Heart and Stroke Month

So I'm deciding to write a more serious piece today since February is the month in which the Heart and Stroke Foundation likes to inform people about their heart health. I thought I'd help do my part and spread the word, especially since I’m a nurse who works on a cardiac unit lol.

Heart Disease Information:

When it comes to your heart there are certain risk factors in which you can change, and some which you can't here are a list of both types.

Things you can't change:

• Genetics: some people are predisposed to heart disease
• Age: don't you wish you could change this lol
• Family History: if you have more than one immediate relative who has heart related issues, it is important to keep on top of your heart health as this puts you into a higher risk category for heart disease
• History of a stroke or TIA's (transient ischemic attack)
• Ethnicity: First Nations, African or South Asian people have a higher risk factors for heart disease

Things you can change or control: Which is probably the most important list out of these two

• High Blood Pressure: increase blood pressure adds more strain to the heart muscles
• High Cholesterol: you get a build up of plaque which remains in your arteries and causes your heart to work harder to pump the blood through
• Diabetes: if you have diabetes it is important to properly control your sugars
• Being overweight: with a higher percentage of body fat, you also have more blood vessels and this added distance creates more work for the heart
• Excessive Alcohol Consumption
• Physical Inactivity: a sedentary lifestyle is never good for the body
• Smoking: the carcinogens and pathogens from the cigarettes create plaques which remain in your arteries and veins
• Stress: increased stress increases your blood pressure

The most important thing about your heart is making sure you take care of it.

Stroke Information:

For a stroke I feel the most pertinent information would be the warning signs. Should you have a sudden onset of the following 5 things, immediately call your local emergency services:

1. Numbness or Weakness
2. Confusion
3. Dizziness
4. Sudden Vision Problems
5. Trouble Speaking

For more information here please visit the Heart and Stroke Foundations website at www.heartandstroke.ca

~Meg

He who enjoys good health is rich, though he knows it not.

-Italian Proverb

Pyrography How to Guide

A continuation from Sergey’s blog:

Step One:



Before you begin working on your piece it’s important to lightly sand the wood. This prevents you from getting any splinters while you’re working on the piece as well as preventing the small loose pieces of wood from coming up and burning while you’re working on your piece.

Step Two:



The next step is to draw out your design or image. The drawing itself does not have to be complicated, and in fact it makes it a bit easier if you just have the general shapes. The drawing is strictly used as a guide to follow along with as you burn the design in.

Step Three:



Now comes the fun part! I find it useful when burning in the design to actually outline the shapes before you begin the burning process. This prevents your lines from disappearing and also gives you a nice feel for the wood, since depending on the variety of wood they all burn a bit different.

Below are the remainder of the images so you can see the process itself. As for the technique itself, everyone does it a little different and it’s important to find out which way is comfortable for you.



For the fur I find a cross hatch works well with the finer fur....



...and longer downward strokes work well for the shaggy fur of the bison.



As you can see by varying up the different strokes shows the varying changed in the bison’s fur. The most important rule with pyrography, is to just play around with it! It’s supposed to be a fun hobby not a chore.



For grass I find simple strokes varying in pressure give the grass a nice textured look



Always remember to include some sort of background if you’re doing a full piece image



And an hour or two later this is the finished product. I may go back and darken up parts of the prairie to give the piece more depth, but for now I’m calling this piece complete.

So there you have it a simple “how to” for pyrography! If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment on here, or you can email me at artistmeg@yahoo.ca


~Meg

Being True to Yourself

So after a rather long break from updates, I've decided to make a new post.

First I'd like to share a quick story, complete with a moral at the end of the it, as all good stories have messages to give.

There was once a girl who met a boy. To keep things simple we shall call them John and Jane. Now when John and Jane first met the got along rather well. They both had similar interests and wanted the same things out of life. Seeing as they got along so well with each other John and Jane decided they would date one another since it just seemed like the thing to do. So John and Jane would go out and spend time with each other and the weeks and months passed by.

Now poor Jane, no matter how she tried, she just did not feel that spark of "true love". Don't get Jane wrong she did love John, but it was a different kind of love. As time went by and talks about their future became serious, Jane started to get an uneasy feeling. This nagging unease continued on as the months went by. Finally Jane could no longer ignore how she was feeling.

Jane took a good look at her and John's relationship and realized it was not all she thought it was. She realized too many concessions were being made and Jane no longer knew who she was. Finally Jane realized what she had to do to but could Jane go on with it. On the one hand she would be crushing poor John but being true to herself, and on the other John would be happy but she would be betraying herself and who she truly is.

What should Jane do?

So as you can see this story does not have an ending, but the moral should be clear. Do you sacrifice your feelings for another persons?

I'm sure we have all been in a situation similar to this, although not necessarily in the dating world. In this story the answer seems quite simple, and very black and white but as we all know the real world isn't like that, its usually far more messy and grey.

This is life's great moral dilemma, do you sacrifice your own values and beliefs to make other people happy.

~Meg

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.
Being true to anyone else or anything else is...impossible.

-Richard Bach, Illusions

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. Yet from this lesson thou will learn to avoid the frog's foolish ambition of swelling to rival the bigness of the ox.

-Miguel de Cervantes

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.

-John Fowles

The Student Nurses Prayer

 

Lord: I know we go through this every day but please give me the knowledge as to why I actually wanted to go to nursing school.

Lord, give me the strength to make it through those boring three hour lectures without falling asleep.

Lord, please give me the patience to make it through twelve hour clinicals with instructors that can't just give you the right answer and on the same note, give the nurses the ability to remember what it was like to be a student and give us just a little more respect.

Lord, give me the endurance to read all the assigned readings and be able to remember it when I am taking a test with four right answers.

Lord, give my family and friends the ability to realize I really am on the edge of insanity.

Finally, Lord, give me the vision to see that one day I will be a real nurse and I will never have to wear this ugly uniform again.

http://www.catholicdoors.com/prayers/english2/p00637.htm

~Meg

The two most powerful weapons are courage and persistence.  Nothing can stop a person armed with both.
  - Scott Sorrell

Common Sense

…and I’m not talking about the pamphlet written by Thomas Paine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_(pamphlet) )

We’ve all heard it before “common sense isn’t really all that common”, but what I always wonder is the “why”.

• Why is it so uncommon now a days to have people without any common sense walk around the world?
• Why is common sense called common sense if its not very common?

Now a quick search on the net will turn up many websites and definitions. For people who don’t know what common sense is here are a couple of those definitions:

1. common sense reasoning reasoning on the basis of common knowledge, as opposed to purely logical reasoning, or reasoning that depends solely on the meanings of words. A purely logical inference might be from If it is Tuesday, Sam is in London and It is Tuesday to the conclusion Sam is in London. An example of common sense reasoning might be the inference that if someone asks for a phone book it is because they want to look up a number, and make a phone call
2. "Common sense" in philosophy has two general meanings:
1. a sense of things being common to other things
2. a sense of things common to humanity
3. commonsense knowledge is the collection of facts and information that an ordinary person is expected to know

Really the one “common sense” that I am referring to is the “commonsense knowledge” as this is the one I feel is lacking in today's society.

So what is the point of this blog, you ask.

I just want to point out and put to the forefront common sense in hopes the people who are lacking in it will take a closer look at themselves and work on gaining both a better understanding of themselves, and why they are lacking in the sense that is so common.

~Megs

The moment we fully and vitally realise who and what we are,
we then begin to build our own World even as God builds his.
  - Ralph Waldo Trine, "In Tune with the Infinite", 1897

1. http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/clmt/MTbook/HTML/node98.html

2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense_knowledge

It Happens

So for todays post I'm going to do another lyric post, except this time you only get the chorus. Why because it is oh so true!

"Now it is poor me, why me, oh me

Boring the same old worn out blah blah story

There is no good explanation for it at all"

"Ain't no rhyme or reason

No complicated meaning

Ain't no need to over think it

Let go laughing

Life don't go quite like you planned it

We try so hard to understand

Irrefutable, indisputable

The fact is

Psssh

It happens"

~Sugarland's "It Happens"

I've also decided to include quotes of the post, which I think will be a nice addition and will hopefully get those brain juices thinking.

~Meg

"Life is our teacher. Life communicates with us all the time and it is a lesson to see how life continuously have led me to the people I need to met, to the situations I need to experience, and to the places I need to be. There has never been any real reason to worry since all small individual rivers are already on their way to the ocean, to the Whole. It is not about swimming, it is about relaxing and to float with the river in a basic trust that life already leads towards the sea of consciousness, towards the Whole."

- Swami Dhyan Giten

-phobia

1. Acrophobia- Fear of heights
2. Aquaphobia- Fear of deep water
3. Arachnophobia- Fear of spiders
4. Automatonophobia- Fear of ventriloquist's dummies, animatronic creatures, wax statues - anything that falsely represents a sentient being
5. Aviophobia or Aviatophobia- Fear of flying.
6. Claustrophobia- Fear of confined spaces
7. Clithrophobia or Cleithrophobia- Fear of being enclosed
8. Coulrophobia- Fear of clowns
9. Demophobia- Fear of crowds
10. Glossophobia- Fear of speaking in public
11. Taphephobia Taphophobia- Fear of being buried alive

This is a list of all my fears. Some are worse than others. All of these things I’m trying, and will hopefully, learn to to no longer fear. Well I can finally cross one fear off my list. Which is it you may ask (and even if you don’t I’m telling you anyway :P): Necrophobia- Fear of death.

Now you may wonder why, out of all my fears, this is the one that I have overcome since this seems to be the “biggest”. Well I decided that it is ridiculous to fear the inevitable.

What does this have to do with you? Well really I just wanted people to see that once they know themselves they can then grow and improve themselves so that they can live their lives without fear.

If you want to find out the names of your fears here’s a great site I found, it doesn’t have all fears but it has a lot: http://www.phobialist.com/ 

Not that anyone reads this but if they do I’m curious to hear your thoughts on phobia’s, what yours are or how you conquered them.

~Meg~