Gross Physical Trivia

This morning I woke up without a hangover, which isn't really surprising, since I didn't drink last night (although that method is not, alas, infallible in my case) and mowed the lawn at that magic Sunday morning hour that is not late enough to be really hot but not early enough to terminally annoy the neighbors, a.k.a. 10:30 a.m. My lawnmower, which is red, has been surgically modified for extra danger: the plastic guard thing that's supposed to keep the outgoing chopped grass from flying out and killing you fell off, and I never bothered to replace it, especially since I noticed that since it's been gone the lawnmower clogs much less often. However, since it's been gone I have also often thought about the inevitability of getting blinded by the damn thing, and in particular about how particularly awful it would be to be blinded by a) thorns from the wild berries or b) poison ivy, both of which I mow over frequently.

Today, as it turned out, was that inevitable day when the lawnmower choked and spat something noxious into my left eye. I ignored it for a while, for I am macho, and then my machismo wavered in the face of actual pain so I came in and poured contact lens solution into my eye. Halfway through that procedure it occurred to me that I should have washed my hands, so I did, with soap, which really made it all a bit worse. Then I decided to take out my contact lenses and flush them down the toilet, and I did that, and put on my glasses, and spent the rest of the day with a left eye that kept going kind of strange and hurting and tearing up, at which point I would pour more contact lens solution into it. It's suprising that I don't have a long white patch of salt down the left side of my face, since I'm basically incapable of putting in eyedrops without pouring the whole bottle all over my head and hoping for the best.

All this is fine and good and I had gone over to my friend S's for a great dinner and in the process moved on from worrying about the fact that I was going out in public wearing my glasses, which are usually strictly for family consumption only, to worrying about how fetching I was going to look in a black pirate eye patch and could I get one with a skull and crossbones on it, when my eye started hurting much worse and tearing like crazy. I explained to the dinner party what was going on and went to rub my eye (exactly what you're not supposed to do, I know) and S's roommate N said, oh my god, look, it's out of there. And so it was. A pretty damn big hunk of grass had suddenly migrated OUT of my EYEBALL and onto the side of my nose. Ewwwwwwwww. In other words, for the last EIGHT or NINE HOURS, there has been a piece of grass (a honking big old piece too, hon, not one of your measly fragments, but a fucking CHUNK) rolling AROUND on my EYEBALL. This is just so gross and horrific, I had to share.