(no subject)
Had class at 10am this morning, strange getting up and having breakfast and whatnot in a quiet house (since my mum's carer wasnt here yet so mum was still asleep in bed) since ive been sleeping from about 5am-1pm most days for the past couple of months really, partly caused by the fact that my boyfriend is on the other side of the world and partly that the best time to get quiet time to myself is between midnight and dawn in this house. Anyhow, the class this morning was Philosophy of Language, i've been interested in linguistics for a couple of years, meeting justinant a while back now at juliadactyl's party sparked my interest in doing the subject at uni and my mother's condition with motor neurone disease, while it pre-occupies my mind a good amount of the time (not surprisingly) it has also spawned so many interesting philosophical ideas that ive wanted to learn more about.
Things like the fact that she cannot talk or write, so her communication with the world is through what we call an eye gaze chart. The chart is a rectangle of perspex plastic with letters on it, so you put it between mum's eyes and yours and she picks the letters by well.. eyegazing at them :p. Tedious and frustrating method of communication at times, but its also started sooo many amusing moments in our house. So philosophy of language/communication is a very interesting subject for me, especially when todays lecture was about the ways that you can fail to communicate verbally between two people. Things like not recognising they are trying to communicate with you, not recognising that they are speaking a language, misunderstanding the words, meaning or context of the thing being said... all of these things are a regular occurence with my mother and with people in similar states (like being 'locked in' by a stroke) so the lecturer brought up some examples of movies/books where people have had major failures of communication, so i mentioned mum and kind of brought on way too much emotion and grief right in the middle of a class... bad idea.
Wandered around uni for a while since i had two hours to kill between class and physiotherapy this arvo, walked up to physio past my old high school, godamn that brought back some memories.. its been a while since i walked along that street. Physio was an hour of immense pain, since it seems i've pulled about three muscles in my right shoulder lifting mum sunday evening *winces* really not fun. I swore 4months back after I went through such bad back pain that i couldnt sit at my computer for longer than half an hour that i'd be much more careful about these things and use the hoist for every transfer to avoid further injury. Hell im only 20. I need this back/neck/spine to be working for a long time to come.
I'm trying to look after myself, i swear.
edit: oh yeeeah, i forgot to mention yesterday too.. I got my head shaved again, down to a No.3 all over. feels so wicked :p
Things like the fact that she cannot talk or write, so her communication with the world is through what we call an eye gaze chart. The chart is a rectangle of perspex plastic with letters on it, so you put it between mum's eyes and yours and she picks the letters by well.. eyegazing at them :p. Tedious and frustrating method of communication at times, but its also started sooo many amusing moments in our house. So philosophy of language/communication is a very interesting subject for me, especially when todays lecture was about the ways that you can fail to communicate verbally between two people. Things like not recognising they are trying to communicate with you, not recognising that they are speaking a language, misunderstanding the words, meaning or context of the thing being said... all of these things are a regular occurence with my mother and with people in similar states (like being 'locked in' by a stroke) so the lecturer brought up some examples of movies/books where people have had major failures of communication, so i mentioned mum and kind of brought on way too much emotion and grief right in the middle of a class... bad idea.
Wandered around uni for a while since i had two hours to kill between class and physiotherapy this arvo, walked up to physio past my old high school, godamn that brought back some memories.. its been a while since i walked along that street. Physio was an hour of immense pain, since it seems i've pulled about three muscles in my right shoulder lifting mum sunday evening *winces* really not fun. I swore 4months back after I went through such bad back pain that i couldnt sit at my computer for longer than half an hour that i'd be much more careful about these things and use the hoist for every transfer to avoid further injury. Hell im only 20. I need this back/neck/spine to be working for a long time to come.
I'm trying to look after myself, i swear.
edit: oh yeeeah, i forgot to mention yesterday too.. I got my head shaved again, down to a No.3 all over. feels so wicked :p