I grew up in Michigan. We have all the weather here. I love most of it, but especially the snow kind. This morning we had the first snowfall of the year, and I’m not kidding, when I got out of bed and looked out the window my heart skipped a beat and I had to catch my breath. Those clichés became for real, you know?
So today’s tidbit is that I am excited for this season, and below a picture of my kids and the snowman they created at 9 am. I mean, I was still in my pajamas, out in the front lawn, to take that picture. Don’t ever say I don’t sacrifice for the blog. You are welcome!
Today I did something kind of funny but kind of scary at the same time. I decided to fry an egg for a late breakfast, so I put a pan on the stove and turned on the heat to start warming the pan. Then I went upstairs to get a pair of slippers because my feet were cold. While I was upstairs I found a basket of clean towels that needed folding. Of all the laundry, towels are the thing I hate folding *least*, so I thought to myself, “what the heck, might as well fold these towels while I’m up here.” As I was folding I was thinking about how cold I’ve been feeling, and remembered that we had an electric blanket stored in the hope chest near our bed. So, I decided to dig that out and give it a go, bring it downstairs to see if it still worked.
And that’s when I smelled it. It was very subtle, but I have a keen sense of smell so I pick up these things. It was a definite smell of HEAT. Oh, dear lordy I left the stove on!! In a near panic, I headed down the stairs – cautiously but quickly – to be sure there was no catastrophe (i.e. FIRE) going on the kitchen.
And thankfully, there was no fire. Not even a scorched-to-hell frying pan. Just a really hot, really lonely, really ready for the egg, frying pan. I turned the stove off, removed the pan from the hot burner, and headed back upstairs to finish with my derailed train of thought activities.
It turned out fine, but I really need to be more careful. New rule: Stay in the kitchen while I’m cooking. That, or just stick to fruit smoothies. Far less dangerous!
I’m back! The illness is gone. We have recovered. We all came through unscathed; my husband and the dog both managed to avoid it altogether (I do hope I’m not jinxing my husband by saying this).
I got back to working on the book I’m writing. I gave myself a deadline of 12/31/15, which is quite aggressive I know, but I also know I have to do such things to keep me from giving up altogether. Deadlines motivate, y’all. The book is a memoir of sorts, so it’s not a cut and dried process. I understand this, and know full well that I may not have a rough draft by my deadline, but progress is progress. Phleh.
I had a thought today (while in the shower… all my favorite ideas come to me while I’m washing my hair) that maybe I will start blogging every day. That sounds like another aggressive goal, doesn’t it? Well, I’m not talking about writing good stuff every day. Just every day, I will plan to share my favorite thought or event from that day. I use the term “event” loosely, as it could be as lame as “the dog didn’t piss me off today, and here’s why…” To make this daily occurrence even more exciting for you loyal readers, I would give it a snarky name, like The Daily Snippet. Or to be more true to how it will likely end up, The Sometimes Daily Snippet. What do you think? Wanna play along? Some days you may be totally bored with it, and others I may just get lucky and strike a funny bone. You just never know, you know? Sounds exciting, right? Let’s start here…
Today’s Daily Snippet:
I love Pandora. It plays the old stuff, the stuff I remember, pre-hearing loss. The songs and rhythms that are familiar to me are the only types of music I can enjoy at this point, with my cochlear implants. I’m told it will get better with time, and to just be patient. Listening to familiar songs is supposed to help. Thank you Pandora, for helping my brain re-learn how to hear and enjoy music. And thank you Beck, for being your funky cool self 🙂
Also notable today, I did some rearranging around the house and that always makes me feel happy. Helps me forget all the evil going on the world right now, if only for a moment.
Hug your loved ones today, and every day. Peace out!
The illness runs strong in this house. First it hit my son, with vomiting and diarrhea – the kind with no warning – and then a few days later it was my daughter with a scary high fever, and then me with your typical sore throat, stuffy nose, and achiness, and then back again to my son. My husband has yet – cross your fingers – to catch whatever this horrendous bug is. But my word! It’s been 10 straight days of illness and I am plain tuckered out from it. I am ready for it to move on and leave us alone.
Really. That’s it. There isn’t much else to talk about. When I can be sure this crud has officially left our home, I’ll get back on my feet again and resume some more regular writing (and with any luck more interesting, as well). Until then, stay healthy. Drink lots of water and keep your hands clean!
My daughter lost another tooth today. This is her 5th tooth to fall out, but her 3rd in the last two months. She lost one just before Labor Day, then another just after school picture day (at the end of September), and then today. She came off the school bus with the tooth hanging around her neck in a plastic tooth-shaped case that the school gave her. She was so thrilled to have lost yet another tooth. She told me all about it, how she was “eating an apple and could feel that the tooth was loose so she just started wiggling until it came out and it had blood all over it and everything!” Keep in mind she was speaking with a significant lisp, since she’s missing 5 front teeth, and also she lost her voice yesterday so it’s all kind of a whisper. A lispy whisper. Say that three times fast.
I think the irony of this is that she is scheduled for her 6 month dental check-up and cleaning in three days. I don’t know whether I should cancel it or ask for a discount.
This girl is making a killing off the Tooth Fairy Game. I’m sure she knows the fairy is fictional, but she sure knows the money that shows up under her pillow is real!
At bedtime I asked her to remember her tooth, so she could leave it under her pillow. She couldn’t find it. She swore she had it with her as she was sitting on the couch. My son and I searched all around, under, and in the couch and we could not find it. That’s when I remembered that earlier the dog had been lying there, right in front of Natalie, when she started heaving (the dog, not the girl). I had quickly rushed her to the kitchen where she proceeded to vomit all over the linoleum. I had scooped it all up into a grocery bag so I could seal it up before putting in the trash, in order to keep it from stinking up the kitchen. My thought at this point was that the tooth had fallen to the floor and Piper had eaten it, choked on it, and puked it up along with the rawhide she had been chewing and her dog food from earlier.
So, since I don’t see well and often have to use my hands to “see”, I enlisted my son’s help. We took the bag out of the trash, ripped it open on the linoleum, and began searching. Luke carefully inspected while I held the flashlight. We couldn’t find the tooth. I thought for sure it was still in Piper’s belly, and my son would find it later when he cleans up her poo from the backyard. So, we closed the bag back up and stuck it back in the trash. When we stood up from the floor, Luke was facing the dining room table, and I heard him laugh out loud. Guess what he saw sitting smack dab in the middle of the table? That’s right, the tooth. We had sifted through dog vomit for nothing.
It wasn’t entirely grotesque, we were happy to have found the tooth for Natalie, and we had a good laugh at ourselves. Ridiculously, it was one of the best parts of my day!
I wonder… must halcyon days always be in the past? Or can we be aware at the time we are living them? Like today… can today be a halcyon day? Right now, as I sip my coffee, snuggled under my fleece blanket, with the dog snoozing at my feet? Is this a halcyon moment? Does that make any sense? Even if it doesn’t, I’ll take it. I could Google it, but I think that would ruin it. I’m just feeling blessedly relaxed and at peace, and these are feelings I so seldom grasp that I want to cherish the moment now, while I can.
This is not to diminish the value of my friendships with real people, because I have a lot of pretty amazing friends, but by golly, I am really loving my crockpot this year (I’ve had it a whopping 16). The internet holds a wealth of information and ideas for what you can make in these things, and I’m finding plenty of healthy, tasty meals.
But here’s why I’m really learning to love the crockpot – it allows me to work around my fatigue and still manage to feed my family. The fatigue that MS causes has really been kicking my butt hard this past month, and by 1 pm (even after a morning nap) I’m pretty slogged (not sure if that’s a word but it sounded good). By 4 or 5 pm, after getting the kids from the bus stop and handling the flurry of that excitement, I’m close to non-functioning. Which makes dinner prep rather difficult.
Case in point: It is almost 7 pm. We ate dinner already (tacos!!) but I’m feeling the munchies so I went into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal (granola, actually). I pulled the granola from the cupboard, the milk from the fridge, and set both on the counter. I then got a bowl and poured the granola into it, and proceeded to put both the granola back in the cupboard and the milk back in the fridge. Notice anything missing?? I walked all the way back to my bowl of granola, ready to eat, and discovered I had forgotten to pour the milk.
It’s really frustrating, feeling so… I don’t know, lacking in ability to perform simple tasks, I guess, and pretty damn powerless to change it. But I’ve been faced with lots of things, big things, that I cannot change. If I have learned anything from these big, unchangeable things, it’s that I do still have a choice. And that choice is to accept it, adapt, and move on.
The crockpot means I can prepare a delicious, healthy meal for my family early in the day, before I get fatigued. I refuse to give up and feed them frozen pizza every night. So, for what it represents and for what it allows me to do, the crockpot is my friend. The thing is old enough to drive now (a wedding gift), but I suppose using it for a ride to the store would be asking too much. We’ll just stick to food preparation for now 😉
Today my daughter stopped coloring to read a book. While that was happening, I was in the kitchen preparing potato soup for the crockpot – thoroughly *enjoying* dicing the potatoes. I was seriously relaxed through the whole process and was mildly disappointed when I ran out of potatoes.
And then I’m pretty sure I saw a pig fly just outside my kitchen window.
Oh my goodness. This past weekend was a whirlwind. Lots of fun activities going on. I can’t quite process it all. In fact, it has sort of left me in a State of Funk. (Also, I just finished reading The Giver, so I’m tempted to capitalize the Common Words. My apologies. Do you accept my apology, Giver Fans?)
Anyhoo, Saturday we went to Luke’s soccer game, and Grandpa took us out for lunch after. Natalie was wanting to do something special with me, so we went to this local “paint your own pottery” place called Playing Picasso. We had so much fun! Natalie was ecstatic, and had so much fun that she has decided she would like to have her 7th birthday party there (because her 6th is already planned). Of course she only gets one birthday per year, so she has the next three all planned out. This year is laser tag, next year pottery painting, and the year after that roller skating. Well, at least we have time to plan lol. Anyway, I really liked this place, and I’m already thinking I would like to come back on my own and paint some stuff. Maybe I’ll even throw myself a party one of these times.
On a normal day, the pottery painting was A LOT of art for this girl here, but I didn’t stop there. No sirree, I had plans to go to Painting With a Twist with a friend that evening. This was a completely new experience for me, but I had heard from other people that it’s a lot of fun. They get 20 or so people set up at tables, with brushes and paint, and then an instructor guides everyone through painting a masterpiece. After 2 hours, you have 20 matching paintings (in theory) and they take a group photo while everyone stands proudly holding their finished paintings.
I was a little hesitant to do this, knowing I would have trouble seeing and hearing the instructor, but we had them place us right up front. This way we had a better chance at reading lips, and could readily ask questions as needed. I ended up asking a lot of questions, mostly relating to which color was which on my palette. My vision is bad, but not in the way most would think. I have a much smaller field of vision, but within that field I am able to see 20/20 with my left eye (20/40 with the right). Colors on the other hand, are hard to distinguish. So most of my questions were relating to the colors: which one is blue? Is this one green? Can you show me where I just painted the white circle? White on white is impossible for me to see, and that happened to be the first thing we did. Oh, I could have freaked out right there, but I decided not to. I was determined to have fun, no matter what, and that is exactly what I did. Even when I lost my balance trying to reach the top of my canvas and almost knocked over the entire effing table. Yes, I lost it. Fell right over onto the table. But I quickly recovered, exclaimed “oops, I forgot I have poor balance”, laughed at myself, and moved on.
At the end of the day, I went home with some fun memories and a painting that turned out to look pretty darn cool!
Painting With A Twist
It may not seem like a big deal for most, but it was to me. I am still, two years later, adjusting to life with hearing and vision loss. I am almost daily faced with tasks that are new to me. New to the NEW Me, not the Old Me. And that can sometimes be a smidge frightening, but I am also daily making the decision to ignore that fear and just keep moving forward. Because today is a gift, and I refuse to waste it being afraid. Do you hear that? Life is a gift! Open that bad boy up!!
I haven’t been blogging much lately, and I think it’s because I don’t think I have anything interesting *enough* to write about. But maybe that’s not for me to decide… maybe I just write what I want to write because it’s my blog (i.e. nobody is paying me to write it). How does that sound?
So here’s a snippet for today. This kind of thing happens to me on a regular basis; so regular that I usually forget about it each time and move on. I have MS, and with MS comes balance issues. Shortly after I was first diagnosed in 2009 a physical therapist caught me saying “I keep losing my balance” and he corrected me with this: “You caught your balance. You didn’t fall.” I thought this was a much more positive way to express what was happening, and I’ve used that phrase ever since. Now, sometimes I do actually lose my balance, and tumble to the floor, but that doesn’t happen nearly as often.
This morning I was heading to the living room with my cup of coffee and as I stepped into the room I decided to turn on the light, requiring me to reach ever so slightly to my left to flip the switch. That turned out to be too much movement on too short notice. My entire body started to wobble and sway and I could feel very quickly that I was about to go down. But just then I grabbed the wall with my left hand, held tight to the coffee in my right, and remained standing on my two feet! I caught my balance (and only spilled a few drops of coffee)! Seriously, picture little ole me, casually walking along, stopping, turning to the left, then suddenly lurching side to side, forward and back, in a desperate attempt to stay vertical. I felt like I was dancing to ska music, but without all the legwork.
I found the whole thing to be quite comical, but since there was no one around to laugh with me, I am sharing it here with my readers 🙂 Have a beautiful day folks, and may you always keep your balance.
~WW
Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!
Deaf and half-blind runner with multiple sclerosis
Little M.S. Runner 