After the Easter break, I seriously thought I lost my mojo.
Maybe some of you had noticed that I didn’t post anything for a few weeks and if you are wondering why, that is the reason.

It is not that my life became boring all of a sudden; it was just me not willing to sit down and write my weekly post. I nearly convinced myself that my blogging career was over: dead, kaput, gone.
Could it be? Nah, the truth is that my repulsion to sit down and write was more physical than emotional.
The entire month of April, I worked like there was no tomorrow on finishing the first draft of the new book. I was so absorbed in my goal that I had no time to bother about the constant migraine, or headache or my regular stiff neck. Some neurophen combined with arnica and devil claws and I was fine, so to speak because there is a limit on how much you can push it, right?

After we returned from our break in the west and we jumped back in the ordinary day life routine, a strange phenomenon started to happen: every morning it was like a truck hit me.
During the day things used to get a bit better, but then in the evening time, the truck came back and reversed over me. You know when in the cartoons someone is smashed under a van and they reemerge flat, well that was me except my curves were still all there and roundly, nothing had flattened.
My jaws hurt, my bones ached, my joined cracked, and even my teeth were in pain.
It was like I was coming down with the flu except for the flu never arrived, and I never had the excuse to hide under the cover.
I confess I had considered eating a full tube of toothpaste to get temperature like you to do when you are in school to skip an interrogation, but that temperature would have come at the worst time ever as the travelling husband was away and I should have to perform my duties of the devoted mother as usual. Now, those are the odd times when you regret not to live closer to some relatives, but then you simply think it straight and would it worth to have your mother in law nearby all year round only to have someone to pick up your kids from school during the only two days a year you are sick? NO, NO, NO.

As much as that general feeling of unwellness was annoying, the worst was the dizziness accompanied by blurry vision, when not double, and an immediate headache every time I tried to sit in front of a screen.
I am not a worrier by nature, and so it is not that I thought I was dying or something, but I am not stupid either, something was not right unless, after you hit 45 your full body starts to collapse piece after piece and nobody warned me. I enquired with some friend slightly older than me but they all said it is usually a progressing process, it won’t happen overnight.
I was back to square one. Something was wrong with me, and it had to be fixed, but what?
The first thing that popped on my mind was the blood pressure; maybe I needed stronger medication. Nop, blood pressure was under control. At this point, it couldn’t be anything else but my eyes. Last December, I skipped my eyes test; I only bought new frames. My most updated prescription is from last summer.
I had no doubt, that was the problem and only booking an appointment for an eye test made me feel better: who says the placebo effect it does not exist?!!!!
It turned out I was right, what a delightful sensation, just a pity I had nobody but myself to say “I told you so.”
It seemed that the fact I don’t use the reading glasses only to read but also to work, all that back and forth from different distances caused the dizziness and the blurry vision. The effort of the eyes to adapt then, it caused the headache. The stiff neck, I’m afraid, is simply one of the joys of ageing. Long story short , the prescription on my reading glasses must be replaced with progressive varifocal lenses….and only the name gave me a heart attack at the thought of how much they could cost. If that was not enough, the optician also detected a high dryness in my eyes.
Well, that was no news. I have been fighting with that all my life, and so I tell her that I already use lubricant eyes drop.
“Not enough”, she cut me short, “You need to put them on every hour.”
“Oh boy, that is going to be challenging, who can remember “, I say spontaneously freaked out at the idea to set the alarm on my phone every hour….and what about night time? Can I leave it for 6/8 hours or I have to wake up on regular intervals? The optician, whose eyes work instead very well, read me thoroughly and add: “You want to be better, you better find a way to remember”.
“Maybe I should hang the little bottle to a chain to keep around my neck.”, I say thinking to be funny, but the look that I got in return told me that I was not funny at all and that the woman in front of me was born missing the gene of sense of humour.

Once the visit was done, I had been handed to the nice lady who usually looks after me when I go there.
She was like a breath of fresh air, the thing that I usually am not for her. I am convinced that when she sees me stepping through the door, she makes the sign of the cross and hope for the best.
Because I have to wear them all the time I tend to be picky with my frames and It takes me ages to make up my mind. I am usually a well-determined shopper, but not when it comes to glasses. In my defence, I can only say that at least, in the end, I always buy something. Well, always except for this time when thousands of frames and an hour later I decided to have the new lenses fitted in my old frames.
Now, You think it is over right? But it is not because thanks to a promotion I am entitled to a pair of free progressive lenses for my everyday glasses too.
NOOOOO, now the dilemma starts all over again. Will I keep my frames, will I get new glasses? And which one? There was nothing I fell in love with, plus the lenses will be free but then I will have to thin them down, and if I am already spending a little fortune as it is, then it will become a big fortune all at once.
We look at each other in silence, a silence full of panic as I don’t know what to do, and she doesn’t want to spend the additional hour with me.
“You know what you can do?”, She eventually break the silence, “you have three months to use your offer. Why don’t you take your time to think about it and come back.? In the meanwhile, I’m sure we will have received new frames as well and you might find something that you like, or, in the worst case scenario, you can have the new lenses in your old frames”.
GENIOUS, I think. She found the way to take us both out of our misery, and with some luck, by the time I will be back, she will be on holidays or in a sabbatical.
“Deal”, I say.
“Good”, she says, and in that short little word, there is all her happiness, relief and gratitude.

Happy out one week later, I am home writing away at the computer.
My mojo is back, and so is my good sight.

P.S

For those of you are willing to spend sometime in the murderous Irish countryside Fields Of Lies is free on kindle this weekend

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabina-Gabrielli-Carrara/e/B07NKKGJ26/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1