My Blind Experience

Posted by u/Liquidcatz 2 hours ago I am so sick of my mother acting like I can still see! Discussion My vision is 20/400 I'm functionally blind, but can still see. I do pretty well navigating the world with low vision to the extent most people don't realize I can't see, but I'm still functionally blind. I've been like this for 3 years now and was steadily losing vision before that for years. My awful excuse for a mother can't get it through her head that I can't see anything. She's been with me to eye doctors appointments. She's well aware I'm functionally blind. But MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY this woman still holds things up across the room and expects me to look at the object and respond to it. Asks me to go look for something in another room. Or do tasks that generally require vision that I don't have! Then she has the audacity to get mad at me for not being able to see! I'm so over it. I've mostly come to terms with my very...

I used my only butter knife to make a peanut butter sandwich yesterday afternoon. I remember washing it when I was done. Today it's gone. I can't find it in the silverware drawer. I can't find it in the dishwasher where I put my dishes to dry after I washed them by hand. I reached down the garbage disposal in the sink to feel around for it but it's not there, either. I looked in the fridge and in the cabinet where I keep the bread and peanut butter. I looked in all the other cabinets and drawers, too. I even looked through the kitchen garbage can and on the floor around the cabinets. No knife. One of the benefits of living alone is having my stuff stay where I left it. Nobody moves my things, nobody puts their own stuff in places I don't expect. That's important. A few months before I moved my wife decided to rearrange the kitchen without telling me. The corn chips don't belong here anymore, they belong over there. The rice should go here. The canned soup wi...

This is nice. A beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood in a beautiful city. We got to Roanoke Friday afternoon. Layne and Veronica took my wife home this morning. I'm on my own for a few months. We installed handles on all the kitchen cabinets, hung a few closet rods for clothes, unpacked all my stuff, hung a mirror, rewired some temporary light switches into permanent electrical boxes, replaced a missing shingle, cleaned out the rain gutters, repainted the chain link fence and the chimney flue cap, installed an extension arm on the downstairs shower head, and raked the leaves in the front yard. I even decorated an unfinished basement wall to hide the studs and wiring. We were very productive in a short time. I'm not done. The toggle switch to turn the garbage disposal on is inside the sink cabinet. Unacceptable - I'm way too tall to bend over like that, and who wants to open a cabinet door with wet, soapy hands? The sink cabinet has a false drawer front on it. I've...

I just hit my head on a kitchen cabinet while washing dishes. Rattled my teeth pretty hard. I didn't lose consciousness but it's gonna leave a bruise. This is my own home. I've lived here fifteen years and still smacked my head. It makes me a little worried about moving to Virginia by myself next week. I wonder how many times I'll have to learn where stuff in my new house is the hard way. * * * My friend Devin showed up to Brass Monkey last night. I couldn't really see him because he was wearing dark clothes but Julie said he looks even sexier than before. He finally left our old employer and is thriving at his new company. I've worked with blueprints for twenty years and Devin's were absolutely top quality. He produced as many in a day as most good engineers make in a week and he's the best nester I've ever known. He learned all this hands on - the company we worked for hired him straight out of high school. Over the years I've noticed it feels...

The smallest bedroom in our house is our Star Wars room. The walls and ceiling are painted black. White, yellow, and blue Christmas lights cover the ceiling and the upper half of the walls to simulate far away stars. The main light in the room was a 30" diameter Death Star. The bed was a TIE Fighter - here's a picture of my wife holding the foot board: Miniature TIE Fighters and Star Destroyers hung from the ceiling. We designed it to be Brian's room. He's as much of a Star Wars fan as I am, but Brian moved into a larger bedroom when it became available a few years ago. Julie moved into the Star Wars room when she moved back in with us but she and her boyfriend have been in their own apartment for a year. The Star Wars room has been empty since then. It's become the place the kids store their stuff after they move out. My wife and I have been repainting it this week. Yes, a blind man with a paint brush is every bit as goofy as you imagine. Some of the paint even en...

Between packing boxes to take to the thrift store, calling to get internet and utilities at the new address, trying to work through two punch lists (one to sell this home, the other to buy the home in Virginia), and trying to hire guys to do some home repairs for us I haven't had time to write. * * * There's a girl named Dottie who works at the local Dollar General. She's a life long smoker by the sound of her voice. Whenever a customer walks into the store she says something like "Hi, welcome to Dollar General!" Whenever I hear her I say "Hi Miss Dottie!" She gets the biggest kick out of a blind man recognizing her voice. I'm not sure why but it just makes her day. Lucky for me she was the one working the register when we showed up and asked to take some empty cardboard boxes. I'm giving away all my books. That sounds like a no-brainer but it's actually a bit traumatic for me. I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember....

San Antonio's local Jack FM station used to be cool when they were an eighties station. The small Arizona town we lived in before we moved to San Antonio didn't have an eighties station. We heard music on Jack FM I hadn't heard since it was newly released in the eighties. On weekend nights the station sometimes broadcast their show live from Brass Monkey, a dance club on North Saint Mary's Street. My wife swims laps with me. She rides our tandem bike with me. She hikes with me. She does the river walk with me. When the weather is nice she exercises outdoors with me. But when the weather's too cold to swim or bike I jog for cardio. And my wife refuses to jog with me. She just won't do it. If I beg and plead I can get her to go maybe six steps, then she says "This sucks" and walks. Jogging just isn't her thing. She'll walk the river walk in the cold but that doesn't really get our hearts pumping hard enough to count as a  cardio workout. One...