I appear to have been woken up early so that I can take a walk–an exercise walk. This seems a dubious proposition to me. It is still dark outside and I have the remnants of a thick gel in my eyes that is supposed to solve forever all my eye problems… (that was just a little joke).
Did I mention that I went to the eye doctor? I dutifully went, apologetically pushing up Matt’s heavy glasses on my sweaty nose and trying to explain that I wasn’t trying to be bad. It’s just that I first stepped on my own glasses and a short time later dug up a day lily and then rubbed my eyes, like a blithering fool, and that since then my eyes have been a cheerful but alarming red and so itchy I feel that I should like to perish. The eye doctor sorrowfully shook his head, shown bright horrible lights at me, shook his head, and finally said, “No contacts for you until your eyes can be less dry,” or something to that effect. I meandered dolefully back to the waiting room where the technician shook her head sorrowfully, tsk-ed, and took thirty pairs of frames off the wall for me to try and then finally gave up and told me which ones to buy since I couldn’t see what I looked like in any of them.
So gel in the eyes at night, and drops four times a day, and if I’m very good maybe I’ll get to have contacts that I wear in five minute increments. Which seemed a gentle way of being told that maybe my contact days are coming to a close, even if I assiduously stay away from the lilies.
Which is really sad because I love lilies–every kind of lily. The bright yellow June day lily, the shade loving orange one, the whacking big Easter lily, I love them all. And yet they have helped to suck all the moisture out of my eyes so that perhaps it will never come back again. I’m being needlessly maudlin. That’s only because it’s horrid walking around in someone else’s glasses, cut off from the clear, crisp reality that drives forward my normal sense of gloom.
“It’s better to see than to not see,” said Matt helpfully. But surely it shouldn’t come down to that. Surely life shouldn’t be narrowed to the catastrophic question of “do you want to see at all?” This is the land of entitlement and ease. If something is wrong, you just go fix it. And there shouldn’t be all this waiting around a whole week for the remedy. Came away from my dutiful hour with the Doctor feeling like one of the children, shocked and saddened that there would be no immediate restoration of the broken electronic device or toy. What do you mean it can’t be fixed right this second? That maybe later you’ll get to it, or worse, not at all?
I guess I’ll go bumble around in the dark looking for walking shoes. Because if I don’t take an exercise walk, that will be really bad too. But later you can find me mashed in a chair with my dog, desperately perusing the bright Internet delights of outrage and immediate gratification, distracting myself from my eventual demise. It’s going to be a great day.
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