Challenges

Today was extremely challenging for me. It started off with me trying to answer the phone three times and being unable to localize where the sound was coming from. It was another one of my reality slams as I like to call them. Something as simple as finding a phone and answering it was so hard to do. I was pretty grumpy after that and needed to frequently take time outs for myself to regroup and breath for 10 seconds. I started to cook in the kitchen. I had such a hard time with that. Picture being unable to see to find the handle of a hot pot or safety find a stirring spoon you placed in the pot. Apparently we have to lightly tap and find the pot that way. Yes we have to briefly touch the hot pot. Sigh!!! I can barely cook sighted much less without sight. I made quinoa and a chicken breast grilled on the George foreman. It bothered me touching raw chicken and not knowing what I was touching in my attempts to wash my hands. I really worried about contamination of the rest of the kitchen or other utensils. It’s unnerving to place you meat on a hot grill and hope you don’t bump one of the hot plates.

For travel I had to make my first trip on the light rail. It was fun. I’ve noticed that when it’s time to travel my day begins to get better. I like that part of my day. I ran into people and tripped one guy. Oops!!! I also had to make my first big intersection crossing. It was across 4 lanes of traffic and I was very nervous. Since we can’t see when the little “walk” symbol comes on we cross by listening to traffic patterns and then going when we have a surge in parallel traffic. Well my hearing is not very directional so it was challenging to figure out where my parallel traffic was. Took many cycles before I just went for it and hoped to God I didn’t get hit. I survived. Whew!!!