Today started out like a Seinfeld episode. Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I took out my contact lenses and threw them away. This is because they are “disposable” (although I’m not really clear on what this means. Odd terminology, since that’s what you used to do with contact lenses anyway after you’d worn them a year, disinfecting them every day. Am I overanalyzing this? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…). I have been told to replace my contact lenses every three months, and I bought a year’s worth of lenses about 9 months ago.

So this morning, tra la la, I go into the bathroom to put my brand spankin’ new contact lenses in. Open the right-eye vial, shake it out, insert right lens. Ah! Beautiful! I can see that my bathroom sink needs cleaning. Open the left – ergh, ugh – open the – what the – ergh – what the bleeping blank is wrong with this thing? Although I am a reasonably healthy adult, I can’t for the life of me get the top off the left-eye vial. My left contact lens floats benignly in its solution, oblivious to my frustrated attempts to free it from its soggy prison.

Now, remember, I threw the old ones away. And – of course – these are the last contact lenses in the box. And because I have toric lenses and such a strong prescription, they have to be special-ordered from the Contact Lens Distribution Center for the Nearly Blind, where no doubt they are manufactured by hand by specially trained rhesus monkeys. Who are on strike.

So at this moment, I am wearing one new lens and one really old lens which I scavenged from a contact lens case I haven’t opened in nearly a year. Thank God I had the presence of mind to decide to keep these in case of emergency. Hopefully, my Big Strong Husband can open the left vial when he comes home for lunch. Of course, if this were a Seinfeld episode, he’d break his glasses at work and call me to come and pick him up, and while I was driving to get him I’d notice a homeless person walking down the street swaddled in my purloined sheets (see August 18 entry). And as I whipped my neck around to scream out the window, my left contact lens would pop out and roll down the street.

To add to the Murphy’s Law mix of today, the beloved fruit of our loins has not been sleeping well (again). Last night, she went to bed at Nine. O’Clock. Two hours later than usual. And woke up at Five. Ay-em. An hour and a half earlier than usual. And fell asleep in her high chair in the bathroom while I was taking a shower. At 9:15, instead of at 12, which is when she usually naps. This has totally screwed up my day, but that is life with a little one. Che será, and all that. She looks very sweet, all snuggled up with Mao, her little white stuffed cat, under her green gingham fleecy blankie. So I have decided to seize the moment and work on my book and stuff. Toodles!