One of my most favorite pastimes since locating to downtown Minneapolis is enjoying the visages of the beautiful men that work in my fair city. And there are quite a number of them I assure you. More than any girl like myself could ever need. With the high percentage of law firms, banks, and other corporate entities that are located in the downtown zone, handsome men in their 20s and 30s are everywhere; simply and fantastically, everywhere.

And when a cute gal like myself needs a boost on her Happy Meter, a jaunt downtown has always been the sure thing. It never fails. Seriously…what’s better than a tall, graceful man in a perfectly tailored suit, smiling at you as he walks by? Absolutely nothing. And on many a sad, depressing day when I can’t bear to live another minute with this wretched SCI, the sight of a beautiful man has always made me reconsider any preposterous thought. This is especially true when they say hi. Giddiness ensues…

Many say that women are God’s personal handiwork; that they are the most beautiful sex, but I disagree. A young, in-shape, and well-dressed man is at least comparable, and even fairer, if you ask me. Luckily, I’ve had a few notable beautiful men in my day. Some weren’t all that easy on the eyes, I’ll admit it, but the ones who were lovely…oh, I’ll remember them forever…

If my knees could go weak (you sing it SWV), these are the traits that will always and forever, drive me wild: Dark, chin-length hair, sexy eyes, broad shoulders, fashionable clothes, lightly pin-striped suits., cool shades, a low, husky voice, impeccable taste in food and wine, a witty sense of humor, an aggressive personality, graceful hands, and better taste in music than even me, which btw, I highly doubt is possible

Did you know that wheelchair-users everywhere - like the old dude in the Hooveround at Barnes & Noble, the young Mexican dude (with a grill) rolling down 5th Street, the hottie in the powerchair at your favorite after work bar - are all going out in public without their panties on? Ha! That’s right, folks. The joke is on you!

Hey, it may gross you out or it may give you a laugh, but I know for fairly certain that over 75% of every wheeler you see out in public is going commando. I can assure you however it isn’t out of some sick and twisted perversion. It’s out of necessity!

That’s right: Panties are pointless. All they do is dig into your skin and leave marks (hello? sitting all day!), which could turn into sores, and then you’re sorely screwed. So don’t wear ‘em ok? Like anyone is gonna know Save yourself the hard-earned dough you made at your customer service job this week, and instead of spending it on a pair of rhinestone encrusted black satin panties from VS, put it towards something more meaningful…like a bottle of some delicious Stolichnaya.

That’s right….sweet ‘n tasty Stolichnaya. Yummmms…..

- Tiff

…should be this; the SUPER-fantastic enclosed makeup pencil sharpener. All your shavings get caught automatically in its plexi-glass enclosure. Now, how cool is that?

Brilliant, and 100% necessary, for any C6 quad with a hankerin’ to line her eyes a la Cleopatra…

Yours truly, Tiff

Check-out the UK’s latest public service attempt to educate the their public on the dis-life (with all the characters voiced by actual people with disabilities):

Creature Discomforts

The same company that created the popular movie/series “Wallace & Gromit” also did this. I’m liking it!

- Tiff

I spent my 2007 Christmas at my mom’s house (in the ‘burbs) this year. As expected, my parents drank too heavily and were unable to perform my much needed PCA duties on Christmas Eve. I was needless to say totally annoyed and promised myself after that night that I’ll never again sleep over at my mom’s, barring any Nuclear Holocaust or any other kind of “fleeing to your mom’s” event. It was just absolutely wretched.

Let me paint for you a picture of how everything went down: All the family left our house at around 9:30pm. Then we busied ourselves with clean-up duty. And let me tell you there were A LOT of dishes to be washed. Not an easy task for a drunk woman of 49 years old to be performing. My mom was almost on the floor. And after my inner-family left, after all the cleaning-up was finished, I took one look at my mom (as she struggled to sit upright on an island stool) and knew an alternative method for getting into bed that night be required. Talk about too much stress to have to deal with on the Holidays. So not fair! What I should’ve done was had one of my PCA’s drive out to my mom’s and help, but by that time it was 11pm on Christmas Eve. Too late to ask any of them. Was I going to have to sleep hunched over on the bathroom sink again?

And then somehow, as if Jesus himself heard my distress call, my 22 year old sister called mom, seeing how the prime rib dinner was (she had to miss it and go to her boyfriend’s family’s house instead). I quickly snagged the phone out of her inebriated hands, and asked if she could come over and help. And she said yes. Whew! Christmas crisis averted. Within the half hour she was at the house helping me transfer into bed. And afterwards, as I tried to sleep during that night, I realized I was facing another crisis: I couldn’t cath myself in this regular bed (i.e. it wasn’t automatic and therefore couldn’t sit me up). “Why hadn’t I thought of this?!” my mind screamed to itself. So, at 4am I had to call my mom on my cell to wake her up, to see if she was sober enough to help me. Lucky for me she was.

I think next year I’ll nix drinking any booze so I can drive home on Christmas Eve and cozy-up in my full-sized automatic bed with my neck warmer, my DVD player, and my two cats. Sometimes the comfort card trumps any long-lasting family Holiday nostalgia.

“Be very careful with this wheelchair! You are handling a $15,000 piece of equipment. Any damages will be considering grievous and handled by my lawyer. HANDLE WITH CARE!”

That’s the sign (one of them), that now goes on my chair each time I fly. You see, I’ve learnt my lesson the two times I’ve flown this year (the first time was to L.A. in June for a Christopher Reeve Foundation event, the second time was for a weekend getaway to Las Vegas in late July): When flying (or with Sun Country Airlines, at least) you simply must print out your own “Handle with care” signs and tape them all over your chair before handing over this very important piece of medical equipment to the lions (and believe me, they are lions). Each time I’ve flown this year the irresponsible luggage handlers (the guys outside who haul your 300+lb wheelchair in and out the belly of the plane), have severely broken my chair.

This is an extremely maddening experience. The first time around they pulled too hard on the harness (aka “the big fat cord”) that connects my joystick to the computer chip that runs the chair. I literally got stuck in the elevator at my posh L.A. hotel and went up 14 stories, unable to exit the elevator, as my chair broke down. When I flew to Vegas, it was my beloved elevator seat that got shat on. They somehow while lifting the chair up, hit the box UNDERNEATH my chair that runs the elevator seat (a $7,500 piece of equipment), making in unfixable. For the Vegas trip, I printed out 3 signs and taped them onto my joystick, my backrest, and behind the backrest; all in the effort to let the handlers know that this wasn’t just another piece of equipment they could toss around.

So when I fly next week, wish me luck! I’m going to print out double the amount of signs with the font extra bolded, just to be sure they’re more than extra-careful with my precious wheels. These are my legs people! I mean, for serious…

I just watched the 2004 movie starring Macaulay Culkin (as a paraplegic no less) in ”Saved!,” for the second time today. It was like watching it for the first time though. My memory usually fails me at remembering every part of a movie if I’ve only watched it one time, and yup, this time was no different. The great surprise about watching this film for a second time around however was the smile that got plastered all over my face after watching Macaulay Culkin’s character on-screen. Can I just say for the record how kick this character was not only written, but acted?

Kudos to Macaulay and to whomever the writer was; for reals. Usually when I watch a character on-screen with a SCI, my usual reaction is a deep, face-reddening cringe. I actually get embarrassed for the actor when watching a poorly written SCI character! I can’t even stand it most of the time and walk out of the theater if it gets really bad. But “Roland,” Culkin’s character in this film, was dead-on perfect. The chair, the way his legs sat, the wheelchair-van, the hand-controls in his girlfriend’s car (that she installed just for him), to how he was constantly reading a magazine in high school whenever he got bored or ignored (while riding in his van, in P.E. class…), was beautifully accurate.

And the best part of the film has got to be the romance he has with the quintessential “bad girl” at his over-the-top annoying Evangelical high school. She’s Jewish, a rumored stripper, an Atheist (just like him), and only goes to their school because she was expelled from every other school she’s gone to. “I wonder if everything below his waist is paralyzed,” she hysterically wonders during one of their daily mandatory prayer sessions. I mean, for serious, can this film get any better?

Impossible!

When I broke my neck at the end of the summer in 1993, little did I know what I was in for in the long upcoming cold season. I soon discovered by October that my body was far from what it used to be when it came to its ability to regulate temperatures. I was screwed. No matter what I did to compensate for my constant coldness - turtlenecks, space heaters, heated blankets - nothing made me feel the blessedness of body warmth again. It was a perpetual Artic Hell.

Fast-forward four years later at the Courage Center (I eventually moved into this independent living facility to learn how to live on my own), and I began to be a social smoker. A lot of my new disabled acquaintances were hardened “crippled” badasses who smoked all kinds of things (grin), had piercings, liked Marilyn Manson, and pretty much broke every rule that was put in place for the residents. I was like Winona Rider and there were like the collective version of Angelina Jolie in the movie, ”Girl, Interrupted.” This novel activity of social smoking outside (we couldn’t smoke indoors), unintendedly made me stop feeling the unbearable coldness that my sluggish blood-flowing body had been forcing on me for all these years. I still hold to the fact that the reason for this was simple: The cigarettes not only provided a small amount of visible warmth, which tricked my mind into thinking of the cigarette as if it were a mini-bonfire, the Nicotine also numbed me to the cold.

Now, I don’t recommend that every freezing quad out there should take-up smoking to cure their neverending bout of freezingness. But I must admit, it was the only thing that worked for me; and I eventually quit smoking years ago. I can still zoom outside, sans jacket, in 40 degree weather for 15 minutes and not even feel the cold. It’s crazy to think about (I never thought I’d get to this point), and I’m incredibly grateful. I live in Minnesota and even though we truly are experiencing global warming (no matter what some crazy Evangelicals may say), balmy Florida-like winters are hundreds of years off. And I don’t plan on moving anytime soon. So as you can see, getting used to the several- month-long winters we have is essential for my sanity.

For you folks with SCI out there reading this, it all really boils down to mind over matter. The cigarettes and the Nicotine screwed with my mind, making the permanent chill I was experiencing become nothing more but a very, un-fond memory. I’ve also found a few other tricks, that I’ll share with you now, that have helped me stave off the “cold:”  Microwaveable neck warmers and drinking hot water vs. cold water (room temp water also will work). These two seemingly minor things blocked the cold from entering my sensitive quad bod. And there’s no need in saying that I had to discover these things on my own. Rehab OT and PT therapists once again proved useless in providing any real, beneficial help to me. I swear, most of everything that helps me on a day-to-day basis I figured out on my own.

Anyways, enough of that. Stay warm this winter all of you quads out there! The Discovery Channel Store sells really nice microwaveable neck warmers, FYI.

I rolled into a Vickie’s this weekend, smacked down my Angel’s card like a good American “hunter and gatherer” female, and bought a sexy-striped chemise from their new Pout line and two of their Beauty Rush body splashes - Juiced Berry and Grapsicle.

Yup, that’s right: GRAPESICLE! I currently smell like someone poured a can of Crush Grape pop all over me, and it’s glorious.

In other scent-related thoughts, I wish someone out there in the wasteland of humanity could also recall the OLD school Victoria’s Secrets scents that were produced pre-1993. Anyone remember Tranquil Breezes cologne from their old “Herb” collection? God that stuff was the most beautiful scent ever bottled! A mix of cucumbers and melon. Better than Jesus’ B.O, and way better than anything Charlize Theron, Kate Winslet, Kiera Knightly, or Liv Tyler are pimping-out these days on TV the week before Christmas.

(The perfume commercials are starting to feel like the most melodramatic soap opera ever. Puke)

Laters - Tiff

We here in Minnesota got over 15″ of snow in the last week. It’s been wretched and awful. My new mini-van doesn’t want to start (bad battery? who knows) and there’s so much snow on the streets that the snowplows just push the snow outwards, like the wake of a boat, blocking the curb-cuts with several feet high snow piles. It’s making my life as a resident of Minneapolis not very appealing these days. I use a wheelchair, yo. And my arms are weak. There’s no way in Hell I can carry a mini snow shovel with me as a meander down the sidewalks, shoveling my way through snow-packed street corners. What to do, what do…?

But I guess this situation isn’t brand new to me or anything. I’ve been dealing with “snow + wheelchair = really annoying” fiascos for over 14 winters now, and I don’t plan on moving anytime soon either. I live in a fancy new condo owned by a family member, my family lives here, MN Medicaid is great, my bf lives here, and I have a ton ‘o friends too. Why in the Hell would I move? Should I let the 3 months of snow and icy cold weather we get each year make me run off to Texas, Florida, or <insert warm weather state here>? Nah, I love it here. But bring on the global warming, folks! Buy your SUV’s and drive 50+ miles a day so little ‘ol Tiffiny up in Minnesota can drive her wheelchair downtown in December. Ha