Distracted By Something Shiny

I went off on FB when I saw this article. And then copied my rant to Twitter. Because why not. Have yet to see how it goes over, other than getting a Like from my dad. ;) He likes all my original posts, even when it’s something we disagree on, because he says, ‘but you write your opinions so well!’.

My venting: “I get that this is an art piece, but I hate stuff like this. Listen, technology is a gd godsend, okay? It gives me a social life when I’m homebound, connected me with writing groups that have improved my writing & helped me get published, it lets me help disabled folks in need of support & advocacy in my free time, it lets me play Dungeons & Dragons & have a relationship with my niblings who live in a whole other country.

People that call out photos of others with devices in their hand as, “lonely or withdrawn or detached” or whatever, without knowing the context of the photos, annoy me to no end. If these photos were real & not art pieces, and they were lambasted for not “putting away their screens”, - as I have seen time & time again, ironically on social media - I’d say, “How do you know what they’re doing?” Those bro-dudes could be looking up how to safely start a charcoal grill. That couple on the porch could be frantically texting loved ones trying to get an update on a sick grandparent. Those boys on the couch could be playing an online video game *together*. That little girl could be watching a cartoon that is teaching her colors with a parent, only to ask, “How many shades of blue are there?” & now her parent is looking it up for her.

I get it’s Art, okay. But it’s infuriating Art, because it reinforces the notion that tech separates us, makes us farther from each other. It can. But it can also educate us, bring us closer together & improve our lives. And articles (and art) saying differently, just makes the person seem like an old disgruntled grandpa waving a broom at all the kids to get off his lawn. It’s 2019, y’all - tech isn’t going anywhere.”

I hate giving QZ the click for this lazy & uninspired article, but whatever, here you go:
https://qz.com/523746/a-photographer-edits-out-our-smartphones-to-show-our-strange-and-lonely-new-world/

Well, I showed up to PT yesterday and had two employees say they were surprised to see me, they thought I’d be in Canada by now. And then ask if I was okay. Like I NEVER talk politics there, a public setting, because you never know who will bring the wrath. But these people just know me well enough by now to know I am gutted. And that, at least, made me smile, when not much else has.

My little brother is a Libertarian - (Idk why, his kids rely on government aid and insurance, but ok) - so he told me that he was voting for Gary Johnson. I argued that Clinton needed every vote, that a third party vote was wasted. He said it wasn’t a wasted vote, it’s a vote for your candidate. I was like, “But your candidate will never win.” He said winning isn’t the goal for him. How? How can a poor, father of two, social issues activist think that way? In an election like this?

So I told him the following - (paraphrasing obvs) - “Okay, I know as a severely disabled person who has been disabled from birth, I will be one of the last to get my benefits cut. But if I do - even if I just lose prescription insurance - I can’t afford my liver meds and without them, I will die. If I die as a direct or indirect result of Trump being president and you voted Gary Jonhson, because ‘winning isn’t the goal’, then you are not welcome at my funeral. And I am not fucking kidding.” He responded with some grumbles and blahblah, but hoy boy, I am NOT fucking kidding.

I may be safer than most in that area - though as a poor, disabled, government dependant, queer woman, I am far from safe - but my brothers and sisters in the disabled community are about to have their health insurance gutted. In our disabled community - because my brother has fibro and bone spurs. We are about to lose people, lose lives, the way we have been losing people in England and no one is talking about it. And it’s not just the disabled, but every marginalized group out there that is about to have their life put in danger, because some people like my brother don’t think winning is the goal. Or ‘vote your conscious’. If all of those third party or absent protest-voters had voted Clinton, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now. And I don’t want to hear a single word from any of them. They forfeited their right to be upset by this outcome. They were warned.

After he was declared president, I made my sister promise that if I do, in fact, die as a direct or indirect result of Trump’s policies, that she is to put the following sign outside of my memorial service: “If you did not vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections, you are a part of the reason that my sister is dead and, per her instructions, you are NOT welcome at this service.”

She promised she would.

And now I leave you with this thought - the deed is done, so let us bond together and protect each other and amplify the voices of the marginalized and stand for those who can’t. And fight. We will take our country back with love, not hate. Let’s form a really big fellowship and throw the goddamn ring in the fire!

Let’s rewind to April. Mom is living at home. She can dress herself and make her own meals. She claims she can do more, but she isn’t doing it. She is turning away half of the charity cleaning services. Dishes are stacked everywhere, half eaten food, laundry all over, dusty shelves, dirty bathroom and medical supplies. But whatever, she’ll do what she wants.

( This is the shortened version, I swear! Also memory may be off on some details, it's been a lot of details, okay. )

But this week she was told she can go home! They still don’t know what the problem is. They still don’t have a treatment plan. We don’t care. We are letting her. I don’t have hope it will be for long. But for a moment, a brief moment, we will have a reprieve

So, I owe you all a Mom update. This is long, I have to go back to, uh, January, I guess it was. There was a Wednesday when my sister went to visit Mom at rehab and her breathing didn’t sound very good. Sis wanted to know what the doctor said. “Oh, I haven’t seen a doctor,” Mom tells her. Then on Sunday, Sis takes Mom to visit a sick friend. After they leave, Sis says, “So, shall we go to the ER?” Mom is taken aback, why would they? Sis is like, “If I sounded like you, I’d go to the ER.” Mom pooh-poohs her.

( Under the cut for spaceage. )

What’s next for her? She can’t stay at my aunt’s forever, so idk. Maybe she really will go home. But one thing is for sure, she can’t have Winston back. He’s my puppy now!

Posted this to my disability blog, but it ended up being like a whole actual post, not just my usual paragraphs I post over there, and as it is about my life and this is my life-journal, I figured I'd post it here too. On the upside, I really did get a great discount on the frames I was shopping for, so I still call it a win!

So, yesterday I actually put on pants and went out to the art store, Michael’s, to buy some frames for some art I got. While I was in the passenger seat, in the parking lot, waiting for my sister to get done fussing about and get my wheelchair out, I heard the unmistakeable sound of a Truck - with a capital T - pull up next to us. The noise caused me to look up. It was a big truck, but not nearly big enough to require the ridiculously large monster truck-esque wheels they had put on it. I had no choice but to roll my eyes. I was about to look away when I noticed they were half in the wheelchair loading zone, on the slanted blue lines that mean “Don’t park here!”

( The rest is under the cut. )

I got the items I needed for cheap and on sale, which was great, but I still think that today Michael’s did not get a passing grade.

Why are so many people of the opinion that being a stay-at-home dad is ‘doing nothing’? You should hear some of the things people in my family say about my little brother, just because he doesn’t have a ‘job’. It’s so sexist. If it were his wife who chose to stay home and take care of the kids, she’d be doing her duty as a wife and mother. But because he, a man, that society has set up as the breadwinner, is staying at home to care for the house and kids - (and two elderly parents, as well as volunteering at a soup kitchen) - suddenly it’s ‘doing nothing’. It irks me to no end. It’s basically saying, “Man make money, Man pay bills, Woman rear children, Woman get back in kitchen.”

My brother worked construction for ten years. His wife worked at the same fast food place all through high school. When they had their kid, they made a choice together that she would work and he would stay home. Construction is not a consistent job - he’d work 60 hour weeks for two weeks and then not work again for a month. That’s not possible to make money on an even scale that way. They tried both working for awhile, but with the construction gig, it wasn’t worth it to pay for the full-time spot at daycare for The Nephew when my brother wouldn’t be working regular hours. My S-I-L was being offered management positions and consistent promotions and it made more financial sense this way. My brother still picks up weekend gigs whenever his old construction crew is on a deadline, but he has a full-time job raising those kids. And running a household.

My mom called him the other day and he was all, “I can’t talk right now, Mom, I’m making dinner,” and she said, “Why are you making dinner? Your wife doesn’t make dinner?” My brother was shocked to hear her ask that, after he’s been a stay-at-home dad for almost nine years now. He was all, “No, she works. I run the house. I have to feed the kids, give the baby a bath, help my son with his homework, put the baby to bed and then do the laundry.” My mom scoffed at that, the idea that he did all of that, that his wife didn’t work a full-time mangers job and also run the house. What does she think he does with his time then? My cousin was here tonight and I was saying that Mom has been driving my brother nuts, calling him all the time, and my cousin was all, “Good. It’s not like he does anything else with his time.”

I am so offended! I am offended on my brother’s behalf and on the behalf of all stay-at-home dads and on the behalf of women, because apparently we belong in the kitchen and not men. Now if you'll excuse me, I apparently have to get back in the kitchen and make someone a sandwich.

I just put up a post on Tumblr, because I was pissed as hell when I heard this, and it is definitely up Tumblr's alley, but since I typed it all out - and since I'm still pissed - I thought I'd go ahead and share it here as well.

I turned on the TV the other day and The Wendy Williams Show was on and she was talking about the Jennifer Lawrence nude pics, so I figured it would be full of great talk about rape culture. It was not. Instead, Wendy Williams had this to say…

"Jennifer Lawrence, you want to know what? Don’t sweat this, young lady. I mean, you’re the one who took the pictures. And now she’s telling us why she took the pictures. She took the pictures because she had a four year long distance relationship with her boyfriend. Mind you, she’s only 24 years old. She said, ‘Either he could look at my naked pictures or he could look at porn.’ Well how about - well, no, 24, she’s still young - men would look at both. You know what I mean? I mean, not for nothing. If you ask any hot-blooded man, he would say he’ll look at your naked pictures, but he’s also going to look at porn. But, she was young when the relationship started. She said that having him be able to look at her pictures is what sustained that relationship for the four years, because they were long distance. In my opinion, if she would just stop talking about the cloud and the naked pictures, it’d go away! We’d all forget - like we’d forget about it. Really! Besides, Jen, you don’t look bad under your clothes. And this - I think the hackilation has actually made your career even hotter. Because she was red hot before, but now it’s like heat-seeking missile hot. So hold your head up with pride."

And the audience cheered and clapped and agreed with her. Listen, Wendy Williams, we shouldn’t just stop talking about it and forget about it. THIS IS A CONVERSATION THAT NEEDS TO BE HAD.

Jennifer Lawrence has stated - and I agree with her - that what has happened here is a sex crime. She has made it very clear how she feels about all of this…“It’s my body, and it should be my choice, and the fact that it is not my choice is absolutely disgusting. I can’t believe that we even live in that kind of world.”

But what Wendy Williams is basically saying here is, ‘Don’t worry about it, Jen, cuz it’s totally done wonders for your career and you're a hottie anyways and what did you expect when you took the pictures?’ And that should not fly with anyone.

I have a ton of comments in my inbox and I'm so far behind on my Flist that LJ won't let me go back that far - (how come it doesn't let us go back as far as it used to?) - but I'm just trying to take it all one thing at a time, because this has seriously been a bad few weeks around here. Hopefully I'll get around to telling you all about it, but for now let's start with this: My mom's dog was mauled by another dog while they were out walking.

( Under a cut for graphic descriptions of animal attack. )

Any good thoughts, vibes or prayers you can send Winston's way would be appreciated. Give your beloved furry family members extra cuddles tonight in his honor. I'll try to let you know how he's doing in a few days.

(ETA: I've been informed that the attacking dog has not been put down yet. It is in quarantine but there is a process that has to be gone through before he can be put down. We'll see what happens with that.)

I'm finally calmed down enough to tell you about my Saturday - and here I'll be making up for not doing a proper post for a week by word-vomiting all over you.

( Rest assured, this doesn't end with the Criminal Minds team at my door. )

The security system may be great for us - (I’m sure it will be) - but I did not like those guys and I will never open the door to them myself, that's for damn sure.

Okay, so that moment when you hear a song - or more specifically a lyric within a song - and you go, “THAT. That’s it. That’s the tile for the fic I am working on.” And then you go to change the fic’s name…and you can’t remember what it was. Or what song you were listening to. Or even where you heard it. And then you have to retrace your steps just to try to figure out what you were doing when this epiphany happened. Yeah, that’s my life right now. And just having the title figured out got me so enthused about a fic that I have kind of let fall by the wayside and now I have lost it! /headdesk/ I am retracing my steps. I will find it! All is not lost.

So, I did a clean sweep of my Friend’s List; unfriended people who have no entries in their journals (oh the days when I just automatically friended anyone who friended me, without even looking at their ljs), unfriended a few people that I had friended for their fics who have moved onto other fandoms, and friended back a few people who had friended me but I was lazy and never got around to friending them.

Wow. I just used the word ‘friended’ a lot in that paragraph.

But mostly I left communities; most of the Glee ones because I’m basically done there, some newsletters because I’m not invested enough to really need daily updates, and several SPN/CW RPS comms because when I first got an LJ I joined a lot of those. I still belong to an abnormal number of them, but I’ve weeded it down a little.

LJ was pissing me off for a few days though, because it kept listing that I had still had posting access to those comms, even though I was no longer a member and I just...need my organization to be complete, not all messed up because LJ is being wonky! It seems to have corrected that issue now. Although I did belong to a comm that has been shut down now but it’s still listed on my profile with a line through it and yet, because it doesn’t exist, I can’t go unjoin, so I can’t get it off my page and...OMG, that one’s bugging me. I have these weird organizational things that you would not expect from me.

Also - does anyone know how to send PMs now? It seems to have disappeared from our profile pages. Or is it now called ‘Nudge’? Because that seems to be an option we have.

I have happier notes but I had to go to the doctor today and now I am all tired and sore, so maybe I’ll be back tomorrow - though tomorrow’s first priority is to clean out my inbox, so comments first, then posting, then writing. Bed now. Night all!