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Geater Leads Girl Scouts

Tricia Geater is age 60, lives in Puyallup, Washington, and has multiple sclerosis. She regularly reads this column in her hometown newspaper from the Midwest.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease that causes inflammation and scarring of the tissue protecting nerves, and affects body movements by disrupting communication between the brain and muscle. There isn't any known cause or cure. Geater has relapsing remitting MS, which a Mayo Clinic website says is "characterized by clearly defined flare-ups, followed by periods of remission."
"Each (new) time I come out of a remission, it takes longer and longer to return to normal," said Geater in a telephone interview. "When having a flare up at first, the symptoms would go away after a week, but no longer. The flare-up I am fighting now has involved extreme pain in the lower extremities and weakness for more than two months. I'm able to stand up for no more than five minutes at a time."
Her first brush with MS came in 1993, when, working as a nurse, she felt a sudden tingling and burning sensation in her legs, lost feeling, and collapsed to the floor. It happened a second time. Later that year, after trips to various specialists, she learned she had MS.
She worked as a head nurse until 2000, when she could no longer walk using a cane. Then she had unrelated open heart surgery. Wanting to continue working, she became a staff development nurse and, using a wheelchair, began teaching nursing. A year later, she physically couldn't work, and had to go on disability.
However, she soon realized that if she quit "living," the disease would emotionally overpower her. So she started volunteering as a Girl Scout leader. "I lead 86 girls while in a wheelchair," she said. "I have assistant leaders helping, and take kids with disabilities, either mental or physical, and work with them, too."
Besides double vision, she regularly experiences involuntary shaking, a scissors gait when trying to walk, and extreme pain during flare-ups.
Geater first contacted this columnist two years ago saying she'd just read the Ron Roy "A to Z Mysteries" book "White Wolf" to her Girl Scout troop. That book featured my daughter with spina bifida as a character. Geater had a girl with spina bifida then as a troop member, and said, "That book changed everyone's outlook on disability, totally."
Contact danieljvance.com [Blue Valley Sod and Palmer Bus Service grants make this column possible.]

ABCs of qualifying and registering to vote

Q.:  What must I do to qualify to vote in Ohio?
A.:  In Ohio, you must register before you can vote.  Generally, you must meet three qualifications to register to vote.  You must be a U.S. citizen, 18 years old or older, and an Ohio resident for at least 30 days before the election at which you seek to vote. 
If you are 17 years old, you must meet the citizenship and residency qualifications mentioned above.  In addition, if you are 17 but will be 18 by the time of the next general election, you can register to vote before the general election, or at the primary election before the next general election.  If you are 17, please contact your local county board of elections for more information.
Q.:  Can I qualify to vote if I have been convicted of a crime?
A.:  It depends.  Generally, you may vote if you have been convicted of a misdemeanor.  If you are a convicted felon, but have been granted parole, judicial release, a conditional pardon, or have been released under a non-jail community control sanction or on parole, you may vote if otherwise qualified to vote.  However, if you are currently serving time in prison for a felony conviction, you cannot register to vote or vote in an election.  Also, if you have been convicted of violating Ohio elections laws more than once, you are permanently barred from voting in Ohio.
Q.:  Assuming I qualify, how do I register to vote?
A.:  You may got to any of the following locations, get a registration form, and complete it there: 
· the office of the Secretary of State or any of the 88 county boards of elections;
· the office of any deputy registrar of the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles;
· offices of designated agencies that provide public assistance or disability programs;
· public libraries;
· public high schools or vocational schools;
· county treasurers' offices.
You also may register in person, through another person, or by mail at a county board of elections or the  Secretary of State's office.
Q.:  What if I can't sign my voter registration form?
A.:  Ohio law requires you to sign or affix a signature to the voter registration application.  "Sign" or "signature" means your written, cursive-style legal mark, or whatever legal mark you use in your regular business and legal affairs, written in your own handwriting.
If you cannot sign your own name, make an "X," if possible, on the application's signature line.  The person filling out your application must then certify your mark by adding the person's own signature.  If you cannot make an "X," you must indicate somehow that you want to register to vote, and the person registering you must sign the form and attest that you indicated you wanted to register. 
Law You Can Use is a weekly consumer legal information column provided by the Ohio State Bar Association.  This article was originally prepared by Sylvia Brown, Assistant Legislative Counsel for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer L. Brunner.  Articles appearing in this column are intended to provide broad, general information about the law.  Before applying this information to a specific legal problem, readers are urged to seek advice from an attorney.

Laura on Life

Somebody recently made me aware of the fact that I was old enough to be a grandmother. That person is not my favorite person right now, but since she is my mother and I was the one who made her a grandmother, I guess what goes around, comes around.
Being aware of that fact has caused me to think about my own grandmothers. They were both very special ladies and I consider myself fortunate to have known them. Both of them lived to a ripe old age which, I hope, is something they will have passed down to me.
My paternal grandmother, Elsie, was a pill, but she had no problem getting her point across. She had six children, my father being the oldest boy, so she learned to be strict. Elsie was a big woman. She never wore a dress, contrary to the fashion of her day. That's probably because wearing a dress made her look like a ship under full sail. In fact, the only time I ever saw my grandmother wear a dress was on my wedding day. Then, it was purple. She didn't know what a "red-hatter" was, but she wore a purple dress with scarlet red nail polish and lipstick to match. With her slightly bluish hair, she was a sight to behold.
Though Elsie hated to wear dresses, she always painted her nails. She also used to make costume jewelry with those perfectly manicured hands. She had so much costume jewelry left over when she went out of business, that everyone got a pair of earrings or a brooch each Christmas for years afterward. Many times my dad wondered when he would ever have an opportunity to wear that pink and yellow brooch in the shape of a fish. Maybe on Fridays during Lent?
I remember where my grandparents lived when I was growing up. We used to go there every weekend so that my mother could wash diapers in my grandmother's washing machine. Elsie probably wasn't too thrilled about that. Her pride and joy was the dryer that my father had found for 50 cents. After he tore it apart and fixed it, he installed it in my grandmother's house because we didn't have room for it. He had fixed the machine only to learn that it would sing a couple of choruses of "How Dry I Am" during every cycle. If it wasn't for the fact that she was the only one in the family that had a dryer, her family might have used her dryer's vocal skills as a point of levity. As it was, no one dared.
My maternal grandmother, Bertha - I'm not kidding- was German. Though she lived in the United States for almost 50 years, she kept her German accent until the day she died. The most important thing I learned from Grandma was that "The bananas, they make you regular." She was slightly touched in the head, but in an endearing sort of way.
She never learned to drive, so when my sister and I would visit, we'd walk everywhere or take a bus. If we were about to cross paths with a man about her age, she'd stop and ask us if her hearing aid was showing.
Every Thanksgiving, she brought a "kuchen" and every Christmas she brought hand-knitted slippers for everyone. Then each year I would snag my slippers on the first nail I came across that happened to be more than a sixteenth of an inch above the floorboards.
One summer, when we were kids, my sister and I went to visit Grandma for a whole week. She didn't have a bathtub, only a shower, so she decided to wash our waist-length hair in her kitchen sink. She sent us to look for shampoo and we were very surprised to find about six cases of toilet paper jammed into her linen closet, but not a single bottle of shampoo. That's because she had her hair regularly maintained at the beauty parlor. No need for shampoo. As for the massive quantities of toilet paper - I don't have a clue.
She eventually decided that the next best thing to shampoo was Palmolive dish detergent… We couldn't get a brush through our hair for two full weeks.
My grandmothers may not have known how to wash waist-length hair or keep a dryer from belting out an aria, but they had a lot of character. I miss them very much.
You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more columns and info about her books.