Things you don’t see every day…

We got to see a movie stunt being done!!
It’s for a movie called The Other Guys that’s been filming in the area for the past few weeks. They’ve decided to use our area as a double for New York City. The only thing that’s the same is the plates on the car…

But here’s the stunt being set up. I wonder if you can guess where that car will land…because I’m not going to show you…

 

The great backpack fiasco of 2009, the reprise!

Let me start this tale by saying that I hadn’t planned on this happening. Seriously. I hadn’t. But, Isaac demanded that I send applesauce in with him, in his Star Wars thermos, so I did. BUT, he didn’t close it all the way, and whammo. Applesauce all over the pack.

We did what any parent worth their salt would do. Empty the pack and toss it in the washing machine with the next load of wash, which happened to be towels. We’ve done this with all of our packs and bags, both REI, EMS and LL Bean. We have never, ever, ever had a pack come out of the wash looking like this:

Needless to say, I was NOT impressed with the LL Bean backpack that we had fought so hard to get. Knowing full well LL Bean has a satisfaction guarantee, and that we needed a backpack for the morning, I called the local store.

I had a nice chat with a kindly gentleman, who totally understood my predicament and really wanted to help me out…but they don’t carry the LL Bean Original Bookpack in the store. They only have them online.

Yes, I knew that.

So, I told him that I didn’t care if we got a deluxe bookpack or whatever, as long as we had SOMETHING that met the following criteria:
1) was red.
2) was large enough to hold snowpants, a lunch box and other assorted things in the winter.
3) was small enough for a kindergartener’s back.
4) Would last for a few years.

He told me he had two things in stock-
1) the deluxe bookpack.
2) the critter backpack, which has a shark on it.

Now, the only problem is that these two backpacks cost a bit more than the one I purchased. I was NOT willing to pay for the upgrade to the backpack. I wanted a straight out even exchange if I was going to be made to get a more expensive pack.

I explained this to the kindly gentleman on the phone who explained that he couldn’t do this without a manager’s approval.

I understand that. It’s at least at $10.00 difference!

Now, it’s here that some people would say that I’m being unreasonable. I don’t think I am after what we went through to GET the pack in the first place, and the fact that we had purchased it in July, never even took it out of the package until September and my child had only used it to and from school for not even 3 weeks. Also, to refresh memories, I was given lectures on how I was going to ruin my child’s bones by purchasing the pack that I did, even though I explained I knew how to load a backpack and would be sure to watch out for overloading…and how can you overload a kindergarten backpack? I even did my homework on ratings, age appropriateness and the like. So, I don’t feel I’m being unreasonable.

Back to the tale…

Kindly gentleman puts me on hold and comes back and lets me know that the manager had approved the even swap, due to our immediate need and extenuating circumstances. I tell the nice guy that I’ll be in to get the pack in about 30-45 minutes.

I hop in the car and head down to the mall and the LL Bean store. I walk in and take the pack to the register. Explain the whole story, tell them that there’s a critter pack waiting for me and that I just need to do the whole exchange.

Then, I see her. One of the lecture givers…and she said “Oh, is that the jr. backpack?”
I told her it wasn’t and got the eye roll…then, she accused me of putting the pack in the DRYER.

Umm..the pack was still wet from the washer! How could it have even come CLOSE to going through the dryer?

As I’m being rung out, the clerk notices that the critter pack was more expensive than the backpack I was returning. I explain what I was told on the p hone, and they bring back Ms. Lecture. She ok’s the even exchange and I go on my way…to deliver this:

To a waiting 5 year old, who was beyond happy that his new backpack was:
1) red
2) had a shark on it.

Now, can we please just get through the year without another fiasco that involves a backpack or a part of Isaac’s room?

 

How to…

Prevent Swine Flu.

courtesy of my Mom…

 

Special Needs and Kindergarten, the parent’s perspective

As anyone who has read this blog knows, the transition from the school Isaac was at to this one has been nothing short of an arduous journey. When you are the parent of a not-so-obvious special needs kid (you know, one that looks the same as everyone else but is a bit left of center.. and isn’t obviously autistic), it’s a given that at some point, you’ll just want to throw your hands up and scream as you wonder if anyone actually gets it. Does anyone read the reports? Does anyone really pay attention to what your child actually needs versus what’s worked with 95% of the other children they see on a daily basis? Will the staff and teachers at the school STOP patronizing you and actually treat you as part of the team?

It becomes this brutal dance that no one really wants to dance. In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve got that awful pair of shoes that looks like an absolute knock out, but hurts your feet to the point of cutting off your circulation. It’s just like the time I drove to an interview that was a serious hike away and the shoes just looked AWESOME with the outfit, but I drove in my Hello Kitty slippers because I couldn’t stand the way they felt on my feet.

Right now, even on day 4 of kindergarten, I don’t know if I made the right choice sending Isaac to a public school. There are times I think it’s wonderful-like the way he gets on the bus and rides like a champ- and times I think this is just the worst thing ever created-like when the school calls and freaks me out by NOT leaving a message because it’s just not that big of a deal.

There are times I wonder if they’ve ever picked up Isaac’s IEP report and really gone through it or just wanded  bar codes for goals based on some stupid basic screening that he didn’t feel like doing at the time.

But then again, none of the private schools I visited felt just right either. One felt too one sided-one behavioral approach fits all-another was just all sorts of wrong. It was so wrong it made Isaac shut down for 2 days. He spent 100% of his OT session in a barrel. He was that upset.

I knew when I selected his preschool that it was just right. It was the perfect fit for him. Now, I’m not so sure if I’ll ever find that perfect fit for him again.  Where do you put a smart, funny, goofball of a kid who needs sensory supports to function through his day, but can’t stand to be away from his friends?

There are so many questions and not enough answers.

I’ve got lots of people telling me to wait it out and things will get easier-this pair of shoes I’ve got on right now will do some stretching and break in. I hate to say it, but I don’t know if that’s what will happen or not. I’ve got the teacher telling me that he’ll settle in, but it will take time. I’ve got my child pulling shenanagins on the staff-when do I tell them that this is garbage and when do I let them figure it out on their own-if they will figure it out without me having to tell them. Then I’ve got me and my knowledge of what is correct procedure and compliance and what is not.

Welcome to Holland. Seriously. Welcome to Holland.  I’ve found some of the nice things about the place, but the wooden shoes suck.

 

How I stopped complaining and learned to sort of like suburbia.

The first soccer game of the rec season was today, and it was quite the sight. Isaac belongs to team Kiwi…Yeah…BRIGHT green. Seriously, bright green.

See?

We had the AFO’s that Rob had so awesomely rigged to hold the shin guards…

And yet I was totally afraid.

Of what?

Well, remember last time we tried to play soccer? Isaac ended up getting beaned in the face intentionally by another kid. He was tripped, made fun of and asked to do things that with AFOs, are impossible. It went so poorly, I didn’t know what to think. Those parents were out for blood, guts and total other team annihilation. NOT my idea of how beginning sports should be!

Plus, I remember when I played sports, it was the parents again who were horrid.

So, it was with huge trepidation that I stepped on to the soccer field in the E. Nowhere suburbia that I live in.

Turns out, my worries were for nothing.

The coach explained to the kids on team Kiwi that their objective was to play a bit and have fun, take turns and possibly get the ball into the net. Kindergarten-3rd grade teams don’t keep score or win-loss records. It’s all about coming out and having a good time in the fall air.

Coach Greg swapped the players out as much as he could, so everyone could play in their team dresses shirts.

Note-whoever ordered the shirts for the kindergarten division-YOUTH LARGE  (size 12-14) is a dress on 100% of kindergarteners!  Just sayin.

Isaac got to run and chase the ball

Play goalie

Hear the other parents cheer for him, tell him he did an awesome job, even though he missed the ball, and learn the basics of good sportsmanship.

Coach Greg got them all lined up at the end of the game (by this time it was drizzling rain. My camera went back to the car..) for the post game handshake.

He had them play follow the leader with their right hand out (and they had to switch to their other right!) and high five and tell the other team good game.

Ok, so suburban fall soccer at least for now isn’t so bad. I at least got to stop complaining and sort of like the E. Nowhere I live in. It’s got some decent things going for it!

 

Little Boy, Big School

Today was the first day of Kindergarten. The bus comes mighty early, so Isaac was ready, excited and all raring to go, way before I was.
He insisted on wearing his Darth Vader shirt-that’s my little Star Wars boy-and his new hoodie, and brought the red backpack that set off the first fiasco of the school year.

Then, we heard it-the distinct rumble of the school bus

and the little boy, who is off to the big school to begin all sorts of new adventures cheered!

Got on the bus like a pro, sat right behind the driver and went off.

No, I didn’t cry. He was too happy to go off to Kindergarten-snack, folder and red backpack in tow, to meet new friends, have new adventures and finally share what a neato kid he is with more people than just his little world.

So, my little boy is now a kindergarten kid in a big school-and he likes it.

 

Did you read the letter that got sent home?

Yesterday was Kindergarten orientation. I’m reserving all comments, because right now, they’re totally clouded by the fact that I’m not sure what to make of the school, ect. Lots of things to really take into account, and I’ll have a better idea of what I’m handling and dealing in by the end of next week. But, I do have to say that the classroom teacher emails back FAST! That’s one point in their favor there…but I digress.

When we got the notice for Kindy orientation, there was a whole section about how not to bring siblings, because this was a time for parents and their kindergarteners to really get to know the room, meet a few people, ect. For cripe’s sake, this was done in groups of 5-6 students at a time. So, this truly was small group stuff.

Well, in wanders this one mom and her Kindy kid…and TODDLER SIBLING IN TOW! Oh, my. Lovely. Mom lets little one run roughshot and allows her to get into the dramatic play area, ect. My highly distractable child was quite the picture trying to get over there when there were things to be done. ARGH. But, he did it, and did it semi OK.

I know all about no babysitters. I know. But if there is a specific instruction NOT to bring siblings, ect, it’s there for a reason. For cripe’s sake, one family sent GRANDMA with the kiddle because she couldn’t make it. Argh.

I just wonder if some parents don’t even read what gets sent home.

 

The back to school roller coaster

There’s a lot going on around here. With school starting and the like, it’s been one heck of a ride the past few weeks.

When you have a special needs child that goes to kindergarten or even changes schools, it just becomes that extra bit of twitch factor that other parents don’t have. Add that to everything else, and you get a back to school roller coaster that just doesn’t slow down.

Personally, I’d like this coaster to pull into the station, but I know when it does, I’ll complain that life is boring again (especially here in E. Nowhere) and I’ll wish to be back on.

So, here’s the latest roller coaster set of moments.

Now that Broken Bed fiasco 2009 has ended with a successfully fixed bed, we can all laugh at the latest piece of delusion that came through my mailbox-
a card thanking us for our purchase.
No, not kidding.
a week of screaming, sobbing and being totally glad that the boys weren’t here so that the bed could get fixed in peace, and we get a postcard for a year old bed? What?
Whatever.
Will I patronize this store again? Most likely, at the location that gave us the most help. I, however, will not deal with the person who shares my name and her customer disservice.

Since coming back from the outlaws in Arizona, my darling shrimper has been nothing short of a pill. Massive pill. Rude, spoiled and entitled acting. That’s what happens when you hang with the outlaws too long. I spent the first week back retraining him that 1) being rude will get you nowhere but your room, with all priveleges revoked, like your television viewing, and 2) you may not have everything you see, control the agenda to your heart’s desire, or speak to me like I’m the hired help. Again, this will get you nowhere but your room, with no television.

And no, a 45 minute meltdown will STILL get you nowhere.

Charming, isn’t it?

Then, Shrimper thought it would be a good idea to explore the cabinets on the top of his wall. His room has built in cabinets, and these cabinets are almost at ceiling level. I get a call at work on my cell phone, and hear that he’s fallen off of the cabinets and hit his face. Yes, huge bruise and scrape on cheek and neck. Great way to show up to the first week of Kindergarten-bruises and scrapes. Joy.

And then, we had the biggest ride of all. The medication ride. Isaac’s ADHD meds are insanely expensive. Hardcore expensive. That’s even WITH insurance. So, we found a few coupons to cover at least one of the copays. That’s when the pharmaceutical companies began their rain on my labor day weekend. Our coupon was declined at the pharmacy, because we had used one, and it was one per person, per lifetime.

what? Really?

So, we come back, call the doctor and explain the situation. She comes back with a card that gives us 50% off of copays for 10 months.

Ok. we can get behind that.

so, I drive all the way down to the doc’s office, and then all the way back home so we can activate the card and get the meds, as we’re down to our last 2 pills and two pills and a bunch of days doesn’t add up around here, especially with kindergarten starting.

Let it be known that I disclosed what happened at the pharmacy to the doc’s office. They assured me that this would be just fine and work well.

Yeah, it didn’t work. So, I spent a better portion of two hours dealing with Shire pharmaceuticals and their idiot staff. Here’s how it all broke down…

First step-talk to customer service and explain the situation. Get an extremely rude rep, who makes sure that she lets me know that this is totally my fault, and that the doctor could NOT have told me that this card would work.
Finally, I get her to give me the number to patient assistance, and I thank her for her unhelpfulness.

Second step-Call the number that witch 1 gave me. Get understanding person who unfortunately confirms rude witch’s stuff, but hears me out and issues us a “second use” card for the price of the perscription. She informed us that the card wouldn’t get here until Friday. I also explain to her that the cost is prohibitive to us, even though we have insurance. She puts me through to patient assistance, where….

I get the most sarcastic, obnoxious rep ever. I explain the situation, explain the whole thing and he starts to get sarcastic with me. He tells me I have to fill out an application, and me, knowing that we’re almost down to our last pill for the shrimp, says “I don’t want to be filling out 80 yards of paperwork just to be denied.”

Jerk says: “well, if you mean one page equals 80 yards, than yeah, you’ll be filling out 80 yards of paperwork.” and then he laughed.

I broke into tears and told him he wasn’t funny.

THEN he had the nerve to tell me that this process could take at least 2 months, because since we had insurance, we’d be automatically denied, and we’d have to appeal.

Really? Automatic denial? What the…

So, since we can’t wait 30 days, I ask if he is the final word, because he’s refusing to do anything. He tells me that even his supervisor won’t do anything for me.

This is where I finally lost it. I told him the following:
“Too bad. Stuff gets overridden every day. You don’t say another word to me and I want your supervisor now.”

I get the supervisor and she almost gets her head taken off with the following statement:

“well, if you had called yesterday, you wouldn’t be in this situation! This is almost 7 pm on a holiday weekend…”

Everyone knows how well that line goes over with me.

Let’s review here…this medication is a SCHEDULE 2 CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE. This means you MAY NOT get it any sort of early. So, like the bed fiasco, how were we supposed to know that this was going to happen?

I very politely took her head off reminding her of this fact. I told her that because of the nature of the drug and their lack of any sort of urgency in this situation, that my child is being made to suffer. She then put me on hold.

She came back and they’re supposedly fed exing the card to me by tomorrow (tuesday). Should be interesting.

Meanwhile, we had our “booster pills” here, and we’ve been giving them to him, and we’ve kind of noticed something…

Shrimper’s disposition has changed drastically. We’d been dealing with the “whine monster” and wondering if it was just stress from changing schools, ect, or if it was the meds. With a 5 year old, it’s hard to tell.

So, Shire may have f’d up in our favor…letting us know that we had a side effect that we just chalked up to something else.

I’ll be on the phone with the neurologist’s office on Tuesday.

Then, the last piece is that of meet the teachers/aides/therapists. I’ve been trying to get answers out of the school all summer as to meeting Isaac’s aide and having him meet the teachers, ect. AND the biggest question-who is doing resource room for him. This is just what happens with a special needs kid. I’m still at the top of the hill on this wild ride with this one, so hopefully, these are only mini hills that will end on Tuesday morning.

 

Umm, is it really September?

Seriously, I don’t want to be in this month. I’ve got a kindergartener (EEEEEEKKKK!) and all sorts of things to get done.

Blah.

But the upswing of all of this is that I’m going to (for the second year in a row..) be late for the faculty meeting.

Can we say trend anyone?

 

why I don’t have an xbox

Thursday night, before I went to pick up the boys from their Arizona trip, I went over to  Blogless Renee’s house to geek out and play Rock Band. No, I don’t have it for my Wii, but she’s got it for the xbox 360.  And she’s got drums. Seriously. Drums. The last time I was over there, I made my own character-seriously red hair and all, and slammed out to Green Day and all sorts of other things.

(Interjection-21st Century Breakdown is the BEST Green Day album since Dookie. And yes, I have a special fondness for Dookie…but seriously. The new album rocks-and you can play it on Rock Band-21 Guns is a killer drum track…interjection over.)

We fire up the xbox and get the game in and Renee’s all loaded up, and I’m loading in…and the game freezes.

Oh….crap….Oh…crapcrapcrapcrap!

Renee and I reboot the system and see                    it.

the worst thing that you can see on an xbox-

The Red Ring of Death.

We both gasped in horror. serious horror.

I made a panicked phone call to the game store to confirm that there was nothing we could do-because this is her BOYFRIEND’S console. NOT hers, and we were both going to DIE.

So, Renee’s boyfriend walks in and looks at us…as we’re probably looking beyond guilty. Renee looks up and says: “I just tried to reboot it…”

Boyfriend notices the red ring of death and goes off the deep end.

I grab the computer and start peeking for fixes. I also jump on twitter…

Well, crap! @neanea18 and I just tried to play Rock Band on the x box and got the stupid ass red ring of death. *!@*#$%#@! Dumb Microsoft!7:58 PM Aug 27th from web

Yeah, seriously. We were both NOT happy about this. Definately not happy.

So we gave up on the xbox, with boyfriend saying “Man, crappy night all around. Both of my teams are losing, and I’ve lost my lover-Not you, Renee, my xbox!”

And with that we moved over to the wii…and this is what happened…

Umm. I think we now need a battery run. Stupid ass batteries. Stupid ass xbox. Stupid ass microsoft.8:00 PM Aug 27th from web

And then this:

ok. the wiimote lives. No, it’s not.8:01 PM Aug 27th from web

and the final insult…

Fine. we give up. We’re going for ice cream and batteries. Video games NOT in the cards tonight!!8:02 PM Aug 27th from web

All of this drama equals why I don’t have an xbox, and I use a Mac. Seriously. No one needs this kind of a headache. Seriously. We ended up at Stewart’s and then at CVS to get batteries for the wii. It was all we could do. Then, we played wii Tennis. So there.

Stupid Microsoft. Stupid xbox.