The Mom Thing

For the last couple of days, I've been watching a family drama taking place outside my window. A fledgling Black-capped Chickadee has been trying to convince a parent that it really still needs to be fed. It's a pretty good flyer now, and it's as big as the adult, so it's not very convincing when it sidles up next to the adult (I find myself thinking of this as the female, although I know both parents feed the young), flutters its wings, opens its hungry little mouth, and gives it the sad little starving Chickadee eyes.

The adult obviously thinks this has been going on just about long enough. Most of the time, the adult hops away. The fledgling follows, with more gaping and begging. The adult flutters to another branch. The fledgling follows. Occasionally, with an air (I know I'm being anthropomorphic here) of exasperation, the adult stuffs something into the gaping fledgling maw.

Seems like if the youngster spent the same amount of energy rustling up its own food as it does begging, it would get more to eat, for less effort. But you can't tell a kid anything.

I know what it's like.

Yesterday, Tuffy asked me how they charge for text messages on her cell phone. Um, beats the heck out of me?

She waited for me to continue. I resisted the urge to do so.

At one time, I was the one who sorted through all the eight bazillion combinations of cell phones and plans and carriers, tried to guess which would work best for us, signed us up, and paid the bills every month. Eventually, however, I stopped using my cell phone at all, and Scarecrow only used his in emergencies, at which time he would inevitably find that he had either left it at home, or forgotten to charge it. Since Tuffy was the only one using the darned thing, it seemed reasonable that she should take over its care and feeding. She can get whatever phone she wants, whatever plan she wants. Not my problem. That was a couple of months ago.

At one time, I'd have offered to track down the information she needed. This time, I didn't do that.

I finally explained that if she wanted to find out how she was billed for text messages, she could do the same thing I would do – rummage around on the carrier's website.

She whined (it was subtle, but it was definitely whining) that the website was confusing. Imagine the fluttering wings, hungry little mouth, and sad little Chickadee eyes.

Yup, I said. It can be confusing. We waited to see who would talk first.

If you still can't figure it out, I said, pick up the phone. Call and ask somebody. You're a clever girl. You can do this as well as I can. I wasn't born knowing how to do stuff, and I didn't take care of these chores because I enjoyed them; I did them because they had to be done. There's a lot of that in life. You can do it.

That fledgling Chickadee is still out there harassing its mom (I know it's the mom; I just know it), and not getting much for the effort.

I guess one of the hard things about being a mom is learning to let go; teaching them they can fly without you. As Mother's Day presents go, realizing that your kid can do that is the best one ever.

Mayday! Mayday!!

Hal an' tow, jolly rumble-o,
Leap an' caper all befor' the day-o!

Oh wait. That was yesterday.

Well, I really did imagine pulling out the old Morris kit, putting on the vest, tying on the bells, and dancing the sun up. I must've done a good job of it, too, because we had a beautiful spring day yesterday. Today, of course, it's back to being gloomy and gray and leaky. And I've got the Fools Jig tune stuck in my head. Appropriately and, apparently, permanently.

Scarecrow spent the weekend ridin' fence. I always thought that was a chore associated with containing livestock, but maybe the phrase 'little dogies' pertains to whippets, too. They had all day yesterday to test his repairs. Of course they didn't, because we were home. They were quite happy to hang out in a sunny spot in the yard with the rest of the pack. Today will be the test.

When Scarecrow came in, grubby and sweaty, from working in the yard, I realized how much I miss being able to do that. Not fixing fence – that's never a fun job – but generally grubbing around outside, getting dirty. Running or hiking or riding a bike, and coming in sweaty enough to have to quarantine my clothes. Pulling weeds! Death to blackberries! (If you're not from around here, Himalayan blackberry is an invasive species that is attempting to use the Pacific Northwest as a base from which to take over the planet.) Death to English ivy! (Ditto.) In addition to being cathartic, ripping out weeds is a great way to get dirty. Planting vegetables and herbs and flowers. Watering and weeding and sticking my fingers in the dirt for no reason at all. Having to leave muddy shoes at the door, and use a brush to scrub the dirt out from under fingernails. It's hard to come up with a way to get really dirty these days. I'll have to work on that.

Happy belated Bealtaine!

It's Not Just Me

My calendar has lost a couple of days. April ends on the 28th, which is a Thursday. The first of May isn't until Sunday. Aren't there supposed to be 30 days in April?

I'm so glad it's not just me.

Before I had to retire from my day job, it was hard to get too far out of sync with the rest of the world. Five days of work, two days of weekend. I might have to stop and think about whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday, or whether it was Wednesday or Thursday, but it didn't usually happen that whole days went missing.

Even when I was just tagging along with Scarecrow to Bob's Books, he worked a pretty regular Monday through Friday schedule.

His new job has a lot more potential for working at home. In fact, in his first month, there's only been one week when he went in to the office every day. Last week, he only went in one day out of five. While this is great for a lot of reasons, I find it easy to lose track of what the heck day it is.

It doesn't help when the calendar is missing two days. I looked at that darn thing for an embarrassingly long time before I realized that it wasn't just me. The calendar was wrong.

It's OK, really. I only get it for the greyhounds. I buy a Celebrating Greyhounds wall calendar every year from Greyhound Pets, Inc. They make a little money, and I get to look at nice pictures of greyhounds all year. It's a way to get my greyhound fix, since we (temporarily) don't have any retired racers hanging around the house. If I just wanted to know what day it was, I could always check my computer.

Duh.

A Lesson You Don't Want Me to Learn

I think it was last December that I noticed the control on my power chair was acting a little wonky. It took me a while to convince myself that it wasn't just my imagination. Mike the Wheelchair Guy first checked it out in January. He confirmed that it was, in fact, wonky. After fiddling and plugging and unplugging and much head scratching, he decided that maybe Mike the Permobile Guy better have a look at it.

So, OK. We made an appointment with Mike the Permobile Guy. He confirmed that it was, in fact, wonky. He fiddled and plugged and unplugged and scratched his head, and decided that the problem was the control unit. Unfortunately my chair, a 2007 model, uses older electronics than they're putting on newer chairs, and it might take some time to come up with a replacement.

That was in January. Now it's April.

I started sending polite e-mails requesting status updates last month. The first polite e-mail to Mike the Wheelchair Guy got an auto-reply saying he was on vacation for a week, but would contact me when he returned. Not wanting to be pushy, I waited for his reply for another week after he got back, but never got one. Hey, I've been there. Your e-mail box can get pretty full when you're out for a spell. Stuff gets buried. It happens.

So I sent another polite e-mail requesting a status update. This time Mike the Wheelchair Guy replied, saying that Mike the Permobile Guy had finally found a control with the older electronics, and he would be calling me early the following week to set up a time to try it out. Mike the Wheelchair Guy would be seeing Mike the Permobile Guy at a conference in Las Vegas the following weekend, and would "remind him of his commitment to getting this problem resolved." Yeah, right.

So it gets to be Thursday of the following week, and I haven't heard anything. I don't want to be pushy. It probably takes a couple of days to recover from a Vegas conference. But on Thursday I sent another polite e-mail, asking if there's anything I can do to get this moving along.

Mike the Wheelchair Guy replies by cc'ing me on an e-mail he sends to Mike the Permobile Guy, asking what's going on. Very helpful. I don't know if Mike the Wheelchair Guy got any response from Mike the Permobile Guy, but I sure didn't.

When I still hadn't heard anything by Tuesday of the following week (that would be yesterday), I was starting to get a little cranky. I pointed out to both Mikes that we started working on this problem in January, and now it's April, and my chair is still broke. My insurance is different now, which is going to make all this more of a pain than it would otherwise be. I'm tired of being nice. I'm ready to start rattling cages.

I got a call from Mike the Permobile Guy a couple of hours later. He made an appointment to come and try the new control box the following afternoon (that would be today). The timing is fortuitous, because Scarecrow was planning to work at home anyway, so we won't have to take time off work to get this done. Finally.

Wait wait wait… not so fast. The appointment was for 2:00. Around 2:45, he calls and says he's running late. Can we do this tomorrow?

Um, not really. We're not usually home in the middle of the day. It just happened that we could do it today. Tomorrow is not a good day.

Mike the Permobile Guy has no idea how lucky he is that Scarecrow answered the phone instead of me. (Actually, it's a pretty good bet, since I can't physically answer the phone unless it rings on my laptop, and he was calling our home number. So scarecrow always answers the phone. But still.) I'm tired of being nice. You have no idea how much of an effort that is for me. I would have used Discouraging Words. I would have let him see the real me, and friends, it would have been a conversation he would not soon forget.

I don't know the end of the story. I don't know whether Scarecrow can arrange to work from home tomorrow, or if we have to try to find another time to get the chair fixed.

I do know that the lesson I take home from this is that as long as you try to be nice, as long as you're polite, as long as you're not pushy, you'll be at the bottom of everybody's priority list. It's only when you speak up, make it clear that you're tired of waiting around for people to get their fudging thumbs out of their ears, that you expect them to get their butts in gear and get it done, that things start to happen.

Don't be so nice. That's a lesson I can learn, but trust me, it's better if I don't.

Purpose in Life

I have never spent much time worrying about my Purpose in Life. I have no philosophical bent, and I'm not religious. And, I admit, it's partly because I'm shallow and intellectually lazy. But I like questions that I can answer, or at least questions that can be answered, by somebody. The Grand Imponderables are not something I'm inclined to spend a lot of time pondering. I don't know if there's a Purpose or a Reason. I'm here. I'll just go with that. It works for me.

Imagine my amazement to realize that I do have a Purpose in Life. I occupy an important place in the grand scheme of things. I play a role in the great cosmic events that determine the direction of the universe.

I allow Scarecrow to use the HOV lane.

In case you're fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with Seattle traffic, it's a mess. A lot of cars want to go the same place at the same time, and where ever you are, there's water between where you are, and where you want to be. Scarecrow's new commute takes him through the thick of it. Every day. Twice a day.

The HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lane, reserved for transit vehicles or cars carrying two or more people, has so few qualified users that these fortunate few can zip past the numberless horde, as they wait more-or-less patiently in line to reach their destination. If it weren't for me, Scarecrow would be waiting in line with the rest of them.

You might think this is a job that can be done by one of those life-size inflatable dolls, but the requirements are, in fact, considerably more rigorous, as many drivers with inflatable passengers have found out. The police expect a high occupancy vehicle to be occupied by at least two people who are breathing, and have a pulse. I can do that.

I have a Purpose in Life. Who knew?

Return to Jurassic Park

When Tuffy got home from class yesterday, she found a note on the door saying that our dog had been running loose in the street, and had nearly been hit by a car. Bareit, clearly the subject of the note and clearly still loose, greeted Tuffy at the front door.

Crap.

If there's a way to keep this darned dog in when he wants to be out, we obviously haven't figured out how to do it. Although I admit our fence needs work, it was good enough to keep two greyhounds safely contained for three years. If Bareit wants out, he's out in about five minutes. He's been over it, under it, and, most recently, through it. Fortunately, he usually runs to the front door and waits to be let in. Sometimes he doesn't, and that's bad. It makes me queasy to think about him running in the street.

When I lived in Laingsburg, Michigan, on any crisp fall afternoon I could count on Maggie Blue to make a break for it. She was an English setter, and she lived for birds. If I wasn't going to take her out to look for them, she'd go by herself. We lived on 5 acres, surrounded by corn fields amply populated by ringnecked pheasants. There was a very entertaining pen full of quail behind house, and a bunch of fat, slow chickens. The road that went by our house got little traffic, and although there was little reason for her to go that way, I was still terrified that Maggie and a car would somehow wind up in the same place at the same time. (Never happened. She moved with me to Lansing, and later to Seattle, where she lived to a ripe old age.)

The street we live on now isn't the autobahn, but it carries a lot more traffic than a road in rural Michigan. And really, it only takes one car, coming along at the right time, to make a dog seriously flat.

Scarecrow erected a temporary barricade last night, confining the wandering whippet to the least permeable part of the yard. Seriously, if he can get out of this, I really don't know what else we can do. He won't get as much exercise, but at least he'll be alive to get fat.

The little s#!t.

Sensory Deprivation

Scarecrow just took the screens off the windows in our office at home. It's still not warm enough to have them open, and you can see out a lot better without screens on. Duh.

The view isn't particularly spectacular. Close-up, there are the trunks of a couple of large but scraggly black cottonwoods. Since the house sits up above the street, the window looks across the street to Swamp Creek Park. As the name suggests, it's not a lawn-and-rose-bushes kind of park (although there is a patch of grass with some picnic tables further in). From here, I'm mostly looking across the street into the canopies of assorted deciduous trees, which are just beginning to think about leafing out, and a couple of red cedars. There's some seriously ugly fencing that doesn't even do a particularly good job of keeping the dogs in, not that anything seems to do a particularly good job of keeping the dogs in, but the window mostly looks across the top of it and birds sometimes stop there to check out the neighborhood.

We do get some good birds. Nothing exotic, not that I would recognize anything exotic, but close-up views of birds that like tree trunks. Downy woodpeckers, brown creepers. The occasional pileated woodpecker. Robins and juncos and towhees and Steller's jays and chickadees and Bewick's wrens and golden crowned kinglets and similar Little Brown Birds. And crows. And squirrels. I can see the weather outside, and tell whether it's day or night.

There are no windows in the bunker at Gloria's Books and Adult Day Care Center.

When last I worked at a real job in a real office, the 'windows' in my office looked out on a hallway. I called it the Burrow. For half the year, it was dark when I went in and dark when I came out. I never knew whether the sun ever came up or not. I felt like a gopher. Still, there were people and meetings and things to do and background noise and a coffee pot in the kitchen. There were pictures on the wall, and a whiteboard, and my greyhound calendar, and a bookcase, and geological layers of assorted desk detritus.

The bunker is different. It opens off of a dark interior hallway, way the heck at the other end of the warehouse from most of the office activity. One wall is cocoa brown, just a little darker than the walls of our office at home. The other three walls are that institutional not-quite-yellow color. There is nothing on any of the walls except dings and gouges, which I did not put there but which I'm sure my chair will make more of. In this big empty room, there's a little table against one wall, with my laptop on it.

Was it something I said, do you think?

Seriously. It's quiet. That's good. I can put up my greyhound calendar. I'm connected to the 'net, so I've got books and tunes and movies and blogger buddies and whatever else. Scarecrow's got a job, and I've got a place to be while he's there. This is all really good. Really good.

But I gotta tell ya, it sure makes me appreciate my window.

Gloria's Books and Adult Day Care Center

Yesterday Scarecrow started his new job at Gloria's Books and Adult Day Care Center. It's exactly like his previous job at Bob's Books and Adult Day Care Center, except it's more than twice as far away, in the other direction. Bob even works at the new place. It was just like they never left. Bob even wiped out an entire database, and threw away the backup tapes. Just like a normal day at Bob's Books. (Bob is the sweetest man you could imagine, but he belongs in a home for the technologically impaired.)

Just like the bizarre arrangement we developed at Bob's Books, I went in to work with Scarecrow. He helped me with lunch and bathroom breaks, as necessary. Elsewise, I just tried to stay out of the way.

I'm embarrassed at the lengths to which Gloria has gone to find a spot for me. She had obviously given it a lot of thought, and offered me a couple of choices. Choices! I'm happy to be allowed to sit in a corner, out of the way, and you're giving me choices? After a tour of the facility, we decided I would take up residence in a big empty room waaaaaaaaaaay at the other end of the (really big) warehouse. It's a veritable crip suite, as it's right across from an accessible bathroom, with nobody much else around. I heard a couple of people talking, but didn't see anyone else all day. I certainly don't feel like I'm under foot. There are no feet to be under. Feet under which to be. Whatever. I hooked up to the wireless 'net, and we're good to go. How cool is that?

My new hangout is, as I said, a big room with no windows, a warehouse-high ceiling, and concrete warehouse floor. It's warehouse temperature, which this time of year is still pretty brisk. It feels kind of like a bunker. Gloria brought in a rug for the concrete warehouse floor. Seriously. I can't believe this.

I wish I could still use binoculars. The warehouse backs up to a wetland, and I bet there are some good birds out there.

So, that's it. Who knew there were two book distributors in the greater Seattle area that would let an employee bring a disabled partner to work? Well I guess, as an old friend of mine used to say, 'You don't ask, you don't get.' We're in.

Sharing the Pain

Many of the websites I visit and the blogs I read are MS-related. Most of the time, I don't find them all that depressing. For one thing, a lot of the time they're not about MS. These people do have lives, after all. But even when they're writing about MS, reading them doesn't usually make me feel depressed. Yeah, having MS is crummy and I'm sorry that anyone has it. I wish I didn't have it myself, truth be told. I don't like reading that anyone's having a flareup or that their symptoms are getting worse. It might make me feel sad, but not depressed. The other day, however, I ran across a blog that I found profoundly depressing.

It's written by a 19-year-old girl who takes care of her mother. The mother has MS, and is apparently pretty seriously disabled. The girl is torn between loving her mother, and hating having to take care of her. It was not easy reading. It left me feeling really depressed.

You see, everything she has to do for her mother, Scarecrow has to do for me, and more. How could he not hate it?

Thinking about it, I realized I mostly avoid reading caregiver blogs. It's so hard for me to put myself in caregiver shoes, to imagine doing that job. I don't know how they do it. It's just too hard, and it never stops. It's easier for me to deal with having MS myself than it is to think about what it does to my family. I have no choice, after all. They could walk away, but they don't.

I've tried to avoid having Tuffy take on caregiver chores, to the point of hurting her feelings sometimes, I think. I don't want her to feel that she has to stay here and take care of me, instead of living her own life. It's a luxury we have because Scarecrow takes care of me instead. If it weren't for him, my daughter might be the angry young woman writing that blog. Hating herself, for hating her mother.

So, there's that. It took a serious dose of old-timey music, a couple of books with absolutely no edifying content, and some really stupid movies to restore my normal grumpy, cynical outlook on life. Sometimes it helps to share pain. Sometimes shared pain just makes more people hurt, and what's the point of that?

Tomorrow is Scarecrow's first day at Gloria's Books and Adult Day Care. The adventure begins…

There's an Outside, Outside!

I really need to get out more.

There are doors that go outside the house. I had almost forgotten.

It's been amazing. For the last three days in a row, the middle part of the day has been sunny and warm. And dry. Sunny and warm and dry enough to eat lunch outside. I had forgotten how much fun that was.

Scarecrow has been working on the deck, replacing some rotten boards. The month he had between jobs seemed like it would be a lot of time to work on household projects, but somehow there's less than a week left. How does that happen?

I'm bracing myself for when Scarecrow heads back to the salt mines, for all that I'm glad he's got a mine to go back to. It's not like I actually do any work when I go with him to work, but with the going and coming, it's a lot harder than staying home. So I'm enjoying these last few days of not-work. And if it's sunny and warm and dry enough to eat lunch outside, how cool is that?

Squirrel!

I sound the alarm!
Sneaky squirrel on our fence,
Come to kill us all!

EeerrrrwwrrowrrRRRrrwroooowrr...

It's quite a sound. I can't really describe it. The first time I heard it, I thought one of the dogs was in great physical distress; perhaps being disemboweled. Now I know that's not it. It's more like, "I need to be someplace and I'm going as fast as I can, but it's not fast enough."

EeerrrrwwrrowrrRRRrrwroooowrr...

A moment before, the ever-vigilant whippets might've been perched on the couch, ceaselessly scanning the horizon for intruders. From this vantage point, they can maintain surveillance through both the dining room and living room windows. Although these dogs typically have the attention span of a gnat on crack, they will carry out this visual patrol for hours at a stretch, on the alert for the least glimpse of a tiny paw, or nose, or the flash of a tail.

EeerrrrwwrrowrrRRRrrwroooowrr...

When one of them spots their quarry, or thinks they do, their legs are scrambling at maximum speed before they even touch the ground. It takes a moment before their flailing limbs gain purchase on the hardwood floor. Imagine Wile E. Coyote, taking off across the desert in a cloud of dust. It's like that. They're here, then they're both heading for the door at maximum whippet speed, which is really very fast. It's like watching a flock of birds, or a school of fish. How do they all turn at the same time like that, without running into each other? It's like two dogs with one brain. Pretty impressive in one way, but in another way, maybe not so much. I mean, two dogs, with half a brain each?

EeerrrrwwrrowrrRRRrrwroooowrr...

They drift sideways as they take the turn from the dining room into the kitchen, scrabbling for traction on the much-abused hardwood. Imagine the Doppler effect on their doggy siren as they negotiate the chicane through the kitchen and laundry room, and jostle for position as they approach the (narrow) dog door. Not being able to keep up with a whippet I never actually see this part of the pursuit, but Jasmine, being at a significant weight disadvantage, probably gets bumped out of the way. The slap of the door flap, and they take off across the deck.

Thunderthunderthunderthunderthunderthunder…

By the time the whippets race the length of the house, yowling the whole way, the squirrel is long gone. I haven't actually heard the squirrels snicker and chortle from their place safely beyond whippet reach, but I'm sure they do.

A couple of minutes later our tireless guardians trot back inside, hop back up on their perch, and the whole thing starts again.

And there's the male robin who, impelled by his annual case of testosterone poisoning, is determined to drive his reflection in our kitchen window away from the territory he has claimed. Every time the dogs hear him bonk against the window, they go streaking outside to keep us safe from robins. Since the robin starts bonking against the window as soon as it's light enough for him to see the evil interloper, the ever-vigilant whippets begin the day by tearing outside, taking the sheets and blankets from the bed with them.

Ah, spring.

*Apologies for the riff on Doggy haiku

Learning about Lightning

They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place. It makes sense, if you think about it. How much of a place is likely to be left, after it's been hit by lightning?

But me, I don't believe it anymore. Lightning can strike the same place twice. It may not happen very often, but it can happen. I know it can. Because it did.

On April 1, Scarecrow starts a new job that is absolutely amazingly like his old one. Who knew there were two book distributors in the Seattle area that would allow him to bring his disabled partner to work with him every day? It's way the heck the other end of town, so it will be the commute from hell, but how can you complain? Well, I can, of course. I can always complain. I'm really bad that way. But it beats the heck out of not having anything to complain about!

We still have some insurance problems to work out. Smaller problems than we were looking at before, for sure, but anything having to do with health insurance is always a pain in the butt. So there's that. But still.

Timing is everything, isn't it? Our old washing machine, which had been making an ominous clunking sound for some time, finally started smelling funny and filled the utility room with smoke. The new machine has many buttons, and can wash dog beds. Scarecrow likes.

Why Would You Want to Go Anywhere Else?

It looks like the snow last week is going to be the highlight, weather-wise, of the next couple of weeks. This is looking gloomy, even for Seattle, even for this time of year. Gloom, gloom, gloom.

It was Scarecrow's birthday yesterday. His first day of unemployment, which took some of the fun out of it, but still, having a birthday is better than not having one. And it's not like birthdays seem to have much of any effect on him. Although, as a 'nom de blog', Scarecrow is a pretty good fit on many levels, I could just as well have gone with Peter Pan:

I'll never grow up,
never grow up,
never grow uu – UP,
not me!

And the Yakima Fruit Market is open for the season. It always opens around Scarecrow's birthday. And since it's between our house and the vet clinic and the library, we go by there often. (The vet clinic and the library are close together, which is convenient.)

Scarecrow is going to talk to somebody about a job tomorrow afternoon, which means a couple of things:

1. He had to get a haircut. Well, he may not have had to, really. I think this is going to be pretty informal, but still, it's the done thing. I can't remember when he last cut his hair. Probably when he was refereeing wrestling, when Tuffy was in junior high (she's now a junior at UW). Anyway it was long enough ago that he had a waist-length ponytail. 'Had' being the operative word here.
2. This meeting is way the heck the other end of town – several towns, in fact. It will take a couple of hours, at least, what with getting there and back, and Tuffy has to work, so we're doing the home care thing again. It's the safest thing to do. I need to get used to the idea. It's not really that bad. Really. I know I'll get used to it. Eventually.
3. The meeting might lead to a job. And that would be good.

More Odds Than Ends

Blue sky and snow. We don't see too much of either of those things in Seattle, but last Wednesday we had both. Kind of unsettling.

When I don't feel like putting together a blog post, it's usually either because there hasn't been much going on, or a lot has been going on, and I haven't been able to sort it out. This time there has been lots going on, with the sorting definitely running way behind.

Most immediately, today is the last day for Bob's Books and Adult Day Care. Although the warehouse is looking pretty empty, there's still a lot of stuff to clear out. Scarecrow has worked here for almost 15 years, so not working here will definitely be a change, for him and for us. He's following up on a couple of job leads. If any of those turn into an offer, we'll see what we can do to make them work, day care-wise. In the meantime, we've got plenty of half-finished household projects to keep him busy.

A couple of people asked about the home-roasted coffee I mentioned in my last post. It was not roasted in our home, but in the home of one of the women who came to visit. Her husband has started buying green coffee beans in bulk, and roasting them himself. She says they bought a roaster, but that you can roast beans in the oven, or in a modified hot air corn popper. The end result, I've got to say, was pretty tasty.

I need to put some time in on the next issue of the Greyhound Pets, Inc. newsletter. Tell me again why I volunteered to write an article about intestinal parasites?

Scarecrow sent me this the other day:



Before you start in on me, I understand about disabilities that may not be apparent to the casual observer. I am not equating that with being lazy. Been there, done that, I get it. This is about people who really ought to know better than to park in a space reserved for people with a disability. Just a funny way to make the point, is all I'm sayin'.

That's about it. Lots of odd, not many ends.

A Very Ordinary Visit

A couple of people I used to work with came by the house for a visit yesterday. We caught up on jobs and kids and whatever else might've changed, or stayed the same, over the past couple of years. We drank home-roasted coffee, shared some bakery goodies, and yammered for a couple of hours.

The coolest thing about it – the very coolest thing about it – was how ordinary it seemed.

Yeah, I was sitting in my hideous black monster robo-chair, drinking the home-roasted coffee through a straw from a cup in my Doc Ock cupholder. And Scarecrow had to feed me the white chocolate brownie.

But we talked about how the places we used to work weren't the same as they were when we started there. We reviewed, at considerable length, the shortcomings of distressing coworkers. We talked about travel in Africa and South America. (They talked; I listened.) We talked about kids in, and out of, college. We talked about the future of tech writing, or the lack of same.

I don't mind talking about MS or disability or any of that. I wasn't particularly trying to avoid it. There wasn't that "elephant in the room" feeling. At least, I don't think there was. It just didn't come up.

It was really cool.

And the white chocolate brownie was so totally worth it.

You Could Be a Dog on the Internet

There was a piece on NPR the other morning about the difference between your Internet persona and the person you really are. In addition to places like Second Life, where you consciously create an avatar who may or may not be kind of like the real you, there are the tracks you can't help but leave behind in e-mail, IM, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and all the other kinds of e-communication that people use to form an image of what you must be like.

That got me thinking about what I must seem like to people who only know the e-me. What do you reckon? Dour? Sarcastic? Cynical? Not misleading, I'm afraid. That's the real me. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

I've had people tell me I seem shy. I am, a little, but I don't think that's what they're seeing. It's just that my mom always said, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I frequently don't have anything nice to say. Similarly, I'm frequently rude, although that's not my intention. At least not usually. I'm just oblivious to the finer points of social interaction. I'm not great fun at a party.

So the e-me is pretty much the same as the real me, as unpleasant as that may sound. Or rather, it's the same as the real me used to be. On the Internet, my arms and legs work as well now as they ever did.

Although this blog is all about MS and disability (more than I would like, truth be told), elsewhere on the 'net I probably look pretty normal. Corresponding with people I haven't seen in person since before MS really started to kick my butt, it usually doesn't come up. In most contexts, having MS shouldn't matter. I wouldn't say I'm hiding behind my able-bodied Internet persona, exactly. It just doesn't come up.

As much as I like being able to preserve a part of my life where MS just doesn't come up, it can make meeting people in person kind of awkward.

There is a plan in the works to get together, real life in person, with a couple of people I used to work with. In fact, they were the reason I moved from Michigan to Seattle in 1995. They're both smart, talented, funny, well-read and widely-traveled. They make me feel kind of ignorant and hopelessly provincial. I like them a lot. They have both known I have MS for about as long as I have, but I haven't seen either of them in person for several years. When last we met, I was a lot more capable than I am now. Although we've kept in e-touch from time to time, my physical abilities, or lack of same, just didn't come up.

So when we meet, acknowledging the differences between my Internet persona and the real me will be kind of awkward, but we'll get past it, then Scarecrow will conduct a guided tour of our remodeling project. We'll catch up on the gossip at the places I used to work. Our dogs will convince them that whippets are unmannerly and disrespectful. We'll resolve to meet up again, which may or may not happen. It'll be fun.

Then I'll go back to being the e-me.

I Love the Smell of Hops in the Morning

One of the things I will really miss about not coming in to Bob's Books and Adult Day Care every morning is the smell.

The warehouse that accommodates Bob's Books also houses a craft brewery, and brewing beer is aromatic business. Some mornings we're greeted by the fresh scent of hops, herbal and citrusy. Some mornings it's yeast. Some mornings it's rich, sweet, toasted malt. The lovely fat essence of organic esters. The ingredients of a wholesome, nutritious beer that will really stick to your ribs.

I'm told that not everyone appreciates the whiffy aspects of brewing beer. My mom says my granddad used to brew beer, and my grandma wasn't crazy about the smell. Or the occasional bottle that would explode in the basement. I've always enjoyed the olfactory experience, myself. Good thing, because Scarecrow has been a homebrewer for 20 years, and the process is every bit as aromatic when carried out on a smaller scale. While I could do without the sticky malt residue that covers every surface in the kitchen after a brewing session – Scarecrow is a congenitally messy guy – I've always enjoyed the smell. Well, that, and the beer. The beer is almost always good. (If you've never tried it yourself, it's not hard to make good beer. Scarecrow's first batch was one of his best ever. What's hard is making beer that is consistent from batch to batch. But it's almost always good.)

Another advantage to having a brewery next door is that Scarecrow could get yeast from them. He'll miss that.

Update from previous post: Sparky is planning to spring my pop from the joint this afternoon. Apparently he's looking and feeling better, although he's very weak, easily tired and a little confused. They never found out where he was leaking this time, but seem to think they got it plugged up for now.

I tell you, gettin' old is not for wimps.

Pop Sprung a Leak

My dad is back in the joint.

My brother (I'll call him Sparky – he's an electrician) called the other day to say that dad was weak and a little confused. Like, too weak to get out of bed. They got him in to the doctor, and found that his hemoglobin was way low. Again. He's sprung another leak.

They packed him off to the hospital, where they filled him up with blood. After that, Sparky said he was looking and sounding better. Now they need to find out where he's leaking.

Dad has a history of bleeding from holes in his gut. It has almost been the end of him on several previous occasions. If that's what it is, this time they probably caught it early. Who knows? He's 90 years old, for Pete's sake. He's got a lot of miles on the chassis. They're keeping him in the hospital for tests.

My mom, who is 88 herself and has more than her own share of medical problems, seems to be getting by on a combination of willful ignorance and denial. Sparky said she had a total emotional meltdown when he talked to her on the phone this morning, but by the time I called she had all the input filters firmly back in place. Whatever works, I say.

Whatever works.

House of Cards

The trouble with a house of cards is it's awfully darn fragile. A mishap that would barely cause a ding in a sturdier structure will likely bring the whole thing down in a heap. It's a precarious balancing act.

The house of cards at Bob's Books and Adult Day Care is coming down at the end of the month. Bob is closing up shop. Scarecrow is looking for a job; either one that will allow him to care for a disabled partner on-site, which seems pretty unlikely to me, or one that pays well enough to have someone else take over the job.

By unfortunate coincidence, my COBRA subsidy ends at the end of the month, too, so my health insurance will go from pretty reasonable to pretty scary. After three months of that, continuing the policy will cost 150% of what my employer pays. I'm pretty sure we couldn't do that, even if Scarecrow still had a job.

I knew from the beginning when the COBRA subsidy would end. I knew the situation at Bob's Books, while more open-ended, couldn't last forever. They were nice while they lasted. We were lucky to have had them for as long as we did. I'm grateful. I really am.

So. What next?

I'm going to take a couple more days to get over feeling like I just swallowed a large rock. Read some escapist literature. Watch some really stupid movies. Then I'm going to balance my checkbook. It's a control thing. After that, I'll take a look at the budget. Just to see where we're at. Knowing is better than not knowing, kind of thing.

We can do this. There are a lot of people who are a lot worse off than we are.

It'll be an adventure.

Ode to a Marmot

Happy Groundhog Day!

They say Punxsutawney Phil had to dig out of a snow drift today before he could undertake the annual search for his shadow, which was nowhere to be found.

I have no idea what that means. I just like marmots. And old-timey banjo.


“Ground Hog” by David Johnson
from Smithsonian Folkways

Invalid

I am really feeling very sorry for myself. The display on my nearly brand-new laptop went south on Saturday morning. Fortunately everything else still worked, so I could plug into an external monitor. Not easily portable, but better than nothing, especially since I didn't have anywhere I needed to go. Yesterday morning Robert the Computer Tech appeared at Bob's Books and Adult Day Care with a replacement display which was, alas, the wrong one. If the problem were a loose connection somewhere, we were hoping that just putting it back together would fix the problem. No joy. The right part should get here in a couple-three days. In the meantime I could use a dim, fuzzy, flickery old 15-inch CRT monitor that Scarecrow liberated from the file server here. This morning a different computer tech shows up, this time with the correct display. By the time he's finished, the display works, but the webcam doesn't. Of course, we didn't realize the webcam didn't work until after he left. After another seemingly interminable troubleshooting (duh?) session, they're sending another computer tech out tomorrow.

In addition to making me whiny, unpleasant, even downright cranky, this situation has me thinking about how much I rely on a great deal of human, mechanical, and electronic assistance to do pretty much anything. Does that make me an invalid?

Even though I can be, I admit, kind of fussy about words and this is something about which otherwise temperate people can get pretty darned touchy, I mostly don't much care about the word used to describe my current inability to do everything I used to do.

Some people refer to MS as a sickness, an illness, or a disease. I guess it is, but those feel wrong to me. I generally don't feel sick, or ill. And 'diseased' sounds so icky. But the words don't offend me.

A guy I met whose wife has MS was incensed that people would refer to her as 'handicapped', thinking it connoted begging, with cap in hand. Although I don't think that's the derivation of the term, I guess a lot of people share his view, and it's not the politically correct thing to say. I can't get that worked up about it, myself.

I've seen references to people who were 'differently-abled.' While I understand the desire to come up with a term that no one could possibly find offensive, this is just wrong. To me, it implies that these people acquired different abilities to compensate for the normal abilities they don't have. Maybe it's just me, but I sure didn't get any different abilities. Still, if you want to use 'differently-abled', knock yourself out.

At the other end of the PC spectrum, there's 'cripple' or 'crip.' I can refer to myself as being a crip, and frequently do. (When I started this blog I thought about calling it 'Tales from the Crip', but it's been done.) Fellow crips can use the term, in sardonic recognition of our shared predicament. It's ok for my family to call me a crip, because I know they mean it in the nicest possible way. At least I think they do. But it's kind of like the 'n' word; you can only use it if you belong to the club. You gotta draw the line somewhere. But depending on who's using it, I'm OK with crip.

You could talk about an 'impairment' or a 'disability'; either of those is fine with me. I realize that in addition to occupying different places on the spectrum of political correctness, and possibly causing different levels of offense in the population to whom they are applied, the words used to describe physical or cognitive limitations all have slightly different definitions, and different shades of meaning. Pick one that works for you.

The term 'invalid', however, gives me a little trouble. One definition, according to Merriam-Webster, is:

Noun: One who is sickly or disabled
Adjective: suffering from the disease or disability
of, relating to, or suited to one who is sick

OK, I get that. Aside from my previous reservation about being labeled sick, I can't really object to anything here. My problem is that when I hear the word 'invalid', what I hear is 'in-valid.' As in:

Adjective: not valid:
a: being without foundation or force in fact, truth, or law
b: logically inconsequent

Logically inconsequent? I don't think I'm ready to go quite that far. I may be disabled, but I need to think I'm still valid:

1: having legal efficacy or force; especially: executed with the proper legal authority and formalities
2a: well-grounded or justifiable: being at once relevant and meaningful
2b: logically correct
3: appropriate to the end in view: effective

And my favorite, although I admit I don't exactly see the relevance:

4: of a taxon: conforming to accepted principles of sound biological classification

There are lots of words one might use to summarize my particular combination of cans and can'ts, and really, I'm just not that touchy. I know that talking to somebody with a disability can be awkward, and most people mean well.

But invalid? In-valid? I'd rather not go there. Nope. Not me. Not yet.

Hardware Heck

So, OK, I'm sitting at my desk this morning, reading my e-mail or whatever, just minding my own business, and the display on my brand-new laptop begins to slowly fade to white. It then gradually darkens to a kind of streaky gray.

Now, I'm not a hardware person, but this is not looking good to me.

It's not really a brand-new laptop, truth be told. It's refurbished. You know – just as good as new, but a lot cheaper. The place I used to work always bought refurbished machines, and the IT guys at a software company should know, right? Since they're the ones who have to fix them if they break? I've had pretty good luck with refurbished computers in the past. Although, now that I think about it, I did have the motherboard replaced twice on my last one. But that was a long time ago. It's run without a hitch since, and Scarecrow has been using it since his (refurbished) machine died. And fortunately the IT guys where I used to work also recommended buying the 1-2 day on-site repair service, you know, just in case.

So, after a long troubleshooting session with a very nice man who spoke impeccable English in a call center in India that needs a little better acoustic insulation between cubicles, someone will be out Monday or Tuesday to fix it. And, in the course of troubleshooting, the nice man suggested connecting the laptop to an external monitor, which I wouldn't have thought to do. Apparently the problem is the display; the computer works fine. The monitor makes the laptop somewhat less portable, but it beats being without a computer until sometime next week.

Isn't it wonderful the way technology enhances our lives?

St. Scarecrow

On the radio this morning I heard a piece about a guy who had an unfortunate encounter with an officer of the law. I wasn't really paying attention so I didn't catch the details. Apparently Bad Things Happened, and the guy got his head slammed into a concrete wall. He is now totally and permanently disabled.

I started listening when they talked about how his wife has to take care of him 24 hours a day. She has to feed him. She sleeps in the same room, because she has to wake up three times every night to turn him so he doesn't get bedsores. She's a saint, they said.

Fortunately the $10 million she gets from the lawsuit will make it possible for her to care for her husband for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately for Scarecrow, I did not have the foresight to acquire a disability that is somebody else's fault. He feeds me, he wakes up three times every night to turn me over, and he does a lot more besides; I will need this help for the rest of my life, and nobody is going to pay him $10 million to do it. Yet it appears he's willing to do it anyway.

He says I would do it for him if our roles were reversed, and while I like to think that's true, I'm not really sure I'm that good a person. He's just a good guy. I wouldn't say he's a saint. He doesn't believe in them anyway. But he's a really good guy.

So, in lieu of $10 million, I thought I should tell him that I love him and I appreciate everything he does for me. Since it seems kind of self-serving to tell him this while he was actually doing something for me, I wanted to wait for a time when he wasn't. The opportune moment, kind of thing. I had to wait a long time. I hadn't realized how much of his time he spends doing things for me.

The beginning of our care partnership was so gradual that I can't remember how it started. He just started helping me do things that were hard for me. Some tasks I did not want help with, no way, no how. (I can sometimes be a little stubborn that way.) He allowed me to struggle, and when I finally gave up and let him help, he never asked why it took me so long. The number of things I resisted assistance with were so few compared to the number of tasks that somehow Scarecrow assumed without my ever realizing it. When someone reads your mind so much of the time, how irritated can you get when they occasionally provide help you don't want?

As Scarecrow started helping with more and more of the things I used to do for myself, we evolved some very complicated procedures that I can't imagine anyone else ever figuring out, and even if they could, I can't imagine anyone but another ex-wrestler being able to perform. Even for $10 million.

I'm glad that woman and her husband were compensated for the injury that was done to him, but nobody's going to pay Scarecrow $10 million to take care of me. I guess he's OK with that.

Good Enough

Sometimes I read something that just stops me in my tracks. It might be prose so perfect, so beautiful, it's like music. It might be an essay that is so insightful and elegant, so well-written, so much better than anything I could ever do even if I worked at it for a million years, which of course, being a lazy slime weasel, I wouldn't do, that I'm embarrassed to be caught trying.

After I read something really good, I am not inspired to write anything myself. Quite the opposite. It takes a while before I feel like howling again. I can't come up with anything good enough. I don't really have anything much to say, and I'm not that good at saying it. I can't offer knowledgeable comments on events of global import, or pithy observations on the human condition, or erudite analysis of, well, anything. I rarely have exciting events to recount, even setting the bar for 'exciting' pretty low. Nothing momentous or noteworthy. I'm tired of writing about MS (actually, I'm always tired of writing about MS and MS-related stuff; it is, however, a regrettably abundant source of topic material), the dogs haven't done anything despicable (another regrettably abundant source of topic material), and there's nothing much else going on. Just life.

But, you know, it's my life. And I can write about it better than anybody else.

It's good enough.

As usual, somebody else already said what I think I'm trying to say better than I could.

A BETTER VOICE
©1990 Joel Mabus
originally on the album Firelake

Sometimes I wish I had a better voice
to sing my song for you -
A voice so brilliant, rich and clear -
Soaring and gliding through the air,
Hanging the melody in your ear
The way good singers do.
But my voice cracks like a back porch chair,
Growls and groans like a big black bear,
Full of whispers, kinks and snares
And I sometimes miss the key -
But nobody sings my song like me.

(Joel Mabus is an amazing musician, singer, and songwriter from Michigan. If you ever get a chance to go hear him, do yourself a favor…)

Well Now, That Wasn't so Bad, Was It?

Last Thursday night, Scarecrow went up to the high school to keep score at a wrestling tournament. And I stayed home.

It wasn't such a big deal, really. He wasn't gone that long. It was mostly an excuse to do what we've been meaning to do for years, but kept putting off. We had a home care person stay with me while he was gone.

Neither of us wanted to do this, but we need to have a backup plan in place in case anything ever happens to Scarecrow. Or, you know, he just needs a break. From me. Or whatever. So we'll have this agency send somebody to help out for a couple of hours every now and again, just so we've got somebody we can call if we ever need someone to take over for Scarecrow. For whatever reason.

So we did it. They sent a perfectly nice young woman who seemed willing to do whatever I asked of her. She fed the dogs. She reheated some leftovers, and fed them to me for dinner. She swept the dog hair and dust bunnies off of the floor, and, without being asked, took a damp mop to the kitchen tile, which was really pretty disgusting. That all took, I dunno, maybe a third of the time she was here. I'm just not very good at asking for help. I couldn't think of much for her to do.

No. That's not true. There was plenty to do. There was laundry. She could have trimmed my nails. I could have had her help me clear the detritus off the desk. There was plenty to do. I just felt bad about asking her to do it. Even though she was perfectly willing and cheerful, and that's why she was there, for pity's sake! Fortunately, I didn't need to go to the bathroom.

I'm telling myself I'll work up to it. This should be a real milestone, finally getting set up for home healthcare, but it doesn't feel like we're there yet. I need to learn to do this. I need to stop feeling like I should be entertaining the healthcare aide. We don't need to chat. I don't need companionship or conversation. I need to learn to ask for help with chores. I need to learn to let someone help me with those icky personal care things. I can do this.

There's another wrestling tournament next Tuesday. I'll need to be ready.

Who knew it would be this hard?

Communicado

I'm communicado again, more or less. That is, after having been pretty much in-communicado for the last couple of weeks. Having to choose between a keyboard (= voice recognition software) and a mouse (= head tracking software), and having to disable this before I could enable that, and applications crashing right and left, was making me kind of cranky.

Then Scarecrow's laptop died.

So I've got a machine that can't do what I need to do, and Scarecrow's got no computer at all. Tuffy's been using the laptop my former employer let me keep – that's how old it was – since her laptop was stolen, but it's running the wrong operating system. Before Tuffy took it over, I replaced the pathetic Windows Vista with Fedora, which I really like but Tuffy… ah… doesn't.

Everybody has their priorities. Some people expect to buy a new car every couple of years. I've never done that. I'm not a car person. For me, a car is just a way to get where I'm going. As long as it can manage that, I don't really care how old it is. Our four-year-old minivan still seems pretty new. We sold the car I used to drive, and since Tuffy doesn't drive, we're a one car family.

We don't have a travel budget and we don't eat out much. We don't have an entertainment center or a big-screen TV. No TV, no cable subscription or satellite dish, no game console.

We have our fiscally irresponsible hobbies. There are the dogs, for example. And we are a three computer family. At least.

So we bought a refurbished laptop, and we're playing musical computers. I'm shifting my stuff onto the new laptop, and Scarecrow and Tuffy are negotiating the allocation of the remaining two machines.

It will take me a while to figure out this new operating system, get everything installed and configured and what all. But I'm communicado again. More or less.

Decisions, Decisions

I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to decide which I need more: a keyboard (that is, voice-recognition software), or a mouse (or the head tracker equivalent).

Not surprisingly, both voice-recognition and head tracker mouse software place considerable demands on processor resources; resources which my aging laptop does not possess in any abundance. The CPU, which was quite the ticket in its day, is just not up to the task. It was doing pretty much OK with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, as long as I was using a regular hardware mouse. However, replacing the regular mouse with head tracker mouse software, which is a total CPU hog, was just asking a little too much. They would both load, and run, but I couldn't... do... anything. If I opened a browser (Firefox) or an e-mail client (Thunderbird), they would crash. Same for my database and checkbook applications. Nothing spectacular, just...*poof*

By alternately disabling DNS or the head tracker I might be able to get through checking my e-m*poof*

Or not. Sending e-mail wa*poof*

I tried balancing my checkbook, but th*poof*

OK. I need both a keyboard AND a mouse, or their logical equivalents. I want both. And I need to have enough system resources left over to run applications without crashing.

Software is available these days that can do ever more magical things, if you've got the hardware to handle it. It's shallow of me, I know, but one of the things I miss about working for a software company was always having a computer that was fast enou*poof*

This is not a great time to buy a new com*poof*

Well cr*poof*

Welcome Winter!

We're celebrating the winter solstice today. If you don't observe one of the many religious holidays that occur this time of year, it can be a little hard to come up with a "How to Celebrate" template. Fortunately for us, a lot of the holiday symbols aren't inherently religious. Evergreens? Check. Holly? Check. Mistletoe? Check. Wreaths? Check. Sparkly lights? Check. Frost? Snow? Icicles? No problem. Presents? Anytime. Over the years we've incorporated these things with other bits from here and there into a holiday observation of which we have become rather fond. 

One of the things we do, and I don't remember whose crazy idea this was, is to experience the shortest day of the year by not using artificial light. We get up when it's light which, here in the Pacific Northwest, means we get to sleep in. We use whatever light is available during the day, and plan to be done with whatever we're doing by the time it gets dark. Since, here in the Pacific Northwest, this comes pretty darn early, the person responsible for the holiday dinner has to do some pretty intricate planning. If nothing else, by midmorning you realize that it's pretty much a reflex to turn on the light when you go in the bathroom.

As it gets dark, we listen to music because there's not much else you can do without turning on the lights. When it's dark, we light the candles, light the fire, put the tin sun ornament on the tree, open the wine, exchange presents, eat dinner, and all that.

It may not be exactly what everybody else celebrates this time of year, or exactly the way anybody else celebrates it, but we're OK with that. For us, it's all about love and family and eating too much and presents the recipient will need to return and the days starting to get longer. Not necessarily in that order.

It's getting dark. I wonder how Scarecrow is doing with dinner?


...rise up, Jock, and sing your song,
For the summer is short and the winter long,
Let's all join hands and form a chain
'Til the leaves of springtime bloom again.

Stuff

The other day, before I put up the post about Tuffy's birthday, Scarecrow observed that there wasn't much new material on my blog this month. Since that was true, I sat down (virtually speaking) and wrote something.

Reading it over (yes, I do that, even though it probably doesn't seem like it), I found this:

"This is all sounding rather whiny and petulant, and I don't mean it that way. Whatever point I might have been trying to make, it appears I totally missed it. In fact I should probably scratch this post and start over, but I can't think of anything else I really want to write about and at least one of my four readers is obviously restless so I'm going to post it even if I sound like a whiny jerk...."

Wait wait wait. Wait. Hold on just a minute. I'm thinking I shouldn't post what I've just written, but I'm about to do it anyway? How stupid is that? Am I really afraid "my readers" will be disappointed? Oh please. I really need to get over myself. Besides, writing for readers other than myself starts to feel an awful lot like work. Been there, done that.

So it's been kind of a thin month, content-wise, on this blog. You can thank me later.

Instead of scribbling, I've been kind of preoccupied with holiday shopping.

This time of year isn't really about Stuff. I know that. It's shallow of me to admit how much grief my gift list causes me, when it's the thought that counts, it's about love and family and being together and pretty soon the days will start getting longer. But there it is.

I have never been one of those people who can always think of the perfect gift, the one that the recipient didn't even realize they wanted until they got it, after which they can't imagine ever having lived without it. That kind of gift always involves an element of risk. I'd rather forgo the possibility of giving the recipient a pleasurable surprise if it means reducing the likelihood of witnessing speechless dismay. Give me a wish list every time.

Tuffy's good that way. She's got a wish list online, with links to everything from boxing gloves to cool chopsticks to sparkly hairpins to rubber boots. She updates it regularly. Lots of choices, but there was her birthday, in addition to the whole solstice winter holiday thing.

Scarecrow is more of a challenge. Throughout the year he mentions stuff he would have on his wish list, but come December I'll be darned if I can remember what he might have been lusting after in March or July or October.

I'm still working on it. No rush.

Birthday Girl

Today is Tuffy's 21st birthday.

I guess there has to be some arbitrary age at which people are considered adult, and twenty-one is as good as any. It's not like she's really much different today than she was yesterday. In some respects she's been amazingly adult since she was five years old. In other ways I wonder if she'll ever grow up. But, officially, today's the day.

I don't know what I expected. It seems like a surprisingly unremarkable day. From my perspective, at least, something of an anti-climax.

Maybe I'm a little slow, but it wasn't until I first went into labor, 21 years ago, that I was struck by the terrifying realization that I was about to do something I could never undo. From that point on, I would always be a parent. That's when it became real. At that point, I couldn't possibly imagine her turning 21. Or 18. Or starting school. Heck, I couldn't imagine her ever being big enough to fit into six month size baby clothes. But if time flies when you're having fun, I must've been having a blast.

She's grown up to be a remarkable person -- beautiful, smart, talented, funny... I guess parents always say that about their kids. But she really is. She's athletic, like her dad. Like me, she believes that anything worth doing, is worth doing fanatically. She doesn't much like dogs, so I guess in some ways she's her own little creature.

Seems like we ought to mark the occasion somehow, although I'm not sure we'll even see her today. She was still in bed when we left for work, and she'll be at the gym by the time we get home. Her friends want to take her out to party, even though she doesn't drink.

I've been trying to think back to what I did when I turned 21, but I really don't remember. I know that by that time I had already made a couple of serious life mistakes, ones that Tuffy has thus far managed to avoid. Maybe that's because we were really good parents... but I doubt it.

Happy birthday, kiddo. Happy birthday.

PFM

Long ago and far away, an eager young tech writer asked a senior software developer what protocol a server used to send configuration settings to a client device.

"PFM," the developer replied.

The tech writer looked blank.

"Pure F#@kin' Magic," he explained.

Smartass.

But now, many years later, I've come to believe he was probably right. Technological advances notwithstanding, I think a lot of things still rely on that protocol.

As we were leaving the UW Medical Center the other week, a woman was watching as I drove my power chair into the elevator and turned around.

"How are you doing that?," she asked.

"PFM," I wanted to reply. But I didn't. I explained about the head array control.

It might not be magic, exactly. I leave gouges in the walls and  dents in the furniture. I go backwards when I  meant to go forward, and vice versa. I whine and complain about how it makes my awkward, clunky power chair even more awkward and clunky. In spite of all that, I'm using it. I'm glad to have it. I'm keeping up with the Red Queen. That's pretty magical.

My latest adventure in assistive technology, and the reason I've been away from this blog for a couple of days, has been a search for a way to control a computer mouse without using my hands. I can get by without a keyboard. For entering text, Dragon NaturallySpeaking does fine. For moving around the desktop, it's beyond awkward. I'm not the first person to run into this problem. There are solutions. It's time to start checking them out.

The most likely-sounding options use head tracking. A webcam tracks the position of your head, and moves the cursor accordingly. They can be pricey, but there's an open-source option. I've spent the last couple of days playing around with it.

Like the head array, you wouldn't use it if you could use a regular mouse or trackball. It's a major drain on system resources. And something keeps crashing Firefox and Thunderbird. But it kinda works. No hands! How cool is that?

PFM.

Just Another Day in Paradise

This photo was taken around 1930 in my grandfather's grocery store in Toledo, Ohio. Standing by the counter to the left of the picture, in the long apron, is my uncle Willie. Behind him, looking proprietary, is my grandfather. To his right is one of the neighborhood kids, and then two men who sold produce to the store. The guy in the back corner is my uncle Leon. The young man at right, wearing knickers, is my dad, the baby of the family. He turned 90 yesterday.

A WWII veteran, he went to the University of Toledo on the G.I. Bill and moved to Southern California for grad school at Cal Tech. A few years later, he and my mom bought a house near the ocean. In those days, mere middle-class mortals could afford such things. My brother and I grew up in that house. My mom and dad still live there.

He got up early yesterday and went for a walk, as he does most mornings. He went to the beach and back, a walk of maybe a mile, including a significantly steep hill. He says he has to stop and rest several times on the way up, but still. Mom says when he goes all the way down to the beach he sits in a chair for the rest of the day, but still.

He has his share of health problems. In May 2008 he was in intensive care with three holes in his gut. Nobody expected him to live through the night. He worked his way back, a little at a time. He still can't do everything he used to do, but he can do a lot more than anybody ever expected. The man is a force of nature.

Whenever I ask him how things are going, he always says, "Just another day in paradise!" He says every morning when he wakes up he thinks, "Another day! And I'm here to see it!" When I was living at home I sure don't remember my dad being such a relentlessly cheerful guy. For whatever reason, he seems to have come to really appreciate what he's got, and not waste much time thinking about what he's lost. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from the old guy yet.

Happy birthday, Pop.

Giving Thanks

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”
-The Buddha (Prince Gautama Siddharta, 563-483 BC)

To blogger buddies in the United States, happy Thanksgiving. To blogger buddies elsewhere, happy Thursday.

Dog Years

In response to the folks who read my last post and tried to convert my age in dog years to people years, there really isn't a simple linear equivalence. Dogs are sexually mature at six months to a year, which might correspond to human of about 13. They're physically mature at two or three years, comparable to a human in their late teens or early 20s. They're mentally mature at, well, don't hold your breath. For either species. A dog might start to show its age at 7 to 9 years, like a human who can start taking advantage of the senior discount at the movies.

But it's not that simple. While small dogs tend to mature faster and live longer than large dogs, the relationship between size or weight and longevity isn't linear, either. Some breeds typically live longer than others of similar size. It all depends. If you're really interested, and not just trying to guess how old I am, here is a pretty good summary.

My conversion algorithm is proprietary, based on an imaginary giant breed with a mature weight in the neighborhood of 150 pounds. Among other inherited tendencies, the breed is prone to skeletal problems due to its bizarre tendency to walk on its hind legs. Which is to say, I just made it up. Truly, I don't feel a day over 435.

Aside from the birthday thing I wouldn't usually give my age that much thought, had I not picked up a webcam to use to try out a hands-free mouse. Those things are brutal! (The webcam, I mean, not the hands-free mouse. The mouse is kind of remarkable, about which more another time.) Seriously, I have never been under the impression that I look like Charlize Theron and I'm totally OK with that, but one of the advantages of rarely confronting oneself in the mirror was being able to imagine that I was aging gracefully, you know, along the lines of a Jessica Tandy or Jane Goodall. According to my new webcam, this is not the case.

But for 443, I look pretty darn good.

Two Dog Night

It's starting to get cold here at night. Cold for Seattle, that is. It's not the same as Michigan-cold, of course, but cold enough for narrow dogs that don't carry much adipose tissue or fur for insulation. Although we provide them with dog beds, they prefer to sleep in a pile with the rest of their pack. On our bed.

Or more accurately, in our bed. They bring their wet fur and gritty little feet and cold pointy noses in from outside and hover expectantly until Scarecrow lifts the covers, letting in a rush of cold air, and they burrow to the foot of the bed, jostling for the best spot, between the humans. It can be very bracing.

If Scarecrow doesn't lift the covers, either because he's asleep or because he doesn't want the bed to be infested with cold wet whippets, one of them will insert a pointy little nose under the edge of the blankets and, in an attempt to get under the covers without assistance, will bulldoze them into a pile at the bottom of the bed with its head and possibly its shoulders under the pile. Alternatively, one of them will tromp around on top of the bed until the covers are in a small heap, and will then lay down on the heap.

Best to let them in. They warm up before too long.

After a while, the mattress starts to vibrate. They're panting. It's only a matter of time before one of them stands up and jumps off the bed, taking the covers with them.

I've read speculation that one of the benefits that canine domestication offered to both species was that sleeping together would conserve heat.

I'm not buying it.

On an unrelated note, I had another birthday yesterday. It kind of snuck up on me. You lose track, once you get to my age. That would be... let me think... 443. In dog years. But I really don't feel a day over 435.

All in My Head, Part Two

After another week using the head array control to steer my power chair, I think it's working pretty well, considering.

It's not as convenient or as easy to use as a joystick, if you can use a joystick. I can tell you from personal experience, though, that it's a whole lot better than trying to use a joystick if you can't use a joystick.

For the most part I've still been keeping to a speed that can be best described as 'glacial', although I prefer to think of it as 'stately.' Or perhaps 'dignified.' Getting down hallways and through doors at home and at the warehouse where I spend my days is enough of a navigational challenge for the time being.

Turns out one of the hardest things to do is go in a straight line. My chair (Permobile C300) doesn't track worth a darn anyway. With the lateral switches on the head array being either on or off, it's hard to straighten out just a little bit. Being front wheel drive, the chair has a tendency to fishtail when going downhill. I don't remember noticing it that much with a joystick, but it's really hard to control with the head array.

We've been dinking with the position of the headrest and the lateral switches. Really small adjustments can make a huge difference in how easy this thing is to use. If the side pads are in close, it's easier to turn the chair but harder to go straight. The best position for the head rest really depends on how you're sitting in the chair, which changes during the course of the day.

To respond to the comments on my last post (which I do appreciate very much even if I hardly ever respond to them directly because I'm a lazy slime weasel), using this thing does require a fair amount of head control, but not that much range of motion.

I don't need Scarecrow's help to change the speed profile. Although I can't press the buttons on the display, I've got a separate switch I can use as a kind of mode selector. That gets me to the settings menus, where I can select a different speed profile, or change the tilt, recline, etc. Navigating the settings menus and selecting options entails a series of taps on the side and back pads of the array, which is kind of awkward but not complicated. Sure beats having to ask somebody to do it for me.

Yes, I'm still learning (the hard way) that leaning my head against the head rest when the chair is on can send it crashing into walls or furniture. The dogs? Well, they're whippets. If they can't stay out of the way of a chair set to 'glacial', there's no hope for them.

I haven't taken it out in the real world much, yet. Excursions to the UW Medical Center and the optometrist went OK. I'm feeling like I'm safe enough to give it a try, but the weather has been crummy. This being Seattle, it should stop raining sometime next July.

OK, so. Mobility problems under control, for the moment. Thanks to TinMan, Cupholder v.3 is working great. My next quest is to find a hands-free way to control the cursor on my computer.

It'll be fun!

It's All in My Head

I've been using the head array control to drive my wheelchair for a couple of weeks now, and I know you're just dying to hear how it's working.

No?

OK. Most people will never need to know this. Even people with MS will probably never need to know this. I sure as heck didn't figure that I ever would. But in the unlikely event that you should go looking for information about using a head array -- what the equipment looks like, and how you use it to steer a power chair -- I can tell you from experience that there isn't much of anything out there. Besides, Herrad at Access Denied was curious about how it works and how it looks. So, here:

 

This is the head array control installed on my power chair. There is a switch installed in each of the three sections of the headrest. Touching the headrest lightly activates the switch in that section. All the rest is software.

The way my chair is currently set up, touching the center section of the headrest makes the chair go forward. Touching a side section makes the chair pivot that direction. Touching the center and a side section simultaneously makes the chair veer to that side. 

Unlike a joystick, where the distance and direction you move the stick controls where you go and how fast, each of these switches is either on or off. To change speed, reverse direction, or control other chair functions (tilt, recline, etc.), you select options from menus on a control unit.

If you could see this better, you could see that it displays battery status and whether the chair is moving or on standby (duh). It also shows which speed profile is selected, and whether the chair is going forward or backward. Each of the five speed profiles is preset to accelerate, travel, turn, and decelerate at a selected speed. To change speed, you go back to the menu and choose a different profile. The profiles are configurable, but the wheelchair tech is probably the only one who has the software to do it.

This is just one example of a head array control set up. There are head arrays with more switches, fewer switches, or different kinds of switches. Newer control units are a lot cooler, but my three-year-old chair is too old to be compatible with them. The software is pretty much totally customizable.

So what's it like to use?

It takes some getting used to. You'd expect that it takes practice to direct the chair where you want to go, and that's true. It does. And you might expect that your neck gets sore, because you're using it in unaccustomed ways. That's true too. You might even expect that you need to make sure the power is off before you rest your head on the head rest. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to do this. And it's surprising how often you need to look at the display to see if you're going to go forward or backward. And it's surprising how often I forget to do this, too. It's not nearly as convenient or intuitive as a joystick. It seems like I'm always having to stop and dink around with a menu to change a setting.

Still, I have better control with the head array now than I have had for a long time using a joystick. Although it took forever and cost a lot, I've caught up with the Red Queen again. For a while.

Remember remember

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot...

Maybe it's just me, but being burned in effigy every year since 1605 seems a little excessive after the man was tortured, and then sentenced to being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Even if plotting to blow up Parliament was a really bad idea.

I don't suppose it's any creepier than Halloween. Any excuse for a holiday, I guess.

Happy Guy Fawkes day?

All Hallows Eve

Halloween. All Hallows Eve. Samhain.

We never get any trick-or-treaters. In the five years we've been in this house, not a one. I don't understand it.

We always got a few brave souls at our old house; kids who knew there was a house at the end of that long, dark, scary driveway, even if you couldn't see it from the street.

When we moved here, I figured we'd attract a swarm of little ghosties in ghoulies. OK, the driveway is kind of steep, but it's not very long, and from the street you can see there are two houses once you get up here. And we're not out in the middle of nowhere. It's a normal suburban neighborhood, one that I would once have considered a reasonably target-rich environment. We don't go crazy with Halloween decorations, I admit, but we did put out a jack-o'-lantern for the first year or two. We quit when it didn't seem to make any difference.

This year, it will be different. This year, we will be visited by every trick-or-treater in western Washington state. This year, they will come.

This year, we didn't buy any candy.

On a Halloween-ish note, Scarecrow passed along a video clip of some clogging mummies. It's too good not to share:



Every time I watch it, I find myself thinking there are couple of steps I could steal. Even though that train left the station long ago, I can't seem to help it. I do the same thing when I listen to somebody play banjo. "Oooh, that's cool! I could do that!"

I can't, of course. I probably couldn't then, truth be told. I never was much of a musician. But I played when I could. I danced when I could. That's going to have to be good enough.

That's good enough.

15 in 15

On Facebook (this is my penance for being one of those creepy moms who lurks on Facebook, spying on my kid) Tuffy tacked me on to a list of friends she challenged to come up with a list of books I've read that stuck with me; 15 books in 15 minutes. I usually hate these chain letter type quizzes, but this sounds like fun.

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends (or, if you're lazy like me, whichever number seems appropriate), including me, because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose. Do yours before you read anyone else's....

OK, here we go...

The Once and Future King, T. H. White
Sociobiology, E.O. Wilson
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
The Panda's Thumb, Stephen Jay Gould
Horton Hatches the Egg, Dr. Seuss
Emma, Jane Austen
Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
The First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Big Red, Jim Kjelgaard
Introduction to Population Genetics Theory, C.C. Li
The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Moby Dick, Herman Melville

I probably spent more than 15 minutes, but not a lot more. I'm kind of surprised at some of the things that bubbled up from my subconscious to wind up on the list. Some are books I haven't thought about in... decades. Big Red? Where did that come from? They're not all books I loved. For example, I had a love/hate relationship with Intro to Population Genetics Theory. And I definitely did not love Moby Dick. It was assigned in one of the few English classes I ever had to take. This was back at the dawn of time, you realize, but it really stuck with me. It really stuck with me. The book and the class about did me in. Tuffy, English major that she is, loved it.

I found it got easier to come up with books as I went along. By the time I got to the end, I was having to choose between books with equally valid claim to a place on the list. For some authors, it was hard to pick one book that stuck with me more than others. Sherman Alexie? Terry Pratchett? Stephen Jay Gould? Toni Morrison? If they wrote it, and I read it, it stuck with me.

Well, that was fun. Comparing my list to Tuffy's, I look like a troglodyte. I haven't even read most of the stuff on her list, and wouldn't be inclined to try. It looks like work.

Maybe that's why I wasn't an English major.

Murder in Kenmore

I live in Kenmore, a suburb of Seattle at the north end of Lake Washington. About 6:30 the other evening I was sitting in the car while Scarecrow went in to Safeway to pick up a prescription. I was just sitting, not thinking about anything much, when after a while I noticed that crows had been flying overhead for kind of a long time. As I watched, they continued to fly overhead. Sometimes I could see 10 crows, sometimes maybe 50, sometimes only one or two, but for as long as I sat there I could see crows flying northward over the parking lot to their evening roost. I'd say I was there for about 15 minutes. When we left to drive home, they were still flying overhead.

That's a lot of crows. A murder of crows.

Their winter roost is a mile or so from our house. Every evening this time of year American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) congregate in this area in large numbers. Really large numbers. Tens of thousands. John Marzluff, a guy at UW who studies them, says the local crow population began to expand during '70s and since then has "increased 30-fold."

"It wasn't really a comeback," he says, "it was an invasion."

Crows are not your rare, exotic, or retiring bird. Even I can watch them. You don't have to creep up on them, stealthily, in inaccessible places, using a long-range spotting scope, at the crack of dawn, hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse. If you want to watch crows, toss a couple of Cheetos out there and you'll have more of them than you can keep track of. (Marzluff used Cheetos as bait when he was netting birds for his study. He says they're like crack to crows.)

Nothing bashful about crows. They are raucous and noisy and disputatious. They're smart and social and amazingly adaptable. They can figure out a way to live pretty much anywhere.

I really like them.

I admit, though, that watching them, I can't tell one from another. They have the advantage of me in that regard.


Is That a Caveman or Dick Cheney? Crows Know the Difference

The "D" in DME

So, about the head array control on my power chair. Because I know you were dying to hear.

The initial speed and acceleration settings were way too energetic for negotiating tight spaces. Or even for negotiating pretty roomy but not entirely wide-open spaces. This is a switch control, remember. It's either on or it's off. Go or don't. I've spent the last couple of days trying really hard not to ram into things. With only moderate success.

The chair I used when I was trying to decide if I wanted to install the head array was much easier to control, so I knew it was possible. On Monday I called Mike the Wheelchair Guy about adjusting the settings. This morning he came and did it. I now have a Granny Gear for getting in and out of the van, or creeping down the hall and turning through the door to the bathroom. Without damage to walls or woodwork. Much better.

The new control uses a micro-switch to turn on, toggle between forward/back, select the speed range, and control seat functions.  The switch emits a rather loud chirp whenever I tap it. That's obtrusive but tolerable, since hitting the switch inadvertently and turning the chair on without realizing it would be bad. If I press the switch and hold it, I can turn the chair off. This causes the switch to scream loudly for 5 seconds.

Five seconds is a lot longer than you'd think, when you're making a really irritating noise and there's no way to shut it off.

I asked Mike the Wheelchair Guy if there was a way to make this stop. He said he didn't think so, but he'd check with the manufacturer. Still, if it turns out to be the worst thing about this new setup, I'm OK with that.

In the course of crashing about over the last few days, I managed to get my new drink holder hung up on the edge of the door when I was getting out of the van. Scarecrow got me loose, but in doing so broke the cupholder. (In situations like this, Scarecrow is not likely to take a tentative approach. As my dad is fond of saying, "Don't force it. Get a bigger hammer.") This made us both very sad.

Scarecrow told TinMan what had happened, admitting that he had subjected the cupholder to serious abuse. TinMan allowed as how that might be the case, but maintained that the D in DME ought to stand for Durable.

He is at work on cupholder v.3.