my ignorance

those that don't know my profession...i work in a college admission office, and i love it! i greet all prospective students and their families and see to it that they have a memorable experience. there is a lot of coordinating between people within our office, guidance counselors, professors, current students, etc. to ensure a smooth visit. this past friday i experienced a first: we had a student that was in a wheelchair. he was a delightful young man who appeared to have cerebral palsy perhaps? his parents were great, he was engaging, and i tried to "treat" him as normal as possible assuming he didn't want royal treatment or pity. as he and the rest of our guests were leaving to go on a campus tour, i thought in the back of my mind...i hope that the tour works out for him, and my worrying didn't go much further than that. i was busy getting prepared for more students arriving within the next hour. the tour returned, and then they all had interviews which take place in a different building than my office. so after the interview, one of the counselors called to say this young man was on his way over to meet with our student lunch host who would be taking him to our dining hall. if you walk out the front door of our building, you see the dining hall down the hill. i thought to myself, wait, we have a ramp out back, but i don't think we have a ramp out front. i grabbed my student worker, and we ran outside to see. then i thought well, wait...why do we have a handicapped parking space out front towards the north end of the building? how in the hell is a person going to park there and get in here? then i thought how is our friend going to leave here and get to the dining hall? so i panicked. we ran out the back of the building to see how they were going to leave and get to the dining hall. i was freaking out because there were all these steps and the sidewalks that lead to the dining hall had steps down. leslie and i were like, how are we going to figure this out before he arrives, so it won't look like we are idiots on getting him to the dining hall. we quickly figured that she needed to meet him outside of a courtyard and literally go a long way around campus so his wheelchair would be able to access a sidewalk and pathway that lead to a patio connected to the dining hall. ALL THIS TO SAY...i feel so ashamed that i didn't know how to get around our campus if one is handicapped. i was sad that i have never thought about it. and i was sad because you know that he and his family have to think about this every single day of their entire lives. it's almost like a maze or a puzzle that has to constantly be solved just to do normal things in life. and i am sure 90% of the time ends in frustration and/or disappointment. we take so much for granted, ya' know? i challenge you as you carry on with your life...notice if your office building is handicapped accessible. next time you go shopping, to a meeting, to a park, pretend if you were handicapped and see if you could get access to where you are going. if someone calls you tomorrow and asks how to get to your office, would you know how to tell them to go? man, reality check.

a mess

so my in-loves come to town this past thursday. i decide to get the twenty-four hour bug (more like the 67 hour bug and counting) saturday morning exiting both ends (TMI...i know), and david leaves me yesterday for a week in canada. the in-loves leave this morning. i wisp to work having lost weight over the past couple of days wondering if i would make it through the day. i last until one o'clock and head back home for the couch. i am already emotionally stirred by the morning's paper on 9.11 and the haunting memories i have stored in my mind. so i am at home feeling pretty puny missin' my baby wishing that my stomach would stop cramping. to make matters worse, my aunt from the red sea visited me yesterday...what a combination. sorry, men...TMI. women, you feel my pain. so with the option of three soap operas or divorce court compliments of our rabbit ears, i resort to our case of dvd's. why i chose castaway, i don't know. i love this movie for some reason, so today i was on my, i guess, fourth viewing. i guess i like it because i don't have to concentrate on people speaking, or i don't have to figure out what's going on. i also love how it portrays the essence of time with profound, unspoken symbolism. similar to the previous three times, i begin sobbing when wilson is torn away by the sea and continue to sob until the end of the movie. the movie has an amazing ability to draw you into hank and hunt's character. this fourth time around, i was so much more aware of the comments and the surrounding set after hank had been rescued. we take so much for granted...so much. man. i flip the news on to watch more 9.11 memories only to surface more tears. i dawned on the fact that i had not prayed a single prayer for any of the victims' families and all involved on that horrible day. so i am sitting on my couch with snotty tissues pretty much a wreck still missin' my baby wondering what i was going to do about addressing my stomach. i go into the kitchen only to walk into a war zone of flies! flies buzzing all around me. i couldn't count...i panic...what the? i frantically looked for the source finding...nothing really. i trashed three red peppers on the counter and a banana that had been cut in half. nope. turned on the disposal. nope. all the while pulling matrix moves avoiding the frantic dive bombs. i put the trashcan on the back mud room and come back in to the deafening force field. i get a kitchen towel ready for retaliation. did i mention i hate flies? bam...broke our plastic paper towel holder (didn't like it anyway...). determined to stop the insanity...i licked three down in a row...just call me chuck norris...or rather mrs. miyagi. it was amazing. three dead flies wrapped up in a paper towel in the trashcan on our back porch. kitchen towel in the dirty clothes pile. silence. feeling good and wanting to reward myself, i scooted up to sonic for a chocolate milkshake to coat my stomach. it's a few hours later...and all i can say is...my eyes are still swollen from sorrow, and my stomach still hurts and that concerns me. maybe i am just constipated from all the lomotil i took to stop the diarrhea. yeah, hopeful that's it. anything past twenty-four hours means something is majorly wrong with me, right? i am a hypochondriac...i will settle with constipation though and call it a night. out.

hairdos

david and i went to college with a guy who is pretty stinkin' hilarious. he posted some pics of himself on his blog several weeks ago in regards to hairdos. my college roomy gave him some do-do rolls with a curling iron, and i took this pic of him our sophomore year in college (he's on the right) and to my knowledge...he has no clue that i possess it. :o) happy labor day, jabulani jonny. thanks for the many laughs.