Eyeballs, Boogies, and Religious Catchalls

I had to get my eyes checked yesterday. Note to self: Take a half-day for next year’s eye exam.

Normally I like scheduling doctor appointments during office hours. You get to leave for a little while, no one is particularly jealous or resentful because you aren’t going anywhere fun, and it breaks up the monotony of the day a little bit. Lord knows I need that. Well, yesterday I learned that computer screens and Nice Hedge Fund’s fluorescent lighting scheme are the arch nemesis of dilated pupils.

The examination itself is a kind of low-level torture. They sit you in a dark corner and make you look through microscopes and say what you see! There I was, sweating though the whole thing, nervous about giving a wrong answer – I couldn’t make out a number in that last circle, oh no I’m going color-blind! I can’t find the white dot in my periphery, can they tell if I fake it? It’s too much pressure to handle before lunch! Then, as if that isn’t enough agony, they make you stare at a green light and then shoot a puff of air into your eyeballs. Test for glaucoma my ass, that scared the shit out of me and once I knew how much it sucked I was understandably reluctant to let the girl test my other eye. The one and only highlight of the pre-dilation tests was the eye patch I got to sport.

(Girl: You can just hold it over your eye.
Me [ignoring her, putting on eye patch]: Argggh!)

But the worst of it all occurs after the exam, when your pupils are unnaturally widened to the max and you have to blindly navigate the streets of Manhattan wearing non-prescription sunglasses and wincing at the sunlight like a misdirected mole person. Then, once you make it safely back to your office by following pedestrian traffic, you get to look like a mid-afternoon lush wearing sunglasses indoors and vaguely stumbling around. Ah, if only.

Could someone do me a solid and tell me where autumn went? Or, specifically, September and October? Because I sort of blinked and it’s already a full week into November. Holy cow. The Time and Temperature Tower outside my window (such a nifty feature of my Midtown Manhattan view) said 35 degrees at 5am this morning when I was piling on layer after layer of spandex to go meet the girls for a bike ride, and I am just NOT READY for this kind of weather. My under-nose area is already chapped from wiping my boogies on my bike gloves, but I’m still shamefully lousy at snot-rockets. An unfortunate percentage of my attempts land on my shoulder, or helmet strap, or face, or innocent passersby. Just a friendly little PSA reminding my readers of what a classy broad I am!

Also, it's dark when I'm leaving the office, and it's not like I'm ever here past 5pm! I'm about to get on board with Midwesterners and declare my hatred and possible boycott of Daylight Savings Time. Can it be like a religious thing, as in, "Oh, I'm not an hour late, I just don't believe in Daylight Savings Time"? That's the direction I'm heading.