Unique Situations
Yesterday I had something of a crazy day. First I had to go into the bank to sign the paperwork setting up a separate account just in my name for the soon to arrive Social Security payments. I ran into a bit of problem. Why? My stroke of a year ago.
One of the things I've been left with is less accuracy with my hands. I've done some occupational therapy and kept using them, but there are differences now. Differences in my signature significant enough that I had to rewrite the bank signature card 7 times to get one close enough to my passport signature to pass the bank examiners.
Which leads me to the question - what do you do if you are so physically incapacitated that your signature is now a shaky "X", if you can even do that?
It was a day filled with disability weirdness. I had to head to the expensive import grocery store to try and obtain a few things - doing the BRAT diet to hopefully calm down ten days of reactions that we're pretty sure now are food allergy related. The BRAT diet - bananas, rice, applesauce and toast sometimes helps when the food allergies get out of control. Sometimes I have to do the whole lamb, rice, butter thing to make it happen.
I ran into another crazy problem. All three, a puny pallid paltry three handicapped spaces were filled with cars with zero handicap placards. I could not access the upper lot with the handicapped spaces, nor the larger back lot, and we were directed to park in the underneath parking garage.
There's just one problem and it's a big one. If you park beneath you face four 30 degree angle long wheelchair ramps to get up the one and a half stories, and a step of steps to the store. This is why I don't park down there. Jim let me out in front of the garage before parking, but I faced two sets of stairs and then another ramp. I rarely park in the handicapped parking because it means another set of stairs and that's my biggest challenge with differing balance issues. Yesterday was very bad balancing day and no good options for me.
It might be I just needed a nap. I had a hard time sleeping the night before because of THIS ------>
Yes folks, that is a tarantula about the size of a small lemon perched merrily on my bedroom rug! Now I love spiders, but not bedside. I took him on a sweet ride in the dust pan outside and stayed away freaked out and worrying about half the night.
Fortunately after a two hour late afternoon nap I felt like a better newer person instead of a grumpy old lady, although the grocery store will be getting a sternly worded email today about the fact that they have a mere 3 handicapped spaces for roughly three hundred parking spaces. Usually a shopping center has them spaced out every so often, not this joint, 3 and done.
Costa Rica's handicapped laws are taken directly from U.S. law, so there are some big violations there, primarily that there's no way to go around most of those steps unless you park in the big back parking lot, where I was aiming to go. It's a good quarter mile from the grocery store, behind the movie theater, but for me it's doable because its flat with zero steps. I can walk all day on flat. There needs to be a couple of handicapped spaces back there and the parking lot guards need to insure only people with handicapped permits actually park in the spaces. Right now they let anyone park in the spots.
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