Tag Archives: caffeine

Feb27

Yes, we went to Medieval Times

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Yes, we went to Medieval Times

A couple weeks ago I was riding the elevator and noticed on the elevator TV (what, your elevator doesn’t have a TV?) that they were offering  Medieval Times tickets 50% off.

And Joey’s birthday was coming up.

Well, my Seminary Wife brain clicked on and thought, Well….we’ve never done THAT before….might as well give it a shot.

So I bought tickets.

Not for the night of Joey’s actual birthday, which was Thursday of last week, but for last night.

Traffic was an absolute nightmare, so we took a different route and made it there in fairly record time, which pleased me because usually when we take alternate routes it winds up taking us longer.  But we got lucky this time, probably because it was Joey’s birthday.  Or maybe just because our number was up.

We arrived early, like the ticket told us to do, and fortunately we had brought my iTouch because we wound up having to stand in this large entrance hall with about 1,000 middle schoolers for about an hour and a half.  And I like middle schoolers considerably more than most of you (because I’m almost a youth pastor’s wife) but nearly 1,000 of them in close quarters for an hour and a half with nothing to do is enough to make me want to jump in front of a Mack truck on the Stemmons Freeway.

Joey noticed me getting that wild I AM FEELING CLAUSTROPHOBIC look in my eyes and he knew that it was time to find a different place to stand.  So he whisked me away to a less cramped part of the waiting area and we sat on a bench that me miraculously found and played Monopoly on my iTouch for the next 45 minutes.

It was a long wait.

Also it was 8:00 and I hadn’t had dinner, and that makes everything worse.

Finally, it was time to enter and we poured into the arena with all the middle schoolers. (I do not understand how it was basically  us and I AM NOT JOKING about the 1,000 middle schoolers.  We counted.)

And those discount tickets I got?

Were in the worst possible seats in the entire place.  Like when I say worst possible seats I mean that we were in the back corner with 1/4 of the arena blocked by the place where the king and queen sit, and my chair was an inch from falling down some stairs if I made one wrong move.  (Which, incidentally, I did and then I fell down the stairs.)

But we’re used to our cheap tickets getting us lousy seats, so we sat up there and giggled like middle schoolers (when in Rome…) and wiggled while we waited for our food.

Our waiter came and filled our plastic cups up with Pepsi, and Joey looked at me guzzling mine with wide terrified eyes as he sneaked a peak at his watch.  It was 8:30, and we all know how Pepsi trips me out on caffeine.  But I told him that I hadn’t had Pepsi in two weeks, so I would surely be fine.

Whatever.

Soon our soup and garlic bread came and as we sat waiting for the waiter to FINALLY get to us already.  He was just about to serve the person next to us (who was actually not a middle schooler) when he said, “Would you like some garlic bread sir?”

Then there was this awkward pause, and the server finally realized his mistake and said, “I’m sorry, MA’AM, would you like some garlic bread?  Sorry, I just….the eye patch….one of the guys downstairs has an eye patch.”

The lady next to us was indeed wearing an eye patch, which I had been trying not to stair at.  She continued to stare, one-eyed, at the server, and he continued to ramble.

“The guy downstairs is a Knight and he was sword fighting and a piece of Titanium came flying off one of the swords and got stuck in his eye.”  Then he paused long enough for the eye-patched lady to speak.

“Well, I had a brain anuerism and now I can’t see out of this eye,” she said, obviously peeved.

“Oh.  Well, do you want some garlic bread?” Asked the poor server again as he mentally tried to calculate how much THAT mistake was going to cost him on his tip.

When he finally got around to serving us we were so hungry that we totally inhaled our garlic bread and soup, and then we sat in our super bad nosebleed seats and tried to calculate how much money Medieval Times was pulling down every time they opened their doors.  Joey figured it out, after some quick calculations, and we were like, woaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

And then, the jousting began.

We screamed just like the middle schoolers until the Pepsi wore off and we started getting tired and feeling our age.  And as soon as it was done?  We hit the road, Jack and booked it home before all the middle schoolers made their way to the doors.

“Want to stay up and watch the Olympics that we recorded?” Joey asked as we sped up Central Expressway.

“Pssssh, YES,” I squealed.

And we stayed up until 12:15 screaming at our TV while we watched short track and bobsled crashes.

Our poor neighbors.  They must really worry about us these days what with all this yelling at the TV that we do, and of course we do it about 2 feet from the only wall we share in our entire apartment.

Speaking of, it’s almost Olympics time.

And we know where my priorities are.

So whatever I was going to type in this post is now irrelevant because I have only two more days to bask in Olympic glory until have to wait 2 1/2 more years to do it all over again.

Jan7

Flipping Things

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Flipping Things

When you flip anything, you really… you just have to have the courage of your convictions. – Julia Child

That’s how I feel right now.  Like…like I’m trying to flip three omelettes at the same time, and they’re all up in the air, and I’m trying to catch them in my pans but HOLY COW I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH HANDS!

Did you see Julie & Julia?  I like that movie.  I like the part where Julia flips the omelette and totally misses the pan on half of it, scoops it in and squishes it back together.  Then she says that no matter what happens in the kitchen, never apologize.

So.

Summarize.

I have three omelettes in the air right now (not real omelettes, guys, this is a metaphor; gosh) and I’m all anxious and nervous because I don’t want to drop one and wreck it!  Because I am a perfectionist in my kitchen!  And other areas of my life!  And I want everything to be just so!  So that my life looks like something Martha Stewart would endorse!

But I’m working on that; this last year has really started to break me of the “my life has to at least LOOK perfect” thing I’ve had going.  And you know what?  Sometimes we have people over for dinner and I serve them something that didn’t take me three hours to prepare.  Or – even worse! – we had Luke & Becca over for lunch on Sunday and I thawed chili from my freezer.  (And I believe we had a delightful time doing so!)

A year and a half ago, that would not have been me, y’all.  No way.

Anyways.  I’ve flipped my three omelettes and I’ve done so with all of the courage of my convictions.

Jibbly  jibbly jibbly.

So while I wait for the omelettes to land (or not land?) in my pans, I feel like I just better keep my mouth shut lest I say something that I’ll wind up having to apologize for.  And Julia said to never apologize for what happens in the kitchen.

That’s another reason why this blog is QUIET and BORING right now.

I think give me two more weeks and enough things will be out of the air and I’ll be starting to get back to normal.

But right now?  I feel like I drank two Pepsis and a Starbucks Grande Triple Shot all within the space of an hour.

Jibbly jibbly jibbly.

Nov6

Hitler and Pepsi

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Hitler and Pepsi

I think IVF stress is going to ruin my brain.  Either that or memory loss and idiocy is a side effect of my medicine: I’m forgetting absolutely everything lately, I’m bad at responding to emails, I can’t figure out my new cell phone.  AND SO ON.

 

Yesterday and the day before I felt pretty good.  Today I am absolutely dragging.

 

This could have more to do with the fact that I had a really weird and very long dream about being Hitler’s secretary.  Hitler was really mean in my dream, so I kept trying to find ways to blow him up but he kept foiling my plans by being screaming, “Jenna I need you to get over here right now!!” at me, and then I’d have to go stand by him. Which, of course, was always right where I had set my bomb to go off.  Obviously I was not going to blow myself up.

 

So after an entire night, pretty much, of trying to kill Hitler, let’s just say I did not feel refreshed when the alarm went off.

 

In fact I felt so un-refreshed that I got back in bed after drinking my coffee, and I fell asleep.  Which made us late.

 

That’s the secondary reason why I am having a Pepsi today.  The clock is ticking, y’all.  Once I start shooting myself up every day I can’t have caffeine anymore.  I guess caffeine and ovary simulation meds are not a good combination.  (I just really creeped myself out by thinking about that, so now I’m shaking my head really hard to jiggle the mental picture away.  Whew.  It’s gone, but now I have a headache.)

 

I have until November 21st to caffeinate myself.  I will totally rise to the challenge/occasion.

Jul9

Organization

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Organization

Joey leaves for his week in Virginia and NYC tomorrow, so tonight we were packing. Well, he was packing. I got distracted by my closet.

I haven’t put my shoes away in two months. Now, granted, for one of those months I didn’t wear anything but flip flops or something I could easily slide into, but over the last month I have gotten more shoe adventurous. I can successfully wear a pair of heels now, and three times I have worn jeans. (Take that Scar, MiniScar and Minions.)

But back to the shoes.

They were all over the floor, in a mountain by my ironing board. It’s been bugging me for weeks, but I haven’t had the energy to do anything about it. Tonight, though, I unwittingly drank a TON of Barq’s Root Beer which, SURPRISE, has caffeine in it. And I drank it at 7:00, so I’m planning on being up all night; I have energy to spare right now.

So, quick as a wink, I decided I’d put my shoes away. I did so, and in record time. It looked so nice, I thought I’d re-organize my closet. Ideally, my closet is organized by clothing type (skirts, dresses, pants, capris, etc) and within each type, they are organized by color, lightest to darkest. My shirts were pretty good, but the pants, skirts, jackets and dresses were a disaster.

(If you think I’ll post before and after pictures, you have another think coming. No matter how tidy my closet an drawers get, I still always feel like they are cluttered and messy. So…NO PICTURES. Duh.)

Once I finished that, I moved on to my drawers. I had been putting my clothes away by just putting them in the drawer, not by putting them in the sections of the drawers they belonged in. I know, I know. Not like me.

While organizing, I weeded out a bunch of old shirts and stuff, and they’ll find their way to Luke’s Closet shortly. (Aside: you know what’s weird? Running into someone who is wearing something that you donated to Luke’s Closet. When this happened to me I said “Oh! I had ______ just like that!” And then they said, “I got this at Luke’s Closet.” Awkward moment.)

But now my closet is tidy, shoes are put away, drawers are organized and laundry is thumping around in the washing machine. I baked cookies for Joey to take on his trip, we went on a walk, and Joey’s sitting on the couch reading Harry Potter; I think I’ll join him.

I almost feel normal again.

Jul9

The Twitch

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The Twitch

Due to STRESS and LIFE not being my favorite right now, my eyes have been burning lately.  And my limbs start feeling like I exercised very strenuously about 8:30 every evening, although odds are that I haven’t because I’m too tired to exercise mildly, much less strenuously.

Anyway, last evening Joey and I were driving home.  The weather was doing a creepy weird thing, a storm appeared to be blowing in from the East, but it was kind of a spotty storm with lots of sun.  Just about the time we arrived home, the hail began.

And not just any kinda hail, this was GOLF BALL SIZED hail.

To protect our one and only car, we slid into one of the covered spots at our complex (because we aren’t going to pay $20 a month for covered parking when it only hails a few times a year, duh) and hoped that its owner wouldn’t come home while we were sitting there.

The hail was coming down in large, bouncy blobs from the sky, and I really wanted to go run around in it to see how bad it hurt.  But I was wearing very long pants and heels, and the likelihood of me ruining my pants was high, so I refrained.

Joey and I sat in our car for awhile, watching the hail come down and bounce off the roof, grass, and other cars.

Then he said,  “OH MY GOSH.  Your eye is twitching.”

“NO!” I wailed.  “It’s not!  I can’t feel it!”

“Well, that doesn’t appear to matter because it is TOTALLY TWITCHING.  Really bad.  Have a look.”  He pulled down the mirror for me and I opened my eyes wide and stared into it.

“IT IS!” I screamed, slapping my hands on my face to cover my convulsing eye.

“It’s not that gross,” he said.  “Let me see it again.”

“No!” I said, pressing my hands in harder.  “It’s creepy.”

Joey peeled my hands off my face and looked at my eye.  Then he laughed.  “That’s awesome.  You really can’t feel it?”

“No, I can’t feel it.  And it’s not awesome, it’s disgusting.  Quit looking at it.”  I put my hands back up over my face again since Joey refused to turn his head away.

“It’s not that gross,” he repeated.  “Remember when my eye twitched for like three days and only stopped twitching when I accidentally overslept my alarm?”

“I remember that,” I said.  “But I’m still not letting you look at it again.”

Somewhere between 6:00 and 10:00 my eye stopped twitching, to my great joy and delight.

So, I woke my burning, twitchy eyes up this morning and then proceeded to infuse them with caffeine, on an empty stomach no less, and my eye twitch is back.  I have serious jibblies on top of the eye twitch, but at least it’s Thursday.  Right?  It IS Thursday?!

Jan26

Accidental Caffeine

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Accidental Caffeine

Joey and I were both feeling a little beat down yesterday afternoon, so about 6:00 Joey suggested we take our books and go to Starbucks near church so we could read and drink yummy beverages until it was time for 7:22.  I agreed, of course, so we grabbed our books and hit the road.

Once at Starbucks, I selected one of those new Tazo tea-fruit-infusion thingies, thinking it would be delicious and low on the calories.

It wasn’t very delicious.

It wasn’t really low on the calories, either.

Oh yeah.  AND IT WAS FULL OF CAFFEINE.

Any caffeine consumption after 1:00 p.m. causes extreme jibblies and sleeplessness in my system.  Having it at 6:30?  Yeahhhhhh.  Let’s just say I knew I was going to be up all night.

“Joeyyyyyyy,” I wailed in the car.  “I don’t want to be up all night.  Tomorrow is MONDAY.  I can’t start a Monday on like 2 hours of sleep, I’ll be evil all week!”

“Uhhh, you’re taking one of those Tylenol PM things when we get home,” Joey advised.

I took one of those Tylenol PM things.  I took a whole half a dose, too, which is usually enough to knock me out for 12 hours (I am real sensitive to sleepy medicine.)

Wanna guess how long it took me to fall asleep?

An hour and a half.

I’d lay there and feel all sleepy-woozy (you know the feeling) and then suddenly I’d open my eyes and feel like going and running around the building two or three times.  Then I’d force myself to close my eyes again and take really deep, huge, breaths to make myself dizzy.

I made myself dizzy, but I didn’t make myself tired.

So then I started praying for everyone I could think of.  Unfortunately, halfway through my prayer I’d get distracted and start thinking about what I was going to make for dinner on Monday, or whatever else, and then I’d have to kick myself in the shins to get back on track.

It is exhausting not being able to sleep due to caffeine consumption.

Dec26

It’s December 26 and it is 77 degrees outside…

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It’s December 26 and it is 77 degrees outside…

Last night we went to see Marley and Me.  It was supposed to be a comedy, but can I just say that I was like weeping for the last 20 minutes of the stupid movie.  Actually, I wasn’t “like weeping”, I actually was weeping.

Joey only cried one tear.

Me?  My neck got wet, and when your neck gets wet from crying over a movie, that’s never a good sign.

Anyways, be forwarned, that movie’s hilarious until the last 20 minutes.  Then break out the Puffs Plus.

So, after seeing Marley and Me, Joey and I came home and hugged the heck out of poor Henry, who couldn’t understand why my face smelled like salt.  “Don’t die Buddy, don’t ever die,” I whispered to him.

And so today, we took him to the park.

It’s 77 degrees outside, which is creepy for the day after Christmas, but we prevailed.  We made guac and salsa wraps, grabbed some leftover of Jesus’ birthday cake (because His birthday was yesterday, in case you forgot) and leashed up Henry.

“We’re going to the park,” I told him.  He looked at me like I was smelly, which is true.  I haven’t showered since at least Wednesday, but I am not even positive about that.

It was windy.  Henry was cute.  Joey was tired.  I was unshowered.

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Henry’s lovin’ the combination of warm weather and the picnic blanket.  He somehow manages to get on the picnic blanket before it’s even fully spread out on the ground, he likes the scratchy sound it makes against the grass.

Can you say SPOILED ROTTEN?

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Yes, my dear photographer friends, I realize that this picture isn’t fully in focus.  (But Joey’s calves are sort of in focus…)  Henry just looks like he’s sassing in this picture, which is what makes it money, in my opinion.  I imagine that The Brother is just outside the frame and Hen’s sticking his tongue out at him.  Hen always spazzes out on The Brother.

img_0704

“Look at us, we’re cuddling,” Joey said.

“Looks to me like Henry’s being trapped,” I replied.

That is totally the face of a trapped puppy dog, ain’t so?

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And, Laura Stiller, this one’s for you.

Yep, that’s Henry’s head stuffed in the tupperware, licking out the remainder of the birthday cake.  (Don’t worry, I ran it through the dishwasher afterwards.)

Hope your day after Christmas is as lazy and relaxing as ours is…I think I’ma go take a nap now.  Or maybe not, because I’m currently drinking a Pepsi and it has given me the jibblies.

Jibbly jibbly jibbly.

I won’t be able to sleep tonight as it is, so I probably shouldn’t try to take a nap.

Jibbly jibbly jibbly.

Dec22

I “overslept”

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I “overslept”

When my alarm woke me up at 6: 15 this morning, I actually rolled over and reset it for 7:25.  Joey had to take some friends to the airport extremely early this morning (and doesn’t have to work this week!) so he fell back into bed at 5:30 and slept through all my alarm-resetting.

When it went off the second time, at 7:25, Joey half woke up, looked at his alarm and said, “woah, you’re late.”

“I know.  I’m oversleeping,” I told him.

“Whatever…” he said, and I’m pretty sure he was asleep when he said it.

Twenty minutes later, we were out the door.

And, thus, I declare this to be a Pepsi Week.  I’ma have one every day until Christmas.  Then I won’t have any more because we don’t have any at my house.  (If we have them at home then I drink them too late at night and get the jibblies and can’t fall asleep until 3:30 a.m., which is lame no matter how you slice it.)  Soon I’ll drink my Pepsi.

Maybe I’ll even drink two Pepsis….

Hey The Brother, want to have a jibbly contest today?  Or should we do that tomorrow?

Jun3

Late night…late morning

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Late night…late morning

Yesterday my friends dragged me to Starbucks about 3:00 in the afternoon because I was having a Monday of biblical proportions. I got a chai latte and, by 3:30, the combination of sunlight and caffeine were truly starting to make me feel better.

I got home, ran around like a chicken with my head cut off for three hours while Joey studied (you know: folding, ironing, making tomorrow’s dinner, cleaning the kitchen, running to the grocery store to get the stuff to make the cheesecake for Joey on Tuesday evening…the usual) and finally crashed about 8:30 to play puzzle in the study while Joey finished up his homework for the evening.

At 10:20, I finally shut off my bedside lamp with the full intention of going to sleep immediately. I was very, very tired. But then, ironing always takes it out of me.

The moment I turned out my lamp, it’s like I became insanely awake. I lay there for 20 minutes, staring up at the ceiling and thinking “I’m so mad that I’m not sleeping right now…” until I couldn’t take it anymore. I went and found one of those Pain Releiver PM pills, cut it in half, and swallowed it.

It didn’t work. I think it worked as a wake-up pill instead, because at 11:10 I got up to read in the living room for awhile, no sense laying in bed wide awake when I could sit up and be wide awake too.

So I read until 11:50.

I went back to bed. I lay there until 12:15, at which point I was seriously irritated with myself. And it was then that I remembered the Starbucks run at 3:00 the previous afternoon. Knowing that I had jinxed myself and it was probably going to be a very long time before I fell asleep, I went back out to the couch.

I awoke at 5:15 when Joey’s alarm went off. Somehow I had actually fallen asleep out there, so I dragged myself back to bed and apparently said to Joey, “Don’t wake me up when you leave at 6, I’ll just get up at 6:30 when my alarm goes off.” (Joey was heading to the airport to drop our dear friends Luke and Becca off so they can head to Haiti for the summer. I’m quite sure we’ll miss them excessively.)

The garbage truck woke me up at 7:30. Again. Twice in two months I had overslept my alarm for the first two times in my entire life.

I shot out of bed and raced around the house trying to get ready so I could leave at 7:45. When it was quite clear that wasn’t even remotely possible, I gave up rushing. I managed to get out the door by 7:55 and, by some stroke of luck, into the office by 8:15. No one really noticed, either.

This leads me to conclude two things:

1. I still cannot have caffeine after 2:30 p.m., ever.

2. I need a new alarm clock, one that has several different alarm tones that alternate. Clearly I can sleep right through mine now, and this is a recent skill which is becoming problematic.

Nov28

268 mg of caffeine in 6 hours…

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268 mg of caffeine in 6 hours…

I woke up at 5:00 with a fearsome cluster headache. (I’d felt it coming on about 9:00 last night so I was at least sort of prepared.) It hurt so bad that I didn’t even get up to take Excedrin Migrane which, in hindsight, was a pretty bad idea. In any case, when I finally hauled myself out of bed at 6:30, I popped 2 Excedrin tablets. Each Excedrin tablet has 65 mg of caffeine, so that was 130 total.

Because of the headache I decided that I might as well have coffee with breakfast since I already had a headache. Besides, maybe a little more caffeine wouldn’t hurt? So I brewed myself some drip coffee, which tops out at 100 mg of caffeine.

And now, with my Jason’s Deli for lunch I am drinking a Pepsi, which has 38 mg of caffeine.

This puts my grand total of caffeine intake for the morning at 268 mg. (Mom, don’t pass out.) I’m starting to feel a little jittery, caffeine paranoid, shifty, and otherwise strange.

AAAAUGH!!!