Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2007. That day I took Mattie to visit Peter at his office. Mattie took over Peter's white board and began drawing. As you can see Mattie drew a sun and a tree. Of course there was always a vehicle involved. But a tell tale sign of a Mattie picture was the sun. Which was why the sun became part of Mattie Miracle's logo.
Quote of the day: Grief changes shape, but it never ends. ~ Keanu Reeves
After cleaning up the breakfast dishes, I sat down to do brain games with my dad. Given that his doctor wants him to read, I have been trying to work with him on reading comprehension. The book I am using is at the 5th grade level. Not because my dad has trouble reading words, he can. But he retains very little information and can't process and put information together. So in essence the 5th grade reading level is very challenging for him. For example, today's passage (which involves about 8 paragraphs of information) focused on a young girl visiting the zoo with her parents and brother. While there the girl expressed interest in animals and how she'd love to be around them all day. The father suggested that his daughter talk to the zookeeper, a couple of feet away, to learn more about this job. So the family approached the zookeeper and the remainder of the passage, involved information the zookeeper shared with the young girl. The zookeeper discussed how she has a degree in zoology and that zookeepers do not teach the animals to do tricks. Zoo allow animals to behave like they would in their natural habitats. Also the purpose of doing tricks is for entertainment and that isn't the mission of the zoo.
One of the reading comprehension questions was why don't zookeepers train animals to do tricks? A simple question, but for my dad, it was impossible. All he kept saying was that tricks were not in the zookeeper's job description. The more I kept explaining why tricks weren't taught by zookeepers, the more confused he got. I honestly thought I was going to put my head through the wall. No matter how easy and step by step I made the explanation, it did not matter. This truly gives me a greater understanding for his processing problem and memory issue.
However with my dad it is very hard to tease out what is a cognitive problem and what is sheer disinterest. My dad is basically disinterested in about 90% of daily activities. The only thing he focuses on is food and basic needs. However our world is made up of more than eating and toileting. Unfortunately, my world revolves around these hourly needs.
Meanwhile, in between dealing with my parents, I am desperately trying to work on the Foundation's mass mailing. This mass mailing is one of our major fundraisers each year. Slowly we are working through the pieces, but now I am trying to clean up our database for this mailing. This is always a heavy lift every year. You would think I would have created a better system by now, but unfortunately now I am lucky I can keep my head above water.
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