12 Low Vision Moments of Christmas, Part 2

Jennie Bovard:
Welcome to Low Vision Moments, the podcast all about those sometimes frustrating, potentially embarrassing, but often pretty comical things that happen when you are just going about your day with blindness, visual impairment, or albinism.
I'm Jennie, your host, and this is episode number 26. It's part two of our special Low Vision Moments of Christmas episodes. So cozy up, pour yourself a beverage. I haven't said that one in a while, but I'm bringing it back because in choosing which kind of beverage you may want to consider that there may be singing from two very amateur people on this episode. So you have been warned.
So today we're going to unwrap the final six Low Vision Moments of Christmas. So if you haven't listened to part one, just make sure you go ahead and do that. Highly recommend that, if not, whatever, it's your life. Joining me today for the fun is a very long-time acquaintance, someone who I'm delighted to kind of catch up with. We've been trying to go for brunch and this and that for a year now, so very nice to have this person on. They're a stay-at-home mom, they're an avid volunteer in the community in various things, and they've got an advocacy mission as well, Tara Niekamp, welcome.

Tara Niekamp:
Hi, how are you today?

Jennie Bovard:
I'm festive. I am ready to get down and unwrap these final six Low Vision Moments of Christmas. And I know you've got some new ones, but before we get into it, what else do you want the listeners and the viewers to know about you?

Tara Niekamp:
So as you mentioned, I'm a stay-at-home mom. I have one son who's nine years old. I have Stargardt's and have since I was about 10 years old. So I've been living with low vision for, oh, over 25 years now. And I live in the wonderful, "City of Lakes," Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and that's... Married. My husband also has low vision, so I often joke that we're a double-blind household.

Jennie Bovard:
And I think that might come into play today if I'm not mistaken, but I think we need to take a second to describe what we've got going on because we are both quite festive. Would you like to go first? Tell me what's going on in your background.

Tara Niekamp:
So I've dragged my Christmas tree into the room with me. So we got that all decorated up last week, and I love decorating the Christmas tree. It's one of the highlights. Then on the other side of me is a wall hanging, and it's actually my advent calendar. It's a reusable advent calendar that I had made a couple years ago. And the part that I really love about this, other than the chocolates inside of it, of course, is the center part is a stocking. And it's actually my old childhood stocking that my grandma made matching ones for me and my brother.
And it's a rather large stocking, and it's got this sort of very old Georgian-style house that's kind of up the leg of what would be the sock. And there's like little reeds and candles and people decorating trees in the windows. And then along the foot is a snowy lawn with Santa and his reindeer going right along the sort of foot to the toe. And so that was stitched into the middle, and it's just a way that I can keep that really sort of precious keepsake and pass it down.
And each year my husband and my son go out to the Lindt store and they pick all my favorite chocolates and they fill it up. So every day I know I'm getting something that I love.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh, that is so lovely. I love it. And you have a fabulous red sweater on, I have to add. Red is one of my favourite colours and certainly reminds me of this time of year.
For me, when I think of the holidays, last time I dressed completely differently. I had a Santa hat and whatnot on, but today I ran with the idea of sparkly. So I've got a sparkly necklace that my grandmother gave to me. She's passed on now, so I love wearing her sort of costume jewelry. So I've got a really nice sparkly choker thing going on and a super sparkly bracelet that you can't really see unless I hold it up. So I'm doing that right now. I've still got my blue LED lights behind me and my posh Santa and all the same stuff I had on the first episode. So you can go give that one and listen if you want to get the lay of the land in terms of my decor.
All right, so let's get into number seven. On the seventh day of Christmas, my low vision gave to me my, I don't know, city gave to me an unsuccessful gift delivery. So a few years ago, my really good friend Kelly, she and her partner moved to a new neighbourhood. And in true Jennie fashion, I did not deliver gifts well ahead of time. It was probably pretty much in the nick of time that I finally got my act together and set out to deliver these gifts to Kelly.
And so planned out my route, of course, on the bus saving money that time of year not taken, we didn't have Uber actually come to think of it. So not taken a taxi or anything. Fully confident I had planned my route on the bus and I got to a part in the route where I had to get out of the bus and walk quite a few blocks to get to her house. When I say quite a few blocks, it was maybe, I don't know, four or five blocks, but it didn't make sense to transfer to another bus basically, walking was what made sense in the route.
So I should say, we had had a big dump of snow this time, this winter, and that's not really common in the Halifax area that we get a ton of snow and it hangs around, but there was quite a lot of snow. But I'm from New Brunswick, I'm from Moncton. We're used to having a ton of snow around for months and months at a time. So I was fully confident. I had planned my route, I knew where to go, where to turn, but as soon as I got off of the bus in this neighbourhood that I did not know well, I still had my plan of action in my mind.
But I stepped off the bus and I walked maybe half a block and I got to an intersection and I just thought to myself, "I need to abort mission. I'm going to risk my life if I continue." Because I don't know about you, Tara, but in my experience, especially in the Halifax area, snow doesn't get cleared super quickly or super effectively all of the time. So what really made me say, "Ooh, abort mission, sorry Kelly, it's probably going to be after the holidays that you get these gifts now," was I came to an intersection and the snow had not been cleared and you had to step over the snowbank just to get into the street and half of the sidewalks hadn't been plowed.
So I was just not feeling safe. And that's really unusual for me to plan a route, especially when I have an endgame of giving someone gifts. I love the gift-giving, but it was very much abort mission. Sorry everyone, no gifts. So I don't know how comical that is, but it was an unusual thing for me where I was just like, "Nope, not happening today."
I know that you said decorating is very much your thing and I do a little bit decorating around the holidays, but what's it like decorating in a, did you call it a double double-blind household, where both you and your husband? Okay, so there have got to be some mishaps when it comes to all the decorating.

Tara Niekamp:
Yeah, so well, I guess here, what are we on? Eight? So on the eighth day of Christmas, my little vision gave to me an ornament hiding in the Christmas tree. So I love decorating the tree. I love all the memories because each ornament is its own story and its own memory. And I love being able to share that with Sheamus and share that each year it grows because he has ornaments that get added on. But this was more, I guess, an undecorating moment.
So we're a little bit old school. I'll keep the tree up till January 6th, old Christmas, and which is actually the 12th day of Christmas. So the 12th days of Christmas is actually from Christmas day to January 6th. So I keep the tree up till then. And so by that point, Kyle's back at work and Sheamus is back at school. So usually I'll be un-decorating the tree during the day someday and wrapping all the ornaments up and putting them away.
And I'm always very careful. I try to think about which ones went on and make sure I have them all. And every year I say, "Okay, next year I'm going to do a spreadsheet. So I know I have them all off." And I had them all off. I had everything down. And this was a year we had a real tree. So I always get Kyle to check because I know that I can't, my vision's really at the point where I can see the lights on the tree and that's kind of it. And well, and the tree itself I guess. And he checked it, "Yep, looks all good."
So we hauled that puppy outside, all the needles dropping everywhere. And it was outside probably for a couple days. And I was walking my son to school and he goes, "There's an ornament on that tree."

Jennie Bovard:
Wait. On the curb? While it was on the curb there was there still an ornament?

Tara Niekamp:
Outside on the curb and he goes, "There's an ornament on the tree." And I was like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Right in there. There's an ornament." So thankfully it was just, we caught it, it was just a little Dollar Store ornament. But moral of the story, always have the person with the most vision in the household check your Christmas tree, even if that person is under the age of 10.
So yeah, two blind people checking over the Christmas tree does not guarantee that you're going to catch all those ornaments. Really glad for my son's vision in that case.

Jennie Bovard:
So if it was me, I like undecorating, if that's not a real word it needs to be. We say taking down Christmas, which it sounds negative. And sometimes if... I can't think of a time where I had to undecorate the tree on my own, but I would probably frisk it, you know what I mean? When you go to the airport and you get frisked or whatever if you're dealing with the law.

Tara Niekamp:
Then you get all the sap on your hands and your hands are all sticky.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah. that's right. I didn't think you had... You had a real tree.

Tara Niekamp:
Yeah, we go out West, my husband's from out West, so we go out West kind of every other year. So we use a real tree when we're here and then an artificial tree when we're, my parents gave us an artificial tree, their old one a couple years ago. So we use that when we go out West because otherwise the tree's sitting here without any water or anything. And then it's a real mess.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah. Oh, I love the smell of a real Christmas tree.

Tara Niekamp:
I do. But then there's the mess of the needles. I have a love, not hate, but whatever's, a love dislike of the tree because there's the smell but the needles.

Jennie Bovard:
You don't find the needles months later and you're like, "Ah, Christmas."

Tara Niekamp:
No, no. I'm usually vacuuming every day around the tree to get it up. But even then you got to really have some serious skill because if you go in it too rough, then your vacuum just knocks more needles down.

Jennie Bovard:
Right. Or you're sucking up ornaments or you're sucking up the tree skirt or worse, gifts. Oh, my God.

Tara Niekamp:
We don't have any carpet, so I think that's the saving grace. We have all hardwoods, so even when the tree goes out, we can vacuum. And then my son is also usually pretty good at catching those needles. It really helps to have someone who can see in the house.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh yeah, definitely. Well, speaking of things that we find under the tree, other than needles on the... Oh goodness, I'm having a moment.

Tara Niekamp:
Ninth.

Jennie Bovard:
Thank you. Thank you, Tara. On the ninth day of Christmas. Should I try to sing this one? Oh gosh. You've been warned, listeners and viewers.

Tara Niekamp:
Go for it. They've had enough time to have a drink.

Jennie Bovard:
I haven't though. On the ninth day of Christmas, my family gave to me nine pairs of tighty whities. I can't believe those words came out of my mouth. I hope tighty whities isn't like something offensive now because that's what we call men's briefs. Cotton men's underwear, that's what we call them, tighty whities.
So I know for sure that more than a couple of times I have opened gifts that were for other people because I misread the label and I gung ho, got in there, ripped her open, and realized, "Ooh, this was for so-and-so." So I wanted to find the best one. I was searching my memory and I was talking with my mom and I asked her mom, "What's the most, I know I've done this, what's the most memorable one that you can think of?" And she says, "Oh, well, when you were pretty young," I think I must have been five or six or something, I opened a gift that I thought was for me.
So my dad's name is Terry and Terry Jennie, similar number of letters, possibly similar shaped words. I read the label as Jennie and not Terry. And I ripped open this package and didn't I find a pack of men's underwear, tighty whitey cotton white underwear. And I must have suppressed this memory because I do not remember this happening.
I wouldn't put it past me, because I know I've done it. But I seriously must have repressed it because my mom says, when I opened the gift, I was so upset because I thought the family was playing a mean joke on me. That they bought me men's underwear for Christmas. And it certainly happened since.
I remember opening a thing of chocolates and I was like, "Oh, these chocolates are okay, but they're not my favourite. Do my parents know me at all?" And it was for my sister.

Tara Niekamp:
There's a good chance after this episode drops, you're going to get tighty whities for Christmas this year.

Jennie Bovard:
You know what? That's fine, that's fine. I'll laugh and then I'll donate them elsewhere. Again, it's great to have someone with good eyes or use the tools available to me to make sure that I'm not opening the wrong gift.

Tara Niekamp:
Present-hander-outer Sheamus has to hand out the presents because I've actually got to the point where I can't even read the labels. So my vision is so bad that there's no even trying to make them out. It's not an option.

Jennie Bovard:
But he's happy to do it, right?

Tara Niekamp:
Yes. He loves handing out the presents and we love just sitting back on the couch and drinking our hot Christmas morning beverages and not having to do anything.

Jennie Bovard:
We do mimosas, but we don't have children running around. So men's tighty whities, possibly the worst gift a five-year-old could get? Maybe. But I'm sure there are other weird gift giving moments. I can't be the only one, right?

Tara Niekamp:
No. So we're on 10 now, right? So let's do this.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah, someone's keeping track.

Tara Niekamp:
On the 10th day of Christmas I gave to my grandpa the wrong DVD. So as I said, I am at the point where trying to read Christmas texts it's just not, it doesn't happen. But what I do have enough sight is to sort of, and I don't know if you do this, I wrap the presents and I know based on what wrapping paper and what type of box or shape of box, I know what present that is and who it's for.
So I have it all cataloged in my head, "This paper, this shape equals this person." And so this would've been several years ago before I was married, we were at my parents' house for Christmas. My grandparents were down visiting. They live in Ontario, so they were down visiting. And I remember before this, I had been talking to my grandpa about what his favourite Christmas movie was and my favourite Christmas movie is White Christmas and he said that his favourite Christmas movie was A Christmas Carol, but the original black and white Christmas Carol.
And I don't know if I was actively looking before it or if I just happened upon it in Walmart, but I found the original black and white Christmas Carol. And I said, "Oh, okay, great. This will be awesome. I'll get this for my grandpa." This was when DVDs were a thing. And so I got it, I wrapped it, I had it under the tree. And so Christmas morning comes and I'm like, "Oh, this one's for Poppy." And I knew this one's for grandpa. It was the wrapping paper I used. It was the shape of a DVD, pretty unmistakable shape. And so I handed it to him and he was sitting on the couch sort of across the living room from me.
So he unwraps it and there's sort of this just silence. And I was like, "Well, do you like it?" And there's kind of like this. And my mom's like, "I don't think that one was for grandpa." And I go, "No, no. That's for him." I know I wrapped it. And she goes, "No, I don't think it is."
And so it turns out, and I have it here, what I actually had given my grandpa and I'm trying to figure out, was not the original black and white Christmas Carol, but the Barbie animated Christmas Carol video DVD that my mom-

Jennie Bovard:
Poor grandpa.

Tara Niekamp:
... my mom had gotten for me. And by some strange coincidence, she had wrapped it in the exact same papers that I had wrapped my grandpa's Christmas Carol DVD.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh, no.

Tara Niekamp:
I was like, "Okay." So it was a little bit anti-climatic for me because at that point it was already unwrapped. But then I realized that we obviously had just both grabbed the same wrapping paper by chance and wrapped it up and so yeah, found the right one.

Jennie Bovard:
What are the chances?

Tara Niekamp:
Very, very slim. Having someone a designated present distributor, a designated distributor, is necessary when you have low vision. A DD.

Jennie Bovard:
A new definition to DGD, Designated Gift Distributor.

Tara Niekamp:
Yeah, definitely should have one.

Jennie Bovard:
We can't make it too official. They'll want some perks or something. We can't make it sound too official because then they'll...

Tara Niekamp:
But they can have free drinks. It'll be the opposite of the regular DD where you can't drink when you're the gift distributor, the designated distributor, you can drink as much as you want.

Jennie Bovard:
DGD, let me pour you another mimosa.

Tara Niekamp:
Keep handing those presents. They got to pace themselves because if they get to the point where they can't read, then the whole thing.

Jennie Bovard:
Yes. They need to be able to read.

Tara Niekamp:
Not too too many.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah. Wait till the gifts are handed out and then go to town. Then this is a plan. I like this. This is good. Oh, poor grandpa.

Tara Niekamp:
You're going to have a whole bunch of people offering to hand out gifts at your house this year.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah, yeah. Right. So wait, how did grandpa react?

Tara Niekamp:
He's just very quiet.

Jennie Bovard:
Just quiet?

Tara Niekamp:
Obviously, Barbie Christmas Carol was not on his wishlist, but I think he didn't really want to hurt my feelings. I was obviously so proud. But we sorted it out. It was all good. I think that was the last year I was like, "Okay, I'm done handing out presents." So I'll do it now because I know we don't have a ton of presents under the tree. There are not as many people around, so it's a little bit easier. And I don't live at home-

Jennie Bovard:
Now, we're talking-

Tara Niekamp:
... so my mom's wrapping paper is different than my wrapping paper now.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh that, okay. So maybe you had dipped into the same supply of wrapping paper. Okay. It's coming together now.

Tara Niekamp:
Oh, yeah. So I was living at home at the time I was in university, so I'd gone to the wrapping paper stock and pulled out the same papers.

Jennie Bovard:
Okay. So we're talking a little bit about, a lot about actually, relying on people with working eyes to hand out our gifts, check the tree over, and my next Low Vision Moment of Christmas, where are we at?

Tara Niekamp:
11.

Jennie Bovard:
10?

Tara Niekamp:
11.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh, my goodness. I'm glad one of us is keeping track. I am not on the ball today. Okay, so we're at 11 already. Oh no, we're almost done. This certainly ties into relying on other people when you have low vision or are blind and relying on people who can see well, so on the 11th day of Christmas, my sister gave to me the wrong cooking temperature.
You can probably guess where this is going. Last year my sister and a couple of family members were over for the holidays. She and I were going to make the turkey. We were going to make the dinner together. And we had never done this together before. She had made turkeys before and she has working eyes. So I was relying on her a lot.
Now, I could have very easily taken out my magnifier, used my phone, any number of tools to go and read the instructions on the turkey, "What temperature do we cook this turkey at?" I asked her, instead of going and reading it myself, I trust her so, "Lisa, what temperature do we cook this turkey at?"
"Okay, 160 degrees." "Really? Fahrenheit?" And I swear to God 10 times I asked her, "Are you sure you read that right? Only 160-something degrees. Are you sure that's not Celsius? Because that seems like a really low Fahrenheit. Really? That seems low Fahrenheit temperature." But we put it in, I trust her, she's my big sister, 160-something degrees.
It had been in, I don't know, maybe 45 minutes or something and I was just like, "No. Something's not right." I have to go and check. So I snuck so she didn't know. And I went and checked and I read it and I was like, "No way, man. No way." I took out my phone and I read this thing and I was just beside myself laughing and I called her in and I was like, "Lisa, I don't know if I can trust you anymore. This was not supposed to be cooked at 160 something degrees Celsius."
You have to cook a turkey, you'd have to cook it for a day for it to cook. I want it to be juicy, but I'm not trying to slow-cook my turkey in the oven here. That's a long cook time. It's supposed to be 325 to 425 Fahrenheit or something like that, depending on how long you're going to cook it.
So I'm just glad that I went and snuck and read it later on. We salvaged it. We had enough time that we were able to cook this turkey in time. So I'm just glad. A lot of these low vision moments have lessons and if you got the tools, maybe read the cooking directions yourself on the turkey if you can.

Tara Niekamp:
You would've been cooking that turkey for 12 days.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh my God. It's so lucky that I happened to go and just sneak and look because "This doesn't feel right. Something's not right here."

Tara Niekamp:
It's funny you say you sneak because sometimes that happens. You're like, "Well, who am I to second guess? They can."

Jennie Bovard:
She's got the eyes. She read it.

Tara Niekamp:
But you're like, "It doesn't make sense." And so you're always sort of sneaking and double-checking. And then I find the hard part is when you're like, "Oh, yeah. They were wrong." How do you then, "Oh, so..."

Jennie Bovard:
Well, it's my sister. So I flat out just laughed my ass off at her and told her what was going on. And now it's one of those fun holiday memories that we're never going to forget. Do you cook a turkey? Do you do a ham? What do you do?

Tara Niekamp:
So we do a turkey. And so what's that? The last day.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh my God.

Tara Niekamp:
I know. On the 12th day of Christmas my husband gave to me an upside-down turkey.

Jennie Bovard:
I never even thought of what way it should go. Sorry, go ahead.

Tara Niekamp:
So we bought our first house over 10 years ago. And even though we had our own house and my parents came in to our place, my dad still did all the cooking for Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, cooked the turkey, he'd do all the vegetables. And we were very, very spoiled. And so this was the first year that my dad was stepping back and we were actually going to cook the meal. And so our living room kind of goes along the front of our house and then our kitchen and dining room is along the back and they both have openings into the living room and the dining room in the kitchen are pretty open.
So there's a bit of a wall, but it's all kind of fairly open. You can hear people in the kitchen. And so my dad was on the couch and I was in the living room with him and Kyle called me into the kitchen, Kyle's my husband, and he goes, "Tara." "What?" He goes, "Is the turkey upside down?" And I looked at him and I go, "How should I know? I can't see. I can't see if the turkey's right." I wouldn't know which way a turkey's supposed to go.
And he goes, "I think it's upside down." And of course, so then we're trying to figure out, "Okay, do we have the turkey upside down?" But we don't want my dad to hear because we're like, "If he finds out we can't cook this turkey, that's it. We've lost our Christmas holiday cooking privileges for the rest of our lives. He's never going to trust us with this again."

Jennie Bovard:
You've got it under control.

Tara Niekamp:
I was like, "I don't know. Google it." Don't ask the blind person. They're not a reliable resource. So he Googled it. It was upside down. Of course he-

Jennie Bovard:
How do you Google that? Which way does a turkey go in a pan?

Tara Niekamp:
Yeah. How should turkey...

Jennie Bovard:
How do you feel if a turkey's upside down?

Tara Niekamp:
And of course, it'd been in the oven for a while at this point. So he then had to flip the turkey, but it was hot and it was greasy. Thankfully, and this is probably the only saving grace, we have the silicone oven mitts.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh, yeah.

Tara Niekamp:
So he was able to flip it and then wash the oven mitts off. Now apparently in Googling what way is a turkey supposed to be cooked? He came across this whole school or this section or subgroup that actually holds that you should start cooking your Turkey upside down for a certain amount of time and then flip it. And that in doing that, when it's upside down, all the greases run down into the rest of the Turkey and stove. Apparently, it makes the turkey juicier and better tasting. But you got to have a strategy for flipping it if you're going to start it upside down.

Jennie Bovard:
That's fantastic. I'm so glad you guys pulled it off. And I'm assuming nobody was the wiser. It was delicious.

Tara Niekamp:
Not until they watched this podcast, but that was several years ago. Now we've got lots of turkeys under our belt.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah.

Tara Niekamp:
We proved that-

Jennie Bovard:
So do you still cook it upside down for a little bit and then turn it over?

Tara Niekamp:
I don't know. Kyle takes care of the turkey.

Jennie Bovard:
Okay. But we'll have to ask him. Because I'm curious if he actually went ahead with this tip.

Tara Niekamp:
I don't know.

Jennie Bovard:
I'm just imagining.

Tara Niekamp:
It's a hard thing to do, to flip a turkey, especially if you've got one of those big birds.

Jennie Bovard:
Well, yeah.

Tara Niekamp:
It's not easy when it's been in there for a while. It's all greasy and slippery.

Jennie Bovard:
It sounds dangerous and you're trying to do it without anybody in the other room-

Tara Niekamp:
We were tying to do it without anybody figuring it out.

Jennie Bovard:
That's Christmas movie material. I'm just going to put that out there. Yeah, that's great. Oh my goodness, Tara, this is so much fun. I don't think I dropped any F-bombs in this episode. So we're really keeping it festive and joyous. And I wonder, are you game to try and recap the full 12 Low Vision Moments of Christmas before we go?

Tara Niekamp:
Let's try it.

Jennie Bovard:
Okay. All right. You have the honour of starting and I'm going to try to keep up and not mess up.

Tara Niekamp:
On the 12th day of Christmas my husband gave to me an upside-down turkey.

Jennie Bovard:
11 wrong cooking temperatures,

Tara Niekamp:
10 wrong DVDs for my grandpa.

Jennie Bovard:
Barbie Christmas Carol, in case you forgot. Nine pairs of tighty whities.

Tara Niekamp:
Eight ornaments hidden in a Christmas tree.

Jennie Bovard:
Seven unsuccessful gift deliveries.

Tara Niekamp:
Six awkward shopping checkouts.

Jennie Bovard:
Five burning houses.

Tara Niekamp:
Four missing cookie cutters.

Jennie Bovard:
Three origami gift sets.

Tara Niekamp:
Two Kelly Clarkson tickets.

Jennie Bovard:
And one giant deck of playing cards. I think we did that justice. I cannot thank you enough for being brave enough to go through those with me. Please nobody judge our singing. Just be kind. Tis the season to be nice.

Tara Niekamp:
We gave them fair warning. We did not profess to be professional or good singers.

Jennie Bovard:
That's right. That was the first episode. We had one on the first episode, but this one, you got us and we're fun, if I do say so myself. We might not be able to sing well, but we're a good time and I've had such a good time.
Tara, I can't thank you enough for coming on and wrapping this up in a nice little bow with me. Before we go, is there anything you want to shout out? Anything you want to say?

Tara Niekamp:
Just I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas or whatever they choose to celebrate and that whatever low-vision moments happen to come your way this holiday season, even if they don't seem like a gift now in future years, hopefully, you'll look back and they'll be sort of some precious memories that will make you chuckle and bring a smile to your face.

Jennie Bovard:
Unless they're tighty whities. You might suppress that one. There might be a little trauma.

Tara Niekamp:
You're smiling though.

Jennie Bovard:
I know. I smile at trauma. No, I'm just kidding. All right, thank you so, so much. You have a Happy Holiday with your family and we'll catch up in the New Year. For real we'll go for brunch.

Tara Niekamp:
Definitely.

Jennie Bovard:
Thank you so, so much for listening and watching these two very special Low Vision Moments episodes. The 12 Low Vision Moments of Christmas, I think, have been the holiday party we all deserve this time of year, and I could not have done it without my incredible guests, both Marlina and this time around, Tara, you're both incredible people.
Thank you for singing along and I really hope that if you're watching or listening that you are doing what makes you happy this time of year, whether you're celebrating something or not.
If you have any feedback or suggestions for the podcast, you know I'd love to hear from you. You can send an email to podcast@ami.ca or you can leave a voicemail at 1-866-509-4545. To leave a voicemail, again, that number is 1-866-509-4545. Just make sure to mention Low Vision Moments in the message please and thanks.
You can also follow me on Instagram. I'm there under UberBlonde4. That's U-B-E-R-B-L-O-N-D-E and the number four. Don't forget to subscribe on YouTube if that's where you're enjoying Low Vision Moments, please hit subscribe over there and leave a comment. I'd just love to hear from all of you.
Our technical producer is Marc Aflalo and he is definitely still on my nice list this year. Thank you very much to manager at AMI-audio, Mr. Grinch, I mean Andy Frank. And until next time, Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.