Author Archives: Terri Rupp

My Tasty Day! What’s on Your Menu?

On Friday, April 1, 2016, I enjoyed a tasty day.

Image of a heart with the words, %22Love, Laugh, Live,%22 in Braille

I chose a heaping serving of love and laughter for my life.

early birthday sushi lunch 3

Each bite was savored to the fullest..

my kids eating cupcakes

I suckled up every tasty ray of sunshine.

sitting in the garden enjoying the sunshine

I overindulged in sweet smiles.

Jacson in his Star Wars shirt and Star Wars shoes standing in the sunshine

 

Stretching out every second like it might be the last, and ending the day feeling complete contentment and bliss.

cuddles with the dog

What’s on your menu?

***My day is still not over yet.  Currently, we are barbequing a huge piece of tri-tip, veggies, fixing up a yummy salad, and just downloaded Star Wars the Force Awakens.  I can hardly wait to finish off this tasty day with dinner, a movie, and of course a glass of wine in the hot tub.

 

Just a Blind Girl

just a blind girl, Marley and me holding our canes

On our drive home from our Southern California Spring Break Beach Vacation, while sitting in traffic which made a four hour drive into an eight hour drive, we found ourselves listening to a whole lot of music.  A particular song from my teenage years, popped out to me.  Do you remember No Doubt’s song, “Just a Girl?”  Here’s something fun!  How about singing, “Just a Blind Girl,” the next time you hear that song?

 

Take this big ribbon off my eyes

I’m exposed, and it’s no big surprise

Don’t you think I know exactly where I stand

This world is forcing me to hold your hand

“Cause I’m just a blind girl, little ol’ me

Well don’t let me out of your sight

I’m just a blind girl

all pretty and petite

So don’t let me have any rights

Oh… I’ve had it up to here!

The moment that I step outside

So many reasons for me to run and hide

I can’t do the little things, I hold so dear

‘Cause it’s all those little things, that I fear

“Cause I’m just a blind girl

I’d rather not be

‘Cause they don’t let me drive late at night

I’m just a blind girl

Guess I’m some kind of freak

“Cause they all sit and stare with their eyes

I’m just a blind  girl

Take a good look at me

Just your typical prototype

Oh… I’ve had it up to here

Oh… am I making myself clear?

I’m just a blind girl

I’m just a blind girl in the world

That’s all that you’ll let me be!

Oh I’m just a blind girl living in captivity

Your rule of thumb makes me worry some

I’m just a blind girl

What’s my destiny?

What I’ve Isuccumbed to is making me numb

I’m just a blind girl

My apologies

What I’ve become is so burdensome

I’m just a blind girl

lucky me

Twiddle-dum, there’s no comparison

Oh… I’ve had it up to!!!

Oh… I’ve had it up to!!!

Oh… I’ve had it up to here.

 

Never heard of the original?  Here’s No Doubt’s, “Just a Girl.”

 

 

 

 

WordPress and Blogging from the Phone

I’m curious how many of my fellow bloggers blog via the WordPress app from their phone.  I gave up a while ago, but am making another attempt at it.

Is it just me and not being so tech savvy?

Is it an accessibility issue, and the fact that I use a screen reader?

If you follow my blog via my Facebook blog page, then you have noticed that I post much more often there than here.

Well… This is my attempt at posting more, whether stationary or on the go…

Tonight, I go to sleep as blind mom in the burbs.  

The rest of the week, I will be blogging as blind mom at the beach.

I will do my best at posting more, I promise.

But, if this word press app continues to annoy me, you should probably follow me via blind mom in the burbs on Facebook for more up-to-date photos and happenings of my adventures.

Happy Nevada Reading Week, and Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Yesterday, students across the United States celebrated Read Across America Day.  Watch this excellent video of blind students reading Braille.

Here in Nevada, we make the celebration all week and call it Nevada Reading Week.  Friday, I get the opportunity to read to the Kindergarten students at my daughter’s school, in Braille of course!

Today, Marley and the rest of the kids at her school dressed up in red, white, and black in honor of the beloved Dr. Seuss.

Happy birthday Dr. Seuss!  In honor of your great works, I spent the day in the Nevada Legislative Committee on Education meeting educating our state assembly members and state senators about the need for blind and visually impaired children to have access to literacy through Braille.

All week long we’ll be reading from our collection of Dr. Seuss books.  I’m sad to say I don’t own my favorite book, “Oh the Places You’ll Go.”

What’s your favorite Dr. Seuss book?

As I wrap up my night I leave you with this my favorite Dr. Seuss quote, which actually happens to hang up on the shower curtain in the hall bathroom.

“Today, you are you.  That is truer than true.  There is no one alive, more you-er than you.”

Dr. Seuss books

 

 

In Loving Memory of Michelle Bruns Miller

On Sunday night, I learned of the sad news that a friend and mentor had passed away.  I tried writing this post that night, but it’s hard typing when tears are splashing down on to the keyboard.  So, here it is…

Dear Michelle

Words cannot even begin to describe the number of ripples you have sent out into the world.  Your powerful, and vulnerable energy infected us all.  You barely stood five feet tall, but your love for your friends, your work, butterflies, shoes, the color pink, and for all man and animal kind couldn’t ever be measured.

I was in my early twenties when I first met you.  I was lost, confused, feeling ashamed of my blindness and trying to hide what has become the most influential piece of me.  Knowing that I needed to do something different in my life, I found myself at the Sacramento Society for the Blind.  That’s where I first found that blind people could indeed be confident, stylish, and in control of their lives.  That’s where you strolled in in your cute shoes and  It was because of you and the rest of the staff there that I took a stand for my own life.  I left everything that was familiar and comfortable, flew half way across the country, and got the training I needed in order to fly with you and the rest of the butterflies.  You not only did this with me, but with hundreds and hundreds of blind youth, adults, and seniors, all hiding in our cocoons.

Thank you for your friendship.  Thank you for your mentorship.  Thank you for believing in me.  Thank you for being you.

I hope you are dancing with Tufty in a field of colorful spring blooms.

Love you always and forever, may you rest in paradise.

 

 

 

 

Little Woman, Big voice… My Caucus Experience

It was noon on a Saturday, the sun was out, the sky was clear, and I was walking into my first caucus.  I felt a little nervous, but a whole lot more intrigued and excited.

I told myself, that I would follow Yoda’s advice of , “Do, or do not.”  I’d been thinking about it all week, so why not play my part as an American citizen, a mother, and most importantly an advocate in the blind community.
Let me rewind to 1992.  I was a shy fourth grader learning for the first time about the presidential election.  I remember that day like it was yesterday.  Our school was having a mock election.  The teacher handed us our sample ballots.  Like everything else given to me in print, my ballot had been blown up, and it was still a struggle for me to read it.  Once again, my low vision was keeping me from fully participating in something else sighted people did easily.  At 9 years old, I just assumed that I would never be able to independently vote for the president of the United States.
Fast forward to 2001.  Just a few months before my 18th birthday, both my parents became naturalized citizens.  Because of the fact that I was still a minor, I automatically became a citizen too.  At my interview and swearing in, the agent asked me if I was excited to be able to vote.  Still shy, I simply smiled and nodded.
Fast forward a little more into 2006.  I had just started my training at the Louisiana Center for the Blind.  I was learning how to read Braille, how to use accessible technology, and how to travel independently and confidently with a long white cane.  Most importantly, I was learning the philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind, that with the right training and opportunity blind people can participate actively and equally with their sighted counterparts.  Just weeks after arriving at the training center, I flew with my fellow students to the annual Washington Seminar of the National Federation of the Blind.  This has become my favorite event of the organization.  This is where we put words into action, where the rubber meets the road.  This is where we meet with our elected officials and push for legislation furthering our independence as Blind Americans.
Yesterday was February 20, 2016.  Yesterday, I participated in my first caucus.  feeling slightly nervous, but a whole lot more intrigued and excited about the process, I was ready for anything!  I carried a large tote bag full of snacks, water, and two fully charged iPads.  Why the iPads?  To entertain my children, of course.   After the confusion of which line to get in, standing in that line for 40 minutes in the hot Vegas sun, being told we weren’t registered (even though we’d made sure we were registered as Democrats and preregistered to caucus), we finally found the correct line, registered, got our ballots, and headed in…
The caucus process itself was pretty tame.  It was nothing like the videos I have seen of Iowa’s.  I sat in a room with about 50 people from my neighborhood.  There were a few heated moments when it came to counting who was voting for whom, but over all very neighborly.  Asides from my children squatted on the back wall, I would say at 5 feet 2 inches, and 115lbs, I was the smallest person in the room.  Hillary supporters sat on the left, and Bernie supporters sat on the right.  We counted off, and our room final count was 26 for Hillary and 22 for Bernie.  After the math was done, we had 6 delegate seats, 3 for Hillary, 3 for Bernie.  Next came time for selecting the 6  delegates who were to represent us.  I’m sure no one expected the petite woman in the back of the room to be the first to stand up and volunteer to serve as a delegate.
Holding my long white cane, this is what I said.  “Hello, my name is Terri Rupp.  I would like to volunteer to be a delegate.  You probably don’t realize that this paper ballot I’m holding is completely useless to me.  I am a member of the National Federation of the Blind, and active advocate for equality and accessibility for blind people.  I will not only be representing my precinct, but I will be representing blind Americans who should have access to the right to vote independently”
In just over a month, on April 2nd, my 33rd birthday, this little woman will be once again bringing awareness and educating her fellow Nevadans with her big voice.
IMG_5336

 

 

Direct the U.S. Department of Justice to promptly release the ADA Internet regulations

Dear Readers,

The following op-ed by Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind,  appeared last week on the Congress Blog of the influential Washington newspaper The Hill. The text is pasted below. You can also access the article by browsing tohttp://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/266943-inequality-and-indifference

Please consider sharing the above link with your contacts. Also, please sign and share our petition to President Obama to release the regulations referenced in President Riccobono’s piece. The petition is located here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/direct-us-department-justice-promptly-release-ada-internet-regulations

 Thank you for your support.

January 26, 2016, 11:00 a.m.
Inequality and Indifference
By Mark A. Riccobono

The recent decision by the Obama administration to delay issuing new regulations under the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is outrageous. The regulations would have provided guidance on how businesses can meet their legal obligation to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities. These regulations have been in the works for over five years, but the Obama administration now proposes further delaying them until 2018, effectively washing its hands of the matter. This move is particularly shocking in light of the president’s correct observation, made when he first announced his intention to issue the regulations in 2010, that such rules are “the most important updates to the ADA since its original enactment.” The urgent need for these regulations has only increased, so why has the administration’s position inexplicably changed?

Thanks to today’s technology, people with all kinds of disabilities can access computer information, including websites, with tools such as text-to-speech screen readers that verbalize what the computer is displaying, connected devices that can display the content in Braille, and alternative input devices for people who can’t physically use a mouse or keyboard. Despite this advanced technology, however, most of us, especially blind people like me, struggle every day to perform routine internet-based tasks, including paying our bills, examining electronic health records, and making hotel reservations. That’s
because improperly designed websites can block our ability to effectively access all of the information. For example, if a website uses images to convey important information without also providing “alt tags” that a screen reader can read, then the screen reader will spit out gibberish because it can’t “read” a picture in the way it can read text. And the inability to access websites is not merely an inconvenience; it is a barrier to education and employment. For example, the college graduation rate for people with disabilities is just thirty-four percent; inaccessible online technology used by today’s colleges and universities undoubtedly contributes to this dismal statistic.

All of this is not due to hostility towards Americans with disabilities. While a few businesses simply refuse to provide equal access to their websites until a legal settlement or court order forces them to do so, many others simply don’t know where to turn for guidance on how to make their websites accessible. Organizations like the National Federation of the Blind are doing all we can to educate business leaders and programmers, but by issuing clear and legally binding guidelines, the Obama administration could quickly bring reluctant businesses to the table and show other well-intentioned but uninformed players a clear path to providing equal service to their clients and customers with disabilities. The administration’s continued refusal to do this is irresponsible. Its failure to act not only leaves disabled computer users on the wrong side of a real digital divide, but ensures that litigation, which is costly both for disability advocates and businesses, will continue for the foreseeable future.

Recently, the National Federation of the Blind and several other organizations representing Americans with all types of disabilities urged the immediate issuance of the proposed regulations in a letter sent directly to President Obama. From the business perspective, Microsoft and other business leaders have also written to the president calling for the release of the regulations. If the president ignores these requests, the inescapable conclusion will be that he is indifferent to the inequality that is part of everyday life for me and millions of other Americans. This indifference has an intolerably high cost: we are denied equal access to services that are readily available to everyone else, denied educational and employment opportunities, and denied first-class citizenship in twenty-first-century America. If the president is serious about the civil rights of all Americans, a recurring theme in his rhetoric, then he must not renege on the commitment to equal Internet access for Americans with disabilities that he made in 2010. Fortunately, he still has time to honor that commitment. I, along with millions of other people with disabilities, fervently hope that the president will do so immediately.

Mark A. Riccobono is president of the National Federation of the Blind. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife and three children.

Do You See What I See?

Ever since I was a small child, I have never known how to really answer questions like,

“What can you see?”

“Is your vision blurry?””

The one I hated the most growing up was, “How many fingers am I holding up?”  Thinking back now, I wish I would have always responded to that one with my middle finger and saying, “This many.”

You see, I can’t answer those questions the way you would.  For someone like me, and my Marley, we have never had perfect 20/20 vision like yours to compare it to.  What we see isn’t blurry.  What we see is normal to us.  We function quite well with the vision that we do have, and we function even better if we don’t rely on just our residual vision, but instead with that and our non-visual techniques.

In a discussion with a family member about Marley’s night terrors, I was thrown the theory that perhaps she cries so much in her sleep is because she is distressed from her lack of eyesight while she is awake.  Perhaps, her flailing around, swiping her arms through the air are attempts to clear the fog blurring her vision.  In the case of someone going blind who previously had 20/20 eyesight, that theory might stand.  In our case, this is not the reasons behind her restless sleep.

All throughout my school years, I told my teachers I could see the handouts they’d worked so hard to enlarge.  I’d pretend to do the work, take it home, stick it under a CCTV, and spend the rest of the night redoing it the right way.  At each one of  my visits with the ophthalmologist, when  asked to identify the letters on the eye chart, I’d answer as automatically, “I couldn’t see anything below the big E.”  Around the age of 20 or 21, I finally fessed up that I couldn’t remember the last time I could actually see that big E.  I can’t even see the fact that there is an eye chart across the room.

I’ve heard from concerned parents of blind/low vision kids worrying about why their children lie to teachers about what they can or cannot see.  Parents, it is important to remember, your child might be able to see the object.  The question is, how does that child see the object, not whether or not they see it.  This can be one reason to so many misdiagnoses of acuity.

Children are eager to please.  If you want them to see something, they will most likely tell you they can see it.  It is up to you as a parent or educator to make sure that child knows it’s ok to not see.

I suppose the next time someone asks me, “Do you see what I see?”  I’ll answer with,”No, I see what I see, not what you see.”

 

 

 

What’s Happening in our Marley and Mommy Saga…

Since September, we have met with Marley’s educational team 5 times. Since 2016 started, we have attended three IEP meetings. It’s amazing how much has changed since that initial meeting that started it all.
Today, Marley is receiving Duel media instruction, and come first grade she’ll be switched over to all Braille. She is learning how to use different forms of accessible technology, and most importantly, she is allowed to use her long white cane. Today’s IEP settled our transportation problems. Marley had been assigned the, “special,” bus. After constantly getting to school late, not having any time to socialize with her peers before the bell rang, and occasionally not being brought home, we decided to terminate those services. Today’s meeting made it so that Marley could ride the, “Regular,” bus with her peers. As Marley steps onto that bus tomorrow morning, she will be not only heading to school, but she will be taking yet another step into her future as an independent young lady.Source: Meet the Rupps

Powered by Vulnerability

I can honestly say that I’ve cried more these past 12 months than any other time I can remember.  Why all the tears you might be wondering?  Well, I supposed I have opened myself to being powered by vulnerability.

The first few months of 2015 were tears from experiential learning exercises through an emotional intelligence course.  This course left my emotional bank account with a revolving door.  I easily found the tears flowing freely more often than not.  Tears of happiness, tears of pride, tears of love, tears of fear, tears of loneliness, tears of depression and sadness, and tears of exhaustion.  Those last few listed reasons of tears have been the reason for my lack of writing these more recent months.

Exactly one week ago I was crying again.  I was sitting in the middle seat on the back of a nonstop flight from Las Vegas to Baltimore, and my neighbors must have been afraid to talk to the strange woman who in our four hours in the air often went from having a huge grin on her face to sobbing out loud, because neither neighbor said a word to me once we landed.  You see, from take off to touch down, I had my earbuds in, and lost myself to one of the most motivational and self reflective books a stay at home blind mommy blogger from the burbs could possibly read.

51Dss9GPynL._UY250_

A very good friend who just so happens to be a fellow blind mom from a suburb across the country suggested that I read the book, “Carry On Warrior, the Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life,” by Glennon Doyle Melton.  She said she was thinking of me the entire time she was reading it herself.  I will not go into detail what the book is about because I want every woman who may be feeling the pressures of marriage, motherhood, society, and normalcy of life sometimes strangling them, to go out and buy a copy!  I am not being compensated by anyone for promoting this book.

What I have gained is the courage to write not just the pretty, positive posts that my about me page written almost four years ago states.  This book has given me the courage to share all of me.  Be prepared to read all the vulnerable, angry, fear filled, joyous, smelly, aching, belly laughing, all 360 degrees of me.