The Racer

On the way to the bus stop a house on the corner in my neighborhood must have gotten new sprinklers because out of the blue they are on every morning now and shooting 6 feet in the air. Well ok, more like 5 feet 5 inches because I’m getting drenched from head to toe when I walk by in the morning. I could handle this ok if it weren’t for my dog running to get past them. Instead of Racer the marathoner he becomes Racer the 50 yard dasher! Racer does not like sprinklers. Oh and did I mention that these sprinklers are also on the corner so it’s right at a curb that we should be stopping at and while we are stopped I am supposed to then leisurely tell my dog that it is ok to proceed forward. Well my dog bolts past the downpour and never stops for the curb because how can he think about an insignificant thing such as a curb when he is trying to save us from a sprinkler attack. It is a residential street so there aren’t any cars around but seriously. It puts me in a precarious situation. I don’t really want to be sprinting towards a curb that I might twist my ankle on. So I guess from now on I will cross to the other side of the street before we even get to this street. It’s annoying to think that there is only 3 minutes during the day when these sprinklers are being a problem to a blind person and it is those 3 minutes that they are on. If the home owner picked any of the other 23 hours and 57 minutes to run his sprinklers it would be no problem.

 

 

“It’s what we’re all trying to do, right? Remember a time that was better. Re-create a moment of that memory as we let the crisp Coke bubble down our throats. Riding bikes on a summer day. Sitting on the curb and watching the streetlights come on. Playing in the sprinklers with a group of neighbor kids. We’re all trying to salvage a time when we dreamed beyond our reality and thought monsters were under our beds instead of peppering our family trees. We’re trying to harness those fleeting moments that turned our ordinary lives into something extraordinary. In the sepia haze of those memories, we are beautiful.” ~ Liza Palmer

 

Pet Smart

We recently went to the Pet Store to get a name tag for Racer’s Collar. The print on his old one was wearing off because we had forgotten to place the protective plastic covering on it. We stood at the machine as it was made and then we leaned over my dog to clip it onto his collar. Racer was standing very still as we hovered over him. Meanwhile a fluffy dog sneaks up and sniffs my dogs butt! Racer turns his head quickly to see who the visitor is. I imagined my dog saying, “excusez-Moi! Do you mind?” Nothing like a cold wet nose in your butt to get your attention. Before any of us could respond the dog and his human darted down an aisle. Racer I guess it was a drive by sniffing!

 

“You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.” ~Alice Hoffman   

Freudian slips or are you just blind?

When I was in my twenties and had some pretty good vision but had to start using a cane, I became friends with Kyle who had lost his sight from diabetes. He was the first person who I connected with who was totally blind and had a guide dog, well the dog was from the Seeing Eye to be exact. I would talk to Kyle about losing all of his sight and He said that when his vision was going there was a period of time when he had a tiny bit left but it just made him confused and he was relieved to just lose the sight completely. I couldn’t imagine wanting to lose whatever vision I had remaining. Honestly I feel at ease now that I am a total. I was constantly trying to figure out if I would be able to see something with this amount of light or that amount of magnification. I used to leave for work and freak out if I couldn’t find a magnifier that I needed to function. I was constantly trying to tell people what I could or couldn’t see. I had a software program that magnified my computer screen called zoom text and I would sit with my nose up to the computer. I was using Facebook then and when old status updates come up from years past I cringe because almost every post has a typo. Reading the “on this day” section of Facebook is supposed to be nostalgic but I just cringe. Today one popped up from 2009 and I had written that the weather put me in a bed mood. I am pretty sure I was trying to say bad mood. Then there was the time that I posted that I was attending a gluten free sexpo when really it was an expo. I am sure this was because of my eyesight and not Freudian slips although I have heard a joke that once you make one Freudian slip it’s just one after a mother. I was getting my under grad during this time of visual impairment so I bet I had some big typos in my assignments because spell check doesn’t get everything. I am not claiming that I never make typos now but since I use speech software on my computer I can catch misspellings better because it will read the misspelled word really strangely and my ear catches it. It’s unique to be on both sides of blindness. The times where I was clinging to a little bit of sight and now when I am totally blind. I can really see what Kyle meant and it’s ok. Even though I am saying all of this now I don’t think my earlier self would believe me on this issue. We only know our experience and I hadn’t gone totally blind then so I would never believe that I would feel this way. Also I am always thinking about the psychology of things, is this a way of coping with blindness? Here I am writing a post about how ok I am with blindness. I am open to that idea. Sure it is painful to not see photos anymore or not be able to enjoy an art show like I used to. I also can’t enjoy interior decorating shows. Is my brain telling myself that it’s not that bad to be blind so that I can handle it? Hmmm. Something to ponder.   

RIP Kyle. You went too soon. I miss hanging out with you and your sweet guide Toledo. Your kidneys and pancreas failed you and I don’t know why some people aren’t allowed to live a long life. When you receive a guide dog you are always thinking about the day when you might have to retire the dog but I don’t think people really think that it might be their dog that outlives them and their dog will be sitting so stoic, at their funeral, greeting their friends and family.