Me!!!: October 2011

Friday, October 28, 2011

Funny Friday-10/28/11-Out of the mouths of babes

I've been insanely busy between holidays and the stuff we have going for our house, so I haven't had much time to focus on Funny Friday. However, I wanted to share something funny my younger son said last night.

He was eating a piece of chicken and didn't like the sauce. So he said "I don't like the sauce on the chicken, so I'm going to lick it off."

Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? ;)

Also, we were talking about food and I said "we like meat." My older son said "Well, I like dairy!" So my younger son chimed in with "I like parve!"

Happy Friday and Shabbat Shalom!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

#Fail

Remember the blog project I did last year with three other women? Well, Froggie decided to resurrect it with me and we each got to invite another friend to join us. She invited a mutual friend (someone I met through her) and I invited a friend whose blog I really enjoy reading. So now it's Froggie, Mom of Many, Moma Rock and Merrylandgirl. Hope you enjoy the topics that we'll be exploring!

This week, Mom of Many picked the topic: Talk about a failure that you have experienced and how that has impacted your life.

Before reading ahead, first see what everyone else had to say on this topic:
Froggie
Mom of Many
Moma Rock

Earlier this year, our power failed during a storm and we lost a lot of food. It taught me to get a generator, which we have yet to do. The end.

Just kidding! You didn't think I was going to get off that easily...

After a contract job of mine had ended back in late 2006, I decided to go into business for myself. I was a mom of a toddler at the time and thought it would allow me to spend more quality time with him and also be my own boss for once, after dealing with some pretty lousy bosses in the past.

I started a virtual assistant business where I would hire assistants and match them with companies looking for virtual work. I thought it would be a useful commodity and that companies would be chomping at the bit. My husband even helped me create a website and supported me in every way possible. However, he also turned into my boss in a way. He was the one calling the shots and coming up with all the ideas. I was still doing a lot of work, but I wouldn't have had as much to go on without him. Was I grateful for his help? YES! Although I felt like this was all his brainchild and I was the one doing the frustrating tasks that were involved.

To start, I had to make lists of companies that might want a virtual assistant. I looked for small businesses instead of large corporations that probably had lots of on-site assistants. I then had to call these companies and offer my services. I already had a lot of interested (and qualified) assistants, but no one with whom to pair them. Anyway, I didn’t have much luck from calling the companies. No one was interested in virtual help!

I also tried networking by putting the name of my company out there whenever and wherever possible. The networking sites I found were full of people with pyramid schemes though. My business was in no way, shape or form a pyramid scheme. I thought that virtual assistants could branch out anywhere, so I tried to reach a huge market. I even managed to get my business in the newspaper, but it didn’t bring in any interest either.

Overall, it turned out that I was putting in more money than I was getting back (which was nothing anyway). When we moved to New Jersey, my husband closed down the business and I went back to job searching. That was a long and arduous process, since I didn’t have any “real” work to my name from December 2006 through April 2007. That span of time between my contract job and the time I moved did not help me find much employment. Then I got a semi-virtual assistant job. When I did the medical billing, I could work from home and since it was local, I only had to come by a couple of times a week to drop off and pick up papers. There was a lot of flexibility and I was still able to enjoy being a mom too. It was what I had wanted when I started the virtual staffing business, but it came in a different form. And I actually was getting paid for it this time!

I learned from the experience that I am NOT entrepreneurial! I don’t do well with selling or cold calling. I also learned that I have to do work of my choosing, not what other people would want me to do. I realized that again when my husband was trying to get me to do database management in order to find a job. While medical billing wasn’t all that glamorous, I enjoyed working for my bosses and the flexibility and confidence that the job offered me.

I’m now working where I want to be. This was not a job that anyone else helped me get or told me I should be doing. (In the past, I had gotten jobs through family connections but they weren’t really right for me…especially the contracting one!) It’s not a bad job at all, but I know my husband wasn’t fond of me being locked into an assistant role when I was out there looking. However, the type of organization and the fact that it goes along with our values was (and still is) helpful and he was supportive of me working here as a result.

Back to the entrepreneurial thing though; I love reading books about women who start their own business because I can live vicariously through them. While my book blog is not a business, I still feel like I take on a managerial role. However, I’m not worried about making money from this blog, which makes it less stressful and also easier to take risks when I feel they are needed.

Honestly, I am glad I had the chance to fail, as embarrassing as it felt at the time. It allowed me to figure out what I wanted for myself in terms of a job and showed me that failure isn’t always that scary. It just happens and people find a way to pick up and move on.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

"Eleven days before Halloween.. all the good costumes are gone?"

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Safety first

To write this post, I did some personal research first. I asked my parents what safety issues existed when they were kids.

From my dad:

When I was growing up our parents still had the same fears as you do today, Kidnapping, drunk drivers and bullies but not to the extent it is today. When I was starting kindergarten my mother always had me walked to school and back by an older neighbor's kid. It was more about crossing big intersections then anything else. When I got older I always walked home alone or in a group from school. We had no buses that would take us to school in those days in the city. When I was 10 years old and in Hebrew school 4 days a week I walked in the dark back and forth. We had no fears of being kidnapped, only rich people's kids got kidnapped for ransom. If someone took me, papa would have said “you took him, you keep him.” They were always bullies and that has not changed in 50 years. But I never walked out of the house afraid of being mugged, stabbed or shot as it is today in some neighborhoods.

From my mom:

Our world was more sheltered than it is today. We were not exposed to violence on TV or in the newspapers. We lived about 8 or 9 blocks from the school so Mama Mollie or my Grandpa walked me to school. Back then we went home for lunch so one of them would meet me at lunchtime walk me back and then come back at the end of the day to walk home. As I got into higher grades we would walk down the street to school and meet up with kids who lived on other blocks and all walk together. We never worried about anything happening although Mama always warned me not to get into cars with strangers. One day our neighbor was driving down the street on my way to school and even though I knew him I refused to get into his car. As we got older my friends and I would go out on summer nights and walk all over the neighborhood past dark. We lived across the street from a park and weren't even afraid of going in there. I never heard of any gangs at my school. The greasers were tough but I wouldn't call them a gang like today. I don't think anyone owned a gun. The only drugs we heard of were reefers (marajuana).

This topic allowed me to look back at certain points in my life where safety could have been an issue and how it was handled. When I was in high school, I didn't have much of a social life. However, when I first started driving my car to school, my parents equipped it with a car phone (one that only works when plugged into the car). One time I forgot to call when I arrived at school and they had the school office page me. I do know how they feel now, as I panic when I don't hear from my husband every morning when he arrives at work.

After I graduated high school (in 1994), I started going to midnight showings of "Rocky Horror" a lot and my parents weren't thrilled with me going by myself. One night we got in a huge fight about it and they ended up driving me there and picking me up. They wanted me to go with friends and didn't realize that I had already made a nice group of friends at the show. The only other time they drove me after that was for New Year's Eve because it was snowing out. I didn't mind it as much that time as I hated driving in snow. There was only one time I could not have felt safe and the cast still managed to make me feel safe anyway. It was regarding a cast member who had murdered someone and was already arrested for it. After they show, they made sure no one walked alone to their cars.

When I was in college (mid-late 90's), I was meeting people online a lot, including guys. I met my first boyfriend that way and our first date was truly a blind one. I hadn't so much as seen a picture of him but I knew I could trust him for some reason. He didn't want to go through the process of meeting my family, but they wouldn't let me leave the house with him if they didn't. Then we just ended up driving all over the Chicago suburbs looking for a late night diner. After we had broken up over a year later, I was still meeting people online and my parents even let me go to another state to meet one of them in person. They tell me how they don't know how they let me do that, but I guess they trusted me a lot!

The other aspect of safety during my college years was just general on-campus safety. During freshman year, my mom had equipped me with an alarm system and pepper spray. Needless to say, I held on to the latter, but never used the former. I thankfully never had to use the pepper spray and it ended up exploding in my pocket one day during junior year, stinking up the room and practically burning my leg. I never carried it again after that. There was a safety service during my school years where someone would be able to drive students from one building to another. I used it a lot during freshman year and then just felt fine walking around campus after that. I stayed alert and tried not to be so paranoid about campus safety. When I had to park my car further from campus, I'd have friends or the guy I was dating at the time walk back with me, as it was late most of the time. I remember some safety concerns I had sophomore year, thanks to a situation my roommate got into and how she still managed to leave the door unlocked anyway. There was a time when my neighbor's boyfriend came in my room and sat on my bed in the middle of the night. He almost kissed me! He realized he had the wrong room and ran out, but he could have been a rapist! I got so lucky that time. I was so upset about her lack of concern for our safety.

A few years after I graduated college, I wanted to go to Israel on a Birthright trip. That was another topic of consternation between me and my parents, but they finally let me go after hearing about one of my best friends who was living there at the time and said he felt totally safe. They also got a lot of reassurance from the people running the program. My paternal grandma wasn't so thrilled about it and when I told her it was free, she said "You can get shot for free." I didn't tell them when I actually went and when I got back and they found out, my late paternal grandpa was the one who had a fit over it while my grandma just asked if I had a nice time. Ironically, even with all the terror threats going on, I felt safer there than I ever had on the "L" train in Chicago.

As a parent, safety takes on a whole new meaning. I am constantly worrying about the safety of all three of my children. Hearing about the kid in Brooklyn who was found chopped up or the baby that was stolen from their room doesn't give me much comfort either. Last week I mentioned my older son "disappearing" at FAO Schwarz when he was almost three. I remember getting lost in a store as a kid and how, as a result, I hate to become unintentionally separated from any adult in any store, even during my adult years. (I freaked out when a friend of mine wandered off in a big mall and didn't have a cell phone on her.) It's even worse when the person who gets lost is so little and hard to spot amongst a crowd! I have been diligently teaching my children about stranger danger and safety rules. Our neighborhood doesn't have a lot of sidewalks and I am constantly yelling to my kids to not run ahead of me and to stay on the side closest to the grass. There have been some close calls and then the kids wonder why I get mad at them. The other thing I do is constantly make sure my house is locked to a Fort Knox level. I've been doing this even before I ever had kids. When I had a home with a garage, I'd circle around the neighborhood to make sure that I did actually remember to close it. I wasn't taking any chances.

In general, I think safety is more of an issue these days because of the Internet. In my day, I had pen pals and wasn't worried that they were predators or perverts. These days, I won't let my kids on social networking sites at all. I also get edgy about people posting pictures of my kids on their Facebook pages, let alone tagging them in these pictures, no matter how close a friend they are. I also think we're more aware of safety issues due to online Amber alerts and so many articles about bad things that happen to people. There's definitely more information out there. People can even learn how to make destructive devices, thanks to the wonders of the Internet. I don't know if I'd prefer to live in an age of ignorance and innocence or an age of information where I can become more cautious as a result of being more paranoid. I just know that I am sorry for ever giving my parents a reason to worry about anything and hope my kids don't triple those reasons for me in the future!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Isn't that special?!?

When you have a new baby, the biggest concerns are when they'll crawl, walk, talk, grow teeth, eat solids and sleep through the night. However, those concerns become sidelined when the main focus is about how to keep them from eating their hearing aid.

That is just one point of concern in a sea of many others when it comes to raising a child with special needs. When I was asked if I had walked in someone else's shoes, this was the first thing I could think of. I majored in special education in college before switching to psychology. During that time, I learned how to write IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) and even had hands on experience working with both kids and adults who have special needs. At the time, I didn't think much of what was going through the minds of their parents. When my first child was born with hearing loss, I instantly became a parent of a child with special needs. Although the needs are different from the needs of the children I worked with in the past (and for my sake, thankfully a lot easier), there were (and still are) a lot of things that go along with those needs.

I've written in the past about how the Italy vs. Holland concept figures into my life. I heard the passage again at an inservice program from my work this past summer and teared up from it. While going to Holland does have a lot of unexpected treats and rewards, as a parent, I have to admit that I was expecting to land in Italy. The first time around was more of a shock. The second time around (present day) was more of an expectation and I was prepared (even as much as having my first child's hearing aids still available). However, there are the little things that throw me off track, like my baby's hearing aid shutting down completely while we were out of town. And this new development of having to watch her like a hawk so that she doesn't accidentally swallow her hearing aid or dislodge the battery into her mouth. I don't know many other parents who have this kind of worry. Along with landing in Holland, there are the aforementioned treats...the people I get to meet that I may not have met otherwise. I absolutely love my older son's pre-K teachers. I never would have met them if he had been at my younger son's school. I also met a woman who wrote a book about her cochlear implant experiences. I wouldn't have thought to read the book or even contact her if I hadn't needed the implants for my kids. It's besherte in a way.

There are also a lot of decisions to be made and sometimes I get judged on what route I choose to take. Getting a cochlear implant for my children is a huge decision. In the hearing community, it's accepted in the same way that Lasik is accepted for correcting vision. In the deaf culture, I'm seen as a pariah...at least by those who are not open to the idea of cochlear implants. Anyway, along with that decision is a surgery. Doing this surgery on a four year-old was not that tough, other than going into the operating room with him and seeing him be sedated. However, it seems scarier for me to do it on a baby, even though this will help her in the long run. She can't tell me when something's bothering her, other than by crying.

Then there's the decision about schooling. While it's obvious that my daughter will go where my son has been going, being in a community where almost all the children go to a Jewish day school makes it more stressful for us. We have to find other ways to fulfill their Jewish education. And since our middle child is hearing but we don't want to play favorites, we're planning to give him a public school education as well, and are working on sending him to the same school as his siblings when he starts kindergarten. I'm sure that won't be questioned at all. (Pardon the sarcasm.)

Another factor is the extra stuff. Therapy, for instance. Also, lots of hearing tests (or mappings in the case of children with CIs). We go to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for a lot of this, which is an hour's drive in both directions. However, it's worth it in order to get our children the best services possible. The cochlear implant surgeon there is one of the best in the nation. People come from the other side of the country to have him do their childrens' surgery. The audiology department is also amazing. We're still trying to work out speech therapy services for our baby though. We have someone coming from Early Intervention, but that's only twice a month and only a half hour each time, which is spent partially by tinkering with her hearing aids. There are no speech therapy centers in the nearby area. We'd have to go to Hopkins every week or to some place in Virginia. With both of us working, it's hard to manage that kind of schedule. When we lived in the previous two states, I was able to go somewhere nearby to get our older son to speech therapy services. Again, the drive was sometimes longer than the therapy.

Finally, there are the questions. Questions we have for ourselves and for other people, as well as the questions people have for us. The biggest one is about genetics. Where did our kids get their hearing loss from? How come we haven't been genetically tested? Do our older son and the baby have the same condition? (We hope to have that answer soon.) Why does one of our children hear just fine? Does he have the same condition and we don't know it yet? Why did we wait till our older son was 4 before getting the implant but we're not waiting as long for the baby? We've answered these kinds of questions many times and even asked them of ourselves at times.

For all parents who have been down this road already, I know how they feel. For all parents who are new to this situation, I can tell them I've walked a million miles already and they'll be following me on that path. I can only hope to make it easier for them. I am always offering myself as a contact for parents who are just finding out that their kids have hearing loss. I know it's specific, but it's the only special need with which I really have any personal experience. If I can make someone else's journey easier, it will have been worth walking all these miles. Then again, my kids make the journey worth it every day!

Side note on the theme: I found out yesterday about a baby that has gone missing. I can't say that I've experienced the same thing, but I also know how her mother feels because I can relate as a mother, thinking about how scared she must be feeling and the despair she must be going through. My older son disappeared in a toy store for two minutes and those were the worst two minutes of my life, so thinking about a possible lifetime of being unable to find your own child is dreadful and heart wrenching. I hope she is able to find her and that the baby is alive and safe.

Having said that, I don't always have to walk a mile in someone's shoes to feel sympathy for them. I read stories or even hear firsthand about bad things that happen to people and I cry for them anyway. I don't want to ever be in their shoes, but it doesn't mean that I don't care about what they're going through.

Me!!!