Episodes in stupidity..

I went down to my work office today, to try to get a copy of my paycheck stub from two weeks ago, as I lost it and I needed a copy of it for income verification for my children's Medicaid. The two women I spoke to were very rude, and told me "I couldn't get it." This is the letter I am sending with signature and delivery confirmation to the owner of our franchise. I don't know if he'll get it, or if the women in question will get ahold of it before he does, but I have to say something. Our payroll woman, Lynn is known for being rude, not just to me but I'm not going to take this treatment quietly.

November 2^nd, 2010

Mr. Mzowski,

My name is Helene and I work at the Marion store on 6^th Avenue, store 5014. Today I went down to the office to try to receive a copy of my paycheck stub from October 18^th, as I had lost my copy. I needed a copy of my income for the month of October as it is time for my annual review for my eligibility for my children for Medicaid.

When I went down to the office in the morning, the first person seen told me that “we didn't have the paystubs, you do.” I said I understood that, but I had lost my stub from two weeks prior and I needed a copy of it for DHS. She said “you would have to talk to Lynn, but she's on the phone.”

I waited for about 5 minutes, and when I did get to talk to Lynn, she said again that “we don't have the stubs, you do.” And I said again, yes, I understand, but I lost the stub from the 18^th, and I need it for a DHS verification. And they said that they couldn't do it. They said that DHS can send them a form and they can fill it out, and that “we need to start keeping track of these things, I'm tired of filling out those forms”.

I believe I know of the form that Lynn referenced. That is for DHS when you start a new job, and DHS sends a form for the employer to fill out to verify income to see if you still qualify based on income. That is not the form I am filling out. This is a yearly verification of my income and I am supposed to send in copies of my paycheck stubs for the month of October. I received this form in the mail on November 1^st and it is due back on November 5^th, so I really do not have time to wait.

I do not understand why I could not have a copy of that paycheck stub. I understand that it is my responsibility to keep track of my own financial documents, but sometimes things do happen and things get misplaced. I can't imagine that there is no access to that there at the office, and that it would take that much time out of their day to look that up for me.

I am sending in my form with the paycheck stub from November 1^st and a note telling them that I was unable to get a copy of the October 18^th paystub, along with the office address and phone number, and I hope this will suffice for them.

I was not pleased to have driven all the way down to office from Marion, having to bring my child with me only to find out that I could not get what I needed.

I don't know what can be done about this issue now, but I did want to let you know about the disrepectful treatment I received today.

Sincerely,

Another daughter update...

More news from the Heidi front...

Heidi finally had her appointment with the Developmental Pediatrician on Monday the 23rd. She didn't actually see the doctor for very long, but with the little time the doctor seen her, and talking to us about her, she did say that Heidi does fall into the spectrum of Autistic behaviors.

Okay, so now what? It's mostly just observation, for now. Heidi started preschool August 18th, and even though it is only for 2.5 hours 4 days a week, she loves it. Her teachers know about her needs, and they are working with her with and through Grant Wood Area Education Agency. She might go to some speech therapy, and other one on one interaction to see what she knows, how she expresses herself, things like that.

We have more papers to fill out and another doctor's appointment in a couple of weeks. I won't update on every appointment, but if something big happens, I'll be sure to update.

On the home front, like I said, Heidi loves school. She's getting into the routine of getting ready, and she loves music time and playing outside. She usually doesn't want to leave. It probably doesn't help that sometimes I have to park near a big playground she can't go on. :)

She is talking more, although still not as clearly for her age. We celebrate the small things like saying complete sentences, and I watched her pour her own glass of milk the other day. (That task still requires some supervision, however.)

She is still so sweet and innocent to the way people look at her with her behaviors. She doesn't know she shouldn't scream while picking up the son from school, that she shouldn't just go up to other kids and get right up in their business. She doesn't care if people stare or scowl. In that way, she is innocent. In other ways, such as getting into mischief at home, such as getting into the blinds or tearing the sheet off the bed again, she's not so innocent. But, that's Heidi. I want to protect her, as any parent does for their child, but I also have to let her go to a point and let her explore the world.

This is just the start of a process for us. Thank you all for your support as we work on this.

My family has been going through some rough times lately.

My daughter, Heidi might be autistic. It hasn't been officially diagnosed, but we're just starting the process with doctors to see if that might be the case. She's 4 years old, with about a 2 year old or less mentality. She doesn't say more than 40 words, and just this week I got the longest sentence from her ever. "I love you mom." She babbles nonsense, and screams loudly when she doesn't like what you say to her.

She crouches down and refuses to move when she doesn't want to walk. I often have to pick her up and carry her when she does that. She doesn't respond to most verbal commands, "Stop, please," "No, please." She runs at full speed, anywhere and everywhere. She has no fear.

She likes to be in her own little world at times. She likes to stack things, like books and blocks, and line things up, like cars and toys. She likes to imagine and talk to her special toys, and focus intently on certain tasks. (usually involving something not allowed).

She can be mean. She throws fits if it isn't done her way, I've been hit and kicked more times than I can count. She has a fascination with knives and forks, and would rather stab a pen through a paper than draw with it. She beats up her big brother, when he has something she wants. I try to curb this, but it isn't always easy. Sometimes it feels like I have a pet more than a child, with her behavior.

I'm getting better at figuring out what she wants, but it's hard when she just looks up at a section of the counter. There's 30 things on that counter, it could be any of them. And she can't tell me what hurts when she's sick, if I can't see it, she just cries and says "ow ow ow."

I hate it when she refused to get up off the floor, or screams at the grocery store, and people stare and sometimes glare. I can't help the way she is. I wish I could. But I still love her just as much as my son.

My daughter looks normal. She doesn't look like anything is wrong. She's tall for her age, and I've heard she's very cute. I call her Dastardly Cute. But I don't call her Sylar girl for nothing. She's cute and sweet when she wants to be, but, like Sylar, she's wired a bit differently inside as well.

Her Doctor referred her to a Developmental Pediatrician, for "developmental delays and questionable autistic", as I overheard. I'm not surprised. I'm a little sad, because I know it will be a struggle. But it's a start.

I just want people to know what's going on to try to understand and to not judge. Please.

It takes all kinds...

I have worked in the fast food industry a long time, and have seen a lot of strange things from customers over the years. I had an interesting encounter last night with a customer, that I want to share.

Right now I am working as an employee at KFC. (A fast food chicken place.) It's not the greatest job in the world, I make $7.35 US Dollars an hour, and I struggle to get 20 hours a week. It's not hard work, really, I run the register, pack food according to the customer's orders, and clean and stock in the store. But, it's a job, and while it's not always what I want to be doing, for now, it's what I do.

The weather was unseasonably warm for Iowa yesterday, so we were pretty busy between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. I was at the front counter, taking the orders for customers that would come in the lobby. A man came in, he ordered the new Double Down grilled sandwich, just the sandwich, to go. No big deal, except that almost immediately after ordering, he starts on a what will become a 20 minute diatribe about just about everything.

Now, a bit of a disclaimer here. I'm going to post as much of what I can remember about what he said here, in italics. I don't remember it all, as I've been groggy from a head cold, and the back part of the store can be very loud. He wasn't talking too loudly, so I didn't catch everything he said, but I do remember some things quite clearly.

It started with trying to complete the order transaction. He said, this is so slow, and I inferred that he was talking about the whole Iowa way of life, how we take our time to do things, how we're unhurried as a whole. He also mentioned that he was from California, (I think he said the LA area) and how things were so much faster and more streamlined out there. He said, this is the hot tub time machine, this is 1985! Even our credit card machine didn't meet with his approval, as he looked over the counter to watch my run his card. Too old school, I guess.

Then, as he waits for his food, he goes on about how can we do this to ourselves, how can we treat our bodies this way. Our bodies are temples, and if we don't respect them and ourselves, how can we start to respect others? I do understand that, I really do. I am about 60 pounds overweight, and I know this. I know that I should take better care of myself, and I don't like the way I look right now, but that's just the way it is. And I'm the only one to blame for that, and the only one who can change that.

If this guy was so concerned about his health, he was at the wrong restaurant in the first place. KFC is not known for its health food. He ordered the Double Down Grilled Sandwich. It has 460 calories, and 1430 milligrams of sodium, which is actually more sodium than the Original Double Down Sandwich, which comes in at 540 calories and 1380 mg for the sodium.

But he just kept going. And I was not needed in the kitchen at that time, and other employees were packing food, so I didn't have any escape route. I had to listen, as best I could given the conditions, to this man.

Here's what I remember. Something about how being fat is like just seeing the tip of the iceberg, you only see about 10 percent of it, it's the other 90 percent that you can't see. And that trickles down to other aspects of their lives, such as their religious views, their work ethic, how they treat other people and maybe even how they treat their kids.

Also in there he got started on how some people (I'm not sure if he meant us low level employees, or just in general, ) wind up on welfare, and I (the man) would have to pay for it.

During most of this speech I am trying to keep up, nod and smile, or at least try to say something back. I couldn't get a word in edgewise, and if any of you know me in real life, that's a rare occurance. And I'm supposed to be nice and polite to the customers, so asking them what kind of crack they are smoking, and would they please SHUT UP isn't really very good business practice. I was also trying to edge my way into the kitchen a couple of times, hoping they would need my help, but to no avail.

Next on the list was that he had lived in Europe for ten years, and Americans are the most ugly, overweight disgusting people. Finally after he did get his sandwich, he come up with this. Really, is there more cottage cheese here than the dairy section? Then he left.

I was very relieved, to say the least. And in our defense, at the time he was there, only one other employee besides myself could have been considered "overweight", so really that comment about the "cottage cheese" was unwarranted, in my opinion. While I was rather busy after he left, when I had more time to think about this encounter, the more odd some of his statements seemed.

I know Iowa isn't LA. Things can be slower here, a little more laid back, a little less fast paced. But this isn't Bedrock, either. We have high speed internet, iphones, and other technology too. Yeah, traffic isn't as bad on Collins Road in Cedar Rapids as it is on 405 in California, but that doesn't mean we're totally backwards.

Another point, because I'm fat, I have a bad work ethic, unfavorable religious views, and it possibly reflects on how I treat my kids? Yeah, I don't think so. I might not have went to law school, like he said he did, and I don't have the best job in the world, but I work hard at what I do to try to provide for my family. I don't feel like it's always enough, but I do what I can. As for my religious views, my faith may waver, but it's still pretty strong. And I believe that everyone has the right to believe in what they want, despite what I myself believe. And if I had been able to speak my piece, I would have said something about how I love both of my children very much, and my weight has nothing to do with how I treat them. At all.

The part about being on welfare caught my ear too. I know that there are abusers of the system, but I also know that it can be helpful to those that need it. I myself was on Medicaid (state aid) for both of my pregnancies, and my children have been on some sort of state sponsored medical insurance their whole lives. I am grateful for this, as my son was in the NICU for the first week of his life, with a bill running well over $100,000, and my daughter is going to be needing special developmental care, and neither me nor my husband can afford these costs out of pocket. And as for this man having to pay for something if I get hurt? Sorry, not for me. I have no health insurance. If I need medical care outside of getting hurt at work, I'm paying for it out of pocket, and at full price. And my cousin/godmother, who has been living off of disability for 15 years for job related injuries, is triple doomed because she's living on government money, has medicaid, and is morbidly obese? I guess she's got another strike against her as well, as she's been recently been diagnosed with cancer, and the state of Wisconsin will have to cover those medical expenses.

So, Mr. Customer, feel free to go back to California and your fast paced, fit, beautiful lifestyle. And if that gets to be too much for you, feel free to go back to Europe and live. At the very least, please stay out of my workplace. And don't let any doors hit you on the way out, either.

An article I like...

I sent this article to a friend of mine today, and thought I would post it here. I got it from Stacey, a dear friend of mine from Luther College, after my mom died. On a lighter note, I typed this into my laptop today, and honestly, I have never used so many quotation marks in my LIFE! And I write fiction! Hope it provokes some thoughts.

Hurrying healing

By Ellen Goodman, Globe Columnist, 1/4/98

I don't remember when the words fist began to echo in the hollow aftermath of loss. But now it seems that every public or private death, every moment of mourning is followed by a call for “healing” a cry for “closure”.

Last month, driving home in my car just 24 hours after three Kentucky teenagers were shot to death in a school prayer meeting, I heard a Paducah minister talk about “healing”. The three teenagers had yet to be buried, and he said it was time to begin the healing process, as if there were an antibiotic to be applied at the first sign of pain among the survivors.

Weeks later, at a Christmas party, a man offered up a worried sigh about a mutual friend. “It's been two years” he said, “and she still hasn't achieved closure.” The words pegged her as an underachiever who failed the required course in Mourning 201, who wouldn't graduate with her grief class.

This vocabulary of “healing” and “closure” has spread across the post-mortem landscape like a nail across my blackboard. It comes with an intonation of sympathy but an accent of impatience. It suggests that death is something to be dealt with, that loss is something to get over-according to a prescribed emotional timetable.

It happened again when the Terry Nichols verdict came down. No sooner had the mixed accounts of guilty and innocent been announced, than the usually jargon free Peter Jennings asked how it would help the “healing” for Oklahoma City. Assorted commentators and reporters asked the families whether they felt a sense of “closure”.

The implicit expectation, even demand, was that the survivors of 168 deaths would traverse a similar emotional terrain and come to the finish line at the same time. Was two and a half years too long to mourn a child blown up in a building?

It was the families themselves who set us straight with responses as personal and diverse as one young mother said, “it's time to move on” and another who described her heart this way: “Sometimes it feels like it's bleeding.”

In the Nichols sentencing trial last week, we got another rare sampling of raw grief. Laura Kennedy testified that in the wake of her son's death in 1995, “I have an emptiness inside of men that's there all the time.” Diane Leonard said that since her husband's death her life “has a huge whole that can't be mended.”

By the second day, however, the cameras had turned away, the microphones had turned a deaf ear, as if they had heard enough keening. Again, observers asked what affect a life or death sentence would have on, of course, “healing” and “closure.”

I do not mean to suggest that the people who testified were “typical” mourners of the Oklahoma bombing a “typical” way of death. I mean to suggest that grief is atypical-as individual as the death and the mourner.

The American way of dealing with it has turned grieving into a set process with rules, stages, and of course, deadlines. We have, in essence, tried to make a science of grief, to tuck messy emotions under neat clinical labels-like “survivor guilt” or “detachment”.

Sometimes we confuse sadness with depression, replace comfort with Prozac, and expect, maybe insist upon an end to grief. Trauma, pain, detachment, acceptance in a year-time's up.

But in real lives, grief is a train that doesn't run on anyone else's schedule. Jimmie Holland at New York's Sloan Kettering Hospital, know that “normal grief may often become an ongoing lifelong process.” Indeed, she says, “The expectation of healing becomes an added burden. We create a sense of failure. We hear people say, 'I'm can't seem to reach closure, I'm not doing it fast enough.'”

Surely it is our own anxiety in the presence of pain, our own fear of loss and death, that makes us wish away another's grief or hide our own. But in every life, losses will accumulate like stones in a backpack. We will all be caught at times between remembrance and resilience.

So whatever our national passion for emotional efficiency, for quality time parents and one minute managers, there simply are no one minute mourners. Hearts heal faster from surgery than from loss. And when the center of someone's life has been blown out like the core of a building, is it any wonder if it takes so long even to find a door to close?

Star Trek Musings and other griping....

This is actually two of my LiveJournal posts posted here into one. Yay for you!

Let's try this again, shall we? I started this last night, but realized I didn't have the energy or though process to finish it. The thoughts were still with me too flipping early for me this morning.

The hubby and I went to go see Star Trek again Friday. The 4th time, and probably the last, because my husband was falling asleep in the theatre. I was fine, and I'd love to see it again. and again. This was the first time at this theatre, the first week at the 2nd run theatre. Tickets, pop and popcorn at Wehrenburg, the first run theatre, was about $30, and at Collins Roads, the 2nd run theatre, the total was about $17. And that's with real butter for your popcorn.

I had some random thoughts about some things in the movie, and I can't really express them anywhere but online, since my husband says I overanalyze. Of course I do. I'm a fangirl and a Trekkie. duh. So in no real order, my thoughts.

How exactly did Kirk get his "Enterprise clothes"? When Kirk was brought on board, he was still wearing his cadet uniform, although Bones did say something about "getting changed". I've seen an article about the designs of the uniforms, and the male cadets wore a red undershirt under the red uniform, and "cupcake" had one on when his shirt was open after the bar fight. How did Kirk get a black shirt and pants? He wouldn't have his own uniforms on the Enterprise, since he wasn't assigned there. I suppose Kirk could have "cheated" and wore the black undershirt under his cadet uniform, but I don't know if he would have even possessed any of them, as he had no real ship to go to, and get them. (Like that would ever stop Jim Kirk.) Most likely, he probably borrowed them, from his boyfriend best friend McCoy, although at least with the shirt, it probably would have been too big. But now, we couldn't have our hero running around in red or a too big borrowed shirt, right? Sure. At least it does give us something nice to look at. Chris Pine is easy on the eyes, most definitely.

Why was Dr. McCoy helping with the Kobyashi Maru? I know he was there to support and roll his eyes at Jim, but honestly, Dr. McCoy knows how to check to see if the Klingon shields are down? I guess there is something for doctors to be cross-trained, but man, that's something else. No wonder McCoy is so busy, learning all the nuances of Starfleet along with all the medical stuff. Another quick note about McCoy. I really hope if they are going to do a sequel that McCoy can be a little bit happy. I swear, the closest we got of a smile from him was when Kirk asked about who Spock was after his hearing. Honestly, some happiness for the good doctor, please.

I know that McCoy and Kirk are BFF's, but I really don't think I could smuggle my best friend on my ship just cause he didn't want to be left behind. That is some dedication by McCoy. I wonder if he really got into much trouble for getting Jim onboard, afterall, Kirk did save the whole damn planet, ya know.

I have more, but I'll wrap it up for now, with kids and chatting, it's taken me an hour to write this much. Progress, I know. Have a good fourth, if you like the holiday. I don't but that's just personal reasons. Til later.


Let's see if I can get this done. I'm kinda a crabby SOB today, so, yeah. Maybe I'll explain that more later.

Star Trek thoughts..

Sulu seriously doesn't get enough credit for saving the Enterprise. If he hadn't forgotten to take off the "parking brake", the ship would have been with the rest of the fleet, and reduced to space trash. Between his error and McCoy's smuggling of Jim onboard, the planet has a lot more people than just Jim Kirk to thank for the saving of Earth.

This is the point I tried to explain to my husband, who proceeded to give me his best McCoy eyeroll. I asked why Chekov got the conn in the movie when the Captain is elsewhere, saving everyone's hides. He said, "because that's the way it's always done" I guess he means in TOS. Fine. But for me, giving Chekov the conn in the movie, was CRAZY! Pike gives it to Chekov when Spock, Kirk, Mr. Red-Shirt Olsen and himself were going to visit Nero and the drill. Pike couldn't even remember his name 20 minutes before! And later, when Spock was going to beam down to Vulcan, I believe Spock gave it to Chekov again. I don't remember if I heard it or not, but when Spock and Kirk beamed onto Nero's ship, he probably had it then. I'm sorry, but HUH? I love Chekov, don't get me wrong, he's cute, and smart, and Anton Yelchin is great, but giving the captain's duties to a 17 year old kid? As McCoy said, "Oh Good, he's 17." Maybe he wouldn't have total captainly duties, or he's just babysitting the bridge until the Captain gets back, and doesn't make any real decisions, but, yeah. Maybe TOS Chekov had more responsiblities, but I just don't see this AU Chekov as mature enough to be captain if the situation arises. What's Sulu, chopped liver? And in the TOS we know he got to be Captain. See previous thought. Luckily, everyone made it home mostly safe, so it's kind of a moot point, but, thought provoking, for me.

I saw an LJ icon that said, "Jim Kirk and the terrible, awful, horrible, no good very bad day." Yeah, that about sums it up. I have no idea how Kirk could even TALK with having the life almost choked out of him by Spock, and Ayel, and beat up by about everything in between. One tough cookie. Or stupid cookie. Or both.

Okkaayyy....

The Linn County Sheriff's Office just stopped by. A little unnerving, seeing a deputy at your door. Anyway...He says we are being garnished.. Apparantly some sue happy dude has decided that the trailer park that we live in owes him about $750 for some reason. He's suing them for that amount. So, somehow SOMEBODY decided that OUR money that we pay the trailer park needs to go to this person. We haven't paid our lot rent for the month of June yet, we were going to do that today after work, and the deputy said to mail the rent to an address on the papers I got instead of going up to the office. I don't know how WE got picked to be the lucky ones to pay off this guy, maybe random pin the tail on the schmucks that live here, but whatever. I am definitely keeping all my receipts and papers and stuff, and I guess if the trailer park has any questions THEY can call the Sheriff's office. And no, I don't know the guy suing. We have lived here for 2 years, we are buying the place from a private seller. His first name is the same as the suer, but we are keeping up on the payments, and we won't be done with that til sept or so, unless mr. seller is using an alias, but I doubt it. He wouldn't be suing the park, anyway, he'd be suing us. Why the park hasn't coughed up the $750 themselves, I don't know. Wait, yes I do. They're so cheap, they've probably been ignoring him for years, and figured he wouldn't do anything about it. Well, he did. Congrats to us for having to get involved in crap that isn't our business and we know NOTHING about. We have until the end of September to get this resolved, and two or three months of paying our lot rent (about $320) to the Sheriff's office to calm down all parties involved. Ugh. I feel a headache coming on. At least it wasn't anything we personally did, so I'm not too worried. Still, my first thought, and still kinda is on my mind...is...WTF???? Yeah. rant done.