Dweller on the threshold

This list is likely to be much longer for than I have space and time for tonight. So I’ll just begin with the changes that came even before we were married. One of the first changes was, oddly enough, wearing jewelery.

I’d not worn any since my high school ring nearly 15 years previous. And even that was only for a few months. I just never liked it on me. It always got in the way when I was fixing things, working on cars, fishing, camping and generally being me.

But soon after meeting Natasha, I learned she was leaving for school on a scholarship in London. We’d be apart for nearly a year. She gave me a ring to keep until such time as we could be together again. Since I couldn’t wear it because of the difference in finger size, I wore it on a chain around my neck.

I had to keep it kind of low-key because it could not be officially known that we were seeing each other so I wore it beneath my shirt as I made my way around the streets of Amman. I made a vow to keep it there until the day I married her. I wore that ring on its chain for nearly two years; it never left my neck. The clasp froze up on it at some point making even a desire to “get a breather” an impossibility. It mattered not. I never tried to remove it.

In May of last year we were engaged and I broke the chain around my neck and put on my engagement ring. I wear it to this day. I have had some small dramas with it, taking it off to shower and forgetting it for an hour. But the wife is quick to find it and put it back on my finger. It took me a bit to get used to having something on my finger. But I managed pretty well with the ring on a necklace so I think I’ll manage.

It’s quite possible I’ll never put on another piece of jewelery in my life. But this engagement ring is now my wedding ring and it looks just fine. I’ve actually grown accustomed to its presence and even think it looks good on my hand.

It’s interesting to me to realize that this woman came along and in the space of just a few weeks changed me into a wearer of jewelery. But I have to say that the choice of jewelery and the woman that asked me made all the difference.

I know it has been quiet on my end for a bit. Well, I’m going to break that silence now and sound off on an issue from home that’s been annoying me for some time: Flu-shots. I know many of you would like to know what’s been going on, how’s my neck after the Dubai scare, etc. I’ll get to that one of these days. But for the moment, let’s examine the flu-shot.

I remember distinctly when it popped up because I was thinking to myself, “So what. No flu shots. You don’t really need them anyway.” I remember way back in the days when my feet were on a different land mass and the shots were introduced. Of course they want to sell them so they say “Flu is getting bad. Better get one of these so you don’t suffer.” And naturally many listened. I never did. I never got one, saw it as a waste.

I know there are those out there that need them. But let’s face it, most folks don’t. They just don’t. Our body never saw a disease it liked, so it gets in there and fights, flu shots or not. For those of us relatively healthy, we may get a runny nose, maybe a fever, but we’ll make it. If we need a day to rest, that’s what sick days are for. Let’s use them. Bottom line, most of us just don’t need a flu shot. So why the panic?

Michael Moore brought this point to bare in “Bowling for Columbine,” but I think many of us have thought it for a long time: Fear is the number one American import and export. In the US of A there is a daily onslaught of things to be afraid of. If it’s not the terrorists, it’s the Tylenol, it’s the mail system, it’s air travel and hey, now it’s the flu shot.

The panic has been escalating at such a pace it is sickening. The wife and I watch Orbit’s western news package and she’s asked me more than once, “What’s it all about.” It’s all about fear. I realized the other day how it even has a parallel to the oil situation and that deathly fear Americans have that they might not be able to fill their SUV.

Yes, much like oil apparently, the US doesn’t even make its own vaccine: it’s the Brits (and maybe others we could only guess at). Next thing you know we’ll not only have OPEC but a new and more dangerous OFLEC (Organization of Flu Vaccine Exporting Countries); dangerous because they don’t know quite what they are doing it seems.

We watch the CBS/NBC/ABC news each night and are astounded how 90% of all the adverts are for medicines, many from Elkton’s beloved Merck (a few of those … apparently quite dangerous). I mean it’s Viagra, that purple pill with the annoying guy, it’s the people who can’t sleep’s pill. So it’s only natural when fed medicine every night at news time that people want their flu vaccine. But, guess again, most folks don’t need it.

And finally, word has come down from health officials. Guess what, “you don’t need it”:

Public health officials say Americans should roll up their sleeves for a dose of reality: For most of us, getting a flu shot is not a life-or-death matter.The flu vaccine will not necessarily prevent you from experiencing the flu’s miserable symptoms, like fever, hacking cough, runny nose and “hit-by-a-truck” body aches. Studies have shown that the shot generally works about 52 percent of the time.

… But the millions of people who are younger and healthier do not really need it — especially during a vaccine shortage, public health officials say.

“Right now the entire country runs on fear and we don’t need to live like that,” said Catharine A. Kopac, a Georgetown University gerontology nurse. “We somehow think we should be disease-free all the time. If you’re leading a healthy life & you get sick with the flu, you’re probably going to get through it.”

There it is in black and white, the face of fear running scared in the land of freedom. If you really want to worry about things there really are so many other things to be concerned about. Bush and the ever-spiraling price of his war would be a good place to start. Forget about that stupid bloody flu vaccine. I don’t want to read another story about it or see one more crying face on CBS Evening news, saddened by their lack of access to it. The most important post in the world is about to be decided in less than a week. I say to western news outlets: Maybe it’d be better to put more eyes on that.

Well, we learned one other little tidbit of information from our dinner with the Lebanese ladies. I’m not sure how we got onto the topic, but somehow or other I felt compelled to explain that I was, well, feeling a bit bloated. This might be an easy subject for the ladies to broach, but for me it was bloody well foreign. But that was the only word I could think of to describe how I’d been feeling for a pretty good little bit. Natasha had felt the same, but well, you know, she figured that was somehow normal.

After I stood, placed my hand on my heart and exclaimed, “My name is Jeff Tynes and I am bloated,” the ladies were quick to chime in. The word, immediately, was how much sodium is in your water? What?

We’d moved in here and decided to buy bottles of water for all drinking water, forgoing the unknown that would be the bringing in of the big 10 liter juggernauts on a periodic basis. Bottles allowed for variety and you felt like you knew what you were getting. Initially, I’d had a fondness for Arwa water. We’d bought a lot of it while staying at the Movenpick. Seemed like ggggoooooodddd stuff mmmmmm mmmmm. But then I found Coke bottled it.

I’d read something about Coke bottling tap water in the UK and well, the Arwa just didn’t taste the same. So some time after moving here I started buying cases of Masafi water. Masafi was good water … or so I thought. But sodium “bad.”

It turns out that Masafi has about the highest sodium content of any bottled water I can find. I never knew such. Amal, you set me straight! I started looking around after she and Julia explained there was a magical water available with about 2.3 ppm of sodium per bottle. Masafi, I found, had 23 ppm — ten times as much. They explained that the magic water was not easily found, only available at select locations. After we drank up our Masafi I switched back to the more easily accessible Arwa; at least it only had 12 ppm.

Well, last night sniffing around at Carrefour reading all the labels I find that the Pepsi water, Aquafina, has the same low-sodium amount as the “magic water,” that I sought. And it is pretty cheap.

Will it stop the bloating? I don’t know. Amal claims that upon returning to Lebanon and drinking the lovely water there, it is only one week and she’s fitting into jeans that were tight and all kinds of good stuff. And it is true that in Jordan, one of the most water poor countries on the planet, I never had this feeling.

I started looking around here and found that lots of stuff we have is high in sodium. I knew about Campbell’s soups and some other things having high sodium — stay away they told me, so I did. But I’m finding sodium everywhere and I’m starting to wonder and perhaps worry. I know it is used as a preservative, though I’m just guessing water doesn’t need preserving so it’s likely only “a natural part of the spring” or some such ad-boy garbage.

One other thing too. This whole thing starts to make you wonder where your water comes from and more to the point, what have they done to it, or not done. These things can keep you up at night.

Will switching help? It’s gotten quite hot as of late 44-45 Celsius — that’s 113 Fahrenheit to you metric-deficient folks. That’s pretty warm. Bloating in 113 ain’t no fun that’s for sure. Stay tuned and we’ll see what happens.