How to explain this to Mom?

So, last week I was told (by my mother, obviously) that there weren’t enough photos in the post. I responded and told her that nothing had changed in the week, and as a result there were no new photos to share.

Guess what. Same thing this time.

We’re still waiting for the shower glass, and we haven’t fully moved in upstairs, though we have somewhat moved in up there.

So just for mom, here’s a photo of a Philly cheesesteak pizza from a couple of weeks back:

That’s right. Philadelphia cheesesteak pizza. I made a snarky comment about some leftover steak, and voila, Anne made it real. It was pretty good, too.

But ok. That won’t do. To keep Mom happy and perhaps entertain the rest of you, here are a bunch of photos I just took. These show the place as it looks right now.

That’s the main bedroom. The closets are full, but we’re not unpacking the books that go on the shelves just yet.

Anne’s temporary office, until they get half the roof work done. It will become Anne’s music & craft room.

Anne’s future permanent office. This is waiting for the first half of the roofing work to finish, and then she’ll move into here.

The small bathroom. Tiny but functional.

The main (en suite) bath. This is the one waiting on the shower glass.

That’s the entryway, with the rug and the storage thingy restored. Can you tell where Tinkerbelle sleeps now that the rug is back?

And that’s the guest bedroom where we have moved a bunch of stuff to get it out of the way for now. Eventually it will get set back up and guests will be able to use it, but at the moment it’s a storage facility.

It may not be obvious, but most things the contractors are involved with are done. In reality, everything is done except the shower glass. And they will be back to fix the roof. As for me, I still have to do some paint touch-ups, which half explains why we’re not fully unpacked yet. The other half is Anne not wanting to be working beneath the contractors when they are reworking the roof.

Anyway, back to the shower glass. The story goes like this:

The shower measurement went well, and the contractors confirmed the order as soon as they could. But there was a delay, and we were told that they had trouble getting the glass. That seemed odd, as we’re dealing with a glass shop. How could they have a problem getting glass? Seems like a pretty serious issue.

But finally they gave us an installation date of last Thursday, June 4th, between 1 and 3 in the afternoon. We dutifully waited. No installers showed up. At 3pm I texted the contractor to say, "Uhh… no glass guys," and (as I said last week) he called them and talked to someone (not his regular contact) who told him that one of the glass pieces — the one above the pony wall, which is just a rectangle — was cut incorrectly. How that could be wrong is hard to fathom, but OK. In any case, they would rush a reorder, and the install would happen in the next week.

Confused? Me too.

So the weekend came and went, and Monday and Tuesday too. I reached out to the contractors who said they would call the glass company again. They did so, and on Wednesday (June 10th) we had a new story.

This time the problem wasn’t the glass over the pony wall. Instead, it was the door that wasn’t properly cut. And it seems that any rush they placed on the order didn’t matter, because there would be no glass installation this week either. At the time they expected the glass to arrive in their hands on Friday, June 12th. (That’s today, as this goes out.)

As I write this, we’re still waiting to learn more and (hopefully!) get an installation date next week. But if Murphy has anything to say about this — and he usually does — the new door will be cut incorrectly again.

Also, the contractor tells me that all the glass shops in Metro Vancouver use one big glass supplier, and apparently that supplier does all the fabrication as well. All the glass shops do is measure and install. They don’t actually cut glass. I had no clue that was the case, but here we are.

That’s where things stand. Please tune in again next week for an exciting new episode in the completely unclear story of the shower glass installation.

But it’s not like I’ve been idle, just waiting on the glass guys. Oh no. I’ve spent a ton of time updating the community association website. At times this volunteer job seems to take six to eight hours a day, and that’s been the case for a while now. Still, it keeps me off the streets. Or something

One of you gentle readers asked if I could share the link to my personal profile page when it was up. I mentioned those were part of the work, and a few are done, or at least done-ish. So here you go:

Jeff’s Profile Page for the BCA.

And finally, I would like to share a public service announcement. This should have been in last week’s post, but I completely failed to do that. Don’t ask me how I managed to forget, but I did.

Wednesday, June 3, began like any other day. I got up, stumbled downstairs, fed the dog, ate a banana, and made my first cup of coffee-shaped liquid. (Trust me, you do not want to know.) Then I fired up the computer to get through the morning email and news feed review, as well as the daily updates to the community association website.

I’d been sitting there for a few minutes when I noted that my right eye seemed to be working harder than usual. Odd, I thought. I cleaned my glasses, but things still felt off. And then, as I looked at my monitor, something moved in the lower right corner of the field of vision in my right eye. Well, "moved" is the wrong word. “Shimmered” might be better.

I sat back and took it in.

Way out, down and to the right, my peripheral vision did something strange. It was like a set of black lines in an arc squirmed over the top of my desk. I could still see over there, and if I turned to look at the spot directly, the shimmer moved as well. It stayed in place in my field of view as I moved my head, and it looked nothing like the floaters I’ve had.

I pondered retinal detachments and ocular migraines for a while. Nothing hurt, and my vision was otherwise fine, but this was definitely new, and it could be a harbinger of something bad.

I told Anne about it, and she agreed. It was time to call the eye doctor.

I called. They had a cancellation, and a doctor could see me at 1:30pm. I thanked them and put the appointment on my calendar.

But even as I was hanging up the phone, the shimmer was changing. What had been an arc of perhaps a quarter circle down and to the right expanded. The arc got longer. It grew up and around, forming about half a circle, all still on the outer edge of the peripheral vision in my right eye. Then the bottom of the shimmer/arc started disappearing, going back to normal vision, and in a minute or less my vision was back to normal. No shimmer, no distortion, nothing.

Obviously I did not cancel the eye doctor appointment. That would be silly. But I suspected they were going to dilate my pupils as part of their investigation, so I took the bus to the appointment rather than drive.

And I was right. A very nice doctor, who was already running behind, saw me anyway — this could be an emergency after all — and scrutinized both my eyeballs very closely. Then she gave me the drops to dilate my pupils and sent me off to wait while she dealt with the next patient. Then she brought me back in and went over my eyeballs a second time.

The upshot: what I had was probably a partial posterior vitreous detachment, or PVD.

I had no idea either. This is just one of those weird things that can happen to those of us who get older.

Anyway, the short version is as you age, the goop that fills your eyeballs gets thicker and more like a gel. And at some point it can pull away from the retina, leaving a void and an edge to the goop that distorts your vision. In my case, the arc shape I saw was apparently the giveaway. But also in my case, it had slopped back against the retina, so she couldn’t actually see it.

These things aren’t harmful, however, similar things can happen if you get retinal detachment or holes in the retina. If you experience any oddities in your vision, you need to see an eye doctor ASAP to be sure it’s not something serious. I got lucky.

They recommend a follow-up exam a few weeks after a PVD happens to have another look for more serious issues, and I was already booked for my annual exam at the right time, so I will see my regular eye doctor about this later in the month.

Oh, and because I’ve had one in one eye, apparently I am more likely to get one in the other eye as well. So there’s that.

Honestly, why didn’t someone give me the book listing all the strange things that happen as you age? I am getting older and walking into it blind. (Well, not literally blind, but you know what I mean.) I should have advance warning about anything that is going to fail in some weird way. Or any way, for that matter. It’s only fair!

If you’ve been hogging the book, now is the time to share it.

Thank you!