Cataracts...To Remove or Not?

   It looks like my cataract procedures are back on.  Early this month I saw Dr Manns at Bassett in Cooperstown but he wasn't satisfied with the results of my right eye so I had to go back for more tests.  Finally he was satisfied with the test results and ok-ed the procedures.  The Scheduling Office called a few days later to tell me the right eye would be done at Little Falls Hospital in 2 weeks and the left eye 3 weeks later at Fox Memorial in Oneonta.  I said NO Way.  Little Falls is the most convenient location for us, it's only 6 or 7 miles from the house, so I was glad to have the right eye done there but I was willing to go to Cooperstown, too.  The 2nd procedure was too far away in distance (over 50 miles) and time.  Because I have to take Warfarin for my mechanical heart valve, I'm going to have to bridge on and off of Heparin (which is an injection) and I'm not going to shoot myself in the stomach for longer than I have to. And it seems Dr. Manns doesn't have 2 open dates closer together at Little Falls or Cooperstown.  Now I have to see another ophthalmologist, Dr. Lamanski, next month in Cooperstown before they can schedule my procedures.  I'm not all that sure about having the cataracts taken care in the first place, so this new bump doesn't have me excited at all.  

Bye Boxes Bye!

    The raised garden boxes are no more and the clumps of enriched
dirt have been smoothed down with Wally's help...and invention.  That's 2 pallets tied together and dragged over the clumps of dirt by one of the garden tractors.  After a few passes the ground is almost level again!  You'd never know the boxes had been there!  The main 
hazard is a buried board
with a nail protruding.
Wally managed to pick one up with a back tire but so far the tire hasn't  gone flat.  Hopefully, the nail didn't go all the way thru the tract.  Just have to wait until morning to see.  What a difference it is with the boxes gone!

Oh,no...Jeff just picked up a board with a nail with our tractor and, yes, he got a flat tire...a front tire! He took the tire off the tractor and we took it to Tallman Tires behind KFC in Herkimer.  They could change the inner tube but they didn't carry that size tube.  We went to Tractor Supply and got the inner tube and took it back to Tallman's.  Then we went to Walmart to do some shopping.  When we came back to Tallman's the tire hadn't been changed yet so we decided to go and get lunch at Mona's in Mohawk.  After lunch the tire still hadn't been changed.  Jeff was getting upset...who could blame him?  I took Zoey out of the car to give her a chance to move around and maybe pee, and when we got close to the door Jeff came out and asked what was wrong.  I told him I was just exercising the puppy and Fanny didn't want to get out of the car.  The manager saw us and came out and started talking to Jeff about beagles and before you knew it the tire was changed...and no charge.  If it was only going to take 5-10 minutes why did they make us wait so long?  Not charging us helped a little, but not much.

   8/30/17:  This morning Wally moved the burn barrel back next to his garage after empting it one last time in our driveway then Jeff raked the cold ash and shoveled it up and disposed of it.   When we went to town this afternoon we bought a magnetic sweep at Tractor Supply and Jeff swept what was left of the ash pile once.  He's planning to do it a couple more times.

Good thing we weren't parking there or driving over the ashes...or letting anyone else do that!  How many flat tires do you think that pile of screws, nails and staples could have caused?

The Boxes Are Done!

      Another day spent dismantling and burning our garden boxes but the job is finally done!  All the
boxes have been burnt and the weeds left in the  clumps have been leveled with the BushWachker.  All that's left to be done is the spreading of the

    

clumps of dirt.  That will happen Monday or Tuesday.  In the meantime, Jeff used the Bushwhacker and attacked the overgrown mess on the west side of the house.  He has opened it up twice as wide as I was ever able to do with just the walk behind mower and a regular weedwacker!
  We've been outside from 10am to 4pm and at least one of us needed a little nap.  Our garden and yard is full of new

wonders to Zoey and Fanny is right there showing her the way...even when it's just finishing off my coffee!.  What still gets me is that the pile of ash is so small...and this is after 2 days of burning!!

The End of the Garden Boxes...is in Sight!

   There are 2 raised boxes left in the garden...a corner one(that's a 3-tiered one) and an extra large one that we grew corn in one year. There is one

The last 2 boxes!

demolished one ready to be burned and that's all!  The process of demolishing the boxes went faster than we thought and today's fine weather made burning them a snap!  The burn barrel is about 1/2 to 3/4 full of ash right now and by tomorrow morning will be down to about half.  Tomorrow Wally wants to try knocking down the clumps of dirt by dragging 2 wooden pallets thru the garden behind one of the Cub Cadet garden tractors.  His machine is a little bigger than ours and he thinks it will do a better job of flattening the square clumps of dirt left when the boxes were removed.  Nobody is bothering with cutting the weeds before flattening the clumps!  After the dirt...which

is a mixture of compost and manure...is leveled Jeff wants to till it and spread some more compost.  Then he'll just let it sit till spring.  Kind of let Mother Nature take over.  We should be mowing grass out there next summer!  Oh, when all the burning is finished and the ash cooled off, the guys are planning to shovel it into a bucket and dump it into the old well that's on the side of the house and already half full of ashes.

What's left of an old well

  The guys decided to quit work early this afternoon.  Wally went home to take a nap because he's planning on going up to the Casino tonight to watch the big fight instead of watching it at home on pay-for-view TV.  Jeff's been wanting to go fishing so he took the opportunity to go!  We had a good lunch and I don't have to worry about cooking supper tonight.  The dogs are exhausted from being outside

 since 10am and Fanny's napping in her chair by my computer while Zoey is curled up on the couch in the TV room.  She has

 been managing to get 

Fanny's chair unassisted-
it takes her a bit of effort and if Fanny see what she's trying to do, usually beats her to it!  Meanwhile, Zoey uses the covered basket of yarn as a footstool to help her get on the couch.  
  With Jeff off fishing and the dogs napping I can do what I want for a couple of hours.  Humm, nap or read or knit...or play on the computer?  What decisions I have to make!

More Garden Boxes

   Wally and Jeff have kept busy this week demolishing and burning our rotten raised garden boxes.  They have managed to remove and destroy 1 1/2 rows plus the bean tower. 

Jeff really didn't want to take down the bean tower but Wally did it without asking and when he did he uncovered a nest of red ants...and paid for it with quite a few bites!  They have been burning the rotten wood in a 50gal drum that Wally brought over so it's been

slow going.  Tomorrow they hope to finish off the 2nd row and some, if not most, of the 3rd.  They've decided to dump the

the ashes of 2 rows of boxes

ashes...when they're cooled off...into our old well which is near the garden.  Unfortunately, it is surrounded by weeds so Jeff had to mow around it today.  When he did he got the garden tractor tangled up in a sheet of plastic and the mower stopped.  The guys spent most of the afternoon taking the mowing deck off the tractor, cutting the plastic away from the mower's shaft and then putting the mowing deck back on the tractor.  But in the end, everything works again and it is something that will have to be done...exchanging the mower deck for the snow blower...so it was good in a way that Jeff learned how to do it on a nice, bright, sunny, warm day in August instead of a cold, wet, day in November.  Jeff said he had walked around the well looking for obstacles to avoid...or remove...and never saw the plastic.  He thinks it might have been covered with leaves.
  I spend the afternoon knitting on a Pin-Stripe sweater.  I actually got a sleeve finished!  Hopefully,
I'll get the 2nd sleeve done tomorrow and the rest of the sweater finished over the weekend.  I'm not scheduled to work in the shop until next Friday, Sept. 1st, so I should get the sweater finished.  And some hats and maybe even some booties that I saw on Ravelry.  We'll see how the weather holds and if I can sit outside and knit.
   Fanny and Zoey spent the morning outside playing in the yard...just having doggie fun.  When I went inside to fix lunch for Jeff they came with me and the 1st thing Zoey did after being outside for 2 hours was pee on the bathroom floor.  I guess she figured if everyone else pees in this room, why can't I? (And yes, I was using the facilities at the time.)  After I took Jeff's lunch out to him, I went back outside with Zoey but Fanny took that opportunity to take a nap inside alone.  Later I went in to get Jeff some coffee and asked her if she wanted to come out but didn't get much of a response so I offered her a dog biscuit and left her inside.  I think she enjoyed her afternoon alone.  After Wally went home Fanny came out and played with Zoey until it was time for supper.  Both dogs had worked up an appetite and ate well.  Right now they're both asleep...Fanny next to the computer table and Zoey on the pillow under it.  I think all of us will sleep well tonight after spending the day outside.   (Jeff may not be moving so well tomorrow after crawling around on the ground taking the mower deck off/putting it back on the tractor.)

Cataracts

   Had another set of tests done yesterday at the Eye Clinic at Bassett in Cooperstown.  The first set was done last Monday (8/14) at Cooperstown and the surgeon, Dr Manns, wasn't pleased with the results.   While there was no question about the size, etc of the cataract in my left eye, the right eye wasn't so easy to diagnose.  He wasn't sure about the condition of the retina and wanted a clearer view of it before scheduling cataract removal.  He wasn't sure removing the cataract would improve the vision in my right eye that much.  So yesterday I reported to the clinic at 11:45 and sat in the waiting room for about half an hour before it was my turn.  The tests took about an hour and then it was back to the waiting room for another hour's wait.  Finally I got to see the doctor who decided to schedule another test before oking the surgery.  Finally,he was satisfied with the test results and he okayed cataract removal.  The scheduling team would be in-touch.
   In the meantime, Jeff and the canines were waiting for me in the parking lot.  He was talking to people about beagles and Zoey was making friends.  Fanny was just putting up with all the strangers...she doesn't like meeting new people, remember?  Everyone was happy to see me and after a quick stop at the shop to leave some new stock, we headed for home.  It was too late to plan on stopping at Mona's in Mohawk (the purple house on Main St closes at 2pm)so we decided to stop at Mr. Shake's on Rte. 28
near Columbia Center.  Jeff got a bacon cheeseburger with everything on it, I had pulled pork and the dogs shared a plain hamburger patty.  We got 1 order of French fries and 1 order of onion rings, 2 sodas and a bowl of water.  We sat on the deck in the shade next to the mini-golf course...what a nice breeze there was and when some kids started to play golf and the water feature was turned on it was a very nice spot and we enjoyed our lunch.  We even had ice cream cones for dessert...I shared mine with the dogs!
   When we got home all four of us were beat so it was nap time for us all!   And we slept thru the supper hour so I didn't have to cook!  After watching the President on TV last night Jeff decided he was hungry so he went down to Burger King but the dogs and I were still sacked out!  Fanny heard him after he came back when he was straightening things up around the burn barrel near the driveway and she managed to wake up the rest of us.  Zoey may still be little but when she starts to bay....!!!  No one can sleep thru that!
   The Scheduling Center at Bassett called this morning to schedule my cataract removals...the right eye at Little Falls Hospital on Sept 21 and the left eye at Fox Memorial in Oneonta on Oct 1.  I said no.  I explained to the woman that I have an mechanical heart valve and take Warfarin and would have to bridge off Warfarin and on to Heparin for both procedures and while Little Falls Hospital would be my 1st choice,Fox would not be acceptable at all due to the distance.  She hemmed and hawed for a few minutes and then said she would try to schedule both eyes at Little Falls and would call back.  I'm not even sure now if Dr. Manns will end up doing the procdures!  All I know is that I'm not going to drive to Oneonta to have it done when Little Falls is 6 miles away, and Bassett is 35 miles away.  Oneonta is about 50 miles away and neither one of us is familiar with those roads. I'm willing to wait until they can schedule both eyes at Little Falls.

Tearing Down the Raised Boxes

     Jeff and Wally decided today was a perfect day to start tearing down the rotten garden boxes and burn them.  Wally brought up his burn barrel and they started taking the first row of boxes apart and  

feeding them into the fire in the barrel.  Eventho the wood was wet...and rotten...the box parts burnt nicely, sending up bellows of white smoke. I

asked if they were sending smoke signals or electing a Pope.  Wally and Jeff compared lawn tractors (ours is newer) and Wally finds it hard to believe how few miles our has on it!  (Less than 60 hrs of use and it's 10 yrs old!)  Jeff sent me down to Tractor Supply to get the small cart to complete the ensemble.  It does seem a lot easier to put things in the cart and drive it to the burn barrel than having to drag them over to it.   Fanny and Zoey ran around the yard keeping an eye on the guys while exploring between the boxes.  I don't know how long it will take to burn all the boxes but they were busy and happy today...guys and dogs.