January 1, 2012

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It’s Been a While 1.

It’s Been a While

Monday, 02 January 2012

Maize, Ks

To be honest, it has been more than just a while, it has been nearly two years from the last time I wrote anything here. Frankly, I was shocked to see that my diary was still online. When trying to figure out what super awesome, most likely to happen “self-improvement” thing I was going to do for 2012 I figured taking up the keyboard here once again couldn’t hurt. It has helped me slog through stuff in the past, so why not?

I used to write in this thing once, if not more so, a day… So why a two year segment of time between the last entry, according to the entry list at the right it was a book review, and now?

This reason, why I haven’t written anything is the same reason why I am starting again. You see, life as I knew it two years ago was completely shattered in March of 2010. Everything I had and knew and loved and thought was true, either got lost forever or completely blown apart. The fact this diary dates all the way back to the start of what ended up so painfully, cataloging day to day life, ups and downs and all arounds, looking at it again, much less writing in it simply was too painful.

I am going to try and sketch out an overview of the events of March 2010 until now. I’ll fill stuff in as I post entries here. I’m not sure if I want to start from now and work back, as these most recent things are what I remember most, or if I should more or less pick up where I left off? *SMH*

18 March to 10 May 2010

Olathe, Ks / Kansas City, Ks / Wichita, Ks

This time frame, especially 18 March through 10 May of 2010 are the most cloudy memories for me. Given what my children and I were going through at the time, I can say without a doubt this is a blessing…

Background:

If there are still any of my long time readers out there, you can skip this bit as it just fills in the background of life leading up to 18 March…

In April of 2002 I was at the now defunct Kansas Rehab Center for the Blind. Trust me when I say, just because the word “Rehab” is in the name of this place, doesn’t mean it is “REHAB” (cue up fancy Hollywood-ish music”..

There was no Dr. Drew, or Phil or anyone from TV who takes part in some class of “Rehab” celebrity or otherwise. There were no damaged, dysfunctional addicted stars. Although we did have our share of dysfunctional, most of them frightfully enough staff. I do know, we did have one recovering addict in aftercare, but she was an inmate, oops client. There was another client who was clearly addicted to smoking and possibly other things as all he did was cough hackingly away through his time there. When he wasn’t hacking up a lung or liver or something he was slurring his speech and acting slightly less that sober… We even had, for a very short time, I think I had be in for not even a week when they carted this person off, a man who I think was barking mad. He would sit in the client lunch/multi use room and shave. At one of the lunch tables. Without water. Every morning I seen him. Then, some big row came to pass where he would not exit his residence, an apartment rented by the RCB to house out of town clients, or take a bath or do anything civilized.

One day he was there and the next day in morning meeting he wasn’t there anymore. All we were told was he had to leave for persona’ reasons.

Come to think of it, there was another client who came at the summer time. This person was under strict orders by their doctor to have supervision round the clock as they were self-injuring. This meant the person had to room in the resident manager’s apartment as there was always someone on duty.

This took for like a few weeks, and then the powers that be for whatever reason rented another apartment that was in the same complex but unlike the two apartments or three apartments that were already rented out by the RCB that were in direct view of the RA’s office, this unit was several buildings over, more or less like Alkatraz is to San Francisco.

They said they were moving their two most independent clients over… One of whom, was the person who was under the supervision order.

This did not end well. It could of ended a lot worse… After a few days away from supervision the under supervision self-injuring person started to have issues. I was in the multi use room when this client and some of the admin staff came through… I don’t know why they were talking so loud or if they even took notice I was in the room. The client was in tears. Staff was trying to comfort her. They were also trying to make plans for taking this person to the mental hospital as they had tried to self-injur again.

Drop the ball much RCB?Although, them being a state agency, if this person had, say, managed to kill themselves, the RCB would either lie, duck to cover their own ass or spin it to make it look like they hadn’t gone against medical advice like as not…

There were no TV cameras or crews filming every moment of our lives, but you could of fooled us. Several times I and other clients cought staff hiding behind, say a big book shelf of braille books in the braille room, spying on us.

They also did mind boggling things like, dig through the trash so they could confront us clients as to the fact nearly all the sack lunches provided, which were composed of sandwiches with mystery meat and about 30 metric tons of mayo. Then to add to the soggy factor, containers of mixed fruit would spill juice all over the mayo laden sandwich. Fruit was provided but it was mostly mushy apples, spotty bananas or the like. My guide dog Fleming wouldn’t even try to sample this slop and he, like Mikey, would eat anything. They went through the trash on an regular basses and we were often confronted about the findings.

Some of us took the choice to walk the few blocks to the Hardys for lunch. One day we were late by something like five minutes. None of us thought this was a big deal. More often than not, if you turned up for any given class on time the instructor wasn’t there, leaving us to blink at each other and figure out what the hell we were meant to be learning. The instructor, most of the time came into class but it would be at least fifteen minutes and sometimes as much as a half hour late.

What they were doing to cause them to be late is beyond me. So, as you can see, this five minutes late thing didn’t seem like much of a big deal to the four, five if you count Fleming of us.

We no sooner walked through the door and collected the things from our lockers we needed for class when big Eva, who was actually the size of a humming bird and the boss at the shooting match at the old RCB, came flying at us, herding we protigal sons and daughter and her little dog too, into the multi-use room.

We were told that we shouldn’t waist our money on lunch when a perfectly good one was provided…

I muttered inside my head, “Perfectly good… To cause future clogged arteries given the metric tonnage of mayo… ‘Sides that, last time I checked, big Eva, you were nowhere to be found in regards to my banking account. You do not have “payee” status on any of my money, thus you haven’t any place to stand there looking down your nose at us, me, and how we, I chose to use whatever funds we have… If I wanted to go buy hookers and boos, I didn’t and never have, just saying, ain’t shit you or anyone else can say about it.”

There was also a very mean looking can crusher device that looked as if it could take a man’s arm off if it took a notion to. We were supposed to recycle soda cans by washing them out in the sink and then submitting them for distraction by the jaws of death, read, can crushing device.

As you might guess, given that I am telling about it, this was something we did not do.

This resulted, as did most of our “bucking of the system” in a lecture at the morning meeting.

Come to think of it, perhaps these little “fact finding missions”, dives through the trash and peering at an unused can crusher can colliector, might be the reason none of the staff could ever show up on time a majority of the time.

If you think that is completely offing nuts, wait until you hear about our, social, or anti-social after hours life.

By some grace of God, I as a new inmate, oops, client, had no restrictions on where I could go after hours. There were a few “sane” staff there. The two computer teachers, the lady who, for a majority of my time there ran the daily living skills class, and my mobility instructor and, though others might say different, the woman who ran the braille class.

My mobility teacher, bless her heart, figured that as I had a guide dog, I could deal with having a “free pass” to go off grounds in my after hours time. I had full access to Topeka and as long as I checked in and out with the resident manager on staff, I could come and go as I liked. Which, thanks to my friend Eva, “lil Eva” so no one is to think I meant Big Eva I did nearly from the first weekend.

Other people… Were not so lucky.

About the time the client needing supervision came along, so did two other clients, both middle-aged mothers. People who could, up until the time they set foot on the grounds of the RCB could take choices for themselves and come and go at hem.

For the first several weeks of their stay, they lived in the RA’s apartment. They were forbidden to go anywhere off grounds unless family who could be responsible for them came or something. They could go out side, but could not leave the patio in front of the RA’s apartment and were restricted to about a six foot patch of sidewalk to pace back and forth on. The RA also, as I recall, had to be outside with them at all times.

I’m not sure what they thought these women would go and get up to. Supervision, as has already been made clear here, wasn’t a consistent thing. It was like being watched over by a bi-polar rock star or something. One minute anything goes, then the next it’s like we were unknowingly transported to super-max or something.

I felt bad for those ladies. They were grown ass women on a leash shorter than the short leash I use with my dogs while working them!

All sorts of utter non-sense prevailed.

We, numbering on average about 3 to 4 men and women residents of the RCB, had all sorts of stupid dumb eff rules that stripped away any “adultness” we may of managed to check in with. And now that I have had the chance to attend another residential training center for blind adults who didn’t have any of these childmaking rules, I can clearly see that, in the case of the state run program, you might as well pack a big box of depends, go to one of those fetish stores and buy a giant pinkie and bottle… You can check your self-worth and dignity at the door the first time you walk in.

If we were on grounds, we could not mix with the other sex. We were not to set so much as a skin flake of ourselves into the other sex’s apartment. Or… Fred Phelps would attack us, or failing that, we would be lectured by whoever was on staff.

We couldn’t sit outside the apartment on the long shared patio thing that fronted the ground floor of the apartments. It was in direct view of the RA’s apartment. To say nothing of the fact that this was a public, as in sighties on the outs, people with normal vision who just lived there and had nothing at all to do with the RCB could sit out on this same shared patio.

If too man people, meaning more than the assigned number of people started to cluster at either end of the patio, which was where the two apartments were located, one for the women and one for the gents, the RA would either ring the “over crowded” apartment to grump at whoever answered the phone and tell them to disband. Now! or they would storm over in person and tell the lot of us to disband.

We could only speak to the other sex under supervision of the RA in the RA’s apartment…

What’s our age again?

We had a bed time of nine o’clock. This meant we must be in our bedrooms in our apartments by nine in the evening.

But…

If we checked ourselves out, we could stay out until 11. So let’s say, we went out and the guys went out off grounds. We could leave as a group, mixed sex. and I’m guessing, could… Go buy hookers and boos, hook up, client on client… Get roaring drunk, although no boos was allowed on the grounds proper, knock over a gas station… Okay, maybe not that, but you get the picture.

At first we were allowed to use the stove and oven in our apartments. We were encouraged to use what skills we learned in TDL, tequnics of daily living. The kitchens were well stocked with pots and pans and the like and we were even allowed to submit food shopping lists so we could make our own meals

But then. All of a sudden, it became a high crime if we did so much as boil water. We would be written up for it and lectured. We were resricted to eating things we nuked in the microwave, or as Larry and I did so often, checked ourselves out, hoppedthe backk fence and tore off over the field behind the apartments and… Have mad wild blink sex in the tall grass. No not really. We’d go hang out at the strip mall that was on the other side of the field behind the apartment. We’d go to the pizza place or Subway or the Cascos or if we felt brave we’d high tail it over the road to the Mc D’s and spend as much time away from the apartments as we could get away with.

When he staid at the weekend one time, we took a cab to the hypermarket, wal mart on roods, and went all over the place to the best buy, and lunched at Winsteds… To the mall and everywhere. We walked. We even walked all the way backfrom the shopping district to the apartments. A rather long walk.

We always did stuff like this, me and Larry.

And I’ve said all that, to get to this… Larry… That’s where I met Larry. and that’s where I started down what would prove to be a long and rocky road, from there, through now going on ten years later.

If I knew then what was to happen in what was unknown to either Larry or I to be our future together, would I of changed anything?

Depends on what day you catch me now. Mostly though, despite the heartbreak and horror that was laying in wait for us down the road, I wouldn’t of changed a thing…

So, there I was, a month into what would be only three months at the state rehab center for the blind. The center had closed for a week prior as a sort of easter break. Before we broke up, we were told that two new men were joining us. Larry and another man. That’s all we were told. I figured that these must be old men or something because mostly every “Larry” I had ever heard about or known was a old person. I pictured a bald old man with hairs sprouting from his ears, thick hornremd glasses from the 50s and a button down short sleeved red checked shirt and old man trousers. This Larry, in my mind, also could, depending on my current mood have a hearing aid the size of the space station screwed into one ear.

Oh well. New people can be interesting even if they are old…

I had a friend, Zack, who was my brother’s age, read eight years younger than me, who was at the RCB. We hit it off straight away and I kicked it with him outside classes. He too thought most of the insane rules were crap.

I remember this one time we decided to do something dangerous. We took the bus to the mall and hung out in hot topic. We tried ringing the RA’s office and left a message on their answerphone as they didn’t pick up.

I thought nothing about it, but when Zack and I returned we were promptly chewed out by the RA for not checking with her.

I listened to her, filed the event in my mind under, “things that make you go Hummm? and can really do nothing about but move on from.” and went back to living my life.

That following Monday I was called into the head of student services and told that the RA from Friday was worried as I failed to show the correct level of reaction to what had taken place Friday Re: the mall.

What!

I’m sorry, I must of missed my braille jail handbook because I had not a clue that I was meant to display a given amount of reaction to a given encounter. How was I supposed to react? Should I of fallen to the floor, beat myself on the back with chains, offered up m first born child to the state, which, looking at things now, nearly came to pass. What? The RA said her bit. I acknowledged it and moved on.

Anyway… The first evening we were all back after the easter break, Zack and I wanted to go to hyper mart. There were two poor sods signing their self worth and dignity away, oops, I mean checking in with the RA. I introduced myself. “Hey I’m Jenny and this is Fleming my guide dog. Nice to see ya… I’ll come back later…”

The next evening Zack and I wanted to go back to hyper mart and then so did everyone else.

I’ll never forget this as long as I live, or am overcome with old age forgetfulness, which ever happens first. We were milling around the electronics section of hyper mrt, Zack and I. I had got 2 CDs, Weazer, the blue CD that has Buddy Holly on it, and a Lenny Kravits CD, the one with “If I’ll see you again” on it.