The Hurricane Passes the Test!

I'd like to extend my congratulations to Social Hurricane for passing her CNA test.  She is now a fully licensed Certified Nursing Assistant.  Yay!

This is something she's long thought she'd like to do.  She's spent a fair amount of time in hospitals (including a lengthy stay after getting hit by a car a few years ago) and has learned to very much appreciate the work CNAs do.  Plus she's compassionate, enjoys being with people, and has never been scared of hard (or dirty) work.

On the downside she does have some learning disabilities and doesn't do well in an academic environment.  She didn't pass the test the first time through, despite lots of studying, and that took the wind out of her sails for a while.  But she regrouped, and recently took it again, and this time she was determined to blow it out of the water.

And she studied and prepared like nobody's business this time around, and successfully passed it.  I'm very proud of her; this was a bit of an uphill climb.

So she's going to be starting in the healthcare field--there are numerous job possibilities, and she's hoping this will be the doorway to further opportunities.  And hey, if she decides that health care isn't for her, at least she'll have a VERY marketable skill while she IS deciding what she wants to do with her life.

Way to go, Hurricane!

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Everybody Needs A Little Understanding

Everybody in the household hits difficult times, but we react to it in different ways.  MOST of the time, we cut each other a little slack, recognize that the particular family member is having a tough go of it, and let them deal with it how they need to.

Adored Wife gets temperamental and irritable when she's not feeling well or she's frustrated or she's having a "bad brain day."  When this happens she has to go do something to take her mind off the hook a little bit (usually reading) OR she needs to do some project to feel more in control; she'll straighten, clean, get something checked off the to-do list.

Usually when I'm tired or overdone or hungry I need something to eat and some alone time.  I can't be subtle about this; I have to announce it.  "I need a sandwich and a book and some peace and quiet for thirty minutes.  Thanks."  That's pretty much all it takes.

Basement Artist, the introvert's introvert, will get to the point where she's all peopled out.  She retreats to her room and we don't bother her for awhile until she's had a chance to recharge.

Social Hurricane, when SHE'S having a bad brain day, requires feeding and attention and one on one time.

Graphics Magician will have occasional meltdowns when he's just generally frustrated with life.  (This early adolescence business is tough.)  With him we combine feeding and alone time--a snack and a timeout do wonders for his mood (especially if it involves a turn on the computer.)

We have to be good to each other.  We're in this together.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Connoisseur of Couches

Adored Wife, among the many other challenges that go with being here, has chronic nerve and muscle pain relating to some collapsed disks in her neck.  Surgery helped, but there appears to be some long-lasting (and perhaps permanent) nerve damage.

The end result is that she can't be upright for excessive lengths of time without having to lie down to take the pressure off her neck.  She can last longer standing up than sitting down, oddly enough.

So she's a connoisseur of couches.  Some years back when this was first becoming a problem, pre-surgery, she and the kids went on an extended road trip to visit several old friends.  She spent a fair amount of time in the van with the seat leaning back, and she did most of her visiting lying down on various living room couches talking to her cronies.

At church she's been known to stretch out on some comfy chairs in the choir room.  When she directed a play recently we actually kept a "stage furniture" bed complete with foam rubber mattress in the rehearsal space and she did a lot of her job from the horizontal position.  There's also an amusement park we like (bizarrely, certain full-neck-support roller coasters she can ride) and she knows where every bench is--she'll have some fun for twenty minutes, then stretch out on a bench for ten, using her purse as a pillow.

And, yes, she knows where all the couches are.

Need to know something about a place to lie down somewhere?  Adored Wife can hook you up.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

The Post-VBS Post

Vacation Bible School was this past week, and we did an unusually intensive one this year in addition to running a little short-staffed.  It turned out great, but I personally worked for eight straight days without a day off, with the "light" day being nine hours and a couple of the big days being thirteen to fourteen.  Something had to go and it was mostly sleep.  LOTS of caffeine.

Saturday I did get a pretty substantial nap in the afternoon and some badly needed downtime, but it was also catching up on a few neglected chores, PLUS having to get a new battery put in Adored Wife's minivan.

Yesterday, Father's Day, after church I went to spend the rest of the day with my father, which involves a four hour round trip commute.  I don't begrudge it for a moment--I love the old man and his health's not good.  Seize the day, right?

So, this is today's post.  Thursday I'll hope to have some actual content for you, but I'm having to cut myself a little slack just at present.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Telling Stories on the Kids

I have three children, pseudonymously known as Basement Artist, Social Hurricane, and Graphics Magician, all three of whom have given permission to have their lives featured in this blog.

Having said that, I do feel the need to have some respect for their privacy.

Among my other failings, I used to be a Baptist pastor (I'm currently a Baptist associate pastor, so not much of an improvement, but I don't preach that often any more.)  You always had to be very careful using the children for sermon illustrations--it was okay when they were very young, but they weren't far into elementary school when the cute stories started to embarrass them.

Similarly, I have to be careful about putting funny stuff on Facebook about my children.  And I have to be circumspect about what I say about my kids on this blog.  I have their permission, sure, but I also have to have some consideration for their feelings and their privacy.

BA and SH, being of the young adult persuasion, are now to the point that telling interesting anecdotes about their childhood doesn't bother them (much).  We've passed some sort of statute of limitations, but I still don't want to embarrass them.  GM on the other hand, being thoroughly twelve and pushing hard on thirteen, hasn't reached that happy perspective point, and it's hard enough being his age already without dad throwing out some comical tale from his childhood for all the world to see.

So, I have to be a little careful, even though there's a wealth of funny material I could draw from.

The stories I could tell you.....

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Our Cat Has Disgraced Us....

Have I told you about our cat, Oscar?  He's currently the only pet in the household, but we've had an assortment of cats, ferrets, and rodents of various descriptions over the years.

He has brought shame on the family.

He's been an indoor-outdoor cat for his entire life, but now we're transitioning him to being an indoor feline.

Because he attacked a neighbor's cat, half his size.  Poor little Oreo was just trying to get away and he was apparently solidly biting her back leg.  The neighbor had to hit him with a broom to get him to let go.

She felt bad about hitting him and told us she hoped she hadn't hurt him.  I told her she should have whacked him harder; maybe it would have taught the bullying varmint a lesson.

So, okay, going after squirrels and mice?  Not a problem, because that's what cats do.  Attacking, without any provocation we can tell, the neighbor's pet on the neighbor's property?  That's something else entirely.

I am shamed.  Fortunately we have a good relationship with the lady in question, but I have absolutely no interest in this ever happening again.  So Oscar has largely forfeited his outdoor privileges.  It's sadly for his own good--we don't want anybody else's animal getting hurt, and we don't want HIM getting hurt if the next neighbor whose pet he assaults wields the broom a little less gently.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

God Has a Reason for This.....

I'm a big believer in God's sovereignty, right?  He's in control, so everything that happens He either directly causes or allows for His own good reasons.

I know that this gives a lot of people pause, with all the evil and sorrow and suffering in the world, but the alternative is to either believe that evil is somehow stronger than God or to believe that God doesn't truly care, and neither one of those ideas holds water.

So EVERYTHING in my life (and in yours) must be there because somehow, some way, God's going to bring good out of it.

People who deal with chronic health issues and disability face this on a regular basis.  I know a lady with multiple sclerosis, and every single morning before she gets out of bed she has to check to make sure her legs are going to support her when she does.  (And sometimes they won't, which is why she's cautious.)  I have a good friend with spinal bifida, and there's no point in him even checking--he already knows his legs are pretty much useless.

And they know people who enjoy pretty good health and they have to wonder, along with Adored Wife who's in near-constant pain and my friend Jim who's going blind and a lady I know who suffers with Lou Gehrig's disease, what the point is to all this?

Because we know there's a point.  I don't necessarily go so far as to say God causes pain (although even a surgeon must inflict injury to bring healing) but if it happens at all it happens because He permits it to.  The only reason I can think of for Him to tolerate suffering is that He intends to transform it into something beautiful and wonderful.

So friends, if there's suffering in your life, from the tiniest inconvenience to the most heartbreaking tragedy, may you be comforted.  Take consolation and strength in knowing that God wants to use even this in your life to bring about something glorious.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Nobody Has It Easy......

I won't go into a comprehensive list of Adored Wife's issues, but the muscle spasms have been particularly troublesome this week.

Social Hurricane, in addition to the hallucinations and bipolar issues, has been having some workplace headaches with changes in management, personnel, and policy.  She's a little stressed about it.

Basement Artist is a little nervous about upcoming wedding and move to Montreal.  It's a year off but there's a LOT to get done and life as she knows it is going to change drastically.  Also she's trying to learn French, and has had some co-worker "division of labor" issues.

Graphics Magician is dealing with being twelve, with school pressures and social stuff and the general demands of adolescence.

I'm having a busy time at work plus juggling my usual financial troubles, family obligations, and extracurricular projects, and I think the midlife crisis is still going strong..

Our parents are getting older and are having a host of health troubles.  Among the four of them we can list macular degeneration, early dementia, back trouble, and a leaky heart valve, just to name a few things.

My brothers among them can boast of marital troubles, concerns about children, job, economic, and health stress.

Good friends of ours battle with depression, loneliness, the loss of loved ones, unemployment, household troubles, overcommitment, money woes, every health trouble in the book, family strife, legal issues, crime, interpersonal conflict, and worry.

I don't have the slightest doubt that you, friend reader, could make a list of your own.

Let's be good to each other.  No one has it easy.

God bless.

Face Blindness

Adored Wife suffers from prosopagnosia, face blindness.  I ask her what it's like having it, and the response is "what's it like not having it?"  What would a sighted person say if a blind person asked what it was like to see?

There's a part of the brain that puts facial features together into a pattern we can instantly recognize from memory, so we don't have to say "Blue eyes, slightly arched nose, chin a little pointed, thinner than average lips...oh, that's Bob!".  AW's brain doesn't work that way--she can't look at my face and know it's me, and she's occasionally not recognized me if she's met me someplace unexpected.

There's nothing wrong with her eyesight (well, okay, she has limited peripheral vision and is legally blind without her glasses, but her eyes WORK), but the connect-the-dots part of the gray matter doesn't happen.  I ask her how she knows it's me, and apparently I have a very distinctively shaped left ear.

I'm now a little self-conscious about my left ear.  I shouldn't have asked.

Some people she identifies by voice, or by height, or scent, or general body shape.  We know a lady who has an unusual hairstyle, and AW loves that because she can pick her out of a crowd.  She's hoping she never changes it.  It's one of the reasons she tends to be more comfortable around those with some markedly distinguishing features--she knows who they are.

It sounds a little strange, but she's used to it.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.