beyond cinderella

After our daughter, Shantel, moved into her new apartment, I made a list of projects  I wanted to tackle. Things like shred all her High School individual education plans (IEP) papers, all emails regarding issues pertaining to follow-up issues when the IEP plans were not followed by the school and district, all court documents from when we had to take the school district to court to force them to adhere to the IEP as written, and all her college paperwork related to her special needs and accommodations… Oh what memories are held within those documents.

In addition, I am on a quest to shred all unnecessary papers related to my mother’s insurance and/or banking business as well as any and all unnecessary papers my husband, Bill and I have accumulated over the years. I have been told, by various people, that I am the “document queen.” and that served me well when I was fighting the school and district for Shantel’s rights, or taking care of my mother’s personal business etc. but now, I know I can free myself from the burden of managing all that paperwork. And it is very freeing to clear out all that paper. I have made a good size dent in the shredding project, but still have a lot of shredding yet to do… this could take weeks, and has become almost a full-time job.

I say almost a full-time job because the shredding project is just one of many projects on my “to do list.” In addition to shredding our past, I am also in the process of cleaning out closets and getting rid of anything and everything we don’t use and giving it all to Goodwill. I have the first Goodwill pick-up scheduled for tomorrow morning..

I also decided we no longer need the older refrigerator in the garage. We only used it to store drinks, and now that Shantel moved out, we don’t need to store all her soda’s, vitamin water, bottled teas etc. so I moved the beer and wine into our kitchen refrigerator, cleaned out the garage refrigerator, and scheduled it to be picked up by SRP’s recycling team on June 7th.

One reason it is taking me so long to complete my “to do project list”, is because I keep getting interrupted with things like Shantel calling to ask me to take her to get her groceries, and to spend the day with her at Social Security and DES offices. I can not believe how long it takes to get anything done at these government offices. Shantel had to go into the DES office to get finger printed before she could begin receiving services she has been approved to receive. We were told we needed to arrive at the office early as lines begin forming at daylight… I picked Shantel up at 5:30 A.M. and we arrived at the DES office by 6:00 A.M. The office doesn’t open until eight, but there were already 75 people in line ahead of us at 6:00.. are they kidding me? There was nowhere to sit down so we just had to stand in line outside the building in the parking lot. To make the time spent even more fun than I could have ever imagined… two LARGE pit bull dogs were running up and down the building terrorizing all of us. There was nowhere to go to get away from them and no one was going to step out of line for fear of losing your place…I mean these dogs were growling at us and just kept patrolling the line back and forth. One black man got so scared he started to run and the dogs started chasing him. OMG!!!  I was so scared they were going to come after Shantel and I, because they kept coming by and pushing up against Shantel’s cane. I kept trying to get between the dogs and Shantel but every time Shantel stepped behind me the dogs followed her..

Finally, the DES office opened and we were ushered inside to take a number, have a seat, and wait, wait, wait… After several hours, Shantel’s number was called, she was finger printed and we were on our way.. However, later that day, Shantel called me to say one of her Facebook friends said she and her daughter were at that same DES office in the afternoon and both she and her daughter were bitten by the pit bull dogs in the parking lot. An ambulance had to be called and both the mother and her child we taken to the hospital. Also animal control, which was contacted early that morning, eventually came and apprehended the dogs. All I can say is I was glad to get the hell out of there and hope I never have to go back..

The next day, I’m back to working on my projects when Shantel calls me to tell me her friend, Jaz, was at her apartment helping Shantel do her laundry at the apartment laundry room. As they were walking back to Shantel’s apartment, Jaz saw some kittens on Shantel’s patio. Jaz wanted to pet them but when she got close to them, they started hissing and swiping their claws at her. Jaz said the kittens were hanging around Shantel’s storage room door so she went over there and opened the door and found the mother and more kittens hiding behind the water heater. The mother cat started hissing and started towards Jaz so she slammed the door and started back into Shantel’s apartment. However, when she opened Shantel’s sliding patio door one of the kittens ran in and hid under the sofa. Jaz tried to get it out but it was hissing and making all kinds of noises at her. She finally was able to use Shantel’s cane and get it out from under the sofa and put a laundry basket over it but even with the laundry basket over it the kitten was running all around the room sliding the laundry basket with it… Jaz directed the kitten and basket towards the door and finally pushed the kitten out and shut the door… OMG!!! What next? Shantel called the Humane Society but was told they would not come out and trap the cats. They said Shantel would need to trap them and bring them into the Humane Society .I told Shantel she needs to call the office and ask if maintenance can come by with a net or something to get the cat/kittens out of her storage room because Shantel would have no way of knowing if one was by her door and would run into her apartment anytime she opened her door…

After all that excitement, as if I needed more… I went to visit my mother. I stopped by McDonald’s to get her a caramel frappe, but their frappe machine was broken so I ordered a chocolate milk shake thinking it would be a close second… NOT so much… Mom was excited to see me and very happy to see I brought her what she thought was a McDonald’s frappe. However, when she found out it was a milk shake she said she wasn’t hungry and didn’t want it…by this time I was too tired to care. I just thought to myself “if you knew what I’ve been through with pit bull dogs, and furrow cats terrorizing my daughter and I, you would just take the milk shake, smile and say thank-you, even if you threw it out after I left… Oh well, I tried… 🙂 🙂

Stay Tuned!