Laugh therapy, ironies and civilization

All those people who talk about how laughing curbs anxiety attacks should just join us at breakfast listen to Pa talking about how trimming his nose hair worked wonders on his sinuses. :)

My sister, on the other hand, sometimes gets a kick out of looking over at me when we're both working on our laptops, because for some reason when I'm typing at home then the collar of my tee often ends up between my teeth. Don't ask me how or why. I don't even chew on it or anything. Maybe it's a subconscious desire to make my dajie happy. :)

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After some experimenting, I've determined that my eyelids do have allergic reactions to both cocamidopropyl betaine and sodium cromoglycate. The former, a surfectant derived from coconuts, appears in all kinds of shampoos, shower gels and hand soaps. *sigh* (My lids also get angry at its more refined counterpart, cocamidopropyl hydroxysultaine.) The odd part is that I've always loved reading the ingredients on food packaging, but I've never had any food allergies. Urgh. Now I have to spend my life scrutinizing toiletry labels as well; fulfilment is mine.

The other compound, sodium cromoglycate, is the chelating agent in the eyedrops that I'd been using for my eye allergies.

*sigh*

Of course, I really shouldn't be complaining -- it's lovely to not have inflamed scaly bleeding peeling eyelids anymore. Tralala.

Also, last week I went to the optometrist for the first time in nearly three years. I'd been expecting my eyes to get a lot worse, partly because I've gotten a lot lazier about wearing my glasses unless I'm doing work, but mostly because my last three years of 'work' have mostly entailed squinting at a computer screen (getting a netbook might not have been the brightest idea, but I love my eee).

But weirdly enough, my right eye is no worse than it used to be, i.e. around -3.00 diopters. Even more perplexing is the fact that my left eye has improved from about -1.00 to less than a diopter. Not that I'm complaining, but I seem to be a singularly odd test subject. Not that there's anyone who isn't an anomaly in some respect. (Hopefully someone has less confusing grammar than I do though.)

The optometrist also told me that I should be wearing my glasses most of the time -- which I probably would've done more anyway because the new pair doesn't pinch my embarrassingly large head as much as all its predecessors have -- because if not I'm just depending on the better eye. One wonders if the more stereoscopic vision will do anything about the clumsiness, but one also knows that it isn't prudent to hold unrealistic hopes.

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One further wonders whether the distance over which people move water corresponds with their settlement's degree of development.

I.e.:

people going to the river for drinking water/laundry (if applicable)/ablutions

-->Roman aqueducts et al

-->[other technological developments that I am not schooled in]

-->Indah Water channelling rainwater from cachement areas to treatment plants to our taps at home. We transfer water some water from the tap to the bucket to the mop to the floor. Other water is moved from the tap to the filter to the kettle. When the kettle boils, yet other water goes from the vacuum flask to the ceramic jug, after the water that was originally in the ceramic jug has gone into the plastic bottle. Then the boiled water is tranferred from the kettle to the vacuum flask. Eventually it mostly ends up in cups or mugs, then us. Of course, sometimes its transit is accidentally terminated in a puddle on the floor. At which point we move the water from the floor to the mop to the bucket.

Scratch that -- I really hope that there isn't a relationship between how civlized a people group is and how much it shifts H20 around. o_O

It'd be fun to think about where the Big Guy would fit into a quack theory like that. But not so fun to think about little time will pass before I will regret some part of this post. Oh Archimedes screw.