This Flu Is Not Going To Get Me

Dear George, 

I’ve been worrying more about the flu this year.  This could be a matter of getting older, but it’s probably due to generalized anxiety about the imminent collapse of the country (which makes one more vulnerable to all the horrors out there).  In any case, my nervousness got worse when Katja recently had an overnight stay in the hospital.  The doctor told her not to go to the chamber music concert when she got out (millions of flu germs), and, if she felt compelled to go to a friend’s funeral, she should only make a brief appearance and shake nobody’s hand.  Then the nurse came in and added that the current flu is lethal, that the vaccine this year is only 10% effective, and that it would be best to never leave our house at all.   

When I got home I went straight to Google and asked “How do I prevent the flu?”  There are a lot of good tips available.  Here are the main suggestions from webmd.com and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention*:  

Get a yearly flu vaccination, preferably by the end of October.  This is especially important for persons in high risk categories: young children, people age 65 and older, pregnant women, and persons with chronic health conditions.

Avoid crowded public places.  Especially try to stay away from people who are coughing or sneezing.  

Wash your hands frequently with soap and water.  If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.  

Every time you sneeze or cough wash your hands for 15 seconds (the time it takes to silently sing “Happy Birthday” twice).     

Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze.  

Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.  This is how most germs are spread.  

Clean and disinfect surfaces and objects that may be contaminated with germs, e.g., doorknobs, stairway railings, keyboards, phones. 

I was dimly aware of most of these ideas, but I’ve never done much to put them into practice.  I find that frequent hand-washing with soap is a lot like like drinking 8 glasses of water a day.  It sounds good and I have good intentions, but I rarely follow through.  This time, though, I went promptly to the bathroom sink to take action.  Our soap is a purple liquid which comes in a plastic dispenser named “Lavender”.  The label is decorated with purple flower images, and the soap not only smells good but it’s guaranteed to provide “freshness at your fingertips”.  I reviewed the fine print carefully, but it didn’t say anything about the flu or any other life-threatening condition.  I asked Katja if we had a regular bar of soap, and she did have a bar in the bureau dresser.  It was large, egg-shaped, purple, smelled exotic, and came in a woven silk bag with a purple tie.  Like our “Lavender” dispenser, it made me uneasy.  I decided to get my own more powerful soap at the drugstore. 

I never paid much attention to the soap department at our neighborhood pharmacy, but I have to admit it’s impressive.  The soap section is about 18 feet long, 5 foot high, and must contain three hundred or more different soap products.  The hitch for me was that they all came in plastic dispensers with floral designs and promises of “beauty”, smooth skin, and “freshness”.  For several minutes I couldn’t find any bars of soap at all.  Finally I located three packages on the bottom shelf at the end of the row.  I settled on the antibacterial bar (even though it’s irrelevant to the flu since the flu is a virus).  The label says “‘round the clock odor protection” and “the perfect balance of feeling clean & moisturized.”  They don’t explain just how they determined that cleanliness and moisture are balanced.   

Katja is unhappy with my choice.  She says the yellow-orange color doesn’t fit our purple bathroom motif.  My opinion is that yellow is complementary to purple so it’s a better fit than, say, pink or chartreuse.  So far I have used my new bar of soap once or twice each day.  I’ve yet to use it after sneezing or coughing although I hope to do so in the future.    I definitely worry less about the flu now.   Not only do I wash my hands with soap more often, but there’s probably protection just from having a real bar of soap sitting in our bathroom.

Love,

Dave            

*SOURCES:

www.cdc.gov, “Prevent the Flu: Good Health Habits Can Help Stop Germ

www.webmd.com, "How to Dodge the Flu Without a Shot"

Snow Days

Dear George, 

We’ve just had our second snowfall of the month, a frosty reminder the we’ve reached the thick of winter.  According to Google, over one septillion snowflakes fall in the U.S. every year.  I didn’t even know what one septillion is, but it turns out it has 24 zeroes.  That’s a trillion billion, more than all the grains of sand on earth or all the gallons of water.  As adults we tend to forget just how astonishing snow is.  Among other things, it falls out of the sky.  Second, though each snowflake is tinier than a ladybug, a good snowfall blankets the earth, often spreading over thousands of square miles.  Snow not only turns the whole world white, but there are endless things to do with it.  Roll in it, slide on it, eat it, make snow angels, ski and sled, build sculptures, throw snowballs at the tree trunk, etc.  Having grown up in the U.P., snow was a dominant part of our lives.  Here are a few snow memories in honor of the season.    

KINDERGARTEN.  In my early childhood my parents and I lived on the second floor of a big white house on Ogden Avenue at the foot of the Interstate Bridge, and my friend Sally F. and her parents lived in the first floor.  At age 5 Sally and I walked the half-mile to kindergarten at Boswell School every day, and in the winter this often meant trudging through drifts of snow.  We were all bundled up with boots and scarves but it was still freezing.  Fortunately Sally’s dad owned the Boiler Works on Ogden Ave. which was midway on our route, and we’d stop in each morning to drink hot cocoa and warm our hands and mittens at the potbelly stove.  I don’t remember anything about my kindergarten classes, but I do remember our snowy journeys to and fro.  

SNOW WARS.  Our family moved to Sheridan Road when I was in first grade.  My friends Frankie S., Darl S., and I built a good-sized snow fort at the curb in front of our house, and several older neighborhood kids built an enemy fort on the opposite side of the street.  We lobbed snowballs at each other for hours, even if nobody ever managed to hit the other guys.     

PLAYGROUND TACKLE.  As soon as snow covered our Washington Grade School playground, the boys would play tackle at recess.  One of the more athletic kids was chose as a runner, and all the other kids would chase him until somebody tackled him in the snow.  The tackler then became the runner, and everybody chased after him.  The crowning moment of my youth was when Tommy H., the halfback on our school’s football team, ran straight at me and, to everyone’s amazement, I actually managed to tackle him.  I didn’t do very well as a runner, probably lasting about twenty seconds.  I didn’t care.   I’d had my day.  

ALL AGAINST ONE.  One of the boys a year younger than me lived in the house right across the street from the playground.  On winter days he’d come out in his yard during lunch hour, and all the boys would thrown snowballs at him from across the street.  He successfully dodged most of them.  However, when everybody threw their snowballs simultaneously at the count of three at least a few would hit the target.  The kid didn’t mind in the least.  He loved being the center of attention even if it was a matter of collective aggression.  

ON THE RIVER.  We moved out of town to our house on the river when my dad came back to the war.  Playing in the snow became even more of a full-time occupation.  We’d ski off the river bank, hike across the ice to Pig Island, and walk with snowshoes in the forest.  My dad tied the toboggan to the back bumper of the Lincoln V-12 and pulled us along the snow and ice on Riverside Boulevard, swerving from one side to the other.  Steve and I played endless hours of basketball on the snow-covered driveway, lighting the hoop at night with a desk lamp attached to an extension cord.  In the morning we ran barefoot races in the snow-covered front yard.  Every winter we tried to build an igloo, but when we got to the center of the roof it would always cave in.  

SNOW DRIVING.  Cruising around town in the family car became our major teenage activity.  I practiced winter driving on Stephenson Avenue near the cemetery, hitting the brakes, and spinning the car in circles as it bounced off the snowdrifts on each side of the road.  One holiday night my friend Bob A. volunteered to take my mother and I to the O’Hara’s house on the Green Bay shore during a major snowstorm.  Halfway there his Model A Ford skidded off the road and tipped over in a ditch.  My mother wound up on top of Bob, and I was laying on top of her.  Too embarrassing.

SNOMANCE.  In my second year at Antioch College I had a coop job in Madison, Wisconsin, and I went to visit college friends in Milwaukee.  Much to my surprise Katja was there with them.  I’d never met her before but had admired her from afar.  We went for a walk in downtown Milwaukee, and the snowflakes started falling.  We stopped on a bridge to watch the snow and the river, and I’d have to say those snowflakes led to love at first sight.     

CLOSED ROADS.  During one of our Xmas breaks my college friend Arnie P. joined me to drive the 600 miles from Yellow Springs, Ohio, to Menominee.  A major storm was raging, and, as we got north of Milwaukee, state troopers had shut down Highway 41.  They explained that all of the highways heading north were closed, with the exception of one two-lane county road which was still open for local traffic.  Disregarding police advice, Arnie and I set out on the county road  with the snow already up to our bumpers.  We never could see the road or its edges but simply pointed the car midway between the evergreen forests on the right and the left.  It took us 6 hours to go 150 miles and we didn’t see a single other car, but we did pull in to Menominee about 3 or 4 a.m. 

SNOW PARENTING.  Snow took on a whole new meaning when I was a new dad in the early 1970’s.  J and I would go sledding at Burnet Woods, or, for still bigger thrills, at Mt. Storm Park with its skyline view and steep hill.  Katja was raising rabbits at the time, and J and I would build a large snow rabbit in our side yard.  Every year, as J got bigger, the snow rabbit got bigger too.  After New Years Eve we’d go around the neighborhood and collect discarded Xmas trees, creating our own forest of a dozen or more trees on our patio deck.  

SNOW DOGS.  Our Old English Sheepdogs, Mike and Duffy, were curious about the snow but I don’t think they were true enthusiasts.  The snow stuck in their paws, and the salt from the roads and sidewalks was painful.  I put socks on them with a rubber band but they never stayed put.  For our best sheepdog outings we joined Donna and Sophie for winter snow hikes at Miami Whitewater Forest.  The down side of the snow season involved the dogs pulling too hard on the leash and me landing on the sidewalk on my rear end.  That probably happened fifty times over the years, but I managed to survive.    

It’s been snowing about six hours since I started these reminiscences, and our street is looking beautiful.  I think I’ll go for a stroll.  

Love,

Dave

2017: Sometimes Bad, Usually Good

Dear George, 

When I was 21, I didn’t spend nearly as much time on New Years Day thinking about what had happened in the previous twelve months.  Probably I started doing this around age 60 or so (when it dawned on me that I had fewer years left than I used to).  My first thought this morning was that 2017 was the worst year politically that we’ve ever experienced.  On reflection, though, there are a lot of other contenders, e.g., 1963 (JFK’s assassination), 1968 (RFK, MLK Jr., nationwide riots, Vietnam outrage and despair), 1973 (Watergate), 2001 (World Trade Center).   Fortunately 2017 has been much more pleasant for me on a personal level.  I’ve settled fully into retirement and am appreciative of a relatively stress-free and at least mildly enjoyable existence.  Here’s my summary list for 2017.

Love,

Dave

Worst day of the year: January 20 (guess why) 

My most reliable source of cheer: baby hippo Fiona at the Cincinnati Zoo 

Big birthday: No. 80 

Best one-day outing: the Ohio State Fair 

Best junk food: gigantic Bloomin’ Onion (at the Ohio State Fair) 

Favorite movie: Lost in Paris (Paris Pieds Nus) with Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel

Best new activity with Katja: Israeli folk dancing 

Sweet out of town visitors: J, V, and L drive up from NOLA in June 

High Culture: Linton Chamber Music, Cincinnati Opera 

Favorite hiking place: Miami Whitewater Forest 

Favorite TV show: Ray Donovan

Tastiest dessert: Putz’s Creamy Whip chocolate sundae with peanuts

Most aerobic exercise: Zumba  

Sport thrills: Roger Federer wins two grand slams

Sad restaurant loss: Clifton Subway (where we regularly shared a footlong each week)

Most esoteric expedition: Victory of Light psychic fair 

Best local thrift shop: Valley Thrift Store

Irritating condition: sluggish hearing  

Funniest book: Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen 

Overhyped natural phenomenon: the wimpy eclipse in Cincinnati 

Favorite Lean Cuisine: Swedish Meatballs 

Grandchildren accomplishments: V and L’s success in changing schools

Big loss: our friend Donna moved to Nashville in December (happy for Donna, sad for us)  

Made me nervous: J signing Katja up for Amazon Prime 

Museum show: Iris Van Herpen fashion exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum

Best trip: Caribbean cruise with V, L, K, and J 

Guilty pleasure: Spider solitaire 

Favorite Cincinnati Restaurant: Jean-Robert’s Table 

Favorite OLLI class: Poetry Writing Workshop

Temporary disability: strained Achilles tendon (two months recovery time — yuck) 

Something I like, Katja hates: Lawrence Welk show on PBS 

Best flea market: Flea ’n Tique (Dayton fairgrounds) 

Worst newspaper: the Cincinnati Enquirer

Neighborhood excitement: Clifton Market opened in January (after 5 years with no local supermarket) 

My biggest Amazon purchase: a home haircutting kit 

Happy Christmas celebrations: with the Minkarah family

New Years Eve dinner at Postmark: at the waiter’s suggestion we added a few truffles to our entrees (I hadn’t heard him correctly — they cost $36).  Such a start to the New Year.  

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS 

Sit less; get back to 10,000 steps a day

Take more camping trips 

Read one book a month

Clean up my junk room   

Cut down on Ambien 

Be less grumpy and picky around the house

Be less obsessed with Trump horror stories in the newspaper 

Plan a big trip 

Talk more by phone with loved ones 

Drink more water (I could actually accomplish this)

Lose ten pounds (fat chance) 

Get my blood sugar down (lots of luck)