Late Night Video

I love Dire Straits. This might be my favorite song... or one of them, anyway. Here's a video from, it says, 1985 - a mere thirty-three years ago.

I wish the style of the video was a little less dated. And I could do with a little less video of the audience and a little more video of Mark Knophler, but hey, it's the song that matters. That, and the guitar solo at the end...

On the Road (Barely)

Looking over my recent posts, I see that it's been just over three weeks since I've said anything about my morning commute - a new record! Let me rectify this by briefly updating you this morning's commute. Don't worry, this one doesn't involve traffic.

I just wanted to mention that, the day before yesterday, the temperature around here was in the low seventy's. Apparently this is a new record for this time of year. By the end of the day, pretty much every trace of snow was gone off of my front "lawn."

This, however, is what my commute looked like this morning...

Pretty, right? Yes, it is... unless you're trying to keep your car from careening off of the road, due to the black ice.

To me, this is the kind of thing that looks beautiful, almost magical, somewhere around December twenty-third. By somewhere around December twenty-seventh, my attitude towards the once pleasing aesthetics of newly fallen snow begins to nosedive.

If it snows at the end of  December, I find have a reluctant acceptance that, yes, it's snowing again. What do I expect? It is, after all, still winter. By the next storm or two, my attitude slowly (and by "slowly," I mean "rapidly") devolves into greater and greater amounts disgust. And with each successive storm, I find myself heading deeper into the throes of the "Wintertime Blues" - the symptoms of which take me from the aforementioned disgust, to a semi-mild, but growing hostility, before finally reaching a more comfortable and consistent, borderline rage.

Generally speaking, this bad attitude lasts until somewhere around the following December twenty-third.

Anyway, back to the lovely photos...

The other thing you might have noticed in the lovely photos is that there are no other cars on the road. This isn't because the other cars have all slid off of the embankments. At least, I don't think so. I didn't really look. (It's hard enough to navigate the ice covered roads while trying to drive and snap pictures at the same time.)

No, I think the reason that traffic was light was because it's school vacation week in our Great State. However, once I cross over the state line, which I do every morning, it's a different story. There is no school vacation this week in the Not Quite as Great State.

This explains why, this morning, as I wound through the hills on my way to work, and after I crossed the Great/Not Quite as Great State Line, I found myself stuck in the middle of a forty-or-so car caravan, slowly winding through the tree lined, ice covered road, with not one, but two school buses up ahead.

But I won't go there. I promised that this post wouldn't be about traffic.

I'll save it for another time.

In the Kitchen

You're most likely wondering what Sam and I have been baking lately. If you guessed banana bread, you're wrong (though you would have been correct two weekends ago and two weekends before that, and if I'm not mistaken, two weekends before that, as well.)

No, instead, Sam and I decided to make pizza today - our usual three of them. Our first pizza, in case we're feeling in the mood to play it healthy, was a mushroom and onion pizza...

For our second two pizzas, we made pepperoni, sausage, and onion pizzas. You will note that even though we have included an abundance of meat-like products on these pizzas, we have also included onions (look close) - which, I am told, is a vegetable - thus making our meat pizzas even healthier!

More Changing the Subject

Here's another photo, from the same neglected Instagram account, taken while on the same Art Club field trip...

Today's Brief Updates

Back in this post, I mentioned that there was a possibility that Sam may have found a job. Unfortunately, when Sam and his job coach called back to find out the status of the position, they were told that the position had been filled.

On Monday, I spent the better part of the day, dealing with the situation regarding SSI (and I see that I still haven't deleted that post- another broken promise.) After repeatedly calling SSI and finally getting through to an actual human being, I found out what the next step is to reinstate Sam's claim -  or at least, possibly reinstate Sam's claim. I think this may have to wait until the IEP meeting.

I no sooner got done with the SSI phone call, when Sam came home from another session with his job coach. He told me that the woman who he spoke to about the position before had called back to see if he was still interested in it. His coach helped him return the call and set up a time to try out the position. Apparently, because of this, he got to ring the bell at the Career Center - twice.

In response to a follow up phone call on this, yesterday, he went with Helaina to pick up a packet of forms which he needs to fill out for this position (whatever it is.) Helaina and Sam filled out and returned the paperwork for his background check (so they can make sure that he's not a violent criminal.)  Last night, Sam and I spent an hour or so, working through the bulk of the other forms.

Later today, he'll be going over to the school with his job coach to spend a couple of hours, in what sounds like training for this (unnamed) position. Assuming this works out, he'll be going back again on Friday.

Until then, it's back to holding my breath.

 ***
Late update: Sam called me at work this morning to let me know that someone from the school called and had to cancel his tryout for today.  This resulted in the usual flurry of emails (on my part) to try and coordinate this blip. All is well (I think.) The tryout for Friday still stands.

Oh, and I received another seven page form to fill out today - relating to Sam, but unrelated to the prospective job. So, at least I have something else to occupy time.

Changing the Subject

Here's an old post from my often neglected Instagram account ...

Read it While It Lasts...

...before I delete this entirely.

I have another IEP meeting coming up for Sam in four weeks. I don't know if this will be his last one or whether the school will continue to give him services until he turns twenty-two - which would be in about a year from now. We'll see...

In the meantime, today I find out from the MRC  (the State agency which may - or may not - offer support services in him finding employment after he leaves school) that it's not enough that he's found to be "disabled" by SSI, he needs to be collecting money, as well. Are you kidding me? You're telling me this now?

Originally, I was told by the MRC that they have income guidelines when it comes to providing services, but if Sam qualified for SSI, he automatically qualified for services from the MRC.

Sam and I went through the lengthy SSI application process, starting over a year ago, which included receiving a followup multi-page questionnaire (due three days after we received it, which was mysteriously dated two weeks earlier) - plus having to give them a rundown on Sam's medical history, including medical reports and a list of all of the (many, many) physicians he's seen throughout the years, along with their contact information. 

When we received the finding (eight months ago,) I wrote to the MRC and told them specifically that Sam was found to be "disabled" by SSI, but he wasn't collecting money because his savings was $200 over their limit (which was fine by me) - and the MRC's response? "...Now Sam meets MRC income guidelines for our job contracts..." All of this is in addition to my stated concern right from the start (and over and over and over again) that my only reason in applying for SSI for Sam is not the money - it's so that Sam will have have support in finding a job and support in keeping a job.

Apparently It's not enough that we just want some support and services, we also need to be taking the money, as well.

As near as I can tell, it looks like we now have to reapply for SSI. Does this mean another three month process? Will this lead to having to have another neuropsycholocial evaluation done before we can even apply? Will he still be getting services from the school while all of this is happening? Who knows? ( I have a call into SSI - and expect to be calling them again and again.)

Time, I hope, will tell.

I know this is completely uninteresting to anyone else and I apologize. But, god, why does this have to be so difficult?

The Color Red

There was a girl in my seventh grade home room class, a girl I knew little about. I knew she had curly hair - that was plain to see, and I knew she sat at a desk near mine. But, other than that...

Our desks were on the other side of the classroom, across from the classroom door. My desk was in the second row over from the windows, while her desk sat between the windows and me, but her seat was one seat further forward.

Were it not for the fact that she walked past my view of the windows every morning, I’m not sure I would have ever noticed her at all. We never talked and I’m pretty sure that she never noticed me and at the time, I don’t remember ever thinking twice about it, or about her.

I don’t remember her ever talking to anyone else, either. She would just smile contently to herself as she entered the classroom and she would hug her books tightly to her chest as she made her way through the homeroom havoc, over to her desk, where she would sit down and arrange her books neatly in front of her.

While other kids were talking with each other or gazing out the windows, she would sit there facing the front of the classroom, her hands folded on top of her neatly arranged books, quietly smiling to herself the entire time. Always quiet, always smiling.

Looking back, I think she liked the color red. I remember noticing that she would often wear the same red dress. And later, I remembered that sometimes she would wear a red sweater - and if she didn’t wear a red sweater, she would wear a white sweater, but with a red blouse underneath. 

One morning during that seventh grade winter, after the homeroom teacher had finally managed to quite the classroom, the morning announcements came over the speaker, just as they did every morning. But on this particular morning, it was announced that this little girl had died.

As the announcement continued, some kids whispered that "she was always sickly” and indeed, I remember thinking that, now that they mentioned it, I guess she was absent quite a bit. Someone else mentioned that one of her legs was shorter than the other and I remember wondering what that meant and if it were true, why did I never notice a limp?

I remember being shocked by the news of her passing- even though I didn’t really know her.

After the announcement, as the other kids resumed their conversations, I sat and looked over at the starkness of her empty desk. There was no smiling girl, no folded hands, no neatly stacked books. Suddenly, it was just the emptiness of her desk, framed by the darkness of the winter morning behind it.

Over the next several weeks I would look over at her empty desk with a feeling of loss and sadness. Over time though, I looked over at her desk less and less. Life moved forward and pulled me along with it, and this loss and those feelings, though not forgotten, drifted further and further away into the haze of time.

For most of my life, I never gave much thought about that time or much thought about the little girl. But eventually, with age and the accumulation of my own experiences, I’ve occasionally found myself thinking of her and about that winter morning.

Each time I think back, I've thought not only of the little girl, but increasingly, of her parents, as well - people whom I've never met.

I think about how hard it must have been for them to lose someone so young, someone they must have loved so much. I think about how difficult it must have been to get through the days, or worse, to get through the nights. I think about how difficult it must have been, year after year, to get through birthdays and holidays and other special occasions - times which were once joyous, but instead became moments which accentuated their loss.

And I think about how strange it is for me to be thinking about any of this at all - let alone to be thinking about it with such feelings of loss and empathy - not only for the little girl, who I never really knew, but also for her parents - people whom I never knew at all.

But in ways that I can’t articulate, I wonder if this is a part of how we’re all connected, if this is one way in which we live on - to be remembered and touched by the ripples of that memory, in this case some fifty years on - ripples set in motion by a little girl - a little girl whose name I never knew, a little girl who always smiled, a little girl who, I think, liked the color red.

Tonight's Music Videos

I'm a firm believer in finding something I like - and then totally beating it into the ground. With that in mind, here's another couple of Jeff Lynne videos...



There's about fifteen seconds of crowd noise and dead air at the end of this one. Feel free to leave about fifteen seconds early...

Today's Brief Comment

Just when I thought our intelligence level couldn't sink any lower, I find out that we're now letting a rodent predict our weather.