Disabling the disabled

I have to get on my soapbox for a moment.

I have a brother who is deaf. He's older than me by a year. He communicates 100% through sign language. He does have some limitations due to lack of understanding abstract things. He wasn't born deaf. He was born 3 months premature and acquired an infection that nearly took his life. The medicine to save his life is what took his hearing. Perhaps the prematurity or the medicine or the infection played into his ability to understand or not understand things. Don't know. Anyway...

My brother has a HUGE heart. He genuinely cares about people. He always wants to help. It makes him feel good about himself. When he works he works hard. He will do whatever job is placed before him if it is within his ability to perform. In the past he worked for a trucking company. He helped the guys who repaired the trucks and trailers that came in damaged (accidents etc..). He pretty much kept the shop in order and brought equipment to the guys when they needed something. . . .

My brother is single. He's super shy.. no... make that SUPER SHY when it comes to girls. He likes girls but has absolutely no clue how to go about being a friend to one let alone actually date one.

One day... Valentines Day... he bought a teddy bear and some candy for a girl.... who worked at the same company.... He put the gifts on her car in the parking lot... She went out and saw them.. freaked out and my brother got fired for... get this ... Sexual Harassment. He received unemployment payments and was sued and forced to return the money do to the "conditions" he was fired.

Fast forward to ... oh.. this week. He's been working at a couple of car dealerships in Phoenix. He cleans up the cars and gets them ready for customers when they are purchased. He moves the cars around the lot whenever needed. About a year ago the dealership went bankrupt and was bought out by another company out of Florida. Everyone basically was fired and re-hired by the new company when the change over happened. Restarted all the vacation time, health coverage (aka - no one had any for 3 months) etc.. The dealership said that they really like my brother. Said he was a nice and hard working guy but they just didn't have a lot of work for him at that dealership. Rather than firing him they sent him to work at a sister-dealership in a neighboring city (Scottsdale). He worked there for a couple of weeks then they passed him back to the first location (same lame excuse). He was batted back and forth for several weeks. No one wanting to give him work but no one willing to fire him so he could look for a new job (they would have to pay unemployment to him if they out right fired him).

. . . . Well, it was one of the times he was working at the dealership in Scottsdale that he was in the parking lot heading for his car to go home. He saw a co-worker from the dealership in the parking lot... a GIRL . . . He waved "bye" to her and got in his car to head home. Tuesday (his day off work) my mom gets a phone call from his boss saying that he has been fired because he violated some company code. Turns out another claim of "sexual harassment". The girl claims that he followed her to her house. My brother says that all he did was wave to her, that he never went to her house. They both had to travel the same path to the same highway. If they both left the dealership at the same time it would appear that he might be following her when in fact he was simply going to the same highway.

My mom has decided to not fight this. My brother communicates 100% through sign language. He can get by at work with people acting out what they want him to do. When someone is saying "I'm not interested in dating you... please leave me alone" they don't usually have an interpreter in their hip pocket. Both times no one went through an interpreter to explain the situation to him. He was just told "you're fired" after he did something he didn't know was wrong.

Makes me want to scream!!!!

What is wrong with some people?!?! If he had been let go when there wasn't anything for him to do he could have been compensated while he looked for a new job. Instead they have to play ping-pong with him until he is nearly forced to quit... or they can fire him for something stupid.

I use to work at a grape vineyard where I was the only young white girl within a 20 mile radius. I was in a minority of those who spoke English even though this was in Arizona. Numerous times while working there I was not just asked out but given a description of what the guy wanted to do with me on this "date". I never screamed Sexual Harassment because I knew these people were here because they needed a job... and I knew that if things REALLY got bad I had a "protector" on the property I could go talk to if necessary. No one ever touched me... it was all talk.

I don't understand why these girls freak out when my brother acts nice to them. I know he can't communicate with them in the same language... that doesn't mean they need to get him fired for him buying them a teddy bear and candy ... or simply waving good bye at the end of the day. Geesh!!!!

Hopefully he will be starting a new job at a place where they have several deaf people working there and are in the process of hiring 3 more this next week. I can't wait to hear the good news. If he really gets the job it will be the first time will have worked at a place where there are others there just like him.

I love my brother and his big soft heart. I hope that some day he can meet someone who will appreciate it and not take advantage of him.

Speed Bump

Well... Things don't always go as we plan. Would it be weird to hold a funeral for a piece of exercise equipment?

Tonight, while getting in my workout on the elliptical machine, it started making a very loud bump noise every time the wheel (in the back) was at the bottom of the rotation. I tried to baby it along while attempting to get some exercise... in the end it died anyway. It looked like it spilled its guts out on the floor. My husband has yet to open it up all the way, but looking through the part that fell off he believes that the rear axle broke. If we can fix it ourselves we can keep using it. If we can't fix it, we are out of an awesome exercise machine. We certainly can't afford a new one... doubt we can afford to get this one fixed (even doing it ourselves). We bought it Valentines Day 2008. We have used it a TON. So sad.

Can we please have a moment of silence for my favorite torture device?

Thank you. . .

Shhhh don't tell my fat cells that the machine is dead. They might hear you. I want to keep them on edge.

Countdown to 40

Today is Saturday October 8th. Lately I have had a LOT on my mind. In 41 days I will be 40.

I've always had goals in my mind that I would achieve by the time that date arrived:

1 - Be done having kids.
2 - Get my body back into the best shape possible.
3 - Be doing what I want to do for the rest of my life (job wise)
4 - Be financially stable and able to start having fun.

There are others but they are more "bucket list" type things. Not necessarily things that had to happen by a specific date.

How am I doing on my goals?
1 - As far as I know we're done. Feels right. I always wanted 1 more but finances and health have put up some major road blocks preventing any more additions to our family.

2 - Working HARD on this one. I've lost 25 pounds this year so far. I have been on a plateau for the past 2 weeks but have been hitting new all time lows again this week. How am I doing it? Big one is using the "livestrong.com" website helped me be MUCH more aware of calorie intake. I find that it's not hard for me to live on 900 - 1,500 calories a day. Sometimes I get majorly hungry and I eat but just watch portion sizes. Eating small amounts more frequently. I drink a large glass of water (my tumbler cups can hold 16oz or more of water) about 10 min before I eat. I feel full MUCH faster than when I forget to do this. I also have been using our elliptical machine for at least 1 hour 3 days a week. I'm going to be charting my progress on another post.

3 - This is still sort-of on hold due to the fact that I still have a 2 year old at home. I want to get back into the film industry. I LOVE the type of personalities film draws. Everyone is super creative and slightly crazy... or is it slightly creative and super crazy? I've recently helped out with rotoscoping on some of my husband's film projects. I miss being on set though. The "hurry up and wait" environment. I also love photography. I'm saving up for a Canon 5D (my current dream camera). It will be a LONG time time before that goal is met but I have to have something to aim for.

4 - This goal is the one impacting 2 of the 3 goals above. Our finances have been hit so hard lately that my hands are severely tied. We're squeaking by only with help. I have become a genius at feeding and taking care of a family of 7 on what we bring in every month. I should have a master's degree in frugality by now.

At the moment... The one goal that I can have the biggest influence on is #2 - my fitness level. I will be posting updates on that progress in another section of this blog. I'm pretty motivated and excited.

Update at last . . .

I find myself so wrapped up in the little here and there posts on facebook that I have all but forgotten my precious blog. My blog... where I get to project a little bit more of "me" than is possible on FB.

While our lives continue to be plagued with financial stress - actually more so than I ever thought I would ever be able to endure - I do have some happy-ish developments. Since I quit nursing my daughter, my body is finally releasing much of the weight that has been my heavy companion all these years. I have lost more than what I gained with the last pregnancy. I think the last time I was this weight was around 2004 ( between "Power Ranger" and "Tinker Bell"). I've dropped about 20 pounds in the past 2 months. I should be ecstatic... why would I call this "happy-ish" developments? Well, I have noticed a sudden recurrence of symptoms I had when we left our last house. It made me sick... VERY sick. I have recently found myself stuttering, losing muscle strength for a few seconds, headaches, extreme exhaustion, fatigue, confusion, disorientation, lack of desire to do anything etc... Our old house suffered from mold. I was having major neurological problems towards the end. It was during an extended vacation (11 + days) that I realized that my symptoms were lightening up (while away from home). About a month after moving to this "new" house I began to feel human once again. Why are my symptoms suddenly returning now? While laying on the sofa, holding my head and covering my ears in an attempt to calm the rising throbbing pain in my head the thought hit me.... I'm losing fat.... the same fat that has encased and protected me from the toxins that made me ill for all those years. The fat was now being used to give me energy but it was also releasing my greatest enemy.

I am more determined to push onward and lose the remainder of the weight. In 20 more pounds I would be at my goal - what I weighed at my wedding... the same I weighed in high school. Hopefully I can lose all the nasty toxins that are stored within the fat that remains. This is a side effect I was unaware to be on the look out for.

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4 out of my 5 kids are now in school. This is the last year that everyone will be in elementary school. Next year the twins move on to Jr. High. Time is just flying by faster and faster. I don't want to miss anything. I really enjoy these kids.

I need to count up just how much reading I did over the summer. It was quite an impressive amount.
5 out of the 6 books in the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series. 2,142 pages
Catching Fire and Mockingjay (hunger games series) 781 pages
Beyonders (Mull) 454 pages
Twilight series (4 books) 2,446 pages (read series in 2 1/2 weeks)
Candy Shop War (Mull) 409 pages
The Last Olympian (Riordan) 381 pages

These are all I can remember reading. There might have been others.
14 Books - 6,613 pages
All this from a girl who barely cracked open a book throughout all of high school and college. I guess I'm using reading as my escape from life. It never fails to crack me up... I went from cringing from the tiniest of books to purposefully seeking out those with the fattest spines so I have a lot to read. I picked the Inkheart series based on the InkDeath book - 683 pages.

Jodi Benson - Ariel - Little Mermaid

I love to see who does the voices behind some of my favorite cartoon charters. Here is a little treat for you. This is a video of Jodi Benson singing "Part of your World". She does the voice of Ariel in Disney's "The Little Mermaid".




Here is a video of the original recording for the movie (in studio).

The Ultimate "Potty Dance"

Teaching old dogs to like new tricks

Ok.... I have to admit. I am very slow to warm up to new technology. I wait until something has been around a few years before I reluctantly join the throng. For example: When CD's first came on the scene. My brother came home after listening to a new tech thing called a Compact Disc on a friend's new stereo system. He raved on and on about how clear the sound was. He could even hear the singer take a breath. How cool is that? He showed me what they look like. My thought was, "It'll never last. I like my tapes." HA!

When the internet fist came on the scene... I thought it was a waste of time. Granted... there wasn't much to do at first. All you could do was write TONS of text. Computers that could display pictures hadn't been invented yet. My friend got me into something called "Telnetting". I did it at the local college where I was going at the time and everything was ok. Then I went out of state to a large university. I continued to stay in contact with my friends in our little telnet world. During one of my sessions one of the watch dogs from campus came barging into the room and demanded to know who was wasting computer lab time telnetting... claimed it was against the rules and proceeded to stare at everyone's screens. I was the "evil one" and he didn't see it for some reason. Needless to say, he scared me to death and I never joined my friends back home in our little self made haven again.

Jump about 5 years later and my 16 year old sister-in-law was living with us. She had homework to do and needed to access the internet to do so. At this point the only stories I had heard about the internet were all about viruses. I was terrified to venture into that unknown realm. The only virus I knew about were the kind that made you have a fever, major body aches and you just wanted to crawl under a rock and hide until further notice. I heard all about how the internet viruses took over your computer, hackers stole everything on your computer and left you with nothing but a burning blank harddrive. I couldn't see any use for the internet.

So.... About 2 years ago I was introduced to a thing called Facebook. I had already seen something called "Myspace". I thought it was ugly and very hard to read. It listed TONS of nonsense personal information that I didn't want to know about others and I didn't want others to know about me. I never signed up. So a friend is showing me his facebook "wall". Don't know why they call it a wall but there it is. I thought it was a jumbled mess and I didn't know how he could tell who was saying what. Why would anyone want to have that much information coming at them all day.

So... now I have my own Facebook account. I was a little shy to let anyone know I was there at first. I did not put my maiden name on because "that was then and this is now". I hooked up with a bunch of my current local friends and family. I started to get into the whole facebook family thing. One day I wondered what would happen if I put in my maiden name. I was immediately found by a few people from church when I was a kid (granted I had just seen several of them a few months earlier at my dad's funeral. I was fresh in their minds and easy to find). Then I added my high school and -BAM! A few more long lost friends added to my current world. It's strange to combine my life "back then" to my life today. It's really neat to see how my old friends are doing. I get to see who they settled down with and how cute their kids are. It's also fun to see how their personalities panned out as an adult and what type of job they have chosen.

Thanks to Facebook I have been able to hook up with people I have been eager to see how they're doing but did not know how to contact them. I already have plans to make cookies with a former roommate and meet a sister-like friend at a favorite book author's latest book release in a few months. I can't wait!!!

I'm a stay at home mom. I help out my husband with his job where and when I can. I recently gained some basic skills in roto and keying with Primatte on a very labor intensive film FX project. I live in the dungeon of the Tardis. I don't get out and meet very many people. My world consists mainly of people at church, my kid's school teachers, the moms in my daughter's neighborhood preschool group and the bill collectors who seem to like calling us when they want something. Because of Facebook I now have some friends from when I was a teenager, when I was single and in college and a few others I have met along the way.

My world has been opened up because of technology that I was reluctant to grab onto at first introduction. I can't live without my internet now. The medical research my husband and I have been able to do alone make it worth every penny. I love to price shop online before I go out and buy something. Saving me traveling time and money. I print out my coupons, read product reviews (to avoid lemons) and catch up on the lives of family and friends... all while wearing my pj's if I want. I now use the internet to slowly earn a little extra cash (watching ads etc..) so I can afford a few extra's that I would otherwise not be able to ever purchase (Wii).

I don't know if I will ever change. I think I will always drag my feet. I am usually glad I did make the change after it's done. I'm both scared and excited to see what's around the next corner.