Family is Fun! (And Adorable)
Tonight I babysat for my adorable 3-year-old nephew Benji while my sister went to a work event. He was very good! We read 3 books, and ate dinner (mostly) neatly and without major mishap ("I dropped a piece of pasta on the floor but if it goes on the floor that's okay because we can clean it up, Auntie Em!" he said, repeating what I'd told him 5 minutes before). He's a very sharp little kid and gets more personality every time I see him. One of the books we read was from my & my sister's childhood, about the Fisher Price "Woodsey" family toys. The books were sold with little log or birch-tree looking houses made of cloth and plastic, with plastic furniture and the actual Woodsey characters (the main family being squirrels) to go along with them. You can move their little puppet arms with your fingers, and when you squeeze them they squeak. They're pretty cute. :) My parents gave Benji the two houses and the animals we had, along with 3 books, a while ago. Reading these particular books with Benji is hilarious, because Benji re-named the main characters after our family, so when you read them, you have to read them with the "proper" names (e.g. Milkweed the little squirrel boy becomes Benji). The best part of this is that since there's no aunt character in the book, I got named after the bluebird who delivers the mail. Amanda brought the bluebird book along with Benji's toys today; so I read a whole book about "Auntie Em" delivering mail to allllll the Woodseys. Hee.
We also played "catch" with balloons my sister had brought along, and watched my Mood Beam change colors in the dark. Entertaining Benji is pretty fun. :P
We also watched Izzy a lot. Benji is very enamored of Izzy. Last weekend at my parents' house I showed him a couple of videos and pictures of Izzy, so he really wanted to meet her. ("Mommy, we call her Izzy even though her name is Ysabell, because she's also Izzy like I'm Benjamin but also Benji. And Izzy isn't a boy. Izzy is a girl!" he proudly proclaimed to my sister after I explained this to him.) Even though Izzy was sleeping at first, I caved in to the little boy cuteness and took her out for Benji to see right away, and showed him how to pet her *very gently*. He was good at that (and slightly scared of her climbing on him even though he liked her a lot). At first he was very concerned that maybe she would bite him (or poop on him). I explained that she doesn't usually bite, but she might scratch her teeth on you a little, "tch tch tch" if she wants to get down. I explained this with a hand motion to show him what it would feel like, and then for the rest of the night on and off he would say, "And if she wants to get down, she will go 'tch tch tch'" while doing the accompanying hand motion. Haaaaa. Later when Izzy was more awake we put her in the ball and he had a great time watching her run all around. Amanda hadn't seen that before, so when she got back and Izzy was running around she laughed and laughed because it's so cute, and couldn't resist following Izzy around to move her when she (inevitably) got stuck somewhere. ("She's so tiny!" "I told you!") Hee. When it was time for them to leave, Benji gave me hugs and kisses and said, "I love you, Auntie Em!" That kid. <3
Speaking of Izzy, she really does get stuck a lot, and she looks SO SAD when she can't get the ball to move. I got a great picture of this, and couldn't resist making this macro:
HAAAAA.
I took a hilarious video of Izzy being stuck after Amanda and Benji left. In the ball she can get over small bumps in the floor (like between the living room and the kitchen) if she gets momentum. But she's so small that if she doesn't have space to run up to things, she gets stuck.
It is so pathetically cute.
Heeeeee. I wanted to keep filming her adorableness, but I also felt bad for the poor wee stuck hamster, so I helped her out.
If you liked that video, by the way, there are several more here, and trust me, if you haven't seen the one where she eats a seed, you really should. IT'S SO CUTE.
...I love my hamster ridiculous much.
In other things I've been up to lately, my column over at ComicMix is still going strong - every Tuesday at 1 a new one goes up. So far I've covered the Avengers fragrances, a new comics marketing campaign I was unimpressed by, why Cable & Deadpool is a great buddy comic, a few thoughts about getting started in the comics industry, what I don't like about the way the comics industry markets to women, and why collaborations in comics are fun. This week's column is a review of Splitsville, a great indie comic by Ben Fisher and Kevin Stokes. It comes out at HeroesCon June 22, and y'all should definitely check it out. And next week, DEADPOOL is stopping by to answer questions - so if you leave one in the comments of the Splitsville review, you might hear from Deadpool personally next week. :P
Speaking of ComicMix, any comics subjects you'd particularly like to hear my thoughts on? I have plenty of column ideas already, but if anyone has a topic they'd really like me to write about, let me know!
Switching topics completely, another thing that's happened recently is that I GOT NEW CONTACTS. They are very scary looking GIANT hard contacts called scleral lenses, but aside from being a bit hard to put in, they are AWESOME (!!!!!). The way they work is that they sit on the white part of your eye instead of the cornea, and they have a "reservoir" in the middle which provides space for preservative-free eyedrops. Because of these things: a) I no longer get the unpredictable stabbing eye pain caused by the edges of the (smaller) lenses hitting my irregularly shaped corneas (the irregular shape being from the keratoconus). This used to happen to me at random times several times a day. No more!! b) I no longer have to use eyedrops at alllll hours of the day (I used to freak if I didn't have eyedrops with me because my eyes could get randomly, painfully or cloudily dry AT ANY MOMENT. Now, I use eyedrops MAYBE once or twice a day if I'm wearing the contacts a long time, but can survive without them if needed.) c) My vision is so much better. Seriously, y'all, I haven't seen this well in maybe 2-3 YEARS. YEARS. I CAN READ THINGS FROM VERY FAR AWAY. STUFF IS NOT BLURRY. STUFF IS SHARP. OMG.
I cannot fathom why nobody recommended these to me sooner, except that they aren't as commonly known or used; but for keratoconus sufferers, they are GREAT.
They *are* rather costly to use and tricky to put in, though. When you put them in, you have to fill each with special preservative free eye drops. These drops cost about $25 for 70 little individual packages that look like this:
One package = enough for one contact. About 35 cents per eye. Kind of pricey but not terrible. BUT the catch is, if you mess up while putting one in, you have to open another little package and re-fill the contact, because it has to be completely full when you put it in. I'm getting pretty good at putting them in (1-5 tries per eye, usually) but a few days ago it took me EIGHTEEN tries to put in just one contact. That's...six dollars and 43 cents to put in a contact. *siiiigh* But like I said, I'm getting better at it, and also: I DON'T CARE I CAN SEEEEEEE.
Anyway, to put the contact in, you put it on this crazy looking suction cup plunger thing, fill it with the drops, and then, while looking straight down at yourself in a mirror (i.e. face parallel to the floor/flat mirror), attempt to put the contact on the center of your eye without spilling any drops and then squeeze the little plunger to pop it off into your eye. (AIEE!) If you DO spill a bit, and you end up with an air bubble? You have to use a completely different little plunger to remove it, and start all over again. (This is why it gets expensive.) But hey: VISION.
Another benefit of these new contacts (along with providing me with new stories to completely squick cleolinda out) is that I can now, FINALLY, see well enough to do the fine detail needed for the tiny clay things I promised people who bought them from the "Foresthouse Eye Auction" and who won them on Twitter way back when. I have a lot to catch up on, but I started a couple of weekends ago, and made these:
(from this image reference)
and
I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.
Aaaand in my last bit of news, I've finally joined Pinterest. Here I am! I don't post all the time, but I did go through and try to upload a lot of my craft pictures, so I have some jewelry up, and some clay, and some sewing stuff, and some paintings/drawings. So, you know, if that stuff interests you, check it out! And add me! I don't have too many people I'm following on there yet.
Whew! So. That's what I've been up to. And now: BED. Good night, world!
We also played "catch" with balloons my sister had brought along, and watched my Mood Beam change colors in the dark. Entertaining Benji is pretty fun. :P
We also watched Izzy a lot. Benji is very enamored of Izzy. Last weekend at my parents' house I showed him a couple of videos and pictures of Izzy, so he really wanted to meet her. ("Mommy, we call her Izzy even though her name is Ysabell, because she's also Izzy like I'm Benjamin but also Benji. And Izzy isn't a boy. Izzy is a girl!" he proudly proclaimed to my sister after I explained this to him.) Even though Izzy was sleeping at first, I caved in to the little boy cuteness and took her out for Benji to see right away, and showed him how to pet her *very gently*. He was good at that (and slightly scared of her climbing on him even though he liked her a lot). At first he was very concerned that maybe she would bite him (or poop on him). I explained that she doesn't usually bite, but she might scratch her teeth on you a little, "tch tch tch" if she wants to get down. I explained this with a hand motion to show him what it would feel like, and then for the rest of the night on and off he would say, "And if she wants to get down, she will go 'tch tch tch'" while doing the accompanying hand motion. Haaaaa. Later when Izzy was more awake we put her in the ball and he had a great time watching her run all around. Amanda hadn't seen that before, so when she got back and Izzy was running around she laughed and laughed because it's so cute, and couldn't resist following Izzy around to move her when she (inevitably) got stuck somewhere. ("She's so tiny!" "I told you!") Hee. When it was time for them to leave, Benji gave me hugs and kisses and said, "I love you, Auntie Em!" That kid. <3
Speaking of Izzy, she really does get stuck a lot, and she looks SO SAD when she can't get the ball to move. I got a great picture of this, and couldn't resist making this macro:
HAAAAA.
I took a hilarious video of Izzy being stuck after Amanda and Benji left. In the ball she can get over small bumps in the floor (like between the living room and the kitchen) if she gets momentum. But she's so small that if she doesn't have space to run up to things, she gets stuck.
It is so pathetically cute.
Heeeeee. I wanted to keep filming her adorableness, but I also felt bad for the poor wee stuck hamster, so I helped her out.
If you liked that video, by the way, there are several more here, and trust me, if you haven't seen the one where she eats a seed, you really should. IT'S SO CUTE.
...I love my hamster ridiculous much.
In other things I've been up to lately, my column over at ComicMix is still going strong - every Tuesday at 1 a new one goes up. So far I've covered the Avengers fragrances, a new comics marketing campaign I was unimpressed by, why Cable & Deadpool is a great buddy comic, a few thoughts about getting started in the comics industry, what I don't like about the way the comics industry markets to women, and why collaborations in comics are fun. This week's column is a review of Splitsville, a great indie comic by Ben Fisher and Kevin Stokes. It comes out at HeroesCon June 22, and y'all should definitely check it out. And next week, DEADPOOL is stopping by to answer questions - so if you leave one in the comments of the Splitsville review, you might hear from Deadpool personally next week. :P
Speaking of ComicMix, any comics subjects you'd particularly like to hear my thoughts on? I have plenty of column ideas already, but if anyone has a topic they'd really like me to write about, let me know!
Switching topics completely, another thing that's happened recently is that I GOT NEW CONTACTS. They are very scary looking GIANT hard contacts called scleral lenses, but aside from being a bit hard to put in, they are AWESOME (!!!!!). The way they work is that they sit on the white part of your eye instead of the cornea, and they have a "reservoir" in the middle which provides space for preservative-free eyedrops. Because of these things: a) I no longer get the unpredictable stabbing eye pain caused by the edges of the (smaller) lenses hitting my irregularly shaped corneas (the irregular shape being from the keratoconus). This used to happen to me at random times several times a day. No more!! b) I no longer have to use eyedrops at alllll hours of the day (I used to freak if I didn't have eyedrops with me because my eyes could get randomly, painfully or cloudily dry AT ANY MOMENT. Now, I use eyedrops MAYBE once or twice a day if I'm wearing the contacts a long time, but can survive without them if needed.) c) My vision is so much better. Seriously, y'all, I haven't seen this well in maybe 2-3 YEARS. YEARS. I CAN READ THINGS FROM VERY FAR AWAY. STUFF IS NOT BLURRY. STUFF IS SHARP. OMG.
I cannot fathom why nobody recommended these to me sooner, except that they aren't as commonly known or used; but for keratoconus sufferers, they are GREAT.
They *are* rather costly to use and tricky to put in, though. When you put them in, you have to fill each with special preservative free eye drops. These drops cost about $25 for 70 little individual packages that look like this:
One package = enough for one contact. About 35 cents per eye. Kind of pricey but not terrible. BUT the catch is, if you mess up while putting one in, you have to open another little package and re-fill the contact, because it has to be completely full when you put it in. I'm getting pretty good at putting them in (1-5 tries per eye, usually) but a few days ago it took me EIGHTEEN tries to put in just one contact. That's...six dollars and 43 cents to put in a contact. *siiiigh* But like I said, I'm getting better at it, and also: I DON'T CARE I CAN SEEEEEEE.
Anyway, to put the contact in, you put it on this crazy looking suction cup plunger thing, fill it with the drops, and then, while looking straight down at yourself in a mirror (i.e. face parallel to the floor/flat mirror), attempt to put the contact on the center of your eye without spilling any drops and then squeeze the little plunger to pop it off into your eye. (AIEE!) If you DO spill a bit, and you end up with an air bubble? You have to use a completely different little plunger to remove it, and start all over again. (This is why it gets expensive.) But hey: VISION.
Another benefit of these new contacts (along with providing me with new stories to completely squick cleolinda out) is that I can now, FINALLY, see well enough to do the fine detail needed for the tiny clay things I promised people who bought them from the "Foresthouse Eye Auction" and who won them on Twitter way back when. I have a lot to catch up on, but I started a couple of weekends ago, and made these:
(from this image reference)
and
I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.
Aaaand in my last bit of news, I've finally joined Pinterest. Here I am! I don't post all the time, but I did go through and try to upload a lot of my craft pictures, so I have some jewelry up, and some clay, and some sewing stuff, and some paintings/drawings. So, you know, if that stuff interests you, check it out! And add me! I don't have too many people I'm following on there yet.
Whew! So. That's what I've been up to. And now: BED. Good night, world!