Between being busy and stressed I haven't had much time to do much of anything. I am on my final slide for classes this semester and due t procrastination issues I have a lot to do in the next two weeks.
Right now I am really struggling........
The social security lady had me in tears yesterday. My mom is not receiving her social security. It is still going to her old nursing home in TX. We called social security when my mom got here and the person who helped us on the phone said that the address change and everything would be taken care of.
Six weeks later I realized that I needed a letter from them stating how much she makes so I called. The very rude lady wouldn't talk to either of us because she said we weren't the payee. She said that the payee would have to send in a form. So I call the nursing home.....for days trying to reach the financial lady. Finally I get in touch with someone in administration and they say that there is no form for them to send in, that the person from social security is wrong.
So I call social security back and they ask my mom a lot of questions to identify herself. She was able to give them her SSN, mothers maiden name, birthdate and such. However, when they asked for the address of the nursing home my mom had no idea so they refused to help us in any way.
Why don't we just go in? My mom has no photo ID, no social security card and no birth certificate. I ordered her a new birth certificate but you need a photo ID to get a social security card. With no photo ID do you think they will talk with us? If I can't get her on Medicaid soon I will burn out. I am the only one who changes Depends in the house so my time away from home is very restricted.
She is not receiving any money so we are paying for all her medications, Depends, clothing and other hygiene items. Affording someone to come in and watch her for $10 and up/hour is not in the budget. John is in training which means he is making about a fourth of what he was making at his last job. It is not worth it for me to get a job, the cost would be way too high.
So, no money, no Medicaid either. Then another concern is our foster care license. My mom needs fingerprinting....and they require a photo ID. If we don't get her fingerprinted by June they will revoke our license which means they will remove the 3 foster kids. So, how do you get a photo ID with only a birth certificate? I know that South Carolina won't issue her a state card without one. OK, can you feel the stress....and frustration. At finals time. Are you totally confused yet?!
Say a caregivers prayer for me, I am burning out and fading fast.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Happy Easter
Happy Easter from our family to yours....
One of my blessing........
(Shared a family picture for Easter. Pray that sometime soon I can post it permanently)
Our church had breakfast this morning....it was a bring your own chair event.
Kids at the feeding trough.
One of my blessing........
Friday, April 6, 2012
Falling Apart
It seems like our house continues to fall apart. I am not sure what it is.
Our KitchenAid dishwasher is about to go to the dump. In February it had it's first birthday so KitchenAid will no longer service it. It has had the top rack replaced twice, the control panel, water pump and door latch were also replaced. The top rack is in pieces again and KitchenAid says "sorry about your loss". So tonight we went out and bought a new dishwasher and bought a 5 year service plan through Lowe's . We don't normally buy service plans because it should last 5 years, obviously that is no longer true. We didn't buy a KitchenAid or a Whirlpool because they both have the same rack system that kept breaking on us. We got a Samsung where you can easily take off the top rack. It will make it easier to replace those cheap plastic wheels in the future.
Oh, and our downstairs A/C unit stopped cooling Tuesday. We can't get anyone to come out until next Monday. This unit is only 3 years old and this is the second time it had stopped cooling. At least the weather turned cool for us so we aren't sweating. But, geez, what has happened to the quality of the products we buy?
My brain is also falling apart. I remembered that I had a therapist appointment today...this morning. At least we made it on time. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy is interesting. Right now the kids are in control of playing while I build them up through positive reinforcement. Later I take the control and see how they react. It shall be interesting and I have homework. I am supposed to do this play therapy with all kids ages 8 and under in my house daily. Hmmmm....when to fit that in!
Our home got really interesting tonight when our teens mom contacted her wanting to be picked up. She had nowhere to go and no way to get there. We ended up picking her up and putting her in a hotel for the night. Yes, our life is interesting.
Because of the unexpected drama and the forgotten appointment I didn't get to do my planned activity.....getting Easter candy. I am so totally unprepared. I did have a stash of bracelets that I was going to put in the girls baskets but Larissa found them so I told her that no one would get them in their baskets. (If she finds hidden stuff she doesn't get it, she is always on the prowl for stuff, ugh) Of course the kids were in shock and asked about the Easter Bunny. I am not a huge fan of he Easter Bunny. I mean really, a huge bunny running around with Easter Eggs?! So, I told them the truth....there really isn't a huge Bunny running around with candy and such. I told them that the basket of gifts was a way of reminding everyone of what a great gift Jesus gave to us. They seemed happy with that. So, no Easter Bunny in our house! Now for the tooth fairy....because she is getting senile and forgets half the time.
How is your house holding up? Hopefully better then ours!
Our KitchenAid dishwasher is about to go to the dump. In February it had it's first birthday so KitchenAid will no longer service it. It has had the top rack replaced twice, the control panel, water pump and door latch were also replaced. The top rack is in pieces again and KitchenAid says "sorry about your loss". So tonight we went out and bought a new dishwasher and bought a 5 year service plan through Lowe's . We don't normally buy service plans because it should last 5 years, obviously that is no longer true. We didn't buy a KitchenAid or a Whirlpool because they both have the same rack system that kept breaking on us. We got a Samsung where you can easily take off the top rack. It will make it easier to replace those cheap plastic wheels in the future.
Oh, and our downstairs A/C unit stopped cooling Tuesday. We can't get anyone to come out until next Monday. This unit is only 3 years old and this is the second time it had stopped cooling. At least the weather turned cool for us so we aren't sweating. But, geez, what has happened to the quality of the products we buy?
My brain is also falling apart. I remembered that I had a therapist appointment today...this morning. At least we made it on time. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy is interesting. Right now the kids are in control of playing while I build them up through positive reinforcement. Later I take the control and see how they react. It shall be interesting and I have homework. I am supposed to do this play therapy with all kids ages 8 and under in my house daily. Hmmmm....when to fit that in!
Our home got really interesting tonight when our teens mom contacted her wanting to be picked up. She had nowhere to go and no way to get there. We ended up picking her up and putting her in a hotel for the night. Yes, our life is interesting.
Because of the unexpected drama and the forgotten appointment I didn't get to do my planned activity.....getting Easter candy. I am so totally unprepared. I did have a stash of bracelets that I was going to put in the girls baskets but Larissa found them so I told her that no one would get them in their baskets. (If she finds hidden stuff she doesn't get it, she is always on the prowl for stuff, ugh) Of course the kids were in shock and asked about the Easter Bunny. I am not a huge fan of he Easter Bunny. I mean really, a huge bunny running around with Easter Eggs?! So, I told them the truth....there really isn't a huge Bunny running around with candy and such. I told them that the basket of gifts was a way of reminding everyone of what a great gift Jesus gave to us. They seemed happy with that. So, no Easter Bunny in our house! Now for the tooth fairy....because she is getting senile and forgets half the time.
How is your house holding up? Hopefully better then ours!
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Lunch
Guess who called me yesterday and wanted to have lunch today.....
We actually had a very nice lunch. She looked very good and has a job. She is living with a friend and is sharing the bills.
She wanted to reconnect.
I had been following her through various facebook accounts and would send her a message about once a month telling her that I was here and open to a relationship.
Say a prayer for us!
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
The Big Random Post
I shop online for obvious reasons......
I purchased these salt and pepper grinders. John likes to do the sea salt that needs grinding so I got a set of grinders. I knew that one was bigger then the other. They are unique and I like them.
I am still working on the kitchen....very slowly. Yea, it is a mess.
And working on the door that was blocked in.
Sometimes I just sit and enjoy the view out my window.........while trying to ignore the fact that I have a lot of school work that needs to be done in the next 3 weeks. I don't seem to have much motivation in that area and am really struggling to finish some big projects. Heck, I haven't even started some of them. But, isn't the view great?
Here is my new gas stove top. I look forward to getting it put in....some day.
I purchased these salt and pepper grinders. John likes to do the sea salt that needs grinding so I got a set of grinders. I knew that one was bigger then the other. They are unique and I like them.
Our kitchen table was recently refinished....but already it is not big enough. I am not sure what to do about that problem. What if we decided to add another kid? Where would we put him?
I am still working on the kitchen....very slowly. Yea, it is a mess.
And working on the door that was blocked in.
Sometimes I just sit and enjoy the view out my window.........while trying to ignore the fact that I have a lot of school work that needs to be done in the next 3 weeks. I don't seem to have much motivation in that area and am really struggling to finish some big projects. Heck, I haven't even started some of them. But, isn't the view great?
Here is my new gas stove top. I look forward to getting it put in....some day.
If you come to my house you should have no problem finding the salt and pepper grinders. Yea, I didn't realize that they were that tall. Obviously I didn't read the description too well. That is fine with me, no one should complain about not finding them.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Shopping
Yesterday I went shopping with 6 kids. Yea, I was feeling a little brave and set up babysitting for my mom. Our mission was dresses for the teens and dress shoes for the 4 younger kids.
JCPenney's was an adventure. Sarah says there was an older couple that seemed to be stalking us and smiled every time they looked at us. Yea, I am sure we were entertaining. Like when Anthony yelled to me, mom Larissa is doing inappropriate things with the mannequin! She determined that although the mannequins assets looked real, they were in fact not.
The poor lady at the shoe department must have thought that my kids had never gotten new shoes before. The excitement and choices.......combined with my choice of not medicating my ADHD kids when they don't have school. They were like kids in a candy store.
Sarah, Anthony, Lily and Dimples all picked out appropriate Easter Sunday shoes. Larissa wasn't interested. She found the Sketchers Ballerina shoes. She has been wanting these for a while now and has been pestering me about them. So she didn't get dress shoes which is fine because the girl has plenty of shoes. She says that she likes NEW shoes, lots of new shoes. Have I mentioned that she is spoiled?
After driving the lady crazy in the shoe department I see why I either order shoes online or get them at Walmart. On a good note when I told the lady what size shoes I needed she seemed skeptical of my abilities and checked all the kid sizes.......ha, I was right every time. Yea, that is because I order shoes online or pick them up on my late night Walmart trips.......alone, with no kids.
After Penney's we headed to Moe's because we had worked up quite an appetite. Also, I figured that if I could get them all sitting down and eating then I could save my sanity. We do enjoy Moe's but have the typical large family issues....seating. Once we got past the 2.5 children mark we found that restaurants are not made to accomodate us. Moe's was crowded and we needed two tables. I sent out the teens to scrounge up tables while I ordered the food. The sanity break was just long enough to give me courage to head to the next destination....the pet store.
Yep, I took all the kids into the pet store and came out with none (uh, pets not kids). I believe that the guinea pigs may be a little traumatized by our visit but everyone survived. I stood strong and said no to the cute little chinchilla that Sarah wanted and the crabs.
After the pet store we went to Old Navy where I finally found a bench seat for the kids to sit on. The bench seat was a sanity saver. I was also able to sneak a few Easter items. By time we finished Old Navy we were broke and exhausted so we headed home. We did meet our objectives of dresses for the teens and shoes for the little ones so the shopping trip was a success.
JCPenney's was an adventure. Sarah says there was an older couple that seemed to be stalking us and smiled every time they looked at us. Yea, I am sure we were entertaining. Like when Anthony yelled to me, mom Larissa is doing inappropriate things with the mannequin! She determined that although the mannequins assets looked real, they were in fact not.
The poor lady at the shoe department must have thought that my kids had never gotten new shoes before. The excitement and choices.......combined with my choice of not medicating my ADHD kids when they don't have school. They were like kids in a candy store.
Sarah, Anthony, Lily and Dimples all picked out appropriate Easter Sunday shoes. Larissa wasn't interested. She found the Sketchers Ballerina shoes. She has been wanting these for a while now and has been pestering me about them. So she didn't get dress shoes which is fine because the girl has plenty of shoes. She says that she likes NEW shoes, lots of new shoes. Have I mentioned that she is spoiled?
After driving the lady crazy in the shoe department I see why I either order shoes online or get them at Walmart. On a good note when I told the lady what size shoes I needed she seemed skeptical of my abilities and checked all the kid sizes.......ha, I was right every time. Yea, that is because I order shoes online or pick them up on my late night Walmart trips.......alone, with no kids.
After Penney's we headed to Moe's because we had worked up quite an appetite. Also, I figured that if I could get them all sitting down and eating then I could save my sanity. We do enjoy Moe's but have the typical large family issues....seating. Once we got past the 2.5 children mark we found that restaurants are not made to accomodate us. Moe's was crowded and we needed two tables. I sent out the teens to scrounge up tables while I ordered the food. The sanity break was just long enough to give me courage to head to the next destination....the pet store.
Yep, I took all the kids into the pet store and came out with none (uh, pets not kids). I believe that the guinea pigs may be a little traumatized by our visit but everyone survived. I stood strong and said no to the cute little chinchilla that Sarah wanted and the crabs.
After the pet store we went to Old Navy where I finally found a bench seat for the kids to sit on. The bench seat was a sanity saver. I was also able to sneak a few Easter items. By time we finished Old Navy we were broke and exhausted so we headed home. We did meet our objectives of dresses for the teens and shoes for the little ones so the shopping trip was a success.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Fountain: Take 2
The top part of my fountain sealed but the bottom didn't. Also, the water wasn't being pumped correctly for some reason.
So after church today I took it apart. There was a crimped hose which was causing the pumping problem. I used a different sealer. It looks good tonight. Hopefully tomorrow it will still be full of water. If so then it will be one successful project done.
It is spring break for my kids....not for me! I have several large projects due this week so we will see how well that goes. Tonight I will be finishing our taxes, I almost forgot about them.
Have a great evening.
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