Hi, people!
So, in case you are either (a) fully sighted with no blindies in your corner and-or (b) living under a rock, you oughta know that Facebook, in addition to all its inherent security and political badnesses, is becoming a regular trash-heap of accessibility problems. The most heinous of these include having to go through ridiculous work-arounds to do things as simple as composing a post, writing a comment, or being able to know what link we’re clicking on before we leave Facebook. Again, basic things. Totally unacceptable that these issues have been dragging on for literal months. Non-disableds would not stand for this.
As you can imagine, this app inaccessibility, combined with the fact that Facebook Mobile (on the computer, not the phone) is now also a cluster, has made me less and less inclined to post status updates. Therefore, ergo, and henceforth, the plan is to move gradually away from Facebook and more toward blogging. Will it work? No one knows. But it definitely won’t work if I don’t try!
Let’s break it down into nice paragraphs. I’ll even do little fake titles / headings. Mostly for the sighties. I think they like that. But I’m not doing formatting.
WHY A BLOG?
A long time ago, Martha and I thought it might be fun to blog together. Do you like our cute title?
Dots: speaks, of course, to my love of all things braille.
Doc: Have you met Doc Martha? She blogs and Instas already, but hopefully she’ll bring some Doc Martha Magic, as I call it, over to this little corner of the Interwebs.
Roc: The cool shorthand way of spelling “rock,” which is for Maíte, the Rock Wilder (Rottweiler). She is our eight-year-old dogter and we love her. She enjoys raw meat, singing, chasing “creachers” to the best of her abilities, and “para-ambulations.” She may guest-post on here occasionally, if she’s not too busy “ressing” in the “tsunchine.” Plus, we, all three of us, rock. And enjoy rocking out.
Most updates, I imagine, will be more brief and topical, but I have a few life updates that I think it will be helpful to fill you folks in on so you know where we are these days in Caitlinworld. I’m also not going to update on, you know, seemingly everything in ways I once did, but more things that feel more sharable for, and consumable by, the general public.
SCHOOL
This is my ninth year of teaching. It is ridonculous. Like, seriously, I don’t even know how that happened.
To make a very, very long, nine-year story short, I’m still having problems with our school district, to the point that I was pushed out of a school due to accommodations-related reasons. Last year, for the first time, I taught a special-day class for third, fourth, and fifth grade students with mild to moderate disabilities, in the hopes that the main accommodation issue would be less prevalent. In fact, the issue was still prevalent, and a bunch of other issues in that setting compounded it, most notably never being fully staffed.
Our school district is infamous in the news for its struggles and, thankfully, school sites seem to understand that, with almost a decade of special education teaching under my belt, I’m actually a useful staff member to have on their team, in spite of the fact that, you know, I can’t see things. This year, I’m back teaching small groups of kinders through fifth graders at a little elementary school that’s actually walkable from our house. The children are delightful, and some of the most hardcore, dedicated learners I’ve ever had. We haven’t had a special educator at our school for the past two years, so from the get-go, my crew, by and large, were extremely eager to receive the support.
I know some of us, myself included, miss kid-quotes! Kid-quotes make the world go ’round, don’t they? I have gotten out of the habit of putting them in a palatable format; I just tend to scribble them in my daily notes and across my lesson plans. And I haven’t made up kid-names in ages! But I will keep chewing on the idea of bringing them back. Maybe in, like, a weekly or monthly digest?
ARFID
As some of the long-time Facebookers may recall, my therapist was able to give me an official diagnosis of ARFID, or Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. For the uninitiated, ARFID is often handily explained as “more than picky eating.” It’s when people struggle to eat typically, due to low interest or appetite, fears of choking or becoming ill, and-or sensory-based things like flavor, color, texture, etc. For me, it’s mostly about texture and poor hunger cues.
The texture component has been present for as long as I can remember, but the interoception piece, I think, worsened during the shelter in place, when eating was much less structured. School and being out and about in the world tends to help me with scheduling my eating; I just never really thought about it that way.
Long story short, after the shelter in place and returned to school, I had unintentionally lost a lot of weight, due to eating both less food and less frequently. I worked on it over the summer, got some guidance from providers familiar with ARFID, and joined some ARFID Zoom groups. Things got better for a while, but got worse throughout the school year. ARFID on its own was difficult enough, but last year, we were extremely short-staffed, and I wasn’t used to teaching the special-day class.
By the end of March, I’d lost so much appetite and weight that even Kaiser people were concerned, and I was referred to a partial hospitalization program in the city. I had to go on medical leave for the rest of the school year, and was at the program for eight hours six days a week. That gradually decreased as I was able to work on my eating.
Because ARFID is such a relatively new disorder, there aren’t really best practices on how to address it. I ended up trying a new med, which increased my appetite drastically and helped me put on weight rapidly, but it made me feel absolutely miserable. I quit the med after about a month, but it took a while to taper down, which was very unpleasant. But I’d put on enough weight and learned enough new skills that I got sprung from the program.
The folks at the program were pretty kind, and … well, you all know me, I brought my signature joy as best as I could. If nothing else, being able to focus on eating and not stress endlessly about school helped, and then I had the whole summer to stay in good patterns.
This school year has gone so much better, and I’ve kept up with eating … knock wood. My main takeaways have been to just TRY to eat, even if I don’t think I’ll be able to. And to eat whatever feels doable, even if it’s not what I quote “should” be eating. Relatedly, we have banned the concept of “junk food” in this house. It has been renamed to “simple” food, which you say with a French accent and hair-tossing. I will do a video of it sometime.
So that’s the ARFID update. Oh, also, we’ve been doing some fun videos of me trying new things, but, thankfully, the program did not force me to eat different things. They encouraged me to eat a higher volume of my “safe foods,” which was a big relief. I’ve never felt motivated to eat, quote, “normally,” and my blood tests have always been okay, thanks to vitamins and, at some points, iron.
OUR LITTLE FAM
We’ve now been in our house for about three years.
We have the best next-door neighbor ever, “Uncle Wayne,” who calls himself the Mayor Of the Street. He is hilarious and always keeps an eye on us. Martha, in particular, knows all the dogs and their families, too.
We also hosted a block party, and now have a great sitter and walker for Maíte. So I feel like we are slowly but surely finding some community.
WRITING
This part saddens me: I have done literally NO writing. No Facebook posts, but also, for the first time in my life, I don’t have any story ideas, either. It’s super saddening. I did NaNoWriMo successfully for the first time in 2023, but flunked out midway in 2024 … and the stuff I did in 2023 wasn’t that great.
STAY TUNED
Hopefully, I can stay on this wagon and get back in the posting / writing groove! Think good thoughts for me!
If you made it this far, I shall send you e-hugs and rainbowz!
dot doc n roc 
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