{"id":62899,"date":"2025-11-19T10:49:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=62899"},"modified":"2025-11-19T10:56:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:56:21","slug":"belay-glasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=62899","title":{"rendered":"Belay Glasses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Samain and the Summer&#8217;s End Moon (a very faint waning crescent)<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. His path. Shirley Waste. Joanne. Working out. Great Sol illuminates us all. Shadow, who goes outside when I&#8217;m done talking on Zoom. This strange trip we&#8217;re on. Ripple. Sugaree. The Weight. Ain&#8217;t No Grave. The Night They Drove Ol&#8217; Dixie Down. Tambourin Man. Don&#8217;t You Need Somebody to Love. That teeny Mule Deer not quite a fawn anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Sparks of Joy and Awe: Morgan, rock climber and orthotist<\/p>\n<p>Life Kavannah: Wu Wei\u00a0 \u00a0 Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress<\/p>\n<p>Week Kavannah:\u00a0 Hakarat Hakov\u00a0 \u00a0Gratitude.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cWho is rich? Those who rejoice in their portion.\u201d Perkei Avot 4:1<\/p>\n<p>Tarot: Being a metaPhysician<\/p>\n<p>One brief shining: Still in the dark, I picked up the white plastic trash bags filled with two weeks of refuse, some garbage, some recyclable, opened my kitchen window which begins about a foot and a half off the floor, tossed the bags in their respective bins, opened the front door, and went out to pull them with a sound like muffled thunder to the edge of my driveway where Seoah and I went as the last ritual of Kate&#8217;s shiva.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday, Tuesday. Drove down the hill into Denver near Denver Health to the Evergreen Orthotics office where I once again discussed braces for my wobbly, sagging head. Morgan, my orthotist, a fit young woman in her late twenties, early thirties with an engaging smile and warm persona showed me the possible braces. Both soft, one identical to one I purchased on Amazon, another larger.<\/p>\n<p>I told her about my problem standing and talking with people taller than I am. At 5&#8217;5&#8243; that&#8217;s a lot of people. She said, &#8220;This is sort of<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/m.media-amazon.com\/images\/I\/612qZb62yqL._AC_SL1500_.jpg\" width=\"221\" height=\"178\" \/> a joke, but you could get belay glasses.&#8221; She&#8217;s a climber and explained the principle. Belay glasses have a prism that lets you see your climbing partner without straining your neck back.<\/p>\n<p>So I could have my soft neck brace on, then in a social setting I could flip my belay glasses on my readers when encountering a taller human. That wouldn&#8217;t be weird at all.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a transition here, similar to getting my handicap placard, where I have to publicly acknowledge my troubles with assistive devices. I don&#8217;t like it. Yet most old folks wear both glasses and hearing aids&#8230;assistive devices. So. Transist me up, Scotty.<\/p>\n<p>Inadequate solutions at best, yet better than having the charming medically described head drop.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Turned around and drove back toward Golden. Panorama Orthopedics. Saw Abby who numbed my hip and jabbed a needle through my skin. Steroids again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So,&#8221; I asked, &#8220;if the injections don&#8217;t work and you can&#8217;t do surgery, where does that leave me?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She shrugged a bit, a slight tilt to her head, &#8220;Well, then we&#8217;re between a rock and a hard place.&#8221; Which made me think of Morgan.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I also thought. Whaddya&#8217; mean we whiteman? It&#8217;s me that&#8217;s stuck. That bridge we all agree we&#8217;ll encounter later. You know, when we come to it.<\/p>\n<p>Left there and drove forty-five minutes back home. A lot of pain setting in as I headed up into the Mountains, willing myself back home, driving sometimes with gritted teeth. Too much for one day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Samain and the Summer&#8217;s End Moon (a very faint waning crescent) Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. His path. Shirley Waste. Joanne. Working out. Great Sol illuminates us all. Shadow, who goes outside when I&#8217;m done talking on Zoom. This strange trip we&#8217;re on. Ripple. Sugaree. The Weight. Ain&#8217;t No Grave. The Night They Drove Ol&#8217; Dixie Down. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=62899\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Belay Glasses<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4417,4390,127,4418],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-back-pain","category-denver","category-health","category-post-polio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62899"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62909,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62899\/revisions\/62909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}