It’s Wednesday & I have an ashy eye

Okay, I’m going to get into the ashy eye story in a minute, but also I just want you to know that I got a COVID test after flying across the country, and it is negative. So…whew.

But, yes, I have an ashy eye.

So I discovered this ashy eye issue the day I was packing/prepping to fly across the country. My eye had been bothering me since Thursday. It kept watering for no reason, which honestly happens to me quite a bit, but I thought it was just allergies. You know, a fire was raging, and debris was flying through the air, so it seemed logical. But that night I couldn’t sleep with my eye mask on because it felt like something was stabbing me in the eye.

Then, on Friday, my eye was still bothering me. It was still with the leaking and all, but I could smell smoke in my house, so, again, I just banked on allergies. Also, my daughter told me I looked like I had gotten punched in the eye because my eye was swollen. “Yes,” I told her. “It’s the allergies.”

When I woke up the next morning, my eye was still bothering me, and I thought, I should probably go to the doctor. And then I realized it had been three days so I knew I really needed to go to the doctor. So I called the eye doctor, and the person who answered the phone told me the doctor might be able to squeeze me in, but if she couldn’t I would need to go to urgent care. Your girl did not want to go to urgent care because I knew it would take hours, and I really needed to be home to (a) pack for my trip and (b) go to book club. And I could NOT miss book club because I had actually read the book (The Water Dancer) and it wasn’t even a book I wanted to read, so there was no way I was going to miss. None at all.

Good news! The doctor could squeeze me in. Bad news! She could squeeze me in right at the beginning of book club. Good news! Book club is on Zoom, so as soon as I got to the office, I signed into the call and joined book club from the waiting room.

I go in to see the eye doctor. She does my exam. We have a chat about where she grew up (a little bit in England, a lot of bit in California). Then she tells me the problem with my eye is that it’s really, really, really dry. Super dry! The driest. And the reason it hurt to put my eye mask on is the dryness AND if I had let it get any more dry, then I probably would have had a tear on my eye from how dry they were and that would be a problem that would never go away, ever. It would just recur and recur and recur. Which I already know would suck because the slight pain I was feeling from the extremely dry eye was misery making–I don’t even want to think about what it would mean to have that happen over and over again.

So, yes. Dry eyes. She told me to get some over the counter eye drops to moisturize my eyes since I didn’t have an infection. She said, “You know how if your skin gets really dry and then you just have to keep putting lotion on so they’re not dry anymore? That’s what you have to do with your eye and the drops.”

After it was all done, I called my mom and told her that I have an ashy eye. An ashy eye! What else do you call it when someone tells you your eye is so dry that you have to moisturize it the way you would with dry skin? Dry skin is ashy skin! My dry eye is an ashy eye.

When I told my daughter my eye was ashy, she told me to never say it again. But again I ask: what else am I to call it? It is extremely dry! So dry that it could have cracked open!

Anyway, it is dry no longer. Also, this is a slice of life story so check out this fly graphic my friend Kirsten made me!

My students are writing slice of life blogs this semester based on the Two Writing Teachers challenge I have participated in a few times. Since I couldn’t use their graphic, Kirsten made that one, and I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I may use it when I do the challenge again–that’s how much I love it.

Also, my eye isn’t so dry anymore. I have been putting in the drops several times a day and also the gel drops at night. Whew.

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I also read some books:

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was super cute and fun, especially if you like any of the following:

– books
– puzzle mysteries
– smart girls being smart
– smart kids being smart
– word play
– ciphers
– friendship books
– geocaching
– Edgar Allan Poe

Also, I was very stressed about whether or not the big emotional issue in the book gets resolved at the end or not (re: the family structure), and it does! So just know that you and Emily will know by the end what the family is going to do.

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The language in this is so amazing and poetic. I love the focus on women, the expectations women face, and the choices that women make. This is a great exploration of destiny and fate and even the parameters of the responsibility of service. Tilo is called to help her people (Indians specifically) and often grapples with the idea of pushing beyond that idea because Indians are not the only people who come into her spice shop and are not the only people who need her help. Almost all of her defiance is grounded in good intentions, so it’s interesting to think about what disobedience means when talking about faith, especially when someone (in this case Tilo) knows what is right and wrong deep in her heart even if it goes against what she’s been taught. Good stuff.

The Cracks in the Kingdom by Jaclyn Moriarty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jaclyn Moriarty is a genius. This book. THIS BOOK. Love. Love, love, love.

Also, I have a deeper appreciation for the first book, which I obviously need to reread now.

3/27/16: Okay, I love this book EVEN MORE now than the first time. Of course because I picked up things I didn’t pick up on the first time but also because I fell super in love with the characters in a way I didn’t the first go around. I knew Princess Ko was pretty amazing, yes. And, oh, my heart aches for Jupiter so much (SO MUCH). But also Samuel is pretty great and Keira, too. Plus everything with Belle.

So, basically, this book is pretty great, and I still 100% recommend it and the first one in the series. I am suuuuuuper excited for the final book in the trilogy.

9/22/20: Somehow this is the first time I’ve reread this since I finished the trilogy, so it makes sense that I was like “Ohhhh” re: stuff that happened in the third book. Anyway, Princess Ko remains the thrill of my heart, but I also loved Madeleine and Elliot in a very new way this time around. I would still read a whole book about Jupiter/Ariel.

Oh! Oh! Oh! My favorite part of this book is that Cello is part of the Kingdoms and Empires, which means these books take place in the same world as The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone, which thrills me beyond end. Jaclyn Moriarty, you poetic, noble land mermaid, I do not think I could love you more.

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