Tag: braille

Leader Dogs, Day 5

Shout-out to my therapist for exhaustively reading this entire blog and making notes on all the reasons she’s proud of me, all the times she laughed, all the things she took the time to search up, and all the things we could talk about in future. She is truly the best, and I adore her and appreciate her beyond words.

Today for breakfast, I got a choco-chip muffin, and Jeffrey encouraged me (kindly) to try quinoa chocolate bark. Apparently, I tried this before, with Martha, on airplanes! But this one was homemade by the chef, and it was way tastier. It was a similar taste and texture to those chocolate / espresso coffee beans I used to snarf from Trader Joe’s: chocolatey and bitter and kinda … gritty. Shocking that I liked it, but I did!

Hannah had meetings, so Jeffrey and I did a quick route-plan, then reviewed and practiced a lot of the key take-aways from yesterday.

* I think I forgot to write yesterday that I’d somehow never really computed that we line ourselves up to cross along the inner curb because the traffic is closer to the outer curb. I mean, I guess I knew that … but not in those exact words. Necessarily. So you just listen to which side your traffic’s on, and then focus on the inner curb accordingly. MAGIC HACKS!

* This one took Jeffrey a couple tries to explain. When and if I veer while crossing a street, and my cane bumps a full curb on a left angle, that most likely means that, when I Go Go Gadget, the up-curb will be on my right, and vice versa. This may not always be true, but is a good place to start. We also talked about doing Go Go Gadget arm minimally at first, then extending farther on each side if I don’t immediately find something. If I go big first, I might miss the domes, since they’re often much closer than I think (IE, the veer is often not that big).

* Again, we practiced not moving my feet when I find the domes and using the traffic to check alignment on more simple crossing. For more complex crossings, I first line up with my shoulder lined up to the APS pole (we went from forearm to hand to shoulder because I am me and need Caitlin-specific choreography). Then, once I’m lined up with the pole, I use the traffic to confirm. This freaked me out a little because I’m usually not on the domes! I just have to trust the surge to guide me! I could also edge forward a LITTLE toward the domes, but carefully, so I don’t lose the magical position!

* Jeffrey reminded me again that it’s okay to wait until I get a parallel surge that I like. It’s okay to wait, take my time, and listen to one or more cycles to ascertain what’s going on and to make sure I’m lined up right.

* We also practiced using the traffic to get back on, or maintain, our line of travel. I always knew about this, but didn’t think as much about it in terms of avoiding sidewalk junk. Jeffrey pointed out that, typically, you get around sidewalk junk most safely by moving AWAY from the traffic. Maybe that should have been obvious, but, again, I just never thought about it that way.

* In terms of parallel surges, we talked about “The Golden Goose” surge, where the cars aren’t just tearing up to the intersection and passing through, but have been waiting for their turn, and are accelerating. This is complicated by the fact that (a) a lot of new cars idle very quietly, causing me to think no one is waiting and that they might be a new arrival, rather than an accelerator, and (b) in busy intersections or areas with lots of noise, it can be hard (for me, anyway) to differentiate.

* Funny moment:

Me: This car’s waiting for me, huh? But I want my all-quiet, all-clear.

Jeffrey: Right. What can you do to encourage him to move on? (Without thinking, I whirled around and pulled up my cane, acting like I was going to leave.)

Jeffrey: Ahh, don’t move those feet!

Me: Ahhh, I forgot!

Jeffrey: Look down or look away, but don’t move those feet.

Me: Should I look, you know, in the opposite direction? Or in their direction, so they know that I know they’re there?

Jeffrey: I think “nose to ground” is a good reminder.

After our water break back at the downtown lounge, we spent some more time with the Wheatley boards. Those are the big felt-covered boards with plastic strips for streets, blocks for intersections, little squares with bumps for truncated domes, little cars and people, etc. These can be velcroed in whatever place you want, to build intersections, simulate crossings and movement of pedestrians and cars, etc. It really seems like an art form to me when these instructors just built complex intersections in a trice.

We did a review of complex lighted intersections. Like with yesterday, Jeffrey took the time to explain things like lanes, different scenarios, being careful about cars that might turn unexpectedly and what can be done, etc.

We then did a quick walk to a complex intersection. It sounded SO wild, but Jeffrey made it clear that we were just going to listen, not cross. He wanted me to be able to hear it in person after we’d simulated and discussed it with the board. Hannah was also able to join us on this leg of the journey, which was great, because she and Jeffrey often tag-team and riff off each other with extra tips, ideas, suggestions, and noticings.

After lunch, we went to the mall, because I’d asked for techniques for the mall, stores, etc.

Best line:

Jeffrey (as Hannah cranks some music): Is this that song y’all were singing earlier? “Lifestyle Of Evan Williams?”

Me: Ahahahahahaha!

Jeffrey: Something about … Dean Williams?

Hannah: “Dear Evan Hansen.”

Jeffrey: Oh, is that what it was?

Me: My dad calls it “Dear Evan Handsome,” if that helps.

In the mall, we talked about using sounds as markers, which sounds like a good idea until you think about all the competing sounds in malls: fountains, mall music, people talking, echoes, music coming from individual stores, etc. Now that I look at it, that list actually doesn’t seem that intense, but it all adds up and becomes a lot. We practiced escalators and went up to Nordstroms. I was going to try soliciting verbal directions to the bathroom from a salesperson, but some customer who reminded me uncannily of my mom was taking forever and a day at the counter.

Me: Can you just pretend to be a stranger and I’ll practice with you?

Jeffrey (turning into his alter-ego, Joffrey The Boy King from Game of Thrones, which he’d told me about): Helloooo, madam, can I … (sketchily) help you?

Hannah (amused): Oh, no …

Me (trying to stay in Caitlin character): Can you please give me verbal directions to the women’s bathroom?

Joffrey (sinisterly): Yes. I’d loooove to. (breaking character) Okay, no, that got creepy.

Me: Ahahaha it was great.

Jeffrey: Okay, Joffrey’s gone, I’m back.

Hannah and I also practiced bathroom tips, but their Nordstroms bathroom was waaaay more straightforward and chill than ours. Still, good notes: try to stick with one wall at a time (not just flail around and go in wild circles, like I frequently do, in search of the stalls); trail the walls with the back of a hand; be mindful that sinks may stick out; etc.

Jeffrey also showed me one of those enormous marbles that rolls around and around in water. I can’t explain it now, but Martha showed me one at the county fair. They’re so wild!

We also talked about how malls seem totally, ridiculously insurmountable to me, but I could pick out a couple of stores and plan a route beforehand. And because they are cool, Hannah and Jeffry reiterated that human guide is a tool in my toolbox! So if I want to do that — if that makes the most sense, like if I just want to browse a mall and not get hung up on every single piece of mall junk — that’s an option.

Hannah also noted that many malls open before the actual stores open, and that would be an ideal time to practice, map out routes, etc., like when I used to practice my routes for school in the summer, or after school. Much easier to learn the route without people swarming everywhere.

On the drives to and from, we talked about odds and ends, from why I became a SpEd teacher, to my attempts to find something noise-canceling that doesn’t make my hearing feel weirdly occluded, to their experiences doing extensive training under blindfold. One of the ladies in our cohort also did a route with a blindfold and poignantly said to me, “I have so much respect for you, Caitlin, because my blindfold comes off, and yours doesn’t.” My “best straight guy friend,” Mitch, from college, said something similar after he did a Dining In The Dark-type simulation, and it really just warms my heart when people empathize in that way. I know people have big feelings about simulations, but when they’re paired with training, education, and-or exposure, as in these cases, I really do think they have their place, teaching empathy but not pity.

I was going to take a nap, but one of our crew texted our thread and told us there was ice cream in the piano lounge, and another told me there was an Oreo-type thing that I’d probably like … and she was right! At dinner, Jeffrey delivered my mail: a brailled letter from Martha (and Maite). Soooo cuuuute! I may or may not have gushed and bragged a bit about how sweet and brilliant she is. Everyone was properly touched.

We had fun chats about favorite desserts and adventures of the day, and I told the group that I, very suddenly, felt a huge influx of big feelings about leaving. I was a wreck after leaving guide dog school because I’d bonded so much with the cohort. And when I left LA after the “Dreaming In Color” summer, I was more sad than I think I’ve ever been in my life. For weeks! I cited that it’s not just about leaving the people and the, like, vibes, which is hard enough; it’s also about leaving a world that feels built for us, where blindness and visual impairment is normal, where we’re understood, respected, and treated well. It can feel very hard to leave that, especially when there are stressors at home, and when you feel some anxiety about preserving and keeping up what you’ve learned, as with guide dog school, but this time on your own (until you teach your people the things you learned, so they can support). The crew, of course, got this.

I forgot to mention that I tried the jumbo roller cane tip today and liked it as a lighter option. It doesn’t hop over cracks like the Pathfinder and Sensaball, but it does pretty well and is much lighter. I bought one at the RA office so I have it as an option.

I also did my best to take pics of the braille rails, wall of snacks (with its braille labels), and fridge (with the braille labels on its shelves) for my therapist. We’ll see how I did.

And, as ever, I’m zonking out! Only one more day … nooooo! I feel like I’ve been here forever!

Image shows a bird’s eye view of a white painted hand rail with a “bump dot” screwed into it. Underneath it, on the floor, is a dark blue line running parallel to the wall, very visible against the white floor. Presumably for folks with some vision can use it. Unless it’s for the guide dogs? Next in the picture are Caitlin’s two feet, in their special, ankle-saving shoes and pride socks. Next to her right foot is her cane – the bottom section is red and it has a cane tip I don’t recognize on it. It’s red and white but I don’t think it’s the Sensaball. I’m doing my best, people. Caitlin is long abed and I’m posting this after choir practice. Which was awesome.

NAME GAME


HINT: Skip to the end if you're wondering why Martha calls me "TJ." 

For as long as I can remember, I wanted a nickname. For whatever reason, I've always connected nicknames with words like "blindie," blind jokes, and the right to (with consent) guide me in an unconventional way. All these things have to be earned. 
In the same way I despise outer-circle folks going around pontificating about "blindies," teasing me for a "blawkward" (blind plus awkward) moment, or steering me by the shoulders, I have always chafed at people's insistence on calling me "Cait," "CJ," or, God forbid, "Caity," unless they've expressly been told that I liked it. 

I wonder if I connected these ideas because, in the same way people project false familiarity around blindness, I feel that people have attached nicknames to me as a means of declaring friendship, connection, or even ownership that isn't really there. Or maybe it's just because, as a blind kid trying to cut it in a sighted world, with extracurriculars, blind stuff, and (then unidentified) ARFID sprinkled over a typical childhood, I felt like I had so little autonomy. 

As a kid, I was Caitlin to just about everyone. Very early on, my dad nicknamed me Trouble, or its derivatives, Troub and Troublemaker ... but that was very much his nickname alone. No one else used it until, years later, entirely unaware of my dad's nickname for me, my seventh-grade science teacher also awarded me the same label. 

"Cait" and "Caity" were exclusively family names, with only my grandparents and Aunt Linda allowed to use "Caity." My grandpa, with his affinity for Spanglish mixed with the occasional German from my grandma, called me "Diablito," or "little devil." In hindsight, I found it interesting that he didn't use "Diablita"; perhaps this was a nod to my wild-child, tomboyish behavior. I wish I'd thought to ask him before he passed away in 2012.
 
By fourth grade, I was taking nicknaming into my own hands. My infamous Deraitland bestie, Derek, myself, and some other friends sometimes invented languages. In one, "Caitlin" backwards became "Niltiac," pronounced sort of like "Nil-shyack." In another, "Caitlin" in braille, upside-down, became "Itincoma," which I loathed and Derek, subsequently, used often in an attempt to rankle me. 

The nickname I lusted after constantly was CJ, for my first and middle initials. Derek, happily, was DJ, a nickname which I used a lot. CJ never really took, but for a time, we became "Coodge" and "Doodge," with the double Os in "book." But these were very much Deraitland names, and perhaps with good reason. I could be misremembering, but they may have been a nod to our constant fixation with imitating the speech synthesizers of the time. Though CJ and DJ would not have been read as "coodge" and "doodge," those names were reasonable approximations of how a screenreader might have misread them. 
By fifth grade, I was going totally rogue. I brailled and typed "Cat Hernandez" on all my papers, as though it was my given name. When some grown-ups would obligingly write "Cat" but never call me that, I tried Kit, Kit-Cat, and, in a final, desperate attempt, C. Nothing worked. 

"Cait" and "Caity" remained staples with the family; my dad added "It" and "Little It" to Troub and Trouble; and my sister, for reasons I now can't remember, called me Poopsy. My mom, when I was being particularly cute, would call me her "Little Lamb Chop," which I liked only because I loved both lamb chops and the show Lambchop's Playalong. But such a nickname was too sappy for public consumption. 

This seems like a logical time to pause and state that I have no problem with the name "Caitlin." It fits me. I'm especially grateful my parents picked the spelling they did, not only because I prefer the way my spelling looks in braille to that of all the others, but also because it enables me to make my albeit somewhat confusing crack, "Caitlin: remember, two Is but cannot C. Get it? Two EYES but cannot SEE," which, if you don't think about it so hard that you wonder whether the "cannot" means you ought to use a K and not, in fact, the correct C, helps people spell my name correctly. 

No ... in spite of the fact that there's no good story behind my name, other than that it went well with Courtney, my older sister's name, and that my dad had heard the name and thought it was, quote, "nice," I like my name. I think, though, that I did sometimes come to associate it with being in trouble. Maybe it was because people couldn't wave, make eye contact, or get to me visually, but often, even today, when I hear my name called, even in a casual way, I immediately panic and think that I'm in trouble. Sad, but perhaps true ... and possibly a reason why I always longed for a nickname that wasn't restricted to a certain crew of friends. 

In college, I tried to start out as CJ with my a cappella group. A few people used it somewhat, but in more of a tongue-in-cheek way, not as a true nickname. Amusingly, a label which did stick was "Cajherna," derived from my collegiate e-mail address, which I had not chosen. Apparently, there were so many C Hernandezs that the system spat out the second letter of my name, my middle initial, and the first part of Hernandez. I had to dictate my school e-mail address so many times when signing in at events that my a cappella group, claiming it sounded like a sneeze, began to call me that every so often. Another of the Acquire contingent, Andrea, also took to teasingly calling me Button, which came to light because of a random guy who, upon seeing us in Safeway and recognizing us from busking, said, "I remember you all singing, and I had to stop and tell you ... you're just as cute as a button." Some casual ableism there, as he must have known we were both college students and still insisted on treating me like a disabled child. However, as with "blindies," we took the comment and turned it into something fun. 

Some other in-group names: 
* Dez: short for Hernandez, from a later Acquire member, Caroline, and later adopted by the CRE Outreach (now Arts Up LA) boys. 
* MC, PC, LC: standing for "Poor Child," "My Child," and "Little Caitlin," respectively: all nicknames my dad came up with in the era of texting, again poking fun at people's insistence on feeling sorry for me or infantalizing me, even when nothing is wrong. 
* Little: What my sister started calling me, after getting me a braille bracelet which read "little sis." (She, of course, is Big, which appalls my mom, because some people are still laboring under the delusion that being big is bad. I might add that, though she's taller than me, Courtney is actually more delicate / small-presenting.) 
* Ti-Ti: What my niece has called me every since she could talk ... technically from the Spanish Ti­a, although no one in our family speaks Spanish meaningfully, and I doubt the kid even knows that ... I was just always Ti-Ti. It would be so weird if she ever called me Caitlin. 

The thing with nicknames, though, is that, beyond lamenting frequently that you want one, you can't force people to come up with the perfect, awesome, organic encapsulation of you. And then, once they find one, you can't coerce other people into using it ... and even if you could, it might seem weird, or nonsensical, depending on the origin of the nickname. 

Which brings us to Martha, and TJ. 
So you all know our adorable eight-year-old Rock Wilder (Rottweiler), Maite. Mighty Maite. Big Maíte. Fubu (For Us, By Us). Big Rock. Ruccoon (after Rocky Raccoon). And on and on. 

Since Maite was already Martha's "dogter" before I came on the scene, I became "Stepmom" to her. If you've heard any of our videos or recordings, or read transcripts, Maite has a very distinct way of speaking, a little like a kid with some speech quirks, sound additions and deletions, and some unexpected ways of mixing and garbling words and terms. So Stepmom became "Tep Mom" ... and, because I, of course, had told Martha about my quest to be "CJ," CJ, in Mai­te-speak, became "TJ." And because Martha is Martha, TJ stuck more than CJ did, because Maíte is such a talkative fixture in our house. 

Now, because I'm a rule-following people-pleaser, I did object, "But TJ has to stand for something. It's too confusing to explain, otherwise. How about Trouble Junior? Trouble has always stuck, and Maite is clearly the biggest troublemaker in our house." 
To which Maite, of course, responded, "That is not no true story, Tepmom, GAH!" 

But TJ stuck ... and now you all know the story. And while I would prefer for you to just call me Caitlin, I'm always open to new nickname ideas, should they arise. Just make sure you've earned it, and that I've approved, before you go shouting it all over the place.