After the 5 days of annoying IV meds, I thought I would be feeling better. What I was not warned about was the side affects of the medicine leaving your body is NOT FUN! I actually called the doctor thinking something was wrong because my whole body hurt and my skin on my chest, back, shoulders and even my ears hurt. Everything felt like it was bruised and I wondered if I caught the flu along with everything else. Turns out it is the normal process of the medicine. One more reason I truly don't want this to ever happen again. Once I took a day or so off work to sleep and rest, I started to feel human again. This was last Friday when I finally felt good again. I was ready to attempt to get back into the garage and make some sawdust. I had a slight delay as we watched our friend's kids while they took care of some funeral arrangements.
Then came Sunday. I was ready to beg/plead/cry/anything to be able to get a few hours of ANYTHING done in the garage. I felt a lot better and I was ready to see what I could do with my eye (I will explain in a bit about that). Luckily my kids were in a calm mood and wanted to spend the day coloring and reading books with Daddy.
I can't begin to tell you how I felt stepping out into the cold garage. I wished it was warm like summertime, but just getting out there and breathing in the soft smell of sawdust. I stretched and looked around. To warm up I did some rearranging and cleaning of the garage. I got my new workbench into its new position and got started. I was building the last bit of Anna's parson's chair.
I had already built the basic form of the chair. Then I got sick. Since that was so long ago, here is a little reminder.
It sat there looking so close to done and taunting me as I was sick and not able to work. Anyway, I took those out to the garage and did the some more. I started by adding some 1/4 inch plywood to the seat and back. This would give decent support to everything. then I used spray adhesive to attach the 2 inch high density foam to the seat bottom. There was some old 1 inch foam left hanging around from when I took apart the old breakfast nook so I used that for the back cushions. I wrapped the whole thing with burlap to smooth it all out.
I really should have folded the foam over the top of the back. I forgot this step when I did it. I WILL do that on any future chairs. The top then met the bottom. :-)
Look Ma, a real chair! Okay, so we all took turns sitting on it and seeing how it felt. Everyone agreed it was comfortable, but it is a smaller chair. Our old chairs were huge and I always thought they were too big. But this just made this chair feel so small. It was comfortable (more than our old chairs) but the seat isn't very big. I worry I would rather have it reach all the way to the back of my knees instead of mid thigh and while quite supportive, my husband and I are a little wider in the hip than this seat. You don't feel awkward sitting on it. It is just smaller than what we are used to. It didn't help that without dining room chairs we have been using computer chairs which are huge and comfortable and more like sitting in a rocking chair than a dining room chair. Everything feels smaller compared to them.
I decided to finish the chair anyway. Even if I make modifications to future chairs, this one is plenty big for either of the kids with room to grow so it wont need to be disassembled or anything. (Why can't I ever use the word disassembled without hearing "Number 5 is ALIVE!" in my head. Darn movies). I followed Anna's slipcover pattern for sewing a slipcover for the chair. I used the extra fabric I had on hand from when I was building the bench that sits on the other side of the table.
Here is my first attempt at sewing a slipcover!
So this is where I want to talk about my eyes. After steady improvement the first few days of the IV meds, my eyesight stopped improving at about 95% of my original site. With my left eye closed, I can feel and tell things are not quite right. Light seems brighter, or rather like someone turned up the contrast so I get more glares off of things. There is still a ever so slight haziness which makes me feel the vision is off. I was VERY careful when I went into the garage because I didn't want to take chances with things. The doctors can not say for sure if I will ever get my vision back to where it was before the optical nerve swelled. I am happy to report that while woodworking I didn't feel limited by anything and thanks to guides and settings on the tools, I felt confident that I was following along where I wanted to go.
Sewing on the other hand was a challenge. I LOVE this fabric, but if I moved it quickly the pattern seemed to throw off my eye. Like my eye couldn't keep up and took slightly too long to refocus once it was moved. So if I went slow, I was okay, but anything too fast and I could feel it. It was also hard because I didn't have any of my fabric cutting tools that I could find. So I was using a large woodworking ruler to mark off the fabric and it was hard to be precise. I felt myself squinting and really having to work hard to draw the lines and cut straight. Sewing again seemed easy enough since I just had to do straight lines and keep it 1/4 in from the edge which matched the edge of the sewing machine foot so I had a guide so to speak.
So the consensus is that for now, woodworking seems to be okay for me, but cutting and a lot of detail cutting of fabric is best left to earlier in the day when I am not as tired and maybe my eye can focus easier. It did fit and looked wonderful, but it was hard and I felt a bit let down by my eye. I go back for a checkup on Friday to re-dilate my eyes and check to be sure the swelling of the optical nerve is gone. I hope it is. I don't think I can handle more medicine and lost garage time. There are precious few weeks between now and Thanksgiving. If we are going to host the whole family at our house this year, we NEED CHAIRS!!!!
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