Earlier this year, I had posted Tough Choices and Tough Love Part I and Part II as well as Enabling and Rescuing vs. Tough Love. Now, it is time for a brief update on how some of this plays out.

People that you love can drive you up a wall when you know what they are doing will eventually come back to hurt them. As I mentioned before, tough love is tough because it is hardest on you.

To quote my opening paragraph:

“Tough love is a term in the USA and some other places that mean a series of choices you have to make to help someone grow. The reason it is called ‘tough’ love is because you have to go against your desire to help, step back, and watch a person you love hurt themselves badly with their choices. You have to let them toughen up while you have to stay tough enough to let them fall.”

Sometimes that fall is fatal. Sometimes that fall is hitting the absolute bottom in the form of a prison sentence or watching their family fall apart. It comes in many forms but you can see when the bottom hits if you care enough and love them enough to stay by their side.

In the case of one person we know of and care for deeply, that person has been hit with a significant injury that will alter their life. My husband and I know how it impacts a family as it hit him a little over 4 years ago. Any significant injury that has a permanent impact on your life or a real permanent disability makes you re-evaluate your choices and future. If you are lucky, you have someone by your side to help you deal with the challenges.

If that disability hits someone you have been trying to help but had to patiently wait with the tough love, then it becomes a potential opening in helping them back up to their feet.

I know my bana told me about what happened to him a couple of times. It has likely happened to each one of us perhaps once. If it hasn’t, it will. That is when you are faced with a very bad time in your life, those who are using and abusing you will abandon you. You are damaged and no longer usable. You find out who your real friends are and who truly cares. Often, that number comes as a shock as the amount of individuals who are your real friends and who truly care is low.

When the times count the most, who you can count on become very clear. Sometimes it is clear enough to break through the haze that had them distracted for so long.

Tough love is tough. But it is worth it all in the end. Tough love is described in a way in the Bible too. It has a special term which I will write about tomorrow. It is called Agape love.

Thank you,

Anah

Diet has two main different meanings which depend on the context in which they are used. First is what you eat on a regular basis. The other definition is what you don’t eat or do eat just to lose weight. I’m going to be writing about the first definition and how it impacts our health.

In the Philippines, …. Nah, I need to change up the format on my Life Here & There articles so you’ll get the comparison at the end. Trust me. It is a positive one for the Philippines.

In the USA, there are a few major leading causes of death with some of the top ones being heart attack, cancer and the medical industry. The average lifespan is decreasing in the USA as well. This is due to overmedication, lack of proper exercise, lack of balance of exposure to the sun and poor diets. Diabetes Type 2 is on the rise courtesy of so many being overweight and excessive consumption of large amounts of sugar – usually in sodas such as Coke or Pepsi. If you think drinking diet sodas will get around that, the sweeteners in those are also bad so look out for anything with aspartame in it and avoid it.

The junk food or chips, candy, microwave meals and more bring with it extensive amounts of chemicals that accumulate in the body and cause all sorts of diseases and ailments including cancer. From this article, we can find even more problems with common foods eaten in the USA.

“The USDA reports that the top nine foods eaten by Americans are:

* Whole cow’s milk
* 2 percent milk
* Processed American cheese
* White bread
* White flour
* White rolls
* Refined sugar
* Colas
* Ground beef

All of these foods are foreign to our genome that evolved on a Paleolithic diet. This mono diet creates altered patterns of gene expression that lead to disease, including food allergy or sensitivity.”

Translation is the standard diet of Americans is not healthy at all.

What is called for is drinking pure or distilled water (of course it tastes better cold), skim milk or 1% milk at the most, avoid the soy, and eat lots of raw vegetables, raw fruits, and proteins raised in on organic or natural grass. That last part means the chicken, pork or fish should be caught in the wild or fed foods that were not processed or treated with chemicals as those chemicals collect in the body of the animal and transfer the poison and toxins into your body.

Unfortunately, you can’t trust much of the food in the grocery store as even the fruit and raw vegetables are sprayed with chemicals to help them last longer and look more appealing to shoppers.

How does the Philippines compare on this? Do we grow our fruit and eat it raw? Check. (Deep fried bananas may taste good but may not be good for you.) Do we grow and eat our veggies raw? Oftentimes, yes we do. Do we avoid white flour? Hey, we’ve got rice. Are the proteins raised on organic foods? Most of the time, they are.

So diet wise, I think Pinas has the advantage. As for the other definition of diet, many Filipinas have no problem with this. With a few alterations of getting the junk food out of our system, all of us can live healthier lives.

Thank you,

Anah

One thing everyone needs to understand is the title a person holds whether it is an Engineer, Scientist, Doctor, Chemist, Accountant, CEO, President, or Janitor is they are individuals with a variety of opinions and beliefs just like you and me. That they hold a position is more about their ambition and ability to have some skills in a certain area does not make them someone special. Their beliefs are a combination of life experiences and instruction they have received whether it is a formal or informal education.

To summarize that, I will refer to a comment my husband uses. “It doesn’t matter what a person’s title is. They all drop their pants and take a poop like the rest of us. I’ll respect the title but the person still has to prove themselves to me.”

How does all that tie in with the title?

Specialists in the medical field are quite good at what they do. I have nothing but respect for their professions and their service provided. However, there is a little detail most individuals overlook in the USA. Courtesy of some federal government regulations, competition issues, and generally laziness of the patient in tending to their own medical issues, specialists represent vulnerability in the USA medical system. The specialists have their copy of your medical records that pertain to them. Your Family Practice doctor doesn’t have the same copy unless you, the patient, have the foresight to give it to them.

IF the individual doctor stays current on the wealth of information in their field AND can get past what they were told to believe even when verifiable facts disprove a long standing assumption, then you have a good doctor. However, doctors are human too. Combined with insufficient information from incomplete medical records and generally accepted assumed practices, a Family Practice or general doctor can make a mistake that compounds issues. It happens all too frequently.

Let me give you a real life example.

My hubby has issues with his ankles like I’ve written about before. His left one causes a daily problem with a blood vessel. That in turn increases his cholesterol as the liver produces it to mend the interior walls of the blood vessels. The Orthopedic doctor knows about the blood vessel issue but the Family Practitioner only saw the blood test results and wanted to move on medication for the elevated cholesterol which was related to the ankle injury. That caused even more problems.

His father got hit with what is called the pharmacology ladder. Basically, he also had problems with blood vessels in his legs. At that time, they thought the cholesterol caused the heart issues so he was prescribed Statin. But each long term side effect of the statin was not recognized as coming from the medication so more medication was prescribed. In the end, he has far more medical issues to deal with because of the medication than he had before it. This unfortunately is becoming more and more common. The medical industry is killing the patients with the medicine. You can read more about it here, here, and here.

Thank you,

Anah

Today marks a day of Vested Wisdom for many reasons. This topic has become loaded with so much meaning today that I’m still trying to fully grasp all the changes required. I’ll talk more about that later.

I was watching the Vice Presidential debates and one of the questions really struck me as odd. “What is your Achilles heel?”

To most Americans, they know what that means. For me though, many years here is not enough to pick up all of the various terms, slang, and implied references to literary items I’ve never read. So that question was confusing me. I had to turn to my geek encyclopedia reading husband for the answer only to find he is even more of a geek than I originally knew.

He immediately began telling me the exact Greek mythology story it was referring to because he had read all the books regarding Greek mythology years before it was assigned in school. Between that and his ability to never forget anything he pays attention to, he nearly recited the story to me completely. I believe we did not bother with Greek mythology in school in the Philippines. If we did, I know I didn’t pay attention to it.

The reference the VP question made was to the Greek mythology story of a hero named Achilles. He was a warrior who was invulnerable to harm except for one area on his heel. Of course, he died from a wound to his heel later on.

The name Achilles is also given to the Achilles tendon. It is arguably one of the most important tendons in the body as it supports your entire weight when you walk. If you tear the Achilles like Misty May did, then you are in for surgical repair and a yearlong healing process. The recovery takes so long because of how important the tendon is. If it is hurt with tendinosis, it will seriously impact your ability to walk as my hubby had it in both Achilles for 5 years. If you rupture it in either a partial tear or a complete tear, your ability to walk is removed as you can’t bear weight on that leg with the injury.

What is the major change in the lives of my husband and me? We need to be there for someone of advanced years who has suffered a partial tear and is in a bad bind.

(As a footnote, I tried to watch the Presidential debate but I turned it off because both candidates suck.)

Thank you,

Anah

Today’s entry is about why I haven’t written yet.

Right now, I’m not feeling all to well.  Give me another day and I’ll get caught up.

Thank you,

Anah

Recently I was asked a question of “What is Black Friday?” It is not that easy to answer when you know that who you are trying to explain it to is not from the USA. I could say just go to this website for your definition, but that wouldn’t be good enough. The reason is the lifestyle choices of the USA are so very different than the Philippines that a basic definition is not good enough.

I will only touch briefly on one definition of it. One definition of it is tied to a stock market crash on September 24, 1869 when speculators wanted to corner the gold market but failed and caused a lot of problems on the stock market. But that isn’t the answer my source is looking for. Jumping right into the answer will only confuse a person more because of the differences in lifestyle and culture.

The USA, like all other countries, has its special set of holidays that it observes for various reasons. Thanksgiving Day is the holiday associated with Black Friday but not for obvious reasons. Thanksgiving Day is an USA holiday that originally was for everyone in the nation to give thanks to God for the blessings they have received. Along the way though, Thanksgiving Day and all of the other holidays have been distorted from their original meanings for the sake of retail profit.

You see it every year at any of the stores. They get in new packages of candy to celebrate Easter with chocolate, gummy eggs and other stuff promoting the Easter Bunny not the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christmas is about Santa Claus, Rudolph, Christmas trees and getting and giving stuff. Thanksgiving is supposedly about family but the big turkey meal is promoted as well as football games, deer hunting and the start of shopping for Christmas. Often the New York parade or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade has all of the floats, bands and other stuff in it and it ends with Santa Claus marking the start of the shopping season.

In the Philippines, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ and celebrating another year of having your family alive and together – not about toys and trinkets from stores. That is why this is a tough question to answer.

Thanksgiving is always on the 4th Thursday in November. The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday. It is when the retail stores give major discounts and sales to lure in a swarm of shoppers to get their stuff (often on credit card) to give away as Christmas gifts. January thru November marks the time when most retail stores do not make ends meet. They often are operating in debt. The Christmas shopping season is when they make the vast majority of their profits.

Black Friday is the start of that holiday shopping season and the start of generating profits for the year. It comes from the term “in the black” which refers to general accounting practices of using black ink to indicate profit or positive numbers and red ink to indicate debt or negative numbers.

Know you know this detail. Whether or not it holds this year with the economic challenges remains to be seen. Our household does not participate in the materialistic part as it has no real meaning outside of making some corporations wealthy.

Thank you,

Anah

Chance of being born a male: 1 in 2

Odds that a celebrity marriage will last a lifetime: 1 in 3

Chance of suffering from asthma or allergy diseases: 1 in 6

Odds of getting hemorrhoids: 1 in 25

Odds of being on plane with a drunken pilot: 1 in 117

Odds of catching a ball at a major league ballgame: 1 in 563

Chance that Earth will experience a catastrophic collision with an asteroid in the next 100 years: 1 in 5,000

Odds of being considered possessed by Satan: 1 in 7,000

Odds of getting a royal flush in poker on first five cards dealt: 1 in 649,740

Chance of dying in a terrorist attack while visiting a foreign country: 1 in 650,000

Odds of drowning in a bathtub: 1 in 685,000

Chance of dying from contact with a venomous animal or plant: 1 in 3,441,325

Odds of Winning the Wisconsin Lottery: 1 in 6,991,908

Chance of dying from parts falling off an airplane: 1 in 10,000,000

Chance of dying from ignition or melting of nightwear: 1 in 30,589,556

Chance of dying from a mountain lion attack in California: 1 in 32,000,000

Odds of winning the multi-state lottery in the USA: 1 in 146,107, 962

Chance of dying from a shark attack: 1 in 300,000,000

Odds of a meteor landing on your house: 1 in 182,138,880,000,000

Odds when things are considered statistically laughable or impossible:
1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Odds of Evolution happening: 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000

You get the picture.

Have a nice weekend,

Anah

If you have followed the economic news closely and dug down deep to find what is going on, you will find that those who have been the most accurate are predicting the USA is headed for a complete economic collapse just like the USSR did in 1989.

Basic rationale is the USA government and people have spent too much and lived beyond their means for too long. It will hurt the global markets as the global markets are based on the dollar. But tama na…enough of the gloom and doom talk.

I’m shifting focus to how to deal with one of the leading causes of higher utility bills. There are three main culprits being heating the air, cooling the air, and heating the water. Cooling the air when it is really warm usually calls for an air conditioner of some sort. They can really eat up the energy budget. The environmental air conditioners or energy efficient kinds often do not have the same power so they have to run longer or you need more of them to get the same effect. I haven’t done the experiment but I would think that would negate the energy efficient part.

As for heating the air, you can invite people over for a political debate. Between the boiling blood of your guests and all the hot air they’ll be spewing, your energy bill can go down quickly.

I am quite interested in this article about a device known as SETS (Space Energy Time Savings). It is a tankless water heater that does a silly thing. It heats the water as you need it instead of keeping 40-120 gallons of water heated all the time. Our electric bill was $45 a month just for the Hot Water heater that we didn’t use much. Cutting that down to only a fraction can easily assist in shifting some of the burden off of the energy bill. The savings can be used to help chip off other debts.

Perhaps the US government should learn a thing or two about running a household. You cut your expenses wherever you can then cut them more with efficient methodology and tools. But that would just be silly common sense.

Thank you,

Anah

Yes, this does have to do with positions and placement. Yes, it even has to deal with special choices. I am even going to disclose some secrets when it comes to time and duration. Length also plays a factor in this as well.

Here we go.

When my husband was single, he decided to upgrade from a single bed or a twin to a double bed because when he lies down he needs the extra length of the bed to stretch out. So he purchased a used bedroom set 12 years ago from an older couple that was moving. He has no idea how long they had the bedroom set either. With such a long duration of time, the inevitable happened and the mattress and box spring have started to break down and it is getting uncomfortable. Since we are in the same bed together, he doesn’t get to sleep diagonally so we will likely need to upgrade to a queen sized bed so he has leg room.

That leads us into a series of decisions regarding bedroom furniture. Do we go for some modern bedroom furniture or some older kind again?

So that is our bedroom secret. Even the furniture is ancient. But if we choose a new set of contemporary bedroom furniture then we will need to figure out the proper placement and positioning of the furniture in the bedroom again.

Oh well, we will do what we must to get the springs back into place and make our sleeping comfortable again.

Did you think I was going to talk about something else? Tsk, tsk, tsk. I guess this post has gone on long enough.

Anah

It comes as no surprise with the future economic condition of the USA that many Fil-Am couples are immigrating to the Philippines as is being reported by the Philippine government. Yes, the economic outlook for the USA is that grim. If we could, we would be doing the exact same thing.

However, we cannot as we have a duty to perform here first. I would like to hear your feedback on similar issues as I believe these cross across state lines with ease. It is about taking care of your parents-in-law during the latter part of their lives.

I know every situation is different so I will try to point out a number of variables that I can see. The easiest one would be that your mother-in-law and your father-in-law have already passed away so it is a non-issue to you. Well, that isn’t the case with us. Both of Goryo’s parents are alive and relatively well. (They are both so dear to me- I love them to death!)

No, they do not have any terminal ailments but they have their collection of issues after near 70 years of life. Some of which will require some surgical correction but that’s enough details on their health. Let us just say the German attribute of stubbornness has a tendency to complicate a few matters such as willingness to get the proper corrective surgery.

Here is the challenge in all of this. Yes, we could be selfish and leave for the Philippines but that would not be true to the Filipina way. We are going to serve them until they pass from natural causes. Yes, there is a degree of fear of the government as we hope Wisconsin never turns to nurse-assisted suicide like California has done. That is just wrong on every level. We will stand by their side until God comes to claim them and not someone playing God in the medical or political field.

We will likely face some economic hard times but how many haven’t in the Philippines? A deep recession or depression is likely good for the USA. It teaches character and how to be tough. You need to learn how to survive, thrive and be happy even when the times are tough. That is nothing new for a Filipina. It should be an interesting ride but we all do what we must out of proper service to those who have been our parents or the parents of our spouses.

to be continued..

(Please scroll down for Part 2)

Thank you,

Anah