Yesterday, the most awesome thing EVER happened. Well, it really wasn't that awesome, but it was hilarious to me, so I thought I'd share. Here goes! 

I came back home from a day of being on the road, and pulled into my garage, but I left the door open because I needed to walk out and check the mailbox. The (extremely religious) neighbor kids were riding their bikes in the street. As I got out of my car and walked down the driveway toward the mailbox, I heard one of the kids say, "Hurry! She's going to murder you!"

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.....we're those people. 

I have a feeling it's because we don't always go to church on Sundays, and we also have friends of a variety of sizes, hairstyles, ethnicities, religions (or lack thereof), and various non-1950s sorts of family types. We're also both voters that are registered as independents. Plus, I sing really loudly, a lot, and sometimes we play the Johnny Mathis Christmas album in the middle of the summer. Oh, and did I mention we don't have babies? Throw that in there, too.

Hide your kids, people. We are bona fide weirdos (also, do yourself a favor right now and type out bona fide and see what your spell checker does...mine was fantastic).

Ha ha ha ha ha. I love my street.

So my singing hasn't been going terribly well lately; in fact, my jaw has been locking up more and more every week. I had a rehearsal that was epically bad this past Monday, and it made me almost die in public.

I cried. In front of people. Holy crap.

So the next day, I met with a person who offered to take a look and see if she could help me figure out what's going on. We tried some stuff, it went okay, and now I'm adding some of it to my normal stuff. I'm also telling all my students about it so they know that it's definitely normal to have bad times, and we don't have to let it keep us from doing what we need to do to be singers. We just keep going until we can't anymore.

I'm getting perilously close to that "can't," but I'm not quite there. We'll see after a few weeks of trying.

At any rate, there are a lot of things that I'm trying, but there are two that, by far, are killing me. The other things, like stopping immediately and moving my jaw and tongue around when I even start to feel a tiny pull, are super easy and also feel much better. The ones that suck? I have to practice looking into a mirror, and I can only practice for twenty minutes at a time.

I am dying.

I don't want to see what I look like when I'm making sounds that call to mind a dying cow. It's not pretty. Sometimes I drool, and quite often, I see a zit or a stray eyebrow, and then I have to go fix it, and it just ruins my concentration. And stopping after twenty minutes? Come on.

I usually sing for about an hour at a stretch. It's not always good, but I push through.

And that's just what is not helping my problem.

Ugh.

So I'll give it a shot. It's better than encouraging the muscles in my neck to tense up and feel like a Charley horse up in my face, but it is also seriously annoying.

I may die.

Okay, maybe not die, but still. Yuck.

There better be beer for dinner tonight. That is all.

I think last night I must've been engaged in an epic squeezing battle with my pillow. 

I've got to stop doing that.

Maybe it's just stress and I'm trying to work things out in my sleep, but I remember waking up periodically with my head twisted into some weird place while my pillow was attempting to migrate onto the floor, and then no matter how hard I tried to coax it back into place, I would have to grab it, squish it up into a big ball, and then try to put my head back on it. 

Which didn't really work.

So I woke up with my head tucked over to the side and my face squished with my pillow all the way up against the wall.

Jerk.

Pillow, you may have won this round, but it isn't over. Not by a long shot. Tonight, I shall succeed and you shall support my head and neck in the manner to which I have become accustomed.

Or else I'm going to beat the crap out of you.

So we went to the Denver Aquarium this weekend. It amazes me that so many people will pay that much to go look at fish, and spend the entire time looking at their phones.

Seriously. It was twenty bucks. Can't you look at your phone another time? 

Also, so many ladies taking selfies in front of every single fish tank. Do you really need that many reminders of your day at the aquarium with your phone?

Ugh. So all of the walkways are clogged with people staring at their phones and no one is talking to each other, and even kids are looking at phones. Have we not realized that we have a problem, guys? This phone thing is getting out of hand.

Not to mention that everywhere else I went this weekend was also dominated by phone use, including (yikes) a wedding. Yep. DURING THE CEREMONY. Ermahgersh.

So maybe I won't bring mine with me next time I go out. Or maybe it can just stay in my purse, so I can use it when I need it. Because it's getting ridiculous.

Also, twenty bucks. Come on. If I paid twenty bucks to look at fish, why on earth would I spend the entire time looking at my phone when I could've just done it outside for free? Really? 

Or maybe I'm just easily annoyed.

Or maybe it's both. Yeah, probably that. Anyway, put your phone down briefly. Feel the freedom.

You should see my fridge. It's really good in there. Like, I have a rainbow of produce, and I have yogurt and cottage cheese and milk and absolutely no beer.

And I gained two pounds this week. Gained.

Seriously, what the hell? I've walked 3 miles every day, fast, in the sweaty hot sweatiness, I've eaten under my allotment of calories every day, but not too much because that's bad, too, and I've had protein shakes for breakfast all but 2 days, and those days I had healthy oat cereal.

Yes, that's right. No generic Lucky Charms this week. And I have it, just sitting up there in my pantry, mocking me with its colorful marshmallows and rainbow deliciousness.

I have had no rainbow deliciousness.

Last Sunday, I decided to really be awesome this week and next and see how much I could lose. Apparently, I did the backwards thing, because 2 pounds. 2. How???

I weighed. I measured. I recorded. My protein percentages were through the roof.

And still.

Ugh.

This is the story of my life, right here. I wish I didn't care, but I got rid of all my big pants when I originally lost the 80 pounds, and I really don't want to have to buy them again. I keep reading articles about how if you go back to weighing and measuring, you'll see that you were eyeballing portions too big or not writing stuff down.

These people have obviously never met me. I eyeball like a champ. I can measure out 16 grams of peanut butter like nobody's business.

But apparently that's not the issue. 

Ugh, again.

Maybe it's time to try a weird diet. Like Atkins or something. Except Atkins plus no meat would be a disaster. I'll have to look around. Because for reals. This is stupid.

So I thought I'd share.

Ack.

Okay, here goes. I'm going to just get this out, so I can move on and lead a more honest life from here on out, okay? Ready?

I don't care about the Olympics.

There. Said it publicly. That's no longer my dirty little secret. Actually, I know for a fact that there are others Ike me; we're just too scared to freely admit that we could not even care a tiny bit less about who won the something meter freestyle swimming medal. Badge? Nope, it's medal. Right?

Yeah, definitely medal.

Anyway, sports are not my thing, too much. I like tennis, baseball, and football, and I really want to learn to play golf, because any sport where you can drive around in a little cart, drinking beer, is okay by me. Oh, and I love to hike, but that's not really a sport, so there you go. And I rarely watch any of them except baseball, but only in person, and football, because I remember watching it with my dad when I was little and I totally have an emotional attachment to that.

But that's it. And I don't know teams or players, either, except that I like the Broncos because my cousin had a Broncos shirt when we were kids.

Just getting everything out there in the name of honesty.

Opening up the Facebook this morning, I realized that I had better come clean, since no other person on the planet feels this way. My feed is all about swimmers and medals. And how many we've won.

Except, how can you watch other people swim for nine hundred hours? Especially my mom, who loves the Olympics but never once wanted to go sit at the pool and watch me swim for hours. Seriously, mom. And I was doing tricks and stuff.

So, there you have it. I have watched exactly zero Olympics, and it's likely that will remain unchanged.

Sorry, America. I just don't sports.

I made this deal with myself this summer that I would paint my fingernails every week or so, and that was supposed to encourage me to use more lotion, to help my hands not look like 90-year-old lady hands, with some dishpan action thrown in there.

So far, I have only been mildly successful.

Why do I hate lotion so much? Especially with this thin, pale skin that is all Sahara-ish and wrinkly? I should be taking baths in the stuff, but I can't seem to work up the enthusiasm necessary to take the five seconds I need to put it on.

Urgh.

Sunblock is another thing altogether. If I skip that, I know I'll be a lobster in less than fifteen minutes, so I'm pretty good at getting that all over my face. 

Maybe I need a more fear-based type of encouragement. Like, if I don't put on lotion all day, dust mites will come and devour all the dead skin and multiply and take over my house.

Except that kind of really happens.

Gross.

Maybe I just really, really need to not look at my hands at all. Then I'll never know.

I may go with that. Sounds pretty good.