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Jun. 3rd, 2012 03:39 amSometimes, I get really really tired of how if you do any research at all, on any topic, you find that there is the way everyone else in our society seems to mostly do things...and then there is a far superior, highly beneficial way that is little known and harder to achieve. Conscious living is a never ending series of unfolding truths about how you've been doing errythang WRONG.
THIS GOES FOR EVERYTHING. Everything you've ever been told by public schools, television or your neighbors is total horseshit if you just get online and read for 10 minutes about it.
One dimension of what I'm talking about is, things they sell in stores near you reallyreallyreally suck compared to things you can order from websites. Like, they're cheap rip offs, they won't last, they're toxic and potentially dangerous, they don't even do what they're supposed to - for example, cloth diapers. The ones in the stores are a joke. When you hear that someone hates cloth diapers and thinks they don't work, it's almost always because they bought the ones available in "real" stores. Same for sex toys, for fucking TEA, whatever.
Whether you're getting a bird or buying a bunny or cutting your hair, you can do a very minimal amount of research and learn that you need to spend more than other people and jump through a bunch of hoops normal people have never heard of, if you want it done right. There are real and terrible problems with the standard ways things are done. It doesn't matter how many rabbits you know live outside, when you read about maggots nesting in rabbits' rear-flesh because they smell the feces, while flies are rife in summer, and then bursting from the skin as they hatch, you keep the fucking rabbits inside or just decide you're not getting one.
Some stuff you can disregard and be like, whatever. Maybe you're fine with the cheaply made and mostly plastic toys at Walmart or say you like fast food enough to eat it regardless of what nutrition is missing. You know pizza at big chains is mostly corn syrup and additives and isn't even as tasty as pizza at little pizza parlors or that you make at home, but you like it anyway so too bad.
Workbooks, though, workbooks sold in bookstores are (almost always) total bullshit compared to the ones you order from the internet, and totally shortchanging your kids. You can't even get real "curriculum" at learning stores (that I've been to). You HAVE to go online!
Fish oil purchased at a CVS is either gonna do nothing, or eventually kill you via mercury poisoning.
The vast majority of what's marketed as "yogurt" is really corn syrup and gross hormone-laden dairy with minimal probiotic benefits. Which is fine if you just want an empty treat, but if not, you have to go to the one store in town that sells real yogurt and pay more.
If you buy something that appears to be and is called a "corset" from any chain store, and it does nothing for your figure/warps to the point of being ruined with one wearing, you can google and find out it's because REAL corsets cost like $300 and are made from your measurements and are some kind of serious investment people save up for handmade with artisan craftsmanship and then treasure.
It is exhausting horseshit.
Anyway, the particular issue that's sparking this rant, is piercing. Gun piercing, like the kind they do at the mall, is "bad" for a lot of reasons. You can't get everything in the gun totally sterilized, it's significantly more painful with a lot more trauma to the tissue vs needle piercing, since you're forcing the actual blunt earring through the cartilage - too small of a gauge is often used so that holes close easily/don't comfortably accommodate all standard earrings, infection and poor healing are common, BLAH BLAH BLAH. On the internet, everyone knows this and nobody would ever subject a child to such cruelty and danger.
This is all very annoying because if you're like me, you got your own ears pierced with a gun, you know plenty of other people who pierce ears with guns, and you even have some ridiculous peripheral anecdata, like, Well Arielle got her NOSE done with a gun in a foreign country and it was fine!
To further complicate matters, finding actual piercers in tattoo shops that are willing to pierce minors is very very difficult - sometimes they aren't even legally allowed to, depending on your state! Even pediatricians usually use guns, if they offer ear piercing.
All of this combined with how INSTANT the gun is and how they can do both sides at once, is why I caved and took Annie to Claire's in a mall and got her freakin' ears pierced there, a couple of years back.
And yeah, she had a lot of pain and poor healing and ended up with one side infected and we took them out and the holes closed - and upon inspection the posts on the jewelry were tiny, you get the picture. I felt like an asshole.
Now she wants her ears pierced again. I've talked to her enough about needle vs gun piercing that she would never do the gun thing again even if I wanted her to, which I don't - and this was all reinforced for me when I got my own nose pierced and the piercer guy talked about it.
So today I called 5 places before I found someone who stayed on the phone with me long enough that he eventually caved and said he would drop his "16 and over only" policy and I could bring her in their shop.
We trekked up there, she and I, and we got their notary form and went and found a 24 hour check cashing store open on the weekends that offers notary services and stood in line there and paid $10 and took the form back...only to find she still needs a picture ID which she does not have. Because she's 12! But the birth certificate, social security card and notary form with my ID were not enough, so we're going back next week after a stop at the DMV to do this ID thing.
Meanwhile, twice people have asked what I was up to and when I explained the hassle they both inquired, "Why don't you just take her to the mall?"
Argh.
I have had a lot of really great moments today. I had some HORRIBLE moments, like when I first realized the alarm going off was for me and not Grant because I have Statistics early on Saturdays, and when I first got a glimpse of the Statistics exam I was handed.
But there were still more really good ones.
Grant managed somehow to be holding me in a way he never has before, after my class, touching me in a way we've never done, in some sweet-drowsy cuddle positioning that could never be recaptured if either of us moved from our spots. It was magical and led into a two hour nap.
We had tacos all together for lunch and after an initial 10 minutes of chaos and disorganized self serving arguments, I was looking around loving my family and eating some damn fine yum.
Elise fell asleep in my lap later in the day, all warm and fitting into me wonderfully. She's so big, but so small, and so lovely.
Ananda and I laughed at things on the internet, ran around Pinecrest/Kendall in search of earrings in a way that was really pretty fun, and watched a movie together in my room late tonight.
Grant made a fantastic improvised dinner when we realized we were missing some soup ingredients we'd planned on - fish and roasted potatoes and steamed broccoli and salad and white wine. Holy shit I love not having to do anything and dinner happening anyway. This man!
Now, it's 3:30 AM and I have to wake him up out on the couch where he is so he can come to bed...tomorrow, I dunno, I imagine it'll be largely shaped around the birthday party Jake and Isaac are going to in the afternoon.
My personal existence separate from the people around me is largely defined by:
-being in too much pain (hernia site, back, and foot - from misaligned hips causing leg problems - mostly) almost all of the time
-crying at the drop of a hat over movie trailers, movie plots, YouTube videos, song lyrics, imagined scenarios, nostalgia...it's out of hand, I don't know what is happening exactly but if I'm alone I can suddenly go from zero to audible sobbing in like, one second. I think I've probably cried 6 times a day for the last week and I'm really not miserable or depressed or anything like that in between cries.
-extreme impatience and irritation about the continued delays in my book publishing processes...this goes for the local publisher putting out my short stories and for Memo taking his sweet ass time with my illustrations. Although I receive enough input and updating from both sources to know I'm steadily approaching game time(s), it's kind of like being overdue with a baby - each day that brings you closer in reality FEELS as though it's more and more likely that it's just never going to happen. Mentally you know better but that means little to the frustration.
THIS GOES FOR EVERYTHING. Everything you've ever been told by public schools, television or your neighbors is total horseshit if you just get online and read for 10 minutes about it.
One dimension of what I'm talking about is, things they sell in stores near you reallyreallyreally suck compared to things you can order from websites. Like, they're cheap rip offs, they won't last, they're toxic and potentially dangerous, they don't even do what they're supposed to - for example, cloth diapers. The ones in the stores are a joke. When you hear that someone hates cloth diapers and thinks they don't work, it's almost always because they bought the ones available in "real" stores. Same for sex toys, for fucking TEA, whatever.
Whether you're getting a bird or buying a bunny or cutting your hair, you can do a very minimal amount of research and learn that you need to spend more than other people and jump through a bunch of hoops normal people have never heard of, if you want it done right. There are real and terrible problems with the standard ways things are done. It doesn't matter how many rabbits you know live outside, when you read about maggots nesting in rabbits' rear-flesh because they smell the feces, while flies are rife in summer, and then bursting from the skin as they hatch, you keep the fucking rabbits inside or just decide you're not getting one.
Some stuff you can disregard and be like, whatever. Maybe you're fine with the cheaply made and mostly plastic toys at Walmart or say you like fast food enough to eat it regardless of what nutrition is missing. You know pizza at big chains is mostly corn syrup and additives and isn't even as tasty as pizza at little pizza parlors or that you make at home, but you like it anyway so too bad.
Workbooks, though, workbooks sold in bookstores are (almost always) total bullshit compared to the ones you order from the internet, and totally shortchanging your kids. You can't even get real "curriculum" at learning stores (that I've been to). You HAVE to go online!
Fish oil purchased at a CVS is either gonna do nothing, or eventually kill you via mercury poisoning.
The vast majority of what's marketed as "yogurt" is really corn syrup and gross hormone-laden dairy with minimal probiotic benefits. Which is fine if you just want an empty treat, but if not, you have to go to the one store in town that sells real yogurt and pay more.
If you buy something that appears to be and is called a "corset" from any chain store, and it does nothing for your figure/warps to the point of being ruined with one wearing, you can google and find out it's because REAL corsets cost like $300 and are made from your measurements and are some kind of serious investment people save up for handmade with artisan craftsmanship and then treasure.
It is exhausting horseshit.
Anyway, the particular issue that's sparking this rant, is piercing. Gun piercing, like the kind they do at the mall, is "bad" for a lot of reasons. You can't get everything in the gun totally sterilized, it's significantly more painful with a lot more trauma to the tissue vs needle piercing, since you're forcing the actual blunt earring through the cartilage - too small of a gauge is often used so that holes close easily/don't comfortably accommodate all standard earrings, infection and poor healing are common, BLAH BLAH BLAH. On the internet, everyone knows this and nobody would ever subject a child to such cruelty and danger.
This is all very annoying because if you're like me, you got your own ears pierced with a gun, you know plenty of other people who pierce ears with guns, and you even have some ridiculous peripheral anecdata, like, Well Arielle got her NOSE done with a gun in a foreign country and it was fine!
To further complicate matters, finding actual piercers in tattoo shops that are willing to pierce minors is very very difficult - sometimes they aren't even legally allowed to, depending on your state! Even pediatricians usually use guns, if they offer ear piercing.
All of this combined with how INSTANT the gun is and how they can do both sides at once, is why I caved and took Annie to Claire's in a mall and got her freakin' ears pierced there, a couple of years back.
And yeah, she had a lot of pain and poor healing and ended up with one side infected and we took them out and the holes closed - and upon inspection the posts on the jewelry were tiny, you get the picture. I felt like an asshole.
Now she wants her ears pierced again. I've talked to her enough about needle vs gun piercing that she would never do the gun thing again even if I wanted her to, which I don't - and this was all reinforced for me when I got my own nose pierced and the piercer guy talked about it.
So today I called 5 places before I found someone who stayed on the phone with me long enough that he eventually caved and said he would drop his "16 and over only" policy and I could bring her in their shop.
We trekked up there, she and I, and we got their notary form and went and found a 24 hour check cashing store open on the weekends that offers notary services and stood in line there and paid $10 and took the form back...only to find she still needs a picture ID which she does not have. Because she's 12! But the birth certificate, social security card and notary form with my ID were not enough, so we're going back next week after a stop at the DMV to do this ID thing.
Meanwhile, twice people have asked what I was up to and when I explained the hassle they both inquired, "Why don't you just take her to the mall?"
Argh.
I have had a lot of really great moments today. I had some HORRIBLE moments, like when I first realized the alarm going off was for me and not Grant because I have Statistics early on Saturdays, and when I first got a glimpse of the Statistics exam I was handed.
But there were still more really good ones.
Grant managed somehow to be holding me in a way he never has before, after my class, touching me in a way we've never done, in some sweet-drowsy cuddle positioning that could never be recaptured if either of us moved from our spots. It was magical and led into a two hour nap.
We had tacos all together for lunch and after an initial 10 minutes of chaos and disorganized self serving arguments, I was looking around loving my family and eating some damn fine yum.
Elise fell asleep in my lap later in the day, all warm and fitting into me wonderfully. She's so big, but so small, and so lovely.
Ananda and I laughed at things on the internet, ran around Pinecrest/Kendall in search of earrings in a way that was really pretty fun, and watched a movie together in my room late tonight.
Grant made a fantastic improvised dinner when we realized we were missing some soup ingredients we'd planned on - fish and roasted potatoes and steamed broccoli and salad and white wine. Holy shit I love not having to do anything and dinner happening anyway. This man!
Now, it's 3:30 AM and I have to wake him up out on the couch where he is so he can come to bed...tomorrow, I dunno, I imagine it'll be largely shaped around the birthday party Jake and Isaac are going to in the afternoon.
My personal existence separate from the people around me is largely defined by:
-being in too much pain (hernia site, back, and foot - from misaligned hips causing leg problems - mostly) almost all of the time
-crying at the drop of a hat over movie trailers, movie plots, YouTube videos, song lyrics, imagined scenarios, nostalgia...it's out of hand, I don't know what is happening exactly but if I'm alone I can suddenly go from zero to audible sobbing in like, one second. I think I've probably cried 6 times a day for the last week and I'm really not miserable or depressed or anything like that in between cries.
-extreme impatience and irritation about the continued delays in my book publishing processes...this goes for the local publisher putting out my short stories and for Memo taking his sweet ass time with my illustrations. Although I receive enough input and updating from both sources to know I'm steadily approaching game time(s), it's kind of like being overdue with a baby - each day that brings you closer in reality FEELS as though it's more and more likely that it's just never going to happen. Mentally you know better but that means little to the frustration.
