Posted on October 8th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
Lots of people say I'm talking like my old self. My "style and persona seen just like always," according to a cross-country friend. And thank you. I want to. I think I struggled even from the first to sound like myself; everybody sounds, to me, like him or herself, and I was scared I might lose my voice. Now I think it's buried deep, and my voice -- everybody's voice -- is something you can't reach merely from a stroke.
But: my style and persona is not real, not quite. We read these posts, and we read them in the same time, same pace. But when you talk to me, in real time, you realize that I am damaged; I am ten times slower to get to the point, if I can: sometimes I can't. I slur, stutter, garble. I lose track. The magic thing about writing is, it makes me seem all right.
It makes me feel like there are two Scrapses: one you encounter day by day, the other by writing. And yeah, every writer is two-fold, the writer and the person; but I never felt the difference so starkly.
Posted on October 7th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
I am very mad at Access-a-Ride (the transit service for disabled people). They didn't show up this morning, or went to the wrong address. When I called, I was told that I was listed as Did Not Show. I was outraged. Me and Tyrell (my home care assistant) were there, outside, from on time to half an hour late. And the driver said he was outside a two-story building, but ours is three-story. I told them I was Disputing. Unfortunately, it's my story against his. Oh: the phone guy asked why I waited thirty-five minutes to call. Incredulously, I pointed out that their rules stated that a half hour late is on time. Here, I quote: "Be prepared to wait up to 30 minutes after your scheduled pick up time. The 30-minute waiting period begins at your scheduled pick-up time and ends 30 minutes later. AAR vehicles arriving during this time are considered on time."
Well. They offered another ride, but it was seriously late for my appointment. I fumingly declined. I called Metrosports, and arranged with Jenny for being half an hour late. So Tyrell and I took the bus; and, actually, I am contemplating whether, once I get the disabled permit, it is maybe the best thing for traveling to therapy.
The o.t. was really good, good workout. And this was a monthly where-is-the-patient-now thing, so Jenny moved and stretched the arm every which way, and you know? I think, very slowly, the arm is getting better, the last month or so. I'm not sure; but I think so. It will be the first time in ten months that I've detected some improvement in my arm. So, hey.
Posted on September 27th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Boring Posts, Recovery, Memory.
(I'm going to post insignificant details of my rebuilding mind, both because I wish I'd kept closer track of my pre-stroke mind -- even before my stroke, my memory was not good, but now it's awful -- and because I'm living here, and while my friends keep marveling at my speed of recovery, it frequently seems like I'm standing still to me.)
For four or five months, I've been typing every day, and my progress has been infinitesimal. Not the progress of my content; two months ago I couldn't summon up the word "infinitesimal", for instance. But my typing is about the same as two months ago. It's frustrating. A sentence will enter my thoughts, and by the time the typing catches up, sometimes the sentence will have vanished. And, my god, the N's. For some reason, N is particularly difficult, both the placement of the N in a word -- literally about one-third of the time my mind will drop the N, except the ING combination -- and also the placement of the N on the keyboard. Even though, as I said, I stare at the keyboard every day.
Composing and typing time: 24 minutes.
Posted on August 26th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
Medicaid doesn't allow more than one therapy each day, don't ask me why.
I wrote that two days ago. It's actually more complicated, and frustrating, as I found yesterday. With Medicaid, they will only pay for ONE VISIT PER DAY. That means one out of everything: my regular doctor, my neurologist, my psychiatrist, my speech therapist, my occupational therapist, my physical therapist: only one per day. Never mind that this plays hell with my schedule, and basically means I can't work in an office: I can't get the help I need. I need three days (minimum) of speech, four or five days physical, at least two days of occupational, one day of psychiatrist, and the doctor and neurologist every two weeks. I could do everything happily if Medicaid didn't put that cap on. As it is, I take two days speech, one day occupational, and two days physical one week or one day physical and one day doctor/neurologist the other week. I haven't figured out when to fit the psychiatrist in. It's not enough, anyway; not nearly. I suppose I should be grateful that Medicaid covers anything in America; of course I can't get any normal coverage, with my Preexisting Condition. And at least Medicaid is straightforward; they pay in full or they don't, and you don't need to argue with a insurance man determined to screw you.
Posted on August 24th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
What a day.
We put in -- with Patrick's help -- air conditioning, last night. Yay! Unfortunately, I noticed in the morning that it leaked. It was now a medium-sized puddle in the rug, about two feet wide and four feet long. Ack. Angela, my home care assistant, helped me to lift the a.c. and insert two small paperbacks, solving the immediate problem, though the puddle would have to wait, because my speech therapy was imminent. We barely made it to my Access-A-Ride bus.
Unfortunately, the woman who scheduled my speech therapy last week apparently forgot another person's schedule (and the woman who scheduled me wasn't around to ask, because she was taking a vacation). More than two hours later, John showed up, very apologetic, and saw me for an extra half hour to make up for it. And he's good; he described a way to defeat (or get around) aphasia, talked about aphasia (and my suffering) intelligently, and when I asked about reading materials, including the way they teach me (or ones like me), he promised to bring in literature.
Unfortunately -- I'm getting tired of that word -- Angela said, on the way home, that she's leaving next week: because she doesn't like so much walking as I do. Now, I like walking. But I can't walk too much; I'm, well, crippled. I told her that I'll miss her (though truthfully, I can't understand her accent 75% of the time), but I'm not cutting down on my walking; first, it's not an unreasonable amount of walking; second, I need to be walking to keep in shape.
I thought, at the beginning of the day, I had the week more or less organized. Now at the end of Monday, I'm waiting for a call tomorrow that will reschedule me for speech (and I can't reschedule for Tuesday or Thursday, because those are my days for physical therapy and occupational therapy, and Medicaid doesn't allow more than one therapy each day, don't ask me why), and I've got to replace another home assistant, and the rug's still wet.
Every day is a challenge.
Posted on August 25th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
Hey everybody:
My posting -- and online reading -- is going to be intermittent for the near future. I have replaced my computer, but A: much of my data remains lost, and B: it has become clear to me that the annoyances of Vista have passed the point I am willing to bear, so I am going to be teaching myself Linux. I expect this will be a slow process.
Cheers.
Posted on December 30th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
When we were in Seattle for Christmas, I discovered that nearly all my Parlando wallpapers looked like crap on widescreen monitors. I'd already adjusted them a couple times for bigger screen sizes and smaller resolutions than I use at home, but this was too much; I couldn't see any way to fix the problem other than making brand new wallpapers, and right now designing non-tiling wallpapers that work both on regular monitors and widescreen is not a task I am up for.
So I am now making tiling wallpapers for Parlando. I'm planning to change them entirely every month, though I'll probably also move some in and out whenever I feel like it. The first new eleven are up now.
Posted on November 14th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
When I left work last night, I had worked 27 hours out of the preceding 36. I'm certainly not complaining; we can use the money, and I'm not breaking rocks. But it has taken me a while to properly wake.
The last two days are an intensified example of how busy my work life has been lately. I had not intended to fall silent here, but just when I started taking on freelance copy editing again to supplement my dwindling hours at the ad agency, the office work started picking up again. And I'm suddenly getting more freelance work than I had anticipated. Rains, pours. Because of assorted financial pressures in our life right now -- debts, Christmas travel, the need to move -- I'm not inclined to turn down the work until it's literally more than I can do.
The creative writing has to come first, and I'm barely making time for that. And I've become somewhat obsessed with photography (some of which I post at my my other weblog). And I'm trying to read a lot more fiction than I have in the last few years. (I've severely cut my online reading.) And of course I'm still completely in thrall to music.
So, well, I do intend to keep writing here. But it's likely to be pretty scattered. And honestly, I'm not nearly as good a writer on music as I wish I were (this is not a cry for reassurance), especially at describing the specifics that make music work for me. (Two recent posts at Pretty Goes With Pretty, about Slint's Spiderland and Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime, are a great example of what I wish I could do: he told me specific musical things about those albums that I hadn't known.)
Feelings of inadequacy aside, I'm unlikely to ever entirely stop writing about music I love and trying to spread it around. Just not so much right now.
Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
Things have been slow here, I know. I have been obsessed for the past couple weeks with our new digital camera. I didn't expect it to take over my life, even briefly. I've discovered that it's an excellent tool for shoring up my awful memory, so I've been spending almost all my free time learning to use it. Most of that stuff appears over at Memory Machine, my weblog that's not about music and words (as such), just random observations and life tracking.
More soon.
Posted on September 19th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Oracles, Boring Posts.
The fictional names of spam senders are mostly amusing to the recipient and no one else, inasmuch as everyone has the opportunity to be (briefly) amused by these absurdities in their own overflowing inboxes. So I note almost entirely for my own amusement the email I received today from Grackle L. Pigging.
Posted on July 19th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Boring Posts.
Posted on July 18th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Boring Posts.
Posted on July 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Boring Posts.
I've decided, for no reason I can articulate even to myself, to track the music I listen to on headphones at work.
28 June 2007
2 July 2007
3 July 2007
5 July 2007
9 July 2007
10 July 2007
11 July 2007
Fascinating, eh?