What Would a Hippopotamus Think of This? in Everyday Ramblings

Will you look at that? Crocuses in late January! They are about two weeks earlier than normal here. Yesterday they were such a welcome sight in the heavy almost freezing fog and noxious air. I love those Easter colors. I have lived here long enough that I knew where to check and see if they were up yet.

Mrs. Sherlock has a bug that is going around so decided it was prudent not to walk so I went to the gym early and came home and puttered the rest of the day.

It is amazing how much time one can spend on changing batteries, changing light bulbs (I have this annoying specialty feature in my dining nook area that involves special bulbs and holding this not insubstantial glass plate overhead).

I was at least mollified that all the pushups I have been doing made that a little easier than it has been in the past.

And I read. I had Heart A History by Sandeep Jauhar on hold at the library and picked it up last weekend. I was a little concerned because I am pretty squeamish when it comes to inside the body “stuff” but it is accessible and interesting and starts with the same CT scan I had a few months back that kind of changed the whole focus of my regular exercise program.

There are a lot of very driven eccentric self-testing doctors making these breakthroughs that we all take for granted these days. And way too many smuggled abandoned dogs in for experimenting… one of them a doctor associated to this day with the organization for whom I work.

Wow. I know quite a bit about how muscles and tendons and ligaments and bones work but the heart…not so much. The thing I find most touching is how much social support has to do with heart health.

I wish I had understood this more when I was growing up. I am pretty good at the driven, pulling one’s up by one’s bootstraps, determined focused way of living life but what I am not very good at in general is the softer social aspects. Having a father who was a misanthrope didn’t help but my brother (who also had the same father), actually has pretty good social skills when he puts his mind to it.

When I was taking a course on yoga and stress reduction from Olga my teacher, she recommended a book called, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. I have it on my Kindle and haven’t finished it but I dip into it often to share tidbits with my students about the physiology of stress.

I have been listening to a podcast interview with the author, a physician at Stanford this last week and his conclusion is to recognize that so much of what we consider and apprehend as stressful, (the young woman talking on the phone doing multiple transactions and ripping her check and taking forever and blaming the machine at the ATM the other day) would not say…. be stressful to a Hippopotamus.

And also to bolster and build up one’s social support network.

A lot of it has to do with a sense of control and a sense of status and where we are in the group. This is why this being ignored thing at work is so painful to me.

And why I need to find a few other folks to walk with or hike with besides Mrs. Sherlock. She knows that, I know that but it hasn’t happened yet.

Apparently in spite of all my trying and not knowing why, running in a group appears to not be an option for me.

Maybe a gym buddy. I had this great gym buddy, a beautiful younger woman, when I was working in Oakland back in the day. She was a coworker, the gym was two blocks away, we both had relatively high enough positions that we could flex our schedules and we had a blast being recreationally competitive. We were both sad to have me move here even though it was the right thing for me to do.

Now that I have my “ears” I need to make an effort to get out there in the world.

Last updated January 29, 2019