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Giant Sippy Cups
Today I woke up with a song playing in my mind. It was a song from the ’60s. I have no idea why my RAM decided to move that song forward, but there I was humming a tune I hadn’t heard since I was a teenager. Go figure. It’s happened many times, but this morning’s mental musical was special. This morning I really needed that song. Perhaps that’s why it popped up. It sent me to YouTube to find out who wrote it, who sang it and what the lyrics actually were. At 6:15 a.m. that song was all I could think about. By noon, unless I check my browser history, I couldn’t remember what the song I needed to hear was. I do remember the artist’s name, though, so that’s a good thing. Aside from forgetting the musical ear worms, I’ve become increasingly concerned about whether or not I’ll be one of those people who develops age-related memory loss. I don’t think I have a memory problem, but if I did, would I actually know?
Apparently, as people age their power of recall sometimes takes a bit of a powder. I’ve assured myself the decline is because oldsters have years and years and years of memories, facts and information swirling around in their heads. I think of my brain sifting through 70- plus years of “stuff” just to remember I may have left the burner on when making lunch. And, if you’re like moi you’ll now find yourself looking high and low for the cellphone which is in your hand or your reading glasses which you’re already wearing or the other slipper which is on your “other foot”. As I wrote in a previous column, LOML and I have adopted a method of dealing with missing articles by putting them away (in the right place) rather than putting them down. All y’all know you aren’t going to remember you put the keys on the shoe rack in the front hall when you were taking your boots off, right? I know I’m right. These days, when one of us makes an appointment a moment is taken to share it on the calendar— all of the calendars: the phone calendar, the kitchen calendar and the laptop calendar. And, medication reminders are programmed into our phones with a cheery little musical tone to which LOML and I have created a cheeky little song. A song my younger brother recognizes and sings along to when he hears it (his day will come). For the most part, a relatively healthy, older person could reverse, or slow, some of the memory decline by reducing stress, addressing medical issues such as thyroid problems or sleep apnea and remediating potential medication side effects. Both LOML and I are working on better sleep hygiene, which sounds as simple as going to bed after the news, but there’s more to it. LOML and I make sure the room is cool and dark and the window is open. I have a white noise machine; he has music. We try to hit-the-hay in a wound-down sorta way. And, because we’re not kids anymore, we usually go to bed at a reasonable time. Goodbye to caffeine and hello to chamomile tea. Brains need to rest. And speaking of the actual brain, the fella who keeps an eye on my brain gently suggested I might try to drink more water. “Stay hydrated,” said he. It only took a year to finally do a bit of research about hydration and how a lack of hydration negatively affects brain health.
So, on top of everything I have to remember, I have to remind myself to drink a lot of water every, single day. And here I sit with my fortygallon sippy cup of water to keep my brain hydrated. I know life could be a lot worse than drinking enough water every day and spending more time in the bathroom. On the bright side, we do spend more time in the boom-boom room getting rid of the “water”, but now there is a magazine “rack” in there, along with a pair of reading glasses. The reading glasses should probably be on a chain of some kind because this morning the stinky readers were on the front hall table next to a pair of socks and the CTC receipt for my giant sippy cup. Growing older is a chore; getting there is going to be a challenge to my brain.
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