hi everyone!! my name is grainne but i go by grace! i’m from scotland in the uk and i have cerebral palsy, this year i’ve been offered a place at university!! but my university is built on a lot of hills and i would struggle to get to classes on my own. i really really value my independence so i am looking to buy an electric wheelchair attachment to help me get around – a SMARTDriveMX2!! it’s a wheel that attaches to the back of your wheelchair to give you more power going up hills.
i can’t stress how much this would improve my life, not only for university, but just in general as getting around on my own can be really difficult. if i was to get this it would be like a weight off my shoulders, i could go to university, i could go travelling, go shopping ect just normal things without having to worry about being tired or sore!! the freedom that abled bodied people get doesn’t seem so far away!
the only problem is that the SMARTDriveMX2 is £5750 and i start university in september!! i really hate to ask anyone for money but there’s no way i can afford this on my own – so if you can please please donate!!
my justgiving (my mum made this page so it’s in her name)
if you aren’t able to donate i totally understand – but please share this page and message far and wide!! thank you so so much!! xx
•buy toys/dolls/crayons
•play with Legos
•play old videogames/dress up games
•weave friendship bracelets
•watch cartoons
•use stickers
•draw pics of your favorite characters
If it makes you feel nice, do it.
Don’t even worry about what other people think, because it doesn’t matter–if it brings you happiness, it’s not “ridiculous”, or “immature”.
You deserve to enjoy yourself.
Let me share with you what I consider to be the most important less I’ve learned in my adult life:
“Growing up doesn’t mean you can’t have Zebra Cakes. Growing up simply means that, if you want to have Zebra Cakes, you buy them for yourself.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Bear?” Well, let me explain. For those of you who live outside of the US, this is a Zebra Cake:
It’s a little pre-packaged snack cake that is horribly cheap and junky and really not that great, but it is like manna from heaven to me. I fucking love these things. When I was a little kid growing up, my mom bought Zebra Cakes but once in a blue moon. They were intended to be put in mine and my siblings’ school lunches, but my brother and I would eat them whenever we wanted, so Mom just didn’t see the point. (They also used to be kind of expensive, at least for our family’s budget.) Needless to say, the coveted Zebra Cakes were a luxury for me, and were one of the tastes of my childhood.
Fast forward to my college years. I was living in an apartment with three other people, doing my own shopping and cooking. I was in the grocery store, picking up some stuff, and I happened to walk past a display of snack cakes. Among them were several boxes of Zebra Cakes.
I paused at this, chuckling to myself. Oh man. Zebra Cakes. I haven’t had those in years. I loved those when I was a kid. I reminisced happily and thought about how much I missed the taste of Zebra Cakes, then started to walk away.
And then I stopped dead.
Because I had realized that there was literally nothing stopping me from buying a box of Zebra Cakes. There was nothing stopping me from buying ten boxes of Zebra Cakes. If I wanted Zebra Cakes, I could have goddamn Zebra Cakes, because it was my money and my decision to make.
I put two boxes in my cart (they were 2 for $5) and never looked back.
Here’s the secret I learned that day: The idea of something being “just for kids” is, by and large, bullshit. What you do on your own adult free time with your own adult money is, by its very nature, adult stuff. It’s like comedian Eddie Izzard (who frequently performed his routines in drag) once said when someone asked about him wearing ‘women’s clothes’: “They’re not women’s clothes. They’re my clothes. I bought them.”
I am 25 years old, and yesterday I bought myself a shark lunchbox. Look at it. Look at how awesome my lunchbox is.
Was this lunchbox intended to by bought for and used by a child? Yes. The tag said it was for ages 3 and up. But it was bought by and will be used by an adult, and anyone who thinks that’s wrong is probably just jealous that they don’t have the self-confidence to rock a shark lunchbox at 25.
So like. Being “mature” and “an adult” doesn’t mean you have to completely abandon the things that made you happy when you were younger. It just means that you may have to approach them in a different way.
On a warm summer day last July, Claire Hart and her 19-year-old daughter Charlotte went for an early morning swim at their local leisure centre in Spalding, Lincolnshire. It was a trip they made often, just a short drive from their home in the village of Moulton. Claire’s son Ryan had recently bought his mother a swimming pass as a present.
At 9am on 19 July, mother and daughter left the pool and made their way back across the car park to their blue Toyota Aygo. As they approached the car, a man crawled out from underneath it: Claire’s husband and Charlotte’s father, Lance Hart, whom the pair had left five days earlier. Now he held up a single-barrel shotgun and shot Claire three times. He then reloaded the gun and shot his daughter, before turning the gun on himself.
Ryan and Luke Hart – Claire and Lance’s sons, Charlotte’s older brothers – were both working outside the country at the time. But the same BBC breaking news alert popped up on both their phones: “Shooting in Spalding,” the notification read. They both tried to call Claire and Charlotte, but neither answered their phones. The two brothers started to worry: only days before, they had both helped their mother and sister move out, after a lifetime of emotional abuse and psychological control. But surely Lance wouldn’t do anything that would make the international news?
The police told the brothers not to read press coverage of the attack. Luke read nothing for months, but Ryan was able to avoid it for only a few days. He was shocked to find reports that were sympathetic towards his father. The Sun and Daily Telegraph quoted locals who described Lance as “a nice guy”, while the Daily Express reported that he was “a DIY nut”. The Daily Mail spoke to others who described Hart as “always caring”. In every report, there was speculation that the prospect of divorce “drove” Lance to murder, and little mention or description of Claire or Charlotte.
“I was shocked at the ease with which others, sitting behind their desks, could explain our tragedy away within an afternoon,” Ryan says now. “It was very difficult to read that they were sympathising with a man who caused Mum and Charlotte misery their entire lives. One writer even dared use the word ‘understandable’ to justify why they were murdered.” This second Daily Mail article, a column by psychiatrist Max Pemberton, argued that a man killing his children “is often a twisted act of love”. The article was later removed from the site.
“You’re reading it and thinking, ‘This is bollocks,’” Ryan says. “But you know people around the country are also reading it, and those ideas are being driven into their minds. It reinforces in the abuser’s mind that what they’re doing is OK.”
My autistic self: *goes to a place with loads of people and lots of noise*
My Brain:
OK, I am definitely going to have to try a factory reset if I can get the S7 Edge booted up again. I’ve been putting it off (and mostly avoiding using any web browsers on there in the meantime 😬) because it is such a PITA. But yeah, I need to try it. And hope that gets it happier again.
This time it wedged booting when I was powering it up after doing the “let the battery drain and charge it back up” reset number. Same deal, totally nonresponsive–but starting from a full battery this time. That will be some wait for it to drain again. Plus this is the first time so far it’s shat itself trying to start up, not in use.
Samsung isn’t the only one, but I would also really like to slap somebody over the design changes to keep customers from easily just pulling the battery. That was not too hard to get around and just pop the back off when the Nexus 7 was having weird battery contact problems that required some fiddling, but Samsung made it so I’m not even trying to get this thing open right now. At least the battery is not hidden under the motherboard in this model, but I don’t have the tools or the patience on hand to open the case safely. Guess I’ll check back before going to bed, and hope the battery is dead by then.
A friend and I were out with our kids when another family’s two-year-old came up. She began hugging my friend’s 18-month-old, following her around and smiling at her. My friend’s little girl looked like she wasn’t so sure she liked this, and at that moment the other little girl’s mom came up and got down on her little girl’s level to talk to her.
“Honey, can you listen to me for a moment? I’m glad you’ve found a new friend, but you need to make sure to look at her face to see if she likes it when you hug her. And if she doesn’t like it, you need to give her space. Okay?”
Two years old, and already her mother was teaching her about consent.
My daughter Sally likes to color on herself with markers. I tell her it’s her body, so it’s her choice. Sometimes she writes her name, sometimes she draws flowers or patterns. The other day I heard her talking to her brother, a marker in her hand.
“Bobby, do you mind if I color on your leg?”
Bobby smiled and moved himself closer to his sister. She began drawing a pattern on his leg with a marker while he watched, fascinated. Later, she began coloring on the sole of his foot. After each stoke, he pulled his foot back, laughing. I looked over to see what was causing the commotion, and Sally turned to me.
“He doesn’t mind if I do this,” she explained, “he is only moving his foot because it tickles. He thinks its funny.” And she was right. Already Bobby had extended his foot to her again, smiling as he did so.
What I find really fascinating about these two anecdotes is that they both deal with the consent of children not yet old enough to communicate verbally. In both stories, the older child must read the consent of the younger child through nonverbal cues. And even then, consent is not this ambiguous thing that is difficult to understand.
Teaching consent is ongoing, but it starts when children are very young. It involves both teaching children to pay attention to and respect others’ consent (or lack thereof) and teaching children that they should expect their own bodies and their own space to be respected—even by their parents and other relatives.
And if children of two or four can be expected to read the nonverbal cues and expressions of children not yet old enough to talk in order to assess whether there is consent, what excuse do full grown adults have?
I try to do this every day I go to nursery and gosh it makes me so happy to see it done elsewhere.
Yes, consent is nonsexual, too!
Not only that, but one of the reasons many child victims of sexual abuse don’t reach out is that they don’t have the understanding or words for what is happening to them, and why it isn’t okay. Teaching kids about consent helps them build better relationships and gives them the tools to seek help if they or a friend need our protection.
Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami has been a force in contemporary art for several decades. His latest work offers yet another evolution for the Hi-Fructose Vol. 38 cover artist, with his electric, vibrant pieces. See more on HiFructose.com.
Are they aware all the vulnerable populations they pretend to care about are primarily in red states?
No.
I get the impression that for at least half of that type, they just don’t care. Acceptable collateral damage, if they ever do bother to acknowledge the existence of huge chunks of the population. Not the sorts of people they’d want to associate with anyway 😩
What I find really fascinating about these two anecdotes is that they both deal with the consent of children not yet old enough to communicate verbally. In both stories, the older child must read the consent of the younger child through nonverbal cues. And even then, consent is not this ambiguous thing that is difficult to understand.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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