14 thoughts on “Chatterday! Open Thread.”

1. Oh my gosh, it’s a lion, get in the car!

   Happy Saturday for folks that are having Saturday right now. I’m counting down the minutes until New New Who. Since I know our dear friends in Australia are not going to be able to watch it for a while yet, no spoilers, but WHO!!!!!

   I am deeply in love with Eleven, and Amy Pond. And Donna and Martha and Rose. Especially Donna, who is me but more awesome with red hair.

2. My grandma is feeling a little better this week. Last week she was in the hospital but the doctors still don’t know exactly what was wrong with her in the first place. Now she is in a rehab hospital, because she was immobile for so long & needs to get some physical exercise. She might have to go into a nursing home permanently now but we get a little more time with her.

   I had a lot of work to do at work and I don’t think it’s going to slow down for a long time. So I’ll be keeping busy…

   to be honest I feel like… I’m probably going to need to start posting new content at my blog somewhat irregularly or late in the week. I’m going to be so busy it’s going to be hard to balance. And I’m like guilty about it lol even though I know *I* need to come first. So I guess that’s fine.
   .-= K´s last blog ..BADD 2k10 – sexual dysfunction as disability =-.

3. For those in the central US – and it’s probably heading east – good luck with the storms.

   My hometown (not Memphis) is partially flooded and the main road is closed, and the levees were breeched (we have levees?) and anywhere from 3,000 to 1,500 people are being evacuated. Or were, last time I checked.

   Spring weather is persnickety. Or moody. Whatever. The university area? Not a branch on the ground, we got power. Other places? Aforementioned flooding, power outages, and on and on. Or maybe it’s tornadoes. Bah, nasty things.

   But last night (because I haven’t been in the building during a tornado warning since my freshman year), I realized a major FAIL on the school’s part. For the fire alarms (not one fire in three years), there are two senses assaulted – a horrible blinking light you hope you didn’t really see, then a screeching alarm, then the booming voice of god repeating instructions.

   But with the many tornado alerts, we only had a less quiet voice of God telling us to leave. No blinking lights, and it’s quite easy to sleep through these announcements. Also, the sirens aren’t as loud 9 floors up, so I can sleep through those as well.

   But fret not, people! The Kentucky Derby went on as planned. Thank goodness, I know I was worried about that, not the fact that my mom wasn’t answering her phone and the tv said “Your mom’s town evacuated”. (She was napping.)

   It’s spring time. Wake me up when summer’s over. And it’s so humid right now, no breeze, I ran into the dorm saying I wanted to marry air conditioning.

   I also watched some more episodes of Dexter and my sleep schedule is all wonky – no sleep Thursday night. Fell asleep at 8 am Friday, woke up at 2pm, and then fell asleep at 9pm until the tornadoes.

   With tornadoes brings worries about PWD and elderly people – people have died from heatstroke in their homes, and what happens if the power goes out and you need electric things to live? And then there’s the house falling down around you aspect too. And evacuation – oh, that must be fun.

4. I’m looking for some advice about how to explain to my students why the word “lame” is not acceptable.

   I was recently working in a 3rd grade classroom (so 9-10 year old kids) and one student had written that the plot of a story was “lame”. I didn’t know how to address it, so I didn’t do anything, which I felt somewhat guilty about.

   Then last week, I asked a high school student about the prom and he said “it was ok, but the music was gay”. When I seemed offended at his word choice, he changed “gay” to “lame”. And I heaved an inner sigh, and again didn’t try to explain the problems with his language.

   Any advice on how to handle these situations? Has anyone else been in similar situations?

5. K – I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother.

   And you can always stop posting on your blog. I’ve done that from time to time on my daily (except Sunday) blog, and I stopped posting April 10th. A week ago, I made a post saying, yeah, I haven’t been posting. I don’t feel so good, etc.

   I got comments and an e-mail all thanking me for my normal posts and hoping I’ll feel better soon. So I think saying, if you feel comfortable doing so, “I can’t handle this right now, there’s a lot going on in my personal life…” whatever fits – is a great idea. People are nice sometimes.

6. BADD has left me depressed – not because of the content of the posts, but because last year was my first post for BADD. My disability affects my life much more now – I can’t work nor can I attend school – than it did a year ago, and I couldn’t even gather the energy to put together a post. Last year’s post was optimistic about my future; right now, nothing could be further from the truth.

7. I don’t know what to say but I’m sorry, Avendya. This is my first BADD, and all I could do was make a post linking to it. I did recently write about my illness and ableism, but nothing for today. I just… can’t.

   But I think it would go against BADD if you made yourself do something new and awesome even when you can’t.

   I’m dealing with a lot of school issues. Nearly every office on campus has some give, and I can get accommodations easily. But the scholarship office will not budge. You can go on academic probation for your GPA, but there’s no leeway for hours – either class hours or volunteer hours. Honors classes count as volunteer hours, and if I don’t get an 80 in my honors class this semester, I’ll need to do 75 hours of volunteer work by June 1st. (Also, with the honors class, I can’t have an incomplete, the grade must be in by the end of next week or 75 hours of volunteer work.)

   The answer when I asked, “What if you can’t?” “You knew the rules.” And the “normal” class load is 5 classes, or 15 hours. I dropped one class early on, because it was too much. 12 hours is still full time, so it didn’t affect my scholarships or financial aid. But when I wanted to withdraw from a class this week (dropping my credits this semester to 9), I was told I would lose my scholarship.

   And my case guy at Disability Services was like, just take one or two classes if that’s all you can do. Yeah, you’ll get less financial aid, but still!

   So I’m taking an incomplete in the class I wanted to withdraw from, but if I don’t finish it within the first incomplete period, yup, scholarship gone. Though the professor is completely willing to help and extend it. The professor for the honors class? He said you can turn it in in a year if you need to! Well, I can’t, so he’s like “do what you can, you’ve got good grades in here, you’ll get your 80”.

8. Sorry about two posts in a row, but I didn’t want this too be long, and I needed to scream about school. Though I actually handed it very well, compared to how I would have a month ago – I skipped my second class because I’d spent most of the time after my 1st class on the phone all worked up and would be miserable in class. I cried a bit, but I accepted it and moved on. I didn’t need my therapist to help me, which is big. (Last time, she basically told me, I know you’re smart, you know you’re smart, you can do this. Pep talks do help. And I like getting texts from my mom saying I’m smart.)

   Anyway, I wanted opinion on a disclaimer I just added to my regular random blog. (Tennessee politics followed by a cute dog pic followed by Bollybabble)

   My latest post was on something getting under my skin –
   http://ohmonkeytrumpets.blogspot.com/2010/04/pajama-jeans-and-ableism.html

   http://ohmonkeytrumpets.blogspot.com/
   It’s at the top of the sidebar:

   Disclaimer:

   About ableist language on my blog to any new readers – there is going to be some on old posts (pre November ’09, I’d say roughly).

   I’m not necessarily proud, but I’m not going to go back and edit the posts to clear them up, even though I want to and go look, I’ve been a good little activist all along!

   But that’s a lie and it’s disingenuous. It’s also a disservice to the few people who do read the posts.

   On a personal note, it’s a disservice to me. I can go look at my posts from 2008 and compare them to ones in 2010 and see how I’ve grown as a writer and as a human being. It’s nice to see how far we’ve come in life, you know?

   I am truly sorry if anything here hurts somebody, and even if it’s on a post from 2006, do not feel shy to tell me – e-mail me at otrumpets at yahoo dot com or comment. (I get a notification with every comment, so if you do comment on an old one, I’ll know and reply.)

   Thanks for reading.

9. 1 week until I graduate from college. I’m going on to grad school, so it isn’t the end of my formal education, but it feels like a huge thing. With my LDs, I wasn’t sure if I could get here. But I am. It feels really great.

   However, my family is coming to town. And that means anxiety for me. My parents and brother are great, but my aunts and uncles and grandmother are a different story. My grandmother doesn’t really like me (I know she loves me, but she doesn’t like me, as we have nothing in common) and she tends to criticize everything. So that may increase my anxiety level. Sometimes I wish I still had my anti-anxiety meds, even if they did do weird things to my body.

   Kaitlyn, I’m sorry your school is not being helpful. I hope your profs can help you resolve the situation.

10. I’m mostly reading BADD posts this weekened and enjoying all the content very much. My own post makes me somewhat worried, as I wrote about being mid-continuum multiple, and I’m not out to anyone offline, and who knows who reads this?

    I also want to say I might be going to take part in a recovery workgroup at my institution in a few weeks. I was invited, but since I can’t attend the first meeting, I’m not sure I’m allowed to attend at all. Would be very exciting if I could attend.

11. Lisa, I shall think about your question some. It’s a complicated one to me, because of the teacher aspect, and the age of your students.

    Avendya, I’m so sorry. 🙁 Don’s gone through something similar – for a while, especially after he got the wheelchair, the sky seemed the limit. That’s.. not quite what’s going to happen. 🙁

12. Lisa, I’ve been thinking about your question.

    I was excited about this site and showed it to a friend, particularly the ableist word profiles. A few weeks later, she starts to use “lame” as a descriptor, and switches to horrible, without pausing or going “Oh, you don’t like that word” or anything. It was cool. 🙂

    I think you should use the website – e-mail admin first to make sure it’s okay – and show the AWP related to “lame” to the students. Or use the dictionary. You really mean the plot had trouble walking?

    And, on a teacher note, you could do what my 9th grade english did for an assignment – we had to rewrite all these sentences without using “got” (i think), because that was lazy.

    So you can say a) don’t use “lame” that way, it’s offensive and b) anyone caught using it that way will lose points or have do an assignment where they rewrite that phrase – “She is soooo lame.” “What do you really mean?”

    A phrase that came to mind is “use your words”. My mom used to say that to students who could talk in “special ed” classes in elementary school, but hey, pointing is easier. She also uses “use your words” on us (and the dogs. we’re all pretty weird). Make it an exercise in vocabulary, as well as tolerance. Write up on the board. “That movie was lame.” and then say, we know the movie was not physically lame. What was the movie really like?

    I’m a teacher’s pet, can you tell?

    But yeah, this site is really helpful, because if I try to repeat the message, it’ll get jumbled and make no sense.

    And from older kids, you may hear “but no one uses it that way, so it’s okay” “then why is it a word for “bad” if no one uses it?” Someone once told me to keep asking “why do you say that?” when people say racist things until they run out of answers.

13. The last week has been exceedingly stressful, and the next one probably will be.

    I’ve been trying to get out of my current accommodation situation because it’s just untenable for me (too low on spoons to handle flatmate interactions so I have to avoid them so I can’t use the kitchen so I can’t /eat/…); I’m in uni accommodation and my lease is technically till September but I really don’t think I can hold out that long. I spoke to the woman I meet once a week from the National Autistic Society about this, who brought it up with my contact at the disability centre, who called up accommodation services.

    And then on Monday evening I got an e-mail saying that they had a new person looking for a flat so if I could move out by this coming Friday they’d let me out early.

    Cue very panicked hurried flathunting. Miracle of miracles, I actually found one, miracle of more miracles I will be able to get it despite their fucking awful foreign-student-hostile policies. (Any student who wants to rent needs either a guarantor in the UK who’ll pass a credit check and guarantee to pay the rent if the student can’t – yeah I can just see myself asking my supervisor this, okay, where the hell do you expect your foreign students to find someone like this – or has to pay the full amount in advance. This is because, you know, we could drop out of uni or something, and it’s not as if any of us have *scholarships* or anything, and it’s not as if an employee could get fired or anything like that. Via a great deal of financial juggling I have figured out I *can* pay the full amount in advance, but I am still SO ANGRY about this I want to breathe fire.) So now I just have to finish the paperwork and sort out the payment and PACK and MOVE and all before Friday morning.

    You can tell how bad it is in my current flat that I’m doing this!

    Luckily for me I often get +a million spoons out of nowhere when things become genuinely desperate, but I’m not convinced that I won’t collapse when this is all over. On the plus side, I shall be in a MUCH better situation and once things settle down I can do stuff like cook!

14. This has been a very stressful weekend for my family.

    Before the storms even hit, my mom missed a chance to see Josh Pastner (current coach of the University of Memphis Tigers and my mom’s latest crush) at Special Olympics Friday. Poor dear.

    And then the rain and tornadoes and the flooding and the impotent pacing and worrying on my part, as I’m safe on campus and 20 miles away, my mom’s crouched in a closet hoping a tornado won’t hit.

    Another feeling of powerlessness – my sister’s had some bad stuff happen this weekend. No details because hey, this is a public place.

    But it’s not good and I can’t wait til she’s home so I can not hug her and just … have her around.

    And finals. effing finals. Nothing has happened to me or my mom (our house is fine), but the stress! My sister… she has finals too, after the events of this weekend. In my world, no finals, but As for all! This school year has been one bad event after another, and I cannot believe the “neat” way it’s happened – uncle’s death the first week, and now stuff with my little sister right at finals time.

    I am so ready for summer, so I can whine about heat and play with dogs and turn my brain off.

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