stranger vision

Ugh, we're here again.

This is the cloudy zone. Not unlike the twilight zone but lacking the gremlin on the wing. You're probably too young to get that.

So, after an evening of fun and beverages this Easter weekend, I woke with a gnawing headache. When I woke at four in the morning, I assumed the pointy objects developing behind my eyes were the beginnings of a day of feeling pale.

The night before, we went for drinks with two friends and that turned into a ten-person evening at their place. You see where this is going. Anyone who knows me well knows I have terrible social anxiety, particularly if I go into a social situation expecting one thing and it turns into another, regardless of how lovely the people involved may be. My two beer turned into a glass or so of unexpected wine.

But, it wasn't a mother of a hangover at all. Turns out I still have MS. 

Damn.

It was the start of optic neuritis. Again. Round 4.

The first time I had optic neuritis [ON from here on] was pretty scary. It's beyond unsettling to suddenly have reduced vision, and the saturation difference is eerie. If you wear contacts, having ON, once the pain dissipates, assuming it dissipates, is like having only one contact in…for months. Your depth perception gets screwy.

Like all three previous bouts with ON, this round only affects my left eye. I suppose that's a silver lining, but I'm not looking for rainbows and sunshine about it yet. I'm still in the upset stage. No tantrums or wailing and I know the anger will pass quickly, but if I don't respect the emotion behind this, it'll linger even longer. I'm all about the shortest route to being okay.

Things I had forgotten about optic neuritis:

• Just how painful it is at first. I could barely stand the feel of an ice pack against my eye. The pain is much more manageable now. Almost gone.
• I bump into things on my left at first onset. I get a bruised elbow, shoulder, and hip. Tonight at 9, "when door frames attack".
• I have to be careful about placing drinks to my left or I'll send them flying. 
• It's nauseating at first. 
• Typing and reading are weird. I read left to right, obvs, and it's like the words get clearer as the sentence grows.
• I randomly find myself closing my alternating eye/s for comparison and look like I'm flirting with the rocking chair.

Attractive.

I'm not altogether sure what triggered this. I had a few days of drinking to some excess while in SJ. Sort of an "I don't get to do this often" mentality while thoroughly enjoying the company of close friends. Whether that set it off or not, who knows, but I am back on track. 

On the way home to New Denmark, we stopped at a great Asian market I used to visit all the time. I felt like Darryl Dixon on a supply run - basically racing up and down the aisles, grabbing one of everything. Finding options that we can't find in this region is like winning a teeny lottery. I see a lot of sour soups in the upcoming weeks. We've already worked through the jackfruit. 

 

So, that's where I am. Slacking at the blog. Processing a lot of emotion from late last year that flew by in a blur. Writing a lot of poetry. Trying to gather a story or several about the place we live now. Floundering about on social media. My interest in Facebook is at an all-time low, so I find myself posting more elsewhere.

The walking is going well. We'll be ready for the long days in Ireland well ahead of schedule. One thing this area has plenty of is space, so I've been taking advantage. My cardio is still cow shite, but it's coming. 

We bought new boxing pads when visiting the Princess of Power and fam, so that's working its way back into a routine as of this week. 

That's what's new with me. Peace out. I'm off to watch something on Netflix and snuggle with superwifey. 

xo

ahem

We're staying at a friend's place in SJ for a few nights while she's out of town. Nancy just left for a dinner and I took the dogs out through the back door as she was putting her coat on. While out in the side yard, I heard the front door close and hollered a "see ya! Love you!"

It was the neighbour leaving his house.

He seemed very perplexed.

vitis

It's National Drink Wine Day!

I alerted my wife to our patriotic duty via text this morning. I imagine her response was "We need a day for that?" but what I actually received was "I'm Driving - Sent From My Car" - a canned response with terrible capitalization that I simply can't get over.

Yes, that's a preposition at the end of a sentence. I like to live dangerously.

I hated wine when I was younger. Well, no. Hate is a strong word. My exposure to wine at an early age lead me to believe all wine was 1. white, and 2. sweet. I am not a fan of sweet whites, so I assumed I didn't like wine at all. Time went by and my dad became a bit of a connoisseur and I realized I actually really like wine. I still prefer red to white, or daytime wine, as a certain friend would say, but I enjoy a nice dry pinot gris on occasion.

Long gone are the teenage days of sipping cheapass spumante out of plastic water bottles, although I semi-remember those days fondly. I generally know which grapes I enjoy now and we have hosted a handful of wine tastings. I even have a wine book to write all my notes in, although, I'll admit its level of neglect is somewhere on par with this blog's. But, I have one! And there are h̶u̶n̶d̶r̶e̶d̶s̶ dozens of wines in there.

Living with MS means the thoughts of what to avoid consuming is a constant low level hum, but I tell myself it's a glassful of extra antioxidants. And it is. A delicious one.

On the MS front, all is quiet. And by that, I mean I have the usual cast of characters at play but nothing new worth mentioning. There's only so much one can say about numbness or leg pain and if I find it mind-numbingly boring, I'm sure you're all...

The wide open space here gives me every opportunity to be active. As extra incentive, I use an app on my phone to track all the fitness stats. Those, plus a single glance at my dog send me out in the fields to get my heart rate up. If we're not outside by 10 AM (aside from her early pee breaks), I get the wags of doom near my mug of tea. Cold nose pokes. Moans of "I'm so bored" even though she's a dog and can't speak actual words. Her tenacity is a fabulous motivator.

xo


P.S. I just got an end of day text from Nance "Dear wifey, I am so glad it is international wine day. Hitting the road for home now."

alone

Posting, even though this was stuck in drafts for ages.

---

An arm pushes from beneath a pile of rumpled blankets. The fist unfolds to release a white flag. The arm flails pathetically….

Fine, it's a germy tissue, but my surrender still stands.

Colds suck - the exhaustion, the sneezing, the burny eyes and nagging cough. Sucks. When a cold also makes your knees numb and triggers the feeling of carpet burn up and down the side of one arm - super sucks. I feel like my immune system goofed off at Hogwarts and learned half-assed spells intended to annoy me.

Okay, whining over. I am a day or two or three from kicking this virus's ass, thank jeebus. Mind you, I said that three days ago too. All hail Neocitran, the mighty god of fucked up dreams, but decent sleep.

Now if that carpet burn sensation could disappear, that'd be fab.

The daily snowshoes/hikes picked back up again yesterday, now that I can hold my head up and the brilliant ball in the sky doesn't make my eyes stream. If there is one fantastic perk of living here, that's it - the fields. I can open the door, throw on my snowshoes and walk with the dog for an hour without having to drive anywhere first. To the back of the field, down through the brambles, around a copse of evergreens and back again and my heart and lungs are hollerin'.

When I say "walk with the dog" I mean the dog is within sight at most times. That could mean 4 feet or 300 metres, so it's a loose phrase. She has superb recall, so it's fantastic to be able to let her run free. She likes to bull+china shop her way through the brier. Who needs the easy way when you can gleefully bulldoze your way around?

I am loving the walks. I'd like to wax poetic and regale you with stories of how the dog and I bond, traipsing side-by-side, but really, we're both in our separate worlds. She sniffs out every scattering of deer droppings and lifts a paw to tell me they're there. Thankfully, the days of wanting to roll in dung are years past us. [Er, she was the one who used to roll in horseshit, not me. Granted, I have spoken a lot if it in my time.] Or she trundles along sticking her nose into cat, bird, or even her own tracks, adding to her endless inventory of "cool stuff that was here recently".

The time with her is precious to me. I love watching her soak up the outdoors. When she stops to flop and floop around on her back in the hard packed snow, I laugh every time. It is the picture of joy.

And, for some reason, snowshoeing doesn't much feel like exercise when I pop out the door and get at it. If the snow is hard packed, I throw on heavy Sorels for the added heat and weight, and leave the rackets behind. I get the same lung joy as I would at the gym, without the mental effort it takes to work myself into it. It's just right there. There are no excuses...and I love it, so I don't try to make any. Me and my dog. And my MS, so I take my phone in case of emergency.

I was going to end this here, but friends have been asking how I feel living in the country, so….

I won't live here forever - I miss the ocean and my friends far too much - but this necessary move has offered up a unique experience that we are both trying to immerse ourselves in to the fullest. I felt isolated living in town. Not lonely exactly, that is a rare feeling for me, but alone. Now when Nance is away, I don't feel that at all, even though I am surrounded by nothing but fields of white and the whistling wind. It's easier to absorb being alone when you're surrounded by nature.

Loneliness is not a totally foreign concept to me. Because I'm on the far end of introversion, I rarely feel it from a social inclusion perspective, but I feel alone in MS on a semi-regular basis. I have the best support anyone could ask for, but Nance is not inside this head with me. I feel what I feel on my own. And while I like and need to communicate how I am, it's also a lot of effort to try to explain why I am not 100% in a given moment. Why I'm teary. Why I am flexing my hand or clearing my throat (most of the time I'm unaware of doing so). So, even if I let my wife into my head, which is my go to, sometimes I choose to be alone with it. And I've learned to be okay with that, for the most part.

So, I'm okay living here. Better than okay. I walked 6 km this morning with the dog and felt free. Myself. I'm not lonely here.

xo

need

If all goes well, we have a family of five moving into our empty house in SJ today. They know no English, have next to nothing to their names except donated beds, a couch, and a TV, and they need pretty much everything you can imagine. Call us if you'd like to help.

oh mickey, you are not so fine

The electric furnace died.

For a few days it had been a little noisy on startup. On Wednesday past, it was louder than normal and we noticed the ducts were pushing a strange burning smell like the demise of a hairdryer. After the worst of the fetid furnace air, I turned the heat off completely. In January. In Northwest New Brunswick. By choice.

Thankfully, two of the rooms in the house - the den and the master bedroom - have electric baseboard heaters, so they groaned to life like Frankenstein's monster and kept us above freezing.

With the landlord's input, we called in an electrician. Lovely man. The good news is there was no need to turn the heat off. Bad news? The motor had already died. Not just worn bearings or in need of a drop of oil - flat out dead. 

And speaking of lack of life, apparently the odiferous waftings were not simply the last gasps of a fading motor. Stuck to the elements like a miniature Salem trial were two tiny fried mice. Mice, not rice. Fried mice. That acrid smoke? Dead mice.

As you can probably glean, one problem evolved into two. What to do about effing mice. With small rodents, the rule is see one, count ten. If there were two in the crisper, there's a higher number throughout the home.

There were also two teeny corpses behind the chewed filter.

I am not afraid of rodents, but don't want to share my home with any tiny critters that carry serious diseases. Compromised immune system aside, we live in open territory, so deer mice aren't uncommon and those adorable fuzzballs can carry hantavirus. No, thanks.

The electrician recommended I call my husband and get him to bring home mousetraps. 

In the meantime, things were getting chilly in New Denmark. Ringo seemed to think he was part of my outfit. My usual hoodie and jeans ensemble was not cutting it and I opted for extra layers. Did I mention we didn't order wood for the stove?

The electrician replaced the furnace motor after hunting down a suitable replacement. And the mouse situation is being addressed. Time to relax, right?

plink

plink

Tonight, while Nance was facing network connectivity nonsense, I noticed that the night's unseasonable +4 C downpour had triggered a major leak in the living room. The collective leaks were/are [sadly, ongoing at 11:49 PM] over a large window, but water was pitterpattering from a crack in the trim, underneath that sill, and also from the edge of the pane. And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Two buckets with strategically placed supports, five towels, a sponge, and a smattering of f-bombs, and I think the leak is slowing to more of a drip than a stream. I am sleeping - or not, as the blog update shows - in the living room to empty the buckets when needed. At least the drips have rhythm. It's almost as if I can hear them telling me just what a fool I've been.

I feel bad for our landlord. She lives well away from here and is trying to sell this house. I can't imagine she was pleased to have to buy a new furnace motor, or to hear there's a mouse problem, or there's a floodgate over the biggest window in the house. Yay! At least we were here to tell her about the problems, I suppose. Better than busted pipes and a mouldy living room. Home ownership blows sometimes.

1 AM update: still dripping and now it's blowing a 75 km/h gale and our curbside garbage can has pulled a Mary Poppins, ffs!

1 PM update: sun is shining. Fascia is torn off the front of the house and where did all those shingles come from? Also, we have ladybugs now?

In lighter news, we had a grand visit with a friend and her very handsome pup over the weekend. Two large dogs under one roof is a combo that will always make me happy. A familiar face, wine, dogs - what more could you ask for?

Maybe a life preserver.

danced in their heads

After weeks of boozy, sugar-coated overindulgence, the holidays are swiftly coming to a close…

...unlike the zipper on my jeans.

Irish cream in morning coffee, social drinks nearly every day, snacky foods we don't eat year round - I'm all for Christmas cheer, but my clothes are starting to request danger pay. Back to better consumption habits, immediatement! If anyone craves tiny cupcake-shaped chocolates, please help yourself to our cupboards. Leftmost, top shelf.

Fortunately, we have isolation to help loosen our waistbands over the next few months. [Covering my assets, I say "we" as my wife insists she is in need of a renewed eating plan as well. I'm not, in any way, suggesting she needs it.] When you live in an area without neighbourhood corner stores or restaurants, meal planning becomes more important and somehow easier to stick to. 

Not that we won't see anyone through the winter but we have a very small handful of friends within 300km of us. We'll surely get together with the friends we have here, but they have committed to better eating through the winter too. So, we are set up for success. Prepare for my utterly foul mood during sugar detox. I'm already finding myself scrambling to find something sweet in the morning and cursing Christmas cheer for letting sugarplum fairies lead the charge. Being removed from convenience can sometimes be a good thing.

Something happens to me in semi-seclusion. Without the distractions of TV and a social life, I tend to write and draw more. And I tend to write better. Not on this blog, mind you, but my pen or pencil stabs away at paper more. When you don't physically write much, it feels strange not to tap out your thoughts with fingertips. How odd.

It has always been this way. In my younger years I always wrote most when at the cabin. Being alone with my thoughts makes them louder. That's mostly a good thing.

My thoughts about MS have always been fairly quiet. Not that I don't have frustration or fears about having MS, but after my first year as a person with MS, my inner dialogue quieted to a murmur, for the most part. I have never been able to write about in in a concretely creative way. I have a half-assed poem about MRI claustrophobia but that's it. I have tried to write about having a (mostly) invisible disease, but it bores me. It's not interesting enough for me to put my energy into. I have wondered if denial keeps me from delving into that side of my life in a creative fashion, but I don't think so. Which sounds a lot like denial, right? 

It seems fertile ground for many authors, some with MS. Silent struggle, bravery [Raoul], hope - it's all so self absorbed...unlike keeping a blog, of course. But I write about it here and that seems enough. I stay on top of the research (MS sufferers* benefit from high levels of vitamin D). I try to remain active and eat well, the last few weeks notwithstanding. But I can't romanticise a disease that has taken things from me. It doesn't anger me enough to work up artistic acrimony. It's upsetting and sometimes to a degree that few around me would guess, but I've never been one to work out my fears out loud or in  any way other than straightforward. While I may pitch an internal hissy fit at new or worsening symptoms, I am accepting of MS and don't want to give it more room in my life than it deserves.  

It is a gorgeous, cold day in New Denmark. At -28, the wind chill is a degree colder than yesterday's face blazing snowshoe. I have learned that one needs a balaclava to snowshoe across breezy, open potato fields once January hits. The Ireland walking tour is half a year away but has become motivation to get outside even in bitey weather. Even when sloth suggests I really, really don't want to. At all.

We three [catface makes four, but he's anti-snow] love being outdoors together, so this winter is going to add a lot of miles to the snowshoes. Nance has found a new spin class. We have the treadmill in the den. Now if only someone could hide the remaining snacks.

xo

*authors and researchers need to stop using this language. We're people with MS before we're sufferers or patients. Get with the fucking times.