No, I am Not Winking at You

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Whoa. Is mine this crazy?

In the last 24 hours, I have Googled the following terms: “impetigo,” “hard cat poop” and “mesothelioma.”

It goes without saying that the visual horror unleashed by the first two terms is something that will stay seared in my memory banks for the rest of my life.

But it’s clear that I’ve got a lot of weird stuff on my mind and it’s beginning to manifest itself outwardly. Again.

Once or twice a year I get an eye twitch.

The first time it happened was about 10 years ago as I began packing up to move to a new house while pretty pregnant with my fourth child and serving a term as PTO president.

The new house was probably more than we could afford at the time and the packing up of every last teaspoon and Lego and hauling boxes filled with books and skillets inspired the sciatic nerve running down the left side of my body to revolt. That combination of stress and crazy pain made sleep impossible and resulted in a tremor in my right eye that persisted for months.

Five years later, and despite spending a fair amount of time upside down in a yoga studio, the wink was back as I navigated through the legal and emotional tumult of ending my marriage of 18 years.

And now as a full-time working single mom (I’m like the suburban Ann Romano with more kids and no Schneider), I find the twitch appears more frequently but for less-extended periods of time.

Last week, the eyeball earthquake was back, but it’s hard to say just what triggered it.

Was it having to pony-up the balance for the new pool cover I had to buy when a giant tree smashed through my backyard during Hurricane Sandy? Or maybe the remains of said giant tree, all 40 or 50 feet of it, cracked and hovering close by in the neighbor’s yard?

Maybe the mountains that needed to be moved last week to get my college son home to have a wisdom tooth removed caused just enough stress. Or how about the big fight he and I had later that night?

It could have been my mom’s recent knee-replacement surgery that took a brief turn to the scary when she spiked a high fever and had my seven siblings and I spinning in circles for about a day. Then everyone started fighting.

Or maybe it’s the increasing demands of my big, corporate employer that has become as insatiable as the flesh-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors, minus the show-stopping numbers.

Dump all this on top of all the regular activities on my to-do list, like making sure there are school-approved snacks for fourth grade, cat food and endless dinners, eyebrow waxing appointments, reeds for my son’s saxophone and toothpaste.

And then there are my worries. Why is my cat so fat? Will my 19-year old find a major? Will I ever find a good man/read Dickens/lose weight?  Is there life after death?

This, my friends, might also explain why I drink a lot of wine, but even that is starting to grow old.

I’d like to lie down and forget about it all, but I can’t, because my eye is twitching.

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4 thoughts on “No, I am Not Winking at You

  1. So right there with you. At least we have our sense of humor. At least we have our sense of humor. (I’m going to keep repeating this to stop the twitch/tears/desire to pour myself a glass of wine at 9:02am.) Hang in there! And, hey, maybe some handsome fella will see the twitch and think you *are* winking at him…

    • AMY!! We have to keep laughing, right? I mean, what are our options? Right there with you about that 9 a.m. urge that struck often this summer and will try to use the twitch to my advantage next time I’m standing at a bar … xo

  2. Could be magnesium deficiency. It’s hard.to get it back in balance as magnesium depends on other elements to stay in check. My Mom had botox shots to stop her constant eye twitch. Maybe you can vanish the wrinkles and twitches at once.

    • And here I thought I had a perfectly good reason to drink wine every night. Dag. But I do like the one-two punch of vanquishing both my twitch and my wrinkles with one little needle … 😉

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