The plan was for me to fly to Texas and help Bob and Smokey move to Iowa. I found a reasonable one-way fare from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Houston. My brother, who has been living with me, just got a job in Minneapolis, so the plan was to drive up after church on the Sunday before Thanksgiving (my flight left at 5:30). Since the timing was going to be tight, I wanted to leave right after my second church service, which is in a town right on Interstate 35 (the town I live in is 8 miles east). Since I knew BpW wouldn’t be ready to go in time to go to church with me (he was loading his stuff into Mom’s van, which he’d borrowed), I arranged to get a ride from a friend, and then he’d pick me up after church.
I’d also promised to bake bread for the Thanksgiving Eve dinner at church, so I did that on Saturday night. Got to bed around midnight. In between the first and second church services I double checked my bag and gave it to BpW, who was loading the van. When I got to the church in Ellsworth (the “away” town) I looked down at my hands. Oh <expletive deleted>. I grabbed my cell phone and called BpW. “Hello?” “I need you to go into my bedroom and find the jeans I was wearing while baking yesterday . . . they should be on the top of the dirty clothes basket.” “Got it.” “On the right front side, in the little extra pocket, you will find my engagement ring. I need you to bring that.” “*snicker*”
My eyes itched a little bit that morning, and on the way to Minnesota they were very light-sensitive. Fortunately I’d remembered my sunglasses, so all was okay. By the time we got to ElJay’s house in Minneapolis I was pretty sure I had an eye infection coming on. I got them a lot before I switched to daily disposable contacts, so I recognize the signs. I figured I’d call my eye doctor the next morning and try to wheedle him into phoning a prescription to a pharmacy in Texas if I promised to come in for a check-up as soon as I got home. But since I’d chipped a glass measuring cup the day before while taking it down from a high shelf I was a little afraid that I might have somehow gotten a chip of glass in my eye. I didn’t think so – my contact wasn’t damaged when I took it out Saturday night, and it really should have started to hurt sooner if that’s what it was, but just in case I had ElJay stop at the drugstore on the way to the airport so I could buy some saline solution to flush out the eye. It felt a little better after that.
The flights and layover were uneventful, although my eye hurt a bit by the second one. Bob picked me up in Houston, and I told him that I’d need to call my eye doctor the next morning, and if he wouldn’t prescribe over the phone we’d need to call a local eye doctor, because by then my eye was hurting pretty steadily. He asked if we should go to the emergency room, I said no, first thing in the morning will be soon enough.
It’s a two hour drive from Houston to College Station. By the time we got there, about 1 am, I was curled up in the corner of the seat whimpering and said I’d like to change my mind on the emergency room visit, please. We spent the next hour and a half waiting, first in the waiting room, then in a little curtained cubicle in the ER. The nurse was kind and dimmed the lights in our cubicle, which felt much better on my eye. “Better” being a relative term at this point. I spent the time alternating between crying, trying not to cry, laughing (Bob was there, after all), being just generally delighted to be together wherever we were, and feeling really guilty for keeping us up until 3 am when we had a big day tomorrow.
The doctor finally came in about 3 and flipped on the (bright) light. I yelped in pain. He asked if I’d like him to numb the eye. I said “Oh yes!” He gave me wonderful drops of what Bob now refers to as “eye cocaine,” said it looked like an infection and wrote out a prescription for antibiotic drops. I asked if he’d checked to see if it was scratched or there was something in it. He asked if I had reason to believe there might be. I said it was possible. He did the iodine stain and black light thing, said there was no scratch or foreign body and asked if I knew what he’d do if there was. I said “prescribe antibiotic drops?” He said, “right.” At least I got more eye cocaine when he put the iodine in.
We filled the prescription at the 24 hour pharmacy and arrived at Bob’s house. All the furniture was stacked in the garage waiting to be loaded into the moving truck, but Bob had made a big pile of pillows in front of the fire place and had wood arranged ready to be lit. It would have been a romantic, relaxing place to sip some hot chocolate and fall asleep, had we gotten there several hours earlier. As it was we collapsed and got to sleep about 3:30. We had to leave to pick up the U-Haul in 4 hours.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Having had two incredible scratches in my eye during my lifetime, I just have to tell you that just reading that story made my eyes water. (One time, I went to the doctor and told him I scratched my eye and he said, "How do you know?" And I said, "Cause you can see the big white line down the center of my eye!" Apparently, he'd never seen a scratch that was visible to the naked eye before. That was the second scratch though. The first time, I went to the eye doctor because my eye wouldn't stop watering. He put that dye in and used the funky light and said I scratched it and seemed downright angry that I had no idea how it could have happened.)
Moving is hell. But, in a few months, you get to do it again, right? Or maybe after this ordeal, y'all will just decide to live in separate houses? Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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((((Dana)))) I am so sorry! Eye scratches hurt, but I'm glad it was minor. I'm actually more blind in my left eye because of a scratch.
Posts: 873 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Yikes! Great timing, dkw. Glad it was minor, and trust it is feeling better, and you two both have gotten some rest.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I once got a hangnail actually caught in my eye. My cousin had a hangnail, glomped me, and as she was pulling away, suddenly--OW!
Apparently, that actually tore the outer part of my eye. Took absolutely forever to heal, and hurt like hell. I also had to keep putting in antibiotic drops cosntantly for infections.
So on slightly less than four hours of sleep we headed for the U-haul lot. On the way there I mentioned to Bob that we needed to go someplace where I could buy clip-on sunglasses, since I couldn’t wear my contacts for the next week because of the eye infection. He reached up and pushed a button on the ceiling of the car and a little compartment folded down. In it was a pair of clip-ons that exactly fit the lenses of my glasses. My car doesn’t have a magic wish-fulfillment box. I guess they don’t make them for chevys.
We got the truck, furniture pads, and 4 lengths of tie-line. Four. Bob had obviously forgotten that he’s marrying a theatre techie. We got home and the husband of one of Bob’s co-workers arrived to help us load (we’ll call him “R”). He and Bob moved all of the furniture that was stacked in the garage while I played 3-D tetris with the boxes and tied everything down. When we went to load boxes in the “attic” over the cab we realized that it had a major leak. Oh yeah, did I mention it was pouring rain? Bob called the U-haul place, and they said they could patch it. We decided to get the rest of the heavy furniture in first, since R could only stay three hours, and the water seemed to be confined to the attic. I ran out of tie-line about then, and returned to the U-haul place to get more.
When it was time for R to leave, Bob drove the U-haul back to the lot. I followed in his car, and we left the truck to be patched while we went out to eat. Really yummy grilled seafood. Then we picked up the truck and went back home. R was coming back in the afternoon, and we decided to take a quick nap before he returned – 3 ¾ hours of sleep the previous night not really being sufficient. So we caught about half an hour, then went back to loading. I dried off the truck attic and discovered that the roof still leaked, though not as badly. We decided to deal with it. I arranged plastic to channel the water away from where we were working, then covered everything with sheets of plastic and wedged a heavy blanket against the ceiling to keep the water from rolling off the plastic onto the other furniture or onto the floor and attacking the boxes from the bottom. It seemed to work okay – we had a very soggy blanket when we unloaded, but all the boxes were intact.
R left again around 3:30, and Bob and I started to pack the kitchen and other stuff that he’d left for the last minute. Around 4 we decided that the hope of getting a head start on the weather by leaving that night was making the whole exercise too stressful, and that we would take the time we needed to finish everything and get a good start in the morning. About 9:30 we decided to grab some fast food for dinner, and re-evaluate after. By 1:30 am we had the truck loaded, but still had to put the motorcycle in its trailer, pack the rest of the boxes in with it, and load the clothes from Bob’s closet into the back of the car. We decided to finish in the morning and set the alarm for eight.
We got up at eight and finished loading. By the time we were done it was almost eleven. We made a quick trip to the bank, grabbed some breakfast/lunch at McDonalds, went back to the house to do a last walk-through and pick up Smokey. Officially on the road by noon-thirty, just as it started to rain again.
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I had an eye infection once. I had to go to the ER at midnight during my 13th birthday slumber party because there was a chance my cornea was scratched (it wasn't). That "eye cocaine" (great name for it!) really is magic.
You certainly had an exciting move! Can't wait to hear more...
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Or maybe after this ordeal, y'all will just decide to live in separate houses? ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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To DKW![[No No]](graemlins/nono.gif)
To Bob for all the terrible Eye puns he was thinking, if not saying, while DKW suffered so.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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