Category: Family

Thanks for the Compliment

A few hours ago, I returned from a weekend away with some ladies. Jerry encourages me to take advantage of opportunities like this, and works hard to schedule enough attendants to cover my time away. He tells me the first 24 hours I am away he enjoys full control of the remote. Which means, at least at this season, baseball is on all the time. If it is not on the television, he is watching a game in person.

By the second day the novelty has worn off and he is ready for me to come home. He remembers all the things he did not enjoy about living alone.

Like most of you, when I come home I unpack my car. We update each other on our time apart. And then it happens, no matter what time of day it is Jerry apologizes that he needs a little nap. I know that a little nap in this situation means a long solid period of deep sleep.
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I sometimes forget how much energy Jerry expends to live day to day. When I am away he does his best to keep things as tidy and together as he is able, increasing the amount of energy he expends. Giving me the grace to get a break, he accepts greater responsibility on his personal resources.

I could be frustrated that after being apart for a few days, I come home and he sleeps. Instead, I embrace it as a compliment. To me, it means he feels safe and content. We both know we’ll have the time to talk and tackle all the life decisions we have ahead of us tomorrow. Lord willing that is. And if we aren’t gifted that time tomorrow, we won’t need to worry about the decisions.

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Is there something in your life that could bother or irritate you, but it you look at it from another perspective it brings you joy. I would love to hear your story. Please share.

 

Building Sandcastles

Katelyn. our 10 ½ year old grand-niece visited recently. She is a loving girl who thinks deeply. Our family planned a day at the beach while she was here. In anticipation of the trip Katelyn told me she likes to build sandcastles, but not in the typical way with buckets and shovels. She described her method, but it all became much clearer to me when we were at the water’s edge.

katelyn sandShe digs a hole close to where the water laps the shore, allowing the hole to fill with water. Then she digs in and picks up a clump of wet sand. Moving to her sandcastle, just a short stretch away so it is out of the water, Katelyn slowly allows the goopy sand to drizzle out of her hand, creating odd shaped squiggles piled on top of one another. She continues to build it up until the water advances and washes it away, or it collapses on it’s own.

Right away she surveys the situation, digs a new hole and starts a new sandcastle. Then, she looks at me and says,

“Sometimes it gets wrecked, but that’s ok because it leaves a foundation to start the next one.”

Girl, are you really just 10 ½?  You just preached a message your grand-aunt needed to hear and I don’t think you even knew it.

Disability and Real Estate

This is the week we expected to be moving south, and we are still at home in the north.  It has been twenty years since we made a major move and sold a home. Much has changed since then in the world and in real estate. We made some mistakes early on, but with the help of many, we have corrected these things.

A plethora of comments have come our way on how to improve our chances to sell quickly. One is that we need to try to remove all, or at least as many as possible, vestiges of disability from the home.

Wow!

Not only is this our home, but we both work from home, and disability is very prominent in our life. We had our MLS (Multiple Listing Service) pictures cleaned up houseof disability.  I’ve come up with a plan of what I can easily move out of the house when we have an open house or showing. My husband understands, but sees this as another form of discrimination toward disability. People want new homes built with universal design, but don’t ever expect to need to use it. Encountering a home that does throws people off.

Because it has been so long since we’ve sold a home, we did a search on disability resources in real estate  From our exploration we have not found any standard training that is offered to realtors to help them understand disability and accommodations.  Nor is there any clearinghouse or single reliable site to share homes that do have disability accommodations.  It is a check box on the MLS, but that may mean that there is one grab bar someplace in the bathroom.

question-mark-160071_1280           So, dear readers here are my two questions for you. I would really love to get your thoughts!

  • Have you sold a home while living in it with disability (physical, intellectual, or any other type of disability)?  If so please share a tip, or two or three or four that you employed.  I’d love to compile a list to share with others who sell an accessible home.
  • Are you aware of any resources (aside from MLS, or Craig’s’ List) that does serve as a clearinghouse or publication of accessible homes for sale?

I am excited to hear from you!         sculpture-2275202_1280

Thank You . . . For My Marriage and So Much More!

A brief but passionate Marriage Monday post today . . . Thank you!

Thanks to those veterans and those who are currently serving our nation. Part of the freedom you gained for me is that I can be married to my best friend who was born with a disability. In other countries I have visited, he would never have been allowed out in the community, let alone go to school, college, post graduate school, drive, work and be married.

Thank you to those who left with able bodies to serve us and came back disabled. I am sorry, and I am grateful. I pray for you.

Thank you to the spouses and family members of those who serve and have served. Some of you have welcomed your warrior home, others never will. Only in recent years have I come to understand more fully (though know I never will completely) the sacrifices you made, and continue to make.

Marriage is hard, but can be so good. Marriage with disability is hard, but can be so good. Marriage with disability due to war and national service is hard. Yet I pray it may also be so good.

May this small and humble thank you bring you a moment of peace.  May you know my husband and I are grateful.  May your marriage be strengthened and blessed.

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Sometimes You Just Have to Laugh!

In our early months of marriage we tried to navigate the division of household tasks while balancing that with the amount of time it took Jerry to help. One of the jobs he took on was some of our personal needs shopping at Walmart. BenGay was on the list that week. One of us must have had some pretty sore muscles, because he bought the biggest tube he could find.

As we unpacked the bags, Jerry began to take some items back to the bathroom for storage. He tucked the tube of BenGay between his thigh and wheelchair frame.   As he moved through the hallway I heard a funny sound and then an, “Uh, that was cool, but uh oh!”

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Crossing the fifteen feet between us I was met with the overpowering menthol smell of muscle rub ointment. In a split second that extra-large tube dropped out his chair and onto the floor just as his heavy front tires rolled over it. The safety cap and foil seal were no match for the PSI applied to that tube.

Ointment exploded everywhere.  On the walls, into the carpet, over Jerry and his chair, and even into a couple different rooms because he was at just that place to create a wide-angle expulsion.

The most interesting place we found it?  Underneath the corner guards we had applied to keep the corners from getting nicked.  It’s phenomenal how far and into such tight regions that white stuff flew.

When faced with cleaning up a situation like this we had two options. Cry or laugh.  We chose to laugh.  It didn’t change how much clean-up we had to do, but it sure made that clean up a whole lot more fun.

share-2482016_1920You must have some “Uh Oh” stories – when things didn’t go as expected and you just had to laugh.  Will you share one?

Baseball and Words

If your family is like ours, stories come out of the woodwork when we gather together. This weekend we visited with Jerry’s family – his sister, brother and lots of extended family and friends. There are always a few golden oldie stories that you can count on being retold, here is one.

Jerry and his brother are baseball fans. In fact, as I write this they are on their way to a game. Jerry roots for the Detroit Tigers. Eric for the Cleveland Indians. Many softball-1354947_1920years ago tickets for the Indians games in Ohio were hard to get. Instead Eric bought tickets for the Indians away games in Oakland since we were living nearby.

Jerry and Eric offered me a ticket to join them. Not being as fanatical about baseball as they are, I chose to go only to the last day game of the stand. The guys were at the stadium the previous night for a game that went into extra innings –  lots of them (see how technical my baseball knowledge is?). So many extra innings that the game had to be called around 1 am. It was announced that the game would be finished as a double header with the next day’s game.

The brothers said they were two of about 200 fans left in the stadium when they exited in the wee hours to come home. Didn’t I say these guys are die-hard fans? Don’t even get me started on what they did when Cal Ripken was celebrated for showing up to work for 2,632 days.

Anyway, after the guys got some sleep the three of us headed down to the stadium. We watched the conclusion of the previous game and then moved into the new game. At the end of the first inning Eric looked at Jerry and said, “she has already kids-2782718_1920spoken more words in this one inning than we spoke in 13 innings last night!”

 

Good thing they love me, and I can laugh at myself. They still invite me to join them for baseball games, but more often than not I encourage them to go and enjoy their (quiet) time together.

Can you laugh at yourself?  It’s one of the best things Jerry and I do in our marriage. Do you have a favorite story that comes up when your family gets together?  I’d love to hear it!chalkboard-620316_1920

 

It’s All About the Image

I grew up in a wonderful neighborhood in central New Jersey. Grandmom, and later my Uncle, lived in the house next door. I remember our sprawling yard, games of kickball and softball with the neighbors, and riding bikes to my friend’s house around the corner.  Summer cook outs and home made ice cream were a highlight. As far as I was concerned it was the best place ever to be a kid.

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We had a phone number for the town of Pennington, a mailing address of Trenton and my parents paid their taxes to Hopewell Township. When I went to college and people asked where I was from  I had a choice. I started by saying Pennington, NJ which is just outside of . . .  Here is where the choice came in. Pennington is about equal distance from Princeton and Trenton, NJ. Truthfully I spent much more time in Trenton growing up than I did Princeton. But Princeton sounded so much classier because of the University, Seminary and the Governor lived there. More often than not I would identify as being from near Princeton.

Recently I went home again. My parents haven’t lived there for nearly 30 years, but my uncle is still there. Every time I go back, his house still elicits the memories of Grandma.  But the neighborhood feels less like the place I grew up. New retail shops have popped up, traffic patterns have changed. That is to be expected.  Still that does not stop the sadness from coming when I see how run down parts of my beloved street have become, including our own (former) house.

I was amused though, to see how much “Princeton” has expanded.  No, not the town itself, but within the first couple miles of crossing into NJ from PA I began to see signs for Princeton Business Park, Princeton Commons, South Princeton Church, etc.

Much like my own experience, these buildings are closer to Trenton than they are to Princeton.  Somehow it seemed ok when I said it.  When I see these signs I scoff and princeton-97827_1280think, “get over it, you are just trying to seem more prestigious by calling yourself Princeton.  You can probably charge higher rent too.”

I guess I am not the only one who got hung up on image building.