Sleeping Twice

Sleep improvement with better daytime restfulness has challenged me for a while.  I know there were benefits to accrue with more daytime energy and a willingness on my part to do what I could to bring that about.  Retirement has enabled better attention to this, though it could have added to my function at work too.  I've been exercising, grading myself to a proper type and amount with more success than I've enjoyed in decades.  

While exercise is something I might make excuses to avoid, sleep has more of an allure of the now with payoff later.  I want to sleep well and have no barriers for avoiding it.  Optimal sleep hygiene principles are readily accessible from many sources.  Unlike exercise, which for me requires a reward incentive, the behavioral changes for better sleep seem minor, mainly avoiding the bedroom for activities that can be done someplace else.  Other than reading in bed, which I could eliminate now that I've captured two good lounge chairs, I've accomplished that.

Yet sleep depends on cycles that I don't control very well.  Getting up at a fixed time can be committed with an alarm clock, going to bed at a fixed time can be enforced with a light switch.  Being asleep from lights out to alarm on and not beyond does not automatically incur from best intents.  Physiologic cycles don't adapt very well to clocks.

Despite the challenges, I've done well, nearly 100% on the arising time without the use of a device, less well on lights out times or smart phone deprivation times, but not as well at actually being asleep.  

I bought a watch with a sleep tracker module that has some tabulating mechanism that I don't understand other than to figure out its inaccuracy.  I'm frequently not tired at the assigned lights out time, or even the somewhat later smart phone off time.  In keeping with principles of sleep hygiene, I go to another room.  Food is off limits from 8PM to 6AM for another reason, but it has also helped eliminate getting up due to heartburn.  And there is nocturia once nightly, for which I am unwilling to resume a medicine that on two attempts made me dizzy.  But generally I have no trouble returning to sleep following the interruption.

Last night brought something different, maybe even of more concern.  In effect, I slept two half nights instead of one whole night.  At about the midpoint I suddenly found myself wide awake, a little achy as well.  It was not a bladder awakening but I took advantage of being up, taking a naproxen tablet for the achiness, and returning to bed with an empty bladder.  Still awake though, but I do not know for how much longer.  Since I've not needed an alarm clock and the usual wake time was just over two hours later, it remained lights out and under blanket.  I did awake, though an hour later than usual to glance at the clock, followed by a mostly involuntary final sleep cycle for another hour, when I figured I better get on with the day, two hours later than my usual daily starting time.

In effect, those natural sleep cycles of 60-90 minutes divided into two half night's sleep instead of one whole one.  After some feeling of teeter with morning hygiene, I feel well now though my daily activities are time shifted by two hours.

Cancelling Vacation

Covid-19 has taken its toll on travel, though this Thanksgiving a lot of people took their chances to see trusted relatives in person.  When I went to pick up a few items at Total Whine for my own Thanksgiving, a lot of other shoppers had full baskets that they could not possibly consume themselves.  I felt a need to get away too, and began to act on it.

 

It's been a confining time.  I went on three small day trips this fall and air travel over Labor Day weekend.  My son's wedding was worth some prudent health risk, though far fewer attended than originally planned.  I went virtually nowhere, getting food at a supermarket on arrival and having two dinners, one outdoors, the other in a tent.  The hotel had closed its pool.  In lieu of a buffet, it offered a doggy bag, which I declined in favor of the munchies from the supermarket.

That vacation overdue feeling had arisen, emphasized by a goal I had set for myself to visit a National Park by year's end.  I could have driven to Great Smokies, probably a reasonable  Plan A.  It would take a lot of driving, but offered detours to either Asheville or Knoxville. But there didn't seem to be all that much to do at the park itself, maybe hike or drive on trails.  It is also the most visited of the National Parks, so undesired crowds might be expected.  As an alternative, I looked at the Everglades.  By travel standards, this looked too good to be true.  Airfare less than regional intercity train fare in the Northeast.  Hotels about a third less than I usually pay for a chain hotel.  Rental cars seemed something of rip-off with Florida gouging its visitors as best it could, but as a package, it could not be beat.  Reservations made, with a modest penalty for canceling the car.  Looked forward to getting away until the reports of accelerated infection rates starting making the news.  Most of the trip would not have been that unsafe.  Air travel requires masks and we would sit together.  Hotels and cars also leave us by ourselves.  The hotel district can be accessed on a variety of internet maps.  There is a cluster of them near ours, at the edge of a shopping center district with ample takeout.  And the Everglades have assigned roads and open spaces, far larger than any of the parks near home.  However, to see what's in the Everglades, the National Park Service franchises tour concessions who take tourists around in some form of land or watercraft.  The State of Florida has been a little loose about protecting it's inhabitants, with far more people than we have rejecting infection control precautions as infringement on their personal or economic liberties.  That part is not a prudent risk.  As reports of illness, hospitalization, and mortality disseminated, responsibility for the health of my wife prevailed.  Son's wedding, take a chance.  My amusement, no way.  I cancelled it all, forfeiting an auto rental deposit, accepting an airline credit good for nearly a year, and perhaps staying at a different hotel in an area where the people have a better level of regard for each other.

Congregational Vote

As I look at my institutional affiliations, many have deteriorated with Covid, few have strengthened.  For a lot of reasons, I have felt particularly disaffected from my synagogue, a worthy refuge from another unfortunate congregational experience more than two decades earlier.  What was a place of growth opportunity with talented, though sometimes abrasive, clergy has greatly atrophied.  Skill, knowledge, and inquisitiveness have long since yielded to the mediocrity of inbreeding or paths of least resistance.  I am no longer a Giver, even have reason to think that prickly intrinsically challenging people are targeted for exclusion by the Officers, the Nominating Committees they appoint, and a languishing collection of committee chairmen who fill schedules on calendars with no interest whatever in the processes of Continual Improvement and Reflection that we experience in our professional lives.  They've arrived at the Promised Land of Undistinguished with no serious aspirations of offering a more exceptional Jewish experience.  It's hard to say if the talent has departed, easier to say it has been devalued.

Judaism has been a culture of forging ahead in prosperous times and in challenging ones.  Sometimes to forge ahead, you have to exit where you are,  whether that be Ur Chasdim to Canaan or Poland to NYC.  It also means that congregations that languish will become smaller, as most people really are willing to invest in their advancement.  Thus we are smaller.  There are a lot of rationalizations for this and no shortage of fingers to point, but as a congregation we now have little communal relevance and diminishing internal attractiveness, at least to me.

Yet, my personal assessment aside, I remain a member of the community, often a candid one or a person of discontent, but still a presence, though less loyal than I once was.  As we diminish in numbers, we diminish in money.  We also enter a phase of congregational senescence.  Our building where we congregated for fifty years has been cashed out.  We only own one piece of residential real estate, which may prove our security later, and have Torah scrolls of financial value.  But we have given up some or our independence.  Until Covid-19 kept us all home, we at least gathered in one place for worship, mainly for shabbos, nominally for daily minyanim, and squeezed by on yom tovim.  There is a governance which met on its appointed times, there were committees, though none large, none really advancing us as a synagogue with activities and meeting places perhaps a little under the table if they met at all.  It is possible to be a congregation of cyberspace, as Covid has taught us, but we would have a better future, already pretty precarious, if we had a mailing address, land line phones, and chairs.  It is here that paths of least resistance emerge with exploratory committees looking at other Jewish agencies with buildings rather than looking at rentable space as a more abstract concept.  We latched onto the local Conservative shul, not a bad shidduch, though we were always the stepsister to a congregation that started about where we were ten years ago but made decisions that moved them forward.  The disparity could be seen pretty much anywhere in the building that we would share.  I expected to hate being there, having departed for cause, but that was not the case.  I found those detestable machers who would swoop on the vulnerable and give a hint of credence to those anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, pretty invisable.  The people I met seemed personable.  I imagine they had some sort of agenda, as they could not have advanced themselves without one, though as a visiting tenant I never felt threatened.  Then again, I didn't run the place and did not have to appeal to them for anything I wanted.  Within our own governance I perceived some discontent, which didn't surprise me.

Then Covid shut down buildings.  They accept streaming on shabbos, so their worship continued on schedule.  Ours did not.  Our titled class has many delusions that repackage over time.  When our new Rabbi arrived, the Executive Committee proclaimed that if people could just come and see what we imported, they would want to be one of us.  Until they came and saw a very inexperienced but nice young man reading his Rashi notes for a sermon.  If we enhanced kiddush, more people would want to pay dues.  Not true either.  Congregational dwindles ensued, never a mass departure, but the actuarial realities of people getting older without replacement, people relocated for employment or retirement, some religious decisions more attractive to the inbred people than to anyone else.  So we find ourselves looking for what is likely to be our final space, with a race to see if we deplete our money or our people first.

While my observation detects the recessive genes of relentless inbreeding and formation of dysfunctional cliques, to be fair, those among the in-crowd have been diligent to task.  They desired space, found space, and negotiated terms.  Being a by-laws democracy, sort of, some key decisions cannot be implemented by our elected representatives but need the approval of a majority in attendance at a pre-announced Congregational Meeting.  While I had the shul on FB style Snooze, I signed in, watched and asked my questions, then voted with the majority to sign a lease on the proposed space.

I did not know how I wanted to vote.  One fellow was adamant about staying where we were, despite the fact that our current landlord really doesn't want us there indefinitely.  So once I understand the proposal, should my vote reflect what I want or am I an agent of the congregation who should allow what's best for the group override my own preferences?  It's not a bad financial deal, though I don't know how sustainable.  Two downsides, one for me, one for the congregation that nobody brought up.  I don't want to drive that far to attend shabbos services, let alone an evening meeting or activity.  Covid will end, either by vaccine or like all other epidemics from the Black Death to cholera to the 1918 flu, by the infection running its course.  There is always an endpoint to an epidemic, though some diseases remain endemic in lesser forms.  We have reasons to assemble.  If I don't want to drive there or find the location or even the room not to my liking, there are other locations to observe shabbos.  That affects me and I set it aside.  What affects the congregation is the capacity of the chapel where we would worship.  There was a time not that long ago when our usual attendance would easily overflow that capacity.  We would fit now, not really a tight squeeze but the room would appear amply occupied by our recent attendance levels.  Unfortunately, our recent attendance levels need to be boosted.  Accepting this as our worship space pretty much closes the door on expanding our congregation's worship attendance.  It's the current reality.  But I think it unwise to accept that as our destiny.

I voted in favor, as that takes a lot of pressure off the congregation and enables decisions going forward.  Whether I return when the space becomes operational remains unsettled.  I'm a worthy agent of the congregation when I need to vote, much like I tend to vote for candidates who support my vision for my country, state, and locality even if I might take a little hit in the process.  I can stand a few setbacks, not everyone can, so I vote for what I think would be best for the group unless the harm to me is unacceptable.  Having an address and on-site worship and not being subservient to other Jews is important enough for me to not impede the project with my vote.  But a building does not make the congregation viable.  The same officers have been in place with few changes since we sold our building.  The message that there was a decline for a reason that it is their responsibility to address in their official capacity, even if a few Sacred Cows need to be  schected in the process, never fully registered.  Having new space, particularly one contrary to any aspiration for growth, only reinforces our time limited trajectory.

At My Screen

As I review things I want to do today, or should do today irrespective of whether I really want to, a lot of categories allow shuffling of items on this rather long list.  They are sorted by color with home, medical, financial, and personal divisions.  Some have a colored hilighter designating whether they contribute to the initiatives I set up at each half year. Some have a dash, indicating a finite identifiable end point that allows crossing off as done.  None of these really direct my day.  What does offer direction is a little letter designation: D=downstairs, U=upstairs, C=computer.  There's a lot of stuff that pretty much has to be done over my screen, things from an Osher Institute class, seminar, nearly all my writing projects, my professional medical activities, finances.  I really need not get up from my very comfortable swivel desk chair, though some fairly important items like exercise or house chores displace me from my desk.  But rather than look at what I will do, maybe it will be more efficient to look at where I will be, clustering the computer tasks, the downstairs projects and the upstairs ones.  It my be preferable than my more customary shuttling from place to place.

Thanksgiving Week

 

This Thanksgiving will have a different form.  I've been alone before.  During my medical school years, I lived far from everyone else.  A classmate who observed kashrut would arrange a caterer to make dinner for his extended family and include me, though when he departed for a year in Israel, that invitation no longer came.  I made a turkey tv dinner from Sol & Ely's Kosher Butcher.  My aunt who usually made the family dinner would mail me some edible, though ironically via my mother's will which my uncle actually wrote, they were in fact stealing from me at the time.  As a resident and newlywed, I would try to make it to my in-laws for their dinner, succeeding two years of three, linked to a scheduled week's vacation.  

Thanksgiving, alone or amid family, always marked a landmark on my calendar.  School would suspend for a long weekend.  As a college student, I could take a bus or train to my father's house while those attending college from farther away stayed on campus.  Because of the extended weekend, and therefore classes earlier in the week underattended as some kids had to take a day or two off to travel with their families, those classes earlier in the week were often a review or catchup of less intensity than the rest of the semester.  One set of exams had been completed.  Pre-college midterms were a way off, college finals loomed with a few study breaks incorporated into that class free hiatus.

While Thanksgiving Day marked the apex, it was really a week's change in direction.  Returning home from college meant friends at other colleges also returned to their homes.  Old friends usually found a way to get together, usually informally.  We didn't think of college or pro athletes having the same entitlement to time off.  Some collegiate leagues had completed their schedules but others were making their final push for a bowl invitation or preparing for a bowl already secured.  Pros scrambled for league position, We watched on TV as they played.  For those with a yard, we were expected to pitch in with leaf disposal.  And those dinners would have extended families in attendance with somebody else preparing the meal.

Time brought me to adulthood, more responsibility.  Since I covered the hospitals for Christmas, I could count on Thanksgiving Day or even the extended weekend off from my medical duties.  Now I had the house, children in school with their Thanksgiving schedules, leaves to rake but for a long time dinner deferred to other people, though driving to the dinner assigned to me.  I worked pretty hard, the early days of the week just as intensely as any other work days, meaning I could use as much recreation as a few days away from work would allow.  It was not always that way.  Eventually as the children became adults, the generations turned over, and geography took its toll, Thanksgiving week changed.  Somebody could be paid to do the leaves.  I had taken a liking to cooking elaborate dinners so I became the caterer, transporting dinner to my in-laws.  Eventually it made more sense for people to come to me, which they did, though fewer of them as people became less willing to travel or ideological differences became unacceptable animosities.  I still watched football.  And the time remained more of a week with days of preparation, execution, and anticlimax of dishwashing and shabbos which always followed.

With some pandemic reality, I am back to my medical school and residency days, just me with my wife.  One child has his new family to absorb him as my in-laws absorbed me.  The other opted for the safe route, staying on America's other coast.  One regular guest decided to adhere to her state's Coronavirus control restrictions and stay home. But I'm still the caterer who thinks of this time more of a week than a day.

It's still a week delineated by a day.  Food acquisition early in the week, preparation with enjoyment Thursday, dishwashing and shabbos Friday and Saturday.  Indifferent to football as the teams have their own coronavirus restrictions which has detracted from level of performance for most and from hype for everyone.  Leaves again contracted out.  Osher Institute on intercession with no anticipation of return after the week concludes.  Less festive for sure.

Hard to Find

We used to have 5 & 10 Cents stores, WT Grant, Woolworths, Kresge's, all gone or absorbed into larger entities.  If you needed something, they had it.  The closest we have now are neighborhood hardware stores, perhaps, but most of our errands get done at mega stores, from groceries to home maintenance to big discounters.  They have a lot of things on display though rarely those petty items you buy infrequently or at low cost.  I needed, or really wanted more than needed, a few items this week, either not finding any or struggling to find something ideal.

Being a newly dedicated treadmill walker, my ankles and calves started getting sore.  I cold use some soothing liniment, maybe a generic BenGay. Lidocaine infused potions with markups reflecting their medicinal value appeared regularly.  At one time I could get a tube of muscle rub with just oil or wintergreen or menthol at a Dollar Store.  No more.  Not even the more chemically supplemented standard BenGay.  The best I could find was a juiced up generic BenGay with a lot more than pleasant fragrance for a lot more than a dollar.  I bought a tube.

I have two grooming locations, the bathroom next to my bedroom and the powder room downstairs.  I keep hair preparation at each, though not the same stuff.  They come as aerosols which I have as plastic bottle sprays both places but metal aerosol only upstairs.  Some require wet hair, which I keep upstairs as that is where I shower.  For the dry hair, there are cremes like Brylcream, greasy kid stuff like Wild Root, and liquid Vitalis.  Ointment stuff downstairs, liquid upstairs.  I wanted to get an ointment for upstairs but those classic cheap hairdressing like the barber offers at the end of a haircut don't seem to be on anyone's shelves.  There's expensive stuff like Crew or Panama Jack, those trendies, but not a bottle of Wild Root or tube of Brylcream to be found.  

I bought some hand sanitizer, a liquid rather than a gel.  It came with a pour bottle but would do better as a spray.  So I looked for a couple of spray bottles.  I know they exist, because the barber uses them, home cleaners like 409 have them, they are used to spray plants with home designed nutrients.  But none at the Dollar Store or a few other places.  I could have bought some spray cleaner at the Dollar Store, emptied and cleaned out the bottle, and then I would have one.  I found an old one in a closet at home, already empty, and used that.

Facial tissues used to be more commonly used than they are now.  I have a crushed box at home.  Hotels offer tissues in dispensers, sometimes part of a wall unit, sometimes as a free standing metal or plastic container.  No luck finding one of those.

All these items exist at Amazon.com but since they are small purchases, the shipping cost exceeds their value.  I will just use the final dry hair dressing downstairs.

Tracking My Activity

Periodically our regional Department Store Boscov's runs a promotion that gets me spending a little more than I ordinarily would.  They have a partnership with non-profits which enables a designated charity to receive 5% of sales.  On the most recent of these, I bought myself something useful, an iTouch activity tracker watch for $30 which is a whole lot less than the more popular fit-bit costs.  I assume it is not one of those brand fakes that funds terrorism in remote parts of the world.  I trust Boscov's.  Being hi-tech challenged, setting it up meant reading the instructions line by line, but now it functions, if not flawlessly, in a way that gives me useful information.

First step is the watch, three display faces.  It stays visually muted unless I request to see the time.  I can ask it to convey messages from my cell phone to which it coordinates.  FB is really a form of life clutter, so I don't want those notifications tempting me passively.  My text messages never justify interruption.  That module stays off.  It calculates my steps.  I know that is in error, since it resets automatically every midnight.  If I get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, which is most nights, I will often return to bed having taken zero steps.  There are more steps recorded on my treadmill days, but since I hold the handrail while exercising, there's likely a lot of steps that do not record as the watch remains stationary while I walk.  Over the years I've been given a lot of promotional pedometers with organizational advertising.  Those clip to my belt so should be more reliable at counting steps.  Never did a comparison.  While some authorities regard number of steps taken as a marker of physical activity for which goals can be set, I find my current measuring devices inadequate for this, including my new iTouch.  Similarly calories and distance are calculations from that primary activity.  I know how far I've walked on a treadmill session.  The calculation on this sports watch rarely coincides.

What I find most intriguing is my sleep time, reported as total time on my wrist but subdivided into stages of sleep on the synched smart phone.  Typically it will record about eight hours but I don't know how it determines when I am actually asleep.  It could detect darkness as a surrogate, time when I am horizontal though probably not since I often recline during the day without receiving a sleep measurement from the watch.  It cannot measure sleep directly.  Maybe motionless time.  Doubt if something on a wrist will record breathing or eye movement. Most likely not terribly accurate but maybe a way to experiment with my sleep times.  Wake time has been very consistent, bed time very inconsistent but I still get very little variation in the cumulative sleep duration calculated by the device. And I never know from the clock when I actually fall asleep, as I am typically awake after lights out.

It will synch with my smart phone camera but I don't understand how to do this.

P and Oxygen saturation should be easy, but again, my heart rate on the iTouch does not accelerate much at the end of a treadmill session.  Oxygen saturation is supposed to be constant.  Mine has been.  

There are some sports modes and a stop watch.  What seems missing is a count down timer.  A lot of sports, including some pictured on the sports module, have their duration based on counting downward from a starting time.  I have been successful with my treadmill this year by setting a duration, then watching my cell phone count down instead of watching the timer on the treadmill count up.  I would have expected iTouch to include this option.

Worth $30?  Keeps me focused a bit more on my sleep and my relative level of activities on different days.  It's absolute accuracy remains questionable.

Almost Done

As I outline each upcoming day at 7PM the night before, I make some task notations.  A dash means I can complete it that day with a finite end point, a T indicates it requires less than ten minutes, a circle denotes a task that once done will not reappear for at least a week.  Most projects are bigger such as reading a book or replacing my bedroom curtains.  It is those segments that trip me up.  Appointments are usually fulfilled.  Making friends in a Covid environment is more amorphous.  Keeping in contact with old friends is very doable but not well focused.  More often it becomes an intersection of us each commenting separately to somebody else's FB posting, which post election have become tiring to me.  And a lot get worked on without a finite end point where it can be declared completed.  That leaves me with a lot of intentions not quite done, most significantly an article where the final paragraph before submission has shifted many times.  

I've wanted to join two organizations.  Got one of two.  Second never gets explored.  I have a trip planned to a National Park.  Don't know what I am going to do once I get there, though all reservations made.  I might even forgo it at a small financial loss if too high a medical Covid risk.  I am absolutely determined to not access social media today.  So far so good.  I've actually completed my fourth book for this half-year.  Quota of three done previously, but one more already started and probably another ten sessions until completion.  I do my two TED talks each morning, tackle my quota of two articles from The Forward with a comment on one.  I'm not as reliable at reading one article daily from The Atlantic, but once I start, I finish it.  I take my medicine and check on the indoor plants most days.  BP no longer needs measurement daily, though it is on my task list each day.  Weekly weight and waist measurements are Monday appointments, and my treadmill sessions are treated like appointments.  As much as I want to learn the harmonica, draw pictures, color with my colored pencils, go fishing and do some watercolors, those rarely get started.  

And then there is the house, a repository of partially completed efforts.  Currently I am filing and shredding papers, which relaxes me in a way. I emptied a box of papers, sorted into financial and other, and even made some folders.  Big project but seeing the once crammed cardboard box empty gave some satisfaction.  It's a milestone, but not completion.

One characteristic of ADHD's, which I might be a reasonably compensated but untreated one, is that we tend to have a lot of simultaneous projects but not a lot of completion.  From the review of my focus list, the end points need to become easier to identify.

Too Irritable

Most things have gone my way of late, better than for others it seems.  I feel well except for some nagging lower thoracic discomfort.  I sleep pretty well.  I don't miss the groceries I stopped buying.

But I've also gotten restless of mind and of physical position.  Things irritate me more than they should.  I snoozed my synagogue in protest, asking nothing in return from them.  My FB friends have gotten a little out of hand with not moving on from what for most were disappointing election results.  One OLLI course bores me a little, though I remain polite.  I want to go somewhere else, but not where I actually drive to.

Obligations get fulfilled very easily, though.  I make dinner, have been doing my scheduled treadmill session increasingly early, get up at the appointed time, tend to my indoor plants without fail. My scheduled reading proceeds to expectation most days.

But as much as I want a better level of connectedness, maybe even some appreciation, it doesn't arrive and its absence annoys me, and I probably don't deserve it.  

Amid the irritation, though, the screen and where it connects remains my loyal friend.

Sorting Papers

It's not yet been the first anniversary since closing out my storage unit, a repository for the unwanted that drained a fair amount of money that was wanted.  I thought I would have all worldly goods from that haul removed from my living area to other storage areas within my house, and I've made progress.  Contents of my wife's boxes have been mostly moved to interior Gehenna designated as a place in the basement in front of my work bench.  I still have a line of boxes in front of my stairs that needs a better home, preferably a recycling center, though a landfill will suffice.  I bought a shredder to replace my broken one and began the daunting task of sorting.  Anything more than ten years old except key financial documents gets shredded.  Sort of fun to do that.  I've dumped two bags of confetti into plastic bags.  Though paper, they are not eligible for recycling.  There are basically two filing piles, one of financial statements less than ten years old and the other various consumer filing of credit card statements or confirmation of charitable donations.  There's a lot of paper there, but I will make an effort to have it all done by the end of the calendar year, that anniversary of ending my storage unit rental.  The project seems more tedious than it really is.  And when I am done, I will be able to make that hallway space more navigable.  Worth the effort.

Pursuing Wellness

This may be the best I have felt physically in about four years.  Within the last year or so I have regimented a few things where benefits are emerging.  My treadmill schedule has become fixed to essentially two days on, one day off, with an adaptation to transition of months.  I set a time and speed with a cool down time and speed.  Days missed have been few.  If anything that has created the biggest payoff.  Sleep comes next.  I reviewed current recommendations for sleep hygiene with fixed bed and not bed times.  I've done very well with arising, rarely lolling in the morning seeking more time.  The evening has been more problematic.  Among sleep hygiene recommendations is not to toss and turn for more than a half hour or so but to get out of bed and go someplace else.  My recliner and big screen TV in my Man Cave have come to the rescue.  I usually return to sleep and get up at the fixed time feeling rested.  Staying out of bed at the times other than specified sleep has been harder, as I like to read there.  The overhead lighting is ideal, the temperature better than anyplace else, and reading reclining rather than sitting has been a habit dating to college.  I rid the bedroom lounge chair of clutter and should try that as an alternative to the bed.

Eating and weight control have responded to a few shopping decisions. Snacks are minimized, or at least selective.  No chips or national brand cookies.  No squishy bread.  No soda other than seltzer.  I glass of sherry or port each afternoon.  Coffee more rigidly rationed, with additional liquid via hot spiced apple cider or herb tea.  I've started buying portioned fish which can be taken out of the freezer the day before and made into a quick low fat, low carb meal.  Some starch control still needs attention but this is serious progress, probably contributing to my current well being.

I've given up some medicines, most notably citalopram which I used to be more restrained when among people.  I'm not really among people.  Flonase is gone.  Omeprazole went on an unsuccessful holiday, though.  And I am faithful to daily use of what I should take for cholesterol and for blood pressure control, each with reinforcement when the lab results and home BP readings confirm efficacy.

Despite the physical improvements, my quest for wellness still has some loose ends.  My mind wanders, which has its benefits but I often abandon tasks short of completion.  This is especially true in some of the reading and expression initiatives I've set for myself.

Connectedness languishes, my most serious deficit.  While independence of thought and to a lesser extent of person have been virtues, there are limits.  I assign myself a quest for organization affiliation, never achieving the acceptance I seek.  OLLI has gone virtual.  FB has people but considerable attrition for good reason.  Events like birthdays or my son's wedding get a lot of responses, presentations of ideas and initiatives don't.  Twitter and FB have lost their potential, places that people carry their placards for which others present some slogan as a poor surrogate of responding in thought.  KevinMD rarely has two responses to any article.  My synagogue has become the USY Clique transposed in time with inbreeding and not a lot of curiosity among those of title or the Rabbi on how to maximize engagement.  There are more substantial forums like Disqus where people can respond to articles in a substantial way and others can respond in kind.  I've basically shut them off, except for KevinMD as the responses of strangers too frequently are more hostile than enriching.

If I have a deficit of connectedness to people, I have compensated a little with connectedness to places, and even to things.  This month I've ventured to a few new places, Harford County, MD. the Philadelphia Italian Market, Laurel and Millsboro DE.  Each place has its visual impression, reinforced by wandering around there and peering from my car window en route.  I purchase very little, but early in Covid-19 I went to stores a lot as that was the only venue open.  The novelty has worn off but at least there are people around.  And I drive around the neighborhood or to a park, mainly for scenery.  It's not connectedness but a boost to my spirit, which can often benefit from that boost.

I've given up toxic food and overt sloth with good effect.  I should redirect to a little social butchery perhaps.  FB has attrition because it deserves attrition.  Ditto for my shul. But as my loss of squishy bread acquired a pumpernickel replacement. and undesired wakefulness led to TV time as replacement, I don't have a good replacement for shul or for twitter that would serve a better purpose.  Until that happens, wellness, or at least its social component, remain unfulfilled.

Next Holiday: Thanksgiving

My two favorite holidays, Pesach and Thanksgiving, center around elaborate dinners.  Most people think that it's the people gathering around the tables that make the festivities, but the last few years have posed a few challenges.  Toxic divisive public figures promoting confrontation bring people seeking confrontation to those dinner tables.  The holidays reflect a different view but the people who I would ordinarily invite are steadfast, so like many of us I have to choose between people and holiday.  For Pesach I've chosen people, for Thanksgiving I've chosen holiday.  While animosities can be set aside, justified disrespect has this aftertaste.  The purpose of gathering around our table must advance the holiday.  When it undermines it, the holiday stays, the people are sent into exile to repackage their own holidays.  Not a whole lot different than Hagar and Ishmael being unfriended or Lot selecting Sodom for its bounty.  They'll claim their turf. I won't challenge theirs but I will defend the sanctity of mine.

Covid changes the reality as well.  The risk of travel, particularly by car, may exceed the risk of hospitalization or death from the virus.  Travel we are used to and accept the risk, a lethal virus in our midst seems less acceptable.  My dinner table can be adapted to fewer people very easily.

So I'm back to food, though not exactly food as much as the pleasure I get from designing the meal and assembling it.  I've been through recipes, some familiar, some a new adventure.  That glorious roast turkey which can be eaten to gluttony, segmented for guests to take a portion home for shabbos the next evening, with a remaining carcass for soup later has given way to the more practical half turkey breast.  It is easy to prepare, though this year I think I will use a thermometer instead of depending on my timer.  I like crock pot stuffing but my crock pot lid needs replacement.  A barley kugel looks like the way to go.  For a salad, red cabbage and pears.  I hesitated on my preferred recipe as it calls for small amounts of port and red wine, but I can drink whatever we have leftover a little at a time.  Sweet potatoes have not yet gone on sale.  I have a recipe for a baked givetch vegetable medley.  And my synagogue assembled a cookbook about 20 years ago that offers a few cranberry options.  For dessert, something I've made before, a cranberry apple oatmeal torte.  And I think I'll try making some minestrone soup.

So the people have lost their centerpiece, replaced by my creativity and dedication.

Unexpected Repairs

There is a reason why we retirement geezers find our fondness to our homes and communities fraying as we age.  In my home, I work at my desk and sit in my recliner next to the desk essentially daily, watch the big screen TV most days, though my interest has been waning.  I use about half the bedroom and the adjacent bathroom.  In the living room I recline on the couch.  Fleishig is eaten at the dining room table.  The Family Room has a nook for my treadmill, to which I have been faithful to a set schedule.  I do my laundry when it needs to be done, use the powder room when I am downstairs, and regard my upgraded kitchen as a destination.  Parts of the house that I don't use comprises a lot more floor space.  Could duplicate all with 2 bedroom condo, though a little tight with a mobile home.  Stuff not used goes to yard sale.  I'm not the first senior to think of this.  And then there is where.  I like where I am.  State of Delaware may need to rename itself from The First State to Conscience of America as our voting pattern was one of the few to reflect concern for Derech Eretz and kindness in a meaningful way.  But having driven through Trump pockets of three states this month, there is something appealing about their spread out nature with space between neighbors. Rhetoric about protecting us from those neighbors, or from the people like me from elsewhere has less appeal.

But changing housing and location by seniors also suggests that time to be Lord of the Manor has come and gone.  I have a nice yard, but it wouldn't be a nice yard without a lawn service.  I do the garden myself, never taking a disappointing harvest that could have been improved with better attentiveness as a personal failure.  But as my FB friends nudge themselves to city condos or planned 55+ communities, it seems less about space and more about divesting themselves of maintenance responsibilities.

Got an unexpected jolt of kitchen maintenance last night.  To manage a Kosher kitchen amid my interest in using the kitchen, I needed more easily accessible storage space than my cabinets had available.  Many years ago I found a pair of wire grids at a small department store, long since defunct, and installed them on a dominant wall.  Using S-hooks one became fleishig, the other milchig. It remained static and trouble free for decades.  When I remodelled the kitchen I took them down to enable new wallpaper, but the brackets back in the original holes and reattached the grids.  It took minutes.  Suddenly my wife comes upstairs late at night to inform me that the fleishig side had collapsed, scattering pots and pans everywhere.  On inspection, there was surprisingly little serious damage.  One of the screws holding the upper left bracket had dislodged.  I figured an easy repair, just insert a plastic anchor and screw the bracket back on.  However, the plastic anchor did not go into the hole evenly.  When I tried to hammer it in a little farther the bracket that held the grid snapped so I would need new brackets.  Finding one proved impossible, both at local big box and hardware stores and and online.  Instead I got a new set, one with premade drywall anchors and installed those, but in order to do that I had to hunt my basement for a drill and a 0.25 inch bit.  Not as easy as it looks but done and should be adequately secure.

And it's leaf time.  The bane of my existence in my young parent years.  Delegated in my empty nester years.  Need to clean gutters too.  Reputable contractor came, gave an estimate for about twice what I think it should cost.  Thanked him for coming by then got more estimates, settling on one from somebody we hire for other outdoor things for $200 less.  

And there is all that stuff that will one day find its way to a clean-out service which parcels some to an auctioneer for the estate sale, the rest to landfill, and the structure to a realtor, all to do what may have been better to do myself while I still had the vitality to do it.

The rack has been rehung.  Not exactly what it was before but serviceable.  There is some cleanup in its wake to restore the kitchen to its previous function.  Just need to set my timer to the estimated time needed and do it. 

The question of setting an endpoint for these responsibilities drifts along, to be reconsidered at the next event.

Three Punks of Yore

It's been a tough political cycle with no end in sight.  Everyone who faces opposition puts on their armor, bears a grudge.  We saw mobs descend on the opposition's vehicles and attempt intimidation with a real or at least credible threat of violence.  One of my most respected authors, a journalist by profession, Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press issued an editorial on election day that came to my local newspaper post-election day, pre Presidential determination, that the results don't matter if the behavior remains static.  https://www.freep.com/story/sports/columnists/mitch-albom/2020/11/01/mitch-albom-2020-presidential-election/6102179002/

As I looked at hoodlums in the making, I thought back to the punks of my own teen years coming up with three who literally attacked me, something of a nebbish that perfect target that any worthy predator could pounce.  None got reported though one would have been had I needed medical care for the three fingers he hyperextended.  I let the torn shirt go.  Generally reporting as a victim made you an easy target.  We have that today when women in our Orthodox communities seek their Rebbe's guidance on spousal abuse.  Usual question, what did you do to provoke him?  No, in the absence of needing medical care, none got reported.

It's now more than a half century later, more than ample time to assess outcome.  Mine has been pretty good, stable career, nimble mind, stable family, nachas from children.  As I drove around Trump Country on two day trips pre-election, looking at the election signs on the lawns and farms, it was obvious that my personal and usually financial assets exceeded theirs.  Any good Social Darwinist can make that assessment.

I didn't know how the three teens, two classmates, one from an organization, who actually attacked me fared.  One seemed superficially respectable, the other two had their daily attendance taken in the principal's office instead of the homeroom.

Those same fifty years allowed electronic retrieval systems and cataloguing people, mostly for free and usually with little effort.  None of the three had ultra-common names so name and estimated age made identification easy.  Two of the three had obits, one more a death notice with burial site. 

The first actually made a friendly overture to me later. He had some psychological problems but it would take me through my medical school psychiatry rotation to be able to define people like that with better specificity than just not right.  He physically harmed me but was physically and to a lesser extent verbally aggressive in our encounters.  He was about my weight, muscular, pinning me faster than a prom queen in a legitimate gym class wrestling module.  But he was volatile.  He lived to his mid-40's, lies for eternity at a veteran's cemetery in California with a notation that he served during the Vietnam conflict.  There are no notations of what he achieved or cause of death at a young age.  I also came across a far more detailed obit of his mother who lived to age 97.  She sounded like a sweetie.  Her son was named as pre-deceasing her.  She had several children and worked as a waitress at a time when mothers tended to stay home or do teaching or nursing.  I suspect that finances may have been strained.  This son must have been a handful in the days before the principals or deans of discipline could set their phones to speed dial selected parents.

Second person from school is still alive.  He is identified by Google searches which lead to directories rather than individual entries that mark his achievements in business or identify him as a property owner or even a linkedin occupational entry.  He has lived in a lot of places, none for very long.  And he does not seem to settle in major population centers. I did not check any of the geographic identifications to see which have a correctional center.  Of note, when the search scans for court contacts, they identify that there are 19 records.  Were I willing to pay a fee the search site would identify them, but I had no inclination to spend money on this.  I would be a little critical of our HS Reunion 50 year committee for not taking the initiative to pursue his whereabouts and contact, along with most others whose location capture would not come passively.  If they are alive, they probably had some relations more endearing than the one with me.  I never wore the torn shirt again.  My mother never asked how it got torn.  And within two days I had full recovery of range of motion to the hyperextended fingers without needing xray, immobilization, or analgesics.  There was something wrong with him, but even as an alumnus of our psychiatry course, I cannot identify what.

Our final acquaintance was a hellion, a generally hostile person who strived for dominance but lacked the social skills to gain acceptance voluntarily.  Hostility to me was pretty much every encounter, laying of the hands only twice that I remember, at least one provoked .  By age 15 he was already a smoker, either a quest for attention or social acceptance in those days, but at age 15 still a measure of deviance.  Since we went to different schools, my summer with him ended, but I remembered his name and what he did to me indefinitely.  He didn't have a terrible outcome.  Eventually he married in his hometown of Suffern.  He had served in the military and had a stable family.  He also had an identifiable occupation.  Settling in Pennsylvania, one of the parts that doesn't vote like me, he worked in quarries as the guy who hosed down the fiery rocks, which I assume is part of the extraction process.  He lived to his early 60's, wife predeceasing him by a few years, and with children survivors.  Certainly within the mainstream at the end, though a troubled beginning.  The Army still has a way of making people responsible.  We read about veterans who remain aimless after their service, but this fellow of unstable and volatile underpinnings seemed to have lived a mainstream adult life.  

In the fifty or so years since they threatened or in one case physically harmed me, I did not think about them but never forgot their names.  As I see their next generation banding together to intimidate, I am grateful that these three acted mostly alone, I think, to identify a vulnerable target, maybe many, though not as a mob.  Today, would I report it?  Victims of bullying are treated more sympathetically now and the bullies are offered assessment in addition to punishment, so probably yes.  As an experienced physician, I regret not having my hand x rayed, though it would not have shown a fracture.  A medical exam might generate an MRI with identification of injury.  Had it not been self-limited over a few days, medical care and report of an attack would have been mandatory.  Do I hold any personal animosity? No.  Do I gloat in any way that my outcome surpassed theirs?  No, I would have expected that.

But the punks now are more threatening than these three turned out to be.  And my prediction for their long term underperformance runs parallel to the three outcomes Google searches have revealed for me.

New Friends Amid Covid-19

Making friends was among my semi-annual initiatives, something pursued half-heartedly.  Ordinarily friends evolve from direct personal contact.  You join an organization, select somebody from it, share a joint project, have coffee or come over for dinner.  Facebook creates the illusion of friends, people who are really contacts, people who express themselves but never really converse. Osher Institute's value for seniors like me has been to create personal immersion as will as challenging intellect.  There are chairs in the lounges, round cafeteria tables far too large to eat alone at peak times.  Yet, there is also a book on one of my college reading lists called The Lonely Crowd.  It reviewed the evolution of the other-directed person, one who buys what is advertised, votes with the majority, attends religious gatherings more for the comradery than the elevation of inner spirit.  This has dominated culture but at the price of inner development.  Personal friendships offer a bridge between conformity to achieve acceptance and the development of inner strength that justifies the friendship.

Covid-19 has forced social distance, with a screen via Facebook or Zoom as a rather poor surrogate.  Ideas in real time get exchanged. but not as immediate verbal offer and respond.  Interactions via classes or seminars are structured.  We can drink coffee while we are doing this, but we cannot share coffee.  Attending Holy Day services and one shabbat service in person affirmed that the formality could be preserved but it also exposed the importance of kiddush or brief agenda-free chats while walking to our cars.  We still encounter cashiers in the stores, maybe medical staff when we get seriously ill, but rarely peers.  We have become The Lonely Crowd.

Mincha? Not My First Choice

It's been an ambivalent relationship with my synagogue, which reflects a great deterioration from the enthusiasm of arrival and many elements of participation and contribution in the ensuing 23 years.  But this week, for the month of November which has 30 days, I declared them Snoozed in the manner of Facebook.  The monthly bulletin arrived in the mail yesterday.  Headline, breaking news, they established an outdoor Covid compatible Mincha service once a week.  Flashback of Hebrew school where we also did mincha.  Of all that Judaism puts on the menu I don't think I would select abbreviated worship as a focus, whether it would be Zoom Hallel on a day when Hallel isn't recited in anticipation of a day when it is, a parsha class where people take turns reading from the portion, and other expressions of group mediocrity.

None of this engages me for a number of reasons.  I had no role in its design or in any decisions.  When the various Nominating Committees meet, they have vacancies on the slates.  Not being invited, the logical conclusion is that Nobody would be a better congregational asset than me.  There are committees.  We even have a list of them published every Yom Kippur.  I have never seen a committee report since I was last on one some time ago, have no idea if they meet, if the chairman has invited anyone on it, if their are agenda items other than repeating what was done before.  Institutionalized mediocrity, expected by the increasingly inbred governance, and not challenged in any visible way by the Rabbi who presides over a dwindling unengaged membership.  And to be blunt, with a measure of resentment on my part.

Easy to kvetch, particularly when I have no influence on outcome. A little harder to replace what is there with something better.  No, I don't want to go to Mincha in a parking lot or recited Hallel from the screen.  Neither do most people which the Zoom attendance tallies or the size of the gathering in the parking lot attest.  The congregation, ours or any other, is about getting people to identify with it.  Making it a restaurant where people read from a menu and select will send it the way of other restaurants dropping like flies in a Covid era.  It's about interaction, it's about writing the menu, it's about that invitation to a seat at the table and solicitation of your thoughts once seated there.

This has been created in the past.  In my childhood shul, the Rabbi would invited kids returning from college break to his living room.  No planned lectures, just a few questions opened to the group and conversations.  Real conversations, not a line of people waiting for their two minutes at the microphone like our meetings.  Our congregation has had brainstorming sessions modeled after a DuPont idea mining process.  People were discussing what they thought.  No designated leaders.  Everyone had their seat at the table.  It is that table that needs construction, not another trough nailed together by people of title to fill with what they think everyone else will immerse their snouts into.  The members have decided that about 15 of them will want to be there for mincha, at least a third of them the designers of that mincha.  

If there were a Covid friendly chat room with a subject, I might go.  Assign Board Members to man it at designated times.  If there were online Rabbi Office Hours, might attendance exceed what mincha in the parking lot generates?  And why mincha or any other Hebrew School surrogate?  Why not shabbos?  That why not has disappeared for congregational conversation.

But for now, being on the periphery when there should be no periphery, Snooze Congregation for 30 Days at least gives me a chance to intercept my own response to what has become an increasing unwelcome experience that needs a better alternative.  And the alternatives are out there, but generally external to the business as usual ruts the Executive Committee and Rabbi seem to find comfortable.

National Park Maybe

I've been an enthusiast of America's National Parks since I first made Zion and Bryce a destination.  Once I became eligible, for $10 as an entry level Senior, I purchased my Park Pass which has gotten me to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Rocky Mountain Parks.  All spectacular.  I've only been to one eastern park, Shenandoah which I visited as a side trip from Charlottesville.  I'm sure it was more spectacular than I realized, though travel limited to the Skyline Drive main road and few minor offshoots.  No mammals seen, don't even remember road kill.  It had been my intent to detour from St. Louis to Mammoth Cave last year, a project undermined by airline delays that made a long round trip unrealistic.

It's time to go again, so much so that I designated it a semi-annual initiative, even amid Covid-19 restrictions.  These parks are big.  Having the summer depleted, I can no longer head north to Isle Royale or Acadia.  There are some southeastern options.  Mammoth Cave is a little farther than I want to drive.  Great Smokies seems the closest beyond Shenandoah, about a 10 hour drive.  It is the most visited of the National Parks, but seems a lot like Shenandoah.  It was cobbled together by mass purchase of farmland or privately held forests.  There are hotels nearby and side trips to either Asheville or Knoxville, in different directions, that have a few attractions of their own.  This seemed the best option.

However, I looked at the Everglades, which I have seen from the air.  It's geography is less familiar to me, wildlife easier to find, Florida weather has an advantage over the Appalachians in December.  After checking on logistics, airfare and hotels are far less expensive than I would have predicted for Florida in their high season.  Being economically dependent on snowbirds and other tourism, they must have taken a very big hit from the virus.  The hotels are a bit farther from the park than those of Great Smokies.  Still there is a lot more to do in Florida than in North Carolina at the onset of winter.  I even know people who live within a drive of there, though I don't know about the willingness of old friends to have people stop by, even with precautions.  

Given the options, I'm leaning toward the Everglades, but will see if anyone else has experience with these two parks and their surroundings.

Roaming the Costco Aisles

My wallet contains an expired Costco card which gets me through the door but not to the checkout line.  When I had my own medical practice, I paid extra for a premium membership which qualified me for their credit card services.  After leaving, reduced my membership to standard every two years.  I needed bifocals and Costco's Optical Department was the best option for bypassing an Italian Mamzer who cornered the lens market, inflating prices and not really disclosing what he actually controlled.  So it was one year on, one year off.  The savings on the bifocals would more than offset the membership fee.  And I took advantage of it.  There were a lot of good buys at Costco, which must be run by college psych majors who know how to generate wants.  This was a bifocals renewal year but the prescription change was small enough and my need to enjoy maximum visual acuity in retirement did not justify the expense.  But I needed my eyeglass frames refitted so I went. 

Not having an active card defined me as a window shopper.  I'm not much for prestige items.  Have enough TV's.  Mattress OK.  As much as I covet those high end gas ranges that the professional cooks have, I don't need one, especially when it means getting a plumber to run pipe from my gas furnace into the kitchen.  But there are petty indulgences.  Cookware, maybe an indulgent office chair, always clothing that I might buy out of artificial want more than need.

And I like specialty food.  Cheeses with acceptable hechshers.  Gravlax.  I didn't see any herring this time but didn't do a thorough search.  Frozen kosher tiramisu, I assume still in the freezer section which I did not explore. Their warehouse sized bags of kettle chips which I've banned from my house.  Don't know what I would have gotten today with an active card.  Better off without an active card.