{"id":1585,"date":"2014-02-19T01:14:40","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T01:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/?p=1585"},"modified":"2014-02-19T01:15:29","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T01:15:29","slug":"1585","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/19\/1585\/","title":{"rendered":"day off, part 2: shovel and vision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After getting Thunder(cat) in the house, I bundled back up and headed for the driveway. I share the driveway with the neighbor and he usually clears it with a slow-blower. Today, though, he wasn&#8217;t home and it was all up to me. I grabbed a shovel, took a deep breath, and set to work.<\/p>\n<p>The driveway isn&#8217;t that long &#8211; as these things go &#8211; but it was long enough. And it&#8217;s brick &#8211; meaning that shoveling was a careful affair. I cleared the space in front of garage, then the neighbors garage, then the middle section, then around my car, then the rest of the drive, then a path down the sidewalk in front of the houses, then my steps, then the neighbors&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Which is when I heard the sound of a garage door opener and my neighbor&#8217;s son walks up. He&#8217;s amazed by how much I&#8217;ve done and says he&#8217;ll get out the snow blower as soon as he clears his truck.<\/p>\n<p>By this point I&#8217;m wiped out and ready to call it a day. But, instead, I pull my car into the garage and clear their back porch while he goes sailing past with the blower.<\/p>\n<p>I was a little cranky &#8211; I mean, I had already done all the work and he was going to &#8220;wrap it up&#8221; with the snow blower. And then I saw him head down the street to clear all the sidewalks, all the walkways, and all the driveways. Of everyone on the block.<\/p>\n<p>So, yeah.<\/p>\n<p>I did a little more work and then realized he didn&#8217;t have gloves. I offered him some and he declined and I told him I was done for the day.<\/p>\n<p>I headed back in, stripped off in the basement and put all my dirty, wet, snow-covered and sweaty clothes right in the washer.<\/p>\n<p>And then I had some lunch. I saw him leave in his truck a bit later as I got ready to go to the eye doctor.<\/p>\n<p>I got there a little early, checked in, and waited for my appointment time &#8211; then waited a bit more. The assistant did a few tests and then took me to the exam room, where I waited some more.<\/p>\n<p>For about a 1\/2 hour.<\/p>\n<p>Then a guy came in and introduced himself as a optometry student. He did the exam and spent about 100 hours shining a beam of light slightly brighter than the surface of the sun into my eye. And then the other one. Eventually, he finished up and I asked if he could see what I was thinking &#8211; or if he&#8217;d seen my soul.<\/p>\n<p>He left and I waited some more.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the doctor came in and did a shorter version of the same exam and then told me that I was at risk for glaucoma. Oh, nice. Thank you for that. They suggested more tests and sent me on my way to pick out new frames.<\/p>\n<p>1. I first asked about glasses with magnetic clip on frames. Nope, my insurance doesn&#8217;t cover those.<\/p>\n<p>2. I then picked out some nice frames &#8211; though the color was too bright. Nope, they don&#8217;t make those any more. The company might have some extra ones laying around, but it would take longer to ship them.<\/p>\n<p>3. I find another pair that I don&#8217;t hate &#8211; because, really, I didn&#8217;t like any of the frames they had &#8211; and I ask if the earpiece comes in a different color or if there is a similar frame. The guys comes back with a bunch of frames in what I&#8217;m guessing is a shoe box to see if can find some different ear pieces to swap out and I give up and settle for another extra-plain style.<\/p>\n<p>Even with my insurance my debit card begins quietly weeping. The best part was when I showed them photos of a previous Halloween costume with costume contact lenses &#8211; the staff thought that was pretty great. My new glasses won&#8217;t be in for a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n<p>So, on my day off:<\/p>\n<p>1. Terror in the bathroom<br \/>\n2. Thunder(cat)&#8217;s Bad Day and gum disease.<br \/>\n3. Mountains of snow and stuck in my driveway.<br \/>\n4. Staring into the sun and being threatened with glaucoma.<\/p>\n<p>Can I please go back to work tomorrow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After getting Thunder(cat) in the house, I bundled back up and headed for the driveway. I share the driveway with the neighbor and he usually clears it with a slow-blower. Today, though, he wasn&#8217;t home and it was all up to me. I grabbed a shovel, took a deep breath, and set to work. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1585"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1587,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions\/1587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}