Today I went to a conference for one of my students to be removed from my services, those services being for the visually impaired. I pushed my boss to have this conference, and I don't think she appreciated it, but I have to sign papers that go to the federal government concerning VI students, and I want to make sure that I do it right. This student does not meet state requirements for visual impairment, and he hasn't for a long time, but he does have some issues. One of the teachers for his grade's team made the statement that he has taught for thirty-six years and has never had a student with a bigger emotional crisis, that this boy needs help NOW. So, he will receive testing to go into the emotionally disabled class (it used to be called emotionally handicapped.) That means that he has a normal IQ and emotional issues are getting in the way of his gathering the information he needs to learn.

I am glad the conference went the way it did, not that the boy has the issues, but that they may now be addressed in a more appropriate way. I did not have him for any classes, and once teachers see a disability or impairment listed on an IEP, they tend to say that everything that goes wrong with that kid is because of that impairment. I don't really get that; you wouldn't, for instance, say a kid's refusal to do math homework had anything to do with his getting speech therapy, but that is the way things seem to go with VI.

My husband and I are always on the lookout for ideas on staying healthy WITHOUT going to the doctor, and the new issue of READER's DIGEST had some good suggestions. We are paying attention to our diets and working on exercise, but I would like to know more ways to handle stress in our modern society. My husband is on call much of the time, so the stress of work never leaves him. When we had seven acres, we used to cut wood and do other chores together, but now we have a smaller property and NO TIME. I know that stress relief should be a priority, but so is paying the bills!

My little autistic preschooler screamed the whole time I was with him today. I don't care what they say about not taking it personally; you would have to have a heart of stone to fight through a lesson and not take it to heart. Makes me wonder if all the other kids in that preschool class are terrified of me.

Talking to my officemate about all the handicapped people we service got me to thinking about pseudobulbar syndrome, which is what killed my mom. She died nine years ago next month. When I looked on the net a long time ago, I could not find any references to pseudobulbar syndrome, only to pseudobulbar palsy, but there are some now. I was surprised to read that this syndrome is considered a "benign" form of ALS--Lou Gehrig's Disease. I guess, all things considered, I am selfishly glad I had Mom as long as I did rather than lose her relatively quickly to ALS.

Today I had to drop something off at one of the school districts I service for the co-op. I was going to go yesterday, but the timing wasn't right. I had tried to e-mail the director, but she couldn't open my attachment.

The secretary took my information and then told me that the director's mom is in the hospital. Dying. I guess she has been ill for a couple of weeks. The director is in her early thirties; her mom is in her early seventies. There has been no official diagnosis, but things don't look good.

I am not usually brave about my faith with people I don't know, and I hardly know this secretary, but I thanked her for telling me what was going on and told her I would pray for both the director and her mom. Her next words were, "As long as you are praying..."

This woman has a daughter who has MS and is bipolar. Her daughter has been hospitalized with psychotic delusions since December 2. Of course I told her I would pray. I have a a daughter.

How strange it is that I would go to that office today, that I would be brave today, that the secretary, who hardly knows me, would confide. There must have been a reason, and I WILL pray. One of the things I am continually reminded of is that prayer is often the only thing I can do.

The Bible says that we don't have because we don't ask. It says that where two or more of us are gathered in God's name, He is in our midst. I pray that the director's mom is ready to die, if that is what must be. That God will comfort the family in their loss. I pray for the secretary and her daughter, that the psychotic episodes will end and that they can be reunited. That medication will keep things under control. That the secretary's daughter AND the director's mom know how much they are loved.

I don't know the answers. I can just approach the One who does.

My health cost $5000 today. It will cost that again in eight weeks. This is for only one of the drugs that keeps me mobile, that enabled me to see my kneecaps again after two years and to keep up with my two-year-old grandson (well....keep up when it comes to a two-year old? Grandpa was there to help.)

My sister is a vegetarian, and she has commented to me that I put a lot of poisons in to my body. Although I was irritated by the commnent, she is right. Remicade contains mouse DNA. My daughter brings me books to read, and in one of her thrillers, the bad guys were using mouse DNA to mutate human beings. Putting these things in my body does not make me happy, but neither did the handicapped parking sticker and the prospect of a cane or walker before I turned fifty. I have the handicapped sticker, although I don't need it very often anymore, and the cane or walker was looking like a real possibility.

I know that drugs like Remicade carry a risk, and I find their expense daunting, but I would rather live the life I have now and take my chances on the risk than be crippled so early in my life.

Who knew twenty-five years ago that I would think fifty was young to be crippled?

It seems to me that if we as a nation allow Michael Schiavo to have his wife's feeding tube removed, we have crossed a dangerous line. I don't think anyone would begrudge Michael a more normal life, if that is what he wants. I do not claim to know the emotions he must have experienced because of Terri's condition, but if he wants to be free of her, he can always get a divorce. Her parents are more than willing to take care of her.

I work with handicapped children every day, and many of them have feeding tubes and are minimally responsive, at least until you get to know them and know how they respond. Yet educational law says that these children are entitled to education in a public school, in the least restrictive environment. Why should Terri be entitled to less? Certainly no one would deny nutrition to these children.

I find it hard to believe that when Terri said she did not want to be kept alive by extraordinary means, she meant having food and/or hydration withheld. I have a living will. When my husband and I discussed its issues, we agreed that while we did not want machines to breathe for us or those kinds of measures, the withholding of food and hydration would be inhumane. We figured if we could stay alive without the machines, there must be a reason for our being there.

I watched my mother die as her brain stem failed ovet the course of almost thirty years, and medical "practitioners" did not accurately diagnose her condition until three weeks before she died. An accurate diagnosis would not have changed the situation, but it certainly would have encouraged people to treat my mother better than they did. Doctors blamed her gradual loss of communication and other skills on "that menopause thing," dementia and mental illness. One pastor said she was depressed because she was now, at the age of sixty, an empty nester. He failed to consider the fact that at sixty my mother's condition became noticeably worse; things started much earlier. When we received an accurate diagnosis, we found out that Mom could communicate by writing even though she could not speak. How we wished we had known that before! The day before she died, she wrote a note to my father reminding him to take his offering to church because he had forgotten it the week before. Hardly the memory of a "demented" woman!

I was angry when people tried to tell me my mother was better off when she died. Although I was glad she was no longer in pain, the people who told me she was better off had dismissed her as a person long before her death. For instance, Mom liked to dance, so my father took her to a square-dancing class for seniors. The other members of the class went to the teacher, not my parents, to ask that my mother stop attending since she did not always immediately understand the directions or move appropriately. I had thought that seniors would be sympathetic to her plight, but most of them were afraid of ending up like her.

Where do we draw the line if we say Terri's life is no longer worth living? I take drugs for rheumatoid arthritis that cost around $30,000/yr. Since I am almost fifty years old, I do wonder what will happen to me if some insurance company decides that my life isn't worth their paying for my medicine. The quality of my life went rapidly downhill when I came down with RA, and while it has improved a lot, things aren't like they were. What if someone decides that I no longer entitled. I mean, I am older, and maybe young people need the insurance money more. My husband would bankrupt himself to keep me comfortable, but then what?

I thought we settled this before as a nation. We fought the Nazis as they tried to decide who had a life worth living and who didn't. Have we changed that much?

There was an episode of STAR TREK;THE NEXT GENERATION in which people were required to commit suicide when they turned sixty. It didn't matter what they had accomplished or the kind of health they were in. They owed their deaths to their society. My father, who studies the classics, said there was a Greek civilization that required the suicide of its older citizens. Is that what we will come to?

I know Terri's fight might not seem important to you NOW, but I think we as a nation had better beware. Sometimes when you cross a line, it takes a lot of work and hurts a lot of people before you get things back the way they should be. I guess I would agree with Pogo; as far as our courts are concerned, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

For more information, go to www.terrisfight.org.

I wish my ego wasn't getting in my way, but it is. I was so happy at first to be back at writing that I didn't care who read what I wrote. I was happy that I could actually organize my ideas. But then I included a sitemeter, and all of a sudden it bothers me that on the big, anonymous web, it does not appear that anyone is reading what I write.

This is exactly the reason that I quit writing before. I didn't think anyone would listen. I got the bug when I went back to school ten years ago, and I even wrote what I was told was some pretty good fiction, but beyond submitting to a WRITER'S DIGEST contest (once), and taking a weekend seminar, I didn't do anything with it.

I know enough about my favorite authors to know that their egos got in their way too. How does one combat this? My husband says I am a whole lot nicer when I write, and especially since I am looking at a change of employment, I want to have something worthwhile to do. How do I justify the use of my time with its practicality? I want to tell myself that it doesn't really matter as long as I am enjoying myself, but writing doesn't clean the house or make the afghan or send the cards...

ARGGGGGGH!

My husband and I went back to our old Bible class this morning, and boy,am I glad! The discussion was so deep it made my head hurt, but that's good for all of us every now and then.

We discussed the Samaritan woman at the well, which is found in John 4. I have read this story many times, but I have never had so many questions. For instance, according to the map the teacher had, going to Samaria was out of Jesus's way. Why did he choose to go there?

The woman at the well came at about the sixth hour, and she was pretty sure nobody else would be there. Given the fact that she was living with a man and had five previous husbands, what had happened to her? The fact that she went to the well when she thought it would be deserted suggests that she was a social outcast. Maybe she didn't have loose morals, though. In a society where men could divorce women by saying "I divorce you" three times, many women had a hard life.

How did the woman know Jesus was a Jew? Why was she bold enough to speak to him, to answer him, in a time and place where men and women who were not related seldom even made eye contact? Maybe she didn't have anything to lose. Maybe Jesus was her last hope.

The woman had a basic knowledge of what her people believed. She knew that the Jews and Samaritans were on the outs with each other. She thought that the basic conflict was over where one should worship. It seems reasonable to think that she wanted some peace, probably for her people as well as herself. I think she wanted some answers, and she was thirsty enough to search for them whether what she did was socially acceptable or not.

I wonder what the woman thought when Jesus knew her lifestyle. It doesn't sound to me like he judged her for it; he just called it what it was. He didn't throw stones at her or call her names. Certainly, Jesus could not have behaved like any Jew the woman knew, and maybe not like any man, either. Maybe his knowledge of her combined with his willingness to discuss her questions, convinced her of who he was.

Why did the townspeople believe this woman, especially if she was of ill repute? We know they did because they went in search of Jesus and convinced him to spend two days with them. How long had they been waiting for answers? For acceptance?

I personally find it very hard to go against what is expected of me. That has caused me a lot of problems since I tend to have my own opinion about a lot of things. I think them through, but sometimes, mostly because I have to be reminded that I don't run the world, I get myself in trouble. So I can see myself being the woman at the well. I can see myself living a life but knowing there is something better somewhere, if I could just figure it out. And depending on how much I wanted that better life, I might be willing to risk social taboos, even to the point of speaking to a Jew. If my own people did not have the answers, and it appears that, at least for this woman,the Samaritans didn't, it would become necessary to look in another place. Or to another person.

I will be interested to see the turn the lesson takes next week with this oh-so-familiar story. Is the whole point that we humans are not the ones who are in control? Or is the point that the One who is in control is ready to accept us as we are?

In November of 1959. my dad moved our family into the house where he still lives. I was four. I remember that time because we ate McDonald's for lunch, back when that was a new thing and people didn't eat out very often. We moved out of apartments, and my parents were very proud of having a house of their own complete with lots of green yard. The house was forty years old then.

My father's house is two-story, I guess, although the outer walls slant some. We remodeled the bathroom in 1969, got rid of the iron, clawfoot tub and installed a shower. It is a nice ceramic shower, but most adults can't stand up in it completely because of the way the outer walls of the house are.

Dad will be eighty in June. My mom has been gone for nine years, and although he never was very aware of preventative maintenance, things have gone downhill since she was around to "keep him on track." (He will not admit that when she did this, he accused her of nagging.) My younger sister and I have been bugging him to move when he laments about the state of the house, but he has neighbors that take care of his snow (an immediate concern), and I think he is overwhelmed by all that moving would entail. Shortly after Mom died, my daughter and I were trying to clear out some of the basement, and he put back much of what we threw away, including a piece of linoleum from before the bathroom was remodeled. Those Depression babies! Never know when you might need something.

The plaster in the house has had some major fall-outs over the years. The first were in one of the spare bedrooms, so Dad wasn't concerned. The next was in the livng room over his reading chair. He is a retired English teacher and he likes to read, so he noticed that. Then the basement hallway, again no big deal. Recently, though, for some reason he moved the furniture in the dining room and found that a good portion of the lower wall had just fallen off, something plaster and lathe walls have a tendency toward when they are old.

My husband tried to talk Dad into drywall, but no, he wants plaster and lathe, and he actually found somebody to do the repairs. That presents another problem. Although six of us lived happily in that house, it is small, only 900-1000 square feet. He has lived there forty-fivc years, and he really doesn't like to throw anything away. He and my mom moved a lot when they were young, but Mom saw to the packing and organizing. Clearing out the rooms so that work can begin is overwhelming.

The best illustration of this is the story my daughter called with last night. She found some friends to help move furniture. Since my dad is testy when he is in a good mood (you can be that way when you are almost eighty) and she wanted to keep him happy, she asked him to put sticky notes on the furniture to say where he wanted it moved; she would make sure it got moved there. Dad groused and refused to use the sticky notes!

I'm glad my dad is taking care of the house, but I feel sort of sorry for him, too. I have watched the toll on him as he lost friends and family over the years, and in an odd way the house is a metaphor of this. Recently his younger brother, who is seventy-aix,was diagnosed with cancer, and Dad was understandably upset. Those of us who love him wondered if he was afraid of being the only one left. In a way, I think, the decision to give the house a face-lift is his answer to that. If he has to be the only one, so be it. He will make the life he has the best that he can.

Bradley said "orange" three times today. It has taken a year and a half, and I don't know if he will remember on Monday, but I do believe the sun is shining just a little brighter.

If you've had any special ed experience, you know exactly what I mean.

Do you know a woman who has had an abortion? If you do, please remember that you haven't walked in her shoes.

Let her talk if she wants to.

Cry with her if she needs it.

Then forgive her. God has.

And then forget it. I guarantee she won't.

***In Memory of Richard, December 22, 1976***

I Corinthians 13:12

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.


My son gave me a gift last night. I'm not sure that he knows he did. You see, I am blessed with the Maxwell House son. Remember the coffee commercials where the son arrives unannounced for Christmas and his mom wakes up to coffee and him? That's my boy! He isn't perfect, but he has always looked out for the whole family. I think it started when he was four. My husband traveled a lot at that time, and he told Ron, our son, that he needed to be the man of the family and take care of me and his sister.

Anyway, obviously I am feeling a little insecure about this aging thing. I WANT to do it gracefully, but my mind rebels sometimes. Ron and I were having a discussion last night about some pictures on his website. He found a way to age both himself and his wife from their tender ages of twenty-six and twenty-four to age eighty. I asked him if he had done mine, and he had, but fortunately he loves me too much to send it to me. The gift was in what he said next.

He told me that he had a line drawing of me that was done through a website and he had kept it because it was beautiful. Then he said, "Mom, I know you didn't grow up as one of the beautiful people, but you are, and you need to know it. When I look at this picture, this is how I see you. And now I have to send you the picture."

Well he did. Send me the picture, I mean. And I was surprised, because the woman in the picture is really pretty. There was no space between my teeth. My nose didn't look too big, and the dents that have appeared around my mouth really weren't noticeable. The picture, what my son said, it all brought tears to my eyes, and it does again as I write this.

I know, of course, that we see the people we love differently than the mirror does. How wonderful it is, though, to be reminded that those dear to me do not always see the "poor reflection." They know me fully. and there is a pleasure in being fully known. A little glimpse of heaven. The promise of things to come.

So...thank you, Ron, for the springtime you have brought to me in January. And who knows? I may even post the picture.

Aren't they what make life worth living? Validation of existence?

One of my preschool students is autistic. He has limited vision and is developmentally handicapped. He is largely nonverbal as well.

Surprisingly, I am usually one of the service providers to whom he has the least objection. When he first started preschool, he bit the PTA. I don't know if he still does, but he used to cry when the OT came. She found out that he likes to swing, so she lets him do that. A lot. This student would often fuss when I took him, but once out of earshot of his classroom teacher, he was usually cooperative. Until this year.

I don't know what happened. His teacher says he has the same reaction to the speech therapist, but that doesn't make it any easier. He is almost too big to handle by myself when he is angry, and he has a lot of destructive habits, like pulling out his hair, scratching his face until it bleeds and banging his head on the floor. His classroom teacher says not to let it bother me, but it does. I know he doesn't understand, but I get upset when he tries to hurt himself out of temper. And I know this is ego, but I don't like the looks I get when I lead him down the hall while he is screaming.

One of the first lessons I relearned when I made the transition from teacher of secondary English to teacher of the visually impaired was that I was still in charge. You wouldn't think I would have to relearn that, but I was unfamiliar with the student population and therefore sort of intimidated by them. Developmentally delayed kids are universally cute, and they know it. They also know how to manipulate.

As a result of this lesson relearned, I took my autistic student on head on. Since his tantrums are hard for me to control with the RA, I asked for his aid to accompany us when we left the room. Then I resort to the old hand-over-hand routine. You don't want to nest the cups? That's fine, but I will take your hand and you will go through the motions. Sorting bells? You can pick them up yourself, or we will pick them up together.

Our struggle has been going on pretty much since the beginning of the school year, so imagine my surprise last week when this student actually touched puzzle pieces. He put three bells in bowls (one for him, one for his teacher, one for him....)and both looked at and touched the nesting cups. His reward is for us to go to the cafeteria and sing songs. His favorite is "The Hokey-Pokey." Anyway, it would have been reward enough that he participated, but at the end of the lesson he held on to me. I'm not used to that; we did the Hokey Pokey one more time. Then, when I told him I had to leave, he gave me a hug! I only see this student twice a week, so that was quite a reward. When I related what had happened to my husband, he too was pleased. "Isn't that what you have worked for?" he said. "A response?"

I hope I will hold on to the lessons I have learned from my special ed students. A little perseverance goes a long way. And one hug makes sticking with it worthwhile.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking into my local Super Walmart when something hit my leg. I was surprised, and when I looked down to see what it was, I saw the passenger door handle of a car in the lane. I don't think the driver knew she had bumped me. A woman who was putting groceries in her trunk saw what happened and said I should have gotten the license number of the car, but by the time I thought of that, it was turning the corner. At least I wasn't hurt.

Today I was sitting at a stoplight, and I was hit from behind. My car wasn't hurt, and I don't think I was either, but until he saw me put my car in park, the other driver wasn't even going to get out and look. His excuse? He thought I was moving! Now, I do sometimes daydream so that I don't take off like I am at a race, but I had started to move when I felt the impact. He could have made sure I was moving, couldn't he? But at least I wasn't hurt.

I don't think I am superstitious enough to be waiting for someone else to hit me because these things happen in threes, but I do think there is food for thought here. I wasn't hurt, but I easily could have been. Who protected me and why?

I believe that God protects us from more than we will ever know. I think that these two minor incidents may well have been two major ones otherwise. I don't know why sometimes we are protected and sometimes bad things do happen, but I am certainly grateful that Someone who has his eyes on everything has his eyes on me as well.

My husband is one of the calmest and most capable people I know. He is hardly ever short with me, so when he is, I take notice. This past week has been such a time. In all fairness, there have been a lot of emergencies at work that demand his attention and his assistant is nigh unto worthless, so I can understand the pressure. I was worried about the bleedover. I thought maybe he was getting sick and needed but would not take what my fellow teachers term a "mental health" day. He won't take it because the way his assistant is makes him worry that things will be even worse when he gets back.

It just happened that our daughter visited this weekend. She noticed the way her dad was acting and thought maybe he had some of what she called residual anger. She is coming up on a divorce, and when I asked her what she meant, she said that when she was upset with her husband, the upset spilled over into her attitude everywhere.

aha! I would hope that after being married so long I would look for this, but I guess I didn't since it doesn't happen very often. I like to hear about work, but when things are bad he doesn't tell me because he doesn't want to worry me. When I asked him about work, though, he opened right up and told me all that he was facing. He seems to feel better, and I certainly see why he was so stressed. I am thankful for my daughter's insight and the fact that she loves her dad enough to wonder why he was acting strangely instead of getting upset with him.

What is this thing doctors have about cholesterol? It doesn't seem to matter anymore if your total cholesterol is where it should be, they want the proportions to be right. I guess I can see taking drugs for it if your cholesterol is sky high, but if your overall number is good and your triglycerides and lipids are too, I think the docs should leave you alone.

Since with RA I must take so many medications, adding another is of concern to me. My whole body has never fit the norm, and I suspect that it is unlikely to start now. Why all the fuss if it is in the ballpark? Why can't we be PEOPLE to doctors instead of sets of numbers generated by neverending tests?

Why doesn't anybody stay to the right as they walk down the aisles in malls or go up and down stairs anymore? My husband says the whole thing was started because we as Americans drive on the right side of the road, but I think it is just polite and makes for easy people moving if people know what is expected of them. Where did the whole custom go by the wayside? Will anything replace it, or will we all just annoy one another?

I used to tell my husband that I did not want to go into special ed because I knew I would bring it home with me. I'm not sure that is a bad thing exactly, but it can make you tired.

One of the students I service is a kindergartener who has visual problems, cognitive problems and CP. I disagreed with his placement in a regular class, but now I see some benefits. He is way behind his agemates in every way, but eons ahead of where he was this time last year.

One of my assignments with this student is to eat lunch with him. We don't think he gets the concept of eating. He knows that when he is hungry he gets food, but he still grabs his food with his fist and shoves it in his mouth like a baby or young toddler. Sometimes I don't think he distinguishes between different kinds of food, and I know that he doesn't really realize that there are methods for eating. When he is hungry, he gets the food in his mouth in the quickest and easiest way.

Obviously, this does not work at the kindergarten lunch table for serveral reasons. First of all, it presents a choking hazard. When the class was given peanut butter cups as a treat, my student shoved the whole thing in his mouth. His teacher was quick to say something because she was afaid he would choke, but when she did, he just reached in his mouth and took the whole thing out. Secondly, it makes him a spectacle. With no help, at the end of a meal my student's face and the area around him are really really messy. His classmates this year have been understanding, but soon such eating will isolate him more than it already has.

My student's teachers wanted me to work with him on opening his own lunch containers, and he has made some progress there. He can open his lunch box or lunch bag and get eveything out, but the job is hardly done then. He has CP, so he lacks muscle control in his hands and elsewhere. He can't open a ziplock bag to get his sandwich out, so we open the bag hand over hand. The next problem is getting the sandwich out. He doesn't have a pincer grip, so he grabs with his whole hand, and more often than not he just grabs the top piece of bread on the sandwich; so once we get the sandwich out, we have to reassemble it. Every other bite or so, he needs to be reminded how to hold the samdwich so that he doesn't shove it in his mouth. That is easy on days he isn't hungy because he waits, but the little guy is hungry by 11!

Today I got the OT to help me watch him. He doesn't bite food off; he rips it. Consequently, today's lunchmeat and cheese sandwich was a messy disaster. The OT observed, and then I found an article on the web which says that poor cheek, lip and tongue control is normal in kids with CP. Neither of us know what to do about it, though. I called my resources at the school for the blind, and they are looking into it. They were amused in a way because usually people want to find out how to STOP their students from biting.

The developmental charts say that my student's biting and chewing skills should have evolved between the ages of 9 and 18 months. He will soon be six. I am convinced that he needs to eat in a socially acceptable manner, but this is something I have never encountered. The visual "piece", as my boss would say, does affect his understanding of eating. But so do his cognitive deficits and his lack of motor control. Until today, I never even knew people received therapy to gain oral motor control. My more handicapped students all eat soft food, and now I am beginning to see why this boy's mom usually packs PBJs for him. Less mess, and less choking. The OT says that the parents need to teach him this at home but if we, the professionals, don't know how to teach it, how would his mom?

I think working in special ed is beginning to teach me to count progress in baby steps. I need to learn how to keep it from breaking my heart.

Was I just too young to notice?

Before we moved to Indiana, I did not know any women who had been divorced after a long marriage. I have met them here, though, and I find it unsettling that their worlds fell apart when they were around my age. What is it about middle age?

Two of these women were divorced because of blatant adultery on the part of their husbands. One had been married for thirty years. I don't know exactly how long the other had been married, but she had seven children. Her husband was an executive, and the divorce took her from an opulent life style to the lower middle class in a hurry. Why is this important enough to talk about now? Well, because of two conversations that I had yesterday.

One was with a woman who has been married the same amount of time that I have. She was telling me about her two honeymoons, one to Niagara falls right after the wedding (which took place on Sweetest Day), and the other to Hawaii at Christmas. Sounded pretty romantic to me, especially the Hawaii part since I have never been there, and she admitted that it was, but as she talked, she said that the whole marriage had gone downhill from there. How can you say that about twenty-seven years of your life?

The other conversation was with someone I know a lot better. She has been married almost twenty years and still has small children at home. There seems to be a lack of communication in her marriage, and while she has known that for a long time, she is really battling with it now. I told her that I was glad she trusted me enough to talk to me, but I was worried about her. Her response was that I should be worried. That was NOT what I had hoped to hear. As she talked, I heard her say that she needed to do something to save her marriage. But what? And how can she save it if she gets no help from her husband?

Having been married twenty-seven years, I am a lot less arrogant about maintaining marriage than I used to be. Sometimes the whole thing is hard work. Seldom is the division of that work 50-50. Hearing these stories, though, and knowing how hard it is to maintain the marriage dance, is a reason to reflect. I do not know what goes wrong with marriage in middle age;maybe it goes wrong long before. I do know that I do not like watching the effects of gravity on my body. As I notice the changes in my face, I think about what I can do to avoid them. I want my husband to be proud to be seen with me. If the physical changes that I face make me feel insecure, I am sure they do the same to him. But it isn't just the physical changes. Will we retire? When? Will there be enough money? Will we be healthy enough to enjoy it? These things weigh on both our minds as well. And in the quest to rid ourselves of the unease these thoughts cause, both of us could certainly make wrong choices. So on to my, and maybe every woman's secret fear: if it happens to people that I know, can it happen to me? Will it?

I guess there is no way of knowing. I used to think that if adultery were involved, that would be the end of things because trust would be gone, but I have been alive long enough now to know that trust can be rebuilt. I know that sins can be forgiven. And over the long haul, I know that marriage is something worth fighting for.

I guess I haven't reached a conclusion yet, and maybe there isn't one. I know that in this imperfect world marriages will end sometimes even if one partner doesn't want it that way. Maybe the difficulties marriages face in middle age is a grab for youth or for certainty in an uncertain world. Maybe it is easier to divorce your wife because she doesn't look like she did when you married her than it is to admit that you don't look the same either. Maybe people, marriages are just different, as diffent as the reasons for which they falter. Maybe people don't realize what they have until it is gone. Or maybe bad things just happen to people sometimes. And looking for explanations for all of them is an exercise in frustration. In the end, the only thng I can do for the people I know that are hurting is listen to them and pray for them and their marriages. And remain committed to my own.

For better or for worse.

Yesterday I had something really important to say, and I said it. Unfortunately, I was not successful in saving it as a draft, and just as I tried, my dial-up connection kicked me off and the post was lost. I will attempt to say what I had to say again. I will also bug my husband for a cable modem. The money we will pay for it is not the whole issue. Fortunately, he is all in favor of decreasing my frustration.

Sometimes I wonder if having credit is worth it. I have finally reached the stage in my life that I can use my credit card and pay it off. My husband and I found what we thought was a good deal on a credit card that pays more cash back than we are currently getting for gas purchases that are swiped at the pump. Since most of our family lives quite a ways away and I travel as a teacher, that seemed like a good idea.

My husband made the application over the phone, and at the same time he asked for duplicate credit cards for an account we have with the same company. There was no problem with the duplicates, but there was with the new application. The credit employee called my husband at his place of employment, but then she refused to verify the employment because the phone number was not in the phone book. Actually, I am sure that the phone number is somewhere im the phone book because private citizens don't have problems with finding it. My husband couldn't find it though, even when he looked under the company's old name. And he works for the railroad, whose headquarters is in Atlanta, so its listing really isn't up to him. Anyway...application denied.

Knowing that I have a card in my name, I called in when I saw the letter. As happens so often, the railroad called my husband out to yet another place, and I thought that this, at least, I could take care of for him. But no. I am an authorized user, but I have no legal rights to any information about the account. Having been married for 27 years, that sort of irritates me. I am listed as his spouse, not his child. I would think I could handle the information. I guess it is a good thing I have an account of my own elsewhere.

My husband I are boomers, as in baby boomers, but one time a sociologist who came to my school to give an inservice told my principal that I was not a typical boomer, that I had a lot of characteristics of the WWII generation, and she should "manage" me accordingly. Well, I don't know that that principal did ever actually "manage" me, and I don't know how much different I am from a "regular" boomer, but I do know this much: at this stage in my life, it seems as if a lot of things that are not my responsibility fall into my lap for me to take care of. I usually do take care of them, too, if it is not worth the fight otherwise. My husband lectures me about this because, he says, I would give away the shirt off my back if he were not here to watch out for me. I like to think I am more intelligent than that, but I would also like to know how to cut back.

For instance, on Saturday we visited my daughter, who happens, at this point in her life, to be living at my dad's house. Dad is almost eighty, but he is very spry and alert. Not your typical eight-year-old (so maybe not being typical is genetic?). Anyway, we were late because of the snow, and our daughter wasn't home even though she was supposed to have the ingredients ready for her dad to cook lunch, and my dad was hungry. So we ordered pizza, which wouldn't be a big deal except that I got the money out of the car to pay for it. My husband didn't say anything at the time, but on the drive home he mentioned that, since we were not the hosts, providing the food was not our, or in this case my, responsibility. True. But it has always been that way.

I am not complaining, exactly, because I really don't mind helping out. And money doesn't mean a lot to me in a sense. I am sure that I do not know what it is like to be poor, and I don't particularly want to know, but I don't care if I have things to show off to the world. And my husband is right. If I don't want to enable people, which was the big thing about boomer parents in particular, I need to have them all ( the kids, my dad, my siblings) take responsibility for their own stuff. When they act like they are helpless, though, it just seems natural to step in.

And it isn't just my family. At school, I service visually impaired children, yet it becomes my responsibility when their behaviors get in the way and they do poorly in school, not because of their vision, but because no one holds them accountable. I have begun to stand up for right there, pointing out in case conferences that vision really has no bearing on whether a child turns in his homework. That problem seems to be pervasive among teems anyway. How do I then alter my behavior with my friends and family?

Maybe I will evaluate each situation. Is it a necessity? Is it my responsibility? Can they live without it? Maybe it doesn't matter what others think as long as I answer those questions for myself. I don't want to be an enabler. I just want to help when I can.

Yesterday, my husband and I drove 300 miles round trip through a snow storm to see our daughter. She is 25 and soon to be divorced, and she needs our support. On the way, we talked about a speech my husband has to give later this month.

My husband is a supervisor on the railroad, and they always put a lot of emphasis on safety (for which I am thankful). Last year, my husband gave this speech because his guys had a record of almost ten years injury-free. This year, his subdivision has had two injuries, which makes it the worst on the division, and he has to give a speech on that. Sounds terrible to me, but he has reflected on the whole issue, and I am impressed.

It is hard to see how the first injury could have been avoided. One of his men was walking out of the headquarters at the start of the day and broke his foot as he stepped from the concrete at the bottom of the stairs to the parking lot. There is a dropoff there of less than half an inch, and it is hard to see how such a drop could have caused a broken foot. All railroaders wear steel-toed boots, and I would have thought that offered more protection. Nevertheless, Bill's foot was broken, and he spent four months off work while it healed. My husband made sure that there was a less of a dropoff to the parking lot on the day the injury happened.

The other injury was a rules violation, something my husband thinks is the result of an evaporative act. What that means is that this employee got used to taking a shortcut past the rules, and since nobody caught him, his shortcut became a habit that resulted in an injury. He says that when he does safety audits, he is supposed to look for evaporative acts. I guess that makes sense to me. If you are used to speeding, it becomes a habit, at least until you get a couple of tickets and start to pay attention again.

Anyway, my husband is going to start out by saying that last year he was in front of these men giving a speech because his subdivision had the best record, but such is not the case now. Then he is going to talk about the injuries. Bill's broken foot was a hazard that no one had foreseen, but now it is taken care of, and the other injury makes it even more important to look for and audit evaporative acts. Then he is going to talk about how much the good safety record meant to his men, and how he knows they will work to re-establish it. He is even thinking about ending his morning meetings with a reminder of the railroad's safety goal: zero injuries today. He says that more than today is too much to think about, and that all the injury-free days add up. Then he is going to end with something like, "Last year I was up here telling you about the good safety record my men had. It only takes a moment of inattention to change that. Be vigilant. "

I think my husband did a really good job of reaching his audience in a humble, matter-of-fact sort of way. I know it has been hard for him. I don't see how it could be easy be responsible for the behavior of others. It is hard to be assigned to eat crow in public.

Here's to an injury free 2005 for Marion Subdivision!

I should have added to my last post that a wife can be unappreciative as well. A husband who works a full-time job puts in just as much time as his wife, perhaps more counting commuting, and may not have as many chances for breaks during the day.

I have known some wives, both working and not, who expect their husbands to take over when they get home so that the wives can get away. I don't think this is a bad idea in and of itself, but it can be carried to an extreme. When I was a young wife, I thought that my husband should be around for me to talk to when he got home. We lived in the country, most every phone call was long distance, and I had spent the day with babies or small children. How I longed for adult conversation! My husband is a patient man, but it did not take him long to point out to me that he needed down time too. He is a person who works out frustration with puttering, so his refuge was to go to our little barn and work on things. I took the kids and went outside when I needed company, and most of the time that worked.

I wasn't perfect....there were lots of times when I thought my husband should have helped more, especially since his job took him away four or five days a week, and I am certain that there were times he thought I should get out of his face. I think that, as in all things, married couples have to work at appreciating each other.

My husband probably borders on being a workaholic, but I was always able to point him out as an example to our children because he does a good job whether anyone is watching him or not. This causes him a lot of stress since he is a supervisor and not all the people he supervises are as industrious as he is, but I do admire him for his diligence.

Some husbands annoy me. Seldom is the husband that annoys me my own, and I try to remember exactly how lucky I am.

My current pet peeve is husbands who don't recognize the value of what their stay-at-home wives do. They want income. Money. I no longer have children at home, but since we had the last two days off school, I have done a lot of housework. My husband's clothes are clean. His meals are planned and I shopped for the food to make them, although I do not always cook. The dishes are done. The mail is sorted and that which demands his immediate attention is laid out for him. He takes care of checkwriting in our house, but I take it over when he is busy. When the kids WERE home, their needs were taken care of as well. My husband traveled at that time, and I was the parent who delivered them to their various practices. I admit that vacuuming was not a big thing to me and that housework was ignored at times when I had a full-time job, but much of the time, all my husband had to do was come home and relax.

I don't know how much all these services would cost if you had to hire them out, but I DO know how much time they take. Maybe it is time that some guys quit taking their wives for granted. Maybe they could appreciate the little things wives do, which add up, and even appreciate their wives!

When I was a little girl, I sort of liked ice storms. They were soooo pretty, and even though I had to walk to school and those were the days before girls were allowed to wear pants and I was not a big fan of snowpants, they were sort of fun to walk to school in. The adults were wrong, though; walking on the grass was not all that much easier.

Since I moved to Indiana, I have appreciated Toledo Edicon in that our power seldom went off and was never off more than 24 hours. It was pretty expensive, but there were benefits. Here, the power blips on and off a lot, and thousands of people were without power during the current storm. A friend of mine called and said she was without power, and the electric company says the outage may last until Monday. This friend has RA like I do, and I know how uncomfortable she must be without heat. Today I went to WalMart and the people were acting shell-shocked. The shelves were half-empty, and that is a rarity for WalMart. There was no water on the shelves.

I still think that ice storms are pretty, but they sure do wreak a lot of havoc.

We have a snow day today. Just like a little kid, I waited and hoped for it. There is a big ice storm, and a lot of people are without power. The thing I find weird, though, is that it is so hard to stay home when you know you should. I like to drive anyway, but somehow when somebody tells me I shouldn't go out, that about triples the need.

I am taking a free course in social development for preschoolers who are blind or have limited vision. One of the things that I noticed that I don't remember from my education courses before (of course, I was certified in secondary education) is that children have to be taught to enter a group, and that children who are viewed as popular study the groups they are to enter and do so seamlessly, without calling attention to themselves. I don't think I was ever taught this, nor did I teach it to my children, and it does not seem like something that kids would catch on to on their own. If I get the chance, I will teach my grandsons. A bigger challenge will be the little boy for whose sake I took this course. He has a condition called cortical visual impairment, which has impaired his mind as well as his vision. There are times when he will not be able to study a group visually, and I doubt that he could process what he sees if he did. How do I facilitate things for him?

Several years ago I made the decision NOT to watch the evening news. My reason for this was that I was told that doing so would lower my stress level, which needed lowered at the time and still often does. Not watching the evening news does not mean that I do not keep up with what is happening in the world. I catch the morning headlines, and I listen on the radio as I am driving. I look at the news on the web. I just don't think it helps me to hear/see each individual horror story.

My office-mate is a speech pathologist and a rather learned woman. I consider myself to be learned as well, but I did not feel that way as I talked to her about the tsunami and the enormity of its disaster. She watches CNN and listens to Larry King Live and public radion on a regular basis. I try not to have the TV on. Am I putting my head in the sand by not being informed? Or do I know enough when I know that there has been a disaster and people all over the world are affected?

My church is starting its own chapter of the Red Hat Society, which is an organization dedicated to having fun as you age. The requirement is that you be fifty. You are to wear a red hat and clashing purple clothes to all functions. While I like the ladies in my church who are leading this, I am not sure I am ready to proclaim my age to the world in this way. I like the idea of not fading out as I grow older, but I am not sure that I am ready for this.

One of my friends, an older lady of 70+ years has been e-mailing me about her new grandniece. My friend does not have or expect to have grandchildren of her own, so she is very interested in this, her sister's first grandchild. The first news about the baby was that she had come early, at 35 weeks. The second was that she had pneumonia. The latest is that she has a systemic problem that is causing her intestines to be necrotized. The prognosis is grim.

What do I say to this friend, especially as my own grandchild, as God would have it, was born healthy? How do I comfort her? Here is where those words "All things work together for good to those that love God" are hard to understand. I don't know about the baby's grandma, but my friend loves the Lord. Why did this happen in her family? And no....I do NOT wish it had happened in mine. I just feel for her and her family and what they must be experiencing.

I actually only have one resolution this year, and that is to age gracefully. The whole aging thing sort of caught me by surprise. It shouldn't have. Nine years ago when my mother died, a friend I hadn't seen in a long time came to the viewing. The first thing I thought was,"That's Bob!" The second thing was, " and why does he have gray hair?"

I come from stock that shows the signs of aging slowly, so I have found few gray hairs in comparison to my friends. That doesn't mean they don't surprise me. And then there is the question of what to do with them My daughter-in-law seems particularly interested in this. "Are you going to dye it, Mom?," she asks. I am different from the other mother figures she has. She wants examples, and I don't blame her. My mom was sick when I was her age, and I didn't have good role models for life after forty, so I looked around for women I admired. My own daughter is much more realistic. She knows that the chances of my maintaining my hair after it is dyed or highlighted are slim to none, so she told me I should gray gracefully.

And then there is the RA. For the uninitiated, that means rheumatoid arthritis. THAT has been a learning experience in and of itself, and I have not always taken the changes that are necessary gracefully. Fortunately, I have a very supportive husband and children that understand. But the reality is that I may leave the workforce, and then the question is, "who am I and what do I want to be when I grow up?" I thought I had that all settled.

I know it will be a good year. My baby, who is 25, is getting her life together. My son and his wife were blessed with a new baby on December 22. I know I will enjoy watching him grow as I have watched his brother. They live ten hours away, and still remembering the two-year-old's, "Grandma, look a' me!" brings tears to my eyes. And my husband doesn't mind being married to an almost fifty-year-old, though years ago he joked and said that when I reached this age he would trade me in on two twenty-fives.

So...here's to the NewYear! I hope I am wise enough to see the things I need to learn.

My son introduced me to blogging and I though it was a good idea. The blogs I like the most have their own voice, so here's mine.