Yesterday, if you hadn’t heard, I finished my first week at a new job.  Hopefully that will mean no more privileged, insensitive, ableist comments from bosses, at least for a little while.  I’m really enjoying the new job thus far.  I’m not just doing data entry all day and I’m gaining trust from my colleagues to undertake projects on the basis of my competence, not my age or the fact that I have not completed my degree.

One of the most difficult things I’m dealing with right now though is trying to raise my partner’s nieces and nephews that I mentioned previously.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s immensely rewarding, but at the same time some times I feel like I’m crashing and burning.  We had negotiated a bed time of 11:00 for the kids because it is summer, but my new job starts earlier and I have to be up by 6:30.  My partner isn’t home in the evening, and I can never get them in bed with the lights out before 11:30.  That puts me at 7 hours if I’m lucky.  Usually though I don’t get to bed before midnight.  Those of you with fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue probably know that that amount of sleep is not enough.  In fact, it’s nowhere near enough.  I’m subsisting on Redline energy drinks to keep me conscious until 11:30, which is making me incredibly nauseous all the time.  Thursday, my partner’s day off, instead of keeping with my usual Thursday plans I was so beat that I just lay down in bed when I got home and slept. 

Did I mention I’m out of Lyrica again and the insurance has decided that they’re not going to cover it?  Because it’s not a “necessity”, so I probably will not be taking it anymore.  It’s far too expensive without insurance.  I hate insurance companies.

Trying to relate to the kids has been a trip, too.  When they get angry, they lash out in ways that I haven’t figured out how to deal with.  They say things they don’t mean and react violently (hitting each other, etc).  Sometimes I just don’t know how to respond.  I know it has a lot to do with things they’ve observed from others, but it’s just so hard sometimes.  I have to say, for those of you who have kids, I have a much greater admiration.  Raising kids is no easy feat.

Hope everyone is having a great summer.

I know, I’m a little out of the loop, but I finally got a button so you can add my blog to your RSS reader! Just click the “Subscribe” button on the sidebar and add me to your feed reader, which ever one you use. Thanks for reading!

I saw an interesting article the other day about dolls specially made to represent people with disabilities. Down Syndrome, cancer, blindness are being represented in some of the new dolls being made, as well as dolls that use wheelchairs. The article gives three different perspectives, one in support of the doll and two against. The support says that children should be able to have dolls that look like them, while the opposition says that it puts too much focus on children’s differences. Personally, much the way I wish dolls representing other races were more readily available (I remember last Christmas finding a non-white doll for my partner’s mixed niece was difficult to say the least), I think that people with disabilities should be represented, even with dolls. I don’t think we should be trying to convince children that they’re no different than “everyone else”. Children don’t fall for that. I think we should be showing children, as cheesy as it sounds, that everyone is different and that we should embrace differences in each other rather than to just pretend they don’t exist. You can find the doll article here.

What do you think? Are dolls representing people with disabilities a good thing or a bad thing?

Well, Tuesday officially marked the four month anniversary of this blog. If you want to buy me something nice to celebrate, I accept all major credit cards, good red wines (bonus points for sparkling wines), and deep tissue massages. All jokes aside, I’m glad to be writing this and want to thank those of you who read this blog.

This week has been hectic. I wanted to have written Tuesday, but I have been so busy. To make a long story short, I now have four children ages 5 through 14 living in my house, my partner’s nieces and nephews. I got a call on Wednesday saying that we (my partner and I) were going to go pick up the kids because their mother was about to be evicted from her apartment and she couldn’t afford to feed the kids anymore–my partner and I had bought groceries and brought them over several times in the preceding weeks.

My head was spinning as I got off the phone, wondering where we were going to put all these kids. We had one “bed” in the house–ours, a mattress on the floor, and that certainly wasn’t going to hold six people. My mind was reeling when I got home, so I went on a search for bedding. By some miracle, we found enough. I found a mattress and box springs in my attic for one, my father brought over another, an extra from his house, we found a toddler size racecar bed in the garage, and an inflatable mattress to suffice until another actual bed can be brought over. We found three sets of sheets (we had to buy a set for the racecar bed), four comforters (including two that I had made myself!) and four pillows.

Setting it all up proved to be difficult though. Stairs, as you probably know if you read this blog, are my arch nemesis. I climbed the flight in our house way more than I wanted to that day, trying to get everything set up and ready. The room looks really cute though… my Ultram and I are just going to be BFF for a couple days while I recover from too much strain.

Thanks for your patience with me while I try to get settled into all of this. I appreciate your continued reading. By the way, I added a cool little widget so that if you don’t use an RSS reader that you can be e-mailed when I update this blog. It’s up at the top, sort of on the right side, so be sure to fill in your e-mail so you can know when I write a new blog. Otherwise, add me to your RSS reader and I promise I’ll start writing interesting things again soon. TGIF!

The company that I am working for for the summer holds an annual convention, and this year they have decided to do a “philanthropy project” for all of their members at the convention.  The company wanted to work with Habitat for Humanity, but Habitat for Humanity’s chapter in the area where the convention is to take place was not able to schedule a build with them as far in advance as my company’s deadline, so my company scrapped the idea.  I did some research then and came up with a volunteer organization that builds ramps to make people’s homes wheelchair accessible.  I gave the idea to some people I work with who seemed enthusiastic, but then we talked about it in the meeting today, and it seems some people are less enthusiastic about it than others.  First of all, the CEO said that it was a “lame” idea, that building ramps sounded like a stupid idea, and that we should do something much more impressive with a more well-known company.  He said we could work with United Way or the Red Cross, but that we didn’t want our members to think we’re small-time like this small, locally based nonprofit.  We couuld do anything else, as long as it was with a big company with a big name.  I found out quickly that this wasn’t about doing good, it was about making a good name for ourselves.  I have felt incredibly jaded with the company since, and I am glad that this is just a summer job. 

What do you all do or say when a superior says something ableist or otherwise prejudice or offensive in front of you?

A very important decision came down from the Supreme Court yesterday. The case involved a woman who became disabled while working for Sears. The insurance company at first paid her benefits but two years later decided to “reevaluate” whether or not the woman, Wanda Glenn, was still disabled. A doctor said in one appointment that she would be able to do some sedentary work, but he decided shortly thereafter that he had made a mistake and that work of any kind would be of high risk to her health. The insurance company though, Metlife, continued to deny her benefits despite the opinions of her physician. The case went to the Supreme Court though and yesterday the opinion came down that there was a conflict of interest because the insurance company was both deciding whether insurance claims were legitimate and paying the benefits. Glenn was supported by the AARP and the Supreme Court sided with her. What a great victory against the insurance company. Frankly, I think the fact that insurance companies are for-profit companies is absolutely ludicrous. How completely unethical to profit off of other people’s health issues. You can read the full story on the case here.

Socialist Worker ran an editorial recently about disability activists who are against the selective abortion of fetuses with disabilities, even in the case that the activist is generally pro-choice. The writer, Allen Hines, mangles the words of Ruth Hubbard, who says, “A woman must have the ability to abort a fetus, whatever her reasons, precisely because it is a decision about her body and how she will live her life, but the decisions about what kind of baby to bear inevitably are bedeviled by overt and unspoken judgments about which lives are ‘worth living.’” [emphasis mine]

Hines follows Hubbard’s quote by claiming that Hubbard only thinks women should legally be allowed access to abortion if disability is not involved, which is quite obviously not what Hubbard is saying. He continues by stating,

We must reject oscillation on the question of abortion. Disability theorists who waver about abortion when a fetus with a disability is involved do a disservice to women by helping to roll back the gains of Roe v. Wade.

Honestly, abortion was legalized in part to regulate something that was already happening. Like Hubbard, I don’t see selective abortion as a legal issue so much as a moral one. Aborting on the basis of disability is not dissimilar to eugenics and therefore should be critiqued, rather than broadly accepted. I am disappointed to see this article that seems to have so broadly missed the point of Hubbard’s argument published in the Socialist Worker.

You can read the story here.

The Seattle Times ran a story this morning about the ADA and the Bush administration’s plan to revamp it in response to the many war veterans who have become disabled in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new standards would require that:

• Courts would have to provide a lift or ramp to ensure that people in wheelchairs could get into the witness stand.
• Auditoriums would have to provide a lift or ramp so wheelchair users could “participate fully and equally in graduation exercises and other events.”
• Any sports stadium with a seating capacity of 25,000 or more would have to provide safety and emergency information by posting written messages on scoreboards and video monitors to alert people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• Light switches in hotel rooms could not be more than 48 inches high. The current maximum is 54 inches.
• A new swimming pool with a perimeter of more than 300 feet would have to provide “at least two accessible means of entry,” such as a gentle sloping ramp or a chair lift.

Disturbingly, however, small businesses, even with new facilities, can opt out of the standards if they use 1% of their revenue to attempt to become more accessible. Personally, I think that the government has an obligation to its disabled citizens and should provide financial assistance to small businesses to help them become accessible. Especially in this time of struggle, I cannot think of a better reason to require accessibility for small businesses. The construction of lifts and ramps would equate jobs and accessible buildings would equate more potential patrons for small businesses. Seems like a no-brainer for the government to me.

Additionally, the new ADA would potentially be more restrictive in some areas. Wheelchairs and scooters would still be allowed everywhere, but the government could limit the use of golf carts and Segways in indoor areas. The types of animals that could be used as service animals would be limited to, “any dog or other common domestic animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks”.

Thoughts?

If you haven’t heard, Wal-mart has been sued for failing to accommodate and firing a pharmacy worker who became disabled after being shot in a robbery. The woman was still able to do her job but used a cane and required moderate accommodations. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Wal-mart, who is expected to settle out of court for $250,000 in damages and restructure their policies. You can read more on this story here.

Honestly, it’s about time someone went after Wal-mart and their discriminatory practices and horrible business ethics. Evidently this is not the first case this year either. Wal-mart lost another $300,000 earlier this year for another case involving the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It seems it would cost them less to employ better business practices rather than continue to be sued for large sums of money for discrimination. This is absolutely disgusting.

I’ve been absolutely horrible about blogging since I’ve been back home. I’ve been so busy with the job hunt, catching up with people, trying to get the house in livable condition, family crises for both me and my partner… it’s been hectic. I intend to pick blogging back up though now that things have calmed down a bit. I have wonderful news though that may seem entirely unrelated to disability, but I assure you it’s not–I now am the mommy to three adorable kittens!

I have one more furbaby who’s not pictured here, a little black and white girl, but they are just sweet as can be. Research has been around for several years about how companion animals have a therapeutic effect on those of us who deal with illnesses and pain. My kittens have been wonderful for me–petting them and watching them wrestle around and play with each other has lifted my spirits, thus making the pain at least a little more bearable. I hope all is well for all of you out there. Thank you for the kind comments you all have left me. I hope you will keep reading, I have been thinking about this blog a lot lately and all the things I still want to talk about, so stay tuned for that. I hope you’re all having a good summer so far!