This year has actually been a pretty good year for our family.
I had done a favor for a friend who wanted to do a favor in return. She sent Amy and I some cash to go out to dinner and starbucks. It was an awesome gift and Amy and I enjoyed a night out.
With the help of some friends we have walls in the office, a wood stove and a chimney.
We visited my mom for her birthday. It’s not easy to have Amy home on a day when we actually have gas money to go to Columbia SC so this was a real treat for my mom.
In mid Feb several bikers showed up and dropped off a ton of deck parts. Someone in our community donated his 20 year old deck to turn into a wheelchair ramp for my kennel. Guys went with chain saws to cut the deck into parts that would load onto pickup trucks and then hauled them to our house. Once all the parts were in the yard plans went into motion to build the ramp.
In Feb when we got our income tax refund we got the truck we seriously needed and I finally got some new eyeglasses. We got a great deal on a used chest freezer and my friend Rick found an old fridge that worked pretty good and he gave that to us.
A few bumps and scrapes with the truck, it’s an old truck, it has an electrical problem that we haven’t been able to trace. As a result we keep blowing alternators. We keep blowing tires but don’t have the money to get new ones so we keep pumping green slime into them and hope they will make it till 2010 income tax.
In March me and a friend were chatting in IM and she causally asked me if I had got a new fridge yet. I hadn’t bought a fridge though because we found a great deal on a used chest freezer and we bought that so my food was finally out of the cooler. The conversation casually turned to other applicances I had or did not have and it was learned that I didn’t have a microwave. We were both checking out microwaves online. She found some that were cool and wanted feedback, I found some that were nice and commented on them. All this time I actually though she wanted a new microwave and we were just chatting about appliances. A little later in the conversation she informs me that the one microwave I really liked was going to be delivered to me...I hadn’t expected that! I of course said oh no, don’t do that, or something to that effect but while we were chatting she went ahead and placed the order so it was a done deal. It’s a an awesome microwave and has served our family very well. Glad to say it’s still in excellent condition a year later.
April, we found out just how much our family means to us as we faced the Beech Island Tornado. Our home and pets were fine, we lost a tire on our car but the next day after realizing what we had been through we felt a little closer knit knowing just how close we were to the forces of nature that flattened homes and uprooted trees but spared us. Later in the month Rick and Josh built the new kennel gate in preparation for the ramp build and a few days later the wheelchair ramp was built by Rick, my sons, Richard, Karen, Bob and Tom (Dixie Thunder)
May…ok well the month of May kinda sucked
In June, Amy and Went away out of state leaving my sons in charge of the house and kennel. This was our first time leaving the kids for a long period of time without someone over 30 nearby in case of an emergency. It was an awesome trip and we pulled the whole thing off for $50. We went to North Carolina and stayed in a tiny primitive campground, visited the town of Cherokee and watched the Warriors of Anikituhwa. It was cold in the Mountains, I’m glad I had the nice home made socks Amy made for me. We came back home and decided we needed to have more back yard cook outs so we hauled over a huge cement tube my kids found somewhere and built a back yard BBQ pit.
In July all the AC’s blew out at the same time. Office AC, my sons room AC and we were having radiator trouble with the Lumina. My mom offered to buy us a new AC for the office as my early Birthday present and we greedily accepted that offer since we were roasing our butts off. Some friends online gave some tips to help save Josh’s AC for a while longer and he did manage to limp through the summer with the failing AC. Our radiator issue was fixed rather quickly at home and didn’t cost us too much.
In August I had sprained my wrist and was sure my birthday was going to suck. Amy had a day off and we had plans to go to Hopeland Gardens. With a sprain there was no way I was going to be able to roll around the gardens and it was my right wrist which meant I wouldn’t be able to use the scooter either. I was whining to my friend Lori about what a sucky day it was going to be. I can’t stand to be pushed in my chair, if I can’t do it myself I don’t want to do it at all..insert image of a very butch grown woman stamping her feet and pouting like a 4 year old…
Lori started asking me if there were things I could do that wouldn’t require much wheeling. Well….not really. All the nature things that are free would be too hard to do with a bum wrist and most of the time we don’t have money for fun things. Lori recalled earlier in the year when another friend had sent Amy and I off to dinner and Starbucks. The next day she surprised me and Amy with some birthday cash so we could go to dinner and Starbucks. While also trying to figure out things to do one of Amy’s friends John told us about an easy access boat landing on the Savannah River and he thought I might be able to easily get my chair right to the water. We decided to check it out and sure enough I was able to dip my toes in the river, we then went off to Dinner and Starbucks for my birthday
Amy and I did get our day out at Hopeland Gardens where she spent the day spinning yarn from fleece.
In September we had a sure test of endurance. My son heard a strange sound in the utility room, a hissing sound. He pulled apart the cover to water heater to find the heater leaking. Luckily it was the first of the month and we could go immediately to get plumbing supplies to fix the pipe. He managed to quite an impressive job on the damaged pipe and was shifting the heater into position when another pipe burst dumping gallons of water onto the floor then the heater started sinking fast through the floor. He called for help and together he and Amy sawed pipes, cut cords and at the last moment he lifted the heater and hauled it to the porch. Now we find out the heater must have been leaking for a while, under the floor covering we found a totally damaged utility room floor. Back to the Home Depot to get lumber to fix the floor…this was an expense we didn’t have room for, but was worse was after the lumber was loaded onto the truck we discovered a flat tire. Yeah, Sept wasn’t such a great month but we did get the whole floor rebuilt and now not even a stomping elephant is going to hurt that floor and my son saved the water heater and was able to rebuild all the plumbing.
In October Dixie Thunder held the 3rd Annual Cripped Critter Benefit Event which helps my sanctuary for special needs animals. We raised enough to get a few things tended to. The very first item on the list was to get a good grooming for Ginger the Elderly Dachshund who along with Sidney the Gunshot Kitty are the Cripped Critter Mascots and are of course spoiled rotten.
In November Amy managed to get Thanksiving day off. That almost never happens! My Mom and Sister were going to come to Aiken and we were all going to go out to dinner at Shoneys. My sister would have taken the boys in her car and Amy and I would go in the truck. Amy got home from work and said the tire was losing air…yeah great ANOTHER tire that needs slime, but we were broke. I called my sis and she said she’d pick up some slime on her way into town. My son was complaining of an upset stomach so I gave him something to calm his belly, his friend shaved him up and cut his hair, everyone washed clothes and we were all ready for a nice ThanksGiving Dinner with the whole family. Kid comes into my room in the morning still sick. He was going to have to stay home. Called my sis, plans were still on. Amy goes to the truck to get something and the tire was flat..to the ground, on the rim, no way to slime it FLAT. Errrg…called my sister and said we’d have to get the tire off, take it to the station to slime it, pop it back on then we could go. Ok…well we didn’t get a jack with this truck. We have been sliming tires all this time, not replacing them we didn’t realize that a bottle jack we had wouldn’t jack high enough. Also didn’t know the lumina scissor jack would slide off the frame once the truck was off the ground. Ok, that didn’t go so well. Dinner plans were canceled and we grumpily ate oatmeal for dinner being thankful that nobody got hurt when the truck slipped three times off the jack.
The next day a friend loaned us a universal jack to jack the truck up but even that jack failed. Amy managed by herself to slowly and carefully jack the truck with the scissor jack and she saved the day! The tire was slimed and recently our fourth tire started to leak so that is now slimed too and we are so impressed with how this slime has helped us we are going to pre slime our new tires when we get them with income tax.
Finally we come to the month of December. We held a late Thanksgiving Dinner since we couldn’t get together in November. That dinner was wonderful and it was great to have everyone together under the same roof for a family meal. Shortly after coming home though I came down with a flu and just after I started to recover from that I got sick with mono. I was pretty weak with the mono and fell twice in one night injuring both my good (or better) hit and my better knee. I can’t roll in the rain when it’s raining out I have a great deal of trouble getting from my bedroom to my office. I knew I needed to be resting in bed in a warm room but I also have responsibilities that nobody can help me with. I am the designer and admin for Dixie Thunders website, Egroups and Social networks and I’m also the Community Leader and an Admin on the MicroGiving Team. These responsibilities require me to be at my computer and my computer is in my wheelchair accessible, finished, office building on the other side of my kennel. Bad weather makes this very difficult and being sick just makes it nearly impossible. I have been complaining for a while about needing a laptop or good size PDA so days when it’s too hard for me to get to my office I could work from my room so this wasn’t a new complaint but after being injured I was full of whining and complaining because I just couldn’t stand not doing the things I do. I vented mostly to my friend Lori…my family hears me complain all the time. Figured I’d give them a break LOL. Lori knew that we were trying to figure out a way to get me some kind of used portable computer to handle my web work away from my office, we were hoping to do something at income tax time and were trying to juggle that with the real needs which are brand new tires and having the electrical system in the truck repaired.
Well…Lori posts this message on my FaceBook Page:
Hey Becky………..Guess what????????? Ya know pay it forward??????? I need you to email me your mailing information so I can mail you A NEW DELL LAPTOP COMPUTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lou said MERRY CHRISTMAS! We love ya’ll and know you have needed this for some time now. I got photos to email to ya too! YEEE HAAAA~~~~~~~~~~
This folks is now 2009 ends. We have had some rough times, but have been able to manage the rough times pretty good. I have awesome friends and family and together we have helped each other through another year. I have mentioned what others have done for us. Now I’ll mention a few things we have done for others.
Amy and took part in the Down Rider Benefit Event and both benefit runs for the Helping Hands Shelter for Abused and Neglected Children. One run brings school supplies the other run brings holiday gifts. Through my Handipets Site we managed to help raise $3,700 for a kitten in need of life saving surgery and more recently for the same kitten we raised nearly $200 for his neuter and after care. Amy crocheted comfort shawls for two women who lost their mother and a blanket for a new child who was born. After the tornado we offered food help and any other services we could offer. We gave a home to a feral kitten who was given safety by a local biker, she wasn’t able to give her a home and didn’t want this little feral kit to go to the shelter where she would have had no chance at survival. The kit had a home lined up for her as soon as she was ready for solid food. We have made donations online through chip ins and locally we always mange to donate something.
