Person in my DM's, "hey did you see XYZ thing so and so posted?" No, no actually I did not, and do you know why? Because there were at least 5 hashtags at the very beginning of said post and I'm reading everything on a 40 cell braille display, which means I get 40 characters at once before I need to scroll.... So if you choose to put more than say, 3 hashtags in the beginning of your post I'm probably moving on because my time for spending on the interwebs is not limitless... people are, of course free to do what they want but... If you are using hashtags you obviously want engagement of some kind. So putting them at the end might be the better bet from an accessibility standpoint. #JustSaying
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The Witchy Bitches
@pawpower@beige.party
mastodon 4.6.6Wow I hate these things.... We are the kitchen Bitches. 1 Deafblind neurospicy crippled kitchen witch and her 3 service dogs. We live in the swamp and share our home with an over abundance of loose leaf tea, books, and my cauldron collection. My hobbies, such as they are, are a Finly veiled excuse to set shit on fire! Candlemaking, using my kitchen torch to make desserts… And playing with my charcoal grill.
1344 Followers
530 Following
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Joined October 06, 2025
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@lydiaschoch@mastodon.social Also, it is helpful to have online menus. Is easier for people who are blind, people who have sensory processing disorder and who may find concentrating on a menu in a chaotic restaurant environment difficult, people with developmental disabilities who may need a little more time deciding, etc. And yes, accessibility information. Many times it has been that I've got to a restaurant and I need to climb up these weird stairs with no railing and that is a little terrifying!
I just heard from the theater. They have decided to move my seat for the show "Book of Mormon" from the ADA seating area I'd booked, to the private suites and clubs area where the rich people sit. No, I did not pay for this because I refused and I told them they had 2 choices. 1. Let me sit in the seat I paid for with my interpreters or 2. Move me to where they want me at no charge. So it looks like they went with option 2 and ya girl is gonna be watching the show from a suite, with my tactile sign language interpreters. Fancy, eh? I guess it's my compensation for having to turn this whole thing into a multi-week long battle about my civil rights.
There I was, naked, freshly out of the shower, walking from the bathroom to the bedroom when I am met by Phoenix, who has gone to the hooks where I keep all the equipment and retrieved her working leash and calmly put it in my hand and then sat down next to me. I'm not even dressed yet! But apparently she decided to give me her opinion about how the day should go even before I get my clothes on. Guess we know who's going to work today.
Remember the dayf when you would buy a thing and then that would be it? You wouldn't be pestered for days afterward to leave a review! And yes, I understand that in today's marketplace reviews are very important, but I also have a life and the thought of having to find the language to review everything from my toothpaste to my most recent book purchase leaves me exhausted! I would like to stop being nagged about leaving reviews. Because guess what… Spoiler! Being nagged about leaving reviews does not actually make me want to leave reviews. It makes me never want to do business with whatever company ever again. From my perspective, we had an exchange. I give you my money, you give me the thing. If I like the thing chances are, I'm going to come back and give you more of my money so you can give me more of the thing! What makes me not want to come back ever again is pestering about reviews.
one of the schools where I teach has a lot of outdoor halls. There's a roof and Columns supporting it and you concrete paths. You can see into the grassy area which is about 3 feet from where we walk.One of the areas we pass while walking to my class is the lunch area where the kids can hang out. There's picnic tables and the like. A creature whom I have named Devilsquirrel makes its home where the kids eat lunch. My interpreter gives me a blow by blow description of the goings-on as we walk. It loves to taunt Callisto. She will be guiding along minding her work and the devilsquirrel® pops out, runs on to the table closest to where we're walking and uses it like stage where it does the squirrels version of the chicken dance! Then it launches itself up the closest tree and just sits there, so close, chittering away, hurling insults in squirrel language. Poor Callisto, meanwhile is attached to this fat Deafblind woman of vertigo and lung disease and she really wants to give this idiot squirrel some good ole canine justice! But work comes first. So she settles for slowing down slightly, keeps one eye on the road, the other is blasting out death ray energy at this impertinent creature. One day! One day she will get him. But not today!
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@adhdeanasl@beige.party Bonus if they can do it in a wheelchair, or with a large service dog that they have to fit in the foot space… And then tryy to find a place for their feet.
Came home from work and decided that a crunchy peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwich was the order of the day. Best life choice! Now I am waiting for the pharmacy to deliver my meds. This is going to be a three day weekend for me, but on the Monday I'm going to be watching my friends dogs all day while she goes and takes a certification exam so we will be the house of six dogs. That's kind of like working only… I don't leave the house.
Callisto says if i leave her home and take Phoenix to work all day then when I get home she can at least work by helping me with the laundry!
Last night I read the transcripts of the Atonement podcast. This is a documentary about the guy who was gay, then got "cured" by a Christian-based program to make him straight and then went around the country for 20 some odd years advocating for conversion therapy which has harmed so many people. Anyway he eventually realized whoops he was gay after all and then tried to come back into the gay community only whoops again, why don't people like me? He seemed honestly surprised that he wasn't welcomed with open arms. It was very interesting to read but the biggest take-away I got out of it is the guy is an attention whore. Good attention, bad attention, he loves being the center of attention. This has been a reoccurring theme in his story. Anyway, it left me with even more disgust for the whole ex gay and conversion therapy movement and made me dislike Christianity even more than I already do. Yikes! Organized religion in general has done immense harm, and the whole thing makes me shake my head. As for the guy telling his story, he just came off as attention-seeking. This is just another way for him to get the attention he craves and he doesn't actually give a shit about what he's done or the folks he's hurt, because "woo look at me!" harsh, maybe but damn.
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@futurebird I don't have a cat, but I do have service dogs, and they will take me by the hand or bring me a toy and use it as a tug rope and lead me to the fridge where the food is. They will also do this with water. They haven't gotten the memo that yes I'm blind, but I do actually know where the fridge is and where the food is kept! I think they believe they need to remind me.
Those fine asholes that Meta have basically made my smart glasses unusable. The app, Meta AI that I was using to read the transcripts of the spoken output is now an enormous piece of bloatware. I'm not even sure if I can access text output anymore. I have been trying to figure this out for an hour now, and the app is so ridiculously overblown and full of so much garbage that it is very unclear
Good beautiful Sunday morning. It has been raining since last night and the temps have dropped over 25 degrees in 12 hours. It is now sitting at 61 degrees Fahrenheit, which is something like 16 degrees in the other one. It's windy, is is humid but not awfully so. I have every window i can open, open wide for the beautiful cleansing breezes. I'd love to go outside but it's still sprinkling and also working out when it's windy makes my lungs work harder and this additional burden is unnecessary. So I'll wait to go outside when I'm not trying to elevate my heartrate. I'm sure my yard is a quagmire. Must remember to close my bedrooom door so when Callisto comes in dirty from outside she can't roll around in my bed. You'll notice I said when she gets dirty. I'm not fooling myself that she won't. I hope everyone in the US is enjoying these cooler temps. I know this is going to be one of the last times before we move into the roasting heat of summer. I hope everyone has a great day!
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@futurebird I've been thinking about this and it seems to me that the amount of nostalgia one experiences as pleasant is equal to the amount of ones privilege.
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@dank@jorts.horse @futurebird@sauropods.win You're both really great at describing videos thank you so much
The algorithm that drives the Apple podcast app is smoking some good stuff. Or maybe bad stuff I don't know. But it keeps trying to force me to interact with true crime podcasts. Literally my podcast feed is witch podcasts, cooking/foody podcasts, and random shows that people I know put out. I may have on occasion looked at the transcript for a documentary podcast or a podcast with an interview of someone like an author whos work I follow but never have I ever been interested in or listened to, true crime. I like to sleep at night and I am very aware of how terrible humans can be to one another so I deliberately avoid reading about it. It's like politics. I stay surface level informed because it's smart to at least know whats going on but i can't with the news day after day. I really wish the algorithm would get with the program!
arrived at my first school out in the country only to find that it's a teacher day so no students. UGH! Wow Monday! I guess we now have time to check out the offerings at the Hong Kong market before I'm due in the city for my next student.
Today in… Misadventures of my professional life… A pox on those people who refuse to update their operating system and then complain that the features they want don't exist in the version they have or that they are not as good. I get it sometimes you don't want to update but when you don't update, you accept that things are going to be the way they are and if you want to take the chance of updating, then you can have the features you want. I do not know why this is so difficult for some people to grasp, but I have explained it to someone three different times today and I am reaching the end of my patience. And the same goes with hardware! No, I am not saying that you need to update all your technology every year. I usually go between four and five years when I update something like an iPhone and longer if it's a braille display. But progress is not going to stop just because you don't want to give up your old operating system or your old piece of equipment. That is reality. I don't make the rules!
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@Iloo@mastodon.social For my own life, I will consider it successful if I leave the world better for having been here. that more people remember me with love or positive feeling than those who remember with anger or pain. That I helped lift up others. That I used my privilege to amplify the voices of those with less. I guess thats it.
Hey blind hive mind, if you are a Mac user what program do you find works the best for handling PDFs either reading them or converting them to other formats. Thanks so much for any suggestions.
For Deafblind folks who use Aira, the onboard live captioning on iPhone, via Braille access will work with aira and I just tested it with Astra, and that works as well. You do it the same way you caption a call or get captions for a podcast.
Replying to
@roknrol Yes! This! People are always telling me they could never be a fully deafblind person and travel, to the market much less to another country. And I'm scared but I do it anyway. Because this is my one life, my one shot. I refuse to allow my fear to deny me the chance to make a memorable life. But I'm still scared and it still sucks and I still try to talk myself out of it when I'm sitting in the airport. Or in my hotel. But fuck all that!
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@ricky_enger@mindly.social @Ranger1138@mindly.social It definitely goes on top of the beans and meat and whatever other warm toppings there are. It's like frosting on a cake. It goes on top.
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@Tattie@eldritch.cafe My favorite sport is skijoring or urban mushing and it would be called dog jog
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@futurebird@sauropods.win All right, another stupid ant question but how does she clean them?
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@futurebird@sauropods.win Actually, I'm deafblind so I can't, but I didn't know that about their mouth. That's interesting.
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@coachmark2PointOH Oh yum that sounds good, I've never had it but people tell me it's delicious.
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@coachmark2PointOH Oh no! It's going to be 75 and sunny here... we're having gyros later... get your broom out! I'll set a place for ya.
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@FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com @MariahL@dragonscave.space And I guess my situation was really unique. I lost my hearing as a result of a huge hurricane and the aftermath. So everyone here in this city was grieving. The loss of homes, and children, and partners, of the lives they had before. I would go to work every day and try to get resources for folks in a city with no resources and no infrastructure and I was losing my hearing and would be profoundly deaf in a matter of weeks, but I didn't feel like I could retire to my bed and grieve because we were all grieving. We had all lost something. Besides I needed to be at work. So while maybe this wasn't the healthiest way to find acceptance, I think it served me in the long run because there was no time for pity, and no patience for it.
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@StroongeCast@hear-me.social I was in the hospital once with pneumonia and the lady from billing came and took my hands physically from my interpreter's hands, put them on her face and said 'She doesn't need the interpreters I know deafblind people can read lips by touch I saw Helen Keller do it." Because apparently there is a YouTube video of HK doing this with Anne Sullivan... only she actually *chose* to do it. Anyway the woman wouldn't let my hands go and she held them there on her face and I had to tell her to please leave my room and i spoke to the charge nurse and told her never let that person in again.
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@MariahL@dragonscave.space @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com What interests me is I speak with a lot of people who are blind, usually from birth who tell me they wouldn't want to see. I have also been blind from birth and became deaf as an adult but I wouldn't want to become sighted or hearing if I could and a lot of blind people in particular seem to be kind of astonished? Offended by? Confused by? The fact that I don't want my hearing back. Even though they themselves wouldn't want their sight and accept that I wouldn't either. It seems to be that because I lost my hearing later in life I should want it back? And I don't so it provokes a pretty strong reaction. And like you said the world isn't built for me, I have my days where I'm frustrated and angry and the struggle is hard. But thats not caused by deafblindness, it's caused by ignorants and ableism. I like my life and myself and I'm ok with how I experience the world and I think getting either sense back would be very traumatizing and confusing and no thanks.
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@amy0223 @baxaphobia Seriously if I could remove the term healthy from our collective lexicon, I absolutely would do it. Mostly when I see it used it is in a smug self superior kind of way. Usually judging other people's food choices. DIt is ridiculous! It is also incredibly subjective! I prefer to use clear concrete language around food. Terms such as low-carb, dairy free, high protein, etc. Those are factual labels that tell you what a product is, not some subjective label like healthy or unhealthy or even worse, clean.
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@amy0223 Anchovies? What the actual fuck? I mean .... wut? Wow. Also label reading is fucking exhausting. I'm sorry about the migraine. Ugh. I hope the day improves.
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@MariahL@dragonscave.space @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com I have seen quite a few people who have allowed their hearing loss to become the central tragity of their life. And I knew I didn't want that for myself. I still do the same shit I've always done, aka train dogs, work my job, make candles and lotions and other potions, travel all over the place, etc. I learned sign language by touch and the technology I needed in order to be as independent as I can. And I've found my own way. Because life is too short to cry about what you don't have because that means you aren't appreciating what you do have and i like that feeling much better.
Replying to
@blindbat84 @amy0223 It must've been the night for up late, awake early! I'm also in the club. Was on zoom until 11. Lol
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@cub80_appleby@mastodon.stickbear.me @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com @MariahL@dragonscave.space I was born blind and hearing and lost my hearing as an adult that is correct. I have been deaf now though for about 20 years so it's pretty much like I've always been this way.
Replying to
@amy0223 @blindbat84 I've also purchased it on amazon in the can I think. Not sure if they still sell it there.
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@MariahL@dragonscave.space @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com No you shouldn't, it's terrifying. I was gut-level terrified for years. I lost my hearing completely over a period of 6 weeks after hurricane katrina because I am allergic to the mold here. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced so never would i ever say you shouldn't be scared. The difference is you accept that fear is going to be the companion in the passenger seat for the rest of your life but you are driving the goddammed car. Where do you want to end up? And good for you for starting to make modifications. I'm sure it sucks, it can be sad but it is important to keep finding joy in living and to embrace the future kind of straight on, I guess.
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@FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com @MariahL@dragonscave.space Oh thats neat. I love the vibrations from music if I'm not trying to work. If I'm working i think it's distracting. Haha.
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@MariahL@dragonscave.space @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com These headphones are helping a lot of folks. I think thats awesome.
Replying to
@amy0223 @baxaphobia Mushrooms and mushroom powder are the newest "healthy" thing to do. You can find them in coffee, in energy bars, in designer fizzy water. They are supposed to have all kinds of health benefits. I like mushrooms fine but I'll keep them in my pasta sauce and on steaks.
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@FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com @MariahL@dragonscave.space You would be fine eventually but it would be rough getting there. I was a musician before I lost my hearing so yeah the feelings and experiences were really intense.
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@bmoore123@tweesecake.social this is awesome news. Yay! We are cheering him on from here.
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@blindbat84 @amy0223 I love skyline! Maybe Cincinnati is where I should go this summer! Lol the chili road trip
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@ratking@mastodon.stickbear.me I have great success with match light. It has the lighter fluid soaked in already. If you are using regular charcoal, let the fluid soak for 15 or so minutes before attempting to light it
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@ner@fwoof.space Sadly, this is not unique or unusual. I am sorry you experienced it though. I have been volunteering and working in animal rescue for about the last 25 years and I encounter this problem a lot. It is frustrating and is largely why I have stepped back from doing a lot of this work because the ableism is exhausting.