Opposite ends of the spectrum

It is amazing how quickly things can change. Saturday it was warm - in the 50's, which is warm for the Inland Northwest in late October. We washed cars, mowed lawns, and raked leaves. We watched soccer games while wearing only a light jacket. It was another beautiful autumn day. Sunday was a horse of a different color. It began with leaden skies that grew darker with each passing hour. By late morning it was drizzling. By noon it was pouring, but that only lasted an hour or so. It drizzled off and on for most of the day. Youngest Son arrived at about 2:00 PM. It is Fall Break at school, which means he had no classes on Friday, and won't have class until Tuesday afternoon. It is his first trip home since he left for school on Labor Day. He brought laundry. His car needs new tags. He needs to watch a French film and write a short paper on it. Each of these things would benefit from my assistance. That is why he is home.

Daughter, Son-in-Law, and The Grandchildren stop in for a short visit at about 5:00. They have not seen Youngest Son since he left for school. The Grandchildren are always happy to see him. We listened to tales of pumpkin carving and soccer greatness. Granddaughter scored 4 goals, bringing her team their first win of the season. Grandson scored 9 goals, also bringing his team a win, though he has done that all season long. Grandson is 5. His two front teeth are so loose they are usually pointing in every direction but straight up and down. But they are not loose enough to pull out just yet. He looks like a snaggle-toothed pirate, which is what he will be on Halloween. He is a very active 5 year-old. Sitting still is not his forte. At one point, he puts his legs through the armholes in his coat, and his head face first into the hood. He rolls around on the floor, knocking into everything. Eventually, he tries to disentangle himself from this getup, his head becoming momentarily stuck in the hood. As he extricates himself, he gets this odd look on his face; a look that moves between tears and panic like a ping pong ball between paddles. In that split second, we all realize he has knocked one of his teeth out - and has swallowed it. He doesn't know whether to cry or laugh. Son-In-Law laughs, and grabs Grandson, easing his panic and making him laugh. Daughter assures him that the Tooth Fairy will still visit him, even though the evidence of his loss is in his tummy. Knocking the one tooth out has loosened the other tooth sufficiently so that, as she wipes the blood from his mouth, Daughter is able to pluck the other tooth free as well. She tells Grandson that she will include a note, along with this tooth, under his pillow tonight, explaining the circumstances of his missing tooth, and the Tooth Fairy will compensate him for both teeth. Granddaughter plays along, though she has almost certainly figured out that Mom and Dad are the Tooth Fairy. She thinks. She still has teeth to lose. Grandson laughs, his newly gap-toothed smile bringing a chuckle to us all. His speech is affected, and he laughs at himself. He sticks his tongue out through the opening. He is quite amused by his new smile. Time to go, they all give us kisses and hugs, stop to light the candles in the pumpkins at the door before they depart, waving as they drive off into the growing darkness. It is only 6:00 PM, yet it is already dark. The end of Daylight Savings Time caught us by surprise this morning. The early darkness confirms it.

We return to the French film we are watching – Amélie. It is an unusual film; unusual, but interesting. The film ends. We return to television for a while. The chimes out front are chiming loudly. We realize the wind has kicked up. In fact, it is howling. The Spouse looks outside and announces that it is snowing. I think he’s being melodramatic, so I look for myself. It is snowing! The wind is whipping the trees. Leaves are swirling. The pond is covered in leaves. We are not ready for this. The Audi has its highway tires mounted still. The BMW is in the driveway, not the garage. Youngest Son’s snow tires are at his brother’s house, not on his car – and he has to drive back to school. The pond is not covered with the screen that keeps the leaves out – and it is now covered in leaves. The leaves will all sink, and rot. Next spring, we will have to drain it, and clean out the rotted leaves. It is a smelly, nasty job. It is 31 degrees out, and it is snowing like mad.

This is early for snow. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I remember when Halloween almost always meant snow in the days immediately preceding it, or on the holiday itself. Kids would come trick-or-treating so bundled up you could barely tell what their costume was. But for the past several years, it’s been almost warm on Halloween. Snow has rarely made an appearance until Thanksgiving, or later. In fact, snow on Thanksgiving has been so uncommon in recent years that ski resorts around here rarely plan on opening until much later. When we first moved here, in the early 80’s, the ski resorts always opened for Thanksgiving weekend. Global warming, or maybe just cyclical weather, has changed that. Is this year going to be different?

The sun was up before 6 AM today. It feels weird. Good, but weird. It’s been dark in the morning for a while now. I feel more awake when the sun is up. Unfortunately, its early rising means it will be setting early too. It will be dark when I leave work now. It will be dark long before I leave work. I don’t like that. In another month, it will be dark at 6 AM again, and dark by 4 PM, and I will go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. I really don’t like that. It’s 25 degrees outside.

The dawning day reveals the effects of last night’s storm. The trees, which just yesterday were laden with leaves, and seemingly content to hang onto them for some time to come, have been stripped nearly bare by the wool-mittened winds. The lawn is covered with leaves covered in snow. Unless it warms up and dries up between now and next weekend, they will likely stay there all winter. The deck and lawn are snow-covered. It’s not deep, barely half an inch, but it is snow. The streets are clear, fortunately, making the tire situation less dire than it appeared last night. Les Schwab will be swamped, though, so the Suburban may be pressed into action as my daily driver until we can get the tires changed over. If the Audi had all-season tires on it, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it has speed rated 18” highway tires on it – not at all suitable for driving on slick roads. At least Youngest Son’s car has all-season tires on it. He can go back to school and not even bother with the snow tires for a while as he does little driving on a day-to-day basis. Besides, it probably didn’t snow in Spokane, and probably won’t for a month or so.

Remember that commercial – “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”? Looks like Mother Nature fooled us. Nothing about the weekend even hinted at this dramatic change. I’m not ready for snow yet. I need another month or so. Are you listening, Mother Nature?

And we think we have a tough life....

So, maybe you've seen this, maybe not. I hadn't. I get a lot of forwarded emails from The Favorite Uncle in California. Most of them I've seen already. Most of them I delete without reading (sorry, Unk). For some reason, I read this one, and then watched the video. I sat at my desk and cried. You have to read the story behind this, then watch the video. If you don't cry too, well, there's something wrong with you.

Strongest Dad in the World

[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay
for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in
marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a
wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and
pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back
mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes
taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was
strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged
and unable to control his limbs.

``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told
him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an
institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes
followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the
engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was
anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told.
``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a
lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by
touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to
communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school
classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a
charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran
more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he
tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore
for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running,
it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving
Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly
shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a
single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few
years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then
they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran
another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the
following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he
was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick
tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour
Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud
getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you
think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says.
Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with
a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston
Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best
time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world
record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to
be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the
time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the
Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a
mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries
was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor
told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.''

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston,
and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always
find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and
compete in some backbreaking race every > weekend, including this
Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants
to give him is a gift he can never buy.

``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the
chair and I push him once.''



Certainly puts my silly little complaints in perspective. How about you?

Pumpkins and Poseidon

We had a really nice weekend. The weather was perfect - sunny and crisp, but not so cold you couldn't enjoy being out in the sun. Saturday we watched the grandchildren play soccer. Then, after the frost had melted and the lawn had dried out, I mowed the backyard while The Spouse sucked up leaves with his new Toro Leaf Blower-Vac. The old Craftsman has been held together by duct tape for a few years now, and the bag into which all the leaves get sucked is threadbare, with almost as many chopped up leaves blowing out of it as get sucked into it. It was time. The new machine is nice, more ergonomic, which means it's easier on The Spouse's back, and has a tougher bag, but it doesn't appear to chop the leaves as finely, despite packaging touting its 16:1 mulching ratio (16 bags of leaves is supposed to be chopped into one bag), and its metal impeller. We'll have to see if it was just wet leaves, or if it really isn't as good at mulching as the old one.

The birch tree on the south side of the driveway is amazing in the fall. The leaves turn a beautiful gold. It really is breathtaking, and I often find myself standing, staring at it, wishing I could do it justice in photos. This year, it dropped nearly all its leaves in one fell swoop. That's what The Spouse was sucking up on Saturday. I took a photo of the leaves with my phone - pretty dismal resolution, but it's what I had available at the time. This is about half as many leaves as had fallen by Saturday. You could NOT see the lawn or the curb by Saturday. The only leaves left on the tree were just a few hundred on the very bottom.

After the yardwork, we had dinner and vegged out on the couch and watched stuff we had TiVo'd.

Sunday we got up and went to breakfast with our daughter and the grandkids. Son-in-law is off hunting in Montana with my dad, so daughter and grandkids are all ours. After breakfast, they came over with pumpkins for carving. Daughter always puts those Mr. Potato Head type things in the pumpkins at their house, and the kids get a kick out of deciding with which nose, eyes, mouth, ears and whatnot their pumpkin will be adorned, but this year, granddaughter asked her mother if they could have a pumpkin with a candle in it "like everyone else". Daughter didn't want to carve the pumpkins they had decorated, so she decided to bring new pumpkins to our house so we could have a carving party. We had a ball! Grandpa did the honors, and we have two very nice traditional pumpkins, complete with votive candles, on our porch now - something we haven't had in, well, I don't remember the last time, it's been that long. One pumpkin is obviously a girl - she has lips. The other has the typical gap-toothed smile. The kids were delighted.

We baked pumpkin seeds, another first for the grandkids, and then watched Poseidon, Finding Neverland, and half of Shopgirl. We came into that one an hour into the movie, so we have no idea how relationships developed or anything - very disconcerting. We will have to find it and TiVo it so we can watch ALL of it someday. The kids liked Finding Neverland a lot. I have to say, Johnny Depp is a remarkable actor. I have always wanted to see that film, but never could get anyone to watch it with me. We stumbled across it, and the Scottish accent of J.M. Barrie drew us in. Before we knew it, we were all engrossed in the movie. It was really good. Poseidon was your typical disaster/action movie. Short on acting ability, long on drama. The sets were amazing, the outcome predictable. Grandson kept up a monologue throughout most of the movie, mostly to distract himself from the people being killed as they were flung about the boat while it overturned I think. At one point, he did say "I don't think I am going to like this movie". I can't recommend it, unless you are simply dying to see Richard Dreyfuss play an aging gay man bent on suicide until he sees The Wave coming, at which point he becomes a sort of hero/cheerleader/father figure. It's entertaining. That's the best I can say about it.

The hour grew late. Daughter, grandchildren, and granddog repaired to their own abode. The Cat came out from hiding (she loathes both granddog and grandchildren equally). We watched one more TiVo'd show, then off to bed for us. What a great, lazy day.

Now it's off to buy groceries.

Me Time

This is one of those rare luxuries I just had to take advantage of. I got home about 5:50 PM tonight. The Spouse is just now on his way back to his HQ, an hour away, which means I have about two hours to myself! That almost never happens in the evening. I just need to pop dinner into the oven at about 7:30. Other than that, I get to do what I want. I'm paying no attention whatsoever to the stack of laundry that I have folded, but that is still on the sofa waiting to be put away. I'm also paying no attention to my cat, who is head butting me, trying to get me to open another can of cat food for her. She has dry food. I gave her her nightly portion of canned food (half of one of those small Fancy Feast cans). She's just pulling a typical kid trick - begging to see if she can wear my resistance down. No way. She'll give up soon and go eat her dry food. I am going to read the posts of my fellow bloggers, then settle in for some TiVo watching. I TiVo a few shows The Spouse doesn't watch, so this will be a great time to watch them. So yeah...some me time. Very hard to come by.

Oh, I almost got arrested tonight. Well, probably not arrested, but some darned fool set the alarm at work tonight - while I was still inside! They even asked if I was going to be there late, had to walk past my car in the parking lot, and yet still set the alarm. I got up to leave, walked out onto the main floor upstairs, and heard this chirping. It took me a minute to realize what it was. The disarming pad is all the way downstairs and by the exit, so it took me a good three minutes to get to it. By the time I disarmed it, gathered my stuff, and prepared to leave, resetting the alarm as I left, the cops were there. I had to show them my driver's license, even though I was wearing my work ID, and had a building key and the alarm code (duh!). Finally, a cop that knew me drove up. We laughed about how embarrassing it was, and then I was on my way. Boy, am I going to have a few choice words for my coworkers on Monday. Sheesh.

Now, on to the TiVo.

Frodo, Sam, and Rick Santorum

I don't care what your political leanings are, this is funny: (thanks to Lorraine for this link).

Some people are so nice!

Today I got called to help a patron, who is also the spouse of a woman I've known for years, with an email problem. Usually, I dread these kinds of calls for help because it invariably involves trying to retrieve something from a webmail account like Yahoo or Hotmail that has "vanished" while they were typing. You just can't do that, and I hate delivering the bad news.

This time was different. This patron had sent off a test, in Spanish, to a school in Mexico. This test will be used to place him in the appropriate level class when he and his wife arrive in Mexico next week for their Spanish immersion class. She faxed hers, but he had decided to send his in via email - a wonder in itself since he only recently learned to even use the internet and webmail. He was concerned because his "sent items" folder did not show the email he was sure he'd sent to this school. Fortunately, a copy of the completed test was saved in a folder in his webmail. Apparently, some friend who was helping him did that for him. Since the mail did not appear to have been sent, I was simply going to help him resend it. But upon inspection of the saved test, we realized that several questions had no answers typed in. I decided I'd just copy and paste the text into Word so he could type in the missing data, and then we'd just email it as an attachment. I got the document copied into word, fixed the header's formatting, and left him to type away.

A short time later I was buzzed by the info desk. Could I please come help him again? So downstairs I went. He told me that while he was typing in the missing data, it suddenly appeared in the document! I sat down to figure out what the heck was going on. It turns out that the document's format was so messed up from trying to put it into the body of his webmail, that the data was in all the wrong places. Fortunately, it just involved doing a lot of cutting and pasting - something he was not yet capable of doing. Knowing that his time was running out, I sat down, and with him at my side and his handwritten test in his hands, I proceeded to cut and paste and arrange the data as it was intended to be arranged. I showed him how to put Word into Spanish mode so he could put all the accent marks on the words too. It took about 35 or 40 minutes, but we got it done. I then saved it for him, attached it to a new email, and emailed it off to the school. He was so relieved! I was happy to help. In the process of doing all this, I was happily surprised by just how much Spanish I still remembered. I could read the entire test, and even knew the answers to the questions! Too bad I have such a hard time speaking Spanish these days.

About an hour later, I was called to the upstairs info desk. The staff person said "there is a girl out here you need to see"... okay... what's up with that? I walked down the hall where I was met by a gal with a vase of flowers. She asked if I was Gina (my name tag says I am). I looked at her, puzzled. She smiled and handed me the vase, filled with beautiful spring-like flowers and smelling divine. I looked at the card. It said "Es un milagro! Mil Gracias!" and was signed by the patron and his wife. Now how great is that?! I called them and left them a thank you. It made my day.

So much to blog about....and so little time

By this time - 8:02 AM - I had expected to have completed a couple of blog posts. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I have been helping my blog pal Lorraine of "Here's The Thing" fame, figure out why Word is misbehaving for her. It's one of the kinds of mysteries I enjoy solving. I know, I'm sick. So, since I have so little time now, I will post a couple of highlights.

Parents' Weekend - last weekend was Whitworth College's annual Parents' Weekend. The weather could not have been better. It was the perfect autumn day. The day began with breakfast at Shari's with our friends, the Harrisons, parents of the Son's freshman roommate, with whom we connected the day we first met. They live near Portland, so we only get to see them a couple of times a year. This year, their daughter is a new freshman at Whitworth, so they have two kids to be parents of during this event. We had a hurried breakfast, then returned to campus for our "mini college" - one of about 5 different presentations from which we get to choose, put on by professors, to give us parents a taste of what our kids experience daily. We went to one called "Evolution vs. Faith" by Dr. Michael Sardinia, a professor of advanced biology and a veterinarian. It was fantastic! When I have time, I'll share what he had to say. It really was a wonderful class, as all the mini colleges we've attended have been. I am so jealous! I want to go back to college!

After the mini college, we had lunch (college dorm food - not the best), then went to the football game, which was also the Homecoming game. Whitworth killed their opponent, Lewis Clark College. We left at halftime because it was such a rout. The final score was 70-3. The next few hours we just hung out with The Son. At 7:30 PM we went to the auditorium for the fall production - The Pirates of Penzance. I LOVED it. The Spouse wasn't as thrilled. He doesn't go in much for theatrical productions. I did catch him chuckling several times, though. The performance was stellar. They even customized some of the lyrics of I am the very model of a modern major general to incorporate several Whitworth traditions. The audience roared. It really was a delightul performance. The Son did not accompany us. At the end of the show, we bid the Harrisons goodbye as we would not be returning on Sunday. We picked The Son up from his dorm and went to a late dinner, returned him to his dorm, and embarked on the long drive home at about 11:30 PM, arriving home at 1:15 AM. What a great day!

Next.... the follow-up eye appointments....

Is that frost?

What a beautiful morning! It's sunny, and from the looks of my deck, it's cold! My back lawn is covered in frost this morning, as is half my deck. This is it, folks. Autumn is upon us. The leaves on the aspens across the street make it look like the proverbial money tree, except instead of leaves made of greenbacks, the leaves are golden coins hanging from white-barked branches. Every few seconds, a golden coin falls from a branch and disappears into the underbrush. I'm convinced this is where the leprechauns get the gold for their rainbow anchoring pots.

My cat is laying curled up next to me. She is dreaming, her mouth twitching, little sounds emanating from within, her paws moving every few seconds as if in pursuit of some prey. It's funny that a cat who has never caught a mouse, or any form of prey other than a toy we drag around, or a hand under a blanket, has dreams that are obviously about chasing and catching some critter. The closest she's been to a mouse has been standing at the sliding glass door watching the squirrels play on the deck, aching to get out the door so she can eat one of them. She's an indoor cat. She can only imagine the life her outdoor counterparts lead, and apparently she does that quite often as she sleeps. She's so darned cute, and furry, and cuddly looking laying here next to me. I just want to pick her up and hug her, but she doesn't go for that. She likes to sit on my lap, likes to sleep next to me at night, likes to lay next to me when I'm on the sofa, but hates to be held. She'll bite me if I pick her up. She is, after all, a cat, with a very real mind of her own. And right now, she's dreaming, sun is streaming through the door onto her, the trees are beautiful, I have 20/20 vision, and life is great.

A Poetic Break

I have written a few poems in my life. I wouldn’t call myself a poet, though, much the way I don’t call myself a writer. I like to write. I sometimes like to write poems. I sometimes do one or the other well. When it comes to poetry in general, with the exception of the Shakespeares, the Keatses, the Byrons and Yeatses, e.e cummings, and a very few others, I’m often left like the comic strip character – with a question mark hovering over my head as I puzzle over the meaning of a poem about which some critic has raved. A lot of contemporary poetry is like a lot modern art – it seems it has to be beyond description or comprehension, as if hiding some deep truth that only those with enough insight, talent, and awareness are capable of seeing – in order to be considered praiseworthy by the snobs in the world of art and literature. God forbid the art should be of something recognizable, like a landscape or nature scene, or the poem should tell a story with which we can identify. When that is the case, it most certainly is not art. It’s too mainstream, too commercial, and too mundane. Given that, you can probably imagine what I was prepared to hear when a poet was listed as the speaker during our luncheon at the library conference I attended last Thursday. I expected to be subjected to a reading of his works, after which I would sit, eyebrows knit in puzzlement, trying to make sense of them, praying during his discussion of said works I would catch some glimpse of his intent. To my delight, that was not the case.

Robert Wrigley is the poet in question. I was so moved by his work that I bought his book. He is a charming, handsome man who adores his wife (a respected writer) and children. He is not overly impressed with himself. He writes well. When I bought his book, which he signed of course, I told him I like that his poems make sense, and tell a story, and I hate ones that don’t. He said he felt the same. He gave me hope. He even made me want to write some poems. This link gives a brief bio of him. And here’s a bit of that bio:

Robert Wrigley was born in 1951, in East St. Louis, Illinois, and grew up not far away in Collinsville, a coal mining town. He was the first member of his family ever to graduate from college and the first male--in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wales, and Germany--never to work in a coal mine. In 1971, with a draft lottery number of 66, he was inducted into the U.S. Army. After four months of training and duties, he filed for discharge on the grounds of conscientious objection and spent the next five months attached to "Special Training Detachment #2" at Ft Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas. For two weeks in October of that year, he dug a trench eighteen inches wide by twenty-four inches deep by 80 yards long. It took him only four days to fill it back up. In November, he was honorably discharged….

Here’s an interview with him from the University of Idaho’s literary magazine. And another from Poetry Daily.

And here is a sample of his work:
The Local Myth of a Kiss by Robert Wrigley
That neighbor boy who tried to kiss the frost
from Alice Murtaugh's tombstone married
his lips to the legend of this place. Did he
notice the dates of her life at all, I wonder.
Or how despite the cold the flowers on her grave
were hardly spoilt at all: three red roses,
their petal edges kissed half as hard as he was.
There is someone, it is said, who remembers
just what it was Alice Murtaugh whispered
in the shotgun's mouth, who had tried
the tongues of love and found them wanton.
Remembers, and dies
a little every day, it is said, though no one
knows the source of the weekly flowers.
It's like the weather or the wind,
the way the fog crawls up the canyon walls
and freezes, until the cemetery's ornate gates
loom ghostly, and the stones recede in clouds
that cling. Had he not panicked
and snapped his head back hard,
the boy might have been all right.
Now, however, an odd blossom etched
in the polished stone, a faint gray rose
over the weekly, inclement others
no one ever sees arrayed.
How is it forgotten,
such desperate parting, the kiss
that won't let go?

The view from here is exquisite

The transformation is complete. I have gone from a blind-as-a-bat, squinting to see the clock upon awaking, glasses wearing nerd to a now-my-vision-is-better-than-20/20 superhero. Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little - I wasn't really blind as a bat. It does feel almost superheroic, though. Someone who has always had perfect vision can't possibly understand. My fellow myopics know exactly what I mean. We've always dreamed of being able to see when we awaken in the middle of the night without first groping in the dark for our glasses. We've imagined what it would be like to swim underwater and actually see where we are going; or in my case, opening our eyes after diving in without the ensuing panic upon the realization that our contacts were in and they have probably now floated away. We've fantasized about falling asleep on a train, plane, or in a car, during a long trip, and not waking to dried out, hazy contact lenses, and eyes so scratchy it's obvious the sandman was on a bender and dumped his entire load into our eyes. Those were my fantasies. They are now my reality. I can't help but marvel at the technology that has made this possible. I wonder about the first people on whom this technology was tested. Were they so blind that the potential hazards were heavily outweighed by the potential benefits? I'm sure that information is available, and I'll probably look it up. But I can't imagine there is much that is more frightening than messing with your vision. I thank them for their bravery, the bravery that has made my better-than-20/20 vision possible today. It is truly miraculous. For those of you who are afraid - don't be. It is so easy, so relatively painless (there is some discomfort on day one, but day two is pain free), and so life altering, that if you are a candidate, you really should do it. If your corneas are too thin for Lasik, then do PRK. While it is more painful (the watering, scratchy eyes last two or three days instead of one), it too is well worth it. My daughter is on day three today following PRK this past Saturday, and is doing really well. On day two she already had 20/30 vision - an outcome they don't generally expect until day 5 or 6 with PRK. We both agree this was money very well spent (about $1700 for each of us) and we'd both do it again in a heartbeat.

Google bombs, digital natives, and lasik

Tomorrow is the big day. The left eye gets the Lasik treatment and I will have perfect vision in BOTH eyes. Yay! I can't wait.

Today was interesting. I attended an Idaho Library Association conference in Moscow, ID. I went expressly to listen to Stephen Abrams, VP of Innovation at SirsiDynix. He is trying to help librarians and libraries move into the 21st century, to embrace technology, to look at the services they offer and whether they're reaching their audience, and to figure out how to reach today's teens more effectively. He is talking about a paradigm shift in how we view the delivery of services to patrons. He is really motivational and thought-provoking. If you are even remotely interested, this article about Digital Natives is terrific. Stephen's blog is here. It's pretty library oriented, so it probably won't interest most of you, but the digital natives site is great, especially if you're a parent of a teen. Heck, I think it's interesting for anyone.

One thing I learned today that I didn't know was that Google doesn't just index the web and provide results in an unbiased way. The results are actually driven by various special interest (translated political and religious) groups to provide results that support their positions. They're called "google bombs". Want more info? Click here. Dumb me. I should have known this, and I didn't. So, I learned something new today. Lots of somethings new. I love days like today.

From 20/425 to 20/15 in 10 seconds

A week ago today, my vision was about 20/425 in my right eye, with a substantial astigmatism, and 20/400 in my left eye, with minimal astigmatism.  Basically, I was blind as a bat without corrective lenses.  

For the past few years, I’ve struggled with my beloved soft contact lenses.  I’ve worn soft contacts every day of my life since the summer of 1973 with great success.  I even went about 20 years without a pair of glasses for backup.  A few years ago, I decided I needed to start wearing a toric lens in my right eye to correct my astigmatism, which had gotten bad enough that it needed correction.  I had worn a toric lens several years ago quite successfully, but they were substantially more expensive, so when that one needed replacing, I went back to a normal lens.  Toric lenses are still more expensive, but nearly as much so as they once were.  Unfortunately, I could not find a lens that didn’t rotate once I put it in my eye.  It would seem to be fine, but about an hour after inserting it, it would rotate about 5 degrees, making everything blurry and defeating the purpose of wearing it.  I struggled through 5 different brands and at least two or three different lenses in each brand, to no avail.  I finally gave up and got my first pair of glasses in 20 years.  I was quickly reminded why I hated glasses.  I longed for perfect vision.  My sister had had Lasik surgery several years ago and couldn’t say enough good things about it, but it had cost her $4,000.  Everyone I knew who’d had it, had spent over $2,000.  I just couldn’t justify spending that much money on something that wasn’t a necessity, not with a kid in college.

The newspaper always has an ad or two about Lasik, especially Sunday’s paper.  I’ve seen ads for Lasik for just $295 per eye, but there is always fine print.  I figured those ads were loss leaders, and that the majority of people wouldn’t qualify for the advertised price.  Then, my son-in-law’s sister had Lasik – for $295 per eye.  She said she wasn’t pressured into a higher priced option either.  So, I made the call and went in for a consultation.  While my astigmatism did mean I didn’t qualify for the $295 per eye surgery, I did qualify for the $495 per eye surgery.  That was still a great price.  Last Monday, I went in for my surgery.  

During the meeting with the surgeon, we discussed the fact that I’d likely need reading glasses after the surgery.  Given the fact that I needed them now when I had my contacts in, I expected that.  What I wasn’t sure about was whether I would need them to see my computer or not. If I did, that almost defeated the purpose of getting Lasik, since I spend all day in front of the computer and would pretty much need to wear glasses all day long.  We decided to try correcting just my right eye – my worst, and dominant, eye – and leave my left eye uncorrected.  That would allow me to read without glasses, but still have clear distance vision.  It would take my brain about two to four weeks to adapt, but once I adapted, I would have the best of both worlds – near and distance vision without correction.

They have you take this pain medication – Lyrica – 3 hours before surgery, then another dose when you arrive at the office.  Now, I’m one of those people who never takes pain meds besides ibuprofen or aspirin.  I have a very high pain threshold and a very low tolerance for drugs of any kind, including alcohol, but I did as I was instructed.  By the time I arrived at the office, I was feeling pretty loopy.  I took my second dose neverthless.  During the meeting with the surgeon just before surgery, he gave me a Valium.  They want you to be relaxed.  Within half an hour, I was really feeling wobbly, but surgery was imminent, and they want you to sleep afterward if you can.

I was taken into the surgery room, feet and hair covered in those booties and hair coverings doctors wear.  I laid down on a table where they put a shield over my left eye (the one not being corrected), put anesthetizing drops in my right eye, and then put something on my eye to keep it open.  Within seconds they had cut the flap.  Now, for those who don’t know how it works, they cut a very thin flap in your cornea with, in this case, a laser.  Then, they use a different laser that works off the scan they took of my eye during my consultation/exam a few days earlier, and blast away corneal tissue to create the reshaped cornea that will provide perfect vision.  The flap is then folded back into place, and you’re done!  So, they cut the flap, stood me up – everything is a very hazy gray blur of shapes at this point – walked me to a different table, upon which I laid, had me look at this green dot of light, and then started doing the correction.  There is a smell that kept my eye open, and I was finished!  They put drops in right away, so everything is foggy, but I can tell immediately that my vision is better.  That was it.  I was finished!

I sat in the waiting area for my daughter to pick me up, chatting with a fellow who was in for a consultation and marveling at my vision.  I was starting to feel really woozy though, and really just wanted to nap.  My eye felt like I had a hair in it – annoying but not painful.  My daughter arrived in a few minutes.  I donned the provided sunglasses, wobbled to her car, got in, and started feeling kind of queasy.  I realized I hadn’t eaten all day, and it was after 3PM.  We stopped at a McDonald’s, where I grabbed a Coke and a burger, and then we headed for home.  I really did just want to sleep, so tried to doze on the way home.  I was battling waves of nausea, which I attributed to both the drugs and the uneven vision that my brain was struggling to understand.  At last, I did fall asleep.  90 minutes later, we arrived at my house.  As I walked in, I was overwhelmed with nausea.  I went straight to the bathroom and vomited, then crawled to my bed.  I got in bed, fully clothed, and passed out.  I did not awaken until 4 hours later.  Even then, I awoke only briefly, put in the antibiotic drops they had given me, and fell back to sleep.  As I said, I am a lightweight when it comes to drugs, and I was definitely not handling the combination of the Lyrica and Valium well at all.  

The next morning, I awoke to clear vision.  Even with just one eye corrected, I could see like I’d never seen before.  I got up to make lunch for the Spouse, and could see as well as I did with my glasses on.  I could see crumbs on the counter, yet I could read the calendar on my refrigerator and the newspaper.  I had a follow-up appointment that morning, so I had to leave pretty early.  The one down side – you can’t wear any makeup at all the day of, or three days after, surgery, and you can’t wear eye makeup for a week.  That has been rough.  

My follow-up appointment went great.  My vision in my right eye is now 20/15!  After a few days of work, I realized that my corrected eye is the one that is in use when I am at my computer as it is about 3 feet away.  Not only that, I can actually read with my right eye in most situations.  If the light is dim, like lamplight in my living room, I need reading glasses, but at work, and most everywhere else, I can read without glasses.  So, I am going to have the left eye corrected Friday.  Eventually, I will need reading glasses for everything I read, but I shouldn’t need them for the computer for some time.  I can live with that.  This time around, I am not taking any pain meds beforehand, and only half a Valium.  I should be in a much better state after this go around.  

My daughter is having her surgery on Saturday.  She is even more nearsighted than I am, but has no astigmatism.  She can look forward to 20 years of correction free vision.  Lucky kid!

Today, I can't even see the big E on the eye chart, but tomorrow.....

Today I go in for Lasik eye surgery to correct my ridiculously near-sighted vision. I have wanted to have this done for years, but it's always been too expensive. Well, too expensive to justify spending THAT much money on just me for something I didn't HAVE to have since I could see just fine with my contact lenses. But a few years ago, my astigmatism in my right eye became bad enough that I could no longer see clearly with just a distance vision correcting lens in it. I needed a toric lens.

I had worn a toric lens in my right eye about 15 years ago with no problem, but when it "wore out", I returned to just normal soft lenses because torics were so expensive back then and I could see well enough without the astigmatism correction. That was no longer the case. Unfortunately, this time around I could not find a toric lens that would sit straight on my eye to save my life. I went through five different brands and two or three variations in each model, and each time, the lens would rotate about 5 degrees. That left me constantly rubbing my eye in an attempt to get the lens back into position. After struggling with this for over a year, I gave up. I started wearing my glasses to work and left wearing my contact lenses for the weekends. I hate wearing glasses. I haven't worn them regularly since getting my first pair of soft contact lenses in the summer of 1973.

I remember the day vividly. I lived at home. It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college. I was heading to UC Santa Barbara in the fall after a year at junior college in Santa Maria. I remember I had to go to Santa Barbara to get them for some reason - probably because podunk Santa Maria didn't have doctors who gave them out yet. Part of the plan for the day was to tour the UCSB campus. I remember that when the lenses were first inserted in my eyes, it felt like I had a hair in my eye for just a few seconds. As soon as my eyes teared up a bit, I couldn't feel them at all. I also remember walking around on campus amazed at how clearly I could see the leaves on the eucalyptus trees, and how cool it was to have vision that was not boxed in by frames. I took to soft lenses like a duck to water. From that day on, I did not wear glasses again, except briefly upon arising or just before retiring for the night. For the past 20 years or so, I haven't even owned a pair of glasses. But now, I wear them daily once again.

A few months ago, my son-in-law's sister had Lasik done in Spokane. The price was an amazingly inexpensive $1,000. That was a figure I could handle, especially since I have $450 in a health benefits spending account I have to use by the year's end or lose. I made an appointment for a consultation for myself and my daughter, who is also as blind as a bat, minus the astigmatism. Last Thursday, we both went for the exam. While I have pretty typical eyes and can have the normal Lasik procedure, she has thin corneas and will have to have either a different kind of Lasik or PRK. She will find out which today. At 1:00 PM today, I will be in the doctor's office preparing for my Lasik surgery. By 4:00 PM today, I should be able to see better than I've seen since I was a little kid. My only concern is how bad my presbyopia will be after surgery. I have the option of having monovision done - they correct your dominant eye for distance and leave your other eye uncorrected so you can read without glasses - but I'm not sure I would like that. You do lose some depth perception and it takes a couple of weeks to a month for your brain to fully adapt. I'll talk to the doctor today. Regardless, I WILL see without glasses after surgery today. I can hardly believe it, and I can hardly wait! My daughter goes in for her surgery on October 7. She, at least, won't need reading glasses for years. I wish I'd been able to have this done years ago so I could have enjoyed years of glasses free vision, but to be able to wake up and see, to see in the middle of the night, to be able to go in the water and not worry about losing a contact lens - I can't even tell you how exciting that is.

So.... tomorrow I will try to post and give you the scoop on what it's like post-Lasik.

The end of days - and post #203

Gosh, this is my 203rd post! I didn't even notice when I hit number 200. Of course, that's a small number of posts compared to some of my more prolific bloggy friends, but considering my workload, well, it's not too bad.

It's painfully apparent that summer is drawing quickly to a close. The weather isn't the giveaway, though. It's the absence of the sun at times when, in the very near past, it has normally hung high in the sky. I really noticed it this morning when The Spouse left for work. Usually, I can see his car just fine as I stand at the kitchen window waving goodbye. This morning, the sun had yet to peek above the horizon. The sky was almost still dark, and he needed his headlights. That was at 6:00 AM.

Wasn't it just last week that the sun was waking me up at 5:00 AM as it blasted through the bedroom window? It seems like it. Even now, at 7:50 AM, the sun is just barely above the tops of the 20 foot tall trees in the neighbor's yard. And it has moved into a more southerly position in the sky, as opposed to the very easterly one it occupies all summer long. And last night after work, as I mowed the lawn, I found myself doing so in growing darkness, barely finishing the front yard before it became too dusky to see where I'd mowed and where I needed to mow. By 7:30 PM it was too dark to continue. Not that it was actually dark, mind you. It was just not bright enough to continue mowing. In another week, it will be too dark by 7:00 PM.

The color of the sun's light has changed too, especially the afternoon light. It has taken on that autumn glow that signals the trees to change color, and evokes an innate sense of urgency and impending change in many of us. It has a more golden color to it, as opposed to the white-hot color of the July sun. The summer sun invites us to languish in it, to soak it in, to relax and take it easy. The autumn sun urges us to hurry, to organize, prepare, complete projects, stock our cupboards. It whispers to us, reminding us that winter is just around the corner; and no amount of tweaking of daylight savings time will stop its arrival. But between summer and winter is autumn, harvest, the season of change. I'm looking forward to the apple harvest festivals this region holds each year, to college football games, to Parents' Weekend at Youngest Son's college, to the end of mowing season, to the gorgeous, crisp sunny days when the sky is as blue as a topaz, and the mountains to the east stand out in relief against it. I will miss summer, but I am ready for fall, and it's getting nearer day by day.

Weight loss update

So, amazingly and surprisingly, I've started losing weight again. What I mean is, despite my best efforts over the past few months, I was fighting a losing battle against my weight. I'd lose three or four pounds, only to gain them back even more quickly. Over the past few weeks, I started trying more diligently to watch my diet. I was rewarded with a loss of a few pounds that stayed off. Then, this past week, I found myself losing about half a pound a day, to my utter astonishment. The net result is that I have lost about 17 pounds over the past 4 or 5 months! I still have 20 to go to get to where I was when Youngest Son went off to college in 2004, the weight at which I'd been "stuck" for a few years, and 35 to get to my ideal weight, a goal I haven't achieved since 1998, but I have a renewed hope that I can actually achieve those goals now. Anyone who has fought their weight understands how good it feels to achieve a goal, even a little, interim one, and how motivating that can be. My boss has lost about 40 pounds in the last couple of months, thanks to a renewed dedication to Weight Watchers. His success is what spurred me to work harder at my own weight loss, coupled with a concern for my health and fitness, which has always been excellent, but which was being negatively impacted by my weight. So.... a little success, with hopefully more to come!

9/11

Every morning, while getting ready for work, The Spouse turns on the news. Today, of course, it's all about September 11. I keep getting all choked up. Regardless of your thoughts about the president, the war in Iraq, or anything else, I suspect we all share similar feelings about that awful day. One thing that makes me sad is remembering how united we all were on that day, and the days following, and contrasting it with the climate in this country today. We weren't Republicans and Democrats, we weren't black, white, asian, or hispanic, we were just Americans who shared a national grief. And most of the world grieved with us. But today there is so much division, so much name-calling, so many doubts, so much second-guessing. And so much of the world looks upon us with disdain. It makes me sad. But then, I've never been one to handle division and conflict very well. I want peace and unity. I'm an idealist, I know.

Last Vacation of the Summer - Take Two

Note: I had a really great, long post written, and blogger ate it. All I could recover is what follows...not even half of my post. I am too aggravated to rewrite it now. In summary, we painted the garage doors too, which was a project in itself, and moved Youngest Son back to school on Labor Day. I did some long overdue transplanting of stuff, of which I took photos and might post about separately when I get over being peeved at blogger. For now, read what blogger didn't eat. Grrrrr!

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My last vacation of the summer is over. I am back at work. Oddly, I missed being at work when I was off. What does that say about me? Maybe it just says a lot about my job.

The week off was a busy one, as I said it would be. We successfully accomplished the power-washing and restaining of our deck (photos to follow), with the assistance of daughter and son-in-law, who came over one afternoon to help us get the project completed in at least half the time it would have taken the two of us alone. We repaid them with a BBQ dinner of tri-tip, roasted peppers and zucchini, green salad with tomatoes fresh from my dad's garden, and Italian bread, with ice cream for dessert. During the meal, Grandson, age 5, was stung by a wasp - the second time in as many days. The yard seemed to be infested with the darned things, and Grandson appears to be a wasp magnet. I have the magic potion, though, that stops the swelling and the pain almost immediately - Adolph's meat tenderizer dissolved in a bit of water, applied with a cotton ball to the sting and held in place for several minutes. Grandson is convinced Grammy is magic. Meanwhile, Poppy and Dad are out spraying wasps with "dead on contact" spray, knocking down wasp nests from hidden places, and stomping them to bits. Turns out there was a huge wasp's nest right next to the swingset on a post used to hold up the tarp covering our boat. Grandson was swinging when the first sting came - on his face next to his mouth. The second sting came while sitting on our wrought iron picnic table eating dinner. The little yellow striped buggers had made nests in each of the four open-ended pipes that made up the legs of the table - right under Grandson's seat. Lucky kid.

Once the staining was finished, it was on to the trim. The deck is 800 square feet of cedar with slate blue fascia and railings that are a combination of slate blue, white vinyl lattice, and white vinyl handrails. All the blue trim had to be painted - carefully so as not to get any paint on the newly stained deck surface. You have no idea how much work that involved. Backbreaking work that could only be done after 2PM when shade hits the deck. Spouse did 95% of it. All I did was get the small art brush and do the places that were too small or precise for his big brush. (subsequent paragraphs gobbled by blogger)

Another vacation

Next week I will be taking my last week of summer vacation (I still have a week in November and one in December coming). I am not going anywhere this time; I'll be working around the old homestead. So, you know what that means. I likely won't be blogging or commenting. I hope you don't miss me too much. :-) I'll be back at it the Tuesday after Labor Day, while the youngest son starts his junior year of college.

Beginning tomorrow, my days will be filled with painting of garage doors and deck trim, staining of said deck, digging out overgrown shubbery and replacing it with wonderful perennial flowers, with a few trips to The Big City thrown in for good measure. I am sure I'll be called in to work at least once, maybe twice, while on vacation. That's just par for the course. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to work up a post, but I am not promising anything. Ciao, friends! I'll miss you. Stay out of trouble in my absence (charlie, that means you!) And be nice to Amy.

Blog workshop

Hi everyone...guess where I am? At a library workshop on blogging and the use of blogs in/for libraries. I am one of only two people at this workshop, which about 15 attendees, who has a blog. The instructor is showing everyone how to set up a Blogger blog. Naturally, I am exempt from this part of the workshop. (I think I get an A on this section.) The afternoon session is about RSS. I have tons of RSS feeds (I like to know when you guys post as soon as you do, so I get your blog feeds!) but I don't know how to create a feed on our web site. So, that's what I hope to learn this afternoon. Since he's teaching everyone how to create a blog and post to it, it's okay that I'm blogging right now. In fact, we're supposed to blog right now. Yippee! Paid to blog! :)

Growing pains

My town is changing - quickly, and not necessarily for the better. Obviously, every town changes with time. Businesses come and go, as do people; some move, some die, all change with age, sometimes becoming unrecognizable. New neighborhoods spring up, new businesses sprout from once vacant lots, new roads go in to service all the newness, and the face of the town changes. For the most part, those changes have been gradual in my town. It's a small town, off the beaten path a bit, and short of its breathtaking geographic beauty, lacking most of the qualities that draw throngs of new residents. There are very few well-paying jobs in town. There isn't much in the way of affordable housing available. With the exception of WalMart, Home Depot, and the usual fast food enterprises, we lack major retail outlets. It's more than an hour drive to the nearest mall or movie theater. There is no institute of higher education within a 70 mile radius. But the area is beautiful - breathtakingly so. As a result, the various magazines that rate such things (Sunset, Outdoor Life, and the like), have deemed this town one of the country's most desirable places in which to live, going so far as to call it "the next Aspen". I want to thank those publications so much for those articles.

Not wanting to miss out on the latest, hottest, hippest thing, people are flocking to this area. They are not flocking to live and work here, though. They are coming to develop the area, build homes, drive up housing prices, sell their spec homes, then move on to the next hot market. The people who can afford these new homes are mostly retired, usually don't plan to live here year 'round, and add nothing to the economy in the way of jobs created. Sometimes they are people who need a tax write-off in the form of a second home, or maybe they want to escape city life for a week or two a year, so they build a home here to meet that need. Unfortunately, they usually bring their big-city attitudes with them when they are in town, driving aggressively, behaving rudely in our local business establishments, treating the employees at said establishments as servants, barely worthy of acknowledgement. Yes, my town is changing.

Houses are going up faster than I can keep track of them. Neighborhoods of dozens of ostentiously enormous homes, paved with wide, interstate-like roads, are being cut into the previously roadless, pristine forests, miles from downtown, changing the very nature of the area. If I take a different route to work, I am apt to be assaulted by the shock of seeing new "premier, upscale townhomes" being built where a block of quaint little homes once stood, as was the case this morning. Laughably, these premier townhomes back up to shoddy little houses (picture chicken coops in the yard, laundry hanging on the line) and front one of the few busy streets in town. Not exactly my idea of a "premier, upscale" location, yet they're asking more for them than the value at which my house, on half an acre, with lake access, was appraised. We are in the midst of a sort of tax revolution as a result of the meteoric rise in property values. My property taxes are set to increase by more than 50% this next year. Thank you, all you "hipsters" who are changing my town.

When I first moved here, if I called my friends at home, and they were not there, I could almost always find them by just driving around the few streets that comprise "downtown", locating their vehicle, and going into the store on that street. They were almost certainly inside, or walking down the street, easily spotted. Going to the grocery store took forever because I invariably knew 75% of the people in the store, and of course, had to stop to chat for a few minutes. Everyone smiled at everyone else. People said "hi" even if they didn't know you. They probably know your folks, kids, siblings, or neighbors. It was a nice feeling. If my kids were at the City Beach, and I had to leave for some reason, there was always a contingent of friends around me who would look after them for me. Now, I barely recognize a tenth of the people I see on the streets, or in the shops. Now that we've become "hip", the folks walking our streets and perusing our shops are usually tourists, or seasonal residents. Most locals don't even go downtown any more. The parking is a nightmare, the shops are tourist oriented, and unless you work downtown, you seldom have a reason to do so. Yep, my town is changing.

I used to joke that we didn't have rush hour here, we have "rush minute". No more. Traffic in town is choked from a two lane road into a one lane road on both ends of town, as it comes into town and as it leaves town. The volume of traffic has increased 5-fold, yet we have roads that haven't had their capacity expanded in over 20 years. We now have rush half-hour. I avoid it by leaving for the gym at 6:30 AM and not leaving work until 6:30 PM. My town is changing, and I am not thrilled with most of them. But I still love my town. I hope we find a way to deal with all the changes without losing our character, our heart, our core.