Sandwich Generation

I'm beginning to truly understand and grasp the full meaning of this expression and I think my head is going to explode with the pressure of it.

My mother totalled her car yesterday. With no way of getting it replaced. We only have one car. When something goes wrong with ours, we borrow hers. So her car is our back up car.
We were a bit concerned with her totalling the car and it being our back up car.

Our son has a rotten driving record and we've not been able to get him his own car. (he's buying it, but but we have to take him to get it ... and we've not had the time or ..well ...we've just not done it.)

My husband is sitting talking about how much trouble we're going to be in if Samuel wrecks our car again. 3 times in the last 6 months he's wrecked our car. 2 times seriously.

He has bent the frame 2 times ... $1000 a pop! (yes, he's paying for it, but paying our credit card back)

He'd also jammed the door closed that was going to cost $600 to fix, but we were getting the $2000 paid off before worrying about getting the door fixed.

So, Don is talking about how much trouble we'd be in if he wrecked the car ... and the phone rings ....

Dad .... it's raining ...and someone cut me off ...

he hit the concrete barrier on the free way ... it took him 15 minutes on the phone to admit he was sitting in the ambulance.

He's bruised ... he's shaken ... he had a fireman's witness that a car did indeed cut him off ..and he was not ticketed.

He doesn't get that he doesn't realize that he may not be legally at fault ...but he is RESPONSIBLE ...

He could have killed himself ..or someone else.

She doesn't realize that she could have killed herself ..or someone else ...

Teenager boys and elderly drivers ...

no wonder their insurance is so high!

Well ...

Mom made the news! And it's not good news .... At least in my family fued going on I got an email before I found out on the news! (although I'd not know because they didnt' have video feed or say who it was).

She hit the gas instead of the break ... ran over a tree ... a bike rack and into a light pole!

totalled her car.

her airbags deployed.

She had slowed down enough to park ..and yet accelerated enough to plow over a tree, a bike rack and get the airbags deployed.

YIKES.

Thank GOD there were no children in her pathway!

She will not have enough money to replace the car, so she is carless .... no more wheels. So we do not have to take away the keys.

*whew*

If somehow, she gets restless and tries to get another car, I will get the keys, by hook or by crook, I will. She's already not talking to me over my niece, it can't get any worse.

Long time since posting

I didn't realize it'd been so long since I'd checked in.

I got busy with the month of August! The month flew by before I even knew it was over.

A friend got married on August 8th and had asked me to sign for her wedding. I've been exposed to sign language my whole life. My father taught at California School for the Deaf in Riverside before I was born and until 1972. I was taught to sign and say the alphabet at the same time. (very early since I was reading at age 3).

I grew up knowing the essentials in sign, I had a deaf cousin that I can remember talking to in Portland and having real conversations with when I was all of 8 years old.

However, my real love for sign, and becoming fluent/conversational was when I was 15. A young woman moved to Pueblo where I was living and came to our church. She'd just moved there from having gone to Christ for the Nations in Texas. She was an interpreter for the Deaf and Lorrie taught a bunch of us young teenaged girls sign language. We hung on her every word and sign. She taught us not only the signs, but the ins and outs of interpreting as well as artistic sign.
I considered Lorrie, not only a friend, but a mentor, both in sign and spiritual as well. To Lorrie Sluder, I owe much.

So, my friend met me about 8 years or so ago, and decided then that I'd sign at her wedding ...when she met the guy she'd marry.
So, here we were 8 years later and I'm signing ... however, I rarely sign anymore because I have tremors and my coordination is not what it was.
Thankfully, the tremors, while worse than normal that day (not so much by the wedding since I took my medication an hour before the wedding rather than at bedtime) were visible, they did not seem to be so much visible to the average person to interfere with the artistry of the sign. FOR ME however, it felt weird, and disrupted my concentration. It was difficult and I found the signs difficult to do. After to close to 30 years of signing without thinking ... that is a hard pill to swallow.

I think, I've gone into retirement with my signing, my friend, got the last song. I didn't think she understood how hard it was, till she asked for a wedding picture with me and her, and with tears in her eyes, she thanked me for doing it, even though it wasn't easy. Ok, so she did ...so I'm so glad I did.

Then, was getting myself and my 18 year old ready for school! WOW .. what a process!

We have finished the first 2 weeks. The first week knocked me off my feet. The computer let me into a class that had a math pre req that I'd not taken and about scared me into dropping out and quitting.
Instead, I dropped the class ...and to keep my full time status with financial aide I'm taking an 8 week computer concepts class starting in October.

I'm in Developmental Psych, Humanities and Algebra.
Having never had algebra ... EVER EVER EVER not even in high school ...this has been an interesting quest.
My instructor is having a ball with me. He is great with personalities and has me pegged.
When I started struggling with the "BUT WHY'S??" (which is what got me when I was 14 and my refusal to TAKE algebra to begin with) He started to laugh and said "um, you were a rebellious teen weren't you?"
I responded with : Nope, not at all, not even a little bit.
He looked at me with a horrified look and said "OH NO! REPRESSED REBELLION!"

We both laughed and are having a good time. We're about the same age in a class full of kids ...so it's kind of fun to have someone to identify with.

My humanities class ..oh let's not go there. Shudder. Suffice it to say ..if you think you have a flake for a professor ... NEVER EVER GOOGLE THEM you will find more than you want to know!!! That, and she thinks the sonnet I wrote for an assignment was a 'great sonnet' ... YiKES ... took me 5 minutes ... I'd never written a sonnet in my life and I promise you it is THE worst poem I've written in my life! Making me question her taste in art (it's on my regular blog) I expected the full credit for the assignment (5 points) however I expected a 'funny' or a 'good effort' or the like ...not GREAT SONNET! eeghads!

Developmental Psych, I had to write a paper ... and I got a 100% A on it. Grade is posted on my online grading system, haven't gotten the paper back yet, so no feed back. Anxious to see what she has to say.

Family life ...which is what this blog is supposed to be about ...has been somewhat chaotic ...and I'd planned on catching that up, but this has already taken too much time and it's now time to get ready for school.

Suffice it to say, my sister is no longer talking to me, the relationship may have gone beyone reconcilliation. My mother is under her 'spell' and has betrayed my niece in a possibly unrepariable way ... and nothing on those lines is good. We are at the stage of a lawyer involved and possibly getting a protective order involved.

However, my niece is blossoming in her growth as an independent woman and learning the truth of what her rights as a woman both in God and as a person truly are. I'm so proud of her. She's under the good care of friends of mine who are helping her in ways I'd never imagined. They've taken her under their wings ...and now, we've formed a new family.

Guess, sometimes you can choose your family.