The Seated View

The night before I dreamed that I was late to this first-ever Facebook Live event that I hosted on Friday. I’d gotten held up by the tornado, but somehow managed to get there anyway. Then the lights went out as a massive natural disaster commenced. I couldn’t find my notes, so I talked for a good 90 minutes, rather than the 10 minutes I was supposed to. Eventually, they took the phone away from me rather forcefully. The reality  was a somewhat similar, without the tornado. There were some technical challenges and some RA-related challenges, as well as rampant idiocy challenges (that latter one was me), but for a first time, it was alright. I promise to do better next time! Now I just need a better tripod....

I had a medical appointment fairly close to the Eaton Centre and it being that time a year where I stand in front of my closet bemoaning the lack of appropriate clothes therein, it seemed like kismet. So I headed to the building with many, many stores ready to give someone money so they could give me tops that would be neither too warm, nor too cold. I skipped the top floor entirely, as that has become dedicated to expensive US retailers that are financially unattainable for most people, including this starving artist. I mean, there’s a jeans store where items start at $300+ for a pair of ripped jeans. Even if I were to temporarily lose my mind and pay that amount for a pair of jeans, I’d be looking for something with more fabric. Y’know… to increase the value of the expenditure. The lower two levels not only have more stores, but also a lot more people. I zipped through the crowd, first visiting my new go-to store Reitmans . It’s not as perfectly “me” as Joe Fresh use...

    By noon last Tuesday, I was exhausted. This is not a good sign two days into the work week. I kept going, pushing through the haze of tired and somehow made it to the weekend. Saturday was spent moving in glue and looking with dread at a week filled with entirely too much, but not knowing what to do about it. When people ask, I say I work part-time. Sometime in the past week, I realized that isn't true. The job that pays me may be part-time, but when you add all the other projects in which I'm involved, you end up with the equivalent of a full-time-and-then-some job. This was a bit of a surprise to me. This also made me feel less freaked out about being so tired all the time. Which brings us back to this past weekend. On some level, I realized I was crashing - starting the day with a Coke to get that shot of caffeine three mornings in a row and it not working was a huge clue - but was at that moronic stage where I was fighting it. I looked at all the me...

     They say it takes three weeks to create a new habit. If that's true, I'm screwed. I may have mentioned once or twice (or entirely too much) that things got a little busy during Arthritis Awareness Month. It all started at some point in April or maybe it was March - the specifics are a blur, so forgive the vagueness - suffice it to say, the planning and preparation was intense. And then things ratcheted up during May and there were times (too many) where I found myself working well into the evening, sometimes even popping in for an hour or so around midnight. As you can imagine, this does not make one's chronic illness happy. In fact, mine got downright cranky about it and when I wouldn’t listen - because seriously, I couldn't or the whole thing would fall apart – it gave me a stomach flu. When that didn't slow me down, it started throwing other things at me and I don't really remember what they were, because I ignored them. I did try to prioritize and thi...

    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...

Thanks to everyone who left a comment in last week's contest , three quarters of you voting for Wish Upon. Thank you also for giving me this moment of publicly telling a certain someone that I told you so. Which is not to say that I don’t like Christmas Come Again, I do – I like its intense Christmasness – but I figured the other would be more versatile. I have obediently changed the packs around in the shop . And speaking of winners… I messed around with a random number generator and the winners of the calendars are comments #3 and 12. Congratulations kallajer and deb bennett! Contact me at landers5ATgmailDOTcom with your full names and addresses and I'll get the calendars to you right away. The other day, I saw a bit advertising an upcoming story on one of the local news shows. Called Everyday Hero - which leads me to believe it's a bit of a series - this particular episode was a portrait of a woman with MS. The woman is a wheelchair user and her MS has affected her eno...

Two things have me confused this week. Thing the first is an article in the Wall Street Journal about President Obama ordering a change in regulations governing hospitals that participate in Medicaid/Medicare programs, requiring such hospitals to respect advanced directives and other legal documents designating people outside the immediate family for visitation rights. As well, the new regulations will require hospitals to respect legal documents that designate people other than family, including same-sex partners as decision-makers for healthcare if the person can no longer make decisions for themselves. This will finally grant gays and lesbians the right to designate their partners as not only decision-makers, but also the basic right of being allowed to visit. A man named Peter Sprigg who works for the Family Research Council (socially conservative, as many organizations with a name that includes the capitalized version of the word family) is quoted as no objection to gay and les...

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...

As you may have noticed, my comment box no longer looks like the comment box I used to have. Earlier this week, I got a notice from Haloscan (my comment provider) that it had been bought out by Echo and that users would gradually be moved over to the new system, for which I get to pay $9.95 a year. They told me I had two weeks to make up my mind and if I didn't want to use the new system, I would be able to back up all my comments and buh-bye. In other words, if I didn't sign up, I would lose all my comments on the blog. I could keep them on my hard drive, but that's not much use, is it now? So, no-brainer, right? Only, I switched and discovered that I hate my new comment box. I wrote the support team and got the following information: Display of link to your webpage. When someone wants to leave a comment, they have to sign in by indicating where they're from and there are a multitude of options (Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Only then will the link to your webpa...

--> And she's off on a rant again…. In Monday evening when I was vaguely skimming the paper, seeing what had happened during my four-day absence from anything not exhibit-related (I still giggle when placing em and an exhibit in the same sentence – bear with me for a bit longer, okay?), I came upon this article which tells the story of the Toronto Public School Board looking into a complaint about To Kill a Mockingbird . Apparently, some dimwit - and clearly I have no problems with broadcasting my particular bias early - wants it banned. This book has previously been pulled from the grade 10 English curriculum by the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board in response to the parents complained about the use of the n-word. WTF??? If a book, as described in the article, "chronicles racial injustice in the American deep south" during a specific era, why on earth would you ban it because of the N-word? Is the n-word in this book not a vital component ...

Dear Buskerfest , It's no secret that I'm not fond of you. For years, you've invaded my neighbourhood the last weekend in August and when I say invaded, I mean take over and fill up sidewalks and streets to the point that I can't get to the grocery store for the throngs of people. A few years ago, you added an extra day to the point where your bloated festival takes up four days, which means that for four days, my neighborhood looks like this Don't get me wrong, I love a good festival as much as the next person - sure, it's not always easy to get through the crowds when you use a wheelchair, but Woofstock (for instance), which also invades this neck o’ the woods for 3 days in June, is a lot of fun. What makes your shenanigans particularly bothersome is the fact that the buskers? The reason we're all here? The entertainment? Is hard to see for me. After all, when this is your view of the aforementioned acts, not once, but all the ti...