My Blind Experience

  Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can, The patience to accept the things I can't, And this wisdom to know the difference. - The Serenity Prayer After our third kid was born my wife and I decided to have just one more. Four's a good number. I'm one of four kids, my wife's family is even larger. We would have one more and our family would be complete. That was the plan, but we got twins instead. We jumped from three to five just like that. But we didn't mind. I've always loved children. I'm an oddball myself and adult logic still baffles me. I understand kids better than I understand people my own age. My wife comes from a religious family who think of children as blessings and raising them to be the doing the work of God. So five was good. We were happy with five. Then number six came because that blue contraceptive gel they sell at the grocery store doesn't work. We're not sure how number seven happened. We were using every...

Art is hard to define. It could be limited to drawing and painting and sculpture or it can encompass the way you parked your car at a little bit of an angle to the yellow lines in the parking lot. If the way we set our forks on our plates is influenced by our subconscious need to defy expectations, a rebellion against the status quo, then all of us are both artists and works of art. That would be a good discussion to have, but not here. This blog is about blindness, not the concept of art. I want to write about visual art. Why would a blind man want to write about visual artistry? Maybe to defy expectations and as a rebellion against the status quo. I create. That's just what I do. Kitchen cabinets, Toyota trucks, bed frames, short stories, computer programs, stair cases, kids, sculpture, schematic drawings, and today, painting and bead work on reusable canvas shopping bags. But why? Why not work in finance instead? If you were the only person in the world would you be rich or poor...

When I was very young my father taught me to go with my first answer. When a question was asked and an answer popped into my head, that answer was right, and unless I was certain it was wrong I should stick with it. Don't second guess myself. When I was in college my English professor believed the soul of writing was editing. Anybody can scribble words on a page but the process of agonizing over word choices and punctuation decisions was where writing actually happened. That's where the scribbling becomes a masterpiece. Sorry Dr. Brown, but I'm going with my father's advice. When I write the first word that comes to mind is the truth. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Editing is for wimps. I am what I feel and what I feel needs to be committed to the page while I feel it to truly reveal who I am. Going back and rewording what I wrote seems like lying. Someone might say "That's fine for a journal but what about technical writing? Fiction writing? B...

  Here are a few items still on my bucket list - The Smithsonian Monticello Tubing in the snow Ride in a self driving car * * * Imagine you're barefoot and trying to navigate your way through a room with Legos scattered all over the floor. You're halfway to the door when somebody turns off the light. That's what it feels like for me to be in a cluttered place. It takes me forever to find the salsa in a cluttered fridge, or a particular tee shirt in a full closet, or a certain tool in a full toolbox. I need less, not more. Less of everything. My blindness has caused me to want to buy the best of everything once. I don't want six pairs of cheap pliers, I want one pair that will last a lifetime. Searching through dozens of items to find the one I'm looking for doesn't seem like a big deal but when I do it over and over again each day it's draining. I don't consider myself part of the decluttering movement. I have my opinions against consumerism and capitali...

Mom is 76 years old. Dad is 81. They're remodeling machines. Give Dad a paint roller and he'll finish a room before I've got my roller wet. Give Mom a screwdriver and she'll have the outlet plates on or off faster than a cheetah. So far we've painted all of the basement except the small bedroom and the hallway. We've added shelf supports, shelving, and closet rods in the closets in the bedroom and the hallway. We have about 500 square feet of laminate flooring to install. I don't think that's going to be enough to do the entire carpeted area downstairs. We might have to buy more or leave the bedroom carpeted. We won't know until we start laying it all out. Today we're removing the carpet in the big room. We're going to roll it up in four foot rolls and tie each roll off with bailing wire. After that we've got to get the carpet pad and tack strips out. I really hope the pad isn't glued and the tack strips come up easy. If so we can sta...

The sun will come up in a few more hours. Not too long after that happens my parents will start the long drive from Salt Lake City to Virginia. They'll be here 20 days to help me remodel the basement. My mud and tape guy will finish the basement walls about two days before they get here. I've taken off the outlet plates and taped up the plugs and torn the old door casing and baseboard molding off the walls. I even ran Ethernet cables through the walls and false ceiling and into each bedroom for when we get fiber internet in March. After the mud and tape guy sands everything down I'm going to mask everything off and we'll be ready to paint. Mom and Dad are going to help. As soon as the paint is dry we'll get rid of the old carpet and put in the hardwood flooring the seller left for us, then replace the doors, door casing, and baseboards. I don't know how long any of this will take. We might be finished with the work halfway through their visit or we might be fini...