The Write Woman’s Right Eye (290 Days before Loosening my Grip on Reality)

Is it a newspaper or a zebra's derriere? It's all the same to me.

 Okay, so I haven’t totally lost vision in my right eye, however after attempting to settle the kids down after a baffling game of Monkey in the Middle, my daughter refused to settle down. I picked her up, drew her across my lap, and her thrashing made the lens pop out the right side of my frames. I understand why I can’t find it, I couldn’t find my butt with both hands right now, but neither of my kids can find it either. (The lens, not my butt.) Honestly, I can’t even see what I’m typing, so I just have to keep my eyes peeled for the ever-popular red squiggle to stay on track. Other than that, all I can see is black lines on a white background.

Yesterday I was forced to drive to the photography place with my resignation papers while squinting one eye to drive, with my one-lensed glasses—tinted no less. In the rearview mirror I resembled a goofy cartoon with one eye darker and larger than the eye without a lens, closed. Perhaps a new-fangled Popeye the Puppy program?

Oh, and please don’t bother texting me, unless you want my son to read it first. (This means to keep it G-rated) He doesn’t always understand what he’s reading and watching me respond must be hilarious. It’s all I can do to get my fingers between my phone and my face to press the buttons.  But, I still managed to change the ringtone I use to wake Cameron up. It’s a really annoying rooster crow, produced by yours truly.

The strangest thing is I used to be a nail-biter—let me rephrase that. I was not a nail-biter, more

Yeah, right. Shut up and let me dream!

like a finger-gnawer with nails so short I never had to worry about cleaning out from under them. There was no “under them” to clean. I was a wreck. But now, I don’t know what caused it, but I’ve magically quit putting them in my mouth. Personally, I believe it's because I work out, releasing stress. So my hair is growing, due to the deal I made with Nikki. I’m losing weight, to appear presentable for the job I no longer have, with a contract at a gym. And I’ll be acquiring contact lenses because my glasses are trashed. I’m going to unwittingly emerge more attractive by the time we move.

Oh, the novel I’ve been working on taught me a valuable lesson yesterday. (Between writing it and reading numerous full-length books for school and taking care of the kids while working out, I’ve been getting up at 3:00 a.m. and going to bed at 9:00 p.m. in order to fit everything in.) See, I made the mistake of allowing the kids to play a game I had downloaded for school. It’s called “The Movies Superstar,” and they love to fire people after they catch them drinking on the job. Anywho, I wrote in the morning for a few hours before taking a shower. When I came back, the kids were taking turns playing the game. I thought it was pretty cool they were getting along so well, so I let them continue. When I finally kicked them off to write some more, I said, “Oh, that’s weird, I should be on about page forty-five by now, but it says I’m on page twenty-two.” They both agreed it was odd. I even switched layouts to see if perhaps in changing it earlier, as I had, I may have altered the page numbers somehow. Deciding I’d better quit playing around and get back to work, I did. I managed to make it to page thirty-two before I needed to go back and check on a quote one of my characters said earlier. That was when it hit me; the first twenty-four pages of my novel had been erased. Holy crap! I started to hit the undo button, thinking out of desperation I may be able to undo some of my work and get the lost pages back, marking lost hours of work. But then it dawned on me that there’s no way to fix the issue by using that method. I will simply need to rewrite that portion again by using the index cards and screenplay I’ve already been working on. Oh yeah, and tell my kids they can unfortunately no longer play on my computer.

If you ever want me to ignore you, say the word “unfortunately” because it always precedes a statement meaning, “and now I’m gong to tell you that life is tough. You're not going to like what I'm about to say.” This turns my brain off faster than a nose-picker on a jumbo tron. Think about having a loved one in the emergency room and the first word out of the doctor’s mouth is unfortunately. Go ahead and start making funeral arrangements, because there’s no good news to come.

This entry is a freebie—so if I make any grammatical or spelling errors, I refuse to be held accountable. And UNFORTUNATELY, I will not be adding another blog until later this week, when I can see properly.  So, have a good day and remember, no matter how bad you’ve got it, someone else has it worse! Thinking this always makes me smile.