Category: The Non-Writing Life

Smoke and Dreams

I’ve been very good about not blogging lately. I hope you all are proud of me. I finished the comprehensive edits on Penny’s single title and will submit it to one or two publishers this week. While I’m in Penny-mode, I decided to revise a first person erotic short story of Penny’s into third person and submit that as well. So I’ll continue to stay away from the blog for the next several days.

Why I’m away from the blog isn’t all good news, though. I’ve talked before about my dh’s small business, Ironhorse Caddybag. The venture is in addition to his full-time job, and he shares the business with a partner. Well, last week, I think it was the day before the Japan earthquake struck (or it might have been the same day, but we heard about the fire first), we woke to the news that our business partner’s workshop, where our ENTIRE INVENTORY was stored, burned to the ground.

A car and motorcycle were both stored in the same shop for the winter (we still have snow on the ground!). You can see the car in the picture below, on a hoist. The fire was extremely toxic, as our inventory was built out of plastic and fabric and metals, bubble wrap and cardboard, not to mention the car and motorcycle and other stuff that is found in a working shop! The shop was maybe two minutes from our local volunteer fire department, but the fire department had no choice but to let everything burn and try to control spreading to neighboring buildings (at which they were successful).

We are in the process of gathering together receipts for our commercial insurance, but we’ve lost our selling season. It’s difficult enough to start a new business and then discover in the midst of ordering your first product run that the United States (target consumer as well as Canadians) has hit a deep recession. Ours was a niche product, so, as you can imagine, it’s been slow going.

Of course we would like to rebuild the business, but that depends on so many things. Until we find out where we stand financially, I’m asking my Facebook friends who haven’t “liked” Ironhorse Caddybag yet on Facebook, to do so. And, if you wish, suggest the page to your own FB friends. This way, once we have replacement stock, we can get the word out quickly.

Any help in this regard is appreciated!

People have asked me why the fire hasn’t impacted me more than it has. I guess I’m trying to let it slide off me, much in the way I have learned to deflect rejections from agents and/or publishing houses over the years. I have suffered two major traumas in my life aside from natural occurrences like grandparents dying: (1) my husband’s brother, a good friend of mine, dying at the age of 25 from an asthma attack; and (2) our family experiencing a 5-car accident when our youngest was 11 months old that took three years of battling out-of-province insurance agencies to settle and left me with a whiplash injury that lasted 14 years. Somehow, the business inventory burning pales in comparison. Age and wisdom help. Plus, when I consider what residents of New Zealand and Japan have suffered recently, what would I choose? Our entire inventory burning in a fire, of course.

I find it kind of ironic that our homepage says, “while quantities lasts.” In a way, that’s pretty funny. The quantities didn’t last very long, however, not in the way we’d anticipated. Honestly, Universe, we were aiming for sales.

Where In The World Is Cindiego?

On an airplane, that’s where.

Coming home. Back to Canada.

Which means I’ve been somewhere. But where? And for how long? How could that crafty Cindy go away without her trusty blog readers suspecting something?

  • 2 points to anyone who guesses how long I’ve been away.
  • 4 points if you can correctly guess where I went.
  • – 16 points if you knew where I went, because I told you, but you pretend you didn’t know because you WANT THOSE FOUR POINTS!!
  • + 80 points for creativity.
  • – 13,000 points for rudeness.

You need hints? I got hints!

  • I went there last year, for my birthday. This year, I took My Liege along.
  • We stayed with my parents.
  • There was sun.
  • And water.
  • Probably taco sauce.
  • A margarita or two.

By gum, you got it! Alaska! (Not).

*Fine Print. Correctly guessing wins you nothing. Cindy is under no obligation to confirm that your guess is correct or to reward you in any way. In fact, Cindy might be making this whole thing up, because that’s her line of work, and you’ll never know, will you? Can you trust her to eventually tell you the truth? Will she prove her absence by posting pictures? Will you believe she took the pictures? These and other questions may or may not be answered in upcoming episodes of When Cindy’s Gray Matter Churns.

Don’t Look Back

Not for the squeamish!

There, you’ve been warned. If you don’t want to see photos of Eldest Son’s laser eye surgery that occurred last Friday, BROWSE AWAY FROM MY WEBSITE NOW!

No, don’t wait two seconds. Don’t wait ten minutes. Don’t look down. Don’t scroll!! Just hop on over to another blog.

However, if, like me, you once wanted to be a pathologist or an opthamologist or a dentist (I collected teeth as a child—don’t judge me!) (I only collected about 3) (they were my brother’s) (his molars are still in my childhood scrapbook, sealed behind plastic wrap and tape), but once you reached grade 11 realized you were crappy at any science other than biology (chemistry sucks; sorry, but it’s true), so you took law and history instead, then, by all means, continue to view this post.

It was only natural that I wanted to be a doctor. How could I resist the possibility of being called Dr. Procter? I can’t tell you how much I loved the doctor’s kit I received the Christmas I was 5. And, I have an excellent bedside manner. Well, I’m marginally polite. Some days. That works, no? Alas, my brain Would Not Have It. My brain insisted it was in love with words instead. I’m rather fond of my brain, so I’ve learned to listen to it.

All right, I’ve wasted enough space that you should have BROWSED AWAY FROM MY WEBSITE if you don’t wish to see pictures of Custom Wavefront PRK Laser Eye Surgery. Why not LASIK, you ask? Because E.S.’s corneas were too thin.

What, you want me to explain the differences between LASIK and PRK? I refuse. You can follow this link instead.

Okay, you’re duly (as opposed to dully) informed. Yet you still wish to see the pictures. So here they are. And it’s coming up on Christmas, which means I’m super busy and these pictures will be here for some time. That’s what you get for volunteering to view them.

Last warning! BROWSE AWAY!

You’re still here. Welcome…to my lab.

E.S. had Custom Wavefront PRK Laser Eye Surgery on Friday. I think I was more nervous than he was. But the clinic we chose was amazing. There were other patients due to go before E.S., either the Custom PRK or LASIK, whichever suited their needs. We sat together in a little waiting room while a nice young fellow named Reid offered coffee and Christmas cookies and explained the procedures as they were occurring in the room behind us. There was a large window, covered with open blinds. So, a degree of privacy for the patient and a degree of visibility for the folks in the waiting room. I did not expect this.

I also didn’t expect that the surgery would be projected onto a TV screen in the waiting room. When I came back from visiting the washroom and saw Reid explaining the procedure occurring on the TV screen high up in the corner, I thought it was a sample video. You know, like a childbirth video. I was surprised to realize the surgery occurring on the TV was occurring live…in the room on the other side of the blinds.

My Liege got the bright idea to take pictures of E.S.’s surgery with his cell phone. And here they are. (We also have a DVD—how cool is that?)

E.S. being made comfortable. He's under the influence of...something and, no worries, they freeze his eyes or something with drops of some sort. Hey, I never said I would get technical.

Very Clockwork Orange! Several scans have been done by this point and my son's information was fed into the computer of the laser machiney thingie. The red lights are scanning his right eye again before...zeroing in on the specific areas to be worked on. Once the unit "locks on," even if your eye moves, "it" knows what to do. Shades of Hal!
What beautiful green eyes! Behind that little instrument, that is. If you think this is gross, you're lucky I didn't show you the photos of the right eye. My husband had become better at taking pictures with his cell phone for the right eye, so the right eye photos are even more close-up.

All right, this next picture is a little icky. Here you’ll see the main difference between PRK and LASIK (surgically, anyway). In LASIK, the lens of the eye is kind of sliced and lifted up, the zapping is done, and then the lens (cornea?) is lowered back down. It heals from there. In PRK, the thingie is separated from the thingie using a thingie… Oh, that’s no good. Quoting from a PRK versus LASIK website:

PRK laser surgery differs from LASIK in that a corneal flap is not created before the laser is used to ablate the eye. During PRK, the outermost layer of the cornea, the epithelium, is completely removed. After the epithelial layer is removed, the surgeon uses a laser to reshape the cornea. In LASIK surgery, a corneal flap is created with a microkeratome blade or a laser, allowing the surgeon to access and reshape underlying layers of corneal tissue.

Much better than I was explaining!

So how do they remove the epithelium during PRK? Like in the photo below. Kind of gross and utterly fascinating!

Yes, I shuddered at this point. The surgeon was taking away part of my baby's eye! Almost like skimming a sunny-side-up egg with your fork. Yeah, totally disgusting. I don't eat sunny-side-up eggs. I can only eat hard-boiled eyes or scrambled eggs due to images like this one.

My Liege took a picture of the laser performing its work, but at that point the screen is dark, so I’m not posting it.

With PRK, a contact lens-type “bandage” is placed over the eye so that regrowth can occur beneath the “bandage.” PRK surgery is more difficult to recover from. Indeed, E.S. spent all of Sunday with bags of frozen corn on his eyes. They were super light sensitive. On Monday, he was in great shape. His vision isn’t perfect yet. As the healing process occurs the vision keeps improving, reaching maximum potential between 3-6 months.

Yesterday, the “bandage” contact lenses came off. The local optometrist who has been working in conjunction with the eye surgeon says E.S. is now “borderline” for driving, which is excellent! We return in a couple of days and hope to have more good news then. If all is fine, his next follow-up appointment will fall at the one-month point.

Wish him a speedy recovery! Now, go find something Christmasy to do—and no complaints about the topic of this blog. Because it’s not as if I didn’t warn you.

The surgery was E.S.’s university graduation gift. Both our kids inherited my lousy eyesight and M.L.’s…charmingly crooked smile. So both have had to endure glasses and braces during school. We promised them that if they went to university and actually graduated, we’d gift them with amazing vision. Darn kids (at least the first one so far) took us at our word.

Eye, Eye!

Eldest Son is having laser eye surgery today. Yes, I’ve been dreaming of this image all night. I have no idea if he’s nervous. I don’t want to ask for fear of making him nervous. I’m nervous enough for both of us.

My Liege and I will be there, in the waiting room, I suppose. And later E.S. has to wear sunglasses even though it’s the dead of winter. He’s having PRK. The other option is LASIK. But E.S.’s corneas require PRK.

Youngest Son comes home from university in another ten or so days. The plan was to fit E.S.’s surgery between E.S.’s finals and Y.S. coming home.

Wish E.S. a speedy recovery!

Wish my nerves won’t fray!

I’ll post an update later.

A Good Deed

I was sick last week. So sick that I didn’t do anything writing-related from Tuesday night until this Monday. I think I had the flu. Not the barfing/sitting on the “commode” type of flu, but the my-head’s-gonna-blow-up, I-ain’t-got-no-energy (and I don’t care if that’s a double negative), sleep-for-15-hours-and-still-feel-crappy sort of flu that then resides in your ear and sinuses, keeping you dizzy enough that you smartly cancel a very busy week of appointments, wear pajamas whenever possible, and forget to wash your hair.

The second day into this illness, I decided that if I strapped on snow pants and a parka, and extra layers of clothing, boots, hat, scarf, dog poop bags—the whole bit—I would have what it takes to walk the dog to the park and back, the same route we used to run before it started snowing. And, if I accomplished this task, I wouldn’t have to walk up and down the basement stairs for 20 minutes to make up for no longer running.

I actually felt quite good walking in the fresh air. Man, it was cold, though, and the snow was coming down. The snow was coming down not “hard,” precisely, considering this is Canada. But coming down hard enough that tracks were getting obscured within minutes.

So Allie and I rounded a corner onto a busy road, and I had to shorten her lead to make sure cars didn’t slide off the road and hit us (logically, I knew shortening her lead didn’t mean the cars wouldn’t slide off the road, but at least I would be saved the embarrassment of the driver shouting, “Her damn dog raced into traffic!”) While trudging along with the short lead, what did I suddenly see sticking out of the snow? A $50 bill. Right away, I knew it was a fifty, because we have colored money in Canada. For those not in the know, this is what a $50 looks like:

Which sorta confused me, because it used to look like this:

Same guy (I think), but when, like me, you never see fifties, you don’t remember who’s on front (turns out it’s William Lyon McKenzie King, only one of our most important Prime Ministers ever).

But it was pink, and so I snatched it up. Then looked around. Cars were driving past, and several yards/meters (take your pick) in front of me I could see a couple walking. Had one of them dropped the fifty? I decided the couple might be a pair of women from my neighborhood whom I often encounter while walking or running Allie. So I began trudging after them in hopes I might catch them. Because it was a fifty! A $5 bill I would keep. A ten, yes, probably. A twenty? You snooze, you lose! But a fifty? At this time of year, when we’re supposed to act charitably toward one another and wait until April to be a jerk? Maybe it was my illness influencing me, but I felt so bad. I could not in all conscience keep that fifty. Maybe someone was filming me to verify my honesty. Maybe someone felt compelled to hang their hand out a speeding car window in the frozen, snowy day, and they accidentally dropped the $50. Maybe it didn’t belong to the people walking several yards/meters (take your pick) in front of me. Maybe it belonged to the person in the house of the driveway two feet away from where I grabbed the bill.

So I backtracked to that driveway. Allie couldn’t figure out what was going on. The dog park was in another several feet, and she was getting antsy. When I reached the driveway, I got more and more confused. No tire tracks, no footprints leading out of the driveway. In fact, no one had even shoveled the driveway. I glanced around at the surrounding driveways, and it was much the same story.  By this point I was totally convinced the $50 belonged to the walking couple, and so I trudged off after them again. But by the time I reached the dog park, they were long gone.

Maybe it’s because I was sick, but my conscience was working overtime. I’d found the $50 close enough to the high school that it made sense to me that if the strolling couple weren’t my neighbors, they must be kids from the high school. Even though it was somewhere around 9:20 a.m. and they should have been IN school… All the way home, I wondered what to do. Because of the dizziness and ringing in my ears, I wasn’t thinking too clearly, so it took the rest of the 45 minute walk to figure it out.

First, I called the neighbor, but she hadn’t gone out that day. Then I called the high school and asked the secretary to announce over the loudspeaker that someone had found an unspecified amount of money in the area, and if a student could describe the denomination and approximately where it was found, they could have it. If not, the finder would treat her family to Chinese take-out. I figured I’d give until the weekend for a student to come forward. Then, realizing the walk had totally exhausted me, I forgot about it and fell into bed.

The next day, I was finally starting to feel better. I still couldn’t work (as in write), but I could make my rescheduled massage therapy appointment. I was puttering about when the phone rang. It was a student from the high school. She’d lost a $50 bill, she told me, walking along Road I’d Walked Along with another student, going toward the corner store, because they both had spares (why they weren’t in school at 9:20 a.m.). She’d been out of town on a shopping trip to the West Edmonton Mall (which, for Canadians, is almost like going to Disneyland, but it’s Edmonton so the theme park and waterpark are all indoors), and the $50 was left over from that trip. It was all the money she’d had in her pocket, and she’d lost it “near the dog park.” Then I asked her to describe her ski jacket, because I remembered one of the couple was a lot smaller than the other and the smaller was wearing a coat with a white background and this memorable pattern I can no longer remember. But I remembered it well enough when she phoned, and it was the jacket of one of the pair walking in front of me.

I had been right to listen to my conscience, not keep the money, and instead try to find the owner. The girl popped over on her lunch hour, and I gave her the $50.

Integrity. It got me because I was sick. Don’t expect it to happen again.

Happy December!

Movember and Mammograms

My husband grew a moustache for Movember, Prostrate Cancer Awareness Month. He shaves it off in two days, and I can’t wait. The only time he’s had a moustache is for a couple of years around the time I was pregnant with our second child. I got…used to it. But I far prefer him without one. It’s just too prickly, and this ain’t the Seventies, folks. Moustaches remind me of the Seventies, weasley used car salesmen (as opposed to non-weasley used car salesmen, who have nice goatees), porn stars (of the Seventies), and guys who sell fake Rolexes out of their coats. I’m just not a moustache-loving girl. That said, I know men who are quite handsome with their moustaches. I just prefer my guy clean-shaven, the better to see his charming smile. Awwwwww.

But we have friends who’ve struggled with prostrate cancer, and so the moustache will return next November, I’m told. Bring it on!

Speaking of moustaches and Movember, they both start with M. And mammogram also starts with M. I’m bringing this up because I recently learned an old friend just underwent a pretty intensive surgery for breast cancer detected during an annual mammogram. She’s on her way to recovery, and I wish her well.

You did read what happened, right? She had her annual mammogram, and that’s how the cancer was detected. Smart woman, to have gone in for the mammogram. I’ve been getting mammograms for several years. Much earlier this year, I was called back for diagnostics for the very first time. That freaked me out. I can’t imagine going through the fear and uncertainty my friend must have experienced these last several weeks. The time between my mammogram and the diagnostics were enough to stress me out to no end. On one hand I rationalized I couldn’t possibly have breast cancer because I plan to live to at least 90 and will haunt everyone I know and all the friends of everyone I know, including the friends of friends of friends of people on Facebook I know, if I don’t make my goal. It’s not my goal, really, more of an expectation based on family history. I take very good care of myself. I eat chocolate whenever possible and exercise only enough to ensure I can eat chocolate whenever possible. Cancer has no place in my body.  

Neither did it have any reason to reside in the body of my friend.

But it did.

Cancer is a bitch. It doesn’t care if you plan to live to at least age 90 or if you haven’t gotten around to taking that trip around the world yet. It doesn’t care if you have proper medical coverage, and it doesn’t care if you do have the coverage but the wait times for surgery in your area are long. It doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor—as long as you give it what it wants. And that’s your life. However it can take it. If that means leaving four children without a mother while one of those children is recovering from his own life-threatening illness, cancer will be happy to oblige. So we owe it to ourselves to fight back as fiercely. To grow that ugly moustache in support of a friend. To get annual mammograms—no excuses. No, your boobs AREN’T too small. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Yes, the first time is embarrassing. Well, the first time you opened your legs for a doctor while you were in labor might have been embarrassing, too. The 3rd or 4th time? Not so much. So it is with mammograms.

Oh, my diagnostics turned out okay. Then I returned in August for my follow-up and the mammograms were okay. I’m still getting tested in another year. And every year thereafter.

While I’m at it, I had to cancel my Pap Smear last week because I was sick for several days. But I’m getting it this week. If you haven’t had a Pap Smear in two years, what are you waiting for? Get ‘er done!