Coping and continuing to function

I am home for a few hours as I have agreed to work the afternoon in the charity shop. I went in as usual, taking the box of biscuits that I bought in Leclerc. I stayed for an hour or so and then came home via the health stores where I buy most of my breakfast cereals. I also visited some of the other charity shops in the town.

Yesterday Dan went to Alresford to play petanque as usual. I did not visit my aged uncle as my left eye is still sore. Around 5.30 Dan's cousin and his wife arrived. We had a very pleasant meal together at the local ASK Italian restaurant. Philip is a very eminent professor of astronomy. We have visited him in La Palma, off the coast of Tenerife and Cape Town, where he was leading important projects. He and Anne have twin sons. It was good to see them and catch up on their travels and activities.  Anne is a scientific programmer and they met when Philip went to NASA. She is an American from Dublin, Pennsylvania. We have an invitation to visit them in Oxford.

I had my second vitrectomy on Monday afternoon. It went well. I was not so heavily anaesthetised this time and conversed a little with the surgeon. During cataract surgery one is conscious all the time and can make conversation with the surgeon's team. I am now washing my hands more times than Lady Macbeth in order to carry out the regime of eye drops. I have antibiotics four times a day for a week and anti-inflammatory drops four times a day for four weeks. When I go out I wear dark glasses. The pupil of the left eye is still a little dilated, making the vision fuzzy.

I have some emails to which I must reply. One is from my cousin in Melbourne, one from an old school friend and the other from my friend Adele. She and I met in Kingston, NY in 1974. Our respective husbands were both assigned to the IBM plant in that little town in the foothills of the Catskill mountains. We would have got on well together however we had met and have been firm friends ever since. Adele separated from her husband in 1976 and has not  married again. She has come close to it twice but remains single. At my daughter's funeral my three oldest friends were present; one from schooldays, one from civil service days, one from IBM assignment days. I value them all.

The weather is getting warmer. It has been very cold during our absence in France. I left the warm quilt on our bed and am glad that I did. I think that I shall change it next week. Tomorrow is chores day; ironing and polishing the silver. My dining room is going to be complete sometime in the summer. I am looking for a little table for the living room and for lamps for the dining room. There remains one room, the smallest (or smaller) bedroom, that needs a new oak floor. Dan uses it as a study/ office. It still has the rather horrid carpet that was there when we bought the flat. This, too, will come to pass. Patience.