Slackjaw's Forum

Every once in a while someone will come up to me when I’m pushing Ike around in his chair. Sometimes they work with kids with similar disabilities so they just want to say hi, Sometimes it’s parents who have children in similar situations and are looking for common ground, sometimes it’s little kids asking what’s wrong with Ike and why is he in a chair, and sometimes, like the guy who stopped me this weekend, it's new parents looking for answers as to how he and his wife can better cope, dealing with their newly diagnosed disabled child. All new parents of special needs kids, and that included me, want to believe that there is this secret underground healthcare society where, if they could just find the hidden entrance, they would enter a new world of help and support. A place where maybe, just maybe, a higher level of overall care would be available. One that doesn't exist for most people – to those people with the more “normal” kids. When you have a newborn ch...

It’s been a few weeks since the last update and I’m not sure why exactly. Days just seem to slip by with out a story slipping out. We spent the weekend huddled by the wood stove starting out into the rain and mud puddles that formed everywhere you looked. Spent the better part of an afternoon and evening at the Puyallup Fair on Friday night getting soaked in the downpour, dodging the rain by going between the livestock barns and arts and crafts booths. During the heaviest part of the storm we took a gondola ride that went from one end of the fairgrounds to the other, looking down upon the carneys in their yellow slickers trying to keep dry by putting their heads under the small ticket window overhangs. In all the years that I’ve been going to the fair, it was the first time I’d ever been on that ride. We bought round trip tickets so we could leave Ike’s stroller on the platform, and it was raining so hard, and the fairgrounds were so empty, that after our trip, the guys ...

For the last week or so, I’ve been staggering though computer hell. I’d purchased a wireless network for the trailer so that the new desktop, the old desktop and the way old lap top I write on, could all play together and sing camp songs by the fire. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way yet, but the good news is that they are all able to surf the world wide web at the same time and having a very portable laptop that you can take anywhere around the park and still be connected to the world, is a pretty cool thing. It took a while to get everything up and running and forced me to upgrade the laptop to Windows XP but once that was done and tweaked, everything is back to normal. The Older Boy started first grade last Thursday and though he tells me he’s still getting used to the fact that his teach is both old AND thin, and not, as he said he likes, young and thin OR old and fat, I think he’s truly excited about being back in school again. Ike doesn’t start until September ...

Thursday afternoon I headed down to the Murry Morgan Bridge on 11th. My friends at Beautiful Angle and I had taken part in the Goddess Project , putting up a fourteen foot high series of boards with pictures and words the night before, and now I’d signed myself up to hang the rest of the pieces. It was a perfect afternoon, the rain that had been hitting our city had finally slowed down and the sun was just starting to make an appearance. The lift was right where the rental company had said it would be as were the artists waiting for my help. It was going to go smoothly, it just had that kind of feel to it even though I was in a hurry and the mill was in full production mode at the moment. It didn’t really work out that way though. Coming around the corner the lift was unable to stop in time and I wound up slamming straight into the side of the 402. I put a pretty good dent in the front right fender and though the mirror popped out of it’s holder I didn’t tear it off, n...