C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 106

We tried to go to the party last night…

…Alas, I have to wear dark glasses because of the eyes: have to protect the iris from light changes: keep the muscle from working, the doc says. We wore sweatshirts because it seemed a night for it, but while we live at about 65 degrees, that number of people quickly overheated the house to the point my glasses kept sliding down my nose, and something I ate at the potluck massively didn’t agree with me: intense stomach cramps. We not only ended up going home way early, I ended up just going to bed. Sigh.

But I’m doing fire this morning. Just wanted to sleep in soooo bad. But if I don’t get up, the whole day gets off schedule, and I need to get back to work.

Rained like crazy from yesterday afternoon til morning; now just kind of overcast, which is nice since I work by a window. And the outside temperature is holding pretty well in the 40′s by day, 30′s by night. If the amount of rain we’ve had this week were snow, we’d be two feet deep.

But the snow will come, I’m pretty sure.

Had a call from my brother last evening…too…he’s got his eye on a house, and I so hope he gets it.

Hawke has just done some bookbinding…something Closed Circle encourages…

It’s a way to get your own copy of a book. A little futzy on the printing, but it’s a great skill to learn, and you can let your imagination fly on the cover: lacquered cloth, even with picture glued to it; tooled leather, painted, you name it. Check it out in our Bookbinding section on the tabs atop the site. Very neat job on the stitching, Hawke.

Anybody have a Kindle Fire HD? We need a check…

on the display of one of our newer covers…like one of the Netwalkers books. Let me know if it’s displaying correctly or if you spot any ‘artifacts’ like a white border, etc.

This is not good…

…Ordinarily I can write through anything. Anything. OTOH—something’s different today. My eyes are still bothering me. Up until yesterday I could write past that. But right now it’s like I keep putting thoughts into the basket and while I’m putting one in, all the others are falling out.

I have a feeling it’s one of the two meds–either the stuff to keep the eyes dilated—or the Prednisone derivative…that I’m supposed to be on all next week, and through next weekend. This is going to be a living hell. No kidding. A writer in mid scene who can’t write is not a happy creature.

The eye appointment…

9 am, out the door, and off to the Spokane Eye Center—had a very fast rush into filling out paperwork, answering tons of questions: no fool I, I brought my previous meds with me so that was one set of blanks. Then we wait 30 minutes for the doc, who runs the usual things the optometrist does, then does a lesion scan with yellow eye drops, a pressure test with numbing drops, and finally dialation drops and sends me off to wait 20 minutes out in the lobby—Jane is in a political argument with 2 locals out there, but alas, I had to leave her, as I was nabbed back to another room to wait for 30 minutes (it is a busy place) and finally to get a really thorough once over: so—I appreciate the doc, who is very willing to talk science and what she’s seeing and how she reasons it: the upshot diagnosis: iritis, or inflamation of the iris. Which, no, I have never been diagnosed with betore: if I had they would worry, but not a big worry. It is an indicator of autoimmune disease, such as lupus, various others, but also arthritis, and I do have a bit of a problem in one finger, not the one I broke, but the one I overuse with the trackpoint mouse.

So the prescription is some prednisone-derivative eyedrops 5 x daily and a blood test for arthritis markers. Well, if that should be what it is, it might be a really lucky break to tag it early. Or it could just be from the contacts. I really hope I don’t have to go over to wearing glasses, but the fact is, I like seeing. And I am impressed this doc knows what she’s doing.

So no contacts, and these eyedrops—plus 2x daily I have to dilate my eyes (yep, the stuff they use) to give the iris a rest and try to calm that down.

So that’s the story. We went out to exchange my cable tv box, which had quietly died the death yesterday: all its little lights had gone out. We got my meds at Freddie Meyers, and we also got our flu shots. We were going to go to Costco, but I had begun to have that kind of ill-defined headache you get from having your eyes messed with and pressure-tested, so I decided we should leave off the last stop and go home.

We have also resolved to use up what we’ve got of carb-type food in the freezer, then go back on Atkins for a few months to get rid of the weight we’ve gained being bad. WE always feel better when we’re on Atkins, anyway, and I think it’s time. I’m going to have to do some shifting about in the kitchen, and we’ve got some things to eat up, (logical, eh) before we diet them off.

Got an eye appointment for Thursday…

So’s you won’t worry.

I’ve stopped all antibiotic. The Simulasan is providing relief those two don’t and I’m suspicious of them…Tobamycin being a mycin COULD be closer to Neomycin than is safe for me… But the redness persists.

I went off to an appointment with the bank today looking like a mafioso, dark glasses, hat, because I’m out of hair dye—I’ve got to do something about the hair dye for Thursday (eye doc).

We opted to go to a little eatery downtown for lunch—and the hamburger was won-der-ful.

Then I got home and nearly passed out for 3 hours with profound chill. Meat tenderizer. I had it happen in a fancy hotel steak restaurant at that level—I could hardly get back to my room. In this case I wasn’t driving, thank goodness. I don’t know how they can use a product like that without advising you. But that’s exactly what it was. I was semi-conscious all afternoon.

Two inches of snow and still coming down…

The season has begun: I heard the plow go by this morning.

But we have our snowblower ready to go.

My eye infection is back, so Jane’s going to have to do the driving…I can’t wear my contacts and my eyes are watering nonstop. I swear I have battled this since we got back from Texas, in September. I am so annoyed. It’s not too bad. But I have had two rounds of antibiotic, and am probably going to try a drugstore remedy like boric acid (the weak eyewash solution, I assure you.) It’s what we used in the 40′s and 50′s, and it kills bacteria by brute force. There are a few things I resort to when all else fails: one of them is this eyewash, and the other is merthiolate for a hangnail. Yep, it’s mercury: but it also is the ONLY thing that will help a hangnail when it’s getting infected. Stops the pain and cures it usually with one application.

So we try an old, old one: I just need to get to the pharmacy to pick up a bottle.

Cold.

It is.

The pond is frozen over, the koi are down where it’s warmer, next to their heater—and it is clear and cold today.

We discovered a really strange thing about Shu when we went south—he doesn’t deal with cold. He kept going under the seats, really stubborn about it, and when I picked him up, a little worried about this, he just kept shivering until he warmed up. We provide a fuzzy to sleep on, and he slept and slept and slept, warm and just fine. His ancestry is Bengal: his weight is double that of a domestic cat his size; his metabolism is ‘hot’, and he eats like a horse; his jumping ability is so extreme he threatens his own bones, and he has hair like a dog, doesn’t feel like a cat. He’s just—different. And apparently cold isn’t his thing. Heat isn’t ours: we always have the house between 65-67 in the winter, and love it. But we also can’t have Shu being cold. So I ordered a cat-mat from Amazon…I worry about heating pads: I don’t trust them, safety-wise, and don’t like to leave them connected; but there’s that NASA-type silver stuff, that thermal insulation, and an enterprising (forgive pun) company has made that stuff the interior of a padded pet mat, so it just reflects the critter’s own body heat. I figure while Seishi is Shu’s personal blanket (Seishi’s ancestry is Scottish, where cold is not an anomaly, and he’s fine with the chill) Shu can’t always get Seishi to snuggle down with him—I think Sei gets too hot. So I’m going to plunk this nice pad down in a place where Shu rests and see how it does. It’s not very pricey. Cats or small dogs; there’s a bigger doggie version; and I suppose if anybody has chronic cold at night, it could help people, too.

I’ve been not only writing on the current book, I’m spending my evenings reviewing the very first e-books, The Writing Life, and those will go up with improved text, not enough to warrant another copyright, but enough that certain sentences will now make sense.

The wonder is that we survived all that. The number of times I hit the ice is really quite amazing. Mind, I started skating at 61. And OMG, the computer I was working on, that crashed every hour—and Jane’s nursing the thing back to life…

It’s snowing. ;)

We love the snow.

Our backyard is pretty well winterized—haven’t turned off the faucets yet, but will. Need to prune a few bushes and the apple tree. But the koi put in one appearance yesterday when it started to rain — they heard something hitting the water and thought ‘food,’ I think, — then went back to their little bottom heater. There are two heaters—the floating one to keep a hole open for co2 to get out; and the sinking one to sit down with the fish. It by no means heats the pond: just provides a little slight warmth, and it sits on a bed of pebbles, so as they stay warmer, the fish have a nice comfy spot that’s just a little nicer.

Got to get some bird food. And we’re good to go. We have our snow-blowers, and we’ll get our winterizing finished at the first thaw (we’re sure this won’t last long) and get the hoses in, the faucets winterized and that’s about what there is to do.

We winterized our little fingers to the bone…and found a problem.

The pump is pulled…the heaters are installed; the waterfall is now silent and drained. There are still things to be cleaned up, but the water faucets are all disconnected, the solar lights are wrapped and stored, our occasional fairies and seagulls are boxed and safe…and I’ve gathered up all the tools.

We got soooo tired I suggested we go to Long John Silvers for lunch; and we then went down to Lowes in search of winter-shells for our basement windows. We also got a pressure-gauge for our house water pressure, which has gotten worse since the city fixed the water lines: we had it at 80 and dialed it back to 60, but the thing turned out to have fallen to 50. Well, so the cure for that is, first you attach this to an outside faucet to read what the house pressure is, then to go to the adjustment thingie on the house water supply, you know, where your house cutoff is; and screw it clockwise to raise it, while your partner, with a cell phone, is talking to you to tell you when to stop. Piece of cake. Futzed with it and got it to 70, which should make certain jobs a bit faster…

But it’s not raising the pressure in the sink, which is affecting our dishwasher.

We got under there, figuring, well, maybe we’ve got a problem in the valves down there.

What we’ve got, for one thing, is a leak. We also think we may have a clog in a pipe. It makes several right turns including the one to get from the basement to the kitchen in the ceiling access down in the basement.

This time we may just call a plumber. We’ve done so much ourselves, but if we’ve got a clogged supply pipe problem—sigh—at a certain point I just wanna know and have it fixed. We’re real tired. We’ve got so much to do. And Jane and I just want somebody to make this work.