Welcome to Finding Abilities first guest blogger – Paula Raulinaitis. Paula has her own amazing blog: SavageNotions. Paula’s blog is filled with encouragement, fun stories, and awesome recipes. Check it out! Now, please enjoy Paula’s boating update.
One miraculous and rainy Sunday morning back in March, my husband and I awoke with no plans for the day. As we leisurely sipped our coffee and watched the news, we saw a commercial for a boat show that was being held nearby. That is when the fun started (and I mean “fun” in the most sarcastic way possible). You see, my husband has always wanted a boat. Watching the excitement in his eyes at the boat show that day, I wanted him to get a boat. I must admit that I was initially a bit apprehensive about my ability to help him on the boat as his first mate, given some of the symptoms that came along with my MS diagnosis.
In the interest of keeping this story from becoming a novel, I will not cover every step. What you need to know is that every weekend since has been taken up with looking at boats and marinas. We had put an offer on two different boats that we loved, and were so very excited. Both complete duds riddled with problems found during the survey (aka inspection). Now, it is a weekend late in June and guess what we are doing? Yes, we are going to look at another boat! Yay! (Again, note the sarcasm) The boat was not as nice as the first two, but it was beautiful nonetheless. As first mate, I made sure to walk to the bow of the boat to make sure that I would feel somewhat comfortable helping with fenders and lines when docking. As I held on to the bar and walked along the outside edge of the boat that was about as wide as my foot, I came to the end of the bar but still had about 3-4 more feet to walk to get to the bow. I was in “no man’s land.” There was absolutely nothing to hold on to, and I was petrified. I stopped dead in my tracks with a look of sheer terror on my face.
I could tell that my husband really liked this boat so I tried to subdue my panic and say that I just needed to get used to it. That evening, my husband was looking at YouTube videos and posting on forums about the terror he inflicted on me earlier that day. There were many alternative approaches to my going out to “no man’s land,” but I was still a little nervous about having that limitation. As usual, when I’m faced with limitations caused by the MS, I usually make jokes. My husband started the laughter off with “Well, I could get you a harness and attach it to one of the fishing poles, and just real you back in if you start to fall over.” Then I added on with “Or, we could buy a pair of suction cups and I could scale the front of the boat like a cat burglar.” We still do not have a boat but we are having some laughs, and laughter is good for the soul, our health, our minds, and dealing with some of life’s limitations.
Paula Raulinaitis
Finding Abilities 