Point of view

I learned something new about myself this month.

I was at my annual eye exam a couple of weeks ago. The doctor looked at me and said, “You have a bit of a head tilt.” He asked if I ever have my head tilted in photographs.

I just stared at the doctor. The thing is, I always have my head tilted in photographs. Slightly to the left. I’ve noticed it before and thought it was odd, but because I’m often on the right in the picture, I figured I was just leaning toward the person next to me.

My doctor said that I have a bit of “up and down” in one eye, meaning that it doesn’t hold its focus properly in some tests. He sent me home with a prism to do some exercises to see if it could be corrected. (The prism sat on my kitchen counter for two weeks. I did the exercises once, but they gave me a headache.)

For the next two weeks, I was constantly aware of my slightly slanted view of the world. I noticed it when I was driving, or when I was looking in the mirror as I brushed my teeth. When I was at my counselor’s office last week, listening as he discussed something important, I was thinking, Is my head tilted now? Okay, lean to the right. Just lean a little bit to the right…My God, what’s the matter with me?

Monday I had a follow-up appointment. My eye doctor had done some research in the meantime, and he believes I have a “trochlear (fourth) nerve palsy” in my left eye. (He said that the only way to know for sure would be to dissect my eye and look, but that that wasn’t such a good idea. I concurred.) He even showed me some pictures in a medical textbook. The pictures were slightly off-color, making everyone’s eyes and skin appear yellow. The subjects’ eyes were slightly crossed.

My doctor explained that the palsy can be caused by a virus, and asked if I’d ever had measles or mumps. No, but I did have the chicken pox when I was eight. He said that might have been it. The damage to the nerve, whenever it occurred, caused my eye to weaken. My brain compensated by having my head tilt slightly to the left.

My doctor asked me if I have double vision. I said no, because I don’t, but as I was lying in bed that night at home, I realized that when I let my eyes go completely relaxed, I see two images that do not line up vertically. It’s been like that as far back as I can recall, even from childhood. I remember learning as a child that I could control it, moving one of the objects in line with the other until they came into focus as one. I just took it for granted that everyone’s eyes did the same thing.

But now, I begin to suspect that they do not. I suspect that when you, dear reader, are looking at a television or a plant across the room in an unfocused way, you still see only one television or one plant.

This has thrown me into a small identity crisis. Now, not only am I someone out of work who doesn’t want to get another job in the same field but has no idea what she wants to do, I am also someone with a slightly tilted head, someone with possible palsy in one eye. It’s weird.

Yes, I realize that this is a narcissistic pursuit with no constructive outcome: I don’t think my slightly inclined head is going to cause me to solve global hunger or develop alternative fuel sources. I haven’t noticed any new superpowers. But it’s changed my view of the world all the same.

Where does the time go? (for Tuesday)

I am amazed that I ever had time for a job. Just yesterday, for instance, I had a dermatologist appointment in the morning (where I was kept waiting for thirty minutes in the waiting room, which unfortunately gave me time to start the library book I was going to return after my appointment, because it’s due Saturday and I hadn’t gotten a chance to start it yet, but now I have to find out what happens, meaning 15 cents a day until I finish it).

Then I went to the library to look at magazines for an assignment my counselor gave me last week. While I was there, my sister texted me (don’t worry, I had my phone on vibrate, because if there’s one thing that bothers me—other than all those SUVs with just one lady driving around with her coffee and no passengers—it’s cell phones that ring in quiet places, like libraries and movie theaters and orchestra rehearsals; I mean, c’mon, if you can’t figure out how to turn off the phone, maybe you should just leave it in the car) to see if I wanted to have lunch with her. Which I did.

So I checked out twelve magazines and left, stopped at the Goodwill donation center to drop off a bag of my old books (a small bag, I must admit—it’s hard for me to get rid of books, even books I don’t intend to read again) and several jackets I never wear, and picked my sister up at her office for lunch.

After that, I came home and practiced the piano for an hour, looked for jobs online, and went over to my parents’ house to help get dinner ready because my grandparents were coming over, ate dinner, and then went home and did three loads of laundry.

That’s a pretty full day. Imagine if I’d had to fit eight hours of work in there, too. (But yes, I do realize that I will eventually have to find employment. Anyone want to hire me to stay home all day and play computer games?)

Home improvement

One of the things about home ownership is that you are responsible for your own repairs. I admit that I am not overly handy at these things. I am capable of unscrewing a light fixture to change a bulb, even while balancing on a ladder; and I can hammer a nail into a wall—but I can’t guarantee that it’s the right kind of hammer for that type of wall, or that whatever I hung won’t come crashing down in a few minutes.

When my father comes over, he usually finds something that needs to be done: a picture to hang, a chip in the bathtub to caulk. I admit I save the things for him that I either don’t know how to do or don’t have the tools for. (In my toolbox, I own: one hammer, one steel measuring tape, two standard screwdrivers, one wrench, one Phillips head screwdriver, one set of socket wrenches, one pair of pliers with red handles, assorted nails and screws that my dad shopped with me for at Home Depot because “it’s good to have them on hand”, and some duct tape.)

My tools are all hand-me-downs. When the husband of some elderly family friends died, his wife offered us anything we wanted from his enormous workshop. He had at least four of everything. I chose the socket wrench set because it came in an adorable green metal case that looked just like a lunchbox. I used the wrenches to take apart and move my bed more than once in college, in blatant violation of dorm rooms. It made me feel very Rosie-the-Riveter.

But I don’t have an instinct for repairs. Most of the time I wouldn’t know where to begin. I believe this stems back to junior high when we did a six-week rotation of wood shop and metal shop as part of “the wheel” of required electives (back when there was a budget for electives). I was terrified of the equipment, more so when the shop teacher (who used to invite students, mostly girls, into his office to view pictures of his horses during class—I believe it was innocently done, but still…) shouted cautionary tales over the sound of sawing, of careless students getting their fingers cut off because their attention wandered. I was so frightened of amputation that I didn’t even finish all the class projects, but I got an A anyway. I made a very crude birdhouse in wood shop that fell apart many years ago, and a welded tin basket with a curved handle that I still have somewhere. After that, I didn’t want to get anywhere near sharp blades or dangerously hot metal. No, thank you.

But I’m an adult now. I am worldly and experienced and capable, and I can fix things at my own house. Right?

The sink in my bathroom has been draining poorly for a while. I noticed it a few days ago, but now that I think about it, it’s been progressively slower for weeks. I could have called my dad, but I wanted to fix it myself.

So I called my mom instead, and requested her secret recipe for unclogging drains: pour one cup of bleach into the sink, let it sit for at least 30 minutes, and then pour boiling water down the drain. I did this, even letting the bleach sit for 45 minutes as I practiced the piano. My house smells like a community pool.

Unfortunately, this did not work. If anything, it seemed to be worse. So I removed the stopper and poked down into the drain with an old toothbrush, trying to keep my hand above the water level. Not wanting to look too closely, I stabbed blindly with the toothbrush, deeper into the recesses of the drain. At last, as I met with some resistance. A rusty cloud burst forth, and I pulled a substantial clump of long hair from the drain with my clenched toothbrush. Gross, gross, gross, gross, GROSS!

I threw away the slimy clump, and rinsed the brown residue out of the sink. The water rushed away as the drain drank greedily. Triumph!

That’s right. I fixed it myself. I guess I’m just handy like that.