Where I live, it is mandatory to wear a mask when outside of your home. I have been working through the different options and figuring out which mask works best for a given activity. My sister’s last post had me cracking up because yet again BPES rears its head in the most unexpected nooks and crannies of life. I wear larger framed glasses so I have been fairly strategic in tucking my mask underneath my glasses to avoid fogging them up while I have a mask on out in this hot, humid weather. Recently I tried on a different mask style and I had to laugh! While the mask had a flexible nose piece to help fit it to my face, I had to wear it up so high, the mask was practically covering my eyes so I could barely see. It also felt uncomfortable to have the fabric that close to my eyes. Based on my face shape and the positioning of my eyes, ears, and nose; this mask was not going to work for me.

I was chatting with a colleague about how astounded I was at the number of people wearing disposable masks. I thought this was so wasteful and surely given our situation, more people would leverage reusable, washable cloth masks as a more sustainable option. My colleague pointed out that surgical masks have better nose pieces to fit more easily to your face as they are less bulky when compared to many fabric masks. Truth be told, I do find surgical disposable masks fit my face better with my large glasses and my teddy bear BPES eyes. I have been defaulting to my cloth masks wherever possible, but on occasion when I try to fit my mask to my face “just right” I kind of roll my eyes and giggle because I cannot get a comfortable fit. It is subtle reminder that with BPES small things that seem to work so easily for most, sometimes don’t for us.