• 12:39 @indehed DUR... #

Unlike most of the country, we haven't had any snow yet here in the South West, but it's bloody cold. Yesterday we had freezing rain, and for the last 4 days the ground temperature hasn't risen above freezing, so the pavements and pedestrian walkways have been like a skating rink (because modern gritters are so efficient that they grit the roads really well, but don't overspill onto the pavements AT ALL). I've had to keep the heating on all day and all night, and I'm not going out unless I really have to.

Normally I walk to the office even in winter, but currently the safest way for me to get to work (without falling - which with my legs in their current condition would be a disaster) is to skitter gently across the paved area out front, get the car out of the garage and drive the half mile to the office. I've never been so glad of the underground car park - normally I avoid it like the plague because it's dank and dismal, but on days like these it's snug and warm and dry and means I don't have to slither down an untreated tarmac walkway from the above-ground car park into the building.

But the office is bloody cold too. We have a great big open-plan space in a draughty old building, and my desk is closest to the door so any time someone goes in or out I get blasted with cold air from the stairwell. Being cold makes my joints hurt more and yesterday I ended up wearing my hat, coat and scarf indoors for most of the day. I still ended up numb from the knees down, so today I took in an extra fleece and a hot water bottle for my feet, and created my own little cocoon of WARM.

• 11:52 the downtown cops are wearing elf caps o_O #

I can't put it better than jocelyncs, who said (via sparkindarkness):

Absolutely, especially women. As a consciously-perpetual single and childfree, I run into this a lot - and much of the pressure, I note, comes FROM women. I've been told it's "unnatural to not want to love" (disregarding the love that I feel for friends, family, etc as "that doesn't count") that I have issues, and the good ol' "having a husband ... See Moreand children is part of God's plan"!

The pressure can be conscious - such as those examples - and even unconscious - note how delighted friends and relatives and even strangers become when a person announces a pregnancy or engagement. It's hard to escape even when, like me, you've consciously divorced yourself from what you "ought to do" and decided to do "what makes me happy."

I think for me also there's a sense of being regarded as 'not quite grown up' because I haven't been through the two traditional female rites of passage - marriage and pregnancy/childbirth. 

For anyone who's about to protest that marriage is a significant milestone for both parties, I'd argue it's significantly moreso for women. For one thing the wedding itself - the planning, the preparations and the event itself - is focussed almost exclusively on the bride. The groom barely gets a look-in. And for another in most cases even in the 21st century a woman's name - her very identity - changes the moment she gets married. Most married women still choose to be addressed as MRS [husband's nast name]. And in doing so she's immediately signposting that she's an adult, a married woman. By contrast someone who is a MISS is usually assumed to be a child or young woman. Those of us who are still MISS beyond our 25th birthday are regarded as aberrant, even suspect - caricatured as sour, bitter, sad old maids who 'never found the right man', or at best lovely maiden aunts who are only too happy to lavish attention on other people's children because ::pitying voice:: they never had any of their own.

This is one of the reasons I always give my name as MS suryaofvulcan (although I'm still regularly addressed as 'Mrs' even when someone's reading my name off a form I've filled in). In most cases when I give my name - especially in a work context - my marital status is completely irrelevant, yet women are still expected to display their marital status as part of their name.

The last thing I saw at the pictures was Star Trek XI. The last film I watched on DVD was ... Star Trek XI. On TV ... *whispers* I may have watched Sister Act the other night.

So I've been posting about disability a lot recently, and there's a reason for that.

As winter draws in the pain in my joints gets worse - my left hip was replaced 10 years ago and that's absolutely fine, but my right hip, right knee and left ankle all give me jip on a regular basis. I've been living on ibuprofen and paracetamol for the last few weeks, but they're already aggrivating my damaged digestive system (damaged from long term use of those self-same painkillers pre-hip replacement). Last week the temperature dropped dramatically and I spent a lot of time on my feet - as my job sometimes demands. My hip and my knee are still laupin'.

So on and off since last winter I've been debating with myself whether it's time to start using a walking stick again, and this week finally decided me. It's a good way of getting extra support when I need it, I wouldn't need any stronger drugs, and it's a signpost to other people that I'm going to be slower and need more space. It will mean that I no longer 'pass for normal', which means I'm going to get a lot of impertinent questions of the 'what happened to you?' variety, and probably a lot of unsolicited (and largely unhelpful) advice.

But I'm comfortable with this decision, and I've even found a website that sells some really cool funky sticks. I'm trying to decide between these two:

The Storm Grey Stick
The Ocean Blue Stick

But I also like these:


I could have one for every outfit.

So bearing this in mind I told a few friends they’d probably see me using a stick from time to time, and was going to ask them to help me choose one of the above. We never got that far.

Their reactions:
1. Does your doctor say you need one? (No, I've decided I need one – my doctor doesn’t live in my body.)
2. Can’t they give you stronger painkillers/inject steriods into your joints? (No, and I don’t want them to. All painkillers have side effects and I’m happier with a drug-free solution at this point in time.)
3. Have you tried this food supplement/elimination diet? (No, just because your health problems are food-related doesn’t mean mine are.)
4. My Gran used to have aching knees and someone told her to sleep with them wrapped in white cabbage leaves. She did and she was totally cured! *headdesk*

For me, taking the decision to use a stick was a positive step, but their automatic assumptions that this was a bad thing, and that I hadn't thought about alternatives and that I couldn't decide what was best for my own body really put a damper on my day.