Elyse is blind

I am blind. Legally blind. And being legally blind isn’t that much different from being legally blonde because I do ditzy-like things on a regular basis due to my seeing-balls inability to work properly. I basically Mr. Magoo my way through life. I have something called Stargardt's disease. A disease with a name I can never spell correctly and always reminds me of Bea Arthur in a silver sequins gown with *ginormous shoulder pads in space. Like a glamorous linebacker playing tag football on the moon with a cheesecake.

It’s a tricky disease, because unless I told you I was blind, you’d probably think I was an eccentric who types in size-26 font, hates seeing foreign movies, and never says hi when I look directly at you on the street. But, I can see how many fingers you’re holding up. And I can drive a car … just not legally.

A lot of people use modern technology as a crutch, even disabled people. I’ve heard that Autistic people better communicate with the help of iPads. But, for me with my particular problem, it seems like the more advanced software and gadgets become, the tinier the font becomes, making it increasingly more challenging for me to engage it. For instance, Instagram is something that I am completely ignorant of, not by choice, but because it’s only available on your phone and it’s impossible for me to use and read.

On the other hand, let me give a brief shout out to Kindles: Hey girl! All y’all out there who like to diss Kindles and Kindle users like we’re a bunch of unromantic assholes because tablets don’t smell like paper yellowed by time, are killing book culture, and are engaging intangible items that you can’t scribble crap into the margins or cut and duct-tape a hole into the middle of making it a great place to hide your crack pipe can lick my macula (go ahead, it doesn’t function correctly anyway) because ever since the Kindle was invented, I was able to read books again. Good books and not just self-help and Oprah’s book club books, which were the only books available in large print before the Kindle because those are the kinds of books old people who can’t see like to read. So, thank you Amazon, you horrible, horrible company that mistreats your employees. Because of you, I can read Hemmingway again. For free!

Anyway, back to technology I can’t use, or more technically, technology that is becoming increasingly more frustrating for me to use, like Facebook. Oy vey Facebook You annoy me. So much so, that I can’t even email within Facebook anymore. I have to literally cut and paste a person’s message into a Word Doc to read it, respond in a Word Doc, and then cut and paste my response into Facebook’s message box in order for me to have a normal interaction with someone else. Modern technology is saving me so much time.

The other day I was going through this whole cut, paste, read, write, cut, and paste process in response to a friend’s email about farting. Here’s a snipit of what she said to me:

“Re: farting. Are you farting a lot more than you used to too? I don't know if it's my diet or what. Last week I made a huge batch of beans and rice and ate it thinking ‘oh boy I am going to blow the house down with this’ but then just kept farting the same amount. Like, it gradually increased over the years or something? What the hell.”

And here is my response:
“I don’t know if I fart more, per say, but I do kind of just fart whenever I want without any kind of regard for anyone around me, because I’m older, think it’s healthy, and I’m not getting colon cancer after eating a lunch that consisted of nothing but bean salad because people are jealous of my boogie. I also enjoy my farts a whole lot more than I ever did before. Like, I’ll push out a real funky one and think ‘Good job, m’lady.’ And I think they smell bad enough to joke about in casual conversation. Sample tweet I made: ‘Great Gatsby in 3D sounds as bad as my last fart smelled. And this is coming from an expert on the subject of my farts.’ I am never going to get married. My last fart made me hungry.”

 This is a fine email to send to a good friend, which the person I was intending to email this message to is. But because of all this silly foolishness that happens when I attempt to zoom-in on Facebook, I accidentally emailed that message to an old co-worker, not a great friend. A co-worker who now knows my farts make my hungry. And now you should too.

Mmmm. I’m suddenly in the mood for roast beef and hard boiled eggs.

* I read today in a book (not somewhere on the Internet, but in a published book about the roots of words that actually had a fact-checker who fact checked facts before it said facts were published) that “ginormous” is as much a word as “humungous,” which sort of blew my mind gigantically, hugely, and enormously.

Elyse likes her polish color so much, she writes it a haiku

"Seasonal allergies sure are a bitch" 

 Lovely lavender 

The hue of Phil Donahue’s 

springtime hemorrhoid 

 Color is OPI’s Do you Lilac It?

Elyse writes a tweet that’s more than 140 characters, so she slaps it here

Forgot how to spell the word “igloo” today & when I looked it up I was so amazed by the spelling I wanted to lick it, get my tongue stuck to it, and just leave it there. Like my heart in San Francisco. Fuck you San Francisco. Give me back my heart.

Elyse takes you on a photographic adventure

I was looking through my phone and found a bunch of random pictures that I took with the intention of blogging about each, but, never did. So, I figured, I’d upload them all, slap them in a single post, and explore my exterior reasoning for creativity, which should be fun because my head is capable of doing things like forgetting how to spell the word “use,” having dreams about me eating my own cottage cheese thighs, and thinking this was a really clever idea for a post (sorry feminism). Anyway, let’s go on a photographic journey a la my rationale and I’ll make fun of myself for you:

Exhibit A: A blossoming tree

I took this picture because the view from my window is a muddy construction site. During the winter, the view didn’t really bother me much, but ever since the weather has been getting significantly less icky, when I open my window in the morning and see the construction site, all I can think is: “Ah! Springtime in Brooklyn!” Which is horribly cynical but I do admittedly live on the ugliest block in Carroll Gardens. Yet, the other day, while walking home, uncomfortably hauling a shitload of groceries, I saw this tree blossoming in front of my building and all I could think was, aw, shucks, tree, maybe my block aint that rundown after all.

Exhibit B: Homemade mayo

I hate mayo. But I made some from scratch for my very Midwestern roommate’s birthday. I was originally going to write a whole post about making mayo, but really, all you do is dump a cup of canola oil, 2 eggs, a squirt of lemon, and some mustard into a bowl and then blend that nasty concoction with an electric mixer until it’s white and giggly gross. For her next birthday I need to figure out how to make Mountain Dew from scratch, but I’m thinking a 2-liter plastic bottle filled with water from the Gowanus canal will suffice.

Exhibit C: This also happened on my roommate’s birthday

Exhibit D: One pimp ride

I spotted this slick Caddy on DeGraw Street the other day and wanted to lick it. Instead I took a picture.

Exhibit E: Hester’s new looks

Uh oh. Someone chewed the blueberry gum at Willy Wonka’s factory didn’t they?

Uh oh. Someone chewed Big Red gum at Willy Wonka’s Parisian factory didn’t they?

Uh oh. Someone chewed the weird blouse gum at Willy Wonka’s ugly factory didn’t they? 

Exhibit F: Rationing wine

Instead of doing what I usually do and buying four bottles of wine for weekday consumption, I decided that I would try to buy just one bottle of wine and drink a little of it throughout the week. This is how much I had left over after Monday night.

Exhibit G: My foot

It looks like Sloth from The Goonies

Exhibit H: My roommate’s tiny dog sunbathes in the bathroom

Exhibit I: I made my friend draw a Hasidic Jew on a grape.

Exhibit J: My mom texted me a picture of an old letter I wrote her.

From this letter I gather that I’m jealous of my sister, distrust the quality of meat produced in American slaughterhouses, and need to change banks.

Exhibit K: A masterpiece

I call this “The F train: 4 am”

Exhibit L: The reason why I quit the dating site Plenty of Fish

Elyse gets drunk after a long day at work that involved writing photo captions for a slideshow she made called ‘How to Incorporate LED Lights into your Bar Mitzvah” and complains about how she’s so fucking bored

What has happened to me? I am not funny anymore. I used to be. I can’t think of a funny tweet, can’t write a sample, funny 200-word review for a job I actually want that might get me out of this catatonic rut-of-blah I seem to be in, or write anything for work, or myself that isn’t silly. I feel like I’ve lost it.

My best friend gave me this really cool hand-painted leopard print chopping knife a year ago. When I first got it, it was sharp and as chopperific as an Amazon instant video stream when I’m trying to watch the season finale of The Walking Dead. And after a year of wasting its sharp blade on cucumbers and onions instead of on zombies’ nippy faces, it’s become dull. Just like everything I’ve written in this post up until now.

GALILTH! Now that’s a name that makes you want to dump a bowl of macaroni and Velveta cheese down your pants and squish it around your thighs, isn’t it? And that’s kind of exciting. And gross. Speaking of gross.

I wore a new blouse today I bought from a thrift shop. Although I washed it, it smelled like some other person’s BO and gave me a headache. It’s balled up under my desk at work now and I think I may keep it as a pet. Name it Steve. Feed it bananas. Kick it when it’s fresh.

So, this is a sample restaurant write-up I stated and quit up front, just like most of the guys I go out on dates with from OKCupid:

“Word association time. When we say ‘Red Hook’ you think: a) some place in Brooklyn, b) warehouses, c) a sunburnt, one-handed ginger whose hook is on fire from stabbing sample, lava-infused habanero peppers at a Fairway. And he’s pissed because they were organically grown by free-range dragons and he CARES about the environment and global warming but this hurts especially because his tears taste like Saracha.”

I didn’t even mention Ikea. Or the restaurant. I am a failure.

 Time to watch Bob’s Burgers and go to sleep.

Elyse has an email correspondence with her mother

Mother: I found a really cute dress that would look great on you. What’s your dress size?
Me: Size FAT.
Mother: Would that be a 10-14 or a 14-18?
Me: 10-14, I haven’t gotten that fat.
Mother: Ok, good.

Elyse watches ‘Bird on a Wire’

I just watched “Bird on a Wire” with Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson like a virgin, for the very first time. Thoughts, in bullets, because there was a lot of shooting:

• It was totally gross to watch Kate Hudson make out with Mel Gibson. He’s like, her mother’s age.
• In 1990, playing air guitar was a cool character trait and floppy disks were high-tech devices used by the FBI. 
• How did Mel Gibson KNOW to have an overgrown mullet and the alias Billy Ray two years before “Achy-Breaky Heart” was released? This proves that Gibson has always had his finger on the pulse of culture, which totally explains why “The Beaver” was such a success. (Poor Jodie Foster). 
• It’s totally okay to kill police officers and FBI agents. And it’s totally okay to laugh and slap-flirt after doing so. 
• I’ve used the word “totally” five times already in the post. 
• They couldn’t have played Leonard Cohen’s version of “Bird on a Wire” at least once? 
•  If Mel Gibson was able to hotwire a motorcycle, why did he get all panicky when he thought Goldie Hawn lost the keys to her BMW? Inconsistencies! 
• Apparently you can drive a motorcycle with a bullet lodged in your butt.
• Vets are horny and totally sexy women, which is so unrealistic because who's ever heard of a female doctor?
• When you’re shown a skeleton of a piranha in a scene shot at a zoo not once, but twice, someone’s getting eaten alive by piranhas. And that someone’s going to be a real asshole. And that’s called foreshadowing. 
• Speaking of the zoo, the only animals they have in zoos are ones that eat you. 
• The only time you saw Asians in the film was when they were about to get hit in an alleyway during a car chase scene. Yet they never got hit. Instead, the rack of drying laundry they were toting got hit, or they kung fu-jumped upwards, out of the way, into a mass of hanging Chinese lanterns. And this happened twice. What does this mean? That Asians do a lot of laundry? Have ninja-like reflexes? Like tight spaces? Can’t drive and should be hit by cars? Next thing you’ll tell me is that they like rice. And everyone likes rice! 
• The film’s portrayal of gay people (poor Jodie Foster) is about as charming as Mel Gibson’s infamous rants about Jews (poor Goldie Hawn) and Russian Jacuzzi blow jobs. 
• Speaking of Russians, there was not ONE Russian in this film. Racist! 
• After Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn get into bed naked together and surprisingly have sex, Goldie Hawn talks about having a dream about just the two of them on a sail boat, away from everyone else. You’re telling me none of her teeth fell out, she didn’t fly, fart petunias, or eat the pancreatic cancer out of a Norwegian gnome named Wanda (gnomes can be woman too, misogynist) during this sail boat dream? Boring. 
• The final scene of the movie was Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson on a sail boat at sunset making out. There were no repercussions from all the cops and FBI agents they killed, laughed, and slap-flirted about during the movie. The conclusion was totally shocking.