Eye See You, Sort Of

I have said before that I turned fifty and starting falling apart, but I was partly joking. Yesterday I found out I have low-pressure glaucoma in my eyes and have already had loss of my field of vision. I have to have laser surgery to try to stop anymore damage, although the opthomologist kept reminding me that, although there is ongoing research being done for glaucoma, there is no "cure". She said the laser surgery shouldn't interfere with my other eye surgery at the Eye Foundation in August for lazy eye.
Then I'm still wobbling like a drunk person from the Meniere's, waking up at night with hot flashes. I have to go for a sleep study Sunday night because they suspect I have sleep apnea. I'm to the point of writing God and saying, "Ok, this body is shot, and I want another one. One I get to pick. I promise to take better care of the new one."
On the positive side, after a long discussion with my daughter over what a normal person eats, I did pretty good yesterday, and am keeping up with my food as Amy suggested. I think losing weight would help with a lot of things.
I took over doing the bills a couple of weeks ago. My husband had always kept the checkbook, and he had Spiderman checks and checkcover. So everytime I had to write a check, someone would ask me if I liked Spiderman. Since I took over it, I decided to get girlie checks. I ordered Cinderella's castle. They are so cute. He absolutely hates them.

Andrea Yates- Insane, yes, but what's Rusty's excuse?

I've been watching the Andrea Yates retrial on tv today. She's the mother from Texas that drowned her five children in the bathtub. The psychiatrist who testified against her said she copied her crime from a tv show, and it turned out the show never existed. So she gets a new trial to determine whether or not she was legally insane at the time of the crime.
I wish I was on that jury. I believe the woman was legally insane, delusional, and if anyone is guilty, it is her husband for leaving a mentally ill woman alone with five children, when only a few months before he had taken her to the hospital in a catatonic state. She had postpartum pychosis with her pregnancies, but did he stop getting her pregnant? Noooo. Did he keep them living in a 300 sq ft motorhome for a time with five children? Yesss. Did he refuse to let her use disposable diapers? YESSSS. Did he force her to quit her nursing job? Yes. Did he force her to homeschool and prevent her from socializing with their neighbors? Yes. Is he to blame? Definitely. I think he has to take the blame as much as she does. She had an excuse. If I left my children with a psychotic mental patient, I'd be guilty too, if something happened to them.
I for one think she should get sentenced to a mental hospital, and he should be locked up in a motorhome with five kids, no make that ten. No disposable diapers either. He needs a double dose.

Moving to the Library

I've been doing secret shopping. Of the fourteen places I've gone, all but one had lousy customer service. You know those stores when you can't get what you want without a salesperson, but there isn't one in the department, and you ask someone else who is going to get someone for you, but they never show up? That kind of lousy.
I did go to one where the customer service was so good, that my son said they must have heard a rumor that they had a secret shopper coming that day. Yeah, I felt like they were putting on the dog a little too much. Anyway, I signed up for twenty jobs for July, and then I think I'll quit doing this. I put a high price on being able to wake up in the morning, at least some days, and not having to leave the house if I don't want to. Most days I don't want to.
I hate my house. The more I look at it, the more I hate it. It's too full of junk, I hate my furniture, and the walls are closing in. I want to rent a dumpster, and clean it all out and start over. I'd say it's probably PMS but I'm having too many hot flashes at night for that to be a probable cause. I think it's just that I hate it. Period. This is the same place I used to absolutely LOVE. Go figure.
I went to the library yesterday. My husband dropped me off there because he had to go out to work for awhile. I spent about an hour there. I've decided I could move out of my house and live in the library and be happy. They have absolute silence, the kids are kept in a whole separate section, they have great couches, and they have tons of books and computers. Who can beat that?
I've always used "I hate exercise" as an excuse not to do it. Until I read this magazine article that said we hate doing other things but do them anyway, so why not exercise? I hate cooking lately, but I do that. I hate grocery shopping, too. But I do that.So I guess I'll have to give up my excuse and get off my fat ass and go walking. I found a website that said to use a pedometer and figure out your average daily steps over three days, and then increase that by 2000 steps. (My average steps are probably about fifteeen; how far is it from the recliner to bed and back to the recliner?) Then they said figure out how many calories you eat on an average day and decrease that by 100 (they said that's one pat of butter). Evidently you do this ever so often until you are actually living a healthy lifestyle. So my goal is somewhere around 2015 steps a day and 8400 calories! I think I can do that.....
All joking aside, I'm as sick of being fat as I am sick of my house. And I'm sick of complaining about both and not doing anything about them.
If you haven't seen "The Breakup" with Jennifer Anniston, but you've ever been in a relationship, then you need to go. Funny stuff.
We are driving 150 miles next weekend to see the new Superman in IMAX. My son has already got our tickets, and my husband can't wait. Yippee. Can you tell how excited I am? But usually I like these things a lot better than I think I will.
Well that's all I can think of to gripe about today, so I'll end this here.

My Dog is Smarter Than Our President

I saw a t-shirt with this on it today, "My Dog is Smarter Than Our President." Now I don't know the dog personally, but I would bet you it's a certainty. Take for example last weeks press conference. President Bush calls on a nice young man in an expensive suit and a great pair of sunglasses. The man stands to ask his question, to which Bush exclaims, "You mean you're going to ask your question in those shades?"
The young man smiled and said, "Yes sir. The sun is bright out here."
Bush replies, "Well, humpf. It's not bright for those people watching this on television." I guess that was suppose to mean that we, the American people and his viewing audience, would somehow take horrible offense to a guy in sunglasses. It's not like we've never seen that.
But that's not what made President Bush dumber than a post in my book. It's the fact that the young reporter in the sunshades is actually legally blind...
What makes this all worse for me, is that I actually voted for Bush. I guess we all are allowed to make mistakes, as long as we learn from them. I've definitely learned. I filed away this tidbit of information about lesson learned: Vote for someone who has some evidence of having a brain. (And I mean the one behind his eyes, not the other one, President Clinton.)
But what do any of us really know about voting. I mean, isn't it just voting for the lesser of two evils most of the time? I remember this peanut farmer from Georgia I voted for once. Wondered what ever happened to him. At least when it's said, "He has peanuts for brains" that guy would have a good excuse.

Sunday Afternoon Stuff

I went to my dad's yesterday. The last time I was out there awhile back, he didn't seem to know me or remember what he'd said for more than a few minutes. He repeated himself a lot. Yesterday, he was a lot more lucid, and seemed glad to see us. He said he'd told my step-mom the reason none of the kids came to see them anymore was because they had gotten old. I said no it's because the KIDS have gotten OLD. ha. If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know that I'm pretty much a self-imposed shut-in, and like it like that. Although, I did accept some assignments this week with a secret shopping service. I get to eat a lot of fast food and find out all about cellular phones. But it's a little extra.
I guess my last post left a lot of you saying, Huh? Well, it was just something I wrote awhile back and thought I'd post. Maybe it wasn't suited for the blog, but now and then I just put things on here I liked, even if they won't be very interesting to anyone but me.
I don't know whether I posted this or not, but the eye doctor set my surgery for August to fix my "lazy eye" problem. I'm really looking forward to it. He did say that for two weeks afterward I will see double because they overcorrect so that it will end up being right after the muscles stretch a bit. Sounds weird. He said it will drive me crazy for awhile. I said oh ok. He said no, I mean it will REALLY drive you crazy for awhile. So I guess it's not going to be fun, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.
Well better go check on dinner. I'd hate to burn it and end up serving KFC. No, really, that sounds pretty good, too.

And That's the Truth

I grew up in a family of very practical people, and for many years, I followed that way of thinking about life. Things were either right or wrong and there was no in between. Ideas that seemed foreign to me I quickly dismissed as nonsense. I had strong teachings of my birth family to fall back on when I found something new to ponder, and if this new idea didn’t fit, it was quickly and adamantly rejected. And for many years, this worked just fine for me. Not perfectly, though, or I wouldn’t be where I am now.

I knew from the beginning there was something a little different about me, something others probably described as weird. Because even though I accepted the things I was told eventually, I always had to ask a million questions about it beforehand. It was my nature, they said. And it was very aggravating to those who tried to teach me.

As then as the pages of my life turned, and I drifted away from my family out into this huge ocean we call living, other teachers came. They always came into my path gently, and the words they told me I quickly analyzed, dissected, and filed away as either true or false. However, many of the ideas I deemed false still continued to circle around in my mind afterward, whether I wanted them to or not. Then one day I heard a wise man say something that began the change in me. He said simply that some things are true, whether you believe them or not.

Now hearing that stopped me in my tracks. I had to repeat it to myself several times before I could even process it. I wondered if it was possible that some of the things I had quickly dismissed from my life as ludicrous could in fact have been true anyway. So even if it didn’t make sense and even if it didn’t fit in with the way I thought things should be, and even if I totally disbelieved it, could it possibly be truth anyway. And that is when I opened my mind and began to learn. I began to listen with an open heart, without quickly filing it into my mind’s careful categories. I allowed the ideas to just be that, a new idea, a new thought, however foreign.

Of course, now that I was allowing some light in, that also meant I could see more clearly, what was already in there. So then, I had to start dealing with some of the old beliefs, and that was the most difficult part. Those were locked in big metal safes in my mind, with many security features in place. If that were true, then what about this? No. No. That would make some other person in my life, who had taught me that, wrong. That was difficult to deal with but not as difficult as questioning the things I had taught myself. After all, I was a rational, thinking, sometimes even intelligent human being. And if I had looked at something and decided it was right, how could it now be wrong? Could I be wrong?

A carpenter would say that sometimes a house can be stabilized, as it is, with minor repair, but that there are some cases when the only solution is to tear the house down to its foundation and begin again. And sometimes even the foundation itself has to be replaced. And he’d also tell you that doing that is a big job.
So my life has become a process of taking in something, fighting myself not to dismiss it too quickly, then holding it up to the light along with what I thought I knew, and deciding which to keep and which to throw out. And I was never very good at parting with my stuff. But we have to free ourselves of some of our stuff to make room for better stuff. And so I try to do that.

And I also have realized through all this, that like decorating a home, you never get finished. Life is a continuing process of replacing the sofa only to find the drapes no longer match, and neither does the rug. But you know what else I learned? That this process can actually be fun. Hard work, yes. But fun. And isn’t that what life is suppose to be? Out with the old, in with the new?
Of course, some things are replaced very reluctantly, and some things I cannot bear to part with never are replaced. But that’s ok. I can live with that.

Bitch Slappin' Oprah Ho

Ok, so today I'm in a weird mood. It all started when my laptop went haywire doing things nice computers shouldn't do, and I got this sense of impending doom and wondered if this is the thing they call the virus. Hopefully not. But I quickly shut that sucker down before it had a chance to infect anything. Am I the only one who thinks "virus" and "infect" sounds like stupid words to describe computer problems? Right now, I can think of much better words but they are mostly four letter and might be censored by Blogspot.

So there was this true story told by Jerry Clowers. He said he was having chest pains and went to the doctor because he thought it might be his heart. The doctor told him his heart was so strong that when he died, they might have to take a club and beat it to get it to stop. Then he told him what his problem was, was his esophagus. To which he replied, "I didn't know I had an esophagus."

Well, I only have two people in my life whom I can ask about computer stuff. My son is a whiz, and although he rants and complains when asked, usually fixes it anyway. But he's got this new job and he's gone all day. The other expert I know is my daughter, but she's at work and always busy and when I send her a message gives me three word replies, "Look it up." However, today she told me it was probably my "symbol lock" that was causing my problem. And I replied...yes, you guessed it. "I didn't know I had a symbol lock." I asked her where it is and what it looks like, and she said...."Look it up."

I decided to remedy this my own way. I put the laptop on the stairs so my son will see it when he makes his beeline from the front door up to his bachelor pad upstairs. And I got on the "trusty desktop, tied down, can't do it and also watch tv at the same time" computer.
So that got me in a really foul mood. And I started thinking about other things. Things I know I've said in my blog before but still bug me. Things like I hate Oprah Winfrey.

I saw on one of AOL's million welcome banners that she's the third most powerful person in America according to Forbes. She is knocked out by TOM CRUISE, who got the number one. So I guess being a couch jumper, ignorant, opinionated, "should shut his &^% mouth", guy pays off. So I am just angry enough today to admit I hate Oprah (which on a normal day I woudn't say for fear of hellfire and damnation). Evidently, I'm not the only one who does. So does this guy. And he's really funny about it.

I think it's that look she gets when she closes her lips and sticks her nose in the air like "Go ahead, admire me some more" that drives me to hate. It makes me want to bitch slap her. I have the perfect Oprah show. Send Oprah to the ghettos to live on a Welfare check, take care of some women's six children, cook, clean, wipe butts and noses, and have to be normal for at least a year. Then show the highlights of her stomping her foot because she can't afford to have a limo driver go pick up dinner, or the kids shipped off to some expensive boarding school, or buy her Louis Vuitton purses. That's a show I'd watch.

But you want to know what else bugs me about Oprah? As much as I hate her, her show, her magazine, and her bookclub, just like that guy does, I still watch that frigging show, read the magazine, and buy the stupid books. So what does that make me? An Oprah ho?
Told you I was in a weird mood today.

The Last Time

Don't you think it's ironic how the last time you kiss someone, you never know it is the last time? And then you break up, and a month or so later, you think back and realize it was, and you wish you'd paid more attention.
There was a lady who used to manage the apartment complex where we lived when my children were little. She was a newlywed, and one morning she and her new husband got into a big argument. Her last words to him as he went out the door were, "I hate you." He was killed in a head-on collision on the way to work. She had a nervous breakdown and that was the last I heard of her. We just never know the last time is the last time.
So I think we have to just make sure everytime our loved ones leave, we tell them we love them and hug them like it's the last time. In case it is.

Here's the Skinny of It

I saw an eye surgeon yesterday and he thinks he can fix my eyes. I have had an eye that drifts over to the side when I am tired or don't feel well. I can hold them straight with some effort and attention to it, but as I get older, it's more of a strain. Also, because of this, I wear heavy prisms in my glasses. The eye doctor said they can't put in any more prism than they have now, because there is just no way to add any more to a lense. And I can't see with what I have now, at least not small print like phone books or newspapers. So we're left with surgery, which he says will correct it in 75% of cases like mine. That leaves 25% that have to have a second surgery. I'm willing to take that chance.

All my life, I've avoided looking directly at people, because I was so self conscious that my eyes might not stay straight and I'd gross them out. Of course, my family and friends are used to it. I think it would be a real blessing in my life to be able to look someone directly in the eye when I talk to them. That surgery is scheduled for the middle of August.

Tonight my stepdaughter and son-in-law are coming over for dinner. I am seriously considering a Stouffer Chicken Lasagna and a salad. It's good. We like it, and they are not choosy. So we'll see how it goes over.

And our best news today is we are mailing the check to pay off our only credit card. That right there is cause for celebration. Yoooo Hoooooo!

Last night we met my daughter for dinner. When she got there, I could tell she was sort of stressed, having just gotten through a very hectic day at work. I know she's been dealing with another family issue that has taken up many of her evenings lately. To me she looked a little pale. I worry that she doesn't take care of herself. I've worried about her ever since she was a preemie. She's always been little. I've always thought of her as my "little bitty". So when she only ate about a third of her very low cal dinner, I was concerned.

I told her she hadn't eaten anything. I also told her when we walked to the car that she needed to go home and rest and "eat some protein". Then I read her blog entry that she'd been getting a lot of rude comments about her weight, and my comments just threw some more fuel on the fire. I really meant well, because I worry about her working so hard. She has told me about stressed she gets at work sometimes. But her blog entry started me doing some self-examination. Do I resent my own daughter for being little when I've battled with my weight all my life? I think the honest answer is yes, not just her but anyone who seems to just naturally be thin. Losing weight has been my big mountain to conquer forever. I hate it. I get sick of it. I get sick of thinking about it. I get mad for not thinking about it. It's extremely frustrating. But she made me realize that I may have taken it out on her at times. And I'm sorry for that.
Truth be told, I think she is absolutely perfecto. And I'm very proud of her.

Putting One Foot in Front of the Other

As you may remember if you've been reading this awhile, I hired a new cleaning lady awhile back. When we talked about her taking on the job, I told her the one thing I ask is that she set a certain time and be there at that time, so I can plan my day around it. I told her I was very flexible as to what day what time but just pick one and stick with it. No problem, she said.
Now every week for the last few weeks, she calls. "One of my other clients was sick and asked if I could come tomorrow. So instead of doing your house in the morning, I'll be there in the afternoon." I hate afternoons, because she's slow (but methodical) and is still here when it's time for me to start dinner and for my husband to come home. He doesn't mind her coming but wants her out of here when he gets home.
So, have I said anything to her? Oh no. I usually say something wimpy like, "Oh sure, that will be fine" or "I understand. No problem." Then I resent it. So today, she's coming late again, and I heard a big groan out of my son when I told him she may be here when he gets home from work. I have to grow a backbone. I took assertiveness training! ha.
And if you're wondering why we still have a cleaning lady when my husband said we were having a financial crunch? Well I took over the bills, and we have a lot more free money than he realized. So I'm trying to stick to the necessities. And a cleaning lady is definitely a necessity!! ha.
I missed my Spanish class last night. By the time I ran my errands yesterday, I was totally exhausted. I think I did a little too much too soon. I bought a book from Amazon called "Spanish for Gringos" and it comes with CD's, so I'll try to keep at it this week.
Today I go to the doctor in the city where my daughter lives, so we are going to meet her for dinner when we get finished (and her husband if he can get away from work early enough).
I signed up with a secret shopper place and have signed up for a couple of local jobs. Mostly fast food restaurants. They pay about 8-10 per visit plus you get a free lunch. With that, and the articles I get paid for with Associated Content, I get a little extra spending money. But all that fast food is not going to do much for my diet. When I weighed at the hospital, those scales said I'd lost ten. At the doctor's office, his scales said six. But hey, I'll take six pounds. It's a start anyway.
I wrote another short story this morning. I was sitting here and the first few sentences came to me. I ran and grabbed the laptop and it seemed like I couldn't write it down as fast as it was coming. When it was finished, I do what I always do. First I send it to my daughter for her opinion. Then I leave it alone for a couple of days. After a couple of days, I go back and read it and fix things. Then I submit it and forget it. And secretly keep my fingers crossed that someone besides me likes it. And I'm very grateful to the heavens for dictating me another story.

Speakin' Spanish, Walkin' Drunk, and Goin' Batty

I laid around all weekend. My husband did most of the cooking, although he did go out and get Red Lobster one night. I'm still a little off-balance when I walk, and seem very weak, but I'm feeling much better than I did at this stage last year with the other ear. Hopefully, the medicine they put in my inner ear will help. I am enjoying getting waited on but that ends today I guess.

My husband left for work and my son leaves in a few minutes. My son got an internship for the summer. He graduates at the end of this fall semester. He's already talking about an apartment, so I don't guess he'll be home much longer. He's still in the part of his new job when no one knows what he's suppose to be doing yet. So he and the other interns have been sitting a lot. He said it makes for a very long day "but if they want to pay me to sit on my butt, I can go for that."

I can't hear on the telephone yet. My right ear was always bad and now the left one is bandaged. My husband has been answering my phone but since he's gone today, I hope it doesn't ring. I can hear it when it rings. I can hear faintly what people are saying, but only pick up about every third or fourth word. It's very frustrating.

The house is driving me crazy. My husband does the dishes but doesn't wipe off the stove, counters, etc. Plus he isn't very good at putting things away. So I'm going to try to get everything straightened up today, so the clutter won't drive me batty.

When the doctor weighed me a couple of weeks ago, I almost fell out. So since then, I've been really trying to watch what I eat. According to what I weighed at the hospital, I've lost ten pounds. Ten down and a million to go. But at least I'm heading in the right direction. I'll be glad when I can balance well enough to ride my bike again. The weather here has been so pretty and it feels like summer, even though it doesn't officially begin for a few more days.

I signed up for a Spanish class. I had my first class last week. It's being taught by a girl about my daughter's age. She's very nice but has never taught adults before. So she spent the first part of our time going over the rules. ha. It was cute. I wanted to take it because I have always wanted to learn a language and figured Spanish would come in handy more than the others. There is this man in our class that evidently was forced to come by his wife. He sits there the whole time saying "This is jibberish to me" and "I don't understand any of this" and "They should pack 'em all up and send 'em home if they can't speak English." We also have this lady who is very opinionated and outspoken, and she's been coming back at him with comments like "Well that's not gonna happen, so you'd better get used to them being here and learn something about their language and culture." He gives her looks like he could strangle her. I'm sitting back secretly hoping I get to see a fight between the two of them before our classes end. (snicker).

Well,for now, adios amigos.

Stick a Fork in Me I'm Done

We had to be at the surgery center at 530AM and it was a two hour drive from our house, so it's been a long day. I did fine with the surgery. I actually think it was easier than last time.
We have to go back there tomorrow morning for another Dexamethasone injection into that ear, and then I have to lie flat for two hours. Hopefully the worst of it will be over after that.
Thanks for all your well wishes and the ecards. I really appreciate it. It kind of bums you out to not have friends or family over to drop off a casserole when you don't feel well. But my husband is going to make dinner.
I may not post again for a few days. But just wanted to let you all know I'm doing good.

Here We Go Again

I went from not knowing anything about our finances to doing our bills. We paid off our only credit card. I think that will ease things up. We had a really nice dinner last night with my daughter and son-in-law at P.F.Changs. If you ever go there, order the honey shrimp and lettuce wraps and share. Yum.
I saw the ear specialist yesterday. Last year I had surgery in my right ear for Meniere's. I did great until about a month ago when my vertigo returned really bad. The doctor said my hearing in my left ear has deteriorated until it is now as bad as the right one. In a year's time. He "hopes" it's Meniere's in that ear. Because if it isn't, it could be the auto-immune disorder in the ear that caused Rush Limbaugh's deafness (He has since had an implant and can hear again).
So, in order to try to stop any more hearing loss, I have to go in tomorrow and have surgery on the left one.
I feel like I hit 50 and everything fell apart. ha. Didn't Ponce de Leon once say he thought the fountain of youth was in Florida? I should have looked for that bugger when I was down there.
Anyway, I'm going to clean the house today, buy some groceries, and get ready for being laid up for awhile. I'm also working on a budget. And I have to pick up the dogs from the groomer. And probably a million other things I haven't thought of yet. But if you don't hear from me for a few days, now you'll know why. Wish me luck!

Play it Again, Sam

I actually did this a year ago, so I thought I'd do it again with my current answers.

What were you doing ....

10 years ago... I was getting involved in a very controlling relationship with a very toxic man. It took me two marriages, and three years to shake him.

5 years ago... I met my husband. I think God said, ok. Listen, girl. You obviously don't know how to pick a man, so let me pick one for you.

1 year ago... I was expecting my mother in law's upcoming visit.

Yesterday...I found out my best friend is having a good day.

Today... I am exhausted.

Tomorrow...I have to go to the Eye Foundation to see about correcting my strabismus, something I've probably needed to do all my life.

5 snacks I enjoy... chocolate, pork rinds (stop saying, "EW!"), cheese, Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, and twizzlers.

5 songs I know all the words to... Amazing Grace, Your Cheating Heart, America the Beautiful, Third Rate Romance, and Hey Jude. (Something Freudian about those songs coming to mind first?)

5 reality television shows I watch... Nothing right now. We're in the summer tv drought.

5 television shows I watch daily... Today, Dr Phil, Judge Judy, something on the FoodNetwork, and I can only think of four.

5 things I would do with $100,000,000... Set up a very lucrative money market account, travel, go to a health spa and come out skinny, and hire a full time housekeeper/cook like Alice on the Brady Bunch.

5 locations I would love to run away to... A cabin isolated in the mountains, Paris, Hawaii, Jamaica, and Greece.

5 things I like doing... giving advice, laundry, surfing the web, taking naps, and eating.

5 things I would never wear... a padded bra, uncomfortable shoes, a corset, a beanie, a bikini.

5 recently seen movies I like... Over the Hedge, RV, American Haunting, The BreakUp, and I Walk the Line.

5 famous people I'd like to meet... Stephen King, Sean Penn, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Maya Angelou, and Robert DeNiro.

5 biggest joys of the moment... Sold another short story this week to a book coming out next spring, my doggies, my friends, my kids, and my husband.

It's the Real Thing- Real Bad

Millions of people in our country have drug problems. I, myself, am a coke addict. No, not that powder kind. That kind that comes in a can marked Diet Coke. My husband and I figured it up, and we, together, drink 8-10 CASES of these each WEEK. I don't even want to figure out how many that is a day. But needless to say, if you drop by my house anytime during the day, I will have a can of the stuff in my hand or within reach.
When I was a little girl, soft drinks were getting really popular, but my dad "didn't believe in 'em" and thought they would "rot your kidneys". Therefore, we could have Kool-aid occasionally (that red dye has to be great for the kidneys) and water. Lots of water. In fact, before the cold water dispensers on refrigerators became popular, we had a home rigged one. He ran a copper pipe in and out of the coils on our frig, and put a spigot on it on the side of the frig. We could have all the water we wanted. But my friends had coke at their house, and I wanted it. BAD.

When my parents divorced, my mom remarried, and my step-dad liked Pepsi. So mom bought him a six pack of Pepsi each week. Of course, with the rest of us wanting it, that quickly grew. Finally, we ended up with a separate frig just to keep the cokes in. (Ok, I'm giving up trying to type "soft drinks". In the rest of this entry, all soft drinks, no matter what their brands, are called "COKE".)

My habit continued. Throughout the years, I continued the habit. You can ask my kids. The most trouble they ever got in, was drinking the last coke from the frig instead of saving that one for mom. (I feel like a terrible mother) When my daughter was two, and I had no car, I walked with her on my hip for two miles one day because I just had to buy a coke. I inhaled that thing like air.

My husband even bought an old coke bottle at a antique store, filled. He warned me but I even tried to drink that stuff. It was nasty and he never forgave me.
So I'm not kidding when I say I'm addicted. I think giving up sleep has got to be easier than giving up coke.

But I've read more and more about how it makes you fat. Even the diet ones like I drink. Especially the diet ones, according to some things I've read.

So I'm going to try AGAIN to get off these things. And I think it's amazing how hard that can be. I think we should be able to have our health insurance pay for a caffeine/carbonation patch or something.

Can You See Me Now?

UPDATE: Doc says I probably passed a fleck of plaque into my eye from an artery, and that these usually resolve quicky, as mine did. She also said I have high pressures and may have glaucoma. More tests to follow. I better stock up on books for the waiting rooms.

I started wearing glasses in fourth grade. I realized I couldn't read the chalkboard, and so my mom got me fitted in these old brown small squared frames. Of course, then the selection consisted of pointy frames, square black frames and square brown frames.
I got home and couldn't wait to put them on and look in the mirror. I remember thinking I looked smarter. Then I went to school with them on. My friends were gathered in the hall, and as I came in, the comments started. "Oh My God, where did you get THOSE glasses." "Man, those are ugly." I jerked them off and put them in my bookbag where they stayed unless I couldn't find a way to inch close enough to the board to read it. Then I'd slip them up, write it down, and quickly hide them away.
This hide and seek continued until I was dating in high school. I went to the drive-in and we actually were watching the movie (my daughter reads this) and he pointed out something on the screen. So I squinted and strained but I couldn't make out what he was talking about. He asked, "Can't you see that?" "No." "Why don't you get glasses?" "I have some." "Where?" "In my purse." "Well, put them on!"
After that, I wasn't quite as self-conscious, but there were times I just wouldn't wear them. Like on a first date. To get my driver's license picture made. When I had to go to a new group meeting of some kind.
Eventually, I got married, had kids, and started wearing them all the time. I found an eye doctor that could fit prisms (one of the accomodations for lazy eye) and I remember coming out the office with them thinking, "Oh My! Look at the trees! They have leaves!" Evidently I hadn't been seeing too well.
Then I hit my forties, and slowly print in phone books started looking blurry, but if I squinted really hard, I could make it out. I spent over an hour trying to thread a needle to sew on a button. The wonderful doctor who fitted my glasses retired and the new ones I've tried just don't get it right. So now, at fifty, I have progressive trifocals, and still I can't read with them. They bother me so much trying to read that whether I think about it or not, I end up tossing them onto a nearby table.
A couple of weeks ago, I had an episode where I woke up and couldn't see at all out of my left eye. I didn't want to tell anyone and worry them. It was a weekend, and I knew I had to see my doctor anyway for a physical, so I kept quiet. I knew it wasn't an injury because it was fine when I went to bed. By the next morning, I was seeing some out of it, but blurry. Then it gradually got back like it was before.
I told my doctor, and he's freaking. He has made appointments for me with every specialist imaginable, so all week I've been running to the doctor. I'm sure they'll figure it out. The ENT I saw yesterday thinks it may have something to do with the Meniere's disease. I see the Meniere's specialist next week, and an opthomologist tomorrow.
That scare made me aware of how much it means to me to be able to see, considering I've got hearing loss in both ears. I don't want to pull a Helen Keller anytime soon.
And while I'm on the subject, remember the old saying, "Boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses?" Well, yes they do. And the best part is, you can see it coming.