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26November | part of a larger list
Reason #72 I love my boyfriend: He lets me borrow his backpack when he's not home. Reason #73 I love my boyfriend: I find this assortment of things in the front pocket:
Me: Why do you need so many bouncy balls? Brian: So I can throw them in parking lots. Makes sense I guess!
19November | my plea, continued
Sorry for the week lag in between. Last week at work was pretty crazy and my brain was pretty much shut down when I wasn't in the office. I went back to the eye doc that Tuesday and he told me that my eyes were still inflamed. Not the same as an infection, but still inflamed. I got another dose of antibiotic drops and was still relegated to my glasses for another week. I braved it through and my eyes were feeling better through the weekend... I went back to the doc again for another check up the next Tuesday (so at this point this is the third weekly appointment in a row) and he cleared me for contacts. Yay! I decided to wait until the next day to put them in. And it's a good thing I waited because come Tuesday afternoon, my eyes started to water and swell up YET AGAIN. After some differential thinking (a la House, M.D.) I deduced that it must be the air in the office that was causing the irritation, because I felt fine on the weekends and when I went home from work, and the discomfort always flared up again at the beginning of the workweek. I moved to a temporary office for the rest of the week and my eyes felt much better - though still sore and probably mad at me for putting them through so much back and forth. Then Friday morning I went back to the eye doc AGAIN (twice in a week!) because I felt that I needed another round of antibiotics. I was right. He gave me another bottle, and a note requesting that I be moved to a different floor at work. The different floor didn't happen but I was put in another temporary office closer to my team, and we got an air purifier for the office. Finally, my eyes cleared up and for the first time in an entire month my eyes felt completely normal and comfortable. I went back for one final checkup a week later and passed with flying colors! I could wear contacts again! This was a little over a week ago. I'm still feeling fine - but I'm no longer going to be sitting in my temporary office. It's been requested that I return to my cube with the air purifier to see 'how things go' so as to avoid any semblance of undue hierarchy within the support team. I won't elaborate on the office politics here - but that's the reason I'm going back there. I hope my eyes will be fine. I've experienced periods of ocular discomfort before, but it's never been this serious or dragged out this long. The amount of time I spent feeling unable to function at my full potential, or crying despite the fact that it only increased my irritation, or surrendering myself to other people because my vision was so impaired - really made me feel completely helpless. I spent almost $200 in doctor co-pays and eyedrops in the span of a month and had to ask my superiors to make concessions for me multiple times - something that I never feel comfortable doing. The month I spent with my infection frightened me in a way that not many health issues have before - it changed my mood, my social energy, my functionality at work. It occupied my thoughts and drained my energy and I realized how much of a disability my vision really is. I can still wear contact lenses for now, and I will always have the option of glasses, but even wearing such highly prescriptive lenses handicaps me. My subject line about Lasik was a joke - but only partly so. I think about all the money that I spend on my vision yearly without incidentals like this infection, and then after I factor in all of the emotional grief that comes from the infections and I really feel that dropping a load of money on Lasik should actually be worth it. Don't you?
11November | a plea for anonymous benefactors of free lasik
Readers - you may or may not know that I have been wearing glasses since I was four years old. That's right - my eyes have not been the perfect orbs they should be for almost 21 years. I don't know what it's like to wake up and see my surroundings clearly, and I imagine that if that were to ever happen again, I would probably freak out every morning for a good two to three month long grace period. If I had digital pictures of me and my glasseshood, I would most certainly post them. Unfortunately, I do not. Perhaps when I am home for Thanksgiving I'll make a point to scan them in and share. I will say that when I was about six years old, I had the fantastic idea that I wanted tinted lenses. That's right. I walked around looking like a miniature, Chinese-girl version of an old man with cataracts. I'll make sure to scan a picture of that time period, if nothing else. When I was in seventh grade, my older brother (who had been wearing glasses for about as long as I had) had had contacts for about a year and I decided it was time to be done with coke bottle glasses and having to tilt my head at an awkwardly unnatural angle for school photos to avoid a glare. (Again... will try to scan one of those as well.) So off I went to the eye doctor for a fitting. When my first pair of lenses came in, I sat in the vanity of the eye doctor and spent the better part of an afternoon trying to put the first one in my eye. I must have spent about two hours there... and still couldn't bring myself to make contact with my eye. I had something else to do that afternoon - piano lesson, probably - so I had to leave, have my lesson, and come back to keep trying. Bless those eye doctor nurses and their patience! Oh, and my mother who then had to deal with my eye-touching fears for the next couple weeks or so before I became accustomed to just popping them in and out. Fast forward to college. I've been wearing my contacts, happy as a clam to join the ranks of non-visually impaired society (ostensibly, of course... at night was when my terrible secret - THE GLASSES - emerged). However, over the years my vision has continued to deteriorate, and it is more and more difficult to keep up with the ever-advancing technology of short-term wear contacts. Whereas people have graduated to such craziness as two-week contacts, daily contacts, OVERNIGHT CONTACTS... I am still wearing the same pair for an entire year and using all sorts of wacky cleaners to eliminate protein deposits. Come summer after senior year in college. I am working at CTY (aka nerd camp). A couple weeks in, my eyes start itching and watering, and my contacts don't stay in place for more than a couple hours. They start sticking to my eyelids. I go without contacts for a little while, but this is apparently the hottest, most humid summer ever in the history of man, which means that my glasses keep sliding down my face a la Super Nerd style. But I can't bring myself to wear the contacts because of the excruciating pain they cause my eyes. Finally, I get home from nerd camp and go to the eye doctor. Turns out that I'm allergic to protein deposits!!! Isn't that FANTASTIC?! The doc gives me antibiotic drops and after two weeks I'm good to go. He also finds a contact lens manufacturer who will make three-month contacts in my ridiculously high prescription. (Think I'm exaggerating? My left eye is -10.25 and my right is -11.25. Yes. When it comes to the Whose Vision is Worse game, I always win, suckers.) This is all well and good. While most other contact-wearers have long done away with any sort of cleaner (they've gone so far as to make 'no-rub' solution!!!) I still have two cleaners. And you better believe I rub. All in the name of doing away with those pesky protein deposits. Since then, every summer my eyes still freak out, mostly because of humidity which I guess increases the production of protein, and I have to go without contacts for a couple weeks. Sometimes I need more drops from the doctor. Fine, fine. During those weeks I always bemoan my terrible vision, and stare at other people's ail-free eyes with the deepest envy. But then it's fixed and I continue on my way. HOWEVER. Then came this past October. October 9th, it was - I'm at work and my eye starts itching. No big deal, right? WRONG. It starts to cloud over and water like crazy, and I can no longer concentrate on work. So I go home sick and take a three-hour nap. When I wake up, my right eye is swollen and still watering. Ack! What?! Then the next morning, so swollen I can barely open it. I call in sick and sleep for most of the day. Not because I'm necessarily tired, but what else am I going to do if I can't use my eyes? The next day I feel a little better. Off to work, and then home for the weekend. My eyes still water intermittently, but they aren't swollen anymore and I feel confident that this is just going to fade away. WELL I AM WRONG because I wake up Monday morning and my eyes seem to be leaking a thick, sticky puslike fluid. I go to work anyway. By about 2:00 my eyes are so red they're almost purple, and swollen, and definitely emitting a gross discharge. I go cry in my manager's office. Everyone in my department gives me the number of their eye doctor... Becca (lifesaver!) calls her doctor and makes an appointment while pretending to be me. That night I nearly cry myself to sleep... and when I wake up in the morning and open my eyes, they don't open. They are crusted over with dried pus. I never thought I would actually experience this, but I had to pick my eyes open. It was fantastic. Then I had to take a 45 minute subway ride to the eye doctor, during which I kept my eyes closed so no one would look at my purple eyes and run screaming. When I got there, I had to pick my eyes open once again. (Side note: my eyes are watering now just thinking about it) Turns out I have an eyelid infection. Well, DUH. Doc gives me really strong 'bacterial ocular infection' drops and sends me on my way. They work FANTASTICALLY. No more redness and no more discharge. Just chapped, peeling skin around my eyes from all the fluid that has been around them for the past week. I look diseased. Then I go up to New Hampshire for the weekend and my eyes are so happy they nearly sing. I even wear my contacts for a bit. I return home Monday, wake up Tuesday with ITCHY WATERY EYES AGAIN!!! What the heck?!?! -Oops. I have to run to brunch now. To be continued!! Are you in full suspense?!?!
09November | my biggest pet peeve ever
is when people label photos as '[friend's name] and i' because if it were just you in the photo, would the label be 'i'? if it were a photo of you a the taj mahal would it say no? then why would it be '[friend's name] and i at the taj mahal'? don't feel bad if you are guilty of this. (unless you suck in other ways in which case you do not get off free) because it really is the fault of the dumbing down of america in general.
09November | i've watched this at least 10 times
He's adorable!! Yet... oddly psychotic and perverted. Don't you think??
04November | a story about money
This past weekend I went up to Boston to meet Brian for the weekend - he lives about a 2 hour drive from there and it takes between 4-5 hours by bus or train from New York. Now... I guess in the grand scheme of things, 4-5 hours is not a long time to travel (especially for love... yeah, yeah) but it is when the cabin of the train and/or bus is blasting with heat and like 90 degrees or something. Anyway - I had planned to take the bus up and catch a ride back with Miin, but Friday morning Lauren emailed me to tell me that there was a tank spill on I-95 and the road was closed for the next 8 hours or something ridiculous like that. So, I'm thinking... after my 8-hour drive up to New Hampshire two weeks prior, there is no way I'm spending that long, potentially, on a bus. Also, Brian was picking me up at the bus station and I didn't want him to be waiting there indefinitely. So I bit the bullet and bought a freaking Amtrak ticket. Now - I don't understand why an Amtrak ticket is so expensive. The train is barely more comfortable or timely than a bus. And it was boiling in the cabin. I seriously thought I was going to burn up a fever. Anyway we had a very nice weekend involving a lively jaunt through Malden, MA (not so nice, but for a girl who lives on the same street as housing projects I think I'm ok), go kart racing at F1 Boston in Braintree (nicer than Malden), tons of pouring rain and gusting winds, New England Aquarium aka Karel faces her #3 phobia (aquatic animals), Boston Common, and Fire & Ice which I have finally decided is just too overpriced for the experience. Find me some authentic Mongolian BBQ instead please. We decided, though - that it really doesn't matter what it is that we do when we see each other. And that it would be really nice to find stuff that doesn't cost a buttload of money to do. It costs enough to travel so I think that should be where the bulk of the money is spent. This might be easier to remedy once I no longer live in New York... More on that later. It won't be soon, but it won't be too long from now either. I have to get my life in gear.
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