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What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?
I have a few game-time strategies to increase the comfort(s) in my life. My strategies revolve around a daily schedule that I have built up over the course of this past year. My daily schedule is not rigid, however, I am quite firm on staying as close to it as possible. It also depends on how my little one is behaving on any given day.Mine & Jian‘s best friends have a set schedule with time frames written out clearly on a dry erase board they keep in their living room. They are extremely diligent on staying true to their strict schedule, except on weekends.
When I am taking care of my little one by myself (without the extra help from my mom & Jian), I try to stick to my daily routine as much as possible. I don’t give myself strict time frames, but I at least have a general timeline of when to accomplish target tasks.
First thing early in the morning, I head to the kitchen to grab my kid a cup of milk. I pour myself a cup of leftover coffee (lately I have been really into drinking iced coffee). My little one & I will lounge about in bed for a little bit. She will play toddler games on my iPad while I watch the morning news on TV. She drinks her morning milk, & I drink my coffee. This is one part of our daily routine that is definitely a luxury. It starts our day on a happy, positive note.
After breakfast, I clean up the kitchen. This is when I will play some music on Spotify or play a movie to run in the background while I am washing dishes & such. I will also take some time to top up my coffee cup, check my Instagram feed, or watch a few YouTube shorts. This is my equivalent of a 15-minute smoke break in a corporate office. However, at least one to two times per week, I will use this in-between breakfast & lunch time to wash my hair. I cannot wash it at night when I shower because it takes too long.
During my little one’s nap time, which I call “quiet time”, is where the fun starts for me because it is now my do-whatever-I-want time, or more accurately, the do-the-things-she-won’t-let-me-do-while-she’s-awake time. I will use this time to grab my 2nd full cup of coffee for the day. Also, right now, I am currently in the process of building 4 toy brick sets from CaDA Bricks. I use my little one’s nap time to work on my brick sets. If she were awake, she would want to grab all of the pieces & scatter them all over the house. Just a few minutes before the little one wakes up from her nap, I will carefully put away my bricks.
Carving out this 2-hour window each day to work on my brick sets or read up on trashy celebrity gossip is one of my day’s comforts. It allows me some real time to relax & not have to think about chores or daily work. This time when my little one is extremely precious to me & I make sure I set aside an allotted amount of time each day to do something I enjoy, like writing this blog. That pretty much sums it all up. There’s not much strategy other than setting aside some uninterrupted time to do things I need to or want to do. That’s all. Until the next one, cheers!
What is your favorite genre of music?
This quote I found on Pinterest completely describes my musical interests. Also, yes. People still use Pinterest.
I am willing to listen to just about any type of music, even music in languages I don’t understand. I like songs in almost every genre or category, except Gregorian Chanting. That’s where I permanently draw the line. (I do not consider that music in the least.) My dad once bought a Gregorian Chanting CD from a CD subscription catalog (yes, that’s how looong ago it was), & he played it the entire time our family drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It was torture, but he wouldn’t allow us to change it. My mom was so irritated after that 7 hour car ride that she forbade my dad from listening to it on the drive home.
I don’t listen to a lot of songs from all genres, but there are a few songs I like from each category. For example, I don’t frequently listen to Country Western music; I listen to it very rarely, but there are a few Shania Twain, Taylor Swift, & Patsy Cline songs I like. I also don’t frequently listen to Reggae music, but I have been known to bop along to Bob Marley’s greatest hits.
Another genre that I do not listen to is Chinese pop, like C-pop or Canto-pop. It’s not that I think the music is bad. The one thing that turns me off from listening to this genre is the fact that all of the songs & their topics/themes sound the same. Every song is a love song, either about unrequited love, lost love, heartache, cute love, or sad love. There is no variety in the song subjects, & most of the songs are ballads. It just feels repetitive to listen to C-pop or Canto-pop music a lot of the time, so I avoid that genre most of the time.
Three of the biggest music genres I listen to the most these days are J-pop, Alternative Rock, & Jazz. I also love listening to other genres relating to these main categories, like: J-rap, Brit-Rock, & Bossa Nova. I used to be a super huge fan of Japanese male idol groups from the talent agency Johnny’s Entertainment, but since most of my favorite groups have either retired, broke up due to public controversy, or have disbanded, I haven’t really payed much attention to the new idol bands.
If you were to ask me which bands are on my repeat playlist, it would be:
I would definitely say that my preferences in music lean towards catchier songs, you know, songs with a catchy melody or chorus to sing along to. I also enjoy songs I can sing & bop along to. I wouldn’t say I have a great singing voice, but it’s at least adequate enough to carry a tune when I sing karaoke with my friends. Also, I have sung karaoke in public more than once & have not yet been booed off stage, so I’d say that counts as me being an okay singer.
I also like electronic music with no lyrics, LoFi ones that I can put on all day while I’m writing or doing house chores. Sometimes I will find a low key LoFi music stream on YouTube & run it in the background on the TV while I am playing with my little bean. She enjoys it as well. At least I think she does. It keeps her focused on playing in one spot & not running around the house like a child strung out on a sugar rush.
That pretty much sums up my taste in music. I could go in depth about every single specific type of music I listen to & which bands from each category I like, but that would take FOREVER! I’d like to end this post with my usual song of the day, but I will insert a playlist instead. Cheers!
Today’s PLAYLIST of the day:
Have you ever had surgery? What for?
Yes. I have had 3 surgeries, both done in my teenage years. I guess you could technically say these surgeries were to improve my health. However, one of the surgeries could be viewed as cosmetic even though I did not seek treatment from a cosmetic doctor, but a pediatric surgeon.
The first surgery I had done was to improve my breathing. For as long as I could remember, I had always been a mouth-breather; a loud, very heavy breather. I couldn’t properly breathe through my nose. It was a struggle, & I never understood why until my family doctor, who was also my allergist, took my x-rays and suggested I repair the hard palate in my mouth.
The hard palate is the cartilage that separates the breathing passage between the nose and the mouth. There was a small section of the hard palate in the back of my mouth, near the throat, that had a gap which was the cause of my breathing issues. I would inhale through the nose, but the air would exhale out the mouth. This caused me to not be able to properly breathe easily. So, I had a small piece of cartilage surgically placed in my mouth to cover the gap (i,.e. “plug the hole”).
Now I can breathe so much better. I can definitely inhale & exhale through my nose without sounding like a wheezing bagpipe. Sometimes, when I am deeply concentrating on something, others will point out to me that they can still hear me breathing heavily, but not as frequently as when I was a child. I also don’t sound as nasally as I used to when I speak.
The surgery only took a couple of hours, & I was home by the end of the day. I spent the next 3 weeks eating Jell-o & soft foods, throwing up all of my pain medication, & not being able to talk without feeling like I swallowed a grapefruit that got stuck in my throat. My sister expressed her envy that I would lose weight due to my inability to eat for 3 weeks, but I didn’t see it that way. I only thought of being able to breathe like a normal person & not always sound like a deflated accordion every time I breathed.
The second surgery I had was a few years after the first. I was still a teenager, & was going through the last stages of having braces, the old fashioned metal kind. My orthodontist explained to my mom that no amount of braces would ever fully straighten out my teeth. So, that bummed her out. It kind of bummed me out too. No amount of braces-wearing would make my teeth straight.
The orthodontist also explained that I had a severe underbite; my jaw stuck out quite a bit, causing my upper & lower teeth to not be aligned, which always caused food to get stuck in-between my teeth all the time. The orthodontist also said that my jaw would continue to grow until adulthood, which would push my jawline out even further. He suggested that I get surgery to push my jaw back, unless I wanted to look like a horse & never be able to fully close my mouth.
So that was that. I opted to have surgery to correct my underbite. Because I was only 17 at the time, I had to see a pediatric surgeon. I was in & out of the hospital within 3 days, & was instructed to only eat soft foods & ice cream for the next 3 months. Lucky me! I spent the entire summer eating my mom’s signature Chinese chicken soup rice porridge & chocolate ice cream.
I looked like a funny little chipmunk with my swollen face, & the only thing holding my jaw in place were rubber bands used for braces. I had a whole mouth full of braces rubber bands crisscrossing across my mouth, & I was scared that one day they would snap & my jaw would fall off. Lucky for me they didn’t snap, & I spent the summer learning how to talk with my teeth clenched & not moving my jaw. I tried learning ventriloquism, but I couldn’t get my lips to stay still.
The day I had my final post-operation check-up was the best day of my teen years. The nurses came in & one-by-one snipped off all the rubber bands with scissors. I could finally move my jaw freely. Then, & this is the best part, they took off my braces. One-by-one, each metal bracket glued to my teeth was removed, & at first, it felt very strange. I would run my tongue across the fronts of my teeth, & feel nothing there. When I closed my mouth, nothing was rubbing against my gums or poking the insides of my cheeks. I was finally free of anything obstructing my mouth & felt good. I could also go back to eating popcorn & chewing gum.
The third surgery, as you may already know, was a cesarian (a.k.a. C-section) surgery when I gave birth to my little bean. This little offspring of mine was no longer able to successfully grow inside of me, so the doctors & midwives suggested that she be delivered 2 weeks early. I was hoping that I could be induced into labor early, & push that little nugget out of my V, but alas, she was lying sideways, so that was not an option.
No, she was not in a breech position, she was in full lounging-on-the-couch position, which the doctors found very funny. We tried a cephalic inversion procedure, but my little offspring was not having any of it. She would not budge even a little bit. So, she had to be surgically removed from my body. I was freaking out like crazy, but once the C-section procedure was done, I was elated.
Jian really helped alleviate the whole situation with his humor. He was in the operating room with all of the nurses & doctors running around. After the little bean was extracted from my open flesh, the nurses cleaned her up & let Jian hold her for the first time. He immediately held her up over his head & started singing the first part of “The Circle of Life” from the Lion King movie. Everybody had a great laugh, & all the nurses gushed about what an awesome dad he was. I told Jian not to make me laugh until the gaping wound in my mid-section was fully stitched shut, & I wasn’t massively bleeding. Well, I still laughed anyway, so there.
I guess this sums up my story time about the times I had surgery. I didn’t have anything medically major happen to me throughout my life health-wise, & I feel extremely lucky & grateful for that. I am so glad that the first wo procedures I had done were mostly minor, & some would say, cosmetic. They did, however, drastically improve my quality of life & modestly improved my self-esteem. The third surgery brought my little nugget into the world, & that has also drastically changed my life for the better. Knocking on wood, I am not planning on having any more surgeries…& that’s all I have to say about that. Cheers, all.
Today’s song of the day:
Rabbits & Foxes 
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