Seriously. Where did May go?

I told myself I’d write a blog post today. Well, here we are, 11:55 pm, so I’ve got four minutes to make that happen. Technically, I wrote two blog posts today, for Asthma.Net. But that’s not what I meant.

Toronto. Minneapolis. Ten days of the month on the road, and it was awesome. Then the storm—in a good way—of catching up. I turned twenty-five. I hit all my goals (actually exceeding one of them) for work. Assisting with getting the research protocol off the ground for the U of A project. All kinds of mostly awesome nonsense filling my head, and trying to return to my commitment of quelling all that nonsense a bit with meditation—it’s all good.

So, here we are, May.

Over.

Except with pictures to come tomorrow, because there are a lot of them and they’re still uploading.

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On the 12th of the month, I take 12 pictures throughout the day and blog them. This month, I started off a trip in Toronto, and then flew from YYZ to MSP to spend nearly a week in Minneapolis.

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11:36 am | noodles & company. I had some ambitious food goals on this trip (there’s lots of stuff on the University of Minnesota campus, where I was spending my time). Lunch #1, Noodles & Co.

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1:12 pm | East Bank train platform. I wandered around for quite awhile after lunch, hitting up the UMN Bookstore, CVS (my favourite), Walgreens (to use the Coke Freestyle machine, because how could I not?) and stop in a few other places. Here’s the East Bank train platform, on my way back from the bookstore.

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1:29 pm | University of Minnesota. Not only do the crosswalks talk, they have very detailed signage of how to cross safely.

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1:30 pm | Washington Street (?). We’re not really super school spirited in Canada, so I’m not sure if I love or hate all the spirit around university (COLLEGE) campuses in the US. Either way, here’s a logo’ed bike rack of an M, and in the distance you will see a Golden Gopher bike rack. 
Really.

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1:35 pm | Mesa Pizza. Well, two hours since Noodles means it’s time for second lunch… Today, penne marinara pizza. I also had mac & cheese pizza here on this trip… Twice.

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 2:10 pm | University Avenue. On the sidewalk near the Days Hotel, there’s this poor mom graffiti… It’s amusing and confusing, and the cursive is quite good given the medium (at least it’s better than mine on any medium…)

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2:23 pm | Days Hotel. I’d been living at my cousin Dean’s apartment for the past couple days. My aunt and grandma arrived on the 12th, and my aunt added me to the hotel reservation—and they let me check in early (two for two on this trip!).

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3:35 pm – Days Hotel. I took about 5 trips between the hotel and Dean’s apartment (basically parallel but a few blocks away) with my 10+ days worth of crap (and things I’d purchased). I then re-set-up my bed, aka air mattress, in this corner… It’s quite the bedroom, even if I did have to move the fridge and clear an armchair to the other side of the room.

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8:14 pm | Jax Cafe. We went out for dinner with Dean’s girlfriend, Jackie, and her family for dinner to celebrate Dean and Jackie becoming real engineers with pinkie rings the next day.

Yeah, pinkie rings. Read about that here if you’re confused.

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8:58 pm | Jax Cafe. “You call that a knife? This is a knife.

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9:13 pm | cvs. There you go again CVS, takin’ all my money. I dropped another $31 USD (so like, $50 CAD) in CVS with my grandma after returning from dinner. Here are some NOT BIRTHDAY cards.

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10:44 pm | hotel. Emptying out my pockets at the end of the day. I friggen hate pennies, and America needs to follow our lead and get rid of them. I don’t know how I still have a TTC transfer at this point, and I heart cvs (and love the extra care keytag that is not on any keys.)

Today […yesterday, technically] is World Asthma Day. Much the same as at 12:05 AM, I have no riveting thoughts on this. I took my inhalers, I went to bed. I woke up, I took my inhalers, I went out. I took my inhalers before coaching, I came home, I went to the pharmacy and picked up more inhalers, and I’ll take medicine again before I go to bed.

And I wore this shirt that I wear one day a year.

World Asthma Day? It’s gotten boring. Just like this disease. I feel like the organizers aren’t putting the effort in, even. The theme has been “You can control your asthma” for as long as I can remember. Guess what? That hasn’t changed much either.

Maybe people with asthma would think differently about choosing to manage their disease, if they were given something to think about.  We need some fresh air, y’all. (Bad puns…)

Fortunately, I’ve got a fresh announcement to make up for that.

Asthma.net launched TODAY. 

Way back, I signed a blogging contract with Health-Union, LLC, which oversees Asthma.net. They took their time getting their ducks in a row—which is, as a contractor, super nice because since starting to submit work to them, everything has been SUPER ON THE BALL. I honestly do not have enough good things to say about working with them!

Asthma.net stands for the same things that I do: writing for Health-Union, I retain all credit for my work, and I get to choose my post topics—but, I have people to fall back on if I’m stuck for topics. And yes, of course, they pay me. Not only that, though, but they treat patients like experts—who knows our world better than we do, right? Health-Union has been at this awhile—and it’s clear they’ve done the work to get their relationships right.

Please, check it out. I highly recommend checking out other contributors as well, but here’s where you can find my posts.

…By the way, I freaked right out when I saw one of my posts as a featured post earlier. Whaaaaat.

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So, as I try (again) to write my patient story for our National Asthma Patient Alliance executive meeting in Toronto this weekend (again. I can only talk about myself so much… Said the blogger…), I’m reminded of the importance of our stories.

And I’m grateful that more and more organizations are seeing the importance of sharing patient stories in empowering patients, too.

Disclosure: I am provided per-piece compensation by Health-Union, LLC, for pieces I publish to Asthma.Net. Health-Union allows me full choice over what I contribute, as long as it falls within their guidelines (which are basically like, don’t be mean to people). I was not asked to write this post, nor was I ever asked to share Asthma.Net on social media.
I mean… If they googled me for all of 5 seconds they’d know I’d share anyways. But, they never asked me to.