A healthy lack of obligation

This blog is not an obligation!

Funny how that happens, and funny how I say that now, after months of not obliging it. I'm changing my tactic. I'm not sure what it was before, but whatever it was, it wasn't working and is therefore now out the window.

In my inaugural non-obligatory, and perhaps also my final post (who knows! There's no obligation! Whee!) I am just going to blab about the day. Because blabbing about my mundane day is what I do best, yet I doubt I will ever feel a sudden obligation to do continue doing it.

Today's theme is Health Issues

Say "hi", Health Issues.

"Hi, health issues!"

This morning started with my wandering eyes noticing both a fire engine and ambulance in front of my neighbor's house. This, sadly, is not an unusual occurrence. K has both lupus and fibromyalgia, recenly had spinal surgery, is an veritable encyclopedia of medications and information on how to deal with sundry agencies regarding children with disabilities, and cracks me the fuck up.

Hell, K, is the first person to introduce my son to a low vision aid. Not one of the many eye docs we saw, not the school, not the state. My neighbor.

So, even though an ambulance shows up at her house several times a year, my heart skips a beat each time. You get used to it, but you don't. You wonder how big a punch her body delivered to itself this time.

I don't know yet :( because we had health issue of the day #2 to deal with.

- - -

This is more positive, if "no change" can be called good news.

Son was diagnosed a few years ago at age 11 with cone dystrophy. It is, basically, a loss of central vision that one is born with.

Now, that simple definition should have clued me in right away, but I need details, and get bogged down in web research even though each time I do it in this case, the results are the same: there is very little out there. The little that is out there indicates that it starts around the first decade of life, and can maybe possibly progress to complete blindness, but it's hard to say because it's a rare disease and there's scant data on it.

So, for a person who wants to understand so there are no real surprises down the road, it's frustrating as all get out. I could go on about those frustrations, but that's not the point today.

Today's point was that son was taken over the river and through the woods to a Univ eye clinic 1-1/2 hours away (because apparently that was how far we had to travel from home to finally find a doc who didn't call son a liar) and after the exam and visual field and retina photographing thingy, the result is that his visual acuity has held steady at 20/400 (20/200 being legal blindness).

It's good because it's not getting worse, and what I got a whiff of from the doc was that the longer he goes without getting worse, the better the odds that it won't ever get worse. He did add that it probably won't get better either, but I was never expecting that to happen anyway. Son already knows that he will have to keep being good to his sister if he doesn't want her to abandon her emphatic offer to drive him all over the place when she's old enough to drive. ;)

And there was a real nice aha moment today, too. Doc is great, but he is the fastest damned talker I've ever met. It's almost comical, as he speed-talk-dictates into his recorder and without missing a beat shoots a quick question at son, pauses all of one second to allow for response, then continues on. So having an assistant in the room at the end of the hours-long appointment was a big plus, as she was able to translate for me that which made me go, "aha".

We always thought this was something that progressed with him. His behavior indicated it. He never sat close to the TV, or held a book close at first. Then everything is pulled in a little closer and closer until we finally realize that something's going on. I always thought he could see fine when he didn't have things so close. But doc said (translated by assistant) that he wasn't moving closer because his eyes were changing, but because his need for detail was. In other words, as a toddler the details didn't matter.

Geez, I think about it now and it makes loads of sense. Pictures for kids are simple. Shapes are basic. Print is large. He didn't need to get closer because nothing out there demanded that he be able to distinguish small details. It was the demands, not the eyes, that brought him closer and closer to things. Therefore, the conclusion at this time is that his vision has always been 20/400 or thereabouts. Which is even more reason to think that it won't get worse, it just is. Which to me, is good news.

- - -

Perhaps the best part of the day, though, was the thing that isn't so directly health-related, but something I consider a huge part of what makes one healthy.

The guy at the front desk just made my freaking week. When we were all standing at the desk to check in, from moment one he addressed my son directly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to turn to the actual patient to ask him to verify his address, phone number, etcetera. I say that tongue-in-cheek because it should be natural, but it's so rare that when it happens, you slap your head and wonder why, yeah why, do people direct questions not to the child patient old enough to possess language skills, but to their parent(s)? And even though you know that what this person did, which was to treat a child as a person, is what the norm should be, you still feel like handing him a blue ribbon or something for doing it.

Oh, and then when I went up to get my parking validated, he pulled out a box of chocolates that a resident brought back from vacation, took off the lid and held it out to me in offering. So I took one, looked up at him, and he just continued to hold that box so I could take a couple for the kids.

Gawd, I just love the little details, and the people that make a point of paying attention to them and injecting them into your day. That's what I call good for your health!

Great Uncle

Certain people just touch you deeply and don't let go without putting forth any effort. That's my great uncle. His heart is huge. I wish everyone could know him. I wish I could put it into better words.

But it's hard, because he died this morning and I can't stop crying, dammit.

I can swear to you that he didn't have a mean bone in his body. He had mental retardation, which is the term I was told when I was very young and thought that the reason he was hard to understand had something to do with the prosthesis hook on one arm. So I've always been comfortable with that term, probably because the first time I heard it and for quite some time thereafter, I heard it used properly. I gotta tell ya though, nothing bothers me more on this earth than some asshole slinging around the word "retard" to put down someone else as if they are the better person. They're not. Not ever. Don't fucking do it.

He lived in the same town he was born in for decades. Just about everyone knew him, and if anyone were to ever think of short-changing him at the store, or doing any thing bad toward him, they'd have a whole town to answer to.

His heart was huge. He once bought a boat when I was young just so he could take us out on the lake when we visited. The excuse was that it was for fishing, but this was no fishing boat.

The kids - the kids loved him. They thankfully were able to meet him a few times and they just naturally gravitated to him, and if that's not beauty ---

And those Christmas cards. Damn. I must have only seen him a few dozen times in my life on family visits, but I got those cards every year of my life from him. And every year, wherever I lived, whether I was five or thirty-five, he included a five dollar bill. Even when I was young, I never looked at that five dollars as inadequate. Somehow, it was huge in a whole other sense.

And he didn't just sign his name to the card. He wrote a note; a few sentences. You could tell, with the scraggly, labored writing that it must have taken him an awfully long time to write all that, but he did. Every single time, as long as he still had some eyesight left, he did it himself. I dunno. Just something about that writing, that five dollars, that consistency, that thoughtfulness, was always just the best gift I ever got every single year.

And now I won't get that any more. Which sounds selfish, but damn, it was certainly a wonderful annual reminder of what can be right in this often crappy world.

So I know this isn't eloquent or anything, but I just needed to say something because he died, and it sucks, and I'm going to miss him an awful lot.

Spouse fine

Buck deceased.

Yikes

Shortly after making this post, I will become the parent of a teenager. Can someone cringe for 7 years straight? Guess I'll find out.

Quick!

I need a clue! If someone wants to use some of your photos in a magazine, what's the going rate? What is it based on? Type of publication? Circulation? Size the images run? The fact that they found it on your photo site and you should be happy with any amount, you silly fool? Aack? Eek! Gulp.

Radical!

Just received this lamp courtesy of the state dept for the vision impaired. Whee! That's a big lens! I'm so psyched.

Son currently has a visual acuity of 20/400 and therefore is considered legally blind. It's been a gradual deterioration, so that he's made his own adjustments over time without giving it a thought, and we didn't notice until his adjustments became really obvious to us. Then, after well over a year of hearing numerous "professional" asshats calling him a liar, we finally came across one (note: university hospital eye clinic) who came to the conclusion that it's most likely cone dystrophy.

So, there's the condensed background.

He's "typical", they say, in that he doesn't want to be "special" or "stand out" or overuse "scare quotes". (Okay, so I made up the last one.) Of course, I keep telling him that he won't know how much something helps, or even that something he's been doing has been causing him unnecessary strain, unless he just tries the stuff out. He likes the pocket magnifier because it's kinda cool in a gadety-way. Ditto for the monocular. But when they delivered those, they did not deliver the lamp also recommended at the low vision exam. So, I said "send it!", even though son was all like, "nah, it's no big deal".

But I think it is. It looks so basic, a lamp with a heavy base and big lens. But it means he can read hands-free, which I know he'd like because he doesn't use the pocket magnifier all the time, and instead squashes his face literally 2 inches from the page because for him, that's easier. And I'll bet that he'll find how much easier it is, how much less strain is in his neck, when he can put a book on the table, have two free hands, and not have to bend so damn far over to read the words. So simple, but I think it's freaking awesome.

And I'm so totally psyched that I've regressed into using 80s slang more than should be allowed in a just society. Fuckin-A, dude.

What I did last night

That's right! I saw Jon Stewart and like N'il, I found it hard to remember what came before the puking dog. Good thing she made some mental notes!

The crying penis thing, I should note, was freaking hilarious.

Below is an an example of how crappy a camera phone captures something a mile away, wherein Jon is deconstructing the argument that condoms contribute to sexual activity. It will be hard to hear, so don't even try. The important part is that you get to hear my wonderful laugh near the end.

Neener neener neener

Got it!

I am now a photographer's assistant. The glamour! The travel! The fame!

Bwahaaa.

My references rock!

Wheeeeee!

Finger-Crossin' Good

That's all I need. Some crossed fingers, some good karma, some positive energy, whatever you've got.

I just got a call from someone whose ad I responded to - and we must have talked for an hour. He's got a few more respondents to filter through before deciding on the final few to meet with, but...

At one point during the conversation he says, "You sound just about perfect for the job" and eek eek eek, I'm trying not to get too confident but it's pretty hard when the vibe is so very "I'll call you tomorrow" as opposed to a more detached "I'll let you know if you make the cut".

It sounds fun. It's creative. It's flexible. It's variety. I will be able to learn new things and get better at other things, while bringing my own skills into the fold. It's not a damn office with all it's office-y ickiness and competitiveness and that-is-not-by-jobiness and goals sheets and performance reviews and screw-you-osity.

Eek! eek? EEK!

Okay. Breathe. Get some stuff together. Get IT together.

yikes

:)

M357

Some of the shit I used to take and will never take again.
Except for those white ones. They go everywhere with me.

To Vicodin or not to Vicodin, that is the question. Tonight I got this familar feeling in my mid-back, one that I used to think was general soreness or intestinal stuff. It's grown into a full-blown I-feel-like-my-lungs-are-collapsing hours-long muscle-contraction-spasm-thing enough times now that I start looking for the Vicodin immediately.

Found it!

If I take it now, it will kick in just before the pain radiates and starts to become unbearable. If I wait too long, it won't be enough and while the pain will be cut quite a bit, it will still make labor contractions seem like a indigestion by comparison.

Seriously. Take a labor contraction, the worst one, and make it last 2 hours with no break. Have it wrap entirely around your torso - front, back and sides - from your armpits to the bottom of your ribcage - and squeeze the living shit out of you like some nightmarish hufuckingmungous blood pressure cuff torture device, so that when you are writhing on the floor in constant pain and moaning and panting and feel like your internal organs are about to be crushed to death by your own muscles, you know that it can still get worse. It's worse when you can no longer moan and writhe. Which is scary shit, because the only thing left to no longer do is pant, and that's kinda a breathing thing, ya know?

But maybe it won't happen, and it's a false alarm, and I can save those one or two pills to further delay going back to the doctor for a refill. Which I don't wanna do. Because while I love that the doc gave me something that takes the pain away, he irritates the shit out of me when he spends 20 minutes on his laptop trying to figure out what the heck my deal is (which is, like, 16 more minutes more than he usually spends with a patient), only to arrive at the miraculous conclusion: "I'm stumped."

He's done this twice now.

The second time he was all stumped as he perused pubmed or google or whattheheckever it was he was doing, he sent me to a spine doc. Who listened to my description. And without prodding a thing, said it sounds like a bulging disk, and come back if it happens again.

Which would be fine, but I'd kinda like it if it didn't happen again ifyoudontmind. Damn MRIs. I've had a bulging disk in my neck already, which at the time had my doc probably googling "spine doc" and referring me for a diagnosis from a freaking spine surgeon who said basically "why the heck are you here?" and slapped a collar on me that only made my neck sore and stiff. So when I asked about chiro and doc said chiropractors were quacks and would break my back, I of course dropped his arrogant scare-tactic ass and got a doc who would refer me to the chiropractor who, of course, made everything all right and dandy and I haven't had a problem there since.

Besides, I have this feeling that the torso contraction from hell is just the morping of anxiety shit as I age, as the first time it happened was the day after Bush was "re"-"elected". Who wouldn't end up in the ER after that?

So, at this moment, that weird, "warm" soreness in my mid-back has subsided, and hopefully I've dodged another freakout wherein kids think I am dying and spouse calls 911 so the EMTs can yell at me, yes yell at me, because I was not able to immediately answer my name and age through pants of excrutiating pain in the ambulance. Asshats.

No thanks.

Just waiting it out in a relaxing, hyper-aware sort of way.

Back Again

Geez, 130 unread posts in my RSS reader! Hope I don't miss an good news when I mercilessly skim.

I have well over 400 photos to go through so it will still be a few more days before I can even think of diving in. Yeah, I know, the waiting is terrible, huh?

Tip of the day: do not drive perpendicular to ridges and valleys on roads that post 15 mph speed limits on every 3 mile long twisting line of endless hairpin curves at 11 pm, 11:30 pm, midnight...

Obviously I'm alive, but I still haven't located my stomach.

For the spotted one

De slope! De slope! From de north:

Does that even look like 39 plants and 24 cubic feet of mulch? That's because it's now 47 plants and 28 cubic feet, duh. Had to tweak along the driveway where I forgot to allow for it's gentle curving away. Note the lovely patch of dirt where I used spare soil to fill in low spots that turn into wonderful little ponds of muck during heavy rains.

From de east:
Wonder dog is not impressed and just wants to know when we're gonna get our butts in gear and head for the lake.

Garden Week is over

After a week of sifting stuff out of my yard that Lowe's sells in bags for like $8 a cubic foot (pea gravel, river rock, drainage rock), mixing the sifted dirt with garden soil and using it to fill in low spots in the yard, filling in huge washed away gaps under downspout splashblocks with the "free" rock, digging 39 holes after whacking at the dirt with a spade, planting 39 various green things, and spreading some 25 cubic yards feet of mulch and thinking how I could use at least 5 more, I am unofficially done with planting the darned slope.

Maybe I'll take a picture later. It kicks ass, dammit.

So, on to other things! What the heck has been going on in the world beyond lime and wheelbarrows?

Wait, don't tell me yet. I have laundry and packing to do now, as in two days we leave for a week so one kid can go to Easter Seals Camp and the other can join me in a cabin at a state park.

Wheeee!!! I'm gonna canoe my butt off.

Crazy Yard Lady

She's at it again. Years ago she was the Crazy Lady who sat for hours pulling weeds out of her gravel driveway. "What the heck is that crazy lady doing in her driveway?" asked men who spent 6.5 hours per week waxing their cars.

Crazy Lady has since been updated to the new and improved Crazy Lady v2.0! Crazy Lady v2.0 has all the wackiness you love to mock, now with pictures!


That's right! For all your sanity hearing needs, photographic evidence shows that once and for all that yes, Crazy Lady really is sifting her gravel, pebble, and asphalt chunk filled dirt with a decorative basket from Tarjay.

Zone 7 is like, so hot

Why is it that whenever it "feels like" over a hundred degrees, I have an inkling to create holes in my yard?

I didn't actually create holes, but I did throw down some mulch and got shat on the head by a bird in the tree overhead while I was moving newly purchased plants over and over again. (See that little red (X) at the bottom right? That's the tree and scene of the crime.)

So, hmm, I actually spent a good chunk of the day in the air conditioned indoors playing with BHG's online garden planner, not to be confused with their online room planner, which is lalaland for furniture rearranging afficionados everywhere.

There is this dumb slope at the front of my house that I hate almost as much as the other 98% of my yard. The ground is hard as a rock, yet every last grass blade that ever tried to hold on has been washed away in a mini-lesson in erosion. Because it slopes, it presents itself to passersby on the street in all it's ugly glory. I've had enough. It needs foliage!

Anyone got a rototiller?

Life is one big oozing infection

Abscessed molar
what a pain
Weekend trip
too much rain

These are not tools of the patriarchy

Evidence that heat beats stubborness, every time.

I am determined to whack at the crud that passes for dirt in my yard. Apparently, every time I whacked today, the temperature rose a degree. I am sorry, eastern US, that I made it reach 100 freakin' degrees. Feels like: death.

Heat=1. Me=0. Dirt=999.

Wednesday Visual Bliss: Phone Phixed

The new cell phone.

Last month my cell phone lost the will to live. I mailed it in for repair, and received the package with a replacement yesterday. Until last month, I had no idea how much I'd miss the thing. When I first got one 5 few years ago, the idea was "well, in case something happens," which I can appreciate because of that time I broke down on the interstate, in the winter, 6 months pregnant, and was passed by a steady 3 lane stream of cars, trucks, and two police cars for over an hour.

It took a while for me to start to use the thing. Then I was calling for all kinds of reasons. It replaced my long distance service. It replaced my watch. It coordinates "meeting up" with a group during an expedition to amusement parks and the like. Heck, it's even a way for my sister-in-law to constantly find a way to interrupt any minor trip we take with some emergency call about how to do a simple thing on her computer (her being employed as a computer specialist, of course.)

Okay, that last one I can do without.

Now it's a way to take a photo when I find myself without a camera, connect to the internet if I really really have to and am not near a computer, and listen to mp3s or the radio when I'm waiting for something, somewhere, and bored out of my skull.

Funny how you can do without something until you start using it, and then have to do without it.

Mom's Day: a preview

This year saw the premiere of a mom's day eve, apparently. A pure product of the daughter, it was heavily fueled by a trip to the grocery store with her dad. I can just hear her insist, as he selects potato salad and sodas, "We gotta get this and that for mom!" This and that culminated in the following: A sushi snack around lunch time. An evening dessert of raspberry sherbert adorned with dark chocolate pieces and a lit candle, delivered on a tray to the tune of a mom's day version of the happy birthday song.

Not everything was from the grocery store, but all of it was from the heart. A neck rub when I had a headache. A regifting of my coveted gifted jammies at bedtime (a soft, comfy shirt and pant combo). A bonus cuddle.

This morning she came downstairs and the first thing out of her mouth was "Stop! I'm making your breakfast!" (I was just getting something out of the pantry, I swear!) She beats me to my desk and rotates the chair out for me to sit. She sings another original lyric to the tune of the Camp Granada song:

Good morning mama, it's your day.
That's exactly what I will say.
You're the bestest, and you deserve it.
And trust me mama I will not sit, I will work it!

Then she aksed if it was okay if she spent some time at the neighbor's across the street. The young woman she has her own relationship with (does that make sense? It's a one on one mutual friendship that they nurtured on their own) has a one-year-old, and her spouse is on the road today. She wanted to know it it was okay if she focused a bit on another deserving mom today, even if it meant less focusing on me for a while.

Hearing that is the best honor yet. Damn.

I think my babies are okay

Fine, they aren't really my babies, they are the babies of mom and dad cardinal. The 2 siblings hatched a little over a week ago (one egg never hatched), in the nest I watched mom build in the bushes that are just outside the window I sit next to as I type.

I've gotten used to their disctinctive chirps and post-partum routine. Dad likes to hover before landing. Mom just lands and jumps in. When one pops out, the other flies over from a nearby tree with the next course in their beak. And on it goes.

They gave me a scare, though.

I was on the phone, their sounds and movement out of the corner of my eye ensured me that all was well. Then I saw movement. The two dogs from across the street were at the base of the bushes, right below where the nest is. At the same time, the chirping reached a level that was chaotic. I cut off the person on the other end of the phone, saying no, please no, as I walked out the door to shoo the dogs off and peek in the nest.

The newborns were gone. What a sense of loss I felt, even a shade of panic, wondering what had become of the kids in my adopted family.

I returned inside and to my conversation, but kept getting distracted. Mom and dad were acting very differently, and I couldn't really see or figure out what was going on. Once I ended my phone conversation, I headed back out. Mom and dad seemed more spooked than usual and immediately left. I sat still at the bottom of the steps hoping I could observe better from there, but it seemed I couldn't even be outdoors any more without disrupting them. They never came back to the bushes, instead they chatted back and forth from this tree branch or that, and I just knew they had to be looking for their babies and were waiting for me to leave. Heck, I wanted to find their babies!

After poking around a bit, I picked up the rubber ball the dogs were attempting to retrieve at the base of the bushes, headed back to my perch inside, opened up the window, and just watched.

Eventually I could track mom and dad, follow their sounds, and realize that I was hearing more than just their chips. From somewhere in those bushes, some place that I strain to see but can't make out, the kids are chirping away in unison themselves.

They're not gone, they're just beginning to leave the nest.

My babies are okay.