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Another day-another sick call and another race home. This time though it was a new twist on the old theme.
For the first time (and I want to reiterate the first time), my sitter who is here in the afternoon with the girls came up sick. So instead of a call from the school nurse at 9:15, this time it was a text from her at 12:15.
The good news for me was the meeting part of my day was largely done with-but I had to do some prep for three key meetings tomorrow. Work that is easily transferable to the train.
Based on timing, I could make it. 11.5 would be home about 10 minutes before I got home and I would go right to the bus stop to meet 9.0. That all fell into place quickly.
The wild card though is tomorrow-as noted, I have three key meetings tomorrow. Not a lot of room to slide things around. So along with the meeting prep, I spent some time coming up with a tomorrow strategy as well.
All of that in place, in time to do the Hebrew school car pool-get back home do a little more work and make dinner.
Just another day juggling on the single parent express.
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It happened again. Got out of the subway and there was the vibration of voicemail on my iPhone. took a look at the missed calls-it was the school nurse. And so another day went from normal to flipped on its head.
This time it was 11.5 with a stomach bug of some kind. I tried to get hold of the sitter-but could not track her down, so it was jump a train and make the run or hope to hear back from the sitter…
Back down the subway steps and back to Penn Station I went.
Just once I wish that call would come before I got on the train, or maybe half way through my trip. But it never does.
Upshot-11.5 is feeling better. Looks like it’s school tomorrow for her and since my Thursday was such a mess, I’m back in the office on Friday-going to try it again.
That call is still the toughest element to handle as a single parent. I’m pretty sure at this point I can plan for just about anything-but undoing the plans is often my undoing. I’m not sure its supposed to get better or easier, thankfully it’s generally infrequent.
In many ways I see part of my role as a parent to be an enabler for my kids. Enable them to succeed and grow. Whether it’s the best strategy or not I try to allow them to have experiences at their own pace and when I think the time is right. For example, when the time I enabled them to go to sleep away camp and have a summer full of fun.
The key to this is being confident that they will be successful-and enjoy the experience.
Today is one of those moments for 11.5. She is going to an Islanders’ game at the Coliseum without me. It’s a first for her and a first for us. I think in this case it’s me who may be a little more up tight than she is about this experience.
In trying to be a good parent and exposing my kids to all kinds of events, she’s been to the Coliseum for many Islanders’ games. Add to that the circus, Disney on Ice, the Globetrotters etc. I know she knows the building and how to move about there.
But anytime she’s gone, it’s been with me. I’ve taken her friends from time to time, but I’ve always been there. Until today. A milestone is reached.
I know she will have a good time. I know she knows how to behave. I know she knows how to enjoy a game.
In a twist of fate, I had the opportunity to buy tickets to the game from a friend, and take 9.0 with me to the game, and be there. I decided though it was time for 11.5 (and for me) to reach this milestone-so I declined the tickets and here I sit with the surround sound on, ready for some hockey.
I’m pretty sure I’ll keep an eye on crowd shots, and shoot some texts out during the game.
Let’s Go Islanders, and Let’s Go 11.5.
What started out as a normal Wednesday somehow went awry with a single phone call-and the simple phrase, “Dad, I just want to remind you…”
On the phone was 11.0. The call came at about 3:15 this afternoon-and the reminder was that she had her school’s winter concert for chorus and band that night. She needed to be at the high school at 7 and the show started at 7:30.
Almost reflexively I reminded her that in order to remind someone of something you first need to tell them about it.
But after that came the on-the-spot mental logistics exercise. I have to get her to the high school by 7. I have to make my way out of the city and to the high school no later than 7:30-earlier if possible. In the middle of all of that, 9.0 has Hebrew school and Girl Scouts.
After thinking it through, the timing and locations work-I can have the sitter do the transportation-Girl Scouts also meets at the high school, so it just may work. At about 7:10 I roll up to the school and find 11.0 to say hi and take a seat.
Mission accomplished-guess it was a good thing I got that reminder, right?
Maybe I should not post this while I am upset-but I will. And I probably should not do it as a video-but I did.
I call this the final insult, because after navigating the nation’s completely dysfunctional Medicare system for more than two years, I have written what should be my final check to close the books on the care I needed to provide for my wife in her final months. And while I don’t begrudge anyone having to pay for it-the process is broken and no one wants to hear about it.
I spent time with the staff Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, Congressman Bishop, former Assemblyman Alessio, State Senator Lavalle and county legislator (now my Assemblyman) Losquadro. While their offices were mildly helpful in helping push my case-none of them was or is willing to look at the bigger issue: the system is broken and does not work.
While I had a wife dying in hospice and two children at home what was my focus? A five-year look back into my finances which included massive document acquisition and shipping. All for someone who has spent a lifetime working and paying taxes.
Just to add some context-when someone goes through something like I did, there is a legal process called spousal refusal. In reality it’s kind of the practice of elder law-where the assets you’ve spent a lifetime trying to amass and leave to your children are protected. As a means to prevent fraud-the social safety net that is Medicare has become something more akin to a painful process to tap into-where there are plenty of folks who push the blame down the line to the one person (in New York this is the county caseworker) who has contact with the person applying.
There is nothing compassionate about trying to leverage the social safety net and frankly instead of being able to focus on the pieces that required attention, I was chasing documents and meeting always arbitrary and usually impossible deadlines. How many of you can put your hands on 5 years of bank statements, 5 years of investment records, 10 years of tax returns? There was one request for records from the savings accounts I have for the girls-because tooth fairy money is part of the accounting scheme.
So now I can say-screw you.
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For probably the first time-certainly the first time I can recall in the eight years we are in this house, I spent a few hours today cleaning out the garage. Now, generally, the garage for us has been a place to put bicycles, garbage pails and I put some shelves up for storage of some pantry type items.
After that, for eight years, it’s kind of been the place where things go to never be seen again-kind of an abyss for half-finished paint cans, quarter left rolls of duct-tape, half full bottles of washer fluid etc.
But today, I struck gold. Or at least a find that probably saved me a couple of hundred dollars.
The window shade in 9.0′s room has been broken for a while now. It was basically down, and would never go up. I’ve delayed dealing with it because it would be the start of a project-which would lead to wholesale changes for all of the windows, and frankly, I just don’t feel like taking that on.
But there, tucked away in a corner of the garage, next to a box of flooring tiles (because that would be really useful) were two extra window shades.
Now the part I truly don’t understand. When we moved in, the window covers were custom cut and installed. I have no recollection of extras coming in-much less two of them. Nor do I remember tucking them away in the garage. Yet there they were.
And now, 9.0 has some sunlight in her room.
Dictionary win/win here. She has the new window, I’ve saved a few hundred dollars (not to mention the tediousness of window cover shopping). Probably should clean the garage more than every eight years I guess.
At the start of the final week of bachelor living-I can say things have actually gone pretty well. I managed to get just about all I wanted to get done accomplished. There are a few things that are still in progress, but should be done by the time I get the girls next Sunday. All is all, despite the hang ringing and over-analysis not too shabby.
On the home front, by next weekend I will have completed the renovations I had planned. Painting, flooring, new TV’s and some better organization.
On the career front, by the end of next week I will be a month into my new gig at Verizon and while learning on the fly, generally doing well-no complaints.
On the personal front, I’ve been able to slow things down a little and not feel like things are coming at me faster than I can process. Of course that’s easy to do when I am the only one home. The bigger test will be when the girls get home-but I think we should be OK.
For the girls, by all accounts they love camp, and its been a positive experience across the board. This was one area I was not too worried about for myself, but until the girls got there and settled in, it was always a variable.
So, into a new week I’ll go. The usual myriad of work and personal pressures ahead and plenty moments of the unknown. Then the girls come home and we get back to “normal” or whatever semblance we can create.
My hopes for a quiet July and early August turn a turn for the busy (in a very positive way) when I decided to get back into the corporate world-and took a job with Verizon. This is the decision I alluded to a month ago in my post about not having a sounding board to talk things through with. Decision done, background screening aced, and back into the corporate world I go.
As I look at my first day on the job-a success by any measure (I can find coffee and the men’s room) I kind of sit back and look at change and the management of change that has transpired really over the course of the last year or so.
It was at about this time last year I knew my time at CBS was winding down-and given all I was dealing with (wife in hospice, managing the house, juggling sitters, getting ready for the next school year, deaths of two close relatives) it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. In fact, the time since last October when I left CBS to now has been for the most part relaxing and I think a needed respite give all that was going on outside of the workforce.
As I look back (and ahead) I can see a lot of the change that has gone on – some of it by choice some of it by happenstance and some of it by life itself. The self change is the way I try to look at things, relate with people and deal with events as they come up. It’s a work in progress, but generally going OK.
Change by happenstance-much like change by life itself doesn’t really give you a lot of choice, it’s really the curves that you get to roll with in life. In a couple of weeks it will be a year since my uncle died. Last month it was a year since my aunt died, in a few months it will be a year since my wife died-while none of those events were surprises-its never an easy moment and they each bring a piece of change and a new beginning.
While I am not trying to relate starting a new job to the death of a loved one-there is in a very different way that same kind of process of finding a new footing, taking a deep breath and moving on. In my case, pulling back from what was a successful-if accidental-consulting business, knowing that some of the scheduling flexibility I enjoyed is gone. But ahead there are great new opportunities in an emerging field with a world-class company-so once again, as I have done throughout the last 12 months I set out on a new beginning-this time its the start of the beginning of a new chapter that needs to be filled in with context and structure-because every story needs a beginning a middle and an end-and this one is just now starting.
Her First Period from Canada’s The Frantics comedy troupe (via mom’s email)
Coming off the long Memorial Day weekend, where I was able to slow down just a little bit-still spent a lot of time checking things off the list and getting the kids from here to there-I realized I am just grinding it out to the end of school and getting the girls off to camp.
Over the holidays in December, when I took the girls skiing and I started to feel like some of the burdens of being a full-time care giver for my wife were being lifted-I decided to focus on June.
Get to the end of the school year, get to sending the girls off to camp was (and is) the mantra. And although sometimes I wanted it to be a sprint-the six months in between have been a marathon. Some of it’s a blur, some of it we can look back at fondly and hopefully in the end the girls and I can look back at it as a chance to restart our lives.
During one of the shuttle trips from here to there this weekend, 10.5 asked me about a cousin’s Bat Mitzvah we did not go to in May 2010. It was the first time she had asked me about it. I quickly ran through how I would want to answer the question-because the answer was directly related to condition of my wife at the time.
I went pretty straight up and told her that because of the mommy was at the time, I didn’t think it would be good to be so far away. At the time, Risa’s condition was declining pretty steadily. Of course she stabilized, and held on six-plus months which got us to December and my current marathon.
So, heading into June, I kind of feel like I am making the run up Heartbreak Hill (Boston Marathon reference for those who are confused) and trying to finish strong. A little more shopping needs to be done. A lot of packing needs to happen. The end of school “stuff” is going on-and the usual assortment of last-minute pop-up items await-but the finish line is in sight.
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