Flashes of Light

On Saturday I started seeing little flashes of light in my left eye way in the very left corner. I didn't know what it was right at first but it has continued. Since I had Lasik in January I was a little concerned so I went to the dr.

Here's what's going on pretty much:

My retina has "traction" which is just kind of like when you stretch out a balloon. This makes it tear more easy. The Dr. said that pretty much everyone has traction but since i have symptoms, that means that the vitreous gel is pulling against one of the walls of the retina stressing the nerves and making them fire. Hence the flashes of light. If it pulls hard enough, it can tear the retina which if not caught early enough can lead to a detached retina which can cause vision loss.

Right now he didn't see anything and it can self correct itself. If it isn't better in a week or it gets worse I need to go back in to make sure it didn't tear.

This has nothing to do with the Lasik though as that deals with the cornea and this is on the retina.

Last night Adam did some more work on the roof with his dad.


while I tried to water the iris. The water tank wasn't full enough to have enough force to drain so I needed to re-fill it. Once again, living out of 3 places makes things harder than they should be. It took me 1/2 an hour to take the ball off of the hitch on the pickup. It's a hard thing to do w/o the right tools. Once I finally found the right tool (in the last place I looked of course after driving all over town) it was hard to get off also because when I turned the bolt, the ball turned also. Ugh. Anyway, after FOREVER I finally got the water tank hooked up, filled up

and the trees watered.


It's dreary and rainy out today


but I love it!

Suds

Being married to Adam has changed me. I always thought he had a obsession with washing cars - now, when the car is dirty I can't stand it either. :)

We decided to go wash the car last night at his parents house. Even though it will get dirty again sitting outside close to the Co-op Adam says "It's ALWAYS going to get dirty again. At least it will be clean for a little while." When we got there his dad was up on the neighbors roof tearing off shingles so he decided he wanted to go help and the car washing was left up to me....and Abby of course. Abby is Adam's 6 year old sister. Abby joins me when I'm washing our car and 1/2 way through decides that her mom's van needs washed also.

Abby: I think we should wash the van too. It's really dirty. See right here. (She points to some dust)

Me: Ok Abby. Move the bucket out of the way and I'll switch the vehicles.

So I move our car and back the van out of the garage. Abby mans the hose and I go to grab a rag out of the bucket.

Me: Uh Abby, did you put more soap in the bucket? (As I grab a rag out of what I'm pretty sure is now no longer a bucket of sudsy water but a bucket with an 80/20 ratio of soap to water.)

Abby: Yep! (As she happily waters down the van)

Me: I think that what we needed was maybe a little more water in the bucket but not so much soap.

A few minutes later Abby/Adam's dad walks by.

Terry: The van looks good! Almost a new car!

Abby: That's because we used a lot of soap!

:)

The weekend report

Friday started out on a low note when we were informed that our closing date on the new house was being pushed back until Sept. 17th. There isn't anything wrong that we know of that caused this. I'm guessing it's just because it's just a bank that is busy and impersonal and don't really care they are pushing us back.

But the day got better when we attended a friends crab feed. Our friends boyfriend works on a ship based out of Houston (not exactly sure what he does) and he brought back crab, oysters, shrimp and mussels and cooked them in a big cooker with all the veggies and seasonings and then dumped them on the kitchen island. It was pretty interesting but also quite scary when your food can look at you :)






A couple of our friends brought their puppy who is so in love with his momma.

He followed her everywhere.
He kinda likes dad too.

But really he's looking for mom who went inside.

We did get a good family photo


and Kobie ended up being our entertainment for a while at the end of the night when he decided to smoke a cigar.


No, not really. It's a bone he stole from the other dog that was there and it got rubbed in the dirt. Sure did look like he was smoking though.

Saturday was just full of little things here and there. I cleaned all the cardboard boxes out of the new garage that the previous owners left. There were a ton of them! They filled the entire back of the Rav4. I did a lot of laundry running around. Adam worked on moving some dirt around the lot and our neighbor over there came over and told him where there was some more dirt that he could go get. The driveway now has nice sloped sides. We went out to dinner at El Bee's in Waterloo which has Adams all time favorite meal.

Sunday we went to church for the first time in Mead. We went to Alma Lutheran where we were greeted in perfect small town fashion :) The greeters we knew well and had said they were wondering who bought our house and had just found out it was us. Everyone welcomed us when we shook hands for peace. As I was walking out the door I felt a tap on the shoulder and turned around to find the lady that was sitting next to us on the pew. She said "Hi! Are you new in town?" :) Then they said they were having cookies on the lawn if we wanted to stay but we had a lot to do so we left. I went back to the apartment and planned on doing some painting.

Now, living in a small space with all your belongings spread around 3 different locations can be frustrating. I had already made a couple trips to get some stuff needed and didn't really want to make any more.

What do you do when you have a wall with a million little holes because the previous owner must have tacked a bunch of stuff on it...

...and you have joint compound but no putty knife?
Use a paint stirrer!


You have a roller pan with old paint flakes in it and no pan liners?
Put a grocery bag over it!


You need to take off the elecrical/light switch covers and can't find a screwdriver?
Use a butter knife!

Of course after your husband comes home he knows exactly where a screwdriver is. Why wouldn't there be one in the box that contains all that used to be in our junk drawer.

Missy is going to go crazy in this small apartment. I took her to Adam's parents house on Saturday because the family was at a wedding so it was nice and quiet for her to adjust and she had a lot of fun. I left her there for a little while and when I went back I couldn't find her anywhere. There is a false wall in the basement that she found her way into. She's finding all things possible to keep her busy in the apartment too - this is as high as she can get in there and I'm pretty sure she's yelling in her head right at this moment "I'm queen of the world!" (think Titanic - corny I know but it seems to apply here)

Workin' on the lot

Last night we spent the evening on the lot. I dug up a couple of the iris at the new house so we can kill the rest of the back yard but I can still have a couple of them and added them to my collection. I now have a little "iris garden" in the back corner of the lot.


The tank in the foreground is just a water tank for me to water them and the trees with.



Adam finished mowing the lot also.

It's been a little neglected lately if you can't tell.

Every time we mow the lot a ton of birds suddenly show up. Supper time for them! It's hard to see all the birds in the pic so I circled them in red.


All the trees we planted this spring are doing well!

Backyard

The backyard is also way overgrown BUT it ALSO has many more creepy, crawly, slithery things. We worked in the backyard last night. We didn't get as big of a transformation there than the pics of the front yard show and we still have a lot to do.











This tree will have to go

It's a nice tree but the only thing it's going to do is ruin the fence and grow into the power lines above.

These trees will also probably have to go. They are dead 1/2 way up - they are killing each other and nothing was done about it early enough.

Note Adam and his cool chainsaw.


Plus no grass grows under them and they make a mess in the yard with the needles and pine cones. There are large trees behind them in the neighbors yard that should provide enough shade. They strung a power line above our back yard to the neighbors that goes under these trees so that will make taking them down tricky.

I found some more flowers that I don't know what they are


Adam wants to take a bobcat and tiller to the back yard so I tried to weed these so he could see that they would look nice once cleaned up and we can save them but when I went to pick up an antique tire rim thing they had there I'm assuming to plant flowers in I found what I would guess is a nest of baby snakes. I've run across way more snakes in this yard than I would like to but I'm hoping that when it's not so overgrown they will find somewhere else to live.

The reason Adam wants to just tear out everything in the backyard and start fresh is because of there really isn't even any grass there for us to work with even if we got everything else cleared out. The pine trees killed a lot of the grass and right now it's covered with these weeds:


We've acquired an old wagon


and I've acquired some more iris. I wonder what color they will turn out to be!


Here's all the trees we've taken out of the yard so far


The white shed in the background is also ours. It def. has some nice curtains don't ya think?

Here's what it looks like inside. We got some nice shelving!


Maybe we'll be purchasing a new AC unit - this one looks a little old. We'll have to see how it preforms.


It's the deluxe high efficiency model. Anyone else notice how back in the day they loved the word deluxe?

We rounded out the night by breaking the trimmer so we quit and went to mow our lot and plant my iris' before they die. We only got 1/2 of the lot mowed and not all of the iris planted before it got dark but we sure did get to appreciate how black the dirt is on the lot! We had clay in Lincoln and that made everything more difficult.

We definitely have lots of projects with this house!

Update: Of course our plans change very often and not even 5 minutes after posting this we have a new plan of attack for the back yard. Roundup. You can plant new things 2 weeks after using roundup and we have a week to wait still until we close with plenty of other things to do and once we get the keys we have lots to do on the inside.

End of work night #1

Adam's grandma was nice enough to make us supper last night so that we didn't have to worry about that when we got home and could just eat and go start working on the house. After eating we got a lot of work done at the house. There is just small tree after tree all over the property. They pretty much line the whole outside of the fence, house, garage and are in all of the flower beds! It's crazy! Most of the night was spent cutting down trees and taming that crazy hedge!

The before pics are posted in the last post but it's easier to see them side by side so I'm posting them again. Click to view larger.

Before:

After:


Before:

After:


Before:

After:


Before:

After:


Garage before:

After:


Look! I found some stairs!


I've acquired some hosta's and daisies and some plants that are a mystery to me:
Hosta's - they are along the side of the deck and house and alternate between variegated and non-variegated:


Purple daisies:


Yellow daisies:


Here's the mystery plants - anyone know what they are?