lasik, part one

I wasn't sure until the morning of surgery that I really was going to get lasik, because at my pre-op appointment two days before, I tested as needing an entire diopter of correction less than I had needed in October. 

It seems that some people with myopia will accept just about as much correction as they can get, and I am one of them. 

You know when they keep switching the lenses in front of your eyes and asking if 1 or 2 is better, or 3 or 4? Some of us nearsighted people will keep saying that a stronger prescription is better, even after we can see 20/20 with a weaker one. This is because, the doctor explained to me, the stronger prescription makes the shapes darker, and we mistake the darker shape for a clearer shape. 

So I brought in my contacts and glasses prescriptions from the last ten or 12 years, digging them all out of my wee little filing cabinet, and the doctor re-tested my eyes herself the morning of surgery, rather than having her assistant do it. "It's valuable information for me to know if something is darker or lighter, even if it isn't clearer," she said, "so just tell me what you see." 

I kept making her go back and forth, leaving each one for longer than usual, to make sure the prescription we came up with was exactly right. Lasik is a permanent change, after all, and if you do too much correction for nearsightedness, you might need reading glasses sooner. 

We settled on the same diopters as my contact lenses have been for a decade, and the middle of the astigmatism correction I've had. My astigmatism correction has, shall we say, fluctuated. Probably because, "which is better, 1 or 2? 3 or 4? 5 or 6?" always goes so very fast, and it feels like there should be a right answer, even through there isn't. There is only what is right for your eyes. So I've had a bunch of different astigmatism corrections - my glasses and contacts were not the same, even though they came out of the same eye exam - and they've all worked.

J. and I walked up the hill to the main hospital cafeteria and got some fish and chips. We took some photos on the deck overlooking the city, commemorating my last few hours in glasses.

After I checked in and paid crazy quantities of money ("your card isn't working," the lady said, but I looked at the machine and said, "It's a connection problem, not my card," and it eventually went through fine), I took the valium they had given me and went to the bathroom one more time. There were people in the lobby waiting for all kinds of eye surgery. A mother and grandmother waited for news of a child.

They called me back right at 1:45, and explained all the post-op procedures, which I promptly forgot. 

For every other surgery I've had, I've been half-asleep, even if I was talking. I can't remember any of them except a snippet of the wisdom teeth removal. But for this one, I was awake. You have to be awake so you can direct your eyeball. I remember it all.

This is where you should look away if eye surgery makes you squeamish.

.

.

.

The surgery takes place in two parts.

First, in a room with a big laser, they numb your eyes and put betadine in them. "I bet that would sting if my eyes weren't numb," I said, as the brown washed over my vision.

They cover one eye and move your chair so the other is directly under the machine. A round piece lowers onto your eye and suctions the middle up. Everything goes dark, but you try to look at a light. The laser does something that you can't really decipher, and when the machine moves, everything looks like you are looking through a foggy glass. 

What's just happened is that a laser has made a bunch of little air bubbles in your cornea (pulses of one quadrillionth of a second!), creating a flap at the front of your eye.

The second eye, the left, hurt more than the right. I felt like someone was pushing through my eye into my sinuses. Instant sinus headache. But that was the only real pain of the whole thing.

When both eyes had been air-bubbled, they had me stand up and walk into the other room, looking through the fog.

I lay down on a padded bench, and the assistant moved the knee rest under my knees. 

They put more numbing drops into my right eye and wedged it open with a little eye speculum. I looked up at a diffuse green light that pulsed. I could see the doctor working on my eye with a little tool that looked like what the dental hygienist uses to scrape your teeth, sharp on one end and folded like a spatula on the other, only the surgeon was gently lifting the flap that the first laser created. 

I had to look up at the green light, which sometimes disappeared for an instant and then came back red, and then green again. Red lights moved around the edges. I could smell burning eye. It only took 15 or 30 seconds before it was done, and the surgeon was patting down the flap, smoothing it into place and tamping down the edges. 

The longest part of the whole thing was waiting for the flap to re-adhere, it seemed. Finally they took out the eye speculum and let me blink, then re-checked with a bright white light to make sure it was smooth.

The surgeon and the assistants kept telling me how calm I was, which surprised me, because they seemed surprised, but who would flinch while someone has a sharp tool and/or a laser near their eye for surgery purposes? That would end badly.

Between eyes, I asked if they had any blankets. It was so cold in the room that I was struggling not to visibly shiver. I had even expected that and worn a warm fleece jacket, but it wasn't enough. Fortunately, they had pre-warmed blankets, and the second eye was much more pleasant just because I wasn't so cold.

After the second eye, they put a flexible sunglasses material mask on my face, rubber band around my head, handed me a stack of papers, and walked me out to J. 

It was 2:15. 

I tried to keep my eyes mostly closed, but I snuck peeks. At the first stoplight, I braved opening my eyes a little, and I could already see better than before the surgery.

When we got to the house, I deliberately walked into a telephone pole on video for posterity, and then I took a vic0din and went to sleep.

They had warned me that some people feel a sensation like red pepper in their eye after surgery. I was one of those people. By the time I got home, my eyes were burning. The vic0din fixed it, though, and it was gone by bedtime when the second vic0din wore off. 

Sometime after I went to sleep, I woke up and sat up, wondering what time it was. The alarm clock was across the bed, and I looked over at it and read the time perfectly clearly. It was 4:36. I never could read it from there before.

I tried not to get too excited, but I woke up in the middle of the night, since the pain pills had worn off and I'd been sleeping off and on since 3 pm, and laid in the dark with my dark mask still on, looking at the tree branches outside the window, silhouetted against the street light, and smiling to myself. I couldn't see those tree branches before.

The next morning, my vision was 20/15. 

glasses

"I love your glasses!" people keep saying to me, and I say, "Yeah, I like how they look, but I can't see through them at all." 

I started wearing them the day after we got back from Mexico. I made up my mind that the day we got back from Mexico would be the last day I wore contacts, and so when I took out my contacts after flying all day, I put the case in the cupboard in the bathroom and put my glasses case on the nightstand.

I have worn contacts for 21 years. 

I have worn them in the muck of a South Sudan rainy season, when I had to put them in before I could crawl out of my mosquito net, because I had to be able to see if there was a poisonous spider or snake in my gum boots. 

I have worn them in the dust of the desert in State of Happiness, where I had fine granules of blown-dry clay on my hands that I couldn't get rid of, so I had to blink the grit off my eye before I could see clearly.

I have worn them through the fine blown dirt of roads in Rwanda and Liberia and Kenya and Tanzania and Honduras and Cambodia, always finding a bottle of water to clean off my dirty hands first thing in the morning. 

I have kept them warm in my pocket in a freezing tent, put them cold into my eyes at 3 am after 5 hours of sleep before climbing a mountain, washed my hands with sanitizer before rinsing in water. 

I have put them burning into my eye when the hydrogen peroxide solution wasn't fully dissolved. 

For 21 years, I wore contacts an average of 365 days a year. I never had an eye infection, so I occasionally tried a pair of glasses - I got a pair in 2006, and one in 2016 - and wore them for half a day, or even a day, and then went back to contacts. 

T. used to laugh, because for many years I always had a bottle of the same kind of multi-purpose solution, the one from the store in the Mitten. 

Meanwhile, for 20 years, eye doctors have told me that I would get used to my glasses if I would just wear them more. If I just kept trying, if I wore them for a day or two or three, my eyes would adjust. The prescription was right; I just wasn't patient enough. 

This is a blatant lie. I've been wearing glasses for almost four weeks (tomorrow will be Day 28), and I am not used to them. 

I'm better at wearing them. I've figured out how to keep them clean. I've figured out how to look right through the middle if I need to see something clearly. 

I haven't figured out how to keep them from hurting the back of my ears, no matter how they are adjusted.

My phone isn't a rectangle when I look down at it. 

I feel dizzy when I walk down stairs - I can't quite tell where the steps are. 

I have to leave extra space in traffic, because I can't tell how far away the car in front of me is. 

When I take off my glasses and put them back on, I still feel disoriented and unsteady, even four weeks in. By the end of the day, my eyes ache from trying to find a way to see clearly and my head hurts from trying to make sense of what comes into my eyes. 

This whole month feels like a dream, fuzzy around the edges, because I couldn't really see what was happening. 

I have a list in the back of my journal, a countdown. I'm crossing off days. There are five of them left. Five days of glasses. SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesday. And only two of them involve staring at a computer. 

So close.

Next Thursday, I'm getting lasik. 

[3] business

I will freely admit that there are plenty of people in this world who love running their own business or for whom the upsides (flexibility on when you work, e.g.) outweigh the downsides (accounting, e.g.). 

I am not one of those people. 

I really admire those people, but I am not one of them, and I do not want to be one of them. 

 

Running a business makes me feel like the world is falling down around me. I do not want to run a business, I have never wanted to run a business, and I hate running a business. 

Periodically people who run a business try to convince me of how great it is. 

"You get to set your own hours!" they say. "You don't have a boss! You can make more money in the long run! You just have to sell yourself!"

I have to tell them to stop. I can't listen to this. 

They tend to push the issue, these business-running people. They want everyone to love it as much as they do.

I finally have to tell them that if they continue to push the issue, I am going to either leave or cry, because I hate running a business. The downsides far, far outweigh the upsides for me. I would rather be part of a team than have flexible working hours. I would rather make a steady salary than make a fortune. I would rather use my skills than sell them for money. I do not, in fact, like money very much. I don't want to have to think about it.

I really, truly hate running a business. It is a source of incredible stress. I have more admiration than ever for people who do it and do it well, but for me? It's probably the worst thing about my life right now (or a close second), and that is saying a lot.

suitcase

I am becoming an expert at living out of a suitcase. I've been doing it for seven months, after all.

Each time I move, the number of clothing items that I consider essential drops. When I first got back from the Mitten, I had a big suitcase and two little ones that all contained vital items. Now it's down to the two little ones. The big one is in the K.s' barn, full of things that I don't need to see again until winter hits. (I still have a bunch of dresses on hangers, though, of course. I lurve dresses.)

Two and a half months ago, I moved into this little sanctuary of an apartment. I needed some space to myself so very badly, and I found it here in this cozy studio facing west. 

I love it here, but my time is up. The actual renter of this apartment is returning, and I'm moving back into the K.s' spare room, because I have nowhere else to go and no money to pay for it. I could barely afford this place. I managed it, somehow, but I didn't complete enough projects in August, and so I haven't gotten paid in almost a month. I may not get paid for another month. (It is not enough to do the work, the way I am paid right now. I have to finish a chunk of work, and then I can bill. I hate it.)

When first I got into my car and drove toward the Mitten in February, it was my goal to be back in Gone West by this weekend, for the wedding I attended last night. 

When I turned my car around and drove back to Gone West, also in February, I could not have imagined that I would still be homeless six months later. I really couldn't. I thought something would come together, and I would have a job and a little apartment by now.

One of the attorneys I work with keeps telling me that the economy is terrible for this. It isn't me, he keeps telling me, it's the economy.

That may be true, but it's wearing on me.

There are some really, really good things in my life right now, but they aren't enough to stave off the constant anxiety about the bills I cannot pay.

cranky

I am feeling cranky.

There is no particular reason for me to feel cranky, except that it is almost the end of July and I feel like I haven't gotten a summer at all. *&*^^%%( cold summer.

That, and I met a friend for dinner last week and spent the whole time watching his recent photos of Liberia pass on his computer screen. Curses.

I feel stuck.

Fighting class should help, but we didn't work until we wanted to fall over today. We just did some combatives and then practiced chokes from the side.

Last week, in advanced fighting class, we practiced the front choke with actual pressure. For some reason, the instructor and the guys in the class always worry that the girls will be freaked out by things like that - the choking, the hitting in the face. I am actually quite surprised myself at how un-phased I am by it all. It really doesn't bother me.

It makes me realize how very safe my life has been. I don't have a post-traumatic stress reaction to any of it, because no one but my brother has ever hit me. Oh, and that girl next door when I was growing up in Liberia who sat on my chest and told me to bang my own head against the ground. Details.

Also, I am starting to understand how people get addicted to exercise (horrors). I made a decision yesterday to give my knees a break (kung fu + running + hiking steep hills = ouch), and it was actually hard for me. I did go for a long walk, but it's not the same.

Cranky.

[20] short

My roommate M. has a tiny little dog. He doesn't live here all the time, but when he is here he runs around on his tiny paws and curls up on my lap like a cat, and then he tries to lick my face and I have to push him away.

I sat in front of the happy light for an hour today, but it was not enough. It still gets dark too early, and light too late.

inevitable

What usually happens is this: I start getting sick. I gargle and neti pot morning and evening. I take lots of ibuprofen. I get sicker. Finally, I pick a day when there is nothing much going on, and I determine that I will spend that day getting better. I will wake up late. I will do nothing but rest and drink tea.

Then I wake up that morning feeling fine, and so I get up, and I go to work or church, but by evening I feel terrible again. The next day is inevitably something I can't skip, and so I just plod on through.

rocks

I have big plans for this evening. BIG PLANS. Pretty much, my goal is to be in bed by 9 p.m. Maybe 8:30.

I don't know what is going on here, other than a cup'la late nights in a row, but last night I fell asleep on the couch. At 6:40 p.m. It did not make for a pleasant rest of the evening when I had to get up at 7:40 and drop some stuff off at goodwill and clean out the car I had been borrowing. I spent the rest of the evening counting the minutes until I could go back to sleep, but by the time I got to go back to sleep there were fewer than seven hours left before I had to get up again.

I have a... thing about getting eight hours of sleep. T. used to mock me for it in college, because I get very upset when someone disturbs the eight hours. I know in my head that seven hours and forty five minutes is functionally not that much different than eight hours and five minutes, but I have a mental block in my head there. I think I've gotten a little less neurotic about it, but I still need my sleep. I need my lots of sleep.

This week, I seem to need it more. Having found a job - a job I want to do, no less - brings a whole new set of stresses (moving, the actual work, learning a new town), but it also relieves one huge chunk of stress: I no longer have to look for a job. I was really worried about that. I was beginning to think that this recession/depression would change the entire course of my career. There are so few jobs available, and my law school's loan assistance program has conditions that mandated that I start a new job by September 8 or lose a whole lot of help. I needed a job, quickly.

I decided that if, on average, a job receives 100 applications, interviews 8 people, and hires one, I needed to do 8 interviews to get a job. Surely my resume and cover letter could get me some interviews, I thought (I've seen what passes for a resume in some parts), so then I just had to plug on through eight interviews until it was my turn to get a job.

I did three (four if you include a second interview). I know that my job search could have been many, many times longer and harder, but I have been carrying the weight of knowing that I should be applying for a job for a year or more, now, and actually getting a job feels like someone took a basket of rocks off my head, a basket that I didn't even know I was carrying.

And now, in the relief, the only thing I want to do is sleep, to sleep real, restful, relaxed sleep, for several days or weeks, possibly months, straight.

tears

There was a girl walking down the street as I came out of work. She was looking straight ahead, but there were tears on her cheeks, and her eyes were red. I wanted to walk up to her and put my arm around her and say, "Oh, honey, I know. I've been there, fighting tears in the most awkward place. It's going to be okay," but I was fighting to get my bike out onto the street, and she was trying hard not to be noticed.

It's lonely, there. A stranger's words might help.

time

Last fall, I finally destroyed my watch. I destroyed it by slamming it against the knob on a door, if you must know, and the crystal, which I'm sure was not a real crystal, shattered. It had actually been cracked since about three weeks after I bought it, two years earlier, and it had periodically gotten more cracked when I slammed it against various things. (Clumsy is a trait of mine.) This was just the final shattering. It broke into a whole lot of hazardous little slivers of glass, which I of course put into a ziploc bag and carried around for weeks in a pocket of my bag, until the little slivers of glass started to work their way out of the ziploc and into the bottom of the pocket and every time I stuck my hand in there I got stabbed.

I finally took the ziploc out of my bag and put it, uh, on the counter, where it remains to this day, I think. I thought vaguely about buying a new watch, and I looked at a couple of stores when I was in the mall anyway, but then I decided to try going watch-less. I could be one of those people who doesn't care what time it is! I could be one of those carefree people!

Unfortunately, you either are one of those people or you aren't. I get along fine without a watch most of the time, but only because I check my phone incessantly for the time. It worked, for a while, but I ran through the battery on my phone a whole lot faster. And then I started traveling: to Vietnam, to Michigan, to Honduras. And, I don't know about anyone else, but I find being on a plane with no idea how long you have been flying is just utterly infuriating. I started leaving my phone on, in airplane mode.

And yeah, I know, they tell you that airplane mode is not good enough and it has to be all the way off until you are over 10,000 feet and blah, blah, blah, but I have flown in Africa, where pilots are texting while they fly and where mobile phones routinely ring and are answered as you are lifting off, so I wasn't that worried about airplane mode. Anyway, if you turn your phone all the way off and then turn it back on in airplane mode, it has no idea what time it is. It isn't communicating with whatever magical thing it communicates with to tell you the time, because the entire point of airplane mode is that your phone will not communicate with anything so that it does not "interfere with airplane navigation systems." The only way the phone will continue to know the time is if you leave it on. So, YES, I broke the FAA rules. And my planes were fine.

But, at last, one day, a week and a half ago, my coworker mentioned that she has seen lots of nice watches at M@cy's, and I went over there on my lunch break. I came within dangerous seconds of buying a $200 Citizen watch (because they last! forever!) and then pulled myself back from the brink and had the guy point me to the cheaper watches (he sort sniffed as he directed me to "Fashion Watches" - so much for lack of snobbery at stores in Gone West, huh?).

In Fashion Watches, I finally found a watch that meets all of my exacting criteria:

1. Silver and only silver band (I do not like the silver/gold combination).
2. No fake bling. Ugh.
3. No white face. I prefer blue, silver, or black.
4. A round face.
5. Not too small and wimpy.
   

I bought the watch (this particular one has a black face, and I love it)* and part of the thought in the back of my mind was that I would soon have to fly to Michigan, again, for my Oma's funeral.

This morning, my momma called me at 5 am to tell me that my Oma died. (The journalist types call that burying the lead. Seven paragraphs in.) Tonight, I am getting on a flight to Michigan. I've thought a lot of things in the hours since five am, but one of them is that I have been getting ready for this for a while, we all knew it was coming, and that buying the watch for the flight home was one way that I was preparing myself. It's impossible to be prepared. But at least, when I fly overnight to Detroit, unable to sleep on a flight taking me home to my family, I won't have to wonder how much longer? How much longer?

I will never make it as a watchless person, and I've accepted that. I like to know what time it is. It grounds me. And having a watch saves me a whole lot of cell phone battery.

* A friend of a friend said, as I was showing my friend the watch the day I bought it, "That is the watch version of a boring executive in the Midwest." Apparently my idea of classic is another person's idea of boring. He can have the obnoxious fake bling, then, on his watch.

the gloomy days of feb

It's February. It is very definitely February. When I leave my house in the morning, I nearly universally forget to bring an umbrella. By lunch, it is nearly universally raining. I borrow an umbrella from a colleague or beg one from the lost and found, and it barely covers my head. Its spindles poke out beyond the sagging plastic.

I tromp through the rain to my favorite coffee place, the one with the espresso so perfectly pulled that I almost can no longer drink coffee elsewhere. A. has a tiny new shop, and I stand there in a willing row with all the other addicts, waiting for my little mug of cappuccino with the perfect foam lid.

"It's so small!" my colleague says when, occasionally, I get it to go and come back to the office bearing a white cup wrapped in my reusable coffee sleeve. "You go all that way for something so small? Why don't you just get a bigger cup at the place across the street?"

"Cappuccino is supposed to be small," I tell her, sipping my six ounces of coffee perfection. "And this coffee is worth it."

When I'm done with my little cup of cappuccino, there is nowhere to go but back to the office. It's raining and cold. The parks are dreary. During the summer, I try to keep my coffee consumption to a few times a week, but here in the winter, I get it every day. If nothing else, I need the walk to get me out of the office.

Winter feels unending, in February. Last winter, I was hibernating at this time. This year, I have promised myself that I will get out more, be more social. I am trying to fight the winter weariness instead of succumbing to it. It's been working fairly well, but this week my strategy has failed me. It could keep up with the weather, but it couldn't keep up with life's random onslaught of difficult things.

This week, I switched to quieter music. The music I usually love hurt my heart. I updated my status across the internet to reflect my crankiness. I am writing a lot. The notebook I bought two weeks ago is nearly half full.

If you had asked me when I was 20, I would have said that by 30 I would know myself. I would have said that by 30 I would be able to just live, without needing to think about why I did or said what I did. I would have said that by 30 life would be easy. Indeed, I have learned a great deal about myself. I know many reasons why I do what I do. I am mostly happy. But I don't know everything, and some weeks I wonder why I said that, or why life is sometimes so hard.

The best thing that I have learned in 30 years is that even the worst moments usually end. This is not the worst moment, but I still need to remind myself, sometimes, that this will end, too.

I am thinking about entering a contest for number of times one can blow one's (raw, bleeding) nose in a single day. I am pretty sure I would win, chunky green snot and all.

Re: visual image: you are welcome.

separate pieces

I got a bulletin about Liberia from the US State Department today, and they warned against driving outside of Monrovia at night. I don't remember where we were going or who was in the car, but I suddenly remembered a night when I was in a car in Liberia, 2.5 years ago, driving somewhere (yes! This is a specific and detailed memory! ha.). We were driving in the dark, near but generally away from Monrovia, and I remember looking out at the passing scrub land and thinking about the fact that travel warnings always say not to drive around at night, but thinking that I never wanted to stop and turn around and go back to the city. I wanted to keep driving further into the country, into the continent, forever.

...

On the train, a young blond man who was definitely high (I am getting very good at recognizing symptoms; farewell, my very-protected upbringing) asked the guy behind him, "Bro, can you spare any change?" When he didn't answer, he asked across the aisle, "Bro, you have any change?"

The man across the aisle asked, "You going to buy drugs with it?"

"Marijuana." he said.

Hey, at least he's honest. He didn't get anything, though.

...

I caught a few minutes of Jeopardy last night, and what keeps running through my head is this:

"Answer: Lonely, very lonely."

Bzzzzzt.

"What is: How does it feel to be far from your family when there is a crisis?"

...

A year ago, I was just getting back from Ethiopia. I've been here for a year, now, without a break. I'm plotting, though.

end weekend

I have to say, I almost don't like weekends. I am always relieved to have them, and I wish they would go on, but I find myself being so sloth-like in them that I'm glad to have work again on Monday morning. Although I'm not so glad about the fact that I've stayed up/slept in too much for the last two nights and can never go to sleep on Sunday night. That part is not so great.

If I ever came into a great deal of money, I would not be able to quit my job, unless it was because I had started an organization that required me to work every day. My life needs the structure.

On weekends, I watch videos about Somalia, and I watch videos about Darfur, and I think too much. I think about the bullet-pocked walls in Liberia and a coworker in Sudan who, when he saw a picture of Monrovia flash by on my computer, said, "Wow, where is that? I could actually live there. I can live anywhere there are paved roads." In that video about Darfur, where they show the "terrible conditions" that the peacekeepers are living in - the dirty latrines? Not so different from the latrine that was Wallace's last home. (Oh, Wallace. I do miss you.) There is no experience quite like 110 degree heat on a latrine made of corrugated iron. As I was watching the video, I thought, "That's pretty much how everyone lives outside of big cities in Southern Sudan." (Probably in Northern Sudan, too, although I hear that Khartoum is very modern.) My pity for the peacekeepers was distinctly lacking, regarding their toilet accommodations.

I realized the other day that Tiny Little Town in Southern Sudan is the one place in the world where I have been but will probably never be able to return to. It's a weird feeling. Every other place I've been has been accessible. I may never go back, but I could. I could buy a plane ticket and rent a car and take a bus and get back. But Tilt is just too remote. Even if I could fly to Nairobi and fly to Juba and fly to Rumbek, I would need to get on the UN flight to the airstrip in the middle of nowhere, where there are no houses or businesses, not even a child walking by with a tray of gum and biscuits, and therefore no taxis. I suppose I could stand out on the road in the sun with no shade, with big Chinese trucks rumbling past on their way to the oil derricks, waiting for the chance minibus coming from Bigger Town or from Khartoum, two or three days drive away. I suppose I could, but it would be very difficult. Nigh unto impossible. The very impossibility makes me want to go back.

...

A few days ago, I found a tiny blue jewel on a desk at work. For complicated reasons, I'm not the only person who uses this desk, or, at least, someone else very possibly had to use it over the weekend. It's not my normal desk. It was a very pretty and sparkly little blue jewel, and I kept it on the desk, because I thought someone might come back and want it.

Several hours later, I realized that it came from my earring.

decorating

Yesterday I was mooning over a print that I desperately want (you can see it here), and as one does, I sent the link to my sister so that she could make up my mind whether or not to spend $30 on something that I do not, strictly speaking, need.

She vetoed the purchase, and then it occurred to me that I have thousands of photos that I took myself, and surely some few of them are good enough to print and hang on a wall. Perhaps not as perfect as that one, okay, but with more personal meaning. And I could probably print and mat several of them for the price of ordering one online.

I proceeded to waste several hours looking at every single picture I've taken in the last few years in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, DR Congo, Tanzania, Liberia, Senegal (airport only), Sudan, and Ethiopia.

It's funny all the things you forget. I was amused to notice, for example, that right in the middle of the Rwanda days there is a gap for the time I went to Italy. Like any (ab)normal person, I brought my good camera to Africa and it was only when I went to Europe that I started worrying about getting it stolen. So I brought my ancient point and shoot film camera to Italy.

I also didn't remember that I had visited so many genocide memorials in Rwanda. They are such a tiny portion of my memories of those two years, but apparently I went to the one in Kibuye, at least, repeatedly. (And took the same photos every. single. time.)

I now have a set of about 10 photos that I think have possibility, and I'm googling things like "photo composition" because I haven't the first idea how to make a photo look good for such displays, particularly since I have a random desire to make the photos square. That part's not working out so well. Also, I wanted lots of reds and oranges, but it turns out that nature is more greens and blues.

And, for example, is this too boring? Too colorless? Please inform.

(Lalibela, Ethiopia - 2008)

addicted

I daydreamed about it all day.

When I had to work overtime, I sat and stared out the window and thought about it.

On the bus, I glanced at my watch again and again, counting the minutes.

I raced through the door to my apartment, ready, poured it into its perfect little glass, and drank it down.

My new addiction: children's cold medicine.

The only thing that keeps me from wanting to claw out my own throat from the pain.

tea and sympathy

There is something every so comforting about tea. Coffee is tasty but, I'm sorry, not comforting like tea. You never find yourself thinking, "What I need right now is to sit down in a corner with a nice cup of coffee to cradle in my hands and then I will feel better." At least, I don't. When I need comfort, I turn to tea.

Good thing I found the tea shop.

On the bus on the way home, feeling slightly carsick because some annoying person had taken the ideal front-facing seat on the passenger side, I remembered how, back when I worked with kiddos in MI, we the staff had a team-building exercise once in a park. The boss asked a series of questions intended to help the college-aged group of us "get to know ourselves" and one of the questions was, "Where do you sit on a bus?" I always, if I have a choice, sit in the front on the opposite side from the driver, because it is the ideal place to look forward and therefore not become carsick. According to this personality test, however, sitting in this spot means you are self-centered because you don't want anyone blocking your view. "Hey!" I said, "I sit there, and it doesn't mean I'm self-centered!" [Okay, maybe a little.] "I get sick sitting anywhere else!" Fact is, I am still kind of annoyed by this little self-knowledge quiz of six years ago.

off again

I do this every single week: I get on a later schedule on the weekend and I go to bed far too late on Sunday night, resulting in starting the week exhausted. Every single week I vow to get up earlier on Sunday morning so I can go to sleep earlier, and every single week I fail. It's just impossible to get up at 7 on a Sunday. Not possible.

some title

So! It's Sunday again. I have no idea how that happened. I just woke up and there it was. I don't know what happened to those days in between, either. I'm pretty sure they happened... yes, I can go through and find at least one memory per day, so they did happen. I have just been blog and internet lazy. In my defense, the weather has been lovely, and every evening I face the internet v. walk dilemma and generally choose the walk. Because it's pretty out there! Unfortunately, I still feel as if something is sitting on my chest when I spend too much time in unfiltered air.

I was beginning to get worried that there was something more wrong with me than allergies (like lung cancer! hypochondria, again) because shouldn't springlike-ness be over by now? Shouldn't allergies by over? By July? But then I overheard a conversation in which random people downtown were discussing how a mere two weeks ago their allergies got to the worst point they had ever been and they were forced to seek prescription medication for the first time. So perhaps this is just the penalty one pays for the drawn-out winter/spring that never ends. Although it appears to have finally ended. HALF WAY THROUGH JULY. I never thought I would make favorable comparisons to Michigan, but! I have. I have actually caught myself saying longing things about how Michigan weather is beautiful starting in May.

In other news, since I have nothing interesting to say, I will inform you that I have become obsessed with the library. This may be another reason why you never hear from me. Every time I hear about a book I want to read, I just log into the website and request that it be put on hold, and then I prance over there on my lunch hour and pick it up! It's brilliant. Now I have lots of interesting books, and I read them, and the internet is boring by comparison. Even my internet. So. See you in a few weeks.

(I'm kidding. I hope.)

anecdote

Shockingly busy days; feeling quiet by evening.

At the train stop, a man riding by on a bike handed me a ticket and said, "Don't waste your money. Use this." Over his shoulder, he called, "It's good!"

I was on my way to Trader Joe's and I usually use one ticket to go there and back because they are calculated by time, not distance. I took the ticket and I got on the train and then I sat looking at it closely. That star? Did that mean the ticket was only for someone with a reduced fare ID? That 08:52? Was that a.m. or p.m.?

On the way back, I bought my own ticket. The machine spit out two gold dollars and a silver one. I put them in my left pocket and the ticket in my right. I tore up the old ticket - I didn't want anyone else to get into trouble - and poked it in between the St@rbucks cups sticking out of the trash can.