A Day Like No Other?!

Yesterday I awoke with a headache. Rarely do I ever have a headache but yesterday I had one that hurt enough to take two extra-strength acetaminophen. Not long after I took the two pills my stomach also began to feel uncomfortable. The discomfort lasted all day and into the evening.

A little after 7 am I went to the school and moved around more slowly than usual while working. At the end of the school day when I went to my second job I found my client was also in pain. I called his mother and she came and picked him up early. I went home and ate. I forgot to remove the shirt I had on and exchange it for another. I had somehow allowed my shirt to be ripped down the left sleeve.

I then went to the home of another client whom I usually take to his Boy Scout meeting. He was also not feeling well so I stayed and worked in the home with him and his mother. I left his home at 8 pm, finished up some paperwork at the main office, and returned to my residence. I still felt not so good but I did the best I could.

About 9:40 our power went off. I was in the middle of posting on a health blog when that happened. The power company sent a man out who went into our back yard, stuck a long pole up by the transformer a couple of times and got the power back on for all 5 or 6 homes on that transformer. I brought the computer back up and checked my post--gone!! I rewrote my post and went to bed a few minutes later, happy that I could remove the extra blanket from our little one's bed--we now had heat in the house again.

I am still asking myself what could have possibly caused such an interesting day?! My wife, Claudia, and I were just amazed at all of this. To be sure, we both have had many such days in our lives--this was not the first and will not be the last. Still, like all of you out there, I wonder how it all happens at once!!

Chinese Spring Festival and New Year Blahs and more

My son, Stephen, displayed a video of the recent Japanese New Year celebration in which the Year of the Ox became the Year of the Tiger. They actually had a baby ox on stage (looked just like a normal calf) and brought a tiger out on the same stage. Both were on leashes. As I watched I remembered that probably the Chinese were doing the same thing right about that time. I checked online for Chinese New Year and it was the same. I sent a Happy New Year and Happy Spring Festival greeting to our former foreign exchange student, Luo Lan. She returned the greeting, thanking me for it, and explained that she had an unhappy New Year because she had to work. She is a flight attendant for a Chinese airline and was dismayed to not be able to celebrate the New Year at home with her mother and father. She had been required to be on board an airplane instead.

I could feel some of her pain as I remembered, rather vaguely now, the lonely Christmas and New Year holidays seasons I had spent in the U.S. Army after I was drafted. This was during the Vietnam War. I knew there must be many people who shared her situation--even on her flight--so I told her about how I and my Army buddies used to celebrate the holidays in the best ways we could. We bought items representing the holidays and used them to help us feel a little of what we might normally feel at home.

Certainly it would never be the same as being with family, I told her, but there would be people around her eager to offer her support and who shared her predicament. She could probably celebrate the Spring Festival and New Year on a smaller scale and still enjoy it.

I gave her our love and closed my email, knowing that it never really was very fun for me during the holidays, but that there always seemed to be someone to share them with.