Tips for living with a blind man

1. For goodness sake, keep the fridge/closet/toolbox organized unless you want to get up to help him find everything he's looking for. Still, you will have to call out which shelf/side of cabinet/location of said item is anyway.

2. He does not think it's funny when you hide weird stuffed animals in his underwear drawer.

3. Just go ahead and match up church/office outfits for him, including pants, a shirt, a tie, belt, and shoes. It will save you both time. Come to think of it, it may save you time even if your husband is not legally blind.

4. Realize that your children will learn very early that they can sneak treats, as long as the wrappers don't rustle, right in front of Daddy.

5. Get used to driving. Everywhere.

6. Get used to being the one who always cuts the fingernails, gives the haircuts, and removes the splinters.

7. Learn to read medical/anatomical textbooks for hour-long periods. That one may be a little specific.

8. Get with the Dept. for the Blind. They will most likely pay your husband's school tuition. (Sweet!)

9. Be confident with your looks, 'cause it's not very validating to hear a blind dude tell you you're hot.

10. Don't believe him when he says he can't do something because he's blind. Unless you've tried it with your eyes closed and you can't do it. Except for driving. Please don't try that.

11. With reference to the previous listing, just don't be upset when a red sock accidentally decides to party in a white load of laundry. He honestly didn't see it jump in.

12. Do not leave turpentine sitting on the floor in a mason jar if you also drink out of mason jars. He may think it's water. He may take a big mouthful of it. You may have to clean up paint thinner off the floor.

13. Invest in window cling stickers. Or just don't clean the glass doors. Or both. Guess why.

14. Perhaps recommend a walking-around-helmet.

15. INSIST on a helmet for when he rides his bike. Oh yes he does.

16. Do not EVER buy the small Legos. Unless you want your children to increase their vocabularies quickly in a bad way.

17. If he says he's feeling your butt to identify who you are, don't believe him.

18. Encourage others to introduce themselves over and over and over. Voices really aren't that easy to recognize and when you walk away, he will just ask who the heck that person was.

19. Remind him that even though he can't see very well, other people can. Tell him to stop "adjusting" himself in public.

20. Love him, because he needs it!

Things that make my life more interesting...



the Hamster, "reading" his fortune at the Chinese restaurant: "You will go to a pawty with M&M's and ice cweam!"

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Warning: this is disgusting.
Sassafras was told to get a gallon ziplock full of dogfood to take camping with us. (It was for the dogs, we aren't that primitive). She came back and asked how she was supposed to get it. Wha? Come on, Sass, use the cup in the dogfood bag for crying out loud. James goes to check on her after about 15 minutes. I walk into the kitchen a minute behind him. What is in that bag?!? It does NOT look like foo- IT'S POOP! I saw it before I could stop myself and spun into the bathroom. Thankfully, I had only eaten yogurt and yogurt rejoining the land of the living is still pretty much yogurt. Sassafras, obedient little girl that she is (yeah, right) thought her daddy had asked her to fill a bag full of dog poop. WHY, Sass, WHY? I don't know she said, I thought it was kind of weird...

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As I was walking to school the other day, a guy in a Navigator drove by and I smelled his cologne. How much cologne do you have to be wearing for pedestrians to smell it?

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The checkout lady at Sam's filled me on her daughter's broken arm, her mother's car problems, and how crappy this winter will be here in IA all in under 5 minutes. I thought I was in GA.

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When we did go camping, without the bag of poop, Pickles told me it was the best camping trip ever. He tells me that about everything. Every birthday party is the best ever. Every trip, every Christmas, every visit from a relative, is the best ever. It's quite uplifting to live with such an enthusiastic kid.

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Speaking of relatives visiting, we had my mom come visit (Yay!) 2 weekends ago, and then James' dad came to visit last weekend. Now, we are (hopefully) going to see Granny, Aunt Beccah, and the cousins in just a few weeks. All this love coming to visit us is awesome!

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I gotta go to class, I'll post again soon. I'm sure you are all wondering about the Obama school speech thang...

I haven't forgotten

8 years ago today

It's a beautiful day. I have an almost 2-yr old and a 3-month old. I work at my sister-in-law's laundromat a little, babysit a little, sell a little artwork, and deliver pizzas on Friday and Saturday nights. James and I had just bought our first house 6 months before. James is at work. Life is good. I worry about the kids getting baths, getting enough sleep, about going to the farmers' market later today. I'm checking my email and the news sites that I read while periodically nursing Pickles and letting Sassafras watch a movie.

Boortz
"Folks, I don't know if this is some kind of horrible accident, but it looks as though a plane has flown into one of the World Trade Center towers."

What? I think I've heard of the Twin Towers before. No reason to think a whole lot about it. But I'd like to get another perspective so I head over to Drudge to check it out.

"It looks as though America is the victim of a terrorist attack."

I turn off Sass's movie and turn on the news. I start to feel sick as I watch another plane hit the second tower. Did that really just happen? I truly have never seen anything like that in my life.

I turn on the radio as well. I try to call James. He was in the middle of a massage.

I tried to call my mom, my sister, my dad. I try desperately to reach my family as I watch fellow Americans dying on live T.V. I'm not physically anywhere near the actual destruction but I can almost feel the heat from the fires, almost smell the smoke, almost hear the screams. I cling to my baby, and kiss his soft fat milk-sticky cheeks over and over. He laughs while I weep. Sass asks why I cry. I call a friend who lives a few miles from Ground Zero. Somehow I get through when her parents cannot. She's OK, but shaken to the core.

James calls me back. He had walked past a T.V. reporting the destruction, but had no idea of the utter devastation. He couldn't leave work and I couldn't think of a good reason to have him come home. Tell the boss your wife needs a hug that lasts the rest of her life, James, I'm sure he'll understand.

All I can think of is everyone in the buildings praying, crying, calling, wishing, hoping...dying.

Now

I still cry when I think of this day. This day that has lasted 8 years and will continue for as long as soldiers are still fighting, as long as families who lost loved ones are still missing a piece of their hearts, as long as the rest of us remember.

I can't say what the proper course of action could have or should have been. I didn't set out to make this a political post.

I just wanted to say that I haven't forgotten.

Untitled: a near-novel

Sassafras ran away the other night. For a terrifying 20 min or so, we didn't know where our beautiful almost 10-year old little girl was. I was gone picking up the Hamster from preschool and James called and asked if she was with me. Um, no, what do you mean you don't know where she is?

James is legally blind and we have a big house and Sass likes to find a small space and read. That is why he didn't initially realize she was missing.

She was around the corner at a friend's house. She is not allowed to go anywhere without telling us. We have a nice house, on a decent street, but our neighborhood is pretty urban and there are streets nearby that have heavy traffic. There are also bad neighborhoods a few blocks over. An interesting thing about where we live - pockets of nice and scary back to back. Also, because we live in an urban area, there are quite a few sex offenders living around. The closest one is 5 blocks away. I had looked it up in the sex offender's database before we bought the house. I realize there are problems with this database, and all the implications that go with that could be an entire blog in and of itself, but it's still terrifying when your little girl is missing.

She left because she was mad at us. She had a decent day at school. She didn't seem upset when I went to walk them home from school. She had shared a funny story about a friend on the walk. What are you supposed to do with a kid who doesn't give you much warning?

Apparently, we don't let her do whatever she wants to do. Well of course we don't! We're good parents. Good parents don't let their child wander around quasi-inner city streets and ride their bikes all over town, which is what she wanted to do.

She wrote me a long letter (she's a writer) detailing some of our offenses. First of all, she hates her name. It's a beautiful name given to us in the temple for her. Second, she doesn't understand why we won't let her ride her bike around the block when her friends are allowed to. Well Sass, maybe their parents don't care if someone snatches them. Except that her argument was that they've never been snatched, so I shouldn't worry. Bizarrely she also included that her friends always had nice clothes that were clean. We stay on top of laundry and she just got about $200 worth of new clothes, so I'm not sure what that was about.

Because I am her mother and it's a mother's super power (usually) to know what is best for her own kids, I realized that she is just acting out her angst over moving and starting at a new school. Sass is actually quite resilient to change, but being the oldest child, the only girl, and having 2 parents who go to school double full-time can be overwhelming. She was crying for independence, but she really needed to spend more time with us. So I read Dr. Seuss books for an hour while she and the boys piled up on my bed and laughed. She needs me to take her to get our nails done. She needs to go shopping, and I don 't mean to the mall, I just mean grocery shopping. She needs Mommy time. I get it. I feel terrible that she thought she had to run away to get my attention. This did not go on consciously in her head. Sass genuinely thought she wanted new parents who would let her do what she wanted to do. But prayers can tell you amazing things about the path you should choose, especially when it comes to parenting.

She is grounded for the entire month. Which is really too bad for her, since this is her birthday month. We actually do birthday parties every year for every kid. I like parties and I think you should celebrate people on their birthdays. If you don't agree with me on that, I don't really care, so don't bother leaving a comment on that subject.

This isn't over. I realize that reading kids' books for an hour with my daughter will not heal whatever is bothering her. I also realize that this is part of the way some kids grow up. I threatened to run away at about the same age. I packed a bag of stuff and rode my bicycle up and down our street for close to an hour while my mother watched from the window. Then I came home and cried while she hugged me.

I love Sassafras so much it leaves me breathless sometimes. I know she came to our family for a reason. I hope I can be the mother Heavenly Father needs me to be for her and the boys.

Update on yesterday's post

The White House is rethinking President Obama's address to schoolchildren next week. While the speech was touted as a pro-education and pro-American, many people, including myself, saw it as something a little more ominous. Exactly what kind of education would Pres. O be pushing? This article says that activities such as writing letters on how the kids could help the president would accompany watching the video. I'm not thrilled by the thought of this. I don't want to think about Bud (age 6) thinking of ideas about how to help the commander-in-chief who is trying to push his healthcare reform through in less time than it took him to pick out a dog for his little girls. Obviously it would be more along the lines of recycling and the usual govt education brainwashing topics, but still. The question was NOT, 'think not what your country can do for you, but what YOU can do to help the President'.

Yes, we should help each other.
Yes, a healthy country is a wealthy country.
Yes, we have a responsibility to help people who need it.
But, we do not need it crammed down our throats by an overzealous, under qualified (but probably very intelligent and a nice guy) President. Sorry, that's how I feel about it.

We also need to think just a little about how this type of address would have been received had George W. Bush tried to do it. Would school boards across the country have jumped at the chance to have a day filled with the patriotism and commitment to education that they say this address would have been about? I'm not so sure they would have.

That being said, I like W's education reforms less than I like the idea of O's schoolchildren address. No Child Left Behind?!?! Another blog post, another day...

4 grits warning, just in case Nobody cares

Heads up:
Do you know what's going to happen on Sept. 8th? Pres. Obama will be addressing your children at school. There is a planned nation-wide address by the President to help the kids start their school year the right way. Whatever that means. You know what it means? There will be a sponsored brainwashing at a school near you. Am I Conservative? No. Ideally I would claim to be a Libertarian, although I realize this is an impossible political situation in reality. But Democrat, Republican, Seussian, whatever. I'm not comfortable with a politician speaking to my children without my consent. So I may very well be taking my kids out of school for this. I may very well give them my own address covering such topics as being kind to others and sharing what you have because YOU WANT TO, and not because you have been ordered to from over the barrel of a rifle. Yes, my kids go to a government school. Yes, I would send them to private school if I could afford it. Hopefully, eventually, I will do just that. But until then, I will do my best to be vigilant about the information that is fed to them. P.S. the article is a little inflammatory, so take it with a grain of salt.