1. LOST IN THE RAIN: It had been raining intermittedly all day and the sky was pretty, OK — very, overcast. But I still thought it would be Great Idea #465768 to go for a walk. I made it a few blocks before it began raining again; drizzling at first. It was in the fifties today and the rain felt kind of warm and refreshing. So I kept walking.

Another block or two and the rain started to pick up. The drizzles had turned into big fat drops that smacked off me in sort of an unkind manner. "It’ll slow down," I thought, and perservered another few blocks.

Soon, I was about a trillion miles away from home and the rain was coming down in torrents. My sweatshirt was so soaked through that the simple task of walking became more strenuous, like walking with a  toddler on your back. My jeans — drenched. The bottoms of them had been dragged through one puddle too many and made me feel like I was stepping with ankle weights. My hair slapped against my melting face in sopping ringlets. All the people passing me in their cars were probably laughing, but I couldn’t SEE them so what did I care.

At one point, I realized that I couldn’t tell where I was. I was afraid I was going to get ingested into the bowels of Brookline, not being able to see, but I just kept making lefts and eventually some of the blurred blobs I was squinting to make out began to look familiar.

2. A SERIES OF EYESIGHT AND BALANCE MALFUNCTIONS:  Before I left for work, I tripped over the baby gate on my way upstairs. I guess because in my present state of semi-blindness, I mis-gauged the height of it and the toes of my shoe clipped the top. I tried to catch myself, but ended up sprawled across the bottom three steps anyway. Hoping that Henry didn’t see, I quickly looked over to where he was sitting, but we made direct eye contact. He rolled his eyes and didn’t even inquire about my well-being. Right after that, I was walking across the living room and my right foot got caught in the hem of my left pant leg (I was wearing my dumb long people jeans) and I did a very graceful lunge, landed with arms akimbo, and promptly said, "I meant to do that." I don’t think Henry bought it.

When I got in the car to go to work, I hadn’t even pulled away from the curb before nearly crashing, because I had the car in reverse when I floored it and came nauseatingly close to kissing a telephone pole.

3. BROKEN HANDS AND REFLEXES: I didn’t realize how bad I hurt my hand during my daring baby gate hurdle until I got to work and tried to lift the coffee pot, nearly dropping it against my chest as the pain spread up my arm. I mean, I knew it was broken, but not THIS broken. I’m trying to ignore it but every so often it feels like the skin is burning. I don’t know what that means. And then sometimes it feels numb. So I moved my mouse pad over the left side of my keyboard and I’m attempting to convince my left hand that it can handle this new life change, but it doesn’t seem willing to cooperate. I’m not asking it to get a sex change, for Christ’s sake, I just want it to cradle the fucking mouse. I keep highlighting the whole screen by accident and then my left arm jolts and jerks forward like I suddenly have some sort of reflex defect now too.

Everything goes to hell when I can’t see.

EDIT!!! So I deduced that my hand was feeling numb because I had two hair elastics wrapped around my wrist too tightly. That doesn’t, however, change the fact that my hand is broken.

Also, I make no apologies for the myriad of typos I’ve been making in my current state of blindness.

I just went into the bathroom to beat the shit out of my left contact, which was acting like an asshole. When I took it out, it ripped in half. So now I can only see out of my right eye. Where "see" means "squinting out a foggy window." Bob keeps shaking his head and saying, "You should have just told your doctor the truth" and I keep defiantly rebutting this. It’s only a matter of time before I start stamping my feet.

But Collin agreed. "You probably would have had glasses by now if you had told the truth and ordered a pair yesterday," he said. Ugh! Does no one understand that I don’t want to buy glasses??

When I was on my way home from the eye doctor yesterday, two Mormon missionaries were walking toward me. I squinted all up in their faces as the one girl pawned off a Jesus card on me, trying to see if one of them was the missionary girl I interviewed back in October. But they were two new girls that I had never seen before.

I graciously paused and let them talk to me, hoping that God would take notice of standing within such close proximity of religious people, and perhaps he would correct my vision with painless rays of Heaven light, like some sort of Holy Lasik. That hasn’t happened yet, but I keep checking my mail box ofr a voucher.

I asked the girls if they know Hayley. They both seemed taken aback. "You mean…Sister McRae?" the dominant one of the pair corrected me. I forgot that it’s some sort of weird taboo to use their first names. Collin said Hayley’s probably getting flogged right now for revealing hers to me.

Anyway, they’re coming to my house this weekend. I hope God is watching. Maybe he’ll have them bring me glasses.

“Your prescription hasn’t changed,” my eye doctor said, pushing the butterfly-shaped apparatus away from my face. I started to relax in the orange leather seat, thinking that I would get to leave sooner than I imagined.

He pulled out a pen light and some sort of magnifying glass and after blinding me while forcing me to stare at his ear, he started pressing down on my closed lids.

“Have you been in a car accident recently?” The question made me pause; I answered no.

“Any sort of trauma? Been hit with a basketball?” he suggested. I said no to both, but started wondering what Henry does to me in my sleep that would change the shape of my eye balls. Am I going to lose them now?

Then my doctor dropped the false concern from his voice, adopting instead a tone of mild irritation. “Oh never mind, it’s because you wear your contacts too much.” He wheeled his seat back behind his desk and began scribbling in my chart, shaking his head at my irresponsibility. He told me that my over-used contacts have caused an allergic reaction to my upper eye ball area in both eyes. The name he gave it sounds like an STD gone optical. The good news is that my medical insurance will cover it, because what was originally just a routine exam (back when the sun still shone and birds chirped my name) was now an appointment to treat a medical condition.

“I’m going to prescribe you some eye drops. Use it for ten days, then I’ll see you again to check the progress. Don’t wear any contacts for the next ten days! I’m serious. I’ll know if you’ve been wearing them.”

I’m certain this was the point during the exam where I gulped. I’d have rather been getting a pap smear right then.

The conflict lies in the fact that I don’t have any glasses. I broke my last pair in an Incredible Hulkulean fit of rage, instigated by my extreme agitation of viewing the world through lenses. But I couldn’t tell my doctor this because five breaths ago I was swearing that I alternate wearing contacts with wearing my glasses.

I’m sure he could smell the stench of bullshit seeping through my cheese-clothed lie. He’s an eye doctor, for Christ’s sake. But I’m stubborn, so I left his office armed with a prescription and no eye sight. I tripped a few times on my walk home, flopped down on the couch and proceeded to panic.

How would I drive to work? How would I see who’s walking past my area? How would I spy on the creepy cleaning guy? Oh yeah, and how would I work?

I cried to Henry about it, but received no consoling. “That’s what you get. You idiot. Just go back and tell them you need to order a pair of glasses.”

“No, I don’t want to pay for them! I just spent $150 on a contact supply,” I whined.

I slapped my old contacts in right before I left for work, so that I could at least see while driving. Except that the lenses have grown ornery in their old, abused age, and refuse to stay suctioned to the curve of my eye. I blink and they ride up, like my eyes are trying to reject them. Even my EYES aren’t as retarded as me. I had to drive with my head tilted back, peering down my nose. Christina, trying to find the bright side, pointed out that at least I’ve had a lot of practice with looking down my nose.

Work was long and arduous. I took my contacts out as soon as I got there, so I had to pull my monitor as far out as possible, without knocking the keyboard off the edge. I  couldn’t slouch in my seat like usual or I would be too far away to see the screen through my furious squints.

The worst part of the night was when I tried to pay my coffee bill. The lady in charge of the coffee club was gone for the day, so I was instructed to give it to her friend Sharon. I’d never been to see Sharon before, but the coffee lady told me in an email that Sharon sits near her.

I did my best to walk over to their area of the building without reaching with my arms, an inherent reflex when vision becomes obstructed, or so I’m learning. Convinced that Sharon had an office and not a cubicle, I began pressing my nose up to the first several closed doors I came upon, squinting to see the names. The third or fourth door (blindness renders me dyscalculate, apparently) was open. I know this because a bright haze emanated from within, like I had finally reached Heaven’s gates.

I could detect a blurry outline of a human situated behind what I assumed was a desk. “Sharon?” I called out hesitantly. I jumped a little at the sound of my voice, which I had raised the volume on to compensate for my lack of sight, I suppose.

“No, this isn’t Sharon’s office,” answered the voice of a man. I squinted and brought my hand above my brow, like I was trying to see into the sun. This did nothing to sharpen the man’s outline. I know, I was surprised, too.

He tried to point me in the direction of Sharon. “No, the other way,” he said, as I turned to leave. I couldn’t see where he was pointing, so I was trying to fake it. He had to correct me THREE TIMES before I finally pivoted to the right and walked right into Sharon’s cube. He probably thought I was autistic.

On my way back to my desk, I took comfort in the fact that I didn’t even know who I was acting like an asshole in front of, so when I get my sight back, I won’t even know to be embarrassed if I ever encounter him again.

Until I inadvertently found out from my friend Jenn, who works during the day, that this guy in her department just got his seat changed. His name is David and I had a brief crush on him during our Christmas party, wherein I spent a good twenty minutes taking clandestine pictures of him sitting alone and brooding. After she mentioned that, it occurred to me that the man in the office sounded like him. I tried to imagine David with a blurred face. Later, when all the dayshift people were gone, I groped my way back to that office, stood with my nose an inch from the door, and read a line of fuzzy letters that spelled out “David [Hopefully-Erin’s-Future-Surname-But-Certainly-Not-Now].”

Great.

Today, I had planned to go to Goodwill and see if maybe they have a box of unwanted eyeglasses that I can pick through, maybe find a nice old man pair or fabulously over-sized owl-frames, in the style of Brett Somers. But Henry argued that Goodwill doesn’t just collect a box of prescription glasses to re-sell. “They probably send them to old people homes,” he reasoned. But how will the poor people see?

“Here’s a thought,” Henry posed over the phone this morning. “Why don’t you just call your fucking eye doctor and tell them that you can’t fucking see?”

“Because I don’t want them to know I lied! Ooh, unless! What if I call them and say that I left my glasses on the bus yesterday and I need an emergency pair?”

“Or, why don’t you just tell them you’re a re-re who has never had glasses.” When he came home from work, I had the bean bag pulled two feet from the TV and I was lurched forward, squinting to make out the undulating forms of Danity Kane. “Is this where the blind people sit?” he asked, with a roll of his eyes.

Once I’ve woven a tangled web, the lies and deception just get deeper and deeper; there’s no turning back now. And it’s stupid things I lie about too. I mean look, I’ve been writing on the Internet since 2001. You would think that if I was so into knitting ridiculous afghans of aspersion with a distorted reality fringe, I would do a better job constructing a polished image of myself. Like, maybe I would lie and say that I went to an Ivy League, perhaps Oxford, Photoshop my pictures and pretend to be in porn. But no, instead I’m like, “Hey, I’m a fatso! And a high school drop out! I’m not even awesome enough to have a hot boyfriend!”

But glasses I’ll lie about.

Henry sad he might have his old glasses, a pair of 1980’s aviators. I really hope he finds them, because I bet they’d cover at least half of my face. Until then, Christina is sending me her glasses.

I’m starting to lose sight (ha-ha) of my initial point. Why am I doing this again? Oh right, because I’m an idiot.

Hello. I’m twenty-eight years old. I have never built a snowman.

We got a good bit of snow on Friday, so I got all ambitious and decided that it was time to change my status as snow architect from "never" to "active."

I concentrated hard on my efforts for an entire, let’s say, three minutes, before walking away and playing with the shovel. Henry spied my attempt and asked what it was. "Uh, that’s not how you make a snowman," he patronized as he continued to sneer at the uneven mound of snow that I formed by scooping and patting, not rolling which is apparently the universal method of birthing snowmen.

"Oh, then show me how," I said, knowing that it was a surefire way to con Henry into doing all the work while I pranced around in a crocheted frog hat and rain boots. (By the way, rain boots make terrible snow boots.)

By the time he was done playing snowman God, I was tired of being outside. It was still snowing hard and Chooch kept trying to sneak past us into the street, no matter how many times I yelled, "Danger danger!" I decided I would implement by carefully planned-out snowman face and accouterments the next day, which turned out to be beneficial because by the next day, it looked like this:

I was pleased with it’s current Leaning Tower state — it would make a more realistic dying snowman. Unfortunately, before I had a chance to slap a piece of salami on its face for a protruding tongue, some asshole kids stole his head and torso.I found the head a few yards up the steet, but the torso is probably in a garage somewhere, being harvested for kidneys.

Snowmen suck. So do kids.

I guess technically I still haven’t built a snowman. It’s the cherry that can’t be popped.

Thursday, 11-15 and Friday, 11-16:

I had slight twinging on my left side. I was fairly certain it could be my kidney, but also considered a strained muscle. The pain was just a dull ache that fades into the background of my day, so I didn’t concern myself too much.

Saturday, 11-17:

When I came home from school, I started to get body aches so I sprawled out on the couch under a blanket and had Henry serve me Tylenol. Henry bitched that I was 5% sick, 95% dramatic, but by that night, I was nearly convulsing and couldn’t get warm no matter what I did. My teeth were chattering so hard that I was afraid they would chip. Henry bitched for me to call my doctor, but I just got new insurance last month and hadn’t had a chance to choose a doctor yet, so his bitching was for naught. Henry is MEAN when I’m sick.

Sunday, 11-18:

I had a fever of 103. I wanted to go to the ER, but Henry bitched again about calling my doctor (which I still didn’t have).

That night, the music wafting from Chooch’s monitor started talking to me. Maynard James Keenan was telling me to pull out my intestines and tie them in bows (A Perfect Circle will never sound the same to me again).

The CD in Chooch’s room also has a Club Ibiza remix of Bush’s “Letting the Cables Sleep,” a song that used to be quite capable of soothing me but under the spell of my fever had suddenly sounded like if vinegar and garlic and bile, straight from Satan’s saliva, solidified into a thorny-armored army of musical notes and began its cavalcade down my temporal lobe. I wanted to reach out and shut off the monitor but I couldn’t muster the energy.

Monday, 11-19:

I was sick. Sick, sick, sick. Fever. Henry bitched. My only meal was a small cup of mint chocolate chip ice cream which made me nauseated. That night, I hallucinated that I retrieved my imaginary $15 flea market shot gun from under my pillow and Frenched the barrel while finger-jobbing its trigger.

Tuesday, 11-20:

In the early AM, I called Henry and begged him to come home and take me to the hospital. He came home alright, but instead of taking me to the hospital, he found me a stupid doctor on Brookline Boulevard because it would only cost $10 instead of the $100 ER fee, but my appointment wasn’t for another 6 hours. I didn’t care about the extra money it would cost to go to the ER. I just wanted to get better and go back to work. Time is money and either way I was losing out on it.

The doctor’s office was next to a laundromat, and as soon as I walked in, I was barraged by a stench of Beef-a-Roni and vitamins. Some poop, too I think. There were watermarks on the ceiling, wallpaper was ripped from the walls near the floorboards, and the magazines catered only to the elderly patient bracket. The receptionist had a brassy hair helmet with fringed bangs and close-set, beady eyes. I didn’t like how forcefully she grabbed the clipboard from me.

A male nurse came and took my vitals. He had a creepy white handlebar moustache with blonde highlights and wore beige scrubs which made me uncomfortable. The bathroom where I gave my urine sample had tile ripped up from around the commode. I felt like I was in a Nicaraguan clinic and became afraid that Angelina Jolie would come in and try to adopt me.

My doctor was in his forties and very personable. He put me at ease and didn’t patronize me when I told him I was sure I had a kidney infection. He wholeheartedly agreed and, as he took my pulse, said that I was “very sick.” No shit, I felt like I was dying. I told him so, too. He laughed when I said I expected to be able to return  to work the next day.

Later on, I was home alone with Chooch while Henry went to pick up my prescriptions. Chooch kept beating on me and I was so sick and exhausted that I lost it and started wailing. It was a pitiful moment. Not really one to share with Kodak.

Wednesday, 11-21:

I couldn’t find any relief during Tuesday night. I was so tired and wanted to sleep but I had a searing pain in my head and my fever kept spiking. I called Henry into the bedroom (he had been banished to the couch for snoring) and gasped, “Look, I surrender. I cannot manage this pain. I’m dehydrated. I want to go to the fucking hospital.”

He was all, “Well, I don’t know how you’re going to get there….” and I growled, “Work it out!” He of course sat there stupidly, so I yelled at him  to call Janna, who arrived shortly around midnight and took me to St. Clair Hospital, where there was an apparent gnat outbreak.

After I registered (the nurse loudly asked my weight, but then whispered, “And when was your last period?”), Janna, my knotted hair, and I sat in the dingy waiting room on hard teal chairs. Some bitch we went to high school with walked by with her butch-gait and I scowled. Then I panicked that she would fuck with my chart and I would wind up getting chemo or a mastectomy.

When I finally got a room, a nurse came in and asked me what was causing me the most pain. “My head!” I whined. “You have a kidney infection, but your HEAD is giving you the most pain?” she asked in disbelief. Oh lady, if you only knew. It felt like an irate Roman god had stuck tuning rods in hellfire and then pierced both of my temples with them until the formed crosses behind my eyes, at which point seventy-three bolts of lightning were summoned to strike while a Molotov cocktail made from bleach, John Candy’s stomach acid, Black widow venom, BTK’s semen and Flava Flav’s athletes foot exploded in the back of my head, the after effect of which was like being persistently bitten all over my brain by a swarm of fire ants. This would happen over and over, like Groundhog Day.

Except it was every hour. So Groundhog Hour, I guess.

It also didn’t help that I was lying on a headful of knots on top of more knots, sucking the dicks of other knots. Janna chose our hospital quiet time to request a story. I’m sorry Janna, but this IV in my arm is kind of distracting me from spinning yarns. Why don’t you pull out that book in your purse? I hear those book thingies have lots of stories.

I was released at 5am, but not before the ER doctor said, “You know, generally when people have kidney infections like yours, they’re admitted.” Tell  that to my boyfriend, doctor. I tried to sleep when I got home, but my headache was still there. In fact, by late morning it was at its peak. Henry called the doctor and had my prescription switched from Cipro, because as it turns out, we’re just not meant to be friends.

He also called in a prescription for a pain reliever, so I was ready to get stuffed by dinner time.

My mom never called to see how I was doing.