My eyes are dilated.

I drove home, about a half hour after sundown in this state.

Headlights became stars exploding (almost)

I still can't really read very well.

(Look at those pupils!!!!) 

 I visited my eye doctor again today.  She has an Italian name so she just goes by Dr. C.  LIke me. she has a teenaged son.  (I have two of those.)  Her husband gave her the book Blink--and it's due to him that I have an inkling about the popular book Outliers.  Blink was sitting in her waiting room and I, thinking it was about intuition (in that touchy feel-y, new-age-y, girl-y sort of way one can talk about intuition) asked to borrow it--and she let me.  

I like my eye doctor.  When I see her it's like going visiting--except:

My eye check-up was on Tuesday, but Monday night I took my contact out of my left eye and (skip this if you are squimish)  I ripped my eye.  I ripped my eye in a neat little circle--a circle the size of my contact..  Worse still, out of habit, the next day I just plopped in another lens, (this doesn't help your eye to heal after you've ripped it--the cells need to grow back and they need breathing room, not a plastic cover).  

My eyes get dry now and each lens we (well, really, just Dr. C.) find(s) ends up being a bit of a problem.  Dr. C. says it might be due to menopause and hormonal changes.  The cause doesn't matter to me.  The dryness is acute in my good eye--my left one, the one my old therapist used to laugh  at and call my "sinister eye."  (Now remember folks, in the photo it's the eye on the right, not the left--it's opposite day in the photo.)

In my father's family, for some reason, people have one good eye and one bad eye.  When I was small my left eye, the sinister one, was a "lazy eye."  It turned out and I was cock-eyed.  I went to therapists and eventually had operations to correct the loose muscle. My eye stopped drifting.  My vision in this eye was good for many years--now it's 20/40 for distance--and the contact for the lefty, the sinister one,  is calibrated for reading.

 My other eye is 20/200.  If your eyes can only be corrected to 20/200 you're legally blind.  I find life without my right lens to be awfully woozy. Everything is a blur--but sometimes, if I'm just hanging out at home, and I rely on the left eye to read and get around my tiny home, I let myself  live in that woozy world for half a day or so  (woozy world is like sleeping in all snuggled under a warm quilt on a gray day) before I pop a snap-all-visual-material-to-the-grid lens in.

Ahhhh, clarity.

 Because I ripped my left eye, I wasn't able to finish the eye exam Tuesday.  It didn't hurt that much--it just felt like having a little piece of annoying lint under my eyelid.   I asked if I could put in drops--to alleviate the dryness and Doctor C  told me to buy the little packets--the ones that you rip tips off of and then through the whole container away after one application (how un-environmental--but how beautifully sterile.)  

So I did.

Don't do this if you ever rip your eye!  It hurts so much--it's close to contractions, except the pain is in your head.   (I feel like Rosanne Rosannadanna right now. Just leave me a comment or check out another blog if you get queasy--I understand.)

When I woke up the next morning my eye was swollen.  it was hard to open it.  And some god-ling would have sprung right out of my head, the contractions were so strong!  I took some Alleve, but those contractions flowed into my limbs.  My students, my sixth-graders, were kind--I warned them about my eye and my pain and not one said I looked like a monster, though a few suggested I had pink-eye.

But that's just one day, and this morning it was better.  By the end of the day today I was back to my normal blood-shot state.  (It's just how that eye is now.  F-ing dryness!)  It no longer hurts.  And I swear I'll use drops before removing any contact lenses in the future!

 I mean it!

Really!