Eye Eye

It’s time for the next update and just so you know, I am doing this one in ‘stealth mode’ – under the guise of a work email in Outlook. Yes, I am writing a blog at work. In my defence, I have been here since 8am and have had only one task to complete – a proof reading that took me a whopping 15 minutes. So I think it is justifiable. The way I see it, if I don’t do anything then I will fall asleep at my desk. If I am asleep I won’t notice when someone emails me with work so I will be slower to react. Therefore, it must be in the interest of everybody to keep myself occupied, and more importantly awake, by doing important tasks like writing blogs.

It has been an eventful and at times exhausting and excruciatingly painful week. So the fun started on Friday with Ragil’s birthday, complete with cake, candles and my own very unique version of Happy Birthday. I think he liked it, even if it was slightly out of tune… The pain started during the birthday meal and didn’t end until well, yesterday/today, still to be confirmed. My wonderful contact lenses apparently thought it would be a good idea to grow some bacteria and thus, on insertion into my eye, gave my eye a bit of an unwelcome shock and visitor. The bacteria soon took affect and caused an almighty pain in my eye. By Saturday lunchtime I was screaming in pain, my left eye too swollen and painful to open and my right eye similarly shut. An eye doctor was sought. Apparently German hospitals are weird, eerily quiet and empty places. We went to one in the morning, when my eye was just disconcertingly cloudy, and found no people and the casualty hidden away on the 2nd floor with only one doctor/nurse in attendance. She informed us that they don’t have an eye doctor at the hospital and that I would have to go into town and seek one. It being Saturday, they were all shut, so the emergency eye doctor, a Dr Maus, came to my rescue, gave me vision for 40 minutes, patched me up, prescribed eye creams and pain killers and sent us on our way. The next 36hrs were spent with me being effectively blind, limited to such exciting and varied activities as sleeping and, when awake, sitting or lying with both my eyes shut, listening to music. The patch came off on Monday and my vision was magically restored. My eye continued to look extremely unsavoury for a while but it is fully fit now, hence I am back at work, with nothing to do…

Onto rather happier pastures, the flat mentioned in previous blog entry is ours. We signed the lease, paid the deposit, got the keys, moved most our stuff and last night, most excitingly of all, started to paint. This is quite a big thing for me. I have never had a place to renovate and paint before. The excitement did temporarily wear off when we had to cycle ridiculously far and up a huge hill to get to the DIY store, but once back at the flat complete with paint, rollers and brush, I was beaming. Unfortunately you couldn’t see me beaming because we had no electricity. We managed to paint most of the living room in the light of dusk and just as we started packing up our stuff, the electricity was fixed. Hurrah. Can’t wait to see the place today. Ragil is going on ahead after work to apply some finishing touches. It is probably safer with me not there. I did a very good job last night of covering my skin, t-shirt, trousers and socks, as well as large amounts of newspaper, in paint. Luckily, in fact, miraculously, no paint on carpet or furniture. How good are we?! (I got quite a bit on the walls too!)