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I can see clearly now, sort of…
I was overdue for my eye examination and the Scientist was long overdue for his. We finally made appointments and saw an optometrist last weekend. I knew my vision had gotten worse, particularly in my left eye, so I guess it wasn’t too much of a surprise to be told my left eye had worsened by one dioptre, which is kind of significant. My right eye was worse but not by nearly so much. I think the vision change happened not far into last year so I should have seen to this long before now.
I ordered new glasses which haven’t come in. The Scientist got a message yesterday that his were ready but today I found out mine had to be redone due to a problem with the coating. Mine are far more complex than his, though, so this doesn’t surprise me too much. I’m just anxious to have them again.
I haven’t been offered contact lenses for a very long time, presumably due to the dry eye problem I have from the Sjogren’s syndrome. But this optometrist suggested I have a trial of them and see how I do with them. So I did and I was “fitted” for them today. The appointment was for an hour but I didn’t need that long. My history is mostly linked with rigid gas permeable lenses but that was off the table this time. Still, I remember quite a few of the important parts of wearing contacts, particularly the hygiene. I’m trying out disposable soft lenses that will correct my astigmatism. One thing I came away with this time is a proper way to remove them from my eye. I didn’t do well with soft lenses in the past because I kept gouging my eye trying to get them out. Getting them in wasn’t a problem at all. It’s pretty similar to the harder lenses except there’s a lot more coverage of the eye.
I have two different variations to try out with these contacts. The first one is wearing them for distance only and using readers for close up work. The second one is using one contact for distance and one for close up.
Going in I felt like it would be best to go with two distance ones, but I am not so sure after wearing them for the better part of the day. I will say they were pretty comfortable for most of the eleven hours I was wearing them. I did use eye drops once when they started to feel dry but otherwise it was fine.
Seeing at a distance is absolutely brilliant. I shudder to think how poor my vision has been all this time and I suspect that I shouldn’t have been driving when my left eye was so off. I can only hope my right eye has compensated to some degree. I could read the computer screen from a fair distance, which is something kind of new for me. At least I don’t recall having such crisp vision from so far away.
Seeing up close is really tricky. I can still read unaided pretty well but with the contacts in, my close-up vision was impossible. I couldn’t even look at my phone properly and squinting is no help at all. I did buy some reader glasses from the pharmacy to use for close up and that makes a huge difference but putting them on an off to read things up close is kind of maddening. Still it’s mostly doable that way.
The real issue came when I sat down at my computer. That middle distance is too close to see with just my contacts but the readers aren’t all that effective either. I was getting blurriness both ways and it was kind of exhausting too. I will be giving them a few more times before I throw in the towel with them just to see if I can work with them in the longer term.
More realistically, I suspect I will have to hope I can work with the other configuration with one eye for close up and one for distance. I have a vague recollection my mom had this set up many years ago and I think it worked okay for her. It sounds a bit crazy to me but possibly not so much as being so impaired on my close up vision.
One thing that struck me after I got the contacts in and wore them a bit was how wonderful it was to see again. It was like I didn’t know what I was missing and was a similar feeling to when I first got glasses as a teenager. I don’t know how bad my vision was at that point but I recall being thrilled to see so many things properly again. The best part of all is the peripheral vision. With glasses that pretty much goes out the window and I did adjust to it but I like being able to see off to the sides. I will admit that if I decide to stick with contacts I will need to buy some sunglasses again. I haven’t worn them for ages because my glasses have had transition lenses the last several times which has worked really well for me.
Anyway, I will update again after trying out the other set up for my contacts and after getting the new glasses.
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Restarting
This week I am back to exercise again and it’s not been all bad but not all good either. I’m trying to meet my daily calorie commitments set on my watch but came up just short on Tuesday. I did get exercise but it wasn’t the sort that easily is recorded on the watch. So this week won’t be a perfect one but I did get some exercise.
Today I did a short walk before going to meet my carer client. That went pretty well. It wasn’t exactly warm today but not really cold either. I walked on a path that has been a regular one of late and it’s mostly in shade. But I didn’t need my jacket so I think it was okay. If I’d been out longer I probably would have needed one since the sun was rapidly setting. It was only a twenty minute walk and I was walking a pretty quick pace and felt okay for it.
The real fun happened when I took G to the pool. I mostly was just walking laps but also did some laps (half laps sometimes) where I was doing kicking my feet and using my hands/arms to propel myself. I wouldn’t call it a swim exactly since I wasn’t doing proper strokes or movements but it wasn’t walking since my feet were off the ground. Anyway it’s 25 metres across and I managed to go to the other end the first time and was exhausted at first. I did more walking and then tried again and managed to go across and back to the start a few times. My arms and legs were fine but the breathing was really painful once I started taking in deep breaths. And then I end up coughing a lot. At one point I accidentally inhaled a tiny amount of pool water and that got me spluttering quite a bit. I decided to stick to just walking across after that since I’d already been in the water for a while.
Meanwhile at the Lorikeet house, the Scientist is mostly better now and the boys are still feeling pretty rotten. I think Game Fanatic had improved a bit during the day but tonight he’s really coughing a lot.
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I am an idiot
It’s been my habit lately to drive up to my mother-in-law’s house every Wednesday to check the mail and house while she is overseas for a few months. It’s easier for me to do it than the Scientist who is gone for a long part of the day. There haven’t been any real issues so far aside from the starting up her car each week. Last week it took quite a while to get it to turn over but it eventually did. All was well.
I went there again yesterday and started the car for a few minutes and checked through the house. I also grabbed some frozen meals from her freezer. These are meals she’s bought from other Sri Lankan and usually gives them to three boys/families (she’s vegetarian and these meals are usually not). Anyway, she has asked for us to take out the remaining meals and to turn off the fridge. I grabbed several this time leaving just a few more for the Scientist’s brothers. Or I will take them next time and clear things out of the fridge and freezer. I took the stack of meal boxes to the car and opened the trunk up and put them into a chiller bag while holding the keys. The car key dropped from my hand ( I realise this is what happened now) and out of habit I closed the trunk…With the car key still inside…That was my first bad move. I won’t say it was totally foolish because I normally hold onto the key when I am putting things in and this accidentally fell.
So there I was with only the key to that house and a gadget connector to recharge my phone in the car that I was holding for some reason. I recall that just before I shut the trunk I heard the car lock automatically. I think I had unlocked it, anticipating putting something in the front. So there I was with no key, no purse or phone. I went inside and tried to use the landline but it had been unplugged so was useless. I did have a good idea to use my Apple watch to access my phone. I was able to call the Scientist at work while standing outside the car. It was kind of weird to be talking into my watch right then but that is how these things work now. It worked and the connection wasn’t too bad either…at least from my end it seemed pretty clear.
I was able to confirm that the other car key was still at home. There is another spare key here just in case but it doesn’t have the remote locking features on it…I guess that really didn’t matter because the trunk wasn’t key locked and I could have opened it from the car. The issue was getting home to get the key. I did make a couple other phone calls in hopes of finding someone who could get to our house and bring me the key but that didn’t work out. I had contacted the mum of the guy I assist as a carer to let her know the situation and she said not to worry about it.
Next I went into the house and looked for any money that might be around. There may be a spot where she leaves spare change but I never found it. I was looking all over the place and then I even went to her car to look and see if there was anything there…That’s when it finally dawned on me that I could use her car to come home and get the key. I wasted a good half hour on other options when the most obvious solution was right there.
The trip home and back took about less than 90 minutes and I was able to drive from there to my job, arriving just about an hour late.
I won’t berate myself too much for closing the trunk on the keys but it sure was ridiculous that it took me so long to figure out the simple solution.
Well I hope that turns out the most idiotic thing I do for a long while anyway.
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New furniture
It’s actually portable furniture we got recently.
Years ago when we got our current sofas, Lego Lover wouldn’t sit on them. I’m not sure of his reasoning back in the early days but since we’ve had the dogs, the chances of him sitting there have reduced to zero percent. For years he’s been dragging his chair from the kitchen table around and sitting on that in other rooms. But that chair is now unusable due to a part breaking and we are looking for another chair to replace it. Actually the chair has lasted a lot longer than I expected because somebody who was rather large-sized had sat upon it years ago and it has slightly cracked. It was still usable because Lego Lover was still small at the time. In fact, the part of the chair that is currently broken is unrelated to that crack. Anyway…
We looked at Ikea for possible replacements and found some possibilities there. But we really need him to be there to check it out so didn’t want to commit at all. Then we happened to notice Ikea had a foldable armchair for sale. It wasn’t cheap but it certainly seemed to fit the bill for what was needed for Lego Lover. I went to Ikea and checked it out and it was surprisingly solid despite looking a bit like an outdoor lounge chair. It was far more comfortable than some of the other chairs too. Anyway, I went ahead and bought it and brought it home. It’s kind of heavy but still was small enough for me to carry alone to the car…with a few breaks along the way. I got it home and unboxed it and it was practically ready to use from the box. Lego Lover liked it and is now using it regularly. To his delight, he can fold it up and keep it away from the annoying dogs.
While I was checking out that chair, I noticed they also had a two-seater sofa version and thought that would be useful in our games room where there is no proper seating for when watching tv or playing video games. For the tv this isn’t so bad because our treadmill is in the games room and that is often used while exercising. But for playing video games the set up has been poor and Games Fanatic was sitting on the floor or an exercise ball to play. With the tv screen so high up it was bad all around. That weekend the Scientist and I went back and got the sofa version of the chair and it is working out quite nicely. We are keeping it set up right now but it’s easy enough to fold it away too.
We have some other furniture we plan to buy soon but it’s mostly storage units and it’s big so we will have all of that delivered when we finally make our selections.
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Certified
I’ve been working as a carer for well over ten years now. For most of those years it was a very casual job where I just signed a form from the disability services and got paid in cash. For what was three hours a week, I guess it was okay. Then the provider of funds changed to the NDIS (national disability insurance scheme) and it’s all formalised with proper pay, benefits, etc. Not to mention the pay has increased considerably from the previous arrangement.
Anyway, it’s been three or more years now and I was only just asked quite recently whether I had a first aid certificate. No, I didn’t. A first aid course was arranged and at the end of last month I had my training.
It consisted of a day-long course at one of the St. John Ambulance locations. I’m not exactly an early riser so the biggest challenge was getting to sleep the night before. That didn’t really work out too well but I did get up and I got to the place on time. It was easier to reach than I expected although it still took nearly twenty minutes due to traffic.
We did the CPR component in the morning because one of the students was only there for that part of the training. I was a bit underprepared because I didn’t get some information on the online part of the course before we started and so I was going in blindly. I guess under those circumstances I picked it up quickly.
We ended up partnering with other students and practicing the CPR on dummies. There was an infant and an adult dummy. Plus we practiced using the defribillator which was something I had no idea about at all. It was all a bit overwhelming but I feel I got enough from it to be able to handle it should a need arise.
We had a break at lunch time and did various other scenarios during the afternoon. I was interested in the methods for handling choking. Here they don’t recommend the Heimlich manoeuvre because of the risk of damage to internal organs.
I was also interested in the handling of snake bites because that has changed so much over the years. The limb affected is effectively wrapped up snugly to slow venom from spreading through the body,
Other things like broken limbs and sprains were pretty similar to what I expected. I suppose that hasn’t had a need to change as much over time.
The teacher was quite engaging and made it sort of fun for us. I learned a lot and hope I can retain it. It’s supposed to be updated once a year and I can see why because there’s so much there that it’s easy to for you to forget, especially when you don’t have to make use of the information much.
Anyway, I am certified in first aid here in Australia and finally feel somewhat equipped to deal with an emergency.
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A new post
I just noticed it’s been over three months since my last post. I really seem to go in dribs and drabs at the best of times.
Life carries on at the Lorikeet household.
I am working more hours these days. The man I am a carer for got lots more funding this year and my two hour shift doubled to four. Plus I have taken over for the other carer on several occasions, and the pay is quite a bit more for weekend days and even more on holidays. Anyway, I’ll be adding an extra eight hours over two more days in a couple of weeks to cover for the other carer who is unable to continue with that work load at the moment. This is to continue until November although there is always a chance I will keep some of those hours. It’s not quite as many hours as I’d like but it’s still so much more than the measly two I’ve been doing.
Also, I did stints at two campuses of counting people in rooms for a utilisation survey in March/April. Each last a week of fours hours daily. The first week was quite easy, thanks to my much fitter body. The second week was pretty exhausting since it covered a lot more ground. I think I was walking something like 10 kms a day for that job.
I am still doing pretty well with my exercise regime. I did fall off the wagon on doing more strength training but I am getting cardio workouts several times a week right now. My biggest challenge has been eating habits. Around Easter I started going heavy on carbs and I could tell a difference with overload. I have settled back down from that but still find I’m eating too much junk so need to work that little bit more on improving eating habits.
We recently started a new term at tai chi and the Scientist and I starting to learn tai chi sword. We’ve already learned two styles of fan and the regular tai chi set. I was a bit hesitant on this one for concerns over the weight of the sword but decided to give it a try. I’m having to do it right-handed because it’s tricky for the teacher to teach a lefty…I’m sure she would try if it’s impossible for me…so far I’m okay but the movements have only just shifted to using my right hand so it’s early days. Also the advanced group is learning Beijing 24 which is a competitive type of tai chi that has been standardised between various styles. It’s different so far but kind of neat to be learning something pretty different.
Health-wise, I have been mostly okay but have a couple of issues. Some body hair loss was noticed recently and it’s quite obvious in one area so it seemed worth checking out. I don’t think the hair on my head is falling out more than usual although I could be wrong. Since it’s long, it always seems like I’m losing lots of hair. I had a whole bunch of blood tests run just over a week ago and a few came up abnormal although most weren’t terribly so. The worst affected is my iron levels. I don’t think I’ve had a normal transferrin sat level in nearly three years and the ferritin is also often below normal. The actual iron is more normal although right now it’s on the lowest possible normal it could be. Anyway, I’ve been offered an iron infusion to help that along (hopefully) and that’s scheduled on Friday and should take about an hour including the doctor visit. Hopefully this might get me back on track for the first time in a long while. The doctor I’m seeing suspects this might be the problem with the hair loss so it will be interesting to see if this helps things along in that area too.
The other tests that are in question are my vitamin D level (too low) and my parathyroid level (too high). Apparently the parathyroid level can be properly understood without a calcium test so I had that done today. The gp I’ve been seeing told me to take vitamin D tablets but I understand that it’s important to find out the reason for my parathyroid first…This doctor is young so I guess she has little experience in this area. I’m holding off on this until I know that my calcium isn’t high. My father has issues with his parathyroid and he has problems with his calcium being too high which poses lots of problems in treatment due to other medications he takes. I honestly have not heard much about parathyroid issues over the years, except for when my father had his. He has a tumor on his parathyroid that can’t be removed due to closeness to some major artery or something like that.
Which reminds me that a few weeks ago, I also had a blocked tear duct which got rather swollen all of a sudden and sent me off to see the doctor on a Saturday morning. That’s cleared up but it’s interesting because it’s a common issue in Sjögren’s syndrome and this is my first time experiencing it. Since that started, my eyes have been particularly dry so I am so glad to have artificial tears available.
I’ve been doing a lot more reading of actual books lately, mostly on my Kindle. I must admit I find physical books less appealing lately, especially at night when I need some light to read. I resisted the Kindle for a long time because I hate that it’s a proprietary format. But after trying other e-readers, I find it works better than others I’ve tried and, of course, it’s got a very established database of books. I find I am downloading lots of the free books and some of them are quite good. One of my latest books I finished was a light novel I found amongst a bunch of manga titles. I can’t recall if it was free or very low price…but it was a pretty long book and I really liked it.
Well that’s quite a long read and it’s kind of late so I will quit for now and hopefully remember other things I want to write about later on.
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Stomach churning day
I’ve been dreading today but it’s finally here. It’s so easy now to appreciate how good Obama was as president when I know how everything is descending into hell at a rapid pace. I finally changed my Facebook avatar today to a totally black image, per the suggestion of the Scientist. It’s a simple reminder of how dark a day it is for the world. I’m not sure how long I will keep that up there but it might be a while. After all, it took over a year to remove the image of our cat who died in November 2015.
In the past I often avoided posting about too much political stuff on Facebook but I decided I was going to do exactly what some of my family and a very few of my friends have done. I am going to post constantly about things that man is doing and why I think it’s wrong. The main difference will be that I won’t be posting a bunch of crap…which is what I call most of the fake news that was share with me over the past years. And I’ve been trying to post lots of Obama positive articles because that’s how I feel. I know he wasn’t a perfect president but he was pretty good as most of them go. And he was and still is very classy in the face of all the garbage he faced. I suspect he’d have been better had he not faced the onslaught of right wing America/world.
Normally I would stay up to watch the inauguration but I will be giving it a miss this time around. There is no way I want to acknowledge Trump as president in any way, even after he is sworn in. I know it’s going to happen but I just can’t stomach it.
Anyway, I’m meeting the Scientist in the city after he finishes work and we are planning to head to Fremantle for the latter part of the afternoon to partly escape from reality and also to enjoy some yummy food. I’m mostly looking forward to going to Gabriels, a chocolateria of sorts which has some amazingly good ice cream made with their homemade chocolate.
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All adults here
Lego Lover turned eighteen last month and the house is now filled with adults. Sure, maybe some of the adults are still quite dependent up the parents, but they are still legally adults. That’s kind of weird to think about because part of me still thinks of that baby and little boy when I think of him.
The birthday itself was pretty quiet. Lego Lover wasn’t interested in any sort of party so it was just us plus the Scientist’s mum, who dropped by early in the day. He got some of the presents he was hoping for and I went out and got another one for him on the day because the item in question was finally available. He asked for tandoori chicken for his birthday meal. Last year he’d asked for pizza from our local shop but he found it made him too full. The chicken came out well with some basmati rice. Later on we played some video games that were of interest and it was all good.
Later in the night, after his birthday was technically over, we had a rather emotional chat that touched on subjects that needed to be discussed. I won’t share that here but I will say it was good for us to share what we did. It was one of those times when it became clear what sort of things matter most to him…at least the ones that he isn’t already quite vocal about.
Anyway, Lego Lover is such an amazing young man and he continues to grow and become more interesting all the time. I must remember this when we are dealing with the harder stuff because it’s so easy to get lost in the tedious everyday issues.
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Health and fitness
I’m pleased to share that I’ve made it to one of my longer term goals on my fitness and weight loss journey. I started back in August, I think, and I’ve lost just over seven kilograms which is pretty significant. I am not rushing the progress and trying not to get too tied to rigid routines because that seems to cause my downfall most of the time. My biggest improvements have been in my diet because I’ve been able to restrain myself from overdoing it a lot better lately than in the past few years.
My exercise has also been going pretty well too. I’ve been mostly cycling and walking for exercise up until now. I find I have a lot more stamina for climbing hills doing either and I can sort of keep up with the Scientist when walking with him. He walks really fast so I am still slow next to him even at my fittest….so he slows down for me and I speed up for him as much as possible.
I notice a couple weeks ago that I have a lot of sagginess in my arms so that motivated me to finally get on to doing some strength work after all this time. It’s still early days on this (only done it twice) but I started out using the Wii U Fit for some cardio work and then moved on to various other exercises including some using light weights. I’m mostly using a .5 kg dumbbell and it’s sad to see how even that is a bit of a strain after a couple of sets. Hopefully I will sort that out soon and be a bit more balanced overall.
My clothing size has definitely dropped in this time. I still need the same size tops but I can see it won’t be long until I move to the next size down. I’m just rather top-heavy so the fit isn’t quite right yet. On the other hand, the shorts I’ve been wearing have been just about sliding over my hips with almost no movement so I went out and got a couple pairs of shorts that are one size down. I do have some smaller ones here but I haven’t gotten down far enough to wear those yet.
I did have a couple instances in the last couple of months that seriously could have derailed my efforts. On one occasion I started out fine and I even felt as though I was exerting little effort for the first fifteen minutes. But then my heart started racing while climbing a hill and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to come down until I completely stopped riding when I stopped at some markets about half an hour from home (by bike). I walked around there and got a drink and then bought another drink along the way. I had made the mistake of forgetting to take water but that shouldn’t have caused the problem. Anyway, I started to feel better so decided to carry on with my ride and went to another suburb where I was again struggling with racing heart and struggle to get to the shopping centre there to get more fluids. I did feel a bit better but not particularly great to ride home. Fortunately the most direct way is a mostly downhill ride so I was able to coast most of the way and then go slowly the rest of the way home. I’m not quite sure why I had such a bad time of on that day because I didn’t feel unwell before I went out and I did feel unwell for a day or two afterwards.
Interesting thing is the next ride was totally opposite and was a good experience all around. It took me a few days before I tried to cycle again so it was a relief that it went so well that time.
Last weekend I bought an Apple watch, in part so that it would be easier to look at my stats while riding or walking instead of constantly looking at my phone. I’ve used it for cycling twice and it worked really well except for the fact the app I use somehow switched my activity to walking. I was able to change this before I stopped the app and it seems like it shows cycling as it should. I think this happened when the activity tracker accidentally started on the phone, which sent it to the watch, where something must have moved the digital crown and changed the activity there…and that made the change on the phone…sigh…will just have to be careful in the future about that. I don’t think there’d have been an issue had the app not started by accident.
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Happy New Year
My intentions of writing more frequently haven’t quite caught up yet. I see it’s been nearly two months now, not to mention the Scientist made comment on it recently too. That’s probably a really poorly worded sentence but it will have to do.
It’s a new year and I am hopeful there will be more positive to come out of this year than last. The Scientist started a new job last week so life at the Lorikeet house has been considerably changed from the everyone is at home model. The job means a considerable increase in income for him but there are some concerns that keep it from being anywhere near an ideal job. Hopefully many of those can be overcome so that he has a more satisfactory experience there.
Meanwhile my increased hours as a carer have gone back to the two hours a week from before. The other carer returned from his holiday and is back to usual. I didn’t mind the extra work load but it wasn’t exactly ideal to spend nearly half an hour to get there for a mere 2.5Â hours most of the time.
My driver’s licence was due to be renewed by tomorrow so I decided it was time to get a haircut. This is the first one in well over a year and my hair was down almost to my mid-back. I went yesterday to a less commonly frequented shopping centre that has two hairdressers. The first one I came to had someone free so I had my hair cut by about 3-4 inches. It’s still long enough to go past my shoulders but quite short in comparison to pre-cut. I had the full works done with shampoo, blow dry and style and it looked pretty good when I finished. I rushed off to the post office to get my licence renewal done. (Here, you just go to the post office with the renewal form and they handle the payment and photo for you…no updated eye tests like back home though.) It was just before closing and I lucked out by getting someone free there too and it was done and over with in a matter of a few minutes. It will be a couple of weeks to get the actual licence but I have the renewal with me in case I need it.
There are a few things I wanted to write about so I might just put them here to remind me…
- Lego Lover becoming turning 18
- Christmas
- Sadness for people we know
- Health/fitness