Chatterday! Open Thread.

chatterday

This is our weekly Chatterday! open thread. Use this open thread to talk amongst yourselves: feel free to share a link, have a vent, or spread some joy.

What have you been reading or watching lately (remembering spoiler warnings)? What are you proud of this week? What’s made your teeth itch? What’s going on in your part of the world? Got any questions for your fellow FWD commenters?

Today’s chatterday backcloth, possibly the cutest baby sloth alive, comes via The Daily Squee.

baby golden sloth lying on its back reaching out as if for a hug

22 thoughts on “Chatterday! Open Thread.”

  1. Guess what? I found a dentist I can get to. It was so busy that it took me *three hours* to get anyone to talk to. (I hate making phone calls so obsessively recalling was draining.) When I finally got through, I scheduled an appointment…*for June!* I don’t get it. They open up for new patients once a month, but I couldn’t get in until June. What’s the point? Why not just not take new patients? On top of that, I mentioned I needed a filling fixed but it didn’t make any difference to them. I’m just expected to wait until June to get a a good sized hole in my tooth fixed.

    I’m at the end of my rope as far as calling places is concerned. I can’t handle this. I’m trying the dental office the clinic system I go to runs again to see if they’re taking new patients but I kind of doubt it.

  2. It’s World Autism Awareness Day today.

    If only people could be aware of what autistic adults (like myself!) deal with on a day-to-day basis. But no, apparently wearing blue and realizing autism exists is more important than realizing what all is involved in autism.

    (And seriously, wearing blue? How does that raise awareness of… anything?)

  3. After being tripped up by Good Friday yet again (wanted to reschedule a doctor appointment, hope they’re open Monday – the library will be closed Monday because… because!) I wanted to make sure I wore blue. I did not, because I forgot.

    Codeman – I wish there were more stories like yours out there. We forget about PWD after they become adults especially if they’re “high functioning”. Unless you’re involved in a crime. ::sigh:: Being a legal adult sucks sometimes.

    I lost my cell phone Wednesday. And because it is pure evil, it shut off soon after, because I asked someone to call (“Marco!” ::ring ring::) it went to voicemail. Sure, someone could have taken my old dirty broken phone and turned it off, but it has been randomly turning off for a month or so now.

    And I was due for an upgrade, so I got a Lotus. It’s purple, has a QWERTY keyboard, no touch screen, and little chance for randomly dialing people while it’s in my purse as I walk along. It’s a flip phone – ~2 years of accidental dialing, I want a guarantee! I feel so retro talking on it, like let’s go to the NSYNC concert and then a rave!

  5. I’ve been thinking a lot about the invisible women post from earlier this week, and it got me thinking on a lot of tangents.

    I try to be frank when I talk about my mental illness on my journal, but lately I’ve come to realize that I don’t write about mental illness (and feminism) as often as I used to because the whole process of vetting through comments and putting the brakes on disagreements really exhausts me.

    I find that really frustrating, because I know I write very well, and I know that my words have a lot of power to reach people, not to change minds (that’s never been my primary goal; too much arguing) but to help other folks find their voices and thereby increase the number of people talking about these issues. It is something I would like to do more of, but it’s so tiring.

    I am in a really good place right now with my bipolar depression. I feel pretty great and am being creative again. Life feels good. And I am still not up to dealing with the comment avalanches, even when they are positive.

    Part of it is that, when I write something like the post I did a little while back about why suicidal people don’t just “get help,” people tend to come in and share their stories. And I think that’s incredible, it’s incredibly valuable, and I am humbled that so many people will open up like that. I think it’s important to make spaces for that. But for me personally, reading about other people’s pain is hard, even if they are agreeing 100% with what I said. I routinely get teary and sad because I really do care, and the things these people share are heartbreaking.

    I don’t know how people who do it all the time do it. I admire those who can. I wish I knew of a way to deal with it, because it is something I love doing a whole lot and wish I could do more of.

  6. @ Codeman38 – I saw a car driving with a bumper sticker that said “I <3 SOMEONE WITH AUTISM" today so that was a coincidence.

    I'm still chipping away at a feminist & sexologist text and I'm still seeing some problems with it. There's a lot of stuff in there that's making me very uncomfortable on multiple levels now. Some of my discomfort right now is with who is being cited as experts. I googled one source for example and it's by a journalist who's written some books on the history of mental illness, but I'm getting the impression that it's a history with an anti-psychiatric medicine slant. Not anti treatment, per se, but anti-medicine. And it's relevant to the text because the quote cited in text was about mental illness.
    I don't know, I'm having a very hard time reconciling what I'm seeing. And I don't know if I can trust what I'm seeing.

    I don't know… I don't know how to reconcile it. It's in stark contrast to everything I've ever seen on FWD let me put it to you that way. It's the opposite. Still all done with the patients best interest at heart or so I'm led to believe but I don't know…

    Is there like anybody I can talk to about this?

    In lighter news: What else is news… my basement flooded due to all the wet weather we've had in the area. It never got up to water in terms of inches, more like several leaky leaks & puddles & they spread… but only because my family was on top of it round-the-clock throwing *anything* that could absorb water at it. Oh we got real creative… don't be afraid to think outside the box!

    There's this pit in the basement for a sump pump but we don't have a sump pump so it's just this pit & the water was seeping up, through ground, in the pit. It wasn't pouring in through the walls & windows it was coming up from the ground. And it's a big pit so I was dipping this mixing bowl into the pit, to bail the water out. This went on round the clock for a day. The pit filled up about every half hour or so at its peak. It's peak lasted about 18 hours, then slowed to filling up once every hour. It's still seeping now but a lot more slowly…

    Don't get me wrong, stuff still got ruined, just not as much stuff as some of the other neighbors. One throw rug is trash & we had to move furniture (it's a finished basement) to get to it. I quite literally cut a rug with a carpenter knife. And the bookshelves are just particle board or something so they absorbed water… they'll collapse eventually.

    We're all very tired now from so much work managing the flood & cleaning up after. As much as I'd like to do some more heavy reading or shopping or something I think I'll just rest & watch movies for the weekend.
    .-= K´s last blog ..Let’s read books part 4 – more Sex is not a Natural Act =-.

  7. I’m proud of myself for doing something about a teeth-itching situation – someone I was friends with in college busted out the “if you’re not limping or in a wheelchair don’t take the elevator one floor” nonsense on Facebook and I actually responded asking him if he had heard of invisible disabilities and reminding him that there were lots of reasons people would take the elevator just one floor. Teeny, but I have a really hard time calling out my friends on their asshattery, so I’m calling that a plus.

  9. I still read Jezebel on a regular basis (tons of old pages in my links, easy way to kill some time) but some comments in a month old post pissed me off.

    It was about legalizing marijuana and medical marijuana and how one woman with MS said “I’m not a pothead.” and the comment next to the clip said “Then don’t wear tie-dye.” WTF.

    But someone came up and said someone I know who has MS doesn’t have pain. She’s a fighter, she fights her disease, she has a strong will, she’s not giving up. Other people who know others with MS were like WTF, way to insult people who take medicine and hey, a LOT of MS sufferers have pain.

    http://jezebel.com/5464210/oaksterdam-university-the-marijuana-college/gallery/

    But it was just, be stronger, beat the pain. Lately I want to sink to the floor, holding onto a counter and rock. IT HURTS.

    As for medical marijuana, want to try it with a vaporizer this summer, if I can. I want to pursue all options. My current pain regimen works great for the first 6 or so hours I’m up, then it’s downhill. Takes longer to respond, doesn’t respond, it hurts so much.

  10. For PWD who can talk on the phone and/or text with little difficulty (love the QWERTY, t9 is eeeeeeeeeeeeevil), do you think of a cell phone as a necessary part of your life?

    I went like 24 hours without one, but it wasn’t too bad, because I spent the day before I lost it on the phone with the doctor and I wasn’t expecting any call.

    But we have landline hookups in our rooms… yeah… no. And my mom got rid of the landline in the house. And said yesterday that we’re too addicted to our cell phones. She says things like that ALL THE TIME.* It drives me up the wall. Her childhood sucked, but it’s better through the haze of memory. But if we said, okay, we’ll leave our cell phones at home (or not call from a friend’s house when we get there) she’d say no. She likes being able to talk to us, texting during the day.

    *I really hate those e-mail forwards that used to go around about how if you were alive in the ’60s or ’70s you survived lead paint and we coddle our kids. We didn’t coddle ourselves! The same generation writing these, the audience, is the same generation that raised a less tough (in their rosy-colored view of their childhood) generation. But they always feel like they’re blaming today’s young people for growing up when we did. A pet peeve.

  11. @Kaitlyn: There is one thing that I have found far more convenient with cell phones than with land lines, and that is text messaging. It is so much easier for me to deal with than deciphering muffled voices over the phone!

    But even then, that’s not necessarily something I need a cell phone for. After all, I was running AIM via a modem connected to a land line in the ’90s. 😀

  12. Codeman – kya geek hai! 🙂

    People used to say (back when I was really in to the Beatles) that I was born too late or something. But I hate concerts, though if I were 21 in 1964 maybe…

    But I moved on to foreign films. Back in the bad old days, Bollywood movies were on VHS with NO SUBS. And no internet for easy access.

    Away from that, the internet has been really helpful during bad mood swings or whatever. And college! How did you e-mail your profs? You mean, no e-mail? *head explodes*

    Oh sure, back in the bad old days, I could have read (and read and read and read – did that before I got a laptop when I couldn’t sit at a desk) or been sent to the countryside (you need money to survive to good old days if you’re a PWD or black or a single woman or gay or trans or a person). And I’d be dead. Whoops.

  14. Struggling through The Ten Commandments (if anyone sees me on twitter, yeah… live-tweeting it) reminds me of the Biblical story of Moses. Dude had a stutter so bad, he had his brother come along and speak for him when he told the Egyptians to get stuffed.

    Also, man, I love Prince of Egypt so much more than this.

    But I set a goal, I will make it through this. The bad effects of the burning bush made me curious about the parting of the sea – how bad will IT be?

    Only 2 hours to go… I’d rather wander through the desert for years.

    My pain is terrible. It was good, I took a shower, it became BAD BAD BAD BAD swearing pacing going in circles why why why ow ow ow

  15. I’d always thought double vision was the sort of thing I just had to live with, and it’s gotten to the point where I have to stop and think really hard to work out whether I am seeing single or double. But my eye doctor actually noticed it (when I kind of went “blaaaaargh” after he switched my view of the eye chart from single eye to both eyes) and prescribed prism lenses. Now of course the problem is finding out if Medicaid or Medicare cover any of these things, then going to various charities, because none of the cheap glasses places I use online have prism lenses (and he warned me against going online for anything this fiddly) and glasses offline are ridiculously expensive.

  16. @Kaitlyn: For me, a cell is something I need, more so when I’m at college than when I’m at home, but with my time management fail, it’s one of the few fool proof ways I have of remembering things, calling doctors, my caseworker and my parents, or texting instead of talking to someone.

    A little off topic, but I just remembered how full of win my case manager down at school was. I told her I have a hard time with telephones and if she could text me instead of calling when possible, it would be really helpful. She just said sure and changed to doing that. She didn’t question my needs, just met them and I really appreciated it.
    .-= thetroubleis´s last blog ..Guilt =-.

  17. Thetroubleis – “She didn’t question my needs, just met them and I really appreciated it.”

    That is so awesome when it happens, you know? “I can’t sit in these chairs.” and the people were under no pressure to accommodate me, but they did, with like 50 e-mails before & after the event. 🙂

    Re – cell phones. They’re supposed to be off (or at least have the sound off if you’re gonna text about how bored you are) according to oh, every single syllabus I’ve gotten over the last 3 years.

    But when I’m waiting for a doctor to call? I ain’t doin’ no phone tag, professor. I asked during a recent exam (they called back much later, but still) and he said sure. I had it on during presentations and the worst happened – it rang when I was about to start. And I’ve had it out with the volume on and gotten surprise calls and bolted out the door. Apparently, against the rules. Whoops.

    People can be so nice.

  18. I mean volume OFF and notice a call from Mom during her work day (she’s not supposed to call.. omgwtfbbq better answer!) and go answer it.

  20. I had some disability fail issues this weekend with family and it made me so sad. My mom is overall such an incredibly awesome figure in my life, but two things that we talked about this weekend upset me.

    1. We were talking about the post I made recently in my LJ about my attempts at ridding words like “crazy” and “insane” from my vocab, a post that got linked to from here and another site and I was talking about how I got some traffic due to those links and I was kind of excited about that and generally excited about my being more involved in disability issues online, etc. And she kind of snapped out at me that she would clearly never be able to live up to my standards because she’s been using those words in those ways for so long and would not be able to change. And I mean… I was just really aghast. This was the woman who taught me how to be a feminist and a liberal as a growing girl.

    So I pushed the issue and explained that I wasn’t expecting anyone to suddenly become perfect about not using ableist terms and phrases that they were just newly learning about (as I myself am still working on it!), but that it was a really worthwhile goal, and didn’t she think so too? And she just kinda kept being snappy about it and saying she’s been using those words the wrong way all her life, so how could she possibly change now? And WOW was that hard for me to hear, much less respond to.
    I kept at it, asking her how she would feel about someone saying the exact same thing about other kinds of terms, ones I *know* she has issues with because she’s the one who taught ME not to say them; words about racism and sexism and heterosexism. And she said she understood what I was saying, but continued to insist that she would not be able to change. I kept my cool at the time, but I admit that thinking about it now is causing some tears. Like, it’s not even worth it to her to TRY and change her vocabulary, even if it’s an issue that’s so important to me?? I just … don’t even know what to do with that.

    2. Later, we were talking about a family member who is currently pregnant and who has previously had a miscarriage and my mom said “when I was pregnant with you and your brother, it never even occurred to me to worry about if you would be in good health or not, I just assumed that you would be, but now I’m worried about [family member]’s baby.” And I know how easy it can be to get caught up in that kind of thinking, so I carefully and gently suggested that even if the new family member to be born ended up with a disability, it would be okay. And again, she kind of snapped at me: “but it would be more challenging!” And yea, it would. But, again, this feels like a slap in the face to me. I, her daughter, am not actually in good health. I am disabled. And I wasn’t (in any obvious ways maybe) from birth, but I have been for many many years and I thought she *GOT* me in these ways. But I dunno. Maybe she really hasn’t dealt with my being disabled as well as I thought, or maybe she really just doesn’t even see me that way at all. Either way, I went down the list of reasons I thought it would be okay if our family member’s new child had a disability, but I don’t think she was really listening.

    I also had to put up with some transphobic and fatphobic remarks from relatives over the weekend, and it was so cranky-making. For such a liberal family, they can still say some really ignorant and hateful things. Makes me feel all that much more for folks who have more close-minded family members. But then, OTOH, I think it can hurt that much more at times when you’re expecting the other person to be good about something and then they just suddenly aren’t. *sigh*

  22. @Kaitlyn: I agree, for me, keeping the cell off wasn’t an option, so I always put it on vibrate as well. I wish more professors were more understanding of the fact that, yes, sometimes a phone call truly can’t wait until after class.

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