Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Top Ten Reminders That You're Getting Older.....

10. TAKE IT DOWN A NOTCH - You're not as quick as you used to be so stop trying to be Speedy Gonzales. Slow down. You'll still make it to the finish line, just a little later that's all....

9. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY - When you feel an ache acknowledge it. This isn't Jenny Craig's no pain no gain program. This is your friend Arthur talking to you. Don't ignore him 'cause if you know Arthur, he doesn't play around. Also known as Arthritis and you don't want him as an enemy. Believe me when I tell ya....

8. DRESS TO IMPRESS, NOT TO DEPRESS - You're not a teenager or 20 or 30 something anymore so don't dress like it. Be classy not trashy. There's nothing worse than squeezing into an outfit that's 2 sizes too small for you and revealing, thinking you look good only to see others perceiving you as outrageously funny. That's depressing........

7. MAKEUP ( REMEMBER LESS IS MORE ) - Natural looking is in. The character Mimi from The Drew Carey Show is out! You're not auditioning for the circus. Actually, this comment is mainly directed to the women well over 60. You know the ones. Eyebrows penciled in like Corky the Clown because they shaved them off and the small lips they once had are now 3 times as large brought to you by the miracle of lipstick. And it always has to be RED LIPSTICK! Walking around looking like Ruby Ragoña! Shame on you!! You just wanna enhance your natural beauty. Stop trying to hide your laugh lines. So ya got crows feet now Big whoop. And what's up with women close to 70 years old with no damn gray hair? Not one. So maybe you do still have a nice shape on you but what about the poor unsuspecting guy who walks up behind you thinking he's about to say a flirty hello only to find out that when you turn around towards him, you look like methusela all wrinkled up and everything. You're probably old enough to be his grandmother for Christ's sake! Age gracefully ladies, Please.....

6. ADULTS ONLY - You're an adult, not a child. So act your age, not your shoe size. It's okay to have fun and keep a youthful mind. But adult fun and child-like fun are two different things. Going out on the town for dinner and drinks and becoming a bit " tipsy " is one thing. Going out on the town for dinner and drinks, getting butt hole drunk and acting like a damn fool, dancing like Pee Wee Herman up on the tables while flirting with other people's dates and throwing up all over yourself in public is just plain stupid. Just say no......

5. A WALKING MEDICINE CABINET - Your pharmacist has become your newest best friend. Yes, it's no longer fun popping pills because you HAVE TO take them now! Geez!

4. MUSIC IN THE AIR - Elevator music is now appealing to you because you know all the songs! So don't be shy just sing along....

3. MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE WORKPLACE - The majority of your co-workers were born the year you started working there. Oh yea.....and some of them are YOUR SUPERIORS!! DEAL WITH IT!

2. A HISTORY LESSON - When you tell your child that their history book is wrong because you were there, you REALLY ARE old. - * shaking my head *

1. PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE - You have more patience, but actually, it's just that you don't care anymore. Gee, isn't that the truth.....

Saturday, February 16, 2008

To Dream or not to Dream.......


Dreams are interesting. Quite interesting really. A few days ago while at work, one of my co-workers, his name is George, started telling me about this recurring dream he has quite often. He dreams a lot about flying. He said that in this particular dream, he's sitting inside the batmobile, ( If you're thinking of Batman and Robin, you're right! )

So, in his dream, Batman and Robin are sitting in the front seats and he's sitting in the back seat of the vehicle with ( of all people ) Elvis Presley. lol
He told me that he looks over at Elvis and just opens the door of the car and starts flying. He doesn't have any special super powers or anything like that but he can fly. Also in the dream, he's wearing regular street clothes. He doesn't have any type of crime fighters attire on. Of course when he told me and my other co-workers about the dream, we naturally began laughing. I guess you'd have to know him to get the full benefit. George is an African American male about 60 years old. He's a very likable person. Very down to earth and friendly. There's just something extremely funny about seeing him in jeans and a T-shirt flying through the air. lol
There's also another dream he has quite frequently where he's pulling something in the form of taffy candy out of his mouth continuously. He just keeps on pulling he says and it never ends. lol Strange dreams, eh. We all have them at some point or another.

Which brings me to what I want to talk about. WHY DO WE DREAM???

I don't know if there is actually a concrete answer to this question but I have come across some interesting theories, if you will, concerning our mental brain activity in the dreaming process. In an article I found recently, a Neuroscientist by the name of Mark Solms explains how dreams may protect and distract our brains from the outside world and allow the body to rest.
According to Solms, he suggests that we may very well have been confusing cause and effect. He says that dreams are not a by-product of sleep as assumed all along but may very well be what allows us to sleep in the first place.
"Dreams protect sleep, " Solms says. His iconoclastic view of dreams springs from emerging evidence that REM sleep and dreaming are not synonymous, and that the brain mechanisms involved in REM sleep may be entirely different from those involved in dreaming. Dreaming, in fact, is now thought to recruit areas of the brain involved in higher mental functions. So in essence he's saying that dreaming is a diversion and without this diversion, the brain would be urging us up and out into the world to keep it fully engaged. Solms also states that " dreams are a delusional hallucinatory state " -driven by activation of the brain's basic motivational system. And like delusions, they appear to be stoked by an abundance of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Scientists now know that dopamine plays a critical role in directing our attention. The neurochemical dictates what is important in our environment, regardless of whether that environment is inside us or outside. Under dopamine's influence, events or thoughts jump out of the background, grab our attention, move us to act and drive goal-directed behavior.

Dreams trick us into thinking we're out striving in the wider world. Solms says that the fundamental problem of being alive is that we must get all our needs met in the outside world. The brain has an answer to that; it has developed a kind of unified motivational course variously called the " seeking " or " wanting " system, an orchestration of primitive and higher neural structures that orients us to the outside world with an air of anticipation and positive expectancy. As Solms puts it, " It's an all-purpose looking-for-pleasure-in-the-world drive " that sends animals out to satisfy their needs.

Pioneering neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp describes the seeking system as a " goad without a goal " ( goals, such as gathering food, being dictated by the specific situation ). It is a readiness for action, an appetitive arousal, the neurobiological decendant of Freud's idea of libido. Representing a very basic function of the brain, it commands and activates an array of neural circuits.
Researchers mapping the functions of the brain have shown that the hallucinations of psychosis involve hyperactivation of the seeking system's structures. They also involve dysregulated dopamine transmission. Increasingly viewed as " the wind of the psychotic fire, " dopamine prompts the brain to assign abnormal importance to its own internal representations. Delusions, in other words, are errors of salience attribution. We over value our own thoughts, which are mistaken for perpetual experience of the world.

Dreams share many qualities with hallucinations. They are the hallucinations we all experience. Both dreams and hallucinations involve intensive activation of the seeking system. And Solms points to accumulating evidence that dreaming, like hallucinating, is driven by dopamine. French neuroscientist Claude Gottesmann reported that dopamine release in the brain's nucleus accumbens, a site long recognized to be involved in the hallucinations of schizophrenia, is maximal during dream sleep. " Dreaming and schizophrenia have the same neurochemical background, " Gottesmann says.

Other studies show that the dopamine-boosting drug L-dopa, commonly used to treat Parkinson's Disease, prompts people to have more dreams, more emotional content to their dreams and more bizarre dreams. Driven by dopamine, dreams fill our minds with myriad stimuli that feel worthy of our attention, says Solms. " That's necessary because the body is withdrawn from the external world. "

Goaded into seeking but blocked from action by paralyzing neurochemicals released during dream sleep, we feed on our own internal representations of the world. And we wake hungry for new experiences that build our psychic cinema of internal representations.

Says Solms, " The dopamine hypothesis is at the core of why we dream. "

-So there you have it.....

Sunday, February 10, 2008

SO CUPID'S PASSED ME BY AGAIN.......



WELL, IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN. VALENTINE'S DAY IS UPON US. ANYONE DOING ANYTHING SPECIAL THIS YEAR? QUITE HONESTLY I'M NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO IT AT ALL. I NEVER REALLY DO. I MEAN, LOVE IS A BEAUTIFUL THING AND ALL BUT I DON'T HAVE A VALENTINE SO IT'S NOT SO GREAT FOR ME.
SOMETIMES I SIT BACK AND TAKE A LOOK AT HOW MY LIFE HAS PLAYED OUT. I CAN HONESTLY SAY THAT I'M NOT HAPPY WITH IT. NOT AT ALL.

I SURELY THOUGHT BY NOW AT THE AGE OF 42, I'D AT LEAST HAVE SOMEONE SPECIAL IN MY LIFE. I THOUGHT I'D BE MARRIED OR AT LEAST HAVE A SIGNIFICANT OTHER BUT THAT ISN'T THE CASE. NOPE, THAT SEEMS TO BE JUST A DREAM OR FANTASY IN MY LIFE. NOT A REALITY. I GUESS I SOUND LIKE I'M FEELING SORRY FOR MYSELF WALLOWING IN SELF PITY. I ENJOY MY FREEDOM BUT SOMETIMES I JUST GET SO TIRED OF BEING ALONE. I SURELY DON'T WANT TO GROW OLD BY MYSELF.

I GUESS THE THING THAT REALLY UPSETS ME MOST IS THAT MOST OF THE MEN WHOM I FIND ATTRACTIVE AND/OR COMPATIBLE TO ME ARE ALREADY TAKEN. AND THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO PRETEND TO BE SOMETHING THAT THEY'RE NOT. I REALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT. PERHAPS IT'S JUST NOT MY TIME RIGHT NOW. WHO KNOWS......



http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/01/valentines/image/intro.jpg


I SEE SO MANY HAPPY COUPLES EACH DAY. IT'S NICE TO SEE. I JUST WISH THAT I COULD BE AMONG THEM. THEY SAY THERE IS SOMEONE FOR EVERYONE. I KNOW THIS SHOULD BE TRUE ALTHOUGH I'M BEGINNING TO WONDER. I REALIZE THAT I'M NOT THE MOST ATTRACTIVE WOMAN IN THE WORLD BUT I'M NOT THE UGLIEST PERSON ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH EITHER. HMMMMM........



The image “http://iguessimfloating.net/assets/photos/cupid.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.



OKAY, MAYBE THAT'S A LITTLE HARSH. LOL
I DON'T HATE VALENTINE'S DAY. IT JUST MAKES ME SAD.

ANYWAY, I WISH A HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO EVERYONE WHO HAS SOMEONE SPECIAL IN THEIR LIFE.