Cooking

Tonight went well. My friend Kristen and I went to my house and had Matt and the kids, my mom and her boyfriend and us for dinner. I made gluten free chicken Parmesan that was fabulously good and a pecan pie that was gluten and dairy free. I did the whole thing under blindfold. It was very good practice and did take 3 hours to make everything, but it all turned out well. Everything was from scratch and tasted good. I even was ok with sticking my fingers into the fryer to flip the chicken. No burnt fingers or food. :-)

Last day of Skiing

Today was my last day of snow skiing with the program. I really enjoyed it and was determined to make it the entire day without peeking. Yeah I made it!! Went on a few blue runs and practiced turns on command, etc. I did so much better today and felt very confident under direction. A few tricks my guide played on me included handing me the ski poles upside down to see if I'd notice. I was trying to push in the snow and said "This isn't looking right!" I was trying to hold the bottom of the poles and the top was sliding in the snow. No grip. LOL!! He got a laugh out of that one. Apparently he was able to successfully ski me around a few downed skiers, a class of kids, and some wild snowboarders. He still was very safe but felt confident in my response times. Had to laugh b/c at one point he said "now we will have to make a very hard right." I literally turned an entire sharp turn 180 degrees and he was like "Go figures." I turn way more than students he's used to and it didn't surprise him how sharp it was. Of course it made me go uphill and I had to keep from sliding backwards.

At one point today we were standing on the side of the hill waiting for a safe clearance for me to go and some lady went careening out of control and went right towards us shouting "Look out!" After she came to a skidding stop by him he was like "Lookout doesn't work with the blind!" I didn't even know she was coming until she whizzed right next to me. He said about 1 foot distance between her and I. Guess I came close to getting taken out. She was kinda expecting me to move out of the way for her and didn't see the blind skier vest I had. Oops!! Poor thing felt bad especially after the comment my guide made. Glad my hearing isn't so good. At least I had no idea what was coming towards me and never freaked out.

I noticed a change in some of my directional issues. When I was starting to slide backwards I started to notice and actually correct by moving my skis in the downhill direction so that I was perpendicular to the slope. This is something I have had trouble with identifying. I would be going backwards and not realize it or know what to do about it. Perhaps there is some hope for this directionally challenged blind woman :-). Maybe I will eventually be able to tell what my orientation is while traveling or skiing.
I really thoroughly enjoyed my day out...the air was warm and sunny (of course I couldn't see it) but I felt it. :-)

Thursday

So I had to go on a travel route to a place called Beyond Sight to look for vision aids (digital recorder to take notes, watch, etc.) to use while training. Took a long time. Anyways Jen my tech instructor went with me. I veered into the road and when I couldn't find the curb I was tempted to peek and saw that I was walking in the middle of the road and all the cars were stopped hoping not to hit me. Whoops! After the store on our way back to the bus stop I got tripped up and Jens wheelchair ran over my foot (no it didn't hurt). When I moved my foot her wheelchair began to tip and I freaked out and tried to grab her. Can you just picture what all the drivers in their cars were thinking and us two blind folks were getting all tangled up in the middle of the crosswalk. Luckily we were able to keep her from tipping over. Then when we were almost at the bus stop I crossed a driveway as a huge truck was bearing down. Jen likes teasing me that I almost got taken out by a huge dump truck. Luckily the driver could see and stopped for me as I was floundering all over the place trying to get out of his way.

What a day!!!

On the bus I was trying to find the steps to get on and couldn't seem to figure it out. A lady can out of her seat, came over to me, and grabbed my arms. For some reason she thought pulling me up was helpful. My arms were way above my head since she was above me on the top step and my cane wasn't usable that high off the ground. In that position I couldn't use my cane to get up the steps and was tripping all over the place. I did thank her anyways b/c I know she was just trying to be helpful. It really wasn't helpful at all.

I'm getting used to looking like an idiot in public. Nice and humbling!!!

Another challenge

Another challenge for you! Next time you cook and are putting your ingredients together practice under blindfold or with something else covering your eyes. Try to pay attention to pouring and how it works and practice putting together your ingredients. If you don't want to ruin a recipe then just do an experiment with flour and water. Practice pouring water into a measuring cup (we don't use the liquid measuring cups) and practice scooping flour into a measuring cup as well. Try some different techniques and get a feel for how you would know if your hand is level and when the cup is full. Leave comments if you like so everyone can get an idea for what people feel and think about it.

Am I so Scary?

So why is it that people are so afraid of me? I don't bite! On Sunday night we had a shopper's assistant at the grocery store and since I could still see I saw very clearly that the assistant was terrified of us. Am I really that scary? Then I noticed that when we came on the train yesterday morning a few people quickly got up and left even after we sat down. It's like we start a panic. I remember being self conscientious around blind people before and would act silly and was unsure what to do but I never really ran off or freaked out....or did I? Uggg I hate being on the receiving end of someone's fear. I was on a travel route yesterday and had problems finding the bridge and some guy came up and grabbed my hand and yanked me towards the bridge. I know he was trying to help so I am trying not to be miffed about it, but it seemed really rude how he yanked me around. Can there be a happy medium? I'm not stupid like the blindness makes me look. Being hearing impaired suited me better....I could hide it. The stick is really hard to hide. I really hate having my disability so out in the open. Now people see me and their first impression is dumb blind girl or pity. I really am capable and strong. Yeah it really sucks I'm blind but that doesn't mean my mind is blind to the things happening around me. I can see why the blind become so bitter about sighted people. I am determined not to be and so I have to work through these things. There are so many nice people out there and they genuinely care...and then there are some rude jerks. I need to make sure that line doesn't become to fuzzy for me. I do not want to be a bitter blind person towards people. My outgoing friendly personality is part of what makes me who I am.

Snow Skiing

I was so excited to get up to the mountain and told my guide "let's go to the big mountain." We got over there and took the lift up and began our run. Let's just say with no vision I sucked royally. I was so upset with myself and couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I could not make turns, I kept sliding backwards without realizing I was moving, and all in all I did awful. We decided to come back to the little mountain (as I call it) after lunch. One of the video guys that was video taping me for some analysis program they are doing came up to me and said he knew why I was having such trouble. The powder was fresh and creates a gliding sensation. I literally could not get a feel for my ground and orientation b/c I was gliding on this stuff. Great stuff to ski on if your sighted but horrible in my case. We went back to more familiar runs that I did the week before and I had to start working on techniques for handling the powder. I soon got the right idea and was figuring it out. I feel much better after this afternoon and finding out that mt skiing was so bad b/c of something else I wasn't familiar with helped. He let me do a few runs with my shades off so I could see and I basically ripped down them, but the key word is SIGHT really helps. Oh well I need to learn to figure out how to work with vision loss so I'm ready when it is gone.
My guide was telling me that the trouble he has with me is opposite what he has with other skiers b/c I can ski well with sight and when I turn on his commands they are very sharp turns. He's like "I can't believe I actually have to tell someone to turn less." I had fun teasing him by hockey stopping and spraying snow at him. I got him good a few times. Turning is hard while blind b/c I have no idea how much of a turn I have made. Without visual clues you have less sense of the turn amount. I would compensate by turning very sharp causing me to stop a lot. [sigh] I'll get the hang of it and hopefully the big mountain won't have fresh powder next time.

Multitasking

Today I had clean up duty and had to make sure I could clean the whole "huge" kitchen and get it looking nice while not seeing what I was doing. I also had a yeast rising bread to make and was doing both at the same time. There's a lot to clean when you are tidying the central hub for over 35 people eating lunch and getting stuff out and using the counter. Another student at the center was also assigned with me and he took out the trash and cleaned tables off. I was not going to attempt to find the dumpster. Already get lost just walking out the door sometimes.

Braille is going well. I know my alphabet just about and am learning punctuation marks. I had to write sentences using the slate and stylus today. It's a little device with cells that have 6 holes each and you punch out your words or letters in each cell. Hard to keep track which ones you already punched out, and when you punch the paper the punch dots appear on the back of your paper. This means you have to write your words or letters backwards. I'm getting the hang of it, but if any speed is needed forget it!!!