Thanksgiving Day Football in the country

I came home from running to the Dollar General for last minute Thanksgiving dinner stuff, the only store in Honey Grove...although as Aunt Sue pointed out at least they have a store... but I digress.  Ok, so I came back from the store and was told I had to go look out back at the "Goal" my brothers had created.  I was told it had fallen on Adam, but he was still alive and it also fell on a chair but it broke.  I walked out the back door and found this.

Yes, that is a trampoline AND picnic tables turned on their sides.  There were all sorts of rules like, if the ball goes over the chalk line it is out, if it goes between the legs of the chair it is in.  Most of the balls ended up in the chicken coop or next to the pond... which is also out of bounds.

Here is the whole gang "warming" their hands from the heat coming off of the spinning ball.  Awesome goal guys!  Adam, I'm glad it didn't kill you.

I got a job, I got a job, I got a job hey hey hey hey!

In case you missed it, I got a job!  It is technically a "Graduate Student Assistantship" position (which is hard to get and thus an honor...but I don't want to brag... ) but it pays real money!  The kind that will pay bills!  Can you tell I am a little excited about this new development?  Ok, here is the scoop.  I am working at the Denton State Supported Living Center (used to be called the Denton State School).  Here is a blip about it from their website:
Denton State School's doors opened in July, 1960, and within 1 year had approximately 1,700 residents. The majority of the residents were children and young adults with mild to moderate mental retardation. The school was designed to be a community within it's self. It had its own infirmary, beauty shop, education buildings, therapy departments, and four dormitories. The dormitories have since been converted to 40 apartments. Located on 200 wooded acres south of Denton, It is the largest of the 11 state schools in Texas and home to more than 650 individuals with severe and profound mental retardation. 

All of the residents there now are adults, many of which have been there their whole lives.  The few I have come into contact with have seemed very happy there.  I am working in the communication department and will eventually be working with the residents there to help them communicate whether by speaking or using some other augmentative device.  For now, because I have not completed the required training, I am not allowed contact with the residents to I am helping with the grunt work around the office.  Mostly I have become very familiar with the new shipment of communication devices recently delivered.  I get to open the box, plug in the device, make sure it works, then engrave it with an ID number before packing it all back up and putting it on the shelf.  So, for now, the picture of my work there is this...

Why did we keep...

I am way behind in my blogging.  It really slowed me down when the free internet I was piggy backing on decided to go password protected and didn't tell me the password.  So rude!  Anyways, that is my excuse on to the posting.

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to figure out how to come up with the money to pay my bills.  I looked around and decided I have a bunch of "stuff" that other people might want so I cleaned out everything that I owned that I thought might be of some value, mom did the same, and we posted a big digital garage sale on ebay, amazon, and half.com.  One of the easiest things to list was the DVDs so we listed a bunch of those. Later that evening, I was in the kitchen when mom yelled out from the bedroom

"Hey, Hope!  Why did we keep someone like you?!"


Ummmmm,


"what?" I responded hoping this was some sort of weird joke I wasn't getting and not my mother regretting having me as part of her family.  She repeated "Why did we keep someone like you?!" and I thought about it for a minute.  Just before I went off the deep end of despair I realized she was referring to the DVD Someone like you.  With a sigh of relief I yelled back, "I like that DVD!" followed by "you'll never guess what I thought you said!"

After retelling the story from my end we laughed until there were tears in our eyes.  Aubrey came in and I told her the story which just got the giggles going again.

Someone like you is a funny movie all about the new cow theory.  It makes me laugh but from now on I will giggle when I think of this movie because of the glitch in communication I had with my mother and the split second that I doubted I was wanted in my family.  :)

Mom, I know you're glad you kept someone like me around to share this story with the blog world.  Love ya!