WheelieTerp (Formerly Dodgingwndshlds)

It's been a while since I've posted. It's been even longer since I posted about a cat. Her Royal Highness, The Pirate Tranny Kitty Goddess, Afsoun: Bane Of Arachnid Kind and Harbinger of Podiatric Doom has left many absences with her passing, not the least of which is an absence of post-worthy stories.

Don't get me wrong; Sylvie is hilarious and also suffers from a deplorable excess of personality, but she's only a kitten. Barely 20 months old, in fact. Kitten stories are like baby stories: they're precious, yes, but they are also ubiquitous enough as to be only really worth recounting to those for whom it matters. Namely: family and close friends, only...PLEASE! Everyone who has ever had a kitten (or hell, even seen one on TV) has the same stories. Sylvie hasn't been around long enough to be interesting to a broader audience. She hasn't done anything noteworthy.


Until now.


I'll bet you're just dying to know what it is she chose as her coming-out stunt... Her Debut Yarn for the old blog...Well, ok, unless you've seen my Facebook for the last two days. If you have, you know already... But, whatever..

Sylvie has managed to break her leg.

Don't ask how. The explanation, to do it justice, requires audio/visual aides and schematic drawings...Suffice to say it was a freak accident that happened when The Ruling Redcub picked her up off the bed to give her belly a raspberry. A game that she loves more than almost anything... Oh.. except the red dot... She loves the red dot.. But I am digressing into kitten stories... And this story is sadly much more grown up.

So yeah... Broken back leg. And Sylvie, you may recall, was born with Manx Syndrome, which means she has some unique methods of locomotion that so far are proving incompatible with a cast. She is currently living in a towel-lined laundry basket in the middle of our King bed, between us. The Ruling Redcub is proving an amazing kitty nurse: fearless and calm and patient and all of the things that I am not, nor can be, even when I spend the whole commute home coaching myself on man-ing it up and taking care of the poor wounded little kitty... but then I try to pick her up and put her in her box and she cries and I freak out and the RRC has to rescue her from me or me from her or something.

This is all so hard. And too soon after Afsoun. I'm still mad at the Vet's office. Not the people (although, this substitute vet they have in the office this week had better watch his damn toes)... I'm mad at the place...When I pulled into the parking lot today to pick up the kitty from being re-splinted, I was shaking a little. (Her sedation wore off at 10:00pm last night. She got out of her first splint at 10:01. Not a lot of sleep happening around here. Which explains all of the asides.) The RRC and our neighbor have been shuttling Sylvie to the vet, as I haven't been able to be there until today... I have been off working. I may not be able to handle the down-in-the-trenches nursing care, but I can work and pay the mounting bills.

I hope.

Happy New Year! May 2011 bring joy and wonder for every one!

It's nice to be home.... Hospitals are not for the human.

After an exceedingly frustrating day navigating in Dominantcultureland, we find our wheeled hero at home, doing his standing exercises and taking the opportunity to cop a big, long hug from the Ruling Reddcub...

Bug: "You know, I love you even though you're a Walkie."

RRC: "That's very generous of you."

Bug: "I know it is. Thank you for noticing."

RRC: "You're welcome, and I love you, too."

I've decided that I was, after-all, being wrong and and bit pig-headed about the whole "It Gets Better" thing. Not wrong in the sense that my concerns were not justified, they were and still are, but they are not enough to declare the whole she-bang a bad idea. I was reminded the other night that these PSA things are no longer the planned, produced, and static media messages of the past. Social media allows for evolving messages, and I was objecting to what amounted to the first sentence. Once viral, the messages are so diverse and legion as to answer everything in the end (or at least, everything I can think of). A friend sent me another one via email tonight I haven't yet seen, but apparently am going to love.

In the context of all of this diversity, even the objection to the first messages seems trite and those messages now are clear even to me to be wonderful, heartfelt, and needed. If you walkies think it's hard to get a foot out of your mouth, you should try a wheel.


I am thinking I may even make one.

I keep posting and taking down responses to the "It Gets Better" thing.

The whole mess has me really upset, and I can't seem to frame an appropriate reaction to it. I find the idea to be riddled in privilege and to me, it feels condescending and trite and it seems, at deeper inspection, to reinforce a status quo that is causing real pain and hardship and even a lot of death.

Then, I look at the videos and they are kinda inspiring to me... But, I'm 40 and mostly successful and safe... And then, I think to myself that maybe I am being jaded and bitter and wrong about this..

Still, I can't help but think we are building a better ramp, when we should just stop building stairs.

The color scheme is designed to be easily read. Black letters on yellow background is a standard in the Usher's Syndrome community, in which I have been involved for a long time, and so making my blog accessible to these folks from my meat-space life was a priority. Studies also show that this particular contrast makes it easier for the human brain to stay mentally focused on the incoming information.

The color of links is close to the color of the text to cut down on visual distractions, but drastically changes color when moused over, making it easier to know when the pointer is in the correct position. Links are also kept in line of the text, or in an obvious place making them easier to navigate to without a mouse. Finally, the font size is larger for not only ease of view, but also to make the links easier to hit with a pointer.

In-entry photographs will have a caption underneath with a description, and I am also working on learning how to make alt tags, which I suspect I will be using from here on out as well.

Any video appearing here will be captioned. There will be no exceptions to this for videos with spoken English or Spanish (I can't promise other spoken languages.. Those are the only two spoken languages I use fluently). Occasionally, there maybe videos containing ASL that will not offer English translations. I am happy to discuss this hypocrisy, but I will point out that I cop to the hypocrisy for what it is, and I am ok with it in certain situations. (IMPORTANT NOTE: English captions are not always successful avenues to language access... Help me brainstorm some ways to improve the language access here!)

I believe my blog to be accessible; which is to say, I think it meets a minimum standard to which people can get to it and navigate it enough to influence it. That means it's a good starting place, and since I am trying to build a community here, I expect it to improve from input. Since it is intended to be a common space of sorts, a community of my own making (Bugville..LOL), it may never be perfect for anyone, but I hope it can come close for many, and that the burdens and barriers that do inevitably exist are equally and/or justly distributed.

You may have noticed the handle change over here on DreamWidth. I maintain that for a guy whose nickname is "Bug", the domain and online identity "Dodgingwindshields" seemed way too good to pass up.

But, many people I have met over the last three years, since I started using the wheelchair, have said "Oh! I guess I assumed you were hit by a car... You know... Cuz of your blog's name and all..."

What I want to do when this happens is let my jaw hit my lap and stare in utter disbelief that anyone could think me that twisted... But... Let's face it... I would totally believe that of me, wouldn't you?

Still...I thought this might be a good opportunity for a handle change.... Only my second in ten years...

PCC has these advertisements on the sides of their vans and buses and such that show a picture of a student with the caption "Future Civil Engineer" or what have you, the name of the student, and some quote from them about how much they love PCC. Today, I saw one that featured a young black woman, sitting in a rather nice manual wheelchair, looking perhaps even a bit gender variant (this, of course, is pure fantasy..... I wouldn't even try to identify her sexuality or gender identity...It was a picture on a van.... But I'd like to think she is also queer. It makes me happier) and the caption under her picture said "Future Homicide Detective" and the first thing that popped into my head was "Oh, they'll never let her do that."

And my eyes got watery.... Not because of the injustice, as you may expect, but for the very fact that my default position--my first thought--was NOT: "Oh, she'll never be able to do that."

I can't express how grateful I am to be truly rid of THAT kind of thinking