A belated birthday wish

The mother of my children had a birthday while I was in Europe, she is far closer to 70 now than 60.  I hope she's happy with her new husband, she's not the type of person who feels complete unless she has a person she can subtly and totally control; I am far happier without her although I grieve over the de facto loss of my three children, now mature adults, whom she totally turned against me as tender children during the divorce in my opinion with her insidious and invidious ways of control.

They are the true victims, as studies show that the children of a parent who introduced hatred against the other parent into their hearts grow up depressed, lacking confidence and unable to form emotional bonds, even with their own children.  I haven't received much information about my children since their early teen or pre-teen years when she secretly initiated the divorce by taking them out of state on false pretenses and started their total inclusion in her camp by subtly imploring them, while she was in control, to be in solidarity all together with her against their father who was according to her of an overbearing or dissolute character.

Unfortunately from what little I do know, now one seems to be a grifter, one a drifter and one a hanger-on.  And they had such potential, absent, in my opinion, her ruinous, self-centered influence in having them sue me as children during the pendency of the divorce.

I am afraid of one, who was manipulated to threaten me during the divorce, have received virtually zero information about and upon another for over a decade, and know the third is doing his best to subtly manipulate me, in his best impersonation of her, by doing things like visiting adults he knew growing up in the immediate neighborhood but not me in the sure knowledge that this potentially hurtful activity will get back to me later in idle conversations with neighbors.  I hope your special day was truly special, as befits you, Sharon Rogers Lightbourne.

Happy Mothers Day...

...to my mom

... and to all mothers out there.

Coming Back?

I've had a lot of injuries in the last two years that kept me from running.  I strained my achilles tendon two springs ago and that forced me to the couch for nine months because I couldn't run through it, or run at all, and for two months two summers ago I was in The Boot, which helped my healing.

I came back to running last spring and was slowly kicking up my pace, mileage and conditioning when mid-summer I was felled by a detached retina which required four surgeries, two of them emergency operations and two more that were delayed for weeks or months because of various circumstances on the surgeons' part.  

The first surgery hurt a lot (I don't believe I was sedated properly, if at all) but the second was the worst although I was out so I didn't feel a thing.  They filled my eye with oil to keep my eye pressure sufficient for  the retina to heal properly without deteriorating further. Reinas heal slowly, believe me.

But worse still was the feeling it engendered within me.  There was an organ in my body (my eye) that was foreign (filled with silicon) and my body wanted it out.  A few times a day I experienced white flares in my vision, good as it was in its permanently impaired state, that rose from lower left corner of my affected right eye like a nova and I would still all motion until it subsided and went away.  Exposure of my optic nerve as the oil in my eye sloshed around?  I don't know, I just got a vague answer from my ophthalmologist when I complained to him about it and he just told not to do it.  Well!

Worse still was that it felt like if I fell hard due to my shaky vision, say I pitched forward by tripping on broken  or uneven pavement, that my eye might split open.  Yep, that's what my foreign eye felt like, very strange, and I stayed on the couch till my third operation in December when they took the oil out (or at least most of it--I have these maddening residual small silicon globules floating around through my vision permanently like tiny astroid clouds from the oil they couldn't completely flush out when they operated).

Then I had cataract surgery on that eye last month, a cataract that developed suddenly and rapidly due to the eye trauma I experienced, as is normal with retina detachment repair, and I feel now that my eye, and my vision, is as good as it's going to get and my eye is healed.  

So on May 1, I went out for an intended slow half-mile run, after stretching assiduously.  I made a quarter mile before I had to walk a block, twice.

That first week I ran a second time and that time I pushed through my overwhelming urge to stop after a quarter mile and finished my half mile run, getting my second wind on the backside of the run.

This week I was going to run a half-mile three times.  I ran a slow half-mile on Monday and it went okay.  I even picked up the pace a little the last two blocks.

This morning I had to wait for an electrician to come deal with a problem at my house, so the morning was used up before my thoughts turned to adhering to my running schedule.  Here was the crisis, I wanted to have lunch instead and I didn't feel like getting into my running togs.  But I changed and went out into the street and started stretching my achilles.  The neighborhood steady runner ran by and stopped to talk and our discussion soon turned from politics to running.  I told him I was trying to return to running and my planned slow schedule.  He nodded approvingly and asked if I was returning from my run or about to set off.  I truthfully told him that I was "procrastinating."

He laughed and said I should make sure my pace wasn't too fast.  "You're going to run, right?" he said, looking dubiously at me.  "Yeah, yeah," I said as he set out on his run and I started stretching again.  I sure didn't feel like it.

But I walked over to the W&OD Trail and got underway at a slow shuffle.  My neighbor passed me going the other way on his eight mile run, having entered the trail a different way half a mile up.  Here I was just starting my half-mile run.  He said, "You're going too fast!" as he ran by.  "Slow down."  

I decided he wasn't mocking me but that he was right, and I slowed down to barely past a walk.  But I made the half mile run feeling good once I got underway and again, I picked up the pace at the end.  Best of all, I haven't injured myself or lazily gotten off schedule--yet.  A half-mile on Friday, repeat the schedule another week, and then I'll kick it up even further, I hope.  It seems pathetically slow (literally) but otherwise I might stop in discouragement if I put on too much mileage or pace right now.

Changes

I hate change, but it's inevitable.  My bank used to be across the street, where I could get cash from the ATM and deposit checks, but it was closed by Capital One for being underperforming and now I have to drive to my bank and the service sucks.

I used to be able to walk to the main provision center of my HMO which was in my home town with 24-hour care, but Kaiser built  new main center in Tysons Corner which I now have to drive to, it's impossible to find on the first try and traffic out there sucks.  To pick up a prescription at my rump HMO center in town takes at least half an hour waiting in line.

My mortgage holder used to have an office across the street and I had overdraft protection linked to my home equity line of credit but Capital One sold my mortgage to a fly-by-night provider (who begins every phone conversation with an offsetting warning that this conversation is an attempt to collect a debt, unless you're in bankruptcy) and my HELOC to a different fly-by-night company so my checking account no longer has overdraft protection.

Next door is a drugstore which I walk to often to buy toiletries and incidentals, food, beer or wine, and to check my B/P, treating it like an old-time dimestore.  Rite Aid just announced it would close the store next month as being underperforming, leaving me with no store I can walk to handily.

The Assist

In the Safeway I noticed the encounter of a middle-aged man with an elderly, frail woman at the checkout counter when the cashier ringing up the woman casually handed her a light bag of groceries and the elderly lady almost pitched over as she placed it in her cart. The man in line behind her started to reach out to steady her but discretely stepped back when she successfully regained her equilibrium.

The woman handed the cashier a fistful of coupons and then learned that she couldn't use her best one, a ten-dollars-off coupon if the grocery bill was $50. Her total was $49.

She fumblingly put her credit card in the card reader and lamented her loss of ten dollars off but also spoke of her good fortune as well.  "It's too bad I can't use the ten dollar coupon, I counted up my purchases carefully but I gave you too many lesser coupons and now my total is too small.  But this is my first shopping trip in eighteen months after the fracture so I guess I'm doing okay.  I'll just use it the next time I come, if I can get over $50 then."

You and I both know what we would do.  Look anywhere for a one dollar item, a candy bar or anything, so we could then benefit from the ten dollar coupon to achieve a nine dollar savings.  But the lady was evidencing a trace of confusion as she said she didn't want to delay the checkout line.

The man behind her was surveying his items on the conveyor belt and then, handing her two of his four yogurt cups, said, "These are seventy cents each, Ma'am.  If you added these to your purchase, then you could then use your ten dollar coupon because it would put your total over fifty dollars.  I don't know if you like yogurt but it would save you almost nine dollars off your current bill."

She gratefully accepted the two small containers and handed them to the cashier who rang them up. Her total dropped from $49 to forty dollars and change.  The lady helpfully added to the man that she liked yogurt, she spread it on toast, using it like peanut butter.

Done?

Early this month I had my fourth and hopefully last eye surgery shortly after I returned from  Europe, removing the cataract in my affected eye and putting in a plastic lens that I will have for life.  It's pretty standard surgery but it's a little more tricky when the eye has suffered prior operations because the resulting trauma can damage the "platform" that house the lens.

I was more than apprehensive.  Not only did I have the after-effects of a cold which caused me to need to cough every few minutes to clear my chest congestion but my three prior eye operations were definitely a mixed bag.

The first operation was dreadful, it hurt and I felt every cut and was ordered by the doctor several times to "Lie still!" which I did to the best of my pain-wracked ability.  The second operation a week later after the first one failed, I was put to sleep, at my insistence, and they filled my eye with oil to keep the pressure up while I went through a week of dreadful face-down convalescence and while my retina slowly healed.  The third operation, to get the oil out, they insisted that I be alert with only a local anesthetic, just like the first operation, so I could cooperate with the surgeon if necessary.  I fell asleep on the table (or went out) so I only remember being wheeled in and waking up as I was wheeled out.

This time I had to cooperate with the surgeon again and I was awake throughout and did stare at certain lights upon command or moved my eye as directed.  I felt pressure but no pain and had no distress; it helped that I knew what they were going to do (smash the existing lens with ultrasound to liquify it, remove it, then drop in the artificial lens through the cut in the cornea where it would unfold like a blooming g flower) thanks to an hour-long class I was required to take.  I felt liquid, cold liquid, being splashed or washed over my eye several times and I was gripping the edge of the gurney in a death grip waiting for pain to intrude (sort of like when I'm in the dentist's chair) but it never came and then I heard the surgeon say, "It's finished," and I was wheeled out.  In a few weeks I'll go to the optometrist to get a new prescription for corrective lens and see how well I'll be able to see again.

Europe at last

I was a history major at the university, and I primarily read history now.  I force myself to read literature occasionally, although once I get into a great book, I can love it.  Like reading Great Expectations recently (apparently I didn't read it in ninth grade, although we spent a whole semester on it), the first 100 pages were bewildering, the last 400 pages were pure pleasure.

Coincidentally, this year I read a book on D-Day after finishing a book on the Second World War in Europe.  Then I got a call from my friend Eric, the husband of my first and best running buddy, Rhea.  He said, "Rhea and I are going to England for my Oxford reunion and then to France to go on a personally guided tour of the D-Day beaches, and Rhea insisted that I call you to invite you to join us."  Rhea and I used to take long runs on the Mall and the trails in Northern Virginia and talk about battles, before she and Eric moved back to California a decade ago.  Yeah, that's the way she is, and me too, I guess.

So I went with them, to Oxford and London and then to Normandy to visit the D-Day beaches and then to Paris.  They both have long known that I have never been outside of North America and this has always mystified them.  They were excellent traveling companions and the perfect travelogue hosts.

I spent twelve days in England and France, flying to London to meet them and flying home from Paris after spending the last two days there alone.  Oxford was charming and London was terrific, touring the D-Day beaches on this 75th anniversary of the battles in Normandy was memorable and providentially I toured Notre Dame barely two weeks before it burned so catastrophically.  I liked spending time on each of the five D-Day beaches the best, and the impressions of the days I spent in Paris are steadily growing in my memory.  I came back just in time, with a bad cold, for my fourth and hopefully last eye surgery; after being shown the wonders of Gay Paree, I suppose it's a wonder I ever came back.