·:[ Jason On A Shtick ]:·
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Lindsay loves swings and slides. For as long as she’s been here, we’ve had one little swing mounted under the deck and she has to swing in it at least once a day. Whenever we go to visit friends who have a full fledged swing set, she is all over it. So, it came as no surprise that when we saw a “build it yourself” swing set kit at Lowe’s, she asked me when we were going to get one.

Jenny and I tossed ideas around for a while. We looked at several swing sets of all types and sizes. In the meantime, Lindsay would ask me almost every day “Daddy, did you get me a swing set yet?” Eventually, I decided to get the very kit at Lowe’s that started it all because, well, I don’t spend enough money at Lowe’s already.

The kit is designed so that you can add on different things as you go. The main tower comes by itself, then there’s the swing bar, monkey bars, a tunnel, a climbing wall, two different sized slides, a picnic table, and so on. I decided to start with the tower, swing bar, small slide and climbing wall. I wasn’t planning to mulch the area around the set just yet. I figured I’d start with the grass and maybe go from there.

There were about nine million pieces that came with this rig. First things first: lay out all the pieces so that you know what is what.

Our back yard has a slight slope to it, so I knew from the beginning that getting it level was going to be tough. My friend Leslie brought his trusty water level over and once we had roughed out where the posts should go, we used that to dig down and get the frame in line. We decided that it would be better to let the back posts on the lowest part of the yard sit on the ground and dig in the front ones, as opposed to trying to raise the ground to meet the back ones. That choice would have some consequences later.

Once the frame was level and ready, it took a few days to get the tower section built. Leslie and another friend, Mark, helped me off and on. I laid the parts out in the yard on Friday, May 18 and was cleaning everything up on Thursday, May 24. With the exception of the weekend, I only worked on it at night because it was just too hot during the day, plus the back yard is in the shade after dinner.

I decided not to put the climbing wall up yet because it was Thursday night at 9pm before Memorial Day weekend when I got to that. I figured saving it for later would leave me something to add on to keep the “newness” of the swing set going. I also need to finish the sandbox, which is the section under the lower deck where you see rocks in the pictures.

My brother would be proud of my use of “scabrication”, as he calls it, in dealing with the slope of the yard. Choosing to set the front posts of the tower in the ground meant that anything on level with those posts and further up the slope would also have to be in the ground. I cut four inches off the bottom of the ladder legs so that I wouldn’t have to dig them in too far.

As for the swing bar truss, the leg closest to the house is a good eleven inches in the ground while the back one is resting on a nice rock. I built up some dirt around that back one and I plan to build it up further and place the sod on top so that it stays in place. The crossbar at the bottom also had to be raised up or else dug into the ground, so I just cut the length of it down, too.

The kit came with small posts that have a hook on top for anchoring the set into the ground. Each post has a circular blade made onto it so that it would act like a screw and grip into the ground as you turned it down. However, getting those suckers to drill down into solid Kentucky clay was nearly impossible. Instead, I picked up some sections of angle iron and sledge hammered them into place. I don’t think this set is gonna move much now, but I need to cover those things up somehow so they don’t poke out an eye.

In the end, Paige, David and Lindsay seem to like it. Yes, sweetie, I did get you a swing set.

On June 7, 2006, I had long overdue eye surgery to correct my “crazy eye”. Finally deciding to have that operation may be the best thing I have ever done for myself. To honor the date, I plan to celebrate “Straight Eyes Day” every year on June 7. As the first anniversary approaches, it seems like a good time to tell you all about my eye.

To start, let’s get a few facts down. When an eye turns off in one direction, that is not a “lazy eye”. A lazy eye is one that does not see well, which may be caused by any number of problems. One reason may be strabismus, the correct term for a crooked eye.

Surgery to correct a crooked eye is almost never a 100% success. Eye muscles are removed and reattached at different places on the eye in order to change the direction, so being off even a small bit might leave a slight turn to the eye. As the muscles heal, they may change position slightly. As you get older, your eye muscles may change or weaken and cause your eye to start turning in another direction, meaning more surgery. There is also a minute possibility that the muscle is “lost” behind your eye once it is detached, meaning you are hosed. In short, there is a lot of stuff to think about when you consider having your eyes cut.

Now, back to the story…

From the time when I was very little, my left eye turned inward a great deal. Crossed eyes are not uncommon on infants because they have not yet learned to focus them, but it was clear as I got older that something was amiss. Before I turned two years old, my parents agreed with doctors’ recommendations that I needed surgery to fix the problem.

I never appreciated what a harrowing experience that must have been for my folks until my daughter turned two this past year. Jenny and I were terrified about her getting ear tubes around that time, which is a common operation these days. I can’t imagine having to make a more serious surgical decision about her.

For the most part, that first surgery was a success. I am ever so slightly farsighted, so I wore glasses for most of my school years to help me focus on near things. If I didn’t wear them or did a lot of reading and focusing during the day, my eye would turn in just a bit. That result was certainly acceptable compared to how much my eye turned in when I was little.

Most people have a dominant eye to some degree. While both eyes work normally, you may unconsciously prefer one over the other. I am obviously right eye dominant since my left eye is the one that turned in. However, I am very lucky that I can still see normally with my left eye. In most cases like mine, the turned eye results in amblyopia (lazy eye). My parents made the right decision. Without surgery, I most certainly would not have good vision in my left eye today.

When I got to college, I was usually reading non stop. Majoring in computer science and sitting in front of a monitor for a lot of time wasn’t helping, either. It turns out that I picked one of the worst professions for farsightedness and crooked eyes. During my junior year, I noticed that my left eye was turning in a lot more often and to a higher degree. By this time, I had mostly stopped wearing my glasses because they were big, thick lenses and I was a little self conscious about them.

I visited an ophthalmologist and discussed some surgical options. While he suggested a prescription for reading glasses to help me out, he said surgery was probably the best fix and he wanted to operate on both eyes. This approach might seem a little strange, but the muscles of both eyes shift in tandem to turn them in the same direction. It is possible to adjust the “good” eye in order to bring the two into better alignment. Still, the thought of any possible complications with my right eye scared me away from surgery. Instead, I got the reading glasses and used them in front of the computer, too.

From college on, I simply learned to deal with my eye. If I didn’t get enough sleep, had a long work day or was out late, it was a sure thing that my eye would turn in. If it turned in a lot, I would get headaches and see double to some degree. At that point, I would have to just give up for the day and take it easy or go to bed. Looking back, I was probably way more self conscious about it than I should have been.

Fast forward to 2005. Lindsay got pink eye near the end of the year and I ended up getting it, too. Lucky for me, I got the special kind of pink eye that leaves some crazy deposits in your eye that cloud your vision. Of course, they were in my right eye. Driving at night was a nightmare of blurred lights and fonts on the computer were fuzzy. For a while, I thought I was losing my mind because the symptoms would come and go. I went to see my usual optometrist and he gave me a prescription for some gunk to put in my eye. The problem didn’t clear up over the holidays, so I decided to seek out a second opinion.

Earlier in the year, we had some family pictures taken. There was one that they made into a postcard that I absolutely hated. I was sitting with my left side facing the camera, so my eyes were completely crooked because I was trying to look to my left. Because my eye turned inward, it was nearly impossible to get it to turn to the outside and look left. I refused to let Jenny send those postcards out to anyone.

With that photo in the back of my mind, I decided to go to UK and talk to someone. Why not kill two birds with one stone and ask them about surgery while they are getting rid of the stuff in my eye? My first visit was to Dr. Crutchfield. She laid a steroid prescription on me for the deposits in my eyes and recommended that I see Dr. Stevens about the crooked eye. Let me just give mad props to Julia Stevens right now. She laid out my options and took the time to answer every single question that I had, no matter how insane. She was very confident that she could help me.

Dr. Stevens’ plan was to first go in and examine the work that had been done on my left eye when I was young. We couldn’t find any paper records from my previous surgery, but my parents remembered some details about the hospital and surgeon. If there was still room to move the muscles on my left eye, she would do that. But, she said there was a high probability that she would work on the right eye instead.

So there I was nearly ten years later with the same dilemma. I shied away from surgery in college because I didn’t like the idea of my right eye being the one getting worked on. But, I thought about all the times I had bowed out of something early because of my eye and how I hated that picture, so I went for it.

The night before surgery, I had Jenny takes some pictures of my eyes while looking in various directions. It had been a usual work day and it was late, so my left eye turned in as usual. Here’s what I looked like when it was good and messed up:

After things healed up and didn’t look scary anymore (about two months later), I had her take the same photos after a work day at about the same time:

I didn’t realize how much I was dealing with my eye until it wasn’t a problem anymore. I could now get up in the morning and make my way to the bathroom without having to close my left eye. I could put in some long hours in front of a monitor and still be able to focus on things without issues later. Most interesting of all, I caught myself looking down as I walked around when we were out and about. Was that just a habit, or was I that self conscious about it? Either way, I try not to do that anymore.

In thirty years or so, I may have to have surgery again. Dr. Stevens told me that not much had changed from the techniques that were used when I was two years old to when I was 31 years old; the instruments and facilities were just better. I wonder how they will fix me next time. Until then, here’s to looking straight at ya!