Unfriendly Skies
First, no real food on a plane
Then, if you’re a big person you must pay for twice the room on some airlines…
Now, apparently if this is implemented *the seats themselves* will cost more, be *optional* or be gone alltogether.
Has *any* bright boy tried to spin this move that effectively *bans those who cannot stand* from flying???
I’ve contacted Airbus. We’ll see if I am answered.
Rock Climbing
I doubt I’ll have the lungs or constitution to rock climb out here, the capital of tall stone…
I love to travel though it, stop within it or beneath it, have a picnic, take a picture…but climb? Not at this fitness level, thanks.
but I do remember an afternoon back east….at a place called Nelson’s Ledges…
Even with orthopedic shoes, myself and an associate managed to clamber away most of an afternoon…and sit on top of a stone crevasse wondering how I got there and how in all the god’s names was I going to get down…Thankfully, unlike previous climbers to this spot, alchohol wasn’t there clouding my judgement that day.
Another one of those afternoons that had the occasional wistful twinge of “Why isn’t this man interested?” but, the best part of the afternoon had nothing to do with that….Intellectual discourse, being out in nature, taking in the sound of water, the chill of early spring, the thick green of eastern forests, and the dark grey rock….
I don’t mean to diss the Rockies. They’re magnificent….but they’re dry.
The native trees are only two: the pine and the aspen.
Back east was birch, oak, maple, apple, dogwood, cherry. Heavier rain, different soil…Spring doesn’t smell the same here, and has the uncomfortable addition of hailstones. Ouch, damnit! Many of these trees have been transplanted to Colorado, but they’re affecting the high desert ecosystem…they weren’t meant to be here.
I try to enjoy the amazing weather and sights available, protected by the eastern wall of the Rocky Mountains…and I do…I’m very fortunate to see what I’ve seen.
But sometimes, I want to climb down the rockface and walk in the eastern woods…heavy with rain, buzzing with sound and air complete with oxygen…
It Can Be Fought
discussion of the issues surrounding the Duke rape case made me wonder…why is it so hard to believe that assaults do occur?
A friend of a friend was a victim of sexual assault, physical abuse and breaking and entering…not once but several times. Because of this I told a friend… “I like **** and would like to invite them over….but I have to take responsibility for my own safety…and this nut who is attacking your friend could track them here and do some damage, so your friend cannot come and visit here.”
It was very tough to get a restraining order written, but eventually one was put in place. Prosecutors initially persisted in seeing this as a lovers quarrel gone wrong, not something that needed legal intervention. The friend had a tough time getting law enforcement and prosecutors to believe in these assaults because the assailant and the friend had previously been in a relationship…
In addition it was very difficult for this friend to stick to their guns and stick with the truth when someone they had loved was dragged in front of attorney, trial judges, placed on probation etc.
The assailant threatened this friend’s life in front of witnesses while out on bail, and tracked them to a new home (they had had to leave their old home because the assailant knew where their home, their friequent hangouts, and their place of employment was.)
Since I was quite removed from the events, I could look up advocacy networks, etc send a few emails, and get resource information tailored to this friend’s situation…I passed the information on during a careful, non judgemental rational conversation.
The friend of a friend took this information, and used it, and had a support network of advocates that helped them through charges, arraingment and the jury trial.
The assailaint was convicted on four separate charges….and three good things are happening now…
The first, is that the friend of a friend can get a better nights sleep now.
Symbolically, yesterday, they went kite flying for the first time in their lives, raising a banner in the spring wind.
And the third is, they’ll be by for dinner in a couple of weeks.
It can be fought. And victims can win.
Doctors Say the Darndest things.
Inspired by a post over at The Gimp Parade, about how the answer to disabled people is more and more likely to be anti-depressants (WTF!!!)
(I take them because part of my smorgasbord of impairments is *chemical depression,* not because I have physical impairments, but because the history of mental ilness among those genetically related to me is…well…significant)
Here are a few gems given to me by my mostly male physicians
1980: “The reason you’re so well adjusted is because you don’t know what you’re missing.”
1991: (Possibly *the* most mind blowingly dumb question I have *ever* heard a physcian ask a patient. I had just been given the news that I had (possibly terminal) Hodgkins Lymphoma on top of everything else, and was taking refuge from my screaming emotions in a rational intellectual examination of the treatment needed and my chances for survival. ) This bugged the doctor so much he said rather archly, “Aren’t you afraid???!!!!”
I said “Of course I’m afraid.”[you clueless attempt at a physician, certainly I’m afraid. I’m freaking for my very existence, I’m terrified, I’m crazed with fear, but I know that allowing that out of my control right now will not give me the information I need to maximize my chances for sucess, so kindly STFU with the irrelevant questions]
and 1996 to 2004 again and again and again.
“You know if you lost weight all of this would go away.”
IBS,
Cerebral Palsy
Have nothing to do with body size in and of themselves. They exist irrespective of weight.
Osteoperosis
Asthma
Carpal Tunnel
and
Chemical Depression
are made worse by weight, yes, and three of the above Asthma and Osteoperosis are shown to have significant improvement once one is no longer seriously overweight.
Carpal Tunnel and Chemical Depression will be part of my mess no matter what size I am.
And then,
“You don’t have IBS what you need is some counseling.” This selfsame physician’s assistans attitude changed dramatically when I happened to have an attack *in her office*
To her credit she chased down and found the medicine that is allowing me to work right now, but I had been a patient in that office since 1999, and the correct medication didn’t find it’s way to me until 2005.
Doctors don’t want to know what makes us tick anymore than the rest of society does…they don’t have the inclination to discover that qualitiy living can and does exist among those with impairments.
imfunnytoo, ***therapist???
Yes, its late and I’m a bit wacky…but this actually happened.
It’s the early eighties and I’m out for dinner with a longtime aquaintance (none who have ever posted here)
I was twenty one, said aquaintance was a bit older.
Right in the middle of dinner, said aquaintance suddenly grabbed a napkin and wrote a single word upon it:, a well known moniker for the goal of most intimate encounters that starts with “O”
Then, they said… right between the Surf and the Turf of dinner:
“Have you ever had an” and then thrust the napkin with the ****** word written on it right in front of my face.
I couldn’t help it. Honestly. The words kinda leaped out before I even had a chance to think…
Rather loudly too.
“Alone, or with somebody?”
So much for whispered, albeit supportive discussion of how to attain that goal.
Midlife And Treachery 
