have the guts to do those things, even if I don’t have the first idea how to do them.

Marketing requires a level of extroversion I can’t even fake.

Put me on a stage, give me a guitar and a microphone and tell me to sing. Piece of cake.

Give me a stage and a script and ask me to play a part. No problem. I’m more comfortable on a stage than anywhere else in the world.

Ask me to walk up to a stranger and ask for their time. I have no idea how. The level of fear that involves is more than I care to admit.

Even making a phone call takes twice as much time to rehearse as it takes to actually do.

But it’s who I am. If I appear confident and relaxed, try to find out what character I’m playing, because there’s nothing of that in me.

I do keep trying to be more accepting of me. It would be nice to really believe that if someone invites me somewhere, they actually want me there, and that I can do this without screwing up. But it’s a difficult journey. A lifelong journey.

And if I could go back and fix things, I certainly would.

Fasteners

 

 

In the 1950s and 60s – and probably for centuries before that – anyone playing with dolls had the opportunity to learn how to use a variety of fasteners.

Of course, they learned to use them on their own clothing and shoes, but, especially with the advent of Barbie, fasteners on a much smaller scale appeared and gave them some rigorous training in tiny fine motor skills.

Barbie’s dresses either zipped (a 2-3 inch zipper with about a ¼ inch zipper pull), snapped or buttoned with buttons the size of snaps, and button holes to match. Ken’s trousers had an even shorter zipper. Dresses almost always had a hook-and-eye closure at the top of the zipper to keep it from unzipping, and Barbie’s cardigan and pullover sweater set had tiny pearl beads that buttoned through thread loops.

Snaps and buttons were generally the closures on larger dolls’ clothes, often because they were actually infant hand-me-downs – at least in our house, since I was the last baby and they wouldn't be used again.

Doll shoes offered a unique opportunity to learn to tie shoelaces that were about 1/3 the length of a child’s shoelace, if that. And some shoes buckled, as did children’s sandals. Practice on a micro scale made operating fasteners on people clothes a piece of cake.

There was no Velcro.

Nowadays there’s seldom anything but Velcro.

The American Girl Doll, which is a very nice size doll (18 inches tall), whose clothes would be far easier to manipulate than Barbie’s, is Velcro paradise. The only other fasteners I’ve seen on those dolls are zippers on her jeans, a buckle on a belt from the ‘90s (I can’t swear that zippers or buckles are still used on anything of hers) and on one occasion I found snaps to close a “button front” shirt. But that may have been a home-made outfit. Doll sneakers still have laces, though.

And it seems to be the way of things in doll life that Velcro is the closure of choice, just as it has replaced buckles on people shoes and a few other items.

As an Occupational Therapist for over 30 years, I worked in schools with special needs children. Some had physical challenges, while others had mental, sensory or visual-perceptual ones. At the beginning of that career, I would’ve welcomed Velcro. The only place it was at the time was on their hand or foot braces, if they had them.

Part of my job was to teach some of these children how to put on socks, foot/leg braces and shoes. While some had issues that precluded them putting on their own braces, I did teach them how to put on their socks and then the shoes over the braces, a more difficult task than putting shoes on unbraced feet.

Once a child was able to get that far, I took on shoelace tying. There are a few different ways to learn to tie shoelaces. When I started out, I only knew the way I’d been taught, but I quickly learned other ways to get the job done, and I let the kids decide which way worked best for them.

I did have the occasional parent who looked at their child’s age rather than their physical abilities when insisting on my teaching them a particular skill. Of course, there was also no reason why the parent couldn’t teach a skill at home if they were so insistent.

“How would I do that?” one parent asked.

“How did you teach your other kids? Do the same thing,” I replied. I had to keep my face palm in my head.

One mother of twins was constantly telling me that I wasn’t doing enough for one of her sons. Of course, despite them being twins, one was much more capable than the other. She berated me at an IEP meeting because shoelace tying wasn’t one of the objectives for the less capable twin, even though his brother had mastered that skill the year before. I told her I considered it important to learn to put his shoes on before we tackled tying laces.

I also suggested Velcro closures for his shoes – they had recently become available on children’s shoes at that point. She acted like I’d slapped her. She told me in no uncertain terms she would not get Velcro closure shoes for her son because it would make him look – and here she used the R-word. Actually,  no one would have noticed his shoes.

I was wearing shoes with Velcro closures at the time she said that. I looked at my shoes, then back at her, but she missed my point.

I also at times had to teach some children how to buckle shoes. That wasn’t as easy as one might think, since often the buckle is out of the line of sight while being buckled.

Coat zippers were another challenge. Getting the two sides attached at hip level or sometimes lower, is difficult, and sometimes the coats are too bulky to allow for the bottom to be pulled up to waist level. Getting the one side all the way into the slot on the other side is also difficult, so it is a great accomplishment when it finally happens.

Generally, when learning coat zipping, the children would practice it with the coat on a table. Sometimes they would pull the coat over their head afterwards so they didn’t have to try zipping it while it was on them.

I have a few coats myself that have reverse zippers (the kind that zip normally, but also unzip from the bottom for more comfort when sitting) that I find difficult to attach because of the reverse zip component. Or maybe because they're right-handed zippers and I'm left-handed.

Perhaps the most difficult thing I ever had to fasten was my school uniform blouses in high school. Some designer decided it would be cute to make school blouses that buttoned up the back. Given the fact that I had to go to school earlier in high school than in elementary school, and I’m simply not a 6 a.m. kind of person, that was not going to work for me. (And my maid simply wouldn't touch buttons!)

As a lefty, I have a history of needing to adapt things to my needs. The blouses were no different. I buttoned all of my blouses up except for the top button, and they hung in my closet that way, so that I could pull them over my head and button the top button very easily once the blouse was on. I then had to beg my mother to leave them buttoned that way when she did the laundry. Since they were that wonder material known then as “perma-press” she didn’t need to iron them, so my blouses were permanently buttoned through my high school years.

One thing I never understood was that, although most of my shoes had laces while I was growing up, the laces seldom came undone. I didn’t know about double knotting, so they were simply tied and stayed that way.

As an adult, however, my laces have frequently come undone. The round type often seen in men’s dress shoes – and a few of my own shoes – simply refuse to stay tied. I don’t know how my father managed to keep his tied, but I have had to resort to flat laces, since double knotting doesn’t work for round laces, either.

Of course, as an OT, I learned about many types of shoe laces, from the round and flat varieties I’ve just mentioned to elastic laces and alternate-closure laces.

Although I usually worked with children in schools, a couple of summers I worked with adults in rehabilitation. One gentleman with whom I’d worked a few days earlier was sitting on a chair with his shoes untied. He’d had a stroke, so he had one non-functional arm. I stopped to ask if he needed help with his shoelaces, and he said his therapist was getting elastic laces for him.

He and I had a rapport such that I could joke with him and he wouldn’t be offended. I quipped, “What, you mean you can’t tie your laces with one hand?”

He laughed and said he bet I couldn’t either. I said I bet I could.

Now at this stage in life – I was in my mid-30s – I had never tried such a thing. I had no idea whether or not I could tie shoe laces with one hand. And he called my bluff.

“Okay, let’s see you do it,” he said.

“Which hand?” I asked. If I was going to fail, it would be huge.

Once he ascertained that I was left-handed, he told me to use my right hand.

So, I sat down, untied my shoelace, and proceeded to tie it with one hand. It took a bit longer, and I couldn’t get the laces as tight as if I’d used two hands, but I’d done it. The man was duly impressed, but then suspected I’d lied about being left handed, so insisted that I tie the other shoe with the other hand. So I did. And that, my friends, is my stupid people trick.

The man was thrilled that I could do that and wanted to know where I’d learned it. I told him I’d never done it before, and figured it out just then. He told everyone.

Being able to tie one handed or double knot hasn’t kept me from modernizing my shoe wardrobe. I’ve never been very good at keeping slip on shoes from slipping off. As a nod to laziness, I’ve tried Sketchers hands-free shoes, which are pretty good, as well as the shoes that have elastic laces with a slider to tighten them. I also discovered that stretchy shoe laces and metal closures to go on the ends of them can be had through Amazon. They work well for regular lace-up shoes if you don’t want to have to tie them. While there’s no little bow at the top, things like that don’t concern me.

I don’t expect to forget how to tie my shoelaces any time soon, so a little time-saving – especially at the airport where I have to remove my shoes to go through TSA – is a good thing.