New Specs

So today I got something new from the optometrist: progressive lenses.



OH I don't wear them all slid down my nose like that all the time, no, because then I'm not really looking through the lenses, am I? And what good would that be? If you look closely, you'll see that the fronts are black, and the sides are green, and yes that is a glass of Riesling behind me and no, I'm not always so stern-looking. Except when you're in my way or you're not moving quickly enough for me or you're not doing what I told you to do.



See? Green. And not so stern. And books! Up top, Michael Ondaatje and Carol Shields, Nino Ricci and Robertson Davies, a slice of CanLit. Under the cribbage board, Jose Saramago, John Berger and Mavis Gallant....and then Michael Ignatieff goes and sneaks in with his loving tribute to Irving Berlin. Isaiah Berlin. And Pilgrim by Timothy Findley, which is a lovely book that is impossible to understand. Or else I'm an idiot, which is quite possible. Down below that, some old books, some art books, some other stuff I can't remember, and my wine.

I would much rather show pictures of myself than talk about all the garbage that went on today. Let's say you make a decision not to do something you usually do, because circumstances have changed today and you have to change your routine. Then say your colleague totals his car just a minute ahead of you on the road, so you pull up and there he is, and his little Echo is all smashed-in and he's on the phone with his wife and then his insurance agent and then who knows who...and in the end he's okay and you take him home again later in the day? Would that not be the perfect icing on the Dad's dying cake? Naturally it would. Then say later you're hoping to pick up a coat that needed a repair, and the repair people say, "No, it's not done. We said Tuesday after 6:00 and we don't mean before 6:00. We can't get it done before 6:00," which is fine but then they feel all guilty for upholding their policies and try to get me to hang out in the mall for a couple of hours so they can work on the thing and no, really, I don't care if it's not done, I just thought I'd see if it's done. Uphold the policy, by all means. I am absolutely the most impatient person on the planet, but I'm the last person who will stand there and say, you do the work for me now, ahead of all these other people who by rights should be ahead of me. It seemed very weird to me and I scooted out of there quickly. I can get the coat another day.

Anyway, instead I went and picked up my new glasses and here they are, and now I've been wearing them for a few hours and no more are they making me dizzy (although they seem to be affecting the way I write, and not in a good way) but they are pinching my head and things have been so insane today I really, really just want to go to bed. Thursday I'm going out west to see Dad, and we shall see if he's cheating Death or not. This would be the third or fourth time that the final scythe has missed him, so who knows. Maybe this is it. I will see for myself in a few days.

Stop the world, I need to get off and get a drink

So you know, if I write a bunch of garbage about completing structural analyses and tuning probes and whatever else it was I wrote about in that last post (except the kids, because they were cute) then you know that life is going faster than I'd like it to go, and I don't exactly have the words to explain what the devil is going on. Plus it's February, the cruellest month, even if it had a most excellent lunar eclipse. That is not enough to pull one out of the giant blue funkorama that February is. I am positive that I am not the only person to talk about this, so I'm going to leave it be, although I had a rather down day and I'm sort of half-drunk now so if this turns into a blathering self-indulgent fest feel free to leave your computer for the mindlessness of HNIC. If it's still Saturday night and you're in Canada. If not, then the CBC is not in your reach and the internet will have to do you and I'm sorry because you won't be able to listen to the song, and the song is the thing that rings in Saturday night. If you're young, then it's sort of time to get ready once you hear the song, and if you're older then it's either time to put the kids to bed or else it's time to get some beer or it's time for tea or it's time for bed.....or it's time for that Saturday night thang, because by the way, you're older.

Okay, so this week bit those brass monkey balls. This week my dad almost died, but not quite, because he's my dad who's been cheating death for years now, and he's done it again. By Sunday, he'd not peed for three days.

That's sunk in, right? Three days? If it had been even 24 hours, would you not be begging everyone around you to take you to the hospital absolutely right now because something somewhere is not working and all the liquid in your body is pooling...in your body? Of course you would. But if you're my dad then you deny that this is happening. "I'm fine, this will clear itself up." Never mind that you only have one kidney. 72 hours and one kidney and no pee? Panic, and maybe a tiny bit of frustration. Perhaps you're feeling bloated? Oh no, not my dad, who says that he's seeing his own GP on Monday anyway, let's just wait and see what she says. Can I just remind you that my dad is a trained EMT? this helps everyone else, except him, because he will ignore every symptom in the book and then lie about the rest of them. Anyway, when he did see his doc on Monday, she sent him off to Emerg, and he went there, barely with the world.

He has apparently cheated Death again as I said, in that they've figured out that heart failure, not kidney failure, is his problem, but that the fluid that would have normally gone to his lungs and drowned him has instead just sat in his body, because he takes drugs to clear his lungs. Drugs that are apparently no good for the kidneys. Or kidney, as in his case. So now he's in the hospital still, and things are clearing up a bit, but he's confused and saying unusual things, which is new, and his body is mad because it's all screwed up, and my sister the ICU nurse is mad because his nurses are useless in her estimation, and my stepmother is doing what she does, which is coping.

We'll go and visit when he's home, March break I think, and with luck he'll last another six months or so before this entire mortal coil gives up its fight and we have to go for a funeral. I just want the kids to see him when he's up and available for a conversation.....they've lost two family members already in the last six months, they're getting used to the fact that people die. Still, they should see him.

Speaking of my dad and his one kidney, I have a new audiologist who is totally awesome and who is fitting me with hearing aids that are going to break the bank (real cost, $3100 each...but with extended health and OHIP, we cut that total number by $2K, i.e. $4200 for the pair.) but with luck I will be able to hear way more clearly. It turns out that the embryonic tissue that makes the heart and kidneys and the like also make the auditory bits. It turns out that it is very possibly an hereditary problem. Yea. Or yuck, since there's nothing I can do about it. I did surprise the audiologist, however, because during my tympanic test my results were not normal. I can take noise with masking into an ear, but the same noise blasted into the opposite ear is very bad and I get angry and rip the earphone out of my head. Same thing on both sides, which is apparently not normal and she'd never seen it before. I make no claim on normalcy and in fact, perhaps this indicates that my problem is not my hearing but my brain. This is no consolation by the way, because knowing that your brain is wacky just isn't a source of comfort, you know? Another weird thing is, and I have asked several people about this, and it turns out that being able to unfocus your hearing is not in the normal realm. What I mean is that I can be half-listening to something and let my brain shift it a bit, so that it sounds sort of like a foreign language even if it's English. I thought everyone could do this, like unfocussing their eyes. Apparently no, people do not "unfocus" their ears. Well, people don't. I do.

On top of the (full cost) $6200 ear things, I also will pick up my new glasses on Monday. These have "progressive" lenses.....those unlined bifocals. I don't really really need glasses, but I've been having a slight problem with seeing lately. Very slight. I can see in the distance, but I have an astigmatism and so I sort of don't focus well on anything in the distance, and then of course I have those "old eyes" that would prefer to have reading glasses, thank you very much. Progressive lenses are the two in one kind that take care of the distance and the reading in one. Oh happy day. Cost prior to extended health benefit: $500.

Welcome to my $6700 head, not counting dental benefits, which if I'd had braces as a kid would of course up the ante, but we will just not go there. As an adult, I should not need to spend so much money just to function day to day like a regular person.

Okay? We're up to speed now? My dad didn't die and I need all this expensive headgear. Other things too, spiritual and religious things did and didn't happen, but these are things I need to keep to myself for now. Regular life is a bag of dirt.

Oh, and I went to work too and people are saying remarkably good things about me. I mean, amazing things, where experts in their fields are coming to me in the hallways and introducing themselves and saying how pleased they are that I've joined the staff, that they're happy we'll finally get some real work done now. Yeesh. Guess I'd better figure out what it is that I do.

Whole lotta nothing

So a couple of weeks have passed. My low blood pressure self-diagnosis was wrong, it was an inner ear problem and it's mostly fine now. I just shouldn't turn around too quickly or bend over and stand up too quickly, or do certain things at yoga where I have to scoop my whole body through a movement. Most of those things make me sort of dizzy but not really......it's a yucky feeling.

Things said this week:

By the Big Child, who looked at me through bleary eyes at 6:30 a.m. and said, "Mumma why, why do you go to bed so late and get up so early?" to which the only logical reply was, "Because I am nuts."

By the Smaller Child, who was looking over Hub's shoulder while he was working. "Daddy, when will you be done this so I can go on Webkinz?" "The computer is not a toy. I am working." After two minutes, Small One says, "Ugh. This is going to take forever," and stomps off.

Things done this week:

Several crystal structures solved, one an organometallic complex that was actually two completely different compounds in the same crystal. While my crystallographic boss said he has seen this many times, I disagreed. "You have not. That's not "normal", and you don't see it all the time." What I meant was that in general, when you make an organometallic Rh(I) complex, it's just the one compound that comes out at the end, not two. If you have more than one product, they crystallize separately. I've done a lot of that chemistry, but I just didn't realize what my argument was.

I calibrated the AV600, but not the lineshape. The lineshape sample is dissolved in acetone-d6, and the problem lies with the high pressure nitrogen line, which isn't steadily blowing N2. Generally, the lock signal for the lineshape sample isn't steady, so shimming this is difficult.

Monday evening, went to a Lenten evening retreat with a friend of mine.

Tuesday evening, mass.

Wednesday evening, yoga.

Thursday evening, home.

***
Not very exciting, which is why I haven't bothered to write anything. I have thought of fun posts, but the thoughts usually occur to me when I don't have anything to write on, and now of course they're out of my head. Perhaps tomorrow something will be clearer. For now it's late, and I should go to bed, because even if I don't have to or want to tomorrow, I will likely get up ridiculously early and complain because I stayed up too late.

Portent

These have been days of event. I could have written on Friday, when we were being buried under mounds of snow and none of us made it to work....schools and universities were closed....I sat here on the couch and made a hat for the Big One (StaceyJoy's Katie Hat. I will take a picture.) The snow came down all day, and Hub went out shovelling on and off all day, the kids played, I knit. Knitting is good. I could have done some work, I've got work to do at home, but it was a snow day. I also could have cleaned the house because god knows the house needs a cleaning, but no...I knit. Knitting was successful, I made a useful garment and it's fuchsia and it has really cool twisty shaping and it was lovely to knit. I do love a successful project.

Unfortunately, Saturday was not successful, although I did get to spend it on the couch. For some crazy reason my blood pressure tanked in the middle of the night, and I was left lightheaded and dizzy (or dizzy and lightheaded...believe it or not, the two are hard to distinguish) and not able to do much except lie here and not move. I don't think I was dizzy because the room was not spinning. I called Telehealth Ontario, the most fantastic bunch of R.N.'s anywhere, who chat you up and then help you decide if you need to see a doctor within four hours or within the next three days. This time, I'm on the next three days regimen, and that's okay with me. Since my doc is not available until Monday anyway, I'm good with waiting. Things got better as the day progressed, and I did sit at the table to have supper with the troops, although I hit the couch again soon after. I watched a lot of sports yesterday: the Habs beat the Islanders, there was some women's downhill from Saint Moritz (hey! Brenda Irving! would it kill you to use the French pronunciation??) and then a bit of news, and then Toronto skated all over Ottawa, which was good for Montreal. Do I normally watch hockey? Not really, but like anyone in this country, many of my Saturday nights have been punctuated with the HNIC song as I was heading out the door for an evening of revelry.

Today things are a bit better, as in I only sort of fell over on the way to the bathroom this morning, and I forced myself to sit up and to shower and to get dressed to go to mass. After that I asked for a trip to Shopper's Drug Mart so I could actually check my blood pressure, which was a (normal for me) 108/64. So maybe it's not the blood pressure, although I'm sure it's not dizziness but lightheadedness that I'm feeling. I made the Sunday pancakes and ate sitting up like a human, and then hit the couch again to pound this out and prove that I am still functioning.
There is still snow outside, and you might be thinking, "20cm of snow fell on you the other day. Of course there's still snow!" except that the weather is mental, and on Tuesday the temp is supposed to go to 9C, and that's warm enough to melt it all to a slithering mess again. Oooh! maybe the fainty feeling will pass and I'll get another weather-induced headache from hell! How exciting!

Or, you know, maybe I will just stop thinking about myself and my tiny ills.