Pig. Dog. See the distinction?
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Since I was a little kid, I’ve had glasses. It started out as just needing glasses to read, and quickly progressed to needing glasses all the time. I’ve ALWAYS hated glasses, but came to accept the fact that I was doomed, as both of my parents have had glasses forever (My dad since he was 3!). I put off getting contacts because more than I hated glasses, I hated things in or near my eyes. However, I LOVED to swim. I’d swim all day and night if I were allowed to. The summer before high school I joined the high school swim team, and wearing glasses became a major problem. Either I got contacts, or I spent the next 4+ years cracking my head into the concrete pool wall instead of doing flip turns. A few dents in my head later, I was at the ophthalmologist asking for contacts. It took me two freaking hours to get the first one in. But once they were in I loved them. I completely ignored the doctor’s instructions to wear them for two weeks and then throw them out and start a new pair. I would wear them for 3 or 4 months (day AND night!) before I switched pairs. I couldn’t see the point in throwing out perfectly good contacts if they weren’t irritating my eyes, so I wore them until they bothered me. I almost forgot I had contacts, except when my goggles would leak, and the water would cause one to flip into my brain. Other than that, I wore them non-stop with no problems. As much as I loved my contacts, I always hated having to wear them. I wanted to get LASIK since I found out about it. Sadly, my ophthalmologist said it wasn’t even something I could consider until my prescription stayed the same for a minimum of 2 years. Since I was having to get a new prescription every 10-12 months, 2 years seemed like an eternity. Then in 2004, my doctor decided that he wanted to change the type of contacts I was wearing, because they made my eyes red. They were still super comfortable, and I had no problems with them, but he felt I needed something else. I thought that since he only saw me in the evening, after I’d had a full day of work and school, it was more likely that I was tired but I still agreed to try a new brand. After all, he should know best, right? It’s now 2008 and I’ve had nothing but trouble with contacts for the last 4 years. I went through 6 different brands of contacts with that doctor, and none worked. They’d make my eyes itchy or dry or cause a horrible film to cover my contacts. It got to the point where I could only wear my contacts for 7 to 8 hours, before I wanted to rip them out of my head. Last January I finally gave up and went to an ophthalmologist near where I live now. She’s AMAZING. She immediately gave me trial contacts for 3 different brands, and promised not to charge me for anything until I found some that didn’t make my life miserable. After 5 brands, I found some that I could tolerate for two weeks at a time. I was incredibly upset that I couldn’t wear them for longer, but glad to finally have something that would work at all. Sadly, last November those same contacts started causing me problems after about 2 days. It was infuriating. But I was too busy to get back in to see the doctor, so I just started wearing my glasses all the time. I HATE them. Not the look of them, since they’re pretty cute, but the need to wear them. You have no peripheral vision. You get dust, dirt, spots, and sweat on them constantly. I can’t see anything without them. Nothing. I wake up in the middle of the night, and have to half pull myself out of bed to read the clock. My vision is clear until about 5 inches from my face. Then it’s all just colored blurs. In summary, my vision sucks. And for almost 5 straight months, I’ve worn nothing but glasses, which has not made me a happy camper. However! There is a happy ending to this extremely long, and probably boring-as-hell story! Wearing the glasses after having contact trouble for so long actually gave my eyes a chance to relax. They got so relaxed that they got BETTER! Can you believe that? For the first time in my entire life, my eyes changed prescriptions for the better. Better than that? My doctor says that I’m a candidate for LASIK. NOW. Not in two more years. Not even in two more months. I could do it tomorrow if I had the money. She says that the idea of having two years of steady prescription is outdated, and that one year of improved vision is perfectly acceptable. I have an appointment on Tuesday to meet with the LASIK counselor and ask all my questions. And most importantly, find out how much it is. I’ve heard anywhere from $400 an eye to $2000 an eye. Obviously I’d prefer the former, but I’m going into this with the assumption that the latter is more accurate. Hopefully, they have a kickass payment plan I can take advantage of, or I somehow manage to hit the lottery soon. This time I’m hoping for the latter. My sister is a special education teacher at a low income school in Orange County. She currently teaches a 1st through 3rd grade class for children with Autism. It’s a hellacious job, and one that she loves very very much. Anyone who talks with her for more than 5 minutes can see how much she loves her kids and her job, even when she’s had a bad day. She’s been punched, grabbed, pushed, scratched, kicked, bitten, had hair ripped out, chairs & toys thrown at her, and she still goes back with a smile on her face. I used to say I didn’t know anyone who loves their job as much as I love mine. All that changed when Jen started teaching. Now I have to say I’ve never met anyone who loves their job as much as she loves hers. And she’s phenomenal at it. She’s only in her second year of teaching, and was already given an award for being an outstanding teacher, not just in her district, but in the multiple districts in the Greater Anaheim area. When one of the other teachers in her program left last year, Jen took on the responsibility of overseeing the other class, in addition to teaching her own. She was essentially teaching two classes, for the salary of one. And though she was stressed out, she hardly complained. When general education teachers have behavioral problems in their classes that they can’t handle, they come see Jen for help. She’s amazing, and I couldn’t possibly be more proud of her. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for those children including spending thousands of her own dollars to help supply her classroom with the toys and activities that her students need to learn. The school provides them with the necessities, but nothing close to what they actually need. She stumbled on this program that helps provide funding for activities in different classrooms. It’s a way for people to donate money to a very specific project or classroom, as opposed to making a general donation and hoping the money goes to the right people. DonorsChoose.org is a national program, and not something specific to Orange County. Any teacher can participate, and donors can search by subject, state, school district, school, or by any keyword. I won’t regurgitate all of the information about the program, as it can be found on the site. I will, however, put in a plug for my sister’s project, and ask you all to at least take a look at it. If you have the money to donate to Jen’s class, great! If you prefer to donate to a classroom or teacher closer to you, great! If you just want to take a look or pass the information along to a teacher who could use it, that’s great too! There’s no pressure here. It’s a great program, and I just want to help get the word out. I’ve never made a secret of how much I love going to concerts or the theater. I like plays, dance productions, comedians, or musical acts. I’m not ashamed of it. If I could afford it, I’d go to the theater all the time. And it doesn’t have to be a big fancy theater presenting a big fancy production either. It can be a little theater with a little production, and I’m just as happy. But I have discovered that I like mainstream theater more than things that are a bit different. Friday night my mom and I went to the Cerritos Center for Performing Arts to see Axis Dance Company. I was thinking it would be your typical dance production. It was. And it wasn’t. I thought it would be different musical numbers with dancers showcasing their talents. I did not think it would include people in wheelchairs, or with prosthetic limbs. That part was a surprise. Now, before someone says I’m being discriminatory or mean or whatever, let me clarify. I have NO problem with differently abled people. None. I don’t feel uncomfortable around them. I don’t avoid them. I don’t think they are less of a person because they are different than I am. I just was surprised to see them in a dance company. The program called the company a "bridge between Contemporary and physically integrated dance." I’m not sure if I would have said that, but that’s how they like to describe themselves. The dancers consisted of 2 able-bodied women, 2 women in electric wheelchairs, 2 men and 1 woman in manual wheelchairs, and 1 woman with amputated fingers and legs (below the knee) who used different prosthetics throughout the performance. It was..different. The people in the wheelchairs looked fairly graceful as they twirled around the stage. But it wasn’t synchronized dance. It was a little bit of everyone doing something different. Sometimes they did things together, sometimes it looked like a free for all. The able bodied women would spin and leap around the stage, sometimes riding on the back of a wheelchair. My favorite part was when one of the men tipped his wheelchair on the side, and one of the women spun on the wheel that was facing the ceiling. That part was acrobatic and cool. The rest of it was a little like watching an interpretive dance, and not having a clue as to what was being said. It wasn’t bad, per say, just not my cup of tea. Or maybe because I expected something else, I didn’t have time to adjust to something this new and creative. Maybe if I knew that it was going to be a mixed ability production, my expectations would have been different (not lower, just for the record). Or maybe I’m just a mainstream kind of gal. I know I said I wouldn’t gripe much about work, but I need some assurance that I’m not completely in the wrong here. (Or, if I am, I need one of you to let me know.). The boss does a Costco trip every few months and stocks our kitchen with lots of coffee, chips, cookies, crackers, soda, and other snack items. In exchange, we have to drop in 50 cents every time we take something, just to help offset the cost. The exception to the 50 cent rule is coffee. Coffee is supplied for free. I hate coffee with a passion. I don’t like the smell, the taste, or even the look. It’s gross. I also get a little bitter that coffee drinkers get free coffee, but as a soda drinker, I have to pay. It’s not such a big deal that I bitch about it constantly (especially since I haven’t had soda since March 4th) but it’s the principle of it that makes me a little mad. So, since we have this big fancy kitchen, we each have to take turns cleaning it. We have a schedule of when this is to be done, and what should be done. Wiping down counters, running the dishwasher, cleaning out the coffeemaker, and refilling the fridge with soda. Seems fairly easy right? Except NO ONE ever refills the fridge. Every freaking time I have to clean the kitchen, I have to dump their old coffee, wash out their coffee pot, and rinse out their filter (a great big EWW on that one, by the way) and yet none of the coffee drinkers can ever get their lazy asses to refill the fridge. Even the ones that drink the soda!! I mean, if everyone fills it every day, it should only take a couple seconds. I filled it on my assigned last day before surgery (March 12th or 13th or so). When I went to fill it last Wednesday (April 16th), my first time on kitchen duty since I came back to work, there was no soda in the fridge. None. No one had filled it in a month. I was furious. I know I’m not the only one who drinks soda here (and I don’t even drink it anymore!) so you’d think that someone else would notice it’s empty. Either they didn’t notice, or they noticed and didn’t care. But I think they noticed and didn’t care, as I saw several of them drinking soda after I’d refilled the fridge. So my complaint is this: Why should I follow the rules and be forced to clean up after coffee drinkers, if they’re not going to do follow the rules and restock the soda? I mean, it’s not like I ask them to rinse out my cans and throw them in the recycle bin. I just ask that they refill the fridge. ESPECIALLY if they’re removing soda from the fridge!
I’ve been thinking about copying Dooce and doing a Daily Mia section of this blog. I have a million pictures of her, and it would be nice to share them with everyone. However, as I look through all the pictures, I notice something. My dog doesn’t do anything. In every picture she’s either sitting and looking cute, or laying down and looking cute. I can never get a picture of her playing with her toys, or running around outside. It’s almost like she’s camera shy. She was chewing on a water bottle last night (her FAVORITE thing to do) and I crept over to my camera to take a shot of her. Almost like she has a 6th sense she dropped the bottle, jumped up on to the couch and put her head down before I could get the lens cap off the camera. I swear she’s an active dog! I just have no pictures to prove it. …compliments of two of the funniest
It won’t make sense to anyone who wasn’t there last night. But it was one of the most entertaining nights of my entire life. Thanks you three! Yesterday was my follow up appointment at UCLA. It lasted 45 seconds, I kid you not. I got there 20 minutes early and was called into the room 15 minutes before my appointment. I waited approximately 3 minutes for my surgeon to come in. He took a look at my incisions, answered a couple questions I had on some pain in my stomach (totally normal), and it was over. I literally said to him "I drove all the way up here (60+ miles) for that?" It’s a legal thing, apparently. They have to see me at least once after surgery to make sure I’m alright. And I am! I’m clear to resume life normally. I thought it would be more blood & urine testing, weight, height, blood pressure, etc. Nope! Just a quick glance, a couple questions and I’m out! Thank you drive through! I can’t lift anything over 10 pounds for another week (which is fine by me, since it hurts to do so). I can start bowling again on May 2, and I CANNOT WAIT! I hung out at the bowling alley with my team last night, and I was DYING to bowl with them. Of course, my stomach was hurting halfway through the evening, not from bowling, but from laughing too hard. They’re hilarious. I’d gone to the alley to visit them a week after surgery, and while they were still funny, I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t appreciate the funny appropriately. Last week I was feeling crappy, so I didn’t even bother to go down and visit. But this week I realized how much I missed them. Trying to bowl while laughing is going to be painful, but worth every second of it. Jas comes home on Monday, which means I should be cleaning the house in anticipation of his arrival. A feat I’m obviously not accomplishing, as I’m sitting on the computer writing this post. The house doesn’t look TOO bad, but it could use some work. I’m still hoping that if I wish hard enough, little house cleaning elves will show up and handle it for me. Think that’ll happen? Last Monday (the 31st) I tried going back to work. I made it about 2 hours before I had to go back home. The drive to work was excruciating (the seat belt nearly killed me), and then the bending, standing, sitting, standing, walking, sitting, standing routine was more than I could take. I was in a lot of pain when I got back into the car to go home. Then some idiot decides that he doesn’t actually want to exit the freeway even though he’s in the exit lane, so he swerves in front of me, causing me to slam on my brakes, and the seat belt to yank on my stomach. Oh my hell, the PAIN. I had to pull on to the shoulder because I was crying so hard. It was awful. I went home and just laid on the couch for the rest of the day. This past Monday I tried going to work again, with much better luck. Driving is still uncomfortable, but tolerable. And the difference in the amount of pain between last week and this week is amazing. Last week sitting and standing was still hurting me. This week I can sit and stand and sit and stand repeatedly before it even starts to bother me. Sitting for long periods of time hurts a little, since the swelling in my lower abdomen pushes on the incision, but it’s nothing that I can’t handle. The worst post-surgery effect I’m having is my lack of energy. I’m so freaking tired all the time. And yet, as I mentioned, I am having trouble sleeping. Yesterday I left work about 4:45 because I was starting to nod off at my desk. I came home and planned to take a 1 hour nap (so as not to disrupt my already precarious sleep schedule). I set my alarm and promptly fell asleep. And proceeded to sleep right through the alarm for another 45 minutes. So when I went to bed last night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I took a pill about 3am, and that made me fall asleep (even a I cursed myself for needing the pill). Today was a little better. I felt sleepy around 2pm, but managed to stay at work until 6 (even though I was laying on the couch at work reading for the last half hour, while the computers did their updating). But then I came home, showered, and fell asleep again. So I guess my problem is not so much NOT sleeping, but not sleeping when I should be sleeping, and sleeping when I shouldn’t be. (For the record, that made perfect sense in my head). Jas called tonight and I got to chat with him for a while. I’m hoping the contact will settle me enough to where I can sleep pill free tonight. I don’t miss him as much as I thought I would (I’ll qualify that in a second), but it was really nice to get to talk to him for a while, and not just be connected by text messages. I love Jas, but sometimes we just need a break from each other, and this yearly trip of his is the perfect time for that. I like coming home to a quiet and clean house. I like being able to read my book, and not have someone turn on the television in the same room (when there’s a perfectly good TV in the other room that no one is sitting in). I like watching Jon & Kate Plus 8 without someone constantly complaining about what a bitch she is, therefore drowning out the show. I like watching Big Brother and not getting mocked about my horrible choice of reality TV. I like not being upset that the person who has only works 4 hours that day hasn’t bothered to take out the trash, but has in fact left that, the laundry, the dishes, and various other chores to the person who works 10+ hours a day. This break from each other is like a relationship reboot. It gives us both time to appreciate the good things about each other. I’ve complained on multiple occasions about Jason’s sleeping habits. He flips, he flops, he snores badly, he takes up 80% of the bed, he hits me in the face (unknowingly, of course). Sleeping next to him can be quite the unpleasant experience sometimes. So you’d think I’d be able to sleep like a rock when he’s not there to hit or push or snore in my ear, right? Ummm. No. Jas left for Washington D.C. on Thursday night, and I haven’t had a solid night of sleep since. Thursday night I fell asleep around midnight, but woke up at 1, 2:10, 3, 4:45, 7:30, and finally got out of bed at 8. Friday night was much worse. I couldn’t fall asleep at all. I tried reading, a hot shower (can’t take a bath until the stitches are all healed solid), watching TV, counting ducks (as opposed to sheep), and listening to my stress relief play list on my ipod. I don’t know why I couldn’t sleep. I have no real stress. I’ve been off work for 3 weeks, I knew Jas was ok getting to DC, because he texted me to let me know he landed safe (I have a fear of flying that has increased into a fear of HIM flying too). I hadn’t had any soda, or chocolate, or anything else containing caffeine. It wasn’t like the nights where I can’t get my brain to shut off. Things were pretty quiet up there for a change (yes, yes wide open door for sarcasm right there. I know.). The last time I looked at the clock, it was just past 5am on SATURDAY morning. That’s just insane to me. Thankfully, I slept in until noon (One of the But now it’s 2:30am on Sunday morning, and I’m wide awake again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, or why my schedule is so whacked out. I hate HATE the thought of taking something to help me sleep, but I can’t keep doing this. I have to start work again on Monday, and I can’t be staying up all night, and then sleeping through the morning. Part of me wants to take one of the prescription pain pills, because it makes me sleepy. But I don’t want to get in the habit of needing drugs to help me sleep. I’m trying to rationalize it by saying that the pill will help me get my body back on track if I just take it one night. However, I know that I’m just rationalizing it, and it pisses me off. So I ask you, dear internet, for your words of wisdom. What have you tried that helps you sleep when it feels like sleep will never come? What worked? What didn’t? Guide me, oh wise ones, because I really think I’m going to lose my mind if this happens for the entire 2 weeks that Jas is gone. |
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