Whisked Away by Grecian Wonders and Wellness Wisdom

Wave goodbye to the old and embrace the new with me, Marcy Backhus, as we transition from the beloved "Aging Ain't for Sissies" to the fresh and exciting "Inside Marcy's Mind." Reminisce with me about the enchanting vistas of Santorini and the hustle and bustle of Thessaloniki, where I unearthed the true spirit of Greece beyond the beaten path. Let's chat about the bittersweet feeling of returning to the familiar—how the simple pleasure of Greek salads and French fries played an unexpected role in my weight maintenance journey. And don't forget the night I spent in the company of the humorous David Sedaris or the blast from the past at the TWA Hotel; these are stories you'll want to carry with you.

Spring into action with me as we look forward to Chicago's rebirth and discuss the practicalities of life, from bike rides to supplement regimens. I'm ready to share how my electric bike became my chariot of freedom and how supplements like glucosamine and chondroitin, alongside zinc, have become my allies in the quest for health and vitality. As we gear up for the Democratic National Convention and Olympic fervor, I invite you to join in the conversation about keeping up with a bustling daily pill routine. Whether you're a supplement savant or looking for pill management pointers, let's navigate these waters together on "Inside Marcy's Mind," where the journey continues and the mind never stops exploring.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hello and welcome to the Aging Aim for Sissies podcast. My name is Marci Backus and I am your host On today's episode. This is our last episode as the Aging Aim for Sissies podcast, but don't be sad, because I'm starting a new podcast and the new podcast is called Inside Marcy's Mind. Excuse me, the only reason I'm doing it is because I wanted to broaden the subjects that we could talk about. Are we going to talk about aging? Of course, because that's part of my life and, trust me, that's in my mind. What else are we going to talk about? All kinds of things. So wherever you find your podcast, wherever you find Inside Marcy's Mind I mean, wherever you find AG&A for Sissies you're going to find Inside Marcy's Mind. So don't worry, I'm still going to be coming to you every Monday, but this will be our last podcast and this is going to be a little talk about my finishing up my trip to Greece and where we're going next. All right, so the last time I left you, I was in Greece. I think I was headed to Santorini. Yeah, I was headed to Santorini, so Santorini was amazing. Was headed to Santorini, so Santorini was amazing. We were only there for a short few hours, but we managed to get ourselves to the other end of the island and saw what I call the Instagram Santorini the beautiful blue roofs down the sides of the hills, and what a magnificent place. What a wonderful trip, traveling with people that we have worshipped with for 23 years in California. It was great to see old friends. What a trip.

Speaker 1: 1:56

We went back to the mainland. We went from one end of the mainland to the other, ended up in a place called Thessaloniki, which I thought was just a beautiful, charming city. I'm going to tell you something If you are on tours and if you are out and about and if you're on buses which we were on a lot of buses if you don't get in and see the internal workings of a city, you're not seeing a city, and I say that from living in a big city. I live in Chicago I I implore you to make sure that you get out and you spend some time in that city. The last night we were there, we went to the placa, which is like a plaza full of all kinds of walk streets and restaurants and just nightlife and people out enjoying a meal in the midweek the amount of people that are out enjoying a meal in Greece all the time is amazing. I know this happens in a lot of big cities, but, wow, I do really implore you to get out and to explore cities when you're on tours.

Speaker 1: 3:04

Don't just do what the tour operators take you on. Make sure that you're finding your own way. A tour is a great way to see cities. It's a great way to be out and about, but you want to make sure that you get a real flavor for that city. We did the same thing in Thessaloniki. We went out for an evening, very fun evening we right at the end of our dinner, a giant pouring rainstorm came out of nowhere. We were very lucky that where we were at we just hung out and had a little bit longer of a dinner. Several of the people on our tour that had gone out that night got stuck in the pouring rain and got drenched, and again, I am grateful that that was not us. But you know, that's that's part of traveling. That's part of life is experiencing the different things, the different weather. I certainly enjoyed that trip to Greece, you know. And coming home I don't know about you, but coming home is all reentry I call. It is always a tricky thing.

Speaker 1: 4:01

We came back into an extraordinarily busy week, right back into working out, because, goodness gracious, I didn't gain an ounce on that trip. I will tell you. You know why. You know what I ate every day. This was my standard meal. I love nothing more than a Greek salad. And let me tell you something in Greece their Greek salads are really good. So I had a Greek salad every day and French fries. That was my standard go-to meal. I had it everywhere we went and let me tell you, it was delicious and I never got sick of it, nor would I ever get sick of it. I love myself a French fry. I'm not going to lie, I love a fry from McDonald's. I love, I just love a fry. So that was my meal. So I didn't gain any weight when I was on the vacation. But, boy, you got to get home, get right back into eating right and your exercise routine, which I did, no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 4:52

And then we drove down to Champaign, illinois, and spent the night. A gift, a Christmas gift from Sharon and Alec was a night to see David Sedaris, and if you don't know who David Sedaris is, I suggest you look him up. You watch some of his videos. He is he's on NPR, I believe he does 60 Minutes like satires on there, but anyways, he's super funny, tells great stories and was just a delight to go down and listen to. But on top of that, I had a massage when I got home. Oh, and I also had a massage before I left Greece. Oh, that was a delight. Oh, I know one other thing On our way back home from Greece I know I'm all over the place today, I don't have really great notes on this but on our way home we stopped at JFK Airport.

Speaker 1: 5:47

We spent the night in New York and went and stayed at the TWA Hotel. They use the old TWA If you don't know what that is Transworld Airlines, one of the first airlines in the United States commercial airlines and they use their old, which is a very retro 1950s terminal, and they've redone it and it was quite nice. I think it's been open five or six years. The only thing I would say is upkeep. They could keep it a little crisper. But other than that, we had a great meal. There's a pool on the roof.

Speaker 1: 6:25

But the night that we were there, that was a Saturday night and let me tell you it was packed. There was a wedding there that night as well. So there was a lot of people, but what a what a fun little treat. People but what a what a fun little treat. I wouldn't do it again, but it was a fun treat to spend the night in New York and do that. So that was the finish of our trip. But coming back home, boy oh boy, busy, busy, busy. Had lunches, had a very beautiful. My friend, joan, invited me to the Peninsula Hotel, which is right below me here, and it is a beautiful, very fancy hotel and we went and did fancy tea. So that was fun. A couple of dinners out this weekend, dinners out with friends. What a delight it is to live in a city.

Speaker 1: 7:12

Craig and I are trying to take advantage of everything that a city has to offer. We try to do new things, we try to go to new places. I don't know about you, but when I lived in the suburbs we just where are we going to eat? Same old place, same old thing. We never, very rarely we did, but probably more than most of our friends, but didn't get out of our regular circle of things. And I'm trying to find here in the city all the fun things to do, all the new things to do.

Speaker 1: 7:41

It is spring here in the city of Chicago, which means a hundred thousand I thought it was a million, but it is a hundred thousand. Tulip bulbs are planted and they do bloom and our spring plantings look amazing. The city is it's another sunny day, a little cooler today. We've had up to 80 degrees, we've had down to 50 degrees, so you just never know what you're going to get. But that means we get to break out our bicycles and go for more bicycle rides.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Now I've told Craig over and over again one of the reasons I got an electric bike and we got bikes was so we could go other places and ride them. Well, the thing about an electric bike, if you don't know this, they are heavy and they cannot go on a regular bike rack, which I did not realize when I bought mine. So we do have a back seat that is fold down, a bowl and et cetera, et cetera. So we're going to have to see if, by taking off just the front tire of my bike, we can get it in the car, because if not, we're going to buy a new car Because I want to be able to take my bike. I don't know if you know this, but around Chicago there are a million forest preserves and paths and places to go and experiences to be had, and I want to do all that. So we're going to have to see if we can get that bike. I've watched some YouTube videos. You know YouTube is very handy whenever you need anything. So I looked at my car, getting bikes in my car, two bikes and there's all kinds of people that have done it and people will videotape anything, I think, and it's kind of great for the rest of us so that we can find out how to do things.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Well, the elephant in the room that this is last podcast for Aging Ain't for Sissies and I want you to understand why I've decided to move my podcast to a new name, which is Inside Marcy's Mind is because I felt that although I thought Aging Ain't for Sissies was a great idea and I still think it's a great idea I think just talking about subjects on aging became very limited for me. I've done it for two years. I feel we've covered all of the all of the possibilities. Now does that mean I'm going to desert our favorite guests? No, because inside my mind I think about aging all the time and if we're going to talk about inside my mind. Then we're going to talk about aging. So I don't want you to fear I will still touch on the subjects of aging, but it is going to brighten my horizons. There'll be some political comments. It's not going to be a political show, so don't let that turn you off. But obviously we're going into a political season. We have the Democratic National Convention here, we've got the Olympics coming up. There's so many things to talk about that I was feeling kind of stifled with the thought of just talking about aging.

Speaker 1: 10:35

But on the subject of aging, I want to talk about supplements. Do you take supplements? Hmm, I do. I've kind of tested around supplements. I don't know about you. I have managed to get with losing almost 50 pounds. I've managed to get all of my medications down to just two that are necessary. I am healthier and working out and all of that working out, losing weight, eating Well, I don't eat that much better. I just eat a lot less. I still eat crap. I love crap. I love fast food, but I just eat less of it. So that helps. But I've played around with supplements. I've played around with all kinds. You can make yourself crazy and I've kind of whittled it down to what's important to me, and one of them is glucosamine and chondroitin and that is so important for our joints, so it's one that I refuse to give up.

Speaker 1: 11:35

I keep trying different ones. I'm trying to find ones that I don't have to take six pills a day, three in the morning, three at night, or however you want to take it and get the same effects I also take. What else do I take? I take zinc. I take a zinc magnesium combination, type one, and I take zinc because zinc helps you heal from within and I have as we all know we've talked about this before I do have a connective tissue disorder that is genetic. So anything that can kind of beef me up from the inside out is something. Obviously you can't change your genetics and I can't change what I have, but if I can help myself along the way, I do so. I know there's a ton of different ones.

Speaker 1: 12:21

I took turmeric for a while. It upset my stomach so I had to let go of the turmeric. But are there any? If there are any supplements that you take that you just can't live without, please email me at agingfast1 at gmailcom and let me know. I'll talk about it on the new podcast, because it's something that I find intriguing. We could make ourselves crazy with all these supplements. How many supplements do you take? One, two, three, four, five a dozen? I mean, seriously, it can make you crazy. And then, okay, let's talk about this traveling.

Speaker 1: 13:04

So I did buy this really great thing where you can package them up in little packages and I thought that was really great and I did that for a while. But, man, it's a lot of work. So I finally found this kind of like I don't know, it's probably six by six pill case. Anyways, it has compartments and I just throw all the pills in each compartment. I put a label on the top and now I just know what I take in morning and night. And it used to be. I had one of those pill cases that you'd say, oh, I took, you know, morning and evening. I don't forget anymore. These are things that I actually need. I know that I've taken them. I find that that was just a better way. And then for traveling, you just chuck that whole thing in, and I also keep my Tylenol in there. So for traveling, you just throw that whole thing in and you've got your pills with you. And for longer trips, that's really important Shorter trips. You can maybe pare it down, but I found that that kind of pill case helped me.

Speaker 1: 14:06

What kind of pill cases are you using? What are you doing to remind yourself every day to take your pills? Can you remember? Do you open up those containers every night? I can't do that. That is just insanity to me, having all those pill containers around and then opening them up every night. But maybe that works for you. I know everybody's got to find what works for them. So, supplements. That was our little talk today.

Speaker 1: 14:30

I know this is a shorter than normal episode, but I don't have a lot more to say. I am going getting ready to record my first Inside Marcy's Mind, so write it down Inside Marcy's Mind. You'll be able to find it wherever you get your podcasts. It may take a couple days for it to show up because I have to follow all of the protocol, but you can go to InsideMarcy'sMindcom and you'll be able to find it directly there. I'm also on Buzzfeed, which will show it right away, um, because that who is who hosts it. But if you really need to get it right away, you can go to inside Marcy's mindcom and find it on my website. I want to thank you for your loyalty. I want to thank you for helping me build the audience on this podcast, so please follow me. Follow me to the new one. That's why I don't say okay, follow me to the new podcast. What is it Inside Marcy's Mind, patrick? What is it? It's Inside Marci's Mind. What's that new podcast Inside Marci's Mind? And remember what I always say aging ain't for sissies.