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May 24th, 2009I Laid me Down and Slept
Is this a wonderful morning, or what?
I used to think there were NO wonderful mornings. I had problems sleeping, and it drove me crazy. I had a hard mattress and mysterious on-and-off nasal congestion, and–this is disgusting–hard stuff accumulated in my nose, at the narrowest points in the air passages. The only way to cope with that was to get up and remove it. I woke over and over during the night. Sometimes when I woke up, I felt as if a giant magnet were sucking me down into the mattress. That’s how tired I was. I would get up and literally stumble because my nervous system wasn’t working yet.
I started taking steps. I gave away a $2000 mattress that felt like cement and replaced it with the much nicer, cheaper one I use to use when I lived in Texas. I lifted the head of the bed six inches. I got synthetic pillows, because when I was a kid, a useless allergist told my mother to get them for me.
I got improvements, but not real success. I wondered if the problem was mold or dirty air conduits or pollen. I decided to treat the one thing I could be sure of beating: dust mites. I got a microfiber mattress cover. It doesn’t kill mites, but it prevents them from getting at their food: me. It cut back on congestion to the point where I didn’t need anything to help me sleep. I quit using nasal spray, including that worthless saline stuff.
I still had one improvement to make. When I got new pillows, I saw mite-proof covers on display at the store. I picked one up. What the hell. The pillows improved my sleep, but one of them worked better than the other. One was a memory foam pillow that came with its own cover, and the other was a fake down pillow, which I put inside the cover I bought. The fake down pillow remained problem-free, but after a while, I noticed that I could feel congestion starting whenever I rolled over onto the foam pillow. I realized what was happening. Mites can’t grow in a foam pillow (I am told), but they can grow in the materials covering it. Any new pillow will kill your allergies, but if mites can get through the cover, they’ll grow on the fabric, and the protection will fade. Yesterday, I invested in two more pillow covers. I put one on the foam pillow, and I cleaned one of my old down pillows and stuck the other cover on it.
Last night was perfect. I have no idea when I fell asleep. I remember absolutely nothing that happened during the night. When I awoke, I felt great. And I had a down pillow to help me cope with the fake ones, which really are not as good.
I can’t express the feeling of freedom. It’s like I’ve been cured of leprosy. Poor sleep affects your blood pressure, your weight, your memory, your concentration, your energy, your mood, and your body’s ability to heal and renew itself. It’s a very big deal. It looks like it’s behind me.
If you want to try one of these products, go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and get a Microguard mattress cover and pillow covers. Pay no attention to the way they feel in the store. You can’t feel the fabric’s creepy texture when you use it, and it breathes, so you will not sweat. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the fake down pillow tends to expand like a balloon, because air passes out of the cover slowly. The pillow blows up from its natural loft, and then when you put your head on it, it deflates like a tire with a pinhole. That isn’t a problem with the other pillows.
I can go back to down now, although I want to keep the foam pillow for variety. I want varied pillow materials on hand so I will have choices every night when I engineer my pillow structure.
Next health challenge: I have to resume counting calories. I think the pizza crisis is over, so I won’t be making it every day and ruining my diet. Last night I checked my blood pressure, and it scared me to death. I assume something I had done or eaten was affecting it, because it was behaving strangely. The diastolic number varied between 89 and 113. I got up today, and my pressure was 114 over 76. I don’t trust blood pressure measurements. As a scientist, I can’t believe a gauge as silly as the sphygmomanometer could ever be reliable. How can things like subcutaneous fat, muscularity, and arm position fail to affect it? But I want to be thinner, just in case. I ate unsweetened oatmeal for breakfast today. I guess I could have just boiled a newspaper.
Church was good but not fantastic last night. They had a guest preacher, and he was too much like a standup comedian for my tastes. He started joking about PMS and other things not relevant to Christianity. That’s not what I go to church for, and I don’t want to be encouraged in my own habit of ridiculing people and their weaknesses. He didn’t follow his notes, and his sermon was disjointed and way too long. One of the reasons I left my last church was that the services lasted three hours. Like I’ve said before, there is a thin line between a long church service and a hostage situation. At the end, he asked everybody to give the church a special gift, which annoyed me. They want a special gift next week, for Pentecost. This is too much. I think he knew it. You could see the certainty leave his face when he brought it up. I think he knew he was making a mistake. I guess he just got carried away and then decided to bull his way through. I gave a little something out of respect for his authority, but I felt used. Not a big deal. Good people make mistakes, and I won’t miss the token amount I gave.
I figured there had to be some good things in his message. I don’t think God lets people go to an effective church and leave with nothing, just because it’s an off week. And I picked up some things. I think my prayer life needs a shot in the arm. I have not restored my routine; it comes and goes. So in the morning, I am not always spending time in prayer. He also talked about temptation, and how we are sifted and pulled away from the church. That was a useful reminder.
It certainly beats what I would have gotten had I stayed home, i.e. nothing.
He said Christians screw up by pursuing marriage too doggedly. He claimed that when the Bible refers to “he who finds a wife,” the word “find” means to come across inadvertently. Try to serve God, and wait for someone to show up. That was the message. Maybe he’s right. That’s the way it works with other needs, to some extent. God provided mates for people in the Old Testament. I think of the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Ruth. Human effort was involved, but it was guided from above.
May 24th, 2009 at 3:03 PM
He said Christians screw up by pursuing marriage too doggedly. He claimed that when the Bible refers to “he who finds a wife,” the word “find” means to come across inadvertently. Try to serve God, and wait for someone to show up. That was the message.
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That’s pretty much how it was with me and Barb. After a number of disaterous relationships in my early to mid-20’s, I decided I wasn’t going to pursue relationships anymore…I was tired of it. A couple of years later, Barb and I met and started dating. We were married a year and a half later.
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From my experience, there seems to be some truth to what this pastor was saying.
May 24th, 2009 at 3:22 PM
In the book of Genesis it’s pretty clear that “it’s not good for man to be alone.” Also impossible to fulfill, ethically, the positive injunction to “be fruitful and multiply” without a spouse. Remarkably, after the passing of Sarah, Isaac went to retrieve Hagar (renamed Keturah), the mother of his rival, Ishmael. This was at the same time Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, was searching for a bride for Isaac. An unmarried rabbi is suspect.
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The octogenarian widowed rabbi of my rabbi remarried a couple of years after his wife’s passing. Marriage isn’t just about children.
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On the other hand, “finding” is exactly what I did. There is NO other way to explain how I met my wife because her becoming my father’s secretary makes NO sense on paper.
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Part of finding is keeping one’s eyes open and engaging in the search.
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I knew I wanted to get married someday. At the age of 20, I was hoping that it would maybe take me longer. But when I realized I couldn’t put my prospective wife in suspended animation while I worked out my issues and made my fortune, I had to commit. It hasn’t always been easy. At times it’s been extremely difficult. But it’s rewarding and it seems to have paid dividends in the character of my children who I’m proud to give the world to help improve it… just a little bit.
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Dennis Prager once spoke to a childhood yeshiva friend about getting married. The friend was an older bachelor who found problems with everyone he went out with. Dennis pinned him down… the guy was looking for a Playboy bunny that happened to be a talmud expert.
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Also, looking for perfect seems to be bad economics… at least according to a Freakonomics column this week. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/why-finding-the-best-isnt-worth-it/
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Many tests of one’s spirituality come in close quarters over long periods of time. Want to test patience, kindness, and forgiveness regularly? I fail regularly but I refuse to quit trying to improve.
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There’s a traditional rabbinical sermon about marriage using the Hebrew words for man and woman. Eesh (aleph-yud-shin) is “man”. Eesha (aleph-yud-shin-heh) is “woman”. If you remove the letters “yud and heh” (yud-heh is “Yah”, one of the names of God) from these words, you get “esh”, which is fire.
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Sadly the Greek ethos dominates the West. They put romance and eros on a pedestal. That’s why we’ve been conditioned to prime time TV and movies where the couple ends up more in love at the end. That’s not reality. You need three legs for a relationship to stand: goals, values and communication. A couple that has divergent goals will drift apart. A couple that has divergent values will lose respect for each other. The least important leg, one that is forever wobbly due to Mars/Venus communication styles, is communication. The West seeks comfort and ease in a marriage. Scripture puts an emphasis on purpose. Better to approach marriage like an attempt to build a business to survive 50 years. Pick a partner whose goals and values you share and it’s pretty likely you’re going to figure out a communication style that works. No, it may not be the most entertaining, but the pair will be able to accomplish more together than apart.
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My typical recommendation for single friends is to go to a congregation and keep an eye out for prospective partners among those who are doing volunteer work you admire. One is more likely to find someone who has the requisite goals/values one seeks.
May 24th, 2009 at 3:29 PM
At my top weight I used a CPAP machine. It made a lot of difference but I got over needing it. It was hard to go back to breathing cold dry air though. You can really grow to like warm moist air.
May 24th, 2009 at 3:42 PM
I bought some cheap pillows at Walmart. They are made of recycled bottles. They were $5 each. They are plump and non-allergenic. They are for the guest rooms so I doubt they will be getting many mites any time soon. The pillowcases stay on them a very short time. I also plump my other pillows in a hot dryer for 20 minutes from time to time, that should kill anything in them. For my bed our have foam pillows. I’ve been using foam for many years, but do have to buy new ones every so often. Our bed is entirely of foam also. Not the tempurpedic type. Latex. We like it, it is our second one. We like it so well we had one made for our travel trailer. Restful.
BTW, on marriage, today is our 51st anniversary. It hasn’t been easy, marriage is always a work in progress. But we do progress.
May 24th, 2009 at 4:47 PM
The section on the mites awesome, Steve. This would be perfect in a health magazine opinion section or the Readers Digest. Though you are not an ‘expert’ in medicine or health, you seem to have taken some reasonable steps in dealing with the problem. No magic… just plain old common sense with a little science) thrown in.
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The Good Lord gave us a brain (not as big as a Whale or Elephant but enough so that we can do and write all sorts of good stuff!) to solve our problems so when things happen, we can deal with the enviroment around us so life is more pleasant. It’s a shame that people blame G_d for all sorts of things that could easily be solved by taking responsibility for your own actions. Most of our problems are caused by … ourselves, of course. 😉
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This is going in my archive.
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“I have to resume counting calories.”
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Fantastic! The ‘ol “full gas tank” governor is on the fritz, eh?
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“I ate unsweetened oatmeal for breakfast today. I guess I could have just boiled a newspaper.”
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Uh… if you eat things you love to hate, your body is going to go into rebellion, man. You may start paying a visit to the fridge at 2am when your wits are sleepy. Besides, you have such good taste in food (and fattening too), I’d hate to see such a virtue go to waste.
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How ‘bout using the ‘Doggie Dish Theory’: Choose the food and count the calories at the _beginning_ of each day, and eat only that which you put on the platter. Pace yourself for the rest fo the day and make sure you have some left before you go to bed. Then, _once_ a week, eat as much you like and whatever you like.
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The upside is the you can eat ANYTHING you want – its just the the volume is decreased dramatically and you can’t be as sponanteous (just put what you crave on the platter for tomorrow).
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Remember, you are part animal and it WILL get what it wants if you hinder it too much. Just sayin… 😉
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“He said Christians screw up by pursuing marriage too doggedly. He claimed that when the Bible refers to “he who finds a wife,” the word “find” means to come across inadvertently.”
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So True. Gotta be friends first – and for a LONG time. But if you are forced between the choice of helping a little old lady across the street and helping a neighbor woman (if you are unmarried and she is of your age bracket) carry her furniture up her stairway, I’d try to steer in the direction of doing the latter – under certain circumstances of course. Just as a rule of thumb, of course. There is only so much time in the day so you can’t be completely selfless. If you keep steering away from opportunites that are presented to you because some orphan or dog or whatever needs help too, may may just end up single for the rest of your life. Lots of Starfish out there, and there are only so many that you can throw back in to the sea. You’ve gotta give yourself opportunities. Heh… here’s me talkin and I’ve never been married! 😀
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It IS the second most important decision that you make your life. It needs to be taken seriously if you want to be married only once and for the rest of your life and… happily ever after.
May 24th, 2009 at 6:08 PM
Aaron… as usual, your thoughts are fantastic. Ever think of turning your blog back on? I’d be a daily reader.
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“An unmarried rabbi is suspect.”
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No kidding. Celibacy stinks. You can turn it ‘off’ for a long time, but not forever – and there are consequences. The gravitation of desire has unseen effects on your logic and reason.
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I wish the rules for the Catholic Priesthood were altered. But those were put into effect to stem the corruption in the church during the Middle Ages. Still… I’m sure it keeps them humble. Hmmm… sounding a bit sacrilegious to my faith…
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“At the age of 20, I was hoping that it would maybe take me longer.”
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You are soooo lucky Aaron! I had wished… deeply… to had found the woman of my dreams when I was younger, but I didn’t . Furthermore, I was definitely not marriage material at that time. Readiness comes from both parties, I suppose. You gotta know how to love and that comes from G_d.
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“The friend was an older bachelor who found problems with everyone he went out with.”
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You also need to know _what_ qualities to look for in a friend (and hopefully spouse). That’s a lot tougher than it appears. I’m still figuring that out. Being that the marriage between my parents was downright awful, I do not have a template to go by and needed to “reinvent the wheel”.
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In my pursuit of what would make a good spouse, I’ve figured out a few things – but will keep it to myself (or in a private email that is not to be shared) as those who I would be interested in need to be themselves and not try to follow a formula (Lets just say that trying to be as good a Christian or Jew as you can while giving a nod to _and acknowledging_ the truths of Science is a real turn on in my book).
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Thanks Aaron. I really enjoyed your comment.
May 24th, 2009 at 6:40 PM
“Uh… if you eat things you love to hate, your body is going to go into rebellion, man. ”
My real problem right now is not gluttony per se. It’s laziness. I don’t really care what I eat, but if nothing good for me is at hand, I will reach for the Pop Tarts and Haagen-Dazs before I will go to the grocery store. I can stand oatmeal.
May 24th, 2009 at 6:49 PM
Mmmm.. Haagen Daz…. (* Drool *)
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I think I’m making a mess here.
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Say… do you know what else is good? “Parfaits! They are the best thing on the planet…”
May 24th, 2009 at 7:52 PM
I didn’t like oatmeal until I started eating steel-cut (“Irish” style) oatmeal. It’s wonderful, and you don’t need too much extra flavoring (sugar, salt, butter, whatever). Also, it’s not as gluey as the rolled-flat oatmeal Americans are used to eating. However, it takes about half an hour to cook. But so does rice, more or less.
May 24th, 2009 at 8:21 PM
Difficulties with blogging again are many. While I’m more confident in the current incarnation of WordPress and my ability to secure it, my backups go back 8 steps. I can’t just do a fresh install and import my old content. I’d have to find an old version, install that manually and do the imports and then manually do the upgrades (which include database revisions) from 3-year-old WordPress to May 2009 WordPress. I also spent WAY too much time on it to the detriment of taking care of my family. As my daughters were reaching marriageable age, I was concerned that my predilection for hyperbole would scare off prospective suitors.
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Oh, and the regular death threats from the Religion of Peace. I’m not sure it’s fair to subject my family to dangers they aren’t choosing. On the other hand, I espouse Sun Tzu’s confrontation wisdom of “If your opponent is quick to anger, seek to irritate him.” It exposes reality. Many people don’t like to think about confronting Islam. It’s too uncomfortable. But history is pretty much unanimous that delayed confrontation results in more death of innocents than does pre-emptory confrontation. When someone declares their intent to kill you and is developing means to do so, you aren’t obligated to wait until they get in a first, possibly deadly, shot.
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The West has failed to come up with rhetoric to justify action against asymmetric warfare, war from ununiformed opponents overwhelmingly supported by the civilians they use for shields. We are so dhimmified and cowed by political correctness, we fail to assert the Geneva Conventions on our own behalf:
Using hospitals as shields renders them legitimate military targets. In cases where the civilians encourage such use, there is no moral high ground. When a combatant uses a white flag fraudulently, that side of the conflict has morally forfeit the right to use that universally recognized symbol until they have unconditionally surrendered or won.
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Dang… you got me blogging after all.
May 25th, 2009 at 8:25 AM
Speaking of finding a wife…. I made a lot of mistakes. Then when I finally decided that God may want me single, and I got to the point that I was ok with being single, if that was God’s plan for my life, it was only a few months before I met my wife. And it is right this time. We’ve been married 13 years, we go church together, it is scary how perfect it is.
Your mileage may vary, but I believe you are on the right track.
May 25th, 2009 at 9:56 AM
Aaron, I understand your misgivings about writing and the safety of your family. I remember when the hackers were taking down your website. I’ll be content with you residing in the comments section at Steve’s website.
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As you as pointed out from a variety of articles from the Geneva Conventions, the big problem with the West is enforcement of the Law. That in itself is breaking of the Law, too. So the West is complicit with the Palestinian Terrorist scofflaws.
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Where will it end? Its not looking too good. My guess is it is going to get much worse before it gets better. Because the West is so guilt ridden for its successes and victories against barbarism, I am guessing that there will need to be some serious ‘Western’ blood that will need to be spilled before this malaise is shrugged off. I hope that it will not be too late. Nuclear Weapons can mean a far quicker and more permanent victory than the blitzkrieg. Nuclear Weapons can also cause utter annihilation and the barbarians have already proven they are not afraid to annihilate innocents. Rwanda… Congo… Turkish Greeks and Armenians… Christian Lebanese… all come to mind.
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“Dang… you got me blogging after all.”
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That makes me glad. The Signal to Noise Ratio is very good when you write – especially when you write about G_d.
May 25th, 2009 at 10:30 AM
Redneck, your decision that “God may want me single” reminds me of a rhyming Yiddishism: Mann tracht und Gott lacht. Man plans and God laughs.
May 28th, 2009 at 2:36 AM
Steve –
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Dinda’s post (above) is spam. The comment is a _direct and unaltered quote_ from Aaron’s first comment on your posting.
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Clicking on Dinda’s name brings you to a construction advertisment website.
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The upside is that ‘Dinda’ actually read the comments section enough to pick out a choice part of what Aaron wrote. I hope Dinda learned something.