Horse Sense for Human Aches

In the early Spring of 1994, my horse veterinarian put me on equine glucosamine and chondroitan sulfate. I was developing  an early form of arthritis. Standing up from a squat position was unsuccessful without pain, if at all.  The chondroitan sulfates and glucosamines were not on the shelves for humans  yet. No one in the health food stores knew about them.  Horses had them because horses are very special people. Their performance on the track produced a research industry in medical supplements that is often ahead of the race against human products. 

After my veterinarian's suggestion, doctors and pharmacists that treat humans checked the products I bought. The medical team declared them safe for humans.  About two years later, health food stores began to stock them. And about a  year after that,  local supermarkets followed the trend. Now they are plentiful on the shelves. But I like my Equine stores the best for price and reliable quality.

I buy 3 jars of 1 lb each to avoid shipping charges. This lasts me  about a year and a half.

As far as doses, since a big scoop is for horses, I put about a flat teaspoon of the powder in my cereal 1x day. It is not flavored and it dissolves readily.

Supplements are not medicine. Usually it takes about 6 weeks for the body to begin to notice a difference. Since I have been treating myself with these supplements from 1994, I have reasonable range of movement when I haven't pulled a muscle. 

 

Check out this Drug.com link for precautions due to allergies of the product. 

 http://www.drugs.com/vet/aniflex-complete.html

Various equine suppliers sell AniFlex Complete. Compare prices and shipping. Stateline is one of my favorites. As a Florida resident, I have to pay tax.

http://www.statelinetack.com/item/animed-aniflex-complete/SLT700310/

Snake-Ums

  Snake-um

This young snake was in the road at the barn. Both managers were unsure what it was. It was not venonmous ("poisonous" was the word the she-manager used....incorrect when not eating snakes...snakes can be venomous. "Poisonous" refers to ingestion only). 

The head was not a triangle or diamond shape and there was no hint of tail rattle. 

Determining that it was non-venonmos, I assured the managers it was a variety of ratting snakes which is good for our environment of the barn. Familiar with Rat Snakes and Corn Snakes, I wasn't certain of this one. It was more aggressive in protecting itself from cowboy boots than the more placid Corn Snake, which I can usually pick up when confronted.  This was a rapid mover. 

So I bagged it. Punched holes in the baggy, I photographed it for DaggerWing Nature Center to get back to me on the variety.

Taking it down the road where humans were not horsing around, I set it free.  It surprised me. It did not take off at the run (fast slither). It turned to me, flickering it's red forked tongue and started to move towards me tongue-smelling the underneath of my boots. 

It did this to both boots and then it turned away and went into the grass ditch.

DaggerWing reported back to me that Donald, former director of DaggerWing Nature Center and snake specialist said it was a young Black Racer. Ah...that explains the aggressiveness. 

Black Racers are great snakes but not domestic. Corn and Rat snakes can be pets. Black Racers dislike human interaction. They are not aggressive unless cornered. Then a bag, a pillow case, a towel thrown over it will do the job of removing it from the site without needing to kill it. 

They are common to South Florida. I have them around my residence and they are welcome here. They eat mice and rats. Usually they are seclusive. 

 http://www.snakesandfrogs.com/scra/snakes/racer.htm

The Good of Snorting Alkalol

This is your Great-Grandma's Nasal Wash!

Teaching elementary school children reveals that our culture is embarrassed that we have nostrils.

The silly giggles snickle the room when I teach my young learners to draw those holes in our face: nostrils. Aside from coaching them to not stick fingers up those holes and expect to use my art supplies, we have to learn to love those holes. When they draw faces without them, I gasp, "How will you breathe?!!" and again I get a blast of the giggles. Children cannot say why they laugh at their noses. They don't "nose"! 

A colleague suffering from severe asthma shares outdoor duty with me every morning so we notice other teachers walking by with the Never Ending Hacking Cough. One morning she revealed a secret: Alkalol. 

The following is my experience of this natural, CHEAP, remedy to disgust the cough so badly as to make it flee from us.

 

The Never Ending Cough
The Cough that never goes away seems to be what everyone has succumbed to this year. I had it to the point of needing antibiotics. My doctor said it started with post nasal drip and settled in my chest. Had I combated it earlier, the Cough might not have brought me to popped and stuffed ears and hacking until I threw my back out.

Herbal and Tea Remedies

When the rumbling cough first came on, I upped my doses of echinacea and goldenseal. The Goldenseal is a mucus fighter. Removing all dairy except Half & Half in my afternoon power coffee, I tried to reduce the production of mucus. I increased Garlic oil for bacterial fighting. And I drank plenty of warm tea....my favorite being Celestial Seasoning's "Apple Cinnamon" and Lipton's "Green Tea" with fruit flavors. These were good for continual throat lubrication. But the Cough persisted.

Drugs

I succumbed to drugs. First the saline nasal solution which irritated my delicate nasal skin. Then I tried "12 Hour Sinex" which did open one nostril but it closed again at Noon. I gumbled Mucinex D along with the antibiotics which relieved the Cough from becoming pnuemonic.

Alkalol

It's been with us for 100 years. Usually in the aisle with hydrogen-peroxide and rubbing alcohol, these days one might need to ask for it behind the pharmacy counter. Some stores still carry it on the shelf. Walmart doesn't carry it at all. It is a mixture of 1% Alcohol and lovely mentholated oils. That's it. For a deeper understanding, click on the next url.

http://www.alkalolcompany.com/index.php/alkalol/faqs/frequently_asked_questions
Non-Addictive
The only addictive quality I found was the Good Feeling I had after I blew out all the crap laying in my sinuses. It took about 3 days of treatment and then it was gone! My throat was no longer raspy. Now I use it once a week as a preventative. I cleaned my sinuses out the night before my root canal.  Deep meditational breathing was possible during root canal! 

Conclusion: 

The worst side-affect of alkalol is that people laugh at me as if I'm wearing mismatched plaid socks.  For example, one teacher suffering the clogged ear - cough had a hard day at school. It was after 3 pm when we met up and I suggested "alkalol". Our bookkeeper, obviously listening in, belted out a hardy laugh. I asked her why. She said she could not see me in the same sentence as alcohol. But I have no ethics against responsible drinking:  I am a teetotaler for medical reasons.

I corrected her and said, "Rubbing Alcohol". Disinfectant. Plaid socks.

Serving Green Bananas for St Paddy's Day

After a three year hiatus from personal watercolors, by St. Paddy's day, (a green day near my birthday), I resumed. Folks at the barn were gathered for their after-lesson stories so the benches were full. It was a good time for me to go off with my Yarka watercolors and find some landscape to paint. The ground has been dry so I plunked myself down in my riding apparel and looked around. The banana flower pendulum is always a Floridian vision of delight. Seemed like a solid place to start.

 

After a warm breezey half hour, I was noticed by Matt, the manager of the barn. Because of my painting, he saw the ripe bananas on the very top of this floral pendulum which were otherwise shaded from view. So he called over Jerry, a trainer who can ride anything, to hop on the tractor to chop down the fruit. No matter what I was saying about removing my still-life, all they could think of was food.

Sweet though the Lady Finger Bananas were, I no longer had my still life. Country Boys are a force of nature!

They ate my still life.

February is Spring time in South Florida. Warmth returns and the layers of clothing drop like melted northern snowflakes. I was back to one layer of cotton T.
It's also the dry time. This early in our southern Spring, we may get cloud cover but rarely results in rain.

So this is when I remove unwanted ants. I hate doing this chore but without it, the amount of ants that visit can literally take a home off it's cement block and move it like the slaves did to pyramid blocks.

Even if I spray and clean, the ant bodies that die along the patio strip are in the millions and multi-millions. In a week, they pile up to dark dusty masses. But the granules ended that ant compilement. In one way, you might say the granules are "ant-i suicide". Ha....

Not far from the premises, I watch new mounds emerge by the swale and out the back behind the fence. The ants have made new escape routes. That's ok with me.

Meanwhile, it's the time I get to reacquaint myself with my backyard and native floridian plants.

Autism in Your Face is Good

I am not related to anyone with autism. Yet I am related by blood.  The blood factors that make me human relate me to these children who are struggling humans.

  

According to statistics, 1 in a 100 has autism in the United States. http://autism.emedtv.com/autism/autism-statistics.html 

Outside the USA, other countries are feeling the effects. ?  If countries all over the world are suffering from this childhood affliction, then it’s not just western civilization’s modern conveniences creating the cause. The cause itself is still unknown.  http://autism.about.com/od/whatisautism/p/autismcauses.htm   

 So cosmically speaking, why do we have such a predominance of Autism in this generation ?

Years back while in a bookstore in Greenwich Village, NYC, I ran across a book that suggested that children born with mental disturbances are the result of people’s souls returning who died in shocking trauma such as in war.  

Although  I have no system of belief in reincarnation, I enter the sense of brain shock.

I myself am a child who had brain shock, or trauma in my early youth. I have had a lock-down on those pains.  So I have to wonder if perhaps children are coming into this generation with similar brain shock. 

This week I worked in an Autism Unit at an elementary school.  The one nearly non-functional student I was assigned to was In My Face.  He had  a dearness and my heart softened to him.  Looking into his eyes,   I had no idea if he could read my eyes or face at all. 

The first day we were together, he acted out with hand to tongue spinning, whining, kicking, throwing. He seemed angry and unsatisfied. I learned to patiently repeat and repeat and repeat and firmly assist him in picking up his tossed items. The wonderful teacher and paraprofessional aides provided a model of saintly patience and direction. The second day, after about two hours together, he asked me for  things.  The teacher seemed surprised he verbalized his wishes.  When he said “sleep” and was ignored because it wasn’t rest time, he acted out.  The trained paraprofessional asked him what he wanted. By then he lost the word. I provided it: Sleep. So we were allowed to rest him on the rocking chair with him on my lap, head back to rest and gently stroking my head and hair. He got what he needed. And finally, instead of the anger he had the day before, he heard me laugh and wanted to laugh for hours. He liked laughing. And then, in my face, he knit his brows and said to me, “Cry”. So I pretended to cry and so did he. And then we both laughed again.  We were relating.

This begins my adventure into the realm of Autism.   I know that coming out of my brain shock has enabled me to see that I have special talents and awarenesses.  Mine are uncommon to most people’s.  I believe that cosmically we are given these children to learn to be better humans ourselves. And when they wake, we will reap their special talents and awarenesses.

"Play it again, Sam."

(The “S” in my name came from my grandfather Sam. )

First grade is the most cerebral of elementary school learners. 

According to the Art Education Curriculum, it is the 1^st Graders who learn about patterns and visual repetition.  These are abstract concepts which are a huge challenge to turn into concrete, meaningful art.

This year with class time reduced to 25 minutes a session, fun in learning was drying out to a crisp. Materials were reduced from the juicy gooey wet tempera to pencil, color pencil and artstix.

“Honey, I shrunk the kids’” fun syndrome boxed me in. After weeks of feeling the  terrible restrictions, I broke into song. If I couldn't juice up the art materials, I could juice up by sound. 

My Casio keyboard was advancing in age by dust accumulation so I dragged it out and livened it up in school. The first day, I let the children hear what “cleaning” sounded like as I turned the power on while cleaning the keys with babywipes.  The dust hit the floor like bouncing miceballs.

By the second week, it was cleaned out enough to start planking away.

The best way to excite children is to include them in the creative decision making process.   The Art Concept “ Contrast” was the goal to sing out.

So I asked the class if someone can start the song up.  Sure enough, Sarah  began to sing and it caught my ear…she sang “Light/Dark…..” hey! That works for Contrast!   A little feel of “Night and Day” in the opening and we had our song: “Light/Dark/Light/Dark…..in our Art we have Contrast”.  Ok…it doesn’t rhyme. But the tune was catchy in a minor chord. 

Most importantly, without drilling, without unwilling wordy repetition, the soft chant hummed all through the visual application of the lesson. These children were thrilled to write and sing a song about their Art. 

And like  Bo-g-art's ‘Sam”, these students will be on school TV next week to “sing it again”!