Once upon a time, I lay in bed with a mischievous smile on my face. I was devising a prank to play on my doctor. Yes, I'm gutsy. LOL. A few days later I was at LabCorp. "May I please have a biohazardous waste bag?" I asked my phlebotomist. We'd become friends, and she was all too happy to help, especially when she learned that it was for a prank. As soon as I had possession of that precious bag, I placed a stool sample in a clear container into the bag. But this was a pun. You see, my stool sample was a replica of the kind that you sit on. To make things look even more official, I stuck a requisition for a stool test into the bag. A few weeks later I shook hands with my doctor, when he entered the room. "The lab wouldn't accept my stool sample," I explained. "I thought maybe you could help me with it." With his face red with annoyance, my doctor took the bag from me. I could only imagine what he was thinking. Why was I wasting his time with this? He'd told me before that lab issues were to be handled not by him but by his phlebotomist. Finally, my dad interrupted the awkwardness, "Look inside the bag." "It's a bench?" he asked, confused. "It's a stool sample," I replied. The room erupted with laughter. For years, my doctor kept that stool sample on his desk and used it as an icebreaker with his patients. After all, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones." (Proverbs 27:22) What is a favorite prank you've played? Share in the comments below.
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Health Tip: Want a bigger, healthier brain? Toss your GPS and revert to road maps! "A multinational team of investigators has found that using GPS might be harmful to your mind because it bypasses and thus atrophies your brain's hippocampus, which is the key to many everyday tasks as well as remembering the past and envisioning the future." (The Farmer's Almanac) But if you don't care about your hippocampus and your maps are simply collecting dust, use them to create cards. Be creative! Cut your map to the desired size and glue to your card. Stamp sentiments with ink, tear paper for a rustic look, use old postage stamps and scraps of cardstock for embellishments. Upcycle!
Have fun and send some happy mail! Final Warning: Failure to navigate using road maps may result in hippocampus that shrinks so dramatically that you end up needing TWO GPSes. The evidence is below... Shadow photography. It all started one night in 2020 when I was going to bed and realized I hadn't snapped my daily photo. What could I photograph in my dark room? I could use my camera and a flashlight to make and photograph shadows! My imagination ran wild. I began by photographing a shadow of myself, a monster. My brother Ben provided his analysis, "I love the sharpness of the shadow, with your individual hairs showing, and I love how disproportionately big your head looks to your hand. Also this is quite an original subject, surprisingly enough. Most people don't get pictures of either shadows or monsters. This is a new and more introspective class of the ubiquitous genera of the 'selfie.' You've brought the earth into a new era of self-awareness." If the monster frightened you, perhaps you ought to drink some tea to calm your nerves... This is the most challenging shadow photo I've taken. Keeping the actual teapot and teacup out of the picture, while positioning them close to the wall to receive a sharp shadow, was difficult. Additionally, I needed to angle my camera to prevent casting its shadow into the picture. Finally, I waved my magic wand and transformed my dog and me into shadows lurking on the pavement. Did you know I had such superpowers?
Shadows. Once I viewed them as "ruining" my pictures. Now I photograph them. I blinked. The ceiling was covered in green smoothie. The walls were covered in green smoothie. The floor was covered in green smoothie. I was covered in green smoothie.
Apparently, I hadn't fully secured the lid onto the blender, and in the process of blending my smoothie, the lid had flown off, spattering splotches of green smoothie everywhere. Uh, oh. Thus began my journey of drinking green smoothies 6 years ago. Hopefully, you'll blend one too after reading their benefits and my recipe. The Benefits of Drinking Green Smoothies Green smoothies up your vegetable intake. I easily consume about 3 cups of vegetables each morning in my smoothie. Green smoothies are "fast food." It only takes about 10 minutes to make a smoothie. It's an easy way to ensure a healthy meal on a busy day or when your energy levels are low. Green smoothies are easy to digest. Since all the vegetables are blended, they are easier on the stomach. For a year in my illness, all I could eat were smoothies and pureed food. Green smoothies are high in fiber. Fiber forms bulk in your colon and helps bind and excrete toxins and inflammatory mediators. Green smoothies can aid in weight loss. The fiber in green smoothies makes them very filling, and they are low in calories. Green smoothies are more economical than juicing. With green smoothies, you're blending the whole vegetable, vs juicing where the fiber is removed. With smoothies, nothing is wasted, and you won't have to buy as much produce. How to Make a Green Smoothie Buy a quality blender. Originally, we bought a NutriBullet, but the motor failed after just a few months. Now we own a VitaMix. It's expensive, but it blends beautifully, is long lasting, and comes with a warranty. Start with a liquid base. I use 2 cups of filtered water for making a smoothie that blends to the 5.5 cup line. You could also use green tea, almond milk, etc. for your base. Use more or less liquid to adjust the thickness of your smoothie. Use plenty of organic vegetables. I use about 3 cups of vegetables, including lettuce, kale, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, and carrots. Mix and match vegetables to find what tastes best together. Include nuts, seeds, or peanut butter. These will make your smoothie more filling and give you fat and protein. Use fruit sparingly. Try to limit the amount of fruit in your smoothie and use lower glycemic options like apples and berries. Sugar, even sugar from fruits, feeds yeast and bacteria in the body. I often only use half of an apple in my smoothie. Add ice. Green smoothies are more palatable when they're cooler. I blend 6 ice cubes into my smoothie. And, yes, make sure the lid is secured onto your blender. Need I say more? Now I'm off to drink a green smoothie. Will you join me? It's maple tapping season! With the temperatures above freezing during the day and below freezing at night, the sap is running in the trees, and it's time to make syrup. Each year from around 2000 - 2015, my family would head outside with a drill, taps, and 5 gallon buckets (in the early years, we used milk jugs), and we would tap our and our neighbors' maple trees. This year, after a 5 year break, we are repeating the project! Do you want to join us? Using a 19/64" drill bit, drill a hole about 3' from the bottom of your tree and go in about 2" deep. Drill at a slightly upward angle to facilitate the downward flow of the sap from the hole. Then insert a tap with the tubing entering into a small hole in the lid of your 5 gallon bucket and secure the bucket to your tree using bungee cords. Although sugar maples are the best for producing syrup due to their high sugar content, any type of maple tree will work. The tree must be at a minimum of 12" in diameter to place 1 tap, and if it has a diameter of more than 20", it can take 2 taps. On a good day, we might collect about 3 gallons of sap from 1 tree and only a quart the next. The amount all depends on the weather. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, and each tree gives about 10 gallons of sap per season. As your buckets become full, collect the sap, dump it through a cheesecloth filter to remove any sediment, bugs, or twigs, and store your sap in a large pot placed in a snowbank outside to keep it cold. Once you have enough sap, begin boiling it down at a temperature of 212° F. As the sap thickens into syrup, use a candy thermometer to check the temperature and remove it once it reaches 219° F. Unfortunately, we've gathered very little sap this year as we mistakenly used a larger drill bit when tapping a week ago, but on Sunday, my oldest brother and his fiancée collected what sap was available, boiled it down, and received 1/4 cup of maple syrup. We'll continue to collect sap as long as the temperature is above freezing during the day and below freezing at night. Drilling holes into trees. Trudging through the snow to collect sap. Boiling it down. Sticky fingers. This is maple season.
Special thanks to Randy Morris from Morris Organic Farm in Irwin, PA for his giving us taps years ago. He is currently making syrup that will be available for sale. |
AuthorHi! I'm Lauren Watt. I'm a 20 year old Christian, chronic illness warrior, and amateur artist and writer. Archives
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