I am still continuing this blogging assignment until Day 20. Big thank YOU for your comments, I love them! Suggestions always welcome, including what you like best. 🙂
I hope everyone reading has enjoyed the pictures of my daughter’s cat, Africa, she is a sweetie. – David
Today I was reminded,
of a post of mine, not too long ago, called I’m feeling grateful. I know that I am feeling grateful, and encouraged for many reasons including the heartwarming interactions from people who read my blog.
The post I just mentioned talked about the analogy of a table, and our mental health are all the legs of a table.
Imagine that our personal mental health, attitude, ability to deal with stress, cravings, sadness and so on; they all depend on the stability of that table.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
As long as we keep most of the table legs strong, we might be just a bit wobbly but we won’t topple – the table still stands, and doesn’t topple because the other legs are there to keep us upright.
What are our Table Legs?
On our individual tables we have multiple legs, together those leg support the table – those legs include:
Diet – healthy foods, avoid sugars, limit meat
Exercise – at least three times a week is essential
Spiritual Activity – Proverbs, praying
Social Support – being with and supporting friends
Sleep – plan beginning and ending sleep times, wind down at night
Avoid Negative Speech – positive language using words like Thank you
Water – three litres a day, starting with a big drink in the morning
Deep breathing – concentrate on the breath alone a few times daily
Sunlight – get outside, nothing like fresh air and sunshine
When we do recognize that life isn’t fair, we feel compassion for others and for ourselves. And compassion is a heartfelt emotion that delivers loving-kindness to everyone it touches.
The next time you find yourself feeling about the injustices of the world, try reminding yourself of this very basic fact.
You may be surprised that it can nudge you out of self-pity and into helpful action.
Indulge yourself for a few minutes with the jazzy sounds of Diana Krall, a Canadian originally from Victoria B.C. I believe. Sending her thanks for the music !
Sending you each a smile and a hug, take care of those table legs and I know that I feel like you are helping me keep my table from being wobbly ! – David
Everyone’s situation is different right now, but my life has shown over and over not to give up.
It’s been nearly a year,
It’s been nearly a year since April 24, 2019 when I received my third kidney transplant. I am 61 year old man, and my previous transplant lasted from 1987 until 2018.
As that kidney failed I naturally became sicker and sicker, I resisted dialysis as long as I could. As soon as I began dialysis I felt better, but I knew that was the death knell for my transplant.
My health future seemed bleak in September 2018 when I began kidney dialysis (hemodialysis). This is what I posted then. Click here.
September 2018 was the beginning of a long dark night that lasted until April 24, 2019.
However dawn did arrive.
My dawn did arrive, but I could not imagine if or when it could in September 2018, I had big obstacles that made a new transplant nearly inconceivable.
My family and my friends made it possible to keep hoping.
In August 2019, after the months of transplant followup, I posted how my life had changed in my blog. Click here.
My long night was over, and dawn came unexpectedly, and now with the Corona Virus we don’t know when dawn is coming, but we know it is.
Keep expecting the dawn my friends, and I will also.
Today is Jour 9 – Day 9 of my blogging assignment to myself. If you want to read the previous posts, and I hope you do, then go to that blogging assignment category on my blog’s right side.
When I was a youngster I looked forward to Easter Sunday morning because it meant hidden Easter Bunny treats.
The bunny apparently was a silent visitor (like Santa) on Easter Sunday and he left a trail around the house of jelly beans. (perhaps the birth of my sweet tooth)
My brother, James, and I would flit around in our pj’s, accumulating our stash of jelly beans, small chocolates and the inevitable solid chocolate bunny each. Mom and Dad were watching over us and would give one of us tips where to look if either one of us was getting too much of the chocolate. ♥
Then off to Sunday service at church, chocolate on our breath.
Sundays also included time spent visiting with Baba (grandma). Baba and Guido were from the Ukraine and Easter had many special traditions for me because of them. ♥
Happy Easter memories includes the painting of easter eggs and dyeing them with Baba.
I would sit at her kitchen table, and make easter eggs. It began with a white boiled egg canvas, little bowls of dye.
I would paint designs of melted wax onto the egg to symbolize food, health, prosperity. Designs like wheat, flowers and in my case hearts, and my name of course. 🙂
Baba’s was the best but she made us feel like we did a wonderful job also. I miss her.
My eggs were simple and I always put the year on them. Today these eggs are priceless remembrances of those times with Baba, and simpler days in my youth.
who talked about celebrating Easter and Passover was deeply associated with freedom and American values.
“The generation of Americans now growing up in schools across our country can make sure the United States will remain a force for good, the champion of peace and freedom, as their parents and grandparents before them have done,”
“If we live our lives and dedicate our country to truth, to love, and to God, we will be a part of something much stronger and much more enduring than any negative power here on Earth.”
In 1994 Stuart McLean began Vinyl Cafe, a radio broadcast that he recorded live as he travelled the width and breadth of Canada.
He visited small towns and big centres from the Atlantic Ocean to Whitehorse, Yukon Territories and to Vancouver Island on the Pacific Ocean.
He visited my small town of Penticton and I booked our seats six months in advance, my family and eight close friends lined up in the 12th row of the auditorium. What a lovely October evening that was.
It was fantastic heartwarming evening, a show of Canadian music, Stuart’s monologue and two of his original stories. He told clean stories of humor, featuring Dave who owned the Vinyl Cafe and somehow despite his best intentions ended up in awkward fantastical situations.
I encourage you to enjoy a heartwarming show picked for this special weekend.
Slow down and enjoy a simpler form of entertainment.
I hope you will invite your loved ones to join you, lean back and relax and listen like Canadians have for decades with Stuart.
This is my Easter gift to my blog friends wherever you are. You make blogging special for me. I am grateful to you. Enjoy the video.
– Hugs, David
Tree of Heaven
This is a wonderful story about Dave, a seed, and it has a special connection to New York city which is explained at the end.
– Welcome ! Today is Jour 8 -Day 8 – I am filing these posts away under my category: Blogging Assignments.
Big thank you for visiting today. Some readers like the quotes, others the musical choices, I hope there is something you will like in my post today. – David
– I thought this seemed appropriate today, and no one does it better than the classic – Stand By Me, Ben E King (1961)
When the night has come, and the way is dark,
And that moon is the only light you see.
No I won’t be afraid, no I-I-I won’t be afraid
Just as long as the people come and stand by me.
Welcome and a couple pictures of life from today in my little city.
Just thinking out loud:
My Life in Five Chapters – Portia Nelson; I memorized this one page “Five Chapter” lesson (poem?) It is about self-discovery, and I think almost every person who reads this thoughtfully will find it applicable. Now I will have to refresh my memory so I can still tell it. 🙂
Who hasn’t fallen in a few times before walking around the hole in their sidewalk?
today’s quote is from a poem by William Cowper, named “Mutual Forbearance”, I won’t quote the entire poem, but if you want to read it after reading my excerpt below, click here. It’s quite the poem, but I shall say no more.
The kindest and the happiest pair
Will find occasion to forbear;
And something, ev’ry day they live,
To pity, and, perhaps, forgive.
1 : the process of exact thinking : reasoning 2 : a reasoned train of thought
About the Word
Sherlock Holmes was the ultimate logical reasoner in pop culture until Mr. Spock came along. When the first of the Sherlock Holmes films starring Robert Downey, Jr. was released, a form of ratiocination was used in several of the reviews. We can see ratio and rational in ratiocination; they share the same Latin root that means “computation” or “reason.” There’s also the verb ratiocinate and the adjective ratiocinative.
Yesterday I could not get the CUP SONG out of my head, and so today I looked on Youtube for tutorials on how to do the cup movements, there are lots of them.
If you are like me and you have listened to this song a few times (or sang it in your head), here’s a challenge for anyone willing, it won’t take long, there is just about 6 steps! – two or more of you learn the movements also.
My favorite version is still the one from Day one of these blogging assignments aka Birinci gün
So simple to do – see below, ONLY 60 seconds long. Now I have to find a cup ! Thanks for visiting – David
Happy Easter memories includes the painting of easter eggs and dyeing them with Baba.
I encourage you to enjoy a heartwarming show picked for this special weekend. 
“If your life was a book, and you were the author, where would you want your story to go” – That’s the question of 
