Special Manners 101: Not Rude, Just Life

Before I get into the meat of this article, I want to share a link to a story that a friend sent my way: Check out Zilla's Blog Here, and then go read an article about how SEIU is taking money out of the medicaid monies that people receive if they care for their adult special needs children at home. This could be my future. I would fight this to no end.... or at least to a pay check and state pension. 

Now mind you, the most a person gets for being on SSI is $674 here in Michigan. That doesn't go really far when there are medications to buy, diapers to change and wheelchairs to push. There isn't much that you can live on when you only have that much to make it through. Think rent, medicines, food, health needs, transportation... ect....

Special Manners 101: Not Rude, Just Life

Holiday get togethers, birthday parties, and field trips to crowded places are wonderful times for people to share. Well, most people anyway. Special needs people and their families love that you think enough of them to invite them. Some of those trips and settings are appropriate for them, and others are not. Please understand when we politely say "No, Thank you."

A wheel bound child might not like to go to the park that isn't set up to be inclusive for their disability. A formal sit down Thanksgiving meal may not be the greatest place for two Autistic children. A concert with limited handicap access may not be what Billy had in mind for his birthday gift.

It isn't that we don't like your home, it is that we respect the other people that will be there as well as our children enough to know that we should stay home. Everyone will have a better time if they aren't forced to deal with people who just don't understand the way their world works. My kids don't get your world and you don't get theirs. Sitting in your nice home that has never known children with tons of adults being adults would be hard for any child but even more so for one with disabilities. It isn't us being rude it is just our life.

When we plan a party for our kids it is in a time and place that we know they can deal with. It is geared to keep them safe, balanced, and content. We don't want anything less for your child so we will think of them and wish them the happiest of time but not subject each other to the chaos that could come from taking my sensory sensitive child into a crowded pizza play house. It isn't us being rude, it is just our life.

Special Manner #106: Accept that we are doing what is best for everyone. We are not thinking of just us, but you as well. It is a matter of respect, safety, ease, common sense and common courtesy. And before you think it or worse, say it... no I will not force my children to conform any more then they need to. Yes, they have to learn manners and such but they don't need to be forced into extreme, inescapable situations that we KNOW they can't handle. It isn't them being bad, spoiled, or rude, it is just their life.

If I choose to stay home because of my children, then I take responsibility for staying home. My life my choice. If you want to talk about, fine, but to give me cheap shots because you disagree with my handling of something only makes YOU look small and rude. If you truly care about me and mine than you find away to include us with out question or ridicule. Bring us a plate of left overs, save us a piece of cake, or simply accept us as we are, because we are.

Enjoy the Holiday Season. Know Love, Peace, and Hope.

Bad Apples Spoils The Basket

No Group Is As Good As Its Best Example,

Or As Bad As Its Worst.

The problem with anyone grouping people, races, religion, movements, parties, and classes together is that it makes assumptions that everyone with in that group is the same. That is simple crap.

People may have the same general thought or characteristic (such as a bank account) in common but be very different with how they got to that thought, what it means to them, and what they do with it. If you take any group as a whole for their individual action or motto, then you aren't really getting to the truth of the issues. You are doing a disservice to yourself as well as to them.

~~ And do not trust any one media source to tell you the truth. ~~

Let's just think this out for a minute. If you take the label out of any statement it loses its fire. People won't pay it the same kind of attention. If you want people to get their britches in a bunch, tell them how the people they are upset at did something they won't like. Don't tell them anything that may show the undesirables in a better light. 


Labels and the bad news is how people (MSM, politicians, and your in-laws) TRY to control you and your support. Think about what you hear: the Tea Party is against your race, the OWS movement is costing you jobs, the Republicans want to control your body, and the Democrats are giving all your cash to the lazy poor. They get you to hate a group, a label, a cause that is against theirs. 

Go ahead and tell me that it doesn't work.

If you spend your life hearing from respected people that: the Blacks will steal you blind, the Whites still make slaves of other cultures, Pagans all worship the devil, American Indians are all drunks, and the Christians are really using their faith to cover a sex ring - then you will believe what you were taught until you apply your own logic and knowledge.


It is a flawed way to control people who really can think about their own lives and know that they have seen the truth for what it is. And American's are starting to waken up and look at their lives and how they got where they are. People are slowly learning to look at the smaller details with-in the whole picture.

Don't you ever get lumped in with a group that you may share some trait with  but then feel put out because really they are the whole of you or your thoughts? 

Learn to look deeper then the group to see what the people are made up as before you judge. One jerk slicing an officer shouldn't say that all Occupiers as violent. One photo shopped picture doesn't make all Tea Party members fakes. One dumb racist prick shouldn't mark all of that race as evil. Know a faith before you paint horns on the one trying to save the Earth. 

 

How hard is this???? .... um.... never mind.... Don't answer that.

 

Even in the special needs community we are careful how we word our labels. If your child is labeled well then there are service to help them. If they are under labeled then you have more to carry on your own. If they have the wrong label or are correctly labeled but it is a label insurance company doesn't like then we are in all kinds of trouble. And then there are the people who think our child's label is what makes or breaks them. It is all they are. Never are my children the sum of their labels.

 

Tolerance, Understanding, Information, and simply letting people be people will go a long way to solving the issues that Labels create.

OK So My Point: 

If you hear of 3 people in a crowd of 100 doing something out of the norm of the group, then you should have a good idea of the true nature of the group by looking at the whole.

If you don't understand what the group stands for believes in, wants out of life.... try talking to them, reading about them (and not using MSM alone), LEARN before you judge.

Check and re-check what you think you know with what you can prove from your own life experiences. If you have know 50 cops in your life and only one was kicked off the force for bad behavior then you have a good indication that most cops want to do their job as best they can so the media may be full of garbage if it says that most cops are dirty. 

Don't judge. And if you feel you have to take a side, learn the good and bad of both sides before you do. Don't just go with the one you always have because you always have.

KNOW PEACE. KNOW LOVE. KNOW CONTENTMENT.

The Updated American Revolution

The Updated American Revolution

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation." - Founding Father James Madison

 
Why do people revolt against anything? They revolt against perceived injustices. They fight back against people causing harm to the ones they love. They take up arms when people steal from them or when they feel there is no choice. They fight for their rights to live like humans.

Lobsters are a strange lot. They don’t know that they are being boiled alive until it is too late. Sometimes though, one will revolt and head for the top of the pot hoping to change his fate. Too many Americans don’t realize that the fire is on and turned way up. The water is starting to get really hot. Now is the time to change the pot we are in because it’s not just hot, it is boiling over.

You may not agree with the methods behind the Occupy Movement. You may not agree with all they have to say or what you have heard that they want to have happen. You may think they are not an organization and lack an over all structure. You may have seen clips of one protester using a police vehicle as a toilet and other clips showing unruly cops.

Set aside those thoughts long enough to understand that it is made up of people just like you. They are everyday people who have found that they can not make it as things are. They are poor, middle class, and even some rich. They are students and parents. They are young and old. They are just everyday people who have their own reason for standing up. It is everyday people that will make or break the future of America. Click here for a great look at what the press hasn’t shown you.

There is the bottom line that we should all take from the Movement no matter what political affiliation we hold, no matter what our bank account looks like, or what we think of their methods. That bottom line is that something has to be done and only ‘We The People’ can make it happen.
 

If not a revolution then a civil war!

Polls are showing that 80 percent of Americans are unhappy with how the country is being governed. The two major political parties seem unable to work together to fix what is broken. There has been a growing support for an alternative to those politicians. The smaller parties aren’t powerful enough to breach the divide. It is time to find a better system, and maybe a better political party.

As Americans, we need to band together to create a system, a party that can replace those already in power. We need to forget what is different and use what we view as the same. We need to organize. We, as a nation, need to get it together and stand united against the threat to our way of life because if we don’t things will be forever changed in the worst possible way. If you are a hard working American who wants to see this country get back to being the greatest in the free world than it is time for you to stand up for it.

WHY?

There are not enough jobs to meet the needs of the American people. Ignore the unemployment numbers that you see posted by the financial or government institutes for a moment because they do not include the people who took jobs that are not enough to maintain their life style or even their downsized life. It doesn’t include the folks who gave up finding something, the ones who tried going back to school, or the ones who just disappeared off the radar because they are now part of the nameless, faceless homeless.

There are families that have to choose between dinner and medicine. Having to spend money on high priced gas just to get to their low paying job is sometimes impossible. They are trying to find ways to make do on less while the government slowly takes away their rights.

You have to pay the electric company because if you go off grid and don’t “have electric” you can lose your children. But that same electric company makes it a habit to cut off families every early fall before the November cut off date that makes it illegal to do so. That is the corrupt big business standards that people need to stand up against.

The government from the town level on up are full of corruption and greed that only leaves ‘We The People’ cleaning up their mess while trying to feed our families. They are putting laws into place that they have no right passing because they are about our basic freedoms.  The highest levels are full of back stabbing, ankle biting bull that makes it impossible to get things done.

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

~ The Declaration Of Independence ~

We are losing our place in the world. We are losing our soldiers to pointless actions of aggression that lead us no where. Children are not being educated to their full potential. The rights and freedoms we hold dear are being stripped away a hidden law at time.

The rich are getting richer. The middle class is getting poorer. The poor are getting crushed under the weight of it all. People are starving for the first time in decades. It can and will happen to you if things continue along this untenable path.

What has to be done:

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."- JFK

The people of The United States Of American need to band together to become more than any movement or any party. Together the common needs can be met, the common goals reached, and the common ground returned back to the American people. It needs to be “by the people, for the people,” a grass roots organization of caring concerned people who aren’t there to feather their nests at anyone’s expense.

YOU need to let go of the old party lines because they don’t work anymore. They are getting us into deeper and deeper trouble. We need to take the best common threads of all of our political ideologies  and weave them together to repair the fabric of our nation. 

Libertarian’s, The Tea Party, The Green Party…. They all have good ideas that are simply lost in all the noise. Band them together. Take the heart of the Occupy Movement, the people, and use it to create a better political party.

There are likely thousands of intelligent caring hard working respected Americans who would answer the call to serve not as soldiers in a battle but as politicians ready to right the listing ship that is America. There needs to be a great leader to take the voice of the people. We need this generation’s Martin Luther King. We need the greatness that helped the original revolution over come impossible odds. It’s to remember what this land stood for from the time the first settler found freedom from oppression. 
 

In 1776 the people of the USA wanted their own country, in 2011 its time to take it back!

Occupy Graphic To See Key Points

Via: Online MBA Blog

Lazy Lazy Lazy (Special Manners 101 or A View)

Wake up at 6 am Monday through Friday to go scrapping. That is what the man does to bring in a living. He has a license unlike a lot of the scab scrappers that he must compete against. He drives through certain neighborhoods, takes any visible metals, and leaves the stuff as neat as when he came by. It drives him nuts to see the people who dig stuff out of trash bags or leave a mess or break glass all over lawns. He hates the way the scabs break into houses or steals the fencing from the roadsides. This is his job since he lost his to a medical condition he doesn't have insurance to treat.

He comes home after a couple of hours and helps with morning chores. He feeds the dogs and checks the property. He helps medicate the special needs child. He gets to work breaking down the scrap. The more you break it down into it's different metals the more you can earn. Now that winter is near there is wood to be split and a fire to tend over the course of the day.

The wife is homeschooling three kids. Two of them are special needs. She is trying to get all of the medical needs of the family met.She fills out that form, calls those people,pays that bill, puts off another and writes to these other folks. She juggles those chores with trying to earn a bit using the family computer, helping break down the scrap, and her own medical issues.

The family then loads up into the car to go to therapy 3 times a week totaling over 15 hours. Hubby has to drive because the wife has seizures. Wife handles the kid in therapy and the hubby watches over the other two kids. Then the other days of the week is the "other" appointments. There are doctors to see, tests to be run, groceries to fetch and scrap to turn in for gas and grocery money.

They get home just in time for Hubby to head out (Sunday through Thursday evenings) to do his scrap run. Wife and kids do the afternoon chores and play time. Play around their house is like therapy time. They do crafts for fine motor skills, play parachute or biking for gross motor, tell stories for social skills, and speech is practiced as often as possible. Wife makes dinner and hubby will do the dishes.

Nights are spent breaking down scrap and working in what ever way is needed. The kids are doing what ever they feel up to until story time. The chores every family has is worked into their day - showers and baths, diaper changes, and room cleaning. The same everyday stresses are there with the added stresses of medically fragile members of the family, bad moods, and bad physical days. There are money worries and days when parents don't eat so the kids can.

And it really gets rough when there is a need that needs to be met and no where to turn to get it. A breathing machine (nebulizer) breaks and the youngest can't breathe. A problem with the truck and there is no way to get money to feed the family. An extra bill or trip to the ER can turn the whole world upside down and side ways.

This is the reality being faced and balanced by many people (families) these days. Both of these parents had jobs 7 years ago. They made 75% more then they bring home now. Both are facing medical issues that aren't being addressed. Neither has a criminal record or cheat the system. The kids are relatively happy and are taken care of. This is their life.

People who say that the poor are just lazy have no idea what it's like. People who say there are plenty of jobs are clueless to the realities of today's world. People who don't understand where the "poor" (as a class) are coming from have simply never been there, done that. They must be made to see that they are not too far away from being here themselves. 

The reason the OWS/ 99% movement has caught on is because too many folks are falling without a net. They looked for work and couldn't find any. They have lost a house, a car, and all the stuff they once took for granted. No matter what political or OWS view you hold, you have to understand that things can't keep going on as they have if we are going to "recover" our nation as a nation, our world as a world.

I have not seen any answers I would call THE ONE, but I am at least seeing people trying to come up with solutions. That is progress. Instead of stamping down on the efforts of those trying to make a difference, or those folks just trying to make it through the day, why not BE the change the world needs? I am personally sick of the hate and fighting when we should all be doing what we can for each other.

The sooner we get together and work together on practical, down to Earth solutions that work for everyone, the sooner we will once again be everything we claim to be as a people. There will always be rich and poor but the poor doesn't have to be THAT poor, the poor that wipes out hope and happiness.  

BALANCE IN ALL THINGS. The family I talked about would be happy with enough. Not fancy, or even modern... just enough. Enough food, enough warmth, enough care. Why is that such a  problem for people to wrap their minds around? What is enough? Enough food is when everyone goes to be having eaten dinner every night of the month. Enough is when we don't worry about leaving our children as orphans because we can't get the treatments to cure our illness. Enough is not a 6 month wait for a 3 year old's leg braces. 

This came out as more of a rant then I intended but I guess if more of us spoke of what we know, what we see, then we wouldn't have fallen so far behind. Stand up and fight or you will fall.... and soon.

Know peace. Know love, Know how to share.