FO and Complaining

This is my latest Finished Object. It went really fast once I decided what I was actually going to do with the warp. The finished project is not anything at all what I had planned to end up with since I started out with a completely different design in mind. Such is my life sometimes.

I worked toward the original plan in several different ways. All of them ended up being unwoven (the nice thing about using acrylic yarn and weaving very loosely is that it comes apart very quickly with out felting together at all).

The scarf is actually darker and more purple-y than it shows in the photos, at least on my computer. The Danish Medallions - a last minute total design change - are actually woven with lavendar yarn, but kind of look more whitish in some of the photos. Next time, if there is a next time, I will weave them with double strands of yarn to accent them more, and I may try to start them in the middle of the scarf, weave them toward the edges and back and then tie a bow - or something. Little pom-pom? I'm not sure. I don't like the way they look here.

I do like the main scarf, altho the edges need some work. The colors are really pretty in real life. It ended up being a lot shorter than the Bamboo Scarf, even though I warped the loom with the same length warp threads. I don't know why. I haven't figured out what makes the difference yet - pattern, looseness or tightness of the weave, change in air pressure, what?

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Emotionally, I'm at a breaking point right now. Maybe because I have not been writing? Processing my thoughts in print rather than holding them in and/or verbalizing them? I do a lot better when I write. Whatever. I feel like a basket case right now.

Frustrated with myself. Angry with myself over several things. Sad. Feeling like just giving up on everything. Now.

I wanted to go to Last Bell at the orphanage this year, to say goodbye to the kids who were graduating in my Sunday school class. And I forgot all about it. Until Mel looked out the window and said, "There goes a little girl with a white puffy thing on her head. Must be all dressed up for Last Bell." Or something along those lines (little girl, white puffy thing on head). There was no way, at that point, that I was going to be able to get to the orphanage in less than 5 minutes.

Beat my self up mentally, royally, for the next several days. Anger at myself. Plain and simple. Dispair because I seem to fail so often at simple things - like making it to Last Bell on time, once a year - forgetting it was actually going to happen.

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My eye is not doing well. I can barely see out of it at all now. Well, I can see colors and large shapes, and they are perfect in shade and probably size - but how far away is the item/person/animal? And what are the details - like does the person/animal actually have a face - or just a blurry pink blob with brown/black/white blob on top (human) or, well, I can't even see that much of animals, so ... If Cheyenne is laying in my loom, while I'm tying the ends of the scarf on the table in front of her, I can close my left eye, look at her beautiful white blob of fur and tell she has pinkish bumps on top of what I think is her head, so that would make them ears, and if she opens her eyes, I can see that she has yellow and black dots under those pinkish bumps so I figure that's her eyes, and of course there is the pink dot in the center below the yellow and black dots, so that must be her nose - but that's about it.

And it makes me so angry! So angry that I went through the cataract surgery and could see so well, tho definitely not 100% due to the tear/scar in the macula, but I could SEE again and now I can't!!!

So, Mel asks me if I've looked it up on the internet and I say no (because I'm too scared and too angry and too full of self-pity) and he tells me I should because maybe this is "normal" or can be fixed or something.

So I do. I look it up and voila! It may be a simple thing that can be fixed with laser surgery and is common. And I feel better immediately. And I feel angry at myself for being so stupid and putting myself through the pain of fear of the unknown. And I won't have some Ukrainian "doctor" doing laser surgery on my eye, so what to do? What to do? (Throws mental hands up in the air in frustration and self-pity rears it's ugly head and self preservation tries deperately to push it back down, stomp on it, kill it before it takes over my whole life.)

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We came back to Ukraine and my fish were all dead, the pond stuck back in the back room. A few weeks after returning I accidently broke the fountain - which caused me a great deal of self-recrimination because I really did like that fountain a lot. The color of the blue glass was beautiful, the sound of the fountain running was soothing - I liked that fountain a LOT. And I broke it doing something stupid.

I kind of expected the fish to be dead because we'd been gone so long and I knew no one was hear for days at a time.

What I did not expect at all - and maybe I should have - is that most of my plants would be dead.

This has caused me no end of anger, grief, self-pity, frustration in a number of areas and just plain "I give up, I'm never going to have plants again, no one ever brings me flowers, no one cares about what I like, no one likes me, I don't like me, I'm going to throw out all of my plants/pots/vases because why bother they are just going to die/break anyway" and on and on until I'm sick of myself.

Now these thoughts don't go through my mind all the time. No, usually only when I'm already feeling down for some other reason. Or when I water what's left of my plants. Or when I finally decided to put away all the pots that just have dead dirt and sticks in them now. But let's face it - I'm angry that my plants died. Angry. I make a home here in Ukraine - and the things I do to make it my home die from neglect. Even my cat is different now.

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I rail/rale (how is that spelled??) against God: "You take everything away from me!!! My grandkids, my kids, my parents, my fish, my plants, other things in my life that are important to me, being able to teach kids in a language I can actually speak, mountains, my country, my eyesight, my knees (and on and on ad nauseum). It's YOUR FAULT, God!" I kick against the goad. I shake my fist, stamp my mental foot and feel oh, so sorry for poor me.

I'm disgusted with my self, actually.

I am so glad God is patient. And I'm so glad He forgives. And I'm so glad that I really do, deep in my heart, believe that He loves me. And somehow, I really do believe, somehow, someway, this is all "good" for me. I don't get it. I'm still mad about a lot of it. I still want to throw all my pots off the balcony in a fit of temper (which I guess is better than wanting to throw Cheyenne off the balcony, or throw the pots at Mel for some unknown reason). I just wish it was different. I want my life to be easier. If I'm going to live in Ukraine - why can't I have plants? Other people do. Why can't I have fish and a pond? Other people do. Why can't I see better?

Oh, I am so tired. So very, very tired.

I would want to go home - but I have no home to go home to. Home is here. Home is where Mel is. Home is exactly the place where I'm supposed to be right now and I am there.

I guess I'll go empty the washer and hang out the clothes on the balcony to dry. That's the next thing. And then - maybe I'll try and find another scarf pattern to work on later tonight.

We'll see.

Playing Hooky

I'm kind of playing hooky this evening. (Is that how "hooky" is spelled? Is that even what we say in America - play hooky? uh oh. I'm losing it!)

Prayer meeting time was changed to 5pm instead of 3 pm. I don't know why for sure, but 5pm for me today is a lot harder to get to than 3pm. I think it's because I have this fear of walking in late afternoon/early evening sunlight, or lack of sunlight. It was a lot brighter than I was thinking it would be, but still - - sigh. My cataract surgery went very well almost 2 years ago. Hard to believe it's been that long! I had almost 20/20 vision in that eye afterward. Sometime about a week before we left to come back to Ukraine I bent down to pick something up (it might have been Eithnee) and I felt something "give" in my eye. I don't know how else to describe it. Immediately I lost part of my sight in that eye again. I've described it to Mel and he thinks I just need glasses. Stupid silly me - I did NOT go to the dr. before we left. I don't know why, other than the fact that I was already stressed out to the max at that point. The last week or two before we leave the States is always a very difficult time for me - no matter how much I try to be ready, there is still always way more to do that I have time for. This time was no different, with the added family stresses piled on top. So, now I cannot see clearly out of my bad eye again. It's like my eye has a smear of vaseline or something. Plenty of light comes through, everything is just totally not in focus. So, in a way, I'm almost back to where I was before I had the surgery, except the cataract actually did block some light. Now, I could go down and get a pair of glasses here - probably should. But I can't tell that my reading glasses make any difference at all. None. Mostly I am just using one eye now ..... which makes my depth perception off kilter ..... which gives me the heebie jeebies about walking in low light because I might trip and fall again and break my knee caps. So, I am playing hooky (or whatever) tonight and staying inside. I've got a blanket in the washer and it will soon be ready to hang out on the balcony. Hopefully the neighbors on the 4th and 5th floors will not sweep their balcony dirt on to it early in the morning because it will be outside all night. I'm a chicken, I admit it. It's really pretty outside today, cool but not cold, not a cloud in the sky. The far distance that I can actually see above the rooftops outside the office room window is beginning to turn pink. I probably should have gone. I won't go next week because I'll be alone. But the week after, I won't be alone and there will be even more light. If Christ doesn't return between now and then, I'll go then.

(The 1st and 3rd photos were taken from the bedroom window, not the office room window, the sunset light on the wall is in our bedroom. The rest were taken from the balcony this evening.)

Thanking God for Lavender Skies and More

No, this is not a 4th of July post, altho I do thank God for the United States of America and the freedoms we have (soon will be 'had' with the way politics are now going).

No, I am thanking God today for having a cataract in my right eye. I am thanking God that I live in a time of history when cataracts can be removed. I am thanking God for insurance. I am thanking God that I had a cataract removed just a few weeks ago.

I am thanking God for "Volcano Lavender".

Six weeks ago I would never have been able to see a sky like this one:
Volcanic Twilight
Instead of a view similar to this:

I cut out the bottom of the photo because I didn't want to ruin the whole photo.

Once again I was in a position where I was looking at something and the difference in my eyes was highlighted dramatically.

We left Thornton's last night just after sunset. While standing outside waiting for the taxi, I looked up and checked out the sky. I am always checking out the sky. In fact, sitting here at my desk I have a view of the sky and am always looking out the window to see what I can see - clouds, birds, blue sky, gray sky, the moon, etc. I developed this habit as a child - What's up there? Look up!

The sky was beautiful. Puffy pink clouds to the northwest, a beautiful lavendarish color filled the clear parts of the sky. I commented that I thought that was the "volcanic lavender" that I've recently read about on spaceweather.com. I'm not sure any one else saw it or even cared about it, but to me it was a natural phenomenon that intrigues me. It's not every day the sky is lavender, after all!

The taxi arrived, Mel, Alys and I got in and took off for home. We dropped Alys off first and then headed down the street to the west. I was sitting in the back seat, Mel in the front. I looked out his window at the sky, trying to see the lavender color, but also looking for a hint of noctilucent clouds (none). I was disappointed. I knew that his window was open, but apparently there was a plastic shield over the window distorting the color...like a wind screen directing the wind away from the back seat. I moved to see if I could see around the 'shield' and that's when I realized that what was happening.

The door jamb was splitting my view out Mel's window. I was looking with both eyes, yes, but my left eye was seeing more and since I was concentrating of seeing OUT the window my brain was adjusting and blocking the fact that my left eye was seeing mostly the door jamb. (Who knew the brain does this? Not me!) When I leaned forward, suddenly I was seeing the view out the window cut in half. The left half was that ugly color, the right half was beautiful lavender. Totally split in half. I don't know exactly how it works, all I know is that I was seeing a split screen.

And I was astounded. I sat forward and backward in the seat two or three times, comparing the colors of the sky, slightly irritated when we came to a section of the street with lots of trees that blocked the view of the sky. :) I was doing a scientific experiment here - how dare those trees get in the way! ha ha

We got out of the taxi in front of our podyezd. I stood looking at the darkening sky with my left eye closed. Darker lavender. I just kept that eye closed for several seconds, breathing in the beauty.

Thank you, Father in heaven, for giving me this new sight! It's not perfect, it's still fuzzy in the center of everything, but I can see TRUE colors now with that eye. A little taste of heaven!

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For more information on Volcanic Lavender, read Volcanic Sunsets Sarychev Peak 2009. Isn't this a beautiful photo? The sky was a bit like the lavender part of this photo - the yellow and orange was already gone when we went outside:

Bi-Color Vision

One of the first things I noticed after my cataract surgery is that I see completely different colors in each eye now. I was shocked at the difference. At my post-op the doctor asked me if I had any questions and that was one of the first ones - is it normal to see different colors?

The answer is yes, it is normal. He assured me that I am seeing the true colors in the eye with the new lens. The other eye, with my natural old lens, is seeing distorted colors. The old lens has apparently aged and discolored, which discolors everything I see. Since both eyes aged at the same rate, I guess, I never noticed that colors were changing.

Well, now I do! It was shocking at first. Disorienting. But I've become more accustomed to it now. If I want to see what the 'true' color of something is, I close my left eye. My sight is still blurred in the right eye, but I can see enough that if both eyes were that blurred I'd manage to live fairly normally - just not be able to read books without a magnifying glass, not be able to do any handwork like needlepoint.

The biggest differnce is in the colors blue and yellow. There is a lot of blue in red colored things, too, and in green colored things. Especially magenta. wow! And burgandy. Wow! And of course, I really notice it with white.

Suddenly a white sheet of paper practically glows. White clouds are, well, white. And my cat, well she is white, too.

Except for last night.

I was standing in our office room doorway and looked over to the table where Cheyenne was sitting on my craft bag, waiting for me to come and work on my project. She sits there, snoozes there, watches me with eyes half closed there. One of the handlebars on the exercise bike split my view of her completely in half, like a black line drawn down the center of her body. And the way I was standing, the correct distance for this to happen, I saw her head and shoulders with my right eye and her hind quarters and back only with my left eye. My white cat had suddenly become two completely different colors on each side of the handlebars!

It was actually kind of shocking. I'm going to try and give a comparrison in the following two photos. Just divide her up with a black like around her middle and pretend you see the two photos as one instead.

Right eye vision now:Left eye vision, apx. color:


I was amazed at the difference!

Seeing Double

I had my surgery this morning. I think that all went well. It was quite an experience, all in all. My blood pressure was 162/126 when the nurse first checked it. Is that possible, she asked. I realized my whole arm was stiff and my hand was clenched tight. I told her that and after a few minutes the automatic cuff checked it again and it was much lower. Still too high, but not that high! :) The anesethetist (what are those people called, anyway?) came in and gave me something to relax me and finally my bp went down into the 'normal' range. I went down into the 'la la' range. :) :)

I remember the two doctors working on my eye, I remember a bit of what was said but nothing specific. That's the wonder of drugs for you. I couldn't move my head at all, my eye was 'blocked' and couldn't move, I couldn't feel a thing and I felt 'just fine, thank you.' It's not my favorite thing to do in the world, but it's not the worst experience I've ever had either.

Now - now if I can just get the two eyes to work together...well, that would be wonderful. At the moment, several hours after the surgery, my right eye is looking down and to the right of the left eye, and the view is slanted to the right as well. In other words, instead of a straight across line, it's a pointing down to the right line. And that view is covered in a smear of white as well, like I have vaseline or something on my eye still. I'm sure the smear is due to left over stuff they put on it. I'm hoping that the right down tilt is due to the paralyzing meds they put in the eye and that eventually it will move on up and join with it's compatriot and I won't be seeing double any more. I still don't have 100% vision in the right eye, but I knew that would be the case. It's almost sa if I have a contact in, but the center of everything will always be distorted due to the tear and repair of the macula all those many years ago now.

So, here I sit, more than a bit dizzy from seeing two of everything. I put the eye patch back on and that seems to help. It's a clear plastic shield, with several 'breathing' holes in it, taped to my face with opaque medical tape. I'll put drops in my eyes again tonight and wear the shield to bed each night for a week.

It all makes me feel really tired on top of being slightly dizzy. I'm glad we're staying at the motel again tonight. I can sleep whenever I want.

I have an eye appointment tomorrow and will find out then how everything is going.

I'm still nervous - I hope the double vision and the slanted vision is "normal."

Dust Gets In Your Eyes...

It is late and once again I cannot sleep. I went to bed about an hour ago, but realized I was not going to go to sleep right away. I sat up, on the edge of the bed, and gazed out the window into the night. We are on the third floor of our apartment building, above the street and traffic below. The lights of cars sweep by, lighting up the trees on either side of the road, causing shadows to dart around our room, before darkness descends again. This time of night, however, the road is mostly empty, dark and quiet.

Across the road is a business of some kind – I’ve never figured out exactly what it is. People come and go all day long, but I’ve never crossed the road to read the little sign on the gatepost directly across from our window and three floors down that tells the world what goes on in there. A light shines in one of the windows every night, all night long. Sometimes two windows have lights. It is a one story building, so the lights do not reach up this high to bother us in our darkened room.

Tonight as I sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window, I was reminded of the many times during my childhood when I did the same. There are four of us girls in my family and I am the oldest. We shared one room – two sets of bunk beds. For a long time my position of being eldest gave me the privilege of having the top bunk on the north side of the room. My mother had made café curtains out of pretty, pale pink cotton gingham – an upper valance and two shorter curtains below that were drawn together at night. From my top bunk, though, I had a clear view beneath the valance of the night time world. I guess I have often had a hard time sleeping, because I can remember lying there at night, listening to my sisters’ little sleep-noises, looking out the window at the stars, or a few years later, at the brightly lit K-Mart sign a couple miles down the hill from us. I enjoyed doing this because I could see nothing clearly without my glasses on.

I have had severe myopia since birth, I guess. I remember the first time I wore a pair of glasses. I was in second grade. We came out of the building where my ophthalmologist had his office, a building which was located on Pikes Peak Avenue, just down the street from the old Antlers Hotel. The first things I saw were the twin peaks of the roof on the Antlers Hotel. The second thing I saw, for the very first time, were leaves on the trees. I was amazed, I had not realized that people could actually see individual leaves on the trees. I am still amazed when I look at trees.

But at night, I would take off my glasses and gaze into the darkness at the lights around our neighborhood. Porch lights, street lights, all balls of fuzzy light, sometimes overlapping each other, usually soft yellow. The K-Mart sign, however, was unique because it was a bright red fuzzy ball of light, attached to a smaller brilliant blue fuzzy ball of light. I would stare intently at a light until my eyes began to water. And then the most amazing thing would happen. I would see little shadows float across the balls of light. Some of the shadows were round, some were long and wavy, others looked like pictures of bacteria I had seen in a book. One time I asked my mother what I was seeing and she thought maybe it was dust floating in the tears. Because I was so near sighted, I could focus on it and see it clearly while everything else around it was fuzzy.

Yes, looking at the dust floating around in my tears, through the light of streetlights and the K-Mart sign was fun. I never knew for sure what I was going to see – and the lights were so pretty all fuzzy like that!

Tonight as I gazed out the window, contacts resting securely in their case on the table beside the bed, I was reminded of those nights long ago. Now there is a change, however. No longer do I see the little bits of dust in my tears. I realized for the first time tonight that with my left eye I see dim fuzzy balls of light. I wonder – are they dim because of the cataract I have in that eye? With the right eye I see fuzzy rings of light, with beautiful bright lacey webs within the ring when the light I am looking at is very bright. But when the light is dim, like that coming from the window across the street, I see a fuzzy ring and a darker hole in the center. This is due to the tear in the macula I had several years ago. Although experimental emergency surgery kept me from losing all of the vision in my right eye, it has no “center” vision and is truly “legally blind.”

So, I sat for awhile on the edge of the bed, listening to Mel sleep as I listened to my sisters so many years ago, scratching Cheyenne under the chin, staring at the lights across the street. First with the left eye, then with the right. Comparing the vision in each separately, and then with both eyes open.

I like the right eye view best – it’s the brightest and prettiest, even if it is not complete. But I miss the dust specks. I wish I could see them again….

Health "Care"

March 31, 2006

Mel is ill this morning. It started last night and it’s probably just a nasty little head cold, aggravated by spring allergies. Even so, it always worries me when he gets sick. I’m always concerned about his blood sugar levels going way out of whack. So far this morning, after a fever that broke in the night, he seems to be doing a lot better. His blood sugar was normal this morning, not high like it gets when he is really ill.

This is one area where I have had a hard time trusting God. It is strange – I trust God pretty well with our health while we are in the States. Or, at least I thought I was trusting God - maybe I am finding out that I was really trusting the American medical system! That’s more than a little scary!

The medical system here in Ukraine is an on-going nightmare to me. I hear the stories people tell and I remember our own experiences with it and I wonder how anyone has survived it to even tell their stories! Just yesterday one of the women in the Bible study was asking prayer for her nephew. He was badly burned in an accident at work, late at night. To get to the hospital HE had to call a taxi (I’m not sure of the details, but apparently the ambulance refused or wasn’t available?). The taxi driver took him to the hospital (everyone was amazed – the driver refused to take any money!). Then, to add another black eye to the medical profession (read – socialized medicine), when the burn began to itch a couple days later, the nephew asked the doctor if he should put an ointment on it, and the doctor replied: “you can do whatever you like. You can lick it if you want, or you can get a rock off the street and scratch it.” I have no doubt that this story is true. I’ve seen and heard too much, even from those in the medical field, to think that someone just made the story up.

I have had four “run ins” with the medical field myself. The “fun time” I had with the dentist is for another journal entry, as is the time I fell and dislocated my shoulder. But the other two are short enough I can put them into one entry.

I discovered a lump in my breast during our first three years here in Ukraine. I found out from friends in Kiev about the American Medical Center located there, so I made an appointment with the gynecologist to have an exam. I really liked this doctor and I would go back to her again at any time. After examining me, she determined that I needed a mammogram, so she made an appointment for me at a local hospital. In the States when I’ve had a mammogram, the office is staffed by women, the person who does the mammogram is a woman, and everything is nice and quiet and designed to put me at my ease. In Kiev, I sat on a flimsy theater style chair out in a busy, dimly lit hallway with a couple dozen other people, both men and women, waiting to be called into one of the side rooms. Once inside, I was instructed by a man to take my blouse and bra off – no private room with a little cupboard to put my belongings in, just take it off right there. Then, he and two other people, one of whom was a woman (yea!), did the exam. While I was stuck in the machine (a brand new Siemens mammogram machine!), I was treated to three or four Xeroxed comics taped right there before my eyes – comics of male anatomy being squashed in a mammogram machine. Very interesting. Afterward I was examined by one of the men, then shown the white spot/lump on the x-ray. He circled it with a black marker and gave the x-ray to me to take home. I was instructed to have a mammogram once a month from then on. When I protested that we don’t have them that often in the States, he looked at me and asked, very seriously, “Don’t you value your health?” I wanted to sit down and laugh hysterically and then burst into tears. Of course I value my health – that’s why I don’t have a mammogram once a month! I sent the x-ray to a gynecologist in the States and he determined the lump was nothing to be concerned about, I just needed to schedule a mammogram in another couple of years. When we were in the States the next time, my mammogram came up clear.

I guess our first three years in Ukraine were hard on our bodies. One day I woke up and after putting in my contacts I realized I had a funny line in my vision. I took the contacts out again and cleaned them, but the line was still there. I started getting scared. I have had bad eyesight since I was a little child. It has something to do with being born breech and then being given oxygen immediately after birth. Apparently the oxygen damaged my eyes and I am very nearsighted. My eyes have only grown worse over the years and I’ve always had a fear of eventually going blind. Back in the early 1990’s I had a new kind of surgery to repair a torn macula in the retina of my right eye. The surgery was successful, but my eyesight was permanently damaged by the tear and I have very little vision in that eye now. Well, this new line was in my left eye. It was a different thing than a tear in the retina – I’d had several small tears that required cryosurgery or laser repair, in addition to the more serious macula repair, and I was well aware of what those symptoms are. I started looking up information on the internet and did a self-diagnosis of “vitreous detachment.” The articles I read on that indicated that a tear in the retina could occur during a vitreous detachment, so I immediately called the American Medical Center for an examination.

After a long overnight train ride to Kiev and then a ride on the metro to the AMC, I was examined by a doctor. He determined that I needed to go to the special eye clinic in another district of Kiev. This clinic is the number one, top of the line, eye specialist clinic in all of Ukraine. It was a very interesting examination. After filling out some paper work with the help of someone from the AMC, Mel and I waited in a little room until called. Mel came with me – I did not want to go alone. I was taken into a very large room with several machines sitting around. The attendant took me to the first machine and my exam began. I can’t even begin to remember all of the machines and all of the tests they did. I do remember very well, though, one test that was done. They put something on my eye, a lens of some sort and I started to panic. My eye was actually stuck to that machine. It was all I could do to keep from trying to jerk away and start screaming in panic. I actually started making panic noises and hitting my hand on my leg and the person doing the exam told me to shut up and stop it. During the test for glaucoma, I asked the examiner if I had a vitreous detachment. The person had no clue what I was trying to ask. That was fun. How do describe something like that? I finally said something like, “Is there a problem with the ‘water’ in my eye?” I went into as much detail as I could trying to describe what I meant. No one could see anything wrong. But oh, everyone was VERY interested in my other eye! The right eye was examined very thoroughly. A couple people came over to look at it, to examine the results of the surgery I had had in that eye. I was asked to describe what my ophthalmologist in the States had done. No one was concerned with my left eye at all. I left the exam no wiser – did I have a vitreous detachment or not? All I knew was that my right eye was very interesting but that no one seemed to care at all that I had a problem in my left eye.

When we were home in the States one of my first appointments was with my ophthalmologist. He began the examination and the very first thing he said was, “Oh, I see you had a vitreous detachment! Let’s see if there was any damage to the retina.”