First and most importantly, I learned that macular degeneration is all kinds of not fun. Not that I wasn’t already aware, but the more details I get, the worse it sounds.

I was at my grandmother’s house, trying to figure out how best to make something to help her remember how the new CD/tape player my uncle got her works. I thought color coding the buttons would be a viable thing, but it turns out she can’t see colors so well anymore. I never realized that the ability to see color was part of the degeneration of vision.(Not long after that, ‘help with the CD player’ turned into ‘completely rearrange the living room- why didn’t you say you couldn’t see the TV from where your chair is??’)

This leads to the next thing I learned, which is those little plastic and foam sliders for moving furniture WORK. My wee self was able to move a sleeper couch around no problem. Reducing friction for the win!

Finally, while on an expedition to Lowe’s*, I learned that Pantone now does paint. This I did not know. I did, fortunately, know that they also venture to declare a ‘color of the year’, otherwise I would have been considerably more sarcastic about the display set up in front of the Pantone paint samples for the color of the year. (Radiant Orchid, seen below at left. Not to be confused with Wild Orchid, shown on right.)

Though I rather resent the notion that only pinks and purples should be called orchids, because my favorite orchids look like this:

*Also, I learned that some businesses are slow in the face of competition. Lowe’s, the Home Depot across the way and the local Tractor Supply both have their seeds and seed starting stuff out already. Get with it!