Unraveling - ROW80/Camp NaNo

This is my first attempt at making a six foot scarf.  My specialty over the last several years has been skinny scarves that hang no further than the collar bone and won't wrap around.  They are decorative rather than useful.  This one is also nearly a foot wide. I want it long enough to wrap around more than once or alternatively to fold it in half and wrap it around looping the ends through the fold. I'm crocheting with lace yarn that has a thread of tinsel in it, using a 2.5mm hook. 

I stopped to take this picture after I'd unraveled several of the 40 some rows that needed to come out to reach that red stitch saver that marks the first of the mistakes that created unintentional decreases that had narrowed the width by nearly an inch (4 meshes) by the time I realized it.  This is the second time since beginning the scarf three weeks ago that I've had to take out significant parts of it.  The first time I'd reached nearly two feet in length and had to take it back to two inches.  This time I had to take out about eight to ten inches after nearly reaching the halfway point of three feet.

The weird lighting is due to the lightbox it is laying on which I like to have under my work as I crochet to help me see the silhouette of the stitches.  It was probably because I kept moving away from the lightbox so I could more easily glance up now and then at the video playing to my right that set me up for skipping stitches.

Visible in the light on the right edge is a long loose chain which my preferred method for frogging.  I used a 9mm hook to work it and let it fall into the bag on top of the skein as it lengthens.  I find that working off this chain allows for more control of the tension as there is no tugging on a thread wrapped around the outside of a skein.

Unraveling seems to be the theme of my life. Not just one area of it either but nearly every aspect of it.  It feels like it is all coming unraveled or more precisely I'm being faced with having to unravel something about my life or self every time I turn around. 

When I gave up on my marriage two months ago and wrote the poem Who Am I Without You, I had no idea how that same sentiment was going to echo across several other aspects of my life within weeks:  Who am I without my Mom?  Who am I without my vision?  Who am I without the time to devote to the things that make me who I am?  Who am I when words fail me?  Who am I when all the mirrors in my life that showed me myself are missing or broken?

Sigh

I finally got the aps open involved with scavenging my creative writing files for 'good enough to print' words. One of my ROW80 goals.   I'm focusing first on my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld files as that accounts for most of my ROW80 and Wrimo novel projects going back to 2004.  This was a project I began several years ago as an attempt to figure out once and for all if I have a single epic multi-generational novel or a series or a storyworld proliferating stand alone stories with common characters.

As I was perusing the roster of characters I realized one of my major POV characters from one of the earliest stories (the first version was begun in the 1970s when I was in ninth grade) has a name that may no longer serve the purpose I intended because of current events.  I may have to find another name that conjures up the concept of caring, loving and kind because Karyn no longer does and who knows how long that meme is going to reign.

This is making me feel like my storyworld itself is unraveling.  Naming my characters is not a casual thing.  Either the etymology of the name itself or meanings conjured up by the sounding out of the name must relate to the theme the character's arc is playing out.  So I just spent two hours I don't really have on Think Baby Names and none of the alternatives are doing it for me.  Who is my character without her name?

Time to put on my thinking cap.

Cloche Hat

It took me 2.5 days to crochet the cloche hat before starting the matching scarf with the same skein.  This gave me hope that I could do the scarf in a week.  That is until Mom's stroke changed all such calculations.  Even then I was sure I'd be done before the end of the month.  Not likely now.  But I'm learning to love the process.  And that seems to be the attitude I need to cultivate about all my WIP including my Self.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2020

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2020

2020 Round 3 ROW80 and July Camp NaNo goals check-in:

* Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  Satisfactory effort

* Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- Satisfactory effort

* Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15 min Daily Minimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream. -- Unsatisfactory

* Read Fiction 30 min Daily Average --  Above and beyond

* Read/Study Craft 15 min Daily Average --  Above and beyond

* Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  --  Satisfactory effort

* 30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  Satisfactory

* To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged. --   Satisfactory

* Personal Journaling 45 min or 1000 words whichever come first Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.  --  Unsatisfactory

For an explanation and links to backstory see the ROW80/Camp NaNo Goals post.

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I Tried It My Way

Halpz Pleez?

Second in the Why I Need a Coach series.

Why I Need a Coach I  Just the final Round 1 check-in entry
Why I Need a Coach III

Anyone reading most of the last week's posts and following the trajectory of my husband's coaching me in time-management and self-managment but were new to my story might be wondering why a 50 something woman needs to have tasks assigned to her like a tweener.

Some women might even see my submitting to my husband's guidance as an offence to a modern woman's social position.

I raised those questions in my ROW80 check-in post on Wednesday and attempted to answer them only to find that the scroll through my explanation seemed longer than the measuring tape I measure my shrinking waist with twice a week.

That plus the fact I'd recently decided to start posting about my challenges with self and time management outside the supportive ROW80 community meant that I would have to repeat myself in a later post if I didn't just move the material into a fresh post and save it for the next day.

But then I reneged on my promise to answer the questions in Thursday's post because I'd frittered away my time until there wasn't enough of it to complete the extensive editing the moved material needed in order to stand alone.  So I had to push it to Saturday because the Friday slot was already planned.

Before I finished my first read-through of the draft today I realized there was too much material for a single post so I'm going to split it into several posts.

****

So why is a grown woman in this decade willing to submit to the direction of her husband on what to do and when?

The short answer is:  I tried it my way from the age of 20 to 56 and never got anything but messes out of my efforts.  Including the mess in my head.

Over and over again it didn't work.  I kept thinking:

• I wasn't trying hard enough
• I was lazy
• I wasn't sacrificing enough for the cause (my writing)
• I was just a dilettante
• I was untrustworthy (due to inconsistency in action and mood)
• I was a slob
• I was a failure
• I was a fraud
• I was useless
• and on and on and on

My way consisted mostly of trying to put writing first always.  First above self-care (sleep, nutrition, hygiene, exercise, relaxation), first above schedules, first above relationships, first above fun....

That was the advice that seemed to permeate all the writing books.  You must not want it bad enough if you put anything else first.  But all I got from it were millions of journaling and freewrite words, dozens of fiction WIP, hundreds of unpolished poems, dozens of unfinished book reviews, and dozens of unpublishable, rambling personal essays.

It was crazy-making.

Yet I kept resisting the advice from other fronts--parents, husband, friends, siblings, self-help books, counselors--that without some structure to my days my writing would remain little but a private hobby.  Without structure I would not develop the consistency required to finish projects and meet deadlines.

But why my husband?

Short answer: He has over 30 years of experience in self-management, time-management, people management, and project management in his role as supervisor of teams beginning with the Marine Corp followed by janitorial then IT then a shipping dock.

It doesn't hurt that he knows me and the situation well.  Or that he has lived the repercussions.

Oh, and its free.  In terms of cash anyway.

He was reluctant when I asked him last Friday to resume the coaching sessions we began last year in late spring.

'I have no desire to be your boss.' he said.

But I was desperate and I begged.

So he agreed on the condition that it is understood that the goal is for me to:

• absorb the lessons at the principle level so I can assess new situations on the fly and apply the principles to adjust the goals, methods, tactics or strategy without any outside help.  
• develop and maintain a consistency in staying on track with the scheduled tasks 
• and staying on task with each one as their turn comes.
• develop flexibility so I'm not thrown for a loop by the unexpected
• develop bounce-back-ability 
• stop taking failures personally and 'beating myself up' over them.  Just say 'OK that happened' and move on.

In other other words learn how to be my own supervisor.

The principles he works from that I've gleaned so far:

• set smaller reachable goals to accumulate rewards in the feeling of success.
• take those memories and make them the carrot aka the motivator.
• create habits and routines on autopilot for self-care tasks 
• create a structure for my days by adding the daily tasks one or two at a time, anchoring them to an existing habit
• streamline the tasks by implementing routines and insuring all necessary materials are accounted for and kept in order

I'm sure there are more because he doesn't always define them until after he's led me by the hand into an Ah ha! moment that burns a memory that contains the principle in a wordless, holistic lesson.

But none of that really explains why a grown woman who has read dozens of self-help books can't implement the advice on her own but needs one-on-one and step-by-step coaching.

There is really no short answer.

But there is a list of reasons.  Personal challenges that combine into an overwhelming jigsaw puzzle comprised of the jumbled pieces of half a dozen puzzles, a convoluted and lightless maze with so many notches on the walls they have no meaning, a mathematical equation too complex for Einstein to solve:

• I'm ADD (recently diagnosed)
• I have Panic/Anxiety/Depression mood disorder
• I'm legally blind with RP aka Tunnel Vision
• I have high blood pressure
• I'm overweight 
• I'm living in my elderly Mother's household run by my sister who is her caretaker. (see the 2013 February and March posts under the lifequake label for context) 

This environment is chaotic due to the following:

• Including my sister's YA son all four of us are ADD
• My nephew also has the same mood disorder as me
• All four of us are hoarders and/or organizationally challenged
• My sister and I both moved the stuff from our own households into this one and every surface in every room is an archaeological dig
• My mother is 82 and also legally blind with the RP, plus she is Aphasic due to the stroke during her hip surgery after a fall in 2008, and is in severe chronic pain from osteoporosis inflicted damage to her spine just above the tailbone.  
• Mom can no longer be left home alone for more than a couple of hours and that's becoming iffy.
• My sister does respite care for behavior challenged kids and there is often one or two spending a day to a week here. Or she goes to their house leaving me on duty with Mom.

That is enough for this post.  It answers all the questions I posed in Wednesday post.

I've moved out all the paragraphs in which I tried to describe each of the challenges and how their interplay makes them exponentially more challenging and sometimes even life, limb or health threatening.  They just about double the word count and yet aren't nearly complete enough.  There is probably material for multiple future posts and I plan to continue developing it in my WhizFolder note ap and dole them out as this story line of Joy's Story progresses.

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Graceful She Is Not

Facepalm sometimes says all that needs saying.

I fell over the dishwasher door again this evening.

I was on duty from lunch time to bedtime today as Mom did not go to my brother's for the weekend as she was in too much pain.  The doctor prescribed hydrocodone and this was the first day taking it.  I was standing right beside the dishwasher in the process of loading the dinner dishes when I heard Mom call "Good night" from the hall.

I suddenly remembered I needed to work out with her a way for her to find the already split pills in the middle of the night and make sure she understood there needed to be four hours between doses.  I also needed to get a report from her on how she felt--pain level and any possible side effects.

With that thought I turned and took one step to my right--or tried to--and tumbled across the bottom rack holding big pans, dinner dishes, bowls and silverware surfing it to the floor on the other side.

The racket was horrendous.  Like a thunderstorm in a tin bucket.

But nothing was broken.  Not on the dishwasher. Not on the dishes in the rack.  Not on me.

But oh boy are there a lot of sore spots. The worst at this moment seems to be the hard ridge along the bottom of my right palm and the wrist--mouse and crochet hook hand.  It's going to be a rough couple of days.

The second worst pain isn't from that accident but the one I had while fixing dinner.

I dropped a few zucchini chunks on the floor while scraping them off the cutting board and bent down to pick them up smacking my forehead on the cutting board hard enough Mom heard the thwack from her recliner in the living room.

I had to sit down with an ice pack for ten minutes before I could proceed with dinner.  Nearly knocked myself out.

But it's not the pain from the knot on my forehead nor the headache that still lingers that competes with the fallout from the fall over the dishwasher.  Its the pain from the whiplash to my neck.  And I'm not sure it doesn't win first place.

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The Eyes Have It

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Went to the eye doctor today.  Not for new prescription glasses or any other potential benefit for my eyes but to get evidence of the severity of the retinitas pigmentosa as the next hoop to jump to qualify for state benefits so that I can have medicare so that I can have my prescriptions for blood pressure and mood disorder now numbering six and maybe stay alive and maybe sane.

And because they didn't schedule the field vision test for this appointment I have to go back again in two weeks for that to get the proof of what the eye doctor today estimated based on his visual observation of my retinas that I now have less than 5 degrees of vision. That's 5 out of the possible 180.

The state defines legal blindness as less than 20 degrees.  I was already at 12 to 15 the first time I went on disability in 1989 and the RP is by definition a degenerative disease and still no cure in sight.  So it would have taken a miracle of Gospel proportions to have changed that yet because I had the  good fortune to be able to go off the disability for over ten years I have to apply again as if I never did.

Do I sound bitter much?  Sorry but something about dealing with the system makes one feel less than.

The system looks at you with soulless eyes as if through a microscope at bacterium on a slide.  So one comes to feel a bit like a bacterium--a parasite needing to be exterminated.

Every time I go in to see my counselor I'm given a form to fill out to measure my subjective sense of my mood that day and one of the questions is: How often in the last two weeks have you felt you were a burden to family and friends?  never, sometimes, half the time, nearly every day, every day.  I always answer one of the last two even when for all the other questions I can answer one of the first two.

And I always silently add 'society' or 'community' to the list after 'family and friends'.

It doesn't help that as a political news junkie I'm tuned into the current debate in America over healthcare reform and that the overall mood of that debate paints taxpayer funded healthcare and other 'entitlements' as burdens on the hardworking Americans and is creating a sense that anyone needing help from the system is a 'user' or a 'taker' and that if the so called American Dream isn't working for you it can only be because you're too lazy to work for it and that the kindest thing we can do for people who can't or won't 'pay their own way' is eliminate all the 'entitlements' in order to force them to 'pull their own weight'.  But if you can't or won't 'pull your own weight' than have the decency to keep your weight off the backs of your fellow American Dreamers as you sink into the mud beneath their gold booted feet.

So.  OK.  The fact that question is on that 'mood-o-meter' questionnaire is testament to the fact that 'feeling like a burden' is a symptom of the illness and thus not necessarily a rational or objective view.

But it isn't necessarily irrational to interpret the mood of the nation that way and thus see yourself through the eyes of the Paul Ryans and Rand Pauls and the Tea Party protesters and the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters and Michelle Malkins... all those voices that are all but chanting for people like me to just lay down and die already.  Just get out of the way so the 'real' Americans can have the freedom to grab their bootstraps and bound up the ladder of success as weightless as frogs in space.

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It's Like This

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I have a massive sinus headache tonight.  I'm sure it's at least partially due to the several hundred liters of tears I've shed since Thursday evening.  But it's probably partly cat hair and dander from all the cuddling Merlin has been getting and pollen from taking him for excursions in the yard, and dust I've stirred up while unpacking the last van load from our house in Phoenix, and cleaning and rearranging the areas of the rooms I'm using at Mom's.  Then there is the fact that the light on the central air system shows it is time to clean the filter.

The tears (for those just tuning int) are from having had to just leave my husband behind again Friday morning without any idea this time when the next time will be or where now that the last of my stuff is our of our house and by tomorrow so will be Ed and his stuff.

Today's main task was the appointment with the Social Security Administration about getting me back on disability based on my visual impairment.    This was the latest aftershock generated by the lifequake that hit me in late January when I learned that I was no longer covered by insurance from Ed's job.  This created the dilemma that has me feeling like I'm caught in a snare that is binding me hands and feet.

Options are few.  None of them desirable.

My health issues are life-threatening without medical care with blood pressure and mood disorder being the primary issues.  But even with the part-time nature of Ed's job and the fact that for half the year or more he draws unemployment--a week or two out of every month between Christmas and Halloween--he makes too much for me to qualify for aide. The waiting list for getting on the Oregon Health Plan is nearly a year long.  Thus, in order to get my health issues tended to I have to not be living with him.

Or in other words I can live.  Or I can live with my husband.  So much for Defense of Marriage, right?

The last time I was on SSI disability Ed was not working at all.  He was drawing unemployment for a time until that ran out but then it was just my SSI that was supporting us both and we couldn't afford to risk the medical benefits aspect of it for him to take a job that did not include medical benefits for me.

Eventually he did find one having used the time he was unemployed to teach himself HTML and several other web development skills and snagging a tech job in the Silicon Valley in the late 90s that took us out of the poverty level for the first time ever.  That lasted 22 months before the dot.com crash in 2001 took it away from us and we had to move in with his folks in the Rogue Valley and he took the job he still has with a company whose primary products are seasonal and/or holiday.  Except for Fruit of the Month and Dessert of the Month Clubs.

Only an honored few below management level are kept on year around and most of those are kept at part time.  But they would continue to make health insurance part of the perks as a way to control turnover and hang onto the cadre that would train and supervise the battalions of seasonal workers hired for the fruit packing season in the fall and the Christmas season between Halloween and New Year.  A year ago they took that away from the part timers and took hours away from them to insure they wouldn't have to provide it.

It was the health coverage that made that job indispensable in spite of the income keeping us under the poverty level and unable to get into our own home again for over a decade.  It was only because our recent landlord was a friend who waived first, last and deposits and took some of the rent in labor that we were able to get into the trailer Christmas week of 2011.  Now he has to sell the trailer and had to ask us to move out.

Which nixed our plan for Ed to hang onto the job and the house down there while I lived with my Mom and applied for aide in order to maintain my meds until we could get on the Oregon Health Plan so I could come home.  Now there is no home to come back to and Ed is moving back in with his folks.

And I just found out today that I probably shouldn't be on the waiting list for the Oregon Health Plan while I'm living in Washington.  So there goes that hope.

And again I say, So much for Defense of Marriage yadayda.  Obviously those guys aren't all that concerned about preserving marriages or they wouldn't create programs that create such impossible dilemmas for married couples.

So the waterworks are going full force this week as I struggle to deal with all of this while in the throes of an unstabilized mood disorder--missing Ed, grieving over the loss of our home, trying to find how to fit into the chaos of this household run by my baby sister around the needs of our elderly blind mother, feeling like a burden to my family and intense shame as I jump through the social service hoops...

The next hoop is Thursday when I get the eye exam that proves I'm still legally blind and haven't experienced a miracle cure for Retinitas Pigmentosa in the last two decades.

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Sunday Serenity #325

Us Summer 2011

I'm going to do something I rarely do here and post a full face picture of myself.  This in honor of the fact that all of my serenity and joy of the last week is wrapped up in what this pic represents.  It was taken of Ed and I at Rice Hill OR where he'd met my sister and I to transfer my stuff from her car to his Dad's car upon my return from the  May-August visit at Mom's in Longview.  When I'd gone for Mother's day and stayed for my niece's wedding in July and my sister Jamie's surgery in August.

Anyone following my blog this month will know that we nearly split the week of Valentine's but managed to stop the bleeding of our broken hearts before they bled out via some intense email exchanges.  Then this past Thursday my sister drove me down after more of my stuff I'm going to need for the extended stay at Mom's and Ed and I had some intense face-to-face encounters that began the healing process.

My extended stay in Longview is for tending to a health crisis brought on by loss of my meds after we lost health insurance through Ed's job.  So I'm staying here where my sister can be advocate, phone contact and chauffeur as I get the necessary help and until something can be established back home to carry it forward once I'm stabilized again.

I have mentioned my various health issues here in the past but do not dwell on them nor feature them very often.  I will break that tradition now as my life is becoming an exercise in getting healthy and independent so that I can step up as full and equal partner with my husband and I can't imagine continuing to blog daily if I try to keep all of this private.

For now I will just list the issues:

I'm legally blind due to Retinitis Pigmentosa aka RP aka Tunnel Vision. This is a degenerative eye disease that takes the night vision first (my teens) then a progressive loss of peripheral vision (my twenties with legal blindness reached by age 27) and finally encroaches on the central vision (I've lost so much of the central in my left eye I can no longer read with it and it is closing in on the right as well)

My blood pressure was in the range of 220/120 when I finally started treatment in 2006 which was life threatening not to mention the risk of stroke that could take language from me.  It took a combination of four meds to get it under control and since last August I'd been taking only one or two at any one time as we tried to stretch a month's supply into six weeks or two month's.

I have a mood disorder that includes severe anxiety issues especially social anxiety along with episodes of severe depression.  All of that accompanying severe insomnia to the point I often go days without sleeping at all or weeks with sleeping less than four hours at a time. And the when is all over the clock.  The artist of the cat naps I am.  I went off the meds for this last August and thought I was coping but apparently nobody else thought so and once this latest crisis hit it became obvious to me as well.  The clinic my sister took me to is going to screen me for bi-polar next month before restarting the meds which probably won't be the same ones as before as my sister mentioned that she didn't think they were all that excellent.

I am also overweight by maybe 60-70 pounds now.  I've lost about 50 in the last three years that has come off without going back on.  I've come down from a size 24/26 to a size 18/20.

Additionally I have dizziness and balance issues, joint pain, significant loss of hearing accompanied by loud ringing in the ears and a mouth full of rotten teeth.

My sister is actually excited about the prospect of getting my health overhauled.  I wasn't feeling real cooperative about it at first but am now on board.

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Full of It.

Just pulled ahead on NaNo.  Need only 1112 words to finish and could probably get them before I go to bed but don't know if I will.

The words are there but they are full of it.  There seems to be less story this year and more musing about the story.  More rambling, digressions, and more indigestion making messes.

Like something made in a pot with leftovers.

But the words are there.  So maybe I can make something of them eventually.

Yesterday I roasted a whole chicken in our new crock pot my sister got us and today I made chicken soup from the leftovers.  Added the leftover green beans from Thanksgiving dinner, the leftover baby carrots from our car snacks last week, the leftover noodles from Ed's Sunday spaghetti which was the meal that inaugurated the crock pot.  Salt, pepper, garlic power and jalapeno pickle juice to spice it.

While dishing it up I slopped a ladle full over the finger of my left hand holding the bowl up to the pot.  Good thing it had been on low for over an hour at that point.

I guess i'm going to have to stop holding the containers I am pouring or dishing hot stuff into.  The tunnel vision is now to the point I can't see the entire rim of a cup when holding it or the entire large ladle let alone the whole bowl.

I know this but I still prefer to hold the bowl up to the pot when dishing up things that might splatter or spill.  But I think wiping up a little mess would be preferable to putting up with fingers that feel sunburned for several days.  Or worse.

This is going to slow down the crocheting as the finger that controls the thread is affected and I'm sure is not going to love having that thread drug across it for hours on end.

Speaking of crochet.  I finished another of the 8 strips of 11 squares today on the Secret Santa project.  Was all excited until I got out the first one finished last October and discovered the second one is both narrower and shorter.  Shorter by over 4 inches which is supposed to be the size of the squares.

[Picture of Charlie Brown with wide open mouth.]  Arrrrrrrrrrgh!

This is the kind of problem that tends to make me set a project aside indefinitely but I do not have that luxury as I have to have it done by Christmas or even a few days before.  So one way or another I have to make this work inside of three weeks.

Just for kicks while taking pics of the soup I snapped this one of the coffee pot I talked about so much this week.  Almost didn't post it when I saw the smudges on it in the photo which I could not see on the pot itself.

That's typical of my eyes these days.  I see more in the photos taken of something then in the thing itself in real life.

So that's the coffee pot I brewed six tanks of cleaning solution and two tanks of plain water through on Monday.  This brought it back to life.  The dispenser had stopped working and so we had to take the grounds out of the top and lift the bucket out to pour coffee and this tended to make terrible messes all over the counter and stain the counter.  Ed had been planning to buy a new one but when my sister looked at it last week she thought maybe it only needed a good internal cleansing.

It wasn't good enough to just brew the cleaning solutions through and then dump the bucket though.  To fix the dispenser I also had to make it deliver the fluid into the cup. So for every full pot of 'brew' I pulled out two or three cups through the dispenser before dumping the bucket.  In thee beginning it took over fifteen minutes to fill a cup but by the end it took only 7 seconds.

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Google's Project Glass: I Want to Know

Of the many questions prompted by this intriguing video, one pops out and its possible answer excits me.  

I would like to know what would happen if he opened the book he pulled off the bookstore shelf and started reading it.  Could he use zoom and other camera features to adjust for visual impairment?  

In other words would I, with my advanced Retinitus Pigmentosa be able once again to pull regular print books off shelves at home, at the library and at bookstores and read them without a magnifying glass?  

If the answer is 'Yes' then I'm uber excited and only wonder if Google's future will get here in time for me.

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Not Ready to Hang It Up Yet

My mom has been more productive than I have in the last couple of weeks or more.  She has been crocheting coverings for hangers.  Pictured here are just some of them.  Several have been given away as gifts already and some are already hanging in my sister's closet.  She made rainbow variegated ones for my sister.  These blue ones are for me.  I supplied the yarn and most of the hangers.

This isn't the only thing she has accomplished either. She has been winding my crochet thread off the cardboard tubes into balls for me for over a month now at the rate of one or two per day.  I haven't counted recently but I think I have less than ten more of the cotton thread for her to do.  Which should be about right as my new departure date is tentatively set for a week from Saturday.

It is amazing to see the difference in the space that thread takes up after it is off the tubes versus before.  I will get pictures soon.  But if you've ever seen the pics of the blue chest that held all of my thread you might remember that the cotton size ten thread alone took up 2.5 of the three drawers.  Now with less than ten percent left to do the balls are taking up less than half of one drawer.

This picture explains why as it shows the difference is space two nearly full balls take up before and after winding off the tubes:

These were some of the first that I did in order to make a project portable.  

 Here are some pics of my thread hoard as of approximately a year ago.  I haven't added a whole lot to it since then so it is representative of what I brought here with me this year.  The entire hoard overflows the three drawers and for over a year now I would have them stuffed and have a dozen or or two balls on the hook in portable project bags.

That is a huge help to me.  I had started doing it myself and mom asked if she could help and a few days later I stopped having got busy with other things.  But she kept going.  This will make not only storing the thread in waiting for projects easier but traveling with it and of course the individual projects will be more portable.  Many can be pocket sized even.

Mom also folds the laundry every day.  My sister brings it up from the laundry room and leaves it on the couch for her.  So in spite of her eyesight failing rapidly and constant pain in her hip and back she is not hang it up yet.

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How Fast Do You Read?

Source: Staples eReader Department

Ever since I started reading ebooks last fall, I had the sense that I was reading significantly faster than I had been with tree books using regular sized fonts.  Now I know for sure.

It was hard to judge since the ebooks don't measure by pages and when it says I'm at 20% what is being measured.  Nor when it says 244/556.  When I read 1Q84 this past week the second number was 2343 and I know the book was not 2343 pages so it isn't pages they measure.  I tried counting the words on a screen and then trying to keep track of how many screens I read in a minute or in five minutes but I could not keep the count straight plus trying to keep an eye on the clock did not help my speed.

So I was excited to find this little speed reading test on the Staples site.  It is designed to help you figure out which ereader you would get the most books read on a single battery charge.

The first time I took this test with 12pt font I read less than 300.  I think it was even less than 250--and I still failed the comprehension questions.  All three.  Then I zoomed my browser until the fonts appeared approximate 14 to 16pt and tried again.  And my speed increased to just under 500.  I went from 20% slower than the average adult to 96% faster.

It is still only half the speed I once read but I'll take it and smile.

This drop in reading speed is the fallout from the RP that is taking my eyesight one pixil at a time.

Not only was reading so much slower with tree books but I couldn't read for as long either.  Usually after less than thirty minutes I would need to rest my eyes and so often once I'd put the book down I didn't pick it up again for hours or days.  That was so frustrating.

Last night I started The Hunger Games after midnight and I almost finished it before I had to sleep.  It has been a long time since I came that close to reading a whole book of that length and difficulty level in under 6 hours.  I still haven't finished it as there was so much else going on today.

I can't wait until the next read-a-thon!!!  I might actually be able to list multiple finishes.

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Ch- ch- ch- changes. Gets Thee Behind Me.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

I'm always discombobulated by change. No amount of reasoning as to how it is inevitable serves to make me comfortable with it. Today I woke to discover my blog had been hacked and was redirecting visitors to a spam page offering the domain name for sale. While I was dealing with that Blogger via a popup asked if I was ready to switch over to the new platform.  I don't know why I clicked yes.  I was not in the mood for learning a new way to prepare my post.  But then when would I ever be?  I think I may have been feeling a minor surge of courage after figuring out how to fix the hack on my blog without running to Ed to rescue me.

Well there are several things I like about the new posting platform : 

• more buttons for coding--strike, undo, redo, jump break.
• more space in the editing fiels tho I could still wish for more.
• ability to change the size and position of photos after they are in place without going into the code
• ability to add labels by scrolling through a list of available ones and clicking on them.

And there are a few things I don't like so much:

• the font in the editing field used to be large enough for me to see without zooming and now it isn't.  A difference between size 14 and size 10
• which wouldn't be so bad if I could then use zoom but when I implemented zoom the right side of the editing field went behind the panel of commands in the right hand column and no horizontal scroll showed up..  I would prefer anyway if the whole page, editing field and command panel remained in same ratio and the horizontal scroll appeared for the whole page.  I'm used to that as I take advantage of zoom on many pages because of my vision impairment and am used to using horizontal scroll

I'm sure there are more I would put in both lists but I've had enough for tonight.  I need to take my change in small doses.

I've been talking here only of the editing platform itself.  I haven't even begun to explore the other new stuff on offer: the stats and analytics, settings and layout.  But that's gotta wait for another day.  Like I said.  Small doses.

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It's Monday! What Are You Reading #30

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.




I read Elizabeth Berg's The Last Time I Saw You for Dewey's Read-a-Thon this weekend. You can read my first reaction in my thon post.

It was a feat in itself to read all 320 large print pages in under 15 hours. Such a rare thing for me anymore with eyestrain becoming an issue sooner and requiring longer recovery time. I long for the days when polishing off 500+ pages of normal sized print in a singe day was par for the course--a school day no less. But then I see my Mom (also with RP) with her magnifying glass reading the comics in the newspaper or her large print Reader's Digest one word or syllable at a time, sounding the longer words out like a first grader with Dick and Jane and I'm reminded to be grateful for what I still have.

During the read-a-thon I found myself gravitating more and more back to the screen to check out the hub activity and other reader's blogs and realized it was because I can read the fonts on my netbook screen easier. Even fonts smaller than those I'm unable to read off the page for more than fifteen minutes. I'm not sure but I think it has something to do with them being backlit. But it is also nice to have the zoom function or the ability to enlarge the fonts alone. Note to web page developers: seriously folks 9 or 10 pt grey font on off white? That can't be good for anybody's eyes.

OK nuf kvetching.

For the week ahead I hope to expand my initial comments on Berg's novel into a review though I may wait to post that until the Shelia's Wordshaker's book club convenes on that book.

Beyond that my reading plans revolve around Script Frenzy from which I took off Friday through Sunday for the read-a-thon. I'd hoped to devote some of my thon reading to scripts and screenwriting how-to during the thon but did not so that is where my main focus will be for the next week.

Script Frenzy is a writing challenge put on by the same people who brought us NaNoWriMo (write a 50K word novel in 30 days) in November. This challenge held every April is to write a 100 page script in 30 days.

These four scriptwriting books are coming due Thursday and this first one will not renew for me. Wouldn't you know it is the one I'm finding the most helpful and also the one with the smallest font.

Essentials of screenwriting : the art, craft, and business of film and television writing by Richard Walter

This is my favorite of the four scriptwriting how-to books I checked out last week. I've actually read a dozen or more pages in a row while I've mostly browsed in and read glossary entries and checked the indexes for specific topics in the other three.

The screenwriter's bible : a complete guide to writing, formatting, and selling your script by David Trottier

I've found some useful advice in here but it's not exactly a page turner. It is also BIG. Like a coffee table book.

The complete book of scriptwriting by J. Michael Straczynski

Straczynski has appeared in the credits of several TV series. Babylon 5 for one. Which is one of my all time favorite. So I am going to give him a serious listen.

A forth book, Writing the Script: A Practical Guide for Films and Television by Wells Root, is three decades old which is probably why I had trouble find an image of the cover.

To complement the how-to books, I've also checked out several books with scripts:

The green mile : the screenplay / screenplay by Frank Darabont ; introduction by Stephen King.

William Goldman : four screenplays. Containing: Marathon man -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid --Princess bride -- Misery

Slumdog millionaire / screenplay by Simon Beaufoy.

There are more scripts I've found online but that's enough for this list.

You can see what I'm working on for my script here.

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Library Loot: September 29 – October 5

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

Claire has Mr Linky this week.

My husband picked up the items waiting for us yesterday. I'm pressed for time having just started Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna Sunday night which is due Monday so I'm going to skip image collection and just paste the info I just pasted into my note ap where I keep track of items out.

Once I have a little spare time I will be moving the info for each book onto its own separate note aka bib slip in that same note ap, WhizFolders, unless like The Help it already has one albeit for the large print edition. Can you believe I used to make all these bib slips by hand? I still have hundreds of them covering three library systems and my personal library going back a decade. I lost the previous decade's worth in our 2001 move--a couple thousand at least.

I was reading The Help while in Longview WA in August and didn't finish and when I got home the queue for the LP edition was in double digits (30+) with 2 copies whereas that for the audio was at 8 with 2 copies . Don't even want to talk about the queue for the regular print edition which was approaching 100 with around 10 copies. When I checked today they now have 5 copies of the LP, 6 of the audio and 43 of the regular print.

I haven't listened to an audio book for years. I used to dislike it because I could read so much faster than that. Due to the RP I can't read as fast as I can talk anymore so I'm going to give audio books another try. I'm hoping I have a positive experience. Also hope I will be able to listen while crocheting or stepping on the mini-tramp. Or when I'm too sick to read like I was this past week.

Title: The help [sound recording (CD)] : a novel / Kathryn Stockett.
Publisher, Date: [New York, N.Y.] : Penguin Audio, p2009.
Description: 15 sound discs (ca. 18 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Saw Mosse's Labyrinth on someones Currently Reading list a bit over a week ago and ordered it. While I was looking at other books by Mosse, I went ahead and ordered Sepulchre. It arrived first. Labyrinth has been shipped.

Title: Sepulchre / Kate Mosse.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher, Date: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2008.
Description: 572 p. : map ; 24 cm.
Summary: The stories of two women separated by more than a century are brought together by a series of visions that are related to the tarot and a small church, known as a Sepulchre in the grounds of the Domaine de la Cade.
Subject: Tarot cards -- Fiction.
Time travel -- Fiction.
France -- Fiction.
Occult fiction.
Fantasy fiction.

I saw Ecology of a Cracker Childhood listed on someone's Library Loot or It's Monday What Are You Reading? posts. Possibly both.

Title: Ecology of a Cracker childhood / Janisse Ray.
Edition: 1st pbk. ed.
Publisher, Date: Minneapolis : Milkweed Editions, 1999.
Description: 285 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Subject: Ray, Janisse, 1962- -- Childhood and youth.
Baxley (Ga.) -- Biography.
Longleaf pine.
Deforestation -- Georgia.
Forest ecology -- Georgia.
Consumption (Economics) -- Social aspects.

I've had Anatomy of the Spirit checked out of several different libraries since it came out in 1996 and was featured on Oprah. I've never quite finished it as there was always a queue. My sister, Jamie, has been reading it recently and wanted me to be able to discuss it with her so I'm trying again. It's been a few years so I'll probably have to start it over. Again.

Title: Anatomy of the spirit : the seven stages of power and healing / Caroline Myss.
Edition: 1st pbk ed.
Publisher, Date: New York : Three Rivers Press, 1996.
Description: xiv, 302 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Subject: Medicine and psychology.
Mind and body.
Medicine, Psychosomatic
Personality -- Health aspects.
Alternative medicine.
Self-care, Health

DVD:

Have been in queue for both of these for most of this year if not before the New Year. It's been a long wait. I had the book Food Inc checked out awhile back but haven't finished it.

Funny story: when Ed went to pick up our requests he found a copy of Food Inc in both of our reserve stacks. He only checked out one of course, handing the second over to the librarian saying I don't know what she was thinking. Well I don't either. There are several possibilities. I got in line on one of our cards weeks before and forgot. I thought I was reordering the book. Or I could have thought if we didn't manage to watch it in the week allotted that would insure a speedier second change. That last is very, very unlikely though. Can barely imagine it being my thought process so one of the first two is most likely. But what were the chances we'd both end up with our turn the same week? Especially since at the time the library system had only one copy.

The queue was above 70 when I first jumped on. It is still above 30 but then now have 9 copies.

Another irony: While browsing Netflix this month I discovered Food Inc is available to watch online. But at the time I still thought Ed wanted to watch it with me so stayed in queue for the DVD. He says he won't have time this week and probably not til after the holiday season.

Title: Food, Inc. [videorecording (DVD)] / Magnolia Pictures ; Participant Media ; River Road Entertainment present ; Developed with American Documentary, Inc. ; Perfect Meal, LLC. ; a film by Robert Kenner ; executive producers, William Pohlad, Jeff Skoll, Robin Schorr, Diane Weyermann ; producers, Robert Kenner, Elise Pearlstein ; co-producers, Eric Schlosser, Richard Pearce, Melissa Robledo ; writers, Robert Kenner, Elise Pearlstein, Kim Roberts ; directed by Robert Kenner.
Edition: Widescreen.
Publisher, Date: [Los Angeles, CA] : Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2009.
Description: 1 videodisc (ca. 94 min.) : sd., col. w/ b&w seq. ; 4 3/4 in.
Summary: Lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing how our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profits ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. Reveals surprising - and often shocking truths - about what we eat, how it's produced and who we have become as a nation.
Target Audience Note: MPAA rating: PG; for some thematic material and disturbing images.
Subject: Food industry and trade -- United States.

Old Dogs is one Ed asked to get in line for and he is going to try to watch it with me this weekend. I would have sent for it anyway. I mean Robin Williams, John Travolta and kids! Irresistible.

Title: Old dogs [videorecording (DVD)] / a Tapestry Films production, a Walt Becker film ; produced by Andrew Panay, Robert Levy, Peter Abrams ; written by David Diamond & David Weissman ; directed by Walt Becker.
Publisher, Date: Burbank, CA : Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, [2010]
Description: 1 videodisc (88 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.
Summary: Dan and Charlie are two best friends who, together, have built a successful marketing empire, but have somehow managed to avoid ever really grown up. Their lives have been turned upside down when they are charged with the care of seven-year-old twins while on the verge of a big business deal. The clueless bachelors stumble in their efforts, leading to one debacle after another, with a gorilla and some pecking penguins. Dan and Charlie learn as much from the kids as vice versa.
Target Audience Note: MPAA rating: PG; for some mild rude humor.
Series: Disney DVD
Disney DVD.
Subject: Male friendship -- United States -- Drama.
Marketing executives -- United States -- Drama.
Twins -- United States -- Drama.
Father and child -- United States -- Drama.
Bachelors -- United States -- Drama.

Travolta, John, 1954-
Williams, Robin, 1952 July 21-
Preston, Kelly.

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Where's the Nap Attacks When You Need Them?

Excuse me but this is going to be a ramble and rant post as sleep deprivation has lowered my inhibitions as effectively as a double shot of Kaluha and Cream. I have just pulled my first wake-around-the-clock stunt since I got here almost two weeks ago. I guess it was bound to happen but it caught me by surprise. I didn't feel it coming. I'd been feeling pleased with myself for sticking fairly close to a wake up between 10 and 11 AM and asleep between 2 and 3AM schedule. Now I'm not only ticked at myself for blowing that schedule all to hello and back but I'm having the morning after regrets, wondering how it is I think I'm capable of managing a web-based business, a bookstore or a writing career let alone all three whether in some combination or consecutively when it takes me 2 to 6 hours to complete an online transaction involving money.

Last night I started a task that I expected would take me no longer than four hours tops and hopefully more like 2.5. I began at 10 PM. The task was to activate the pre-paid, reloadable card my husband sent me and then go spend some of it on Joann.com to take advantage of a 30% off sale on crochet thread, floss, and ribbon coupled with free shipping.. Scrapbooking supplies too but that's not my current craft, though it looks to be the kind I could love.

OK Joy get back on track. You don't need any more hobbies.

I was excited at the thought of getting to plug several more holes in my thread rainbow. I'd been waiting since February for another $5 flat rate shipping offer to land in my inbox. That was when I acquired 8 hard-to-find colors. I had been drooling over them for months but could not justify ordering them when the shipping costs would add anywhere from a third to a half again to the cost of each ball of thread. In February I got 8 balls at their regular price of 2.49 to 2.79 apiece for a total of a little less than $20 plus the $5 shipping fee that added only 62 cents to the cost of each ball. Before their standard shipping was $5 for the first $10 of product ordered then it jumped to $7 something when your order went over $10 and $10 when it went over $20 and so on and on. I rounded some of those numbers up or down because I can't remember them exactly just the approximate range.

This time I ordered 17 items (15 assorted crochet thread balls) and that $5 flat rate would have added only 29 cents to each item. But the day after I received the email announcing the $5 flat rate and after I had discovered the 30% off sale but before the prepaid card was delivered, another email from Joann.com announced FREE shipping and an extension of the sale that was supposed to end Wednesday through to Saturday. After finding that email I spent several hours fretting over whether the card would arrive in time. If the offers had not been extended then the card would have had to arrive that day and I would have had to activate it and compile my order by midnight. Which was in the realm of the improbably knowing my propensity to make 30 minute tasks into 300 minute tasks. But knowing the card was supposed to have gone in the mail Monday afternoon I had little hope that it would reach me by Wednesday afternoon anyway. Yet the card did arrive late Wednesday afternoon after all as Ed had sent it UPS but by then I'd seen the announcement of the extended deadline so I didn't rush to tend to it that night. I'm glad I wasn't up against that midnight deadline as I probably couldn't have made it. I found the card just before needing to start dinner prep and was not free to tend to it until after 8PM but I also need to tend to that day's post.

So on Thursday I made sure to get my post up in the afternoon and then had my night session after Mom went to bed to tend to the card and the order. See I had never taken care of either of these tasks completely by myself before. I always had my husband there to walk me through it, to direct my eyes to the right place on the screen, to explain the jargon, to dictate the strings of numbers and so forth. Because of my visual impairment these tasks are tedious and slow and most commercial websites do not consider the issues I have and how their page design might detract or enhance my experience in dealing with their company or product. If they did they wouldn't be using 6pt font in gray on cream or cream on chocolate Talk about the fine print. If they gave a care at all about my issues they wouldn't have their form pages time out in two minutes for security reasons so that I end up having to start over at the beginning over and over and over. I finally make it past page one and complete page two only to have it reject my submission and go back to page 1 because my session had timed out while I read the instructions and filled in the form. This happened multiple times on each page and there must have been at least 7 to 10 of them.

And each time I ended up back on page one I was socked in the eye with the 20 pt font shouting 'Congratulations and Thank you for choosing 'dippity doo da' card. You are just minutes away from enjoying the blippity blah blah bleh.'

So. See? They have noting against 20pt font. They're perfectly willing to use it when it doesn't even matter to the ease or integrity of doing business with them.

What slows me down the most is the need to keep changing the focus of my eyes between the screen, keyboard and whatever object has the info I need to copy. Finding the right spot on the screen to input the info is difficult and keeping track of it once I know the vicinity to aim my eyes is a challenge. Especially when I or someone else inadvertently cause the screen to scroll. Like a helpful kitty nudging my elbow as I'm navigating the page with the mouse. Because I use the page enlarge function of the browser I need to scroll sideways nearly as often as up and down.
_______________________

Well. I had to break off at 5:30 to prep and have dinner with Mom. I came back and sat down again about 7 only to notice the sound of the sprinkler going in the back yard still. I had set it at 2 and meant to turn it off at 4. When I got out back it looked at first like either I was seeing double or someone had set up a second sprinkler. But I finally figured out the second geyser of water was shooting straight up out of a slit in the hose and reaching the level of the windows on the upper floor. I had to walk through the spray to reach the spigot.

That was just one of the many things that happened to me today as a result of inattention. The inattention being the result of sleep deprivation which was due to my not laying down at all because I didn't get my order form successfully submitted at Joann.com until after Mom was awake and up after 7:30. Remember I started activating the prepaid card before 10 PM

Now Mom is asleep again already and I'm still up and can't lay down until I get a shower. Today was litter box duty up and down stairs...Don't ask. Suffice to say it was one of those things I alluded to above and I should have got a shower before starting dinner but Mom's stomach seems to be on a schedule so I just washed my hands up to my elbows and a few inches further and by 'washed' I mean something akin to what a surgeon does before entering the OR. Everything but hold my hands in the air and let the water drip off my elbows onto the floor.

When I started this post I had thought I'd talk about some of the things I ordered and maybe even filch a pic or two off Joann.com. I'm so excited about it. It's fifteen new colors, including four variegated and three different weights and texture of thread and there are two tools to aid in the bookmark making project as well. But that will have to wait. Maybe even until the day it arrives here in a week or so when I can take the pictures my own self. I am going to hit that shower now and after that I'm down for the count.

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The Artificial Retina Project

So maybe there's hope that before my RP progresses to total blindness there will be a solution that could restore the ability to read.

It's amazing the intricacy of the science involved and of the cooperation among scientific, educational and governmental institutions along with for-profit corporations to coordinate the research, development and manufacture aspects of a project like this. Eventually millions of people could benefit.

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The Eyes Have It

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Or rather have had it.

I was working on a book review for this post but have run out of time and my eyes are having a hissy fit.

Any other night I might just take a half hour break and come back to working the review but I have an ophthalmologist appointment in less than 12 hours (it's actually after 3AM Wednesday morning tho the date stamp reflects when I opened this post) so I can't push my lay down time much further let alone past dawn as I have been since I'm going to have to set my alarm for noon in order to get ready for it.

This appointment is primarily about having a look at the cataract on my right eye and then scheduling its removal. But I'm sure he will want to have a look at the current state of the RP damage to both eyes as well. This will be my first visit to an ophthalmologist in over eight years. Which is hardly recommended for someone dealing with a degenerative eye condition.

I don't know how realistic my hopes are but I'm hoping the surgery can be scheduled soon enough that I can have my new prescription glasses before NaNo starts November 1. Else participating in NaNo is going to be a huge frustration. I've barely been hanging on to a daily posting regimen here of late.

Reading with my right eye has become all but impossible and when I try anyway I pay a price in eyestrain, headaches and nausea.

I can read with my left but the RP damage is worse in it and limits me to reading a single short word at a time. Which feels very limiting to someone who once read whole lines at a glance. Getting this cataract removed will not bring back my heyday of 1000 wds per minute but it just might allow me to return to the fifty pages per hour I was still able to do five years ago before this cataract encroached on the center vision of my right eye and essentially cut my already limited field of vision in half or worse. Currently I'm averaging 20 pages an hour on a good day. But seldom can last out a full hour without a break.

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Wilting

I've had three slow days in a row with my NaNo novel. I'm behind the pace by 3377 words, assuming the need to average 1666.6666 words per day. I'm a tad discouraged but not panicked yet since I've frequently surged ahead by over 3500 words in a single day on a story. But that kind of thing isn't the norm and I can't count on it. When it does happen, it usually follows a day or two of backing off to dream the scene(s), watching my characters move in their environment and interact with it and with each other. I can't afford very many such breaks in grinding out the words though. Especially with there being no guarantee that the surge of words will follow the fallow day.

It doesn't help that I'm fighting another headache either. This isn't quite of the migraine category yet but still... It might be eye-strain. I've taken the step of increasing the font size to 20pt to see if that might help. Of course, I won't be able to judge that until after I've rested my eyes and started fresh.

If some of these headaches of late are eye-strain related, I may be getting relief soon. I've finally got an appointment with an eye doctor. A week from Friday though, so it's not going to help me get through NaNo. Even the best scenario means that I'd be breaking in a new prescription during the last ten to fifteen days. There is always eyestrain involved in that too. And to make matters iffier I have to go with bifocals as our insurance only allows for one pair in two years so I can't have separate reading glasses.

I did not have a happy experience with bi-focals last time I tried them. They were fine for reading or for sewing while watching TV or for not having to choose between seeing your dinner plate or the face of your conversationalist across the table. But for walking about--not so fine. My tunnel vision seems to be encroaching faster from below than from the sides so I have to look down to see anything below the level of my nose. Looking down with bifocals while stepping off a curb was nearly as disorienting as stepping off a carnival ride. I use that analogy because I had bifocals when we moved to Sunnyvale, CA in 1999 and the following spring we bought season tickets to PGA (Paramount Great America) amusement park. It was a natural comparison.

One of my frustrations today is that my word count remains so low in spite of the fact that I have spent the majority of my waking hours focused on Spring Fever. Once again I've put every other thing in my life to the side to become submerged in the story world. I don't know whether to just accept this as the way I work most productively or to think of it as something that needs to change. I know such a working style would not be compatible if I had other pressing responsibilities: a day job, kids, a household of my own to run. But since I don't have any of those, maybe I should just go with it. On the other hand, I am starting to miss certain things. Like reading novels, watching movies, clean hair, and sleep.

And getting out of this room! It's been a week since I've been any further than the dinner table or the bathroom. I was considering passing on the weekly trip to the library this week because I've barely touched most of the books I brought home last week. One of them has become essential reference for my story world but the rest are just sitting there taunting me. I still haven't finished The Historian, the novel we own so bringing home more novels makes little sense. But Ed is down to three out of the seven I brought home for him and thus might not make it to next Monday without more. So now I'm thinking that I should try to go tomorrow, the last day the Phoenix branch is open this week. And if I wake up headache free I think I will wash my hair and head for the library.

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Thursday Thirteen #52

Thirteen Bumps and Thumps on Murphy's Roller Coaster Ride That Was My Weekend

1. It began with me waking about nine in anticipation of spending a couple hours of quality time with Ed before he left for the races with his folks in the afternoon. He had to work that morning but assured me he would be home by noon. He didn't arrive until 1:30 because his boss had ordered pizza for the crew in honor of Ed's birthday coming up on Monday. Then he had to spend the remaining half hour making his cigarettes for the rest of the day out on the front porch which is the designated smoking area for he and his Dad. So while he happily visited with his folks about the races scheduled for that day, I sat in our room stewing in jealously juice, counting the things that seemed to put the light in my husband's eyes more often and more readily than I could: bosses, workmates, The Job, his parents, dirt track races, cigarettes.

(Yeah, I was having a bit of a pity party. But I have issues with The Job thing going waaay back to childhood and how my relationship with my father was impacted by his relationship with his Job. Later it will be clearer why this particular weekend I was more primed than usual to react badly to these triggers.)

2. Ed and his folks left at 2 and I knew I had to do something drastic to snap myself out of the dark mood I'd fallen into. It was a glorious day outside. 80 degrees with a gentle breeze. There wasn't likely to be many more like it. Especially on a race day Saturday when I had freedom to roam the house and yard without fear of being in anyones way.

Why can't I be like normal people and follow a spontaneous idea with quick and simple action? Say I had gone with the idea of enjoying the perfect weather by sitting in the back yard with an iced-coffee, my cat Merlin, and one book--say Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows which I'd started the previous Sunday evening and then set aside because of the final four of the 70 Days of Sweat and meme visiting. I could have been settled in under fifteen minutes and had up to five hours of relaxing reading. But no, that wouldn't be me. Nor would there now be a story worth telling.

(This relates to another one of the issues I had with my Dad. Or he had with me. He teased me. He chided me. He shook his head in despair. But he could never break me of it. I've written about it before.)

I had to take with me all the materials for several projects I hoped to work on that day. The one element common to nearly all projects was the laptop. I could have opted for the front porch where there was a handy electric socket and an awning that would shade the laptop screen enough to make it visible to me. And no steps to lug things down. But the front porch smells like ashtrays; faces the neighbor's kitchen window; has no safe place to stake Merlin's leash; and the front edge is so close to the road it's possible to shake hands with passersby.

Nope. It had to be the back yard for pleasantness and privacy. That entailed first of all stringing a fifty-foot electric cord from the carport out front to the patio table near the back fence. My father-in-law has half a dozen of these cords rolled up with their ends plugged into one another hanging on hooks next to the shed. The first one I unrolled was too short. The second one was only a two-prong plug. By the time I had the right cord plugged in and strung across the yard, my arms were good for little else than hanging at my side.

3. I'd taken Merlin and the big cardboard box I planned to set the laptop up inside of out with me on that first trip. Just before leaving my sister, Jamie, had IMed and I asked her to wait for fifteen to thirty minutes while I got set up outside. The thirty minute were up by the time I got back in. Realizing this caused me to hurry my pace. Bad idea for a clumsy, sight-impaired and now weak-armed and bare-foot woman. I lost count of the trips back and forth in the next half an hour. And I no longer remember on which trip which thing happened. At first I was just taking things out by the armful, not bothering with boxes or bags. But after a few trips I realized that if I didn't need them for the rest of the things going out, I would need them for bringing the stuff back in. If I didn't want to start moving in a good hour before I lost the light, that is.

So I got out the two bags you see me hauling in my profile picture which have been stored away since the library closure in April. And my soft-sided attache with shoulder strap. I filled the latter with files and notebooks and office supplies. I filled the kitty bag with books, more office supplies, and sewing stuff. The backpack I reserved for taking out the laptop which which would go out last as I could not leave it out there unattended.

On various trips between bedroom and backyard I tripped over Merlin's leash; I skinned the knuckles of my toes on Merlin's stake; I slammed a shoulder into a door casing; I bumped an elbow on a doorknob; and stepped on a sharp rock hidden in the grass.

4. When I think I am finally ready to bring out the laptop, I realize that it is after three and I am thirsty and hungry and that by the time I get snacks and drinks gathered up and hauled outside it will be another half hour. Which means that I really ought to sort the laundry and get the first load on before I got settled outside. Half an hour later, with the laundry started without further incident, I'm in the kitchen raiding the fridge. I decide that I'm in the mood for an iced-coffee which I haven't had since I got sick three weeks ago because I'd been having my daily cup in the now chilly mornings. In order to get the ice, I have to break apart the cubes frozen together by the water leaked onto them by the malfunctioning ice-maker. I've been doing this all summer. Mostly without incident. Except for that one time I cut my finger on an ice-cube.

So I was using the meat-tenderizing hammer to pound the pile of cubes when I punched the ice-cube maker with my fist, skinning my knuckles, jarring my wrist, elbow and shoulder and whiplashing my neck.

Oh, boy. I knew I was going to be in for it now. There have been times when a single one of these jarring incidents laid me up for over a week with inflamed joints and a pain cycle that ramped itself up in a viscous feedback loop. I'd lost count of how many there had been in the last two hours. But this one was the worst by far and if the shoulder to the door casing had not done in my neck, this one surely had. Having pain or stiffness in my neck prevents me from scanning my environment while in motion to compensate for the severe tunnel vision caused by the RP.

5. By the time I got my snack stuff moved outside, the first load of laundry was done. So I switched it to the dryer and started a second load before going after my laptop. Earlier, when I had started to prepare it to go out, I had picked the power cord up off the floor and laid it on the bed. Apparently I had inadvertently unplugged a section of it for I found the laptop cold. It had hibernated. Which meant it was now off line and I was going to have to sign back in to IM and email and blogger and... annoying but not devastating. Like everything else that had happened since I woke up.

6. I get the laptop out there and set up in the cardboard box on the patio table only to discover that the table is too high for me to see into the box at the right angle. So I have to unplug it from the back to take it with me as I head to the front porch to get one of the folding tray tables. No big deal as I hadn't woke it up yet anyway.

Once back out there with the laptop set up inside the box on top of the small table, I woke it up. And could see nothing but a black screen. Ooops. I forgot to wake up the screen by tapping the touch pad. Nope. Still nothing but shades of gray. And then I realized that while I took all that time to get moved out and set up, the sun had moved to the opposite end of the yard and was now shining over my left shoulder straight into the box. Five seconds of eye-rolling and a couple of big sighs later, I started moving my stuff to the other side of the patio table with the back of the box aimed West. This involved more than just moving the laptop and its table and box. It was the entire workstation I had set up so that everything was within reach from the chair once I sat down.

6. By the time I was all set up again, it was 4:30. So two and a half hours after telling my sister to give me half an hour, I am signing back into my IM. While I wait for it I open the container of cold tuna and noodles and start munching. And that gets Merlin's attention. In all my careful set up I'd forgotten to take into account where I was on the arc of Merlin's reach. Where I had been set up in the first place I had been safely out of reach. Not now. He could reach my whole right side and kept grabbing at the hand holding the fork or trying to climb my knee. When I put the fork back in the container so I could type, he wound his leash in a figure eight around both ankles and then stood on his hind legs and reached for my hands which were now on the keyboard. When I pulled back, the table tilted forward and the box fell off carrying the open laptop with it. Heart in throat. Feet in thrall. And there goes the IM tone announcing my sister has discovered I am back.

OK. You have permission to laugh. No lasting damage was done to self, cat or computer. When I picked up the laptop, I found it had closed itself somehow and the only repercussion was a loose cap on the left ctrl key which snapped right back into place when I discovered it later that night.

7. So I get it all set up again and respond to my sister's IM. I tell her all about my Murphy adventure and she tells me all about her day. Until I realize that it is after five-thirty and I tell her that I have only a bit over an hour before I have to start moving my stuff back in and I'm going to be really disgusted if I don't even get to use anything except the IM. But once we've said our goodbyes I realize I've an urgent need to go in the house. Which means taking the laptop with me and making sure I tap the pad or a key every three minutes so it doesn't go to standby and thus loose WIFI connection. As I head for the steps, Merlin races me and we barely avoid a collision. He is yanked to a stop by his leash. I realize he has been outside away from his food and water and litter box for nearly four hours. No wonder he is so eager. I go back and unhook his leash at the stake.

While in the house, I discover both washer and dryer silent. So I take care of the first load which is six pair of Ed's Jeans, transfer the second load which is two large blankets, and start the third load which is three small fleece blankets and some shirts, sweats, shorts and pajamas. I am now really feeling the pain and stiffness from the jarring incidents. I noticed it first when I was pulling those wet jeans out of the washer earlier but its worse now and pulling those large waterlogged blankets out was torture. And reaching over my head to pull down the nearly full gallon jug of detergent? Don't even go there. Then there was shaking out and folding the six pair of jeans while constantly brushing my skinned knuckles against the denim, zippers, seams.

8. When I got back outside the breeze had really kicked up and had a bit of a chill to it. I was barefoot and wearing Capri's. So I dashed back and grabbed the fleece blanket still on the floor just inside the door with the fourth load. Yeah, we have a lot of those. I think they breed in the dark.

It was obvious the breeze was going to prevent work on any project involving loose paper or even opened books I wasn't holding with both hands. This ruled out many of the projects I'd brought out with me, including any that involved both the computer and any books or notebooks used in conjunction.

I had less than an hour now. And if I wanted to do the photo shoot of my needlework, it had better be in the next fifteen minutes. But a little thought nixed the idea. Before I could take more pictures I had to get the ones in the camera dumped onto the computer and in order to do that I had to take the laptop out of the box to plug in the USB cord. By the time I got that done, the light for a photo shoot would be gone. It seemed my efforts to get pictures of my needle work were doomed yet again. I've been trying since March!

Instead I settled on multi-tasking. I called up Ed's Sunday Serenity post which he had posted that morning and told me that afternoon was another music video. So I watched and listened to it and several of the related ones as I went about making the bib slips for Harry Potter 5 and 6 which I'd finished in August and could have returned to my niece on her visit the previous weekend if not for having this little five minute chore to do. I've gotten a bit lax in keeping my reading records since the library closure.

(I've been making these slips for every book I start since late 1992. They are on 3x5 scratch pad pages and contain title, author, number of pages, call number if library owned, date started and date finished, and sometimes other info. Of the ones for books finished, I only still have those finished since July of 2001. The rest were in the storage unit we abandoned in San Jose that summer.)

9. When I finished that task, I needed to go inside again. Which meant taking the laptop with me. I also took in the HP books and reading journal and the empty food and drink containers. While in the kitchen I got a bright idea for how to keep Sweetie, my in-law's dog, outside guarding my stuff so I could leave the laptop for a minute or two. It was time for her after-dinner treats. I got them out of the cupboard and let her see that I had them and she followed along as if on a leash. I set them on the table where she could see them and then gave her one of the six. She stood there without taking her eyes off them while I plugged my laptop back in and returned to the house where I changed into my fleece PJ bottoms so I could stick my Capri's and that fleece blanket into the forth load.

By the time I got back outside it was six-thirty which meant I had a bit more than thirty minutes of light I could read by. I chose the book with the largest print which was Holly Lisle's Create a Plot Clinic. The spiral spine also made it easier to keep the pages from flapping in the breeze. I had hoped to take notes but I could see I would be spending more time corralling errant pages than reading or writing not to mention concentrating. So I settled for reading while listening to more YouTube music videos and handing Sweetie a treat every few minutes. When I ran out of the doggie treats I opened my bag of Cheetos and gave her one. Once she knew those were there, she wasn't going anywhere as long as hope persisted.

Sweetie's hope can persist a long time.

10. When I lost the light for reading, I started packing up to move inside. I had about fifteen minutes before I would have to feel my way across the yard with fingers and toes. So the more I could get into the bags the better. It also sped things up to take some of the items too big for the bags and leave them on or by the washer just inside the back door and drag the full kitty bag and attache over by the steps.

Finally I broke down the computer/box/table setup and packed the laptop and a few odds and ends into the backpack, leaving the power cord easily accessible so I could take it straight in and plug it back in without unpacking it. Which I did before returning to do the next most urgent thing which was unplug and roll up and put away the fifty-foot electric cord. I'm glad the one I used was orange as I doubt I could have seen the green ones by then. As it was, it got snagged on the table and chair several times which caused very unpleasant yanks on my already stressed arm and neck. By the time I had it rolled up I did have to feel my way to the shed to hang it on its hook.

The last thing left by the patio table was the tray table that belonged on the front porch. I folded it and made a special trip through the lit house to return it, leaving Sweetie guarding the Cheetos which I'd hung on the fence above the waiting bags. You'd think she had the patience of a saint if you didn't know what was motivating her.

11. Counting the trips in to lay things on or by the washer and the earlier trip with the food containers, I made six trips in and out to bring it all back in. Which means there had to have been at least ten trips when I took it all out that afternoon.

Now I was faced with unpacking and putting it all away. And the mess I'd left on the bed while hunting for things to take out. Which had been added to by the clothes and blankets coming out of the dryer. By the time I got the fourth load in the dryer and my usual work area set up on the bed again it was after eight-thirty.

My next priority was to get my own Sunday Serenity posted. I chose to limit myself to one of the related videos on the YouTube Ed had posted as it provided the embed code without having to go to YouTube where I risked getting lost for hours so I had mine posted by shortly after nine. Then I began exploring the Sacred Geometry site which I'd hunted down so I could link to it on my Sunday Serenity.

I was getting ideas for drawing mandalas and patterns for needlework. I favor patterns based on geometry for the projects I design myself. From anything as simple as a checkerboard to as complex as Celtic Knots or Mandelbrot Sets. Geometric designs on book covers or bookmarks became my signature gift during the nineties.

I haven't finished a needlework project since we moved here six years ago. I'm not much known as a finisher. And if I don't move along I won't be finishing this TT anytime soon.

12. I heard the dryer buzz on the last load just before ten but ignored it. And then a few minutes later I heard Sweetie race for the back door and through her doggie door. They were home. An hour sooner than expected. The bed was still piled with clothes, books, sewing, laptop and the cardboard boxes that comprise my 'desk'. And my hour's rest had stiffened me up. The pain cycle had set in. Now I was faced with Ed's 'help' in clearing off the bed and getting the last load out of the dryer. I didn't unpack the kitty bag or the attache, just set them on the floor beside the bed. Ed stuffed clean clothes and blankets, folded and unfolded, willy-nilly in whatever nook or cranny presented. (Hear Snoopy's Arrrrrgh!?)

After Ed lay down I played on Sacred Geometry for awhile longer and then set up watch a Lost episode on ABC's streaming video while laying down in the dark.

I don't know if it was the afternoon coffee or the pain but for the first time in three weeks I was awake past 1AM. In fact I did not get to sleep until after 5.

13. And then I woke up only four hours later at 9. Oh, I was sooooo sore! Ed was already up and although all I really wanted to do was go back to bed and groan, I went out to the porch where he was smoking over his morning coffee to talk to him. I knew he planned to run out to Wal-Mart with his Dad's car and I wanted to go. I had been hoping for an invite but I knew it was improbable. It was time for me to stop waiting for invites. But even if he didn't want me to go, I still needed to talk to him about what I needed, wanted and hoped for.

I was all prepared to answer any reluctance to take me with a little speech: It is always going to be easier, more efficient, quicker to leave me behind. It is a fact of life being married to someone with visual impairment. You were aware of the risks going in. You met my grandmother and watched my mother dealing with it. You said you could handle it if it became necessary. I haven't been out of this yard since July.

What I wasn't going to say but was thinking: I don't think I can handle another 20 plus years feeling like an inconvenience.

Also: I can't bear to be left alone today. The 23rd of September. The second anniversary of my Dad's passing. (Well actually 4:20 something on the morning of the 24th but it still felt like the 23rd to me and I have my reasons for trying to remember it that way. See Monday's Poetry Train post for more.)

But I didn't have to give the speech. He accepted my desire to go with him without a blink.

I was going to include the rest of Sunday's events but this is already too long. Besides Murphy seemed to have lost track of me on Sunday. Though I was hurting, Sunday was mostly lacking in frustrations and full of goodness.



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