A few days ago, my blog got locked by Blogger because they thought it was a spam blog. If they had locked it because they thought it was a shallow, overly self-referental exercise in mediocrity. full of sentences written in passive tense and too many references to Britney Spears’ vagina and my dogs, I would have been ok with being locked out.
When I saw the message that something here triggered some sort of spam detector and someone had to review this site before I would be allowed to post or edit, I regressed. When I read the warning that if “you do not respond or if your blog is determined to be spam, it will be deleted, I flashed back to high school, to the end of the day panic everyone experienced while, during afternoon announcements, the school discplinarian announced the names of anyone who had gotten a demerit during the day; then you had to go wait in line outside his office while he signed your demerit and assigned the appropriate punishment. Catholic school, hooray! I felt like Blogger had unwarranted problems with the length of my blog’s skirt, or maybe my blog was wearing shoes that did not meet the uniform policy. Perhaps you should stop passing notes in class or remember to cover your books, Double Vision.
Then I got pissed. I didn’t do anything wrong. There have been very important things that I’ve needed to say, and for four days, I have been rendered silent. Literally. As a testament to how much Google controls the universe, not only have I not been able to write here, but I’ve also come down with a nasty case of laryngitis. Blogger’s been so worried that I might be a spammer that they somehow got into my vocal cords as well as my blog. No joke.
I’m looking into other hosting options, so if you other bloggers out there have suggestions, I’m all ears.
On to the important things you’ve missed during my unexpected hiatus:
1. What is up with the peep-toed shoe explosion? I have been searching all winter for a pair of black leather pointed toe flats at a reasonable (under $100) price. They do not exist. I have approached pair after pair with hope, only to have my heart break. What looks like the perfect flat from a far turns out to have a nice little slice cut out of the front, turning a practical shoe that would be fashionable for several years into something no one wants. If it’s cold or wet out, I don’t want a hole in the front of my foot. I do not want to show off the front of my stockings. My toes don’t peep. They are so long they can peel bananas, so I prefer to keep my size 10.5’s hidden until it’s too hot to do so. I don’t want footwear that can’t commit to being either a shoe or a sandal. Peep-toed shoes are the mullet of women’s footwear, and we all know how well the mullet worked out for Richard Marx.
2. The HPV vaccine. If you think this is going to make your teenage daughter more likely to think about having sex, you’re wrong. Being a teenage girl is what’s going to make her more likely to think about having sex. You have to trust her to make good decisions, so why not set a good example by making a decision of your own – to protect her from the risk of cervical cancer. There are very few teenage girls I’ve known (myself included) who thought, “gee, I sure don’t want to do the nasty because I might get HPV.” They are more likely to think “gee, I sure don’t want to do the nasty because I might get pregnant/AIDS/in big trouble/grounded.” This vaccine won’t be why she starts having sex – she’ll start because she’s a teenager who doesn’t see the big picture, or because she thinks she’s in love, or because even though you’ve tried to do your job, there comes a point where you can’t make all the choices for her anymore. There’s one you can still make – get her the vaccine.
3. My hair stylist is the man, No kidding. If you need a haircut that will look amazing and be easy to deal with all at once, email me. People stop me on the street to ask me who cuts my hair. The man is a magician.
4. I go to have my yearly check-up at the Duke Eye hospital next week. It will go something like this: Various residents and visiting fellows will come in and visit me, poke me, shine lights at me,act excited about my trochlear nerve palsy, my genetically shrunken malformed muscles, the inability of my brain and eyes to talk to each other, my scar tissue, the stitches hanging out of my cornea. They will fail acknowledge that I am a person, not just a very rare and complicated medical case and star of journal articles. I will remind them of this. My eye doctor, boss of all, will then come in, tell them to stop being idiots, and kick them out. Then, he’ll say, “how are things” I will say “not great.” He’ll do an hour of tests, and tell me that there’s nothing more they can do until things get much, much worse. I will get frustrated. Then he’ll remind me to compare my vision now to what it was five surgeries ago when I couldn’t function. I won’t. I’ll spend the drive home not talking. I’ll be depressed for three days or thereabout. Then my husband will bring home chocolate cake and beer one day next week and snap me out of my pity party and remind me how lucky I am that such a thing as Duke Eye Hospital exists. Because even though I feel like a specimin while I am there, they are the best.
5. I recently realized that my first childhood crush was on Alan Alda. Or rather, Hawkeye Pierce. I’m not sure what that says about me.
