This moment brought to you by Eyemasters

So due to the massive storms we had over the weekend, my apartment got very, very clean. BTW, it got clean because I was stuck at home most of Saturday because it was too dangerous/scary/freaky to go outside and I got bored and cleaned the place silly. It doesn't even look like my place it's so dang clean. But I cleaned to the extent that this morning I stumbled out of bed and could not find my glasses, as they had been moved -- inadvertantly -- from their usual resting place to somewhere mysterious to me during my mad cleaning frenzy.

My morning routine consists of the alarm going off (Sarah Brightman's "Harem Tour" CD) and I listen to the first three songs ("Kama Sutra", "Join Me" and "Imagination"). Then I literally roll out of bed (ouch!) and stumble into the kitchen where I put the kettle on. And then it's into the bathroom to brush my teeth and that's when I locate my glasses and put them on. And then, back to make the coffee.

Well, this morning, I stumbled around in a fuzzy haze, checking every possible location for my glasses. Now, I'm not terribly near-sighted. I can actually function quite well without any kind of corrective lense in the sense I can discern objects and have a vague idea of what they are. I can even read without glasses, no problem. However, I need glasses for driving as I'm unable to read street signs without and I also have a serious lack of depth perception and occasionally, I am unable to make out separate shapes if they are all jumbled up together. But. I digress.

So I'm running around looking for my glasses and time is running out. I haven't had my coffee, haven't eaten my bowl of Cheerios, or gotten dressed. After running over in my mind where my glasses must be, I decided that the most likely location was in the drawer in the bathroom. I kept opening the drawer and didn't see any glasses. I took some objects out -- box of Q-Tips, lotion, the occasional bottle of perfume, a wide assortment of lipsticks -- and peered in more closely, but still, nothing and by then, I was having a full-scale Seema Panic Attack (tm) (don't try this at home, kids!). Did I accidentally throw my glasses out in my feverish attempt to rid myself of the piles of paper I've accumulated since August?

Finally, in exasperation, I put my contacts in and armed with my mug of coffee, I continued the search. Only to find the glasses in the drawer, exactly where I had assumed they would be. (sigh). They were actually on top of my small jewelry box and without corrective lenses, I was unable to discern the shiny frames from the piles of necklaces and other assorted pretty objects.

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In other news, I saw "Finding Nemo" yesterday. What a totally adorable and sweet movie! I love it! Ellen DeGeneres as Dory is a hoot. I recommend this movie to everyone and anyone. Very cute.

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Also, to clarify in my below post, there is absolutely nothing wrong in using the first person POV -- I use it myself quite often and enjoy writing it, however, there are certain situations where another POV is probably better utilized. In the end, it really does come down to what works for the story and there are no hard-fast rules for writing, despite what people say and you'll never find two people who totally agree on anything.

In my muddled-headed way, what I was trying to say is that the following example isn't well-served by a first person POV:

The blood rushes out of my nose and I feel the world going dark. I smile one last time and then there is indeed darkness.

The narrator is dead. There is no one left to tell the story. First POV narrative would require the story to either end before the narrator died, or have someone else tell the story. Hopefully, using an example -- completely fictitious and made-up on the spur of the moment -- will clarify what I was trying to point out. As always, take anything I say with the proverbial grain of salt.

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Also, this column is a good example of why I heart Ellen Goodman so much.