taking stock
As people who exist in a world of forms and documents and receipts tucked away here and there, we are a family surrounded by paper. It’s tiresome, but necessary – did I ever tell you the one about how my taxes were audited because of our special medical and caregiving expenses? Our column of numbers caught someone’s attention over at the CRA, and it was a good thing that Jennifer and I are as disciplined as we should be about keeping every shred of evidence that, yes, we did spend over $150 on diapers last month, for instance.
Listen: The White Stripes, “Astro”
One thing we are not disciplined at, however, is making sure that those forms and documents and receipts are filed in the right place, for posterity’s sake. Stacks of the latest evidence of money spent were growing in the kitchen, in the basement, and in the living room, and I was kind of tired of it. So last weekend we decided to start tidying up, labeled some file folders correctly, sorted the pulp from the chaff, chucked a bunch of crap in the fireplace. Freedom!
In the process of putting anything old away, however, there is always some opportunity to unearth even older and more interesting things, and then a diversion into evaluation of whether an item deemed ‘must keep until dead’ a year ago, three years ago, or ten years ago is still deserving of that designation.
Case in point: film. Remember film? The stuff you used to have to put in cameras in order to take pictures? We were so primitive once!
If you’re anything like us, you probably have several dozen sheets of negatives sitting around. Good stuff – wedding photos, for instance. Once upon a time, that’d be essential, hands down, and no questions asked – keep forever! But times have changed. The number of places one could take negatives to get reprinted into something physical is a small fraction of what it was in 2002, and who ever gets reprints of wedding photos eight years after the fact, anyway? Will film negatives be a recognizable artifact in another eight years, or will I need to spend a day finding the one print place left in Ottawa, only to pay a thousand bucks for the dude behind the counter to crank up some dusty old reproduction relic of his own?
The consensus around these parts was as follows: chuck ‘em. Yet the pile still sits on my desk, waiting to make that long trip from the basement, to the bin, to the curb, to the truck, and to the landfill. Gone forever. Thanks for everything! Easier said than done, I guess.
How about you? Still socking your negatives away somewhere? VHS tapes? Cassettes? Floppy disks? Does obsolescence in the outside world turn your media into junk, or do you hold on in the name of ‘just in case’?
and then a sheer drop
Whose Child is This?, a story from the Citizen about a local couple who had to give up legal custody of their severely disabled baby last year in order to receive the sort of help with day-to-day life they needed to keep their family together.
“When Pénélope was three months old, they began to look for a home that specialized in caring for severely disabled children.
‘I felt like a complete failure, to tell you the truth,’ says Ms. Gavrel, who was exhausted and ineffective and failing. ‘I also worried I wanted to do this because I was not attached to her, because I couldn’t love her. It’s awfully hard to feel love when there is no rest, no help. I knew I had to find a way to love her, so I knew why I was really seeking help.’
They found a place on the outskirts of Ottawa that would provide 24-hour care, as well as expertise. The couple say they were advised by the home’s operator, and later the CAS, that to get Pénélope a bed they had to seek a ‘temporary custody’ order that would eventually lead to relinquishing parental rights.
It was a devastating blow.
‘She already had the worst birth imaginable. She was stillborn. And now to get proper care we have to give her away?’ asks Ms. Gavrel. ‘That’s like another death. This is just a horrific situation. There is a huge stigma to saying you can’t care for your child. I am a decent person and a good mother, but in the eyes of society I won’t be.’”
And then today, Man’s detention at Ottawa jail a ‘tragedy’:
“A 30-year-old man with Down syndrome and bipolar disorder has been housed in a segregated cell at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre for more than two weeks, a case some say highlights a gap in the criminal justice system.
Karl Gauthier is charged with assault after an alleged incident last month involving a worker at his Nation Township group home. He is expected to remain at the jail until at least Wednesday, when he has a bail hearing.
Until he is released, Mr. Gauthier faces ‘horrific’ conditions at OCDC, according to Dave Lundy, an official with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents correctional officers at the jail.
‘The reports I have are that he’s standing in his own … urine,’ Mr. Lundy said, adding Mr. Gauthier soils his sheets and needs his diapers changed. Correctional officers are ‘not given the training to help an individual like that,’ Mr. Lundy said.
‘If you’re going to house a developmentally disabled individual such as that in a jail, what’s next?’”
Can you believe it?
I came home today to find a note in my son’s communication book from school, mentioning that one of his classmates had passed away over the weekend. I didn’t know the little girl very well and could only take an educated guess as to what her particular ‘special needs’ were, but she was of elementary-school age, entirely too young for her fate.
Lives lived by the profoundly disabled are more severe than they are special, and sometimes it’s difficult to keep strong, even when you have no choice but to do so.
it’s not as if
Internets! Hi!
I’ve been spending too much time with your work side, old friend. Configuring WordPress for enterprise-type use is something I always said could be done, but I had never actually, you know, done it. (Salesmanship 101. Say yes to the job and then figure it out later.) So that’s been a challenge, but one that I’m finding my way around.
Hey, what’s up with people warming up to jogging pants again? Our friend Cooney left town the other day to try her hand at a job that requires their use, and I’ve noticed people wearing them in public just recently. Like, respectable people, who probably shower most mornings. It’s strange. And not in a good way.
I’ve decided to ditch Bloglines and use Google Reader instead, but I had a bunch of things bookmarked for future use that I need to clear out of the old thing first. Like these:
- this silhouette tutorial for Photoshop seemed like something I might find a use for at some point. I’m not sure.
- likewise, Renkoo could be useful one day. It’s a sort of online event planner, for the social life I hear people have out there.
- Long Time Lost is a neat tool that will try to dig up old friends and other people whose names you might remember from somewhere. You make a list of those folks and the site will look around for you, trying to find traces of those people online. And if those people happen to find the site and make an account themselves, they’ll automatically be informed that you were looking for them. Which is fine, but you know, maybe I’m too cool to actually acknowledge that I might be looking for someone, right? So there’s that.
- the search for diapers that don’t last longer than me continues. gDiapers came across the wire the other day – looks like a system that has potential. And they deliver to Canada!
More to the point – how do I get softer Jello shots? We’ve had a wine tasting, perhaps a Jello booze tasting is in order. Recreational and educational.
fall activities for the whole me
In the past thirty six hours or so, I have:
- created web pages in French, zut alors
- addressed gross diaper situations
- sent an e-mail newsletter to over a thousand people – haven’t done that in a while
- discussed an online presence for a relative who doesn’t use the internet
- enjoyed homemade chocolate chip cookies.
Can’t complain. Except the diapers, but these things happen.