Snow falls against my bedroom window

Place: my bedroom - my windows on the world.

Time: apres 1st coffee, which is not early morning, because I am stuck at home recovering from surgery and I am staging a "bed in" this week. For this week, I have decided that there are only 2 reasons to get out of bed before 10 a.m. , to get coffee and to take the dog for a walk (avec sunglasses). After 10 my stomach will give me a 3rd reason, food.

Mood: upbeat Listening to CBC Radio 1: Q - A.C. Newman playing in the background"Like a Hitman/Like a Dancer" - catchy tune! (will check the exact name tomorrow when the Q playlist is published)

Anyway, I was listening to CBC radio 2 (which by the way has really done a turn about from what it was just last year!) Changed to Radio 1 as I was getting irritated - just wish my reception was better, some other station keeps intruding in the background. I am looking out my windows to the world - this is the most awsome bedroom ever with a wall of windows looking south over the lake and to the east, CN Tower and the downtown office buildings. I open both of my "pinhole blinds" [pinhole blinds: my term - they are roller blinds which allow some but not all of the sunlight to come through - just enough to filter the sun to a moderate light in day and to dull somewhat the night time city lights] Just got out of bed and took a couple of pics to show you what I see today. The first pic is my view east, which is less than spectacular given that it is snowing. The second is the view south from where I sit now. Again, not so spectacular just right now. But it is not without attraction even today. It is alway in the foreground a sea of motion and sound day or night. There are at least 10 cars constantly in view moving along the Gardiner Expressway - even at 4 am in the morning! and they move quickly - it takes a car about 7 seconds to move from one end of my window to the other. It is the opposite of a serene country postcard scene it is all energy and action - really alive and bustling. The upper part of the view to the south, which does not show up well today is Lake Ontario. On a good day I can see across to Rochester, NY. The sun plays on the lake and it changes colour and reflection as the wind plays on its surface and clouds move overhead. Today it is a grey stormy sea. Always an interesting view to gaze out upon.

But enough of this chatter, first and foremost I must give an update on my eyes.

I am tired of sleeping sitting up. One of the required accommodations for a faster recovery is to not have a lot of extra fluid collect in the eyes, which when we sleep lying down is the case - ever wondered why your eyes are puffy in the morning? So the Doc says sleep with 4 pillows, which pretty much means I am sitting up. Ok, I have discovered that when tired I can sleep in any position, so except for the first night I have managed to stay unconsious for as much of the night as I usually do - which is almost always the full night. This is a good thing - I am suspecting that many do not have this sleeping skill as perfected as I do. So technically, I have had no problem sleeping. However, upon awakening I find that I am pretty sore from being in this position all night. I am thinking tonight I will remove 1 pillow and do this in each of the nights to come. Enough is enough - the pillows got to go.

Tomorrow I go see Doc again. Just another peek at the incision lines and a review of what I should/should not be doing. I have it down pat: nothing aerobic, no bending down, eye drops (I have used almost a full bottle already), vaselined greasy eyes (so the skin doesn't dry out), hot compresses to speed up the healing of bruises and lots of sleep. I have to "ha" about the sleep - maybe the Doc should try sleeping with 4 pillows. I have also come to know first hand that Vaseline is not a flattering facial makeup. Speaking of makeup - allowed after Day 7! Bring out that camoflage makeup - I think I shall go out to Brazen (my local pub) to hear some live music on Thurs night!)

Don't think there has been sufficient improvement in the eyes to load up another pic here - so those sitting on the edge of their seats will need to come back tomorrow.


A plug for the program Q on CBC Radio 1 - lots of interesting topics - from yesterday 's program promo: "Guest host Jonathan Torrens talks to graphic artist and writer Laurie Rosenwald on why all the wrong people have self-esteem". This might be going a bit far, I don't agree that ALL the wrong people, but maybe a good number of them need to spend some time thinking about whether they maybe should have a bit less self esteem. If you have listened to the podcast (or actual program) this is about a book (you can guess the title) - a funny book - tongue in cheek or maybe tongue sticking out of mouth or so it seems.

The author says self esteem is a myth - that it is the norm that people don't feel so good about themselves - or at least few think they are so good as to not needing improvement (those are the ones that the book title makes fun of). Actually, to change the slant that the headline for this would suggest, this book is a good one for people with lower self esteem - the author suggests that it is not such a good thing to aspire to have great self esteem. I think I will see if it is at the library. If you are interested you can replay the Q podcast of Jan 12th from the CBC Q website. And I am not saying whether I think I have great self esteem or not - I will just say that I believe humility is a virtue. If I find the book will provide a short review in a future blog.

Today's Q program gem questions whether we should have the right to call someone a Skank and a horse faced Hoe (or is it Ho?) in our blogs - apparently Google is being sued because there is a blogger who called a female celebrity that exact thing. Apparently, it depends on whether it is factually true. Not sure how one would prove that but I expect it would involve courts and expert testimony.

Douchebag is also a similar word which is allowed if true. This prompted me to sidetrack. What exactly is a douchebag (slang, not real english def? I realize that it is a derrogatory term, but who could you legitimately classify as one? So after a sidetrip to Wiki, I fetched the following definition: An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by a low level of intelligence, behaving ridiculously in front of colleagues with no sense of how moronic he appears. Ok, so we all are a bit more knowledgable with our english language slang. And I can think of a few folks I think could be proven in a court of law to legitimately warrant the adjective douchebag. Sounds like douchebags are in the same group as Laurie's "wrong people to have self esteem".

Thanks to today's Q, I also found out that if you "upskirt" or "downblouse" (take a photo of a woman up her skirt or down ... in public) and then publish this on the web it is not against the law in the US. Wow - what a world we live in, eh? Apparently it has to do with us now all being potential celebrities (thanks to reality tv) and our paparazzi are worthy of protection. And paparazzi are allowed to downblouse or upskirt celebrities if the celebrities are not protective against their personal space when in public. (I guess if a photog were to hide under a sewer grate and snap photos of Brittany one would find that to be curious but not think it illegal). And for those of you who need to know, if you see a photo of your nether regions on the web (and can recognize them) you can claim to have been "upskirted", but cannot sue - at least in the US, not sure about in Canada. That is unless it was taken from a peep hole in the ladies room - which is of course illegal.

So just got the weather word - I can see snow melt drops stuck against my window, so judging that it is not too cold out there - snow has now stopped, however we are in for a plunge in temperatures and by tomorrow morning it is expected to be -20 celcius. What can I say - the roller coaster weather continues. Get out your balaclava folks.

Today seems to be a trivia day (but I hope to do a double header today and try my hand at entertaining everyone with Cruise Time Tales, watch for a second post later today)... so following is my last tid bit for today:

"Unfortunately, what triggers an avalanche is often consumed by it". Saw this in a headline ad this morning. This can be applied to a lot of problems (an avalanche is one big problem for the folks in the path of the snow, you must agree). So a serious and sobering thought - we are often the makers of our own misery. I can personally vouch for that having made myself lots of trouble to get out of in the time I have been on this planet. You can apply this to almost everything - we reap what we sow, etc etc.. But I draw the line on one thing - I do not agree with the extreme views on this grain of an idea being promoted as "The Secret". It seems to me that if we could truly make things happen simply by thinking our way there, the promoters would not need to promote these ideas, they could simply wish us all into submission.

I have to admit that I come from the school of hard work. In other words I believe you can be successful at anything you set you mind to, except we might not set our mind to so much it if we realized how much hard work is required to get there. We often give up on what we want to accomplish because it is too much work.

This leads me to the dwell briefly on premise behind the new TV series "Being Erica" - that is choices lead to consequences. She is luckily allowed to go back and remake some of the decisions she made when she was young and foolish - and I am guessing will find her life improving as she undoes those bad choices of the past. Too bad we all can't do that, eh? Best we can do is learn from our bad choices and learn to deal with the aftermath. Hopefully, not as deadly as an actual avalanche. And that is my word of wisdom for the day - actually, I think I should restrict myself to only 1 "word of wisdom" per week or else you might think I have more self esteem than I should. So I promise more sillier posts in the days to come. This is supposed to be fun reading, not "Mother Knows Best".

Tada for now.

Jeepers, creepers....where'd ya get them peepers

Jeepers, creepers... where'd ya get them eyes... or so the song goes.

So the Peepers are not that nice looking just yet. I will admit that.

And in answer the lyrical question, I bought them, as mentioned in my last post - should have used that as the title of my last post, but I just thought about that song and it appealed... and I am just now looking at my new eyes and get a good feel for what they will look like when healed. Awesome, I think. Well to be truthful they will still look like my eyes, just a lot less saggy. Those of you who are my new friends may not notice much at all after everything is healed up. But I will.

I think they will be a nice improvement. My friend, T.S.  sent me an email last night. I have been in almost daily contact with him over the last week, sending emails and pics (- thanks for the support T.S.). I do believe he is utterly flabbergasted at how awful I have been looking. He asked me if "knowing what I know now would I do this again?" My daughter Lilly said she felt like crying when she looked at me because it seems like I had the crap beat out of me. OK, so I am not so viewable just yet and my opinion must wait until factual evidence is available.

But what a question to be asked at this point! Shows his as yet unspoken judgement about my decision to do this. Kudos to you T. for leaving these thoughts unspoken. At this point the answer is easy - I am only "half baked" and any such conclusion can only be reached once I see the finished product and live with it for a while. I need to write him back this morning and tell him exactly that. While I am at it I will also tease him about what I can only assume to be a Saturday night date. Guess he is playing his cards close to his chest. We only agreed just a week or two ago that we were no longer "BF and GF". Noticed yesterday he was back advertising on LavaLife. (Yet another subject for a blog! - god, I will be blogging day and night to catch up with all the stuff I need to write). I decided to sit out of LavaLife for a bit yet... but I did update my "away" message so T.S. would know I had been on and therefore had seen that he was no longer "taking a break" . Might go back there in a week and see if any "bingo letters" have dropped into my hopper. T.S. tells me he gets so many "hello's" he can't keep up with them. But then that is another subject. Nothing against T.S. (actually he is quite hot) but there are far fewer men on these sites than women.

In 6 weeks I will be able to provide via this blog a preliminary answer to T.S.'s question - may even post a poll for you to tell me what you think. Just to give everyone a hint though, I am not having any second thoughts. Still quite happy with my choice despite a week of less than happy living. But the proof is in the final product. The doctor said after 2 weeks most of the bruising and swelling will be gone although will take 6 weeks to heal 90%. The real answer is to be had after one full year; it takes that long to reach the 100% mark. And of course other folks reactions to my new eyes will play a part - however my satisfaction will be the only thing that matters to me.

Looking on the bright side of my current circumstance (if you don't know me yet you will soon discover I like to look on the bright side), I have been able to listen to just about every song nominated for Obama's Play List on CBC - which has been some really fine listening to Canadian songs. For those of you who do not listen to CBC, they have a contest going at the moment. They are asking for email/phone in nominations for a play list of 49 Canadian songs to send to Obama on the occassion of his inauguration. Some damn good songs we Canadians have produced! This week we get to vote for the short listed songs. Listening to radio is about the only thing that I can do which doesn't tire my eyes and make them sore.

I did spend too much time on computer yesterday. I am jumping full into my New Years resolutions (see the list provided on the sidebar which cozies up nicely with my "bucket list" aka "43 Things" which is accessed via the link on the sidebar tool "Linkworthy"). Every day I will look over these lists and see what I can do tomorrow to futher what I want to accomplish. To this end, I perused the "Meet Up" sites and joined a few -skating, documentary movies, spanish music/dancing, book club and 35+ social. I looked up the Tai Chi nights for beginners and decided I should see if I can join up with a beginners class in progress on Thurs nights as a way of getting back into it. Once back "out there", in a few weeks, I will be joining in on a number of interesting activities with new friends. Also browsed around the "43 Things" site and added a couple of items to my life list. Last night's Golden Globe awards provided me with renewed interest in getting out to see some of the films which garnered the most kudos. In all more than my eyes could take at this point. They were sore by day's end. But I was happy with my day.

So what of today? I have to be careful not to over use my eyes. Found out yesterday how much they hurt after prolonged keyboarding. I also have to decide when I will be able to go up to Collingwood to visit my dear friends up there. I promised to go up and spend a few days during my time off. I am not supposed to drive until day 7 - hard to drive with tearly, blurry eyes that hurt. Since I have to see the Doc on Wed and go get my mammogram on Thurs, I might leave it now until after so as I can spend the weekend up there.

Also on tap for today is a long walk with my dog Bella, shown on the left. Bella is a great walker. Boy, sitting around is not helpful for my weight loss effort. I can't believe how last month's holiday (I went on a cruise just before Christmas - Ye Gads! - the subject of another post to come!) and the holiday season moved me back up the unhappy side of the scale. I am not allowed any aerobic exercise for 3 weeks, but walking is fine. So I need to walk.

And it is MONDAY! One week before I go back to work after my 5 week haitus. :( Getting kind of used to not having to work for a living. *sigh* Too bad I don't have a wealthy "benefactor".

Another beautiful sunny day. Cold, -4 or -10 with the wind chill but I will take that with sun over +2 and cloudy any day. Good day for a walk. Gonna see if I can do at least 5 K. Might be hard with Bella. She won't wear those doggie booties and she gets salt in her paws. I end up carrying her when that happens and with my eyes I am not supposed to bend down as yet. Hard not to bend down when you have to pick up your dog. Makes the blood flow to my head and that causes bleeding. I found that out first hand yesterday when I forgot and bent over to tie up my boot. Anyway, I digress. Got to get moving the day is moving on.

One closing item. Today's picture is one view from my bedroom here in my Liberty Village Condo. It is on the 21st floor looking south over the lake and east to the CN Tower. Wonderful views. Will show more pics of them in blogs to come.