My great-niece Anita turns 17 this week, and her mom, my niece Janet, had a birthday last Saturday. I must love those two: I offered to take Janet’s youngest daughter out of their hair overnight as a gift.

That’s AnnMarie and me. Of course, it’s all about Hanni.

AnnMarie Florence Czerwinski heads to Chicago Tuesday to spend the night with her Great Aunt Betha. AnnMarie is the only offspring in our entire family to be blessed with my mom’s beautiful name. She’s six years old now, but I still refer to her as “Baby Flo.” Our slumber party Tuesday will give Baby Flo a chance to get acquainted with my exuberant new dog Whitney – I’m eager to find out which energetic creature will outlast the other.

And how does a doddering old blind great aunt occupy a six-year-old? I do have a few ideas up my sleeve:

• Clean the silver jewelry: we’ll use old toothbrushes to brush my silver with a baking soda paste, then dunk them in vinegar and be awestruck by the bubbles.
• Play fetch with Whitney.
• Rock ‘n’ roll. Warn the neighbors! Baby Flo plays piano, and I have an accordion. When we get tired of those, there’s always the collection of percussion instruments.
• Play fetch with Whitney.
• Watch a video with video description. My nephew Robbie was just a kid when I did this with him, and after just one minute he was begging me to turn the narrator’s voice off. “It’s driving me crazy!” Let’s hope it goes longer with Baby Flo.
• Play fetch with Whitney.
• Scavenger hunt. Baby Flo peruses the apartment to find things to place in my hands. If I guess what the object is, I score. If she fools me, she wins.
• Play fetch with Whitney.
• Watch the lobby via closed-circuit TV. It’s just like Harriet the Spy.
• Play fetch with Whitney.

Somehow in-between all that fun we’ll have to take Whitney out to empty from time to time, too, and here’s where Whitney’s bell comes in handy. When I was away training with Whitney last December, the Seeing Eye gave us a bell to hang on our dog’s collar during feeding times. When the trainer came around with a bowl of food, Whitney had to stay in her assigned place by my bedpost as I answered the door. The bell on Whitney’s collar gave her away if she moved off her place, and she’d have to go back if she wanted me to place the bowl of food in front of her. Whitney can’t have her food until she stays in her place.

Whitney doesn’t wear that bell much anymore, but during our slumber party Baby Flo will attach it to her collar anytime we go outside. We live in a busy Chicago neighborhood, and Baby Flo knows she has to hold my hand the entire time we are outside. But there’s that half-minute when I take Whitney’s harness off and on to “empty,” and I’m going to challenge Baby Flo to keep that bell absolutely quiet during that time.

Before we go to bed I’m hoping to play my favorite game with Baby Flo: Spa. Baby Flo’s wise mother taught her this one. Baby Flo sets up a towel at the foot of the bed, gets out the lotion and rubs your feet. She usually charges a quarter for the service, but she offered her Great Aunt Betha a deal. I get the spa treatment for free as long as I promise to take my fake eye out when we’re done.

Remember that post I published about fellow blind blogger Becky Andrews, the social worker who owns her own business in Salt Lake City? And remember how I described her as a fashion plate? Well, one week after I featured Becky here on the Safe & Sound blog, her name turned up on Jezebel, a blog that describes itself as “Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing” The Jezebel” post wasn’t about Becky’s fashion sense, though. It was about Becky’s style! From the post:

A legally blind shopper was barred from shopping at a Salt Lake City area Ann Taylor last weekend because she had a dog with her, even after she explained that she was dependent on the service animal to get around.

That’s Becky with her guide dog Cricket.

The Jezebel blog picked up on the story after Becky wrote about the incident on her own Cruisin’ with Cricket blog. In Becky’s words:

I was greeted by a clerk with her first words indicating I needed to leave the store with my dog. I politely explained that she was a guide dog and allowed to be here. She indicated again dogs were not allowed and she would need to talk to her store manager. I began to feel like my exciting find of the Ann Taylor store was not going so well.

Work with a guide dog long enough and you’re sure to go through a situation like this. My Seeing Eye dogs and I have been stopped trying to get into Crate and Barrel on Michigan Avenue, at Andy’s Jazz Club on Hubbard, even at Wrigley Field. In every case I asked for a manager, and once they showed up we were allowed in. Unfortunately, this was not the case with Becky and Cricket. Again, from her blog post:

the manager also was not too helpful and indicated that dogs were not allowed. I knew there were other people there as well, and I felt really alone. No one stood up and said, this is a guide dog she can be in this store. I again explained she was a guide dog and allowed to be here. At this point, I found myself just wanting to leave and go to another store where I was welcome.

And that is exactly what Becky did. She took her business to The Limited next door. Later on a representative for Ann Taylor company claimed Becky’s dog didn’t have a harness on, and that’s why the pair was denied entrance to the store. Maybe that rep needs a guide dog herself. Or at least a check-up with an eye doctor!

Becky called the statement absurd. “To make it very clear, I walked into the store with my guide dog in harness, of course!” she wrote in a follow-up post. “Why would I enter the store without her in her harness?” The company could be fined up to $50,000 under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but Becky says she doesn’t plan on pursuing anything in court. She describes herself as a woman who usually prefers to stay quiet about things like this, but hearing the lie about Cricket’s harness compelled her to agree to an interview on KSL News that garnered a lot of support for her in Salt Lake City. “This wasn’t about me – this was about all of us,” she said. “Accessibility. Respect. Equality. It is for each of us.”

An Ann Taylor spokesperson emailed a statement to the Jezebel blog after Becky’s story came out:

We at Ann Taylor sincerely apologize to Mrs. Andrews for her experience at the City Creek store.
Service animals are always welcome in our stores and this incident is not representative of how we approach customer service.
In our previous statement we had said that her guide dog was unharnessed. This was not the case. We were misinformed, and we are sorry that this information was released.
We strive for 100 percent customer satisfaction. In this case we fell short.

Cherie Colyer (author of teen novel Embrace) regularly interviews fellow children’s book authors on her blog. This week she interviewed…me!

Cherie asked a lot of good questions, and I especially appreciated having the opportunity to answer one
about who my hero is:

My mother is my hero. I am the youngest of seven, my father had a heart attack and died at home a week after my third birthday. Flo had not graduated from high school and worked to get her GED degree and then held a job as an office clerk until she was 70 in order to raise us on her own. The heroic part is that she never complained to us about her lot in life. She took naps when she could, though, always telling us she was “just resting her eyes.” I follow her lead: naps are good when you can get ’em!

Flo on her birthday. Those naps did her a world of good: she’s a young 96 years old.

You can link to Cherie’s blog to read the entire interview. Cherie was thorough –she even asked me what my favorite color is, and I know you Safe & Sound blog readers are just itching to find out.

Thanks for all the attention, Cheri– you make me feel like a celebrity!

A lot of the conversation during The Q&A after my talk with Skokie Public Library’s Talking Books Book Club last week centered around independence.

Jim and Kathy Zartman.

After we shared tips for keeping track of our prescriptions, identifying colors of clothing, using talking computers to read and write, one senior citizen with macular degeneration piped up and said she loves to cook, but when her daughter offered to buy her a bag of frozen, chopped onions at the grocery store, she agreed to finally quit insisting on dicing them herself. “I’m learning to stop being so goddamned independent and accept help,” she said. “But it hasn’t been easy.” Her words were refreshing, and she didn’t have to be able to see to know we were all nodding in support.

Our hour at the library went by quickly, and once I’d thanked the Talking Books Book Club for having us, the dapper Jim Zartman guided Whitney and me to his car to take us home. I’ve known Jim for nearly a year now – his wife Kathy is in the memoir-writing class I teach at Lincoln Park Village. He drives Whitney and me to that class every Thursday, and when he found out I’d be speaking at Skokie Public Library last Wednesday, he volunteered to take me there, too.

Jim has the wisdom of age and the spirit of youth. During our rides the past year I’ve had the privilege of hearing his stories about growing up in a small town in Illinois, the mother who gave him his first violin, and getting free room and board in exchange for working as a houseboy for John Kenneth Galbraith’s family at Harvard. “They said they named their son Jamie after me,” he blushes. “But I’m not sure that’s true.”

Jim is not exactly forthcoming, but when I ask questions, he answers. In our 20-minute rides to class he’s shared the agony and ecstasy of raising children with Katherine, his appreciation for his talented grandchildren, his work writing the Illinois Power of Attorney Act and then getting it through the state legislature during his career as partner in the Chicago firm of Chapman and Cutler, and his current role as president of the board of the Chicago School of Violin Making.

The Chicago School of Violin making is one of only a handful of such schools in the world, and it happens to be located very close to the Skokie Public Library. “Would you like to stop at the school along the way for a tour? I would. We did. It was amazing.

Jessie Gilbert, a graduate of the school who specializes in bow-making now, led my one-on-one tour. Her sweet, strong hands guided me along blocks of maple and spruce that were to become instruments, and I met teachers and students who had come from all over the world to participate in the schools three-year program. Students aspire to the quality craftsmanship of the 17th and 18th century classical masters and are ready to enter the violin making and repair field as professionals once they graduate.

We couldn’t stay long — it wasn’t fair to distract the students from their work. While we were there, though, I was taken by how quiet the workspace was –no music to work by, just the intense sound of careful carving and fine sanding.

And so, after my rides and field trips with Jim, and hearing Kathy read her memoirs in class, I’m getting to know the Zartmans. Time to meet the grandchildren, now too! Skyler, Sonia and Aaron had all read my children’s book Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound so they were eager to follow Whitney as she led me around their grandparent’s block. “You’re like the pied piper!” one of them exclaimed.

We sat in Zartman’s lovely back yard after our walk. I showed the kids how Braille works, then took Whitney’s harness off so she could play fetch with them. We all sat down together for a supper of Kathy’s home-cooked beef brisket afterwards. It was sublime.

On my Thursday rides to memoir-writing class with Jim, I often remind him that he doesn’t have to come each and every week. Whitney and I are capable of taking a bus to Lincoln park. He pretends he doesn’t hear, and you know what? That’s okay with me. Just like my new friend in the Talking Books Book Club, I’m learning to stop being so goddamned independent.

Without being able to drive, I’ve always thought that blind people who use guide dogs — especially those of us who live in big cities — must walk more than the average person does. Now I have a chance to prove it.

Some of you blog readers know I have a part-time job at Easter Seals Headquarters here in Chicago — last week they started a six-week “Walk For U, Go The Extra Mile” challenge as part of their wellness program. Every employee received a free pedometer to keep track of progress for six weeks, and those of us who meet the daily goal of 7,000 steps per day — a distance of 3.5 miles — throughout the entire six weeks will be entered into a drawing to win a six-month fitness club membership.

The human resources department here realized I wouldn’t be able to read the number of steps I’d taken each day on my own, so they ordered a special talking pedometer for me — it says my results out loud. And so, I’m on my way to prove my theory.

The list of requirements for people applying to train with a Seeing Eye dog says candidates need to be able to walk one or two miles a day:

Applicant must be between the ages of 16 and 75, motivated and emotionally stable, capable of walking one to two miles a day, and able to receive and implement instruction.

In a post I published on the Easter Seals blog about all this, I explained that when you live in a city you can’t simply open a sliding glass patio door to let your guide dog out. I take Whitney down the street, around the corner and to her favorite tree at least four times a day. That’s 1,000 steps per trip. My talking pedometer counted out 12,157 steps the day I walked to Walgreens to pick up prescriptions, and that included a safety shortcut I take each way to cross State Street. Whitney and I walk down the subway stairs on one side, pad along under State Street and then ascend the stairs on the other side…safe & sound.

Whit and I often use Subway stops to cross under busy streets.

Not sure what Whitney and I will do with the free six-month fitness club membership when we win the “Walk For U, Go The Extra Mile” challenge at Easter Seals. Seems to me we already have a free pass to the gym: running errands in our neighborhood is like using a treadmill, and every El station is a StairMaster!