Equal Parts Practical and Peculiar
Food, fun, style, and snark from a life that rarely comes preassembled.
I’ve always had an eye for details and a mind for recognizing patterns, but I simultaneously have a passion for the whimsical, imaginative, and out of the ordinary. What can I say, I like to mix it up. That instinct eventually led me toward art and design, but it also shows up in nearly everything else I do. I like finding unexpected solutions, assembling strange combinations and ignoring the assumption that there is one correct way to live, dress, create, travel, or eat.
I have a fairly epic sweet tooth and a sizable canine entourage that shamelessly circle me like sharks at mealtimes because they know I will eventually drop something worth eating.
My style is funky, my purse is a snail, and when all the other girls in college were watching The Notebook and Grey’s Anatomy, I was watching Fringe, Star Wars, and reruns of Buffy.
I’m also a disabled woman and a lifelong powerchair user, although I don’t necessarily lead with that. Disability is an obvious and important part of my life, but it isn’t the basis for everything I do. My first thought is generally what I want to do—not what my disability supposedly dictates that I should do.
That might mean finding a new recipe and teaching my PCA how to make it on the fly because my arms are largely decorative; scouring Amazon for compression socks that don’t look like they were issued with a senior-discount card; or drinking from funky plastic patio glasses because they’re light enough for me to lift and needing an adaptation does not mean I should have to drink from a sippy cup.
My disability blends into my life, not the other way around.
So this is not a neatly packaged “disability blog,” although disability will inevitably appear here. Sometimes as the reason a completely ordinary activity became an elaborate group project. Sometimes because the wild shit that happens is too absurd not to share. And sometimes because disability policy, healthcare, accessibility and advocacy can be matters of life and death for people like me. More often, though, my disability is the side of sauce when I talk about whatever fun and fabulous thing has captured my attention this week.
Adjust As Needed is a place for all of it: the things I love, the things I notice, the things that make me laugh and the things that make me furious. It’s less about fitting my life into a category than sharing the full, quirky, occasionally ridiculous mix—and inviting you into the conversation.