SoCS: Contact Paper, DIY Lucy, and a Praying Mantis

Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “wallpaper.” Use it however you’d like. Have fun!

My parents didn’t have wallpaper that I remembered, because I was probably too young. But I do remember they had “contact paper” in the kitchen over the sink. Contact paper was supposed to be easier wallpaper, I guess. Maybe it was a peel and stick thing. They loved it like the coolest thing since sliced bread. It had yellow, orange, brown, and maybe green flowers, with a 60s look. When we were getting the house ready to sell a few years ago, I peeled it off and painted it yellow. The buyers probably redid all the walls since the house needed a lot of work.

Early in my first marriage, we lived in a duplex that had different contact paper in every room. We had looked at the place in the dark since the landlord didn’t have the electricity on. Of course, that was a mistake, but the rent was low. The living room contact paper was similar to what my parents had over their kitchen sink. The kitchen had contact paper with lemon and lime slices on it. The landlord was proud of it and said, “it came all the way from New York!” He was probably in his 80s and had a thick German accent. Talk about a time warp. The contact paper was still tacky, even in 1985. I hung a lot of stuff on those walls to try to distract from the paper. One thing I hung was a large brown and white tapestry that I bought with the money I saved in a jar when I quit smoking cigarettes. It had a Native American design. I gave it to my son when he quit smoking cigarettes. Who knows where it is now. I still have a lot on my walls, but no contact paper or wallpaper. I do have peel and stick blue and white squares on the wall over my stove. They are meant to be temporary, until I get real tile, but I like them.

Below is a clip where Lucy and Ethel hung wallpaper. Lucy was always worried about Ricky being mad at her, but looking back, he didn’t get that mad. He had some patience. My mom was like a quieter version of Lucy – emotional and zany, but quieter. Come to think of it, Dad was often quiet, though when he used his Gunny Sgt voice, you paid attention and didn’t give him any back talk.

I bet Lucy would love contact paper.

Back to 2022, there have been a lot of praying mantis sightings lately. Besides the one below which I found walking upside down on my clothesline, a big brown mantis was on my shoulder at the sanctuary yesterday. They’re a good luck sign!

Praying Mantis on my Clothesline

I resisted the urge to help and let it be.

~~~

To learn more about Stream of Consciousness Saturday,

visit out host, Linda Hill by clicking HERE.

SoCS: The Conservation Kid, Osteoporosis, and Forward Bends

 Today’s Stream of Consciousness prompt is: “the first 2-5 words at the top of the closest printed matter.” 

There’s a Goodnewsletter open on my coffee table with a story I was thinking about including in my Good News Tuesday post but have not used in the month it’s been sitting there. Now I can use it and move it. Here’s the title on the open page: “Meet the Kid on a Mission to Pick up One Million Pounds of Litter in 2022.” Twelve-year-old Cash Daniels is known as “The Conservation Kid.” Cash and his friends spend “several hours each week picking up trash along the Tennessee River.” Kids like cash give me hope for our future.

(The above is all that would save Friday night when I normally write my SoCs post. The auto-save seemed to be circling, so I had a feeling…. This morning, I’m going back to try to re-create the second part but will try to stay in SoC mode.)

The other printed material nearby is from my medical folder and includes reports on previous bone density tests showing I have osteoporosis. This has not been addressed in a couple of years since my beloved gynecologist who was treating me went and retired. Like my beloved dentist retired. The nerve! Now all my doctors are clearly younger than me. Maybe it’s because I’m retired. (Yay!)

Anyway, I waited 18 months for an appointment with a rheumatologist. 18 months to get in! It gave me time to look up, rheumatologist. They deal with muscular-skeletal stuff and immune system issues, chronic pain, etc. Okay, good.

This rheumatologist said to me, “You’re pretty young to have osteoporosis.”

“Oh, really?”

“Did you ever smoke cigarettes?”

“Yes, in my twenties, for about ten years. A pack or two a day.” (Mostly a pack.)

“That could do it,” he said.

Sigh. “I thought I was over that. I thought my body had overcome that.” I don’t remember my exact words. I felt a bit deflated. He said something about smoking taking years from my bones or adding years. I looked it up. Smoking cigarettes decreases bone density. It just took a long time to catch up with me.

We can’t change the past, but we can do what we can now. (If anyone needs help quitting smoking, I have good experience.) I can look up exercise for bone density on YouTube as the doc suggested. I didn’t find anything that would be good to post here, but what I did find out (from multiple youtube sources) is that people with osteoporosis should NOT do crunches or forward bends. WT? We do forward bends regularly in my senior yoga class “Gentle Yoga for Back and Bones.” It’s not always gentle by the way. I’m good at forward bends. This needs more research and maybe I won’t push the forward bends. Maybe I’ll be more relaxed about them. This needs more research. Has anyone ever heard about this?

Maybe I’ll leave most (not all) of the trash picking up to the young conservation kids, or I’ll get one of those picking up sticks.

Below is one of the roosters at the sanctuary doing a forward bend in front a mirror.

~~~

For more about Stream of Consciousness Saturday, visit our wonderful host,

Linda Hill by clicking HERE.

It’s Possible to Stop Smoking For Good

(Original version posted November 19, 2013)

The Great American Smokeout is coming once again. On the Thursday before Thanksgiving, smokers get the opportunity to quit, knowing others are facing the same challenge. If you smoke, Thursday could be a practice run. Or it could be the day you quit for good. All those other times you tried, but didn’t make it were practice.  If you go three days without smoking, or just three waking hours, that’s practice.

I know it’s not an easy habit to break. That’s because smoking isn’t just a habit, it’s an addiction. If you do something twenty times a day, there will be many potential triggers to contend with.

Mark Twain is credited with saying that quitting smoking is easy because he did it hundreds of times.

During the 10 years I smoked, I must have tried to quit at least 20 times. Back in the late 70’s, I’d regularly quit for an hour or two. One day, I threw half a pack of cigarettes in the trash only to fish them out again two hours later. Then, after smoking one, I broke the rest in half , so next time I had to tape them back together again. They tasted awful when I got to the taped part. This is not recommended. Once, I ran what was left in the pack under the kitchen faucet. They sort of fell apart when I tried to dry them out in the oven. So eventually I went out and bought another pack.

I quit for several months until I thought I could smoke occasionally like a couple of my friends. First I started bumming off my friends, then I regressed to buying whole packs. I tried to hide my addiction from my family. When I got caught, I was ashamed, but fell back into full blown relapse.

Every effort and every relapse taught me lessons. I learned that when it came to cigarettes, I was an addict. I could not smoke occasionally. I learned I had to stay away from triggers as much as possible. I finally quit for good after I studied addiction and recovery, and after I got sick and tired of throwing away my money and gasping for breath when I climbed a flight of stairs. Smoking never did fit with my values. I loved nature. I was supposed to be promoting health. It didn’t make sense. I had to have faith that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

I needed a plan.

I read everything I could get my hands on about quitting smoking. I wrote down the benefits of  quitting including how much money I would save. I made long lists of alternatives- things I would do when I wanted a cigarette, like blowing bubbles, taking a walk, looking at pictures of diseased lungs, taking a shower, screaming into a pillow- whatever it took. I made a commitment.

The first week was the hardest. I put a dollar a day in a jar for each day I was smoke free. (That’s what a pack cost back in the old days)  Over the next few months, the cravings became less intense and further apart. After 60 days I bought myself a beautiful  tapestry with my reward money and hung it on my living room wall like a trophy. After 30 years, I’m usually turned off by cigarette smoke. But every couple years, upon smelling a faint whiff of cigarette smoke, I reminisce for about half a second.

Then I shake my head with a shudder and remember how thankful I am to be smoke free.

If you smoke and want to quit, it can be done.

The American Lung Association’s Freedom from Smoking Program teaches the four Ds:

Delay

Deep Breathing

Drink Water

Do something else

The cool thing about the four D’s is you can use them to help break any habit, or addiction, as one tool set of tools in your tool box.

For more information, go to

www.cancer.org/healthy/stayawayfromtobacco/

www.lung.org/stop-smoking/

Let me know if I can help!