Monday, August 1, 2011

I can't believe it really worked.

Jalapenos and contact lenses do not mix.

I was making salsa with a jalapeno in it the other night, and of course I don't have any rubber gloves, so I got some jalapeno oil on my hands.  No big deal, just be careful what you touch, scrub, scrub, scrub, and it's all good.  I even took my contacts out that night with no problem.

But holy hell, when I tried to put them back in the next morning, did it burn like crazy.  Well, actually, only one of them did.  The right one was fine, but the left one was on fire.  I managed to pull it out, and, not knowing what else to do with it, I put it in the case.  Since I was going to have to wear my glasses anyway, I then proceeded to take the right one out.

I wore my glasses all day while pondering the options for my contacts.  The people at the eye doctor said to throw them out and move on to the next pair.  All well and good if you have dailies or weeklies, but mine aren't disposable, and they're expensive.

I decided to get creative.  I reasoned that I could try things out, and if they didn't work, it didn't matter, because the contacts were ruined anyway.  Plan A: what do you drink with spicy food when you need to cool it off?  Milk.  So that night, I poured a teeny dish of milk and put the offending lens in it to soak.  And by god, it worked!  The next morning, I rinsed the lens and put it in with no problem!

It was the other one that was the problem now; it had gone in sting-free the morning before, but when I took it out, it appears that I transferred the jalapeno oil from one lens to the other.  So in it went to the milk bath for six hours or so, and voila!  Like new!

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