Playing hostess!

Mike came in last night from Charlotte, and C from New York City, and LilBro 1 from New Hampshire, so I got to play hostess!  In my head, we all sat down to dinner at seven, so I planned accordingly.  Of course, that’s not remotely what happened.  C showed up around 8:15, Mike arrived around 9:30 and LilBro 1 came ten minutes after.  What, y’all don’t sit down to dinner at ten o’clock at night?

I had carrots and grape tomatoes with Light Parmesan Peppercorn Ranch Dressing and Light Caesar dressing for dipping as well as chips and fresh pico de gallo.  Then for dinner I served stuffed chicken breasts wrapped in proscuitto with steamed broccolini and steamed jasmine rice with lemon zest and fresh basil.  (If you were curious, puff pastry works as a substitute for the chicken and proscuitto — easy vegetarian option!)

No one was hungry enough for pie last night, so LilBro 1 and I had pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream for breakfast.  And no, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH PIE FOR BREAKFAST!

Got to shunt LilBro 1 off to his international flight — happy Early Thanksgiving, y’all, and have a good day!

P.S. I really do like having guests.  I’m not nearly as fond of the “getting ready for guests” chores.  But it’s nice having the laundry done, and the toilet scrubbed, and the counters cleaned, and the recycling taken out, and the fridge stocked, and the spare bed made with clean sheets, and the litter box cleaned, and . . .

In which I contemplate slicing open my eyeballs with a laser

First off, thanks to everyone who commented here!  I was sitting at my computer yesterday morning, bleary-eyed, and a little petulant.  “Why didn’t anyone comment on my Meditations post?  It was a good post, wasn’t it?  I thought it was good!”  Then I checked in this morning to find that my comment-pouting had been rendered completely unnecessary.  Thank you to Jay, Mike W., Shoothouse Barbie, Weer’d Beard and Borepatch.

And on to the topic of the post:  I’ve scheduled a Lasik appointment for January.

I’m so excited I can’t even TELL you.  The idea of waking up in the middle of the night and being able to clearly see my surroundings is fantastic.  I mean, yeah, there are other things to look forward to — not having my contacts dry out on airplanes, skipping the morning-and-night eyeball-poking routine, avoiding the agony of catching a dirt spec underneath a contact, etc. — but that’s the biggie.  I want to be able to roll over and tell whether the guy in my bedroom is my husband or The Big Bad Wolf.

And to do that, I am perfectly willing to take a Valium, have my eyelids held open a la Clockwork Orange, and trust a machine to slice into my cornea and reshape my lens.

I’m just the trusting type.

If you consider the cost of buying and maintaining soft contacts, the cost of Lasik will eventually balance out over many years.  That being said, I was very hesitant about adding the surgery to the household expenses.  In fact, whenever Mike brought up the subject I firmly dismissed it with a “Maybe some day, that would be nice” judgment.  It is my very good fortune that he did a bit of research and discovered that, in fact, the surgery was NOT the $10-K-per-eye that I’d imagined; it’s more like $2K.  Still, that’s a BIG purchase, and — unlike vacation funds, or saving up for a replacement car — the benefits would accrue solely to me.  So still I was reluctant.

Mike solved my problem by generously offering to fund my surgery out of his “allowance,” in exchange for a year’s worth of gift-giving.  Actually, that’s not quite how it happened.  When we started seriously contemplating Lasik as something I could do sooner rather than later, I mentioned that I CERTAINLY wouldn’t need any birthday or Christmas or whatever gifts for a year.   Mike decided to take me up on that throwaway offer, and therefore gave the gift of allowing me to do the surgery guilt-free.  He’s a sweetheart.

Countdown to cutting open my frickin’ eyeballs with a frickin’ laser:  57 days!

P.S.  We’re going with Custom Lasik rather than regular Lasik, on the recommendation of Mike’s friend J (he had PRK surgery).  As J put it:  “I’d rather have my eyeball sliced open based on a custom print of my eye, than based on whether 1 or 2 looked better.”  Right on.

UPDATE: Marko links.  Thanks!

Zzzzzzzzzz

Up too late three nights in a row = Sleepy Lissa.

Besides, I liked yesterday’s essay.  Go read that

I’ll write something tomorrow.

These are your eyes

Well, not your eyes; these are MY eyes*:

And these are my eyes on dilating drops:

Can you SEE how huge my pupil is?

No seriously, look:

I hate going to the eye doctor.  I come out looking like — well, I’ve no idea what my pupils would do on LSD, but popular culture leads me to believe they would look something like this.

And, of course, that made the hour-plus drive back to Lissaville an absolute joy.

*grumble, grumble, snarl*

Three things, though, made it bearable:

1) I’m not sensitive about my eyes.  The doctor can poke ‘em, prod ‘em, drip nasty potions into ‘em, and I just sit there phlegmatically.

2) Today’s Friday, and Mike’s coming home!

and 3) it was a consultation for maybe doing Lasik.  SQUEEE!!!

*No, I haven’t had to pull out the fleece hoods yet.  I don’t look forward to it.

Greetings from the Bolt Bus!

It’s a nasty, rainy, cloudy day, but I’m on my way to New York City.  Sure, I had to leave the house at ten, instead of noon, and I’ve got a seatmate.  On the other hand:

1) I’m sitting comfortably while someone ELSE struggles with driving through rain

2) I’m listening to my choir music and mentally rehearsing for the upcoming concert

3) I’m enjoying WiFi on my Eee and ready to plug it into the electrical socket by my chair, should the battery run low

4) The bus ticket cost me about as much as the gas would have, driving

5) If you consider that I’d have to pay money to park, I actually save money by busing it

And, perhaps most importantly:

6) I don’t have to drive into NYC.  The last time I tried it I got smacked with a speeding ticket in CT.  In a construction zone.

The bus is a LOT cheaper than that!!

UPDATE:  Know what would be nice, though?  If they had a GPS tracker (as they do on airplanes) so you could see where the bus was.  That would allow your receiving party to know when you’d get in, and help you figure out which river it was that you just crossed . . .

Eyes like a hawk

I get my knowledge from the most random of places.  I owe any (sketchy) familiarity with the historical religious quagmire called the Middle East to The Source. I helped diagnose my grandmother’s cataracts thanks to The Clan of the Cave Bear.*

And now  — thanks to The Fiery Cross — I’m wondering if I lack binocular vision.

Physician Claire gives her son-in-law Roger a few eye tests, asking him about which sports he played and which sports were difficult.  She then explains the reason that he could play soccer but not tennis was that he has no binocular vision — that his brain never learned to merge the pictures from his two different eyes to form a true 3-D picture.  Instead, he’s learned to subconsciously judge the distance of things by comparing their relative size.  She assures him that he should still be able to shoot, as many men close one eye while doing that anyway, but warns that he might have difficulty tracking moving objects across the sky.

Every single bit of this applies perfectly to me, right down to the preferred and proscribed sports.

I find it just as easy to go about my business with my left eye covered.  I don’t gain any real depth perception by looking at something with two eyes, rather than just my strong eye.

Is anyone else familiar with this concept?  Do you have the same problem?  Do you know how to test for it?

At the end, Claire assures Roger that many creatures, such as birds of prey, have no binocular vision, as their eyes are on the sides of their heads.  So even if it’s true — I’ve got eyes like a hawk.

But that’s not going to help me when shotgunning clays . . .

P.S. Thanks to everyone for holster advice!  And I definitely plan to buy a bluegun.  I’d mentioned to Mike that we need to practice a bit with him trying to grab my “gun” away from me — and that’s not the sort of thing you do with a real gun!

*I noticed that my Japo’s irises were blue at the edges.  Japo, you will recall, is Chinese; we’re not supposed to have blue eyes.  I thought of how, in The Clan of the Cave Bear, the Clan initially thinks Ayla might be blind because she has blue eyes.  All the Clan members have brown eyes; their eyes only film blue when they’re going blind with old age.  Thinking of this, I mentioned it to my mother, my aunt took Japo to the eye doctor a little while later, and they diagnosed her with cataracts.  True story!

NOT A NETI!!

Despite what you might think, this -

is not actually a torture device.

Seriously.

No, you buy it on purpose and voluntarily pour water up your nose.

If you’re insane.  Which apparently I am.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, the blue rubber instrument of pain up there is a neti pot, and you use it to pour water up one nostril and have it come out the other one.  No, you do not do this in lieu of saying the fifteen rosaries the Father assigned you for penance, or because you let the dog get into your wife’s shoe closet and he picked a pair of Christian Louboutin’s for his next chew toy.  You do this to wash ucky stuff out of your sinuses.

(Of course, the water you’re using to wash the ucky stuff out will, itself, be left behind as an ucky substance.  You feel quite waterlogged afterwards.)

I tend to get head colds a few times a year.  I can often fight off the worst of it by chugging tea-with-honey, gargling with salt water and religious use of Dayquil/Nyquil.  Often . . . but not always.  A few of my friends SWEAR by that-there neti contraption, so I gave it a try.

PANIC.  Utter panic the first time water started flowing up my nose TO DROWN MY BRAIN.  It didn’t even gross me out; I was too busy hyperventilating while sternly reminding myself that I was NOT in fact drowning.  It feels like water filling up your ears, mixed with that-time-you-got-pulled-under-by-the-riptide-at-the-beach-and-thought-you’d-drown.  It’s horrible.

I can’t say I noticed any great sinus improvement, either, but I’ll keep trying for a little while.  A week, maybe.

And if there’s no improvement, I’ll just move up to shoving bamboo splinters underneath my fingernails.

Library beauties

No, I don’t mean pretty librarians, though I could name one or two

Killing time before my first choir rehearsal yesterday, I found myself watching the sunset in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library.  If you’ve never been there, you’re missing out; the library’s huge, beautiful and full of books.  What’s not to like?  (Well, the metal detector at the front door perhaps, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Sitting there absorbing the breathtaking colors and majestic sky, I mused on technology and the passage of time.  Think on it . . . a few hundred years ago the only way to visually capture the scene would take several hours (at the least), expensive oil paints and canvas, and a level of talent that I most certainly do not possess.  Today?  All it takes is a decent point-and-shoot:

Push a few buttons and change modes, and suddenly the scene looks entirely different:

A total of two minutes passed between that first picture and the last picture.  It’s not time-lapse; it’s all in the camera settings.  It’s kind of fabulous.

(And, I read the camera manual so I actually know how to CHANGE those settings — boo-yah!!)

Taking full advantage of patriarchy

*ring, ring*

“Hello?”

“Good evening, may I speak to Mr. _____ please?” the caller inquired politely.

“He’s not here, may I take a message?”

“Is this Mrs. _____?”

“It is.  To whom am I speaking?” I asked.  Then I kicked myself, hard.  I could just TELL — I’d gotten myself into trouble.  The caller had that bright, shiny tone about his voice that meant he was about to ask me for money.  Sure enough . . .

“Well, Mrs. ____, this is Sergeant Friday of the Lissaville (Home of the Evil Conservatives) Police Squad, calling to remind you not to drink and drive, and to wear your seatbelts, and blah blah blah blah give us money please.  You can be a silver member for $60 or a gold member for $100, which would you prefer?”

“So sorry, Sergeant Friday,” I said sweetly, “but my husband handles the household budget and I can’t commit to anything without speaking to him.  But I’ll certainly let him know you called and I’m sure he’ll send you whatever he normally does.”

“Right, ma’am,” he replied anxiously, his voice a little less shiny.  “Or you can be a bronze member for just $25, how about I put you down for that?”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” I said, sweetly-with-a-hint-of-steel.  “I can’t commit this household to anything without speaking to my husband.”

“Wait!  How about — you can make a Goodwill donation for just $10?  I’ll send you the envelope!”

“Sorry.  I cannot commit to any household donation without speaking to my husband.”

“Oh,” he said, a bit crestfallen.  “Well, then, you have a lovely night.”

“Thank you, Sergeant, same to you,” I replied politely.

Now, we do normally donate to the annual police fundraiser, and Mike does normally make more decisions than whether we should deploy a missile shield in Europe.  But there’s just something about people calling up and begging for money that makes me dig in my heels and get stubborn.  And stingy.

Perhaps I should update our phonebook contact information to read

No soliciting.
No drop-ins.
No means NO.

Things to do over the weekend

1. Get a hair cut

2. Look up Mass. certified firearms safety courses (Mike has already made a start on that — thanks Mike!)

3. Update the blogroll — met a few new people at the bloggershoot that need recognition!  Also, I think there are a few people who have me linked on their blogs.  If you’re linking me, and I’m not linking you, drop a note in the comments so I can fix it!

4. Finish loading the bookcases.  (We purchased three new bookcases last week, which brings our total up to five large bookcases, with four smaller ones scattered throughout the apartment.  That’s barely enough to hold all our books.  When Mike and I moved into the Kitty Den we rented a two-bedroom because a one-bedroom apartment wouldn’t have had enough room for all our books.  Seriously!)

5. Re-arrange some of the bookcases in the living room.  Mike did most of the work unpacking our remaining book boxes and moving the old bookcases into the bedroom (thanks again sweetie!).  However, that means that it’s mostly his books out in the living room.  I think I need a shelf or two of my favorite books out there, so that if our guests ask which books are mine I have something besides the Wheel of Time’s and Tom Clancy’s to grab!

6. Load the pics and maybe the videos to my LookingForLissa Facebook ID.  I think maybe I’ve got a few friend requests too?  I really should update that more than once per ninety days, shouldn’t I.

7. Cut the kitty’s claws.  Also bait him into an interesting video.  (I’m heartbroken; he had his head stuck into his cardboard scratching post and I wasn’t recording when I rapped on the top, causing him to rear up, slam his head into the top and dash into the bedroom.  How did I NOT record that?)

8.  Shop for a cocktail dress.  We’re going to a wedding next month and I’m tired of wearing old prom gowns to weddings.  I haven’t bought a fancy dress since I was about nineteen.  (With one big honking exception.  Obviously.)

9.  Go grocery shopping.  Wednesday night’s dinner was a glorious success — thanks Pampered Chef! — so I’ve another quick-and-easy dinner to add to our rotation.

Anything I miss?