"One-eyed Jilly" (not to be confused with one-eyed willy from Goonies)

Yes, that's me with an eye patch. Sooo....what we have here is one of those eye infections i get due to allergies.  Those of you who have known me long enough have probably seen me struggle with these.  I decided to wear an eye patch at work so it would stay closed and thus be able to heal...and to keep it free from cornmeal or other random debris.  It also allowed me to keep my fingers out of it and from being otherwise "eye obsessed" (that was for you stacey).  I have to say, i definitely take for granted the ability to see out of both eyes.  Here are a few lessons i learned while being half blind:

1.  No depth perception.  Here is a list of things i ran into today (much to the amusement of my employees, who for some strange reason kept cracking pirate jokes)...the oven, any and all door frames, the coke cooler,   stacks of dough trays, various employees (thanks for being understanding guys).  I also really struggled with taking orders on the touch screen, as it was usually either closer or farther away than i thought. I went to grab for a pizza screen and instead of quickly getting it like normal, my whole hand went through the rack and knocked half of them off. whoops.

2.  Peripheral Vision is highly important.  Since I could not see on my left side, anything to my left was unsafe. I would usually forget about that until it was too late. For instance, i would turn to the left by the oven and scrape the crap out of my arm on some screws.  Or i would turn to the left and knee an unsuspecting driver in the head who was trying to get something on the bottom rack (still sorry about that, Jon).

3. When you take off an eye patch and open an eye that hasn't been in use for a few hours.....you feel kinda wonky.  It was amazing to notice the reaction of the eye i had been using solely when i finally opened the covered eye.  I think hallucinations almost happened.

4.  Your body will compensate.  Towards the end of the night, i noticed the muscles in the right side of my body were sore, tense and tired and crampy.  I had been using my right eye only.  I noticed that once i took the patch off for good, it eventually subsided.  I guess my right side was compensating for the feeling of imbalance on the left. interesting.

Anyway, while this is probably only interesting to me, i just thought i'd share my lessons learned. Oh, and i also learned that you take on quite a few more nicknames than normal....