Wheels of Steel

At this point no fewer than four people have suggested I get a Segway Scooter (sorry, their website informs me it's called a "Segway Personal Transporter"!) which cracks me up because I didn't know four people even remembered those things existed, Mike Gordon aside. Doesn't she just look so NATURAL standing there?! haha I do appreciate the creativity of my fantastic friends - Chris found a cane with a clock in the handle, though I believe John Powers may have trumped him with the suggestion that I get a cane with a sword in it. Poorly-executed Sean Connery impressions (or at least impressions of Darryll Hammond as Sean Connery) are sure to ensue!

I'm trying to plan a trip down to DC to visit Chris (finally!) next month and it's another reminder of how life-altering this condition is. I shan't be strolling the Mall and the Smithsonian this time around! Chris asked me if I might get a wheelchair for the trip, which is... in a word, depressing. I said "Uh... I'm really not at that point just yet." One of the research survey questions at Children's asked "How often are you aware that you have a medical condition?" on a scale of Never to Always. The answer is always Always. The scant moments where I'm NOT thinking about it (usually when I'm running around in some sort of tizzy and/or fog) are the moments when I turn funny or step wrong and go "Owie!" I can't stomach the thought of considering myself "disabled", especially given some of the other folks I see at the pool, but I am limited in what I can do and I need to work on being less bummed about that. I HATE having to say "I can't walk that far" or "I can't sit there", but... I can't. Hey, but I can still throw a mean frisbee!

In other news, thanks to cnn.com I have Hungry Eyes stuck in my head, which I suppose is an improvement over what I kept finding myself singing in my head last night: "Stan-din TALL on the wings of my dreams..." which is, that's right, the theme song to Perfect Strangers. :)