Making the Best Out of Stabbing Yourself in the Eye

So I stabbed myself in the eye last week. And I mean, like I stabbed myself in the eye. Not the eyelid. Not the eyelashes. Not the eyebrows. I stabbed myself in the eye.

When I tweeted this there were two recurring questions that came back at me:

1) How the hell did you accomplish this?
2) Can I see a picture?

Answers:

1) I was holding something and gesturing at the same time. It ended badly.

2) If you want to see a picture of my eye post-stabbing check out my Twitter stream. I know some people actually don't like to look at other people's bloody eyes (WTF, right?) so I won't just put a big jpeg of my bloody eyeball here on the blog.

The bad news: It hurt. Like a bad word. Also, I said a bad word. Not a huge surprise, but the fact of the matter is that the self-inflicted gesture-stab happened in front of the entire K-4 staff as I was doing a library presentation. So that means the bad word did too. I think they were torn between wanting to help me and wanting to send me to the office.

The good news: I'm alright. In fact, I finished my presentation while my eye seeped and then kind of forgot about the whole thing until I looked in the mirror later on and saw that I was bleeding underneath my cornea.

Some more good news: My mom happened to have some antibiotic eye drops on hand so I drove to her  place after work to put some in my bloody eye.

Some more bad news: Immediately after I put them in she said, "Oh, wait. Those might have been for the dog."

Despite having the bad luck to belong to someone who stabs themselves in the face during work hours and whose mother hands out veterinarian medications to humans, my eyeball is recovering quite nicely. It's a trooper.

Why am I blogging about this?

Now I know how it feels to be stabbed in the eye. Granted, it wasn't a stiletto, or a razor blade, or a rusty nail, but I get the idea. If I ever find myself in a writing situation where this kind of knowledge would come in handy, I've got it nicely tucked away in a brain folder marked @##$&*!!!

Right alongside that is a folder marked HOW IT FEELS TO NEARLY FREEZE TO DEATH WHILE WEARING YOUR CAT PAJAMAS, but that's a story for another time.

Rely On Your Crit Partner... In All Things

So, after writing a post about how much we need to respect and rely on our crit partners, I then completely dismissed my own advice. I wrote a promotional letter to all the public libraries in Ohio, talking about how NOT A DROP TO DRINK is based in an Ohio environment. I had a 30 second time period where I thought, "I should send this off to RC and have her glance over it." Then I thought, "Nah, come on Mindy. You can write three paragraphs all by yourself - and you want to get this done!"

After thus reassuring myself I gleefully printed off 250 copies, signed them all, then stuffed (and sealed) about 175 of them with the letter, a shelf-talker and my business card. And on #176 I folded up that bottom section of the trifold, squaring up with the same line I'd done 175 times prior to that... except I actually looked at it this time.

And spotted a typo.

Yep. I printed, signed, stuffed and sealed a typo. Kind of a funny one too. I said that my book is about a time when water is scare. As in - BOO!!! No, it's not scarce. Don't be silly. It's SCARE!

The good news:

  • I didn't mail the typo letters

  • I didn't put address labels on them

  • I didn't put stamps on them

The bad news:

  • I wasted ink

  • I wasted paper

  • I wasted envelopes

  • I had to UNstuff all 175 of them to get my tent card and business cards back out

  • Most importantly I wasted TIME!

Time is something I don't have right now. School starts in less than two weeks. My garden is in shambles. I haven't done nearly enough research for my WIP. I need to prep my blog in advance. I have interviews to answer. And oh - I'm debuting soon. Time is the most important thing to me right now, and I just wasted it.

Oh if only I'd emailed RC and waited the three minutes for her to read, answer, and undoubtedly find my typo.

Big sigh.

But hey - in other news - it's not just text of me being an ass that you get today. If you want to see me on the catwalk (yes, on the catwalk) I'm participating in #NovelFashionWeek. I put together a little video about Dressing For Survival.

Enjoy me being an ass - yet again.