C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 62

Day 2 of new contacts. And I’m a wee bit dyslexic with left and right…

I read the labels carefully, overthought it, was way careful, and put them in the wrong eyes. Scratch one pair of disposable contacts. Went to another, and much happier.

But probably due to a half year of wearing a ‘wrong’ prescription, I have the world alternately focusing clear and fuzzy, one eye fighting the other, and while I cope ok in a quiet, static environment, I went with Jane to get a couple of 6″ cylinders for the sprinkling system–and that meant Lowe’s. And to take back an item at Freddie Myers, and that meant another mega-store and a 10 mile drive. I don’t get motion sick easily, but I was feeling queasy walking around the big stores, and hungry, which didn’t help, so we went to a local rice-bowl type place and had lunch, and we got things done. I’m still having just a little trouble coping. But it’s getting better.

Don’t let a prescription go because it ‘almost’ works. It means this sort of thing trying to get fixed.

Got my contacts: glasses have to wait…

…until my eyes ‘settle.’ I’ve been wearing a slightly wrong prescription for reading for over half a year. This has an effect: eyes and brain are real good at doing a ‘Hubble Telescope’ type correction, and they have to learn that program has been changed.

So the doc wants me to wear these daily-wears a couple of weeks and use a 2.50 pair of cheaters, ie, simple magnifying lenses, for reading.

The contacts are comfy, don’t sting when going on, and I got them on first try, though it’s been a while. The distant world has much crisper edges. I’ll see if I can see the stars if it’s not cloudy tonight. But the right eye, on a slight .25 lens, is being cranky: getting that eye to ‘settle’ is going to take a bit.

The good news: contacts can ‘bandage’ your eye against allergens.

I’ve gone to daily wears so I can give my eyes a rest.

I can drive with these. So what I need is a pair of driving glasses for when I’m *not* wearing contacts, and a pair of reading glasses with, and one without—bane of my life is an astigmatism that gets worse the closer something is. I used to have good vision at all ranges. So, well, I can be glad of the years when it was real good. Now I have to put up with what a lot of other people have to put up with, so I can’t gripe.

I hate having my eyes dilated…

Pita. It’s at least a cloudy day. But the stuff is not readily wearing off!

But I did get the exam, regular doc in her new clinic, and I’m much happier. Going for the usual reading glasses with contacts, driving glasses if the contacts alone won’t do it; and reading glasses-for-no-contacts. I don’t know what’s going to be necessary, but it’s long overdue, whatever it is. I need to work and drive and garden and…well, and play video games.

I’ve decided on daily-wear contacts, because I get into too much trouble with extended-wear. This way my eyes get a 12 hour break from contacts daily, and I can opt not to wear them at all on some days, but they’ll be there to use if I need them, depending on the day’s activities.

What I do to glasses is really awful: I have one tough pair that’s survived, but the earpiece is sprung from the last time I stepped on them, and I’m afraid to bend it too far to get it in line, even with hot water. I think these are expiring. But I will still have them for a fallback. Which I’ve been using ever since, 9 months ago, I lost my regular glasses.

Today we’ve done a shade of housework, trying to bring order…

We’re so resolved not to let the house go again. Cleaning the kitchen. Getting into the mixed bag of stuff we boxed fast when we were policing the place before the wedding.

Poisoning weeds along the front. That was my job, while Jane was washing the kitchen grime off the pretty Russian plates that decorate the wall.

I mean, a proper sort of cleaning.

Tomorrow I go to the optometrist and I’m taking a pair of old frames in the hope they can be a spare pair, for driving, ideally…IF a 150 contact won’t solve my problem. Or a pair for reading when the lens is out. My crazy vision requires so many sets of glasses I have to keep frames in service. The ones I’m wearing are comfy, but don’t bend over while wearing them: they fall off.

We set the kittehs outside…in their playpen…

…reviews were mixed.

Seishi, who will dart a door and race madly away, escaping under the gate with no idea where he’s going…[dimbulb]..

and Shu, who will ooze out a door and roll on the sunwarmed pavement…

both sat there in the fairly large pen in distress, sure they were being abandoned to the wild.

On the other hand, they were getting rowdy in the house.

It seems to have been salutary. They’re much quieter now they’re back inside, sleeping it off, or finding things to do that don’t involve objects on shelves…

Ah, the season of long light…

June. When it’s light from 5 am til 9 pm, and everybody is insomniac…

We live more attuned to the outdoors up here in the PNW than we did in Oklahoma, for one thing: we live a lot in the garden, but, y’know, it’s hard to go to bed when the sun is still up, and hard to stay abed ditto, and there are times the corresponding winter darks and sleeping are just so attractive… Here it is finally pushing 7, and we’ve both been up for more than an hour.

The knees, I rejoice to say, are finally working out the last of the bruise from the Champagne cork incident…nearly 3 weeks on, still a little ouchiness in the calf muscles, but the bruising is dissipated.

We were going to attack the accounting yesterday, but our freezer decided to do a meltdown…just what we needed atop the slight untidiness in the kitchen due to our return from the convention (the kitchen dining area, next to the back entry, catches all the incoming baggage)—and here comes the stack of towels, the winter heater, and the ice chest that helped us save its contents.

At least we didn’t lose anything. We’re a little worried about the wedding cake, but we think it’s ok.

The freezer was long overdue for a defrost, as was. We can now report that done.

Now we get to the accounting.

Ah, the eye appointment.

I decided to go to the WalMart clinic as close and convenient, after my docs set up their own clinic.

Appt at 930 am. I arrive on time.

Fill out new paperwork.

Take the tests, etc, etc.

Talk to VERY young new person doing tests.

Sit in the exam room. sit. Sit. Sit. Sit.

I watch the elderly and gentlemanly doc potter back and forth from his 8:30 appointmentee, and finally finish up at 1030 AM. And go on pottering. Back and forth. The 1030 appt is now here. I haven’t even had a hello from the doc.

I wished the staff well and left.

Called my regular doc’s office and have a new appointment Monday.

I’ll probably end up with contacts AND reading glasses, and I don’t want that new prescription held hostage by this apparently nice but glacially slow fellow. I’ll drive the extra 3 miles to reach my old docs.

Got the vision appointment.

930 AM Going to try contacts again, or at least a monofit.

I hope it’ll work. I really don’t like glasses. I’m thinking about going for daily wear, to avoid some of the problems I’ve had in the past. IF I can get a monofit, so both eyes aren’t involved. I hate removing lenses even worse than putting them in, but an eye infection isn’t good either.

Slowly recovering from two falls…it’s a good thing figure skating taught me how…stepping on the champagne cork at the wedding reception was just one of those things. Tripping over a parking buffer while carrying a tray of pottery…not so much. But it’s not going to be a lasting problem. That’s the good part.

Now I just need to work on seeing where I’m going.

One of the unplanned effects of an old injury is a right foot that reports where it is as about an inch higher than it actually is when I’m stepping over something…age is not for sissies! So I tend to trip. The champagne cork was a triple play: a stray cork, new higher sole strap-sandals that squish, and a sole that ‘grips’ things like the long skirt as I tried to recover balance. The other was just a stupid ‘thought I was stepping clear of that buffer’ oopsie.

Well, at least I’ll see oncoming cars and read street signs better, with new contacts.

Making good progress on the book…

I need to. Todd’s working on the cover, and I need to finish this by the 20th of June.

I think I can.

Typically when I get to a near-finished stage I do a ‘rolling rewrite’, in which I go back to the start and fill in all the detail, check continuity, look up the names currently represented by X [literally] and in general curry the winter coat off it.

That’s in progress. I’m always amazed when it seems to be working. But it works.

Meanwhile I’m restoring the pond to the crystal clarity it had during the wedding—-I had to leave it unfiltered while we were at Miscon. And I’m hopeful that will go quickly. And Jane trimmed the wisteria and the nameless shrub she thinks is Oregon Grape or something like, and various other things, so I’m the rake-up squad. The iris are all in bloom.

And I’ve got to get to the optometrist and get my contacts prescription renewed: it’s real annoying. My far vision on the right side is still very good at 50-100 feet, but after that it gets annoyingly less so. I think a 150 lens ought to handle that. But that means getting two pair of prescription reading glasses, one for without the contact, one for with. And I should really get the insurance. Because the difference in astigmatism at varying ranges of vision plus an unusually ‘flat’ face means bifocals, even gradated bifocals, are a no-go for me (I look completely over the top of most glasses when looking up, not just half-glasses)— I have to carry multiple pairs of single-purpose glasses and try not to lose them. The only option would be lenses so large I’d look like an owl. So….I’ll just try not to lose the next pair. The ones I’m wearing are from about 2005…because I lost the ‘real’ ones two years ago. Sigh. I am worse than a six-year-old when it comes to losing or breaking glasses…but less likely to reform.

And I have to ask myself whether to go back to Walmart optometry, which is convenient and where I like the staff, or drive several miles to reach my optometrist, who has set up an independent practice, now. The second doc at Walmart is good, too. I hate Walmart. But having somebody this accident-prone user can access in a hurry and on short- to no-notice is a good thing…

Been dieting so long (since last March) I haven’t really cooked in forever…

I became inspired to do meatloaf, and discovered the tomatoes in the pantry expired in 2011. Now, usually stuff isn’t really bad until the can swells, but, y’know, why risk it? Those went out.

The corn flakes were all gone.

There were no veggies.

I decided, well, pasta. Pasta would work as a binder. I had an egg. Also a binder. Spices, no problem. And I discovered unexpired spaghetti sauce. Voila! Tomato!

So I stirred it up, dumped in a cup of dry penne pasta, and added a measure of water, in the theory, well, the pasta needed something to grow on.

Baked at 350 for an hour and a half…covered in foil—worked like a charm. It wasn’t my best meat loaf ever: that would have had diced tomatoes, diced bell pepper, and sufficient chili sauce (I did have some, expiration 2013, well, close enough. So I used it.) And it would have had carrots and potatoes.

But it was still good. Half of it will be Sunday dinner.

Chef Ramsey would be proud—at least of my ability to punt.