Ironing

Seriously, does any-one else burn their iron? I mean I will keep trying to do my ironing as long as I can, but I have just brought my third iron this year!
Its definitely taking me longer to get through a pile of ironing, and I'm not as anal about it as I used to be, I was never one for ironing socks and nickers or anything like that, but I don't iron bed linen anymore or pj's, I just fold it nicely when it comes off the washing line and shove it straight into the airing cupboard. I tend to hold things up in front of me as I am going along and if it looks ok to me it doesn't get ironed...trouble is who am I to decide if it needs ironing or not? I cant tell half the time and then I am at risk of finding the item back in the washing bin!
Irons though, are generally not blind person friendly. That little dial thing in the middle which you move to get the right heat for the fabric you are ironing, I think this little dial thing may be where I am going wrong! I cant see it at all and tend to just wiggle it until I hear steam coming out of it or I hold my hand in front of the plate until I feel heat, not a very technical way of getting the heat right, and clearly the heat isn't right otherwise I wouldn't keep burning the plate! 
Then there's the place where you pour water into your iron, well, that's just a barrel of laughs too, I don't use those little plastic pots they give you with your new iron, they are just too fiddly and I always end up over filling, so I use a jug and end up over filling the iron anyway and the iron ends up sitting in a pool of water. I need a iron that doesn't have all the dials, knobs and twisty turny things but then steam irons wouldn't work if they didn't have all those things so it seems I am destined to buy at least five irons a year, the one I had at the beginning of the year kept getting magically cleaned every time my mum came for a visit, but eventually it became beyond even her iron cleaning abilities, so I brought one of these really cheap ones, I think it cost £6, but it was crap, it was so light to handle I kept knocking it over and it ended up looking like this....

The one I brought yesterday looks like this..for now!

I had one of those entertaining bus journeys yesterday on my way into town to buy a iron. As you know Mum lives down the village from me, its about six bus stops away, so I get on at the stop near me and just hope she has got to her stop before the bus arrived. We did go through a stage during the winter last year where I would go and stand at the bus stop and then when the bus came I would ring her to tell her the bus was on the way, but this didn't work as her phone was either off or she couldn't find it in her bag.

So anyway, yesterday, there we are, I am standing at my bus stop and she is sitting at hers, the minutes ticked by and twenty minutes after its due time I concluded that the bus wasn't coming so I walked to Mums bus stop and we simply caught the next bus.

There we sat on a slightly busier than usual bus, but the oldies we less than happy, there was so much tutting and huffing going on I was wondering if they were about to turn into a load of bulls.

All this moaning triggered the old lady sitting beside me and she was off.....I've been waiting an hour for this bus...so I rolled my eyes and ignored her, then she taps me on the shoulder and asks if I had been waiting too, so I said yes....somewhere in her old lady mind she had mistakenly seen my answer as a green light to explode into a torrent of slagging the bus driver off...its DISCUSTING...not wanting the bus driver, who could hear her very loud voice, to think I was agreeing with her, I said..no, not really.

She stopped moaning, leaned forward in my face and said..what do you mean? This is the second time in a week that the bus hasn't turned up....so I lent forward and said...I don't suppose they do it on purpose, they don't stand outside their bus with their mates and say..ahh bugger it, I cant be arsed with this lets go down the pub, there will be a reason the bus didn't turn up.

Well, I have to go into town!!….So, I said, Ohhh did you have an appointment? ...NO, I need to get bread from the bakers.....I didn't really trust myself to open my mouth so I bit down hard on my tongue until I thought it was going to pop.

Again, she saw my silence as a excuse to give me more crap, leaning forward again she whispers..well, last week one of the Indian drivers tried to steal my purse!! I wanted to get the hell off the bus but the next stop was too far for Mum to walk into town. Instead, I put my hand up in her face to stop her talking. I know the exact driver she is talking about, He is a bit grumpy, but Hellloooo, look at the crap they have to put up with and there is no-way he would have tried to steal her purse, what was he going to do? Leap out of the tiny window and run off up the street with her purse tucked under his arm?

So, I said, If you act negatively you will receive negativity, that's the problem these days, the bus drivers are human, and they cant stop the bus breaking down, an accident or road works on their route. If you wanted a personal service you should have booked a taxi 

Ahhh well, that shut her up for all about twenty seconds and then she proceeded to tell me all about an incident last week where the alarm was going off on the bus and the police were called and it was really terrible for all the people on the bus, apparently they were all sitting outside Sainsburys for 45 minutes, its sooo disgusting....

WAIT!! You weren't on the bus?...Noooo my daughter came to visit that day so I missed it!!!

That was it, I rang the bell and Mum and I thanked the bus driver, wished him well, got off and walked the rest of the way to town.

If nothing else that half hour bus ride made me forget all about burning my iron. 

xx

If only things were different

I am sure just about everyone at some point during their lives has had a moment when they have thought...What if things had been different...
I have been struggling a bit this week, probably because I have spent a lot of time on my own, but also because I force myself not to think of what will happen in the future, and then when I get times when I am feeling down and struggle to keep focused I tend to think back to the past. 
I have spent a lot of time wondering what life would have been like if I had normal sight. I even spent a whole afternoon making a imaginary life in my head. Like, I would be able to drive, and work full time. I would be able to just go out and meet friends with out having to plan the whole outing meticulously. I was imagining that I was able to run, cycle and join the gym and not worry about over exercising because the only harm it would do would be in my muscles and not strain my eyes and put pressure on them. God, I miss cycling so much, I mean proper cycling, like belting along, weaving between moving cars and trying to beat my record time for getting to work, I miss those frosty mornings when all the fallen leaves scrunch under your wheels and its so cold your eye lashes freeze. What sort of car would I have? and what sort of a driver would I be? I closed my eyes and imagined packing up the car and driving off to Suffolk with the girls and Ralph to visit our friends, and hell...what about just noticing that I am nearly out of milk and I could just hop in the car and drive to a shop instead of having to catch a bus, a train or walk, I know there's nothing wrong with walking but when you only decent shop is three miles away, a six mile round trip for a pint of milk is a bit excessive. 
I feel like a sighted person trapped in a visually impaired persons body and it bloody well sucks! I want to be able to replace that light-bulb and I want to notice someone has dropped tomato ketchup all down the kitchen cupboard door. I want to be able to write a shopping list then actually be able to read it when I finally get to a shop.
I am fully aware that this is not a good state of mind to be in, but some times life is just not fair. What did I do for this to happen? Its so hard to stay level headed sometimes, when you just want to scream and punch something. 
But back to the day dreaming, I think its easy to accept that things are just the way they are and there's nothing wrong with a little day dreaming, and at first it was fun, I had envisioned me driving to work, which parking space I would use, then I would do all the things I used to do, but better because I would be so much more confident and wise, then at the end of the day..yes I would go along to the pub for a coke with my work mates, then I would jump in the car, pop to the shop on the way home and then get home and do all the things a working Mum does and then walk Ralph on a route that I am NOT familiar with, instead of being delivered to work via taxi, working for four and a bit hours, getting the same taxi to deliver me home, and then having to sleep for the next three hours because the morning has exhausted me. 
Then there was this thing which happened to me earlier this week. Daughter number 2 and I were walking down the village, we were linked arms and she was practising describing my surroundings to me and I was practising listening. As we walked along I could hear a digger and she began to tell me where it was because loud sounds can be distorted and its hard to determine where they are coming from sometimes. The next thing this male voice shouts...Hello love, aren't you going to speak to me today?...I had no bloody idea at all who he was, He was seated high up in the digger so I couldn't hear or recognise his voice over the engine..so I said, sorry, I cant make out who you are..(I felt like a right twat) ..So he turns off the engine and says''its me!...seriously for gwads sake man, I still have no idea who you are...there was this awkward silence and then he says...you walk past my house very day and I always put me hand up from the window...OHHHHHH YESSSS OF COURSE I KNOW WHO YOU ARE NOW!!!!  oh, well lovely to see you...and we walk away, Daughter number 2 looks at me with this crooked grin and says...you haven't got a clue who he is have you Mum? So now I have a mixture of emotions, I feel ashamed that I didn't have the bottle to tell him that I cant see him in the window, I feel stupid and awful that I never put my hand up to return his 'hello' and I feel this strange emotion that I am almost tricking him because he thinks I am 'normal' and I am just not!!
I am also struggling with the beloved Facebook, because everyone is doing such lovely things and going to cool places. I used to be able to do these things, but I don't, I do safe things and that is just not the real me, I want to take risks again and I want to pack my days full of seeing things.
Then I realised that this day dreaming was getting kind of dangerous and it was spiralling me down into a deep uncomfortable place and now I feel like the old pilot light on my gas fire, the flame keeps lighting and it desperately tries to say on but it flickers out after a few seconds, now I have to focus on lighting my flame and keeping the thing going because I don't want to be in the dark. 
That was all it took, a little day dreaming to change my train of thoughts, we are such delicate beings, and its important to keep a focus, I do wish my life could have taken a different road but then would I have met the people I have? would I be the person I am? I think I was sent along this road for a reason, I don't quite know what that reason is but I expect the answer will creep up on me and suddenly everything will make sense, so until then, day dreaming will take a back seat. We are what we are, there's no changing that so I will try to be more open and honest with this not being able to see thing, hold my head up high, treasure what I have had and look forward to the future xx 

Prove you're not a robot...

Seriously??? I cant be the only person in the world who finds it incredibly difficult to prove I am not a bloody robot! Twice today I have had to get someone else to prove I am human..so what's the bloody point?  All I wanted to do was to log into my Lottery account and buy a ticket for tonight (things are getting desperate here!) and even though it has all my personal details including my bra size and my favourite colour pants, it STILL wanted me to find and tick the lamp posts in a photograph that had been sectioned up, if you get it wrong then...beeep...no entry. Well, as I cant see any bloody lamp posts I had to ask for help, which never comes quick enough for me and I end up in a foul temper because I cant buy a lottery ticket in case I am not real, but my bank card can be cloned and you can empty my bank account in seconds!
So, then I had to complete an application form on line, its taken me three bloody hours to fill this thing in, then just when I think I'm done I press submit and BANG...prove you are not a robot and tick the boxes that have birds in it!!! Birds...for Christ's sake (sorry Christ) I cant see any birds... and what's more I have managed to piss off my whole family who have gone out so there is no-one to help me find the stupid birds so I had to wait for them to return by which time the dam thing had expired!!
Its been a bit of a trying week really. I seem to have got into the horrible pattern of dropping my contact lens when I am taking then out or putting them in, and its always the 'good eye' that I loose so I have no chance of finding it myself. 
I have this green deep pile carpet in my bedroom and the other morning Ralph wakes me up to tell me he needs to go outside at 5.30am, so I know he needs a poo and if I don't put my contacts in I will never be able to see his poo to pick it up and then the little sod will eat it, I don't know why he does that, its revolting. So not wanting to wake the girls up I whisper to him that I am just going to pop in my lenses and then we'll go to the garden. 
I had the little hard lens balanced on my finger tip, other hand holding up my eye lid, and just as I got the thing near my eye it fell of my finger tip...GONE...I heard it ping off, and I know I cant move so I use a quiet voice to call the eldest daughter in the bedroom next door...nothing...try a little louder voice....nothing....try 'outside' voice....still nothing...so I find my phone on the bedside draws and ring her, that wasn't as easy as it sounds and luckily I have my phone adapted so the most used numbers are on the home page so I just click it.  
I recon I must have called her phone twenty-five times before a sleepy voice replied, Ralph was crying with need to go to the garden and I was massively frustrated at the total inability to find the dam thing myself. 
The daughter walks in and grunts, walks along side the bed and as far as I know doesn't really open her eyes, just leans down and picks up my contact lens from the carpet, dumps it in my hand, grunts again and goes back to bed. I mean charming!
So, once the lens was cleaned and I could see again Ralph and I went to the garden, where he cocks his leg up my washing line, takes a wee and trots back in, goes upstairs and snuggles back on my bed, no poo insight, stupid dog! So there I am, at 6.15am wide awake now, I end up cracking on with all the Mumsy things we mums do as soon as we get up, this mostly involves putting away your kids crap from the night before...believe me you mummies, little people don't get any tidier as they turn into big people...all this meant I was exhausted by 11,30 and needed a nap but the thought of taking out my contacts again was too much, so I kept busy.
Since then I have lost that same lens three more times! 
Maybe its due to the very hot dry weather we have been having, weather does strange things to contact lenses, I seemed to spend most of spring taking them out several times a day to clean off all the gunk that hay fever makes your eyes produce, I have never really suffered from hay fever, but this year has been horrible for it. Then the glorious long, hot summer days make them dry out quickly and air conditioning is the worst thing for a contact lens wearer. Today we've had torrential rain, as the wet stuff dripped off my eye lashes into my eyes, my contacts become sort of cloudy.
As much as I love summer I cant help having massive excitement for Autumn, all those different smells, cold mornings and warm afternoons, all trees changing colours. Autumn always gives me a feeling of contentment. 
Anyway, I have two more BBC Proms to go, on this Monday and the other next Monday. I have a change of partner next week as my friend is coming with me instead of Mum, I would like to say my friend and I are less likely to have any disasters, but who am I kidding, my friend and I are a worse pair than Mum and I.
Well, with all my thoughts of Autumn and Proms, I have forgotten about robots, and that's exactly why I write a blog...once whatever is on your mind goes from you brain to paper, even if no-one ever reads it, for some reason, things just don't seem so bad...sharing is caring, right? 
Speak soon and look out on the news for my smelly feet at the BBC Proms xx

Feeling the environment

Just lately I've noticed that I feel the need to touch things!! 
My friends have apparently noticed that I have been doing this for sometime. I'm not talking about anything rude of course, although I have looked at the occasional bearded bloke and wondered how it would feel, but that normal surely? 
I think it started when I was feeling like I was going to have a panic attack, as the place they happen most often is in the supermarket, as soon as I started getting a bit anxious I would feel my way along the shelves. That sounds like I am walking along gripping onto the selves for stability but I mean just running my fingers along walls or along shelves so that I know that my fingers, for example are feeling tins, then I know without looking that I am in the baked beans, tinned tomato area, and then packet rice usually comes next. Of course, this has to be in a familiar supermarket, which is why it doesn't help when supermarket chains decide to move things around. Also if I am feeling my way along, my sense of smell becomes better, I don't know why, but there's flowers, which are usually by fresh meat, fresh meat has its own smell which leads to cheese, no need to tell you that cheese smells. The household isles have smells, as does the baby isle, bread and fish counters. so that usually means if you are down an isle without a smell you got to be down the tinned food isle, dried pasta or rice, biscuits or drinks. But then noises help to identify which isle you are in, crisp packets make noise as do clinking bottles. 
Anyway, I'm taking you around my local Asda,  back to what I was talking about, so, yes I sort of know I have been running my fingers along walls when I am out, feeling the textures on leaves and I found myself feeling the lettering on a plaque on the wall of a bridge the other day. If I see anything, tactile or not, I just gotta feel it.
So, now this seems to have turned from a way of dealing with the stressful anxiety of a panic attack to a sensory tactile need to feel different things and textures. Maybe this is because I am seeing less well, so I feel instead of seeing!  
When we were in the Natural History museum two weeks ago, I was walking around the minerals, now, I've always loved this area of the museum, I just love a stone! Anyway, this nearly killed me this time because the urge to lift the lids on the cabinets and feel each stone was almost too much to bear, luckily there were some stones and minerals that we were allowed to feel so I was happy for a while. The trouble is as I walked around I became more and more aware of the need to touch every exhibit. I found myself stealing a quick touch of a tapestry, and standing for ages feeling the animal shapes that are crafted into the walls of the Natural History. 
I really do understand why there are big DO NOT TOUCH signs everywhere, but I just cant help it, I need to feel it to understand it. I need to touch because walking around a museum doesn't mean anything. I spend so much time concentrating on where I am going and not taking little kids out with my cane that I miss so much that it becomes meaningless. That is until there is something I can touch, and when I am touching, people seem to respect me a bit more. No, respect isn't quite the right word, but empathy I suppose. People seem to give me more space to feel than they do if I am walking around exhibits.
I wish museums were a bit more clued up for people with special or additional needs, I think they stick a ramp in and a disabled toilet then suddenly they are disability friendly, I would love a smaller, quieter area where I could explore more of the exhibits that are ok to feel instead of sneaking around trying to cop a feel of a statue when there's some little kid going Mummmm that sign says DO NOT TOUCH but that lady's touching it ...bog off little kid and go grass your brother up for picking his nose.
Anyway, the need to feel does worry me slightly, Is this part of the process? does every person that has a visual impairment 'feel' their environment. 
I notice textures more too, today we were at a private swimming pool and the minute I walked onto the tiles around the pool I could feel that they were made from (or had a coating of) some sort of gritty non-slip stuff, the rest of the family didn't notice. At dinner we sat at a wooden table that had a painted pattern on it I kept feeling the groves of the wood with my finger tips, everyone else thought it was a table cloth! I suppose I see things so much differently than they do, I notice more because I have to look for it, if you know what I mean!
Now, I cant remember what else I was going to say and I have just had a quick look at my note book and realised I have written my notes too small for me to read.....mind you, that's another subject for conversation...the importance of making sure I do things, and do them regularly. Since the school holidays have started, a week and a half ago, I haven't been writing as regularly as I do when I am at school, today I noticed that I am loosing that skill again, its alarming how quickly a skill as easy as holding and moving a pen on paper to make words can be lost, this is the same for the confidence to do things on my own, I am happy to avoid doing things alone and really have to push myself to walk Ralph on my own just lately. Especially after this morning when I tripped over him as he is the same colour as the dead grass and I just didn't see him. He yelped as I went flying over onto my knees, I apologised to him but he spent the rest of the walk home looking at me like I was a complete nuisance and then stomped off in front like a moody teenager as soon as I put him back on his lead. First thing tomorrow I am going to practice writing again and make sure I keep it up. Right, off to bed, Speak soon x

See what I mean? Now you see him.....now you don't!