A funny and a pretty.

Although this has nothing to do with today's post, I have to share. This post really made me laugh today.

On to the subject of the day.

In the interest of celebrating a holiday (not necessarily the one that is today), I thought I'd share the story of a random houseplant.

It was left behind by the people who sold us this house. I had no idea what it was, but it seemed happy in front of the dining room window, so I left it there and gave it a little water every once in a while. For the most part I ignored it. Then one day in early November I realized there were little buds at the ends of the stems. I watched in fascination over the next few days as the tiny buds became lovely, salmony-pink flowers. I was amazed! I described it to my mother over the phone and she told me it was probably a Christmas cactus.

And sure enough, here it is, still blooming faithfully every late October/early November.

I've heard there's a way to make it bloom in December, I just don't have the heart to banish it to a dark closet for a few months. And who cares when it blooms, right? It's happy.

Be thankful ~

Karen

A sure sign my thoughts are disjointed: the handy list format.

1. If you are the praying type, please pray for my daughter, Deb. She is pregnant with our first grandbaby, Sticky Bean, and having some rather scary complications. Please pray.

2. I love my new book, Lapsing into a Comma by Bill Walsh. I actually put it to good use last night. I read the part about discrete items vs. measurable quantities needing plural vs. singular verbs respectively to Elijah and he fell right to sleep! I can't imagine why. I was thoroughly engaged, although I already knew the rule. I've been preaching that one to my kids for years. You know, as in less coffee but fewer coffee beans. But Bill takes it one step further and says, "101 Dalmatians were aboard the ship" but "101 dollars was paid to the captain." And to get even more persnickity, you would say, "101 barrels of oil were sold" but "101 gallons of oil was sold," because you would count the barrels, but measure the gallons. I just love hairsplitting.

3. I know I said I wasn't going to read any more political stuff, and technically this doesn't qualify as reading, but am I the only one who is bothered by the graph on Yahoo!'s homepage showing the number of electoral votes each candidate is projected to win? That's not news-reporting. That's election-steering. And the silly articles informing us of media bias - as if we didn't already see it - as if we're dumb enough to need to be told the media are biased against republicans. As long as there have been media, there has been left-leaning bias. But this is more than bias; they are actually trying now to influence the outcome, and will most likely be successful.

4. This is what happens when three college-age girls get together for the weekend:

They eat pizza (the three of them ate all but one piece),

Climb life-size statues of former presidents (guess which one was that short),

And eat at IHOP.

5. Don't forget to pray for Deb and Sticky Bean!

Be thankful ~

Karen

My reign continues.

And just so you know for sure that I really, truly am the grammar queen, let me inform you that my son-in-law called me from Tennessee today to settle a friendly argument. He and his brother were discussing what that little star thingy that you sometimes put next to a word is called - an asterisk or an asteric.

Judging from the sound of his voice when I told him it was an asterisk, I think he won. So clearly I am still on the throne.

And on another grammatical note, I got a new book in the mail today, The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh. I'm sure I'll find some nugget of English wisdom to share with you. Try to contain your excitement.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Paul Bunyan lives.

Reading a friend's blog today reminded me of a story.


We have heated our house with wood for a long time. The first time we put in a woodstove I was petrified because, hello? Fire inside the house? But I got used to it pretty quickly and claimed my spot right in front of the stove. I had executive privilege back then, only because I was bigger than all the children and could move them out of the way.


Of course, heating with a woodstove requires wood, and we learned it was a really good thing we had so many children. Everywhere we lived we spent time each year cutting trees down, hauling off the brush, and splitting rounds to dry for the next winter. Tree cutting always made me a little nervous, but Ben acted like he knew what he was doing, so I just took all the kids and stood way back. He never felled a tree on anyone's house or anything, so I figured it was all good.


One time, when we lived in another part of Virginia, we had these huge pine trees out back, one of which had died. I didn't want the whole thing cut down since I used it for part of my clothesline, but we needed to cut the top off. The kids and I were watching and Ben was talking smack about being able to put that tree down wherever he wanted it to land. I doubted his ability with much rolling of the eyes, so he said, "OK, tell me where you want it."


Naively taking the challenge I demanded, "Right across the pampas grass."


He set up his ladder against the base of the tree and started cutting. I waited for my sure victory.


Dang if he didn't put that stupid tree right across the pampas grass. He only had about a three-foot window and I figured he'd be lucky to even hit the plant, but that tree was right down the middle.


I shut my mouth and went back to hauling brush, properly de-sassed.


I get reminded of the Pampas-Grass-Incident whenever I doubt his ability to put a tree where he wants it. It still makes me nervous, but I've learned to keep quiet.

Be thankful ~

Karen

A boring post with a bad picture. Promise you'll come back?

Yesterday was the last of our seven $60,000 concerts. Yes, that's all we got for sixty grand, but they were worth every penny. I would have great pictures to post but I forgot a camera (shoot me) and here's what you get with my phone:

Leah is the blonde in the second row - they are warming up before the concert. I'll try to do better in the picture department at her recital, a mere two and a half weeks away. I make that promise a lot, don't I?

Anyway, Ben and I had a good day traveling up there. It was nice to spend some time together since he was gone all last week. We had lunch, drove up, went to the concert, took Mike and Leah and two friends out for dinner, and topped it all off with gas for $2.25 a gallon.

Today Ben and Elijah are working, Abbie's at school, and I am doing laundry and making bread. And writing a really boring blog post. But sometimes that's what life gives you, and really, it's not so bad. Sometimes a boring day is just what I need.

Be thankful ~

Karen

A picture is worth a few gallons of gas.

How much are you paying these days?

Be thankful ~

Karen

Here she goes again with the grammar.

Have I mentioned I love to read?

I do. And not just any trifle; I want reading material with real substance. Something to keep me on the edge of my seat, or mattress, since I usually read in bed.

I'm a subscriber to National Review because we just don't get enough political news these days. I don't know why I don't just get all my information from CNN because everybody knows that if you hear it on the Communist News Network it must be true. And while YouTube is entertaining, it's not to be depended on for accurate information.

And like 98 million other households, we get Reader's Digest and enjoy it. Although I will say, it's gone downhill a bit in recent years. We used to be able to count on RD to publish family-friendly articles and balanced, informative pieces, but I'm not so sure anymore. They seem to be leaning toward the left and I'm getting just a tad uncomfortable with it.

Anyway, I'm always on the lookout for something I think I might enjoy reading, so a few weeks ago when I realized it was National Punctuation Day, I thought I'd celebrate by looking for a good style book to help me sleep at night. I wound up finding Lapsing Into a Comma by Bill Walsh, Copy Desk Chief at the Washington Post, and haven't been able to put it down. Seriously, the excitement of commas, the intrigue of incorrect capitalization, his fascinating soliloquy on compound words and whether or not they should be joined as one or hyphenated - last night I was awake until 11 pm hanging on his every word!

The saddest part is that I am not kidding or exaggerating. I am such a geek. But a grammatically well-informed one. My favorite quote so far is, "Go ahead and call me anal-retentive, just make sure you hyphenate it."

How do you get a job as a copy editor?

Be thankful ~

Karen

The ongoing vacuum saga.

I've said before I have vacuum issues. About four years ago I bought a Hoover Windtunnel. Big mistake. I have had problem after problem with it - brush rolls don't fit, belts burn up, self-propelled function works intermittently and now not at all. It's been awful, and for $350, it shouldn't be.

So after "vacuuming" my carpets on Saturday and all but throwing my back out trying to push the thing back and forth, I decided to send it the way of all lousy machines - the dump.

That brought up a new problem; I had no vacuum.

Now, I love to shop as much as the next girl, but vacuums are not my idea of fun spending. And since the last expensive one I bought turned out to be not worth its weight in dustbunnies, I decided to buy a cheap one - you know, in the hundred dollar range. I wasn't sure what I would wind up with, but for a hundred bucks, I wasn't expecting much.

I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Walmart. Lowe's. Target. I read websites. I went to epinions.com. I wound up with a Bissel for $120. Brought it home and vacuumed the 9x12 carpet in the living room that I just did on Saturday (that's 3 days) and here's what it sucked up:


I was speechless. This is what was in my "clean" carpet. Are you grossed out? I am.

Elijah came out of his room and said, "Whoa!" and it's not easy to scare a teenage boy.

I don't know if it will last four years, but that first cleaning was worth the $120.

Be thankful ~

Karen

A pledge, however short-lived it may be.

So my new thing that I really enjoy is getting up in the morning and reading Townhall.com, a conservative website with a host of different columnists to choose from. I love Thomas Sowell especially. He is the voice of reason in a very unreasonable time. My problem with this is that I read other writers too, like Doug Giles whose column I shared with you yesterday, and while I agree with what he said, much of it gets me, um, spun up.

Leah liked what he said too, and posted the same column on her facebook. Leah is a senior at a Virginia university, hence many of her friends are rabid liberals, and don't take kindly to her views. There are regular (read daily) heated discussions on her facebook about politics. But Leah is a smart conservative and very good at debate and she doesn't back down. So the combination of the heated discussion and my being spun up makes for a lot of nervous energy in my home. I just can't stand to let things go, especially when they come from uninformed, liberal-brainwashed young people who believe every declaration of "change" they hear.

So I'm taking a political day off. You can breathe a sigh of relief now - you won't be subject to any more rants today. And if I'm successful, I might continue for a week and see how I do.

Yes, I'm taking the high road, the path less fretted over. And with that, I share this funny from my mom:

I'm going to spend my day teaching Algebra and the proper use of colons (the grammatical kind), studying fungi and conjugating Spanish verbs. And cutting grass. I pledge to remain calm and not stress over the upcoming election.

It's going to be hard.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Political rant brought to you by Doug Giles, courtesy of Townhall.com. You've been warned.

Boy, the blood sucking entitlement toads are hoping and praying that Obama will win this election because they are smellin’ free candy! Everybody gets free candy! Yep, the ubiquitous handout mooches across our formerly great land are fully aroused at Barack’s promise to “spread the wealth.”
I guarantee the hard-working “Joes” out there who have worked their plumber butts off 10-12 hours a day for the last decade aren’t too jazzed at the prospects of Obama Robin Hooding their hard-earned cash on behalf of a crack whore, a criminal alien or a costume jewelry wearing welfare brat who’s also sporting a teeth grill and donning $100 Nikes.
Spread the wealth . . . please.
I believe Moses and Jesus call that “wealth spreading” theft. Obama is spreading something, but it ain’t wealth. It smells a tad different. I am astonished that Barack can boldly and publicly table that socialist bunkum and we don’t shout him down, utterly ignore him, and buy him a one-way coach ticket to Havana.
Personally, I’d like Joe the Plumber to keep his cash. In addition, I don’t want a dime from the government. The only two things I want from the government are for them to leave me alone and keep the terrorist groups that have endorsed Barack Obama from bombing our collective backside both at home and abroad.
Now for those of you young people who do not like the prospects and the strings attached to living off the government welfare tit, herewith is one simple little ditty to keep you ruggedly independent and never in need of a penny of Joe the Plumber’s hard-earned cash.
Don’t be a slacker.
If you want your life to land squarely in the profit column then you must joyfully live mach2 with your hair on fire no matter how crummy a hand life has dealt you. When I see the multitudinous goofy and lazy entitlement mentality punks at “work” in restaurants and at retail stores moving like manatees in the intensified gravity of the planet Pluto with no excellence of service and a pouty look on their attitude-laden faces, I kind of . . . sort of . . . get really ticked off when I hear them trying to chisel a slice of Joe’s pie.
Hey, gum smackin’ slacking moron, if you want to get out of the pathetic sponge mode you’re in realize this: Nobody owes you anything.
To cure your mediocre malaise, first go out and buy a Bible. Then take that Bible and smack yourself in the face with it. Do it hard for about ten minutes. After that, start reading the book of Proverbs and see the correlation between wisely working hard and accumulating wealth while simultaneously paying attention to what God says is the fate of idle entitlement-minded dorks. After that join Jenny Craig and remind yourself on a daily basis that our country is all about the pursuit of happiness and not handouts.
Here’s a novel idea: Instead of wanting other people’s money, why not go forth and make your own? Yeah, that’s it . . . get a job. I think the apostle Paul put it succinctly via the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when he wrote in second Thessalonians that if you don’t work, you don’t eat (3:7-12).
Listen, handout Harry and Hilda, as long as an abortion survivor like Gianna Jessen, cancer survivor like Lance Armstrong, extreme amputee athlete like Jarem Frye, and comedian Josh Blue (who has cerebral palsy) can look brutal reality and difficulties in the eye and work and thrive in spite of gargantuan setbacks, then you can get off your couch and at least wash some cars.
I think I speak for all the working hard, playing hard, living and loving sweat-of-the-brow Americans who get up day after day and toil their tails off to those who would like to “spread our wealth” that you can pucker up your socialist lips and (this phrase edited in the interest of being nice).

The tediousness pays off.

Just to prove I really did do all that stuff, here are a few pictures to show you what I accomplished today. I didn't take photos of everything. I just didn't think you'd want to see my washer and dryer or the fun we had flipping a king-size mattress. Here's the stuff that smells good:
Apple pie ~

Putting cooked apples through the food mill ~
Hot apple butter ~

A few of the eight spider plants that hang around the deck during the summer and are now snug in their winter home ~

In addition to the list in the last post, I also made a cake for Sunday School tomorrow, prepped tomorrow's dinner, and updated the blog.

I'm exhausted, my back hurts, and I have dishpan hands. But I have a feeling of accomplishment. It was worth it.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Oh, the tediousness of it.

Boy, do I have a long list today. In no particular order, here's what I plan to get accomplished today:

1. vacuum up the dog hair
2. clean both bathrooms
3. shake the spiders out of plants and bring them indoors - finding a place for them will be the hard part
4. make apple butter
5. help Abbie start an essay
6. wash sheets and flip the mattress
7. make an apple pie
8. take the dog for a walk and get a short workout

And anything else I find that needs doing along the way. I'll check back in later and let you know how much I got done.

*first edit* At 2:15 I have everything done except going for a walk, working out, and getting the apple butter in jars. Abbie finished her essay, I sent an e-mail to my mom, got all the laundry done, and once again it smells of warm apple pie in here. Not a bad day.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Sticky Bean!

Our first picture of the grandbaby!

I'm sure there will be more.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Twitter

Did you know Twitter is all the rage? I've been seeing references to it everywhere - on people's blogs, in advertisements - so I thought I'd go check it out. I signed up for a Twitter account (is that what you call it?) and I am an official Twitterer.

That's where it begins and ends. What is it for? Why would I use it when everyone over there is already over here? Best I can tell, it's just like the status thingy on facebook. Am I the only one who doesn't get it?

So if you have any explanation or advice for me, feel free to share.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Since I promised.

I did say on Sunday that I would share more about Tim.

Tim is a friend we met about five years ago when we moved to Tennessee. He is 23 years old and was a carpenter and a redneck when we met him. Big trucks, mudding, guns, the whole nine yards. But Tim has a cultured side. We found out he is a good violinist and is highly intelligent. So smart that, when he took his test to get into the Air Force, he scored a 98 on it. He qualified to do anything he wanted to do in the military.

So what did he choose?

EOD.

That's Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

Yes, he takes apart bombs. Or blows them up. Either way, it's a dangerous situation.

Anyway, he is currently stationed in Hawaii and stopped here on his way to Iraq for six months. This young man is leaving his wife of five months and going halfway around the world to protect your freedom to sit at your computer and read my blog without fear.

Pray for him.

Be thankful ~

Karen

You won't need a magnifying glass.

Encouraged by a friend of my daughter Leah, I was thinking about this verse this morning:

Ps. 62:19 Blessed be the LORD, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.

Isn't that encouraging? DAILY. LOADETH. And not only DAILY, but LOADETH! That means we should be looking for our load of benefits daily. Not just one here and there, but a LOAD of them.

So go! Start looking!

Be thankful ~

Karen

Apples and doggies and Thunderbirds.

Yesterday I didn't write because we were at the Graves Mountain Apple Harvest Festival. It was a gorgeous day in the mountains of west central Virginia and we went to the festival with our Sunday School class.

This guy is stirring apple butter over a fire. Can't you just taste it?

There was a hay bale maze:

And lots of people brought their dogs. Abbie wants this one. Look at him gazing lovingly into her eyes. In case you're wondering, he's an English bulldog.

There was a group of vintage T-birds where Abbie found her dream car.

And Ben found his dream truck - a '57 Chevy. See that walnut tree behind it? It's actually growing right up through the middle of the frame.

Here we all are enjoying the T-birds and scenery.

We came home with half a bushel of Mutzu apples, five of which are now in a pie. Seriously, five apples made a ten-inch, deep-dish pie. They're massive. I see a lot of pies in my future.

Today I'm trying to recover while getting ready for Tim to come visit. More about Tim tomorrow.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Just in case you need another excuse to eat chocolate.

I go to the gym at least three times every week. Aren't you proud? Most of the time I even exercise while I'm there.

Last week one day Elijah's PE class ran a little long and Abbie and I found ourselves sitting in the waiting area reading magazines. I found what sounded like a good recipe, though just what it was for escapes me at the moment. I was seriously distracted.

I took the magazine to the front desk and asked the girl if she could copy the page for me. She happily agreed, but before she left for the copier, she told me about a chocolate-cake-in-a-mug recipe a friend had given her the day before. It sounded like something fun to try so she offered to copy that one for me too. Why do I go to the gym? I only get fatter.

Anyway, last night Abbie decided to try it, and I share it with you so I'm not the only one in blogland who can't lose weight.

First, in a large mug combine:

4 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
4 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. powdered cocoa




Mix well. Add one egg and stir. Then add:

3 Tbsp. milk
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
small splash of vanilla

Mix thoroughly. At this point you can add 3 Tbsp. chocolate chips if you want. Abbie did.


Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at high power. The recipe calls for a 1000 watt oven. I don't know what mine is, but it did fine. If your mug is too small the cake will rise over the top - don't worry. Tip out on a plate to eat, or eat out of the mug. If you want ice cream on it you'll have to remove it from the mug.

This is really big enough for two people unless you're feeling blue, in which case you'll want to eat the whole thing by yourself. We understand.

Abbie wasn't feeling blue and she still ate the whole thing. But she didn't sleep a wink; beware the caffeine.

Now aren't you glad I go to the gym?

Be thankful ~

Karen

History of a learning disability - part 2

Fast forward eight years. Abbie is now eighteen years old. She has been homeschooled all her life. She remembers very little of what she reads, but remembers most of what she hears. I spend lots of time reading TO her in my effort to make sure she actually learns something.

I've been doing lots of research myself over the years. I label her a right-brained child. I decide she is a visual-spatial learner. She is a terrible speller. She learns best by doing and hearing. I try to tailor her education to take advantage of her strengths, but always that lack of comprehension is nagging me in the back of my mind.

We go for testing again when she turns 18 and is in her senior year of high school. The results show that she is again having trouble with tracking, convergence, visual discrimination and visual memory. Sometimes this happens, we are told. Some kids need refresher therapy to keep their skills current. She goes through vision therapy again. She graduates from high school and registers for her first semester at the community college.

She does fine in everything except Psychology, which requires the reading of a 500-page very technical, very dry textbook. Abbie is in tears after the first week. She assures us she is going to fail this class, can't remember anything she has read, can't even read more than 15 minutes without feeling exhausted.

I begin to read the book TO her, discussing each section as we go through it, and it helps. But I know I can't do this forever. At some point she will go away to college and I won't be there to help.

We make another appointment with the vision therapist for a third round of testing. The testing is different this time, more in-depth. They make some fascinating discoveries.

Her eyes are still not doing the things they are supposed to do, but more than that, she is not processing the information that's coming in through her eyes. It's not just an eye problem, but a neural, or brain, problem. Connections have not made that are supposed to be there. The official name is Visual Processing Disorder, one of the many sensory integration dysfunctions. The neural pathways that are supposed to exist between the two halves of the brain are disrupted, therefore the two halves of the brain perceive different things. And that's what this is all about - the perception of what she reads. Try to imagine taking in some information and one side of the brain perceives one thing while the other side perceives something different and the two sides are trying to justify them into one concept. Imagine how frustrating that would be! The doctor asked me at one point if Abbie was athletic. I laughed and said no. She has always joked about being uncoordinated. Turns out there's a good explanation for that.

Abbie can pick up a ball and throw it easily. But if you throw a ball TO her, the two sides of her brain perceive different images of the ball, can't justify where it is, and she misses it. When Abbie heard this she was excited and said, "That means it's not my fault!"

Now you're current - right where we are. The doctor has said this proposed therapy is much more intensive than anything Abbie has had before and that's why it will work better. I thanked her and left.

Ben and I are willing to spend any amount of money to get Abbie the help she needs, but there's been this little bit of hesitation. I just felt like we only had one person's opinion, and what if that one person was wrong? But I didn't know where else to turn.

Then I had a conversation with the vision therapist yesterday, whom I really like, and asked her, if this were her daughter, would she take her for more testing, just to be very sure of what the problem is before we start dumping thousands of dollars into therapy, and she said, "Absolutely." I was so glad to hear that. I spoke to my sister-in-law, a Montessori teacher with her Master's degree in special ed, and she recommended a place she has dealt with in Northern Virginia where we could get her tested, and where they offer many types of therapies if it turns out the vision therapy is not what she really needs.

If you met Abbie today you would never guess she has this learning disability. She is an intelligent, well-spoken, very social young lady. She loves the Lord and has great plans for her future.

So do we.

Be thankful ~

Karen

History of a Learning Disability - Part I.

Abbie was born the fourth of our five children, at home, surrounded by those who loved her. There were no interventions in her birth, and from start to finish it only lasted six hours. She was a plump, rosy-faced, dark-curly-haired baby. She cried with gusto right away. And never stopped.


Other than when she was eating or sleeping, she cried literally all the time. I remember one occasion having some people over to watch football and, as I walked around with Abbie in one arm trying to get food put out, she continued her incessant crying. I finally walked over to the couch and dropped her into the arms of a single guy friend of ours and walked out of the house. I wonder if that's why he didn't get married for a long time?


There was nothing physically wrong with her that we could figure out, and we chalked it up to colic, whatever that is.


She did finally outgrow the crying and became a happy little girl. She had a vivid imagination, and loved to be read to. She would sit for hours and let someone, anyone, read stories to her.


Eventually the time came to begin teaching her some phonics. I used the same books and methods I had used with the other three children, and she seemed to pick it up just fine. I could point to any letter and she could say the sound of it. She had some trouble with the difference between long and short vowels, but that's not unusual and didn't really concern me. I figured she would eventually "get" it. She learned to put two sounds together, to recognize digraphs, and caught on to the differences in vowel sounds.


By the time she was six, she had a good foundation in phonics and should have been reading primer-level books. She couldn't. Reading a story was the most painful thing for her, an episode of laboring over the sounding-out process. We figured she just wasn't "ready." We continued reading to her and didn't worry about it.


Then she broke her right arm. Mangled it, actually. She splintered one bone and broke the other just below the growth plate at the elbow. Her orthopaedic surgeon said that in his 40+ years of practice he had never seen a break like it. She was put back together with a pin from the elbow to the wrist and stayed in a cast for eight weeks. It was months before she regained normal use of that arm and hand, so in the meantime, we made her do things with her left - eat, brush her teeth, get dressed. We wanted her to be independent and learn to care for herself even if it was difficult. We didn't want her to be helpless.


In the meantime, writing activities were put on hold because she is right-handed, and we continued to teach math concepts and phonics skills. We tried different approaches, different curricula, anything to help her get past her sticking point and be able to read. She had no problem with the math concepts, but struggled with the bookwork.


During this time we noticed that she was very artistic. She and Leah would collaborate in story-writing. Leah would write the story and Abbie would draw the illustrations. We put them in a few drawing classes to encourage her obvious gift.


By the time she was eight and nine we were getting concerned about the lack of ability to read and were searching for answers. The internet was available at that time, and I spent hours reading, searching, asking other parents for ideas. When Abbie was nine she asked if she could take piano lessons, and we agreed. She seemed to do well for a few months, but finally one day her teacher took me aside and said, "I don't think Abbie is reading the notes. I think she is playing by ear." I thought about it for a while and realized that after every lesson, Abbie would call me over to the piano and say, "Mama, I can't figure this one out. Will you play it for me so I know how it goes?" And I did. And she learned to play every song by ear.


At this point I was dumbfounded. She couldn't read words. She couldn't read music. We had had her eyes checked and were told she had 20/20 vision.


Finally, some kind person on a home school website's discussion board said it sounded like she had a tracking problem. I had never heard of that and went searching. I found this site, which began the uncovering of the depth of Abbie's difficulties.


We found a developmental optometrist who diagnosed four different areas in which Abbie's eyes were deficient: tracking, eye teaming/convergence, visual discrimination, and visual memory. We would find out much later that there was more to it than this, but at least we had a starting place.


Abbie went through vision therapy for 18 weeks with Dr. Joel Zaba in Virginia Beach, VA. She took a few months off, then we went back for another six weeks of therapy and some training for me. We worked with her at home for a few more months and by that time, Abbie was reading. She wasn't reading at grade level, but she could get through a book and was feeling better about things. Dr. Zaba suggested we let it rest for a while and just let her read as she was willing, so we did. She began to read for pleasure and we thought we were in the clear.

Read the rest of the story in Part II, coming soon to theaters near you.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Can we get a big, fat DUH????

This just in from the AP:


NEW YORK - Washington's financial bailout plan is now law. So the credit spigot will start flowing again, banks will resume lending, and an economic recovery can begin, right?

Wrong. Experts say the most important thing that needs to happen before the $700 billion bailout even has a chance of working: Home prices must stop falling.

Please know that it is taking every ounce of self control I have not to jump right into my monitor and choke somebody.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what the bailout was supposed to DO?? Stop the perilous slide down this slippery slope of easy credit and falling housing prices? If affordable housing is what they're really after, they should stop right now. We have affordable housing right here in Virginia - just ask homeowners who are trying to sell and can't get anywhere near what they owe on their homes.

Now go back and re-read that quote from the AP article above - the part that says "the most important thing that needs to happen BEFORE the $700 billion bailout even HAS A CHANCE OF WORKING."

OK, so where is the bailout bill from God that politicians were begging us to buy into just 48 short hours ago? It's not such a sure thing now that it's passed, is it? But you better believe Nancy Pelosi got her $125 million for research into global warming in that bill. Because whether you and I have houses or credit or retirement accounts, by golly she'll get her pork.

I'm so mad I'm going to eat chocolate.

*edited* Thanks to Anonymous, who shared the rest of the pork included in this bill in the comments section.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Food. Sleep. Money. It's all they need.

Yesterday we had a fun time in DC. I took my two youngest children (18 and 15) and two of their friends (16 and 17) because we all had a day off. Three of them home school and Abbie's only class for the day was cancelled, so we made the most of our time.

We started out at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing where we saw money being printed. The security features are pretty interesting, but the best part was a sign near one of the huge printing machines that said, "I just printed my entire life's salary in 20 minutes."

How depressing.

Anyway, then we decided we would walk down to the Lincoln Memorial, Elijah's favorite. We were cutting across grassy patches and looking for acceptable places to cross the street (we might have jaywalked a few times), when we came across this pseudo-park and stopped for a photo-op:

And then, because they are teenagers and can't be serious about anything, we had to take a second pose:

We made our way toward the Reflecting Pool (not so reflective at this time of year - it's pretty scungy) for a picnic:



And met an official DC duck, who actually ate out of Abbie's hand:

As you can see, it was a perfect day in DC. Here's the view from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:

After the Lincoln, we wanted to take Joy up in the Pavilion - the Old Post Office tower - to get a great view of the city. It's a long walk. *sigh* They needed a nap. *rolling my eyes* Don't go to the city with teenagers if you don't want to be embarassed.

They're just oversized toddlers. They eat, they sleep, they cost money. But we finally made it to the tower and here's the view down Pennsylvania Ave:

And finally, since we are teenagers and can't do anything the normal way, we decided to walk down the four flights of very narrow stairs in the belltower rather than take the handy elevator. Because we haven't walked enough today. Here's the view:

We made it off the metro before 3, the official start of rush hour. We came whizzing down the entrance ramp to 95 South optimistic as ever and guess what we found.

A traffic jam. On 95. Can you imagine?

I've heard many times that Friday rush hour starts Thursday afternoon, but I always think I'm going to beat it out of there. Someday I might learn. But I doubt it.

It was a great day in the city. Come visit, and let us know you're coming. I promise we won't make you take a nap in the grass.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Wordless Wednesday: a silent rant. *$%#@!!!!

Be thankful ~

Karen