I grew up in the 60's in LA. It was all about surfing & the war (protest songs & peace songs). The Beach Boys were huge. The Beattles came on the scene in '64 (I think?). 'Inagodadavida' was the huge underground song. In 1963, the Kingsmen recorded Louie Louie & we sang & danced to that song a million times. Protest songs were 'Eve of Destruction' & 'One Tin Soldier' &, of course, the BIG ONE...Arlo Gunthrie's 'Alice's Restaurant' (You can get anything you want...at Alice's Restaurant...) He still performs the song each year on Thanksgiving Day in Stockbridge, MA just like the song...in the Church. Jefferson Starship recorded 'Miracles'. Wolfman Jack, on KRLA, once played 'Miracles' over & over for 24 hours! Our dream cars were "pony cars" like the Pontiac GTO & a Chevy Camaro Z-28 with a 454. We all carried surfboards in our cars...sticking out the window or tied to the roof. We wore boots (Nancy Sinatra 'These Boots Are Made for Walking') & our skirts got shorter & shorter. Our hair got longer & longer. We used to iron our hair on the ironing board to make it completely straight. In the LA area, we cruised Pasadena Boulevard & Whittier Boulevard on Friday nights. Whiskey-A-Go-Go was the place to see & be seen. Eight-track tapes were THE thing to have in your car for tunes. Bonanza was huge (Sunday nights). Jackie Kennedy did her White House Tour & President Kennedy didn't watch it on TV 'because Bonanza was on! In the later part of the decade, we attended way too many funerals of our classmates who'd come home from 'Nam in a flag-covered coffin (25% of the boys in my graduating class). So, we cried together a lot. I graduated in '68...the year MLK was killed. So was Bobby Kennedy. I've always considered myself fortunate to have spent my teen years in the '60's on the beaches of southern CA. Until the "War" ruined our innocence it was an idealic time & place to be a teen. We entered the '70's a much more subdued crowd.

Born in 1953. When I was around 47, I suddenly had all kinds of really bad joint pain. I could barely walk...feet, legs....got frozen shoulder, too. Health care folks thought osteoarthritis, but the bone scan was fine. Then, they thought fibromyalgia. I started gaining weight because I couldn't move very well and had no energy. Fast forward...I started taking potassium supplements when I tried the Atkins diet for a few months. The pain went away. Rewind...up until about that time, my GYN had me on aldactone, a potassium-sparing diuretic, to help with PMS. I had stopped taking it when I had to switch providers. So, I guess my body was missing the potassium. Back to the future...3 years ago, I caught a respiratory virus that sent me to the ER. My heart went wacko on me. I was born with mitral valve prolapse w/regurgitation. It hadn't really bothered me until I caught that virus. The virus lasted almost 5 months! I was put on atenolol, a beta blocker and promptly gained a lot more weight, was out of breath, no energy, etc. from that experience. So...DH insisted that I retire from my job (June 2006) to take care of myself. Everytime I turned around, I had something to follow-up...suspicious mammos, biopsies, etc. He told me my job was now "to get healthy". Bless him. For the last few years, I've been trying to figure out how to make myself healthy. Last year, I was able to slowly wean myself off of atenolol. A pulse over 100 was normal and I have low blood pressure. Tired person! I also started taking kelp, which cleared up my sinusitus and tinnitus within the first few days of taking it. Don't ask me why I needed it. I was just researching my multitude of problems and decided it wouldn't hurt to try it. As soon as I retired, I made myself exercise and get outside as much as possible. I tried all kinds of diets. My weight stayed locked on the same number no matter how little I ate or how much I exercised. My body temp was usually around 97.1, but I'd have bouts where it would drop down in the 96 range and I'd get chilled. Thyroid tests showed 3.0, so my doc won't treat that. On January 9, 2008, I tried something new. Trader Joe's came to town, so we started purchasing 100% of our food from them and have almost completely stopped eating out at restaurants. I was already in an exercise routine, but I just mixed it up to add frequent bursts of intensity among steady exercise...stationary bike, Bowflex weights, crunches, yoga, walking the dog, etc. I have an outdoor bike, a kayak and a swimming pool, so I'm also accustomed to doing those when the weather permits. I just spent 3 hours this morning in my garden, moving shrubs around. I started keeping a daily dairy (spreadsheet) of EVERYTHING that I eat to try to stay between 1200-1300 calories per day and also low fat. I rarely go above 45 grams of fat for an entire day. When I bring home the groceries, I enter every item's nutritional content into that spreadsheet to help me easily track what I eat. I use measuring cups and spoons to make sure that I've got my portions matched to the nutritional portions. I stopped drinking "brand name" diet sodas. I drink TJ's diet soda with no preservatives, no sodium. I no longer crave sweets at all. I don't get hungry at all. It is so easy to eat the right portions. DH is experiencing the same thing, although he gets larger portions and more calories. I take TJ's high potency vitamins for women -- you take 5 pills a day instead of one pill -- spread out over the day. I take potassium due to my particular problems. I get vitamin D because I do get sunshine, even in winter. Our house is passive solar, so even on a cold sunny day, I can sit out on our front porch and toast. The results? I've lost 12 lbs, but I stalled at 6 lbs for several weeks and have stalled again at 12 lbs. I tend to increase my exercise, so I'm hoping these stalls are due to muscle weighing more. Anyway, I still need to lose 10-20 lbs. I have lost 4 inches in my waist! To get out of the first stall, I started drinking green tea 4 times a day. That helped to boost my metabolism up to a temp of 98.3. My husband has also started drinking the green tea, too. He is also losing weight, btw. What we've BOTH noticed...our skin and hair looks and feels so much younger. We both have a lot of energy. We feel great with no aches and pains. We feel like our circulation is better. My bp is around 88/60 and my pulse is down to 65-70 beats per minute. This sounds strange, but my body feels "quiet" now that my pulse is under control. I feel "light" inside my body like my organs have more room. Could it be the lack of artificial stuff and preservatives in the food? Could it be that restaurants (we don't do fast food) are really surving food so full of calories and fat even in small portions? Anyway, I'll see how the weight loss goes over the next year. I got interested in the green tea from going to the Real Age website and catching Dr. Oz on TV. Hope this helps someone else. IMPORTANT: I got my physical in January before starting all of this. So, my doctor knows what I'm doing, what I'm eating and the supplements that I'm taking.

At this, the second meeting of the ROMEO(1) club at church (which I call "The Old Farts' Club") this morning, we decided that we'd each take turns telling our life story (as we had last year). One man in his late 80s agreed to start off, and without previous consideration told of being an instructor in the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II, then working for H J Heinz for 30 years (didn't know of the veracity of the "57 varieties") and later for a provincial agency helping farmers not lose their farms when interest rates went over 20% just after 1980. He'd worked for 35 years ... had been retired for 25 years ... and asked us to consider how much his company had paid out to him over those 25 years since he'd retired. As fewer of us have the privilege of private pensions any more it seems to me that funding our retirement should be a high priority item for almost all of us in our hierarchy of important things to do in our lives. And it needs to begin early on. ole joyfuelled 1. It started as the Senior Men's Coffee Hour a few years ago, then someone heard of another group called "ROMEO" (Retired Old Men Eating Out) that he'd heard of ... so that's what we became. They wouldn't touch my suggestion that it should be ROMDO (Retired Old Men Drinking Out) with a twenty-foot pole! o j

My husband's mother had grown children....maybe even a grandchild or two, when she married his father, who had grandchildren...probably even great grandchildren, and after they got married, they had six children in six years. She was 38 when he was born....four more after him, and his dad was 68, and 72 when his last was born. The baby had spina bifida and died shortly after birth, and his mother died from breast cancer a couple of years later. I was almost 34....had no trouble getting pregnant and no morning sickness or complications during pregnancy and only gained 25 lb. Had a c section and was in the hospital for five days, and lost all but 7 when I got out. My mother, who was 42, also said she never had any nausea or other problems. My mother was 42 but probably looked older. She was thin and had premature gray hair. After I was born, in a Catholic hospital, by the way, she didn't see me for several hours. One of the sisters came into her room, which was a room with 4 beds, and said, "Have any of you had a baby and not seen it?" My mother said, "I haven't seen mine." The sister said, "Hmph!! No old woman like you has had a baby!" My mother said, "Well, I guess I ought to know if I had a baby or not!" I am quite sure my father was there, and he was a very over bearing type of person, and I can just imagine smoke coming out of his ears, because shortly, the mother superior came running into the room....my mother said her rosary or whatever she had hanging on her outfit (sorry, not Catholic...I don't know) "just a'jangling". She said, "Yes that is Mrs. Stout's baby.....give it to her right now!!"