I will answer comments on my Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008 post that was also a Love Thursday post in a minute, honest, I swear. But first, I have an announcement to make:
I finally finished reading every single one of the other BADD '08 posts! Yes, every single one (except the one in Turkish, sorry, couldn't get a translation). It took me five days, partly because like you I have a life which includes many other activities and responsibilities besides, alas, reading the internet, then partly because even though I have largely recovered from my amazing brain tumor experience, I still read a bit more slowly than I used to, and finally also partly because I am still apparently chock full o' cancer elsewhere, both the thought and fact of which are making me quite tired just at the moment.
Also, this year people really had quite a lot to say! So many people contributed this year, and so many entries are long, detailed, erudite and/or impassioned, and all in all represent a heck of a lot of thought and work. They deserved not to be skimmed or skipped.
I knew if I was going to make it through this reading marathon, I was going to need fuel. Fortunately, besides the gummy bear I almost choked to death on reading an entry by Lady Bracknell's Editor, thanks to my friend S. with whom I worked at Whole Foods and who now works at Debra's Natural Gourmet, the local Mom 'n' Pop natural foods store, I was able to score these:
Yes, these are five pounds of organically grown English peas, in season. After I expressed how much I enjoy them every year, how hard it is for me sometimes to find them grown without persistent pesticides or chemical fertilizers, and how short is their season around here anyway, S. kindly set aside this amount for my pick-up and delectation.
This is me delectating:
Yes, I eat them raw. They are sooooooooo good, better than candy and better for you to boot. I ate so many yesterday that I created a friction sore in the righthand corner of my mouth just from running the split open pods across my teeth and tongue to slurp out all the green goodness within.
I will not show you a picture of my friction sore. However, this is how many peas I have left:
Oh, wait, never mind.
(Not really sure how that happened. Maybe it was the missing rabbit.)
So while I was making a pig of myself, and then again when my anxieties or our poor anxiety sausage of a cat woke me up untimely and I couldn't get back to sleep, I read and read and read. As I said, everything I read was worth reading, but here's a short list of my absolute favorites for people who have less time than I had because they sleep all night or who have less sustaining fuel readily to hand.
Gigantic suffocating hugs go out to both The Gimp Parade and Planet of the Blind for pointing out that while war may or may not be precisely disablism, maybe not exactly, it is a tangible product of the same evil, the convenient ability to see people, even little children, not as individual human beings of unlimited potential but as so much expendable material.
Special honors for best use of LOLcats go to OOK!.
And in no particular order, these revealed things that were new to me, catalyzed personal epiphanies within me that I still remember days later, or are just really effective presentations:
From An Unreliable Witness: Apparently, there are worse things than being disabled, including being forced to act as a professional inspiration to the masses, but at the same time being denied access to public transportation and public restrooms, and also having an anachronistic hairstyle.
From This Is My Blog: You try living with a gorrilla in your house.
From Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star: Very, very thoughtful and thought-provoking post about mainstreaming vs. segregating disabled children in educational settings. The writer draws from her own experience both as a disabled child in public schools and as an academic working to develop mainstreaming programs, a choice she is not entirely sure is always the right choice. Most revelatory line for me: "What is unique about most [kids with disabilities] is that they are born a minority into their own family."
From Smite Me!: The closer we live our lives along the lines of relevant gender stereotypes, the more likely we are to be diagnosed with a personality disorder. Favorite part: "Schizoid personality disorder mainly comprises emotional and interpersonal distance – a main component of the male gender role. Narcissistic personality disorder seems to complement schizoid, in that it entails extreme ambition, arrogance, and a sense of entitlement. Along with antisocial personality disorder, the three disorders seem to embody the Western definition of masculinity."
From A Garden of Nna Mmoy: The concept of "stereotype threat," about which I'd never heard before but which is apparently a hot topic.
From it's THRILLING HEROIC:30, y'all!: A good example of a post detailing personal experience of debilitating chronic illness, just for people who didn't know what it's really like, plus my first exposure to Spoon Theory.
From Willendorf: Oppressors take note: the "Ladies' Auxiliary of the Gimp Militia" has been formed and is not amused by your sh*t.
From Lovely and Amazing: A nightmare turned into a pledge.
I could go on and on, but at a certain point, as others have noted, a post like this just becomes a recreation of the directory. These are just the ones sticking in my mind right now, and I love them, but there were many others to love. If these don't look interesting to you, or if you run through them and find yourself hungry for more, you know where you can find more.
1-I love those little peas, too.
2-I promise to go and read every one of your faves over the next few weeks.
3-"I am still apparently chock full o' cancer elsewhere" Did I miss something? Is this new news? Please excuse my sticking my big old nose in, yet again.
L.
Posted by: laurie | May 05, 2008 at 07:50 PM
Laurie, I'm so glad you're going to read them. I think you will appreciate many of them.
As for the &#%@ cancer, yes and no. I have a 13cm tumor on or in my left ovary which was revealed in a CT scan taken while I was in the hospital being diagnosed with a brain tumor. I actually knew about it already; you can't really have something that big in your pelvic cavity and not notice it, and it started causing me severe pain every other month at mittelschmerz time -- really severe, screaming agony kind of pain -- about a year and a half ago. But I didn't have health insurance a year and a half ago, so I just rolled around on the floor shrieking and moaning on and off for a week at a time, promised my true love I would get some kind of health coverage, and signed up for one of the new Commonwealth sponsored plans as soon as they became available and I was able to control my fear of forms. The big lump in my pelvis which can be appreciated with fingertips from the outside and which seems to swell and shrink and move around with my meals and my menstrual cycle was actually something I was going to look into this year -- just as soon as my headache went away.
hahahahaha
So there's that, but there's also more now, maybe there was more all along or maybe more grew because of how long I waited, but there's no way ever to know that, and it's pointless to ponder. And meanwhile, one way or another, much ugliness and another big crapshoot loom in my hopefully immediate future.
On the up side, barring catastrophe or merely unforeseen clusterf*ck, it looks like I'm getting a new leg this week, one that fits. So that's all right. (And again, thank you, Massachusetts.)
Posted by: Sara | May 05, 2008 at 09:20 PM
Sara,
I am speechless. That is so f*cked up. Let me know if there is anything at all that I can do (email me privately, if you like). I am so sorry.
Glad to hear about the new leg, though. No more pinching of the girl parts! xo
Posted by: laurie | May 05, 2008 at 09:41 PM
Thank you, Laurie. Plus, with a new leg I'll really be able to enjoy Lilac Sunday, and whatever else is left of this beautiful spring.
There's nothing else to do right at this moment except prod doctors and wait and prod doctors and wait and in between all that try to enjoy the hours that are about other things.
You know how it goes. But thanks. Your kindness, as always, means a lot.
Posted by: Sara | May 05, 2008 at 09:53 PM
I like to enumerate too:
1) Mmmmmm, peas!
2) Holy crap about that thing squatting on your ovary. I recall your writing about the pain but maybe missed your discovery of the reason.
3) Mittelschmerz is the best word ever.
4) You are finished reading BADD? Seriously? Because, um, that's impressive. I am about a third of the way through.
5) Mmmmmm, peas.
Posted by: Kay Olson | May 06, 2008 at 02:10 AM
hahahaha -- Yes, enumerating is very convenient!
1. Yes! MMMM.
2. Yeah, it sucks. The thing is, every woman on my mother's side of the family reached her 40s and entered this horrible perimenopausal hell. All of them except my mother herself, who decided to tough it out for some reason, had hysterectomies by the time they were 50. It's often a combination of nastinesses -- fibroids, endometriosis, etc. -- and it can last up to 15 years. So this was like the brain tumor in that when you combine all the symptoms I've been having from everything all at once, except for eventual degree of physical pain, they've really not been much different from the symptoms my mother experienced at my age (except she was also bipolar while her hormones were doing her dirty, so that was actually worse). So it's been hard for me to feel any urgency over what I just assumed was the usual family "female trouble," and besides, I didn't have health insurance, and practically every time I go to the doctor it's at least $10,000. So I chose to just suck it up for the time being.
And honestly, if it were just that I had the one squatter (love that), I wouldn't be freaking out, and also the nice and apparently quite skilled gynaecological surgeon who works out of my delightful local hospital (if a hospital can be delightful) would be happy to take care of it for me, and the whole thing would be over in a week. Heck, I could probably walk home from it! But, see, there's this other stuff. And the other stuff complicates my life with very unpleasant choices I can't even make until I have more information. And getting that information is a painfully slow process -- hence the anxiety and insomnia.
3. Yes, "mittelscherz" is an awesome word. It sounds like a fake curse, doesn't it? Like when an adult says "Oh, frick and frack!!!" around children instead of dropping F-bombs. And you know, since it is such a nasty thing, I think we should start using it as a curse word. Mittelschmerz! MITTELSCHMERZ! Yeah, try it; it totally works.
(The F-bomb is still my favorite, though.)
4. Yes, but you have been reading and writing other things, wonderful things. I have not. Also -- and this is a big assumption on my part -- you probably haven't been up half of every night with anxiety-driven insomnia. So, seriously, cut yourself some slack, girl!
5. Yes. Mmmm. :)
In Still Life With Woodpecker, Tom Robbins -- and I may have told you this before, too, but I can't remember -- wrote that there really are only two mantras: "yum" and "yuk" -- oh, and sometimes "yikes," depending on the situation. I think my own life alternates between the realms of "yum" and "yikes." Sometimes it is appropriate to dwell within the "yikes" -- for self-protection in crisis, for unflinching acceptance of hard, physical truths, and so on -- but other times, times when there's absolutely nothing I can do about whatever is going on to invoke the "yikes," I have to find a way to consciously, sometimes forcibly apply the "yum."
The peas really helped. :)
Posted by: Sara | May 06, 2008 at 09:11 AM
In the enumerating tradition:
1. One of my earliest memories is sitting in a garden eating peas straight from the vine. Minus the pods, mind.
2. Damn! Squatters (I like that term, too) suck big time! I hope you get some good sleep soon along with some good information. Anxiety is not fun on top of everything else. I try to remember "worrying is optional" (Patry Francis said that and I love its succinctness) but I often find it a difficult hat to wear. I am glad you are applying the yum as you can.
3. By the way, I appreciate the introduction to the yum/yuck/yikes theory. Bring on the yum, please! :-)
Posted by: mb | May 06, 2008 at 12:34 PM
Hi Sara,
I love Tom Robbins, too, although my favorite was "Jitterbug Perfume". He has a way with words and metaphors that is "yum"!
Like Laurie, I caught the phrase "chock full o' cancer" and have been worried about it - wasn't sure how to come right out and ask about it since the blog wasn't about it outright. So, thank you, Sara, for sharing what's going on (and Laurie for figuring out the right way to ask the question). I am so sorry.
I completely understand the anxiety and insomnia - been there, down that - so now your comment a couple of weeks ago about being tired makes sense. I can only hope that you get the information you need fairly quickly so that you can start on gearing up for your next challenge, whatever that is. We're all here for you, you know!
So, here's to more yums! One of our grad students (who interviewed young breast cancer survivors) gave me this joke:
It's about time we vote in a senator with breasts...after all, we've been voting for boobs for a hell of a long time!
You are, apparently, a Democrat, so I thought you might enjoy that one!
Wishing you the best, Dee
Posted by: Dee | May 06, 2008 at 08:07 PM
Crap. (Shorter and somehow more handy to the brain than mittelschmerz, though I agree that the F bomb is the quickest to arrive at the lips for expulsion in a pinch.)
Love peas. Just bought a few sugar snap peas yesterday to throw in my salad. Have you ever tasted pea greens? I wen with friends to this Taiwanese restaurant in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago and we got pea greens (cooked with garlic and sesame oil, as far as I could tell) and they were fabulous. Tasted like pea pods - well, with garlic and sesame oil (like any greens wouldn't taste fabulous in garlic and sesame oil). Yum. I can still taste them just thinking about it.
Posted by: leslee | May 06, 2008 at 08:23 PM
I am so sorry to hear that the cancer is still with you. Cancer sucks.
I loved the pictures of peas - especially delectating. Fresh snap peas are certainly delectable.
Posted by: jen of a2eatwrite | May 06, 2008 at 10:12 PM
Fun photos, great words.
I find pea pods yummy in themselves!
Posted by: pete | May 09, 2008 at 02:11 PM
sara, i don't know how i missed this post. kept thinking i'd read it already, but NO.
the peas are fabulous! and so are the links to such great BADD posts.
the squatter -- not good. i'm so sorry, and i hope it gets gone soon. xoxo
Posted by: kathy a. | May 10, 2008 at 03:07 PM