July and October reports...and in December, the end of this era

[bumbershoot]

I don't think I mentioned the story of meeting the Stormtroopers at the Halloween party. (the fun is gone from calling them Stromtroppers)


The line was handled annoyingly by Disney, with a big gap between the line and the area where you actually meet them. This gap was taken up by the entrance to the Buzz giftshop, and it led to wonderful feelings of "omg there's NO ONE in line!" that of course were crushed by "no, the line starts over there". The CMs were great about it, they had to deal with a really bad line set-up and were apologetic, and just felt bad for them (and us).

So we figured out where the line was, which was basically behind the Star Tours FP machines, and waited. And waited and waited and waited. We met nice people, yadda yadda, the normal thing when waiting in line.

Now remember that the guys were dressed as pirates, with swords (two each, since they *had to* upgrade the swords (at extra cost!)) and attitude. I wasn't meeting the stormtroopers, and just walked in and went to the photographer to hand over my PP+ card. The guys walk in, and Robert gets it into his head to pull his sword. So he pulls his sword out dramatically and strikes an ATTACK pose.

The Stormtroopers reacted *instantly*, pulling their blasters out and being exactly as a Stormtrooper might be, when confronted with apparent space pirates with swords. It was SO COOL. And funny.

Just goes to show that the actors they get to be characters (and this isn't just Disney...Universal has great actors in costume as well!) do their jobs very very well.

The line handler and photographer were laughing and calming things down (that should be in quotes, of course), and talking about how they narrowly averted an "Intergalactic incident".

 

[bumbershoot]

I totally forgot to tell you guys this!

So you know, if you read every single word I write and remember it all (which, obviously, I don't even remember what I write so that's definitely NOT something I assume happens) our last day was supposed to be spent at the Hilton Suites, or something like that.

As we were going to bed (after Eamon was totally passed out) on our intended last DLH night, I got mega-sad. I mean seriously bummed out! It wasn't that I didn't want to leave Anaheim, it was that I didn't want to leave the hotel. I didn't want to pack, I didn't want to move, I just wanted to be THERE.

So Robert channeled Yul Brynner as the King of Siam and said "make it so". Or something like that.

We got ahold of the front desk, and someone worked some amazing magic, and despite it being sold out on disneyland.com, hotels.com, expedia, and everywhere else we thought to look, they got us the SAME rate that we booked at (amazing gay days rate) and let us stay in our same room. We nearly cried!

It was so lovely to tell Eamon, the next morning when we woke up, that we had one more night there.

 

[kaoden39]

When I got out of the hospital I had a home health nurse that came in regularly, a physical therapist and an occupational therapist. They all tended to call the morning of. That was until I got a permanent home health nurse and her and I set up mid morning/early afternoon times. In a house that has three kids that go to school in the morning, and two adult makes that worked(my nephew lived with us at the time) you really have to work around that. The therapies were always in the afternoon.


I have had the horror of losing passes. Now that you can use your AP for that it is so much easier. How nice of that lady to help you.


Love that the Stormtroopers stayed in character like that. What do you think of Disney buying Lucas?


Oh how nice to not have to move that night. Disney magic.



I hope you feel better soon, its rough being sick.

 

[bumbershoot]

So you know the fun of having Home Health. I guess the PT showed up today. As I expected, she wasn't deemed as needing PT.

Robert took her to a neurologist today, one who has seen her 3 of the 4 hospitalizations. Harder to "snow" them since they've seen her at her very worst! Nothing new, but they are glad she's being checked for atrial fibrillation. Sounds like it was a good appointment. Guess I should call her "old" neurologist to Trump him. (you know, "you're fired")

 

[kaoden39]

Oh yes, I know it well. I had an ileostomy and I had a terrible time with it springing a leak or the bag just plain coming off. When I had one that was one really good I refused to let them take it off to check my skin. I am afraid I wasn't a very good patient.


Well, honestly I did the majority of my own therapy. I took all of the things I learned in all of those months in the hospital into my therapy. Have fun playing Trump!

 

[bumbershoot]

Oh Michele, you poor thing. Hopefully you had some people who could appreciate a person who was an active participant in their care!

 

[kaoden39]

Truthfully, I think I was lucky. I should have died my blood pressure was down to 40/20 and Scotty was told to gather the family and bring them to the hospital to say goodbye. Through having an amazing surgeon and prayer I survived. My non miracle believing surgeon said that I am a miracle.

 

[bumbershoot]

Poor you and poor family! Even though in MIL's case it was a false alarm and caused BY a doctor, I know it's not a good feeling to have to gather the clan like that.

 

[bumbershoot]

Michele, you have been a great help to me here.

I'm 100% certain that if the strokes MIL has had were affecting her *body* that she would take it more seriously and not fight *us* so hard. We want her to be safe, we want her to take her pills (since she has chosen this route, at least in discussion with us), we want her to eat, we want her to do all of those things so she stays as healthy as possible and hopefully doesn't have any further strokes.

I don't *want* to treat her like a child or a teen; she's a grown woman who has gone through SO much incredibly bad stuff in her life. And now she's had a series of strokes that have messed up her long and short term memory, and therefore cannot keep track of these things 100%. But she resists proper help. Whereas you embraced the help, learned from the help, graduated from the help and went on to amaze people!

 

[kaoden39]

Molly, when I think what Scotty and the rest of the family went through I am amazed at Scotty's strength to get them through.


I am glad I have been able to help. I was partially paralyzed when I got out of the hospital. I was lucky in the sense that my thought processes in my brain like memory were not affected. When everybody else had to attend classes to work on that in the rehab center I had extra physical therapy and another class where I had to do things like play dominoes. I am still not sure what that did for me.

They told Scotty I would never leave the rehab center, then they told him I would always be wheel chair bound, then they told me that I would always need a walker, then they told me I would always need the cane. I "lost" my cane. I am a very stubborn person and I refused to be unable to do the things I always had. My hand and arm being paralyzed were the hardest on me. It's thanks to Disboards that I recovered use of my arm. Its the best physical therapy.

 

[bumbershoot]

Your story is amazing!

 

[kaoden39]

September 11th marked my 5 year anniversary of getting out of the hospital after 5 months and one week. It is a good day in our house.

 

[kaoden39]

I was thinking about you and I am hoping that you and Eamon are feeling better.

 

[bumbershoot]

Thanks Michele,

Eamon is very close to being done with this cold, and I'm feeling a little better. Still coughing annoyingly, and since I seem to get ickier as the evening goes on I'm sure I'll be a whiney mess by my bedtime, but I was able to do more today.

Of course, "more" involved cutting mass quantities of cardboard. This morning when I got up, I sat down on the couch and suddenly there was a very large arachnid next to me (whimper). DH (who was trying to get out the door to go to his mom's) took care of it and then there was another! So now we're on a mission to CLEAN and STRAIGHTEN and get rid of the piles of papers and Eamon's stash of cardboard. He had some big boxes that he was using in various ways, and he likes to keep his Lego boxes. Since there is no plan to sell his Legos, ever, we don't need them but he likes looking at them. Since papers and cardboard could be a hiding place for those critters (both E and I are terribly phobic, though I've tried to reduce E's phobia b/c it's an awful way to live), we gotta get it all gone. E wants to put some of the pictures from the boxes up on his walls, so I spent the day cutting the pictures out of the boxes.

And now my cutting hand's thumb is actually swollen. Visibly and palpably, AND it actually hurts.

So now I probably have some sort of traditional seamstress injury, LOL.


We did actually go out last night and got a bit of fresh air. It was a really warm-ish night, and it felt good to be OUTside. I had my phone with me and the redfin real estate "app" open, so I could see the prices of the houses we went by that were for sale. If ONLY I could afford a nearly 700K house...big huge gorgeous house on a really good street with other big gorgeous houses, all redone inside, awesome yard for trick or treating and decorating, and 7 bedrooms. Sigh. Funny knowing all of this in the span of time that E went and got a piece of candy. Yay internet!

 

[kaoden39]

Fresh air when you have been ill does wonders. Or at least it does for me. We had rain last night so there weren't many people out here. Aren't homes expensive? Even with the market having dropped like it did they are still outrageous.

 

[bumbershoot]

Up here you can still get good bargains. But not on that street. Or on the North end of that street. If you want to live in Hilltop, to continue the gentrification of that area, you can get *screamin'* deals on the exact same sorts of homes as are in the North End, but there are trade-offs. When I was in college I would go for runs in the good neighborhood and dream lofty dreams. It was SO exciting two years ago when Eamon and I went up to the door on Halloween of the one house I've yearned for. It's like a Craftsman bungalow with Cape Cod influence and a Florida coastal glassed in front porch. So neat.

I love redfin.com, but you have to be careful not to break your own heart. Another LONGED for house in another great area is for sale right now for about the same cost. When I looked at redfin, I saw that last year at this time it was foreclosed on and sold for 110K. omg I wanted to commit seppuku. 110K.

I've been trying to console myself with the taxes, the heating and cooling, the lawn care, the insurance on the place...that all of those would add up and be the death of us, but still. 110K.


Sometimes, with some colds, going outside hurts me rather than helps me. But with this one it was good.

It *has to be* gone by Saturday, because I am finally, for the first time in a LONG time, going out with a girlfriend of mine. YAY! She told me weeks ago that she wanted to take me out for beers the moment I got a chance, and this weekend is it. Woo!

 

[kaoden39]

Oh you can here still too. It is going to take a while for our area to recover we were one of the hardest hit in the country. We live in a great area, we are the most racially diverse area in the country according to a study I read, so it is a good area. So many people were underwater on their loans.

 

[bumbershoot]

The following is what I thought of based on what you posted, Michele.





We've been looking through FIL's old paperwork, trying to get answers to some things, because the longer he's gone (Thanksgiving '06 is when he died) the more his stories just don't make sense.*

One of the things we found was the mortgage paperwork for the duplex they bought with BIL and his ex (in ex's name ONLY**). It was with that SoCal bank/credit union that was among the WORST, the most predatory, at giving out loans, and it's the one that was purchased by Washington Mutual that caused their rating to tank because of the bad loans involved in the purchase.

We've thought that the ex didn't pay the mortgage for a year.

But in looking at the paperwork, they were setting the date to auction off the property before he had missed 6 months of payments. Yep, 5 months of missed payments, and they foreclosed. October '05 to Feb '06. With NO time in between starting the process and auctioning.

That does not seem right. In addition to that, the payments were just over 2K per month, so the family lost two homes for what amounted to $10,000. Just seems so pointless. If the ex had communicated...with my in laws or with the bank, it might have gone differently.

Part of me wants to look into it, see if that was standard practice or if they were among the people who were foreclosed on erroneously, and without due process/etc.


*for instance, his service record...now, why a person would make up a story that his last discharge from the military was dishonorable, I don't know, but we have his service records, and there's nothing indicating it would have been dishonorable...Robert says that his dad's personality is such that he would stick with such a story, for a reason that served a purpose decades before, rather than tell the truth, even when it cost him money and benefits much later on. so we want to know, and today we put in a request for info on that last discharge. I mean, what if he was eligible for VA help, and therefore MIL would be? how cool would that be?

**yep, same ex that has recently featured in MIL stories.

 

[kaoden39]

Oh joy! What a prize the ex is.



I think it bears look into there is any way to get extra help that way for MIL. Although don't expect much, a friend of the family has a husband that is in seriously bad health. He retired from the Air Force, she has tried to see if she can get him into some sort of VA place. They are not helping her.


The bank part I doubt that there is any recourse honestly.

 

[bumbershoot]

I doubt there is at this point, as well. And even if there were, with the mortgage only in HIS name, I know he would just take whatever possible settlement there might be and run.

We're trying not to anticipate *anything* but simple knowledge with the military records request. A conversation with neighbors about the VA is what finally prompted me to look through his stuff again and then make an online request for info, so the VA stuff is in my head. But really it's just the info we are after. I mean, we haven't even mentioned it to MIL. He served during WW2 and Korea, and re-upped 5 separate times, getting an Honorable Discharge certificate for 4 of those. Then there's just paperwork discussing mysterious stuff that happened at some point, which ultimately led to paperwork about him being fit for separation based on his resignation. Now it's possible that resigning (even when you've had 4 other tours of duty, at least two of which were during wartime) IS a Dishonorable discharge, but we'd like to know. And since the story he told is nearly impossible to believe to anyone outside their family (who had no choice but to believe the man of the house), knowing the "rest of the story", as told by the Navy, would be good if we can get it.



***************

We're dealing with the mentally painful situation of having scads of Alaska miles, an AP that expires Dec 6 (well, mine does...theirs expire in Feb, the stinkers), and a yearning for a cooler-weather re-do.

But we have NO desire for Candlelight Processional.

And WORSE, today I was sitting on the couch and got the strongest urge to just be in Epcot, just right now. OH if only the transporter beam existed and I could trust it...