Blurry, Blurry

My vision has been bothering me for a while. Since I was in second grade I have been wearing glasses in some kind of capacity. I have always felt, especially in high school, that my glasses were kind of like a block to me being attractive.

I started wearing contacts six years ago, but allergies have always kept me from really being able to wear them on a constant basis. At best, I can wear my contacts all through winter, but maybe only four times a month any other part of the year.

It was really troubling though when this past year, I couldn't wear my contacts hardly at all. It was even more disappointing when my eyes became so bothered by my attempted contact use that I actually ended up with really sore, tired, red eyes. All this summer I have been fighting my eyes, starting with the red eye, and moving onto more serious eye problems of having seriously crusted eyes in the morning, to extreme light sensitivity, to blurred vision in my left eye.

I finally went to the doctor to try to clear things up. It has been greatly frustrating not knowing what is wrong with my eyes, so instead of going to my regular eye doctor, I decided to go to Clarkson.

It was there that I finally got some answers.

I explained how much my eyes bother me, and how badly my vision was blurred, including the fact that the blurred vision was accompanied by extreme light sensitivity. The doctor looked at my eyes, explained exactly what he was doing, and gave me a clear diagnosis.

I basically have chronically dry eyes. They are so dry that the normal stuff that usually lands on people's eyes, like dust and other shit, can't be washed out of my eyes. My left eye is way worse off than my right eye, but the doctor told me that my right eye was definitely on its way to becoming just as cloudy.

He gave me a prescription to help me. Basically I have to take these steroids four times a day, and my eye should start to heal itself.

Sadly, there is no guarantee that my eyes are ever going to get better. I have almost no tear production in my eyes, so I might always have to have artificial tears. And I may never be able to wear contacts, no matter how much I absolutely love them.

But on the plus side, my secret fear of going blind seems to be nothing more than a fear. So for that, I am grateful.

Bitch be Trippin'

Alas, I know it has been a while since I last posted, not including the story about my kitten. There have been many events occurring in and around my life, but tonight's event is definitely the most pressing, as it is the most recent.

I shall begin with the simple fact that the ex-boyfriend has a pregnant girlfriend. Weather it is actually his is totally the question of the day, because everyone knows she has been cheating on him, Chris just doesn't believe EVERYONE.

Naturally, as I do think Chris is a good person, just terribly naive, I dislike the girlfriend. And this is the same girlfriend of his I told he should "totes give a second chance" after her first indiscretion. I really tried to give her a chance, but seriously, she is a total twot.

Which brings me to tonight. Gina and I went over to visit our friend Kyra, whom is also the fiancé of Gina's brother. It wasn't really all that clear weather or not the slut girlfriend would be there or not, but what did it matter to us? It was Kyra and Matt's place. They were just crashing on account of Chris being homeless (again) and the girlfriend, (her name is Malissa, "with an A") just following him around uselessly.

So we get there, and Malissa is just chillaxing on the couch like a bum. We follow Kyra into the apartment to check out the new digs, and see her rather enormous closet considering the tiny space. Gina then tells Kyra that she wants to talk to her about "stuff and things" and since the TV in Kyra's room is still boxed up, I decide to be good-natured and watch a Repo show with her while the girls talk things out.

I am going to stretch the good-natured thing to the max.

I pop a squat on the futon, and pleasantly ask, "What are we watching?"

"Are we seriously gonna do this?" Not really an answer, so I won't play along.

"Watch TV together? I think so." I smile, but it's really more sarcastic than sweet.

"Get up."

"Up?" I look at her, cock my head a little and really give her a maniac grin.

"Get up! I am serious!" Her face gets a little red, which makes me grin harder.

"Or what?" I ask. All sparkling eyes and charm for little bitches.

"I said get up!"

"What are you gonna do?" More head cocking to the side, and I am grinding my teeth I am smiling so hard.

"You have to the count of five." I can't help it, I giggle.

"Five? That is so little numbers!"

"Get up!"

"I am on four now, right?" I hold up my left hand, starting the countdown.

"Get up!" She is all glares and malevolence by now.

"Three..." I tick down my fingers, "Two..." I drop my last finger, "One! Yay! One! What does that mean? You are upposed to go something right? Something is about to happen? What? You aren't doing anything! Do something! One, one, ONE!" I squeal with glee when she finally gets up. It takes a good deal of huffing and puffing, and I am concerned she could blow the house down.

Then she does the ultimate faux pas: she grabs my wrists. I learned a long time ago to never let anyone think they are gonna man-handle me.

I gently break her grasp with a simple karate move Alex showed me years ago.

"Don't touch me," I say, using my you're a bad dog voice. She just goes back at it again. 

I break her grasp again, this time more firmly, and say as calmly as possible, "Don't touch me."

She goes in for a third grab with her right hand, and either does the same with her left, or is trying to go for a punch. Either way, I grab her left hand that is slightly balled, and squeeze with a little force. Her thumbs pops. But because her right hand is grabbed onto my left arm, and it is for sure the weaker of the two, I dont break her grasp immediately.

In a move Alex would have been proud of, I roll back slightly, put my right foot against her thigh and push with the same force I use on my kitten. She seems shocked that I am in full control of my body. Maybe Chris told her I was a paraplegic. She drops my hand and backs up.

"You kicked my stomach!" She squeals like a gutted pig.

I raise my eyebrow. "I didn't know your stomach was located in your thigh." I poke her thigh pointedly. "Of course it is fatty enough."

"I am calling the cops!"

My eyebrow is still raised, "Call them. I have dealt with many cops in my day. They all like how I tell the truth." She just storms out of the apartment in a huff. I shrug, because I still haven't done anything wrong. Not only did I not start it, but I didn't hurt her in anyway. I had light pink rings forming on my wrists, but what did I care about a little ouchie.

Kyra started freaking out when she heard that the cops had been called and began hyperventilating. I read somethings about their church's funding. I heard the front door slam open then shut, and very heavy footfalls run into the bathroom. I smiled, since Chris had told me how hard it was to make Malissa cry. Apparently not.

She left the bathroom to go back outside and talk to the cops. Finally Gina lead them upstairs to meet me. I smiled kindly, because I seriously had talked to cops a lot. Then I reiterated the true story. The dudes looked at me, all tall and scrawny with my skinny arms and skinny legs and decided I wasn't a threat in the slightest, especially to not such a rotund girl like Malissa.

They informed her there was nothing they could do. She didn't have any marks, while I did. If anyone should be pressing charges, it was me. Of course, I didn't really care to do anything that irrational. They informed me she was pressing charges. I smiled and said okay. Then the officers told me and Gina we had to leave, so we grabbed our stuff and hopped in our cars. No big deal to me. They didn't even know my name.

Chris decided to send me something akin to a death threat via text. I told him I didn't kick his girlfriend in the stomach, but of course I had to be facetious and add in that "Unless your girlfriend had her stomach and uterus in her thigh," I definitely didn't kick her there. Of course, maybe she really does have different anatomy. I never met someone who literally had stomach fat that slugged off of her.

I also decided to add in that he could come hit me if he wanted to. "You know where I live," I explained. "If you believe her, you'd do it."

Of course, I don't see Chris anywhere. He is too much of a pussy to do something.

The Kitten

So, there was a stray cat living outside my apartment that I noticed about two months ago. I am normally not a cat person, but I felt sad for her. She was so little and stray cat like, I took it upon myself to start feeding her. She ate all the food and water I left out for her, but I didn't really ever see her. I wasn't really worried though.

Then I went for a little weekend vacation, (story to come later), floating down a river. And when I got back, my neighbor had taken it upon herself to continue feeding the cat in my absence. At first I was happy that the cat hadn't gone hungry while I was away for four days, but I assumed she had been able to catch her own food since she was alive before I had started feeding her.

Well, after I explained to my neighbor that I was the guilty party member who was feeding the stray cat, she told me how the cat had become friendly. I was happy, because that meant she was a nice cat. But then my neighbor also informed me that she was going to take the cat to the pound if someone didn't do something.

I am allergic to cats.

But I am weak at the thought of a kitten being put to sleep because of the simple problem of overcrowding at shelters, so I quickly volunteered my home.

"Oh good, she really does want a forever home." She seemed happy with having found a place to put the kitten. I was left chewing my lip.

My neighbor helped me get the kitten into a crate, and I made an appointment with the vet at the humane society to get her checked out. I put her in the car, drove her down there, and proceeded to wait. The vet techs finally came out to collect the stray kitten and me.

The vet techs checked her out for feline leukemia and pregnancy, weighed her, (six pounds, eight ounces) then called the vet in. She explained how my new family member, (who was clean of both afflictions), would need her kitten vaccines since she was six to eight months old. In total, after the second round, she would be costing me two hundred dollars. I sighed inwardly, but I couldn't just leave her there to die.

The poor kitten was shaking like a twig during a tornado, anyways.

So she got her distemper, rabies, and leukemia vaccines, plus a flea and tick treatment and a deworming. Then she crawled back into her crate, defeated. I paid the front desk and left with the little calico.

I stopped by Petsmart and bought her some necessary things like a scratching post, little box, collar, water dispenser, food dish, and most importantly kitten food. Then I took her inside my apartment for the first time. She mewed at me, and after setting up food, water, and litter box, I let her out, slipping on her black collar.

She crawled under my futon and stayed there all day and night.

She finally started coming out and inspecting her new home. I encouraged her to use the scratching post, and was very relieved to see she knew exactly how to use the litter box.

She even started coming up to me. And since last Tuesday, (as I have only had her a week) she has started coming when called, goes where I tell her, and eats pretty much everything, including waffles.

And while I am allergic to cats, I have invested money into allergy medication, and have plans to get allergy shots.

I named her Elsa, but I call her Elsie most of the time.

"Let Me See Your..."

So this past week was my birthday, and in celebration I had a few little gatherings. On my actual birthday, some of my friends took me out to a hookah bar. It was ridiculously fun and we stayed there from about seven until eleven. Then the next night, my dad and Sharon cooked me dinner and made me a giant paisley cake. (They are finally coming around to my tattoo.) Then two days later, my mom, little brother, and Adam went out to a Peruvian restaurant and I got all kinds of special things done, like having a menu that said Happy Birthday at the top.


Regina and I decided to end the week with a movie: Magic Mike. For any girls reading this, you'll definitely like the movie. But maybe go during the day so you can circumvent all the squealing forty year old women who drink way too much.


We got to the theatre, waited in line for about ten minutes, then were able to buy our tickets. I let Regina go to the first teller and waited for the next one. I walked up, told him the movie and time and passed him my twenty.


"Uh, I need to see some ID." I cannot begin to explain how hard I rolled my eyes. I had just turned twenty, and I was getting CARDED? I had never been carded in my life. Ever. People always try to serve me at restaurants, and even when I was sixteen buying tickets for R-rated movies, I was never carded.


I opened up my bill fold with another hardy eye roll, then snapped it shut. I got my ticket then found Regina waiting for me to get in the popcorn line. I told her the story and she laughed. 


"I don't LOOK sixteen!" I exclaimed loudly. I felt like I looked like an old lady: no make up, a house dress, flip flops and a hastily made braid.


"You should take it as a compliment," Regina suggested. I was annoyed.


We stood in separate lines to get popcorn, and of course, I chose the slowest one. When I finally got my popcorn and soda, Regina was already inside looking for seats. I walked up to the ticket taker and it happened again.


"How old are you?" The guy in the wheelchair asked. He had seen me a million times. I smiled.


"Twenty," I said, my teeth slightly clenched. "born in good old ninety-two." He shook his head like he didn't believe me, but I kept walking. I was going to watch a movie with my friend who was younger, looked younger, acted younger, and she didn't get carded once.


Yeah, I might have been slightly pissed off, but then the movie started, and Channing Tatum made all of that go away. 

Sprucing Up

Now that I am done with my college classes for the summer, I have decided I need some projects to keep me busy. I cleaned my apartment up, (it was a pigsty) and made a list of things that need to be done.


I am replacing my towel racks, the toilet roll dispenser, the kitchen floor linoleum, and I am going to paint my bathroom, study alcove, and hopefully the kitchen and cabinets to bring in more light. I am also putting up a curtain in front of my sliding glass doors.


These are kind of little projects, but they are enough for me since I am just a girl and only partially handy with tools.


Last night, Gina and I made some new shelves for my shoes. Since I have a lot of heels, (very tall heels, I might add) I couldn't hand them on the door hanging thing. I had them all displayed on top of my winter clothes bin, but I didn't have enough room for all of them. So I now have a shelf to put them all on.


And they look kind of fabulous.


It is nice to have my closet getting slightly more organized and the rest of the apartment coming into order. Because I live by myself, I don't actually have any obligation to make it look nice or orderly, so things fall into disrepair sometimes. But I decided I needed to get on top of making the space habitable for more people than just me, because I actually have friends that want to party with me.


So my next project coming up, once I get my pay check, is spackling the bathroom walls where the old towel hanger and toilet roll dispenser was and painting that wall and the study alcove this bright blue color.


I am super excited!

Making Money

I work at a restaurant as a busser. I would work as a server, except the company's newest policy is that I have to be twenty-one. Since I won't be twenty-one for at least one more year, I am stuck bussing and hosting.


My days usually go as follows:


Get to work, bus some tables, run some food, deal with nice customers, deal with bitches.


For the bitches, I have a couple guidelines:


If you have NEVER worked in a restaurant, YOU ARE NOT RIGHT, EVER. No, you cannot just sit where ever you want. If I am taking you to a table, sit at that fucking table, because I SWEAR TO GOD THERE IS A FUCKING REASON I AM TAKING YOU TO THAT TABLE.


If you ask to sit outside, then you are going to go outside. At no point in time is it okay to just arbitrarily decide that you want to be seated inside as soon as we call your name. Our restaurant gets packed, and having very limited seating inside means that there is definitely going to be a longer wait for that, especially during the very hot days of summer.


I am NOT A SERVANT. I do NOT do your bidding, nor am I some trained monkey that will just fetch shit for you. If you ordered a pizza with pepperoni and I bring out that pizza, DO NOT GET IN MY FACE IF YOU FORGOT YOU WANT SAUSAGE ON IT. I will bring you out some fucking sausage if it means that much to you. Otherwise, you just save 25 cents.


If the kitchen screws up and forgets to put bacon on your burger or gives you chips instead of fries, I WILL FUCKING FIX THE PROBLEM. Keep the fucking chips, I will bring out some fries in a basket. It is not a big deal, SO DON'T FREAK THE FUCK OUT ABOUT IT. It gets on my nerves.


DO NOT MOVE THE RESTAURANT FURNITURE. Period. If there is an umbrella at a table, IT IS ANCHORED TO THE MOTHER FUCKING GROUND. DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT. DO NOT MOVE TABLES. DO NOT TOUCH THE CABINETS. DO NOT ACT LIKE THIS IS YOUR HOUSE. GET YOUR MOTHER FUCKING FEET OFF THE TABLE.


Lastly, PAY FOR YOUR FOOD AND TIP 20%.


I do not know what the fuck is wrong with people. Do not ever go to a restaurant and just not pay. It is RUDE. The only way servers, bussers, hosts, all the kitchen people, and the management get paid is if people PAY. What is so hard about this concept?


Tip your server because that is how they make a living. They are getting paid nothing because all of their money comes from tips. If your food tasted bad, YOUR SERVER DIDN'T COOK IT. If your food came out late, YOUR SERVER DIDN'T TELL THE KITCHEN TO BE SLOW. If your iced tea isn't refilled immediately, STOP DRINKING SO FUCKING FAST. YOUR CUP IS NOT MADE OF MAGIC. IT DOES NOT REPLENISH ITSELF AND NEITHER DOES THE PITCHER. WHEN YOU GO THROUGH TWO GALLONS OF TEA IN 20 FUCKING MINUTES, WE HAVE TO MAKE A NEW PITCHER OF TEA. THAT TAKES A WHILE.


It is frustrating working in a restaurant. All of those things above happen everyday. People sit themselves where ever they want, are mean to every person they encounter, are rude to their servers, to bussers, to hosts. They think they know what they are talking about when they don't. Being called a liar when I have no control of the air conditioning, having people wanting to report me to a manager for telling them they cannot move umbrellas, and having people send back salads because there are "too many" croutons is what I deal with all the time.


So while I love making money so that I can pay to live in my cute little apartment, I hate dealing with nitwits.


Next time you go out into the world, weather to go to the zoo or the cinema, or a restaurant, remember that WE, the people who are trying to help you have a good day, also want to have just as good a day as you. We work on Mother's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and all of the other great holidays you get off. We are missing out on spending time with our families and friends because those are the days normal people venture out. Just because you have been waiting an hour doesn't mean that everyone else hasn't been. The only customers that get special treatment are the ones that are pleasant. Because ultimately it's the customers that will make our days good or bad.

I've Been Neglectful

I am dearly sorry for how terribly neglectful I have been. Normally I try to blog at least, (at the very least) once a month. But I think I totally skipped April, and have basically skipped May. But I do have good reasons.


In February, on the 15, my cousin Sabstian told me he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. At that point she was three months pregnant, and they had only been dating four months. On top of that, my cousin is only turning 21 in July. Of course, he presented this information to me as a "Look what I did!" Getting girls pregnant is NOT the hard part.


My good friend Carl left for boot camp around the 20 of February, so that kind of bummed me out.


Ex-Boyfriend Chris returned. That was interesting, mostly because the night he returned, Regina's brother Matt and his fiance Kyra had this huge fight. Mostly it was because of Chris's current girlfriend Melissa who was trying to start shit between Matt and Kyra. Melissa had already left because Regina and Matt had gone to pick up Chris from the airport, and that had apparently pissed the little girlfriend off. So instead of trying to figure out where Melissa was, Chris called her a stupid bitch and instead decided to rough house with me.


Regina informed Chris in April that his girlfriend has been cheating on him for a long time now. Basically two days after he left for tech school for the army, Melissa has been cheating on him. I don't know what he expects from a 17 year old high school girl who gets high and drunk every weekend, but I decided to stay out of it. Of course, Chris blamed the fact that people said anything to him on me, so I still got the short end of the stick.


I was failing my Anatomy class almost all semester because the teacher was just not giving us the right information, so I had to really buckle down. I squeaked by with a C, thank God.


My cousin introduced me to one of his friends that is actually pretty interesting. His name is Erik, and honestly, he seems like a nerd. But he is a hiker, like I am, and so we are kind of clicking. Also, he gets my pokemon jokes like Chris never would.


Gina has been testing our friendship recently, asking me to point out all her flaws. I hate doing that, because in the end, if you keep pushing me, I will tell you the truth, even if it hurts. I have come to the conclusion that it's not that she is afraid of loving someone, it's that she is afraid to ever let herself be happy.


Now that school is over, I thought I would be happier. In a sense, I am in bursts. Like today, my little brother and I went kayaking on a lake, and it was ridiculously fun. I enjoyed teaching him different strokes, and being in the sun was good for me. But being alone in my apartment, sometimes I get to thinking too much and it makes me sad.


There are a lot of things I would like to do, you know? I would like for me and Chris to be friends. Before Melissa showed up and basically told him he can't hang out with any girl, we were getting there. There were old wounds that needed patching, but I felt like we were both moving on towards something like friendship.


I would really like to not be mad at my cousin for making a human. Because ultimately I am upset he got his girlfriend pregnant. We aren't going to have the same relationship we always have. We are really close, more like twins than cousins, and now he is deviating from the path we've been taking. It really frustrates me. He is my best, and closest friend, and now he is going to be raising a baby while I am going to college and hopefully studying abroad. It pains me to know that I get to do all of these amazing things and he never will.


I would like for Gina to just be happy. She won't be, especially when she gets turned down by one guy and that ultimately means to her that she should never date again. She frustrates me because rejection is not the final blow in the casket of love. Deciding to never try to love again is what destroys people.


I want to hang out with Erik more, but he is going away on an internship to New Jersey this summer. And while most of me is like, holy crap, that's awesome! Some of me is really bummed because I like that he gets my jokes and is way taller than me. But I don't want to start anything if he is going away, so I think I will just start by making a friendship first.


I did get a new job for the summer as a nanny three days a week, so at least I am going to have a little more money. And Carl is going to be going to a close by college this fall, so maybe I will actually be going to some fun parties instead of staying home on the weekends. 


And I do have a little trip planned for the end of the summer. I am figuring out the details for a 22 mile hike. It will be a backpacking trip, that I hope will be the epitome of awesome. The plan is for me and my friends to go, but considering Chris has me on his shit list, Gina is acting like a crazy person, and I don't want to be stuck hiking with just Matt and Kyra who apparently have REALLY loud sex, it might just be me and Dash. Who knows? My summers have unexpected turns all the time.