Podcast Audio
Full Transcript:
Lisamaria:
When I start my group coaching, we’ll have a private mastermind Facebook group, just for the women.
Serena:
We are able to give them a little peek into what it’s really like to be blind.
Jeff:
Now, please welcome from The Blind Grind, Serena Olsen and Lisamaria Martinez. We hope you enjoy.
Lisamaria:
You will learn about blindness and you will just see that it’s just a part of who you are. I’m excited that the educational field is telling people to listen to us. We’re homework.
JAWS reader:
Recording in progress.
Jeff:
It sounds like you’re on a big set somewhere. And there’s someone in some booth somewhere that says that, and we’re all like-
Serena:
Yeah, that’s our sound crew.
Jeff:
Yeah.
Lisamaria:
Recording in process.
Jeff:
Getting into position. Our makeup people are just walking away from us now, we’re done. Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson, and today in the studio, we got a team. They’ve been together for 20-some years, it seems like. They have a Facebook live show that I caught up with and it’s called The Blind Grind. They have so many different names and they’re all over the blog area. They’re two sassy, blind bloggers, Serena Olsen and Lisamaria Martinez from The Blind Grind. Thank you so much for coming to the show, how are you both doing?
Serena:
Awesome. Fantastic.
Lisamaria:
Pretty good. It’s a little chilly today though. So I have my unicorn socks on.
Jeff:
It isn’t the company that we have here, is it?
Lisamaria:
No, no, never the company.
Jeff:
There you go. It’s chilly in California, what is it, like 70?
Lisamaria:
Right? It’s like upper fifties and raining.
Serena:
While the rest of the world was having a heat wave it was literally like 68 to 70 degrees out here, and beautiful. Usually when a heat wave washes over anywhere, California gets a big chunk of it. And somehow at least out here on the coast, like we kept our cool. Weather privilege.
Jeff:
Well, I’m glad to see you got some rain out there after all the fires and everything.
Lisamaria:
Yes, we so needed the rain.
Jeff:
I was making the notes for this and I should have got like a spreadsheet to try and connect these names up. We have the Blind underscore Broad, then we have-
Serena:
You just want to score points with Ella.
Jeff:
-Bay Area Blind Mom. Yeah. I was like, okay, this is gonna be fun in the show notes. But it’s really neat to catch up with you ‘cause I’ve laughed a lot listening. The Blind Grind is- the grind stands for like coffee because you guys always have something to drink.
Lisamaria:
Yes, and it has multiple meetings really. I mean, you know, the grind of the day, the nine-to-five, you know, lots and lots of meanings, but we like to think of it as coffee, and that’s why we always go and ask each other what’s in your cup.
Serena:
That’s right.
Lisamaria:
Yeah.
Serena:
I’m the moderately coffee-obsessed one. I dig deep into seed to cup. And so I kind of tipped the naming process in favor of a coffee-related subject. And of course, if you’re following The Blind Grind, you know that when there’s a magical fifth Wednesday in each month we switch it up and we do our [censored] and wine. I don’t know if this is a family podcast, but we shift it to the afternoon and we make it a more sassy afternoon experience.
Jeff:
I caught that one and I thought maybe I shouldn’t have them on the podcast.
Serena:
I can keep it PG. I just need to dial it back.
Jeff:
We should just switch it to the fifth Monday of the month to do this one.
Lisamaria:
Well, I mean, we do call ourselves two sassy blind bloggers. So the sass kind of comes out regardless of what time of day.
Jeff:
I really like it because it’s just cazh talk. I’m not just sitting there wasting time listening to it. I’ve usually got it playing doing something else. So I’m catching the conversation.
Serena:
That’s an endorsement we need to get in print, by the way.
Jeff:
But you both say you’re two busy blind women doing your stuff.
Serena:
Yep.
Lisamaria
Yeah.
Serena:
Yep.
Jeff:
So why don’t you give us a little story on how this started?
Lisamaria:
How did it start?
Serena:
Oh, I’ll go.
Lisamaria:
Okay, good. I’m glad you know where it started, ‘cause I don’t.
Serena:
I’m Serena, AKA blind fraud, which has of course a backstory all its own. Just consider that my celebrity persona, but I am happy to hear Serena as well. I have known Lisamaria since like 2004. I met her at my first national NFB convention in Atlanta, Georgia. She claims to have minimal memory of it and that’s okay ‘cause I was a newbie and I was a little wide-eyed-
Lisamaria:
Minimal? I have zero memory, dude.
Serena:
Oh dear. But we did start crossing paths a lot after that and developed a friendship and that eventually led to me moving to the bay area and moving in with she and her husband. It was supposed to be a few months, it turned into like a decade. And I don’t know, I can’t think of anyone else in the world that I could live with and work with. We co-worked, actually, she was my boss for a number of years and like, we never fight. And we always just kind of dance together and everything just flows and we complete each other’s sentences.
Lisamaria:
Aw, that’s so poetic!
Serena:
And I can’t think of anyone else, I know very few people that can do that. Like we were literally together 24-7 for years, and like, not only did we not kill each other, I don’t think we’ve ever thought about anything.
Lisamaria:
No, no, I don’t think so.
Serena:
So you know, it just, the years have gone by and I don’t live with them anymore. I did grow up and, you know, by my own house, like a responsible grownup, but the friendship is still going strong.
Lisamaria:
And we’ve talked over many glasses of wine on our porches about-
Serena:
Oh, I miss that stoop!
Lisamaria:
-potentially doing some kind of business together. We are about to do part three of three on Do It Yourself products, and that for the most part is something we’re both interested in and we’ve just thrown out there the ideas and fantasized about, oh, what if we start our own, you know, handmade beauty product, or do it yourself- you know, cleaning product, smelly product line. And Serena’s talked about coffee stuff and potentially doing a coffee cafe. You know, we’d just thrown out lots of ideas and bed and breakfast, and I don’t know, just sometime in the last year it came together that we thought it would be fun to try and do a podcast together. And so we decided to go ahead and do it. And right now it’s just a Facebook live once a week. And until we figure out how to actually make it a real podcast-
Jeff:
A real podcast.
Lisamaria:
A real podcast!
Serena:
Let’s be absolutely clear. This was an impulsive decision on my part because I kind of snapped and decided it was a good idea for me to just start doing things that terrify me. And it’s been a fantastic exercise, I gotta say, from the backside, but we, what you did your coaching summit, your first big coaching summit, and your, like, friends, I’m doing these Facebook lives and it’s lonely because it’s just me talking to the world. You’re like- she said, why don’t you just come on with me and go live with me? Like you’ve been following the summit and you know me and like, we banter well. So I did this Facebook live with her, and she asked me that morning, I did it in the afternoon and it was a hot mess on my end in terms of technology, like I forgot to turn on do not disturb. And I got an incoming phone call for a grocery delivery that was stupidly early. And so I got bounced out of the live and like I came on and like, my video was sideways and there was just- and ordinarily-
Lisamaria:
It was a hot mess.
Serena:
I’m not kidding. Like that would put me into tears in another lifetime and I was just laughing. I was over here laughing and realizing like, it doesn’t matter, right? We’re like, we’re totally having fun and nobody’s dying. And afterwards you’re like, that was so great. That went so well. We should do a podcast!
Lisamaria:
It was truly impulsive. Like if you know Serena, you know she likes to think a lot and analyze for a very long time. So I was very proud of her for stepping up and saying, yes, let’s do this. And so it was impulsive, it truly was for her.
Serena:
We should do a podcast. Okay! I think like the next day or that afternoon, we sat down and started creating Gmails and Facebook pages and just doing it. Like we’ll make it a real podcast eventually, but let’s just, I mean, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Just, let’s do it. And we’ll tinker with the rocket ship while it’s in flight. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.
Jeff:
And they can find that on Facebook, at Blind Grind.
Lisamaria:
That’s right, we have over 200 followers. So thank you, followers! And we have over 20 episodes. Yep. We have over 20 episodes and we’ll get on all the things eventually.
Jeff:
All the things.
Lisamaria:
All the things, mm-hmm.
Jeff:
All of that, the whole list at the bottom. That’ll be in the show notes. We’ll put all the things in the show notes too. And there’s a lot of ’em, we’ll let it start with quiche, how’s that for transition?
Lisamaria:
I love it.
Jeff:
Of all the things, start with quiche.
Lisamaria:
She had some amazing quiche the other day. I ate it.
Serena:
Oh, it’s true. S
Jeff:
So there’s no proof, is what you’re saying.
Lisamaria:
No, I have the real proof that it starts with quiche.
Jeff:
Serena, you have actually recipes available too.
Serena:
I do. I do. And as a matter of fact, I’ve got a little linktree that I drop in every episode on the Facebook page. And one of those links is for my email sign-up, and if you drop your email to receive regular updates from me, you will get an automatically delivered at no cost, my trademark sweep, my sweep the fridge mini crustless quiches. It’s a mouthful to say, and it’s also a delicious mouthful, so. I’m a huge evangelist for ending food waste. I’m really passionate about repurposing leftovers and getting every little bit of value out of the food that I bring into my house, so you can make all kinds of delicious quiches. It’s a great way to use up leftovers, or some veg that might be like needing to go, you know, all you need to know is the proportions and the ratios, and it’s right there in that recipe when you sign up for my email.
Jeff:
So it’s kind of a take-off of everything but the kitchen sink, yeah. Sweep the fridge means you’re going through the fridge and grabbing anything you can find and toss it in there.
Serena:
There’s protein, there’s veg and there’s cheese and dairy and eggs. And of course you can adapt and swap any of those out if you’re a vegetarian, you can just swap the proportions out with extra veg, etc. Omit the cheese, add more veg.
Jeff:
I started my notes and I had to look up how to spill quiche.
Lisamaria:
Oh, most people do that. .
Serena:
Yeah. I often joke I’m on a mission to make sure the world knows how to spell quiche. Q-u-i-c-h-e. Just for reference.
Lisamaria:
It looks kinda fun in braille.
Jeff:
It’s kinda like that word “savvy.” You just, hmm, let’s see, s-a, but quiche.
Serena:
Is it two A’s or two V’s? It’s like bizarre.
Jeff:
Or like vacuum. That’s a good one too. Vacuum.
Lisamaria:
I always have to-
Serena:
Two U’s and an M.
Lisamaria:
Whenever I’m spelling together, I always have to say to get her otherwise I can’t spell it.
Jeff:
How about tomorrow? A lot of people have trouble with tomorrow.
Lisamaria:
Yeah. Why is that? Two M’s, one R, no wait, one M, two R’s. I don’t know. TM. That’s all I have to write.
Jeff:
Well, that’s great. And then we have the confidence coach. That’d be Lisamaria.
Lisamaria:
Hi.
Jeff:
Tell us about confidence coaching. What is a confidence coach?
Lisamaria:
Well, so it turns out that confidence is not so easy for some people. And so about four years ago, I left my traditional nine-to-five to start my own business. I founded Be Confident, Be You Coaching. I primarily work with women, and this year I have been nicheing down to moms who work and are trying to be what I call a boss mom, you know, kicking butt at home and at work and still finding time to be her, to be a human being that doesn’t have little children hanging off of her or the boss at work where you have to make all of the decisions. So that’s kind of where my niche is taking me and I’ve worked with a lot of women who might come to me because, you know, they say they need help being more confident at work so that they can speak up and really get the assignments that they want or just be heard at a meeting that happens to be dominated by men. And perhaps they’re one of two female supervisors or something along those lines. And with coaching, you know, you come for one reason, but you really take a deep dive into your whole life. And I work with clients who figure out really what it is they need to succeed. I never tell- this is what I love, why I love coaching. I never tell you what to do, what to think, what to try. I just sit back and I ask questions and inevitably the answer is within you. I just champion and cause and get you to figure out what that answer is for you. And I’ve worked with high level women executives who are switching jobs or switching companies. I’ve worked with women who have learned that if they don’t practice self-care regularly, they will burn out. So you know, how to infuse self-care into your life and you know how to shift your energy or reframe. Serena’s always hearing me say, let’s reframe that!
Serena:
Or me saying framing is everything, right?
Lisamaria:
Yes. Yes.
Serena:
Framing is everything.
Lisamaria:
So that’s what I’m doing. And I kind of took a month off here during July and the summer to hang out with my kids and to go to New Orleans and do the vacationing thing. And in a couple of weeks, when my kids start school, I hope to start up my first group cohort for women, a six month program all about, I call it the f-a-b evolution, the fabulous evolution where we just talk more about fun and attitudes shifts and balance, and working in small groups with women to make sure that they feel confident in every area of their lives.
Jeff:
Well, we’ll have to get that in the show notes so people can find that.
Lisamaria:
Oh, will do. Will do.
Jeff:
I believe I can say this or I can be part of it, but I heard there’s a Facebook group called Bad [censored] Women on Facebook.
Lisamaria:
Yeah, there is! There is, a hundred percent of that is my over 300 strong Facebook group for women who want to be more bad [censored]. That is a group I’ve had for a while. And I just started Be A Boss Mom. And that’s just under a hundred women now, but those are all the free communities. Eventually when I start my group coaching, we’ll have a private mastermind Facebook group just for the women in the group.
Jeff:
Isn’t that fitting that you’re on the b-a podcast too?
Lisamaria:
I know.
Jeff:
Wow. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I think that was meant to be. Lisamaria, did you work with American Printing House too?
Lisamaria:
I do. I actually contract with them now. So I worked for Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco for 10 years. I mostly worked in blindness nonprofit agencies ever since I was 18 in some way or another. And then I just was like, hey, I’ve always wanted to do my own business, have my own business. So I decided it was time to do that shortly after my third and last child was born, but I can never get away from the blindness community. I don’t want to. Not really. And so one of my friends and now colleagues again, Richard Retta approached me about working with APH Connect Center for some projects. So I do a little bit of contract work with them as well. So I’ve still got my toe in.
Jeff:
There you go. I think I remember, do you remember back in 2006? When they would have stuff out in Baltimore for NFB, where they would have like scholarship groups or leadership programs and stuff. Were you ever at those?
Lisamaria:
Yeah. Yeah. They, sometimes they had like leadership seminars, is that what you’re referring to?
Jeff:
Yeah.
Serena:
I was an echoing seminarian, seminarian, seminarian, seminarian.
Jeff:
Yep, I remember you. I remember you back then.
Lisamaria:
See, so many people remember me and I feel bad every time. That every time I’m like, I’m so sorry. I meet so many people-
Serena:
You’re terrible!
Lisamaria:
Apparently. My own kiddos know that when we are in big groups where there are lots of blind people that if it’s time for, you know, us to leave or they want something and I need to go with them, they pretty much tell me to seal my lips so that nobody can hear me and stop me to say hi so that they could get whatever it is they want.
Jeff:
I think it’s the name, Lisamaria. ‘Cause it’s one word. It’s one-
Lisamaria:
It is all one word. No space.
Jeff:
Yeah.
Lisamaria:
No capital M.
Serena:
The flip side of this is that you yourself even recognize that you have the ability to connect with somebody and within minutes make them feel like an old friend, you really do. And I personally am in awe of this skill, because I really feel like I need several encounters with somebody to feel like I have an authentic connection with them. And you’re just like, you know someone for five minutes and you’re like, okay, we’re all social! Best friends. And you do make people feel like we’ve known each other forever. So, you know, this is, you know, the power that you have.
Lisamaria:
Ooh. Thank you. I did not pay her to say that.
Serena:
No!
Jeff:
Wow. I didn’t get those notes. Okay. Let me, I edit this stuff. So that’s what podcasting is.
Lisamaria:
I know, you do such a great job at it too.
Serena:
Are you also on sound effects? ‘Cause they’re very entertaining.
Jeff:
I used to do all that more so. But sometimes it’s like I don’t need it for us, you know? I mean, we’re laughing [distorted] and yes [normal]. I know. I know. I know, we got sound effects. [distorted] Okay. It sounds just like you’re on your show.
Serena:
It’s all part of the magic of being us.
Jeff:
Yeah. Was that you two or us three? I’m just trying to see if-
Serena:
Oh, I’ll take either one.
Lisamaria:
I say all three.
Jeff:
I just wanna say listening to you guys banter here and the way you’re talking here, it’s just like listening to you when you’re doing your Facebook live shows and stuff. So if you put a podcast together, I hope you can keep that liveliness. Have you ever heard of bands that sounds better live than they do in the studio? You know what I mean? Like music.
Serena:
Yeah.
Lisamaria:
Yeah.
Serena:
So, well, she’s broken me of my notes habit, so I’m sure the improvisation will always be there.
Lisamaria:
Oh man, you don’t even know, she would have all these notes on her counter-
Jeff:
Oh no, no. She has a three by five card now.
Serena:
My janice slate!
Lisamaria:
Yes. Oh, that is true.
Serena:
It’s always been a three by five card to be fair.
Lisamaria:
Okay. Okay. No, it’s great. It’s great. I think it’s, you know, to be fair, the naturalness and the banter come very much so because we’re just really good friends and we share a brain. And so really it’s kind of like talking to ourselves, but out loud.
Serena:
Yeah. Tough.
Jeff:
Oh, sorry.
Serena:
So we often have very similar thoughts at the same time and it’s kind of freaky.
Lisamaria:
Yeah, definitely.
Jeff:
Yeah. I’ve seen you start out shows. I forget which episode, maybe it was two, but you realized that you could do the lyrics with the braille and you finally found out that it isn’t, what was it? Egg-
Serena:
Eggs delights?
Lisamaria:
It’s Metallica’s not saying [sings] “Eggs delights.”
Jeff:
I was rolling because you went into some other one. Something about pants or another one.
Serena:
Oh, the safety dance!
Lisamaria:
[sings] We could dance, everybody look at your pants.
Serena:
Which cracks me up.
Jeff:
That’s funny stuff.
Lisamaria:
I have a wild imagination, which is really useful since I have three kids, so.
Serena:
Oh yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah. When you’re talking about the mom stuff and all the moms with kids and- is quality time when you can shut the bathroom door and be away from the kids for a minute?
Lisamaria:
That is self-care, yes. There have been times where I’m in the garage with the lights off. We have a big freezer out there, but an upright one and the freezer door is open and my head is in there eating ice cream, shoveling it in my mouth as quietly as possible.
Serena:
Children are a lot of work. And I don’t say that from personal experience.
Jeff:
I’m still hanging onto that audio described in the freezer, eating ice cream.
Lisamaria:
Shoveling ice cream in the shoveling.
Serena:
I do that and I don’t even have kids.
Jeff:
By the glow of the freezer door.
Lisamaria:
That’s right, by the glow of the freezer, ice melting.
Jeff:
There you go. What audience have you found that you’ve been reaching out there? I know when you start this stuff up, you think who’s gonna listen? But you got over 200 followers now, what type of audience did you imagine you’d be getting? And what do you got?
Serena:
As Lisamaria said, you cannot get away from the blind community. And as I’ve been working to establish myself in food circles, I’ve still been finding that to be the case and whatever, bring it on because the more blind foodies I can collaborate with the better off we all are. And there’s also naturally our sighted friends and family and allies are like, look what the girls are doing. And there’s definitely an underlying educational component to what we’re doing. We’re sort of indirectly, if not explicitly targeting people who don’t necessarily know a lot about blindness and we are able to give them a little peek into what it’s really like to be blind, at least if you’re like a 40-something career professional and maybe a mom. I have cats, I do not have actual children, but you know, like we have all these facets to our personalities that go beyond blindness, but you can’t not talk about the blindness. It’s such an integral component of who we are, and so I find that not only you get the fellow blind community members who, yeah, we can relate to this, or we can relate to that and they’re sharing on our behalf as well, but we’re also extending our reach to the communities of those sighted friends and family who are in turn sharing our message out to their circles of friendship. And people are learning things about blindness that they might not have known, like we can find bathrooms and tie our shoes, you know?
Lisamaria:
And that’s been, I think for me, the super exciting part of it all is the audience of sighted people. Whether you know, it is our family or friends who are getting educated on blindness, like Blind Broad says, and they’re seeing that blindness doesn’t have to be this scary, tragic thing, and it doesn’t mean sitting at home eating TV dinners or something, I don’t know. But it can mean living an active life, and so we always try to have some sort of educational component to our lives so that people are always learning. So to me, that has been really surprising to see how that’s caught on with like our extended family and community. I literally have a former coworker who knows quite a lot about blindness herself. She’s sighted, but she’s been in the blindness field forever and she teaches at SF State and she tells her students, go listen to these ladies. You will learn about blindness and you will just see that it’s just a part of who you are. So I’m excited that the educational field is telling people to listen to us. We’re homework.
Serena:
All right! There will be a quiz, by the way.
Jeff:
Well, you got your DIY kitchen stuff going on too.
Lisamaria:
Yes. Yeah.
Serena:
Yes, yes, yes!
Jeff:
Yeah. I like that. I just want to let you know, I just got a Cosori-brand air fryer, and it works with the smart device.
Lisamaria:
Ooh!
Serena:
Oh, okay!
Jeff:
All I said was, I said, I named it Air Fryer. I thought it was like unique. In this house it is. So I asked my smart device, set Air Fryer to 400 degrees for 10 minutes. All of a sudden the machine just goes beep and it starts going. I couldn’t believe it.
Lisamaria:
Wow, that- I have the wrong air fryer, then.
Serena:
It’s a new age.
Lisamaria:
It is. It is. And you need my children to come over and name your devices.
Jeff:
Oh, really?
Lisamaria:
We have a robot vacuum named Cutie Pie.
Jeff:
Yeah, they named our robot, I think it was Claude or something. I forget the name of it.
Lisamaria:
Claude?
Jeff:
Yeah, I fired him.
Lisamaria:
He’s French!
Jeff:
Yeah, you call him, Claude, you’re 22. You can move out now. But that’s another thing. You’re a mom, I mean. You’re a mom, three kids, right?
Lisamaria:
Three, yeah, three kids, 11, 7 and 5.
Jeff:
And you’re still laughing, having fun and doing things, you know.
Lisamaria:
I try!
Serena:
That’s why we love her.
Lisamaria:
I mean, to be fair, if you know my parents, you understand why I am the way I am. I mean, my parents are phenomenal. I maybe didn’t think that growing up, especially since I was grounded half of my life for being mouthy. Imagine that. You know, I lost my vision at the age of 5, and my parents are 27 at the time. And I just think it’s so incredible, the mindset that they took on with very limited resources and just knowing that there has to be something better out there for blind kids. You know, I had a tutor and she was teaching me to read felt letters. And my mom’s like, wait a minute. She’s not gonna have books made out of felt letters in college. So don’t blind people read those dots?
Serena:
What, what are those bumpy things? I want my daughter to read those bumpy things.
Lisamaria:
So, I mean, they’re just incredible people. And so they raised three kids and I was the oldest and they’re pretty cool. I mean, my mom just had a birthday and I can’t say how old she is, ‘cause no one would believe me anyways. But, you know, she’s like, yeah, I went to the pool today and now we’re going to a seafood restaurant and your brother and his wife got cake and ice cream for me. I’m like, man, mom, you’re living la vida loca.
Jeff:
What she’s saying is share the ice cream. Don’t go into the garage, into the little freezer. Share the ice cream. So Serena, you said you had a cat?
Serena:
I have two. I have two.
Jeff:
I got two myself. I know what it’s like.
Serena:
Oh, they’re great in pairs, they are a bonded pair. We adopted them right before the world shut down and I think they were naturally anxious, like by default, and the pandemic has just made it worse. So I have like the two most anxious cats ever.
Jeff:
Do you think during the pandemic, the cats finally said, do these people ever leave?
Serena:
It’s funny because I want to refer to them as my fur babies, but they’re really more like really needy and demanding roommates. I mean, we set up- their base camp was in our office. And so that’s, that is their base camp, no matter, you know, they have the whole run of the whole house now, but that’s always gonna be their go-to safe place because that’s where they were introduced to the house. And every night we all go upstairs to go to bed and we do our little, you know, they’re very routine-oriented, you know, they need their structure. We all go upstairs to go to bed and, you know, they race around and get all, you know, murderous, like in the evening hours, it’s the evening murder-
Lisamaria:
Because they’re crepuscular.
Serena:
They’re crepuscular, which is a great word.
Lisamaria:
I love that word.
Jeff:
Crepuscular.
Lisamaria:
Yeah, it means active at dawn and dusk.
Serena:
Birds are also crepuscular, which you know, is why cats are crepuscular ‘cause they hunt birds. So it all makes sense.
Jeff:
You gotta add the word of the day on The Blind Grind.
Lisamaria:
Oh, you have just challenged me. Thank you. I love it. I love long strange words like pulchritudinous and crepuscular and pyrex.
Jeff:
Words that you won’t remember tomorrow. You’ll go what did she say? But that’s why they can go right back on Facebook and play it again.
Lisamaria:
That’s right!
Jeff:
And add some more hearts to it.
Lisamaria:
We’re adding that.
Jeff:
I got a stick, it’s about a foot and a half long, and then it has a long leader on it, like for fishing, and then on the bottom one, there’s this fuzzy little thing. They both attack differently. One of them is like as fast as it can it gets the paw and it’s in its mouth. Boom, just bang. It’s fast. It’s like, yeah. I wanna show my friends when they come over. And the other one is like, I’m gonna play with this for 10 minutes before I kill it.
Serena:
Different cats have different hunting preferences. Some cats really prefer to chase bugs and birds. They like to get up on their hind legs and like clap with both hands and swat, and some cats are ground chasers. They like to chase prey that’s on the ground or in the water, like they’re fishing. Like they stay low to the ground and they scoop. And if you can key in on those preferences, you can really get your cat’s mojo going. You can get them really engaged. They’ve gotta get that murder out. They’re perfect little killing machines, and we treat them like they’re stuffed teddy bears and they’re not, they need to kill. It’s very important, even if it’s just a toy mouse.
Jeff:
This is like a sick nursery rhyme or something.
Serena:
I know!
Jeff:
Teddy bears, sweet, murders, killing.
Lisamaria:
Sort of like an episode of the Twilight zone or something.
Serena:
They’re tiny little predators. And I think the fact that they’re so much smaller and easier to scoop up and snuggle and make kissy faces at just offends them and makes them angrier.
Jeff:
Who wrote those fables back in the day?
Lisamaria:
Aesop?
Jeff:
And Stephen King. Put the two together
Lisamaria:
I don’t ever wanna sleep over at your house, Serena. I’m afraid of your cats now.
Jeff:
Well, Serena, Lisamaria, it’s been fun listening. I feel like I didn’t shut off my phone here. I was listening to your stuff earlier today and it seems like it’s still going. You guys are just natural.
Lisamaria:
Well, it’s been a ton of fun talking to you and we’ve been looking forward to it since you first contacted us and super appreciate, you know, we appreciate you having us on your show, so thank you.
Serena:
Absolutely.
Jeff:
I think you sassy blind bloggers-
Serena:
Yeah!
Jeff:
I think you are living proof of all these things that you hear, these little cliche sayings, like live the life you want, you hear them all the time, but listening to you guys and what you’re talking about, random, with coffee, it’s living proof that you guys are successfully doing what you want to do, living the life you want. You’re doing it, and it’s enjoyable. That’s the biggest part.
Lisamaria:
Awesome, thank you.
Serena:
Thank you so much, Jeff. It’s been a delight.
Lisamaria:
I’m gonna go party now, ‘cause Jeffrey said. We’re living the lives we want!
Jeff:
I’ll put it on puffy paint so you can read it.
Lisamaria:
Oh yeah!
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Contact Your State Services
If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Pre-ETS Program and Transition Services Manager Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361.
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