Agreed. And leave everything in the household to some worthy local charity - ideally with enough money to cover the cost of hauling stuff away, if you can manage that. The charity can sell what they can and donate or discard the rest.
There are also places that specialize in estate sales. I know next to nothing about them, but your executor could bring in such an orgnization.
And have the proceeds go to a charity (or to help your mother), NOT your sister.
To be honest, the hassle of jumping on a plane and organizing a garage sale is nontrivial, so I can’t entirely blame your sister for that. I can’t speak to the other crap she’s pulling, just being a devil’s advocate on that one issue.
Early Intervention is the place to go. This all occurred well over 25 years ago for us (Dweezil, who is high-functioning autistic, is 28). The evaluation for him was free - it’s mandated (IIRC) by the IDEA Act.
If memory serves (again, this was 25+ years back), we could have gone through either Child Find or Early Intervention. Dweezil was just under 3 years old at the time; I think the cutoff for one was birth through age 5, and for the other was age 2 through adulthood - but it may have changed, and I may be misremembering.
They have a legal requirement to get things rolling within x days of a referral. We went with Child Find initially because the mandated period was shorter, but also got things rolling on the longer one (which was through the school district). I want to say one was 45 days, and the other was 90 - and the clock on the second one may not have started until after the first was complete. I recall that his evaluation was some time in June, and we got things rolling some time in May, so it all happened relatively quickly. He didn’t start preschool until October,
Services through the first one were billed to us, but we could submit certain of them to insurance as therapy. And the billing was means-based.
By going through this process, we got Dweezil into a school-based preschool program - which was of course free. Bus right to our doorstep, etc. The downside of that is that you’re working on the school’s calendar - if it’s snowy, kiddies stay home and you have to arrange for care. If it’s a school holiday, ditto. We had a nanny, so that wasn’t a huge issue for us, but it is something to factor into your planning.
Thanks. I talked to Early Intervention and they said it was too late for that (he’s 35 months), but I was referred to the district coordinator and supposedly he is eligible for free services through kindergarten age if they find he needs them. But they have not responded to my emails or calls. It’s been over a week.
Meanwhile through private insurance we are seeing absurdly long wait lists. Pretty discouraging.
Washington DC has quadrants like that as well. Centered on the Capitol - so you’ve got North Capitol and East Capitol and South Capitol - but no West Capitol, as that’s the National Mall.
So you might have 123 F Street NW, 123 F Street NE (which are on the same street, as F Street goes east/west, so you’ll have 123, 121, …3, 1, west, then 1, 3, 5… east). But 123 F Street SE does not connect.
The numbered streets are the opposite - they go north / south.
And of course not every street exists in all 4 quadrants - but any DC-based address WILL have the quadrant, and it’s important - Google Maps once tried to send us to a NE version of an address and we’d have followed it blindly, if we hadn’t done a sanity check beforehand.
All in all, it’s a pretty nice grid system… until you factor in the state-named Avenues, and the traffic circles. And the further out from the center you go, the more it all falls apart. All in all, driving in DC is quite the, er, adventure in confusion and terror. I haven’t driven in Portland all that much but it can’t be as bad as DC.
It won’t be just through kindergarten, depending on his needs: the school program will likely involve an IEP (Individualized Education Plan), and various steps to document that he meets the criteria for special ed services. There’s also something called a 504 plan, which is less involved than an IEP. Both my kids had IEPs, and needed to have that level of support and oversight.
We did have Moon Unit go through private evaluation when she was 8 or so - as she’d been offered a spot in the gifted and talented center, but we also had concerns over her behavioral issues. She was already “in” with an IEP, so it wasn’t for that purpose, but it was done through Children’s Hospital based on DC - and as you’ve found, the wait list was crazy and they were the least organized medical practice I’ve ever dealt with, when it came to trying to get hold of someone. I can only encourage you to keep calling the school, every week or so.
Feel free to PM me (or my husband, Typo Knig) if you want to vent, or hear more somewhat outdated details of our journey through special education.
If your rant was in English it’d be easier for us to sympathize with.
It looks like maybe you were dictating your post into your phone. That’s a great way to write the rough draft, but it will always need extensive editing to be comprehensible.
"People who interrupt short cell calls to arrange for car transport at designated stops while on trains ( because some comfort-craven moron creates an unwritten rule among the Metro-Card NAZIs that would unofficially call most of the back train-cars ‘sleeping cars’), need to be shot.
In the face."
I’m not sure if that lowers the statement to an appropriate level of comprehension, but while there’s life, there is hope.
I did it once and only once. I had to go on a business trip to Arlington, VA. Driving around, I ended up in DC because it’s just across the Potomac and there are lots of bridges between the two, so it was inevitable. This was nearly 20 years ago and GPS wasn’t a thing, really, the only way I had to get around was printing out Yahoo Maps directions. So I got lost. At one point I found myself driving up to the entrance of the Pentagon which gave me an “OH SHIT!” moment, and I was able to turn around before I had to explain what I was doing there. Not a peaceful trip at all.
I live very close to Portland and I’ve been there many times (since I live in the Seattle area). What ticks me off is that I’ve gotten lost many times because often I am trying to figure out road signs and they let trees grow in front of them. As in, you literally can’t see the signs. Which seems like a massive safety hazard. But hey, trees are important, so, okay, whatever. Hopefully that isn’t an issue anymore. But it used to tick me off royally, especially since figuring your way around was hard enough already even when you could see them.
Once upon a time I worked for a company with three offices; one in Seattle, one in Boise, and one in Portland. So I would visit there a lot and I always hated trying to find my way around.
It’s a fun city in general though, and great places to eat. If someone else is driving, I love to go there.
My performance review is in about 12 minutes. I am in anxiety mode. At least the doc was able to help with my shoulder. I am trying to calm down before the review but I’ll probably still be shaking when it happens.
So, in this age of connected everything and self-driving drones and ChatGPT writing it’s memoir I find I have been wrestling with a TV trying to watch my cable provider.
Long story - We have a Sony smart TV, which uses a version of Android. We have had the TV for a handful of years, but I wouldn’t call it “old”. We also had cable TV (Comcast) attached with a cable box. In the past, we downloaded a myriad of apps onto the TV for watching content (Netflix, Disney+, etc.) At some point the some of the apps didn’t seem to work, so we tried updating the apps on the TV. That also didn’t seem to work. Much online research did not provide solutions. So, our kid suggested getting an Amazon Fire Stick plug-in, which bypass the TV and become the repository of apps for viewing content. This worked.
So, we moved to another state. The home we moved into already had a TV, with a Roku attached. In our new home we got cable (Spectrum). When we signed up, they told us we didn’t need a cable box or direct cable connection. Instead we could download the Spectrum TV app on our TV (initially, the Roku) and watch from there. That worked.
Fast forward to today - we got our secondary room set up with our “old” Sony TV, with Fire Stick attached. So, I go in to the TV and try to download the Spectrum TV app so we can watch it here too. No can do. I also try to download the Spectrum TV app on the Fire Stick. No can do. Apparently, neither of these types of devices support the Spectrum TV app. Y’know, because electrons come in different shapes and they don’t like the Spectrum electrons?
FFS!
A cable box to this location is not really an option at this point either. I suppose we can dump the Fire Stick and get another Roku, which does support the app. Geez, what the hell!
The issue is with Spectrum not having an app for the Firestick. The good news, I suppose, is that the cheapest Roku is pretty inexpensive, and works just fine.
I suspect that most native Smart TV systems are going to be crap and as of now cheap outboard streamers are the way to go.
Ah, Spectrum. I’m looking forward to the day when I can tell them that I would like to close my account, and that Mr. WolfpackSuburban [Dad] isn’t available, but that if they’re willing to supply the spiritual medium we can try contacting him. (Yes, his name is still on the account, despite many attempts.)
I was sitting here enjoying a snack of Hormel real bacon bits. 3 oz. I picked up the end that wasn’t opened, and yay, most of it poured onto the bed, so I tossed a lot of it.
Then I realized that was a silver lining, as it has a ton of sodium.
But it was a mess.
