Love Your Freds

Bodiam castle (as you will remember, Marlinspike Hall will not photograph)

It really has been a quiet day in the neighborhood, here, as you will no doubt recall, in the region west of the Lone Alp, the central geographic point of pride (on the elevated, hoity-toity altitude side of things) in this land of Tête de Hergé.  Older, more faithful readers, also known as The Most Belovèd, will remember that the entire name of my country is Tête de Hergé (très décédée, d'ailleurs).  For those francophone grammarphiles whom I have kept so busy, lo these past five years of blogging, please remember that "décédée" agrees, in gender and number, with Hergé's "tête," and not Hergé, himself.  Yes, I realize that both the "tête" and the tête's owner are dead, and probably at the same time and place, and that while my choice might seem arbitrary, or, God forbid, redundant, I do not agree. Of Hergé, I only have interest in the tête.  It may have sparked a Holy Spark one nanosecond after Hergé's heart's last beat and final flop.  In fact, I'm sure it did.

So, yes, we're in the hilly but essentially flat western plains, but in an area very difficult to chart.  Many a cartographer has given her life in efforts to plot our location so that Map Quest and other tracking devices might narrow down where, precisely, I am currently sipping my cuppa Italian roast.  No one seems to much care, but probably the second most cited point of geographic pride in Tête de Hergé is located on the Haddock family's ancient home - that's right, right here!  I speak, of course, of the lowest altitudinal touristic draw of the land:  our own Marlinspike Hall moat.  Rife with what I call mole holes in the space-time continuum (figuring them to be larger than your average worm hole, y'know?) -- and I make that assessment with the full approbative force of the accredited Seal of Support of Star Trekkers behind me -- our moat serves as the docking port and sporting marina for the world's entire fleet of miniature and super-miniature submarines.  I figure we're kinda like a Deep Space Nine station but on terra firma.  Though I guess terra firma won't fly in this context.  Good luck parsing this post, either for its pristine grammar or its fuzzy logic.

Kirk, making the Vulcan salute: How many fingers do I have up?
Dr. McCoy: That’s not very damn funny.
-Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Yesterday, I can at least be confident in saying, put me on edge, such that I don't much care where you think I am or whether your car's GPS has a clue about whether to go straight, turn right, left, or make a U-turn,  In fact, if we could make the rest of the neighborhood temporarily disappear to some pleasant spot, warm but with a cooling breeze, with beaches on the east and woodlands on the west, and s'mores everywhere there is a hypnotic bonfire, along with wine coolers shaded by tiny paper umbrellas and chunks of chilled fruit speared on toothpicks, with prosciutto-wrapped cantelope taking up a third of every silver tray -- well, that would be nice, too.  I hate to say it, but we've a daring, overly-friendly new neighbor two manors and one castle down the road who appears to be doing a bang-up business dealing drugs.  Or maybe he is the new rarefied gourmet salt door-to-door distributor. Celtic salt, sea salt, kosher salt, sour salt (citric acid), mineral salts, epsom salts, pickling salts. He strolls, cheerful and with deep-breathing good health, up and down the country lanes, phoning and texting and exchanging little baggies of white stuff -- small salt samples -- with random car drivers who impulsively stop to chat with him about the prospects for pork belly futures and which salt is currently number one on the salt list, in exchange for which they stuff sweaty balled-up bills into our smiling neighbor's now empty palm. In between chats with out-of-the-region tourists nervously eyeballing The Manor, the Cistercian monastery, the remains of the organic pig farm (wild and extremely organic hog gangs) and perhaps contemplating a tour of the Animal Husbandry Museum, our new neighbor chats and gives salt samples to the seasonal workers that stream into the area this time of year from Pieds de Hergé, our sister territory.  Thus far, he's not crossed the drawbridge to knock on our bronze replica of the florentian Baptistry doors, which makes sense.  Doesn't it?  What self-respecting medieval-slash-renaissance manor kitchens would be caught cuisining without a dozen varieties of salt readily at hand?

And then, there's my eye.  Specifically, the right one.  My right, not your right.

I have had to patch it again, due to excess tearing and what we will term "fogging." My pressures yesterday were again remarkably good -- 14 in both eyes. I had lost a little acuity in the right eye, but what worried me more was the discomfort, and the weird... I don't know... little slash of light that hits sometimes on the periphery.  Plus it looks like I am weeping and will never stop!  And I am not, I swear.

And yeah, that Saran Wrap over the orb feeling had returned.

So when the tech -- whom I love -- gave me the instructions for the next week, in terms of drops, I was relieved to see that we were "progressing," that the right eye was done with drops and the left was now going to start tapering.

Then the doc came in and did her more in-depth eyeball exam thingy, which included an announcement that " [my] body is doing its thing and having an exagerrated inflammatory response, particularly in the right eye." What is weird to me is the timing.  It did fine the first two weeks only to start this revolution at the end of the third week?  Then the doctor said that she considered "the first operated eye" as providing the road map for what the second will do, so she expects it to flare up in the third week as well.  So I am back to being one-eyed at the moment, but lacking my much beloved pirate patch, as Buddy ate the elastic.  No, not entirely.  Just nibbled it so that it was in three pieces and unusable.  So I am using these flaky stick on bandaid-type affairs.  Fred has drawn something on this one, but I keep forgetting to look in the mirror to see what is making him guffaw every time he looks at me.  It's always something.

So you will please excuse this backslide into "catastrophic thinking," an attribute I love to point out when taking other people's inventory (Sea from Phoctor Dill's website comes immediately to mind).  I am scared that an "exaggerated inflammatory response" will turn into an infection.  You know, of the biofilm variety and all that.

There, I said it.  The same crap that is in my bones/joints/prostheses has found its way into the windows to my soul.

Or is that a little over the top?  It just CANNOT be.  It WILL NOT be.  It couldn't have happened this quickly, one.  And, B) I REFUSE to allow this to happen.

Add to the catastrophic mode of thinking the fact that we stopped the Vigamox -- the freaking antibiotic drops!  I still have the oral antibiotic, which I've never stopped, I don't think, even once, in the last three or four years.  (That's a whole other post, entirely, as I've questioned the wisdom and reasoning behind that decision as well!)

Well, there.  It took me a while, but I spat it out.  Um, a little Windex and a paper towel will probably get that off your screen.  Oops.

[For those of you who are Fred fans... He's having his own version of a bad day, but I hope it's interspersed with moments of light-heartedness... such as drawing goo-goo eyes on my eye patch.  He's also working on another painting, which is fascinating to watch, as he's good as well as thoughtful and with a surprising sense of play.  But it can't be denied -- he's sad.  Fred has his own life, you'll probably not be surprised to learn, and has not the support he deserves, which also will not surprise you.  I long to give it to him and I fall short with remarkable consistency.  I want to envelope him in peace and laughter.  More than anything in the whole damn world, that's what I want.  I, me, me, my.  Sweet Fred...]

Everyone out there, whether you are new to these Tête de Hergé digs or old hands at this Tintin Tribute Land, and hum je ris de me voir dans ce miroir when showering, make sure to love your Freds.

Even if, maybe, your Freds don't love you in an equal commodious return: Love, cherish, your Freds.

Ethiopian Sky

© 2013 L. Ryan