Barnmaven

Job anniversary and parenting challenges

One year anniversary at The Job That Saved Me From New Jersey.  Wo0t! 

Kids start new daycare tomorrow.  Too many reasons why, lets just say that it is really hard sometimes to have a kid with special needs.  I fear that nobody but me is ever going to give KidWithIssues the space and support and love she needs to find her way.  Its sucky, really.  There is little support for parents of kids with special needs.  There's NONE for the daycare employees who deal with those kids every day.  I wonder if that support were there if my kid might be able to have a more stable environment when it comes to before-and after-school care.  I realize her behaviors are difficult (if not impossible) to manage sometimes;  I realize her episodes can be frightening and sometimes violent;  I realize that the majority of daycare employees are completely unequipped to handle a child like this with any real degree of capability and comfort.  Even realizing this, I cannot help being outraged at my child being expelled from her daycare situation.  I am so angry on her behalf, angry at her caregivers failing to let her be important.  Angry that they are helping to start the chain of failure, the chain that I am trying so desperately hard to combat so that my child will not be at such high risk of so many potentially bad outcomes.  It feels like a hopeless battle sometimes. 

I wonder if there is a way that I can get involved, maybe find out if anyone is out there working on legislation or programs to help provide child care professionals with resources for special needs kids.  The schools have help, but kids are being diagnosed so much younger that I think we need resources and support for the daycares too.  Maybe if they had some help kids like mine would not have to have the added burden of being deemed "too much." 

 

Bye, Norman

I miss the cow. 

Damn, I never thought I'd say that.

Norman came to us right after we bought this place.  He needed new pasture, and since I hadn't yet begun acquiring horses like a crazy woman, we needed someone to eat our pasture.  Norman was bestowed his moniker thanks to his amazing resemblance to the little cow that Billy Crystal brings home in the movie City Slickers.

Norman was not real bright, in fact, I've met rocks with more common sense than our little friend.  He had an annoying tendency to poop and pee just about anywhere, most often where someone would be likely to step in it or be totally annoyed by it.  He sure bonded with the horses, though, and for the most part was a sweet little fellow. 

Norman's owner, like Norman, was not real bright either.  But he was also not nearly as likeable as his cow, and he seemed to feel no urgency to provide appropriate support for his animal.  Four tons of hay I paid for over the winter, feeding Norman along with my horses twice a day.  Despite repeated requests to either reimburse a portion of the cost or at least bring his own hay, the guy just couldn't be bothered.  Come spring he advised us he'd be moving Norman over to his mom's place, since her pasture was getting knee-deep in grass.  Without having been reimbursed what we were owed, we couldn't see clear to letting Norman leave, so our pasture gate quickly sprang a lock and chain.  He said he'd come soon, pay us and take Norman, but after a month of no-shows, we kind of figured we now had a permanent pet.

Fast forward to last week.  Norman took a wanderlust while I was conveniently out of town on business.   He seems to be quite the escape artist when he wants to be, this time he managed to get outside our pasture.  My city-born, city-rased husband had not the first clue what to do about a loose cow, so of course he did the obvious thing - he called 911. (Which, incidentally, seems to have lodged us in local law enforcement's mind as the owners of loose cows.  They now call us whenever anyone reports a loose cow or cows just to see if it might be ours.  Lovely.)  Sometime after 1 AM hubby and the deputy managed to get Norman back in the pasture.  Seriously frustrated hubby sent a not-so-nice email to Norman's owner saying something along the lines of "if you don't want us to go to small claims court and sue you for ownership of your fence-crashing steer, show up, pay up, and get him the hell out of here."

Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit if that's not exactly what happened yesterday!  I was so surprised to see that guy's truck and trailer here that I had to momentarily look up and verify the color of the sky was still blue.  Not only did he have the money he owed us, he gave CASH.  But in all honesty, the minute I tricked Norman into getting into the trailer with the promise of some grain in a bucket, all I wanted to do was cry.  Come December Norman will be burger, no doubt.  With us he would have been a very long-lived, very expensive (and possibly very destructive) pet.  Now he's just next year's meat budget.  The guilt!

Bye, Norman.  We miss you already.  Enjoy your year. I hope your new fences offer many possibilities for escape.

They're awake

It's 6:30 AM.  I want to sleep in but my eyes won't shut.  Best and worst thing about the onset of spring is that we have more light.  I won't be able to sleep anymore - but then again, I won't want to sleep constantly either.  Bigger downside is that my children simply don't understand why they must go to bed when the sun hasn't.  And, like me, my youngest has a sleep pattern that is light-dependent.  "We're on vacation, go back to sleep" just isn't the kind of logic he understands.

So, last day of vacation.  6:30 AM.  Little man and I are awake.  Coffee, anyone?

Potential

I'm on vacation for a few days.  My oldest is on spring break this week so I decided to head over the mountains and spend a few days with my folks on the wet side.  I have been looking forward to this trip very much as I haven't seen my parents since October - they are snowbirds and only just got back from Yuma a couple of weeks ago. 

This is my first real vacation since I started my job a year ago.  I had a week off in October to have carpal surgery, but I wouldn't really classify that as 'vacation,' considering most of my time was spent trying to figure out how to button my pants one-handed.

Other than the act of being present on the island for five days I haven't made any plans for things to do while I'm here.  I've brought some books to read, some movies to watch, thought about old friends I might call while I'm in town, but otherwise the vacation is still a jar full of possibilities for me.  There's so many 'might be's' that it feels intoxicating. 

Talk about possibilities:  At the same time as I write this, a very dear, close friend of mine is on her way to starting a new life.  This friend had a tumultuous few years.  About three years ago we became close as she went through a divorce after over twenty years of marriage.  Having had a sheltered, controlled childhood with very strict parents and having married early, this lovely woman had never really experienced the gleeful independence many of us do in our twenties.  I got to enjoy seeing her go through this as a forty-something mother of two.  The transformation was complete and as fascinating as watching an exotic flower come into bloom.  She lost weight, got new, sexy clothes, smiled more, flirted more, dated for the first time in decades, talked about grand dreams and plans.  There were some downsides: the house that just wouldn't sell, necessitating that she still live there with a man she was no longer married to; the job we both worked at where the mind-games and the drama far outweighed the work to be done; and a persistent gastrointestinal issue.  A year ago, just after I moved away to start my own new life here, the bottom fell out of her transformation.  She was diagnosed with third-stage cancer.

My friend very nearly didn't live through her treatment.  She had radiation and chemotherapy, an intolerance to which landed her in the hospital unable to eat anything.  Her digestive system simply shut down, painfully, and there was a point at which her doctors did not think she would live through it.  Divine intervention, power of prayer, love of friends and family - whatever it was, she managed to pull through.  She got strong enough to have surgery to remove the cancer.  Since that time she has been in recovery mode, working on regaining lost strength, living with some ongoing pain and making lifestyle  and emotional adjustments to some of the changes in her body that have been difficult to accept. 

Finally, a couple of months ago, the best news in a long time:  an offer on the house!  Upon closing day after tomorrow she will have the seed money to start a whole new life.  Its not the life she was planning before the cancer; but its a new start.  When I think about my friend, I picture the woman I knew who was in a miserable marriage, contrast that with the newly divorced butterfly coming out of her cocoon, then consider the cancer survivor fighting to regain her health and hoping that she will be fortunate enough to remain cancer free.  Finally, I see the woman who is right now in her car driving from New Jersey to Texas to start a new life with her children, her parents and her brother nearby, and I begin to understand the nature of possibilities.

Human beings are mysterious, wonderful creatures.  We are not simply the person one sees in the current moment; we are the sum of all of our experience, our past, current and future hopes and dreams and the possibility of all that we ever were and all we will ever be.  I see this most distinctly in the women I know.  Women are the epitome of possibility.  Every women, even when clad in sweats and performing the most mundane task, contains endless possibility and probability.  We are the princess and the mother and the executive; the nurturer, the dreamer and the organizer. We are perfectly imperfect, we can transform at a moment's notice from tired mother to sweet-smelling wanton woman.  The path not taken is as fully present in us as the road we traveled and as the future ahead.

I am joyful for my friend as she experiences yet another transformation and I am excited to see what possibilities will develop into reality in her life.  All that she has been through has served only to enhance and refine her beauty and mystery.  I am in awe of not just her past and present but her potential as well.  Shine on, my friend.  I can't wait to see the next chapter unfold!