I've learned that :
wheelchairs don't go well in snowy parking lots.
people can make a really big deal out of nothing.
many people don't know how to deal with life when there is nobody else to blame.
most of those pointing at someone else are really just trying to stop people from paying attention to them.
sometimes you get what you want.
sometimes you get what you need.
sometimes you get what you get.
cookies' calories increase when used to dull worries.
a pot of soup can be stretched to feed many people multiple days.
I don't like to share chocolates.
chicken nuggets are heavenly dipped in nacho cheese sauce.
a bowl of cereal is a lovely way to end the day.
a cold cloth on the head soothes a headache nicely.
much reality tv does not resemble reality, & none of it resembles my life.
sometimes I don't know when to stop
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
New Year, New View
NEW YEAR, NEW VIEW
The new year gives us a chance to look at our lives from a new point of view. We are, of course, free at any time to view things differently. A brand new calendar just gives us an easy starting point. With this in mind I try to look at all that I must do daily with an alternate perspective, and examine a bit my motivations for the choices I make.
The biggest part of my days are spent caring for Hillary, both physically and mentally. One of my main goals for her has always been to give her the best quality, most meaningful life I can for as long as she is with us. I’ve always felt that it was my job to help her live in our world because we cannot live in hers. What if this year I tried to get others to visit her world instead? Maybe that’s a more appropriate goal now. There are laws and policies in place to ensure that she has the opportunity to participate in our world to the extent that her abilities allow, and that’s good. I think that the next logical step is to invite others to visit her world for a while, so they can gain an understanding of how to further include her in the world at large. Isn’t it similar to visiting another culture? How can we understand what another way of life is like if we don’t visit that world? I see it happening in her classroom with the Best Buddies club. Non disabled peers visit the classroom as well as hosting different events after school hours. When all are able to participate in activities that they all enjoy it fosters a level of understanding that reading or talking about inclusion doesn’t come close to. When people with differing abilities can work together, everyone grows a little. Someone without disabilities can look to the peer who has disabilities and see determination to achieve that they may not see or pay attention to in their peers who have no challenges. The person who has disabilities can feel accepted, and try to model the peer’s positive behavior.
The question then is how am I going to do this? I can start, perhaps, by seeking places where there are opportunities for some one on one time with new people. We do take Hillary out quite a bit, but perhaps I can look for new places to go. I can also try inviting more people to our home to spend some time with Hillary. This will be an exciting opportunity for both Hillary and I to broaden our horizons and expand our connections. Good goals for the new year.
The new year gives us a chance to look at our lives from a new point of view. We are, of course, free at any time to view things differently. A brand new calendar just gives us an easy starting point. With this in mind I try to look at all that I must do daily with an alternate perspective, and examine a bit my motivations for the choices I make.
The biggest part of my days are spent caring for Hillary, both physically and mentally. One of my main goals for her has always been to give her the best quality, most meaningful life I can for as long as she is with us. I’ve always felt that it was my job to help her live in our world because we cannot live in hers. What if this year I tried to get others to visit her world instead? Maybe that’s a more appropriate goal now. There are laws and policies in place to ensure that she has the opportunity to participate in our world to the extent that her abilities allow, and that’s good. I think that the next logical step is to invite others to visit her world for a while, so they can gain an understanding of how to further include her in the world at large. Isn’t it similar to visiting another culture? How can we understand what another way of life is like if we don’t visit that world? I see it happening in her classroom with the Best Buddies club. Non disabled peers visit the classroom as well as hosting different events after school hours. When all are able to participate in activities that they all enjoy it fosters a level of understanding that reading or talking about inclusion doesn’t come close to. When people with differing abilities can work together, everyone grows a little. Someone without disabilities can look to the peer who has disabilities and see determination to achieve that they may not see or pay attention to in their peers who have no challenges. The person who has disabilities can feel accepted, and try to model the peer’s positive behavior.
The question then is how am I going to do this? I can start, perhaps, by seeking places where there are opportunities for some one on one time with new people. We do take Hillary out quite a bit, but perhaps I can look for new places to go. I can also try inviting more people to our home to spend some time with Hillary. This will be an exciting opportunity for both Hillary and I to broaden our horizons and expand our connections. Good goals for the new year.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
My Bad Hair Life
I wanted to write something about the new year for my first blog post of 2011, but all I can think about is my hair, and I’ve come to a conclusion. I’m having a bad hair life. I know, most people just have the occasional bad hair day, but I seem to find that I have occasional GOOD hair days among the nearly constant bad hair days, and yes, I know that there are those with no hair who would love to have these problems. This thought stream got me to wondering how I ended up having a bad hair life.
As far back as I can remember, my hair has been the focus of conversation. I recall relatives commenting on the thickness of my hair when I was quite young. My mother gave me a home perm a few times a year. I slept in curlers for a good part of my childhood, and I can vividly recall spending time under a home hair dryer before blow dryers were widely available. My mother used to clean a beauty salon in town in exchange for getting her hair done weekly and I went with her many times. The owner very kindly allowed me to try on the wigs displayed in the window. What fun that was! My favorite was a very long platinum blonde wig. Which is ironic because if I stopped coloring my hair now it would be about the same color except it’d be called gray. Of course, my hair isn’t long either. But I digress. I loved my first blow-dryer, the “maxi”. I remember the ad in a teen magazine for it that I saw: 2 pictures of the same model, one with her hair a wet wild mess, the second with her hair beautifully styled with the caption “8:00 wet & wild, 8:07 dry & styled!” Somehow, no matter how hard I tried I never quite achieved that whole 7 minute dry & styled thing. Dry, yes, but not in 7 minutes, and as for styled? Well, thankfully they also had curling irons on the market at the same time because I needed one of them along with lots of hairspray. I even let my mother talk me into a “pixie” cut one year. Well, at least I blended in with my brothers--except of course for the girl’s clothes! Note to self: a pixie cut does not look like such if your hair is not stick straight and thin. Thick, wavy, coarse hair is not a good thing with a super short cut. At least I wasn’t getting home perms any more by that time. Next came the “pageboy” cut. That actually didn’t look that bad but oh boy was it a lot of work to get it to look right. It was at this stage that having “Farrah” hair was the rage. Thank the Lord that I was old enough to realize that I was not ever going to have that hair!
Once I became a young adult, I took to getting perms again, only this time I went to a salon. I loved the freedom of wash ‘n’ go hair that a perm gave me, but my hair grows very fast so it was really only easy for about 4 weeks or so. Then I was back to the whole hair dryer/curling iron routine every morning. I continued fluctuating between a non-permed pageboy and permed layered freedom for a few years, until my second child came along. When she was about 9 months old I marched into a salon and asked the girl to give me a very short cut. She questioned me a lot before she took the scissors to my hair, but she finally obliged. At least now it was quicker to style, but until that point I hadn’t realized how much gray was mixed into the brown. A new chapter was about to begin. Hair dye.
It was an incident at church that precipitated my enslavement to the color bottle. I was sitting in the pew after the service with my baby in my arms and my preschooler next to me waiting for my husband, who had sung with the choir, when the older woman who had been sitting in front of me turned and said, “Your grandchildren are very well behaved.” Need I explain further? Since then I have done everything from keeping my natural color going to being blonde. One thing I haven’t done is stop coloring. For some reason, it is more socially acceptable to walk around with a bad dye job and/or white roots than it is to be gray. About a year ago I mentioned to a few friends that I was tired of coloring my hair and wondered if I should just go ahead and go gray? Shock and dismay is the only way I can describe the reactions I got.
So, I shall continue fighting with my hair, blowing, coating, and spraying it into submission daily. Welcome to my bad hair life, and happy New Year. Have a great 2011!
As far back as I can remember, my hair has been the focus of conversation. I recall relatives commenting on the thickness of my hair when I was quite young. My mother gave me a home perm a few times a year. I slept in curlers for a good part of my childhood, and I can vividly recall spending time under a home hair dryer before blow dryers were widely available. My mother used to clean a beauty salon in town in exchange for getting her hair done weekly and I went with her many times. The owner very kindly allowed me to try on the wigs displayed in the window. What fun that was! My favorite was a very long platinum blonde wig. Which is ironic because if I stopped coloring my hair now it would be about the same color except it’d be called gray. Of course, my hair isn’t long either. But I digress. I loved my first blow-dryer, the “maxi”. I remember the ad in a teen magazine for it that I saw: 2 pictures of the same model, one with her hair a wet wild mess, the second with her hair beautifully styled with the caption “8:00 wet & wild, 8:07 dry & styled!” Somehow, no matter how hard I tried I never quite achieved that whole 7 minute dry & styled thing. Dry, yes, but not in 7 minutes, and as for styled? Well, thankfully they also had curling irons on the market at the same time because I needed one of them along with lots of hairspray. I even let my mother talk me into a “pixie” cut one year. Well, at least I blended in with my brothers--except of course for the girl’s clothes! Note to self: a pixie cut does not look like such if your hair is not stick straight and thin. Thick, wavy, coarse hair is not a good thing with a super short cut. At least I wasn’t getting home perms any more by that time. Next came the “pageboy” cut. That actually didn’t look that bad but oh boy was it a lot of work to get it to look right. It was at this stage that having “Farrah” hair was the rage. Thank the Lord that I was old enough to realize that I was not ever going to have that hair!
Once I became a young adult, I took to getting perms again, only this time I went to a salon. I loved the freedom of wash ‘n’ go hair that a perm gave me, but my hair grows very fast so it was really only easy for about 4 weeks or so. Then I was back to the whole hair dryer/curling iron routine every morning. I continued fluctuating between a non-permed pageboy and permed layered freedom for a few years, until my second child came along. When she was about 9 months old I marched into a salon and asked the girl to give me a very short cut. She questioned me a lot before she took the scissors to my hair, but she finally obliged. At least now it was quicker to style, but until that point I hadn’t realized how much gray was mixed into the brown. A new chapter was about to begin. Hair dye.
It was an incident at church that precipitated my enslavement to the color bottle. I was sitting in the pew after the service with my baby in my arms and my preschooler next to me waiting for my husband, who had sung with the choir, when the older woman who had been sitting in front of me turned and said, “Your grandchildren are very well behaved.” Need I explain further? Since then I have done everything from keeping my natural color going to being blonde. One thing I haven’t done is stop coloring. For some reason, it is more socially acceptable to walk around with a bad dye job and/or white roots than it is to be gray. About a year ago I mentioned to a few friends that I was tired of coloring my hair and wondered if I should just go ahead and go gray? Shock and dismay is the only way I can describe the reactions I got.
So, I shall continue fighting with my hair, blowing, coating, and spraying it into submission daily. Welcome to my bad hair life, and happy New Year. Have a great 2011!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Share Your Gift
It was a cold and sunny Saturday afternoon as a crowd gathered in the parking lot in front of Shop Rite. The focus of this group was a large square contraption with large bells and wires with a bench and pedals and levers. Perched on the bench behind the bells sat a man dressed completely in black save for a gold bird-like mask. As up tempo music poured out of speakers, the man began to stamp and pound on the pedals and levers, working the bells. Theatrically he engaged the audience while making music best described as haunting and medieval. The instrument he worked was a bronze carillon, usually only heard from a church tower.
As I stood there with my family watching and listening it occurred to me that there is no better way to temporarily lose oneself than to be at a performance in which the performer is enjoying what they are doing so much that they draw in the audience. This Christmas season I have been lucky enough to be seeing performers who get such joy from what they are doing that it beams into the audience, drawing in all those who are there. We went to an Advent afternoon of music at our church in the beginning of December. It just seemed to me that all those who performed were enjoying themselves and sharing that joy with all who were present. The final act was a group of adults who, because they enjoy making music, formed a “garage praise band”. The whole church rocked as they donned sombreros and treated us to their rendition of “Feliz Navidad”. If the Christmas season is about finding joy, then I have found it time after time in the past few weeks. What a wonderful gift performers give the rest of us when they are fully enjoying what they are doing and invite us to enjoy it with them.
My wish for all of you, my faithful readers, is that you find joy and pass it along in whatever way you are talented. Whether your talent is music, cooking, hugging, or just listening I urge you to share the gift that God has given you. In doing so, may you find the joy of Christmas in your heart. Merry Christmas!
As I stood there with my family watching and listening it occurred to me that there is no better way to temporarily lose oneself than to be at a performance in which the performer is enjoying what they are doing so much that they draw in the audience. This Christmas season I have been lucky enough to be seeing performers who get such joy from what they are doing that it beams into the audience, drawing in all those who are there. We went to an Advent afternoon of music at our church in the beginning of December. It just seemed to me that all those who performed were enjoying themselves and sharing that joy with all who were present. The final act was a group of adults who, because they enjoy making music, formed a “garage praise band”. The whole church rocked as they donned sombreros and treated us to their rendition of “Feliz Navidad”. If the Christmas season is about finding joy, then I have found it time after time in the past few weeks. What a wonderful gift performers give the rest of us when they are fully enjoying what they are doing and invite us to enjoy it with them.
My wish for all of you, my faithful readers, is that you find joy and pass it along in whatever way you are talented. Whether your talent is music, cooking, hugging, or just listening I urge you to share the gift that God has given you. In doing so, may you find the joy of Christmas in your heart. Merry Christmas!
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Christmas Memory
**Disclaimer: If any of my brothers read this and find that the facts are not accurate, I apologize, but it DID happen and forgive me if the details are not exact***
Looking back on the Christmas seasons of my childhood brings an eclectic deluge of memories. I can remember hearing the rustling of bags and packages late at night while my mother and aunt whispered excitedly, and my father’s footsteps while I lay in my bed pretending to sleep. One Christmas Eve we had a snow storm complete with thunder and I remember standing on my bed and peeking out the window hoping to see Rudolph’s nose glowing through the snowy night. Rehearsals with the children’s’ choir and special holiday dresses, one purple crushed velvet long skirt in particular, along with the feeling of an excited queasy stomach are among my memories. When I was a bit older I recall walking downtown with my friend after school to do some Christmas shopping with our babysitting money, and returning home to the smell of cookies baking. I recall that it was my job to help wrap gifts, and I loved the scotch tape with the Christmas designs embossed on it. I also enjoyed the time my brothers and I spent inventing games for ourselves.
Of all the events, sounds, smells, and feelings that I remember it is something that happened at some point during the Christmas season that always makes me chuckle. It was perhaps during the week off from school after Christmas, or a Christmas Eve afternoon. My 3 brothers and I were goofing around, as kids are likely to do when at loose ends. Someone decided that we would play a game of jumping over someone’s leg. One of us sat in the chair just inside the living room wearing a Christmas stocking on their leg and sticking it out while the others took turns running from the kitchen into the living room jumping over it just as they came through the doorway. Our house was small; it was originally someone’s 2 bedroom summer cottage that my parents made into a 3 bedroom by some strategic wall building as their family grew. So it was understandable that the doorways were so low that a 6 foot tall man had to duck his head to walk through the doorways in the house. At any rate, of my 3 brothers, brother number 2 was the tallest, even at a young age. In third grade he was taller than his teacher by at least a head, and it may be that this was the age at which he last played this jump over the leg game. I’m not sure if it was my leg or brother number one’s leg but when it was number two’s turn, he ran, he jumped, he hit his head on the top of the door jamb and howled. The rest of us, of course, rolled on the floor laughing and that is all I remember about it. I am sure my mother must have come running to find out what number two was crying about, and I’m sure the rest of us got into some trouble. Number two is no worse for the bump; he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at a private college. I’m not sure if my brothers remember that day, no one ever mentions it when we are all together. How funny that I don’t remember any of the many gifts I received for Christmas, but I remember a silly game and my poor brother hitting his head.
Looking back on the Christmas seasons of my childhood brings an eclectic deluge of memories. I can remember hearing the rustling of bags and packages late at night while my mother and aunt whispered excitedly, and my father’s footsteps while I lay in my bed pretending to sleep. One Christmas Eve we had a snow storm complete with thunder and I remember standing on my bed and peeking out the window hoping to see Rudolph’s nose glowing through the snowy night. Rehearsals with the children’s’ choir and special holiday dresses, one purple crushed velvet long skirt in particular, along with the feeling of an excited queasy stomach are among my memories. When I was a bit older I recall walking downtown with my friend after school to do some Christmas shopping with our babysitting money, and returning home to the smell of cookies baking. I recall that it was my job to help wrap gifts, and I loved the scotch tape with the Christmas designs embossed on it. I also enjoyed the time my brothers and I spent inventing games for ourselves.
Of all the events, sounds, smells, and feelings that I remember it is something that happened at some point during the Christmas season that always makes me chuckle. It was perhaps during the week off from school after Christmas, or a Christmas Eve afternoon. My 3 brothers and I were goofing around, as kids are likely to do when at loose ends. Someone decided that we would play a game of jumping over someone’s leg. One of us sat in the chair just inside the living room wearing a Christmas stocking on their leg and sticking it out while the others took turns running from the kitchen into the living room jumping over it just as they came through the doorway. Our house was small; it was originally someone’s 2 bedroom summer cottage that my parents made into a 3 bedroom by some strategic wall building as their family grew. So it was understandable that the doorways were so low that a 6 foot tall man had to duck his head to walk through the doorways in the house. At any rate, of my 3 brothers, brother number 2 was the tallest, even at a young age. In third grade he was taller than his teacher by at least a head, and it may be that this was the age at which he last played this jump over the leg game. I’m not sure if it was my leg or brother number one’s leg but when it was number two’s turn, he ran, he jumped, he hit his head on the top of the door jamb and howled. The rest of us, of course, rolled on the floor laughing and that is all I remember about it. I am sure my mother must have come running to find out what number two was crying about, and I’m sure the rest of us got into some trouble. Number two is no worse for the bump; he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at a private college. I’m not sure if my brothers remember that day, no one ever mentions it when we are all together. How funny that I don’t remember any of the many gifts I received for Christmas, but I remember a silly game and my poor brother hitting his head.
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