Volunteering To Do What???

As most of you know, Kalisha likes to volunteer for various things. You probably know she is also a 'knee-jerk reaction' kind of gal.
Read about it, call for information, volunteer, and THEN, tell Mom.

Several weeks ago, she asked me if I would take her to a specific place so she could pick up her shirt, work gloves and garbage bag.  As usual, my response was something intelligent, like, "What???"
"Yeah, I'm going to do the Great American Clean-Up on Saturday and I have to pick up my stuff."
Now we are talking about the girl who isn't real fond of work of any kind and I'm pretty sure picking up litter along city streets would be on the bottom of the list if there even was a list of favorite 'work.'
Being the perceptive person I am (and having lived with Kalisha for 32+ years) I knew immediately what this was about...the T-shirt. Yes, she wanted the T-shirt. It is always a pretty cool shirt. The design includes the city of Fort Wayne in some way and this year the color was neon yellow. I told her she could direct traffic wearing that shirt, in case she ever needed to.
She did go with a group and all was well. I don't know how much trash she actually accumulated in her big black bag, but by George, she has the shirt. Mission accomplished.

Next Scenario: Kalisha tells me, "I contacted the people that run the Colts' training camp and asked them to send the information about volunteering."
Of course she did. We have attended the training camp two separate summers in the past. She has many player autographs, including Andrew Luck's. She has asked volunteers when we are there how they got to volunteer. This year she wasn't waiting around. She was on it.

They emailed the application and we filled it out together. There were many questions about what days, what hours, what groups of people she preferred working with and what jobs she would like to do.
We chose 3 days in a row, the early afternoon session and then came the list of possible duties. She was deciding what she would like the best when she read, drive a golf cart.
Her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. "Yes, Mom, that's what I want to do. Can I?"
It was difficult to answer while laughing. "Kalisha, you've been there. You've seen them. The drivers of the golf carts have to wind around all the people walking. You would mow someone down and then they would need a golf cart."
A few summers ago, her sister,  Kaylynn, being a brave soul, allowed Kalisha to drive the golf cart they own at their lake property. Kalisha drove from the lakefront up a hill to the cottage. Kaylynn was in the front seat with her and I was in the back..thank God.
Kalisha eventually made it to the top of the hill and then home but not without lots of swerving and jerking. I had visions of that when she wanted to volunteer for it at training camp.

I did manage to dissuade her from checking that box. Whew. She called Michael Limmer at Parkview Field and asked permission to use his phone number as a reference for handing out brochures since that is what she does at her job at Parkview Field. He graciously gave his consent. When we had it all filled in and scanned and sent back, she immediately called the person listed on the form and asked if it had been received. The lady was very nice and it sounded as though she has the position sewed up.

So...it seems we will be heading to Anderson in August. Kalisha is anxiously waiting for her assignment to be emailed to her.

This should be worth several more posts by that time. Yikes.

Right Now...Famous Words

Kalisha has inherited my "let's git 'er done" philosophy on life in general (although I was separated for 4 years before finally getting a divorce...go figure).
This does not always work in her favor, although sometimes, it does. I could ramble on here for many paragraphs but I will just list some of her latest impatient actions.

She wanted to have an answer to a 'phone' question. I told her I would take her to Verizon the next day. Not soon enough for her. She got on the city bus and went to Verizon. That isn't a bad thing except I didn't know she went and because of the location of the Verizon store, she had to walk across almost the entire parking lot at Glenbrook Mall. (Have you seen the way people drive in that parking lot?) Yowsers.

She filled out her Parkview Field availability work sheet for May and immediately sent it back. No discussing the dates or my availability to pick her up.

She asked if she should sell her Hello Kitty shoes since they were barely worn and she didn't want them any longer. I told her it was okay. I thought she meant e-bay or Craigslist. The next time I was online, there were her shoes. She found an app called 'Let It Go' and promptly listed them.

I opened my FB page and saw a video of Kalisha talking to the people who were commenting to her. Then I saw my dining room flash before my eyes. What the hell? That is sort of what I asked. She said "Oh that's an app I found called FaceBook Time." Really? It would be nice if she would warn me. Occasionally, I make a mad dash from my bedroom upstairs to the dryer in the basement, wearing only the essentials. And we all know, once in a while I say a few words I shouldn't.

She wanted to participate in 'Clean-Up Day' in Ft. Wayne last year but was too late in volunteering. That wasn't going to happen this year, evidently. She already signed up. I didn't even know when it was scheduled.

She is constantly telling me things after the fact. I know you are all thinking that she will be living on her own soon and she needs to make decisions by herself. While that's true, she might want to think about it for just a minute before volunteering or proceeding.

She informed me that the COLTS were looking for volunteers to work at their training camp in August at Anderson College. (We have gone to that for a day a few times) I guess we will be going again because she off-handedly informed me the other night that she was volunteering this summer. I said, "Don't you have to contact someone to find out all the details?"
"Oh, I already did. They are sending me the paperwork to fill out."

Of course they are.

The Colts Kid Is Back

If you read this blog occasionally, you already know Kalisha is a huge fan of the Indianapolis Colts football team. She has shirts, pants, gloves, hats, Christmas stockings, jewelry, hair accessories, winter coat, shoes, windbreaker, scarf...you get the idea.
Some time this fall, she became enthralled with Hello Kitty and everything that entails. I posted a picture of her Christmas list with 2 pages of Hello Kitty things she wanted. She has been carrying her HK wallet inside her HK purse and wearing the HK hairbands.
A few weeks ago, I noticed some Colts gear was being used again. Last weekend, when the Colts played the Broncos, she was definitely all dressed in Colts clothes.
Today, before we left for a doctor appointment, she was switching everything from her HK wallet and purse to her Colts wallet and purse. I teased her about putting the "cat" in the closet and getting the "horse" back out.
"Oh yeah," she said. "It's time to be a Colts fan again. We play the Patriots on Sunday." (As if I didn't know that)
I took these pictures of her outer layer of clothes and then the next layer of clothes. That's as many layers as we are going.

It makes me laugh because somehow, if she supports her team with every piece of Colts gear she has, it will encourage them to play better, I guess.
She changed her FB profile picture and cover photo also. She is drinking out of a Colts cup.
She is ready...I hear the Kitty crying in the closet, but for right now, it's COLTS all the way. I love seeing her this excited and if you think she doesn't know the players, their numbers, positions, the plays and how it is scored; think again. She definitely does.

Now if she could just count change...oh well.

Indianapolis Colts Pillow Pet

I could hardly type those 4 words as the title of this post because I have heard them so many times in the last 2 days, I even dreamed about them.

This saga started on Christmas day. Kalisha was happy with her gifts, although even after all these years, I still never quite get used to the lack of much emotion. She opens a gift, says thank you and lays it aside. Then she opens the next one, says thank you and lays it on the stack. 'Hope springs eternal in the human breast' is a quote I like to use. I am always hoping one day she will open something and be ecstatic. I know that is definitely not in the autistic person's nature, but one can always hope. This year she really wanted a Colts shirt with # 12 and LUCK on the back. Obviously, so did everyone else. It took a lot of searching, but with God's help (literally) I found one on the 24th, and it was her size. Yesssssss!

I could hardly wait for her to open it. She did, smiled and said thank you. No, no, no! I wanted to say, "You are supposed to be jumping up and down and screaming and running off to your room to try it on." Why do I expect that when I know it will never happen? I did ask her to try it on and she said she would before she went to bed. Arrrrrghhhh! When I expressed my disappointment, which of course, I had to do, she immediately put it on. I am such a pain, I know.

Okay, now to the rest of the story....a friend of hers who is also a Colts fan, sent a picture to Kalisha's iPhone of a Colts pillow pet she had received for Christmas. Naturally, Kalisha wanted one just like it. I tried to dissuade her by convincing her it was pretty ugly (which it is, sort of) but she wasn't buying that. Nothing was open on Christmas day, so she spent a few hours writing in her notebook.

Wednesday afternoon I was trying to take a nap and since she was using the landline, she was in the living room. Twenty-three times (because she was cut off twice) I heard her say, "Yes, do you have an Indianapolis Colts pillow pet? No, a pillow pet. Indianapolis Colts. C-O-L-T-S, you know, like the football team?" "Okay, I will hold." When they transferred her to the correct department, she would start over, "Yes, do you have an Indianapolis Colts pillow pet? In-di-an-a-po-lis. Football. Okay, how much is it?"

I never did get a nap, because even when she found one, she continued calling because someone else might have one on sale. (The stupid things were $29.95...are you kidding me?) Some stores were out, some didn't carry them, some only had one, and the Meijer's at Maysville had theirs on sale for $17.00. Woo-hoo, but that is too far to drive, she decided. She knew that was what I was going to say.

Kalisha is a tenacious person. She never stopped dialing until she had called all 21 stores on her list. We had to go North this morning anyway, so I told her we would stop at the Lima Rd. Meijer's. They had one left and it had been marked down to $17 also. It was full price yesterday when she was calling, so I know God had them mark it down before we got there so I wouldn't have to listen to her call all 21 stores again to see if anyone else put it on sale. She was willing to return a pair of jeans so she could purchase him. It was a good thing she wanted to return the jeans and not the LUCK t-shirt or that might have been a mountain I would have had to climb.

Okay...so he's not so ugly. Obviously he came home with her and now resides in her Colts Museum, also known as her bedroom.

I Hate Halloween...Costumes

I can remember many Halloweens and the costumes that my kids either loved or hated. It always seemed like a lot of time and trouble for an hour of collecting candy! My suggestion has always been for each family to buy 5lbs. of candy they already know their kids like, throw it out in the middle of the living room floor, and say, "Go get it, Kids." That would also insure that it would all be eaten and there wouldn't be rock-hard 'not-liked' candy still hanging around at Christmas.

I never allowed the "gory, bloody, axe-in-head" kind of costumes and really didn't like the cheap-looking ones at the big stores either, so-o-o I usually made their costumes (hmm...perhaps that's why I don't like Halloween). I made some memorable ones: Miss Piggy w/ pearls, white gloves, golden curls, etc.; a full-body robot with 'bleep-bleep' sounds; a wrinkled old lady, complete with hat and cane; a witch with green oatmeal face make-up and a wart on her nose; a sailor; and probably my most memorable costume of all, was turning two of Kalisha's sisters into the California Raisins...they were young women going to a grown-up party.

I was always recruited to make my grandchildren's costumes too. Sometimes they were excited when they made their choice, but then turned into ungrateful gnomes when it was time to wear them. LOL

So, now comes Kalisha. She really was never comfortable in a costume of any kind. Too many sensory issues. She just wanted to go and collect candy. For the past couple of years, she could have gone to a party/dance at a local service provider. I could never talk her into going. This year however, since the girls in her Friday cooking group were all going, she wanted to go, also.



When I asked what she wanted to dress as, she said, "A Colts football player." I should have known; what else would she want to be? I'm thinking this is going to be a piece of cake. She owns everything COLTS already. A helmet, some shoulder pads, a football and we're good to go. The first problem was finding a helmet. She posted on FB that she needed one, she called every store possible for a realistic looking plastic one, she even got the phone number of a local high school football coach to ask if she could use a practice one. (Does she know this coach? No, she just wanted a helmet)



Her brother-in-law offered her a real helmet from his grade school days. A little small, but serviceable. I kept asking her to put her jersey on so I could make some shoulder pads. I painstakingly painted a blue horseshoe on each side and found 2 small removable Colts tattoos for her face.

She decided against carrying a football, didn't want to use the tattoos and didn't want the shoulder pads or to even wear the jersey. Okay......... at this point, I didn't care if she went in her pajamas; I just wanted her to go and enjoy herself.

She wore a Colts sweatshirt and jeans and carried her helmet. When I dropped her off, she put her helmet on the table and sat with a couple of girls she knew.


I came back a few hours later and found her in a group of people all dancing to, "We are family...."

She said she never did put the helmet on at the party, but she had a great time.

Mission accomplished.