Month: May 2018

OK, looks like the trim job will have to wait. Because of course I couldn’t find where I stashed the hair scissors “safe” after the last time I used them. And this place is enough of a wreck that I don’t have the energy to hunt too hard right now 😬

Not going to stress about it too much, though. I considered just trying the fabric scissors since I’m not exactly trying for a precision cut here–but thought better of it and got another pair of proper hair shears on the way. To keep where I can find them again, with any luck.

I really don’t like replacing items thanks to lousy executive function and the clutter around here, but nerds must and all that.

More great photography on the edge of the sink for light in there 🙄

But, glad I decided to try that Jerk Pit! That’s maybe a third of the chicken and rice–and everything is delicious so far.

I was expecting just half a bone-in chicken, but this is certainly easier to eat. They really were not kidding about the hot jerk sauce being hot, either. Lots of fresh scotch bonnet in there, and I’m not complaining. Glad there was plenty of rice after the first big bite of it, though 😅

(ETA: Mirrors actually tried the chicken before I did, because he smelled it and ran into the kitchen crying. Had to give him some so he would let me eat, and it certainly seemed to be cat approved too đŸ˜č)

clatterbane:

Current plan: enough food for lunch too, most likely!

Running low on spoons anyway, but the main thought here was that if I order food in, I can hopefully have energy left to get my hair trimmed and washed too. Overdue, and ‘tis the season for sweaty heads đŸ˜©

That place had great reviews, and jerk sounded appealing. But, the prices are reasonable enough that the delivery minimum took a bit of doing for one person. Wouldn’t have added a drink otherwise, either.

But, I can’t say I’ll be sorry to have half a chicken to myself either 😅

That was quick! The food just showed up half an hour earlier than estimated, while I was washing dishes to eat it off of.

Current plan: enough food for lunch too, most likely!

Running low on spoons anyway, but the main thought here was that if I order food in, I can hopefully have energy left to get my hair trimmed and washed too. Overdue, and ‘tis the season for sweaty heads đŸ˜©

That place had great reviews, and jerk sounded appealing. But, the prices are reasonable enough that the delivery minimum took a bit of doing for one person. Wouldn’t have added a drink otherwise, either.

But, I can’t say I’ll be sorry to have half a chicken to myself either 😅

jellyberries:

floozycaucus:

Saying that a disabled child or adult “will never live independently” is such a slap in the face. I think it’s unacceptable and I think it’s lazy. No one will ever live independently! No one is living independent of medical care, emotional support, and goods/services provided by others. Humans are a deeply interdependent species. Disabled people are sometimes rendered ~dependent~ specifically on a state or family apparatus in a way that makes them vulnerable to abuse or exploitation, but this isn’t the only way to experience “”dependency.”“

Some people are just told that they are “independent” because their lives and needs are normalized to such an extent that the enormous amount of support they receive is invisible.

I feel the need to summarize two other commenters posts on this because, while well meaning, just glosses over things which is a problem.

When people say “will never live independently”, they aren’t talking about the medical system, emotional support, or goods/services. They’re talking about being able to count change. They’re talking about not scalding themselves while running hot water, [
] being able to feed themselves, being able to protect themselves, and countless other things that most people take for granted.

We know most people still rely on one another, on their family, for help. But the fact is that disabled people face these “normalized” issues and then have more so on top. To imply that the level of help needed for both disabled and not disabled and that it’s really NBD is detrimental. It’s kind of like the whole “I don’t see race, we’re all human”. On the surface yes we are human, yes we still need help, but that ignores and glosses over their situations that makes them unique. Sure you need to ask your parents for financial help from time to time, but do you need direct help to do the most basic every day things? Do you need to be spoon fed, need help showering or going to the bathroom, need help talking, help walking from room to room? Do you need a nurse to come to your home?

Like. I see people talking about how moving out of your household is a western culture thing as if that’s what it means by living independently. Which honestly isn’t that true, families will still move out when it gets too crowded you’re just not expected to as a young adult. Back in my mother’s home country several generations live together and help each other with groceries or cooking and things. But you can’t kid yourself in comparing niceties to constant essential aid that is purely for living. You can teach an able bodied person to remember a number in a heartbeat. Doing so with someone who has short term memory loss due to severe brain trauma? Not so simple and I say that from experience.

My point is that disabled people need extra help and that’s okay!! It’s nothing to be ashamed of nor does it make you a burden. It’s a part of life and that extra help is one given lovingly and willingly. Saying you get more help than usual isn’t an attack on your abilities.

And also as a side note you WILL inevitably live without any help from family members or friends, just not as a young adult. It can happen when you’re 40 or even 50 although I knew a few who were forced to be completely independent at 19. I feel like we’re expected to be some self made, worldly, experienced business man making 6 figures right out of high school or college. But it’s just not true and parental wisdom will always be there for you.

superqueerartsyblog:

A short comic about a girl, her mother and their different Black clothes.

I made this in late August this year for SeriefrĂ€mjandets yearly contest. The topic was comics for young people
 and guess what, I actually won! 

En serie med otroligt bra kÀnsla för karaktÀrer, med god kÀnsla för hur utseende och subkulturer betyder i ungdomens sökande efter en identitet. En serie som man ser pÄ första anblick har hjÀrta, och som subtilt pekar pÄ Àmnen som andra skulle göra till huvudpoÀngen i historien. Som en liten bonus fÄr vi en tjej i huvudrollen som kÀnns levande och som man kÀnner starkt inför.

I’m incredibly surprised, happy and grateful to have won. Since it got so much praise, I figured I should post it here. Thanks to Keetande for helping me with the tricky translation! 

Source: eliasericson

autismserenity:

kickair8p:

cookinguptales:

Today is the anniversary of the Capitol Crawl, an event in 1990 in which disabled activists pulled themselves from their wheelchairs and quite literally crawled up the steps of the Capitol Building. This was done to protest the living conditions for disabled people in the United States, and it was done to pass the ADA. And fuck yeah, they did it.

These activists along with hundreds of others managed to secure rights for disabled Americans for decades to come. However, all that heroic work is now being threatened by H.R. 620.

I’ve been talking a lot about H.R. 620 lately because frankly, it scares the shit out of me. It’s a bill that’s designed to strip rights from people with disabilities, and it has already passed the House of Representatives.

A little background:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990, the year I was born. Because of that, I have lived under its protections for just about my entire life. When my high school tried to prevent me from graduating because of my medical struggles, we were able to use the ADA to procure a 504 plan. When my dorms and classrooms were inaccessible, it was the ADA that got me accommodations. I am afforded extra assistance when traveling, when voting, at the doctor, and the only reason I can do any of these things is because of the ADA.

I now have a college diploma and a full-time job. I would have neither without the ADA. It’s not a perfect solution, but the protections it does provide have been invaluable in my life and the lives of my family. (My family members with a different disability have also Gone Through Some Shit but that’s really their story to tell.)

I think most of Americans know that some semblance of protections for PWD exist. I’m not sure most Americans understand how difficult they are to use. It’s not like the ADA provides, idk, inspectors who go around looking at buildings to see if they’re accessible. They don’t take complaints from PWD if the elevator in their building stopped working and their landlord won’t fix it. There is no safety & health inspector of the disabled world. The ADA is instead enforced via lawsuit.

To put it simply — if a disabled person has been discriminated against, they have the right to get a lawyer and sue the establishment that has discriminated against them. They cannot sue for damages. They can only get the place to change. (Though some courts have levied additional monetary damages for noncompliance.)

This is already a pretty arduous process. I mean, you have to get a lawyer and go to court. No one enjoys doing that, especially when you know there is no financial reward. But H.R. 620 aims to make this process much, much harder. It requires PWD to gather a ton of evidence and documentation, it requires a system of letter-writing and complaints, just a mess of things that many PWD will not have the time, money, energy, and/or know-how to be able to do.

More importantly, though, H.R. 620 changes how businesses need to comply. H.R. 620 aims to change it so a business or institution has six months before they even need to start showing a plan to change. I repeat. This is not six months before the work is done. This is six months before they even need to start moving. Six months would have been an entire semester when I was in college! And even then, all they need to do is show “progress”. Progress can mean anything! It sure doesn’t mean that I can get in the building!

In effect, this would strip PWD of their ability to actually have the ADA enforced. It puts a very onerous process on the back of the people being discriminated against so they’ll be too confused, tired, or burdened to exercise their rights in the first place. And then, if they get through that wholly unnecessary roadblock, the place they need to get into may not actually become accessible for — well, ever. There is no part of the desired amendments to the ADA that would actually require accessibility. Ever. Which is mind-blowing.

H.R. 620 is popular amongst business conglomerates and real estate developers, for obvious reasons. They don’t want to deal with the extra expenses that come with making their properties accessible. Because of this, they have started a misinformation campaign saying that PWD are using the ADA to attack small businesses with frivolous lawsuits, which puts undue burden on people ~just trying to make it~.

  1. Wow, talking about what “burdens” PWD are. Like that’s not a misconception that leads to self-harm and discrimination every day.
  2. There is no evidence that there is an outbreak of frivolous lawsuits. There are a couple lawyers who have been engaging in fraudulent lawsuits, but frankly, it’s not hard to find an unscrupulous lawyer, and none of them have been successful in court.

  3. Even if there were some uncontrollable outbreak, taking away protections is not the way to deal with this. I can’t imagine this being the reaction to any other group’s civil rights. “Oh, well, some lawyer’s being a dick, better take away civil rights for an entire marginalized group just in case someone tries to abuse it!.” There are so many better ways to deal with misconduct than systematically stripping a marginalized group of its civil liberties.

  4. Again, PWD CANNOT MAKE MONEY FROM THESE LAWSUITS. There is no one sitting in some wheelchair made of gold that they got from taking sandwich shops from cute grandparents who just wanted The American Dream ℱ. This is a boogeyman that does not exist — but it does play into a lot of nasty stereotypes about disabled people.
  5. It is telling and depressing both that PWD fighting for their right to live with the rest of society is being framed as “frivolous”. So many things that disabled people need are framed as frivolous every day. So many things people insist we don’t really need. This bill would deny us access to stores, hospitals, schools — you know, the things we need to survive. But even if it were just some shop down the road? The ability to live in equality with our peers IS NOT FRIVOLOUS. Our enforced separation from the rest of society has led to a series of abuses against us that can only be rectified if we are allowed to live lives as independently and openly as possible.
  6. The ADA was passed almost thirty years ago. Properties that are not accessible have already had almost thirty years to fix this. Businesses aren’t given thirty years to make sure their fire safety measures are up to code. Restaurants aren’t given thirty years to make sure their health measures are up to code. This is a law that already wasn’t being enforced, and now you act like this is some new issue that’s onerous on property owners? Good lord. Historic buildings were already exempt — what, are y’all just waiting until every building is old enough to be historic? Jesus.

The long and short of it is that the businesses who make money off of our oppression are trying to turn us into the villains of the story so they can pass legislation that will remove their financial responsibilities and take away our civil rights.

H.R. 620 has already passed the House. It moves on to the Senate shortly. Please, please call your senators and tell them that you support the ADA and want them to vote against H.R. 620. So few people are even talking about this issue, but it is a matter of life and death for a lot of people. This, paired with our current administration’s other crimes against the elderly and disabled, is looking to make this country uninhabitable for PWD. And that’s terrifying.

Please help us.

(Note: If you’d like more info on H.R. 620, the ACLU has put out a handy guide on myths and misconceptions about the bill.)

March 12th 1990

I checked (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/620) and the Senate hasn’t done anything with it yet as of this writing (May 7 2018) so keep an eye on it and start educating those senators!