A Night at the Club

Because we are all kinds of cool up in this house, our resident grocery-bagger decided he wants to go to nightclubs after work. He gets off of work at 10 pm and hears other employees discussing going "clubbing" and he wants so desperately to fit in. And bless his heart, he is just so socially awkward that he's likely never going to be in the "in crowd" of the grocery store employees (if such a group exists). He did ask one girl out - the story of which could have it's own blog entry complete with him wanting to dress up in costume so she wouldn't recognize him; to making up a name as a secret admirer; and finally to writing secret notes and trying to have Lowell deliver them (I can just see explaining to our friends and family why my husband is in jail for soliciting a minor!) - and she was very sweet when she declined. But I digress.

So a couple of nights ago, Lowell picks him up after work and he says he wants to go to a certain nightclub that he overheard some people talking about. He tells Lowell where it is, and Lowell, knowing full well that there is no nightclub at this address, drives there anyway in an attempt to put an end to the nightclub discussion. However, once they got there and there was no club, Lowell was asked if he would drive around to look for it. So as they are driving down the street, they discover another club. Grocery-boy gets really excited and stops to ask somebody if they know where the other club is. They don't. But lo and behold it's "one dollar cover charge night" there so he goes on in while Lowell waits for him in the van. While he is inside, Lowell googles the place and gets a good chuckle when he sees this written on the website: "genre: gay/lesbian". He really laughs when said guy comes back out and says, "I'm gonna hang out in there for a while, but if I pick up a girl and come out with her, will you be cool and all?" Lowell promises to be "cool and all" about it, but the idea of this guy going into a gay/lesbian nightclub and emerging with an interested female is crazy enough. But to think that he would actually meet someone who would be willing to come with him to meet his STAFF is downright laughable.

He stays in there for seriously over an hour. All the while Lowell is texting me. He's waved to a couple people from church who were out walking their dog. We know that every time they see us from now on, they will be wondering if they should fill me in on the fact that my husband hangs out in front of gay nightclubs. And I won't be able to stop laughing.

When he finally comes out (no pun intended), he says to Lowell, "I had to leave. There weren't any women worth picking up. The band was good, but the men just announced how long they'd been married. Men are married. The men in the band are married!"

At least he figured it out. And it only took him an hour. And a huge club-wide announcement. And we seem to have gotten the "want to go to a nightclub bug" completely out of our system. So I guess it was worth it!

Helpful Hints from A Group Home

Remember Heloise? I used to enjoy reading her helpful hints in the newspaper. She always knew how to get that stain out, what ingredient could be a substitute for whatever you are lacking, and how to make your own laundry detergent. And now, I know I am no Heloise, nor am I Martha Stewart, but I've learned some decorating tips and useful household hints throughout my time in a group home. So turn off the HGTV and see what I have to share!

What do you do when you are chopping vegetables and can't find that pesky cutting board anywhere?? It's easy, just open the nearest cabinet, clear the closest shelf of whatever dishes might be residing on it, pull that shelf off of the pegs and Voila, you have a cutting board. How nifty is that??

And what about when those cabinet doors seem to always be in the way. You just despise having to open one anytime you need to get something from the cabinet (a cutting board, maybe). Did you know you can just pull really hard on them and they'll pop right off? No need to worry yourself further with the task of opening and closing!

And how many of you have ever wished for new countertops? You visit a friend and they have new granite, someone else has beautiful tile. But you have ugly white laminate and really can't afford to have it replaced. Well do I ever have a solution for you! Grab a Sharpie!! It's amazing what you can do.

Maybe I'm Back

Okay, so I'm a tad embarrassed. December 15th was the last time I blogged? Can that be true? I mean, I know it's been a while, but really? Four months, wow!

And now the problem is, I don't even know where to start! Uh, so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I guess I have been in one of those blogging "funks" that I think most bloggers have from time to time. Life is happening, life is sad, life is funny, life is hard, life is wonderful, and you still just feel like there is not a lot to say, or at least not a lot of time in which to say it.

So nothing has really changed in our lives over the last four months, in which I haven't been blogging, but nothing ever remains the same either.

Our guys are the same. And even though it seems like we repeat the same day over and over and over and over, there's always a little bit of crazy thrown in.

We think one of our guys is depressed right now. Or at least that's the psychiatrist's most recent diagnosis. I think it's like living with a colicky baby. He's crying ALL the time. And he's fed, and he's clean, and his schedule hasn't changed, and everything is in place that should be in place to make him happy. And yet he still cries. And I understand, though would NEVER condone, where shaken baby syndrome originated. Lowell and I have both learned that when we get to that point, we have to pass off responsibilities to the other person and go to the local bar for a stiff drink or two. (Just kidding about that of course, but it's a thought that's crossed my mind.) Here's hoping that the new antidepressant will solve the problem, and we'll have a little less screaming and a lot fewer tears, for all of us, not just for the resident Eeyore.

One of our guys knocked on the door a few weeks ago in the middle of the night, was holding his right side, and said, "Can you take me to the emergency room? I think I need my appendix out." And would you believe, he was right? So Lowell got to spend the whole evening and a good portion of the next day in the hospital with "Mr. I Know How to Diagnose Myself". He was released a lot earlier than they had originally planned. We are pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that he was continually asking for a meal and complaining that there was no Sci-Fi Network on the hospital televisions. When he started asking for video games and Microsoft points, they decided he was ready to come home. That was over three weeks ago. The surgery was laparoscopic, so the healing time was about 2 days. He went back to work this week. Talk about somebody MILKING an injury. Pathetic doesn't begin to describe it.

And then we have "Mr. My Short-Term Memory Gets Worse by the Second". The loops that he gets on could be scripted. We know exactly what he is going to say and when he is going to say it. And then he's going to say it again. He loves to talk about the weather. Any time you drive past one of those digital time and temperature signs, he will tell you the temperature over and over until we pass another one, and then he points out how much the temperature has changed. And the loop goes on. The first few times that he made statements like, "It's 50 degrees. Kind of cold for a Tuesday," we laughed. But we have since decided that hearing, "it's warm for a Friday" or "kind of rainy for a Thursday" just isn't that funny anymore. I've tried to steer him by saying, "yeah, kind of warm for FEBRUARY," but it's been to no avail. I give up. I remind myself that this is the same sports nut, who, the Wednesday after the Super Bowl, told us several times that they were having a huge parade in Green Bay because they like celebrating Wednesdays. Again, no use explaining that the residents of Green Bay aren't just big fans of Wednesday!

Anyway, that's pretty much life as we know it. Hopefully, I can get over the non-blogging funk that's had me down. I'm going to go turn the heat up. It's kind of cold here for a Thursday.

O Christmas Tree

This time of year makes me miss my daddy. I know a lot of people miss their parents around the holidays, but it's usually because they are deceased. Thankfully, mine's not. But this time of year makes me think of him and wish we lived closer.

Why? Partly because it's the Christmas holidays and being close to family is nice. But the main reason is because, without him, I'm on my own to get Christmas tree.

I have the best memories of being a little girl and going out to hunt for the perfect tree. It would be sacrilegious to have an artificial tree, as everybody knows. And we weren't ones to buy one from the Optimist Club in the Kroger parking lot. Heck, we didn't even go to a Christmas tree farm. We were the kind of family that did it right!

We got all bundled up nice and warm and loaded into my dad's pickup truck. We didn't really have a destination, just a purpose: find the perfect tree. We'd drive around and dad would slow down and look around, then drive on. Then he'd slow down and we'd hear him say, "hmmm" followed shortly after by, "I bet... hmm. Come on kids, let's see what we can find."

We'd then park on the side of the road, grab the saw and go searching for a tree. I learned all about barbed wire and how to judge if it's best to go over or under. We'd find a great tree, saw it down, throw it over the barbed wire, toss it in the truck and be on our merry way. What's funny about all this is that I had NO IDEA we were trespassing on somebody else's property and cutting down their trees. I just thought it was how everybody got a Christmas tree. But as an adult, and seeing how much trees are, I now know it was because we were POOR. (Isn't it funny though how as kids we don't realize the reasons behind the things our parents do?)

As I got older, we did begin to go to the Christmas tree farms and choose our trees legally. To this day, I don't know if that's because we had more financial stability or if my dad grew a conscience. Or maybe he was worried that now that we were older and not quite as little and cute, people would be less likely to be in the "Christmas Spirit" and let it go if we got caught.

One year my mom bought an artificial tree and quickly got the wrath of my brother and me. (And we were grown, not even living at home.) But now that I have to clean up after a real tree, I can certainly see the allure.

So I knew that I wanted my kids to have the real tree experience. I was excited the first year my dad came to pick up Joshua to take him to the Christmas tree farm down the road and let him pick out and saw down a tree. And it became a tradition. So much that last year, after we had moved 450 miles away, Joshua asked when Grandpa Phil was coming to take him to get a tree! (I was kind of wondering myself...)

Anyway, although I miss the tradition, and I miss my dad having a part in it, we have a tree. A real one. And the local Optimist Club members sitting in their trailer in the Kroger parking lot have way too much of my money.

The upside though, no clothes have to be replaced due to being caught and torn on the barbed wire.

Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full

In this house, there is no half-empty or half-full. It's just plain EMPTY. And we aren't just talking about one particular gentleman's outlook on life. We are talking about his VERY odd perception that when something only has a little left, it's gone.

To better explain, he came to me the other day and said, "We are out of laundry detergent." Well that's just plain laughable. We order our laundry detergent through the food bank and I am not even kidding when I say that we probably have close to thirty bottles of detergent in the house. But he was referring to the bottles on the shelf in the laundry area.


So you can see that there are at least six bottles of detergent on the shelf. And they may not all be full, but I can assure you none of them is empty.

And when he makes a bowl of cereal in the morning, he almost always says, "We're out of milk." And he doesn't mean, "we're almost out" because unless I catch him first, he will inevitably throw the jug of milk away.



But I really thought I might scream today when he came to me and said, "We are out of toilet paper. We only have one roll left." I went into his bathroom and this is what I saw.



Can you guess which "one" is the only one left? Of course, in his mind, the only roll we have is the one that hasn't been touched. However, I CANNOT for the life of me figure out why he truly CANNOT see that there are seventeen, count 'em, seventeen other rolls that still have a substantial amount of toilet paper on them. But he can't. He really can't. He is truly convinced that we are out of toilet paper. There is no arguing with him. And it makes me want to cry and yell. But I don't. I just walk away. And tell Lowell that one of the guys next door wants to talk to him.

How to Make a Donkey Mad

So for the last several weeks, we have been in deep discussions with one of our guys about getting a cat. We honestly think he wants the cat so that he will have a reason to buy pet insurance. (Logic is not one of his stronger attributes). Anyway, Lowell and I have been anti-cat, for various reasons. We aren't really cat people. This guy can't keep his room clean to save his life. And mainly, we are worried that we are going to have a dead cat on our hands in just a few short months.

However, there's a fine line between being against having a cat and letting him know we are against having a cat. We have been having to play both sides of the fence, dealing with him, his guardians, and the company we work for. It's not been easy.

So the other night, to stir up some fun, Lowell says something along the lines of, "Why a cat? Why not get a goat?" To which he seriously responds, "No, I don't have enough room for a goat." (This was also his response concerning smaller pets such as a hamster or turtle.) He wants a cat because he wants a pet that will be waiting for him when he gets home and will "snuggle up" with him at night. When we point out that cats aren't known too much for waiting at the door for their owners to get home so they can "snuggle," he says that he is planning on training his cat to do what he wants. After some time of forcing it to sleep with him, the cat will learn to snuggle and be happy to see him. Are ya' seeing where our concerns are coming in??

Anyway, after the goat comment he goes on to say if he had to get a pet such as a goat, he would get a donkey. He thinks it would be fun to have a donkey, mainly because their "real names" are jackass. He proceeds to tell us that "people don't call them jackasses though because it would look funny. Imagine hearing your neighbors outside calling their donkey in - 'here jackass, here jackass, come on jackass.' And not only that, imagine how mad and confused the donkeys would be hearing their owners call them jackasses. They would be upset knowing that they hadn't done anything wrong and would wonder why they were being called a jackass. It'd probably make them so mad that they would wait until their owners were standing behind them and then they'd buck up and kick them. Because, you know, donkeys don't know their real names are jackass."

And there really isn't even a response from Lowell or me. I mean, honestly, how does one respond to that conversation?

Anybody wanna join a pool on how long the cat survives???

A Penny for your Thoughts

One of our guys loves money. All money. Dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies. All money. When working with him, we have to be very aware of our surroundings, because he will literally walk in the middle of the road if he sees something resembling change. He doesn't have a good understanding of the values, but he does know that the silver ones are more valuable than the copper, but that's never kept him from jumping out of the van to get the copper.

We recently had to call our maintenance department because our garbage disposal wasn't working properly. The guy came to fix it and pulled this out of the disposal:




And it just blew our minds. We thought we had figured out who the culprit was though. Certainly not the money hungry one. Surely not the one who definitely knows better. It had to be the one who knew better but would think it was funny. So we talked to him and talked to him about how if it happened again, he would be responsible for the maintenance charges to get the garbage disposal fixed. And he swore over and over again that this was stupid and asked why on earth we would think he would do that.

Two days later, the garbage disposal is once again just barely humming. We reach in there ourselves this time, and again pull out a handful of pennies. This time, there were even more than the first time. And we notice that some of the pennies are more beaten-looking because they were the same pennies that were in there the first time that Mr. I Love Money swiped off the counter as soon as Maintenance put them there. He was the culprit!

So that's been our latest behavior issue. And although better than some of the other behaviors we've had to deal with, it still feels odd every time I say, "Now where do we put the pennies we don't want? Do we put them in the sink? Noooo. We put them in the jar right??" This has been mildly successful. And we have caught him recently just throwing them in the trash. And although I am not a fan of throwing any money away, at least we don't have to call maintenance!