Well I suppose I should be writing more blogs lately but things have gotten a bit more crazy around here. With all the calls to Texas regarding the kids I'm trying to adopt. I find this very hard to deal with since I seem to lack patience. I want call backs right now, I want answers right now, I really don't like being jerked around, but here I am.
So on the home front here, the kids are getting restless as there are only about 2.5 weeks of school left. However there wont really be much of a break since Princess goes to college for two weeks, and Jokester goes to Reading and Writing summer camp. My running around will actually get a bit worse as I have to bring Princess to her classes and pick her up.
Superman is in a opposites mood, I guess I can't really call it that because it's not really opposites. He just makes things up for what he wants them to be. The other day he said he hated someone, and I told him that it isn't nice to say that about someone. He tells me, " oh when I say that I really mean that I like them a lot." Here's another one, " when I say stop it means I like BG." I'm not sure where he is getting this from, but at first it was kinda cute, but now he seems to think he can apply it in all situations and make his own reality, and it's becoming irritating now.
Henry did something the other day that just blew my mind...he came upstairs with the boys and I when it was time for bed. He walked around, turned and looked at me and popped a squat and peed. The little bastard peed in my house! He hasn't done that since he was 2 months old!
Then to make matters worse, DH notices a wet spot on the floor and finds out it was BG. The only dog who was behaving himself was Smokey and he's usually the one peeing all over. My house is revolting against me or something. Ha! They have a lesson to learn, and that is...I shall not let them win! It is war! Bring on the water balloons household get your squirt guns cuz here we go!
No seriously we probably will have ourselves a water war here soon, but in the mean time...the things that stray from the norm of our family life with continue to shock me, make me just stop and bust out laughing, make me cry, or just plain stump me. I wouldn't trade it for the world either.
Well maybe the dog pee would be a good thing to go, but you get my drift. This is who we are, we learn new things each day, face new trials, and over come hurdles, but through it all we are still here and not somewhere else.
Speaking of trying days...tomorrow the entire street can not use their drains. Why? They are repairing the sewer line and plugging everyone's drains to the sewer. Use the drains and there just might be sewer backing up into the house. That would not be fun, nor would I be happy, and it would be about the same time as the lady from CPS in Texas called me.
Wish me luck getting through 12 hours of that, thankfully most of the family will be at school/work for the duration. Now I just have to figure out where to do my business all day. Yes, yes I went there. Everyone has to do it, there is no denying it.
Showing posts with label princess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label princess. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
I lost Track of Time
Well sometimes things just get away from us. My Princess went out last weekend and found the perfect prom dress with all the accessories. I wonder where the time flew? It seems like just yesterday she was in first grade. How did she get to seventeen without me knowing?
My Jokester is going into 2nd grade next year. With him too, it seems like he was just in his walker sneaking french fries from our customers, and not a seven year old boy who is obsessed with healthy eating.
Then there's my little Superman. DH, wasn't it just awhile ago, that Superman had the emergency surgery when he was 2 months old? He's going to be five this year, and tells me he knows everything.
How time flies. Quite frankly time doesn't even care if your having a good time or a bad time. Time just keeps marching on doing it's thing. Looking back it seems as if the last seventeen years hit warp speed, and holy crap I wasn't supposed to get older this fast either. The last age I remember being was twenty-seven, and cool, and full of energy, and skinnier. A lot skinnier, and not sleep deprived, and I was fun, and skinnier.
Ok, enough with the skinnier stuff. While it's true that I was skinnier than I am now, that was then and this is now. I must deal with what I have now, and that's all I can do. Seriously though, I do not like being over weight. Let me back that one up a bit and speak the truth. I do not like being fat.
I seem to be one of those people who lately lacks any motivation. It took me three years to actually do more than just talk about quitting smoking to actually trying to quit. Which I did quit on Valentines day.
Don't ask why that day, I have no clue. It just was time, that's all. I have to get unbelievably pissed and disgusted with the circumstance that I don't like before I move to change it. Prior to that, I'm all talk.
Well I'm starting to get pissed about my weight. I want it gone. I am not going to just sit back and embrace my fatness and chalk it up to getting older. Screw that. Big excuse right there. I have over used the excuse of the problems with my back and hips to not do any exercising. Truth is, I can exercise in moderation without ending up in bed for weeks. It is when I go all gung ho that ends up putting me in bed for weeks. I'm not about to add another excuse to use. Older my ass...
Diet. More specifically my diet. Ha ha, well I should say the families diet. It's changing, whether we like it or not. I have been put on a reduced sodium diet. Guess what? It sucks trying to find stuff to eat. Why, you ask? Here's why...for the most part with a few exceptions, everything out there has sodium in it. Whether it's there naturally or put in by man. There is sodium everywhere! There is salt in stuff that doesn't even need salt in it for crying out loud! I can't get away from the stuff it seems. Since I already have to take drastic measures in finding or making food that is low sodium, I might as well go out on a limb and loose some weight too, and eat healthier like my mom taught me to do.
Now the hard part for me. I have no idea why I have such a time with this, but I have just a bitch of a time trying to get all the knowledge that is in my brain into a workable plan. It's driving me crazy. Snort, hehe I'm already crazy. Guess that was a short drive. I can research, and dig up information like there is no tomorrow, but putting it all together....whole nother story. I used to be good at this, apparently not any more. So here I sit, with a ton of knowledge and no idea what the hell to do with it all. I put it in a sloppy temporary form of something to tide me over while I continue to work on the plan. Argh!!!! Talk about a set-up for failure.
Well once again I wrote another post that just took on a mind of it's own. You would think I would have some control over my fingers and what they type, but they just type whatever the hell they want to. This is what the end product looks like. Hope you had a happy read, y'll take care now. I'm off to find some low sodium recipes for enchiladas for dinner tonight. You know this means I have to make everything from scratch here. Ugh.
My Jokester is going into 2nd grade next year. With him too, it seems like he was just in his walker sneaking french fries from our customers, and not a seven year old boy who is obsessed with healthy eating.
Then there's my little Superman. DH, wasn't it just awhile ago, that Superman had the emergency surgery when he was 2 months old? He's going to be five this year, and tells me he knows everything.
How time flies. Quite frankly time doesn't even care if your having a good time or a bad time. Time just keeps marching on doing it's thing. Looking back it seems as if the last seventeen years hit warp speed, and holy crap I wasn't supposed to get older this fast either. The last age I remember being was twenty-seven, and cool, and full of energy, and skinnier. A lot skinnier, and not sleep deprived, and I was fun, and skinnier.
Ok, enough with the skinnier stuff. While it's true that I was skinnier than I am now, that was then and this is now. I must deal with what I have now, and that's all I can do. Seriously though, I do not like being over weight. Let me back that one up a bit and speak the truth. I do not like being fat.
I seem to be one of those people who lately lacks any motivation. It took me three years to actually do more than just talk about quitting smoking to actually trying to quit. Which I did quit on Valentines day.
Don't ask why that day, I have no clue. It just was time, that's all. I have to get unbelievably pissed and disgusted with the circumstance that I don't like before I move to change it. Prior to that, I'm all talk.
Well I'm starting to get pissed about my weight. I want it gone. I am not going to just sit back and embrace my fatness and chalk it up to getting older. Screw that. Big excuse right there. I have over used the excuse of the problems with my back and hips to not do any exercising. Truth is, I can exercise in moderation without ending up in bed for weeks. It is when I go all gung ho that ends up putting me in bed for weeks. I'm not about to add another excuse to use. Older my ass...
Diet. More specifically my diet. Ha ha, well I should say the families diet. It's changing, whether we like it or not. I have been put on a reduced sodium diet. Guess what? It sucks trying to find stuff to eat. Why, you ask? Here's why...for the most part with a few exceptions, everything out there has sodium in it. Whether it's there naturally or put in by man. There is sodium everywhere! There is salt in stuff that doesn't even need salt in it for crying out loud! I can't get away from the stuff it seems. Since I already have to take drastic measures in finding or making food that is low sodium, I might as well go out on a limb and loose some weight too, and eat healthier like my mom taught me to do.
Now the hard part for me. I have no idea why I have such a time with this, but I have just a bitch of a time trying to get all the knowledge that is in my brain into a workable plan. It's driving me crazy. Snort, hehe I'm already crazy. Guess that was a short drive. I can research, and dig up information like there is no tomorrow, but putting it all together....whole nother story. I used to be good at this, apparently not any more. So here I sit, with a ton of knowledge and no idea what the hell to do with it all. I put it in a sloppy temporary form of something to tide me over while I continue to work on the plan. Argh!!!! Talk about a set-up for failure.
Well once again I wrote another post that just took on a mind of it's own. You would think I would have some control over my fingers and what they type, but they just type whatever the hell they want to. This is what the end product looks like. Hope you had a happy read, y'll take care now. I'm off to find some low sodium recipes for enchiladas for dinner tonight. You know this means I have to make everything from scratch here. Ugh.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Veggies, Fruits and Meet my Mom
Today I think I will write about my mom, since she's been on my mind a bit lately. I don't know, probably since it's her birthday this month. Shall we get started?
My mom was bat shit crazy. Ok, maybe not bat shit, but she was crazy. There are a lot of mental issues that run in her family. More on that some other time, or maybe later on in this post. There was something about her that just was just a bit off. I can't really explain it, maybe quirky would be a better way of putting it. Either way, as a teenager growing up with her, it made life...interesting.
You might notice that I speak about her in past tense, and that is because in 1995 she passed away. In 1984 my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and my mom being herself decided that chemo and radiation was not for her. Now look at the above years. Subtract 1984 from 1995. That's eleven years my mom lived without taking mainstream treatments until the last year of her life. Almost a year before she died, she decided to try the chemo. It didn't work. I'm going to share with you her amazing journey, because it is amazing and it certainly had God's hand in it.
I don't remember the month, but sometime in 1984 when my mom told me to sit on her bed with her because she had something to tell me. (We just happened to be in her room.) I hopped up on her bed and said, "what's up?" I was around twelve years old at the time. She started to cry, and I knew it wasn't good. She told me that a couple of weeks before she had gone to the doctors and they had found a lump in her breast. She told me she just came back from speaking with the specialist. It was confirmed that she had breast cancer and the doctor told her that she had 6 months or less to live. BAM! Life as we both knew it ended that day.
She made the decision to forgo the mainstream treatments, due to other family members dying while taking them. Her philosophy was that it was the chemo and radiation that killed the family members. She very well could have been accurate, but I'm no specialist. In place of the mainstream treatments she went all natural. This woman was way ahead of the times, and it was hell for a teenager who liked to snack on junk food. She also kept having the tumors removed when they occasionally came back.
Let me explain a bit here for you. These fads you see now and days about, I don't know lets say, Pomegranate juice. She was doing this WAY before it became the norm or the fad. I don't know where she got her information from since there was no internet as we know it today, but I notice today, that everything, and I do mean everything she used to preach to me about health and nutrition is true. I remember when I moved to my dads house when I was 14, and while going through things and packing up I found the stash of vitamins that I hid everyday. There were a butt load of them! Can you tell I was not on the health food bandwagon yet?
My mom continued to try alternative treatments to cure her cancer, and during this time her being a woman who already was very religious turned ultra religious. She had a ritual so to speak. She would take her vitamins, go to the Chiropractor, eat all natural foods which included juicing, and pray like there was no tomorrow, because for her there might not have been another day. She would go in for her follow-ups and 9 times out of ten there was no cancer to be found. That other one percent...yeah it was cancer. Usually when the cancer re-appeared it was during the times where she wasn't eating her diet, and praying like she usually did. Many times she would come home and say they found a tumor, and go back on her routine, to have the tumor completely gone at the next visit.
She did this despite the fact that EVERYONE told her she was crazy and was going to die. She lost many friends because she refused to do the mainstream treatments. Family members refused to speak with her because of it.
I was stuck in the middle. Today I understand the reasoning behind everyone's insistence that she go mainstream. It was because it was what they knew. It was what everyone did. My mom's approach was new, and almost unheard of. They were afraid it wouldn't work, and they didn't want to see her die. cancer is after all scary enough to deal with without going outside the box.
So for eleven years everyone held their breath as they sat there and waited for that day. We all new she would die from the cancer, just didn't know when it would happen. I used to think about when she died, as the day of relief. The wait was finally over, and I no longer had to stand there and wonder when it would happen. Looking back I realize that was the worse thing anyone could have done for her. How hard was it to keep going on when nobody believed in what you were doing? We essentially were planning her death. Actually, I just realized this as I was writing and am having a bitch of a time dealing with this realization.
My mom had my brother when she was 43 years old and went into stage 4 cancer. I remember the day she told me she was pregnant, and I asked her if she was stupid. How could she be so selfish to bring a child into the world knowing that it would probably kill her, and her child would grow up without her. Her answer to me was, "God decided that this was to be." Now don't get me wrong here, I believe in God, I really do. However in all honesty I certainly do not have the faith that my mom did, and her religiousness was driving me crazy.
Through out this time her cancer had gone from her breast to her lymph nodes, to her bones, and in the end, into her blood. Let me click back a bit here, and let you know that she did make an appointment with the doctor who first diagnosed her and told her she had six months to live and when she told him how she was going to treat it he then gave her a month. Six years after that diagnose she walked in with her head held high and told that doctor to shove his diagnose where the sun don't shine. In a very religious way of course.
In January of 1995 I had my daughter. I called my mom who lived 4+hours away at 4:00am and told her it was time. She drove 260 miles to witness her first grandchild be born. She arrived 15 minutes after I was admitted, she asked if she could take a seat, and I asked her why she was walking funny she told me when the cancer entered her bones it had weakened two of her vertebrates and they were crushed. I asked her where my step-dad was, and she told me he was at home nursing something or other from surgery. She had driven herself all that ways with two crushed vertebrates! Hell fucking yeah she could have a seat!
That was about the time where things for her started to really head south. It was also the time where she went on the chemo pack. I was at home one day when she called me from the hospital. She wanted me to call the nurses station because they weren't answering the call button. Problem here, I had no clue which hospital she was in. The only info she could give me was she was in Madison WI, and she was freezing. She could hardly talk she was so cold. After playing phone tag with several hospitals and churches to locate my mom or my step-dad I headed out to Madison without a clue as to where I was going, but with one goal in mind. Find my mom, and figure out what the hell was going on. I made the five hour drive in three hours. Little did I know she would be gone in two weeks.
By this time the cancer had entered her bloodstream and was having the worst impact on her than in all the other years put together. It was causing too much calcium to be produced and the side effects of this were that she was very tired and slept a lot. The doctors were able to keep it under control for awhile, but in the end it did a huge spike and essentially what happened was that she went to bed and never woke up again. She fought the cancer for eleven years, but in the end...the calcium in the bloodstream took her in a matter of months. ( Side note here. Just because a person has high calcium levels doesn't not mean they have cancer. What happened to my mom is very rare, and only some times happens with people in late stage cancer.)
She passed in November of 1995, eleven months after she witnessed her first grandchild being born. My little brother was only three years old. My mom taught me many things about taking care of my body and being healthy, and for years I scorned it and laughed at it. It's come full circle now, as I currently am having health issues, and bit by bit I am remembering the things I was taught. I am also kicking myself in the ass for not listening in the first place. Don't you know? Mothers always know best. Slowly I'm changing my life into a healthier one, and I'm sure just like my mom, I too will be ridiculed for going against the mainstream, and being a bit quirky, but it's all good, she's got my back.
My mom was bat shit crazy. Ok, maybe not bat shit, but she was crazy. There are a lot of mental issues that run in her family. More on that some other time, or maybe later on in this post. There was something about her that just was just a bit off. I can't really explain it, maybe quirky would be a better way of putting it. Either way, as a teenager growing up with her, it made life...interesting.
You might notice that I speak about her in past tense, and that is because in 1995 she passed away. In 1984 my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and my mom being herself decided that chemo and radiation was not for her. Now look at the above years. Subtract 1984 from 1995. That's eleven years my mom lived without taking mainstream treatments until the last year of her life. Almost a year before she died, she decided to try the chemo. It didn't work. I'm going to share with you her amazing journey, because it is amazing and it certainly had God's hand in it.
I don't remember the month, but sometime in 1984 when my mom told me to sit on her bed with her because she had something to tell me. (We just happened to be in her room.) I hopped up on her bed and said, "what's up?" I was around twelve years old at the time. She started to cry, and I knew it wasn't good. She told me that a couple of weeks before she had gone to the doctors and they had found a lump in her breast. She told me she just came back from speaking with the specialist. It was confirmed that she had breast cancer and the doctor told her that she had 6 months or less to live. BAM! Life as we both knew it ended that day.
She made the decision to forgo the mainstream treatments, due to other family members dying while taking them. Her philosophy was that it was the chemo and radiation that killed the family members. She very well could have been accurate, but I'm no specialist. In place of the mainstream treatments she went all natural. This woman was way ahead of the times, and it was hell for a teenager who liked to snack on junk food. She also kept having the tumors removed when they occasionally came back.
Let me explain a bit here for you. These fads you see now and days about, I don't know lets say, Pomegranate juice. She was doing this WAY before it became the norm or the fad. I don't know where she got her information from since there was no internet as we know it today, but I notice today, that everything, and I do mean everything she used to preach to me about health and nutrition is true. I remember when I moved to my dads house when I was 14, and while going through things and packing up I found the stash of vitamins that I hid everyday. There were a butt load of them! Can you tell I was not on the health food bandwagon yet?
My mom continued to try alternative treatments to cure her cancer, and during this time her being a woman who already was very religious turned ultra religious. She had a ritual so to speak. She would take her vitamins, go to the Chiropractor, eat all natural foods which included juicing, and pray like there was no tomorrow, because for her there might not have been another day. She would go in for her follow-ups and 9 times out of ten there was no cancer to be found. That other one percent...yeah it was cancer. Usually when the cancer re-appeared it was during the times where she wasn't eating her diet, and praying like she usually did. Many times she would come home and say they found a tumor, and go back on her routine, to have the tumor completely gone at the next visit.
She did this despite the fact that EVERYONE told her she was crazy and was going to die. She lost many friends because she refused to do the mainstream treatments. Family members refused to speak with her because of it.
I was stuck in the middle. Today I understand the reasoning behind everyone's insistence that she go mainstream. It was because it was what they knew. It was what everyone did. My mom's approach was new, and almost unheard of. They were afraid it wouldn't work, and they didn't want to see her die. cancer is after all scary enough to deal with without going outside the box.
So for eleven years everyone held their breath as they sat there and waited for that day. We all new she would die from the cancer, just didn't know when it would happen. I used to think about when she died, as the day of relief. The wait was finally over, and I no longer had to stand there and wonder when it would happen. Looking back I realize that was the worse thing anyone could have done for her. How hard was it to keep going on when nobody believed in what you were doing? We essentially were planning her death. Actually, I just realized this as I was writing and am having a bitch of a time dealing with this realization.
My mom had my brother when she was 43 years old and went into stage 4 cancer. I remember the day she told me she was pregnant, and I asked her if she was stupid. How could she be so selfish to bring a child into the world knowing that it would probably kill her, and her child would grow up without her. Her answer to me was, "God decided that this was to be." Now don't get me wrong here, I believe in God, I really do. However in all honesty I certainly do not have the faith that my mom did, and her religiousness was driving me crazy.
Through out this time her cancer had gone from her breast to her lymph nodes, to her bones, and in the end, into her blood. Let me click back a bit here, and let you know that she did make an appointment with the doctor who first diagnosed her and told her she had six months to live and when she told him how she was going to treat it he then gave her a month. Six years after that diagnose she walked in with her head held high and told that doctor to shove his diagnose where the sun don't shine. In a very religious way of course.
In January of 1995 I had my daughter. I called my mom who lived 4+hours away at 4:00am and told her it was time. She drove 260 miles to witness her first grandchild be born. She arrived 15 minutes after I was admitted, she asked if she could take a seat, and I asked her why she was walking funny she told me when the cancer entered her bones it had weakened two of her vertebrates and they were crushed. I asked her where my step-dad was, and she told me he was at home nursing something or other from surgery. She had driven herself all that ways with two crushed vertebrates! Hell fucking yeah she could have a seat!
That was about the time where things for her started to really head south. It was also the time where she went on the chemo pack. I was at home one day when she called me from the hospital. She wanted me to call the nurses station because they weren't answering the call button. Problem here, I had no clue which hospital she was in. The only info she could give me was she was in Madison WI, and she was freezing. She could hardly talk she was so cold. After playing phone tag with several hospitals and churches to locate my mom or my step-dad I headed out to Madison without a clue as to where I was going, but with one goal in mind. Find my mom, and figure out what the hell was going on. I made the five hour drive in three hours. Little did I know she would be gone in two weeks.
By this time the cancer had entered her bloodstream and was having the worst impact on her than in all the other years put together. It was causing too much calcium to be produced and the side effects of this were that she was very tired and slept a lot. The doctors were able to keep it under control for awhile, but in the end it did a huge spike and essentially what happened was that she went to bed and never woke up again. She fought the cancer for eleven years, but in the end...the calcium in the bloodstream took her in a matter of months. ( Side note here. Just because a person has high calcium levels doesn't not mean they have cancer. What happened to my mom is very rare, and only some times happens with people in late stage cancer.)
She passed in November of 1995, eleven months after she witnessed her first grandchild being born. My little brother was only three years old. My mom taught me many things about taking care of my body and being healthy, and for years I scorned it and laughed at it. It's come full circle now, as I currently am having health issues, and bit by bit I am remembering the things I was taught. I am also kicking myself in the ass for not listening in the first place. Don't you know? Mothers always know best. Slowly I'm changing my life into a healthier one, and I'm sure just like my mom, I too will be ridiculed for going against the mainstream, and being a bit quirky, but it's all good, she's got my back.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
A Bit of This, and a Bit of That
Wow, I have to say the following really, really quietly ok folks...things have been fairly quiet around here. Knock on wood. Wait can't reach any wood. I got Formica. Stop! Every time I knock on anything, something bad, crazy, totally unbelievable, scary, or just plain insane happens around here. I take back my knock on wood. I refuse to knock on anything in the hopes that things stay normal for a bit. I know I totally just fucked myself there now didn't I...sigh. See what happens when I have keys that I can push that makes words? I cause my own demise without even trying. As my dad would say, "you really are a Pollock aren't ya?" Yes, yes I am, and thank you very much daddio for giving me that heritage. (For all you people including me who were not part of the 50's I just called my dad, dude hahaha.)
So on with the writing. Oh yeah, it's gonna be one of those very unnecessary Rambling posts that doesn't go anywhere. Just thought I would warn you before you get too deep into it. As I was saying, read the very first sentence and insert it here. One thing that has changed is that I have gone from the only driver in the house to one of three drivers. Scary! Well one of us is only on a permit, but none the less, still scary. Let's just say Princess thinks she needs to have a love affair with the right side of the road. Oh yeah, she also doesn't like to stop. I really do not want to take her driving. I have no idea why. I taught two of my sisters to drive the day I got my license. Ha! There would be the why...I was young and stupid. We also lived in the middle of no where so there wasn't anything to hit either. Not the case here.
Maybe this post should be about all the stupid things I did as a younger person and never got caught. Naw, I still might get in trouble. Really I wasn't a bad kid, just Polish. Yes! There is my excuse! It's rock solid. Fine I'll stop picking on the Pollocks. You know DH gets really pissed when I say stuff like, "hey that was my Polish coming out". He seems to think I'm being derogative towards myself, and I fall into a pit of dispare or something. On a side note...for some reason Blogger is not liking the way I am spelling my words. Hey Blogger they are correct! I double checked, so suck it! Well on that note, the lid on my garbage can just opened by itself.
Moving on to less passionate things I guess. I definitely do not want to upset the garbage can again. Touchy, touchy. So the doctor and physical therapist that I saw for my vertigo, unbalanced, ear thingy, thing seem to think I might be in the early stages of Meniers Syndrome. Yippee! Not. Hopefully they turn out to be wrong, but in the mean time they would both like me to go on a low salt diet of only 2 grams of salt a day and I guess with this comes no caffeine too. I originally thought that this would be a cinch (the salt thing, not the caffeine) since I didn't think I ate much salt, since I rarely use it when cooking. Turns out it's in everything that we eat for the most part. For instance there is 130mg of sodium in one serving of 2% milk. I had no clue, and guess what? It's there naturally. Nothing we can do about it. This is going to suck, big time. Then to top it off...once someone tells me no, I only want it all the more. I could really go for some salty chips right now. Good thing I'm broke and there isn't any in the house.
Well I guess I'll wrap this one up, I'm sure there is something around here that I should be doing right now. I really should start looking at the foods I can actually have now. How boring. Well you all take care now, and I'll check you next time. Hugs to you.
So on with the writing. Oh yeah, it's gonna be one of those very unnecessary Rambling posts that doesn't go anywhere. Just thought I would warn you before you get too deep into it. As I was saying, read the very first sentence and insert it here. One thing that has changed is that I have gone from the only driver in the house to one of three drivers. Scary! Well one of us is only on a permit, but none the less, still scary. Let's just say Princess thinks she needs to have a love affair with the right side of the road. Oh yeah, she also doesn't like to stop. I really do not want to take her driving. I have no idea why. I taught two of my sisters to drive the day I got my license. Ha! There would be the why...I was young and stupid. We also lived in the middle of no where so there wasn't anything to hit either. Not the case here.
Maybe this post should be about all the stupid things I did as a younger person and never got caught. Naw, I still might get in trouble. Really I wasn't a bad kid, just Polish. Yes! There is my excuse! It's rock solid. Fine I'll stop picking on the Pollocks. You know DH gets really pissed when I say stuff like, "hey that was my Polish coming out". He seems to think I'm being derogative towards myself, and I fall into a pit of dispare or something. On a side note...for some reason Blogger is not liking the way I am spelling my words. Hey Blogger they are correct! I double checked, so suck it! Well on that note, the lid on my garbage can just opened by itself.
Moving on to less passionate things I guess. I definitely do not want to upset the garbage can again. Touchy, touchy. So the doctor and physical therapist that I saw for my vertigo, unbalanced, ear thingy, thing seem to think I might be in the early stages of Meniers Syndrome. Yippee! Not. Hopefully they turn out to be wrong, but in the mean time they would both like me to go on a low salt diet of only 2 grams of salt a day and I guess with this comes no caffeine too. I originally thought that this would be a cinch (the salt thing, not the caffeine) since I didn't think I ate much salt, since I rarely use it when cooking. Turns out it's in everything that we eat for the most part. For instance there is 130mg of sodium in one serving of 2% milk. I had no clue, and guess what? It's there naturally. Nothing we can do about it. This is going to suck, big time. Then to top it off...once someone tells me no, I only want it all the more. I could really go for some salty chips right now. Good thing I'm broke and there isn't any in the house.
Well I guess I'll wrap this one up, I'm sure there is something around here that I should be doing right now. I really should start looking at the foods I can actually have now. How boring. Well you all take care now, and I'll check you next time. Hugs to you.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Knocked Out for Forty-five Hours, and a Whole Bunch of Other Stuff
Well today seems to be going good so far. I can say that I am not tired that's for sure. I caught some 48hr bug and seriously slept 45 of those hours.
So if you've been following my blog or my Facebook page, you will know that I've been having some medical issues lately. One of them being me trying to get put on the name brand drug for my seizures. Since I moved to Wisconsin six years ago I have been prescribed Phenytoin rather than the Dilantin I had been on.
We moved back to Minnesota and I tried to get to see my old Neurologist but it seems he's quite the busy guy with teaching and hospital work and the wait was gonna be a long one, and I needed my meds. so I saw one of his whatcha callem's co-worker thingies. Colleague, that's the word. I saw one of his colleagues. Hmm, not such a good pair we were not. Here's the low down on that one
So anyhow, back to the story. I finally get to see my original Neurologist and the first thing he asks me is, "how is the depression?" Whoa Frickin Nelly! Hold the boat for a moment. So I explain that the "depression" thing is a load of crap, and something else is going on. I tell him my thoughts on what might be happening. Ya know the whole generic drug thing. I ask him what is it going to hurt if for a couple of months we switch over to the Dilantin, and see if this could be part of my health problems? He's like, "what the hell let's give it a go." Yes my doctor totally said, what the hell. I love him.
So it's been a couple of months later and I had an appointment with him today. First thing he says is, " well you don't look depressed." WTH? I'm gonna hurt that other doctor for putting that in my file. He must have wrote it in bold red colors or something. Now I do in fact suffer from depression, but it's not something that I have to battle every day. I am aware of the times when I am unable to control it and I can't get myself outta a funk, and I need happy pills to help me. Right now though? I'm Good to go. Actually there is a valid reason he keeps asking me this. Apparently Dilantin can cause depression. It also can, get this, cause seizures. Not even going there. Nope. Not at all.
Oh yeah, back to the story. So I tell him about the dizziness and vertigo stuff that's been going on and I tell him it's been going on for awhile, but in the last month has gotten super duper bad. He tells me to get my levels checked, and he wants an MRI since neither of us can remember when I last had one. Ya know, just to make sure things are still normal in the noggin, or at least as normal as I seem to get.
I felt pretty good about the appointment. Holy crap, I just got all medical lingual on myself...totally deleted it all as I'm sure you all could care less unless of course you have a seizure disorder. Here's the dealio ...Everyone says that Phenytoin and Dilantin are the same thing. They are not!
I was on 300mg twice a day of phenytoin that barely kept me in the lower normal levels. When I switched over to Dilantin my doctor kept me at the same dosage. This is after all an experiment...sort of. The doctor called me back about 30 minutes after I got home. Ok, did you catch that? The doctor called. Not his assistant, or his nurse, it was him. He called to inform me that my levels were through the roof. Remember I'm on the same dosage as I was of the generic version. Ten to sixteen is the normal range. When I was on Phenytoin I was at a consistent 10.2 my Dilantin labs from today showed I was a toxic 44, and that was after throwing up a dose this weekend. He told me to cut 200mg out and told me to not take my dosage tonight, and to get back in on Monday to have my levels re-checked.
Hmm why do they keep insisting that these two drugs are the same and interchangeable? I'm sitting here barely functioning because first off, someone refuses to put me on the right drug, and then the right drug just about puts me in the hospital. Holy Hell's Bells! Why does this stuff always happen to me? On a more positive note. I stupidly made the MRI appointment for tomorrow morning, which is ok, except my nose is newly pierced and I don't want to take it out. It will hurt like the dickens! I guess it wouldn't be so bad except the other day while trying to get buggers out very carefully with a Kleenex.(yes I do have buggers, and yes I have to get them out somehow, and no it apparently wasn't carefully enough)I popped the fricken post out of my nose. Picture this...me in bathroom, me going, "oh shit", me yelling, "Princess come here!" Princess showing up asking, "what", me and her looking at each other like a couple dorks, Princess giving me a pat on the back and telling me good luck and walking away. Me grinding my teeth as I try to put the stupid thing back in. You can after all only really fit one set of hands on a nose you know. It now hurts like hell...again.
Pre-Publish Update: I called radiology and they said titanium was ok to leave in during an MRI. Thank you good Lord Jesus, and thank you super metal sensitive body for making me buy the expensive nose post!
So if you've been following my blog or my Facebook page, you will know that I've been having some medical issues lately. One of them being me trying to get put on the name brand drug for my seizures. Since I moved to Wisconsin six years ago I have been prescribed Phenytoin rather than the Dilantin I had been on.
We moved back to Minnesota and I tried to get to see my old Neurologist but it seems he's quite the busy guy with teaching and hospital work and the wait was gonna be a long one, and I needed my meds. so I saw one of his whatcha callem's co-worker thingies. Colleague, that's the word. I saw one of his colleagues. Hmm, not such a good pair we were not. Here's the low down on that one
So anyhow, back to the story. I finally get to see my original Neurologist and the first thing he asks me is, "how is the depression?" Whoa Frickin Nelly! Hold the boat for a moment. So I explain that the "depression" thing is a load of crap, and something else is going on. I tell him my thoughts on what might be happening. Ya know the whole generic drug thing. I ask him what is it going to hurt if for a couple of months we switch over to the Dilantin, and see if this could be part of my health problems? He's like, "what the hell let's give it a go." Yes my doctor totally said, what the hell. I love him.
So it's been a couple of months later and I had an appointment with him today. First thing he says is, " well you don't look depressed." WTH? I'm gonna hurt that other doctor for putting that in my file. He must have wrote it in bold red colors or something. Now I do in fact suffer from depression, but it's not something that I have to battle every day. I am aware of the times when I am unable to control it and I can't get myself outta a funk, and I need happy pills to help me. Right now though? I'm Good to go. Actually there is a valid reason he keeps asking me this. Apparently Dilantin can cause depression. It also can, get this, cause seizures. Not even going there. Nope. Not at all.
Oh yeah, back to the story. So I tell him about the dizziness and vertigo stuff that's been going on and I tell him it's been going on for awhile, but in the last month has gotten super duper bad. He tells me to get my levels checked, and he wants an MRI since neither of us can remember when I last had one. Ya know, just to make sure things are still normal in the noggin, or at least as normal as I seem to get.
I felt pretty good about the appointment. Holy crap, I just got all medical lingual on myself...totally deleted it all as I'm sure you all could care less unless of course you have a seizure disorder. Here's the dealio ...Everyone says that Phenytoin and Dilantin are the same thing. They are not!
I was on 300mg twice a day of phenytoin that barely kept me in the lower normal levels. When I switched over to Dilantin my doctor kept me at the same dosage. This is after all an experiment...sort of. The doctor called me back about 30 minutes after I got home. Ok, did you catch that? The doctor called. Not his assistant, or his nurse, it was him. He called to inform me that my levels were through the roof. Remember I'm on the same dosage as I was of the generic version. Ten to sixteen is the normal range. When I was on Phenytoin I was at a consistent 10.2 my Dilantin labs from today showed I was a toxic 44, and that was after throwing up a dose this weekend. He told me to cut 200mg out and told me to not take my dosage tonight, and to get back in on Monday to have my levels re-checked.
Hmm why do they keep insisting that these two drugs are the same and interchangeable? I'm sitting here barely functioning because first off, someone refuses to put me on the right drug, and then the right drug just about puts me in the hospital. Holy Hell's Bells! Why does this stuff always happen to me? On a more positive note. I stupidly made the MRI appointment for tomorrow morning, which is ok, except my nose is newly pierced and I don't want to take it out. It will hurt like the dickens! I guess it wouldn't be so bad except the other day while trying to get buggers out very carefully with a Kleenex.(yes I do have buggers, and yes I have to get them out somehow, and no it apparently wasn't carefully enough)I popped the fricken post out of my nose. Picture this...me in bathroom, me going, "oh shit", me yelling, "Princess come here!" Princess showing up asking, "what", me and her looking at each other like a couple dorks, Princess giving me a pat on the back and telling me good luck and walking away. Me grinding my teeth as I try to put the stupid thing back in. You can after all only really fit one set of hands on a nose you know. It now hurts like hell...again.
Pre-Publish Update: I called radiology and they said titanium was ok to leave in during an MRI. Thank you good Lord Jesus, and thank you super metal sensitive body for making me buy the expensive nose post!
Thursday, March 8, 2012
When Did I Grow Up
Ya know, I used to see mom's out there when I was much younger and think to myself, "wow how did they let themselves get so dumpy?" I mean I seriously remember being there in Target and actually thinking this an after thought of the line of, "I will never let myself get so uncool."
Now why I thought that, I have no idea. I, myself was never the type of being in style kinda girl, or a cool kid. Maybe that's the reason I thought that. Then again, every teenager who has parents who give a damn about them view the parents as aliens from another world. Think I'm sticking with the second one.
I was doing good when I had Princess. Cool, hip, fun mom. I mean I was really strict with her, but we had a ton of fun. I actually knew how to laugh. We went camping, fishing, roller blading, snuggling, shopping... Now? It isn't happening. Somewhere I lost my youth.
I'm not fun anymore. I don't have the energy to do things with the kids. In fact the little bit of energy I do have, they suck right out within five minutes of waking up. I don't laugh as much, and I don't just stop and grab a hand and start dancing. I'm too busy trying to get through a day. Screw that, to busy trying to get through an hour.
The little things that I should be gaining pleasure from are just wearing me down. I am not able to enjoy life right now. It seems somewhere along the way...I grew up and became one of those dumpy parents from my yesteryear.
Gosh darn it! I refuse to cave into the stereotypical description of growing up! If it rains, you can bet your sweet ass I'm grabbing a little hand and we are going to go dance in the rain. Ok, it will only be with Superman, since Jokester, and Princess hate rain, but dancing we shall go. Oh, and when it gets much warmer here, it's still a bit chilly.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Fast River of College
So here I sit about to write another blurp about my life, and I'm drawing a blank. Well actually not a blank, there's lots going through my head, just having trouble grabbing a thought. Sometimes I feel like I have suddenly gotten ADD, because I find it so hard to focus on one thought. They tend to be like something floating in a fast moving river. The current takes these thoughts away before I can get a grasp on one.
Because of this I tend to just be in myself, because trying to be vocal to someone is very hard. Things tend to come out in a cluster fuck or like a record that skips all over the place. For instance, I was having trouble making that last sentence understandable, so I got up and brushed my teeth. I didn't stop trying to grab a thought while I brushed my teeth, but when I came back I just started typing and it came out right. Maybe I just need to be multi-tasking. If that's the case it will take me forever to get one of these things done.
So today is Friday, and if Superman made it through today without any form of violence at school he will get to pick something out of his rewards bag. Hoping today is a good day for him.
Today, Jokester takes his spelling test. Keeping my fingers crossed that he does well on it. It wasn't looking very promising this morning when I asked him how to spell the word "hope", he kept spelling it "hoke". Oh my son, you can do it!
Princess got to go visit a college yesterday, and when I picked her up, I asked if she liked it. "Oh yeah mom it was great!" "Did you like it better than Oshkosh?" (she did a two week pre-collage stint there back in 9th grade)"Way better than Oshkosh, they have sky-ways and tunnels so I don't ever have to go outside!" ??? "Um Princess, I don't think that qualifies as a good college. You know the ability to never go outside." "I know that mom, you asked me what I liked better than Oshkosh." Point taken daughter, touche. Then she kicks into high gear... "Plus it's close to the Mall of America, and there was a good selection of food places there, and the students who were telling us about the college said the community was really cool, and the dorms looked pretty good too, they have a separate dorm for the Freshman." Oh Lord we are up shit creek if this is what she is basing her decision on the college she is going to go to. "Princess, I understand the importance of food for your bottomless stomach, but I highly doubt your going to have a whole bunch of spare time to go hang out at MOA, and if you decide to go there you can still live at home and save some money on rent and oh I don't know...food. How about the classes? Do they have the one's you need? That is after all the reason your going to college." "Yeah their language classes looked pretty good." "Ok those aren't the important classes. How about the science classes you need, do they have those?" Vague answer coming..."I'm sure they do, but if they don't they are contracted with other colleges that will have the ones I need. Oh and I get a $8,000 scholarship because I'm in AP, that's a $32,000 savings. Plus all their scholarships automatically roll over the following year." Well hell's bells there is promise for this kid. Way to try and win the argument with the highlight of saving money. Now keep in mind that this kid has a very good chance that she will get into Harvard or any other esteemed college. "So Princess is this the college for you?" "It is until I go visit the next college. Then that's the one for me." Oh this is going to be a very very long process...sigh.
Because of this I tend to just be in myself, because trying to be vocal to someone is very hard. Things tend to come out in a cluster fuck or like a record that skips all over the place. For instance, I was having trouble making that last sentence understandable, so I got up and brushed my teeth. I didn't stop trying to grab a thought while I brushed my teeth, but when I came back I just started typing and it came out right. Maybe I just need to be multi-tasking. If that's the case it will take me forever to get one of these things done.
So today is Friday, and if Superman made it through today without any form of violence at school he will get to pick something out of his rewards bag. Hoping today is a good day for him.
Today, Jokester takes his spelling test. Keeping my fingers crossed that he does well on it. It wasn't looking very promising this morning when I asked him how to spell the word "hope", he kept spelling it "hoke". Oh my son, you can do it!
Princess got to go visit a college yesterday, and when I picked her up, I asked if she liked it. "Oh yeah mom it was great!" "Did you like it better than Oshkosh?" (she did a two week pre-collage stint there back in 9th grade)"Way better than Oshkosh, they have sky-ways and tunnels so I don't ever have to go outside!" ??? "Um Princess, I don't think that qualifies as a good college. You know the ability to never go outside." "I know that mom, you asked me what I liked better than Oshkosh." Point taken daughter, touche. Then she kicks into high gear... "Plus it's close to the Mall of America, and there was a good selection of food places there, and the students who were telling us about the college said the community was really cool, and the dorms looked pretty good too, they have a separate dorm for the Freshman." Oh Lord we are up shit creek if this is what she is basing her decision on the college she is going to go to. "Princess, I understand the importance of food for your bottomless stomach, but I highly doubt your going to have a whole bunch of spare time to go hang out at MOA, and if you decide to go there you can still live at home and save some money on rent and oh I don't know...food. How about the classes? Do they have the one's you need? That is after all the reason your going to college." "Yeah their language classes looked pretty good." "Ok those aren't the important classes. How about the science classes you need, do they have those?" Vague answer coming..."I'm sure they do, but if they don't they are contracted with other colleges that will have the ones I need. Oh and I get a $8,000 scholarship because I'm in AP, that's a $32,000 savings. Plus all their scholarships automatically roll over the following year." Well hell's bells there is promise for this kid. Way to try and win the argument with the highlight of saving money. Now keep in mind that this kid has a very good chance that she will get into Harvard or any other esteemed college. "So Princess is this the college for you?" "It is until I go visit the next college. Then that's the one for me." Oh this is going to be a very very long process...sigh.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Turner's Syndrome and Princess
Awhile
back I told you that I would talk about Turner's Syndrome someday.
Well I guess today is as good as any day. I am going to attempt to
keep this as short and as informational as possible for you. Please
understand that I am not a doctor, and this is basically how I
understand what I am about to write. I may not have all the facts
correct.
My
daughter was born with TS, it's not hereditary or anything like that.
It's basically a fluke. Before she was born I had never heard of TS
before. I went through a crash course after she was born. Back then
there wasn't a lot of info on the web that was in people language.
There were a bunch of really big words for me to try and read, and I
ended up more confused than when I first began researching TS.
First
a quick lesson on cells and chromosomes. the body is made up of
cells, which are our DNA. The cells are, for lack of a better word,
the envelopes that hold the chromosomes that tell the body how to
make us. In each cell there are supposed to be 46 chromosomes. The
chromosomes are the things that say whether we have blond hair, eye
color, how many fingers...you get the idea. Girls have two X
chromosomes in each cell, and boys have a Y (that's where they get
that testosterone from. I'm kidding I have no clue on that.) and an X
chromosome. Ok, I told you it would be quick, moving on.
Only
girls have TS, due to an X chromosome either missing or a different
variation of it and I will cover that in a bit. About 99% of the
fetuses spontaneously abort themselves due to sever complications. So
whenever you hear a mom say that her TS daughter is a miracle, she
speaks the truth. They are our miracles. They all come with a wide
variety of medical concerns, from sever to mild, and no two are
alike.
There
are three types of TS, the first one being Monosomy or Classic
Turner's, about 50% of TS girls have this kind. With this kind the
chromosome is completely missing. The girls who have this type show
the most physical features and medical conditions. This is the type
that Princess has, and I will get into this more.
The
next type is Mosaicism Tuner's and about
30-40% are born with this type. With this type they have some of the
46th chromosomes or only part of the 46th chromosome. There's no set
order to this, so each girl will have different things going on.
Girls with this typically don't show as many physical features, or
have as many medical conditions. Some will menstruate, and can become
pregnant but go through a very early menopause. They are also not
diagnosed until usually later in life due to the lack of TS physical
features being absent.
The
last type is Ischromosome which occurs in 12-20% of girls. The
features and medical conditions are similar to the type Monosomy.
Now
onto Classic Turner's. With this type there are many physical
features that are present. With Princess the fact that her hands and
feet were puffy was the initial indication that she had TS. I'm going
to list some of the physical features that are usually present with
this type. Not every girl has these and I am not going to list them
all as the list can be long. Of the following, Princess exhibits
seven of the features plus more not listed.
short stature
a
low
hairline
at the back of the neck
broad
chest
small
jaw
a
narrow, high arched palate
shorter
fingers
soft,
spoon shaped fingernails
prominent
ears
Nearly
half of the females with Turner syndrome have a condition known as
lymphedema resulting in puffiness in the hands and feet at birth.
Some
of the medical conditions are as follows:
underdeveloped
ovaries or non existent
constricted
aorta- Princess has a bi-cuspid aorta and widening of the aortic root
misshapen
kidneys, or horseshoe kidneys- one of Princess's kidneys is
slightly bigger than the other
Eustachian
tubes do not work properly and cause middle ear infection and
possible hearing loss
short
sightedness
scoliosis
thyroid
problems
The
chromosome that is missing is the one that tells the body to keep
growing, and to go through puberty. Most TS girls take growth
hormones to grow and later take estrogen to develop a normal female
body. Some TS girls prefer not to go these routes.
When
Princess was born the doctor told me that she could
be severely mentally disabled or a genius. (way to close
that gap there doc) If she actually used her brain she would be
closer to the genius range, just saying. There is however a common
learning impairment that is associated with TS and it is
called Nonverbal Learning Disability. This means that there
might be problems with math, and they may find visualizing
objects in relation to one another more difficult, this is
called visual-spatial relationships.
Well
thank you for reading this post, if you know a girl or woman who
might show the signs of TS let them know they are not alone, and
there is help out there. People often ask me if I'm mad at God for
this, and my honest answer has always been...absolutely not. He
decided that she was the perfect child for me, and I the perfect mom
for her. Together we can educate and inform others of this Syndrome
and let them know there is nothing to be afraid of.
Ok so I have no idea what I did to make some of this weird looking, and I have no idea how to fix it...sorry folks. Just been one of those days.
Ok so I have no idea what I did to make some of this weird looking, and I have no idea how to fix it...sorry folks. Just been one of those days.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
The Bullshit Trials of a School System
Well I was just reading one of One Tired Mama's Posts about schools, and IEPs and all the crap we as parents have to deal with regarding our child's education. Now I have to write this, cuz apparently I'm still pissed at said school system. A lot.
The first round began with Princess back in elementary school. Princess has Turner's Syndrome, and with it comes some special things. Someday I'll devote a post just to TS, but not today.
The main reason that Princess had an IEP was for her speech therapist. Part of TS is a high arched palette. It make pronouncing words correctly more difficult. Even now if she talks too fast I can't understand what she is saying. The other reason was for math and reading. She really had a tough time with both early on.
Now I'm gonna begin the gritty nastiness of dealing with the schools. When Princess was in 4th grade we moved to Wisconsin. Once again she was given an IEP. No problems the first year, however the 5th grade turned out to be a nightmare for not only her, but her whole class.
Her teacher SUCKED! Big time. I called a conference with her because Princess's grade took a nose dive off a cliff. She didn't get great grades before, but she sure wasn't getting straight F's and D's. The teacher's response was, "Oh it's the whole class. All of them are really struggling." "Excuse me? Your telling me the whole class is having trouble, and flunking?" This is where it got really nasty, well I guess I got really nasty. Keep in mind this is a very small town school, I'm used to the big city schools.
I got up in her face and said, "I'm thinking it's not the students who are to blame. When you have eighteen kids flunking, something tells me it's the teacher. Your a crappy teacher!" Let me tell you that didn't go over so well.I ended up taking Princess out of school and home schooled her for the rest of the year and half of the next. The next year we had custody of our nephew and he ended up with the same teacher, and holy crap did she ever kiss my ass. Hope the new attitude stuck with her. I have never met a teacher who was so hated by so many students and parents. How sad.
When I started home schooling I found out that Princess didn't know her short and long vowels. How the hell did she get to 5th grade and not know her vowels!? I mean after all she had been in Title 1 reading for four years. Who the fuck missed the boat on this one? I had to start at the beginning with the phonics. She seriously would not have been able to read this post back back to me without 90% error. Within a year I had her caught up to her grade level and then some. This was done only teaching three to four hours a day. Something is very wrong with our school system.
Princess went from getting F's and D's to straight A's, and has continued doing this for six years. The next problem came when we moved back to Minnesota. Apparently these states do not use the same semester/trimester system. Because we had moved two weeks before the semester ended in Wisconsin, they refused to give Princess her ninth grade credits. Seriously?! The school I got her into is a Charter School, and their hands were tied on the credit thing, they couldn't just let her test out. They originally wanted to put her back in ninth grade to gain her credits. Oh yeah, not happening people. This kid worked her ass off and is not going back into ninth grade. Holy tantrum was happening here on our parts. We came up with a compromise...she would continue in the tenth grade and go to night school for her ninth grade credits. This girl went to school for eleven hours a day M-Th for an entire school year, and managed to get straight A's in both schools. Take that assholes. My girl rocks!!! She is almost caught up now, she has half a credit of math to do still, and we are not so worried she wont have the credits to graduate next year.
Now let's move on to Jokester's first year of school which was last year. He was in a different school since there were no openings at the school Princess goes to. I am kicking myself for putting him in this school. His teacher sucked ass too. Some back ground here. The boys have not really had the opportunity to socialize with other kids their age. Every where we move there are no kids their age. We don't know the people in our communities, so getting together with other parents and their kids wasn't happening. It's always been just the three of them. There was never any need to daycare or preschool. Jokester went to Kindergarten last year, and it was a nightmare. Twenty-three days into the school year his teacher wanted a conference. Ok, so I go. She tells me point blank that Jokester is NOT going to pass Kindergarten. Come again, what? She determined in twenty-three days that Jokester just wasn't ready for this. Umm, yeah it's going to take a bit for him to get the hang of this since this is completely new, but your writing him off already? Bitch. Basically in a nutshell we refused to take him out of school, she persisted with the shitty attitude towards him. If I had been able to get him in another Charter School I would have ASAP. I think Jokester is Dyslexic and when I brought it up to them they were like oh, maybe. They finally brought someone into school to test him but not for Dyslexia but rather for Autism/Aspburgers. Where did this come from? We waited and waited and waited for the test results...finally at the end of the year I found out he got into Princess's school and I went to get the records all together. Asked where the report on his testing was...they couldn't find the the results or the guy. I'm sorry You lost a whole guy, along with the test results on my son? So I called the new school and informed them of what was going on, and wasn't really sure what grade he would be going into. This was a actual concern since if he had to repeat Kindergarten they might not have an opening for him. They weren't too concern once they heard about the nightmare. Sometime during the summer I got a letter in the mail, stating he had flunked Kindergarten. Fuck you.
He went into 1st grade this year, and didn't have to re-do Kindergarten. Yes he is struggling, which if the previous school had done their job right wouldn't be happening. Jokester's teacher says that he is making great progress, but he probably wont be up to the reading level he should be at the end of the year, but he wont be too far off, and the teacher is not too concerned. He is getting the extra help he needed so badly the year before, and is kicking butt in math which he struggled with so hard before. I continue to work hard with him here at home, and hopefully between the awesome school and myself we will get him where he is supposed to be, and make sure that he still likes school in the mean time.
So for all you parents out there who are getting screwed over by the schools, your not alone. There are student advocates available...use them. If things are not going the way they should...become the biggest thorn in their side. If you don't fight for them they will just be swallowed in the bullshit of a school system. One other thing...schools and teachers don't expect you to give a crap. It is refreshing to have a parents support even if you make their life hell. There are so many parents out there who don't give a crap, so when you do step up and call the school out on something it takes them by surprise. They become hostile until they know your doing it for your kid, and not just blowing smoke up their ass. Keep at it and good luck.
The first round began with Princess back in elementary school. Princess has Turner's Syndrome, and with it comes some special things. Someday I'll devote a post just to TS, but not today.
The main reason that Princess had an IEP was for her speech therapist. Part of TS is a high arched palette. It make pronouncing words correctly more difficult. Even now if she talks too fast I can't understand what she is saying. The other reason was for math and reading. She really had a tough time with both early on.
Now I'm gonna begin the gritty nastiness of dealing with the schools. When Princess was in 4th grade we moved to Wisconsin. Once again she was given an IEP. No problems the first year, however the 5th grade turned out to be a nightmare for not only her, but her whole class.
Her teacher SUCKED! Big time. I called a conference with her because Princess's grade took a nose dive off a cliff. She didn't get great grades before, but she sure wasn't getting straight F's and D's. The teacher's response was, "Oh it's the whole class. All of them are really struggling." "Excuse me? Your telling me the whole class is having trouble, and flunking?" This is where it got really nasty, well I guess I got really nasty. Keep in mind this is a very small town school, I'm used to the big city schools.
I got up in her face and said, "I'm thinking it's not the students who are to blame. When you have eighteen kids flunking, something tells me it's the teacher. Your a crappy teacher!" Let me tell you that didn't go over so well.I ended up taking Princess out of school and home schooled her for the rest of the year and half of the next. The next year we had custody of our nephew and he ended up with the same teacher, and holy crap did she ever kiss my ass. Hope the new attitude stuck with her. I have never met a teacher who was so hated by so many students and parents. How sad.
When I started home schooling I found out that Princess didn't know her short and long vowels. How the hell did she get to 5th grade and not know her vowels!? I mean after all she had been in Title 1 reading for four years. Who the fuck missed the boat on this one? I had to start at the beginning with the phonics. She seriously would not have been able to read this post back back to me without 90% error. Within a year I had her caught up to her grade level and then some. This was done only teaching three to four hours a day. Something is very wrong with our school system.
Princess went from getting F's and D's to straight A's, and has continued doing this for six years. The next problem came when we moved back to Minnesota. Apparently these states do not use the same semester/trimester system. Because we had moved two weeks before the semester ended in Wisconsin, they refused to give Princess her ninth grade credits. Seriously?! The school I got her into is a Charter School, and their hands were tied on the credit thing, they couldn't just let her test out. They originally wanted to put her back in ninth grade to gain her credits. Oh yeah, not happening people. This kid worked her ass off and is not going back into ninth grade. Holy tantrum was happening here on our parts. We came up with a compromise...she would continue in the tenth grade and go to night school for her ninth grade credits. This girl went to school for eleven hours a day M-Th for an entire school year, and managed to get straight A's in both schools. Take that assholes. My girl rocks!!! She is almost caught up now, she has half a credit of math to do still, and we are not so worried she wont have the credits to graduate next year.
Now let's move on to Jokester's first year of school which was last year. He was in a different school since there were no openings at the school Princess goes to. I am kicking myself for putting him in this school. His teacher sucked ass too. Some back ground here. The boys have not really had the opportunity to socialize with other kids their age. Every where we move there are no kids their age. We don't know the people in our communities, so getting together with other parents and their kids wasn't happening. It's always been just the three of them. There was never any need to daycare or preschool. Jokester went to Kindergarten last year, and it was a nightmare. Twenty-three days into the school year his teacher wanted a conference. Ok, so I go. She tells me point blank that Jokester is NOT going to pass Kindergarten. Come again, what? She determined in twenty-three days that Jokester just wasn't ready for this. Umm, yeah it's going to take a bit for him to get the hang of this since this is completely new, but your writing him off already? Bitch. Basically in a nutshell we refused to take him out of school, she persisted with the shitty attitude towards him. If I had been able to get him in another Charter School I would have ASAP. I think Jokester is Dyslexic and when I brought it up to them they were like oh, maybe. They finally brought someone into school to test him but not for Dyslexia but rather for Autism/Aspburgers. Where did this come from? We waited and waited and waited for the test results...finally at the end of the year I found out he got into Princess's school and I went to get the records all together. Asked where the report on his testing was...they couldn't find the the results or the guy. I'm sorry You lost a whole guy, along with the test results on my son? So I called the new school and informed them of what was going on, and wasn't really sure what grade he would be going into. This was a actual concern since if he had to repeat Kindergarten they might not have an opening for him. They weren't too concern once they heard about the nightmare. Sometime during the summer I got a letter in the mail, stating he had flunked Kindergarten. Fuck you.
He went into 1st grade this year, and didn't have to re-do Kindergarten. Yes he is struggling, which if the previous school had done their job right wouldn't be happening. Jokester's teacher says that he is making great progress, but he probably wont be up to the reading level he should be at the end of the year, but he wont be too far off, and the teacher is not too concerned. He is getting the extra help he needed so badly the year before, and is kicking butt in math which he struggled with so hard before. I continue to work hard with him here at home, and hopefully between the awesome school and myself we will get him where he is supposed to be, and make sure that he still likes school in the mean time.
So for all you parents out there who are getting screwed over by the schools, your not alone. There are student advocates available...use them. If things are not going the way they should...become the biggest thorn in their side. If you don't fight for them they will just be swallowed in the bullshit of a school system. One other thing...schools and teachers don't expect you to give a crap. It is refreshing to have a parents support even if you make their life hell. There are so many parents out there who don't give a crap, so when you do step up and call the school out on something it takes them by surprise. They become hostile until they know your doing it for your kid, and not just blowing smoke up their ass. Keep at it and good luck.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Toe to Toe
I have this thing where I stub my toes on other peoples toes. NO,no,no that's not quit right...other people stub their toes on my toes. Yeah that's it. It has no bearing on the fact that I am the one who is walking, none at all. DH, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
It all began one night when I was walking over to DH (who was sitting on the couch) to give him a hug. And that's when it happened! His damn toe attacked mine! It just patiently waited until my toe was in range and jumped out and stubbed it's self on my toe. I was hopping up and down like a crazy rabbit yelling ow-wee, ow-wee, and he was grabbing his toe, moaning ohhh that hurts, ouch, ohhhh. Our eyes met and we both burst out laughing while we were still crying over the pain.
He says, "how do you manage to stub your toe on mine? You should really learn how to walk." Oh no! He didn't go there now did he. It wasn't me at all, and here's my reasoning.
First off... he had a blanket over his feet...like I would know there's a toe there.
Secondly...there was so much crap in the area that I would have to have been in special ops to maneuver around it all.
thirdly...my equilibrium has been way off lately, so it's not that I don't know how to walk, it's just that the world keeps tilting on me, and no I haven't been drinking. See not my fault at all.
So this has happened a couple of times, and each time DH looses a bit more of his sense of humor. I tell him he needs to laugh through the pain. Lighten up already. Plus it's not just between DH and me. Princess has done it to me too. I was just standing there, when she stubbed her toe on mine as she walked by.
Either people in this house need to quit stubbing their toes on mine or I'm going to have to invent a "nut cup" for toes pretty soon. Hmm, I can see dollar signs already!
It all began one night when I was walking over to DH (who was sitting on the couch) to give him a hug. And that's when it happened! His damn toe attacked mine! It just patiently waited until my toe was in range and jumped out and stubbed it's self on my toe. I was hopping up and down like a crazy rabbit yelling ow-wee, ow-wee, and he was grabbing his toe, moaning ohhh that hurts, ouch, ohhhh. Our eyes met and we both burst out laughing while we were still crying over the pain.
He says, "how do you manage to stub your toe on mine? You should really learn how to walk." Oh no! He didn't go there now did he. It wasn't me at all, and here's my reasoning.
First off... he had a blanket over his feet...like I would know there's a toe there.
Secondly...there was so much crap in the area that I would have to have been in special ops to maneuver around it all.
thirdly...my equilibrium has been way off lately, so it's not that I don't know how to walk, it's just that the world keeps tilting on me, and no I haven't been drinking. See not my fault at all.
So this has happened a couple of times, and each time DH looses a bit more of his sense of humor. I tell him he needs to laugh through the pain. Lighten up already. Plus it's not just between DH and me. Princess has done it to me too. I was just standing there, when she stubbed her toe on mine as she walked by.
Either people in this house need to quit stubbing their toes on mine or I'm going to have to invent a "nut cup" for toes pretty soon. Hmm, I can see dollar signs already!
Friday, January 13, 2012
What to Wear When the Truck Breaks...Again
I went to get dressed today, and was looking for my sweat pants, cuz it's that kind of day. They are nowhere to be found. I looked in all my drawers, hit DH's dresser, the boys dressers...nowhere. I looked in the dirty baskets just in case I wore them and didn't remember, not there. The only place I didn't look was in Princess's room. Why would I look there? Well occasionally when she does her laundry and sees I only have a few dirty clothes she offers to wash mine too. (I know! What teenager does this right?) I suppose I should go look in there, but I don't want too. She has this habit of washing my clothes with her's but never gets them out of her room. I was looking for a specific pair of pants for Superman one day and could not find them. Three months later I happened to be in her room, and there they were. I guess I should just be happy she's helping me.
So until I find my sweat pants, I am forced to wear a pair of pants that are um... a tad too small. You see I don't have many pants that actually fit me. All my money goes to getting what the family needs, and in the off chance there's some left over for me, I don't usually spend it on myself anyhow. I'm unselfish that way. I really should spend some money on some pants because the ones I have on now are going to cut off my circulation and cut me in half. Either that or do a load of laundry. Nope, not gonna be doing that today. Actually what I should do is, make a pattern of the jammy pants that I loved so much I wore them out, and make a new pair. I wore those things everywhere. They were actually mens lounging pants that passed as sweat pants...sort of. Close enough.
No I don't go around like some of those women who go out looking like they just rolled out of bed, with their actual pj's and slippers on. It's the lounge pants or slippers, never both at the same time. Come on I do take alittle pride in myself, though not much. Who has time to fix their hair and be in command of three kids, three dogs, and a DH? Well I guess there are some of those types out there, but not me. I like to be comfortable, and I'm done with my days of being with the latest trends. Got more important fish to fry. Like finding out where my sweat pants disappeared to.
Princess's friend gave us some dog supplies the other day since they got rid of all their dogs. One of the things she gave us was one of those food and water bowl stands for large dogs so they don't have to bend down to eat and drink. Cool! Only thing is it's HUGE, and my kitchen is small.
There isn't a place for it, yet. In order to get this thing it's own home will result in clearing off the only little counter space I have and putting DH's coffee maker on it, and moving the shelf unit that it currently sits on. I have to clean out my pantry to make room for the shelf thingy in there, and then there will be a spot for it. I debated on whether to use the thing, but BG seems to like it. This is going to be a couple hours long project. I really don't feel like doing this, but I'm tired of tripping over it.
On another note, I really hate vehicles. After spending well over a thousand dollars on my stupid truck, I now have a new problem. There is something wrong with the valve stem on one of my back tires. Which I found out when I went to put air in it last night. Now I had tried to put air in it the other week, and had trouble but I thought it was due to the air hose I used because I had trouble with all the tires. Guess not. So now my tire is at like 25 pounds and I have no way to get air in the stupid thing. I don't want to spend a lot of money on it since I will be getting new tires here shortly. I just wanted to put it off a bit longer than what it seems to turning out to be. Damn truck. Guess I'll have to go out and put the spare on. Don't wanna...it's cold out! Any volunteers? Please? I'm begging now.
So until I find my sweat pants, I am forced to wear a pair of pants that are um... a tad too small. You see I don't have many pants that actually fit me. All my money goes to getting what the family needs, and in the off chance there's some left over for me, I don't usually spend it on myself anyhow. I'm unselfish that way. I really should spend some money on some pants because the ones I have on now are going to cut off my circulation and cut me in half. Either that or do a load of laundry. Nope, not gonna be doing that today. Actually what I should do is, make a pattern of the jammy pants that I loved so much I wore them out, and make a new pair. I wore those things everywhere. They were actually mens lounging pants that passed as sweat pants...sort of. Close enough.
Yeah this isn't my thing.
No I don't go around like some of those women who go out looking like they just rolled out of bed, with their actual pj's and slippers on. It's the lounge pants or slippers, never both at the same time. Come on I do take alittle pride in myself, though not much. Who has time to fix their hair and be in command of three kids, three dogs, and a DH? Well I guess there are some of those types out there, but not me. I like to be comfortable, and I'm done with my days of being with the latest trends. Got more important fish to fry. Like finding out where my sweat pants disappeared to.
Princess's friend gave us some dog supplies the other day since they got rid of all their dogs. One of the things she gave us was one of those food and water bowl stands for large dogs so they don't have to bend down to eat and drink. Cool! Only thing is it's HUGE, and my kitchen is small.
I put a coffee can next to it so you can see how big this thing is.
There isn't a place for it, yet. In order to get this thing it's own home will result in clearing off the only little counter space I have and putting DH's coffee maker on it, and moving the shelf unit that it currently sits on. I have to clean out my pantry to make room for the shelf thingy in there, and then there will be a spot for it. I debated on whether to use the thing, but BG seems to like it. This is going to be a couple hours long project. I really don't feel like doing this, but I'm tired of tripping over it.
On another note, I really hate vehicles. After spending well over a thousand dollars on my stupid truck, I now have a new problem. There is something wrong with the valve stem on one of my back tires. Which I found out when I went to put air in it last night. Now I had tried to put air in it the other week, and had trouble but I thought it was due to the air hose I used because I had trouble with all the tires. Guess not. So now my tire is at like 25 pounds and I have no way to get air in the stupid thing. I don't want to spend a lot of money on it since I will be getting new tires here shortly. I just wanted to put it off a bit longer than what it seems to turning out to be. Damn truck. Guess I'll have to go out and put the spare on. Don't wanna...it's cold out! Any volunteers? Please? I'm begging now.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Meet the Princess: AKA Autumn
Princess, AKA Autumn came into this world almost 17 years ago. There was one thing special about her. Her hands and feet were super puffy. Five doctors later, I finally found out the cause of the puffiness. She had Turner's Syndrome which only affects girls. I'm sorry repeat this please doc? After I did some studying I found out that there is a very high rate of the fetus aborting herself in the first trimester, so any TS girl born is indeed a miracle and God decided I should have such a miracle. This was quite the challenge for a 22 year old single mother, but we worked through the rough times just fine.
Now when Autumn was younger, and an only child she was always bugging me for a baby brother or sister. She got her wish times two. Jokester came when she was ten, and Superman when she was twelve. She now regrets her wish, because her little brothers driver her crazy. Hmm welcome to my world Princess. Don't get me wrong, she loves the dickens out of them and would do anything for them, she just wishes they would leave her alone. You see when the boys aren't tormenting each other, they are tormenting her, but instead of one on one it's two against one. Poor thing.
Autumn helping Joe
Autumn is my helper, and the one who keeps me somewhat sane around here. The things I can't (or don't want) to do she does. On top of that this kid gets straight A's. Without even trying! Wish I could have done that when I was in school, but alas it was not to be. This girl is always sunny and happy, never lets anything get her down for long. And let me tell you, she cracks me up. She is so gullible, you just cant help but mess with her. I'm sure my payback will come someday, but in the mean time...I will enjoy myself immensely.
trying not to crack up for school pictures
I'm pretty bummed because she will only be here for one more year, and then she graduates and will step into the real world where I can't protect her any more. Then there's the other reason...I will be left in a house full of boys, but mostly I will miss my baby girl. I have secretly decided not to teach her how to cook so she has to come home sometime for real food, that way I still get to see her. See I'm smart sometimes. I sure hope the man she finds someday will know how to cook, but then again they can both come home for food.
Princess and myself
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