To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
~ e. e. cummings
So we have this tree in our front yard that I've nicknamed the Leafy Bastard. It's a silver maple and it is huge.
The plus side of having a huge silver maple in the front yard is that we have some lovely shade in the summer months, something we never had at our old, virtually shadeless house. The downsides of having a huge silver maple in the front yard include the helicopter seeds that come down in massive quantities for weeks and weeks in the spring, followed by a summer's worth of bird crap all over the driveway (and anything thereupon) and what has happened over the past month. The shedding of the leaves.
Now, having a virtually shadeless yard up until this point in our homeowning lives, we never had to deal with leaf collection and removal. The two ornamental pear trees and one tiny maple at our old house only shed a minimal amount of leaves that were easily mulched in with the lawnmower. Not so the Leafy Bastard.
A few weeks ago, I attempted to rake the seventy-six squillion leaves that LB had dropped all over the front yard.
My next door neighbor kindly lent me her gas-powered leaf blower, and I had a fair amount of fun blowing the leaves towards the front of the yard before raking them to the curb. The residual effect of not being able to feel my arms from the elbow down after leafblowing with such enthusiasm for over an hour was a small price to pay. "Hey, leaf removal isn't so bad!" I thought to myself. Kiddo definitely thinks it is a grand, old time.
So, happy with the leaf containment I had achieved, I congratulated myself heartily on a job well done. Then I woke up and looked out the window the next day. Leafy Bastard had decided to mock my earnest efforts by dumping another seventy-six squillion leaves on the front yard. I'd have thought I dreamed the entire leaf-removing experience except that my ginormous pile was still there at the curb and the blisters were still all over my hands. (Yes, I wore gloves. I shudder to think what my hands would've looked like if I hadn't.)
It wound up taking four full leaf blowing/raking events over a three week period to get the majority of the leaves to the curb. Leafy Bastard. If you think I am being unduly harsh to ole LB, let me tell you this. It turns out that leaves are a serious allergen for my poor,beleaguered eyeballs. All that leaf work culminated in my eyelids swelling to the size of golf balls and my eyes feeling as though they were being stabbed by red hot pokers, along with my vision degrading to the point that I felt like I was seeing the world through heavily Vaselined lenses. I would've taken a picture to show you, but my eyes were getting really sensitive to the light too and I didn't want to kill them with the flash.
After a few days of worsening eye problems, I took myself over to the eye doctor to get 'em checked out. Sure enough, the icky eye disease I dealt with two years ago, GPC, had reoccured, and I also have some SPK going on, and the combination of the two has made a hot mess of corneal badness. (Google the abbreviations if you must, but do so at your own risk because they're both really icky.) For the record, things you don't want to hear while at the eye doctor include "Wow, it looks like someone took sandpaper to your corneas!" and a general sucking in of breath in horror as he gazes in the other side of the machine you're holding your eyes up to for examination. Now I'm back on eye steroid and antibiotic drops and off of my contacts while my corneas heal.
At least this gets me off of leaf-removal duty for the rest of the year. Did I mention we have another huge, leafy silver maple in our back yard?
If you're Kiddo's godmother (and my BFF), you give her these. As a "feel better soon" kind of present, mind you.
Yep, those are gumballs in the shape of bloody eyeballs.
Kiddo thinks they're hilarious.
(That's Kiddo, her godmother, the bloody eyeball gumballs, one of the books her godmother brought her and Merlin the Halloween cat, who is apparently related to Jack, the Halloween cat Kiddo got from her godmother a couple Halloweens ago.)
So, our first full day of movement-restricted, post-surgical convalescence is now 14 minutes from over. Okay, technically it ended for Kiddo about 4 hours ago, but still. She is doing remarkably well overall, I think, given that just yesterday she was under general anesthesia and having surgery and all.
She did *not* sleep in and in fact was up by 6:10 when Hubby was heading out the door for work. I had been pulling for a "sleep in until at least 9 or 10" kind of morning, mostly because I was tired enough to sleep in until at least 9 or 10 myself, but no such luck. Flipping on the TV in my room and trying to roll over and go back to sleep while she watched Disney channel didn't buy me many more Zs either. Nope, Kiddo was all about getting herself set up on the couch in the family room so she could watch DVDs. (With the movement restrictions mandated by her doctor, Kiddo's usual strict limitations on "screen time" have temporarily been lifted and she is watching as much TV as she wants, so long as she's doing so while chilling out quietly on the couch.) Well, she mostly wanted to watch one DVD in particular.
This one:
I had picked this up almost as an afterthought when I was frantically scanning the shelves at Blockbuster looking for movies that (a) Kiddo hasn't seen, (b) were longer than 22 minutes, (c) were not objectionable in any way according to my admittedly puritanical judgment scale. I saw Garfield grinning up at me from a box on the lower shelf and grabbed it because Kiddo has developed quite a love for Garfield in comic book form ever since she discovered a few of my Garfield cartoon collection books sometime last year. She thoroughly enjoyed the Garfield Christmas special when I DVRed it in December, so I figured she might get a kick out of the DVD and added it to my pile.
She has now watched this DVD enough in the past 24 hours to have the dialogue, scene order and likely the closing credits memorized. And yet, she wants to watch it again. And again. And again.
Now, I've been a Garfield fan myself since I was a kid. (Side note: Garfield debuted back in 1978.) I mean, those are *my* Garfield books that Kiddo has appropriated, after all. I have watched pieces of the DVD (hard to avoid it when it's playing nonstop on our largest TV) and will confess to chuckling aloud a few times. But, still. This is not the height of comedy, folks. It's a talking cat. How many times can one human being watch the same talking cat cartoon over and over before one goes a little bit nuts? Four is the number, if you're asking about one's mother.
When the repeated viewings of Garfield and Co had hit the upper limits of my sanity threshold, I suggested a different means of entertainment, namely, playing princesses with me on the family room floor. Kiddo got a castle and all the Disney princess figurines to go with it for her birthday two years ago, except for Snow White. Well, as a "hey, I feel lousy that you have to go through all this" kind of a post-surgery present, I picked up the Snow White (who, by the by, is much more Snow Tan than Snow White) that matched the rest of the set and Kiddo was over the moon with Snow's arrival (even better that she came accompanied by bonus Dopey and Grumpy figures) when I showed her the set the night before her surgery. So, Kiddo was content to play princesses, with one teeny-tiny problem:
Those are Snow White's shoes, as held by Kiddo's not-abnormally-large, 6 year old hand. They're raisin sized and skinny and a total PITA to put on to the princesses' feet. Moreover, they're impossible to put on if you are experiencing double vision from recent eye surgery. That meant it fell to me, Man Hands Mommy, to repeatedly jam teeny-tiny princess piggies into teeny-tiny high heels. I don't even jam my own piggies into great, big heels, for Pete's sake. Haven't these girls heard of Birkenstocks? Perhaps a nice, sensible clog? After the assorted princesses had made like Cinderella one too many times and lost yet another shoe, I convinced Kiddo to let them just go barefoot since they were in the family room which has lovely, new carpeting after all.
Garfield and ridiculously minuscule footwear aside, Kiddo had some ups and downs today. Downs include the persisting double vision, eye pain and headaches (though, true to her general good spirited nature, she was joking on the phone to my mother about how she could see "all four of her feet" and how she was so happy to have "two cats" instead of one.) The two biggest downs include the having to stay still, calm and quiet (which, seriously, could someone please order me to lounge on the couch in my jammies, tucked under a fleece blanket with total dominion over the TV and someone to fetch me snacks and ginger ale? Please?) which is especially hard for my SPD kid, and the eyedrops. The steroid/antibiotic eyedrops that must be administered by me four times a day in each eye.
You wouldn't think that something as small as this:
could produce so much misery. Misery on both our parts, mind you. Kiddo gets her full-fledged freakout going on as soon as my hand approaches the airspace above her head with the bottle poised for action. Misery on my part because DANG, that bottle is small. (I photographed it with an ordinary sized pen and paper clip for reference. Note that is my tres cool, official Nanny Goats in Panties pen, courtesy of the ever-fantabulous Margaret.) The bottle is so small that it is virtually impossible to carefully squeeze out one drop into the squirming, blinking, bloody eyeball of the squirming, blinking, screaming bloody murder kid. I certainly don't want to miss, either, because those eyedrops are apparently made out of fairy wings, pixie dust and hens' eyeteeth. Or possibly gold, diamonds and George Clooney's cell phone number. Whatever they're made of, they're danged expensive and I'm not willing to waste them by spritzing them willy-nilly into the general direction of Kiddo's head in the hopes that a veritable rain shower of medicine might inadvertently make its way into her eyes in something akin to the proper dosage.
So, yeah, that? Not the fun part. Even less fun is how her tears are blood right now. Okay, fine, technically they're just bloody, not actual straight blood, but the effect is still quite disconcerting despite all the advance warning from helpful surgical staff. Also staining - Kiddo's pillowcase has some icky spots on it now, as does the shirt I was wearing yesterday.
Now then, let's talk about the ups. Kiddo has had several phone calls and emails from folks wanting to check up on her, and has felt well enough to take some of the calls in person. Kiddo loves to talk on the phone anytime for any reason, so having calls *specifically for her* is a huge thrill. She also spoke with her surgeon last night when he called to follow up on her. I don't think he speaks to many of his actual patients when he makes such calls, being a pediatric eye doctor and all, but Kiddo heard me say hello to him and requested a word. She gave him several, specifically "You know, I did NOT like what you did to my eyes, because now they're bloody and they hurt and I do not EVER want you to do that to them EVER again." Heh.
Kiddo also has had some visitors. Her in-town grandma came over yesterday and today her aide from school came over, bringing a lovely, large card that Kiddo's classmates made her. Kiddo also had a visit from one of her Daisy troop friends who lives a few blocks from us and with whom Kiddo plays during recess just about every day. She walked over with her mom and younger sister, and they came bearing get-well gifts to boot. (Who doesn't love presents? My kid sure does!) They baked us some delicious apple bread (which Kiddo and I both enjoyed during her dinner), lent Kiddo some books with tapes so she can listen while she's reading (though she was getting frustrated with the difficulty her vision was giving her with reading earlier today) and brought us the most beautiful bouquet of flowers. I had far greater appreciation for the flowers than Kiddo did, but I guess that's to be expected when one of us is six and more into endless viewings of Garfield and Odie and the other of us is closing in on 38 and has had more experience in the realm of bouquets. One can never have too many flowers, I don't think... at least I never have!
I'll leave you with a shot of the patient, listening to Howard Jones on her iPod (yes, along with appropriating my comic books from the 80s, she's also appropriated my 80s music) as she ate her orzo in chicken broth and a slice of apple bread for dinner, sitting at the table with the flowers:
Here's a close up of the flowers, because they're beautiful enough to warrant their own close up. Despite being meant for Kiddo, they really brightened up my afternoon!
At least they'll be something to look forward to when Kiddo invariably wakes up too, too early again tomorrow and wants me to get up, too... or maybe I could just put the Garfield DVD in now and let it run so that it's playing when she gets up...
We're home! The surgeon said it went very well. Kiddo is really, *really* miserable now. Her eyes hurt, her throat hurts from the intubation, she's vomiting... She's groggy but not so groggy that she is out of it and unaware of what's going on, so in true Stubborn Kid form, she's refusing to just go to bed and sleep it off. Instead, she's on the couch in the family room, tucked in with a contingent of her Stuffed Animal Entourage, a cool washcloth over her eyes, "watching" a DVD.
I'm so glad it is over and really hoping the healing goes well and completely and this surgery worked. She poked herself in the eye(lid) in the recovery room with the straw as she was leaning forward to sip some water, so now my overactive and extremely overtired imagination is envisioning complications from that. I am in dire need of sleep and food, having had neither of both since yesterday. Need to make sure she's okay first though.
The doctors, nurses and OR staff were all talking amongst themselves about how awesome a patient Kiddo was - cheerful, cooperative and extremely polite. She even used her manners when she was coming out of the anesthesia, demanding quite politely that they take the IV out and get her mom and dad using lots of "please"s. Heh. We also had a surprise visit from one of the other nurses there, who is the mom of one of Kiddo's friends from preschool. She came in to say hi and chat before the surgery and stopped by in the recovery room as well.
Thank you to everyone around the globe who said a prayer and thought good thoughts for us. It was very much appreciated!
In nine and a half hours, we'll be leaving our house to take Kiddo for her eye surgery. I have been a bit of a total nervous wreck about this for a few days now. It got to the point where I couldn't even respond to an email, Facebook comment or tweet about it without tearing up if not actually breaking down into sobs.
Fortunately, around midday today, I found these:
And then I cowboyed up...
and I managed to otherwise pull myself together so that by the time Kiddo came home from school, not only was I able to hold up my end of pleasant but mindless chitchat with our neighbors as Kiddo went around our street selling Girl Scout Cookies, but I was able to explain to her about where she's going tomorrow instead of school (for School Picture day *and* Domino's Pizza Day, nonetheless) and what's going to transpire. Whew.
Still, despite my big girl panties and my cowboying up, I'm still going to be extremely glad when it is this time tomorrow and the surgery is behind us. Sigh. I've got a pile of books, DVDs and books on CD ready and waiting, as well as a list of folks who've offered to come by to visit the patient once she's up to it and a few new toys and arts and crafts things for when her vision is improved enough that she can play. I want to get to that point of the recovery and be beyond the dreading and the counting down and the waiting.
So, in all seriousness, please, if you are a praying sort of person, would you say a prayer for us tomorrow morning around 8:30am? I won't detail the nightmares I had last night or the even worse thoughts that ran through my head as I lay awake in between them, but suffice it to say my ridiculously overactive imagination is running haywire with the thoughts of scalpels and eyeballs and anesthesia and the bad things that can happen... So, please, say a prayer or send out good thoughts or whatever it is you might be able to do, because we'll need it.
Updates to come post-surgery... Also, if you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies, I know a kid who is about to be very brave and strong who is selling some...
So, we met with the eye doctor this morning. Hubby went too, and we brought Kiddo's grandma along to sit with her in the waiting room following the exam so Kiddo wouldn't have to hear the discussion (or see the visual aids, as it turned out).
The news, as we expected, wasn't good. The patches, like the glasses before them, aren't correcting the exotropia. Worse news is that Kiddo's brain is now suppressing the signals/information from her right eye and only "using" her left eye for vision (unless her left eye is covered, then it will use the right).
The doctor is advocating for surgery. He went through with diagrams and explained exactly what they do. This isn't an uncommon procedure, it is done on an outpatient basis and takes about half an hour. Kiddo would miss, at most, 3 days of school and would come home immediately after the procedure. No hospital, even; they do the surgery at an outpatient surgery center.
We discussed at length. I took notes. Hubby and I discussed further. We looked up studies and read anecdotal evidence. There is the alternative of vision therapy, which we considered (that was all the stuff I was doing with the insurance company for the past several weeks). We discussed even more.
The end result is that we've decided to go ahead with the surgery. I'm waiting for the surgical coordinator to call me back to get Kiddo on the schedule. We're hoping for the end of September or beginning of October, so we don't have it right at the start of school.
I know in the grand scheme of things, this is not the most horrible kind of surgery one's child could need to have done. I know that it isn't extremely complicated or lengthy or anything. That doesn't make me feel any better knowing that Kiddo will be going under general anesthesia and that they will be cutting into her eye muscles. We're not telling Kiddo until much closer to the date - no need for her to obsess. Mommy is perfectly capable of obsessing enough for all of us.
I just hope this will work and correct the problem, once and for all.
Lots on my mind right now. Drama, visitors we were expecting unable to come (leading to much disappointment especially on Kiddo's part), all sorts of stuff, shenanigans and nonsense. Tomorrow morning Kiddo has an appointment with the eye doctor to determine if the patching is effective at treating her exotropia. I'm pretty darn sure it isn't, as I still see the turning as much as I ever did. So, Hubby and I will be discussing The Next Step with the doctor after he finishes the exam. We already know the doctor advocates for surgery in such situations, and fully expect him to recommend surgery as the best treatment option tomorrow. We aren't ready to necessarily jump on in and say "Okay, please cut into my child's eyeballs" without a lengthy discussion and lots of thought. I've already spent more hours than anyone should need to spend doing the Will They Cover This? dance with the insurance company, in an attempt to get all my ducks neatly lined up to try vision therapy as an alternative before surgery. As of tonight (the result of weeks of being glued to the phone, listening to some very bad hold music, and speaking with Kiddo's primary care physician, the vision therapy doctor's office and the insurance company, writing letters and having the doctor write letters, etc etc etc), we have approval for Kiddo to be initially evaluated by Vision Therapist Eye Doc, but not much more than that. Still going to have to fight to get the potential 24 weeks of vision therapy covered. Worst case scenario is we don't renovate the kitchen this year as planned and we pay out of pocket for the vision therapy, but I'm darn well hoping the insurance company steps up to the plate, as, after all, that's what they're theoretically there for, right?
Following the Eyeball Fun first thing in the morning, Kiddo has her screening for classroom placement for the first grade in our new district. I'm hoping she shows off what a smart cookie she is so that she gets appropriate placement. Every now and again, she'll play dumb, like say she can't read something that she absolutely can, or not give it her best effort and sort of half-ass read something and mispronounce words she knows very well how to say/read. It's laziness or stubbornness or both, and it frustrates us no end, and I am fervently hoping she doesn't pull that tomorrow. She is now reading well enough to look over my shoulder and sight read aloud as I'm typing an email or tweet or Facebook status update or comment (and, for the record, I type ridiculously fast - well over 100wpm). She should be able to ace any first grade test they give her, just based on what her reading level was as of the end of May in kindergarten. Yes, I'm obsessing, but given the challenges we're having with getting her IEP transferred over (or recreated, as the case may be), I want to know that at least her classroom placement will be appropriate and not an environment in which she will easily be bored. Boredom for Kiddo with her SPD is a Very Bad Thing. (Not that boredom is good for any other kid, it's just that with her sensory-seeking system, being bored can lead to extra-disruptive behavior because boredom = lack of sufficient sensory input and then she'll go seeking more sensory input, and not necessarily in appropriate ways.)
So, yeah, lots going on and not a lot of it fun blog material. I do have some pictures from a blogging buddy lunch last Friday (holla, Andy and Kristin!) but I haven't pulled those off the camera yet. Perhaps I'll get that up by Mostly Wordless Wednesday time...
In the meantime, Kiddo's in-town grandma made, from scratch, adorable new tiebacks for the curtains in her room and the paint is finally cured to the point that Kiddo could (with Hubby's assistance) put up her wall animal decals. So, here are some pictures of The Pink Safari, mostly done. (Still need to repaint and rehang the closet doors and find an area rug, but other than that, it's done!)
Here are the curtains with the fantabulous, pink, polka-dot tiebacks. I was struggling to get a decent shot with the lighting and the flash... sorry these are a bit washed out.
A shot of the wall above Kiddo's dresser. The decals are pretty high quality - they're not too shiny and plastic/vinyl-looking unless you get up very, very close.
Kiddo was extremely specific about which decals were to go where. Above her headboard, she wanted "the big cats" along with, apparently, some food in case they get hungry. The flash caught the cheetah a bit in this one:
A close-up of one of the decals. I love how they blend into the pink on the walls. It really is the Pink Safari!
Have you seen my shizzle anywhere? Because I've lost it. Now, I thought I had lost it yesterday, after being forced into playing Let's Kick Up Some Major Drama For No Reason Other Than I Feel Like It with a member of my family that ended with me hanging up the phone on the Drama-Producer (though not until I said, as calmly as I could, "I am getting very upset and cannot talk to you any more right now. Goodbye.") and said family member is now Shunning Me With a Stony Silence, by all accounts and appearances. Yee-ha. Yep, thought that was where I waved goodbye to my shizzle as it packed up its belongings in a little red bandanna, tied it to the end of a stick and went whistling off up the road out of our subdivision for Parts Unknown.
Nope. Turns out I still had some last shards of shizzle left. And I've lost them today. It seems that the simple and easy transition we were going to have for Kiddo's services in her new school? Not going to be that simple and easy. Also, the evaluation the school psychologist was supposed to do at her old school sometime between January and June? The one that she just never quite got around to doing? (Kiddo's triennial review, for those of you In The Know about the world of Special Ed.) The one that I specifically made a point of asking the head of SpEd in our new district about whether I needed to push to have done and she told me no, it wouldn't be necessary? Well, it might be necessary after all. The entire "classification, qualification and determination of services" wheel, it might need reinventing. I'd had such faith and confidence in what I'd initially been told, way back in mid-May when we were only 2 days into living at our new house and I'd started making phone calls to the Big Cheeses here in the new school district. Silly, misplaced optimism. Now, it seems that we are facing a a whole new set of hurdles, albeit it lovely, freshly painted ones as befitting our posh, new district.
So, there you have it. Shizzle fully lost with no GPS system able to track it. And, in my current shizzle-lost state, I also still have the fun of Will Kiddo Need Eye Surgery? and its partner Will the Insurance Company Pay for Vision Therapy in Lieu of Surgery? to tango with. It takes two to tango, and that is two plus one, so I don't know how that will work. I mean, I've never been Ginger Rogers... Maybe I can convince them to do a line dance instead. I'm a Chicken Dancing ace, and also quite good at the Macarena, and Kiddo's now taught me the Tooty Ta, as she has learned in summer camp........
....and some late-breaking news from Hubby. This just in: as his current company was bought out a few months ago, he has just learned that our health insurance will be transitioning from what we have now to the new company's insurance carrier instead. We'll learn the pertinent deets in September and coverage would switch (if it has to) come January. So, all the fighting with the insurance company over coverage of potential vision therapy? Could be moot. Could be a wheel that will need reinventing and a tango that will need to be redanced after the first of the year.
So, I've lost it. Freaking out. Freaking out and PMSing and I can't take one, tiny, little additional thing. No thank you.
I think I'll move to Australia. Or just bury myself at the bottom of a jumbo bag of Cheez Doodles, with a pint of Ben and Jerry's in the other hand.
We're spending the Fourth indoors, prepping Kiddo's room for painting. Kiddo and I picked up 3 gallons of Princess Pink paint this morning while Hubby was busily patching a squillion and three holes in the drywall (nail holes, not gigantic holes, but holes that needed patching nonetheless). I attempted to help Hubby with the sanding project - all the walls and trim and basically everything except the ceiling and floor in her room need to be sanded before we can paint - but even with glasses and breathing mask on, I was a wreck after less than half an hour of sanding. My eyelids did NOT like it one bit and promptly got all swollen and painful. Yikes. I hung up my sandpaper and resigned, and shall paint my heart out extra-hard to make up for quitting this afternoon's project. *blink blink cough sneeze blink blink*
In the meantime, the sun is shining outside and I hope everyone else is enjoying the holiday, despite the cooler-than-normal temperatures in our area. (Hoping it's sunny and warm wherever you might be!) I'm pondering grilling in honor of the holiday, but leaning towards making pierogies as those are easier and less work than dealing with the grill.
I shall leave you to the rest of your holiday celebrations (well, my fellow Americans, anyhow - the rest of you I shall leave merely to your weekends!) with the musical work of that awesome group of patriots, The Muppets:
I've got a monster of a post that I've been adding and adding and adding to since last week, and I'm not sure whether I'm just going to break it up into a bunch of smaller posts or heave it all out there into the blogosphere in one, gigantic post at some point.
In the meantime, I have some news to report. Went to my new eye doctor (side note: I've been going to the eye doctor for over thirty years now ((side side note: dang, but that makes me sound ooooold)) and this is the first time in my life that I've ever had a female eye doctor. Isn't that odd?) this morning for a check-up. Longer-time readers of my blog might recall I've had some eye-related issues in the past, that led me back to becoming a primarily-eyeglasses-wearing kind of chick after twenty solid years of being a primarily-contact-lens-wearing chick. It's been over a year and a half now since I reverted back to Heather Four Eyes, and I've mostly gotten used to it. A minor inconvenience, really, that is a pain mostly when having to do that Mr. Rogers-esque switch from regular specs to sunglasses (prescription, thick as heck, and *enormous* in my case - very Hollywood Celebutante-ish, oooh la la. Um, except for the "thick as heck" bit) whenever I'm going in or out of doors, and, of course, when I'm trying to perform various depilatory acts while showering.
Well.
My new, fantabulous Eye Doctor Chick not only confirmed that while yes, my ocular allergies have returned, no, I do not in fact have any recurrence of last year's Major Eye Ick, but she also had a new, better prescription to replace the "eh, I guess it works better than plain old Visine, I guess" eye drops I've used in the past (and gave me a sample bottle to get me started, too), but best of all she told me about a brand-spankin'-new type of contact lens that *might* just be my ticket back to Four Eyed Freedom! This lens is made of silicone instead of whatever kind of plastic or Saran wrap or whatever it was my lenses have always been made of up until this point, and that means that they are much more conducive to eyeballs with my kind of ridiculous protein output. (Yes, my eyes have a veritable superpower when it comes to protein production. Woo.) Even better, these fancy-pants silicone lenses are way the HECK cheaper than the daily disposable ones I'd been told were the only ones I could possibly ever wear last year by my old eye doctor. Like, a quarter of the price cheaper. She promptly produced a sample pair that I'm going to wear for the next two weeks (well, once my pupils return to normal from their Heather Looks Ever-So-Slightly More Insane Than Usual, Totally Black from Massive Pupil Dilation state) and if all goes well, I'm in business. Wooooooo-hooooooooooo!
I must pause here for a quick Happy Dance, done to Jamie Foxx's ubiquitous tune Blame It, which has been stuck in my head for the past 24 hours thanks to my five-minute-long flipping sessions through the music channels on TV each morning (part of my vain and desperate attempt to stay "current" but I always wind up watching the comfortable, familiar videos I recall from my youth on VH1 Classic and hoping that they'll play a little Duran Duran before Hubby is done in the bathroom and I must get up and on with my day...) coupled with the fact that I fully blame my night of horrid gastrointestinal distress plus feverishly bizarre dreams last night on a bad glass of OJ I chugged as I made dinner last night............
Okay, I really, really, REALLY need to get some curtains or shades for this office. Stat. And if someone could please explain to me the point of that video, besides Jamie showing off his cool, famous friends (Ron Howard? Really? Richie Freaking Cunningham? Does he have street cred now? I always thought Fonzie
was the cool one.......) that would be great. I mean, I *get* which are the cool guys in the Duran Duran videos. (Hello, John Taylor...) I just don't get today's videos and music. Is T-Pain in every video right now? Is there a rule that you can't just do a song - it has to "feature" someone who may or may not actually have more of a part in the song than the "main" artist? And what the freak is up with Lady Gaga? She scares me. Yeesh.
Annnnnyhow, the news that I might be returned to my previous state of contact lens bliss isn't even the best news to come out of my visit to the eye doctor today. You see, we were chatting during my exam (I know: Me? Chatting? No way!) and somehow got around to the topic of kids (again, I know: Me? Talk about kids? No way!) and the fact that Kiddo has intermittent exotropia came up. I honestly don't remember exactly how that came up, really - I remember we were talking about going to Disney World (her family's going for the first time later this summer) and next thing I know, it had worked its way into the conversation. I do remember mentioning how much I'm worried about and dreading the very real possibility that Kiddo might be needing eye surgery later this summer, as I don't think the current regime of patching is doing diddly or squat.
It was at this point that she filled me in on some new information (well, new to me, anyhow) both about the surgery typically done for Kiddo's eye condition and about vision therapy.
Oooh, did you hear that? The chorus of angels that sang out when I typed the words "vision therapy" just then?
See, there they go again!
Yes, my friends, it turns out that there is a course of vision therapy that, according to Fantabulous Eye Doctor Chick, can cure Kiddo's eye condition without any surgery. And she's not just a doctor, but the wife of someone who had the exact surgery Kiddo would be facing when he was a young child. (Surgery, I might add, that left him with zero depth perception. Which is a typical result of the surgery. Yikes.) Anyhow, she knows of another doctor who does such vision therapy, and while I was out in the optician's area waiting for my pupils to explode and trying on eleventy squillion frames and cracking the optician up with my commentary (sample hilarious joke: "Yes, but do these frames make me look 50 pounds thinner?" Seriously, she was a way easy audience. There might've been a two drink minimum going on sometime earlier in her morning. I mean, it's always five o'clock somewhere, even when it's just 10am in my corner of the world...) the Super Awesome and Most Fantabulous Eye Doctor made a phone call to the Vision Therapy Doc and spoke to her about Kiddo, so that when I went owlishly blinking my way back into the exam room, she had all this info including contact info for the doctor nicely written down for me.
Seriously, I will try *anything* that doesn't involve cutting into my kid's eyeballs. Let me repeat that: Cutting. Into. My. Kid's. Eyeballs. Nope, doesn't get any better no matter how much I say, think or type it. So, I giddily left rambling voicemail messages on Hubby's Crackberry and office line (I know: Me? Rambling? NO WAY!) as I squinted my way home behind my Really, They Are Trendy Magoo Sunglasses and left a voicemail for the vision therapy eye doctor as soon as I got home. (Then Hubby called back, and despite being quick to inform me he had listened to BOTH of my messages in their entirety, I repeated the entire thing to him again, because I was just that excited and because I could only type him an email by closing my eyes and that was annoying as heck.)
So, tomorrow morning (assuming my pupils have returned to normal and I can look at the screen again without squinting) I have to call the insurance company to see what, if any, of this doctor's services might be covered. I know that although it would seem like a no-brainer to cover something other than surgery and hospitalization, when have insurance companies ever been accused of having a brain? So, I'll find out how impossible it will be to get coverage on that end of things and also call the vision therapy eye doctor's office back again ('cause, surprise surprise: I left a kind of rambly message on her voicemail, too, and I'm not sure but I may've been cut off before I actually left my name and number) and see what I can do about getting Kiddo evaluated there.
Since her vision issues play a role in some of her OT issues, I'm thinking I may be able to work that angle and possibly get the support of her most recent therapist if need be, too. I will gladly work any angle necessary to get Kiddo any treatment that (a) might work well and (b) doesn't involve scalpels and eyeballs.
So, there you have it. Good news for both of the brown eyed girls in the Smith fam. I shall now return to shaking my shuwumple in a happy dance and bid you all good night.
Blame it on the Minute Maid, Blame it on the Tropicana, Blame it on the Sunny-D, Blame it on the organic, blame it on the generic... Blame it on the O-O-O-O-O-O-OJ Blame it on the O-O-O-O-O-O-OJ.........
Let me start out by saying that so far, this has not been a great week. The fun is only going to get better from here on out, too, as we'll be picking up the ginormous U-Haul tomorrow night and loading it up Wednesday morning, bright and early, with the assistance of some stronger, younger backs and arms in the form of some college kids from our old church who are home for the summer and willing to work for cash and pizza. Then it is the Big Closing Day on Thursday, when, if all goes as it should, we will officially cease to own our current house and will instead take possession of the new house on the other side of town. Friday morning the U-Haul will be unloaded (hopefully with the continued assistance of the college boys, assuming we haven't scared them off on Wednesday), and then Operation Renovation will begin in earnest.
Of course, in the midst of all this, I will be without ready internet access for up to several days. *twitch twitch* As my ever lovely blogging buddy Ronnica put it to me this morning, it feels like I'm Tom Hanks going around the moon. (Hence, the title of my post. It is not really a Pink Floyd reference. I never got into Pink Floyd despite having friends in high school who were ardent, ardent fans.) It's probably for the best, I mean, it isn't like I don't have ridiculous amounts of stuff to do, and on top of that I haven't been sleeping well (hello stress) or eating well (hello, dregs of the dregs of the pantry, fridge and freezer), my allergies are kicking up bigtime and we had some not-so-good news at Kiddo's eye doctor appointment today. (I can't go into it without crying right now, so I shall just say that eye surgery is now much more of a possibility than we'd thought prior to the appointment this afternoon, and leave it at that. Side note: if you are quietly weeping to yourself as you get in line at the grocery store, people will totally give you cutsies. Just saying, in case you're ever really in a rush, consider it. Who knew?)
So, I'm basically a half inch away from an utter meltdown right now, which doesn't make me a very good blogger or blogosphere buddy anyway, so you're probably all well rid of me for a few days.
I was going to do some posts in advance to post while I'm back in the dark ages of No Internet, but I just haven't had a chance. (Heck, I've got computer-related things to do going back to March - Carma, I swear to George Clooney that I haven't forgotten your video. It will happen, really.) So, I'm going to point you to a few of my favorite blogs, in no particular order, who always make me laugh, sometimes to the point of a spit-take and/or side cramp. I'm fairly sure I've mentioned them to you before, because I *big red puffy heart* them all. If you don't read these ladies already, you should definitely go over and get to know them. They're all wittier and funnier writers than I ever could hope to be, even when I'm not stressed beyond belief and worrying about my kid and which box exactly had my last wits in it and did I label that one "fragile" or not......
So, check out these fantabulous women's blogs and please forgive me for a lack of commenting/blogsurfing for the next ????????????? I swear I'll be back (and that's not a threat, it's a promise, as my mother used to say)! I'll see you once we've come back around from the dark side of the moon............ Andy at The Creative Junkie Margaret at Nanny Goats in Panties Anna at Life Just Keeps Getting Weirder Kiki at Flibbertigibbet
I've been debating whether or not I should relate the following anecdote. I mean, I do have a reputation to uphold, that of a dainty, delicate, utterly ladylike and genteel chick, of course...
At first, I was going to keep this to myself. Then, my dear friend Givinya de Elba posted something on her blog which spurred me into replying, via comment, about what had transpired despite my decision to keep this one in the vault and uphold my rep and all.
Furthermore, I was not, not, not going to share this with Hubby. I was firm on that one. I mean, it is true that over the past 16 and a half years we've been together, the bloom has somewhat come off the rose. The air of mystery surrounding All Things Feminine has long since whooshed out the window opened in the House Where Chicks Outnumber Dude. But, despite my resolve to not tell him, of course I did. Last night. Well, mostly - I was having a hard time getting to the crux of the matter given that I was giggling like a fool with tears streaming down my face. But he got the gist of my tale and then provided me with the perfect ending line, so now I am feeling compelled to blog it after all.
Here goes.... and if, by some slim chance, you're still subscribing to my Cheerful Delusion that I am a Dainty-n-Delicate Gal, you might want to stop reading now and go about your business.
So, I'm nearsighted. Really, really, reaaaaaally nearsighted. This is an accurate representation of Heather Without Her Corrective Lenses:
Seriously, I'm Squinty McWhatisthat without my specs. As one who has required glasses for more than one score and ten years (NB to Creative Junkie - I double checked and a score istwenty years. Apparently the brain cells aren't all pudding!) I have grown used to having to guesstimate what it is in front of my face at certain crucial times over the course of my day. The clock with extra-large, illuminated numbers that is over on Hubby's side of the bed (as he is the one who requires Control of the Alarm)? Perfectly used to squinting as hard as I can to determine if the number before the colon is one or two digits, and completely comfortable with the fact that unless it is 11:11, I'm not going to be able to tell what any of the numbers are beyond a glowing, green fuzz.
The tasks associated with showering are another set of things with which I am generally comfortable doing without being able to see them. (Goodness knows, the amorphous, jiggly, white mass that exists below my eyeballs is better left viewed in Extremely Soft Focus, anyhow.) Scrubbing, rinsing and that trickiest of all shower-related jobs: shaving, all are second nature to Magoo Me. Now, in order to shave my lower legs (and my big toes, if I am telling the complete truth, but what woman is going to admit to shaving her big toes? Let's just say it was a horrible mistake I first made back in my foolhardy teenage years that now requires regular maintenance, lest Sasquatch think I've robbed him of some digits in a weird, inter-species transplant situation) I have long since perfected a maneuver in which I prop my leg up against the side of the shower wall, kind of like this:
only slightly less dressed and graceful and also always solo. Oh, and I don't shave my armpits and legs simultaneously, so without the arm extension, too. Yes, for a big girl, I'm surprisingly flexible, and am able to effect the above position for better squinting proximity to shave.
Now, I must digress for a moment. It's actually relevant to the story, as you will see. I love prunes. Oh, I'm sorry, "dried plums" - thanks, Marketing Gurus! I love dried plums. Every once in a while, I'll be overcome while grocery shopping and buy a container of dried plums. (It does sound classier, I'll grant you that.) A few weeks ago, I was overcome in such a manner and thus, a large container of dried plums has recently been residing in our fridge. Dried plums that no one else in my family ever, ever eats, besides me. We've been frantically trying to eat down all the contents of our pantry, fridge, freezer and chest freezer with some decent amount of success, but it's taken effort. (We're down to about 1/3 of a case of frozen pizza dough balls, a Sam's Club sized box of Italian ices, and several bags of frozen veggies. Oh, and a large container of old-fashioned oatmeal. And Cheez-its, for Kiddo's lunches.) As I said, no one else in my family eats prunes dried plums, so it's been me giving a dedicated yet solo effort to finish off the container before Thursday, when we move. As I *big, red, puffy heart* them, this hasn't been a hardship. (And I should further note for the record that while I adore Jamie Lee Curtis - A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies were both performances of comedic perfection - I do not have a need for her in her new guise as the Activia Lady. Regularity has never been an issue for me, is what I'm saying.) I've been popping them down by the handful (as in four or five at a time) a few times a day, like when I'm making Kiddo's lunch for school or emptying the dishwasher or cooking dinner or walking by the fridge. They're so, so delicious. Mmmmm, prunetastic.
So, back to my original story. The other morning, I was in the shower and up to the deforestation portion of events. I was taking care of business in my usual Big Girl Ballet pose, and when I was through, I turned around to put the razor back up on the top shelf of the shower caddy that dangles from the showerhead. It was at this point that I noticed something on the floor of the tub.
That something, to be specific, was two somethings. Two small, dark brown, blobular somethings there behind me on the tub floor. Now, I suppose I must confess that while regularity isn't a problem for me in any event, my present Extra-Prunetastic diet has led to the occasional gaseous emission. And, while I was Leg Up on the Wall and shaving, I had a few such emissions. Whatever, I was home alone (well, besides the cat and frankly there is nothing I could bodily emit that could touch her post-bologna-consumption farts.) (NB to Crazy Sister - I amend my comment on your post earlier today. My cat's post-bologna-consumption gas might be the Worst Smell, Ever.) So, I froze at the sight of these two, small, dark brown, blobular somethings fuzzily peering up at me through the steam and myopia.
I will confess that I pondered for a moment or two if any of my recent gaseous emissions might've been a bit more... strenuous than I'd thought at the time. I mean, I was distracted by my Shaving By Braille method and the whole Trying Not to Slice My Legs or Feet Open business. But could I have been that distracted? Paraphrasing what Givinya said in her related blog post, getting up close and personal to such a potential biohazard in order to see it clearly is not something one wants to do. I bent over and squinted for all I was worth, but didn't dare actually get down onto the floor of the tub and poke my nose into it to see for sure. I hopped out of the shower and grabbed for my glasses and then turned back around to face the music.
This is what I found: . . . . . . . . . . . . .
*
That's Don Diego and Brownie, aka two of Kiddo's Teeny Tiny Guys, Dog Pack Division. (She has a multitude of TTGs, from dogs and cats to farm and zoo animals to two Teeny Tiny T. Rexes. Hubby and I have stepped on every single one of them over the years, too.) She's taken to bringing the TTG Dog Pack into the tub with her, as the dinosaurs in there were apparently getting dull. (They are getting rather icky from dwelling permanently on the ledge of the tub and may stay behind when we move...) I guess I didn't hear the clatter of Don Diego and Brownie as they slipped from their ledgeside perch to the floor of the tub, singing heartily as I was as per usual while going about my Showery Business.
Whew.
So, in conclusion, I told Hubby about this last night. He rolled his eyes at me, rolled over and began drifting off to sleep (a sleep that was full of dreams of loading U-Hauls and hoping that everything would fit, apparently). A few moments later, he rolled back over towards me, opened one eye and said "You know, the moral of that story is that you should never, ever eat anything without your glasses on."
He's probably right, too.
* Don Diego and Brownie's actual size is less than one inch, each. They come from that vending machine in the row of nasty gumballs and You're Never Going to Be Allowed to Get That candy in the front of the supermarket. So, they are in fact quite small.
First, the good news: the kiddo totally cowboyed up and didn't fuss one bit for any part of the exam, including the dreaded eye drops (two in each eye, no less). This eye doc did an extremely thorough exam (it lasted almost 90 minutes!) and the kiddo enjoyed the parts where she got to wear 3-D glasses and look at different pages to see what "jumped out" at her and where she got to look in the various machines, too. Plus, they had Lion King playing there, which the kiddo knows by heart and was thrilled to get to watch - we don't allow TV during the day so that was an extra treat!
Now, the frustrating news: This eye doctor immediately detected an issue with Kiddo's eyes. The same issue that we've thought we've noticed (in our admittedly inexpert opinions) since she was an infant. The same issue we've taken her repeatedly to the other eye doctor for checking for the past five years. ARGH. We had no reason to not believe what the other eye doctor was telling us, but now I wish we'd trusted his opinion less and had sought a second opinion sooner. Thank goodness the kiddo's OT suggested we get her checked out by someone else, or we still would be blindly traipsing along (pun intended) with her having vision issues.
So, the verdict is that the kiddo has exotropia in both eyes, more so the right than the left. It is intermittent, which is good, and not in both eyes simultaneously either, which is also good. Treatment options to start with were either patching or glasses. We opted for glasses, and have now ordered the kiddo her first pair. (They're PINK! With SPARKLES!) They were crazy expensive - more expensive than my own Mega-Magoo specs - but they're warrantied and the special, super-flexible and bendy kind that hopefully will withstand the kiddo's SPD sensory-seeking and klutzy behaviors. The glasses will be in next week, so she'll have time to get used to them before school starts.
The bad news to the verdict is that glasses and patching each only work 50% of the time. The eye doctor (the new one - we're NOT going back to the other one now!) will re-examine the kiddo in 3 months and will determine at that point if we need to just keep going with the glasses or if we need to look at surgery. Boy, I hope the glasses do the trick.
We're really selling the whole excitement factor on the glasses to the kiddo. So far, she is viewing it as a treat to be able to wear glasses (that are PINK! With SPARKLES!) just like Mommy and Daddy (and Grandma and Grandpa in NJ, Gramma in FL, Grandma G and Grandpa A, several of her aunts and uncles.....) and was upset that she couldn't wear the sample pair home today. We're gonna keep focusing on how cool and exciting it is, and hopefully when she gets the actual prescription lenses, she will be good about wearing them and this won't turn into a battle of wills. (Especially for the amount that these PINK! With SPARKLES! glasses are costing us............)
So please keep your fingers crossed that these glasses do the trick and no surgery will be required down the road! (Um, and that the kiddo wears the glasses without a struggle, too!)
