April 30

Well, as the date indicates, it has taken me sometime to get back to writing my blog. I have not really been doing too much lately and I am rather distressed at my lack of progress on many things which I consider to be important. I do not seem to be getting as many things read as I would like, but I am managing to make some progress on some of the issues within the community. Today marked the 11th birthday of my young niece and we celebrated with a barbecue and a small cake. She went out and rode her bike and her brother enjoyed trying to learn how to ride is at the same time. All in all, it was a rather fun day, except that I didn't feel quite as well as I normally do. The other day, I had an interesting thing happened to me. A young boy, the son of one of my nice neighbors, came up and asked me when I would finally be getting better. As I began to inform him that it was highly unlikely I would have any more significant improvement, his face went from a countenance of pure delight to one of absolute horror. He is had no concept that someone could be injured in an accident and be relegated to live a relatively sedentary lifestyle. Although, I pointed out to him that despite my paralysis, I am always on the go but I don't let my body's inertia keep me from moving forward. Well enough for this short blog. Hopefully I will get a blog out on Monday and try to keep putting a simple daily post on the Web. I just need to remind myself sometimes that all I have to do is make a small entry. I need to attempt to stop making all of my entries thought-provoking. Just simply jot down what has gone on or what was interesting about the day. If there was nothing, put that down. If I want some interesting television shows or read something which stimulates my intellect, curiosity, or humor I can simply annotate that.

April 21

The day began rather slowly, but I decided I needed a massage and it became a bit more interesting. After getting one of my fantastic neighbors to coat my arms and hands with copious amounts of sunblock, I started on my trek to West Park Village in order to get, what I thought would be, a really good massage. I must have forgotten, once again, then my chair is barely operating at times and one day it is going to completely break down on me. Anyway, as I approached a bridge in our community, which is currently under construction, I discovered it would be a rather difficult climb around the side of the fencing, which is designed to keep the Vandals out of the area. Well, knowing there was a lady behind me, whom would most likely help out if I got into too difficult of a situation, I decided to go ahead and attempt this maneuver. Driving rather hurriedly through the bumpy trail, I noticed almost immediately that my wheelchair was veering to the left due to the incline of the terrain. I managed to get the wheelchair stopped prior to running into the fence, and then tilted my seat back in order to get traction. By now, the lady was coming to my aid, but I let her know I was OK. After successfully navigate this difficult ill-advised situation I discovered about a mile later that the sidewalk had been completely ripped out and there was only a very small sandy trail which wound perilously close to an enormously busy highway. I had turned around and was beginning to head back to my house, knowing that it was pure idiocy to even attempt something like this, when the Lady approached once again an offer to help out. I expressed my misgivings, but she convinced me she will be able to make sure I did not stray into the traffic. Anyway, to make a short story long, I did make my appointment, but I ended up calling my dad to come out and pick me up. The sidewalk had other defaults and I spent the remainder of the day calling around and trying to something done about the repairs.

April 20, 2005

Today was a relatively noneventful day. I started the day pretty late and basically talked to Lydia for a couple minutes and then went to meet with a county representative about safety concerns at our local crosswalk. This meeting took quite some time and I ended up becoming a little overheated. Following the meeting, I went and spent a few hours with some of the ladies in our cul-de-sac. It was rather enjoyable being able to talk to the neighbors about what is going on in the community and just having fun conversations about things other than disabilities or community activism. When I returned home later in the afternoon, I realized the heat had taken a little more out of me than I had thought. It didn't seem that hot, but I was in the direct sunlight for entirely too long. Additionally, I do not believe I ate enough food or did not have enough sugar in my system and subsequently I felt a little hungry and extraordinarily exhausted later. My evening was taken up with a slight amount of reading and my typical news programs. I have not been able to read nearly as much as I would like to lately and I am attributing this to my lack of enthusiasm. I will endeavor to accomplish more in the near future and hopefully I will be able to get my energy back up to the level it was prior to be having my bowel problems.

I do not believe I covered the difficulties I was having in-depth, and I don't think I will do it here. I will simply say that over the last six weeks I have been having difficulty with bloating and a general feeling of uneasiness. The bloating and dull pain has caused me considerable discomfort and left me feeling exhausted most of the time. I'm excited to be feeling better and hopeful that this was just a temporary condition, caused by Metamucil. Well, I have not been doing much dictation lately and it shows on my accuracy. I need to work on talking a little slower and try to annunciate more effectively. Just writing in this blog will enable me to increase my effectiveness once again. For some reason, when I do not write a considerable amount of the time, the accuracy of the computer and the program seems to dissipate significantly.

Back in the saddle again

When I began this particular blog I had the intent of edify people on the endeavors which a normal quadriplegics face every day. Somehow, however, I ended up trying to mold this blog into a sort of form for social commentary. I occasionally endeavored in making witty quips and insightful comments, but ultimately failed to what I intended to do. I believe I am going to switch directions and began what many people have pronounced was the original intent of blogs, and, that is to chronicle something that is going on or provide a journal. With that in mind, this blog may be somewhat mundane to the average person, although, it may be enlightening to a few people which might possibly face this type of life in the future. I'm not going to concentrate so much on how my writing is materializing, but more on trying to put my thoughts down as quickly as possible while they are in my head. I frequently found I have my most profound thoughts during the nighttime hours when I am without access to my computer. I wish at times I had the ability to set up my laptop and be able to turn it on at any whim, but this is not the case. From now on I will start titling the blogs with the day. I may enter a special blog if I have feel it is necessary to comment on something which has caught my attention. For instance, the election of the new pope today was a rather interesting and the stork event. I was, nonetheless, a little disappointed when the appearance of the senior Cardinal signaled the new pope would be Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. While he is known for his generosity and piousness, I feel the is entirely to conservative and frankly I would have rather seen a Hispanic or African pope. As I am not a Catholic this is really have no concern to me, but news is what it is.

Motivational difficulties

Once again motivation seems to be a problem. I am unable to get much done lately and this is primarily due to problems with my blood pressure. For some reason I am having difficulty getting going most of the day because my blood pressure is too low. Once I unable to stabilize my blood pressure, today seems to go by much quicker. However, it seems as if I am not able to accomplish anything significant and I feel as if I have become more and more irresolute. I need to come up with a very good long-term goal. I would have thought something might have presented itself before now. Well, enough wallowing in self-pity. I am going to read some more and maybe later on tonight I will do some writing.

My 10th anniversary, but I'm not celebrating

Anniversaries are typically a day of celebratory fun, but in this particular case my anniversary is dreaded for weeks to come every year. One might ask why, and the answer is, I was injured in a bicycle accident 10 years ago today. In the next few days I might reflect back on see how things have changed over these last 10 years, but today is normally a day when I choose to ignore everything related to the tragedy which cause my paralysis. It could be said that I tend to wallow in self-pity, however, the longer I am injured the less lugubrious I become about the event. This year I actually found myself acting as a small child. Halfway through the year I started indicating that I was almost 10 years post-injury. All in all, this anniversary was a relatively normal day and definitely the best April 5th I have endured over the last 10 years. I'm hoping the longer I am injured the less I tend to dread the beginning of April.

For some reason I have not been in the mood to write lately and have chosen to avoid making any injury in my blog. I'm going to try to get back into the groove again. I last few weeks have really been pretty good. The first week I spent a majority of my time with my nephew and niece. They had a pretty nice spring vacation and I wanted to make sure they can spend as much time as they could outside. I purchased new scooters for both of them and they chose to break them in rather well over the one-week vacation. The remainder of my time has been filled with meetings, reading, answering e-mails, and going to a few appointments. I'm hoping to have more information on my new wheelchair. Well, I'm going to close his blog today and look at it tomorrow to determine if there is anything I want to change.