I saw a clever but depressing bumper sticker this evening.
Americans with Disabilities Act: “to boldly go where everyone has gone before”
The Viking and I are both disabled. I suppose we’re lucky, in a way, because we don’t require wheelchairs. The Viking has to use a cane sometimes, and his life is very limited due to chronic pain. He has a serious back injury. Riding in cars, sitting in restaurants or movie theaters, sometimes even walking up the stairs or sitting in chairs — all of it causes severe pain. My disability is mental illness, so I don’t have to worry about mobility issues. (I do, however, have to worry about crippling depression, hallucinations, and suicide. Fun.) Since his disability is physical and mine is mental, we’re well-suited for caring for each other. I do the driving and lift the heavy things. He talks me down when I have anxiety attacks and holds me when I’m depressed. Neither one of us feels put-upon, because it’s a give and take relationship.
Social Security disability is ill-suited to disabled married couples. I receive SSDI and have Medicare. The Viking has been turned down for SSI, because I “make too much money.” (I get well below the poverty line.) What he really needs is health insurance. He has none. Yesterday we spent $880 on his monthly medication. That’s ridiculous. We’re trying to get him insured through Obama’s insurance deal, but that takes time. Right now we’re waiting on his doctor to write a letter to get the Viking into the program. We have no idea when the doctor will do it. The Viking’s calling his office every day, and the office person who knows us well has promised to bug the doctor. I’m hoping she can keep at him enough that he’ll do it at the beginning of next week.
At least my meds are covered. They’d be $850 a month if I wasn’t insured. I’d have to do without if it wasn’t for Medicare. Which means I’d be dead by now.
I don’t understand why people are so against helping the disabled and the poor. Every Republican I’ve ever talked to has this mental image of people on disability faking their illness to get a free ride, or people on welfare living it up, while the poor little Republican works for a living. It’s not like that. I’m trying to get off disability so I can work for a living. That’s why vocational rehab has me in school. Most people on welfare are trying to get jobs. Everybody looks down on people who receive government money and aren’t over 65. Most people don’t want that scorn and ridicule. Plus it feels good to work. Before I was well enough to go to school, I was miserable. Now I at least having a future to look forward to instead of unending uselessness. And I’ll be very happy to pay my taxes, because I’ll be helping people like myself as well as helping to pay for roads and bridges and schools. I care about my fellow Americans. It seems like a lot of people don’t. Makes me sad.
The therapist has decided he can’t fix me. Depressing. I may have to give up running altogether. He wants me to talk to my GP about it. The problem is that if the foot bone is grinding against my leg bones when I run, then the bones will wear out faster. Walking doesn’t hurt as long as I don’t go too fast. So I may be limited to moderate-speed walking for my cardio. Bugger. I can’t see my GP until February 28th, because he’s out of the office until the 26th. I can see his assistant, but I’d much rather talk to the doc about it. I only like seeing the assistant when I have the flu or something lightweight.
To change the subject entirely for the moment: the television just played the Subaru commercial about the mom driving around the kid hockey players. While the Pogues’ “If I Should Fall From Grace with God” is an awesome song, who the hell thought it was a good idea for this commercial? I mean, the part they use is about dying. It has nothing to do with children, hockey, or cars, and one would think it’s too depressing for a commercial. Very odd.
(15 minutes later…) Adventure Time is fucking AWESOME. I love that show. (It was just on.) Rebecca Sugar, artist/songwriter/sometimes-writer for the show, has become one of my favorite entertainers. The Viking introduced me to her work. She posts her versions of AT songs online sometimes, and I love her voice. Hearing her sing makes me want to give her a big hug. Check YouTube for her stuff, and watch the show if you’ve never seen it.
And now, it’s time to do homework. Bleah.
I wound up watching the last two-thirds of the film after all. I actually enjoyed it, which surprised me because I didn’t really like the original Tron. I have a couple of problems with it, though. Spoilers under the cut.
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Geekspeak ahead!
WordPress is weird. I kept trying to put in a favicon.ico so I’d have a icon, and it wouldn’t read the file no matter what I used to convert it. So I tried a GIF. Worked the first time, with a line in the site header telling WordPress where to get the icon from. Copied the same line to the WP admin header, and now my nice little icon works across the whole site. Yay!
I am also happy to report that playing with WP templates and pages has taught me that a) I can still write HTML from memory, and b) I can still read a PHP program despite having not touched code since PHP3. Maybe one of these days I’ll catch up. A couple of months ago I bought myself books on Ajax and Java, but haven’t spent any time with them. (Yet!)
A few days ago, the Viking introduced me to the music of Daft Punk. They’re awesome. How is it they’ve been making music since like 1997 and I never heard them? But I’ve fallen in love with their sound and I have them on repeat on the iPhone.
The reason I bring it up is because the Viking’s watching Tron 2 at the moment, and while I don’t give a damn about the movie, I’m loving the soundtrack. It’s a character in the film, it’s so present. Awesome! Must buy soundtrack. Now.
In fall 2010, I took my first statistics class. I fell completely in love with the subject. I desperately wanted to do more. I looked into get my BS in it at the local state university, but they required applicants to have finished calc 3 before enrolling. I hadn’t had anything higher than algebra, so it would have taken me four extra semesters to get through calc 3. Oh well.
At my current school I took Research Methods I & II. More stats! I loved those classes, too. If I go to grad school for experimental psych I’ll be able to do tons of stats. I’d take trig and calc at the community college right now, only I go to school through a vocational rehab program and they’d kill me if I increased my course load. I tried taking trig online, and I couldn’t handle it. I need lectures. I need to see problems worked out on the board.
But! I can take classes after I graduate. I can do it while I’m working or looking for work, as night classes. Trig in the spring, calc 1 in the summer. I’m looking forward to it. I love math. The more I can learn, the better!
Gordon Allport was one of the first psychologists interested in personality theory. We’re studying him this week. I am less than impressed. Much of what he came up with was based on his personal life. For example, he said that childhood experiences don’t have an effect on adults’ personalities. WTF. Of course they do. Allport was a completely isolated child who idolized his older brother so much he went to the same school to get the same degree, and always felt he was in his brother’s shadow. Obviously childhood experiences had an effect on him — he just wished they didn’t.
I appreciate that psychologists often bring personal experience to their theories, especially in the field of personality psych. The field is rather nebulous, and wasn’t very scientific at the beginning. There are a lot of touchy-feely types in pers. psych — in fact, the first time I took a class on the subject (at another school) we spent all our time writing down our hopes and dreams and then trying to analyze them. I prefer psychology as a science. I like cognitive psych and neuropsych. Psychologists sitting around and coming up with ideas based solely on introspection and intuition bugs me. Allport was like this. The part of his theory about childhood experiences was very obviously wish fulfillment and not objective reality.
I’ll probably write more about my studies over the course of the semester. It’s cool to have a place to write down my thoughts on the subjects.
I thought it was well done. Obama did a very good job of setting the Republicans up so they’d appear as anti-American if they fought him on a few things. He was pro-union, he wants to make corporations pay taxes, he wants to get rid of No Child Left Behind (which he didn’t mention by name, but that was the gist of it), and he basically wants a new New Deal. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but most of it was encouraging. I’m dubious that the Republicans will let him accomplish any of the things he wants to do, but it’s nice that he wants to meet the goals he set forth.
I’m not happy with a lot of things about his presidency, like keeping Guantanamo open, and not cracking down on the TSA’s ridiculous policies, and bailing out Wall Street. But he’s also done some good things. Overall I’m glad I voted for him, and I’ll vote for him again so long as he doesn’t take up eating babies or throwing feces at his opponents or whatever. (Well, okay, throwing feces at Gingrich would be pretty fucking funny. But I doubt it would win him the election.)
Shit My Students Write is a favorite blog of mine. I had to share today’s entry:
Mary Antwinet is famous for saying “let the meat cake.” She was a leader of the French revelation. She was very popular and fashionable until she died from guilty.
I always find these hilarious. The Viking finds them depressing. I think we’re both right…
The college I attend has mostly online classes at this satellite campus. Full-time is two classes per eight-week semester. I am full-time. This semester I’m taking Forensic Psychology and Personality Theory. Both classes are pretty interesting, although the people in my Forensic class are a little scary. The first week of class we talked about the Andrea Yates case. Even if you don’t want to bother with the link, you may remember her. She drowned her five children in the bathtub in 2001 while experiencing post-partum psychosis. Many of my classmates thought she should be sent to prison instead of to a psychiatric facility, and a few even thought she should get the death penalty.
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