Yet another customer service debacle

But lo and behold, it’s NOT MINE!

I was over on the Consumerist, and saw an article on this guy who had United Airlines baggage handlers break his guitar…by throwing it. Now, I’ve had stuff stolen out of my luggage and my luggage mangled by said handlers at O’Hare, so I’m not too shocked by this. Hell, my luggage went to Philadelphia once when I came back east from living in SoCal.

So, since guy is a musician, he’s written 3 songs and is producing 3 videos about hsi ordeal with United. Hrm. Wonder if these videos will force United into submission….

But, here, for your pleasure is my attempt to help him stick it to United.

this is….United Breaks Guitars.

Wonder if this being on the Consumerist and getting tons of hits on Youtube will shame United into paying for this guy’s guitar that they mangled!

Oh, and I adore the sombrero wearing backup singers!

 

Happy 4th of July!

Have a great fun, safe 4th..and Happy Birthday to my darling sister!

I figured some muppets were in order today…so here they are!

 

My free range kid

I’ve always been that kind of person who is on the go. Constantly. Isaac seems to have the same trait…but I’m trying to kick that in the tush now. After the farmer’s market fiasco, I was so upset by the fact that my child had to be at what we call in the sped department-closely supervised-be in arm’s reach at all times. Why can’t my 5 year old be in my eyesight? Why do I have to be that close so as to smother him? What’s the deal?

 

That’s when I found Free range kids. Holy cow. What a breath of fresh air! This site (and coresponding book) teaches the nervous parent that allowing a child some freedom-the time to be bored, the independence to do things on their own, based on their age and skill set-is not a bad thing. This mom let her child (then 9) ride teh NYC subway alone, wtih a map and a cell phone because he wanted to and she knew it was ok. Fine! Cool!

But this backfired on her as I saw my playground experience backfired on me. She became the subject of media scrutiny-the worst parent in America? Not in my book!

It has taken me a while to realize that Isaac does need some downtime-there’s no reason to schedule life and things. When you are a first time parent, you want all of the advantages, to the detriment of the kiddle. I’m working on being a free-range parent-I did it as a kid. I was a free range kid. We were out all of the time, rode our bikes everywhere, on our own. We came out just fine. Totally fine.

People need to remember this and use common sense-not be the most hypervigilant society. Kids need space, time and some lack of parental involvement-not to the point where they’re unsafe, but so that they can explore, create and be them.

I guess that’s what I’m working on now. Giving Isaac the space to know downtime is OK-that it’s OK to play in your room and be weird. To create, to mold and to be you.

Free ranging isn’t for everyone-but it works for me.

 

Doctors and patients and medical stuff, oh my!

Does everyone remember a year and a half ago when I had the whole medical device fiasco? Well, the short version of the past year and a half is that this sucker is now malfunctioning. So, it has to come out. With this being me and my rotten luck (I swear-Eeyore mode is in full force!) I’ve got to go into the OR and have them pull it out. I was NOT going to let the doc go in and get it blindly. Not a chance.

So, they scheduled a surgery time for me. I got the phone call for the pre-op appointment and after scheduling it around some other things, I finally made it there on Friday. As per the way my life runs, nothing can be normal or smooth…

So, in walks this couple. They’re loud and the male of the two is kvetching about how he’s going to have to wait, and that there are all of these appointments ahead of him.

The female of the two is trying to calm the guy down. At this point, I figured they were father and daughter or uncle and niece. She begs him to eat the other half of his sandwich. Did I mention it’s 9:25 am?

So, he finally agrees and she hands him a half of a BLT with cheese and mayo. He sits there, eating it, slobbering all over the place. There was mayo everywhere! Then, he started loudly complaining how he waited 2 1/2 hours the day before and never got seen. Then he asked about vending machines in the building we were all in. Unfortunately, there’s really none of those, and we all told him so. Girlie offered him water, and he kvetched about the temperature of said water.

So, I get called back to do all sorts of things, like insurance verification and all of that, and when I came out, the entire room of people had moved away from this couple. Hrm…so, I settled with the rest of the waiting room.
One by one we all get called back for bloodwork and EKG stuff. In between each one, we were put into a seperate waiting room. In that secondary waiting room, I ran into two of the people from the waiting room who had moved away from the couple. This is what they told me…

“you missed it.”

I asked what, and the one proceeded to tell me that after I was called back, the couple started to make out. He started SLURPING ON HER EAR!!! Oh, for yuck, yuck yuck!

I couldn’t believe it. So, after I left that office, I figured I’d never hear or see that couple again. Until this morning. I arrived for my procedure on time (that’s a whole other ball of wax..but I’m not going there.) and as I’m getting settled into preop, I hear a voice. One I recognize…

OH MY FREAKIN HECK! It’s that couple! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Thank goodness I was settled into my bed and was not visible to them. I was beyond OMG-ing. I quickly signaled to Doug that this was the BLT, ear slurping couple and he craned his neck to look. Hell, I would ahve too if I hadn’t seen this group. Haven’t seen them since. Thank goodness.

So, as I sat in my room, it became people watching central. The woman in the pre-op bed next to me was quite the entertainment factor. She spent the entire time she and her daughter were there talking about FOOD. OH, my god. Food. I then immersed myself in the laptop. Tossed on a DVD-and then got bored of that and went on the wifi.

During this time, they tried to insert an IV. I promise, there will be  no pictures of the aftermath of the IV debacle. The one nurse tries, misses. Second nurse tries, misses. They declare me a hard stick-Duh. They call the IV team who tried two more times and gave up. THEN, the anestesiologist came in and I told her she had one hit to get it, and if she didn’t I didn’t know what I was going to do.  She made 2 hits, so we’re up to 6 sticks, but  I had an IV, and I also had all sorts of bruises all over my hands and arms.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on the wifi, playing with the Pandora internet radio and basically wondering when the heck I’d be going down for the whole surgery thing.

Surgery was scheduled for 2:10, so about 2:45, I finally asked when I was going to be taken down…and they found out for me that it was going to be another 45 minutes to an hour before I got down there. Ick. Fine, blah. yuck. So, 3:30, I finally got down to the area before the operating room, and was there for about 30 minutes before everyone came and talked to me about it all. I met in quick succession, the resident, anestesiologist and an OR nurse. Oh, brother. How to really confuse me about who was going to be in there! eekers!

The anestesiologist dropped something down my IV, and wow! That sucker really knocked me on my ass. I remember being wheeled down to the OR, saying hi to Dr. C, and shifting to the surgical table. Then, it’s all black. Nothing. Nothing at all.

I woke up to the PACU (post anestesia care unit) nurse telling me to take deep breaths.  The first question out of my mouth was-Where am I?

Second question-Can you make the room stop spinning?

Did I mention that I don’t get along well with pretty much all types of sedation? I’ve got a really hard time waking up and I end up crying and all sorts of icky things. I let them know this, so they were ready with pain meds and phenegrin for the nausea that I always have.

But I finally got home late last night. Out of it as all get out, but home. So, I’m without said medical device and still kinda feeling gross. Not wanting to eat, and every once in a while, if I push myself a bit further than I should (that’s normal for me-I want to be back to myself NOW.) I feel woozy…

 

but at least I’m done and don’t have to worry about having something in me that’s not working like it should.

 

Holy cow-the Supreme Court got it right!

I was parusing through the local paper this morning online and came across an article about how the supreme court ruled in favor of a set of parents who wanted reimbursement for a private education for their special education son.

I’m elated.

First off, the supreme court got it right-this is not for parents who deem the program that their child is pegged for to be inapropriate. For that, you still need to take the course of action described in the parent rights literature. This is for parents who are completely ignored by the school district, have not received a free, appropriate education for their child and have had to take their child elsewhere.

This is for the parents who have had the crap school psychs, teachers who ignore them and a system that is so broken that they had to pull their child to fix it.

In this specific case, the student was tested and the conclusion was that the child did not have a disability. Upon using their second opinion clause from the parent rights, the testing that the school had done was proven wrong, and the student was pulled to a private school for their education.

So, the parents sued for the cost of their child’s education, and who can blame them?

When a school district fails so miserably, they should reimburse the parents for the cost of educating their child. Private schools and therapies are NOT cheap, and can drain a parent’s income faster than anything out there.

Will the majority of parents need to use this recourse? I highly doubt it. This is an extreme step, albeit a needed one to keep the school districts in check and doing their job. I will say it’s nice to see that for once, the courts are considering the student and not the bottom line.

 

Can I please parent my OWN child?

Today, I took Isaac to a local farmer’s market-one that has a playground right next to it. As I was finishing my last transaction, knowing I’d be over in 3o seconds, I allowed him to zip over to the playground, where I could see him the ENTIRE time. He was in my line of sight and I was on my way over.

As Isaac is prone to do, he fell over another child-he refused to wear his AFOs this morning. I was not going to fight with him on that.

I had no less than 4 parents asking me if this was my child, and basically condemning me that I wasn’t within arm’s reach. For cripe’s sake-I saw the whole thing, he was fine, I was paying for some eggs-it was all of 30 seconds. I had to explain myself to these parents and I ended up getting a lecture on how I should NEVER leave my child alone.

Umm, really? I know when I was 5, I spent more time running from my parents down at the local park. As long as I was in eyesight, I was fine. My parents never got lectures from other parents who thought they knew better and how I functioned. I’m sick of the hyper vigilant society that we live in thinking that we all know best how to parent another person’s child.

When will others learn that only the parent knows what is right for their child? Telling someone how to parent is like telling the weather to change on a dime. It just doesn’t work.

 

Misguided Kindergarten Packets

I figured we were all set and kindergarten would be as smooth as things can get around here. No such luck.

Yesterday with the IEP revision documents, we got the kindergarten packet with teacher assignments as well as the schedule for kindergarten orientation.

Included in this packet, was a letter from Plastic Principal saying that it was so wonderful to meet all the kids and parents at screening. It also  said that the screening results showed that my child was within normal limits for scores, fine and gross motor as well as vision and hearing.

Umm…My child has an IEP-obviously his scores are NOT in normal limits, or he wouldn’t have a full out IEP with RESOURCE ROOM! Good lord.

It would be nice if the packets that were sent to teh parents were checked for accuracy. The big problem is with that letter. I wonder if students in the k-2 room (the kindergarteners) recieved that one too. .

The sad thing is that nothing shocks me with this school anymore. After what I’ve been put through in the kindergarten placement, the crap goals on the IEP, and the changing dismissal times for Isaac-this just seems par for the course. I don’t even know why it SHOULD be par for the course, but it is.

oy. Again, Kindergarten entrance s hould NOT be this hard.

 

Happy Father’s Day!

Dear Dadoo:

You are not the recipient of the majority of blog posts here that revolve around my family, but you are quite the instigator of a lot of the fun that happens. So, here is my official “dad” post…just for you.

And since it is widely known that I can’t do anything straight, and if I did, you’d think someone had died…

From the Home Office in SUNNY Seattle, Washington…

here are…

The top 10 reasons my Dad is the coolest!

10. He lets me take pictures like this:

9. Has mastered the art of rolling his eyes at me and telling me I’m insane.  That’s a good thing to master-I’m serious!

8. Daddy-Daughter Date night!

7. Knows that when a kid learns a foreign language, they only want to know the “good stuff” first, not basic vocab!

6. Knows everything about cooking-and is one heck of a chef!

5. Map coloring is now a sporting event, once every 4 years-kinda like the Olympics. Cackling is NOT optional. Neither are some good crayons.

4. Is the awesomest grandparent-breaks all the rules we used to have-and feeds Isaac eclairs in the living room.

3. He allows Yoda ornaments to be hung on his tree…after loudly stating that they were not allowed, ever.

2. Late night Lenten Domino’s Pizza!

1. He’s MY Dad! There should be no other explanation other than that needed!

so, Happy Father’s day to my darling Daddoo!

Love you!

 

Kindergarten warning shot

I got Isaac’s IEP in the mail yesterday, and I was quite impressed by this, as I wasn’t expecting it until later in the summer. It had his summer pre-k IEP and his new Kindergarten one. I was parusing through the kindergarten one and came to the goals. Umm…these are not the goals that his current school sent. These are goals I hadn’t seen until I was peeking at the IEP. Some of these goals were the most garbage things I’d ever seen. Serious garbage. They didn’t even send these goals to me prior to the meeting to approve them or present them at the meeting, or I would have asked them to be tweaked.

So, I called the CPSE/CSE director and asked her a few questions (because there were some things I didn’t see on the IEP that I know we had said at the meeting-I just overlooked them…) and asked her where to go with the mediocre goals. she told me to call the teacher at the elementary school.

So, now, this is the time to fire the first warning shot that I am not going to accept mediocre IEP goals and all of that. They are going to learn today that Special Education is my training and that they better do it right or it will be kicked back to edit.
The sad thing? The director of Isaac’s current school basically all but spelled this out at the transition meeting. Guess they didn’t listen, huh?

 

As if things couldn’t get much more complicated…

As it is, it is the end of the year, and I’m all sorts of going insane. Between IEP hell and the insane amount of paperwork due by June 24, I’m already going slightly insane.

So, let’s just add some more insanity to the fire here, and toss me on crutches! Yep! That would be me, gimping around again. I took a spill at a local grocery store on Friday. Their floor was slick, unsigned and basically a hazard. One of their employees even fell as well, going in the opposite direction as I was-and then putting up a caution cone. Yeah, a bit late for me.

So, here I am, with a sprained ankle and knee to boot, and having to deal with this at the worst time of the teaching year. Plus, I can’t even be a game geek until I get this all healed up, as there’s no option for sitting at all.

At least today I can wear normal shoes…I was living in my Adidas slides all weekend, because my foot didn’t fit into any of my shoes…today, I’m air-casted and ace wrapped, so I can actually wear my comfy shoes to work! WOOHOO!

But really, crutches and gimping around is the pits.