Staying Temporarily Hydrated

Ever since my experience with dehydration while in rehab for the broken hip, I have been very mindful of keeping hydrated. I keep a large container of ice water handy wherever I happen to be in my home. Especially in this beastly hot weather, I keep reading and hearing how important this is for geezers to keep that water going.

And that s the trouble with hydration. The life giving water does keep going. It does not seem to want to stay in my desiccated body very long. Our water aerobics instructor keeps telling us to bring a water bottle with us, which I refuse to do. I would have to get out of the water and dash to the loo and miss most of the exercising. As it is, I get a lot of exercise right here at home, dashing to the bathroom to dehydrate myself.

I have heard that the body gets used to this and regulates itself eventually. I have been drinking a lot of water for months now and it hasn't regulated anything. I've never been much of a water drinker. I have friends and children who have always been mighty water drinkers, who feel a thirst for it, gulping down great quantities of it. I almost never feel thirsty, even in hot weather, so I have to force myself to imbibe. I do not have to force myself to get rid of it; it forces me. I can be contentedly reading, or drawing and keep being interrupted by its demands. I have not choice, I guess, being old and dried up and at risk for blowing away, so I'll have to look at it as another form of exercise.

I have an addendum to my screed about the weather: my arms keep sticking to the drawing table, with the result that my drawing tools occasionally stick to my arm, too and I keep dropping pencils and such. My large bottle of water sticks to the coaster, which ends up dropping, or flying to the floor. More exercise spent leaning over to pick things up.

But life is good, innit? I just finished reading a good book (between trips to the bathroom), a fictional accocunt of the Bubonic Plague in a small English village in the 1660s. The inhabitants decided to quarantine thenselves to avoid spreading the plague to other villages in their vicinity. That actutally happened, but the author, Geraldine Brooks ("March"), made it into a very fine, if gruesome, story. I kept wanting to shout to the characters, "It's the fleas on the rats, people!" Alas, they didn't know that until the 1880s. Just so we can feel safe, since there are so many other things these days which can bump us off, the plague can be cured with antibiotics, if you haven't been using them for colds and such, for which they are no good anyway. One less thing to worry about. But I would not still not play with dead rats.