I Scream

From an unnamed university in the greater San Francisco Bay Area...

Note: I totally thought I posted this yesterday. My bad, kids.

Today is Officemate's youngest daughter's 2nd birthday. Happy Birthday, little Officemate! Your current Jekyll and Hyde personality befuddles me, but it cannot be denied that you are damn cute.

Officemate took the day off to take her kids swimming in honor of little one's birthday and because the Bay Area seems to have gotten the memo that it's June and the weather is behaving accordingly, much to the extreme relief of people on Facebook.

The nice weather is awesome, of course, but it does not contribute to a productive workplace, as doing anything outside seems infinitely preferable to, I don't know figuring out how a student with a disability will be able to access our 100+ year old, totally in no way ADA-compliant building when she arrives this August.

We actually have more disabled people in our building than average, I would guess, but they can all walk by themselves, or with the assistance of a cane, or in one woman's case, the wall. (Seriously, watching her move makes me want to cry and thank some deity for my ambulatory body.) This student has some serious back problems that sometimes don't hinder her walking, but sometimes necessitate the use of a wheelchair.

Our building is one of the oldest on campus, and has multiple floors and lots of stairs and no elevator, so it's really kind of nightmare for someone with mobility issues, making me all the more impressed with my disabled coworkers who seem to navigate it expertly and without complaint. Anyway, for someone who uses a wheelchair to go from floor to floor, they have to leave out the one ADA compliant exit we have on each floor and go outside and around the building, up a pretty steep hill, to get in on the next level. I anticipate this being a nightmare for our student, and let's be honest, probably for me.

So that's why I'm not thinking about it and going to get ice cream.