badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

Grumpy and scared; teaching epiphanies

I'm irritable, frustrated, and feeling scared of this injection. The doctor did talk like I would leap up and be healed. Online sources, reputable ones, seem less convinced, and warn that there will be a few days of increased pain before the steroids kick in for real. I'm scared of the procedure and I'm scared of the aftermath. "Increased pain" can mean anything from achiness to not being able to walk for days more and so I worry I won't be able to sit up or hobble and I might have to take pain meds. That's not really all that scary but it makes my heart sink.

Plus a general freakazoidal feeling from constantly battling the thought of OMG AN INJECTION INTO MY SPINE.

Though the affected joint is in mid-back, the main horrible pain is in my tailbone just to the right. I'm so very tired of this pain. It would be refreshing to hurt somewhere ELSE.

Meanwhile, grading in-class group project on "Hungry for a Month" and really enjoying it.

Today's class rocked! I was so happy and proud of my students. We hit a groove today. Tons of people talked in class. I felt they approached the complicated exercise with confidence. My working at giving them very clear instructions paid off too. The subject was interesting to them. They seemed to "get it" and in their groups wrote busily and with purpose.

I sat there correcting their revised "Works Cited" pages and thinking that every time they have done very well, it's when I've taught well. Every time they've seemed confused and unable to do an assignment, it's because I haven't taught well. I have hit upon "the groove" at times only because of flexibility and experimentation and listening to them. To the teachers who feel bitter and that their students suck, I would say not that the teacher sucks but that they haven't figured out the way to teach those students yet and they should experiment with many techniques.

No matter what grades they end up with I have a strong feeling of trust that they learned some useful things. The guy who writes confused blather still does, but it's more organized confused blather and rather than failing he will make a C+ on the exam. I think we'll practice this same exercise with different source material two more times. With this magic technique at their fingertips, they'll be ready for English 1B.

Technorati Tags: composition, pain, teaching

So I feel like telling a story

In the bath just now I was lying there scrobbling blue stuff into my dandruffy scalp as I thought about relationships and teaching composition. The skills of my students and where I have failed to bring them up to speed; the times that I went out with someone and realized oh fuck it was a bad idea. I realized most of my knowledge of the basics of what I have not but might should have taught, I learned in early high school. My teacher was a hardassed tightlipped reasonably intelligent person. She explained very clearly about grammar, clauses, compound and complex sentences, essay structure; that sort of thing. I had read a lot of it in my parents' 3-volume set of little grammar books - Elements of Style, Strunk & White, and one other book - but never got it in class. This teacher had a ton of information and conveyed it with maximum efficiency. I enjoyed that! This train of thought led me to consider how I could have done a quick grammar review at the beginning of the semester. Would that have helped? I'm not sure. It might have helped two people and lost me the attention and respect of five others. And frankly I felt that oh for fuck's sake that's why I'm telling y'all to go to the writing lab or for tutoring, and to read specific pages in the textbook. So I didn't! Thus missing a chance to pass on very solid knowledge they are missing and may never get. The comma splices, people! I do it on purpose! I know when not to do it in a formal situation! They don't!

A couple of years later I ended up going out with her son, who was in his freshman year at college. I was going out with his friend Kane in a casual way and realized I could potentially really like him because he was really really nerdy, smart, fun, intellectually competitive in a pleasant way, liked books and science, and good in bed; but he was a bit nuts when it came down to it and was doing things like flying on small airplanes across the border to bring back mass quantities of mescaline and weird designer drugs to R1ce and who also was not "into having a relationship" and so I backed away slowly from Kane after writing a lot of bad poetry and then, at a party, met his friend, who hit on me... well... why not? So I went out with this dude Radeck, who was charmingly starry eyed and into me and seemed smart and liked to talk about physics. What did I know? And he was off at college so I only really dated him like 4 times. He gave me his letter jacket, I wore it, it kind of helped like armor because I was really sick of getting flak for being a slut at that point, so for a couple of months I was known to Have a Boyfriend and people in high school left me alone. It was a nice thought that I would get to college and there might be an exciting romantic affair where I would get up to all sorts of No Good and in my mind there was ... I dunno... some wonderland of learning and creativity and collaboration and there would be some mate or mates (I was proclaiming allegiance to Free Love, though momentarily pausing on my quest to sleep with the entire math club) who would be doing Bohemian Things with me. And I liked Radeck's co-op which was indeed a giant collective of pretentious arty freakish students. Oh, a side note that my first high school boyfriend, way before this, was very fabulous in so many ways. He was nerdy. He was doofusy. He could quote Monty Python at length. He danced the pogo. He lusted after me with white-hot burning passion. He was genius-like in a way that I was not; a mathy, ordered way. Yet he was also capable of great silliness and gave a great massage. All perfect qualities! But we got to a point where at 15 he was droning on about marrying me and in his mind this would happen immediately after high school when he would go work as a shoe salesman at Brillobrook Mall while I had babies and cooked him macaroni casseroles. Hell no. I recall explaining to him that my vision of life included going to big cities, reading a lot, being gay as hell, taking some drugs maybe, and having a million lovers while writing poetry, going to Nicaragua or somewhere to join a revolutionary group, and sure as fuck not having any babies anytime soon because it would interfere with my Life Experiences. He could not deal with this. I am thankful for my fairy godmother or whatever 70s zeitgeist infected my brain early enough to save me from the horrid fate that could have sucked me dry. So you see why I had to ditch him. Also, he was jealous and began to threaten to shoot himself. OUT DEMON OUT - what can I say. It was Texas.

BACK to Radeck the "college boyfriend" who moved home for the summer. Fascinatingly he told me horrible stories about his parents (you will recall that his mom was my English teacher and was a good one) and how they would take him out back and beat him with a two by four. I have forgotten the other details but the 2 x 4 sticks with me; the other things were all standard Texas hick-ass Christian Dare to Discipline things that sounded like horrible child abuse but were considered fairly normal there. And then. Oh dear! There was a terrible Incident where we were having sex or something in the back of his falling-apart orange chevy mustang in a cul-de-sac out back of some under-construction subdivision. And as we gazed romantically up at the stars through the back window and hoped that Odgen (local police officer) would not drive up and shine his flashlight at us to check if I was being raped or not, I remarked something about stars and how they move around and how nifty it would be to sleep outside and watch them rotate all night, and that it would be majestic and one could imagine one was navigating across the ocean with fabulous navigational knowledge. He remarked back something that destroyed our nascent relationship and I don't remember how he put it but basically it was that the stars twinkle because of interstellar dust. I was like WHAT dude what the fuck? The stars are twinkly-looking because of the atmosphere of the Earth! And he argued back and forth with me citing completely stupid "physics" and total bullshit about "dark matter" saying that he KNEW because he was a physics and astronomy major, until I wanted to spit. Hello asshole, I have not read World and Discover and Scientific American (all the way up to where it gets equationy) and swooned over Carl Sagan and read all the most sciencey science fiction for my whole life so that you could snow me with your ignorant claptrap about relativity and dark matter! No way could he be my soulmate lover and go through life doing cool fantastic things if he was that fucking dumb! The atmosphere, jerkass! Turbulence! In! The!

It was very disappointing and plus I had just had sex with him so it was also embarrassing to think I had had terrible judgement.

So fast forward through the summer where I did manage to have some fun with other people but he remained sort of nominally my boyfriend though I backed off and did a lot of fast talk about my philosophy of being good friends and lord knows whatall else. I continued to sleep with him sometimes (why?! it must have been good sex?) And then in college rather horribly he began seriously dealing acid and took WAY too much acid himself and went completely nuts. I watched him have a bad trip (with Kane, his friend who I had originally been sleeping with) and helped him out of it and put him to bed (And then as you can imagine, had better things to do with Kane, who was hot and flashing me a sort of knowing sardonic smile; the night was young. We ditched our tripping, passed out friend and went off to flounce around town in the beautiful night and then had great sex while on mescaline. Yes, I can feel you reading this and feeling sorry for Radeck for taking up with a sleazeball like me; recall I was only 16 please; though I'm still that way.) So anyway the upshot of it is I had to keep telling Radeck, while he went completely scarily insane over a period of a few months, that I was not his girlfriend anymore to the point where I refused to speak with him and then moved and stopped answering the phone. Meanwhile, 80 other things were going on (including my girlfriend being stabbed with a butcher knife by her other girlfriend) and I fell madly in love. Then was sort of living with this other dude (not the one I was in love with) in my new coop because I felt safe sleeping in his room because I was afraid of Radeck. Then one morning bright and early before class I went to my actual room (out in an annex, isolated) to change clothes and Radeck was there having broken in and waiting for me... insanely... He refused to leave. I fled... And I went inside the main house and called his parents, my former English teacher and her husband. They were both on the phone. I explained briefly, leaving out the drugs and sex, but putting in the part about how Radeck thought he was the Messiah and I was his destined bride, and asked them to come get their son and sort of rescue him if they could. Their response was so amazing. The mom talked for a while about how I was a bright young thing and how disappointing Radeck was and illustrated it with long stories about how disappointing he was when he had had Every Opportunity. The dad just sighed after this diatribe and I can totally hear his voice in my head even now (or... well... earlier, when I was in the bathtub shampooing my hair and also vaguely re-reading "Dragonriders of Pern", and if you don't believe I can do all three things at once, a) read pern books b) wash my hair c) reminisce complicatedly, then you're wrong) as he sighed and said "Well, that's that. I guess we're going to have to have him committed." As if his longstanding suspicion had been confirmed; he had been a good father best he knew how, his son had not turned out well despite his efforts with the 2 x 4 and his wife's with the difference between complex and compound sentences; now his son had turned out crazy and would have to be committed to a mental institution; the end.

It was so creepy and wrong and I felt sorry for the guy. Through the years in Austin that I continued being scared of Radeck and still today I am sometimes haunted by the way his parents treated him. I know he is the sort of person who might very easily have murdered me, though. That was the last time I went out with anyone who was scary like that. After that I think my "scary" detector was finely tuned.

Then I thought about Raquel some more and why I loved her so much and just pondered it as I rinsed my hair. She was wild and unlimited and uncategorizable! We ran around actually doing all sorts of odd things and art projects and performancey things! She puzzled and scared me in a good way. She was sad and wouldn't talk about it! She was sort of weird and robotic! She'd look at me in that way that chicks do when they are trying to make you kiss them, until I kissed her - and then she'd look smug. Her vintage hats, her polka dot dresses... She tasted like garlic... Her pensive moody gaze made my heart flop around madly! Her laughter that sounds like crying. Her cruel, snobbish streak and curt impatience reminded me of my grandmother - in a good way. She was everything interesting and outrageous and her art was good; lively, morbid, energetic, not like anyone else's. When she was in the room, everyone else turned invisible. She read me Georges Bataille in bed and we were partners in crime pouncing on nerdy slightly nebbishy guys and tying them up with our bathrobe sashes! I'll always love her. This is completely true as of course whump and skarat know very well.

My point was something about teaching and my childhood ideals about love and relationships and how I like them to have both sanity and shared creative expression. Lost it somewhere along the way. (The point, not my ideals.) You do see I hope with some amusement that my criteria for going out with boys has not changed much. I am writing this to Iris because I haven't written her enough letters lately and because she said my blogging had become dull and less wild, implying that because I have a job or am too influenced by people reading my blog that it's impossible to say anything juicy. But also to feel better and more myself by writing globs and globs of stuff and a little to show away for xyzzy who will enjoy the parenthetical structures and funny parts. Also for anyone who wants a sort of roadmap of what qualities I tend to like in people and what scares me away. This post might not count for Iris since it's about the past, but she is good at extrapolation. If only she would start blogging again with some insane stories of being exactly my sort of wild girl in 1969 or whenever it was probably wearing platform gogo boots and a swirly pyschedelic minidress, or so I like to imagine.

Overheard, in the living room, in a couch cave

Direct quote from the next room where Moomin and his friend Thom have all the couch cushions off and iceberg pillows.

This is our polar realm. The water is 1 billion degrees cold. So stay out of it. This is a polar stingray, an ANTARCTIC stingray. Those old newfangled legends say they can't live there, BUT THEY CAN. We make the room dark so our customers will know how dark it is in the polar winter.

When it's one billion degrees cold I cease to worry so much about the stingrays.

The two of them come up with endless nerdy sounding scientific zoo talk. I love overhearing it!

Playing Talisman

playing talisman
Originally uploaded by Liz.

Dinner at Minnie's... saw her baby room which is looking excellent. I liked the black crib and light sage-green walls. Moomin had a cool grownup feeling as he played a board game at the table with everyone.

He's really opening up more to relatives, friends, random other new grownups, and even other kids. I'm really glad to see it. Other people might not see the difference but Rook and I do. He will come up spontaneously and say "Want to hear about this book?" and he also will go explore a house or a room. It's nice to see!

whatever that chocolate stuff on the ice cream was, i want more of it!

I feel suddenly desperate to hang with minnie before there is a baby. But also, can't wait for the baby. I will maul it and be its auntie! I'll buy it weird stuff! I will call it "it" as with all babies until it shows signs of sentient being and is less blob-like!

Just now Moomin asked if he and his friend could go next door and play in Nukie's front yard. Obviously a normal thing for a 7 year old kid to do but I'm trying to convey that it is a huge milestone for him and that such things did not occur to him as possible or desirable.

I hurt a lot and need a nap but also want to work on some things while Moomin is happy and busy with his friend.

Lately I contemplate friendship and love and relationships and I try to sort out where my attention and my emotions are. Very tangled. I like where I'm at in some ways. I really really really like all my lovers and wish I could see more of all of them. For one thing I super love other people and appreciate them and appreciate feeling loved. For another I love to have fun (duh) and to have a zillion exciting flirty lovers who are also fast friends. And yet I still miss what I had or thought we had (me and c.) and I just keep wondering about that, what was that to me and why so rare-feeling and what just happened and why? IN other words, still processing. What is the difference? Why should there be one? Is it a kind of dumb illusion? Was that thing, whatever it is, the problem in the first place and only in my head? What is love? I want to go around asking everyone What is this? What are we? What are we doing? Why? Does it matter? Does it need to be defined? Am I fucking something up? Why am I lying here in bed feeling like this? What is/was going on with me? Oh, hell.

Weird surfing video

"Riding Giants" v. strange, full of jaw dropping moments of stunning cluelessness, colonialist weirdness, bad metaphors, wondering why the fuck, and yet fascinating, the knowledge in my body what its like to rush down a wave or the uncertainty before you take it or pull back or knowing you're going to wipe out and can't do anything about it, just get as much control as you can & point forward before you crash down with the wave on top. So though I ride a 5 or 6 foot wave the videos make my body have intense memories as I see these people on 50 foot waves.

A good day today, moments of exhaustion, but I laid down & then was fine again for a while. Gina came over and we hot tubbed. Moomin took to her amazingly. He explained Captain Underpants to her a bit.

Tonight has been bad with white-hot stabs in the base of my spine so that in the middle of sentences I can't really talk anymore and have to wrench my mind back to words. So that means crutches tonight. I avoided taking any pain drugs.

In the middle of all this I had an infection of some kind in my finger. It looks to be something right at the edge of my fingernail but it made the whole fingertip swell up. It kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally last night it got to where I couldn't ignore the pain of typing. So I alternated reading, typing, surfing some blogs, and ice pack on finger. I have an amazing capacity to ignore that sort of thing. This morning finally pus started oozing out from the edge of my fingernail while I was smearing antibiotic ointment on it. And then more and more kept coming out. It was incredibly disgusting! I squeezed a bunch out though I know that's the wrong thing to do, but it was such a relief to have it less swollen.

My incredibly tough beautiful vertebral discs

Fantabulous news - my discs are fine. The MRI shows massive swelling in the facet joint between the 4th and 5th lumbar vertebrae and around the two roots of the nerves (forgot their names) that then join to make up the sciatic nerve. The fluid is trapped in the joint because of the swelling. The same thing is true to a much lesser extent on the other side.

The orthopedist said that an injection of cortisone into the joint will make the swelling go down with amazing quickness and within 48-72 hours I will be hopping about good as new and it will be like it never happened and my nerve will function again, undamaged! No more pain, also, no more leg-collapsing! And my career as a ballet dancer, figure skater, and marathon runner can continue!

Unlike if it were actually a torn disc in which case it would be a hideous months-long deal with multiple injections and continuing pain and disability with recovery in a time and galaxy far far away.

It was interesting to see the MRIs. He showed me the normal discs, and the normal joints in which there are some gray blobs that are cartilage and stuff, and then the joint where on the right side there are gray blobs and giant white-hot looking extra bad evil mean yucky blobs that are the fluid and swelling.

It is nice to have a doctor point to a scientific looking chart that has obvious empirical evidence not dependent on some one moving my legs into various positions and waiting for me to say OW and start crying. (As we also did. When I reach OW I tend to try to wrestle the doctor's hand away while with my other hand grabbing the table white-knuckle style and yelling OW and then I start crying and demand a pause in the body-part-moving around diagnostic thing.)

It is even nicer to know that this may very well be finite! Over! Soon! Not something I have to adapt to for more weeks or months! Fixable!

I wish they could do it right now and I didn't have to wait a week. Also I wish someone had referred me immediately to this doctor, think of the pain and horribleness I could have avoided!

Pushing myself to activity

I dealt with yesterday's bad feelings and frustration by doing extra rounds of physical therapy exercises. I also did countless laps of slow careful walking around the front and back yards. I said I felt bad and Xyzzy entertained me on the phone with very silly stories about kosher and non-kosher swans and amazingly stupid jokes like "what is a specimen?"***

The laps hurt and I couldn't tell if it was an okay hurt or a bad, going-to-hurt-me-more hurt, but I decided I didn't care. I think it was successful, because I stayed off the crutches completely all evening! Just now I went to the cafe and walked in a reasonably normal manner, maybe halting and uncertain but not limping too much. At this point my leg muscles are kind of fucked up and I have to think about "how to walk normally". Ep suggested the warm pool in Polo Alto! I forgot that existed and so now I'm resolving to check that out today!

I can bend slightly but I feel very cautious about that. It hurts sharply if I sit up at too much of an angle or bend over. Squatting and picking stuff up, I still need to hold onto things to get back up (same with standing up from chairs.)

So, progress. I think yesterday's awful feelings were mostly because I am at a cusp of getting BETTER. I must not freak out if I need the chair in the next few weeks.

Goal, no matter how I feel, get up every half hour and walk around the room without any cane or crutches even if I have to walk slowly and it hurts. Keep conscious of stomach muscles at all times. PHys therapy exercises at least 3 times a day but ideally every 2-3 hours.

Right on, Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert talking about the advice people gave him not to go to some film festival because he has health problems and basically because his jaw is messed up from surgery:

We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my festival.

Awesome, right on!!!

I also like how he talks frankly about his pain and varying ability to walk and sit up.

"Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick. I wouldn’t miss the festival for anything!"

I so agree! Go to your festival, dude!

A nice green mohawk would shut up your critics. Why not, at this point? Haven't you always wanted to? Come on!

Technorati Tags: disability, righton

So frustrated and tired of this

Screw this... I'm going to try to pretend for the rest of tonight that nothing is wrong and operate accordingly. I'm going to walk on this fucking leg and not use the crutches and try to take reasonably normal steps. If it hurts it hurts. At this point everything hurts so what do I have to lose. I'll keep my stomach muscles straight and I'll avoid bending over and will keep doing the chair-to-standing transfer carefully.

A nifty assignment idea

Here's what I'm assigning my class today:

http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/

Assignment:

READ Evan's blog posts for the month of November. Just the blog posts - you don't have to read the comments. Most of the blog posts are short.

MARK two passages in the posts (printing out the ones you mark) or in the comments below. Mark one passage that contains an idea you like, find interesting, or agree with. Then mark one passage that you don't like, disagree with, or find offensive or annoying. Be prepared to talk in class about your reasons for choosing those passages.

I put together about a page's worth of comments, some praising the experiment and its humility and thoughtfulness, some pointing out that as a society we aren't doing men a favor by not teaching them to cook, some talking about how the vast majority of the world lives on way less than a dollar a day, some posts talking about how offensive it is to assume that poor people eat ramen and rice every day, or how offensive it is to think you can understand actual hunger and povery by doing an experiment like this.

In class I will have them all go around and explain the passages they marked. Then I'll ask them to write a short paragraph. Oh the challenge! One sentence that explains the project and refers to it. Indirect citation! Another that lays out what a commenter said. Another that explains a different comment. And then a final sentence for the student to say what he or she thinks.

My thesis advisor was a scary expert on composition teaching and he used to give us these mind-cracking exercises like "summarize this entire horrible literary theory article in one sentence"... He was also big on the "mark a sentence and explain it" technique, which I thought worked very well as a warmup.

This is going to be a good one!!!

Technorati Tags: composition, teaching

The Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes

I'm reading Rook's little collection of Korean history books and am so blown away. I want to know all about King Chu'ngson's Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes, in 1308, and later in the 1400s the Precious Mirror for Succeeding Reigns, the Calculation of the Motions of the Seven Celestial Determinants, and Records on Gunpowder Weaponry. But then! The 17th century Shirhak movement of "Practical Learning" really had it going on. Topical Discourses, Record of Concerns for the Underprivileged by Yi Ik, Yu So-won's "Idle Jotting", all written for reform, improvement, even revolution. A clean break with tradition, The king could not exist with out the people... and the Northern Learning faction who wrote travel books Hong TaeYong with Pekin Diary, Pak Chi Won, Jehol Diary. Pak Che-ga, Discourses on NOrthern Learning. Studies on HIstorical Geography of Korea, Ecological Guide to Korea (still before 1650 here) Studies on Routes and Roads, Studies on Mountains and Rivers, Map of Korea. Chong Yak-yong 1(1762-1830) sounded quite cool; Admonitions on Governing the People; Treatise on Farmland; Design for Good Government; Toward a new jurisprudence, Studies on our Land; Catalog of Fishes of the Chasan Island, Comprehensive Treatise on Smallpox. And the fiction! 14th century, New Stories of the Golden Turtle, Dream of Cloud Nind (1689) by Kim Man-jung; Tale of Hong Kil-tong - social injustice exposed. Tale of Yangban - ridicule. Tale of C'unhyang and so many more. Historical novels - The War Diary of 1592.

Wish I could read them all.... Probably none of them are translated.... it's torture!

I would very much like to read the catalogue of fishes!

Technorati Tags: books, translation

What happened with plagiarism in my class

I kept my direct responses in email and in class very neutral.

Then we did an exercise.

I talked about paraphrasing, summarizing, and indirectly citing, and said what I wanted was for everyone to learn a particular form of writing a sentence, paying special attention to punctuation marks, like so:

According to X, because of Y, Z (X 637).

For example:

According to William Broyles, the U.S. should reinstate the draft because it would fairly distribute the burden of military service (Broyles 637).

Or optionally, for variety's sake:

According to X, Z, because Y (X 637).

We took the essay they'd read for homework (in theory - though most had not read it). In groups of 2-4 people they tried to come up with one sentence modeled on the formula above - one sentence that would sum up the article's main point!

I think only one group of 7 did a reasonable job of this. The other groups mostly took an impressive sounding phrase (word for word) from the end of the essay (or the beginning) and stuck it after the "According to Broyles" bit of the sentence - with or without quotes.

So that showed me VERY clearly that most of the class, in fact I think all of them but two or three, did not understand how to talk about something that someone else has talked about. They didn't get how to paraphrase (though we had practiced it a bit) or how to cite or what plagiarism was.

I gave for a humorous example a fake lecture from my mom to me on how I should dress and how I shouldn't and on the subject of my hair (a bit unfair to my mom who really does not care all that much anymore, most of the time, except on alternate Tuesdays). and then, if they were to describe that lecture to someone else who wasn't there, and assuming the relevant information was on page 417, they would not say,

According to Badgerbag's mom, you should dress like a grownup and your hair is idiotic (Badgerbag's mom 417).

nor

According to Badgerbag's mom, " you should dress like a grownup and your hair is idiotic" (Badgerbag's mom 417).

but rather

According to Badgerbag's mom, professional women nearing age 40 should wear nice office lady clothes from the mall, and they should not have silly hair, because that would be appropriate for their age and social class (Badgerbag's mom 417).

From this exercise I conclude the two students were not plagiarizing consciously - they really did not understand the basic idea. I suddenly get that from all our work in class, they now get how to talk in their own voice about their own opinions.... but doing this, I have to teach with examples and practice!

Technorati Tags: composition, teaching

Giant bummer from grading hell

I was just all excitedly writing a student about the nice quality of her thought and organization and analysis and even venturing into career advice and reassessing my general impression of her... like "you might want to rethink your goal of being a kindergarten teacher and consider a career in biology since the topic inspires you..." and then thought "Hmmm" and alas the most casual of googlings shows me that at best her paper is a pastiche of direct giant liftings from various sources like this and at worst it might be a vague stab at a rewrite of something from exampleessays.com. SAD.

I still like to think (without signing up for the plagiarism-busting sites) that she just thinks that's how you do a paper and you put the ideas together from other people DESPITE MY GIANT WARNINGS OF AND EXplanations of plagiarism. I did them at the beginning of the semester, but obviously needed to do them again before this research paper.

Sadly I also think she will not be the only one in this batch of papers!!!

Technorati Tags: academia, composition, teaching

Explaining things

Showed Wikipedia to a fairly patient but non-loving-computers D. and I edited her page a little bit. (Want to help??) I need to clean it up and source things and add some more notes I've got on my hard drive. Need sources! Need to make proper references!

Need to write real article on C. Slater!

Moomin liked talking with her about books and made up a squirrel superhero while nestling with me on the couch. He and Rook played Talisman.

We talked about books and poetry and then bitched a while about our vertebrae.

"Bye, have fun on your date, Don't do anything that hurts! I mean, that hurts bad. Uh, I mean, the bad kind of hurt. I mean, the bad bad kind of actual hurting. That hurts your neck. Oh! Nevermind!"

My back really hurts nastily today. It sucked. I think maybe the severe cramps made it all worse and vice versa. I had trouble sitting up for any length of time.

It was perturbing to hear that Wolfie (who had nasty back and mobility problems when i did too in the 90s and still does - i run into her every once in a while with a giant walking stick and enormous snaky green dreadlocks) finally had a real mri and 6 of her vertebrae or discs or something were crushed. all those years she was diagnosed with bogus crazy woman "syndromes" like "somatoform disorder" (which means basically "it's all in your head") and really all the time half her spine was degenerating. fuckers. i hate this country where if you have no insurance you are utterly fucked. and beautiful people like joi endure years of pointless physical suffering with no real help. and the insulting "non diagnosis" on top of it.

Anyway. Harrumph.

Mmmm, much better

Well a lot of cuddling and massaging and petting and listening and flirting and laptop-passing-back-and-forth and romantic compliments about how I am mesmerizingly wonderful and fancy chocolate truffles painted with gold glitter later, I feel much, much better about life.

Two steps forward, n steps back

I felt really great this morning, Tom did a great massage, I was walking well! Did 2 hours of PT which was partly good and part torture. Was strapped into a rack for mechanical traction. Did a billion exercises. Horrible electrodes again (I hate them!) I was left exhausted. Lunch with Jo. Collapse. I tried to work a bit. Signed Moomin up for more weeks of camp. Everything is strangely frustrating. Tomorrow I'll take a fresh start and try to get back into work for real and just knock things off my todo list and ignore the strategy stuff that is insanely frustrating. I haven't done or learned enough. Or I'm just missing something.

I did laundry today, picked up Moomin, and made him some food. I think the hill at his school killed my disc or whatever it is. Now I'm in a lot of pain. I should have called them and asked them to send him out. Then, I realized the car seat wasn't installed and so drove him home gingerly and illegally. Need someone to clean out my car and put the carseat back in. Can I possibly fuck up on ALL FRONTS... that is how it feels right now. On top of all that I am having a NEGATIVE ATTITUDE so am double triple damned in my own eyes.

This morning I was walking so well that the whole thing seemed imaginary. But no. Because it hurts like hell again this afternoon... Now I'm in tears again... frustration and pain and exhaustion. All I did was walk up a hill and down again - with crutches - and bend over a few times. I did some bending down to pick things up, mostly squatting, and walking without crutches, and stood up from chairs without heaving myself out with my arms because it felt like maybe I could manage. I can't yet. I can't feed myself, Moomin, and do something as simple as a couple of loads of laundry. yet. Well, fuck.

Driving and sitting up were not so bad but clearly: no hills, and no picking stuff up from the floor.

The instant I feel even close to okay again I want to pretend nothing was ever wrong and go right back to my normal level of activity. It's really hard not to do that! I feel like a horrible malingerer if I feel "mostly okay" but then lie in bed. Also, as I've mentioned, it's boring.

hell and twitchiness

My whole back is in one giant weird cramp. I think from whatever was going on with the electrodes at physical therapy. Arrrgh!

Despite that, I'm walking really well around the house. I'm not sure how to test walking distance. Maybe laps up and down the driveway without crutches, gradually increasing, until I have the confidence to walk further afield? I don't know whether I can rely on my leg not to collapse.

Even if I keep improving will I be confident enough to teach w/out a chair, or travel without one next month?

Oh - in good news - my new passport got here with amazing speed.

Can you tell I'm bored with lying in bed? At least being up, there's distraction from pain! Maybe it's time to take a muscle relaxant and watch those surfing documentaries.

A healthy dose of pissed off

Oh just what I need, to hear the VT shooter was a stalker and that Nikki Giovanni kicked him out of her class in 2005 for being insane-o, taking photos and writing obscene violent crap *about his classmates*. Yeah he sounds all around nuts. But it just disturbs and pisses me off (though doesn't at ALL surprise me) that the guy was a known, creepy, stalking, sexually harassing misogynist who made everyone uncomfortable. (upskirting classmates under the desk, and the stalking reported to police) We have so much conditioning to accept abusive behavior from men... BAH. It sounds like people tried hard to get the guy help. Referring him to counseling, he was hospitalized, he was kicked out of class.

it's horribly sad.

It was certainly creepy today in class to talk about it with students, I know we were all imagining "what if". Me and some of the guys debated whether we think we would have charged, or laid down and pretended to be dead already, or what. I am generally in favor of charging straight forward. Never mind maneuvers, go straight at em.

Ants in my pants

The physical therapist commented I'm doing better - definitely true! I'm stronger at the exercises and can bend over much further & move around more easily.

The person who did the ultrasound and TENS electrodes today put them right smack on the most painful spot at the base of my spine. It feels very strange. 20 minutes later I can still feel the tingly prickly ant-crawling feeling at the base of my spine. It's not horrible, but it feels like being jabbed with tiny needles. Will it go away.... was it a bad idea to put the electric things there? Plus, the basic pain. Plus the feeling that comes and goes that's like a horse kicked me in the tailbone.

Rook's working from home today and is baking cookies for about the 5th time in the last few weeks. Maybe he's picked up my habit of baking for stress relief.

Physical therapy again tomorrow morning.

I am missing the 2nd day of Web2open, sadly. After teaching this morning (SO hard to get up and make myself do it) I came home and collapsed into bed and fell asleep. It seemed better to stay home, rest, and then go in for extra PT. Rook is happier with me that I not push myself too much since I only really got up from bed on Saturday night.

prudence! bah!

So the conference was fun yesterday. I wasn't exactly in top form. After an hour or two sitting up I'm exhausted. I could lie down on the floor and recharge and perk up for a while longer... and managed to sort of sound mostly coherent for our talk... but, well, I'm usually a much better speaker. It was fun anyway and I hope had stimulating ideas. Afterwards, went to Citizen Cupcake, then to the Varnish party (enough imprudence for the next several weeks; cold; exhausting; had a drink; sudden overwhelmingness of enormous crowd of very tall people. Bright spots were talking with Obi and with the super fun awesome wiki guy from Utah, convivial gossip with Scott B, seeing MJ. It was strange to see xyzzy as he's been away for weeks and seemed slightly unreal, so it was nice to look at him across the room and feel the same funny tenative bubble of happiness. We sat in the car and gazed at each other with glasses off saying extravagantly sappy things.

I fell asleep this afternoon, half-asleep, lightly dreaming, and woke up feeling even more unreal. Everything about my life looked surreal. Am I really disabled again or did I dream it? Sense of extreme unreality, *and i wheeled all over town and knew how to do it*, "crippled girl in the big city", wtf wtf, there I am right back where I used to be zooming around and then collapsing, the macho feel of the rims under my leather gloves, the little happy surge of going down a hill, the painful jolt of going up a curb and having to lean over to keep balance though it hurts to bend forward. The horribly familiar need to lift myself up for a minute to relieve the pain, especially in the car. Am I really this person? And I have this life? This partner and kid? These friends? And I've done all these things and know all this stuff? Also, am I really this person who has been writing an enormously detailed gazillion-word internet diary and who is moderately well known in various circles for various reasons? And have I really had all these affairs and am having this one now? It appears so. What a strange dream!

In the MRI tube the other day, white and flashing and knocking and with glowing futuristic light strips, coffiny, jeffries tube or photon torpedo-chambery, I had a very horrible moment of thinking "ugh, someday I'll just die and they'll be sliding my body into some kind of giant crematory furnace thing and zzt, this body will be gone. Could be any time." And what a mess I would leave behind me. I felt a very very strong panicky urge to clean up my life. To do things like go through old papers and get rid of them; file things; maybe ditch old journals I would not really want to leave behind, as I'm old enough now to understand why people burn their juvenalia.

Bored with myself, impatient, I just want to be better and productive and feel good again. (Instead of gritty and determined).

hideous nightmare

god i just woke up in a sweat. i had a nasty nightmare. i was at a gas station and the gas was leaking everywhere out of the hose and just gallons of it were going all over. Then driving along there were all these police cars and weird stuff happening and big garage doors opening with ruined cars coming out. They were burned and rusted out and being hauled to a scrap heap.

Then I was playing a board game with Moomin and some people and i accidentally won almost all the game pieces and was trying to sneak them over into his pile but it was too late and I was ashamed it was like I had been trying to beat my own kid in this game and he felt bad... but it was an accident...

Then I was a a doctor's office and the doctor was writing up the report of everything that had happened with my back and I could see the paper, "Patient appears to enjoy medical attention ... is convinced that back hurts... noncompliant...can walk... false conviction must use assistive devices" and more. Then she kept asking questions about if I felt anxious or upset. "Of course I do, my back hurts, and it's hard to sit up or walk... let me explain how it is... they did an MRI, right next door, you could look at the results" and she'd write more stuff down! Nurses kept coming in. They were all sewing their own furry suits for the office musical. I realized they started out across the room and were then subtly manipulating me by all coming over to act friendlier and friendlier. It was a psychological test and also was as if I was either dangerous or in hysterics and they had to try to make me feel "safe" and among friends. Another nurse came in with an injection. 'I don't want an injection... I don't need anything... You can't just inject me with stuff. What is it? " They wouldn't answer. Finally, "This will help you feel more relaxed...it will help with your anxiety" "No, i don't want it, and you can't force me..." It was very scary. I wasn't sure if I could physically get away. Then in desperation I explained again and put all the power I could find in persuading them of what had happened and what I was experiencing. I explained I could walk some but it fluctuated... They began to believe me, what a relief

But then my friend D. walked in and took me aside a bit. "everything's okay so don't worry, but i need to tell you what happened..." but she looked incredibly concerned and I was sure for a minute that Moomin or Rook was dead. Then I realized suddenly I'd left Moomin at home alone in the house. "He's very upset and angry but he's okay... he didn't know what to do so he called his doctor." I was sick with regret and anger at myself thinking that because Moomin is so quiet in the house, i forgot him and went off to my doctor appointment thinking that he was at his school day care. The thought of him alone and freaking out and crying and angry! and it was my fault entirely. I couldn't bear it! I began to wonder if I *was* having some "problems" indeed and the doctor and nurses were right. I knew that because I had been a terrible mom they were not going to believe me (as they were starting to) about my back. And that child protective services was going to come take me away to some kind of hospital jail. Rook would be furious with me and so disappointed. There was no way around it. I had completely fucked up... D. and I were still whispering as I was trying to hide the situation from the nurses and doctor.

Imagine my happiness when I woke up and it wasn't real!

a few times in the night i woke up and the thought hit me that I had just been wheeling all over town like it was normal. the reality shift was too much for me at those moments.

Technorati Tags: anxieties, dreams

Waiting for my MRI

I had doubts about chair vs. crutches for going in for my MRI. The chair was a good decision - I never would have made it through the whole hospital on the crutches. The radiology intake process was about half an hour and then someone walked down with me (attempting to grab chair and push without consent) to the basement where I filled out some more forms. After waiting a while I asked to lie down. The front desk person, maybe a tech or a nurse, then became SUPER SUPER nice, stuck me on a gurney, gave me a warm blanket and some magazines, and took off my shoes (!) Really, what a relief to lie down. Profuse thanks to her!

At some point a Mrs. Cramello was scooted in and parked next to me. She was extremely anxious, complainy, and out of it, worried about how she'd breathe in the MRI machine since she couldn't have her oxygen tank. Alas, no one helped her onto a soothing gurney with warm blankets. I struck up a conversation, figuring I owed the nurses, and pitying a fellow sufferer. "Honey, what happened?"I give you some remembered excerpts from the rambling, fascinating monologue of Mrs. Cramello:

I just woke up and my neck was like this. It hurts like hell. I have a compromised immune system and so I stay home. I take care of my lungs. I haven't been outta my house for THREE MONTHS. I stay out of the germs and the cold air. Now I'm here where there's all the supergerms! Goes to show you. My neck just hurts. I have a staple where they took out my colon cancer. I have narcolepsy. I think I'll be claustrophobic. I take 2.5 grams of Valium every morning, have for years. Years! What about my oxygen? Can't they give me something? I might have a panic attack. They gave me Ambien upstairs, and Ativan.

"Don't worry Mrs. Cramello, the machine isn't that scary, it doesn't hurt, you can pretend you're an astronaut going to Mars. That's what I do. It totally makes it less boring. It's very futuristic in there." (That did not help, and unfortunately increased her anxiety.)

Nurse, entering room: Mrs. Cramello? I have an injection that will help your claustrophobia. ***injects mass quantities of Ativan***

Other nurse: That should do it.

Mrs. Cramello: I feel the same. I don't feel anything.

First nurse (with evident relish) : Oh, you will.

20 minutes later:

Mrs. Cramello: I *****LOVE***** narcolepsy! Okay! I'm ready!

Nurse: That must be inconvenient not to be able to drive, gosh!

Mrs. Cramello: Oh, I drive very well!

Nurse: *smothering a giggle* Really! With narcolepsy! That's a challenge.

One of the tech dudes wheeling the stoned-to-the-9th-chakra old lady into the MRI tube gave her a very beautiful guided visualization. "Picture yourself in a sunny meadow, the gentle breeze, you hear the cool stream rippling by, and little crickets...."

Anyway!

After that I felt like a model patient despite having once MOVED during a 4-minute knocking and buzzing. MRI machines make the most amazing noises.

One of the nurses "helped me find the front lobby" and as I suspected she just really needed a break and wanted to see the sun and fresh air. They had 4 emergency room cases this afternoon! I've never seen a nurse that wanted a smoke so bad. "Ambien, Ativan, Valium, and more Ativan! Jesus!" "Well, it can be... hard not to judge people's, um, inability to cope with life, she must really need it." "Yeah I guess so."

I can get the wheelchair out of my trunk, but I can't put it back in. Luckily, sitting on the edge of my open trunk just sorta looking at the wheelchair seems to bring helpers. I'm pretty lucky that way. When I'm old and rambly I hope that I manage to trick nurses into taking me seriously, when it comes down to it Mrs. Carmello probably needed a warm blanket WAY worse than I did. Poor thing.

Question about a certain kind of reversal story

So, thinking of books like Grendel. Wide Sargasso Sea, various fairy-tale rewrites, Gail Carson Levine's stuff; Wicked, Godslayer... What other examples can you think of that rewrite the story from the point of view of either a very minor character or the villain? What stories earlier than 20th century?

Technorati Tags: books

Fabulous progress

Whatever else happens today, I've just had a morning of walking around very freely and it felt great. Just being able to walk around the house!

Made my own breakfast, sat up and ate it, cleaned up my bedside table, made coffee. I helped Moomin find stuff for a present for Peanut. Need scissors! Need tape! Markers! And, thanks to mobility and also to Minnie's organizing of the art supplies, I can find them.

What these people need

You know the upcoming Wiscon panel, "What these people need is a honky"?

Tom Cruise is the Last Samurai. Kevin Costner wins the heart of American Indians with his wolf dancing. Orlando Bloom, in Kingdom of Heaven, goes from medieval England to Jerusalem to teach the Arabs how to sink wells and transport water. Etc. Is there anything that can be done about this plague of Orientalist white-guy Mary Sue-ism?

Another for the list, though this is more a "rescue and free the people" scenario than a "watch the honky do the other culture better than they do it themselves" situation. Take a look at Daine in "Emperor Mage", in the chapter "Daine Loses Her Temper". The southern empire has slaves, and some of the slaves are a pygmy tribal race called the Banjiku who have special "wild magic" power with animals. They have some super wise knowledge about what the gods intended, including that they were meant to be slaves. Anyway, in this chapter near the end of the book...

"Tano --- I have a message for you, from the first badger. The male badger god. He said to tell the Banjiku that Lushagui never meant for you to be slaves."
The black man frowned. "Never?" Daine shook her head. Tano thought this over, pulling thoughtfully on his lower lip. "We must talk about this, the Banjiku. Talk comes later. I go for prince now --- you wait."

It made me giggle pretty hard. Do you think she planted the first seeds of freedom into their unquestioning minds? Go white girl, go white girl!

Levels of uncertainty, journal of aches and pains

I had less pain today, more like 6-7. The only really bad part was driving. There was no bad episode of pain.

There were a lot of moments of not being in pain, but instead the tingling or burning and my leg going suddenly weak and collapsing like a piece of flimsy plastic. I keep trying to figure out patterns, but it doesn't have any logic. Pain is boring and exhausting and frustrating, but the floobly zombie leg is UPSETTING.

Listened in on work phone meetings and then talked more work stuff but did not really feel while I was producing anything. I'll work in the morning. The problem is I want to be working, I don't want to be left out, I want to prove I can do something, and also it's a good distraction when I manage to get into it. And when I don't I feel disappointed in myself, plus embarrassed, it's just not good. Why can't I draw a line of some sort! Arrrgh!

Rook understands completely about my not quitting the teaching and carrying on. He's very staunch and honorable that way. So, he's going to drive me on Monday and I'll see how it goes.

I have been thinking of my ex and how he would lurch around (as I had been doing for months, on and off) in complete denial. Barely able to fling himself forward, his knee swollen to 2x normal size, his ankle all fucked up, and in a bit of a sweat, he'd offer to carry something and say with a straight face, "What? It's not like I'm crippled." Then he'd try to do some normal activity like *go to work* or enter a drugstore to buy something, drag himself home and sort of fall over, stop communicating, and stay in his bathrobe for a week, unshaven, going between bed and hunched-over-computer. I understood, but got so mad at him! Like, dude, go to the doctor already! It's hard not to be like that, at times. I'm doing a pretty good job.

Moomin liked playing in the wheelchair and with my Robot Arm. Rook took him to the zoo and they stayed out for dinner. While I'm lonely, it is also sometimes a relief to be alone because then I can cry without being embarrassed (or in the case of Moomin, lame redirection and trying to hide it). So, because I'm so upset, it is sometimes a strain to be around people.

However, today:

I can reach into the fridge now to the bottom shelf for the first time in two weeks,

I walked to the mailbox without crutches and back,

I put together the wheelchair without help,

And every time I wanted to get up and get something, I felt like I *could* (though I didn't, out of prudence)

when I used the crutches I was still putting a lot of weight on my leg and was moving it normally instead of dragging it,

My other knee hurts less today (yay steroids!)

I did a ton of physical therapy, almost constantly, and can feel that it's doing some good, so I can actually tell that I have abdominal muscles, and my right ileotibial band is being much more cooperative and less painful,

So that was all good progress.

It's so, so great to notice some basic need or desire and then just do it. Like, I want some more water, or oops I forgot my book in the other room, or brushing my teeth more, or putting my own clothes in the hamper after I take them off. Zen dismissal of desires is not for me.

Even with all that and my general optimistic outlook, I still spent a fair amount of time moody, upset, either crying or trying not to cry, reproaching or exhorting myself or reassuring myself, and feeling very lonely & perturbed. It isn't even a layer of upset under a layer of cheer. It's all mixed up in tangles.

Technorati Tags: daily life, disability, optimism, pain

Freewheeling!

The wheelchair is here and it fits and it's lovely and glorious. I'm SO relieved! Now I can do anything.

I got the grabber too. So while I was assembling the chair, sitting out at the patio table, I dropped a bolt, and I dropped one of the footrests, and a tire fell over and HAHAHA I could pick them right up without giraffing and groaning painfully because -- there was my grabber. That ruled!

Ph33R my robot arm!

It's not the same one I ordered off Amazon, oddly. It's flimsier. Huh, whatever, I need it.

I need a seat cushion too, gel is nice but I think foam would be fine. Must get to the rehab store tomorrow. I could drive there right now but ... well.. pain... Maybe I could order one online, and just use a pillow for now, I won't be in it very long at a time.

Spinning down the driveway light as a fucking bird! I'm so happy! Backing up the hill, decent tires, not to heavy, reasonable pivoting! Yeah I can go anywhere now! Screw all my fears and stuff, give me some independence. Though I will be quick to ask for a push if I need one.

Don't bump the chair by the way, it drives me nuts... It's weird how people do it without realizing it's like they just banged into me, in fact, they just did.

Also, it's very strange who will grab your handlebars and move you around, without asking or even having made eye contact, people who would not think to *pick me up and move me* physically. When that used to happen to me I learned a lot about how to establish boundaries and let people know what not to do. (Aside from the moments of just snapping "Don't touch my chair dammit.") Really what are they thinking!

The doctor today was like "Damn girl your disk is probably GONE." Okay fine. Whatever! Sucks! She favors the injecting steroids into an epidural, and the not staying in bed, and more physical therapy, and gave me a referral to a back/spine orthopedist and an MRI on Monday. Depending on what they see in the MRI ... errrgh well she described the epidural process. It sounds like they used to just kind of stick the needle in and shoot your spinal column up with Stuff. Now they do it under some anesthesia with a CT scan going so they can see better. Scary sounding. Also, they do it 2-3 times but it has a chance of working super well even on the first try.

As I said, whatever, it looks like I will go up and down a bit with mobility and pain, but it will pass, and till then I do physical therapy like a mad dog, and I get around walking if I can and with the chair if I go out anywhere Big enough to where I'm not sure how long I can be on my feet, or where there is a significant car ride. At good times in the day I'm walking pretty well, but it doesn't last long. So maybe the "needs crutches" time as well as "need pain med" time will be pushed out further and further.

After any length of time in the car my leg just sort of collapses, but after a few minutes it recovers. This used to be true for me even up till 2003, on long car trips.

I was able to work almost normal hours yesterday, today a bust but I will try to catch up tomorrow.

Well, what a funny mood, I'm hurting, but I feel pretty optimistic.

Technorati Tags: disability, optimism

Good site on herniated discs

The Mayo Clinic site on herniated discs is good, and this personal story sounds awfully familiar. From this and a bunch of other things on the net, I'm kinda thinking the epidural steroid injection would be a good thing to try next.

But first I think maybe a back specialist - someone who is more comfortable than my gp in doing a diagnosis without an MRI, because it sounds like the MRI isn't all that necessary for diagnosis - only really useful if you want surgery which I most emphatically do NOT. Also, if anyone's going to inject steroids into my fucking spinal column I want it to be a back-injecting expert. My physical therapist said the epidural can be helpful but it lays you up for a few days extra. (Plus it sounds very scary.)

The exercises I'm getting are all about "dynamic lumbar stabilization". So after this whole thing resolves I must, must, must have regular back-strengthening exercise!! Not just walking! I think swimming or in the summer/fall, surfing, once a week would be a good goal.

Medline on herniated discs - spine.org on epidural injections - MOre from spine.org - jama info on herniated discs.

Feeling hopeful on steroids

I feel pretty decent today! Leg more like tingly and wobbly, but not so much pain! I can walk around a bit without crutches, better than yesterday, way better. And I sat up, had pancakes at the cafe, (gingerly, leaning back in chair not forward over table, dripping syrup on my shirt) and went to physical therapy. An hour of down time, stretching, heating pad and then I sat up and worked a bit, and felt human.

Maybe this is the steroids kicking in.

I still can't bend over. I went to try to get something off the floor and it was like when giraffes bend over to drink. I braced myself in 3 places, splayed out giraffe-style, reached delicately forward with a giraffe-hand, and with great care, attempted to bridge infinity by bending my knees.

It's very hard to get up and down from chairs. Hurts! I fall in, I heave myself out with arm power, gripping for dear life.

Last night was seriously the dark night of the fucking soul with the pain. So I'm extra happy to be reprieved today! So far!

The physical therapist was happy that my exercises are better, leg a bit more stable.

Caution! Do not make assumptions! Do not overdo it! Go back to bed! Don't get too cocky! Steroids create exclamation points! Plus, I can breathe out of my nose and my little-bit-of-constant-asthma is totally gone so I'm *high on oxygen*.

**********
Oh well, serious pain started around 3:30 or 4. To bed. Up to eat pho ga. Then, just ow. Had to drag my leg again. Muscle spasms so far up my back I couldn't take a deep breath. Hard to be that way in front of C. Also, if you can't take a deep breath, it's a bad idea to cry. Muscle relaxants taken at 8:30. It was a nice day while it lasted.

The Phoenix Guards, and helpful things to do for invalids

Wow, I really really enjoyed The Phoenix Guards - so perfect! So gloriously pompous and silly and Dumas-y! Homage and parody... must have ben awfully fun to write. Three Musketeers, but satisfyingly with women in it, and not just plot-device women but actually integrated-into-the-story-women. By page 10 Tazendra was playing poker and duelling with a cardsharp on Main Street. The unlikely friends met, had a coach ride full of intrigue, joined the Musketeers, more duels & intrigues, even more satisfying descriptions of outfits and swords. I loved the funny dithering conversations. A party of adventurers, easily a role-playing game in episodes! Did... they weren't human, right? The humans were the Easterners and the various characters were sort of dragony? That's what I gathered. Anyway, there were women everywhere, at all levels of power and plot and narrative importance, even their housekeeper was awesome because she slacked off and had a personality, no one was made rapeable in the vile way that I hate in books, no one simpered or was perky or plucky...

A particularly good sentence:

Lord Adron, in between eating and thinking, which activities he was, in any case, accustomed to perform together, told the host and anyone who would listen of the recent exploits of his travelling companions, which caused Aerich to shrug, Pel to smile, Khaavren to blush, Kathana to consider more closely her food, Uttrik to look nervous, Tazendra to look haughty, and Mica to positively glow.

Nice because of the wordy pomposity but also the way the characters' reactions are neatly, tersely laid out; they're differentiated from each other and their personalities further illustrated and cemented.

It was nice to read this as a palate-clearing antidote after this grotesque, pretentious, dull book.

Yeah I'm cranky from pain, so sue me.

Need more Brust books... need to read Immortals series which I've been saving for next episode of being stuck in bed, which would be now.

Helpful things to do for a person sick or in pain in bed:

- dinner on a tray with perks, condiments, salt, all the things one might get up to get one's self if one could get up without thinking about it
- just be around, and check in every half hour to offer fetching/carrying assistance, a few minutes every half hour or even every hour is very reassuring
- water refills, juice etc
- remove old dishes, trash, straighten bedside clutter, create easy to reach space for what's needed
- pick things up off the floor
- straighten blankets, fix pillows, difficult to do for yourself with mobility problems or weakness from being sick
- gentle petting, sympathy, shoulder to cry on
- small self-care things, qtips, fingernail clippers, lotion, lip balm, hair clips, face wipes, icy hot. Heating pad!
- is the room smelly or stuffy... if so fix this... air it out, scoop catbox, offer nice smelling lotion
- for fever, bowl of ice water plus a facecloth. pain/heat relief, passes the time, gives control to the patient
- luxury things, small pleasure to outweigh pain;
- for extreme difficulty a child's sippy cup is great. otherwise, straws.
- listen to complaining; articulating the pain or difficulty might give the complainer a bit of control or a handle on it
- offer distractions, light conversation, books, frivolity
- offer change of clothes or sweater or remove the 4 extra sweaters that have piled up in the bed
- offer inclusion in socialness or quiet, be aware of offering choice. If you come in my room talking loudly and chewing with your mouth open, I am trapped, miserable, and can't escape, and am reluctant to boot you out because probably I need your help and can't afford to piss you off. I can't take chaos or jostling, but don't like to feel isolated or excluded either, I like to know what's happening. (Very young children are cheering in like, 2 minute doses, but difficult, because they don't have any boundaries, and I can't enforce my boundaries easily while lying in bed. )
- flowers are cheering, you might think not, but they are
- for me, with the back problem, I need help with socks/shoes sometimes
- make snoring-ass husband sleep in other room please 8-) (sparked by current events taking place to me, sounds like a convention of asthmatic walruses going uphill)
- an office chair with wheels makes a good makeshift room-to-room wheelchair
- ultimate luxury, someone to set up a fainting platform outside in the sun, with blanket and pillows and water and the necessities of civilized bedridden life, and then checkin and offer to move back after a while.
- Damn I wish I had some grab bars in the bathroom, you have no idea how hard it is to get in the tub especially when i need it most.

Those are mine, but I would guess they are nearly universal. The person is trapped, or has to make a hard decision of where to put very limited getting-up resources, where getting to the toilet independently is a high priority. So, think about how many times you have a small need, and can act swiftly and unthinkingly to satisfy it. Project that desire (frustrated) into days in bed.

When I feel a bit better, like this morning, the uncluttering and food things are my first priority. So, as soon as I can, I tend to do these things for myself, because then they help later when I fall over again.

No one is going to get all those things, all the time! I tried to put them in order of importance. It really sucks to have to ask for every tiny thing. So, this is a guide if you want to be extra thoughtful for someone.

When I visit someone in the hospital I do the bedside declutter, dish removal, drink refresh, and reorg. You basically have to do it a few times a day.

That's my guide of ways to help people who are stuck and help them feel less helpless and beholden. Read Cherry Ames and Pollyanna for further instruction in the ways of nursing. It would be amusing if one's bedside nurse would solve a mystery with their 6 attractive nursing school roommates while dating a handsome though surly doctor AND a devil-may-care airline pilot, and would tell one all about it. Calves'-foot-jelly plays a mysterious role in these proceedings (see Pollyanna). Also, I hear that alps and goats, or cute baby animals off the moors brought by wholesome peasant boys with strong Yorkshire accents, are useful. Perhaps someone would bring me some goats or robins or a mysterious key, or at least show up in lederhosen to infuse me with Heidiological and Secret Garden healing rays.

Technorati Tags: books, disability

Still spazzing a bit

Guy on sidewalk today outside of city hall, a sidewalk that was about 3 people wide, walking towards me, then freezes up and goes tharn as I crutch down the sidewalk in his direction, apparently terrifying and unpredictable as a hurtling freight train gone amok. Dude. I am not a hrududu. I'm just a purple haired chick on crutches. You can just keep walking. Nothing bad will happen! Perhaps a robot-aracho-phobia sparked by the long spindly metallic extra legs?

I've seen it before with bicycles and skates and wheelchairs, never before now for crutches. It was kind of funny.

So, I shouldn't have gone out, but it was only 1 errand, five minutes away, with a good parking space... Ugh! That didn't matter! It hurt like hell and now I'm paying for it in extra pain and limping. I thought it could be a test run for what it might be like to drive to class tomorrow.

Noodled around on the web. For a fair bit of money, $225, I could rent a segway for a day including pickup and delivery. I was imagining the different reactions, instead of "OMG what HAPPENED to you!" (tone of shock and horror) it would be all like "OMG you lucky dog and queen of nerds, you have a segway!"

I just called all 30 of my students and told them class is cancelled tomorrow. This *so* doesn't help that I'm missing 2 classes in a row. I feel horrible about it. I haven't been able to work as much as I wanted to, and also missing class, and not being able to do anything or take care of Moomin or the house. It is frustrating as hell and I feel that I am failing everyone and failing in everything. What I'm seeing is that I was already overscheduled, barely hanging on, and therefore there was no room for error. So, that was bad. Rook patted me and tried to point out that I base my whole self esteem and worthiness on my productivity and so I should try not to, and try not to fall apart. I can see this, but it's still very difficult. I will try to make clear to-do lists for myself for the rest of the week -- small, reasonable ones that take into account that I'm having some difficulties with a fairly basic function and it is reasonable to slow way way down until better.

Woke up at 4am, too, worrying endlessly about that one thing I said I'd do, but haven't done, and was setting aside to look at all once, which would be now or a few days ago, and that I need to back out of, because I don't think I can... This all feels like a lesson in failure, and the lesson is hitting my limits and needing to slow down. NOT some mystical thing about stress and the body -- anyone could slip a disk while gardening and moving furniture and not paying attention to posture! But what I said before, "not leaving any room for error" - no leeway in life for anything to go off - no fault tolerance built in. I knew that was true, and would last till the end of May. So, should have been ruthless in protecting some down time for myself and developing backup.

Realized suddenly that my mom-club membership had expired (though I thought I paid it). 5 years in that thing paying their dues and making meals for new moms and people in difficulty, and now the bitches, I can't call in a favor. I could just slap the whole lot of them, all 400+. Mother of God, that pisses me off and seems unfair, somehow. Yet then I think of going on the web site and writing to one of the officers and asking, or worse, signing up again to pay the dues just to ask for a free meal and you know? Fuck it I can order from waiters on wheels! In theory, there is food here. In practice, it hurts to stand up and go cook it. Anyway. WOW it is.

MRI discussed yet again but still not scheduled. My oomph and forcefulness is not at its oomphiest. I keep using it up. It's unclear, still, than an MRI will really change anything in treatment.

Oh, but, good news, I have prednisone tonight so maybe that'll help in a big way.

*endless drivel and dithering about my back* *sorry*

Technorati Tags: anxieties, daily life, disability, pain

Spazzes and Eclipses

Well this cheers me up considerably as I contemplate possible futures. My old chair was a red titanium frame Quickie sports chair with a camber of 2, and quick release wheels. It was quite battered (since I got it from a giant-muscled sporty dude who had used it for years) but extremely cool. Looks like the Colours line is *even cooler*. I like the Boing and the SpaZz! models just from looking. Plus they have seatbacks with FLAMES and porny tattooed girls draped all over (not included with wheelchair, but I can easily supply my own.) Fucking hello, they have a chick in a collar and latex dress in the "Spazz!" pages in their pdf catalog. Note that the Zephyr is 14.5 pounds! whoa. If they had an xframe zephyr-like chair, I would be on the phone right now ordering one.

There's an xframe (folding) Quickie2, sorta fugly and 27 lbs, on craigslist right now. Hmmmm.... Also, this: quickie 2, pink, $299.

"Frivolity in the face of adversity" -- an excellent motto for me to go by, thanks Iris!

Home of the fighting beavers

I thought this admonition from my friend J. was pretty funny:

well, don't work too much, because the *other* thing you do when you're sick is work like a beaver as if people were just looking for an excuse to set you adrift on an ice-floe

So true. Don't worry J. I have been napping, popping muscle relaxants, reading bad novels, and doing physical therapy every 2 hours. I'm walking with an almost normal gait today - at least around the house - no crutches - waiting for a callback from my doctor to get me some prednisone -

Tomorrow will be tough, though. Rook is going to Pasadena. I have to drop Moomin off at "spring camp" (fancy name for interim daycare) between 7 and 7:30, then drive to San Jose. By leaving early I hope to miss the bad traffic and make the drive easier on my back and leg. Then, somehow find the disabled parking. Crutches might be necessary after the long car ride. Then get into my classroom (I finally got a key, but it doesn't WORK. Will call department office to make someone unlock the room for me ahead of time.) Teach (from a rolly office chair). Drive back (hahahaha, that's the really scary part ) Collapse. Massage??? Physical therapy at 4. (Get someone to pick up Moomin from "camp"?) Lori and Guy coming over and bringing dinner, yay!

I don't want to skip out on the class at the last minute, but I wish I'd cancelled it last week. I think I'm learning how to say no. Sort of.

Thursday: collapse? Go to work? Depending on whether there's prednisone or not and whether Wednesday damaged me.

Speaking of privilege, that massage was awesome

So Tom just gave me a 2-hour massage and did something bizarre to the front of my hipbones. The... ileacus... and the psoas, and the quadratus lumborum, and the ileotemporal band (which I agree is a great name for a rock group) and finally... stabbingly and with yelling agony but one could tell the productive kind... through all sorts of layers of ouch to the errant piriformis.

I had no idea the whole enormous muscle coating the insides of my hipbones were hellishly aflame with evil. He went for them right away, and I had a "no absolutely not, that just isn't comfortable" reaction, it felt so awful. "Besides, that's not where I hurt." Huh. Yes, it was where I hurt. Weird! And now I can move my leg all the way forward, instead of lurching with my entire right side stiff to drag the leg. He also said that it seems like a piriformis or muscle thing and the whole thing could be muscle spasms or at least the truly awful part, and it isn't necessarily a slipped disk.

The not true part was that he would massage me till I was done with it. I could have gone 4 hours easy.

I'm in way less pain, and I can move my leg!

Hmmm... piriformis syndrome and other sciatica information here...nervemed.com. I know, not the best of sources! Here, there's some talk of toes and feet and pain and low back pain. My back hurts, AND my butt hurts, and all my toes hurt. Huh. Whatever.

I'm working on rotating my leg outwards while doing the different physical therapy exercises. That seems like it's stretching the right spot. Pre-massage I couldn't tell that was true - everything was too tight and painful to move.

So even if it is a herniated disk, there's clearly a whole other level of evil that the massage helped.

Okay, here's a better source: the merck manual on piriformis syndrome.

Leader of feminist army

A brief blog entry on Maryam Rajavi:

Resistance leader Rajavi was radicalized in the early 70s while getting her degree at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. After the shah's supporters murdered two of her sisters, she went from engineering geek to guerrilla by joining the People’s Mojahedin of Iran, a group which advocated for a secular government. In 1993, she became Iran's president-in-exile when the National Council of Resistance, the Iranian Resistance’s Parliament, elected her to become Iran’s future leader if the mullahs are ever overthrown.

Read the whole article from the source, Iran Focus...

Women make up 30 per cent of the NLA, but 70 per cent of the officers are female. The British Army has just one female brigadier, while in the Navy there are four female captains.

Rajavi has long encouraged female participation in the army. She argues that, as misogyny is the mainstay of the Iranian government, who better to strike at it than women? Her female recruits, many of whom had been tortured and imprisoned in Iran, train alongside men in all aspects of frontline battle, including hand-to-hand combat and armoured vehicle operation. With the backing of wealthy Iranian exiles, they are preparing for the day when the order comes to march east over the frontier to liberate their land from the mullahs.

Wow, that's pretty intense. Laleh Tarighi's story is inspiring. Someone who left a life of privilege to go and fight for women's freedom.

Staying in bed, lots of visitors

Staying in bed is helping my back. I'm being strict about not walking around the house. Yesterday about half that walking was without crutches. Shuffling works best. I may get up only to stretch gently, or wash, or use the bathroom, or get food, and the getting-food part should be planned and efficient.

All the visits and nice chocolate and books and company and cleaning and massages and emails bolstered me up amazingly! Thank you! I'm a very lucky person. And you are all the nicest of friends. I found myself starting to say things yesterday, like on the phone to Debbie, saying "Oh, probably don't come down after all, I'm really not worth visiting, I'm no fun when I'm like this...." What a thing to say! I'd never say it about another person who was stuck in bed, sick, or injured. I've done some caring for other people, and been glad to do it. But then when it's me, I flip out.

"Oh, don't go visit *her*, she's whiny, sad, toxic, she doesn't deserve friends! No one should be nice to her! Don't go to any effort! She's a grown woman, she can take care of herself! If you let her cry on you, there'll be no end to it. It'll just encourage her. She'll just lie there on the couch, complaining, really no fun!"

Come on now, who would say that!

Apparently, me! About myself! What an asshole!

It was something I remember saying to C. when we first started going out and were politely trying to warn each other of our faults. One of mine was "I get really weird about being sick."

My main feelings on needing help, or even looking disabled or in difficulty and having anyone mention it, are a) shame b) fear that other people will be angry with me c) deep conviction that I'm not worthy or deserving of help.

Interesting isn't it? (considering self as far-distant science project) I've learned something. And I'll try to quit doing that, and be sensible and trusting and ask for help.

T.W. is coming over to give me a fabulous massage. I know it'll be fabulous because at Debbie's party he was giving free chair massages, and without my really having to explain anything, he didn't hurt me (rare, as I'm beyond the princess and the pea with massages.) Anyway, a person who says he knows all about massage for sciatic problems. And he also said "We can do it for as long as it takes." Yes, it's come to this, I'm paying someone to come to my house and rub my ass. For as long as it takes! That's awesome, I hope he has a lot of ass-massaging stamina, because I've never had a massage where it hasn't ended just as I was starting to feel like it was having some kind of effect.

So I have that to look forward to, to break up my day, and then (shudder) physical therapy at 6pm, then Minnie is coming over again which will be amazingly comforting and lovely. Then, surfing documentaries brought over by whump, and go to sleep reading Madeline's phoenix book.

Oh I had a funny phone call exchange with a woman off craigslist as I am trying to hire some extra help. She talked a bunch about what she could do and how much she enjoyed it and I was totally sold and said she should come on by to look at my sad piles of crapola and give me an estimate. Then oh by the way she charges $200 an hour! With a slight discount if you commit to 40 hours! Yeah right, did you mistake me for someone from Polo Alto or Blatherton?! for fuck's sake! "I'm thinking about that and uh, I think uh, you better not come over because um that is out of my price range." "Well I could go down for a special job to $150 an hour." "Um no sorry I really think, you must have a different kind of clientele than me, and, better not." "Well maybe all you need is a special one-time thing, say, one day at $100 an hour." "I really can't do that." "So, it's not the money then? You just don't want to get organized and have a system and you're deciding you don't need that kind of work?" "No, it *is* the money, I can't spend 800 on that... I've done that kind of work for other people and don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you and your successful business, but you're too classy for the likes of me.... Thanks though... I just want a person who will put my stuff away in some logical places for a few afternoons while I'm on crutches." Jeez, lady, way to go with the hard sell!

All the way down to $100 an hour. Teh awesome! I could hire a personal administrative assistant for a month on what I'd pay this person for 2 days. Minnie it looks like I owe you a fuckload of money for putting Moomin's toys away. If you shelve any books for me or tell me to put some papers in my filing cabinet in a systematic way, then you can totally pay off your student loan. McC**t can retroactively pay me a gazillion bucks for having done his wife-work, also. (Extra charge for psychotherapy, fanfic editing, and feminist consulting.) As a note for the future... this service looks pretty cool, it's a worker-owned co-op, for stuff requiring thought like organization or errands, they charge $38 an hour.

I don't get it. Women have MINDS?

I totally want to buy this whole series. Only 89.95!

The Key to Unlocking Women's Minds. Check out the creepy photo close up of the key stuck into this woman's frontal lobes.

Whoa, I just noticed I've read one of these books - "How to be the jerk that women love". It was amazing. Treat the A girls (blond busty cheerleader models0 as if they're B girls, criticize them, make them feel insecure. Treat the B girls like they're A girls, find some mousy nerd and lavish her with compliments. That was the whole secret of the book! Ew!

How to put on your underwear during a sciatica flareup

Things are feeling a bit better. I can hobble around slowly, though it makes the pain worse. I can lift my leg up a lot further, without using my hands to pull it.

For your amusement and edification, a lesson on underwear! It's hard to put on pants and socks and undies when one leg doesn't work very well, and I can't bend over. But I have a million old lady bad-back tricks.

It helps to start with stretchy underwear.

Sit on the edge of the bed.

Drop underwear on the floor, carefully positioned.

Insert non-working leg into place.

With toes of working leg, scooch the underwear up your bad leg to where you can reach it with hands.

Insert good leg. Here's where you need the underwear to be stretchy. This can be a hard trick. Don't fall over!

Voila!

Jeans are harder because they're not stretchy. Skirts are easy, but they kind of suck because they can catch on crutches and hike up. (Oh well.) Socks, well, I struggle there, it's not completely impossible, but it's better to ask for help with the bad-leg sock.

Yesterday was a dark time, and it felt very hard to reach out and ask for help and emotional support, I felt very ashamed and foolish, so thank you to everyone who has been so nice and called or sent sweet emails or is coming over. I need it. It helps me feel more normal and jolts me out of my shame-spiral. People get sick or injured, they go to bed and rest, they get better, it's normal. It's not some kind of massive moral failing. (Yeah, that's where my head goes, weird huh?) It was the hardest thing in the world to ask Rook to come home even though he called me spontaneously to check up and to offer to come back. He took care of Moomin, got us a silly movie (the first Casino Royale - omg the *outfits* and the absolutely ridiculous "plot"!) and brought me things in bed, petted my head, (I think I needed a bit of that all week, and didn't ask) and held my leg up in traction for a bit, which brought me a complete absence of pain and made me cry with relief. Traction! I wish I had a pulley thing in the ceiling and a counterweight.

Also, I took the muscle relaxants again after refusing to take them for a couple of days. I'm doing the physical therapy exercises - over and over. At least once an hour.

We don't have any special easter thing - or spring thing - I had gotten some chocolate eggs weeks ago - When Minnie comes over I think we'll make devilled eggs and hide the chocolate around - or something - I feel sad that it's not more festive for Moomin - but another year. I hobbled outside and cut a small bouquet of garden flowers. Moomin asked Rook "Am I a Christian?" and I answered he could learn about it and make up his mind later. Really, oursin's commenters' holiday suggestions are so much nicer. Discovery Day, with fire and silly cave-person outfits! Big Bang Day! Genocide remembrance day. Antiwar Day. DinoDodo Day (to honor/mourn extinctions).

Other than getting up to cut flowers I will stay in bed. Or maybe I could go outside another time and lie in the sun on my foam cushion - sun would be so cheering - if Rook sets it up for me.

Beautiful in its simplicity

This is one of the most glorious pieces of nonsense I've ever seen!

The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel

The story begins in any of the three dozen taquerias supplying the Bay Area Feeder Network, an expansive spiderweb of tubes running through San Francisco’s Mission district as far south as the “Burrito Bordeaux” region of Palo Alto and Mountain View. Electronic displays in each taqueria light up in real time with orders placed on the East Coast, and within minutes a fresh burrito has been assembled, rolled in foil, marked and dropped down one of the small vertical tubes that rise like organ pipes in restaurant kitchens throughout the city.

A masterpiece of parody! It's so thorough.

Go, worky me!

This morning I gave a stab at doing a little work.
Called my mom.
Made some lists.
Cancelled class on Monday in effect. Emailing my class to go to the library computer lab during our usual class time. JM can't officially sub according to our dept. admin.
Signed up for grocery delivery (sfway for basics) One less errand? Will this actually help? When I worked in 2000-2001, I had webvan, which rocked.
Called/emailed 2 potential temporary housekeepery/cleaning people and left messages.

Resolved

It's all just silly... I'm going to feel fine tomorrow... I've just thrown my back out a little bit and probably by Monday it'll feel better, I'll rest all weekend, and in a week I'll be laughing at myself.

Wise and kind advice

SuperT, who is very wise and kind, came over, brought Hamster to play with Moomin, cleaned up the floor of my room so I can crutch over it, did the laundry, lectured me, made acerbic comments on the amount of bags and books I have, explained the meaning of life and what I should do...

Stay down now so you get better fast, get JM to teach your class if you can, stop worrying, think about the other stuff later, fuck that shit you don't have the energy for that! You're the emotional backbone of the family, you have to take care of yourself! Get Safeway to deliver your groceries! Hire someone, you're making a bunch of money!

She's a massage therapist, and she knows!

My worries right now are over teaching. I'm not sure where to park to be close to my classroom, but even the closest place that I'm vaguely aware of isn't very close, not close enough for me to crutch to. I could do it in a chair and I could rent a chair. I wished for one today. My right leg works on and off and hurts a lot; my left knee is starting to be strained and I'm worried.

I should not have picked up Moomin today, and I shouldn't have gone to the pharmacy. Physical therapy and working were enough (and for both I could park *right* there.) But I wanted to prove to Rook that I could do it and I wanted him to know that I wouldn't be an infinite burden and that I'm getting better and that I'm making the effort to get better and to be competent at life. I didn't want to stress him. That was a mistake. I need better backup.

IN fact, physical therapy was tough. It's good, but brutal and exhausting. They do the hard parts first, and then the nice things like gentle massage, ultrasound, and the weird electrodes and zapping with a million crawly ants. I needed a blood pressure thing from the pharmacy, and a large heating pad. The blood pressure cuff with gauge is for physical therapy: I inflate it, lie with it in the small of my back, and then press down gently with my back using my stomach muscles which I am supposed to be THINKING OF AT ALL TIMES. So, I push down gently but with constant pressure (ha!!!!) keeping the gauge on 40 whatever-it-measures, while I do the brutal, cruel, hurty-ass exercises that make my foot go numb and make me cry. Remember to breathe! Also, remember to stay at 40 whatevers! The dial is soothing. The physical therapist noticed that I disassociate by talking... like, when hurting a lot, I would start babbling about something as intricate as possible. Focusing on the numbers on the dial and the tiny wiggles of the needle is quite helpful!

So my plan for the weekend is to be down. Rook will bring Moomin to Hamster's; someone will bring him back; I'll stay "down" and Moomin can watch tv or whatever; the evening might be a bit challenging. I want Rook to be out and have fun at his game con and not have to deal with me, my care, Moomin's care, or my emotional freakout which he knows all about even if I keep it under wraps and play Brave Crippled Girl.

I am facing up to that I probably have to do web2open in a wheelchair, i think the scary part is not doing it, but on having to decide to do it. because at this point I don't believe i'm better enough by then to walk all the necessary distance. I've gone so quickly from walking miles up and down hills with perfect confidence, now a couple of weeks later, thinking of distance and my ability very differently. That bums me out. But it might have to be. SuperT thinks not, if I take better care now.

I should listen to her and rest a lot this weekend. Also, I should quit worrying and take it as it comes!

Unpride and physical therapy, need help!

Two hour physical therapy session had me crying a couple of times. The electric part was okay but then afterwards I was in a lot of pain (and now) plus some of the exercises. Those exercises, I'm like "okay, okay, okay, doing it, not bad, suspicious, not too bad, feeling uncertain, maybe, doing it, okay, OW OH FUCK OW NO WHY DID I TRY THIS OW OW OW." Plus the basic level of pain and tingling meant that nothing was easy or comfortable to do. For now my homework is to do every full-body or leg-moving motion while thinking about keeping my stomach muscles tight AND breathing.

Meanwhile....If anyone wants to work as my high level domestic servant for a bit, I would desperately appreciate a little organizing and decluttering and picking up of all the things on the floor. Rook is doing housework, dishes, cooking, shopping, kid wrangling and all parent things as well as fetching things for me, commuting an hour to San Jose, and working full time. I would so much rather pay someone... if you know anyone ... I wish my mom was here, but she can't be, and I feel like my friends are already stretched to their limits. And so I would like to pay someone to come and be sort of an organizer, declutterer, picker-upper, tidier, housekeeper for a couple of days. I can't bend over... I can't do the laundry... I *CAN* lie here or sit at the table and do computer stuff, luckily.

Let me know if you want to, or if you know anyone, give them my contact info - lizzard --- at --- bookmaniac.net

The thing is, I know that it sucks to work for someone in their house. I've done it so many times! It can be kind of tense and awkward and there can be boundary issues. I could tell you stories... Oh wait, I have. So, I'm aware of some of those issues and would want to avoid them as much as possible and be super clear.

Pain and pride

I'm in a lot of pain, but I feel really proud of myself for various reasons. I still have the knowledge that I could do better (and I could have done *so* many things better today and in the last few days). But fuck it. I was crippled for years and I fought it and right now I am fighting against being scared and helpless. It's my own head trip, but because I had a hard time in the past and because I get so scared of being really disabled again, it's good to know I can be the crippled girl and still kick ass. So if it gets me again, it won't stop me. I can still think and work and have it (more or less) together. I'm comforted. I also feel a lot of gratitude to various people.

What a nice time today, and tonight, and all the really good conversation, and feeling of cameraderie, and being around people who have a peculiar like-mindedness and approach to ideas. That's amazingly pleasant for me. I also love the general atmosphere of stimulation, idea-sharing...Also, I just plain like other people and often feel proud to know them and really astonished & pleased at how cool they are. My god, people are beautiful! They're full of fizziness! They bubble over with coolness! It's really great!

Next time I feel down I'll just remember that (as I often do, like Coleridge remembering friends, books, and nature).

Now I'm going to lie here with a muscle relaxant and write just a tiny bit more. Do you have any idea how relieved I am to be lying down! *crying* *light meltdown, not to be taken seriously* *the aftermath of being brave and cheerful and focused and effort* A little overemotional from exhaustion perhaps.

I wished for my old wheelchair a hundred times today,

as I was basically forced to use an office chair as a bad one,

and it was scary how my old habits come back. I know how to go through a door on crutches. All the movements are automatic. Turn. Push. Shove. Shoulder through and stick the crutch under the door jamb. Shoulder forward the other way and slip through.

Technorati Tags: body image, disability, pain, personal

Sciatica pwned!

Let me just boast here for a minute that I'm a total stud. Pain and crutches can't keep me the hell down. Of course, it helps to have insurance, money, and someone to drive me around. I lucked out to get my *real* doctor stat, and not the ham-handed Bulgarian who thinks Ibuprofen will give me Reyes Syndrome (??!!) or the crusty-eyed crazy guy who always rants for 10 minutes about the Great Importance of Taking Your Temperature. Neither of them would have done what I wanted without a lot of runaround and weeks of wasted time. No!! Instead, I got my awesome doctor who is a sports medicine person, and so who knows what it means to be injured and yet not want to let it keep you down.

Therefore! I now have awesome physical therapy, Celebrex, some kind of scary muscle relaxant to take at night if I need it. "I don't really like that stuff..." "Girl, you know what happens at night, you're not going to rest until you're crying with pain, that's what I do, so have this at your back." "Okay well give me one I can cut in half because I'm a super lightweight and don't like to be drooling and passing out." I also have a disabled parking placard thanks to her having the form all there and ready, and thanks to Rook hauling ass to pick me up and bring me to the DMV, and thanks to the DMV people letting us slip in 2 minutes before 5pm and not giving us any hassle.

However, the trip to dr. office plus the DMV has me pretty exhausted and I'm already kinda thinking "Huh, a muscle relaxant might not be so bad, even if it's called 'Soma'." But first some ice and heat and Celebrex. It's true that I really really hate that passing-out feeling of my brain not being my own.

She offered to MRI me right away but then we talked a bit, I gave her the history, and she said well then maybe wait a week, if it gets better no need, if it doesn't, then whatever we'd see, we'd still see.

Now, they MRIed it in the past when it was like this and saw nothing, but on the other hand I was at Valley Med and on welfare, so who knows, my whole disk could have been bulging out like a nasty water balloon and they could have missed it in favor of their favorite diagnosis, "crazy lady meds-seeking malingering crack whore." (Nothing against whores; if anyone in pain needs some meds, it would be crazy malingering crack whores; I don't know why it's such a hard thing to help them out with some medical care and pain relief.)

It's so heartening to go to a doctor and get actual help! And with a nice positive attitude too.

Lying in bed is actually the worst thing for me. It's depressing, boring, not really that good for your low back, and it hurts me physically -- I need to keep as active as possible. SO tomorrow into the fray once more.

If I'm not significantly better by next Monday, the hard bit will be getting to southeast San Jose. I think I can do it, especially with the parking thing, but driving that far might be tough.

The doctor properly admired my awesome duct tape crutch pockets, gratifying my need to see myself as a brave resourceful clever person who is not slayed by a stupid leg that acts like a piece of dead meat.

When I can walk fast again and go bounding up stairs and curbs I'm going to be so appreciative!

Technorati Tags: disability, medical, pain, optimism

Best April Fools' Prank, the worst interviewee ever

In this April Fools' prank, my friend Bri dresses in a horrid outfit, douses himself with perfume, practices his interview skills, and gets a job at a high tech startup despite not knowing how to do the job and having the worst social graces ever.

His props included a foot-long deli sandwich with plenty of mustard and a tie printed with the words "I HEART PERTH AMBOY". Most of a bottle of White Diamonds perfume. Tic-Tacs. An horribly "off" stare. Glitter.

"well, he's insane, but he has such good skills -- if you think your group can handle him, I say we hire him", but the fact that I got the job even after saying that I coded robots in HTML, went to Africa to teach robotics in remote villages, or got my programming inspiration from the Terminator movies...

Oh, my god. Severin has often outdone himself in outrageous pranks but this time he had a brilliant accomplice - our friend Bri, an actor & voice actor, blogger, board gamer, geek, and improvisational genius.

I'm dying with impatience to see the video!

I hope this part is included:

As the third intervewer showed me out of the building, he held out his hand for a handshake in the lobby, and I gave him an enveloping hug complete with my head on his shoulder. I don't think he'll ever forget that.

Day of things breaking including the most inconvenient bits

My intermittent computer crashes became worse this weekend. This morning my computer hung and even the clock froze - at 9:27. By 11:30 I was at the Apple Store showing off my frozen computer. (I left it frozen and worked from another computer this morning.) They did some sort of disk first aid program on it - nothing. They had me back up my recently changed files onto a dvd. They ran a hardware check on it and everything passed. Soooo then they declared my computer would have to stay there for indeterminate time and maybe an archive and install or logic board replacement or another HD replacement or lord knows whatall else. "I really don't want to do that. Waaaait a minute... shouldn't we check the log file of crashes?" I didn't remember where that was. (Applications -- Utilities -- Console). They did not really look at it, so I sat there and read through it and then remembered my clock frozen at 9:27. Yes! Bingo! Something nasty happened at 9:27 and it had something to do with /var/vm. "Well, we don't really know what that is, maybe some sort of software problem..." "Okay well it's either your virtual memory OR it could be something to do with my vmware installl, but I doubt it." Blank looks. "Well it must be virtual memory." "Well if it's not from an Official Apple Source...." Oh whatever!

I sat there at their "genius bar", googled and found many pages of people bitching about a sleepimage, and a memory swap, and the swapfile taking a snapshot of your computer pretty much constantly *just in case you lose power and need to reember the state of your system*. Or something. Yeah right, assholes, like I'm worrying about my battery falling out of my computer? OMG! Sounds nice in theory but in practice, this zillion-mb file was being swapped in and out of virtual memory and now that I've DELETED THAT ANNOYING FILE, my computer is nimble, no more weird hangs, delays, spinny thing, etc. I bet you anything that fixes the crashes, because for the last hour my computer has been nice and fast.

*Breathes*

Meanwhile, I felt pretty normal and good last night and even this morning, but as the day progressed I stopped being able to move my leg forwards very well. By a couple of hours ago it was impossible to hide my limp. And getting up out of my car just now, I had that thing (so horribly familiar from past years) of *not being able to get my leg out of the car* so I had to pick up my leg with my hands and haul it up and yank it over, then drop it. My hip is all weird, my leg is painful, not reliable, sort of wobbly -- not mechanically but whatever the nerve is doing, is not reliable at *all*. At Moomin's school (And I was late to pick him up as I completely forgot it was Monday and pickup was mine despite having reminded myself in the morning about it, god, the shame of going into the office there to get him!) At Moomin's school I realized I was going to have to park illegally and hobble in. I considered the cane, which luckily with great wisdom and paranoia I keep in the trunk. Rejected the cane but that might have been pointless and dumb because limping is bad enough. "OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR LEG!!!" "Er. Nothing really, it's an old injury that flares up sometimes." (For this situation, need giant sign to hold up that says "It's probably not MS so would you mind stopping thinking that?") Now I'm on the cane. It hurts a bit less and makes me worry less about FALLING OVER. My leg is dragging like it's attachd to someone else's body.

Luckily I'm a philosopher. This helps with the giant wave of weeping freakout that I could be having at this moment but am managing to remain detached from. A cane is not so bad. It's just embarrassing.

Also I was really proud of not having needed it for years though maybe there were a couple of short intervals... but I didn't count them and so I say no devices since 2001.

Fucking leg... Or back... or sciatic nerve or disk or whatever it is...

It's probably swapping out its virtual memory. Or maybe it's on spring break.

Cane or not? Balance and reliability are important. It does help a bit with pain. It doens't help me move my leg forward, really, which is the hurtiest and hardest part. It is also hard, lying in bed right now, to bend my leg upward so that my knee is bent. *testing* It's hard if I'm lying on my side too.

I can totally handle it, but I'm just a little bit scared and don't want to be (seen as) disabled again.

This morning I walked 2 blocks to the school and didn't think anything of it and it was a lovely sunny day to have a pleasant 2 block stroll. But then I started hurting in the car, and parked near work, and had to go up this huge ramp that was the worst thing ever, and then had to walk more and then walk *more* to the store. You see why the whole thing freaks me out - aside from plain old pain, which is tedious but I can deal -- sudden readjusting of actual mobility really blows.

Better my legs than anything else, really, legs are pointless compared to, say, hands! Legs, fuck off! No, wait, I didn't mean it, I take it back, legs I'll be your best friend if you'll just behave!

*Not freaking out* *saving freakout for later* *working now*

*****
Okay, Rook just persuaded me to call the dr. in the morning. It seems pointless, and I don't want the millionth pointless inconclusive MRI of my life, but on the other hand I could get some good NSAIDS and physical therapy. I vaguely remember some exercises I used to do and the gist of them was to just keep moving around even though it hurts, but not in any weight-bearing, vertebrae-twisting ways. Rook also points out while I have had a million pointless MRIs, only a couple of them were on my low back. Huh. I am unwilling to deal with medical crap unless there is a clear goal or unless I'm desperate with pain.

Technorati Tags: anxieties, disability, pain, whining

Cetacean-Americans unite! or, not

I was going to do a whole goofy blog post about how when I was little I listened to the square flexible vinyl 'Songs of the Humpback Whale' record that came in some 1976-ish issue of National Geographic and how I knew then and there that I was really a whale at heart, and come out as a cetacean furry and make up some horribly juicy stories that would compromise half of San Francisco's bisexual polyamorous internet hipster population, and then bury that story deep within a long rambling paragraph about my garden and cats and what I thought about having for lunch and didn't have and a feminist analysis of the philosophy of compost, The Anatomy of Melancholy, and Anima Poetae, but then didn't because it was not quite silly enough and also could be seen as being mean to furries and that just wouldn't be right; plus the whole cetacean-american furry hoax page idea was going to be me and xyzzy doing it including the most ridiculous podcast video ever and so I didn't want to spoil the possibility (but now am spoiling it anyway) and instead worked all morning in a cosy way halfway with Rook passing urls back and forth and cussing at installer programs; and did other worky but fun stuff for Wiscon in the afternoon that sort of made me scream but was also fun, after which through the chain of gossip or proximity or both I was teased nearly instantly over IM for wanting to sleep with or having had slept with everyone I recommended for panels, which was almost true but only because I have good taste, and anyway it wasn't true; or, well, sort of; read a bunch of blogs for the first time in forever because I've been working; ate a satisfying amount of olive oil sesame biscuits and chocolate, in the bath, reading The Queen's Mirror, a book of fairy tales by German women from the mid 18th century; got derailed completely by looking up books of myth and legend for Squid's daughter Iz and then into a sidetrack of The Voyage of the Argo; read a bunch of stuff online that pissed me off but failed to really work up a head of steam about it probably because I'd already worked 10 hours by accident; arranged play date, did random mom things, found string and scissors, served up food though Rook mostly did it because I kept burning the grilled cheese sandwiches; grocery shopped, had a pleasant mom-gossip session in the sun with Tomas's mom and found he's going to Pole Star, or as Jo calls it, Big Noggin, ensuring happiness of Moomin there as they play explorers and zookeepers with perfect accord and tenderness and perhaps will play at recess even if they aren't in the same homeroom; gardened; realized suddenly that I had been picturing *my* vegetables and herbs and flowers right where my housemate had been picturing *hers* though I thought hers were going in hanging buckets; tried to compromise; felt that it was my space as it's outside my kitchen window and I sit and see it every morning, but maybe that's wrong and I hope we can split it somehow and anyway I don't sit there all the time now that I'm working from an office; compost, worms, digging, sand, trying to be very gentle and work slowly and move a lot because of my back and knees; now festooned with cats, who seem to trade their purr back and forth very efficiently so that only one is purring at any one time, no matter how hard I try to achieve the purr in stereo; thinking about last night's game and the moments that were cool and that clicked though mostly I felt I was vacant-mindedly failing to do any beautiful improvisation and was tongue-tied and panicky. It was an intriguing game that I'd play again, and I think it could do very well for a longer term game, at least 5 or 6 sessions if not longer.

Then I blogged a little bit, was pissed off by the cover of Wired, cheered with enthusiasm and exhaustion for A.'s mockery of it, and finally was slayed utterly by this feminist analysis of Tetris. Back to my German fairy tales which shall drift me to sleep.

Technorati Tags: daily life, humor