My, What Thick Corneas You Have

Last week, I went for a preliminary evaluation to see if I'm a candidate for laser eye surgery.

First they had me fill out a questionnaire explaining why I wanted it. I knew I couldn't write "I hate my f*ck#ng glasses," so instead I talked about how they interfered with my quality of life. My glasses are making me fat by impeding my ability to participate in contact and water sports! I live in fear of being trapped in a burning building if I had to escape quickly and couldn't locate them! Also, they make it difficult to watch TV while lying sideways on the couch.

Not five minutes after I'd handed in my essay (did they read it?), a technician invited me back for a battery of tests. I had made the first cut! For the next hour and a half, that technician poked and prodded me. She had me follow a pinprick of light with my eyes, took pictures from different angles, and shot puffs of air into my eyeballs at random intervals, then snickered when I recoiled. (Optometrists get their kicks from administering the glaucoma test, apparently.) But we had a rapport, the tech and I, and felt certain that by the end of our time together, she would present a glowing recommendation to the surgeon.

When I finally went in to meet him, the surgeon started in on the old "good news and bad news" speech, but I cut him off at the pass.

"Give it to me straight, doc."

"Well, you're a . . .reasonable candidate. I like the thickness of your corneas and your pupils dilate beautifully, but . . . [whips out thermal relief map of my eyeballs and furrows brow in concern] there is a bit of dryness I'd like to remedy before going forward," he confided, pointing his laser at some suspicious yellow areas.

He assured me that he'd performed the surgery with great success on many, many people with my exact profile, but since most peoples' eyes become more dry for up to a year afterwards, it's a good idea to "get a handle on the dry eye" before proceeding. Also, there is no way to tell for sure how much drier my eyes will become post surgery and whether or not the condition would be permanent. Still, I left with a prescription for Re$ta$i$ and a tentative surgery date in early June, which I plan on canceling at the last minute.

Then I went home and spent way too much time surfing Lasik message boards, reading posts about Lasik disasters from people with screen names like, "Keep Your Glasses" and "Lasik Ruined My Life." Who I'm assuming got the two-for-one special at Lasers-R-Us and not the Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Center, but still. I find this "reasonable candidate" business disturbing.

What to do? And who will win: my vanity, or the Internet doomsayers?

I'll Take That as a Complement

I always wore glasses as a kid. And I'm fairly certain that my gargantuan, chablis-tinted plastic frames, coupled with a short, cross-gender haircut - which I liked to wear feathered and parted straight down the middle (not pictured) - were my main obstacles to social superstardom.

Ninth grade saw salvation and gradual peer acceptance in the form of contact lenses, the kind that would routinely pop out as I went about my daily business. Still, rooting around the bathroom floor searching for your contacts beat the hell out of getting stuffed into your locker by Frank Snodgrass.

Alas, my glasses reprieve was short lived. They served me well through high school and college, then all of a sudden*, I just couldn't wear them comfortably anymore. I haven't worn them regularly for over ten years now, and it really chaps my hide. Because even though I have a decent pair of virtually weightless Swiss specs that are the least obvious pair of glasses I've ever owned, they still give me a bit of a complex. Whatever! Things could be worse.

Every once in awhile, I'll put in my daily wear disposable contacts on the off chance that my dessicated, renegade eyeballs decide to cooperate, but it's usually only a matter of hours before I peel them off and flush them down the toilet in disgust. I had them in today, and as I was going through the supermarket checkout line, the cashier says to me:

"You have such a pretty face!"

Me (blushing): "Oh! Thanks!"

Cashier (recognizing me as a regular customer): "You usually wear glasses, don't you?"

Me: "Um, yeah. I have my contacts in today."

Cashier: "It makes a huge difference in your appearance."

Me: "Uh, thanks."

Cashier: "Just lovely."

Me: "Yeah, I'd wear them more often if they weren't so uncomfortable, you know what I mean?"

Cashier: "Such a pretty face . . . Hey, Carl! (to bagger) Take a look at this young lady, don't you think the contacts really make a difference?"

Carl: "Oh, yes! Very nice!"

Cashier: "She usually wears glasses."

Carl (contorting face in disapproval): "I see."

Cashier (shaking head): "You should wear your contacts more often. It's a shame."

Me: "Thank you."

Cashier: "No, really, I mean it."

Me: "Okay, thanks."

Cashier: "Have a nice day."

Then me and my beautiful visage hightailed it outta there before the stroke of noon, when I was scheduled to morph back into a bespectacled hag.


* Following a recurring, untreated case of conjunctivitis that may or may not have been triggered by poor contact lens hygiene habits.


"Beauty"


"Beast"

Mission

It was on the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated that I took the pregnancy test.

We had decided just a few weeks before that the time was as ripe as it ever would be for babymaking and I, with a green light from my psyche, the P-Dawg, and the ob/gyn, made it my personal mission to beat the estimated odds of conceiving in “six months to one year.”

P-Dawg’s input and DNA would be required, naturally, for implementation, but I took greedy ownership of the planning and strategy phases with the same singularity of purpose I had once dedicated to making the Dean’s List, getting the scholarship, scoring the interview, landing the job.

To this end, babymaking books were purchased and studied religiously. Google searches employing phrases like, “How to get pregnant super fast” were performed, and morning temperatures were charted. I was tuned into my body’s every twitch and secretion in the way that only a woman meticulously planning conception can be.

One afternoon just days after our first scheduled attempt, I was driving home from work when I noticed how uncomfortable the tug of the seat belt across my chest had become. My ta-tas, as it happened, were sore in a whole new way, and they heralded a light bulb moment the likes of which I hadn't experienced to date.

I began groping myself right there in the driver's seat of my blue Saturn sedan, cautiously at first, then with no holds barred. Does it hurt when I press here? Yes! What about here? Yes! If I mash them together? By, God, it does! And if I press myself full tilt into the steering wheel? I just might be pregnant.

It was too early to take a test, yet impossible, from that point on, to ignore the goings on: continued soreness, strange, cramplike twitches in the nether regions, and a sharp, stabbing pain that woke me up in the middle of one night to be followed by unmistakably rosier than usual cheeks the very next morning.

I endured the requisite number of days before an early pregnancy test could be taken. On the morning of that day, with the P-Dawg still on his overnight call shift at the hospital, I planned a deliberate trip to the drugstore. As I prepared to leave, the cable channels were playing and replaying the same few clips of space shuttle Columbia breaking up in blue skies over Texas.

And in the car on the way to the pharmacy, listening to a DJ announce news of the tragedy with thinly veiled excitement, before the pregnancy test had even been purchased or peed on, I knew with certainty that a catastrophic space mission would always be entwined in my memory with the day I learned that my first baby would come to be.

The test, of course, was positive: my dear little V-meister in her earliest iteration, as evidenced by a blurry pink line. Yet I was surprised at how closely my initial joy was followed by a pang of fear and the very first inkling of the buzzing, baseline anxiety that comes part and parcel with the act of bringing a child into this world.

And I've been living with the uneasy knowledge that ecstasy and despair are never more than a heartbeat away, one from the other, ever since that day when my fervent hope was confirmed as inky smoke trails, obvious evidence of human frailty and ultimate demise, arched across a Texas sky.

Baby Powder: Not Just for Bums

I was recently stone-cold busted by my hair stylist for washing my hair daily.

It hasn't been its usual shiny and lustrous self lately, but I chalked it up to motherhood, heat, humidity, and old age.

Still, I didn't think much of my enormous lampshade head until the other morning when the V-meister enthusiastically noted, "Mama! Your hair looks like a giant mushroom."

She meant it as a complement, I think, for who doesn't love a giant mushroom?

Still, I took it pretty hard.

Suzy Stylist confirmed that things were amiss when she took one look at my poofball coiffure and declared that I was tragically overwashing my hair and stripping (STRIPPING!) it of it's natural oils (Ew).

I do appreciate honesty in a hairdresser, but getting "the talk" is almost as bad as being reprimanded by the dental hygienist for not flossing.

Turns out that Suzy and her minions at the chi-chi salon where you have to wear all black just to step foot inside and lookout! if you happen to be wearing a banana clip (just sayin') only wash their hair every three days. AT MOST.

"For realz?" I asked, dumbfounded. "How do you avoid Squiggyhead and the second day kinks?"

That's when Suzy let me in on the second part of the dirty little stylist secret: baby powder.

You rub it through your hair at the roots on the days you don't wash it and voila! Instant Pantene commercial.

Also, since you are not spending the extra twenty minutes washing and blowing your hair out, why, you can use the bonus time to smooth out your unruly locks with your handy dandy ceramic flat iron, which you'd never have time to employ otherwise.

Who knew?

I suppose the French did.

(They wear the same outfit for four days in a row, you know. On day five, they wash their hair and change outfits. Honest to Pete. I was there and I saw.)

Anyway, even though I noticed she had a bit of a femme 'stache and you should always take whatever someone with a mustache says with a grain of salt, I took Suzy's advice to heart and went three days without washing my hair. (I did shower! GOSH! Get off my property!)

And you know what?

The world didn't end, my hair was all sleek-like, and it smelled like a baby's butt.

Rimarama recommends: dirty hair.

I'm curious, though. Am I the only person in the blogosphere who didn't know this bit of wisdom?

I mean, for serious. How often do you lather up, reader?

Coiff-o-Rama

A Hair Retrospective

It all started innocently enough with a little flip 'do . . .




And a bad home hair cut courtesy of the Mom Salon could always be covered up with Lithuanian folk regalia . . .




But wait! What's this?



Could it be the beginning of the "awkward phase?" I appear to have been blinded by the reflection from my satin Members Only jacket. It's also caused my left eye to swell up and I think I lost a couple of teeth, too. Thank God I'm wearing my lucky unicorn tee shirt and there's a rainbow behind me.


Sadly, the comb-over and fugly glasses are not much of an improvement:


"No photos, pleez."


My only saving grace at age thirteen was that I was allowed to get contacts.


Who is the dog in this picture?


Oh, hai, spiral perm:





"I don't need no stinkin' hairdo. Pass me another Rolling Rock."

That's better.



Hello, nineties.



"Halp! I had a baby and I'm skeert."


All's well that ends well.

(Except that I'm starting to Feel Bad About My Neck)

This post was brought to you as the result of a gauntlet that was laid down by my bloggy friend, Janet. Go check out her stellar hair retrospective here. And while you're at it, hop over to JCK's, as well. All the cool kids are doing it, and you should, too.

Unfortunately, I did not have photos of my modified mullet or mall bangs at my disposal for this post. If and when I come across those pictures, I will be sure to post them to the interwebs, because isn't that why Al Gore invented this technology, after all?

Rimarama Recommends

The other day, the Vidal Sassoon hair drier I've been using for the last ten years finally blew up. (That's right, Vidal - you don't look good.)

Its death was a long time in the making though, since it was already missing a few parts (like a filter and a thingamahoohoo that fell out awhile back), but the final blow (A PUN! DO YOU SEE?) came when it sucked a good handful of my coiffure into it's gaping hole of doom, then sputtered and smoked for a few seconds before kickin' it.

Vidal's demise propelled me to go forth and purchase a top of the line tourmaline hair drier with ion technology.

I'm not exactly clear on what an ion is, or how hair driers and ions became bedfellows, and I'm pretty sure tourmaline is a banned substance that went missing in Russia a few years back, but I will say that I have not had a bad hair day since I began using it.

This is what my hair looked like before (uh, fifteen years before, towards the tail end of a dorm party):

I Can Haz Ramen Noodlz?

As you can see, I had yet to be introduced to anti-humectant pomade (or the concept of brow maintenance.) Or a brush. In those days, all we had was mousse and gel and we liked it.

This is what my hair looks like today:

See How It Shines?

It is full of body, swing, and lustre! There is not a fly-away hair in sight! The ion/tourmaline technology locks in moisture and repels the chunks of food, dirt, dust, and insects that might otherwise become entangled therein.

It's as if I'm wearing a virtual helmet.

I paid around thirty bucks for this item at my local discount retailer. (FYI - you do NOT need to show the cashier your ID and/or proof of citizen ship to purchase this device. Shocking, I know, because of the tourmaline and all, but whatever, le Tar-jay. Don't come crying to me when the feds are a-knockin.')

And I'll admit, it was not without a little trepidation that I prepared to flip the "on" switch for the first time.

Would I develop superpowers from the ionic blast?

Would the tourmaline technology enable me to see through walls? Scale buildings?

COUNT BACK CHANGE?

To be quite honest, the blow drying itself, when it finally happened, was kind of anti-climactic, except for the fact that it took me exactly half the amount of time to complete the deed than it had with old Vidal.

I could not be more pleased with my new toy.

And therefore it is with great enthusiasm that I recommend space age ionic blow driers. If you have wet hair that you would like to make dry (yet healthy and lustrous) within mere minutes, you need one. (Unfortunately, I cannot tell you which particular brand I purchased myself because I am not getting paid even one red penny for this glowing endorsement. But they have them at Tarjay. It's the third or maybe fourth one from the right end of the display. Don't pay more than thirty bucks.)


Note to Readers: This post is what I call "scraping the bottom of the barrel." There is NOTHING going on right now. Hopefully you can look forward to a post of substance sometime later on this week. Or next.