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.