... on a purple power chair / o'er the curbs we go / ripping out our haaaaiiiir ... With that out of my system, I'll continue. Remember my last post, so long ago? (Sorry—a few new ones are in progress. It's slow going, though, and I was away for a week and have been frenetically … Continue reading Crawling Through the Sludge …
If one measures accomplishments in tangible output, as our capitalist society is wont to do, my summer and early fall weren’t incredibly fruitful. As a productivity-worshipping perfectionist whose self-worth has traditionally been based on such standards, I feel obliged to remind you that my lack of much to show for these months was by design: … Continue reading Just Like Christmas
… I’m free! My inner drama queen had started to wonder if my period of confinement disproved that "this too shall pass" adage that rankles me when all I'm trying to do is see the glass half empty. Yesterday, for example, which was particularly bad from the “me cooped up and resentful that most people’s … Continue reading Twelve Days Later …
I'm now at the one-week mark of my current captivity. More like a week and a half, actually, since last Saturday's reprieve was so brief—more a tease of what I hadn't had for days (and haven't had in the time that's elapsed between then and now) than anything else. Counting from part one of the … Continue reading Plowing Through (No Thanks to a Plow)
I’ve made it more than half a block from my building exactly once in the past seven days: last Saturday, when, for a glorious few hours between snowstorms, the sidewalks were clear enough to navigate on my power wheelchair. And then, on my way home from the thrift store (I’m on the hunt for nice … Continue reading Snowy Sabbatical
I’m writing this (and publishing it, if I manage to finish it quickly enough) while on a plane bound for Victoria, BC. It’s been six years since I last visited the city in which I was born and grew up. The long separation hasn’t been by choice; until now, my health’s made the trip unfeasible. … Continue reading Go West, Young Wheelchair
It was an unusually long summer and fall in Toronto, a period marked by eerily comfortable temps that lingered well into November and delayed the inevitable freeze of an Ontario winter. As much as I'm alarmed by what T-shirt-in-October days might signal, I was pretty fine with leaving my parka in the closet until weeks … Continue reading Trial by Snow
It’s Christmas Eve, and my husband and I are puttering around the apartment wrapping the few presents we bought for each other and enjoying glimpses of our Christmas tree and the faint sound of a holiday album. We pause intermittently to entertain the feline houseguest we’ve been hosting this week or to eat one of … Continue reading A Chill(y) Christmas Eve
I realize that since I live in Ontario, I have no business being surprised by super-cold temps in January. The last week or thereabouts, though, has been cold-weather-warning cold, let's-not-leave-the-house cold, three-layers-and-still-not-comfortable cold. So yeah, it's been incredibly cold, in case that wasn't clear from the previous paragraph. This quasi-arctic weather—and I say this as … Continue reading It’s Really, Really Cold, and Seizure Me Doesn’t Seem to Know or Care
It’s rapidly getting chillier outside, and I’m rapidly getting more panicky about how I’m going to handle the winter months. Some people joyously welcome October and the changing leaves, donning their leggings and oversize sweaters and ordering their pumpkin spice whatevers (OK, I do this too; don’t judge). I agonize about the coming snow and … Continue reading In Anticipation of Winter (Bad Circulation, Bad Attitude)
De Morbo Sacro: Life and/with Epilepsy 