That's Flo calling from the bath-phone. Get it, Robin?

Flo – that’s my mom — turned 93 on Monday. My four sisters and I celebrated by taking Flo to Geneva for a two-night stay in a beautiful restored old inn. This was in Geneva, Illinois, but if you talk to Flo about it all, you might think we brought her to Switzerland.

Trying out her poster bed, enjoying her first ever massage, looking over the balcony at the series of brides being photographed in the courtyard below…Flo was enthralled. We did a bit of walking around town, but most of our time together was spent in our two adjoining suites, talking, laughing and drinking wine.

My sister Bev had brought her laptop along, and conversation often turned to topics like Facebook or Twitter. At one point Bev skyped her son Brian, who teaches English in South Korea. Flo could hardly believe her eyes – she was watching her grandson on the computer screen from all these thousands of miles away. “I just can’t keep up!” she’d explain. “I’m not in this world!”

That phrase became the theme for the weekend, and after Flo’s first trip to her hotel bathroom she was convinced she really was in another world. It wasn’t the bidet that threw her off — it was the phone. “It’s right by the toilet!” she giggled. She’d never seen – or imagined – such a thing, and she could hardly get over it.

With our encouragement, she went back in the bathroom, picked up the phone and gave my husband Mike a call. She practiced her lines out loud as the phone rang. When Mike answered, she was ready.

“Mike?” she asked, somehow managing to stifle a laugh. “You know were I am?”

“Well, you’re probably all sitting at a round table, each with a glass of wine, right?” It was a pretty good guess. Flo was delighted to tell him he was wrong.

Sisters, sisters.... From the top (of the stairs) that's Bobbie, Bev, Cheryl, Marilee, me, and mom Flo.

“No,” she said, taking another big breath to avoid laughing. “I’m sitting on the pot!”

Mike was stunned to silence. Flo repeated. “I’m on the pot!” she said, finally bursting into giddy schoolgirl laughter.

As the weekend drew to a close, we asked Flo what it was like, living into her nineties. She said she doesn’t really think about her age much. “One thing, though,” she said. “Every year, something new happens. And it’s always something I would have never, ever thought of myself.”

Flo, having her cake and eating it, too, at 93.

Sandra Merullo, future Illini.

Sandra lost her sight when she was three and has always attended regular public schools. I met Sandra when she was still in high school – I interviewed her for a Chicago Tribune story exploring how kids who are blind are educated in the public school system. Sandra is a very impressive young woman – she’s bilingual, a great writer, sweet, smart, and funny, too. The thing that impressed me most about Sandra when I first met her, though? Her math skills! From my Tribune article:

In geometry, however, learning can be far more complicated. Using raised line drawings to read graphics, push pens and rubber bands to form angles, and special paper and pens to create diagrams, Sandra is managing a 96% in geometry so far. “My textbook is 63 volumes!” she exclaimed, opening one page of her Braille textbook to demonstrate how big the raised-line drawings can be.

Sandra and I have kept in touch ever since that article came out. We talk a lot about writing – she’s known for years that she wants to be a journalist, and through the magic of talking computers I’ve been able to read quite a few of the many articles and stories she’s had published.

When Sandra wrote that blog post for me in November she was a sophomore at South Suburban College, hoping to transfer to the journalism school at the University of Illinois in Fall. She responds to my blog posts fairly often, and those of you who follow the comments here know that Sandra was nervous about whether or not she’d be accepted. The University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign is my alma mater, and I’ve been confident she’d get in – just didn’t know whether she’d say yes when the time came. I mean, c’mon, the girl is so talented, I worried she’d get other offers!

The time came last week. Sandra got her acceptance notice from the University of Illinois. I was the first person she emailed. She said yes. She’ll be starting at U of I in the Fall.

When I wrote her back I asked if she’d be willing to email me a photo of her so I could use it in a blog post announcing the good news. She said, “sure!” and attached a couple of photos. “They were both taken at a wedding in which I was a bride’s maid, and I look sooo pretty (that’s what I hear from my family.)” She ended that last sentence with one of her favorite words: *smile* I did.

An NPR story called Obama: A New Force in Publishing describes how our president is helping authors sell books.

When he’s seen reading a book on a plane or carrying one in his hand during his travels, it can create a stir. When Obama was photographed holding Fred Kaplan’s Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, the book’s sales bumped immediately, and requests for media interviews with the author surged.

Now, that’s the sort of surge I’d love to experience! So here’s my plan: I’m going to send a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to the schools the Obama kids go to. Both Obama daughters attend Sidwell Friends School, but Sidwell’s lower school is in Bethesda, Maryland — that’s where Sasha attends second grade. Malia is in fifth grade, and that’s part of the middle school, located on the same campus as the high school in Northwest Washington.

I’ll send a letter along with each book, explaining the visits Hanni and I make to schools. I’ll tell them about our dear friends in Alexandria, Virginia. “We visit Pick and Hank a lot,” I’ll write.” Next time we’re in town, Hanni and I would love to come visit your students.” I suppose the Sidwell Friends School gets barraged with offers like this, but am hoping my letter might stand out:

• I live in Chicago, and that’s where the Obama girls are from.
• it’s rumored Melee and Sasha will be getting their new dog as an Easter present tomorrow, so dogs will be all the rage at the school.
• Because I can’t see, I won’t know which of the kids in the school are the Obamas. This means I won’t gawk.

I came up with this great idea (to send a book to Sidwell) months ago, when the Obamas first announced that the girls would be attending that school. But as Thomas Edison liked to say, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” So far I haven’t worked up one bead of sweat composing the letter, much less addressing the envelopes or asking Hanni to guide me to the post office to slide the packets into the mail. Now that I’ve put this idea out to the public in this blog post, though, I have to do it, right?

My fantasy, of course, is that Sidwell asks Hanni & me to come. Malia and Sasha love our presentation so much that they take Safe & Sound home from the school library. Their dad greets them on the White House lawn when they return from school, and they hand the book over to him before receiving their hugs. Snap! Snap! Snap! The cameras start clicking, and next thing you know President Obama is pictured hugging his girls with one arm, the other arm hugging a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound. This could be bigger than…well…bigger than Oprah.

From the NPR story:

Perhaps, Seroy (Jeff Seroy, a publicist for the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux} likes to say — only half in jest — Obama will have the kind of influence on book sales that his supporter Oprah Winfrey has had.

“I think there’s room for two Oprahs, and I think if there is a new Oprah, Oprah will be happy that Obama is the new Oprah,”

…at least for a couple days. Go Spartans!

That's Billy (and me). Let's hope we're still friends after Monday night.

Four years ago I won an award for a White Sox story I did for Chicago Public Radio. Ever since, I’ve been telling people that I am the only blind woman in America to win an award for sports broadcasting. I don’t know if that’s true, exactly, but so far no one has told me differently. It is in that spirit that I am sharing news of three momentous events from this week in sports that could change our lives.

1. I picked Michigan State in the NCAA pool at our local tavern, and for the first time ever, in my entire March madness life, I am still alive going into the final four. Not only that, but I have a chance, although remote, of winning the jackpot. My stiffest competition comes from beloved bartender Billy Balducci. He has North Carolina beating UConn in the final, I have Michigan State beating UNC in the final. In order to get to that final, though, Michigan State has to beat UConn tonight. Mike, Hanni and I will be watching the game from Hackney’s – Billy is bartending, which means he’ll be waiting on us hand and foot as we enjoy a Michigan State victory. Go Spartans!

2. Yesterday NFL quarterback Jay Cutler was traded to the Chicago Bears by the Denver Broncos. Normally I don’t follow football, but this trade is noteworthy to me because Cutler was diagnosed with Type I diabetes a year ago. I have Type I diabetes, too – that’s the disease that caused my blindness. Yahoo Sports had a sportswriter whose own son was diagnosed with Type I a few years ago write a piece about Cutler. The description of Type I in the article is one of the best I’ve ever read. The writer points out that two very different conditions are referred to as “diabetes” – Type I, formerly known as juvenile diabetes, and Type II.

Type II diabetes, often brought on by obesity or poor nutrition, involves a breakdown in the body’s ability to process the insulin it makes. For that reason, improved diet and exercise can often improve the condition and lead to the reduction or elimination of the need for insulin injections. Type I is an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks itself and destroys its insulin-making cells. There is no behavior that “causes” it; doctors believe it is a genetic condition often triggered by an environmental stress, such as a virus. It is more typically diagnosed in childhood but in recent years it has become increasingly common for people Cutler’s age or older to become symptomatic. Those who suffer from Type I are completely insulin dependent, and there is nothing that can be done to change that fact.

The writer explains how Type I diabetics balance food, exercise and insulin to walk a tightrope between high and low blood sugars, and how we use blood glucose monitors to check our blood sugar levels regularly (mine has audio output that calls my results out loud).

Yet control not only requires hyper-vigilance, but it also correlates to a risk in the regular occurrence of hypoglycemic episodes, or “lows” – the scariest day-to-day element of diabetes management.

To control blood sugars, most people use one of those finger-stick kits like the one Cutler carries to check their blood-glucose reading on a frequent basis, certainly before meals and often as much as 15 times a day. When that number is higher than the intended target range, additional insulin can be given through shots or via a battery-powered pump that is threaded into the body (the plastic insertion devices typically must be removed, reloaded and relocated every two or three days). When the number is low, fast-acting carbohydrates – usually juice or glucose tablets – must be ingested. It is also important that a person accurately computes the amount of carbohydrates he/she consumes, ideally by reading labels and measuring or weighing portions. Insulin is then dispensed according to a preset ratio (which also needs to be tweaked based on frequent testing).

Sounds pretty complicated. That’s because managing Type I diabetes is complicated. but the writer goes on to say that Cutler isn’t the only pro athlete who has Type I, and that plenty of people with Type I diabetes manage to live happy, fulfilling and healthy lives.

For now Cutler – like Charlotte Bobcats forward Adam Morrison, Seattle Mariners pitcher Brandon Morrow, golfers Scott Verplank, Michelle McGann and Kelli Kuehne, swimmer Gary Hall Jr. and other pro athletes with Type I – can help the cause simply by conspicuously continuing to perform at a high level, despite the daily challenges he faces. And if seeing him suck down a juice on the sideline or prick his finger during a timeout helps some observers gain a better understanding of the rigors of Type I management, that’s not a bad thing.

Amen.

3. Thanks to Hanni, Mike and I managed to get tickets to Monday’s White Sox home opener – the game is sold out, but since she needs room to lie down we qualified for seats in the handicapped section. Rumors are flying, pardon the pun, about Barack Obama throwing out the first pitch. Our president is a big White Sox fan, you know, and he does have experience — Obama threw out the first pitch during the 2005 playoffs, and the 2005 World Champion White Sox won 8 straight games afterwards. I can’t imagine President Obama returning from the G20 Summit overseas in time for Monday’s 1 pm start, and once he sees the weather forecast I doubt he’ll make the White Sox game a priority –it’s supposed to snow.

OMG, it’s 4:37 already. Time to head to Hackney’s. Go, go Spartans!