How Heavy is a Glass of Water?

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From an email..

The Lecturer walked around the room while explaining stress management to an audience with a raised glass of water.

"How heavy is this glass of water?" she inquired with a smile.

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it.
If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem.
If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm.
If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance.
In each case it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

She continued, "That's the way it is with stress. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on.

As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden - holding stress longer and better each time practiced.

So, as early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don't carry them through the evening and into the night... Pick them up tomorrow."

Music for Friday

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I love Owl City and this video is great fun too.
Have a wonderful weekend. :-)

My Peace Globe - the Grand Unveiling

Not much time left before Blogblast for Peace on Nov 4th. I'm still refining what I'm going to say on the day, but my Peace Globe is ready. I'm just on my way to post it off to Mimi, but thought I'd pop it up here first.

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Folded into Wings

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UNODA (UN Office for Disarmament Affairs) is running a Poetry for Peace contest this October. The theme is the "hibakusha" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

This poetry contest is a platform to share your thoughts and feelings about the hibakusha testimonies. In their own voices, hibakusha have recorded their testimonies for you and future generations to hear.

I listened to two YouTube testimonies:

Kayano Tsutsui, who was a child in Nagasaki, and
Isano Tanabe, who was a mother with children in Hiroshima.

Their stories are worth hearing. What happened to these people is beyond words - what Nuclear weapons do to people is beyond words.

How do you write such horror into a poem for peace? How do you bring hope out of the ashes of Hell? All I could think of as a ray of hope was another victim of Hiroshima, Sadako Sasaki, who left behind a new Peace symbol for the world - the origami crane. (My Peace Thimble post 80 - "1,000 paper Cranes")

Here's the haiku poem I finally submitted, in her honour:

angels, doves and cranes -
our only hope for peace lies
folded into wings.

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You can see it on the UNODA site at: http://www.un.org/disarmament/special/poetryforpeace/poems/frost/

Finalists will be selected from those with the most "LIKE" clicks. So, if you are on Facebook, please consider giving my poem a LIKE, as long as you really like it! ;-) And do check the other poems out too, there are others worth liking.

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Most interesting Video of the Year

...for me anyway.

And if that struck a chord with you too... do check out their website.
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It's Been a Crazy Week..

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I know I haven't blogged in ages. Typing still hurts my fingers so I'm using them sparingly. Thank goodness I had the sense to get my 100 Thimbles of Peace done early, since I was worried my fingers might get worse. I've also taken time out to read the UNODA Peace Poem entries. You can find my poem here.

It's a haiku I wrote in honour of Sadako.

I have been keeping busy, but the real reason I haven't updated on this blog because I was waiting for things to calm down a bit - the last two weeks have been really crazy. I've been bouncing between doctors and other specialists trying to sort out where my hand-arm pain is coming from. It's been coming and going, trying all sorts of medications, and then last Saturday.. everything exploded

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This arm-hand pain wakes me up regularly during the night.Then I sit up on the edge of the bed, dangle my arms down and wait for pain to ease. So... last Saturday I wake up groggy with bad pain. I sit up, dangle arms... and the world exploded. MASSIVE pain.

I know I stood up because I remember thinking I mustn't move again, or sit down - too much fear of causing more pain. Hubby got out of bed so somewhere I woke him. I remember yelling, "DON'T TOUCH ME" at him, I was so scared of more pain. but then the pain got worse anyway and I started to hyperventilate, wanted to faint, thought it was me going...

so hubby phoned for an ambulance. I scared the life out of him. My parents woke up to hear him freaking out and so they were scared too... human panic dominoes!

The ambulance medics took me in sitting up, as I didn't want to move, draped in a blanket as any touch or movement hurt, but by then the pain was easing-increasing in waves.

LONG story short - I saw three doctors, was there for ages and the pain wore off naturally, but they gave me strong pain killers to take home. I saw my doctor and I have lots of people dashing about trying to sort out more tests for me.

In the meantime the pain medication hasn't helped. I have had two pain-explosion mornings since then, but I'm coping better. Knowing I wasn't going to die (lol) I stayed calm and it was weird. The pain gets HUGE at the worst stage, but by staying calm and I could watch it and see where it came from. It radiates out from my left hand, middle finger. How amazing. I never knew watching pain could be beautiful and yet so damn unbearable.

While sorting out tests and stuff at the doctors I was given a stronger pain med to try. mmm.... what can I say?

It never helped the pain, but it did make me groggy and more sleepy. So sleepy that some nights I kept falling asleep upright on edge of bed when I sat up to ease the pain. That was scary, so I sat in a chair on Friday morning and woke up pukey, very dizzy, and my dreams were on fast forward. I mean that literally! My dreams, each time I woke up, were zooming by at top speed like when you zoom the TV maybe 6x speed. surreal!!

I now know strong pain meds are not the answer. It’s taken 48 hours for the dizzy-groggy to wear off, with help of dizzy meds that… make me sleepy! I have slept everywhere!

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I stopped the pain medication and the pain is no worse, but my groggy-dizzy is MUCH better. No more of the strong stuff for me!

I'm still feeling more upbeat, because I have doctors trying to sort it out and I'm learning to fix things myself - by staying calm, taking naps and trying some stretching exercises the chiropractor gave me that definitely are helping. It's not fast or easy, but I can see improvements. I'm more hopeful than I was this time last month, which is really good.

Blogblast4Peace - Join Us!

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A truly excellent video made by Dawn from
Don't Know Much About Photography
for Blogblast4Peace.
With Music by Enya.




BlogBlast4Peace
November 4th
Join Us!

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Show me your Shops!

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I was browsing a friend's blog, Kerry of the Jade Gryphon's Tavern. I reached his post on photos of shops from around the world and recognised one from Edinburgh instantly. The rest were all strange and "exotic" to me. That got me thinking... when I first arrived here every Scottish shop seemed exotic and it was similar for my husband when he came to Africa and saw typical African shops.

So, here is my challenge, my meme, if you will:

show me your shops!

1. Show me where you buy your everyday goods - groceries, etc.

2. Show me your unique shops - the ones special to your area or country.

3. Show me your quaint or quirky - the shops that are one of a kind.

Here are my choices (click on photos for bigger views):

1. Yes, This is a post office, but it also sells some very nice baked goods and it has some lovely cards and gifts crammed into that small space too. Plus there's the window for local messages/adverts and the bus stop.

2. A Kilt shop - can't get more Scottish than that!

3. For Quirky I'm picking a true gem - a shop of Automata. No idea what that means? Go check their website here. You will be enchanted!

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Editing to add in participants:
#1. Dawn with some brilliant shop fronts.
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