Disabled people aren't here to inspire us

“The only disability is a bad attitude” is one of those glib sayings that has always made me cringe. There's quite a few problems with it, with the glaringly obvious one being that IT'S NOT TRUE.

I've always felt a bit mean for thinking that though, because it's clearly meant in a nice way, right? To show how INSPIRING disabled people are?

Turns out there's a word for that: Inspiration Porn. Stella Young (who sadly passed away recently) makes some fantastic points about it. She also says what I've suspected all along:

“No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K9Gg164Bsw

Etude House Missing U Hand Cream Review

Hello! Please be our new mummy!

You know when you don't realise how much you need a certain thing until you become aware of it?

I was quite content going about my life without requiring an adorable pot of hand cream. Then I saw Etude House's Missing U Hand Creams and suddenly it dawned on me that owning some would seriously enhance my life in some way.*

Cosmetics companies in the UK don't really do 'cute' very well. Perhaps this is why it took me so long to discover my latent desire for a hand cream that makes me squee whenever I look at it.

Thankfully, Korea is rather more advanced in the field of adorable cosmetics (and if you like cute things and have never come across their Etude House brand before, you're in for a treat).

~The Pots~

Image from Etude House: http://www.etudehouse.com/index.php/missing-u-hand-cream.html

Animal Characters

Let's be honest, the pots are the reason I bought these. Aren't they just adorable?

They come in four different animal forms: a fairy penguin, a harp seal, a panda and a... what the fuck is that weird pink thing with the lips?!

According to Etude House, it's a pink dolphin. No, I don't see it either.

Each animal contains a cream of a different scent, as indicated by the image below each of their adorable faces.

Fairy Penguin: Baby Powder

Harp Seal: Green Tea

Panda: Peach

Weird pink thing with the lips Pink Dolphin: Rose

I decided to purchase the Panda, which is quite clearly the cutest. Then I realised I probably needed two, so I bought the pink dolphin as well.

...Just kidding! That thing would give me nightmares. I bought the harp seal.

Size/Contents

The pots are just shy of 3 inches tall and hold 30ml/68g of hand cream. So yeah, they are rather dainty but I don't think they're intended to be slathered on frequently.

The top section is a screw lid and the cream sits inside the bottom section. Some people may consider dipping fingers into pots of cream to be unhygienic (vs squeezing from a tube). Personally, I reckon my immune system can handle it.

~The Boxes~

*Round of applause*

These hand creams come in AWARD WINNING PACKAGING! Apparently they won some kind of packaging award in 2011 and they're made from 100% recycled paper and printed with soy ink.

Also applicable to arms!

They feature a poignant (and is it just me or... slightly clingy?) message from the animal about how they are endangered and they miss you.

Following that is a kind of dating ad-style summary about themselves and what they like to do with their time.

Just above the ingredients list is a little summary of the hand cream contents and how to use it (“Also applicable to arms”! I love that.)

And then comes a pretty standard caution note about not eating it/putting it in your eyes etc. (Side note: the Etude House website currently directs you to “Apply cream to all areas of the face.” Yeah. Don't do that. It's for your hands.)

~The Cream~

Oh yeah, the cream.

Scent

The cream itself has a decent amount of scent but is certainly far from overpowering. Personally, I prefer the peach scent of the panda as I'm just particularly fond of soft, fruity scents.

Panda (Peach): Soft peachy scent with a sweet powderiness to it, a little bit like those tablet-esque sweets (Lovehearts, Fizzies, Refreshers). It's a pretty pleasant scent that I keep going back to sniff.

Harp Seal (Green Tea): Clean, fresh, leafy, herbal scent. Also something about it reminds me a little bit of aftershave. I didn't like this one as much as the peach but it wasn't offensive.

Consistency

Both have a thin, non-greasy, lotion-like consistency that sinks in quickly.

As with some other hand creams, there's a moment of slight stickiness/tackiness when first applied, but this quickly settles to a lovely smooth, soft finish as your skin absorbs the cream.

I was very pleased with how lovely and soft my hands felt. However, for those with very dry skin, I'm not sure that this would be an effective moisturiser on its own as it's probably not rich enough.

~Summary~

Pros

üSo adorable! I get a lot of compliments about how cute they are. My mum has her eyes on the harp seal.
üThey'd be really easy to refill with more cream or use as containers for something else.
üThe hand cream softens skin well and is non-greasy.

Cons

ûNot a massive amount of cream for what you pay for (but come on, you're totally buying it for the cute pot, right?)
ûProbably not suitable for very dry skin, due to the light formulation.

Bottom Line

If you're looking for a really effective, good value hand cream, keep looking. If you want to be that person who casually whips out the cutest hand cream from their handbag and makes everyone coo in admiration, this is the stuff.

*My life has been slightly enhanced.

Clicker Training Part 2: Doggy see, Doggy do

How can we deal with fear? Allow me to sound like a cheesy self-help author for a moment.

Think back to being a kid... you're way too scared to go down the big waterslide/try a new food/kiss a warty old relative, but then you see your brother or sister or some other kids doing it. They're all fine, in fact, they seem to enjoy it (ok, perhaps not in the warty relative scenario).

It's quite likely that, at least after a few repetitions, this makes you a little curious about it. Maybe you start to feel a bit left out or even... jealous. Suddenly, you find yourself rather wanting to give it a go so you don't miss out!

Enter Sidney.

This guy is totally unfazed by the clicker. He literally does not care, he just wants some roast beef.

Ignoring Dennis completely (but making sure to stand within his field of vision/hearing), I proceeded to click and reward Sid, who thought it must be Christmas again.

Sure enough, guess who comes timidly creeping over to see what's going on? As in the previous session, Dennis twitched a little every time he heard the click, but this time you could see his little face going “oooh!” at Sid getting all the treats and attention. He didn't run and hide!

Eventually, I let my mum feed Dennis some treats and I stood a few paces away and clicked just before each one. Success!

Perhaps the vicarious reinforcement worked and/or the slightly softer sound of the clicker in the distance helped. He does have massive ears after all, so maybe the sound of the clicker too close is quite startling.

Anyway, as it appeared we were making progress, we ended the session on that high note. Well done, Dennis!

Clicker Training Part 1: Beef with the Clicker

Excited for our very first clicker training session together, I gathered some tiny snippets of roast beef, picked up the clicker and called Dennis over. And we were ready to go!

My first aim was to get Dennis to associate the click with a reward.

I kept the clicker in one hand behind my back and picked up a treat with the other hand. He sat down and stared at me, licking his lips and jiggling excitedly. Then I clicked just before giving him the treat, which he gobbled up eagerly.

I managed to do this twice, noticing that he twitched a little at the sound of each click.

The third time I clicked, there was a very different outcome – instead of eating the piece of beef being offered to him, he ran away and hid under the table in terror!

I purposefully didn't make any fuss because I didn't want to make his fear seem justified or reward his anxiety with attention.

When he eventually returned to me, I smiled and praised him, giving him a couple of treats by hand to reassure him that nothing sinister was going on. But as soon as I reached for the clicker, he darted back under the table.

Great – my dog is scared of the bloody clicker! My guess is that it sounds similar to the nail clippers, which he hates because I once accidentally grazed the edge of his quick (the sensitive part inside the nail, which isn't visible in dogs with black nails).

On his second return, he ran back under the table the moment I even tried to offer him a treat. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that the merits of his sudden aversion to food did cross my mind.

So as to end on a positive note, I waited for him to come back to me and gave him plenty of cuddles and eventually a treat (no clicks!)

Dennis and I are going to start clicker training!

I'm probably slightly (a lot) biased but Dennis does so many cute things.

Miniature Pinschers are known for what is adorably referred to as a 'prancing gait' (which basically means they walk like they're doing dressage). Sometimes when he's excited, he taps his paws like he's doing a little tap dance. I often think to myself “aww, I wish I could make him do that on command!”

Then I realised it was absolutely possible and I just hadn't been committed enough to try it out. The answer is clicker training! Of course. People are training cockatiels and llamas and kids with clickers these days. How hard can it be to train a dopey, unruly mutt with a short attention spa-... oh shit.

~What do we need for our mission?~

1 clicker

We already had one of these from years ago, where it proved popular with our elderly poodle, Sid. They're widely available online and basically consist of a small plastic case housing a piece of bent metal that, when pressed down with your finger, will make a 'click' noise, followed by a second 'click' noise when you release your finger (resulting in a clear, consistent 'clickclick').

You don't necessarily have to buy a clicker. Apparently some people use pens or even a small light, which can work for dogs with hearing impairments.

Some clickers, like ours, have a nice plastic button on top to press instead of pressing the metal directly. This makes it easier to click using other parts of your anatomy (I'm thinking of palms/feet, what were you thinking of?)

I made sure ours still clicks, because that would have been quite an anticlimactic first training session otherwise.

Some small, highly desirable treats

The basic idea is to find something as irresistible as possible, so your dog will be enthusiastic and keen to work for it.

For our first session, I raided the fridge for the smelliest, most mouthwatering treat I could find. I toyed with the brie, but decided on some sliced roast beef, which is a little less slimy to handle.

I snipped the beef into slightly smaller than pea-sized pieces using a pair of scissors – he's only a little dog and the point is to reward him with small tastes of victory, not lay on a banquet.

Common sense dictates that the ideal time to start is when your dog is hungry, which for Dennis is literally any time.

1 dog

Big ears optional.

~Why am I clicking at my dog?~

I want Dennis to associate the clicking sound with a reward (note: the click is not the reward, it's a signal that tells him “you're going to get a reward!”).

Then when Dennis performs behaviours that I want to reward, I can click at the exact moment that he performs the behaviour. This will tell him that whatever he is doing in that split-second is going to get rewarded.

Also note: I do not need to click 'at' him. He only needs to hear the sound of the clicker rather than pay any attention to it visually (it's better that he looks at me), which is why I keep it behind my back or at my side.

~Why can't I just give him treats or say a word like 'good' or 'yes'?~

I could do that, but it works out far more efficient to use a clicker because it is a distinct, consistent sound that can be done easily at a precise moment.

Simply giving him the treat can often be too slow to do at a precise moment and it's just not practical if he's moving around or is some distance away from me.

Saying a word can also be tricky to time correctly and it isn't as consistent as a clicking noise because our voices differ slightly each time and can unintentionally convey an array of different emotions.

A common analogy is that clicking the clicker is a bit like clicking a camera and taking a snapshot of the exact moment the dog does what you want. Hopefully I can 'take snapshots' of all the cute things he does and eventually train him to do them on command :D

See how Dennis gets on in subsequent posts!

Making stuff up on the spot

Everybody lies. Everybody. But when it comes to lying under pressure, most of us suck at it.

Spontaneous bullshitting is an art. In fact, there's a whole form of live theatre dedicated to it. (I suggest joining an improv group if you're really serious about this. If nothing else, it will make you a little less serious.)

When I was 16, I went to Paris with my friends – my first holiday ever without adults. Having been fully briefed by my parents, I was determined to be sensible and not get murdered. Early on in the holiday, a potential murderer young Parisian guy approached us in a park and asked me my name.

I had a miniature internal freak-out at the potentially fatal consequences of giving personal information to a stranger.

Me: *looks around* Umm... Grass. And *points to friends* this is Tree, Flower... Bush and... Stick.”

I swear characters do this a lot in bad comedies. Those are probably the only instances where the other party is dumb enough to fall for it. Unless you're lucky, like I was, and the person you're trying to lie to has a limited knowledge of English.

Anyway, turns out I wasn't the only one making things up as I went along.

Parisian: Grass! You have a beautiful name. My mother- no! -my grandmother's name is Grass!

Setting aside the highly unlikely possibilities that a) anyone actually thinks the name 'Grass' is beautiful and b) some old lady in France is actually called Grass, Parisian was quite clearly bullshitting too. Changing his mind halfway through a sentence just made the already terrible lie even worse.

It's just occurred to me that maybe Parisian knew all along and his response intended to display some kind of socratic irony. But perhaps I'm giving him too much credit.

Anyway, the best spontaneous lie of the day was one of my friends 'suddenly realising' that we had to go.

If Da'ee were Pokemon

I'm all for dawah (proselytising your religion). But some da'ees need to crawl back into their pokeballs and stay there.

Made using MyPokeCard.com