Updates

I guess it's been a little bit since I posted, but not much has been going on...

Ron is playing nice right now most of the time. He was a real pain when we moved and for the little bit shortly after, but now has been okay again. I don't know what he's up to, but maybe he's finally coming to the conclusion that pissing me off isn't the best idea in the world...

I had a wonderful time at the Brain Injury Conference I went to for work, it was very fun and they packed a lot of information into it. The first speaker was an eye doctor, talking about the things they can do to help people with double vision, shifted field of vision, lazy eye and other stuff like that. The next speaker was about music therapy, explaining what it was, how it's used, and how we can use it when caring for BI patients... Um, I get that, music calms people. I use it all the time to settle one of my patients (A CD of his band) and another has classical all the time (he's a composer). The next speakers were from Physical Therapy, talking about balance tests and things like that. They lost me shortly after they started reading off the PowerPoint slides, and started talking about tests that will never be performed in our facility... When they start with "The person has to be able to walk without an assistive device for long distances to do this test" it's not going to happen where I work. When they can do that they're long gone from our place! We had a terrific lunch, then mini-dramas after lunch that were hilarious, then they had 3 families affected by Brain Injury speak and take questions. At the end we picked up our attendance certificates to turn in for Continuing Education credit, and off we went. Very Fun!

Since then it's been the normal stuff at work, patients that can't remember they can't walk, patients that don't speak or complain, and a few that do both very well. I have a new guy that swears he's having a "Heart episode" every time I have to turn him. He's in a lot of pain, gets short of breath, and thinks he's having a heart attack. He's not, he's just very anxious.

At home we are settling in very nicely. We went out to get a Christmas Tree a few weeks ago, Nate said he didn't want to go, didn't want to get up early, and was very miffed when I said it was his job to put the tree up. Well, we were planning to leave at 8:30 Sunday morning, Nate was up at 6:15 am, chomping at the bit to go. We got our tree at Target, then went to Big Lots to get the big blow-up for the yard (only $30!!). We bought their last one only 4 minutes after they'd opened! When we got home, Nate put the blow up outside, was good with that for a while, then started asking about the tree. That was just minutes before Ron was picking them up for the afternoon, so I told him he could put it up the next day.... I got home from work Monday at the same time they got off the bus, Nate met me at the door saying "I want to show you what I did!!" He was so excited about putting up the tree that he'd done it Monday morning before going to school :-)

He did wait to put lights on, since I hadn't specifically told him he could. When I told him he could he strung on the lights, then decorated the whole thing himself. RJ sat on the couch and played XBox. We only have a few ornaments, but it looks pretty good! Nate kept all the ornaments on the front of the tree, since that's all we see anyways. The first ornament on was, of course, a Corvette. We've decided to stick with these few for now, and they can each pick a couple special ornaments each year. They liked that idea, and I promised to go to Bronners when we go to Snow Fest in February.

That's about all the fun and happenings around here, except RJ and Nate both made Honor Roll... RJ had one B+ and the rest were A'a, and Nate got all A's and B's, even in writing... He was very excited to tell me he made Honor Roll, and had written "Honer Role" on the bottom of his report card... What a kid!