Set up your dream disability TV show…
Go to the Disability Rants blog and give some good comments
Arrows from the Inbox
I’ve been getting jabbed right in the inbox about the content and setup and tone, and style and subject matter here lately.
I don’t need to explain why I write the way I do.
But I think I will, just to clairfy a few things.
“Why in the *** do you always sound so self important and arrogant? Don’t you know there are other people out there? The world doesn’t revolve around you!“
My only answer to this is an affirmative with the caveat: Where else do I get to *sound off* arrogantly and with a bit too much self-importance? It’s my blog, aint it?
I’m more and more aware that the world doesn’t revolve around me….
“We don’t need to hear all your sad bellyaching crap. Get over it. Who cares where you came from or if you had a husband.”
I suppose not….there are many perky, cheerful, always looking on the bright side bloggers…Go read ’em. I do.
“You’re making that stuff up.”
*I* *am* *not.* More on this below…
“God, you’re so angry all the time. I’m sick of it.”
You’re not the only one. If people would stop being wrongheaded, I could write about beaches, flowers, puppies, candy, flowers, and funny people.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now, here are a few reasons I write as I do. I do not present them as “correct” or “appropriate” or “right.”
They are simply *my* reasons.
Why I have chosen to make many posts autobiographical…
Offline, strangers who only know me from here in Denver have begun to *question the veracity* of my first 36 years of life back east.
One (former) aquaintance told me how ridiculous it was to think I could have ever been married and that I *made my husband up.* She says I have to provide the marriage license before she’ll believe me. When I dig it out of a box, I plan on photocopying it and sending the copy by certified mail.
The doctors disbelieve both the Hodgkins and the CP because they know that all of my troubles are weight related. Literally. I’ve been told that I don’t really have CP and that I couldn’t possibly look as I look today and have had cancer.
Persons who never knew my family members are shrill in their anger at me, and that they think I ought to be ashamed for reporting my opinions and perceptions of their life, attitudes and behaviors.
In short, this place has to have as part of it’s raison d’etre, a record that *I did not make any of it up.* If I’m too grim and stuck in the past sometimes, I’m *much less so* than ten years ago…but I feel compelled to record these things because gradually, people who weren’t there are, in a sense, *erasing* what came before. This will be here even if my medical records, my family my school records, all dissapear or become unavailable.
If people offline heard the truth and didn’t shove their uninformed desire to disbelieve me…it would be simpler easier…
And the simple fact is that when medical issues come up for me, I sound too “Medical Model of Disability,” for some emailers comfort…
My apologies for that…I’m sure that as medical issues ebb and flow for me I’ll sound less Marcus Welby and more, “Do you realize sir that your *attitude* about my impairments holds me up more than this laundry list of conditions ever could?”
And one annoying part about this blog that I apologize about…I’m just really worn out by working…and so I haven’t been able to put the effort into the long linkfests and serious Googling about impairment issues that I could before….
I still do that when I can…
Now, back to the irregularly scheduled blogginess…
On a beautiful Friday…
I just love the last two posts at The Beauty Offensive
She gives a detailed picture of why understanding impairment is never a static, still, one time thing…and celebrates the moment when some oneclose to her comes to see her in a different way…
Please read and enjoy
‘Touch Screens’, I-Phones, and Every thing old is new again
Back in March 2005 when I was beginning to blog, I went over the ridiculousness of ‘touch’ screen technology.
Apple may have missed that post.
For the MacOPhiles out there, I’m wondering what Apple is planning to do to adapt the much anticipated I-Phone for visually impaired users….who naturally need an alternative way to interface…is there a Jaws adapter built in? or a keyboard attachment with Braille buttons?
Just sayin’
If a dazzling new product raised their stock by 40%, lord knows the money for a work around is available
Does “I” stand for Innovation?
Or some other word…?
How to talk about work without talking
about work…
The comfort is, I know many people, able and not, that have these sorts of gripes…
First, I’m quite grateful to have my job…
Second, it is stressful, but the stress is what I consider to be an acceptable and “common” level of stress.
Third, I’ve got steady, professional co workers. Very little “office drama”
And I’m going to try and explain this without sounding like an egotistical nut….
Between my impairments and the narrow amount of stuff that I’m “good at”
I’m probably going to be permanently irritated for the rest of my life that none of the things I can do really well will actually pay me any money…
and, as I age, I also have fewer things, payable or not, that I’m good at…
I’m “just by the skin of my teeth good enough” at particular things to try and hold this job….that’s a good thing…
The things I *am* good at are just so different…
I put this feeling in a box and don’t let it color my work life if at all possible…
Because of physical issues I have now, that I didn’t have 25 years ago…
They mean that public performance, public instruction or teaching are out as well…
Singing has faded, because it’s tougher at higher altitudes…
And this sounds so much like a whiney-*** b!tch fest,
I’d best just put my back into it, work, collect the paycheck and zip it.
Midlife And Treachery 
