Ken Home!

Ken got home safe and sound on Sunday night. How nice it is to have him back again. With him being gone about 11 days, it gives me a tiny bit of empathy for single parents. That didn't come out right....it gives me a tiny peek into how hard it must be for a single parent, and increased my empathy for them. So while he is back for now, he has a few more trips planned. In about three weeks he goes to Florida for a meeting with his organization, in four weeks he goes to Philadelphia to work a conference, in 8 weeks he has a conference to work in Fresno, and then nothing (at least that I know) until August, where he may be going overseas for about 6 weeks...but that is still in the planning stages. He mentioned to me this morning that I should plan a trip while he is gone....so my brain started ticking and we went to get a map of the USA. Maybe another cross-country road trip will be in the cards.

I just finished reading "Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love" by Myron Uhlberg. WOW. This book made me jealous that I wasn't brought up with American Sign Language (ASL) as my first language. The way Myron describe how his father signed and showed the words as three dimensional thoughts instead of flat and two dimensional was really remarkable. He also showed how hard it was to be a child with the responsibility of being a link for his parents to the outside world. I plan on sending this book off to my friends Shawn and Dee Collins who are currently working with WordSign (http://www.wordsign.org/) which is a Sign Language Animation Tools Project.