a day about two weeks ago.
i can't find words to describe how things are right now, so i'll talk about one of the craziest days ever - a day that took place a couple weeks ago.
After going to class (1.5 hours), and teaching (2 hours), and seminar (in which we had a quiz & paper due - 3 hours), i arrive home the other night and after a week of grazing, i engage in a festival of gluttony and promptly fall asleep on the couch. With my (rigid, gas-permeable) contacts in.
Okay, so i've done this before. i wake up late and take them out before i shower, figuring i can pop them back in afterwards and they'll just be a little uncomfortable. i do this, vaguely aware that my left eye is hurting, but really i'm just focused on getting on the next bus. With a flash of foresight, i throw my glasses in my backpack (i never take my glasses anywhere, so this was truly providential).
i miss the bus.
i call a taxi, because i'm sick of busses and the next one isn't for another 40 minutes. i wait and wait and the taxi doesn't show. After almost an hour, i call them back, tell them to cancel, and get on a different bus. My eye is getting worse, tearing up and massively red. i finally pop out my contact and decide to go Cyclops-style to my advisor meeting. i get there, late of course, and the eye is still tearing up enough that i have to blow my nose every 5 minutes. We meet, everything is mostly okay, she's concerned about my workload, etc. etc. In the middle of the meeting, i take out my second contact and put my dorky Harry Potter-esque glasses on.
Anyway, i go to meet with two students who have completed corrections from their latest test. One has no idea what's going on, the other is a little more competent. i just want them out of my office so i can call my optometrist and ask if i'm going to lose my eye. i call her, she tells me to buy a special brand of over-the-counter eye drops and use them every two hours - if things aren't better in the morning, i have to come in. Great. i have a fairly important graduate student meeting in 5 minutes, so i decide to buy the drops after the meeting. i try to make myself look presentable in the bathroom, grab a box of tissues and a drink, then head downstairs to the meeting.
Down the stairs in one catastrophic flailing leap, that is.
You see, my depth perception with my new glasses prescription is awful. The new prescription itself is good - very sharp - but i don't wear them enough to get used to calculating depth. i've never worn them to school. And so i fell an entire length of ~12 hard stairs, landing primarily on my knees, right hip, and right arm. Since i was carrying stuff, i wasn't able to brace myself properly, although i remember thinking "head up! keep the head up!" Anyway, i was lucky & knew it, but before i was able to turn myself into an appropriate "i'm okay" position, some good Samaritan opens the door to the stairwell and starts telling me not to move. Don't get me wrong, i appreciated his kindness, but my peers are going to walk into the stairwell any minute and i do not need them seeing me all splayed out on the floor. He makes a big deal of checking my ankles and knees, etc. and then of course my officemates come in and are all concerned. It was massively embarrassing. When i get up to go to the meeting, i discover that i've torn a good conference-worthy pair of pants straight across the knee.
So i look like a hot mess throughout the meeting, eye grotesquely swollen and red (though hurting somewhat less now that i have seven nascent bruises smarting elsewhere on my corpus), ugly glasses, torn pants. i make it through the meeting, buy the eye drops and spray them liberally in the direction of my eye (i hate eye drops: my eye has adapted to protect my contacts, so it really wants nothing of liquid entering beyond the eyelashes). Then i have to meet and make up with a friend with whom i've been having a junior-high type of spat for about two weeks now. Then after changing pants, i go to dinner with another friend and not until returning home do i see how absolutely disgusting my eye looks. It's puffed to the point of barely being open, and all crusty from the eye drops. Embarrassing - i can't believe i went out looking like that!
My R returned home that evening and all we wanted was to cuddle with each other, but it was hard finding a position that didn't touch the bruises. Sigh.
i'm still mad about those pants, probably because they were a gift and i don't want to pay $80 to replace them. But otherwise, all is fine.
After going to class (1.5 hours), and teaching (2 hours), and seminar (in which we had a quiz & paper due - 3 hours), i arrive home the other night and after a week of grazing, i engage in a festival of gluttony and promptly fall asleep on the couch. With my (rigid, gas-permeable) contacts in.
Okay, so i've done this before. i wake up late and take them out before i shower, figuring i can pop them back in afterwards and they'll just be a little uncomfortable. i do this, vaguely aware that my left eye is hurting, but really i'm just focused on getting on the next bus. With a flash of foresight, i throw my glasses in my backpack (i never take my glasses anywhere, so this was truly providential).
i miss the bus.
i call a taxi, because i'm sick of busses and the next one isn't for another 40 minutes. i wait and wait and the taxi doesn't show. After almost an hour, i call them back, tell them to cancel, and get on a different bus. My eye is getting worse, tearing up and massively red. i finally pop out my contact and decide to go Cyclops-style to my advisor meeting. i get there, late of course, and the eye is still tearing up enough that i have to blow my nose every 5 minutes. We meet, everything is mostly okay, she's concerned about my workload, etc. etc. In the middle of the meeting, i take out my second contact and put my dorky Harry Potter-esque glasses on.
Anyway, i go to meet with two students who have completed corrections from their latest test. One has no idea what's going on, the other is a little more competent. i just want them out of my office so i can call my optometrist and ask if i'm going to lose my eye. i call her, she tells me to buy a special brand of over-the-counter eye drops and use them every two hours - if things aren't better in the morning, i have to come in. Great. i have a fairly important graduate student meeting in 5 minutes, so i decide to buy the drops after the meeting. i try to make myself look presentable in the bathroom, grab a box of tissues and a drink, then head downstairs to the meeting.
Down the stairs in one catastrophic flailing leap, that is.
You see, my depth perception with my new glasses prescription is awful. The new prescription itself is good - very sharp - but i don't wear them enough to get used to calculating depth. i've never worn them to school. And so i fell an entire length of ~12 hard stairs, landing primarily on my knees, right hip, and right arm. Since i was carrying stuff, i wasn't able to brace myself properly, although i remember thinking "head up! keep the head up!" Anyway, i was lucky & knew it, but before i was able to turn myself into an appropriate "i'm okay" position, some good Samaritan opens the door to the stairwell and starts telling me not to move. Don't get me wrong, i appreciated his kindness, but my peers are going to walk into the stairwell any minute and i do not need them seeing me all splayed out on the floor. He makes a big deal of checking my ankles and knees, etc. and then of course my officemates come in and are all concerned. It was massively embarrassing. When i get up to go to the meeting, i discover that i've torn a good conference-worthy pair of pants straight across the knee.
So i look like a hot mess throughout the meeting, eye grotesquely swollen and red (though hurting somewhat less now that i have seven nascent bruises smarting elsewhere on my corpus), ugly glasses, torn pants. i make it through the meeting, buy the eye drops and spray them liberally in the direction of my eye (i hate eye drops: my eye has adapted to protect my contacts, so it really wants nothing of liquid entering beyond the eyelashes). Then i have to meet and make up with a friend with whom i've been having a junior-high type of spat for about two weeks now. Then after changing pants, i go to dinner with another friend and not until returning home do i see how absolutely disgusting my eye looks. It's puffed to the point of barely being open, and all crusty from the eye drops. Embarrassing - i can't believe i went out looking like that!
My R returned home that evening and all we wanted was to cuddle with each other, but it was hard finding a position that didn't touch the bruises. Sigh.
i'm still mad about those pants, probably because they were a gift and i don't want to pay $80 to replace them. But otherwise, all is fine.