Weekly review: Week ending December 30, 2016

Posted: - Modified: | review, weekly

We lost A-'s ocular prosthesis again, this time somewhere at home. It had been slipping out once or twice a day, sometimes even when she wasn't touching it. People in the online support group said that's often a sign that it's too small. We're going to see if the ocularist can step up his game and make one that's a better fit, or if it's time to shop around. 75% government funding and additional help from W-'s health benefits soften the blow a little, but if a replacement isn't eligible for coverage, it's a lot to pay for something that might not fit well. We'll just have to see. I don't think it would be practical to patch her eye 24/7 to help keep it in, so we'll just have to work on finding it whenever it comes out – at least until she becomes responsible enough to keep track of it herself, which could take several years. Anyway, that's life.

On the plus side, we've been enjoying the Junior Engineer set that my sister and her husband gave us. It's a collection of beams, plates, axles, pins, nuts, bolts, cubes, triangles, and wheels – a bit like LEGO Technic, but for the younger crowd. A- likes pulling things out of the basket and offering them to W-, who then figures out how to incorporate those things into whatever he's building. I'm methodically working my way through the models in the instruction manual. 3 down, 85 to go.

A-'s play area in the living room is shaping up nicely. The Junior Engineer set is there, as well as the toys W-'s family gave her at the Christmas get-together. W- installed a ledge for displaying a few books. We have a bin for rotating toys so that we don't have too many out at once. This also makes clean-up easier. It's become a nice place to hang out with A-, and we're developing a good rhythm of playing, doing chores, and going for walks.

We were out for a walk almost every day, except for that time there was a lot of freezing rain. We've been skipping the snow suit for walks in the neighbourhood – the blankets and scarves I wrap around us seem to be enough to keep her warm in 0-degree-ish weather. This means it's easier to get out of the house, and to come back in after. Yay walking!

The Junction Family Resource Centre turned out to be open, so we dropped by for snack time and circle time. A- was a little quiet – once again getting used to the stimulation of having all those kids around, I guess – but she seemed to have fun taking all the rattles out of one of the bins, and putting them back in again. She ate two apple slices and three slices of cheddar all by herself. Such progress since the last time I had taken her to the JFRC!

We chatted with my mom on Christmas and she gave us a few updates on the health issues that she and my dad are dealing with. Ah, life.

Lots of cooking. We made a number of banchan to accompany roast beef in bibimbap bowls: spinach, mushrooms, carrots… Congee made with mushroom soaking water picked up a deliciously earthy flavour. The roast vegetable techniques from the science of cooking book – cutting the vegetables into batons, steaming them in the roasting pan under a tight cover of foil before uncovering and browning them – resulted in tender, sweet roasted veg. The meat-stuffed vegetable recipe from the visual cookbook J- gave me didn't turn out as appetizing, but maybe I just need to double the filling and add more salt. Hmm… I want to get better at capturing and building on our cooking notes, too, so I might write more about cooking here.

Capturing ideas and fleshing them out on my phone is working well. I've been using Tasks Free to jot down ideas for sketches, and that makes my limited computer time more efficient. I like its drag and drop capabilities and synchronization more than I like Orgzly. There's a script to synchronize Google Tasks with Org Mode, anyway. As a result, I drew quite a few non-journal sketches this week.

I also managed to do a little coding. I finally got around to adding a date filter to my theme. While testing it, I realized that my blog had been quietly dropping paragraph breaks – how embarrassing! I discovered that just as A- woke up crying from a nap, so I was rather frazzled, but W- stepped in and took care of her. Fortunately, I managed to quickly narrow down the problem and fix it by upgrading a plugin. Got two blog posts out of that, too.

And I even got to play video games with W-! A- had been going to sleep at 9 or so, which gave me some time to join W- on a new playthrough of Borderlands 2. Whenever A- woke up, I put down the controller and dashed upstairs to spend time with her. It usually took a short time to settle her back down. Sometimes W- dropped my character out so that he could keep playing, and sometimes he filled in the time with other activities. He's a couple of levels ahead of me, but it all balances out with the way Borderlands 2 handles experience. Anyway, spending time with him is on my priority list too – video gaming time is cheaper than therapy. :) It's fun to be able to team up again.

Next week: more writing and playing, perhaps!

Blog posts

Sketches

Focus areas and time review

  • Business (0.5h – 0%)
    • Earn (0.0h – 0% of Business)
    • Build (0.0h – 0% of Business)
    • Connect (0.5h – 100% of Business)
  • Relationships (3.1h – 1%)
  • Discretionary – Productive (6.4h – 3%)
    • Drawing (2.8h)
      • ☑ Braindump a bunch of sketches
    • Emacs (0.6h)
    • Coding (1.3h)
      • ☑ Investigate WordPress date filter, add to theme
      • ☑ Fixed paragraph breaks in WordPress, no more wall of text
      • ☑ Set up inbox
    • Sewing (0.0h)
    • Writing (1.8h)
  • Discretionary – Play (10.7h – 6%)
    • ☑ Play Borderlands
  • Personal routines (15.3h – 9%)
  • Unpaid work (74.3h – 44%)
    • Childcare (61.9h – 36% of total)
  • Sleep (57.6h – 34% – average of 8.2 per day)

You can view 2 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

2 comments

RayH

2017-01-02T17:27:24Z

Lost ocular prosthesis etc

Sasha

Reading this post reminded me of the couple of times I have lost one or both of my hearing aids. (The costs being similar to an ocular prosthesis I believe.) Making urgent recovery of said items as easy as possible would be useful. Google didn't off much help after a short search session. So I am now thinking of attaching a RFC chip of some kind to my heading aids and a necklace device that would page the chip frequently and email or alarm if the RFC is NON responsive... lost. I shall look into this more over the coming weeks, For you I was thinking make an RFC chip could be mounted within your girls prosthesis with support from your medical professionals.

RayH

sachac

2017-01-02T17:56:00Z

W- and I have joked about the usefulness of having conformers come in safety orange or be sensitive to UV light, or embedding an RFID chip in one to make it easier to check or find. There's even one that's 0.3mm, so it might fit in her tiny prosthesis. We'd need the ocularist's help to pull it off, though! There's an ocularist in Toronto who put a camera in an artificial eye, so... Tempting. :) But conformers, painted scleral shells, and artificial eyes have different construction methods, and it might be tricky figuring out how to embed a chip into the acrylic they use (and if any safety approvals are need).

She's going to go through quite a few of these while her skull grows rapidly, and the problem may self-correct with age. When she's older, she might be able to sit still for the impressions in the ocularist's office, which will ensure a better fit. So the development costs of a prototype might not justify the potential benefits, unless perhaps I want to make this one of my future businesses. Anophthalmia and microphthalmia are rare conditions, so it would probably have to be a worldwide business to be worth it, and that has its own challenges for marketing and regulations.

I will ask the ocularist if he can do anything to make it easier to find/check, like drawing an X on the surface or outlining the edges. I'm also trying to get an idea of typical budgets for replacing these over time. More technical solutions might need to pass a feasibility check, though!

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