Cav's Place

Was saying that I was getting increasingly worried about my left eye and eventually got myself to tell dad about it, and he scheduled an appointment. Well, that appointment was Tuesday, supposedly from 11 AM, but we got there at 10:35 AM, with me pretty much fully shut down and struggling not to have another meltdown since waking up, and went in earlier. Or more or less earlier, since it was quite a mess there, plenty of people waiting, most of them old, likely having arrived hours earlier and at least some of them waiting to have surgery, and at one point dad was called in while another person was sent out to wait for the eye drops to kick in, then I was also called in while dad waited for those eye drops to work, then we all took turns going back for the second part. And it was all very rushed, the doctor quickly saying that if we sit and talk she won’t get me checked out after I had barely managed to somehow say a few things after she asked what the problem was. Then she didn’t even want me to go out to get my glasses, instead just telling the other one to start putting lenses in to test me directly, and even rushing her when I started struggling to read letters and she didn’t immediately change the lens.
Either way, apparently my glasses are still fine, no change there after almost 11 years. However, when she actually checked my eyes there was good and bad news. At first she mentioned seeing something in my right eye, but I was already aware of that and when I said what I had been told back then she just moved on to the left, which is the current problem, and where she said she noticed scarring on the retina. They both had a look, seemed to confirm that they were seeing the same thing, and I can’t quite make out everything that got written down, but was told that the cause was likely a minor eye stroke I had quite some time ago. So the good news is that only a very small area is affected and it’s not something degenerative, shouldn’t in itself get worse, but the bad news is that nothing can be done about it either, so I permanently lost that little piece of my field of vision from my left eye, which gets added to that tiny piece lost to that indentation on the retina of the right one that I was told back then that I likely had since birth. And while nothing about this was said there, I’d say that the even worse news is that, if it already happened once, and while I’m still quite young as well, the risk of it happening again, probably with much worse consequences, will likely only increase from now on.

Moving on, after we got out of there it sure was weird, those eye drops and the sunlight making us almost blind. Dad was saying he was walking mostly with his eyes closed, I just kept my right one open a little, trying to look through my eyelashes and managing reasonably well, looking ahead a little more when there was some shade and mostly just a little in front of me the rest of the time. Managed less well when I stopped at the farmers’ market on the way back though, since dad had somewhere else to go and we therefore went our separate ways. In the shade it was manageable, though I couldn’t quite trust myself to pick good stuff by looking at it even there, but sunshine pretty much made me unable to see, and for example I couldn’t see anything at all on any price label not in the shade. Did wander around for a while, waiting for it to get at least a little bit better, but even after getting back here I was seeing green and red, as if I had stared at bright lights for quite some time, and even a few hours later, when it otherwise seemed fine, I glanced at the sky and thought it was still sunny until I was surprised by lightning, which made me look more carefully and notice that it was actually cloudy.
As for the market, it seems that prices went up, so stayed away from cucumbers and only got half a kilogram of tomatoes, out of the cheapest ones I could find that weren’t a complete mess, and even those were more expensive than those I bought before. Also almost tricked myself with plums, since I found some small ones that looked nice enough and were also cheap, but somehow messed up a very simple calculation and put 660 grams on the scale while thinking I should be paying as much as for 750 grams, but the guy who was selling there told me the correct price and didn’t seem to want to go through the trouble of finding small change, so rounded down to what it’d have been for half a kilogram. Could have been left with only that much, if not even less, when the bag I had the plums in tipped over after I set it down when picking those tomatoes, the plums spilling all over and some of them rolling under the stall, but I managed to gather them all back, even if I had to reach under there and even use one of the ears of corn which I had also purchased to just manage to reach the last one and carefully pull it out.

Going back, since I mentioned trying not to have another meltdown, of course I had one Monday, when I was in the kitchen and dad insisted on trying to talk to me about the appointment, trying to get me to explain just what the problem was, and I just lost it, throwing down what I had in my hand at the moment, which fortunately was just an empty cup of yogurt and therefore didn’t break, and running to my room screaming repeatedly that I didn’t know, including I think several more times after slamming the door, as I was pushing against it to make sure it stayed closed, before curling up in a ball in bed. Only went out of my room to run to the toilet until he went to bed that night.

Further back, Sunday evening I went out for a little walk and happened to bump into Alex, who ranted for some 20 minutes as I sort of just stood there, both of us stopped on the corner of the road, since he had just crossed and I was about to when he noticed me. He actually mentioned some interesting things I hadn’t been aware of before and which I’d have wanted to know more about, and of course I wanted to say some things as well, but since we were face to face, I barely got a few words out, and probably quite stupid ones too. What was annoying was that one of the first things he did was ask what did I do for a living though, and I of course just asked whether it mattered and then only added that it wasn’t when he said I had an interesting brain and he was just curious whether it was put to use. Seriously, what people generally do “for a living” is breathe and drink and eat and sleep, the other meaning of the term being something we must get rid of, not continue to define ourselves by! And when even those who strive, or at least strove, to change things fail to see that, or at least to act like they do, it’s not just frustrating, but also sad and disheartening.

As for Disciples, just have two of those “Divine Empire” scenarios left. Finally finished number 17 Sunday, then that same day moved on to 18, which was the first one from this series that I couldn’t play with the Undead, as I had played all the others until then. But I picked Humans and finished it that night, since it seemed really easy. Number 19, which I started Monday and finished yesterday, was trickier, but also somewhat interesting due to the map. Did quit and reload the autosave at one point, Monday night, after losing my main leader in an improperly planned attack on a strong neutral city, but otherwise it went well enough. It was also the last one I could play with the Undead, so I did so again. Now I guess I’ll go back to Humans for the last two and see how that goes, and then I’ll have another review to write… For a game started over a year ago and with the main campaigns finished just about a year ago, since I’ve been working my way through this series of scenarios, on and off, since then, taking them as something of an expansion and wanting to finish them before considering the game completed.

Last but not least, woke up early today and went to run before it got hotter. Not quite early enough, as it was 11 AM when I started running, but that was after getting up at 8:55 AM, and after not sleeping well for those few hours either. But it went well enough for a routine run, the time being 48:17, with sector times of 4:25, 5:08, 5:54, 4:25, 4:58, 5:54, 4:29, 5:10, 6:03 and 1:51, making for lap times of 15:27, 15:17 and 15:42. Quite nice to see exactly the same times on sectors one and three of the first two laps, and also that pretty good time on sector two of lap two, which was just when I tried to push a little in order to make sure I could if there was any need to do so. But there was no need to keep pushing after that and I was never actually worried about not getting under 48:30 again, so I just did what I had to do and got back. And now, since I won’t be napping this evening, I sure hope I’ll sleep well and get up late tomorrow, because there’s a protest tomorrow evening and I’ll be going again, for the first time in two months, even if mainly just to see what will happen.