...eye solution

…eye solution

To Me,

Now I’ve gone and done it! It is nearly February, and I’m wondering if anyone else’s resolutions are trashed yet? I broke down and got eye surgery. I know, against my better judgment and everything I espouse about conforming to the world and the preconceptions of plastic surgery. Castigation, begin! Love T.

I’ve followed the trend of most female comedians and had my best source material  surgically removed. No more jokes about blindly slipping off the ski slope and dropping the glasses in the prom powder room.  Worse yet, the source of mirth for my children is gone. They can no longer wink behind my back, or laugh silently in front of my face. I’m freed from wearing the butt of their jokes, free from their cruel taunts and I’m no longer stuck in bed while the morning passes and finally the children seek me in the bedroom where I’m hoarse from yelling, “Help! I’ve dropped my glasses and I can’t get up!”

I’ve done it! I had my blindness fixed. No more thick glasses, no more blundering and sadly, no more excuses about misreading the ingredients on a recipe card. I can see!

It’s all they say it is and more! Instead of feeling as if I want to rip my eyes out in the evenings, it’s 100% of the time. Light of any kind is an irritant and the eye-drops taste bitter. (Trust me, the eyeball’s connected to the tastebud, and the tastebud’s connected to the…)

I’ve had no other side-effects, no pain, no burning, no extra tears, and if it weren’t for my trusty drug reaction, I would have nothing to write about.

I don’t remember much of that first day due to drugs. It happens every time. I warned the doctor that it would be better for everyone if I didn’t have the “relaxant.” I do “tense” so much better. The nurse reassured that five milligram tablets weren’t really anything to worry about. At least that’s what I think she said, by that time I was snoring softly into my chest. She asked the husband to tilt the chair back, hoping to stop the mouth gape and drool.

I vaguely remember meandering my way, with a double escort, to the operating table where I laid down with relief, but when they said skooch up to the top, I started giggling. I was pudding by that time and if they had told me to slosh on up, I might have attempted it. They tape your eyes open and the little machine sucks the eyeball up, which was a good thing because I couldn’t have managed that on my own. My memories end with me staring blankly at the blinking red light.

I slept like a baby from the office to the house and I don’t recall how I made it from the car. After about four hours of lying peacefully in a “lovely repose with hands crossed over the chest” (and obviously looking more at ease than the husband thought I deserved), I was forcibly awakened.

If I didn’t have to face people again, all would be well. It’s that drunk-at-the-company-party/morning-after that is mortifying. The next day, doctor and nurse were both very circumspect and only casually noted that I had been quite relaxed. The nurse remarked that it’s nice that I’m petite… Me?[44]  For the record, I'm not short, I'm just awkwardly shaped.

I remember now why I don’t do drugs during childbirth. It’s because of my big mouth. I have no discretion under the influence. The husband said that just as I was leaving, I announced to all-and-sundry that the reason the husband didn’t have this kind of reaction to medication was “due to his extensive history with drugs.”

Reality Bite: Please shoot me! Or just shoot me up again, so I don’t remember.

[44] I’m also heavier than I look. That’s what the ski patrol said when he piggy-backed me to the bottom. Oops, another story for another time.

…an eyeful

…an eyeful

Hey, I’m tentatively revising my wholehearted recommendation for eye surgery. I’m thinking that there are more downsides that are only just now becoming apparent.

It’s obvious that I have lost the sympathetic ear. “No, Mom, you can find your own keys. I know you can see to search now,” and “Dad says it’s safe for you to drive us.” I can no longer use the broken glasses/missing contact lens excuse for my haphazard mowing, sweeping, mopping and paper chaos.

To me

Life is filthy and some things are best left unseen, i.e., television and the whole of every election campaign. I’m thinking it’s a shame my hearing is still good. T.

I was legally blind and loving it! Even corrected, I could never really see as far as the floor and though my eye-doctor didn’t promise perfect vision, unfortunately mine is now good enough to notice dirt in the corners, the film on the mirrors, the dust on the pictures and the crust on the windows. I’ve decided that visually challenged was not necessarily a bad way to go through life.

Flying about blind as a bat had other heretofore unrealized benefits beyond never knowing that my shower was filthy. The afterbath is a whole new unfiltered experience now that I’m not tripping about with scratched glasses, peering through an altered perspective. 

 I've lived in my own little fogbank and there is so much more that is attractive that way.

Reality Bite: There is an upside. When I put in the milky antibiotic and life returns to a haze, everything can again be beautiful.

---

…suburban vermin

We have vermin! Encouraging vermin through careless habits is greatly frowned upon in our neck of the woods—that we may actually shelter them in our abode is near profanation, and I risk censure by the neighborhood association if they find out!

The HOA’s (Hallowed Office of Analogousness[1]) current President and protector of decelerating house values will be appalled, but pretending that the problem doesn’t exist doesn’t work either.

Dear Diary,
I think that we’ve moved into a suburban wildlife habitat, and I don’t mean just teenagers. The other day, as I loaded the car for the errand excursion, I glimpsed a little red fox as it pattered across the front yard, up to our garage door and peeped in. The fox was oblivious to me, he was only after the cat food.

So, I admit it! We’re infested with an insidious gremlin whose most repulsive habits are tearing holes in the garbage and defecating in the cat litter! This animal sheds, leaving shoes dangling askew, shirts thrown over doors, a reflector running vest on the saw table, and socks, gloves and hats everywhere else. He stacks the workbench so high that it’s virtually unworkable. The infestation is obvious in the scattered bikes, slung helmets, and unpacked storage bins. The mutt hides the bike pump and drop-kicks all the outdoor sports gear.

Dear Diary,
As a country-raised kid, I spotted cows in the corn, hit deer in the road, and even spied moose in the meadows that occasionally mowed down motorists, but I’ve never seen a fox. T.

The vermin family moves in as does the influx of garden tools, gloves, shovels, trowels, and bulb planters from the garden shed.  The pestilance trashes the potting corner, digging in the dirt, scattering the bulbs that are in various stages of preservation, slacks his thirst in the watering cans, and sucks the life from dormant plants. 

I'm willing to bet that this is the same evil gremlin that loses the tools, jumbles the drawers, mixes the recycle-ables, drips oil on the concrete and this week has scattered oatmeal on the garage floor? (Don’t ask.)

To me:
If the neighbors had noticed, a meeting of the HOA, would be called and plans would have been made for the immediate extermination of that fox, to protect the domesticated felines and rodent-sized poochies.

They breed… in thirty-weight oil maybe? I just know that when one gremlin moves in, others follow. Soon, it looks like you have housed a whole herd. 


[1]People who wish they owned your lot so they could manage it better.

...infestation grows

This pest is inherently evil taking on the appearance of good, ie., the running clothes draped carefully, limp with sweat and moldering on the bike handlebars to rot forever and in the used car towel ready to be used later to polish the car with its encrusted dirt.

To me:
I was raised within miles of a nationally certified wilderness area and that makes me more appreciative and tolerant of nature…somehow. I sympathize with squirrels that have made the big mistake of enduring as suburbia fills in around them. They are in the process of being trapped and deported; no matter that they were here first. Their eradication is aided by the daily commute as cars whip up an assorted road-kill casserole including a mishmash of squirrels, turtles, armadillo’s, frogs and the occasional possum.

And the polish... there are bottles of various car condiments everywhere. This gremlin snacks on car wax and tire-lube. Like salad dressing, one brand is never enough, and a various assortment accumulates along with caulk and duct tape.

The vermin has a strange proclivity for paint cans jumbled, un-stacked, opened and closed haphazardly, poured, spilled, restacked, and infected with rust.

It isn’t too bad until the nesting started. The garage rats unwind every extension cord and hose and carefully create masses of convoluted entanglements for what… or to aid who? whom?

Stop them at the garage or they spread. The nocturnal meanderings can invade the house at night, through the cat door, wandering through and randomly exchanging new light bulbs for old. That’s the only explanation for blow-outs only moments after installation. (I’ve been known to date the bulbs on the base, so I can see how fast he gets to them.) He stores a plethora of bad bulbs in the garage closets, intermingled with the good bulbs.

To me: I worry about the fox. He's shortlived for this world if he irks the husband. I watch the husband’s mole hunt escalate like the gopher hunt in Caddyshack. Bubble gum, traps, flooding, poison, animal feces, he’s tried it all. The cat is canonized each time she catches one to munch on, back feet first. The rest of us rescue and repatriate what’s left to the river park miles away. Gone Environ-mental…me

As yet, the husband is unconvinced of the presence of the garage gremlin, but I see. And as the world slumbers, the garage gremlin drags things out of the house to the garage—items you’d never expect to find there, toys, books, luggage, and toothpaste?

I’ve never discovered how to get rid of the vermin, I could call an exterminator, but that would involve a search for the phone book, the vermin spray, the sprayer and that would only be inviting the problem to worsen.

And truthfully, I think the exterminator is in on it.

I have learned the secret. To keep the beast at bay, all I have to do is suggest a house party. Somehow that is a signal that the pest needs tamed. While I advocate for help inside, the husband sidles outside and makes a valiant attempt to lasso and leash, train and domesticate.

Reality Bite: He assures me that it’s all in the event that a guest might ask for can of W-D 40 to loosen the lid on a jar of pickles.

…toss it!

To me,
What if every person took every pen that stopped in mid-stroke and sent it back to the manufacturer? Not the pens that have provided adequate service and have nearly run out of ink, but those that have stopped for no apparent reason?

I spend a lot of money on pens, in the quest for the perfect writing instrument, but I always come back to the cheap ones. I know that it’s against my astrological character for me to use a cheap pen, but they are the only ones that work reliably.

I’m convinced that if the manufacturer had to deal with all those nonfunctioning pens, pouring in through the mail, they would stop sticking us with them. Pondering, T

I’m battling a family tradition that rinsed and reused plastic grocery bags and flattened and folded aluminum foil, but I now feel that I have amassed enough plastic grocery bags to secure my place in the record books into the next millennium and so I’m giving myself permission to toss stuff out and not feel a bit bad about it. I’m recklessly wrinkling aluminum foil and flinging it into landfills worldwide. I have a lot of years to catch up on, so don't try to guilt me. I was green before the enviro"mentals" were old enough to know it was really just a mix of blue and yellow.

This cavalier attitude hasn’t transferred successfully to stuff—I still can’t throw away stuff. Now, don’t be confused, this is not just trash, this is the junk that has put in its time, has served me well and moved up a level and attained the coveted “stuff status,” whereupon, it immediately breaks and again becomes junk.

It’s hard for me to toss out once-valued-stuff-reverted-back-to junk. I’m keeping it in case it might be fixable or to use for planters, or whatever and it’s overwhelming my space! I just can’t do it anymore! So, I’ve decided that all the certifiable junk—either the items that didn’t work long enough to attain stuff status—or stuff that has reverted back to junk—to mail it back.

Yup! I’m going to send it back to the manufacturer.

Reality Bite: Think of it as a form of paying forward, and consider the postal infuse to benefit this flagging economy.

…return policy

When you are returning some failed object, don't bother looking for the original carton, or searching for the original receipt. They were recycled the day before the warrantee expired and two days before it broke. Just box it up in any odd box, (might as well use the computer box. It has three weeks to go,) then ship it back to the manufacturer.

Don’t include a note. The company won’t even flinch. They'll know it’s broken because by now they already know what was wrong with the original design. And whatever you do, don’t use your real return address. (Junk has a way of finding its way back).

They will keep it, in storage in a warehouse somewhere, in a pile, waiting for “further customer instructions,” and you will be the winner because you won’t have to look at it for eternity, cursing yourself.[1]

Reality bite: The day after you send it, the original receipt will turn up, and months later, just to provoke you, the instruction manual will surface with detailed instructions on troubleshooting.

Note to self: Send a note to Monte Blanc… remind them of form vs. function… recommend their engineers work on the function aspect.

Never mind! The husband solved that problem with a refill from the dollar store.



[1] For buying it, for keeping it, for the lack of gumption to throw it out, for a weak character, for being born…

…a new life

I'm told that major changes in life, moves, births, deaths, and divorces, are stressors and the greater the number, the greater the impact level and the higher the curve at which I set my reality.

I know there must have been some period of my life that was calm and peaceful and I think I've discovered when it was. It was directly after The Big Move 

Dear Anyone Who Cares, 
The husband asked Saturday if I was homesick and I felt a wave of sadness roll over me as I answered no.  I wish I had a reason to get out of bed, but the house is beginning to resemble the one I left (prior to the move), so there is no reason to get up to unpack any more boxes. I’m comfortable just sitting right here and writing aimlessly to people who care.

Handwritten by me, who has yet to unearth the computer amidst the avalanche. Terina

I think I was unattached and unattended… for about six months, then I went and birthed another batch of excitement.  

.I love blogging because to find enough drivel in my life to write about each day, I have to trek through the piles of my journals. I have so much that I'll never run out! You could cheer or not, depending on your perspective.

To me:
The husband left for Houston today. The kids left for school on the bus at 8:30, back at 4:00. Here I am alone and I've decided it's a breakdown day. I should be looking forward to a nap but I’ve already been to bed. I’m up, it’s noon and I don’t feel any better. But, I shouldn’t. Today isn’t over yet. T.


Sometimes it is better to toke up the intensity. I do better engulfed in busi-ness. I’m happier in constant motion. If I ratchet up the insanity levels, then there are excuses for my forgetting nature, and for my chaos. If I weren’t so busy, I would have no rebuttal.

To me:
It seems I’ve spent my lifetime struggling to eek out more time. Now I have it. Eons of moments stretch before me in this place, as I look out on the stifling hot waste that is my life. This new city is misery personified. It’s too hot to go out, too lonely to visit. I’m too fat to feast, too tired to care, too bored to stand this, too lonely. Despair.

It’s pathetic prose, but I take it where I can. Moribund, T.

I’m constantly being warned that I should hold back and let the world pass me by instead of meeting it head on with a forward dash toward insanity. Okay, I’ve tried it. I don’t like it.

Reality bite: But dont worry.  There is no threat because busy doesn’t necessarily mean productive.