Funny How?

I have a friend who writes the most hysterical statuses on Facebook.  She is spot on every time and gets me to laugh. Here are a few classics:

  • And that’s a wrap on another day where I acted like I knew what I was doing.
  • Snowboarding. Everyone is dissing on Shaun White. Why don’t YOU try to medal in half-pipe while dealing with the death of Shirley Temple?
  • After I drink my coffee, I like to show the empty cup to the IT guy and tell him that I have successfully installed Java. He hates me.
  • Friday is the beginning of my liver’s workweek.

I find it an enviable quality for someone to be  funny, especially the talent to write humor. I do not feel like I have the funny  gene, yet I hear from mainly younger adults quite frequently that I am funny and I have even heard the word “hilarious”.   Who me – funny?  How?   Could it be that even after 50 plus years of living we still do not see ourselves clearly?

Self Awareness

As the famous E.B. White said:
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

Humor and what makes someone laugh, is essentially a complete mystery.   The prevailing theory of humor has been the incongruity resolution – or the realization that two things do not go together, and the brain’s attempt to fix it is what makes us laugh.  The incongruity activates the front left part of the brain that makes sense of competing ideas. When we appreciate a joke, that’s the resolution. Activity moves to the so-called pleasure center and generates an emotional response, which equates to laughter. However; what makes someone laugh at a particular form of humor  might be just a function of how we are wired.  To check your laugh-ability levels, here are the humor “genres” characterized by movies – a universal point of reference. I find there is a little bit of something for everyone from this list to find funny:

Dark Humor – Humor about the gross, dark, violent and disgusting things in life.  A few movies come to mind; Fargo, The Big Lebowski, The Truman Show and Barton Fink.

Farce – Situations that are highly extravagant, exaggerated and improbable. Some Like It  Hot, The Producers and A Fish Called Wanda are great examples of Farce.

Screwball – Humor based on misunderstanding.  Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Blues Brothers and The Odd Couple are a few of my favorites.

Slapstick – Humor involving exaggerated physical activity.  I thought this would not be my cup of tea because for some reason I think of Charley Chaplin and the Three Stooges, but in checking out slapstick humor, I realize this genre includes some of the funniest movies I can recommend: Austin Powers, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Zoolander.  One could say these films are stupid – I say they are genius.

Parody – mocks or makes fun of an original work. Check out Spaceballs, Young Frankenstein, and The Naked Gun to have some laughter of a lifetime.

Satire – making fun of human follies and shortcomings.  Spinal Tap,  A Mighty Wind and Best in Show are some of my favorites.  This is my all time favorite humor genre.

In reviewing this list, I realize that although all these movies are funny, they have taken hours of writing to perfect the craft and I just come across as funny merely by speaking and my friend by dashing off an early morning status on Facebook?   Maybe it’s because there is humor in everything and when you look at life that way, and try not to take everything so seriously, thoughts and comments translate into funny gestures without even trying to make them funny.

I will leave you with another goodie from my friend – the most recent status:

Just saw an atheist friend of mine at TGI Fridays. What a hypocrite.

Funny

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

womansface_03…A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

This is a great philosophy to have however I am finding with age, my stone is rolling a tad bit slower and gathering more moss than ever before.  What gives?  Back when I was a spring chicken, I noticed that older adults “stones” crept down the path, and spending time with them used to drive me crazy!  They would get so flustered over the smallest details and seemed to have lost the ability to roll with it.  I found it exhausting to witness and utterly frustrating.  As I take a look at myself now however; I realize that I too am now slowly evolving into that which I am having a hard time recognizing – the much slower rolling stone, one that is taking its time moving down a very small incline.  I tell myself – Rage, Rage, Rage against the dying of the light but I am fearing that this is out of my control.

Some concrete examples might you ask?  Take travel, for example.  With each passing year, I like to get to the airport earlier and earlier.  I check the weather a week before the flight and sweat about the potential of a storm.  It takes me  longer to get out of the house in the morning as I review everything I packed.  Just last week when  traveling I was asked by the ticket agent at the gate if I wanted to check in my bag because the plane was full – I panicked.  I never check in a bag – should I check in a bag?  The mere decision I had to make threw me for a loop.

How to explain this?  In researching, there appears to be a loss of brain flexibility as we age.  After age 40, the brain begins to shrink in size and, after a lifetime of gaining accumulated knowledge, it becomes less efficient at accessing that knowledge and adding to it.  It’s like our brain just needs a “time out”.  I’m not a big believer that this can be remedied, although the website Lumosity, which provides exercises to strengthen the brain,  would have you believe otherwise. I gave the site a whirl,  created a login and password and began building my personal training program by selecting the areas of memory I wanted to train.  After answering a series of questions, I was presented with a pie chart showing the areas I needed to improve on and from there, it was on to my “exercises”.    Did I find this fun and engaging exercise for my brain?  NO – I found this to be just one more thing I had to do, one more thing to worry about and the amount of concentration I had to apply to all the exercises gave me sweaty palms.  No thank you.

I could be wrong, but I think that as we age, regardless of our brains shrinking, we just get tired.     We have moved on to the “I need to take care of me ” phase which means we are old enough to say NO!  I find that with aging and life, the key is acceptance.  The human brain is very big and complex, but just does not age well.  It becomes increasingly vulnerable to all sorts of malfunctions the older we get and obviously,  there is a slight shift in cognitive functions.  I am not viewing this as a bad thing; rather something that is what it is.  Given this reality I am faced with, I do intend to do my best to resolve to be more flexible, realize that the worst thing probably won’t happen, and continue to try to let things roll off my back.   Dylan Thomas’ famous poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is easily applicable to this situation – accept it but RAGE to keep it at bay.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

Drying Out This Winter

The title of this week’s blog does not mean I am checking into the Betty Ford Clinic.  For lack of better words,  my entire epidermis is drying up, desperately sucking up any and all available moisture in the air and my mucous membranes are turning to sand.  The cold winter we are experiencing this year, combined with home heating, makes for one arid body and is the cause of the lack of moisture that my body is craving.

Chicago, along with other parts of the country, have been vixen-ed by the “Polar Vortex”.  See all the arctic air settling down along the Great Lake areas?  That is us.  The cold is dangerous and bitter with temperatures hovering near zero accompanied by wind chills way below zero.
Polar Vortex Map

WHAT DOES THE POLAR VORTEX HAVE TO DO WITH DRY SKIN?
Nothing really but read on…
When water evaporates, it is drawn into the air which “holds” it.  The warmer and drier the air, the more water it can hold.  As air becomes cooler in the winter, it loses its water-holding capacity, so the air becomes dry.  That is okay when you are outside, because even though the air is dry, it can’t draw much water from your skin, since its capacity is low anyway. This is not what causes the skin to become dry.

Now for the real culprit….
The real culprit is when you come inside.  Given the bitter cold temperatures we are experiencing this winter, most furnaces are running full time.   Inside air, warmed up by your home’s / work building’s heating system, has a huge capacity for water, and therefore sucks the water out of your skin like a leech.  The same principle can be applied to your wood furniture and wood floors, where the lack of moisture dries  wood out easily.

What to do about this?
RUN A HUMIDIFIER

humidifier-inside-outsideFor best indoor comfort and health, a relative humidity of about 45 percent is ideal. At temperatures typically found indoors, this humidity level makes the air feel approximately what the temperature indicates, and your skin and lungs do not dry out and become irritated.  Most buildings can not maintain this level of humidity without help. In the winter, relative humidity is often much lower than 45 percent.  Any time the temperature outside is below freezing (which has been frequent this winter), relative humidity inside will be below 20 percent unless you do something to increase the humidity. That something else would be a humidifier which helps to maintain a comfortable level of humidity.

Other Tips To Help with Dry Skin….

  • Avoid hot showers and baths, and use a gentle cleanser
  • Moisturize your skin frequently
  • Shower then shave.  Men, shave after you get out of the shower. Women, save shaving for last while in the shower. This way the hairs are softer and your pores are open. Be sure to always moisturize after shaving!
  • Exfoliate to get rid of dead skin cells.  I use Clarisonic on my face and it is worth every penny.
  • Grease up your feet.  I have been doing this for years.  Once out of the shower, I grease up my feet with Vaseline or cocoa butter and wear a pair of socks for about an hour.  You can also do this right before bed.  Works like a charm!
  • Protect your lips.   I use a bag balm product called  Udder Balm.  Believe it or not, Bag Balm is used to soothe irritation on cows’ udders after milking.
  • Udo Oil.  The jury might be out on this one but Udo Oil works for me.   Udo Oil is a certified organic blend of unrefined edible oils and contains Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s). The EFA’s  in Udo’s Oil play an important role in great-looking, healthy skin. An imbalance in EFAs can make your hair lackluster and cause your nails to break or crack.  Given the dryness of indoor air in the winter, Udo Oil has helped to repair my nails in this dry heat along with my hair.  I buy the Udo 3-6-9 blend and consume one tablespoon daily.
    DCF 1.0

MYTH:  MOISTURIZE FROM WITHIN
I have always heard that drinking 8 classes of water per day will help with skin dryness.  I am a water drinker and I have not found this to be the case.  To quote Katie Rodan, a dermatologist in the San Francisco Bay area and a coauthor of Write Your Skin a Prescription for Change, humans aren’t like plants. Our skin doesn’t perk up when we consume water,”   In fact, when you ingest it, “water doesn’t go straight to the skin,” she says. “It goes through the intestines, gets absorbed into your bloodstream, and is filtered by kidneys. Then it hydrates cells.” When it comes to moisturizing skin, drinking water falls short.  Just stick to a great moisturizing lotion.

I have been applying these principles listed above – especially the Udo Oil and the humidifier –  for the past few months, and I definitely see an improvement.  Please comment on what has been working for you and let’s overcome this cold winter together one dry skin tip at a time!