Fri Jan 27 2023
Day two past another cataract surgery, this time on the left eye. This one is not going quite as well as I remember the first one. It's still a little blurry, but it's early days. The fog is gone so lots more light going into that eye now. I get a glimpse of a shadow to the outside of that eye. Dang it, I think that's my droopy eyelid – I haven't seen that for a while!
It's an amazing thing how the brain can take a good eye and a bad eye and form a pretty clear image. But the fog in the left eye was getting so bad, especially outdoors in the sunlight, that it interfered with the clear right eye vision. I'd lean forward when driving, a natural reflex, to get a better look ahead at the road and traffic. Reading got more difficult because the left eye was a fuzzy cloud. I closed my left eye a lot in order to see things better.
A few years ago, the right eye was the bad one. After that cataract surgery, it felt like my brain struggled to switch eye dominance to the right eye which was suddenly the better eye. It was like all the knobs and dials and wiring had to move to the other side of my skull. It took a while.
I wonder what will happen in my brain now that both eyes are good again and also equal. Will I sing "I can see clearly now" like Johny Nash? Will I finally be able to see what the hell it is the dog is barking at? For sure, and it's so good to say this, "whew that's better".
Mon Jan 9 2023
Damn owls. One of them, maybe a pair, has made a habit of visiting the two porch lights outside the door to the patio. I don't mind owls themselves. It's their poop I don't like and boy is it nasty. First, there is a lot of it. Second, when it dries it turns into ceramic.
Birds as a rule poop everywhere. They like to poop when landing or taking off. You can tell the difference with the owls. If they poop while swooping in, it sprays all over the wall. If they poop on take-off, there's a pile straight down underneath their perch.
Little birds too like those two porch lights, and at first, it was their little poops that got my attention. We've all seen bird deterrents like spikes and rotating wands, to turn a potential perch spot into an uncomfortable proposition. I thought I'd try something else so I cut a couple small squares from spare window screen and scrunched them around the perching ring at the apex of each porch light, you know, to take away the secure footing from that perch spot.
That actually worked with the little birds. Then the owl (and its porcelain poop) appeared. I thought hmmm I do actually need something spiky now. Being lazy like I am, I stuffed toothpicks into the scrunched up screen material, you know, similar to cactus thorns. Well, the owl would just land, remove the toothpicks one by one, and drop them on the ground.
Hmm, I thought and thought. Ah, I need something longer and more lethal than toothpicks. How about 1-penny nails? I tossed the screen and went for some leftover chloroplast signboard, cut me a small rectangle to slide over the perching rings at the top of each porch light, and poked nails through at upward angles. Result? Well, the owl adjusted a nail here and there to find a comfortable spot for its talons, and pooped porcelain.
Hmm, I thought and thought. Ah, maybe I need something longer than 1-penny nails. Hey, I know. Way way back when we were planting the vineyard, I bought a whole bunch of drip line stakes, 8” long, thinking I might need them to hold the drip lines in place on the ground (we didn't have a trellis wire for hanging the drip lines yet). I never did end up using them but now I have found a new purpose for them. (Well, I used just a handful of the hundreds I have, but this is why I horde things, and there will come a day when I'll need the other 784 of them).
This time it was clear the owl was not liking the new seating arrangements. The bird must have gotten a bit of a poke as it came in for its first landing on the new apparatus – one of the stakes was pushed in a little. It pooped a porcelain splatter on the wall and then I imagine it carted its little hiney off to other parts. Yay!