Word of the Day: impetrate(IM\pi\treyt); to entreat; ask for
Weight: 206 pounds
Goal: lose 100 pounds in one year duratioPounds to lose: 74 pounds
Waist Size: 44 inches
Rowing Duration: one hour, twenty-two (22) minutes
Okay, you did it, you made it through Monday and now that it is Tuesday, you only have four days left to the work week, three, if you don't count today, you can do it, you just have to believe in yourself, I believe in you!
I need a drumroll please, unbelievable, there are just twenty-five (25) days left until the biggest holiday of them all, twenty-five days until Christmas, twenty-five days until your children are at their happiest, twenty-five days to enjoy your children's good behaviour, and only thirty-one days left to smoke, if indeed you have that filthy habit, and it is only a habit, but this next year, this is going to be the year that you are smoke-free because you are going to finally quit smoking, aren't you Lily!
I, too, am going to make some resolutions for the New Year, I just don't know yet what they are, there are so many to choose: eat better, yes I know I'm already attempting this but it is nothing if I don't keep at it; continue to exercise, actually, I don't want to look at my time on Cruella and CC as exercise, I want them to be part of my morning routine, right up there with brushing my teeth, that kind of thing, not judge others so harshly, I still tend to be awfully critical of people, I need to learn to be accepting of all people, warts and all, I want to better manage my money, yes, I think this is the one that I am going to give alot of my attention and energy.
I tend to be materialistic and have alot of "things" that I don't need or require. I think the worst thing that I collect are my dvds, and blue-rays, my collection is never-ending, and I know I have over three thousand of them, which are mostly movies, this wouldn't be too bad if it wasn't for the fact that for some movies, I have up to five copies; this happens because if I'm in a store and I see a movie on sale for a really good price, I just can't resist buying it! Are you guilty of this offence?
I just did some quick arithmetic, I estimated my dvd holdings to be about three thousand, and lets say I paid at least ten dollars for each one of them, true, some of the dvds probably cost less than ten dollars, but then again, I know many of them cost way more than ten dollars, so averaging ten dollars for each one is a good, honest estimate. Now, comes the scary part, multiplying three thousand by ten, bringing me to, gulp, "THIRTY-THOUSAND DOLLARS!," (keep breathing Efrem,) oh my goodness, that amount of money would have been nice to add to the down-payment of my future winter home, THIRTY-THOUSAND!, the realization of my frivolous spending kind of gets stuck there in my throat (and mind!)
My toes are still purple, but my left foot is less sore, so I guess things are improving. My breathing seems to have settled down as well, thank goodness, I don't especially enjoy having to get two needles a week, the depomedrol shot in the arm can be quite painful.
Heart Disease, for both men and women is a huge killer to the sexes in both Canada and the United States of America, because of that, yes today, I'm going to write about it, we have to get control of this disease, and you need to arm yourself with facts, so here is a start:
Did you know that the link between heart disease and job strain is aleady well established for men, and now researchers say the same holds true for women. Women with high levels of job stress are eighty-eight (88) percent more likely to suffer a heart attack and forty-three (43) percent more likely to need heart surgery than women with less stressful jobs, so my advice to you gals is if you can't stand the heat, send your husband to the kitchen (well, I thought that was cute.)
Anyway, where was I?, oh yeah, job strain, a form of psychological stress (also known as (aka) a husband, hehe,) is defined as having a demanding job that provides limited opportunity for creativity or decision making. These findings emphasize the need to help women manage job-related stress.Women with very demanding jobs are nearly twice as likely to have a heart attack as their peers in more easygoing occupations, a new study suggests.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School analyzed ten (10) years of survey and medical data on more than 17,000 women in the health profession. The women, who were enrolled in a long-running study on heart disease, were all in their 50s or early 60s when the study began.
Women who were stressed out by work, (never a pretty sight, let me add,) or worried about losing their jobs, were more likely than those with steady employment to be physically inactive and to have high cholesterol. (Job insecurity by itself did not appear to increase the risk of heart attack, this fact blows my mind; I can't believe it; however.)
"This new data is among the most important to emerge in recent years concerning the relationship between job strain and cardiovascular health," says Peter Kaufmann, Ph.D., a researcher at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute who has studied mental health and heart disease but was not involved in the new research. Doctors and other experts in the field need to do more to help people manage work-related stress, Kaufmann adds. The findings "emphasize that progress is needed urgently in this arena" he says. And remember what I proclaim is the key to life, and work, success is not measured by the dollars in your bank account, nor by job title!
The increased risk of heart attack seen in the study can't be attributed solely to health or socioeconomic factors. To zero in on job strain, the researchers controlled for age, race, education, and income, as well as blood pressure, body weight, and cholesterol. And even though all of the women in the study were health professionals, it was a "very socioeconomically diverse" group that included doctors, nurses, dietitians, and researchers, says the lead author of the study, Dr. Michelle Albert, M.D., a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston.
Much of the research to date on job stress and heart health has been done in men. But women are more likely than men to experience job strain, not to mention stress related to home and family demands, says Paul Landsbergis, Ph.D., an associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, in Brooklyn.
Famous last words "I was too busy for heart disease, until it almost killed me!"
"The results certainly imply that we need to do more to make jobs healthier," Landsbergis says. One way to accomplish this, he adds, might be to give individual workers more control over their jobs through collective bargaining and other types of organizing.
For her part, Albert recommends some simple steps to help women limit the impact of work-related stress: Exercise regularly, try to leave your work at the workplace, and take 10 to 15 minutes a day to relax and concentrate on your physical, mental, and emotional health. It's also important to have a network of family and friends to help you cope, she says.
"We're never going to be able to get rid of stress, some stress is positive, actually," Albert says. "The negative aspects of stress we're going to need to learn how to manage."
Naturally, there are plenty more surveys, studies, and news on "heart disease" and if you fall into this group of people wherein this deadly killer lies, I urge you to do find out all that you can, and get off your duff, and start improving your health, (yes, even I am in this group, but I am trying to improve my situation, so there!,) there are many people out there counting on you and would miss you terribly should you suddenly die from a heart attack, do you really need that cigarette and/or donut?
Today would have been, and is the birthday of one of my very favourite writers, Miss Louisa May Alcott who was born in 1832, a little while ago indeed.
Determinded to contribute to the small family income, Louisa May Alcott began writing to help support her mother and her sisters. Miss Alcott first achieved widespread fame and wealth with "Little Women," one of the most popular children's books ever written, although I read it as an adult and I did not feel it was too young for me. The novel, "Little Women," which recounts the adolescent adventures of the four (4) March sisters is largely autobiographical. Isn't all great writing autobiographical?
Louisa May Alcott's first book, "Flower Fables," was a collection of tales originally created to amuse Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson, how about that?
In 1860, Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly. She was nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, D.C., for six weeks in 1862-1863. Louisa May Alcott's letters home, revised and published in the Commonwealth and collected as "Hospital Sketches" (1863, republished with additions in 1869,) garnered her first critical recognition for her observations and humor. Her novel "Moods" (1864), based on her own experience, was also promising.
A lesser-known part of Louisa May Alcott's work are the passionate, fiery novels and stories she wrote, usually under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. These works, such as "A Long Fatal Love Chase" and "Pauline's Passion" and "Punishment", were known in the Victorian Era as "potboilers" or "blood-and-thunder tales." Her character Jo in "Little Women" publishes several such stories but ultimately rejects them after being told that they are "dangerous for little minds." Their protagonists are willful and relentless in their pursuit of their own aims, which often include revenge on those who have humiliated or thwarted them. These works achieved immediate commercial success and remain highly readable today.
Alcott also produced moralistic and wholesome stories for children, and, with the exceptions of the semi-autobiographical tale Work (1873), and the anonymous novelette A Modern Mephistopheles (1875), which attracted suspicion that it was written by Julian Hawthorne, she did not return to creating works for adults.
Louisa May Alcott's overwhelming success dated from the appearance of the first part of "Little Women:" or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, (1868) a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood years with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. Part two, or Part Second, also known as "Good Wives," (1869) followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages. "Little Men" (1871) detailed Jo's life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of "Part Two of Little Women, Jo's Boys (1886) completed the "March Family Saga."
Most of her later volumes, "An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870)", "Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag (6 vols., 1871–1879)," "Eight Cousins and its sequel Rose in Bloom (1876)," and others, followed in the line of "Little Women," remaining popular with her large and loyal public.
Although the "Jo" character in "Little Women" was based on Louisa May Alcott, she, unlike Jo, never married. Alcott explained her "spinsterhood" in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, "... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."
In 1879 Louisa May Alcott`s younger sister, May, died. Alcott took in May's daughter, Louisa May Nieriker ("Lulu"), who was two years old. The baby was named after her aunt, and was given the same nickname.
In her later life, Alcott became an advocate of women's suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election.
Despite worsening health, Alcott wrote through the rest of her life, finally succumbing to the after-effects of mercury poisoning contracted during her American Civil War service: she had received calomel treatments for the effects of typhoid. Luisa May Alcott died in Boston on March 6, 1888 at age 55, two days after visiting her father on his deathbed. Luisa May Alcott`s last words were "Is it not meningitis?"
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