Out With My Cane...

Just got back from the store. I carried my white cane around for the first time.  A lot of you don’t know this but I have super bad vision and have always had super bad vision. I’ve had a cane for most of my life but have never really used it that much. I am a really stubborn person and insisted on getting around on my own for most of my life. Glasses don’t really help in most situations for complicated reasons I don’t know how to explain. I’ve been thinking about starting to use my cane lately, not only to let others know I am visually impaired, but to bridge the gap between what I can and can’t see.  I also have really bad depth perception. that is another reason why I have started to use it. I am not going to use it everywhere, but I am going to carry it around everywhere. If you see me using it or carrying it around don’t be to surprised. :)

I have had a cane for my whole life but have never used it because i was to stubborn.

I have been taking O & M classes since I was 7 years old to help me know how to get around and use my cane if I ever wanted to use it.

I went to the school for the blind and visually impaired up until 6th grade, it was great. :)

Yes I do know braille, but I have forgotten a lot of it since I don’t use it really.  I might want to learn about for fun though some day.

Most my friends growing up were either blind, or visually impaired.

My class at the school for the blind and visually impaired only had 8 people in it, we were all really close to each other. :)

My best friend Eric that I do not have contact with anymore because he is married, I met at the school for the blind. We were really close up until my senior year of high school. :)

I used to have a talking watch  

Despite my impairment I am very good at getting around and taking care of myself. I usually do not create any hassle for anyone. 

All my computer fonts, and browsers, and web pages are enlarged so I don’t have to have my face 7 inches from the screen at all times like I used to when I was stubborn. ha ha.

I use size 20 font for my browser menus. :)

I never use the word disability when describing my vision, I am not disabled since I have some of my vision, if you are not able to do, or use part of your body completely, that is a  disability, if you can use it partially , that is am impairment.  I am not disabled because I can see still, but not completely, I am visually impaired. :)

We bought a few things at the store, mostly shampoo, dish soap, and a few other things that I forgot. My sister got some ice cream bars… mmmm. I had the chocolate. :)

White Cane

I’ve been coming to a strange realization as of late. I have been legally blind, even with correction my whole life, but I’ve been really stubborn to admit these new realizations to myself. These new realizations I found were that I have a cane, but have never used it in public, at least not of late, this could help me a lot in most situations. I’ve never realized that it might help with the certain problem where people just automatically assume that I can see well when I can’t in a public place. I should have at least kept my cane out in open sight in these situations, even if i wasn’t using it. It could have helped me a lot.

The other realization I am having is that it could have helped me avoid a lot of uncomfortable situations where I couldn’t see and had to be careful, and I have suddenly come to realize that I have had a certain lack of security when not using it in every day life. I have to be a lot more careful than most people.

I didn’t realize just how common it is for people of even worse vision than me to use their canes and visual aids. I felt dumbfounded by this certain realization when I was reading personal stores of people that have even better vision than I do but still use their visual aids and canes often. I have never thought about it until my eye doctor said he is amazed how well I go through life without much help, I get around better than most people with my vision. 

I’m not the kind of person that would be embarrassed about bringing a cane everywhere with me, or asking for help, or being recognized as being visually impaired. 

I’ve read the personal stories of people that have worse vision than I do and they said that using a cane really helped them. They were like me and didn’t really want to use it at first but tried and loved it.

So I think I will try for myself as well. Maybe it will help me in more ways than one :)

work parties are lame...

So it’s been a few days since I wrote anything. Not much has been happening that I remember. I’ve just been catching up on some TV shows, and trying to work a few problems out with my characters in Destiny Online. So nothing that dramatic has been happening.

I’ve started to edit photos to match what I see from my visual perspective. i really like the blur tool in paint programs, it really comes in handy for this kind of thing. My edits aren’t absolutely accurate but they are close. I’ll post a few later most likely.

((look at the circled area))

Yesterday my mom’s work had this party at a park. There was food, and a band, it was pretty cool but it was sort of drizzling outside of the pavilion. I was wearing the wrong shoes. the shoes I was wearing, when they get wet they become really slippery and so i had to be really careful how I walked sometimes and make sure id didn’t step in any big puddles. I thought the party was okay but it wasn’t my thing. I didn’t know ayone there, I liked the band they played some songs i like, even though it wasn’t my favorite version of the songs they sounded good. 

Then there was this skit it was sort of funny, I don’t think it was as funny as other people thought it was. I don’t know, sometimes I’m a little hard to impress,  I just feel like it wasn’t my thing that day. I thought it was okay though. It was this guy acting out a family reunion and he acted out all the people himself. It was pretty cool.

We had some drama in the car on the way there. Natalie got really carsick and felt like she was going to throw up, lucky she didn’t though. I was really freaked out, but I laughed about it later. Everyone was panicking it was so funny.

Anyway, I’ve just been hanging out at the house today, watching youtube videos, and reading news, and blogs and stuff.

The Eye Doctor

so yesterday I had to go to the eye doctor. I’m trying to get SSI income, and insurance so I can get a neurological scan and some other things that I really need.

It was really interesting. We filled out a few forms to get started at this new office that I had never been too. My eye doctor was one up in primary Children’s hospital for so long called Dr. Hoffman. When I was in my senior year of high school I started going to another one though. Can’t remember his name but he seemed pretty good. He was a good doctor but I am a bit tricky when it comes to measuring my vision. If your not really careful and check to make sure the correction you give me is right for sure then I can end up with the wrong prescription for glasses. That can mix a lot of things up trust me.

I went to this doctor 2 different times. 1 time at the end of high school. That time he said my eyesight was better than it used to be. He said it was 20 / 100 with best correction. The second time he said that my best correction was 20 / 80. I thought my vision had gotten better again. Well I went to this really great eye doctor, they were so professional about their job!

First they did the test with my glasses on, that thing they make you stare at and rad the letters. They keep making the letters smaller until you say you can not read them.   Then they had me do a color blind test. I am not color blind and I aced it as usual. Then they did a test that had me staring at a grid, I had to look at a little dot in the middle of the grid and tell the doctor if i had distorted vision, that is if the grid looked distorted. I did not have distorted vision thankfully.

Then they checked how much my vision could be corrected, you know when you look through that machine, and they flip the lenses back and forth and ask you which one you can see through better.

Well this is where it got interesting. I don’t know what it was but we were able to find out that my former doctor made a few mistakes when measuring my vision. The people at this new office I went to were really thorough about their jobs and did so many tests that I did not get from my other doctor. I really liked it. They were able to properly diagnose me with 20 / 200 vision with BEST correction. So in other words my vision has not gotten any better. I know I haven’t gotten any worse, I would have noticed that so the former diagnoses es of 20/ 100, and 20 / 80 from my former doctor were wrong. 

I can’t say I’m sad about this because me being legally blind officially again, even with glasses is a good thing for SSI. I will have a lot better chance of qualifying for it.

So next they did a pressure check. They put the numbing drops in my eyes that make my eyes feel really weird, and then they did the pressure test. I don’t know exactly what they do but they had to apply a little bit of pressure of something like that to my eyes with this really little blue thing. I is always a little difficult for me to do this because of my nystagmus. The doctor had to keep my eyes open with her fingers because it’s a natural instinct of my eyes that I should close them when something is going to touch them. My nystagmus had a factor in it as well. My eyes wanted to go crazy but I had to resist and keep them from moving as much as possible it was tricky. 

After this the doctor put a series of drops in my eyes. he put another set of numbing drops in my eyes to dull the sting of the dilating drops. He dilated my eyes with eye drops.

While I was waiting for my eyes to dilate we did a peripheral vision test. I am not to good at explaining this test so you should probably look it up.

After that the doctor checked my eyes, my retinas and stuff, made sure my eyes themselves were healthy. A lot of my vision problems aren’t in the eyes themselves but originate from my brain. 

It was really bright because of my eyes being dilated, so they gave me a pare of shades before I went home.

We went out to Wendy’s and ate, and then took my mom to work. The line at Wendy’s was sort of slow. My food was hot though, like I like it when I got it. i got a spicy chicken sandwich. I really love those.

Then I went home and did the usual stuff.  I’ve been watching Aladdin the TV series, I finished it yesterday, that took up the whole day. I played Destiny Online as well, leveled my characters a few times.

Today I’ve just been surfing blogs, and watching videos and stuff. Can’t believe it’s saturday once again.

Family Stuff...

So, I haven’t talked very much about my nephew since he was born. His name is Jax, he is totally adorable. I haven’t seen him in person yet, but my parents have. They went up to California for a few weeks in August after he was born.

We did a web cam chat sometime last week. I don’t remember talking about it. It was pretty cool though. I can tell he is attached to his mom though, he has gained weight but it only made him cuter.  Heh, I think he was a little fussy when we were doing it, we had to give him back his bottle multiple times.

Almost my whole family was there when we did it, minus my 2 brothers that weren’t present. We took turns getting into the view of the camera. I’m not very fond of cameras but I made an exception to get in front of it this time. :)

It was a pretty good experience all in all. We are going to do it again soon sometime.

Oh and a day before, or maybe 2 his hair came off the top of his head while they were giving him a bath. it didn’t come off of the back so he has this really funny hair now, it looks cute though. He looks like captain Pecard from Star Trek. Maybe they should dress him up and take photos as well.  :p

September 11th... My Story. :)

I never got to my September 11th post yesterday, sorry about that. It is now September 12th.

I fell asleep for part of the day yesterday and completely forgot I was going to write it. I also got distracted by a church meeting I was supposed to go to and completely forgot, I wasn’t ready to go and I had to miss it and that totally took my thoughts elsewhere.  Yesterday I just spent most of the day rememiscing in the past and watching youtube videos. I’ll tell you my story from that day. 

It was 10 days before the end of summer on September 11th. I was sleeping when my mom came into my room, turned on my light, and gave me the news. “A Jet has just hit one of the twin towers.” , she said. I was still in a sleepy daze but I heard what she said, even though I did not completely register the seriousness. I stumbled out of bed got my clothes on and went upstairs. I watched the TV with awe, I did not really get what was going on but it looked serious. I started to get ready for school, went along with my day as I usually did before school. Not to long after I woke up though, and started to go about my day as normal after seeing it the 2nd plane hit (according the the video i am watching right now it was at 7:03am, so not very much time had passed since I left the TV. I was still a little un serious about it at that time. I was not accustomed to things like this happening, at least not to my knowledge, I was very innocent at the time.  I just stood there at the TV an watched for a while not knowing what to think about it.

I went to school as usual after these events, everyone was buzzing about it. I just sort of dismissed it and went along to my classes.

It wasn’t until lunch, about 12 noon that I was caught up with the news. I had heard rumors like the towers had fallen, and the pentagon was hit and stuff like that but I never really got to see for myself, until lunch that is. 

I wasn’t really scared at all, just surprised, and a little shocked. I’m pretty sure if I had been a bit older I would have been a little scared, but being young I was more curious than anything else. I sat on top of one of the lunch tables and just watched the TV for the whole lunch period, completely glued to it. I found it very exciting. 

I should probably add that that day was the first day I had ever heard of Islam as well. It’s been an interesting 9 years since then. I find it to be a very interesting religion, but unlike a lot of people I do not hate Muslims, nor do I think they are all bad. Some of them are misled however, not all of the though. I am not one to condemn a whole religion just because of a few mistakes made by a few people.

Anyway, they had the news and stuff broadcasting in the classrooms through out the school day. Most of the time the sound was just turned down, or completely off, and some classrooms we watched the news for a few minutes and then went about our day.

I couldn't’t wait to get home. I wanted to just watch everything that was happening that day.

When I got home I spent a large amount of time just watching the TV. in fact I’m pretty sure besides a bit of homework, that was the only thing that occupied my time that day. I didn’t want to miss a thing.

Yeah, so that was an interesting day. I wish I had a bit more detail but it was 9 years ago, and memories fade. I guess this will have to do though.

Oh and for the record I started typing this on September 12th, but got a bit lazy. it is now September 14th.  :p

Games and Ducks

so today is September 11th.

My sister’s birthday was 2 days ago, she turned 29. Nothing much has happened. I’ve just been hanging around the house as usual.  I’ve been trying to level on Destiny Online lately, and have been busy on the game, so I didn’t write for a few days. That, and I sort of forgot a little, when your having fun time just flies and you forget stuff, heh.

Today was tribe war today in Destiny Online. We take turns being winners on panda server, we have a pretty good system. It enables even lower level people to be able to participate without worrying abut dying a lot. My priest got to level 75, the war gave a lot of experience. The funny thing is that all the losers get turned into ducks it’s so funny. 

Anyway, besides that, nothing much has been happening. I have been reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning though.

I will write about September 11th later, that was a crazy day for me ha ha.

 

At the Park...

So today we went to some thing at the park this evening. I don’t know what it was but we had food and there were people there. I did not know who most of them were but the food was good. The funny thing is that we were the only ones probably that brought actual food. There were a to of chips but no main courses. We made Chicken broccoli casserole, that stuff is good.

I played around the playground at the park with my niece’s. At first I was just going down slides and stuff with Kayla, then we went on the swings, soon after we started doing that Natalie joined and I got off the swing and pushed them for a while. Then another swing got clear and I swung with them. It was pretty fun. My arms got tired when I was swinging with kayla.

Other than that today has been relatively uneventful. Today is Sam’s birthday though. I was going to call him but I woke up sort of late, and I think he might have been going places today.

I got my priest to level 74 yesterday in Destiny Online. I’m trying to catch her up to my main character Starya that is level 89. My priest’s name is EternalLight.

Anyway, I guess that’s all for now.

Sunday and Chips

Wow, so another Sunday is here. I always enjoy Sundays, they are very calm around here. There is just something about Sunday that makes you want to relax if you are not already relaxed.

The weather was perfect today and it was sunny. It wasn’t to hot or to cool, it was just right. I find myself thinking of the story of The Three Bears as I type that which is so funny and random.

church was pretty nice today. I usually enjoy church, I get to see a lot of people I usually don’t see on the week days. Plus, all you have to do is listen, and on occasion answer questions about stuff, or ask them. Church can be very relaxing as well if you have the right attitude about it.

Seems like today everyone is eating Cheese Chips, including me. Funny how when someone in this family starts eating something the others follow. :)

I’m just mostly on Destiny Online right now trying to sell some items I’ve had in my bags forever.

I guess that’s all for now.

CHEEEZE FRIES!!!

Talk about bad cravings. I love waffle fries (criss cross fries as I call them). ♥

I think I’ll do this as a daily thing. I have at least 1 bad craving every day.  :)

cooking and...

I really need to learn how to cook. I can never thin of anything to eat, I know that this is the reason. I never really learned how to cook. I’m convinced that when I do this problem will disappear. I suppose I’ve been afraid of cooking a little bit because of my vision, and because you can get burned and a good number of other situations could arise. I honestly think I could do it though. If I can cook stuff from a can or box, or follow directions for a cake I should be able to do the other stuff as well. Plus I have good patience.  I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.  I never really got a chance to learn how to cook because my mom and dad were always working and my other family members were busy with stuff as well.  I suppose I could have taught myself but I don’t think I could have gotten very far on my won that way.

Another strange thing is that my mom was a piano teacher for years but yet I do not know how to play the piano. I sort of regret not learning now. I have so many songs that go through my head that I can’t get out because I can’t write music and I don’t play any intstrument. i always doubted myself when I was younger if i would be able to play the piano. I know it would be hard but I think I could do it now for sure. My mom had to get a job and quit her piano teaching. So when I decided I would probably like to learn how to play the piano my chance was gone. I think she might be able to quit soon in a few months though so i should get another chance. I really want to share my music with the world. 

Anyway, I guess that’s all for now. :)

Nothing much has happened today so no need to write about today. I’ve just been chilling out at home watching videos. Hope something exciting will happen tomorrow though. :)

A Song I have Been Searching For Forever!

Finally found it!!

Yuki Kajiura - Mezame (via NyaoTsukiyomi)

I looked for this song for literally hours! I could not remember what it was called, or even who sang it at first. :)  This is one of my favorite songs ever, it’s so pretty.

Yipyips, Roses, and Emoticons

I have always loved this video, it is just so cute. I grew up watching Sesame Street and the Muppets.

One of the roses in our yard. :)

I also want to share this emoticon site with you.

http://www.anikaos.com

Empathy... or Lack Thereof.

I really should start eating better, I know that very well. When I don’t I have a tendency to get very moody and out of character. I guess this has been happening the last couple of days. I’ve been letting stuff get to me a lot lately. I usually don’t let that happen, I know I am stronger than that. I suppose we all have our weak moments now and then.

I’ve been TRYING to spend more time with my niece’s lately. it’s a lot harder for me than people would imagine. They were born when I was just 13 years old. I knew nothing abut how to raise kids, I was not ready. Certain family problems made it so I had to watch them a lot. I didn’t realize it back then but I really hated watching them, I hated being around them. I took every opportunity I could to get away from them. Deep under the waters of my mind the ice was starting to form inside my heart I did not realize it back then but I was breeding a lot of hatred. I resented the fact that I was the one who had to watch them, I had to change diapers, and make sure they stayed out of trouble and stuff like that. i was so angry because those were supposed to be the years I was at my prime, or so I thought.

I hated it because I felt like I was being cheated out of my childhood. Little by little the ice grew stronger and I started doing little things like when I was angry I would push Natalie when I got frustrated. I stopped doing this but the ice was still growing and it became increasingly more difficult for me to get close to them, to want to be around them. Eventually I began to think up ways to stay away from them, or to avoid babysitting. I even lied a lot saying that I would watch them when I didn’t even care in the least bit about it. Some of you reading this might think that is way out of character for me to be this selfish. That was the consequence of me letting the ice grow in my heart, the anger, the hatred, the resentment, the false longing for them to just disappear. Those feelings are what grew inside my heart for these 9 long years since Natalie, and then Kayla 2 years later was born. 

Kayla was spared most of my icy hatred. I can’t say I have actually really hated her, but I have felt anger. This probably has to do with the fact that Kayla and I have a lot in common, whereas I see Natalie as the exact opposite of me in personality. On countless occasions I would find myself saying that I hated her over and over inside my head. It was my fault I let so much ice build up inside my heart. Selfishness, want, and desire lead to a lot of things if they are abused. I think part of this anger for Natalie is because I felt like she was picking on Kayla a lot which she actually does. I wanted to protect Kayla. I have been like that since she was born, she was the smaller one and I got irritated at Natalie a lot for being bossy and stuff like that. This in combination with my other feelings towards her did not wield good results.

Sometimes I stay away from her for my own good because I get so angry and frustrated that I feel like I could harm her, or yell at her, or something like that. I can’t say that I have improved much but at least I know the truth about my feelings now and I am no longer denying that my behavior is wrong.  Little by little I can feel the ice melting now. It might take a long time for it to be gone though. I adored her when she was first born. I followed her around everywhere. Then I got saddled with all this babysitting and stuff. I felt like what I imagine a young mother feels when they don’t know how to take care of their children. I had no clue how to handle them and these feelings arose from it. If i had been as good at controlling my feelings as I am today back then things probably would have turned out differently.

I’m sort of afraid to interact with other children now. I’m not really surprised this happened as a result though. Maybe this ice, this coldness in my heart is the barrier that makes this happen.

Anyway, I think that’s all I’m going to say for now about that.

By The River

This is possibly the best picture I have taken to date, and my favorite. :)

Took this when I was out on my 19th birthday 2 years ago when we went to the park.