Aieee!

I'm having that old issue with my eye again. It hurts. I've tried all the drops and that stuff; all that remains is to close it and keep it closed. It's going to be a long evening.

Tomorrow is my last day with my lovely library assistant, and graduation at night. So that's a long day. I'll miss her, but really, she was just what I needed when I needed it to get my old mojo back (if that's using mojo correctly.) I do hope she gets the job she's interviewed for a couple of times. She's good, and she deserves a nice job.

So my sister activated texting on her phone yesterday, but she can't upgrade to the phone with a keyboard for another few weeks. She's developed her own punctuation system, since she can't seem to manage punctuation on the keyboard she's got, and she can't go without. I'll bet it's killing her not to punctuate and capitalize, but so far, she's sent me some very cute messages, with lots of xxxxx's in them. She uses an x to stand in for other things, one x for a comma, two xx's for a period, and so forth, and she also ends each message with xoxoxoxo. It's like reading a secret code.

In other news, no summer yet to speak of in New Jersey. It's very, very strange.

Okay, I'm going to goop up my eye now with ointment, which will be like wearing glasses with vaseline smeared all over one of the lenses. Mmm boy.



watching THE GOLDEN GIRLS :: ENTRY #2072
READING: ----- by -----

VaCa Day 1

An ordinary start to a vacation, I suppose, nothing bad, nothing much. Oh, it is Valentine's Day, so the Hubs gave me yet another plant-thing, since he now takes it as a personal challenge to give me a plant every Valentine's Day and keep it alive as long as he can despite my occasional presence near it. This year, a dish garden of herbs, which he will plant outside in the spring. I gave him an argyle sweater vest. It's not a big deal to me, Valentine's Day, and not really to him, either.

I slept until 9:40 and took a nap from 1:00 to 2:30 and I'm still exhausted. Not bummed or anything, just dragging. And I had a wonderful breakfast of bagel and lox, which I have not had in some time, and ooh yum, lox. On cream cheese, of course. Ooh yum.

R and the GF are away for a few days, so K and I went over to feed the grandcat a little while ago, and will go tomorrow as part of our normal Sunday Target run. Monday morning I'm having that CAT scan of my liver, and then I'll go feed the little on myself, and then her mommy will be home.

The best news of my day is that my eyes are much, much better today, which means whatever I'm doing to them is right. (What I'm doing is a warm compress at night, followed by eyelid scrubbing, and anti-biotic drops twice a day, plus lubricant drops or gel whenever I need them. But I haven't needed them today.) This is not the inflammatory thing acting up (which is episcleritis), but just your routine blepharitis, which my father had too and which is very common. I didn't realize that what I've been calling allergies for years was probably allergy-triggered blepharitis, so knowing what to do for it now is very good. It means I'll be able to get back to some reading soon, I hope.

Oh! Listen to what I did last night: I had POPCORN! I have not had popcorn in many a year, but you know, the Resnick says I should eat whatever I want and see what happens, and I've been eating some walnuts and almonds in small amounts over the last few weeks with no ill effects. So last night, in my normal semi-awake state (I really am awake, I just don't want to be) and searching for food, I popped a little bag of K's popcorn and I ATE IT ALL and I am not in the Emergency Room yet, so thumbs up for me! Tomorrow, I may pick up a box of popcorn without butter, as I prefer to put on my own or have without, and then I can try it once or twice a week. Just like a grownup!

The Chinese food is on its way. I'm going to go juggle the cars so that when the Hubs gets back with it he can park my car for the night.


LOVE, ACTUALLY :: ENTRY #1988
READING: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

School starts two weeks from today!

I think I'm actually okay with that, though. I'll know better after I talk it out in therapy tomorrow morning. Heh heh.

My big adventure today was the glasses thing, which went well everywhere, but it might be two weeks before my new lenses come in. That whole glasses-in-one-hour thing apparently does not apply to freaks like me. My distance rx, says the doctor, is as good as it's gonna get. Why is it still a little fuzzy? Oh, that's the cataracts. Cool.

She says, btw, that everyone gets cataracts, they just don't interfere with everybody's vision. She says I could get the surgery now -- I won't -- but that you no longer have to wait until your cataracts are "ripe." I figure I can wait it out, since it's really not a problem now, and by the time I'm ready to do it, technology can only improve, and I'll have some better options.

Nothing of substance really going on, then. Although for no particular reason today, I really really really want to get a dog. For a change. Ah well.


WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1836
SUMMER BOOK #7: Can't Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg

On the Crazy Scale: 2 Out of 10

All in all, a pretty good day. In fact, on the way home from the eye doctor, I cranked up the radio so loud that I could feel the car vibrating through my feet on the floor, and sang along loud, first to "Woodstock", and then to "I Love the Nightlife". I know it's a coincidence because no anti-depressant works that fast, but it was very nice. Although now I have to do some eyelid-washing routine every day because my eyelashes will otherwise fall out. Or something. Whatever.

K, who is getting up at the crack of very early tomorrow to go get on line for an iPhone, finally got her student teaching assignment today, this afternoon in fact, while I was at the eye doctor. Without going into a lot of detail, which we don't have completely confirmed yet anyway, it appears that she is going to one of the county magnet schools, essentially, a county gifted-and-talented program. Oh ho. I didn't even know that these schools took student teachers, but if it turns out to be what it appears to be, this is an exceptionally plum assignment. I must call The Other Chai tomorrow, who knows a lot of county people and also teaches in K's field -- social studies -- because she may know the two teachers K will be working with.

So we got R at the airport last night, the Hubs and I, which was not the scene of devastation I feared but actually quite pleasant. The airlines are all insane, as we know, but fortunately, Newark Airport's three terminals are arranged around a loop of road, so if you get to Terminal A and there is no R yet, you can just keep on driving, pass Terminals B and C, and come right back to A, and if you do this three or four or nine times, sooner or later, the kid will be waiting for you at the curb. Didn't get home until 11:30, and not to sleep for at least another hour, but I sure slept well.

Okay, gonna see if I can reach the Sibs on her Colorado adventure.


WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1802
SUMMER BOOK #3: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

Memory Not So Much Serving

[copied from dland]

I forgot to tell you part of the story last night.

So, K says, after we're in the house and I'm all cleaned up, she says "You know, you probably tripped on your crocs."

Well, I suppose this is a possibility, but one I'm going to ignore because I'm going to wear crocs every day of my life from now on unless it's snowing or raining or I have to go to a wedding. I told her that it was probably because of my bad balance, and that I often feel like I'm about to fall when I'm just walking, and really, it's amazing that I don't fall more than I do. Which is all true.

But I think, not why I tripped on the front steps last night. Here's why I tripped. I didn't want to tell her.

I think it was because I couldn't see clearly. About twenty minutes before we'd left the house -- before we'd even decided to go get Wendy's -- I put some ointment in my eye. Ointment in my eye is a real good thing/bad thing to do. About 90% of the time, it resolves the pain and dryness in my eye instantly. But it also creates the illusion that I've just smeared vaseline over the right lens of my glasses. Sometimes this effect is more pronounced than other times; sometimes it's harder or easier to deal with. Last night the ointment settled in a particular part of my eye that seemed to make it affect my depth perception.

Yes. And then I went out and drove a car.

Now, I drive like this all the time. I try to avoid it; for example, if I need it in the morning, I try to wait until I get to school to put it in. I did that today. (And then it turned out I had to go run an errand in my car during first period.) Most of the time, it just makes my eye blurry for things close up, which makes reading and using the computer problematic. Driving is rarely a problem, because everything I need to see is outside of the blurry range. But last night, on my way to Wendy's, I realized that I wasn't able to judge accurately how far away a car was that was coming in my direction. I don't mean cars right near me; I was turning right onto a street and there were cars coming from my left from what seemed to be very far away, but I couldn't really tell how close they were, so I waited for all of them to pass before I turned. Like that.

I think that when I got home, my faulty depth perception caused me to put my foot down in the wrong place on the step, which is what made me fall. Maybe it was the crocs. Maybe it's the age. (Just kidding.) But I think it was my eyes.

So in the name of full disclosure, there you are.

In other news, this is the second Thursday in a row that I woke up convinced that it was Friday, and I can't shake it all day. Once again, I turned off my alarm for the weekend after it went off, and then had to turn it back on for tomorrow. At school, I kept asking the SCM about a certain class coming in, according to my schedule, and each class I asked him about, he had to say No, that's tomorrow. It's Thursday. Every time I remember that I still have to come to work tomorrow, I feel sad.

I'm walking in the morning and listening to the podcasts, which I'm enjoying. So far, I've been listening to Podictionary, which is about word origins, and Grammar Girl, which is about ... duh; thank you to bluesleepy, who suggested Grammar Girl. It's very nice; I walk for 15 to 20 minutes and that's a good minimum goal to strive for, I think. The scale is inching down veeeerrryyy slllllooooooowwwwlllyyyy, but at least it's moving in the right direction. With a little luck and fingers crossed, I may reach my first ten-pounds-lost goal this weekend.

Speaking of which, I am in a jeans quandary. As I've said before, I have jeans in four sizes, which I call small, medium, large, and extra-large. (The actual sizes have numbers, which I am not disclosing.) I am never buying a size larger than the extra-large, which is what I'm wearing now and what I've been wearing since last summer. (I had to buy new ones then, because I had gotten rid of all my extra-large jeans when I lost the weight four years ago.) Now, I do not ever expect to wear the small jeans again; that size was ridiculous, and I'm sure I will never see that low a weight again. But here's my quandary.

I originally had to jump into the extra-large when I gained the weight before I started WW the first time, four years ago, and then as I lost, I kept moving down sizes. That original high weight was ten pounds less than I weigh now, so, 20 pounds less than what I weighed in January, before I started WW again. I'm still wearing the XL, but they're starting to feel loose on me. Not on the waist, where I will probably carry all my weight for as long as I live, but everywhere else, they're a little baggy. But how can I go down a size when I still weigh more than I did when I moved up to this size? I think the L ones would fit, although they'd be as snug around the waist as the XLs were for a long time. (And still are, a little bit.) Oy.

You know what I'd like to do? Re-boot my body and start over. Can I do that?

Turns out that there is a little problem with the hearing aid that the audiologist is looking into, but until there's a cure, the easy fix is to turn it off and essentially re-boot it. Perhaps a dozen times a day. It's really not a big deal, since I don't even have to take it out and it takes all of ten seconds to do it, but it is odd.

Our new library is at the end of a long hallway that is otherwise populated by science classes. The two classrooms closest to us are English/Social Studies, but the rest of them are science. Off and on for the last week, the biology teachers have been doing some experiment which required the kids to run up and down the hall as fast as they can. (Then, presumably, they go back into their classroom and measure something or other, blood pressure, perhaps.) What this means for us is intermittent pounding, like a herd of wildebeests approaching, and the occasional sweetie pie who thinks it's appropriate to end his run by grabbing the top of the library doorway and swinging in, like Tarzan.

At one point today, I stood in the hallway about three feet in front of the library door, just to see if they would stop and turn around farther back, and they did, of course. No one wants to run down an old lady.

Just before the end of the second to last period of the day, I heard the pounding and turned towards the door; I think I'd finally had it and was going to get up and say something, but it was the English teacher, who started to laugh and laugh when she saw my face! And so I did too, of course. She had just pounded down about ten feet from her classroom door, just to see what I would do. It was pretty funny, actually; the noise has been bothering her too all this time, and some of her kids have been doing quiet reading, either in her room or in the library, but it hasn't been very quiet for them.

Well, it's just after 5.00 now, and K should be home from work any minute. She worked a double shift today, so that's a long day on her feet. We've been very good about not eating out this week -- well, I have; she had the infamous Wendy's last night -- so maybe it's a good night for it. I haven't had any fish this week yet, so it's time for that, too. It's either that or Night #3 for the Shepard's Pie, and that's pushing it, even for me.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1409