Tag Behavior

You can’t keep a good Jingle down

Michael 12 Comments

Why is it some days I can think of nothing to write and others, there is a surplus of ideas that I could pick from. I usually keep the serious stuff for the ROAMcare site which means most of the time this site is left with the breezy, often trivial, rambling essays that makes little sense outside the confines of my mind.

This week though, this week is serious stuff.

Last week, actually the last couple of weeks I’ve been more than a little distracted. The daughter’s doggie Jingle, who might as well be part mine they live so close and he’s here so often, is facing his mortality. He is suffering from an osteosarcoma in his front left what would be a shoulder if he was a human. (Scapula in dogs? Maybe it is a shoulder too.) After a couple of weeks of tests and scans, his only hope of fighting his fight is to have the leg and shoulder amputated which is scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. That’s assuming the one final scan he has before the surgery does not reveal any metastases to the chest or lungs. If he has the surgery, a final biopsy will determine if he would benefit at all from chemo also.

I just spoke of Jingle in The Search for Bigfoot when I described him as “fairly normal-sized for a dog of indeterminate origin. He’s part pointer, part husky, and looks those parts. But he has feet the size of an ottoman, which has always led me to describe him as a yointer. Part pointer, part Yeti. It seems that could be accurate – technical differences between Himalayan abominable snowmen and hairy North American cryptids notwithstanding.”

For the last 2 or 3 weeks, the little fella hasn’t been able to use that leg, either because of the pain when he puts it down or the inability to move it from the nerve compressed by the tumor, so he’s already been getting his practice hopping on three legs and still does a mile walk every morning (down from his usual 2-2&1/2 miles), and he still eats and plays, and still demands scratches and treats. As the daughter says, “He’s still jingly.”

Providence smiled on us when last Friday we celebrated the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, he who is invoked at the annual blessings of pets at many churches around the world and which ours held just yesterday. It was the reminder that a medal of that very saint hangs on Jingle’s collar and that dogs too need prayers.

If you are of a mind to, perhaps you’d mention Jingle in your prayers tonight.

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You’re used to seeing a blurb here about the latest Uplift blog post. If you can’t decide if you should click that link and go find it, it could be just right for you because it’s about problem solving.

But before you go look, have you yet thought about joining the ROAMcare community and have the weekly Uplift blog delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly a Monday Moment of Motivation, and our email exclusive Blast from the Past repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at  ROAMcare.org.

Take a peek – Solving Problems the Right Way

Michael 9 Comments

Hello fellow bloggers! I invite you to take a peek at another ROAMcare post, Solving Problems the Right Way.

Among our interactions at home, at work, and places in between, there are few when some disagreement doesn’t arise. True problem solving has less to do with deciding who is right and everything to do with finding the right way to be.

 

Solving Problems the Right Way

Posted October 2, 2024
3 minute read

In just about a month, Americans will go to the polls to elect 23 governors, 33 senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives, one Vice President and, oh yes, one President. In many of those races it is difficult to differentiate the opponents from their ads and campaign signs. Regardless of party, the advertising party is for the “hardworking people” and the opposition is “too radical” or “too extreme.’’ How is it that both sides can be right? They can’t, and too often neither side is.

We see the difficulties in expressing oneself without bias or without attempting to either make less of someone’s accomplishments or to make more of one’s own when they are presented to us in such jarring fashion as a political ad. If we took a close look at our own interactions with those who take a different view of how something should be done, would we see the same traits as we are seeing now being played out on the larger stages?

Read the full blog at Solving Problems the Right Way on us lift at ROAMcare. As always there is no fee to read, nothing to join, no catches, no kidding.

While you are there, consider joining the ROAMcare community and have Uplift delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly a Monday Moment of Motivation and our email exclusive Blast from the Past repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at ROAMcare.org.

Uplift 2024

Hunting Headlines

Michael 10 Comments

I almost didn’t post anything today. I had the art already done so I figured I should use it. I hate to waste brain power, I have so little of it available.

It’s been a hard week. In some future post I’ll tell you about it, but for now let’s just say I’m tired. Some days I have the energy of an 8 year old. Other days, the energy of an 8 year old dog. Just getting old enough to really enjoy laying in that spot of sun across the living room floor. Actually that’s *lying* in that spot of sun. See what I mean. A fresh brain wouldn’t make that mistake.

To get back to what I was going to write, which would have been a diatribe against headline writers, I present to you some headlines. They were going to be much more politically oriented, controversial, and certainly tick off somebody. The moral of the story being if you live your life based on headlines and sound bites you probably think it’s appropriate for a man to wear a hat to the dinner table. Probably worn backwards to boot.

Anyway, just yesterday I was shocked (shocked! I say) to discover headline bias in the sports section. See the image below. I watched that game, and to be perfectly honest, neither headline is accurate. But … but, you still have to be a disgusting example of humanity to wear a hat at the dinner table. And for the particularly dense ones, breakfast and lunch too.

See you next week.

Blog Art 2

You’re used to seeing a blurb here about the latest Uplift blog post. It’s a dandy one if I say so myself. You can read it in the ROAMcare site. But before you go look, have you yet thought about joining the ROAMcare community and have the weekly Uplift blog delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly a Monday Moment of Motivation and our email exclusive Blast from the Past repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at  ROAMcare.org.

 

Take a peek – Harvesting Greatness

Michael 3 Comments

Greeting dear blogging friends! I give you another peek at a ROAMcare post, Harvesting Greatness.

Harvest time is here. Time to set aside the hard work and reward yourself. Time to harvest the greatness you have carefully cultivated.

Harvesting Greatness
Posted on ROAMcare, September 25
3 minute read

Summer is behind us; Autumn is just beginning. Fall festivals and harvest fairs are on the calendar. Harvest time. A period of celebration going back centuries. Millenia even. It was the harvest that fueled communities through the stinginess of winter and the necessary thriftiness of spring. Summer would bring moments of respite from the stored necessities while everyone waited for the annual fall bounty. Naturally there is a caveat to this celebratory season. You reap what you sow. In the words of American author Ralph Ransom, “Before the reward there must be labor.”

There will come a time when you want to set aside the hard work and reward yourself for that labor. There will come a time to harvest the greatness you hopefully cultivated.

As with harvesting a crop or a backyard garden, there is more to reaping the bounty than simply pulling up what had been planted. And as we had compared cultivating greatness to tending one’s garden, harvesting greatness also has its comparisons to reaping one’s bounty.

Read the rest of Harvesting Greatness at Uplift on ROAMcare.org. Yep, like always, there is no fee to read, nothing to join, no catches, no kidding. While you are there, consider joining the ROAMcare community and have Uplift delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly a Monday Moment of Motivation and our email exclusive Blast from the Past repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at ROAMcare.org.

Uplift 2024

The Search for Bigfoot

Michael 22 Comments

Believe or not, that title is not a tease. Click bait is beyond my scope of operations. Or maybe behind. Either way, it’s a legitimate topic. For now.

My daughter has a dog. He’s fairly normal-sized for a dog of indeterminate origin. He’s part pointer, part husky, and looks those parts. But he has feet the size of an ottoman, which has always led me to describe him as a yointer. Part pointer, part Yeti. It seems that could be accurate – technical differences between Himalayan abominable snowmen and hairy North American cryptids notwithstanding.

Sasquatch, or good, old Bigfoot, the overly tall, overly hairy, overly plodding biped, bipedalling his way through dense forests has been sighted all over North America. But then, so have UFOs. Anyway, Bigfoot’s big believers see him everywhere, but usually in the Pacific Northwest. One of his names, Sasquatch, comes from the Salish Saquits indigenous people of that region.

But my daughter’s dog is an eastern U.S. mutt, raise from puppyhood in Western Pennsylvania. Where would a Bigfoot find his way into that animal’s lineage. Well, Pennsylvania apparently is a hotbed of Bigfoot activity. So hot there’s an annual Bigfoot Camping Adventure sponsored by the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society. How did I live here for over 60 years and not pick up on that?

I just found out about it and them on Sunday when I was reading an article that they participated in a local town’s fall festival with merchandise, artifacts, and even bus tours to sightings sites. (I can hear the tour guide now. “Ladies and Gentlemen, if you look out the right side of the bus, you’ll see a break in the trees. We will depart the bus an’ go through that break about 30 yards, cross the crick, turn right, go 32 paces from the fallen hemlock tree to the spot where Ole Zeke heard Bigfoot a’moaning. You taller folk with long legs might want to stop at 28 paces. An’ don’t interrupt the UFO folks on the trail. They gots a sightin’ site one crick over.”)

It seems that just in the last 8 years there have been over 50 Pennsylvania sightings reported to just this one group, one pretty much in my backyard. So now when I say that my daughter’s dog is a yointer, I could be right!

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Here is where you may be used to seeing an invitation to read the most recent Uplift by ROAMcare blog. Consider joining the ROAMcare community and have Uplift delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website. In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly a Monday Moment of Motivation and our email exclusive Blast from the Past repost of one of our most loved publications every Friday. All free and available now at ROAMcare.org.

Take a peek – Are You Ready?

Michael 2 Comments

Hello fellow bloggers! I invite you to take a peek at another ROAMcare post, Are You Ready?

You want to feel you are ready to take on whatever you are asked to do. Regardless the task, preparation is the first step.

Are You Ready

Posted September 9, 2024
3 minute read

The NFL Seattle Seahawks’ offensive line coach Scott Huff is known for his philosophy, “Confidence comes from preparation.” You might think you are good enough to take on any situation at a moment’s notice, but how confident of success are you without taking the time to prepare for it. You want others on your team…or in your family or at work…to feel you are ready to take on that assignment, plan that vacation, lead that team, or paint that living room.

Are you sure you are prepared? Are you confident that you are ready to move from thought to action? How can you tell?

Read the full blog at Are You Ready on Uplift at ROAMcare. As always there is no fee to read, nothing to join, no catches, no kidding.

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An old fashion shoot ‘em up

Michael 11 Comments

I have to be honest at with you. This post was to be a critique of the debate. There was just so much ammunition. Enough to fill a year’s worth of blog posts. From hidden communication devices (Trumpican: She was wearing magic earrings to help her. Normal Person: How did her earrings make him say stupid shit?) to dinner menu choices (Trumpican: They are eating dogs and cats. All high and mighty one says so. Normal Person: He would know. He is a dirty dog who never skip a chance to grab some pus…..) …umm, but all that’s been done and it’s way too easy anyway.

So instead, I’m doing a normal person version of a public service announcement just in time for a real potential disaster. Cold and flu season and a return of covid.

It’s been a long time since I’ve encouraged people to get their flu shots. It’s pretty much not been necessary. Since 2016, flu vaccine rates have increased with some stagnation in 2020 and 2021 when a good chunk of the population was getting its medical information and recommendations from politicians and future billionaire social media platform owners. Even with those idiots attempting to sabotage the then new covid vaccine, flu vaccination rates remained stable.

Unfortunately, the actual flu vaccination rate has never reached the Office of Disease Prevention (of the Department of Health and Human Services) goal of 70% of the population. Most years, the actual percent of population receiving the seasonal flu vaccine is in the 50-56% range. Not good enough!

The flu vaccine repeatedly prevents 67% of potential hospitalizations. Extrapolating for the number of people who go unvaccinated, 44% of those hospitalized for flu do so unnecessarily. According to CDC data, over 18,000 patients were admitted to hospitals during the 2023-2024 flu season. This was the highest rate since 2010-2011. It may not seem like a lot of people, but these are those admitted admitted for flu, not those admitted for other conditions like pneumonia exacerbated by the flu virus.

Why are people still reluctant to get a flu shot? Not understanding the severity of the disease has always been a factor in noncompliance with available, effective vaccines. The emergence of antiviral medications to treat flu symptoms also gives people false confidence in being able to treat the flu if they get it. These are effective but only in a very specific window of virus activity, within 48 hours of infection which may leave only hours after symptoms appear.

If you’re older than 6 years old, there is a flu vaccine for you. Go get one.

Flu shots aside, there are other vaccines this season to seriously consider. The first is covid. Yes, since the pandemic has cooled, little has been heard of covid and only those most susceptible have routinely availed themselves to the annually updated vaccine. Although a large percentage of the population has some immunity to covid, that immunity is likely effective against earlier variants, no later than the delta variants. New strains of the omicron variant have been noticed with increasing frequency in at-risk patients, the young, the old, the immunocompromised. If you don’t know if you are in one if those groups, you probably are.

How bad is the new covid strain. Over 10 million Americans over 65 were treated in hospitable emergency rooms in June. That’s twice as many as last June. Over 60% of those presenting to an ER with covid symptoms are hospitalized and of those 10% die within 24 hours. But those who survive experience few immediate complications. The current most significant risk is developing long-covid and experiencing long-term respiratory problems, GI symptoms, and mental and cognition disturbances.

Regardless of how convincing the charts posted to social media seem to be in differentiating between flu and covid, in life, the differences are not so obvious. The best predictor of infection, and which infection, are home tests. If you are achy, tired, and running a fever, take a test. If you can’t tell if you have a fever, don’t go by the “if it’s not over 100°, it’s not a fever.” If you feel good right now, take your temperature. Do that a couple times a day for a couple days. That is your average normal temperature. If you take your temperature and it is 2° higher than your average normal temperature, you have a fever.

Now there is one more risk for my at-risk friends. RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). RSV has been with us a long time. When I was a young pharmacy resident (yeah, that was a long time ago), we started seeing RSV in pediatric ICUs. Now it is responsible for the hospitalization of 240,000 Americans of all ages. Many  of those are still under 5 years old but now the highest demographic are those over 60. The CDC calls those most at risk are children under 6, adults over 75, adults with immunologic conditions or pulmonary disease over 65, and those routinely in contact with at-risk populations. Finally, a vaccine is out there. Let’s use it.

Those closes this year’s public service announcement. I now return you to your regularly scheduled routine.

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You want to improve how you get through the day? We know how. You need your rests – all four of them! Yeah, four. We talk about them in Get Your Rests, the latest Uplift blog at ROAMcare.

Take a peek – Get your rests

Michael 6 Comments

It’s time for another peek at what’s going on at ROAMcare this week. In yesterday’s Uplift blog we talked about the 4 kinds of rest we need for happier days as well as peaceful nights.

Get Your Rest

Posted September 11, 2024
3 minute read

“I feel like I sleep walked through the day. Being a couch potato isn’t so bad.” Diem didn’t put a question mark at the end of that but Michael, a part-time potato himself, treated it as if she had, and responded, “No, being a couch potato is good way to recharge.” Truthfully, we aren’t sure that it is an ideal recharging method. We do know, however, any down time renews energy needed for all the up times.

Rest is a state most people find hard to come by. No matter how many breaks throughout the day or how uninterrupted a night’s sleep might be, so often it never seems to be enough to feel truly well rested.

We can most often combine physical, mental, emotional, and sensory needed rests in a single quality rest target. Trying to separate the four is like trying to unbraid a rope. You end up with 4 strings but together they are stronger than any of the four alone. What affects one, affects all. Both ways

Read the rest of Get Your Rests and see why we say if you want to improve how you get through the day, you really need  to get your rests – all of them!

Uplift 2024

It’s that time again

Michael 11 Comments

It’s that time again. This is just way too much stuff up in my brain and if I don’t open the release valve and let some out, I’m going to end up with a massive headache.

Speaking of headaches, does anyone else remember the Excedrin Headache Number ___ commercials. I was hoping to find a list of them. I don’t know why, but I was, and I can’t. I did find some of the commercials though. Excedrin headache #20- the new secretary, #24- what’s for dinner, #39- shopping for shoes, and #44- driving home. If anyone knows of others, please let me know too. They were the kind of low-key comedy we can use today.

Not at all comedic, I wonder what’s the remedy for headache #AK47. Oh wait. I know. Thoughts and prayers. In case you missed it, after the 14 year old shot 4 people in school in Georgia that everyone was talking about, 2 days later in Maryland a 16 year old shot a 15 year old in a high school bathroom, then the day after that a fine defender of the Second Amendment brought a new definition to the term ‘road rage’ when he randomly shot at passing cars on a Kentucky highway.

Something else not comedic, merely desperate and a grave sign of insecurity, when did it become the new macho standard for men to wear black wedding bands? News flash– they look even more stupid than a shaved head combined with a full beard.

On a lighter note, remember when I was bemoaning the loss of color in modern automobiles. Just yesterday morning there was a pretty, light blue car that pulled up in front of my house. It was such a refreshing sight. And I thought a welcome sight too. Maybe I was getting company! But no, they were there to visit the folks next door. [Sigh]

Speaking of cars, I saw a video last week of a guy showing off the new to him 30 year old roadster. Being an owner of 25 year old roadster it was up my alley, or driveway. He happened to mention some of the more atypical factory options the car included and mentioned the original owner “ticked the box off on that on the options sheet.” That brought back an old memory – ordering a car. Did you ever order a car from the factory? Let me know. I’ve bought new cars, I’ve bought old cars. Once, I actually ordered a car. Went into the dealership and sat down with a sales person and an option sheet and actually ordered the very car I wanted. I remember what it was but not when. A black on black Buick Riviera T-Type. I think 1982 but it could have been 1984. I ordered it but never got it. The order went in 2 days before the auto workers staged a strike against GM and that was the end of that.

Football season is here. Also yesterday, shortly before noon the neighborhood was filled with the sounds of life. People out for walks, lawnmowers whirring, backyard chatter, the occasional passing car. At 1:00pm, Eastern Time, aka KICKOFF TIME! all activity ceased. There may have been cheers raised, calls debated, and chips crunched, but if those were happening, they were happening behind closed doors in front of newly purchased from last week’s Labor Day sales big big big(!) screen TVs.

Tomorrow night is the Presidential debate and that is when people should be hunkered down in front of the television and for most of the last 15 elections (if we want to consider 1960 as the opening of the debate generation) most people would be. They seem someone unnecessary now the for the last two election cycles, one of the debaters has decided to not encumber himself with the truth. And still some people are brain dead enough to actually consider it for president. [Shudder]

I feel better now and we now return you to your regularly scheduled headache.

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We have a choice every day. Do we make it fun or will it be dreadful? Death is tragic often enough. Don’t make life tragic also. Read our take on that at Each Day a Bonus, the latest Uplift blog at ROAMcare.

Take a peek at Each Day a Bonus

Michael 7 Comments

Hello dear bloggers. Today I bring you a peek of yesterday’s Uplift post at ROAMcare.org, Each day a Bonus. We have a choice every day. Do we make it fun or will it be dreadful? Death is tragic often enough. Don’t make life tragic also. Make every day a bonus.

In the last week, several “young” deaths made headlines. Hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew, ages 31 and 29 respectively, lost their lives to a drunk driver. Hiphop artist Fatman Scoop (Isaac Freeman III), 53, died after collapsing on stage. Olympic wrestler Michelle Fazzari died of cancer at 37. We are sure none of them expected their last day would be their last day.

On the other hand, Maria Branyas Morera died on August 20 at the age of 117 years, 6 months, and 24 days, leaving five people older than 115 years of age still alive. It is estimated that there are more than half a million centenians in the world, nearly 90,000 in the United States, and over 300 supercentenians (over 110 years old) worldwide. These are people who appreciate the daily gift of a new day.

What do the tragically dead too soon and the life-fulfilled oldest among us have in common?

Read the full blog post at Each day a Bonus. There’s nothing to buy, no fee to read. Ever. (You do have to register if you want to comment and join the discussion. Again, though, that is absolutely free.)

We don’t decide how long we live. We do decide how we live. Whatever you decide to do today, do it with a smile.

Uplift 2024