Myrtle Beach

We’re on the way to visit my in-laws at Myrtle Beach today.   They have a time share there they’ve  been going to for many years.   They’ve asked us to join them in the past and my children have good memories of the time we spent with them there.

I have specific memories of the last time we went, which was two years ago, mostly because it was right after my daughter lost her vision.   But let me digress for a minute and talk about my travel packing lists…

This might sound like way too much organization but I need to compartmentalize things so I don’t have so much floating around in my head.   I think I thought for years that I had a bad memory for certain things, and perhaps I do, but I think now after working with our play therapist that it’s a way of reducing clutter in my mind.    I write things down so I don’t have to keep them in my mind—and because I know it’s documented somewhere I don’t have to worry about it.

My son was having anxiety—a larger and more complex situation—Dhruti had said and because he had so much going on in his mind he didn’t know how to organize it and that was giving him stress, something a five-year-old shouldn’t have.  She said if we helped him by writing things down like dates on a calendar, he would know he could find the information when he needed to and it would be one less thing on his mind.   And it worked.   That, among other things helped my son a lot.

Back to the travel packing lists though, this is something I’ve done for years.   It’s a list of all the things we need to bring on any given trip as well as things we need to do beforehand like run the dishwasher, find someone to get the mail and put the bread in the refrigerator.   There are other things on the list that we might forget, like bringing bathing suits, which we’ve forgotten before.   It includes things specific to the trip based on the location we’re traveling to such as bedding when we go to New Jersey to visit my brother– and sister–in-law.  

When we go on a new trip I take create a new travel packing list, copying the list from the last trip or more commonly by copying the list from the last trip to that location.  I have a folder of all the lists for all our trips from the last several years.   It’s interesting to look back and see how much we had to take for trips when my children we younger and needed things like a crib, pacifiers, bottles, diapers, etc.   These days the list is a lot shorter.   Soon enough the children will be responsible for completely packing themselves—which will be nice.

Back on topic to the trip to Myrtle Beach for this weekend though, it’s been two years since we last went.   Two years ago was only months after my daughter had had an infection in her eyes, causing catastrophic damage she would never recover from.   We didn’t know what she could see and she had been in surgery every two weeks to monitor and manage her detached retinas.   We didn’t know how to handle a blind child and we were all depressed at the unknown future of her vision.

I remember some things specifically from the trip.   One was of going up in a large ferris wheel.   I was hoping my daughter would be able to see something, anything, as we got up high.   I was so sad to realize she couldn’t even tell which direction the ocean was and that large building rooftops were not discernible to her.  

I also remember one thing that still makes me smile.   We were walking down the boardwalk and a lady had an inflated green monkey.   She asked if my daughter would like it because she had won it and wanted to share it with someone who would like to have it.    My daughter did want the monkey.   It squeaked when she squeezed it and she played with it all weekend.

We still have that monkey.   It lived in the children’s bedroom for a long, long time but eventually was relegated to the storage room beyond their closet.    We pulled it out a few times and he was played with again (he never got named).   Then he got a hole.   The deflated monkey got put in a box of toys because I couldn’t bear to throw it away.   Just two days ago my daughter found the green monkey and I tried to re inflate it, only to find out the hole was significant.   I didn’t have time to find and patch the hole so I put it away for later.

Maybe this trip we’ll get another green monkey.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter wants to play with my son in the car right now.   He isn’t interested.   She has been persistent but it’s not working as my son just said to her, “I’ve had enough of you.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I took my daughter rock climbing the other day for the first time.   She was hesitant at first but once she got the hang of it she was quite good.   There were challenges mostly because she couldn’t see where the handholds were but she didn’t give up.   By the time we’d been there for an hour she had decided she liked it, saying, “I love to climb.   This is even better than a water slide.”

Bring Your Parent’s To School

We went to my son’s school this evening to spend time with him in the classroom.   He’s been preparing for us to visit and see what work he’s been doing all week.    We didn’t know what work he was going to show us and he didn’t want to tell us so we waited until tonight to find out.

He had some things laid out on the table and when we sat down he opened up what was a book that turned into a poster-sized sheet about the sun and planets.    He’d been working on this for some time, drawing a picture of each of the planets and then writing about each of them.   He read back to us the information on each planet.    It was some of the more complex writing and drawing work I’ve seen him do.

Next he wanted to do some math work and added four digit numbers together.   This was called, “The Exchange Game” with the part of the game being to know when you need to exchange ten of one order of magnitude for the next level up.   For example, he was laying out the units portion of the problem and was looking at the numbers.   He said, “there might not be an exchange here” but then as he realized the two digits were six and eight he updated his statement with, “oh wait, six plus eight, there’s definitely gonna be an exchange.”  

As he was laying out all the chips for the exchange game he was running out of table room so he rearranged them, saying, “it’s easier to count by two’s”.    He did the remainder of the problem by twos.

After math he did some reading work with the result of the reading to circle a picture of the answer.   But my son didn’t want to circle it, it wanted to minutely and accurately trace it.    That level of detail took up the last five minutes of our time but he was very happy with his tracing.   Coincidentally we got a light tray today.   I’m going to see what he thinks about it tomorrow.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said in the car today, “I feel a little tired of being a kid.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter explained to me the other night when she wanted the laser light off in their bedroom we’d put up for Halloween that she wasn’t liking the light on because it was too bright (it was green and I was surprised she saw it).   She told us, “when I sleep, my eyes are open most of the time.”

Speed Stacks

My son came downstairs with some cups that were part of a big color and shape sorting work we’ve had around for a number of years.   Typically the piles of rubber bears, llamas, goats and other sundry animals get disbursed around the room by one child and then another child, possibly a neighbor, comes in and decides it would be fun to sort them into the color-matching cups included with the set.

This time though my son had an idea with the cups.  He was stacking them upside down into a pyramid.   My husband and I looked at each other because he and I were remembering Speed Stacks, the competitive cup stacking sport for children.   If you’ve never heard of it look at the video on their main site here: http://www.speedstacks.com  And yes, those videos aren’t being sped up, the participants are really that fast.

My husband and I had fun with the Speed Stacks not that long ago.  On second thought, it was before the children were born.  I swear time speeds up as you get older.   But muscle memory still serves because as soon as we had the mat out and the cups in front of us we remembered most of the sets.

I was hoping my son would be interested in it but I missed something as I was thinking about which child might find it fun.   My son had triggered the idea but my daughter was the one who was interested.    It was tactile and physical and she could do it without having to see.   She loved putting her hands on either side of the timer, releasing her hands to start the clock, stacking a set of three cups, collapsing them back into a single stack and then putting both hands back on the pads to stop the timer.

She did this again and again this afternoon.   I taught her how to do two stacks of three and we were getting into three stacks of three when I asked her if she wanted to do one stack of six.   She was getting the motions down fairly well when my son finally came over and acted interested.

The part she liked the best was the competitive aspect though.   She liked trying to best her own time.   She asked all about the buttons on the pad and understood that after she’d stopped the timer she could either reset the timer and go again or store the time if it was a particularly memorable one (she liked most of hers).

The only thing she couldn’t do was see the time on the timer.   She’d ask me to come over and tell her what her time was.   The made getting anything done by me rather challenging because most of her times were less than thirty seconds.

We’ll see who has more perseverance (or interest) and who will get the fastest score.   Okay, on that second question I already know the answer in advance: dad will.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Christmas Conversation:   This morning my son told my husband there were three colors of Christmas: white, for snow; green, for the trees; and red, for love.   My daughter chimed in, “and yellow, for the star on the tree”.

The Broken Cabinet Door

I have a bit of an OCD thing going.   I think I got it from my mother but that might not be completely true.   My mother likes things just so, but that’s not to say my father is a mess.   He’s organized in his own way.   My father likes to collect things and my mother likes to organize things.   I got the combination of liking stuff that’s also well-organized.

But this post isn’t about collecting, it’s about things being in the “proper” place.   And by proper or “right” place I mean the place I think it should be.   The blinds all have to have the same relative angle.  The counters need to be cleared of clutter and let’s not even get started on what my expectations are for a tidy pantry.    Just take it on authority that I have a bit of an obsessive nature about me when it comes to things being in their proper place.

In 1994 I was ending my employment with IBM and had another job that was starting shortly afterwards.  Instead of starting immediately though I scheduled a four week break between jobs with the plan to go to Manhattan and stay with a friend for a month and see the city.

I had a great time.   He lived on Central Park West in a 200 square foot condo and I slept on his couch  which at the time was comfortable.   Thinking about living on a couch for a month at this point in my life with my cranky neck and spine makes me recoil in fear, but back then I was in a different place and it didn’t bother me one bit.  

His parents were very gracious and lived a few blocks down the street in what I would call an opulent home for Manhattan.   They had had a designer come in and decorate the place completely.   The style was both modern and eclectic with flairs of colorful artwork and antlers thrown in for good measure.   I spent a lot of time in the evenings at his parents house.

One day I came over and went into the den and noticed one of the doors to their custom made cabinetry had been left fully extended on its rollers.   So I rolled it shut, that being how it was suppose to be when not in use.

Not five minutes later my friend’s father came in and was quite upset, wanting to know who in hell had closed that cabinet door?  Oh dear.   I said I had.   He was immediately back to polite, realizing I didn’t know what I’d done.   They’d had a repair man there for several hours trying to fix the tracking mechanism and had done some gluing that needed to dry and no one was suppose to touch it overnight while it dried.

I felt awful.   But they were very nice about it, saying I didn’t know.   My OCD got me in trouble that day.   Thankfully they weren’t upset about it.   Since that time I try to never let my need for order interfere when I’m in someone else’s home.   Until now.   But I handle it differently.

If I see drawers left open I ask if we can close them because I have a child that may or may not see them and drawers and cabinets are at the worst height to damage the face, body or possibly even the eyes of my low-vision daughter.  

I hadn’t thought of that day until recently when I was in a friend’s house and had to ask about the drawers their children had left open as they slowly, and with multiple reminders to stay on task, put up the dishes.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said to my husband today, “I feel bad for that grandpa sitting on the bench.”  My husband asked why and was told, “because he’s old and getting weak and is going to die soon”.   I’m not sure where he got this idea but my husband told him not to despair by saying, “you never know, he might live for another twenty years.   Some people live to 110”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter helped me pick out some clothes for her and her brother at the used clothing store today.   She said she wanted all green shirts so we looked at what they had available.   She also said she wanted stripes.   Tall order but I found one green shirt with rows of frill across the chest.   She felt it and said, “look, the stripes are tactile!”   Can you tell one of the words that’s important for blind people she hears all the time at school?

We Kind of Look Like Losers

My son has decided we need to put up some Halloween decorations.   He’s liked Halloween since he figured out there was candy but as he’s gotten older he’s gotten more into the costumes and recently into the decorations.  

Last year he wanted to help decorate for Halloween.   This year he asked me before October even began if we could put some decorations out.   I told him after school we’d get some things down from the attic and every day we’d add a little bit more to our decorations.  

We have a lot of things in the Halloween section of our attic because friends of ours took their house on the road in a forty-five foot rig and had to abandon most of their belongings so they could wedge into a much smaller living space.   We were the recipients of the Halloween collection.

So each year we figure out what and where to put things and I’d told my son we’d get started soon.     Yesterday on the way home from school I think my son had had enough because he was looking around at the neighbor’s houses, many of whom are already fully decked out for the season of horror and sugar and told me, “we kind of look like losers”.  

And we can’t have that.   So we got some boxes down and my son ran around and randomly placed things in locations that made no sense, but made him happy nonetheless.    I sent him outside with a step ladder and some ghosts to hang from the tree in the front yard and he got the neighbor’s children involved.

I came up from downstairs to hear my son explaining to the other children about this one tree ghost (a piece of white plastic with newspaper inside it, tied at the bottom to look like a ghost) that this ghost was special.    He tied the ghost to a lamp in the living room and proclaimed, “this is the Greeting Ghost”.

Tomorrow he wants to put out more decorations.    I think he is more enthusiastic about Halloween than any other holiday.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had some stomach cramps earlier today.   He had been sitting on the toilet in our powder room for a while.   I came in and asked him what he was thinking about.   He pointed directly in front of him and said, “I was distracted by that”.    I told him that piece of artwork was named, “Spooner” after Gramps and it was created by one of our friends.   I told him that to create it she had taken all the fun things gramps had given her and made them into a colorful, three-dimensional piece of art.   And get this—she hadn’t thought the piece of art was cool, I told my son.   He asked me about the different keys and transistors and knobs and buttons and things I don’t even know how to describe and wanted to know where Gramps found them.   I told him I didn’t know but weren’t we glad our friend Beth had made them into this piece of art?   He agreed.   He and I decided “Spooner” is definitely cool.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Sometimes we get excited when my daughter can see things.   We learn not to get too excited though because sometimes it’s via other senses and not sight that she knows something, but I’ll remain hopeful and keep an open mind that some of it could be visual.    We were pulling into the driveway yesterday when my daughter asked, “why aren’t there berries on the bushes anymore?”   There are two large bushes on either side of the driveway that are at times laden down with red berries.   Did she see the lack of red?   She was correct, there were no berries.

Three Walking Miles:  not much exercise but the weather was clement and the conversation was good, as always.

The Screw

I ran some errands this morning while my husband worked at home and answered my tracked-out daughter’s seven-hundred questions about everything and anything.   I returned to the house just in time for my husband to put his golf clubs in the car to head out to a charity golf tournament.  

I thought he’d gone but my daughter came into the kitchen from the garage and told me I had to come out to hear the noise.   The noise was a good catch by my husband who heard the hissing of the passenger rear tire in my car deflating via the impaling of a large screw in our nearly new tire.

Quick, grab my daughter, explain there was an emergency she didn’t understand that was time-sensitive and head to the tire store to get the tire plugged before it went completely flat as we were already down to 27 psi and it was dropping fast.   Seriously, had my husband not heard the hissing we would have had a whole other problem on our hands as there's no spare tire in the car and I would have had to re-inflate the tire most likely leaving my son stranded at school until I got everything sorted in the garage.

But never fear, I was on the way to the tire store.   Was my husband sure I should go to that particular store, I asked?  Last time they said it was, “better” to get a new tire.   And I didn’t like that answer.    No no, my husband assured me, the only thing they could possibly have any concern about was the foam layer in the tire—but don’t mention it unless they bring it up.

So of course they bring it up.   It’s not a safety thing.   It’s not a re-inflation thing.   It’s a noise reduction thing.   All you have to do is cut out the insulation around the screw/nail and patch as normal.  I’d been on the phone with Tesla service on the ride there and they’d said that’s all you needed to do.    But did the tire place balk?   Oh yeah.    Wouldn’t do it.   Wouldn’t let me take the risk of it being a wee bit more noisy as the tire went around and around.   Wasn’t sure it it was safe.

My daughter is now scared because I used the word, “emergency” to get her moving at the house and I now can’t dissuade her that it’s all going to be okay.  This isn’t made any better because I’ve been agitated.   And then I lose my temper.   I’ve been back on the phone with Tesla, on speaker phone with the service center folks telling the tire place it’s fine, just patch it.  But they don’t feel comfortable.

I don’t like losing my temper but at this point I had my husband on speaker phone now and the guy is saying their other store won’t do it either.   He’s calling headquarters or something, I don’t know.   I’m using all manner of foul words as I describe this to my husband on speaker phone.   My daughter is still worried but I’ve given her my iPad and she’s repairing cars on some children’s app and seems okay.

Then things sort of changed, which was interesting.   This man, whom I’d just yelled at, telling him how frustrated I was at their store, was contacting Michelin to get see if they could more information and possibly do the patch.  Had the tire company said it was okay, then they’d do it.   In the meantime, while I stand around texting my husband looking for alternate tire locations, this guy is calling their competitors, asking if they would do the repair.   He called five places and the fifth one said that sure, they do those types of tires, no problem.    I call this store myself to see if they could, “sure, no problem” do it right now on account of my tire was losing about one psi every two minutes.    “yeah, come on over” they say, “we can do it right now”.

I told the guy who I’d yelled at that I was very sorry.   He said don’t worry about it.   I said, no, I was sorry that I had lost my temper and it wasn’t his fault and that even though I was rude, he had tried to help me, even calling his competitors.   He then said, “here’s the thing—no one wants ever to come to the tire store.  So I get it all day long and I don’t take it personally.”   Yeah, well I did, because I wasn’t polite to him.   I gave him a tip he didn’t initially want to take but I told him I insisted.   He was a young guy but he made an impression on me.

So now we’re back to the leaking tire problem.    I drove those four miles down the same main road to this other tire place and they pulled the car in, told me to come back in an hour (my daughter and I went to lunch) and that—get this—it was all free.   Hold on?  I didn’t buy the tires from them.   That’s okay, company policy.   They hope we’ll choose to buy tires from them in the future.   Compelling practice if you ask me.

The two people who helped me told me they didn’t understand why other companies had trouble with the tires, it was just a sound dampening layer.   I said I didn’t know but I was going to do one thing and that was to call the Tesla service center and let them know about this place three miles from them that knew how to handle their car’s tires.

So where did that screw come from?  I went to four locations and only one of them had any construction around it.   My chiropractor’s office is virtually surrounded in construction and has been for several months so I have my suspicions.   Here’s the screw and the nice company who fixes punctured tires for free.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was working on his reading yesterday and complained bitterly, “I hate print.   I want to say to all the writers in the world who write books: please use cursive.”   Montessori schools teach cursive writing and it would seem he prefers it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked Alexa to play, “Call Me Maybe” today.   I asked her where she’d heard that song as it was popular too far back and I don’t remember it playing when I’ve been around.   She didn’t recall she said, she did say, “I’m good at remembering things”.

Zipper Free

I have a requirement with any purse I carry.  Actually, that’s a lie, I have a lot of requirements which is one of the reasons it takes me so long to find a replacement purse when I need to get something new.   I don’t swap things from purse to purse so finding something that works for everything I need takes time, particularly because I apparently want characteristics in a purse that not everyone wants.

I don’t understand why people want one big compartment into which they just dump all their items, condemning them to a swirling vortex of difficult to find stuff.    I want my things to be organized.   I want pockets within pockets.   I want it small, neat, easily contained and i want to be able to go right to the thing I need, in the darkness of a theater, without fail.

In recent years I’ve had an additional requirement added to my purse “must have” list—it has to hold my iPad.   It has to hold it easily and I have to be able to get the iPad in and out of the purse quickly.   It has to be protected from other belongings because I don’t want to have to get an extra protective case for the iPad when the purse should be the one doing the protecting.

It’s typically been a search, but I’ve been able to find a purse that’s small while meeting my needs.   I’ve had an iPad since day one of the first 3G iPad launch which I think goes back eight-ish years and I’m rough on purses.

My latest purse I really like.   It’s got a main channel in the middle that fits the iPad very nicely, although it’s tight.   I’d been pulling my iPad in and out of this compartment for probably a year-and-a-half now and not thinking much about it until earlier this week when I upgraded iPads to the iPad Pro small version.   The dimensions are almost the same as the iPad Air I had with the exception of being slightly longer.

I tested it in my purse and it fit, but I noted I’d have to be even more careful getting it in and out with the zipper in the way.   I got the iPad, did the backing up, restoring from iCloud and setting up on the new iPad Pro while simultaneously upgrading my son’s iPad to my current iPad Air 2.   This was all going very well and to plan.

I went out to dinner and was telling my husband about the slightly larger dimension and the zipper and the carefulness and then something struck me: I never zipped that zipper.   Not once.   Not one time in the entire time I’d owned that purse, with the possible exception of at the store before buying it, had I zipped that zipper.    The purse stayed closed without the need to be zipped.    So why, exactly, was I carefully taking the time to work around the zipper to avoid any scratching?

I looked at the zipper.   It was just attached to the edge of the leather.  It could be removed in five minutes and it wouldn’t even be missed.   When I got home I sliced it out and now I can just cram the iPad in and out with nary a thought to unwanted scratches.    Why is it so hard to see a solution to a problem you didn’t even know you had sometimes?

The Big Boy Update:  We were going on a picnic playdate with a friend from my daughter’s school who is also visually impaired.   My son was not one bit interested in going when we discussed it earlier today (even though it was to one of his favorite parks).   He said, “why do people always picnic for lunch and never for breakfast or dinner?”   Good question.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has figured out she can both message and call people who have the Amazon Echo (or Alexa as it’s commonly known) as long as they have an Alexa.   She’s called Nana and Papa, Aunt A and while we weren’t paying attention, figured out how to call Uncle Eric and Aunt Kelly.    She’s been sending messages to Maddie, Ellie, Gigi and Juju, my best friend’s children down the street and she likes to ask if it’s too early to call people.    So beware, if you have an Amazon Echo and my daughter is made aware, she’s probably going to call you.   And if you don’t answer, you might have a voice message left for you for when you get home.