Tuesday, April 25, 2023

 Tuesday, April 25, 2023

I had my appointment with Lex Brodie to get my safety check before the month was up. I wanted to check if I had an up-to-date insurance card earlier. I forgot. Fortunately, the one I had expired in June 2023. I had everything I needed. Last year, I had to call Geico and have them email a copy to me while I waited for the inspection to be completed. It was an automated system. Easy peasy.

After I signed in for the safety check and gave them my key, I walked to Target, about a mile away. I took on more than I could comfortably chew. My bruised foot felt worse today than it had. The walk wasn’t pleasant. I thought walking on the road closer to Target rather than on Kaiwi would be faster. It was an unpleasant trek. It was just cement and a barren field with no shade. I was uncomfortable the whole way until I got to the front of Target.

Approaching Target’s entrance from the loading deck side, I discovered this shaded section to the side of the front door. I never suspected it was there. I found a pergola-covered area with large planters beautifully tended. A magical spot.

I had only a few items to buy at Target. I walked there to get in my steps for the day. I looked for a single onion, Hersey’s milk chocolate nuggets with almonds, over-the-counter magnifying eyeglasses, a pepper mill, and Dave’s multigrain bread. Target had a loose onion. Yay! I did buy one bag of nuggets even though they weren’t on sale. The price was the same as at Long’s, over seven dollars. A year ago, it was in the five-dollar range. Ow! They had a pepper mill; I got that. I found a collection of eyeglasses, but none of them were magnifying. I bought a pair claiming to dull the blue light from screens. Dave’s multigrain bread wasn’t available.

While at Target, I ran into two groups of people who had been in line with me at Lex Brodie’s. They had walked over, too.  The company called to let me know my car was done. It hadn’t taken an hour, only half that time.

I decided to take Kaiwi on the way back. Shops line the street, and there are some trees providing shade. It would add two-tenths of a mile to avoid the walk along the barren strip because I would have to walk in the other direction for a stretch to get to Kaiwi. Instead, I used the through street from Loloku and Kawai at the halfway mark. I also did some j-walking, using the shortest distance between two points. My foot held out. Kaiwi was more pleasant.

I stopped off at Island Naturals before going home. I planned to get two bottles of tea tree oil. I use a lot on Elsa’s lesions every morning. I also wanted arnica. I found those two items quickly and could have quickly exited, but I was hungry. Never go into a food store hungry. I bought a tuna fish salad and a tapenade. They were both expensive, but they would last more than one day. I just had to remember to eat them.

When I got home, I lay down for a nap. As I was falling asleep, I heard the doggie door flap. Was it Elsa going out or some miscellaneous animal trying to get it? It was Elsa. She was taking a pee break. I have confirmation she will use it without getting a treat or my stamping feet. 

I bathed Elsa while listening to the NPR show On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti. I love the way this woman conducts an interview. Aside from her obvious intelligence, she is excited to be engaged. She asks challenging questions, not to humiliate her guest but because she is interested in the response.

Today is the day I stopped wearing glasses. I haven’t been thrilled with them since my cataract operation in 2014. When I fell last week, my glasses were scratched and bent. I discovered I could see just as well without them as I could with them. My vision isn’t what it was in my youth in either case. But I don’t have headaches and don’t get quite as tired when I ditch the glasses.

The problem with my glasses is all the modifications to improve my vision also interfere with it. I have progressive trifocal lenses, which means I have three small windows to look through: one for reading, one for looking at the computer, and one for distance. Getting my eye lined up with the focal point was hard. My head needed to be at just the right angle, and the frame must be in tip-top shape. My frames regularly get maladjusted. The second is the three treatments to the lenses that interfere with a clear image. I have transition lenses that get darker if I want them to or not, an anti-reflective coating, and a film applied to the lenses to compensate for my double vision.

When I had my cataract operations, I tried to get adjustable lenses that move from near to far-point vision as our natural lenses do. The doctor inserted one in my left eye. It didn’t work for me; it only afforded me a near-point vision. She then put in one for far-point vision in my other eye. Having two different lenses in each eye means my eyes never see the same thing. Whatever I look at, my eyes are not going to coordinate. I needed classes because of the double vision. It is a problem. With one eye doing near-point vision and one doing far-point, my brain would have had to learn to use one eye at a time anyway. If my brain can learn to do that, the problem with the double image will disappear over time. Right now, it is a challenge. It is a little confusing and sometimes downright disorienting. Whatever the drawbacks, it is still better than wearing glasses. Looking through those glasses exhausted me. I feel so much better now.

I got the paperwork done. I renewed my car registration, sent Shivani my blurb for her to post on local sites advertising my tutoring, and a few other letters I had to get out. By the end of the day, my updates were written and ready for editing.

 Scott heard me vacuuming my indoor lanai and asked if it was a good time to move the furniture back to its rightful place. One-half of the lanai looked like a furniture store in disarray. Scott had moved it away from the screens when we got threatened with a heavy rainstorm. Before I could get it back in place, Elsa started using the exposed rug as her preferred pooping ground. I’d clean one area up, and she’d poop on another. I finally got it all clean at the same time. Scott heard me vacuuming up the last of it with my Rainbow vacuum and offered to move the furniture back in place. Done.

I was scheduled to have an appointment today with third-grade J and first-grade I. Their mother canceled because they had another appointment. I hope J is hanging on. Whatever I do, it has been effective, but only temporarily. His situation with his parents had to change before anyone could expect a nine-year-old boy to remain calm.