61 and counting?

I glanced through an article in this week's Health and Science section of the Washington Post, entitled "the Years Lost to Cancer".  I scanned through the list and found melanoma.  The I looked at the column that said "median age at diagnosis and death".  Median age at diagnosis:  61.  That's my age, and the age I was diagnosed with melanoma.  The median age at death?  69.  I didn't look at, or understand, some of the other data.  Like "in millions of years of life lost"--.15 for melanoma.  Too remote and abstract for me.  But age 69 is a real number, and only 8 years away.  OK, they don't say what kind of melanoma diagnosis, and they don't say what percentage of people who get melanoma die from it.  I'm assuming the number 69 refers to:  of those who died from melanoma, the median age was 69.  All the char shows is number of deaths in 2010 (9 thousand) compared to number of new cases (68 thousand).  Those two statistics aren't related; I don't know why they are juxtaposed.

Anyway, part of me assumes I'll live to be about 90, since both my parents did (my mother died 2 months after turning 90, my father 3 months before he would have turned 90).  But then again, neither of them were diagnosed with cancer when they were 61.

Sorely Tested

I know I said this year I would focus on staying positive; on paying attention to the thoughts in my head and gently redirecting them if they turned negative.  But everything fell apart during the crisis.  None of the techniques that work when one is fairly calm worked.  I would meditate, and find myself sobbing partway through the meditation.  Don't think ahead, I told myself.  Don't project dark thoughts into the future.  As the crisis subsided I was a little less panicked, but it threw me.  And now it's hard not to think about when the next crisis would hit.  I was beginning to think there wouldn't be another crisis; beginning to have real hope for the future.  But now we're shaken and are trying to regroup.  I can't tell myself to be positive, because I don't know what that means.  Thinking that everything will work itself out; will be just fine, doesn't work.  So now I tell myself to stay in the moment.  Don't think forward, don't think back.  But it's hard.

Will Black Ever Be Back?

Or, conversely, will people ever get tired of stainless steel appliances?  When we bought our house, I had stainless steel appliances all picked out, after looking through a magazine the builder had given me.  Then I saw an ad for a special cleaner to get off all the fingerprints from the stainless steel appliances...so I reconsidered.  I decided it would be too difficult to keep stainless steel clean, so I opted for black.  Stainless steel was a passing fad, anyway, I told myself.  Too sterile and antiseptic.  People would tire of the look and the upkeep.

That was 12 years ago, and stainless steel still is everywhere.  At least if you believe any magazine that has pictures of kitchens in them.  Occasionally you may see a fridge and/or dishwasher that are covered to match the cabinetry, but the stove/oven are always stainless steel.  And usually Wolf.  I have never seen a kitchen with black appliances in any magazine I've looked at in the past 12 years, at least.

I liked watching the Sopranos, because they had an upscale house and black kitchen appliances.  When was that, the early to mid 2000s?  But we rewatched the entire series recently, and I noticed that at some point, toward the last seasons, the black appliances disappeared.  They were replaced by a combo of cabinet-matching and stainless steel appliances.  Sigh.

And once recently on House Hunters International, a couple looked at a model condo that had black appliances--I thought it looked really nice.  They purchased a condo in that complex, but agreed that the black appliances would need to be upgraded to stainless steel.

A few months ago, I was scouting out appliances in anticipation of at least some of ours nearing their useful life.  I asked him about stainless steel vs black--he said about half of purchases were now for black, up from what it was a few years ago.  But the fact is, stainless steel is more expensive, and everyone knows it.  So I don't think they're going anywhere, unfortunately.

Our microwave was the first appliance to die, and I considered stainless.  But it's hard to change just one appliance, and we have no reason to buy all new appliances.  So I stuck with black, and even downgraded from the Kitchenaid we had to a plain GE (not even GE Profile).  They're all made by the same manufacturer, but Kitchenaid is considered more upscale.  But the GE cost only about $350 as opposed to $500+.  And all we do is reheat stuff.  It works fine (although I'm annoyed that if you hit a button it automatically runs for that amount of minutes on High; you have to press "cook time" first to get less than a minute and/or 90 percent heat.

I think about "black vs stainless" because if we ever decided to sell the house, I'm sure the realtor would note that black appliances are a negative.

Someone needs to come up with a shade of black that's just as expensive as stainless--call it onyx.  Something posh.  So I can keep my black appliances without second-guessing.

The Year of Positive Thinking

I've struggled with this my whole life.  From an early age, it seems, the thoughts in my head were negative.  I wish I had learned about cognitive behavior therapy, and the fact that you can train your brain toward positive.  But I didn't learn of that until many years later--in the past 15 years.  Even though I did have therapy when I was in my mid-20s, I don't remember the focus on thought patterns.

I remember my sister saying to me, "why do you always have to be so negative;" probably when I was a teenager.  I used to tell myself that assuming things would not go well was a way of protecting me--so that if things didn't go well, I wouldn't be disappointed.  But I didn't realize that negative thinking can influence outcomes--that is, influence behavior related to outcomes.

I've noticed since I stopped working full time that my mind is freer to think.  But the trend has started to be that it retrieves negative incidents from my past.  For now when I notice that, I start repeating "be positive" over and over.  As much to block out the negative as to try to replace the negative with positive.

I know people are wired differently; some people are like me, with the wiring tilting toward negative.  I've decided to make a concerted effort this year to keep my thoughts positive.  The start is to notice the negative and redirect.  This week hasn't been easy, because I've been sick with the flu (despite getting a flu shot) and feel low as a result.

The tricky thing about positive thinking is, I think it has to focus on keeping a positive outlook, but recognizing you can't control all outcomes.  Especially outcomes involving others.  For example, a recent magazine article (Real Simple) suggests visualizing yourself 10 years from now, with positive images.  How do you be positive while still being realistic?  I'm not going to visualize myself living in a mansion, for example.  But it gets harder when visualizing how things will be for my son 10 years from now.  I know what I want for him--so I'll visualize those.  And of course, I hear a voice saying, "but what if they don't happen?"  And there's the rub.

Mall-Free Christmas

I haven't set foot inside a shopping mall this Christmas season; I've done virtually all of my shopping on  line.  For the first time.  And it feels great, not to have to deal with finding parking and coping with crowds.  Not to mention trying to find something I think my husband and son will like, that will fit.  At the same time it feels weird, like I'm cheating by not having to put up with crowded malls.

Okay, I've been in a mall once since Thanksgiving, because we went to a movie there.  So I stopped by Macy's to buy a couple of boxes of Christmas cards.  They're getting harder and harder to find.  But I like getting them--I tape them around the archway to our family room--so I'll keep sending them.

I didn't plan to do everything on line.  I did buy the main items from Amazon right after Thanksgiving; I was planning to do the rest of the shopping at a local mall.   I was going to go to Nordstrom on my way home from teaching yoga last Monday, but started looking at Nordstrom's web site and realized I could get exactly what I wanted for my husband.  Shipped for free.  I knew the brand and the size, based on prior purchases I've made, and it was so much easier than hunting through the men's store.  I also relied on the LLBean website--again, because I'd bought items for them in the past, and knew what types and sizes to get.  OK, I'm taking a risk with my son, hoping he'll like the latest purchases.  I even bought the chocolate santas from Godiva on line; I couldn't bear the thought of going to the mall just to get a couple of things at Godiva.  Everything was free shipping except the Godiva.  But the Godiva website had a couple of offers that reduced the price of the items and of the shipping.

I did buy a couple of things for my cat the old-fashioned way, but I got them from pet stores.  In strip malls, which don't count malls, at least by my definition. My cat, Pooh, was named "pet of the week" in a local e-newspaper, and I received a $25 gift certificate from one specialty store.  So I bought Pooh a fancy waterfall-style (electric) water dish.  It was virtually the only cat item in the store, which otherwise is for dogs.  It was pricey; when I got home I checked the Amazon website and found I could have gotten it for about $25 cheaper if I'd bought it on line.  So the gift certificate was a wash.  And if history is any gauge, Pooh will hate the waterfall fountain and refuse to use it.  But he'll love the box.

Ashtanga Not for Me?

I attended an interesting yoga workshop yesterday on something called Mysore Yoga.  Based on Ashtanga (more about that later), Mysore classes are not instructor-led.  Instead, the student arrives any time during the hours the practice is available, and does his or her yoga.  A lead instructor and some assistants are available to guide students individually.

This practice just became available in the studio where I take yoga classes (and where I received my 200-hour yoga teacher training).  I've been wondering if it's something that would work for me, with its flexible arrangement (it's open from 5:30-8am M-F, and a little later on Sunday.  You pay by the month, rather than by the class,  so if you go several times a week you get the most for your money.

But I'd been reluctant to go, not knowing how it operated.  The instructor asks that new students contact her first, so she can guide them when they get there.  But I still wanted to know more in advance--how do students know what to do?

Some of my takeaways from yesterday's workshop:

- You do the yoga in a prescribed sequence, which builds up over time.  But it always starts with 10 Sun Salutations--5 A, 5 B.  Right there, that's a problem for someone with low bone density--that means you're doing 20 deep forward folds just to start, putting pressure on the spinal discs.  I can do this, I say to myself.  But should I.  And every day?  What if I don't want to start that way?

- The room is heated to between 78 and 80 degrees, and they don't want you to drink water during the practice.  There's a philosophy behind this, and it's also a tenet of Bikram and other types of hot yoga.  The idea being that you want to build up your body heat, and water will dissipate that.  Is this really medically sound?  Add in the ups and downs of Sun Salutation, and I may end up getting dizzy.  I've found that water helps keep me from getting nauseous.  They say they will let you drink water (as in "leave the room to get water") if you have a medical reason for doing so.  But I'm still skeptical of this whole approach.  Why do they want me to work up a sweat?  How is this supposed to help with Enlightenment?

- YOU DO THE SAME THING EVERY DAY.  I know the practitioners would chafe at that description, but it's so different from the classes I teach and take, where the idea is to be creative and come up with new movements and combinations.  To keep things interesting, and so you're not working the exact same muscles in the exact same sequence every time.  What if I don't want to do revolved triangle?  Ever, as a matter of fact, since I heard that someone dislocated her hip trying to do the prescribed Iyengar alignment.  Is it medically sound to do the same sequence every day?

So while there is flexibility in terms of when you do your practice (within the prescribed morning hours), and you go at your own pace--appealing to those of us who are tired of the same class times and instructors--the practice itself is prescribed.  An alternative is the open session, where everyone shows up and does whatever they want.  But then why pay for that?

So there are some good reasons why I shouldn't do this sort of practice, but it still has an appeal--because I like to think I COULD do it.  Even though it's probably not a good idea.  I'll do some research ("google") to see what I can find out from relatively objective sources.

Get Up Off Your Butt...

That's what I said to myself during a flute duet last night.  I wasn't playing well, and had to tough my way through it.

My performance image is of the figure skater who falls, then gets back up and continues her routine.  Especially the skater who nails a difficult jump after the fall.  Not the skater who doesn't fall.  Because much as I would like to be, I'm not someone who performs flawlessly.  Do any of those skaters just want to stay seated on the ice, call it quits while they're behind (literally as well as figuratively)?  I came close to doing that last night.  But I finished, not without more mistakes, though.  Hopefully my next performance will be better.  I'd like just once not to have to get up off my butt.
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