Straight No Chaser

Peripheral Vision and Guilty Pleasures

the eye doctor had to do the glaucoma test twice, because it came out high the first time. "are you a little apprehensive?" she asked; "think about something relaxing and let's do this again." she suggested the beach. i said okay, and then thought about marcus instead, imagined his hand on my hip, took the test again, wound up with normal pressure levels that time. and i never really believed in physiology. consider me a convert.

my right eye is getting less and less near-sighted. then again, she's been saying that since i was fifteen, and i still can't see a damn thing twenty feet away without benefit of contacts or spectacles. no retinal tears, normal range of motion, et cetera. the best part, though, was getting to sleep in for an extra hour this morning, and then to help prep my brother for the kate chopin test he's going to take at the very beginning of twelfth grade english. i think it's a crime to make seventeen-year-old boys read "the awakening," so i tried to make it interesting for him, read a few sawdusty paragraphs with extreme melodrama, which backfired because then he was laughing instead of listening. having convinced him that it was going to be an exciting read (he's going to hate me when he figures out what a lie that is), that's when i left for the eye doctor, and from there to taco bell, and now here i am for a half day.

will (tourette's) is divorced, and calls his eight-year-old daughter every single afternoon. it's very touching. he can't find a civil word to say to anyone around here, but he's all sweetness and light when she picks up the phone, probably because he only sees her once a week, if then--her stepaunt, it seems, is transportationally uncooperative. with obvious exceptions, parenthood seems to bring out the absolute best in people. he's still amazingly bitter toward his ex-wife, whom he refers to as "the [c-word]" at least once a day...the impression i get is that she remarried pretty soon after their divorce, or so it would seem, because she's got another daughter not even two years younger than will's eight-year-old. anyway, will hates the ex-wife, hates her new husband (which has to be hard, watching two people you hate raise a child that you love) and doesn't hate the six-year-old per se, but probably hates what she stands for, overzealous rebound and all that.

but he still asks heather, every single time they talk, how's your little sister? you treating her good? you take care of her, okay? i find this very noble.

of course, i can only imagine what it must have been like to be married to him.

"from hell" has me all jittery. this is like right after i saw "once upon a time in mexico," which, as much as i loved it, gave me a week's worth of eye-gouging nightmares. (thought about that while i was in the glaucoma test hotseat, watching that drill-looking thing get as close to my eye as possible without actually touching it. yuck.) i tried to remember all the good that came out of the movie--antonio playing the guitar, beautiful spanish guitar, johnny's skinny legs, the acting, antonio kissing his wife's belly and then that beautiful little girl--and managed, consciously, but couldn't dream about anything but bleeding sockets. "from hell" portrayed a jack the ripper who liked to give crude hysterectomies in dirty alleyways. perfect. what's gross is that i'll probably watch it again before i take it back to blockbuster.

this makes four movies i've seen in under two weeks wherein pregnant women get shot, kidnapped and then shot, blown up or waxed in otherwise brutal ways. i think the cinematic world is trying to tell me to find a new focal point.

other guilty pleasures:

1. knowing i'm the most articulate person in the room
2. godiva's white chocolate strawberry truffles
3. ignoring men who offer to pump for me at the gas station

...but i'm not a bitch, i promise.