Ewww

Today was yard cleanup day, which means I hauled out my largely-ornamental chipper (how it gets a 3.5 star rating is beyond me) and shredded up last year's garden plants plus some of the branches that have fallen off the trees in windstorms during the winter. I managed to get through the afternoon with only one jam, which is much better than normal. Though I did discover that this year, it has decided it can only chip branches less than 1/2" in diameter. 1/3 the width it is advertised to handle. I guess I'll have to sharpen it's cheap-ass blades again. They hold an edge about as well as PVC does.

Both MaxieC and HannahC at some point came out to help (though not at the same time), and both got bored within minutes. That's good, because there is nothing I hate more than help with anything. I am like the lone wolf, never wanting help with anything, and always ready to stop everything I am doing that I am not getting help with to help someone else on a task much easier than what I am doing but that they're so shocked, Shocked!, to have to be doing any work at all that they need to whine and moan and complain until I come over and do the work for them while they stand back and tell me I'm making too much noise, and then turn off my radio station because it played an ad, and then turn off my ad-free music stream because it makes too much noise because the kitchen/family room is actually a study hall, and the room I slaved away getting set up upstairs as a school room is no good because The Childrens feel too isolated in there, but the kitchen on the other hand is right in the middle of everything, but they find that too distracting to work, so I better shut my sorry ass up and make like I don't even live here so they can get their schoolwork done because it's 9:00 at night and it still isn't done on account of all the distractions in the kitchen that were my fault, like when I got a glass of water.

That kind of lone wolf.

A married lone wolf.

But, at any rate, after I spent hours upon hours chipping/shredding/mulching all our garden refuse, and after I had been yelled at because the tarp I used to protect a big pile of cardboard from sawdust happened to have some shredded redwood bark mulch dust on it, and how inconsiderate of me not buying a brand f'ing new tarp to cover the cardboard that The Mrs. volunteered we'd store in our garage without asking me, right in my way all the time blocking my access to any of the garden tools and the tractor and all my power tools and the gun safe, until the Odyssey of the Mind competition which is thankfully next weekend, I was topping off the hot tub with the garden hose that I had to move cardboard out of the way to get to, when I blinked.

It was an ordinary blink. Just the kind of blink a lone wolf would do when his eyes started to dry out a bit.

However, it became a bit of an extraordinary blink in that, upon completion of said blink, my right eye was only in focus on the left half of my field of view.

Something had disrupted the lone wolf's contact lens. After a bit of poking and prodding, it was decided that the best course of action would be to cover the eye with my hand, lest the contact fly out never to be found, and head inside for a look-see in the mirror.

Upon examination in the mirror, no contact could be found. Though my eye felt a bit scratchy. I rolled my eye all around and lifted up the lids and everything. No contact. I removed the contact from the left eye, and then that one felt scratchy, too. Probably from all the dust from the chipper.

So I sat down to watch Ultimate Fighting Championship in the basement, lest my presence disrupt the train of though of all those schoolwork-goofing-off childrens upstairs. After about 45 minutes, I blinked, and it felt like an eyelash was stuck to my eye. So I again checked a mirror.

There was my contact, folded up taco-stylee, poking half out of my eye from under my lower eyelid.

Ewww.