Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

After a rough morning yoga session, the dog says “too much down-facing dog.” We call this the I Want To Be A Dog In My Next Life Pose, the perfect pose to ready you for a day of squirrel watching, mail carrier barking, and generally guarding up the neighborhood.

A few random thoughts for this Wednesday:

1. It’s National Poetry Month.  And April 29 is Poem In Your Pocket Day. It’s never too early to decide what poem you’re going to carry in your pocket.

2. National Geographic’s special issue on Water is an incredible read, featuring a brief essay by one of my literary heroines, Barbara Kingsolver. It’s safe to say that we take water for granted. Some women in Africa spend six to eight hours a day searching for water. In other areas of the world, people have to fight for water that’s neither clean nor purified nor running through a convenient faucet in the house. And the earth’s water table is drying up. The issue isn’t all bad news though – there are several organizations working on the water situation and making strides in desalination, water purification, and finding ways to bring water to dried up places.  If nothing else, you’ll think twice before you water your lawn or leave the faucet running while you wash your face.

3. I am limiting my intake of black jellybeans to three per day. Thanks to mom, who sent some to me for Easter. It’s tough but I’m doing it.

4. I’ve been reviewing the Fall course list for the MFA program. My top choices are “Haiku and Modern Poetics”, “O’Connor and Malamud: Postwar Voices”, or “Irish and British Literature, 17-19th Century.” A recent poll of friends says Postwar Voices; I’m inclined to think that might be the choice. 

5. Currently reading: Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. The jury is out on whether I’m enjoying it. 

6. Comment from neighbor when he spied the girls in the yard: “Wow, they’ve gained some fur over the winter.” Meaning, the dogs are fat! Both are on diets and not happy about the reduction in treats, especially Alice. Biggest Loser edition of Girl Talk still to come.

7. Going to a new salon today. I’ve decided I’ve become a salon hopper. This will be the fourth salon in less than three years in Akron. It’s the curly hair thing and the color thing. One salon gets the cut right but the color is awful.  When I say “brown” I mean brown, not black, not golden, not blonde, not mousy, not auburn. Brown. Another salon makes me look like I’ve got a mushroom cap on my head and the color is okay. I’m taking photos…again.

Haven’t been able to blog – too busy at work and at home so here’s a poem for your springtime viewing enjoyment.

While I was surfing around tonight, I discovered that June 8 is National Best Friends Day. A big shout out to all of my girlfriends, guy friends, and furry-faced friends who are flung far and wide across the world. To me, you’re all my best friends. Why have good or better friends when you can have the best?

A very quick post as it’s 11 p.m. in Honduras and they’re getting ready to close the internet cafe for the evening.

First, the Z-pack is the eighth wonder of the world. Antibiotics rock. I’m feeling better. We went to the ocean on Sunday and I think the salt water and ocean air also helped. And…drum roll, please…I spent about an hour in the ocean. Most of you know that I have an irrational fear of sharks. So, I went into the water screaming. I was in up to my neck, yes, my neck, while a crew dragged the volleyball net into chest-deep water. We played volleyball for an hour. My team won and I only panicked twice when something brushed against my leg. How brave am I?

Today was an emotional day in clinic, mainly for the doctors who are working their tails off. I have the deepest respect for the long days they put in. We had two people come in who were blind, one from an accident three years ago and one who had severe cataracts. Both will receive surgery at the Vision Outreach International surgery clinic later this week and we will actually  have them come back to clinic (if we can) to see the results. That we are seeing people with such poor vision, sending them off for surgery, and being able to follow up with them before they leave is incredible. Truly incredible.

We also dispensed several high-plus Rxs today. Too many to count. There was lots of discussion about what would be the best pair. In the photo above, Ineesha and I (we are now the Wonder Twins of IMS) selected a pair of plus-8.50s for this 13-year-old boy who has never had glasses before. He was all grins and check out that awesome pair of frames!

But the most touching one for me was the one that happened late in the afternoon when we were busy. Jeff (Sunglass Hut) was in auto-refracting and he had a 15-year-old boy who couldn’t see at all. His autorefractor reading was plus-14 and plus-13. He went through the docs for surgery referral and after checking him out, they told Jeff that surgery probably wasn’t going to help much. The nerves in his eyes were too damaged and loose. So, Jeff came to me asking me to pick the best pair of glasses for him that I could. The boy was sitting slumped over in a chair crying. Jeff was crying, too. So, of course, I’m all weepy too. The translator told us that this boy had not been to school since second grade because he could never see anything. He was there with his older brother and we never got the story on where his parents were.

He was so sad-looking that I told Jeff we needed to get him out of the crowd. So we brought him back into the IMS area where we really don’t let any of the recipients roam around. We got him a chair and he nearly missed the chair trying to sit down, his vision is that bad. I gave him some Starbursts and Jeff got him a Pepsi. Still no smiles. We had him try on about eight pairs of glasses, none with a super great prescription but something was better than nothing. After about a half hour, he decided on one pair and gave us a half smile. We decided we will “adopt” this young boy once we hear the outcome from his visit to the hospital. If surgery can’t help, the least we can do is make an Rx with his exact prescription and send it to Honduras.

In other news, we are playing a game called “Killer”, courtesy of our Gernan teammate Christian Meinert. There is one killer among us and already 17 team members are “dead.” I’m still alive as are 16 others and we’re banding together in the hopes that we figure out who the killer is before we’re next on the list. It’s a great study in social interaction. All of the “alive” people are sticking close together but we’re paranoid the killer may be among us. And all of the dead people are laughing at all of our speculation. It’s just one of the ways we’re making our time together fun in between the more emotional stuff.

More later…I’m wiped out.