vasilatos

So what happened.

After Penny Lane died, Bugle the senior rescue chihuahua/beagle mix came to live here. She's a hoot and a half. Some other stuff happened.

A friend likes scrabble. I told him, you don't want to play scrabble with me, I used to play competition scrabble, I'm seriously not a person you want to play scrabble with. Bridge, maybe, I can play for fun and don't work competition level. I'm terrible at chess, that might be a good thing to try me at... Weirdly, I don't know how to play poker or backgammon

i've had this theory for many years that the reason i get sick so much is that getting better is like being high

OK, so I was sitting around watching TV when I glanced across the room and noticed a strange object on the floor over by the woodworking section... not believing my eyes at first, eventually, I retrieved it and remain baffled as to its arrival here.

Not the only odd thing that happened last night, but jeez...

I haven't changed my meds, my relationships are pretty stable, I haven't moved...

For reasons I can't explain (and don't care to), I'm happier than I've been since I can remember. Just plain super OK.

That is all.

They gave me 3 lbs of titanium, and put my leg back to the same length as the other one, and I'm almost back to being able to walk stairs normally. So fuckem I'm back to bodybuilding after some decades, and I feel unstoppable. Love you guys.

Oh, and I got my chest reupholstered.

So sorry, kids... but my news is that short story, on the x-ray, it looks like a bomb went off on my right hip, which explains why my leg keeps getting shorter. We're now 3" up and it took them a year to figure this out. Whatever. They're going to do a hip replacement in early June, and I'll have some hospital time, then rehab facility for some weeks. And one of my boyfriends broke up with me in a cruel way, and that didn't sit well. But off I go to surgery.

Seeing as how you all are in with the in crowd, this is it, for realzz this time.

In 24 hours, a decision will be taken by Those In Charge, as to where the next motss.con , maybe *two* motss.cons , due to an unprecedented voting TIE between Perry NY in August and New Orleans LA not sure.

Currently, with a bunch of discussion, mostly over on facebook, there's a lot of agreement about a proposal by the New Orleans idea being postponed to 2016, stepping aside for Perry in 2015. That decides TWO .cons at once, leaving the hosts to manage the logistics on their own.

If you have something to say, the deadline is Sat midnight PST 2/21/15, which is in 24 hours. Speak now, put in your two cents, you will be heard by the People In Charge and taken into account.

In short, given the tie, so far, both are declared winners, one has deferred to the other, if you care for one or the other you might speak your reasons, we all care.

Send me email at vasilatos@gmail.com, a message at facebook (Max Meredith Vasilatos), or text me at 415-370-8712 if you need to speak in private. This is not however a vote.

Thank you for your time,
Max

... but I can't sustain it.

Some years ago, before this facebook thing, I was in an online support group for disABLEd folks where we'd talk about our experiences in the temporarily ABLEbodied world, and some of it was heartbreaking but worth hearing: the pain, the meds, the medical establishment, even the support groups themselves. Now I can only find highly organized fanpages to LIKE instead of have a real conversation.

Anyway. There's a couple of things. First is kind of ephemeral. I used to have dreams I could fly, rarely if ever now. They were great, and I realize that some people have them and some don't, and we who do are lucky. But that switched over to dreams in which I could run. Full out, or just across the street, or to chase a dog, or just because. Run. Wow, I see people run, in bursts, or jogging, or whatever, and I remember when I was in first grade and I saw the other kids sliding on the ice and it looked so easy and so fun. I broke my nose. Never did have good balance. And these days, I'm under orders not to do anything involving balance: skating, surfing, biking, skiing, you name it. And of course, I can't run without risking a major fall.

These days I have a new dream: to walk. I can walk, sort of, in pain, with a cane (calling Dr Seuss :-). I'm slow and it's risky and I've already broken what, 5 bones, falling. So I watch TV and instead of paying attention to the plot, I notice that people are walking up and down stairs, they're running over rooftops, they're walking down halls and into apartments with no thought in the world. They could probably go to yoga class like I used to. They pace, they trot, they ramble, they give no thought at all to being able to just walk around whenever they feel like it. I dream of walking.

I'm trying everything they got to help me, and there are brief moments when it seems like I might walk normally again, do yoga again, have cool sex again. Patience, I say. It will come.

There's a second thing. I live on a disability pension from an insurance company ; it was negotiated in 1990, and every now and then they want documentation of my disability, not unreasonable. There are forms for me to sign, there are forms for my doctor to sign, everyone fills everything out and sends it in and we're done.

This year, my doctor's office didn't send in the forms. They say the woman in charge of that has left, there's a new guy, they don't have the forms, they don't know. WHAT? I say. Did you, like, throw them away? My entire livelihood is just GONE? What happened to the forms? Gobbledygook back. "We put everything in electronically now" so where are they? Are they in the computer? Can't you find them? Seriously, did you just dump them in the trash?

I've asked the insurance company to please send ME the forms again so I can track them ("you should have made copies" like I have enough paperwork filling my little studio already) and I will cause them to be filled out and sent in, oh yes I will. The damn doctor's office has moved to a location that is unsuitable for people with disabilities, but hey, who cares about that part.

Sorry, a little venting over here. At this point, if I could think of something else to complain about (don't get me started), I'd throw it in, but this is about disability. And in fact, the Chinese herbs and the chiropractor and the acupuncturist altogether seem to be moving things in the right direction. I walked normally for a while today.

That is all.