Who Am I?

My son did his Mystery History presentation today.  His teacher sent home the first three-quarters of his presentation electronically.   I published this post and then realized I had a printout I could type in the missing end so I updated the post later in the evening?  He did a very good job, talking to the audience twelve full minutes from memory, referring to a page of diagrams he'd recreated from the book he read on his famous person.

Good Morning everyone! I hope everyone has had their coffee for the morning to sit and listen to my story next.

I am going to begin by telling you stories about my childhood. I was born on February 11, 1853. As a child I was curious and was very interested in the world around me. I went about it like a scientist. Once I cracked opened a bumblebee’s hive to see what was inside. Another time I watched the bird eat worms and fly off. So I made a mixture of water and mashed worms and gave it to a girl to see if it would make her fly. However, it made her sick and I got in a lot of trouble. Even though I got into trouble I did not stop.

When I was seven we moved to Port Huron. My father worked hard to make money. We were there a short time when I caught a scarlet fever. I had high fever and a rash on my skin. When I was better I realized I couldn’t hear as well. So at school I would wander off. One day I heard my teacher telling someone that I was “addled” which meant that my brain was scrambled. I told this to my mother and she was very furious. I started home school. My mother gave me difficult books to read about history, nature and science. My favorite books was a science book called “A School Compendium of Natural and Experimental Philosophy.”The book was about electricity, batteries, electrical toys and many other things. One part of the book that interested me the most was the information about the ‘Morse Code.’ The code was used to send messages over telegraph wires. I set up a wire from my house to my friends house so we could messages. My interest in telegraphy grew when I went to work on a railroad.

When I was twelve years old I sold newspaper magazines and snacks on a train that traveled from Port Huron to Detroit, Michigan. I also made money by selling things I bought from the Detroit market as well as vegetables from my family farm. When I noticed that a newspaper was throwing out ink and old pieces of type in Detroit I started a small printing press and started selling weekly newspaper. I set up my printing press in the baggage car on the train. However, when a chemical mixture caught fire I was asked to close my printing press on the train. When the Civil war broke out people wanted to read news so I found ways to sell more newspaper.

One day when I saw the train about to hit the stationmaster’s son I dashed onto the tracks and pulled the boy to safety. The stationmaster was very happy and offered to teach me telegraphy. I was very happy to learn since I already knew the Morse code. Telegraphs were very popular and they were sent not only from the railway stations but also from a company called Western Union. I worked for Western Union for few years as a telegrapher. I worked at night at the Western Union and during the day I worked on my inventions. I worked long hours on my inventions. I spent time at a machine shop to make the parts for whatever inventions I was working on. I was very sad when nobody wanted the voting machine I invented. That is when I decided that I will invent things that people wanted and nothing else. So I quit my job at the Western Union and decided to spend more time on inventing things that someone would want.

In 1869 I moved to New York without a job. Since I was already known for my inventions I did not have a difficult time finding a job. A friend and I started our own business. We made machines such as the universal stock printer. I sold the patent for my printer for thirty-thousand dollars to Western Union. My friends and I started our own company with the money we received form Western Union. I not only figured out how to send four messages at the same time but also perfected an electric pen.

One day a young woman named Mary Stilwell came to work at the company. I fell in love with her and three months later we were married. My wife soon found out that I would be spending more time at work than at home. Mary and I had three children. I lovingly called my first two children Dot and Dash after Morse Code.

After six years in New York I wanted a change so I bought two big plots of land in a small farming community in New Jersey called Menlo Park. I built two-story building for my laboratory. I found Menlo Park to be a perfect place for me to think.

Around this time Alexander Graham invented the telephone. I wished I had thought of it first. But, Bell’s telephone had problems. It worked only for short distances and you had to shout really loud to be heard. Western Union asked me to make a better telephone. The telephone needed a better transmitter. The problem with Bell’s transmitter was that it was made of metal so I had to find out what material would work best.

My team and I worked very hard. One day I thought of scrapping a carbon off a glass piece of broken oil lamp. Next I rolled the carbon into two-button shapes. I put one on Bell’s transmitter and another one next to it. I was very excited that my carbon transmitter helped the telephones work better.

Next I wanted to invent a way to record and play back peoples voices called phonograph. My team and I were not in any hurry until we saw an article in an important magazine called Scientific American. In the article it said that I had invented a machine that played the human voice. Now I was in hurry to invent the next invention. I quickly draw a sketch and gave it to my machinist. My machinist knew how to read my sketch and he came back with a model. I added a melody and it worked! I was soooo excited that my phonograph worked the very first time. I was only thirty years old and everyone called me “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”

One day my scientist friends and I decided to go on a vacation by train to Wyoming to see an eclipse of the sun.  During this trip when I saw Platte River rushing by I wantered why no one had thought about using the power of the river's flow to provide electricity to miners who were working nearby.  One of my friends told me that there was a man in Connecticut who was trying to find an interesting way to use the power of elecgricity.  

I wanted to be the first one to imnvent a simple light bulb which gave off a bright, soft glow from a simple filament.   First I had to make a bulb and then to see what type of filament would work best.  Even before I had any idea of how to do this I was bpasting to everyone that I would have elecgtric light of the future.  Six weeks later when I had nothing to show for electricity, people started accusing me of bragging.  My team and I worked hard to fund the right filament and we tried over three thousand different materials.  Six months later, I found the answer.   It was sewing thread covered with carbon and baked at the right temperature.  I was only 33 years old when my lightbulb glowed.

Next I was very sad to lose my wife who died due to an illness when she was only 29 years old.  My children and I stayed in New York since that is where my electricity business was.  A year later I got married again.  My new wife and I had three more children. 

Next I enjoyed spending time with my family, traveling to different places and visiting exhibits that displayed items from my inventions.  I never stopped inventing til the end,  During the last fifteen years of my life I went on many trips with friends like Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and John Burroughs.  We called our trips together, "camping trips."

Last two years of my life I was sick with a number of diseases like diabetes and stomach ulcer.  I died on October 18.  I was eighty-four years old.  On the day of the funeral, the President asked all Americans to turn off their lights for one minute in my honor. 

Well the world when I was alive was very very different.  There was no electric light, no music to listen to, no movies to watch.  I made all of these possible with my inventions.  Even if I say so I was one of the greatest inventors of my time.

Who am I?

The Big Boy Update:  My son, when asked if he needed to be chaperoned for trick-or-treating today said, "Mom, I'm almost nine.  And I always go with Rayan and he's almost ten.   We don't need anyone to go with us."  I explained how his father wasn't sure and if he could convince dad, it was fine with me.   I got a call after the neighborhood event at the clubhouse that my son had disappeared and apparently, he was able to trick-or-treat alone.   He had and he was.   He came home later happy and loaded down with candy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter ran thirty-six laps for her school fundraiser, "fun run" today.   She has raised a lot of money.   Thank you to everyone who pledged to help her.   Tonight, she didn't want to take her cane to go trick-or-treating.   She really needed to, as in the dark it is helpful for her to be able to discern terrain.   Also, it helps for people to put candy in her basket instead of waiting for her to grab it, expecting her to see it.   She told me, "Mom, I don't need my cane, I'll self-advocate."

MLM

I could have called this post "Tupperware" because when I think of multi-level marketing companies that's the one I have the strongest association with.   The first one I knew about was Avon, although to me it was just a lady ringing the doorbell when I was young and my mother ordering some lipsticks from her.  Maybe she ordered other things but I remember her getting something she put on her lips.  

One time the lady stopped by she had a little tiny lipstick sample she gave to my mother.  It was the size that would have been perfect for a Raggedy Ann-sized doll.  My mother gave it to me.   I didn't have any interest in lipstick, but the size of the little tube with the lipstick color sample fascinated me.   I must have used it eventually but I looked at it for a long time, not wanting to mess up the pristine shape the pink-red stick.

When I was older and had started working at IBM while I was in college I got invited to some Tupperware parties.   This was my first experience of the, "invite every single person you know that might be interested or would feel obligated to come".   If that sounds ungracious, it's because it's how I view it personally.   That doesn't mean I mind coming to your party for the latest new thing because I don't.   I don't mind the subtle pressure to buy something or a lot of something to support your friend in their new business endeavor to make money off a portion of the proceeds of what you end up spending, because I'm fine with that.  I'll happily come to your party and will probably buy something.  I'm a pretty easy consumer to sway.

I just don't like the concept for me.  I don't want to host a party and I don't want to invite all my friends.  I don't feel comfortable asking people to come to an event to spend money so I can have some of it.   Maybe the products are truly remarkable, but I don't want to be involved as the middle man and involved in other people being able to by said products.  

Add to that the Multi-level component and my unease increases.   Now that you're a "rep" for the product, get your friends, associates, and acquaintances to become reps themselves.   Then they can make their own money from sales of their connections, and you can make a portion of their portion.   The theory is that with the right amount of people involved (a lot) you can quit your day job.

Statistically, you have a 2.9% chance of being profitable as a gambler.   0.4% of people in an MLM are making a profit.  You end up investing in the products themselves, perhaps far more than you might otherwise spend on something.

I like traditional consumerism that doesn't involve friends and family.   That being said, I've been a "rep" for a few product lines in the past.   I've joined at a higher level because the products are good ones and I expected to spend enough over time personally that it was more economical to be my own salesperson.

I believe firmly that, "if it makes you happy, do it" and if someone I know joins an MLM and they're having fun with it or are able to supplement their household income, then more power to them.   Invite me to your party, I'll come and buy something.   Like I said, I'm an easy consumer to sway.

The Big Boy Chronicles:  I was going to give my son the night off on his rehearsal since tomorrow is the presentation day.   I asked him how many times he thought he needed to rehearse, expecting him to say none, but he said: "three...well, maybe two".   Several days ago he just didn't want to rehearse and said he knew it all.   Tonight, he realizes I think that he could use a few more practice runs.   He knows the whole thing but he has to think for a few seconds to remember what's next here and there.

The Tiny Girl Update:  My daughter has raised a lot of money for her Fun Run school fundraiser.   Tomorrow she will run thirty-six laps in the school gym (because it will be raining).   Thank you to everyone who has helped her and her school.   Raising money for education is something we feel strongly about.  I come from a family of educators who worked very hard to help educate countless students.

Your Existence

This post is about all four of my family members so my children arent going to have their own sections tonight.   We're trying to improve our grace and courtest at home.  Grace and courtesy is a phrase my children know from Montessori school.  To them it means to be nice to each other.   We're not always so good at this at our house, but we're trying to improve.

I've talked about how I yell and hate that I do so every single time because it feels like a failure as a parent.   Sometimes I'm raising my tone to match the children's, but not always.   The children last night were being very unkind to each other.   My daughter bumps into my son because, get this, she can't see him.  Shocker, right?  I can't imagine how that would ever happen and yet it does.   For some reason this annoys my son when he's tired or in a mood and he pushes her, then she yells and protests and pushes him back.

This is happening and I'm trying to let them work it out and stop it from escalating more and I end up yelling to get their attention.   My son gets upset because I'm yelling at his sister and, well, I can't even remember how it played out but it was about three minutes of the whole family very unhappy at each other.

My son was told to go upstairs but he waited at the bottom of the stairs because his father was coming with his sister.   At that point he had decided I was one of the good guys and wanted to give me a compliment, say something nice to let me know he cared about me.   He said, "Mom, you're really good at drawing."

I laughed.  I laughed and told him he was the sweetest thing but I definitely was not good at drawing. My husband came out from the bedroom with my daughter in airplane mode, her preferred method of being transported upstairs to bed each night, and I repeated what my son had said.   My husband said, "no, Mom's right, she's really not good at drawing."

My son was angry about this and he said dad was being rude.   I said it was all right, I was glad he thought I was good at art.   As the three of them went up the stairs to the children's bedroom my son had the last word in though, saying, "Dad, you're existence hurts my feelings."  

It’s a Good Memory

I've mentioned my daughter riding her bicycle a lot lately.   It's into fall but temperatures have been such that she can go outside after school and get in a few good hours biking before she has to come in.   On the weekend she typically spends some time each day biking.   Some of the time, when she hasn't run the battery down from talking to my mother and other family and friends who have agreed to share their number, she's outside going around the block or other distances further than just our eleven house length street.

My husband had an idea two days ago: how would she fare on her brother's bike that's larger, has hand brakes as well as gears?  She prefers his bicycle now, asking to bike as soon as she got home from school.   Her brother wasn't overly thrilled about it, but seeing as he hasn't been interested in biking, we've told him he could share.  Surprisingly, we got little pushback.

There was, of course, mt son's constant monitization of the situation, something he does with everything lately.   Phrases such as, "I'll do the dishes, but you have to give me fifty dollars."   There are a lot of things he believes are worth fifty dollars.  He has recieved exactly zero dollars from us, nor the promise of any dollars, but he continues to try.   He agreed to let his sister ride his bicycle but he yelled out, "if you scratch it, you have to pay me for the damage!"  This was shot down immediately by me explaining how he hadn't bought the bike in the first place to which he sighed and said, "okay, Mom."

My husband has been talking to my daughter about asking for a new bike for Christmas (which would be helpful, as we need something to get her).   She came in today after biking and talked to me about getting a new bike.   She said, "what will happen to my old bike?"   I explained we would have to find a new home for it to make room for the new bike.

She doesn't like to get rid of things.   She suggested putting it several different places, including the attic and basement and I explained how we had been cleaning out the attic recently and the basement, just tonight, was going to have to have even more things cleaned out and moved to the attic because dad is having Tesla Powerwalls installed tomorrow.

I talked to her about how we had to make way for new things by getting rid of old things sometimes and that that was part of life.   She sighed, relented and then said, "I'll miss it.  It's a good memory."   I told her I understood.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband picked my son up to get his hair cut before his Mystery History presentation on Thursday.   He was very talkative to the lady cutting his hair, asking her questions about Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell.   When he got home, he decided he wanted to learn how to ride a skateboard.   I came outside to see much less hair on his head as he slowly balanced on a coasting skateboard.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This weekend at the VI gathering my daughter's Orientation and Mobility teacher talked to us about turning Airplane Mode on on her watch for their sessions.  The rule at school is that her watch must be in airplane mode while she's in school.   Her braillest turns it on for her when she arrives and we have an alarm set to vibrate on her wrist silently at the end of the day so she and her braillest will remember to turn airplane mode back off for her ride home.  Mr. Adam wanted to have her learn features she could take advantage of with the watch for her sessions.   Anything she can learn that will help her navigate or be safer is a good thing.

A Bigger Bike

My daughter has been riding her bicycle a lot.   She wrote one of the blog posts a few weeks back explaining what it was like in her mind as she rode up and down driveways and on our street.  Mostly what she's doing is riding from our driveway onto the street, to the left to the neighbor's driveway where she turns around, down to the driveway of the neighbor on the other side of us and then back to our driveway.

She does variations on this and has added recently the driveway directly across from us, getting off the seat and with the bicycle inbetween her legs, walking through the natural area to the next driveway and then back up to the street.  She's not going far for the most part, but she's biking miles of distance within the that small area.

She can tell where obstacles are for the most part and hasn't hit her head on a mailbox so far.   We alert her to cars parked on our dead end street that are in the area she bikes and excepting one incident, hasn't run into them.

Today my husband thought brought out her brother's larger, gear-based bike and had her try it.   It was taller with bigger wheels and had gears and hand brakes to get used to.   She was just tall enough to be able to bike reasonably well.   I came outside to find my husband calling out, "hand breaks" every time she got close to an obstacle.

She got it fairly quickly and told him he could stop reminding her noe about the hand brakes.   He said shs might think of asking Santa for a bike if she discocered she preferred his style bike over hers.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to watch YouTube today.  He had been banned by his father for inappropriateness in some of the channel choices he was watching due to language.  Today he has been granted a second chanve.   He also had to fold laundry while watching—without complaining.   So far, so good; he's folding laundry as I write tjis.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  For as much pushback as I get from my daughter, she wants to do the right thing.   Dhruti said I put a lot of expectations om the children, and I would agree, I do.   But there has to be a balance.  It affects my daughter in that she wants to do the right thing.   She seeks approval and validation like everyone else.  My mother told me about a song she made up and was singing while she was visiting my parents in the mountains.   She said while singing, "I wish I could be the perfect daughter."   And while this sounds quaint and charming in its own way, it worries me that I'm not praising and validating her enough.   There are so many things about her that make me proud.  Maybe she doesn't see that because I don't say it enough.   I need to work on it in that case.

VI Gathering

We had a gathering at my daughter's VI friend, Aditi's, house.  The gathering was an idea her mother had to bring together all the VI teachers our children have had since they were in preschool.   The community is a small one in the school system and all the teachers know each other so it was a friendly bunch of us that gathered around the tables to talk while the children played.

Her mother, now my friend, kept giving me credit for helping.   I felt badly taking much credit—at all—seeing how I coordinated an Evite for the most part whereas she held the event at her house, cooked Indian food for two days, catered additional dishes and hosted us all with her husband.  But I accepted her words and passed back as much of the credit as I could.

The children had fun doing things that were in part appropriate for visually impaired children because two of the children (my daughter and Aditi) were blind and some of the other children were siblings of theirs or had parents who worked in the field.   On the whole, the children all seemed to have fun, doing Karaoke in one part of the house while we had adult conversation and ate on the main floor.

I had a conversation with a friend today afterward.   He had asked me a question about when I thought my life changed because of my daughter's loss of vision.   It was a singular thing to ask, because I had been thinking of just that as I listened to all the VI-related discussions.  I fit in with this group.   This is my world: the parent of a blind child.   I fit in well.   When did everything change?

I'm going to do something I never do: I'm going to go back and read the blog from years ago.   I'm going to relive the time when my daughter initially lost her sight.   I remember it today, but I don't know that I remember it the same after four years.   That's what the blog was created for in part: to write down things as they happen so I don't have to rely on memories alone.

I don't know if it will be hard to read or not.   I'm not sure how much of it I can read, but I think I need to.

The Big Boy Update:  My son fits right in with a group of children that include some who are blind.   He understands it without thinking about it because he's been living with a blind sibling for half his life.   Many times I've thought about what it will be like for him as an adult.   How will his sister's lack of vision impact his life?  I can hear him in a deeper voice saying to an unknown person in the future, "my sister is blind" and then going on to talk about something related.   He can't explain how it's affected his life today, maybe, if I'm still writing this blog in years to come he'll lterll me about life as his sister's brother.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter didn't want to go to Aditi's house today because they haven't been getting along.   Two weeks on medication to help stabilize her and she was close to back to her old self.   She had a very good time and asked if we could please stay for longer, not wanting to leave when the party was over.

On Not Saying Goodbye

I do a significant amount of communicating electronically.   It's the not-in-person way to have conversations and share information.   When I was growing up we could talk on the telephone or mail letters as ways to communicate.   Today with the advent of the Internet, cellular network and vastly improved bandwidth, the ways to communicate are too many to enumerate.

When I was growing up and still today when you're finished with a phone call you say, "bye" or some other terminator statement before disengaging from the call.  That's standard practice and I didn't think much about it until my daughter started just hanging up when she was done, abruptly ending the call.   I gave her some pointers on phone etiquette and now she politely lets you know when she's ready to hang up.   Sometimes, like the other day when she was talking to Aunt Rebecca, she says something like, "Can we wrap this up?  My friend is here."  She then says the traditional goodbye and is off.

It's different from text messages though.   When is a conversation over?   You send a message and expect the other person to respond.   They might respond immediately or several days later, but usually the other person responds.   Commonly that prompts another message from the first person.   This goes back and forth until, when?  When are you done?  You don't say, "okay, bye" on text (or Facebook Messenger, or Twitter, or insert messaging protocol of your choice) because commonly you're only done, "for now".

I keep message chains on my phone that have been ongoing for years.  It's like one long conversation punctuated by days, weeks, months or even years of inactivity.   When you send or receive a new message, you just pick up with the new thread and start communicating again.  I think about this sometimes because I am one of those kinds of people who talk a lot and by extension, type a lot.  Initially, I would keep responding, not wanting to leave a message unanswered.   If you have two people who do that though you never end, even though the purpose of the communication has been completed for some time.

So I think about it.  When is there an understood, "Talk to you later.  Bye."?  There is such a wide range of behaviors in message responses that people don't seem overly upset if you keep responding or don't respond.   Some people text more, some less.   Some use more words and some are more succinct.  I remember recently I asked my husband to type a response to someone on my phone because I was driving.   I remember him saying, "that's a lot more words than I would have used."  He's one of the fewer words people.

Blogs are the same I suppose.  They're over when you don't write anymore.   You don't have to end with, "bye, see you tomorrow."  You'll be back when you're back.   That being said, I'll see you tomorrow, writing about whatever my brain needs to get out of storage and offloaded here to free up space in my head.

The Big Boy Update:  We went to Bring Your Parents to School at my son's school today.   He has done a tremendous amount of work since school started.  With the Adderall, he's a producing machine.   Last year at this time it would have taken him eight months to have completed the same amount of work.   He was nonchalant about it; it was just work he had done.   He, his father and I did some work with currency and numbers.   We deviated from the Montessori work and decided to come up with our own.   We went by fives from ten to one-hundred, seeing how many ways we could represent the number in coins, laying out the variations under each number.   We started challenging each other, saying, "can you do eighty cents in ten coins?"   My son was almost as good at it as my husband and I were, which is impressive because a year ago he would have been confused by the idea and wouldn't have been able to do the work at all.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter went to my son's school with us tonight and spent time while we were in his classroom with one of her teachers from Toddler House.   Elim showed us what my daughter had been doing when we got there and was clearly impressed.   While my daughter went over to visit with the guinea pig again she showed us some wooden squares with different sandpaper patterns on them.  The idea was to feel the patterns and match them up correctly with a matching three-by-three tic-tac-toe shaped board.   This is easy stuff to my daughter but to someone who hasn't seen her in action and doesn't realize how easily her fingers can discern things it looks impressive indeed.   Elim let my daughter take one set of the cards and its associated sheet to practice at home.   We're going to have races to see who can do it the fastest.  My son said he had a stop watch on his watch and he would time us.   My money is on my daughter being the fastest.   Bonus is she doesn't even have to close her eyes.

The Unlost Keys

I pride myself on knowing where my things are.   This isn't because I have an excellent memory, because I don't.   It's more a factor of being organized and having a system for most things.   We have spots in our house where we put certain things so they get to the right "home" location.  I do have junk drawers and messy areas, but they are only like that because I haven't gotten back to them to organize them.   

Organization is key, because by having a place for everything, I know where everything is.   When I step outside of the orderly, planned existence of "stuff" in my life, I don't fare as well.   For instance, I got something to give to Aunt Margaret the other day.   So I remember to give it to her, I can do one of two things:  I can put it somewhere that I will visually see it, somewhere where things shouldn't be so it will stand out as out of place, or I can put it in the "share spot" which is a space set aside for things that need to go to other people.   Tupperware containers (what's the generic for Tupperware?) that need to be returned to people after the food items in them have been consumed, presents for someone we'll be seeing soon or items left at our house that need to go back to their owners are all things that go to the Share Spot.  

The item for Aunt Margaret has been sitting right at the edge of my dresser and every time I walk by it I think, "I need to get that to Margaret".   I need this kind of organization because outside of that, I'll forget about things.   The phrase, "out of sight, out of mind" could not be more appropriate a phrase for how my brain works.   

This is why when I realized my keys were lost, I was confused.   I blamed (well, asked) my husband, asking didn't he borrow them and maybe he should check again to see if he had them somewhere (he didn't, he looked.  Twice.)  We had gone to Hawaii and for big trips I usually empty my purse of anything I won't be needing, leaving it in a drawer for my return.   I didn't remember if they were or weren't there when I got back but they weren't in my purse when I needed them.  

Losing my keys sounds like something I would have noticed fairly quickly.   We have keyless cars and keypads on the house so the only time I ever use the keys is for rental property or to go to my parent's house.  In the meantime, I borrowed another key to my parent's house, asking again if my husband was sure he didn't have my keys?  He didn't.  

I lost something else on that trip to Hawaii I was sort of upset about as well.  It was cold when we left and I wore my favorite winter jacket, one I'd had for about ten years.   When I got home I noticed a few days later that the jacket was nowhere to be found.  When had I had it last?  I remembered having it when we got on the flight home.   I must have left it on the plane and not realized it.  I was planning on writing a blog post about it at some point, not because losing a jacket is that blog-worthy a topic, but because it was upsetting to me that I'd lost it and had been careless.   I never got around to it mostly because I was too annoyed with myself for being careless and losing it. 

It's just gone from non-jacket weather to jacket weather here and I thought of the missing jacket again as my husband and I headed over to the property we're dealing with with the asbestos remediation, fuel ground contamination and prior owners who abandoned loads of possessions in the house when they moved out.  I hadn't been to the house in months, losing interest in clearing it out when it turned out we wouldn't be doing anything with it for some time.  

We came in the front door and were about to head to the basement to start clearing one of the back rooms when I looked to the left at the small pile of things someone might want and on a pink chair I saw my black jacket...that I must have taken over shortly after returning from Hawaii and had forgotten about it in the mounds of stuff.  

I think I scared my husband when I cried out something incoherent at seeing my jacket returned from the land of the lost.   He laughed and said, "it was here all along" knowing I'd been disappointed about losing it.  

I took it home and washed it—it really needed a wash after being in that house for months.   When I got it out of the dryer, smelling fresh from the smell of dryer sheets I realized I hadn't checked the pockets, which were lumpy.   I had a mostly dry glove in each pocket and in one...the keys I accused my husband of borrowing and losing,  

The Big Boy Update:  Unprompted, my son told me in the car today he was trying to improve himself.   I asked him what he was doing, expecting it to be something minor, trivial or video game-related.   What he answered was, in fact, nothing of the sort.   He told me he was really trying hard not to pick his nose—although sometimes he had to because tissue wasn't helpful.  I thought that was it but he went on.   He said he was trying not to pick his fingernails.   He followed up by saying he used to chew them, but he'd stopped that already.  now he was trying to stop picking at them.   I told him I thought that was great and did he want to learn how to use nail clippers?  He said he already knew how to use them.   He wasn't done though, saying he was trying not to crack his knuckles.   I told him they all sounded like good things to work towards and some of those habits were hard to break—and that I was very proud of him for working to improve himself.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's school is doing their annual fundraiser.  She will be running thirty-six laps around a small track again.  She wants to ask friends and family if they will contribute to help her raise money for her school.  Her father told her she could ask anyone she wanted, but she was responsible for asking.  Today she got in the car with me on the way to Dhruti and started calling people.   She spoke with Uncle Bob, Aunt Rebecca and Aunt Margaret before we ran out of drive time.  When she got home she met Stephen, our neighbor outside while she was riding her bike and asked him.   She has other family members on plan to call in the next few days.   Today when she called people I didn't say anything unless I had to for clarity.   She was very cute asking and then explaining how one dollar per lap was thirty-six dollars, two dollars per lap was seventy-two dollars, etc. and how much did they think they could contribute? She's a better fundraiser than I am, I think because no one said no.

Asbestos

This is a story about having to do things in order to be able to do other things—things that cost money that seems a waste.   Remember there was a property adjacent to the school we were involved with that the school now has an option to purchase so that at any time in the next five years, the school can choose to move forward with expansion and choose to buy the property?   Ah good, I knew you'd been paying attention.  

As part of the due diligence they performed as part of the contract, they requested the fuel oil tank be removed that was above ground, behind the house.   A fuel tank tens of feet away from toddlers didn't seem to be ideal.   During that process we discovered an additional underground tank that predated the above ground tank—and that tank had been seeping petroleum into the ground for probably decades.

That changed the simple tank removal to a tank removal plus tank dig up and soil removal of fifty-one tons of contaminated soil.   And they couldn't get it all.   They got most of it, but until the house was demolished, they couldn't do more.   Good thing we had had discussions all around and decided demolishing the proprety now seemed like a good idea.

In order to get a permit to demolish the house and two sheds you need a demolition permit.   Which we can't get yet because 1) the age of the hosue necessitates an asbestos inspection and 2) a survey of the property needs to be submitted.

And this is where I got a little miffed.   Half of it I retracted when we found out the results: there was indeed asbestos in the house on the floor in two bedrooms in the basement and the master bath floor.   As far as asbestos goes, this is pretty easy.   We now have to have the asbestos remediated by a company that removes it safely, removes it from the site and then provides document asserting that all contamination has been remediated.

I was fine with that—not the extra money, because it's never fun when unexpected costs arise.   I agreed we needed it properly disposed of.  The demolition was going to take place, again, tens of feet from the Children's House building with toddlers up to Kindergarten.   We didn't need particles of Asbestos in the air for them or for anyone else whereever the material travelled.

The survey though, I'm annoyed by.   We tried to doctor up a map of the property, drawing the two sheds on it but no go, we have to pay for a full survey of the property buildings just to get a permit so they can be torn down.   It's not necessary for the demolition, they can see the buildings.   But such is regulations.

By next week we hope to have the demolition permit and the buildings will be down shortly following.  Eighteen soil samples were taken from the first petroleum remediation with the leaking tank that had been buried within a foot of the house.  Only three of them came back with contamination.   There is a basement wall the tank was adjacent to, which will give the company additional depth they can dig to once the building is down.

Hopefully after all of this, the property will be in a better state for the school when they decide to expand and all environmental hazards will be removed.   In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy an asbestos- and petroleum-free parking space next door when I drop my son off at school.

The Big Boy Update:  Last night my son rehearsed his Mystery History presentation to Uncle Bob.   He could not stop moving.   The phrase, "bouncing off the walls" is about as accurate as I can get to describe him.   Out of control would be another.   I told Uncle Bob, "this is the ADHD".   We asked my son if the Adderall helped him and I talked to him about it on the ride to school this morning.   He agreed it would help him be able to stand in place and recite his lines calmly and with focus

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter just called me on her Apple Watch from Girls Run Club.   She was running extra laps with Brooklynn and they wanted to know if Brooklynn could have a play date soon.   She ran and we talked about her upcoming birthday and party planning.   The Apple Watch sounds so good.   I couldn't even tell she was running with her arm moving along with her pace.   The voice quality for both her and Brooklynn was flawless.   I don't talk much on my Apple Watch; my daughter is going to do so a lot it would seem.

Upper Elementary

We had my son's parent teacher conference today.   In the past, for a long time, it's been a lot of conversation about how things weren't going all that well.   There were good parts and my son was learning, but there were challenges as well.   For a few years we battled what was his intentativeness and hyperactivity and how it was impacting his ability to learn as well as causing him to be disruptive to the class.

He would, "spin around" which is a phrase I could understand, but I didn't really have a good grasp of what they meant.   I know what they mean now though.   Because my son only takes a short acting Adderall pill for the hours he's at school that wears off by the end of the day when they're outside, we have an opportunity to see what they meant when he does things that require focus at home.

He's been practicing his Mystery History presentation for the past four days.  He simply cannot do it and stay still.  He bounds around the room, over the bed, bounces on the purple yoga ball, leaps over the chair and doesn't ever stay still.   When he's holding the sheets with his presentation printed on them his arms stay relatively still, but the rest of his body continues to move.

He doesn't maintain a normal speaking pace or pitch.  Sometimes he reads as fast as he can, he uses different voices to read and he's even broken into song, singing the words on the page.  I've let it go because he's actually doing the work.  He's memorizing the presentation and he's doing so quickly.   It's not short, what he's delivering from memory to his entire class and parents in a week.   I challenged him to read through it as fast as he could this morning to see how long it would take him.

At top reading speed with very little breaks, he made it through the three pages in five-and-a-half minutes.   At a normal speaking pace with the remaining section of his speech still to be written, he's going to take about eight minutes to recite it, all from memory.   I don't remember ever having to memorize something that long.   He seems to be doing it with ease, deviating from the exact wording from time to time but getting the essence of each sentence correctly.

I'm not worried about his body movements because I know with the Adderall he'll be able to do the presentation calmly and easily in front of his peers and parents.   He needs an outfit so he's dressed the part.   We found a three-piece brown suit and matching brown bow tie on Amazon and plan on putting white in his hair to make him look like a distinguished gentleman.  Hopefully he will remember everything when he presents on the 31st.   If not, he remembers easily where he is with a few words of promoting, which his teacher will be doing with all the children.

After talking about my son's upcoming presentation with his teachers, we talked about his academic progression.   He is "graduating" this year after being his his three-year Lower Elementary Montessori class.   Most students spend three years at this level but some stay for a fourth if they're not ready to move into Upper Elementary yet.   We were worried two years ago and even last year that he wouldn't be ready after three years.   His teacher said today he was most definitely moving up next year.   He's already excited and talking about it to his friends.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son is so thrilled to have his sister's old watch.   He is less thrilled about wearing it and left it at Nana and Papa's yesterday.   We'll see if he wants to really wear it because if he's not willing to make a commitment to keeping it on and takes it off all the time he's not going to be allowed to use it.   So far, he's more interested in having it and wearing it.  He just needs to get accustomed to having something on his wrist.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today was my daughter's first day back to school after being tracked out for over three weeks.   She is in the street right now with her friends on a big wheel trycycle that spins around that Nana and Papa have borrowed from their neighbor.   She is laughing and having a great time.   She also had a chance to see Dhruti this afternoon, which always helps.   I'm hopeful getting back on her school schedule and seeing Dhruti coupled with her, "happy pill" will help her feel better overall.  Today, so far, it looks like she's having a very good day.

State Fair Date

My family loves the state fair.   We happen to live quite close to the fairgrounds where the state fair is held every year.  All my life I've lived here and every year I love to go.   It was about the rides when I was young.   A bit about the games, but most were losing propositions so not overly much.  Later on it was about being somewhere unchaperoned with a boy I liked.  It was about the free samples and the food.  Always the food.

As a child the food meant cotton candy and candy apples.   As an adult it means all manner of things. There is the newest, strange concoction vendors have come up with to lure you and your dollars to their stands.   There is the terribly unhealthy like the deep-fried Twinky.   I think I've tried it all over the years; I am not averse to eating almost anything and I like most everything.  

This year has gone differently with the state fair, mostly due to scheduling, my children's sitter being available and both children being out of school at different times.   My son went to the state fair first with Morgan.   He came home full and happy and without prizes or trinkets or even a candy apple to eat later.   Today was my daughter's turn to go with Morgan.   We already had it scheduled with Morgan but my husband and I realized we had a few hours free we could also go—and he and I love to go.

With children, we hadn't gone just the two of us to the fair in a long time.   We realized we could go for lunch, second lunch and double desserts and do so unencumbered by slow-moving children who might not, okay probably wouldn't, want to do what we did.   So we escaped to the state fair together today.

That sounds strange to write, but it's how it felt.   We were alone, we were unencumbered, we were hungry.   Once a parent though, always a parent.   When we got there we messaged Morgan and said we'd meet up with my daughter and her for a bit for one of the rounds of food and to let us know when a good time would be.

Morgan and my daughter had gotten the unlimited rides wristbands and it was a bit before Morgan messaged me saying my daughter after ride after ride after ride on the swing had informed her it was almost time for dessert.   We met up with them and I got a dozen mini donuts.   My daughter wanted a frozen banana dipped in chocolate with sprinkles on a stick.

Morgan and I ate the donuts, my husband said he was holding out for some beef tips and my daughter was making a right mess of herself with melting chocolate on her hands.   We hugged her and escaped, saying we were off to see some boring adult exhibits and we'd catch up with her back at the house.  Then my husband and I avoided the boring exhibits and got more food.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son has nearly memorized his Mystery History presentation.  He can not sit still while he recites it.   He had to take a break to go to the bathroom in the middle and I called out, "stay there, keep talking."  I had this strange idea that I could keep him there and with his pants down he wouldn't bounce around and could actually go more quickly through the presentation.   It sort of worked, me sitting on the edge of the tub and him talking.   I started miming what he was saying so if someone got sick I pretended to be sick.   When they got money I got excited.   He liked it so much he kept talking to see what I would do next.   It's not the most traditional way to rehearse for a presentation, but it seemed to help keep him focused.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  When we were trying to meet up with Morgan and my daughter at the fair today my daughter called me on Morgan's phone.  I asked her to ask Morgan if they were at the Jim Graham building.  It was very loud where they were and hard to hear so my daughter asked Morgan, "is the building grey?"   She came back on the line and said, "yes, mom, the building is grey."

Is She Ever Happy?

After my daughter saying to me that she was never happy recently I've been collecting information from her and other people.   It's not that I didn't believe her—she told me twice, very firmly, on two different occasions that she was just never happy.   Do I think she has happy moments?  I do, but I also believe how she feels overall is unhappy.

I consider it a lot like climate and weather.  You live in a certain climate, but you have different weather on a day to day basis.  She's in a wintery cold climate where sometimes the sun comes out and shines on her face.   She seems to have fun, like today she worked with two of her friends to transform her and her brother's room into Halloween central.   (Her father and I weren't decorating for the season to their liking it would seem.)   Did she have fun with her friends?  I think she did, but when I went upstairs for the unveiling, there were undercurrents of tension I got from her about how things had gone.  Her friend, Madison, was simply beaming with the result.  It was clear Madison was happy.

My mother-in-law was over the other day and I was explaining the situation to her and she said she thought a hobby might help my daughter feel happier.   When my daughter came over a few minutes later, Nana asked her about the hobby idea and then said she had seen my daughter happy sometimes.   My daughter's response to her was unexpected, but gave another insight into the mental "climate" she's living in.   Her response to Nana's question about was she happy sometimes was, "I just pretend to be happy.

She has a lot of fear right now.  It's another facet of where she is mentally.  It's throughout the day, as well as night.  Sometimes in the middle of she comes downstairs and climbs on the bed, saying she's heard a noise or had a bad dream and usually it revolves around monsters and fear.  When she was staying with my parents this past week she woke up Mimi one night.  My mother sent me this about what happened:

Reese woke up Wednesday night about 2:00 and came to my bed. I asked if she was having trouble sleeping and she said “yes”. So I went with her to her bed and we talked a while. Then we got up and had a Yasso pop, and talked some more. I put her back to bed and asked was there anything else I could to to help her sleep. And she said, “Yes, not being blind.”.  That was so honest of her, and I answered her as best I could, explaining how everyone was working toward that.  I thought you might want to know.

This, to my knowledge, is the first time my daughter has ever expressed that she didn't want to be blind.   I think we all, including her, assume she would prefer not to be blind, but she doesn't articulate it.  It's going to take several weeks for the medication we've put her on to help with anxiety, perhaps it's starting to make some fractional difference in her mind if she's able to start talking about it.

She and I went to get donuts this morning and we got to talking about how she was feeling.   Or rather I was testing the waters, to see if she thought she was feeling any better.  She wasn't sure yet, she said.  By way of explaining, I started off saying that our brains produce something called serotonin that helps us feel happy.   She blurted out, "well, my brain doesn't make any."   It's another data point on how she's feeling, and it only reinforces to me that we made a good decision to try and help her with medication in addition to the therapy.

She is a child who, for the first four years of her life, could see.   Then within the span of three days, the vast majority of her vision was robbed from her.   For four years she has been subjected to drops, pills, surgeries, restrictive behavior, mandated behavior such as sleeping only on her back for months, all in the hope that her vision would get better.  And in all that, her vision has only gotten worse and worse.   She is independent and intelligent and yet has to ask for help from everyone.  She runs into things constantly—her legs have been covered in cuts and scrapes for years.   Things happen around her that she doesn't understand all day long and the people around her that love her are learning how to best serve her blindness and don't always know how to best talk to her or help her.   Putting it in that perspective, I don't wonder why she's never happy.

Hopefully, she will be though.   When I tell people she will be just fine, I truly believe that.   She has to accept the blindness, embrace it.   Once that happens I think she's going to be more than a handful to deal with (not that she isn't already) because she's going to put a whole new light on the phrase, "self-advocate".   She's going to make sure she's got all the opportunities she can have to lead a rich life.   She's going to hold us, her parents, accountable for helping make that possible.   I'm looking forward to it.

The dog, in the meantime, continues to help regulate my daughter like no pill ever could.   Here is a picture from yesterday morning.  It may look like the dog is wearing pajamas, but it is my daughter hugging the dog, and the dog just letting her, calmly, warmly, lovingly.

The Big Boy Update:  There is a battle of the volume my son and daughter play.   They don't really realize they're doing it, but it happens a lot.  My son turns on the television and starts watching something.   He's reasonably good with volume and doesn't complain if we ask him to turn it down but when his sister goes into the kitchen and starts playing an audiobook or game on Alexa, he turns his volume up to compensate.   Then she turns hers up and then he reacts.   They do this mostly without a word to each other.  It takes me, calling out from the other room for them both to turn it down for them to drop the volumes back to reasonable levels.   They used to argue over this, but they've learned the TV and Alexa will be turned off if they don't comply.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter found a polyhedra shaped object on one of the tables at Mimi and Gramp's house.   She wanted to know how many sides there were.   She and Mimi realized it would be hard to count because you might lose your place as you went around counting and either over or undercount.  My mother thought about putting sticky notes on each side and numbering them as they placed them on.   As my mother was getting the sticky notes and a pencil my daughter said, "Mimi, why don't we just put the sticky notes on the sides, then pull them all off and count them when we're done?"   My mother told my daughter she was impressed with her thinking of a more efficient and easier way.

Not Helping

We've started asking our children to assist us in household chores.   We've slowly added to their responsibilities over time with first setting expectations on them for things that relate to them.  For instance, their dishes should be put in the dishwasher after meals and their place cleaned.  Their water bottle should be put back in the refrigerator and, and this is a hard one for some reason, refilled as needed. I don't know why refilling their water bottle is so hard, but they just don't want to do it.

They've had to clean up toys and other things they bring out every day, completing all cleanup prior to bed for several years.   They also have to put blankets away.   My children love blankets.   They have multiple fuzzy blankets on their beds and we keep several in a cabinet beside the television in the living room. They regularly pull out blankets, drag them around the house and then leave them on the ground when they move on to do something else.

The blanket abandonment is so regular I estimate I put up three to four blankets each day.  I told them I was done picking them up and putting them away.   They now have an allowance penalty of fifty cents every time I find a discarded blanket.   I've given them warnings for the past week which has been enough to have them start thinking about putting their blankets away, which was the whole point.

Laundry is another item we're asking for help with.   I have two full loads today that need to be folded and put away.  My daughter came into the bedroom and I explained how both she and her brother were going to help with part of the laundry.   My daughter flatly said, "no I'm not."  I told her this wasn't an option, it was something they were going to be doing to help out today.   She said, "I won't be."

So I put my firm voice on and told her that yes, she was, but she could choose to help now or later, which did she prefer?  "Never" was the answer I got.  I said it sounded like she wanted to have me do all the work to put up her clothes and did she want to have clean clothes to wear or would she prefer to have nothing available in her drawers?   She didn't care about clean clothes, she told me.  I said that was fine, but she needed to understand I wasn't available to help her, at all, until she helped with the laundry.

The next hour was interesting.   She contacted me on Alexa and on her new watch (which she is able to use quite well for a variety of things already).   Each time I told her I would be glad to help her, only it would be after she helped with the laundry.   She wanted to make a "boo bag" for our neighbor and could I help her find a halloween bag in the attic.   When I told her I could, after she helped fold the laundry, she said, "nevermind, I'll figure it out."  We kept on in this manner for a while, me saying I couldn't help and her deciding to figure it out herself.

Then she came to me with an idea.  What if she put the dishes away from the dishwasher that had been run last night?  Would that count as helping?   I said it would.   She asked for some help  becasue she didn't know where everything went.   Could I put some of it up?   I said she could put up what she knew and to call me when that was dond and I'd show her where the remaining items went.  Then after she put them up she'd know where they went the next time.

She rode her bike for a while, did some of the dishes and then asked for help with lunch.   It was getting late for lunch so I agreed to help get her some pasta and told her she had been doing a good job as I saw a lot of the dishes were already put away.   My daughter has finished her lunch and is currently listening to a story on Alexa.   She said she's going to finish the dishes in a while.

My daughter has demonstrated she can be more independent if needed, which is good for her.   She also selected something she wanted to do to help, showing she has initiative as well.   It's been interesting saying no repeatedly when she asks for help for things.   And yet she's not upset about it because she knows she's putting off a responsibility she's not getting out of.   We've both learned a lot today.

The Big Boy Update:  This morning I went out to get coffee and brought back food for my children.   I went upstairs to let me son, who was still asleep in his top bunk, know that food had arrived.   Mt son rolled over and reached his hand out to grab mine.   He said, 'Mom, you are one of the most important people to me in the whole world.  If you died, I would cry. And then I would kill myself so I could go to heaven with you."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter did a good bit of reading while visiting with Mimi and Gramps this week.   My daughter likes constant company and from time to time my mother would want to take a break and suggested my daughter read her books.   After what must have been a good bit of reading mt daughter said, "Mimi, I'm tired of reading, my fingers hurt."   My daughter, not understanding how adults don't have the same energy level of adults asked Mimi after once when my mother said again how she needed to lie down for a bit, "Mimi, did you lie down this much when Greyson was here?"

The Birthday Watch

My daughter's eighth birthday is coming up in a few weeks.  It is occurring to me as I type this that we'd better get on with the birthday party planning, but that's another topic.  I think she's wanting to have a sleepover, which will be easy as it's at the house and will involve only a few party-goers.   My daughter is on the way home now from the mountains after spending several glorious days with my parents.   Perhaps talking to her about her upcoming birthday will help with the expected letdown of being backt to ou much less exciting life as a family here.

With my daughter, finding presents is always hard.   My son sees so many things he wants that keeping his list of wishes under control is more the issue with him.   My daughter doesn't know what there really is to want.  Couple that with many, many things being wholly unsuitable for her because they require being able to see things to do them and we've got a sparse Amazon wish list.  We end up  having only a few ideas to share with family and friends who want to get her something.

Every year about this time I start scouring the web for reasonably priced potential gifts for her.  Gifts that are tactile, look understandable that she could be successful with versus frustrated by.   They also have to look fun.   It's hard to guess what will work with her which makes the pool of possible gifts quite small.

Sometimes we can get the children a gift that's not really a gift.  There are things we've been able to give them that's served a purpose beyond that of a toy or entertainment.   This year for my daughter's birthday we've thought about it at length and decided to give her one thing she wouldn't get until she's much older and another thing she wouldn't get at all if she were sighted: an Apple watch.

Let me lay out some background.   First, she rides in a cab that has an ever-changing route with rotating students, drivers and even companies.   We wanted to track her location and initially got a GPS location device targeted at children with mental disabilities who might wander and get lost.   The device could be attached to the child's clothing or their backpack.   Since my daughter carries her backpack with her when she travels, this was a good option.

Some advances in technology and we got a second option that was smaller with much longer battery life but still had to be attached to her backpack.  About a year ago we got another option in the form of a watch.   The GPS location app wasn't as robust, but the device was on her.  The other main advantage was that it was also a limited phone.  Numbers had to be approved and added to the watch face and they were limited, but we added ours and a few others and set it so it was in silent/airplane mode during school hours to meet school requirements.

The watch turned out to be a better solution than we realized because of the phone.   My daughter loves to call Mimi after school and at other times and talks with her about all sorts of things.   She also sings to Mimi—a lot.  She's used the phone feature to call for help when she's needed it.  There have been a few times she's been well and truly lost and the calling has made the watch worth it in safety and security as a result.   But there are disadvantages to the watch.

My daughter's vision has degraded to the point she can't see what's on the watch face enough to discern anything.   She asks friends in the cab to pick the right person to call.   In the absence of help, she presses the screen until she makes a call and hangs up to try again if she gets the wrong person.

An Apple Watch comes with Siri, which means my daughter can just talk to the watch and ask it to call someone if needed.  The GPS location service is reliable and her location can be shared with not only my husband and me but any other family members who might need to know where she is.  My daughter can also say, "Hey Siri, where am I?" and it gives her the street address where she currently is.

And Siri can answer questions—all sorts of things.   My daughter takes advantage of Alexa in so many ways to find out information, having Siri available on her wrist will help her be more independent.  With Siri she can have family members in her phone and will be able to call the correct person the first time.   My daughter loves calling family members and talking away their afternoon.

The other thing the watch comes with that my daughter wouldn't have until she was much older is a phone.   This is sort of a non-present though because my daughter won't either have it or use it.  A basic phone was all that we needed but was a requirement because an Apple watch has have a phone as a parent device.   In her case, the phone will sit charging most of the time.

We're getting it set up now and will give it to her soon.   We did a test the other night and she was able to call, send text messages, ask the time and weather all successfully after having the watch on for only a few minutes.   I think she'll not only pick up how to talk to the watch quickly, but she'll also find out all sorts of things we didn't know you could do with Siri.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is currently at the state fair with Morgan.   Apparently, he stayed up quite late last night playing games with Uncle Jonathan.   I wonder how tired he's going to be when he gets home.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been picked up by my husband and is now on the way back from the mountains.   We weren't certain it would work well for her to go and stay with Mimi and Gramps.  My mother and I talked about it for a few years, trying to find the right age for my daughter to go.  It was apparently the perfect age because my daughter had so much fun she didn't want to come home—even though she missed us all.

Halfway Contracted

I just submitted my fourteenth assignment for the UEB Contracted Braille online course I've been taknig for over a year now.   I'm halfway through the course and will likely be taking it for another year before I've completed it.

I could have been done with the course long ago, but I've intentionally been going slowly through the material.   This does not mean I'm not working on reading and writing braille because I most definitely have.   Thanks to my daughter's teachers, I'm getting lots of practice work sent home all the time.  

For instance, not only are my daughters school assignments sent home without the print filled in over the braille she's typed and the instructions or other words on the worksheets themselves, but they're sending home other things my daughter is workign on as well.   Each unit my daughter does with her VI teacher is sent for me to not only read, but to understand what new contractions my daughter is learning.   Her braillest is sending books for my daughter and any overage items she prints for her.   In short, I not only have lots of materials to read, I almost have too much.

I'm so so on reading braille.   I would have thought by now that I'd be visually whipping through the pages with ease and while I am faster, I'm no speed reader.  Imagine this (for those of you with children, this won't be hard at all).   There is a point when a child is doing well enough at reading that they can figure out and pronounce most words.   At that point they're exciting about reading.   But it's so slow it's hard to follow each sentence because they're moving at such a slow pace.   By the time they get to the end of the sentence, you're not sure what how it started.

I'm not that bad.   I do a bit of scanning ahead, which is impressive in its own way because not that long ago I was having to figure out words one letter at a time.  Throw in conrtactions and it adds to the complexity of the reading.   I'm slow enough that I can't read with intonation or pace that makes reading something aloud go from utterly mind numbing to interesting.

It's getting better, but I have a ways to go.   My "vocabulary" continues to be augmented with each lesson and additional material from my daughter's school.   There are about 180 contractions in Unified English Braille (UEB), the standard my daughter is learning.   Yes, there are other standards, but fortunately my daughter came along at just the right time to be taught the newer and globally preferred standard going forward.   And while the other standards were more like dialects and could be picked up with some additional work, having only one standard is nice.

Every month I learn more and assimmilate it into my braille knowledge.   It's tricky though because think of this: a braille cell (or character)is six dots, two dots wide and three dots high.   There are only so many combinations you can make with six dots.   This means some of the contractions use more than once cell like for instance 'father' is two cells long.  The first cell is just the fifth dot and the second cell is the letter 'f'.   When I see 'dot 5 f' as it's referered to, I read it as 'father.  'Dot 5 m' is 'mother'.    There are a lot of things like this in UEB braille.

There are also overloaded symbols.   The symbol for a colon is only a colon if it's at the end of a word.   If it's at the beginning of a word it's the letters 'con' and if it's in the middle of a word it's the letters 'cc'.  And if you think that's complicated, the rules of when you can or must use certain contractions, punctuations, etc. is fully documented in the 'Rules of UEB' formal standards docuement that's 344 pages long.  

But, that being said, once you get into braille, it's not that bad or complicated.   It begins to hang together with a logic in simplicity that isn't initially apparent.   That big manual is full of examples and exceptions and seeing as I have no plans to become a braille editor, I won't need most of it.   Just as most of us don't write perfect English in our writing, it's enough for our readers to understand what we're saying.   That's where I'm going and it's definitely an achieveable goal.

Here's an example of where I am today.   This is one of the sentences I had to write in braille, using all the contractions, punctuation and rules I'd learned so far:

As a child, I went to that grocery store together with my mother, although today it does not exist.

The braille version looked like the following where anything in italic brackets is a braille cell that represents that character string.  For example, there is a single braille cell that represents the word 'with'.   Some cells are groupings of characters like 'st' or 'er' or 'th'.  

.z a [ch], I w[en]t to t groc[er]y [st]ore tgr [with] my *m, al[th] td x does n exi[st].

Here's what the braille looks like for the sentence:

I think I may have made braille sound complex and daunting, and sometimes it feels like that.   But it still is loads of fun and there is nothing quite like doing things with my daughter where she and I are the only ones that can speak "the same language" and work together in braille.   She likes to make me "worksheets" to test my knowledge and then grade me on how well I do.   She's a strict teacher.

The Big Boy Update:  I have no idea what my son is doing or what to put by way of an update for him.   He is currently at Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Margaret's house playing Zelda.   I hear Jonathan was prepping earlier today by playing Zelda.   Was he catching up to where my son was or making sure he knew more than my son about the game?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is apparently having a wonderful time with my parents.   She had two children over the day she got there.   They played cards and I hear a lot of laughter was heard in the room.   My mother had some other visitors over yesterday to see her.   I sent a video both yesterday and today of the dog as she has been missing her more than the rest of her family.

No, Wait! Don’t!

My son came home from school today to find me watching YouTube videos from my favorite chemistry channel.  I thought he might like some of them, even though they were very technical in parts, he could understand a lot of it and the author demonstrated visually every step of the process he was going through.

We watched a few, ending on one in which he made a ferrofluid from scratch (https://youtu.be/6L8yUY-doNc).   After the video I asked him if he wanted to do some experimentation with iron filings and magnets and that while it wasn't a liquid magnetic solution, iron filings were pretty interesting to play with.

He was interested so we went to the craft room where I got out my bottle of iron filings, a closeable, flat rectangular plastic container and a collection of strong earth magnets.  

We poured in some filings, closed the container and then proceeded to have fun battling back and forth with the magnets to see who could collect more on their side of the container.  The iron filings were leaving a powder residue on the container making it hard to see,   I was going to see if we had gotten all the dust particulates stuck on the plastic and told him to hold while I did a round of cleaning.

I opened the container, poured the iron filings into a glass dish and was wiping off the interior of the container when I saw him coming at the dish with the very strong neodymium ring magnets.   I yelled, "Wait! Don't!" only a second too late.  

He didn't understand why I was upset.   I tried to explain that it wasn't his fault that had I realized in advance, I would have told him not to directly connect the magnets with the iron filings.   I intrinsically knew this from experience, hence the closed container.   But it was too late.

My son, not understanding how magnetism works, put the rings in the sink under the faucet.   The iron filings didn't budge.  He tried soap.   They wouldn't release.   He used a paper towel and met with very little progress.   Eventually, we got it mostly off, although I think the rings will forevermore be a bit gritty.

He was upset about it, saying he was an idiot and he wanted to hide in his room.  I told him it wasn't his fault, that we learned something from it.  I'm going to reiterate again later tonight and talk about the fun we had.   I hate for the last part of the experiment to be a negative memory of the whole experience.  

I would gladly watch science videos with my son any day.  He loves science.   It was a nice way to spend the afternoon after he got from school, including the learning experience with the iron filings.

The Big Boy Update:  My son misses his sister.   He told us just before dinner tonight.   I wasn't sure if he would miss her.   It's only been a day and he's already wishing she were here.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter sent me a text on Mimi's computer today saying hello and to tell Matisse she missed her.   I recorded a video of the dog, describing what she was doing and sent it back.   My mother called later, saying my daughter wanted to talk to the dog.   She wanted to talk to me too, but after she'd talked with the dog.

Special Guest

My husband picked up my son at school today and as his teacher watched him get into the car she asked if my daughter would like to come to visit their class and talk about what a day in her life would be like?  As they drove home they called her and proposed the idea.   My daughter was interested.   She would be a special guest of the class, talking about herself.

My son's classmates and teachers are interested in what it's like to be blind and to have a blind sibling.   They are a respectful and friendly group and would treat her disability with positivity.   From my perspective as a parent, it would be a good experience for my daughter to have children interested in her.  

But it could be hard on my daughter as well.   She doesn't like to talk about being blind.   She doesn't want to tell us what she can see or if her vision has changed.   She doesn't like when people ask her what her cane is for.  She's never talked about how she's different and I'm not sure she even knows how she's different because while she knows what she needs to do to accomplish something, she doesn't necessarily understand what sighted people can do in all cases.

I'm also not sure she would be able to stand in front of a group of students and talk through her day without becoming shy.   And yet when I called my daughter later (she's just arrived at Mimi and Gramp's house to visit for a few days) she said she'd heard and she sounded rather excited about it.  So I got to thinking about what we could do to make the experience a success for her and build her confidence at the same time.

I thought of questions I'd ask her that might differentiate her as a blind person.   She could type the answers up on her braillewriter and then start by reading what she'd written to the class and then answer any questions they had afterward.  If I ordered the questions in the right way, it would tell a story of her day and show how she was the same and yet different.

Then she could bring some things she uses like her braillewriter, cane, tactile games like Monopoly and Chutes & Ladders.

I'm going to work on a list of leading questions and see if she'd really like to be a special guest of my son's class and talk all about her.

The Big Boy Update:  Fortnite has been down for two days.   It was the end.   It was over.   It was also a bit of a media stunt coupled with a large international software rollout.   The changes are extensive and exciting and as such my husband let my son have some weeknight screen time for a bit to check it out.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was very excited to go to the mountains today to visit with Mimi and Gramps for four days.  Aunt Margaret and I drove her until we met my parents half-way.   We all had lunch at Wendy's and then, after a hug goodbye my daughter told me she was okay about it, but she didn't think she was going to miss me.   I told her I was so glad she was going to have so much fun that she wouldn't miss me.

The Bed Without The Cage

Our dog has gone through the standard phases or house training.   And by standard I mean the phase where you think your new puppy is amazing and knows to go outside intuitively followed by the, "wait a minute, maybe she doesn't because we're having accidents" followed further by the, "going outside seems to be foreplay to coming in and going on the carpet" and then eventually, after what seems like a protracted period, actually going outside consistently, leaving the now well-stained carpets alone in favor of grass.

We've plateaued at the final phase for long enough that I called our carpet cleaner, letting him know it was time, that we were ready for his deepest cleaning skills to be applied to, well, everywhere.   He said there was no greater gift any of his clients could give him than getting a dog.  Especially small dogs, he said.

I can't address the small dog comment as our mid-sized dog seems to be well and truly housetrained.   Or so I hope.  I can't confirm for sure that she doesn't sneak off to a corner of the house and relieve herself when we disregard her repeated ringing of the bell.

I haven't given her full reign of the house yet when we're out though.   This is largely due to a stuffed animal and LEGO issue more so than anything else.   That or anything the dog might decide is a chew toy that is, in fact, not.   Stuffed animals misused in this way would horrify my daughter, as each one has a special place in her heart (even though they seem to be left on the floor regularly).   The LEGO or other small, hard or expensive item such as a game controller is more a concern of mine.   I don't want the dog choking and I don't want to lose costly hardware.

So we keep her in the bedroom when no one is home.   This works well because it's where her crate is.   Her bones, toys and a water bowl are also available as is her favorite air-conditioning vent (soon to become a much-despised heating vent).

When I had the carpets cleaned I decided to put her wire metal crate up, collapsing it and putting it in the garage.   I pulled out the pad and put it on the carpet in the exact same place as it had been in the crate, only the crate was no longer surrounding it.

I figured the dog would continue to lie on the pad multiple times a day and during part of the night (when she wasn't lying on top of the air-conditioning vent).   But not so.   She wouldn't go near it.   She looked at it, almost sadly, for a day or two.  She almost got on it once and then wandered off and found a spot on the cool tile floor in the bathroom.

Did she want the protection of the wireframe of the crate?  Could it be that it made her feel safe in some way?   After two days I brought it back into the room and she immediately went into it and lay down.  She grew up in it over the past ten months.   It must represent safety and security to her in some way.   I suppose it will remain in our room now that I know it has meaning to her even though we don't shut her in it anymore.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter goes to visit Mimi and Gramps tomorrow for four days.   She put on her watch today and rode her bike for probably three hours across several long sessions throughout the day.   She called Mimi to talk about the trip, biking and talking plans with her at the same time.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter and I talked in hushed voices in her bed tonight about what she wanted to take on the trip tomorrow (books, stuffed animals, games) while her brother read a comic book aloud neither she nor I paid a bit of attention to.   He didn't realize we were whispering, which I suppose was a good thing because the book was very exciting to him even though it wasn't to us.

Biking Biking Biking

"My eyeglass lens fell out again."  [Dad takes glasses off to be glued again while Reese writes this blog post]

Today Reese rode her bike a lot. (You do the punctuation, mom.)  First, she biked dooooown the road to Madison's house (be sure to say 'dooooooooown, mom).  Then she biked as fast as she could, then she rode back to her house and then to Bryna's.

To get to Bryna's she had to turn left.  She had a steep driveway.  I mean very steep.  So you bike up it, it's very steep going up, she turned around and went very fast down the driveway, and then rode back to her friend, Madison's, house (and didn't even turn in to her driveway).  

Ow! (Don't write that.  I was about to floss my whole mouth and I flossed the tooth that fell out last night.) I'm going to bend my flosser.   Back to the story...

What was the last sentence you wrote? [rereads last sentence] 

Madison's driveway wasn't as steep, but it was steep.   When she turned around she got speed, but not as much speed as Bryna's.  A car came.  It was Kevin and Molly and Madison,  And then Madison and me played.  Do you think they're really going to like this?

After we played I went to my Y-Guides thing.   I did a Y-Guides meeting.   Are you liking the blog post so far?

Then I knocked on Madison's but she couldn't play so I rode my bike.  It's in the evening and I'm wet because it's raining.  It's getting dark so I go really slow.  I go faster uphill.  Then Matisse and mom came out.  

Then my mom moved the stake closer to the driveway.  Then Matisse got to move farther in the driveway.  Mom moved it because all the mulch was gone at the tree so Matisse couldn't get to the tree.  We didn't want Matisse to get to the tree because with the mulch not there Matisse was getting dirty and had to have baths every single time she went outside.  

Then I biked some more.  I got soaked so I went inside soon.  I had a KitKat and then helped my mom write the blog post.   The End.

The Big Boy Update:  My son went to a birthday party at a roller skate rink today.  He was a gentleman to every one of his classmates, including letting them have some of the few arcade game tokens when they asked if he could share because they'd spent all of theirs.   He and I spent a lot of time together and had a very enjoyable time throughout.   He seemed happy to have me around with him and his friends.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had her Y Guides meeting at the house here today.  It was the first time she's hosted her friends.   She and her father made cookies (which were delicious), had snacks for her friends and a craft to do.   She greeted her friends and showed them to the meeting area.  She was a lovely host

The Temperature Building

I was driving by "the mall" yesterday while running errands.   There are lots of malls, but when I was growing up this mall was built while I was still young and by the time I was old enough to go anywhere for shopping expidetions with my mother, typically this was the mall we wouild go to and for all the years of my youth extending even into today as I still live only a few miles away, that particular mall is known as simply, "the mall".

I can think back over many iterations of changes that the mall went through during my life.  There were arcades that I spent hours in when I was a pre-teen after getting dropped off with friends by one of our parents.   Back then, the mall was a destination.   We would save up some money and make plans for what we'd do when we got there.   Commonly, much of my planning revolved around getting candy at various stores followed by playing games at one of the arcades.

We shopped for clothing too, but clothing cost more money and was less of a draw until I was in high school when my tastes centered around affordable jewelry or things at Spencer's novelty store.  Investing in a single piece of clothing used up far more of my cash on hand than candy, arcade games, and trinkets.  I usually waited until my mother would take me on a shopping trip to buy clothes for the latest school year, a trip we took together to that very same mall.

Over time the mall became more crowded.   I got my license and my mother vowed not to go near the place any time remotely surrounding the holiday season.   This was before online shopping and then was one of the only places to go to get holiday gifts —if you could manage the long wait to get in the parking area followed by circling until you found a parking space.   The final years before cyber shopping took off they had employees bussed in, traffic directors and coned off single-direction entry and exit to the greater mall area.   You could get stuck in barely moving traffic for hours trying to get in or out.

My mother was smart, she did catalog shopping early, via phone or mail and avoided the chaos and frustration that was the mall during the month of December.   I still liked to go and usually tried to pick better times that were less crowded.  I got stuck a time or two myself.  There was a building off to the side of the mall that, if you knew what you were doing, could be used as a cut through from one road to another.   Sometimes, but not always, it would get you out of the traffic early.

That building had been there since the mall was built as far as I knew.  It was about ten stories high, which was relatively tall for the urban area we lived in.   I didn't pay attention to what the company was that owned or inhabited the building, it was a bank I think.  At the top of the building, they had a lit display on each of the four sides showing the current time and temperature.  Maybe the date, but I think it was just time and temperature though.

This was the height of tecnhology back then.   It was lit with what appeared to be large white bulbs and changed slowly enough that you could see the time and temperature about twice before you drove past (unless you were stuck in holiday traffic).

We always made a point to look and call out the temperature.   We had watches, but the temperature was something you got from a thermometor on the outside of a window at home or via the radio when I was a child.   By the time we drove by the mall, perhaps later in the day or after school, we had no idea what the temperature was beyond general guesses of how it felt outside.

That building is still there today even though the mall has changed a good bit.   A building behind it was dropped via demolition—something rare in our area—and another building is currently under significant external renovations.   The temperature building still sits on the corner of the intersection and the top still shows the time and temperature.   I think at one point the bulbs were updated to be higher "resolution" sporting smaller bulbs for a cleaner, more exacting look.

I still drive by the mall a lot, but I don't remember the last time I looked at the temperature or time until I saw it the other day.   I have the temperature on my phone and watch and can marshal the information any time I want.   I don't know if it's even the same company that owns the building.    I wonder how long the display or building even will remain before it's updated like much of the area aroumd it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son heard there was a lemonade stand down the street this afternoon.  He ran into our room after announcing it and I called to him, "what are you doing?   You're not just taking money from us without asking to buy lemonade, are you?"  He came out, a bit sheepish, and offered to buy us a lemonade too if we'd give him some quarters.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter went off on her bike this morning while I was off at a board retreat.   I heard when I got home that she got lost and was "found" by a neighbor who was about to bring her home when my husband and son came around the corner looking for her.   They knew she was exploring the neighborhood on her bicycle.   She wants to be independent so badly.   We're trying to not limit her just because she's blind.   She is exceptionally cautious.   There isn't a child I know that is more careful when it comes to cars.   She hears everything and is out of the way on the grass well before a car could even get to her.    It gives her a lot of pride that she can go out on her bicycle alone around the neighborhood.

Extrovert Meter Pegged

People who know me most likely think I'm an extrovert.   I don't think I'd disagree, I am extroverted, but only to a point.   My understanding of what it means to be an extrovert is that you get energy from being in social situations or around other people. And while I'm like this some of the time, there is a much larger part of the time I'd just rather be alone or with a few select people.

This means social situations can be tiring to me after a while.   It might not be any particular situation, it could be the totality of the day's activities and how much of that time I've spent with other people versus being alone.   At a certain point in any given day my extrovert meter gets full and I'm done.  All I want to do is be alone in my room, doing things alone.  

There is a piece of the day's tolerance that's based on how much I need to get done that can only be completed while I'm alone.   For instance, this blog post.   Writing is not a social activity.  The more I need to complete, the sooner I'm likely to be done socially.  

I thought for a long time I was an extrovert exclusively.   The older I get perhaps the less extroverted I become, or perhaps it's just realizing how I've been all along.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had an "epic Zelda game session" after school today with Uncle Jonathan.   Thanks to him and Aunt Margaret for having my little guy over for the evening.   He came home very happy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Tonight my daughter and I went to dinner with Aunt Rebecca.   There were crayons at the table but since my daughter couldn't see the paper or what she'd drawn on it, she drew on her face instead.   Makeup, she said it was.   She added a blue 'R' on her forehead and then wanted to know if she could color on her glasses.   She was having such a time emotionally at that point I said sure.   A little crayon isn't going to affect her ability to see.   When we got home she got in the bath and we washed everything off.   I told her I was getting the water to take her medicine.   When I came back, water bottle in hand, she said, "happy pill first."   I hope this medication works.   She really wants it to.  So do I.