National Eat Your Jello Day

Tomorrow is the day to make or buy some jello.  Jello can bring back childhood memories.  Do you have any memories of eating jello??

Jello has been around for quite a long time.  It was actually trademarked back in 1897.  Can you guess the flavor that has been around the longest?  It’s Lime, since 1930.

Who knew that gelatin and water could be so tasty and fun to eat.

You may wonder about the health benefits of this wobbly treat.  There are differing opinions but Private Home Health Care is calling out some of the benefits in this blog.

First, jello is good for your gut, otherwise known as your digestive system.  It can help with gas, bloating and overall digestion.

It is full of collagen and collagen is great for the cartilage in your joints. It can strengthen your nails and hair too.

Your skin can add elasticity and hydration.

Jello is low in calories so it is a good food to help with weight loss.

Your body can get energy from jello as it enters the body fast and it’s very hydrating.

Finally, jello is very easy to digest.

Private Home Health Care recommends the low sugar version of Jello because they can be full of sugar but we hope you try some tomorrow.  J – E – L – L – O!

National Sugar Cookie Day

Private Home Health Care is feeling a bit indulgent today straying from the usual healthy foods topics.

We celebrate the versatile sugar cookie today on the national calendar.  Delicious, and easy to make these cookies delight just about everyone.

You make them with ingredients you have on hand at home.  Grab some flour, butter, baking powder, baking soda, a little vanilla and of course sugar and you are all set.

Sugar cookies come as a chewy delight or a snappy hard cookie to dunk in milk.  Which one do you prefer?

The word on the street is that these cookies began their life in the 1700’s in Nazareth, Pennsylvania but we wonder if it took that long to come up with a recipe.

You might not be following a healthy diet but you need to indulge once in a while if you are even a little bit of a cookie monster.

If you are watching your sugar intake, you might want to indulge sparingly.  We all need a cheat once in a while don’t we?

We came across an easy and according to the website insanely good so we are sharing it here: https://insanelygoodrecipes.com/easy-sugar-cookies/#wpzoom-premium-recipe-card

You can try it and let us know if they are truly a super good sugar cookie.

Too tired to bake?    You can try Ralphs Bakery Fresh Goodness Sugar Cookies or Pepperidge Farm Ojai Lemon Sugar Cookies. Both got high ratings.

On this day, Private Home Health Care hopes you treat yourself to a delicious sugar cookie and a glass of milk.  Enjoy.

Ringo Starr and a Day on the “Calendar”?

Do any of you know what day Richard Starkey, otherwise known as Sir Ringo Starr, began?

We can give you a hint.  It is an International Day of the calendar and it started on July 7, 2008,   Ringo Starr’s birthday.

It is something that is good for everyone in the world and would be especially helpful in the middle east and in Ukraine right now.

Today thanks to Ringo Starr it is an International Day of Peace and Love.

Since 2008, Sir Ringo has been gathering with friends to celebrate peace and love.  You’ll find peace and love comes from many religions too but the day is Ringo’s. 

The word peace is in every language from Afrikans (Vrede) to Danish (Fred) to Zulu (Ukuthula).

Peace and love resonate all over the world among the people of every country.  It is the governments that ignore the definitions.

Private Home Health Care wants everyone to think about peace and love on this day and try to pass it on to the people you encounter.  

Sir Ringo Starr had the right idea with setting this day aside for humanity.

I Forgot Day

Yes, today is the day to think about those moments when something slipped your mind, otherwise known as you forgot.

The day really gives absolution for all of the little things you may have forgotten over the past few months.

Raising a family with activities can stretch anyone’s brain.  You may use a planner on the kitchen counter, a calendar hung up on the wall or a digital calendar.  

It all depends on what works best for you.  Marking everything down is a big help but it’s also possible that one or two things were missed.  Busy schedules can do that to a person.

If it’s a two parent household and both work it’s not always easy to keep track of it all.  Add traveling for work to the mix and it can get even more complicated.

As you age, memory becomes more of an issue.  Day-to-day activities are lost but memories from year’s back remain.  The brain is a very interesting part of our body.

There are checklists to help senior citizens weigh normal memory loss with dementia so reach out to a doctor, friend or family member with help for that.

For the rest of us, today is a day to forgive yourself and forget about any recent memory gaffs.  Tomorrow is a new day to work on remembering.

Private Home Health Care has many ways of keeping track of our to-do lists.  Tomorrow you can search for a way to help your memory.

A Helping Hand

Do you know anyone with an aging parent who has kept many keepsakes?

The question today is how do you lend a helping hand to an aging family member who has trouble letting go?

When you reach a ripe age of 99 everything can start to be a challenge. Just getting yourself fed and dressed can be a couple of hour event.

When you are trying to downsize it can be difficult to take the next step when memories surround you. What do you do with old yearbooks? How about family albums, remember those old fashioned books?

It can be a multi-week project but you have to begin somewhere.

Find a friend or family member and pick a pile. Its important to work with someone to help let go.

Go back through the memories then see if it is anything you will ever look at again. See if you can pass on the photos to a family member. They may be able to digitize them.

For the yearbooks or memorabilia, is there any place you can donate? Historical societies might take yearbooks or old bibles or books.

Move on to the next group of items. Is there any china that is worth any money? If so you can reach out to an antique store to see if they have any interest. You can get help to post things to eBay or Craigslist.

Facebook has marketplaces where you can sell things inexpensively. Connect with someone on Facebook and become a member. You’ll find things will go quickly if you price things right.

Letting go can be the most difficult part of the process. A helping hand is needed for acknowledgement and encouragement to help the person let go.

Private Home Health Care knows that it can be so difficult to let go of “things” that are part of your former life but the right helping hand can be just what is needed.

Playing in the Mud

When you were a child did you ever spend time playing in the mud?

Thinking about getting into the mud might make your skin crawl.  Some of you just may not have enjoyed getting yourself so “dirty.”

For those of you who did jump in, it turns out that you learned quite a bit from playing in all that wet dirt.

You may have boosted your immune system.  The good germs in mud may have saved you from a cold or flu back in the day.

You used creativity and imagination by building, moving or rolling in mud.  It was awesome sensory play too.  Mud feels different.

Think about the outdoor time you experienced.  No screens, just outdoor air and the earth.

Throwing mud can be fun but it’s probably not something you were allowed to do.  Hopefully you had trucks or things to use to build that kept you busy instead.

Mud play has been around for as long as dirt and water have been in the world.  In days gone past it was just a given that you played in the mud.  

Baths and washing machines did the cleaning after.  Isn’t that what they are for after all?

Private Home Health Care hopes that back in the day our seniors got to experience the fun of playing in the mud.  You might try it again someday!

Joy

Private Home Health Care is thinking about joy today and wondering what brings you joy?

You may say that today is the National Day of Joy but that’s not our concern, you are!

Merriam-Webster has a definition of joy and it is “a state of happiness or felicity (bliss)”.  That’s our definition too.

Do you have things that bring you joy?

It could be family-related or sports-related.  You might find joy in gardening, traveling or singing. You have so many possibilities!

We are not talking about any materialistic things that give you joy.  Your Apple watch or iPad don’t really count.

We really feel like joy is something in your surroundings or something that you do that gives you a great sense of well-being and happiness.

If you are a senior, setting time aside to be joyful is important.  Going out and smelling flowers could be joyful.  Knitting or doing an activity with a group might be another option.

The key for you is to make sure you take the time to think about being joyful.  If you are going through a rough patch it could be difficult but it’s important to try.

Each of you can begin to start spreading joy by talking to other people.  Laughing can bring lots of joy but just conversing and being positive works too.

Choosing to be full of joy may be something you have to focus on but that’s ok.  Life goes by so quickly and is so precious your joy can help you and others.

Private Home Health Care tries to bring joy and peace to the people we take care of.  We hope that you can find what makes you joyful. 

National Typewriter Day

Yes, you read that correctly.  A day for the typewriter, an old fashioned way to type up articles, recipes, reports you name it!  

It was just like the computers we have today, sort of!

If you are young you might not even know what a typewriter is but for those of us in their fifties or older, a typewriter saved the day for many of us.

A basic typing machine was invented by Charles Thurber in 1843.  Commercial typewriters however, took until 1867 to be built in Wisconsin.

Fast forward to the 1970’s and if you were in high school you would have had lessons on the typewriter.  Later, you would need a typewriter to do some of your work.

You would need to feed paper into the typewriter and replace any ink ribbon after it was used up.  

Don’t forget about any errors you might have made.  That required you use whiteout and retype to fix it!

The genius of moving to use a computer is that  if you learned to type using a typewriter it transferred perfectly to a computer keyboard since it is the same letter keyboard for both.

Memory lane is fun to go down every once in a while and the typewriter can bring us traveling right down it with thoughts of former jobs or other typing you would have done.

It’s fascinating too because there are some people you may have heard of who still like to use a typewriter when they get the chance.

These include authors George RR Martin and Jhumpa Lahiri and the filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

Private Home Health Care is sure that many of you remember the days when the typewriter was a great machine to use.   Celebrate the memories and then appreciate the computers we have today!

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Staying Safe on a Warm Summer Day

The Summer solstice is upon us and with it the Northeast has a heatwave coming next week.

Our weather has been a bit crazy so far with lots of rain on the weekends and up and down temperatures.

Next week the temperatures are going to be stuck in the 90’s.  That means that no matter your age, but especially if you are elderly you need to take good care of yourself.

Below are a few reminders of the ways you can survive a heatwave.

1) Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.  You need to drink a lot, more than you usually do.

2) You should try and keep as cool as possible.  Use your air conditioner or your fan and keep them running.  

3) Try to cook on the stove top so you don’t have to use your oven.  Have a salad or sandwich for dinner perhaps.

4) Keep your blinds and curtains closed during the day to keep down the heat coming in.

5) Go out early in the day or later in the day and dress for the weather.  You should wear light, loose clothing to stay as cool as possible.

6) If you don’t have air conditioning try and go someplace that has it for a part of the day.  This will give your body a respite from the heat.

Private Home Health Care is available for help if needed during the extra hot days.  You should try and follow the tips above to keep yourself in good shape.

Photo by Clicker Happy

International Picnic Day

Today is a reminder of how fun an outdoor picnic can be!  

Summer is just around the corner and in New England we are heading into the perfect season for picnics.

Picnic as an outdoor social event has been around since the middle ages.  The menus have changed over the years and most likely the traditions have too.

You don’t have to use a checkered blanket, any comfortable blanket will do.  You might even decide to go to a state park where they have benches!

Deciding on the food to pack is half the fun.  The other half is choosing the games or activities you’ll enjoy.

It could become a tradition for your family.  We have memories of whole family gatherings where a softball game was played, good food eaten and lots of laughs.

Around the world people head outdoors to enjoy food and fun!

In Hong Kong they have seaside barbecues basically until the food is gone.

In England they bring any kind of food that can be eaten cold.  Then they enjoy a game of croquet.

In France and Paris, you grab a baguette with some cheese or a baguette and a bottle of cider and go to a park to feast and relax.

In Argentina a picnic is all about a drink of tea.  You sip a Yerba Mate from a gourd cup using a metal straw.  Food is not as central to the picnic as the tea.

Wherever you are from, Private Home Health Care hopes that this summer you’ll gather family and friends for an outdoor picnic.