Texas, our Texas! All hail the mighty state!

Texas, our Texas! So wonderful so great!

Boldest and grandest, withstanding ev'ry test

O Empire wide and glorious, you stand supremely blest!

(....so why not pass those blessings along to Texans with disabilities....)

Well, Josephine's been in heaven! Sean's parents' visit on Saturday was quickly followed by a stay by my mom, who came down Monday, since she was scheduled to meet with her district's Texas House of Representative's member, Todd Smith, on Tuesday morning. I, with the excuse of being her chauffeur, tagged along. She and her teammates did an excellent job, discussing the effects of the budget cuts to home and community based services for individuals with disabilities. A state cut as high as the proposed 29% would eliminate billions of federal dollars, too, and effectively shut down all programing outside of state schools for individuals like my sister, Janell. State schools are an inaccessible, dismal, and segregated option for the 27,000+ people who would be left up a creek... and all personal feelings aside, while those rage extremely strong.... by national standards, that would be a shameful and disgraceful landing point when our state has been struggling for decades to empower this population towards community integration and independence.

I know budget cuts are rough right now, and subsequent losses are rampant, but really--- my mom's group had excellent proposals for ways to make the programs more financially efficient (which unsurprisingly calls for REDUCING state-run options and moving towards waivers for privatized services). From what I can tell, though, it requires legislators to see beyond the shortfall this biennium and acknowledge the enormous financial benefit that would come from restructuring the system towards long term improvements. Being ridiculously cynical, I don't even expect politicians to consider human dignity, which is PRICELESS... but come on! Just the budget numbers alone are convincing!

Anyway, I was proud of my mom's political debut, so I made her take a picture in front of the capitol building:

In other news, Josephine has fully recovered from that awful cough!

And my CT scan came back totally fine-- yay! This reassured my doctor not to worry about a cysts or inflamed appendix, and led her to all sorts of abdominal shovings that made me want to either cry or hit her. The conclusion, however, is encouraging. It's nothing worrisome; apparently c-sections commonly develop adhesions... strands of scar tissue that bind one's uterus (in this case) to other organs or places in your abdomen. The binding is what causes pain when I move and my gut, in all it's bondage, doesn't. She showed me how to inflict further pain on my abdomen in hopes of weakening those strands of scar tissue and loosening their binds. Fun stuff. We'll see how it goes. I'm just relieved it's nothing serious.

Grandma reading Josephine a book, at which point Josephine proudly showed off her perfect ability to repeat back any word she chooses... "Peacock" came out plain as day.

I, watching, quickly was like, "How about 'MOM?????'" (Because, according to her, I am still "Ba." It's like she's decided I am not worthy of being upgraded to official "Mom" status.

But come on!!! What do I have to do??? I bathe her, clothe her, feed her, play with her... She can say words like peacock, goofball, and full sentences, plain as day... "Clean up this, too." But Mom? Nope.)

Almost all our amaryllis bulbs are in bloom!

Josephine, being proud of more dirt relocation:
Politics, medical issues, and verbal capabilities aside... some things like moving around dirt just stay consistently great.