An Expressed Perspective

I'M HERE

2010-07-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

I'm here, a tad down but far from over. Give me a bit more time, Universe, and I'll be an everyday visitor once again.

Just When I Thought I'd Heard It All...

2010-06-26T17:22:00.000-07:00

Now I've heard/seen everything...just interviewed a chic named ''Benji''...ok, fine, until she said her parents smoked too much pot while her mom was pregnant and that's why she is named Benji. Good times, baby. Now tell me...should I hire her?

Side note...my man is kicking some serious ass remodeling our house... Mike's work is as beautiful as poetry. I still can't believe it's ours, and we are just getting started. God bless you, Dad. I love you forever, through all space and time.

This Week's Misc.

2010-06-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

holy shit's of shit's...calling people like crazzzzy who are answering my classified ad...as of 7/2, i'm aidless - don't ask, i'll tell the story later.

anaphylactic reaction to i.v. penicillin yesterday...tons of fun...2 hours to get a pic line in, no shark graft until infection is mia. trying new med tomorrow, wish me luck.

sorry for the poor form, exhausted. love to you, Universe, praying about the oil spill.

Current Conditionss

2010-06-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

I never remember being this tired. I made it through Father's Day, only to have my only current staff person quit, be told by Dr. Levine the graft on my ankle didn't take and I have to go back to the O.R. asap,and my infectious disease doc called me himself to tell me I have a UTI involving the bacteria pseudomonas, requiring 10 days of I.V. antibiotics. The worst part is I'm so fucking tired from being sick that coping with all of this horse shit is next to impossible.

Fuck, I'm tired. Interviewing potential staff, O.R. trips as common as Starbucks drive thru's, fatigue from another world. Wish me luck.

Biography

2010-06-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

I had to write a brief autobio for tvlesson.com. Although I wrote a memoir, I always find writing my bio difficult...I feel no matter what my word choices are, I always end up sounding like the next poster child for the disabled community. Anyway, here it is. Tell me what you think, and please, be harsh.

Amy Alexander recently authored her first book, “Life At Breakneck Speed’’ and is in the process of attracting a publisher. The title of her memoir comes from Amy’s life experience of living with a spinal cord injury from a car accident at the age of twenty-one that left her paralyzed from the shoulders down. Making a promise to herself to live a life without regret, she focuses on squeezing every drop of vivacity out of each moment. She believes her writing can help other’s find the ease and pure joy that comes by making this level of awareness the staple of a person’s daily diet of life. Paralysis comes in many forms – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, and her writing relates to all.

Amy has made her home in Upstate New York and is lucky enough to be surrounded by family and friends dear to her. She is heavily involved in The Amy Alexander Foundation For Spinal Cord Injuries and she blogs daily on www.anexpressedperspective.blogspot.com. An additional element for Amy in her writing journey is to make her blog, ‘’An Expressed Perspective,’’ a column in a regular publication, offering advice through experience of the “paralyzing’’ circumstances anyone can find themselves in throughout life. Her website Spinal Times at www.spinaltimes.org has more information about Amy’s foundation, her writing and her inspirational speaking. Keep your eyes wide and your ears open; this is a woman that is here to stay and is just getting started.

Father's Day

2010-06-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

I cannot say how glad I am this damn day is almost over. My 1st Father's Day without my dad. I didn't think it would come...how could it, possibly, without him? But it did. Another affirmation that life is for the living. Mike and I BBQ'd at my brother's with his family and it was nice. If I could get through the thought of ''Is Dad okay?", I could deal with the ache of missing him so badly.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. We knew each other well so I know it's no surprise to you I've turned your house upside down and inside out. And I know when it's all done, you'll say, as you always did after I bulldozed through your resistance and did it anyway, ''Hey, pal, that looks pretty darn good.''

I love you, Dad. I miss you more than I can say.

Happy and Sad

2010-06-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

My niece Jamie had a horse show today and she sits in a saddle as if born in one. At the age of eleven, she is already a very accomplished rider. Her aunt is proud beyond words.

I've been heavy hearted these last few days...Father's Day is fast approaching and I don't know what to do. The thought that I can't go into dad's living room where he'd be sitting in his blue recliner chair and say ''Happy Father's Day, Dad!'', to which he would reply ''Thank you, pal'' fills me with a sadness so strong I wonder at times how I will survive through it. Breaking my neck was easier than this. I still can't believe he isn't here. Where the fuck is he, anyway, and is he okay?

It's pouring rain outside tonight, matching the tears pouring down my face as they soak the top of my tank top. I will just have to keep breathing in and out and say that is enough to work on for now. Even my extreme Type A personality will recognize this as accomplishment enough right now.

Relay For Life

2010-06-12T18:09:00.000-07:00

I just got back from an amazing fund raiser for cancer called ''Relay For Life.'' My foundation was one of it's sponsors so our name was on their t - shirts. I have never been so proud to have my name on something than I was to have it on these t - shirts. Dedicated and devoted cancer survivors, supporters and their families will walk throughout the night to finish their relay, regardless of what Mother Nature brings. As I write this, we are experiencing a heavy thunderstorm and I am about one mile away from the event.

I apologize for not writing all week, Universe. Sometimes life gets the best of me. Only temporarily, of course.

Congrats To Jimmy and Beyond

2010-06-08T17:03:00.000-07:00

Congrat's to Jimmy Phillips of P.B.H.S. Academy of Finance for winning a scholarship from the Amy Alexander Foundation For SCI! Jimmy rocks with being the first to volunteer when needed, including for us. His win is well deserved; BRAVO!:)

FYI...12TH Annual Amy Alexander Foundation For SCI Golf Outing is OCTOBER 11TH, 2010! Mark your calendar and stay tuned for sponsorship information. Every bit count$!

Lots of writing today, arm may fall off if I don't tie this up. Goodnight and Godbless.

If no one is reading this, it feels like the world record for the longest fucking diary ever written.

Academy Of Finance Award's Dinner

2010-06-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

Tonight Mike and I are going to The Pine Bush Academy Of Finance Awards Dinner. My foundation gives out two $500.00 scholarships a year - one to a student with a disability and one to an Academy student because they always donate a few students to help out with our annual golf outing fundraiser. This year the scholarship goes to Jimmy Phillips. His teacher tells me that he is an exceptional young man, always the 1st person to offer to help when volunteers are needed for a particular event or project. This will be my first year going to give out the award personally. I feel privileged to do so, and I wish for more young people of Jimmy's caliber to graduate high school and plan on continuing their education. This makes all of the hard work to fund raise, of which I do very little, all worth while.

Shopping Sunday

2010-06-06T19:04:00.001-07:00

Holy crap of all craps...I totally forgot the fantastic effects of retail shopping! I spent the entire afternoon at the mall and it was BLISS! I went a bit nut$, but I had good reason to celebrate...it's extremely hard for me to gain weight, I've been a ''0'' forever, and reach my goal of being a ''4'' this month...skipped right through ''2.'' I think I actually spotted a few curves coming back...wahooooooooooo baby!

Hey ya'll...I'm needing some new advertising blood for home health staff...$11.00 per hr./health insurance, double time pay for OT...I'm getting the same 50 citizens responding to my classifieds that you wouldn't let weedwack outside, let alone assist me w/my personal care gig...any suggestions?:) I constantly use local n.papers and craigslist...

Sleep well, Universe.

Notes From Yesterday

2010-06-04T17:51:00.000-07:00

The blog article I posted yesterday, ''How To Change The Perception Of Your Life'', was actually written by me a few days prior for the website www.tvlesson.com. A friend of mine, Natasha Rhodes, a very well published author in her own right, (Blade Trilogies ring a bell?) is helping me build a profile on the site in an effort to market my writing. I'm hoping to tickle the right person's interest to help me get my book published. Hell, by the end of a year of blogging, I'll have written enough for another book. Anyway, the site is very cool and focused on the ''How To'' of anything - physical, spiritual, emotional or mental. What I have to offer fits in best with life experiences and self - help needs, which are topics a lot of people search the site for. The site gets about 2 milion hits a year, so I'm really excited to have a new avenue of exposure for my writing. Natasha was actually my guide, my cheerleader and my touchstone throughout the year I wrote my book. I couldn't have done it without her and that year is filled with a massive amount of fun memories. We have yet to meet. She is in L.A., originally from the U.K., and a mutual friend put us in touch. At some point, we're going to have to meet in person, but we feel as if we've known each other for a long time. We always pick up right where we left off in conversation, and I truly forget we have yet to meet face to face.

It's 9:15 p.m. and exhaustion is setting in, so I'm signing off. Nite nite, Universe. If no one else is reading this, at least I know I have one reader...my dad.

How To Change The Perception Of Your Life

2010-06-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

‘’HOW TO CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION OF YOUR LIFE’’

Perception is a funny thing. Its power can make or break your day, your week, your year or your life. For the last sixteen years, I have been living life paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a car accident, and my perception can be my biggest ally or my toughest enemy. While you don’t need any money, social status or specific set of circumstances to posses a perception, a positive one can, at times, seem impossible to attain. A positive perception is one of those things in life that is hardest to get when we need it the most. Before we figure out how to change a negative perception into a positive one so we can bathe in its benefits, we need to make sure we know what perception is. Put very simply, our perception is our point of view. A positive perception makes us feel as if our wildest dreams are at our fingertips, while a negative perception can make us feel that even breathing is pointless. Since how we feel is our first step in creating the life we wish for, and our perception determines how we feel, lets make sure we know how to change a possible negative perception into a positive one.

Step 1: Make the effort to breathe in and out. If you can’t, get hooked up to a machine that can do it for you.

Step 2: Get it into your head that you don’t need anything else than what you have in your current moment to vaporize your negative perception. Depending on the hardness of your head, this idea may need to marinate for a bit. Be patient.

Step 3: Replace your negative thought. It can be with anything that feels good and gives you that warm, yummy sensation in your gut that produces an instant smile. Do it quickly, swiftly. Visualize literally spitting the negative thought out of your head and seeing it disappearing.

Step 4: Next, fill the now lovely, open, anything is possible space in your brain with a positive thought. Choose something really fantastic - A loved one’s face, an amazing memory or simply any thought or image that fills you with instant, effortless joy. Let this joy soak into every inch of your being, until you feel it streaming out of your fingers, toes and the top of your head, like sunshine. Take a moment to notice the way you feel – light, hopeful and happy. I have a few golden reflections I keep in my head just for these occasions, and they never get old.

Step 5: A negative perception is based on a problem or set of circumstances in our life in which we feel stuck, without options and paralyzed. This is an awful feeling, and creating possible solutions and strategies are literally impossible if they are coming from a negative perception. Now, armed with your new perception, created simply by choosing a positive thought that has filled you with hope and unlimited possibilities, take a peak at your circumstances that need changing. I guarantee things look different. I guarantee you feel different. You see options. You see possibilities. You see change.

Step 6: Recognize that nobody deserves credit for this but you. You didn’t have to wait for outside circumstances to befall upon you by chance or some obscure outside source – all you needed was you. The big secret? All you’ll ever need is you.

Step 7: Tell yourself that like any new habit, it may take some time to break the old habit. You may fall off the wagon, many, many, times. That is perfectly okay and to be expected. Taking steps backwards is not a sign that you should throw in the proverbial towel. It simply means that you have a bit more work to do. Depending on where you are in your life with you’re spiritual mechanics, a positive perception comes easier to some of us than others. Like body mechanics – if you regularly practice good body mechanics in your daily life, when you decide to start lifting weights and exercising, it will come to you easier than if you have to learn good body mechanics first. But it’s not important where your starting line is. What matters is you’re on your way to looking great and feeling great. When you fall off your positive perception wagon, remember your personal power that you don’t need anyone or anybody or anything to get back on – just you.

Step 8: Enjoy the feeling of being the one in command of your life and no longer a victim of circumstances beyond your control. Bask in the knowledge that your personal power is always in the bank, and is constantly full, regardless of our present economy.

Step 9: Enjoy watching your life you wish manifest, as if by magic, as you practice the power of positive perception. Be sure to share it’s magic with others.

Just A Few Words

2010-05-31T18:35:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how long it's been since I've written ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, (wow, ten days), but I was in desperate need of rest. For me, that means I cannot even turn my computer on, because if I do, everything I need to work on is staring me in the face and I can't help but dive in. This equates to me never leaving my desk and never getting any rest. I'm an all or nothing girl, and it doesn't always work in my favor. I'll be back to blogging and networking in the next few days, so goodnight to all, love and light to you as always.

I Miss You

2010-05-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not sharing as of late. Bone biopsy today, it's 9 p.m. and I'm whipped. By Wednesday I'll have the bacteria results, Thursday I have an appointment for a pic line, and hopefully I can get started on meds by the weekend. All I know is, I need energy.

Hope you are well, Universe, and I'll write more when I can. I miss you.

Sick Vs. Injured

2010-05-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

Everyday for the last 16 years, I have woken up everyday paralyzed and have dealt with the challenges that comes along with that. Like anybody, disabled or not, some days are more challenging than others. Right now, I have a serious infection that is sucking the life force out of me. I'm so exhausted that each day I wake up, I don't know where I am going to get the energy from to get out of bed, and that's with somebody else getting me dressed. I realize that there is a huge difference between being sick vs. being injured. I can't move 80% of my body, and I have aches and pains, but I don't feel sick. I have an enormous amount of respect for individuals dealing with chronic illnesses. Their strength of character astounds me, and I can only hope to emulate them in some small way. To all fellow humans living with an illness, you have my utmost respect and my very best wishes. May God and the Universe bless you and surround you with healing light.

At Last, An Explanation

2010-05-19T17:44:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling reallllly tired the last two months...exhausted beyond anything I ever remember feeling. Finally, we found a reason. A sore on my ankle that had a scab on it went from looking like any old scab to a yucky, wet, open wound that looks quite nasty. A recent bone scan this week confirmed osteomyelitis, which is an infection in the bone. No one is glad to get osteomyelitis, but I'm extremely glad to get an answer to my two months of fatigue. A bone biopsy will determine what bacteria has made its home in my ankle and then I will finally be able to get put on the right antibiotics. I'll have the bone biopsy within the next few days, then a pic line put in my arm to allow me to run my I.V.antibiotics right from home and I'll be all set. I can't wait, I have so many things on my plate right now that demand my attention, and my attention demands energy. I'm excited to get better, and I'll keep you posted.

Peace and light, and please keep me in your thoughts Universe...I need your energy.

Dad and the Relay For Life

2010-05-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

The Amy Alexander Foundation For SCI is sponsoring this year's Relay For Life, an event to raise funds for those living with cancer. Its held at Pine Bush's town park June 12th and is an amazing, moving event. I was asked to write a bit about my dad for a page in their program and I wanted to share. Anything about Dad is worth sharing.

My father, Frank Alexander, passed away September 25^th, 2009, after living with cancer since 2001. If anybody could be an example of how to live with cancer, it would be my dad. Although he experienced radiation, multiple rounds of chemotherapy, a multitude of hospital stays, more surgeries than I can count and a heart attack somewhere in between, dad loved life and knew how to enjoy it. He adored his two grandchildren and was able to be a large part of their childhood and early teenage years. He rarely missed a baseball game, a swim meet or a horse show. If his cancer went in a direction that required treatment, he quietly did it and kept right on going. My brother and I used to say there must be youth serum in is chemotherapy. It wasn’t any secret serum…it was dad’s attitude. Even though he left us way too early, I feel in my heart that my dad had a very full life, and I know he would agree.

There is one huge regret I have regarding dad’s life, however, and that is the late detection of his cancer. He had his first colonoscopy when he was 70 years old, and cancer was immediately detected. If the cancer would have been detected earlier, he may be attending the Relay For Life with me instead of me writing about him. Get your mammograms, your colonoscopies and whatever other tests your doctor recommends for early cancer detection. I agree, the tests aren’t always pleasant, but I’m guessing you agree it beats fighting cancer.

Amy Elizabeth Alexander

www.Spinaltimes.org

www.anexpressedperspective.blogspot.com

I Remember Why I Love To Write

2010-05-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

I was reminded this weekend why I love to write. Sharing stories and experiences in hopes of making people stop long enough to think and then possibly, if I am very lucky, they apply a smidgen of what I've shared to their own life.

Yesterday, my 15 year old nephew and 11 year old niece spent the entire afternoon planting flowers for me. There were a lot of flowers to plant, it was pretty damn hot and they did a 1st class job, right down to hosing off the deck when they were finished. Sometime during the afternoon, when I told them how much their help meant to me, my nephew replied off the cuff, ''No problem, Aunt Amy. It's our chance to give back.'' His sister nodded in agreement. Now, I'm sure their parents explained this to them, help Aunt Amy out, she's good to you, blah blah blah. But those two kids busted their tails for me all afternoon and the attitude they had about it was fantastic. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fool, their popular, fun, gorgeous kids and I'm sure planting flowers for me on a hot weekend wasn't 1st pick on their social agenda, but that made their attitudes matter to me even more.

The next time you are stopped at a stoplight in your hometown and you see a bunch of kids using obscene language, making fun of others, smoking, with giving back to anyone as foreign as a language they don't speak, think of my nephew and niece. Know that there are parents out there who are spending time with their kids, teaching them the tools needed for life, teaching them the gift of giving back, that not every young person of the upcoming generation feels entitled to everything while they give back nothing. We all can benefit from the gift of giving back.

Dear Universe

2010-05-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

Dearest Universe,

I apologize for the staleness of my writing the last ten days. I am experiencing some heavy duty family relationship issues and I can't focus on anything else. Normally, I would write about things and give them up to you, therefore allowing my internal emotional turmoil and sadness to begin healing. In this case, however, some of the people involved, one in particular, would feel uncomfortable of my ''airing of dirty laundry'', and since he asks so very little of me, including this, my usual healing process by sharing my problems with you would not work because of my love for him. I am happy to do this, it's just that my creative outlet has a temporary kink.

I felt you deserved an explanation, as you are always there for me. Wish me luck, and I hope this experience in my life is over soon.

100th Episode

2010-05-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

OMG, it's my 100th episode, and I've had ONE comment! I'm a roaring success!!!

''Goodnight and good luck.''

Tired

2010-05-11T16:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry to disappoint any followers, but my exhaustion is putting me to bed asap; it's not quite 8 p.m. A good bit tomorrow, I promise.

A Bend In The Road

2010-05-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get nervous when I'm in the car and there is a bend coming up in the road. I'm not a fan of being in the car anyway, and I hate not being able to see what's around the bend because then I can't prepare for it. I brace myself for a deer in the road, or a stopped car, or anything where we have to brake unexpectedly. 99.9% the road is clear, and if we do need to slow down or change direction, we have plenty of time to prepare. Detours sometimes even lead to a better route than your original one, but the journey of uncertainty can still be scary.

I am really excited about my upcoming shoulder surgery, and I had my timeline for healing all planned out so it wouldn't interfere with my home renovations and mortgage closing. Not so fast. My shoulder surgery is taking much longer to coordinate than expected because of the team of four different surgeons involved and I was beginning to get frustrated. Everything happens for a reason. A weird cut on my foot got infected and it looks like I am going to need six weeks of I.V. anti-biotics and there is no-way my shoulder surgeon would proceed while I have a somewhat severe infection. I had been beginning to feel sick but thought it was a UTI coming on. Anyway, I'm going to be fine but I'm beginning to have respect for the bends in my life's road. They protect you from not seeing too far ahead.

The Key To Happiness

2010-05-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

It's Mother's Day, and I wish to send a message of love and appreciation to all the mom's in our world, including Mother Nature. Thank you for all that you do, both big and small

As an observer, so much of good parenting comes from the way you respond to your children. As we go through life and form relationships as adults, I think this continues to hold true. The way you and your husband or wife or partner respond to each other when working out a disagreement has much to do with the outcome. Yehuda Berg, my favorite teacher of Kabbalah, believes the way we respond to our life's circumstances is the key to happiness.

''...At the end of the day, the key to happiness is taking ultimate responsibility for your reactions to all of your experiences - the good and the chaotic. Whatever enters into your life is something you have to fully own. Even if an event in your life doesn't make sense in the context of this life experience, you have to accept that it's a lesson you need to learn from. It may even be a lesson held over from a previous incarnation.

Today, remember that fully understanding and accepting responsibility is the only way to find happiness, fulfillment, and your purpose on this journey...''

I would have to 100% agree and will work harder to put this into practice in my everyday life as casually as I brush my teeth.

Since I've been gone...

2010-05-07T19:11:00.000-07:00

Hey there, sorry I've been MIA for a few days, definetly not my M.O. Finalized kitchen remodeling plans tonite at Lowes, and the ADA version offered by our cabinet company is a JOKE! Definetly not designed by a fellow wheelchair user. If you can't afford to have your kitchen custom designed, you're screwed to the wall. Custom is not within our budget,so we will do the best we can to modify within what is offered. But now I have a bug up my butt about this, and am letting a few ''awareness'' ideas marinate. Peace, love, light, hope and all the rest always. Love to hear from you, I know you're out there.

The Bonus Round

2010-05-03T18:13:00.000-07:00

I've borrowed another ''Tune Up'' from Yehuda Berg, the director of the Kabbalah Center in L.A. This happens to be a ''weekly tune up'', which is longer than a ''daily tune up'', but when I read it, it just resonated through me and really got me thinking. I had to share, and I hope it gets you thinking, too...whoever you are.

The Bonus Round

Last week we spoke about Spring cleaning and looking through our relationships to create more order as Spring cleaning also refers to spiritual work.  There are a lot of things we have to do along our journey that aren't glorious.  Back in ancient days, if you wanted to be the high priest, you had to be willing to clean the floors too. The high priest could only do his "special work" once a year.  We all want to grow spiritually and be closer to the Creator. We want to remove the blockages that keep us from seeing things as they really are. We want to gain power to shift things for the better -- not just for ourselves, but for others as well.  And more often than not, it's a dirty job. And yes, someone's got to do it.  Take a look at your spiritual regiment. Not just what you do to connect -- pray, meditate, journal, etc., but also how you lead a spiritual life.  Remove the things you shouldn't be doing: things you do for recognition, respect, honor or "brownie points."  And when you have that cleared space, add the things you should be doing: the silent things, the tougher things, those which are more challenging and less immediately rewarding.  What needs to be added to your life so you can connect more powerfully, not just to the Light, but to more people?  Remember, any kind of successes -- in relationships, finance, spirituality, health, and so on -- are results of the other work we do. You can't simply ask the Light to take you to your next level. You have to work on it. If you want more success, try being more compassionate, a better listener, less of a victim. Then you get the other stuff.  Life is like a video game where you accomplish one thing, and then you get the key to the next level. When you transform one thing, you get a key: it can be prosperity, fertility, personal power and so on.  This week, think about what strengths you need in your daily struggles. What personal obstacles would you like to remove? Imagine yourself as that successful person with those strengths, and without those barriers. See the results.  Where's your next level?

A Pureness Of Heart

2010-05-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

After a busy family play day and spending the majority of the afternoon in my best friends house to abuse her air conditioning and absolutely soak up her three kids, the oldest of whom is my godson, my brain is mush. My godson has an amazingly creative imagination and loves playing ''Pirates'' with me. He builds very intricate ships and lasers and warriors and ''land-ho's!'' with legos. As we play, to balance out the fact that my hands are paralyzed, I have to come up with a constant verbal stream of extremely vivid details to fight battles, use weapons, reincarnate my dead warriors and protect my ''land-ho!" After about five hours of the game, my godson is tireless, while I am drooling and having trouble remembering my own name. I tell him Aunt Amy has to go home and rest and after promising him one quick wheel race outside on the tennis court, he graciously accepts my departure. This evening, after walking me over to my van, being a big helper by assisting in buckling my wheelchair to the floor of the vehicle, he tells me he loves me, he'll miss me and to drive safe. He's five. As my boyfriend starts the van, he repeats these well wishes a few times and by now, it is very hard for me to leave. It's about 6:30 p.m., and I'm mulling things over in my head, thinking maybe I can stay for homework and bath time, that I could just stay up later at home to get my own work done, etc., etc. My body, however, which is battling a very strong infection, is telling me it needs rest sooner than later and reluctantly, I listen. His obvious complete pureness of heart makes it hard for me to not cry, but I put the window down with a big smile, and, blinking hard, tell him I will see him in a few days and stay through bath time. I hear him calling as we drive down the driveway, and we beep the car horn as we turn onto the road. By now my shirt collar is wet with tears and my boyfriend holds my hand. When we pull into our own driveway, which is about 500 feet down the road from my godson's, Mike gets me tissues and says simply, ''He is beautiful.'' Wordlessly, I nod my head yes. I would have to agree.

Holy Smokes...literally

2010-05-01T18:23:00.000-07:00

Holy smokes, now I know why there is a 10% unemployment rate. In my help wanted ad for staff, I included in CAPS AND BOLD ''EXPERIENCE NECESSARRY, NON - SMOKER''...a chic came for an interview today smelling like an ass ash tray...in my phone screening last nite with her, I asked her if she smoked and I received the answer ''no'...today when I asked her, she said ''I like, didn't think you were, like, SERIOUS!''...

The scary part...she was my best responder so far. All the rest I could tell were nut jobs even over the phone. Any advice and suggestions about where to find sane, decent smelling home health assistants would be greatly appreciated. I mean, I even offer health insurance!

Nothing Profound

2010-04-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

Had dinner w/fam, now quality time with my man. Taking a day of writing off.

Reasonable and Customary

2010-04-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

There is a phrase that health insurance policies have in their fine print - ''reasonable and customary.'' It protects the insurance company from being liable to pay outrageous fees from doctors and hospitals. Who has the power to set these rates I do not know, but that phrase has always stuck with me; ''reasonable and customary''...hmmmm.

This week, my elevator broke down yet again. The repair tech was here for 90 minutes and charged $483.00, of which $2.00 was for parts. I wasn't home when the repair was finished, and my boyfriend payed the bill by check. I was outraged when I got home and we immediately called the bank and stopped payment. I've called the repair company and so far it's been phone tag. Every company deserves to make money, good money, but that is ridiculous. I'll keep you posted as to the out come, because there is no way I am paying that much money for what was done here.

Wish me luck.

See Your Future With The Past

2010-04-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

I'm a big goal setter. Big goals, started with little goals created from baby step goals. If I just look at the big goals, I feel lost and overwhelmed. I find that one of my most powerful tool for seeing my future is learning from my past.

Before creating a goal and begin making choices and decisions to manifest that goal into your today's reality, recall the last time you created a similar goal that perhaps didn't go the way you wished it to. Think about how it turned out, and what you can do differently this time. And always remember to enjoy the entire process.

Best to you, Universe.

Problems Are Great!

2010-04-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

Today was an insane day. I left the house at 9:30 a.m. for two appointments in Rockland County. The first one was a frustrating nightmare and the second one was a piece of cake. Doesn't sound too bad, I know, but I was just so pressed for time I was really stressed. While racing home in hopes to be back so my aide can leave on time, my boyfriend calls to tell me our elevator repair person charged us $480.00 for 90 minutes worth of work. Parts were $2.00 and the rest was labor. I flipped and couldn't believe he had actually paid him on the spot. I told him to call the bank immediately to stop payment on the check and I would deal with it when I got home. I've since called the company twice but have not had a return call. Both times I simply said I felt I was overcharged and wanted to speak with someone regarding the bill. I bet my phone rings lickity split when they find out I stopped payment.

Next, I'm at my desk, deciding what significant problem I should tackle first on my somewhat intimidating list. I hear a slight knock at my door and within minutes my 5 year old nephew and 3 year old niece are lighting up my house. One glance at my list reminds me that problems are great because they'll wait for you. Out comes the markers, drawing paper, playdo and ice cream. It's fun and play and now my day is over. Like I said, problems are great because they will wait for you.

It was a great day.

Staff Is Secondary...NOT!

2010-04-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

Huge secondary issue when living with SCI is finding good staff to care for you in your home. When I was first injured, I thought all nurse type individuals were Florence Nightingales. The only person I knew personally at the time in health care was my sister-in-law who was an RN and she was a modern day Florence; kind, empathetic and proactive for her patients. So that's what I assumed would be coming through my door as I began the journey of living at home as a person with a disability. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Sixteen years later, I am a wary searcher of home health aides. I've had my checking account emptied more than once, my van stolen, clothes that have magically disappeared, and have heard every excuse of why someone could not come to work. That is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg. To hear it all, you'd have to read my book, and when I get it published, believe me, you'll be the first to know. Anyway, I'm short staffed in my home and my only full-time aide just told me she is moving down south June 2nd. Holy smokes. I knew it was coming, as she has been very open and honest in telling me months ago that her goal was to move down south by summer. I was just hoping it would happen later than sooner, or preferably, not at all.

The classifieds in my local paper bring me the same un-hireable degenerates with each ad I place. What I really need is four angels to appear at my door in home health aide form with all the characteristics I need. If anyone out there has a better idea, please send it my way.

Goodnight to you all, my fellow humans. And angels, too.

Spring Cleaning ''Tune Up''

2010-04-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how things come to us via the Universe in the proper order as we need them. I have a very significant relationship in my life that in the extremely near future is either going to become something that is a positive source in my life or it will be ended. I've been agonizing how to handle it, and I finally decided (or rather realized) no more ''have to's'' with me and relationships, meaning I must have a relationship with a person out of duty or obligation or bloodlines. Good makes me feel good, and bad makes me feel bad. I'm making it simple. Before writing my blog tonight, I checked my email and as I read my weekly Kabbalah ''Tune Up,'' from Yehuda Berg, a smile slowly spread across my face. Allow me to share.

W hen Spring comes, the cleaning begins. We understand this means getting rid of clothes that don't fit us anymore, as well as useless clutter. But it's also a good time to tidy things up spiritually.

We all have relationships that don't "fit" anymore. There are three sorts of these relationships:

1) It's a two-way street: There's circuitry.

2) It's a one-way street: You hope things might change, that there may be a chance for circuitry.

3) It’s a dead end: You have relationships you’d like to end but you feel you can’t cut the connection for whatever reason, or you just don't want to deal with it anymore.

This is the time to cleanse our relationships that lack hope of ever having circuitry. Keep in mind the relationships we do cleanse away are not negative. People aren't negative, it’s the combination between us that doesn't work. The problem is these connections can bring us to a negative place.

If we really understand this idea, we'll also realize that if we’re holding onto a relationship, person, or situation that no longer suits us, it means that someone who needs this connection is going without. It means we’re literally blocking someone else from having that opportunity. Rest assured, the person you are choosing to move on from WILL be great with someone else. Another friend. Another teacher.

Whether it's a romantic or business relationship, or a friendship, if we know it doesn't suit us anymore, it’s time to move on.

This week, look at your connections with people. Make a plan to awaken the reciprocity in the one-way streets: every one-way street can be divided into two-way streets. And as for the dead end relationships, remember that by holding onto them you are preventing other people from having the good they truly deserve through these connections. Let them go.

Daily Kabbalah ''Tune Up''

2010-04-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

Ask For It

The moment you ask for help from outside yourself, you create bigger realities and bigger results for yourself. How many times a day are you asking for guidance, in your challenges at work, while strenghtening a relationship. Even getting up in the morning with a clear consciousness.

Today, channel the right messages for yourself and others by asking for help throughout the day.

Setting The Tone

2010-04-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

Setting The Tone

Living with a positive intention sets the tone of your day. Today, allow yourself to walk around with one that brings a smile to your face.

I can't take credit for those words of guidance. At times, I find myself at a loss of what I wish to share with you personally that has the best chance of catching your interest and possibly benefiting you in some way. I subscribe to a daily and weekly ''Kabbalah Tune Up'' from the fantastic website www.yehudaberg.com. I absolutely love receiving them. The daily ones are just a sentence or two and always promote a great way for me to start my day. The once weekly tune ups are a bit longer, so I read them over the weekend to get me ready for my upcoming week. They're free, you can easily subscribe and just as easily unsubscribe if you feel the need. Try the daily ones out first, as they only take ten seconds to read. If you make the effort to open up the email and read the message, it really makes you feel like you're doing something good for yourself.

Love and light to all.

A True Beauty, Inside and Out

2010-04-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

When we think of a person who has had a stroke, we think of the elderly. Last week, a teenage beauty queen died from a massive stroke. She was not only beautiful on the out side, she was an angel of beauty on the inside. Tune into both videos for the full story.

http://www.kitv.com/video/23216753/index.html

The All American Game

2010-04-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

My nephew just pitched a FANTASTIC game, 16 - 5 against a tough team...keep rockin', Ty'. His entire team is full of talented players that make each game a privilege to watch.

Enough said, nothing in my day was better than this. Nite.

Reach Out

2010-04-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Like angels from heaven, a knock at my door late Sunday morning announced the arrival of my brother, sister - in - law and niece, Jamie; three of my favorite people. Perfect timing, too, because Sunday dawned with me feeling about the same as the evening before. Heavy, sad and doubtful, at life in general. My ever perceptive sister - in - law asked me how I was feeing and we spent some time chatting. My honey Mike treated everybody to lunch from our favorite sandwich place and then the guys went back to work and we three girls spent the afternoon at my brother and sister - in - laws house. We all got together later for dinner and spent the rest of the evening just hanging out. My niece cleaned me out in the board game ''Horseopoly'' and I had some unpleasant thoughts of how an 11 year old could manage real estate better than me. Mike and I came home around 9:30 p.m., got organized for the following day and called it a night. As I settled my head on my pillow, I couldn't believe how much better I felt.

When you're feeling down and out, overwhelmed, stuck, sad, alone, paralyzed, whatever, do yourself a favor - reach out, someone will be there. That first step is the hardest to take, but just do it. Everyone has someone - family, a friend, church parishioner, gym buddy, Facebook friend or a help hotline. It's so tempting to just stay in a hole and hide when we feel less than fabulous, but don't, because it just makes feeling good feel farther and farther away. Have the courage to reach out, because someone will be there.

A Bit Of Doubt

2010-04-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

I consider myself a pretty substantial optimist. By substantial, I mean someone that chooses to see a glass half full on a regular basis, regardless if some life chips may be down, as opposed to other self-proclaimed optimists who only see the positive once everything has worked out in their favor. Today however, I am experiencing a bit of doubt. It is not a nice feeling. I've written over 80 entries in my blog and have no idea if anyone is reading them. I've recently joined Facebook in hopes of networking writing groups in that way, so we'll see.

I pray for the courage to choose a better outlook tomorrow. Best to you, Universe, whoever you are.

A Night Off

2010-04-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

Taking a night off to spend quality time with my cat and my honey.

Wishing you a cozy evening with the ones you love.

Before You Complain...

2010-04-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

Every time I'm ready to complain about something in my life, the Universe taps me on the shoulder to remind me just how lucky I am. I recently received an email from a woman I had communicated with a few years ago when she was looking for suitable housing for her spinal cord injured son. Since our initial connection, her son has attempted suicide so many times and then lied during his counceling sessions that no facilities will take him due to the liability factor. His mother is unable to care for him at home without major ammounts of help but the funding from the government has been cut so $he is on her own. She's asking me for any help I can give, any sources of funding I know about, anything at all. I sit and stare at my computer, every avenue Ithink of her son doesn't qualify for. My heart bleeds for her.

When you're ready to complain about your day, or an ache or pain, or money, think of this mother, right in our own backyard, and what she must be experiencing. I shut my mouth, quick.

More Pain,But More Gain

2010-04-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

Losing my Facebook virginity is almost as painful as loosing the real thing, and I also don't remember feeling this clumsy since then! Everybody keeps telling me the more I do it, the better I'll be at it and the more I'll like it. I think I remember hearing that one other time, too...

Anyway, I'm hoping my efforts will lead to getting my writing read, an agent, a publisher, happily ever after.

Nite all.

I Am No Longer A Facebook Virgin!

2010-04-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

I did it! After creating a Facebook account a few years ago and doing absolutely nothing with it, today I broke my page; I am no longer a Facebook virgin! My mission is to use Facebook to get my blog and book networked and noticed. Two very cool, extremely patient Pine Bush High School juniors came my way today and spent a few hours showing me the ropes. Tyler and Brittney, you guys seriously rock!!! They're coming back tomorrow for some more simpleton torture from me. I told you, they rock.

Off to dinner to wish my nephew farewell for a summer job on Fire Island. He will be severely missed.

See you tomorrow.

Audacity Of Hope

2010-04-12T16:50:00.000-07:00

Today, I started reading Barack Obama's ''Audacity Of Hope.'' As President, I think he is such a wonderful orator, and knowing he authored ''Audacity Of Hope'' before he was elected or ran for President made me curious as to what the tone of the book would be. His moto of ''change'' during his campaign - did that begin when he decided to run for the presidency partly because that is what we as a nation needed to hear or was that who he really was. I received my answer before I finished the first page of the book. I could hear his voice, feel his intentions and beliefs and his great love of the American family. He respects the modest wants of the majority of Americans, which is to have access to affordable health care and affordable education for their children. He reminds us that as a nation, the ties that bind us are stronger than the ties that divide us, and this idea is the key to the end of a bipartisan government that spends precious time flexing its muscles but never really lifts any weights.

I pray with my whole heart that our President gets elected for a second term so he has a real chance to promote change. He has a list of ''things to do'' that may take longer than four years. He needs us to have the audacity to hope that he can promote the change he stands for.

EGO FROM HELL PART II

2010-04-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

Well, 30 seconds into this doc's office, I knew we weren't going to connect. He did not have all of the lab results, because he kept trying to tell me there was only one bacteria when I knew there was two. We spoke of different treatments, and if I.V. antibiotics were going to be needed, I wanted to do them at home. He said someone in my condition couldn't handle managing what it takes to do I.V. home therapy. I told him it was a peice of cake and had done it many times before with no problem. He then said let me talk to infectious disease about it, because he wasn't about to. ''How do you even know you have an infection?'' I told him I knew my body and was symptomatic and if he would call the lab to get the full report he would see what my WBC was. He literally rolled his eyes at me, handed me a slip to give to the receptionist out front and walked out of the room. The receptionist said the soonest I could get an appointment with I.D. was in two weeks. Thanks but no thanks, I said. When I got into my van, deciding what my next move would be, I glanced at the paper from the urologist. I almost fell out of my chair.I was in his office for less than ten minutes, he didn't lay a finger on me and he was billing my insurance company $1,095.00. I couldn't believe it. He hasn't heard the last from me.

I was able to speak to my regular urologist's nurse practitioner later in the day. We faxed her my labs and guided me in what to do. I have an appointment to see him in two weeks to make sure the medication I am now currently taking wiped out the infection. I'm already feeling better, and she didn't charge me a dime.

EGO FROM HELL

2010-04-10T18:38:00.000-07:00

It must be the week of outrageous ego's. Perhaps it's the planetary alignment, or maybe I'm just extra lucky this week (sarcasm is dripping on my keyboard). As I blogged earlier in the week, I had a bad UTI that led me to Urgent Care two days in a row. Late in the week, I received a call from the doctor that saw me and was concerned because the culture report showed two bacteria, one of which was not sensitive to the antibiotic I was on. It happens to be a very dangerous bacteria, so she wanted me to see my urologist. Circumstances had it that my doc was out of town so she set me up with a local guy the following day. You see, when you use a foley catheter like I do, which is a little tube that stays in your bladder and connects to a bag on my leg, you will always have a little bacteria in your bladder. It's called ''colonized'', and it basically lives there and doesn't cause any problems. So if you do a culture on a urine specimen from a person with a foley, you're going to grow bacteria. What is important is the WBC (white blood count) that is in the urine. A lot of white cells means infection, a few do not. So to make an accurate diagnosis and treatment, you need three things - WBC, bacteria culture, and is the patient symptomatic. The first two things you get from a lab, the third thing you get from listening to the patient.

Conclusion tomorrow. Nite nite.

Ego's Among Us, Part II

2010-04-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

So sorry for no blogging yesterday. I was in Manhattan all day at HSS for preop ''stuff'' and by the time I got home it was 8:30 p.m. Nite nite.

Back to my Wednesday wheelchair cushion eval. A total waste of my time. Dave, the O.T. that I was working with, couldn't say enough bad things about the last rehab hospital I went to and how could I possibly of not come to Helen Hayes first?! Two hours later, still at square one, his ego was somewhat deflated. And in a weak attempt to look cool, he used shit and fuck in his explanations of gibberish.

At my next appointment, Im going to tell him I'm a born again Christian (false), and that I came to H. Hayes a year ago almost to the day and he was so nasty to me, I walked out and called his supervisor the following day (true). It should be fun.

Thanks for listening, Universe. I need your support.

Pull, Cross and Roll

2010-04-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

I have writer's block this eve, so I asked my aide Maria something she wondered about me when she first met me, and her reply was she was curious as to how I got dressed. So here you go...

I dress the top of me in my chair and the bottom of me in bed. If you were the person helping me, I'd be laying on my back in bed and you'd start by putting my jeans around each ankle, and then work the jeans up little by little. I gave up undies long ago, what's the point? When you had the jeans up as high as you could, then you'd cross my legs and log roll me one side. Then you'd pull more. Roll me back on my back, pull more. Cross ankles the other way, then roll me again. Pull more, back on back, pull again. Pull, cross, roll, pull, cross, roll, until the jeans are up. It would be easier if I didn't have legs like a walking stick, but oh well. I love my jeans. After the jeans, I'm transfered into my wheelchair and we dress the top of me. Top is easy, really just as if you were dressing a baby, because you have to watch my balance. If you lean me forward and let go, I'll literally fall on my face.

Hope that gives you a bit of a visual. See you tomorrow.

Ego's Among Us

2010-04-05T17:53:00.000-07:00

I need a new wheelchair cushion and I had an appointment today at Helen Hayes Hospital for an evaluation. The therapist went from cocky to deflated. I'm going to bed so you'll have to hear about it tomorrow. This is the best I can do today.

The Importance Of You II

2010-04-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

So I'm off to Urgent Care. I told the physicians assistant assigned to me that I was sure I had a UTI and after checking me over and hearing my current complaints, she agreed. Normally, you have to wait 72 hours for a culture of your urine to be completed before an antibiotic can be given to ensure it was the correct one, but I can't imagine waiting another 72 hours before receiving treatment as sick as I already was. On the same page, the PA gave me an I.V. dose of a very strong antibiotic that worked exceptionally well on bacteria that tends to be in bladders. She also wanted me to come back the next day for another treatment. That didn't thrill me, as the next day was Easter Sunday, but I reluctantly I agreed. A few hours after the first dose, I already felt better, and by morning, even more so. After today's treatment, I feel even better and will continue to feel so as I continue the oral antibiotics. I feel very fortunate that the medication they gave me worked without us even knowing what bacteria were in my body.

With all the stresses I have in my life, I have to admit that I haven't been taking care of myself the way I know my body needs to keep UTI's away. This only lead to more stress; 2 trips to Urgent Care over Easter weekend. Neglecting ourselves is the last thing to do when we are living with stressful circumstances; it only makes matters worse. Always put yourself first. Some may call this selfish, but it's not. If we don't give ourselves what we need to stay healthy and happy, how can we expect anybody else to?

The Importance Of You

2010-04-03T17:59:00.000-07:00

One of the most common secondary complications that people with spinal cord injuries deal with are urinary tract infections. They suck because when you are living with SCI, medical maladies tend to hit you pretty hard and pretty fast. It's important to know your body extremely well because your symptoms may be atypical. For the last two weeks, I have been fatigued beyond fatigued. I attributed it to stress - short staff going on six months, first Easter without my beloved pain in the ass Dad, constant change in mortgage circumstances, unemployment, extremely tough job hunting, upcoming surgery, daily chronic pain escalating by the hour, elevator and van broke down in the $ame week while full time staff person was on vacation - there's more, but I'm tired just writing it. So fatigue seems reasonable, right. Well, suddenly my body turned a corner and last night was hell. Very strong body twitches, one minute I'm boiling hot, the next I'm freezing. Hideous lower abdominal and lower back pain that wrapped all the way around me. All night long. Poor Mike, because all of this means very little sleep for him. By morning, I feel as if I have been hit by a bus. I knew something was very wrong.

Spring Has Sprung!

2010-04-02T17:59:00.000-07:00

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL spring day, and my cheeks are pink with the proof of a day spent outdoors. I absolutely love this time of year, when the warmth of the sun is so appreciated after a grey, cold winter. Soon, everyone will be complaining about the heat, but right now, it's smiles all around.

Nothing deep today, just wishing you the best as always. Peace.

Countdown To Surgery

2010-04-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

I received a call this morning from Lois, Dr. Warren's nurse. After a quick hello, she asks me to hold the line for Dr. Warren. My gut went into an instant knot. The doctor never wants to talk to you unless it's to deliver bad news. I was in the middle of giving myself a pep talk, every problem has a solution, if Dr. Warren couldn't help me than I would find a doctor that could, tenacity wins in the end and so on, when Dr. Warren came on the line. I held my head up and waited to hear how he was going to tell me he had changed his mind about performing the surgery. His voice began telling me he had gotten a chest surgeon involved because of blah medical blah term blah, and that he wanted me to come in one more time prior to surgery to put together the sling or brace I would need to wear after the surgery to keep my right shoulder blade immobile so things could heal properly. I found my voice and asked some questions, of course, but just a few. As soon as we hung up, I already had many more to ask, but at the time of our conversation, I was just so releived he wasn't telling me the gig was cancelled I couldn't think clearly. He asked me when I wanted to do this and I said yesterday. An appointment was made next week for our brace creation and then surgery will be a few days after that. I'm a bit nervous about the recovery; I thought it would be a few weeks, but Dr. Warren says more like 6 to 8weeks. What it is, it is. It's temporary.

Lots to do between now and then. House, staff, home care post surgery, mortgage, writing, etc., etc. Although I get anxious at times about all that I currently have on my plate, which is a tremendous amount, I have faith in the Universe that things will all happen in the proper time and in the proper order. After all, it took me 2 years to find a surgeon who believed he could help my shoulder, and all of a sudden, the time is now. Peace, love and light. See you tomorrow, whoever you are.

A Sure Cure For Sex Addiction

2010-03-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

Now Jesse James has checked himself into a clinic for sex addiction? This is such a joke. Want to know a simple cure? Call Lorena Bobbitt. Done.

Stay strong, Sandra Bullock. You have always been a person in the public eye that I have admired and respected. You deserve far more from your life partner than you've been getting. I have not been in the circumstances you are in, but I do know about sudden, tragic, personal loss that can never be taken back. Catastrophe strikes and in seconds, all that you had simply vanishes forever, almost as if it never was. You will find you have more personal strength and perseverance than you thought could exist, and soon you will begin to recognize yourself again. You have so many people thinking of you, and you're in my thoughts and prayers.

Just a side note...I happen to be an excellent researcher, so if you need Lorena's number, it would be my pleasure.

Pearls Before Breakfast

2010-03-30T17:25:00.000-07:00

I had to share this with the Universe. It's an incredible story, and it's about one of my favorite powers; perception. It's long but worth every syllable. I pray with my whole heart this reaches you.

Pearls Before Breakfast

Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.

By Gene Weingarten Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, April 8, 2007

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

The musician did not play popular tunes whose familiarity alone might have drawn interest. That was not the test. These were masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.

The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. Though the arcade is of utilitarian design, a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors, it somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.

So, what do you think happened?

HANG ON, WE'LL GET YOU SOME EXPERT HELP.

Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, was asked the same question. What did he think would occur, hypothetically, if one of the world's great violinists had performed incognito before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people?

"Let's assume," Slatkin said, "that he is not recognized and just taken for granted as a street musician . . . Still, I don't think that if he's really good, he's going to go unnoticed. He'd get a larger audience in Europe . . . but, okay, out of 1,000 people, my guess is there might be 35 or 40 who will recognize the quality for what it is. Maybe 75 to 100 will stop and spend some time listening."

So, a crowd would gather?

"Oh, yes."

And how much will he make?

"About $150."

Thanks, Maestro. As it happens, this is not hypothetical. It really happened.

"How'd I do?"

We'll tell you in a minute.

"Well, who was the musician?"

Joshua Bell.

"NO!!!"

A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.

Bell was first pitched this idea shortly before Christmas, over coffee at a sandwich shop on Capitol Hill. A New Yorker, he was in town to perform at the Library of Congress and to visit the library's vaults to examine an unusual treasure: an 18th-century violin that once belonged to the great Austrian-born virtuoso and composer Fritz Kreisler. The curators invited Bell to play it; good sound, still.

"Here's what I'm thinking," Bell confided, as he sipped his coffee. "I'm thinking that I could do a tour where I'd play Kreisler's music . . ."

He smiled.

". . . on Kreisler's violin."

It was a snazzy, sequined idea -- part inspiration and part gimmick -- and it was typical of Bell, who has unapologetically embraced showmanship even as his concert career has become more and more august. He's soloed with the finest orchestras here and abroad, but he's also appeared on "Sesame Street," done late-night talk TV and performed in feature films. That was Bell playing the soundtrack on the 1998 movie "The Red Violin." (He body-doubled, too, playing to a naked Greta Scacchi.) As composer John Corigliano accepted the Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score, he credited Bell, who, he said, "plays like a god."

When Bell was asked if he'd be willing to don street clothes and perform at rush hour, he said:

"Uh, a stunt?"

Well, yes. A stunt. Would he think it . . . unseemly?

Bell drained his cup.

"Sounds like fun," he said.

Bell's a heartthrob. Tall and handsome, he's got a Donny Osmond-like dose of the cutes, and, onstage, cute elides into hott. When he performs, he is usually the only man under the lights who is not in white tie and tails -- he walks out to a standing O, looking like Zorro, in black pants and an untucked black dress shirt, shirttail dangling. That cute Beatles-style mop top is also a strategic asset: Because his technique is full of body -- athletic and passionate -- he's almost dancing with the instrument, and his hair flies.

He's single and straight, a fact not lost on some of his fans. In Boston, as he performed Max Bruch's dour Violin Concerto in G Minor, the very few young women in the audience nearly disappeared in the deep sea of silver heads. But seemingly every single one of them -- a distillate of the young and pretty -- coalesced at the stage door after the performance, seeking an autograph. It's like that always, with Bell.

Bell's been accepting over-the-top accolades since puberty: Interview magazine once said his playing "does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live." He's learned to field these things graciously, with a bashful duck of the head and a modified "pshaw."

For this incognito performance, Bell had only one condition for participating. The event had been described to him as a test of whether, in an incongruous context, ordinary people would recognize genius. His condition: "I'm not comfortable if you call this genius." "Genius" is an overused word, he said: It can be applied to some of the composers whose work he plays, but not to him. His skills are largely interpretive, he said, and to imply otherwise would be unseemly and inaccurate.

It was an interesting request, and under the circumstances, one that will be honored. The word will not again appear in this article.

It would be breaking no rules, however, to note that the term in question, particularly as applied in the field of music, refers to a congenital brilliance -- an elite, innate, preternatural ability that manifests itself early, and often in dramatic fashion.

One biographically intriguing fact about Bell is that he got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.

TO GET TO THE METRO FROM HIS HOTEL, a distance of three blocks, Bell took a taxi. He's neither lame nor lazy: He did it for his violin.

Bell always performs on the same instrument, and he ruled out using another for this gig. Called the Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master's "golden period," toward the end of his career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow, and when his technique had been refined to perfection.

"Our knowledge of acoustics is still incomplete," Bell said, "but he, he just . . . knew."

Bell doesn't mention Stradivari by name. Just "he." When the violinist shows his Strad to people, he holds the instrument gingerly by its neck, resting it on a knee. "He made this to perfect thickness at all parts," Bell says, pivoting it. "If you shaved off a millimeter of wood at any point, it would totally imbalance the sound." No violins sound as wonderful as Strads from the 1710s, still.

The front of Bell's violin is in nearly perfect condition, with a deep, rich grain and luster. The back is a mess, its dark reddish finish bleeding away into a flatter, lighter shade and finally, in one section, to bare wood.

"This has never been refinished," Bell said. "That's his original varnish. People attribute aspects of the sound to the varnish. Each maker had his own secret formula." Stradivari is thought to have made his from an ingeniously balanced cocktail of honey, egg whites and gum arabic from sub-Saharan trees.

Like the instrument in "The Red Violin," this one has a past filled with mystery and malice. Twice, it was stolen from its illustrious prior owner, the Polish virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman. The first time, in 1919, it disappeared from Huberman's hotel room in Vienna but was quickly returned. The second time, nearly 20 years later, it was pinched from his dressing room in Carnegie Hall. He never got it back. It was not until 1985 that the thief -- a minor New York violinist -- made a deathbed confession to his wife, and produced the instrument.

Bell bought it a few years ago. He had to sell his own Strad and borrow much of the rest. The price tag was reported to be about $3.5 million.

All of which is a long explanation for why, in the early morning chill of a day in January, Josh Bell took a three-block cab ride to the Orange Line, and rode one stop to L'Enfant.

AS METRO STATIONS GO, L'ENFANT PLAZA IS MORE PLEBEIAN THAN MOST. Even before you arrive, it gets no respect. Metro conductors never seem to get it right: "Leh-fahn." "Layfont." "El'phant."

At the top of the escalators are a shoeshine stand and a busy kiosk that sells newspapers, lottery tickets and a wallfull of magazines with titles such as Mammazons and Girls of Barely Legal. The skin mags move, but it's that lottery ticket dispenser that stays the busiest, with customers queuing up for Daily 6 lotto and Powerball and the ultimate suckers' bait, those pamphlets that sell random number combinations purporting to be "hot." They sell briskly. There's also a quick-check machine to slide in your lotto ticket, post-drawing, to see if you've won. Beneath it is a forlorn pile of crumpled slips.

On Friday, January 12, the people waiting in the lottery line looking for a long shot would get a lucky break -- a free, close-up ticket to a concert by one of the world's most famous musicians -- but only if they were of a mind to take note.

Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won't be cheating with some half-assed version."

Bell didn't say it, but Bach's "Chaconne" is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. Many try; few succeed. It's exhaustingly long -- 14 minutes -- and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound. Composed around 1720, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, it is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility.

If Bell's encomium to "Chaconne" seems overly effusive, consider this from the 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."

So, that's the piece Bell started with.

He'd clearly meant it when he promised not to cheap out this performance: He played with acrobatic enthusiasm, his body leaning into the music and arching on tiptoes at the high notes. The sound was nearly symphonic, carrying to all parts of the homely arcade as the pedestrian traffic filed past.

Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something.

A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.

Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

No, Mr. Slatkin, there was never a crowd, not even for a second.

It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch. Try speeding it up, and it becomes one of those herky-jerky World War I-era silent newsreels. The people scurry by in comical little hops and starts, cups of coffee in their hands, cellphones at their ears, ID tags slapping at their bellies, a grim danse macabre to indifference, inertia and the dingy, gray rush of modernity.

Even at this accelerated pace, though, the fiddler's movements remain fluid and graceful; he seems so apart from his audience -- unseen, unheard, otherworldly -- that you find yourself thinking that he's not really there. A ghost.

Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.

IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?

It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?

We'll go with Kant, because he's obviously right, and because he brings us pretty directly to Joshua Bell, sitting there in a hotel restaurant, picking at his breakfast, wryly trying to figure out what the hell had just happened back there at the Metro.

"At the beginning," Bell says, "I was just concentrating on playing the music. I wasn't really watching what was happening around me . . ."

Playing the violin looks all-consuming, mentally and physically, but Bell says that for him the mechanics of it are partly second nature, cemented by practice and muscle memory: It's like a juggler, he says, who can keep those balls in play while interacting with a crowd. What he's mostly thinking about as he plays, Bell says, is capturing emotion as a narrative: "When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you're telling a story."

With "Chaconne," the opening is filled with a building sense of awe. That kept him busy for a while. Eventually, though, he began to steal a sidelong glance.

"It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ."

The word doesn't come easily.

". . . ignoring me."

Bell is laughing. It's at himself.

"At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change." This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.

Before he began, Bell hadn't known what to expect. What he does know is that, for some reason, he was nervous.

"It wasn't exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies," he says. "I was stressing a little."

Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?

"When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, "you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence . . ."

He was, in short, art without a frame. Which, it turns out, may have a lot to do with what happened -- or, more precisely, what didn't happen -- on January 12.

MARK LEITHAUSER HAS HELD IN HIS HANDS MORE GREAT WORKS OF ART THAN ANY KING OR POPE OR MEDICI EVER DID. A senior curator at the National Gallery, he oversees the framing of the paintings. Leithauser thinks he has some idea of what happened at that Metro station.

"Let's say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It's a $5 million painting. And it's one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: 'Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.'"

Leithauser's point is that we shouldn't be too ready to label the Metro passersby unsophisticated boobs. Context matters.

Kant said the same thing. He took beauty seriously: In his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant argued that one's ability to appreciate beauty is related to one's ability to make moral judgments. But there was a caveat. Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of America's most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal.

"Optimal," Guyer said, "doesn't mean heading to work, focusing on your report to the boss, maybe your shoes don't fit right."

So, if Kant had been at the Metro watching as Joshua Bell play to a thousand unimpressed passersby?

"He would have inferred about them," Guyer said, "absolutely nothing."

And that's that.

Except it isn't. To really understand what happened, you have to rewind that video and play it back from the beginning, from the moment Bell's bow first touched the strings.

White guy, khakis, leather jacket, briefcase. Early 30s. John David Mortensen is on the final leg of his daily bus-to-Metro commute from Reston. He's heading up the escalator. It's a long ride -- 1 minute and 15 seconds if you don't walk. So, like most everyone who passes Bell this day, Mortensen gets a good earful of music before he has his first look at the musician. Like most of them, he notes that it sounds pretty good. But like very few of them, when he gets to the top, he doesn't race past as though Bell were some nuisance to be avoided. Mortensen is that first person to stop, that guy at the six-minute mark.

It's not that he has nothing else to do. He's a project manager for an international program at the Department of Energy; on this day, Mortensen has to participate in a monthly budget exercise, not the most exciting part of his job: "You review the past month's expenditures," he says, "forecast spending for the next month, if you have X dollars, where will it go, that sort of thing."

On the video, you can see Mortensen get off the escalator and look around. He locates the violinist, stops, walks away but then is drawn back. He checks the time on his cellphone -- he's three minutes early for work -- then settles against a wall to listen.

Mortensen doesn't know classical music at all; classic rock is as close as he comes. But there's something about what he's hearing that he really likes.

As it happens, he's arrived at the moment that Bell slides into the second section of "Chaconne." ("It's the point," Bell says, "where it moves from a darker, minor key into a major key. There's a religious, exalted feeling to it.") The violinist's bow begins to dance; the music becomes upbeat, playful, theatrical, big.

Mortensen doesn't know about major or minor keys: "Whatever it was," he says, "it made me feel at peace."

So, for the first time in his life, Mortensen lingers to listen to a street musician. He stays his allotted three minutes as 94 more people pass briskly by. When he leaves to help plan contingency budgets for the Department of Energy, there's another first. For the first time in his life, not quite knowing what had just happened but sensing it was special, John David Mortensen gives a street musician money.

THERE ARE SIX MOMENTS IN THE VIDEO THAT BELL FINDS PARTICULARLY PAINFUL TO RELIVE: "The awkward times," he calls them. It's what happens right after each piece ends: nothing. The music stops. The same people who hadn't noticed him playing don't notice that he has finished. No applause, no acknowledgment. So Bell just saws out a small, nervous chord -- the embarrassed musician's equivalent of, "Er, okay, moving right along . . ." -- and begins the next piece.

After "Chaconne," it is Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria," which surprised some music critics when it debuted in 1825: Schubert seldom showed religious feeling in his compositions, yet "Ave Maria" is a breathtaking work of adoration of the Virgin Mary. What was with the sudden piety? Schubert dryly answered: "I think this is due to the fact that I never forced devotion in myself and never compose hymns or prayers of that kind unless it overcomes me unawares; but then it is usually the right and true devotion." This musical prayer became among the most familiar and enduring religious pieces in history.

A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She's got his hand.

"I had a time crunch," recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency. "I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement."

Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3.

You can see Evan clearly on the video. He's the cute black kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door.

"There was a musician," Parker says, "and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time."

So Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between Evan's and Bell's, cutting off her son's line of sight. As they exit the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look. When Parker is told what she walked out on, she laughs.

"Evan is very smart!"

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

IF THERE WAS ONE PERSON ON THAT DAY WHO WAS TOO BUSY TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE VIOLINIST, it was George Tindley. Tindley wasn't hurrying to get to work. He was at work.

The glass doors through which most people exit the L'Enfant station lead into an indoor shopping mall, from which there are exits to the street and elevators to office buildings. The first store in the mall is an Au Bon Pain, the croissant and coffee shop where Tindley, in his 40s, works in a white uniform busing the tables, restocking the salt and pepper packets, taking out the garbage. Tindley labors under the watchful eye of his bosses, and he's supposed to be hopping, and he was.

But every minute or so, as though drawn by something not entirely within his control, Tindley would walk to the very edge of the Au Bon Pain property, keeping his toes inside the line, still on the job. Then he'd lean forward, as far out into the hallway as he could, watching the fiddler on the other side of the glass doors. The foot traffic was steady, so the doors were usually open. The sound came through pretty well.

"You could tell in one second that this guy was good, that he was clearly a professional," Tindley says. He plays the guitar, loves the sound of strings, and has no respect for a certain kind of musician.

"Most people, they play music; they don't feel it," Tindley says. "Well, that man was feeling it. That man was moving. Moving into the sound."

A hundred feet away, across the arcade, was the lottery line, sometimes five or six people long. They had a much better view of Bell than Tindley did, if they had just turned around. But no one did. Not in the entire 43 minutes. They just shuffled forward toward that machine spitting out numbers. Eyes on the prize.

J.T. Tillman was in that line. A computer specialist for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he remembers every single number he played that day -- 10 of them, $2 apiece, for a total of $20. He doesn't recall what the violinist was playing, though. He says it sounded like generic classical music, the kind the ship's band was playing in "Titanic," before the iceberg.

"I didn't think nothing of it," Tillman says, "just a guy trying to make a couple of bucks." Tillman would have given him one or two, he said, but he spent all his cash on lotto.

When he is told that he stiffed one of the best musicians in the world, he laughs.

"Is he ever going to play around here again?"

"Yeah, but you're going to have to pay a lot to hear him."

"Damn."

Tillman didn't win the lottery, either.

BELL ENDS "AVE MARIA" TO ANOTHER THUNDEROUS SILENCE, plays Manuel Ponce's sentimental "Estrellita," then a piece by Jules Massenet, and then begins a Bach gavotte, a joyful, frolicsome, lyrical dance. It's got an Old World delicacy to it; you can imagine it entertaining bewigged dancers at a Versailles ball, or -- in a lute, fiddle and fife version -- the boot-kicking peasants of a Pieter Bruegel painting.

Watching the video weeks later, Bell finds himself mystified by one thing only. He understands why he's not drawing a crowd, in the rush of a morning workday. But: "I'm surprised at the number of people who don't pay attention at all, as if I'm invisible. Because, you know what? I'm makin' a lot of noise!"

He is. You don't need to know music at all to appreciate the simple fact that there's a guy there, playing a violin that's throwing out a whole bucket of sound; at times, Bell's bowing is so intricate that you seem to be hearing two instruments playing in harmony. So those head-forward, quick-stepping passersby are a remarkable phenomenon.

Bell wonders whether their inattention may be deliberate: If you don't take visible note of the musician, you don't have to feel guilty about not forking over money; you're not complicit in a rip-off.

It may be true, but no one gave that explanation. People just said they were busy, had other things on their mind. Some who were on cellphones spoke louder as they passed Bell, to compete with that infernal racket.

And then there was Calvin Myint. Myint works for the General Services Administration. He got to the top of the escalator, turned right and headed out a door to the street. A few hours later, he had no memory that there had been a musician anywhere in sight.

"Where was he, in relation to me?"

"About four feet away."

"Oh."

There's nothing wrong with Myint's hearing. He had buds in his ear. He was listening to his iPod.

For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.

The song that Calvin Myint was listening to was "Just Like Heaven," by the British rock band The Cure. It's a terrific song, actually. The meaning is a little opaque, and the Web is filled with earnest efforts to deconstruct it. Many are far-fetched, but some are right on point: It's about a tragic emotional disconnect. A man has found the woman of his dreams but can't express the depth of his feeling for her until she's gone. It's about failing to see the beauty of what's plainly in front of your eyes.

"YES, I SAW THE VIOLINIST," Jackie Hessian says, "but nothing about him struck me as much of anything."

You couldn't tell that by watching her. Hessian was one of those people who gave Bell a long, hard look before walking on. It turns out that she wasn't noticing the music at all.

"I really didn't hear that much," she said. "I was just trying to figure out what he was doing there, how does this work for him, can he make much money, would it be better to start with some money in the case, or for it to be empty, so people feel sorry for you? I was analyzing it financially."

What do you do, Jackie?

"I'm a lawyer in labor relations with the United States Postal Service. I just negotiated a national contract."

THE BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE WERE UPHOLSTERED. In the balcony, more or less. On that day, for $5, you'd get a lot more than just a nice shine on your shoes.

Only one person occupied one of those seats when Bell played. Terence Holmes is a consultant for the Department of Transportation, and he liked the music just fine, but it was really about a shoeshine: "My father told me never to wear a suit with your shoes not cleaned and shined."

Holmes wears suits often, so he is up in that perch a lot, and he's got a good relationship with the shoeshine lady. Holmes is a good tipper and a good talker, which is a skill that came in handy that day. The shoeshine lady was upset about something, and the music got her more upset. She complained, Holmes said, that the music was too loud, and he tried to calm her down.

Edna Souza is from Brazil. She's been shining shoes at L'Enfant Plaza for six years, and she's had her fill of street musicians there; when they play, she can't hear her customers, and that's bad for business. So she fights.

Souza points to the dividing line between the Metro property, at the top of the escalator, and the arcade, which is under control of the management company that runs the mall. Sometimes, Souza says, a musician will stand on the Metro side, sometimes on the mall side. Either way, she's got him. On her speed dial, she has phone numbers for both the mall cops and the Metro cops. The musicians seldom last long.

What about Joshua Bell?

He was too loud, too, Souza says. Then she looks down at her rag, sniffs. She hates to say anything positive about these damned musicians, but: "He was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn't call the police."

Souza was surprised to learn he was a famous musician, but not that people rushed blindly by him. That, she said, was predictable. "If something like this happened in Brazil, everyone would stand around to see. Not here."

Souza nods sourly toward a spot near the top of the escalator: "Couple of years ago, a homeless guy died right there. He just lay down there and died. The police came, an ambulance came, and no one even stopped to see or slowed down to look.

"People walk up the escalator, they look straight ahead. Mind your own business, eyes forward. Everyone is stressed. Do you know what I mean?"

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies

Let's say Kant is right. Let's accept that we can't look at what happened on January 12 and make any judgment whatever about people's sophistication or their ability to appreciate beauty. But what about their ability to appreciate life?

We're busy. Americans have been busy, as a people, since at least 1831, when a young French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the States and found himself impressed, bemused and slightly dismayed at the degree to which people were driven, to the exclusion of everything else, by hard work and the accumulation of wealth.

Not much has changed. Pop in a DVD of "Koyaanisqatsi," the wordless, darkly brilliant, avant-garde 1982 film about the frenetic speed of modern life. Backed by the minimalist music of Philip Glass, director Godfrey Reggio takes film clips of Americans going about their daily business, but speeds them up until they resemble assembly-line machines, robots marching lockstep to nowhere. Now look at the video from L'Enfant Plaza, in fast-forward. The Philip Glass soundtrack fits it perfectly.

"Koyaanisqatsi" is a Hopi word. It means "life out of balance."

In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life, British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L'Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said -- not because people didn't have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.

"This is about having the wrong priorities," Lane said.

If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?

That's what the Welsh poet W.H. Davies meant in 1911 when he published those two lines that begin this section. They made him famous. The thought was simple, even primitive, but somehow no one had put it quite that way before.

Of course, Davies had an advantage -- an advantage of perception. He wasn't a tradesman or a laborer or a bureaucrat or a consultant or a policy analyst or a labor lawyer or a program manager. He was a hobo.

THE CULTURAL HERO OF THE DAY ARRIVED AT L'ENFANT PLAZA PRETTY LATE, in the unprepossessing figure of one John Picarello, a smallish man with a baldish head.

Picarello hit the top of the escalator just after Bell began his final piece, a reprise of "Chaconne." In the video, you see Picarello stop dead in his tracks, locate the source of the music, and then retreat to the other end of the arcade. He takes up a position past the shoeshine stand, across from that lottery line, and he will not budge for the next nine minutes.

Like all the passersby interviewed for this article, Picarello was stopped by a reporter after he left the building, and was asked for his phone number. Like everyone, he was told only that this was to be an article about commuting. When he was called later in the day, like everyone else, he was first asked if anything unusual had happened to him on his trip into work. Of the more than 40 people contacted, Picarello was the only one who immediately mentioned the violinist.

"There was a musician playing at the top of the escalator at L'Enfant Plaza."

Haven't you seen musicians there before?

"Not like this one."

What do you mean?

"This was a superb violinist. I've never heard anyone of that caliber. He was technically proficient, with very good phrasing. He had a good fiddle, too, with a big, lush sound. I walked a distance away, to hear him. I didn't want to be intrusive on his space."

Really?

"Really. It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day."

Picarello knows classical music. He is a fan of Joshua Bell but didn't recognize him; he hadn't seen a recent photo, and besides, for most of the time Picarello was pretty far away. But he knew this was not a run-of-the-mill guy out there, performing. On the video, you can see Picarello look around him now and then, almost bewildered.

"Yeah, other people just were not getting it. It just wasn't registering. That was baffling to me."

When Picarello was growing up in New York, he studied violin seriously, intending to be a concert musician. But he gave it up at 18, when he decided he'd never be good enough to make it pay. Life does that to you sometimes. Sometimes, you have to do the prudent thing. So he went into another line of work. He's a supervisor at the U.S. Postal Service. Doesn't play the violin much, anymore.

When he left, Picarello says, "I humbly threw in $5." It was humble: You can actually see that on the video. Picarello walks up, barely looking at Bell, and tosses in the money. Then, as if embarrassed, he quickly walks away from the man he once wanted to be.

Does he have regrets about how things worked out?

The postal supervisor considers this.

"No. If you love something but choose not to do it professionally, it's not a waste. Because, you know, you still have it. You have it forever."

BELL THINKS HE DID HIS BEST WORK OF THE DAY IN THOSE FINAL FEW MINUTES, in the second "Chaconne." And that also was the first time more than one person at a time was listening. As Picarello stood in the back, Janice Olu arrived and took up a position a few feet away from Bell. Olu, a public trust officer with HUD, also played the violin as a kid. She didn't know the name of the piece she was hearing, but she knew the man playing it has a gift.

Olu was on a coffee break and stayed as long as she dared. As she turned to go, she whispered to the stranger next to her, "I really don't want to leave." The stranger standing next to her happened to be working for The Washington Post.

In preparing for this event, editors at The Post Magazine discussed how to deal with likely outcomes. The most widely held assumption was that there could well be a problem with crowd control: In a demographic as sophisticated as Washington, the thinking went, several people would surely recognize Bell. Nervous "what-if" scenarios abounded. As people gathered, what if others stopped just to see what the attraction was? Word would spread through the crowd. Cameras would flash. More people flock to the scene; rush-hour pedestrian traffic backs up; tempers flare; the National Guard is called; tear gas, rubber bullets, etc.

As it happens, exactly one person recognized Bell, and she didn't arrive until near the very end. For Stacy Furukawa, a demographer at the Commerce Department, there was no doubt. She doesn't know much about classical music, but she had been in the audience three weeks earlier, at Bell's free concert at the Library of Congress. And here he was, the international virtuoso, sawing away, begging for money. She had no idea what the heck was going on, but whatever it was, she wasn't about to miss it.

Furukawa positioned herself 10 feet away from Bell, front row, center. She had a huge grin on her face. The grin, and Furukawa, remained planted in that spot until the end.

"It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington," Furukawa says. "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"

When it was over, Furukawa introduced herself to Bell, and tossed in a twenty. Not counting that -- it was tainted by recognition -- the final haul for his 43 minutes of playing was $32.17. Yes, some people gave pennies.

"Actually," Bell said with a laugh, "that's not so bad, considering. That's 40 bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn't have to pay an agent."

These days, at L'Enfant Plaza, lotto ticket sales remain brisk. Musicians still show up from time to time, and they still tick off Edna Souza. Joshua Bell's latest album, "The Voice of the Violin," has received the usual critical acclaim. ("Delicate urgency." "Masterful intimacy." "Unfailingly exquisite." "A musical summit." ". . . will make your heart thump and weep at the same time.")

Bell headed off on a concert tour of European capitals. But he is back in the States this week. He has to be. On Tuesday, he will be accepting the Avery Fisher prize, recognizing the Flop of L'Enfant Plaza as the best classical musician in America.

Tired or Tired?

2010-03-29T16:36:00.000-07:00

I know there is a normal amount of fatigue that everybody experiences throughout the day. Some days you may be more tired than others, depending on how much sleep you're getting or what is physically and emotionally going on in your life. Hormone changes can throw your sleep patterns way off, and I've heard many mom's I know say they are cronically tired. Being spinal cord injured, if my body is fighting a virus or infection, I get hit a lot harder than most and getting unusually exhausted is one of my symptoms. But lately, it seems as though I am always tired. With the help of medication, I'm getting decent sleep and I'm not fighting any bug. But I'm dragging everyday. Not one to run to the doctor for every little health issue, I'm debating if I should go to my doctor and simply say, ''I'm tired. Help.'' Am I being too dramatic, I wonder? I just answered my own question, because as I sit almost unable to type here this, I'm going to say goodnight and go to bed. It's not quite 8:00 p.m. I'll keep you posted.

Shopping sunday

2010-03-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

I'm uber excited! We shopped for the last time today and finalized on our master bath tile and our kitchen cabinets. I absolutely love everything we've picked out and am dreaming about what it will look like when it's all finished. We ended the day by having dinner with my brother and his family and now it's time for bed to recharge for another busy week. Hope you had a great day. See you tomorrow.

Interview With A Nipple, conclusion

2010-03-27T15:03:00.000-07:00

I didn't know what to do, didn't know where to look. I felt like a guy, because I was trying really hard not to look at her boobs. I was literally scared, because as I had eye contact with her, the nipple was still in my view. As she kept talking, all of a sudden "pop!", the other nipple presents itself. Holy shit, I have no idea where to look, what to say. Instinctively, I backed up about a foot. She could of been talking to a piece of bread at that point because I was hearing not one word she was saying. When I realized she had stopped talking, I cleared my throat and thanked her for coming, saying I would be in touch after I checked her references. I showed her to my front door and thanked her again for coming. As the door closed behind her, my aide emerged from the bathroom. She had been cleaning it during my interview and just about peed her pants when I shared the event(s) that had just taken place. She couldn't believe she had missed it.

It's safe to say I'll be giving this particular lady a call to thank her for coming but that the position she applied for has been filled. The next call I'll make will be to the next person I have on my list of who's answered my ad. There is some debate as to whether it is better to tell the truth or a little white lie in certain situations. My dad taught me that there is something to be said for always doing the right thing. In this case, I think the right thing is the lie.

Interview With A Nipple

2010-03-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

Just when you think you think you've seen it all, a nipple appears. And then, just when you think you've seen it all, another nipple appears.

A woman came to my home for a job interview. I'm short staffed and am running an ad in the local classifieds. I've had all kinds walk through my door, so when this particular woman arrived wearing an extremely short wrap dress, I wasn't that shocked; I've seen much worse. She sits on my couch and I ask her to tell me about her experience working with people who use wheelchairs. As she begins to talk, all of a sudden, bing!, one of her nipples pops out of her dress. This was a first for me. Her boobs were huge, it was obvious she wasn't wearing a bra and she needed one, trust me.

this just in...My honey is tired, it's 10:30 pm, I'll finish tomorrow. Nite

Get It Done

2010-03-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

I've written 58 posts so far and I have had one comment from a friend. Time to figure out how to network my blog. I'm embarrassed to say I don't Facebook for networking purposes and it's time to start. I also need to take some lessons to learn all my Mac can do to work for me. So, new project time. Writing my ass off and not getting it out there is not the path I'm on.

Tomorrow, funny story time. A 40 year old virgin experience with one of my interviews.

A Better Day End

2010-03-24T17:03:00.000-07:00

By now I'm way beyond any imaginable curse word attitude. It is very important to me that I write in my blog everyday, regardless of what's going on. Suddenly, a light bulb flashes and I'm in. As I open up a new page to begin writing, Michael walks in. We have to go, as we are already getting a late start for cooking dinner. I quickly write a sentence or two in attempts to explain my current circumstances and post them. I deleted that blog the next day; it was jibberish. I had to deal with the fact that I was unable to stick to my goal of writing everyday two whole days in a row. Very hard for type A's, and it's no coincidence my initials are AA.

From here, things get better. We had a lovely dinner and then spent the night at Mike's dad's house. I counted my blessings that we had an accessible place with our own space to go instead of having to do a hotel. Mike''s dad was out of town and his master bedroom and bathroom are very spacious. The next day, my regular aide worked her regular hours and the elevator repair man was successful in his job. New batteries are needed for it but he bypassed something so it can run perfectly while we wait for the batteries to arrive. Unless we lose electric, but we won't go there; the batteries will be here in a week.

So Monday was indeed a better day. Sometimes we really have to hang in there physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually through the tough times and work life's challenges as best you can. I firmly believe that if we keep pursing what we wish, what we need, even baby stepping much of the way, we will continue to manifest all that we hope. Good night to you, whoever you are. May each of your days be better than the next.

A Better Day, Part Deux

2010-03-23T16:41:00.000-07:00

I accept that our backup plan has to be put into action, which in all honesty is not that big of a deal. Mike's dad's house is about 500 feet down the road and pretty wheelchair friendly. I just was not in the mood to be a houseguest, live out of a suitcase and not have my own bathroom, if you know what I mean. By now it's almost dinnertime on Sunday, and Mike calls his brother -in - law to see if they want to grill out. They live right next to Mike's dad and we were headed that way anyway. While Mike goes to town to buy extra steaks, I stay behind to write a quick blog. The entire day, I had been using Mike's computer, which is set up in our future office downstairs and due to the construction zone, it's impossible not to touch something without getting very dusty. Telling myself I was almost done, I attempt to log in to my blog. Can't remember the password. Can't can't can't. It's different than my usual generic password I use for everything, (smart, I know), because of google's password's requirements. Upon my request, Google sends my password to my Outlook email account that I cannot remember how to access from an alternate computer. Do I use webmail or squirrelmail? I tried every username and password for each account to try to get somewhere, but to no avail. Nothing worked.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the conclusion.

A Better Day

2010-03-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

Holy shit, when it rains, it pours. And funnily enough, while I'm speaking metaphorically, it is literally pouring out. No idea if that's some sign of empathy from the Universe. No complaints, though, because weather wise, it was a beautiful weekend. I'm rambling a bit, I think from shear exhaustion; my apologies.

My main full time Monday thru Friday staff person was out of town starting last Saturday, 3/13. She has also been working half a day one weekend day for me, so needless to say, her absence was felt. For the first time in a long time, I don't have a pool of staff to help fill in the gaps in these types of circumstances, so I was taking help from anybody who had a hour here, 45 minutes there, on a day by day basis. Not knowing how you are going to get out of bed day by day is more stressful than I can put into words. I just kept telling myself that it was temporary and I was doing the best I could; sometimes minute by minute. Giving myself something to look forward to, I scheduled a massage in the middle of the week. An extra special massage, as it was a gift certificate from my boyfriend from Valentine's Day. As luck, or no luck, would have it, my van wouldn't start at the end of the appointment. Getting me and my 350 pound chair home without an accessible van is fun times. God bless boyfriends. Fast forward to Friday, when 0 of my 3 interviews for staff showed up, that was fabulous. Yes, that is a big fat ZERO. All no shows, no call. Saturday, my elevator broke down, leaving me stranded outside. The bottom level of our house is gutted, so staying their wasn't an option. The repair guys came and had to call the tech's at the manufacturer for support, who are located in Montreal. Apparently, the tech guy on call for that weekend only spoke french, and me trying to directly translate intricate circuit board instructions was not going to work. Call back on Monday for English. By now, quite honestly, my attitude is hovering somewhere around fuck me. It's 9:30 p.m., I wash my face, brush my teeth and do my wrinkle cream on our first floor ad-mist inches of sawdust and chop-saws and then my boyfriend carries me upstairs. (Sidenote - teeth brushed, face washed and moisturizer always happen prior to bed, sawdust be damned.) Sunday, my aide is back from her vacation and came in for half a shift, thank the Universe. I shower and get ready for my day using a manual wheelchair that was in our barn and was once used by a disabled dinosaur. I pack enough stuff for two days for my back up plan and once again my boyfriend carries me downstairs to my power wheelchair. Via yellowbook.com, I called 16 elevator repair companies, sitting amongst the carnage of our first floor, and apparently no one works on Sundays except the French. By this time I'm way beyond fuck me.

Exhausted, conclusion tomorrow.

No Title

2010-03-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

Very challenging day. Need to take my own advice and adjust my perspective. See you tomorrow.

Broken Promises

2010-03-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

So sorry for missing a day of blogging. My lovely van pulled an impromptu refusal to start late yesterday afternoon. My 350 pound wheelchair doesn't fit nicely in a car, so my Mike had to come and rescue me with our backup plan. Our backup plan is a portable 80 pound aluminum ramp from hell that can be used to drive my chair up onto the back of a pickup. In case you were wondering, Mike puts me in the cab of the truck first. This entire process sounds about as much fun as it is, especially folding and unfolding the ramp half a dozen times. Oh well, at least we have a backup plan. I'm just praying very hard my car is fixed before the weekend.

So, what is it with the epidemics of pills and promiscuity lately? Seriously, I almost fell out of my chair today when I heard the news of Jesse James cheating on Sandra Bullock. I'm a big fan of hers and I feel so let down; I can't possibly imagine how she feels. What is going through my mind is why? They seem to have such a wonderful, real relationship. Hypothetically speaking, because it's impossible to know what goes on behind closed doors, lets just say they have the relationship they appear to have; loving, supportive, good communication, etc. What I would like to do is give Jesse James truth serum and ask why? If Sandra Bullock is as lovely as she appears to be, inside and out, which I think she is, and again, their marriage is what they project that it is, why would he break such a promise? My feelings are if you can't keep the promise to be faithful to your life partner, which ones can you keep? My heart goes out to Sandra Bullock.

Just Because It Comes From A Doctor...cont'd

2010-03-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

And it seems the majority of the blame goes on the doctors who prescribed the meds. I'm not saying that there aren't doctors and other health care providers that don't go beyond what is morally and ethically right for a price; ie, Michael Jackson, or many times distributing meds to liberally, but the adults taking the meds have to step up and take some responsibility for what and how much of anything they are putting into their bodies. A doctor doesn't know what another doctor is treating a patient for unless the patient tells them. At the pharmacy, when a prescription is filled, there is no red flag that goes off to the pharmacist that the person has just had the same script filled a few days before, unless the person is stupid enough to try and have it filled at the same pharmacy. Health insurance companies won't pay for a script to be filled early, so that can be somewhat of an alarm to a pharmacist, but if a person pays cash, uses multiple doctors and multiple pharmacies, they can obtain a lot of pills in a very short amount of time. They can use them or sell them, and some pills are worth up to $50.00 per pill on the street. The reason I know this is because in the past, I've had staff in my home steal my pain medication and then when reporting it to the police, I've been educated on what pills are worth to sell. The abuse of prescription narcotics is an epidemic and is shocking on so many levels, particularly how many people use them dangerously incorrectly. If the circumstances of this epidemic are to improve, all of those involved, at every level, need to take responsibility of being a part of a situation that desperately needs a healthy change; the government, the pharmaceutical companies, the health care providers and the individuals taking the pills, both those legitimate and otherwise. If the way in which prescription narcotics are distributed and used is not swiftly and severely changed, they will end up doing much more harm than good.

Just Because It Comes From A Doctor...

2010-03-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

I take prescription pain medicine everyday. If I didn't take it, I don't think I could even move my body enough to get dressed and out of bed. I need them to function. I wish I didn't, but right now, I do. On the bottles of each medication, there are multiple warnings regarding its' effects, advising the user the serious danger of mixing the medication with other narcotics or alcohol, not to take more than the prescribed amounts, and that they decrease your respirations. So when I hear about another person, celebrity or layman, dying from taking too many prescription medications and someone says, "But they were prescribed by a doctor, I don't understand what happened,'' I just want to slap someone. Are you fucking kidding me? Someone's heart stops beating or they stop breathing, they die and they were taking every type of prescribed controlled substance that exists at once and people show up on Larry King Live looking puzzled as to why?

More tomorrow...

Health and Happiness

2010-03-14T17:42:00.000-07:00

Living with a spinal cord injury is no joke. I'd be bullshitting you otherwise. You'll learn more about what it means to wake up everyday with SCI as my blog grows. But I'm constantly reminded of those who have it so much worse and I have nothing to complain about. Tonight, I've learned about people (through TLC television network) who have diseases where their bodies will not stop growing. They suffer terribly both physically and emotionally. One girl particularly moved me. She was absolutely beautiful at 5' 8'' and had a body that developed normally until she was 19. Then suddenly, almost overnight, she started noticing odd changes in her body that alerted her to a doctor. Now 31 years old, she has grown to 6' 8'', weighs 250 pounds and is continuing to grow. Her physical features have become distorted and she is unrecognizable. Her internal organs have not developed properly as well and are extremely taxed from trying to keep her body functioning. Although the doctors who have followed her case say she will die by the time she is 40 years old, this brave girl undergoes excrutiating injections every month in hopes they will slow down her fatal growth. At the end of the show, she had fantastic news. Recent blood work showed her growth hormone had slowed down more than it had since her diagnosis. She was ecstatic, and said she now felt anything was possible. She would continue the painful injections gladly; she felt the pain was a very small price to pay.

As I end my day, I count my blessings and am glad for my life, just as it is.

The Power Of Perception

2010-03-13T17:42:00.000-08:00

Perception is a powerful thing. In my memoir, "Life At Breakneck Speed," (currently in book purgatory, yet to be published), I try to stress the importance of the power of perception to my audience. Adjusting our perception is the first step in changing our life's circumstances, and there is no outside "thing" that needs to occur to do this; the power is solely within us. I find this extremely comforting. How powerless would I feel if I had to wait or rely on someone or something else to adjust my perception if adjusting my perception is the first step in creating a better life for myself? That would suck, quite frankly. A positive perception feels good, and the way we feel is the snowflake that will manifest into the snowball and then the snowman, tophat and all, that is what we wish our life to be.

I realize, of course, that all of this jibberish is easier said than done, especially when the circumstances in our life just seem overwhelming. It is at these times, however, that it is most important to raise our sights to see the possibilities, because they are always there. When you are able to see the possibilities, you feel better, hopeful, and then you are on your way. Picture this; you're in a house, maybe even your house, and in a room that has a view of an ugly, smelly, fly infested, overflowing garbage dumpster when you look outside the window. It's huge, and you have no idea how to get it moved or even emptied. How does that view make you feel? Depressed, overwhelmed and just plain crappy. Let's face it, garbage stinks. I'm guessing, however, that you have another room, another part of, your house that has a window. What is the view? Have you even ever bothered to look? Have you been so focused on the garbage that you've forgotten that other parts of your house even exist? You make the effort to get up, go to another part of your house and glance out the window. You do a double take. Holy shit, a flower. You look a bit further, you see a garden. Maybe even some green grass. You forgot about all of these beautiful things that have always been there, that you have created. As you focus on their beauty, something happens. You begin to feel better. You're on your way to figuring out what to do about the garbage and plant flowers in their place.

We all have flowers, we all have garbage and we all have the personal power to create more of either one. Take your pick.

A Night Off

2010-03-12T18:34:00.000-08:00

It's Friday and I'm taking the night off. See you tomorrow.

A Letter Worth Sharing

2010-03-11T18:10:00.000-08:00

I received a letter this week via email that I wanted to share. It's followed by my response.

Hi Amy,

I LOVE your articles in Exceptional Parent magazine! Just checked out your website briefly, as your "Buddy System" article has been on my dining room table since last summer. Love that article. Wanted to find out how I can read your memoir, "Life at Breakneck Speed."

You inspire me, inform me and I hope to get to look at your website more closely soon. I have a daughter who's severely disabled with CP and an uncontrolled form of epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. We are blessed to have her in our life. She's 11 now and was a former special ed and elementary school teacher so I like to learn. Your articles keep me up to date with what's going on in the world.

May God bless you on your journey.

Sincerely,

Diane Hettasch

Brookfield, IL

My response...

Dear Diane,

Thank you so much for your kind words. Writing is my favorite way to share. I resigned from EP Magazine late last year. Due to financial hardship, they stopped paying a few contributing editors, like myself, without any communication on their part. Unfortunately, I am not in the financial position to work for free and made the decision to leave and have been job hunting since.

You can, however, still read my writing. I've started a blog with the column title "An Expressed Perspective." In the world of reality television, I've decided to do reality writing. My column gives the reader a glimpse of my daily experiences living with SCI. You can read it at your leisure at www.anexpressedperspective.blogspot.com. To stay informed of what is happening in the world of medical research, visit my website SpinalTimes and check out "In The News", which is updated weekly. Also, feel free to let me know what you'd like to hear about on my blog or what kind of information you need ie medical or otherwise from SpinalTimes and I'll do my best to get it to you.

As I'm working on getting my book published, I've decided to make a chapter or two available to read on SpinalTimes, and I'll be sure to let you know when it is available. I thought writing the book would be hard, but getting it published when you're an unknown author is really the challenge! It will happen, though, because I refuse to consider any other outcome.

If you decide to read my blog, may I suggest you read the very first entry initially to get the jist of me, and then go wherever you wish from there. I hope you enjoy it.

My thoughts and prayers are with you as you continue your journey with your daughter. I can tell she is the sunshine of your days. Of all the challenges I experience in a day, a letter like yours makes it all worth while times ten.

My very best,

Amy

Purse Shopping With A Purpose Cont'd

2010-03-10T17:05:00.000-08:00

Purse cont'd...

A lady with a store push cart came hurrying down the isle. She had a baby with her and asked in astonishment, "Did that woman just try and steal your purse?" Unable to speak yet, I nodded my head yes in just as much astonishment as she had asked her question. As it soaked it what had just happened, silent tears began to fall and I still could not speak. Just as the kind shopper was putting my purse and its contents on my lap, my aide came down the isle. She was as shocked as I when she learned what had happened. We went to customer service to share what had happened and they escorted us to security. The men we dealt with were extremely nice, and although they could view the entire scenario via security cameras, there was nothing they could do about identifying her. The woman had worn large earmuffs and a hat to disguise her appearance and it had worked. It was this piece of information that made me decide not to report this to the police, and by that point, I just wanted to go home. It took me a few days to tell my boyfriend and family. I just didn't want to deal with how the incident made me feel; like a victim. But as I shared my story with everyone, although obviously appalled, my family applauded me. I had fought back, and whether the woman would have gotten away with my purse or not, I was not a victim. I didn't feel sorry for myself because of my physical circumstances that made me an easy target for an evil opportunist, and I was going to be as proactive as I could. I now have a purse with a thick leather strap that crosses over my body and then the purse rests on my right hip, making it very tough for someone to get at. So come and try to take advantage of me I say to those who are thinking I'm an easy target. I can promise you I won't go down without a fight. And you may be the one that ends up down, literally.

PURSE SHOPPING WITH A PURPOSE...A MUST READ!

2010-03-09T17:16:00.000-08:00

The day dawned beautifully. A sunny sky, with the promise of 60 degrees by noon. With a rare hole in my schedule, I decided to fill it with some shopping. Specifically, purse shopping, and for a specific purse for a specific purpose. Here is why.

A few weeks ago, I was shopping at a local Target, armed with a list of miscellaneous household items. As usual, I was pressed for time. The person I was with went in one direction and I in another, and we agreed to meet in about ten minutes. Now, I always carry my purse on my lap, instead of hanging it on the back of my chair. From the back, some a-hole could easily snatch it lickety split, so on my lap it stays. This day, however, I had placed a shopping basket on my lap and putting my purse in it left no room for my purchases. We quickly hung my purse on my chair's push handle behind me, and while the carelessness of this crossed my mind, I dismissed it because what could happen in ten minutes? A lot, apparently. I raced to the makeup isle, checking out some Burts Bee's lip gloss, when I felt someone behind me. Thinking it was my aide, I turned my head to smile. I was wrong. A girl was grabbing my purse off the back of my wheelchair and trying to get past me. I was too close to the wall display, so she quickly went around the other side of me and headed down the isle. Purely reacting, I pushed my joystick full force right into her and knocked her to the ground. My chair was on a bit of an angle and I not only hit her but also the cosmetic display. The girl's leg was caught under my chair and as she scrambled to get free, I yelled as loud as I could. She scrambled to her feet, raced down the isle out of sight, leaving my purse and its contents strewn on the floor. Stay tuned tomorrow for the conclusion...

Spring Is Coming

2010-03-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

It's real, it's happening, it's no joke. Spring is coming. After the craziness we experienced last week, with more snow than we've had in years, giving us loss of electric and phone for days, it seemed that winter was nowhere near wrapping up. Today, it was 58 degrees without a cloud in the sky. You could actually feel the warmth of the sun, instead of just seeing the glare of it on the snow. One of the biggest secondary issues I deal with as a person living with SCI is being cold. I get cold very easily and it takes an extremely long time for me to warm up. I'm cold if it's below 70 degrees, which means I'm cold pretty much nine months out of the year. For me, cold doesn't feel cold, it feels like pain. Severe pain. I lived in L.A. for five years and the way the warm, dry weather made my body feel was amazing. I was almost pain free. But my family and the people I love the most happen to be where there's cold weather, but being near them warms my heart. Now that you can smell spring in the air, my anxiety level is going down rapidly. Every year, around October/November, I get ultra anxious about how I'm going to survive the upcoming winter. And then, each year, around mid - March, I've realized I've made it through yet again. It brings a big smile on my face each time I realize it yet again, and when I pack away my winter sweaters and unpack my tanktops, it has finally sunken in. I'm on my way to bed soon, with a smile on my face and warmth from today's sun in my heart. It's lovely to know it's only going to get warmer from here. For a while, anyway.

Oscars

2010-03-07T19:04:00.000-08:00

It seems most days, I don't have time to blog until later in the evening. But tonight, the Oscars are on. Enough said.

Life Is So %#ing Busy!!!

2010-03-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

Holy smokes, I need more hours in the day. In a previous blog, I suggested that the Universe have thirty hours in a day and eight days in a week. This current 24/7 plan has got to go. There just isn't enough time to get what you have to get done in a day, so you work into the late evening hours and then don't get enough sleep. Here it is, Saturday night, all I want to do is chill out and droll, maybe watch a movie, but I can't pul myself away from my computer because I feel I need to keep working on a multitude of things in order to get ahead.

As human nature would have it, though, my gut is telling me that even with extra time in a day, a week or a month, we would still feel that there weren't enough hours in a day. I think the best we can do is make the very most of the time that we have, because we'll never feel like there's enough.

Surgery Is Closer...

2010-03-05T17:40:00.000-08:00

What a fantastic day! Four appointments in Manhattan for surgery clearance. All went great, a bit nervous about my pulmonary function test, showed some restriction, but I think some of it had to do with the positioning of the testing machine. I had to really stretch my neck to reach it. I'll call the pulmonary doc Monday and explain. I told Dr. Warren's nurse, Lois, about the test results and she was not concerned. This eased my mind, as Dr. Warren is the main man. I can't wait for a surgery date. I should know next week. My gut is telling me this whole experience and the people I am meeting through this is going to significantly change my life; much more than fixing my shoulder. We'll see.

I'm so tired I'm numb. Kudos to my aide Cameron for working all of her overtime and her support. Nite nite Universe. I pray I'm reaching you.

Surgery Clearance

2010-03-04T19:16:00.000-08:00

It's 10:15 p.m. and we are just getting in for the night. Early day tomorrow for three appointments in Manhattan to get cleared for shoulder surgery. Wish me luck, I'm going to be as charming as I can be. Trust me, it helps.

Phone Is Smokin'

2010-03-03T17:43:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness, my phone is back on. I felt like I was in an alternate Universe without it. My landline has been out since Saturday due to Mother Earth's snow combined with a screwup on my carrier's part. Ironic - we get our electric back Saturday night, we lose phone service Sunday morning. My cell wasn't much help because I get almost zero service in my apartment, unless you stand in my elevator. Note to self - get new cell service. I have a classified ad running in my local paper in hopes of hiring staff in my home, so I am going crazy between answering the phone as it now rings off the hook and trying to play catch up with returning calls. I have no voice, and I'm screwed because even though I know sign language, my damn fingers are paralyzed. How many people can say that. Anyway, with a 10% unemployment rate in our country, you would think you'd get an excellent response from an employment ad. Not so. A large response, yes. We are talking quantity, not quality. People come for interviews that I wouldn't let mow my lawn, let alone help me take a shower and have access to my checkbook. FYI...soap and water and a toothbrush go a long way, people. Wish me luck, more to call.

Good People

2010-03-02T16:53:00.000-08:00

There are good people in this world. Heads up to Josh Coleman at Time Warner Cable. For two days I have been trying to get my phone working, and tonight I am actually frustrated to tears. I switched carriers to save money, and everything has become a mess. The old carrier disconnected it in a way that made the new carrier unable to give me my same phone number. A new phone number would be a nightmare for me, and even if I agreed to take a new number, it would take TWO WEEKS to be connected. My phone is my lifeline. After explaining my story to at least ten different people at both companies and constantly receiving incorrect information, the Universe sent me Josh Coleman. He is patient, apologetic, took the time to get to the bottom of the situation and actually gave me a direct phone number to reach him, not "any representative can help you." It is still going to be a few days before my phone is working, but I am breathing easier with Josh in my corner. He is a customer service godsend and is an example of what a customer service representative should be; someone who cares. Thank you, Josh. I'm sure I'll never get to meet you, but I'm sending blessings your way. You certainly deserve them.

More Giving, More Gratitude

2010-03-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

Economically speaking, it is no secret that the majority of Americans are feeling tightness in their pocketbooks. From single parents to the auto industry, from big banks to your local mom and pop businesses, what is in the cash register just isn't what it was a few years ago. Some financial experts say the worst is over, while others say the worst is yet to come. Either way, in this moment, times are tight. Everybody knows somebody who's lost a job, or knows a business that's had to cut back on employees or adjust pay scales and compensation packages due to the economy. Non - profit organizations are not getting the donations they are used to receiving and in turn, cannot reach out to as many individuals as they would be able to in more robust times. There still are, however, those special corporations, local business, organizations, programs and individuals that not only continue to give to society during tough times regardless of their own personal and/or professional financial circumstances, they give more because the need is greater. Pineapple Day Spa is one such example. Located in my hometown of Pine Bush, N.Y., Pineapple Day Spa is owned by my exceptionally gracious friend Andrea Tompkins and the General Manager is my nephew, Ryan DeJong. Pineapple Day Spa is filled with a special staff who's soothing energy you begin to experience before the front door closes behind you. I'm a very regular patron and each time I leave, I'm ultra relaxed and feelling like the Queen of Egypt. Recently, the staff of Pineapple brought their spa services and skills to the residents of Grace Smith House in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The residents of Grace Smith House are survivors of domestic violence and Pineapple Day Spa's team donated their time to provide these women with lots of TLC as an early Valentine's Day present on February 8th. The residents received manicures, massages, facials, waxing, hairstyles and makeup application. You can almost experience how good all those treatments would make you feel just by reading about them, right? Well, imagine how they would make you feel if you were a battered woman, and someone was offering you something to make you feel good, to make you feel that you deserved some special attention, and they were doing it just to be kind, to give back to a fellow human being? That is quite a gift to give.

I'm lucky enough to have generous folks like this right in my backyard, in my community, as family, as friends and as neighbors. Unfortunately, not everyone in society is as lucky as me. But you can make them that lucky. Regardless of your life's current circumstances, you can easily find a way to give to someone near you. Offer your neighbor, who happens to be a single mother, an hour of baby sitting each week so she can have a bit of time to herself. Plow someone's driveway in the wintertime when you see they are snowed in. Knock on an elderly person's door in your community and see if they need some company or a trip to the grocery store. There are many, many, charities for children, disabled individuals, animals or the environment that you can easily become a part of without ever leaving home. Just pick something close to your heart and step in. Bravo to the team at Pineapple Day Spa. You donated your skill and your time for no other reason than you could. The hairdo's and makeup on the women at Grace Smith House will quickly fade, but what you did for their hearts and souls and self esteem will have an everlasting effect, and they will never forget you. You are an example for all of us to follow. Thank you.

Overhaulin'

2010-02-28T17:22:00.000-08:00

Today I treated myself to a mini - overhaul. No, I didn't sit in front of the flat screen and catch up on dvr'd episodes of HD Theater's hit show "Overhaulin' " with Chip Fosse. I went to the fabulous Pineapple Day Spa instead and had a manicure, pedicure and a wash and blow dry on my hair. It was fantastic, and exactly what I needed after a few days of no electric that came with quite a bit of stress. The spa was busy with people that had the exact same idea as myself. I'm short staffed on the weekends, so one of my gals worked an extra shift for me today so I could shower and get organized for the upcoming week. And somewhere along the way in my morning I decided I needed a little overhauin'. A major overhaulin' would have included getting my roots done, maybe a massage or a facial, and a bit of waxing in addition to what I had done today. Hey, if you want to stay looking good and keep running smooth, you need regular maintenance, and once in a while, a total revamping. Just ask Chip Fosse. He gets it.

Powerless

2010-02-27T18:52:00.000-08:00

We've had incredible weather. Mother Nature has let us know just how powerful she is. Three feet of snow in some areas surrounding us, and at least a foot of snow on our own lawn. Thursday night around 11 p.m. we lost electric. For my household, that means no heat. Very serious situation. It was a blizzard outside, so Mike and I made the decision to bundle up for the nite and see if we regained power in the meantime. We slept in our clothes, put extra quilts on the bed, and hoped for the best. By 6 a.m. we still were without power and the house was cold. We shovled, plowed, and made our way over to Mike's dad's house, who had a full generator. We had everything but cable and internet, so we were fine. The inconvenience, however, sucked. When the electric came on about 7 p.m., we flew home. I'm embarrassed to use this more than corny line, but there is no place like home. That and the fact that I'm lost off - line.

Let It Snow

2010-02-25T18:16:00.000-08:00

It's February 25th, a little over three weeks til' spring, and I thought the snow for the season was over. Not snow. I mean so. Okay, lame ass joke. Our electric has been flickering on and off for the last hour, and I'm praying to the Universe we don't loose our electric. That would totally suck. My system cannot take the cold, we have electric heat, so if we lose electric I have to bundle up and go camp out somewhere. Really fun at 3 a.m. By next winter, I will have a pellet stove for supplemental heat, (no electric required), and a generator. Then I will be able to enjoy snowstorms and not worry about losing electric. Because despite my bitching, the snow is beautiful. So fresh and clean, and when the trees are covered with it, there is no postcard that can compare.

The finals for women's Olympic skating is on right now and I'm going to take advantage while the electric is on. I hope you are cozy and comfortable wherever you are, and I wish you a wonderful night of sweet dreams. See you tomorrow.

Another Great Day

2010-02-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

My fifteen year old nephew needed my computer today to work on a term paper; his dad's computer is in the shop. It's 10 p.m., I just got it back, and I'm going to bed.

Here's the day I had. My three year old niece called me at 8:30 a.m. and wanted to come over for the day. Very big deal, as it was the first time she would come alone. Mike and I had a day of floor shopping planned, and she shopped like a trooper. She was a very good girl. We came home, did crafts, played, and her mom picked her up about 5 p.m. She was here for eight hours. Now do you see how good my day was?:)

Gratitude In Our Attitude

2010-02-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

Today was a tough day physically, which doesn't exactly make it an easy emotional day. A few days ago I started showing signs of a possible UTI, so I'm taking a very low dose antibiotic to prevent a full blown infection. Unfortunately, it makes me pretty nauseous and I woke up very queasy this morning. A low pressure system brought rain, sleet and snow to us today, making my body ache everywhere, and making my usual aches magnified. I spent the day unable to eat hardly anything at all and taking pain medicine. My body truly feels broken everywhere. On days like these, it is hard to find something interesting to write about because I'm not feeling inspired or inspiring. As foreign as it may feel when I'm feeling like this, I try as hard as I can to find some gratitude. Or more accurately, feel some gratitude. Tonight, almost as an after thought, I scrolled through the previous blogs I have written. I read tidbits about a woman who is loyal, tenacious, stubborn, adventurous, dedicated to her family and well - loved. Not too shabby if that's the end of a tough day. Imagine what I would have seen at the end of a great day.

Putting some gratitude in our attitude is a sure way to feel better about who we are and the journey we are on. Identifying the gratitude in our lives will give us what we need to keep moving forward, even during the toughest of times. And no matter who you are, you have some. Just keep looking.

HE SAID YES

2010-02-22T17:56:00.000-08:00

OMG!!! He said yes! No, I didn't propose to my Honey, but this is almost as good. The second of two surgeons at Hospital For Special Surgery said he thought I was a good candidate for the shoulder blade procedure I need. HOLY SHIT, IT'S CHRISTMAS! Dr. Warren was awesome, took a lot of time with me, checking me over, forming a plan, explaining what was going to take place in the O.R., expectations, recovery, drew pictures of my anatomy, answering my questions, the works. His team with him was Dr. Andrea Baker, (I believe a fellow), and his nurse Lois, both of whom were just as fantastic as Dr. Warren. Surgery in approximately six weeks, and I will be busy getting ready for it between now and then with additional appointments to clear me for the procedure. I'm healthy, just the broken neck, so I know there won't be any additional health issues in my way. Rock on, life is great!!! Night night!

Minus A Voice

2010-02-21T18:07:00.000-08:00

I'm lucky I'm a writer because I've lost my voice. Obviously not my proverbial voice, but my physical voice. Ever since I cheered at my nephew's swim meet a few weeks ago, my voice has been raspy. Today, after phone screening a dozen people from my help wanted classified ad to hopefully hire staff to help me in my home, my voice is shot. Nonexistent. I have a very important appointment with a surgeon tomorrow in Manhattan and I have a lot of questions to ask. It should be fun. Entertaining at the least. I met the first surgeon I needed to last week, and this is the second half of the dynamic duo. My right shoulder blade is a mess. It crosses over my spine and hits my left one. Hurts. The first surgeon feels I'm an "excellent candidate" for a certain procedure that will fix my problem. Tomorrow I find out what his partner thinks. I've searched for more than two years for a doctor who thinks they can help me. This shoulder issue has become much worse than my actual paralysis, and if it can be fixed, it will drastically change the quality of my life. Wish me luck. I'm going to wipe my tears of hope away and get ready for bed. See you tomorrow, whoever you are.

The Best Of Day's

2010-02-20T18:36:00.000-08:00

Flakiness is not my usual M.O. I'm organized because I like to be but also because being paralyzed with people having to do things from helping you empty your bladder to write out a check is hard enough; doing it if your unorganized is, quite frankly, fucking impossible. But yesterday, as I laid in bed at 11:00 p.m. in twilight right before I fell asleep, I realized I forgot to write my blog. I apologize to you and to me for breaking the initial promise I made to each of on the first day of this year long journey of writing every single day.

I have so much I wish to share. The news of my upcoming surgery that I'm miraculously a candidate for, our crazy mortgage circumstances, my aide care odyssey, Burke vs. HSS, my dad, my writing dreams, our gift of choice, and so so so much more. But it can all wait; it will be there tomorrow, and I had a great day today.

My lovely aide Cameron worked O.T. this a.m. for me so I went to sleep last night without the worry of how I was going to get out of bed Saturday morning, (a chronic worry when I'm short staffed), lunch with my honey at our special place in New Paltz, and then the rest of the afternoon, dinner, and evening with my best friend and her family. As we gave the kids baths, said their prayers and what they were thankful for, my three year old niece said she was thankful for Aunt Amy. Life doesn't get any better than that, so why would I write about anything else.

Mortgage A Go

2010-02-18T18:32:00.000-08:00

My honey and I qualify for the mortgage we need. Enough said. Insane week. Promise a weekend of details. Night', love to all.

Magic vs. A Joke

2010-02-17T17:07:00.000-08:00

I had two appointments today. One was at the Hospital For Special Surgery in Manhattan, the other at Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in White Plains, N.Y. HSS was magic and Burke was a depressing joke. I'll be writing an article tomorrow that will hopefully turn into an editorial in my local paper. Stay tuned.

Help Your Neighbor

2010-02-16T17:11:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching Sean Penn on Larry King. I'm a fan of Penn's films and talent, both infront of and behind the camera. I always thought his bad boy image was not as bad as the paparazzi wished it to be and that his Best Actor Oscar win last year was well deserved and over due. As I listened to Penn speak of his experience during his recent visit to the ravaged country of Haiti, it wasn't what he was saying that held my attention so acutely but more of the way he looked. He appeared as though he was in shock, the haunting way you'd expect someone to look who had just seen their entire platoon blown away in battle and was still trying to come to terms that his life had been spared. He had been in Haiti a few weeks with different relief organizations he is working with to do whatever they could. Although I had obviously never met Sean Penn before, I knew I was looking at a changed man. Changed in a way that comes from experiencing something so horrific and being amazed that you were still alive and breathing. I recognized this look because I had seen it in my own face. I still see it, and always will. When I broke my neck, my entire body went numb, I wasn't able to move or even breathe and I lost all perception that anything existed below my neck. I thought I had been decapitated. I remember wondering how long it would be before my brain stopped producing thoughts and I would simply cease to exist. When I lived, something in me had changed. Something instantaneous in my soul, some type of clarity. I will never forget what I experienced, what it meant, what I thought was happening to me, and I'd never need to be reminded. That's the way Sean Penn looked. He was pleading on Larry King to the international public not to forget about Haiti, what their needs are and would continue to be, that they needed us to keep our eyes open and not to forget about them. I know Sean Penn won't. Time heals all things...with help. Let us all remember the less fortunate that exist not separate from us, but among us, and make helping them a part of our lives the rule, not the exception. We are all neighbors, so if we don't, who will?

Nothing Like Family

2010-02-15T16:13:00.000-08:00

Family is fun. I took my nephew and niece out for lunch for a combined celebration of Valentine's Day and my nephew's swimming win. I had an added bonus of my sister - in - law and boyfriend being available as well, so I was surrounded by all of my favorite people. My belly still hurts from all the laughing. Life can become so extraordinarily stressful that we sometimes think we have no time for anything but. Don't get into that mode; keep your priorities straight. Spend time with family.

Something Positive cont'd

2010-02-14T17:32:00.001-08:00

On Wednesday, I began writing about my experience of being ill a few years ago with a bone infection, osteomyelitis. I had been sick for about eighteen months, trying to care for it at home with I.V. antibiotics. My illness escalated to the point of needing to be admitted to the hospital immediately, but it came at a terrible time because my boyfriend's mom was in the final stages of pancreatic cancer. She was very dear to me, and I knew if I went to the hospital, I'd never see her again. My doctor warned me that if I waited much longer, my boyfriend would be attending not only his mom's funeral but mine, as well. Edie passed away three days after I received the news that my latest MRI showed the need for immediate hospitalization. I was admitted to New York Presbyterian Hospital the morning after Edie's funeral, had my first of eight surgeries the same afternoon and was a patient there for five months. Five months. Initially, my doctor said I could be an inpatient anywhere from two weeks to two months. Surgery after surgery showed more need to schedule an additional surgery. I had been sick for a long time, and it wasn't truly revealed exactly how bad things were until the surgeons began opening me up. The infection had pulled a lot of weight off of me, and the day of my first surgery I weighed in at eighty - four pounds at six feet tall. I looked as bad as it sounds.

As it became clear my stay was going to be much longer than originally estimated, I knew I had to find something positive to focus on if I was going to emotionally survive. I needed something easily accessible to me everyday that I really liked to do in a burn unit. It actually wasn't too hard to find. People. I loved people, and there certainly was a steady stream coming in and out of my hospital room. So this is what I did. From the surgeons to the janitors to the nurses to the food service folks to anybody that walked in my room, I did my best to get to know them. Some looked at me like I was nuts and many didn't speak English, but I didn't care. Be it 4 p.m. or 4 a.m., I got to know you. And it saved me. Over five months, I got to know some of the most interesting people I'll ever meet, and I still keep in touch with some of them to this day. When you ask a person something about themselves, you show you recognize them for more than the guy who sweeps your floor twice a day, or the doctor who reads your MRI report. They become humanized, and in return, they do the same for you. I wasn't just the patient in room 724, I was Amy Alexander from Upstate New York who was an aspiring writer and adored her nephew and niece. Next time your mailman or bus driver or dentist pops into your life, ask them how they are, or what movies they've seen lately, or if they like regular or decaf. You'll be amazed what you'll end up doing for each other.

Section IX Champs!

2010-02-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

Section IX Swimming Finals were amazing! P.B. took the crown. Dinner with D & G for Mike's birthday; lovely. Exhausted, love to you, night night.

The Thrill Of Competition

2010-02-12T18:47:00.000-08:00

Bonjour, mes amies! I'm in the french Olympic spirit as I watch the opening ceremony. I just came from my 15 year old nephew's Section IX Championship swim meet, where he and his team ROCKED!!! Semi - finals were tonight, finals are tomorrow and I'LL BE THERE!!!:) I 'm hoarse from screaming to cheer. I love how the experience of competition makes me feel - I'm ready to take on the world and win! Small problem, though....I'm absolutely exhausted and I'm going to bed. I'll take on the world tomorrow. So proud of you, Ty. I love you.

Until Tomorrow

2010-02-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

I will continue my story tomorrow. Exhaustion has set in and my typing arm is numb. Good-night dearest Universe.

Something Positive

2010-02-10T13:26:00.000-08:00

About five years ago, I was admitted to New York Presbyterian Hospital's burn center in Manhattan. I had been fighting a bone infection due to a pressure sore for eighteen months at home with I.V. antibiotic therapy, but it was a fight I was slowly losing. It came to a point where an MRI revealed that things had escalated to a point of needing hospitalization or this infection was going to take my life sooner than later. I had a local infectious disease doctor caring for me at the time but months earlier we had discussed the possibility for the need for hospitalization. I had already picked a facility and met with a team of doctors there in case I needed them. My ducks were all in a row, and after my main doctor at New York Presby looked at my most recent tests, he wanted me admitted immediately and in the O.R. the following day. By this point I was very sick. I had lost thirty - eight pounds from the poison of the infection and weighed eighty - four pounds. The antibiotics weren't working anymore; my body just kept getting infected with bacteria that was not sensitive to the current medication I was on. Suddenly things had gotten to a scary point. I looked and felt very ill indeed, and knew that infections of this type were the number one cause of death of individuals with spinal cord injuries. All of this couldn't come at a worse time. My boyfriend's mom, the lovely Edie Pluchino, had terminal pancreatic cancer that was escalating out of control faster than a forestfire. I knew if I went into the hospital, I would have to say goodbye to her. When I expolained this to my doctor, he said if I waited any longer, the people I loved in my life would be attending my funeral as well as Edie's. To add to all of our worries, my father was starting chemotherapy for colon cancer and having yet another surgery. It was a terrible time, and sometimes all I could do was pray for the strength to cope.

Promises

2010-02-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

When I was first injured sixteen years ago, I made a promise to myself. Regardless of how long I needed to use a wheelchair, whether it was a day, a week, a year or a lifetime, I would be happy. I refused to consider any other option because I knew myself well enough that if I did, I'd lose my will to live. I am an all or nothing girl, and anything less is just not worth my time. Not worth my time to live, I mean. Being injured is not what really terrified me. Looking back on my life in my later years, or anytime really, and saying my 20's, or 30's, or 40's, or my whole life, sucked because I was in a wheelchair. No way was that going to me. Like I said, what would be the point of living? Now, some promises are harder to keep than others, and at times, this one is tough. But a promise is a promise. My secret to keeping this promise is I find something that brings me joy, even in the most devastating of circumstances. Some people feel that there is something wrong with this philosophy, but I do not. I'll explain why tomorrow, and I'd truly love to hear what you think and feel about this. Whether you agree with me or not is not important to me. I'd be thrilled to know anything I share abbout my own life experiences would move someone enough that they'd want to share about theirs, or express an opinion about mine. I pray with my whole heart that this is reaching somebody, anybody. I wonder if blogging is the thing on Mars...Venus, more likely, as women are more likely to chat and share.

An Expressed Perspective

I'M HERE

Just When I Thought I'd Heard It All...

This Week's Misc.

Current Conditionss

Biography

Father's Day

Happy and Sad

Relay For Life

Congrats To Jimmy and Beyond

Academy Of Finance Award's Dinner

Shopping Sunday

Notes From Yesterday

How To Change The Perception Of Your Life

Just A Few Words

I Miss You

Sick Vs. Injured

At Last, An Explanation

Dad and the Relay For Life

I Remember Why I Love To Write

Dear Universe

100th Episode

Tired

A Bend In The Road

The Key To Happiness

Since I've been gone...

The Bonus Round

A Pureness Of Heart

Holy Smokes...literally

Nothing Profound

Reasonable and Customary

See Your Future With The Past

Problems Are Great!

Staff Is Secondary...NOT!

Spring Cleaning ''Tune Up''

Daily Kabbalah ''Tune Up''

Setting The Tone

A True Beauty, Inside and Out

The All American Game

Reach Out

A Bit Of Doubt

A Night Off

Before You Complain...

More Pain,But More Gain

I Am No Longer A Facebook Virgin!

Audacity Of Hope

EGO FROM HELL PART II

EGO FROM HELL

Ego's Among Us, Part II

Pull, Cross and Roll

Ego's Among Us

The Importance Of You II

The Importance Of You

Spring Has Sprung!

Countdown To Surgery

A Sure Cure For Sex Addiction

Pearls Before Breakfast

Tired or Tired?

Shopping sunday

Interview With A Nipple, conclusion

Interview With A Nipple

Get It Done

A Better Day End

A Better Day, Part Deux

A Better Day

No Title

Broken Promises

Just Because It Comes From A Doctor...cont'd

Just Because It Comes From A Doctor...

Health and Happiness

The Power Of Perception

A Night Off

A Letter Worth Sharing

Purse Shopping With A Purpose Cont'd

PURSE SHOPPING WITH A PURPOSE...A MUST READ!

Spring Is Coming

Oscars

Life Is So *%#*ing Busy!!!

Surgery Is Closer...

Surgery Clearance

Life Is So %#ing Busy!!!