Ugh! MacMail reports that 122 unread e-mail messages reside on the server. Actually, only about 30 of those are significant. But then there’s all the stuff sitting on the Canvas server, from 20 students in one course and 30 in the other.
Ugh, ugh, ugh!!!!!
Sitting in front of the computer causes physical pain. Not sitting in front of it alleviates said pain. Day before yesterday and yesterday I managed to avoid the desktop. What little, absolutely unavoidably necessary work that got done happened on the laptop, in a relatively low-pain chair — hence 122+ unanswered e-mails — and by yesterday afternoon the back and hip didn’t hurt too much.
This subjective discovery, it develops, is objectively true: one study showed just 90 minutes of sitting in front of a computer induced hypersensitivity to pain in deep tissues. Ninety minutes, eh? I’ve been known to sit mesmerized in front of this thing for eleven hours straight, getting up only briefly to grab a few bites to eat and go to the bathroom.
That tends to confirm my growing suspicion that if I’m ever going to get over this — unlikely, after two years of unremitting pain — I’ve got to get away from the computer.
How exactly to accomplish such a thing baffles me. I make my living on the computer. Really: at this age I can’t be depending solely on Social Security and drawdowns from savings to live…that will pretty much ensure that I run out of money before I die.
On the other hand, I suppose, one could accelerate that latter proposition. There’s hardly any point in living when you’re in agony all the time. And another 15 or 20 years in the present state strikes one as less than desirable.
Oh well.
At the end of the semester, I think I’m going to engineer a two-week break from blogging, writing, editing, indexing, bookkeeping, and anything else that requires extended periods of sitting and staring at a screen. I’ll probably resurrect a dozen “best of Funny” posts to keep the blog alive.
If anyone would like to contribute the occasional guest post, that would be welcome.
Not that yo shouldn’t attempt to limit your hours in front of the computer, but have you tried a stand-up computer station? Or maybe even sitting on a yoga ball?
yes, to both.
For a while, I had a drafting table in the office, on which I perched the computer. It was OK but besides being uglier than pussley it turned cleaning the office from a pain in the tuchus to more work than it was worth. Went back to putting the computer on the desk.
The laptop perched on the kitchen counter will work, sort of, after a fashion. Here, too: major cleaning pain in the tuchus: the counter has to be cleared of all kitchen clutter and thoroughly scrubbed down. And about 15 minutes of standing ends in pain. I can sit longer than that without eliciting pain.
Yoga ball: useful for some, I’m sure. But I find trying to balance on one of those damn things more of a nuisance than the cleaning routines, which are a damn nuisance.
Am left wondering: why try to force the body to spend unnumbered hours in front of a computer when the body is saying, loud and clear, that sitting or standing in front of a computer for unnumbered hours is flicking UNHEALTHY? If you’re supposed to be retired, why are you making yourself sick working?
I suspect that the answer isn’t to make working less uncomfortable. It’s to quit working.
I must have ,missed something…not so long ago you were hiking up trails…providing us with great pictures of the scenery and showing great sucess at weight loss. Now it appears “your falling apart”…LOL ….What happened…what does Dr. Kildare think…and no over the counter meds offer any kind of relief? My DM swears by Aleve which she was throwing down with regularity because of a painful hip…Upon going to the Doc it was found she needed hip replacement and the Doc didn’t understand how whe could function because of the hip’s condition and the pain she must have been in. She now has a new hip and no longer requires the Aleve. Hope you find relief….
LOL! I’m allergic to the active ingredient in Aleve. And to just about every other over-the-counter pain reliever. Prescription pain relievers tend to be, shall we say, addictive. The other that might be helpful, the weed of which we all know, is illegal.
As a consequence, I take no pain reliever other than my favorite potables and ginger decocted into various teas and foodstuffs.
Just saw YKD this morning, the adorable young thing. (sigh!!!) He was SOOOOO impressed by the weight loss. He said the weight and the blood pressure are now (his term) “perfect.”
He felt the idea of knocking off for two weeks to see if that would provide longer pain relief has as its main drawback that, sez he, “it’s unrealistic.” I pointed out that if we knew whether 14 days or so of desk-chair-avoidance would cause the inflammation entailed in the back & hip pain to subside, we would know whether reducing the kind of work I do would be a viable plan. He allowed as to how that was a possibility but looked skeptical.
He was exceptionally annoyed by the sketchy report provided by the Mayo, which he described first as “not very good” and then as he studied it as “second-rate” and “TERRIBLE”! And, one might add, he’s right: it’s all those things.
He noted that the diagnosis of osteoporosis the Mayo delivered (or did not deliver: I don’t remember being told this) in 1995 is marginal. But though he felt it was questionable given the data the Mayo’s report presented, he wanted to do a vitamin D test and a new DEX scan and then discuss whether any pharmaceutical or other therapy might be in order. In the meantime, he urged me to continue doing weight-bearing exercise and to continue the vegetation-heavy, high-quality (but sparing) meat-enhanced diet.
He repeated his speculation that I will never be pain-free and agreed that if the pain level can be kept between .5 and 2 on the scale of 1 to 10, it’s going to be manageable. He said the best way to keep it manageable is to continue exercises that will keep body core muscles strong and skeletal structure stabilized to the degree possible.
Both YDK and the Mayo doc agree that there’s no bad hip involved: the pain is the result of lumbar deterioration associated with age and possibly with osteopenia or osteoporosis.
Age is no country for young men. 😉
But I didn’t answer your question: yes, I’m still walking and hiking and enjoying being skinny again.
The pain is never going to go away: Young Dr. Kildare opined to that effect back in February, and so far he’s been right. Losing weight, walking, faithfully sticking with the physical therapy exercises, and swimming about 1/4 to 1/2 mile a day all summer long REALLY helped. This combination of strategies has reduced the pain level from 7 or 8 on the infamous 1-to-10 scale to about a 2 in the morning and about .5 (sometimes even less!!) by mid-afternoon.
That’s quite tolerable, IMHO. But just between you & me, I’d like to start the day with a .5 and see the pain level drop to .125 (or zero?) as the day progresses. And if getting up off my tuchus for more hours than I sit on it will accomplish that, well…then by all means, I will get off my tuchus! 😀
Does it have to be all or nothing? I remember when you would complain about how the housework was killing you…then you figured out that cleaning one room a week was a better tactic…that is not some stroke of genius by the way…it is the oldest trick in the book. It is called moderation.
And I still say that, although you worry about money, you refuse to take the steps open to you that would serve to, in effect, increase your income. You refuse to discomfort the absolute luxury in which you reside…living alone is bad for most people…an older female living alone in a too large house with a pool is simply too much of everything…too much expense…too much work…and dangerous…Christ! You even bought a gun!
In an actual crisis, a gun never produces a happy ending.
I think you might not be who you claim to be…that you are an avatar…you are obviously intelligent whomever your are…so why not just downsize or get someone to share your house…oh but my precious privacy…blah, blah, blah…
Look…life is like Walmart…lots of shiny stuff on the shelves…take what you want but pay for it! You want expensive pets that require the labor and cost of special meals and the added costs of vet bills…that a luxury but it sounds lame to whine about it…or the pool or all the cleaning and maintenance a large house requires or the job you have chosen…
If you were actually who you claim to be I would suggest you do some lifestyle design…the life you have is causing you physical pain and now you are even saying that your life is not worth living…I hope you are an avatar…because that is about as depressing as it gets…
If you are not an avatar, you need to discuss those feelings with a professional…and if you are as smart as your writing indicates, then you have entered a phase that is common as we age…you don’t want to give up the keys:
My Dad drove until his dying day; in fact, he drove on the day he died at age 91! He refused to give up his keys, we all knew it was not safe for him to drive but he refused to give up his keys.
Obviously, in his mind, his keys represented something more to him than transportation. We all allowed it to continue and by doing so put others in danger, including him!
He didn’t want to give up the keys: you don’t want to give up the big house or living alone or the pool or all the work that a dog requires. Or maybe that’s not really your situation at all…
Look…your life has been all about that stuff for a long time…but for a long time is was about being a good wife to an executive…you made that transition and, if you are who you say you are and not just making this stuff up for its entertainment value, then maybe it is time to start planning what’s next…
Gosh! Thank you for reading Funny so long and so closely!! 🙂 That’s awesome.
Actually, I’ve never bought a gun. The Ruger belonged to my father, and the Derringer was a gift from a friend. And when the cops thought the armed, meth-crazed, Garage Invader was inside the house, you can be sure I was mighty glad I had a pistol that would fire a slug through a solid-core door, if need be. Mercifully, matters devolved into “NOT need be,” but if I’d had to, I would have used my father’s gun and my father’s training to protect myself.
Hah hah! “Life is like Walmart”: that’s an outstanding metaphor. But life, alas, is not a computer game populated by avatars…I’m afraid I’m real. Like Shylock, I have hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions. If you prick me, I do bleed…
Interestingly, in general single women live longer than single men, and most older women who are widowed or divorced will tell you, if asked, that they’re not interested in remarrying. The broadly accepted idea that married people live longer is a myth. Life is good when you don’t have to take care of a man. 😉
As for the alleged luxury: my house is paid for; the landscaping is designed to so that its upkeep is about at the same level as would be needed for a small patio home; the interior is tailored to minimize heavy housework. It’s only 1800 square feet, not exactly a McMansion. And what on earth is wrong with appreciating one’s privacy? We don’t, after all, live in Poland, where housing is so scarce that my in-laws had to live together after they divorced until the (enforcedly un-single) ex-husband died. Is there some moral precept that demands we should play as though we do live under those conditions?
The pool has been a godsend. Possibly you’re unaware of how unsanitary public pools are — you use them at your peril. I know who has been in my pool and what they’ve been doing in it, and you may be sure a public pool is not where I wish to hang out. This summer, the daily vigorous swimming did more to help the back pain than six weeks of intensive physical therapy. A couple of years ago, a a few weeks of swimming helped a dislocated shoulder heal rather quickly after an entire winter of pain. Once the messy, invasive non-native tree was removed, caring for the pool became effortless; even when I had to haul bushels of leaves, pods, and pollen balls out of the water, though, I never hired a pool service for routine care. Today despite my decrepitude I have no problem keeping it clean and operative. Again: is there some moral precept that says I must forgo a commonplace amenity that I can afford and that I can easily care for? Where is this written?
All or nothing…about what? About blogging? Funny about Money has been online since 2007. It has been monetized for years. I can assure you that it was a lot more fun to write when there was no vested interest in publishing a post a day. Since it has never earned more than $400 or $500 a month and today earns significantly less than $100 a month, how is it unreasonable to consider demonetizing it and moving it back to a free platform?
And if two doctors and a physical therapist concur that spending hours and hours parked in an office chair in front of a computer has engendered and continues to contribute to lower lumbar pain, why is it unreasonable to consider ways to decrease that number of hours — particularly by eliminating or diminishing an endeavor that no longer provides a return on the time invested?
Not to return the judgmentalism but…oh what the heck — why not? Don’t you feel it was irresponsible to “allow” your father to continue to drive when you knew he was a danger to himself and others? Strikes me that in the immorality department that far surpasses living alone when someone else thinks you should have a roommate or a husband. Living in a house some stranger has decided is too big for a single woman seems unlikely to injure or kill another person. Keeping a small pet dog hardly makes one a menace on the road. Maintaining a swimming pool, too: how is this likely to harm anyone else? True, I might drown myself in it, but that’s a far cry from running down an innocent pedestrian or crashing a fellow driver.
As for planning what’s next: doesn’t calculating an automobile purchase so that it will be the last car one has to buy amount to exactly that? How is managing one’s money so that it will last until the foreseeable end of one’s life not planning for “what’s next”? And continuing to pay for long-term care insurance? Pricing life-care communities? Bringing one’s weight and blood pressure under control to help delay a cardiovascular event? Exercising every day to stay fit as long as possible? If you’re not doing those things yourself, my friend, better not call my kettle black. 😉
Hello, Funny!
Thank you for the response…that was quick but I hope not too painful. It was totally irresponsible to let my Dad keep driving but hard to be an adult in those situations…there is no excuse for what we kids did.
I read you stress about money. And I have read, including on your blog, that the fear of being a bag-lady is pervasive among females.
But count your blessing! You have a big house, my Mom and Dad raised six kids in 940 square feet, one bathroom. A private pool is a luxury and an expensive pain to maintain, as well.
And I have been in line at Walmart and watched the person in front of me try to buy these huge bags of dog food with food stamps!
You have every right to complain, it’s your blog. But I can’t believe your complaints are genuine. You were able to navigate Medicare and retirement investing but you can’t figure out all the low-hanging fruit in your luxurious lifestyle that would allow you to save money?
I think thou doth protest to much…which leads me to believe your blog has a WWF component to it…just sayin’…for entertainment mostly?
Why would anyone blog for anything other than entertainment? Philip Sidney said it well when he observed that the purpose of literature is to entertain and to instruct. Of course I write to entertain…no one would read this thing if I didn’t. 😀
LOL! Yes, you’re so right! My parents never lived in anything larger than a two-bedroom apartment! Even when they retired and bought a house, it was about the same size…and it was the first place they’d ever lived that had two bathrooms.
It’s amazing how Americans’ expectations have changed, isn’t it? Though our homes were always small — pretty much about what you describe — we felt satisfied with them. In fact, neither of my parents wanted much more size or accouterments, because they didn’t want to have to take care of more square footage.
Thing is, that was NORMAL. No one expected to have anything different, and as I recall we were mighty pleased to have those little places. (Heh…my mother grew up in upstate New York in a house with no indoor plumbing, and my father’s first job was driving a horse-drawn milk wagon, so they felt pretty privileged to have a bathroom at all.) I remember this one apartment my mother found for us in a brand-new building…we were thrilled with it. And it COULDN’T have been as large as 1,000 square feet: 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a modest-size kitchen.
Today, for heaven’s sake, people think a 2,000-square-foot house is “small” and expect to have at least two or three bathrooms. If you fill in your pool, you cut your property value, because in many neighborhoods in the Southwest, a pool is expected. SDXB got his three-bedroom house for a song because the previous owner had removed a wall between the two secondary bedrooms to create a large room for his daughter and her child, converting the house to a two-bedroom and rendering it practically worthless. After SDXB framed out and drywalled a new partition, presto-changeo, the thing reverted to market value. “Normal” is a whole ‘nother critter these days.
And you’re right: I do have a nice, spacious home with a pleasant yard. Because it’s sandwiched between two gang-infested slums, I was able to buy it and pay it off on an adjunct lecturer’s salary, which ain’t much. For what I could get if I sold it today, I could buy a 940-square-foot condo in a better part of town. I don’t wanna live in a condo on the second floor with a covered parking space half-way to Timbuktu, no matter how fancy the ‘burb where it’s located.
I live on a net $2500, approximately, plus whatever I can scrounge from adjunct teaching. Of that, $445 has to be set aside to cover Medigap, Medicare D, homeowner’s insurance, car insurance, and property tax, $200 is set aside to cover short-term emergencies like car repairs, and $1255 is budgeted to cover nondiscretionary costs. Between you’n’me, that doesn’t leave an awful lot of low-hanging fruit.
Dan, Dan,
Long time lurker here. I’m a sixtyish woman who lives alone in a house. I still work — will be working for the foreseeable future. And I can’t tell you how much I envy Funny for having a paid-for house. That’s money in the bank. Money you can withdraw when the time comes that you really can’t live independently any more. The pool is physical therapy — and also an asset when the time comes to sell. The dog is a friend and a comfort. And privacy is priceless.
Like Funny, I would be willing to put up with a lot of things, including inconvenience and physical pain, to be queen of my castle.
And everyone has a God-given right to complain, especially as the years pile up. Don’t get me started.
You need to get one of the desks that converts to allow you to stand or sit. Our admin at work has one and it’s great, it really helped her back.
Hmmm… That’s interesting! I wonder where she found it?
A drafting table goes up and down fairly easily, although with a computer on top of it, you’d have a bit of a hassle. But something with a lever or some similar mechanism: stroke of genius!
I have friends that have clogged email in-boxes. It really gets in the way of communicating with them (long story why email is best). I read on The Simple Dollar years ago about having two email addresses (or more). I have my REAL email address which I give out to people I WANT to hear from. Anyone who asks me for an email address – online or in shops, etc., gets another address. It is an actual email address, but I only check it once every few months, picking up and forwarding items of interest. Nothing time critical goes to the second email (unless you could people trying to contact me via my blog – I really do need to get a third email address…). Just a suggestion. Life’s way too short to spend looking at spam.
The 122 messages are mostly non-spam…it’s stuff I need to attend to. After having shoveled much of the stuff out yesterday, right now there are two messages from students that need to be attended to, five forwarded comments for Funny about Money and Adjunctorium, a form to withdraw money from the defunct insurance policy, three messages from clients, a blat from Twitter announcing yet another new follower, and a paid FAM post that’s been sitting on the server for almost a month because I’ve been too busy or too pained to fiddle with it.
I do have a gmail account to catch spam, which yup, I do give to merchandisers, websites, and other pests who INSIST on an email address. It’s chuckablock full, too, and needs to be cleaned out. Haven’t looked at it in weeks.
Apple’s Mac mail allows you to set up folders and then pre-filter incoming mail to go into specific folders. Right now the folder for The Copyeditor’s Desk contains 96 unread messages and the Trash folder, which catches messages from LinkedIn, the Chamber of Commerce, Local First AZ, DomainsByProxy.com, Facebook, most of the junk from Twitter, EstateSales.net, the Council of Science Editors, the church, Amazon Associates, and a host of other sources of irrelevant chatter that I might like to see at my leisure or whose authors simply will not remove me from their lists — that one has 98 unread messages. So I suppose if you were to add all those up, including the stuff I’ve deliberately derailed into “Trash,” you’d come to something like…what? 210 or so? Not counting the junkmail address on Google.
Students tend to email before they think. I don’t answer a lot of them–and address the question in face-to-face classes. For on-line classes, DH answers as an announcement–answer many at once.
That should cut out some.
Yesh! The “Announcements” function in Canvas is amazingly easy to use, too.
One of my colleagues also suggested using Discussions — as in BB, Canvas’s function sets up an in-house discussion board — to get students to answer each others’ questions. The idea is to tell them to ask their questions on the discussion board, invite students to respond, and then when a kid posts a question, just lay low for a day or so until you see whether a classmate comes up with the answer.
In this mythology course, the “Announcements” function allows students to post comments, which means students effectively can convert an Announcement into a mini-discussion board. Since it’s a very lively group, “Announcements” has turned into a kind of forum on specific topics under discussion in the course at the moment — it really is neat.
Just an after thought…Of course I’m no Doc… but will share that Dear Father was suffering from joint pain and his Doc had no clue….attributing it to old age etc. I went on line and I THINK it may have actually been the Mayo website but can’t be certain….anyway there was a recomendation of a potasium supplement (over the counter) for a older patient experiencing joint pain and cramping in hands and feet. Picked up the potaassium and he began taking it …FIXED…it was remarkable the differeence it made… It appears that with age and the amount of coffee and ice teas he was consuming (both diaretics) that his system became depleted. Just a thought and my 2 cents…
That’s definitely so. You need to be careful with potassium supplements, though, because you can overdose on the stuff.
But bananas are full of potassium! Some friends have remarked that eating a banana a day keeps cramping under control.
Oh dear. I meant “Ron, Ron.” I really am compos mentis, in spite of the occasional lapse.
🙂 It’s a prerogative of experience & maturity!
I have a job which puts me at the computer for 10 hours a day. I use a TrekDesk 2 (separate) hours a day, walking at 1.1 miles an hour and 2% incline. Makes a big difference in back pain and blood sugar control, but means 2 different computers (although one could carry a laptop back and forth).
Before buying the desk I experimented w a piece of plywood and a regular treadmill, since I didn’t want to waste money…