I’d love to be able to ask
this question in real life polite company, but I doubt I could ever work up the nerve.
Is there a conspiracy amongst the able-bodied?
Or have they been programmed?
To walk past *three or four* empty regular restroom stalls to make a beeline for the accessible facilities?
So that when one of us needs to use them, they are always in use by the able, with *three or four empty regular stalls* that are about as useful to us as say…well…NOTHING?
I slammed myself into an able stall today and was *fifteen minutes* getting out of the damned thing. Thank Deity my workday had concluded.
It’s the same programming that makes them insolent and sometimes downright nasty about taking up accessible parking places.
It’s also related to the great wail of martyrdom that is heard when a lift helping to transport a disabled customer breaks down in miduse, leaving not only that customer, but all the abled’s delayed on their transit ride as they wait for another bus…oh, the gnashing of teeth. I remember one fellow on a bus one day with me when someone was using a scooter and got lifted on and then the lift stopped listening, and they called another bus.
“Why can’t they wait and do their transport later in the day?…We’ve got *real* *important* places to go!”
He was six one and pissed off.
All of my five foot three inches didn’t give a shit.
I said, “Excuse me sir, but where do you get off *knowing* that where she’s going isn’t as important as where you’re going?!!! ” She could have a job, just like you, and be facing the same delay. If it’s a medical appointment, or personal business, no one would bitch at *you* for taking the bus, now would they? No matter which time you took it.”
It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya. All of it. Where’s my tinfoil hat?
Stolen road trips
Evidently there’s a market out there for stolen paratransit vans.
One was spotted high up in the Rockies, far outside the transit boundaries of the Denver/Boulder area…
Was this a cool disabled hiking group out for an afternoon of fun?
Unfortunately no, the paratransit van had been appropriated…perhaps to bring access to the high mountains or simply to prove the point that the abductor was no ordinary car thief.
Another swift snatch of a van occurred outside a local dialysis facility…One patient felt that their need for access outweighed all the others waiting for pickup.
Apparently all of the thieves have been apprehended, (evidently they didn’t have a fake gimp/senior business that they could paint the van bright colors for and use with impunity.)
Please…without sudden expert painting and the dispatch radio removed (perhaps a local version of the Discovery channel’s “Overhaulin'”) these vans are too large, unwieldy and obvious to be mistaken for anything but what they are…
Stick with stealing SUV’s.
And yay…
My scooter fits dissasembled in the trunk of my car, so at least on clear days, extra time will be taken to dissasemble, load it and then reassemble it at the jobsite…it will save wear and tear on necessary bodyparts, and allow for easy traveling within the work building…and transport home is made even simpler by the paratransit van…
During the RockyMountain WWE/wrestling match of Mountains v. Nature that happens sometimes in December and *always* in March/April, the manual chair will remain the preferred method…the scooter is not built for blizzards, rain, or icy conditions…Pieces may be falling into place that will let me keep this job.
(a side note to those back east: In Denver proper the weather is different from both Ohio lake-effect winters, and the perpetual ski base/below freezing time in the actual Rocky Mountains themselves.
Usually it goes like this.
September = Summer
October= One snowstorm, the rest of the time Indian Summer
November= same
December Two or three storms maximum.
January Cold, but can go snow free more often than not.
Feburary Same notation.
March: Blizzard Hell
April: Same notation
May: One snowstorm, the rest is rainy
June early is rainy late is summer
July: Summer
August: Summer. )
Autonomous by choice
This was inspired by a post on another blog about singleness and how many women choose it. I’m kinda a mixed bag I suppose. My autonomous period began with my husbands death, and then there were relationships of a sort…during that period I was *not* autonomous by choice, I would have rather found a relationship…The odds are (sometimes) stacked against the heavyset and disabled, and I happen to be both.
But…
After the last relationship (which had an implosive ending very nearly worthy of a Jerry Springer episode) I’ve made a conscious decision to be autonomous by *choice*, to embrace the positives of being single, and I’ve had some pursuit that I’ve had to gently push aside. I respect anyone that can make a couple work, I think that’s both pleasant, wonderful and encouraging: I’m not up for the downside of coupledom anymore.
And I rejoice that *I* run my own show.
I pay my bills, I get back and forth to work…and the occasional social experience.
I also love my family, and my remaining close friends…
It does irk me that society seems to assign a failing grade to anyone who is not part of a partnership.
And I’m aware enough of that to leave the old fashioned “Mrs.” in front of my name, as I’m still entitled to do, as a widow. It gives me just a push of clout in society because even if I’m *not* in a couple now, I used to be.
No special social status should arrive from being coupled, but it does.
From the outside, the average person might assume that I’m not in a pair because it would be tough to find someone to look past the externals…Nope. It is a conscious choice now, and I’m glad to make it.
Thou Shalt Not Covet
Well I blew that one today.
I was waiting for my paratransit ride, and I spotted a young lady coming out of the building.
She has my disability, but not my weight problem…she gets around with a walker…and better still…drives her own vehicle…so the deadly sin of covetousness while I’m waiting to be lifted strapped and hauled back home …
It’s my understanding that those with cerebral palsy are able to drive on a “case by case,” basis. Some can some can’t. I’ve given it a shot three times. The last attempt involved a near miss of a young boy and two dogs. (No one hurt, no harm no foul. ) but I decided after that that I would not attempt it again.
It’s another one of those limits difficult to explain to the able bodied….I have no depth perception and have a great deal of difficulty determining when to change lanes, and am unable to parallel park…I’m missing some nebulous sense of spatial orientation that many of the able seem to have…
And I know that it has been just as difficult for someone who *can and does* drive to explain to anyone else how it is done.
It’s no doubt related to why I had such a horrible time with geometry, or the spatial part of some mental testing done by the local Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation.
So I have all the hangups of owning a car, and none of the fun.
Rats.
Midlife And Treachery 
