This morning’s adventure to the creek behind our house!
We touched the cold cold water, threw sticks in, saw the reflection of the grass and trees in the still water, and climbed out all by ourselves! Up that difficult incline, I’m proud that I could help her change her self-talk from “I can’t do it, I can’t do it” to “I’ll put my foot here and grab there…”
PS, OMG, look at what we have behind our house!
PPS, I don’t often post about Abigail on my blog. Find me on Facebook for more pix and videos.
I just came across this journal entry from my Mindfulness class this past March at San Jose State. I was travelling 2 1/2 hrs each way to school. I am viscerally reminded how intense that time was.
3-21-16
I did a breathing practice with the mp3 on the bus to school today. It was nice to sit facing forward. I’m always facing sideways in my “favorite” seat, the first seat on the left of the bus. I sit there so I can wedge myself in the corner and not have to think about stabilizing myself at every turn and bump while I work on my computer. It is awful. I get car sick most days. When I wear my sea bands, I’m usually less car sick. But the other day I wasn’t car sick at all. But I got off the bus saying to myself “Oh god, I WISH I were car sick! I just feel “bad” in my whole body!” As I walked to SJSU, I took off the sea bands and I had to stop walking as waves of nausea overtook me. Joy.
Anyway…
Today, for 2 moments during the breathing meditation I felt a wonderful nothing. 15 minutes after the experience, sitting in the learning lab, I missed it. I got a little teary eyed thinking of how much I missed it. It was a beautiful nothing. I decided to try and take that feeling with me through the today. I wasn’t sure how it would go.
It went really well. I had an inner calm the whole day. Well, actually, I could feel the inner calm and the manic-me trading control of my body throughout my day.
The day went well holding onto that nothing. I’m going to keep doing that.
Gather a list of the five to ten most influential / favorite books and other media from your childhood up thru age eight or so and send it along. I’m looking for what to offer my daughter Abigail. Welcomed are books, music, video, television, movies. What media helped positively shape you?
My school got put on hold due to a problem with my eye. The condition is under control these days (previously). After 3 weeks of nearly normal vision, my vision started to decline. I went in for another scheduled treatment at the end of week 4, yesterday. The treatment went fine and today my vision is back to nearly-normal.
I spoke to my professor and I’ll hopefully get an internship in the spring semester starting mid-January. Fingers crossed!
Life with family is sweet. Abigail is wonderful. Megan and I have been posting lots of pix and short videos on Facebook. Tune in!
Megan and I went to Ikea and sat on all the couches and loveseats and didn’t love any of them. Then we went to Dimensional Outlet Furniture in Oakland. They had a loveseat that we really liked so we put money down on it. That night I went online and found LOTS of poor reviews for the company and especially for the covering material, Durablend. This “bonded leather” product starts flaking off in 3-24 months (review site, TV news scam buster) and the company generally doesn’t care. I’ve cancelled the order. So what sofa/loveseat brands are recommended?
The OT Students’ Commuting Guide to San Jose State University
with input from the SJSU OT class of 2015 and 2016.
This document was last updated August 2015 and may be somewhat out of date. Have an update? Tell me about it in the comments!
Table of Contents
Public Transit
– BART to Fremont -> 181 bus to SJ -> 5 block walk
– Caltrain -> DASH bus
– Amtrak
Driving
– From the East Bay
– From SF / Peninsula
– From Santa Cruz
– From Monterey/Carmel
Parking
Other Campus Services
Managing Your Documents
Printing Documents on Campus
Food Around Campus
Public Transit
As a student, you can ride all Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) buses and light rails free! The light rail runs from Downtown SJ through Mountain View, Santa Clara, South San Jose, Alum Rock, and Campbell. Some stops allow free parking, but there are some that charge a daily rate. See the light rail map here. SJSU is transitioning to a clipper-card based pass system fall 2015. Find out more here. You can request a new Eco Pass here.
BART to Fremont -> 181 bus to SJ -> 5 block walk
Time: 2.25 hours each way from North Berkeley BART
I believe the world is basically a good place. Matt helps remind me.
I’ve followed Matt’s dancing videos over the years with joy. That’s why my family backed Matt’s Kickstarter to help remind us (and everyone) that the world is basically a good place. As he wrote at the top of the Kickstarter, “I dance with people all over the world. I make videos of it and I put them on YouTube to show that the world is a whole lot safer and friendlier than it looks on TV.”
Matt logged his travels for this latest video on Kickstarter. If you want to be reminded how people all over the world are basically good (something the whole U.S. could really use now), read on:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wheretheheckismatt/where-the-heck-is-matt/updates
With my eye medical problems, the university postponed my internship. That was the right thing to do. I had been missing whole days because of doctor visits, was having trouble seeing, and couldn’t focus on learning because of my worries.
Yesterday I went to an eye doctor, Dr. Michel Jumper in Walnut Creek. They took a really close look at my eye (from my vantage point, all the eye scans looked like awesome 1970’s science fiction movie trailers) and got a treatment for the macular edema associated with my CRVO (central retinal vein occlusion). Dr. Jumper injected Avastin in the vitreous humor of my right eye. It hurt a bit afterward. My eye was scratchy later in the evening. But forget all that. The pain and scratchiness is gone and I can see a little better in my right eye today! The doctor said it might take a few days for the best result. I am so relieved.
I’ve been in contact with my fieldwork adviser and I hope to have a spring semester internship to finish my occupational therapy master’s degree.
Two weeks ago I noticed difficulty seeing out of my right eye. I couldn’t read text on the computer or on paper, it was too blurry. After two visits to the UC Berkeley Meredith Morgan Eye Center and a battery of blood tests to rule out underlying issues, I’ve been diagnosed with non-ischemic central retinal vein occlusion with mild macular edema. The doctors have been saying “You’re too young for this disorder”. But, except for some risk factors that I don’t have, this disorder is idiopathic, which means that no one knows why I got it. And there’s no treatment for the main symptoms. Just wait and hope it gets better. My doctor, an expert in the field, told me today that 1/3 get better, 1/3 stay the same, 1/3 get worse.
I’ve occasionally been bumping into things on my right side. I can’t read with my right eye… I’m typing this keeping my right eye shut. Moving around takes more energy because I have to focus more on where I’m going. My depth perception is much worse, and my ability to discriminate objects at a distance is reduced. This sucks.
I’ll be going for an eye treatment soon to address the macular edema. Please wish me good luck.
.
Some details about how it started: on Thursday October 20th I woke up and stumbled around the bedroom more than usual. My right eye was seeing spots and my vision was a lot darker than my left. I assumed that I had rolled onto my right eye with my pillow and went on with my day. Friday the same thing happened. Saturday wasn’t as bad in the morning but at around 9:30pm I was reading on my computer, and thinking something was wrong, I closed my left eye. I noticed several places in my vision that were hazy. It was like I was looking through a glass pane with several water drops drizzled across it. Within a few minutes, I called the 24 hour line at Meredith Morgan Eye Center.