Dry Eyes

   Well, as I typed "dry eyes" I realized this post could be about two things.  A couple of years ago my optometrist told me I had the driest eyes he had ever seen.  I do have dry eyes and I just can not do eye drops.  My eyelids refuse to let that happen.  LOL!!! A couple of years ago when Zoe was a baby she chewed up my very expensive glasses. I am usually v.e.r.y. careful with my glasses but it was at the beginning of my downhill spiral into the big depression hell hole before D-day (my life seems to revolve around the person I was before I went to the mental hospital and the person I am afterwards.....they are quite a ways apart) anyway, that day I had fallen asleep on the couch reading a book and I suppose in my sleep I took my glasses off and they were in my lap or something but when I woke up the lens had been used as a means to cut Zoe's new teeth.  By the way,  Zoe is my blond dog, not a baby, although I refer to her and Gracie as "the girls" not "the dogs" usually.  Zoe is half schnauzer, half beagle (so I was told anyway) and one of the sweetest dogs I have ever had but definitely the most clueless. She just doesn't "get" anything, but she is sweet.  We think of her as being stuck at the late puppy stage and since she is now 2 and a half assume she will never move on to adult dog status.  She still has her "baby" run, her "baby" attitude about everything, she will just always be "the baby".  She loved Max and had a terrible time when he passed away.   When we brought his body home from the vet's after having him put down I took the body out of the box, sat on the swing outside and called the girls over to smell it.  I had been told if you let dogs smell a dead body they will understand that their friend has died.  Gracie got it.  Zoe did not.  She smelled poor Max's little limp body then proceeded to climb in the cardboard box he had been in ... like OH this is some new game, get in a box!!!!  For at least a week after Max passed away at bedtime when I would say "let's go to bed girls" Zoe would look straight into my eyes,  frantically bark at me like crazy like she was trying to tell me "Max is gone, we've got to find him and put him to bed" and run around obviously looking for Max. That made me bawl.   At night since Max was old and had trouble jumping on the bed our routine was we would all go in the bedroom and I would pick Max up & put him on the bed and the girls would let him get settled before they jumped up there, and Zoe could not figure out why we were going to bed without Max.   Anyway, back to dry eyes.....(which I now do not have because thinking of that made me cry...Max was just the best dog in the world and I loved him so very much)

Zoe and her "babies"

 My prescription is so strong that Eyemart Express, a big national chain, can not fill it.  I have to have the lens ordered, it takes 2 weeks and since I am pretty much unable to do much without them...like read or drive, my Dr suggested contacts.  I had old glasses but my prescription had changed enough that wearing the old ones gave me horrible headaches.  Hhmmm....contacts. Okay. Well, I tried.  There was no way on earth those were ever going to work.  I could not get them in.  I finally got them in at the Dr's office but once we got home I could never again get them in.  Casey tried and tried to help me.  She told me I had the strongest muscles in my eyelids...my eyelids are extremely good at their job of keeping anything out of my eyes!!! Especially contacts and eye drops. The past week my eyes have just been driving me crazy.  Very dry, itchy, achy, blurred vision.  And can't get eyedrops in them.   Last night on the news they said every one's allergies are going crazy here because of mold.  After the driest year on record since Amarillo began keeping stats suddenly in December we got MOISTURE, from the sky!  We had forgotten what that was like!  First snow in early December, then it rained all day one day and then 6 inches of snow on Christmas has resulted in alot of mold growth here.  For winter 2011/2012 so far Amarillo has had more snow than Buffalo, New York.  WHAT is up with THAT?? Anyway, while everyone here is glad for moisture of any kind for our parched yards our eyes, sinuses and noses don't know how to handle the mold.  Lord, we will live with itchy eyes and drippy noses, please keep sending the rain and snow.
     The other "dry eyes" is that I have not cried very much in the past week.  Just three times, two over Max ...which I think is normal, and once when I went to the mental health place on Thursday, not so normal.  As I went in the caseworker's office I saw her desk.  It is the exact same office desk my old boss at the library had.  Blond wood of some kind, L-shaped...not "looked sort of like it" but the exact same desk.  For 20 years I spent time at that desk...leaving messages, using his phone to call my kids, looking on it for things my boss had lost and needed right that minute.  Had a cry over seeing that desk.  Maybe that is not so abnormal ...I loved that job and my therapist used to tell me grief is just not for dead people and pets, but for things no longer a part of our lives, like jobs.  My grieving over it has toned way down because of the time I get to spend with my granddaughter.  Considering In November I was crying buckets over sad commercials (appeals for donations of coats for children without; Hallmark commercials, ASPCA commercials), Christmas carols, the thought of holidays coming, crying over anything that remotely evoked emotion of any kind in me I guess I can say I am doing much better.  Depression and anxiety are still too present though.  In two weeks I go back and I know my psychiatrist will increase my meds so I can cope even better.  Some day I am going to be able to have a part time job.  Lots of folks won't take antidepressants and I have no beef with them.  We each have to decide what is best for us.  When I quit taking them in the fall I was so in hopes that I could do without them but it was soon too painfully aware that I am not one of those folks that can do that.
     Weather man is on and he just said 2 inches of snow for tomorrow. I guess we will have more mold but that is okay! In the morning I am going to go out and scatter some fescue grass seed and see if maybe I can get it to come up.