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Yesterday I felt the ominous beginnings of a cold. The sore throat, fatigue and headache started quietly. As I slipped two yellow tablets (the last of the 'real' antihistamines before we were saved from their harmful effectiveness) in with a glass of water, Scott filled the humidifier. NyQuil is my cold medicine of choice. But a few family members with flu and cold symptoms eliminates my stores of cold medicine, and really these medicines are only intended to treat the symptoms. What happens when I run out of the basics like cold medicine? Is it a necessity or a luxury?
The old advice of "take two aspirin and call me in the morning" has been neglected in a world of anti-virals, antibiotics, anti-germs. This germ-phobia seems to be contributing to weakened immune systems in children as well as creating a microcosm of super-bugs resistant to medications. We stopped using anti-bacterial soaps years ago hoping to do our part in discouraging super-bugs. Now, I am looking at ways to treat cold symptoms in a back-to-basics way.
Web MD provides 9 tips to treating cold and flu symptoms the natural way. Web MD suggests an extra pillow to elevate the head while sleeping. Getting rest sounds great, drink hot fluids, ( I am thinking licorice tea . . . If you have never tried it, you should . . . it's aromatic and soothing. Warm lemonade is also incredible), steamy showers and ointments like mentholatum. I am reminded of having a cold as a child where my mother would tuck me in to bed tightly with orange juice, Vicks on the chest and Mentholatum on a sore nose. We were even give our own roll of bathroom tissue (Kleenex were rare in my childhood.)
I am thinking the Vicks and a humidifier is less expensive and more comforting than those two yellow caplets. If it is only about treating symptoms, then a couple extra hours of sleep will only do a body good.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Wanting a Sunday
Sundays are easy for me, as far as shopping goes. We just take it easy.
It leaves a great deal of time for thinking.
That can have its drawbacks because I can question all the decisions I have made during the previous week.
A while back there was a program on PBS that placed certain families in different places, recreating the living conditions of the time and seeing if these groups could develop communities and survive as those who lived in these conditions. One was a Victorian home, situated in England, I believe. One was a Texas Ranch House. . . in the late 1800's. One was on the Prairie, during the mid nineteenth century. There was even a program with a community placed in the Pilgrims time on the East coast. I was interested in the different adaptations the people made in their communities. Often they were assigned roles . . . servants, landowners, aristocracy.
There were so many conflicts during the different programs because people struggled with the assignment of class and station. So many people of today have no idea how to live and cope with conditions that made them uncomfortable. I was particularly entertained with a pair of teenage sisters from Los Angeles who actually spent the time in their prairie household to create mascara . . . because they could not live without it. They spent time and resources making mascara instead of gathering and chopping wood or cooking, gardening, doing what it takes to live in that environment. I wonder why.
These are the questions I ponder when I consider what sacrifices I am willing to make in order to achieve what I set out to do. I think I take much of the ease of my life for granted, primarily because it is. Yes, I work hard and try to instill a healthy work ethic in my children, but we certainly live in a world of privilege and richness. It isn't much of a sacrifice to manage the day to day living. I wonder how much of our economic woes now could have been avoided if we all would have taken a step back and deprived ourselves of some of our wants. We are in a want over need state. Too much mascara, perhaps. When did that become a need?
It leaves a great deal of time for thinking.
That can have its drawbacks because I can question all the decisions I have made during the previous week.
A while back there was a program on PBS that placed certain families in different places, recreating the living conditions of the time and seeing if these groups could develop communities and survive as those who lived in these conditions. One was a Victorian home, situated in England, I believe. One was a Texas Ranch House. . . in the late 1800's. One was on the Prairie, during the mid nineteenth century. There was even a program with a community placed in the Pilgrims time on the East coast. I was interested in the different adaptations the people made in their communities. Often they were assigned roles . . . servants, landowners, aristocracy.
There were so many conflicts during the different programs because people struggled with the assignment of class and station. So many people of today have no idea how to live and cope with conditions that made them uncomfortable. I was particularly entertained with a pair of teenage sisters from Los Angeles who actually spent the time in their prairie household to create mascara . . . because they could not live without it. They spent time and resources making mascara instead of gathering and chopping wood or cooking, gardening, doing what it takes to live in that environment. I wonder why.
These are the questions I ponder when I consider what sacrifices I am willing to make in order to achieve what I set out to do. I think I take much of the ease of my life for granted, primarily because it is. Yes, I work hard and try to instill a healthy work ethic in my children, but we certainly live in a world of privilege and richness. It isn't much of a sacrifice to manage the day to day living. I wonder how much of our economic woes now could have been avoided if we all would have taken a step back and deprived ourselves of some of our wants. We are in a want over need state. Too much mascara, perhaps. When did that become a need?
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