Thought process

Currently reading:  The Brother’s K

The mind is an amazing thing.  I often have my most interesting thoughts when I’m in the shower.  I wonder if other people find this to be true as well.  It’s a process that I go through the same way every morning (give or a take a few).  It takes very little active brain power so my mind is free to wander.  Also, there are very few distractions.  I’ve also found my mind tends to go on the strangest tangents with nothing to anchor it.

So this morning I was thinking about body hair.  My strong German roots make this something I think about more than I would like.  This lead me to think about tweezers because I have lost the pair I had once upon a time, and I’d like to start tweezing my eyebrows instead of getting them waxed.  Thinking of tweezers brought up the image of a particular pair with a red grip.  When I tried to place them I remembered buying a pair of tweezers from CVS while I was working at Maple City Market because a volunteer had gotten a sliver.  My next thoughts were about taking the splinter out, but then I remembered that it had been bitter cold that day.  I think it was the coldest day all winter actually, and as I walked to CVS without gloves on my hands, a woman pulled her car over and offered me an extra pair of gloves she had in her car.  I declined seeing as I wasn’t going far and wouldn’t really need them.  I thought about what a kind gesture that was, and how more people should be like that woman, and how I want to be more like that woman…. and then I thought about how I had gone from body hair to good samaritan in the span of a few moments.  And then I decided I had something to blog about.

Note about eyebrow waxing/plucking:  I used to think it was a completely silly vanity.  Then I had it done once because a beautician talked me into it.  and I was amazed at how much it opened up my face and made my eyes stand out more.  I’ve been hooked since.

I know I haven’t blogged much of substance recently.  I’m just not in a place to go into it.  There’s just too much.  But I’ve been really happy today!

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Figures

I only have Liz for the next three days, yippee! I love having only one or the other of the kids. I miss the one who’s gone, but it’s so relaxing to take care of one child instead of two. Anywho, Liz just drifted off to sleep and what do you think started going off in the courtyard? A sledgehammer. That’s right, couldn’t have better timing guys.

A post about Christmas to come.

Friendly advice

If someone (like your mother) gives you some peppers, ask what kind they are and do not assume because they are a none threatening yellow and do not smell spicy that they are in fact not spicy.  This is a very bad idea.  And do not, whatever you do, handle them with your bare hands. If for some reason you do this, and the peppers turn out to be habaneros, this is my advice.

Do not touch your eyes!

Have someone help you take the highest recommended dose of pain relievers immediately, you shouldn’t do it because you’ll spread the oils.

wash your hands in milk, vegetable oil, vodka, and rubbing alcohol, I don’t know if these things will actually help, but some people seem to think they will, and honestly you’re probably at the point right now where you’ll try just about anything.  If you’re brave, some people also say a 1/5 bleach-water mixture will cut the oil.  Do not use straight bleach as some people suggest.  This is just plain stupid.

After this use aloe vera or an anti-bacterial ointment to help ward off possible infections due to weakened skin.

Finally, ice packs or ice-water baths will help cut the pain.

As you’ve probably guessed, I did something really stupid last night.  Unfortunately I didn’t have the pain killers until a couple hours in, and I didn’t try the vodka (didn’t want to waste it).  I don’t know if any of the other things actually helped, because the only thing that really took the pain away was cold, but they may have stopped the damage from continuing.  My hands hurt with the most intense pain I’ve ever experienced anytime I wasn’t icing them for about 6 hours.  I’m not sure how bad the pain would have gotten if I hadn’t had something cold to sooth them.  At one point I tired to just let them go so that I could try to sleep.  I was extremely tired, but after about 10 minutes the pain got so bad I was sobbing, and got up and pulled out a new icepack.  Eventually I went to sleep with my left hand on a block of frozen spinach, my right had calmed down enough to not have to be iced.  I woke up at one point from the pain and had to put my hand back on the spinach, but when I woke up in the morning my hands were only sour and ached at the tips.  The searing pain was gone.  At one point I actually considered going to the ER, but A) there’s nothing they could have done except give me pain killers, and B) it wouldn’t have been worth the money.

My first response was WTF!

I’ve been good.  I’ve been really good.  No searching on facebook.  No looking him up on IM.  And then!  Fate twists in the knife and brings him to me.  Today I received an IM message saying that a peice of mail from my bank for me had come to his new apartment.  How weird is that!  It’s a new debit card.
I realized a while later that there is a good (although still screwy) explaination.  We had a joint checking account while we were engaged, and I’m guessing this is a new card for that account.  But I specifically remember cancelling the account and opening a new one, so this must be some sort of error.

It’s a little bit like the wedding magazines I keep getting several years too late.

We didn’t talk long, but other than the initial shock and fighting the desire to get into a more lengthy conversation, it wasn’t too bad.  It really is a kind of pain that just keeps petering out.

Crossing paths

Mike and I meet in Chemistry lab. The first day he turned to me and asked if I wanted to be his partner. I couldn’t figure out how he knew my name. I figured it was due to the fact that I was a senior and in a small school like Goshen most people are at least aware of everyone else. We just happened to be standing next to each other, otherwise it would have never happened that way. I don’t think a choice of where to stand has ever affected me so much. I will always be awed by how our getting to know each other was due to freakish chance. But I guess alot of people come into our lives that way. Just not usually with me. I tend to know people through predetermined connections.

What this post is really about though is the fact that Mike and I had a number of chances to meet before this point, but we never did and I think our relationship is largely due to that fact. I wouldn’t have seen his value if I had met him any earlier.

When we were very young, ages 4-8 (me) and 2-6 (him) we went to the same fourth of July fireworks display in the same park in Syracuse. Now this park isn’t very big. A pavilion, one play set, some lawn and a very small beach. Most likely we would have been playing on the play set together. What if we had met then? What if our parents had met and become friends. It wouldn’t have been unlikely with the way my dad likes to meet new people, and there would have been plenty of connections. There was the Mennonite connections, and I think by that point my parents might have been renting our old house to Mike’s aunt, although that may have come a few years later. Regardless, if I had gotten to know him at all at that stage I’m sure I would have remembered him a little. I have a great memory for faces. I’ve been able to recognize a few old elementary classmates around town that I haven’t seen since we were 8 or 9. So I probably would have noticed him around campus when he first started at Goshen. I might have even introduced myself and asked him if he remembered me. But he would have been a freshman and I would have been dating Jesse and I just wouldn’t have seen him that way.

Or nine years later. When I was a senior in high school, I almost moved back to Goshen with my parents and I would have gone to Mike’s high school. In a school of several hundred I would have at least known who he was. But he would have been a freshman and I would have been a senior and he would have been way too young for me. And he would have always been little Mikey to me. We probably would have been in a play or musical together. That would have been fun, but he would never really grow up in my eyes.

Mike is friends with Abby’s little brother, and Abby recently came across some picture from our sophomore year of Mike hanging out at her house. What if I had been over that day? Jess was. I could very well have been too. Again with the young thing. He was only a senior in High School.

Around that time we were attending the same church. Not a large church mind you, give or take 100 people on any given Sunday so it’s kind of surprising that we never meet there. After we started dating, Mike remembered that he had noticed me there once when I went up to make an announcement. I had recently shorn my hair off and must have been wearing ambiguous clothes because at first he wasn’t quite sure of my sex. Once he determined that I was a girl, he figured I was a lesbian (My home church is openly welcoming of homosexuals so that’s not a huge leap to make, although a bit stereotypical) Talk about your first impressions.

Life is a tricky thing. Change one strand and everything could be different. Yes, Heroes got me thinking, but this has been on my mind for a while. Thank God for Chemistry.

My sweet flatmate

Music: Get Rhythm from Walk the Line

I fell down a flight of stairs on Monday and I’m currently sporting a brilliant purple bruise with a diameter of several inches. My roommates have enjoyed tracking its progress. Today Abby told me it looks like rancid meat. Thanks.

Apartment talk

Music: Kinky boots soundtrack

—

“Maybe this is a sign that I’ll fall in love soon, since I’ve sucked at cards so much recently”

“Yeah because there’s a direct correlation there”

“I figure if I should get the one side if I have to have the other”