Relative Something

I have done it again. This time, I was wearing my safety glasses, but somehow it happened again anyway. A metal fragment lodged in my eye and in time began to rust, just as happened to me 30 years ago.

I knew that debris had gotten around my safety glasses while I was using a grinding stone with a Dremel tool to smooth sharp prongs of the grates I made for the slow-feeder boxes. When I showered afterward, I rinsed my eyes thoroughly.

The next day, both eyes felt a bit irritated, but I figured that was a normal reaction to the abuse of grit followed by the water-washing. Yesterday, when I woke up, my right eye was enough worse that I suspected I had more trouble brewing. Cyndie told me she could see a spot in my eye.

I couldn’t see it, but since I now need correction to see up close, I was trying to look through the lens of my glasses. It didn’t matter. I made an appointment to have it examined at our eye clinic.

First, the doctor checked my distance vision. Still 20/20. That was the good news. Then she immediately identified the foreign body that was indeed beginning to rust. I never expected to suffer that fate twice. It is time for me to buy a face shield that I can wear over the goggles that I will have over my safety glasses.

Yeah, that won’t fog up and make it hard to see what I am trying to do. I should get a welding helmet, and in place of the dark glass window I can put a x1000 magnifying lens so what I am looking at will be in focus.

After the sting of a drop of numbing potion, the tweezers came out and in less than a blink, the sliver was removed. Then came the interesting part. With a miniaturized version of the Dremel tool that caused my problem, she worked to “grind” off the rust in my eye. It took several passes, between which she had me blinking several times.

Finally, she needed to use a Q-tip to retrieve the remnants of floating rust that were left behind.

Walking out into daylight caused pain in the entire eye, which radiated all the way to the back of my head, but it was a relief to know the irritant had been removed. I could live with the discomfort.

The night before, I had created a list of things I hoped to address over my 3-day weekend. By the end of the day yesterday, I had almost finished one of the dozen tasks. That wasn’t the progress I was hoping for.

Shortly after returning from our foray to the eye doctor, George called to check if we were home because he was pulling in our driveway for an appointment to trim our horses and it didn’t look like we were around. Usually, we are waiting for him with the horses haltered and all ready to go. He could see them all grazing in the far side of the hay-field.

Oops. We forgot.

That wasn’t one of the tasks on my list. I suppose I should add it, after the fact, so I could then say I got two things done by the end of the day.

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