Jack-O-Lanterns 2017

Finally finished....  Enjoy!

Two Thumbs Up!

I got back from my annual trip to the doctor and lo and behold, I am healthy as a horse, or an ox, or whatever the expression is.  All of my numbers (cholesterol, glucose, etc.) have dropped.  The only thing I really need to do is lose about 7-10 pounds. 

However, I did end up having to make an appointment with an orthopedist to have a look at my thumb.  I say thumb, singular, but it is going to actually both.  I had previously gotten cortisone injections due to some pain in the joint, but I haven’t done it for about two years now, and had just resigned myself to the fact that I was developing arthritis or something and I would have to learn to live with it.  I told the doctor it was actually affecting how I write, and my gripping strength.  So he wanted me to go see the orthopedist and see if there is anything they can do to alleviate the pain, short of having an operation on the joint.  So I go in a couple of weeks to see just what is going on.  I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Pumpkins

No, not David S. Pumpkins... 

I am talking about the pumpkins we bought for jack-o-lanterns.  We bought them three weeks ago because all the good shaped, carving pumpkins were beginning to disappear.  I actually got them at the grocery store instead of trying to find a local pumpkin farm.  But with all the other stuff we have happening right now (Indian Invite planning, moving Kris’s dad, in addition to all the other everyday trials and tribulations of life) I had no idea how I would have time to get pumpkins carved, but I did.  This year, the jack-o-lanterns are going to be rather unspectacular.  I decided to go with pretty plain designs, just because I needed to do them quickly.  The only one that took a little bit of work was the one Alison wanted.  She always finds patterns that entail a lot of detailed carving.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the expertise to do shaving into the outer rind in order to get the detail needed, so I did my best to get one for her that I could do fast, but still had a degree of spookiness.

I got three of the four done tonight, and the remaining one was gutted and just needs to have the design carved in.  I should be able to get that done after work tomorrow, so as soon as I have it finished, I’ll post pictures of this year’s effort.

Looking Like A Warehouse

With the Indian Invite 3 weeks away, we went out this weekend to start buying supplies/concessions.  Kris volunteered to run the kitchen for concessions this year, so we have lots to get, and no place to store it until November 17^th, except our basement.  So it is beginning to look like a warehouse down there.  Cases of soda, water and Gatorade are all stacked up, and on top of those are boxes of chips, candy, and other assorted items.  I can’t wait for it to be over so that I can get the basement back.  It is getting hard to move down there.  

This Is Halloween

Kris surprised me on my birthday with tickets to the MSO (that's Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra) playing the music of The Nightmare Before Christmas at the Riverside.  Apparently we had been watching TV back in August and a commercial came on for it, and I said something about how cool it would be to see that.  I absolutely love that movie and the music.  I was a little surprised since I only had two days’ notice that we were going.  I had actually read that Danny Elfman himself was going to be conducting a show or two in NYC this Halloween and thought that would have been so cool to see, but the seeing MSO playing his music live is the next best thing.

If you aren’t familiar with Danny Elfman, the guy is a musical genius.  He was the frontman for Oingo Boingo for years, and then took to scoring television and movies.  I think he started doing it back in the mid-80’s, and is pretty much Tim Burton’s go to guy for backing music to his movies.  I am sure you have heard his music somewhere over the last 30 years in either TV or film, and if you ever look for the list of movies he has written the music for you’ll be shocked at what he has done.  How he hasn’t won an Oscar yet for best original score, I’ll never know.

So there was a large movie screen over the orchestra, like I said, they played the movie score live to the movie, with only a vocal track being played.   

You would have never known the difference.  It was perfect!  And from where we were sitting, I could see the conductor’s monitor that he was watching to make sure everyone was hitting their cues.  It was pretty cool.  This was one of the best gifts Kris and the girls have ever gotten me.  And I am glad Kris came along, because I know she is not a fan of that particular movie, but it was fun having her there to experience it with me.  I think I would definitely do something like this again, go to a live scoring of a movie by the symphony.

Finally Out

It’s official.  Kris’s dad is no longer a resident at The Arboretum.  I took a half a day of vacation so we could rent a moving truck and get all of his things moved out of his apartment, and what an ordeal!!!  I had reserved my truck from noon until 4:00.  The U-Haul rental place took forever to get the truck to me, even though I had reserved it, and had the reservation/paperwork in hand when I showed up.  So we didn’t even get there until almost 12:30.  Then we had to go see the director so Kris could sign some forms, where we learned that they would be keeping her dad’s $6000 deposit because it was a “short notice vacation” of the apartment.  Well, had we known that I would have been tempted to tell them, OK, here is our 30 day notice and we will move him out at the end of November.  Unfortunately, they never told us that when we moved him there, or when we transitioned him into the Wisconsin Family Care program, so we were sort of out of luck.  I should have expected that though, based on the fact that they wanted us to pre-pay two months in advance when we transitioned him in the first place.  And then harped about it when we did actually move him to Family Care, because as I understand it, they are not allowed to charge as much as they would if someone was paying privately.  So go figure that they would figure out a way to screw him out of more of his money.

We didn’t have a lot of stuff to move, but we had enough.  It was mainly his bed, a couch, his lift chair (which we just purchased for him coincidentally), a dresser, and a couple of end tables.  The remaining stuff was boxes of clothes and pictures.  The bed and dresser are actually very good, well-made, quality pieces.  They are probably in the neighborhood of 40 years old (probably a little older), but are still in very good shape that we may see about having refinished.

We got everything loaded up in about 4 hours, so we were out by around 5:00.  We stopped at home first to drop off a few things that we wanted to have easily on-hand in the event we needed it (such as some of his clothes) but the rest then went over to the storage locker.  We had finished up and were back to drop off the U-Haul by around 6:00.  The kid behind the counter gave me some grief about having it back late.  Gee, no kidding.  I was hoping to have everything moved within a four hour window, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.  If I had been able to get it for six hours I would have probably done that.   Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.  Thanks U-Haul (insert sarcastic voice).  I just have not had good experiences with U-Haul.  Period.  Even the one “good” experience I had turned into a not so good one because I had to drive all the way to the east side of Milwaukee to get a trailer because the local drop off place in Germantown did not have the size trailer we needed and wouldn’t have someone drive one out.  Maybe next time I should look into renting a trailer or truck from a competitor and see how that goes.

Prep Meeting

It is just under a month until the Indian Invite (actually just under 4 weeks) and we had a brief status update meeting at the high school tonight.  Everything is looking OK.  But we did find out that the team has a “store” set up with the official high school merchandising company for cheerlearing gear/spirit wear.  After looking it over, it was less than enthusiastic.  In fact I will go as far as to say it is uninspiring and generic.  I don’t know who at the high school is getting a kickback for using this place, but I would not want to wear any of that gear.

And it isn’t so much that the gear itself is bad (although I would say it is overpriced at the very least), it is the stuff that is screen printed on it.  Only a couple had the school logo (which I am not a fan of in the first place) and the rest was plain, wording; Menomonee Falls Indians.  Boring! 

Last year I remember having a problem with the gear as well in that the school didn’t want to allow us to use the official logo unless they got a cut of the revenue from it.  So I spoke to the mother that ran it last year and said, we should really look at making something specific to the cheer team, maybe come up with our own logo.  I made a few sketches, and if she was willing to take it on, I’d work on designing something cool.  But it would be something to think about.  The coaches were trying to not get involved because they didn’t want to end up getting in trouble with the administration or the booster club.  But my opinion is that if I wanted to design some shirts that said “Menomonee Falls Indians” and came up with my own logo to use, how can they stop me?  And if I wanted to wear said shirt to games or competitions, what can they do to stop me, make me take it off?  So stay tuned.  Maybe we’ll have some shirts and things to sell shortly.

Gotta Move

It’s official.  We have to move Kris’s dad.  He won’t be allowed to go back to his assisted living facility due to the care that he needs.  Actually, it isn’t so much the actual care (though what he gets there is sort of lacking in my opinion), it is the fact that he can’t help the nurses and aides in getting up, such as out of bed, or moving from his wheelchair.  He needs something called a Hoyer Lift, which they don’t have at the Arboretum.  So now we have the added stress of getting his apartment cleaned out and looking for a place to move him.

The good news is, and this was “off the record” from a social worker at the rehab facility, they would still take him there.  Apparently he would be #1 in their waiting list for a bed there.  And as we found when they tried to run him out of the Arboretum last summer, they can’t just toss him out.  We have to be satisfied that he would be moving to a safe facility that would meet his (and our) needs.  So we are hoping that since he is at the top of the list, we can stretch out his stay in the rehab wing until a long term spot opens up for him.  I think that it will mean filling out all sorts of other paperwork, since the Family Care agency we work with now is not partners with this place, but we’ll worry about that when the time comes.

Homecoming Drama

Alison’s homecoming drama went off last night fairly well.  While I wasn’t exactly happy with a couple of the friends she was going with, things went fine for the most part.  The only problem was taking pictures.  I had inadvertently flipped my focus from auto to manual so what I thought were pictures that had auto-focused turned out to be just big blurs.  Hopefully Ali will send a couple for us from her phone that her friends’ parents took.  The only real drama came from one of the parents trying to move the kids along because they had dinner reservations and it was going to take 20 minutes or so to drive there.  She made a remark about how it was time they started acting responsible.  Well that didn’t go over well with the parents of the girl to whom she said it.  We didn’t see it, but apparently there was a big of an argument that ensued because of it.

We managed to get Ali to the restaurant on time, and we hung out for a bit to give her a ride back to one of her friend’s houses to wait until they could go to the dance.  Then apparently, the nasty girl who was causing all the problems in the first place saw Alison walking in with a duffel bag of clothes (she was going to an after party at a friend’s house) and the girls asked her why she had a bag.  Ali told her she was going to a party after the dance.  The nasty one asked where.  It just so happened to be where she was going as well.  I bet it galled her to not be able to control that.

At the boy’s house afterward, the boy’s mom said something to Alison about pictures she was doing for them, or something along those lines.  I didn’t quite understand what Ali was explaining.  But then Ali said that she wasn’t with the group when they took the pictures before the dance.  When the mother asked why, Alison explained the whole ordeal, which in turn, apparently, really got her steamed.  She asked Alison if she wanted her to go and talk to this particular, nasty little girl, and Alison proved to be the bigger person.  She said, no, that’s OK, it’s over and done.

Ali did tell me that her friends were already talking about next year and making their plans together early so they don’t have to worry about this other girl “dictating” to them who could go and who couldn’t, and all the other BS that goes along with it.  So that’s the end of Homecoming 2017.  Next year will be just around the corner.

Co-Ed Pep Rally

I don’t know if this is an annual tradition at the Homecoming pep rally, but Ali went thru it last year too.  The following is this year’s effort:

2017 Coed Pep Rally from Dennis Hahn on Vimeo.

Can't Catch A Break

We found out today that even after being told by the social worker at the rehab facility that they would love to take Kris’s dad as a resident full time, this is not possible.  Kris explained it to me that the ratio of male residents and female residents wouldn’t work out.  For example, they may have an opening but since residents share rooms, it would have to be a female since they can’t have men and women sharing rooms.

It makes sense, but still, to have our hopes raised only to have them crushed yet again is getting very frustrating.  It just seems like we can’t catch a break!  So we still have to worry about whether or not he will be able to go back to the Arboretum.  It is going to depend on his therapy progress.  So I suppose we had better start planning for the chance that they say, no he can’t go back and we’ll need to find a place to move him.  Even though we have checked all the other facilities within about a 15-20 mile radius and there is nothing open.  Like I said, frustrating.

Nationals Trip

We received the list and dates of Alison’s cheer competitions for the year last week, and their qualifier for Nationals is on Dec. 2^nd.  Last year we waited until they actually received their bid in order to plan our trip to Orlando to watch.  This year we are planning ahead.  Since they (The Varsity Squad) has only missed Nationals once in the last ten years, and that was due to a coach’s decision not because they didn’t qualify, Kris and I have taken care of reserving a place already (many thanks to my uncle Ray!).  I thought that if the unthinkable happens and they don’t qualify, it won’t be a big deal to cancel the hotel, but at least we’ll be able to have a place to stay that is only a 5 minute drive from where the girls will be.  Last year it took us a half an hour to get to their resort from where we were staying, so it was a lot of driving back and forth for things like cases of water, snacks, etc.  Now we just need to make it.

Buy Columbia

No, I am not advocating cocaine use.  Last year I had the misfortune of having the zipper on my winter coat break.  Other than the zipper being broken it was fine.  And it wasn’t really broken per se, but the stitching had come out on it.  And not the stitching that holds the zipper in place with the coat, it was what holds the zipper the strip of material that is sewn to the coat.  So I basically had about two inches of nylon dangling.  It actually happened almost two years ago, and the first time I spent what seemed like three or four hours hand sewing it back on.  Then it let go in a completely different spot.

So not wanting to spend all that time trying to fix it, I had asked my mother if it was something she thought she could sew for me (since I have totally forgotten how, and even if I did remember, I think this would be something beyond my expertise).  When she was here toward the end of the winter she thought she would give it a try.  If she couldn’t do it, the worst that would happen is that I would need to buy a new coat anyway.  She happened to mention it to my aunt apparently who told her that Columbia has a lifetime warranty on their coats, and that she should try contacting them and see if it was something they would replace before ripping everything apart and trying to sew a new zipper in place.

When I heard that I thought, well I can do that, so I had her bring it back early this summer when she was here for something.  I finally got around to contacting Columbia in the middle of August, and they told me to send it in and they would repair it if possible.  If not, I had an option (I forget exactly what my choices were) for replacing it.  I selected a credit for a new jacket.  After a couple of weeks, I got a notice saying that they had deemed my jacket unrepairable and were giving me a credit for a new jacket, and emailed me a code to use when buying the new one.

I decided to go to the Columbia outlet store figuring they would have the best selection.  It turns out that with what they gave me in credit for my jacket that was 5 years old, and purchased on sale at Kohls, I was able to purchase a new lightweight waterproof jacket, and a new outer shell for the winter, and was able to get Sarah (2) new jackets for the winter as well.  And even after all that, I still have about $30 left over!  WHOA!!!!  Best warranty ever!  All I need to look for now is a new inner liner (if I need one).  I have a Columbia fleece I wore at work a few years ago because they kept the thermostat down in the wintertime, so I can try that as a liner.  If not, I can always go back and get a new one for what I am thinking is going to be a little more than what I have left on my credit.  So how cool is that?! I am definitely going to keep buying Columbia jackets, and I recommend y’all do the same!

New Boyfriend

Sarah came home for the weekend for the first time this year. I am not quite sure why, other than her roommates were coming home as well.  She then however, spent Friday night hanging out at a boy’s house.  A boy who has been to our house a few times before, but someone who was just supposed to be a “friend”.  Tonight however, Kris and I wanted to take Sarah out for a decent dinner, and when we suggested going to Jose’s Blue Sombrero, she asked if this boy could come along.  Kris has been prodding her for information about him, while I have been trying to get her to just butt out and let her be.  I had an idea that she may have an eye for this boy based off of a few things I have heard her say in the past, but I thought bugging her about it is not going to result in anything productive, and would more or less get her mad (because that is how I was when I was her age).  It turns out that Kris did get out of her finally that they are “dating”.  Like I said, I had an idea.  

Mean Girls

As Homecoming is approaching next week, we found out today that Alison is still unsure of her plans.  Last year she went with a large group of friends, and was planning on doing the same this year.  However, one girl (who incidentally was not part of the group that she went with last year) had decided to have a dinner catered at her house (or more like her parents did).  She invited some of Ali’s friends and requested that they give her a list of people that should be included.  Her friends included Alison’s name, but when people were being invited, this girl did not include Ali.  There were going to be in the neighborhood of 30+ people there to take pictures beforehand, then have dinner there before going to the school for the dance.

As I said, several of Alison’s friends were invited, and they all wanted Ali to come along.  So some of her friends thought of a good idea so she could be with them.  One of her friends who is going (who is a boy by the way) asked Alison to go as his date.  Problem solved, right? Wrong!  Apparently when this little snot found out that Alison was going to be this boy’s date, he was uninvited to the gathering beforehand.

So rather than make a big ordeal out of things, Ali just decided to go with a few other friends who were going out to eat at a restaurant beforehand.  I feel bad for her and her friends because they are all letting this little snot of a girl dictate to them what their plans are going to be (and believe me, little snot is a nice word for what we are referring to this girl as, and her parents, in the confines of our home).  Planning for next year is beginning as I write this so that Alison and her friends don’t have to be subjected to the will of a girl who feels she needs to buy friends because she is such a spoiled brat that she feels the need to tell everyone else what their plans will be and what they will be doing.

Long Term Solution?

Kris had a care meeting for her dad today and we got some tentatively good news.  I say tentatively because we have gotten good news before.  But the therapists at the Rehab center her dad is at asked if he was going to be going back to his apartment in the Arboretum.  She said that was the hope, and was then told because if he couldn’t go back there, they would gladly take him at Linden Grove (the second floor of the facility is a long term care facility/nursing home).  That would be awesome!

It is very close to home, Kris knows several of the people on the board of directors because they are also related with CMH so she knows what to expect for quality of care.  The only problem would be that he would have to share a room, but we could figure that out.  And they also accept his type of assistance.  If it is true that we can keep him at Linden Grove, it would be awesome.  I have really not been happy with the level of care he has gotten for the last couple of years, but never wanted to say anything because of fear that they would kick him out.  Things really look like they might be looking up.

Glazing A Window

Since I finally have time again, I am getting back at trying to get the basement windows re-glazed.  What I should really do is to see what it would take to replace them with glass block, or even a whole new casement window.  But for the time being, this is what I have to work with.

When I was interrupted to take Kris’s dad to the hospital, I was in the middle of removing the old glazing, which was proving to be a little harder than I initially thought.  There were big chunks that had cracked and simply fell out, so I thought it would be easy taking a screwdriver and just chipping the rest away.  I was wrong.  For the most part, it wasn’t bad but there were a couple of spots where it didn’t want to break loose.  In fact, I ended up putting a small crack in one of the edges trying to get it out, but I eventually did it.  I was hoping to get all of the basement windows re-glazed before winter, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now.  I am just going to be happy with the one that I did get done and I’ll have to finish the others in the spring.  As long as I have the window covers on them, it should be OK (I hope).

Move To Rehab

Well the good news is that Kris’s dad is being sent to rehab.  The bad news is that he is being sent to rehab.  The problem is that the Arboretum is not going to let him return unless/until he can help support himself more (I knew it was going to be a precursor to kicking him out).  Since he has been in his wheelchair he has lost so much strength that he can’t assist the aides in getting him out of bed, or other sort of transfers from his wheelchair.  And until that happens, he won’t be allowed to return.  What a headache!  I suppose that we won’t worry about it too much until he has gotten into his therapy and see what sort of strength he develops.

Touch of the Flu

We stopped back at the hospital to check on Kris’s dad and see how he was doing.  Since he failed his swallow study, it looks like he’ll be there a little longer than we expected.  And on top of the pneumonia that he has, they tell us that he also has the flu.  He was barely conscious when we stopped, and he did not sound good at all.  The snoring/wheezing when he breathed, and when he was awake and talking it sounded like he just smoked a carton of Marby Reds.  So we’ll see what happens when the speech pathologist comes tomorrow.