Tuesday, February 1, 2011National Wear Red Day... This Friday is National Wear Red day in the United States. While I know every day, week, and month seem to have one special connotation or another, Wear Red is one that matters to all of us. It’s about heart disease in women and the odds are pretty good that you are or will be one, or you love at least one. It was thought for longer than any of us wants to acknowledge that heart disease was an ailment confined to men. Only in recent years has it come to light that it is the Number One killer of women. Like many of you, I’ve read and heard more statistics than I can possibly absorb, so I’ll apologize for the repetition, but here are some things you need to know. • As women grow older, their risk of heart disease and stroke begins to rise and keeps rising with age. • If you have a family history of heart disease, this increases your risk. So does being African-American. Women who've had a heart attack are at higher risk of having a second heart attack. • Smoking is a major cause of cardiovascular heart disease among women. • High blood cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease. • High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart attack. • Physical inactivity is not your friend. The American Heart Association recommends accumulating at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most or all days of the week. • If you have too much fat — especially if a lot of it is located in your waist area — you're at higher risk for health problems, including high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, high triglycerides, diabetes, heart disease and stroke. • Adults with diabetes have have heart disease death rates that are two to four times those of adults without diabetes. These statistics are from the American Heart Association, and they’re not kidding, not the least little bit. Unfortunately, they are dead serious. We need to pay attention, because we all have things to do. Projects to finish. Jokes to tell and tears to shed. I know that no matter how we do or don’t take care of ourselves, life’s time clock isn’t ours to punch. That said, I think we should do all we can to keep from clocking out early. While writing this, I thought about the women I care about. My mother-in-law, granddaughters, sister and sisters-in-law, nieces and friends. And my girls. Especially my girls. My three daughters by birth and in-law, mothers and wives and professional women who pack 30 hours into 24-hour days and eight days into seven-day weeks. I love them, and I am so very proud of them, too, but I worry about them doing too much, trying to be everything to everyone. So it is for them I will wear red this Friday. I hope you join me. Till next time. Labels: heart disease in women, Kari Wilson, Laura Flaherty, Tahne Flaherty, Wear Red Day posted by Liz Flaherty # 5:08 PM 4 Comments
Tuesday, November 30, 2010Well loved is better...I’m not a collector. I’m also not a saver-of-new-things. About the only thing I collect or save up is dust, and I’m told that’s not in demand on the resale market. While I enjoy other people’s collections, I don’t want any of my own. (In a disclaiming aside here, I will admit to having more fabric than I’ll ever get sewn and two more laptops than I actually need, but I’m not collecting them. Exactly.)To try put my shattered focus into semi-one-place, let me try this again. I don’t save things for “good.” I don’t have Sunday dishes or company towels or candles that have never been lit. The quilts I have from previous generations are on beds, not put away to be passed on. I’ve learned not to maintain a three-size wardrobe, because even if I lose enough weight to wear the smallest size, I don’t like the clothes anymore. My grandkids’ drawings are not kept neatly in scrapbooks for them to have and laugh over when they are grown; they hang on the refrigerator until the paper is yellow and curled and has footprints on it from hitting the floor too many times. Sometimes they hang there even longer. My first granddaughter’s drawing of a lion is held in place by a business card magnet. Mari was probably five when she drew the lion and she’s now in her third year at Ball State. I might take it down if she drew me another, but then again I might not. I like it where it is, the way it is. The drawing would probably look much better if it had been kept clean and flat for fifteen years, but I would not have enjoyed it every day. I wouldn’t have taken a fresh mental snapshot of our own little red-haired girl each time I looked at it. I wouldn’t remember the day of her birth so often. A few years ago, my daughter-in-law Tahne gave us a set of Christmas dishes. My first thought was to use them just during the holidays, and then only when we had a sit-down meal. This way they would not get broken and sometime in the future, the aforementioned granddaughter would inherit them and look at her mother and say, “What am I supposed to do with these? I don’t think Grandma’s washed them since 2005.” Instead, we use the dishes all the way through the holidays and whenever else we feel like it. That none of them are broken yet is both miraculous and maybe a clue that they are meant to be used and enjoyed whenever the mood strikes, not just at Christmas. Christmas, by the way, is the reason I’m writing this. I know I’m not saying anything original here. I’m pretty sure there are Lifetime movies based on this very premise. But we’ll get and give gifts at Christmas, which is going to be here in about fifteen minutes, as quickly as time’s going these days. Some of those gifts will be complete failures, some will be okay, some will be fun, and some will be keepers. Ones you put up to use at the perfect time and the perfect place. I hope you don’t—keep them and put them up, I mean. Use them. Wear them out. My other daughter-in-law, Laura, made me a quilt as a reward for quitting smoking nine years ago. It’s queen-size, beautiful, and never gets too far from my bed, but I told my son I thought maybe I should put it away so it wouldn’t be worn out when it came time for Laura’s and his son to inherit it. He said he thought something well loved might be a better gift than something well preserved. I didn’t put it away. Collecting isn’t bad, by any means, but I’m kind of glad I don’t. I’d rather wear the things in my life out by enjoying them. I don’t want the gifts I give or the ones I receive to be keepers. I’d rather they were things remembered than things passed on to the next generation in good shape. As another side note (remember my little problem with focus), remember what my son said about well loved being better than well preserved? I think that goes for people, too. Even though I’d like to be a whole lot better preserved than what I am, well loved is better. I wish it for all of you. Till next time. Labels: collecting, Jock Flaherty, Laura Flaherty, Mari Flaherty, saving, Tahne Flaherty posted by Liz Flaherty # 4:10 PM 2 Comments
Wednesday, March 11, 2009Happy Birthday, Laura... Laura's our youngest--well, actually, I guess she's married to our youngest, the one you see in the entry below. But Laura's been a part of our lives since her junior high days, long before she became Jock's wife, Fionnegan's mother, or a pharmacist. She's smart and talented and funny, and eventually the other girls and I will forgive her for being a size two. This is Laura. And Fionn. You seldom see one without the other. Seven years ago, I finally decided that yes, okay, I would quit smoking. Maybe. But I was doing it with medication and a coach. Laura was my coach and she promised she would make me a queensize quilt if I stopped smoking. To make a long story short, I did and she did. The quilt hasn't been off the bed since. She says I have to give it back if I start smoking again and I think she means it. I'm not giving that quilt back, and I wouldn't give her back, either. She has perfectly good parents of her own, but she's still ours. Her birthday was this week. Love you, Laura. Labels: Laura Flaherty posted by Liz Flaherty # 3:58 PM 0 Comments
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