At long sweet last, my eBay orders finally arrived I can finally get around to stretching my lobes again. :D

Why am I stretching my lobes, you ask? For aesthetic reasons, basically. I love the way large lobes look, and you can wear the most gorgeous jewelry in them. That and it gives me something new to obsess over; I can't find a tattoo artist I trust here, and I don't plan on getting any new piercings til I have enough money to travel to a nice, industrialized country with piercing studios I can trust..

A brief explanation on how lobe stretching is (properly) done: there are several ways to stretch lobes, but I prefer using tapers. Tapers are made out of stainless steel or acrylic, and they're used to stretch piercings so they may accomodate larger-sized jewelry. The size of the jewelry is called a gauge. The smaller the number gets, the larger the gauge or the hole of the piercing is. (Here is a gauge to milimeter conversion chart, just to give you an idea of how large/small sizes are.)

Compredez? :P

When you get your lobes pierced with a gun, the gauge of the earring is around 20g or 18g. The weight of normal dangly earrings made my lobe piercings (which I've had since birth) a 16g; two months ago I stretched it to a 12g. Today I went from 12g to 8g with a taper.


( On with the stretching!! (Kinda picture heavy. And depending on your level of weirdness tolerance, it might be a little bit gross.) )

From afar you can't really tell that my lobes are stretched, which is good since I need to look like a normal human being if I ever wanted to get employed. :P At the same time, I'm slightly disappointed at how tiny they look. Where's the fun in stretched lobes if the holes aren't large and obvious?

I can't wait to get to the next size. :D :D I've already abused my poor earlobes enough today, so I'll wait a few weeks before I stretch again.

When people get depressed, they either go drinking or smoke. But when cigarettes just weren't cutting it for me anymore, I thought I'd deal with the stress some other way.

I got an industrial ear piercing.

I spoke to my mom around last week about getting an industrial, thinking that she'd be fine with it because it's just an ear piercing--far more tame than a labret. To my surprise, she immediately said, "No."

"But why not?" I whined.

"Because it looks ugly," was her curt reply. "It looks as if you have an arrow through your ear. It's disgusting. Why can't you just get your belly button pierced?" Like normal girls?, I could hear her thinking. Later on, she told me she probably wouldn't mind if I get an industrial so long as I quit smoking. I told her I'd think about it. But see, I'm not about to quit smoking now that it looks like my thesis is about to blow up in my face. Besides, whether or not my ear cartilege is pierced won't matter if I do screw up my academics and end up with no future. May as well go down looking good. So I got the piercing done.

( Ow. )

I paid my piercer a thousand pesos (that includes the cost of the barbell) and left the store. I was still rather dizzy, but my ear felt like it was on fire and I stupidly forgot to bring an Advil with me. It took me a good ten minutes to find out where the Mercury Drug Store is and when I got there, I was horrified to see that there was a large group of people by the medicine counter. Since I was hardly in any condition to stand in line, I decided to lean against a wall where the crowd was kind of thin and wait for people to leave.

Then, from out of nowhere, the middle aged man in front of me started to shove me aside. "Dun ka na lang," he snapped, pushing me to the crowd. People were staring, and I was too much in shock to say something. "Tinitignan mo tong cell phone ko no?!" the man accused.

What the fuck was his problem? I'm dizzy, in pain, and I have my own fucking cell phone. I have everything I need, thank you very much. I didn't even notice that he was in front of me, much less that he had a cell phone and was using it. Unfortunately, I can be rather slow when it comes to witty comebacks--even more so because the pain was making it difficult for me to think. The best I could do was, "Sorry." and move away from the man.

To my horror, the man started telling the lady at the counter and the people around him that I was looking at his fucking cell phone. Maybe it has something to do with my piercings, but do I really look like someone who would steal a phone?

"The fuck are you all looking at?" I snapped at the women who were staring. At that point I didn't care if the guards escorted me out of the store. To hell with this place. Fortunately, the man left the store without causing any more trouble, and I was able to buy my ibuprofen with no more problems.

So here I am, freshly pierced, screwed thesis-wise, and broke. My mom is probably going to kill me when I go home this weekend. Strangely, I don't feel as doomed as I did last night. I braved an incredible amount of pain to get an awesome piercing. I feel like I can take over the world.