Toucan Sam

My children like the cereal, Froot Loops.  “Froot” instead of “Fruit” probably because there isn’t a shred of actual fruit in the brightly colored rings of sugary goodness.   We try to have the children eat healthful foods, but we’re not militant about it and, to be sure, we're most likely more permissive than a lot of parents on what we allow them to have.   I’ll get off my soapbox though and get to the topic of this post, which has nothing really to do with the cereal and more to do with sidewalk art.

When I was young, one of my good friends lived down the street from me.   His parents and my parents were and still are best friends.  He was four years older than I was which meant he knew pretty much everything, or so it seemed to me.   We had our own friends sets, but we played together from time to time, especially if our parents were getting together for dinner or other social event.

Throughout my childhood, I don’t remember ever having sidewalk chalk.   I don’t think it had been invented yet (or envisioned and subsequently marketed).  The only chalk I’d ever seen were the white or yellow sticks at my school or in the college classrooms in which my mother taught math courses.  Back then, unlike today, there was no such thing as rainbow-colored jumbo-sized chalk, sold in 96 quantity boxes at a price point such that the entire driveway could be colored without eliciting money-wasting comments from parents.

It was different when I was a child.  We did have something that was in plentiful supply and had a price point of “free” though.   That is, provided you had pine trees close at hand, which we did.   All you needed to do was break off a reasonably thick section of bark.   You could then hold it in your hand so that the edge of the bark was pointing down towards the concrete and by pressing down and dragging, you could leave a solid, rust brown line with ease.

Thicker pieces of bark left thicker marks, whereas a thin section of bark could do detail work.  You could quickly shade in things with the flat side of a large chunk prised from an unsuspecting tree.   I remember using bark for everything we ever drew on the driveway as a child.   We made hopscotch grids which over time became more complex to the point they took up the entire length of the driveway, save for the cars parked towards the house.   There was the game Four Square, one of my favorites, which inevitably involved accusing someone of unfair play tactics thus ending the game in favor of another activity with rules less prone to interpretation.

We also used the driveway as a canvas, on to which we would draw pictures.   I have never been good at two-dimensional art.   I suppose I lack both the skill or the interest in improving said skill and as such, to this day I have only one thing I draw well in two-dimensions: an elephant from behind squirting water from its trunk.   And while this might sound complex, trust me, it is neither complex nor impressive.

It was this artwork feature of out bark usage that had me thinking about a day from my childhood the other morning as I emptied Froot Loops into a bowl for one of the children’s breakfast.   My good friend from childhood, Richard, had been over at my house that day.  We had been doing something or other, I’m not sure what, possibly jumping on the pogo stick seeing who could get the most hops before falling off.   Or maybe that’s what I was doing because Richard was at work with some bark drawing something so large it was nearly as large as the footprint of my mother’s car.

It wasn’t clear what he was doing until he got to the head, and then it was unmistakeable.   He had drawn what you’d call, if you’re from the South, “a spitting image” of Toucan Sam.   I’m not joking here.  I had no idea Richard could draw so well but this Toucan Sam was exceptional.   It stayed on the driveway for days.  I would look at it from the front porch in the morning and check to see if it was still there when I got home form school.   It had a long life but was eventually lost to rain.

I’m not in contact with many of my friends from childhood, but Richard and I are still friends.   In just over a month’s time we’re going with him and his family on an  ocean sailing adventure.   They all know how to sail.   Our family has a total of zero sailing experience among us.  They're a brave bunch, no?

The Big Boy Update:  To see if I could get my son interested in audio books I casually put on The Wizard of Oz two weeks ago on the ride to school.   He is now completely hooked.   Every time he gets into the car he asks me to put the book back on.   It’s not just one book; there are over seventy hours in the entire book collection, which was available from Audible for ninety-nine cents.   Right now, since his screen time window hasn’t started for the evening, he’s sitting in the kitchen having Alexa play the audio book for him.   Dorothy just got back to Kansas, ending the story that parallels the movie.   He’s an hour into the next book already, balancing coins on their sides while he listens.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Even though my daughter can’t see much at all anymore, she still enjoys writing things.   It’s very, very hard to tell what she’s written and it makes her a little sad I think when she excitedly gives you something she’s written, asks you to read it and you can’t even pick out a single word because she doesn’t have a good sense of letter spacing and writes her letters on top of each other both vertically and horizontally.   So I gave her a tip.   I taught her how to grid fold a piece of paper.   She liked making fans so she already had part of the skill.   I’m trying to set her up for accurate folding so we can do some origami, which I think she would enjoy very much.   For writing though, I showed her how to make a grid on the paper and then told her to write one letter in each block of the grid, leaving a block blank to indicate spaces between words.   This was in her backpack yesterday.   I can tell it says “I love Madison”.  This is the best spacing I’ve seen in her writing in a long while.

Sighted Guide

I went to school with my daughter this morning to attend her orientation and mobility lesson with Mr. Adam.   He goes to the various schools in the area that have VI students and spends an hour with each one of them per week.  He’s taught my daughter how to use her cane effectively,  but that’s only the start of what he’s teaching her.

They go on field trips most weeks to some location close to the school.  They have been planning a trip to the pet store, what with my daughter wanting to work in one when she gets older, but we didn’t have the time today so we went to Wendy’s instead which was just a few blocks away.

We drove over and parked at the pharmacy at one end of the shopping strip.   The Wendy’s was at the other end and out of sight from where we parked.   My daughter got out and oriented herself at the back of the car.   The next part was hard.  It was hard to get to Wendys.   It was hard, because she couldn’t see anything and didn’t know where it was.

To get there as a sighted person I would have seen it in the distance as we pulled in, walked around the pharmacy through the parking lot, curbs, avoiding the other cars.   Then I would have figured out the best way to traverse the parking lot space including the berms, curbs, parking  concrete space markers, shopping carts, lamp posts, entry way car paths, medians, etc. until I got to the restaurant where I would walk straight to the door, open it and go in.

But she’s blind and she knows none of this.   This is a good point to put in a plug for sighted guide dogs.   How do you tell a dog to take you to Wendy’s?  “Dog, go to Wendy’s” doesn’t work.   Or even if the dog knew how to get there from prior trips, what if you want to go to the Verison store in the same shopping area?  The dog can’t read and doesn’t know which store you mean if it’s someplace you’ve never been there before.  

That’s why you, as a blind person, have to be able to navigate successfully for yourself before you’re eligible to revive a guide dog.  The dog keeps you safe, it’s not an autonomous self-driving GPS creature.   So you have to learn how to get places yourself.

What we did, or rather what my daughter did, was get there using audio and sensory clues.  She knew that from the back of my car she needed to head towards the loudest vehicle sounds of quickly moving cars about fifteen cars away from the spot I’d parked and climb up a set of stairs to the sidewalk.   She couldn’t trail along the backs of the other cars to get to the curb because the parking lot was almost empty.   She had to keep walking straight and not trail off to the left or the right.   And that’s easy to do when you’re blindfolded from what I’ve experienced.

She got to the curb and heard the cars forwards and above her as the road was higher up.   She knew there was a flight of stairs to the right from prior trips.   She used cane techniques to climb the irregular paved stairs and then knew to turn left towards that loud traffic.   When her cane dropped off the edge of the curb (car sounds very loud and close now) she knew to turn left again and walk parallel with the traffic.

This was impressive to see her do and a bit scary because of what happened next.   She got to the pavement opening where the entry and exit ways of the shopping strip.   She waited to hear for cars coming into or out and then moved forward.  She made it to the center concrete island between the lanes fine but the second half of the pavement she unknowingly veered to the right, missing the edge of the sidewalk and started moving into the street.

This is where a guide dog would be useful because the dog would have kept her on path, even if the dog didn’t know where specifically she was ultimately headed.  She was never in danger because Mr. Adam had her stop and assess what had happened.   After that the rest of the walk was much the same, save for I don’t know how in the world she’d know where she was going unless she’d been there before, via that same route (which in this case, she had.)

We got to the Wendy’s parking lot and via some audio cues and, apparently, she could see where the building was (which I didn’t know she could see), she headed to the door.   That’s another thing I don’t know how you’d know without help—you’re at a busy fast food restaurant with cars all over the place, including the drive through cars circling around the building.  Where is the door?   You can’t walk all around the building until you find a door handle.  

When we got there the building was locked.  So what do you do now?  I could see the store hours that showed they didn’t open until ten (we were five minutes early).   I could look inside and see someone preparing to open the store.  If you’re blind do you just wait, hopeful that there isn’t a sign taped to the inside of the door saying, “water main broken, closed until flood damage can be repaired”?

In this case, we waited for five minutes and then all had Frosties before heading back to school.   That was the best part of the trip for my daughter.   Here’s a map of the path she took.   The place where the red line breaks is where she veered off into the street.



I learned a lot about “sighted guide” today as well.   The term, “sighted guide” describes when a sighted person guides a blind person around.   I’ve been doing this, but I needed some more formal training.  The beginning was funny as my daughter grasped my wrist and I started walking forward with her.  She was using her cane as well.   After a bit Mr. Adam said, “what she’s doing is something called ‘untrusted sighted guide’”.   I laughed because I thought his meant my daughter didn’t trust me.

It didn’t though, she just hadn’t stopped using her cane.   A trusted sighted guide is someone who knows how to safely guide a blind person, unlike, say some of my daughter’s friends who will gladly grab her hand and drag her along with them, not realizing she might trip over a root or not see a curb. In those cases or when a blind person has to ask help from someone who is unknown to them, the blind person would still use their cane to give them the additional information.  

In trusted sighted guide the blind person would tuck their cane up against their body and let the sighted person lead.   There are lots of rules for how to do this safely given different situations like opening doors, traversing narrow spaces and finding stadium seats.   I learned the basics today.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told Liz today he was done with OT until August.  Liz said she’d talk to me about that.   He’s almost correct though with all the travel Liz and we have over the summer.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got shy (anxious) when I got to school today with Mr. Adam.  She wasn’t so sure she wanted to have me there I think.   She warmed up to it though when she realized she was going to get a Frostie at Wendy’s.

The Longest Song

While I was at a board meeting last night my daughter was writing a song.   Or rather modifying an existing song.  I knew that tune when I read the title, “The Twelve Good Puppy Days of Christmas”.  She didn’t shortcut the song, like I’m going to do in this blog post, she wrote out every single word of the song, repeating each day again as she counted down in each verse.   The song totaled seven pages, all fully brailled.

The twelve days were:
 - Twelve puppy beds
 - Eleven puppy sticks
 - Ten new toys
 - Nine bowls of water
 - Eight puppy kisses
 - Seven puppy cages
 - Six cool vents
 - Five golden collars
 - Four tug toys
 - Three bowls of food
 - Two puppy treats
 - And a bone in a puppy dog tree

She wanted to take the song to school to show her VI teacher.   When she came home after school she told us Ms. Sample liked the song so much she wanted to keep it.   Which was fine with my daughter, she just started typing the song all over again so she would have a copy here.

When I checked my daughter’s backpack tonight for work and to refill her snack container I looked in the VI communication book Ms. Sample and I use to message us back and forth (old school style via handwriting on paper instead of email).   Ms. Sample told me my daughter had sung the entire song in the VI room today and had received a round of applause and cheers from the teachers and other students in the room when she was done.

The Big Boy Update:  We went to a party this evening for a family who is moving away.   My son jumped right in, playing with the other children even though he didn’t know them.   A while later the boys had left, leaving only some girls, who were playing with dolls on a table in the back.   My son had no problem with this either, but I could tell he’d put his own spin on it when I heard one of the girls talking about where they should put the Infinity Stone.  My son can work Avengers into just about anything.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me, “when I talk to Alexa, does someone have to be there, on the internet?”  I think she was envisioning someone listening in to our questions and sending answers back.   I told her no, it was handled automatically.  Then she said, " oh, so that’s why I can talk to Alexa at night."

Not the Ice Cream Truck

My daughter and I were playing Monopoly yesterday afternoon when I heard a far off melody.   I listened and then jumped out of the chair saying, “is that the ice cream truck?”   My children love when an ice cream truck comes by.   It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s like Christmas and Halloween combined from an excitement level.

As I headed to the door my daughter yelled out, “Greyson, the Ice Cream Truck is here!”   He ran up from the basement by the time I’d gone outside, where I couldn’t hear the sound anymore.   I went back in to find both of my children trying to get out the door.   I told them I didn’t think it was the ice cream truck after all.   My son was certain though and headed out.   I told him if he heard it to let us know.

My daughter and I heard that far off music again.   I opened the door, stepped out and the music faded.   I came back in and it got louder.   I said to my daughter, “it’s coming from inside.”   A dawning expression came over her face as she listened.   She said, “oh, I know what it is, it’s my watch.”

She didn’t have her watch on on Memorial Day as we were just spending time at home.   Mimi had called her twice on it.   We got the watch and my daughter answered the call the next time it rang.   After answering she said, “Mimi, can I call you back?  We’re playing Monopoly."

The Big Boy Update:   My son came home from school today and was a little bit disregulated.  Well, he was actually completely and totally unable to control his emotions.   I was lying down and didn’t notice when things got quiet.   I had fallen asleep when a while later he came into the room, very happy and excited.   He woke me up (children always wake sleeping parents up without a second though it would seem) and told me he had made lemonade with dad.   I mumbled something sleepily and he gently put a piece of paper in my hand saying, “this is the recipe, I’ll read it to you when you wake up.”  I found him first thing when I woke up and he told me about the lemonade, saying they’d saved some for me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told me the other day, "I explained to Madison what passive aggressive means.”  I couldn’t help but laugh as she told me about how she had shared some of her dinner of SpaghettiOs with Madison, who had never had them and thought they looked good.   She had said, “I sure wish I had some more SpaghettiOs.”

A Bitter Loss

I lost at Monopoly.   I threw a tantrum.  I cried.   I dashed the board and all the pieces across the room.  Okay, I didn’t.   It was very sweet what my daughter did, though.   We have been playing the same game of Monopoly for three days now.   We’d take breaks and then come back to the game hours later.   That, coupled with it being my daughter’s first exposure to Monopoly and the added complexity of her lack of vision made it a longer game than it might otherwise have been.

It became apparent I wasn’t going to be able to recover from landing on several properties of hers with hotels in a row.  She didn’t want the game to be over.   She came up with this idea all on her own, telling me, “you give me one dollar and I’ll give you this seven hundred dollars.”  I told her it was such a nice thing for her to offer, but it wasn’t going to help me recover from the situation I was in, that I couldn’t get back to a point where the game would be competitive.

I also told her it wasn’t fun for the losing person to hang on, barely above bankruptcy, just to have the game last longer.   I said I’d rather finish this game and start a new one.   We hadn’t even purchased all the properties from the bank and each only had a few we were able ti improve with houses because we had the full set.  I didn’t mind being in a losing position, but I wanted her to give her an idea that it might not be fun if she was on the losing side, possibly just wanting the game to be over, knowing she couldn’t possibly win.   She understood.  I think she mostly just wanted to be playing in some fashion or another because she’d had such a good time playing all weekend.

After she won and I told my daughter congratulations and she took being the winner with grace.   I’m not sure it would have gone down the same way if she’d been losing, but we’ll find out more on that in future games I’m sure.

The modifications to this version of the game for visually impaired and blind people is extensive.   It enabled my daughter to play the game both independently and successfully.   We added some additional modifications of our own that she and I came up with while we played to help her more quickly discern different items in the game.

First, the board.   It’s a standard Monopoly board glued onto a thicker backing.   On top of that is a clear moulded sheet with braille and raised demarcation lines to separate the different areas of the board.



Each space on the board is separated by with raised lines.   Inside each board space is the braille indicating what the space is.   The Jail space even has two areas, one for visiting and one for incarcerated players.   The dice are larger tactile versions with the faces inset and easily discernible pips on each side of the die.   In order to keep track of the dice she and I rolled them within the Chance and Community Chest raised boxes on the board.

There are two different spaces for the Chance and Community Chest cards.   The traditional-sized spots we used for rolling the dice.  We put the included large print/braille versions of the cards in the bigger areas shown above as  orange and yellow cards.

These bigger cards look like this:



My daughter can pick up one of these cards and read the braille easily, but we decided to add some additional indicators for orientation purposes.   I clipped off the top right corner of each card.   This is commonly done with lots of things written in braille.   It immediately tells you how to orient the card.    I added a corner stripe of tactile tape (very similar to blue painters tape) to the top of each card.   Top right for Community Chest and top left for Chance.   After we made these changes my daughter could orient the card quickly as well as determine how to place it back in the bottom of the correct stack afterwards.

Property cards were our next modification.   I’d never thought about it before but there is a lot of text on a property card.   The ones in this set are about four times the size of the traditional ones.



We take so much for granted with sight.   For instance, if I had the four properties in the picture above and someone had landed on my Indiana Avenue property on which I happen to have three houses I would determine the rent by: glancing at my cards for the color red, scanning down the text on the card looking for the number three and then jump over to the end of the line to get the amount $700.  I would read very little in the whole process and I’d know the rent amount in less than three seconds elapsed time.

When you’re blind you can’t do that.   A lot of organization and memory helps, and my daughter has good skills in both, but that organization is only at a seven-year-old level.   She has to take the cards and look through them until she finds the correct deed.  She then reads the braille line by line until she gets to the correct rent.   She does do some skipping, but it’s a significantly slower process since her entire imput devices are the tips of her fingers.

My daughter pointed out an issue she was having with the property deed cards.   She couldn’t tell the difference between the front and the back.   I never realized it before, what with the scanning and all, but there are a lot of words on those cards.   There’s more text on the back for when the property is mortgaged.   She reads double spaced braille at school.   These cards are single spaced with braille on both sides.  And while the single spacing wasn’t a problem for her, we came up with a way for her to quickly tell the front of the card with proper orientation by putting little brown felt dots on the top right corners.   After that, she could even tell quickly which ones of her properties were mortgaged  because the felt dot wasn’t on the up side since the property had been turned over indicating it was mortgaged.

Money moves around quickly in Monopoly with far more bills exchanging hands with players and the bank than I’d really paid attention to before.   The money included in this modified version of the game was on a stronger card stock.  Each bill had been each individually braille with the monetary denomination.   But my daughter was still taking time to figure out how each bill should be oriented.   Raised braille dots indicated the up side, but then there’s a rotational orientation of 180 degrees.   And here’s the thing—braille upside down can still read like braille but is confusing because the contractions don’t make sense.   I’ve done this too many times, trying to figure out what I was reading only to realize I had the paper upside down.

So we chopped off the top right corner of every bill using a corner punch so everything would be consistent (I do so like accuracy).   When we were done with that it was easy to orient and organize the bills.   I actually liked this from a sighted perspective as well.   Rotated bills in a pack stood out because the top right corner stuck out.   It made being the banker’s job easier if you’re persnickety, which I am.



That took care of most things.   My daughter would roll the dice for each of us, rotate the board around until she found her or my token and then move it the proper number of spaces, using the raised plastic lines to count spaces.  She loved rotating the board, feeling the braille and figuring out where we’d landed or were going.   But this posed another problem—houses.

Our tokens mostly stayed in their space, even when she brushed them with her arm, but once we got into houses, they were going to go everywhere, I was pretty sure.   How could we lock them down so they didn’t move?  I’d recently gotten some “sticky dots” as my daughter calls them, for her to use in her craft endeavors.   I’d ordered three kinds: low tack, medium tack and high tack.



In typical fashion, I ordered a commercial-sized lot of each because hey, you never know when you’re going to need six thousand glue spots, right?   So we tried all three sticky strengths.   The high tack was great insofar as it soundly held the house or hotel on the plastic sheet, but it was annoying to disengage from the house board when we upgraded to a hotel (or when I had to sell houses to pay for my daughter's high-priced hotel rent on Boardwalk).

We tried the low-tack next but that was the opposite problem with the houses easily pulled off.   So we went with the baby bear porridge option and used the middle tack glue spots.  Easy to put on, easy to remove.   The fact that the board is covered in a thick sheet of formed clear plastic made this the perfect solution as it didn’t damage the board at all.

And that, my friends, is what we’ve been doing over the Memorial Day weekend.   Lots of Monopoly.  My son was busy and didn’t get to join in at the start of the game with us.   I’m rather glad though because now his sister knows how to do something he doesn’t and can help to teach him.   Any time she can be a leader and help others gives her a confidence boost.

I was hoping to take this Monopoly on our upcoming sailing trip in July, but the board is too big to take on as it doesn’t fold and is too wide to fit in a suitcase.  It would also take up the entire table we’ll be using for eating.  So we’re thinking about alternatives for the board that will be more compact.   I’m sure my daughter will have some good ideas on that front, she always does.

The Big Boy Update:  As of tomorrow, my son has an entire new rewards program to earn screen time.  I think we positioned it well and had him participate in the process.   It’s more limiting, while giving him the opportunity to potentially earn more time by doing lots of things at home we’ve been wanting him to start doing.   Thanks to Aunt A for her advice on what they’re doing at home there, we used that as inspiration, copying a good bit of their plan.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is quite honest and a fair player, even if she doesn’t like to lose.   When I wasn’t available to play Monopoly this weekend she would play for the both of us.
Some of the time she would play with her friend, Madison, who would play in my stead.   Madison had never played before, so the two of them tried to make the best judgement calls on what to do when they weren’t sure what the rules were.  After the first day she came in and told me I’d landed on her railroad and owed $100 in rent (she landed on three railroads early in the game).   She and Madison had dutifully collected the $100 from my money and had given it to the bank.   When I told her the rent went to her, not the bank, she was excited.   Over the rest of the weekend, any time she played without me she would come in and give me an update on what had been happening.   She really has enjoyed playing, even when I haven’t been there to play with her.

The Free Box

I’ve written over 2700 posts for this blog.  For the most part, I remember if I’ve told a story, but sometimes I’m not so sure.   Something my daughter and I were talking about the other day reminded me of when.I was growing up and the yard sales we used to have.  I don’t remember if I’ve written about this before, but in case I have, here goes round two.

Today we live in what seems like a throw away world.   Or at least that’s what it feels like from where we are here.   I was reminded because of a situation with some some plastic cups we’d been using for years for the children’s beverages.   They were Happy Meal give aways from the era of the first Lego movie.   Each of the main characters had their own cup.  I think we have three of one of the characters and one each of the others.   These sturdy cups are just the right size for the smaller amount of liquid a child consumes in a single setting.

My daughter had taken them out front and had dissolved chalk in them for some driveway painting project she was engaged in with her friends.   She brought the cups in when they were done (because I reminded her, children need reminders when it comes to cleaning up, it’s not ingrained).  When she was washing them out, her friend Madison noticed they had become stained.

Was I concerned with the stain?   Not really, because we had plenty of cups.   But those cups had been with us a long while.   I didn’t want to just throw them away.   That’s when I remembered where they came from.

When I was young, we had a yard sale about once each year.  During that time my mother did what she always does, selecting the few things she didn’t need from her already paired down “stuff” existence.   My father is a collector, my mother is the antithesis of my father in that respect.   My father would find things to put in the sale as well, likely consisting of things he’d found better versions of at other yard sales.

I would go through my toys and clothes, putting things in the sale I didn’t need or want anymore.   The general rule was, any money garnered from the sale of my items, I got to keep.  It was good incentive for me to clear out my room.   I must have done this with reasonable balance.   I wasn’t so incentivized by the money that I’d got rid of things I still enjoyed or played with.

But childhood goes quickly, children grow out of clothes and toys become less interesting as you become older and interested in more complex things.  Some of the things we’d put in the yard sale would be laughed at today.   For example, those Lego Movie McDonald Happy Meal cups are borderline “almost disposable”.  Putting them in a yard sale today with a price of $0.25 would be foolishly hopeful.

Back then I remember putting similar cups in our yard sale though.   The particular cups were glass with each featuring one of the McDonald’s characters like the Hamburgler or Mayor McCheese.  I don’t remember how much we sold them for, but someone bought them.

There were, however, things we didn’t sell.   My mother had an idea to have a, “free box” into which I put little toys, markers, things that were partially broken but could still be played with.   My mother was always kind to any child that would come to the yard sale, being dragged along by their parents.   She would say, “don’t forget to pick out something from the Free Box” to the child.

This was a tradition we had for many years.   One year when I was older, my mother came over to me laughing,   She said, “I can’t believe this, a man just came, walked around and then picked up the entire Free Box and walked off with it.”

What would we have said?  The box said it was free.   We laughed about it later because the things in the box weren’t worth anything other than trinkets we would have otherwise thrown away.   Hopefully the box made the man happy.

The Big Boy Update:  My son did something today I’ve never seen him do before.   I was sitting on the bed working on the computer when he came in to change into his swimsuit (we keep the suits in a drawer in our room, don’t ask me why, I’m not really sure why we haven’t moved them up to their room.).  He typically makes some statement or other about modesty since he’s about to be naked.   I always say I won’t look, not to worry.   But I saw him standing a bit strange out of the corner of my eye.   He had decided to tuck his penis between his legs and keep his thighs tight together to make sure it remained hidden.   Did he come up with this idea himself or did someone suggest it?   It wasn’t me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I had come home from the grocery store and was putting things away.   These days I tell my daughter everything I’ve bought, because she really has no idea what food we have otherwise.   I had gotten Fritos, which several of my family members love.   A short while later I heard her asking her father, “Dad, are Fritos free?"

Car Underwear

Don’t you hate it when you jot a note down so you won’t forget something and then, later, when you see the note you have absolutely no idea what it means?   I write down all sorts of things in my blog post topics list for when I sit down to write these entries every night.  Only sometimes I can’t figure out what I meant.   I feel certain I’ll remember the thing, what with it being so funny or pivotal at that point in my day, only to find myself completely clueless that night as to what it could possibly mean.

So since I have no recollection about the car underwear story, I’ll write about some cute things my daughter has done or said lately since her blog topics list has been overflowing lately.

My daughter spent some time recently at Mimi’s house.   My mother told me after she had dropped my daughter off, “after Reese’s visit today making little notebooks, I have decided to invest in a company that makes staples.   My daughter can empty a full stapler in a single day when she gets inspired.   I finally gave her the full box of refills and showed her how to refill the stapler.

I mentioned that my back was hurting me the other day and my very sweet daughter came over and started massaging my back, including a sort of thumping rhythm she was doing with her fists.   When I asked her where she learned to give massages she said, “I learned from the machine at the salon.”   She loves going with Aunt Margaret or my mother to get a pedicure.   The chairs you sit in will massage your back, including that thumping motion she picked up on.

Easter egg hunts are still happening regularly here (with another one happening just a few hours ago).  My daughter on hearing I wasn’t going to give her any more candy-filled eggs during the week came up with an alternative a week or so back.   She took her Go Fish card deck and hid the cards in various places in the front yard.   She was able to get the cards to stick in places like the bushes and up in the tree branches.   I warned her that she could lose the cards (she was quite clever in the hiding places) and/or they would get wet and ruined.   No no, she wouldn’t let that happen.   Guess what?  It happened.   I found this out when she told her friend they could’t play Go Fish because cards were missing.   So I ordered another card deck and admonished her to find other things to hide instead of cards in the future.   She did feel bad about it.   I didn’t mind so very much because it was a creative idea.

My daughter overheard the adults talking about skin tone.  We explained how some people had lighter skin tones and some had darker or redder or more yellow skin tones.  She asked if her tone was higher?  We didn’t understand what she meant until we realized she was thinking about sound and music.   Then we laughed good naturally at her and told her her tone, in that case, was louder.

I was going through my daughter’s braille homework, reading a page of sentences she had come up with, writing one sentence for each vocabulary word.   For the word ’smart’ she wrote, “I am sooper smart.”

For some reason an old song from my childhood popped into my mind the other day.   I asked Alexa to play Hello Again by Neil Diamond.   My daughter was eating her dessert at the time and was quietly listening to the song.   After a bit she said.  “I’m crying and I don’t know why…I think it’s this song.”  She asked me if I had ever cried from listening to a song.   I told her I had many times, that songs can bring about all kinds of emotions in us.  She was quiet again and then said, “I can’t stop.”   I gave her a hug and told her I could understand, it was the kind of song that could do that.

Oh, I just remembered what the title of this blog post is about.  Sometimes, because I know I’ll be referring to the blog topic list later in the day, I’ll add something to it that needs to be taken care of fairly quickly.   The “Car Underwear” entry was one of those types.   We had an issue with underwear a week ago and needed a backup pair of underpants for my son.   Not to worry, I always keep a spare in the car.   That is, unless we use the pair and I don’t remember to replace them.  When this happened the other week I went out to the car to get the spare pair only to find none of his underwear in the “go bag” I keep in the trunk.   That is, unless my son wanted to wear his sisters underwear that were far too small for him.  He didn’t, so he went commando instead.   Over a week later and I still haven’t put extra underwear in the car but now that I remember I need to, I’m going to replenish our traveling stock of undergarments right after I press the publish button here.

Last night my husband called out to the children, telling them there was a slug on the front porch.   While my son can look at the slug and see it moving, the only way my daughter can experience it is by touching it.   I came to the door a few minutes later and asked my husband if he’d offered to let her touch the slug.  Apparently she already had because she immediately cried out, “he’s gooey, he’s gooey, I don’t like him!"

The Big Boy Update:   My son disappeared for quite some time today.   Typically we have other children here for hours, but in this case he went to one of their houses.   He was gone until well after lunch.   When he returned I asked him if he was hungry.   No, he said, he had had quesadillas at Rayan and Keiras.   It is so nice having neighbors like the ones we have around us.   We’ve fed other children countless times and never mind if one of our children eats at a friends.  

The Tiny Girl Monopoly Chronicles:  My daughter and I started a game of Monopoly today.  It would be nigh impossible to play the game in the traditional manner—there is just too much you need to be able to see,   I ordered a fully brailled version which came in yesterday.  The breakfast room table is now covered with all the parts and cards and she and I have started a game, playing for two hours already.   I had forgotten just how much there is to know to play.   Consider also that we, as sighted people, can see the groupings of properties, the locations of the four railroads, and can generally scan read what’s happening on the board.   She is discovering things one dice roll at a time.  But her memory is exceptional and she is having a lot of fun learning how to play.   I’m being called back to continue the game even as I write this.  Knowing how a typical game can drag on, I expect we’ll be engaged in the game the entire long weekend.

Some Statistics

We have a blind child, but we try to do our best to have her lead a normal life.   Part of that isn’t pointing out unnecessarily how she’s different from other children.   She knows other people can do things she can’t and sometimes that’s hard for her.   We try to give her the opportunity to have skills the rest of us don’t have, such as reading and writing braille, having the best hearing in the family or knowing something about a location or person from auditory clues the rest of us don’t pick up on.

We’ve told her, just like parents have done for eons, that she can be anything she wants when she grows up.   Well, save for being a pilot.   Perhaps not a Uber driver and I’m sure there are other things, but we try not to limit or point our what she can’t do, rather what she can.

There are a lot of statistics you read and hear about from people.   One of them is the low percentage of children that are taught braille.   I think we were one of those families that thought, when my daughter’s vision wasn’t that bad, that she wouldn’t need braille.   It looked complicated and there seemed to be all sorts of things you needed to accompany braille, which spoke towards both our ignorance and prejudice against braille.

Some students, like my daughter’s VI friend in her class, aren’t focusing on Braille as much because she can read large print.   It does make me wonder though when I read statistics like, “only 10% of visually impaired children in the US are now learning to read Braille, a 2009 study from the National Federation of the Blind found. According to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), 1,077 children in England were learning Braille in 2017, out of an estimated 21,900 visually impaired children in the country."

Are blind, truly blind, children who can’t read otherwise not being afforded the opportunity to learn braille?  I wonder if it’s through lack of education or availability of educational expertise, or if the family prefers to try and stay the admittedly more easy course of large print instead?   Large print can be useful if the point size is small enough that the child can read with reasonable speed.   If, however, in order to effectively read they need a point size like:



how many words can the child read per line?  Can you imagine trying to read a book at that size font?   How large would a printed book have to be page-wise.   If it was an electronic text, I think I’d get a headache from having to sweep back and forth across the page at a reasonable reading pace.

So I’m glad my daughter is learning braille.   It gives her one of those things she can do that other people can’t.   It’s her superpower.

Another statistic I read related to government job opportunities: "In the United States, blind people are given priority to own and operate the vending stands—restaurants, food stands, magazine kiosks, etc.-- in federally owned buildings.

I don’t know if this is something my daughter would want to do, what with her plans to have her own pet store, but I can imagine all the friends she’d make at her own kiosk, talking to regular customers as she made them their morning lattes.

Only time will tell, and we have time.   She’s learning at an impressive rate, thanks to her teachers at school.   I’ll keep you posted as she refines what she wants to do when she grows up.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is over at Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Margaret’s house this afternoon.   They picked him up after school and fed him his post-school meal for energy and to ameliorate his after school emotional swings.   He and Uncle Jonathan are now playing video games together.   Margaret sent a picture from the doorway to Uncle Jonathan’s office.   It looked like my son was showing Uncle Jonathan how to play Fortnite.   I am most certain he will come home late and very happy after the afternoon with the two of them.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My husband picked up my daughter today and she got mad.  Mad because her braillest, Ms. B, told him my daughter had been fighting using proper cane hand grip and arm sweeping motions, even though her Orientation and Mobility teacher had been working with her on it for some time now.   She was mad because “now we know” and she didn’t want us too.   Coincidentally, I am scheduled to observe her with Mr. Adam next week at her orientation and mobility session to get some pointers for how we can better do sighted guide with her as the sighted person having to guide her around from time to time.   We’re suppose to encourage proper cane usage at home.   Now that we know what proper cane usage is, that is.

It’s Polite to Say Goodbye

My daughter has this watch phone.  The phone part is not the primary feature of the watch from my husband and my perspective, we got it because it was a wearable GPS device for her wrist.   The phone part was a nice addition, and quite frankly, the main selling point to my daughter to get her buy in on wearing it daily.

We can track her location as she rides to and forth from school, but it’s had unexpected benefits from the phone perspective.  We can call her if we need her to come home from a friend’s house.  And then there was the time she called me because she was lost just across the street from our driveway, stuck between a trash and recycling bin.

She likes the option to call people on the watch.   We’ve had to limit the number of people she can call because she can’t see what’s on the face of the watch and without the help of a friend to help her determine who she’s selecting, she typically has to try a few times to get the person she’s looking for.

With the recent post here about my daughter being bored on the ride home from school, my mother asked if she’d like to talk with her as she rode in the taxi.   It took us a few days to get this working.  First, my daughter didn’t remember to wear her watch one day and then for two days she wasn’t answering my mother’s calls.   We figured out at that point that the phone had been set to silent mode and it wasn’t ringing so she could hear it.

But once we figured that out, my daughter has been into talking on the phone with Mimi after school—or at least that’s who I think she’s calling.   I don’t really know.   What I do know is that she’s calling someone.   Or, rather, that she wants to call someone.

She’s called me the last several days on the way home from school.   I see the call coming in, answer it and say, ‘hello’.   She then says, “who’s this?” because she can’t tell on the little watch speaker phone who the voice is from the single word, ‘hello’.   When I tell her, “it’s mom” she immediately hangs up.   It’s like she’s got her finger hovering over the terminate call button because its nearly instant.

It’s not uncommon for her to misdial a second time, like she did today.   When she hears my voice (and now I know to say, “hi, it’s mom”) she unceremoniously hangs up without a word.   I get the message.   She doesn’t want to talk to me.   I need to let her know it’s polite to say, ‘goodbye’ I think.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was very happy to be going to see Liz today for OT.   When they came out they talked about empathy.   Liz said one of the people they’d talked about was Vladimir Putin.  My son asked who he was and Liz explained.   She said maybe he could think about why someone would want so much power and maybe we could empathize with wanting power.   I’m not sure about the session, but it definitely got my son thinking.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told me this morning, “you know what they should do?  They should make hats in the shape of underwear because I’ve tried putting underwear on my head."

One Less Pill

My daughter had multiple bladder infections last year.   There was confusion with the first one because it didn’t present as a UTI and when we found out, after she’d had it for far too long, we were able to clear it with an antibiotic.

She got a second one though, and then a third.   There was a bit of time between the third and the fourth one (if I’m remembering correctly) and I think after that there was possibly a fifth one.   We took her to a pediatric urologist at that point who suggested two routes: heavy hitting antibiotics to knock whatever it was out for good or low dose antibiotics for six months.

We picked the first option because it was less medication.   That’s when we found out, or rather I found out it the medication was only available in pill form.   It turned out to be not a big deal though, with my daughter easily swallowing the pill on the first night.   Ten days later she was done but the infection came back.   Wait, now that I’m thinking about it this last time must have been the fifth infection.

By now we knew what to look for.   My daughter didn’t want to tell us she had an infection because it meant more medication.   Children are short-sighted through lack of experience.   So on our return visit we took the longer route of low-dose antibiotics that quickly were processed by the body and sat in the bladder, waiting to be eliminated.

The cause of the recurrence was, her doctor told us, because the lining of her bladder had been compromised by the repeated infection.  This was allowing the bacteria to hide behind the lining and lie in wait for the antibiotic to pass.   Once the coast was clear, these sentient microbes sneak back out and set up shop again.  

Okay, perhaps the sentient part is a fabrication, but what bacteria lack in intelligence, they accomplish through numbers.   Enough survived to reinfect her and the only way to stop it was to keep her bladder a inhospitable environment lone enough for the wall lining to heal.

Today it has been six months and my daughter stops the antibiotic.   She is happy to have one less pill.    We’re all hopeful it’s been long enough and her bladder will remain infection-free.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is having screen time reworked starting next week.   I had a long conversation with Aunt A and she told me what they’re doing at their house.   It sounds like just what we need here.   We’re going to be talking to my son over the next week to get his input (and buy in) and then we’ll roll it out.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Two days go my daughter fell off or out of the swing (we’re not sure exactly what happened) and her teeth cut into her lower lip.   Not badly, but enough to bleed and scare her and hurt.   We told her to not eat acidic foods for a few days because they might sting.   She couldn’t keep off the pasta though and had it for breakfast the next morning.   She has some little white dots on her lip now where the tissues are healing, but it hasn’t stopped her from eating or drinking anything that I’ve noticed.

Spring Outing

My husband and daughter went to the Spring Outing at a camp at the beach recently.   My daughter wrote up all the things they did over the weekend.

The Big Boy Update:   My son asked me on the way to school, “do roads go on a human trip?”   It took me a minute to figure that one out.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter has been bored in the cab coming home lately.   She has a watch we use to keep GPS location on her that has limited calling ability.   My mother was trying to call here over the past several school days to no avail.   One day she forgot her watch and then for two days she just didn’t realize Mimi had called.   It turned out her phone had been put in silent mode so calls weren’t coming through.   Today, though, the game was on.   I don’t know what transpired but my daughter was hot on the trail of talking to Mimi.   She accidentally called me twice (she can’t see what she’s pressing on the watch) and when she realized it was me she hung straight up without even saying goodbye.  When she got home she was on the phone with Mimi still.   It would appear she was well-entertained on the ride today. 

Using a Map

I got through a massive pile of braille work my daughter has brought home over the past several weeks.   I make myself read everything she’s done at school as homework so that I’m better prepared for the online braille course I’m taking.   I was ready to get started with the next unit of the course, that is until I opened my daughter’s backpack after school today.   I now have another two inches of papers to read through.   I’m faster at reading now though, hopefully I can get through it tomorrow and start in earnest with my coursework.

Every time I go through my daughter’s work from school I find at least one thing that makes me appreciate the work the VI specialists at school do to make the coursework all the other children can “see” into something my daughter can consume.   She’s not learning disabled, she has a sensory impairment.   As long as the material can be presented to her in a way she can consume, she can easily do the work.

Today’s stack of school work didn’t disappoint.   The students were learning how to use a map.   Here’s the photocopied single sheet the other students in her class had for their assignment.

Note that the answers have been filled in on the sheet.   That’s what my daughter wrote on a separate sheet of braille paper.   Her braillest fills in the print on the original sheet a lot of times.   It probably took my daughter all of ten minutes to read the questions, find the locations on the map, put a sheet of blank paper in her braille writer, add her name and date to the top and then write the five written answers below.   But how did she know what the map looked like?  

She knew, because her braillest spent I don’t know how much time, putting together this tactile version of the map so she could “feel” her way around the map, including a separate sheet with a key.

Because the buildings are raised by using white foam, my daughter could easily draw the path from one location to the other to answer questions five and seven.   

When I say I am humbled by the amount of time it takes my daughter’s specialist teachers to create the work they do for her to just be able to complete a single, simple worksheet, I mean it.   They are heroes to my husband and me.   They are giving my daughter the education we would have no idea how to do.   And they do this every single day as evidenced by the two inch stack high of school work she sent home from last week alone.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a meltdown today.   We have a screen time issue.   It is my son’s highest and most valuable reward, and my husband and I don’t mind him having some screen time, be it playing a video game or watching a show.  But when time is up, time is up.   Today, like all other days, he set a timer with Alexa to let him know when the half-hour was up.   When the time came he lost it.   He was mad.   He was incensed.   Alexa clearly didn’t know how to keep time. We worked it out but unfortunately he lost additional screen time he’d accrued due to behavior and attitude.   I should have fed him after school; he wanted to wait for dinner.   I should have known better than to let him go without calories. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has music on Mondays.   Her best friend next door, Madison, loves to join her for music class and since the main goal for her is to have some purposeful fun, we don’t mind as long as Chelsea doesn’t mind.   And Chelsea is rather a saint when it comes to two excitable girls and music.   They ran downstairs this afternoon adorned in all of Chelsea’s colored scarves, saying they were fairies.    Apparently they had done interpretive dance to some classical pieces.   Chelsea said they each had different interpretations of the songs, each showing quite a lot of imagination. 

Popcorn Present

Today was Uncle Jonathan’s birthday.   He wanted to go to his favorite sports bar/pub for dinner.   He asked if we wanted to join him and said the children were welcomed to join us as well.  I told him it was going to be more challenging time-wise because we had to get  back, have the children washed and in bed by eight.  I knew the folks who would likely be coming weren’t in the same position with young children and typically ate later.

He said it was his birthday and dang it, he could eat at five o’clock if he wanted to, or something to that effect, so we said sure, count us in, we’d meet them there.   And we did just that.   Thanks to Margaret, Nate, Brek, Anna and KP for the very early dinner on account of our children.   You guys are the best.

My children had prepared a birthday present of sorts for Uncle Jonathan.   There was the funny birthday card Mexican-food themed, of course.   My daughter had written him something in Braille that was quaint and yet somehow not germane to his birthday at all.  And then there were the Easter eggs.

My daughter is still obsessed with Easter egg hunts.   She regularly asks if she and her friends can have an egg hunt.   I get out three or so eggs each, we put things in them and then they hide them for each other to find.   Her favorite eggs are the tactile ones with glitter on the outside with the highest value egg being a golden glitter egg.

She decided to put some things in Easter eggs, golden Edd included, for Uncle Jonathan’s birthday present.   She was a bit disappointed he wasn’t going to get to have his very own egg hunt in the restaurant, but when she realized he could have his own bag of Easter eggs, she decided it would be okay.

We put all kinds of things in the eggs.   She was the leader of the egg stuffing effort, making sure he had candy in some of the eggs, what with this being the highest value egg contents for her.  She got some plastic rings and put a collection in an egg so that everyone there could have one, sharing in his birthday celebration.

We had Duke blue hair extensions for him and Margaret for upcoming Duke games, silly putty, superman lip balm (with cape) and friendship bracelets.   My daughter, without realizing it, had two food-based eggs that were great choices.  She wanted to help him with the eggs, which she pulled out each egg, opened it for him and then gave the egg and contents to him.   The very first egg was popcorn, which had everyone laughing—an Easter egg filled with a few kernels of popcorn.   He ate the popcorn while she got out the next egg.

When she got to the rings (there were two kinds) they were passed around to everyone so they could pick which pink cartoony character child’s ring they wanted to try and fit on their adult fingers.   When she got to the Skittles everyone cheered her selection.   Uncle Jonathan, I told her, loved Skittles so much he had a custom pair of sneakers with Skittles painted on them he loved to wear.

My son had the sweetest egg contents.   There was a small scrolled piece of paper held with a rubber ring.   The paper said, “a hug from Greyson.”

My children sat on either side of Uncle Jonathan at the head of the table and monopolized his time until we had to go home for bath and bed.   Thanks for sharing your birthday with us, Uncle Jonathan.   Congratulations on another year.   Next year, who knows what my children will come up with for your birthday present!

The Big Boy Update:  I told my son tonight, as he hugged Matisse before I left with her after reading to them, that dogs gave, “unconditional love” and did he know what that meant?  After I explained it to him he said, “even if you hit them?!”  He was horrified at the thought.   I told him hopefully that would never happen to a dog.   He gave Matisse a final hug and then went up to bed.   I told him when Matisse was older she could stay in the room with them at night.   He and his sister are looking forward to having her stay with them overnight.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter took her glittery purse with her to Shane’s graduation party next door today.   She’s never carried a purse before and it turned out to be a good day to start.   She kept asking people what she could put in her purse.   Before she’d left she had half a bag of butter rum life savers, some chocolate from Israel, a pencil, a spoon, four lollipops and a screw.

My Trip To Hawaii

Here’s my daughter’s view of our Hawaii vacation:

Strange, the variation in color across the photos.   I took them all within a two minute period in the exact same place.   I wonder if it was cloud coverage coming and going and variations in sunlight?

The Big Boy Update:  My son had too much screen time today.   He had had a good week at school and hadn’t used any of the time he’d accrued.  He happily sat and watched some television (the same as I did when I was a child on Saturday mornings) and then he played some games.   He went out and played with his friends after lunch.   I remember when I was a child the limiting factor was that Saturday morning cartoons ended after a certain time and there was no reason to keep watching as the adult shows came on.   In today’s on-demand world of media, there is never a time the exact show you’re interested in isn’t available,   Save for the lack of Internet connectivity, which I informed my son we’ll have when we’re on the boat in July.   He said, “Mom, that’s barbaric!”   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and her friends got the baby pools out today, filled them with water and proceeded to get wet for hours in the back yard.   The dog got into one of the small pools for a while but, on deciding it was too much like a bath, she got out and sat, panting in the shade.

Cane Quest: A Child’s Viewpoint

My daughter participated in something called Cane Quest several weeks ago.   It’s an event where you demonstrate your cane skills and receive points (or coins) based on your performance.   She seemed to have a good time, but I’m never really sure sometimes until I hear about things through the free writing she does at school.   Some of her work came home the other day with descriptions of the various things she’s done lately.   They’re so charming, hearing how she sees things from her perspective, that I love to post them here.









The Big Boy Update:  My son’s school had Spring Expo today.   He got out of school but we returned shortly thereafter for the school spring celebration, including performances.   I knew my son would be doing something from their music class in conjunction in part with the Spanish teacher, but I didn’t know what.  He pretended like he was going to be, “busy” but that I should “look for him when I heard music.”  He was very cute, dancing and singing with his classmates.   I sure wish I knew what the Spanish song, with gestures, was about.   The Spanish teacher introduced it in Spanish, of course.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The four-person swing we have on our play set seemed to be lifting up the leg of the A frame over the past week.   I had moved it to a new location, further out towards the edge of the set, but it shouldn’t have been lifting up.   I thought maybe it was because they had all grown over the winter and were heavier this spring, but then I saw it more dramatically lifting up so my husband and I went out to investigate.   It turns out the bolts hadn’t been tightened recently and play was being introduced in the parts of the set frame.   A bunch of tightened bolts later and the swing is back to bearing all sorts of high swinging weight with multiple children at the same time without incident.

The Clock and The Curio

My daughter has a clock.   It’s a Grandmother Clock, which is like a Grandfather Clock, only it’s, well, honestly, I don’t know the difference.   It’s my Mother-in-law’s clock and she’s a grandmother, maybe that’s the difference.   To be more specific, my daughter doesn’t have the clock that belongs to Nana, she will have it some day when Nana is no longer alive.

She and Nana talked about this some time ago.   It makes a lovely chiming noise and my daughter likes it very much.   Nana told her she could have it and my daughter, who most definitely doesn’t want to lose her Nana, is happy to have something of hers some day, to remember her by.

My in-laws recently moved closer to us and the clock moved with them.  The clock’s new location is prominently in the foyer of their new house.   My daughter must have said something about it to her brother recently when they were over, about how it was going to be hers after Nana had died.   I think it got my son thinking, because the next time he was over at Nana and Papa’s he asked Nana what would be his after Nana had died.

Nana, just like all the stories you’ve heard about kind grandmothers, asked him what he’d like to have?   My son didn’t dither; he knew exactly what he wanted—he wanted the the curio cabinet.  The curio cabinet is not only a piece of beautiful furniture, it’s filled with all sorts of “curiosities” befitting the name of the cabinet.   There are lots of little boxes and small items that make you want to open the curved glass doors, reach in and find out more.

Did the curio cabinet include the contents?   This would be a question an adult might ask, but as a child, my son assumed the case included everything inside.  Nana assured him it did.   And Nana also made sure my husband and I knew that each child had something special reserved just for them, from her, after she was gone.

My children don’t have a good concept of mortality.  They understand there is a cycle of life and living things ultimately die, but they haven’t had the experience of losing a loved one other than our dog, which they remember, but were too young to understand well.   They’re not worried about Nana or any of their grandparents dying, which is a good thing.   Fear of death isn’t something I want them to be burdened with at this age.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me he wanted to get his hair cut after school while we were riding to campus this morning.   We called his father and he asked if he could go with him to get his hair cut after pickup.   My son burst into the room when he got home, beaming, feeling very dapper I think.   I told him he looked very nice.   Then he ran off to play with the puppy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We celebrated my daughter’s half-birthday at school today with cupcakes during her lunch period.   We had missed her actual birthday as her father and I were in Las Vegas running in the Rock and Roll Marathon series.   We had forgotten multiple times to reschedule and now, one half-year later, we finally got round to it.   Her classmates are very friendly.   I had a really fun lunch hour talking to a group of not-shy-in-the-slightest girls sitting around me.

Six Teslas

When we got our first Tesla car in 2014 we would look for other Teslas on the road.   There weren’t a lot back then.  The Roadster only had about 2500 produced and the Model S wasn’t that far into production with our car having a VIN in the 45,000 range.  There was no Model X announced even and the Model 3 was only a rumor.  

We saw about one a week, which met with much fanfare from our family members in the car.   We’d wave and talk about which model it was and what options it looked like it had.   Tesla doesn’t have “Model Years” like other cars do.  They change offerings and features as it suits them.   At the time, you could tell more about the car from the numbers on the back than you could anything else.   Later on things got more diverse still but by then we were seeing enough of the cars that we’d grown inured to it and usually said, “there’s a Model <insert details here>”.

Not that long ago, this school year even, my son wanted to start counting Teslas we saw as he and I were driving to and from school.   Fairly quickly we got to over a hundred.   We stopped counting not that long after when the number of Model 3’s increased from a rare occurrence to multiple per day.

These days I notice every Tesla I see and make a mental note of what type of car it is.   There are a lot of Model 3’s, but I’m seeing almost as many Model X’s as well.   This morning I took my son to school, went through the Starbucks drive through, stopped off at the pharmacy and came home.   The total distance was around ten miles.   In that time I saw six Tesla vehicles.  

There is still a lot of excitement about them though.   When I parked at the pharmacy, a man came up to me and had all kinds of questions about the car.   I talked to him for about twenty minutes.   He, like many other people, would like to buy one in the future.   I told him the same thing I always tell everyone, “it’s the best car in the world.”

The Big Boy Update:  My son still has this, “modesty” thing going when he takes off his clothes.   He is, “modest” from the point he starts to get undressed until he gets in the tub—and then he forgets and doesn’t care any more.   The other day I told him I wasn’t looking, but I had to be over in that area folding laundry.   He said, “but you can putray me any time!”  I told him I thought he meant, “betray” and I would do my best not to.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is bored in the cab lately because the drive is longer due to other students being picked up.   For some reason the students in the cab now aren’t interesting or want to play games with her.   We came up with some things for her to do in the cab that are okay by her driver.   Drawing with markers isn’t and eating food isn’t allowed.   She said stickers would be fine though—and my daughter loves stickers.   She doesn’t know what the sticker is of, typically, although I’ve gotten a much better supply of tactile stickers lately.   Tomorrow she has a folder full of things to work on.   Last time I sent stickers with her in the cab, she came home with them all on her chest, inside her shirt after she ran out of paper.

Ed Buddy

Last year an old boyfriend from a quarter century ago found my number and sent me a text message.   We texted and then caught up on the phone at the time.   We talked about what had happened in our lives during that time and where we were now.   We laughed at all the good times we had and asked if we were each still in touch with the friends we’d had back then.

Some of the friends we were still each in contact with, even close to, while others we’d lost contact with.   One person was a roommate Jason had had while we were dating.  Ed, or, “Ed Buddy” as he was called, had sort of disappeared.   No one had heard from him after he’d moved away for a job.

This morning I had a text from Jason with a link to an obituary.   Ed had died and Jason had happened to stumble across the obituary as they’d been classmates in school together.   The obituary said Ed had been survived by his parents and his husband.

I messaged Jason back and said it was sad news indeed.   Jason said he’d had a chance to speak with his husband.   I asked how he was taking it, that I couldn’t imagine losing my spouse.   Jason said he was doing well, considering.   None of us knew his husband.   None of us knew he was gay.   His husband of fifteen years told Jason that Ed had cut off contact with people from his life before because he didn’t know if he’d be accepted for being gay.

Jason and I texted about it for a bit.   Neither of us would have cared and more to the point, would have been supportive of him as, we think, all of our friends would have been.  I hope no one gave him any indication they wouldn’t have been.   It’s hard to think back over all the events of those years and know for sure though.

As I texted Jason while I sat in my car, I found myself crying.   Not because I was sad Ed had died.   Surely, that was sad, but I hadn’t seen him in over twenty-five years.   I was crying because he didn’t know if he would be accepted by his friends.

The Big Boy Update:  This morning on the way to school my son told me, “time goes slower with you’re not having fun.”  He had had a difficult morning getting ready for school.   He then said, “my favorite time of the day is dinner because dad makes the best food. I think dad should open a restaurant.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My husband texted me this picture from the front yard yesterday:

Leaf Superpower?

My son’s occupational therapist and I got our Wheaton Terriers together today for a, “play date”.   It was two-fold as she and I have coaching calls weekly instead of having my son go to her office.   That, and of late I’ve had a lot to talk to her about my daughter as well.

I make a joke of blaming her for us getting a dog.   I do so in a complimentary way, because we are all quite smitten with the dog and are very glad we made the choice to get her.   She loves the children and they love her.   I’m not sure she has a favorite, she seems to love every one of us wholeheartedly and unconditionally.   That’s sort of the definition of dog though, isn’t it?

When we got the two dogs together we, yet again, marveled at how the coloration and coats had changed with each of our dogs since we’d last seen each other.   What looked like very similar beginnings has now diverged in both coloration and texture.   That, and Matisse is much smaller than Theo (although she’s four months younger).

It was thunder storming on and off but we caught one of the off bits where the sun was out and went for a walk with the dogs after they’d trounced and played together until they were lying on the floor with their tongues hanging out, panting. 

The walk was relaxing and we got a lot of things discussed.   When we got back I noted how my dog looked bedraggled while hers looked almost half orderly fur-wise.   It was about that time that we let them run around in the yard before I headed home.   It was then that the real difference came out. 

First off,  my dog loves to roll in the dirt.   Theo is more dominant as a male and our dog rolls over on her back in a submissive posture, but they were both rolling around.   I looked over and Matisse was covered in dirt, her paws were brown and grimy and she had leaves stuck all over her—just like at home, although there was no “sticky bush” in sight. 

Theo, on the other hand, didn’t have a coating of dirt on him—he looked almost clean in comparison.   And there wasn’t a single leaf stuck to him.   Not one.   Matisse had over fifty.   I know this because when I got her home and in the shower I had to pull them off individually.   Water doesn’t help.   Shampoo doesn’t loosen them, conditioner doesn’t sluice them off and brushing or combing is more an exercise in tangles than leaf removal. 

Leaf collection would seem to be our dog’s super power.  

The Big Boy Update:  I wish I remembered the conversation or context from when I wrote this down.   All I know is one day I was having a conversation with my son and he said very matter of factly, “I’m never taking you into battle.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s music teacher has been trying to teach her how to play the piano (or keyboard, which she likes too).   She said she has excellent fingering skills—only she can’t get her to use her thumbs.   She and I realized this makes complete sense; she is quite proficient at typing on her braillewriter—which doesn’t use the thumbs at all.