Read My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman for Free Online

for a month, blinking and tearing, in continuous eye pain. I never really got used to them, so you could tell I was wearing contacts by the tentative backward tilt to my head as I walked, like someone crossing a rickety rope bridge in the Amazon.
    Plus the glass contacts were always popping out of my eyes, and everybody in the vicinity would end up on all fours, picking through the rug. The only good part was that I learned to shoot them out of my eyes for fun, by pressing down on the side of the lens, playing corneal tiddlywinks.
    Sorry, only people old enough to remember glass contacts will get the tiddlywinks reference. All others, please humor me.
    Anyway, it was a lot of trouble to go through for men to make passes, and then Thing One and Thing Two happened, so what does that tell you?
    But now it turns out that contacts and glasses aren’t good enough, because there’s a new goop that women can put on their eyelids if they have “inadequate lashes.”
    Wha?
    The ads say, “It’s your own eyelashes—only better.”
    Thank God my eyelashes can be better. I had no idea they were underachieving. I have slacker eyelashes.
    The ad also says you can “grow your own lashes!”
    This is a novel idea. I grow my own tomatoes. I grow my own basil. I never thought of growing my own body parts, for limbs and appendages that weren’t up to snuff.
    Given my druthers, I’d bypass the lashes and grow more boobs.
    I bet men would make passes at me, then. Even if I wore glasses.
    I smell Thing Three.
    But if you ask me, this eye business has gotten out of hand.
    First glasses weren’t good enough, so I got contacts. Now my eyes aren’t good enough.
    So will I buy this eyelash goop?
    No. I’m older and wiser, and I draw the line.
    And I don’t mean eyeliner.
    Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice?
    Okay, that happens.
    But three times?
    Never.
    I have plenty of glasses, contacts, and eyelashes, thank you.
    I can see clearly now.
    My vision is, finally, perfect.

Breezy
    The great thing about summer is that we all take the time to slow down, which is especially necessary in a world buzzing with laptops and BlackBerrys. Today I am marveling at the most perfect low-tech invention of all time:
    The fan.
    How great is a fan? No bells, whistles, or BTUs. It’s plastic, and it costs only fifteen dollars. You can’t even buy gum for fifteen dollars. I am in love with my fan, even though I have bad childhood memories of same.
    Let me back up.
    Growing up, we had no air-conditioning, and I remember going to my friends’ houses, where they did. My best friend Rachel had something mysterious and great called Central Air, and we loved it so much that we would leave her house only for the movies, where they had air-conditioning and a blue banner that advertised as much, in letters so cold that they formed icicles.
    Remember that sign?
    Please say yes.
    Anyway at home, we had window fans, which were the source of much discord. The big debate was whether to turn them out or in. To me, even at age twelve, this was a no-brainer. One side blows air at you, and one side doesn’t. So which side should face you, as you sweat your butt off?
    Of course.
    Stick the fan in the window, so that it blows air on you. My father, brother, and I were aligned on this opinion, but we did not prevail, as we lived with a meteorologist.
    Mother Mary.
    You may not have known she was a meteorologist, but she was, when it came to interior weather. By the way, she was also a doctor, when it came to swimming after eating. And an electrician, when it came to toasters near water. Mothers are women of invisible degrees, and she was no exception.
    Mother Mary held that the fan should be in the window turned out, so that it did not blow on you. Her theory was that if it was turned out, it would suck all the hot air from the room and blow it outside, thus cooling the room. Sadly, the fan came with no instructions to settle the argument, and in the end, you know who