Joe

Joe has been our trainer since we joined LA Fitness at the end of May and we love, love, love him. Joe is extremely knowledgeable and kind to us old folks. Harry and I go together for our half hour sessions with him twice a week, rotating working the upper body, abs and legs. He works us hard, but is sensitive to the physical realities of old age. Harry has some arthritic joints and my sense of balance is terrible. Last week Joe had me sitting on a big ball to do sit-ups and I fell off backwards onto the floor. He said calmly with a smile, "Oh, I've never seen that one before."

Joe energetically sets up the work-out machines for us, brings us the hand weights, demonstrates what we have to do and then watches us sweat. Last week Joe went to Chicago to take classes for his certification to work with those recovering from heart attacks. Hopefully, if I keep up with the workouts, I won't fall into that category any time real soon. We had a lot of fun with him during the World Cup tournament in June. Joe played college soccer and he and Harry would debate the attributes of each competing team and the results of each game. So, thanks to Joe, the hard realities of the work-out sessions are fun and something to look forward to, not dread.

Harry and I decided early on that without this twice a week commitment and the fact that we pay for each session even if we don't go, we would not have the discipline to do this. I also would never find the motivation, nor have the knowledge to do all the varied floor or mat and machine routines without a good trainer telling me exactly what is necessary to get results.

This week Joe told us we were ready for free weights which will really show results quickly he assures us. My fantasy is to have Michelle Obama arms. Through all the muscle soreness and tiredness, we both feel we are becoming much stronger and more fit. This week I also continue to attend Pilates classes which I really enjoy. Unfortunately, in Pilates class you go barefoot, so I couldn't rationalize buying a new pair of shoes. Darn!

Pickles and chutney and jams, oh my!

Harry ventured back to his English roots last week and, using his mother's English recipes, did some canning. He made lemon curd, marmalade, blackberry, strawberry and rhubarb jam, chutney, pickled beets and pickles. Tis the season. We have, a few blocks from us in St. Louis Park, a small farmers' market that opened at the beginning of July. The Hmong growers produce beautiful vegetables and we have been shopping there every Wednesday. The fruit for the jams Harry bought at Whole Foods, or Whole Paycheck, as a friend of mine calls the upscale grocery store. Expensive jam, yes, but better than store bought. I made a mad dash to our neighborhood Target late Sunday afternoon and bought the last box of the canning jars on the shelf. Obviously we are not the only people into this canning thing.

Our daughter-in-law, Joanna, has a master's degree in canning. She and Ivan do a lot of picking their own fruit for canning as well. One year, while they lived in Indiana, we had a family outing to pick blueberries. Eva, our granddaughter, was just a baby and we took turns holding her. I was so inspired by the experience I got home and sent Eva a copy of probably my favorite children's picture book, Blueberries for Sal. This year Joanna is doing a variety of amazing things with peaches from a nearby orchard in their new hometown of St. Louis. My sister, Julie, and my niece, Andi, recently picked strawberries and mulberries and made jam. Last week Julie went to the big farmers market in Minneapolis and bought a huge crate of cucumbers for pickling. The Hmong woman wanted rid of the cukes so sold them to her for $5.

All this canning has brought back fond memories from my childhood when my grandmother would take her canned peaches and pears off her pantry shelf for my sister and me to enjoy. It was so comforting: it felt like she was opening a jar of love for us. So, lids off to all who take the time to fill glass jars with wonderful things for their loved ones to enjoy. The world can use more love.

Carrie Bradshaw eat your heart out!!!

My new obsession, exercise, has given me the excuse to indulge my other obsession, shoes. I now have my "step-ups" for outdoor walking and the treadmill, cycling shoes for the Spin class and water shoes for Aqua Fit in the pool. (don't tell my husband!) Any excuse works for me. I love shoes. I think it all goes back to the tradition my Mom started. She bought me a pair of shoes every year on my birthday.

Compulsions aside, the right shoe does make a difference when exercising. In the Spin stationary bike class my feet, clad in Nike tennis shoes, began to hurt. The instructor told me I needed a shoe with a non-flexible sole. I decided to buy a real biking shoe since Harry and I bike quite a bit on the biking trail outside our condo door so the biking shoes would have a dual purpose. Last week my friend, Renee, and I took the the Aqua Fit class together for the first time. Halfway into the class, I noticed that everyone was wearing shoes, except Renee and I. I knew I was having real trouble doing the exercises, but I wrote it off to inexperience. After the class I asked a classmate about the shoes she was wearing in the pool and she said they were water shoes. Perfect! Another way to rationalize a new pair of shoes!

Yes, my retired life has pretty much become filled up with putting on my new shoes and attending my support group for compulsive shoe buyers. I told Harry if I was working there would be no way I could or would be doing all this exercise. I get so tired from all this that I require massive amounts of sleep. I do feel stronger and have lost some weight. I can now even lean over far enough to strap into a pair of the Clark's espadrilles I bought when I got back to Minnesota in April. At that time I could not bend over far enough to strap them on, but they were so cute I bought them anyway. Now I have no problem getting into them..for this I thank my personal trainer, Joe, and a special thanks to all my new exercise shoes. Well, I am off to bed so I can exercise tomorrow. I slumber knowing I will have the appropriate shoes for the cycle, the pool or the treadmill. Life is good.

*For those who wonder,"who the hell is Carrie Bradshaw?" she was the heroine of the HBO television series, Sex and the City. Carrie spent most of her paycheck on expensive shoes, such as Monolo Blahniks which cost hundreds of dollars a pair. When she moved in with Mr. Big, her boyfriend, he had a closet specially built in the apartment for her shoe collection.

Nazi spotted on bike path

The man pictured below and his wife (not pictured) who stopped for a photo-op in front of a road sign, told police they were following the sign and were on their way to "de tour de France" now taking place in the French countryside. Police, who thought the man looked suspect, explained the sign to the couple and escorted them to the bike path which had been re-routed a bit just outside the condo where the couple live. Construction of the new Highway 7/Wooddale overpass has made the area extremely noisy and confusing with large road building apparatus everywhere and the elderly couple apparently became disoriented. The man's wife was heard to say that she never realized the French countryside was so beautiful and she was ready for de tour. The unidentified man, who spoke with some sort of an accent, fervently denied any Nazi sympathies when questioned by St. Louis Park police. The strangely-helmeted biker explained he recently sustained a serious injury while living in Mexico, and though police where glad to see he was wearing a helmet, they seriously questioned his mental state when he began babbbling in French. His wife, refusing to be photographed, said that though her husband's upper four teeth, which were badly damaged in the fall, were now replaced with a beautiful temporary bridge, his intestines continued to give him trouble. Police were unable to explain what teeth and intestines had to do with anything. Thankfully, this couple found their way home and are resting comfortably in their condo watching the Tour de France on their new 40-inch flat screen television. The couple did ask the police if they would like to come up for a cup of tea, homebaked bread and homemade lemon curd. The police politely declined and said they must get back to work. No decision yet if social services will be notified. The couple's next of kin, children in St. Louis and New York City, were contacted.

nothing ever stays the same...damn!!!

I went for a pedicure this week at the shop I have frequented for more than a decade and left the shop feeling very sad. Not because I did not get a good pedicure, in fact, the pedicure was perfect. I felt sad because the shop had been sold and the Vietnamese family who owned the shop was gone. The shop was all Vietnamese workers for sure, but none of them members of the family I had grown to love and admire over the years.

Mary,the family matriarch, her husband and children worked seven days a week 10 hours a day running the shop. The three teenage girls were in college studying pre-med by day and by night and on weekends they had to pull their weight at the shop. I never learned the name of the father. He was an introvert who let Mary do all the people related tasks while he tended to doing occasional manicures as well as all the paperwork and shop maintenance required. One day I saw him single handedly carrying out old pedicure chairs and replacing them with newer, and heavier, chairs. The father's English was pretty much non-existent and he did not seem interested in learning it all that much anyway. He probably thought that Mary did enough talking for the two of them. I always thought it must have been difficult being the father of 5 daughters. That fact alone could make anyone a bit speechless in any language.

If you had been to the shop more than once, Mary knew your name and she would call out a personalized greeting as you came through the door. "Hi ____ . How was your vacation in Disney World?" "Good to see you. Where have you been lately!" "Is your mother doing better now?" You felt like you were home. She ran the shop like the energizer bunny; answering the phone, doing nails, bossing the staff around, cooking up steamed vegetables in the backroom for lunch. Mary never stopped talking or moving. She had the ability to create an atmosphere where you somehow found yourself talking to the people on either side of you. Yes, you didn't know the woman next to you, but you found yourself chatting away to her, just like Mary did.

On a slow day at the shop many years ago, and there were few slow days at the shop, Mary quietly told me her story of escaping Vietnam in a small boat with several other people. They went for days without food and living in fear of capture. She would devotedly go back to Vietnam every year for a few weeks to visit her mother. One year she brought back her son back with her. We regulars were shocked. We never knew she had a son. We knew she had five daughters, three who worked in the shop and two pre-schoolers who sometimes would run about the shop screaming and laughing. The son, was tall, handsome and quiet like his father, and the women in the shop loved him, while the daughters were as graciously vivacious as their mother. They always wore the latest fashions in shoes, piercings and tasteful tattoos, and would complain quietly to you as they polished your toes about what a taskmistress their mother was, how she expected them to get straight A's and work nights and weekends, all of which they did. They would tease her mercilessly however, about her bad English: perhaps this helped them feel a little control over the demanding lives they had been born into.

Even though the new massage chairs, which manage to massage all of you, including your London derriere, are marvelous, I decided I will find a new shop. The good memories are just too strong and painful. All the faces are strangers now and the shop is dead quiet. I couldn't even find the courage to ask what happened to Mary and her family because I just wanted to be able to close my eyes and have them all come back. Besides, none of the workers seemed to speak English very fluently. Granted, things run more smoothly and efficiently at the shop now, but the character and personality of the place are gone. Even the wonderfully tacky paintings have been taken off the walls and the little altar to Buddha, which always had fresh foods surrounding him everyday day, has been replaced with shelves of more polish. Instead of a greeting you are told to sign your name in a book as you come through the door. Mary could always remember who was next in line! I hope Buddah helped the family make a small fortune when they sold the very successful shop and I hope they are all happy and healthy and not working so hard!

the old wine rack maker

Harry built us a wine new wine rack last week and it turned out great! We can now store twice as much wine as we could previously. (I guess that is a good thing.) The bad thing is Harry is back on the "evil medication" flagyl , his second dose, and you cannot drink while taking flagyl. So, no big rush to fill up the the rack. Harry took the first dose of flagyl for 10 days to try and heal the damage antibiotics had done to his intestines. Well, it didn't work so he is on a second dose, this time for 14 days.

Two weeks ago, Harry finished his first flagyl prescription and I encouraged him to have a beer even though 48 hours had not passed. The warning on the prescription clearly states not to imbibe until 48 hours after taking your last pill. It had only been 36 hours and Harry thought he should wait. I said what difference could a few hours make and handed him a beer. After a few sips he headed off to bed feeling terrible. So much for my medical opinion. Flagyl, with all it's side-effects, is similar to the drug sometimes used to treat chronic alcoholism.

We are looking forward to filling up our new wine rack and drinking wine, but, this time Harry's wife will have respect for drug protocol remembering: no wine (or beer) before it's time.