What Else Could It Be?

I had a good feeling about yesterday, and it turned out to be pretty stinking nice.

The Boss had a tolerable day at work, and we went to the eye doctor. By my count, this guy was the eighth doctor that I have seen about my eyes in the last five years. It never fails. They hear my history, shrug a little and say "Let me take a look". Then I put my head up to the microscope and they turn on the light and inevitably exclaim something similar to "Wow". Occasionally I get a "Hmmm", but mostly it's "Wow". My favorite is waiting for the techs who do the initial exams to try a peek. I've heard more than one tech spout off without thinking, "That's really bad!"

It's ok, I've heard it before.

They also like to tell me how unusual it is for a cornea to go into rejection within the first month after transplant. But they do it with a questioning tone that says "Are you sure you're not putting me on?".

"Nope, I really went into rejection within three weeks."

"Did they put you on steroids?"

"Enough to shame Barry Bonds"

"And injection?"

"Close to twenty of 'em. And oral steroids. And intravenous. And about seven different eye drops." (That usually spins their heads like in the exorcist).

This kid (who looked about 12 years old) yesterday looked at the topographical chart of my eyes and freaked out.

"Are you sure your doctor told you to get contacts? Your astigmatism is awfully steep. Glasses might be a better fit for you."

"Do you know what glasses with my prescription cost?" I asked him.

"Oh, yeah. I guess those would run you about three hundred at the discount stores."

"Tell me about it. The insurance crooks...er.. company covers the cost of contacts."

Then he tried to convince me that contacts were a real pain in the neck. I wanted to say to him, "Yeah, it's even worse when you are allergic to the soft lenses", but I didn't.

Maybe I should have, because he then got really adamant about convincing me that contacts were sometimes difficult to use and required significant investments in effort and attention to care.

I admit I kinda wanted to slap him upside the head. Some how I kept from saying, "Do you have any idea about the time and effort that have been put into the care of my eyes? Do you know how crippling this has been to my family, to my standard of living, my self-esteem? Do you know how long I've wandered around in an impressionist painting? Don't talk to me about "effort" and "care", Pal. If it takes an hour a day to put 'em in and an hour a day to take 'em out, I think I can manage to fit it into my freaking schedule!"

The front half of my tongue may never grow back, but I kept from being a jerk. It's a good thing that the Boss was in the hallway trying to sort out her third call from work at the time, or she might have skinned the kid and used his pelt for a cellphone cover.

Anyway, once I convinced him that my doc really did want me to get contacts, I finally got to see the real doctor. He hit me with the numbing drops that always make my lids feel stuck together, looked into the microscope and said...

"Huh"

Gets 'em every time.

He went over my chart, asked suspiciously if I was sure that the doc wanted lenses for both eyes, and excused himself from the room to read my doctors notes.

I looked in the general direction of where the Boss was sitting.

"Ain't sounding too positive, is it?"

"Have faith" she replied wisely.

The Doctor came back in with a box of sample 'fitting' lenses and said "Let's see what we can do".

He tinkered around in the box for a minute, found what he wanted and stuck it to my right eye.

Now over the years I have lost a lot of my blink reflex. When people are jamming fingers, lenses, probes, pressure gauges, needles, and scalpels in your face five or ten times a week, you learn not to blink much. But my self-imposed boycott of the medical profession seems to have allowed it to return with a vengeance, because he stuck that lens in and my lid clamped down like a prison door and refused to open. While he went back to the box of lenses for the left eye, I tried blinking it open, but it had watered up pretty good and I wasn't seeing much of anything.

The doctor came back over and opened my left eye, had me look straight ahead, and stuck a lens on.

I blinked. The lens shifted. I blinked again.

And then I saw the most beautiful thing in the Lord's vast universe.

Sitting twenty feet away, in the most stunning clarity I am capable of imagining... sat my spectacular, shinning, sainted, wife.

I must have stared, because she laughed.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Just reflecting on the fact that the first thing I've seen in nearly half a decade is the most perfect sight in all creation."

That one made her cry (Sorry sweetie, had to be written).

I live my whole life to a hundred years, I'll not forget that sudden shift in perception. With a day to reflect on it I've come to a couple of conclusions.

First, it was not a coincidence and it was not medical science that provided that moment, it was a miracle promised to me in a priesthood blessing so many years ago. As I said yesterday, what difference between clay and plastic?

It was also not a coincidence that what I saw was the Boss. All the years she's suffered and sacrificed, and worked herself to death, and I'm the one who's rewarded with an image of her as she really is.

How do you pay that back?

Third, there is a spiritual parallel to blindness (Yeah, I know, of course there is or the Savior wouldn't have used it himself. But it got a little personal for me yesterday). We come to this earth having forgotten all we knew in the pre-existence. Our test (this life) is like a maze. We look at it from ground view and all we see are walls, dead ends and more obstacles. How do we get to the end?

We require guides who see the end from the beginning. Who looks on the maze from above?

We have to pray for personal revelation; study the scriptures and seek the council of Prophets and Priesthood leaders, then learn to listen to the Holy Ghost for guidance before we can begin to understand why we are here and how we can successfully return to our Father in Heaven's presence.

If we do these things, we find our way past the obstacles and onto the straight and narrow path that leads to Eternal Salvation.

And every once in a while, for some reason or another, something changes. Be it the need to overcome trials, intense study, or simply as a reward for increasing faith, the Lord applies a spiritual contact lens and for a brief moment we get to glimpse the world as it really is. The way that he sees it, in it's perfection. A second of eternal perspective from above the maze that allows us the rare chance to know the beginning from the end.

How do you pay that back?

It only lasted a moment. Much too short in retrospect. I could have stared all day. Lots of things I wanted to see. But the tests had to be done and then it was time to take the lens out. I wish I'd have shut my eye and stumbled out the door with it.

But I got a glimpse of what I used to know, a view of eternity sitting twenty feet away, and it was worth it.

Then the doctor promised that by next Friday, he'd have a pair of lenses that I could take home to test. 20/30 in the left eye. 20/25 in the right.

I'll be patient. Miracles from the Lord are worth waiting for.

I'll eventually have my vision that clear all the time. And my eyes will work again, too.



I can hardly wait.

A Good Day

Squizzle is teething again.

He's been running a fever since last night and he is in a really grouchy mood this morning. "Pitiful" might be the better word for it, actually. He just sits there staring at me with a pathetic stream of slobber dripping from his chin and these awfully heartbreaking moans. I know he's really feeling bad because I offered him his all time favorite treat in the universe and he threw it on the floor with out so much as a taste. If Squizzle isn't downing Popsicles, it's a pretty good indicator that something is wrong.

Today is the last day of school for the girls and they are thrilled beyond comprehension with the fact that they did not have to wear their uniforms today. Funny how one person's greatest joy can be their father's greatest misery (OK, I admit that's a little melodramatic). I wish school would never let out. I wish Peff could go to all day kindergarten in the fall and Squizz could find a free all day preschool. I'd get some writing done those days, I can tell you!

Had to pause there for a minute because Squizzle decided that now would be an excellent time to gag himself into a barf-fest. That does it, I'm sure he's getting new chompers, he got mad when I tried to wipe his mouth off. Ah, this ought to be a spectacular weekend for him. What was I saying about how one sister's time of joy is a little brother's weekend of misery?

I applied for a couple of more jobs yesterday, though neither of them look very promising. I did find a reputable publisher that had online directions for manuscript submissions, so that gave me a little hope. I was thinking I'd have to find an agent before I could get a publisher to look at anything so this was good news.

Finally, today is the big day for the eye doctor. At around three thirty today, I'll go spend about an hour and a half getting poked and prodded and set up for what may very well be a miracle of Biblical proportions. I challenge you, what is the difference between the Savior making a clay of mud and restoring the sight of the blind and Him directing a doctor to make a clay of plastic and doing the same thing for me?

I know that sometimes the answers to our prayers don't come in the way we expect (see Teacher, English and Teacher, Seminary) but things have a way of coming out in the wash. I have a good feeling about today and I am not the least worried. Today is going to be a very good day.

I don't recall the last time I could say that at 9:00 in the morning!

What's Up, Nerds?

I managed to plant my foot firmly in my mouth yesterday. Well, I manage to do it most days, but yesterday was a particularly good one.

I've mentioned the seven kids under five that filled my morning; and by and large, it wasn't as bad as it might have been. They made some messes and did fight over the video games. But they've done worse. Much worse.

Right before Motor was scheduled to get here, I was in the kitchen washing dishes and heard a knock. I figured it was Motor, and so did the kids because they all started shouting, "Motor!" as they made their customary mass stampede down the stairs to open the door. I performed my usual Runt greeting by shouting from the kitchen at pretty much the top of my lungs:

"You ugly, old nerd! Get your big booty upstairs and let's have some fun!"

Imagine my horror when I turned the corner from the kitchen and found my neighbor's mother coming up the stairs. She had arrived to pick his children up and take them back to the hospital to meet their new sister.

Ooops.

Marshmallows and crackers all over the floor, a blanket/pillow fort in one corner, and a full half dozen Destroying Angels hauling butt down the steps to answer the door unsupervised. Then there's me, standing at the top of the stairs in my customary house togs of flip-flops, sweat shorts and a less than spotless t-shirt that was soaked from the navel down with sloshed dishwater. The poster-perfect image of a semi frazzled househusband in his natural habitat.

Probably not my finest moment.

To her credit, she did not seem the least fazed by my um...creative greeting?...and she thanked me for taking care of her grandchildren. I apologized profusely, and she seemed to understand, but I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when she got back to the hospital and asked her son if he knew exactly what kind of lunatic he'd left his kids with.

But I'm sure I'm the only one of you that's ever had a day like that, right?

Gotta go, the job hunt beckons and I must answer her siren signal...

Mormon Mr Mom and How Marshmallows Make It Better

Spent a few minutes hiding from all the runts and reading the Paper. There was an article in the Deseret News about Mormon Mommy Bloggers and a network they have created for support and to boost readership. Since I am still an avowed technophobe that has yet to figure out how to link articles beyond cut and paste, I'll have to just paste it in and let you all figure out how to get there on your own.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700036190/Mormon-moms-connect-through-blogs.html

Now, I know that there are plenty of Mommy blogs and even a good number of Mormon Mommy blogs. There are also a fair batch of Mr. Mom blogs (though most of those are pretty crass and often display questionable humour, even by my "flexible" standards).

But I would love to see another Mormon Mr Mom blog. I have looked and am yet to find anyone else writing about the challenges of being a stay-at-home-Dad in a society that usually deems such circumstances anathema. I always knew I was weird, I just didn't think I was that weird.

While I enjoy being a unique voice, I would not mind the added publicity and especially the extra blog traffic that might come from an association with such a community. Anyone familiar with a group would be helping me out a lot by pointing the way. Things have slowed down around here, no doubt due to my long vacation earlier this spring, and I'd like to build readership back up. If friday's session with the contact fitter doesn't work out, this blog may have to become my source of income. And right now you readers make as much off this thing as I do.

Anyway, as I sat pondering my lonewolf status, I received a steady stream of complainants to the table. Each of them offered a familiar gripe; Peff wouldn't share the video game controller. I solved the problem the way I usually do: I turned the games off.

This produced a reaction similar to the high frequency noise disruption devices employed by tactical S.W.A.T. teams. I have been to an AC/DC show, and Angus' screaming guitar cannot touch this wailing in terms of pitch, sustainability, and sheer decibel level. I am sure that I have told you before that this is how the walls of Jericho came down. Destroying Angels, indeed.

Since I was trying to formulate a few more thoughts for this post, I chose the chicken's way out and bribed those without a controller with marshmallows and green goldfish crackers (ain't that a contradiction in terms?). The screeching stopped immediately.

****Editor's Note
If I were to put a dose of Ritalin in each treat, could I then spell it marshmellows? HaHaHa! Oh, put down the phone. It was funny and you know it. Child Services people are all at lunch right now anyway. And beside, they already know all about me. And this was strictly a theoretical sidebar not actual practice! Shame on you for believing everything you read on the Internet!
****

My favorite part of the morning so far has been Reaggers couture fashion. She came over wearing blue and pink flower-pattern pedal pushers, a matching pink top, sandals, and of course, a pink and blue ski cap. I wish my camera had batteries right now.She is also riding a stick horse that seems to enjoy marshmallows as well. At least I am assuming that is where the mallows are going, because she has been asking for more at least twice as often as the other kids.

Another high point is that Squizzle has learned that if he walks up to the side of the table and reaches from his tippy-toes, he can push the button on the side of the laptop that opens the CDROM drive. He thinks this is utterly hilarious. I find it uber annoying. At least he's not screeching.

I gotta go. I think I hear the telltale sign of another marshmallow fight beginning.

Where the H is that Ritalin?

Expect the Interesting

I love Chaos.

We've been close for many years, and my time spent playing with four year olds has led me to believe that Chaos is one of the great driving forces of the universe.

Yesterday, there was no Chaos. The Boss had the day off, and we went to the eye doctor. There, I was told that it is the doctor's belief that a new set of hard contact lenses may be sufficient to return my vision. Or at least enough of it that I might return to a functional level of society. He even said the "D" word.

Drive.

Yeah.

As in "drive a car".

"Do I dare disturb the Universe?" (Ah, J. Alfred. You and me both, buddy).

I am still in a state of shock; and to some extent, disbelief. I have spent five years living in a world that looks as though it was painted by Monet. The thought of emerging from that makes me a little giddy. The possibilities that the doctor's pronouncement opened are too far reaching to contemplate appropriately.

What if the Boss didn't have to drive every where we went? What's it like to go somewhere by yourself? What kind of job opportunities might there be for someone with eyesight?

The only person happier than me to ponder these mysteries is my wife. After the crushing darkness of the last month, that twenty minutes with the eye Doctor was a high-intensity laser beam of hope.

Fatdaddy in the driver's seat. Who'd a thunk it? It ain't a sure thing, but I choose to dream. Joy is often short lived, and Chaos is quick to return.

Like at about ten or ten thirty today when I will have seven children under the age of five invade my house (Shudder).

I'll have Reaggers, Bub, Peff, and Squizzle as normal. Then Motor is coming because it's Wednesday. Then some friends from the neighborhood are having their third child today, and I am taking their other two for the morning.

I told you me and Chaos were buddies. If nothing else, it ough to provide some solid post fodder. Jericho's walls fell under much less noise and confusion. Could be very dangerous. I'd better post this before I'm buried under rubble.

Pray for me.

Up a Tree

Went to a family function last night at the home of the Boss's parents. It was a good time, if not a little crowded. We finished family business and calender arrangement, then sent the kids out to play while we did some visiting. After a while the monkeys (there were 10 or 12 of 'em last night) all started filtering back into the house to get ready to leave. As soon as it started getting dark, the Boss and I were getting ready to go ourselves when it dawned on the Boss that we hadn't seen Peff for a while.

"Go tell your brother that it's time to come in and get ready to go", she told Haggis.

After a minute she came in with an obviously irritated Peff.

"What's the matter with you?" I asked.

"They put me in a tree and I couldn't get down and no one could hear me and I'm mad!" He shouted, near tears. Apparently, his sisters and some cousins put him up in one of Grandpa's trees and left him for dead. He was more than a little upset with them. What irritated me was that I had asked Haggis about a dozen times to go back out and keep an eye on the kids and she managed to avoid doing it by hiding away out of sight. Then when I got after her about it, she started sulking and getting mad at me like I was some kind of jerk for expecting her to take responsibility. After Haggis left the room, my sister in law, who is a veteran of three teenage daughters laughed and said "I've been there before; it's normal and she'll eventually grow out of it." My reply was that she will if she lives long enough. Her current life expectancy is not looking so good. Next week would be a pretty good goal to shoot for.

But on the good side, "Up a Tree" seemed like a pretty cool post title, no?

We were supposed to go with my side to the cemetery in Orem where my grandmother and uncle are buried, and then to West Jordan City Cemetery where my brother is to do the annual sod-trimming and headstone scrub, but the Boss spent all last night dealing with work related problems. She has not had a single night of uninterrupted sleep in at least a month. I begged out to let her sleep in a little today, but she's been getting text messages and phone calls non-stop all day long.

Funny, she was almost sure she asked to use a vacation day today. I guess that means she's only required to spend three quarters of her day solving problems instead of all of it. I HATE CELL PHONES!!!!! The worst part is they call and say, "I'm sorry to bother you..."

Then don't. It's not that tough. Figure it out yourselves, 'cause the Good Lord gave you a brain before you coated it with malted hops and bong resin.

Along employment lines, we have some big things in the works that we are really hoping work out (Isn't that a familiar sentence?). Any spare prayers you have or Job leads you might provide or just plain old encouragement would be welcome right now.

Since it's a holiday today, I'll keep it short. I hope you all have an excellent Memorial day and it charges the old batteries for another week at the old grindstone.