I Can See Clearly Now....

Remember the song from the 70's? Or those of you too young may remember this more recent one. Well this song pretty much sums it up for me since I had LASIK surgery 1.5 weeks ago!

Yep, on August 2nd I had LASIK surgery and no longer need to wear contacts or glasses! When I went down for my pre-op appointment, they recommended I just have my right eye done. My left eye vision was not nearly as poor as my right, and I hate when people preface the conversation with the doctor said "at your age,"  patients usually come out of the surgery needing reading glasses.  By doing LASIK strictly on my right, this would allow my left eye to be dominant for reading, and the right for distance. And voila, the doc was right, I need no glasses at all!  Because of only doing the one, my distance vision is not as sharp as it could be, but I'm not complaining. When I eventually need reading glasses, as most people do, I can choose to have the surgery done on my left eye too.

The down side? Can't think of any!  Here are my top five reasons why I recommend getting the surgery done:

1.     NO CONTACTS OR GLASSES!

2.     Absolutely pain free surgery.

3.     Quick recovery.  My eye felt a little scratchy the first day, but woke up the next morning not feeling anything different at all.

4.     I can sleep in the car without my contacts drying out, swim next week with the girls on vacation, while being able to see, not having glasses slide down my sweaty nose in the smog of China, etc.

5.     I got to wear these cool glasses to bed for 7 nights, or at least I was supposed to...

Following the procedure you are to sleep for six hours (with the help of a sedative). Mike snapped this of me dozing on the drive home.  You are to wear these glasses when sleeping so that you don't accidentally hit or rub your eye while you are asleep.  I let my pride get in the way and only wore them the first two.  After that I was a counselor at our high school church camp (more on that later), so chose not to be seen in them! But now I am posting it on the Internet for the world to see...Mike had me save them for him to wear when mountain biking!

For part of the pre-op, they do a DNA swab for macular degeneration, which my grandfather has. I was happy to learn that my results were "normal" for that screening. On the downside, I was told that my eyes have a yellowish tint, which is an early sign of cataracts.  Since I am on the young side for that, they recommend I always wear good UV glasses while outside.  No, not the pair above! It was a good excuse for me to buy a good pair though. Nothing but the clearance rack best at Sunglass Hut for me!

More DIY...

Remember this? How about this? Well we've been at it again.  What now, you ask?  Well you might not know it, but Mike grew up the son of a logger, so he put his knowledge and experience from summers long ago to use, and brought down two trees in our backyard before one of them came down on their own, like this one back in February. Don't you love his safety gear? That's an old Mariner helmet one of the boys got at a game when they were younger! Good thing he put it on, as a branch that broke off as the tree was coming down, hit his head. Mike explained that in logging terms, it's called a Widow-maker. Glad this wasn't the case.

And I got this shot as the second one went down.  They were tall trees, as they went across the entire width of our back yard (one even more than that, but thankfully the top snapped off on its way down, or else it would have taken the side fence out).

I know, not very exciting pictures, but I was impressed at how well my husband maneuvered the two trees between the 16 tall trees still remaining in our yard! Since we no longer have a wood burning fireplace, Mike and Josh helped a friend cut and fill up the back of his pickup truck. Glad it will be put to good use.

As for me, my latest DIY job was a bit less strenuous, but stressful enough for me. Martha Stewart I am not!  When Mike replaced the molding and doors in most of the house, he skipped the girls room. His excuse reason was that they do not take care of things well enough, so he will do it when they are older.  Here's proof on one of the doors I took down...

I decided to keep only one of the three doors on their closet, turning the one left into a magnetic whiteboard.  I read a lot of reviews, watched how-to YouTube videos, and ran with it.  The first step was to put on multiple coats of magnetic primer.

Next I mixed the two cans of white board paint. The can states to apply three coats within one hour of mixing paint, or the white board will not work.  Well I did five coats, and still couldn't cover all the primer, so some black shows through. 

The magnet is not the strongest, and everything I have read about the white board says don't leave the marks up for more than 48 hrs., or they will be tough to get off.  With that said, the girls are loving it, and it does make the room look much neater and brighter.

The photo looks yellow, but in reality it is much brighter.  Even knowing neither magnets or white board works as well as claimed, I would do it again.  I have decided to write a different scripture on the white board everyday, to encourage the girls. I hope it is something they look forward to and that I remember to do.

Not sure we are going to get to the bathroom DIY project we had thought we were doing this summer. It may turn into a fall project, as we are running out of summer break, and we have some off-island time ahead.  Stay tuned...