Needed to see details out to about the length of my arm (usual stuff - reading, fine marks on tape measures, handsewing, unpicking hand sewing especially black on black, chopping onions in poor light without removing left finger tips...) my specs are cheap reading glasses bought in bulk online and the current pair spend most of their day either on top of my head or, if I'm wearing a hat (sunny days) hooked through the cord of my jade neck ornament.
Part of last Friday morning was spent flat on my back under the deck (mechanic under car style) nailing ceiling ties in place to hold the deck to its bearers. There is just enough clearance under there to scoot in flat; can't roll over, lift my head, or bend knees up for purchase to push myself along. It was in interesting exercise in wielding a hammer horizontally both forehand and back hand (either side of me as I was between the bearers). Fortunately ceiling ties come with letf- and right-handed twists so I could use whichever suited the angle I was swinging the hammer from.
Sometime later I realized my specs were missing. I had last looped them into the neck cord when I realized that lying on my back they would fall off my head.
Inspection under the deck disclosed nothing and frankly I could have dropped or even put them down anywhere so I dug out the reserve pair.
Yesterday while contemplating a design for wooden steps to the deck, I chanced another grovel under the deck. The ground is still wet from last Sunday's torrential rain and the underdeck area is spattered with mud and sawdust and all the detritus not just of building but of the gorse and bracken that got mulched 6 months ago.
Ta-da!
Note on that deck fixing exercise. Although I built my own floor, instead of supplying materials and letting me get on with the deck in similar fashion, the suppliers decided to build the deck. I had to transport it in one huge piece (which messed up the loading of everything else I was picking up that day), find people to lift it into place and then grovel around underneath it to fix it down. It would have been so much easier to build if from the bottom up and we wouldn't have had to cut holes in it to set the verandah poles onto the bearers either. Sometimes kitset components don't make a job easier.
Hari Om
ReplyDeleteTreasure! Retrieving things we've misplaced (by whatever cause) is quite the thrill, I find. One is easily pleased... I don't think I have ever met a kit of any description that didn't require some form of adaptation! YAM xx
Darned right - not because they were expensive or a momento but because misplacing them represents to me a failure of mindfulness, of thinking and memory.
DeleteOh I felt claustrophobic just reading this.
ReplyDeleteI’m sure the company thought they were helping you. Although charging extra was probably more of an enticement. It did make life vastly harder for you.
Once all the building is done maybe a visit to the optometrist.
We all need to get our eyes tested regularly. You never know. Those store bought glasses might actually be making your eyes worse
I'm actually long sighted. The close vision has been moving further away for years, and lately losing contrast in poor light - that bit is aging. I got a prescription by testing then bought what they recommended online. Conclusion: most people must use computers with their faces less than 300mm from the screen! I couldn't read a thing unless I got very personal with it. The tester had clearly over corrected and I reverted to my old specs that work just fine.
DeleteWhew! That job sounds perfectly awful! You did it! You are the champion of the world! Before i got prescription lenses i bought many readers - they were all over the house and yard, in the car and on my head. The best ones with the clearest glass were from the dollar store, made in china, of course. Chinatown also had the best glasses . They still work pretty well for me though now I have a genuine eye problem...I still reach for my dollar store made in china glasses for reading.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, yours could do with a wipe...
Job well done!
Maybe you should have coerced Sully the sniffer dog to have helped locate them.
ReplyDeleteDon’t be too hard on yourself when it comes to misplacing items. We have so much going on in our brains sometimes it’s difficult to bring the necessary information to the front of the line
Things decide to wander when our focus (!) isn't on them.
ReplyDeleteGlad they decided to turn up.
I remember being told after an eye test "come back to me when you run out of arm when reading..."
It does sound like you're due for another eye test...
Color me flabbergasted at the vision in my head of you doing this JOB.. wow, even though I should be used to your talents by now, this is one that has a wow factor..
ReplyDeleteI can't think there would have been much room to 'swing' the hammer. I am in awe of your plethora of skills.
ReplyDeleteThere was room on a narrow horizontal plane.
DeleteA fish hook and glasses from the warehouse? I have similar ones for reading.
ReplyDelete