Is a Five for Friday by any other name just as sweet?
- Sara/hs: I was adding a new Sarah to my contact list and realized that I have an abundance of Sara/hs in my life these days. Growing up, I knew a Sara when I was in daycare and then a Sarah in high school, then I worked with a Sarah for a few years. That was it for a long, long time. Now, I am suddenly swimming in Sara/hs! I love how names sometimes come in clumps like that. Possibly there’s a regional element to it. For instance, I never knew a single Leah, Colleen, or Corrine until I moved to my current city… and now I know multiples of each. When I was in middle and high school, the cute boys were all named Josh; I can remember four in my grade alone and at least one in the grade above me. Yet I don’t think I’ve encountered a Josh since college. Was there a preponderance of Someones in your class growing up? What about now? Have you ever wandered into a cluster of Sara/hs? Which name has the most entries in your contact list?
- Flowers: My flowers are FINALLY blooming. The best thing about the persistent cool/grey has been that my irises stuck around for a much longer time than they did last year, and really put on a show. Now, finally, my peonies and roses are getting in on the action. I am loving my walks lately, because there are begonias and clematis and dogwood and allium and salvia and it’s wonderful wonderful wonderful.
- Supplements: I mentioned this already, but I am suddenly taking so many supplements. Mainly in an attempt to address the sleepiness/sleep issues, although I’ve lost track of what’s supposed to do what. A doctor tells me to take something, I add it to the pile. With my allergy pill and my anxiety medication, I am now up to seven pills a day. I hate swallowing pills. I am terrible at it. Some people can throw a handful of pills into their mouth and swallow them all at once. Some people can – hork – dry swallow a pill. I have to have a whole glass of water at hand, because I require lots of water to get a single pill down. Still, often they get stuck, in my mouth or my throat, and I have to deluge them with water to get them to where they need to go. I abhor it, thanks. The very worst pill I take is not, surprisingly, the magnesium – which is a giant tampon-sized monstrosity. The magnesium is a capsule, so it goes down far more smoothly than the B6 tablet which I can almost never swallow on the first try. Yuck yuck yuck. My B12 vitamin is a chewable, so I use that as a chaser. It definitely helps eliminate the sour B6 taste. I feel like, at 44, I should be able to reliably swallow a pill. Alas.
- Couches: Until we moved into this house, my husband and I had never bought a couch before. What a lucky, carefree time. My in-laws passed down a total of three couch sets to us over the years and since they were perfectly reasonable couches and also free, that’s what we used for the first 20 years of our life together. But they are old and also not really our personal style. So when we moved to this house, we promised each other we would get new couches. We got a new couch for our basement in 2024, and we finally finally got a new couch for our living room last week. The thing is, we still have the old couches. It is surprisingly difficult to divest oneself of couches, I’m finding. The old basement couch is ripped, so not appropriate to donate. We will end up trashing it. Our trash collection website says we can make an appointment for the collectors to pick up and dispose of a couch, but it also bafflingly says that all trash needs to be divided into four-foot sections. Does that apply to couches, too? How am I to apportion our couch in that matter? Using what implement? A question for the trash collectors, clearly, except they never answer their phone. The old living room couch is getting picked up by a thrift store. But while we are waiting for the question about the former to be magically resolved without a phone call and for the latter to be picked up, they are both living in my piano room. They’re not even usable, they’re so jammed together. It’s… a lot.
- Kitty Photos: My phone is jam packed with photos of the kitten. He is so very cute.
If you like applesauce, that’s the way to take pills. Just get a spoonful of applesauce, put a pill (or two, if they’re small) on it, and it goes right down. My mother swears by it!
I have multiple Jennifers in my life, as well as a few Meg(h)ans and Sues, and two Naomis as well. It is funny to see the clusters when they happen.
Thank you for the flower and kitty pictures, love them!
The applesauce tip sounds great for people who can stomach applesauce; unfortunately, I am not that person.
Yes, Jennifers! Jennifers (and Jens and Jennys) seem to be pretty universally awesome, in my experience.
I would check the pill bottles. Some pills are not supposed to be taken with fructose or citrus. They don’t do their thing then. Most popped don’t know for example that anti baby pills don’t go with grapefruit or osage juice. Same with lots of vitamins.
Another tip for pill taking is to follow them immediately with something with some substance – bread/muffin/porridge etc would be ideal if in the morning. The heft of the bulky mouthful gets rid of any thought or feeling of ‘stuckness’.
Good suggestion, thank you!
I know so many Sara(h)s. So many! I have eight on my FB alone. Growing up I also knew a ton of Christines (7 FB friends) and Melissas and Michelles (5 each on FB). And Nicoles! The guys were all Dave and Mike and Chris. You’re younger than I am, so I associate Joshs with my younger brother and his generation, who are all Tylers. My husband is Rob, and every other guy his age is Rob or Bob or Robert. He in fact lived in a shared apartment with a Bob and a Robert.
I am one of those people who can dry swallow a pill! I take Nutrafol which requires FOUR PILLS a day, and I just throw them all in my mouth and swallow. I need water for those though. I can only dry swallow one at a time. I have said swallow too many times now. I’m grossing myself out.
You have Siberian iris! We had those in Calgary and I loved them! It’s way too dry here for them though.
Lenny! Hi Lenny! You fluffy sweet thing.
I also know a number of Tylers! There are SO MANY BOBS lately. They are all much older than your Rob, though.
Swallow is a super gross word. Ew. I don’t even like thinking about it.
I forgot about the Jennifers! I have fourteen Jennifers on my FB! Lol, why did I need to update you? I don’t know.
The amount of Tyler’s, Ian’s, and Zach’s in my customer lists at work give me heart attacks all the time on if I’ve sent something confidential to the wrong one. It has happened before. It will happen again.
And that is one cute kitten!
Oh jeez, that would be so stressful!!! I had someone in my contacts with the same name as my husband for awhile, and my Siri would default to sending him messages meant for my husband. Needless to say he is now in my phone as So-and-So’s Dad.
Pill/s Assist. So I take daily meds and have discovered warm to warmer water (~3oz) gets everything all the way down. I feel victorious.
Nice! So good to have found a solution!
I taught high school for 37 years so I definitely saw the name trends; fortunately, each student chose a unique French name or I would have had trouble with all the Jennifers, Sarahs, Brandons, Joshs, etc.
I was stuck with my great-aunt and great-grandmother’s name which I hated when younger. Now I love it.
Margaret is such a great name.
I can’t swallow pills easily, they scare me in fact. I couldn’t take supplements unless they were tiny pills.
I know how difficult it is to divest yourself of sofas. Been down this road a few times. In end, St. Vincent de Paul took two of them, a friend took another one. Upholstered furniture is difficult to get rid of.
Pill tip:
in mouth
water
chin down
Swallow
i know it seems like head tossed back is the thing, but try chin tucked. Try a tic tac to see if it works for you.
Oh yes! This is exactly how I do it! Makes the pill float “up” toward my throat.
Shockingly enough the hardest pills for me to swallow are the smallest. I did learn of a trick though that seems to work. Pop the pill in your mouth, take in some water, bend over at the waist and then swallow. Since I’ve been doing that I haven’t had one pill get stuck. See if that helps.
That kitten phot on the striped rug is magazine worthy. Love it. Thank you for describing the pill in tampon terms. You know how to paint a picture. I do so much better now, but as a kid I could not swallow a pill. Why do some of us struggle with that? A friend in college could dry swallow a pill and I stood by assuming I’d have to call 911. I once had to carry a Disney around high school because I had to take a refrigerated medication since I couldn’t handle pill form.
When I was in high school, all the boys were Jason (some went by Jay) and Scott. Then in college: pretty much no Jasons or Scotts. All Matts and Joshes! Where I work, we have a weird Melissa issue: one after another, at one point THREE of them, but mostly just two at a time. We also have three people with shortened forms of the same name, and two other people with shortened forms of another name, and two other people with shortened forms of another name. I have suggested a discriminatory hiring strategy where every applicant has to have a name we don’t already have.
That magnesium pill is pretty big. Can you find smaller ones? How do you feel about magnesium powder? My daughter takes that and she mixes it with water and drinks it.
Lenny is a gift to us all, thank you for the pictures. Also the flowers are beautiful! Spring is pretty much over here, so we’re moving into summer flowers. I prefer the spring flowers, but they are fleeting for sure.
Three of your five are great things to have in abundance. Pills and couches, not so much! Supplement wise, I’ve been able to keep it down to a multi vitamin and Omega 3, but all of the pills are huge.
My husband and I were in the opposite situation for couches when we got together. Between the two of us we didn’t have a decent one. Mine had slipcovers, so everytime that I sat on my couches I had to adjust the slipcovers afterwards. Shudder. Mind definitely went out on the curb.
We have three important Mikes in our orbit (#1 North’s old basketball coach & my former boss, #2 Noah’s sometimes boss, #3 our contractor). Also, a good friend’s husband is Micheal, but he goes by a nickname based on his last name.
At one point, both North’s best friend and mine were both named Megan, which caused confusion more than you’d think.
In high school I once had a history class with seven Davids in it.
I once tried to figure out the most popular names in my group of Facebook friends and David came out on top for men, with Sara(h) the top name for women, though Suzanne was surprisingly popular– I thought you might be interested to hear that.
Oh, one more: In my kids’ preschool, in the class one ahead of North’s there were three Lucys and two Declans, which meant almost a third of the class was named Lucy or Declan. In that same class, there was an Anna Grace and an Amelia Grace.
Magnesium supplements in a capsule can be opened and you can sprinkle the powder into a smoothie!
I can dry swallow very small pills, but I take four ENORMOUS Omega 3 pills a day and I’m going to try putting my chin down tomorrow when I take them. My husband cannot swallow anything but the absolute tiniest of pills and even then he HATES it.
Do I have a big throat? (This is starting to sound sketchy). Moving on to kittens.
Lenny is adorable. I can see why your family is smitten.
I found the name thing a generational thing.
There are certain times when a bunch of Andreas, Stefan Sandra or Annas are popping up.
These days lots of young kids are called Luise, Luisa, Luca, Leo etc.
As for my phone book I have a few doubles but not more.
love your kittens pics! aren’t they the cutest?! I need to reback your earlier posts to learn about him.
My mom’s name is Sara! I love that you’re swimming in Sara/h’s!
Your flowers are beautiful — I love this time of year.
AND LENNY!!! 💜
I can swallow a fist full of pills and often do, but I definitely need water. I do not know how people swallow pills without water!! It boggles the mind!
The kitty photos are adorable. I showed them to my cat loving husband and he ahhhhhhed over them!!
I take eleven pills a day. I definitely need something to wash them down, though.
LENNY!! He looks so happy and content in his new home. You’re definitely doing kitty friendship correctly.
My friend, I hope you find a way to get some sleep, and soon!
I have a lot of Kristy, Kristine, Christina, Christines in my life currently. As a kid, I had a lot of Jessica’s, Cathy’s and Rebecca’s.
LENNY!
I literally stopped taking my magnesium supplement because I couldn’t swallow the pill. I am a bad patient!! I have a STRONG gag reflex so I have to really breathe deeply and drink a lot of water to get my pills down every morning. I am going to try the chin trick!
LENNY PHOTOS. I love him so much. Let me know if you’re tired of being a cat mom and I will TAKE HIM OFF YOUR HANDS. (I’m guessing this will not happen, sighhh.)
I had a couch just sitting at the front of my (small) living room for weeks after getting my current couch. Getting rid of couches is such a pain!
Same re: swallow horse pills, I just can’t do it.. Vitamins: multi (very small), D, Fish oil, B. Medicine(s): lexapro
additional supplements on a “as needed” basis (which lately has been every day): magnesium, Ashwaganga, Vitex. Oh I just got wind of dong quai for hot flashes- it’s bitter as hell but I take it.
I’m a “swallow a handful” person but yeah, sometimes they get stuck. I hate that but it’s just the Way it Is for me. *shrug* (I also choke regularly on food, so maybe I’m just used to it?) Anyway – I hope you are sleeping, reading, and just generally enjoying the Summer of Lenny. <3