Today, we shall revisit my eyeball, since it was so fascinating before. Or because it's my eyeball and it hurts, so you get to read my bitching about it.
Spending the weekend with the family was great. I got to see my amazing, cutest-kids-in-the-world nieces (I shall torture you with the cuteness in a moment), and check out some possible future places to live. All good stuff. The only downer was that I seem to be developing allergies, mostly in my itching eyes, which I haven't experienced since I was a kid. Then last night, after bath and story time with the kids, my right eye became increasingly irritated. Starting with an itch that wouldn't go away and progressing to a slightly stabbing feeling as if there was a small shard of glass stuck in there.
The man and I went to dinner, where I proceeded to leave the table on several occasions to prod at said eyeball, sure that if I could just get out whatever was stabbing, it would be all better. By the end of the night, it was red and swollen and put me into a miserable mood. By the time I woke up this morning, I looked like someone punched me in the eye. Fun.
Straight from the airport to the eye doctor, and I was informed that I have a gross and highly contagious infection. AND allergies. Sweet. More so because my man almost surely will get it, being that he had his fingers all sorts of near my eye, trying to fish the non-existent thing out of it, and my little tiny nieces with huge eyeballs may also have gotten it, which breaks my heart.
Holding my breath for the next week or so, really hoping that those eyes don't get all red and ouchie.
P.S. You know you have a good man when you look completely disfigured and he
a. does not run screaming
b. does everything possible to help
c. gives you his sunglasses, even though he has to completely warp them to fit your tiny head, so the rest of the world doesn't stare at your disfigured eyeball.
Today, we shall get a lesson in eyeball anatomy, in thanks to my left eye, and its inability to not injure itself. Yup, that stabbing-in-the-eyeball pain that awoke me from slumber was self-inflicted by my very own eye. Sweet, huh?
Ok, so, there is a layer of the cornea called the corneal epithelium. It's a barricade that is supposed to protect the eye and is kept moist with tears. It's the layer they peel back when doing LASEK surgery. A helpful diagram:
that clear outer part is what we're talking about here.
Apparently, if one's eyes are not properly lubricated at night, that part of the cornea can stick to the eyelid, and upon sudden awakening, the opeing eyelid takes the epithelial layer with it, causing a tear. Yummy. My boyfriend's theory that because my eyeballs are so big, everything on there is stretched to capacity, doesn't seem to hold any weight, but it was pretty funny.
Some people experience this repeatedly, in both eyes. There's a name for it. Cogan's Dystrophy
Symptoms
The initial symptoms may include severe eye pain on waking in the morning, photophobia (intolerance to light), "something in my eye" sensation and slightly reduced visual perception.
Luckily, those particular eyeball cells are fast growing and regenerating, so I'm not going to look like a pirate. In fact, it already feels about 50% better.
Though it would be fun to be able to say "aaaargh" a lot, with great authority, having a real pirate's eye patch, I kind of like my peepers as they are. Also? Going to the eye doctor confirmed what I already thought was true. Vision in my uninjured eye (and presumably in the ouchie one, when not injured) is super awesome. Perfect, really. Which means I won't be paying anyone to slice into my eyeball ON PURPOSE to fix my vision. Stop doing that, people. Glasses are cute. Not as cute as my perfect vision, but still.
This concludes your lesson in eyeball anatomy.
I don't know what happened, but at some point last night, I injured my eyeball. Like, to the point that it woke me up from a dead sleep at 4am. I have no idea what I did to it, but have I mentioned ouch? I'm probably going to end up having to wear an awesome eyepatch and be a pirate now, because I can't really open my left eye without pain, and it doesn't even feel ok closed.
Can't look at this screen anymore, so that is all for today.
I was evacuated from my building this afternoon. They've been digging up the sidewalk outside for the past couple of weeks, putting down big slabs of stone, making with the pretty. While they've been planning and digging stuff up, they've planted different colored signs in the ground, marking off gas and electric lines. Apparently, one of the geniuses out there thought those little markers were just festive little flags, and hacked right into a gas line. Awesome.
Luckily, they didn't blow anything up. Better luck next time, jackass.
Hope your day was more fun.
As per my usual morning ritual, when I woke up this morning, I did a little interwebbing and came across the "random" button on NaBloPoMo. Cool, I get to see a bunch of other people forcing themselves to write every day, and maybe some of them will be funny or entertaining or just crazy, which is amusing. I found a little of all three.
Here's the thing. You know how the most annoying thing (of all the many annoying things) on myspace is the sudden blaring out of a song, which the person has embedded into their page? People are actually doing this to their regular blogs. Blogger, Wordpress...they all seem to have a little widget available to embed their favorite! or listening to now! or look how cool I am because I am playing this indie band! music player. You know what? It's still annoying. Stop it. If I want to listen to music while I bounce around the internets? I will listen to my own. I have iTunes, I totally can.
Like when I ask, for instance, whether you (in a general reader sense) are sick of hearing about my man. You know, just as an example. If the answer isn't "of course not!" Rhetorical. Shut up. Ok thanks. (Nice comments about the flowers and the greenness are appreciated, though. Thanks, Kerrianne. You may comment to your heart's content.)
Moving on.
Great weekend, lots of driving. Ok, so I didn't so much drive as I sat in the passenger seat and helped to entertain the driver of many miles across several states by:
1. singing (badly)
2. breaking it down (dancing as awesomely as possible while in a seated position)
3. being generally adorable
I learned that Great Lakes are thusly named for their vastness and ocean-like abilities to produce a BEACH, for reals. Who knew? Ok, well obviously some of you knew, smarty pantses. But I didn't, so it was cool.
For those of you who have been missing my ranting ways, a gift from me to you. Because I'm a giver...
Dear people with small children on airplanes:
I realize that small people have small attention spans, and because of that, it can be difficult to keep them in good spirits while stuck in a metal tube for a prolonged period of time. It's not their fault that they get bored and restless. It's yours. You are the parents. Failing to bring along something that may capture their attention for 30 minutes while the rest of us are also stuck on a plane sitting motionless on a runway is YOUR FAULT. Allowing them to...I don't know...SCREAM at full volume while they careen all of their body weight onto a tray table that happens to be attached to someone else's seat? YOUR FAULT. Humor me, at least. Attempt to curb this behavior at least once. You know what isn't helpful? Giggling. You might think that your 3 year old's tantrum is adorable, because maybe you're a little retarded. It's not adorable. Allowing your 3 other children to join in on the tantrum? Also not even a little cute. It's annoying dozens of people. Again, not the kids' fault. YOUR fault. Kids can only be taught how to behave in public by grown up people who know how to behave in public. I suggest immediate sterilization. Why are you having ANY children with your complete lack of parenting skills, much less 4?
Thanks so much.
Poor, innocent little monkey. She was welded onto a copper fountain, minding her own business. If I find out who took her, someone's getting a beating.
OK, I know I'm supposed to get over it today, but I'm still going to bitch about how cold it's been, because it was supposed to be nice all week. Instead, it's been hovering around 20 degrees, with sporadic snow flurries, which is only exasperating the fact that I am not in a tropical paradise, drinking umbrella drinks brought to me by scantily-clad poolboys with an equally scantily-clad hot guy on the beach chair beside me.
Also, my studio has been largely off-limits because of some nonsense involving the fire department, and my desire to not get involved in it all. It's a catch-22 situation, where I haven't been able to acquire the proper permits because the building needs to fix certain things, and those things have been held up by the fire department, who are the ones responsible for issuing said permits. Got all that?
It's a red tape entanglement of bullshit. I've completely ignored it up til now, and would continue to do so, except that now the building's violations are overdue to the point that there is a fire marshal present in the building at all times. It's times like this that I wonder why I didn't go the easy route and paint or make Lego art, instead of working with very flammable! molten metal, which cannot easily be done on the sly with a fire marshal poking around.
Deep Breath.
Ok, it's probably not, but when you are roused from bed by the fire alarm, it may as well be. I live in a high-rise building, and the fire alarm not only has the typical eardrum-abusive siren sound, but also a voice box. This comes in handy when it's a false alarm, and it alerts me that "This is a test. There is no need to evacuate", or like a couple of weeks ago, when it informed me that "There is a fire on the ground floor. Please stay in your apartment", because apparently, fire doesn't come upstairs, and we would all be safe while the bottom of the building was consumed in flames. This was a false alarm, it turned out. This morning, however, it was not.
The voice accompanying the ear busting alarm on this lovely day advised me to "Exit the building immediately. Do not take the elevators. A fire has been reported on your floor". Naturally, I thought bullshit. There's some sort of false fire alarm on a weekly basis. But, better safe than sorry. So I threw on some clothes, wrangled the dogs and made my way down 13 flights of stairs. Yes, I live on the 13th floor, even though the building's elevator and stairwell refuse to acknowledge this and they call it the 14th floor. Stupid superstition. As soon as I opened my door, though, I knew it was for real. The hallway was covered in a hazy film of stinky smoke. Not good. As about a dozen of us shuffled down the stairs, the smell only got worse. Fire trucks were surrounding the building and there was a hose snaked into the side entrance. After being out there for an hour, I saw a couple of pieces of furniture being doused, and a large garbage bin was wheeled out.
Some moron threw something into the garbage chute that was ON FIRE, or at least smoldering, setting lots of other stuff on fire, and pretty much consuming the garbage area...which contains a shitload of cardboard boxes and discarded furniture. The added bonus was the quick spread of the smoke up the garbage chute to every floor. Seriously? What kind of retards am I living with here? I had to hang outside for over an hour, and could have been homeless because some prize-winning idiot thinks the garbage chute is a magical repository immune to flames?
Being the generous and helpful person that I am, I agreed to list a bunch of stuff on eBay for a friend. When he moved into his new office, he inherited a bunch of high-end tech equipment from the company who got evicted left. So, there is a room full of network antennas, IP phones, servers, and all sorts of geeky, expensive stuff. And the cubicles. There are lots of cubicles. Do you know how much companies pay for those pre-wired imprisoning pieces of crap?
I figured, no problem, I'll write down some serial numbers, do some research and slap them up on the auction block. Somehow, it didn't occur to me that I would get emails from the geeky buyers asking me questions I couldn't possibly know the answers to. "Is this the 802.11b model, or the newer xyz booster model?...what is the range for this?...blah blah snore blah".
Umm I don't know. For days now, I have been forced to find answers to these questions, so that someone will just bid already and release me from auction hell. The problem is that I need to find the answers via the internet. Do you know what happens to someone who is forced to look up boring crap on the internet? Shiny, fun things distract. They whisper 'come hither' to me and redirect me to...I don't know, 50 million blogs and youtube (because the Superbowl commercials are there. I didn't actually watch the game). If I'm going to stare at the computer for hours, shouldn't I redesign my blog (again)? The sad part is, I only listed about 1/4 of what was there, so I'll be going through this for a few weeks still. I'm so generous and helpful. Did I mention I get to keep 1/2 the profits? Yeah, I'm a saint.
It's been happening since the day after Christmas. The pink hearts, cupid cut-outs and general rosey-colored sickeningly sweetness. Does there really need to be a two month build up to this "holiday"? Even when I was in relationships (yes, I am a serial long-term relationship girl...13 non-consecutive years of long term togetherness is proof), I never really got into the whole This! is the day you Have To! show how much you Love Him!!! It's silly. Sure, I'd so something like make dinner, and have been known to sculpt a little something cute and silly as a gift, but really, that doesn't differentiate it from most other days, as I was likely to do those things anyway.
This year, I'm very much single, and I'm totally fine with that, but I've been feeling this weird pressure about the single-ness because of Vday. It feels like society is shaking its head and giving me the stare of disapproval over the choices that have led me to be unattached on this most important day of the winter months after Christmas and New Year. Which I guess makes it only the 3rd most important winter date (not all that important), but you'd never know it by all the hearts and the flowers and the various stuffed musical animals which dance and sing rockin renditions of love songs.
I guess my point is...chill the fuck out, Hallmark, you're giving me a headache.
If you are one half of a happy Valentine celebrating couple, I fully embrace your ability and even your joy in making with the sweetness. I just don't need to be bombarded with it every time I step into a store to buy milk.
Oh, and could the people who insist on saying "Valentime's Day" please stop? It really grates on my nerves. There was no St. Valentime, bastard cousin of St. Valentine. Ok thanks.
What have I done to forsake thee? I praise you to all who will listen, I worship daily, sometimes, several times a day (if I am feeling especially sleepy), and still you toy with me in cruel ways.
First, you send me the evil cappuccino machine, which, by the way...totally broken again, thanks. So, I use my French Press, until I go to get the machine fixed (temporarily, obviously). This has been working ok for several days, and then...today...instead of the plunger thingy being pushed smoothly to the bottom, it forces hot coffee to shoot out the edges of the contraption, exploding molten coffee lava all over me and the counter.
I don't like tea, but I have had a chai latte, and let me tell you this. If you keep up this nonsense, I will be tempted to switch my allegience. You've been warned.
I had a really clever and linky post all ready, and when I went to publish, blogger ate it. Instead of the happy " Your blog post published successfully!" message, I instead got the abysmal:
"Blogger and Blog*Spot are unavailable
Blogger and Blog*Spot are unavailable right now. We apologize for this interruption in service.
Details
Blogger is undergoing maintenance until 9:30"
Umm fuck you very much, because I now have to paste that all back together.
Best Regards,
me
Why today might suck a lot
Posted by elizabeth at 12:09 PM Labels: annoying, Lillian/Violet, petting1. Because it started with my espresso machine acting irritatingly wonky AGAIN. I did manage to squeeze some caffeine-laden nectar from it, but it wasn't easy.
2. I got to wake up to the maintenance guy at the door. He came to finish repairing the section of floor (which he was supposed to do yesterday), that my dogs destroyed while I was away. If they weren't so damn cute, we'd have serious issues. Oh dogs, how you bring the joy...which brings me to:
3. I have to bring Bubba to the doctor, as he's been puking for the past 3 days. What? You'd like more details? OK, but it's gross. Every morning, during his first walk, he vomits up what appears to be foamy phlegm. Yummy. He's been on medication for about a year now that has had total control over his IBS. I guess we'll find out why it's no longer working. Today, he's on a hunger strike, which means he must be feeling really very crappy. Before he was (finally) diagnosed for this, he would generally still eat voraciously, even if only to upchuck it a few minutes later. What can I say, he's a Shar-Pei. And neurotic. He's ultra high maintenance.
4. I have to find and actually buy something in a WalMart. I understand that this doesn't seem like a huge deal to most people. Everyone loves WalMart and Target, right? Yeah, I don't. I think they're strip mall creating, small business consuming, child laboring in 3rd world country employing, pieces of crap, and I make it a rule to not ever shop there.
*Warning: baby stuff that may be TMI for some of you follows*
Lillian has been breast fed for all of her 10 months, but for the past 2 or so, she's been weaning herself. She is not yet ready to go to milk, so she had to be put on formula. My sister (smartly) won't just give her regular formula, because cows, and therefore all milk products, unless explicitly stating otherwise, these days, is pumped full of all kinds of nasty hormones and crap. That's a discussion for another time. Basically, to avoid little Lillian from reaching puberty at 9, she only eats organic almost everything, but especially anything deriving from animals. Since this is something I am also adamant about, and since my sister buys this organic formula that can only be bought at soul sucker WalMart, I have to go there. It's not wise to just willy nilly switch formula if you can avoid it.
So there you have it. Suckiness abounds today. Sweet.
You know your body is breaking down when you are able to hurt your back by mopping the floor. No, not on-your-knees-scrubbing the floor, but the simple act of slightly bending forward as you use a mop. This is probably the 4th time this has happened over the past few years while doing something completely benign. It's just getting annoying, quite frankly, because I'm able to do contortionist-type crap in yoga, without any problems. Should I attempt to do mundane chores while in some distorted asana just to prevent this? It could be all the new you tube rage, I guess, if I could catch it on video. Meanwhile, I will limp through a yoga class in an attempt to recover.
I wrote at the end of July about the drunken version of my otherwise mild-mannered roommate. Roy is an ass. I knew it was just a matter of time before he showed his face again, and he did exactly that last weekend. I'm done with him, and unless there is quickness with the moving out, accompanied by embarrassing amounts of apologies and sweetness, I'm done with the otherwise sweet person in which Roy resides as well. It's a complicated situation, as he works for the ex, but I'm not going to get into all of that. I just know that I want him out, and the sooner the better.
It's ironic because I just had a long conversation with the roomie about his drinking; specifically my concern for him. I didn't think it would have any real effect, as those of you who have known serious alcoholics can relate to, I'm sure. Still, I thought it wouldn't hurt to express some concern for his well-being. Wrong. It was the next day that Roy came out to prove my point. I'm just sick to my stomach about the whole thing, and have only become calm enough to write about it now. But now I'm not so calm just thinking about it. In fact, I would like to barge into the room he's sleeping in and kick him in the chin. Instead, I will read myself to sleep. Ahhh wonderful sleep...eraser of all that is crappy.
Ok, so still with the coffee machine...I brought it back in today to show them that it does, indeed, still leak. Brought my coffee, my portafilter, the whole works, so it would do exactly the kind of exploda-leaking it does at home. The guy who had apparently fixed the machine looked dumbfounded, took the filter out, emptied the grinds and started messing with the screw in it. I said, "So every time I make coffee, I need to unscrew that thing to the point that it almost falls apart? Is it just me, or does that seem like something that should not be necessary?" The guy who had the air of running the joint walked over, removed the now almost completely unscrewed metal filter basket and replaced it with one without any small moving parts. Guess what? It works fine. Hmm perhaps someone without his head up his ass should have discovered that was the problem in the month they had the thing. At least I now have serious coffee making equipment again. That is something my roomie can attest to as very necessary for my semi-sanity.
For your enjoyment: someone who rants far better than I do.
Is there any good reason my coffee/espresso machine should be broken for the second time in 6 months? At this point, it's spent about as much time being "fixed" as it has making my damned coffee. Picked it up today, all pumped up to brew a latte and it leaked all over the place. They had it at the repair place for a month. I'm annoyed and I have a caffeine deprivation headache.
Warning: Purchasing this machine could result in aggravation
End of bitch
The same guy has been cutting my hair for a long, long time. About 7 years. I've been very lax about it, and it's been nearly a year since I last stepped foot in the salon. So, I called today to make a much-needed appointment. Even I'm tired of looking at myself with my unruly mass of hair piled on top of my head. Imagine my jaw-dropping disappointment at the news that my stylist is no longer working at the salon. Huh? Well, where is he? The girl on the phone doesn't know. Not exactly helpful.
This is a dilemma. I realize that most people are thinking "Big deal, go somewhere else". But it's a big deal. I'm not really high maintenance about a lot of things, but I'm really freaky about my hair and who touches it. Before this guy, I had another stylist for 4 years, and only stopped going to him because he was a pervert. I drew the line at him trying to kiss me goodbye full on the mouth after his very pregnant wife just left the salon minutes before. But it took that level of perviness to force me out of my hair comfort zone into the chair of a new guy. Now 7 years later, I'm trying to figure out what to do. Why would he not tell me he was leaving, and where he was going?
This is far worse than being blown off by a guy you're dating. There are always other cute boys readily available to go out with, with the potential of making you forget about the other guy almost instantly. But if I were to use that way of thinking with the hair, I could be suffering for months with the reminder that I moved on too fast. Every day, a glance in the mirror could be a rehashing of why...why...why??
So, do I just google "hair genius", or "stylist capable of miracles", or what? This is annoying.
Blogger has been acting funky, so just getting to this page to update has been an exercise in foot-tapping, under-breath swearing frustration. Yet, I braved it just for you. Here's what's new.
MWP is now defunct. His potential to be sketchy just wasn't sitting well with me, and I decided it just wasn't worth worrying about. When things are that new, it should all be sunshine and flowers, and shouldn't take a whole lot of effort. So, that's that. NEXT.
Roomie situation is great so far, much better than I could have hoped. He does cook, cleans up after himself, walks the puppies, and got the floor fixed, as promised. In order to fix the floor, disconnecting the TV and all the stuff hooked into it..surround sound thingy, DVD player, cable, Airport Extreme became necessary. The thought of disconnecting all that stuff gave me heart palpitations, as it took literally hours and hours to get it all hooked up and working properly to begin with. Today, after the floor was finished, the roomie came home, took about 7 minutes and hooked everything back up. Nice. So I am now in the process of building some shelving for all that ancillary equipment, and we're going to mount the flat screen on the wall. Something I've wanted to do since I've moved in, but just haven't gotten around to it.
Also still working on the website concept for my work. I appreciate the input from all, truly. I just haven't found anything that's really moved me yet. Some suggestions have fueled some other ideas, though, and I contacted an ad guy I know. Most of his business is branding and marketing, so I'm hoping if I give him the ideas I've liked, he can mold them into something workable. When his first response was simply "Use your name", I was a bit disheartened, but after having a conversation about what my philosophy is behind my art and design, I think he gets it. Will let you know, as I'm sure I'll be looking for feedback as the site develops. Hmm what else?
Oh, the car (that's actually the ex's car) was broken into for the 4th time or something ridiculous. Nothing of value is ever in it, and it's fairly impossible to steal the damn thing, even once you get inside, if the 4th attempt and failure is any indication. But still, they try, and in the process, they kill the lock cylinder. This time, when they mangled the cylinder, they jammed it into a position that makes the car act posessed. You see, the car has an option where you can insert key into door, turn it all the way to the right, and the windows and sunroof all open. Kind of a nice idea for when the car has been parked in the baking sun for an extended period. Anyway, the cylinder was jammed in that position, so that as I was driving around, the door locks would lock and unlock repeatedly, and when I would park the car and get out, the windows and sunroof all opened. Pretty freaky if you don't know what's causing it. So, I dropped it off yesterday to be exorcised of its demons, and they gave me a cute little loaner car. The guy handed me a "key" to the car, and I just stared at it, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with it. Turns out, keys are so last season. This thing slides into a little slot in the dashboard and you push the start/stop engine button. Very cool. I now have key envy. Or lack of key envy..whatever.