(no subject)

[lakeeffectgirl]

Winter has been somewhat a struggle - America, etc., plus the weather has been unsteady for months. One day it's freezing and the next day it's fifty degrees, and my body just does not handle the rapid changes well. I have been using a rollator when I go most places, more often than not. If other people are with me I can usually get by with just the cane, or if it's the sort of space where there are close walls, but I can't cross open spaces (like from a parking lot to a shop door) by myself without something bigger than a cane to steady me. Which is really annoying when the place I am trying to go doesn't have a handicap door. Thankfully I can still lift the rollator in and out of my car alone, but there's a lighter three-wheeled option that I will probably buy sooner rather than later and leave the heavier one as a backup.

I daydream about designing some sort of mobility device that I can hook around me like a little cage that will balance me when I need it and stop me from tripping but that I don't have to hold in my hands or lean on.

Speaking of buying things: I am struggling with where to shop for life necessities again these days. I don't want to use Amazon unless there's no other alternative, and I don't want to shop at Target now that they've reversed their DEI policies, and Wal-Mart/Sam's Club has always been terrible so I haven't shopped there in years. Menards is owned by a super MAGA white man so that's out, and we no longer have a Shopko or a KMart here. Apparently Meijer sucks too re: political donations... ugh. Ugh! In general.

And as always, winter writer's block. So I have read five books already this month instead - mostly mystery/thrillers, and the "new" Michael Crichton that James Patterson finished, which had a decent catastrophe plot but was very thin in making the characters feel like actual people.

Ugh! In general.

Comments

[rsadelle]

*hugs* Boo to places that don't have accessible entrances!

I think if someone does design your daydream of a device, they should incorporate the term "exoskeleton" into the name of it. (I was once trying to remember the name of the things people with Ehlers-Danlos wear on their arms/wrists/hands, and the only thing I could come up with was "hand exoskeletons.")

Ugggghhhhh, buying things. I do a lot of personal care type shopping at CVS or Walgreens. I know they're not great companies either, but they seem to be as bad as each other, and I have to buy my lotion somewhere. I try to go shopping in person so I'm at least supporting something in my town, but they're so frequently are out of things or have things locked up that I do end up ordering online a bunch too. (That is also hit-or-miss - I once ordered 9 items from Walgreens and received only 6 of them. At least they issue refunds quickly if you complain.) One thing I've been trying to do if I can't buy something at a place near me is buy directly from the company that makes it. This only sometimes works (CeraVe does not sell their products directly, and some places only sell through Amazon). I also have a Costco membership, which I mostly use for toilet paper, Kleenex, and Zyrtec. Not that Instacart isn't evil, but you can Instacart from Costco even if you don't have a Costco membership. (I always tip high to make up for the evilness of Instacart.)