Saturday Night Dinner Theatre

The Setting: Red Lobster, during their Endless Shrimp promotion (irrelevant, but yummy)

The Actors: Hunter, as the Narrator; Kenin, Patrick, and me, as the Audience

The Props: A small, black plastic skeleton and a small neon green spider, given to Hunter by a waiter who is very nice to young boys in an almost-but-not-quite-full-blown creepy kind of way, and the small, red, lobster-topped, sword-shaped fruity drink holder thing that came in Hunter's Shirley Temple

Hunter: Aaarrgghh! The spider bit me on the hip (holds spider to skeleton's hip)! Here, let me thrust the sword into the spider (thrusts sword into the spider (duh))! Aw, crap! I hit my hip! Oh, my hip, my hip! Now I can't walk (makes dying sounds, much to the dismay of Kenin, who's apparently taken Hunter's playing just a little bit too seriously)! Aaarrrggghh!

The Audience (okay, it was only me): Hysterical laughter

Why is it...

That if I click the 'next blog' link at the top of this page that 99% of the time, I get the same things - a blog in a language that I can't read or porn? I'm barely functional in English some days so I'm pretty sure that blogs in Spanish or CHINESE won't work for me. Plus, I'm practically middle aged and married so you know I'm no longer getting laid. Come on people, give me something more original!

Defender

In 'Defender', the hair and all clothing except the boots were drawn by hand.

I Hope It's A Typo

I was reading the online edition of today's Augusta Chronicle, when one of the headlines jumped out at me. What it said was:

Strangler Tied to Death

Wow. Ya think?

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm

Okay, it's really only one thing, at least for now.

Every morning about 10 am, I inject my husband with a drug called Lovenox, which he has to take for about 10 days so that he doesn't develop blood clots after his recent hip surgery. This morning I noticed, according to the box, that Lovenox is "derived from porcine intestinal mucosa."

I am shooting my husband up with mucus from a pig's stomach. And I can't decide if I should be repulsed or just plain fascinated.

One More Thing Done And Over With

Last Tuesday Kenin finally had his hip resurfacing operation. It's been a long time coming, but we're so glad it's finally done. He came home from the hospital on Friday and although he's yet to make it upstairs (except to take a shower), he's doing pretty good. He can only be on his feet for about 10 minutes without being in major pain, but from what we understand, that's pretty much par for the course. Tomorrow he'll have a physical therapist come to the house and will start what I think will be - or at least feel like - some pretty intense therapy. Last week Kenin's boss said that he'd stop by and pick Kenin up and take him to work tomorrow, but if he's not really well enough to leave the house for therapy, then he damn sure won't be going to work, will he? Even if he shows up, he'll have to go through me and I outweigh the man by a good 30 pounds (being fat has it's advantage every now and then) so I'm not too worried.

Ashlyn went to Georgia on Saturday to spend a couple of weeks with her Dad and when I spoke with her today she was a bit shocked to learn that even though we had 70 degree weather yesterday, we had 6 inches of snow today. I told her we missed her, if for no other reason than we needed someone to shovel the snow.

Speaking of snow, our 3 legged cat, Angelo, meowed like hell to go outside this afternoon after the snow stopped. I finally let him out just to teach him a lesson. He bounded through the door with great abandon. The great abandon stopped though, about 2 feet from the door, when he quickly realized a couple of things: 1) My big fat belly is dragging through this cold, wet, white stuff and 2) This stuff is cold and wet. He immediately wanted to come back inside, so Angelo's Adventure in the Snow lasted all of about 45 seconds.

The Face

More tattoos and textures in 'The Face'.

Looking Back

'Looking Back' was created in the spring of 2004, using Poser and Photoshop.

Just a quick little bitch

I spent over an hour on the phone this morning talking to a collection agency and then the billing department of the physician's group that Kenin's doctors belong to. I've been making payments on Kenin's many hospital and doctor bills for months and have been more than religious about making sure that the medical bills got paid on, if not paid off. Regardless of this, the wienies at the hospital sent us to collections because apparently the amount of payments that I was making were not high enough.

So anyway, I'm talking to the collections guy who says that what they usually do when accounts go into collections is collect payment in full. Dude, if I had enough money to make payments in full, do you think I'd have gotten sent to collections for not sending in enough money? Idiots, the lot of them.

To Be or Not To Be... Special

When Kenin and I were in Texas for Jena's wedding, we stayed with some close friends of ours, Larry and Sharon. The night before the wedding, we sat outside, talking. Somehow the conversation rolled around to the idea that we're considered by a fair amount of people to be "special" because of the things that we've gone through as parents or in some cases, simply because we choose to parent. (Sharon (Larry is hubby #2) lost her youngest son, Stuart, to leukemia when he was 8 years old, and we, of course, have Patrick.)

In a way, it's a little offensive to me that people think we're different from any other parents because I don't feel we are. We have the same hopes and dreams for our kids that you have for yours. Our expectations are the same as yours. We expect - and insist on - our children to be polite and respectful and to behave appropriately. It doesn't matter one whit to me if it's Ashlyn or Patrick or Hunter burping at the dinner table - they all know how to say "Excuse me", and they better do it. I absolutely know that one day Patrick will be on his own and will have his own life, just as any 'normal' person would. The only difference is that Patrick will be living in a group home instead of by himself. I saw Patrick dress in a tux and ride off in a limo to his high school prom. I watched him walk across the room, get his diploma, and shake hands with the principal of his high school. So far, Patrick's life is pretty much on par with most people his age. In so many ways he's like everyone else, and as far as I'm concerned, so are we.

The idea that we're somehow special or different because of our children is a bit foreign to me. Yeah, we've dealt with, and in some cases still deal with, things that most typical parents don't, but I don't think that makes us any better than anyone else. I think the comments that I hear the most often are "I don't know if I could do what you're doing", or "I don't know how you do it." Well, guys, you just kind of make due with whatever it is that's thrown your way. If you get stuck in traffic and are late to work, you don't quit your job because of it, do you? You just suck it up and deal with it, right? Now, I'm not saying that there aren't days that it doesn't just plain suck to be the parent of a developmentally disabled child, but there are just as many days that I don't want to be the parent of a "normal" child, either. And Sharon, she's lost her son altogether, so who am I to complain about my kids, aggravating as they can be?

Sharon told me that she'd asked God for a special child, and she'd gotten one, although Stuart's kind of special wasn't what she'd expected. Why did I 'get' Patrick? I don't know for sure. I know that he was part of the package when I married Kenin, but I imagine it was for reasons other than that. I think maybe God thought I should get into the 'family business' (my mom was a speech therapist, my cousin is a speech therapist, one of my mother's cousins is developmentally disabled, my aunt and uncle were foster parents for years and years, etc.) of giving and doing for others. Maybe He thought that I needed to learn patience, or to not be so selfish. Maybe it was because many years ago in The Nuthouse I was told that I was incapable of having empathy for others. Maybe I just drew the short straw. Who knows? And who really cares? This life is just what it is... mine.