What I'm learning from the emails my friends send me

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What I'm learning from the e-mails my friends send me
BY TERRI ANDERSEN
It's always nice to get some mail, whether it be tangible in our mailbox at the end of the driveway or e-mails readable on our computer. When e-mails first became popular, most of them were just to keep in touch, but lately most of my e-mails come with attachments, some of which are very informative and some of which are pretty ridiculous. The ones that ask me to forward them to a number of people in order to have "good luck if you do and bad luck if you don't" remind me of the old chain letters that used to circulate and I ignore them. An e-mail I got recently reinforced my decision to think twice before forwarding. It claimed Snopes.com warns people that e-mails that ask for forwarding almost always have an e-mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and e-mails of those folks you forward to, which only benefits telemarketers and spammers. Another warning is not to add your name and e-mail address to listings that sound like you're supporting a great cause but actually are not. All they're doing is helping the spammers get rich. "E-mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition." A worthwhile e-mail I got from a neighbor who is a nurse taught me that female heart attacks are usually different than male heart attacks, in that "women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms like sudden stabbing pain in the chest, cold sweat and dropping to the floor." One woman who was just sitting in her recliner said she felt an awful sensation of indigestion, followed by a sensation of little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up her spine and under her sternum. The process continued on into her throat and branched out into both jaws. That made her remember how she had often read or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI (myocardial infarction) and the woman said aloud to herself “Dear God, I think I'm having a heart attack!" She dialed paramedics. She didn't remember the medics coming in or getting her into an ambulance and taking her to the ER. In a few minutes they threaded a tiny angiogram balloon up her femoral artery into the aorta and into her heart where they installed two stints to hold open her blocked right coronary artery.
The woman said she wrote about the details because she wanted everyone to know what she learned first-hand. Another e-mail tip: Recognizing signs of a blood clot/stroke is also an important thing to know. Getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and getting medically cared for within three hours can save a life. See if a possible victim can do —four things: smile, talk (speak a simple sentence), raise both arms, stick out his/her tongue (if the tongue is crooked or goes to one side or the other, that could be an indication of a stroke.) If the person has trouble with any of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher. Remember the letters STRT. Tick removal was the topic in another e-mail I received. It said a good way to remove a tick is to "apply a glob of liquid soap to a cotton ball and let it stay on the repulsive insect for 15-20 seconds, after which the tick will come out on its own and be stuck to the cotton ball when you lift it away." One of the less serious e-mails I received had to do with a new wine for seniors. Most of
us have heard of Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio, but the new wine would reduce the number of trips older people have to make to the bathroom during the night. It would be marketed as Pino More. (LOL)

Humor comes in many forms

ΤΗΕ CARY NEWS
carynews.com
Humor comes in many forms 
BY TERRI ANDERSEN
I like to listen to preacher Joel Osteen's television program every week, and one of his recent topics was on the healing power of laughter. He mentioned that it's a good remedy for stress, it can build your immune system and even lower your blood pressure, in addition to possibly helping you sleep better.
He went on to say a joyful Spirit can keep you young (senior citizens, take note) and could even let you live longer. Don't forget to laugh, he advised, no matter how old you are, and don't let grumpiness take over your life. A happy heart and a cheerful mind is good medicine at any age, and it pleases God to see his children joyful, preacher Osteen added. Thankfully there's been much laughter in the Andersen household in the many years of our lives together, and I'd like to share some of the simple things that contributed to that laughter. Husband Herb's parents were born in Norway and the family name Andersen (ending with "sen") is more typical there and in Denmark (Hans Christian Andersen) than the "son" ending which is how most people automatically spell Anderson. A short time ago my daughter-in-law's mother wanted to reach my husband
to ask him a question about a computer problem. She looked in the telephone book for our number under the proper spelling of our name but couldn't find us. When she asked her daughter if we were listed in the phone book, the daughter asked her mother if she tried looking under “o-n," to which the mother replied, "Oh, I didn't know his name was Owen.” We all got a laugh out of that.
Another silly laugh producer came about because I often walk around the house in socks or stockings. My husband is always asking me why I don't just put on slippers. I told him the socks or stockings tell me if there is anything like a crumb or a grain of something on the floor that needs to be picked up. Cute Scandinavian that he is, he facetiously asked "In what language do they tell you that, in Feetish?".
Then there was the incident in the supermarket when we were adding a bottle of wine to our groceries. Evidently the clerks have to be sure they are not selling alcohol to a minor, so they're required to post the buyer's age on the purchase receipt. A little while back they actually asked for your birth date, but it seems the practice later changed to just having the clerk use any date he or she chose in calculation of a customer's age. A lot of people probably don't even look to see what date was chosen, but just for the fun of it, I do. When a date makes me much younger than I am, that's fine with me. But one time in 2008 a very young clerk posted my birth year as 1908. Dear husband thought that was hysterical. Evidently the clerk saw me as 100 years old, but even though I didn't think it was so funny, I had to laugh as I attributed the clerk's calculation to his youth. Anyone over 50 looks ancient to the young.
Then there's our chicken story. Whenever I roasted a whole chicken I always ended up eating the wings because neither my husband nor the kids thought there was enough meat on them to bother with and I didn't want anything to go to waste. Visiting some friends for dinner one day, I noticed that they roasted a good-sized chicken and I thought I'd finally get to eat some of the white meat for a change. Then I heard my husband tell the hostess,"Save the wings for Terri; that's the part of a chicken she likes best." That story got a lot of mileage in our house.
To go back a little farther in time, the company I worked for was sending a few of us secretaries to a seminar entitled "Humor in the Workplace.” The speaker had us smiling or laughing out loud many times during the presentation. When she was finished she asked us all to randomly հuց at least three people before we left the seminar. Everyone was in high spirits and hugging everyone around them. When I went to hug a woman standing by herself she backed up and seriously said, "I already hugged three people." I couldn't help but wonder if she brought any humor back to her workplace.

(Article was online at carynews.com)