Corona Far From Home

We're going to have a houseguest.   It's not a new houseguest, it's someone we have here all the time, we're just adding overnight to his visits.   Blake, our sitter or "Manny" is coming to stay with us until October 10th.   His sister, Shane, is at school and has contracted COVID-19.  She's fine with her only symptoms being a fever and sore throat, but she needs to come home until she's clear.

She is in a dorm and the administration has required any student who contracts COVID-19 leave the campus if they test positive.   You may remember that Shane and Blake lived next door until two months August at which time Shane went off to college for her Freshman year and Blake and his parents moved to a townhome in the area here. 

Their townhome is smaller with fewer bedrooms than their prior house next door, which makes distancing Shane from her father, who has Chrone's, a bit of a challenge.  The plan is for their father to move to the basement to Blake's room.  He'll use the entrance to the unit from that floor while Shane stays on the second floor, totally separate from him for the next ten days.

When they called tonight, asking if Blake could stay here, we were honestly all excited—my daughter most of all.  We've always been close with our neighbors but it's been even nicer having Blake here to help with my daughter during school and do fun things with them both when they're not in school.   

The only concern I have is helping my children understand that some of the time Blake will be working and they will be expected to listen to him as they would us.   This, they already do when he's here working.  Then, we told them, some of the time will be fun time and he might play a game with them if they want or a video game with my son.   That will be up to him.   But then there will be times that are Blake's time and he won't be available during those times.   

They are going to have the hardest time with the last part because they like doing things with him so much.   We'll see how it goes.   Blake comes to stay tomorrow as Shane is coming home in the afternoon. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was excited to hear Blake was coming to stay with us.   His first question was, "is he staying forever?"  Then he said, "maybe we can get him his own Xbox account!" 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was worried about Shane.   Her mother told her we could call and talk to her once she got home tomorrow.   Me, like the non-thinking mom I sometimes am, said, "we can FaceTime her too."   My daughter likes FaceTime because she knows other people like to see what's going on, but it's no fun for her because she has to stay in frame, can't move around freely, and doesn't know how to show things easily on a call.   That, and she can't see at all.   She much prefers to just talk on the phone.  

On What to Write

I can't decide what to write here sometimes.   Originally, I started this blog and kept the existence of it a secret.  It was an online diary for me.  Prior to the blog, I had never written a single page of a diary in my life.   Diaries required writing, and that wasn't something I enjoyed doing very much.  I wasn't sure I'd be successful at writing so I kept at it for a while before I told anyone.   My goal was never to keep the blog a secret but back then I had a good bit of insecurity about how well I wrote.   I wanted to do it though, to write down one thing about each child and something on my mind.   That was the formula.   That was the plan.  Nine years later and I haven't deviated from my original plan. 

For a decent period of time, I had a cringing feeling when I admitted I had a blog.  I was actually worried the person would want to read it.   Over time, that feeling faded.  I became more confident that what I was writing wasn't all that bad.  It was no literary masterpiece, but I'd improved in my writing and it wasn't as stumbly or awkward as those first few months of posts. 

Today, I tell people about this blog fairly regularly.   This typically happens because something comes up about the children and I mention I have a blog where I document my children's lives one day and a few sentences at a time.   That's why I'm here; that's why this blog exists—for the children.   Or at least that's what I thought.   But I was wrong. 

It took me a long while to realize it, but I finally figured out this blog is for me.   I hope someday my children will come here to read about their lives when they were young.  Perhaps they'll want to read about their mother and what I was like when they were young.   Maybe they'll laugh when they remember the 3D printing craze I went through before the invention of the Matter Compiler all homes now have and it wasn't always that you could create any object with the single press of a button.  

This blog has also done some things I never thought it would.   It was the primary communication location when my daughter's eyes revolted, fought, and ultimately failed.  It was exhausting dealing with the medical trauma, my daughter's social and emotional health as well the depression as parents we went through as it became more and more clear my daughter's vision couldn't be saved.  

So where am I going with this post?   I'm having to remember myself.  I was typing this up, with a clear vision two hours ago, despite the audiobook my son was listening to playing from the Amazon Echo three feet away from me.  Then I got called away.   The children are in bed now and I'm trying to regroup.   This happens with children, with life here—the distractions—years ago I wouldn't have dealt well with it but now it's standard happenings in my life. 

Where I'm going with this is that every day when I sit down to write a post I realize I have two audiences: me and you.   I try to balance the posts so that I document our lives for the you of now and for the you of the future on the one hand and the me of today on the other.   The 3D printing posts are me posts.   It's my current passion, or if you ask my children, my obsession. 

And speaking of 3D printing (because I know you were hoping for an update) what have I been doing lately?   Lots of things.  I've figured out how to print larger models quickly that are sturdy and strong by changing the nozzle to a larger diameter and adjusting slicer settings to extrude lots of filament quickly.   This wouldn't work for specific, small and precise items, but for much of what I'm doing that doesn't matter, like the tissue box in the picture below that I printed in a fifth of the time it would have taken with traditional extrusion settings. 

Here are some of the things I've printed just in the past week.   So be warned: if I see you after this whole Coronavirus mess is over, it's likely I'll foist one of my prints on you so I can make room to print more.   Thanks in advance for your understanding. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has to make his own lunch for school.   He doesn't want to do this so he rushes through it and doesn't pack much.   I was thinking he'd learn a lesson soon enough but the Adderall causes him not to be very hungry until it wears off when he gets home so so far, his hurried lunch preparation has been working to his advantage. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I heard my daughter singing along to a song she and Chelsea, her music therapist, were making up as they went.   Chelsea is skilled with her guitar and follows my daughter's lead.   My daughter's voice continues to improve, even though they're not doing formal voice lessons.   I would have titled the song from today, "Here I am" because my daughter kept repeating those words and then saying something related to her or her life.   I always listen to see if she says anything about being blind, but she's usually singing about other things that I wouldn't have guessed.

Mine Mine Mine!

I don't know what's been going on with my son lately but he's been wanting to claim everything as his.   He wants ownership of broken models from the 3D printer, things of his sister's he normally not care about, the odd random toy, an empty soda can, you name it.  

He's so intent on having the item he borders on the verge of obsession.   He wanted this ceramic pumpkin his sister got for her father for his birthday yesterday so badly I couldn't get him away from it.   I had to forbid him from touching it.   I had hoped he would forget about it, but as soon as his father opened the present, he was back trying to touch it and carry it around with him. 

He anthropomorphizes the item and talks to in a baby voice sometimes.   I know, from everything we've done in the past with therapists, that there is some underlying reason he's acting this way.   I don't know if it's something we're doing but I'm paying attention to our interactions with him to see if I can figure something out.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was so excited about the LEGO he got for his father's birthday present.    He couldn't wait for him to open it.   It's a LEGO model that's not so much a model as it is a mosaic picture you build with little round caps.   I hope he and his father will do the project together.   You can build three different pictures from the one set so it'll be interesting which one they choose. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Blake came downstairs today with a foam snow sled in his hands.   He said, "I may have just saved your daughter's life."  She had gone up to the attic and found the sled and was about to slide down the wooden stairs, face first.

I Had Totally Forgotten About...

My daughter had wanted to go to Target today to get a much needed new water bottle.   The one she'd been using I think I got when she was three-years-old, and since she's almost nine, it's had a good life.   We didn't realize how much she needed a new water bottle until we went to clean it and discovered there was mold in places that were cracked and couldn't be replaced.  

My children love their water bottles and have been using one for most meals for years now.   As much as we get things wrong, we've cultured a preference for water over other liquids like juices.  Hopefully, this will serve my children well as they grow up.  

There was a second reason to go to Target, and that was for the children to get their father a birthday present.  We don't take them out much or go out much due to COVID-19, but they've been out enough to know the drill.  They had their masks on before we had parked and we calmly walked into the store. 

That's where the calm part of the story ended though, with both my children going wild in their own ways.   Eventually, I got them under control but as we were leaving (after getting the chocolate my daughter wanted for her father) we walked past a display in the middle of the aisle for cereal.   My son asked about it and I did something I would never have been allowed to do when I was a child:  I bought them all.

I had completely forgotten about the special Halloween cereals: Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry.   First of all, they're not the best cereals for you—by a long shot.  There is a lot of sugar, dyes, and artificial flavorings.   But they're so fun!

I wouldn't have wanted the cereal most likely when I was young because I think I tried them at my friend's house and didn't like the fruit flavor or chocolate cereal.   Still, they were from my childhood and I couldn't resist. 

I got home and my daughter wanted to try them all as I unpacked them and put them into the empty bins where we keep cereal that had recently been finished.   She liked Count Chocula the best. 

The Big Boy Update:  In Target, my son wanted to drive the cart and to do so like he was race car driving. For the most part, he was being safe and he definitely was following social distancing guidelines, but he was a little, okay a lot, energetic.   He helped me out though later in the trip when I had to leave his defiant sister.   He said he'd go back and help her.   He did, and by the time I caught back up with them, she was in a good mood again.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had problems in Target because she wanted to be independent and shop for herself.   She did not, at all, want me involved.   Also, she wanted to run up and down the aisles.  Also, she didn't want to use her cane.   Inside, I felt for her because she just wanted to be free and independent.   Outside, I had to be very firm with her because we were in a store with other people and we had to stay safe.   I checked out and left her in the store with nothing for her father for father's day because she wouldn't listen to me at all.   Her brother and a very nice lady who worked at Target and could see what was going down, helped by talking to my daughter.

You Learn From Your Mistakes

Never has it been more true that you learn from your mistakes than it is when you're 3D printing.   I know this blog isn't about 3D printing, but since it's my latest obsession, it's mostly what I have to talk about these days.   School with my daughter is grueling (for her and for me).   My son is surely days away from puberty if the amount of testosterone-fueled intensity is any measure, and COVID-19 adds that extra special layer of fun to the barrel of life we find ourselves floating down the rapids in.   But 3D printing is the thing that's teaching me the most lately when it comes to patience and learning from your mistakes. 

'Mistakes' isn't even the right word for it, because it's not mistakes really.   It's learning what settings and configurations need to be made to get, first of all, a print to just work and second, to get the print to look right.  Failed prints are just a part of the process.   It's not like paper which is mostly the same aside from thickness.   Every filament has it's own special needs that must be catered to to get that beautiful little print at the end of a long wait. 

There are some materials that are 3D printer "easy mode" and happily print what you want with usually a reasonable result within a wide tolerance of settings.   You can tweak it and get better prints, but once you figure out the basics for your printer, it's not hard.   Some of the more enticing materials need to be babied to work.   

I've been changing nozzle diameters lately, going from a small 0.4mm opening which squirts out small amounts of filament at a time, resulting in high-accuracy prints.   I've moved up to a 1.0mm nozzle in the past few days and have been experimenting with something called "vase mode" which, when working, makes super sturdy prints in a fraction of the time.   Also, vase mode is fun—if you can get it to work. 

Typically, I would have given up on something by now due to frustration but instead of getting frustrated, it just adds to the challenge.   I don't get mad when something goes wrong, I just look into why and try again.   Interestingly enough, all this failure has been kind of fun. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been so intensely energetic lately.   Intense in that he will scream at you or anyone at the slightest provocation.   We're working on this and he doesn't even realize he's done it when you point it out and he immediately apologizes.   He's driving his sister crazy though. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been listening to some audiobooks that feature a clan of cats.   She knows all about cat behaviors now from an anthropomorphized standpoint.  She speaks to us in terms of cat speak.  None of us understand what she means.

Falling Asleep at the Keyboard

I traveled for many years and would take flights to the destination city in which I would be either teaching a class or doing consulting work.  I rather like flying, which was a good thing because I did a lot of it.  Over time I developed a habit of falling asleep before the plane took off. 

It was specific in that I was wide awake until the plane started to taxi, but as soon as we started to move on the ground, I would begin to get sleepy.  Typically, by the time the plane took off, I was asleep.   It wasn't a deep sleep—I knew we were about to take off because the pilot does the talking bit where they keep you apprised of the situation just up to the point you get ready to accelerate and take off. 

It would be only a few minutes after takeoff that I'd come out of my stupor and resume whatever I'd been doing on my computer.   I don't know how the habit started.  It wasn't bothersome and I even liked that it happened most of the time so I didn't try to break it.

This old habit has manifested itself again but this time it's when I'm sitting in front of the computer.   It's not all the time, as many days I'm working for hours without a break and I'm not in danger of falling asleep.   Sometimes though, it just hits me and I can't stay awake.

I'm not overly tired but the pull to fall asleep is very strong.  I fight it by repositioning myself, getting some water, walking around, or talking to my husband, but that doesn't always work.  The other day while watching the Tesla Battery Day presentations while sitting at my desk, I fell completely asleep.   I was very interested in what they were talking about, and yet I couldn't stay awake. 

Sometimes it happens while I'm writing blog posts, like tonight's, for example.   I've had to shake my head and try to stay focused at least five times so far—and I've only been writing for a few minutes.   I can lose track of the sentence I'm writing and I wonder if the post even hangs together with any cohesion of topic.  

But by the time I've fought my way through writing the post and not falling asleep, I'm not sure revising the post would help.   Today I was working at the computer when Edna came downstairs to clean.  I had no idea she'd arrived and she didn't know I was at the computer.   She woke me up accidentally, sitting in my chair, completely asleep.  

It's a mystery and a frustrating one at that.

The Big Boy Update:  My son brought home his work planner for school so we could go through it to see what he's been doing.   He also brought home some math work he's done in the last week.   His math looks so fun to me.   His worksheets are almost like the puzzle and game books I'd get at the book store before we went on a long trip.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's back is still bothering her from the fall off the swing.  She wanted to go to the chiropractor first thing this morning and didn't want to wait until after EL class.   We iced her back and I gave her Advil again today.   I think it's a bit better, but it looks like it's going to be a few days until she's back to normal.

His & Hers

My husband was the one initially interested in 3D printing a few years ago.  Oh, sorry, this is another 3D printing post.   I still have the standard sections for each of my children below, so feel free to skip down if 3D printing isn't your thing.    Now back to you're recently regularly scheduled 3D printing update from this here channel.   My husband was interested but due to cost and general usefulness at the time, we passed on getting one.   When I became interested in getting one earlier this year, I thought my husband would be fighting me for printer time once we got it set up in the basement. 

I would print something, show it to him and the children with a level of enthusiasm and excitement that I am consistently teased by all members of my family these days about my obsession with 3D printing.   Then I would ask my husband if he wanted to print something next.   Prints take a long time, typically several hours with a large model taking over ten hours.   I didn't want to start a print only to find my husband had been waiting for my model to finish so he could print something. 

What he kept saying though was that it was okay, go ahead and print.   He was so good-natured about it.   It wasn't until a week or two in that he told me he wasn't as interested in printing like I was.  He said he'd let me know if he wanted to print something.  

I couldn't believe how he couldn't be fascinated by the whole printing process.  How suddenly you go from not having a thing to having that thing.   Okay, "suddenly" was a poor choice of words because 3D printing takes time.   But you can make your very own things and have them in the color you want them too.   How could my husband not be excited about printing?

My obsession continued which included the recent purchase of the small resin-based 3D printer.   I ordered some resins and was anticipating keeping both printers busy.   But after a few prints for some reason, I wasn't nearly as interested and I let the printer go idle for several days.  

On the third day, after watching some videos, my husband started printing on the resin printer.  He loves the print quality and the process.   He's been learning all about slicing and he's got the printer running most of the time.  

He's not that interested in my printer and I'm not as interested in his.   I suppose we have his and hers 3D printers.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been collecting receipts.   He tapes them to the headboard of his bed.   They're for strange things like a few items from the grocery store or the P.F. Chang takeout sheet from tonight.   I might have to face his wrath if I were to clean off his bed and remove them; he was serious when he told me to not mess with them.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Aunt Rebecca had sent me a text message the other day with a message to tell my daughter she sent her a hug.   I read the message to my daughter at a stoplight and then started driving.   My daughter wanted me to tell Aunt Rebecca, "this".   I was driving and had no idea what "this" was since I was driving.   My daughter said, "I'm putting my arms around her."  I told her I'd send Aunt Rebecca a message back letting her know she had sent an air hug.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

You've seen the collection of binders we have for my daughter's distanced learning before but I wanted to put up an updated picture because there is something amiss about the collection it seems to me.   Can you spot it?  Here's a hint: one of the subjects seems to have a lot less focus than the others.

If you guessed science, you would be right.   I'm not sure why there is less focus on science and social studies.   There is a thirty minute asynchronous block each day that coveres both subhects.  There are some videos to watch on the computer and likely that's a good bit of the difference because you're not practicing like you are with "readin' writin' and 'rithmetic".   

My daughter does have some tools to help with the science materials that are tactual.   This is "Sally" that the school sent home for her to feel and talk about with the lessons.   

And then there's this, my favorite part of her curriculum because it explains so much that words alone wouldn't be able to convey.   The materials go into a lot more depth than she'll need in third grade, but look at how much information is displayed in these pages:

We have a three-dimensional model of an eye, but this might help her understand some things that model can't.   I'm debating bringing up the page and seeing if she's interested.   She may not be, it's hard to tell what she's ready to talk about.

My daughter's quarter ends part-way through next week.   Then we've got one child in school and one out of school for three weeks.   If all goes well (is approved by the school board) my daughter will go back to school one week in three after the break.   We are hoping all goes well...

The Big Boy Update:  Everyone is tired of the negative or restrictive ways in which COVID-19 has changed our lives.   My son asked his father after school, "Dad, when will Rayan be able to come in the house again?"   We used to have a house that practically bustled with children.   Or maybe a better word would be 'rampaged'.   It's been March since we've had children other than our own inside.   My son wants to show Rayan his new computer and play games with him.   They're outside now, playing socially distanced streetball, but it would be nice to get back to normal.   We all miss normal. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter had an assignment for art class we realized she hadn't turned in.   We realized this when all the other students were showing their work off in class on Monday.   Fortunately, my daughter wasn't called on.  She's ready for next week's class when the rest of the students will present their All About Me piece.   She's been having so much fun lately she wanted to add a balloon animal of a bunny that she's recently learned.   Interestingly, I showed her how to make it once and she's figured out how to do it—and do it remarkably like what I showed her—all on her own. 

In Alphabetical Order

My daughter fell off the swing today during her lunch break.   She practically, no, actually runs from the classroom in our bonus room to the back yard to swing when she has a break from classes lately.  My fear, as someone with spinal cord injury, is that she will not fall, or if she does, that it will be mild.   So you can imagine my immediate anxiety when I came in from taking the dog to be groomed only to hear my daughter say, "I need to go to the chiropractor" and my husband saying, "she fell off the swing" at about the same time. 

The fall wasn't a bad one with her landing on her hip and back.  My husband offered to let me see the video of it which he'd isolated from the footage the camera in our backyard records.  I declined but got her in the car as quickly as I could because she needed to because she had a math class in less than an hour. 

She grabbed a freshly popped bag of popcorn from the microwave and we jumped in the car.   Sidebar: guess who got thirsty and just couldn't wait for some liquid until we got home?  Before we entered the doctor's office we had to don masks and I told my daughter to make sure she had her mask under her alien glasses because people would think she looked, "kickass" with them on. 

These glasses are odd indeed and came with a KiwiCo kit that my daughter had made which included all the pieces to make an entire alien spacecraft costume—including bizarre-looking alien glasses that make her look like she has large, oval, alien eyes.  

My daughter asked me what "kickass" meant as we walked in and then proceeded to tell everyone in the office she was kickass in addition to repeating the word twenty or so times just for good measure.   Oops. Our chiropractor adjusted my, "kickass" daughter, saying she'd knocked her pelvis out of alignment and another spot in her mid-back.  Otherwise, she was fine.   Whew. 

When we got back in the car my daughter wanted to know what all the swear words were.   She's good about not repeating them even though she knows them but wanted to be sure she had the complete, exhaustive list.   She said, "I think I know them all.  Can I say them once in the car here?"  I told her that would be fine and I would confirm her list.   She immediately upped her game by saying, "wait, I want to say them in alphabetical order."

She quickly rattled off the usual suspects with only a minimum gap in time to order them alphabetically.   I told her, "you missed D" and she guessed for a bit before I told her it was 'damn' which I knew she knew but had forgotten.   Then she asked me the question which has caused me to come home, sit down and write this post now, as opposed to later tonight when the children are in bed. 

My daughter said, "I think dad said there was another one that started with 'N'."  I told her she was correct, there was another word that started with the letter N, but that it wasn't a curse word, it was an insult, and such a bad one that of all the words people didn't say because they were swear words or rude or offensive words, that one was so bad, people didn't even like to say it, so they referred to it as, "the N-word."

I started at the beginning because at this point we were in a drive-through line to get her some much-demanded liquid and had time before getting home and jumping into math class.  I explained the history of slavery and that there was a time when some people believed it was okay to own another person.   I talked about how poorly slaves were sometimes treated and that it was a shameful time in the history of our country.

At a later point in time after slaves had been freed, the black people of America decided that "negros" would be how they would like to be referred to, but that some people created a more derogatory version of that word to describe them, and that that word, "nigger" was the "N-word" my husband had meant.   I told my daughter some people found the word so despicable, they didn't even like to say it.   

After a time, black people asked to be called, "African Americans" and today that's the phrase we use when describing someone of African descent.  We might describe their color as 'black' just as we might describe our color as 'white'.   

To give her an example, I said, "Edna is black so you would say she's African American or you could describe her as black but you would never call her the N-word.   That would be very hurtful to her if you did so."  My daughter said ib a surprised tone, "wait, Edna' black?"  I told her, "yes, Edna is black."  She replied, "how was I supposed to know?  I've never seen her."  

I didn't show my surprise, but I was very much surprised—my daughter has been seeeing Edna once a week when she came to clean our house since she was born.   For four years she was sighted and she had no idea.   It reminded me again how just because my daughter had seen at one time, doesn't mean she remembers anything she saw.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is playing a game of Minecraft .ith his father that is spanning multiple days. Today, after school, they had some weekday time for an hour as a reward for good behavior.  I think they're both liking playing together. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After I told my daughter Edna was black and she was surprised about it, the next thing she said was, "I love Edna.  I love black people."   I told her I did too.  She then told me how her friends Rayan and Keira were black too which sparked an additional conversation about the difference between African American and Indian people. 

Knowing Nothing

My daughter clearly knows more than "nothing".   That's completely inaccurate.   What I mean is, it is better to assume she knows nothing about a thing because we sighted people take a lot of "knowing" for granted.   I'll give you an example.   My daughter has been listening to a lot of audiobooks over the last year.  In them, possibly several of them, dragons have been featured.   They were talked about at length.   She's heard about dragons for years now as these mythical creatures seem to come up in discussions with children almost as much as cats, dogs, and unicorns.   And we all know what cats, dogs, unicorns, and dragons look like, right?

But does she?   I think we may make incorrect assumptions about what my daughter does and doesn't know simply because she was sighted for close to four years of her life.  Today, if you ask her, she doesn't remember seeing anything, and if that's the case, how can she know what a dragon looks like? 

There are stuffed animals and toys and in many cases, these give her a good idea of what the rest of us might pick up from seeing one on a television show, book, web page, billboard, or any other visual source.   But since my daughter's input is limited to her ears and fingers I think it's easy to forget she may not have the same level of knowledge the rest of us have. 

Here's an example:  Today I 3D printed a set of nesting animals.  They were flat profiles of four...wait, let me go take a picture of them, it'll be much easier if I just show you...

And I just made my own point: that a picture can give a huge amount of information in an instant.  I bet, without even thinking about it, you can tell there is a dog with a nested cat, with a further nested rabbit.   You might have thought, "what is that thing inside the rabbit?" but when I tell you it's a gerbil, you're probably thinking, "ah, yes, I see it now."

That profile of a dog with the ears up, tail in the back, and paws in the front just says, "dog" to our visual brains.   The nested cat is much the same, with ears and paws, sitting in an upright position, and yet it clearly is a cat from some nuance of information we've collected over our lives.  Somehow we just know one is a dog and not a cat and the other is a cat and not a dog.  

The rabbit has a nose, just like the cat and the dog.  There are also ears and the back is in similar form to that of the cat.   There are paws in the front and yet again, we somehow just know this is a rabbit.   So, what do you think my daughter thought they were when I gave her the models?

She had no idea—on any of them.   She knew they were animals because I told her they were beforehand.  When I explained to her what each was and why, she accepted my information, similarly to how a much younger child accepts things parents tell them before they get to the "why" phase.   

There are other complexities, such as taking a three-dimensional object, flattening it to two dimensions, turning it into a stylized version of the object, and expecting a blind person to understand what it is.   That is and will always be hard for my daughter.   But we can always try.   And there are things we can do that help and make sense to her. 

Today Blake was here, helping my daughter with school.   He came downstairs to the basement where my husband and I were working to ask a question.   At the time I'd finished 3D printing a dragon for my daughter.   Again, when we showed it to her, she didn't know what anything was on it—couldn't even guess huge wings were wings because she had no idea of scale.  Truthfully, I don't think she was thinking wings at all.  I'm not even sure if she knew dragons typically have wings.   

That gave Blake an idea.   He borrowed the 3D printing pen and went outside with my daughter while she swang during a break and he drew a picture in 3D printing filament.   The pen basically lets you draw in melted plastic.   Blake wanted to show my daughter how a dragon (were it real) might be compared in size to a person.   Blake is going to keep working on the drawing, adding a key in braille for my daughter.   

The 3D printing pen was something I never thought about for creating tactual things for visually impaired people.   It's a very inexpensive thing to purchase and it is easy to use.   Children can use it just as easily as they can a glue gun as the only rule is don't touch the hot end.   

Here's Blake's drawing: 

The Big Boy Update: Today I went to pick up my son and through a miscommunication, my husband had gotten there already and had picked him up.   My son thought I might want my favorite sandwich from Starbucks so he and his father went through the drive-through and got one for me.   I hadn't had lunch.   What a sweet little guy I have. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has some crazy calluses.   She has them all over her hands in places you wouldn't typically expect to find them.   She has built them up from lots and lots and lots of swinging on the swingset in the back yard.  

Their New Passions

It’s a little hard to write this post today.   I’m on a time crunch, trying to finish this post before we need to leave to go to dinner at my in-laws.  They have been playing golf with my husband today in an early birthday day of being together.   The children and I have been working to get everything done here at the house.  This makes me happy that we’ve gotten so much done, but the children did their usual complaining about conscripted labor and threats of what they’re going to do when they’re parents.  

I took it for a while and then let loos into them, using the same tone and wording they had been using to me.   I complained about how I didn’t want to be doing this either, but my job was made so much harder because I had two complaining children who feel they are above folding their laundry, taking showers, cleaning up their rooms, making their beds and putting away things they pulled out to play.  I said more about living lives or privilege and I was not above removing some of those privledges if they kept up the complaining.   I won.    Parents always do.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son has a robot thing going on right now.   He wants me to 3D print him different robots.   I’m happy to oblige him because printing articulated robots that pop off the printer with limbs and head that moves is pretty cool.   He names them all and puts them in different arrangements.   Here’s one of them with all the robots printed thus far (one more is currently being printed).   The robots are surrounding one he named, “Deadbot” because it’s a failed print I had to pull off half-way through.  There’s also a catapult his father printed for him that is part of his crew. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has taken an interest in making balloon animals.  I loved making them as a child and to this day, I always keep a fairly exhaustive supply of twisting balloon colors and sizes in the craft room.   After several days of asking for one or two balloons and proving she wasn’t just wasting them, I gave her a small bag of them.   She’s been working on variations from what she knows.   I promised I’d teach her how to make more animals once she mastered the dog, and that, she’s definitely done. 

Delicate

The second 3D printer we now have is entirely different from the one we first got.   It’s like starting all over again in learning how to prepare models to be sliced, what models would work well in a resin-based printer.   What I did know thought was there were some models I wanted to print that our FDM filament printer wouldn’t be able to do as easily or at all even. 

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

The tweezers are in the shot to give some perspective on size.   It’s a surprisingly strong.

I printed a stylized fox for my son and now my husband has said he’s interested in printing on the newer, very small, SLA (Stereolithography Light Array) machine.   He is currently printing the longest print we’ve ever done on either printer at ten-and-a-half hours.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son came downstairs with his father this morning already in “boss” mode, explaining to his father what they would be doing first (as they played Minecraft together) and who would be responsible for what.   They played together for several hours.   I liked seeing my son have so much fun with his father. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter figured out a game to play with the dog today.  The dog figured out if she brought the big ball over to my daughter, she would play tug with her.   My daughter used her ears and positional skills she’s learned while squatting down at the dog’s level and was able to get the ball and then get it away from her for a good while today.   The dog was so happy to be played with with her favorite big bal. 

Itchy

My face was itching last night so this morning and today I took some Benadryl and put a steroid cream on my face to get it to calm down, which thankfully it has.   The result though was me sleeping most of the day because Benadryl makes me very sleepy.   If I was ever suffering from insomnia, it would be a great option for me.  I feel like the day is gone and I’ve done nothing—which is true—so I’m going to end the day not doing much else by completing this very short post. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a folded up sheet of paper he brought home to us yesterday and wanted us both present before we opened it.   We were worried it was something he didn’t want to tell us about from school.   It turned out it was something he had electively skipped recess for, because he wanted to stay in the classroom and make a copy for his father and me to do.   He had learned about logic puzzles at school and liked them so much he made a copy for us to complete while he worked on his at school.   I told him excitedly that they were some of my favorite puzzles to do and that I used to have books of them when I was a child.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After school today my daughter came to find me and announced, “I want to learn Latin.   And Greek.”   When I asked her If she knew about Latin…but was interrupted before I could finish the sentence as she said, “I know, Mom, it’s a dead language."

The Bench is Back

An homage to Elton John to start this post about—what else—3D printing.  I may not have been writing about it a lot here, but everyone around me is hearing about it constantly.   I ask my husband to check on my print before going to bed and if I wake up in the middle of the night I'll get up and start a new print after removing the completed print from the build plate. 

3D printing takes time.   It's laying down tiny bits of melted plastic out of a 0.4mm hole in a nozzle that travels around in a pattern created by "slicer" software that's created a map of how the plastic should be laid out so that the model will come out looking like the picture on your screen. 

Before you can even get there, someone has to design the cute model of a fox in a CAD (Computer-Aided Design) tool.   There are many options and CAD tools have been around since I was in college but today they're easier to use with even free options available to the hobbyist.   I don't CAD.   Perhaps I will at some point, but since I'm a terrible artist, I don't see me making delightful little creations after days of frustrating toil when skilled people can do a far, far better job.   I like those people. 

Back to the printing.   It's slow, but once you get over the standing over the printer, waiting to hope to get a glimpse of something when the build head moves to the left or right and really hoping nothing's gone wrong and the print has to be abandoned and started over again (best case) or the nozzle is jammed and the build head has to be taken apart and cleaned before the print can be restarted (worse case), it's lots of fun.

These days I'm better at preventing the first scenario from happening because I've learned a lot about how to slice different types of models as well as the best settings for the various types of filaments I have.   There are times, however, when the second case occurs.   When this happened the first few times I was highly frustrated and anxious because I didn't know how to mechanically take apart the build head, clean out what was gunked up, replace the Bowden tube if it was impacted, and swap out for a different print nozzle if needed—without breaking anything.  Today, when the clog invariably happens, it's a quick job I can whistle through, interested in what I'll find that caused the clog when I get inside. 

I've been printing a lot of things, but the largest focus has been manipulatives for my daughter's VI teachers.   There are countless things in this world a blind person doesn't have a full understanding of and can't from words alone.   An object to touch, when your fingers are your eyes, makes more difference than I can imagine.  So I've been thinking about what might be helpful for the VI teachers at my daughter's school, and through communication with them, I ended up printing these geometric shapes:

First I printed wire-framed versions of the Platonic solids.   Then I found a huge variety of polyhedra, some with a combination of wire-frame and solid sides that would help for tactile determination, and then I worked on prisms and anti-prisms.   The pictures make these look sort of tiny, and they're not large, but they took about an hour-and-a-half each, plus model clean-up time, slicing and starting the next print, not to mention those hours I lost to sleep, and it was a busy week.  Did I mention failed prints and clogged nozzels?  Yep, there were some of those too. 

 My daughter's brailist was just as pleased with them as I was, from the conversation I had with her in masks in the car I couldn't exit from per regulation when I went to pick up more binders of work for my daughter earlier this week.   She told me they had only the basic shapes and these would help for fourth- and fifth-grade math.

So what's this title about that's a nod to Elton John's song, "The Bitch is Back"?  Remember how I mentioned I'd found a low-cost resin printer in a recent post?   It came in two days ago and we've been testing it out.   It's also slow printing, but in this case, it's curing layers of resin in a bath of the liquified resin with a model that's printed upside-down.  The completed model has to have uncured resin cleaned off from it and then it has to sit under a UV light to do final curing.   

I decided to print the "Benchy" benchmark model in the resin printer to see how it compared to the filament-printed version.  It looks pretty impressive.   Mind you, the Benchy model was created to test the rigors of filament printers and is, in a way, a lot easier for a resin printer to print.   It still was interesting to see them side-by-side. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been not so impressed with the 3D printing so far.   He liked an articulated hummingbird I made but when I gave it to my daughter's VI teachers he wanted me to print him a flock of, "Majestic Birds" (completely rejecting the name hummingbird.).  What did impress him are two models he's now claimed as his own:  Killbot and Cubebot who are both articulated models that print in place and come off the print bed with their limbs moving, and in the case of Killbot, his head rotating.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I made the post and took the picture of my daughter's school binder books too soon, or perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it because now we have five more binders.   I was thinking these would all go back to school with her when she's able to get back on campus.   Then I realized the current plan is to rotate students through the classroom, having one week on-campus with live instruction and two weeks distanced learning.   I think this means I'm glad I had a free five-foot table on which we can store her school binders. 

Zipper’s Trip to Zimbabwe

My daughter loves to play word games.   She makes some of them up, while others she hears about from other people such as her teachers.  She's always good at any verbal game because firstly, she's very verbal but secondly, she isn't distracted by all that pesky vision the rest of us have to contend with.  This gives her more focus on the important things, like who went where on what.

The game, as she first introduced me to it, was a travel game.   You would be going to a place, travelling o a thing.   The first person started with the letter A and would, for instance, go to Alabama on an antelope.  The second person would pick up with B, going to Billy's house in a buggy.   The game proceeded until the end of the alphabet was reached. 

This was a fun way for my daughter to end her VI meetings while giving her practice typing on her braillewriter.   She would say and type her answer and then her teacher would do the same on her own braillewriter.   The game translated beautifully to distanced learning as they took turns and could each type at their own end. 

My daughter got my son interested in the game a week or so back on our way to school.  Initially, he had no interest in playing but after a few letters, he jumped in.   There were variants of this game such as things you'd take on a camping trip (the more ridiculous the thing, the better). 

Tonight, my daughter wanted to jump in the trampoline with me and play 'popcorn,' her favorite game in which you try to jump as hard as you can around her balled up body until she breaks form.   I started the game while we played, saying when it was your turn on the mat, balled up, you had to think fast and call out who you were, where you were going and how you'd be getting there.  You kept going until you lost hold of your legs.

We took turns until we got to the end of the alphabet at which point we had to go inside.   She ended with her favorite cat, Zipper, going to Zimbabwe on a zebra.   

The Big Boy Update:  When I picked up my son from school today the first thing I said was, "we've got a bit of an emergency" to which  he immediately replied, "we have to hurry home because you have groceries that need to be put in the refrigerator."   He'd noticed the bags and knew what that meant.   I told him it was mostly the ice cream he and his sister had been asking us to get.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We had to sweep out the trampoline tonight.   It was dark when we were jumping, which didn't affect my daughter in any way.   She noticed what I couldn't see: that the trampoline was covered with leaves and small particles from the wind.    I told her we'd be on lightning game round while I swept: the first one who came up with a full set of who/where/how would call it out as fast as they could.   You couldn't call out an answer until you had all the information.   She's fast, we were about even on letters by the time I'd gotten done sweeping the trampoline deck.    

What Can She See? (Again)

It's time for another one of those, "what can she see?" posts.   We don't really know what my daughter can or can't see.  At this point, it's almost entirely a question of what she can see, because the question of what she can't see is just too comprehensive to explore.   When we discover that she can actually see something now, we get excited, because we've feared that the answer to that question has been, "nothing" for a good while now. 

My daughter knows her way around our house and has mapped out her paces so she deftly navigates around in a manner that would lead you to believe she can see a lot more than she really can—until you start really watching her.   Then you realize she's running into things all the time, and I do mean all the time, that if she even had minimal vision she could avoid. 

It might be a matter of what lighting makes for easier seeing for her though.   For a long time, we thought more light might be associated with seeing more, but we're discovering less light is far more beneficial when it comes to what she describes as seeing things.   

Tonight, I asked my daughter if she wanted to have the new light do-jobber put in her bedroom as she went to bed.  "Do-jobber" is just a word because I don't know what the thing is actually called.  It's a laser and LED globe that shines red, green, blue, and white light in a pattern on the ceiling as well as a green laser that spreads a pile of dots on the ceiling along with the LED lights. 

There are three levels of brightness.   You can have zero, one, or two of the LED colors showing.   The laser pattern can fade in and out or can be off.   I wasn't sure if she would see any of it.   I didn't test her color discerning capabilities because I didn't want to quiz her, knowing the blood that got behind her retina years ago distorted her color perception dramatically.   So I told her what I was shining on the ceiling color-wise. 

The first thing that surprised me was she thought it was too bright.   I had it on the red setting, which is the dimmest of the colors.   She could see each color and understood when there were two colors showing.   If I'd asked her what two colors, she probably couldn't have told me but perhaps someday if her vision remains stable, she'll know what red looks like to her now and will be able to guess fairly accurately. 

What she easily could do was tell me when the pinprick laser dots came on and off.   I wasn't expecting her to see those at all.   She asked me to turn those off because they were too bright.   In the end, she picked red light at its most dim setting and wanted to keep it on for an hour's sleep timer while she fell asleep. 

So she can still see something and some things, while not that bright to me, were very bright to her.   I don't expect her eyes to heal what with their poor vasculature, but maybe she's seeing a bit more than before.   She was wearing sunglasses too, adding to the dimming, and yet she saw it all.   She also has no natural lenses in her eyes and had no corrective lenses in her glasses, which made seeing the laser dots also impressive because she has zero ability to focus. 

I'm happy about tonight.  It's a lot of something that was more than I thought she could see at all. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to play music in the front yard while he, his sister, and the neighbors played kickball in the fashion they play at school that meets socially distancing guidelines.   He really wanted music to go with their game so I brought a Bluetooth speaker out and his iPad and showed him how to look up songs on Amazon Music.   He was so happy about it he brought the speaker in and wanted to have music playing beside him while we ate our dinners.   We asked him to not as we wanted to talk together during dinner. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I dried my daughter's hair for the first time in a long time today.   She went to the chiropractor with me this morning on short notice—in her pajamas—as I had let her ride in the car with me to take my son to school and didn't know at the time she wanted to go see the chiropractor as her back had been bothering her.   She remained in her pajamas until bath time tonight.   Tomorrow she's back to getting dressed before school starts at 9:15

The Most Drops

 My daughter drops things.   She runs into things.   She can't see that the things on the desk are there or table or bed or floor even and things get knocked off or over all the time.   She will learn skills as she gets older on how to place things in such a way as to know where they are to protect her from knocking her own items over.   

That doesn't work when you're somewhere where you didn't place the things around, like sitting down to eat a meal at a location where the food has been set by someone else.  She's learned to be careful, because it's no fun knocking over your glass of milk because you didn't know it was there and you moved too quickly.  She very proprioceptive and is also quite careful, but she's also eight-years-old and likes to move quickly. 

For instance this evening she was working on a math assessment she didn't get to do during school because she and her brother had dentist appointments at the end of the school day.  She got up from the desk three times and each time she walked into the chair from the other desk that had been moved over to sit by her during the day.   Did she move the chair out of the way so she wouldn't run into it again?   Not until I suggested she did.  She didn't run into the chair hard, but it had to hurt to some degree.   She never complains unless she's really hurt, usually involving her head.  She's tough. 

My daughter knocks things over and runs into things.  But I have the most drops.   I drop things all the time—and I do mean all the time.  Yesterday I think I had dropped at least fourteen things and I didn't start counting at the beginning of the day.   Sometimes, after dropping something, I'll drop it again as I'm picking it up.   There is a reason for this, or I suspect two reasons, but one reason I'm going to either give credit to or place blame upon. 

I don't have full feeling in my hands.   I have a spinal cord injury and at this point I've had several surgeries to help things.   And while things improved rather dramatically after my nerves had healed, there was additional damage done during one of the surgeries due to the large amount of scar tissue I have in my neck in the area the doctor was working.  Most of what happened in that surgery has returned to the function I had before, but I remain with hands that just can't discern things tactually like they used to. 

That's part of the problem and perhaps the largest contender in why I drop so many things.   The problem is compounded three-fold.   First, I'm always in a hurry.  Second, I try to carry more than I should.  And third—and this is the most damning one—I seem to think I can feel things normally. 

Why it is after fifteen years I don't remember I need to take more care, pay more attention to and grasp more firmly to things, I don't understand.   Not everything I drop is a result of misjudging my grasp because when you've stacked things too high just because you don't want to make two trips to the attic and then something drops, it's the fault of the arms and ultimately brain that cause the drops. 

It got me thinking about the phrase, "I'm clumsy," which I've used to describe myself for years.  Other people see themselves as clumsy without have a neurological deficiency in their hands.   Does that mean they're rushing, not paying attention, and/or carrying too many things at once?  I'm not sure how a person can qualify for the label 'Clumsy' without having one or more of those characteristics.   

Fortunately, I have them all, so I definitely qualify for what I would say is clumsy.   Did I say fortunately?

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been showing both signs of maturity and impulse control, responding politely and immediately to requests from us as well as outright uncontrolled rage in the form of yelling at us for the slightest and unknown frustration from us.   He's moving in the right direction.  Less than two weeks at school and the upperclassmen and same-grade peers in his classroom are making a difference in how he behaves.   I think it's a combination of age as well as positive role models from school.   I like to tell him I'm proud of him when he does something positive or mature, but he hates when i do that so I'm looking for words that intimate the same thing without directly saying so, sneaking in the positivity any way I can

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son, daughter, Rayan, and Keira were on the playset and swings late this afternoon.   The dog always wants to be out with them, but ever since our new neighbors moved in, the dog wants to go look for him so I have to leash her outside.   I went out and was hooking up the dog when I heard my daughter say to Keira about the game the boys were predominately in charge of creating, "This is boring.   It's all about killing."  Then, before Keira could respond, my daughter added, "well, I like the killing part."  Keira, ever the negotiator, said to her, "we could always suggest another game."  I wonder if they suggested one with less killing?

Open a Can of Worms

I've never seen a can of worms.   I don't know where you would buy one or what dish you would include them in.  Perhaps the can refers to a container in which you store worms for fishing.   Why opening the can indicates calamity is soon to follow is unclear to me.   And while the connection is unknown, I understand the connotation of the phrase perfectly well.   Today, I opened a can of worms. 

It wasn't my intention when I texted my sleeping husband this morning, saying I was thinking about buying something with a, "it's not expensive" addition to the end of the text.  Typically, if my husband or I want to purchase something, we don't need the express consent of the other one.   We discuss things that will be higher in price, but for the most part, we don't talk about things like getting new socks or a container to put my daughter's collection of stuffed animals in.   We trust the other person will make wise choices, or if they're rash choices, it will hopefully be an interesting kind of rash. 

In this case, I had been looking at videos online and had found something that was $250 so I wanted to talk to my husband about it because of price, but more because it was going to impact space and room organization, and I wanted to be sure he was okay with the potential change.   I had left the page up on Amazon the night before but when I got to the computer this morning the price was showing at $150.   I thought I must be missing somehing, so I went back to the review I'd seen the day before and linked to the site from his post and sure enough, the price was $250 there. 

So, I decided to just get it before things changed back.   I texted my husband saying I'd tell him about it when he woke up, and then got to work on some other things.   When he woke up, I told him, "I got another 3D printer."   I was expecting him to be angry or exasperated or to tease me because everyone knows how obsessed I am with 3D printing, but he just laughed good-naturedly and I told him all about it. 

This printer is entirely different from the one we currently have.   3D printing is done in two main ways.   We have the kind where a spool of filament is fed into a hot nozzle which melts it and then layers the now melted plastic into the model.   The type of printer I'd gotten this morning is a resin printer.   Instead of a filament, you have a vat of liquid resin, and light cures layers of the resin which build on top of one another. 

The first printer we have is more substantial and flexible and can do lots of things.   This little resin printer will do some things, on a small scale.   Some of the things I've been wanting to print are very, very hard for our current type of printer to print, but are just what resin 3D printers excel at.   

The title of this post was about a can of worms.   What happened was I needed to free up some space on the other side of the workbench—the workbench we got for my husband that I've mostly taken over with this 3D printing mania.   It wasn't about the $150 that I wanted to talk to my husband about, it was about the space and the use of his workbench.   

He was, like he always is, understanding.  He even had some good suggestions on what I could do with the secondary work table I'd gotten as I'd be needing it for the washing and curing stages after the printing was done (resin printing has more steps, but yields beautiful, finely detailed prints).   Later in the morning he was in the basement with me and I was asking if he really, really needed that miter saw in the workroom on account of it was taking up so much space (he assured me he did) when I noticed the reverse osmosis filter also needed replacing and could he please help with that too?

He got not only roped into rearranging part of the basement workroom but changing out two filters that spewed water all over him and took a good hour to get finished.   I don't know that it was how he intended to spend his day. No, I know it wasn't how he intended to spend his day.  But just like my husband always is, he didn't complain as he helped me.   

He hasn't been as interested in 3D printing as I thought he would be.   He told me today, "I haven't had a chance, you're printing day and night."  Maybe with two printers, he can get some prints in?

The Big Boy Update:  My son's shoes were missing from his trip to the beach where he went fishing with Blake on Friday.   We looked Saturday morning for them but ultimately gave up.  My son had no idea where they were.   It shows just how tired he was when he got home because I found out today his shoes are in Blake's car.   He had no idea he came into the house without shoes on. 

The Tiny Gitl Chronicles:  My best friend's daughter, Ellie, wanted to learn how to babysit and asked if she could do so with our children first.   My daughter absolutely wanted Ellie to come over, and today we were able to coordinate schedules for her to have a social distanced sitting of my daughter (my son mostly managed himself.)  Ellie could only stay a little over an hour, but she promised if we would have her back, she would do all the dishes—she likes doing dishes, she said.   My daughter wants her to come back as soon as possible. 

It’s Movie Night’s Fault

 Se this?  This is the dining room table I bought for myself years before I got married.  

When I got married to my husband this table went into the attic but when we built and moved into our current house, we, on not knowing what to do with the table when the mover's were unloading, told them to put it in the basement.   And here it's sat for almost ten years.   

It gets used all the time.   In the opposite direction as the piano is where the television is with sofas and chairs and where our Movie Night friends sit when we have movie night.   Someday, we hope to have movie night again. 

This picture of the table was taken a half-hour ago as a point of celebration because until this evening, the table has been covered in my husband's paperwork and other things.   He would work on it a bit, but for all intents and purposes, the table was unusable save for a spot to store things my husband hadn't gotten around to taking care of yet.  

My children are with Nana and Papa tonight and the big goal today was to get through the mire of stuff—and he did it.   My husband worked for hours and got it all taken care of.   We can now put together the big Lego project with my son we've been talking about.   

My husband came into the mechanical room (through the door in the picture above) and said, "do you know why the table got so out of hand?  I think I figured it out.   I had some ideas but when he told me I realized he was completely right.   He's always stored things there, but he cleans them up on a fairly regular basis—because we have movie night at our house.   People come over, sit at the table and eat their dinner or work on their laptops during the movie.   He has to clean up the table regularly. 

Despite COVID-19, mu husband told me he wasn't going to let the table get so out of hand again.  It was a lot of work today, on a day he'd rather have been doing other things. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son caught several fish at the beach yesterday.   It was several hours there and then several hours to get back home, but they fished for a long time and my son loved it all.   He brought home what looks to be a flounder that he wants us to cook.   He'll be allergic to it most likely, but we'll eat it so as to not waste its life. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is on the fourth book in the third five-book series currently.   Book five is released in early October.   She's going to have a hard time waiting to find out what happens. 

Direct Connection

Many, many, many people have contracted COVID-19.   I would say "countless" but for the first time probably in the history of the world, we know more about the actual number of people who have gotten an illness or condition than we likely have about anything else so significant. 

I've looked at the statistics on and off since the beginning of the year.   I've gone through periods of looking every day at the world, country, state, county, and even zip code numbers and calculated "how many people in X" have COVID-19 around me.   Statistics can sound both good and bad at the same time.  Saying only 1000 people in a million are infected sounds rather low, but saying one in a thousand somehow sounds more ominous.   How many people might have gone through the doctor's office, grocery store, pharmacy or, now, are connected in some way to my son's classmates at school?   In that light, it seems like a much higher probability we'll encounter someone who is positive for the virus. 

My son's school is taking exceptionally vigilant measures to keep everyone not only socially distanced, but surfaces, objects, doors, toilets, etc. sanitized and safe from one students to the next.  The school had an email come out today saying saying again that they highly recommend families do not travel if at all possible and if they must and go out of state, they should quarantine at home for fourteen days.   That was the prior message.   Today, that message was strengthened with a requirement that families who travel for the holidays must now quarantine for fourteen days. 

Any student or parent who has been potentially exposed does not come to school until the have a negative test result.   Any such situations are reported (anonymously) to all families, listing only what class the potential exposure happened in.   So far, we have had no confirmed cases at my son's school.  My daughter is at home, so her only exposure risk is from our situation here. 

Up until today, I know of people who know people who've had COVID-19 in our area but no one I know personally.   I looked at the statistics for our county and was both surprised and saddened by the death statistics.   There have been deaths, but not a lot of them.   While some cases can't be helped with any amount of medical intervention, we do live in an area heavily focused on medicine.   The sad part was that nearly fifty percent of the deaths were from outbreaks in two nursing homes.   I can't imagine the guilt of the administration and staff, knowing this happened to their patients.   I don't know the dates so this could have been early on but it still was tragic to see those numbers on my computer screen. 

Today my husband told me one of his clients had called.   She was planning on going to sign some documents for the upcoming sale of her house but had just found out her daughter had tested positive.   She had seen her several days before.  Her daughter is one of my good friends and was my matron of honor at our wedding. 

My husband and our family are fine as he hasn't seen my friend's mother in some time and although that's comforting for us, I'm more worried about Bonnie, who is older.   Hopefully she, and our friend will both be fine. 

The Big Boy Update:  Blake took my son to the beach today on a day trip to fish off a pier.   My son hasn't been fishing before but apparently, he had a great time.   We now have a fish in our refrigerator with both guts and scales still intact.   We're going to have to do something with him tomorrow lest it goes bad in our refrigerator

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and I (as her sous chef) made "Dirt Cups" today for her Friday fun VI Google meet.   My husband got the ingredients in advance (chocolate pudding, Cool Whip, Oreo cookies, milk, and gummy worms) and today, we made ten little cups with pudding mud, crumbled Oreo dirt on the top, and gummy worms crawling out from the depths of the "dirt".   There was a lesson entailed in this: my daughter had to read the ingredients list and description (page 1) and then follow the directions (page 2).   She had to keep mentally organized where she was on each page and where things were on the counter without being able to see anything.   She went to get things such as measuring cups and a cutting board.   She also had to decide when she should ask for help.   She did well but had a bit of a challenge reading the directions start to finish and then going back to find each successive step without re-reading most of what was on the second page.   Her teacher is exceptionally patient and always has something positive to say about what she's doing.   My daughter called me her sous chef the whole time after her teacher dubbed me that at the start.  After that meeting, she had another meeting with her favorite braillist, Mrs. B.   They were going to play a game and my daughter, learning from the last lesson, asked me for some help, calling me the, "sous game" which I didn't get until I realized she'd swapped 'chef' for 'game'.   

Let Me Count the Books

I had taken a picture of a stack of notebooks the other day and was going to write a post about them but other things came up and the topic got moved down the priority list.   I'm glad it did, because today, not two days later, I've taken a new picture based on how things have changed. 

The students in my daughter's class are doing distanced learning using Google Classroom in conjunction with some other sites and tools.   The organization and thought that's been put into the platform and by the teachers is impressive.  There is connectivity and continuity in many things where confusion abounded last school year when we were thrust into distanced learning on short notice.  

Lessons are still presented by live teachers.  Students can raise their hands and be called on to answer questions.   There is a chat section on the side where students type their name in to indicate they're present.  Additional tools are available to the teacher, such as something called Jamboard, where students can create their own sticky note with their idea and add it to the board, just like you would do in a brainstorming business meeting with real sticky notes on a whiteboard. 

There are other tools and fun features like interactive, graphical assignments online for the students to do. The students also have workbooks they used each day.   The teacher will say, "open your workbooks to page nineteen" as they begin their lesson.   My daughter has the same workbooks, only in her case the volume of paper and space is three three-inch binders thick for EL (English Language) and four three-inch binders for math.   She has VI notebooks for online class as well as independent learning work.   In addition, there are reading books the students can read online that must be converted to braille for my daughter.   And that's just the main things.   My daughter's braillist sends a daily email with other things for us to print out and have ready for her as needed.  

We had to come up with a rigorous organizational system to keep the pages of braille (which look like a sea of dots on white papers) from becoming a mess of confusion.   Here's what the staging area for my daughter's daily school looks like:

If it seems like a lot, it is.   Keep in mind though that our teachers at school manage this amount of material for each of the VI students they're working with.   Can I just say again, I don't know how they do it with such grace?  

It is at this point I want to send some thank you's out.  First and foremost, to Mrs. B., my daughter's braillist, who is one of the most organized people I know.   She has made a large collection of files not only easy to get to, but easy to print because she's formatted each of them so all I have to do is open each file up and send it to the embosser.   It's not just naming the files that she's good at though.   She has to take all the materials the other children are using and convert the materials in all kinds of formats into braille at the level my daughter has currently learned—no small feat.  She is very good at this I'd venture to say, given how quickly she gets things to us.   She makes it look effortless but from the small amount I've done in this vein, I know she makes a complex job look easy.  

Secondly, I want to send thanks to Ms. Sample and Ms. Crossey, two more of the VI teachers my daughter works with.   When they realized we were confused by the references to workbook pages and weren't keeping up with having materials printed and ready for my daughter each day, they did a mass printing and organizing job.  Within forty-eight hours they had seven full books ready for us to pick up at school.   

Another thanks from me to Ms. Sample and Ms. Crossey for surprising me with a box of printer paper already hole punched.   This is a side story but one that bears telling.   In March when lockdown happened and we ordered our embosser which prints braille (best decision ever) I ordered continuous feed braille paper.   At the time, supplies were frightfully low from companies who produced the paper possibly due to COVID-19 and I was only able to find and order unpunched paper.   

Brailled things tend to take up lots of room so putting them together so for small things we were doing nineteen-hole punching to create booklets.   But we could punch three or four sheets at a time.   For larger work, we would punch the standard three-holes, but we couldn't do many pages at a time there either.   My husband got fed up and ordered a forty-sheet at a time three-hole punch (which is wonderful as well as fun to use).   We were spending a lot of time punching holes though.  

I decided to see if I could order paper that had both the three-hole as well as the nineteen-hole slots already punched in the side of the paper and by now, there was stock available I could order.   That meant all we had to do was print and separate the continuously printed pages.   We could then put the pages right in binders.   Only it was sixty dollars for shipping for the heavy boxes of paper.   So I elected to have the paper sent "Free Matter for the Blind" which as you might guess by the name, is free.   Blind people can have printed material shipped to them as well as by them for free via the USPS.   However, it's not fast shipping.   But free was a lot better than $60, so I was on hold for the paper to arrive. 

On Tuesday, after the holiday weekend, I stopped in at school where my daughter's teachers put in my trunk the binders of materials they'd printed out and organized.   There was also a box.   I figured it was more printed material for her.   Much to my surprise, I got home to find they had given me a box of that precious, time-saving three/nineteen hole paper.   I've never been so happy to have paper with little holes in it in my life.   

It's a team effort to educate my daughter this year.   We have her teachers at school doing their work to get the teaching done remotely.   They are also getting us material both printed and electronically in a format we can give to my daughter so she can do the classwork with ease.   My daughter doesn't have any idea the effort that happens behind the scenes, but as her mother and as someone who has a small window into the world of her teacher's jobs, I am exceptionally grateful to them. 

The Big Boy Update:  I drove my son to his day field trip to a camp site today.  I put on his audiobook per his request but five minutes later I realized it was my audiobook.  He said, "no, mom, don't change it, I want to keep listening," and we listened to it the whole way there.  I had told him about the book the day before, saying I thought he might like it.   I didn't mean to force it on him right in the middle of the book, but he didn't seem to mind.   Part-way to the camp he said from the back seat, "my tooth fell out."  I had to come up with a container for it and ended up dumping my little pill container into a tiny pocket of my purse so we could save his tooth for tonight.   He wasn't bothered or even interested in his tooth falling out, what he wanted was me to press play so he could continue to listen to the audiobook.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's legs are a total wreck of scabs and scrapes.   She scrapes herself and gets bruises often, but this was bad as she was itching things and making large scabs.   Today, instead of getting dressed like we normally require her to do, I told her she had permission to keep her long pajamas on—provided she didn't scratch her legs.   So far, she's done a good job of trying to leave her legs alone.