Blue-Footed Musings

Earlier this year I started walking regularly again as part of my crusade to get better sleep. I set the daily minimum at four driveway laps (half a mile). It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was difficult for me. It seemed to take forever, it left me physically drained, and it never seemed to get any easier. It was also murder on my bad knee. I was always limping by the last lap.

Maybe a normal reaction would have been to quit, but I doubled down instead and set the minimum to eight laps. And it worked. Eight laps was enough to start moving the fitness needle. The walk got easier and started to feel less onerous. I had a little more “pep in my step.” My knee hurt me no more at the eighth lap than it had at the fourth.

I was measuring my walks in laps or miles, but many people talk about walking in terms of steps. They say one ought to strive to take 10,000 steps per day. That seemed like an arbitrary number, but I read up on it and realized it wasn’t entirely arbitrary. Apparently anything less than 5,000 is considered to be sedentary. I was surprised by that, until I wore my pedometer all day to test how many steps I was getting. My total for that day was 7,000, give or take. Of those, 2,400 were from my daily walk, meaning that the remaining 4,600 were just steps I’d taken while moving around the house. I can hardly believe that I walked almost two miles in my own home, just going about my daily business. That explains anything less than 5,000 is “sedentary,” because you can walk that much without even leaving the house.

Months down the road, now Livia has started training for cross country, and I’ve been taking her to the local park so that she has room to run. While she’s running, I walk. I wear my pedometer so that I can keep track of my distance. I’ve been walking at least a mile every night, sometimes two. On those days when I walk two miles, I may be getting close to the recommended 10,000 steps per day.

Since I started walking again I’ve lost weight, about 6-7 pounds. Every pound you lose is equal to five pounds of force on your knees, it’s said. Between that and the presumed muscle gain in my legs, my bad knee bothers me less. Now it hurts only after long walks rather than all the time. That’s a big improvement.

So I’m going to keep walking. Walking laps. Walking miles. Walking steps. However I may count it, it all counts.

I kid you not when I say that by the end of the last school year I was starting to get very worried about the state of my brain. After nearly two years of early waking plus trouble sleeping (thanks, Menopause), I was in bad shape. It was awful enough being tired all the time, which is a unique form of torture that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But then I started to have some serious problems with language. I didn’t merely struggle to find the words for things, but also sometimes used the wrong words (with or without noticing), and sometimes I could barely get the words out, like my mouth and brain just would not cooperate. My memory was also suffering. Not only was I having trouble learning new things, but a few times I actually forget what I’d been told minutes before.

I knew those were signs of dementia. Then I read an article about how sleep deprivation is thought to play a role in some forms of dementia, and that scared the crap out of me. So I started trying really hard to prioritize sleep. I went to bed earlier, exercised more, etc. But I was still struggling.

Now that it’s summer, and I don’t have to get up early, I’m starting to feel better. It’s wonderful not having to fight against my chronotype. I can go to bed when I feel tired and sleep as long as my body will let me. I’m not totally back to normal, but I feel like I have more mental energy, my memory is bouncing back, and the language lapses happen less often.

I have also started dreaming again, which suggests that I’m actually getting the deep sleep that is so vital for brain health. True, I can’t be sure that I had stopped dreaming before, but I had certainly stopped recalling any dreams. Lately I seem to remember one every few days or so. Even when they’re upsetting, as dreams sometimes are, I’m thrilled to have had them, because dreaming is healthy.

Sleep has to continue to be a top priority for me, so I’ve decided that when the new school year starts, the kids will have to mange on their own in the morning. They’re both in high school now and old enough to take care of themselves. I’ll help them out for the first few days, until they get their routine down. After that, they can wake me in the morning if they need me, but I hope that won’t happen often.

It’s possible that my language and memory problems have gone mostly unnoticed by others. That’s how it usually goes. When people have these sorts of problems, they compensate, and it’s not until they can’t adequately compensate anymore that others become aware. So if you’re reading this, please take note. I’m probably OK. Most likely it was just sleep deprivation. But if you notice me using the wrong word (I mean really clearly wrong) or forgetting something you just told me, don’t let it slide. Tell me.

• School ended officially on a Wednesday. It was an optional day for both kids. Marshall stayed home, having already finished taking all of his exams. Livia went, because it was Field Day for her grade. The weather wasn’t entirely cooperative, offering up rain in the morning and clouds for most of the day. On the bright side, she didn’t have to wear sunscreen, which was fine by her.
• Livia’s 8th-grade graduation was on the preceding Tuesday. For several days beforehand, I’d quietly sent out little prayers to the Universe (“Please, please, please let the girl win an award!”). She’d gotten it into her head that she had to win one. Her two older cousins each had, and so had her brother. But the competition was, as always, fierce. So many deserving kids, so few awards. When her name wasn’t called for Social Studies, I was slightly worried, because that was one of her best subjects. Then came the ELA awards. The principal announced a name that sounded perhaps like a mangled version of Livia’s, but I wasn’t sure until Livia stood up and headed toward the podium to collect her award. That’s when I finally let go of the breath I’d been holding for days. Whew!
• To celebrate, we went out to dinner. Livia chose the local Japanese restaurant, where we stuffed ourselves with ramen, sushi, hibachi, and fried cheesecake. We spent a small fortune, but so it goes. Milestones gotta be properly celebrated.
• I have slept in every day since school ended, and it has been fabulous.

I keep a collection of small vases so that I’ll always have a place to put wildflower bouquets when I get it into my head to pick them. Right now I’m using a glass vase that I got from IKEA. It’s about 3-and-a-half inches tall. In it are fleabane, pink, red clover, two unidentified yellow flowers that sadly dropped most of their petals almost immediately, and a Queen Anne’s lace bud.

• The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy is a common mistake in statistical reasoning. As Wikipedia explains, it “arises when a person has a large amount of data at their disposal but only focuses on a small subset of that data,” like a metaphorical “person from Texas who fires a gun at the side of a barn, then paints a shooting target centered on the tightest cluster of shots and claims to be a sharpshooter.” I find the concept fascinating. I just know there’s a good story idea lurking in there. Beyond that, it’s a good thing to know so that one can be on guard against it.
• Quote from The Toll by Neal Shusterman: “A successful lie is not fueled by the liar; it is fueled by the willingness of the listener to believe. You can’t expose a lie without first shattering the will to believe it. That is why leading people to truth is so much more effective than merely telling them.”