M.J. Fredrick's Blog, page 31

Managing My Season Passes

So before I went back to work, I had ONE show on the TiVo I hadn’t watched. We had the TiVo to 63%, because we still have all the Walking Deads and Homelands and Fringes from this season on there, as well as Hurt Locker, Bourne Legacy and 28 Weeks Later (because of my Jeremy Renner obsession.)

By Friday night, the TiVo was up to 95% and I was stressed. The whole point of having a TiVo is NOT to be stressed, right? So I cut back. I deleted season passes to Revenge, How I Met Your Mother, Deception (was never going to get to watch anyway because it’s opposite 5-0 and Castle), 1600 Penn, Bunheads (I just don’t like Michelle.), Elementary (we’d started watching while everything was on hiatus) and something else I can’t remember. I just wasn’t excited about watching those shows anymore. I could probably let go of Chicago Fire, too. I like it, but am not as excited.

Shows I AM excited about? Downton (how did I forget how much I love that show??), Castle, Last Stand (I know it’s cancelled, but I’m still hooked), Justified and Haven.

Scandal is one that I’ll leave on the TiVo, and then when I watch it, I think, WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG?

I’m looking forward to Dallas’s return. I loved that show as a kid, and while it’s not as good–the cast was just sprawling before, lots of stories to follow–it’s a guilty pleasure.

And I’m watching The Unusuals on Amazon Prime streaming, thanks to my Jeremy Renner fixation. It’s pretty good, though not all that unusual.

What shows are you letting go? What shows excite you?

Goals for the Week of Testing

So we have 8 weeks until Spring Break and I only have two normal weeks in that time! This is not one of them.

1) Testing 2, maybe 3 mornings.

2) Food Bank volunteering

3) Upload my Bluestone box set

4) Straighten up the middle room.

5) Read at least one Rita book

6) Continue revisions on NaNo book

7) Start edits on What (Not) to Expect, my pregnant heroine book. Carina rejected it, so I think I’m going to self-publish it.

8) Return an expensive skirt I bought but don’t like.

So…busy week!

Board Games

My family has decided we’re going to start having Game Night every month. We started this on Thanksgiving, when we played Pictionary and laughed so hard I was sore the next day.

We continued Saturday night. Mom made dinner, we all came over, ate, visited, and then played.

The first game was Encore. I’ve had this game for ages and used to play it with my students. You roll the dice, move to a color, select a card that has several color-coded words on it. You match the color and you have to sing a phrase from a song that has that word in it. Then the other team has to sing a song and you go back and forth, using sand timers to keep you honest, until you run out of songs. We played boys against the girls, and the boys won. Josh was really good at it and I was very proud of him for playing.

The second game was Imaginiff, which was a FUN game, but really hard to explain. Everyone has a color assigned to them, and you get 6 cards, numbered one to six. One person asks a question from the question cards about a person, like, “What 80s movie would Mary be?” Then it gives you 6 choices. I’m trying to remember what they were. I think it was:

1. Terminator

2. I don’t remember

3. Amadeus

4. Ferris Bueller

5. I don’t remember

6. On Golden Pond

So you put the number, face down, of the answer you think best fits. Then everyone turns their cards over at once. If people match me, they get to move their piece on the board, UNLESS more people give another answer and outnumber you. Anyway, it was fun.

Mike wants to get Cranium, and another we like is Mad Gabs. Mom wants to play Trivial Pursuit.

Do you play board games? Do you have some you think we should try?

So, My LASIK Experience

I realized last night I never told y’all in much detail about the LASIK thing. I don’t mean TOO much detail, because I’m squeamish, and honestly, I didn’t want to know too much about what they were doing, ifyouknowwhatImean.

So, Thursday after school was my appointment. I’d filled out a lot of the paperwork online and one of the comments said, “If scheduling permits, would you have your surgery done the same day?” I’m like, hm, well, maybe. I asked my principal if it would be okay if I didn’t come to school the Friday before the holidays and told her why and she was very supportive. So I went in hoping to get it done.

Well, it didn’t happen. They did a very thorough eye exam, including dilating my eyes, which I don’t think I’ve ever had done before. I was there over an hour. They let me know that since I am already wearing bifocals, I’ll probably always need readers, though they gave me the option of doing monovision, which is where you have one eye done for distance and the other eye done for close things. That just sounded so weird to me, since my close eye would be the one with a lot more to do. And what if something happened to one of my eyes? So I accepted (mostly) that I’ll need readers.)

The girl doing the exam said they had openings for the surgery on Friday, and would I be interested? I know myself, I know I would find reasons to put it off, so I said yes. Let me tell you, it’s terrifying making that kind of decision, spending that much money, on your own. Then I texted my principal to let her know I wouldn’t be in.

The next day my son dropped me off. The place is not far from home, so no sense in him sitting around for a couple of hours. I told him to just come back at 11. My appointment was at 9:30, but they didn’t take me to finalize the paperwork until 9:50, then they did another exam, then they put me in this small dark room where I would meet the surgeon. The nurse/assistant gave me 4 Advil, but either they were Advil PM or they were piping something into that room, because I was VERY relaxed. That is NOT like me.

Then the surgeon came in, a very long time after I was put in the room, btw. She was really sweet and comforting, and finally, at 11, they took me into the procedure room.

The room was very dark, which I hadn’t expected, and there were two machines. They put me down on one of them, adjusted me where they wanted, and told me they were going to open the corneas. They flooded my eye with numbing drops.

One of the things I’d been freaked out about was the thing to hold the eyelid open. I’d expected something metal, like you see in those horror movies. But no, it was plastic, or at least felt like plastic. They covered the eye they weren’t working on, and then pressed down really hard on the other eye (this was the most uncomfortable part, the pressure. I squirmed, I admit) until everything went black. I don’t know why that happened but it was supposed to and just as well. I focused on the fireworks show, you know, like you get when you press against your eyes, and not on the fact they were opening my corneas. So they switched eyes, then guided me to the other machine where the laser bit would take place. The doctor was really awesome, counting down to let me know how much longer each step would take place.

I was also really worried about keeping still for the laser, but it was really a lot easier than I thought. Also, they kept flooding my eyes to keep them moist, so much that they’d put cotton in my ears so the drops wouldn’t run into them. The worst part of the laser part was the smell.

Again, the doctor counted down, which was really helpful, because you’re thinking, sure, I can do this for thirty seconds! And then it was done.

My brother had said where he’d done it, there was a football on the ceiling and when it was done it came into focus. That didn’t happen for me. Someone else said they’d been able to see the clock when they sat up. Nope. The doctor described it as being underwater, and that’s just how it was. She guided me out to see Josh waiting. He brought me home, and had to help me figure out what drops to put in when because I couldn’t see the labels. (Another huge expense is the drops. They were $100 each for the anti-inflammatory and the antibiotic, then $10 a box for artificial tears. I’ve bought 8 boxes and used 5 in the two weeks since the surgery.) Then he went to go pick up lunch and I fell asleep sitting up on the couch. When he came home, he was upset because the burger place was by the mall, 3 days before Christmas. He was complaining and complaining and it was all I could do to sit up and eat. As soon as I was done I went to bed and slept for 2 more hours, but then my eyes started hurting a LOT. My brother said he didn’t use his pain killers, but damn, I did. They hurt from the pressure, and they burned and itched. I couldn’t rub them–had to wear goggles to keep myself from doing so, and I just kept putting drops and drops and drops. Finally I fell asleep for 2 more hours.

I woke up to eat dinner, and I could see a bit more clearly. I was awake maybe three hours, and I listened to an audiobook in the back room because even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t read or look at the computer, though the few glances at the TV were very clear. I went back to bed at nine and slept until 7! All in all, I slept 11 hours that day.

The following morning I drove myself to the follow up appointment which was only a good idea because it was so close. My near vision was not good and I had trouble seeing the speedometer. I stopped at Walmart and got readers and had to get the clerk to cut the tag off for me. The exam was maybe 5 minutes, then I came home and used the readers to start reading email, though I didn’t use my Nook for another week since I had to wear goggles every time I went to bed.

By Christmas my vision was better–I opened presents without glasses! When I went to my follow-up, my doctor said I needed to use the artificial tears more, and that the swelling will continue to go down and my vision will improve. There are some days when I just enlarge the fonts on everything on the computer so I don’t have to wear my readers. I can see my phone better. I can read the small print on car commercials.

I wore make-up for the first time on Thursday, and again today. The doctor was worried about me rubbing my eyes (still can’t do that) to remove it. So it will be spare.

I can see more clearly now at a distance than I could with my glasses. I have two more follow-up appointments that will lock in my contract, so if I ever need a touch-up, I can have it done free. I’m not quite 20/20 as of my last appointment. I’m sure if you give me a couple more weeks, I may say it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, but I’m still wearing readers as I write this.

Goals for the Week of Back to Work

That was the fastest two weeks, let me tell you. And I got nothing done until the last three days! Even then…not nearly all I wanted to do.

This Friday Josh goes back to Austin, so I’ll be cooking a lot before then, filling him up with home-cooking.

1) Continue working on revisions. I’m ALMOST where I wanted to be when I went back to work, which is good considering some days I only wrote 300 words!

2) Get back on a schedule.

3) Eat healthy breakfasts and lunches.

4) Exercise if Fred fixes my bike’s cord.

5) Keep up the house/cook healthy dinners.

Kind of a boring week, but I’ll take it.

2012 in Books and Movies

Natalie Damschroder posted a blog enumerating how many books she read and movies she watched last year. She got the idea from me, but I didn’t keep track this year. After reading her post, though, I started thinking about it.

Words written: Right around 200,000. I didn’t keep the best count, but 4 novellas and 2 novels is about that.

Books read is easy, since I keep track on Goodreads. I read 77 start to finish. There were a number I started and quit, but I didn’t keep track.

Movies is another story. I THINK we saw 8 in the theater: Hunger Games, Avengers, Dark Knight, Prometheus, Spiderman, Life of Pi, Magic Mike and The Hobbit. Seems like there was another over the summer, but I don’t remember.

Netflix movies: 55. Wow, more than one a week. Add to that some I got from Amazon for free or on sale, probably another 5 or so. Bourne Legacy, Battleship, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. I know there have been more but Amazon doesn’t keep track.

Series: Other than what was on live TV, I watched Game of Thrones Season 1, Downton Abbey, Defying Gravity, and whatever the last season of True Blood came out on DVD. There may have been more Netflix series in there.

So, hm. Maybe my resolution should be less movies/TV. But I love it so much!

Goals for 2013

I did pretty well on my goals for last year, except the exercise. My son took over my bike, broke it, I had to buy a new one, he took over THAT one, the cord is now broken…sigh. I saw someone with an elliptical bicycle in the neighborhood. Hmmm…it’s pink. He should leave that one alone!

I said I’d write 3 books and 3 novellas. I wrote 2 books and 4 novellas and 2 short stories. I said I’d read 80 books and I read 76. And I had a better attitude!

This year:

1) 3 books and 5 novellas. I know, really pushing it.

2) Pay off a bill every other month.

3) Relearn how to play guitar to use in my class.

4) Sew up my fabric and fix the two things that need fixing.

5) Be better about keeping up the house in between cleanings.

6) One little road trip a month with the husband. So much to see in Texas, and he likes to drive!

7) Get the other two Bluestone books formatted for print

8) Get Bluestone bundled as a boxed set

Best Shows of 2012

I watched a LOT of TV this year. A Lot. Again, some of my shows from last year fell off the list, like Revenge and Grey’s Anatomy and The Middle. I don’t watch Glee anymore, and thought about dropping Hart of Dixie but it sucked me back in.

Here are my favorites.

1) Walking Dead–crazy show, not afraid of anything!

2) Arrow–hot guy, superhero story, love it!

3) Castle–best season since the first season!

4) Vampire Diaries–Damon and Elena! Woot!

5) Haven–love the ticking clock and the triangle

6) Once Upon a Time–especially now with Captain Hook!

7) Hawaii 5-0–I love that they’ve brought Katherine on fulltime.

8) Modern Family–always funny. Cannot wait for the baby to be born!

9) Justified–can’t wait until January 8!

10) Scandal–nice and twisty. I love it!

What did you watch and love this year?

Goals for Week of the New Year

New Year is not my favorite holiday, but at least this year I won’t feel depressed about going back to work, since we have until January 7.

1) Celebrate 26th anniversary

2) Lunch with a pal

3) Day with Mom

4) Sew something

5) NaNo revisions, continued

6) Hang with the boy. He doesn’t even know when he’s going back to school. Isn’t that hilarious?

So, busy week, but I hope to have 2 full writing days, at least.

Movies I’m Looking Forward to in 2013

Seems like 2013 will be a year of sequels and redos. I admit I want to see Jurassic Park in 3D. It is one of my favorite movies despite the plot holes.

Coming in 2013, I want to see:

1) Iron Man 3

2) Hansel and Gretel

3) White House Down

4) Great Gatsby (the only non-action movie, but one of my favorite novels.)

5) Man of Steel

6) World War Z

7) Catching Fire

8) Thor 2

9) Hobbit 2

10) The Wolverine (I saw a movie called Gambit listed and had a momentary dizzy spell. I LOVED Gambit when we used to watch the cartoon when Josh was little. Alas, not about Gambit.)