The Husband (westonochse ) finally gets home tomorrow. I'll pick him up at Tucson airport and we're planning on dining on Ethiopian (a cuisine I have adored since my friends Robyn Drake and Matthew Woodring Stover first took me to Mama Desta's in Chicago). I've gotten some writing done while he's been gone, but not as much as I wanted-- spring-related watering and yardwork. keeping the dawgs amused, and the ever-growing responsibilities of The Day Job eat into the available pool of energy. Worse than that are my eyes, which despite everything I've done to try to remedy it, are bone, bone dry. According to the opthamologist (yes, I even went that route), while people who have severely dry eyes have a very depleted layer of tears between the lid and the eye, I have next to NONE. And my tear ducts in the left eye are apparently plugged up, just to add to the fun. I went to him after literally months (going all the way back to winter last year) of waking up with my left eye burning so badly that all I could do was slam my eyelid shut and sit there with my hand covering it. Since January I've been using Refresh PM (which is the equivalent of eye Vasoline-- yuck), but that didn't help. Since my visit several weeks ago, I've poured Systane into it (as much as I can remember, anyway), in addition to the Refresh PM. I've also hot-ragged and massaged each morning. And I've been taking 2,000 mg of Flaxseed Oil every day for waaaaaay many months, starting back in October, which is supposed to be THE thing for helping dry eyes, so much so that people who couldn't wear contact lenses take it and then can. No help.

So anyway, the eyes start out dry (because you don't blink while you sleep, so there is zero lubrication under the eyelid). I wake up and my eyelids (again, particularly that left one) literally scrape across my corneas, and boy, that'll sure put a crimp in your morning. They get a little better with the hot-rag and massage, but then proceed to get worse throughout the day. What irks me the most, though, is that by the time the chores, etc., are done and I can sit down and try to write, they just flat suck, and no amount of freakin' Systane seems to help. The whole dryness, sensitive, pain thing actually turns into a false sensation of sleepiness, because the eyes don't want to open all the way. They burn and my head gets achy, and all I feel like doing is gooping up my eyes with Refresh PM (which precludes ANY visual anything, because it's like having a blurry film in front of everything) and going to sleep. Arghghgh.

But onward and upward, dammit. Here's my count on the Super Secret Project, coming at the end of The Husband's away trip: