No, not the kind that interface to help a career, but rather the ones for your face that improve vision. Or so they should.

I didn’t need reading glasses until I was in my forties. But eventually, I got to the point that I needed them for both reading and distance. I wear them all the time now. But when I’m outdoors and getting a little sweaty, my glasses slip down my nose. If I’m gardening and therefore looking down, they fall off.

Beside that, it’s hard to wear sunglasses over correction glasses and bifocal sunglasses are expensive.

Enough! I went to Costco and got a prescription for bifocal contact lenses.

I look spiffy. . .I think. I can’t see worth a darn.

The doctor explained that the better your distance vision, the worse your near vision with multifocal contacts. So I’m supposed to try to find a happy medium. Apparently my brain should be capable of finding the proper focus with the lenses that is good enough for both distance and reading.

But there’s more to it than that. The contact doesn’t want to stick to my left eyeball. . .and then it doesn’t want to stay put. I can feel it on my left eye all the time. Twice it’s actually fallen off and been lost and other times I find it up in the corner of my eye.

I’ve been through three brands so far and none are any better than the last. I can hardly wait to get them off and back to seeing normally in my old-lady bifocals.

Today I went back for the fourth time to Costco. The regular doctor is back from an injury and he agreed that I’ll never have vision as good as I can get through bifocal glasses.

But he gave me another brand of contacts to try. If these don’t work, I guess I have two options. Either I can give up and resign myself to regular glasses or I can try to find something that’s comfortable on my eye that only corrects for distance. I would use reading glasses for close.

At least glasses act as goggles when I’m doing something that creates sawdust or sparks. . .

I could get something a little more chic in the glasses department. . .

I’ll post a picture next week that explains how I solved the dilemma. I’ve never been a quitter before, but I’m certainly considering i!

On the homefront, our backyard garage is getting it’s stucco tomorrow! We bought a house that had a disproportionately small garage. Add to that the generously sized backyard has no shade. So we had a pad poured and our son Scott (with help from his brothers and our brother in law) built us a nice one car garage with a covered patio off one side.

Once the garage has been stuccoed, I’m going to wire it, hang a light in the patio area install the big rolling garage door, and then we’ll set the flagstone that will form the patio. By then, the summer will be over and we should be able to get a good deal on some patio furniture. I think that’s the LAST of our big house projects!

Life is good!

First of all, a huge thank you to every single one of you that has bought my new book, Beth Stephenson’s Americana. It means so much to me personally. More important, it supports the Americana concept: that there are patriots all across this nation that enjoy focusing on all the great people, places, history, customs and cultures that make America what it is. As I track the sales on Amazon.com, it heartens and encourages me.

I’m babysitting a few of my grandkids for  a short stint of 2-3 days and have been musing on some parenting principles that I learned or wish I’d learned while I was raising my young family.

Every time you treat a child harshly, or deal with them without any regard to justice, or even to refuse to fulfill a harmless request without a good reason, you teach that child that they are not worthy of respect. When you fail to use self-control or a measured, thoughtful response to stress, you teach your children to behave the same way.

When you inconvenience yourself for their well-being, laugh at their jokes, prefer their company over people (other than or along with your spouse),  praise their kindness, intelligence, cleverness, humility, talents or obedience, you teach them that they have value, not only to you, but to the world at large.

When a mother signals to a child that her own pleasure, convenience, or comfort is more important than her child’s needs, she shapes the child’s perception of his/her value to the world generally.

You should notice that I don’t say that the child recognizes that the the mother’s comfort and convenience is more important TO HER than her child’s needs. The child feels that he or she is less important in the whole world than the mother and the priorities she puts first.

An example of this idea is the mother who chooses to work when it is not necessary to the family’s well-being. Children internalize the signal that having stuff, including trips or clothes or status or worldly acclaim is more important than they are. They believe that they come AFTER all of that in their mother’s priorities. So when she’s done at the gym and the office and the resort and the salon and the department store, she might have some interest left for them. I have never seen kids that believe that they benefit from a nicer car or a nicer house or more expensive clothes if their mother chooses to work when she could choose to be with them.

No wonder the blight on children these days is low self-esteem.

One of the most important successes my mom had was that even though she was well educated and even somewhat ambitious, she chose to stay home with us kids. I grew up knowing that my siblings and I were the most important thing in Mom’s world. That is a recipe for success. If your mother believes that you are worth sacrificing for, you believe that your own success and development and education is worth sacrificing for. And then you pass those priorities down to your children.

We did without fancy vacations. We did without lots of clothes.  We rarely (less than once a year) visited restaurants. We learned to do for ourselves in every reasonable circumstance. We learned to have fun without expensive toys.(There’s nothing more thrilling than riding your brother’s homemade go-cart at breakneck speed down an old gravel road when they have forbidden you to touch it!) (Unless maybe it’s climbing into your brother’s no-girls-allowed tree house. I could have built my own go cart and tree house, but what would be the point?)

My mother tried different methods with us kids. She tried to solve the issues that develop in families.

She read to us. She watched our impromptu plays. She taught us to work in the house and yard. She took us to the beach when the Saturday chores were done. She cooked for us and established family traditions.

She wasn’t always successful in her attempts to provide a happy home and it’s no wonder. She was raised almost as an only child, and had little sibling experience. I believe that the fact that she tried her best, whether she succeeded or not, is far far better in its effect on the child than a mother who doesn’t even try.

We learned that clothes are not important. Impressive cars are not as important as reliable cars. So we not only learned that we were vitally important to our mom, (the most important influence in a child’s life,) we gained the skill set and value system  inherent in her decision. People were more important than the income she could provide or the status and acclaim her own achievements might have provided her.

My mom made lots of mistakes. Big ones and little ones. But this one huge success has reverberated through the generations.

As Gordon B. Hinkley, late president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints urged. “Try a little harder to be a little better.” Mothers if you try a little harder to be kind and wise and patient with your kids, putting your family first in your world, not only will they someday call you “blessed,” but when you meet the Lord, He also will say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

This is for my friends and family who don’t mind a bit of religious reflection.

The other night, I was feeling a bit discouraged. I was so happy to receive the first copies of my new book, “Beth Stephenson’s Americana” in the mail, (the first non-fiction I’ve ever published in book form), but before long a sense of discouragement began to set in. I started thinking about how hard it is to get people to know about a new release without spending lots of money and how much I DON’T enjoy selling anything.

Then I started ruminating on the fact that I’ve been contacting a dozen newspaper editors and spoken to switchboard operators and answering machines, but rarely a live person. Just as my pity party was really getting underway, I felt corrected by the Spirit. I was reminded that there have been multiple miracles that have occurred in my writing career, and many times that I have felt guided. When I act on that guidance, more miracles have happened.

I believe that Americana fills an important purpose, promoting the good and encouraging kindness and good citizenship in our nation. I feel confident that the Lord inspired the concept of the column in the first place and now sustains me with ideas and the ability to write well. Because I know my purpose is to do good, I am not ashamed to ask for help.

So prayed to have faith and to move forward and to recognize and respond to the Holy Ghost. I felt comforted and restored.

The next day, I contacted several of the editors again that I’ve been pestering about Americana.

I was stunned when the first editor I called answered and was interested! While I was sending him the samples he requested, I got a call from an editor from a very big paper saying that she loved it and was going to bat with the managing editors in the hope of getting them to change their mind about “no more columns.”

I was flying high by then. While I was sending her the samples, another editor sent an email asking for samples.

Today, I got a nice long email from an editor at a middle-sized paper saying that one way or another, they will use it!

Just to top it off, the coordinator for an upcoming press trip to Long Beach CA, asked me if I wanted to stay on the Queen Mary while in Long Beach. I had told her that I wanted to write stories about Whale watching,  Catalina Island and the Queen Mary for Americana, but I didn’t expect that!

If I hadn’t made any attempt to contact editors because I was too discouraged, I would have given up just on the brink of success. Satan doesn’t want us to succeed in the good things we’re doing and discouragement is his most powerful tool.

I’ll keep ya’ll posted as to what happens with the self-syndicating. Even the positive feedback from editors that have seen Americana bolsters my confidence and gives me encouragement to keep going and growing the audience.