It’s late and I’m tired, but I have to write about what happened today related to my new wheelchair. The fact that it’s late and I’m tired is, of course, my own fault and totally unrelated to the new chair! I had a busy day, only about 45 minutes of which was connected to this topic. Generally I had a good day – lunch with one friend, dinner with another (Jim is out of town), a haircut, some shopping for clothes and wall paint, and from a sports shop I bought a few rolls of tape and underwrap for my wrist. I thought maybe taping my wrist would be more comfortable than splinting it. I’m just tired because I was out all day (8:30 till 8:30), in and out of the car 7 times, and came home to hungry needy cats and a pile of mail and packages to sort out.
Now I want to take a few minutes to document what happened today. Where did I leave off? I believe on Monday I noted that my new chair was in the trunk of my car because it didn’t fit into the ChairTopper, and I had an appointment for this morning.
9 AM found me at the Ability Center talking to a man named Greg who is in charge of car service. We took the chair out, played with it, assessed the problem – and his conclusion is that he doesn’t even want to try to adjust the ChairTopper until we can solve the wheel lock problem. His concern is that not only will the chair not fold enough, but that the piston of the locking pins on each side have a cable that runs over to the control lever, and when the chair folds these cable ends crash into each other – and in time will break at that point. He even thought that perhaps they were damaged already. So, if I have to change the locks anyway, might as well wait till the chair folds thinner. Greg seemed to think that if we position the locking pin higher than the axle it would work, and that makes sense to me.
So, I put in a call and left a message for the man who I’ve been in touch with at the D’s Locks shop. He called me back while I was at lunch. However Steve at D’s Locks seems to think Greg’s idea will not work, and if it was to work it would mean a specifically machined part. He made it sound like the locks won’t work on my kind of chair – so why didn’t he say so in the first place before I ordered it? I suspect he didn’t know the chair was a folding chair (that Mobility didn’t mention it because Tilite has both rigid and folding options on all models – so only one name), and the locks will work with a rigid frame. He suggested I pull out the cables each time I fold the chair, but that will only give me ½ an inch tighter fold, and I don’t really think I can do this physically easily anyway, nor do I want to. He said he might have smaller pistons, but that still would have them hitting.
I have an appointment to go see him on Friday morning to see if we can work this out. I still don’t see why they have to be installed at the same height. Off setting them would make them slide past each other, and not damage the cable.
Meanwhile the chair is staying in the trunk of my car, and I’ve been able to show it off to 3 people anyway! Consensus is that the red orange color is great. No verdict on the yellow spokes yet.
3 other items of note.
My friend at dinner gave me the name of an ADA lawyer who I might contact if I want to file a complaint about the back row seating (formerly standing room only) at the Civic Theater. So, I need to get my letter written to the San Diego Opera, and the city public works department first. That’s the process – did direct contact with the annoying facility not generate any result?
Another friend volunteered to be my regular dance partner at classes. I am so touched that she offered, and excited too. There are 3 more classes in this session, and I hope we get to all of them. I hope I’ll have my new chair too, but that may be too optimistic. After 3 classes we’ll know if this is a good idea. She says she has 2 left feet, and no idea how to dance, but I don’t care. All I need is someone willing to try, who will listen to my instructions so that I don’t get hurt, and is strong enough to do the maneuvers where she moves my chair around.
My wrist is once again feeling ok, though I do notice that if I just bump it wrong I feel a sharp pain. Imagine a very bad case of funny bone in your elbow.
Showing posts with label ADA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ADA. Show all posts
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
what's going on
The ETA for my wheelchair was supposed to be yesterday. However it is apparently being shipped from Washington State today, so really should arrive around the end of this week. Perhaps ETA was really ETC – estimated time of completion? This is still pretty good I think. The frame has to be custom built then painted, not all the parts are premade. Putting a chair together is more than just assembly. I think a 3 week order to arrival time is pretty decent.
The brakes (wheel locks) were still an unknown till an hour ago. The company that makes them is local, but is pretty much a one man shop. Maybe he has some assistants that help him build the locks, but he answers the phone, does the orders etc. all by himself. If he’s out of town, jobs lag behind. I don’t think the order for the brakes was really put in 3 weeks ago when the chair was ordered. So, now Mobility Solutions has been trying to reach him by phone (they say), and haven’t gotten a call back. I thought he might be traveling somewhere, which meant that he might not be checking for phone messages, but he might answer email. Last time when I had a question for him, I emailed him and he replied right away that he was out of town (at an East Coast Abilities Expo) and he’d call as soon as he got back – and he did. He was very personable and helpful. So, around 5 PM after Mobility had had the full day to wait for a call back, I sent an email directly. And an hour ago he replied – he had the order, would ship it tomorrow to arrive Thurs or Friday and no one from Mobility had tried to contact him by email or phone. So, what gives here?
Now it seems everything will be at Mobility by the end of the week, maybe I’ll get in there early next week for adjustments and have it home a week from now!
+_+_+_+_
My wrist has bounced back much faster this time. Either it really is somewhat healed, or I’m getting better at knowing how to rest it.
+_+_+_+_
San Diego Opera called today to say our Renewal Deadline has been extended. I said we weren’t going to renew and they wanted to know why. So I told them their wheelchair seating at the Civic Center sucks, in so many words. I found out something interesting. Apparently, the wheelchair seating at the back of the Dress Circle and the Mezzanine, used to be the Standing Room area. When they had to comply with the ADA, that was the best they could come up with – giving wheelchairs the area that was only good enough for Standing room. Groan. I asked the woman who called if she would be happy if those were the only seats she could have, and she conceded “No”. I considered going to Avenue Q this summer. I saw it a couple of years ago at the Spreckels (I think it was the Spreckels, some theater downtown) and I loved it. But this time it’s at the Civic Theater, where the opera is. The last row of the Dress Circle for Ave Q, the Standing Room area that was, tickets are $90 each. Jim can’t go, and I just can’t see dragging any of my friends to sit in that back row and watch a show with binoculars. My son David got tickets, granted with a Qualcomm discount, in the 10th row for about $90. I really am thinking of filing an ADA complaint, though technically I should write to the city about the Civic Theater first.
+_+_+_+_
To anyone who gets electricity from SDG&E and has a disability or uses some medical device that needs electricity – do you know about the Medical Baseline Adjustment you can get? To see if this applies to you, check out: http://www.sdge.com/documents/customer/baselineapplication.pdf
I wonder how many thousands of dollars I’ve given SDG&E that I didn’t have to. Apparently rehab centers here tell people they can get this discount. Perhaps every person I know with a disability in San Diego has gotten this and assumed I did too, but I had never heard of it till recently, and never thought to ask. I don’t know when the discount started (with the ADA?), but I’ve lived in San Diego from 1979 – 1995 and 2004 till present. Maybe this isn’t fair to everyone else without a disability, but I am going to take advantage of this now. I won’t try to recoup lost money, probably couldn’t anyway.
I wonder if they had this discount in Maryland and Ohio too? Better for me not to know.
+_+_+_+_
It is clear to me now, that my trying to write to my father was getting me down. My siblings no doubt will wonder why I let him bug me. They seem better able than I to dismiss him out of their lives. I can’t help it though. There was once a time when I thought he was so wonderful, and I was proud of him. Now, it’s just so hard to find anything in him worth knowing. He’s still alive, I assume, though I don’t know for sure. I trust that his wife would let one of us know if he died, but that trust may be misplaced. I don’t think she’s ever contacted any of us directly about anything before. Well, I think she may have called once when she had a solo business trip to San Diego, was that 2005? And they’ve been married since the early 1980s I think. I don’t know what year it was, wasn’t invited to the wedding. I was living in San Diego by then. One direct call in almost 30 years? Not that Dad calls me much, his record is about once every other year lately. If we talk, it’s been because I call him.
I had set a rule to not talk about people who were living in this blog, at least not in negative ways. At the moment I’d say my father is about as good as dead, but I’ll believe he’s alive till informed otherwise. And perhaps one day someone will read this who knows him, or perhaps he’ll even read it himself. (That’s probably some daughterly hope that won’t die popping up, let it go Donna, let it go.) So, I’m going to stop here.
But I have to say one more thing about both my parents really, or about myself in relationship to them.
There are a lot of things I want to talk about related to parenting with a disability. Parenting from a wheelchair brings a lot of challenges, you need to be creative in how you solve things, and make adjustments. I frequently talk in my blog about how things are different for me because of my disability, or of the nuisances that comes with having this equipment. I could, and I might, talk about parenting that way. I believe though that fundamentally parenting with a disability is much like parenting for everyone. It’s a difficult job that most of us are not really trained for. Perhaps those who have a lot of younger siblings that they took care of as children are better prepared. Certainly people who have worked in daycare or studied early childhood development have an edge, though no amount of education prepares you for a crying baby at 3 AM. The job of mom is much the same for all of us – how to keep a baby warm, dry and fed; how to entertain a toddler but keep him out of danger; how to educate a child and help their self-esteem…. All of us will find an age that we feel most comfortable with. Some women love babies, some love teens. I liked the age from 4 – 8, but 8 – 12 was very good too. Old enough to reason, but young enough to still be so fond of their parents. I’m not saying anything new.
Through all of this, we bring our own baggage, what we got from our own parents. And at times it is hard to know whether having a rough time with a particular issue is because of the difficulties solving a problem due to a disability, or because of some issue carried over from our own childhood, or as a third option – from a normal development of our children. An example – when a toddler first really learn to run they often are anxious about separation. I remember David especially having separation anxiety. It was ok for him to leave me, but not for me to leave him. For me, this was compounded on one level by my fear that he would run away from me somewhere that I couldn’t catch him, and on another level by my rather deeper fears of abandonment and feelings of neglect from my early childhood. I didn’t fear that David would abandon me, or that I would neglect him. I feared that he would see me as doing this, no matter what I did. I had vowed not to repeat the mistakes (my interpretation) of my parents, but could I control how he would see my actions?
As I struggle with Father’s Day, and my relationship to my father, it reminds me that the parenting topic is indeed a complicated one. My disability added an extra layer of self-doubt, and it merits attention, another day.
The brakes (wheel locks) were still an unknown till an hour ago. The company that makes them is local, but is pretty much a one man shop. Maybe he has some assistants that help him build the locks, but he answers the phone, does the orders etc. all by himself. If he’s out of town, jobs lag behind. I don’t think the order for the brakes was really put in 3 weeks ago when the chair was ordered. So, now Mobility Solutions has been trying to reach him by phone (they say), and haven’t gotten a call back. I thought he might be traveling somewhere, which meant that he might not be checking for phone messages, but he might answer email. Last time when I had a question for him, I emailed him and he replied right away that he was out of town (at an East Coast Abilities Expo) and he’d call as soon as he got back – and he did. He was very personable and helpful. So, around 5 PM after Mobility had had the full day to wait for a call back, I sent an email directly. And an hour ago he replied – he had the order, would ship it tomorrow to arrive Thurs or Friday and no one from Mobility had tried to contact him by email or phone. So, what gives here?
Now it seems everything will be at Mobility by the end of the week, maybe I’ll get in there early next week for adjustments and have it home a week from now!
+_+_+_+_
My wrist has bounced back much faster this time. Either it really is somewhat healed, or I’m getting better at knowing how to rest it.
+_+_+_+_
San Diego Opera called today to say our Renewal Deadline has been extended. I said we weren’t going to renew and they wanted to know why. So I told them their wheelchair seating at the Civic Center sucks, in so many words. I found out something interesting. Apparently, the wheelchair seating at the back of the Dress Circle and the Mezzanine, used to be the Standing Room area. When they had to comply with the ADA, that was the best they could come up with – giving wheelchairs the area that was only good enough for Standing room. Groan. I asked the woman who called if she would be happy if those were the only seats she could have, and she conceded “No”. I considered going to Avenue Q this summer. I saw it a couple of years ago at the Spreckels (I think it was the Spreckels, some theater downtown) and I loved it. But this time it’s at the Civic Theater, where the opera is. The last row of the Dress Circle for Ave Q, the Standing Room area that was, tickets are $90 each. Jim can’t go, and I just can’t see dragging any of my friends to sit in that back row and watch a show with binoculars. My son David got tickets, granted with a Qualcomm discount, in the 10th row for about $90. I really am thinking of filing an ADA complaint, though technically I should write to the city about the Civic Theater first.
+_+_+_+_
To anyone who gets electricity from SDG&E and has a disability or uses some medical device that needs electricity – do you know about the Medical Baseline Adjustment you can get? To see if this applies to you, check out: http://www.sdge.com/documents/customer/baselineapplication.pdf
I wonder how many thousands of dollars I’ve given SDG&E that I didn’t have to. Apparently rehab centers here tell people they can get this discount. Perhaps every person I know with a disability in San Diego has gotten this and assumed I did too, but I had never heard of it till recently, and never thought to ask. I don’t know when the discount started (with the ADA?), but I’ve lived in San Diego from 1979 – 1995 and 2004 till present. Maybe this isn’t fair to everyone else without a disability, but I am going to take advantage of this now. I won’t try to recoup lost money, probably couldn’t anyway.
I wonder if they had this discount in Maryland and Ohio too? Better for me not to know.
+_+_+_+_
It is clear to me now, that my trying to write to my father was getting me down. My siblings no doubt will wonder why I let him bug me. They seem better able than I to dismiss him out of their lives. I can’t help it though. There was once a time when I thought he was so wonderful, and I was proud of him. Now, it’s just so hard to find anything in him worth knowing. He’s still alive, I assume, though I don’t know for sure. I trust that his wife would let one of us know if he died, but that trust may be misplaced. I don’t think she’s ever contacted any of us directly about anything before. Well, I think she may have called once when she had a solo business trip to San Diego, was that 2005? And they’ve been married since the early 1980s I think. I don’t know what year it was, wasn’t invited to the wedding. I was living in San Diego by then. One direct call in almost 30 years? Not that Dad calls me much, his record is about once every other year lately. If we talk, it’s been because I call him.
I had set a rule to not talk about people who were living in this blog, at least not in negative ways. At the moment I’d say my father is about as good as dead, but I’ll believe he’s alive till informed otherwise. And perhaps one day someone will read this who knows him, or perhaps he’ll even read it himself. (That’s probably some daughterly hope that won’t die popping up, let it go Donna, let it go.) So, I’m going to stop here.
But I have to say one more thing about both my parents really, or about myself in relationship to them.
There are a lot of things I want to talk about related to parenting with a disability. Parenting from a wheelchair brings a lot of challenges, you need to be creative in how you solve things, and make adjustments. I frequently talk in my blog about how things are different for me because of my disability, or of the nuisances that comes with having this equipment. I could, and I might, talk about parenting that way. I believe though that fundamentally parenting with a disability is much like parenting for everyone. It’s a difficult job that most of us are not really trained for. Perhaps those who have a lot of younger siblings that they took care of as children are better prepared. Certainly people who have worked in daycare or studied early childhood development have an edge, though no amount of education prepares you for a crying baby at 3 AM. The job of mom is much the same for all of us – how to keep a baby warm, dry and fed; how to entertain a toddler but keep him out of danger; how to educate a child and help their self-esteem…. All of us will find an age that we feel most comfortable with. Some women love babies, some love teens. I liked the age from 4 – 8, but 8 – 12 was very good too. Old enough to reason, but young enough to still be so fond of their parents. I’m not saying anything new.
Through all of this, we bring our own baggage, what we got from our own parents. And at times it is hard to know whether having a rough time with a particular issue is because of the difficulties solving a problem due to a disability, or because of some issue carried over from our own childhood, or as a third option – from a normal development of our children. An example – when a toddler first really learn to run they often are anxious about separation. I remember David especially having separation anxiety. It was ok for him to leave me, but not for me to leave him. For me, this was compounded on one level by my fear that he would run away from me somewhere that I couldn’t catch him, and on another level by my rather deeper fears of abandonment and feelings of neglect from my early childhood. I didn’t fear that David would abandon me, or that I would neglect him. I feared that he would see me as doing this, no matter what I did. I had vowed not to repeat the mistakes (my interpretation) of my parents, but could I control how he would see my actions?
As I struggle with Father’s Day, and my relationship to my father, it reminds me that the parenting topic is indeed a complicated one. My disability added an extra layer of self-doubt, and it merits attention, another day.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Separate but equal?
Separate but equal? Or perhaps I could call this blog Another Side of the Seating Problem
There is one place I like to go to that has a wine shop downstairs, and a restaurant upstairs. There is no elevator. Most often we go to the wine tastings, which are downstairs, but sometimes I like to attend a wine tasting meal or just get dinner, which ordinarily would be upstairs. Their way of accommodating me is to set up a table downstairs in the private salon for however many are in my party. I don’t go to the restaurant upstairs.
I have trouble with this arrangement. It feels more like “separate but unequal” to me than “separate but equal”. The salon is a nice room, even their warehouse where they set up a table once in a while is ok. It isn’t the setting that bugs me. It isn’t the service either. By being in the salon, I’m really getting first class service as opposed to the usual coach. Once in a while they are a bit slow to come down to tend to us, but it’s rare, and if something happens (like a spilled glass of wine) we (meaning someone other than me) have to go upstairs to find help. But overall, the service is excellent.
In fact, recently we went to a wine lunch at this establishment on a Saturday with 2 other couples. One of the men is a very good customer at both the restaurant and the wine shop (he even has a wine locker there), and it happened to be his birthday. So, that day we got absolutely the best service you could imagine. We had the private room, because of me, and some special treats, because of him. I had called to make the reservation, and mentioned his birthday and that it would be nice to have a cake for dessert. They came up with the best carrot cake I have ever eaten in my life. I think they spoiled me, for I haven’t been able to eat any other carrot cake since –they are all too cream-cheesy or too sweet now. If he had been with other people he would have been upstairs.
Uniformly, everyone tells me things are much nicer when they are with me, because they can be in the salon! It’s more private, or it’s quieter. Setting is nicer, service more personal…. And I’m pleased to hear all of this. But all the same, I find it hard. It’s because I don’t have a choice in the matter. And if there’s any day when the salon is not available for any reason, I’m stuck – and most likely will not attend the event scheduled upstairs. These has happened a few times, one time when they were using the salon room for storage, which made me quite annoyed. I brush it off then, that they just don’t want my business bad enough. If this happened too often, I’d not go there at all.
I suspect that in a pinch, they will muster up the men required to carry me and my chair upstairs, but I hate to be carried. I don’t like the feeling in general, and unless there are 4 men and an easy stairway, I worry about the backs of the men doing the carrying. 4 men means an average of 50 pounds a person carrying an awkward package, which isn’t easy, but not crazy either. Any fewer people, means too much weight per person.
One day I know there will be a wine dinner, with a guest speaker – most typically the winery owner or winemaker – and the only way to hear them speak will be to be upstairs. If I really want to go, I’ll find out how hard carrying me will be. I’ve been tempted a few times, but none of the events has worked out to date.
Wine collecting is a hobby of Jim and me. We have about 450 bottles or so, most of which are aging in temperature controlled fridges. In the past 5 years we’ve learned a lot about wine, and enjoy visiting wineries and going to tastings. We keep a spreadsheet of all the bottles, with stats like price, varietals, regions they are from and when to drink them. Our system isn’t working perfectly yet, because we tend to drink more whites than reds, but buy more reds than whites. We buy cabernets because they age well, but don’t eat the red meat that goes best with them very often. Consequently we have about 20 reds in the fridge that should have been drunk in 2009. But overall, we have a good time with our wine. We throw wine parties from time to time, and invite our friends over. And we like restaurants that have wine dinners, especially if they pour them blind, or have small pours of several wines.
I find this to be one of those hard situations to reconcile. I want to fight for equal access, the ability to do what everyone else does. And yet, I am aware that what I’m getting now is probably better. So, I let it go. I have made the wine shop/ restaurant aware of how I feel about all this, but not in a very pushy way – (well I was pushy about them fixing their parking lot at one point, when they didn’t have properly painted access areas). I don’t know if a law is being broken or not. The argument the shop gives is that they are renters, so it’s really the landlord’s problem. The building was built pre-ADA, so they aren’t required to make accessible modifications unless they spend past a certain amount of money on remodeling. Plus the cost of an elevator would be prohibitive, which might exempt them from doing the accessible modifications anyway. All this sounds true to me, from my limited knowledge of ADAAG.
All the same, I have fantasized about having a dozen people in wheelchairs try to attend an upstairs event all on one day. What a madhouse it would be then!
I know the people in both the shop and restaurant, and like them. They treat me well, too well perhaps. We’re good customers, but not in their top tier for sure! Most days I just relax and enjoy whatever we are attending and don’t worry about the special service. But this is one of those events where others looking in might wonder why our party is in the private room, and if the staff says it’s because of the wheelchair, then it would generate negative feelings about people with disabilities getting privileged treatment. And those people won’t have any idea about how I feel about it, and that I’d rather not get the private room. Does this balance out being in the back room at the theater? No. They both should be better.
There is one place I like to go to that has a wine shop downstairs, and a restaurant upstairs. There is no elevator. Most often we go to the wine tastings, which are downstairs, but sometimes I like to attend a wine tasting meal or just get dinner, which ordinarily would be upstairs. Their way of accommodating me is to set up a table downstairs in the private salon for however many are in my party. I don’t go to the restaurant upstairs.
I have trouble with this arrangement. It feels more like “separate but unequal” to me than “separate but equal”. The salon is a nice room, even their warehouse where they set up a table once in a while is ok. It isn’t the setting that bugs me. It isn’t the service either. By being in the salon, I’m really getting first class service as opposed to the usual coach. Once in a while they are a bit slow to come down to tend to us, but it’s rare, and if something happens (like a spilled glass of wine) we (meaning someone other than me) have to go upstairs to find help. But overall, the service is excellent.
In fact, recently we went to a wine lunch at this establishment on a Saturday with 2 other couples. One of the men is a very good customer at both the restaurant and the wine shop (he even has a wine locker there), and it happened to be his birthday. So, that day we got absolutely the best service you could imagine. We had the private room, because of me, and some special treats, because of him. I had called to make the reservation, and mentioned his birthday and that it would be nice to have a cake for dessert. They came up with the best carrot cake I have ever eaten in my life. I think they spoiled me, for I haven’t been able to eat any other carrot cake since –they are all too cream-cheesy or too sweet now. If he had been with other people he would have been upstairs.
Uniformly, everyone tells me things are much nicer when they are with me, because they can be in the salon! It’s more private, or it’s quieter. Setting is nicer, service more personal…. And I’m pleased to hear all of this. But all the same, I find it hard. It’s because I don’t have a choice in the matter. And if there’s any day when the salon is not available for any reason, I’m stuck – and most likely will not attend the event scheduled upstairs. These has happened a few times, one time when they were using the salon room for storage, which made me quite annoyed. I brush it off then, that they just don’t want my business bad enough. If this happened too often, I’d not go there at all.
I suspect that in a pinch, they will muster up the men required to carry me and my chair upstairs, but I hate to be carried. I don’t like the feeling in general, and unless there are 4 men and an easy stairway, I worry about the backs of the men doing the carrying. 4 men means an average of 50 pounds a person carrying an awkward package, which isn’t easy, but not crazy either. Any fewer people, means too much weight per person.
One day I know there will be a wine dinner, with a guest speaker – most typically the winery owner or winemaker – and the only way to hear them speak will be to be upstairs. If I really want to go, I’ll find out how hard carrying me will be. I’ve been tempted a few times, but none of the events has worked out to date.
Wine collecting is a hobby of Jim and me. We have about 450 bottles or so, most of which are aging in temperature controlled fridges. In the past 5 years we’ve learned a lot about wine, and enjoy visiting wineries and going to tastings. We keep a spreadsheet of all the bottles, with stats like price, varietals, regions they are from and when to drink them. Our system isn’t working perfectly yet, because we tend to drink more whites than reds, but buy more reds than whites. We buy cabernets because they age well, but don’t eat the red meat that goes best with them very often. Consequently we have about 20 reds in the fridge that should have been drunk in 2009. But overall, we have a good time with our wine. We throw wine parties from time to time, and invite our friends over. And we like restaurants that have wine dinners, especially if they pour them blind, or have small pours of several wines.
I find this to be one of those hard situations to reconcile. I want to fight for equal access, the ability to do what everyone else does. And yet, I am aware that what I’m getting now is probably better. So, I let it go. I have made the wine shop/ restaurant aware of how I feel about all this, but not in a very pushy way – (well I was pushy about them fixing their parking lot at one point, when they didn’t have properly painted access areas). I don’t know if a law is being broken or not. The argument the shop gives is that they are renters, so it’s really the landlord’s problem. The building was built pre-ADA, so they aren’t required to make accessible modifications unless they spend past a certain amount of money on remodeling. Plus the cost of an elevator would be prohibitive, which might exempt them from doing the accessible modifications anyway. All this sounds true to me, from my limited knowledge of ADAAG.
All the same, I have fantasized about having a dozen people in wheelchairs try to attend an upstairs event all on one day. What a madhouse it would be then!
I know the people in both the shop and restaurant, and like them. They treat me well, too well perhaps. We’re good customers, but not in their top tier for sure! Most days I just relax and enjoy whatever we are attending and don’t worry about the special service. But this is one of those events where others looking in might wonder why our party is in the private room, and if the staff says it’s because of the wheelchair, then it would generate negative feelings about people with disabilities getting privileged treatment. And those people won’t have any idea about how I feel about it, and that I’d rather not get the private room. Does this balance out being in the back room at the theater? No. They both should be better.
Monday, May 17, 2010
on seating...
On seating….
And A Night at the Opera
I have started this blog entry 3 times and had trouble with it every time. The topic is very large, so I have a lot to say! And at this moment I have a lot of passion about it too, related to the San Diego Opera and the venue where the operas are performed, the San Diego Civic Theater. While writing it, I have had to remind myself several times that I’m writing for myself first! If it’s long and a bit dry, so be it. I post things because I do hope some will be interested enough to read my opinions, but the bottom line is that I write what I need to.
I stay in my chair all the time in my own home and when I go out, and you would think that when other people are seated that would make us more similar, and lessen the differences between our perspectives at least for that moment. It helps, really it does. I appreciate when people sit down to talk to me, being at the same eye level is more comfortable.
Arranging chairs in a space for the benefit of both people who can get in and out of chairs, and for those who bring their own chair is not always a simple task. Medical offices and waiting rooms almost never have an open space set aside for a wheelchair to slide into. They try to pack as many people into a small space as they can, which gets translated into ‘as many chairs’ and wheelchairs are forgotten. I will try to put myself in the most out of the way spot, sometimes blocking 2 seats if they are empty, or blocking access to a water fountain or magazine rack. I can’t blame the offices really, but from my point of view it is sometimes tiresome to feel like you are always in the way. Sometimes I end up sitting near a receptionist window, which may feel intrusive to people checking in, but where am I to go?
Even in my own home, deciding how to arrange the furniture in the living room was difficult. I only use that room for watching TV, or when we have visitors. For TV I would like to be in one spot, but then a chair would have had to sit out all by itself, and there would be a big gap between it and the closest table, unless I and my wheelchair filled the gap. It would look odd. So, instead I sit on the end, which turned out to mean I had no table for MY glass of wine. I solved that problem by getting myself a little one foot square pedestal table with a mosaic top that I can call my own. Most people’s living rooms and family rooms are similar, there’s no place for a wheelchair to fit in among the furniture, except for the access route that every takes getting in and out. At book club meetings for example, I routinely block the opening, and if someone needs to get up, I move out of the way. I mention people’s homes not as an example of how ‘bad’ things are, but how even in the easiest of situations, some accommodations are made. Even in my own home, the arrangement is not perfect. And if there happen to be 2 people using wheelchairs, things get a lot more complicated. When my SCI support group is over, we move all the chairs away from either the breakfast room table, or an outdoor patio table, and that works ok. But the living room? No way!
Seating – where do you put those wheelchairs? What do you do with people who can’t get into chairs? It sounds like a simple problem, with a simple solution – remove a chair and slide a wheelchair in that space! The real problem though is with places where there are fixed seats, that you cannot remove. There are occasionally difficulties in public places where the chairs can be taken away, and in those situations the problems have more to do with access to the seating area (because of steps or other obstacles, sometimes even because of other tables and chairs).
Think of all the places you have fixed seats – theaters, sporting events, airplanes and other transportation, some restaurants, airports or stations, medical offices and waiting rooms… many of them present problems.
The ADAAG has helped a lot in this regard, so that in most venues there are guidelines on how many wheelchair spaces have to be allocated per how many total seats, and requirements are given that the people in the wheelchairs have to have the same line-of-sight as people in fixed seats. This concept is a little hard to understand unless you’ve been forced to sit with a poor line-of-sight. Take a movie theater, with stadium seating and nice comfy seats that tilt back just a little. Ideally you put an imaginary body into one of those seats and draw a line from the person’s eyes (perpendicular to the head, not looking at their feet!) to the screen. Most wheelchair seats do not recline, so the angle from a wheelchair user’s eyes usually goes horizontal, perpendicular to the floor. If the wheelchair is too low in the theater, the person has to tilt their head back to see the screen, since they cannot tilt their body and chair, and after 2 hours of this someone can be in serious pain.
The ADAAG also has guidelines about dispersed seating in larger venues, so that wheelchair seats might be found in all price categories, with many options for types of viewing. I used to remember all of the ADAAG guidelines, from my days in Maryland working on various Access committees, unfortunately I’ve lost the details. But my memory wants to say that if there were more than 600 seats, then there had to be dispersed seating in more than one location. So, smaller venues are likely to have only one choice for accessible seating.
Medical offices and waiting rooms, and I believe airports and other stations too, don’t technically have “fixed” seating. Those seats might be bolted down, but they are considered furniture, and the ADAAG does not address furniture! There are no guidelines for bed height, chair stability, GYN exam tables, table knee clearance unless these things are bolted to a wall or floor! Unless you are in a prison or in your own home, you can’t count on a bed being at the right height. Prison beds are fixed to the wall you see. I did some research on this once, mostly trying to figure out something related to GYN tables. Word has spread though about table height, so it’s no longer a problem getting my knees under a table in restaurants. And some fast food places with fixed tables and seating attached to the tables, will have an odd table with a seat missing and a notice saying something like Handicapped Access, or Priority Seating for people with disabilities.
New sports arenas, like Petco park, and Oriole Park in Camden Yards, have very good seating arrangements. Petco Park has more ramps to go up or down to the accessible seats than I would care for, but overall they have done a good job. Wheelchair baseball fans should check out Oriole Park in Baltimore though, it’s amazing. You enter on the main floor, no elevators or steps or ramps to get to the bulk of the food vendors, or the best accessible seating. You enter through the vending areas onto a level ring of accessible seats all around the stadium. From that ring, seats go down to the playing field, and up into the rafters. I’m sure you can get cheaper accessible seats that you have to take an elevator to, as well as box seats, and seats right behind home plate. But if you want to, a person in a wheelchair can get to their seat, all the food, bathrooms and shops without going up a single ramp or in a single elevator. It’s amazing architecture, and the reason it works is that they bothered to dig a hole deep enough and put the playing field down quite low.
Not all sporting events are well designed however. Some of the worst I went to were my kids’ little league or soccer games. Sometimes there was no parking where I could put the lift down on the van I owned at the time. Sometimes there was no pavement from the parking to the viewing area, and it was gravel, sand or mud (Maryland gets rain). And sometimes the viewing area was so badly arranged that I’d have bleachers blocking half my view. I watched a lot of youth games from the driver’s seat of my van, which wasn’t all bad really. I could listen to a book on tape at the same time!
Airport waiting areas present a different kind of difficulty – crowds. Usually near the gate counter there are a few seats marked as Priority Disability Seating, or some wording like that. I don’t actually need one of those seats, but I do like to sit with the people I’m traveling with, and I do like to be near the counter because of pre-boarding. If I’m not visually close to the gate counter, there’s a higher chance I’ll be forgotten. Even though I don’t really care if I board first or last, the airline people DO care. It’s easier for them if slower customers preboard, rather than get in the middle of the line and slow it all down. And for people like me, who put some wheelchair parts overhead, it helps the flight attendants to let us get all the stuff in the bins early, so they don’t have to figure out where to put things later. The frame of my chair goes in the belly of the plane, which takes time to get done as well.
I am going to digress for a minute – one of my pet peeves is seeing people pre-board with some disability, only to be one of the first to dash off when the plane lands. I may be first on, but I’m always last off, and I think that if that policy were enforced with ALL people who pre-board, you’d get a lot fewer people with “disabilities” on the plane! It used to be a huge problem on Southwest, for pre-boarders had a huge advantage in getting seats. Their move to assigned boarding slots fixed most of the problem. I used to hate flying Southwest because of the cattle call feeling, even in the pre-board area. Now, it’s one of the easiest airlines for me to fly. They have the best service getting me and my wheelchair on and off the plane smoothly.
But, back to the waiting area – You’re at your gate, the flight is late, the waiting area is full and spilling over, where do you go? Theoretically, the people in the designated Priority seating area are supposed to give those up for others with disabilities – but do they give it to me? My husband? There are no clear-cut rules on this, and no enforcement. The only time I’ve seen people give up a seat for someone else with a disability, wheelchair or not, is on the San Francisco MUNI buses (or maybe some other buses too) where the bus driver goes over and tells people to move, folds the seat up so there is room for me and helps me get the chair locked in place. Usually someone will give up a seat nearby for Jim too. This works because the bus driver enforces it, and because a lot of passengers are traveling alone or in pairs, and not toting multiple suitcases.
A long time ago, when my kids were about 7 and 9 years old, and I was still married to their father, we took a family vacation to Philadelphia and visited with my brother and his then girlfriend (whose name I’ve forgotten now, so I’ll call her Mary). We spent one day at the Franklin Institute, which I have many fond memories of because I took numerous summer math and science classes there as a child. The 6 of us were waiting in line outside the Planetarium for the next show, when a staff person beckoned us to follow him to wait at another entrance, to go in as soon as they opened the doors. Essentially we were jumping the line. Mary was really uncomfortable with this, and asked me, rather sarcastically I might add, “ Are your kids used to being treated like royalty?” I was flabbergasted. It was one of those moments when you are totally caught off guard, and don’t think of something really appropriate to say until it’s too late. I mumbled something like, “no, they aren’t”, when what I should have said was,” you haven’t got a clue, have you?” We were given permission to jump the line, so that we could get to the worst seats in the house, the ones in the last row where they had a space for a wheelchair, so that we could all sit together before someone else took them. I had one spot in the whole theater that I could sit, and the staff was good enough to be sure I could get to it first. This was in 1984, 6 years before the ADA. I would like to think that Mary would be wiser now, but I have no way of knowing. I do know though, that in places where seats are not assigned, a lot of people still react like this when they see me being allowed in first. They are envious, and annoyed, and wish they could get in first, without realizing that they might not like the only seating choices I have.
In movie theaters, unless they are newer ones built with stadium seating and an eye for the needs of PWD, it is still often the case that the worst seats in the theater – in the back, off to the side, are the ones set aside for wheelchairs. (true in hotels too, the rooms reserved for handicapped guests are the ones without a view, near the noisy ice machine etc., but that’s another story for another day) Most of the time these seats are fine, perhaps not the sweet spot, but good enough – you can see well, and hear well.
Recently I went to a movie, Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, alone. The theater is an old one, with a long gradually sloped seating area, for about 350 people, and 2 access walkways off-center down the length of the theater. In the center section, between the 2 walkways there are rows of about 12 seats, and on the right and left sides about 3 - 4 seats. For wheelchairs, they took out the back row of the right side. Not ideal, and not where I’d chose to sit if I could! The theater wasn’t full, but some women (one had some difficulty walking) sat in the last row of the center section. I figured I wouldn’t annoy anyone if I sat in the walkway that was just behind them. Then, even though I was way in the back, I’d at least be in the center and on flat carpeted ground. (That’s another problem with those side seats, the ground slopes down, and the floor is slick, so my chair skids forward and my knees press against the seat in front. My chair doesn’t tilt back, so I have to tilt my head a bit, which isn’t horrible because the slope is so gradual, but I’d rather not.)
The movie starts, and an exit emergency light stays on right above my head! It was bad enough that the women in front of me moved up a row, and I went over to my designated spot after all. Great movie, but I’m not crazy about that theater.
The newer stadium seating movie theaters are better for wheelchairs, as a rule, though that was not the case when they were first built. The very first stadium seating theaters put wheelchair seating in the very front row, which was not well received at all. It’s like the sports stadiums, if you are going to put the wheelchair seating in the middle, and not have ramps too steep to get to them (the ADA does have guidelines on that) then a deeper hole in the ground is needed when you build the theater, and that costs more money. So, the theater builders cut corners and didn’t bother to dig the holes, and put the wheelchair areas up front.
There was one of those earlier theaters built near where I lived in Maryland, and our Access committee had a tour one day. I ended up concluding that I would only go there if the movie I wanted to see was in 4 specific rooms and not the others. Those 4 were wonderful because they were larger theaters with the wheelchair area further back – one even had a balcony!, but the others were too close to the screen. I believe either the lawsuits were decided in favor of the rights of people with disabilities, or the publicity was enough to change the practices of the theater companies, but either way the newest theaters seem to be much better as a whole.
Unfortunately, San Diego Opera does not perform in a new facility. Seating 2967 people (see http://www.sandiegotheatres.org/eventstickets/seatingchart.cfm), it was built in 1964 and renovated in 1995. I can only assume it felt it was complying with the ADA at the time. I’m not so sure it is now though, and have been considering filing a complaint with the Justice Department, at least to get them to evaluate it. I won’t file a law suit seeking money, I believe only in the type of complaint that gets changes made.
We’ve had seasons’ tickets for 7 years, getting what were supposedly the best wheelchair seats in the house. These were in the last row on the furthest end of the orchestra section. Seats V 57, 59. There is no central access aisle, everyone enters from left or right. Our seats were in the 22nd row, in a row that was 118 seats wide. You couldn’t see the stage well without binoculars. And acoustics were ok, not great. But these seats were the same price as those in the front row center, or the 10th row center. So we assumed it was the best we could do. One of the reasons for getting seasons’ tickets is that you have a chance to upgrade your seat location as better seats become available, but that perk means nothing to us, because we already had the best we could get, or rather that I could get. Jim could have sat alone in a much better seat. There were other wheelchair seats as well, in the last row of the dress circle, and the last row of the mezzanine, lower price categories, and certainly no closer to the stage.
So, after 2 or 3 years of paying full price, I complained. I said that our seats weren’t any better than the row behind us, which cost half as much. I said that if they wanted to keep our business they should let us get the tickets for the same price as that row, and they agreed. For the last few years then we’ve gotten the tickets at this discount.
This year, the subscription renewal pricing has changed. They split the dress circle and mezzanine sections into 2, so the front section costs more than the back (where the wheelchair seats are), and even more significantly – they have created an Orch – 2 area right around where we’ve been seated all this time that costs less than half of the regular orchestra, and is now priced lower than the dress circle row behind it! Let’s put some dollars on this. Price per seat for 3 operas a year, on Saturdays.
Orch – 1 $660 per person
Orch – 2 $297 per person
Dress C – 3 (area behind Orch 2) $330 per person
Now, $33 is not really a significant amount, but what IS significant, if you assume that prices of tickets reflect quality of seating, is that where we have been seated is rated lower than 7 other seating areas, and is only better than seats in the uppermost balcony in the back. The accessible seats in the back row of the DC and MZ cost more now – at $435.
I am not trying to spend more money, what I want is to get decent seats with the best acoustics and visuals. I’m a visual person, and there isn’t a single seat in that house of 2967 seats that I can get where I don’t need binoculars to see. And Jim is auditory, and he would like a chance to find out what the best sound the house can give is. I’m encouraging him to go on his own sometime, and leave me home.
I really do wonder if it satisfies the ADA that there is no wheelchair seating in the top 4 price categories, and that the best they can offer is the back row in a house of almost 3000. When they renovated in 1995 they should have really looked at their seating to figure out which seats were providing the best sound and sight lines, which is what I assume happened this year, and made sure there was accessible seating in all sections. It is an old building, I know. And renovating it to provide better seating would cost money that the city doesn’t have (is this city owned?), I know that too. The building was designed with absolutely no thought to access, and when it was renovated wheelchair seating was barely addressed as well. The way the seats are set with long rows of over 100 seats makes it impossible to put any wheelchairs in the center without taking out at least one if not 2 rows. And all the other rows in other sections currently have steps to access. But it is not impossible to make changes! And I bet those changes would be an improvement for all. It’s like curb cuts – just because they were for wheelchairs initially, doesn’t mean a lot of other people can’t enjoy them – bikes, strollers, people pushing carts.
There was a public assembly room in Howard County, MD where award ceremonies were often held. Towards the end of my day as Chair of the Access Committee, we took on the county to improve that room. The problem was that it was an upside down horseshoe shape, with the county council sitting along the flat side at the top. The center of the room was like a pit, and if you were addressing the council, you had to descend a number of steps to get to the podium. Seating was all around, stadium style, with seats at each step level. People with disabilities were stuck on the top level. If they wanted to address the council, the mic had to be brought up to them. If awards were given, instead of the council greeting everyone at the bottom, they had to come up the steps to them. It worked, but was not inclusive. It probably counted as a reasonable accommodation according to the ADA, but it put PWD on the ring of the room, the fringe of the party. So, Howard County at first grudgingly, but eventually willingly, drew up some designs to fix it. The winning design, was in most ways the simplest – they raised the floor and made it flat. And guess what? It was a hit, and not just with PWD. The chairs were not bolted down, so the room was more fluid and could be used in a lot of different ways. And when people addressed the council, they didn’t feel like that the council was looking down at them from some high court. The council liked it too. Overall it became a more friendly place.
I have no doubt in my mind that a renovation should be done at the Civic Center to improve seating for all. Having to wind your way down those long rows of seats is a nuisance. For PWD it is really needed. I’ve been told that the acoustics aren’t great, but I don’t think I’m in any position to give an opinion on that one. I can’t imagine that any changes will be made soon. In the meantime though, I am planning one of these days to write a letter of complaint to both the San Diego Opera, and the Civic Center (or City if they are the ones who own it, I’ll have to find out). And the chances of my getting tickets to an opera in San Diego again are rather low. I’d rather take my chances on one opera in San Francisco next year! I have no idea about their seating at this time, but I’d get a weekend in SF as well!
Best seats – most of Orchestra, front center rows of Dress Circle and Mezzanine, side balconies on the lower balcony
Next best – upper side balcony, back center rows of Dress Circle and Mezzanine – wheelchair seats are here in the very last row.
Coming down in price, next best – front center rows of Upper Balcony, wings of Dress Circle and Mezzanine – may have some wheelchair seats here too, in the back row, not sure.
And next is where we’ve been seated – back corners of orchestra
Last – top balcony back and wings and there are NO wheelchair seats there! (there may be an ADA violation here too, if someone called in asking for the cheapest seats, to be told they had to get ones that cost 3 times as much?)
Am I crazy to be annoyed by this, anyone else see why I feel miffed and invalidated? The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get. I was never crazy about the seats we had, but I trusted that we had ones that were considered reasonable by acoustic standards at least. I’m not asking for the BEST seating, just fair seating for the price I’m willing to pay. If all I’m willing to pay is $30 a ticket and all I can get is the upper balcony, back corner, so be it. Getting the price break eased the pain for a while. The curious thing, is that we must be in the computer as “special pricing, don’t touch” because when the renewal came back, it asked for the $330 of the section behind us, not the $297 of the newly created section. Amazing.
Tomorrow will be another interesting experience, not for me, but for someone attending a play with me. We’re going to the Old Globe, a nice and much smaller venue. Again the seating is the back row, and off to the side, but my opinion is that there isn’t a bad seat in the house there, so I don’t mind.
I’m sure that my attitude is shaped in part, because it’s really all I’m used to as an adult. As a child, my family attended shows, but we didn’t spend a lot of money on them. When I was a teenager, and even in college if I went somewhere, someone would carry me to a seat in the middle, and I’d enjoy the show out of my wheelchair, but I didn’t go to many. I weighed only about 110 pounds then. Now, not only do I weigh more, but the usual person with me has aged as well, and shouldn’t be carrying even 100 pounds! So, I stay in my chair. With the ADA, this is also easier to do. I’ve seen more performances in the last 10 years than the rest of my life altogether I think – a result of having kids grown up, more time, and a different husband.
I made the mistake of asking my friend, who is going to the play with me, where she usually sits, and she said – “front row, center”. Well, she won’t get that this time. She knows this and is ok about it intellectually. But how will that feel for her? To pay the same $70 for a ticket, and instead of front row, center, she now is sitting in back row, side – because of a wheelchair? How is this going to feel for any adult who finds themselves suddenly with a disability and unable to take steps? I’m guessing my friend won’t feel really bad, partly because the seats really aren’t bad (the gap between these seats at the Old Globe are nothing like the gap between front row and back row at the Civic Theater) and because she wanted my company. I’m grateful that this is true. People who want to be with you, wheelchair and all, can brush off a seating arrangement change for the sake of friendship. They might not have the same reaction if they had to give it up permanently though, I suspect. Like most of us using wheelchairs, we choose not to fight it, and usually just avoid going to venues that are unpleasant.
Unfortunately that creates a feedback loop the makes it hard for changes to ever happen. Avoiding a venue, means fewer patrons in wheelchairs, which makes the venue think they are doing a reasonable job because they have no complaints. Which is why I am thinking of writing letters, and filing a formal complaint.
There is a phrase that people with disabilities sometimes use for describing people without disabilities – “the temporarily able-bodied”. I wonder, if more people thought about themselves or their mothers as one day needing those handicapped access parking spots, or wheelchair seats, or a chance to get in early to a movie theater – would they be more understanding and design places more friendly?
And now, I am exhausted. I’ve thought about this topic for weeks now, and I’m sure I’m still forgetting something. I wanted to try to write all my thoughts down. If nothing else, it shows how complex this issue is, how big a part of going out on the town the topic is, and how much experience I’ve had.
And A Night at the Opera
I have started this blog entry 3 times and had trouble with it every time. The topic is very large, so I have a lot to say! And at this moment I have a lot of passion about it too, related to the San Diego Opera and the venue where the operas are performed, the San Diego Civic Theater. While writing it, I have had to remind myself several times that I’m writing for myself first! If it’s long and a bit dry, so be it. I post things because I do hope some will be interested enough to read my opinions, but the bottom line is that I write what I need to.
I stay in my chair all the time in my own home and when I go out, and you would think that when other people are seated that would make us more similar, and lessen the differences between our perspectives at least for that moment. It helps, really it does. I appreciate when people sit down to talk to me, being at the same eye level is more comfortable.
Arranging chairs in a space for the benefit of both people who can get in and out of chairs, and for those who bring their own chair is not always a simple task. Medical offices and waiting rooms almost never have an open space set aside for a wheelchair to slide into. They try to pack as many people into a small space as they can, which gets translated into ‘as many chairs’ and wheelchairs are forgotten. I will try to put myself in the most out of the way spot, sometimes blocking 2 seats if they are empty, or blocking access to a water fountain or magazine rack. I can’t blame the offices really, but from my point of view it is sometimes tiresome to feel like you are always in the way. Sometimes I end up sitting near a receptionist window, which may feel intrusive to people checking in, but where am I to go?
Even in my own home, deciding how to arrange the furniture in the living room was difficult. I only use that room for watching TV, or when we have visitors. For TV I would like to be in one spot, but then a chair would have had to sit out all by itself, and there would be a big gap between it and the closest table, unless I and my wheelchair filled the gap. It would look odd. So, instead I sit on the end, which turned out to mean I had no table for MY glass of wine. I solved that problem by getting myself a little one foot square pedestal table with a mosaic top that I can call my own. Most people’s living rooms and family rooms are similar, there’s no place for a wheelchair to fit in among the furniture, except for the access route that every takes getting in and out. At book club meetings for example, I routinely block the opening, and if someone needs to get up, I move out of the way. I mention people’s homes not as an example of how ‘bad’ things are, but how even in the easiest of situations, some accommodations are made. Even in my own home, the arrangement is not perfect. And if there happen to be 2 people using wheelchairs, things get a lot more complicated. When my SCI support group is over, we move all the chairs away from either the breakfast room table, or an outdoor patio table, and that works ok. But the living room? No way!
Seating – where do you put those wheelchairs? What do you do with people who can’t get into chairs? It sounds like a simple problem, with a simple solution – remove a chair and slide a wheelchair in that space! The real problem though is with places where there are fixed seats, that you cannot remove. There are occasionally difficulties in public places where the chairs can be taken away, and in those situations the problems have more to do with access to the seating area (because of steps or other obstacles, sometimes even because of other tables and chairs).
Think of all the places you have fixed seats – theaters, sporting events, airplanes and other transportation, some restaurants, airports or stations, medical offices and waiting rooms… many of them present problems.
The ADAAG has helped a lot in this regard, so that in most venues there are guidelines on how many wheelchair spaces have to be allocated per how many total seats, and requirements are given that the people in the wheelchairs have to have the same line-of-sight as people in fixed seats. This concept is a little hard to understand unless you’ve been forced to sit with a poor line-of-sight. Take a movie theater, with stadium seating and nice comfy seats that tilt back just a little. Ideally you put an imaginary body into one of those seats and draw a line from the person’s eyes (perpendicular to the head, not looking at their feet!) to the screen. Most wheelchair seats do not recline, so the angle from a wheelchair user’s eyes usually goes horizontal, perpendicular to the floor. If the wheelchair is too low in the theater, the person has to tilt their head back to see the screen, since they cannot tilt their body and chair, and after 2 hours of this someone can be in serious pain.
The ADAAG also has guidelines about dispersed seating in larger venues, so that wheelchair seats might be found in all price categories, with many options for types of viewing. I used to remember all of the ADAAG guidelines, from my days in Maryland working on various Access committees, unfortunately I’ve lost the details. But my memory wants to say that if there were more than 600 seats, then there had to be dispersed seating in more than one location. So, smaller venues are likely to have only one choice for accessible seating.
Medical offices and waiting rooms, and I believe airports and other stations too, don’t technically have “fixed” seating. Those seats might be bolted down, but they are considered furniture, and the ADAAG does not address furniture! There are no guidelines for bed height, chair stability, GYN exam tables, table knee clearance unless these things are bolted to a wall or floor! Unless you are in a prison or in your own home, you can’t count on a bed being at the right height. Prison beds are fixed to the wall you see. I did some research on this once, mostly trying to figure out something related to GYN tables. Word has spread though about table height, so it’s no longer a problem getting my knees under a table in restaurants. And some fast food places with fixed tables and seating attached to the tables, will have an odd table with a seat missing and a notice saying something like Handicapped Access, or Priority Seating for people with disabilities.
New sports arenas, like Petco park, and Oriole Park in Camden Yards, have very good seating arrangements. Petco Park has more ramps to go up or down to the accessible seats than I would care for, but overall they have done a good job. Wheelchair baseball fans should check out Oriole Park in Baltimore though, it’s amazing. You enter on the main floor, no elevators or steps or ramps to get to the bulk of the food vendors, or the best accessible seating. You enter through the vending areas onto a level ring of accessible seats all around the stadium. From that ring, seats go down to the playing field, and up into the rafters. I’m sure you can get cheaper accessible seats that you have to take an elevator to, as well as box seats, and seats right behind home plate. But if you want to, a person in a wheelchair can get to their seat, all the food, bathrooms and shops without going up a single ramp or in a single elevator. It’s amazing architecture, and the reason it works is that they bothered to dig a hole deep enough and put the playing field down quite low.
Not all sporting events are well designed however. Some of the worst I went to were my kids’ little league or soccer games. Sometimes there was no parking where I could put the lift down on the van I owned at the time. Sometimes there was no pavement from the parking to the viewing area, and it was gravel, sand or mud (Maryland gets rain). And sometimes the viewing area was so badly arranged that I’d have bleachers blocking half my view. I watched a lot of youth games from the driver’s seat of my van, which wasn’t all bad really. I could listen to a book on tape at the same time!
Airport waiting areas present a different kind of difficulty – crowds. Usually near the gate counter there are a few seats marked as Priority Disability Seating, or some wording like that. I don’t actually need one of those seats, but I do like to sit with the people I’m traveling with, and I do like to be near the counter because of pre-boarding. If I’m not visually close to the gate counter, there’s a higher chance I’ll be forgotten. Even though I don’t really care if I board first or last, the airline people DO care. It’s easier for them if slower customers preboard, rather than get in the middle of the line and slow it all down. And for people like me, who put some wheelchair parts overhead, it helps the flight attendants to let us get all the stuff in the bins early, so they don’t have to figure out where to put things later. The frame of my chair goes in the belly of the plane, which takes time to get done as well.
I am going to digress for a minute – one of my pet peeves is seeing people pre-board with some disability, only to be one of the first to dash off when the plane lands. I may be first on, but I’m always last off, and I think that if that policy were enforced with ALL people who pre-board, you’d get a lot fewer people with “disabilities” on the plane! It used to be a huge problem on Southwest, for pre-boarders had a huge advantage in getting seats. Their move to assigned boarding slots fixed most of the problem. I used to hate flying Southwest because of the cattle call feeling, even in the pre-board area. Now, it’s one of the easiest airlines for me to fly. They have the best service getting me and my wheelchair on and off the plane smoothly.
But, back to the waiting area – You’re at your gate, the flight is late, the waiting area is full and spilling over, where do you go? Theoretically, the people in the designated Priority seating area are supposed to give those up for others with disabilities – but do they give it to me? My husband? There are no clear-cut rules on this, and no enforcement. The only time I’ve seen people give up a seat for someone else with a disability, wheelchair or not, is on the San Francisco MUNI buses (or maybe some other buses too) where the bus driver goes over and tells people to move, folds the seat up so there is room for me and helps me get the chair locked in place. Usually someone will give up a seat nearby for Jim too. This works because the bus driver enforces it, and because a lot of passengers are traveling alone or in pairs, and not toting multiple suitcases.
A long time ago, when my kids were about 7 and 9 years old, and I was still married to their father, we took a family vacation to Philadelphia and visited with my brother and his then girlfriend (whose name I’ve forgotten now, so I’ll call her Mary). We spent one day at the Franklin Institute, which I have many fond memories of because I took numerous summer math and science classes there as a child. The 6 of us were waiting in line outside the Planetarium for the next show, when a staff person beckoned us to follow him to wait at another entrance, to go in as soon as they opened the doors. Essentially we were jumping the line. Mary was really uncomfortable with this, and asked me, rather sarcastically I might add, “ Are your kids used to being treated like royalty?” I was flabbergasted. It was one of those moments when you are totally caught off guard, and don’t think of something really appropriate to say until it’s too late. I mumbled something like, “no, they aren’t”, when what I should have said was,” you haven’t got a clue, have you?” We were given permission to jump the line, so that we could get to the worst seats in the house, the ones in the last row where they had a space for a wheelchair, so that we could all sit together before someone else took them. I had one spot in the whole theater that I could sit, and the staff was good enough to be sure I could get to it first. This was in 1984, 6 years before the ADA. I would like to think that Mary would be wiser now, but I have no way of knowing. I do know though, that in places where seats are not assigned, a lot of people still react like this when they see me being allowed in first. They are envious, and annoyed, and wish they could get in first, without realizing that they might not like the only seating choices I have.
In movie theaters, unless they are newer ones built with stadium seating and an eye for the needs of PWD, it is still often the case that the worst seats in the theater – in the back, off to the side, are the ones set aside for wheelchairs. (true in hotels too, the rooms reserved for handicapped guests are the ones without a view, near the noisy ice machine etc., but that’s another story for another day) Most of the time these seats are fine, perhaps not the sweet spot, but good enough – you can see well, and hear well.
Recently I went to a movie, Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, alone. The theater is an old one, with a long gradually sloped seating area, for about 350 people, and 2 access walkways off-center down the length of the theater. In the center section, between the 2 walkways there are rows of about 12 seats, and on the right and left sides about 3 - 4 seats. For wheelchairs, they took out the back row of the right side. Not ideal, and not where I’d chose to sit if I could! The theater wasn’t full, but some women (one had some difficulty walking) sat in the last row of the center section. I figured I wouldn’t annoy anyone if I sat in the walkway that was just behind them. Then, even though I was way in the back, I’d at least be in the center and on flat carpeted ground. (That’s another problem with those side seats, the ground slopes down, and the floor is slick, so my chair skids forward and my knees press against the seat in front. My chair doesn’t tilt back, so I have to tilt my head a bit, which isn’t horrible because the slope is so gradual, but I’d rather not.)
The movie starts, and an exit emergency light stays on right above my head! It was bad enough that the women in front of me moved up a row, and I went over to my designated spot after all. Great movie, but I’m not crazy about that theater.
The newer stadium seating movie theaters are better for wheelchairs, as a rule, though that was not the case when they were first built. The very first stadium seating theaters put wheelchair seating in the very front row, which was not well received at all. It’s like the sports stadiums, if you are going to put the wheelchair seating in the middle, and not have ramps too steep to get to them (the ADA does have guidelines on that) then a deeper hole in the ground is needed when you build the theater, and that costs more money. So, the theater builders cut corners and didn’t bother to dig the holes, and put the wheelchair areas up front.
There was one of those earlier theaters built near where I lived in Maryland, and our Access committee had a tour one day. I ended up concluding that I would only go there if the movie I wanted to see was in 4 specific rooms and not the others. Those 4 were wonderful because they were larger theaters with the wheelchair area further back – one even had a balcony!, but the others were too close to the screen. I believe either the lawsuits were decided in favor of the rights of people with disabilities, or the publicity was enough to change the practices of the theater companies, but either way the newest theaters seem to be much better as a whole.
Unfortunately, San Diego Opera does not perform in a new facility. Seating 2967 people (see http://www.sandiegotheatres.org/eventstickets/seatingchart.cfm), it was built in 1964 and renovated in 1995. I can only assume it felt it was complying with the ADA at the time. I’m not so sure it is now though, and have been considering filing a complaint with the Justice Department, at least to get them to evaluate it. I won’t file a law suit seeking money, I believe only in the type of complaint that gets changes made.
We’ve had seasons’ tickets for 7 years, getting what were supposedly the best wheelchair seats in the house. These were in the last row on the furthest end of the orchestra section. Seats V 57, 59. There is no central access aisle, everyone enters from left or right. Our seats were in the 22nd row, in a row that was 118 seats wide. You couldn’t see the stage well without binoculars. And acoustics were ok, not great. But these seats were the same price as those in the front row center, or the 10th row center. So we assumed it was the best we could do. One of the reasons for getting seasons’ tickets is that you have a chance to upgrade your seat location as better seats become available, but that perk means nothing to us, because we already had the best we could get, or rather that I could get. Jim could have sat alone in a much better seat. There were other wheelchair seats as well, in the last row of the dress circle, and the last row of the mezzanine, lower price categories, and certainly no closer to the stage.
So, after 2 or 3 years of paying full price, I complained. I said that our seats weren’t any better than the row behind us, which cost half as much. I said that if they wanted to keep our business they should let us get the tickets for the same price as that row, and they agreed. For the last few years then we’ve gotten the tickets at this discount.
This year, the subscription renewal pricing has changed. They split the dress circle and mezzanine sections into 2, so the front section costs more than the back (where the wheelchair seats are), and even more significantly – they have created an Orch – 2 area right around where we’ve been seated all this time that costs less than half of the regular orchestra, and is now priced lower than the dress circle row behind it! Let’s put some dollars on this. Price per seat for 3 operas a year, on Saturdays.
Orch – 1 $660 per person
Orch – 2 $297 per person
Dress C – 3 (area behind Orch 2) $330 per person
Now, $33 is not really a significant amount, but what IS significant, if you assume that prices of tickets reflect quality of seating, is that where we have been seated is rated lower than 7 other seating areas, and is only better than seats in the uppermost balcony in the back. The accessible seats in the back row of the DC and MZ cost more now – at $435.
I am not trying to spend more money, what I want is to get decent seats with the best acoustics and visuals. I’m a visual person, and there isn’t a single seat in that house of 2967 seats that I can get where I don’t need binoculars to see. And Jim is auditory, and he would like a chance to find out what the best sound the house can give is. I’m encouraging him to go on his own sometime, and leave me home.
I really do wonder if it satisfies the ADA that there is no wheelchair seating in the top 4 price categories, and that the best they can offer is the back row in a house of almost 3000. When they renovated in 1995 they should have really looked at their seating to figure out which seats were providing the best sound and sight lines, which is what I assume happened this year, and made sure there was accessible seating in all sections. It is an old building, I know. And renovating it to provide better seating would cost money that the city doesn’t have (is this city owned?), I know that too. The building was designed with absolutely no thought to access, and when it was renovated wheelchair seating was barely addressed as well. The way the seats are set with long rows of over 100 seats makes it impossible to put any wheelchairs in the center without taking out at least one if not 2 rows. And all the other rows in other sections currently have steps to access. But it is not impossible to make changes! And I bet those changes would be an improvement for all. It’s like curb cuts – just because they were for wheelchairs initially, doesn’t mean a lot of other people can’t enjoy them – bikes, strollers, people pushing carts.
There was a public assembly room in Howard County, MD where award ceremonies were often held. Towards the end of my day as Chair of the Access Committee, we took on the county to improve that room. The problem was that it was an upside down horseshoe shape, with the county council sitting along the flat side at the top. The center of the room was like a pit, and if you were addressing the council, you had to descend a number of steps to get to the podium. Seating was all around, stadium style, with seats at each step level. People with disabilities were stuck on the top level. If they wanted to address the council, the mic had to be brought up to them. If awards were given, instead of the council greeting everyone at the bottom, they had to come up the steps to them. It worked, but was not inclusive. It probably counted as a reasonable accommodation according to the ADA, but it put PWD on the ring of the room, the fringe of the party. So, Howard County at first grudgingly, but eventually willingly, drew up some designs to fix it. The winning design, was in most ways the simplest – they raised the floor and made it flat. And guess what? It was a hit, and not just with PWD. The chairs were not bolted down, so the room was more fluid and could be used in a lot of different ways. And when people addressed the council, they didn’t feel like that the council was looking down at them from some high court. The council liked it too. Overall it became a more friendly place.
I have no doubt in my mind that a renovation should be done at the Civic Center to improve seating for all. Having to wind your way down those long rows of seats is a nuisance. For PWD it is really needed. I’ve been told that the acoustics aren’t great, but I don’t think I’m in any position to give an opinion on that one. I can’t imagine that any changes will be made soon. In the meantime though, I am planning one of these days to write a letter of complaint to both the San Diego Opera, and the Civic Center (or City if they are the ones who own it, I’ll have to find out). And the chances of my getting tickets to an opera in San Diego again are rather low. I’d rather take my chances on one opera in San Francisco next year! I have no idea about their seating at this time, but I’d get a weekend in SF as well!
Best seats – most of Orchestra, front center rows of Dress Circle and Mezzanine, side balconies on the lower balcony
Next best – upper side balcony, back center rows of Dress Circle and Mezzanine – wheelchair seats are here in the very last row.
Coming down in price, next best – front center rows of Upper Balcony, wings of Dress Circle and Mezzanine – may have some wheelchair seats here too, in the back row, not sure.
And next is where we’ve been seated – back corners of orchestra
Last – top balcony back and wings and there are NO wheelchair seats there! (there may be an ADA violation here too, if someone called in asking for the cheapest seats, to be told they had to get ones that cost 3 times as much?)
Am I crazy to be annoyed by this, anyone else see why I feel miffed and invalidated? The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get. I was never crazy about the seats we had, but I trusted that we had ones that were considered reasonable by acoustic standards at least. I’m not asking for the BEST seating, just fair seating for the price I’m willing to pay. If all I’m willing to pay is $30 a ticket and all I can get is the upper balcony, back corner, so be it. Getting the price break eased the pain for a while. The curious thing, is that we must be in the computer as “special pricing, don’t touch” because when the renewal came back, it asked for the $330 of the section behind us, not the $297 of the newly created section. Amazing.
Tomorrow will be another interesting experience, not for me, but for someone attending a play with me. We’re going to the Old Globe, a nice and much smaller venue. Again the seating is the back row, and off to the side, but my opinion is that there isn’t a bad seat in the house there, so I don’t mind.
I’m sure that my attitude is shaped in part, because it’s really all I’m used to as an adult. As a child, my family attended shows, but we didn’t spend a lot of money on them. When I was a teenager, and even in college if I went somewhere, someone would carry me to a seat in the middle, and I’d enjoy the show out of my wheelchair, but I didn’t go to many. I weighed only about 110 pounds then. Now, not only do I weigh more, but the usual person with me has aged as well, and shouldn’t be carrying even 100 pounds! So, I stay in my chair. With the ADA, this is also easier to do. I’ve seen more performances in the last 10 years than the rest of my life altogether I think – a result of having kids grown up, more time, and a different husband.
I made the mistake of asking my friend, who is going to the play with me, where she usually sits, and she said – “front row, center”. Well, she won’t get that this time. She knows this and is ok about it intellectually. But how will that feel for her? To pay the same $70 for a ticket, and instead of front row, center, she now is sitting in back row, side – because of a wheelchair? How is this going to feel for any adult who finds themselves suddenly with a disability and unable to take steps? I’m guessing my friend won’t feel really bad, partly because the seats really aren’t bad (the gap between these seats at the Old Globe are nothing like the gap between front row and back row at the Civic Theater) and because she wanted my company. I’m grateful that this is true. People who want to be with you, wheelchair and all, can brush off a seating arrangement change for the sake of friendship. They might not have the same reaction if they had to give it up permanently though, I suspect. Like most of us using wheelchairs, we choose not to fight it, and usually just avoid going to venues that are unpleasant.
Unfortunately that creates a feedback loop the makes it hard for changes to ever happen. Avoiding a venue, means fewer patrons in wheelchairs, which makes the venue think they are doing a reasonable job because they have no complaints. Which is why I am thinking of writing letters, and filing a formal complaint.
There is a phrase that people with disabilities sometimes use for describing people without disabilities – “the temporarily able-bodied”. I wonder, if more people thought about themselves or their mothers as one day needing those handicapped access parking spots, or wheelchair seats, or a chance to get in early to a movie theater – would they be more understanding and design places more friendly?
And now, I am exhausted. I’ve thought about this topic for weeks now, and I’m sure I’m still forgetting something. I wanted to try to write all my thoughts down. If nothing else, it shows how complex this issue is, how big a part of going out on the town the topic is, and how much experience I’ve had.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
To George Carlin
To George Carlin, may he rest in peace
A thought struck me last Friday, at my SCI support group meeting, that there are SO many things we DON’T talk about. Even within our own number, some topics are difficult, and some avoided. And those we do discuss now, are because of a few years of getting together as friends, building trust. With other people in general many topics are taboo. I would guess that non-disabled people avoid these too, but they don’t come up in our lives as often as they do for us gimps. Bladder and bowel control. Ooooh!! Don’t want to hear about that!
In 1989 when “Born on the Fourth of July” came out, I eagerly went to the movies, alone, deliberately alone. It was a really difficult movie for me. I left before the lights came up. I didn’t want anyone to see me! I was afraid there might be someone I knew there and that they would then “know” that I used a catheter, and had problems with my bowels! Or I thought they would assume I had the same problems as Ron Kovic, and I didn’t! I felt SO exposed by that movie. Till then, I had felt that no one had much experience with people with disabilities, so other people and my friends only knew what I told them. This didn’t count medical professionals, though they weren’t much better. I was always teaching the professionals more about me than the other way around.
And yet, on another level I was pleased by the movie. Other than “Whose Life is it Anyway?” in 1981, I didn’t feel like people with disabilities made it into movies in any way. And “Whose Life was it Anyway?” wasn’t exactly uplifting, and luckily (it seemed to me at the time) not really well received. Essentially it was championing a man’s right to die instead of living as a quad. Personally I liked the movie, though it was somewhat depressing, and I disagreed with the conclusion.
It’s been good for me, to be with friends who do talk about some of these taboo issues. Somehow it makes them more acceptable, and usually the talk generates ideas and solutions, which makes the talk even more rewarding besides acceptance. There are times I wish it were as easy to talk to other friends too.
So as I was musing at the SCI support group meeting, I found myself thinking of George Carlin’s “7 Words You Can Never Say on Television”. Anyone from age 30 to 8o probably knows who George Carlin is, for he usually makes the Top Ten list of famous comedians. Kids from about ages 18 – 23 might know him as the conductor of the Thomas the Tank Engine series. I’m sorry that he died a couple of years ago, I liked his comedy, which is not the same as thinking he was funny all the time. I just googled him, his 73rd birthday would have been tomorrow, May 12. His “7 Dirty Words” routine prompted a Supreme Court decision that TV stations did have the right to censor what was on TV. But I think Carlin’s attention was instrumental in putting those words later into cable TV and even mainstream language.
The words may be acceptable now, and many others, but there are still so many topics that we shy away from. Why? What is it in our upbringing that makes it hard to talk about Crone’s Disease and ileostomy for example, if you are the one with the disease as opposed to an intellectual discussion? What is it that causes such shame or avoidance in us all? Perhaps as you get older, your need to appear perfect diminishes? It has for me. Perhaps as more of your peers start to have health problems, it becomes ok to talk about your own? I’m not quite there yet, with non-disabled folk anyway. I hope that will happen. I’m hoping that half the difficulty I’ve had is that I was a young person talking about things most young people have no concept of. Now that I’m middle aged I would like to see this get easier.
I can remember lots of incidents where there was some untouchable topic, that rather than talk about it, I stayed silent and let people think I was just annoying. Let them give me a personality flaw instead of a physical one! A case in point – 1976 or 77. I was an MIT student, and someone called me to say that a group of people were going out for pizza, and did I want to go? I DID want to go, I really really DID want to go!!! But we’d all be out for several hours, so it was a good idea for me to empty my bladder first. At that time I was intermittent cathing myself, that means that every 2 or 3 hours I had to insert a very short catheter up my urethra to empty my bladder. If I didn’t, one of 2 things would happen. Either my bladder would spasm (neurogenic bladder) and push all the urine in it out (I would leak), or it would “decide” to hold the urine till it was stretched too much and let my blood pressure rise (a condition called autonomic dysreflexia, which I can explain another time) to a really painful level. (I knew there would be no bathrooms where I was going, this was way before the ADA.) Neither option is appealing, trust me! Though I wore pampers to handle the bladder leaking, and that worked to a point. I learned not to drink a lot of fluids, and to this day I still drink very little at a time, even though now I have a supra pubic catheter, so it’s not an issue.
Anyway, to get back to my story: I had to cath first, before joining my friends, and cathing and dressing took about 15 minutes. The rest of the group waited for me in the dorm lobby, and was really annoyed I took so long, and I could see this when I finally joined them, but I just couldn’t tell them why. Later I found out it was one particular person who insisted on inviting me, and that the group turned on him as a result, they were ready to leave us behind. That man became a good friend, who I could tell my bladder stories to, but I saw him then as an exception.
If I could generate a “7 words paraplegics cannot talk about in public” list, what would be on it? Bladder, bowels, pressure sores, getting assistance (or lack of independence), and sex – ok, I only came up with 5 topics, but these are biggies.
I’ve touched on the first 4 topics at least a little, and most likely will again in the future. Sex is the hardest to talk about, because it’s very hard to handle it as only about me, and I set a guideline for myself to not say things that were too personal about other people. But even now, 52 years old, having used a chair for 37 years, I still find myself asking – if I say really everything will I get acceptance and understanding, or will I get shame and rejection? When telling this much to even my best friends, the other person’s reaction (if they are truly a friend) is, “of course, you can tell me! It’s ok!” But the reality is that it doesn’t always work out. Some times, some things are just really hard to hear.
And I suppose, that in some way, that is why I’m writing. I’d like to reduce the secrecy we carry with our disabilities. And I’d like to know who my friends really are – for the true ones CAN handle this stuff. And perhaps, just perhaps, writing is easier to “hear” and will pave the way for either my friends, or someone else’s, to later be about to really hear about what our lives are like. We’re not totally different from others, but we do have different struggles and sometimes they aren’t pretty.
A thought struck me last Friday, at my SCI support group meeting, that there are SO many things we DON’T talk about. Even within our own number, some topics are difficult, and some avoided. And those we do discuss now, are because of a few years of getting together as friends, building trust. With other people in general many topics are taboo. I would guess that non-disabled people avoid these too, but they don’t come up in our lives as often as they do for us gimps. Bladder and bowel control. Ooooh!! Don’t want to hear about that!
In 1989 when “Born on the Fourth of July” came out, I eagerly went to the movies, alone, deliberately alone. It was a really difficult movie for me. I left before the lights came up. I didn’t want anyone to see me! I was afraid there might be someone I knew there and that they would then “know” that I used a catheter, and had problems with my bowels! Or I thought they would assume I had the same problems as Ron Kovic, and I didn’t! I felt SO exposed by that movie. Till then, I had felt that no one had much experience with people with disabilities, so other people and my friends only knew what I told them. This didn’t count medical professionals, though they weren’t much better. I was always teaching the professionals more about me than the other way around.
And yet, on another level I was pleased by the movie. Other than “Whose Life is it Anyway?” in 1981, I didn’t feel like people with disabilities made it into movies in any way. And “Whose Life was it Anyway?” wasn’t exactly uplifting, and luckily (it seemed to me at the time) not really well received. Essentially it was championing a man’s right to die instead of living as a quad. Personally I liked the movie, though it was somewhat depressing, and I disagreed with the conclusion.
It’s been good for me, to be with friends who do talk about some of these taboo issues. Somehow it makes them more acceptable, and usually the talk generates ideas and solutions, which makes the talk even more rewarding besides acceptance. There are times I wish it were as easy to talk to other friends too.
So as I was musing at the SCI support group meeting, I found myself thinking of George Carlin’s “7 Words You Can Never Say on Television”. Anyone from age 30 to 8o probably knows who George Carlin is, for he usually makes the Top Ten list of famous comedians. Kids from about ages 18 – 23 might know him as the conductor of the Thomas the Tank Engine series. I’m sorry that he died a couple of years ago, I liked his comedy, which is not the same as thinking he was funny all the time. I just googled him, his 73rd birthday would have been tomorrow, May 12. His “7 Dirty Words” routine prompted a Supreme Court decision that TV stations did have the right to censor what was on TV. But I think Carlin’s attention was instrumental in putting those words later into cable TV and even mainstream language.
The words may be acceptable now, and many others, but there are still so many topics that we shy away from. Why? What is it in our upbringing that makes it hard to talk about Crone’s Disease and ileostomy for example, if you are the one with the disease as opposed to an intellectual discussion? What is it that causes such shame or avoidance in us all? Perhaps as you get older, your need to appear perfect diminishes? It has for me. Perhaps as more of your peers start to have health problems, it becomes ok to talk about your own? I’m not quite there yet, with non-disabled folk anyway. I hope that will happen. I’m hoping that half the difficulty I’ve had is that I was a young person talking about things most young people have no concept of. Now that I’m middle aged I would like to see this get easier.
I can remember lots of incidents where there was some untouchable topic, that rather than talk about it, I stayed silent and let people think I was just annoying. Let them give me a personality flaw instead of a physical one! A case in point – 1976 or 77. I was an MIT student, and someone called me to say that a group of people were going out for pizza, and did I want to go? I DID want to go, I really really DID want to go!!! But we’d all be out for several hours, so it was a good idea for me to empty my bladder first. At that time I was intermittent cathing myself, that means that every 2 or 3 hours I had to insert a very short catheter up my urethra to empty my bladder. If I didn’t, one of 2 things would happen. Either my bladder would spasm (neurogenic bladder) and push all the urine in it out (I would leak), or it would “decide” to hold the urine till it was stretched too much and let my blood pressure rise (a condition called autonomic dysreflexia, which I can explain another time) to a really painful level. (I knew there would be no bathrooms where I was going, this was way before the ADA.) Neither option is appealing, trust me! Though I wore pampers to handle the bladder leaking, and that worked to a point. I learned not to drink a lot of fluids, and to this day I still drink very little at a time, even though now I have a supra pubic catheter, so it’s not an issue.
Anyway, to get back to my story: I had to cath first, before joining my friends, and cathing and dressing took about 15 minutes. The rest of the group waited for me in the dorm lobby, and was really annoyed I took so long, and I could see this when I finally joined them, but I just couldn’t tell them why. Later I found out it was one particular person who insisted on inviting me, and that the group turned on him as a result, they were ready to leave us behind. That man became a good friend, who I could tell my bladder stories to, but I saw him then as an exception.
If I could generate a “7 words paraplegics cannot talk about in public” list, what would be on it? Bladder, bowels, pressure sores, getting assistance (or lack of independence), and sex – ok, I only came up with 5 topics, but these are biggies.
I’ve touched on the first 4 topics at least a little, and most likely will again in the future. Sex is the hardest to talk about, because it’s very hard to handle it as only about me, and I set a guideline for myself to not say things that were too personal about other people. But even now, 52 years old, having used a chair for 37 years, I still find myself asking – if I say really everything will I get acceptance and understanding, or will I get shame and rejection? When telling this much to even my best friends, the other person’s reaction (if they are truly a friend) is, “of course, you can tell me! It’s ok!” But the reality is that it doesn’t always work out. Some times, some things are just really hard to hear.
And I suppose, that in some way, that is why I’m writing. I’d like to reduce the secrecy we carry with our disabilities. And I’d like to know who my friends really are – for the true ones CAN handle this stuff. And perhaps, just perhaps, writing is easier to “hear” and will pave the way for either my friends, or someone else’s, to later be about to really hear about what our lives are like. We’re not totally different from others, but we do have different struggles and sometimes they aren’t pretty.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Volunteer Work
I have done my share of volunteer work in my life. I’d even go so far as to say that if everyone put in the same hours of volunteer work that I have, the world would be a better place. I had years when my volunteer activities were a 20-hour-a-week part time job. I believe volunteering strengthens communities. I wasn’t working for pay anywhere, so I had time. Or perhaps I should say I had enough time for that. Looking back I think a full time job would have killed me. I was lucky that we could live on my husband’s salary alone.
My first free work was as Landscape Chair and then member of the Board of Directors in the townhouse complex we lived in from 1984 – 94 in San Diego. Or was it doing interviews for MIT of prospective students? It wasn’t long before I was the soccer team manager and helping out in classrooms. 1995 – 2003 in Maryland, as my kids got older, I continued helping out their soccer teams, and did a lot of volunteer work for the high school band.
In Maryland I also did a lot of essentially disability activism. I didn’t chain myself to the steps of a courthouse building, waving signs about equal rights, but I did work on several committees – some of which actually did change buildings and legislation. I was Chairperson of the Howard County Access committee, a group that the county building department would send architectural plans to for review before making accessibility changes. It wasn’t a huge county like San Diego, but we had libraries, senior centers, community buildings and a community college doing renovations that needed advice. Private groups would come to us from time to time. We were good!
I was also on a couple of state level committees, some were more productive than others. My favorite was one created to change the parking placard laws, and it involved writing legislation, getting senators and congressmen to vote for it, speaking at committee hearings etc. And we were successful.
I like running meetings – setting agendas, sending out notifications, controlling the conversation, writing up summaries and action lists. I feel like I can use some of the skills I learned years ago as a psych grad student intern , to be sure everyone has a voice, and everyone is heard. Oh, there’s always someone in the group who doesn’t quite go by the “rules”, but I didn’t have trouble cutting them off in a dignified way. In general, people want someone to take charge and run things orderly.
So, when I moved to San Diego in late 2004, not having many friends here anymore, I thought I might find some volunteer work to keep me busy and to meet more people. But it wasn’t so easy. In a way, I felt burned out for disability activism, and wanted something different. No kids in school anymore, no opportunities there. I thought about causes I support like Habitat for Humanity, and Meals on Wheels, but the work they want is more physical than I can do. In the end the place I felt the most attached to was the Humane Society, so I’ve been doing some volunteer work for them now for the past 2 or so years.
If you are local, or visiting San Diego, you should check out the San Diego Humane Society on Gaines St. It has got to be a model for the rest of the country. Owing to some generous gift, they have a beautiful campus, with a dozen little glassed in rooms for no more than 4 cats each, filled with furniture and soft bedding, and climbing structures (and even more space for dogs). They will not put a pet to sleep unless they truly are unadoptable, and it is not unusual for them to have pets there for a year waiting. They only take in pets that are relinquished by the owner, not strays. We’ve gotten all 4 of our cats there, and 2 of them were not cats that were easy to find homes for. One has a heart problem and needs daily medication, and his brother sprays his pee. The Humane Society was incredibly helpful and supportive, and I have thought I’d like to give something back – so chose them to do some volunteer work.
Volunteering there has been a little less satisfying though. I wish I could just sit in the rooms with the cats and give them petting time, but I can’t get in and out without someone escaping, and there is barely enough room in there for a regular chair let alone a wheelchair. The best plan is to sit on the floor. I would have liked taking the kittens to Petco on Saturdays to convince shoppers to adopt, but you need to ride in their van and set up cages. So, I volunteered to help out in the development office, where the paperwork gets processed. And every so often, when there’s a large amount of work, most often related to a fundraiser coming up, they put a call out for extra hands to make calls, count money or stuff envelopes.
And that is where I was this afternoon for 3 hours, counting money collected last Saturday at their Walk-a-thon fundraiser. I was told all together they brought in about $300,000, which is pretty good. And all day today people were counting coins, and dollar bills and $20s. One envelope alone had $2000 in it, but many had nothing because their donations were online and those will be counted separately. Checks are added up tomorrow. It’s a big production, and I’m pleased to help out.
I recognize several women (it is usually women at these things) and have even learned a few names. But the nature of the events - holding in your head how many $1 bills you just put in a pile, or adding up as you go a lot of loose change, doesn’t lend itself to much conversation. And these events are only a couple of times a year, so I haven’t really made any friends. When they have the Telethon fundraiser, I’m one of those in the back room who calls the donor when their credit card won’t get processed! You know – someone calls in, pledges X to their credit card, it is taken back to the person who runs the card number. When it fails, someone calls the donor to see what happened. Usually one of the digits was written wrong, once in a while the donor is surprised and even embarrassed. There’s more to the process than this, gifts to be chosen and mailed, competition and matching gifts to tally. Suffice it to say, it’s a long day of steady work with numbers, and free lunch, and later - dinner out because I’m exhausted!
I like to help, and I really believe in what the Humane Society does. I am still grateful that they are there, and know that if I called today, years after we adopted the cats, they would still see if they could help solve a problem. But each time I go, like today, I feel that I wish there was something I could do more directly for the cats.
And from time to time, I wonder if maybe there might be another volunteer project that would be a better fit for me, I just don’t know what right now.
My first free work was as Landscape Chair and then member of the Board of Directors in the townhouse complex we lived in from 1984 – 94 in San Diego. Or was it doing interviews for MIT of prospective students? It wasn’t long before I was the soccer team manager and helping out in classrooms. 1995 – 2003 in Maryland, as my kids got older, I continued helping out their soccer teams, and did a lot of volunteer work for the high school band.
In Maryland I also did a lot of essentially disability activism. I didn’t chain myself to the steps of a courthouse building, waving signs about equal rights, but I did work on several committees – some of which actually did change buildings and legislation. I was Chairperson of the Howard County Access committee, a group that the county building department would send architectural plans to for review before making accessibility changes. It wasn’t a huge county like San Diego, but we had libraries, senior centers, community buildings and a community college doing renovations that needed advice. Private groups would come to us from time to time. We were good!
I was also on a couple of state level committees, some were more productive than others. My favorite was one created to change the parking placard laws, and it involved writing legislation, getting senators and congressmen to vote for it, speaking at committee hearings etc. And we were successful.
I like running meetings – setting agendas, sending out notifications, controlling the conversation, writing up summaries and action lists. I feel like I can use some of the skills I learned years ago as a psych grad student intern , to be sure everyone has a voice, and everyone is heard. Oh, there’s always someone in the group who doesn’t quite go by the “rules”, but I didn’t have trouble cutting them off in a dignified way. In general, people want someone to take charge and run things orderly.
So, when I moved to San Diego in late 2004, not having many friends here anymore, I thought I might find some volunteer work to keep me busy and to meet more people. But it wasn’t so easy. In a way, I felt burned out for disability activism, and wanted something different. No kids in school anymore, no opportunities there. I thought about causes I support like Habitat for Humanity, and Meals on Wheels, but the work they want is more physical than I can do. In the end the place I felt the most attached to was the Humane Society, so I’ve been doing some volunteer work for them now for the past 2 or so years.
If you are local, or visiting San Diego, you should check out the San Diego Humane Society on Gaines St. It has got to be a model for the rest of the country. Owing to some generous gift, they have a beautiful campus, with a dozen little glassed in rooms for no more than 4 cats each, filled with furniture and soft bedding, and climbing structures (and even more space for dogs). They will not put a pet to sleep unless they truly are unadoptable, and it is not unusual for them to have pets there for a year waiting. They only take in pets that are relinquished by the owner, not strays. We’ve gotten all 4 of our cats there, and 2 of them were not cats that were easy to find homes for. One has a heart problem and needs daily medication, and his brother sprays his pee. The Humane Society was incredibly helpful and supportive, and I have thought I’d like to give something back – so chose them to do some volunteer work.
Volunteering there has been a little less satisfying though. I wish I could just sit in the rooms with the cats and give them petting time, but I can’t get in and out without someone escaping, and there is barely enough room in there for a regular chair let alone a wheelchair. The best plan is to sit on the floor. I would have liked taking the kittens to Petco on Saturdays to convince shoppers to adopt, but you need to ride in their van and set up cages. So, I volunteered to help out in the development office, where the paperwork gets processed. And every so often, when there’s a large amount of work, most often related to a fundraiser coming up, they put a call out for extra hands to make calls, count money or stuff envelopes.
And that is where I was this afternoon for 3 hours, counting money collected last Saturday at their Walk-a-thon fundraiser. I was told all together they brought in about $300,000, which is pretty good. And all day today people were counting coins, and dollar bills and $20s. One envelope alone had $2000 in it, but many had nothing because their donations were online and those will be counted separately. Checks are added up tomorrow. It’s a big production, and I’m pleased to help out.
I recognize several women (it is usually women at these things) and have even learned a few names. But the nature of the events - holding in your head how many $1 bills you just put in a pile, or adding up as you go a lot of loose change, doesn’t lend itself to much conversation. And these events are only a couple of times a year, so I haven’t really made any friends. When they have the Telethon fundraiser, I’m one of those in the back room who calls the donor when their credit card won’t get processed! You know – someone calls in, pledges X to their credit card, it is taken back to the person who runs the card number. When it fails, someone calls the donor to see what happened. Usually one of the digits was written wrong, once in a while the donor is surprised and even embarrassed. There’s more to the process than this, gifts to be chosen and mailed, competition and matching gifts to tally. Suffice it to say, it’s a long day of steady work with numbers, and free lunch, and later - dinner out because I’m exhausted!
I like to help, and I really believe in what the Humane Society does. I am still grateful that they are there, and know that if I called today, years after we adopted the cats, they would still see if they could help solve a problem. But each time I go, like today, I feel that I wish there was something I could do more directly for the cats.
And from time to time, I wonder if maybe there might be another volunteer project that would be a better fit for me, I just don’t know what right now.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Sleepless
I can’t sleep. And since Jim is out of town, I can be up in the middle of the night and not bother him. I get days like this once in a while, not always for the same reasons. Usually there is something on my mind that I’m trying to think through. Occasionally some body part hurts. Today, I just feel a sense of wanting to GET STUFF DONE!
So, it’s 3:30 AM and I can hear my new bamboo wind chime bird out front clicking away. The house is quiet, and peaceful, and the cats are a bit confused to have me up. I have a load of wash in the dryer. I’ve just done some online research on home insulation, and I’ve tried to figure out which framers I’m going to call tomorrow for their ideas about how to frame some tiles we got from Uruguay. I made a short grocery list for tomorrow, and I’m thinking of paying some bills. I may pay for this busy night tomorrow, but I won’t mind. It’ll feel good to have accomplished some of this work. And I’ll get some sleep, so I won’t be a total wreck.
I’m not manic, or even feeling particularly energetic. I’m just tired of feeling like my TO DO list is never done. A few years ago, not long after Jim and I got married, and after both my kids were away in college, my mother asked me what I did all day. It kind of surprised me – she’s been retired for years, what does she do all day? She probably doesn’t remember asking me this, and I don’t remember the context of the question either. Perhaps it was just a curiosity question, and my memory has distorted what was said. But, all the same, I have thought about it every so often since, “what do I do all day?”
And yet, this week feels like it’s been busier than usual, and when Jim’s away, that’s not typical. I did take it easy on Monday, recovering from houseguests, I guess.
Anyway, yesterday (Wednesday) I saw the hand surgeon, and her assessment is that it’s not the right time for me to have surgery. I like this doctor a lot (Julie Ohayon) and if and when I do have surgery, she’ll be the one to do it. She explained that the time to have surgery is when you are feeling real discomfort or pain. That’s not where I am right now. I get twinges and twangs of pain from time to time, but most of the time I am pain free. I guess some of the changes I’ve made – new way to transfer, wearing the brace when I have a lot of pushing to do – and my attempts to be more aware of when I stress my wrist, have paid off.
She poked me right on my most painful spot, and today there was nothing there. Like the other surgeon I saw, she also says that after surgery there will be nothing I can do that will hurt me more during recovery, and that I should heal just fine without limiting my activity. She has people wear a small brace more for their comfort than because it is needed. And once the surgery is done, the tendonitis cannot come back. The band that gets cut expands when it heals. It sounds like there are no negative side effects or risks. I didn’t exactly ask what all the things that could happen if it all goes wrong, maybe next time.
I’m a good candidate for the surgery apparently. No osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. The cortisone worked well, which means that it’s only tendonitis in one spot. And the cortisone doesn’t seem to have harmed me any either, not much loss of fatty tissue or strength.
For now, I’ll continue using the topical anti-inflammatory when I feel pain. But if full DeQuervain’s tendonitis comes back, no pussy-footing around then. I’m just going to do the surgery and be done with it.
The other disability thing that happened today was more about my losing (hopefully just misplacing!) something than about my disability. One of my arm pads cracked, making my chair arm rather uncomfortable. It cracked the full length of the arm, on the bottom, so that leaning on the armrest caused my arm to slide off and down. Luckily I had a spare, so I didn’t have to wait till I got to a repair shop to pick one up. But I couldn’t find my collection of “Wheelchair Emergency” Allen wrenches. The last time I had it was on our vacation, for it goes with me when I travel. I must have spent an hour searching for it everywhere, and I hate feeling disorganized. Perhaps it’ll turn up somewhere. I managed to swap out the broken arm for the new one, using another set of wrenches we had in our tool drawer, so my chair is fine. But where did my special set go?
I got a few curious emails today. The first was from a woman who had arranged for a group of people with wheelchairs to have some specially set aside seating at an event. I gather people using wheelchairs have attended this event before and found seating awkward. This special seating happens to be near a rear exit door, which is close to the back parking lot. Her email strung together the words “designated seating”, “back of the room” and “exit”. Someone else in the email group reacted rather badly, and is ready to have his ADA lawyer attend the event to see if there’s an equal rights violation. I admit my first reaction to her wording, was to be offended. But I do believe the event coordinator is trying to satisfy a need, not segregate, so she means well. I doubt though that her solution is legal. And it makes me feel sorry I’ll miss this meeting and the fireworks. It’s been a while since I saw disability rights advocates at work. There were a couple more emails with comments beyond that, and not everyone sees the subject the same way. I suggested to her (privately) that she use Bcc in future for her group emails.
It’s now about 4:30, and my laundry is done. The bills will wait another day, or two. I think I should go to bed for a few hours, so I have some sleep before I need to be up at 9. Goodnight all.
So, it’s 3:30 AM and I can hear my new bamboo wind chime bird out front clicking away. The house is quiet, and peaceful, and the cats are a bit confused to have me up. I have a load of wash in the dryer. I’ve just done some online research on home insulation, and I’ve tried to figure out which framers I’m going to call tomorrow for their ideas about how to frame some tiles we got from Uruguay. I made a short grocery list for tomorrow, and I’m thinking of paying some bills. I may pay for this busy night tomorrow, but I won’t mind. It’ll feel good to have accomplished some of this work. And I’ll get some sleep, so I won’t be a total wreck.
I’m not manic, or even feeling particularly energetic. I’m just tired of feeling like my TO DO list is never done. A few years ago, not long after Jim and I got married, and after both my kids were away in college, my mother asked me what I did all day. It kind of surprised me – she’s been retired for years, what does she do all day? She probably doesn’t remember asking me this, and I don’t remember the context of the question either. Perhaps it was just a curiosity question, and my memory has distorted what was said. But, all the same, I have thought about it every so often since, “what do I do all day?”
And yet, this week feels like it’s been busier than usual, and when Jim’s away, that’s not typical. I did take it easy on Monday, recovering from houseguests, I guess.
Anyway, yesterday (Wednesday) I saw the hand surgeon, and her assessment is that it’s not the right time for me to have surgery. I like this doctor a lot (Julie Ohayon) and if and when I do have surgery, she’ll be the one to do it. She explained that the time to have surgery is when you are feeling real discomfort or pain. That’s not where I am right now. I get twinges and twangs of pain from time to time, but most of the time I am pain free. I guess some of the changes I’ve made – new way to transfer, wearing the brace when I have a lot of pushing to do – and my attempts to be more aware of when I stress my wrist, have paid off.
She poked me right on my most painful spot, and today there was nothing there. Like the other surgeon I saw, she also says that after surgery there will be nothing I can do that will hurt me more during recovery, and that I should heal just fine without limiting my activity. She has people wear a small brace more for their comfort than because it is needed. And once the surgery is done, the tendonitis cannot come back. The band that gets cut expands when it heals. It sounds like there are no negative side effects or risks. I didn’t exactly ask what all the things that could happen if it all goes wrong, maybe next time.
I’m a good candidate for the surgery apparently. No osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. The cortisone worked well, which means that it’s only tendonitis in one spot. And the cortisone doesn’t seem to have harmed me any either, not much loss of fatty tissue or strength.
For now, I’ll continue using the topical anti-inflammatory when I feel pain. But if full DeQuervain’s tendonitis comes back, no pussy-footing around then. I’m just going to do the surgery and be done with it.
The other disability thing that happened today was more about my losing (hopefully just misplacing!) something than about my disability. One of my arm pads cracked, making my chair arm rather uncomfortable. It cracked the full length of the arm, on the bottom, so that leaning on the armrest caused my arm to slide off and down. Luckily I had a spare, so I didn’t have to wait till I got to a repair shop to pick one up. But I couldn’t find my collection of “Wheelchair Emergency” Allen wrenches. The last time I had it was on our vacation, for it goes with me when I travel. I must have spent an hour searching for it everywhere, and I hate feeling disorganized. Perhaps it’ll turn up somewhere. I managed to swap out the broken arm for the new one, using another set of wrenches we had in our tool drawer, so my chair is fine. But where did my special set go?
I got a few curious emails today. The first was from a woman who had arranged for a group of people with wheelchairs to have some specially set aside seating at an event. I gather people using wheelchairs have attended this event before and found seating awkward. This special seating happens to be near a rear exit door, which is close to the back parking lot. Her email strung together the words “designated seating”, “back of the room” and “exit”. Someone else in the email group reacted rather badly, and is ready to have his ADA lawyer attend the event to see if there’s an equal rights violation. I admit my first reaction to her wording, was to be offended. But I do believe the event coordinator is trying to satisfy a need, not segregate, so she means well. I doubt though that her solution is legal. And it makes me feel sorry I’ll miss this meeting and the fireworks. It’s been a while since I saw disability rights advocates at work. There were a couple more emails with comments beyond that, and not everyone sees the subject the same way. I suggested to her (privately) that she use Bcc in future for her group emails.
It’s now about 4:30, and my laundry is done. The bills will wait another day, or two. I think I should go to bed for a few hours, so I have some sleep before I need to be up at 9. Goodnight all.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
I was called Grandma today
We were at Seaport Village, (Johanna, Lizzie and me) and shopping in a soap shop. Lizzie had already had a long, though good, day and was ready to shop in the Safari shop – for her afternoon reward. But first we were browsing in the shops Johanna and I wanted to go into, (because you know as soon as you get that present a certain someone will be ready to leave!) and at the moment it was a soap shop. Consequently, Lizzie was bored, and playing with the bath toys, perhaps a bit too roughly. And consequently, Johanna was snapping at her just a little to get her to behave. I don’t remember what I said, or exactly what the shopkeeper said – but I do remember that she prefixed her statement with “Grandma, …..” and she was clearly talking to me!!
I do believe this was the first time anyone ever called me Grandma, and as much as I would love to be a grandma one day, this was not the right day to hear it! Me? Be my sister’s mother? Sure I could be Lizzie’s Grandma, I’m old enough for that, but Johanna’s mother? Humph.
It helped that the woman in the shop was old enough to be a grandma herself, so it wasn’t some young kid’s assessment of old age – or does that make it worse, not better? And she knew Jo was from out of town, and I was local, so the chances were high we were family. And I look older, am older! She made a quick judgment, correctly, that Johanna was Lizzie’s mom. Where she messed up was in my relationship to that pair. And I had a hat on, she couldn’t see me well – that makes a difference, right? Did the wheelchair make a difference too?
Johanna and I have been laughing about this all evening. I didn’t realize she heard the woman’s comment till we got home later, when she called me “Grandma” with a smirk. I was kind of hoping she hadn’t heard the comment! Eh, I’ll get her back one day.
We took the amphibious SEAL tour from Seaport Village. I had no idea it was wheelchair accessible till the Expo, where I saw an ad for it in the Access San Diego magazine. I suppose it makes sense though, the ADA would require it I guess. It was a decent ride – half an hour to drive to and from Seaport Village and the boat dock past the airport, and an hour on the water. The blue whale that has visited our bay for 2 days didn’t show though. Oh well. We saw sea lions and got a good sense of how much military land there is around the bay. It was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. So, I would recommend it. If you have a wheelchair though, call the day before to set it up, to be sure one of the accessible vehicles is there at the time you want to ride.
I do believe this was the first time anyone ever called me Grandma, and as much as I would love to be a grandma one day, this was not the right day to hear it! Me? Be my sister’s mother? Sure I could be Lizzie’s Grandma, I’m old enough for that, but Johanna’s mother? Humph.
It helped that the woman in the shop was old enough to be a grandma herself, so it wasn’t some young kid’s assessment of old age – or does that make it worse, not better? And she knew Jo was from out of town, and I was local, so the chances were high we were family. And I look older, am older! She made a quick judgment, correctly, that Johanna was Lizzie’s mom. Where she messed up was in my relationship to that pair. And I had a hat on, she couldn’t see me well – that makes a difference, right? Did the wheelchair make a difference too?
Johanna and I have been laughing about this all evening. I didn’t realize she heard the woman’s comment till we got home later, when she called me “Grandma” with a smirk. I was kind of hoping she hadn’t heard the comment! Eh, I’ll get her back one day.
We took the amphibious SEAL tour from Seaport Village. I had no idea it was wheelchair accessible till the Expo, where I saw an ad for it in the Access San Diego magazine. I suppose it makes sense though, the ADA would require it I guess. It was a decent ride – half an hour to drive to and from Seaport Village and the boat dock past the airport, and an hour on the water. The blue whale that has visited our bay for 2 days didn’t show though. Oh well. We saw sea lions and got a good sense of how much military land there is around the bay. It was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. So, I would recommend it. If you have a wheelchair though, call the day before to set it up, to be sure one of the accessible vehicles is there at the time you want to ride.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Catch up
I am truly happy right now, with my sister in town. I'm busy, and now a bit tired, but I don't mind. Her daughter is a handful - just a bundle of non-stop energy and chatter (till she finally crashes around 9 PM) - but she's a good kid. I'm enjoying being able to cook for my sis. And I've done more laughing in the past 3 days than in months before. I don't want to do chores or exercises, or really even write - I want to be with my sister! And it was even better with Stephen here over the weekend, since I feel I never see him enough.
I'm not feeling the same frustration that I felt when Jim's mother was here. Then I felt like I didn't have enough time to write, and that my writing was a low priority that I had to change. At the moment I almost could say I don't care if I write at all this week! I do know she won't be here much longer, and the keyboard will be here after she is gone. But I knew that with Phyllis here too.
So, I have to concede that there is a fundamental difference between the 2 visits, for me. I imagine that Jim would have a slightly different spin on this. He spent more free time with his mom, than he's doing with Johanna - but I suspect he'd say that Jo and Lizzie's visit is harder work for him. His emotional attachment, naturally, is stronger to his mother. Mine is to my sister. Makes sense.
But where does that place my writing? What about my attempt to write daily? I did skip one day. Is it better to write something, no matter how simple, or better to skip more days and write something more thought through? I don't know.
Some things that have occurred to me recently that would be good blog post topics:
2 elevators and a back entrance to get into George's terrace for a lunch today. I love that restaurant, but wish they would upgrade the building.
seating in places with fixed seats is often a problem, and I think the San Diego Civic Theater and SD Opera are breaking the ADA with their seat offerings. We've put up with lousy seats for a few years now, but they just redid their price categories, and this has made it even more obviously unequal. For the first time since the law was passed in 1990 I am seriously considering filing a complaint with the Dept of Justice - not a law suit, or anything for financial gain, just something to force them to comply. On the other hand, Petco park seating is great, and we've got tickets for Memorial Day. I'm not much of a baseball fan, but enjoy going once in a while, especially if there are fireworks.
pet peeves - handicapped parking, don't get me started!
I think that right now is the absolutely best time of year here in San Diego. Many days are perfect - 68 - 70 degrees, cool in the morning, sunny with a slight breeze in the afternoon. Days are a little longer, and if it rains it's only at night! Flowers are blooming - roses, orchids, bougainvillea, pittosporum, lantana, citrus trees, and all the weeds on the hillsides. I even have a Christmas cactus blooming! With weather like this, why go somewhere for a vacation? We're in the most perfect place on earth! And yet, we signed up this week for an October 2011 cruise to Greece and Turkey, round trip out of Rome. Luckily it's far enough away, I don't really have to do anything for a while yet. This does seem to be the way we are - just finished one vacation, and then we start planning another. And of course, it'll be another complicated one, another adventure.
Lastly, the Hillcrest farmer's market was much larger and varied than I expected. Why did it take me so long to go there? I'll be going back sometime just with Jim, so I can linger. For now, my fridge is full of all kinds of wonderful things to eat.
I'm not feeling the same frustration that I felt when Jim's mother was here. Then I felt like I didn't have enough time to write, and that my writing was a low priority that I had to change. At the moment I almost could say I don't care if I write at all this week! I do know she won't be here much longer, and the keyboard will be here after she is gone. But I knew that with Phyllis here too.
So, I have to concede that there is a fundamental difference between the 2 visits, for me. I imagine that Jim would have a slightly different spin on this. He spent more free time with his mom, than he's doing with Johanna - but I suspect he'd say that Jo and Lizzie's visit is harder work for him. His emotional attachment, naturally, is stronger to his mother. Mine is to my sister. Makes sense.
But where does that place my writing? What about my attempt to write daily? I did skip one day. Is it better to write something, no matter how simple, or better to skip more days and write something more thought through? I don't know.
Some things that have occurred to me recently that would be good blog post topics:
2 elevators and a back entrance to get into George's terrace for a lunch today. I love that restaurant, but wish they would upgrade the building.
seating in places with fixed seats is often a problem, and I think the San Diego Civic Theater and SD Opera are breaking the ADA with their seat offerings. We've put up with lousy seats for a few years now, but they just redid their price categories, and this has made it even more obviously unequal. For the first time since the law was passed in 1990 I am seriously considering filing a complaint with the Dept of Justice - not a law suit, or anything for financial gain, just something to force them to comply. On the other hand, Petco park seating is great, and we've got tickets for Memorial Day. I'm not much of a baseball fan, but enjoy going once in a while, especially if there are fireworks.
pet peeves - handicapped parking, don't get me started!
I think that right now is the absolutely best time of year here in San Diego. Many days are perfect - 68 - 70 degrees, cool in the morning, sunny with a slight breeze in the afternoon. Days are a little longer, and if it rains it's only at night! Flowers are blooming - roses, orchids, bougainvillea, pittosporum, lantana, citrus trees, and all the weeds on the hillsides. I even have a Christmas cactus blooming! With weather like this, why go somewhere for a vacation? We're in the most perfect place on earth! And yet, we signed up this week for an October 2011 cruise to Greece and Turkey, round trip out of Rome. Luckily it's far enough away, I don't really have to do anything for a while yet. This does seem to be the way we are - just finished one vacation, and then we start planning another. And of course, it'll be another complicated one, another adventure.
Lastly, the Hillcrest farmer's market was much larger and varied than I expected. Why did it take me so long to go there? I'll be going back sometime just with Jim, so I can linger. For now, my fridge is full of all kinds of wonderful things to eat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)