May 11, 2008
not in my bloomin garden you’re not… grrrr!!!
May 7, 2008
some more photos to share. Its been a beautiful couple of days. hard to believe just a month ago there was snow on the ground..
May 6, 2008
i put in a solid amount of work today on the garden. Only 4 hours but it felt like much much longer. i think mostly because most of it was quite hard work. I dug over the end of bed 3 that has the blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes in. It was infested with some kind of fairly deep rooted weed, due to my neglect of last year, so that entire bed needed going over on my hands and knees, pulling out these horrid weeds. i then moved 2 of the bushes, so that the bushes are further apart and have more room to grow, then put some compost in around them, and moved the strawberry plants in the dug over space.
I’m not sure that the shape bed 3 will take yet. one end is done, the end i’ve just described, in a sort of L shape, with one more bit that needs weeding/digging over, where i was kneeling. the other end is dug over and weeded, the end with the raspberries. its the bit in the middle that needs doing!! its also large enough that i’m asking myself how i’m going to get to the fruit, particularly if i build a sort of net cage to keep the birds off. So that’s still to be done, but i’m glad i’ve sorted out almost all the fruit now, just the melon seeds to sow.
I’ve also sowed the first of my salad boxes. I had a terrible time last year with lettuce and slugs: so much that i didn’t get a single solitary homegrown lettuce from my garden! all i got was rocket. So this year i resolved to do something different. not only have i watered in the nematodes to (hopefully) keep the slugs off, and am squishing every snail i can find, i’m also growing my salad differently. An idea Sez gave me: growing basic salads (salad leaves, pea tips, radishes, spring onions) in fairly shallow containers, on a rotational basis. each box is a week’s worth of salad, i hope, and i’ll have four to six of them, which i will rotate throughout the summer. week 1, sow box one, week 2, box 2, and so on, and hopefully by the time i’m ready to sow either box 5, 6 or 7, box 1 will be ready for eating. all depends how fast things grow, i guess.
Finally, (today) at the top end of bed 8, i sowed the first batch of various greens: swiss chard, both red and multicoloured, spinach, and spinach beet. bed 8 is in the side garden and is shaded for the latter half of the day, so with luck those plants will enjoy that shade 
Oh, and i cut the grass! I’m using one of those battery operated strimmers (need to buy a lawnmower at some point i guess) so i can only do so much at once: the grass got a bit long so it takes a fair bit of the battery to strip it down. I only did about a third of the garden before the battery started wearing down, and will do more tomorrow.
I must also be doing something right. There’s a very cheeky blackbird hopping through my new beds, being watched all eagleeyed by Jess. I think she’s fishing for worms, probably got babies to feed. hopefully she’ll take the wireworms!!!
On Sunday i also worked on the garden, although i did so mostly indoors. I did plant 2 honeysuckle plants that i’d bought from Aldi, up against the fence in bed 5. Hopefully they’ll grow up the fence and make the garden all scented over the summer. I chose the variety “Repens” and “Serotina”. Inside, i set about sowing seeds: 2 small mushroom trays with 6 loo tubes each with sunflower seeds: 6 of a normal giant single sunflower, and 6 of a variety Sez gave me, “Claret”. I also sowed 6 trays of 6 loo roll tubes each of sweetpea seeds of different varieties, including some seed i kept from last year! Be interesting to see if they grow at all - my first attempt at growing completely free. I also sowed a tray of vegetable seeds, different varieties of winter veg: celeriac, kale, leeks, and some flowers. The courgettes have been hit by sunscorch on the bedroom windowsill so they’ve been moved temporarily to the bathroom windowsill, until they can go into the greenhouse for their last few weeks (and i might even put a few in the ground in the next week or so).
Yesterday saw me working in the kitchen: i made bread, apple pie, apple ravioli, lemon drizzle cake and chicken pesto pasta for dinner.
I also took some update pics to show you how i’ve been getting on.. behind the cut, as always…
May 1, 2008
I’ve been reading through some of the blogs written for the Blogging Against Disabilism Day. Some are outright funny, others touched me for personal reasons, others are just fantastically written. But i wanted to share some of them with my readers.. if your blog didn’t make it here, apologies in advance, but i’m not going to reproduce Goldfish’s central repository just to avoid making people feel bad.
[and, since BADD isn't over yet, i may well add to this later on!]
I’d like to start with some of the funnier entries, since humour is always a big draw. Jeanie wrote about three bad habits that ablists often have in “BADD ju-ju” (and how that vice principal is still alive i really do NOT know). Mary has presented a side splitting (to me) alternative analysis of disability involving Gorillas in “The Gorilla in your House” (and for the record, mine is currently watching me type, eating a banana, ooking softly away. and no, i’m not referring to Michiel either), and Attila the Mom has written about the problems of kids overhearing things they shouldn’t (and things adults shouldn’t be saying either!) in “little pitchers have big ears“. ColourWheel made a comment about being too busy to blog about disability today, because she’s too busy being disabled.
More thought provoking entries include references to language - Tera wrote about using words such as “lame”, “retarded”, and, yes, “spastic” in “Ubisoft pulls Mindquiz” and Andrea wrote about deciding not to use any words that refer to the disabled in derogatory terms in “BADD but not rude” and referred us to the “R Word Campaign“. Both posts were thought provoking - pointing out that useage of the term “special bus” or “short bus” in the wrong way can be very insulting, and the word “gay”, as in “that’s SO gay!”.. both of which i have seen used by friends of mine without thinking - and yes, i’ve laughed at them. I won’t any more.
Education was the theme in DarkAngel’s post on being deafblind in the Netherlands, “Sorry, you’re too disabled“. Brooklynite’s commented on “Out and Around - the presumption of literacy” - her sister cannot read. I hope i don’t take reading for granted again. Three Square Meals wrote about the problems of being Body Policed in a post entitled “Body Police” that was thought provoking, and Mary wrote about the problems of equal access to public transport in the UK in “Different but Equal” (and she might be glad to know that in the Manchester area, covered by GMPTE, equal access buses (the kind you can get a wheelchair on) have a sign saying something like Wheelchairs take precedence over moms with children, which i think is a good thing. Although not all routes have the new buses on, which isn’t), and which includes the hilarious - to me - line “no being crippled before 9.30am!” in reference to a concessionary pass which only allows free travel after 9.30am (the kind i have. I’m not supposed to be deaf before 9.30am, i guess?!).
Mauzy got political in “Blogging against Disablism Day” when she wrote about Barak Obama being the only presidential candidate willing to support the “Fully Funding Individuals with Disabilities Education Act”. Go read, it may make you view the presidential campaign differently. willendorf wrote a post about things she’d like to say to people who see her girlfriend in “Gimp Militia, Ladies Auxiliary Reporting“. I particularly like the “I am also not her aide, keeper, or caretaker (if anything, she’s mine).” line. Kate also wrote about being the Significant Other of someone who’s disabled in “Blogging Against Disablism“, about things that annoy her, and things that make her happy - something i share with her, is that she likes people who are simply curious about her husband’s disability. so do i, curiousness isn’t a problem, its an opportunity to educate.
Wheelie Catholic wrote about those who enable the disablists (the ones who make you feel bad for standing up for your rights, for example) in “Don’t Enable an Ablist“. MissNomered wrote about Hope - hope to eradicate disability - in “Pity, Tubes and the Meaning of Hope” - a wonderful thought provoking post. David’s written about the tendency for those in wheelchairs to be lumped together in “Mistaken Identity“, and the slippery slope down to dehumanisation. Cusp wrote a wonderful post about her very different experiences of disability from watching it happen to other people, near and far, moving closer till it struck home in “Substitute“. Well worth a read.
And finally Candy wrote a wonderful post about Audism and Reverse Audism, something i touched on in last year’s BADD blog post, although i didn’t call it that, in “Disablism and Audism within DeafRead“.
May 1, 2008
Its Blogging Against Disabilism Day today, a day that comes around on May 1st each year. My previous entry (from last year) can be found here, where i wrote about the prejudice one can suffer from those who ought to be sympathetic towards you. I’ve found it harder to write, this year, mostly because i don’t suffer from that much prejudice, or disabilism (like racism, but on the basis of disability). or maybe i’m so accepting of the disabilism i don’t see it? I don’t know. If that’s the case then i suspect its a common one.
At the same time my incapacity benefit is up for renewal; and that means its time to think about my disabilities and work and how they affect my ability to work. I’ve had pressure to go back to work over the last five years, from family who probably don’t fully understand my problems. Is that a form of disabilism?
for those that don’t know (and i don’t often write about this, as most of my blog is directed towards gardening and cooking etc.), I’m deaf, have been since.. oh. around about 4 years old. We don’t think i was born deaf; my maternal grandmother was a primary schoolteacher and she strongly believes that if i had been deaf at birth, she would’ve spotted that; she says i reacted normally to sounds as a baby. It was only when i grew older that my speech wasn’t developing as it should’ve, that my parents investigated and i was properly diagnosed. I also suffer from stress related problems. Although the roots of this probably lie in the bullying that happened when i was at boarding school, subsequent events such as work related bullying as an adult and then a very bad relationship (not my current one, i hasten to add), have exerberated the problems quite badly. The most obvious effect is IBS. IBS is one of those things that makes me quite cross; like colds/flu, it seems to be claimed by anyone who has a tiny twinge of abdominal pain that could be put down to other things - and this causes problems for people who suffer from the extreme form of it. In fact, one community health nurse pooh-poohed me when she asked why i didn’t go back to work and i started to explain to her that i have IBS with a “well i have IBS too and it doesn’t stop ME working.”. yes, dear, and you probably have a mild form of it, and YOU should know better than to apply your experiences to mine! (*mutters*). Is that disabilism?
IBS, for me, means the following. when i’m stressed, i swallow - literally - the stress i’m under. the stress manifests itself in muscular contractions around my small/large intestine, my lower belly. It literally feels like someone is plunging a knife through my pelvis and twisting it around. At its worst, it leaves me bent over, pale, unable to breathe while the pain is there, clutching my midsection like i’ve been mortally wounded. it comes in waves, and by the time i’ve managed to swallow any pills.. it can be gone. Or it remains for a couple of hours. One side effect is that the contractions push any food that is working its way through my system out in a hurry. When the contractions catch me i know i have a certain amount of time to get to the toilet - usually a matter of minutes. When i do it is - pardon the personal detail - explosive, and diahorrea like. It plays havoc with my health, as can be imagined. I cannot remember the last time i had a proper stool. Gillian McKeith would be going bananas with me! Sometimes the contractions and the resulting explosion, once the explosion is over, that’s it. With small amounts of stress, i can then get on with things. Other times i’m either sitting on the toilet for hours.. or running back and forth all day. Those days i literally cannot move very far from a toilet.
I’ve had to learn to swallow my embarrassment and ask to use a staff toilet in shops - even to the point of having to lie about being pregnant when they initially refuse my request. Funny how IBS gets a refusal, when pregnancy gets the okay. Maybe because it would look bad in the papers. Is that disabilism?
but IBS is simply the most obvious problem, for me. Its the manifestation of the stress i live under, daily. I honestly can’t remember when i last lived without it. Lets see. Getting up for a specific appointment is a nightmare, especially if i have to catch a bus to do it. This one dates back to a previous workplace, where the buses were extremely unreliable, and the bosses would come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who was late (and i had IBS even then, so you can imagine how popular i was - i lost count of the times i called in sick for a day when i probably could’ve worked, simply because of the hassle i would’ve gotten otherwise. Is that disabilism?). I have to be up at least 3 hours before i have to leave, more if its going to be a stressful appointment, simply to allow time to deal with the cramps on the toilet. I have to allow extra travelling time: more than once, i’ve had to run back to the house from the bus stop.
My deafness causes a certain amount of stress too, and tiredness. Fear of not being able to understand someone, or to communicate what i need. I speak quite well, well enough, in most cases, to be understood. I have far more problems understanding other people, especially if its someone with a strong accent, or someone who mumbles, or we’re in a noisy environment.
<< please excuse me.. one of those cramps is kicking in now.. >>
right. where was i? oh yes. more than that, though, the deafness and stress combined means that any time i have any interaction with someone that i don’t really know, i have to play it over in my mind, i have to think things through to every possible outcome of something, even the most fantastic. For example, if i’m going to a shop, i have to go through in my mind, everything from the shopgirl asking how i am, to someone delaying the queue in front, to not having the right money - even to someone holding the shop up with a gun! (and yes, that did happen once, it was on a train, where a drunken idiot held the buffet car up for more booze. It turned out to be a fake gun, but i didn’t know that - they ended up getting everyone off the train.. and i ended up going to to court to give evidence against the guy. That hasn’t helped the stress levels either). In my head it feels like if i can plan for every eventuality then i can deal with anything that happens. It sounds wierd but its the only way i can cope, to have replies or actions ready to access, kind of like a computer equation. you know.. IF xxx THEN xyz AND abc. Its mentally exhausting, and that, coupled with the tiredness that comes from lipreading whats going on around me, and trying to be aware, means a simple shopping trip can and does wipe me out. Imagine what a meeting at work would do to me (what it has done to me, in the past). In some respects, because i do speak so well, and cope with people on a one to one basis in a quiet environment, there’s no understanding of the problems when out of that - is that disabilism?
Within the family, when one parent doesn’t understand that your deafness isn’t necessarily about not actually being able to hear (with my hearing aids i can hear quite a lot), but in interpreting what one is hearing? That you move through a world where everyone is essentially speaking a foreign language? that the strain of lipreading and understanding your family is stressful, tiring, and yes, leads to IBS attacks.. When one member of your family so totally fails to understand the stress you’re under, that you’re simply struggling to survive mentally, gets upset over something you haven’t done and decides to send an extremely hurtful letter.. is that disabilism?
when your own partner mocks you in an argument for misunderstanding him, or for saying something wrong, something that cuts to the quick and hurts so much, no matter how much they apologise for it later.. when they get so frustrated with trying to explain something to you for the 5th time that you just can’t understand and wind up shouting at you.. is that disabilism?
When a friend forgets that you can’t hear so well and suggests you listen to some kind of music, or call someone.. is that disablism?
When you yourself don’t see (until you stop to think about it) the negative reactions that people have to your disabilities.. is that disabilism? is that even possible, disabilism towards yourself?
I don’t think i suffer much from disablism. Do you?
