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Rose-Colored, These Bastards Are Not!

Plus le change, plus le meme blog.

Hey, everybody.

You returning visitors may notice just the teensiest of changes in the layout; I hope you like it, and that nothing’s broken. I’m afraid my desire not to look just like everybody else finally overwhelmed my natural instinct to do as little as possible when it comes to cosmetics. (Or cosmology, but that’s a different story.) And so, there’s a new look around here. Please, let me know what you think. How does this change make you feel?

And for those of you who are stopping by for the first time — well, maybe you’ll notice that things aren’t quite as ugly or as boring as they could be. Or maybe you won’t; who knows? If you’re just getting here now, then you’re awfully late to the party, aren’t you? What, did your car break down?

(Pssst! If you really want to check out the old layout, though, try some of the 100 Posts About Me. It’ll probably be quite a while before I get around to bringing them into line. Witness the conformity for yourself.)

Anyway, party down. I’m still tryin’ to figure out what the hell to put in the little light blue boxes in the top corners. If anyone’s got any ideas, I’d love to hear ’em. I’ve done way too much thinking about how to make this site ‘real purdy’ today already. Somebody else can take the damned reins for a while.

So, on to today’s bucket o’ words. Today got off to a rather inauspicious start. For one thing, I had to get up early (for me, which in this case means by about nine o’clock; eat your hearts out, nine-to-fivers). But at least it wasn’t genuinely early, so I was able to shake off the cobwebs and get down to the business of showering.

(If you happen to be interested, the shower was just fine. Plenty of hot water, clean towels, and no ‘surprises’ of any kind. Nothing got dropped, and nobody slipped on anything. I had no substances either unexpectedly go into or suddenly come out of any orifice. So all-in-all, I’d call it a rousing success. I don’t know how clean I got, and I may have left a Q-tip in my ear while shining up afterwards, but the shower itself was just peachy. And thanks for asking.

Now, if I could just find that damned Q-tip, maybe I could hear out of my left ear again…)

My real problems began when I tried to put in my contact lenses. Usually, this is pretty much a no-brainer for me. (Which is good, because before about eleven am, I’m pretty much a no-brainer, if you smell what I’m slingin’.) I’ve worn contacts for years and years, and I’ve got the routine pretty much down. Easy in, easy out. I’ve had nights when I couldn’t remember how the hell I got into bed, and yet I’d find my contacts the next day, swimming in solution in their little carrying case. I’m fully on autopilot with these things now.

Ah, but that’s with my old contact lenses, then, isn’t it? (Yes. Yes, it is.) If you read yesterday’s post, then you know that I lost one of my old contacts, and had to visit an optometrist to get a new one. And you’d also be aware that my old lenses are gas-permeables, from the dark old ages, rather than the floppy, wispy soft lenses all the kids are wearing these days.

So, my job this morning was to get a ‘hard’ lens into my left eye, and a ‘soft’ lens into my right eye. The former, I’ve done approximately seventeen million times. It’s like breathing now; it’s practically a reflex. The latter, I’ve performed exactly once, in the LensCrafters store yesterday, and only on my eighth or ninth attempt. Clearly, this little dance had all the makings of an unmitigated disaster. And, right on cue, that’s what I got.

Keep in mind that I had an appointment to make. I got up at nine; I had to be across town for a meeting at ten-thirty. And between my showering and blogging and playing karaoke singalong with Mr. Rubber Ducky in the bathroom mirror, it was about a quarter till ten when I started working on popping my contacts in.

(You know, speaking of Mr. Ducky, I’ve always been bothered that the one song we can’t play singalong together with is ‘Rubber Ducky‘. You know, the one Ernie from Sesame Street used to sing.

And why can’t we sing that together? Well, because I don’t know the damned words. See, I often — no, really, often, folks — get my wires crossed. My zigs zagged. My beans above my frank, if you know what I’m saying. I’m always starting off on one thread or thought, and bunny-hopping to another, sometimes without realizing what the hell I’m doing.

Why am I telling you this, anyway? You — of all people — know about my wretched affliction. Enough explanation.

Anyway, one of the longest-running examples of this disease is the ‘Rubber Ducky‘ song. I get just a few lines into it, and in my head it morphs into something else entirely. I haven’t known the real words for years, because I can’t get past doing this when I try to sing the damned thing:

‘Rubber ducky, you’re the one. (quack, quack)

Ducky, I love ya, but gimme that countryside!‘

Yes, that’s right. My ‘Rubber Ducky‘ song has been friggin’ hijacked by the theme from Green Acres. This may be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever written about. Oh, the shame.

‘Doo-do-de-doo-doo! Mind gone!

Doo-do-de-doo-doo! Mo-ron!‘

And people wonder why I lie awake in bed at night…)

Okay, where the hell was I, anyway? Ah, the contact lenses. Right.

I don’t know whether you’re familiar with how contacts work, or how different the hard and soft lenses are. So, I’ll tell you. The hard contacts are wee little things. They only fit over part of the colored part of the eye, and they’re fairly rigid. Think of them as thin pieces of plastic.

(Which is what they are, so I’m sure they won’t mind.)

Now, the soft contacts are just that — soft and saggy, like a grandma’s ass. Perhaps not coincidentally, they’re also much bigger. These guys cover the entire colored part of the eye, and a bit of the white area, as well. They’re at least twice the diameter of the hard lenses. You can think of soft contacts as big pieces of wet paper that have to be glommed onto the eyeball.

So, here I am, experienced and comfortable with plopping a tiny speck of rigid plastic into my eye. And suddenly, I’m being asked to maneuver this big clear doily onto the entire surface of one of my eyeballs. I probably don’t have to tell you that this didn’t go well. But I will, anyway — this didn’t go well.

The biggest problem was opening my eye wide enough to clear up space for the goddamned thing. It’s like shoving a freaking frisbee in your eye. But I finally worked out a method to hold the top and bottom lids with each hand, so I could properly access my right eye. And several inches of brain behind it, I think, but I left that shit alone. I got enough troubles as it is.

My next little conundrum was that if I was using all my fingers to yank my eyelids away from the places where they frigging belong, then I had no digits left with which to plop this coffee saucer of a lens onto the eyeball. I considered a couple of alternatives — using my big toe to place the lens in my eye, or sticking the contact on the bathroom mirror and just running my eye into it — but finally concocted a way to both completely expose my eyeball and have a finger free to jam into it. Fine.

The first three actual attempts to put the contact lens into my eye were met with your basic, garden-variety failure. The damned thing would get caught on an eyelid, or fold up on itself, and pretty much screw the pooch before things really got started. But I was learning some tricks, and was just about to get it right. I could just tell.

So of course, the fourth attempt simply sucked ass. Not only did I fail to get the mother-bitching thing in my eye, but it fell out of my hand, and onto the sink. Um, somewhere. But damned if I could find the frigging thing. I searched the sink basin. Nothing. The outer perimeter. Zilch. I got down on hands and knees and checked the floor all around. Nada.

(Well, not completely nada, I suppose. I was still naked at the time, and apparently, getting down on all fours is dog-speak for ‘Hey, get over here and sniff my ass, bitch!‘ So what I did get is a cold, wet nose halfway up my hoohah. What I did not get, however, was the fucking contact lens. Contact? Oh, yes, there was contact. Contact lens? No. Be careful what you wish for.)

So, by then, it was pushing ten o’clock. I wasn’t quite hopelessly late yet, but I was pushing it. And there was no way I could get to the place and get through a meeting with one eye. My eyesight’s just too bad to fake it. So, I did what any red-blooded American man would do in that situation. I cursed like a goddamned sailor. I bitched, and I moaned, and I whined, all of it profanity-laced and louder than the last. All the while, I scanned the sink and the floor, not really expecting to find the damned thing that I’m pelting with F-bombs and epithets.

(Really, folks, I was in the zone this morning. I was stringing shit together, making up words that didn’t even make sense. What’s a ‘shitpricking asscap’, anyway? I don’t know; just made it up. A ‘mother-licking fuck-a-bundle’? No idea. ‘Hose-shittin’ bitchapotamus’? Couldn’t tell you. But I said it. Ask the dog; she knows.)

I went on and on that way for five full minutes or more. Finally, I was running out of steam — and words — when I saw the stupid thing. Somehow, it had landed on the back of the sink, and was half-propped behind some eyebrow pencil doohickey of my wife’s. So, I retrieved the damned thing, wet it, and tried again. And dropped it again, and didn’t see it again, and lost the damned thing again. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch!!!

Luckily, I started my search this time at the back of the friggin’ sink, and worked my way forward. The lens was sitting, perfectly balanced, on the faucet overhanging the sink. I’m surprised I even saw it, as unlikely a perch as it was. But I did, and finally — finally got the damned thing to suction onto my freaking eye and stay there.

So, in the end, I guess it worked out. I rushed out the door, made my appointment just on time, and haven’t had any trouble since. But I’m not looking forward to taking this bitch out tonight.

(That’s a whole other ordeal, where I squeeze the thing between thumb and finger, so it wrinkles up and comes off. I’m convinced that if I use just a little too much pressure, I’m going to shoot my eyeball across the room like a marble and splat it against the far wall. Probably with the demonspawn lens still on it, too. Friggin’ nightmare.)

Hopefully, though, a little practice will make perfect. Or at least better. My new lenses won’t come in for almost a week, so I’ve got to deal with this Baggie on my eye for a few more days. Oh, and I’ve got meetings before ten am on the first three days of the week, starting with an eight-freakin’-thirty appointment on Monday morning. I may have to pull an all-nighter just to make that thing, and start pawing at my eye at four am to get this stupid contact lens in there.

Man, will I be glad when I have my razor-sharp little pieces of plastic back. Sure, they may be dangerous, but I can’t remember the last time I had to make up new words because of them. This soft ‘dinglybitchenfucker’ is for the birds!

Adventures With Naked Eyeballs, Part Two

At the sound of Tinkerbell hysterically screaming, you should turn the page.

Hey, boys and girls. Welsome to the latest installment of Daily Crap I Come Up With, Often in the Shower. Just be glad that I only subject you to some of the shit I discover in there. A weaker man would weep or flee, you know, but I carry on. And I do it for you. No, really, you can thank me later. Really.

Anyway, I’m afraid that I don’t have a lot for you tonight. Oh, I’ve got some things that I could write about — don’t you worry, there, Skippy, I’m not running out of material any time soon — but I’m having a bit of a hard time seeing what I’m writing, so I don’t know how long I’ll keep it up tonight.

(The writing, the writing… man, you people are gross.)

You see, last night I washed a contact lens down the sink. Not on purpose, mind you. It was quite the unintended accident, in fact.

(I’m sure that having just returned from a ‘Johnnie Walker Journey of Taste’ event had nothing to do with this. Hell, I couldn’t see when I had my contacts in last night; no wonder I fumbled one down the drain.)

In any case, I’ve got some problems. You’d think I’d have gotten off my ass and gone to get new lenses after the last time this happened. That turned out to be a false alarm, as I eventually found the ‘lost’ lens. But still, you’d have to believe that it would shake me up and get me moving to prevent a more serious problem, now, wouldn’t you?

What, you would? Damn. Have I taught you people nothing in all these long months together?

Look, I’m a lazy bastard. I don’t know what else to tell you; there’s really no excuse. And certainly, nearly losing a contact lens did force me to make some changes. Why, almost every day since then, I would think, ‘Hey, you know, it might be a good idea to go to an optometrist… … … … tomorrow.‘ That’s a start, right? Apparently, no. Who knew that actual action was required to get something done? Somebody stop the presses.

So, you can imagine my chagrin when my right contact slipped off my finger and into the running water in the sink last night.

(But ‘Oho!‘, you might say. You know, if you’re the type of person who wants a kick in the privates for going around using words that haven’t been in play since Elizabethan times. But let’s just go with it, shall we?

‘Oho‘, I hear you saying. ‘Oho! It’s okay for the contact to fall in the sink, because surely you’ve pulled the plunger and sealed the drain with that little metal lever doodad. You did that, right?‘

And, well, yes, in a manner of speaking, I did. Of course, in another, very different manner of speaking, I noticed weeks ago that the plunger didn’t pull the drain stopper all the way down, leaving an eighth of an inch or so gap under which water could freely flow. And, as it turns out, a contact lens. I had really been meaning to fix that damned thing, too. I was sure I’d get to it… … … … tomorrow. Are you sensing a pattern here?)

So, I woke up this morning and put in my one lens and tried to get along as best I could without any shred of depth perception whatsoever. Brushing my teeth was an adventure, let me tell you. I now have the minty-freshest nose hairs on my block. (Or so I assume; it’s not like I went up and down the street to check, for Chrissakes. Even unemployed, I don’t have that kind of time, you know.) I won’t even go into the problems I had picking up the dog’s poop during our walk. Trust me, you’re better off not knowing, okay?

But of course, the hardest task I faced was driving to LensCrafters to (finally) look into — or at least squint in the general direction of — a new pair of contacts. And yes, I drove, despite my best judgement. My only other option was to take a bus that I’ve never taken before to a train to another train. You can see how dangerous that could become for a man of limited vision, I hope. The things I could have sat in, or stepped in, or ended up talking to — I can’t bear to even think about it. Better that I should risk my life and others trying to pilot my car crosstown in the midst of lunch traffic. Oh yes, folks, I make good decisions. Only the best for me, baby.

Anyway, I did eventually show up at the local LensCrafters establishment. And I made it in one piece, too, thank you very little. I suppose I do get marks off for parking in the Burger King drivethrough, and for chatting with a mailbox for ten minutes before realizing it wasn’t a short fat mute guy in a blue suit, after all. (Hey, how the hell was I to know? It’s an honest mistake.) But I got there, and had my eye exam, and ordered contact lenses all in the same day. They even gave me a nifty new replacement lens, so I could get home without fear of committing accidental vehicular homocide. Which is a good thing; when I smear some dickhead all over my windshield at forty miles an hour, I want to mean it, dammit! I wanna stick my premeditated foot all up in their ass. Hell, yeah!

In any event, I can sort of see now. But it’s not perfect, by any means. For one thing, the replacement lens is a soft contact, while my old one in the other eye is ‘gas permeable’. For those of you under the age of thirty or so, these ‘gas-perms’ used to be the only thing we astigmatism sufferers could wear. I got into ’em, and I never bothered to drag myself screaming into the ’90’s and move on to soft lenses. Now I think I’m the only goon left toting these little pieces of glass around in my eyes, so they didn’t have any replacements on hand for me to take. Just the softies, which take a little getting used to. Plus, the prescription on the soft lens isn’t quite right, so I’m still pretty fuzzy around the edges.

(Which is always true, of course, but now everything else is fuzzy, too, so I fit right in. Sweet! Now I just need to fuck up everybody’s vision, and I’ll be golden.)

What I’m trying to say is that writing tonight is a bit rough. I’m not really used to my new lens yet, and it’s not quite what I need. Meanwhile, my old lens in the other eye is about three prescriptions too old, so it’s not doing me a helluva lot of good, either. I can more or less make out what I’m typing, but it’s all pretty blurry unless I blink a lot. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to make any less sense than usual, even with the fuzzyness. So that’s good, I guess.

(Or it’s constantly really, really bad. No, really, I don’t need to know which. No, please. Really.)

And so, I think I’ll sign off for the night. I’ve got to get up a bit early — got a health screening at my new employer’s tomorrow morning — and it’ll take me a while to get to bed, I have a feeling. These soft contacts don’t come out by just squeezing your eyelids closed with your finger, like the gas permeables do. No. These little bastards require you to physically stick your finger in your eye, and pull the thing off. I did it once at the store, on about the eleventh try, so I have a feeling that I’ll still be up for a couple more hours. Bitches!

So, I’ll bid you a hearty good night.

(It doesn’t have to be ‘hearty’, of course. It can be ‘livery’, or ‘spleeny’, or whatever you like. Hell, it can even be a ‘genitalia-y good night’, if you happen to be gettin’ your freak on right now. Go get ’em, tiger!

Although… isn’t it a little weird to be playing Slappity-Slap-Ass while you’re reading this blog? I’m not sure what turns you on, but man, if this is it, you may have some serious issues. Unless you’re a hot chick, of course. In that case, you can send me pictures. It’ll be our little secret. Shhhhh.)

Seriously, I’m going now. I’ve had enough. Just let all of this be a lesson to you, would you? If you’re procrastinating about something now — changing jobs, buying a house, that organ transplant you’ve always wanted — then for spoot’s sake, go do it now. If you wait until the situation becomes critical, it’s gonna be a much bigger pain in the ass. So go on — get something taken care of, all right? Mark an item off your ‘To Do List’. You’ll feel better, and hopefully, you’ll even keep your eyesight intact, and won’t be forced to stick your finger in your own eyes at any point. in the process. Unlike me. Dammit.

So there you have it. I’ll be semi-blind for a few days until the contacts come in, but I’ll try to keep you entertained in the meantime. And I expect you to un-procrastinate about something before they’re ready, too. Yeah, that seems all symbolic and shit; I’ll go with that. So let me know what you plan to do, or better yet, what you’ve actually accomplished after reading this cautionary tale of woe and despair.

Hell, if you can’t think of anything else to do, you can pledge to read through my whole archives, or my 101 Posts About Me. But good luck getting done before the contacts come in. That shit is long! Or at least, it used to be. I’m pretty sure it’s all still there, but I really can’t see it right now to be sure. Oh, why did I wait until disaster struck? Will this hellish nightmare never end?!?