Mid-CenturyModernMoms

Ball gowns, make-overs, stilletos, pedicures

Guess what time of year it is? Yup, it's PROM time. Or, as I call it, the time of year when parents of seniors go flat broke.That time when the phrase "I NEED" becomes the mantra for your senior.

Last year I lucked out. My son had no interest whatsoever in going to prom. Tuxedos and good manners aren't really a part of his life style, and his social skills in that kind of setting are completely lacking. This year, I'm not that lucky. Not only does my daughter have a date for the prom, she wants every single thing to be perfect, and that means that the whole world revolves around the prom this year.

First we had to get the dress. She went off with a friend and came back with a black dress that is elegant, not too low cut or short or tight. In fact, it's surprisingly sophisticated. I was proud of her choice. After all, there are an awful lot of inappropriate hooker-esque prom dresses in the shops.

After the dress was acquired, her attention turned to shoes. She wanted to define her color scheme with shoes and a matching handbag, so her date could find a tux in a matching color. But she didn't know what color she wanted. We had a lot of conversations going over the merits of this color over that. Then one day my online shopping site Rue La La was featuring a shoe boutique and there was a really nice pair of shoes in silver and gold. I showed them to my daughter, she loved them and I ordered them for her. When the shoes arrived they not only fit perfectly, but were comfortable despite the enormous heel due to footbed padding. She was so thrilled with them, she had to try them on with the dress, and then wore them around for a bit to get the sole scuffed.

In a complete stroke of luck she entered and won a contest at our local beauty school for a hair and makeup do-over just for the prom. She's going to have hear hair done up, something I couldn't do if I tried. She's also got an appointment for a mani-pedi and has already picked out the color of the polish.

Now we're working on the jewelry portion of the ensemble. She thinks pearls would be nice, but I think they would be too plain and have suggested something a bit flashier. But what? Fake diamonds? Or maybe she could borrow something from Harry Winston like the stars on the red carpet do.

Besides the outfits, we have to get her and the date to the prom, and that of course means renting a limo with friends. Friends that are notoriously flaky about making plans. Phone calls, texting, and Facebooking are all in use to get this detail down pat.

After the prom, which is at a downtown Boston hotel, they'll go back to the high school for an all-night party. In order to attend the party they have to use a Breathalyzer and promise to enter and stay there. Once they leave, they can't go back in. So at least the parents know the kids will be sober and not in some hotel room having a party of their own. Oy!

Other details include the prom photo that of course costs money, The before prom meal. The corsage and boutonniere. Hair accessories. It just doesn't end.

Total cost? I'd guesstimate about $500. I know, it's a once in a life time event. I just wish it were a cheaper once in a lifetime event. But I have to admit,I'm getting just as much of a thrill with all the preparations as she is. It is really fun seeing her so excited about the prom. I just hope she has a great time, one that she'll remember fondly for the rest of her life.

When schools fail kids

I haven't posted in a long long time. Partly because I have unbloggable stuff going on all around me, and partly because evidentially heart disease isn't enough and God thought that a really funny joke would be to give me seizures too. So I've been in the hospital and then comatose on the most horrible drug you could possibly imagine. But I tossed the drug, and I'm feeling human again, so I thought I'd come and tell you what I"ve been working on.

As some of you know, I'm an educational advocate, person that helps parents negotiate with school systems that are reluctant to give out 504s and IEPs to deserving special needs kids. I attend IEP meetings and challenge the school officials when they lie and make up crap, basically.

As the country settles itself into a nice depressing recession, school budgets have been cut to the bone and beyond. Teachers are let go, programs are cut, classes grow larger, and school systems do everything they can to provide "the least restrictive environment" which is educationese for doing absolutely jack shit. Schools do not want to pay for a proper 'free and appropriate education (FAPE)' for kids that they can shove into the back of a classroom, deny any special aid, and then shake their heads in dismay and claim that the kid is making bad choices and is manipulative instead of offering help.

What used to be bad when my kids were in school has turned into abysmal. It's almost comical to see school IEP teams go around and around the fact that yes, the child has a problem that falls under special ed, but that problem does not affect the kids schooling. I know, hard to believe, but I see it over and over and over again. And every time I see it, I know I'm going to be ending the meeting with "Thank you very much. We'll be talking to the State Board of Education to decide whether or not we want to go with mediation or a full law suit."  In every single case the school reps do this shrug and say, "do what you have to" and then a day or two passes and they start phoning the parents with all these lame ideas of how to fix a problem that they let fester for 6 or 8 or even 10 years. It's disgraceful.

Right now I'm working with two new clients in two different school districts. One is the Boston Public Schools and they were nice and helpful but couldn't offer my client anything other than the suggestion that we change schools or get DCF involved so she could get the residential setting she so desperately needs. I'm sorry to say that after 4 different people, including the kid's psychiatrist and two mandated reporters called DCF to file a 51a for the parent, DCF did absolutely nothing. No investigation whatsoever. What the child is doing is unbloggable, but if it were your child you would be BEGGING for help. Help from any and all corners.

The other kid is at a fairly suburban/rural school outside Boston. The school is fairly new and is used as a 'model school' for communities in MA looking to build a new school. The inside of the building is spotless. The floors are a pearl gray tile. The walls are cement block painted shiny white. There is NOTHING on the walls. No murals, pictures, artwork, trophies. So as you walk down the hall it feels more like a hospital than a school. The only thing of the walls are 5 papers taped onto the glass window of the front office. The papers are the rap sheets for the 5 level three sex offenders in this small town.

We went into the gorgeous conference room in the guidance center, and sat down for one of the more contentious meetings I've ever been in. The school officials were adamant that although they acknowledged this kid had both health and emotional disabilities, was failing every single class, and was truant to school almost every day, his disabilities had no bearing whatsoever on his behavior and attendance. Um, REALLY? For two hours we argued and it was a complete waste of energy. They would not budge.

So we went to the State Board of Education and reported the school for non-compliance and started yet another law suit.

When I started doing this I used to get so upset and angry that the schools could behave like this. But now I see that it's a business just like any other business. They have a budget that gets cut back year after year, and within that budget they have to educate all the kids who access the schools. By refusing to acknowledge giftedness, they can ignore providing any gifted programming in MA. But we have federal and state laws that make it clear that schools have to provide special education to disabled kids, so the schools have figured out a way to get out of educating disabled kids. First they use mainstreaming, and when that fails, they put the kid in the learning center. When that fails and the parents demand an IEP they'll just come up with ways to show that the kid doesn't need an IEP, even if he's failing every single class. Because failure is a choice these days. A choice made by manipulative kids that make bad choices all the time. Choices that have nothing to do with bad self esteem, depression, bipolar disorder and ADHD. Nope, it's just another bad choice.

Well guess what? By refusing to provide special ed or an IEP, the schools have made a very bad choice. They have discriminated against disabled kids, kids they admit are disabled. And that goes against 504, an anti-discrimination federal law. Ooops!

When schools fail like this. parents have a right to find counsel and sue the district. And I encourage them to do so because the districts aren't honest and think they can get away by tossing kids to the side of the road. Most parents follow what the school says because they are the "experts" but the truth is, they aren't experts and they will skirt and break laws and flaunt non compliance as much as they can get away with.

Individually, most people who work in our schools as teachers and support staff want to help kids. But when the district is strapped for cash and the superintendent lays down the law to the principals not to give out any special ed, especially out of district placements regardless of what it does to the kids, well we have a serious problem across the country. A problem that must be addressed because our most vulnerable and fragile students are being left behind.

Extra Responsibilities

This is Ora reporting for our dear Margalit, who once again has taken a turn for the worse and is in the hospital.  Yuk!!

So Ora has extra responsibilities.  Why?  Because I am Margalit's health care proxy.  And by the way, everyone is really worried about the Boy and the Girl.

What? You don't have a health care proxy?

You simply must take care of this at once- especially if you are single.  A spouse is assumed to be able to make medical decisions for you in cases of emergency, but what if you don't have a spouse (or worse, you do but you don't want him/her making your medical decisions!)

It's a simple form.  Margalit and I did ours through a lawyer, but you can easily download a copy for your state off of the web and get it signed and notarized.  Make sure that you tell the person you've picked what you've done, because they don't have to sign the form.

But in Margalit's case, the hospital (her standard one) was very concerned about the Boy since he was just recently released from a hospitalization to change his meds and we are all worried that he won't take the meds and won't go to his day program (he's started down that road already).

And, of course, the girl is very upset too.

And poor Ora is trying to manage all the stuff going on in her life, run to the hospital every day, check on the Boy and the Girl and juggle calls to and from the hospital. 

Rosie, though, always comes through in an emergency.  She received the first phone call from the hospital looking for me and gave them my cell number.  She offered to give up going to one of her drivers' ed classes to ease up on running around time.

The first night it seemed on the dire side for Margalit, but she is much better now.  The seizure didn't cause too many lasting effects- but she needed to be in the hospital anyway to deal with her congestive heart failure.  I think that she'll be there for a while.

Meanwhile, Ora is trying to juggle better.

When you can't predict the problem

My son has a friend with Aspergers. He has other problems too, but Aspergers is the one that is blamed for his behavior when it leans perilously over the edge of normality. Since this friend T is over 19 years old, he doesn't recieve any services for his issues because our state has cut mental health care to the bone and beyond. As is, Department of Mental Health? Gone.

Anyhow, yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from T's mom, and she was not a happy camper. Seems T has stolen her checkbook and wrote out a bunch of checks he tried to cash. And he convinced my daughter and her boyfriend to drive him into the "ghetto" to various western union stores to try and cash said checks. Now the Mom didn't know about the driving part. She had no clue as to how her son went all over Cambridge and Boston when she started investigating. And she called me because T threw my son under the bus and blamed him for the whole thing.

Except, my son is dysgraphic and doesn't know cursive. He can't even sign his OWN signature, never mind make out a check. I asked about the handwriting and she said that T implied that my daughter had written out the checks. But she can't STAND T and she isn't a moron and knows about banking. No way would she have taken part in this.

Am I ticked that this kid blamed both of my kids for this crime? Well, yes, but he has apergers and a lot of his issues are not understanding rules and regulations. Which is why he is NOT allowed on our property anymore. No way would I let him in the house.

After talking at length to both of my kids, I got the whole story. Of course, my son lied for his friend, but when confronted with what his sister said, he came clean. And now he's ticked off at T (thank goodness) and realizes that T isn't a good friend. So there is that!

But what I got out of this whole experience was how sad this poor mom was. She knows her kid is in trouble and yet there is nothing she can do about it because help costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and only Dr Phil can afford it. That's why those families go on his show and bare their souls. I honestly don't know when it became OK to just stop caring for our mentally ill chilcfen. Oh, I"m lying. I do know. Ronald Reagan decided that government didn't need to care for the mentally ill anymore. His government decided that families should take care of thes children, except it's just too hard. To live in conflict every day of your life his so stressful, and as your kids get older thay also get more creative about self-medicating. Not a good situation.

I wish I could help T's mom, but the truth is, my hands are so full with my own son, currently in the hospital again, that I can't really reach out to her. If I could, I would. 

Catching up with life

I haven't posted here for a long time. It's not due to anything outrageous or frightening. In fact, it's due to the basic situation of our collective lives here in Margalitaville that have not changed much. The girl has finished all her college applications at long last, and is working hard in school to get good grades for her last semester there. We're about to order her cap and gown, and I'm working on finding as many local scholarships for her to apply to, while I finish up the big applications.

Her brother still does nothing but sleep all day, but he has agreed to do some stuff to alleviate his poor situation soon. It's not going to be an easy fix, but for a while he'll at least be working toward a goal instead of sleeping his life away.

I'm pretty healthy considering the 7 week hospital stay, and everyone seems to be pleased with my ability to stay OUT of the hospital right now. I'm doing the best I can, but it sure isn't easy and I spend way too much time dealing with health-care for my own taste. At the new year I was switched to a new health care insurance company by Medicare, and that has proven totally disastrous. I've never seen a major American corporation that  cannot solve any problems so they just ignore them. I had to go as far as the insurance commissioner to get my prescription for my test strips and needles. Either I'm the only diabetic that CIGNA has ever dealt with, or they are collective morons, because they have been trying to fill this prescription for TWO MONTHS and still do not have it right. TWO MONTHS to send me a freaking box of needles that can ONLY be used for an insulin pen and test strips for a glucose monitor. How hard is this? Evidentially way too hard. They make Dell customer service look like a rapid response team of experts, and we all know about Dell!

We have experienced boyfriend breakups and finding new love, and girlfriend rethinking and also finding new love. While I'm quite fond of the new boyfriend, who is a great kid, I'm a bit less thrilled about the girlfriend. She's nice enough, But you know how moms always hope for something better when it comes to their son's friends. I can't help it, I see him with someone a little less goth and a little more kempt. So sue me!

The girl has gone through a boyfriend that I couldn't stand, and I made it two years and was still polite to him up to the end. But I gotta admit, I'm glad he's gone. This new guy is already well established in college, he's smart and funny and an overall nice kid. I see him as a vast improvement over the last guy, and so dies she. She's so much happier with the new guy.

But the Boy's girlfriend is needy and a bit overprotected by her mom. He told me recently that girlfriend was way too high maintenance for him, which totally cracked me up because he is the most high maintenance person EVER. Bar none. So that was really hilarious.

As soon as school is over we're moving out of this city and someplace markedly cheaper. We have our eyes on a couple of cities with better weather and better costs, and that will make things so much easier for us. I mean, disposable income! Not having to count every penny. Not having to say "no" all the time. We'll still be poor, but compared to right now, it will be so much easier on us all.

Ring

Why do teenagers think nothing of calling our landline at 1:11 am? Or 2:03 am? Or 3:52 am. On a weekday. Do they live in barns? Do they not know that calling a landline at that hour will wake up the entire house and get me screaming "What moron is calling at this hour?" as my kids rush for the phone.

You see, the issue is complicated. We live in a house that was wired by an idiot savant in a bad mood. We have hardly any outlets in the entire house. And what we lack in outlets, we starve for phone outlets. We have a grand total of TWO in the entire house. Yup, two. One in the kitchen downstairs, one in my bedroom upstairs. So the phone recharger is always right by me at night, and the phone is on the charger at night. So when it rings, it wakes me up no matter what. 

Which means, of course, that I'm hysterical almost every night when someone calls. Many times it's friends of The Boy's who are in college and forget that the real world sleeps. At night. Soundly. But The Girl's friends call as well. The part of all this that annoys me the most is when the kids actually talk to the caller. Believe me, if you called me at 3 am, I'd be letting you know how much I hated you for waking me up.

While I'm on the subject of the phone, the Girl has a friend named Andy who is older than she is, and graduated from high school several years ago. This kid calls in the middle of the day for her and can't seem to get it through his head that she goes to school. During the day. Every day. Every time he calls I give him the hardest time but he never learns. When I complain to her about Andy, she tells me how dumb he is. No shit, Sherlock.

Have I mentioned how much I despise the telephone?

It's a Hanukah Miracle!

One of the things that drives me utterly to despair about my own teenagers is their reluctance to try anything they think they can't accomplish, Or to try anything that might be dirty, interrupt their texting, or in any way disrupt their precious social lives. Sigh.

We have a cantankerous (read cheap) garbage disposal in our kitchen. If you look at the darn thing cross-eyed, it decides it doesn't want to work and gives out the hummmmm from death. I can fix it in less than 5 minutes flat, regardless of what piece of silverware is stuck down there, but my children? Oh my GAWD, they think this is a job worse than gravedigger. You would not believe the caterwauling and excuses for them never fixing the thing.

But since my return from 7 weeks in the hospital, I just don't have the strength right now to fix the disposal, so at the first sign of a clog I ask my son to maybe tear himself away from XBox Live, get the special allen wrench, and get under the sink. Next thing I know, he's gone for the day. I guess cleaning out the disposal isn't worth tonight's Hanukah present, which means two nights in a row he missed getting his only present. Oh well.

But that does not mean that I'm just going to sit and let the disposal fester? Nope, I call in the backup and ask my daughter to do it. The look of horror on her face was priceless. And the excuses? Almost too creative.

"It's disgusting. There's mold under there (there isn't mold, there is detritus that comes from keeping everything including the kitchen sink down there) and I'm not touching it."

I'm not sure when my daughter turned into a princess, but we don't DO that kind of girly behavior in this house. Uh huh.

I tell her where the allen wrench is, and she goes all ballistic on me because it means touching cleaning supplies stored under the sink, and those are "disgusting" and "dirty" and "gross." She goes running up the back stairs, Itouch binging on the way up. I drag her down and hand her the allen wrench, which I have plucked from the cleaning supplies miraculously without blowing up or disintegrating!  Glaring at me, she pulls on surgical gloves (don't even ask) to protect her precious hands from all that grossness. Sticking her hand up under the sink, she goes searching for the hole in which to place the allen wrench,

I suggest looking at what she's doing, which set off another barrage of verbal insults going my way because "I act like I know how to do it".

I pull myself away from the scene and play with the kitten on the stairs. After she hears I am no longer engaging in her complaint fest she gets to work and fixes the disposal in about 2 minutes.

It's a Hanukah Miracle!

I praise her and remind her that she CAN do things like this if she only would calm down and listen to directions,

She's already on the phone and Itouch making plans to leave for the evening. And she's gone in less than 10 minutes.

But the disposal works, which is all I wanted anyhow. Except for a could of triple A batteries so I can fix the remote control!

Margalit Update

Our dear Margalit is a sick little kitty.  She was in the hospital for a month, originally to have a colonoscopy done!!! But she finally got sprung from jail  the hospital (although one set of docs wanted to keep her there!)  (And unfortunately, she ended up BACK in the hospital with a major infection.  I couldn't wonder where she might have gotten that! (No duh, hospitals aren't a good place to be in!)

So I'm sending a bouquet of best wishes to M and hope that you will do the same.

So she came home to a disgustingly filthy house.  Well, let M tell you in her own words.

Let me ask you a question. Does your kid reek of dirty feet? Have you found a cure that doesn't include bathing? Yeah, me neither. My kid is the stinkiest kid in the world and he can't smell himself so he insists that he doesn't stink. He does. Badly. Like decomposing flesh.

Well howdy! I got home yesterday and I will admit it up front right away, things are tough. The Boy's therapist, who happens to have a few issues of her own, thought it was a good idea to call DCFS on us the day before I got home. Nobody, in a full month of me being gone, even considered it, but the second she found out that the kids were not, according to her, well supervised, she had to butt in. I was pretty pissed off, and they haven't closed the case yet even though I am home. Next week the case worker will come out to talk to me. She's already come to check on the kids, and of course her big complaint was how filthy the house was.

Well duh! Of course it's going to be filthy. My home health care cleanedr isn't allowed to clean when I'm not there and so nobody had cleaned the house in a month. A month when two teens who aren't the swiftest boats in the river when it comes to cleaning to begin with, are living there alone. Plus, we have no working vacuum and the kids left the broom on the front porch, that seems to walked off by themselves. My floors are so dirty I'm afraid to walk barefoot at all. 

But things are on the upswing, the Boy decided on his own that he wants to start college in January, and he's actually taking actions to make it happens! I know that most people thought I was nuts to wait it out, but I know him  like a book and he's not going to do anything until he's good and ready, no matter how much I beg or plead.

In addition he went down the street to a store he has been dying to work for and filled out an application. But he thought the application wouldn't be enough so he wrote a bit of an essay In His Own Handwriting on why he would be a good person to hire and why he has wanted to work there since he was a little kid. He analyzed the inventory, he worked hard on this, and now he's ready to hand back the invitation bright and early tomorrow morning! 

The Girl got strep and a small but potent flu that was questionable for H1N1. A friend of mine took her to the pediatrician, picked up prescriptions for her, and bought her a big vat of chicken soup and a large carton of ice cream. Most of my friends came over to check on her, and she was on the mend by last weekend. She only missed 4 days of school. But they were end of term days, and she has some work to make up, including finishing up a wire sculpture and taking a science quiz. The teachers were very accomodating since hundreds of kids were out with either strep or the flu.

She's been writing a term paper on Hamlet. Let me just say that this is not fun. Or cheery. Everybody Dies should be the subtitle.

Me, I"m OK. It's a long involved tale of woe about my health, and I don't want to burden anyone with it. Accept that everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

And how are things with you?

A Useful Kid to have around

Margalit is still being  held hostage by the big Boston hospital that she checked into last week to undergo a simple procedure.  Margalit should know that NOTHING is simple regarding her body, but especially that, if she drives herself to the hospital- she will ALWAYS be there MUCH longer than expected.  This has happened often enough to be a tried and true rule.

But she is still checking up on The Boy and The Girl, along with a host of other adults.

But in Ora's world, a disaster happened.  The TV decided to stop working.  But not so completely that you know that the TV died, no this is more complicated.  Part of the input via the cable (FIOS) works, (you can see the channel guide) but you can't watch anything on TV or worse, anything that was stored on the DVR!!!  

The TV showed something like this, but with different colors!!

So Margalit's Boy is a cabling guru.  He came over to take a look at the 2 loose cables hanging out and see if anything could be done.

But alas, nothing is easy in Ora's world and the Boy couldn't figure it out- not even after looking at the manual!!!  (And the other TV in the house, also on FIOS and DVR, works just fine!)

So we know that it's NOT the main router coming into the house.

So we descended into the dread world of Verizon customer support.

But once we actually got to a real-live (as opposed to computer response) person, things got better.  The Boy and the voice talked cable this and HDMI that and coax and....... And understood each other.  And made Ora's TV all better.

It turns out that Ora's cable box wanted a little vacation, just like Ora had last week and it needed to have its cables pulled and reset and whatever.

So all's well that ends well.  The Boy got a few bucks for 1/2 hours work, Ora got a working TV and the Boy is signed up as the resident TV geek- and everyone is happy (even Margalit from her hostage hospital bed).

Home Alone

Margalit's kids are home alone.  Margalit is back in the hospital to try to figure out why she keeps having to go into the hospital.  Of course, what was supposed to have been 2 days at a major Boston hospital has now been extended to 8-9 days.  But the Boy and the Girl have been by themselves, with drop ins from lots of adults checking on them.

Ora can report that the house had not been destroyed and that the kids were not fighting with each other- although we won't talk about the pile of dirty dishes in the sink!

Even though Margalit's kids drive her absolutely crazy, they seem to have risen to the unfortunately more frequent occasion and are growing up.  Wow.

Hopefully, she'll be released soon, with some answers.  She is okay, but everything is just taking lots longer than it should.  And while Margalit is luxuriating in the spa known as Brigham & Womens, she has had more than her share of bloggable moments, mostly centered on the elderly roommates that she has had to endure.  It seems that if you are sick and old in the Boston area, you get a free pass to yell at any nurse or aide for any reason, preferably in a language other than English.  Regardless of what your original language is the ability to understand simple compounds in English is beyond the capabilities of her roommates.  The best was the Portuguese lady who didn't know that you had to push a button to answer the phone!  Margalit will hopefully be back at full strength in the coming weeks.  But meanwhile, the Boy and the Girl will continue to do her proud as they show their independence.