The Iron Chefs and the Eye Doctor

 

There are eight Continuum Care Communities across three states taking part in an Iron Chef competition. The way it works is each month all eight chefs go to one of the campuses to compete with a theme food they prepare for the residents living there and then the residents and guests vote for the best dish served. They just had their fifth cook-off at our sister campus and our Life Enrichment Director took a bus full of us over to eat and drop a voting chip into---presumably---our own chef's ballot box. The theme this time was 'Food Truck Food' and I had no trouble voting for the women who currently designs our daily menus. She served what she called 'Fried Peanut Butter and Jelly.' It reminded me of those 'pies' you make over a campfire with the round, pie irons. The sandwiches consisted of the centers of two pieces of white bread dipped in pancake batter with peanut butter, jelly, bananas, honey and mini chocolate chips inside, the edges were cut and sealed with a drinking glass before deep frying them for a minute. She took second place. She's placed first or second consistently through out the competition and is the only woman competing. 

If I hadn't voted for the chef from my campus I would have had a hard time deciding between a deep-fried, one bite cheese cake and a loaded baked potato. The cheesecake balls give you a sensation of something warm and sweet going into your mouth followed by a burst of cool and tart cheesecake and it was additive. The Bourbon Bacon Jam Potato' was---duh!---a potato topped with a jam made with bourbon, coffee, brown sugar, vinegar, garlic and caramelized yellow onions. Bourbon was in at least one other contest entry---a peach ice cream topping. I think Bourbon in my new, favorite flavor profile. We got a packet of all the recipes used and the street tacos had the most ingredients of all the dishes coming in at thirty with our chef's peanut butter and Jelly having the least number of ingredients---only eight. There was a Korean short rib dogs with peach relish that was good too and it had 29 ingredients. I've never made anything with that many ingredients in my life!

I'm quite sure this competition is designed to give bragging rights to all the category winners and the top winner for marketing purposes. In the commercial cooking world there's a big competition for good chefs at continuum care complexes and most CCC's serve lunch on the tours use to entice people to come look at their facilities. I almost hate to see our chef placing so well in these contests because then other places will try to steal her away. In the two-and-a-half years I've lived here she's the third or forth chef we've had and she is by far the best of the lot. And get this, she's the only one in the contest without a culinary degree. She used to own her own restaurants, lost it during Covid.  

All in all it was fun way to spend a few hours and we got a free lunch and transportation out of the deal. Plus we got to visit with a guy from our campus who was recently moved over to our sister campus because he has ALS and needs a higher level of skilled nursing than he could get here.

Speaking of Covid I went to the eye doctor yesterday and I remarked about how nice it was that we no longer have Covid protocols to follow and the woman doing the pre-testing before my actual appointment said it was terrible working conditions because so many people tried to argue their way out of wearing masks or bringing in proof that they'd been vaccinated. She said she even had one guy lick the chin rest on one of the machines. (This was the Trump effect---people denying the science.) I remember how careful they were about cleaning those machines after they were finished measuring my macular pucker. I can't imagine dealing with jackasses like Licker Guy or as my niece called the ant-vacciers  'The Spreaders'. 

By the way, my pucker hasn't changed much since my last visit but I have developed "a lot of dry areas on my corneas" which makes my eyes feel like I have grit up inside the lids. I'll now be adding drops twice a day and before I drive. My getting-ready-time in the mornings and at bedtime is getting as long as a teenager addicted to layers of makeup. No matter how many suggestions I follow for getting drops in my eyes I can't seem to do it on the first few tries. Laying down in bed while hold one eye open and using the other to put the drops in the corners of my eyes works the best. I went into this appointment thinking/hoping I'd get a new prescription because I can't read street signs as well as I'd like. But the doctor said the dry corneas are probably causing that more than anything. I'm getting a new prescription for computer glasses that block the harmful light coming from the screens. I'm excited about having prescription glasses exclusively for the computer. I don't know why I didn't get them long before now is a mystery. No more trying to find the right place in my trifocals! 

I love my eye doctor. He used to be a nice piece of eye candy, too, but over the past half decade he's put on a little weight and quit wearing his cute, little surgical scrub cap that he wore during Covid. But he's still got his easy going and confident demeanor which I find to be the most attractive quality in the opposite sex. The way he says, "your other right" or "your other left" has a humorous ring to it that neither makes you feel stupid or nor gives you a sense that he's bored because he's probably said it thousand times to his patients. Actually, I've never thought to ask him if all his patients need the 'other direction' corrections or is it just his dyslexic patients like me. What do you think his answer would be? 

Until Next Wednesday!

 *photo by soydolphin

Fangirling a Fellow Resident

 

You’re probably wondering how come I’m posting when it’s not a Wednesday or Saturday. Or maybe you’re not and you just think I’m getting forgetful or confused as to what day it is. I’m not and I didn’t. I’m throwing in an extra post this week because I have too many posts in my scheduler and they’ll get too “dated” to be relevant, say, if one about a holiday party gets published mid-January. I’ve had to discard unpublished posts before and if you knew how much I like to write, you’d understand how much it bugs me to do that. This post will be short. I promise.  

Back when we had the resident’s art show here at the continuum care complex I’ve been stalking a woman who was rumored to be a retired college professor in the arts department of a local university. Her entries into the show were definitely at a professional level, far above any of the pieces the rest of us entered. I knew where her apartment was by the pedestal outside her door with a metal bust sitting on top---one she’d entered in the show. A few times I’ve walked down her hall hoping I’d get lucky and she’d pop out the door on her way to who knows where. 

Last night I was sitting and laughing in the cafe` with three other ladies and it came out that one of the ladies was the retired art professor. Ohmygod, I totally fangirled her. “I’ve been stalking you for weeks!” I said practically bouncing in my seat. “I’ve been wanting to meet you and here you are! Right next to me!” She laughed. We were all laughing, having a totally silly conversation for over an hour before she got around to asking why I wanted to meet her and I admitted I hoped she taught drawing or painting so I could pick her brain but, she didn’t. She spent her whole career teaching sculpture, jewelry design and other 3 dimensional arts. 

When we parted she wanted to know my name and I answered, Jean.  “There are five Jeans here,” she said, “how will I know which one your are?” “I’m the fat one,” I replied. She looked at me like I was Duffy-Duck so I confirmed what I said, “Well I am.” “What is your name?” she asked again and for a minute I felt like I was in that Abbott and Costello skit “whose on first.” My old brain cells weren’t working and she had to come right out and ask what my last name is. I felt a connection with the woman or maybe it was the fact that I’d been fangirling the heck out of her that made me feel so giddy---and obviously brain farts were involved. I was in grade school again and I wanted to skip on home to tell my mom I’d made a new friend. She probably went home thinking she’d met the dumb or dense Jean. Since it took two and a half months for our paths to finally cross who knows how long it will take for that to happen again. Meeting her made my happy. Checked that goal off my list.

In other headline news from my tiny world, I am finally prescription eye drop free and I don’t have to go back to the doctor again for six months. I do have to give my left eye a test once a week and call the office if a bunch of lines on a grid start breaking up or fall off the chart, which would indicate a change in my macular pucker. I left the complex after ordering five hundred dollars worth of eye glasses---two pair---happy as a meadowlark on a sunny day. I probably should have shopped around but I wanted this whole saga behind me. It’s been over two months since the surgery and the promise of being able to see street signs sharper was just too good to put off another day. Once I get them I'll be braver about exploring the area I moved into.

So there you have it. I was bubbling over to share my fangirl stalking incident and the fact that no one got hurt in the process. Between here and the new year we have so many parties and events on the calendar round here and I signed up for all of them and knew this post would get bumped if it had to wait too long to get published.  Life is good. ©

Eye Update and my Widow's Memory Bank

You may or may not remember that I’ve been nervous about getting through my cataract surgeries without getting an infection in my left eye, the one with the macular pucker. I was told that the fourth week out was the most critical time for one to appear and the doctor started me on eye drops a full week before the surgery to help prevent an infection and here I am in the seventh week post-surgery and up until today I was still doing six drops a day in that eye, with two different medications. At one point, between the two eyes I was doing 16 drops a day with four medications. The doctor has been measuring changes in that pucker weekly and on the fourth week added a new drop to “let out the gas” which I’m sure isn't a perfectly proper medical term but “letting out the gas” works for me. And ohmygod does that drop hurt/sting/burn. Takes me a full three minutes to recover from putting that one in and it has me moaning and groaning as if I’m having sex, even comes with a few “Oh God's” spoken out loud. Yes, I'm worried about what my neighbor on our shared wall thinks if she can hear me.

 

Today at my eye appointment I flunked the test on my pucker so I still can't get a new eye glass prescription written until the "cornea quits moving," another, interesting non-medical term but the good news is I now only have to do three drops a day, two of which are the ones that come with sound effects. The bad news is I walked out of that office deflated that I have to keep going back to track the damn pucker. At least I'm past the point where an infection is a major concern. When I asked that question the doctor replied, "Think so." The possibility still reminds, however, so I will keep following the rules---be militant with the drops, no wearing any eye make-up or rubbing my eye and don't get water in it.

 

After the surgeries I expected the world would be like the opening of the Wizard of Oz that starts out in black and white then turns into bright colors. I do see colors noticeable brighter with my right eye but not the left. I’m legal now to drive without glasses which hasn’t been true in a long time. This not needing glasses except to read has me misplacing my glasses more in the last month than in all of the last year. 

 

A few days ago I found myself in the cafe' without my glasses to read the menu and one of my fellow residents said, “We’ll read it to you.” And they did. But that brought back a memory of a time my husband was mad at me for something long forgotten. We were out to dinner with another couple when I discovered I didn’t have my glasses and I asked Don to read the menu to me. His left-over anger from whatever we’d fought about earlier caused him to slash out at me---the bottom line being he refused to do it. His outburst left the other couple shocked and speechless. It took a lot to anger Don but when he was his fiery glare was enough to stop anyone from retorting. 

 

Flashes of memories are like that when we age, aren’t they? Something small and meaningless can trigger a memory that can consume me for several hours as I try to recall more details. As with most of my flash-memories, I wasn’t successful at doing an archaeological style dig into that day at the restaurant. But I suppose the only important thing to remember is that Don didn’t make a practice out of embarrassing me in public. I can count on the fingers of one hand the numbers of times when that happened in the 42 years we were together. 

 

In January Don will have been gone nine years. In some ways it seems like 9 months and in other ways it seems like 900 years. It took nearly half of those years for the widow’s pedestal many of us put our spouses on to start crumbing, and for me to see the full spectrum of Don’s personality again. It’s human nature I’m guessing, to forget the petty disagreements when someone has passed and to keep the good memories closer to the surface---the Disney version of our relationships---the one where no one has hissy-fits over toothpaste caps not replaced or ever farts while holding our heads under the bed covers.

 

Looking at my past is like looking out one eye, and then the other post surgery. I have two distinctive views---one probably accurate to its history, the other more like looking though a filter of rainbows and swishing puppy dogs tails pushing the colors around into a mosaic of happiness. If/when dementia catches me in its trap the big question will be which version of my history will be locked inside my head as I withdraw from the world? And can we program our brains to choose while we’re still logical, thinking human beings? My dad and brother both walked into the land of dementia. One mostly accepted it, the other fights it, fears it. What will I do when my time comes? I've always had a fertile fantasy life, will I  even know when dementia takes up residence? ©

Who’s the Scary Cat Now!

The month of May might be known for bringing flowers but at my house it also brings the dog’s yearly vet appointment to get caught up on his shots/vaccines and to get the ‘diet talk’ about him needing to loss a pound or two. Doctors are all the same, aren’t they. In Levi’s case the vet talk usually goes something like this: “One pound will lead to two pounds and pretty soon it will start effecting his all over health.” Ya, doc, I know it. But have you ever lived with a stubborn schnauzer who wants his treat when he wants it? Walking him more sounds easy, doesn’t it, except Levi won’t go out in the rain and I won’t go out in snowy or icy weather. I used let him run in the back yard on a long clothesline but my back lot line neighbor acquired three pit bulls two years ago and only one is chained up---presumably the one that has already killed a cat and attacked another neighbor’s dog. But Levi didn’t get the ‘diet talk’ this year because he actually lost his two pounds and now I’m mad at the little bugger for not sharing his weight loss secret with me.

This routine appointment drained $452.43 out of my check book for all his shots/vaccines including two required for licensing, a canine flu shot, CBC blood work, fecal check, ear infection treatment, three months’ worth of flea, tick and heart worm meds and apoquel pills for itchiness when he needs it for a plugged saliva gland. On the good side, this was the first time in three years his teeth didn’t need cleaning but they aren’t going to let that money get away. They want to re-check his teeth in October and I will let them because he can’t afford to lose any more teeth to gum disease. And I'm taking bets on whether or not his CBC blood work will turn something up they'll want to treat. He's a senior citizen now and those years turns us all into cha-ching machines for the medical communities.

The month of May also brings my yearly eye doctor appointment. My eyes are tired and bother me from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed but the doctor keeps telling me eyes are healthy and my sight hasn’t changed enough to bother getting a new prescription in three years. And my cataracts aren’t big enough---yet---for him to want to remove them. “Artificial tears,” he says, “use them up to 20 times a day.” I asked if they have a car service for cataract surgeries like the slick, new eye surgery ‘assembly line’ in town advertises. Not having any children who are obligated by love or guilt to help with transportation to and from cataract surgery is a huge concern for me. The eye doctor said there is a service in town that will pick you up, stay with you and bring you back home for any medical procedure. "Costs a royal fortunate," he said, "but it’s an option to file away in your back pocket." You can’t just call an Uber or Lyft for rides to medical procedures because they require that you have someone in the waiting room in case of emergencies. I guess having a total stranger you just met two hours ago qualities.

Have you warmed up to using Uber or Lyft? We spent our childhoods being warned about getting into cars with strangers and the only time I ever did it I got raped so now I’m supposed to unlearn all those warning that were drilled into us growing up? Granted, no one is going to want to do bodily harm to an pudgy old woman in sensible shoes…unless they're working as a ‘body procurer’ for a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci. Did you know he dissected bodies in the dead of night to learn human anatomy? He started out paying grave robbers to supply him but when they got caught taking a shortcut and helping a vagrant into the next world, his new 'body procurers' would get unclaimed bodies from the city until Leonardo finally worked his way up to getting a doctor at a hospital to give him access to cadavers. Anyway, back on topic. A few years ago I thought I was ready to try Uber when my arm was in a sling then an Uber driver in a town near-by killed six people and wounded two others and in between him shooting random people he was picking up Uber customers! At least with the medical patient courier service my eye doctor told me about I have to believe they go through a thorough screening. If not, don’t tell me. Let me live in blissful ignorance because the odds are good I may need their service someday.

I’ve turned into a quirky little creature, haven’t I. I’m afraid of my back yard, of dying in a car accident, of falling on the ice, of Italian Renaissance Era body snatchers and a hundred perfectly normal 21st century activities like wearing sleeveless blouses, roller coasters and people who dress up like zombies. Not that I was ever a fearless person in my prime. I never jumped off a dock head first, for example, without knowing how deep the water was. I refused to go sky diving in my 20s or to sit in the front row at the stock car races and I’m pretty sure my scary-cat persona was the reason the guy I was dating at the time broke up with me. But I’ll tell you what I’m not afraid of doing that most of my Gathering Girls pals won’t do. They won’t answer their front doors if someone rings their doorbell. Who’s the scary cat now?  ©