Category: The Non-Writing Life

Oh, gosh, I’ve had a busy weekend. You see, my husband spent his summer building us a beautiful new sundeck. In the process, our yard turned into a construction zone. Usually, he or I (or a son if they’re home) “blow/s” the driveway with the leaf blower following the municipality’s annual spring street cleaning. But this year, because my mother-in-law passed away and then My Liege began the deconstruction of the old sundeck, we didn’t get around to cleaning the driveway. Therefore, it was a huge mess. Not just your typical leftover winter gravel, dust and grime, but grime and dirt and gunk and sawdust and composite-board dust and you-name-it was all over half of the driveway (it’s a two-ended beast) and also in a little patio/courtyard area where My Liege had set up his “workshop.” Clever moi, I thought I could just blow the courtyard clean of the grime encrusting the…not concrete, but whatever you call it when it looks like rocks. There’s a name for it. They create it by washing off the top layer of cement or concrete or whatever. I’m too worn out to try and remember what it’s called.

At any rate, I thought that the leaf blower would get rid of the grim in the courtyard. But it couldn’t get rid of it all. I spent 3.5 solid hours in the hot sun (with a break to suck back four mini yogurts), blowing the courtyard and both sides of the driveway, then scooping the waste into a garbage can for My Liege to take to the dump next time he goes. Except I…didn’t realize there was a hole in the bottom of the garbage can. So God knows what will happen when M.L. tries to move it into the back of his pick-up. For now, it’s sitting under a maple tree with a tarp over it, because it’s going to rain tomorrow, and wood on top of the tarp to hold it down.

During this whole process, I had to move leftover construction stuff out of the carport and then put it back IN the carport, because (1) I don’t know where it goes and (2) it’s going to rain tomorrow, the weather man says, and he’s pretty darn sure. So that created more back-breaking work.

I collapsed on the couch and then woke up this morning uncertain if I wanted to give the courtyard a second attempt…this time with my new pressure washer!

The day wore on, and I did everything I could think of NOT to get out the new pressure washer and see if I could get it to work. Considering I was the one who put it together, there was no guarantee it would do anything. So I bathed the dog, did the laundry, washed the floor, did some computer work, then finally realized that if I did not test out my new pressure washer today, before the rain comes, I’m just postponing the construction clean-up (which no one but me volunteered me for; not sure how that happened).

As it turns out, I put the blasted thing together properly, but if I turned on the outside water full force, the hose would blast off the pressure washer at undetermined intervals. I am rather proud that it only took two blast-offs for me to recognize the problem. But I created a huge mess in the interim. Once I started washing the AGGREGATE, that’s what it’s called!! Once I started washing the aggregate, one thing led to another and I washed the vinyl siding in that area of the house, too. And, all right, took a bit of white paint off the door frame. That wasn’t my fault. I think a chipmunk had gotten there ahead of me.

So now the courtyard looks wonderbar! And this week, once the sun comes out again, I will proceed to wash the rest of the house and the new sundeck. It was on my job list, anyway. And this time, the pressure won’t get to me. I am almost certain I have the machine figured out.

Oh…you know how I spent yesterday cleaning the driveway? Well, of course today the leaves started falling off the trees. The driveway will need blowing again before the first snowfall. I knew that when I decided to do the job yesterday. But I just couldn’t stand the construction mess anymore.

What’s your least favorite autumn clean-up job? (I assume no one reading this is nuts enough to have a most fav, but if you do, fire away).

By Bambi, I do not mean the character in the Disney movie, but a generalized Bambi, as in a little deer, as in the book from 1923, Bambi, A Life in the Woods. Any young buck that you might by chance encounter in the woods, a provincial park, your back yard, or your driveway.

I had my Close Encounter of the Bambi Kind in my driveway just the other day! And I have the bruise and scratch on my thigh to prove it. No, I won’t post a picture. I won’t even take a picture. You’ll just have to believe me.

A couple of summers ago, My Liege and I had a Close Encounter of the Bambi Kind while walking Allie McBeagle in a provincial park that has deer, rattlesnakes, cougars, bears, and other varmints. Back then, Allie was not on a leash on this particular trail we had walked on dozens of times. We came upon a doe on the left side of the path. Now, Allie was 9 or 10 at the time, and now she is 11 going on 12. Had she been 2 or 3, considering she’s a beagle, we might have been in real trouble. Because this doe was not little, and a two-year-old beagle would have been very interested in her. The doe was a mom, and somewhere in the vicinity, nowhere that we could see but we knew it was there because of her behavior, she had a fawn. We were pretty darn certain about this because when she saw us, as we passed by her, she began pawing the ground, lowering her head, and her nostrils were flaring. In other words, she wasn’t too happy.

My Liege immediately got the dog on a very short leash and I was to advance very slowly away from the deer. Because he’s a professional forester by training, he knows very well that deer are wild animals and, despite that they can be tamed or found in petting zoos, in the wild you are not, under any circumstances, to treat them like a friendly little Bambi. A deer can really hurt you or your dog, or your goldfish.

This first Encounter, once there was a respectable distance, the doe leapt over the path and into the brush. We thought we were okay at that point, but she wasn’t certain we didn’t know about her fawn, and she wound up stalking us the rest of the way along the path, until we reached the point where we could exit the park. By stalking, I mean that she followed us on the path and/or in the woods, NOT happily twitching her tail, but with the same pawing of ground and nostril-flaring. Warning signs. My Liege found a large branch to keep her away from us. We finished the trail (because we could not leave the trail at that point without going into the brush, which would have really irritated her) and left the park.

Now, just the other day, the dog escaped out the front door, and I thought she was after the mailman, who gives her a dog cookie every day. So I run down the road after her, and there he is, but also there are also several neighborhood members and this fairly tame young buck trying to get the neighbours to scratch its head. According to one of my neighbors, this is the same young buck that has been seen in the area and in the park all this summer. When he lowers his head, he just wants you to pet him. And he likes dogs. He wants to play with them.

Um, yeah.

I gathered my dog together el pronto, and I must say the deer was not interested in my dog. He was interested in lowering his head and having my neighbor pet him between the antlers. But the antlers, they are sharp!

Fast-forward to day before last, and My Liege and I are getting ready to go out for a family dinner. We are both in the driveway when we see a couple walking a young Basset Hound. They’d popped into our driveway because Young Buck had been following them. Basset hid behind our fence, and Young Buck’s tail twitched. Yes, actually twitched, like he wanted to play. You could say his tail wagged, and I wouldn’t stop you. He wasn’t being territorial in the least, but, according to my forester husband, he was still a wild animal and therefore best to give him a wide berth.

So don’t ask me how this happened.

I wound up on one side of the truck, by the passenger door, because that’s where I was to sit. M.L. went back into the house to get something, and the couple with the dog were on a bordering road by now. But Young Buck decided it was time to approach me. Maybe he recognized me from the day before! He lowered his antlers, his rack or whatever you call it, and slowly walked toward me. But I was maybe ten inches from the truck. So I backed up, and next thing I know I’m against the truck door and Young Buck’s antlers are pressing into my thigh. My Liege shouts from the door of the house, “Cindy, get in the truck!”

“The truck’s locked!” I yell back.

Yeah, good plan, M.L. Lure the buck to your wife and then lock the truck doors on her.

So what could I do? The point of one of Young Buck’s antlers was digging into my thigh—and it hurt! If I didn’t do something quickly, soon another might bruise my abdomen (I have quite a bruise on my thigh, and he barely poked me). So I calmly grabbed his antlers in both hands, looked him in the eyes (he was looking up at me) and, as gently as I could given that he was hurting me but I didn’t want to make him mad, pulled his antlers and head up and away from my body, earning myself a scratch as well as a bruise. That caused him to back up a bit, but he hadn’t gotten what he was after, we think (or the neighbors think), the scratch between his antlers. So he went back to following the couple with their dog down the road, My Liege once more gave me heck for not getting out of danger’s path quickly enough, and I once more reminded him that the truck door was locked.

Meanwhile, Allie McBeagle watched all of this from the house doorway. Good pup!

It sounds like a funny story, and even a cute one, but the reality is that the future does not look rosy for Young Buck. He appears to be surviving in the park and in the neighborhood by eating whatever he can. However, reports say he has also been nudging kids at the local elementary school. No matter how friendly he appears, he is still a wild animal, and if he gets perturbed, who’s to say he couldn’t hurt a child or a person or a small dog? Deer have been known to get very territorial about the back yards they inhabit in certain areas of British Columbia, and small dogs have been charged and killed. In the case of our first Encounter, that with the doe, we were in her territory. But this poor Young Buck is now very accustomed to humans and encroaching on their territory. How this happened, I don’t know, but the best thing to do with such a wild animal is not interact with it so it will hopefully head back into the park. But how can it truly become wild again now that it seems to be tame? What will happen to YB?

I would love it if he went to a petting zoo, but there are none in my area.

A hunter might decide to take him down by the light of the moon, when no one is looking. Yes, a rifle makes too much noise, but people in this area also hunt with bows.

Young Buck might dart into traffic and get hit by a big truck.

Or Young Buck might get too friendly with the kids at the school, and then Young Buck will probably be put down by the wildlife service. So sad.

Or Young Buck might continue to wander the area, but eventually winter will come and his food source will deplete. And then he’ll get really, really hungry…

There are also coyotes in the park. No, Young Buck’s future does not look bright.

Have you had a Close Encounter of the Bambi Kind?

 

As some of you might remember, I first had laser eye surgery in December 2011. My left eye, the reading eye, was perfect, and yesterday I had another checkup that reveals the left eye is still seeing as wonderfully as it did soon after the surgery.

The right eye was not so lucky. The first time around, I had SBK laser surgery, which is similar to LASIK but uses a laser to make the incision rather than an instrument. I was one of the unlucky few who experience regression. Twenty-four hours post-SBK, I could see distance what they call “20/20 minus.” That is to say the 20/20 line was a little fuzzy, and I missed a couple.

As the months progressed, my right eye regressed to the point where it was reading 20/50, which means that what a normal person can see at 50 feet, I could only see at 20 feet. Which meant I had to get glasses for driving and any time I wanted to see distance clearly (like going to the movies or attending a writer’s conference). The glasses brought my left reading eye up to speed. However, my distance right eye could not be made to see 20/20 even WITH glasses, which caused me some concern. I went for several post-op checkups before coming to the decision that I did not want my left eye to be doing all the work—reading without glasses and seeing distance with glasses. The right eye was just slacking off! So, even though I knew there were risks involved and I might wind up with worse vision than ever, I decided to go for touch-up surgery in my right eye. This occurred right before my birthday in January of this year.

The clinic intended to “lift” the flap created the first time around with a surgical instrument and then do the laser touch-up. During the surgery, it was discovered that because over a year had passed my flap was resistant to lifting. In some people, their flap can be lifted after a year. Not moi!

This was quite disconcerting, because I had been informed during surgical prep a few days before that if they could not lift the flap, I would be sent home and then brought back another day for PRK surgery, where they sweep off your epithelium layer (after freezing your eyeball) and then they would do the surgery. Thank God the surgeon, in trying to lift my flap, determined that the eye had suffered enough trauma and not to send me home, but to continue on with the PRK. Man, was I nervous, switching surgeries in mid-stream. This meant that I would not get the immediate effects of SBK or LASIK and it would take up to 6 months to achieve potential 20/20 vision.

That six months just elapsed.

I knew before I went in to the clinic yesterday that I didn’t have 20/20 because, if I do put on my glasses, which I haven’t worn in ages, I could see better through the left eye than the right. I suspected that I had just a touch of astigmatism remaining, and it turns out I was right. I have no idea if this touch of astigmatism will improve over the next several months or not, but I don’t care! I have accomplished my goal. I can once more see distance “20/20 minus,” again to say that I could read some but not all letters on the 20/20 line, exactly where I was 24 hours post-SBK in December 2011.

Apparently, I have never been able to see 20/20 out of my right eye, even with lenses, but before I went with monovision this was hard for me to determine. The strange thing is that my right eye is my dominant eye, which was why they didn’t make the left eye the distance eye. However, yesterday in the clinic, the doctor wrote a new prescription for my right eye for my driving glasses and I will be able to see 20/20 out of them (I don’t have them yet). So that’s a blessing! The only time I feel the need to wear glasses is while driving at night. I’m okay in twilight and in rain. In heavy rain, I feel a little better, safer on the road, wearing glasses, because then my left eye is up to speed.

I am so glad my touch-up worked! Whatever happens in the next five years with my eyes, right now I am enjoying the full benefits of monovision, and I don’t require glasses for reading, for the computer OR for distance. The only time the monovision bothers me is in that weird middle distance where the right eye doesn’t quite make up for the left. And this only bothers me when watching a particular TV that could stand to have a touch of a larger screen. 🙂

Phew, what a relief. Some people don’t have successful touch-ups, and I am so thankful that I did!

My eyes are still quite dry, especially the right, after having two laser surgeries in fourteen months. I still can’t spend as much time on the desktop as I used to be able to, and I compensate by wearing yellow-tinted computer specs (no Rx, just the tinting to cut down on blue glare) and also working on my netbook and my iPad when I can. Plus, I still douse my eyes with lots of drops and have it down to a fine routine. I need some right now.

Overall, I am incredibly happy to be where I am with my eyes compared to November 2011, before the surgery.

“See” ya!