Bottled Sky

My parents got me LASIK eye surgery for my birthday this year. My dad and I both had it done last Friday, and now for the first time in 15 years I have 20/20 vision. It’s quite easily the best birthday gift ever.

Like most of the things I do I didn’t give the surgery much thought beforehand, and it was only when I lay down on the surgical table that it sunk in that I really was having part of my corneas vaporized. So for a moment I was nervous, but I got over it in literally 2 seconds. This was basically how it went down in my head:

Stage 1:  Nonchalance – “Surgery? No big deal!”
Stage 2:  Momentary nerves – “No shit! I’m really doing this!”
Stage 3:  Gung ho recklessness – “Bring on the lasers!”

The procedure itself was painless and it took only about 5 minutes per eye. The first few hours following the surgery was a bitch, though. The pain was bearable, but my eyes teared up continuously and automatically so I just kept them closed until we got home. I functioned remarkably well for a (temporarily) blind person in pain, if I do say so myself. I managed to walk quickly and smoothly from the American Eye Center, which was located in a busy shopping mall, all the way to the car with only a relaxed hold on my aunt’s hand to guide me. I was even able to feed myself takeout food in a moving vehicle.

I did, however, drop some macaroni salad down my cleavage at one point. Picture me blindly fishing pasta out of my bra in traffic with automatic tears flowing from my stinging eyes. Of course I had to giggle a little despite the pain. Wouldn’t you? It was just as hilariously absurd as my tearful toast-eating experience!

Here’s some more hilarious absurdity. My parents and I discovered that I had astigmatism when I ran into our garage wall when I was 7 — poor eyesight equals impaired ability to judge distances. I was running to greet my parents as they came home from work one night when it happened. It was like “Mommeeeeeeeee—SMACK!” My two front teeth collided with cement. Good news: no blood. Bad news: chipped tooth. Bottom line: at least we became aware that I needed glasses.

You know what, I take it back. There was no bad news about that whole incident. I’ve always liked the little nick in my tooth. I think it gives my smile character *grins cheekily* And with my newly restored vision, I see only more reasons to smile.

P.S. Yes, I am in a very good mood

I haven’t been dealing with stress very well. (I can feel everyone who has had to deal with my stress-induced bitching raise an eyebrow at the understatement.) It’s like I’m experiencing continual PMS (read: crankiness personified). I’ve been a bit short with most people, but I’ve been at my monstrous best at home. I know it’s totally unfair, but I may have been reserving the nasties for my mom because I know she’s the least likely to strangle her one and only daughter. I feel really guilty about it and I’ve been trying to keep my temper under control, but I keep failing. And it just seems completely lame to apologize when I know I won’t be able to stop myself from being snappish again, at least until this semester (i.e. the source of all stressful things) is over (and buried 10,000 feet into the ground where it will never ever bother me again).

I’m normally not the type of person who remembers past slights — I follow the rant-for-ten-minutes-then-forget philosophy — but the stress is making me remember old annoyances, too. Like just now as I was washing the dishes, I suddenly remembered the time a couple of years back when I had to wash a huge pile of dishes at 5 a.m. with a hangover waiting to happen. I had texted my parents that night that my friends and I had decided to have an impromptu drinking session (or alcoholic rampage as my friend Mei-Anne would call it) and would not be back till morning. Since they had replied and told me to have fun (my folks are very lenient), I had assumed that I wouldn’t have to worry about my dishwashing duties for the night. I had finally managed to get home a little past 4 a.m. and had been looking forward to sleeping the drunkenness away. But no! They had left all the dishes from lunch and dinner scattered on the kitchen counter, some still on the table. So there I had been, pending hangover and all, pissed as hell to be scrubbing dishes at dawn. Had I been naive to think that they would clean up because I had given them sufficient warning and because they hate it when the dishes are not washed right away?

But I digress. The point is, that was ages ago! What was my brain doing bringing that up now? Bad, stress! Bad! I need for this semester to be over, so everything can go back to being hunky-dory in Nikkiland. Then again, I can’t just turn into a monster every time things get tough. I have to find a healthier way to deal with the stress. Somehow, stress balls aren’t enough anymore.

An afterthought added several hours after my original post: I turned 22 last week. My life was in a much better place last year, I think. But I can’t really complain; it’s been a good life.

Meet the newest superhero in town, the Amazing Nikki — the girl with the super Chin. In her latest adventure, she used her incredible Chin to ward off the evil forces of the Cement Floor, which she met after battling with the Slippery Rug in the Hallway. And when faced with accusations from WonderMom that her slipping was caused by her “imbalanced walking,” the Amazing Nikki used her signature move, the Defiant Chin Jut — which she still managed to pull off magnificently, notwithstanding the fact that at the time she was holding a Betadine-soaked cottonball to her Chin to stop the bleeding — combined with her patented Eye Roll.

The Amazing Nikki cracked jokes with PowerDad at the Superhero Repair Facility (ER to mere mortals), where the ultra-cute DoctorDude happily announced that stitches weren’t necessary and superglued (no kidding!) her Chin back together. Throughout the adventure, all Nikki could think about was how lucky she was that yearbook photos were over and that the cut was right under her face and therefore would not interfere with her relative cuteness too much.

Watch out for the next installment of the Adventures of the Amazing Nikki, where Nikki will attempt to actually finish an assignment without cramming.

I feel like drawing something dark and strange. Dark like a woman with whisper-thin fingers that are long enough to go around someone’s throat thrice and strange like a sunlit sky swarming with little tin-can robots with fairy wings. But I can’t because my artistic skills are limited to the safe and adorable. It’s frustrating to have visions in my head and not being able to let them out.

Still connected with my un-boyfriend search, I got to thinking about the sentence “I love you.” I think it’s overrated. It’s so often misused and abused that it’s lost some of its meaning and impact, at least to me. And when it’s said by someone who thinks love is a feeling, it can be downright sickening. There are a lot of other things I’d rather hear, like what my mom told me last week during a casual chat over breakfast. We were talking about metaphysics (casual?! LOL) and she said that her greatest fear about dying is not dying itself but that she might forget my dad and me. “I don’t ever want to forget you” is much better than “I love you” if you ask me. And I guess what made it more touching was that it didn’t come out being sappy or sentimental – she just said it as a matter of fact. I had to try very hard not to cry when she said that, because tearing up over breakfast cereal is way too weird, even for me

I did cry while eating a piece of toast two years ago, though. I had burnt my tongue and had not been able to eat anything solid for a week when that happened. I was crying because, man, it hurt! But I was laughing at the same time, because I found it so absurd and hilarious to be crying over toast. I bet I’ll never cry, laugh and eat toast all at the same time ever again LOL.

Well, wasn’t this quite the eclectic post! From fairy-bots to I-love-you’s to toast. I should stop typing now. Who knows what I’ll end up writing next.