8/28/2007
LITTLE THINGS
NUMBER 189
Little Things
Last week it occurred to me that sometimes the whole universe may appear to be turning on a very small pivot.
When we first arrived in Lexington in 1992, we began to do our grocery shopping at Kroger’s nearby. Our daughter who was here ahead of us was shopping there. We still go there from time to time but now do most of our shopping at Meijer’s. We live about halfway between them.
There are things we like and don’t like about each place.
The Kroger Store:
o We know where everything is. I can walk right to whatever I go for. Of course it is still hard to decide among the 21 choices of beans.
o It is slightly smaller so we don’t have to walk as far inside to shop.
o They have a card that gives us discounts (and tells a computer somewhere in the belly of the beast what we buy so it can mail us coupons to tempt us to buy other similar stuff--this may be good or bad, we haven’t fully decided yet).
o We know a number of the people there and they are friendly and helpful.
o In the long run, the prices seem to average out with the other grocery stores. (Although some of the things we use a lot of like produce and laundry soap are consistently higher than at Meijer’s)
o They have up-to-date self-checking aisles that are user friendly.
o They are pretty consistent in charging the same price at the register as they have posted on the shelf. They are probably this good because if they charge you something other than the shelf price, you get the item free.
The Meijer Store:
o Their meat and produce are generally the best, and the lowest priced.
o The store aisles are wide and never, ever cluttered up with those nasty cardboard point of sale kiosks. These in-your-face sales pushers, combined with an ambivalent little old lady, can totally close an aisle to through traffic. We can move faster here but the store is bigger so we also have to move farther—sometimes this is good, sometimes not so good. Between writing this draft and finishing it up, we have been to Meijer’s and I have observed a small cloud the size of a man’s hand—they have started to expand some endcaps to extend out into the aisle. We fervently hope that this little move is not the beginning of the end of wide open aisles.
o They will take anyone’s coupons.
o They have all the other stuff you find in Wal-Mart—house wares, hardware, garden supplies, etc. It is one-stop shopping.
o They have self-checking aisles but they are neither up to date nor user friendly.
o We seldom get out of Meijers without noticing that what was 2/$5 on the shelf is charged at one each @$2.89 or something. They are always apologetic but their embarrassment never seems to reach as far as fixing the root problem.
All these various bits and pieces (“tiddly bits” our Canadian friends would call them) came together the other day and I realized our decision on where to do our main food shopping boils down to a matter of two inches—the Meijer plastic grocery bag is 1 inch deeper and 1 inch wider than the Kroger bag. This little difference means that the Meijer bag fits nicely into the wastebasket under the kitchen sink--the Kroger bag does not. It doesn’t fit around the top edges and it doesn’t touch the bottom. So Meijer wins, probably on the basis of a decision by an accountant in the belly of the Kroger beast to save a few cents per thousand on their plastic bags.
Not long after this insight, we had a much more interesting example of the big difference little things can make. Several months ago my wife’s doctor finally talked her into starting a cholesterol-lowering drug. She began with Simvastatin and then switched to Pravastatin. With both drugs she noticed side effects that she did not like. She tired easily (of course being 73 years old and having a leaky heart valve had nothing to do with it)--she had spells of weakness and occasional dizziness. She often felt generally edgy--she called it “the heebie jeebies.” She just felt “poorly” more often than she thought she should and was lamenting that her old get up and go had got up and went.
Having been nagged into taking the statins, she blamed this all on the statins and was in the process of beginning with a new doctor who she thought might be better able to balance her quality of life with her legitimate medical needs.
Just one day after she changed to the new doctor, she had all the classic danger signs of an impending heart attack—dizziness, nausea, pressure on her chest, numbness in her right arm, etc. Fortunately she had these in the waiting room of my eye surgeon who was about to fix a cataract in my left eye. The head nurse sent her in an ambulance to emergency where she got a royal reception and eventually a heart catheterization that left her with two stents in a coronary artery on the right side of her heart.
It was a hard 48 hours.
The bad news is that she has to take another pill for a year (Plavix—to keep the stent from clogging) and double her Pravastatin dose. Her old hard-nosed lady doctor wanted her LDL under 100. Her cardiologist now wants it down to 77.
The good news is that this procedure should eliminate or greatly reduce all those symptoms that were making her miserable and that she can stop blaming the pill. The really good news is that the picture of her left coronary arteries shows them to be in excellent condition and ready for many more years of efficient pumping.
The small difference is the stent—a, hollow metal mesh tube that opened the constricted artery and will keep it open in the future. She has two that overlap. They are about one-tenth of an inch in diameter and a total of two and two-tenths inches long.
My wife has had very good medical care over the years but none of the tests she has taken or been given has identified the small obstructions building up in this artery. It took a serious incident to get to an accurate diagnosis. We are thankful for this, and the great care she has received to deal with it.
++++++
For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost.
George Herbert
+++++++
They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were about four thousand people.
Mark 8.7-9
Little Things
Last week it occurred to me that sometimes the whole universe may appear to be turning on a very small pivot.
When we first arrived in Lexington in 1992, we began to do our grocery shopping at Kroger’s nearby. Our daughter who was here ahead of us was shopping there. We still go there from time to time but now do most of our shopping at Meijer’s. We live about halfway between them.
There are things we like and don’t like about each place.
The Kroger Store:
o We know where everything is. I can walk right to whatever I go for. Of course it is still hard to decide among the 21 choices of beans.
o It is slightly smaller so we don’t have to walk as far inside to shop.
o They have a card that gives us discounts (and tells a computer somewhere in the belly of the beast what we buy so it can mail us coupons to tempt us to buy other similar stuff--this may be good or bad, we haven’t fully decided yet).
o We know a number of the people there and they are friendly and helpful.
o In the long run, the prices seem to average out with the other grocery stores. (Although some of the things we use a lot of like produce and laundry soap are consistently higher than at Meijer’s)
o They have up-to-date self-checking aisles that are user friendly.
o They are pretty consistent in charging the same price at the register as they have posted on the shelf. They are probably this good because if they charge you something other than the shelf price, you get the item free.
The Meijer Store:
o Their meat and produce are generally the best, and the lowest priced.
o The store aisles are wide and never, ever cluttered up with those nasty cardboard point of sale kiosks. These in-your-face sales pushers, combined with an ambivalent little old lady, can totally close an aisle to through traffic. We can move faster here but the store is bigger so we also have to move farther—sometimes this is good, sometimes not so good. Between writing this draft and finishing it up, we have been to Meijer’s and I have observed a small cloud the size of a man’s hand—they have started to expand some endcaps to extend out into the aisle. We fervently hope that this little move is not the beginning of the end of wide open aisles.
o They will take anyone’s coupons.
o They have all the other stuff you find in Wal-Mart—house wares, hardware, garden supplies, etc. It is one-stop shopping.
o They have self-checking aisles but they are neither up to date nor user friendly.
o We seldom get out of Meijers without noticing that what was 2/$5 on the shelf is charged at one each @$2.89 or something. They are always apologetic but their embarrassment never seems to reach as far as fixing the root problem.
All these various bits and pieces (“tiddly bits” our Canadian friends would call them) came together the other day and I realized our decision on where to do our main food shopping boils down to a matter of two inches—the Meijer plastic grocery bag is 1 inch deeper and 1 inch wider than the Kroger bag. This little difference means that the Meijer bag fits nicely into the wastebasket under the kitchen sink--the Kroger bag does not. It doesn’t fit around the top edges and it doesn’t touch the bottom. So Meijer wins, probably on the basis of a decision by an accountant in the belly of the Kroger beast to save a few cents per thousand on their plastic bags.
Not long after this insight, we had a much more interesting example of the big difference little things can make. Several months ago my wife’s doctor finally talked her into starting a cholesterol-lowering drug. She began with Simvastatin and then switched to Pravastatin. With both drugs she noticed side effects that she did not like. She tired easily (of course being 73 years old and having a leaky heart valve had nothing to do with it)--she had spells of weakness and occasional dizziness. She often felt generally edgy--she called it “the heebie jeebies.” She just felt “poorly” more often than she thought she should and was lamenting that her old get up and go had got up and went.
Having been nagged into taking the statins, she blamed this all on the statins and was in the process of beginning with a new doctor who she thought might be better able to balance her quality of life with her legitimate medical needs.
Just one day after she changed to the new doctor, she had all the classic danger signs of an impending heart attack—dizziness, nausea, pressure on her chest, numbness in her right arm, etc. Fortunately she had these in the waiting room of my eye surgeon who was about to fix a cataract in my left eye. The head nurse sent her in an ambulance to emergency where she got a royal reception and eventually a heart catheterization that left her with two stents in a coronary artery on the right side of her heart.
It was a hard 48 hours.
The bad news is that she has to take another pill for a year (Plavix—to keep the stent from clogging) and double her Pravastatin dose. Her old hard-nosed lady doctor wanted her LDL under 100. Her cardiologist now wants it down to 77.
The good news is that this procedure should eliminate or greatly reduce all those symptoms that were making her miserable and that she can stop blaming the pill. The really good news is that the picture of her left coronary arteries shows them to be in excellent condition and ready for many more years of efficient pumping.
The small difference is the stent—a, hollow metal mesh tube that opened the constricted artery and will keep it open in the future. She has two that overlap. They are about one-tenth of an inch in diameter and a total of two and two-tenths inches long.
My wife has had very good medical care over the years but none of the tests she has taken or been given has identified the small obstructions building up in this artery. It took a serious incident to get to an accurate diagnosis. We are thankful for this, and the great care she has received to deal with it.
++++++
For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost.
George Herbert
+++++++
They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were about four thousand people.
Mark 8.7-9
8/09/2007
REGULARITY
NUMBER 188
Regularity
The temperature these days is 98 degrees--with the high humidity it feels like 110. Here is a refreshing picture for your summer contemplation. I will follow it with a brief August poem for your regular elimination.
REGULARITY
Five stewed prunes
A day
Will keep the
Sigmoidoscope away.
8/92//07
080
Regularity
The temperature these days is 98 degrees--with the high humidity it feels like 110. Here is a refreshing picture for your summer contemplation. I will follow it with a brief August poem for your regular elimination.
REGULARITY
Five stewed prunes
A day
Will keep the
Sigmoidoscope away.
8/92//07
080
