April Fun Celebration Days

As requested I will continue to provide those crazy and unusual Holidays. Here are a few fun reasons to celebrate the start of April.  Starting the first Friday of April, April 4^th, 2014 is National Walk To Work Day.  U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson declared the first National Walk to Work Day on April 2, 2004.  With obesity and sedentary lifestyles growing at an alarming rate, National Walk to Work Day was initiated to draw attention to the need to get out and exercise, and to get in shape.

On this day, Americans are encouraged to walk to work. If you can't walk to work, take a walk during lunch time, or another time of the day.  The goal is to walk 30 minutes a day. Health officials are hoping this will encourage people to add a 30 minute walk to their daily lives. Health officials, medical agencies, and medical organizations around the country state that a 30 minute walk will significantly improve you health. The benefits are many, including lower weight, less chance of heart disease, less risk of diabetes, and much more. This translates to a longer and healthier life.

Unmentioned in other articles, is the emotional and mental benefits of walking. Walking is relaxing and peaceful. If you walk in a park, or along a waterfront, it can be captivating. Need a quick picker upper? Take a walk today. .

So, if you can't walk to work today, walk 30 minutes at a convenient time. Then, make it a apart of your daily life. I walk to my office every day but then again I work from home…

April 7^th gives you several opportunities to celebrate. April 7th is Caramel Popcorn Day. This day is an opportunity to enjoy the combination of two great treats - Caramel and Popcorn. This tasty, chewy treat is hard to beat. Caramel popcorn is readily found in popcorn tins and specialty shops.

If you are like me, you don't need an excuse to eat any kind of popcorn. So, you can easily guess what you need to do to participate in this day. While other flavors of popcorn is fine any other day, today it must be caramel popcorn.

A great way to make this day truly memorable, is to make homemade caramel popcorn.

April 7th is World Health Day. Sponsored by United Nation's World Health Organization (WHO), World Health Day focuses upon a different health theme each year. It is an international event to emphasize and work on important health issues or problems. Many countries around the world participate.

Major activities on world health Day focus upon, awareness, education programs, and fund raising activities to help with the health issue for the year. Countries also work on resolving problems related to the theme.  The World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nation's sponsors World Health Day each year. Annually, a different country is selected to host World Health Day events.

Finally for April 7^th, No Housework Day… No Housework Day is your chance to do anything, except housework. Better still, have someone else do the chores for a day. Housework is a daily, seemingly endless and repetitive groups of tasks. It often goes unrecognized and worst of all..... taken for granted. But, watch out! If the dishes aren't done, or there's no clean towels, somebody notices.

There's two ways to celebrate this day:

If you normally do the housework around the house, cease and desist for this day. Instead, kick back and enjoy the day. Relax and do anything, except housework.

If you are a spouse or significant other, do the housework for your mate. It gives her (or him) a break from the housework. And, you just might get an appreciation of how much work it takes to keep up the house.  Oops, Sorry Paul, I will be in Florida this day..

Keep Dancin’ Larry B

 

World’s Aids Awareness Day

Saturday December 1^st is World’s Aids Awareness Day. This day is noted around the world, by fundraisers, educational programs, and events.  World Aids Awareness Day was created in 1988 by the United Nations World Health Organization.

HIV/AIDS is one of the world’s biggest medical crises. It is estimated that approximately 40 million people in the world currently have aids. One million of them,  are in the United States. Each year, over 40,000 new cases are reported in the U.S.

I was a hospital nurse back in the early 1980’s and on the front line in a medical mystery. At that time, we did not know a lot about HIV/AIDS and it was a crap shoot with the medical professionals trying to find treatments that would really help the individuals we were being presented.  I was working in a hospital in Kentucky and the majority of the patients were hemophiliacs that had acquired the disease through blood products.

I recall friends and family simply freaked out that I was volunteering to be on a team that focused on taking care of these patients. I kept hearing things like aren’t you afraid of catching this strange disease and my simple answer was NO.  It was a challenge to find the right treatment for each individual and that was the reason I had become a nurse to provide help to those in need.

The fight has been long and we lost a lot of friends, family and nearly a whole generation until the cocktails provided a chance to make this disease a chronic condition and not an immediate death sentence.

Unfortunately, what I have seen is that today’s generation did not live through those early years and have no idea of the struggle and issues that have caused so many losses.  Like any generation they feel they are invisible, they see ads of buff bodies for the drugs used to fight the disease so they don’t see the fear and struggle of actually having the disease.

Education/research are still very important aspects to fighting and moving toward a cure.  We need to continue to keep this in the forefront of each generation so they do not have to suffer what my generation did in the beginning of the crusade.

To all those that have suffered a loss to this disease, don’t stop telling the stories of those we have lost, keep their memories out there so others can continue to hear their voices.

Keep Dancin’  LB