A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was getting a referral to work with a speech pathologist. Now that I’ve had a few sessions with the nice speech lady, I’d like to let y’all in on the process.

Since the problem this time is with my vocal chords and not my pronunciation, the sessions are not just practice talking, as I had assumed. Nope, it’s singing. Not even lyrics. I just open up and say ahhh, but at varying pitches. It kind of reminds me of my favorite part of the Iron Maiden song, “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter”. Which is funny because you’d think it would remind me of the Poison album, Open Up and Say Ahhh! But clearly it doesn’t.

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So I’m supposed to practice singing these various drawn-out notes to keep my vocal chords loose, and I’m supposed to read several short sentences aloud to practice speaking from the diaphragm. Bear is used to ignoring my talking / singing around the house, so he was only mildly interested in these new vocalizations. I might try changing some of the ahhh’s and eeee’s to oooh’s, to see if I can get him howling. Oh, and by the way, the nice speech lady says I’m doing great – and I agree. I definitely sound better than I did a couple months ago.

Random Observation: You can’t spell hospitality without spit!