School

James was supposed to start summer school, but as I mentioned in my last post, his one-on-one school nurse wanted to take some time off for the summer. Unfortunately, the nursing agency has been unable to find a replacement. Until they do, it looks like James will be stuck at home watching some not-so-educational TV…

I admit that I may be a bit jealous. I wouldn’t mind taking some time off, relaxing, and watching Big City Greens on Disney Channel, like James is doing in the above picture. I really like that cartoon.

Hopefully they will be able to find a nurse so James can spend at least some of the summer in school. We think it’s good for him. School is really the only time he gets to be with kids his own age and intellectual level.

Health

This health update is going to be a bit different than most. I am including three of the four of us this time around, and not just James.

James goes first because this is his blog after all. He had an ear infection last month, was treated with antibiotics, and it seems to have gone away. And May 23rd was the 3rd anniversary of his spinal fusion surgery, which Stacy calls his “Spinalversary”. It was a long surgery followed by a much longer than anticipated recovery in the hospital, but in the end we’re still glad we did it. He sits up so much straighter, and it has to have taken some pressure off of his internal organs.

Next up is Maggie. A few weeks ago she had a small mass removed from her side. We don’t know if it was cancerous or not and chose not to do a biopsy on it. It was an additional expense that we didn’t need, and we don’t think knowing would change anything. They sent her home with a “cone of shame”, which wasn’t going to work for her. I ran out to the pet store and picked her up an inflatable collar instead. She wasn’t a fan of that either.

For the final piece of family health news, Stacy tested positive for Covid on May 27th. We had been fearing that this would happen sooner or later; that one of us would get it and bring it into the house with James. I’m kind of surprised that it took this long. It’s been almost a month and James and I are fine. Neither one of us has it. All three of us are vaccinated so we’re not sure how Stacy got it, but her symptoms have fortunately been pretty mild. Just a headache and a bit of a sore throat.

Father’s Day

I’m lucky to be your dad, James. Although we can’t do the normal stuff that other fathers and sons do, I hope you know that I don’t think any less of you. As a matter of fact, I probably think more of you than a father of a typical son does of their kid. You inspire me to be a better person. I may be a bit rough around the edges, but I am working on it. You’ve taught me to not take things for granted. And you’ve shown me that no matter how tough I think my life is, somebody has a tougher one.

Other Miscellaneous Stuff

On June 13th, shortly after I got home from work, the tornado sirens started going off, followed by alerts on our cell phones, and Alexa. Since we don’t have a basement, and the only room in the house without any windows is James’ bathroom. That’s our storm shelter.

The first day we got Maggie a year and a half ago, we gave her a shower in there and she’s been very reluctant to go in there ever since. She and I sat in the hallway until the storm passed, while James and Stacy were in the bathroom.

The following day the National Weather Service confirmed that an EF-0 tornado briefly touched down a couple of miles southeast of us. Fortunately, the damage wasn’t too severe:

“Damage was sporadic along the path of the tornado and consisted of part of the roof of a business getting peeled back in two different directions with the rest of the damage being confined to trees.”

We didn’t have any damage to the house, but we did have several tree branches down in our backyard from the winds:

In other miscellaneous news, the Township Disability Services Department had a nice BBQ that we went to. James got to see one of his old crushes, too.

One last thing to post before I go grab some lunch and do some yardwork. I was debating putting this picture on here for the world to see, but I think the world should know how Stacy tortures our son. She gave him a haircut a week ago and put his hair in a ponytail. She has always wanted a daughter that she could do this to. If Maggie’s hair was longer, I’m sure she’d try to do this to her. Poor James!