The Draft in the Air

NFL Draft Weekend is a big deal in my house. Even back when Lowell and I were dating, I can remember that on draft weekend, I needed to have other plans. Or else I was sitting in front of the television for three days watching a bunch of college football players put on the designated baseball cap of their new team.

Over the years, I've come to a somewhat better understanding of what it's all about, even though I really think one could just read the picks in the paper the next day in about 15 minutes and not have wasted 6 hours the night before watching it live. But then again, I am certain I have spent time watching television programming that my husband wouldn't understand. So we just agree that Draft Weekend is a REALLY big deal and all the televisions in the house are his for three days.

I should have known the time was coming. Joshua was somewhat interested in the draft last year. This year the two of them are counting down the days, researching draft picks online, watching ESPN non-stop and centering a large majority of their conversations around who they think is going where. It's been some great father-son bonding time.

Thursday, April 22 at 6:30 pm is when it would all begin. And guess when the swim team awards banquet was scheduled. I don't even have to say do I? So for about three days, the big drama in the house was banquet or draft? Should we watch the draft live or DVR it with the great fear that some father at the banquet would be checking on his phone and spoil it all? Joshua's vote was draft hands-down. Lowell and I wobbled back and forth between, we really don't want to do to the banquet either, and he did make a commitment to the team and banquets are team functions, blah blah blah. I even posted a Facebook poll to get other opinions. (Most who voted, voted for the draft by the way). One person suggested asking him what he would be more likely to remember in a year, banquet or draft. He laughed and said, "Uh, draft!!!"

We had some staffing issues come up, and we were certain there would be no award for him, so we had a very happy little boy with his spread of notebook paper, snacks, and remote control in the living room. (And Lowell was glad to be watching the draft too, and I was glad not to be dressed up at a banquet, so all was well in our little world.)

Oh, but Friday rolled around and Joshua went to morning practice. He got in the car and handed me this:

Oh. Dear. He did NOT just win the Outstanding Swimmer of the Year Award. And he was watching the draft. And they called his name for his award. And he was watching the draft.

And I am thinking, well in one year he may remember the draft, and I will be remembering us NOT being at the banquet. And next year, I don' t care if they host the draft in our backyard, we WILL be at the banquet. (I mean, unless there is something on tv that I want to watch!)

He Wears a Size 36

One of our guys is a little short on clothing. He only has a few pairs of jeans and they each fall off of him, even when he wears a belt. We aren't sure if maybe he doesn't get the concept of the belt's purpose or what, but we are often reminding him to tighten up the belt and pull up the pants. At least once a day, we can expect to get an unintentional "full moon" from him.

So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take him shopping for new jeans. Not being real sure how he would feel about trying things on or how cooperative he would be, I decided to take him to the local Goodwill store (we have a really good one) so that he could pick out some things and not spend a lot of money in case he decided never to wear them.

When we arrived in the "men's department" he said, "I need a size 36 because that's what these are, so that's what size I wear." I talked to him about the fact that his size 36 jeans fall down a lot and he may want to consider a 34. He just looked at me and said, "But I don't wear a 34, these are a 36. I guess that means I wear a 36." So I handed him a few pairs of jeans that were 36s and slid a 34 in and told him to go try them on.

Standing outside the dressing room, I hear him talking to himself about the fact that he wears a size 36 and not a 34 and he sees that one of the pair of jeans says 34 on it and he isn't going to try that on because he doesn't wear a 34. (I see a few people snickering about his soliloquy but I am not embarrassed at all because I am just thankful that he isn't yelling about needing a bucket to pee in - different guy by the way.)

Anyway, I let him go ahead and buy three pairs of jeans and five more shirts. He mentions on the way home that he'll need to add a laundry day to his schedule now that he has more clothes. I try my best to explain that just because he has more laundry doesn't mean he'll need to do laundry more often because he'll still be wearing the same amount of clothes that he is now, but that completely fell on deaf ears and now he just does laundry an extra day even though I'm not sure what he's washing because he certainly isn't changing clothes more often, but anyway.

So this was a couple weeks ago, and I mentioned this week that I haven't seen him wearing two of the new shirts he bought. He explained that he needed to go shopping for two more pairs of jeans before he could wear the shirts, because we didn't get a matching number of shirts and pants the last time we went and he can't wear the new shirts until he had jeans for them to "go with." I, again, tried to explain that he could mix and match and didn't need to have the exact number of jeans as shirts, and again, that fell on deaf ears.

So I guess we'll go shopping for two more pairs of jeans. And even though the 34 fits, the 36 is what he wears. I would be tempted to buy him a new belt too, but I worry we would need to have one for every day of the week.

Sod vs. Seed

So on the way home the other day with one of the guys, he says, "I sure wish we had a pool in the backyard." And then he proceeded to tell me how if he had a shovel and concrete and something to cut all the underground pipes, he could dig us a pool. (He goes into much detail here, that I will spare you from reading, but believe me, it was much detail.) When he finishes his monologue of how the pool will be built (complete with slide connecting to his bedroom window) he tells me that he even knows how to clean a pool. He figured out a way several years ago where you don't even need those silly expensive chemicals that they try to sell you at pool stores. All you need is some Tide detergent. The kind with the little blue crystals works best. It doesn't make your eyes burn. The pool will be clear down to the bottom, and you can even breathe in the water and it doesn't hurt your nose or lungs. Who knew?!?!? (And even as I write this, I wonder how I could just keep driving and nodding with the occasional "hmmm" without asking him if he'd been smoking crack.)

Anyway, the conversation went on along and somehow transferred over to how the digging of the pool would help out garden snakes and earthworms. (And no, I have NO idea where the segue was here). But he informed me that we have done the earthworms in our yard a big disservice by getting our yard sodded instead of seeded. You see, with grass seed, the earthworms can eat the "root of the soil" then they excrete it and create fertilizer. Well, when the landscaping people came and put down sod, we "essentially took away the earthworms' jobs". That's why they all came up to the surface of the yard and allowed themselves to be fried on the concrete. Because apparently if earthworms don't have enough to do to keep themselves busy, they just participate in a mass suicide.

So there ya' go. Now you, dear reader, have learned something new today.

Excuse the Delay

I know it's been a couple of weeks since I have posted, but things just really haven't been feeling all that funny lately and that leaves me uninspired. We deal with a lot around here, what with both the behaviors and the disabilities. And I think for the most part, we handle those things well. We know what we are getting into and we can generally see the humor in it; if not at the time, then almost always shortly thereafter.

But the things going on lately could not be categorized as disability or behavior. The only appropriate word to use is PSYCHOSIS. And it's really hard to laugh at psychosis. Certainly not at the time, sometimes the humor comes much after the fact, and sometimes not at all. So our last couple of weeks have been filled to the brim with the six-foot psychotic man.

So while not comical on the whole, there of course, is funny mixed in because of the dynamics of the home. And now that things are better (thank God for anti-psychotic medication), we are beginning to reprocess and find some of the funny. And since it's not easy, we are glad we wrote down some of the fun quotes that have been said in the house recently.

We have had a nasty cold make its way through the house and it has hit each of the guys. One of them continued to have a bit of a runny nose for several days. As we are sitting at the table, Psycho tells him to wipe his nose. He replies with, "I don't let people who punch me tell me when to clean my nose." I thought that was pretty well said, and it did make me smile. Although it didn't make me laugh out loud like I did the next time he was asked to wipe his nose and he replied with, "Okay, I will get a tissue now, but if you try to hit me again or complain one more time about my nose, I will have you charged with a hate crime against Mexicans!" Now how's that for a comeback if someone tells you that you need a tissue??

On another day, the cook in the house was making one of his always-nasty concoctions and says to me, "Did you know that if you add enough garlic to your food, it takes all of the calories out?" You can't argue, or even say what you're thinking - "I wish that were true", you just have to smile, nod and say, "Is that right? Hmmm." He said that line shortly after he said, "I've been thinking about going on the show, 'The Biggest Loser' because I tried it once and it didn't taste too bad."

Earlier in the week we had asked that same guy if he would mind taking a shower as we were noticing it had been a while since he had last taken one. He replied that he "would love to, but has no clean clothes to put on." I guess he was waiting on the laundry fairy to come to do his laundry. And personally, I was just too done with everything else from the week to even argue with that logic.

I think we are back to normal. Or at least to what we consider normal.

Grammar Made Easy

With a little help from the guys next door, I was able to give some great grammar examples to Joshua today.

One of the next doors woke up in a grumpy mood. We'll just call him "Bob" today. When "Joe" came out of his room for breakfast, Bob starts saying, "I hate Joe, gonna beat him up." We got Bob in another room and he seemed to calm some. But it wasn't long before Joe got up to get more cereal and Bob ran in the room and pushed him. He was quickly restrained from his physical aggression but continued to yell, curse, and threaten. We got him back into his room and gave him a little something to calm him down while Joe finished eating his Fruit Loops in as much peace as possible given the situation.

Once that Haldol kicked in and everything was okay, I came back over to our side to work on some school with Joshua. I could hear both Lowell and our day staff laughing as I was using examples such as, "If I say, 'Bob hit Joe' then Joe is the direct object. Hit who or what? Joe. So Joe received the action of the verb. If I say, 'Bob is crazy' then crazy is the predicate adjective because it describes Bob. If I say, 'Bob is a bully', then bully is a predicate nominative because it renames Bob."

I also used sentences such as, "The laundry room door is broken. It was pulled off its hinges."

It was good to use sentences that really apply to our everyday life. And guess what? Joshua understood perfectly. So sometimes living with a little crazy pays off!

A Day in the Life, Part Three - Seriously?

So, it's been a crazy day and I am so excited to go out on a date with my husband. We decided we were going to go out to eat and then to a parenting conference at church. Our weekend guy was supposed to be there by 5 pm.

Around 4:30, the grocery sacker/quacker/barker (yes, he started barking too) asked if he could go pick up his paycheck and then go to an electronics store to purchase a new video game. I told him that when the weekend staff came, he could go, as we would have time for them to do that and we could stay home with the other two. Historically, things don't go so well when they are all in the van together.

At 6:15, Lowell called our weekend guy to see what the deal was and when he was coming in. His response was something along the lines of "oh gosh, I completely forgot. All day long I've had this feeling that I was supposed to do something but couldn't remember what it was." REALLY??? You forgot to come to work??? How does one forget to come to work??? He said he could be here in a couple of hours. We told him not to worry about coming in, since our evening was already ruined. I'd stay home and Lowell would go to the conference.

I popped a frozen pizza in the oven and changed into some "just staying home" clothes. It wasn't long before I was trying to explain to Mr. I want my Paycheck and I want it now why we could not go get it tonight. Since our staff didn't show up and Lowell was leaving, I couldn't take him, but we had two staff coming in tomorrow who would be more than happy. Well, this was not acceptable as he had other plans already for tomorrow and he was "tired of this *&%$" and he headed out the door.

Poor Lowell. He headed out after him, walking down the street. Lowell passed a jogger who said that he had seen him. Yes, the 25 year old wearing a tank top and shorts (in the 30 degree weather) and a huge bluetooth type thing in his ear. So Lowell continues in that general direction. Several minutes later, when he hasn't been spotted again, we called in the troops - his dad, our supervisors and the local police. (I have the number for police dispatch in the address book of my cell phone. Scary huh?)

About 30 minutes later, I got a call from Lowell. He says, "so the jogger noticed the shorts, tank top and bluetooth. Don't know why he neglected to mention the bicycle." Heck, no wonder we couldn't find him. Well I immediately feel better that he's been found. I don't know why I thought that finding him had solved the problem.

The police knocked on our door a few minutes later. I told him that we had found the eloper and all was well, but then I had the forethought to ask if he would mind staying until they arrived home just to make sure everything was okay. While the officer was taking his report, our shopper from the morning was most excited to show off his new jeans, and his room, and his new hat, and it just brought back all the fun memories from the morning to me; and the poor police officer just didn't even know what to do/think.

When Lowell wasn't home within a few minutes, I sent the police out looking for him. He'd been kidnapped! Or Adultnapped, or whatever you want to call it. Our guy got in the van with him and told him where he had to drive, or else. The or else involved him: jumping out of the van, destroying the house, tearing up the van so that nobody else could use it (i.e. cutting the battery out). So, Lowell just sat there in the driver's seat - not coming home, but also not following the kidnapper's demands.

The police weren't just a whole lot of help. They were nice and all, but said that really no laws had been broken (yet) and as long as he didn't hurt anybody or damage the house when he got home they didn't see any reason that he couldn't go get his check and video game. (Thanks local police for your help in our positive behavior reinforcement - or not!) So just to get him home safely, Lowell went ahead and took him to the store and got him home.

Once home, the fun continued. He called his dad and screamed at him for a bit. He made a few more demands, going so far as to put a timeline on it - "if I don't have the money in my hand by 9:30 in the morning, I'll blow this house up, then they'll know not to screw with me!" Uh, yeah, okay. So we knew that things may not be any better the next day, but we were so totally done with the day, we just went to bed, hoping that Jesus would come back before we had to face the problem the next day.

With no such luck, the kidnapper's dad came and gave in to his terroristic demands and gave him what he wanted. So he's learned that all you have to do is make threats to tear things up or hurt people and you get what you want. He never learned that you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

We got an email later from his father. He explained that the threat to damage the car was all talk because his son told him that he didn’t know how to do that and was worried about battery acid and getting shocked if he tried that. Yeah, no kidding. He says this all amounted to his son just having a bad day and we all have those. And of course on our bad days, the police get involved and we come really close to having property damage and terroristic threatening charges, right?

I later had a long conversation with my supervisor who had just gotten done with a long conversation with his dad. She said he suggested that we just let him destroy property, call the police, have him arrested and thrown in jail. "A weekend in jail might just be the best thing for him," he says. We got really excited at this thought because we've thought from day one that would be the best teaching experience he could have. But then his dad says, "he wouldn't have charges against him though would he?" When it was affirmed that you really can't spend a weekend in jail without charges, he quickly changed his mind, as he wouldn't want his kid having "legal consequences".

So we are now thinking, "Wait a minute. Just a second ago you thought a weekend in jail would be good for him. But now you don't want legal consequences? Oh, you mean you want him to go to Pretend Jail? Yeah, well too bad there's no such thing as PRETEND JAIL!!!"

The funny thing is when I was relaying all this to our weekend guy (the good one) he pops out with, "Why would it matter if he has a record? Is he planning on a Senate run any time soon?"

And there you have it. That was our day. We didn't make it to the conference, but we certainly learned a lot about parenting - especially what not to do. And although this was not necessarily a typical day for us, it certainly wasn't way outside the realm of what we call normal around here.

A Day in the Life, Part Two - Spanish Lessons

One of our guys speaks fluent Spanish. He was born in Texas, but the rest of his family came to the United States from Mexico and they speak little English. We have a new weekend staff person who is a Spanish teacher at a local school, so the two of them have hit it off beautifully. However, now he wants to speak Spanish all the time and teach it to us.

This would be fine of course, if he didn't have a traumatic brain injury which puts some hindrances on the lessons.

The afternoon went a little something like this. We had a party to attend and were going to drop off Mr. I Have a New Hat and You Better Not Touch It at his workshop and then head to the party from there. The ten-minute trip from our house to the workshop was filled with conversation. Simultaneous conversation. New hat was asking to take me to dinner and asking for my phone number. He would then say "227" (he had to have had a 227 number at some point in his life because every phone number starts with 227 for him) "00444444499995. Got a pencil? Write this down, 227227227444444000, write it down, 227444002227227, write it down and call me, 227....." While this is going on, Mr. Bilingual is in the backseat saying, "I can count in Spanish, see, uno, dos, tres...." I am not lying or exaggerating to say that this went on the whole trip. I wanted to scream, "I don't need your phone number and you don't need mine. I live with you and therefore won't be calling. Plus you don't know how to use a phone." And then to turn around and say, "Yes, I know you know how to count in Spanish - it's your FIRST language." It's like me being proud that I can count in English, for pete's sake. But of course, I didn't. We just dropped "227" off at work and continued on to the party.

The whole way to the party (30 minutes), the Spanish continued. I was amazed at how much I remembered once he started talking. However, instead of just speaking back to me when I said something in Spanish, he would say, "That means blah blah blah in English." Like I didn't know what it meant and was just saying random words in Spanish and they just happened to make a sentence? Anyway, as we were driving I asked how to say "snow" in Spanish and he replied, "lluvia." Thinking that meant rain, I asked, well then what's the word for rain, and he relied, "lluvia." So I say, "well what's the difference between snow and rain?" And of course he responds with, "well rain is water that comes from the sky and snow is white and more frozen." And yes, I know I set myself up for that!

The party was a beach-themed party. Somebody asked how to say "beach" and he said "agua." I said, "isn't it playa?" And he says, "yeah, but there is a lot of agua at la playa." So thus far in my Spanish lesson I have learned the difference between rain and snow and that there is a lot of water at the beach. Woo hoo - goes to prove the old adage that we learn something new every day right?

This has nothing to do with the Spanish lesson, but just to give an idea of the other stuff going on. On the way to the party, we saw another van stopped in front of us and the driver was out looking around the road. I wondered aloud what he was doing and our client says, "He's probably looking for his contacts." Yep, that's it. I know my contacts fly out of my eyes and into the road ALL the time when I am driving.

Senor Spanish met a pretty lady at the party. He really can have a semi-intelligent conversation, but he gets flustered by pretty women. He introduced himself, says, "I do my laundry on Tuesday and Thursday. I take five showers a week. I go home to Kansas City with my brother on Sundays. I have two kids; they are 14 and 12." She was a little taken aback by the kids part. I just nodded and we walked on.

I got asked to be a judge for the hula contest at the beach party. Several of the clients we serve were excited to be in the contest. Imagine it now if you will. It was a group of women (and one man) in grass skirts doing the hula. It wasn't hard to judge. We just waited until there was only one left. Everybody else got distracted and wandered away. She was the hula winner, and didn't care at all that she kind of won by default.

I was so tired by the time we got home and looking forward to an evening off. Our weekend staff was coming early and I was going on a date with my husband. But that's another blog for another day. Check back tomorrow.