The Seated View

         Let's all pretend that today's Friday and I didn't forget about my blog. I have a good reason, I swear!

    Yesterday, I read a post by Trisha Torrey over at About.com's Patient Empowerment area. It was about the possibility of a convicted child rapist named Kenneth Pike being considered for heart transplant . She presented the issues and asked for readers opinions. This is my comment: "One of the reasons I am a monthly support of Doctors without Borders is that they provide medical care without judgment. The person who needs it most is the person who receives the care and it doesn't matter if they are a child or a Janjaweed. Do I like that a convicted child rapist is getting a heart transplant? No. But I don't believe that the organ transplant system should get involved in moral judgments about who deserves a transplant in any way other than the medical. Once you start judging whether someone is a "good enough person" to get an organ, it's a slippery slope. Who decides? By whose moral standards do we make this decision? There was a case several years a...

    It has been brought to my attention that I'm showing. No, not that kind of showing! What I'm showing is my mood. One friend mentioned that my online posting sseem to indicate I was frustrated with my limits and another friend asked me if I were okay, because - and I quote – I’d "been whining online." I can ignore one person mentioning it, but two? Stress on no stress, I appear to need an attitude adjustment. Therefore, I'm starting this week with a post about what makes me happy. Allergies. Because it means that spring is here. Watching TV with a purring Lucy on my lap. Dinner on Boyfriend Weekends. One of my favourite meals and my only contribution is to enjoy it.        Eating dinner while it's still light out. It means winter is on its way out. A good friend volunteering to do my taxes when I, as usual, hit a wall. I keep thinking that this year, I'll figure out how to do it myself, but I never do. Thankfully, I have backup. Spending...

     

    So. There are these two rather large projects that consume my time at the moment. One is happening at MyRACentral. We have two weeks left before it all launches and in the grand tradition of things that sound like a really good idea when you're safely ensconced in the dead of winter and dealing only in theoreticals, it grew. And then there's another rather large project of my own which I naturally decided should come to fruition in the same month (disability? Energy issues? Me?? Pshaw!). At the time, it all seemed completely doable, but the second project may be delayed. Okay, who am I kidding? It will be delayed. That is, unless I figure out how to clone myself, but that would be a third project and I just don't have the time. I wouldn't say I've hit the point where I am in a constant state of hysterics quite yet, although I am walking (metaphorically) around with a pervasive and persistent feeling as if I've forgotten something. I had the tornado dream f...

    Today is Lucy’s Gotcha Day. Since I don't know her birthday, I decided to celebrate an anniversary of her coming home instead. Which naturally means that a post is due. The name I chose for this wee one is good, fits her perfectly, but there are times where I think that if I hadn't found that name, I might've called her Charlie instead and this is why Yes, that is how her legs look, like the mutant offspring between a ballet dancer and Charlie Chaplin. Not surprisingly, she also has an abundance of nicknames, including monkey girl, fuzzbutt, noodle, my little turtledove, Lucy Magoo, Lucy Goo and the list goes on. The turtledove moniker refers to one of her many sounds, this one sounded like a dove cooing. She has many other ways of talking, including variations of chirrups, a melodious yodel when she wants to play, a positive plethora of squeals, chirrups and trills when there’s food involved, as well as a vocalization that I have named a merp. This one happens th...

   A friend sent me an e-mail with an invitation. He has the possibility of going to a gala and since it's for disability related thing, asked if I wanted to come along. This is a transcription of the next few seconds in my brain: Absolutely! I don't have it anything in my wardrobe that is remotely appropriate for an event qualifying as a Gala I have a month to find something Gala-worthy I haven't been out to something fancy in so long I don't remember how to act Or how to dress Would this mean I'd have to wear makeup? The last fancy thing I attended was pre-big flare, a wedding in 2002. That's nine years ago and it wasn't until yesterday that I realized the lack of fancy in my life. Not that there was a lot of it before, but some, at least a couple of times a year and then the flare ate my life. Life is made up of many things, of friends, work, family, groceries, paying your bills and every now and again, it includes a big celebration, the kind you d...

   This weekend, we  gathered a bunch of people for a potluck Spring party. A few moments:     John holding up a wall and I can see the rockstar from his younger days     I'd discovered Sunniebunniezz , an excellent source of handpupoets and many other treasure and got a pterodactyl for Liam. Naturally named Pteri and here seen perched on Janet's head     Not entirely in focus, but the best photo I've ever taken of Scott Aryka's just over a year old and so cute you want to bite her cheeks Vanessa and Morgan have some girl talk (Morgan's butterfly clips from Kate's Cottage )       What's a Spring party without a trip to the playground?     Liam is in heave on that slide As is Ken...     

    Interesting things have happened and I feel compelled to share. For those of you who haven't read the original post, as small recap. A wonderful recreational area called Sugar Beach opened last summer in my neck of the woods and about three weeks ago, I went to check it out. Only to discover that there was no accessible path to get there (details with photos on the original post ). I planned to contact Christopher Hume , the Toronto Star columnist who writes about architecture and urban affairs and who’s raved about Sugar Beach . I did so with an invitation to join me for a trek down to the area to see it from a wheelchair point of view. Christopher Hume never wrote me back, which is a pity because this turned out to be a great story. While I was waiting (in vain) for Mr. Hume to contact me, I got an e-mail from someone entirely unexpected. Bruce Sudds, the Communications Manager for Waterfront Toronto , contacted me the day after that the post was published. He...

    This week on MyRACentral, I think about acceptance, the if onlys and a few what ifs ...   "What would you wish for if there were no limits? What would you do if you found an old lamp at the flea market and it was the one with the genie in it?" You can read the rest of the post here .  

      

    I've been struggling with whether to write this post. In one way, it's a response to a comment and I don't want the person who left the comment to feel as if I'm picking a fight. What am I talking about? Well, it’s like this… A few weeks ago I wrote a post called The Path to Sugar Beach about discovering that there wasn’t an accessible path to a new recreational area in Toronto. I got a comment from someone named Mike who is new to the blog - be gentle with him, please - and who lives in my area. He told me about an alternate route that I hadn't realized existed (which although terrific, doesn't negate the point that there were no curb cuts close to the entrance). Based on the existence of this alternate route and the fact that Sugar Beach itself is probably accessible, Mike thought that I and other commenters who expressed frustration about inaccessibility were perhaps "overly sensitive." I respectfully disagree and am going to use this...

    I was at the grocery store, picking up a few things, moving from the back of the store to the front because I'm compulsively organized. The last item I needed before heading for the checkout was a loaf of bread and I headed to the ice cream and bread products aisle. Once there, I positioned myself parallel to the shelf, reaching out over the left armrest on my wheelchair and trying to get a solid grip on a loaf of bread so I could get it off the shelf. It wasn't going well - it was just a couple of centimeters too far, I could touch the package, but getting it from the shelf to my lap was a no go. I sat there for a while, struggling with a loaf of bread - that's not a sentence you write every day - and several able-bodied people went by without offering to help. Feeling more and more invisible, I also felt more and more frustrated. And then this rather elderly man who clearly had some significant health issues came tottering up, took the loaf of bread and handed it...