Last week I think I mentioned that the apple corer I was using to make even slices in the apple and remove the core broke while i was applying downward pressure to slice the apple. The blades flew everywhere, slicing the hell out of my hands, leaving me with several cuts that are basically like paper cuts on steroids. One of them is almost a perfect corkscrew going around my left thumb. So I have not been able to apply bandages to them. For someone who is deafblind and who uses their hands to write, read, talk, listen, and do everything else this is absolutely inconvenient.

A funny exchange between me and my work interpreter today. She texts to say she's almost to my house, we were running late so I texted back to say i was waiting on the porch so she didn't go inside to search for me. So when I got in the car and noticed her laughing i asked her what was so funny and she says "You text to tell me that you're outside, Like you think i can't see you sitting on the porch?" And without missing a beat, I replied, "'Oh, thats right, you're sighted. You do so well I forget sometimes that you are afflicted with sight. I'm sorry I will try to be more sensitive. But never forget you are so brave and inspirational, navigating the world like you do." And then we laughed for a solid 5 minutes.

A bunch of my friends and I are going to a Werewolf festival tomorrow in Houma. So tonight I need to venture into the depths of the dog equipment closet. Yes it is an actual walking closet and yes it's stuffed full of gear, no it isn't organized hahahahahaha who do you think I am! Anyway in amongst the guide and service dog harnesses, vests, leashes, spair bridge and counterbalance handles, basket muzzles, head collars, dog coats and the like are the costumes and I need to figure out what Phoenix is going to be tomorrow. But honestly I'm debating dressing her in her Columbia costume since we never made it for Rocky Horror. Other options are dragon, witch, phoenix-- as in the bird-- and I think Wonder Woman.

You know, I have seen a lot of wild shit on the Internet during my day… But nothing has left me quite as speechless as this little handy-dandy app, developed by some tech bro who thinks that blind people are incapable of wiping our literal asses without help from an app to tell us whether the toilet paper is clean or not. Never once have I walked around wondering if I have gotten all of the shit out of my ass crack. I don't even! I can't even right now! Holy bananas. [Web App] A privacy-first tool for blind users to independently confirm personal hygiene | AppleVis https://www.applevis.com/forum/assistive-technology/web-app-privacy-first-tool-blind-users-independently-confirm-personal

OK, in theory, it's paid off. I did manage to find a real human, and I explained that I had attempted to pay both online with the website and with the phone system. I even got a confirmation number with the website but the money never came out and it was marked as delinquent. Then I kept getting hung up on when i tried doing it on the phone through their system. so I admittedly went rather Karen on the lady answering the phone and told her that it was an awful experience and I don't want my credit score to get fucked all to hell-- I did not use those words but the meaning was clear-- because they didn't take the payment I made and can prove I made with a confirmation number. So I just wanted to pay the whole thing off. I qualified for a no interest loan for 12 months and after that it's in their benefit to get you to not pay it off because the interest skyrockets. So the lady tried to convince me that I didn't need to pay it off today and I'm like nuh uh! Bitch take my money... obviously i didn't say that but... So i now have yet another confirmation number and I wait more to see if the actual money disappears from my account. good-bye, Money it was nice knowing you.... 💸😭

I taught my afternoon class and was met at school by another one of my colleagues who gave me an iPad that I brought home and will spend this evening working to prepare for my student tomorrow morning bright and early! This is going to be a fun times! I forgot to ask a hearing person to help me pair the braille display so I am grateful that the iPhone and iPad will now connect to a braille display via USB-C. Certainly makes my life a lot easier. But in fun news after work, I went to a new store that's kind of like a co-op. It just opened. They grow all of their own plants and they make tea and tinctures so I had a lot of fun browsing around and talking to the people that worked there. There are lots of volunteer opportunities and they have classes so it looks like a really fun and interesting place. I came home with a turmeric and ginger glycerin tincture, and a bag of dried lemon balm for tea. The only downside to this place is that it does not have a ramp and is accessible by three very tall stairs with no railing. So Callisto earned her bones today.

It's good to know there's someone sitting at the window, watching, and waiting for you to come home.

My current read is "Connecting the Dots" by Joshua A. Miele. It's the story of a man who was blinded as a young boy by a neighbor who was schizophrenic, when the man threw acid in his eyes when the little boy answered the door. And all about his growing up and working for NASA and doing all kinds of interesting things. One of the things I appreciate most about this memoir is his candor. He smokes weed, does a ton of acid, becomes briefly addicted to painkillers etc. All this during his teenage years. He takes himself on adventures across the country and gradually matures. I really love this book because many stories of blind people are .... I don't know it's hard for me to see myself in them because they are so good and well behaved. LOL. There is a lot of pressure on blind children and teenagers to "be good' don't do drugs or drink or have sex or any number of other"unsafe" things. It's hard for me to relate to people who've never been rebellious. I really appreciate this guy's story and admire his courage and his vulnerability in telling this story.

Hello and welcome to this absolutely stunningly beautiful Sunday here in the swamp. It's days like today why I remember that suffering through a billion months of endless hell summer sucks but is worth it because it's going to be lovely like this for over a week. Around 55 at night and 70 in the daytime. I slept with my windows open for the first time and although my allergies objected very strenuously I took an Allegra and told them to get fucked. I went outside this morning and worked out as well. Oh and my store now has dairy free peppermint chocolate coffee creamer! The dairy people have had this stuff for years now and I've been so envious. Not actually envious enough to buy the dairy stuff and make myself ill drinking it but... envious never the less. And now thanks to I think it's Califia Farms I, too, can have peppermint bark creamer in my coffee and damn is it ever delicious. And speaking of delicious coffee I did crack open my bag of Community French Roast beans and these are much better hot than the Trung Nguyen beans I had yesterday.now it's time to put together my breakfast which is going to be a pumpkin brioche French toast bake with blushing applesauce. Basically yes I'm eating bread pudding for breakfast but as long as I call it a French toast bake, it's healthy, right? Breakfast food, not desserts. LOL! I am going to make sweet and sour chicken in the crockpot and serve it over garlic onion mashed potatoes for dinner. This is one of the first recipes I learned to cook in college. My best friend at the time's mother taught me to make it and since this person recently got back in touch with me and we've been catching up, I've been thinking about this recipe. Anyway, enough time wasted frogging around on the internet, it's time to grab the bitchpack and head outside and enjoy this absolutely gorgeous day. I hope it's lovely where you all are, too! Have a great one.

this morning's first order of business is called "Deafblind woman vs. Candex." Candex is the system that Tulane University, amongst others, uses to pay guest lecturers or people not on staff. But in order to get paid i had to navigate the website which appeared straightforward but whatever they did caused my focus to bounce all over the place. So I would get to a form field, such as my name, or address, and i press the cursor router button on my braille display to tell the website that here is where I want to enter text. Does my cursor appear there? NO! NO! it does not! It instead appears in the form field immediately above it. Once I figured this out I realized that if I went back down to the field I wanted and pressed the CRB again, that time it would work. This happened for every.... single.... form field on the website. And there were A LOT! For my name, address, bank information including account and routing numbers which i needed to retrieve from my bank app and paste into Candex. Then I needed to upload a company w9, which I did and attempted to save but it crashed the website because there was a little box you needed to check swearing that the information you provided was accurate but I didn't see it because of my spastic focus. So I got to do the ENTIRE form again! Entering the 20 different things into the 20 different form fields and having to summon the focus twice for each one.... Then I re-upoloaded my w9 and this time found the checkbox and tchecked it and PAH! OMG! I was able to submit my request for payment. Holy fuck y'all! I should get extra pay just for wrangling their payment system. And this was all in all, a relatively good experience because I could troubleshoot the problems myself, but it is only a little passed noon and I'm questioning why I'm sober right now! Because i did this all on a 40 cell braille display. which means I can only read 40 characters at a time.... This is what it's like to be a deafblind business owner using the internet in 2026.... *sighs* but, I prevailed! I am victorious... or I will be once Tulane pays me.🧏‍♀️🦮😈

Well, that's another person blocked for coming into my mentions and telling me how repulsive it is that I shop at Amazon. Gosh, I really love it when ableds who can make their way in the world with very few barriers tell me how I should access products that I need in order to live my life when they can see to read package labels, and drive wherever it is they want to go, and probably climb the three flights of stairs that are in the small owned business they like to frequent. I can do none of these things so yes, I shop at Amazon. If you don't like it, there's the door.

We have all heard of the Instacart fairy who gives us things that we did not ask for in our grocery delivery… She is joined today by her distant relation… The Amazon fairy. As in the Amazon fairy giveth and the Amazon fairy taketh away. I placed an order for delivery overnight that included some granola, some sparkling water, some over-the-counter medication, and a stuffed hedgehog. I received everything but the stuffed hedgehog and in its place they sent me a small about 4 ounce glass jar of some very high-end face serum. This is hilarious because I'm about as much of a tomboy as you can possibly be and the only lotion I use on my face is unscented lotion that has a coconut oil base. I have no idea what to do with this stuff. But more importantly, we still don't have a hedgehog. I am sure the person expecting the high-end face cream is not going to be pleased when they find a small furry squeaking hedgehog and it's place.

Ladies and gentlefolk, may I present.... The Sadnews Bear... Phoenix just left on her funwalk and Baloo is convinced the funwalks person has left and will never return and that she will never get another funwalk again. So she wrote a song about it and is singing it for y'all today....

This goes out to all of the yoga people. I am looking for either a book or a website with thorough text descriptions of the various poses. I do not want pictures, or audio, or video. I am deafblind, and these things are not accessible to me, and I do not have the bandwidth to run them through a transcription bot such as Aiko. I am not interested in face-to-face instruction and finding someone who knows American Sign Language who can teach me yoga face-to-face is a tall order. There are also other physical issues and I would be more comfortable doing this on my own. I do have the written instructions for the eyes free chair yoga program, but I would like to learn more poses and change things up and do more standing poses. So a nice written description either in a book or on a website would be phenomenal if anyone can point me in that direction. Much appreciated! 🧘‍♀️

Saw the gp, discussed my complete lack of immunity to basically every childhood illness there is and today I got vaxxed for COVID, Flu, Chickenpox, measles, mumps and Rubella. I just looked at her and said "I'm going to feel like absolute trash tomorrow, huh?" And she said "yes that is correct." Props for her telling it to me straight. And yes it's ideal to spread vaccines out, but because of transportation and communication challenges I'm not able to do that so I got it all in one giant Vaccine buffet. Now I'm off to work!

Even Service dogs start their mondays with Starbucks! #dogsofmastodon

Well, that was a stupid move! I was just about to start pulling out the things for pumpkin pie when I realized that I used all of the eggs 20 minutes ago when I made a giant container of egg salad to have for breakfast during the week. Aargh! And I don't have cornstarch or arrowroot powder or flax for any kind of vegan egg replacement. This is my very grumpy face.

All right, I decided to create a poll… And it is a poll about going outside. When I say outside what I mean is to go outside because you want or need to be outdoors. I'm not talking about going outside as a means to an end, such as going outside to get into some kind of transportation so you can get to an appointment or to work. The question is how often do you spend time outside for pleasure or as a part of your wellness routine?

I just got all of the ingredients for Guinness stew in the crockpot and it is cooking away. This morning I made pumpkin brioche French toast with cinnamon infused maple syrup and maple bacon. It was more delicious than it had any right to be! I'm trying to decide if I want to make beer bread or cheese biscuits to have with the stew, but right now I am just enjoying what qualifies as beautiful weather. It is 82° and the winds are blowing in about 17 miles an hour so it isn't hot at all, and it is really wonderful to sit outside and not sweat! I forgotten what it feels like!

We just had to cancel our plans for Atlanta because of this tropical storm. The more I hear about it the better I feel about staying home. I want to be here with the girls in case shit goes sideways. I was able to cancel the hotel before they charged me and the train is refunding us. But it still really sucks.