Dry eyes battle

I'm still fumbling through this dry eyes situation that I've mentioned a couple times here. I had never had an issue with my eyes (other than fairly terrible vision) until Thanksgiving of last year, when I noticed my right eye felt like I had an eyelash stuck in it, except there was nothing there. Turns out my cornea was scratched and as it continued to get worse I finally realized the underlying cause was dry eyes. It progressed over the next several months and I quickly graduated from my optometrist to an ophthalmologist.

{fighting it}

I'm certainly not an expert, and I'm still struggling a lot. I have good days where I feel almost completely normal and then I have bad days where I can't see anything unless I hold it three inches from my face (works for a phone, not so effective with a computer screen) and I want to cry in frustration.

I've got my basic arsenal down and it's actually pretty simple for now. I'm attacking on a few different fronts. I did some frantic online research/shopping when I decided to get serious about this (oh, the irony of having to use the computer to find information about a condition that is worsened by using the computer!).

Humidifier - (x2 - one for my office, one for the bedroom). This one was the cheapest, simplest humidifier I could find and it's been great. The misty air is cold, which means you can have an unpleasant tendency to dampness if you aim it too close to your clothes. I'm honestly not sure if the humidifier is making a huge difference, but it's a relatively low cost, low impact option, so I'm sticking with it.

Eye drops - I use two different kinds of eye drops, a lighter one during the day and a heavy gel at night. They are both preservative free, which is critical if you're using them often. They come in individual vials, which are meant for single use but I can recap my daytime ones and get a few applications out of each one. I use RefreshPlus during the day, which I get from Costco for a little less money ($20 for 100 vials, which lasts me about a month) and before I go to bed at night I put in Thera Tears gel, close my eyes and sort of massage it in. Then I carefully wipe my eyes with damp washcloth, because I hate having gel all over my eyelashes when I wake up.

Omega-3s - I'm taking vitamins for the first time in my life. There is some evidence that omega-3s can help with dry eyes (some studies here). I figured I should be taking them for general health anyways, so that was an easy decision. And since I was already in for it, I added in a vitamin B complex and the vitamin D my doctor asked me to start taking 5 years ago. I'm basically the healthiest person alive now! Right now I'm just using the Thera Tears vitamin, because I was overwhelmed and tired of researching things. Since the omega-3 is the important part I'll probably save a little money and just start sharing the Costco fish oil pills that we buy for Circe (yes, our dog has been taking all her supplements daily since we've had her - not sure why it takes a crisis to convince me to do the same). It can take 4 - 8 weeks before you notice an improvement. Last week was my fifth week and I felt like I turned a little corner. It was the first week in months where I felt pretty normal all week. I don't want to jinx it, but I'm hopeful. This week I've had a little blurring but nothing terrible. I'm now obsessive about never missing my pills and I wish I'd tried this earlier.

Hot/cold compresses - There's some debate over compresses. People generally recommend a hot compress to help unplug (possibly) blocked oil ducts. On the other hand, some people swear by cold compresses to help reduce inflammation. I go ahead and do both. I store my gel eye mask in the freezer and when I get home from work I take out my contacts* and do a 10 - 20 minute cold compress. I leave the mask out and then right before I go to bed I'll heat it in the microwave and do a 10 minute hot compress. Again, not sure this helps but it feels good. The mask is relatively cheap and it's been holding up well so far.

Miscellaneous -

I've had temporary punctal plugs inserted twice now and they seem to help me quite a bit but I think the left one came out shortly after it was inserted this time around. My left eye (which was my good eye for the first few months) has been a disaster, way worse than my right. FYI - the punctal plugs aren't scary at all. Each one looks like a tiny grain of rice and it takes about two seconds for the ophthalmologist to pop it into the tear duct. They dissolve slowly and mine are supposed to last about 3 months but don't make it quite that long. I have a little discomfort right after insertion (not painful, but I'm aware of it) but they seem to settle in overnight and then I can't tell they're there.

Eyelid hygiene is usually recommended. I don't worry much about this, because I wash my face every night with gentle soap and do a pretty thorough massage of my eyelids to make sure I get all my mascara off.

Work habits are the toughest for me. The rule I keep hearing is take a break from computer work every 20 minutes and look at something 20 feet away. I don't know about you, but that's difficult for me. First, I guess I should be setting an alarm to go off every 20 minutes, but I haven't done it. Second, I tend to get really focused and then I hate being interrupted when I'm working on something. (I'm fully aware these are excuses - I'm going to set up the alarm on my phone now)

I have been trying to reduce my screen time as much as possible. I don't use the computer much for recreational stuff if I'm having a bad spell (hence, sporadic posting). Sadly, reading is sometimes difficult as well and I have to be more strategic about it. I'm going to look into checking out audio books from the library if I don't improve soon.

Upcoming - at my last ophthalmologist appointment he recommended permanent punctal plugs and Restasis prescription eye drops. I resisted because I felt I hadn't done everything I could on my end. But after 1.5 months of effort, I'm ready to go try anything. I'll probably take him up on those at my next appointment. But maybe not the permanent plugs because those still make me nervous (what if I don't have insurance at some point and that's when a plug decides to go rogue in my tear duct?!).




* And this is maybe where you want to yell at me, because I'm still wearing contact lenses against the advice of my ophthalmologist. He thinks that my dry eyes are caused by contacts but I'm not so sure. I followed his advice initially and went completely without contacts for a month ... and then another month ... and then another month. It didn't make an appreciable difference in my eye situation. I seem to have about the same number of good and bad days whether I'm wearing contacts or glasses. One side effect of the dry eyes is that I'm pretty sensitive to bright light and being able to easily slip sunglasses on and off is a huge benefit. I also just hate wearing my glasses, especially at the gym. I am extremely careful with my contacts, never sleep in them and change them out as scheduled. I feel pretty confident that this isn't setting me back, but who knows? One thing I've found really helpful - I put a daytime eye drop (RefreshPlus) in each eye right before putting my contacts in. Then I put an eyedrop in the contact lens before I insert it and follow the whole thing up with an eyedrop in each eye. My eyes don't dry out any faster when I'm wearing contacts (I have soft hydrogel lenses) and it's much easier for me to put eyedrops in because I'm not having to take my glasses off each time. Have I justified my vain and potentially bad decision enough now?

New splurge

I'd been putting off buying a new nighttime face lotion for ages because there are so many options, at so many price points and the research is just a pain. And then the internet worked for me* and I finally found one with almost no effort. It's officially the best face lotion I've ever tried.

{rose day cream}

It's called day cream, but I only use it at night, because it doesn't have SPF in it. It's very, very thick, and my dry skin loves it. I massage it in gently and it takes a minute to absorb. My skin feels a million times better since I started using it and I think it looks better as well. 

I was initially uncertain because it seemed expensive ($35 for 1 oz) but I've been using it nightly for the last two months and I haven't put much of a dent in the tube. I'm guessing I'll get 4 - 6 months out of it, and I can certainly live with that cost. 

It smells lightly of roses, so you'll either love it or it will remind you of old ladies. That's just a personal preference. I'm team roses.

*Emily posted a link to an article about Keri Russell's skin care regime and this is the lotion mentioned.  

Closet strategy

So you've all been hearing about capsule wardrobes forever, right? Only using 30ish pieces of clothing or something like that? This is really appealing to me because I'm a terrible shopper and I'm finally realizing that the issue is that I don't like shopping very much most of the time*. You'd think this would mean I have less clothing, but no. It just means I have oddly assorted clothing and then wear the same things over and over again. Back in January I decided I needed to come up with a better system that would be more uniform-y and efficient. So now it's August ...

{before}

I was initially planning a pretty drastic overhaul. I wanted to cut my wardrobe down to 35 pieces (including shoes and clothes, everything except underwear and workout gear). I read through the guide at Unfancy and it seemed fairly doable (note - I've linked to the wardrobe planner but you'll need to poke around a little to get more information from her site about how she pieces out her wardrobe). I liked that it at least gave me a solid outline of how I'd want my closet allocated and what pieces I might need. I strategized quite a bit. 

But strategizing is not the same as executing. When I actually went to tackle my closet it became clear that getting down to 35 pieces all at once was going to be a huge mental effort and I was probably going to burn out my decision making power before I was done. This has happened in the past and it gets ugly. Sometimes I give up and put everything back in the closet. Sometimes I give up and toss out all my long sleeved shirts because I haven't worn them in months (ignoring the fact that it's summer) and then in October I have nothing to wear. I took a modified approach instead. 

I worked methodically, pulling out everything from one section at a time. I spread it all out and sorted into categories (tops, bottoms, special occasion, etc) to get an idea of what I had. Some pieces I knew needed to go - I didn't care about them and I hadn't worn them in forever. Some pieces were clear keepers (I'd worn them multiple times in the last few weeks). Then there were all the in-between things. Stuff I loved but hadn't worn in a long time. Pieces that could potentially be really useful (or used to be useful) but I didn't love that much. 

I started to feel overwhelmed with the decision making process so I decided to set up a clothing purgatory. Anything I wasn't sure about I marked with a piece of yellow ribbon, either knotted on the hanger or pinned on the tag. If I wear something and feel good about it, I'll take off the yellow ribbon. In a few months I'll revisit my closet and anything that still has a yellow ribbon will go. 

I also have a few purple tags, which are for pieces of clothing I do wear a lot but would like to replace with a better version soon. This way I'll know to keep my eye out for those staples. 

{hanging}

I think the marking system is what made it possible for me to get through everything without feeling overly stressed out. It's worth noting that I did not try anything on. I felt like that would just get distracting (and possibly depressing) and I was pretty sure I wouldn't finish. I'm just spreading it out a bit, since I'll eventually try these things on when I'm deciding what to wear. I think I can handle it better in small doses. 

{in progress}

In addition I set aside a couple of boxes and stashed them on my top shelf. One has my winter/holiday clothing and one has clothing I'm not quite fitting into right now. It's been a rough year, guys. I'm not going to beat myself up about it, but there's a good 5 - 10 pounds standing between me and my usual jeans. I figure if I'm still here in another six months, I can just give the whole box away in one go. 

This isn't quite everything - my dresses are hanging in the coat closet but I sorted through them with the same system. 

So I didn't exactly achieve my goal (I have no idea how many pieces of clothing I still own) but I think I'm heading in the right direction. I'm going to see how it goes and hopefully I can make this an ongoing process over the next several months. I want to be in a place where getting dressed is easy and I'm happy with all my clothes. 

* Once I realized this it was nice because I mostly stopped shopping. But it's lead to the secondary situation I'm in now, where I've worn through every pair of everyday shoes and now I need to buy sandals, flats and sneakers and it's a nightmare, because I hate shoe shopping more than anything else. 

The weekend, briefly

{pancakes}

{sorting}

{lazy afternoon}

{baby girl}

I had a pretty productive weekend. We had D's little brother up so I made pancakes for us. I'm still looking for the perfect buttermilk-esque pancake recipe. I usually use this one (subbing lemon juice for the vinegar) but this weekend I had buttermilk so I tried a new one. They're both great, not sure that one is better than the other. I might keep testing.

The boys went to FYF fest and I settled in for a marathon closet session. More on that later - it's something I've been putting off for months. After six solid hours of work I stopped and spent the rest of the evening watching Scandal and drinking rosé and trying to convince Circe to be social. She's mostly only interested in snuggling at night and she prefers to spend most of the day alone in the closet in our bedroom (I know, she's a weird one). 

LACBC year 5

A couple weekends ago it was the fifth annual LA Craft Beer Crawl and it was pretty great. I write the same things about it every year, but it's that good. D and I threw a mild wrench in the works by getting mono a couple months ago (I know! I thought it was just for 13 year olds too!) and because I couldn't definitively figure out how long you're contagious we opted to not share drinks with anyone. We still managed to taste quite a bit by asking for half pours all afternoon and it worked out pretty well.

{preparing!}

{kinetic at casey's}

{the varnish}

{seven grand}

{las perlas}

My very favorite beer this year was Neddles from Allagash. It's a slightly sour wild ale brewed in rum barrels. The Bruery had a great showing with a coconut and pineapple riff on their Sour in the Rye (sounds horrifying, isn't AT ALL). Deschute's Fresh Squeezed IPA was hoppy and not too citrusy and BONUS it's readily available (we found it at a random liquor store last week). Los Angeles Ale Works, a newcomer, has a winner with their Lievre Saison, served both regular and on cask. The on cask version was amazing, if you can get your hands on it. I also really enjoyed the Enter the Future IPA from Highland Park Brewery, which operates out of the Hermosillo. We were really bummed that we didn't make it in time to taste their Lazy Susan, which was getting a lot of buzz.

There are so many great places popping up and I keep thinking that I should do a run down on the different LA breweries. Maybe a little series? Is that hoping for too much, given that I'm barely managing to post a couple times a month?

Recaps of all LACBC to date - 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

P.S. - So many thanks for all the sweet sympathy re: my annoying dry eyes. I'm going to do a quick post very soon on what I'm doing (although I've seriously had two days this week where I couldn't see anything that was more than 3 inches away from my face, so I'm not claiming to be an expert) and pull together some of the excellent advice in the comments as well. Hate that so many of us are dealing with this!

Fresh grout

Taking those last pictures was the straw that broke the camel's back, re: me and our kitchen grout. I had issues with our grout. Namely, the fact that it hadn't been redone since the 1930s and most of it was missing. At some point someone came along and attempted a quick fix by running large amounts of painting caulk along the more obvious gaps. I'm almost positive this didn't improve the situation.

One Sunday I couldn't stand it anymore so I did what any rational person would do - decided on the spur of the moment that I was going to re-grout the kitchen instead of taking care of the laundry, meal planning and grocery shopping that actually needed to get done.

{scraping}

{un-grouting}

I went through an insane number of razor blades before we gave in and went to Home Depot. Not sure why we didn't go sooner because we were obviously going to have to buy grout anyways. I think I was hoping I could get away without the scraper. We'd watched this video which is really all you need to do to prepare.

A few hours later, we had a freshly grouted kitchen. I was so excited that I also filled in a few gaps in the bathroom later.

{sweet potato on new grout}

This is the randomest picture to show, but apparently I didn't bother to take an official after picture so instead you get this shot of tiny roasted sweet potatoes, aka the cheapest gluten-free dog treats you can find. It's how we give Circe her pills every day.

There's nothing we can do about the fact that the glazing on the old tile is getting patchy, but I can't tell you how relieved I am to see actual grout in there. I swear our whole kitchen seems brighter.

And yes, we rent. And I'm guessing they're going to re-do the kitchen after we leave anyways so this might seem sort of pointless. But our counters are small so this project took just a few hours of active time (plus not being able to use the sink for 36 hours) and cost about $35 in supplies, most of which we can re-use in the future. It was totally worth it and I'm only sorry I didn't do it months earlier.

On the homefront

Actual documentation of small amounts of cooking! An oven-baked meal is a rare beast right about now. I honestly only bothered with this because we were having company. Our kitchen just gets blisteringly hot during the summer so I'm not always willing to go for it.

{lasagna in process}

{bread + spread}

{caesar dressing}

{classic caesar}

{contemplative}

Is it weird that I don't use a recipe for lasagna? I always eyeball it. I mix ricotta with a few eggs, salt, pepper, chopped basil and Parmesan. Then I just layer sauce, noodles, ricotta mix, mozzarella, repeat a couple times. I've finally started not pre-cooking my noodles and it's awesome. I hate wrangling cooked noodles. I do lay them out in the pan, pour boiling water over them and let them soak for 5 minutes but that probably isn't even necessary.

I made the garlic bread by whipping together salted butter and a few cloves of pressed garlic. I sliced the bread almost all the way through, slathered the butter between the slices and wrapped the whole thing in aluminum foil to bake for a bit. You don't get the lovely browned tops, but it's a lot easier.

I pulled the Caesar salad recipe directly from Bon Appétit and it was perfect - super traditional. I did chop the romaine because I personally hate unchopped salads. They look pretty but I just don't want to have to cut up slippery lettuce while trying to hold a conversation.

And if you're wondering what Circe is waiting for in that last picture ...

{romaine nubs}

She sticks pretty close while we're cooking because we're terrible and will feed her scraps of food. We're super strict about never feeding her from our plates (which is amazing because she's learned not to beg and she just leaves the room if we start eating) but it's so nice to have her in the kitchen while we work that we bribe her. Romaine hearts are her fave.