Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Challenging

 



I started to title this post 'Difficult Decisions' but if we agree that the language we use shapes how we think about things, then 'Challenging' is a more appropriate word, I think.

I am not an intuitive colour chooser.  I have had to work hard to get to the point where I can usually choose a suite of colours that will weave together nicely.  But my yarn stash is going down, and getting enough yarn in appropriate colours is getting (again, changing from 'harder' to) challenging.

These colours are not 'pure' but shifted slightly.  The picture doesn't portray them accurately.  The green and blue are slightly greyed, the peach is more of a pale adobe.  The 'bright' green is probably the most accurate, being only slightly blued, but not greyed.  If you can catch my meaning.

In the end, because I needed four more spools, I added in the brighter green because it is only just two ends on either side of the pale adobe and will act as an accent amidst the more greyed colours.  I will again not keep the colours in strict order but allow them to blend/blur the edges of the stripes because I am quite liking the effect in the other warps I have done this with.

These subtle colour differences will get obscured as the cataracts develop so I am happy to use up this yarn now, while I'm still seeing this kind of difference.

Getting cataracts done is an exercise in patience.  They have to be 'ripe' before they get removed, so they have to get to a certain point of development before you can get on the list to have the surgery done.  And with covid, such surgeries have been delayed even further.

So I am going to go to the optometrist again next year, just so mine can be checked again, not wait for the standard two year check up.

We live in such interesting times and for most of us, as we age the things that start to go 'wrong' can be addressed.

In addition to eye glasses to correct eyesight, I now add hearing aids, and soon cataract surgery.  Not to mention all the other stuff I've had fixed or take medication for.

Science has given us longer lives, not just because we have such devices, but because we have medication, vaccines, understand how diseases are transferred amongst communities and know how to protect ourselves.

I am grateful to modern medicine for making it possible for me to continue to live and weave.

We are now pretty much well into the development of the 'second wave' of covid that was predicted.  In spite of people hitting The Wall, now is not the time to give up but to renew our efforts to prevent covid from entering into our lives, our bubble.

As such I have begun booking speakers for the guild to do Sunday Zoom programs.  Tonight I will present some more suggestions and see how much interest there is.  Our first speaker has been booked for Jan. 17 and I'm hoping for one a month for the first half of 2021.  OTOH, as more and more people get comfortable with Zoom (I had a tutorial on what can be done via Zoom yesterday - amazing!) we might continue to avail ourselves of the chance to bring instructors to us on the internet rather than physically.  At least for the balance of 2021 - and maybe several times a year ongoing.

Covid may continue to make our lives 'challenging' for several years.  One of the Black Plagues lasted 7 years, after all, and killed thousands and thousands around the world.  Covid is shaping up to be at least as contagious at the pneumonic form of the plague, so we are going to have to get comfortable with finding new ways to continue with our lives, our learning.

In the meantime?  You know the drill - stay at home if you can, wear a mask if you need to go out, maintain at least 6 feet of distance, wash your hands.


3 comments:

Anita Salmon said...

I have been reading what you are writing regarding your cataracts and needing to wait for them to "ripen". I had bilateral cataracts removed very successfully several years ago, well before they impacted my vision significantly. The scientific thinking has changed. "Although it's never too late to have a cataract removed, it is better to have cataracts removed while they are immature, as this reduces the length of surgery and the recovery time. Earlier removal also means that you avoid the significant visual impairment associated with very mature (hypermature) cataracts.Apr 5, 2018". This is a direct quote from the Australian vision institute.
https://visioneyeinstitute.com.au/eyematters/5-decisions-before-cataract-surgery/

I hope you are not offended by my butting in.

Jacquie said...

I too had heard long ago that cataracts need to be ripe, but about 20 years ago (in the UK) the health authority in which my mother lived had decided that as they had lots of elderly patients whose lives were being impacted with declining eyesight, they would set aside a tranche of funding to do all cataracts within 6 months of them being referred. As she hadn't even realised she had them until her optician spotted them, hers were done very early (one at a time) and as an artist was delighted with the changes in her colour perception.
Times have changed over the years since then and as funding has got tighter, the cry that cataracts have to ripen is back on the agenda. Not sure how it helps funding to put the surgery off to some point in the future, except that as they are mostly found among the more senior part of the population, not all of them will live to have ripe enough cataracts for surgery.
But it is amazing that if someone has the money to pay for surgery rather than having it done on the NHS, there is no problem or delay at all in having unripe cataracts removed privately.

Janet said...

I agree with the comments posted previously about not waiting for cataracts to "ripen" Obviously your ophthalmologist and health plan may differ, but according to current evidence there is no reason that one has to wait for cataracts to mature. When I started developing cataracts, my ophthalmologist said that if I wanted to see clearly, then it was time to remove them. I opted to have them removed--one at a time--and whites have never been whiter.