Socks and Automail

I have a bad feeling that this is going to be a bit stream-of-consciousness, much the way Monday's post was. I apologize if it gets incoherent at any point. See, for some reason, the clerk of the weather has decided that it would be absolutely hilarious to slam the east coast with a winter storm for the first day of April. I, on the other hand, don't find this particularly amusing.

I have a chronic pain condition, which I like to explain as my possessing automail. For those of you who aren't fans of Fullmetal Alchemist, automail is the term used in that universe for metal body parts. They have prosthetic limbs made of machinery. Well, I have something kind of like that thanks to a childhood car accident; there are metal rods fused to my spine. (Yes, this is in addition to the partial blindness that I mentioned in another post. My life has been interesting.) One of the reasons I love FMA so much is because the main character, who has two automail limbs, suffers pain and nausea in bad weather. So do I. I'm not sure how the series creator came to be aware that this is Truth in Television, but it is. So I'm waiting for the storm to hit, and dealing with pain and intermittent woozies.

In other words, I can't promise that I'm making any sense whatsoever. But I'm going to try.

Moving on to more useful information, I have word from Debbie Tenzer about yet another way we can help with the Japanese relief effort. Odd as it may sound, they need socks.

Apparently, when fleeing from the earthquake and resultant tsunami, a lot of people lost their socks and shoes. Jason Kelly, an American living in Japan, decided to make this his mission. He wants to distribute socks and letters to people in need. The result of this decision is Socks For Japan.

Socks should be new, and each pair should be accompanied by a little card wishing the recipient well. This is a great way to get kids involved - have the kids draw pictures to send with the socks. Send one pair or send a dozen, but package each pair in an individual plastic bag. All the details for preparing a package and sending it to Jason, including some guidelines for crafting your enclosed message, can be found on the Socks For Japan website. Jason, I salute your efforts!

I also want to remind everybody that my friend Dani's project is still ongoing. Any art purchase from her mother's website, found here, between now and the end of June will benefit Water.org and their mission to provide clean drinking water to developing nations. Dani and her mom will be donating 50% of the proceeds from all the art sales to that very noble cause. You can also help Water.org using your Twitter or Facebook accounts, if you have them, so click here to find out how.

And that's about all I can manage for today. As soon as I feel better, I'm going groundhog hunting...because that miserable rodent promised that winter was ending soon.