feeling in limbo

Now that the ablation is scheduled the afib has settled down and my heart has a happy sinus rhythm. Of course it does. But then it will slip in for short periods and out again.

This last 10 days have been tumultuous to say the least. By Thursday morning I was ready for some normalcy so I went to SHARE. Jade had come in Wednesday evening and since both her parents were at work she came with me. It wore her out doing half of what I do. Then I went to yoga at Hesed House Thursday night and filled the regulars in on why I wasn’t there last week. I’m to the point where I make jokes about it because otherwise, well, it’s just too depressing and does me no good to obsess about it. Jade left Friday morning heading back to Austin. And last evening my grandson came by with great granddaughter Paisleigh, 

my first visit with him since he’s been back from Arkansas. He and Audra and Paisleigh are moving back but slowly while he works here, currently staying with his folks, and figures out a place to live but he’s still paying the bills on the house in Arkansas and the lease isn’t up til the end of the year. So Audra and Paisleigh are still living in Arkansas while she works there and he works here. Paisleigh has been here for the last week, Mikey went and got her last weekend, and Robin has been doing childcare duty while everyone is at work. Audra came for the holiday weekend and is taking Paisleigh back with her.

I wondered in the night during my awake time what the neurosurgeon would think of my upcoming procedure for afib and the effect, if any, on the aneurysm so this morning I went on the patient portal from his office to leave a message/question and checked the test results listed that he had reviewed and the most important one, the CT with contrast that showed the aneurysm, wasn’t listed. Did the hospital not send that report, has he not seen it, did he determine my condition didn’t need immediate attention because he did not see the test that showed the aneurysm? So I sent a long message with pictures of the type of test and the results showing the little bomb in my brain. He did review the CT scan, the chest x-ray, and the MRI. I doubt, being a holiday weekend, that it will be seen before Tuesday and I have no idea if he has left the country already or not. I also want to ask about doing a headstand, and a couple of other yoga asanas, which I do, holding it for 20 breaths, giving my organs a little break from gravity and sending the blood to my head, if that puts pressure on the aneurysm but that can wait. I did my home yoga routine this morning for the first time in about 10 days and thought to not do a headstand but I did one anyway only holding it for 10 breaths. I’m still here.

Summer is here, temps in the mid 90s and humid as fuck and no rain for the foreseeable future and I still have stuff out in the yard to do like excavate my potatoes (if I have some), repot some stuff, plant some stuff and ordinarily I would be out there for a couple of hours sweating but with these procedures coming up I am not. The last thing I need is to get heat stressed before all this happens. So I go out when I get up, kill stink bugs off my tomatoes with the insecticidal soap I made and then come in. In the evening I go out and water all the plants in pots. Yesterday I spent the day moving the sprinkler around. The new cotton out in the field, maybe not even 12” high yet looks terrible, sere.

Oh, and I went and got my glasses Friday. I wore them most the day but took them off to read and look at the computer monitor. I see better for that without the glasses which are transition bifocals. I doubt if I’ll wear them much in the house, just mostly driving and being out. I have 60 days to decide if I don’t like the transition lenses and I can get new lenses with the hard line at no extra cost. Rimless except for across the top.

The picture below is my previous pair, the ones I lost in the flood. I think I might like those frames better. This picture was taken in 2016 when Minnie was only a little over a year old. The last eight years have been hard on my face.

hornworms, glasses, and kittens

Mornings I wake up, feed the cat, take my meds, let the dog out. Wednesday morning I went out with the dog to look for that little bastard of a tomato hornworm. This time I found it but it wasn’t much over an inch long and there was too much damage for just one so I kept looking and found two more. They’re hard to find when small because they’re the same color as the tomato plant and hide under the leaves and stems (not in focus but you get the idea).

When I went out Friday morning to remove all the damaged foliage so I can determine if there are more I found another one bigger and fatter than the ones two days ago, that’s how fast they grow. It’s a green smear now. This morning’s examination found two more of the fuckers.

Also Wednesday I moved both of the bell pepper plants, one into the empty corner of the little raised bed and the other in the pot in which I had planted a tomato that was in constant wilt no matter how often I watered it so I figured it had something wrong with it and pulled it out. Put the little pepper plant and watered it until water ran out of the holes in the bottom. Checked on it yesterday afternoon and it was wilted. WTF. Stuck my finger in and the dirt was dry as a bone. Watered until water came running out the bottom, dug in the pot some…dry as a bone. So then I did some intense deep watering and this morning it looked OK but now there are ants in the pot when before with the tomato, no ants. Can’t win for losing with that pot.

The other thing that happened this week was Thursday when I went for my pre-op for cataract surgery. I was joking with the assistant that as soon as I had had my February appointment when I complained about my left eye bothering me for months, feeling like there was some goo or something that I couldn’t rub out, the feeling went away and hadn’t bothered me for the past two months. When asked if I didn’t want to have the surgery I shrugged and said it depended on what the doctor thought. So when Priscilla came in I told her the same thing and she said let’s look. Can you read this line, can you read that line, which is sharper, this or this, etc. Then she pulled out a weird glasses frame in which you could insert different lenses, which she did, put them on me and told me to go outside and see what I could see. So, what am I looking for, focus, clarity, I asked. She just shooed me outside. So I stood outside looking around and everything seemed to be in focus and clear, close and distance. When I came in and reported she said this doesn’t happen often but you were reading two lines better today than in February so let’s get you some glasses. No cataract surgery? Not yet, come back next February. She doesn’t like to do unnecessary surgery which I appreciate.

So I went next door, picked out some frames and ordered glasses. This will be the third time in my life that I’ve been talked into getting glasses. First time was in my late 40s maybe. Wore them off and on for a while and then stopped as my vision wasn’t really that bad and I preferred drug store cheaters for up close work and reading as opposed to wearing glasses all the time. The second time I got glasses was in 2015 when I had to go in and take an eye test to get my driver’s license renewed and I failed the eye test. Two years later I lost them when the town flooded after Harvey and I was wading in thigh deep water and tripped on some unseen something and fell. My glasses had been hooked in the neck of my t-shirt, because I still never got in the habit of wearing them all the time, and when I stood up they were gone. So I went back to drug store cheaters and hoped I didn’t get stopped while driving. Three plus years ago I realized I didn’t need glasses to read in the evenings or do close work, set the cheaters aside and went and got my eyes examined telling the optometrist that I thought my eyesight had improved which he confirmed but attributed it to developing cataracts. That was January 2021 and I haven’t used glasses or cheaters since then. My eyesight is not crisp except in certain ranges but it’s not bad enough to impact my life negatively either so I imagine after I get these I will revert to wearing them when I drive or when what I’m reading or working on is a little too far away. Same as it ever was.

Yesterday afternoon after watering the garden in the back I went over to feed the wildlings a little later than usual and saw that Robin had already fed them. Then she came out with this.

Her boyfriend got a job at Tractor Supply for the summer before he returns to college in the fall and this little 5 week old kitten was abandoned in the parking lot so of course he brought it home. They already have three indoor cats, Pam's Boys and Robin’s Noodle, and the four wildling outdoor cats…Momcat, Handsome Boy, Lovey, and Twin. I told Robin they were quickly becoming the cat people of the neighborhood. Robin is adamant that the new kitten is going with the BF when he returns to school.

After nearly a week of horrible heat and humidity today is cooler and less humid. 

the last days of 2018

You might remember the last time I renewed my driver's license, I couldn't pass the eye test so I had to go get prescription glasses for the first time in my life which I subsequently lost several years later in the Harvey flood. I bought a pair of readers for $5 which I managed to hang on to until maybe a couple of months ago when they went missing, out in the yard somewhere I'm sure. No problem, I had an old pair I had kept from before the eye test but it also went missing a week ago and also probably lost out in the yard somewhere, buried under the mountain of leaves I raked up. Well, phoo. OK, one more extra pair that I don't like because they have metal frames with the separate nose thingies that get tangled up in my hair on top of my head when not in use so off to the CVS to get new ones. They ranged in price...$12, $20, and $30. I was used to paying $10 for good quality frames and lenses. I won't buy the really cheap ones at the Dollar Store because the frames are flimsy and the lenses are crappy. OK, so $12, I got them home, slipped off the tag, only to discover that they were Dollar Store quality. For $12. They went back the next day and I went to the Store of Last Resort (that would be Walmart) unless I want to drive to the next town or further to the nearest shopping mecca. Usually I'll wait till I have enough errands accumulated to make it worth the trip to the shopping mecca but I find myself slipping more and more rationalizing that it's just this one item. This particular item was good quality glasses for $10 that came with a shiny purple case to slip them in. Damn you Walmart.

very spiffy, doncha think?

I've made no effort to replace my prescription glasses as I couldn't see any difference with or without them while driving and I figure if I get stopped, as long as I have some glasses on, they aren't going to question me.

It's been a dreary few days, cold and overcast. Nothing blooming out in the yard except for the roses, spare and halfhearted, and the pansies. I keep thinking these days would be good to play with the modeling glass but Friday I went over to my sister's to visit with my niece who is visiting her mother for a few days. And yesterday I decided to make a Charlotte Russe.

somehow I don't think mine is going to look nearly this good

Charlotte Russe was a favorite childhood dessert of mine, and rare as my mother rarely made it, though she did make me one for one of my adult birthdays one year. I've never made a Charlotte Russe but when we were in Trader Joe's I saw lady fingers and bought them on impulse and yesterday I decided to make good on that impulse  

I think I was writing this down as my mother was dictating it to me over the phone...decades ago

so I dragged out the recipe, soaked the gelatin, melted the chocolate, stirred in the boiling water, added the sugar and half the evaporated milk, stirred in the gelatin, and then happened to look at the empty can of sweetened condensed milk sitting on the counter. Well, fuck. A quick check on the internet assured me one could not be substituted for the other in cooking. I was tempted to just keep going and see what I ended up with but the other half of the evaporated milk needed to be whipped and folded in and condensed milk doesn't whip, so saith my sister whom I had already called once before about what the directions meant by 'paste' but considering she's never made one either there was no satisfactory conclusion, which turned out to be neither here nor there as I ended up dumping it out in the field with the intent to try again today. With all the correct ingredients.

The robo-vac arrived Friday and it's been busily humming all around the house. 

the Mooka mooking around

It's like Christmas every time we recharge it and empty the 'bin'. It had only been four days since I had vacuumed and the floors didn't look like they needed it so we are amazed at how much dust and dirt and pet hair and stuff it has sucked up. I'll still need to get out the big vac now and then as the robo-vac can't get in some corners or under some furniture or in areas where there are too many furniture legs too close together and I have to pick up the small oriental rugs because, while it will travel over them, the fringes get tangled up in it but...I LOVE this thing.

Well, tomorrow is New Year's Eve and maybe I'll play with the modeling glass then or I might make a coffee cake that was a staple in our house growing up that I haven't made in decades (I've gotten so old everything is decades ago) (if I can excavate that recipe) to go with our brunch and mimosas on New Year's Day.

We'll see. First I have to venture out to the grocery store.

eye tests and real glasses

So I went and got my eyes examined Monday and, sigh, I do need glasses to drive. Well, I need glasses so they will let me drive. Exam results were 20/20 in my left eye, 20/50 in my right eye. No sign of glaucoma and the general health of my eyes is good. Basically, my left eye is doing all the seeing while my right eye is giving me clues from my peripheral vision like color and stuff. I considered getting glasses just for distance but as the doc pointed out, it would mean I wouldn't be able to see anything close up while I was driving, like a map (no I don't have Siri telling me where to turn). Since my eyes were dilated, I went back yesterday to pick out frames. I picked 10 pairs to winnow out, choosing heavily from the wire rim selection. I took pictures of each pair as I tried them on but after looking at the pictures after I downloaded them, they all looked pretty much the same.

I finally narrowed it down to two pairs and then to the final one and ordered my glasses. I'm getting the progressive lenses but decided against the transition lenses. I'll just get me a pair of prescription sunglasses later. They have a lot of frames for $20 so it will just basically be the cost of the lenses. In the meantime, I hope my big sunglasses will fit over my new prescription glasses though I don't really wear sunglass very often, mostly just when I am driving or am at the beach.

These are the frames I chose.

They should be ready next week.