Life By Lindsey Rae

Tonight is an exciting night for me. I'm going to go have a sleep study done.

I have had trouble sleeping almost my entire life. Even when I was little, I didn't ever want to go to sleep. Now, not only do I have terribly bad insomnia, I have chronic daily fatigue which never seems to go away. And the problem is, when you are sleeping 10-12 hours a day and then spending the rest of the time just feeling tired and/or sick and tired, you can't accomplish much.

So, I'm hoping that my sleep study will give me some insight into what might be wrong with me that I am not well. It would be great if they could help me. I feel like I've tried so many things already...I've wanted to go have this done for awhile now, but I thought it was going to be kind of expensive. Turns out, insurance is going to cover me 100%! I am so happy about that.

So, I go stay overnight there tonight and possibly another time if they need to get more results. I really hope they can tell me something that will help! I'm exhausted!

I think you know that when a person is this excited about getting a bunch of medical tests done they are getting desperate!

I got my annual eye exam today. I knew it was going to be a year since I had it done this April and so I was debating on whether or not I should order more contacts before my prescription expired. (Because of course, it's cheaper to not have to pay for a new exam). But, Jerrod said I should go ahead and get a new prescription before I ordered new ones, so I made an appointment to see the doctor.

As it turns out, she said my eyes were "great" and there was not any change from last year. I was surprised because from the year before to last year, I had my biggest change in prescription ever, so I expected they would have got worse this time too. But, it was exactly the same!

So, after all that and $75 later, I could have done without the appointment anyway, it seems. Oh well, I guess you never know. At least I have some insurance coverage...it could be worse....
I am so cheap....

Now comes that hard part in finding a good deal on contacts. I love the Focus Night & Day that I wear so much...it's almost like not having them at all, because you can sleep in them up to 30 days. They are more expensive then some, but they never, ever bother me.(The first couple brands I tried as a teenager weren't very comfortable at all.) And actually, my eyes feel better with them in, because apparently, when you have allergies the contacts can kind of shield your eyes from what irritates them. So, I can hardly stand to take them out...which isn't good either, because the eyes need to rest sometimes, but, it's so difficult to wear glasses!

I just got home from taking Jerrod some supper at his work. He has been at his office late a few nights recently...until midnight a couple of times this past week. (If any of my Japanese friends are reading this they are probably thinking, "That's nothing, we do that all the time!")
Anyway, he has some big projects he is working on, so I guess that's why the long hours. I feel bad that he stays so late, but he enjoys what he does, so that's a good thing. He'd probably be doing it at home for a hobby anyway if someone wasn't paying him to do it!

We were talking last night about another certification the computer security husband is going to be taking soon to be a CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker). I was saying that if you tell someone that, that you are a "Certified Ethical Hacker" they will immediately just hear the word "hacker" and most people would think that's sounds pretty strange to have any certification for that. And, most people don't think of the words "ethical" and "hacker" going together.

Anyway, it's kind of fun to think Jerrod has all this knowledge that he has. I tell him I am constantly amazed at his smartness. haha.
Seriously though, he really knows too many things. Nothing gets past him and that makes it hard for me to hide anything!

I did one coat of paint on the bathroom and my hand is hurt. I got blisters from the roller. Actually, it was hurting after only a few hours, even before I finished one coat. I don't know why it got bad so quickly. Maybe I'm gripping it too hard...too stressed out or something....!
I probably won't be able to work very quickly now...gotta take some breaks and let the had heal!
Painting can be a little exhausting anyway. I think because once you get going, you don't want to stop 'cause you and the brushes are already dirty. So then, you don't end up eating for a long time and then start feeling bad.

I also dropped a drawer on my foot today, so my hands and the feet both have problems right now.

Tonight I'm working on starting to paint a bathroom. The builder painted the house in one color, which was an upgrade (anything more than white is) but it is all in the contractor-grade, flat paint, so it does not stand up well to any moisture. Easy to touch up, but easy to mess up too.
So, we decided the bathrooms definitely needed to be redone, as well as the kitchen. After only 3 months, we already had some stains that show through that flat paint, so we need something that is more washable. I think I got some hair gel or something like that on the wall just after we moved in, and it wasn't possible to paint over it. It kept showing through. So, we also had to do some primer on those spots. Kind of a pain, but fixing it now and using a different type of paint will prevent those kind of things make it easier in the future.

We already did the master bathroom a few weeks ago and so now we are doing the guest bath. I thought I would keep the color the same in this bathroom, but at the last minute when I was buying the paint today, I changed my mind. That was quite amazing in itself, because I usually can't make a decision to save my life and I actually made one today.

I think these color chips aren't really that accurate from my recent experience...the paint always turns out lighter. Although, I had heard in the past that you should always expect it to turn out darker.

After this, I want to do the kitchen for sure to get rid of that flat paint and then possibly the dining room. But, the dining room mostly just to change things up a bit with a different color. I'm not looking forward to doing the kitchen though.....with all the cabinets there will be so much trimming to do and I am very, very picky about it. I just hate those uneven lines some people do. I am not happy with some of the spots in my own house. They should just be more careful! It's tedious but I do all edges with a small artists paintbrush. It's kind of crazy, I know, but at least it keeps it nice and clean...and that causes me much less stress later on.

(P.S. I'm not supposed to do any of my art painting inside...Jerrod thinks I'm going to get some on the carpet or something like this. So, this is the only painting I'm allowed to do in the house...I really don't see what the difference is.)

In the past, I wrote a bunch about the animal paintings at the Nashville Zoo that we bid on at the silent auction. I first saw them a few years ago and elephant paintings were the first thing that I saw that got me hooked on animal paintings. (We don't have an elephant painting yet...just the meerkat one. Although we did get one for Jerrod's aunt for Christmas).
But, anyway, most of them that I have seen are mostly just random brush strokes of colors...more abstract, that sometimes turns out to look like something recognizable.

I just saw this video on YouTube of an elephant doing a painting, and it is amazing. This elephant can draw better than a lot of people can. You must watch this!

Have you seen this rabbit anywhere?



This is probably the most famous picture of Oolong the rabbit; It's made it's way around the internet quite a bit.
I discovered Oolong a few years ago, when I was living in Japan, and spent quite awhile one night going through his website checking out the many many pictures of Oolong with random things on his bunny head.
You will not believe the number of pictures this guy has with things on the rabbit's head. Here's a little sample:






I have a link to Oolong's website in the sidebar, but you can also view it here.
This is in Japanese, but you don't need to understand it....just click on the links. No explanation needed...just see the pictures!
Unfortunately, Oolong has now passed away. However, I thought I would share this site, even though it's a little older. I think a bunny with random things on it's head never quite looses it's appeal!
Haha.

We've been thinking we needed to get some dirt to fill in some areas in the back yard that got trampled when the neighbors behind us put in a fence. The workers make huge trenches in our yard because it was rainy and muddy when they were doing it. We called the builder and asked them to come fix it, but they did a really mediocre job and we needed to do more to make it better. There is also a lot of water that runs back there into a drainage area when it rains so we needed to build up the dirt and work on re-seeding it to get the grass to grow after the damage.

We saw that some other neighbors behind us were putting in some new stones for a patio and they had dug up some of their backyard and made a pile of dirt. Jerrod saw them and asked if we could have it and they were very happy to give it to us, since they weren't sure what they were going to do with it anyway.
So, we spent awhile shoveling it into some wheelbarrows and hauling it over (not too far, thankfully, and closer than if we had borrowed it from elsewhere). It was just enough to fill the spots we needed, so it worked out pretty well. I learned that dirt is really heavy. Dirt in Tennessee is mostly hard clumps of clay and rock and is not easy to spread and break up...

It was good to meet these neighbors. They seem pretty nice. I wasn't really sure who they were, but as it turns out, they are a young newlywed couple. We talked with them for awhile and funny story, they told us that the night before when they were putting their patio stones in, they had some friends over helping them until late at night and had their cars parked on the street...so guess who got parking tickets?
They got three of them! $60 worth! They said they didn't even know about the no-parking-on-the-street-after-1:00am law. So, they were quite shocked and surprised to hear that I had recently got a ticket too.

I actually had a couple of semi-interesting thoughts today I was going to write about, but I have a super bad migraine tonight and so now I can't focus enough to write anything...so I may have to try another time...
Ahh! My head hurts sooo much!!!
Well, at least it's better than it hurting everyday like it used to...every few days is somewhat bearable.

Ok, one funny thing that I learned today:
So, this receptionist from one of my Dr.'s offices called me and left a message on my voice mail, saying, " This is the doctors office Just calling to remind you about your follow-up appointment on Monday. You can call us back if you have any other questions."
Uh, yes, I do have a question: Who are you? I have at least 5-10 doctors that could be calling me for a follow-up appointment, so I'm pretty sure that's a question I need to find out.
I called the number back and say, "Uh, I hear I have an appointment, but who are you?!" haha. They told me that according to HIPAA law they can't say the name of the Doctor or clinic. It's just the "Doctor's office". Kind of weird. I never knew about that before...at least none of my other doctor's offices do that...

I downloaded the GIMP software today and now I have another thing to distract me while I try to figure it out. It's pretty cool for being free and all. It's kind of Photoshop-ish, but it doesn't seem quite as difficult as Photoshop....(although it's been awhile since I tried to use Photoshop).
I used to do all my photo editing with Microsoft Digital Image Suite, which was pretty OK for what I was doing. It is fairly user friendly and I knew how to use it well enough to get things done fairly quickly (except for the fact that I am a perfectionist and everything takes me a long time).
We can still run Windows in a virtual machine inside our Macs, but then to use the Windows machine, I still have to switch back and forth. It's not difficult, but then not quite as convenient as just using one machine.

Speaking of pictures, I need to post some more. But, Jerrod is going to re-build my computer again in the next few days and I am not uploading much onto my machine until then...so when I get completely settled with my new computer, I will have everything again and hopefully will be able to post something more interesting with pictures and video!