~Vitamin Sea~

Photos on VitaminSea

This work by Laura@Vitaminsea is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at vitaminsea.typepad.com. Based on several bad experiences I have had lately, Please do not use ANY Photo from my website for work, school, blogs,sharing, or for personal use. Thank you.

An Extra Crispy Marriage

I've been writing about Rick a little more often lately because there really isn't anything else going on in my life, so I've turned my focus on him.
Besides, he hardly ever reads this blog.
Which makes him blog fodder right off the bat, don'tcha think?

Anyway, for the past few weeks I've been bugging him to get a haircut and he keeps putting it off.  There's always something that gets in the way, like work, sleep, work on the house and... oh, snore on the couch!

So this evening, I tried another tact, in which I walked outside to where he was tearing the pool apart and said, simply,  "I bought you some fried chicken!"
And he looked at me with his eyes wide, the way Buddy does when you say  "wanna go for a walk???" 
And he had so much desire in those eyes.  Those hungry-for-fried-chicken eyes.
I moved swiftly, my next sentence feeding off his very look: "Richard."
"Yes?"
"Could you Please Go Get a Haircut!  We're leaving tomorrow and today's the last day!"
And he said, easily as you please.  "Oh, ok." 
Simple as that.

Wow, I should have done that weeks ago.  He left a few minutes ago after calling the place to see if they had an opening, and after discussing with the receptionist over how much they charge for a haircut. (good grief!)
Fried Chicken! Who woulda thunk.  So my question is,  if you're a guy, do you take forever to get around to getting a haircut? If you're female, what about your hub/bf/significant other?

I don't even like fried chicken.

A letter

Dear Internets,

Getting up at 5:30a.m.  is for the birds. Or the Fed Ex people.  It's not my best time of the day, that's for sure.  Since Britt has to get up at 5:30 for school, I find that I wake up instantly, just before the alarm kicks in.  This morning I woke up around three, then four, and finally, 5:29 a.m.
.
I made a pot of coffee and fixed Rick a cup, forgetting that he's not supposed to have food or coffee this morning as he is to fast before a blood test to determine if he's still an alien or just looks like one.  So it was rather cruel of me to walk in holding 2 hot mugs of steaming coffee with cream and sugar.  Oh, It smelled so good.  And he couldn't have any.   Had he done the same thing to me at 5 in the morning I would have killed on the spot. The legal system would have recognized my insanity plea as justifiable homicide.
Speaking of coffee mugs, I want this one. It fits me. It is me:

What do you think? Is it not you, also?  Yes?
Yes.  It is you.

Meanwhile, back on August 20th, Rick and I celebrated our 24th anniversary with some hooters, guns and fast cars.  He actually took the day off for a change and we headed out in the morning for a good one hour walk on the beach.  Good times! Rick hasn't been out on the beach on a weekday in ...... hmmm, never?  Neither of us can remember.  We were sweating bullets when we got back.

Speaking of bullets, we headed over to an indoor shooting range later on to shoot some guns. This was my first time holding a pistol and I was throughly impressed.  When I got done shooting, I turned around and he had this big, wide grin plastered across his face.  After the first 2 misses, I had hit the bulls eye right smack in da head.   HE hit the numbers on the target every single time he aimed. I was stunned.   Also, I looked at him funny.
  Now I'm not sure if he really goes to work each morning of if he's an undercover agent somewhere. Those overnight trips will be scrutinized from here on.
Check out our profiles!

Suffice it to say, if I have to shoot your ear, I might miss.
If I have to shoot your head baby, I won't.
I want to go back again and try some other guns. I also want to try out the "friend or foe" test as well.

After we ran out of bullets, we headed over to a go-cart racing place on US19.  I don't like the ChuckECheese type places, so when Britt went go cart racing with friends last week, I thought that's where she was headed, and declined to go along.   Rick went with her instead, and came home and said I'd like the new place a lot better. 

Bwahahha! I got my go-cart racing license and came in at a respectable 4th place. I beat out two 10 year olds who kept getting in my way.   Rick took off, racing with two other grown men and came in first.    Now he wants to go back and try their league.  There are men who grow up slowly, you understand. 
You have to pay for a package, rather then for the race itself, so I saved the other races for when we can bring Britt and Sam with us.  Plus it was 103 degrees and I was turning into hot rubber.  I really needed a long, tall drink and some chicken wings.  We ended up at Hooters for a giant order of wings and ice tea.

So I didn't wear the sexy, chocolate colored dress for our anniversary, nor did we go out for a romantic evening on the town.  But we did have a blast doing it our way.  And if that ain't the secret to a seasoned marriage, I don't know what is. 

For the record, the modified low carb diet that I blogged about earlier, worked great and I lost 8.5 pounds in 2 weeks and 4 days, including a break from the diet the previous Sunday, when we headed over to Diary Queen and I had a Pecan Mudslide that was worth every spoonful.   
I throughly believe that life is all about living a little bit, and not worrying about the carbs and calories all the time.  If you eat like a pig when you're over 40, then you must work like a horse to pay for it.  There ya go, words to live by, and words to forget when it's convenient! ;)

Yours truly,
~me

Sleep Apnea in a Real Marriage

Samantha is out late tonight and so I can't go to bed until she gets in again.  So, here I am.

Rick is snoring on the couch and believe me, it's a scary sound.  I'm supposed to stay awake and listen to see if he stops breathing, because he has a sleep apnea and stops breathing no less than 15 times per HOUR. I find that absolutely amazing.  Recently we found out that a friend of his took the same test and stopped breathing almost 40 times per hourr.  No wonder so many men end up thinking with their di..(censored).

Now, a sleep apnea occurs when the muscles in the back of your throat relax too much. And when those muscles relax, the airway narrows or closes as you breathe in, and breathing momentarily cuts off.
This is scary stuff, folks. It puts a fair amount of strain on the heart.  When you stop breathing, the brain senses your inability to breath and briefly rouses you from sleep so that you can reopen your airway.  This awakening is usually so brief that you don't remember it.  If it happens on a continuous basis, all night long as in Rick's case, the result can leave you highly fatigued the next day.

We didn't think he had any of the typical risk factors.  He's not overweight, his blood pressure is normal and doesn't smoke or drink more than the occasional beer.  He doesn't have a wide neck, which is one common factor.  But he does have a family history of heart disease and that's one of the reasons he was checked out for it.

He spent the night at a sleep clinic on two separate occasions where he was hooked up to tubes and  and monitored for breathing cycles all night long.  I don't see how the staff could stand the noise from the snoring, all those men and women in there honking up a storm.
  I would have turned the machines off myself to get some sleep.   But then, I would not have worked there very long.  My method when the noise gets too loud is to keep rolling him over until he falls off the bed.
(Easy killers, I was just kidding.)  The tests showed he had stopped breathing on the average of 15 times per hour, which still amazes me and so I'm repeating the sentence all over again. We learned that's actually a low number, some men stop breathing almost a hundred times per night.

They sent a technician over to the house to show him how to hook up the device. It's a little box with a fan in it, which forces pressurized air through a tube that is placed in his nose. This mask allows the air to blow into the back of the throat to keep the airway open and that prevents pauses in breathing as he sleeps.

The device works great and one of the better results is that he doesn't feel as if he's going to fall asleep on the drive home from work every night.   He used to have a hard time keeping his eyes open on the drive home. 
He's also able to remain awake instead of falling asleep in exhaustion at 7 p.m in his spot on the sofa.  Since he got the elephant tube apparatus, as I call it, he falls asleep at 9 instead.  That is two extra hours I have to put up with him. 

It does have some side effects. When the dog wants to go out at night, that means I have to get up and let him out now... we can't take turns anymore.  This is because Rick would have to disconnect the tube from his mighty nostrils in order to get up and  let him out and then go through the whole reconnection process when he gets back in bed again.
Thus, it's easier for me to be a total b*tch the next day since I'm overtired from getting up at night and besides, he'll be at work anyway, so he won't have to deal with me!
(I am just kidding, yet again. I am not total b*tch every day. just some days).

Sam is home at last,  so I am going to close this up and get some sleep. I hope this has been highly informative and if you or someone you love has a snoring problem, get it checked out!

All The Ways You Drive

On the way home from Ft. DeSoto the other day, I was telling Rick how to drive, because he has this habit of pulling up behind another driver and then slowing down to match their speed.   And that's fine, if you're going with the flow of the traffic, but it didn't take me long to realize:  A) the lane next to us, having had a stream of cars for awhile, was now empty, and B) We were following some Japanese tourists who were just moseying along without a care in the world, their heads lifted high as they peered over their wire rimmed glasses to see over the dashboard and out the window. 

Every now and then they would point up to something in the clouds, so I began to check for the police surveillance planes and helicopters that are common here, but I couldn't see a thing. They continued to drive and look, and look and point, and I was looking too, but all I could see were condos.

They sure weren't looking at the water.  I suppose that's because throughout most of Pinellas County, you can't even SEE the Gulf of Mexico for all the condos in the way.  You wouldn't know we had beaches it all, except that there is advertising that says we do. 

I have noticed this many times with tourists, they always seem to look up toward the skies, as if following some type of compass in the clouds. Can't be the condos, could it?  Our condo rooftops are not that interesting. 
You just watch our tourists the next time y'all find yourselves in the tourist district, because they are looking UP and I still can't figure out what's up there.    The beach is down here, after all.

Anyway, they  were going 25 mph or so, and Rick had already switched into "nice Canadian" mode, since he is a natural born Canadian... and he was now following them at the speed of a slug.

Normally he drives at 80+ mph on the Interstate, and I usually have to yell, yet again, "Slow the Car DOWN,"  because I can feel it shaking!  But, you see... on this day, his Canadian Driver gene was working overtime.  I have noticed it comes out by default whenever he is preoccupied with something on his mind.

So I explained how, here in America... it is OKAY to pull out into the adjoining lane and pass them by without even breaking the sound barrier!   I don't see why he gets all annoyed,  I am merrily helping us get home in a timely manner.  I also notice if I bring it up, he'll go even slower, JUST TO ANNOY ME.  If I don't bring it up, we'll never get home.

Finally, I said, will you just pull the stupid car over and GO! Come ON! and viola! we merged on into the next lane, his American upbringing taking over.

I waved to the tourists as we moved past and she smiled and waved too, and then turned to her hub and said   "Lee! #@# ^^^#$##  stupid !##@@?"

(Typepad won't translate Japanese: "Will YOU pick up speed and get this stupid rental car moving!) And he shook his head and started acting stubborn right then and there, and I was instantly sorry I had ruined that part of their vacation.

Anyway, we got home okay.

On time, too.

~The end~