so sorry i haven't responded to your excellent suggestions but i fell in the snow the other day and am battling The Leg Splint (wow, capital letters...lol ) and pain. oh well. <sigh>

i like the reading light idea. that would keep me from having to bring the book almost to my nose to see it!

also, the "buds"? will look into that. that way i could hear client and only "listen" with one ear to the book.

and your comment about ocd and stress. you aren't gonna believe this, but one book i was reading at clients, wanted to finish it (was a good book) so thouight i'd finish it at home. the reading stuff i usually do was almost gone!!! (was just the punctuation stuff and only a tad of the caps like i do when reading here) so there ya go. it must be extreme stress at that client's. she scares the heck out of me and guess it was transferred into the ocd stuff i do when reading.

also, the last time i did any serious reading was years ago when taking care of my mom dying with cancer. so see? that was high-stress too but i just thought that was the way it was with reading and i quit reading books at that time until now.

amazing. like tom hanks said in "philadelphia", "for every problem there is a solution" and i always know if i search enough (and meet caring, concerned and smart people like you ) i will get an answer. thank you vertebrae. means a lot to this ole gal. take care.