Tinks, Bubblewrap, and a Birthday
It’s April. How did it get to be April?? I must’ve blinked… April means Easter and Easter means a visit by the Tinks. This year, it also meant celebrating my mother’s birthday. Well, the first celebration. We are waiting with the grand shindig for when she is fully recovered from her hip replacement surgery. Instead,…
Happy Big Birthday, Mor!
I’m a lucky woman for many reasons and one of them is that mor is not just my mother, but my friend, too. Which is not to say that her friendship has been more important than her mothering. In fact, I think she’s pretty much the perfect mother. Even when I was little, she encouraged…
Disability Diaspora
I only have a few days left. On April 1, this Wednesday, they will come for me. So many of the people I know have already been moved, I am one of the last. I have connections, I fight back, but still, it is inevitable. It started slowly, with some cuts to funding. With exhortations…
Longing for Out: The Itch to Travel
I caught the travel bug early. One of my first memories is of a trip to a rented cottage near the sea that happened when I was four years old. Another favourite was my first experience with flying when my dad and I went to Rhodes just after my sister Janne was born. I was…
Thoughts on Sacrifice
(no, not the type that involves sharp instruments) It’s been two years since Your Life with Rheumatoid Arthritis: Tools for Managing Treatment, Side Effects and Pain was published. It’s the first in a projected series of three, but is so far an only child. Well, if you don’t count the redheaded stepchild called 7 Facets:…
Practicing What I Preach
Whenever I write about RA and its potential impact on heart health, I describe the symptoms of heart attack, then describe how they may be different for women, and then I strongly encourage people who have those symptoms to call 911 and get themselves to an emergency room. A desire to not be a hypocritical…
Divisions in the RA Community, Part II: Making Room for Us All
Also posted on CreakyJoints “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?” – Rodney King A few weeks ago, I took to email and social media to ask about a certain undercurrent in the RA online community where people felt there wasn’t room for them. The…
Division in the RA Community, Part I: Pressure to be Other
Also posted on CreakyJoints “I had to stop going online because there was no comfort for me there.” (Kim Bruno, @kaurorab) “I have been made to feel that you will only be accepted in these groups and listened to, if you only share your woes and not your victories.” (Brenda Kleinsasser, editor of CreakyJoints Poet’s…
The Consequence of Germs
Earlier this week, one of The Boy’s colleagues was diagnosed with strep throat. And then said colleague came to work the day after and the day after that, contagious throat infection and all. And that means my beloved and I will not see each other for the next week while we wait out the incubation…
Our Hands Can Picture Project – January 2015: NEW
The January winner of the Show Us Your Hands! Picture Project is announced: “2015 – A new year with new beginnings for Show Us Your Hands! We now have a brand new website that we hope will bring greater benefits to you. Also, we are now offering a second edition of our photo book “Our…
Weather Catastrophizing
Whoop-whoop-whoop!! Alarm bells are clanging, warnings proliferate, anxiety rises, and maybe I should call in sick? What’s all this about? The notification that we’d be getting “major snow” starting Sunday evening. If you take a closer look at the above screenshot from The Weather Network (click to enlarge), you’ll see that Toronto was looking at…