Writing Away Your Sorrows with an Updated List of Ways You Can Help Those Affected by Hurricane Harvey Who Have Disabilities

That's the tip of Mt. St. Helens, I think, (someone correct me who might know) breaking through a sea of clouds, hit with the setting sun. I couldn't possibly describe how beautiful and strange the world is, even through a thick pane of airplane glass.




I feel like a crazy person today. When I went to the grocery store, I realized that I didn't need to buy milk because Henry (who drank 3 gallons of milk a week) is no longer in the house. I started to cry and then felt ridiculous. I also saw that picture of Marie Antoinette in her stilettos, striding so glamorously alongside Dear Leader on the way to visit the suffering people of Houston and wanted to shame her -- and him. I wanted to openly mock her. I did openly mock her and called her Hurricane Barbie. I felt unsettled about doing so because, as one of my more tempered friends wrote, "What she's wearing is relevant to exactly nothing." I don't like to mock people's appearances and am perfectly aware that my tongue is sharper than a scythe. I always hated people mocking and criticizing Michelle Obama's or Hilary Clinton's -- and that's a feminist kind of thing. It makes me uncomfortable. So I felt uncomfortable about jumping in and joining the fray and said so, openly. What happened was the most interesting discussion from both women and men -- from those who agreed and those who disagreed. I wish all of ya'll were my Facehooker friends so you could read them.

It's all so utterly insane given what's happened in Texas.

If you haven't already, here's a way to help. I'm researching what's happening with disabled persons, particularly those with epilepsy. I remember that after Katrina many displaced persons with epilepsy and other disabilities couldn't get medications or utilize resources. I'm thinking about contacting the Epilepsy Foundation affiliate in Houston to see whether they need some extra help. I can even do that wearing my own stilettos while sitting in my bedroom, typing from the computer.*


Here's How You Can Help People Affected by Harvey

Portlight Inclusive Disaster Strategies has a hotline at 800-626-4959 to help get people with disabilities and elderly people to safety, provide for immediate needs for durable medical equipment and other assistive technology and problem-solve other disability accessibility issues. 

The Texas Diaper Bank supports the needs of babies, children with disabilities and vulnerable senior citizens (diapers are often not available at emergency shelters).









*Sorry not sorry. I do not own stilettos.

My Alto Voice in the Choir

Oh, America...you sad, gunslinging whorehouse...Ah freedom.

                                                    Jeff F.


I have no interest in those of you who like to collect, carry, protect yourself with and otherwise support the narrow interpretation of the Second Amendment.  Your exultation in your conceal and carry status or your photos of your gleaming gun cabinets are nails in the coffins of all the people who've died these last few weeks, culminating in the fourteen deaths yesterday of people who work with the developmentally disabled. Like Sophie. Yes, I'm making an emotional decision. You've made your decision, a decision that I believe is immoral and cowardly and based on nothing but fear and craven impulse. I have no interest in speaking with you nor in living alongside you.

I have nothing to add to this bit that Mary Moon at Bless Our Hearts wrote in her inimitable style and would only add that I refuse to listen to anyone, ever again, justify their lack of support for extremely strict gun laws.

What sort of guns did those gunmen, still on the loose, use today to calmly murder fourteen (at last count) people at a center for developmental disabilities in San Bernardino?
I don't know. But I can tell you this- the guns, whatever kind they were, were manufactured for one purpose and one purpose only and that is for the murder of human beings. Many human beings. As quickly as possible.

At this point, I don't give a shit what these crazy white men (it's always crazy white men, isn't it?) have or had as a motive to make them do what they did. I don't CARE if they needed mental health care that they were unable to get. I don't care what their religion was or their social or non-social lifestyle was. I don't care what video games they played or what their neighbors thought of them.
All I care about is that they were able to get these guns, these weapons of evil intent and the ammunition to go in them and use them to kill innocent people.
And of course it's always "innocent" people. School children, people in church, people in movies, people seeking health care services, people at an awards ceremony at a center for people with developmental disabilities.
Look- anyone who would do what these men do is mentally ill. That's a given. Whether they are teenagers who want to kill their fellow students or grown men who want to gun down abortion providers- they are sick.
That is not at question.
But here's what is- what sort of deep sickness has infected us as a nation which would allow this direct cause and effect to still be legal? What is it about us as a society which makes us hesitate for even a second before outlawing these sorts of weapons? What has happened to us as a species that would allow this to happen over and over again?
I don't even care if the second amendment DOES protect the rights of people to buy these guns (and I don't think for a second that it does). Let's amend the damn amendment. Because our babies are being killed.
And we are the laughing stock of the world.

So how do we do it? How do we, as a nation, say no more? 
Look- I'm at the point where I'd let the government declare martial law and send agents to every house in the nation to collect these guns. Which, of course, would lead to civil war and unbelievable bloodshed because that would prove to the gun insanists (yes, I made that word up) that the very thing they've been yelling about as a defense for owning guns has finally come true.
Nothing is going to happen overnight. It just isn't. This is a problem and a horror that may take decades before we see some results. Is that a reason not to begin the process? To outlaw these guns?
The horror and evil of slavery wasn't solved in a day. Hell, we're still suffering the consequences.
BUT IT HAS TO BEGIN SOMEWHERE!
And this absolutely undeniably psychotic love affair with guns that a certain segment of American society has must be stemmed. The finger has to be stuck in the dike, no matter how huge the force behind it threatens to be. And no jokes allowed- this ain't funny.

I'm preaching to the choir here. I know that. But let me remind you- don't vote for anyone who wavers or waffles on gun control. Just don't. Stand up and let's begin to start the process of getting these guns out of the hands of the insane. And no one in this whole world really believes that background checks really work. We have to just stop selling them. And even, dare I say? Making them?

The House That Jack Built

This is the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the doctor who ordered an EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the company who took the paper
from the doctor who ordered an EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the company that denied the paper
from the company who took the paper
from the doctor who ordered an EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the clerk who sent the paper
from the company who denied the paper
from the company who took the paper
from the doctor who ordered the EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the mother who received the paper
from the clerk who sent the paper
from the company who denied the paper
from the company who took the paper
from the doctor who ordered the EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the clerk who listened to the mother
who received the paper
from the clerk who sent the paper
from the company who denied the paper
from the company who took the paper
from the doctor who ordered the EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the other clerk who listened to the clerk
who listened to the mother
who received the paper
from the clerk who sent the paper
from the company who denied the paper
from the company who took the paper
from the doctor who ordered the EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the mother all forlorn
who listened to the other clerk who listened to the clerk
who listened to the mother
who received the paper
from the clerk who sent the paper
from the company who denied the paper
from the company who took the paper
from the doctor who ordered the EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

This is the place that comforts with laughter

the mother all forlorn

who listened to the other clerk who listened to the clerk
who listened to the mother
who received the paper
from the clerk who sent the paper
from the company who denied the paper
from the company who took the paper
from the doctor who ordered the EEG
for the girl whose brain loves to seize.

Insanity from the Past and Some Things Never Change Except, Perhaps, Seizures

Christmas, 2004

I'm cleaning and organizing today like a madwoman. Oliver is feeling under the weather, so after plying him with homemade soup and juice, I've let him vegetate in front of the television, gone through all the books and crap in my bedroom/office and tried to make sense of the universe. In going through some papers, I came upon this beginnings of an essay, written on October 3, 2004. I believe it was a writing workshop essay, the result of the prompt Write yourself through a difficult situation. 

Ten years later, I think it might provide some hilarity on your otherwise humdrum Wednesday. Feel free to laugh AT and with me.

I am walking our new puppy, Valentine, around the block. I'm training her to be an assistance dog, and said matter-of-factly, this sounds like an amazing idea. However, the training will take two years -- two years of driving to San Diego and back three times a month. I have a nine year old daughter with severe handicaps, a six year old son who has just begun kindergarten, and a three year old son who is currently raging through life.

Now I have a dog.

I was never a dog person; in fact, it's something about which I've always felt guilty. Because I don't get all warm when I see a dog or enjoy talking about dog antics or even like petting a panting, squirming dog, I somehow have a character flaw. Isn't there a saying, "Never trust a person who doesn't like animals?" But I have a dog, now, and I tell myself that the end -- a devoted animal who will sleep with Sophie and alert me when she has seizures -- will be well worth the conflicted feelings. As I walk her around the block, I'm thinking "is this 'a difficult situation' to write through?" How do I write through this as a difficult situation?

When I get back to the house, I go into Sophie's room. My husband Michael is sleeping soundly next to her. He has served the assistance dog role now for over five years because I am a psychotic wreck in the night. She is sitting up in bed, cross-legged in the corner. Sophie's bed is a mattress and box-spring on the floor and she sleeps against the wall. I unfold her legs and pull her to the edge of the bed, to make it easier to slip her pajama bottoms off and change her diaper. She is always soaked in the morning. She is nine and a half years old. Is this a difficult situation?

Michael, who on school days is aggravatingly slow, has practically leaped out of bed and is now very busy getting ready to rush off to work. It's a Sunday, and he hasn't had a day off in over a week. He's a chef and he has to go. I am angry and the day looms ahead of me empty in its Sundayness. 

The writing ends abruptly there but prompted me to search for the following photo of Sophie, the dog and me, dressed in pink poodle skirts for a Halloween extravaganza in San Diego, a required event for Dog Assistance Training. Please feel free to laugh AT me (especially my hideous, hideous hair) and WITH me. What the hell was I thinking?

Postscript:

Ha Ha Ha Ha! The assistance dog became the family dog after four months of me ferrying myself and my three young children and THE DOG down to San Diego for a three times a month 6 hour training session. Don't ask me how I managed to do this for four months.  Evidently, I lost my mind which included shearing off my hair and wearing poodle skirts. I couldn't handle being the Alpha Dog and soon allowed Valentine to run around willy nilly with my little boys. Today, I'm still out of my mind, but my hair is longer, I wear only jeans and long-sleeved tee-shirts and, occasionally, a burka. Valentine is still adorable, but she sure as hell is not a seizure dog and provides basically no services other than unbridled enthusiasm and an annoying, insatiable need to be loved. Henry is now fifteen years old and well out of kindergarten, impossibly handsome and still the sweetest person on the planet. Oliver is now twelve years old, home-schooled and still raging through life. Michael, or The Husband, still sleeps with Sophie and works all the time. Now eighteen years old, Sophie still sits cross-legged on the bed and needs to be changed. Up until two weeks ago, she still had seizures every day, all day.

As of today, she's two weeks seizure free.