Coffee and Lashes

Lots of things look easy but are actually hard. From the viewpoint of the couch, Figure Skating seems like a natural series of gliding and stretching movements that leave me subconsciously imagining to myself that were I decked out in a sequined jumpsuit that could outshine Liberace, with a blade strapped to each foot by what is essentially an ankle corset, I would push off from the wall and cut delicate and intricate patterns across the ice; now doing a sharp turn that sprays snow from my skate, now leaping and twirling to the sound of one thousand people's intake of breath. This is far, far, distantly removed from reality which is that I would take one step onto the ice, yell "AOOOOOEEEEIIIIIII" and end up inadvertently doing a split unprepared for by both my inner thigh muscles and my jumpsuit. Ice, I would imagine, is less cold in your mouth than trickling down through a layer of newly mangled sequins. It bears repeating: Figure Skating is hard. Attempted without proper training, it might be impossible. Children seem pleasantly oblivious to the concept of impossibility . If they can see it, they can do it, until proven otherwise. This is why I was never impressed by acrobats at a young age. This is also conversely why at Christmas time I would write imaginary inventions on my wishlist; a vacuum that didn't need to be pushed, a medicine that heals every wound dipped into it. Obviously it was possible, only no one had ever thought of it (before me, naturally).

Another thing that looks (sounds, most people haven't actually seen it done) easy but is actually hard is removing false eyelashes.
Yet another thing that is hard is having laser eye surgery.
It follows that removing false eyelashes shortly after having laser eye surgery is very very very hard and a thoroughly ludicrous thing to attempt.
Yes.

Yesterday I was sporting an eyepatch, not because I'm trying to bring back Bowiesque fashion (not THIS time), but as a result of a freak semi-permanent eyelash extention accident which started with a cup of coffee. Thousands of years ago in Ethiopia, there lived an unassuming shrub covered in small sticky cherries. This green bushy plant was positioned on the floor of the jungle at exactly the right angle to be in line with the single sunbeam which was able to navigate all the branches, leaves, vines, snakes pretending to be vines, monkeys, beetles, and elephants' backs between the sky and the ground. Plants that live near the bottom of a jungle are not meant to be in direct sunlight. Of course, there were no botanists in the jungle to advise anyone of this. The shrub, which stretched toward the light happily enough at first, soon broke out into an uncomfortable sweat, developed a fever, and ultimately shriveled up and died. One day it rained lightly, and the rustling remains of the poor shrub lay in a shallow pool. The dried cherries festered in the water, and would have turned it the color of mud, if mud weren't exactly the color it already was due to there being so much of it about. Along came a thirsty native with an undiscerning palette who slurped up the muddy water with the juices from the dried cherries mixed into it. Suddenly he stops. His eyes widen. His face twitches. His hands shake. Tomorrow morning, he will find he needs to come back to this puddle and slurp again and woe to any of the other natives if they try to talk to him before he does.

Later natives dried the cherries, ground them to a fine powder, packed them in jars and shipped them off to a place called The Supermarket where people like me buy it, get strung out on it and woe to anyone who tries to talk to me before I do. It's also a great contributor to really bad decisions. After drinking copious amounts of delicious coffee on my first day of visual freedom after laser eye surgery, I of course rendered myself unable to sleep on my first night of visual freedom after laser eye surgery. I was laying down in a desperate, nightmareish, jittery state around 5 am, rolled over, and had my aforementioned monstrously huge fake eyelashes that I brilliantly installed a week before surgery, reach out and scratch my delicately healing left cornea. My hyper-alert coffee enslaved and now panic stricken brain jumped out of bed, forcing the rest of my body to follow it. Downstairs we went, straight to the bottle of eyelash remover which it forced me to rub across both eyes. I then spent the better part of an hour rubbing and tearing and pulling at an area of my body that I was aware was supposed to convalescing, but I was grimly determined that The Eyelashes Would Die. When I finally got the last one off, I lay back as if I had just survived a war, threw a cold compress over my face, and absolutely failed to sleep through the pain until I could call the eye surgeon and tell him I had ruined his perfect work. Not that I could open my left eye to examine it in a mirror, but if I could have I'm sure I would have seen every color of red perceivable, and my hazel iris in the center like a swollen olive being pickled in hot tears.

One eyepatch wearing day later, I have been declared to be healing fine. This will not be permanently damaging to the results of the surgery. What have I learned from this? Nothing useful apparently since I am already calculating when I can have a new set of lashes glued on. I'm hopeless.