A Day in the Life of Captain One Eye

Good news: the pharmacist at the Wal*Mart down the road is very attractive.

For the past few days, I have been waking up with an unreasonable amount of gunk in my eyes. It was getting worse each day this week, and on Tuesday when I woke up I had to scrape the crud away from my poor eyeballs before I could open them that morning. Once I finally managed to peel them open, they were reddish and glossy.

Joking with Alaina that I looked like I had done way too many drugs that day, I brushed it off as a minor irritant and headed off to work. Life went on as usual and that night I held a Beer Pong Night at Château de Lizy. Since I had no need to stay sober enough to drive, I allowed myself a few more than usual.

Wednesday morning I woke up feeling my usual hangover-from-hell that I’ve become all-too-accustomed to after any more than two drinks. Again, my eye crusties were all over the place, and worse than the morning prior. I got my eyes open enough to walk over to the bathroom, and holy crap my eye balls looked like they had exploded.

I was now hungover, maybe a little drunk still, and the shade of red my right eye was sporting was comparable to that of Snow White’s apple.

I did what I always do when something a little too out of control happens in my life: I called my madre. She told me it sounded like pink eye and said I needed to get myself to a doctor.

I skipped work that day and went to the doctor’s. Doc’s verdict was textbook pink eye, which made me cry. Ok, what actually made me cry was the fact that I had to go to the doctor’s in the first place and a parade of strangers had to poke things in my eyes only to conclude what my non-doctor mother already told me. I’m uncomfortable enough as it is with doctors and with eye drops…the fact that a doctor combined forces with eye drops made my worst nightmare come true.

The second I was alone and in Mrs. Potts, I found myself crying and driving to get myself a comfort latte and a comfort mac n’ cheese (Panera saves the day again!).

So here I am, on Day 2 of Pink Eye Extravaganza, with not one but two eyes that make me look like an extra for a horror movie. I had to email the attendants of Beer Pong Night and apologize for potentially infecting all of my closest friends with pink eye. Keepin’ it classy over here.

Don’t tell the other patrons of this Starbucks that my infection might be contagious. I swear I’ve been washing my hands a lot and have kept face-touching to a minimum.

Since my eyeballs are sick, but not the rest of me, I’ve been going a little stir crazy in my apartment because I feel fine otherwise. I skipped work because it hasn’t gotten any better, and I really don’t want to give it to my boss or my coworker.

And that brings me to the topic of this post: A Day in My Life.

Are you still paying attention? Many of you click out of my posts if I don’t start talking about sex or drama or arrests by the third paragraph.

Here we go:

A Day in the Life of Elizabeth Grace Kurtz

I start hitting snooze at 8am and continue to do so in 5-minute intervals until the last possible minute I have to take a shower before work. The whole time I’m thinking to myself: damn, I am terrible at getting up. I really need to get up. But I really like this dream. Why do I still feel tired? I got X hours of sleep last night. I’ll do better tomorrow.

At 8:40ish, I spring out of bed and take a stupidly fast shower, damning myself for sleeping in so late.

At 9am, the time I’m supposed to leave for work with Alaina, who resides in the same apartment complex as me, I text her: “gonna be a few mins late.” She responds: “No rush.”

Between 9:05 and 9:10, Alaina and I drive the two miles to our office. Our office is one room with three cubicles; mine is between Alaina’s and our boss’s.

I sip on a Red Bull or Monster energy drink all morning that I’ve most likely had open for a couple of days. I usually make one can last two or three days to justify drinking them as much as I do.

After a few minutes of checking email, my work day begins.

I process homeowner applications, send rejection letters, respond to voicemails, schedule and partake in home reviews, revise out-of-date documents that my organization has been using since the 90’s (I cannot tell you how many times I’ve changed our application), update our Facebook page, and publish our newsletter.

When a work project comes up, I leave the office with Boss and Alaina to pick up supplies from our warehouse or from Lowe’s. On the day of the project, I’m running around Montgomery in Mrs. Potts as a gopher for supplies. Being in charge of social media, I also get to take lots and lots of pictures of the project and upload them to our Facebook or publish them in our newsletter.

If we don’t have a work project, Alaina and I get off at 5 pretty regularly. If we do have a project, we’ve been known to stay until 9:30pm.

Early in the afternoon, my gang starts messaging or texting each other about our plans for that evening. We are likely to end up at Bud’s to shoot pool and drink. If it’s a Thursday, Alaina, Rebekah, and I head over to the softball fields and drink while we watch Andrew, Joe, Daniel, and Corey play kickball in the adult league (the players, for the record, are also drinking).

Since I don’t have internet at my place, and I really like blogging, I’m likely to camp out at a coffee shop or at a friend’s place for a few hours in the evening if I don’t go out with my buddies.

If I’m not drunkenly watching kickball or soberly blogging, I might be practicing guitar or cooking tomorrow’s lunch.

I mozy back to my place around midnight and attempt to fall asleep shortly after. I’m pretty much the worst at falling asleep and am likely to doze off an hour after laying down.

And then the cycle starts over.

If it’s a weekend, I sleep in until about 10am and mozy around my apartment a little bit before heading to a coffee shop or to a friend’s place to take advantage of the internet. Sometimes I take spontaneous road trips (always flying solo) to any unexplored land a few hours away. Sometimes Mrs. Potts and I run around Montgomery taking pictures of poverty-stricken neighborhoods for Montgomery Mondays. Sometimes I attend a special event with my homies. However the day goes, we usually find ourselves at Bud’s again, drinking and shooting pool.

My goodness, I sound like a drunk. I just really like Bloody Mary’s.

And that’s that! I have a college degree, and this is how I spend my life. My day might also include a bunch of texts from my mom with pictures of Rossi or my nephews. I keep chat windows open in Facebook all the time and am pretty much always talking to Rebekah and Daniel. I go out most nights of the week with my crew and pretty rarely have time to keep up my apartment or talk to my friends in Glendora or Potsdam on the phone (which I feel very guilty about, by the way).

The moral of this post: don’t wipe your tush and then poke your eyeballs, kids.