Monthly Archives: November 2011

Bags of boxes and boxes of bags

This is a joke that my mother and I have with each other: Because I can’t drive to the store (no licenses for the legally blind) and I get tired of calling a taxi for every little thing, I order a lot of stuff on the internet.  Delivery has gotten super-fast and you can usually get free shipping if you try.  Even if you can’t, it’s still cheaper to ship than to pay for a taxi.  So the UPS guy knows me really well.  He actually saw me walking home from work one day, turned the truck around, and pulled over to give me a package that had just arrived.  If for some random reason he’s reading this blog, thanks UPS guy!  That was really cool.

Probably the most annoying part of all this, other than endlessly signing those “Please leave at the door” slips, is the number of boxes I end up with.  Our apartment building won’t let us throw boxes down the trash chute and we only have a dumpster outside the building on Monday evenings, and it’s a tiny dumpster.  So I inevitably end up with this big pile of boxes and no way to get rid of them.  Why not cut them up, put them in garbage bags, and put them down the trash chute that way, you ask?  All perfectly legal, all management-sanctioned, all a really bad idea.  I can’t cut up most of the boxes with scissors, so I would have to use a box-cutter, and after the incident where I accidentally stabbed myself in the wrist and had to spend a week explaining to the people I work with that I wasn’t attempting suicide, I decided that was not a viable option.

Hence my joke with my mother.  Every time she visits, I put her to work knocking down the boxes with a box-cutter and putting them in garbage bags so we can put them down the trash chute.  We end up with bags of boxes, and of course we get boxes of bags to put the boxes in, and after a while we started making up a song that goes, “Bags of boxes and boxes of bags.”  That’s it, really, lyrics-wise.  We think it’s hilarious.  We dance around while we sing it.  What brought this to mind was the unfortunate run-in I had with my current pile of boxes this morning.  My mother hasn’t visited in a while and there’s been a bit of a pile-up, so to speak.  I wasn’t paying enough attention to where I was going and knocked into the pile.  The boxes came crashing down around me–I thought I was being attacked at first, they all went for my head–and when they settled, the boxes literally came up almost waist-high.

Mom is coming to visit next weekend.  I think I may have to take her car keys before she sees the pile of boxes waiting to be put into bags.  But if they decide to attack her, at least she’ll have the box-cutter to defend herself with.

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Why I like the world fuzzy

I alluded to this a little in my “about me” section, not to mention the title of the blog, but I actually like the world fuzzy.  I like that part of being legally blind.  It’s like living in an impressionist painting, or what an impressionist painting would be like if it were a movie.  I love the sky on overcast days because it looks like a blank canvas, like that part of the world hasn’t been painted yet and who know?  It could end up being orange, or puce, or some other color no one has seen yet.  The trees have changed color and I can’t see the individual leaves, so when the wind makes them shake it just looks like the color of the tree is rippling back and forth, or sometimes like a whole line of trees is on fire.

I also love, on a less dippy note, that I can wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and not be horrified–for the simple reason that I have no idea what I look like.  When I look in the mirror, I might as well be looking through a camera lens smeared with vaseline.  I think, “Oh, my skin looks so smooth,” probably because all the blotchiness sort of blurs together in my weakened eyes.  I don’t worry about bags or circles under my eyes, or whether I’m getting cellulite; I just let the rest of the world speculate about that for me and go blithely about my way.  The downside is that, in order to get close enough to do my makeup, I have to lean in so close to the mirror that my eyes start to cross and my features do that sliding-over double-vision thing, so my mental image of myself resembles a Picasso painting.  Artistically fascinating, but nobody actually wants to look like his paintings of Dora Maar (see this post’s image).

Mostly, though, I love that I can choose to perceive the world as beautiful.  I could choose to see it as revolting or depressing or any of a number of negative perceptions, but why would I?  An unfinished sky, a row of trees on fire:  amazing.  Breathtaking.  That’s how I choose to see the world.  I don’t see the dirt or the cracks or the litter or the million uglinesses I’m sure are there.  I choose how I see the world, and it’s a gift I only have because I’m legally blind.  I don’t want to lose my vision completely, but there are worse things than seeing the world fuzzy.

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Way more fun than the truth

I’m always getting unexplained bruises and scratches.  It’s hard to avoid the edge of the coffee table when it’s made of glass and you’re legally blind–for which the lesson is probably something like, don’t buy a glass coffee table if you’re legally blind, but that’s another post.  I don’t even remember how I get these things, but they show up regularly on my legs, arms, neck, face, all over.  People exclaim over them:  “Oh, no!  How did you get that bruise?”  And when I tell them I don’t know, they totally look at me like they think I’m being abused.  Which I’m not, but that’s kind of a lengthy explanation to give to a random person who’s just asking about that bruise under my ear that I think I might have gotten when I tripped over the bathmat that got bunched up and I fell into the towel rack, but I’m really not sure and it might have been from when I was trying to get a can off the top shelf in the kitchen and I lost my balance and smacked myself with the cabinet door.

So I think I’m just going to have fun with it.  “Oh, that one?  This kid I was babysitting tried a karate chop on me, but he stopped when I drop-kicked him across the room.”  Or, “that scratch?  I was giving a performance art exhibition and one of the pulleys snapped, and the yak horn went right through my scuba suit!”  Or, “It’s that guy from the pretzel kiosk. Can you believe it?  I swore it would be the last time.” Just to see how people react.  Suggestions are welcome, as long as you don’t mind if I end up using them on you!

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Blind dating

Applying cosmetics

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been going on a long string of first dates recently, and I’ve noticed that there are a lot of dating pitfalls for the blind.  First of all, the obvious:  whenever I tell people I have a date, they ask “Is this a blind date” and snicker.  Cause, you know, I’ve never heard that one before, ever.

But if that were all, I’d take it and be grateful.  The bigger problems come before the date even starts.  Imagine trying to curl your hair blind.  Go ahead, blindfold yourself and try.  I usually end up throwing the curling iron across the room and screaming “I’m shaving my head, I swear to God!”  Then, of course, there’s the makeup application.  I’m good at foundation, blush, powder, and lip color.  It’s the eyes that get me.  There’s the eyeliner–no way am I ever going to get a straight line right by my lashes.  It will always be crooked and leave space between my lashes and the eyeliner.  Mascara, you ask?  It is for to laugh.  I usually just put on some dark eyeshadow and hope he doesn’t notice.

Then there’s the beginning of the date.  Either the guy picks me up in my parking lot or I meet him wherever we’re having our date.  Either way, I’ll be squinting and peering around, trying to recognize my date, and that posture is just so attractive!  Gotta love that first impression, a bleary-eyed hunchback.  It does accentuate the cleavage, though.  Then, since most first dates involve dinner, we reach the adventures in silverware.  Fork, knife, spoon, and no depth perception.  Fabulous!  The napkin is my friend.  I usually have to ask for extra napkins, actually, which makes me feel super-smooth.  I like this part of the date, though, because I get to sit down.  It’s hard, though not impossible, to bump into things while you’re sitting down.  My dates always laugh when I tell them that if I’m about to walk into a streetlamp, they shouldn’t assume I’m aware of it.  That Chris, she’s so funny!  Oh, my God, who knew a head wound could bleed so much?

If any guy who is preparing for a date with me is reading this, please do the following, and I will guarantee a second date:  1.  Ask me to wear flats.  2.  Warn me when there’s a step up or down.  3.  Don’t, for the love of God, take me to an art gallery.  For Christ’s sake, I’m blind!  4.  Talk to me.  I can’t see a thing, but I’m a world-class listener.  How often does that come around?  Not too much to ask, I think.  Oh, and try not to laugh too loudly when I accidentally spill the mushrooms.  It’s endearing, right?

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