Clarification

I took all three boys to the mall today to get them some nice button-up shirts for Easter Sunday, and yes, Uncle Casey, much to your dismay, I bought the boys matching shirts. Corey's is green, Shannon's is yellow, and Riley settled for blue. Look for pictures sometime after Easter.

While shopping, I asked the boys if they wanted to go talk to the Easter Bunny. ($49.99 for a set of pictures? With the Easter Bunny? Good thing the conversations were free!) Anyhow, Shannon looked over at the large white bunny and yelled, "I'm not going up to talk to him, that's not even really the Easter Bunny!"

I was overcome with this horrible feeling - Shannon's figured it all out, how sad! Worse yet, he debunked the EB right in front of Corey! Not to worry, though, Shannon quickly added, "the REAL Easter Bunny is PINK!"

Studying With Corey

Today, after years of encouragement, I finally gave in to Corey's doctors and my pocketbook and had Corey undergo a Gait Study. The study consisted of four hours of hooking Corey up to devices, then hooking him up to more devices, and then adjusting devices that Corey unintentionally unhooked. Great fun!

Actually we had a great time. There's nothing quite like watching medical personnel interact with Corey for the very first time, especially when they are held captive by Corey for hours on end.

Yeah, it's kind of amazing how Corey tells you the difference between Kelvin and Fahrenheit initially, and wow, listen to him read that Biohazard sign! An hour later Corey is explaining how to utilize a weighted storage cube with an aperture sign on it in a Portal game and yeah, doc is getting a little exasperated. By hour three Corey has read every sign in the room aloud and showed the staff how he spells out words by twisting his fingers into Corey sign language. By hour four, the doctor is trying everything he can to keep Corey on track, just ten more minutes and it could all be over with if Corey would just STOP EXPLAINING THE MERITS OF COMIC SANS VS. TIMES NEW ROMAN!!!!

Anyhow.... measurements were taken of Corey for quite a while and then he was fitted with a little motherboard on his back that resembled a jet pack. Wires ran from this box to various muscles on Corey's legs. Corey had to do a few passes along a path surrounded by about twelve cameras and a bunch of computer equipment, and he did just fine. It looked something like this:

Why does this make me think of the Jetsons?

Then came the cool part. Corey was striped down and suited up with a bunch of reflectors and made to walk along the same path. The data was then transferred to a computer which gave the doctors an amazing rendition of just how Corey's gait affects all areas of his body. Initially Corey looked like this:

A case of the bumps.

What the computer saw resembled something like this, minus Corey's body:


Corey, still and in motion.

This is the same technique used in the movies to do computer animation, and it was fascinating to watch but it is very repetitive. Unfortunately Corey, with his not so subtle gait, often knocked off the reflectors which required us to stop often for an adjustment or two or five.

Going...

Growing frustrated and adjustment time.

Oops. An Entire MONTH?

Wow. It's been a while since I've done the whole blogging thing. I suppose I should start by apologizing to those who manually check in every now and then instead of subscribing to a feed; to both of you I say, "sorry!" I can't really say I'm too busy for my blog, it's just that when something interesting happens, I'm rarely in a position where I can sit and type it all up. (Especially now that I've discovered that you can briefly sum up your day in one sentence on Facebook and get immediate feedback. Find me there, people!)

Since February, Ken has been doing a little project which means I've been forced into a working on a project. We pulled the carpet out of our den and put down wood laminate in a Brazilian Walnut finish. Of course we had to rip out the baseboards to do this, so I had to touch those up and give them another coat of paint. Then the baseboards looked so bright that Ken decided to take off the door trim and the french doors and have me give them a fresh coat of paint, too. In the middle of that I decided to add another coat to my kitchen baseboards because they get so nasty and scuffed, well you can guess how long all of that took.

Right now the floors are down but the trim needs to be replaced. Ken insists that the dark blue walls look good with the darker flooring, but I'm debating (in my own mind) whether I should change the color of the room or not. Whatever I decide, it's not going to happen anytime soon I'm sure.

I did finally get off my butt and got a little job lined up. Well two jobs actually. I just started subbing in the cafeteria for the boys' school district- it's physical work that is flexible and never amounts to more than 4 hours a day. This is good because a) after not smoking for 2 1/2 months I've gained just short of 15 pounds and I need to get moving, b) I can reject any work I want to and it wont be held against me, and c) I still have a good two hours each day to dedicate to cleaning the house and cooking nutritious meals for the boys when they come home from school each day. (One of those selections was complete BS, I'll let you guess which one I'm referring to.)

In another week or so I should also be cleared to work in our school district, as well as a few surrounding districts, as an axillary worker, para-pro, or a (don't choke here,) substitute teacher. Anyone who knows me as a parent will say, "ARE YOU CRAZY???" regarding the substitute teaching. A few people who knew me before children, back when I had that naive 'I can change the world' mentality and actually declared my (first) collegiate major in Teacher's Ed with emphasis in Special Education, will maybe see a little potential here. My take on it? Well I met all the qualifications to be a sub, so I filled in the circle for it on the application thinking, "What the heck?" We'll see if I ever respond to any actual teaching requests, though.

I'd post some pictures on here to at least give you something to look at but my camera is seriously on it's last leg. It will let me take about five pictures and then the batteries die on me. I do have a couple of interesting pictures on my camera phone, they look stellar at 1" x 1 1/2," but worthless at 4" x 6". Hopefully I can rectify this situation by Easter, and it must be rectified for sure before Shannon's First Communion! Maybe the Easter Bunny will hide a new camera in a golden egg for me? Yeah, I doubt it, too.