It's all in the eyes

My surgery went great! I've tested twice at 20/15 vision in both eyes, and there hasn't been any real pain or problems. My left eye aches some times - kinda feels like a sinus headache, just all around and behind the eye (supposedly normal) - and there was some bleeding on my eyeballs from the suction thingy (also normal, and fading) and, lastly, it sometimes seems like I'm looking through plastic wrap. Things are in focus, just... slightly obscured. That's normal too, and at first it was like looking through milk, so plastic wrap is a definite improvement and it's getting better every day. Been driving just fine, going through my day to day life just fine, but I need reading glasses to pull stitches out of my sewing, and for some - but not all - reading. The coolest thing is having DEPTH PERCEPTION and I spent a lot of the first day or so boggling how bumpy things were, or tall, or thick, or all of these textural nuances I hadn't really ever seen before.

So two thumbs up on the eyes! (more below the cut)


Malaysia's kittens are doing great, but we did have a bit of a scare with one. He'd developed some breathing issues last weekend which the vet first thought might be because of a heart defect, but we're now all pretty sure it's because he's reacting to what his mama eats. So we've changed her food and the transformation has been nothing short of miraculous. There's still a teeny bit of congestion (in his sinuses, not his chest, thank goodness!), but making that one simple change was like night and day with his breathing.

Allergies SUCK. Definitely. And they super suck when you just have one food source.

My diet's also sucking, and I've put on about 5 lbs this past month, mostly from stressing over the surgery. But, today, I am officially back on the wagon and so far so good. Got on the treadmill for a little bit - we'd bought one at a yard sale a month or so ago and we finally got things rearranged upstairs so we could actually use it. The delay in rearranging was totally my fault - again, fear-of-surgery stress made me prone to not getting much done other than sitting like a lump looking for distractions - but it's up and running and Bill and I have both used it. So yay for fitness! lol

Sewing... Um. Well. I have a quilt that I've been struggling with for, oh, about 4 years now that I have DECIDED to finish by golly. Or else. And it's huge. Much bigger than what I usually make. And my sewing room is over-run by kittens. So I've moved my sewing machine, ironing board, and assorted other supplies and tools to the kitchen. All of the setting triangles are pieced, the block spacers are all in, and, well, I *did* have the pieced setting strips (short borders between the blocks) cut, pieced, and sewn in place, but I didn't like them, so I spent a nice afternoon watching TV with Bill as I ripped them all out again. Now I have to recut more fabric, sew in new strips and try again. All that's fine, really, ripping pieces and blocks out and re-doing them is part of the quilting process, I'm just on a bit of a deadline with this one, since it's due to the quilter by Tuesday, and I still have to make the backing! Aack!!

I have another bed sized quilt that's ready to get quilted - and a different quilter lined up to do its quilting. Plus I have quite a few little quilts I need to finish sometime soon. As in, oh, by mid August, ish.

Writing is stalled, again, but I've joined a couple of real-life writers groups - the ReadWritingGroup and Iowa's Sisters In Crime. Hopefully they'll help kick me out of my slump. I'm not sure what project to work on with either group, I have so many partial things languishing on my hard drive, but I *think* I might take Secret Project M to Sisters in Crime, and Paul's Story (it doesn't really have a title yet) to ReadWritingGroup, since they seem to be more literary. But I haven't decided for sure. I think Stain of Corruption might be a bit too odd for either group. Maybe not. Must ponder some more.

Many folks have surely heard about all the rain we've received here in Iowa, especially northern Iowa, and there are many, many fields around here that look like lakes. There was water over the roads in pretty much every direction after the last storm, and with the ground so saturated, there's simply no place else for the water to go. We even had water in our basement for the first time since we moved here two years ago (an inch or so, just enough to damage wood and clothing stored in bags), and some friends in a nearby small town had their city sewer back up into their basement. Water water everywhere, and I hope that folks downstream (Ames, Boone, Des Moines, etc) aren't getting washed out.

One particularly icky side effect (beyond the actual water itself) is the massive, awful explosion in the earwig population. I HATE bugs and these damn things just keep coming. We've sprayed the foundation inside and out, smashed I dunno how many scores of the wretched things, but they just get into every possible hiding place they can find. And they apparently love snuggling up to my dishtowels. Earwigs are NASTY. Nasty, nasty NASTY.

Did I mention they were nasty?

We usually get together with Bill's extended family every 4th of July weekend, but Bill and Laura both have to work, so we won't be going this year. Dangit. :( We'll probably go to some holiday festivities in one of the other small towns, tho. Ours is so, so small, we don't have anything scheduled here.

That's about it for me. I hope y'all are doing great and enjoying the summer weather. Have a lovely 4th of July weekend!