Merry Christmas To All

Today starts our 'unplugged' holiday, but before leaving for a week, I wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I hope your holidays are full of joy and love. My year has been enriched greatly by each and every one of you!

Special Exposure Wednesday

This year when my children asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I didn't give them a list of 'things' but rather a list of 'services'. I know they don't have much money, but what they do have is ability.

My oldest son, Chip, offered to paint the living room, kitchen, dining room and hallway for me, and he is doing a wonderful job!! Here's sneak peek:



The wall above the chair rail is a light butterscotch color, and below the chair rail is a mossy green color. The chair rail is a creamy white. He picked the colors himself and they look fabulous!

Be sure to check out all the other Special Exposure Wednesday shots at 5 Minutes For Special Needs!

Today I am thankful for all the hidden talents my children possess!

Put On Your Dancing Shoes

This is a plea for help! It’s December 22nd and I still need some Christmas gifts for Ashley. I know exactly what I want to get but don’t know how to find it.

Ashley is deafblind, but she loves loud music and loves to rock out to it. She will not, however, wear headphones. She wants to watch something on TV while the music is blasting. I’m not sure how to explain it, but she seems to need to feel the music (lots of bass) and also get some visual input at the same time. To her, that is the equivalent of a teenager listening to an IPod.

So what I need are ideas about DVDs or BlueRays that would have bright colorful characters or people (can be cartoonish) singing songs with simple melodies. For instance, one that she really likes is on a Sesame Street DVD we have. There is a cartoon lady with a quirky voice singing Itsy Bitsy spider. Ashley likes to do the hand movements and sway her head and body at the same time.

The disk needs to be all music (and dancing if possible), not something like the Imagination Movers who sing occasionally but talk in between songs. Does this make any sense at all??

Actually, I can’t wait until she is older and I can take her to an actual dance club with really loud music and flashing lights, but 14 is a tad too young for that, don’t you think!?

Today I am thankful for the power of the Internet in helping to find something that I really can't define well

Snow Bound

I tried really hard not to complain this holiday season. I didn't say anything about the stores and all their aisle-way displays making it impossible for a wheelchair user to shop. I haven't written any blog posts about all the people who seem bothered when I ask them to move just a bit so I can get Ashley's wheelchair around them, or the people in their cars who seem impatient as I load her wheelchair into the car.

But now I have to say something. Yesterday, after being stuck in the house because of an historic East Coast snow storm, we finally dug out and decided to go to the mall. As you probably know, the malls always have their parking lots clear before any other business, and that was especially true this last weekend before Christmas.

So, our road had been scraped, my boys had cleared the driveway, and we headed out. This is what we found when we arrived at the shopping mall:



Apparently people with disabilities should stay home when it snows. And for the record, I saw NO regular parking spots that had been blocked by snow. 4000 clear parking spots, and 4 clear handicapped parking spots. It's really too bad because I had quite a lot of shopping to do....and quite a lot of money to spend.

Today I am thankful for those people who believe in community and inclusion.

Snowed In

We got as few more inches of snow after this picture was taken. I must say though, that in the past, this much snow would have crippled my home town. But not this time. Our neighborhood road was cleared in less than 24 hours, something that in past years would have taken a week.

I'm hoping it will stick around for Christmas!

A Single File Existence

I guess I never paid attention to this before.

Back in 2006, I wrote about some adult group home residents that I saw at one of our local malls. I wrote about their walk through the mall – “I saw the two women in charge leading the slow-moving group, and the four clients trudging slowly behind, not seeming the least bit interested in their surroundings. They were in almost a single file line, and at the end of the line was Jack, working desperately to pull his underwear from his behind where it had apparently gotten ‘stuck’.”

Then yesterday, while shopping at Walmart, I saw an older gentleman with Down Syndrome, probably in his 40’s, shopping with someone who appeared to be his mother. I’ve seen the two of them before out and about in some of the same neighborhood places I frequent. This gentleman followed his mother in single file through the store, and has done the same thing every time I see him.

Also yesterday, I drove past an apartment complex near my home, apartments where our local community service board assists adults with intellectual disabilities live as independently as possible. I often see some of the residents making their way to the Walgreens or the McDonalds on the corner. Every time I see them, no matter how large their group, they are walking in single file.

Why single file? Why not walking side by side, chatting, laughing or even arguing? Instead, their faces are frozen with no expressions – they never talk to each other – they just walk, one behind the other, to their destination and then back home again.

How did they learn this behavior? Is this what we have taught them is the only acceptable way to be a part of their community?

All this saddened me, and I plan to make sure my children know they don’t have to walk in single file. They can run and skip, they can link arms or hold hands, they can talk and laugh and yell sometimes. I don’t want my children, or for that matter, any other person with a disability, to have a single file life.

Today I am thankful for bold, quirky people. They make life so much more interesting.

Pulling the Plugs

I always wonder during a thunderstorm if the lightning is finally going to hit our house because we have so many electrical ‘things’. There are of course, the lights, the TVs, the video games, and the stereo. I’ve lost count of the computers we have – ones from school, my son’s computer for college, his computer for home, his ‘old’ computer that he has set up as a server in the house, my home computer, my work computer. And we can’t forget the cell phones and the IPods and the kitchen small appliances.

See, we probably do suck way more than the average amount of electricity. But all that is going to change for a week in December.

As a family Christmas gift this year, we are UNPLUGGING our life. We have rented a cabin in the mountains, a cabin with no TV, no computers, and no cell phone service. The cabin is on the edge of a forest, and we are hoping that our neighbors will be bears and deer, instead of garbage trucks in the morning and motorcycles in the night. We will go to bed when we feel like it – get up when we feel like it – go for hikes in the woods – walk beside the lake on a freezing winter morning. We will cook soups and stews and sit around in flannel while we eat it. My boys will learn to light a fire in the fireplace, and how to set it up to keep warm during the night.

We will play card games and board games and maybe, just maybe, will sit around and talk!

And….I will not be blogging for that week - the week between Christmas and New Years. My commitment to my blog has been to always write every Monday through Friday, and I have done that for three years now. I think it is high time for a vacation!

Don’t you?

Today I am thankful for the technology that delivers electricity to our home, and for the ability to shut it all off!