If you got here by way of one of our words at The Big Word Project, all this worked! Welcome!

Both Hands and a Flashlight started as a blog where my wife and I could try to connect with other parents of special needs kids. This isn’t a requirement of anyone wanting to join the conversation. All parenting topics are fair game, though we will focus a lot on the challenges our son is facing these days. This blog may be serious, funny, biting, full of witty repartee, hopefully foul-diaper-free, certainly hopeful, and all about doing what it takes to help your child grow into whatever little person they were meant to be.

We’ve just started recently, which has amounted to us diving headfirst into explaining everything we’ve been through and everything that we’re learning. We’re just going to catch everybody up as we go.

We just started this site so we have some design issues and features to work on. Until then, stay a while, read the posts, and subscribe to our blog. More importantly, leave us a comment! Say hi, ask a question, say something witty, say something not witty, or whatever floats your battleship.

Also, read The Both Hands and a Flashlight Manifesto and the witty introductions in “The quest to find our own asses begins”. That’ll give you the gist of things.

More to come. Again, glad you made it!

Today was my last day in my old job. I’m moving to a new position within the same company, doing something I’m actually good at, and don’t hate. I stayed with my old job for YEARS because we needed the health insurance, but because of the stress of my old job, I used more health insurance than I would have otherwise. Yet another reason I’m for universal healthcare!

In my old job, I did a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. Lots of people had no idea what I was doing, or how I spent my time… and many of those people had that whole “if I don’t know how to do it, it must be really simple” idea. Or, they assumed that if I wasn’t doing what they did, I must not be doing anything at all. That last one really makes review-time fun.

I’ve tried to spend the last 2 weeks teaching someone else how to do my old job. He’s freaking out. I’ve never seen someone need such detailed instructions before. I’ve been telling my bosses for THREE YEARS that someone else needed to learn how to do this stuff, and they kept putting it off. They knew I had this new position before I did - and still waited until the last minute.

I’ll probably be spending Monday running over and doing CPR on the guy each time he crashes and burns…

Comic relief for stressful households.This really is a receipt we got one day. Hey, it’s a recipe for a good evening!