Living the Dream

Forgive the typos today! Good morning! I’m back. Well, sort of. The eyes aren’t 100 percent yet, but they are amazingly close. The experience was incredible. It was unlike any thing that I expected. Will I have to wear glasses again? I won’t know for sure for another six weeks–that’s when I’m to see my optician, but I go back to the surgeon on Monday to make sure all is good.

Today’s letter is S and it stands for a lot of things but I’ll focus on surgery and surprise.

The surgery was a surprise and the things I saw before and after it were even more so. Getting a little help from GoogleAI this morning.

The inside of the eyelid is lined with a thin, clear membrane called the conjunctiva, which helps lubricate the eye. When you close your eyes, especially in the sun, you don’t see darkness, you see colors. The first step in the procedure was giving me drops, a kind of jelly-like substance. Then I had to close my eyes and keep them closed for two hours. That was my first surprise.

The second was all the colors. Seeing colors, swirls, or flashes of light when your eyes are closed is a normal phenomenon called phosphenes or “closed-eye visualizations”. It happens because the eyes and brain do not fully shut off in the dark; the retina continues to generate faint “internal light” or visual noise, which the brain interprets as color and light patterns.

Retinal Activity: Your retina, the layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eyeball, continues to work even when no external light enters. It produces low-level “noise” (known as self-generated light or biophotons).

• Visual System “Idle”: Similar to a camera, your eye is constantly recording data even with the “lens cap” (eyelid) on. The neural activity in the eye and visual cortex generates colors as a default state, often called “visual noise,” which is why you never see true black.

What You’re Actually Seeing

• Colors/Patterns: These often look like swirling blobs of green, purple, or blue, which are linked to the activation of different color-sensitive cells (cones) in the retina.
• Darkness Level: You generally see a dark, hazy grey instead of pure black. This is sometimes called “Eigengrau” or “brain noise”.

About an hour and a half into that, the nurse came back with a pill for me to place under my tongue to relax me and added another layer of jelly. Then, it was time to go. I climbed into a purplechair–eyes are open now– and then the surgery began. First, the surgeon put something into my eyes to freeze them. It pinched a little. Then the nurse wiped down my outer eyelid with a cleansing solution–I was afraid I would go home with a wierdly colored face . After that, he had me open one eye wide abd stuck something over my face thatleft only the eye on which he was working visible. It felt a lot like what a dentist does to work on only one tooth. He told me to look into the bright light. There are no words to describe the colors I saw, the closest I imagine is psychodelic shade of blue, turquoise, orange, mauve, you name them, I saw them all. Then. that eye was done. Just like that. No pain, another surprise. They removed whatever it was stuck on my face, exfoliating my skin in the process I have a red spot on one cheek, and repeated the process on the second eye.

And just like that, I had two new lens in my eyes. And it was over. I did a quick eyetest, surprised that I could see anything, and he put a couple more drops in my eyes, presented me with sunglasses to wear home, told me no TV, cell phone, or computer for 24 hours, and to lkeep my eyes closed as much as I could. He gave me a pair of sunglasses even though it was night, and my hubby came to get me. Sounds easy right?

But the next surprise came when I stepped outside. It was spectaular, like walking out into another world with magical lights surrounded by halos and gossamer strings of light emanating from them. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen, and yet I could never take a picture of it. It was as if all the lights had turned into dandelion puffs, but other than the lights, my world was a blur.

It was a blur most of yesterday, too, although it’s gradually getting better since I can read the computer screen this morning, and it will continue to improve–or so I’m told. Here are my memes for the day as well as a little silliness. I was much more athletic in 1969 and participated in a stand on my head and look at the world upside down contest. Now, the grandson is gdoing it too–only he does it much better.

Good morning. I hope you’re all having a great day. I’m not really here today. I’m resting my eyes as ordered after cataract surgery yesterday, but I’m thinking of you all.

Today’s letter is R and the R words I’ll focus on will be retirement and rest since that’s what I’m doing or will be doing when you read this.

Are you retired? If not, have you made grand plans? Because if you haven’t, make some. The worst thing you can do is do nothing. The boredom will kill you. The meme might say all you have to do is decide how to relax for the day, but the truth of it is, that gets old fast! When I retired in 2010, I was thrilled with the idea of having nothing to do, no work schedule, no obligations. I read, I cleaned the house, the closets, read some more, and when I couldn’t stand having that much fun, I went back to work supply teaching, you may call them replacement teachers. After a semester of that, I remebered why I’d retired in the first place. So, after retirement number two, I decide to try my hand at doing something I had always wanted to do. I became a published author. I’m busier than I ever was and much happier, too! As long as I can, I’ll keep sharing the fruits of my imagination with you.

Now, let’s look at rest.

I will enjoy my day of rest without guilt. Will you?

And here’s a little reality to brighten your day.

Check here for other bloggers https://tinyurl.com/mu5vjy48

If you are looking for A to Z 2026, it’s the post before this one.

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tales. Spring has sprung. As if! It’s -3C with the wind, but I have cataract surgery today, so what do I care?

This week the authors from Tuesday Tales are crafting their scenes around the word SAUCE. When you finish reading my post, click on the link at the end of the post and visit the other Tuesday Tales authors. I’m continuing with The Case of the Missing Prince.

“Good morning. I’m Evie Chambers. I have three rooms reserved. I notified you that we would require an early check-in.” I pulled out my driver’s permit and the gold E C Investigations MasterCard.

The girl reached for my documents, verified the information on the book, and then on my card.

“I’ll need you to swipe your card separately for each room” she explained. “Our security deposit is one hundred dollars per room. If you don’t charge anything to the room, it’ll be credited to your account. I see here that the suite will be for yourself and Alphonse Binette, one room will be occupied by Viktor Opole, and the other by Petrov Bukowski. Is that correct?” I nodded. “How many keys will you need?”

“Two for the suite, one for each of the other rooms.” I finished swiping my card. I had no intention of going into Viktor or Petrov’s room uninvited, and I certainly wasn’t going to give them the ability to walk into mine either.

“We’ve put you in the royal suite,” she continued. “As I explained to your administrative assistant, we don’t have two bedroom suites, but the couch in the living room opens into a queen-sized bed. The Elevators are to the right and straight ahead. You’ll need your room key to access them. Your rooms are on the eighth floor. You have access to the private Gold Lounge for breakfast and evening canapés if you prefer a quiet drink before dinner. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.”

“Thank you.”

I turned around to find my men waiting for me. From the look on the hotel clerk’s face, she was impressed by my male harem. And why not? Men could be surrounded by a bevy of beauties, but when it was a woman—What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, even if only one of those ganders was actually mine.

Al unlocked the door to the Royal Suite, while Viktor and Petrov had adjoining rooms across the hall.

“Gentlemen, we’ll meet you in the lobby. I have some calls to make. Enjoy your lunch. Al and I will probably order room service while I get everything organized. The suite has a living room and a dining room. The tech equipment should be delivered while we’re at the nursing home. Hallie said it can be set up by three monkeys and a chimpanzee.” I exhaled heavily. “I hope she’s right!”

Don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.

Good morning. I’m excited about this Monday because it’s my cataract surgery day. Tomorrow may be a bit more difficult as I try to keep busy, since I won’t be allowed on the computer or even watching television, but I’ve got audio books loaded and I’m ready to go. I even bought special headphones to wear lying in bed.

Today, we have one of the less than easy letters. Q starts off a variety of words, including quest. I’ve been on a quest to understand the world around me, to seek wisdom where I can find it, but lately, wisdom and commone sense seem to be lacking.

In my quest for knowledge, I’ve discovered a strange ability in myself. One stray thought can change everything, and I’ll go so far off track that the reason for my quest in the first place gets lost.

Continuing the quest, whose purpose is to make sense of the insanity around me, seems like a hopeless task, and I have to force myself to keep going and ignore the urge to just pack in all in, and succomb to the exhaustion and accept what should never be accepted. That’s when I need to remind myself that quitting is for losers.

Finally, when all is said and done, when I can go no more, I set my quest aside for the moment and focus on what’s truly important– the peace I quiet I find in my own element.

Check here for other bloggers https://tinyurl.com/mu5vjy48

Good morning. Well, the third week of the A to Z Challenge Blog for this year is complete. I’m having a great time just filling the page with random thoughts that happen to suit a particular letter. I’m especially happy to be traveling along with friends I’ve made in Europe, Australia, and the United States. I enjoy all of the posts and the insights, and it’s great to know that others feel the same way. I’ve laughed and I’ve cried over some of the posts. Tomorrow, I’ll be having my cataract surgery at 4:45 in the afternoon. If I don’t check in for a couple of days, it’s because I’m not allowed on the computer, but I have preshechuled three days of posts just in case.

I didn’t get around to purpose yesterday in the letter P, but I wanted to share this meme with you. We all need a purpose in life. Some of us find it early on; the rest of if sort of wait until it finds us. Kind of like a teenager having to decide at 18 what she wants to do with the rest of her life.

I hope you’ve found your purpose.

Today is cold for this late in April, but hopefully that will mitigate another P I didn’t cover. For all of you out there, who suffer as I do, get ready because it’s crying time again. The weeping eyes, the blocked ears, the swollen sinuses. That’s right. Pollen season is here.

Good morning. How is your weekend shaping up? We’re expecting 25 C here today, and maybe it won’t rain the entire day. Unfortunately, we’ll be down to single digits again Sunday and Monday. That’s the way it is these days. I plan to worship every nice day we get this summer, no matter how hot is it. I vow not to complain about the heat–the humidity, maybe–but not the heat! I’ve had it with the cold. But enough of that. Smile! This too shall pass.

Today’s letter is P. Now the letter P starts many great words and some not so great ones like politics, president, or as I like to say, he who should never be named since it feeds his ego, and Prime Minister, as in Carney, the best man for the job right now, althought I don’t envy him. It also starts procrastination, the ability to put things off by filling the gap with things you would rather be doing. As well, it stands for proofreading.

Proofreading is right up there with editing. I not only edit my own work, and I’m really hard on myself, I also edit for a few select others. There are times when I’m working on plot edits when I have to wonder if gremlins got to the story before I did. How could I even consider that? And as for proofreading, I swear ten people can read the same page ten times and miss the one typo. it’s like finding the N in a page full of M’s. Why? Because the brain is programmed–there’s another P word–to assign meaning to what it sees and see what it thinks is there and not what is. Like that meme on overthinking from yesterday. You probably read it even though there wasn’t much there to guide you.

P also stands for my new favorite word. Procaffeinating defines me well. I can’t really get going without my morning boost of caffeine. I usually start with tea and then move on to coffee with breakfast. Somtimes, I’ll add another cup midmorning or a cola on warm days, but unless it’s decaffeinated, never after lunch. Caffeine seems to have a more powerful effect on me after noon than after six in the morning.

I also learned another new word recently. It doesn’t start with P, but it meand perfect butts. It came out of a discussion over Easter dinner when the grandkids were discussing their workout routines, and talking about working their glutes. I never knew that people purposely wanted big butts, not just big ones, but perfect, well-shaped ones. Callipygian! Who knew? And here I’vespent my whole life in pursuit of the flat, nondescript bottom. What a waste!

The next P word I want to discuss is prayer. I’ve always believed in the power of prayer, but these days, I think the Almighty seems to have his hands full. As the meme points out, these days it’s hard to tell the crap from what’s of value. I wonder if God counts on St. Peter to help him divide the good prayers from the bad ones? The prayers that shoukld be answered, and those He might want to pass on–consider the source. There are definitely some people praying for the wrong things, like war. As Pope Leo and all the other people with an ounce of common sense agree, let’s pray for peace and understanding.

My career as an author began with poetry, and I enjoy this tongue in cheek look at getting old.

Another P word I love is partnership. My husband and I have been partners for two thirds of my life. Nothing beats a good partnership!

Let’s talk about the final P word for today Power. there are many differnt kinds of power that have nothing to do with money and politics. Here are a few examples.

Check here for other bloggers https://tinyurl.com/mu5vjy48

Good morning. It’s raining again. Can you believe it? Six days in a row. We’re luckier than some places in the province and even in the city since we live at the top of a hill, but there are more than a few flooded basement around.

It’s hard to stay motivated these days, and just getting out of bed feels like a chore, but coffee in hand, I completed my routine, and I now have a little more get up and go, slowly, but any kind of forward movement is good these days.

I hit a glitch in Cold Heart and have to go back and fix it. Sometimes the characters drag me where I don’t want to go, and we have to talk it through. This is one of those times.

Today’s letter is O. I told you the second half of the challenge was harder. There isn’t a lot to be said for O other than the fact that it’s ocassionally confused with 0, zero. When I print out words and numbers, my O and 0 look exactly the same. They only look different in typed prose, so if I’m including a large number, I have to remember to his 0 and not O.

Actually, O is the first letter in ONE, not just a numeral but occasionally a modifier as in “One day, all of this will make sense, but that day isn’t today.” It also means individual, as in one of a kind. As in this is the only world we have, and we have to take care of it!

Take it one day at a time!

I came across this new to me literary term a few months ago, and I thought I would share it with you. I also found this meme about overthinking which is probably my greatest fault and why my charaters and I are at odds right now!

Are you an overthinker, too? Today’s song is definitely from the nostalgia coffer.

Check here for other bloggers https://tinyurl.com/mu5vjy48

These last few days, I’ve read a lot of blogs that featured Kindness for the letter K, just as I did. It’s obvious that I’m not the only one who feels as if the world needs more of it, so here’s a reminder of what truly matters. Right now, there are people who just see money and being rich as their goals in life, and these people don’t care who gets hurt in their quest to be richer than they already are. Let’s agree not to lose our humanity while they focus on their greed.

Of course, it’s raining again, the temps are up, but that isn’t helping with the achy joints. I’m getting rather crochety these days. I truly need the sun, even if that will just make allergy season worse. I have pills for that.

Today’s letter is N. It’s what I consider the Negative Nelly of the alphabet since it stands for words like NEVER, NO, NOT and of course NEGATIVE. In the movie, Kelly’s Heroes, Donald Sutherland, a Canadian treasure, played the role of Oddball, a tank unit officer who was trying to sit out the war until Kelly offered him the chance to get rich. He was just a little out there, but one of his lines which I use to this day, was “Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves?” Today, I’m going to focus on making negatives into positives. Maybe, you’ll find something to brighten your day. But first, let’s talk about the Northern Lights, aka, the Aurora Borealis.

In the last few years, there seem to be a lot more solar storms that result in incredible auroras. I use the magical lights as a means of communication between the ancient gods and my main characters in my Listen to the Stones series. While doing research for the latest book in the series, I found an explanation for the colors that was simple and easy to undertsand. And since my story involves ancient monoliths, this is one of my favorite pictures.

Now, let’s get back to undoing negative thinking.

Good morning. It’s another rainy day here, but as I got home from the orthopedic surgeon yesterday, I noticed buds on my spring flowers. The matched my mood since I’m good for another year–exercise and physio should be good enough to keep leg number two out of surgery for at least another twelve months. Today’s Wednesday. Some refer to it as midweek. Others call it hump day, as in getting over the hump. No matter what you call it, it’s also the midway mark in this year’s challenge. I used to say that the first half of the challenge was easier than the second half and I’m sure that’ll be the case again this year since my store of memes with the difficult letters is quite low.

The thirteenth letter of the alphabet is M. I took the liberty of highlighting all the M words in my introductory paragraph. There are lots of good M words. The first one that comes to mind is motherhood. Without mothers where would we be? Nowhere. We wouldn’t exist. It’s strange for me to try and understand misogyny, the hatred of the female gender, when without women, the human race wouldn’t exist. But enough about that. Today I’m going to talk about medicine, not the pills, liquid, injections, and creams prescribed by doctors but the other kind of medicine needed to keep your mind and soul healthy. Enjoy!

Check here for other bloggers https://tinyurl.com/mu5vjy48

Good morning. Well, today will be a busy day for me. Unfortunately, it’s another rainy day–Noah may have to start work on the ark again. I have an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon today for X-rays and my one-year evaluation of my hip replacement. We’ll be discussing next steps for hip number two. It’s nowhere as bad as the first one was, but I never want to feel that pain again, so, if I can get on the surgery list later this year, that’s a bonus.

Today’s letter is L. Many words come to mind when I look at L. For example LIGHT, which has veveral meanings, LOVE, which again can be applied to a variety of people, places, things, and situations, LISTENING which is a skill I fear many of us have lost, not just in the sense of hearing but of understanding, but the one that comes to mind most this morning is LIFE.

I’m fortunate to come from a family with longevity. My father was 91 when he died as a result of a fall and my mother was 96. She may not have been healthy in mind at the end, but she wasn’t unhappy in her imaginary world either. But who am I to judge? I live in an imaginary world now.

This morning, instead of ruminating on the current conditions all around us that affect our lives in so many different ways, I’m just going to share some of my favorite memes with you, some of the ones I shared with my granddaughter when she realized that the life she’d planned out for herself was no longer the life she wanted. There are no guaranees in life, nor is it without end. Hold on to those you love.