Subtle Glow

I recently had a visit with my new eye doctor.

I’m kind of a nut when it comes to a lot of things putting things in or touching my eyes. I really loved my former eye doctor. He was very thorough but also very patient with me and my “OH GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING DON’T TOUCH MY EYES!!!” issues.

I would even go as far as to say that I would rather go to the dentist, than go to the eye doctor. I don’t have anywhere near the level of hysteria when it comes to my mouth. I mean, I don’t find it enjoyable, having someone dig around in my mouth, scraping out whatever I don’t manage to get with my brush and my floss, but still.

My anxiety resides specifically in one small portion of the exam - the glaucoma test. It’s a little pressue test, where they have to put some numbing drops in your eyes (aka phase 1 of MY EYES! MY EYES! freak out) and then take some sort of instrument or another and touch your eyes with it (phase 2).

So today was my first visit with my new doctor, who is only my new doctor because he is on my new insurance plan. First of all he wants to try and tell me how he’s super qualified, he has some degree only 7 people in the country have it.

Uhm, yeah. That’s all fine and everything - let’s see you try and touch my eye. I guarantee your degree isn’t going to matter one iota when you try to touch my eyes!

Then he tells me I have hyperopia and a slight astigmatism. Astigmatism? Dr. Fitzpatrick never mentioned that. I’ve had to wear glasses for the computer/reading, and he recommended them for night driving so my eyes didn’t have to work so hard… he never said astigmatism.

THEN, I do a little googling and find out that HMM! That is the exact condition that they use LASIK to correct! Dude - you are so NEVER FUCKING EVER going to slice my eye open. SO. NOT. HAPPENING.
I go up front to pick out my frames and the girl heads straight over to the titanium and Gucci frames. There are like 10 styles to choose from… all costing about $300 and up, meanwhile all four walls are covered in less expensive frames to choose from. But of course she heads toward THE most expensive frames.

And of course, those were the ones that looked the best. Trust me, I tried them on, along with about 50 other frames. They really were the best size/proportion/fit for my big fat head.
So I ask her, “Am I choosing frames for when I’m at the computer, or are these for driving, or are they for distance, or what?”

She looks at my paperwork and says, “These will be for distance, so anything farther than arm’s reach, basically.”

“Ok, so then what do I wear for reading?”

“Well he doesn’t have you down for reading glasses.”

“Really? Because that’s all I’ve ever needed glasses for, and he said we would go over that.”

She looks at my paperwork again. “Oh - well you’ll be wearing these all the time, because of the astigmatism.”

“Well, that’s what I asked in the first place.” But apparently she was too busy pointing out the fucking Gucci frames and talking about how I should get a matching fucking Gucci purse.

When I left the office, I had plunked down a check for half of my total cost. Between the frames and the lenses and all the other shit it was over $400. More than half of that was the frames - AFTER a 35% discount.

It was still bothering me when I left work for the day. I called, and told them to cancel the frames, that I would be bringing in my current frames (already paid for so basically FREE) and they could use those to put my new prescription lenses in, and I would just order a magnetic sunglass clip for them. That should cut my total down to about $150 - $200.

I just couldn’t see paying that much money for something that while necessary, I wasn’t completely ecstatic about. I can’t help but be annoyed that the frame chick didn’t seem the least bit interested in finding frames that would complement and work well for my face, etc. She just wanted my to buy the expensive ones.

I am so annoyed by the whole thing, I am tempted to go in and have them write down my prescription and then go pay cash at my old eye doctor to get a second opinion. I might even do that. In fact I think I’ll call Dr. Fitzpatrick this morning to see how they handle this stuff, and how much it would cost to pay for an exam out of pocket. Depending on the fee for the exam I’ll either go to him or wait until next year and just pay cash for everything. Screw the insurance. Screw the damn Gucci glasses lady and the pompous eye doctor, too.

Last year, I wrote this post after seeking a referral for a tubal ligation from my primary care physician. In that post I indicated that the office I was referred to was booked out for two months - just for a consultation.

Here I am one year later. My tubes are still untied. Apparently that office is booked out for a lot of things, including the actual surgery procedure.

What makes it even worse, is that the surgery coordinator won’t even return my phone calls so I can even SCHEDULE THE SURGERY.

That’s right, folks. It’s a year to the day later from when I first saw my doctor to get the referral and I don’t even have a date scheduled for the surgery yet. I can’t even get a phone call from the office manager to explain to me WHY I don’t have a date yet.

What makes it even more horrific? Just over two weeks ago, I had a procedure to terminate a pregnancy. My pregnancy. A pregnancy that should not have been possible almost a year after I went through the beaurocratic bullshit to avoid at all costs.

Just over two weeks ago, I had an abortion. I don’t want to get in to the whys of our decision, other than to say it was the right decision for us, and that if faced with the same situation I would make the same decision. I don’t regret it.

I am so angry and frustrated and relieved all at the same time.

It’s atrocious that in this day and age, that I am supposed to have a choice about when and how and everything else about my body. Specifically, what happens in my uterus.

What I’ve realized in the past few months, is that whether or not we have a choice is not the issue. In this case, you need ACCESS to the services that provide you with the means to exercise your choices. And there is a severe lack of follow-through on some of the paths to that access.

It’s abhorrent to me, as abhorrent as I’m sure that some of my decisions are to others - to those who are not me and not in my situation and do not and will not - EVER - have to take one ounce of responsibility for my actions either way.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make my daily phone call to a voicemail box that is never acknowledged and never answered for a reason that probably won’t ever be explained to me. In the meantime I have to hope that my birth control methods and my body don’t betray me, again.

What is wrong with this picture?

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my little friends and I would comb through the clover patches growing in our yards looking for four leaf clovers.

While we searched for four-leaf clovers we would make little crowns from the flowers.  They would have these really long stems.  We used to pick the flowers and wind the stems around each other, until we had a chain long enough to fasten together and wear on our heads.

My friend Jennifer was always the one to find the lucky clovers - she would find so many she could string them together into bracelets. In some ways I think she needed the luck more than the rest of us, because looking back now I think she might have been undiagnosed with a bi-polar disorder.  Maybe I’m wrong, but she definitely needed some help of some kind, at least for depression.

I wonder how many other young children - as young as we were at 8 and 9 - on up into their pre-teen and teen years are suffering from some sort of depression or other mental illness.  Undiagnosed and untreated - what does their future hold for them?

My bank sent me a Gold Card!  My first ever.  Well, except for the NY&Co gold card… but this is a real live gold MasterCard!

Actually, it’s a gold MasterDEBITCard.

But it’s still gold.

Happy St. Patty’s Day!!

You know, I had big plans for the money I got back from my tax return this year. I wanted a laptop, and wireless internet. And also, a new mattress set. Except, I really wasn’t getting that much back.

So, basically I have been doing some splurging. I paid off a couple store credit cards - one was no interest for a year, a year that would have been over in July. So that’s done and my camera is paid off and it’s like I paid cash for it, so woohoo. The other was for a bunch of charges on my New York & Co credit card, the splurges such that they sent me a GOLD card! On account of my being such a spendy shopper. Those are the only two credit cards I had a balance on, other than the ones that are tied up in my credit counseling agreement. Little by little my debt I shall whittle!
Since I’m not one to spend a lot on credit, that didn’t even hit the halfway mark of my return. Pretty much I’ve been taking a little hiatus from stuff like balancing my checking account, budgeting, packing lunch, etc.

I’m also splurging on some “wants” that I’ve had in mind for awhile. For instance, my new bed frame:

I’ll be picking it up next Wednesday.

Also, for the kiddo’s room:

(Nevermind. I fucking hate Target’s online shopping. I never see ANYTHING online that they have in the store, so I can’t find the image. I’ll have to take one at home - with my now paid off camera! - and post it later)

Anyway I got him a new bedding set. He was using an old queen sized down comforter and it just looked awful. So his bedding is now all coordinated and I moved the furniture around to make room for a desk in there. Eventually - when I finally do get that laptop I’ve been wanting - he will take over my computer and use that in his room.

I’m getting the carpet in the living room and dining room cleaned this weekend. My cat decided not to use her litter box and my attempts to remove the stain from the carpet basically made it worse. It’s really bothering me so I decided to get the carpet guys out there to see if it can be cleaned, and/or replace the pad and restretch the carpt if necessary. It’s a rental but I am friends with the owner and I would feel terrible if my stupid cat ruined the carpet - I don’t want to leave that for her to worry about. Especially since once we move out this summer, she is selling the place. I would just die of embarrassment if I didn’t take care of it.
ANYway… just a few sundry bits about what’s been going on in my world. It’s been a shopping kind of life these days!

The Kiddo has some Serious Sniffly Activity going on. I’m keeping my distance and hoping it doesn’t develop into full on great green gobs of greasy grimey gopher guts… etc. If only I could get the little DARLING to, oh - you know, do something proactive like wear pants with actual legs (instead of shorts) and pull on a sweatshirt over the t-shirt. I know we don’t live in the frozen tundra or anything, but still. At the very least, put on a coat and wear pants so I don’t look like a complete slacker mom!
Anyway.

For lack of excitement or willingness to write about anything current, I figured some filler from the past might be an idea.

By the time I was 6, my parents had divorced. My younger brother and I lived with our mother in a small house in Lake Jackson. Every weekend, she would pack up a cooler and we headed the 20 minutes to Brian Beach - the more ‘family-friendly’ beach in comparison to the rowdy Surfside beach.

I loved to swim out past the breakers and just float around. I loved the peace and quiet and the calm of the Gulf. My brother, on the other hand, spent hours on the shore playing and digging and building in the sand. Occasionally I would spend some time doing the same, or digging up little clams as they frantically burrowed their way down as each wave receded.

Rarely did we bring any of my friends or my brother’s friends with us. The one time we did bring my best friend, she was sunburned so badly she had raised blisters, as thick and wide as a finger stretching all along her back where the bottom of her bathing suit had rubbed away the sunscreen. She never went with us to the beach again - I don’t know if that was her mother’s discretion or mine.

We had bottles and bottles of that sunscreen. I remember the brand was Johnson & Johnson. Every Saturday morning was the ritual of breakfast, bathing suits, and liberal application of sunscreen. I can still smell it. My mother would call us over a few times while at the beach to repeat the process, rubbing the lotion into our sandy skin.

Later, after my mother met her boyfriend, who years later became my stepfather, the four of us would go to the beach. He drove a red Jeep. It had four wheel drive and a wench on the front. There were only two seats - driver and passenger - so my brother and I would sit on the wheel wells and hang on to the roll bars. This was Texas, that was somewhere in the early 80’s. You could drive along the beaches in Texas, I don’t know if you still can. But we would drive along the beach and look for cars that had gotten stuck in the sand. He would tow them out of the sand, in exchange for beers. Eventually he had a seat made and installed in the back of the jeep, complete with two seatbelts. All I knew was that it was a much more comfortable ride than a folded beach towel draped over the red metal wheel well.

We would go four-wheeling on the sand dunes on the beach. It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time. My brother was fine if the boyfriend was driving; he was all worries and shouts of ‘Slow down!’ if my mom ever got behind the wheel. I can still hear the squeak of the styrofoam cooler and the slosh of melted ice as we rumbled across the dunes.

We spent the better portion of every Saturday, sometimes Sundays at that beach. We would come home and flop exhausted and sandy on our beds as we all took turns bathing. That was the best feeling after coming home. Getting all the sand off and changing into clean, dry clothes, and the faint warmth of my skin once in awhile from a slight sunburn. I have pictures of my brother, sprawled and passed out, with his little shorts and flip-flops still dangling from his feet off the side of the bed.

When I think of the time I spent living in Texas, this is mostly what I remember. Mingled between trips to the beach I learned to ride a bike on two wheels, threw up on the front porch of our house, lived through my parents brief but tumultuous marriage and divorce, got in trouble in my first grade class for talking too much and forgetting my homework, slept on a sheet-covered couch while I was home from school with the chicken pox, swinging on the swingset in the backyard, getting my ears pierced, and having my mother tell me as she applied her nail tips with superglue that my brother and I would be going to live with my father. She calmly cried and filed her nails as the world as I knew it came crashing down around me. I don’t remember the beach after that conversation. I don’t remember feeling happy for a very long time after that. Not for years. But, for a time, my life there in that house was very sweet, and simple and innocent, and I’m glad I can still remember that now.

My boyfriend is moving away in about two months.  I have been avoiding this for at least the last six months, because A) I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it, and B) because for now he’s still here and I don’t want to waste time thinking about then when we’re still in the now.

I have subtly ignored any conversations about The Move up until now. I politely acknowledge comments about The Move and then Move On.  This is what I love about him though - he knows.  He knows I’m avoiding any chance of dealing with it, even though he keeps bringing it up.  Meanwhile I’m thinking to myself: “Why does he keep bringing it up?  Is he trying to rub it in that he’s leaving??” No. He wants to know I’m going to be able to deal with it, that I’ll be ok.
I knew eventually we would have to talk about it.

I don’t see why we can’t find a way to make this work.  Long Distance Relationship.  He wants to finish school - so we’re looking at 2 to 3 years of LDR.  His initial response: Impossible.

Maybe it won’t work.

Maybe it will. Why not consider it?  Why not try?

Maybe I’m stubborn.  Ok, not maybe.  Anyway.

For now, I’m swinging back and forth between sadness that this might really be over very soon - that I might be capable of love again but I don’t want to give up the love I already have, much less find another that I won’t always compare to him - and the stubborn will to not take no for an answer.  To make him prove to me that if we both try to make it work that it wouldn’t.  Because I won’t believe it until we at least try.

I have been remiss in updating lately.  I have had so much going on, and at so many points of time in the last week (or more?  hmmm) I have stopped and thought of how that would translate into an entry.

It’s been a whirlwind of health-related stuff and it’s got me thinking and even in some cases pretty angry.  It’s a whole week’s worth of posting at least and yet I don’t have the time or the energy to really  “get into it” just yet.

On top of that, there has been a lot going on in the media regarding women and all the reading I’m doing is opening my eyes and I am even more angry.  Angry that I haven’t been paying enough attention so far, because it really didn’t affect me.  So I would be irritated but then not too long ago it really hit home for me, and I see now that I was basically a “near miss” and that makes me angry and now I want to DO SOMETHING about it.

So we’ll talk about some of that soon.   Because I realize that none of this makes a whole lot of sense, what with the run-on sentences and all.  Sorry about that.