Question of the Day

                Today's post was going to be about Feisty Pant's triumph at school.  She has gone a month without a temper tantrum (She's an old pro at those -a lot of disabled kids spend much of their time simply frustrated and therefore are never quite far from a meltdown.)  She was named student of the month at her school and we all did the happy dance for her- literally.   Which got me thinking.   Are we weird and quirky because we have a special needs kid, or is it just more apparent because of Feisty Pants?  I like to think it's just more apparent, but I am probably fooling myself.  We'd be this obviously wacky and strange no matter what our situations was. ( I am so nerdy I have my own dice set.)  And that lead to things I wonder about now because I have a feisty one.  So this post is apparently going to be about questions I would love to have the answers to now that I see things a bit differently. Questions that I don't think I would have ever pondered before.  Like the following:

                  Why are hospital vending machines full of crap food?  It's a hospital for goodness sakes. I don't know how many nights we have spent looking for any source of real food in some far flung medical center at three am.  If your kid has been admitted and given a room on a regular floor, you can usually scrounge up a cup of coffee and some crackers and peanut butter.  But if you are all still sitting in an ER at 3 am- you will be lucky if the vending machine candy bars have peanuts in them.  A few ER's keep juice and crackers handy, but not enough of them.  It's like they are trying to drum up more business with all the HFCS.  Would it kill you guys to offer some fruit and veggies at 3 am?

                  And on the subject of hospitals, why isn't there a salvo or some other thrift shop in the hospital (or right next door)?  I have been thrown up, coughed or pooped on in eight different hospitals. A few have (or more to the point offer to patient's families) access to a washer and dryer but what do you wear while waiting?  If you are lucky you can scavenge a pair of scrubs, maybe.  Only one hospital (Strong Memorial in Rochester) had a small thrift shop.  It was GENIUS.  Just a small room with some clothes.   But it raised money for their cancer programs and made a big difference until my family could bring me clothes after Feisty Pants had been transferred in the middle of the night and all I had was what I had been wearing.

                  Oh, and what do you do with used medical goods?  I am not talking about wheelchairs or equipment.  There are a lot of ways to donate them.  (Got some old crutches, walkers, canes, etc?  Call your local Independence Center or Council on Aging. They will be glad to take them off your hands.)  But my house is crammed full of scoliosis jackets, dynamic ankle foot orthoses (ankle braces), hand and knee splints that Feisty Pants has grown out of.   I cannot recycle them ( medical goods are a no no) I don't want to put them into a landfill.  I have yet to figure out how to repurpose them.  So they sit around here collecting dust and mocking my lack of ingenuity.

                   And one last thing, I ponder a LOT...  What the heck is wrong with grown ups?  Seriously, kids aren't normally fazed by FP.  And if they are a little daunted by her, they simply ask questions.  Great questions, actually.  "Why are you in that wheelchair?"   "Why do you sound funny?"  "Does that hurt?"  They usually follow those up with even better questions.  "So, how fast can that go?"  "Can I ride, too?" (The answer to that is usually "get on!") Adults are either so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they say EXACTLY the wrong thing.( "So, um, er, um, what's wrong with her?" ) or they assume she's incapable of coherant thought and talk to her like she's two months old. ("How you doing, sweetie, baby, honey bun?" in a cooing sing song voice.)  I know you all mean well, but it's like you all immediately dither when you don't know what to say.  What gives?

                   Any Zen masters out there have these kind of answers?   I would love to hear them if you do.  Hit me up in the comment section.