Hi Everyone,
OMG how I have missed you guys. Things have been so busy around here that I really haven't been able to come back and talk to you guys. So I am grabbin a cup of coffee as we speak and then GAB......hehehehehehehehehe...GAB.
Well last time I got to talk to you guys it was around Christmas and I'm not really sure where to start, so as always I will just start with the first things that come to mind and go from there. :) Good news FINALLY, insurance and medicare approved my wheelchair. WOOOOHOOOOO so no more fighting with those 2 (or at least not for a little while). I talked to the seating company here the other day and they said that my chair should be ready on the 14th or 15th of March. I am so happy that this long drawn out process is FINALLY in the ending phases. I guess I haven't really explained all that so I will here real quick. When I went for my first seating evaluation I was using a rented hospital type wheelchair. Well, medicare and insurance are SERIOUSLY lacking in common sense (keep this in mind). Ok, when the seating company first went for approval for my permanent chair they both said NO. Why???? Because they saw that I had a temporary chair rented and said "she has one". Of course that is where the "lacking in common sense" comes in. YES I had a chair, BUT it wasn't really functional in the way that I need it to be. SO, the seating company came to my rescue. They gave me a "loaner" chair and told me to take back the temp chair. Now this "loaner" chair is NOT a hospital type chair. It is a common name brand chair for peeps that are in one full time (quickie is the name on the chair made by sunrise medical i THINK). O M G seriously this chair is AWESOME. I can turn on a DIME and I can go ALOT further without being as tired. Seriously it is lighter weight, and just overall more responsive to what I tell it to do. And they said that my permanent chair is even lighter and more responsive than this loaner. OMG SERIOUSLY, yeah I am excited.....LOL.
Of course, when one thing goes right, something else goes wrong. LOL Murphy's Law. We have 3 vehicles and for the past month ALL of them have been broke down. Now before I get into all of this I want to give a shout out to all our AWESOME neighbors, who are the same as family to us. They have let us borrow vehicles during all of this so Jay can work and I can go to doctor appointments, run errands, etc. COME ON how many people in this day and age would do that for a neighbor. We are TRULY blessed with the friends and family in our neighborhood. My truck (Ford Expedition) just totally died one night with no warning. Jay came in from work and then 5 minutes after coming in was going to head up town here to get me some missing ingredients for a supper I was making. He went to start it again and NOTHING. We have a close friend (he is like my brother and I have literally known him since I was in grade school) who is a mechanic. A REALLY good mechanic. We have narrowed it down to something in the wiring. EEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK do you know how much wiring is in a vehicle? Yeah, needless to say my truck is still out of commission for the foreseeable future. SO, Jay has 2 trucks. One is a big heavy truck that we only use when we need to haul or tow something big. It is older and has some problems (headlights don't work and some other minor stuff). But the thing with that truck is we all cannot legally fit in it (can sit 3 legally, 4 in our family). SO.......we have another truck here. It is a 95 dodge dakota (one of our neighbors was selling it last summer and jay JUMPED on the chance for it cause all in all it is still a pretty good truck). Jay and our friend put a new motor in it and it is good. Only thing is it is REALLY tight.....LOL. It doesn't have a topper shell, so when we go somewhere as a family my wheelchair and our daughter (Josie) are in the back (it is not a crew cab, but there is a small bench behind the front seats for peeps, VERY small). Then it is me, Jay, and our son (Toby) are in front. WOW yeah it is tight.....LOL. BUT BUT BUT believe it or not when i am on my own or just me and the kids it is easier for me to load and unload my chair by myself in this truck (it has a bench seat in the front, so i just get in on the passenger side, slide over and then pull my chair in). Ok believe it or not it is easier for me to do this BUT I have a feeling that it looks worse to other people. The reason I say this is because when I am in town and loading and unloading people will stop and pull it in or out for me. Now not that I am complaining at all, I really do appreciate the helpfulness of our community, but really it's not as bad as it looks I really can do it. But most of the time people don't ask if I need help getting it in and out, they just step up and do it. I know this sounds weird, but I would REALLY like people to ask first. Normally I just smile and say thank you, cause they are taking time out of their busy day to help someone they think is in need and I DON'T want to seem rude. But really in my heart sometimes I am screaming "HELLO NOT TOTALLY HELPLESS, I CAN DO THIS MYSELF". But I will never turn someone away when their heart is in the right place.
All that being said, I GOTTA tell you about this. Last month I had a meeting at school (IEP meeting). Now my mom usually goes with me to these, as she helps translate because even with Cochlear Implants when we get more than 2 people in a room to me it just sounds like a whole BUNCH of charlie brown teachers talking (wawawa WAWA wawawa). That and my mom has been thru school meeting with me and my sister growing up and she know the territory. Now to the point of all this, my mom picked me up from home for that meeting cause of all the vehicle troubles we have been having as of late. She has a mini van. I really didnt think anything of it UNTIL she got here to pick me up. Now my mom isn't able to lift very much, and she is a strong believer in "if you can do it, DO IT". Which I am REALLY grateful for. She has no problem waiting for me to get things done on my own. She is supportive and understanding of the fact that I like to do things on my own (even though she knows that it hurts a bit and that it takes alittle longer and looks a bit weird). Unless I specifically ask, she will allow me to "do what I gotta do". That being said, we got outta my house and to her van and I went to load my chair. O M G OMGOMGOMG I LOOOOOOOVE MINI-VANS!! I got that sucker loaded in 5 min FLAT. ALOT easier than loading in ANY of our trucks. I could sit in the front passenger seat and load my chair in the back. BY MYSELF. 5 MIN FLAT. And very LITTLE pain in doing it. I was FLOORED. We are not in a position to get a mini van right now, but when we are OMG we are gonna go for it.
Okie dokie, now onto to a TOTALLY different topic.....LOL. I got the BAJEEZERS scared out of me the other day. I mean SKEERD TO DEATH. Nothing is more scary to a parent than a threat (real or perceived) on our children. About a week ago I was online just doing my normal routine, when an alert popped up from our local radio station. THIS is what I saw "BREAKING NEWS: Altamont Grade School in lockdown. Heading to the scene, more details to follow" My heart drops into my stomach and I FREAK OUT. No running vehicle for me to run up there. I frantically text my mom (she is hearing, maybe they will take a regular call since they could not take my TTY call at the time). My mom doesn't answer. Seeing my sister online I holler "CALL MOM NOW, MAKE HER CALL SCHOOL, SCHOOL IS IN LOCKDOWN". She finally gets thru, and the school is finally released from lockdown and kids are on their way home. Now why the lockdown you ask.......well there is a bank 1 TINY village block away from the grade school. And it was robbed. Thing is though, the criminals PARKED AT THE GRADE SCHOOL, went to the bank, robbed it, then came BACK to the grade school and made their get-away. This was later in the day, so I assume they were trying to get lost in the "end of the day, hustle out the door" of the school. Their vehicle was caught on the schools surveillance system, which is how ironically they were caught about 40 miles from here. OMG ok we live in a small town, I mean a one flashing stop light town, town shuts down by 10pm kinda town. Where you can take a midnight walk around town without fear of being harmed kinda town. Did I over-react?? Maybe, but I'm a mom, cant help it. Needless to say, everyone is fine but kids were a bit freaked when they got home. They knew what was going on as it happened. The principle called what my daughter says is a "code red" and he explained what was happening over the PA system. Now some would say that he didn't need to let the kids know what was happening, I say GOOD JOB. The more informed teachers and students are in a situation like that THE BETTER. Our grade school has K-8 and for the most part the people there (both teachers and students) are AMAZING. The older kids help out the younger kids in almost everything they can. Now don't get me wrong, there are still bully's, and whatnot, but for the most part the people are AWESOME. My son has a 7th grade "buddy". He comes to help him with reading and some computer stuff and they have become really good friends. I think it is SO cool that an older student takes the time to help him and is GENUINELY interested in a younger student. They see each other in the hall sometimes and will wave (Toby taught him our secret handshake and they will do it across the hall as they pass). His buddy went out of his way (almost missing his bus) to find Toby and be sure he wasn't too freaked out. Tell me how many 7th graders do you know that would do THAT.
Along those same lines a bit, I have been thinking. They have a requirement in school that you must take a foreign language class to graduate. Which I think is AWESOME, but could be tweaked a bit. Instead of waiting till they are older, can we start even just a little in the younger grades? And maybe offer ASL (American Sign Language) as a class? ASL IS a language all it's own. And like all languages it has a culture and history rich and unique in its own right. I remember we had a Spanish teacher in high school and he was AWESOME. He was very unique and brought more than just the language with him, he taught some history of the people that use the language, the culture, and the "funnys". What I mean by that is some things in American culture he found HILARIOUS. Of course, some things don't translate well from culture to culture or language to language, and he elaborated on this to "let us in" on the joke. And would also tell us when something would "offend". Same is true in ASL and deaf culture. My kids have a heads up in this area a bit as we use speech, ASL, Pidgin Signed English, and lipreading (yes my kids can lipread which is a help AND a not so much help sometimes....LOL). ASL has it's own grammar rules and the whole 9 yards. And is a very rich language. Pidgin Sign is like a mix of English and ASL (it is a mix of ASL and Exact Signed English). The best way I can describe it is Pidgin English mimics spoken English a bit with the use of ASL signs, but the grammar is more like spoken English and is used when communicating with someone who knows a little sign, but is not fluent in the proper grammar of ASL. My children love being able to sign and speak. Do they use it for mischief?? LOL.....sometimes. Like if they want to say something to someone but don't necessarily want them to know what they said. Which is the WRONG reason to use it and they know better. BUT it also helps them. To them, it is comforting knowing that they can talk to me across a crowded room. Sometimes (especially my oldest at the moment) it is hard to convey their thoughts in spoken word. Not cause they are too immersed in ASL, but because they are kids and some things are hard for them to convey in a way an adult would totally understand. Not sure if that made sense, but it is true. My kids can fall back on ASL or Pidgin Sign when they want to talk about something that they just cannot get into words otherwise. Which actually brings me great joy. Knowing that instead of something stewing in their head and not being able to get it out, they can talk to me in a different way to let me know what is going on in their little heads.
Well, I really have ALOT more to talk about. But it is noon here and I REALLY should get the dishwarsher going again and maybe some cookies for snack when the kids get home. Love you guys and will talk to you soon. :)
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