Last Updated on: 3rd July 2021, 10:05 pm
Enough chomp chomp chomping for now. Let’s just ramble. I haven’t rambled in a little bit.
I had a weird thing happen to me yesterday. I went to the drug store to pick something up, and a girl that usually helps me out said “So, you’re here for something for your eye?” My eye? No. I was here to get milk and things. I asked her why I would be here for my eye, and she said that almost the entire white of my right eye was bright red, and it was quite noticeable. Herm. That’s weird, since I didn’t feel a thing.
Thinking it was just a temporary thing, I asked the huppy’s mom later if my right eye looked funny, and she said that it looked like someone took a red marker and drew all around the inside of my right eye. Eek. A kid was nearby and decided he would play doctor. He told me it was probably just a broken blood vessel, and it would go away on its own. Hmmm. I guess he’s had a few of those in his day. I thought that was rather cute.
But now that she’s said something, when I feel anything at all, I wonder what that is. If the other eye itches, I get really twitchy.
It’s times like this that I wish I could see, just so I could look in a mirror and survey things. As it is now, I have to ask people. “What does my eye look like?” It is bugging me a little more, but I have to wonder if a big part of that is psychological. At any rate, I think I’m going to be calling my doctor tomorrow morning to see when I can get in to get her to have a boo at the ol’ peepers.
Let’s see. Trix updates. You know how I was worried about her weirdness around open stairs and her tendancy to yeep? Well, when we were home, she wouldn’t play tug at all. When we got back here, she continued to not play tug. This worried me, because Trix loooves to play tug. But then I started to think maybe she felt she couldn’t get a good grip on some of her old toys to play tug or something. So I bought her a new one, and she went nuts. But now, yet again, she’s less keen than usual about this whole tug thing. I’ll have to keep an eye on that. She seems to be fine walking around working, but I wonder about the tug thing. I also wonder about this new trend where she does not want to sit in the elevator. She’ll willingly sit just on her own in the apartment, but in the elevator she’s always trying to stand up again. It’s times like these where you wonder what is behavioural and what is physical? I can’t sort out a pattern.
She got a new tag. Now I just have to get the old tag off. I don’t know why I’m such a tard with figuring out how to work little key rings, but I profoundly suck at it. If someone could show me a trick, I would love them forever. The vet folks usually put the new one on and take the old one off, but for some reason the tech thought I needed help putting the harness back on. This is nothing new. But she left the old tag on, and I can’t for the life of me get it off.
Oh yeah, and vet techs, if I owe you money, don’t let me walk out without at least asking me when I’m going to pay. I had a credit because I was overcharged for a service. I had been using it up. When I brought Trix in to get her anal glands expressed and her nails trimmed, I asked the girl at the desk if I owed money, or if I still had credit. She just muttered something about “$9 left.” So, when they brought Trix back and I headed for the door, and she made no comment, I figured that meant I had $9 left of my credit. They have the file, not me. I had a hard time figuring how that could be possible, but what do I know?
Then a couple of weeks later, I get an invoice saying I owe $9. Well jeebers woman, speak up! I would have paid it! Oh well, whatever. As long as they don’t tack on interest or anything silly. They said I could just pay it when I came in for whatever I came in for next. Maybe I’ll have to come in if this tug thing continues to worry me.
Like I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, I’m working with the Guelph Barrier Free Committees researching recreational opportunities for people with disabilities. That means me and the phone are becoming good buds. It also means that I talk to a lot of interesting people, of all kinds.
I feel bad that in just asking if a leader of a given activity considers their activity to be accessible, I give some folks what sounds like a minor panic attack. I think I manage to calm lots of them down by the end, but I hate to watch them panic. I’m used to it, I see it all the time when I try and join certain things. I just hate watching it happen in rapid succession.
I also have talked to some people who, um, are a little awkward. When I ask if I’m speaking to a representative of a given club, an odd response would be “Depends who’s asking,” spoken in a creepy voice. Um, why? Is there something criminal going on? It appears that the guy’s just odd. But you really speak to all kinds when doing tons of cold calls.
On the other side of the coin, people have some interesting ideas of what people with disabilities would want or need. Someone thought we should all be rounded up and placed in a compound where we could ride to all amenities and pet animals. Hmmm. Ok.
But I am learning a lot of interesting things about some recreational stuff around that I didn’t know. I’m going to feel like an expert on ways to be active in Guelph in a big hurry.
I have said in a couple of places that this January is just full of suck for lots of people. But there is something weird about the way the barrel of sucktitude is dropping its piles of crap. It seems to be aiming for all the people you don’t expect.
After the pile of misfortune that fell on Steve’s family, I started bracing for the worst. When mom and dad would call, a small part of me would be worried. But all my grandparents and other elderly family are fine. Anyone who’s been struggling with things seems to be ok. All the ones that are getting smacked around are otherwise healthy or reasonably active folks.
Take the case of Seth Webster, for example. I had seen him mentioned in a few places. He had been in a few Growing Up Guide Pup videos showing off his guide dog Bamboo, and he was volunteering for GDB. All seemed perfectly well. I admit I don’t know him very well at all, but there were no signs of trouble that I noticed.
then, suddenly, he dies. What the? Who the? Huh?
Maybe January is giving me a giant, pound it into your head style lesson that life is precious, and you never know when it’s your time to disappear. Ok ok ok, I got it. I think. Yeesh! Now, can you stop with the death and massive injury to tons of my friends and acquaintances thing? Please? Now?
I haven’t written about the huppy in a while. Man is he ever learning a lot of stuff, and he’s really, really trying to communicate. At one point, he decided that my coat had to be zipped, so he grabbed the top flaps, brought them together, and said “Please.” Well, it sounded more like peeze, but ya know. I thought it was just too cute.
But there was one sentence he said that struck fear into my bones. I went with him and his mom in their car, and his mom wanted to run into a store and drop something off. I said I would stay with the huppy. She left, and a few seconds later, he said “Uh-oh, truck.” Uh-oh, truck? Why uh-oh, truck. Was a truck coming for our car? I tried to stay calm, all the while wondering how I could best protect the huppy if the truck was going to hit us. Thankfully nothing happened, but who knew two words could be so scary?
He also imitates everything. Steve was chasing him around the house, and would jump out and go “Boo! Boo!” and he would go Boo! Boo! right back at him. He loves to hug, too, which is just super adorable.
You can see he’s at that stage where the world is still purely logical for him. You can watch the wheels turning. “If that thing with a screen is a TV, then everything with a screen must be a TV.” Actually he says TD, but I know what he’s going for. “Also, the clicker controls the TV. So maybe it’s a TV too. So clicker-like things and things with screens are TV’s. Hmmm. Yeah. I think so.”
Another thing I see his little brain working through is exactly what please means. His folks always get him to say please when he asks for something. But he has taken to thinking that please is some kind of command. So, if he wants to play with the clicker, he’ll say “TD peeze.” When we say no, he cannot figure it out. “But I said please! Hand it over! I said please!” Ah, the complexities one has to learn.
But he loves phones. He wants to grab any phone he can and say “call call”. One time, we locked Steve’s cell phone and let him look at it. Somehow, it came unlocked, and he managed to call call our house! It was pure luck that it was our house. He hit the send button which brought up the dialed numbers window, and we were at the top, so he hit that button again, and off went the phone. Oh boy. Keep your call call locked while near the huppy.
We gave him his Christmas present. I’ve said before that he likes to play with the mail slots in the building. So, I wondered if a toy mailbox existed. And holy crap, it does! I walked into Simply Wonderful Toys and fired off a whole bunch of choices. I thought I’d take a shot in the dark and ask if they had a mailbox, and my god, they did, complete with toy parcels and pieces of mail! I hope he likes it. I know for sure he liked the birthday bear that came in it.
I think that’s about it for this round of babble. Everybody, stay safe and warm.
