Very disabled

 It is fairly easy to forget I am disabled at work. I do a good job and am well thought of by my co-workers and bosses. Years ago one of my boss's said to another one in my presence something like, the problem with Matt is everybody likes him. 

But then something inevitably smacks me square in the face that I am monstrously disabled. 

That inevitable something came the last couple days. I had to get a new computer so I told the IT folks what programs I needed on my computer. They were just four. 

I do not know whether I had to log in myself for anything to be installed, but none of my programs were put on in advance. The operating system not up to date, either. So I spent two and a half hours at the office with an IT person I barely understood and who barely understood me working on my machine. They installed three of the programs allegedly. They told me they could not install the fourth one. So I left with my new machine. 

It got worse. 

When I logged in and started working on the new machine, it quickly became apparent that it was not set up for someone with mobility issues. There is a feature on Windows machines called filter keys that tells the computer to ignore accidental keystrokes. I set this up, but it didn’t not work very well for some reason. So I sent an email to the IT person and copied my boss and her boss explaining the situation. I thought I would get attention because almost every letter was repeated at least once. I also asked them to install to basic programs that they had left off. 

For some reason, when they contacted me, they seemed not to care about the filter keys and instead only worried about installing the  missing programs. 

This was even made worse because their voice was not one I am used to hearing and therefore I had no clue what they were saying often. Making matters even worse, once they were on my machine, they minimized the chat screen that had the captioning that I needed to understand them. 

Then I realized that one of the three needed programs was not  installed.

I finally got a setting of the filter keys that was okay, not wonderful by any means.

I guess I will see what the next day brings to this disabled person. (It mostly brought working filter keys.)

The song

 Once, when we were both closer to college age, my sister told me about a song by a band she liked. 

In the song, the singer, a woman, talks to her brother and says she will help him always. Even when he has lost his strength and he is too tired to go on, she will be there. 

It is a song that even now makes me feel happy and sad, loved and teary all at the same time. 

On Tuesday night, I was having some problems. It started with my realization that except for a Gatorade sports bag when I was in North Carolina at my first job, I have not ever one anything any kind of lottery. 

I did, of course, win, or lose, the genetic lottery by getting Friedreich's ataxia. I was thinking how random it is for me and my brother to have Friedreich's.  I forget my probability studies, but as I understand it each of us had a a one in four chance of getting FA. We both did. No one else in my family has it. 

My feelings kind of devolved from there. On the verge of tears, I decided to listen to that song. It helped, knowing that I am loved as the singer clearly loves her brother. 

The next night, laughing told my sister that I wasn't sure I should tell her what I was listening to the night before. I did, of course. Her response was that I should never listen that song not be allowed to. 

I suspect the brother in the song dies, and that's the reason for her strong stance against me listening to it. 

Despite her thinking, I will still listen to that song when I am sad probably mostly. I am sure that it will make me sad and make me cry. But it will also remind me how much I am loved and that is always worth a few tears.



Stop

On my walk today, I was crossing the street between two trails, in a crosswalk, with other people crossing the other way. There was one car just starting on the road, and there was another car the other way several hundred feet off. But apparently it was not for enough off for one of the joggers going the other way. 

This jogger had on an Army T-shirt and she stopped in the middle of the intersection, put her hands on her hips and just stared at the car. 

Maybe they they had just purchased the T-shirt because it looked cool and not because they were veteran, but regardless I would have stopped. That stare was something else.

I, of course, have no proof that she did it because there was a wheelchair user in the intersection, but at the same time I saw no reason for it except maybe to protect me. 

Dream blog

It happened again, a stranger picked my nose. That is how I decided to start the blog in my dream. 

It was an odd dream, to be sure. 

I went to work with my sister, and after a little while in her room some other adults came in. One was a friend I know. One was an older woman who said to me, “Oh, you have a booger.” She then reached up and plucked it out. It was just weird. 

There was more, too. My sister didn't get me for lunch. Then as I was going home, it started to rain. I have no idea what it all means.

As all this was going on, I was contemplating in my dream how I was going to write the blog about this incident.