One of the measures I have always used to determine my level of acceptance in a group of sighted friends or associates is whether or not they will tease me or play little, harmless but funny tricks. I’m not talking about the sometimes snide, condescending remarks labeled “humor” and intended to belittle and hurt. I know all about those, but that’s a discussion for another time. I’m talking about things that are actually funny, and presented in good fun, equal to equal, not sighted superior to blind inferior. I delight in them, because they acknowledge my blindness *and* the fact that it is accepted as part (and not the most important part) of me. It also says something, I think, about the way I handle it, and acknowledges my own comfort level with my condition.

All this to introduce an incident that happened today at the shop...that still brings a grin, despite the fact that I’m exhausted. I have a motion sensor. It’s portable, which means I can put it where I need it to be, and I use it when stocking for running back and forth between the shop and the store room across the hall. If I have my head (and usually my upper body) inside a large cooler, all I hear is compressor noise, so I don’t know if someone has come in. Well, this little thing has a tone that sounds like the doorbell from hell …and it’s *loud*! Today, one of my customers picked it up, and followed me with it …wanting to see if I could tell it was moving. I could of course …but when I first heard it, I half turned, and must have had a fairly classic WTF look on my face, because the whole place burst into laughter, including me.

A very small thing …but it warmed my heart (and I’ll get him back, one of these days, just because I’m as mischievous as he is, and I owe him one!). Yes, I’m still laughing, just a bit.

On another front, but equally delightful, my helper left me a present! I knew about the piece of home baked pound cake …but I did *not* know about the sweet potato pie! And she baked it herself. I have, it would seem, birthday cake *and* birthday pie, too! Another customer and I had been talking about snowballs …you know, those sugar filled, definitely junk food, absolutely non-nutritious, chemical laden “cakes” that have cream filled cake, topped with marshmallow fluff and shredded coconut? Yeah, those! Well, she brought me 2 of them! And you know what? I enjoyed every bite, too! It might clog my arteries and lie dormant in my tummy, with a half life of 200 years …but I don’t care. Certainly, I wouldn’t want one every day …but every once in a long while, a lady just *needs* cream filling, wrapped in chocolate cake, wrapped in a layer of fluff, and covered with pink coconut!

Now …to figure out how other bloggers get pretty backgrounds, neat fonts, and all that good stuff!

Eleanora

Since this is my very first entry, here’s a bit about me, for context’s sake. I just turned 59 (let’s *not* go there!), live in Atlanta, GA, run a snack/card/gift shop in a Federal building, and am visually impaired.

You’ll find out about my many and varied interests as we go along, but mostly this blog is about my observations, the thought meanders my memories send me on, and my often irreverent commentary on just about everything and everyone, especially myself.

Don’t expect a lot of pictures …that probably isn’t going to happen, though links might appear if I figure out how to upload them.

I just finished Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon’s Kin …a thoroughly enjoyable book, as are all of hers. Since I get my books in Talking Book format, I often must wait a few years for the book to be recorded, so, unless I order a recent release from Audible.com, I’m behind everyone else in my reading. That doesn’t bother me, though …books have a *long* shelf life, and if they were good when written, they’ll be just as good when I get to them!

I’ve just started LA Dead by Stewart Woods, and, again, I know this will be an enjoyable read. I discovered this author about a year ago, and have read several of his Stone Barrington and Holly (oh, shoot, can’t remember her last name!) books. I like them, because the stories are generally engaging, and the ongoing characters are well drawn.

Yesterday was my birthday. Because I’m alone in the world, I didn’t do anything special, and that’s OK. I did some reflecting (not much, that way lies darkness), and some pampering, but mostly I considered the changes that I have seen in my own lifetime. The switch from huge radios that were pieces of furniture, and AM and short wave were about it. We had a huge thing …with knobs and a dial that looked like a clock face, sort of. The antenna was a *very* long wire and I loved it, because it brought me the world …drama, news, music... (I think I believed little people lived in there, just to talk to me!). When we “modernized, I got that radio, and I strung the wire all around one of my bedroom windows. By then, I knew something about the world (and radios), and I listened in on every country I could find. I heard, for example, of the death of Dag Hammerschold (one of my heroes), n the BBC news, and used to enjoy contrasting the news commentary on Radio Free Europe with Radio Moscow.

I remember Sputnik...and the glory days of the Space program …in fact, I wanted desperately be an astronaut, even though I knew how impossible that was, on several fronts. I’d still accept a ride in a Space shuttle, though …if they’d take an old, out of shape blind woman! (It might make a good “if she can do it and survive, anyone can” test, LOL!

I remember the Cuban revolution, the rise of Fidel Castro, the Cuban missile crisis (and the Suez crisis, for that matter, though vaguely), the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall (which I saw once), and so much more …more than I had realized, when I started ticking things off. It’s been an interesting ride …and I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it! If I have my way, I’ll keep riding, observing, and making snide irreverent comments or getting sentimental (yeah, I do), for the next …oh, 30 or 40 years, at least!

Eleanora