Misty & Mold

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, so I thought a new post was in order.  Over the past few weeks I’ve had a ton of bitchin’ and moanin’ to do, but no time to post — lucky for my reader(s).  Maybe if I posted more often, they’d be a bit shorter…

For those of you who are friends on Facebook, sorry to repeat the mold story.  For those of you who’d like to be my friend, go to www.facebook.com/davidbenj.  Since mid-June, water has been leaking into our business, Salon Supplies + Interiors, located in the Delcroft Shopping Center in Folcroft, PA.  At first, it wasn’t that bad.  With each rain storm, however, it has grown worse.  Since we’ve had about 10.29 inches of rain in August, and there were a couple of bad storms the last week of July, some of the carpet hasn’t been dry in over a month!  Over the past two or three weeks, the mold and fungus have really exploded on the walls, floor (both carpet and linoleum,) and ceiling tiles.  I’ll be taking some new pics tomorrow, to document the additional damage from the storms on Friday and Saturday.  I’ll post them here sometime tomorrow.

Since early or mid-July, I’ve been congested.  When I went to the doctor in late July, she asked me if I have any allergies.  I told her I was tested about 10 years ago and nothing registered.  She had a look in my throat and said it was a little puffy.  (She gave me a prescription for Nasonex, but I haven’t started using it yet.  More on that in a second.)  Over the weeks, my congestion seems to have grown worse.  I have trouble hearing out of my right ear (which is really bad, since I can’t see at all out of my right eye…)  Could it be from the mold?  Is H1N1?  Or, does some of it have to do with the new cholesterol drug I was prescribed at the same appointment?  My bet is the mold.  I will start with the Nasonex tomorrow or Tuesday.  I’ve been waiting to use it because I didn’t want to start two new meds at the same time, in case I had a reaction or side effect.

The frustrating thing with the condition of the building is how bad it makes us look.  We’ve had to move product from a storage room that gets a bunch of water with every rain.  There is now cases of product in our showroom, which looks so bad I can’t stand it.  We’ve also had to move product into Eliz’s office, so we now have nowhere in the building to meet with vendor reps.  Ken’s desk is also covered with cases of product.  He now works from home.  If I were a customer looking to open a salon and saw the disarray going on, I don’t know if I’d make a purchase.  This problem has taken our focus off operating the business.  Up to this point, the property management company has done nothing to help us.  I’ll update on the condition of the building tomorrow.

On to some better news: we are dog sitting!  Eliz’s sister’s family is in DisneyWorld for a week, so we are watching Misty.  She is a two to three year old Golden Retriever.  We’ve had her since Friday night, and so far so good.  She seems to like Eliz better than any of us.  We’ve taken her on walks each night, after dinner.  It’s made us miss having Zammy around (he died on 3 August 2004.)  He would have been 12 this coming Wednesday.

Lastly, a quick eye update.  This coming Friday, it will be 10 months since the partial cornea transplant.  My vision has been giving me a bit of trouble over the last few weeks to a month.  I don’t know if it is mold/allergies, the new cholesterol med, or a cornea/glaucoma issue.  Eliz and the kids go to our local ophthalmologist on Tuesday, so I’ll see if I can get in on that.  If not, I go to Wills on 17 September.  It seems like there is a large “hole” (blind spot) in the northeast area of my vision (in my “good” eye — the left eye.)  At times, when I am looking at someone, it almost seems like I am seeing through part of them.  Same thing when I am reading on the computer.  It is not constent though.  I’ve also noticed that while riding a car at night, I see blue (almost indigo) from other cars lights (both headlights and taillights.)  Whatever is wrong, I’m sure it can’t be fixed…

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Thanks Ken!

I wanted to take a moment to thank Ken for all the great changes on the blog. I love all the extra goodies. Now, if I could only write…

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Six Months Later

Okay, so I haven’t updated in five months.  I’ve had a bunch of stuff going on.  Here it is in a nutshell…  We scrambled to find a new space for our business (Salon Supplies + Interiors – www.ForMySalon,) which we finally did about a week before our old lease expired (5 Feb 2009 – yeah, we didn’t even have until the end of the month.)  We moved our business the week of 2 Feb.  It took us the next two weeks to unpack and set up the soft goods (shampoos, perms, hair color, etc) and another couple of weeks to set up our showroom.  Our days were long and free time non-existant.  We only closed for four days during that stretch.  Ken and I (mostly Ken) have been working hard to get ForYourSalon.com up and running.  Eliz has tried to manage both the store and our homelife — delivering salon supplies, taking the kids to school, payroll, soft good orders, etc.  No wonder we both (and the kids too) were wiped-out by some flu like thing in mid-March (and without the luxury or the ability to take a day or two off, it probably took a little longer to get rid of whatever it is we had.)

Okay, enough about other stuff.  I started this blog to rant about my No. 1 frustration: my eye sight.  Here’s where I’m at now…  I am able to read on the computer with reading glasses (I never in my life thought I’d be able to walk into a drug store and purchase glasses for under $20…)  I still have to enlarge the text two or three Apple +’s, but I’ve kind of accepted it.  The readers also help me see larger printed materials (newspaper headlines, etc.)  Officially, my vision still stands at 20/200 in my left eye and hand motion at a foot in the right.  (My right eye has been a lost cause since the day I was born, so I’m STILL ready and willing to take part in some sort of crazy experiment to help me see with it.)  It doesn’t seem likely that my vision will improve much more than where it is currently.  I have been refracted twice with virtually no improvement.  We will try again in a month or two.  I am not happy.

Here comes the rant…
Three of my thirteen eye surgeries have occurred since I was 15 (1980, 2003, 2008.)  Before each one, I was very excited to have the procedures (two trabs, one partial cornea transplant) done because I thought my vision would be improved greatly.  The 1980 trab was successful and it didn’t reduce my vision (though it didn’t improve it either.)  The 2003 trab was successful in reducing my IOP, but I went from reading the 20/100 line to the 20/200 line.  The 2008 partial cornea transplant was successful in removing the bad endothelia and replacing it with a good (but 25 years older than me) endothelia.  My vision is no longer cloudy, but I still can only read the 20/200 line.  It looks clearer than it did a year ago, but I still have trouble seeing TV, movies, sporting events, peoples faces, and just about anything else.  I was hoping to get to 20/100 and from what both my cornea specialist and my local ophth said, it seemed possible.  I had great fantasies of having a catch with my daughter as she worked on her softball pitching mechanics, throwing a football around with whoever, going to a Phillies game, Flyers game, Eagles game, or soccer friendly between two of Europe’s best teams and actually see what is going on.  I’d take tons of pictures with my camera and mess around with them in Photoshop.  All of those will have to wait, if I can ever do it at all.  My biggest problem is trying to get past the frustration and find something else that I do like to do.  I just can’t seem to move forward.  Got any ideas?

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