Christmas Lights

Eric and I went out to the Melting Pot in downtown Ocala tonight to celebrate our 18th anniversary instead of tomorrow because I'm bowling tomorrow.  Anyway, the food was yummy!!!  Afterwards we went across the street to the town square and took some pictures of the Christmas lights.

Here are several pictures of the standard Christmas tree with different light configurations.

Here is a picture of FL Christmas trees.  If you squint, you can see me way down at the bottom of these very tall trees.

We also took pictures of these horses.  Just as Norfolk painted mermaids and Seattle painted pigs, Ocala paints horses.  They might be a little hard to see since it was dark out.

Good Luck John and Amy

Well I just found out that my nephew John and his wife Amy have started the process to adopt a child from Ethiopia.  I'm so excited for them.  If you'd like to follow this long process, take a look at their blog.

IKAN Bowling

Well you might have already looked at my wheelchair bowling page on this blog, but I thought I'd share the blog entry that Bill (co-inventor of the IKAN Bowler) put on his site where he keeps track of high scores.

Fable of the Porcupine

It was the coldest winter ever--many animals died because of the cold.  The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together.  This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions even though they gave off heat to each other.  After awhile they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen.  So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth.  Wisely, they decided to go back to being together.  This way they learned to live with the little wounds that were caused by the close relationship with their companion, but the most important part of it, was the heat that came from the others.  This way they were able to survive.

Moral of the story:

The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but the best is when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person's good qualities.

Just when I thought...

...that I had come to terms with my increasing limitations from having spinal muscular atrophy, I come across a video on YouTube which instantly put me into some sort of frenzy I don't know how else to describe it I became extremely emotional, started crying, and practically hyperventilated.  I thought I had accepted that I could no longer lift my arms, that I could no longer feed myself, that my arms were basically useless to me to do anything that would make me feel the least bit independent from others.

There were so many thoughts going through my head all at the same time...

• I want that.
• Insurance will never pay for that.
• The company is in the UK so I bet I can't get it.
• Please God let me be able to get it and feed myself again.
• Why is this so important to me?
• Why am I getting so emotional?
• Calm down.
• Breathe...relax.
• You're just being stupid.
• No one else will ever understand how much I want the use of my arms back.
• Etc.

Even now as I am writing this, I am fighting back the tears.  This one little thing...the ability to use my arms...is that important to me.  I used to think that people who became disabled after some freak accident or some rapid onset disease had it harder than I did in accepting their new limitations since so much was suddenly taken from them that they used to be able to do.  I'm not so sure that I believe that anymore.

Spinal muscular atrophy is a progessive disease.  The rate at which you lose the ability to do things like walk, stand, lift you arms, etc. depends on the severity of the disease.  I went through several stages in life from being able to walk with braces, being able to only stand with braces, to being in an electric wheelchair all the time.  I don't remember having a particularly hard time giving up the walking/standing.  To tell the truth, I think I was relieved as it just seemed like too much bother.  I didn't need to walk.  I had my arms and pretty much did whatever I chose to do in life.  The changes from that point were slow and subtle until one day after working for 23 years, I realized that I just didn't have the strength to continue doing so.

Since that fateful day over 3 years ago, my abilities have deceased even more.  It took me a year to realize that I needed more help than the anti-depressent medication I was already on could provide so I went into counseling for about a year or so.  Did it help?  Well I thought so until I found myself in an emotional frenzy today.  I guess the thought that I might be able to use my arms again is that important to me.  I wrote an email to the company to see if they have distributors in the US.  We'll see what happens