157 50 Years!

50 years--but who’s counting!

Fifty years ago, we weren’t thinking about reaching our wedding anniversary that would mark half a century.

But here we are--June 22, 1968 to June 22, 2018. We never talked about longevity or survival but somehow and some way we made it. Two children and four grandchildren later we are retired and still together.

There have been years of non-stop life events with never a dull moment. Certain things were a given and non-negotiable – college educations, church attendance, family obligations, and more.

We have been supportive, tolerant, and loving through the years. When I recently asked him why we survived he said he always does what I want --- not true. Then he recanted and said we both have done what we wanted but with respect to each other.

There were commonalities as far as values but also some differences. He introduced me to the world of athletic competition. I had always enjoyed school sports events but never competed. When we started dating in college, I learned the ins and outs of a scholarship athlete at the university level. I even ate with him in the assigned cafeteria for athletes - often not a pretty picture!

He became a part of my world as we spent most evenings at the school library studying for upcoming exams. We were a fixture on the campus at Marshall University trekking to the library each evening.

Also, years of coaching took us to state championships and many, many sports dinners and banquets. I got him back when I was a school administrator and would drag him to events and then to newspaper awards dinners when I took a job at the local newspaper. We both went along for the other with a small amount of complaining.

Our further discussions on the longevity of our marriage brought us no closer to any resolution. We really don’t know for sure, but we have never really worried about it. Maybe that is the answer--we just take each day as it comes and face it together.

We both concluded we have a mutual agreement that each one gives the other space and room to follow his or her dreams and interests without making the other follow unless needed.

Oh sure, there are disagreements (we tell our grandchildren it is bickering not fighting), but when it comes down to it, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

There isn’t much else to say except we hope we have many more years to come!!

Frances

156 Never Start!

Never Start!

I recently saw a sign that proclaimed:

It made me consider why I never started . . . and why my parents did.

I was a senior in high when the Surgeon General's report on smoking was issued in 1964. Research generally supports the fact that peer pressure was and still is the most important factor in adolescents beginning to smoke. People who start in adolescence become the most severely hooked in adulthood.

I was a loner in high school, mostly because I skipped my sophomore year of high school and moved to a new school in a new state for my junior year. I had friends at school but the only kids I hung out with was those who were on the swim team. No smokers there--we were in the water all the time.

I also started wearing contact lens when I was 14 and smoke bothered my eyes a lot. It was difficult to be around my parents and to go to most public spaces since everyone was smoking indoors in those days.

But I think the main reason I had no desire to start was one of my assigned housekeeping tasks at home--cleaning ashtrays. The smell of wet ashes was so offensive to me that it made me gag. So my parents found the best preventative!

They were both lifetime smokers. Although they tried to quit many times, they stopped only when my mother became ill (eventually fatally) with throat cancer. My dad died a few years later, mostly from COPD.

In the twenties and thirties, some still felt smoking had health benefits. And certainly until the Surgeon General's report and subsequent legislation, smoking was seen as modern and glamorous.

Print and media ads and motion pictures showed beautiful men and women smoking. Doesn't it seem odd now to see everyone smoking in those old movies?                                                                                                                         My father was in the Navy from when he joined at age 17 until he retired in 1969. Just as tobacco companies pushed smoking among the general public, the companies also concentrated on a huge captive audience in the military.                                                                                                 In World War I, cigarettes were part of the standard ration kit for all allied soldiers. FDR made tobacco a protected crop during World War II. A claim that I cannot verify states that cigarette smoking increased 75% from 1940 to 1945.

When I worked in the base PX in the mid-1960s, cigarettes were quite cheap compared to regular store prices (I recall 20 cents per pack and $2 per case.). Even today, although the military no longer encourages smoking, cigarette use is much higher among military compared to the general population.

It is hard to remember the days when restaurants had ashtrays on every table and a haze of smoke filled the room. There was the intermediate step of non-smoking rooms in restaurants that were not that effective in separating people from the smoke. Now when I see one or two people standing outside a restaurant smoking, I feel sorry that they are hooked but happy they are outside.

The fifty-year anniversary of the Surgeon General's report was 2014. The 2014 report noted that smoking was down from 42% of the population in 1965 to 18% in 2012. However, the report pointed out that one-half million people in the U.S. die prematurely because of smoking. With the opioid epidemic grabbing so much attention, smoking does not command much attention. But Americans and others worldwide continue to pay the price for smoking.

Just lucky, I guess, Trish

155 Directionally challenged

Directionally Challenged

Likely the day will come when Savvy Frances and Savvy Trish toss me out of Three Savvy Broads! I have NO sense of direction. North is up, south is down, west is left, and right is east. 

That is all there is to it. 

HA! This cluelessness about directions has nothing to do with getting older. I have always been this way! I must have north in front of me!

I need and want simple directions. Turn right, go one light. Turn left. The building is on the northeast corner. OH, FOR HEAVEN SAKE. Which corner is the northeast corner? I have NO CLUE. Give me a landmark. It’s the old brick building with the four white columns across from the gas station. Give me something. I have no innate sense of how to get to where I need to be without landmarks. 

Yes, it is I who loves to drive in New York City. NYC is laid out in a grid. Streets are east and west. Avenues are north and south. Central Park is hard to miss. The East River is on the EAST SIDE of the island! So, the Hudson must be on the west side. Areas are called sensible names like midtown, upper eastside, westside, etc. 

I can give tourists directions in NYC, but I can also try to leave a large department store and realize it’s not where I entered. I have to tell myself things like I came in by the perfume counter or I may have to rewalk the entire first floor of the store.

Ah, and here we are - luckily living only 70 miles from our nation’s capital. An easy hour and a half drive if one avoids rush hour. Out-of-town visitors often answer when asked what they would like to do, “go to D.C.” Okay, that’s fine. 

I can get into the city. I even know where some good parking spots are – usually, I park at Union Station. HOWEVER, I cannot get out of the Union Station parking garage in Washington, D.C. to get back to Virginia without getting lost two or three times. As I drive in circles down the parking ramps to wind my way to the station exit, I have lost any sense of direction I had. There used to be REAL HUMANS at the toll booths that would help you out. No more! Stick that credit card in the slot and go. 

And, good grief, PLEASE NO requests that take one around a circle. Absolutely no circles. This is DuPont Circle around which I can go many times before I find where I need to be. D.C. looks so pretty on a map with its star of avenues, but it is extraordinarily difficult for me to maneuver. I always allow an extra half hour for “being lost” time.

Okay, here is my latest adventure. My sweet husband had to have emergency surgery at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore. One of the best rated medical institutions on the east coast. 

HOWEVER, from Winchester, there are a number of routes to get there. Seems it didn’t matter which route was chosen, I still had to get on Interstate 695 and take exit something or other (I think 11) and head towards the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. Well, folks, there is MUCH construction happening on 695 and a detour when I took the (YES, the correct) exit according to Google and Waze. Then the directions, I kid you not, said “head northeast.” OKAY, that’s it! Pull over and try not to have an anxiety attack. Yep, I am lost. 

Keep in mind, too, all the rain we have had in the past month. There are lots of trees in Baltimore. More than I had considered. Could I see the street signs? Some streets signs I never found. The leaves and branches hung over many of the signs.

Johns Hopkins is on the east side of the city. Somehow I ended up on the far west side in a neighborhood that did not look like a major medical center would be anywhere around. I pulled off in a “no parking” slot on a street and waited for a policeman. He was very nice, but he told me to reverse everything I had done and that would get to the east side of the city. THANKS, HEAPS! Betting he laughed all the way back to his station. Okay, I don’t even SEE my exit on this map with the title Baltimore & Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Both Google maps and Waze had given me the directions but it seems my Bluetooth in the car is synced with my phone and directions can get interrupted by phone calls and text messages. I had no idea this would happen. Call me naïve. Call me dumb. But, finally, 40 minutes later, now heading east (I hoped), I saw a hospital drop off circle that said “NO PARKING OR WAITING AT ANY TIME.” I crossed traffic lanes, with flashers on and a toot on the horn, received some unpleasant hand signals and horns from other drivers, and, yes, I pulled in and parked.

Poor husband, after three days in the hospital, was eager to get home. HOWEVER, seems the aide who took him from his room to the exit did NOT use the same exit I was given by phone of where to pick him up. Thank goodness for cell phones. After he and I talked, a security guard gave him directions of how to get where I was. HE GOT OUT HIS WHEELCHAIR and HE walked to meet me! [Had he passed out or fallen, I believe a lawsuit might have been in the works.]

Now here’s the rub! I turn out of the parking lot and start looking for the cross street that we were told would lead us to 70 West to come home. I have yet to find the street! However, dear husband, whose sense of direction is quite good, calmly says, “just keep 

driving, you will run into Route 40 and we can take 81 home.” Well, he was correct. And we did get home and I finally peeled my fingers off the steering wheel in my driveway. 

One last admission to my directional ineptness: if directions take me outside of the 22601 city zip code of our hometown, I can still get lost. Yep, right here at home. No winding streets, please!!

OH, give me NYC grids!!

Not Very Savvy Glenne

154 Cataracts gone!

Cataracts gone!

No more contacts, no more glasses --I can totally see without any eye gear whatsoever! This is the first time since I was in the third grade when I got my first pair of glasses to correct my vision. 

Now at the age of 72, you can do the math to figure the exact number of years I wore glasses and contacts.

Cataract surgery to remove the rascals that had been growing and causing my eyesight to be affected by blurriness and night driving difficulties is the reason for the drastic improvement in my eyesight.

The changes are subtle so you don’t really notice at first, but the annual eye exam keeps you informed of the progress of the growth of cataracts. This was the year when mine had reached the perfect spot to be removed.

The month of April was basically tied up with the surgery with a period of adjustment to follow.

While it is only in and out surgery, anesthesia is used to put you under somewhat. You are awake but feel no pain. All I remember is seeing some light and movement around my eye. It really was over quickly and I felt very little. Once the contact is out, a lens is put in to improve the vision.

Lucky me, they developed one that is similar to a bifocal or multifocal lens. Prior to that, you could either have distance or close up lenses. Or to really confuse the issue, you could have one for far vision and the other for close up. I had tried that once with contacts and did not like it.

This new lens does both distance and near vision. Of course, there has to be a downside --- insurance will not pay to the tune of almost $2,000 an eye. It would pay for the other lens but not the multifocal ones.

It didn’t take me long to decide I wanted the new and improved model. I was worth it and would make up the difference in the cost of not having to purchase glasses, contacts, solution, etc.

The problem is after the first one is removed, you have to wait two weeks to have the other one taken off and the new lens put in. I wore my contact for that two-week period but it was a little disorienting to have one eye with such clear, improved vision and the other not so much. I could not wait for those two weeks to go by!

But it was only two weeks and I knew how improved the vision would be so I had to suck it up and handle it.

There is some recovery time, and you are warned about being careful – try not to fall, don’t participate in contact sports, etc.

The restrictions are minimal compared to years back when patients had to stay in bed and not move their heads for at least 24 hours. Nothing like that is part of the process at this time. A recent episode of one of my favorite TV programs, “Call the Midwife,” addressed this very situation. An elderly nun had to go through the process which included an overnight stay at the hospital. Believe me, we have come a long way. 

Then there are the pesky drops that have to be used several times a day. Of course, they help the healing process and keep the eyes moist. The instructions are very detailed – use the pink top drops at certain times, the beige top at other times, the ointment, and shield at night. Otherwise, it is really pretty simple. 

However, I must admit I took advantage of all the styles and advancements in both eyeglasses and contacts over the years. I paid extra to have the glass lens made thinner and the bifocal line not to show. I also relished in the lens that turn dark when you go outside -- loved them. The frame styles were something I tried regularly --- from cat eyes to small granny glasses and then the large Hollywood look.

It was enjoyable at times to try the different frames, but contacts became so improved I could not resist. I even moved over to multifocal lens as they improved.

But believe me, the surgery had amazing results – waking up and seeing everything clearly, reading the small print, looking at a brighter world in more vibrant colors. I still reach to take off my glasses when I go to bed and try to find them to put on in the morning. I am sure that will subside soon.

If and when you are told you need this surgery, do not hesitate. It is worth the time, effort, and money!

No more contacts, Frances!