Country Rican

The new me! Here I am, over a month after eye surgery trying to navigate the world with these new eyes. Just to recap: I was scheduled to start my surgeries in December of 2020 and had to postpone it due to Covid. Finally rescheduled it for December of 2021 for a million reasons that you will have to read previous blogs to understand. Had surgery on my right eye December 2nd 2021, left eye on December 16, 2021.  I am typing this right now in my brand new glasses!  Now, I am 48 so they are bifocals; but on the bright side my old prescription was not possible with bifocals so this is definitely a win.  Even if I am still learning to see again. The last 7 weeks have all been about relearning anyway.  For starters, we started the surgeries on my weakest eye, turning it into my strongest eye, and confusing my brain for two weeks.  I have what is commonly known as a lazy eye. Typically my eyes do not work as a team. My left eye leads and my ...

Me in my plastic shield  On Friday the 17th of December I woke up and had no need to put on glasses.  I sat up, took the shield off my left eye, and looked around the room.  I was amazed at how well I could see.  My eye was still dilated so it was by no means crystal clear, but it was so much better than it ever was.  I got out of bed and felt like a baby fawn, no joke. It was 35 years to the day from the day I got my first contact lenses. I told my surgeon about that and he asked me how on earth could I remember that. "Simple, it changed my life". He said "I guess so". It is amazing to me how even those who fix eyes for a living still don't get it.  Wouldn't you remember the first day you were able to see without glasses? Wear sunglasses? Run and exercise carefree? The day before I had gone back to get the surgery done.  I wore the same outfit because I am superstitious, Michael says I am a baseball player at heart.  I was anxious, but a lot less...

 Well, I had the eye surgery.  It has been a wild ride and even though it has only been a week it is hard for me to explain all that has happened in the last 8 days, There has been all kinds of excitement in my house.  For starters, the night before surgery my parents came from Puerto Rico.  We saw them this summer, but my mom had not travelled since 2017 (pre Maria) and my dad...well, since 1992.  That's right.  My dad has not gotten on a plane in almost 30 years.  It is and was a pretty big deal. It is hard for me to wrap my head around the technology folks.  I mean, seriously.  I have worn glasses since I was 2 years old.  Over 4 decades and I am the blindest person I know.  I have lived (and seen eye doctors) in New York, Puerto Rico, Georgia, Texas, and Germany.  Every time I visited a new doctors I have been met with "Oooos" and "Ahhhhs" because of the nature of my myopia.  The time, the money, the tests, the years o...

 How has your year been?  Let me tell you about mine.  The last blog post I published was about an eye surgery that I was supposed to have December 3rd and 17th...see here:  https://countryrican.blogspot.com/2020/11/december-17th.html If you read the blog you will see I was concerned with the surgery not happening because of COVID and the medical system. It never once occurred to me that it would not happen because I would get COVID! Yet, that is what happened.  On November 28th I tested positive for COVID 19. It was brutal.  I was sick for weeks. I called the surgeon and they said "let's postpone for 2 weeks." Two weeks later we did again.  And two weeks later we did it again.  My health was fine by mid January, but I had some long haul COVID symptoms that made me uneasy.   The main issue was my heart rate.  It seemed to be fine but would unexp ectedly shoot up for no reason.  Or even when it had a reason (like exercise) it wo...

 For those of you who do not know this, I am blind.  I know a lot of people say this but in my case it is true.  My vision does not correct to 20/20 even with contacts or glasses.  I have worn glasses since I was two years old, and contacts since I was thirteen.  I wear coke bottle glasses or gas permeable contacts all the time. Now that I am in my forties it is common for me to have my contacts in and wear my 2.0 reading glasses on top of them. I laugh at people who don't want to wear reading glasses because they think it makes them old.  I laugh because I know that lack of eye sight is not necessarily an age thing, but because they do not know how blessed they are to have the option of seeing well.  When I was 10 years old I got the first pair of glasses that were truly hi deous.  That circle that forms in the lens because of the nature of concave corrective lenses for myopia was truly pronounced.  Right when I was hitting puberty my glasse...

When I was a young undergraduate I took an introductory class to Psychology.  My professor was an interesting researcher who worked so much with monkeys that he walked a little like one.  I always remember him talking about mob mentality and how fascinated he was with it because of how difficult it was to study.  A scientist cannot morally stage a riot to study people’s brain to determine how quickly they decide to join in rioting or looting. He said it is hard to predict when and where it will happen.   This was in the early nineties, and I am certain now that this conversation in class must have come about after the Rodney King Riots.  If you are a Gen Xer like I am, it is hard to forget it.  Wikipedia says 63 people died in those riots.  It was the first time in my life that the public consciousness was so aware of the police being out of control.  It is also the start of what we now know is a video age, now the digital age, where c...

If you have not been paying attention, I do not blame you.  There have been so many weather stories lately that it is hard to focus.  The news is overwhelming.  Most people get stuck on one news source they like and that is all they look at.  We are all guilty of it.  I do it too.  But if that one news source has limited time or resources, stories get missed.  It seems to me that we only have time for one major weather story at a time.  With winter storm Isaiah, and the Australia fires, only people with ties to Puerto Rico seem to be paying attention to what is happening down there.  I read today a volcano eruption is eminent in The Philippines. Weather stories are exhausting us all, and I fear it is only going to get worse.  But people need to know Puerto Rico has been quaking for 16 days and counting. Well, the earthquake swarm (as it is apparently called) is worse than Maria. https:/...

This post is about sexual assault, but I’m not going to try to convince you about my views on Kavanaugh.   I am a liberal.   I make no apologies about it; it is not a secret. I am who I am, and everyone that knows me knows it.   I guess my post is not so much about sexual assault; it is broader than that. My post is about social media and empathy.   I am a very empathetic person.   For whatever reason, and trust me I have theories, it is hard for me not to put myself in the shoes of the other.   I am also very accustomed to being surrounded by people who do not share my world view. Which as time goes by, I realize more and more that it is kind of a rare thing. Other than my immediate family who frequently agree with me, and for the 7 or 8 years I lived in Athens Georgia, I am usually surrounded by people who disagree with me.   Which teaches you a lot of constraint for a lot of reasons: not offending a business associate, keeping the peace at fam...

La isla de los ratones June 2017/June 2018 I’ve been digesting how to describe what I saw when I was in Puerto Rico this time around.   My first visit to the island since Maria was 9 months after the disastrous storm crossed it.   If Puerto Rico were the United States, the storm entered through Florida and came out through Washington State.   Think about that for a second.   The island is only 100 miles by 35 so that means there was not an area that went untouched by the storm.   However, my hometown sits where California sits so it suffered less than most. It’s hardly something to celebrate when to get there you must drive across the island and see the blue tarps.   Lots of things are different while at the same time – everything is the same.   It is hard to put into words when you drive by the spot where you held your rehearsal dinner and it is no longer there.   Swallowed by the ocean, or a blown away by the wind.   When you fly...

My first memory of the three kings was in New York City.  We didn't celebrate it, even though we were from Puerto Rico, we just did Christmas.  I was in my dad's arms and he was showing me an image of the kings on the wall.  Maybe it was a Christmas card... I honestly can't remember.  I remember asking him about them and him telling me they represented the three wise men who brought gifts to baby Jesus.  He told me how in Puerto Rico, where he grew up, little kids left out grass for the camels and the kings would leave them gifts by their bed.  I asked if this was at Christmas and he said no.  Three Kings Day happens after the New Year.  I was around Sofia's age and I remember thinking "Puerto Rican kids are the luckiest kids in the world!  They get two Christmases!"    When we moved to Puerto Rico I was 7 years old and I too got two Christmases.  The year I moved to Puerto Rico I learned a lot about my culture that...

Sebastian Junger wrote a book called “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging”.   If you haven’t read it I highly recommend it.   One of the points he makes is how trauma unifies people.   How when something terrible happens to a group of people, they are unified by the feeling of tribalism that is present in all humans.   He supports this with evolutionary theory, sociology, psychology, and just personal anecdotes from his time spent in war zones.   The classic example is New York after 9/11;   how crime rates dropped and how the city became warmer.   On 9/11/01 I was living on an Army base in Germany and I experienced this first hand.   Americans, especially those with military ties, were treated with a deference that was hard to describe.   TSA agents in airports would thank me for my service and sacrifice (I was then a Military wife). I saw the memorials in Paris and in different German towns where the locals were pouring out to show their su...