10 THINGS I KINDA LOVE
-A Subsidiary of Random Acts of Blogging

I only thought it was fair to include a list of things I love. I didn't want you guys thinking I was a complete sourpuss or anything! :) I have a feeling that most of this stuff won't be a surprise to many of you, though, but I wanted symmetry. As with the last list, I reserve the right to change my mind about these things at any time. Also, I'm going to write about THINGS I love rather than people I love, because I don't want to make my feelings about those people cheap by trying to explain them.

But I digress...

1) Books! I have an enormous amount of books, and I keep getting more. Seriously, I think my stash is a bit out of control because I don't really have room for them all. I have loved to read since about the 3rd grade. I think I may have, with a few exceptions, most of the books I've collected since then. I'm trying to get Steve to line my office walls with shelves, which still probably won't hold them all, but at least I can get some of them off of the floor! :) Although I have a lot of books, there are only a few that I've read over and over. They are kind of like my friends. Books really are like friends, you know. It's great to have a lot of them, but usually there's only a few that you'd ever want to take on vacation or go to bed with.

2) Playing online Scrabble! Well, I guess the rightful name for the game is "Words With Friends" but it's just Scrabble with a slightly different look. Let's not mention the fact that I am a terrible speller. I think Spell Check has destroyed years of learning to write. I have 3 games going at a time these days, and I rarely win. I play against Sara (A.K.A. Scary Spice) her man Ron, and they both embarrass me on a regular basis. The other person is a guy I knew in high school who actually doesn't like me much, but he likes having an someone to play against. If any of you play and need an opponent, look me up by my e-mail address. It may take us a couple of weeks to finish a game, but it's still fun!

3) Cooking! I love to cook. I think I mentioned that before, but I've learned to enjoy it more since I've been doing the house-wifey thing and have a bit more time to devote to it. That's not to say that I always want to cook, but I enjoy cooking a great deal. I wish I knew how to make one awesome thing that everyone always wanted me to make for pot-lucks and what-not, but I haven't quite found my niche yet. I made a couple of awesome Gooey Butter Cakes, but I got cocky about them and have never managed to make another good one since about 2006. Ever since I ate at Paula Deen's restaurant and had her version of Gooey Butter Cake, I've been too scared to even try. That stuff was like...I don't know...butter filled awesomeness.

4) Chocolate! OK, that is common knowledge, I know. A lot of people would be surprised to know that I don't really even eat chocolate that much anymore. I also don't eat it indiscriminately, although I like to try new kinds when I come across them. Although it has become gauche in some circles, Godiva is still my very favorite. I like my chocolate to have stuff in it, and the more unusual the center is, the more fun it is to try. That doesn't mean I like every filled chocolate I come across (I'm looking at you, Vosges), but I prefer them to just plain chocolate.

5) Traveling! I love to go to new places. I mean, the actual act of traveling isn't always fun, but I like to go to places I've never been before. I think it stems from the fact that my family didn't travel much when I was growing up. It was difficult to find places that could accommodate my brother, so we didn't go very far from home, even when we did travel. I wasn't emotionally scarred by the lack of traveling, but I think it's why I like to go to new places now that I have more freedom to do so! I hope that I can visit foreign countries one of these days, but the USA still has a lot of places I want to see. Yay, traveling!

6) Wearing costumes! I don't know why I like wearing costumes so much, but I do. I think it's fun to pretend to be something other than what you have to be every day. I don't get to dress up that often, but I have fun when I do. In fact, I've been working on a costume that I can't wait to wear! It was for a specific event, which, unfortunately was postponed (for good and unselfish reasons) but I plan on still wearing it another time! So far, it's turning out better than I thought it would. My only problem is that it's HOT. I mean it, I tried on part of it the other day while in an air conditioned house, and I got hot. Also, I still have to tweak some stuff to complete it. I don't care, I'm having fun. I can't wait till I've finished it!

7) Talking animals! Well, not so much the cartoon or Disney kind of talking animals, but much more like the video I posted a few days ago. It tickles me to imagine what animals are thinking. We do that with our dogs all of the time and it gets silly.

8) This picture:
It is a perfect example of Happy Dog Face.

9) Singing in my car! I love to sing anywhere, but singing in the car is so much fun. I also seat dance and play the steering wheel drums. I probably look like an idiot, but I don't care! It's a joy.

10) French Fries! I love them unashamedly. Don't judge me.

There are a lot more things I love, but this will do for a start! Have a wonderful day!

10 THINGS I KINDA HATE RIGHT NOW!
-A subsidiary of Random Acts of Blogging

Don't worry, this isn't because I'm mad or in a bad mood. Sometimes I just have to talk about things I don't like. I reserve the right not to hate these things at another time, but right now I hate them.

1) I hate my new BiPAP machine. I had to get a new breathing machine on Friday, because HAL, the one I used before, was apparently too strong to allow me to exhale. Or something. I don't know, really, because it wasn't explained in a way I understood. Anyway, the new one is roughly about the size of a Mini Cooper, and it is stronger than my old one. It also doesn't start right away. Last night, I put on my mask and started the machine. I waited, and waited....then POP! It started so suddenly that the cabin pressure inside my head changed and my ears popped. Ouch. It has variable pressures, which wouldn't be so bad if I could just get into the rhythm of the thing. I'm having to learn to breathe in 4/4 time. Oh, and I'm allowed 10 breaths a minute, with a bonus breath shoved in in case I do that "No Breathing" thing I do, so if I want more, I'm screwed. OK, maybe not completely screwed since I can still actually breathe, but still...

If I wasn't so strongly against dying of heart failure in my sleep, I'd chuck it out the window.

2) I hate that there are parents out in the world who believe their kids are so much more important than other kids that they get upset when their children are inconvenienced for the safety of another child. Did that make sense?

I don't have kids, and I know that to some people, that means I have no right to judge. However, in this case, I'm going to judge all I want, because these parents are HORRIBLE. It all goes back to a news clip (which I'd link to if I could find it) I saw last week about a group of parents who were picketing outside an elementary school in protest because their kids weren't allowed to have peanut butter due to the fact that a 6 year old girl in the class has a deadly (as in, she doen't have to even eat them to be affected, all out anaphylactic shock and everything) allergy to peanuts.

Ostensibly, they were angry because they said their kids had to wash their hands and rinse out their mouths before class and after lunch, and the teacher had to wipe down the desks with Clorox wipes. They may have even said the kids had to wipe their faces with Clorox wipes, and I'll agree, that seems dangerous. However, when the parents were interviewed, the wipes were not what they mentioned. One woman said something to the affect of, 'It's a waste of my kids time, to wash their hands and faces so often, since it takes time out of their school day. Also, my son can't have his peanut butter and jelly sandwich! I don't think they should be able to tell my son he can't have his peanut butter, or anything else!' Also, some of the parents were saying on camera, that the little girl shouldn't be allowed in school if she was going to cause that much trouble for the rest of the kids.

To be fair, I'd usually be on the side of the non peanut-kids parents. Being a former employee of the Sprocket (ptooey), I know what a pain in the ass it is to completely scrub all traces of peanuts from a place where children congregate. Also, like any normal person, I don't like to be inconvenienced. However, if it will keep someone from choking to death on their own rapidly-swelling tongue, I'd do it. This situation, though, infuriates me. Here is a little girl with a serious health problem- she didn't ask for it, she can't control it, and honestly, she just wants to be as normal a kid as she can be. Her parents don't want her to be ostracized or sealed in a bubble, so they send her to public school, and her fellow students are told they have to be careful and take steps not to make her sick. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Then you have these parents who freak the hell out because their own kids have to take these steps. What kind of buttheads picket against the rights of a child to not die from an easily preventable cause?

I'd completely understand their feelings, if they were just about wiping the kids off with Clorox wipes, but that wasn't it. They are ticked off because their kids can't have peanut butter! Seriously, not one child anywhere in the world NEEDS peanut butter. They may like peanut butter, they may even love peanut butter, but they won't die without it. This little girl, however, could possibly die because of it. These parents don't think their kids should have to show consideration to this child, or at least, that is the impression I got from the people interviewed. I bet you anything, that if the tables were turned, they'd want their own children to be protected from whatever allergen could kill them without having to pull them from school.

Children NEED to be taught that they sometimes have to show consideration to others, even at the expense of things they want, because that is the way the world is. Sometimes we have to suffer, if not eating peanut butter and having to wash their hands more than once a day can be called suffering, for the rights of others. It sucks, but it's reality. This seems like a great way to teach that lesson. But there are parents who don't want their precious snowflakes to have to give anything up, not even for the safety of a classmate. The poor little girl probably already has to deal with kids making fun of her because of her health issues, but now she has grown-ups saying that she needs to leave school because of them. What 6 year old child is going to understand the reasons behind their thinking? All she's going to think is "No one likes me and something is wrong with me and that makes me bad." No little kid should have to think that.

Sometimes parents* are the worst bullies. And by bullies, I mean complete asshats.

*Not all parents are like this, so don't get your knickers in a twist if you think I'm talking to you. Unless you already know you are secretly an asshat. :)

3) I hate that I repeat myself so much. My memory is so bad that I can never remember if I've told a joke or a story before. I've probably also blogged or twitted about the same things over and over, while being under the impression that whatever I'm talking about has just occurred to me, because I don't remember I've talked about it before. It's embarrassing! However, I'm grateful that everyone has enough class not to make fun of me for it. Well, almost everyone! :)

4) I hate that losing weight is so difficult for me. Excluding the sleeping issue that can make losing weight hard, I'm not an athlete, and exercising goes against my natural instincts. I can honestly say it is nature, not nurture, that causes me to be this way because I wasn't kept inside as a child. I played outside all of the time when I was younger, but I've always hated getting hot and I've never been graceful or athletic. Not even a little bit. I wish I wanted to run a marathon or something like that, so that I'd want to train and get in shape for it. All I want to do is fit into normal clothes and not be embarrassed to leave the house. I hate that I enjoy eating so much. Delicious food is a pleasure. Not eating it makes me stabby. I mean that honestly, because a hungry Kelly is an evil, angry Kelly. I also hate that the texture of most vegetables makes me gag.

5) I hate the Friday song, and the fact that it's catchy and sticks in my head. There is nothing good about that song. It is ear cancer. I also hate Auto-Tune and the fact that all pop music sounds the same to me now.

6) I hate that Russel Brand looks like he'd be sticky if you touched him.

7) I hate that I can't find my sheets. Seriously, who loses sheets in a house as small as ours and can't find them?

8) I hate when I trip over shoes. I'm not a shoe freak, but I have a lot of shoes. For some reason, they migrate out of my closet and into my path, which causes me to trip over them. I don't even have to wear them for them to move into my way. You'd think shoes that you haven't worn in months would stay where you put them, but mine creep out of my closet and lie in wait. I should get rid of them, but since I generally buy shoes because I need them to match something specific, it would be counter-productive.

9) I hate tomatoes. I like things made from tomatoes, but I hate raw, unadulterated tomatoes. They make me sick to look, smell, or touch them. When people eat raw tomatoes in front of me, I want to set them on fire. (Set the people on fire, not the tomatoes.)

10) I hate forgetting I've got wet clothes in the washer during warm weather. If you leave them in there too long, they start smelling funny and then you have to wash them again. Over the past week, I've had to wash the same load of clothes 3 times because I keep getting side-tracked.

QUICKIE

Today, while Steve and I were talking, the subject of building styles came up. He was asking me why people didnt have houses built in genuine old styles, if historical buildings are so popular. I was explainig that people build historical style buildings all the time. I said, "I mean, they still build Tudor style houses, and..." but he interrupted me, asking "What does that mean?" I explained that it was a style from Tudor England. He still didn't understand, so I said, "You know, buildings like they had during the reign of Henry VIII." He still didn't get it, so I explained that Tudor was the family name of King Henry VIII.

He got quiet for a minute and said, "Wait, is that who the show 'The Tudors' was about?" I said that it was.

He said "Oh, I thought it was about the people who taught the royal children."

There was more, but I was laughing too hard to listen.

FUNZIES!

I couldn't sleep tonight because I had caffeine, so I stole this meme from Dr. Annie! Oh, and as a fun fact, I didn't know that meme was pronounced "meem" until quite recently. I thought it was pronounced "me-me" and I thought it referred specifically to these things you fill out about yourself. I thought it was called a me-me because you were talking about yourself, as in: It's all about me. I also think I might have mentioned that fact before, but I couldn't remember.

Shut up.

Anyways, here we go.

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?

ALBINO NINJA!

2. How much cash do you have on you?

None at the moment. I don't tend to carry cash on me while I'm at home.

3. What’s a word that rhymes with DOOR?

Score!

4. Favorite planet?

Venus.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?

I.C.E. Steve Pratt. I hope it wasn't important!

6. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone?

The Indiana Jones theme. It makes all of my calls sound adventurous.

7. What shirt are you wearing?

A blue and silver tie dyed one with flowers on the chest.

8. Do you label yourself?

I do, but only because sometimes I forget my name.

9. Name the brand of the shoes you’re currently wearing?

Croc flip-flops. Say what you will about Crocs, but they are the most comfortable shoes I own.

10. Bright or Dark Room?

Dark. Bright lights make me feel weird and transparent.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?

She is quite awesome. :)

12. What does your watch look like?

I have two. One is a cheapie black plastic one that has a black and white face. The other is a silver colored, bracelet one I wear for fancy times.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night?

Adjusting my CPAP, I think.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?

"Just kidding. I'll tell them you want to be the one who provides child care during the reunion." It was from Sara. She's the only proof I need that gingers don't have souls. :P

15. Where is your nearest 7-11?

? I have no idea.

16. What’s a word that you say a lot?

Disregarding profanity, I'd have to say "ouch."

17. Who told you he/she loved you last?

My mom.

18. Last furry thing you touched?

Butler, my yellow lab.

19. How many drugs have you done in the last three days?

Just vitamins, I think. I'm so tired of taking medicine, I've kind of boycotted it for now.

20. How many rolls of film do you need developed?

None. I haven't had a film camera for over 10 years.

21. Favorite age you have been so far?

17. That was before I knew how much life could suck. Heeheehee!

22. Your worst enemy?

Myself, and possibly C.O.B.R.A. Commander.

23. What is your current desktop picture?

A tank full of genetically modified, glow-in-the-dark fish.

24. What was the last thing you said to someone?

"I'll be there in a little bit. I'm not tired yet."

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be?

Flying, probably. You could always get rich by exploiting the fact you could fly.

26. Do you like someone?

I do.

27. The last song you listened to?

Something written by John Williams that Steve was playing on his trumpet. I don't remember the name, but it was some kind of march.

28. What time of day were you born?

11:10 AM, I think

29. What’s your favorite number?

8

30. Where did you live in 1987?

East Limestone, I think. Possibly Madison. We moved around that time, so I can't be sure.

31. Are you jealous of anyone?

Yes!

32. Is anyone jealous of you?

I doubt it. They'd be kind of sad if they were. I haven't got much going on at the moment.

33. Where were you when 9/11 happened?

At home. I was getting ready for a job interview. Steve called and told me what happened because I was watching The Golden Girls.

34. What do you do when vending machines steal your money?

I pound on the glass and shake them.

35. Do you consider yourself kind?

Yes. At least, I try to always be kind.

36. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be?

Ankle or right shoulder. I think that urge may have passed for me, though.

37. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be?

Italian. No matter what you say, it sounds sexy.

38. Would you move for the person you loved?

Of course. At least, I would if I knew they loved me back. Otherwise it just gets all stalky and awkward.

39. Are you touchy feely?

Heck yes I am. Probably too much. I can't help it.

40. What’s your life motto?

You can never have too many hobbies or art supplies.

41. Name three things that you have on you at all times?

If I'm away from home: lip gloss, insurance card, Swiss army knife (unless I'm going on a plane, because I don't want it to get confiscated.)

42. What’s your favourite town/city?

So far? Bodie, California. It was a ghost town, though. I'm sure there are better places out there, I just haven't seen them yet.

43. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?

Something at Hobby Lobby, probably.

44. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?

Today!

45. Can you change the oil on a car?

No.

46. Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her?

That he just got tenure and a promotion to Associate Professor at Jacksonville St. University. I fall in love with smart people! :)

47. How far back do you know about your ancestry?

Pretty far back. The farthest I know from memory is a (several times) great grandfather who was a Cherokee Indian chief named "Old Tossle." He was killed by union soldiers.

48. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy?

Steve's Christmas party. A black and white dress that was 6 inches too long that I kept stepping on and bedroom slippers underneath. I'm classy like that.

49. Does anything hurt on your body right now?

I have a button on my clothes that is poking me.

50. Have you been burned by love?

Yes. Quite terribly.

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: !%&@^#% MACARONS

Did you know it is possible to become food-obsessed with a thing you've never even gotten to taste before? It totally is. I know this because before I came to my senses and made myself back slowly away from the Kitchen-Aid mixer, there was a week or so where I made (or attempted to make) dozens upon dozens of french macaron cookies. Unfortunately for me...I simply couldn't do it.

I only learned about macarons fairly recently, actually. They have become a "thing" with certain food blogs that I have started reading over the past year. They've been around longer than that, of course, but I had never heard about them before then. These beautiful, shiny, colorful sandwich confections (apparently, they aren't actually cookies) that come in literally an infinite range of flavors fascinated me. I decided that I must have one, or two, or three...(dozen). Unfortunately for me, there isn't a place in Huntsville where you can get them. Well, not one I have found yet, anyway. I've gone to independent bakeries while I've been out running errands, looked in grocery stores, and I've even done searches online for places that might have them, but I couldn't find anything. Sure you can order them online, but from everything I've read, macarons are delicate and easy to smash, and they are expensive. The last thing I want to do is order a box of them and wind up with nothing but expensive crumbs! So I did what anyone else would do: I decided to make them myself.

First off, it was important for me to understand what I was shooting for:

Exhibit A - Macaroons

Nom.

I've had Macaroons before. These are the delicious, chewy, flourless coconut cookies we all know and love. I've made these before. These are not the cookies I was looking for. Move along.

Exhibit B - Macaroons

Not nom. Unless you are from Melmac.

As I introduced in my last post, this is Macaroons. I didn't name him. Steve mis-heard me when I said he was probably a Maine Coon and the name just stuck. As far as I know, he is also flourless, but probably not delicious.

Exhibit C - Macarons

Strawberry Macarons by Tartlette. She is French and
she knows how to make them correctly. Probaby very nom.

THIS. This is what I was looking for. French macarons! These are made with 4 ingredients: powdered sugar, almond flour, egg whites and caster sugar. Anything that only requires 4 ingredients, two of which are sugar, can't be hard to make, right? Wrong.

Wrongwrongwrongwrong.

Apparently, making these damnable cookies (I don't care, they look like cookies to me) successfully requires an advanced degree in chemistry or biology. You think I'm kidding? The woman uses scatter plots to determine how to make these things. SCATTER PLOTS! You shouldn't have to be that smart just to make cookies. I'm sure it helps, but still...

Before I even attempted to try making these, I did research. I read about how tricky these can be, and how hard it is for even seasoned pastry-chefs to make them correctly, but I thought...meh. 4 ingredients, recipe on the internet, instructions on how to make them, easy-peasy. First, I had to locate the ingredients. Powdered sugar was easy, as were the egg whites. However, finding caster sugar proved strangely difficult. It's really just the missing link between confectioner's sugar and regular sugar, a finely granulated, but not powdered, sugar. However, I think I had to go across town to Earth Fare to find it. Almond meal was just as difficult to find, but since I had a food processor and a bag of slivered almonds, it was easy-ish to make. Just a note, though, there is a fine line between almond meal and almond butter.

The first thing you have to do is let the egg whites age. Seriously, they have to sit out on the counter, preferably covered, for anywhere from 24 to 72 hours, depending on the recipe you use. Um, ew. See, I've always been under the impression that eggs shouldn't just sit around the kitchen without being refrigerated, but I'm not a pastry chef, so what do I know? I left my eggs on the counter for 24 hours. The recipe I used said to sift the almond meal and confectioner's sugar together three times, which I did. It was a pain in my ass, too, because you have to get two bowls dirty to do this. Also, almond meal has lumps, and you are supposed to throw away the lumps. This means, unless you are measuring the amount you throw away and replacing the same amount of non-lumpy meal into the mix, you won't have the right amount of meal in the end. SIGH. Then to take the room temperature egg whites and start mixing them until they are juuuuuuuust foamy, and then you add in the caster sugar, then mix it some more. At some point, you are supposed to get soft, shiny peaks. If you've ever made meringue, you probably know what that means. I had never made meringue, so, I simply had to guess.

Then you gently fold all of the stuff together until you get a batter that is supposed to be a certain consistency. I'd explain what that is supposed to be, but I'm not sure I ever got it right. It's supposed to make "ribbons" but I don't know what the hell that means. Anyways, it got mixed.

After you get "ribbons" you get a pastry bag and fill it with the batter, pipe 1 inch circles onto parchment paper and bake them. Some directions tell you to let the batter set for a while before you bake them, some don't. Then while they're baking, some magical alchemical thing is supposed to happen where the cookies rise and make perfect little half spheres with "feet." The feet are the little bubbly, ruffly bit at the bottom of the cookie.

Well, my first batch didn't do this. At all. They didn't rise so much as they sort of flattened out. I wish I could have gotten a picture of my first, sad batch, because they were hilarious. It looked like someone took shiny, white spackle and made pancakes with it. I couldn't even get them off of the parchment paper! I managed to gnaw one off of the parchment. They tasted pretty good, if you don't mind eating small pieces of paper along with your cookies, but they were sad and flat. I couldn't even get enough of any of them off of the paper to make a two sided cookie. However, I was not too discouraged. I tried again.

I did everything the same, except this time I managed to get 8 cookies out of it. They were pretty, I suppose. I filled them with peanut butter filling and they tasted fine, but they still didn't seem right.

This was the only slightly pretty one.

So I tried again, this time making them chocolate with buttercream filling. I didn't follow the directions too closely this time, because I thought that quite possibly, my problem was that I was being too careful. So I just did everything pretty slap-dash. None of the tiresome sifting and all that. I managed to get enough off the parchment paper this time to make 16 or so complete cookies, but there was only one problem. They were as hard as hockey pucks.

Delicious hockey pucks with buttercream filling.

Fortunately, though, these cookies can be "aged" in the fridge, and by osmosis, they get softer as they leach moisture from the filling. However, that takes 3 or 4 days, and when you want a cookie...you want a cookie. Who wants to wait 3 or 4 days?! I did manage to leave a few in there the correct amount of time, and they did get softer, but I still don't think they were right.

So, I tried again. This time I was super careful. I had located almond meal at Publix (which I'm beginning to believe has everything anyone could ever want) and I sifted these bad boys until you could have absorbed the dry ingredients through your skin, Anthrax-style. I aged the eggs, I carefully whipped the eggs, I let the batter sit in it's perfectly piped little circles before I put them in the oven, and I even rotated them half-way through baking, just in case the oven heated unevenly. They came out looking...weird. Like big lipped clams.

*sad trombone*

I think I actually shouted at these cookies. I cursed at them and called them terrible names. I curled up into a sad little ball on the floor, wailing and gnashing my teeth. To add insult to injury, I filled these with lemon curd - and I realized I don't like lemon curd. Somehow, I don't think something as soothing as baking should cause fits of tourette's syndrome-like outbursts.

At some point, I unfurled myself from the fetal position and cleaned the pools of sugary macaron batter from the counter-tops and floor. I quietly put the cookies into the freezer to get them out of my sight, and left the kitchen quietly. I admitted defeat.

My mission to try one of these elusive cookies still rages. My mission to actually bake a successful batch of these cookies has faded a bit, but hasn't completely fizzled out. I'm sure I'll come across a proper macaron one of these days to see what all of the shouting is about, but until then, I'll just stare wistfully at them on the internet from the safety of my office chair. But one day... One day I will prevail.

They will be mine. Oh yes, they will be mine.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Contrary to popular belief, I haven't been abducted by aliens, nor have I joined the circus. I haven't updated because I haven't really done anything lately. I know that your lives don't revolve around my blog updates, so I'm sure you guys haven't been too worried! :)

2) I had to do another round of antibiotics for the evil, apparently drug resistant, strain of pneumonia I had, and that was a lot of fun. I think I've finally, finally, honest-to-goodness kicked the bug. I'm still really tired and have wicked hot flashes, but my chest doesn't hurt anymore! I can go back to licking complete strangers without worrying that I'm giving them a disease. :) It's been frustrating, because I've been too sick to do anything except for the simplest things. I could eat, I could get the mail, and unfortunately, I could gain lots of weight because of the not being able to do anything and the excessive steroids I took for a month. So yeah...that sucks. At least I'm better. At one point, in an attempt to clear my lungs, I took a dose of Mucinex. I mean, if it can get rid of whole families of anthropomorphous phlegm blobs, why not? I...don't recommend it. It felt like a swallowed a lit sparkler. I'm not saying it's bad medicine, and I'm not saying it doesn't work for other people, but yikes. Molten lava, in my body. Itchy, molten lava.

3) Speaking of my lungs (and endlessly fascinating subject, I'm sure) I had another trip to the sleep doctor today. Guess who has two thumbs and gets to go back and do another sleep study tomorrow night? Yuck. The doctor told me that they didn't really know what to do for me because of the things they found out after my last sleep study. He said that I have partial obstructive sleep apnea, meaning that the flappy bit in the back of my throat obstructs my breathing. If I could lose a lot of weight, that might go away. However, part of the reason I have so much trouble losing weight is because of my sleeping trouble (I didn't realize that was even a thing until recently.) So...catch 22. That sucks, of course, but the bigger problem is that I also have something called central sleep apnea, which means my brain has spells where it doesn't tell my body to breathe. This even happens when I'm awake, and it means I have a short circuit somewhere. It can also mean I have brain damage or heart trouble, and...it could eventually kill me if we can't get it under some kind of control. Nice, right? He told me they'd try another kind of breathing machine, which is why I have to go back for another sleep study. I hate those things, but I agreed because the other alternative is undergoing surgery to open my throat and reset my jaw and that would only help partially. I hope that it a last ditch thing, though, because it sounds unpleasant.

4) Did you know I have a cat now? Well, sort of. This is Macaroons:

Of course, in all honesty, this really isn't my cat, but I think he (or she) thinks it lives here. My whole relationship with this cat began innocently, much like how Garry and Spot used to occasionally come over and make me think they were homeless so I'd feed them. Same thing here, only unlike Garry and Spot, I still don't know if this cat has a home. I don't really know if I even like this cat. He's dirty, he's greedy, he isn't really affectionate, and he feels like an old wig. The dumb thing keeps getting into the house, and I have to force him out. He taunts my dogs and has caused Butler to almost jump through a window to try and get at him. He pukes on my stoop if we don't feed him, and he lies down behind our cars in the driveway when we try and leave. He meows at the door if he thinks it's time to feed him, and he has fights with other cats that come by. It's like I'm in the debt of the mob and Macaroons is the guy hanging around to make sure I don't forget I owe the boss something. I feel sorry for him, or I wouldn't feed him, but I don't want to take responsibility for this animal. If I were 100% sure he didn't have an owner instead of just 90%, I'd take him to the no-kill shelter just so I'd be sure he was at least getting shots and whatnot. However, there are days he isn't hanging around on my stoop all day, and that's just enough doubt about him not to want to send some old lady's cat to animal control. Stupid cat.

5) The other day, while I was busy putting away groceries, Steve came over and handed me a credit card to put into my purse so that he wouldn't forget to give it to me. Since I was busy, I promptly forgot about it and went on with my business. After about 30 minutes, the realization that I didn't know what I had done with the card flashed into my head. I got frantic, because honestly, who wants to lose a credit card? Steve and I combed the whole house, I had to pick through the garbage, we looked in the freezer, the hamper, the bathrooms, and everywhere else we could think of to no avail. I was near tears because I felt so stupid. I'd had it in my hands, and now it was just gone. I was standing in the kitchen, berating myself for my stupidity, when I suddenly remembered that I'd stuck the card into my bra so that I wouldn't lose it. It had been in there the whole time. :/

6)ALAN! ALAN! ALAN! AL! ALAN!