The Seated View

This may possibly be TMI , but I'm pretty excited. My gums have been bleeding and no, that's not why I'm excited, it’s actually quite annoying (and alarming). In the past, a few days worth of diligent flossing has taken care of this issue, but it appears I've finally reached the point of being immunosuppressed where I'm having trouble dealing with the bacteria in my mouth. However! My dentist to the rescue. He prescribed Perio-Gard , told me to rinse with it twice a day for a month and whereas I can honestly say that this tastes nasty - and I do mean really, really nasty - it pretty much worked instantaneously. The first day, my gums felt all tingly for hours, as if something was really working at them and they’ve felt all tight and perky since (I can't wait for the person who thinks they're going to find porn from a Google search involving the word 'perky' to find this paragraph). Today's health tip. In the news: and they say there is no more...

The latest installation in the Sculpture Garden .

This one started building in early December. Christmas shopping was in the air, it was cold enough that you could see your breath as you walked down the street and Tiger Woods had been caught with his pants down. Well, more specifically, with his car plowed into a tree, which led to a much more salacious situation of which we have all heard more than enough. I mostly ignored the thing about Tiger until the day I clicked by the Toronto Star to see a bright yellow banner, with a "Breaking News" red line at top. Had a world leader been assassinated? Had there been a natural disaster? Nope. I was so mad, I saved a copy to my hard drive, thinking I would rant about it later: WTF? Tiger Woods making a statement about his personal life now qualifies for this level of media response? Are you kidding me?? How on earth is this news, never mind urgent, breaking news? Anyway, I rented to a few friends, the moment passed and although the irritation remained, muttering in the backgro...

The Tinks came to visit on Valentine's Day, a balm for sadness. Morgan is increasingly demonstrating the perfect storm of what happens when you mix a radio announcer with an Andersen woman: the talking never stops. The kids are learning at lightning speeds, going through workbooks and having a blast Janne/TinkMama helps Liam with the tricky pencil gripping thing Liam and John/TinkPapa work their way through a book - Liam's getting really good at reading. Fuzzy? Sure. But I love the action... When you've been family long enough, the twin thing just happens

This week on MyRACentral, I rant: "When prescribed and used correctly, one quarter of one percent of people taking opioids become addicted. In some state, you can get arrested if your opioids are not in their original prescription containers (nevermind that such containers may be hard to open for people living with chronic pain). And if you somehow manage to find a doctor who's willing to prescribe "the big drugs", you may be required to sign rigid treatment agreements that can ban you from receiving opioids for life if you make the slightest mistake in taking your medication." You can read the rest here .

She came to me a sunny day in February, 13 years ago, a small ball of energy, curiosity and attitude, at three months old, so small and with so much hair and whiskers, she looked like an explosion of fur. Wearing the black mask and mantle, she looked like she’d been dipped in white paint, had freckles of black on her stomach and her toes and a black smudge on her nose, as if she’d gotten too close to the chimney. Her coat was silky, the softest thing I’ve ever felt and the thought that I’ll never touch her again makes my heart hurt with tears. I had dozens and dozens of names for her, variations of her name - Mo, Moj, Mo Po, descriptors like Princess Paws when she was pawing at me to hurry up with food or trying to get me to share my dinner, Yelly McYells-A-Lot (again, food-related), Princess Poopypants (did I tell you about the colitis?), the Psycho Cat from hell (nail cut), Mojo the Wondercat, Her Royal Catness, my Miss Cat and my pretty girl. She was my mother’s grandcat, my s...

I collect them. Moments of the inanity, stupidity and general idiocy exhibited by the able-bodied around a wheelchair. They happen quite frequently. Examples: the ubiquitous “do you have a license for that thing?” (oh, ha-ha – so very funny. And I’ve only heard it 500 times before so yes, still hilarious!) and then there’s an acquaintance of mine who always kicks my times. Always. The only thing keeping me from kicking his shins in return is that it’d probably hurt my foot. And just this week, I got another one. I’d just come home from shopping and was driving in loops on the red runner in the lobby to get my tires dry. A woman enters the building, the aura of brisk cheeriness about her exuding community nurse. And she says “that looks like a comfy ride!”. Sigh. I smile wanly, at a loss for words. I am always at a loss for words during these moments, the smart quip coming to me well after it’s passed. So I tell her the truth, that I’m drying my tires and all the way...

For a while now, I've had my eye on The Hunger Games , a sci-fi YA book by Suzanne Collins . Read some reviews that made it sound promising, but other books had jumped the queue until a few months ago, when I finally took the plunge. Still, it took a while to get to it, but it was definitely worth the wait. It is the future, the US has become a dyspeptic dictatorship called Panem, divided into 12 territories circling out from The Capitol somewhere on the west coast. There was a rebellion, a failed one and a 13 th territory is now never heard of (obliterated, perhaps?). To keep the populace in check, reminding them what happens when you rebel, each year, two children over the age of 12 from each territory are selected as tributes and sent into The Hunger Games. In arenas built in a large area of land, each year designed differently, sometimes forests and plains, sometimes a desert, once arctic, but that was no fun because everybody froze to death. And the "fun...

Jeff Probst has a new show called Live for the Moment , which according to his blog post on the Entertainment Weekly website "tells the story of someone who has experienced a life-changing event that inspired them to change how they live their life". The show sends "them on a series of adventures which offer major thrills and life lessons in how to live a bigger, better life". The first show was about a husband and father who had been diagnosed with ALS and other shows mentioned in a blog involve someone who survived a plane crash and a former athlete who has been paralyzed. Despite dreading the execution of the show which seems to lean heavily on that old stereotype of trotting out the ill and disabled to inspire others who aren't ill or disabled, I decided to watch it, not just because I think Probst is pretty and does a pretty decent interview, but to give it a chance. In the first show, we meet Roger Childs and his family - Roger was diagnosed with ALS ...

Musing about love in my latest MyRACentral post: " Love is all you need. - The Beatles Comfort. It can be hard to come by in the times when pain has invaded your body, occupying it like a foreign army. It can make you feel excruciatingly alone, because pain is, at its root, something you cannot share. You can talk about it, you can describe it, but you cannot link to another's sensory system to show them what it feels like, share every exquisite jab and jolt and thus, you are alone in the midst of swollen, aching joints." You can read the rest here .

To celebrate the Feast of St. Brigid or Imbolc, the Fifth Annual Blogger (Silent) Poetry Reading is happening all over. Last week, Nairn Galvin left a poem in the comment box on my Grief post and it's so beautiful and so right that I'm reposting it here (Nairn - if you have a blog, please put the link in the comments, as the shite Echo system won't do it automaticlaly). It's even more right because some people say that today's poetry reading is in honour of the Celtic goodess Brighid , goddess of creativity and healing. This poem is healing and it needs to be out there. The Cure We think we get over things. We don’t get over things. Or say, we get over the measles but not a broken heart. We need to make that distinction. The things that become part of our experience Never become less a part of our experience. How can I say it? The way to get over a life is to die, Short of that, you move with it, let the pain be pain, not in the hope that it will vanish but in...