My Blind Experience

  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