Incoherent Scribblings

Directly before and for a week after my LASIK surgery, I was not allowed to wear make up.

Actually that’s not true: For two days before my surgery I could not wear liquid eyeliner or mascara. Some women need no mascara to make their eyelashes stand out, but for someone with blonde eyelashes, lack of mascara is like having no eyelashes at all. I knew there would be a period of no make up surrounding my surgery, but I was nevertheless mildly horrified when I found out I had to go without my mascara for two whole days beforehand.

It was one of my most repeated questions in the aftermath of post-op appointments: “When can I start wearing makeup again doctor?”

Overall, I am OK with wearing no make up. Unless I have somewhere to go I don’t wear it on the weekends and I don’t have a problem with people seeing me without it. In fact, I actually went through a period where I didn’t wear any make up at all. Therefore in some ways I found the absence of make up in the days following my surgery refreshing.

However, the thing that sent me running back to the mascara in the end was when a friend of mine said, “I wondered why you’d been looking so pale lately,” when I told her the doctor finally said I could wear make up again.

I am taking Early English Drama this semester and it’s finally time to start thinking about the research paper.

The prospectus is due on Monday, so today I started doing the research. I love to do research! (Hello, librarian anyone?) However, I was slightly disturbed to realize that I am actually more excited about gathering the materials and creating the bibliography than writing the actual research paper. Oh well…

I’ll admit this post isn’t long, but it’s late and I need to get to bed. I have to teach in the morning.

Tonight I celebrated the full moon. I started doing this with a group of ladies a few months ago and I am beginning to think it is having an impact on my life.

I have often questioned spirituality. I once thought I’d like to study Wicca, but when I sat down and approached it in my typically academic way I decided I wasn’t “spiritual” enough. This is not Wicca.

This is different. This takes me to a place where I find myself willing to share things that I normally wouldn’t. Most of the people don’t know me that well, but in a way I think that is what makes it so powerful. People who have known me all, or most, of my life see me in a certain way; but since these women don’t really know me that well, I can express myself in ways that I wouldn’t normally be comfortable with.

If it sounds vague, that is deliberately so.

I am very happy right now. A variety of things have happened in my life over the past few months that make me the most content I think I have ever been. And one of the things that I believe is helping me in this way are the hours that I spend thinking about the moon and everything it represents on this day.

*deep breath*

OK. Given my dismal blogging record lately, I seriously wondered about the wisdom of doing this, but after contemplating it for a few days I have decided to go ahead and do it anyway. That’s right: It’s NaBloMoPo and I will once again attempt to write every day in November… Wish me luck.

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I have joked for many years that I have a dream: My dream is that I want to be able to see clearly across the room when I wake up in the morning.

It seemed simple and I always got amused chuckles from people when I mentioned it, but in reality it wasn’t a joke.

I began wearing glasses at age 10 and probably needed them at least a year before that. It has been 25 years since I have known what it is like to see clearly from the time I wake up in the morning until the time I go to bed at night.

I hated my glasses from the first time I put them on my face. I “accidentally” broke at least 2 pair. As a result, I saved my babysitting money all summer when I was 14 so that I could buy my first pair of contact lenses. And, as much as I loved my contacts I cursed them every time the West Texas wind blew dust into them on warm summer nights.

Finally, I decided that I had had enough.

I made up my mind to make my dream come true by taking steps to reduce my dependence on corrective lenses. I scheduled LASIK eye surgery.

For over a week now I have had 20/20 vision, but I am still in constant amazement. Right before I open my eyes after I have been sleeping there is still a fleeting second when I am terrified that it will be too good to be true and when my eyes open, the world will still be blurry.

I am sure that I will take it for granted soon enough, but for now every time I open my eyes, the fact that I can see clearly without any assistance still takes my breath away.

Anna’s post reminded me that I recently passed the deadline for my 101 Things in 1001 Days. In the end, I completed 62 Things in 1001 Days.

As far as my “Professional” goals went, I didn’t seem to cross a lot of the tasks off the list, but in reality I am pleased with the progress I made. I didn’t get a professional position until I was about half-way through the list and most of the tasks were made under the assumption that I would get a tenure-track position. Since my current job isn’t tenure-track, I simply didn’t need to do some of those things.

One thing the “Personal” section of the list taught me is that I am not very charitable with either my time OR money. I picked a couple of charitable things that, because of my interest in them, I really thought I might do, but in the end I was too stingy with both my time and money.

Some other observations:

1. The “Cat Care” section tells me that my cats get better health care than I do… and I have insurance!
2. I did better on the “Financial” tasks than I originally thought I might. One of my personal goals when I came back to the States was to keep my finances under control and now, “with this economy,” I am glad that I managed not to get in over my head.
3. I did quite well in the “Family” department. Of course, the fact that I lived at home with my family for a year before I moved to Texas probably had something to do with that…
4. The “Stitching/General Crafts” sections were moderately successful. The main problem with the tasks on this list is that I overestimated how much time I would be willing to spend on things that are outside of my cross stitch comfort zone. I only have a finite amount of time to spend on my hobbies and the actual act of cross stitching beats anything else almost every single time!
5. Although I only accomplished two things in the “Health/Fitness” section, I made progress towards all but one of those goals.
6. It was tempting when I was putting this list together to add a lot of “Travel” goals. However, traveling takes money, so I tried to be realistic and managed to travel to four of my seven destinations

I have also annotated my list if you are interested in seeing what I did (and didn’t) do.

Although I only accomplished 62 of my original 101 Things, I will probably do another 101 Things list because it motivated me to at least attempt to do all those things I always say I am going to do but don’t.