Thoughts at the moment:

1. My nose is awfully chapped from blowing it all day.
2. Why has my nose been runny all day only through ONE nostril? The other nostril seems completely unaffected by the mucus.
3. I think I will slowly start rebuilding my site again (possibly reload all my old entries?, include a photo section again). Yeah. I like building.
4. I am going to use Gallery2, which I’m pretty juiced about! One thing that I’ve always been concerned about is motivating ppl to comment more on my blog/photos. Well, it’s not like I’ve actively sought out to get ppl motivated but it’s an interest of mine. People tend to comment a lot on Facebook pics, which is most likely for the convenience factor of having everything centralized, plus ppl are tagged. Posting pics on my own site and also on Facebook would be a duplication. If only there were some way that I could export the commentary from Facebook photos to the same photos hosted via Gallery2 on my own site O_o. Suggestions?
5. However, I found out that it’s possible to export albums from Picasa into Gallery2, which is AWESOME and would save a tremendous amount of time. Not to mention I can start captioning my own pics for my own records. With that in mind, I should really start captioning now… when that’s done, ready for upload! JANG!
6. 2008 = the year to actively work on organizing my photos in a nice centralized fashion, possibly to make better notes of events/places so my picture taking as a form of memory would actually work….
7. I hope the weather is going to be awesome for a winter BBQ on Saturday!! *crossing fingers*
8. My room is a mess but I hope that no one notices.
9. Eating healthy is tough especially with monthly cravings. (I seem to always start my healthy streak at the wrong time, every time.) I want a piece of juicy STEAK, please. Or some poutine or paella might be sufficient alternatives. *sigh*

“In my opinion, the best thing you can do is to find a person who loves you for exactly who you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you. The right person will still think that the sun shines out your ass. That’s the kind of person that’s worth sticking with.” — Juno

mycho cheese.

For my own records, and for anyone else that, like me, browsed around the internet to figure out what the heck was going on with my industrial piercing.

Day 0:
I got my industrial piercing on Friday, the 21st. For the first two hours, it was red, painful, and throbbing like curaaazzyy. Surprisingly, after the first two hours, it calmed down a lot and settled, no longer hurting very much. I applied solution after I got home, sea salt soaked after shower, and solutioned again before I went to bed.

Day 1 – 5:
It didn’t even hurt! There wasn’t really any swelling and barely red.
For these days, I applied solution twice a day and sea salt soaked every other day, since my ear seemed to be doing pretty well recovering. From hereon after, I won’t mention it but by default, I solutioned twice a day and sea salt soaked everyday. I didn’t rinse my ear after applying solution and soaks, which I probably should have done.

Day 6:
I think this morning, my ear was getting itchy, which I remember to be pretty normal from my previous piercings. While at work, my ear started to throb more. It might be because I might have accidentally scratched somewhere around it, and I do remember turning it a little. My jaw felt tighter this day but I’m not sure if this had anything to do with the piercing (even though I’m not sure what the reason would be). I didn’t have any of my solution/sea salt with me so I went to the nearby Walgreen’s to look for some piercing solution. They didn’t have any so I asked the pharmacy people who were around. They told me that using alcohol swabs should work. I later researched online and realized that I was totally not supposed to use this on my piercing (supposedly, the alcohol dries it out). I went home later that night and did the regular sea salt soaking and solution. The top piercing area started swelling this day.

Day 7:
The ear was still throbbing and red in the morning. I brought my materials to work. Because it was still throbbing, I applied solution to it a few times, which I think I might have overdid and irritated it more than it needed to be. At some point, the side of my head closest to the piercing started hurting like crazy, so I took some Tylenol. (Apparently, ibuprofen is supposed to be the best drug to take because it’s an anti-inflammatory drug.) My headache went away and I think I managed to be okay for most of the afternoon. When I got home, I sea salt soaked for a few minutes to ease it out.

I was more or less fine (or just occupied) until later on that night. Maybe it was from all the energy exertion from singing karaoke for a few hours with my favorite karaokeist, or maybe it’s cuz I use too many of my facial muscles when I x10 laugh (very plausible, mind you), but I got soooo exhausted and my head was starting to hurt again. Needless to say, my ear was throbbing. (Yes. I sang so much, my ear hurt.)

Additionally, near the end of the night, I noticed that a bump had formed behind my earlobe. That x10 freaked me out and I basically tried to chill out for the rest of the night. (Also because I was feeling exhausted.)

Day 8:
After a good night’s rest, the pain definitely seemed to have lessened, but was still not as gracefully comfortable as the first few days of the piercing. When I woke up, there was some light greenish pus around the top piercing (closest to my eye), with a spec of blood on it. I felt exhausted and didn’t even feel like talking this day (maybe from the x10 energy exertion day).

Henry took me back to Zebra so the piercists could take a look at it. I told them that my head around the piercing has been hurting a lot, and that the top pierced area has been swelling. They confidently said that it was fine and normal. Thank goodness.

Then, I asked them about the lump behind my earlobe. The bump isn’t really visibly noticeable so I don’ think they saw it. They gave me confused looks, “Behind your earlobe? Hmmm I’ve never heard of that before. That shouldn’t be related–just impeccable timing with your new piercing.” Ooooooookaaaayyyy *slightly still panicking again*

Nevertheless, the placebo effect of knowing that the pain and swelling was normal was totally making me feel better. (”This placebo effect is totally working!”) I got some ibuprofen to get rid of the headache and napped for a few hours, definitely making me feel better when I woke up.

Later on that night, there was some pus at the top hole again, and some coming out from the other end of the hole (the top inner piercing). I made sure to thoroughly rinse off the sea salt water and solution this day, when I didn’t really bother too much before.

Day 9:
My ear and head most definitely felt better yesterday. Noticeably, I could feel that the muscles around my ear (and where I was getting the most headaches, closest to the top piercing) would strain when I laughed/smiled too much. (HOW TRAGIC!) I probably busted something around there on Friday from laughing/singing too much, too forcefully for too long.

There was crust around the top holes in the morning. I cleaned it off and thankfully, my ear didn’t bother me too much through the day. It started throbbing a little mid-day and I sea salt soaked to soothe it, which totally worked. I saw that there was still a little bit of pus forming around the top holes, but not a color that was too alarming.

I made sure to follow the cleaning procedures of only treating it 3 times a day, and not being paranoid and going overboard.

At night, when I was cleaning off some of the crust, the top hole had blood after I removed some of the dried pus (maybe I wasn’t gentle enough to not tear anything?). The same for the top inner hole, the other side of the top hole. I didn’t want to irritate the piercing too much so I cleaned it the best I could and rinsed thoroughly. It started to feel really itchy at night.

Day 10:
Today, instead of cleaning off the crust with a wet qtip, I decided to rinse my ear down first with some warm water, which seemed to really help wash off the crust without feeling like I was tearing it off. The top hole definitely bled a lot less. It looks less swollen from three days ago (my ear doesn’t look like it awkwardly sticks out at some weird angle anymore w00t) . And I’m sooo relieved to notice that the bump behind my earlobe has slowly been going away. I think only treating the piercing three times yesterday helped a lot, since it probably minimalizes contact and doesn’t rile any of those nerves up too frequently. It’s less red and less swollen today. W00T!

Hopefully the rest of this day goes well *crosses fingers*

P.S. I’ve been good about not sleeping on it. (Which is kinda ironic since I’m such a wild sleeper–I move all over the place and kick everywhere, but from past experiences, I’m pretty good about not moving to certain sides in my sleep if I have to.) Any abrupt contact would be when I accidentally bump it against my jacket or when I pull a shirt on/off and such. I’ve been pretty good about having it dodge people’s appendages and heads when hugging.

Lessons Learned (this seems to work for me, at least *shrug*):
- Don’t use alcohol to clean piercings
- Don’t turn the piercing too early on
- When remedying the piercing, thoroughly wash everything off.
- Instead of cleaning off crust with a wet qtip, rinse it off with some warm water first.
- Don’t over-treat the piercing–it’ll irritate it more
- Take ibuprofen for piercing headaches (hohohoho piercing headaches!! get it???)
- Get a good amount of rest so that the piercing can do it’s healing thang at night when sleeping.
- Eating healthy is supposed to be good too (even tho I’ve x10 been eating unhealthily).
- Don’t go buck-wild crazy cuz when you do, your new piercing is like yo momma sleeping and yo smile is like the kid that’s trying to wake yo momma up to play catch and yo momma’s like, “Go away! Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep!?” and you know it’s best to just let her sleep, but if you successfully wake her up you know she’ll be pissed off for the whole day just because you woke her up just to play catch! (And depending on what she’s dreaming about when you wake her up, she could even be x10 times more pissed off!)

Edit: 01-02-08:

Day 10 (cont.)
I went to Safeway today and found the Band-Aid Antiseptic Foam that I used for my previous cartiledge piercing which was a really successful piercing experience (I didn’t even do the salt water soaks! All I used was the Band-Aid Foam!). I was thrilled to find it! It’s rather amazing that all the Walgreen’s I went to didn’t have it at all. BOO! I mentally felt relieved to find it!

My ear got a lot better through the rest of the day. I was able to laugh more without hurting my head muscles, and the swelling lump at the back of my earlobe noticeably diminished. (Some sites online say that this is a swollen lymph node that happens because of a collection of pus, indicating that the pus is preventing an infection from spreading to other parts of the body. PHEW!!) I like the foam a lot because it feels a lot less irritating on my skin when using a moist qtip. Plus, the foam seeps into the crevices that I usually can’t reach. Throbbing stopped, and my ear got almost back to normal color. Woohoo!

Day 11:
My ear’s gotten almost back to how it was the first few days of when I got pierced. The only difference now is that it’s ridiculously itchy!! Woohoo! I’m in the clear! My skin’s healing! The trick now is to not scratch it. aldfjaasd Hot water feels sooooo good on it >:O

I’m very glad that it’s back to normal and that I can laugh again! Woohoo!

Picked and chose the questions that I thought were actually interesting to answer… and put in some questions I thought are more appropriate for my own uhh experiences.

Some of these questions are from last year’s Year-End Survey.

Contine Reading More… »

It’s one of those things that I promised I’d have to write down. I’ve slowly been trying to get back into blogging so might as well, right?

For once, Henry woke up before I did and called me to let me know he was coming over. Ooooppssss, it was already almost 1PM and I was definitely still dazed. I had to finish up Nancy’s present, which kept me up until 3AM the night before (whoop-dee-doo for procrastination)! After Henry came over, I finally finished around 3ish.

There were a lot of little errands to run:
- Pick up something at Henry’s place
- Drop off Nancy’s present
- Drop off something at Ryan’s
- Pick up my present at the UPS before 5:30
- Go to the mall to pick up a few more small items
- Make it back in time for dinner at the So’s before 7:30

Everything was going well. I saved some time by writing Nancy’s card in the car, we picked up the thing we needed to pick up Hanry’s, and I called Nancy to find out that she wasn’t home yet. That’s fine, we’ll just go to Ry’s first, which we did.

This is definitely one of those times that being “too safe” and too “just-in-case” bit me in the ass. While Henry was on the phone with Ry outside of his house, he wasn’t home so Henry dropped something off in his mailbox, while I sat in the car that was still running, I just have a habit of locking the doors, okay? You just never know, right? And I even closed Henry’s window, “just in case.” Oh, I should put Nancy’s present in the trunk now if we’re going to the mall later. So, I manually unlocked just the passenger side door and stepped outta the car.

*click* The door half-closed.

…
shit.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh babe? We can still open the door even though it’s half way open right?”

You see, Henry’s passenger side door doesn’t open from the outside. It only opens if someone opens from the inside. So here we were, standing outside of Ry’s house, Henry’s car running in the middle of the residential street (thank god we weren’t blocking the road too much), keys in the car running the engine, and all the doors locked except for the only door that isn’t open-able from the outside–which was half-way open, like a tease.

Of course, we tried tugging the door open. The trunk was open so we tried climbing through the back. No luck. Thank goodness Henry’s quick to act, calling AAA immediately. I woulda kept trying to get in somehow. And so we stood outside. Too bad Ry wasn’t home. We could have at least, you know… sat. Or something.

We had a good time talking and stuff (”You better remember this the next time you want to get mad at me! You better remember this!” -_____-; ) and Ry’s bro came back and kept us company while we waited an hour or so for AAA to get there.

Moral of the story: Roll down windows? Buy a wedge to get enough of your door open to get a long pipe/stick in there to press your unlock button, which you should also get? (Good thing there were blankets in the trunk! and water!)

Consequently, UPS closed before we could pick up the present Henry got for me (I have no one to blame but myself!), and when we stepped into the mall, we found out we only had 10 minutes left before the whole mall was shutting down. We made it back to his place for a deeeliiiicciouuuussss dinner with his parents, E-jeh, V-dawg, and AJ. Elaine is a BOMB-ass cook! Omigosh potatoes…

Irregardless of the locked door situation, I had a great time Christmas Eve! “You know that if the situation was reversed you would nooottt be happy right now.” So true. =XXX Thanks for being x10 patient with me all the time. I gots a long ways to go.

<3