Word to the Eyeball-Wise

Contact lenses are a prescription device.

It is federal law that you cannot be given contact lenses without a valid prescription. Contact lens prescriptions, according to federal law, only last one year.

No, you cannot "OD on a contact." We know that. But it is still a prescription device that comes into direct contact with your eye.

SERIOUS SHIT can happen when you wear your contacts incorrectly. If we give you contacts when your Rx is expired and you come back with a scratched cornea and an ulcer that cause you to lose your eye (YES THIS IS POSSIBLE, dumbass) that would be all our fault because we broke the law, and people would lose their licenses and it would be very, very bad for all of us.

So no, we can't "just" give you contacts, any more than we can "just" give you, say, a pacemaker.

PRESCRIPTION DEVICE, people.

When I was your age (a blog review)

This girl reminds me just a tad of...well, me.

I've never decided if telling someone that is a compliment or not. I suppose it just is what it is. I mean, she's so very earnest and ambitious and thoughtful, but at the same time some things she says are irritatingly maudlin. It's a teenage thing. And a girl-who-thinks-too-much thing, most likely.

This post is especially apropos.

"i've been thinking about thinking and i've been thinking that i think a lot."

Ain't that the truth. And I feel like I'm intruding on her privacy sometimes when I read her blog, like I snuck into her room and picked the lock on her diary. Or maybe like I'm overhearing a conversation, or the way you feel sometimes when you notice something someone is doing when they don't know you're looking, like staring at someone else or picking their teeth or trying to hide an emotional reaction, and they suddenly realize that you're looking at them, and then you both feel embarrassed. It's like she's writing a journal more than a blog with some posts, and then in some posts she's updating her Etsy or talking about photography. It's a mixed internet bag. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's really annoying. I think she has a lot of growing to do, but she seems like she could grow in really good ways.

"i've been thinking about what it means to be both a christian and a feminist."

Oh look, a can o' worms. Though as one commenter says, "doesn't being a christian automatically mean being a feminist? how could it not?" From where I stand, that sounds about right. Christianity can be about the last being first and the first being last, and about living justly and loving mercy, and about maybe one day the whole world being united in love. Another commenter quotes Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

And then there is what the church seems to have become, an excuse for the powerful to remain in power and for women to submit to their husbands and shut up in worship and dress modestly and be valued mainly for their reproductive systems. And as a mode to shame those who are not "moral"--not immorally power- and money-hungry politicians and business men who make people miserable through irresponsible decisions and a desperate clinging to their own special snowflakeness, but mostly people who have sex. No, mostly women who have sex. (More on that in another post).

So yeah, can o' worms. But a good can to open anyway, I think. I wish I had gotten around to that can by the time I was her age. Not that I'm so much older, just the end of adolescence is a jam-packed few years with a whole lot of changing and growing and decision making squeezed into a short time, and a time when our minds and bodies seem most prone to doing weird things and knocking us off track.

When I was eighteen, I remember crying a lot by myself because I'M JUST EIGHTEEN DAMMIT, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT TO DO? Anyway.

"i don't know how to tell them that i don't care about who they want me to be, but that i do care about them."

I would like to second yet another of her commenters in wanting a paraphrase of this on a poster.

So yes, this concludes the first ever Six-Winged Confessions blog review! It's like a grade school book review, only more like thinking about what you've read instead of proving to your teachers that you like to read, really. No really, this book was great. Like, I really liked it?

Mmm, what you say?

In honor of Tiger Beatdown, and Ladypalooza, and Silvana, I present you: entirely bitchin' music by ladies!

(as my taste in music is almost entirely vocally/lyrically driven, these are all female-sung, rather than focusing on female-played instruments)

My friends and I were all about Flyleaf when they first appeared on our radar. A girl! Who screams!

Also, in finding these videos, I find that I tend to buy vastly more music by men--female artists I like, like Tori Amos, I tend to not bother buying whole albums. I look her up on YouTube instead. This needs to be remedied!

a reminder to The World:

Sometimes, emotion is a rational response.

If you insult me, my anger is not irrational. It is very rational, it is very real, and it is not a reason for you to cease listening to me.

Rationality and emotion are not mutually exclusive, people.

I wonder if this hatred of "emotion" and love of "ration" is related to the equally false mind/body dichotomy? Emotions are felt bodily, therefore they must be separate from and less than the good and rational mind. Men are rational, mind-oriented, women are irrational and body-oriented. Emotion is also bad because it is womanly--so women are bad because they are "emotional," and emotions are bad because they are "womanly," and it all goes in a big nasty circle until I want to grab the next man I talk to who says I'm being irrational and shake him till his big manly brain rattles around in his big manly skull.

And this is an ENTIRELY RATIONAL RESPONSE, people.

Rant brought to you by Tiger Beatdown and all the Freddies of the world.

[ETA five seconds later to add: "mansplaining" is my Word of the Year. Seriously, whoever made it up deserves a medal or something. In the shape of like, a dictionary with a dick.]

Porn For Women

brought to you by xkcd

My dumb dude friends, as magically portrayed by A Softer World

A Softer World reads my mind, I swear.

New title!

I threw the "I Confess" header (a leftover from a personal project a few years ago) as a placeholder until I thought of something better--but I might as well keep it. Hence, the blog title change, to fit the header, instead of vice versa.

Sorry about the double post, just felt like explaining.

plus, I like the idea of "confessions" more than "reflections," somehow. Maybe it sounds less navel-gazey? Maybe I need to go to bed. Whatever.

unintentional poetry, brought to you by Facebook chat.

how the hell do i remember what song

was playing when i left a city

Music! because I can.

The first one is an old favorite, the next two are new--found through a former coworker's Facebook. The last one talks about Lasik and mentions other optical things--though in optometry at least (I don't know what those crazy ophthalmologists do) we say "minus" and "plus," not "negative" and "positive." If your glasses Rx is -2.25-0.50x120, you say "minus two point twenty-five, minus point five, at one-twenty." And "negative five is pretty much blind" is utter nonsense--assuming your vision is correctable, you're not even legally blind at -5.00. I'm -7.50 in my right eye--I see less than 20/400 without lenses (the large E projected in the exam room? looks like jumbled semitransparent blocks, basically), but I correct to 20/20 and am therefore definitely not "pretty much blind."

Nitpick, nitpick, nitpick. It's a great song anyway.

Ugh, weather.

sleet hisses pale grey

on ice-cracked mountain sidewalks.

steam rises from tea.

Horndog On A Stick

After three days on a different, low-dose birth control (Microgestin Fe 120, as opposed to the dreaded OrthoTriCyclen), is it too soon to know if it's the reason I am suddenly incredibly horny all the time?

Or is it the fact that Wulfy came down with an _insert number of hours here_ stomach bug, and knowing I can't even kiss him is somehow bringing my (largely absent, lately) sex drive to the forefront of my consciousness?

Amusing anecdote: night before last I dreamed that I fucked Wulfy in a Cracker Barrel restaurant, which was actually a riverboat. I told him this as he staggered back to bed after being sick again, and it made him laugh weakly while holding his stomach.

Also, the new pill doesn't make me throw up! Score.

Watching the news

Special on the news my aunt is watching this minute:

Reporter goes to a women's gym to horrify the 20- and 30-somethings exercising by telling them that, oh noes! by the age of thirty they only have 12% of their eggs left!

I can't quite pin down exactly what's so facepalmy about this.

Is it the assumption that all women want to have children? That was definitely there. The concern that the human race might come to an end because educated able-bodied white women aren't popping out babies? There was the whole "oh no, women are having careers instead of having babies" thing.

Meh. Just a moment of annoyance while I happened to be online.

Bunny Chaser

Suckitude

Reasons last week sucked:

-Dumb argument with guy friends (see below)

-Sleep deprivation

-Tina Turner the Honda Accord has been making disturbing rattling, thumping noises.

-Annoying patients

-Coworkers disrespecting My Brother The Doctor

-Coworkers blaming me for "freaking out" over said disrespect

-Possible week before my period? Not sure, as I still haven't figured out exactly how I respond to the Pill.

-Dog my family has had since I was ten is steadily getting sicker.

Reasons This Week Has Sucked:

-Parents had the dog put down Monday morning; they and my brother stayed with her. I had to stay here for work.

-Coworkers continuing to argue.

-Coworker who regularly cheats on her husband with her ex-husband (who cheated on her) flips out because her husband may or may not be corresponding with someone who may or may not be another woman, and has been looking at cute girls on Myspace. Facepalmage ensues.

-Annoying patients

-Sleep deprivation

-Today, Tina's front tire almost falls off when I drive my mechanic coworker around to figure out what's wrong with her. It turns out that when my parents had a very trusted family business at home to replace my tires last month, they didn't tighten the lug nuts down enough. It's amazing my tire didn't come off when I was going 70 on the interstate to get back here after xmas. Coworker helps me get her down to a local tire place to replace the lug nuts, which are totally stripped, and they end up having to replace the entire wheel, which is bent and broken all to hell. Repairs cost close to $200.

-I remain vaguely irritated at my aunt, all the time, because she's nosy and nitpicky and thinks she's my mother, and she still hasn't cleared her stuff out of the apartment I was supposed to move into in August. And she refuses to work on it until I clean my room--that is, the tiny guestroom she's tried to squeeze me in for months, with no desk and tiny twin beds. And not enough storage because her stuff is still in all the dressers.

-I need to go to a dermatologist because I think the rosacea I've probably inherited from my parents is beginning to show symptoms, because my cheeks are really red and blotchy and flaky, and it's  But I'm not actually full-time so I don't have insurance right now. Which is freaking me out in general, really.

This is shaping up to be the Fortnight of Suck.

On a lighter note, boobies!

After reading Dw3t-Hthr's post about this post, I thought I'd weigh in with my own thoughts:

Having been on the pill for a few months now, I am proud to report that my breasts have grown from 32-no-one-makes-cups-this-small-dammit, to 32-a! The past few years I've mostly worn training bras from Target, which come in a few cute colors and patterns, but are lacking in the won't-show colors of black and "nude," and have oddly-placed underwire. Now, I have one black bra and one "nude" bra that came from the adult lingerie section. I have arrived.

I still don't like my bra selection, though. Bras this small usually have a metric buttload of push-up padding, because most bra manufacturers seem to think that a-cups are something to be ashamed of. I stopped wearing padding after meeting Wulfy, who helped show me that my breasts are fine as they are, thank you very much. Victoria's Secret even has a bra they claim "fit's like custom," which means that d-cups have no padding and a-cups have more padding than I have breasts. And their underwire stabs me like woah.

I also don't like going braless, which larger-breasted women keep marveling at--even though they're small, it's uncomfortable to jog or go down stairs without a little support because they bounce (that, and my boss is the Abominable Snowman who keeps the office incredibly cold and a ridiculous lot of people are offended at the site of a nipple bump through clothes). This, even though my mom had to naaaag me to start wearing a bra when I was thirteen.

I'm more-or-less happy with the way my boobs are now (I was not particularly happy when they grew, as now I only have two bras I can comfortably wear), I just hate whatever idiot designs most bras.

Now, a couple sources for small-sized lingerie. I haven't ordered from these yet, but at least most of the models do actually have small enough breasts that I can get an idea of the fit on petite ladies like me:

Lula Lu petite lingerie has lots of cute lacy styles, and lots of basics.

The Little Bra Company has bras designed by a petite woman just as frustrated as I am about bra design.

How do you start?

I just got into an argument with a few white male friends who insisted that American white men are discriminated against, other forms of discrimination have nearly faded out of existence, and "racism doesn't exist up North."

*facepalm*

At least one of them is genuinely a cool and understanding person. I think he's just burnt out on the atmosphere at this liberal arts college, where no matter what the class, the point is often that White Men Are Evil. If I had the emotional wherewithal to calmly discuss a few pertinent examples with him, I might be able to get somewhere. But I am an emotional person and I'm dissatisfied with my living situation and my body hates me and I'm underpaid and my dog is dying, and I just. Cannot. Do it.

So, Irrational Female I remain.

The other guy? Is a know-it-all engineering major. The numbers of disciplines in which he thinks he is an expert and is Most Emphatically not are ridiculously numerous, and no matter what the argument he seems to end it with "whatever, we're not going to agree anyway," with an undertone of "I'm right and you're wrong, no matter what you say." To which tonight, I had so say, "You're right, we're not going to," and refrain from saying "because you're never going to listen to a word I say." He's the one who said "racism doesn't exist Up North." By Up North he meant, mostly, Boston. Any minority Bostonians want to disagree? I'm sure you're out there somewhere. Not that he'll listen.

And my beloved Wulfy had to take me home and comfort me, after being astonished at the ire I showed in this argument. And, because I am a white female and this is what I know, the conversation turned toward "women's issues." Why am I a minority anyway? My "minority" comprises 51% of the population, I say. My "minority" also makes less on average than your "majority," for the same work, of the same quality, over the same time. A female coworker of mine was flat-out told by our manager that she doesn't make as much money as a man who works with us, despite doing the same work and having more experience, because "it's a man's world, honey." And here's how I really flabbergasted him:

"Can you tell me when the last time you were really scared you were going to be raped? Because I can."

My car wouldn't start and I was near my workplace, and after catching a ride over I got a male coworker who used to work as a mechanic to take me back to my car and get it to start. And I was scared shitless to get into his car, but I need my car and I knew he could fix it and I was afraid to piss him off if I told him I didn't want to ride with him after he'd gotten our manager to give him permission to leave work, and I knew for sure he could fix my car, for free, and in a far shorter time that waiting an hour in freezing weather for a AAA person who was a totally unknown quantity. And I had to weigh that against the fact that he's over six feet tall to my 5'3", and weighs nearly twice as much as I do, and I know he can lift me a foot off the ground at arm's length.

And my boyfriend had no clue that I was scared that night, that I would have reason to be scared. Because he has never faced that kind of fear.

And now I am so far away from that original argument that I don't know what to think. I'm just a mess of these stupid emotions and I've cried too many times today.

My dad just called to tell me that the family dog--the goofy chocolate lab puppy we got when I was ten--probably has lymphoma and they might have to put her down within the next few days.

Poor sweet dog-baby.