Damned If You Jew

Greetings!

I hope all of my American readers had a dandy fourth of July! Mine went pretty well. My sister and I cooked a rather nomerful dinner for the family. My job was to cook hamburgers. The house didn't burn down and no one got food poisoning so I consider my venture into cooking vastly successful. I was also able to see some lovely fireworks by walking down my road and standing on a neighbor's lawn. The neighbor's Puggle (Pug and Beagle mix) wasn't exactly fond of my presence. It was basically saying "RUB MY TUMMY OR GTFO", so the Puggle got belly rubs while we watched the fireworks.

Yup, that was my fourth of July. Alas, my fourth of July weekend kinda sucked. I attended the funeral for my childhood friend. That of course is insanely sad to begin with and that alone could have easily made for an incredibly somber weekend. But, as luck would have it events at said funeral made it worse. The minister or whoever was proceeding over the service in an attempt to comfort everyone in the room started on this whole big "believe in Jesus and you will get into heaven" speech. So Crippie, along with a fair amount of people in the room (including members of my friend's family) were damned to hell! Funness! I've been damned to hell before in other religious ceremonies before and I usually don't take much offense to it. But I came to that funeral to mourn my friend, not to be to told that "Jesus is your key to heaven". That put an additional damper on the weekend that's for sure.

The cherry on top was when the idiot minister started talking about how this was all part of "God's plan". I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but I genuinely do not understand how that can be seen as comforting and frankly I find it upsetting. God wanted my friend to die? God wants a family to suffer? What kind of loving God would do that? This doesn't just apply to this one situation, but in life as a whole. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard something along the lines of "Your disability is part of God's plan for you". God wanted me to be like this? The hell man? God wants me to learn some valuable lesson? If God was so all powerful he'd be able to find better ways to go about these lessons. Is it a test? Something like the Book of Job? If so, that's equally stupid. God destroys Job's life to prove a point to the devil, why should God care about what the devil thinks anyway? Sure, he "gives it back" in the end, but I doubt that Job forgot about the family he lost.

Since I'm going on and on about how much I disagree with this theory I should probably state my own. Clearly I'm not a terribly religious person, but my answer as to why terrible things like this happen is this... There is no reason as to why these things happen. They just do unfortunately. We can try to learn from what we have experienced and let the terrible events mold us into better people or we can let them ruin us. The choice is up to you and you alone.

Again, I'm sorry if I offended anyone, these opinions are mine and mine alone. I completely understand that everyone has the right to believe whatever their little hearts desire. If you believe that God has a plan for everyone and that makes you happy, good for you. I'd never flat out call anyone an idiot for believing that. Just a heads up for people who do believe that, be careful when trying to comfort someone in a time of great hardship. It might comfort them sure, but they could also share Crippie's philosophy and get pissed.

What do y'all think? Am I missing the point of something? Feel free to comment and explain the God's Plan thing to me, I'm genuinely curious as to how it is seen as comforting.

To make up for the heavyness of this post, here's Helen contemplating life

Who am I? What am I? Where am I?

Crippie's Tippie - Believe whatever makes you happy

Life's Not As Bad As It Seems

Ohai!

I hope all my lovely readers had a lovely weekend. My weekend was pretty good, did some work, played with the pets, and um... oh yeah I GOT A CAR!!! Well, Crippie started the process of obtaining a car, I should actually have the car in a week. I'll post about it as soon as I get those keys in my crippled lil' hands.
So today after starting the whole car process I got to thinking "wow, this time last year I was afraid to drive on my own" once I starting thinking that a whole bunch of "wows". I thought about how it's been over six months since I've had surgery and how *knock on wood* I haven't had any major complications since my last surgery. I thought about how even though there are times when I have been in pain is thankfully manageable. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that my life is going pretty damn well right now. It's funny because for the past few weeks I haven't been feeling like that at all... far from it actually. Sure there are some really craptacular things going on my life now both disability related and not, but that's not what I am focusing on. I am focusing on the strides I have made in the past year, the milestones I have achieved so many things in the past couple of months. I cannot let the bad things shadow the good.
I am also making sure that I take advantage and appreciate the time of "good" health that I am having. I am well aware that this time of good health is only temporary and that sooner or later something will creep up and bite me in the ass, but in the meantime I'm enjoying my health while I have it.

Crippie's Tippie- Heated blankets and throws can be your best friend on an achy day.

PS. One of the reasons I have been sad is that one of my close relatives is very sick, so if my readers could send some healing ninja vibes to Crippie's Auntie I'd greatly appreciate it. 

I Can Do It

Hello, my name is sister Crippie (Book of Mormon joke btw)

I just realized that it's been several days since I've posted, whoops. The main reason I haven't been blogging is that I have been busy being a scenic artist for a local theatre group. I've literally been painting faux marble and faux wood since Tuesday. It's very hard work and to say it's physically demanding is an understatement.  Doing all this physical work is very difficult, tiring, and painful at times, but I am willing to suck the pain up for theatre! 

aaannnndddd transition to the reason I'm posting/crippie rant 

Most people are surprised when they find out that I physically can paint sets, they don't think I can do it. It annoys me when people automatically assume that I can't do something. I hate it when people ask "oh do you need help?" "it this hurting you?' "can you do this?" and so and so fourth. I know that they mean no harm in asking and are only looking out for me, normal people should follow this general rule of thumb... If I do not ask for help or if I don't tell you I cannot do something... chances are I CAN DO IT ON MY OWN. Unless I ask for help or clearly look like I am struggling there is no need to ask if I need help.

Crippie's Tippie- Let cripples be independent when they can be. 

The Pros And Cons of Being Disabled

Greetings,


People often ask me if I could somehow be magically cured, would I take the opportunity? Honestly it's not an easy question to answer. I decided to make a list of the pros and cons of being a cripple to see which one would win.
CON:
1- Everyday tasks are challenging and painful
2- People treat you differently
3- You feel like an outsider
4- You are never "normal"
5- Flat out inability to do certain tasks
PRO:
1- Handicap Parking Permit... HOLLA!
2- Inner strength and character
3- Different sense of reality
I'd like to elaborate on the last one. Thanks to my disability I've learned a lot of life's lessons in a relatively short period of time. This altered, and in my opinion, improved sense of reality is the best perk of being a cripple (although handicap parking permits are freakin' awesome). So to answer the question... if I could be magically cured would I take the opportunity? While I would love to be free of illness I would have a massive identity crisis without it, so I'll just save myself the trouble and stay as I am.


Extended Crippie's Tippies (Crippie's Life Lessons) Part 1
1) Sometimes you have to do something regardless of whether or not it is painful. I learned this with years of physical therapy. Physical therapy is crazy painful, but if I didn't do I wouldn't be able to walk.
2) All things will pass. Whenever I am in a lot of pain or going through a particularly hard day, I remember that's all it is, a bad day. It will pass and it will get better.
3) Be thankful for everything you can do. This is probably really hard to do and practice, but it's important. I know what it is like to suddenly lose the ability to do something, once I lose this ability I feel like crap for not realizing how awesome it was to be able to do it. For example, I've recently lost a lot of mobility in my shoulders, thus I cannot reach very high. I miss being able to grab something on the top of a cabinet. Now I am thankful for every little ability that I do have. While I will probably have more instances throughout my life of losing my ability to do something, sooner or later everyone will experience this. Take a moment every once in a while to appreciate what you have when you have it.