Update on the muck I was in yesterday: it's gone. We came back to find the sump pump had done its job and not a drop of water had gotten into the main areas of the house. This was a good thing because I had spent a good bit of time de-mucking my leather boots and knowing how leather is, it's going to be days before they're dry enough to go a second round in the crawl space.
I brought my tall rain boots just in case and I know, I should have been using those rain boots in the first place. But you know how it is: you think, "this won't be that bad, I'll just pop in and check things out." The next thing you know, you're shoveling dirt and climbing around in mud. Maybe it'll be the last time.
We had to take a few pieces of furniture to the dumpster today. Bookshelves that were on the outs a long time ago that held together only long enough to make it to the spot of dumping. Blake said he wanted to hit one with a sledgehammer, for fun mostly, but because he'd seen some show on television where you could go into a room and smash up anything you wanted. Sort of like the Fantasy Island of anger management or something.
He found a sledgehammer and did, in fact, go to town on the poor bookshelf for a few minutes and then decided it was the kind of thing that was only fun for so long.
Fast forward to tonight when I came into the kitchen to hear my daughter crying bitterly and yelling. I had a call come in so I missed what the issue was at the time. Afterward, we were spending some time in the living room as a family and I asked my daughter, who was piling on top of the dog, her father, and me, what she had been upset about earlier.
She went quiet for the briefest of seconds so her father stepped in and said she had been upset because she was blind. She wanted to make the gingerbread house that came in the mail from our real estate office as a kit, but her father was busy, she wanted to do several things, but all of them either required help or couldn't be done by her at that time. She felt like if only she wasn't blind then she wouldn't be bored. If she could see, then there would be other things she could do.
I told her it was okay to be angry about being blind. Somedays I was angry that I couldn't do anything to help her see. That I wished I could do something. She said a thing or two, but not much because she suddenly wanted to know if anyone wanted to wrestle. She doesn't typically want to wrestle.
She went over to her brother, but I could tell that wasn't going to go well and so could her father. He said, "come over to the ottoman, there's something here for you." She came over excitedly to find her father there. He picked her up and threw her down in a wrestling-like fashion. She giggled and laughed. She wanted more.
They had a good time and she got out what I wonder could have been very much like the sledgehammer and the bookshelf had been to Blake earlier today. She's finally talking about being blind. It's been a long path and she's not at the end yet, but it's another step towards acceptance.
The Big Boy Update: In the living room tonight my son called my daughter a, "little girl." He expounded on this when asked, saying that ten-year-olds were two-digits old and weren't little kids anymore.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: When I was talking to my daughter tonight I told her I got mad too and that if I could, I would give her one of my eyes and take her eye in exchange and then we'd each have one eye we could see out of. She said, "and I wouldn't let you do so." I explained how we'd both be able to see because we'd have one eye that worked. Her father told her he would give her one of his eyes too, if he could. We said it wasn't something that was possible yet with science, but we could always hope so for the future. I told her another story too. I said that Uncle Jonathan had said when she was four that if he could give her his eyes so she could see, he would. I couldn't tell her that story without crying. She misses Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Margaret. Damn, COVID-19, right?
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