sara skates

Blogging against disablism day:

Thanks to Emma for the heads up!

Count me in – whether it’ll be a link fest or new text from me I dunno know…

While I wait for oodles of photos to download off my nearly-ancient digital camera onto an also-ancient computer (purchased about a year before we moved here – which makes it over 5 years old – ancient in computer years) – do camera downloads happen faster on newer cameras, or just newer computers???

But anyway – meanwhile – I’ll be random, (with a nod to her).

*Skating.  Skating is in a really enjoyable low-key but not absent phase.  This month was a back-up month to plan for the Gold FS test if I didn’t pass it the week after Adult Nationals, but I did, so it’s purely play.  I have picked up working on figures again (they took a brief hiatus leading up to competing in Dallas), and working on the Novice MIF test.  I flirted with the idea of trying to test those in May, but gave it up pretty quickly – mostly b/c I wasn’t up for making myself insane.  Which I would have, b/c that’s what I do – gear up for a test that I’m really not quite ready for, and then put out a solid borderline effort.  Sometimes I pass, sometimes I don’t (uh, that’d be the borderline part).  But, I’m playing with those moves, and playing with double jumps (double sal is close; I’m doing pre-double loop exercises, and trying to convince my body that it really does want to play with double toe loops).  I had a funny dance lesson this morning, where we’re working on a whole new set of dances – Silver level dances (I passed the last pre-Silver a few weeks ago – the Foxtrot).  One is a waltz (the American Waltz), and while I’m still perfecting some parts of the technique that it requires, what’s clear in my attempts is how much *thought* it takes.  My coach commented after one attempt "You know Sara, we need to work on the expression.  this is a Waltz, not a March Waltz."  Think army march music, think waltz music – rather different eh?  And comical to juxtapose the two styles.

*related to skating, I have signed up for 4 months of Personal Training torture, provided by my long-time physical therapist.  I started with Jason back in the summer of 2004, with medically-based PT to try and prevent knee surgery. That didn’t work, so I had surgery, and continued with him for rehab after the surgery.  That was abruptly stopped after 6 weeks, having more to do with insurance and surgeon determinations of "medical necessity", so I transitioned to a new service at the same sports medicine clinic and staying with Jason – "Post-operative Rehab Conditioning". I’ve been doing that 1-2 times a week since June ‘05.  I had a *slew* of strength to regain in the left knee, and I knew it’d be 6-12 mo post surgery (March 29, 05, but who’s counting) before I’d be back to "pre-injury levels of competitive training").  The 6-TWELVE mo estimate was pretty on-target – 12 months post surgery, I can pretty much jump daily, if I don’t do a lot of it.  So – the knee-focussed PT came to a stop – with the new option at the same clinic:  what I’m calling Personal Training.  An hour a week, one-on-one with Jason the Wunder PT, not focussed only on the knee but on putting everything together.  It’s intense.  Not very sweaty-intense yet, but intense and a very good muscle workout.  I like it.  He claims he’ll have me doing chin-ups by the end of up.  All-rightey then, as Terry says, that’s a goal and there you have it.

*Knitting.  Well, on the positive end of things, there has been a solid effort at finishing UFOs!  Nothing to actually show for it yet, but hey, I’m closer than before.  I have about 1/2 a sleeve left on a top-down raglan (yay!  no seaming! but maaaannn is the last sleeve a pain what with manoevering the bulk of the sweater around and around and around as the sleeve spirals towards the cuff).  I have put MUCH effort into sock number two of a pair.  Apparently I switched needle sizes on Sock 1 at the heel.  Not that I can SEE a gauge difference, but the cuff of #2 knit on the needles used in at least the latter parts of Sock 1 results in a cuff about half the size of Sock 1’s cuff.  So I go up a needle size, and the cuff is now 3/4 the size of Sock 1’s.  So I go up another size, and the cuff looks like a match until I get about an inch below the cuff, when suddenly Sock 2 is an inch larger around than Sock 1.  Time Out Bad Sock.

* the Kitties are amazingly fun.  All three are as friendly as can be.   It’s really quite strange to have three lap kitties, rather than three, well, aloof cat-like kitties.  See how cute they are:

That’s Akasha on top, Sweet Pea (or Sweet Stuff, or Sweetie Pie, I can never remember which) in the middle curled up tight, and Henry on the bottom.  Hannah is in a nest she made in the hallway because…the cats were making too much noise romping around under her bed.  She just cracks us up that Hannah.  Click the photo to make the kitties bigger.  I haven’t a clue what that white ropey thing is careening down the right side of the picture. 

*Spinning.  I’ve been doing a bit.  I am NOT doing a tour of all reachable fiber festivals this year.  Seeing as I have used a tiny fraction of what was acquired last year, it makes no sense.  I will go to Hemlock this fall (hell, it’s local), and Cate is working on convincing me to go to Cummington at the end of May.  She’s quite persuasive.  We’ll see.

*Toby’s in another round of intensive PT.  He’s doing quite well – just
look at how fabulous he looks all color-coordinated and ready for the
first day of school after spring break, cruising in his walker.

And for good measure,  the cuteness abounds, Hannah turned him into a flower fairy

Can you stand it?  With Hannah too: 

*that’s it for now as bed is calling with a loud an insistent voice. 

Gotta love the term "gobsmacked" – used by my UK friends as a term of surprise and awe (in a good way).

On the topic of pets with disabilities, click here for a decent overview (we have had a blind cat and a deaf cat, now we have a three-legged cat, who knew but DUH that there are CP etc. kitties too).  And for other examples of under-four-legged kitties, there’s here and here and here and here.  And a host of other links that google will turn up for you in a flash.

Akasha and the kittens are settling in well.  The kittens have been named Henry and Sweetie Pie.  (Cate, it still works – of course Ellie is a sweetie pie).  It’s not a surprise at all that the range of disabilities surface in animal friends – what is a surprise is how many survive the odds of not being euthanized. I’m all for the ability to put  pets down when the time is right…but clearly deciding when that time is varies based on who is making the decision.  Which says volumes for my take on disability stuff in general – while the advocacy part of getting Toby what he needs is at times grueling and draining, that says little about how utterly perfect of a kid he is.  Just as perfect as Hannah.  And Henry and Sweetie Pie and Akasha kitty

We have kitties!

Pictures to follow at a later point (the camera is buried in the house somewhere – eesh).

But – we have three new additions to our household:

Akasha:  the sweetest friendliest tri-color three-legged cat in the world.  We went to the local humane society last week to see if they had any kittens.  They only had 5 or 6 older cats at the moment (although the spring influx was around the corner – we were a bit early apparently!).  All of them had notes saying that they were nervous around dogs or children or both.  We were talking to one of the staff members (Rhonda extraordinaire) specifically whether they had a kitty who would do well in a busy household – with both children and a puppy.  She hemmed and hawed for a minute, turned to another staff member and said as an aside "Gee, they might be perfect for Akasha".

Rhonda had fostered Akasha for the last 3 months – and weathered Akasha’s four  surgeries.  Rhonda’s dog Rhys (hey!, she even spells it correctly!) took her under her wing and they were buddies, and Akasha additionally became bosom buddies with the rest of Rhonda’s menagerie (6 total pets – some fostered, some not).  She was brought into Lollypop Farm shortly before last Christmas, along with a 5 mo old kitten (probably her son) who was adopted fairly quickly.  Akasha had a "frozen" flexed wrist – They did a surgery to try and correct it, a surgery to amputate it when the former one failed, and then when they first took the "cone" off of her head she bothered the sutures so much that they popped and they had to redo those (surgery #4).  The first surgery was to spay her. 

I tried confining Akasha to Toby’s room to give her some private space to acclimate to the house.  Within 30 minutes, she made it clear she wanted to roam – she has met Clyde and Barney and toured most of the house already.  She has a quiet little chirpy voice and a big purr.

We also wanted a kitten.  This morning, they had a 3 mo old sibling pair – who had been fostered for two months by another staff member.  They were found when they were one month old – so first they needed fostering until they were old enough to adopt, and then they were spayed/neutered so they were just  released to be adopted this morning.  There’s a little black-furred boy (as yet un-named, I’m lobbying for Brett and Allie after the two who fostered them) who is fearless, and a little gray tiger striped girl (also friendly, but not quite as in your face about it).  Since I’m a sucker and it was hard to choose and WHY would anyone split them up anyway, we came home with both.  They’re currently sleeping in a pile on Hannah’s bed.

Pictures soon – they’re quite adorable!

I believe I have figured out the easy tools for limiting comment spam – and I’m back at blogging.   (Waving frantically at everyone!!!).  I’ll post a link over at the old site.

We’re in the throes of a series of home improvement efforts.  A housepainter has been hired and he’s making slow (but noticable) progress.  We ordered a new fridge.  Having the kitchen cabinets replaced is on the list – nothing fancy (Home Depot specials I’m sure) but a step up from the vintage 1964 cabinets that spill sawdust into our pots everytime we open the drawers above the shelf space (mmm, fiber).  Many debts have been paid off, and we’re entering the realm of folks with normal amounts of debt-to-income ratios – all because we have at last been able to sell our property in CT as the legally-misbehaved grandmother with life-use has been moved to a nursing home.  Lesson we had heard about but now we KNOW and have survived it – don’t mix family and business deals  All is well that ends well.

Tomorrow is Easter and this month’s onslaught of a kiddo sugar rush.  We play most holidays pretty low-key – no big blow up bunnies and eggs in our yarn thank you very much.  Reese’s peanut butter eggs have been getting prominent play for weeks now.  Hannah has lately been asking to go church – any church – apparently she’s one of the few in her class and social group without a formal religious affiliation.  Toby asked to celebrate Passover so heck.  Neither request is enough of a reason for us to jump on the regular churchgoing schedule bandwagon, but it has made us ponder on occasional outing to the UUs or something.  Heck, in googling the UU site, I found a whole list of Rochester area GLBT-friendly congregations of a variety of religions. 

Toby’s at my side now and he’s READING so now he’s wondering "hey, what are you typing about me?" Just the best, buddy.

I’m starting over with blogging over here at TypePad.  I briefly thought of importing the content from my former blog digs, but apparently doing so without importing all 127,587 comments (.9999981% of which are garbiage) is difficult. 

Until I figure out how to limit comments to those who aren’t advertizing poker or various organ resizing prodedures, comments are off.  I’ll sort my way through Typepad and figure it out though.

She’s baaacccckkkkkkkk!