November 6, Part One - Dis-encouraged and Dis-articulate

[ The "dis-encouraged" is included as a tribute to Nurse Lucy, someone I worked with at an earlier job. She regularly consulted me about spelling matters 
(hand-written progress notes at that time); in one note she used "disencouraged" 
and I gently suggested that "discouraged" might be better. Hi, Lucy. 

I know the opposite of the adjective articulate is inarticulate, not disarticulate. 
Disarticulate means "to become disjointed," which I think is appropriate to this content. Also I'm mostly familiar with it being used to describe someone cutting off fingers, arms, etc. of a person. 

This may be a good indication of my mood :) 

but also describes what I nearly did while pruning our hedges this weekend, so I'll use it. ]

Random … something

1. Trick-or-Treating the other night – after the “retarded” comment (see previous post) bummed me out for awhile, we had a pretty nice time. The main celebration: David got to walk a little bit! Last year we were nowhere near this point, so it was awesome. I was actually a little relieved when he sat down in protest, because he’s so short (even in a group of kids) I was worried he’d get stepped on.

              

(Keep reading)

2. Mixed feelings:

(1) Seeing several pairs of Thing One and Thing Two costumes – there are, ah, lots of baby outfits for twins with this theme. On the other hand, when I was in line at Moe’s on Friday night, there was a pretty obviously pregnant woman behind me. She was doing that thing where you can clasp your hands and kind of rest them on top of your big round belly. It’s nice, and in the last few months you have to enjoy every bit of physical comfort you can find. I asked when she was due, she replied January, I said “congratulations,” and that was it. But this does mark the first time since my miscarriage that I didn’t just turn my head away from All Things Pregnant. It probably helps that this was a stranger, whom I will never see again, and about whom I will not have to hear regular happy updates. L

(2) Powerlessness: (a) On the r-word issue described below – I indicated a couple of times that I haven’t sent that message to Ann Coulter because I was afraid it would get misused, some snippet taken out of context and aired on Fox News. The other main thought with that concern was, it wouldn’t make any difference. That’s an unusual feeling for me – I mean, everyone thinks that from time to time about a variety of life situations, but I vote, I volunteer, I have dedicated my career to social work because of a core belief that small actions can make a huge difference, and people can change.

But both with Ann Coulter and with other folks who use the r-word, I feel completely powerless to do anything about it. Being honest, I’m afraid to confront people about it, even teenage girls, because I’m not sure of the best way to go about it, and whenever … well, you get what I’m saying, right? When Matt has had to call out one of his youth about it, he does so privately and doesn’t make a big deal of it.

When I was running a family therapy group in a previous job, there was one client in particular who used the r-word a lot (again, educated wealthy grown-up person Ann Coulter, it’s really teenagers who say it the most). In CaringBridge entry from over 2 years ago, I talked about how I chose not to confront her on it, because she was already so angry about having to attend the group in the first place, and she had so many behavioral problems at the moment, that making my point didn’t seem to be the most appropriate thing to do at the time. And an image flashed through my mind of her complaining to her juvenile court counselor, and ultimately to her judge, that I was violating her right to free speech. Almost immediately upon thinking this, I realized … they are both legitimate issues but really it’s just a cop-out. I was afraid to confront her because I didn’t think it would make one ounce of difference, it would only make her madder at me (I know, she wasn’t really mad at me she’s mad at the system blah blah blah), and … I didn’t want to take the chance that she would laugh at the fact that I have a son with Down syndrome, if I chose to disclose it. That probably wouldn’t happen, right? I mean, she got into a lot of fights at school, she didn’t kill someone. She is not a horrible person; if I ran into her at Wal-Mart with David she would likely fawn all over him just the way everyone does. And the chances are good she wouldn’t have laughed there in group, she might have even apologized but maybe she would just roll her eyes and say “whatever,” which was also common for her.

(Please continue reading for the second part of this list. But be warned, it’s serious/sad)

(And has profanity)