Serendipity! A person (probably a bot) “liked” my post from 25 February 2017. I had totally forgotten this ramble, yet! How nice to revisit. And perhaps you will also enjoy. I haven’t managed to bring the comments through, so if you wish to read them, here is a link to the original post. Sadly, Lord Beari is no longer with us.

By way of update: It took all those years, but the manuscript I was plugging away on, was published earlier this year as Louisa, an Historical Novel. I am still at risk of glaucoma but continue to remain stable with no deterioration in the risk factor (optic nerve cupping). Meantime, both eyes underwent cataract surgery last year. I’m no longer sixty but am still fit and healthy. In fact – I am still line dancing, and as it is once again a Monday, I will be off to that very shortly.

Trigger Warning

My original post ended with a reference to Domestic Violence. Incredibly (or not) three Australian women were murdered by DV perpetrators in the last 24 hours. In another event, one woman and three children were discovered stabbed in their car. One child deceased, the others critical. The circumstances still to be determined.

One man was taken by a shark. Guess which has the most media attention and action by relevant authorities. A (rare) catch-and-kill order has been issued for a great white shark believed to be responsible.

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HERE’S THE ORIGINAL POST 

I haven’t done a blog post for three weeks. For the first two, there was nothing to report, except that I was plugging away on my manuscript, one thousand words at a time. I am about 40% into a first draft. I hope it doesn’t die on the vine. I never plan, apart from a few dot points for an upcoming section. Mostly a broad outline lives in my head, but the details find themselves. Particularly the dialogue. I find it incredible that a person whose job in logistics required high-level planning and organising skills, cannot plan a story-line. But it is so. Perhaps it is a left-brain, right-brain thing.

On the third week, my life went crazy busy again, and now I haven’t written anything for days. I wasn’t even at the computer for most of them.

Last Monday morning (20 Feb) I was at line dancing as usual. It’s not yee-haa country and western stomping. It’s more like synchronised choreography for the individual, danced to a range of older and modern music, such as Meghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass“. I love to sing along. “I’ve got all the right junk in all the right places“. Except in my case, gravity is dragging most of that junk downwards so that it settles on my “booty” 🙂  Anyway, in a world obsessed with self-image, it’s a great song with a great message. We should all remember, me included, “Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top“.

Our lovely instructor has divided the morning into beginner-intermediate-advanced and you can choose two. It’s a great idea for those of us who have been at it for some time. There is one dance that we only do occasionally, and I missed the lessons, so I have not yet mastered it. My phone rang ten seconds into it. It was a friend inviting me to join her at an event run by the Australian Centre for Leadership for Women so I was glad I took the call or I would never have known about it. I still don’t know how to do the new dance, but I’ll catch up sometime. Meantime, I just shuffle around trying to remember the first half dozen steps.

In the afternoon I had my annual eye-checkup. My regular optometrist has been warning me I am risk for glaucoma, so I went to a different one this time for a second opinion. Same warning. Now, I have this mantra I try to adhere to, that I refuse to worry about things until the problem has occurred and I know exactly what it is I am supposed to be worrying about. And then you are usually so busy dealing with the event, that you don’t have time to worry anyway. It’s saved me heaps of unnecessary stress over the years.

This falls into that camp. I will return to my usual optometrist as he has the baseline measurements and the progress chart. Or non-progress in my case. Which is good. Until I get escalated to less than annual check-ups, or a referral to the ophthalmologist, then I refuse to be concerned. Alert, but not alarmed. It would be a kick in the teeth for a writer to develop glaucoma, but it is treatable and in any case there is a workaround. I could dictate my words and others could type them up. Dame Barbara Cartland turned out scores of books that way. And I look good in pink. I would have to get myself a white lapdog if I were to truly emulate her, and take to writing romantic fiction. The first would not be a hardship. The second would be a challenge. Although my Liz Thurlow uncompleted serial would be a start.

It is why a healthy sixty-year-old who has no diagnosed medical conditions would be displaying the characteristics of glaucoma that is the mystery. It could be congenital, but not likely. It could be hereditary, although none of my immediate relatives have it. It could be due to high blood pressure, except I am usually 90/60, which as one doctor once told me, “is only a problem if I start passing out in the street” (thanks Doc). It could be due to high eye pressure, except my readings are normal. Or it could be due to injury, and that leads me to another topic altogether – domestic violence.

There was a media announcement of a new initiative for sufferers of domestic violence, and the local TV station contacted me for a sound grab, which brought DV back onto my radar this week and got my thought neurons pinging. I’d like to share them, or they will bang around in my head all week. I will save it for a separate post though, and that will give people the chance to read or not.

In the meantime, I would like to close with this quote from American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, “Dance is the hidden language of the soul”.