What I do in my Spare Time!

I wanted to make a happy post today on my blog! What do I do in my spare time?

Well I quite honestly I lead a pretty sedentary lifestyle. Every morning I look forward to my morning cup of coffee. As I get older, I am finding that I am actually developing a palate for coffee. I am starting to become a coffee snob where I only use a Coffee Press these days to make coffee!

I absolutely love my Bodum Coffee Press and don't know what I'd do without it. My mornings would be quite sad. Even though I really like coffee, making it can be annoying. One morning I made the comment, "I wish there was a machine that made coffee". My husband thought that was the most hilarious thing because DUH there's tons of machines that make coffee. LOL What I really meant was, I wish there was a robot that could make me coffee in the coffee press. That line has now become a family joke. "Man I really wish there was a machine that made coffee". I'm glad I entertain my family.

The one other thing that I love even more than coffee is singing. If I tallied up how much I sing every day it's likely pushing 8 hours. I am not kidding at all and my poor husband has to hear it all the time. haha My mother was always singing so I think that kind of stuck with me. She would listen to various singers like Bette Midler and Celine Dion. I'm sure there were others, but that's all I can remember. My family went to church every Saturday night and I started to realize that I had a really good singing voice. However with my lack of self-confidence I had been afraid to let anyone know about it and sort of hid it. A few months ago, I decided to record myself to see if I sound good on tape. To my surprise I think I sound pretty darn good for having very little official vocal training.

I really wish to write some music and at least put it out on the internet for people to download. Singing makes me feel so good. It's like all of my problems go away and it is a major destressing tool I use. If you are interested, I have put up a few covers on Youtube. Let me know what you think--if you hate it that's ok. There is always room for improvement with singing. My trills, slurs, vibrato and hitting high notes could be much improved and I hope to take vocal lessons again one day. My last vocal teacher was pretty terrible and I sang better than her.

Getting Through the Mid-Day Slump

MMMmmmmmMMMMmmmm...
Image Courtesy of: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I know a lot of you out there self-medicate like me with chocolate, sweets, coffee, tea or even cigarettes to get you through the mid-day slump. Thankfully I don't smoke!

Today I can't have any caffeine, so I'm going crazy. I'll be the first one to admit that I have a caffeine problem. It's how I live my life and without it I feel completely lost. I'm really having a hard time keeping my eye balls open! haha But I must persevere. Normally at this time, depending upon what time I woke up, I would have a small cup of tea or coffee. Then at around 4PM, I lay down for about 45 minutes and then force myself to get up.

I thought well I could make something tasty to eat, but there is nothing exciting in our house at the moment. With both of us being sick for a week with the flu, a lot of our produce went bad! Our refrigerator was soo stinky once my sense of smell came back. I had to throw out a lot of food, so now we are really really low.

The place where I normally have my blood work done at, were unable to draw the IGF-1. So...I had to go to the hospital to get it done. /sigh They are doing a lot of construction up there, so the lab has been "closed". I showed up there and saw a lot of people considering it was "closed". The lady there, although she was very very nice, she obviously doesn't deal with many patients with small veins. I told her you have to tighten the band as tight as possible making it pinch my skin. She just kept telling me that that's not how they are trained and that she is not allowed to keep the band on longer than 1 minute. She kept saying the words patient comfort blah blah blah. I just kept telling her it won't work because my veins are small and in the end you'll make me uncomfortable with all the jabs.

Well after 2 jabs she tells me that they are trained not to jab more than twice and to make the 2nd one work. After 2 jabs patient comfort goes way down...No crap! During all of this, she randomly says to me, "How are you doing?" and in a tiny, high pitched voice, I let out a "OK".

To get all 4 vials, I was squeezing my fist as tight as possible and I convinced her to leave the band on. Thank goodness. The last vial took a long time to fill and we only needed 4. I've gone in to those places needing 9 vials with no problems at all. Obviously her following the rules didn't work out too well with me. It took her breaking them to get the blood out of me.

Sadly, I'm probably going to have to see her to get the renin and ACTH drawn. I still have to call the lab to see if they can do those in the outpatient center. My God, I hope so. I can't stand going to the hospital and that lady really was not that good. The women at the outpatient center are incredible. I haven't had a bad experience yet...Though I shouldn't speak too soon.