So I see this kid I.V.--five-year-old spastic quadriplegic, cute as all get out, pretty normal intelligence from what I can figure, but can't talk. And we've been working with a pretty high tech communication device, one that has synthesized voice output and all kinds of fancy scanning options so he can access it with a switch placed under his chin. It's a lot of technology for a kid his age, but if we start him young he could very well use the device to attend regular classes, as opposed to getting farmed out to a Life Skills class unecessarily. We've been working for close to three months now, and frankly I was starting to get a little nervous, because he wasn't catching on nearly as fast as I'd expected. Then, sometime in the last two weeks or so, it's like a switch flipped in his brain. He's watching the pictures as they scan and making accurate choices! He's navigating between screens without help! He's exploring the device, and, for the first time in his life, being assertive. He gets this desperate look on his face when we have to move him away from the device for some reason, like, "Give me back my voice." Today I programmed in a couple of phrases about activities that he likes to do at home, and over and over he kept hitting, "I like to watch wrestling on television," and laughing. Then, completely independently, he navigated his way to the Feelings page and hit, "I feel happy."
It's not enough, it's not nearly enough, but it's a start.
"Vaguely queasy" has got to be the worst feeling in the world. I've been feeling...off...all day, for reasons I cannot pinpoint. If I didn't know better, I would think I was hung over--it's that same jumpy-stomach, "Am I hungry or am I about to yak?" sensation. Except I had maybe a beer and a half last night, and come on. I'm not that old. But I felt kind of icky this morning, although I did have a decent short trail run, and then at lunchtime there was almost an Incident at the barbeque joint we went to. I've always liked their food in the past, but today I ordered a chopped beef sandwich, and urrrrgh. I took one bite and had immediate texture revulsion--squishy, gristly beef that was emphatically not trimmed of the fat. Fought the reaction down--Think of it as survival school. If you were Inuit, blubber would be a delicacy--took another bite, and almost ralphed on the table. Opened up the bun to see soft, quivering lumps of fat inside. Shoved the sandwich to the opposite end of the table and gulped iced tea until I could control my gag reflex. Even thinking about it now makes me gag. Why I'm revisiting the experience in print, then...
Much ado since I posted last. I attended two weddings, one of which was highly personal and relaxed (ER and RP), and one of which which was not (AH and EC). In the course of wedding attendance we went to both Dallas and Florida, where we saw multiple family members. At the Florida wedding I drank a staggering amount and was monstrously hung over the next day, a day which was spent juggling outings with my recently-separated parents. In spite of that, the relative visiting went mostly well. The Hubster went to visit his sister K, the one who's in prison, for the first time in a couple years. I'd wanted to go, but you have to be on some kind of approved list and it's pretty heavy duty, so we weren't able to get the papers together in time. Or more like, the Hubster would not get off his ass in time to find out what documentation might be required, so I couldn't get it together. I'd be more pissed except, dude. Jailbird sister. He has issues. I'm trying to be supportive.
I also hung out at a camp for children with disabilities for a week. Hung out, yes. "Assisted" would be much too strong a word for what my work buddy KH and I were doing, which was primarily gazing benevolently at the amazing high school-aged counselors while waiting for our next free meal. Due to some severe weather the previous week, the session we attended was absolutely crawling with autistic kids rescheduled from the previous session, which allowed us to see a fascinating range of expression for the disorder. I chatted up my first kid with Asperger's syndrome (well, officially diagnosed Asperger's. He sure as hell wasn't the first I've ever seen), as well as met my first real live autistic kid who communicated in commercial jingles.
Other stuff happened. I've been kind of blah lately. Blah.
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I've been organizing the guest bedroom/study area, and am trying to rid myself of accumulated piles of paper with pithy quotes on them. In the interest of neatness:
*"She reminds herself for the millionth time that Mulder is a fictional character. It is not healthy to be lusting after fictional characters." From some story by Susanne Barringer. This was going to go on my XF page, back when I had a web page and free time.
*"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies." Oscar Wilde, found on a preprinted paper placemat at Fado's. It made me think of Lex.
*This Land is Your Land, the Canadian chorus that haunted my every waking hour for months until I tracked down the lyrics:
This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From Bonavista
To Vancouver Island,
From the Artic Circle
To the Great Lake waters,
This land was made for you and me.
I would like to state up front that I do not find Alan Rickman to be a sexy bitch. I do not find him to be much of anything, other than kind of washed out in black. I have been tossed by the fandom tide onto many strange and wonderous shores, but not this one.
Been thinking about connections recently--Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, The Internet, and You. I used to swap X-Files tapes with a guy in the band Harvey Danger, who appear on the soundtrack to Disturbing Behavior, which is directed by David Nutter, who also directed the XF episode "Irresistible," which starred Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, as well as Nick Chinlund, who played the creepiest fucking villian ever, Mr. Donnie Pfaster. David Nutter also directed "Metamorphasis" and the pilot episode of Smallville.
Laura JV is thinking about going to grad school in my field. I know of Laura JV because I once gave constructive crit on a The Sentinel/due South crossover she wrote. Subsequently, I asked her to beta my own abandonned dS story, "Auditory Closure." Auditory closure is a term referring to the brain's ability to fill in information, i.e. sounds or syllables, missing from the auditory signal based on prior experience. Laura JV mentions that because of difficulty with auditory comprehension she has to consciously use this process under certain circumstances, which is one of the reasons she found herself interested in speech pathology.
I was listening to the Clash on the way home today. I bought a Clash CD because in Speranza's story "Merry Go Round" Fraser refers to the band's "intriguing West Indian under-rhythms." Next to the Clash is my Billy Idol CD, which I bought because somewhere, sometime, somebody got the idea that Ray Kowalski looked like him, and I had to agree. And I like RayK, so I must like Billy Idol, right?
I planned my honeymoon around a Stan Rogers song, which I found through a CD I purchased because of due South, which I started watching because Resonant wrote a story about square dancing. I knew Resonant through The Sentinel, which I watched because I loved Miriam's writing. Which I had found through a brief dalliance with Paris/Kim. Which I read because I'd already memorized torch's XF stories, and I chose her P/K over her Vampire Chronicles when I needed to branch out. I still use torch's page as my jumping off point to the web.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than when I think of "A Sound of Thunder," I always believe.
