Dignity

Chris is quite a fan of mindless TV, particularly after coming home to errands and chores after an already long day at work and I’ll watch just about anything if a back massage is attached to it. And so our evening routine usually consists of Chris cooking dinner whilst I play WoW (apparently too many cooks spoil the broth and I’m banned from the kitchen), we more often than not eat upstairs in the bedroom and watch something on TV. After dinner I get a back massage and he gets to watch whatever he wants. An episode of Law and Order was on the menu recently and I was rather surprised when Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome was mentioned.

I’m not particularly interested or bothered when mainstream media selects a rare condition which in this case happens to be mine and gets it all wrong, but in this case, I was a little bothered. EDS consists of a group of heterogenous conditions with plenty of cross-over symptoms between different types, making it a particularly complex diagnosis to get. I find it difficult to watch when EDS is in the media and it’s so different from how I experience it. EDS is extremely variable and boiling it down to: “Blair’s baby was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos syndrome. The skin is so delicate the slightest touch causes tearing. It can be fatal without constant medical care” is a little disappointing. I assume they picked the dermatosparaxis type of which less than a dozen cases have been reported world wide as it’s the type with the most pronounced skin issues, but in that case, how hard would it have been to just say so? And personally speaking, it all sounds a lot more like Epidermolysis bullosa, but I think nobody could pronounce that one and EDS just sounded better.

The fact that it was an abortion themed episode was less of an issue for me other than I felt it should have been more about the murder and less about the moral issues shrouding it, but that’s just me. Life is complicated enough without thinking about ethical dilemmas that I don’t have any first hand experience of. In between dealing with the chronic issues disability and an incurable illness creates, I try to live as happy and fulfilled a life as I can and it only gets depressing when I over-reach. It’d be nice to have a full-time job, raise a family, own a house and do all the things everybody else is doing, but it always feels like reaching for an unreachable goal and just the thought alone is tiring. I remember what it was like when I tried to keep going even when I really should’ve been stopping. It wasn’t nice or pleasant and the rewards never seemed worth the sacrifice. There are different paths one can take in life and although there are limitations, I still think that there’s always a way to find a path that you’re happy with.

Did Amadeus go mad or was he just dizzy?

Very bad migraine day and thankfully these are few and almost far between this time of the year. The only real cure for me is time and sleep; eventually I’ll wake up without it hurting, but until I do, there doesn’t seem to be much respite. I wake up, it hurts, I move and it hurts more, I get up and I’m pretty sure my head is going to explode. So I get back into bed, lie very very still and try to sleep. Sleeping is easy if I’m lucky, which I mostly am. I drift off and dream. I have the same headache in my dreams. My headache dreams always have the same theme – dredged up unhappy memories from the past, imagined fears and worries; I’m always stressed out, dealing with problem after disaster after potential catastrophy all the while my head is pounding and I just want to sleep. The irony doesn’t go amiss.

The cat gets anxious and protests. It really doesn’t help. The personal assistant arrives at nine and I decide to shower. She always starts the day with ‘are you dizzy?’ and I always say ‘not much’. I’m always dizzy when I get up and she always makes such a fuss about it, you’d think that it was a big deal. She talks non-stop even after I ask politely if she doesn’t mind being quiet just this once as it really hurts my head. This prompts a very long monologue on how she gets headaches and she’s been having that feeling that she might get a headache for days and how people just don’t understand that migraines are serious and the visual aura that she gets for a whole fifteen minutes is so incredibly debilitating and how lucky I am that I don’t get those. I want to scream, but that wouldn’t help. I go to that place in my head where it’s quiet and peaceful and solitary and breathe a sigh of relief when she leaves.

I catch up on an audio book that’s been almost forgotten, mostly because I’ve only been listening to the Honorverse when I have a headache and have begun to associate it with being in pain. Books are soothing, books with treecats double so, but it’s never quite soothing enough. I sleep, I dream, I wake up, I think, I imagine and I hope that at some point, even if its just for a few minutes or hours, it’ll get better. Now it’s night and late that’s almost turning into early again and finally, that moment has arrived. As long as I don’t do much, it doesn’t hurt much. It’s okay, for a little while. I can feel the throbbing at the back of my skull that makes it clear that it’s not over, soon it’ll get worse again until I’m curled back into a little ball wishing it was earlier or later, rewinding or fast forwarding to the moments where it was and will be better. It’s a blessing in disguise that pain isn’t constant and stable. It ebbs and flows and even though at its lowest points its still pretty intense, the fact that when it’s at the intolerable point, one can look forward to when it’ll go down just a notch is relief enough. It doesn’t have to go away completely, it just has to get a little better every now and again.

Punch punchy punch punch

I picked up a copy of Psychonauts from Steam about a week ago. After playing WoW exclusively for 18 months, I’ve been seduced to try new things. If I can play WoW, the old excuse of gaming just isn’t accessible no longer holds much sway. I love my N52te and being able to program and use it in any game I play on my PC has been an immense help. But even with my trusty Razer mouse, some things have just been frustratingly difficult to master and I haven’t reached that level of frustration in a very long time. I loved Psychonauts from the first moment I saw it and that served as plenty of motivation to learn how to play. I found movement within the game, as I always do, one of the difficult parts to master and spent the first hour running, jumping, climbing and swinging until I felt a little more in control of my little character. The story is great, the dialogue is fantastic and I was having boatloads of fun until I got to that part of the obstacle course where Raz has to punch various cardboard pop-ups, twenty within sixty seconds to be precise, which isn’t something that I can do or get better at. My reflexes are a few times slower than the norm and my mental reaction time is a little slower too and my control of the character is a little sloppy and inaccurate. I get by, but I can’t move and hit a target within three seconds and no amount of practice will make it a possibility. Stubborn as I am, I’ve still spent almost six hours on and off trying without any improvement whatsoever. I hit 9 every single bloody time. Never more, never less and it took that many hours for me accept the fact that some things I just cannot get around. Plan B: Get help.

Chris turned out to be rather useless. He’s a bookworm not a gamer and my computer isn’t exactly standard. He doesn’t like my mouse settings, he doesn’t like my keyboard, he doesn’t like not being sat at a desk and most of all, he doesn’t like the game. Thirty minutes of getting frustrated enough to threaten bodily harm to everything in sight and he gave up to go and raid instead. I blamed him a little and so he comes back every now and again, have a few goes, gets frustrated, yells and then give up. Teamviewer seemed like a long shot and turned out to be useful in many many ways except this one right here. It means I’m stuck very early on in a game that I love and there is no way to get past it. I find it immensely frustrating that I can’t just bypass this one bit so that I can get on with the game. Why oh why does it have to be compulsory to complete? It’s stupid and frustrating and makes me feel more helpless than I have in a long time.

The whole point of gaming for me is to have fun and do something independently. I have no objection to asking for help, even when I get stuck on the silliest things like not being able to find a air vent in Batman that’s so obvious in hindsight that I really do feel like the stereotypical dumb blonde. Thankfully, I have friends that tolerate probably quite a bit more than is good for them. In this case, a friend that was patient enough to log in his Batman and run over to the room I was stuck in so that he could tell me exactly what to do and if required, take a screen shot. I really appreciated the help, mostly because I never felt stuck. I knew there was a way out and I just had to find it and if my way of finding it is asking someone else for help, then I’m okay with it. But I’m not okay with aspects of a game that makes it impossible for me to play and I can’t get around it. I can program my N52 to do a lot of things, but I can’t make my reflexes faster and I can’t make my movement smoother. I am utterly and completely stuck on a tiny chunk of the game that is impossible to overcome unless someone else overcomes it for me. That upsets me quite a bit. The gaming sounds doesn’t help at all. Two very annoying characters stand there and yell and when you fail, say ‘try again, I’m sure you’ll get it.’ It makes me want to scream. Trying again won’t help. I can try it a million times and I will never get it.

I don’t often feel that level of frustration anymore. I used to feel like that all the time. Life was a series of obstacles that I just couldn’t overcome. But with time, I found ways around some and I found routes with less obstacles and most days, I can almost forget what it used to be like when everything just felt so impossible and unreachable that I couldn’t even see the point of trying. It was a useful reminder and it was nice to realize that I am no longer as short sighted as I used to be. I am happy to give up and give in. It may take six hours when really, I knew after five minutes that it was impossible, but I did give up without completely giving up. I’ll put it on a back burner. Chris can keep trying whenever he has five minutes to spare as he does improve and if all else fails, I’ll just shelve games when I get to the stuck point until a gamer friend comes over and can fix it for me.

We currently have ads up to get a PA in a few hours each day and the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this may make a good job interview test. After all, the point of having a PA is to make things that are inaccessible accessible and what better way to test that than to hand them a control and say ‘hit 20 cardboard pop-ups in 60 seconds’. It can be sort of like a typing test given to secretaries. Life isn’t meant to be lived in isolation and I’m learning to be okay with asking for help when I need it. It’s just so immensely frustrating when I get stuck on something so simplistic and no amount of help is going to fix it. And when the annoying brats in the game yell ‘you can do it, Raz. Punch punch punch’, I start to think that when we have kids, they will all play games. Learning how to deal with frustration is a vital life lesson and few things in life is as frustrating as this. I find it a little sad that a game that I instantly fell in love has for the moment been reduced to something that give me nightmares. Looking back, I probably won’t remember the cool character, the witty dialogue, the great story or any of the things that makes it an amazing game. My first thought will always be about cardboard pop-ups that’s just impossible to hit. Or maybe I should just get a fridge magnet that says ‘Who is the milkman?!’ and remember that blowing anything out of proportion is a very bad idea. Next time I hit an insurmountable obstacle, I’ll stop after five minutes and move on. I don’t try and climb mountains anymore or kill my joints on long weekend hikes or bike rides, it were silly hobbies for someone like me. There’s more important things in life than getting stuck on a sixty second challenge. I can watch a walk-through, watch someone else play, get someone else to play the hard parts for me. There  are ways around; it may not be the way I wanted, but if you focus on what you can’t do rather than what you can do, well, that way lies madness.

If it doesn’t give you a little thrill, you’re doing it wrong

Space porn fascinates me and like most things intriguing, the more you know, the more it blows your mind. I don’t know a lot about space, cosmology, Saturn or the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft mission, but I think I know enough that images likes these can mesmerize me completely. I was browsing through images of Saturn at Equinox at The Big Picture, my favourite photoblog and just couldn’t stop looking at it. Saturn with its nitrogen atmosphere and methane/ethane clouds is my favourite planet and Titan with its liquid aliphatic hydrocarbon lakes is my favourite moon. The rings, mostly made up of ice with bits of rock and dust strewn in is pretty beyond belief and looking at images of Saturn remains a surreal experience that I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of.

Love and Peace

I was tired yesterday after only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before and waking up with a massive headache that had me in bed for hours, drifting in and out of a pain drenched haze that really clouds my thinking. We had to go out to the supermarket and I gave up shortly after returning on accomplishing anything useful and went back to bed to try and sleep a little more. The headache was a dull ache in the back of my brain that was just enough to muddle my thinking and its one of the things that eat away at my self esteem the most and make me a little moody. I hate feeling stupid. Chris called me over to come heal the Headless Horseman for a guild run. Whilst waiting out of combat, I absent-mindedly picked up my tea cup weirdly and managed to dislocate both my left wrist and thumb simultaneously. I had to invite someone back into the group before they got teleported out of the instance and trying to rush it, I also dislocated my right thumb. Chris was around, but had popped downstairs and so I panicked. It was one of those moments where I feel completely overwhelmed and pain is about the only thing I can think of. I was in tears clutching my wrist when Chris ran in to see what had happened and he took over my character whilst I tried to fix things as quickly as possible. It took a while. Three joints out are much trickier than one. I had to put some ice on, then a splint, but after a couple of hours it seemed fine enough for raiding.

We really breezed through Emalon and ToC normal on 10 man. It was my first 10 man in months and as much as I love 25 man raids, vent is livelier on 10 and I really love the banter. It’s almost sad how easy it was and although I appreciate all the breaks it gives me and the additional buffers that exist because I can overheal indulgently, it’s a little too much of an easy thing. Heroic mode next. The closest I’ve come to hard mode and heroic raids are Flame Leviathan with two towers up and a few minutes of ToC 25 which really means I hadn’t done any. I’m still very conscious that I’m not a reliable player and so I tend to skip on the things where one mistake can make a big difference and heroic mode epitomizes that rule. But I went anyway because I really wanted to. The northrend beasts were just plain fun. I thought the fire bombs would be really difficult, but if positioned correctly so that I can just hit auto run, I had plenty of time to get out. I’m eternally grateful for the handy set of heroic mode instructions I was handed by a friend just before going in or I wouldn’t have anticipated a lot of things, including not getting a speed buff on Icehowl. Lord Jaraxxus was much more difficult. Healing is pretty intensive, Mistress’ Kiss is rather annoying trying to heal continuously whilst constantly having to pay attention to positioning and be ready to move quickly very frequently made it a challenge. It helped that I have done it on normal a few times and so it wasn’t all new, but I still managed to dislocate my wrist badly in one of the early attempts and was quite happy that my mic was turned off when the raid leader asked what had killed me. It was at this point where the evening stopped being just plain fun.

Chris started yelling. After being together for seven years this is still a major point of contention. He doesn’t like when I get hurt and hates it when he thinks it’s self inflicted. He feels that I should ask to be replaced when it happens this badly, particularly when it is the second time in less than three hours. Bar that, he feels that I should ask for a five minute break and take some time out to put my wrist back in, tape it, rest it and then go back to it. I disagree. I’ll quit for serious stuff, but dislocations are mostly routine even when they’re quite bad and I don’t need five minutes so why ask for it? It either reduces straight away or it doesn’t and a few more minutes changes nothing. He was still yelling when we pulled and I rather unceremoniously kicked him out of the room. We’d spent the downtime arguing whilst I fished painkillers out of a drawer and so my wrist didn’t get the attention it should have. Chris got even angrier because I wouldn’t let him help. When he’s upset he can’t reduce dislocations. He’s impatient, rough and gets the angle or direction or amount of force wrong and usually I end up worse off. And so I wouldn’t let him near my wrist even though I couldn’t fix it, which made him even angrier. I can’t splint and play well and so I just left it at the almost in stage for the next attempt. Over a period of an hour or two, the bones kept sliding and by the time Lord Jaraxxus went down, my wrist was a jumbled mess and I wasn’t sure any more if it was ever fixable. I took another painkiller and by the time we’d had a few goes on the Faction Champions and raid finished, my world was all a blurry hazy mess and I was jittery and a little hyped up.

I tanked the daily heroic afterwards rather badly whilst laughing at ‘Six things your body does every day that science can’t explain‘ being read to me over vent and unwinding rather than immediately stopping after the raid had the desired effect. I was calmer. I did the daily fishing quest in Wintergrasp and by the time I logged out, I didn’t feel like crawling into a corner and crying anymore. I put on an episode of Trigun and then another and before I knew it, I was asleep with the headset still on and the keyboard in my lap. I woke up with my head inches away from a sleeping cat who had curled up around the mouse, resting his chin on top of it, rhythmically snoring away. My wrist was hurting, my head still fuzzy with a dull ache, but I was okay. It’s taken a long time to get to okay even when I’m not quite. I was content with the issues I was having during the raid because I knew I could ask to either stop or have a break for as long as I needed whenever I did. I knew that if I ran into any insurmountable obstacles, I could ask for help, advice and suggestions from a number of people that would do their best to make it as easy as possible for me without taking over. I crawled into bed and the cat instantly climbed back into my arms and listening to him purr whilst warming my cold feet against Chris’ warm ones, I realised that I could see the day as a good day or a bad day, it’s just a matter of maintaining the right perspective.

What a long, strange trip it’s been

It’s been a long, strange trip indeed. A year ago, I was oblivious to the multiplayer aspect of WoW. I played because Chris enjoyed having me there and it was an accessible, highly customizable game that quickly became a nice distraction and fun way to pass the time. I wanted to get more involved, but despite all the raid and arena youtube video’s Chris pulled out, it all seemed very far out of reach and almost impossible to do. The seasonal events provided a nice mid-step for me. Saving Goldshire from the Headless Horseman a year ago was probably the closest I had come to other players at the time. I joined my first PUG to get the Red winter hat for the Merrymaker achievement and I joined my first guild and tagged along on a few guild runs to get to the Elders in the Northrend Dungeons. It’s not so much that the achievement was responsible, but the fact that working towards it coincided with me learning how to play makes it something truly memorable.

I worked really hard to get it done. It involved a lot of crying, hurting, huge frustration and quite a few moments where I felt as if I’d pushed myself over the edge for some silly pixel present. But it also required plenty of creative thinking to solve the issues that sometimes seemed unsolvable, it provided a great opportunity to hang out with friends and there’s some truly memorable hysterically funny and enjoyable events that happened along the way. I really enjoyed doing this achievement and I’m almost sad that it’s over… until I get up in the air and have the 30% speed bonus.

A proper illness

The temp from the agency made the comment yesterday as she took off her latex gloves whilst struggling to pull my stockings over my ankle without dislocating it again that they’re not really necessary unless someone has a proper illness, which I obviously do not, but it’s part of the regulations and she really shouldn’t be breaking the rules. That is wrong on so many levels that I wouldn’t know where to begin commenting. I fantasize about it, but I don’t think a Sheldon-like speech on where it all went wrong years ago when it comes to glove use policies and how currently the focus is on how to undo this overreaction would be useless and largely frustrating for the both of us.

I guess I could have been insulted that my illness wasn’t considered a proper illness and when what’s wrong with me is reduced to ’she has headaches and joint problems’, because those are the two things she sort of understands as she gets headaches and her niece or cousin or someone has dislocated their thumb once, it is a little tiring to even think about how to explain that it’s a little worse than that. I never do explain. I don’t even feel the need to explain. It’s easier to shrug and laugh and let it go. Many things have gotten easier as I’ve started adopting that attitude. We went to Ulduar last night and I really dislike the first night in Ulduar. FL is fine these days, but XT requires a level of precision that is completely out of my control. If I get hit by light wells or gravity bombs or someone that does get hit stands in my line of sight, I have to change my angle very quickly or things go very wrong. Having to move on cue makes dislocating things more likely and so I get a little scared of XT. If I move just a little wrong, I dislocate a finger or wrist and I then I can’t change my screen angle.

Up until I was furiously typing away on msn about how much I dislike the prospect of XT, and on top of that Kologarn, Hodir and Thorim too, I was panicking just a little bit. Then I realized that there was something I did not take into account. I could do what I did last Friday on Hodir. I couldn’t change my screen angle, so I stopped playing and clasped my hands over my eyes. I died within seconds after the pull when I started to get that strange pre-seizure out-of-body type sensation, but we didn’t wipe, a healer short is no longer a problem in raids and I took the time to sort out my wrist, recover my vision and cognitive function a little, whacked my character on follow for a little bit and was fine enough by the time we arrived at the next boss. It wasn’t the end of the world and I’m pretty sure very few people noticed and nobody cared. Playing with other people isn’t about getting everything right all the time, it’s about being okay with sometimes doing less than my share. It was a difficult, but very good lesson to learn.

I often feel as if I don’t do much with my time and looking back over my life I’m filled with a sense of huge disappointment. There’s so many things I wanted to do but didn’t, so many days that’s just completely lost to nothingness and I had hopes and dreams that didn’t materialize and I wonder if ten years from now I will look back over the last decade and feel the same way again. I think about the meaning of life, the things I want, the things I’ve wanted and the things I have and it gets harder to be depressed. I’m not unhappy. I’m not discontent with my life. In fact, unless I start to think too much, my days are rather leisurely. There’s plenty that still needs fixing and the state of things is a little like a run-down house with a leaking roof that requires buckets on the floor on rainy days. But its a happy run-down house.

Growing up I used to think that money would solve my problems. If only I could afford all the things I need, if only I could drive a new car with better air-con in the summer and afford to run the heating high all winter. My friends drooled over shoes and dresses and fancy accessories and I fantasized about those shiny hinged knee braces, silver ring splints and black-out blinds. But the grass isn’t greener on the other side. Splints help, but they don’t stop bad things from happening. Top of the line black-out blinds look pretty, but other things have blocked out the light just as well. There’s more to life than things and there’s nothing wrong with easing up on the worry and appreciating the silver lining. Things just aren’t that important. And accomplishments? I’m reminded of  a scene from a Ted Danson movie I watched a while ago:

Jeremy Brockett: Are you a man who likes to treat himself right?
Dr. Mumford: I’ve had my moments.
Jeremy Brockett: Well, I am. And I’m not ashamed of it. Nobody ever said on their deathbed, “I treated myself too well.”
Dr. Mumford: I thought it was, “Nobody ever said I should have spent more time at the office.”
Jeremy Brockett: Fill in the blanks. I don’t mind the office. The point is you only go around once. So, like the Zen say, “Be here now.”

I worry that my life doesn’t mean enough, but in the greater scheme of things, it’s the little things that actually count. And happiness is a pretty good accomplishment.

I turn everything up to an eleven

I’m a big Hugh Laurie fan ever since Chris introduced me to Jeeves and Wooster. I’m not much of a House fan, the drama behind the drama is tedious and I never could learn to like any of the supporting cast other than, no wait, no exceptions there. And the hallucinated blonde is just annoying. Farscape pulled that off, House did not. The chronic pain theme on the other hand is interesting. Living with any chronic pain condition is a challenge. I can be a little condescending when it comes to pain, when you hurt it always feels as if nobody else can quite grasp how much pain you’re in, but it’s a knee-jerk response that’s really just an attempt to justify why you’re allowed to do less than you think you ought to. Spending my time watching the world go by annoys me. I feel guilty.

I keep thinking that it’s a temporary state of being, that things will change, get a little better or I’ll get better enough at dealing so that it doesn’t take up almost all my time, but I’m still waiting for it to happen. For now, I’m reassured by justification. There’s enough things serious wrong with me that I couldn’t do more even though I want to, I try to tell myself. I don’t really believe it; I still think that there’s always a way to make life work regardless. People have written books by blinking after all, what makes me so special that I can’t persevere a little more?  It’s difficult watching something like House and not feel guilty for not trying harder, until I remind myself that it’s fiction. It’s also rather easy to watch and be mesmerised. Hugh Laurie does pain rather well and living in constant pain is an issue that pulls me back in with its familiarity. It’s not a fun world to live in.

I struggle to deal with it well. Some days are easier than others, but even the easy days are still rather difficult. Everything requires boat loads of effort and I start to feel a little lost in the fog. Pain can be overwhelming and it makes my life particularly unpredictable and me rather unreliable. It seems like a flimsy excuse to say ‘I can’t, my head hurts, I can’t my wrist hurts, I can’t, my ankle hurts’. I think about the darker times, like lying on a hospital gurney with a hand clasp tightly over my fentanyl patch thinking that maybe pressing harder will make my skin absorb the drugs a little faster, but it didn’t help. Nothing helps. But life doesn’t stop because I hurt and that’s the part of House that I enjoy watching the most. Despite the small details of addiction and a little insanity, House copes with pain rather well. I’m a fan of the humour and season six of House is fun again. I hope it stays that way. I’d really prefer not to go back to Stargate Universe.

Achievements

I have a love/hate relationship with achievements and have cycled through phases of both obsession and apathy. I enjoy working my way down a list, but I try to remind myself that it’s healthier for me to be a connoisseur rather than a collector.  I will never get them all done and some would take me into areas of game play where I don’t enjoy going. It’s a dubious claim. Most of the things I love I didn’t actively choose to be passionate about. I stumbled into piano lessons when I was five and I was thirteen before I realised just how much I loved music. I always loved books and reading, but I never thought I would enjoy reading sci-fi until Chris started reading me short stories when I had headaches. Sometimes the doors other people open for us lead to the most interesting of places that would never have been discovered and in WoW, achievements can play that roll. I really enjoyed hunting down the books for the Well Read achievement, it was definitely one of my favourites to lavish time on. I really hate the Loremaster achievement, don’t think I’ll ever get around to finishing it.

Like most things in WoW, the goal isn’t for everybody to do or have anything, but to create an interesting world with some variety in it. I’m happy with that. I won’t be chasing down a hundred mounts or small pets, I rarely sport a title and I don’t compare. I don’t inspect other characters, I have name plates turned off permanently (and even tooltips sometimes) and the only time I pay attention to achievements are when about once a week I have a quick glance at the armory pages of a few friends to keep up with what they’ve been doing in game. The titles and tabards and mounts and pets that are rewarded are fun and there are a few that I really wouldn’t mind having, but probably will never get around to. The Twilight Zone is one of the few I really would like to go back and complete after spending so many hours wiping on it and so very nearly getting it at what now feels like a very long time ago. But there’s always new and better things to do and when it comes to a choice between achievements or progress, the first falls by the way side. And I only have so much time to play. It’s a struggle to maintain a regular raiding schedule and most of the time, my play time goes towards raiding and peripherals – food, flasks, gems, enchants. The time that I have left I prefer to spend on the more simplistic things; fishing whilst turning up the ambient sounds and turning off everything else, picking flowers in the Storm Peaks whilst using WoW as a glorified instant messenger, leveling a low-level alt through an area I skipped the first time around or dabbling in the auction house to keep pocketing my weekly profit without having to do any work. If I were to spend the time instead on achievements, I don’t think WoW would be fun anymore.

I’m a sensible and logical person. I practice my tanking by soloing or duoing dungeons that will also provide reputation. I respec my off-spec quite frequently from bear to boomkin to kitty and work out rotations and macro’s whilst hitting outland or old Azeroth to kill ogres or naga. And occasionally when I get bored of my routine, I’ll pick a random achievement that’s almost completed. I’ll buy a mount, run an heroic to get an achievement towards Glory of the Hero or next on the list – hunt down the last 8 quests in HP for To Hellfire and Back. I do enjoy post-achievement WoW more than pre-achievement WoW, but I’ll never be an achievement junkie. I’ll never get most of the pvp achievements because I like hanging back as a pocket healer and rarely kill, defend or assault anything and when it comes down to it, having fun is more important than getting an achievement. This is my leisure and play time, I don’t want it to feel anything remotely like work. Except maybe for What a long strange trip it’s been. I want my pink drake.

Surreal Day

Some days life catches up with me and I sleep too much. I wake up, realize that I’m still tired and sleepy and at first resist. After a day or two of a steadily increasing zombie like existence, I give up and sleep as much as my body desires. I still wake up regularly, but I’m only awake for a little while. I grab a snack and go back to bed, feed the cat and go back to bed, put on more clothes and go back to bed. I wake up cold, thirsty, hungry, hurting ; rectify the situation and then go back to sleep. Sleeping that much sometimes makes me feel as if I never quite wake up and there for quite a few moments in my day where I was almost sure I wasn’t awake at all.

Chris gives up on zombie wife and makes me coffee with caffeine in it. We go to the supermarket. I’m awake and chirpy. We take the wheelchair. I’ve grown accustomed to it over time and prefer the convenience and comfort over the agony and injury that not taking it results in. Chris won’t have to scoop me off the floor, so he’s happy. As we’re making our way down the dairy isle, Chris bursts out laughing. I turn my iPod off and ask what’s so funny. He glances to the left, I look and a little boy is standing behind his mum’s very full trolley peering at my wheels. Apparently as we went by he said something along the lines of ‘look mummy, that poor lady is in a wheelchair’ and his mother, who at that moment caught Chris’ eye, blushed and tried to shush him as quickly and unobtrusively as she could and shepherded him up the isle. I laughed and turned my iPod back on.

There’s a great mountain of disadvantages when your body doesn’t quite work the way its suppose to. There’s so much that you can’t do, so many things that is just that much harder and it’s easy to get caught up in those. But there are also advantages. I have a cinema card that’s effectively a permanent buy-one-get-one-free deal. The disabled parking can be rather handy and convenient. And people’s attitudes and preconceptions can work for you, not just against you. We experimented yesterday. Chris had a trolley and it was rather busy initially and we were rushing a little and he kept getting stuck in isles because people just don’t move out of the way and block the isle on both sides. If I go first on the other hand, it’s like the parting of the Red Sea. People stumble over each other to make twice as much room as I’d need. It’s a nifty trick. Life is very different for me in many ways. But it’s also very much the same. I don’t mind the glances any more, I don’t mind the faulty assumptions, I don’t even mind the pity, it just doesn’t matter. It’s just people, going about their day in their usual way and I’m quite content to just be people too and go about my day in my usual way.