Unlike a lot of girls I went to school with, I never wanted pierced ears. It seemed like a frivolous waste of time. Besides, I hate pain.

After Melani and I successfully completed a quarter at school, we spent the weekend at the coast. It was a girlie weekend for us. We attended the Women's Show (to stock up on coupons and free samples), shopped the outlet mall on our way to the beach, and then rented a VCR and some movies at the video store in Long Beach. We watched "Stand By Me" and "Groundhog Day," neither of which I had seen before. I stayed up all night reading "The List of Seven" and was so agitated I couldn't sleep till long after 3AM. The next day we walked up and down the long sandy beach in the faint Spring sunshine and had fish and chips at a divey-looking joint off the main road.

And on the way back, we stopped in Tacoma and I got my ears pierced. It didn't really hurt, but I did feel sympathetic toward stacks of paper. The sensation was very like stapling.

It was two weeks before my ex-husband noticed.

I don't always wear earrings. In the past couple of years, I noticed that certain (cheap!) earrings caused my lobes to swell up, so I stuck with near pure silver or the one pair of gold earrings I have. Last week, I decided to get a pair of little sapphire studs so I could wear earrings more frequently.

The hole in my left ear had mostly closed up. The post went in the front, but there wasn't a place for it to come out the back.

At home, I managed to push the post through. Yucko!! So now I have to wear earrings until it heals nicely once more. I'm wearing little gold hoops today. They look nice. My left ear feels funny, but I've been soaking it with alcohol (not internally) so I don't think it's an infection. I think it's just been so long since it's had something in it day and night.

Anyway, as you can see, I am thinking of "anything but" as often as I can. Rob may tell you about the Ikea Incident, but if not, I'll go over it tomorrow :-)

Love, peace, hugs and hoops to all! Go Mariners!