The weak in revue

It's Sunday night again and I'm in Burns Harbor, IN at a Pilot truck stop. They wanna call them Travel Centers now. Guess it sounds better.

After rereading my last post I thought some of you may be wondering how m Monday worked out. Well, it worked out fairly well. It was just barely past 5pm when I got to Indianapolis, and they were kind enough to have a fellow wait for me (they are usually gone by 430). And then it was on to Lafayette, IN where I had called ahead and it the man there said if his salesman was gone by 7 he would come back to the shop and meet me so I could get his one window off the truck and be on my way. I pulled in about 645 and all was well. Interesting though since they had moved since the last time I was there. Not very far, and it was easy to find, but that was the narrowest dock I have ever seen. It's got concrete walls on both sides and if you are crooked in the dock you're hitting one wall or another. TIGHT, TIGHT, TIGHT! But there's enough room to get it in straight so no big deal. Just interesting.

But it was very nice of these folks to wait for me. This allowed me to get further on to Oakwood, IL that night before I ran out of time, and I wish I had run out of time earlier. This place was a dump. Two trucks stop, certainly not good enough to be called travel centers, and both of them had lots that were so full of holes I was afraid I'd lose the truck in one of them. Add to that the fact that it's been raining all day and the holes are full of water so you can't see how deep they are. Turns out a couple were a little deeper than I would have liked had I known. What a mess. Really muddied my floor up good that night. But sleep soon came and the next day was on to St Louis. This was the place I always try to get to in the middle of the night due to the size of the lot and the fact that once cars get in there and park, you can't get a truck turned around in the lot. Alas, this was the case come Tuesday. It was about noon when I got there and this meant backing in off the street, which was not a truck friendly street, and then all the way down the building to the last two dock available. When I was finished, my truck was 90 degrees in relation to my trailer and it was not pretty. I did have one lady stand there and watch me maneuver. When I was done and stepping out she said, "Don't know how you guys do it." All I said was "Very slowly. And some days you feel like you know what you're doing and some days you don't."

So overall, all went well on that trip. Now I'm waiting to get into Chicago in the morning and then on to Waukesha, WI. I've got 33 windows on this load which is a pretty good sized load. The most I've ever had on here was 37. My only concern was that when I loaded it on Friday I anticipated having to put windows up on load bars from the front of the trailer all the way to the back. But I only had to put up three, rather than 5 or 6. The problem is the three I put up go to a customer that sometimes does not have anyone there to help me unload. I think I will call ahead tomorrow and let them know what's what. Being up on load bars means that I've got window frames standing up on the floor and then bars stretched across the trailer at a height of six feet from the floor. We put up three bars and then lay a window frame on it's inside face and lay it across those three bars. So there's a 200 to 300 pound window up in the air that has to come down. Without a couple people helping, it can be a chore. And the worst part is that we put the bigger ones up because it saves more room on the floor to squeeze in the smaller windows. Sometimes loading these things is like working a puzzle, trying to use as much floor space as possible. But it's what we do so...

Thursday we had another IEP meeting for our two boys and all I can say is I hate school bureaucracies. I can understand there position but I think it's a sucky position. Josh is going to school, being educated, getting his life's training, for one and one half hour per day. That's it. All because our school system feels that he needs a one on one aide to be with him, and since they are not "fiscally responsible" for this child, they will not hire an aide until his "county of residence" forks over the money to do so. That county has since agreed to an aide, and our school is interviewing said aide possibility peoples, but the word that came down Thursday was that even when they hire this aid Josh will only be allowed to go to school for three hours a day.

I laid in bed that night, six hours after the meeting, and I still could not get my heart rate down. I was furious at the injustice of it all. Here is a little guy who's psychiatrist says that he needs at least 30 to 35 hours a week of schooling to keep him on track and our school says, sounds great, but we're not paying for it. Let him spend the rest of his life in institutional care. We could care less. If I here the term "Fiscally Responsible" one more time I'm liable to smack someone. I know there is not an endless supply of money in our county, although there appears to be in other places. And I know that he needs intensive support and help and that this costs money. But it would seem to me that when a need arises like this that there should be someplace a school can go to for resources. They should be able to say, "We have a child here who needs more than we have funds to provide for him. Send us some help." This would allow that child to be in school and get what he needs. The county may have to wait a bit until the money gets there, but if they knew it was coming then they could start him and play catch up with the funding later.

It just does not seem right that a school should be able to say, "We won't take this child because we don't have room for him." But then our school system seems to have a reputation for not wanting to deal with any children that have special needs. This coming from nurses and doctors in the area that have had troubles with the school supporting children diagnosed with learning difficulties and other needs. But I will say that this whole situation has caused us learn quite a bit. We are doing more and more research every day on autism and the help that is available out there. So we will see. There is another IEP meeting scheduled for this Thursday in hopes that a person from his "county of residence" can be there and that we can finish this whole thing once and for all. But somehow, I think not. Three hours a day is not enough for this little guy and he's falling further and further behind.

Enough ranting. My heart won't take a whole lot of this. By the way, IEP stands for Individual Education something, Program I think.

But we had a good weekend, Sheila and I. Both the boys went on respite this weekend, Josh for the first time overnight, and it was sure quiet around the house. We went to Preston and Nijal's ball games on Saturday, a double header, and I finally got some sun on the top of my head. Not enough to burn but enough so that that I don't look like I'm wearing a bathing cap. I don't know about you, but I think it's sexy. Then we went home, got Preston and Isaac to mow the lawn, ordered Chinese food and watched "Australia". Not the best movie out there but fairly good. Visual effects weren't that great and parts of the story were a little cheesy, but my wife and daughter enjoyed watching Hugh Jackman pour a bucket of water over himself. I think I heard my daughter moan at that point. Maybe it was the dog. But overall, an interesting movie and I'd give it a bit over three stars.

Ya'll have fun. I think I'm going to bed.