December 21, 2011-Volume 54: Is There a Book in all This?

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 54:  Is There a Book in all This?

This week I have been thinking, as I write my last blog of 2011, about turning these blogs into a book.  When I began writing my blog over a year ago I told myself I would write until the end of 2011 and then see what I had.  So now do I know what I have and if there is a book hiding somewhere in these weekly musings? That is the focus of my blog this week.  But first…………..

My WTF of the week is all the videos of that dancing robot chicken thing called Keepon.  My daughter loves this dancing chicken and I will admit it is cute.  But the original video of the Keepon is of the Keepon Pro that was developed and is used with autistic, Asperger’s and other kids with social and motor issues.  The mass produced Keepon available for just under $40 is obviously not going to perform as well as the one that is made specifically for use in therapeutic settings.  So the crazy thing is all the YouTube videos of people sitting their Keepon in front of a computer to see if it performs the same as the one in the original video.  Obviously it is not the same version so it is not going to perform the same. But there is something else that drives me nuts and that is the fact that they are putting the Keepon in front of a laptop computer and turning the volume up so that the sound is super distorted. The Keepon does not have a chance because it can’t hear the rhythm or baseline.  I have experience in dancing objects because I had a dancing palm tree in the 80’s.  And what I learned is that you had to put it on top of an audio speaker so it could feel the vibrations and pick up the sound. Problem is that no one seems to know what an audio speaker is anymore. The speakers in your computer or even the computer speakers you attach are not real audio old school speakers.  So that poor Keepon had no chance of doing his little dance. Unless he comes to my house where I have real speakers and an amp!

This week I can’t get enough of my new super sunglasses.  After losing my last super sunglasses, I broke down to buy a new pair because having quality sunglasses that are polarized and shatterproof are essential for those of us with blown pupils and retinal damage. This time I went with Maui Jin’s because they are the only company that has an anti-glare coating on the inside of the lens to prevent bounce back from sun coming in behind you.  My sunglasses are called shields because the lens is one big piece.  I thought they looked like glasses you would wear skiing, but was told they were actually trendy. My boyfriend actually said he saw one of the guys from the Black Eyed Peas wearing them.  Good enough for me. The sunglasses have a bronze lens for cloudy days and twilight and sunrise and they are awesome.  All those patents Maui Jin owns to make their super sunglasses also make them super expensive. So I asked every one of my family to contribute to the super sunglasses fund as my Christmas present. My hope is that I come somewhat close to breaking even. All I know is that the case had a clip on it and I may keep them attached to me at all times or put a microchip in them so that I can track via GPS along with a warning label that tells people I can find my glasses anywhere and will hunt them down.

After my accident I set out to write a book and ended up writing a blog. I did not know how long I would write or even why I was writing but I found it cathartic. Making the blogs into some kind of book had always been the plan but I never let it affect what I was writing.  Now, with 54 blogs and over 160 pages of writing I am wondering what I have and how it could be a book. So I will ask you, the reader, for feedback.

Here is what I am wondering.  Have I told enough of my story of the accident and the aftermath or is it unclear?  Do you need to know more about my life before the accident or have I eluded enough to that? Should I weave in my coaching type advice as I work out the chapters? I wonder what anyone would get out of reading the book-what is the main theme or message. Is it how to adapt to change and stay positive and resilient or is it how to deal with big life changes or is a story of adapting to a new disability or is it all that?

I am also wondering if I can really write this book without any background in writing or any real skill. I am of the mindset that I am going to need a ghostwriter to help me piece things together.  I think whoever that ghostwriter is should have some creative writing or journalism experience as well as a sense of humor and the ability to put up with me.

Many have suggested self-publishing. The thing to do these days is to write a book as a conduit to growing your business.  To me self-publishing seems like the Little Leagues. I am not publishing the book to grow my business, although that would be nice. I am writing a book because I think I may have an interesting and inspirational story and if that gets me on some major talk shows, so be it. I want to send my book to publishers and have a real publishing house publish it so you can buy it at Amazon or see it in a Barnes and Noble. It could be a small publisher, but self-publishing is just not an option. Maybe I am a dreamer but it is good to aim high. Really I would like to go on a book tour and do talks like former New York Housewife Bethany Frankel.

One day I may be getting to have a say in who plays me in the movie version of my book and that would obviously be my Facebook doppelganger Marisa Tomei.  It is actually fun thinking about who would play the roles of you and your family and friends in a movie.  I suggest just trying this for fun.  

So maybe, possibly coming to a bookstore near you in the future is my book, not yet titled. I was serious about the feedback and put lots of questions in the blog. So if you get bored during the Holidays, send me your thoughts.  Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Holiday!!!  And Happy New Year! 

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

December 14, 2011-Volume 53: Can You Really Go Home?

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 53: Can You Really Go Home?

The week after Christmas I will be travelling to Tampa for the first time in over 4 years. During the past years my family has been coming to Columbia to visit and then the accident happened and travelling became harder, so I just never made it home.  I have mixed feelings about going home because this is the first time I will see my high school friends since the accident, and the first time I will see my grandmother in a nursing home.  That leaves me both excited and scared and that is the focus of the blog.  But first…………

My WTF of the week is the amount of time it is taking for my daughter to paint her ceramic gifts.  We have been to the pottery painting place three times and she is still not finished.  When did she get so meticulous? Last year we knocked out the painting in one trip.  This time she is taking 45 minutes per item and we had 10 items to paint.  She also refuses to let me help her in any way, so my job is to sit with her and help her keep on task.   She carefully makes color decisions and changes brushes often. She also insists on painting the entire item, even the bottom that will not show.  We are off to the pottery place one last time to finish the items. I am kind of sick of going there and to top it off last month we decided to have her birthday party there, so we will be back in three weeks for more ceramic painting. Whoopee!

This week I can’t get enough of once again trying new things.  I found someone who will give me individual lessons in jazz and will start that after the holidays.  Love jazz hands and would like to learn a number from one of my favorite movies “All That Jazz”.  And I am also getting hair extensions in January.  Not the clip in kind I have now, but the individual strands that last 4 to 6 months. I am really excited about having long hair although I am not used to it and may not be saying that very long.  Knowing me, most days I will find ways to put it up in a ponytail or some other twist thing. But there will be those times when I will make the effort to style it.  I am a huge fan of hot curlers and will be trying those out. It is so 1970’s, but who doesn’t love hot steamy curlers that sometimes burn your head. Lastly I will start my training to do a sprint triathlon which means getting back in the pool once or twice a week.  I have been talking about it all year and will finally take the plunge after the holidays.

This Christmas will be different for me.  It is the first time in 43 years I will not have Christmas Eve dinner with my family, and the first time I will not have my daughter with me.  Christmas Eve is bigger than Christmas day for our family so it will feel strange fir it to be just my boyfriend and me together that night. We have not decided what we will do or how to create something different. I am trying to view it as an opportunity to try something new, but at the same time I would like to eat the traditional Christmas Eve meal. Just need to muster up the energy to cook it.

On the flip side I will be going to Tampa the day after Christmas, the first time I have been in Tampa during the Holidays since 2004.  The trip will be filled with events and firsts. It will be the first time I have seen my grandmother in a nursing home. Because I have been at a distance it has been easier for me to deal with this because it is somewhat peripheral. But when I see her there I am not sure how I will react, how sad I will be, or how much I wish things would not have turned out that way.  And I know I have guilt for not trying to get home sooner.  But I know if my life was different and if I could have driven, I would have gotten there. But that is not my life so it is what it is. It will also be the first time my father, family members and friends will meet my boyfriend. I have given him the skinny on my family and will be doing more prep before the trip.  But how much can you really prepare people to meet your family. And of course your perceptions are tainted with memories of past visits home and are not really objective.

There will be celebrations too.  My niece, who eloped in Vegas last year, is having a vow ceremony. My dad is also coming down for the event, which is a rare time that my parents and extended family are all in one place. I think the last time that happened was after my accident and I have written about how swimmingly that all went. My high school friends are having a party while I am home and I will get to see them for the first time in four years.  They have been my friends for 30 years and I am thrilled to see them and their families. At the same time they are seeing the visually impaired Beth for the first time.  I am afraid of both my reaction and their reactions. Will there be awkwardness, will there be tears or will we just all be happy and gossiping as usual.  I really have no idea how I will feel until I walk through the door of the party and then I will deal with my emotions in that moment and with theirs as they come.  My hope is that they see that I am the same person, just differently abled and somewhat stronger.

Going home, when you have not been there in a while feels challenging and exciting at the same time. Coming home as a visually impaired person who will be seeing familiar places and people, but with new eyes is scary, but interesting at the same time. It is the mix of the emotions and the unpredictability of how I and others will react that has me on somewhat shaky ground.  But it is good to be on that type of ground so that you learn how to react in the moment to stabilize yourself. And that is what I will do.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

December 7, 2011-Volume 52: The Nasty Winter Bug Kicked my Butt Again

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl: Volume 52: The Nasty Winter Bug Kicked my Butt Again!

Last week there was no blog because I was in the bed, unable to move, running a fever and generally feeling like I had been run over by a bus.  The odd thing is that I was sick last year with pneumonia at this same time. Like many others, the bizarre weather changes and general fatigue that comes with prepping for the Holidays contributed to my susceptibility to the Uber-bug.  I always get sick between Thanksgiving and Christmas usually closer to Christmas.  I am beginning to think that I just hit the wall at the end of the year. That is the focus of the blog this week. But first………………

My WTF of the week is that I accidentally figured out how to make my zoom camera focus on my face.  I have had my camera, which is attached to a screen, for a year, but for some reason just figured out you could rotate the camera head 180 degrees.  So I managed to put the camera on me and zoom in on my face.  This was not a good idea.  I was stunned at how bad my skin looked and how wrinkled my forehead was.  Now I don’t trust any of those people who said I looked the same or looked fine and no Botox or other intervention was needed.  My daughter pegged it when she said I had 4 lines on my forehead and three were big and one was smaller and I could maybe get rid of those.  She also recently asked me if I could put on makeup some days when I brought her to school so I could win the prettiest mommy contest, which I was now losing. But she was sure I could possibly win with a little makeup on.  In the end I did decide to do Botox on the forehead wrinkles. It is my Christmas present to myself.  So when you see my next life coaching tip of the week on Monday check out the newly Botoxed forehead.  And I don’t recommend zooming in on your face, especially if you have not really seen it in detail for a while.

This week I can’t get enough of Holiday decorations.  My house is all done up for the Holidays, although there are still things to be done outside.  I am a Holiday decoration junkie.  I think it is all the things that sparkle and the color because I can see them. The same thing happened last year with the sparkle lingerie at the Victoria’s Secret.  I could have spent hours in the Hobby Lobby and if money was no issue I would have come up with a decoration scheme for every room, including the bathrooms.  I have to reign myself in from going “oh a shiny thing” and running toward it.  And I just keep picking things up and saying “that is fabulous”.  I need lights and sparkly things in the yard this year, so for the first time I am going to do the obnoxious light up yard things, maybe even the ones that blow up.  If I can find any kind of changing color disco balls they will be all over the house.  My other idea is to get a bunch of flamingos with Santa hats and string lights around them. That sounds cool-right. By this weekend, the outside spectacle of lights will be complete (and hopefully fabulous).

Every year I get super sick sometime in December. This has been going on for years and years no matter what I have been up to and no matter where I have lived.  I have memories of me being a kid and being sick around the Holidays. There was “the calamari incident” where I attempted to eat the usual Christmas Eve calamari and spent Christmas morning over the toilet. I have not eaten calamari since. Then there was the “Disney World Disease” year (think this was 1998) where I had to leave a vacation at the World after a day because I needed to get home and to a doctor. I had pneumonia and was in the bed 10 days. I watched the ball drop lying on the couch covered in Vicks VapoRub and hot towels. And of course last year there was the “Nutcracker Pneumonia Incident” where the stress of my daughter being in the Nutcracker and the exposure to a slew of parents and kids lead to her bronchitis and my pneumonia.

I think I have naturally adapted to the December illness trend by getting things done early in the Holiday season.  Usually all my decorating and shopping is done by December 1.  This way, if I get sick, I am still ahead of the game. Also there is the added benefit of not wanting to eat the Holiday treats because the antibiotics make me really sick and this leads to potential Holiday weight loss. And I have a great excuse not to attend Holiday parties. So, there is a silver lining somewhere.

I am beginning to think my body gets sick at the end of the year because over the course of the year I am high energy and usually going pretty fast without much vacation time.  So, I hit a wall much like the wall I hit daily around 3pm where I need a half cup of coffee to make it through the rest of the day. Maybe if the year were eleven months long I would be fine, because it is month twelve that gets me.  Next year I have decided to set a goal of not getting really sick in December. To do that I must take more vacation time during the year-I am thinking at least two weeks.  I am also going to work on getting better sleep which means going to bed before 11 and napping when I need it. I am going to take periodic breaks from working out so I can rest my body. I am going to be better at taking vitamins and eating well.   My hope is that by doing all these things I will be well rested and my immune system will be able to fight off the December Uber-bug. In the end it is about pacing myself through the year so I have enough energy and reserves to see the finish line that is December 31, and not from the couch.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock