Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 07, 2025
So, we’ve always had nicknames for our doggies. We’ve had: Sparkinator, Chrissinator, Corkinator; Sparky-Larky, Missy Chrissy, Corky-Lorky; also Sparkasaur, and Corkisaur (Missy Chrissy was too good to be a dinosaur.) (Also, they each knew all their names.) Now there is Ollie, and while I tend to let Ollinator slip out now and then, I don’t think I care for it, somehow. DH always used the “saur” suffix, while I did the “-nator” one. I think I like Ollisaur, and am working on using it, but how about some feedback from the crew here at Playtime? Any other Ollie-name suggestion will be considered, as well. Thanks for whatever you can do! 🐕🦺 🌞
Scottie's Playtime 
I’ve been spelling it right forever 😎
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😀 Since I’ve been reading you, anyway!😀
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Hi Ten Bears. Trying to catch up on all the saved comments I have as I love them. I do have a work out question for you. It has been 40 years since I was into weight lifting. Ron has already remarked that what I am doing on my arms is showing.
But I understand there are two different work outs, one to build up sudden use but quickly wearing out muscle tissue, and the other is less showy but the muscles can keep functioning at strength longer.
I am 62, and due to my medical issues I have not been able to do much to keep my muscles up, and my bones are very thin. But Ron told me today that what I have been doing has clearly shown development on my biceps and triceps. And it is true as my arms had wasted so any effort would show off. Now to the question I have for you as you exercise constantly to grand effect.
I am not interested in a body builder’s huge bulk muscles. But I am 62 today, and I want to be able to use my body far into the future. So here is what I do every other day with the weights. I progressed quickly to the dumbbell of 7 pounds. I know weak for you, but it does take effort for me. I do three reps of 10 biceps curls on each arm, then I use the same barbell to do three sets of 10 over the shoulder triceps extensions. Then I do three reps of ten each of forward shoulder raises.
Then I have to change to the smaller weights. Both my shoulders are torn up with both muscle and bone damage. My pain doctor wants an MRI on my left shoulder as she thinks I tore the rotator cuff when I had a spasm. So on that left shoulder I use two pounds and do 3 reps of ten. On the right shoulder that seems much stronger I use three pounds and do the same of three reps of ten raises each.
What do you think? Am I doing the right thing? I also do 30 sit ups every morning but I realize it is not the same as the sit ups I did in the army so long ago. But it is something. Would you suggest a change to what I am doing? Thank you. I am enriched by knowing so many diverse people. Hugs
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That’s too much weight. Aye don’t even do 7# handhelds: 5’s. At this point in your endeavor you shouldn’t even be using weights. Do the exercises as if you were and when you work up to comfortably doing 20 reps either push on to 25 or start with 1# handhelds, work till you’re comfortable at 20 reps then bump up to 2#, work up to 25 reps before going to 20 reps with 3#. The long-term goal, the most beneficial workouts are with high reps, little or no weight. After my last trip to the hospital that’s where I had to start, and it’s been three years getting back to where I was
There’s this mental thing you gotta’ past and that is making it a competition. I’m not as big as you but I was a competition power-lifter so it’s the same. This is not about the big lifts, being the biggest guy on the block. It’s about endurance, and if we’re gonna’ live another thirty years we would be comfortable healthy …
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Hi Ten Bears. It seems I went the wrong way in trying to get healthier. You mention 20 reps … by the time I got to 10 my arms were shaking so hard I had to be careful setting the weight down. Remember all I know about this was when we kids did it in the break room at a church boarding school.
As you say I don’t need bulging muscles. I need to be able to finish washing and drying the dishes without hurting so bad I end up going to bed.
So I will change the program I am doing. I will do as you suggest reducing the weight and work up to 20 reps. I thought going from 8 to ten was a good advance, but I see I was wrong. Thank you for your advice on this.
By the way you seem to think I am a big guy due to a picture I published. I am 5.8 and 175 pounds. Before my last steroids I was down to 168 pounds. I am only a big guy when needed to protect others. I then use my training of first the Navy, then the Army, and then being a nuclear armed security officer / private investigator / auxiliary sheriff’s deputy. But that was far in my past. Yes I still have my PR-24 and do practice with it. I prefer it to a gun. But even if I get my ass kicked standing up for someone being attacked for being different, for being gay, or like the morning at 5 AM I dashed down my stairs to protect a woman with a 5 year old child running from the guy next door. I a crippled man drove him off. Not sure I could have taken him if he had wanted to make an issue of it, but when I grabbed him thrust my face into his and shouted “I will not have this here” He looked at me and turned around and ran.
As Ron has often told me, I am a small guy with a big guy spirit. Anyway this is small potatoes to what you have been through, what you survived. I have read them wondering if I would have had the same fortitude. Could I have done it or would I have folded? You did not. Hugs
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That’s still bigger than five and a half and one fifty
On reflection I thought I could have been clearer: the goal is stamina and endurance, not gonna’ get that with weights. 20 sounds like a good goal for you for this year: work up to 20 reps comfortably with little or no weight before upping either the reps or the weight. Remember that your 20 reps without weight is my 20 with 30 lbs workout weights, which is not every workout. Else I do 50 with 5 lb handhelds
Be patient, do the reps and walk. It’ll come …
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Hi Ten Bears. Thanks for the advice. Yes the goal is endurance, a healthy rest of my life, and lowering my heart rate. We went on our short walk this morning and my average heart rate was 117 with a range from 92 to 130. I was struggling to breath as when my heart rate goes up I can’t breathe. I took your replies, put them on one page, and printed them off. I then hung that paper next to my desk to keep the needed way to exercise in my mind. Thank you. Hugs
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That’s a good thing to keep in the back of mind and it’s pretty general: when the heartrate hits a hundred heavy breathing starts, and sweat. Endeavor to keep it under a hundred ~ in the nineties. Given time you’ll be able to notice when you’re getting up there, breathing heavy, breaking a sweat, and back off, slow down a little bit. Easy peasy …
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Hi Ali. All wonderful names for our fur family members. I will tell you the story of how one of our kitten rescue got his name. We had a home with a separate garage with apartment attached to it accessed from the small access road behind the house. We had a tenet that Ron suspected of being a crack head but couldn’t prove. One day he came to us and asked if he could get a kitten for his young daughter visiting. We agreed. Once the daughter left I went into the garage to find the cat box full and the cat having no water or food. Ron contacted him to explain that wouldn’t be tolerated. He fed us a sob story and told us he would fix it, his dad was in the hospital and he had forgotten the cat … and so on. A few days later I went to the garage we did not use much, I found the cat crying loudly in terror in a corner as a squirrel menaced it. I chased the squirrel off, grasped the cat as it clung to me and rushed into the house. I did something I rarely do, I called Ron at work and asked him to come home, I need him.
He came home and the kittens collar was so tight he couldn’t breathe well. I held him while Ron cut it off. He then went to a store and got a cat litter box and food. He told me he needed to go back to work at Mar-a-Largo but after he was back home he would address the situation. The kitten was tired and near his end but I fed him for days with an eye dropper until he would eat solid food. He clung to me and was never far from me. The tenant never showed up and Ron’s calls went unanswered.
Two weeks later I saw the tenant at the mailbox for the apartment on the corner of our home. I stepped out and asked him if he had seen the cat he had. No he said … not today. I said you might want to check on him when you get home. Ron got home and I told him of my exchange with the tenant. He did not even change clothes, just said I will be right back. I did not realize how angry he was.
When he came back from the apartment he said we do not have a tenant anymore, I gave him 24 hours to be gone, and reminded him we have pictures of the apartment and I will prosecute him in court if he damages it. But that means we broke the lease and we have to give him his security and last month back. I said well worth it. I wrote Ron the check, asked him if he wanted to take it to the asshole and he said no, the tenant finally admitted he has been on a drug binge and did not have money for the rent anyway. I just wanted him gone and so figured this was the easiest way to get it done. He will get this money once he vacates and I inspect the apartment. He is so strung out he won’t challenge anything and realizes this money is either his next fix or his new place to live, he lost his job. Ron hugged me and told me it was OK, the cat he named George was safe and happy.
As to how George got his name. Once in those two weeks he had been in the home, he realized he was safe and loved with all the food he could eat, he raced around our home. One night Ron came home from work, he was still working days not yet the nighttime butler and house supervisor, he sat on the couch to take his work boots off. From nowhere the cat we had not named yet raced across the room and dashed up Ron’s pant leg … headed for the top. Ron desperately grabbed his upper thigh part of that pant leg so the cat couldn’t get to his man parts and as the tiny cat’s claws tried to reach higher Ron bellowed “God damn it GEORGE stop, stop and let my leg go”.
Laughing I had him drop his pants and took the cat from his distress. But the name stuck. As did George’s jealousy of Ron being too close to me at night. George would be laying peacefully on my side of the bed until the light would go out. Then as soon as we relaxed Ron would let out a yell. George would bite his toes. Some nights many times during the night if he felt Ron was too close to me. So we gave the cat a small pillow between us. He loved that. But if Ron dared to stretch his arm past the pillow, bites and claws reminded him I had cat protection. At the end of his life, he died in my arms. That is the story of George, a wonderful black and white who at night would take all the two lower levels of Christmas decorations off the tree and pile them up for us to replace in the morning. We learned to only place soft cloth or nonbreakable ones at those levels. He did that his entire live with us. He thought it was a grand game.
Who when I came home from my first hip decompression surgery and was bedridden tried to feed me his cat food, when I wouldn’t eat it, he caught a live lizard and repeatedly tried to shove it in my mouth. Ron still laughs at coming into the spare room I was in to see George catch this lizard and try hard to stuff in into my mouth only to have me push it way, so he went to then catch it again to repeat putting it in my mouth. Ron was no help laughing so hard, I finally had to catch George and hold him reassuring him I was OK and did not need the lizard to heal before he would quit. He purred in my arms on my bed the entire time I was bedridden only leaving it to eat and use his box. Until Milo he was my most attentive cat friend. Hugs
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🤣 George knows what’s good for a person!🤣
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