Daisy Doozie - or 3 Girls and a Car!

I forgot my memory card in my camera today. Otherwise I would have been choosing from photos of our frenzy of running around today. First we just drove in circles, unable to decide where to go out of so many places we have missed! I drove after dark for the first time post surgery - other than a trial run at 4 a.m. - and did so-so. I don't think I will be able to do both rain and dark together at this point but still it was so much better than five months ago when I stopped driving and I was happy to be able to do it at all. I told the girls I thought we could make it to AWANA next week, and Lily said she thought she would rather just catch up on going places! Even as we were running around, we were plotting our route for my next day off on Monday!

So you get a photo of our Daisy. Daisy was born on my bed about seven years ago but that is the last time she would get on it until this last week. She is second generation feral cat, born to our Zoey, the kitten of a rescued feral cat. It amazes me that the instincts carry on still. Zoey wanted me there when they were born, but then she figured out she could hide them up UNDER our bathtub through a hole in our closet, which meant I could not get to them, so until they were able to crawl out on their own, there they lived - the bathtub babies. This gave Zoey time to indoctrinate them into the caution of humans that her mama had taught her. When I began to catch them, I tried to block them in the bathroom for safety and Zoey kept carrying them back under the tub until I finally got them all out at once and blocked the hole!

Daisy mostly wants to be outside. There is a wildness about her. I love to watch her leaping gracefully through the woods, effortlessly bounding up and along fallen trees and skittering up tall ones, and she is an avid hunter. But a few months ago she began coming in and sleeping on Lily's bed. Now she has decided my bed is the thing and has taken to hanging out under my feet in the kitchen. We love our cats but boy would I love an affectionate lap cat again! It's been great to have her in more - maybe she took heart after all my begging at the door for them to come inside on cold nights.

Daisy is such a work of art. The fur on her chin is not white but the palest of gray - on top. But if you ruffle it back, it is medium gray underneath and soft as a baby mouse, and a small bit of this darker gray appears just around her lips. Her fur is lushly thick and rich, each hair four or five different colors - if you ruffle it backwards there are layers of brown, tan, black and creamy gray. The artistry, imagination, colors, intricate details and breathtaking beauty I see in nature are why I find it so easy to believe in a Divine Creator/Artist of Life. And Daisy is a masterpiece.

Love the Library!

What bliss today to return to the library. That is, until they told me the late fees figure! Yikes! My sister took us a couple of times over the last few months but I thought the last time was just a few weeks ago. It was two months ago and we had checked out a lot of books that never got renewed! I won't say how much I owed, but let's just say I am helping fund part of the renovations they are currently performing!

Before we had this nice building, the library was rather small. It was quite exciting to have this new modern lovely building. However, I am a bit peeved they spent untold sums on a round dome that does nothing but look pretty and yet the books are still so dated! I love to read old novels but the vacation guide books, for instance, are from the 80s. I don't think the hotel prices will hold up 20-something years later! And the craft books are mostly things like macrame and bread dough creations. I can't help but wonder how many new books that useless dome cost us! And now they are enlarging the library, after I heard them moaning about not getting a budget for any new books. And if you take the time to go to another branch of the library system, they tend to have an almost duplicate set of books rather than buying different ones for each branch that can be traded around.

Nevertheless, picking up a stack of free books is pretty blissful, and it's fun to look at the vacation books and PRETEND the prices are still that low!

Sweet Freedom

Today for the first time in a full five months, I got in my car and drove my children out to have Chic-fil-A, to the bookstore, to Target, to get gas for 1.78 a gallon. Last time I put gas in my car it was 4.12 a gallon. Then on the way home, we all got a movie! The Blockbuster guy said, "WHERE have you been!?" Unfortunately I left my camera at home, but here is a photo of today's treats in celebration of recovered independence, minus the Breyer's ice cream and Magic Shell topping, first ice cream in over five months as we've had to jam our tiny freezer with veggies and meat as the trips to the store were few and far between. Boy is my mood dramatically improved!

Even the months before I had to hang up the car keys, our driving was very limited as my vision worsened, every trip a stress-laden nightmare of straining to see and angry people riding my bumper, so this is just an incredible day. As we were sitting at the umbrella-covered outdoor table eating our lunch and looking at the clear blue sky, Lily sighed contentedly and said, "This is just the Perfect Day."

I was terrified to get behind the wheel as my vision is SO different than it has ever been, and I simply could not tell whether or not I could safely drive until I did it. I meant to drive up and down the drive Tuesday before work but couldn't bring myself to do it, so as soon as I got up today I hopped in the car and drove to get the mail. With not one problem! I figured if I could see on a dirt drive, I could see on the road, and sure enough I had no problems and in fact it is so much better than the last two years - and maybe ever - it was incredible! And no glasses! I have worn glasses since age 8 and had terrible vision even pre-cataracts. To drive with only my post-surgery sunglasses on is like a miracle! Even if I can't read the TV Guide or my watch LOL!

We didn't try dark driving, but it was getting dark as we drove home and it was a little trickier but not so bad. Lily's already hinting about the Terra Cotta Warrior exhibit and several other adventures yet to be had! Bring it on, I say!

Next up, my butane torch and silver clay will be arriving to try my hand at silver jewelry. I can only hope my picture of the day won't be the trailer burning down and my landlord running over with his hunting rifle to shoot me!

Postcards from afar

We have so enjoyed Post Crossing (postcrossing.com). We mail out cards to an assigned address, which also features a profile on the person, and they register our card number and then we get a card from someone else. Sometimes we get and send replies to the same people.

Today we got cards from a 12-year-old boy in Finland, Joosua, and a 23-year-old girl in Shanghai, China, Iris, who was actually vacationing on Hainan Island for Spring Festival. She was someone we sent a card to, so who didn't owe us one, but she was excited to get a card from two girls in America who came from China! The postcard had elephants on it so Lily was thrilled! She signed it with a cute little chop. Tomorrow cards are going out to another US state and to Germany. Finland and Germany are the most common countries participating it seems, though we have sent one to Japan that never got registered as received, and received one from Canada. It's helped the long months at home have some anticipation as we head for the mailbox every day.

Bye-bye snow

Early this morning before I went to bed, Matilda and I took a walk on the hard-frozen crust outside and watched the new sun throw shadows between the trees. By the time I got up this afternoon most of it was gone, but what a lovely sight while it lasted.

Snow-rain Georgia style

This is the view out the girls' back door. We have some pretty snow falling but actually it is raining at the same time, and having been raining very heavily the last couple of days, almost causing the river next to our house to overflow, the ground is a mucky mess. This is why we have no photos of frolicking girls in the snow, though they have been in and out. I do have a picture of them outside cleaning up the trash the raccoons tore open all over our porch, leaving their little footprints as evidence, but I'll save that one for the family album.

I wish I had had the camera when we took our walk yesterday and the river was sloshing over the sides and we saw countless trees bobbing like corks as they sped their way through the rough water. Nature is apparently having a little fun and frolic after a long dry spell.

Swimming and surgery

Here are the girls having fun on Wednesday while mom is going under the knife. I didn't get to be with them for any of the fun - no room for me in the car. Sitting at home alone I felt like the kid who didn't get picked for the team but I'm very thankful that they got to go have some fun after a long dry spell. They absolutely love their new friend Madison, after dreading her coming, thinking she was going to take Anna's attention away from them. I knew Anna better than that and all four got along great, at least from my two's point of view! Madison let Jing play with her Nintendo DS and Jing has a new passionate desire to own one!

Surgery itself was a breeze - I have no memory of anything coming at my eye, which is what I was dreading. But post surgery has been a let-down. I have strained to do my work so long I was gasping with desperation to be able to DRIVE and to read better and see to do my work without intense squinting of my entire face with resultant constant eye strain and headaches. Well now I can't read hardly at all. They gave me reading glasses which enables me to read large type and computer type, as it is lit up brightly, but I can't read my watch, can't read prices in the store, can't pick up a book and read if the type is smallish. What I do type and read is double letters sliding into each other and just exhausts my eye and me. I know (hope!) eventually glasses will correct this but on top of another bit of bad news I have been pretty blue. Not even sure I can drive yet - too rainy today to attempt driving for the first time in five months.

The surgeon had asked me many times if I had a trauma in my left eye, which at this point is so thick with cataract I can only see vague shapes - no meaningful vision. I told him I knew of nothing. He cannot get a good look behind the cataract with any machine they have or with a slit lamp as it is so thick. He had told me he would try the traditional surgery but it had at most a 50% chance of succeeding. If not, he would go in and scrape my eye and something else I don't remember, some kind of compensation for muscles too weak to hold up the new lens. Well yesterday I said, "Please get this other thing out so I can see! When can you do it?!" He said, "I'm not going to do it. I'm not touching that eye."

He said I needed a specialist and that Lion's Club would probably not pay for that and even if they did I would probably not get accepted as a patient with no insurance. He is one of the top surgeons in the country so I am somewhat concerned about this. One of the ladies there told me he was very cautious. And they told me no glasses until both eyes are done, but they are going to have to change that as I can't live unable to read! My eyestrain between the new sharp distance vision and the double/blurry vision up close mixed in with an eye that is "way past 20/200" is almost worse in ways than when the cataract was in. I know part of it will be adjusting but I am somewhat blue about it at the moment, particularly since it's not the only serious issue on the board at the moment!

But for today, I have two happy chatty girls all excited about their adventure and for preservation of my spirit and need of more income I have decided to take the plunge after years of longing to try my hand at making sterling silver jewelry with Precious Metal Clay. I so need something new and exciting creatively to give me a spark right now. Can't afford it, but I'm getting the cheapest set-up, no kiln alas, and I hope it pays for itself before too long. I may even start a PMC newbie blog when my stuff comes!

Toss out a prayer for me if you can spare one. I could use all I can get right now.