Emotional day

I'm struggling with emotions and generally a bit scatty today (difficulty concentrating on the one thing, disorganised, absent-minded). Here's why:

• The first wrestling tournaments of the season tomorrow in addition to having the family split in two to cover two of our boys wrestling in two different locations. David's the coach for the middle school team and going to another school with them and I'm coordinating the hospitality room for the coaches and officials at CAJ tomorrow (25 people).
• More seriously, a CAJ colleague and friend is having her second brain surgery today in ten days, to remove a malignant, deeply impeded tumour. This is not looking curable.
• I went to the weekly parents' prayer meeting this morning at school and the whole room was raiding the tissue box as we prayed over Lois and her husband. I could barely pray out loud. My emotions crept up on me. I guess there's a lot of grief, big and small, been going on for me this year and it comes back multiplied with a trigger like this. I feel drained.
• Then I've just had a 40 minute conversation via Skype with a missionary mum who's having difficulty with their young primary-aged child. It all sounded horribly familiar to some of the difficulties we have had over the years, but especially when our eldest was in the Japanese system in Grades 1 and 2. I retold some of our story. It was emotional!

In the light of all that, I want to end on something a little lighter. After picking up some formerly broken wrestling head gear from the shoe repairer this morning, I found these stickers at a nearby shop: "Flake Stickers"! I didn't take a very close look, but now I'm wondering what they are. Because "stickers" are usually called "seals" in Japan and "flake" just doesn't make sense unless they are snow flakes!