Bed Shopping

I got out of the apartment today, which is admittedly a rare occurance. It was a big deal, as I was going to replace my old, cruddy mattress with a new, soft comfortable one. I look forward to finally getting to sleep in a comfortable bed.

So, how did I go bed shopping? With vision ranging somewhere in the 20/400 range, even when corrected (Really, REALLY bad), I'm not getting a driver's license any time soon. Well, my mom still goes out of her way to look after me, and after months of planing, we finally settled on this date, and so we went.

Furniture stores are scary places. The lighting may or may not be good, and they may or may not have dedicated walkways. This one didn't. It was an obstacle course. Luckily, despite having partial vision, I bring my cane with me where ever I go. Admittedly, I don't always use the techniques taught to me so long ago for the proper use of my cane, but I get by.

The salesman on the show floor was a rather nice man, I'd say, and he had a vague understanding already of partial vision. When he noticed I was navigating by cane, he asked if I was 'Fully blind' or 'shadows'. It was an odd question for me. I understood quickly what he was getting at, but I wouldn't describe my vision as shadows. My vision doesn't really seem dark or shadowy to me. I told him it was more blurry than anything, and I'm not even sure that is a good description either. I just don't see detail... it's like blurriness, but often the outlines of things seem decently clear to me. It's what's on the interior of those outlines that I'm not getting. Also, I'm a bit color-blind. I often have to shove colors into two main catagories: dark and light. Sometimes, I can distinguish that something is blue, or red, or green, or yellow, but I can't often count on it. The dark colors are the hardest. Certain shades of blue, green, purple and gray  all blend together for me. I can hardly tell them apart. The same can be true for some reds, pinks and oranges. Yellow and white can also be hard sometimes. I tell people that it's all about contrast.

The salesman told me that diabetes is common in his family, and that those who've suffered the visual effects of the disease refer to their partial vision as 'shadows' and that is where he got the term. I have met others who had vision I thought could be described that way. I knew a girl who had lost practically all her color vision. She saw the world as mainly only light and darkness. I'm glad my vision hasn't degraded that far yet.

Incidently, I did end up buying a new bed, and it will be here in two days. The only other part of the whole adventure pertinent to this blog was buying new sheets and such afterwards. I was rather disappointed that none of the sheets that were offered were very beautifully colored. They were all dull and flat-looking, and I wonder if it's just me, or if they really were all dull and flat-looking. I still appreciate seeing beautiful vivid colors when I can.

That's all for now.