I’m seriously at wits end!! After my bout with pneumonia my voice still hasn’t returned back to normal!! At it’s best it just sounds like I’m a smoker or was at one heck of a party the night before but not what I normally sound like. It’s been like 3 weeks since being sick maybe longer! I called my Doctor to let him know and now I’m headed to a specialist that will take a long camera and send it up my nose and down my throat to look at my vocal chords. I’m a tad nervous for two reasons ….1-I hope I don’t gag and hurl on the Doctor and 2- I really hope they don’t find anything seriously wrong! There could be a number of things that could be really bad but I don’t want to think of that. It’s hard, this is a job I absolutely LOVE and I couldn’t imagine not being able to do it because I have difficulty talking. I head to the Doctor some time this week but I’ll let you know how things turn out. Wish me luck!!

Ok, before I offend EVERYONE let me narrow it down by saying some parents are on my crappy list (to put it nicely). We were driving to my parents house this past weekend for a quick visit and as we were driving along I was seeing a disturbing trend….many family vehicles with the portable DVD players playing the like of Spongebob Squarepants ( my husbands favorite), any of the hundreds of Disney movies or maybe even Hannah Montanna. Is that all kids do now? Is that all it takes to be a parent? Plop your child in front of the TV and say “Here you go! Now be quiet! There is such a great opportunity to talk with your children during the ride to discuss school, their friends and just to witness the world around them. Some my favorite memories come from road trips with my family. All the games that we played, singing along to the radio…..oh so much fun! In fact one of my friends from highschool told me that her and her sister used to act out death scenes in the back seat of the car just to get a laugh from the other drivers behind them. My cousins and I constructed a huge link of straws from McDonalds and while my aunt was driving we unloaded the long strand of straws out the back of their van. We were cracking each other up as the length of straws was getting longer and longer. Plus I’m sure you can all agree with me that trying to get a tractor trailer to honk his horn was the absolute best fun in a car. So as the holidays get closer and road trips to see relatives are scheduled please do me a favor….please rethink the portable DVD player. You only have so many years to enjoy these road trips with your little ones. Spend them by appreciating nature, teaching them how to have a conversation or showing them the fine art of getting a semi to honk his horn! These are the memories that they will carry forever!

My husband and I seem to find ourselves in the most interesting situations. But its what you do in those situations that can either make you laugh, make you mad or make you just plain crazy!! In this case we were coming from my in laws house on Saturday night around 10:30pm. We were going through the big metropolis of Plain City. Now before you go and think I’m making fun of this town please know it is out of fondness. The town that I grew up in is just like Plain City ….you know, two stop lights, mom and pop businesses and a very strict speed limit. As we are crawling through town doing 25mph we notice something dart out into the street and run back. It looks like a person….and just when we go past that “person” I see a bunch of preteen boys with guns laying on the side of the street waiting to hit passing cars with either a paint ball or pellet gun. Well just then I hear BAM so I tell my husband to pull over into a parking lot so I can see if there was any damage done to my NEW car. I jump out, don’t see much but then I start to get really mad because I know there are bunch of kids just a block away and they are doing this to every car going past!!! I look at my husband and say “Feel like scaring some kids??” He agrees and I tell him to turn the car around and head back in the direction where the kids were hiding out. Leave it to my husaband to add drama to the whole thing…He pulls out of the parking lot and guns it down the street, with squealing tires. These kids must have been watching to see if we were going to come back because I see a whole bunch of them start running when they see our car. So we pull into a side street where they are running and I jump out and start running after them (I was about ready to have a heart attack!). So these boys run in between two houses that have a bunch of trees to hide them. I can see their sillouettes against the street lights so I start yelling at them and tell them that they nailed my car with something, that they better quit before they get someone killed. So I turn to walk away and I’m dying on the inside….I want to laugh so hard but pretend to be extremely mad as I stomp back to my car and slam the door. My huband looks over at me in the car and be both start laughing so hard we’re in tears! Man, that felt awesome!! If these kids wanted to dish out some fear in drivers then I was about to make them wet their pants in fear as well! Whether I accomplished that…I’ll never know. But these kids gotta realize they can’t be hitting cars with things. So we drove over to the Police Dept. and told them what happened and how we handled it and the cops just laughed and they wanted in on the action too. They got all suited up to go and have a little talk with these kids. Thank God there was no damage done to my car because they really wouldn’t want to deal with me then!! What a funny night….I honestly haven’t laughed that hard in quite awhile! So my husband and I will put away our super hero capes away for awhile until we are needed again!

Well I’m feeling 100% better but something is missing……….MY VOICE! I’m trying everything known to man and it’s coming back very slowly. I really thought I would have had it back by now. I am drinking tons of tea with lemon and honey and not much has happened except for many trips to the bathroom! I guess I just did so much damage to my vocal chords with all the coughing they just haven’t healed yet. So please bare with me…I’m here in the studio playing your favorite music but just not in voice. Do you have a home remedy for curing a hoarse voice? I’d love to hear it! I’ll try anything at this point!