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Mastery Mondays

Time. Past, present & Future

Trips To Remember (Kelowna)

Not very long ago my family and I had a very memorable trip. My husband and I will likely remember it for the rest of our lives. It’s one of those memories that was absolutely horrible in the moment but that made it out to be a trip for the memory books.

Our kids are not very old - 3 and 6. We have not done a ton of travelling to date with them because they have been very busy kids and have not been good travelers. We finally feel like they are getting to the point where we can venture out a bit further as they have gotten older.

As I’m sure is typical for most kids, staying in a hotel is the coolest thing ever! I remember being a kid and being so excited anytime we were staying in a hotel. It’s exciting to be sleeping in a new room, checking out the pool and facilities, and eating in restaurants.

So for spring break this year, we decided that we would make a quick trip to a nearby city to spend a night in a hotel and check out a few of the city’s attractions.

Our destination was about a 2 hour drive - and it was the best trip we have ever had. Everyone was happy, getting alone, and excited for the day.

When we arrived, my husband and I looked at each other and felt elated. Like we were actually all going to have a fun time and it wasn’t just going to be about trying to keep small children occupied. The kids were finally old enough that we were past the travel difficulties!

We first hit the mall for some lunch and shopping. It was great and we all had a lot of fun. Then it was time to head to the hotel and check it out. It was perfect - a great pool, nice room, and central location for restaurants. We got ourselves settled and hit the pool. The kids had a blast swimming!

My parents had come with us also and had the room right beside us; they offered that my husband and I could leave the girls with them for a pizza dinner in the hotel room and we could go out for dinner. 

We had a great dinner together and headed back to the hotel to go to bed. We all got to sleep fairly quickly and that’s when it all went wrong!

The air conditioning in our room was glitchy. The room was so hot and then so cold all night long. My husband and I had barely slept by 1am. At that point our 3 year old started coughing. For the next hour she kept us awake with that and then at 2am it all went wrong; she sat up and asked for a drink. So while my husband was up getting her some water, she started vomiting all over the bed. It was everywhere. Her and I were covered. 

By now, we are all awake. Both girls are crying and in hysterics. I’ve got the younger one on the bathroom floor in our underwear, wrapped in towels because we had to strip off all our pjs. My husband is trying to console our older daughter who is scared from being woken up in the middle of the night to a sick sister. He stripped the bed sheets so it didn’t soak through to the mattress and we started to figure out what to do.

We knew that we could call down to the front desk and ask for new sheets, but at 2am that wouldn’t happen quickly. Not to mention, we aren’t really sure if the younger one is going to continue to be sick all night.

Ultimately, we decided that because we were only a 2 hour drive from home that we would just pack up and head home. No one was going to get any more sleep and we weren’t going to be able to do anything fun the next day with a sick kid, so off we went. We weren’t sure if it was the best decision, but we just decided to go for it.

We packed up and were out of there around 4 am. It was dark, rainy, and foggy and an unpleasant drive home…but we made it. 

Once we arrived home, both girls were violently ill for the next 36 hours. We were SO glad that we made the choice to come home in the middle of the night.

Like I said, it was a trip for the memory books. We will never forget packing up with 2 kids at 2am and driving home in the middle of the night. We will also never forget that it was the first trip where we felt like the girls were old enough to do fun stuff with and that it was so much fun…until it wasn’t!

What’s your most memorable trip? 

Recommended Book

The Art of Making Memories

Sep 19, 2019
ISBN: 9780241376065

Interesting Fact #1

Of the approximately 86 billion neurons in the human brain and the hundreds to thousands of synapses associated with each cell, trillions of messages are continuously sent and received.

SOURCE

Interesting Fact #2

Memory is extraordinarily complex. However, scientists typically classify different aspects of memory: time duration, qualitative type (conscious or unconscious), and quantitative kind (rewarding or punishing).

SOURCE

Interesting Fact #3

Sensory, working, and short-term memories persist for very brief periods of time, ranging from less than a second to around a minute. Some of these can be converted to long-term memory, although the mechanisms are mystifying. Long-term memory, which can stick around indefinitely, is correlated with the synthesis of new proteins and synaptic connections.

SOURCE

Quote of the day

“Some of the best memories are made in flip flops.” ― Kellie Elmore

Article of the day - What Is Memory?

Memory is the faculty by which the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves information. It is a record of experience that guides future action.

Memory encompasses the facts and experiential details that people consciously call to mind as well as ingrained knowledge that surface without effort or even awareness. It is both a short-term cache of information and the more permanent record of what one has learned. The types of memory described by scientists include episodic memory, semantic memoryprocedural memoryworking memorysensory memory, and prospective memory.

Each kind of memory has distinct uses—from the vivid recollections of episodic memory to the functional know-how of procedural memory. Yet there are commonalities in how memory works overall, and key brain structures, such as the hippocampus, that are integral to different kinds of memory.

In addition to memory’s role in allowing people to understand, navigate, and make predictions about the world, personal memories provide the foundation for a rich sense of one’s self and one’s life—and give rise to experiences such as nostalgia.

To learn more, see Types of MemoryHow Memory Works, and Personal Memories and Nostalgia.

Forgetting and Problems With Memory

Memory loss is the unavoidable flipside of the human capacity to remember. Forgetting, of course, is normal and happens every day: The brain simply cannot retain a permanent record of everything a person experiences and learns. And with advancing age, some decline in memory ability is typical. There are strategies for coping with such loss—adopting memory aids such as calendars and reminder notes, for example, or routinizing the placement of objects at risk of getting lost.

In more severe cases, however, memory can be permanently damaged by dementia and other disorders of memory. Dementia is a loss of cognitive function that can have various underlying causes, the most prominent being Alzheimer’s disease. People with dementia experience a progressive loss of function, such that memory loss may begin with minor forgetfulness (about having recently shared a story, for example) and gradually progress to difficulty with retaining new information, recognizing familiar individuals, and other important memory functions. Professional assessment can help determine whether an individual’s mild memory loss is a function of normal aging or a sign of a serious condition.

Memory disorders also include multiple types of amnesia that result not from diseases such as Alzheimer’s, but from brain injury or other causes. People with amnesia lose the ability to recall past information, to retain new information, or both. In some cases the memory loss is permanent, but there are also temporary forms of amnesia that resolve on their own.

To learn more, see Memory Loss and Disorders of Memory.

Building Better Memory

Though memory naturally declines with age, many people are able to stay mentally sharp. How do they do it? Genes play a role, but preventative measures including regular exercise, eating a healthy diet, and getting plenty of sleep—as well as keeping the brain active and challenged—can help stave off memory loss.

The science of memory also highlights ways anyone can improve their memory, whether the goal is sharpening memory ability for the long term or just passing exams this semester. Short-term memory tricks include mnemonic devices (such as acronyms and categorization), spacing apart study time, and self-testing for the sake of recalling information. Sleep and exercise are other memory boosters.

Through committed practice with memory-enhancing techniques, some people train themselves to remember amazing quantities of information, such as lengthy sequences of words or digits. For a small number of people, however, extraordinary memory abilities come naturally. These gifted rememberers include savants, for whom powerful memory coincides with some cognitive disability or neurodevelopmental difference, as well as people with typical intellects who remember exceptional quantities of details about their lives.

To learn more, see How to Improve Memory and Extraordinary Memory Abilities.

Memory’s Role in Mental Health

Photo by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels

Memory is a key element in certain mental health conditions: Abnormal memory function can contribute to distress, or it can coincide with an underlying disorder. Forgetfulness is associated with depression; connections in memory, such as those involving feared situations or drug-related cues, are an integral part of anxiety and substance use disorders; and post-traumatic symptoms are entwined with the memory of traumatic experiences.

In fact, experiences such as distressing memories and flashbacks are among the core symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. For someone with PTSD, a range of cues—including situations, people, or other stimuli related to a traumatic experience in some way—can trigger highly distressing memories, and the person may seek to avoid such reminders.

As a feature of various mental disorders, aberrant or biased memory function can also be a target for treatment. Treatments that involve exposure therapy, for example, are used to help patients reduce the power of trauma-related memories through safe and guided encounters with those memories and stimuli associated with the trauma.

To learn more, see Memory and Mental Health.

Question of the day - What’s your most memorable trip?

Time. Past, present & Future

What’s your most memorable trip?