Good Cripple
Not too long after Beth and I first became friends, we had a conversation about a meeting she’d had with an agency that were supposed to help her get equipment (possibly Dragon?). Beth explained how she’d started the meeting by outlining the goal of the conversation, setting an agenda of sorts to be that she…
Wonderful Woofstock
After last week’s extended detour into frustration, I decided to have a completely sybaritic weekend in which my activities would be entirely decided by my Id. Which twice led me to Woofstock (and I consider it a small miracle that I made it through two days of the largest dog festival in North America without…
Sitting in Judgement
The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously hectic – it seemed that Mercury retrograde moved smoothly and seamlessly into whatever astrological phenomena is responsible for a mass epidemic of idiocy. Truly. There were several days last week where the barrage of idiots (and their attendant emotional upset) took over every day, to the point…
Cold
This is completely ridiculous. We’ve had a cold spring up here in Toronto. When I say cold cold, I mean about 10° colder than the seasonal average and that’s in metric, not Fahrenheit. I heard a reliable report that last Monday, it snowed in Huntsville (which is about 150 km/100miles from Toronto). Snow, I ask…
Nightly Mayhem
I have a pretty lively nightlife. And not of the kind usually referred to when someone says a sentence like that. No, I am a creature of habit, usually staying at home in the evening, entertaining myself with bugging the cat, watching a movie or reading and occasionally hanging out with friends. I just read…
Reality Check
The search for balance continues in my latest HealthCentral post. And I may be on to something… “It had been another night of bad pain, of the kind that makes you rock back and forth in an attempt to block sensation with movement, even just a little. I’d had bad nights for weeks, each night…
On the Other Side of It
On and off through my life, there’ve been periods where my pain levels were so high they coloured everything, lent a patina to everything I said, everything I did, sometimes a smudgy grey film, at other times, a blinding scream and when you’re inside of that, there is no stepping to the side to get…
Reason #763 I Love Living Downtown
Not just events like Random Fun, but more organized, like the second annual Toronto Criterium – a bike race to kick off the city’s Bike Month. There’s a kids’ race, an amateur race and it all ends with the Pro Race, a 1 1/2 hour plus 5 laps race within easy walking distance from my…
Safety Audit
First, a wee preamble that is only relevant in the most tangential way. In my spare time (what spare time?) I volunteer as tenant rep for my building, which includes serving on a Tenant Council, being aware of issues in the building and the surrounding community and working with others in the neighborhood to improve…
Still, After All This Time
About a month ago, I wrote about living back from the edge and within that, about the slow coming back granted me by Enbrel and Humira. Well, in the beginning, it wasn’t slow. In the beginning, there was something new every day that I could do again, every day I laughed with the rediscovery of…
A Beginner’s Guide to RA: Social Security
The latest in the Beginner’s Guide series is on Social Secutity for Disability: “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”~ Mahatma Ghandi A friend of mine once said that applying for Social Security Disability felt like she was declaring herself legally dead.” The rest of the post is here.
A Recipe for the Adventurous
I’ve been reading a few blogs that include recipes (The Pioneer Woman especially) and been thinking about doing a bit of that myself. However, given how various and sundry allergies and food sensitivities make my culinary repertoire pretty boring – well, except for my garlic salmon which kicks arse – I decided to approach this…