How I spent the Labor Day weekend holiday

I remember various Labor Day weekends in my life. It was never a biggie in our family, and I don't remember doing anything really special when I was a child. But in adulthood, I remember trying to get in one more trip to the river, or hosting some family members who were en route back to their jobs or schools in the East.

However one Labor Day does stand out in my memory. We had moved to Savannah, Mo., where Lester was appointed to the Crossroads Parish in Andrew County. This meant he had four churches, three denominations, and many members to serve with the help of one half-time minister.

Obviously he was very busy, but since school had not yet started in Savannah, Susan, our youngest daughter and I were not at all busy and were missing the rest of our family and our good friends from Butler, Mo. One tradition remained the same, and that was listening to the Jerry Lewis Telethon through the day. This new parsonage had a working fireplace and though it was still warm outside, Lester built a fire in it for us and we had a picnic on the living room floor in front of the fireplace where we roasted our wieners and marshmallows while watching T.V.

This Labor Day weekend I spent much of the time reading. And I learned many things from all of my reading. One of the happiest bits of knowledge I picked up was from the Mayo Clinic Health Letter. In the special report that was sent as a supplement, there was an interesting chart accompanying an article on "Achieving a healthy weight." The chart was set up so that you could tell by looking down the side for your accurate height, what was normal, overweight or obese. I could tell by looking at that chart that I was not even overweight. That was a big surprise to me because I noticed some of my clothes were tighter than usual. I guess they must have shrunk in the washing or something. Because the chart showed that I wasn't overweight, I was too short!

I really didn't think that at my age I would grow any taller, in fact I might have actually shrunk a little, but it was nice to know that the problem wasn't weight but height. If I was more like Susan, or my granddaughter or great-granddaughter I would be just right. But in my generation I was about as tall as most women ever get. I guess I will need to do some stretching exercises to add those inches because I sure don't want to be considered overweight.

I searched for another magazine to read while I pondered this finding. I picked up the recent TIME Magazine. This was the one that answered questions you never knew you wanted to know. There was an article near the front of the magazine that said we sat too much. It was talking about all kinds of sitting -- desk work, computer work, reading, watching T.V. or just day dreaming. They suggested that you would live longer and have less danger of certain diseases if you would do some of your work standing up.

That boggles my mind. I remember clearly when such articles would have tips on how to reduce your fatigue by such things as learning to iron sitting down. That doesn't matter too much anymore because many of us rarely iron. But we arranged our kitchens to reduce steps in meal preparation, began putting attached garages onto houses to save steps, and designed desks with a place for everything you might need at arm's length. Now it suggests having tall desks where you stand while using a computer or doing business over the phone. I guess that means that desks for children have to be adjusted to grow with them.

I'm guessing that any of my faithful readers have already guessed that my solution to all of these suggestions and confusion they create is to simply quit reading. But no, I will never quit reading unless eyesight fails me. I will quit reading helpful articles and stick to enlightening things like the funny papers and suspense novels. I don't want to live longer if I have to stand up to play Free Cell or read my Facebook pages. I'm too old to die young anyway, so I'll continue on as I have in the past.

Happy reading to you.