Angel Ackerman's Blog, page 32

Spotify playlists for writers

Writer friends—

I sorted and organized some great playlists for you. Check them out on Spotify.

As many creative people do, Parisian Phoenix publisher Angel Ackerman has a day job. At that day job, her employer allows associates to listen to …

Spotify playlists for writers

Question of the day: Am I disabled enough for a service dog?

This is a hard post to write.

That’s the thing about disability— it like a kaleidoscope of worry and health and what you can and suddenly can’t and then can do. It’s a revolving door of chaos and bodily revolt.

Don’t get me wrong. I know I am lucky. Every damn day I get up, take care of myself, go to work, pursue my side business, go to the gym, and try to do what’s right for the teenager and the pets.

I can walk, even if I may never run that 5K I dream about. I work in a warehouse, even if sometimes it’s hard. I try to listen to and take care of my body. And I am grateful.

But despite all the doctors, the physical therapy, the personal trainer (thank you Apex Training), the vitamins, the stretching, the medication and the regular visits to my lovely chiropractor, Nicole Jensen of Back in Line Chiropractic and wellness center, I still “randomly” have accidents.

I trip over my own two feet and have hands that look like this:

And I fall through the old screen door in the garage.

I burst a tendon and spend 12+ weeks nursing mallet finger from taking off my socks.

I’ve broken bones, smashed teeth, fallen down stairs (most recently at the hospital).

I did this at the hospital

I’m getting older and I’m falling more. In a few more years, the teenager will be a full-fledged young adult and won’t necessarily be here to babysit me.

So I filled out a pre-qualification questionnaire. I probably won’t be disabled enough to warrant a dog, but I have the means to pay for it. I live independently and my condition cannot be mitigated with medication.

But I can walk and function you say, and I do. What could a dog possibly do?

Help me take off (and put on) my shoes and socksHelp me retrieve objects from the floor when I can’t bend.Help me retrieve objects when I fall.Help me get up when I fall.Help me up and down the stairs. Bark to alert neighbors or people in the household that I need help.*And I wonder if a dog could “nudge” me if it notices I am unstable and get me to fix my gait or rest.

* this one is apparently controversial — some trainers claim barking in any form is a nuisance and that a service dog should never bother/impact the general public.

Like any topic within disability, it’s complex. But with each fall I take I feel progressively more vulnerable and fragile. It feels like another option to consider.

Falling through the screen door

Monday. I slept pretty decently last night despite the oppressive heat. I had performed 105% in Freestyle on Sunday in the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy warehouse, folding and shipping clothes while dreaming of new sundresses for myself.

I came home a little stiff and achy, a trend that seems to be back-sliding on the recent physical progress I made but the finger held up to its first day out of the splint at work.

I also came home early, as the Teenager planned a movie night for blind friend Nan to watch How to Train Your Dragon, a movie I have not yet seen despite the fact that I made a Toothless stuffed animal at Build-A-Bear.

Nan and I were to stop and pick up dinner at Wawa and the Teenager had made homemade ice cream (that honestly was on par with Cold Stone Creamery). And everyone got their desired dish from Wawa— except me— as I wanted a pre-made salad from the grab and go cooler and apparently the cooler was broken. The employees were removing all the food and the floor around it bore wet floor signs.

So I ate leftovers out of my fridge.

The audio-described version of the movie was intense. The poor man doing the description didn’t have time to breathe.

I was in bed by 8 p.m. The cockatoo had issues at 2 a.m. But all-in-all a good night.

At work today, I was tired, hot and a little bored at my regular table in QC. I did 101%.

I’m still have issues with a strange burning and tightness in my right thigh, and dealing with that is causing lower back pain.

I got home from work and tentatively poked my head around the corner in the garage— checking to see if dog was in the yard. She was not.

I walked up the stairs from the car bay to the main room of the garage. Walking across the big open space in my garage, I tripped over my own foot and fell. I did some sort of corkscrew dive and fell backwards through the screen door to exit the garage then skidded across the floor. I scraped my hand, my knuckles, my elbow and I think my leg and knee.

But then I still went to the gym. Under Andrew’s careful eye at Apex Training, I did my workout. I felt better than when I arrived, even if I am still a little stiff and achy, but such is life with cerebral palsy.

Some of the damage

11 weeks in with mallet finger: Discharged from hand rehab

This week marked my 11th week in treatment for my mallet finger. Almost three months caring for this injury. 9 weeks in a cast. About 9 days in a splint 24/7. One week in a splint most of the day, taking it off 5X a day for an hour.

This morning was my third had rehab appointment since the cast came off. They also did the casting so I had two previous visits with them.

Typically, I go in, they make me bend my fingers and they measure everything, tell me the following week’s directions and send me on my way.

Today I went in, the had me heat my hand for 15 minutes and then I got a finger massage. The therapist measured my finger and made me a new night-time splint and told me I no longer need to wear the splint during the day.

Because I do so much work with my hands, if it starts to droop or just bothers me, I can splint it here and there for an hour.

I have another appointment with my hand surgeon July 27, so although the general guidelines say I only have to splint at night for 2 more weeks, it is recommended that I wear it until I see my specialist.

Other wisdom from my therapist as we chatted today:

Completely immobilizing a mallet finger for six weeks is the minimum in his opinion.The finger can continue healing for an additional six months after splinting is complete. He recommends using individual judgment and awareness of the finger to decide how long to splint at night.Massage the finger, especially the joints for five minutes several times a day. Understand that the finger may never resume its former shape/posture/movement but that the end of the finger itself doesn’t have that big of a role in hand function.Keep bending the fingers several times a day, gradually working into a fist.

My first Stitch Fix Freestyle order

I have worked for the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy for 19 months. This November will mark my two-year anniversary. I have done some shopping in the employee store, but I have never signed up for the service.

I first learned about Stitch Fix when they were brand new and I had renewed my subscription to Vogue magazine. You see, part of the reason my fiction takes place in the high fashion world is because I fell in love with the ideas of fashion as a teenager.

If I had more resources and hadn’t grown up in a family struggling to look middle class, I 100% would have been a mall-obsessed fashionista with haute couture aspirations. But my frugal nature and my minimalist desires mean I prefer thrift stores to fancy designers and weeding out clothes to buying them.

It’s one of the core dichotomies of my personality— perhaps that Taurus cusp Gemini natal sign— I want the opulence and beauty but am not willing to pay money for the experience. It feels like a waste.

Right now, I’m dressed in a Target basic white tank top, hand-me-down denim shorts, Dollar Tree socks and a brand new pair of Vans. That sums me up.

So I gave my 40% employee discount to my friend Joan, but if you assign your discount to someone else, you can’t change it for six months. And you can’t have more than one person using it at a time.

And I have had a great time watching Joan unbox her seasonal fixes. I am very glad she was the first one to take advantage of my discount.

Now that Stitch Fix has expanded their “Direct Buy” into the whole Freestyle experience (where I typically spend my Sundays packing orders and shipping them out to clients), it has become possible to order the items you want any time you want.

I asked Joan to use the brand navigation menu to order five or six specific pairs of shoes— one of them for the teenager. In the time it took for me to compile and send the list, one pair of shoes sold out in my size.

But Joan did manage to find three pairs of shoes for me—pink Toms, green Vans and a laceless DV by Dolce Vita sneaker— and one pair of old skool Vans high tops with a zipper for the teenager.

We ordered them Friday afternoon. On Saturday I saw Joan and I gave her money. On Sunday, I went to work wondering if I might see my shoes process out or if they had been shipped by the Saturday crew. The person at the table in front of me got a cart of shoes.

I wondered if she might have mine in there.

While I was considering this fantasy of sneaking my own shoes out of the building, I got a text from Joan. “Your shoes have shipped.”

Now I don’t know if clients are alerted when we hit the “complete” button and the mailing label prints out or when the post office gets their hands on them.

They arrived at Joan’s house on Tuesday, which we didn’t think to change the shipping. Despite having worked a ten-hour shift, the teenager and I headed to Joan’s.

Joan had never seen the large Stitch Fix bag and I was more than a little impressed that whoever packed them got them in there. And the postal carrier got it into Joan’s mailbox.

We placed the shoes in the back of the teenager’s new car and she dove right in. Neither of us knew her sneakers had zippers and she didn’t recall the color so those were fun surprises.

I didn’t have the strength to try on all my shoes— it was my bedtime by this point and we weren’t even home! I did however put on my DV by Dolce Vita laceless sneakers and wear them for the tour around Joan’s quaint home.

When we got home I piled my shoes on the table and my cat Fog made himself a bed on the Stitch Fix shoe duster bags.

Then yesterday I wore the laceless sneakers to work because my Vans needed the laces laced through and I just didn’t even want to untie and retie the Tom’s. But maybe I should have as today when I tried the Toms on my left foot was so tight I couldn’t wiggle my toes and my right foot couldn’t even get into the shoe.

To see me try these shoes on, click here for the YouTube video.

Shame as they were pretty. And had some nice cushy stuff in them.

But sadly I threw away the return label. And the garbage was at the curb. So, yes, I went through my own garbage. Digging through cat refuse to open the discarded Stitch Fix bag and grab the label.

But then I realized that I don’t have an envelope.

At this point, I think I’m going to slap it on the shoe duster bag and hand it to my former supervisor on Sunday morning. When we moved to day shift, she went to women’s returns.

I’d love to exchange them— but I don’t know if I need an 8W, an 8.5 or an 8.5W.

Meanwhile, I’m happy with my other shoes.

Here Kitty Kitty

Yes, that is a kitten. Yes that is a photo by the amazing Joan Zachary. Yes, that is the teenager.

Please check out this blog post about the upcoming book to benefit Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab. Yes, I am helping to write it, putting my journalism skills to work. And I am offering cat wisdom and reprinting a flash fiction I wrote in high school.

As The FURR Flies, an anthology of cat stories, heart-warming tales from cat rescuers, cat resources and cat advice has gone from in the pipeline to …

Here Kitty Kitty

Mallet finger update: I’ve had it with this splint

Today was my last official day working with a disability accommodation in the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy warehouse. It’s Sunday, tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and I had a helluva time getting out of bed when the alarm went off at 4:15 a.m.

So I didn’t.

I was in the middle of an anxiety dream where I was with an old friend that cut off ties with me a decade ago… and I think a few people I’ve lost were in that dream.

I reset my alarm for 4:45 and started my day a little off and then the Keurig decided I only deserved half a cup of coffee. As. If.

Today was my first day working in my new splint. (If you didn’t know I lost the first one in my car, you can read that story here.)

I’ve suspected since Friday afternoon that my new splint was too tight, but I didn’t confirm it until I started to see marks on my finger, deep ridges, yesterday.

During work today it got pretty unbearable— so when they let us out early I came home, heated the teapot and dropped the custom splint into a bowl.

I poured the boiling water into the bowl and reshaped the plastic. It’s not nearly as perfectly molded as the professional job, but it doesn’t pinch my finger.

Hunting among urban decay and industrial ruins for spaceships

There is an industrial site about a mile from my home, probably a brownfield. Everything on the property has been demolished, except for a mega-furnace of some sort, metal and concrete, far across the field like a spaceship from a 1940s science fiction movie.

This has fascinated me, again and again. So today I invited my photographer friend Joan Zachary and we went on a photo adventure. And trespassing.

These were shot with my phone.

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The July newsletter promotes free books

Tidbits that made me happy today

I helped my baby, The Teenager, buy a 2012 Nissan RogueI made “ugly bean dip,” a vegan concoction that sounds disgusting but is so tasty with your favorite chips. Recipe here. Great for holiday picnics! We stopped at our local Target, where I worked for nearly a decade in the cafe. The store, 2536, is in the midst of a rather tasteless remodel. The cafe sink is in the parking lot. I haven’t worked there for three years now, but man… did the memories come back. I pulled my car next to the fence, put on my flashers and snapped this photo.