“Mental illnesses are as serious as physical illnesses.” 

That was the last thing my prof said to us at the end of term in our Abnormal Psychology summer session course at the University of Manitoba.

Remember it, peeps: it saves lives.

Pay attention. Yes, I mean you.

I’m going to say it again, to make sure it gets into your brains, that you see it in your sleep when you doze off tonight.

“Mental illnesses are as serious as physical illnesses.” 

Got it? Good!

Now, the next time you see someone and ask them the standard sociologically-appropriate question we’ve all been programmed with: “How’s it going?”

…offer to listen.

Some disabled parents get their abilities questioned by professionals or laypeople, making presumptions.

[From parents to mum in the wheelchair with her son in the NICU:]
“Is he yours?”

As if a disabled person couldn’t possibly be a parent due to their condition.

The mum also had some great ideas for dealing with baby: if you want him to crawl into his bedroom at sleep time, Mum crawls into the room, and then he follows her. What a great idea!

The mum on the show recounted the trouble she had with getting an epidural, because her condition meant that leaning over meant she would collapse. The anesthetist started arguing with her, so she said, “Time for you to get fucking creative!” ♥

Eventually, she did get the epidural, after more arguing. Staff chastised her for swearing.

They also argued with her about how she transferred herself from bed to her chair, and nurses yelled at her for doing things the way she does them instead of blindly following instructions. Patients are supposed to be sheep, right?

Overall, this show gave me some great ideas for when my husband and I have kids, and also reminds me that I’m not the only one who goes through these sorts of things. When you’re disabled, you have to get fucking creative. So why can’t other people do the same?

LINK(S):

Disabled Parents Network

Max Von Sydow and Jason Miller in “The Exorcist” (1973)

Today, I came across this article on the BBC.

Shockingly, yes.

But, there’s a big difference between being voluntarily celibate because you believe it strengthens your faith, and abstaining from putting pederastic thoughts into action because you don’t want to get caught. The latter is basically lying, which as I understand it, is a bad thing in all religions.

A certain level of priests in the Russian Orthodox Church are allowed to get married and have children. However, if they want to rise higher in the ranks, celibacy is required.

I disagree with the fellow in the article who implies that women’s sex drive can be lower than men’s. Both can wax and wane, depending on many different factors.

Oh, women are evil for seeing priests as “forbidden fruit”? Please.

They’re also discounting the platonic friendships and camaraderie – perfectly legal ones – that can develop among priests or nuns who live together in monasteries. There is nothing in Christianity that says priests or nuns have to live their lives alone.

Gandhi wasn’t such a saint: yes, he did indeed slept with young girls to test his own level of resistance to temptation. How is that not wrong on so many levels? It is not a “worthwhile experiment” because it reduces the object of the experiment to nothing more than a piece of meat. But when most of us think of Gandhi, we don’t automatically think of pedophilia or  racism. Those were things he espoused.

Judaism, by contrast, has a lesser level of prohibition on premarital sex. If possible, (Orthodox), you shouldn’t do it, but it’s less of a huge sin than in Catholicism.

Corriedale Cheesecake!

A friend on Ravelry asked recently to see some of the yarn I’ve spun with my drop spindle.  I haven’t spun anything new in ages because I’ve been so sick with migraines. However, here are some pictures of what I have.

Pink!

I haven’t decided whether or not to knit my yarn into something, or sell it as-is in my Etsy shop. Please comment and let me know what you think I should do!

BBC: Knitting reinvented: Mathematics, feminism and metal
Dr Sarah-Marie Belcastro uses knitting to explore the mathematical concepts that she uses, encounters and thinks about every day.

What it’s like to wear a hijab (in different countries)

Cancer vs the Constitution – This post breaks my heart. I grew up in Canada and live in the UK – both countries that have socialized medical care. Such medical care would have saved this American woman’s life when she came into the ER with cervical cancer so advanced the doctor could smell it. She was uninsured and because of that, doctors refused to give her treatment until it was too late. Despicable. The author of this post, herself a doctor, sneaked the patient in for under-the-table emergent scans and treatment.

I’ve got my eye on this handspun yarn, “When Dragons Fly” by Countess Ablaze. Thing is, that the spinning fiber she sells in the same colourway looks awfully seductive, too.

I love multicolour, self-striping yarn!

I’m so excited about the upcoming film version of Les Miserables (starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and Amanda Seyfried)!

Boy, would I love to frame this and put it on our wall!

My husband is taking me to London at the end of this month to see the West End production – so I’ve made a playlist of the cast we’ll be seeing!

Les Miserables Wedding Flash Mob – brilliant!

Even better is the original Polish cast flash mob performance of the same song, “One Day More”.  I’d kill to be in one of these!

So that means that a disabled parent couldn’t sit with their kids and their spouse.

Ridiculous. I mean, it’s the PARALYMPICS. Logic fail. Words fail me.

However, in my experience, Russians were delightful to me in terms of my disability. In 2010, I did an interview with Josh Wilson of the School of Russian Area Studies (SRAS) about my experiences traveling in Russia, with a focus on how I adapted to what has been seen traditionally in tour guide books as a country that is not handicap-accessible. 

Sitting near the metro entrance outside of Red Square (June 2003)

I couldn’t read this whole article because it triggered me, but as usual, Surly Amy makes some great points…and there are puppies involved! For your good deed of the day, every time you see a hate message against a woman online donate 25 cents to Planned Parenthood.

Ibogaine is a substance used in a Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode (SE11EP07, “Users”) for opiate addiction (such as heroin, methamphetamines, etc). The psychiatrist (played by B. D. Wong) in the SVU episode claims that Ibogaine can and does end addiction overnight (91% success rate according to the characters) and that it is safer than methadone. There’s only one catch to this miraculous treatment. Wong’s character explains, “It’s illegal in the US, because the patent expired and drug companies don’t want to pay to renew it when they make more money treating people with the less-effective methadone”. Is it just me, or is that weird and not in the best interests of patients who want to end their addictions? Money may make the world go round, but in this case, I think the money needs to stuff it. Something I didn’t know: “Canada and Mexico both allow ibogaine therapy facilities to operate and contribute to further understanding of the detoxification and therapeutic process that ibogaine has the potential to facilitate.” [Wikipedia: Ibogaine.]

Is There a Point to Veil Bans? Personally, I see no reason to ban them, any more than banning the wearing of crosses or kippas/yarmulkes makes any sense. It’s supposed to be an individual’s choice of what she wants to wear – despite what the media trumpets, Islam is a democracy, and those who force women to cover themselves with niqabs have no right to call themselves Muslims, because they are oppressing women in the name of Allah. It’s the same problem with fundamentalist Christians’ objection to gay marriage – religion is used as a crutch to support hatred with the argument from authority, but if people actually took the time to study what Jesus and Mohammed (peace be upon them) actually did or said about such things, it would quickly become clear that people who use religion to bolster hate and ignorance, and to cause mass death and destruction, should have no right to declare themselves followers of those religions – BECAUSE THEY AREN’T. Prophets are turning in their graves, I tell you. I’ve written about what a joke the TSA is when it comes to airport security, so this latest restriction/objection just seems like more of the same nonsense that amounts to racial profiling.

Update on My Guide to Islam – The writer spent her childhood as a practicing Muslim who never in her right mind would have believed that she would grow up to be an atheist feminist secular humanist, or, in other words, a Skepchick writer.

DarthxErik singing “On My Own” in an impression of Frances Ruffelle – Ruffelle was the first “Eponine” I ever heard in Les Misérables, and in my opinion, still the best. Lea Salonga is my second favourite.

Knitting Maternity Shirt – I must have this when we have kids.

The Viking Conspiracy (Or, I’m Not Jew, I’m Jew-ish) – Excellent Skepchick discussion about how, on an exam (GCSE) in the UK for teenagers, a questions asks the students to “reduce modern prejudice to a few dates and events” with the question “ “Why are some people prejudiced against Jews? Explain briefly“.” In other words, they are “expected [italics mine] to refer to the Holocaust”. What that does is make the students find reasons to be prejudiced, which was apparently the opposite result the makers of that incredibly dumb question were aiming for.

Origami Bookmark – Deb shows us how to fold an origami bookmark! I used to know how to make these, but I need a refresher.

Seconds From Disaster – cool playlist I made of all kinds of disasters, and the science and psychology behind them. For some reason, I like watching documentaries about disasters. I don’t like it when they happen, but the mechanics of investigation intrigue me.

Today, after doing an errand, my DH and I were in Manchester City Centre to meet my/our best girlfriend for caffeine and sugar at Caffe Nero at 67 Deansgate.

All three of us are physically/mobility disabled. For privacy reasons, I will only state that I have spastic cerebral palsy, which means, among other things, that although I can walk, I have very poor balance. Access to disabled toilets and wheelchair/scooter accessibility (if I’m using my scooter) to establishments is a must, although today I got about walking with my cane. I can and often do manage stairs as long as they have suitable railings I can grab onto for balance. My husband would not have been able to manage the Caffe Nero stairs at all; I devoutly hoped he would not need the facilities.

When my girlfriend and I needed to use the loos, we entered what we thought was a disabled toilet area. The door was clearly wide enough to accommodate a scooter or wheelchair, so what I didn’t expect to see were two flights of stairs leading down to the ladies’ and gents’ – with only a partial railing on the left side of the stairs, and none at all on the right.
Holy shit.  

My jaw dropped, and I let out a string of words which common decency forbids me to record. But as the call of nature was now urgent, and I could not safely descend the stairs, walking while digging my fingers into the wall moulding or with my left hand only on the banister (I use my cane with my left hand), I had no alternative but to slide down these dirty steps, on my ass. As a gentleman at the next table saw us going to the loos, he expressed concern that we might have trouble, as the stairs were wobbly. Great. He went to check with the servers if there was an accessible loo on the premises. Nope, there wasn’t. My husband would not have been able to manage the stairs at all; I devoutly hoped he would not need the facilities.

So, on my ass it would have to be. My friend suggested we might try going into a different cafe nearby, in case they had more sensible accommodations. I declined; it was now a matter of urgency. (Women’s bladders are roughly the size of walnuts; males’ have a slightly higher capacity, and a longer exit route – lucky bastards.) Climbing back up those stairs was much more straightforward, as I gripped the railing with my right hand and the wall moulding with my left, while my girlfriend kindly held both my cane and hers. We decided that large slices of cake and coffee were in order. That’s partly why I’m awake, having written two blog posts tonight. Zing! 

This wasn’t the first time I’d encountered accessibility problems. But at least now, more than 10 years after my first brush with this kind of nonsense, I can deal with it with a certain amount of aplomb and chutzpah. And chocolate cake.

Caffe Nero can be reached at: 
67 Deansgate
Manchester
M32 BW
0161 832 3186