Tuesday 10 May 2011

The eyes have it


During one of our Bank Holidays I decided to mop the floor.  I sweep and DustBust fairly regularly, but as we had the time, I decided to give the floor a proper scrub. 
It was a good thing I did too.  The floor was revealed to be pretty grubby.  The layers of oil and grime in the kitchen had built up so slowly I didn’t notice that the cream tiles had turned a lovely shade of tan.  So I mopped and mopped and mopped.  But it wasn’t really making a difference.  Then I realized that the ‘scrub strip’ on my sponge mop was at the top of the mop which require me to flip the mop around in order to get at particularly difficult spots, but the mop wasn’t built for this flip (as I discovered when the flip resulted in a horrible scrapping sound with no cleaning benefit) and I went into a rant about why the manufacturer would make such a stupid design.  It was at that point that I realized that I was the manufacturer of this particular design flaw.  It turns out, that in my previous zeal to mop (a good two seasons ago now) I assembled the mop incorrectly.  Sheepishly, I attempted to right the problem.  Turns out, it’s not the best idea to attempt to change the mop head on a sponge mop when it, and you, are soaking wet.  In fact, it leads to almost giving yourself a black eye when you lose grip of the stupid thing mid-tug. 
Speaking of eye conditions.  I have been having quite a few in the recent months.  In March, I spent the first week of our cruise nursing my eyeballs from redness and weeping to unexplained dilation, to impossible itching.  I put it down to some bizarre reaction to complete relaxation and the refreshing sea air.  When I finally allowed myself to go with the flow of doing nothing on a beach instead of seeking out every point of interest, the eyes mysteriously fixed themselves. 
In April, I spent a week feeling as if I did have a black eye until one morning I woke up to find my right eye crushed shut.  When I finally released my eyelashes and investigated I found a huge sty inside my lower eyelid.  Disgusting, yes? Pete agrees.  I left it for a few days thinking that it would sort itself out, but it just got bigger and more painful.  Then, one Sunday night, it came to me;  a cup of tea.  I remembered that a warm teabag held to the eye would help draw out the yuck that was the sty.  But which teabag? I found myself with five boxes of tea lined up on the counter trying to decide which would best serve.  Do I go for flavour? If so, maybe a gentle camomile or Madagascar vanilla.  Or perhaps the shape of the teabag was more important.  In that case, maybe the Moroccan Apple or Red berry as they have bags shaped like mini pyramids which seem to lend themselves to better stability when placed on the closed eye.  But the round pillow-shaped bags of the Chai might be a smarter choice as it would better suit the shape of the eye.  It took me so long to decide that I had to re-boil the kettle.  In the end I settled for camomile.  I can’t tell you exactly why except that it had got so late that I was going to be heading to bed in an hour so I figured I might as well try and kill two birds with one stone; sty and insomnia.  All I got was a slightly scorched eye socket and few too many night trips to the toilet.  Sty and insomnia: 1, Ariel and camomile: 0
This month is eye-concern free thus far. 
*wink wink*
*or maybe my-contact-is-waging-war-against-my-eye-twitch*

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