Middle Age, Healthy Eating, 401Ks....

And everyone under 30 just ran away screaming from THIS long and boring entry.

So today my day started with taking the dog out into the humidity and early morning pollen that is Florida in April, and my sinuses immediately launched into a retaliatory strike. Took Benadryl - the non-drowsy stuff is also non-effective on me, unfortunately. Just FYI, if you take Benadryl and drink most of a pot of Starbucks you will not get drowsy from the Benadryl but will float around slightly stoned, observing the world from a sort of low orbit, in light cloud cover.

And I realized that I now officially have My Mother's Sinuses. They can predict the weather. It was clear when I woke up and they hurt. It started raining a few hours later. Just one of those charming indicators that the joke is true, you do turn into your mother.

Re the healthy eating - Bess and her BD had a rude awakening/health scare this week, and thank God he's home and doing fine, but it was a reality check for me. They are just a very few years older than I am, and with my family health history, virtually identical to BD's, I am now entering the age where this is no longer something I can think about later. Neither, for that matter, is retirement.

So today I boosted my 401K contribution (having found my account number while cleaning) because now that the Girlchild is moving back in one short week, I will no longer be flinging hundreds of dollars a month Northward. That will make a real difference in my budget, so I can afford to save more and pay down my debts.

And I realized that I can't just halfway eat right. I didn't choose the South Beach Diet because it was trendy, I chose it because Dr. Agatston is a serious cardiologist, not a diet doctor, and he developed the diet at the Mt. Sinai Cardiac Center in Miami. I've read enough about the links between heart disease and Type II diabetes in other sources to recognize that he's got it figured out - eating right for dummies, without pain and suffering. I can't do it halfway anymore and get away with the beer and pizza lifestyle the other half of the time. I'm not "fat" - I'm just inside the healthy BMI for my height - but that's more than I want to carry. I want to be in the middle of the range, not skating out of it after a little overindulgence. So I'm going to listen harder to Dr. A. and follow his wisdom more carefully, and maybe avoid the borderline into fullblown type 2 and heart disease path my father has walked. (He's not overweight either, in fact he's a rail.) I'm convinced the glycemic index is the key.

I haven't touched a needle yet today but I plan to take more Benadryl, fall asleep insanely early, and probably end up wide awake at 4 a.m., knitting. I did set up the scanner, finally, and grabbed three random photos to test it - I love it, it's easy to use and does a great job. (For those who care, it's an HP scanjet 3970.)

So here are three non-digital scanned photos, my testers.

The Baileydog. The greatest golden retriever ever, IMHO.




The kids in Washington, many years ago.



and even more many years ago, me at the age of 6 mos. This picture cracked me up because it's so antique looking - I suddenly realized, damn, I AM old!!!



Obviously I have not quite mastered cropping with the scanning software, but give me a break, that was the first three scans ever.

Off to knit something soft and soothing, and sniffle in the rain....