When Half the World Turns White

I'm not talking race, or snow, or anything other than that two eyes in the same head can see totally different things at the same time. Or in my case, one of them can fail to see. That's how I came out of cataract surgery yesterday, once the eye cup came off.

It was a total surprise. The first eye after its surgery years ago went from totally blind to seeing clearly but with a red glow for a few hours. The second eye went from a little weird, the reason for the procedure, to seeing totally white. I blame blinking at the wrong time. I do blink a lot, and asking me to hold my eyes wide open for drops is a fools errand. I'll blink 4 times before you can get the bottle aimed over the eye, and another time just as the drop falls, with another just as the second drop falls as they try to make up for missing the first time. My face gets wildly decorated in red, yellow, white... whatever color the drops are when they miss. The nurses are understandably reluctant to use their fingers to hold the two lids apart, or at least most of them are. So when the doc finally came over to see how dilated my right eye was before surgery, he frowned and ordered more drops. It was important, particularly with both pseudoexfoliation and and astigmatism to deal with. 

So I got more drops. 36 hours later they're still working. I have one huge pupil starring at the world. It doesn't help, much as some might think bigger is better. It lets in too much light, hence the all white view, just like an overexposed photo. It doesn't focus well either. On top of that, the eye is absolutely positive there is some kind of huge (well, relatively) rock under that eyelid that no amount of saline drops will flush away. Blink-ow. blink-ow. blink-ow. Look in a different direction-ow. Close eyes-ow.

Don't think I dislike eye drops. They're mostly keeping me sane right now. Saline ones have a teensy bit of soothing power. Another set stings a bit, but it helps prevent infection, among other things, so no fudging on the doses. But it's just not that simple.

The set of saline (aka very white, and that's seeing them with the good eye, so they really are still white) drops come in a single dose plastic dropper. After you twist off a wide flap at the top, you upend the tube, try to point it in your eye by the time it's totally upside down vertically, and squeeze the somewhat stiff plastic bubble holding the saline. I have no idea what "engineer" designed these things. It's the clumsiest contraption I've ever used. I'm still getting it into position by the time it's half empty, and when I'm really lucky and it's finally aimed over my eye either I blink just that split second or there's so little left that the hard squeeze it requires pushed it back over some other part of my face. Even running down my face those drops are white white. Should you by some miracle of luck and dexterity get the needed drop or two  actually in your eye and have some left over, there is no way to reseal the thing. The winged thingy you twisted off does not go back on. Toss it. all of it.

I asked Steve to help me last night. After I described the process - or lack thereof - to him, we agreed it would work best if I lay down across near the end of the bed with him having room to sit next to me at the very edge. I'd hold my eyelids apart with my fingers and he'd aim and squeeze the tube thingy. One miss. A second miss. He started getting nervous he'd actually poke me in the eye with the end of the tube, so we figured out that I'd make a little wall around my eye with my hand while holding the lids apart, and he'd bring his hand to touch that just as he squirted. 

We got one drop in!

Today I looked in my medicine cabinet and pulled out a still new bottle of good standard saline drops, easy to squeeze, reclosable, and manageable by one person with no problems if "too much" went in. Of course, those drops go in a few minutes before the medical ones, so they wouldn't dilute that. They aren't quite as white as the fancy ones, but who cares. My eye was still seeing white enough all over for both bottles of drops, even though the medical ones are yellow. I can always tell when I actually hit the eye with those since they burn for about a minute. Those are the 3x a day, for 3 weeks drops. Wheeee.

While waiting this morning for the medical drops to go in, I went online for a few minutes to send an email. I could see the keys. They're big and one eye is enough for the job. But the email font is small and one eye in this case is NOT enough to catch the three dozen typos which usually sneak into anything I type while my fingers aren't looking. I apologized for the lack of proofing and hoped it was mostly understandable. I did get a reply this afternoon that seemed to indicate the gist was understood.

Maybe tomorrow I'll go back and read what I really wrote.

This morning I drove myself for my next-day check. It's about a gallon of gas each way, freeway morning rush hour, no decent view of the right lane much of the time. I waited for the really large gaps (all both of them) to change lanes. But I'd asked the doc and he assured me that the anesthesia would be out of my system from the surgery and I'd be OK. I was still seeing white when I walked in. A very quick look in the eye brought some effective eyedrops to start shrinking the iris, and colors returned a bit. Tonight, fyi, it's still blurry and slightly cloudy, but much better. The mirror claims the drops did half their job, a huge improvement. If this is well proofed, we'll all know it's better.

Of course they did a vision test at the eye doc's. The first screen seemed to show a faint shadow that resolved into two blobs, somewhat squarish. I knew they were squares because they'd been up on the screen for 5 minutes and my good eye had identified them... and two others totally invisible to my "fixed" eye. Just to test the system, I think, they had me read their chart after the first go round with various letters for the first eye again for the good eye. Yes, huge difference. I could decipher a couple of the largest letters with my still white eye, everything down to bitty stuff with the old eye.

They want me back in a week. And yes, they did kind of use an extra lot of the stuff to expand my irises for the surgery and it was still working. It will wear off. That thing embedded in the back of my upper eyelid? It's where they did some kind of incision in the eye, not the lid, to deal with the astigmatism. I can check it out when my eye gets better, doing my left-eye, right-eye dance. It hasn't exactly been explained more than that. It's probably enough information anyway. The best part is it will heal and  quit driving me nuts.

Or at least not quite as much nuts as now.

I'll let you decide how much that is.

Packing... To Date

So I've spent the last month collecting sturdy boxes, plus lots of tape, the heavy duty stuff in a holder with a toothed edge which cuts the end and holds the tag end from dropping back onto the main roll so you don't have to fight all over again to get it up and usable, and that's if it doesn't split in the process.  There's been the sorting, starting in two categories: books we're keeping, which basically get stuffed into any box that will hold them but we can still lift, and the "necessary" parts of my SW pottery collection. Of course that means lots and lots of bubble wrap, large bubble and small bubble. I went to the store and bought a large roll of each kind. They're both used up, though I have lots of little pieces from other things I've been going through that I pull out to use again.

In order to reach the back of my bedroom closet, I've had to clear several boxes of rocks up off the floor. We won't mention pulling the muscle in my arm from that. A few have gone into the front garden to help keep down weeds and make the dirt pretty. The other ones have gotten donated to the club for the members to use as they teach or learn lapidary... with a couple exceptions.  I do admit I wonder however: why on earth did I separate my rock slabs, planned at purchase for lapidary use until I got distracted by copper, then sterling, and now glass, with bubble wrap? I can't explain it, but I'm grateful there are still some bubbles left in the stuff. It's still great for the bitty things needing cushioning, or stuffing in a small shopping bag to fill a large space inside a tote to keep things from sifting during loading and travel.

I hit a milestone today: all the pottery which is going north has been bubble wrapped and packed. It had to wait a couple extra weeks to get finished. I wanted to see what I could do to find somebody to handle the other pieces, some of which have significant value, at least in my world. None of this hundreds of years old, thousands-of-dollars-a-piece stuff. Let the Heard Museum have that... and pay the insurance premiums. I have collected some pieces from more recent potters who have gone our into their local areas, scouted for sherds and clay deposits, and effectively reinvented their pueblo's traditions, teaching others as well. All those are being kept.

We did have one fellow in during the first sale, looking for pottery. He knew which were the good pieces, but when he heard MY price to sell them, even discounted from what I paid, let me know he wasn't my buyer. He was strictly a middle man and needed his slice of the cut. Nope, not my problem. I decided to try to sell them myself, starting with the little, inexpensive stuff. The first set I put out sold in a snap, one person taking the whole lot. OK, bigger and better for next time then. And so on, saving the best for the estate sale. But in the process of his looking through stuff, I decided that a couple he showed extra interest in should go into the "must keep" list. He even commented that they should be passed on in the family.

The wait to pack wasn't all that bad. It worked well with other circumstances. I finally got photos taken of all the rest of the pottery, which I could then email up to Steph and ask what she was interested in. We'd discussed it when she came to visit last spring, and she had interest but wanted to give it some thought. So once mine was packed, I finished the photos, and sent them up with minimal descriptions, like "the two shiny brown ones in front are from ______ Pueblo", or "this shelf is all _____ and note the fish and turtle effigies." She answerd promptly with a request for both a Hopi and a Santo Domingo piece, and regrets that she didn't think she'd truly be able to  enjoy more pieces the way they deserved. We'll see what she - and others - think once they are up north and on view. Somebody should inherit, right? Maybe several.

The other delay was getting bubble wrap. I'd used up everything already, and knew I'd need a lot more. So I mail ordered a HUGE roll, two feet wide instead of the standard one foot, in a 125 foot long roll. Huge box! With the bubble wrap still inside, it made a great sign box for the driveway to advertise our sale, visible from 3 sides to traffic. Now that the tail ends of cleanup from that are mostly done, it was time to open the box and use the contents. The huge box can advertise future sales, then maybe get packed with pillows and linens or such.

It's great bubble wrap, especially for those larger pieces. There's just one, significant, problem.

It's not perforated. Not each foot, not in a yard, not in 6 feet sections. Nowhere! So it has to be torn or cut. Tearing means it winds up going across in a diagonal pattern no matter how diligantly I fight to keep it straight. A scissors not only dulls instantly from cutting plastic, just like a knife would, but gets tossed aside after about three tries to cut through the stuff out of sheer frustration. Hey, great for paper, even now. Not bubblewrap however. I suspect this roll of stuff is made for industrial use where first, it rarely gets cut at all, and second, they have special tools for the job and no care how straight it gets cut. Hmmm, maybe a hot bar to melt it apart?

But seriously, why couldn't the seller simply had it perfed every so often? Or in the description mentioned that it wouldn't be?

If it hadn't cost so much, I'd think seriously about packing it as a unit, and once we're up north, dividing it up among the grandkids to play with. Their parents can fight with making portion sizes! Then again, used or not, during the move, all of it has to go somewhere anyway once we're relocated. 

Hey, you in the younger generation with your families: Guess what everybody's getting for presents next  year!!!!! I could even tape it into bundles so everybody'd think there was something inside! Wouldn't that be fun?

Maybe I should actually put a set of earplugs inside each, eh?

"Hey, Do You Mind Pulling Out Your Little Thing?"

Yep, that was an attention grabber in the store this morning.

Even more so that the speaker's voice was in the bass range, and the voice of the one addressed was baritone.  Heads within hearing range turned.

I'd initially had my back turned, working on rearranging the contents of my cart so they'd be easier to load on the conveyor belt for check-out. Those aisles are too narrow to go through while next to my cart so I have to get in front of it and still reach - and protect - the delicate items on the little high shelf, otherwise known as the kid's seat. Before turning back to the speaker, I could see the little old lady behind me was also paying attention. We exchanged a brief mischievous smile.

The man checking out his groceries ahead of me was apparently trying to get the cashier to reach for his portable barcode reader. He needed to explain he had several large and heavy items in his cart.

Still, the lady behind me and I had a quiet chuckle about how inadvisable it was to ask another man anything about pulling out "his little thing"... in public at least.

Yeah, language fails some of us more the older we get.

The Book I Was Sure Would Never Sell

There were a lot of books which didn't leave during our book/garage sale. For the first couple days, I was extremely disappointed in how many people insisted they "didn't read". But after all, this is Arizona, with one of the worst school systems in the country. It's also a pretty right wing area, though retirees flood down here from all over, and not for the politics but for the senior community and the prices. I  do however get repeated comments about how "brave" I am to put several Democratic bumper stickers on my car. So I wasn't surprised when things like Doonsbury books were passed over. Still, I thought there might be one....

I did get requests for things we never had, like math textbooks. Other things we did have were quite popular, like bundles, by authors, of mystery and science fiction books. Those, when they went out, went by the bagfuls. One customer simply wanted to be happy, and wound up buying books of jokes, happy to walk out with a targeted bag after my pointing out what I knew was still there and where. She was only slightly impeded in hauling away her finds by having one arm determinedly snuggling an extremely soft, plush, large green stuffed dinosaur Rich had set out which she also purchased.

Tucked in discretely here and there were a textbook on human sexuality - which I refrained from pointing out to the very young man looking for textbooks - and several slim volumes on birth control including some aimed at teens, along with The Joy of Sex. I didn't have much hope for one other book selling. But here's how it happened.

Two women probably 15 years younger than I am, with no other customers around, picked up the textbook on sexuality. (Yes, I took that college course. The window in the door to the hall was always a bunch of faces fighting for viewing space. They knew what was taught.) The women were laughing over the thought of a mutual (friend?) being somebody they wished  would be the beneficiary of that book, if somebody could just sneak it into her living room and walk out with her not being the wiser. They didn't buy it however, even at its very low price, much as they thought of how much she truly needed it.

Sensing their mood, I pointed out a very subdued, though large, book in another box, mentioning how hilarious I'd found it. It was all old Japanese erotic art prints. Parts of what I found so funny was how obsessed the artists were with - ahem - size. Large sections were depictions of men so enormously endowed that they had helpers to support their "junk" while they moved. The more important and therefore larger the man, the more assistance needed. Or was it vice versa? Help might be in the form of a string of other men, or large wheelbarrows, or other things I've long forgotten. Other fantasies were depicted which, if carried out, would be impossible, or extremely painful should the merest tiny thing go wrong. Ladies in swings were a popular theme in those prints. A 12-foot arc needs a lot of precision!!

Yeah, I cringed too.

At any rate, one of the women picked up the book, they both looked through it briefly, and almost in unison said, "______ would love this book! She collects all things Japanese and Chinese!" I trust it's cozily ensconced in its new home, unless perhaps she lives far enough away it has to be mailed.

Do they still prohibit such things in the mail these days?

When Do We All Get Stupid(er)?

If you go back in time a ways, there were numbers given out about what percentages of our atmosphere were Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, Helium, Argon, etc. I seem to recall that O2 was around 20%. Notice that I'm not Googling it though that function is a few keystrokes away. It was just an easy, nice round number to remember. Nitrogen is the highest by far, but our lungs do a great  job of filtering it out when we breathe so we can take in O2. But you know all this, right? Maybe not the exact numbers, but the big picture. We take in O2, breathe out CO2, then plants take in CO2 and breathe out O2. It's one reason why we need them in order to survive. Food, shade, and shelter are others. They also contribute beauty, for a different kind of survival.

Other ways of measuring what is in our air become important in places like work environments where many chemicals become dangerous in certain concentrations. We get stuck in those locations for hours, repeated over days/weeks/years. OSHA will have lists of all kinds of chemicals and what is/isn't safe to breathe. Those numbers in the danger zones are in PPM, or parts per million, or when they're even more dangerous, PPB, parts per billion. You get the same measurements in the water we drink, where the tiniest amount of certain molecules can  do untold damage to us. If we're on municipal water systems, we get annual reports on how many PPM of arsenic or lead, for examples, are in what we drink, cook with, and bathe in. Read the next one before you toss it away.

For those who have been paying attention, CO2 and methane amounts in our atmosphere are beginning to cause problems. We're heating up. Ice is melting. Each new measurement is worse than the last. The whole process is accelerating, and numerous tipping points, the places where we can no longer stop it, have been reached. Since heat is energy, and the atmosphere is heating up, weather is getting more energy. Simple physics. Simple math. As little as five years ago we kept hearing "We can't blame X event on global warming, it's just an isolated weather event." But they keep getting worse, stronger and more frequent, and temperatures keep rising. And rising. And rise off the charts. It is global warming.

Now I did inquire of Professor Google about these next numbers. Where are carbon dioxide levels now, and where did they used to be? Back before the industrial age, before when we started pouring all that smoke into the air, filled with carbon from burning oil, gas, coal, wood, and whatever, CO2 levels were measured at around 280 PPM. We just passed 424 PPM.

Take that in for a minute. 

It's still climbing. We're not acting to stop it.

If we get too much CO2 in the air we breathe, things happen. We're not there yet, or not so we notice the changes, or even if we do we blame them on other things.  We get sluggish, tired, have persistent headaches. We become disoriented, paranoid, depressed. A whole lot of that translates to simply becoming more stupid. Nevermind your starting point, too much CO2 makes you more stupid than you were.

So the race is on. There are big problems to solve... if we can. We need our best and brightest working on them. Meanwhile CO2 is still increasing. Methane, which is even worse for the planet, is increasing even faster, after having been trapped beneath frozen layers of the planet for millennia. At what point do we all become too stupid to fix any of them?

Will we be too stupid by then to even notice?

What Day Is It?

 Retirement can do funny things to my time sense. Perhaps yours too. Ever since I was in kindergarten I've had a reason to know what day of the week it was, the date on the calendar, the season of the year. Even after retirement there was remembering which night a certain TV favorite show aired to help me keep oriented.

Things change. The last few years there have been my club obligations, knowing which days it was open, of those which were the days I was responsible to open the doors, when meetings or classes were. TV as a time setter tended to drop out because the DVR recorded shows, to watch whenever we felt like it. Then the writers' strike meant little new was there to watch anyway, and we branched out into networks which played multiple episodes of an old show together and it would take a while to get through them. Barring a doctor's appointment, or the 1st Wednesday Senior's Discount Day at the local grocery store each month, who cared when was when?

It has had jarring effects. I often find myself thinking it's a different season. Being without winters for many years helps, but I've always been  much better oriented until recently. 

Take elections. There is one upcoming in a few days. Just not right where we live. Phoenix has one, neighboring communities have some local ones. We don't. I noted to myself months ago I won't be voting in Arizona again. We'll be in Minnesota by then. (I'll have to figure out the logistics of moving and voting later: does AZ want us to officially say "Good-bye"? They automatically mail out ballots to us. It seems responsible to cancel.) Somehow, though, I'm disoriented each time I hear about the looming election because I am thinking it's about 6 months away. But this isn't spring. Where does that orientation come from?

Is it because everything else we're doing right now is geared towards heading north again, and that kind of planning usually happens spring of the year?  Fall should have fall leaf colors but that doesn't happen around Phoenix. I had lots of fall colors just before we headed south, and spring up north would have meant lots of bare branches and sporadic snow, also not happening. I should have had the cues. Trees which keep their leaves down here are doing so. Or at least the ones that survived the heat. Our next door neighbor lost a very tall saguaro over the summer, but that doesn't signal me at all as to season. Neither do the temperatures, though we're finally dropping into the upper 80s.  Ahhhhh.......

Heck, I haven't even stocked up on all the Halloween candy I usually stock up on this time of the year. It's not that we have any kids roaming this neighborhood of seniors,  in costumes ringing the bell and asking for the candy. It would have all been just for us, and only the varieties we ourselves like, not what's available and cheap because somebody else is going to eat it instead of us. (What? You don't shop for Halloween candy that way, even it it's just the leftovers you get to eat?) It's just a convenience to have smaller pieces instead of a large one, as if taking three out of the bowl at once didn't make up for that difference... each of the three times a day we did it.

Even on the micro scale I'm disoriented today. First, we had to get up and out early to pick up groceries before coming back to open up the book / garage sale for the day. So no usual weekday morning TV. Not only did I think it was Saturday repeatedly through the day, then have to check myself, but by 10:00 I was convinced it must be afternoon and continued to be surprised when the sale customers and Steve kept greeting each other with "Good Morning." I had even done some yard work cleanup while the sale was getting going. It must be later, right? I checked my phone. It must not be keeping contact with the towers that transmit time. I shut it off, restarted, and it was still 10:00. I even asked Steve if his was turned on and to verify the time. Ditto!

Even late in the afternoon, time to start bringing a few things in for the night and tuck others back out of the way of the car to come in the driveway, I was thinking more of end-of-the-sale tasks instead of evening ones. We still had too much stuff left!!!  Then I'd mentally kick myself again and remember we've been hoping for the Saturday crowd, people not retired who come into the area to scout the sales on their day off work. Hopefully, ones who read, and, in Arizona, are willing to admit it! Spending money is a bonus!

At least I won't have to worry about sleeping in and not opening the sale up on time in the morning. I'll be awake by 5 if not earlier. That internal clock for sleeping is pretty fubar as well.

Hmmm, no wonder geeezers tend to fall asleep in their chairs in the daytime. I used to find that funny, as if old folks were too feeble or something to stay awake more than a few hours. Granny snoozing in the rocker used to be a TV comic cliche'. I guess that idea still carries some weight. But shhhh, we don't have to tell anybody about that, now. 

Do we?

The Other Eye

That's right. I have two. Surprise!!!

One has been fixed, at least as far as replacing a cataract with a lens which turned that eye back into one which could see something besides black with brown for bright lights like, say, the sun. It's time to replace the lens in the other eye.

I knew it was coming. My eye surgeon, who sees me twice a year now, has been suggesting it for a few years. Since he did such a splendid job on the first one, and we're moving to where I'd need a new doctor, I decided to have the one I trust perform the second surgery. So, now is the time.

It's scheduled for Halloween. I've been telling people that means my costume this year is going to be a red-eyed monster. If they don't laugh, I don't care since I'm not going anywhere afterwards anyway. Except home of course. To sleep in my recliner because that's the only place I will sleep on my back, and I'm under orders not to sleep on my side for a few days after.

I've already had two pre-surgery appointments. Tomorrow is a third, but not with the eye doc this time. It's with the cardiologist. The eye doc insists I return them a clean bill of pre-surgical health for my pacemaker. I didn't even have one for the first procedure. My cardiology clinic won't just sign a paper. I have to show up in person, get an EKG, and they'll review my pacemaker record from over the summer, among other things to make sure the return to taking metoprolol is doing its job too, slowing down its familiar impulse to trot off lickety-split with A-fib. That returned, I got some meds, then got reassured that my heart will not slow down too much because the pacer will kick in if it tries. Steve's heart did so he wound up in the hospital with a pulse in the 20s. Thus I knew to ask. (He's fine now, BTW.)

It's also a chance to have a proper excuse to bill the insurance company. It's OK, they earn it. And I'll be back in their office again just a few days after the surgery for the regular run of tests, both for my pacemaker and my heart.

Meanwhile I've been having fun going around doing the left-eye, right-eye game again, seeing how the eyes are currently different. Previously, the fixed eye saw white as white while the original one saw white as yellowish. Blues tended more towards greenish in the "bad" eye. Something funny and new showed up while wearing those eclipse glasses and looking at the sun. It's a perfect circle, right? But as the eclipse proceeded, one of the top points of the waning crescent the moon left began to pull in to the center, making the sun misshapen. Yeah, OK, whatever, I could ask the eye doc next visit. The camera got it right. That's the important thing.

When that visit rolled around, I had  multiple opportunities to view perfect circles on numerous charts and posters on their walls. Not only was that top slant still there, but a bottom one joined it. Circles had become ovals, as if pushed inwards between 12:00 and 3:00,  and again between 9:00 and 6:00. They tilted. Only with the unimproved eye of course. (BTW for those of you who don't understand that description, you're showing your lack of age and understanding of a non-digital clock face. Better fix that because some day when you get old some doctor is going to check how mentally impaired old age has left you when you can't read the arrows inside a circle without the numbers on them and tell your Doc what time it is!)

Other left-right self eye tests later had the tilts showing up in rectangles, like picture frames. I asked the doc was it weird? Did other people who came in have the same thing? He avoided commenting on weird, but had a name for the phenomenon: astigmatism. So that's what it is! I've heard it much of my life but nobody ever could explain what it meant in how it messed with your vision. Now I know! Well, one way at least.

The new lens will fix that too, of course. But we have to be careful with just how they put it in. Since I remembered from the first time that one eye had pseudoexfoliation, I made sure the doc checked this one for it as well. Yep. It's there. I can't tell, of course, since it's pretty microscopic. This time I got more information on it as well.  What it means is that tiny cells are flaking off the inside of the front of the eye. They tend to float around, not a problem... until they land in the back of the eye in the tiny openings that allow fluids to pass out the back of the eye, usually a normal process. If those get blocked, pressure builds up, and glaucoma results, leading to blindness. 

(Gee, here I only thought I needed to worry about inheriting the macular degeneration my Dad had!)

Apparently lots of us have it, and not so many manage to have it cause glaucoma. That's the semi-reassuring news. It does mean, by replacing the second lens sooner rather than not, the surgery now should be more successful than postponing it years down the road, as then the results may mean the lens won't stay seated properly. The result is I need to follow through on getting annual exams with that nasty little puff on the eyeball while one is not supposed to blink (Yeah, right, try that!) to test eye pressure. So far, so good however. 

I'm also supposed to remind the doc the day of surgery that he needs to remember that I have, in his words, "eye dandruff"! 

Hey everybody, I've got eye dandruff!

But don't worry folks. Next time I'm leaning over a plate of food for you, maybe a bit tired and rubbing my eyes, nothing is going to fall into your food. It's not eye-lash dandruff. Any flakes just head back into the deep dark recesses of my eyeballs. So I'm not sharing. You'll just have to grow your own.