Saturday, September 30, 2017
Dishwashing
Enjoying the peace and quiet of an early morning. The small town I live in is still quiet, and the birds are all that are heard through the window. My fur baby is asleep behind me on the floor. She rumbles and twitches, an occasional sleepy bark thrown in. I'm at the sink, playing with grapefruit scented bubbles. Washing dishes that I've handled for decades, each piece is as familiar under the water as is my own face. There's something comforting in the regular routine of washing by hand. I've seldom lived anywhere in my life where a dishwasher was part of my home. This charming hundred year old rental has no space to install one, and I love that, except for appliances, the kitchen is original. So, I stand on a bright red area rug, and wash each dish. I think of my life as it has changed over the years, the good, bad, joys, and sorrows. Through all of it, this has been a constant, comforting, ritual. I know that I have plenty of whatever I need in life, and I'm happy. The dish rack, full of clean, sparkling dishes is proof of that.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
Thursday musings
Been busy lately, doing homemaking chores while pain levels are fairly low. Mainly, I'm washing the woodwork in this lovely little cottage. So far, three rooms are done, except for the baseboards. Baseboards can wait until furniture is pulled out from the walls when the carpet is shampooed next time. I recovered three dining room chairs with lovely, new fabric on the seats, and recovered the ottoman, as well. Thank goodness for my heavy duty stapler, it makes the job go quickly. I've had the dining chairs for decades, and they were old when they came to me. The seat cushions get fresh fabric covers about every other year. More often when I was raising messy toddlers, but that's in the past. The shower curtain, and some of the lace curtains are clean. The rest of the curtains and drapes will be cleaned , one room at a time. Things are organized, clean, and neat. Everything sparkles, except for the bathtub. It's progress of a sort. I remember doing seasonal housecleaning years ago, and it only took a few days. Now, it takes weeks of working at it for a few minutes at a time until there's too much pain, and then resting for a few hours until it subsides. I know that soon, I'll be hiring out that semiannual chore. This year, it will take a few more weeks. I'm always delighted when it's done, and feel a great sense of accomplishment.
I do enjoy this little cottage. It's 100 years old, has a big porch, huge trees, tons of architectural details and charm. It's the first home I've lived in which was exclusively mine. It's cozy, decorated in my taste and style, with lots of plants, books, comfy places to snuggle with pillows and throws, original artwork as well as prints of my favorite pieces of art, lots of storage, beds which are a pleasure to crawl into, incredibly soft linens, vinyl records and a record player, candles, and fresh flowers in several of the rooms. It's a mix of hand me downs, thrift and antique store finds, some discount store items, and a few antiques that I've had most of my life. No "sets" of furniture like you see on display in stores, I'm too eclectic in my home decor style for that. I like a home which looks as though things have been accumulated over a period of centuries, rather than in a few days. I'm happy here, and it feels like home.
Finally bought a Braille printer, then bought tractor fed paper to go with it. Then....it took a week to get the product Key to go with the software which came with the printer. After a bit of trial and error, I printed out Muse by Alison May. It's now bound in a couple of lovely sets of rose covered scrapbook covers. It's wonderful to have access to things that I love reading again. I think that if I'm going to work on Braille proficiency, it should be with things I enjoy. I know that the printer will get a lot of use, and will be something that I depend on in years to come.
My latest project has been brailling favorite recipes with my Perkins brailler. It's too hard to use magnifying glasses on those faded recipe cards with handwriting from family members now long gone. I could hook up a cable and use the magnifying app on the iPad to project them on the big screen tv, but it's a pain to run back and forth from the kitchen to the living room over and over to read the recipe as I cook. Once they're done, I'll put the pages in a binder, and staple the original recipes to the corners of the pages.
After almost two years together, Moriarty aka The Divine Miss M, actually crawled onto my lap and fell asleep for the first time. I'd given up on that ever happening in this life time. She's still a hateful little thing, unless she's in heat, when she becomes the most loving creature ever created. She still chases everyone through the house, running on her hind legs, which is absolutely hilarious, grabbing calves and tails with her front paws. She's also extremely spoiled. She has three small bowls, each containing a different flavor of cat food.
My big fur beastie, Demeter, spends most of her time asleep. She's coming up on ten years old, and is a sweet little old lady. She loves her memory foam bed, an occasional kiddie burger from Dari Diner, her basket of stuffed babies, and traveling. She has some friends, and is all over happy when she sees them. She's been losing some weight, so I've added canned dog food twice daily to her diet. She absolutely loves that. Served on some rose patterned china, rather than in a dog food bowl, just because.
There's a lot going on in my life. Nothing bad, none earth shattering, or ultra exciting, it's simply life. There's a guest coming for a short visit, he's only got a few months left to live, and is trying to visit everyone while he can. We're taking an upcoming trip together (he, my fiancé, and I) which I know will be an adventure and make a lot of terrific memories. I'm in the middle of making another backgammon board, which will be stunning when finished. I'm taking a couple of online classes (as always), because I'm bored if I'm not constantly learning something. I've stopped the Braille lessons for now, since I'm actually reading it in uncontracted form. I'll get back to it at some point, I'm thinking after the holidays.
There's a new app out called Seeing AI. It's a real game changer for blind folks like me. Point it at a page with print, and it will read it aloud. It describes photos, reads labels and signs, describes people, etc. It's pretty much my go to app for everything. I've opened a physics textbook, and it read everything. I absolutely love it. Best part? It's free. Only in a few countries so far, but rapidly expanding.
This is the time to live if you're blind. Technology has made it so easy to adapt to sight loss. Something as simple as an app which lets you match your own socks, or reads the denominations of money so you know how much you're handing to a clerk, or that takes you street by street with directions to the store and back. Audio descriptive service which describes what is happening on a favorite tv show or movie, means you don't miss out on all of the action. Voiceover reads your favorite ebooks to you, and Seeing AI will read your print books. Wish I'd known it was coming out before getting rid of most of my home library. I'm down to a couple hundred of my absolute favorites, that I will not give away until I have a copy of it in Braille. If there's a need, then there's a technological advance coming to meet it.
Enough for now...
I do enjoy this little cottage. It's 100 years old, has a big porch, huge trees, tons of architectural details and charm. It's the first home I've lived in which was exclusively mine. It's cozy, decorated in my taste and style, with lots of plants, books, comfy places to snuggle with pillows and throws, original artwork as well as prints of my favorite pieces of art, lots of storage, beds which are a pleasure to crawl into, incredibly soft linens, vinyl records and a record player, candles, and fresh flowers in several of the rooms. It's a mix of hand me downs, thrift and antique store finds, some discount store items, and a few antiques that I've had most of my life. No "sets" of furniture like you see on display in stores, I'm too eclectic in my home decor style for that. I like a home which looks as though things have been accumulated over a period of centuries, rather than in a few days. I'm happy here, and it feels like home.
Finally bought a Braille printer, then bought tractor fed paper to go with it. Then....it took a week to get the product Key to go with the software which came with the printer. After a bit of trial and error, I printed out Muse by Alison May. It's now bound in a couple of lovely sets of rose covered scrapbook covers. It's wonderful to have access to things that I love reading again. I think that if I'm going to work on Braille proficiency, it should be with things I enjoy. I know that the printer will get a lot of use, and will be something that I depend on in years to come.
My latest project has been brailling favorite recipes with my Perkins brailler. It's too hard to use magnifying glasses on those faded recipe cards with handwriting from family members now long gone. I could hook up a cable and use the magnifying app on the iPad to project them on the big screen tv, but it's a pain to run back and forth from the kitchen to the living room over and over to read the recipe as I cook. Once they're done, I'll put the pages in a binder, and staple the original recipes to the corners of the pages.
After almost two years together, Moriarty aka The Divine Miss M, actually crawled onto my lap and fell asleep for the first time. I'd given up on that ever happening in this life time. She's still a hateful little thing, unless she's in heat, when she becomes the most loving creature ever created. She still chases everyone through the house, running on her hind legs, which is absolutely hilarious, grabbing calves and tails with her front paws. She's also extremely spoiled. She has three small bowls, each containing a different flavor of cat food.
My big fur beastie, Demeter, spends most of her time asleep. She's coming up on ten years old, and is a sweet little old lady. She loves her memory foam bed, an occasional kiddie burger from Dari Diner, her basket of stuffed babies, and traveling. She has some friends, and is all over happy when she sees them. She's been losing some weight, so I've added canned dog food twice daily to her diet. She absolutely loves that. Served on some rose patterned china, rather than in a dog food bowl, just because.
There's a lot going on in my life. Nothing bad, none earth shattering, or ultra exciting, it's simply life. There's a guest coming for a short visit, he's only got a few months left to live, and is trying to visit everyone while he can. We're taking an upcoming trip together (he, my fiancé, and I) which I know will be an adventure and make a lot of terrific memories. I'm in the middle of making another backgammon board, which will be stunning when finished. I'm taking a couple of online classes (as always), because I'm bored if I'm not constantly learning something. I've stopped the Braille lessons for now, since I'm actually reading it in uncontracted form. I'll get back to it at some point, I'm thinking after the holidays.
There's a new app out called Seeing AI. It's a real game changer for blind folks like me. Point it at a page with print, and it will read it aloud. It describes photos, reads labels and signs, describes people, etc. It's pretty much my go to app for everything. I've opened a physics textbook, and it read everything. I absolutely love it. Best part? It's free. Only in a few countries so far, but rapidly expanding.
This is the time to live if you're blind. Technology has made it so easy to adapt to sight loss. Something as simple as an app which lets you match your own socks, or reads the denominations of money so you know how much you're handing to a clerk, or that takes you street by street with directions to the store and back. Audio descriptive service which describes what is happening on a favorite tv show or movie, means you don't miss out on all of the action. Voiceover reads your favorite ebooks to you, and Seeing AI will read your print books. Wish I'd known it was coming out before getting rid of most of my home library. I'm down to a couple hundred of my absolute favorites, that I will not give away until I have a copy of it in Braille. If there's a need, then there's a technological advance coming to meet it.
Enough for now...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)