By which I mean: aaaaaaaaaaah I got a trailer for the off-road mobility scooter!!! I will, fairly shortly, be able to take it places outside its own battery range to go on adventures!!! I am VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS but also, and I say this with a great deal of affection for myself, I would really really appreciate it if my hindbrain stopped interpreting bidding on eBay auctions as a Clear And Present Danger & responding appropriately.
NEW WHEELS NEW WHEELS NEW WHEELS
Nov. 20th, 2019 10:03 pmItem the first: NEW WHEELS. By which I mean: the last remaining part I needed showed up in today's post, as a parcel delivery scheduled for a time window conveniently after I got back from the endocrinologist, and so I swapped all the bits around and set up the app and pumped up the tyres and set the wheels charging and adjusted the brakes and then I took them for a spin and... good grief, they took some getting used to. As far as I can tell, they've changed the response curve a lot in a way that makes a lot of sense once you've worked out what's happening, but is like neither manuals nor M15 e-motions, and therefore Confusing, at least if you are a small and easily confused Alex. (Broadly: lower sensitivity and power-assist beneath some threshold of impulse on the wheels; higher sensitivity and power assist above some threshold. This seems to make navigating enclosed environments AND outdoor environments much more seamless, with much less requirement to faff around changing settings, but takes some getting used to.)
Item the second: PAPER READY TO SUBMIT, quoth the primary supervisor. I'm waiting on a last dribble of feedback from another co-author and squashing the urge to further complicate matters in terms of the modelling, but A Day Next Week gets dedicated to Submitting The Thing. I am getting my head back in gear for Project The Third; I am excited about science; it is really nice.
Item the third: I have POSTED my RESPONSE to some WRETCHED PAPERWORK and get to not think about it againat least until I have a court date.
Ytem the fourth: Adam didn't actually prompt me much, but: with Adam's prompting, I finally, this evening, got around to bringing the lemon tree inside (from the sheltered patio) (I really should see about installing a stealth greenhouse on the secret patio) and putting hats & scarves on the fig & the bay. They now loom ghostly in the murk, and I should really stick their Warm Apparel down so it doesn't blow away next time there's a breeze.
Ytem the Fifth: goodness but I am luxuriating in the relief of getting to gently put down some of the spinning plates for a little while.
Item the second: PAPER READY TO SUBMIT, quoth the primary supervisor. I'm waiting on a last dribble of feedback from another co-author and squashing the urge to further complicate matters in terms of the modelling, but A Day Next Week gets dedicated to Submitting The Thing. I am getting my head back in gear for Project The Third; I am excited about science; it is really nice.
Item the third: I have POSTED my RESPONSE to some WRETCHED PAPERWORK and get to not think about it again
Ytem the fourth: Adam didn't actually prompt me much, but: with Adam's prompting, I finally, this evening, got around to bringing the lemon tree inside (from the sheltered patio) (I really should see about installing a stealth greenhouse on the secret patio) and putting hats & scarves on the fig & the bay. They now loom ghostly in the murk, and I should really stick their Warm Apparel down so it doesn't blow away next time there's a breeze.
Ytem the Fifth: goodness but I am luxuriating in the relief of getting to gently put down some of the spinning plates for a little while.
- I am home. In my house. With my plants. (To my mild astonishment I actually Managed the public transport All The Way Back with only intermittent panic, and I only dropped things about twice, and only once in a way that was actually a problem.)
- For bonus points, having dragged myself out of bed and through packing to get the 9.07 bus... and having then been expecting to hang around Redruth interminably until the 12.28 train... I actually arrived in time to get the 10.27! Which was beyond my wildest dreams in terms of getting home at a reasonable hour!
- ... it was a ten-car train, not a twelve-car. Which meant there were no standard-class wheelchair spaces. Which meant I was in first class. Which meant I got plied with free orange juice and sandwiches and cake, and felt mildly guilty, but only mildly.
- NEW ROLLING STOCK I'd not been on the long-distance new(ish) GWR trains before, and they have a fascinating two-stage ramp system. And, much as I might grumble about it in practice, when we got to Plymouth I was moved to the rear set of first class carriages because the accessible loo in the front pair wasn't working -- and this is institutionally A Good to have happened unprompted and unrequested even though I did not, in fact, want to use the loo on the train.
- A valiantly fed the breadpet while I was away. It became happy! It... became Very Happy. It... escaped its container by quite some way. (It is now being turned into two loaves, one of which I will be palming off on the allotment seed swap social tomorrow afternoon if I can bring myself to leave the house again.)
- Having got some bread started upon my return home (lares & penates, honouring thereof, etc) I Left the House again and poked around supermarkets various, where I acquired the ingredients for burritos (having decided I wanted to Make Some and that The Instant Pot Makes Refried Beans Meaningfully Possible) along with Several Small Treats, and only got rained on a little (which is good for my plants so I'm not even complaining that much).
- And then there was a the-new-regional-legendary raid on, so I did my first one... ... and it's 100% of all possible stats and I caught it on my second ball (of twelve) so it... wasn't even hugely stressful??? And that's... This Month's Legendary... Done...?! Hurrah.
- Curled up on sofa with A finished Leverage ate some misery pizza (beans will take tiiiiiiiiiiime) did some talkings.
- Items brought back from the mouldering ancestral pile this trip (for me): a pair of Felco Model 7s (in need of some tuning up); a bonus pair of ratchet anvil secateurs; my favourite of the walking sticks Papa owned, that I'd been keeping down there (he mostly used crook-handled sticks, which don't work well for me); a proper workbench clamp; my grandmother's collection of seeds, including the Ancestral Lovage (which turns out to be from Suttons but I'm not actually complaining); and a venerable train timetable for a friend.
- I have discovered that it is in fact currently possible to buy my preferred form-factor of wok... provided I don't mind getting it shipped from Germany. Which is still better than "none of the shops I have looked in at any point over the past decade have in any sense contained the thing I want", so: tiny celebration, and at some stage I will work out if I actually want to buy one.
... which I initially ordered two months ago, with one round of "getting the wrong parts shipped to the wrong address because my supplier didn't notice they'd been sent the wrong parts by the manufacturer".
Instead, it brought a "you weren't in" text message from DPD, while I was sat on my sofa, accompanied by a photograph of my old front door.
After a certain amount of faff and back-and-forth and a somewhat hysterical meltdown, I pulled myself together (with lots of help from A) and, informed that I could pick my parcel up from 6:30pm, ran a couple of errands in town and then got the bus over to the middle of bloody nowhere, pushed over a bridge across the railway and a major A-road via the bicycle ramp, and via doing a lot of on-road self-propelling through a business estate in the dark (because business estates don't have dropped kerbs, and when they do they're only at one end of a stretch of pavement, and anyway the pavement's probably got too narrow to be usable at least once in between) made it to the DPD depot. (I did not manage to get on the first bus I attempted to board! Because the ramp extended, then retracted, and then the driver told me No Can Do.)
DPD looked suspicious, disappeared off into the back, faffed, eyed my passport very doubtfully (and the parcel similarly doubtfully), and then handed it over.
It was larger than I was expecting.
I was very tired, and very stressed, and very unhappy, and so I took it and Left and eventually made my way back to a bus stop, and ordered a curry, and picked up curry in town while I was changing buses.
And I got home, and I turned on the lights, and I got together the requisite cutlery and crockery, and I put on A Knight's Tale, and I flomped onto the floor and ate dinner while Baby Heath Ledger smiled at me, and after a minute or two I decided I was sufficiently fortified that I'd better open this parcel, then.
... it became rapidly apparent that, rather than wheelchair parts, it contained a Nintendo Switch.
I was absolutely certain that all the DPD notifications had prominently featured the name of my wheelchair dealership. I was absolutely certain that they were, in fact, intending to send me wheelchair parts instead of a Nintendo Switch, because they sent me photos of them to make sure they were the right ones this time.
I looked at the exterior of the box in some trepidation and found, to my perplexity, that in spite of the Lengthy Ordeal of The DPD Depot On A Business Estate At The End Of A Long Dark Lane and the Dubious Examination of my two (two!) pieces of ID... I had been handed a parcel addressed to someone else.
(It was not until A got home ten minutes ago and gently pointed it out to me that I realised that there is, in fact, a second -- contradictory -- address label, which does list me at the old flat. It's upside down relative to the first one. It's obviously new and flimsy. What, I ask you, the fuck. Can we just use Royal Mail.)
Now the really interesting bit, right, is that I need these parts before tomorrow lunchtime, so I can fit them to the chair of the person they belong to, so she can come over at lunchtime and swap back my chair (that she's got on loan) and take away hers in time for Adam to drive my big chair to Belfast on Sunday.
... he is now, additionally, going to be taking me back to the DPD depot first thing tomorrow morning (because it's a half-hour round trip by car, and a two-hour round trip by bus if they work) to Read Them The Riot Act, and desperately hope that they are somehow able to disgorge the wheelchair parts I ordered two months ago from their murky depths.
The final insult is, of course, that the Nintendo Switch actually cost less than the parts I ordered -- and it's not even a Pokemon: Let's Go bundle.
Instead, it brought a "you weren't in" text message from DPD, while I was sat on my sofa, accompanied by a photograph of my old front door.
After a certain amount of faff and back-and-forth and a somewhat hysterical meltdown, I pulled myself together (with lots of help from A) and, informed that I could pick my parcel up from 6:30pm, ran a couple of errands in town and then got the bus over to the middle of bloody nowhere, pushed over a bridge across the railway and a major A-road via the bicycle ramp, and via doing a lot of on-road self-propelling through a business estate in the dark (because business estates don't have dropped kerbs, and when they do they're only at one end of a stretch of pavement, and anyway the pavement's probably got too narrow to be usable at least once in between) made it to the DPD depot. (I did not manage to get on the first bus I attempted to board! Because the ramp extended, then retracted, and then the driver told me No Can Do.)
DPD looked suspicious, disappeared off into the back, faffed, eyed my passport very doubtfully (and the parcel similarly doubtfully), and then handed it over.
It was larger than I was expecting.
I was very tired, and very stressed, and very unhappy, and so I took it and Left and eventually made my way back to a bus stop, and ordered a curry, and picked up curry in town while I was changing buses.
And I got home, and I turned on the lights, and I got together the requisite cutlery and crockery, and I put on A Knight's Tale, and I flomped onto the floor and ate dinner while Baby Heath Ledger smiled at me, and after a minute or two I decided I was sufficiently fortified that I'd better open this parcel, then.
... it became rapidly apparent that, rather than wheelchair parts, it contained a Nintendo Switch.
I was absolutely certain that all the DPD notifications had prominently featured the name of my wheelchair dealership. I was absolutely certain that they were, in fact, intending to send me wheelchair parts instead of a Nintendo Switch, because they sent me photos of them to make sure they were the right ones this time.
I looked at the exterior of the box in some trepidation and found, to my perplexity, that in spite of the Lengthy Ordeal of The DPD Depot On A Business Estate At The End Of A Long Dark Lane and the Dubious Examination of my two (two!) pieces of ID... I had been handed a parcel addressed to someone else.
(It was not until A got home ten minutes ago and gently pointed it out to me that I realised that there is, in fact, a second -- contradictory -- address label, which does list me at the old flat. It's upside down relative to the first one. It's obviously new and flimsy. What, I ask you, the fuck. Can we just use Royal Mail.)
Now the really interesting bit, right, is that I need these parts before tomorrow lunchtime, so I can fit them to the chair of the person they belong to, so she can come over at lunchtime and swap back my chair (that she's got on loan) and take away hers in time for Adam to drive my big chair to Belfast on Sunday.
... he is now, additionally, going to be taking me back to the DPD depot first thing tomorrow morning (because it's a half-hour round trip by car, and a two-hour round trip by bus if they work) to Read Them The Riot Act, and desperately hope that they are somehow able to disgorge the wheelchair parts I ordered two months ago from their murky depths.
The final insult is, of course, that the Nintendo Switch actually cost less than the parts I ordered -- and it's not even a Pokemon: Let's Go bundle.
Miscellany
Jun. 5th, 2018 10:38 am1. Singular they is well-attested, as we know, but I find myself wondering whether the appearance of they with the singular verb form in modern low-prestige grammars ("they was doing...") is part of what drives the prescriptivist sneering, consciously or otherwise.
2. I sincerely hope that today's Strong Female Protagonist is going to get narratively called out for the bullshit it is. I do pretty much trust the creators so my hopes are high, but I am bracing.
3. Body positivity: I keep on being frustrated by mainstream presentation & understanding of it as "ISN'T YOUR BODY GREAT DON'T YOU LOVE IT :D" where "love" means "have unambiguously solely positive feelings about", and I keep wanting to wade in to conversations about same with "okay but this is a ~MISCONCEPTION~ it's actually about COMPASSION and KINDNESS and UNDERSTANDING THAT IT'S DOING ITS BEST and d'you know what all the studies show this actually really helps" but I recognise that wouldn't actually be useful, so, you know, you all get a grumble here instead.
4. How To Tell If You "Need" A Mobility Aid: if, in spite of all the structural and systemic and social barriers, using one (part-time! full-time! whatever!) makes your life easier and more pleasant, you need it. That's genuinely it.
5. I swung by the local cheap gym the other day to scope out their level access or absence thereof; as I was giving up, the person at reception who'd seen me wander past and then back out came out and asked if they could help me. Oh yeah, they said, we can do that, let me just come and open the side door -- obviously we'd need to get a ramp but this is how you'd get in. And, you know, I can't get into reception with level access, but the way it's set up I'd be passing reception at eye-height with whoever's on front desk so could get their attention pretty easily. Anyway, I then e-mailed to say "recently post-op, would like to join up with my partner once I'm cleared to return to exercise BUT I'd need level access as discussed last week, here's some eBay links to examples of the types of ramp you could get"... and a few days later got the response "we've just placed the order, should be arriving in the next few days, please sign up whenever!" So that was vastly easier and more positive than I expected.
6. I appear to want to do more reading about thinking about anger, as an emotion, as it's experienced in my social context and consensus reality. For me it's basically always an expression of being scared, and if I can work out why it usually redirects into a different emotional experience; I'm curious about how other people experience it, so here's a placeholder note about that.
2. I sincerely hope that today's Strong Female Protagonist is going to get narratively called out for the bullshit it is. I do pretty much trust the creators so my hopes are high, but I am bracing.
3. Body positivity: I keep on being frustrated by mainstream presentation & understanding of it as "ISN'T YOUR BODY GREAT DON'T YOU LOVE IT :D" where "love" means "have unambiguously solely positive feelings about", and I keep wanting to wade in to conversations about same with "okay but this is a ~MISCONCEPTION~ it's actually about COMPASSION and KINDNESS and UNDERSTANDING THAT IT'S DOING ITS BEST and d'you know what all the studies show this actually really helps" but I recognise that wouldn't actually be useful, so, you know, you all get a grumble here instead.
4. How To Tell If You "Need" A Mobility Aid: if, in spite of all the structural and systemic and social barriers, using one (part-time! full-time! whatever!) makes your life easier and more pleasant, you need it. That's genuinely it.
5. I swung by the local cheap gym the other day to scope out their level access or absence thereof; as I was giving up, the person at reception who'd seen me wander past and then back out came out and asked if they could help me. Oh yeah, they said, we can do that, let me just come and open the side door -- obviously we'd need to get a ramp but this is how you'd get in. And, you know, I can't get into reception with level access, but the way it's set up I'd be passing reception at eye-height with whoever's on front desk so could get their attention pretty easily. Anyway, I then e-mailed to say "recently post-op, would like to join up with my partner once I'm cleared to return to exercise BUT I'd need level access as discussed last week, here's some eBay links to examples of the types of ramp you could get"... and a few days later got the response "we've just placed the order, should be arriving in the next few days, please sign up whenever!" So that was vastly easier and more positive than I expected.
6. I appear to want to do more reading about thinking about anger, as an emotion, as it's experienced in my social context and consensus reality. For me it's basically always an expression of being scared, and if I can work out why it usually redirects into a different emotional experience; I'm curious about how other people experience it, so here's a placeholder note about that.
A. very kindly indulged me today, to the tune of driving me down to New Malden to pick up a folding ramp for using with the Tramper, which I got on eBay for the princely sum of £83.20 as opposed to its price of £605 ex-VAT new. (Which is most of a week's PIP, but given that this sort of thing is Exactly What It's For I will somehow cope.)
So given that we were in Malden with a car, we headed over to Kew via Richmond Park and a mildly fascinating public house Experience. Whereupon A. accompanied me around the orchid festival, and also Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death. Orchid festival: I was less impressed than I have been in previous years, which might be because I've acclimatised to this specific spectacle or might be because this iteration was in memoriam of the previous organiser. Or because it was hideously crowded and moving around was difficult, WHO KNOWS, but I was excited at A about various Crassula and lithops, and showed him the turtle, and nonetheless I enjoyed a bunch of the flowers.
Life in Death was very much My Kind Of Nonsense; here's TimeOut compiling a bunch of Instagram photos and utterly failing to give image descriptions, and here's House and Garden giving slightly more description. To my intense frustration the path was narrow enough to be strictly single file, so you were forced through at a sufficiently rapid pace to not feel guilty about holding up the people behind you; it was beautiful and intricate and I'd like to go back at a point when there's fewer people and just sit and inhabit it for a bit. I was getting glimpses of things organised by... cultivation? colour? -- but I wasn't managing to put any of it together. Some of the garlands were soliflore; I particularly enjoyed the star anise and the agapanthus for their colours and density, and the enormous structural soliflore garlands for their beautiful architectural use of space. I adored the Short Garlands hung above the path, but kept forgetting to look up. I loved the mixed garlands that evoked the edges of fields in spring.
Highly recommended, price of entry is included in entry to the gardens, if it sounds like your kind of thing and you want to organise a trip with me (before it closes in mid-March...) I'd be happy to take you in for free. Offer is good for up to two people at once.
Also, there was pineapple-and-lemongrass upside-down pandan-coconut cake, and I was very pleased.
(When we got in, A very reasonably curled up on the sofa under a blanket and went thoroughly to sleep, whereupon I periodically patted him gently on the head while getting the vacuuming done. All round excellent day, would recommend.)
So given that we were in Malden with a car, we headed over to Kew via Richmond Park and a mildly fascinating public house Experience. Whereupon A. accompanied me around the orchid festival, and also Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death. Orchid festival: I was less impressed than I have been in previous years, which might be because I've acclimatised to this specific spectacle or might be because this iteration was in memoriam of the previous organiser. Or because it was hideously crowded and moving around was difficult, WHO KNOWS, but I was excited at A about various Crassula and lithops, and showed him the turtle, and nonetheless I enjoyed a bunch of the flowers.
Life in Death was very much My Kind Of Nonsense; here's TimeOut compiling a bunch of Instagram photos and utterly failing to give image descriptions, and here's House and Garden giving slightly more description. To my intense frustration the path was narrow enough to be strictly single file, so you were forced through at a sufficiently rapid pace to not feel guilty about holding up the people behind you; it was beautiful and intricate and I'd like to go back at a point when there's fewer people and just sit and inhabit it for a bit. I was getting glimpses of things organised by... cultivation? colour? -- but I wasn't managing to put any of it together. Some of the garlands were soliflore; I particularly enjoyed the star anise and the agapanthus for their colours and density, and the enormous structural soliflore garlands for their beautiful architectural use of space. I adored the Short Garlands hung above the path, but kept forgetting to look up. I loved the mixed garlands that evoked the edges of fields in spring.
Highly recommended, price of entry is included in entry to the gardens, if it sounds like your kind of thing and you want to organise a trip with me (before it closes in mid-March...) I'd be happy to take you in for free. Offer is good for up to two people at once.
Also, there was pineapple-and-lemongrass upside-down pandan-coconut cake, and I was very pleased.
(When we got in, A very reasonably curled up on the sofa under a blanket and went thoroughly to sleep, whereupon I periodically patted him gently on the head while getting the vacuuming done. All round excellent day, would recommend.)
I went on a WALK in the MUD.
Feb. 11th, 2018 05:02 pmWhen it came to be time for Papa's funeral, Adam very kindly drove me down to Cornwall in a van again, and we loaded the Tramper and the mobility scooter of the Other Wheelchair Saga (which I... need to tell you) into the back, and then he drove us back; since then, the Tramper has been sat on our patio (and, after divers alarums and excursions, plugged in to the exterior socket) and the mobility scooter has been sat in the living room (see above re: saga).
This morning, while we were eating scones, A looked out the window and remarked that the weather was fine... and prompted me to actually go for a walk with him to take it for a test drive.
It was Hard Work in the sense that I had very little lateral support from the seat and as such was doing a lot of core activation -- but we did somewhere over a five-mile round-trip, including a bunch of hills and a bunch of incredibly muddy paths that would have been completely impassable in any of my other chairs and a bunch of just... haring off into the woods because I could. I visited the SQUARE WATER we keep driving past and learned about an entire architectural tradition I'd been oblivious to! I visited the obelisk! I caught a shiny Swablu! I went on [photo] a WALK in the MUD (me with a Tramper off-road mobility scooter, on a muddy path through some woods).
I kept zooming off delightedly because I could. I kept giggling to myself. I kept bouncing gently in place. (I kept dropping my phone, and am going to install a handlebar mount.)
I have investigated ramps to make it easier to get it on and off the patio; I will be talking to my mother about buying it off her rather than selling it on, because really, at the point when this is the face I was pulling solidly for two hours?
This morning, while we were eating scones, A looked out the window and remarked that the weather was fine... and prompted me to actually go for a walk with him to take it for a test drive.
It was Hard Work in the sense that I had very little lateral support from the seat and as such was doing a lot of core activation -- but we did somewhere over a five-mile round-trip, including a bunch of hills and a bunch of incredibly muddy paths that would have been completely impassable in any of my other chairs and a bunch of just... haring off into the woods because I could. I visited the SQUARE WATER we keep driving past and learned about an entire architectural tradition I'd been oblivious to! I visited the obelisk! I caught a shiny Swablu! I went on [photo] a WALK in the MUD (me with a Tramper off-road mobility scooter, on a muddy path through some woods).
I kept zooming off delightedly because I could. I kept giggling to myself. I kept bouncing gently in place. (I kept dropping my phone, and am going to install a handlebar mount.)
I have investigated ramps to make it easier to get it on and off the patio; I will be talking to my mother about buying it off her rather than selling it on, because really, at the point when this is the face I was pulling solidly for two hours?
ten good things
Oct. 24th, 2017 09:13 pm- NEW HORN CASE NEW HORN CASE NEW HORN CASE. I have been meaning to get one for Literally Years -- basically since I got this horn, in fact -- because my horn... doesn't actually fit... in the case that was supplied with it... such that I had to remove a slide every time I put it away, and this massively raised the barrier to doing practice at home. More recently, the zips have been gradually giving up. SO. On Saturday A accompanied me on an exciting adventure to Paxman, whose step-free entrance is hilariously locked up at weekends so Everybody Learned Something, and I now own a case that (a) my horn fits in, (b) has working zips, (c) fits on my lap much better for wheelchairing, and (c) is BLUE. Detachable-bell, space for a mute, I totally failed to spot it on the website, props to Paxman for pointing it out to me (it was actually slightly cheaper than the thing I'd gone in expecting to buy).
- Because Borough Market is right there if you've visited Paxman, we had excellent fresh pasta for lunch (I had the pumpkin and ricotta tortelloni; they were brilliant). Further inspiration for the Surprise Charity-Shop Pasta Machine, etc. I just looked up how to make tortelloni.
- On Sunday I finally got around to adjusting Lightweight Wheelchair: I'd extremely belatedly spotted that the pushrims were on the wider of their two settings, and if I moved them on to the narrower the chair would probably need slightly less finessing to get through the front door. However, changing the setting involved removing the tyres and inners and both layers of rim tape, so I didn't get around to it until Sunday afternoon (sat on the picnic bench on the decking in the sunshine, with the patio doors open). I only holed one of the inners, promptly remembered that set of tyre levers always does that, and added them to the charity-shop pile! The chair fits through the door comfortably! My wrists are still somewhat sore (my hand strength isn't great and these are Schwalbe Marathon Plus on 1" rims, okay), but I am pretty pleased with myself, and with finally living somewhere that all my chairs are actually trivially usable. Give or take getting another cushion so I don't gotta swap them around as much.
- I absolutely adore The Ruin of Angels (the latest in Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, the first five books are available as an ebook omnibus for under a tenner, highly recommended) to the point that I'm researching what the blue mineral most likely to be local to Kavekana is so I can Have A Relevant Theological Necklace. (I'm gravitating toward sodalite, but have tweeted the author to ask...) (... and he hasn't responded but I did on Etsy find an Exactly Correct pendant bead so, er, whoops? Whoops.)
- I am having Feelings about the latest Check, Please! and partnership and mutual support and interaction. (Cup I - Playoffs, future Alex.)
- When my baby brother got into the van at Bristol Parkway on our way down to Cornwall the other weekend, he handed me a milk chocolate trilobite that he'd picked up at a museum because it was a trilobite and obviously. Naturally I have not yet been able to bring myself to eat it, so I keep finding it when I'm shuffling things around in the kitchen and grinning again.
- PASTA PASTA PROOF-OF-CONCEPT PASTA. Ricotta tortellini with sage butter; and then we ran out of ricotta, so tagliatelle with Italian Hard Cheese, pepper and Parsley From The Tub On The Patio (which is looking very cheerfully established, HURRAH). Turns out tortellini are actually easier than tagliatelle at least at the proof-of-concept who-cares-if-they're-all-the-same-size stage; I have learned Many Thing and am looking forward to trying again, and am genuinely impressed with how well the dough worked given that I arrived at it by eyeballing a Graun How To Make The Perfect... column and then fiddling with ratios to achieve a quantity I thought we could actually eat.
- Having seen Night At The Museum 2 doing the rounds on Tumblr (specifically the scene with the Tuskegee Airmen and Amelia Earheart), when I stumbled upon Night At The Museum in a charity shop for £1.10 last week I jumped upon it, having got the two confused. Happily, today I discovered the sequel for £1 in a charity shop, so next time I am feeling Sad and want to Curl Up On The Sofa Watching Something I have that lined up. I will cry.
- I continue Greatly Enjoying Pokemon, and am particularly smug because today I took part in a raid and ended up with a Suicune with shit IVs, so I... caught it on my second Pinap berry, for 12 candy, because double-candy event. (I will explain this in more detail if anyone is actually interested & doesn't understand!) (Also I really need to write up my Fascinating Sociological Study in Pokemon Go at some point, but for now suffice it to say that the person I've most made friends with is currently ill? And I ran into her mum outside the sorting office yesterday morning, and we had a brief chat about the world, because obviously.)
- I am about to embark on a His Dark Materials reread, not least because A has acquired us tickets to An Evening Of Conversation in the relatively near future, with ticket price including a copy of The Book of Dust -- so given how hideously behind I am on new releases, I think I'm just going to do the reread and then read the new one once I have it. But AAAAAAAAH. :D
ten good things
May. 18th, 2017 11:00 pm1. ( Food. )
2. I received a quotation for the wheelchair repairs currently ongoing; they're somewhere under half of what I was bracing myself for, which is a great relief.
3. Excellent lunch with a good friend in a small friendly deli in South London. I was particularly intrigued by (but alas did not sample) the tiny gluten-free strawberry-and-elderflower cheesecake.
4. The trip to and from same: a beautiful cherry-blossom mural on a building's front wall; a garden riotous with poppies somewhere between bud and full bloom; irises and weird little fuzzy orange things and colours everywhere.
5. Physio, on the train to and from, and reading books with it: still working on Hope In The Dark, but I'm about halfway through now and then I'll move on to Hugo reading.
6. I dyed A's hair again last night, and am pleased with the result. (It is all-over red, because red seems to wash out of his hair more quickly than blue, in the interests of i. checking whether the new red is actually a red and ii. getting it to a state where I can actually try putting a rainbow in it with minimal rebleaching of previously-bleached hair. In fact, because this means I put a lot of red on over blue, he's got what is in essence a red-into-deep-purple ombre going on, with a darker red layer on top and a lighter red layer underneath.)
7. I am delighted by the conversation that's going on in comments over at the enchilada recipe. Thank you, folk, I keep cackling with delight. <3
8. ( Academia. )
9. I am continuing to sincerely enjoy Pokemon Go.
10. Chelsea Manning.
2. I received a quotation for the wheelchair repairs currently ongoing; they're somewhere under half of what I was bracing myself for, which is a great relief.
3. Excellent lunch with a good friend in a small friendly deli in South London. I was particularly intrigued by (but alas did not sample) the tiny gluten-free strawberry-and-elderflower cheesecake.
4. The trip to and from same: a beautiful cherry-blossom mural on a building's front wall; a garden riotous with poppies somewhere between bud and full bloom; irises and weird little fuzzy orange things and colours everywhere.
5. Physio, on the train to and from, and reading books with it: still working on Hope In The Dark, but I'm about halfway through now and then I'll move on to Hugo reading.
6. I dyed A's hair again last night, and am pleased with the result. (It is all-over red, because red seems to wash out of his hair more quickly than blue, in the interests of i. checking whether the new red is actually a red and ii. getting it to a state where I can actually try putting a rainbow in it with minimal rebleaching of previously-bleached hair. In fact, because this means I put a lot of red on over blue, he's got what is in essence a red-into-deep-purple ombre going on, with a darker red layer on top and a lighter red layer underneath.)
7. I am delighted by the conversation that's going on in comments over at the enchilada recipe. Thank you, folk, I keep cackling with delight. <3
8. ( Academia. )
9. I am continuing to sincerely enjoy Pokemon Go.
10. Chelsea Manning.
Wheelchair physics -- deliberately designed to be generally accessible and written by a physicist in collaboration with a wheelchair user. Links onward to a more in-depth PDF, which is probably something to read after I've slept...
Notes on a new(-to-me) wheelchair
Jun. 13th, 2016 06:11 pmLots and lots of tweaking has happened over the past few days -- I've brought the footplate up a fraction, I've adjusted the upholstery tension, I've removed the arm rests and anti-tips, and I've swapped a drinks bottle holder onto it. A, meanwhile, has provided Sheer Brute Force and willingness to do fiddly little bits, and (a) got the axle bar moving for me and subsequently tightened it up again (so it's now medium tippy as opposed to not-even-remotely tippy), and (b) swapped the brakes over between chairs, so I've got scissor rather than push brakes on it.
So far I've used it getting home from Edinburgh on Saturday (with flat tyres, pre-tweaking) and out & about Sunday and today (post-major-tweaking).
( Read more... )
So far I've used it getting home from Edinburgh on Saturday (with flat tyres, pre-tweaking) and out & about Sunday and today (post-major-tweaking).
( Read more... )
I am on the East Coast Mainline, sat on the left-hand side in the direction of travel, getting to stare down the cliffs onto bays full of dykes (of the igneous rather than queer persuasion), having picked up a new-to-me wheelchair in Edinburgh by dint of a friend's willingness to collect it from West Lothian, and the gorse and red campions are out and the buildings are Old Red Sandstone and this is amazing (I'm in heaven, I'm in heaven, this is the best thing I have ever seen) -- just: yes, yes, thank you.
My GP continues brill
May. 18th, 2016 05:39 pm(content note for mention of misgendering with a happy ending!)
Popped in today to talk about additional paperwork for academia purposes. He's perfectly cheerful about writing a letter to the effect that I'm well enough to resume studies, but the amount of physio/medical appointments/etc I have to do isn't compatible with working full-time.
We also got chatting about sports wheelchairs and The New Chair (I've just booked train tickets to go and pick it up and I am so excited) -- I get the impression he's a cyclist, and therefore goes oooOOOOOooh when you point out you've got Spinergy wheels on, and that wheelchair wheels are basically the same thing as high-end bike wheels.
And while he was distracted by all that, he referred to me using an inappropriately gendered pronoun in the notes he was making, caught himself, apologised appropriately, and rephrased entirely without input from me.
I genuinely hadn't even noticed that he'd spent the past however-long-it's-been carefully making sure that he doesn't misgender me in my medical records.
I am doing a small good cry about it, okay.
Popped in today to talk about additional paperwork for academia purposes. He's perfectly cheerful about writing a letter to the effect that I'm well enough to resume studies, but the amount of physio/medical appointments/etc I have to do isn't compatible with working full-time.
We also got chatting about sports wheelchairs and The New Chair (I've just booked train tickets to go and pick it up and I am so excited) -- I get the impression he's a cyclist, and therefore goes oooOOOOOooh when you point out you've got Spinergy wheels on, and that wheelchair wheels are basically the same thing as high-end bike wheels.
And while he was distracted by all that, he referred to me using an inappropriately gendered pronoun in the notes he was making, caught himself, apologised appropriately, and rephrased entirely without input from me.
I genuinely hadn't even noticed that he'd spent the past however-long-it's-been carefully making sure that he doesn't misgender me in my medical records.
I am doing a small good cry about it, okay.
... would you site your showroom and workshop:
(a) near well-serviced public transport links,
(b) somewhere with decent pavements,
(c) five miles from a train station that's only accessible while staffed, because while unstaffed they turn the lift off,
(d) on an industrial estate with few (poorly surfaced) pavements, fewer dropped kerbs, and non-existent maps, or
(e) c and d, for bonus points IN THE SNOW.
You know. Hypothetically.
(I am mostly amused. I am also very firmly of the opinion that I am going to find a mother or a partner or a someone to drive me back out there for collection rather than public transporting it again, not least because the cheaper route turns out to contain Lichfield Trent Valley station, which for reference is a terrible idea and Not A Friend. In case you were wondering.)
(a) near well-serviced public transport links,
(b) somewhere with decent pavements,
(c) five miles from a train station that's only accessible while staffed, because while unstaffed they turn the lift off,
(d) on an industrial estate with few (poorly surfaced) pavements, fewer dropped kerbs, and non-existent maps, or
(e) c and d, for bonus points IN THE SNOW.
You know. Hypothetically.
(I am mostly amused. I am also very firmly of the opinion that I am going to find a mother or a partner or a someone to drive me back out there for collection rather than public transporting it again, not least because the cheaper route turns out to contain Lichfield Trent Valley station, which for reference is a terrible idea and Not A Friend. In case you were wondering.)
Pull requests made: 13 16 18 (with a few more probably to come)
Attendees: twelve I think (in addition to general hanging out in IRC)
Other bug progress:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hunningham and pseudomonas did loads of work on big projects, shortcipher has done a lot of testing, cesy has made serious headway on an automated test suite, and me_and has written a feature spec
Longest telecommutes:swaldman had this one cornered (at ~725 miles) until the Australian contingent rocked up (thereby neatly overtaking the San Franciscans and Seattlites); video calls worked, eventually.
Wiki pages edited: SEVERAL.
Issues filed: five (#1604, #1608, #1609, #1612, #1613)
Naps taken: three
Wheelchair tyres changed: two
Slightly suspect soldering jobs: one
Food made: white bean dip & smitten kitchen's chickpea thing, macaroni cheese, sweet potato chilli, couscous, rice, parsley-tomato-cucumber-preserved lemon-pomegranate salad, apple-honey cake, gingerbread-apple upside-down cake (recipe via smitten kitchen; nb you can substitute yoghurt + a little water for the buttermilk), Apfelstrudel (family recipe I should probably write up), lemon meringue pie (with more reasonable meringue)
State of the kitchen: astonishingly non-wrecked.
Next (in-person) event: Saturday 20th February & surrounding, probably. Watch this space for details! (With an option on having me do something virtual or less over-catered sooner if folk are in favour.)
Thank you all so, so much. <3
Attendees: twelve I think (in addition to general hanging out in IRC)
Other bug progress:
hunningham and pseudomonas did loads of work on big projects, shortcipher has done a lot of testing, cesy has made serious headway on an automated test suite, and me_and has written a feature specLongest telecommutes:
swaldman had this one cornered (at ~725 miles) until the Australian contingent rocked up (thereby neatly overtaking the San Franciscans and Seattlites); video calls worked, eventually.Wiki pages edited: SEVERAL.
Issues filed: five (#1604, #1608, #1609, #1612, #1613)
Naps taken: three
Wheelchair tyres changed: two
Slightly suspect soldering jobs: one
Food made: white bean dip & smitten kitchen's chickpea thing, macaroni cheese, sweet potato chilli, couscous, rice, parsley-tomato-cucumber-preserved lemon-pomegranate salad, apple-honey cake, gingerbread-apple upside-down cake (recipe via smitten kitchen; nb you can substitute yoghurt + a little water for the buttermilk), Apfelstrudel (family recipe I should probably write up), lemon meringue pie (with more reasonable meringue)
State of the kitchen: astonishingly non-wrecked.
Next (in-person) event: Saturday 20th February & surrounding, probably. Watch this space for details! (With an option on having me do something virtual or less over-catered sooner if folk are in favour.)
Thank you all so, so much. <3
Thing that are not terrible and also do not begin with P:
1. My baby brother phoned me this evening to vent about SPSS and request tech support as an excuse for catching up with me and it was lovely.
2. I heard someone asking a member of cleaning staff how to get to Leicester Square. There was perplexity and some problem with accents. I provided assistance in the form of detailed instructions, then checked the Earl's Court Thought for the Day on my way out, and it was about unexpected kindness, and I briefly felt less like shit.
3. I'm really enjoying seeing all the Canadians I know on tumblr being dazed and tentatively hopeful about politics. There are multiple aboriginal/Native ministers. The cabinet is 50% women, because it's 2015. The Minister for Science is a scientist who's served on the IPCC. 50% female cabinet appointments lead to 5000% increase in guys who suddenly care about merit in cabinet.
4. My local bike shop has got in a replacement pump head and a new set of tyres for me, and I have in all the necessary parts to peer suspiciously overme_and's shoulder while he applies a theoretically-straightforward fix to my power brick, whereupon taken altogether my big chair will work properly again and it will be a great relief.
5. Hot chocolate. Utterly ridiculous hot chocolate with mixed spice and condensed milk and plum brandy.
6. After having an enormous grump late last week and early this about my literature review (and massive thanks to each & every one of you who provided pep talks) I'm now feeling rather more confident about my framing and approach and am kind of enjoying working on it? Obvious sources of stress are obvious, but. Enjoying working on it. That's definitely a thing.
7. your blue-eyed boys. my e-reader.
8. I have acquired all the necessary ingredients for planned baking (bar buttermilk, which I am happy to work my way around not having). Ergo tomorrow all I have to do is Cook All The Things. (Planned: macaroni cheese, Apfelstrudel, two varieties of apple cake, as much stewed apple as I have jars for, a vat of chickpea thing, a vat of chilli, and the start of lemon meringue pie.) (Prep done tonight: loaf of bread started; fennel and garlic laid out for roasting.)
9. I picked up another bag of apples from my parents' this afternoon, and additionally liberated a jar of quince jelly made by my mother's own fair hand, an avocado, and the aforementioned fennel.
10. I'm not enjoying the shit my brain is throwing at me but I am at least recognising it as distortions, and employing coping mechanisms around it.
1. My baby brother phoned me this evening to vent about SPSS and request tech support as an excuse for catching up with me and it was lovely.
2. I heard someone asking a member of cleaning staff how to get to Leicester Square. There was perplexity and some problem with accents. I provided assistance in the form of detailed instructions, then checked the Earl's Court Thought for the Day on my way out, and it was about unexpected kindness, and I briefly felt less like shit.
3. I'm really enjoying seeing all the Canadians I know on tumblr being dazed and tentatively hopeful about politics. There are multiple aboriginal/Native ministers. The cabinet is 50% women, because it's 2015. The Minister for Science is a scientist who's served on the IPCC. 50% female cabinet appointments lead to 5000% increase in guys who suddenly care about merit in cabinet.
4. My local bike shop has got in a replacement pump head and a new set of tyres for me, and I have in all the necessary parts to peer suspiciously over
me_and's shoulder while he applies a theoretically-straightforward fix to my power brick, whereupon taken altogether my big chair will work properly again and it will be a great relief.5. Hot chocolate. Utterly ridiculous hot chocolate with mixed spice and condensed milk and plum brandy.
6. After having an enormous grump late last week and early this about my literature review (and massive thanks to each & every one of you who provided pep talks) I'm now feeling rather more confident about my framing and approach and am kind of enjoying working on it? Obvious sources of stress are obvious, but. Enjoying working on it. That's definitely a thing.
7. your blue-eyed boys. my e-reader.
8. I have acquired all the necessary ingredients for planned baking (bar buttermilk, which I am happy to work my way around not having). Ergo tomorrow all I have to do is Cook All The Things. (Planned: macaroni cheese, Apfelstrudel, two varieties of apple cake, as much stewed apple as I have jars for, a vat of chickpea thing, a vat of chilli, and the start of lemon meringue pie.) (Prep done tonight: loaf of bread started; fennel and garlic laid out for roasting.)
9. I picked up another bag of apples from my parents' this afternoon, and additionally liberated a jar of quince jelly made by my mother's own fair hand, an avocado, and the aforementioned fennel.
10. I'm not enjoying the shit my brain is throwing at me but I am at least recognising it as distortions, and employing coping mechanisms around it.
The proximate impetus to write this is that I'm trying to get back into the swing of technical, information-dense long-form writing. The motivation with respect to content, however, is that there's a whole lot of information about all this stuff and I found it utterly overwhelming when I was first seriously looking at mobility aids, especially in a cultural context that is hellbent on insisting that it's far more important that we look "normal" than that we be comfortable or capable. Form over function, as applied to people, is something that makes me particularly cross. Ergo.
The focus of this guide is manual wheelchairs for everyday active independent use by people who can stand and walk to some extent.
( Read more... )
The focus of this guide is manual wheelchairs for everyday active independent use by people who can stand and walk to some extent.
Contents
-
Orientation
- Price points
- There are lots of correct choices
- Price points
Decisions
- Materials
- Frame
- Footplates
- Wheels
- Seating
- Additional features
Process
- Measurements
- Acquisition
Recommendations
- Accessories
- Aspirational
End notes
( Read more... )
An articulation about terminology
Aug. 13th, 2015 04:40 pmI react to being described as "in" a wheelchair (as opposed to using a wheelchair) by snarling, and I've just (in response to a Sociological Images article The NYC subway to a person in a wheelchair) worked out some more of the why.
There's part the first, which is that it's inherently passive terminology that obfuscates or elides my agency. But the thing I've just noticed, the actual big deal, is that it makes it sound as though me being in a wheelchair is a permanent and unalterable state, and that in turn contributes to the idea that if I can stand or walk at all I shouldn't be using one, and that by using one I'm faking -- in a wheelchair precludes the possibility of being out of it. I'm pretty sure this framing contributes directly to strangers' horror if I stand up to reach something on a high shelf in a supermarket, or get up to carry my chair down a flight of stairs rather than taking a sloped half-mile detour, or what have you.
(There's other issues - who's surprised? - with that SocImages article, including the part where actually level and step-free access is important to all sorts of people. It's genuinely very important not to conflate "accessible" with "level access", or to conflate "level access" with "wheelchair accessible"; the former erases a very great many disabilities, and the latter assumes that all you need is flat surfaces and doesn't stop to think about whether aisles are wide enough or there's space set aside for wheelchair users to sit, or what have you. ... but there we go.)
There's part the first, which is that it's inherently passive terminology that obfuscates or elides my agency. But the thing I've just noticed, the actual big deal, is that it makes it sound as though me being in a wheelchair is a permanent and unalterable state, and that in turn contributes to the idea that if I can stand or walk at all I shouldn't be using one, and that by using one I'm faking -- in a wheelchair precludes the possibility of being out of it. I'm pretty sure this framing contributes directly to strangers' horror if I stand up to reach something on a high shelf in a supermarket, or get up to carry my chair down a flight of stairs rather than taking a sloped half-mile detour, or what have you.
(There's other issues - who's surprised? - with that SocImages article, including the part where actually level and step-free access is important to all sorts of people. It's genuinely very important not to conflate "accessible" with "level access", or to conflate "level access" with "wheelchair accessible"; the former erases a very great many disabilities, and the latter assumes that all you need is flat surfaces and doesn't stop to think about whether aisles are wide enough or there's space set aside for wheelchair users to sit, or what have you. ... but there we go.)
so I was talking to the boything the other day about how I am very definite that I want who only by moving can balance/only by balancing move as soon as I work out who to commission to do the lettering for me, and I'm very certain I want it on my bicep, and he was being a bit baffled about this until I explained that the reason to have it on my arm is wheelchair user. (And also erstwhile pianist/harpsichordist, but hey.)
Which got him to talking about wheels as symbology. And, whoops, now I apparently want the outline of a circle (medium-thick, dark ink; cannot decide just yet whether black or v dark blue) about the size of a 2p piece, on my spine just below the nape of my neck/shoulders. Because: wheels and movement and the Moon and choices and decision-making and going in circles (every five years or so/I look back on my life/and I have a good laugh) and a reminder to not try carrying the world on my shoulders.
This is sufficiently straightforward that I might in fact get it for my birthday (in that I don't have to worry about lettering etc). Because it is a thing that Feels Right, and is absolutely a thing about which I'll keep inventing more symbology as I go along.
Which got him to talking about wheels as symbology. And, whoops, now I apparently want the outline of a circle (medium-thick, dark ink; cannot decide just yet whether black or v dark blue) about the size of a 2p piece, on my spine just below the nape of my neck/shoulders. Because: wheels and movement and the Moon and choices and decision-making and going in circles (every five years or so/I look back on my life/and I have a good laugh) and a reminder to not try carrying the world on my shoulders.
This is sufficiently straightforward that I might in fact get it for my birthday (in that I don't have to worry about lettering etc). Because it is a thing that Feels Right, and is absolutely a thing about which I'll keep inventing more symbology as I go along.
![[photo] a WALK in the MUD](https://kaberett.dreamwidth.org/file/23510.jpg){kind=link}