Retired Waif

So, it’s been a pretty crap Memorial Day Weekend thus far. Friday, I had people over, and since I had the temerity to actually think that the word “remission” means anything, I actually cleaned my house up a bit and cooked a meal, and wham, back into bed the next day with walking trouble, pain, and of course the remnant of The Headache that’s been following me around. Will it ever go away (she asks plaintively)? Tried going to Botanical Garden in the Crap Rental Chair, couldn’t really manage it, had a woman actually grab the handles and try to move me out of the way of her enormous stroller. Think about the for a second, because I’m sure said woman would have screamed bloody murder if someone had tried to grab her stroller like that, you know?

But really, none of this is on my nerves quite as much as this story: It seems that a kindergarten teacher led her class to vote a five-year-old with Asperger’s “off the island,” so to speak. Encouraging the kids to call him “disgusting” and “annoying” (you know, I’m sure this was in the guise of “sharing their feelings”), “his Morningside Elementary teacher said they were going to take a vote… By a 14 to 2 margin, the class voted him out of the class.”

The cherry on top, of course, for anyone who follows disability news whatsoever, is the article’s “comments section.” If anyone ever tells you disablism doesn’t exist, please direct them to the comments section of any article on disability. Here are some gems:

This is a great way to let the democratic process intervein in problem solving and conclude in a determination by your peers. This should be a good time for parents to use this as a learning experience for their child. What can he do differently? Does he want to be a member of the class?
This is cutting edge behavior management.

People want to fire this woman? I’m willing to bet money that some of these yah-hoos who post would do the same, if not worse if they had to deal with a disruptive child in class. People are SO QUICK to judge.

To “teachcbs”: As a teacher myself, I DO NOT believe in mainstreaming. What a way to water down education and force the teachers to multitask their abilities all for the sake of a politically correct concept.

How about the education of the other kids in this class. Does that matter to ANYONE? This kid is in the PROCESS of being diagnosed with and ALLEGED problem. That means he isn’t sick yet. Too many GD excuses nowadays. The parents should be brought up on charges of impersonating good parents. Maybe this wasn’t the best method but this is getting out of hand with discipline or lack thereof in the schools. Raise the level of discipline and watch the scores go up.

Why didn’t the Principal separate this child by putting him in a special class. Autism is distruptive and it was the children who said they thought he was disgusting, etc… I believe the adminstrative end has failed the teacher and she was probably forced to deal with a child with special needs and this was a way to do it. I expect what happened to this child was probably not any worse than what he was dishing out to the others.

The teacher did the job the school officals would not do, maybe the wrong way to some , but at least the problem is identified and now both Alex and his classmates have a chance to excell in their own way and not just put it off for another day.

I support the teacher. The brat should be made to understand how his classmates feel about his behavior.

So. Yet again, I’m in make-up post-semester hell. But it will be fine, it will all be fine, I have Provigil and I’m in much less pain and thank God for my husband who is the world’s most attached, mellow babywearing dad and seems more than chill with taking The Beako out for long walks while I get all this last-semester stuff finished. I am not well, but you know. Well for me.

Also, trumpet fanfare please, The Chair should be arriving any day now!

Anyway, feeling better. Well enough, at least, to shill for my friends. So, in the interests of passing my little cup of joy around the room, two things have been making me utterly thrilled lately:

Organic chocolate from Snake and Butterfly.

Oh my goodness. Since I’ve gotten utterly ridiculous about what I eat, chocolate’s been kind of off the table for me. Celeste’s chocolate is completely different–sort of like what I imagine chocolate would taste like if you followed a winding trail through the rainforest to the secret stone temple of the ancient, dream-like chocolate-gods.

OK, if that image is a bit much for you, I will mention that she uses live raw cacao beans, mills the chocolate in small batches to an extremely delicate texture, and sweetens it with things like maple sugar and agave nectar and most importantly it tastes clean and it does not make me sick.

She makes coffee bars and truffles all sorts of good things. I’m pestering her to make me a Mexican chocolate bar with cinnamon and cumin in it. Go. Buy from her. She doesn’t have a site set up yet, but will add you to her mailing list if you send an email to snakeandbutterfly@gmail.com. Do so.

The second thing I’m in love with?

T-shirts, thermals, anything and everything made by Love Nico.

(designer Corinne painting the Love Nico tees)

First of all, they’re called Love Nico, so obviously I am sold right there. However, Corinne has been making these spectacular shirts for a few years now, selling them through her own online shop as well as through Trash and Vaudeville, Hot Topic, and Urban Outfitters. One might think that with her early success she might have slacked off on quality, however instead Corinne has set up an entirely new line. I won’t ruin it, because it really bears watching, but she’s created a fashion line that is a fairy tale (or vice versa), all beautifully extrapolated in a stunning animated movie on the Love Nico website. A movie, might I add, that I am “in;” I modeled for the character Blue.

I wish I were as talented as Corinne and Celeste, but we’ll see what happens when the academic drudgery is complete. If I can keep it together, I have projects in mind for the summer.

Not all in my head. Or rather, very much all in my head, but not in a made-up drama-queen kind of way.

Aseptic meningitis.

Apparently a rare but normal complication of IVIG.

Ow.

At least I know I’m not crazy.

Or, Why I Didn’t Blog Against Disablism, despite saying I would.

I have to cry like a bitch, now.

Because very few people I actually know, almost none of them in New York, actually read this thing. And because I have to say this to someone. And because I don’t know how much longer this can go on.

I’m finished. I’m over. I have no idea what to do.

I spend all day trying to do my best for these kids, which basically amounts to dragging myself around to keep them fed and in a clean-ish house, and then collapse in exhaustion and pain. MS is the least of it (despite the presence of delicious new lesions on the brainstem, which, aren’t those the blindness lesions? please correct me if I’m wrong)–I’m supposed to follow up on tentative diagnoses of RA and epilepsy, which… really? As my stepfather said when his business fell apart, what am I, Job?

Theoretically, I had finals this week. I did not attend.

I will be trying to retake them–the school was aware of the relapse and everything is properly documented.

If.

If I can get one single second. One good day. One fucking reprieve from all of this. A minute’s less pain so that I can read something. Write something. Do something.

Or should I just amp up on Provigil, go in, and retake them cold? Likely failing? Just to get the semester over with?

I haven’t slept well in such a long time. I was awake screaming at 5am, to the point where my husband had to take the baby outside for an early-morning neighborhood walk.

I will not be posting until I have something better to say than this.