If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve put a little banner there on the right side of my blog that promotes a wonderful new site call SupportForSpecialNeeds.com – it’s a site devoted to supporting friends, family and loved ones who deal with the complexities of  loving a special needs child or adult.

I remember when the kid was first diagnosed with Autism – I was scared, angry and frustrated because of the lack of information – at the time, I felt alone and helpless because the network of people was small and was made even smaller by the fact that I was living in a very rural part of North Texas. SupportForSpecialNeeds.com fills an important void in an area where support is often a life saver.

In addition to being a great new resource – The @SupportSN team has been tirelessly working to showcase the awesome and often unknown products available for kids and adults who struggle with unique needs. To take it one step further – in honor of their official launch on May 1, the ladies are holding a contest where the winner will get a free (Magic) Weighted Blanket.

If you’re not familiar with weighted blankets or more specifically, (Magic) Weighted Blankets, then check out their website.

Once you’ve checked it out – be sure and stop by SupportForSpecialNeeds.com and register for a free account.

To learn more about the contest – check out their blog post The (Magic) Weighted Blanket Giveaway!

I’d like to talk about the increasingly annoying fact that the service I pay for so that I can fast forward through commercials and record live television without the frustration of having to buy DVD-R’s or worse, VHS tapes seems to not only to be cashing my $20 check each month, but also increasing the number of commercial advertisements I see via their user interface and now, via e-mail.

This has been a frustration for me for some time – but we finally hit critical mass this morning, when I woke up to an email from the TiVo Advisers survey service asking me to participate in a survey for TiVo – something I am generally o.k. with. My philosophy is that you can’t bitch about something you aren’t working to try to change – so I click the link and start the survey – the first few questions are demographic questions, which ask me about my age, gender, etc – then we get to the ‘good stuff’

Now, I should tell you in advance that TiVo ads are fairly non-intrusive – I can avoid them (for the most part) if/when I want and I’m not being forced to interact with them…although this isn’t always the case and I am seeing more and more of the more intrusive types of advertising…

The fact that the ads exist at all is frustrating, but semi-understandable – the fact that I can avoid them, sort of makes up for the fact that they exist at all.

So, back to the survey – I answer the demographic questions and then the survey goes off in a direction I never expected – it asks me if I saw a specific advertising campaign, but they do it in a way that’s confusing and sort of misleading – the text went something along the lines of “Did you notice the bar at the bottom of TiVo Central that advertises certain products or services, for example, Coors Light”

“For example, Coors Light” – this is key phrasing here.

This is where it gets a little shifty in my opinion. Coors Light wasn’t an ‘example’ – in fact, the remainder of the questions presented centered solely around Coors Light and not TiVo at all.

I was a little surprised, because A) I don’t drink Coors Light and B) I could have sworn this was a TiVo survey…I mean, I see the little TiVo guy..but the questions keep getting stranger and stranger…

Thinking about your overall impression of Coors Light, how strongly do you agree or disagree that the following attributes are associated with Coors Light?

Then it asked me to rank, on a 5 bubble scale, what I thought about the attributes – color, taste, smell and reputation etc…it was strange, but I continue…

Please think about Coors Light and imagine it were a person with its own personality. How strongly do you agree or disagree that Coors Light…?

What?! Not only were the above two questions presented – there were at least two more in which it asked me specific and pointed questions about Coors Light – and nothing, at all, about TiVo or it’s products. Also? You have to answer on their scale – they gave no “N/A” option…I either strongly disagree or strongly agree (or some place in the middle) – those were my options.

So how will answering questions about Coors Light better my TiVo experience?Are you saying I’ll need to get drunk to enjoy it?

Also, why is TiVo sending me a survey about Coors Light? Why not, I don’t know, Coors? This all seems very backdoor-ish to me – like some sort of corporate work around.

This has really frustrated me today. I’m all about improving the services I receive from TiVo – that’s why I opted in to the survey panel – but this is just to much – I didn’t opt into a service that would send me random surveys about random products I don’t use nor have any intention of using.

Before posting this, I tried, without success, to find the Terms/Policies regarding the TiVo Survey Panel and I had no luck. What I did find is that I’d opted out of the survey panel (which I forgot about) – so now I’m not even sure why I’m getting the surveys to start with.

For the record – I don’t drink – Coors or otherwise. I do, however, have experience creating UI/usability surveys and this specific survey, if they even get the data they are hoping for, is complete crap. Don’t survey people on products/services they don’t use – they almost always rate the product/service poorly, because they don’t use it.

Stupid.

…not by choice, but necessity.

I’ve been sitting here mostly all morning. I started the day reading a book, which I finished and now I’m almost done with another one.

As I wrote about in my last post – I’ve had some unexpected results from my medication changes. The acne is out in full force – I have an entire army of acne in full acne regalia setting up camp on my chin and it’s driving me crazy. In addition to the acne, I have this not-s0-fun full on scratch-till-you-bleed case of itchy skin. This isn’t a new experience for me and it has me somewhat worried, but only because during my last hospital stay, which was the last time this happened, I was told that it’s one of the symptoms of my liver issues and is indicative of a flare up.  So, even though I went to the Dr. last week and he told me I was looking great and we made the medication changes that support this new “it’s going good” plan – I ended up going to the lab yesterday morning and sending my Dr. an email telling him why.

This, my friends, is why I *love* having a standing order with the lab. My Dr. has never given me a hard time about going when I feel I need to and we’ve gotten some really great information from the sudden “OH MY GOSH I LOOK LIKE BIG BIRD AGAIN” rushes to the lab for blood work.

In addition to the crazy acne and the fact that I’m going to need skin grafts in certain places from all the scratching – I also have thrush. This is NOT a fun thing to have…and the stuff I have to swish? It tastes like what I would imagine the blue water in the toilet tastes like…that’s all I can say. Don’t ask me why I have thought about what that blue water tastes like…and trust me, that’s not the weirdest thing I’ve thought about…

Today, I noticed yet another unexpected side effect from the reduction of Prednisone – my knees are hurting again. Now, I should add, it took me a few weeks (what can I say, I was going through other stuff, like being told I was dying) to realize that the medication I was taking was actually helping with my knees. It was like an ah ha moment – I looked at my husband one day and said, “Whoa, my knees haven’t hurt in a long time – I just noticed…” and they really hadn’t.

Until today.

My left one will hardly bear my weight and my right one is just throbbing…both of them are swollen and look like crap.

So I guess the anti-inflammatory was helping more than just my liver…and now that I feel pretty decent (actual liver/spleen pain aside) – I am stuck on the couch…reading books and blogs.

Which leads me to this nifty little piece – which Dawn shared earlier today:  Kevin Smith Kicked off Southwest Flight for Being Fat

I’ve posted a few comments – I’ve had my share of bad airline experiences, being both fat and tall. It’s really frustrating to me that the airlines aren’t called to the mat more often on their crazy policies. They’d save a whole lot more money (thus removing the requirement to pay for baggage) if they’d just remove several rows of seats, giving passengers more leg room and reducing the overall weight of the plane.

Instead – they are trying to figure out ways to cram ever more people in there…just not fat people

That’s all I got — now back to the book

[ETA: Sadly, I've deleted a large portion of this post regarding the Kevin Smith issue - I'll leave the original link, because I think spotlighting the policy is important - and I think it goes a long way to show just how unfairly these types of policies are enforced. However, Mr. Smith - a rather portly man himself - has gone out of the way to make sure everyone knows, “Dude, I know I am not that fat, and if I WAS, I wouldn’t go out in public.” - which does a huge disservice to the people deeply impacted by these unfair policies.

I'll be sure, in the future, to get the 'rest of the story' before I decide to throw my support behind someone who, on the surface, appears to be going to bat for those who are unfairly treated - rather than making sure the world knows, “Dude, I know I am not that fat, and if I WAS, I wouldn’t go out in public.”]

You had me until you started spewing your trumped up BS story mutilated to make your situation appear to be the ‘perfect example’ of why someone should support a specific position.

This, my friends, is what I feel like saying to all of the folks who take ordinary or even extraordinary stories and chop and butcher them to fit a specific agenda.

Insert whatever heated topic you want…go ahead, print out a listing of  highly volatile topics in the news, tack them up on a dart board and throw a dart and I guarantee that once you have, you’ll be able to find some story, mutilated beyond recognition, which skews the facts to make them fit some sort of agenda (either way, pro or con) on the topic in question.

I don’t understand this and I don’t think I will ever be able to understand this. Doing this, in my opinion, totally negates the argument for whatever side is doing it. It makes me question what other stuff they’re being less than honest about. It makes me wonder why they have to do this…this…creative and often in the end, almost completely fictional story telling – is it because there really are no real stories to tell that support their position?

It makes you wonder.

Maybe it’s the common sense side of me that makes this type of thing tweak out my BS-Meter, I don’t know. What I do know is that I get really frustrated when someone misrepresents their experience in order to garner support for something (and I mean anything – I’m not talking about one specific topic).

I know the timing is bad for this post – with all the current abortion stuff in the media and the ‘big bad Super Bowl ad’ everyone is talking about – rest assured, this isn’t a post in response to that specific circus.

I am miffed about a lot of things right now…but most notably, the need to take creative license with ones personal experience in order to tailor it to fit a specific agenda – this is a rampant practice and it just pisses me off.

Ok – now back to your regularly scheduled programing – which is likely the Super Bowl for a lot of you – and is sitting in the corner of my comfy couch reading a good Lee Child book for me .

[FWIW - the title of this post is about as close as I get to making Football commentary - I'm not a sports fan, nor do I play one on TV. Take it for what it's worth, even if it totally doesn't make sense - k?]

So, from time to time, I like to Google random things so that when the old man comes up behind me to see what I’m doing, he’ll bust out laughing.

Tonight was no exception.

I’d just gotten home from a hair appointment and bedtime was looming, so I asked all the required question, “Everyone showered?” and “Kid, is your room clean?!” – of course, the collective answer was, as I expected, “No” – so I put on my mean wife/mom pants and started barking orders like any seasoned wife/mom does – then sat down and Googled “how can i get my husband to help around the house” – ya know, just to yank his chain some.

Like any self respecting internet user, I have some sites I just don’t visit – so results one and four were out. Result two was on a site centered around babies and while my fellas may act like babies from time to time – they aren’t – so that one was out too.

The fourth result is about as reliable as a gypsy paving company – so I skipped them too…seriously, Yahoo answers?

Anyway – so I thought I might have struck gold with the fifth result. I mean, it’s called “Wise Geek” – how could I go wrong.

The name should have been some sort of indication of the type of article this was going to be.

First, I must warn you, because some of you don’t know me in real life – but I am a fairly self-assured woman who subscribes to the “Equal Partners” mentality in a relationship. We both do half. Of everything…most of the time.

So, back to the article. Let me dissect and correct it for you.

It doesn’t actually get good until paragraph 2, so we’ll start there.

Many times, husbands don’t realize you need help, unless you ask. The biggest problem with many couples is that both people don’t always see the same mess. Try making a honey-do list and let him know when you would like it to be completed. If you don’t give him a timeline, he may put it off as long as possible.

Ah, I see – so in order for me to get something done around the house, I actually have to treat my husband like a child and then, create more work for myself in the form of list making? Dang…what was I thinking!?

If it feels like your husband  just won’t help around the house, talk to him about it. Tell him how it makes you feel when the brunt of the housework is left to you. Don’t use a condescending tone of voice when talking to him, as he may shut down and ignore you. No one wants to be talked to like a child.

Ok, got it – talk to him – but don’t talk to him like a child – just treat him like one. Check.

Consider what your husband  does do to help around the house. Many times, when the going gets tough, a person only sees what needs to be done. Often times, what the husband  has done to help goes unnoticed. Take a moment to reflect on what he did that week to help you and take it into consideration. He may have done yard work, changed the oil on the car, taken out the trash, or vacuumed.

Ah ha! The old “be grateful for what you get and shut up” attitude. Yes, Ok – so I should be thankful he took his dishes to the sink – even if I have to wash them. Got it…next?

Make sure your expectations aren’t too high. Husbands often work a lot and can’t really help around the house as much as their wives want them to. If he comes home exhausted after a long hard day, helping around the house may not be an option. Consider the extra income he is bringing home when you get frustrated.

Ok – so I am assuming at this point we’re dealing with a ‘stay at home wife’ and a ‘working husband’ – but either way, working or staying at home, the job of keeping up a house is hard and shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of one person…but either way, working or staying at home – this is lame. Lame, lame lame!

If you really feel that your husband isn’t pulling his fair share of work around the house, then he needs to know. Try writing it down, if you have trouble explaining it to him verbally. Let him know that you are serious about things needing to change. Let him know exactly what is expected of him, so he doesn’t have to try to read your mind.

More work for the unwitting wife yet again! Not to mention we’re back to treating him like a child. Do husband’s leave their keen observation skills at the alter once married? Why is it up to the wife to ask for help? Of course he’s not a mind reader you moron – if he were, we’d be millionaires and we’d hire a housekeeper. Stupid.

And of course, the final paragraph piles it all back on the wife, yet again:

Most husbands really are good guys who just don’t realize their wives need help around the house. Maybe the wives look like they have it under control or the house just doesn’t look like it needs to be cleaned. Whatever the reason, they need to help around the house, as they help dirty it. It may just take a little nudging on your part.

Apparently, if you do to good of a job, they can use this lame-ass excuse that you just look like you have everything under control.

Freakin please. This article HAS to have been written by a man. Most likely an unmarried man, if he believes this crap.

Anyway – so it worked by the way – the old man comes up behind me and laughs and I start reading it out loud to everyone in my best “Pollyanna Wife” voice – we got a good chuckle – so I thought you might too.

Enjoy

Oh – and do leave a comment on this guys article – I’d like to see if he approves any of them – I don’t think he’ll approve mine!