Do Mermaids use Wheelchairs?

My least favorite classic fairytale is "The Little Mermaid." I hated the original ending and felt the mermaid had a stupid death. The Disney animated film gave me nightmares.

Despite that, merfolk provide endless fuel for my overthinking imagination. Why make a deal with a sea witch when human have options for getting around without legs?

The Ipswich Mermaid, George Courage, Acrylic on canvas 8"x10".

The idea of merfolk using a wheelchair is not original to just me. In “Roverandom” by J. R.R. Tolkien there is an underseas adventure that ends in a wizard and his merfolk wife getting banished to the surface. The wife becomes a small business owner and very famous swim instructor. She is described to go around in a horse drawn 'bath-chair.'

As charming as that character concept is, I am not Tolkien. He made a living as an English college professor and ploy-linguist. I have an incomplete environmental engineering degree and chronic health issues. My creative approach takes another angle.

Overthinking

When I imagine merfolk in wheelchairs, my first instinct is “I hope wherever they are going is ADA compliant.” While I don't yet need mobility aids, my dodgy joints and low blood pressure make like accessibility toilets, ramps, handrails and rest benches a boon. Unfortunately, many space designers forget or outright sacrifice those features. Smaller bathrooms means more floor space for making money. Ramps and comfortable benches are never seen as 'bold artistic expression.' You can have the best wheelchair in the world, and there are still places you can't go.

If a merfolk uses mobility aids on land, they have to deal with all the accessibility issues that we humans face.

Another thing that comes to my mind with any mobility aid – chair, cane, brace – is long term comfort. I have friends and family who have used all of them at one point or another. Each comes with a unique set of challenges. Chair and braces can cause bruising and circulation issues from long use. Double crutches require training so your wrists and shoulder can take the pressure. Even a walker or a cane requires a degrees of mindfulness.

This is all assuming you're a human whose used to living on land and in the air. Merfolk live in the water. The buoyancy and resistance change is going to be as tricky learning to swim is for us.

Merfolk also have the complication of having *just* a tail. Human do have tails (the tiny bones at the base of our spine). However, we sit on our hip bones. Aquatic mammals like whales, dolphins, and manatee, lack hipbones and the pelvic bone is all but identical to the surrounding spinal vertebral. If a merfolk where to 'sit' upright like a human, all that weight and pressure goes onto a handful of vertebral. (This doesn't begin to touch on if the mer using a lateral tail flick like a shark. That spine isn't going to bend into a chair posture.)

Merfolk would not be able to use a standard mobility aid comfortably. It would take training and modifications.

The last element to consider is cost. Good mobility aids are expensive (especial in the U.S. where making a deal with a sea witch is a less daunting process than dealing with healthcare industry, insurance companies, and out-of-pocket costs.) Even if you use magic to 'cheat,' land mobility aids are going to be more of a tool than a toy. You aren't going to spend all that money and time training unless you are serious about making it part of your life.

All these elements will shape what kind of merfolk can afford or want to spend time on land. Yes, transformation magic is always an option, but that means giving up the sea. Most people are not bubble-brained princesses willing to give up their family, culture, and body over a man they met for a few hours.

One of the core guidelines when I put fantasy beings in my stories is that people are people no matter their shape. People are curious, people are creative, and most of all people find ways to overcome obstacles. Humans want to explore the sky and sea, because it's there. Merfolk want to see what's on the land. Finding other people and sharing ideas is part of how we grow. The land and sea would not be separate worlds. People learn from and inspire each other.

In Mundus

I imagine that merfolk communities do business with the 'terrestrial' neighbors. It's common to see a floating fish market or pods of off duty pilots and divers by a riverbank or city docks. These mers do leave the water for short periods of time, business meetings, trying a meal at a local pub, rolling over to the next stand for a bit of hot gossip. However, tourist merfolk are rare.

Merfolk curious enough to travel on land sort are more akin to people going on a long vacation with curated experience packages. They travel up a water channel and make group trips to see famous on-land sights. The most luxurious trips use magical aids like levitation rings or transformation potion for the live on land experience.

It's expensive, and some foolhardy mers have gotten themselves in debt over those trips. However, the general consensus is that if you want to go have a look at how the people up top live, you can.

Migraines and Radioactive Eggs

 

“Write everyday” “Protect that time slot” “Set up your schedule to maximize your creativity.”

Every writer who aspired to become a published novelist gets told this, repeatedly.

However, there is an fitting phrase “Easier said than done.”

My current writing goals are to have two to three long writing sessions per week with small daily journaing. (I'm rebuilding my brain's stamina after a long stressful hiatus.)

Now, on paper these are reasonable goals even for a full-time working adult.

I am not a full-time working adult. My side hussle is house and pet-sitting. It should be super simple to write when I'm paid to live in someone else's home, right?

Unfortunately, my life is a bit more complicated.

I have several chronic health condition that regular throw my 'reasonable' expectations out the window and into the bin. Even when I'm not at a job, there is always some energy hog that leaves me struggling to protect my precious creative energy and time to write. The most frequent foe is migraines.

For example, this last Tuesday, I planned to write out my blogs rough draft in the morning, then run errands in the afternoon. Wednesday morning would be a medicine exam (just a few scans of the stomach) with updating my social media and polishing off the blog before posting.

Life and my health had other plans.

Tuesday morning was a wash as my mother had a very dear, very deaf friend over for a visit. They speak very loudly. I'm not deaf. Also, the unfortunate design of our house means my room is a natural amplifier.

After about ten minutes into hearing all the latest drama and woes, I left the house for a walk, a long rambling walk.

This kept my stress levels down, but also ate into my physical energy. I wrote it off as my lower body PT. After company had left, I had to eat lunch and do my afternoon errands. One of these errands was my chiropractor part of my P.T. for my upper body.

I was exhausted with the start of a migraine when I got home at 3 PM. Mom had more company coming that evening, so I went to my room for a power nap. The new plan was to recharge my batteries, help with the house, and quickly journal or something before company came.

Unfortunately, I was so tired, I left my phone in the car. Blissfully, I slept through the wake-up alarms, my evening medication alarms, and all my other alarms rigning away in the garage. It was two hours before my body decided the recharge was finished. The migraine was lingering

I had just enough time to medicate, compliment Mom and Bro on the quick house prep (they cleaned the kitchen, cooked taco meat, and did an all purpose tidy while I was dead to the world), and then company arrived.

Now, in a reasonable world, the food and medication would banish the headache, I would make some token socializing with Mom's friends, and then retreat to finally get the writing done. That's not what happened.

My migraines are terrible, stubborn beasties. It was all I could do not to fall asleep again. This was not an option tonight. If I threw off my sleep cycle the next morning, Wednesday would be miserable. So I stumbled through the motions and pecked away at my key board. (None of what I wrote was suitable for a blog update.)

Wednesday morning started very very early at 5:45am. Also there would be no breakfast or coffee this morning due to my upcoming medical test.

Mercifully, I had someone to drive me to the procedure 20 minutes away. Once there I was served a small breakfast of toast, a single dixie cup of water, and slightly radioactive eggs. (I felt cheated that they were not green or glowing.) Next four hours was spent waiting for the eggs to disgust and getting pictures of of my stomach taken. (Hence the radioactive bit. It makes it easier for the camera to track them.)

Four hours! you might be exclaiming. That's the perfect time for writing!

Well, no actually. I was in the MRI center waiting room. In addition to poor connection due to big honking magnets, it's hospital waiting room. It was busy and not a good place to leave a personal laptop, even without the big magnet issue.

For the first hour I made paper notes for future blogs, but had nothing for this week except a picture of my not-green-eggs and toast. At the second hour, the lack of water was giving me a headrush every time I turned my neck (It's a chronic blood pressure issue). Third hour, I had to stop myself from reflexively going to the water fountain after a toilet break. Forth hour, I was lightheaded, hangry, and very grateful my driver hadn't abandoned me to make my way home in this condition.

Lunch was egg drop soup and rice so as not to overwhelm my stomach. Then the migraine broke like a storm front. An afternoon nap later (with an alarm this time), I rose like the unholy union of a vampire and zombie. I hunted down more liquids and easy to disgust nutrients, while stumbling over my own feet.

After two days, I had maintained my unreasonable body through several mid to high level adult interactions. I was exhausted come Thursday morning, which held yet another doctor's appointment. Writing-goals wise I had scribbles that need converting and also posted a picture of my radioactive breakfast on Facebook by not anywhere else.

This was actually a good week. Yes, the blog would be a day late and the social media needed a tune up, but fingers crossed, I could (and did) knock it out by Thursday evening.

Friday, I plan to shift into full recovery mode. Sleeping in, eating leftovers, more PT. My journal will likely be a illegible cursive line of 'sore and sleepy. sleepy and sore.'

Time management looks different when you live with chronic migraines and assorted health issues. You can make reasonable goals and plans. However, the reality is there will always be something you have to either catch up or let go.

There's no magic time table or weekily planner that will guide you to better writing habits. There no way to schedule appointments for dealing health problems, friends and family in need, all of life's vaugities.

When you try to build habits or develop a discipline, you will fall short, especially if it's for something 'simple.'

Ironically, the solution is yet another 'easier to say than do' directive. Don't give up.

I may fall, I may retreat, I may take a new approach, but what I won't do is give up my love of creating and sharing stories.

Migraines and radioactive breakfasts are passing events. Upsetting, yes. Challenging, yes. However, it not quite enough to stop me.

My Troubles with Naming Dragons

 

As I continue rewrites on “Don't Fireball the Neighbors,” I've made several tweaks to the plot and characters. One was the dragon's name.

The dragon has lived rent free in my head since I was thirteen and had run out of books with dragons to read aloud to my younger brother. I named him 'Celebramar' because it sounded like a high fantasy name and was easy to write in cursive.

The trouble was they way I write that name and the way I have said that name don't match.

This is not a unique problem in my life. Despite being an early reader, English was the ban of my school day. I had solid grammar and composition skills. My spelling skills on the other hand brought back lots of red ink.

I could read and recognize words. However, if you asked me to write out those same words five minutes later, you'd get back a mess. I passed several tests by single points and would write the lists until it was muscle memory. Spelling orally like you see in competitions was impossible.

I don't know if this is a brain issue or just confusion from growing up in a region were you can hear the word 'pecan' said three different ways in the same town. “Just sound it out” doesn't work for me, not in English.

The Latin classes in grade school and the Spanish classes in highschool complicated my issues. When I saw I word I didn't know, my poor brain would switch phonetic systems.

'Champagne' 'defenestrate' 'legumes' I knew what they all meant and how to use them. However, if I heard them on the street, I would have thought it was a different word with a similar meaning. Like 'cool' and 'cold.'

First time I tried to read out loud to some who was not my brother, I got repeatedly corrected by a child five years younger than me. Cimorene, Kazul, Gollum, Smaug – all the names were wrong.

Needless to say, creating original names runs into the same issue. The way someone reads a name's spelling don't always match how it sounded in my head. 'Leon' was short and safe. The same held for most of the characters name. The troublemakers were the dragons.

The current draft of "Don't Fireball the Neighbors has three dragons, each with a unique name. Madam Vircroc, the diplomatic liaison of the Dragon Nation. Mahgister Wodigee a dragon of few words and a short role in the plot. Finally, Celabramar the co-protagonist who is trying very hard not to start a diplomatic incident for the other two dragons to clean up.

The 'vir' in Vircroc's name was taken from Latin meaning green or living. However, Vir in English reads more like 'Vur' than 'Vear.' I let this be because it makes a fun growling noise.

Wodigee gained an extra 'ee' to avoid confusion on if the 'i' was long or short. Their title 'Mahgister' also gained an 'h' to make the first vowel sound good and breathy.

And of course, there's my dear problem child who started this all, Celabramar. It took listening to recording of myself, checking with my now grown little brother, and a page of scratched out combinations for me settle on the new spelling. 'Cele' to 'Cela.'

Over all, I am happy with these changes. However, one little issue remains.

My muscle memory has had years to program the old spellings. When writing 'Celabramar,' I regularly catch my self typing or moving through the pen loops of that second 'e.'