Time keeps on Slipping into the....

Time keeps on slipping, sometimes it slips into the past, sometimes it slips into the future. I was reading Ronnie Bennet's post The Mystery of How Time Slips Away where she talks about time flying away from her. I sometimes feel the same and it bothers me. I have a busy life, like many of you and most of my friends, so I get annoyed when I find that I have lost time. We are, as human beings by nature workers and doers and we need to be productive and be a part of something bigger than yourself. 

The next time you are feeling tired, foggy, and mentally unfocused and you find that time is slipping away, whether it is to the past, as you think about your life, or slipping into the future as you envision what you want to do, take a 5-minute breathing break to flood your brain with more oxygen. Every day you take tens of thousands of breaths and 20% of the oxygen you inhale is used by your brain.

Oxygen is so critical for brain cells that they can live for just a few minutes without it. It may be hard to accept that you aren't breathing "properly," but few people do. Ideally, you should breathe deeply from your diaphragm, not your chest. (Children naturally breathe this way until the constant stress of life retrains them to breathe shallowly.) Breathing helps you gain clarity but it won't make up for the time you have lost and for some this is frustrating. However, if you think of the time lost as the time in-between, the time after an ending and before a beginning then the time lost may not be thought of as a bad thing.  What you are doing could be starting a transition, which could be chaotic. 

However, a transition is a choice. When you get fired, stop practicing law so you can write novels, or hand in your keys to the office, you have made a change, not a transition. A change is an event. A transition is a transformation. Whether or not we are making a change or a transition, we need time to sort life out and sometimes that could mean that time appears to slip away from us. In reality, our mind is aware of what is happening all of the time but it may choose to withhold that information from our conscious mind until we are ready to hear/ Time keeps on slipping, and that could be a good thing for us.

Ventilation for COVID-19

I received this from my friend Sylvia and it is truly scary. It was written by a nurse who works in an ICU and specifically works with ventilators. We are lucky folk who specialize in certain areas and thus know just what to do and how to help. This is her description of what it is like.

Sylvia

Here you go folks... for those people who don't understand what it means to be on a ventilator but want to take the chance of going back to work...

For starters, it's NOT an oxygen mask put over the mouth while the patient is comfortably lying down and reading magazines. Ventilation for COVID-19 is a painful intubation that goes down your throat and stays there until you live or you die.

It is done under anesthesia for 2 to 3 weeks without moving, often upside down, with a tube inserted from the mouth up to the trachea and allows you to breathe to the rhythm of the lung machine.

The patient can't talk or eat, or do anything naturally - the machine keeps you alive.

The discomfort and pain they feel from this means medical experts have to administer sedatives and painkillers to ensure tube tolerance for as long as the machine is needed. It's like being in an artificial coma.

After 20 days from this treatment, a young patient loses 40% muscle mass, and gets mouth or vocal cords trauma, as well as possible pulmonary or heart complications.

It is for this reason that old or already weak people can't withstand the treatment and die. Many of us are in this boat ... so stay safe unless you want to take the chance of ending up here. This is NOT the flu.

Add a tube into your stomach, either through your nose or skin for liquid food, a sticky bag around your butt to collect diarrhea, a foley to collect urine, an IV for fluids and meds, an A-line to monitor your BP that is completely dependent upon finely calculated med doses, teams of nurses, CRNA’s and MA’s to reposition your limbs every two hours and lying on a mat that circulates ice-cold fluid to help bring down your 104-degree temp.

Anyone want to try all that out?

Then stay home!
Stay safe and well!

How grandchildren perceive their grandparents

Thanks to my sister-in-law, Barb for this. I had to pass this along...my belly hurts from laughing!!!!😂

1. I was in the bathroom, putting on my makeup, under the watchful eyes of my young granddaughter, as I'd done many times before. After I applied my lipstick and started to leave, the little one said, "But Grandma, you forgot to kiss the toilet paper good-bye!" I will probably never put lipstick on again without thinking about kissing the toilet paper good-bye...

2. My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday. He asked me how old I was, and I told him, 72. My grandson was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, "Did you start at 1?"

3. After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin. Finally, she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice, "Who was THAT?"

4. A grandmother was telling her little granddaughter what her own childhood was like. "We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods." The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this all in. At last, she said, "I sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner!"

5. My grandson was visiting one day when he asked, "Grandma, do you know how you and God are alike?" I mentally polished my halo and I said, "No, how are we alike?'' "You're both old," he replied.

6. A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather's word processor. She told him she was writing a story.
"What's it about?" he asked.
"I don't know," she replied. "I can't read."

7. I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colours yet, so I decided to test her. I would point out something and ask what colour it was. She would tell me and was always correct. It was fun for me, so I continued. At last, she headed for the door, saying, "Grandma, I really think you should try to figure out some of these colours yourself!"

8. When my grandson Billy and I entered our vacation cabin, we kept the lights off until we were inside to keep from attracting pesky insects. Still, a few fireflies followed us in. Noticing them before I did, Billy whispered, "It's no use, Grandpa. Now the mosquitoes are coming after us with flashlights."

9. When my grandson asked me how old I was, I teasingly replied, "I'm not sure." "Look in your underwear, Grandpa," he advised, "Mine says I'm 4 to 6." (WOW! I really like this one -- it says I'm only '38'!)

10. A second grader came home from school and said to her grandmother, "Grandma, guess what? We learned how to make babies today." The grandmother, more than a little surprised, tried to keep her cool. "That's interesting," she said. "How do you make babies?" "It's simple," replied the girl. "You just change 'y' to 'i' and add 'es'."

11. Children's Logic: "Give me a sentence about a public servant," said a teacher. The small boy wrote: "The fireman came down the ladder pregnant." The teacher took the lad aside to correct him. "Don't you know what pregnant means?" she asked. "Sure," said the young boy confidently. 'It means carrying a child."

12. A grandfather was delivering his grandchildren to their home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmatian dog. The children started discussing the dog's duties.
"They use him to keep crowds back," said one child.
"No," said another. "He's just for good luck."
A third child brought the argument to a close. “They use the dogs," she said firmly, "to find the fire hydrants."

13. A 6-year-old was asked where his grandma lived. "Oh," he said, "she lives at the airport, and whenever we want her, we just go get her. Then, when we're done having her visit, we take her back to the airport."

14. Grandpa is the smartest man on earth! He teaches me good things, but I don't get to see him enough to get as smart as him!

15. My Grandparents are funny when they bend over, you hear gas leaks and they blame their dog.

Should you re-examine your priorities?

This has been a difficult time so on this Sunday in May,m perhaps it is time for some reflection. Over this difficult time, you may have been in the process of re-examining your priorities. If you have not been doing that, maybe it is time to consider doing that, or if you have examined your priorities I invite you to reexamine them.  

When you look at what's on the list, and what priority you give it think about this question. What might you take off the list because it no longer deserves to be a priority?

Take a look at your checklist or to-do list and ask yourself:

“What isn’t on the list… but actually should be?”

I'll share some of the things I think are important in my life
Regular exercise
A meditation practice
More time with my family
More time for ME (reading for pleasure, a long bath, working on a hobby…)
Getting enough sleep

Notice this is not a long list, nor should it be, if you have a list of priorities if it is short, then you can make sure you cover them all If you have a long list then you have a wish list rather than a priority list that you can focus on every day.

This week, why not pick one thing (just one) that’s important to you, but never seems to make it onto your list... and put it on the damn list!  

If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will. (And it won't be the way you want it to be.)