Seriously

I asked my brother if he noticed any change in me since the last time he saw me about a year ago, and he said “You’re not as serious.”

I win!

Maui playlist

I just spent four days on Maui with my brother and some of his friends. They were all here for a tech conference, and I joined them afterwards for a few more days of laziness on the beach. My favorite part was last night when it was just my brother and I in our room, and I played some music for him on my phone. These are the songs I played, all new favorites from within the last year or so:

Led Er Est – Plants
Led Er Est – Port Isabel
Proem – When Frailty Fails
oOoOO – Burnout Eyess
The Soft Moon – When It’s Over

IUD, Part II

So about three years ago I got an IUD. It afforded me birth control I didn’t have to think about.

Earlier this year I somehow inserted (parts of?) a tampon applicator and ended up having to dig for pieces of soggy cardboard hours later and pull them out. I found one particularly stubborn “piece of cardboard” really high up there and I couldn’t get a good enough grip on it to pull it out. After trying to yank it out about four or five times, I realized oh shit. That’s not a piece of tampon applicator. That’s the string of my IUD. I decided to stop pulling immediately because that needed to stay there.

I did some research to see if it was possible to accidentally pull the IUD out or cause any other kind of damage by pulling on the string, but it was inconclusive and all I really left with was the idea to have the IUD checked at my next OB-GYN appointment. I didn’t worry too much about it because every time I reached up there, all I could feel was the strings, so clearly I hadn’t pulled it out. Right?

Another thing I had noticed over the last few months was some pressure on my left ovary. I wondered if I had a cyst there. Or maybe even cervical cancer. The pressure came and went over the course of my cycle; sometimes it was really noticeable, sometimes barely there. I wondered if it had something to do with me having pulled on the IUD string but I didn’t really know how. Nevertheless, I decided to have that checked out at my next OB-GYN appointment as well.

That appointment was today. My doctor said that an ultrasound would be able to verify both of those things: The location of my IUD and the existence of a cyst. The ultrasound clearly showed that there was no cyst: My ovaries were empty like a virgin’s. But then she said “You know your body well.” The IUD had indeed been moved from its desired location. From what I understood, it was sitting too low and thus not as effective at preventing a pregnancy. She said that she was not able to simply move it; instead she would have to pull it out and insert a new one.

I was scared because there had been some complications the last time. My cervix had been very uptight. And this time there was no boyfriend to hold my hand or pet my head. But the doctor seemed almost excited to perform this procedure, so I got kind of excited too. I thought, why not give it a try. Maybe my cervix has lightened up a bit.

Since my doctor knew about my uptight cervix, she decided to not even try a dry run but immediately go for the injection to numb it. I’m pretty sure she injected me about two or three times but once again, I barely felt it. And I love that each time she poked my cervix with a needle she said “Here is some numbing medicine.”

And then she tried to get the old IUD out. The numbing medicine takes effect almost immediately so any pulling, prying and popping she did just felt like mild annoyances. One time she almost pulled me off the table. Yes, me, as in the entire person. “Is it just really stuck up there?” I asked, making small-talk. “Yeah,” she said. Then she turned to the nurse and said “Would you get me the, you know, the really long–?” And the nurse said “Yes, certainly.” I have no idea what these really long things were, but I do know that my doctor stuck them up my cervix. And then, I think, she kind of fumbled in the dark with them. She said “I’m sorry, I’m just looking everywhere in your uterus for the IUD.” “Oh, sure, no problem,” I said. I felt this section of my uterine wall being poked, then that. She said “Let me know if you need me to take a break.” I said “It’s okay. It feels weird but it’s not unbearable.” It’s true. I was sufficiently numbed so that it only felt like mild cramps.

Then she pulled really hard, almost pulling me off the table again, and then she said “Oh, thank God.” And she took some gigantic tongues and plucked something from right outside my vaginal opening. She held it up, and it was my bloody IUD. She said “I was starting to get so depressed because I wasn’t sure if I was going to get it out.” I said “It was just really lost in there, huh?” She said “Yeah, I’m thinking it was partially embedded.” PARTIALLY EMBEDDED? Holy shit, those are some gnarly words. I’m glad she didn’t use those words until after it was already over. I think if I had known earlier that my IUD was PARTIALLY EMBEDDED in what, my uterine wall? I would have freaked out. She told me that the string had broken off. She also said that “this” might explain the pressure I had been feeling on my ovary. It makes sense to me: Maybe the IUD had been partially embedded on the left side, creating the pressure there.

So now she still had to insert the new IUD. After what I had already been through, this seemed like a footnote. She asked the nurse to bring the ultrasound machine in again, so that she could watch the IUD on the monitor as it went into me, to ensure that it was in the right place. The nurse held the ultrasound dildo firmly against my belly, and the doctor inserted the IUD while they both watched the monitor. The nurse said that was the coolest thing she had seen and she wanted to do that all the time from now on. Then I went downstairs to have some blood drawn for STD tests. I was such a trooper today!

That was about six hours ago. It hurts down there, but not nearly as badly as it did last time. I’m having intermittent cramps, and I especially feel a pain on the left side. I imagine that’s the wound that was left when the PARTIALLY EMBEDDED IUD was dislodged from my flesh. I’ll be curious to see if the pressure subsides on the left side now that the old IUD is out.

God, I love writing about medical procedures!

Happy soulstice

I went into meditative ritual mode at 12:34pm today and stayed there until after dark. A Mary candle in my room had been burning all night and continued to burn all day. I did some domestic chores and put up a new string of fairy lights. Now I think it wasn’t a coincidence that I had left the lights sitting for a couple of weeks after buying them: they wanted to be put up today. I listened to Solstice by Björk on repeat, in my room and on my headphones, for a total of 64 times. I went for a walk to Holly Park because I hadn’t been there in years, and it had been calling me. I wore a black and white skirt, a black T-shirt with white polka dots, a black coat and a white hood, a black bra and white panties. Black and white, dark and light, good and bad, right and wrong, happy and sad. Accepting the cycles and rhythms. Or trying to.

I came home and lit my new amber-scented candle and meditated. I lit another Mary candle outside to be burnt down as it wants to. Then I did Christine Arylo’s winter solstice meditation and loved it. I painted my nails. Then I opened three packages that had come in the mail, all Christmas presents from my mom. Books and candy. Today is the real festival of light.

My New Year’s resolution for 2012: To let myself be. That is all. 2012 is my year. The year of the dragon.

The beginnings of a fashion sense

When I was about 9, I remember my 15-year-old neighbor wearing oversize wool sweaters that went almost down to her knees. I didn’t really understand why she wore those huge sweaters–I didn’t think they looked particularly good, and they also didn’t seem very practical. But I did understand that she was making a fashion statement. To me, she was sending the message that she was beautiful in her ugly sweaters, that she was subversive and rebellious, that she was expressing emotions through her clothing, and that she was in on a secret that I hadn’t yet discovered.

Colorful synchronicity

Today I met up with one of my new friends I made over the week-long school retreat I returned from yesterday. She only lives a few blocks from me. Shortly after entering her purple living-room, I said “I’ve been here before.” It turns out I was in the apartment whose owner hired me for a color consultation a few years ago. He had wanted me to help him make his place more colorful. It looked great! There was a purple living-room, a green kitchen, a yellow bedroom and a blue bedroom. My friend is temporarily staying in the blue room. What a wild coincidence!

Electronic mail

I was at the post office today to mail off a scholarship application. I handed my envelope to the clerk and said “I need to make sure that this gets to Illinois by Wednesday.” The clerk said that the only way to ensure that was via Express Mail, which costs about $18. He gave me a special envelope and a form to fill out.

A minute later I returned to the clerk’s window, and he said “Ready?” I said “No. I am just going to email it instead.”

It was a very 1995 kind of moment.

This is kind of cute

A description of myself from 2004, found on match.com:

I am a geek by day and a freak by night. I love living in San Francisco and never want to leave. I grew up in a small town in Germany and moved to the U.S. after winning a greencard in the lottery. I have never regretted this decision for a minute. I love documenting my life by blogging and taking pictures. Gender equality is very important to me. I would like to meet somebody who shares the notion that men and women are equals on every possible level. I would also like to meet somebody who likes to dance their ass off. And, if you have a bike, I will look twice.

Flash/Feisty has been adopted

So I am carless and carfree for the first time in almost 16 years. I had gotten my first car (a silver VW bug) on September 9, 1995. Ever since then I have always had a car. I had bought my most recent car on April 4, 2003. Eight years and two freak accidents later, I finally sold it to the mechanic that had been storing it for me since February.

Since the car that hit mine had been stolen, it was tricky tracking down insurance. My insurance company finally gave up after even the official police report didn’t contain any insurance information regarding the other car. Luckily I had uninsured motorist coverage and received a lump sum from my insurance (less than my car is worth but I was still happy with it). Then I received another $400 from the mechanic who bought my wrecked car off of me. He is going to fix it for himself and use it as a loaner car for his customers. I am happy with this arrangement.

On my birthday I got a voicemail from my insurance company saying that they are using a collections agency to try to recover the damages (since I wasn’t at fault, it is technically not my insurance company’s responsibility to pay). If they are successful, I would receive even more money than I already have. I don’t have very high hopes for it, but I love that there is a chance.

So far I have been loving my life without a car. The place where I have lived for the last five and a half years is close to very convenient public transportation. It has stores, cafes and restaurants within walking distance. I have been running most of my errands on foot anyway. I have often felt over the last few years that I don’t really need a car. A lot of times it just sat there in my neighborhood and I worried about it getting parking tickets.

Now I feel like a huge burden has been lifted. No more parking tickets. No more expensive repairs. No more car insurance.

For the first time in my adult life I am relying on friends for rides. And it feels really good. I love that it has gotten difficult to go to a party by myself now. I am almost forced to ask a friend to go (for a ride or for safety), and I love the amount of control I am having to give up. It’s actually nice to not be so independent anymore. I feel more dependent and thus more connected.

Happy birthday to me!

I turned 35 two days ago. Jeremy threw me an Indian potluck birthday dinner at his house. He spent all day and all night shopping and cleaning and cooking for the party. It was really sweet. He made two of my favorite Indian dishes: Aloo Gobi and Paneer Tikka Masala. His housemate Lia made Navratan Korma, another one of my favorites. His housemate Jordan made an amazing alcoholic Chai (with rum and Bailey’s) and another Indian-inspired drink called Bloody Kali (or Kali Mary, as my friend Kelly liked to call it). Some of my favorite people showed up: Jay, Amber, Theorna, Amy & Jay, Bret & Lizzy, Liz, Caylin, Kelly, Crispy, Amelia, Shu, Siri, Jessica.

My birthday gift to myself, like my only New Year’s resolution, is to love myself. This project is going pretty well so far. It’s been four whole months of self-love being my primary focus, and I can definitely feel a difference. When I talked to my aunt not long ago, she said she perceived a “quantum leap” in my energy, in the sound of my voice, even my laugh. In April I participated in Miss Rosie’s I Love You Study in which I told myself “I love you, Vera” as many times a day as I remembered to, every day of the month of April, sometimes in the mirror. It sounds silly, but it really works.

It makes me slightly sad to have taken 35 years to get to this place (I wish I could have loved myself this much at age 10, 14, 17, 22, 27, 33, etc.) but better late than never! I unfortunately know that many people NEVER hold themselves in as high a regard as I hold myself now, and I am grateful for being able to give this to myself.

Happy birthday, Vera! I love you.