Pee Colour is Serious Matter

Have you ever taken a peek into the toilet bowl after emptying your bladder and seeing the dark yellow urine then instinctively check your temperature? . Lol! I bet some of you did and still do.  I did countless times as more than often; my urine was amber or dark yellow. By reflex, I would feel my temperature to be sure I was not running a fever.

I wasn't the kind to stop and drink water, maybe only at meal times or when I’m exhausted from running around with the boys. I always knew something was wrong with that colour of urine but since I wasn't running a fever, I shrugged it off time after time. Well, I wasn't totally wrong, urine is diagnostic but not for fever like I thought.

So what does your pee colour say about your wellness?

Ideally, your urine should be pale straw or transparent yellow. Urine gets its colour from a yellow pigment called urochrome. So when your urine has that pale or transparent yellow colour, you are well hydrated and healthy.

Do you know you can also have too much water in the system? No colour or transparent urine says you are drinking too much fluid and your body is eager to get rid of the excess water. When you are on a diuretic, you will also be passing water frequently. A diuretic is any substance that promotes the production of urine; it could be recommended drugs, caffeinated drinks and beverages or even high-water content fruits.

Dark yellow means you can do better and drink more water. But if your urine is amber or honey colour, you may need to get up and drink some water now, as in, NOW.

People who drink less than 2 litres of water daily do not only get dehydrated; they also have constipation. Too much troubles for not drinking enough water; I had them all.

The urine shouldn't get out of the yellow spectrum of colour. If the urine looks like syrup, it could be severe dehydration.  If drinking lots of water fails to eliminate the colour, please visit the doctor. You should know pee colour is serious matter, don’t shrug it off, if you notice any strange colouration please see a doctor!

Image Courtesy: Thinkstock/Getty Images

Meet the new D.O.P. in town

You don’t know your limits, how far you can stretch until you try- and this is no motivation talk; it’s from an experience I had.


There were some things I thought I would never be able to do, that I had no capacity for. I knew I could write to express myself but being a director of photography, telling a story with pictures looked almost impossible but I needed to make this happen at work to create a beautiful experience.


Here is how I conquered; I called uncle K (Kelechi Amadi-Obi) and asked to sit with him for few minutes. Uncle K gave me sixty minutes of his time and taught me how to create a mood board. I did and created a theme.


I went back to the office and sat with P&Y team and together brainstormed on props and settings.


The D-day came and I got all props and executed these beautiful work. Ijeoma is known more as Ozichi and the cutie, Zemira is her spirited daughter. Check out the pictures and tell me if I am a good DOP…















The guitar girl





















Time for the mama-girl dance












do as I do





You should buy this copy of Pregnancy and You magazine to see all the other beautiful pictures and read Ozichi's story. Check out Pregnancy and You on facebook and connect for more info

I'm so excited!!!

Oh I missed out my picture -

Nostalgia : Pleasant Memories

It was a Thursday morning and I was walking behind these cute boys and their mom heading to school. Mom was holding the younger one, while the other walked beside them carrying his school bag and food pack in his white joggers and blue vest; Thursdays must be their sport activity day.

Little brother dropped his pencil but momma wasn't looking at them, she concentrated on making it to school as depicted by her pace. The little one had to signal to his brother to pick up the pencil; little big brother did and held on to the pencil. Like a flash, the little one protested and made some funny faces at his brother who didn't wait to think about anything before handing the pencil over to its owner. I smiled! God knows how many times the pencil would drop before their final destination. And that brought me pleasant memories.

Growing up, my big brother led me to nursery class every day. We got a coin each for lunch and I would hold my 10 kobo in my hand. School was a little distance down the quarters and we trekked like most kids. The bladder holds so little and for shorter periods as kids and I was no exception, it only came with the drama of most cute girls (winks).  

You know little girls can be dramatic when they have to pee, I think they wait till their tiny bladder is about to give way before frantically pull down the panties and pull up their dress with some funny dance to accompany the activity. I would stop by to pee and most time I dropped the coin unknowingly while ‘doing’ the drama.

Time after time, I dropped the coin and when I grasped that the coin was gone, and I would cry so hard that Niyi would give me his coin. Sweet brother! Yet I never allowed him to hold the coin for me till we get to school.

Now, I think Niyi should have collected the coin from home and kept till we got to school or he should have allowed me cry out my eyes if I refused and loose the coin eventually. But wasn't that why we were children; pure in thoughts, innocence in acts and naive in reasoning?

I didn't have the honour of harvesting this act as my younger brothers went to a different nursery school.  God knew I may not have given them my coin.

Sweet thing is big brother still has my back till now, grown and no longer in the same nest, he still shares his stuff with his father’s daughter.

PS- this is my Neyoski as I call him 

Bimbola and  Niyi 

WOULD YOU RIDE WITH ME?

I remember the first time I came across the word joy-ride, I thought it would mean just what it looks like, a joy ride, you could imagine the disappointment when I ‘googled’ it.  I added it mentally to my compiling list of words that I have strong opinions about, words like nostalgia, bucket-list, ambiguous, gusto and many more because I had a funny idea of what I thought those words should mean. I thought nostalgia should mean irritating or something close to that,  like nauseating,  then ambiguous should mean something big and obvious and I thought joy-ride would mean taking a happy ride, hands in the air, wind in the face thing; not true. In fact, taking a joy-ride is criminal according to Wikipedia. I have no explanation for why I thought about these words that way, I am not a native speaker of the language and my imagination is allowed to go wild about words. I’m working on speaking English in my dreams, and then I would be sure I have overcome this grammar ‘thing’ eventually. lol.

Joy-ride: dictionary.com meaning-  

1.a pleasure ride in an automobile, especially when the vehicle is driven recklessly or used without theowner's permission.

2. a brief, emotionally exciting interlude

Joy-ride: my definition-

1. happy ride, in an open roof car driving on high speed on a road free of bumps and traffic, or exciting ride on a happy wild horse on mountain sides

2. a brief, emotionally exciting interlude …you get the picture?

I am just sticking to my definition for this piece because I want a joy-ride, my two definitions though, nothing criminal.

Would it not be really cool to take a smooth ride from the mainland in a convertible (maybe the Ford Mustang) to a far place like Badagry? You know,  getting high on some hard or soft rock all the way, no traffic jam, no pot holes, air in the hair and getting to one of the beautiful beaches of Badagry, walking bare-foot and drinking from the tender coconut its water? That would be some good evening for me, I could be tempted to sleep under the stars till day break…sigh!
Some little excitement is good for the soul and body, life shouldn't be all seriousness, we aren't coming out alive anyway, so don’t only set goals and more goals and more goals, live and live well. What happened to exploring? Like visiting different countries of the world or even remote villages and mountain climbing with some friends? Or driving through the desert for the sake of it? Getting on a roller-coaster; I've never done that before and would like to though I learnt I could get the fainting spell, or what about swimming in the ocean? (I’m just kidding about the ocean thing; I still get lily-livered at the sight of the rushing waves)

Photo credit: Vroomgirls.com

Talk about adventures and fun, I am a wild dreamer, I should become a wild doer and stop dreaming, maybe I need a willing partner, who knows- we could get on a speed boat together, what can God not do?

I saw this quote somewhere and it justified my desire for heart-pumping fun “Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto” Dale Carnegie

So for this forth-coming holiday, I need to make the blood pump faster, would you take a joy-ride with me?

TO LEND MONEY PEOPLE IS HUMAN, TO COLLECT IT IS DIVINE

Lend (v)- to grant the use of something on condition that it or its equivalent will be returned.

My brother tweeted this some days back and I laughed hard and then stated that it was a painful bad truth. Most times, one needs divine intervention to collect back something (money in most occurrences) that was collected in privy. When the borrower comes to borrow, he asks that you be excused if there’s an eager third party and you step out to have the quiet talk spiced with many promises and a lot of swearing… “God knows I will repay”, “I promise!”... “walahi!”... “I won’t disappoint”…

Fast forward to due date, you would expect his/her call till you have seemingly waited for ever, and then when the guy calls, he’s in a hurry to end the call and says “sorry, please send your account details”. Hope rising, you send the account details and wait endlessly for the bank notification. Unending wait I tell you.

A friend shared some of his experiences with me lately about “good people” that he lent money to and when it was time to refund, the “good people” pulled off their masks and showed him how nasty they could be. By the time he got to the third story, I was tempted to ask him how he managed to keep on burning his fingers… honestly, the guy must have “burnt” all of 10 fingers. And the effrontery people have when they owe you! Someone even abused him so much and told him to stop feeling like a rich dude! So much for being helpful

It’s not just awful that you have tarnished your integrity as I am NEVER eager to lend defaulters again you are also blocking other people’s chances. Some people genuinely need money that they are not able to pull together at the time of need and a helping hand is needed to save the day but if the lender has horrible experiences of defaulters in time past, he is most likely going to turn a deaf hear as he doesn’t know if he would ever get to be repaid.

Now “remember” to pay anyone you have borrowed from, not necessarily because you like to, but because your friend, brother, sister or anyone else may need financial assistance and it won’t be fair that your failure to refund has influenced their being denied.  What goes round comes round eventually.

It’s possible things haven’t turned out like you expected and you don’t have the money yet, be courteous enough to show remorse and apologize for not being able to pay nevertheless. Who knows? You may get a voluntary write-off of the debt. This is better than acting up, I tell you.

Do I owe you? Buzz my line ASAP (lol)

GO BACK TO THAT NOTE

My informal training this past month has brought wonderful people across my path, from the pharmacist turned journalist, Tolu Ogunlesi to Jon Gambrell, AP Chief Correspondent in Nigeria, to Bukola Kogbe, the HR guru, and Harry Akinola to Jimi Tewe, all very seasoned speakers and instructors. Hearing them teach about significance makes the heart beat faster because of wide dreams and possibilities awakening.

My notepad is loaded!!! My storage device almost full with slides and audio files, and yet there are other meetings to attend still, another workshop in a short while, and the notes may keep piling.

If one would write exams for what has been acquired in knowledge per month or quarterly like we do in formal settings, how well would one do?

For most people, we tend to pay more attention to our formal education, we attend classes religiously, cram our notes and study hard to pass our exams, which in most cases, these knowledge seem not too relevant in life scenarios. We would actually be better developed and increase in value if we pay more attention to our informal classes as life seem to impact more through the informal setting. I think I've learnt valuable practical lessons from the informal than the formal.

We all need to befriend our notes more. Apart from seminars, workshops, training or even church, some of us write our spur of the moment ideas, inspirations and thoughts in our notepads, the burning sensation that hits us when a speaker says something we agree with or find fascinating makes us write those words down, and that sensation can be relived if we will go back to the notes later.

Don’t we feel like we could conquer anything when we are just done with another life improvement teaching? Don’t we get energy to want to take on much more from those workshops? Then after a week or so, the note pad is closed and some, if not all the inspiration we got is almost evaporated. Go back to that note!

There’s a lot one can learn from an old note, you may even find those ideas and actions plans you were inspired to put down on how to take your life to the next level you never executed. You may get inspired to take on a task you've found challenging or seemingly impossible.

See; Life brings exams too like the school system, except that there are no timetables and the exams are always impromptu, they come disguised as new challenges or opportunities, only those who have taken their informal classes serious are able to excel. They have gone through their notes and they have applied the knowledge learnt. Would you pass?

Read your notes frequently, you’ll be a better person, listen to that podcast again, put the audio book on your phone and listen to it. Go through the slides again. Do whatever has to be done, wisdom lies in applying knowledge.

Still like a child

The heat has been almost unbearable for a while and the rain would bring so much relief, everyone desired that and so it rained, as the droplets were hitting my roof, only one thing was on my mind; to get into the rain.

It was in the night and I was supposed to be sleeping, sleep also chose to elude me this particular night, so I was there on my bed wishing I was in the rain. I craved the taste of rain water and only the showers of rain could soothe my skin like I wanted that night but I wouldn’t get into that rain, I’m a grown woman plus someone’s  missis.  Sigh! So much for growing up!

I miss the little girl that I was; I was a child and nothing else!!

I could stay in the rain or choose to run around in it or even dance in it, or better still, cup my hands under a heavy downpour and just gulp the rain let-down (oh my! That used to be heavenly, now don’t tell me you haven’t tried that, I did over and over again)

I miss the days we would sing and run and chase each other on the bushy roads that led to our home.  We could trek any distance and never felt the pain; I could do many things and not be bothered about what others might think of us!

I miss the days of our pardonable mischief as children; days when we would stay behind dad’s bedroom window whispering and giggling till he shouts “E s’ere lo o” (Please go and play somewhere else) –and that was our ticket to freedom, we would not be back till dusk from wherever we decided “somewhere else” was.

Childhood was fun! Pure fun! No techie stuff to play with, but I had fun I must say.

“Grow up and leave childhood behind”, right? I have, but I packed a baggage full of my childlike ways to last me a life-time.

I still dance to an audience of one; and that’s me! And if you walk in on me at that time, God bless you, you can enjoy the free show as I hardly stop. And I still shamelessly beat the table as I shout my songs ( I really can’t call that singing)   like we used to do then and I still make faces, there is hardly any face contortion I haven’t tried.

I like little children for many reasons but I like them more for one reason, they are children!

A child has no worries, a child doesn’t “think” about it, a child is easily persuaded, a child moves on easily. I am trying hard to not think too much about things this day and just do it being fully persuaded that I can trust God like a child trusts the parent.

The baggage I packed from childhood couldn’t contain so many things but I’m grateful for the ones I stuffed in, I will acquire more as the journey demands, kids are fun and I just want to keep the fun in my life, simple!

And dear rain, I may get into you any time soon, especially if you choose to fall in the evening of one of the weekends, cross my heart!!