....in which I wonder if I may have Adult ADD. I've been sitting around reading blogs (well one blog, which led me to the second blog, which I am still reading. I have also been on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail. I think I said that in my other post.) Anyway, one of the blogs I've been reading chronicles the life of a mom of four kids, all of whom have special needs ranging from ADHD to Asperger's. She herself has also been diagnosed with Adult ADHD and I just read a post about how she just started medication for it and how wonderful and productive she felt that day. Now I am a firm believer in Better Living Through Chemistry, and if medication has helped solve, or at least maintain at a functional level, my anxiety, depression, and GERD, then if I have ADHD and something out there can make me more functional and doesn't cost a billion dollars, then why not?
Now first of all I don't want you people to go thinking I have self-diagnosed (even though I sort of have) and am running out this minute to purchase black-market speed. Are you crazy? That crap is probably WAY expensive and if I get an actual diagnosis by a doctor who I already see on a monthly basis, then I can get a generic for like $4 a month instead of $4 a pill. So stop worrying, Mom, this is not just a quest for more medication, it's just a quest for productivity.
Which brings me to the reason I started writing in the first place. I'd love to be a more prolific blogger--who wouldn't love to make a living swigging coffee and playing on the computer in their pajamas all day?--but I have just never been able to keep at it for any length of time, usually more than about 2 weeks. This one has been the exception, but as you can see in my posting history, I'm still sporadic at best.
So the real real reason I started writing was to chronicle my journey from reading blogs to Doing Something Productive. I was talking to Bob about the symptoms of ADHD that I have--not the hyperactivity, but never being able to finish anything (like a sentence) such as washing dishes. It is only through God's good grace that we ever have clean dishes, because this blessed apartment has a dishwasher. But some things either can't be washed in it or just don't fit. So I have a habit of putting things in the dishwasher and whatever doesn't fit just has to wait. I'll wash what I need if it's urgent, but usually it waits several days. Or Bob washes it. (That's usually what happens.) I'll get started, and halfway through decide I am done, and go wandering off. Sometimes I leave washed, but still wet, dishes in the sink and they get dirty again just by association with the yet-unwashed dishes.
Well, I decided I was GOING TO WASH DISHES, DAMMIT (sorry Mom.) I actually said this to Bob, in hopes it would help me finish the job. I said, "I am going to wash the dishes, just you watch." And then he didn't say anything. I watched the back of his head. He did not turn around to watch as I had commanded. So I said, "Did you hear me?" Then he turned around and I repeated what I just said. I went in the kitchen and looked at the dishes. Then I realized that I had to go to the bathroom. And I had a headache. So I went to the bathroom first so I didn't forget to. (Yes, I HAVE forgotten to go to the bathroom.) As I was getting on with it, I thought, "I need to remember to get some headache medicine while I'm in here. Did I weigh myself today? I don't think so." So I weighed myself. Then I washed my hands and thought, "I need to get some hand soap for the kitchen sink so I'm not always using Dawn every time I need to wash my hands. The sink is dirty. Should I wipe it down now? I have those Clorox wipes conveniently under the sink for occasions just such as these. No. I am on a Mission. To Wash Dishes. This can wait. I need to get medicine." So I reached into the medicine cabinet and doled out my two acetaminophen and single ibuprofen, noticing that we were dangerously low on both. "I need to check these off on my grocery list so I don't forget." I left the bathroom, took the medicine with me to where the grocery list (which is one of two, both of which have a magnetic strip on the back to hang on the fridge--neither of them is on the fridge) sat quietly on the coffee table. I searched for a pen and checked off pain reliever and hand soap on the list (haha! I remembered!)
Now, as you may have forgotten, my Mission is to Wash the Dishes. To actually Finish. I put up the clean dishes--a spoon, a pot, and a bowl, which I placed on top of the stack then rearranged because we have Fiestaware and I don't like two dishes of the same color to be stacked directly on top of one another.
Hold on, I have to check my email. I signed up for this ADD newsletter about how to manage things and get them done when you have ADD and I just got like 5 emails from it and I can't stand having that number in parentheses staring at me, waiting.
Okay. Focus. Focus focus. I checked my email, which included a link to the "Clear Clutter the Fantastic Never-Tried Way That I Have Developed Just For You Because I Am A Psychologist and Very Special Human Being" document. I opened it and started reading--well skimming, cause it was a lot of garbage I probably don't really need--and found a whole lot of stuff that, sure enough, I already know. Small steps, duh. Have everything you need before you start, duh. I KNOW THAT. The point is that I just don't do it. Then I hopped back over a couple of Chrome tabs and looked back at the Mommy blog for a minute and realized I was in the middle of writing a blog post. (This happens every time I write a post, I'm just trying to illustrate my logic behind thinking I may have ADD.)
So. The dishes. I poured the water out of the soaking chicken dish from Thursday, ran the disposal, and proceeded to wash it. Then I washed the colander. I put some silverware into the dishwasher, along with a coffee mug. I washed another dish, and a pot that had some residual water staining on it and I didn't know if it was just hard water or actually dirty. Then I had to dry those dishes so I had room on the mat for the dishes I still had to wash. I put one up, then had to rearrange it all because one dish had to fit inside another and it was full of pot lids. Now I return to the remaining dish, which is leftover from when I tried to make no-bake chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies yesterday, which did not set up right and now I eat them out of the pan with a spoon. They're still good, I just couldn't take them to Sally's for dessert last night so I ended up having to go by Gigi's and get some cupcakes. They were awesome, but they use too much icing I think, and also it was 5 p.m. on a Friday in June and traffic was awful.
Anyway, the pot is all sticky with chocolate and sugar residue, and little bits of oat are cemented to it, so clearly the best thing to do was to put hot water in it and let it soak, probably for several days.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Sleep Schedule Fail
So at about 11 last night, I thought to myself, "Self, you must utilize your access to prescription medication with the objective of getting a full night's sleep, else you will fail parlously in any endeavor in which you partake tomorrow." Or something like that.
Well at 8:30 this morning I awoke to hear my cell phone alarm dingling away happily in the kitchen, and I staggered out of bed to silence it. I considered, briefly but not seriously, staying up, and then I staggered back to bed, thinking I'd sleep for another hour or so and then get up and do something.
Fast forward to time of waking. Roll around bed for awhile, sit up and put on glasses, smack phone to turn the light on and it's 1:30.
Obviously the day is over and there is no point whatsoever in trying to actually do anything, so all I have done all day is sit on the couch or floor and read blogs, check Pinterest, Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter. With the TV on in the background. Occasional snacks.
While I enjoy days like these on some level, and in fact during the course of the day do not actually feel any desire to do anything, I always like having the feeling at the end of the day of HAVING done something. I have done NOTHING today. AT ALL. This just makes me a failure at so many things, but my logic is, since I have already failed for the day by sleeping until 1:30, there is no longer any point in trying, so I might as well just do whatever the hell I want. So there.
Well at 8:30 this morning I awoke to hear my cell phone alarm dingling away happily in the kitchen, and I staggered out of bed to silence it. I considered, briefly but not seriously, staying up, and then I staggered back to bed, thinking I'd sleep for another hour or so and then get up and do something.
Fast forward to time of waking. Roll around bed for awhile, sit up and put on glasses, smack phone to turn the light on and it's 1:30.
Obviously the day is over and there is no point whatsoever in trying to actually do anything, so all I have done all day is sit on the couch or floor and read blogs, check Pinterest, Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter. With the TV on in the background. Occasional snacks.
While I enjoy days like these on some level, and in fact during the course of the day do not actually feel any desire to do anything, I always like having the feeling at the end of the day of HAVING done something. I have done NOTHING today. AT ALL. This just makes me a failure at so many things, but my logic is, since I have already failed for the day by sleeping until 1:30, there is no longer any point in trying, so I might as well just do whatever the hell I want. So there.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
I've Never Liked Musical Chairs
Musical Chairs is one of those games that just sucks. Somebody's going to be out, and it's always by the skin of your teeth that your butt misses the invisible line that divides the chair in half, while the other person smugly wiggles just a smudge and you fall off. Then everybody points and laughs, and you have to go stand dejectedly on the sidelines while everybody gleefully rejoices in their chairs, safe for another round. But even if you survived that round, you always have that innate fear, that sneaking thought in your mind: I could be next.
But what if they mixed it up and made it even MORE risky? What if all the players were blindfolded, and after each stop the referees (what else would you call them?) remove MULTIPLE chairs--it could be one, it could be all BUT one. And then they hide the rest. So when the music stops, not only are you worrying about how many of you won't get a seat, but you're also scrambling frantically about the room looking for the chairs, wasting precious time at every corner that turns up blank. So at the end of each round you have people standing, bewildered, in the middle of the room wondering, "Did we miss one? Is there a chair still out there? Do I still have a chance?" while the seated onlookers are taking a deep breath and thinking, "Thank God it's not me."
Well, that's how this week at school has been. We thought they took out three chairs, maybe more--turns out two of the people left standing managed to find chairs in hidden corners. Only one chair got snatched, and it belonged to the person I'm going to miss the most. She's okay with it, though; more okay than I am, probably.
I got a chair, but it's one of those that's made for toddlers. It's a chair, but slightly too small for my rear end and if Bob tried to sit on it with me, it would collapse. (That's a financial metaphor, by the way.) Bob's playing his own game at the moment, and hopefully he'll find one of those big throne-like La-Z-Boys hidden behind a curtain somewhere, one big enough to hold both of us, even if we're a little cramped. Of course, best case scenario is that we each manage to find a chair that is an appropriate size for one person. But nobody knows where those chairs are, or if they even exist right now.
I have had an idea that I think would be quite the viral YouTube sensation: Synchronized Roll-y Chair Dancing. Think of it: Ten people in rolling, spinning office chairs, whirling in and out of one another in a perfectly choreographed routine set to "Pumped Up Kicks." Amazing, right?
But what if they mixed it up and made it even MORE risky? What if all the players were blindfolded, and after each stop the referees (what else would you call them?) remove MULTIPLE chairs--it could be one, it could be all BUT one. And then they hide the rest. So when the music stops, not only are you worrying about how many of you won't get a seat, but you're also scrambling frantically about the room looking for the chairs, wasting precious time at every corner that turns up blank. So at the end of each round you have people standing, bewildered, in the middle of the room wondering, "Did we miss one? Is there a chair still out there? Do I still have a chance?" while the seated onlookers are taking a deep breath and thinking, "Thank God it's not me."
Well, that's how this week at school has been. We thought they took out three chairs, maybe more--turns out two of the people left standing managed to find chairs in hidden corners. Only one chair got snatched, and it belonged to the person I'm going to miss the most. She's okay with it, though; more okay than I am, probably.
I got a chair, but it's one of those that's made for toddlers. It's a chair, but slightly too small for my rear end and if Bob tried to sit on it with me, it would collapse. (That's a financial metaphor, by the way.) Bob's playing his own game at the moment, and hopefully he'll find one of those big throne-like La-Z-Boys hidden behind a curtain somewhere, one big enough to hold both of us, even if we're a little cramped. Of course, best case scenario is that we each manage to find a chair that is an appropriate size for one person. But nobody knows where those chairs are, or if they even exist right now.
I have had an idea that I think would be quite the viral YouTube sensation: Synchronized Roll-y Chair Dancing. Think of it: Ten people in rolling, spinning office chairs, whirling in and out of one another in a perfectly choreographed routine set to "Pumped Up Kicks." Amazing, right?
Monday, March 12, 2012
Screwing with the Universe
Ever have those days where you feel like the universe is just playing with you, and you want some way to get back at it? Today was one of those days.
Earlier today at school, I was going through sight words with a kid. I would ask her to tell me the word and she'd say, "I don't know." Now this is her strategy for whenever she doesn't want to work--just say you don't know, and hope they leave you alone. This same child remembered something entirely new we taught her two weeks ago and haven't discussed since. I KNOW she knows more than she lets on, which can be frustrating because she could be advancing so much faster if only she would realize it! But little kids don't think that way.
Anyway, I just got in the, haha, take that! kind of mood a little while ago. So I posted a Facebook status soliciting people to shoot the chickadee outside my window. (If my grandmother were dead, she'd be rolling in her grave, but she's alive and if she checks Facebook, she'll probably scold me. Life goes on--it won't be the first time. I love her dearly, and she's taught me a lot.)
Let's get this straight--I don't like birds. I know that's a blanket statement, and in fact it isn't entirely true. I don't hate ALL birds. I just don't like the boring, annoying ones--the ones that sit outside your window at ridiculous hours of the day and night screeching, who don't do anything cool like hunt small animals and other birds, or who can't be considered for purchase in the poultry aisle at Publix. I do, though, have a vendetta against a particular gaggle of geese that lives in the Inverness area, because they will regularly take up residence in the road and refuse to move even when you nudge them with the bumper of your car. I also have a vendetta against ALL swans--this is another story, though.
So anyway, the point to this post is that today my mission is to stick it to the universe in as many small ways as I can. The first way I chose today is to look up a very specific recipe for chicken, and then purposely get "creative" with it. I don't think it will have a major negative effect--rather than use lemon, for example (because I don't have any, they are expensive, and I don't like them), I sliced some onion and threw some minced garlic in there. I am kind of winging it with the rest of it, but with chicken, potatoes, and green beans in a pan with olive oil, onion, and garlic, it can't be that bad as long as it's all cooked, right?
Way #2 that I am showing the universe who's boss: I'm drinking Pepsi out of a Coke glass. Small, I know, but it's the little things that give you satisfaction.
Oh, and back (way back) to what I was saying about my Facebook post about asking people to shoot the bird? Well, underneath that, I posted a comment about what I'm doing tomorrow--volunteering at the Humane Society. Being hypocritical in a way that doesn't hurt anybody satisfies the rebellious streak in me. Which is good, usually it's asking me for chocolate and caffeine and battling my will for a happy tummy.
Such is life. Sometimes you get along, and sometimes you don't, and either way, it's the little things that matter.
Earlier today at school, I was going through sight words with a kid. I would ask her to tell me the word and she'd say, "I don't know." Now this is her strategy for whenever she doesn't want to work--just say you don't know, and hope they leave you alone. This same child remembered something entirely new we taught her two weeks ago and haven't discussed since. I KNOW she knows more than she lets on, which can be frustrating because she could be advancing so much faster if only she would realize it! But little kids don't think that way.
Anyway, I just got in the, haha, take that! kind of mood a little while ago. So I posted a Facebook status soliciting people to shoot the chickadee outside my window. (If my grandmother were dead, she'd be rolling in her grave, but she's alive and if she checks Facebook, she'll probably scold me. Life goes on--it won't be the first time. I love her dearly, and she's taught me a lot.)
Let's get this straight--I don't like birds. I know that's a blanket statement, and in fact it isn't entirely true. I don't hate ALL birds. I just don't like the boring, annoying ones--the ones that sit outside your window at ridiculous hours of the day and night screeching, who don't do anything cool like hunt small animals and other birds, or who can't be considered for purchase in the poultry aisle at Publix. I do, though, have a vendetta against a particular gaggle of geese that lives in the Inverness area, because they will regularly take up residence in the road and refuse to move even when you nudge them with the bumper of your car. I also have a vendetta against ALL swans--this is another story, though.
So anyway, the point to this post is that today my mission is to stick it to the universe in as many small ways as I can. The first way I chose today is to look up a very specific recipe for chicken, and then purposely get "creative" with it. I don't think it will have a major negative effect--rather than use lemon, for example (because I don't have any, they are expensive, and I don't like them), I sliced some onion and threw some minced garlic in there. I am kind of winging it with the rest of it, but with chicken, potatoes, and green beans in a pan with olive oil, onion, and garlic, it can't be that bad as long as it's all cooked, right?
Way #2 that I am showing the universe who's boss: I'm drinking Pepsi out of a Coke glass. Small, I know, but it's the little things that give you satisfaction.
Oh, and back (way back) to what I was saying about my Facebook post about asking people to shoot the bird? Well, underneath that, I posted a comment about what I'm doing tomorrow--volunteering at the Humane Society. Being hypocritical in a way that doesn't hurt anybody satisfies the rebellious streak in me. Which is good, usually it's asking me for chocolate and caffeine and battling my will for a happy tummy.
Such is life. Sometimes you get along, and sometimes you don't, and either way, it's the little things that matter.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Perspective
I was just perusing Pinterest, and I noticed some goody bags for a kid's party labeled "Thank you!" It got me thinking, when I was a kid, my mom always had me say thank you to the kids who came to my parties, or just came over for a play date. I always thought, in typical selfish-kid fashion, why exactly am I thanking them? I always thanked my friends when they invited ME places--they extended the invitation, after all, they let me play with their toys and make a mess in their house and eat their Fruit by the Foot. That made sense. It didn't make sense to me the other way around: Thanks for coming over and messing up my room, not putting my doll's hair on the right way, and eating those last two cookies I was going to eat after supper tonight? I didn't think that seemed quite right.
Now I see it differently. As an adult, and one who has suffered extreme feelings of loneliness, I understand the reasoning behind thanking friends for spending time with me. Even when it takes a lot of effort on my part, I'm always grateful that someone else thought I was a worthy way to spend part of the day. When you're a kid you don't think much about your value as a person. You're a kid, and your parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles (if you are lucky enough to have them) are always telling you how wonderful you are and everything you do, no matter how crappy, is perfect.
When you're an adult, you start to realize that your worth as a person is measured by more than the opinion of the people who created you (no offense, Mom.) Your worth is measured by the things you do for yourself, for your friends, and for people you don't know--in short, for the world in general. And when other people want to be around you, it's a sign you're either doing something right, or that they put up with your negative qualities so much because there is something lovable about you regardless of whatever you're lacking in personality. No one is entitled to trust, friendship, and respect without first showing some to others, and we're all guilty of betraying at least one of these fundamental principles at one point or another.
Despite our faults, most of us still have at least one person who calls you, texts you, eats lunch with you, or at bare minimum comments on your Facebook posts. If you do, be grateful to those people--they've seen the ups and the downs, and they are willing enough to muddle through your downs because they think your ups are worth it. If you don't, maybe you need to reconsider the ways you show trust, friendship, and respect to others. It's important to realize that people perceive things differently based on personality, gender, age, stage in life, and the kind of day they're having. If you're naturally sarcastic, like me, realize that some people don't get that kind of humor and don't appreciate it. Almost all of my friends have at one point or another been offended by something I've said. (I can't count how many times I've probably offended my husband.) But they've all forgiven me, just as I willingly forgive them for accidental insults that are nearly always meant in jest.
I guess what I'm saying in all this rambling is that now that I'm an adult, I appreciate much more that friendship can be a sacrifice. You sacrifice time, energy, calories, and sometimes your own feeling of well-being for your friends. And I love my friends and am eternally grateful for everything they've sacrificed for me.
Now I see it differently. As an adult, and one who has suffered extreme feelings of loneliness, I understand the reasoning behind thanking friends for spending time with me. Even when it takes a lot of effort on my part, I'm always grateful that someone else thought I was a worthy way to spend part of the day. When you're a kid you don't think much about your value as a person. You're a kid, and your parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles (if you are lucky enough to have them) are always telling you how wonderful you are and everything you do, no matter how crappy, is perfect.
When you're an adult, you start to realize that your worth as a person is measured by more than the opinion of the people who created you (no offense, Mom.) Your worth is measured by the things you do for yourself, for your friends, and for people you don't know--in short, for the world in general. And when other people want to be around you, it's a sign you're either doing something right, or that they put up with your negative qualities so much because there is something lovable about you regardless of whatever you're lacking in personality. No one is entitled to trust, friendship, and respect without first showing some to others, and we're all guilty of betraying at least one of these fundamental principles at one point or another.
Despite our faults, most of us still have at least one person who calls you, texts you, eats lunch with you, or at bare minimum comments on your Facebook posts. If you do, be grateful to those people--they've seen the ups and the downs, and they are willing enough to muddle through your downs because they think your ups are worth it. If you don't, maybe you need to reconsider the ways you show trust, friendship, and respect to others. It's important to realize that people perceive things differently based on personality, gender, age, stage in life, and the kind of day they're having. If you're naturally sarcastic, like me, realize that some people don't get that kind of humor and don't appreciate it. Almost all of my friends have at one point or another been offended by something I've said. (I can't count how many times I've probably offended my husband.) But they've all forgiven me, just as I willingly forgive them for accidental insults that are nearly always meant in jest.
I guess what I'm saying in all this rambling is that now that I'm an adult, I appreciate much more that friendship can be a sacrifice. You sacrifice time, energy, calories, and sometimes your own feeling of well-being for your friends. And I love my friends and am eternally grateful for everything they've sacrificed for me.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Bella
Bella.... Oh, Bella. She is, if you'll pardon my vernacular, a mess. One minute Brittany and I are falling out of our chairs laughing at something she's said or done, and the next minute Britt is pretending to strangle herself with her scarf because Bella won't listen.
A little information: Bella is six years old and repeating kindergarten this year; she's skinny because all she eats is peanut butter, cheese puffs, vanilla wafers, goldfish, and gummies, and her gait is more of a skip than a walk, so she burns TONS of energy. She loves to sing and dance, and she likes to make up her own lyrics to tunes she is familiar with. She is obsessed with fairies, particularly Tinkerbell, and she loves Barbie. Every day, usually multiple times, she stops her bouncing long enough to ask, "What color are your eyes?" We answer her every day and usually let her get close enough to see, but still she asks--and I discovered today that she also asks her own dad the same question all the time. Recently she's also had a preoccupation with angels and daisies. When she is focused on one of these things, it's incredibly difficult to get her motivated to do schoolwork; however, she conveniently enough NEVER gets focused on schoolwork.
It can take this little stinker upwards of an hour to sort 35 bears into 5 plastic cups based on color--and this lengthy time frame has NOTHING whatsoever to do with her low vision. She's just that stubborn. She sees colors very well and she's pretty smart; she has an incredible vocabulary, which is unsurprising considering so much of her information is probably based on sound.
Since Bella is completely blind in one eye and has very low vision in her other eye, it has been determined that it will be in her best interest to learn Braille and cane skills, so that if her vision fails completely she will already be much more adaptable. Since I am with Bella for about 30+ hours a week, I get to learn these things too. We had our first big breakthrough in Braille practice today--Bella wrote her name in Braille all by herself with no more than motivational support!
This is a HUGE DEAL. She hasn't been working on this for very long, and just yesterday it took her about 15 minutes to just write her name once--today she did it THREE TIMES in LESS THAN TEN MINUTES. Note: When I say she's learning Braille, it isn't the way you picture it. As she is so young and still working on dexterity, she uses tennis balls in a muffin tin to represent the six dots that form the basis for the language. We read books aloud to her and let her run her hands along the dots on the page, but she doesn't comprehend those at all yet. It's a long process, and she has a hard time sitting still for even five minutes.
But we're learning.
Eventually I'll post more information on Braille and sighted guide (when a seeing person leads a blind person), but for now, I'll leave you with this little scene from today....
Me (to Britt): Did you know Bella can speak with a British accent?
Britt: NO WAY. Are you serious?!
Me: Bella, do you know how English people talk?
Bella: No.
Britt: Do you know what language we speak in America?
Bella: I speak....BONJOUR!
And then we died laughing.
A little information: Bella is six years old and repeating kindergarten this year; she's skinny because all she eats is peanut butter, cheese puffs, vanilla wafers, goldfish, and gummies, and her gait is more of a skip than a walk, so she burns TONS of energy. She loves to sing and dance, and she likes to make up her own lyrics to tunes she is familiar with. She is obsessed with fairies, particularly Tinkerbell, and she loves Barbie. Every day, usually multiple times, she stops her bouncing long enough to ask, "What color are your eyes?" We answer her every day and usually let her get close enough to see, but still she asks--and I discovered today that she also asks her own dad the same question all the time. Recently she's also had a preoccupation with angels and daisies. When she is focused on one of these things, it's incredibly difficult to get her motivated to do schoolwork; however, she conveniently enough NEVER gets focused on schoolwork.
It can take this little stinker upwards of an hour to sort 35 bears into 5 plastic cups based on color--and this lengthy time frame has NOTHING whatsoever to do with her low vision. She's just that stubborn. She sees colors very well and she's pretty smart; she has an incredible vocabulary, which is unsurprising considering so much of her information is probably based on sound.
Since Bella is completely blind in one eye and has very low vision in her other eye, it has been determined that it will be in her best interest to learn Braille and cane skills, so that if her vision fails completely she will already be much more adaptable. Since I am with Bella for about 30+ hours a week, I get to learn these things too. We had our first big breakthrough in Braille practice today--Bella wrote her name in Braille all by herself with no more than motivational support!
This is a HUGE DEAL. She hasn't been working on this for very long, and just yesterday it took her about 15 minutes to just write her name once--today she did it THREE TIMES in LESS THAN TEN MINUTES. Note: When I say she's learning Braille, it isn't the way you picture it. As she is so young and still working on dexterity, she uses tennis balls in a muffin tin to represent the six dots that form the basis for the language. We read books aloud to her and let her run her hands along the dots on the page, but she doesn't comprehend those at all yet. It's a long process, and she has a hard time sitting still for even five minutes.
But we're learning.
Eventually I'll post more information on Braille and sighted guide (when a seeing person leads a blind person), but for now, I'll leave you with this little scene from today....
Me (to Britt): Did you know Bella can speak with a British accent?
Britt: NO WAY. Are you serious?!
Me: Bella, do you know how English people talk?
Bella: No.
Britt: Do you know what language we speak in America?
Bella: I speak....BONJOUR!
And then we died laughing.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
You know you're married when....
I had a married moment today. Bob was getting out of the shower and getting dressed, and I was getting ready to take laundry to my parents' house since we don't have a washer and dryer at our apartment. So as he opened the door I threw out my hand and said, "Give me your underwear."
Ladies, this is your life as a wife: washing your husband's dirty underwear and being glad to do it, because that way you know that at least he HAS clean underwear, and you also know when he needs a new pair because the old ones have holes bigger than the waistband.
This is not to say that Bob doesn't ever do anything to help out--today, for example, he put all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and fixed dinner. Last week he did the laundry because I was out of town, and most weekends we do the laundry together and share the folding and putting-away. Our marriage is very much a partnership and every day we learn about one more thing that annoys the other person and one more thing that makes them happy.
This is also not to say that every woman enjoys domesticity: I know several women who hate either cooking, or cleaning, or laundry, or all of it. My own mother is not a fan of cooking, but it made her happy to give my sister, my dad, and me a reasonably clean home, clean clothes, and healthy meals (when we would eat them.)(I say reasonably clean not because she was not a good housekeeper, but because with two children, two dogs, two cats and numerous friends and neighbors tromping through the house every day it's a wonder the house is still standing at all.) I have several friends who would rather express a dog's anal glands than vacuum. And that's fine. Everybody has different preferences, strengths, and ideas about who should do what in the house.
All this is to make the point that while demanding that a person hand over his dirty underwear is not something I'd choose as a career, it makes me happy that I can do certain things to take care of my husband, even when he's perfectly capable of doing them himself.
Ladies, this is your life as a wife: washing your husband's dirty underwear and being glad to do it, because that way you know that at least he HAS clean underwear, and you also know when he needs a new pair because the old ones have holes bigger than the waistband.
This is not to say that Bob doesn't ever do anything to help out--today, for example, he put all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and fixed dinner. Last week he did the laundry because I was out of town, and most weekends we do the laundry together and share the folding and putting-away. Our marriage is very much a partnership and every day we learn about one more thing that annoys the other person and one more thing that makes them happy.
This is also not to say that every woman enjoys domesticity: I know several women who hate either cooking, or cleaning, or laundry, or all of it. My own mother is not a fan of cooking, but it made her happy to give my sister, my dad, and me a reasonably clean home, clean clothes, and healthy meals (when we would eat them.)(I say reasonably clean not because she was not a good housekeeper, but because with two children, two dogs, two cats and numerous friends and neighbors tromping through the house every day it's a wonder the house is still standing at all.) I have several friends who would rather express a dog's anal glands than vacuum. And that's fine. Everybody has different preferences, strengths, and ideas about who should do what in the house.
All this is to make the point that while demanding that a person hand over his dirty underwear is not something I'd choose as a career, it makes me happy that I can do certain things to take care of my husband, even when he's perfectly capable of doing them himself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)