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Daughter wants her daddy home for Christmas is there a special Christmas Visa?

  • Posted on August 20, 2010 at 5:22 am

He deported for drinking driving he now attend church 3 times a week him turn life around.How I can get special Christmas Visa ?

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Some Creative Ways Parents of Children with Special Needs are Getting Help

  • Posted on January 7, 2010 at 12:20 pm

Here are just a few creative ways parents of children with special needs are getting help – and making their lives more manageable and balanced!

1. Barter for help among friends and neighbors. 

It’s been done since the beginning of civilization.  In these tough economic times, bartering for help is once again regaining popularity among parents who are pressed for time, who realize they can’t do it all themselves, and who are watching the budget.  A few examples of very successful barter arrangements that have worked well either for myself or for my clients:

Trading babysitting

*        Cooking in exchange for ironing
*        Tutoring in exchange for child care
*        Gift wrapping in exchange for errands
*        Car repair in exchange for yard work
*        Window treatments in exchange for organizing closets

Who do you know who might be interested in bartering for help?  See what they think.  You’ll be amazed at the possibilities!

2. Delegate small jobs (or big jobs) to family members.

My daughter pours the milk at every meal.  My son sweeps under the table after dinner.  These may not sound too significant in the grand scheme of things, but these small jobs add up to minutes and hours saved over the course of the day.  Plus, it teaches the kids to pitch in!  How many small jobs do you do, that could be done by someone else in the family?

3. Seek out sources of help in your community. 

There may be free services out there that you’re not even aware of, closer than you may think!  Find them by calling your town or city clerk, community organizations, local churches, your pediatrician’s office, local hospitals, and local school offices.  Even if they don’t directly offer services themselves, they often can tell you who does – and give you phone numbers and names of people who can help you.  And don’t overlook what is most often the best source of information of all: other parents! 

You might be surprised at what you find.  For instance, many high schools have community service programs where students will come help you with a number of different types of work, in return for your signature on a paper stating how many hours they put in!  Remember, families of children with special needs are usually considered eligible for such programs. 

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Borough Food & Drink: the Shopper’s Special

  • Posted on January 6, 2010 at 1:07 pm

I managed to work myself into a snit because we were early, our guests were late and the perfectly adorable young woman at the Borough Food & Drink’s desk — it’s an old fashioned double school desk — said we could not be seated until all our party…“No. No. No,” I said, refusing to let her finish my least favorite restaurant greeting, “We will be seated now. We willstart ordering as soon as we are seated.”

She smiled, not recognizing my hysteria, and urged us to be comfortable while waiting in the lounge or the bar. “I don’t want to be comfortable,” I hissed through clenched teeth, “I’ll stand right here.” I posted myself a few inches from her podium and her various official papers. Oh lord, the diva-ness of it. I was not exactly in a mood to appreciate a new and still tentative operation.

But at least I was near a window looking out at 22nd Street, which is how I happened to spot our slightly tardy friends, Bina and Georges, as they strolled past looking for a name on the restaurant’s awning and heading toward Broadway. I grabbed them; presented them to the head mistress and we settled at a bare wooden table on bare wooden chairs next to shelves of great-looking groceries in jars and tins.

I pretended not to mind when our perky waiter tilted his head to the right and announced he was Carmine and “I will be your server tonight.” It seemed a long while before he brought two covered jars of pickles…wonderful, lightly picked vegetables “from Gus’s pickles,” he said, unleashing the lids. The pickles were long gone when he showed up in another long while with the wine and poured me a taste.

I swirled and put the glass to my lips. And stopped. “I can’t taste wine,” I said. “My mouth is full of vinegar. Can you bring some bread?”

He shook his head, “That will be difficult.”

“No bread?” I looked all around. If this is not a restaurant, it’s a delicatessen, a market. No bread?

“Well, it will take a while,” he said. And it did. Fortunately, we were all being funny and interesting without really trying too hard…the conversation flowed.

But finally: “Can’t we just pour the wine?” my friends asked.

“What if it’s bad…? I can’t taste it with a mouth full of vinegar.”

All around us people were actually eating. Carmine returned, dropped a napkin-lined basket on the table with two slices of bread, touched my shoulder and turned away. “That’s all I could do.” Two slices of bread. I struggled to chew off a bite. Not just common, but stale as well.

I cleared my palate and swirled my red. The wine was fine. The medley of herrings from Russ & Daughters was lovely too, though meager for $14, and what was this plopped on top? Gorgeous warm pumpernickel bread.

I gave in. Okay, I thought, as I tasted Katz’s Delicatessen’s gargantuan and delectable matzo ball in shockingly bland soup that could have been heated up — okay. Now we know Zak Pelaccio can shop, but if it weren’t for Fatty Crab, we’d never know he can cook. And we can’t know what he could be thinking letting those weirdly watery clam flatbreads out of the kitchen. Or an unredeemable pea soup. House-smoked beef brisket arrived in a six-onion gravy that, alas, was no more remarkable than a one-onion gravy. And the Queen Anne’s rigatoni tossed with spring peas and chunks of Calabria Pork Store sausage under a melting half cup of lovely Creek Farms Toussaint cheese — was inexplicably dull.

Spoiled by a recent round of very good burgers, the Road Food Warrior was not annoyed by the BF&D cheeseburger — that caper aioli is a fine touch — but he wasn’t overly impressed even before he saw that the bacon was three-quarters fat. Yet the fries were great. And grilled hanger steak with spring herb chimichurri and crisp tobacco onions was a joy.

Eileen’s cheesecake is no match for the Brooklyn Diner’s. What can I say about a scoop of caramel ice cream for $2 with 75 cents worth of pecans? Provocative pricing.

Maybe you noticed that I haven’t once mentioned the unstoppable Jeffrey Chodorow trying yet another concept in this space, or dragged in the ghost of Rocco di Spirito or Caviar & Bananas. Nor have I confided that the last time we were here we had to sign a waiver that anything we said might wind up on TV. I thought I’d just give it to you without ribbons or party favors: a first tasting of the boutique fare.

It’s too soon to judge the kitchen, I grant. Still, can a Chinese dumpling carried out ever be as good as a dumpling en situ? Maybe a Borough sandwich would be a better choice. I get hungry just reading the options. Or maybe this is just an especially clever idea that isn’t going to work or will take a while to mature. The “gathering of great products” concept has its weird moments for me too, at BellaVitae on Minetta Lane, where the goodies come from Italy, but I have friends who love it.

I understand there’s a web site that tells waiters they get bigger tips if they touch the customers. I’m sure I just made Carmine nervous and he was not in love with me, but by dessert it was like a twitch. He couldn’t stop. If I counted the numbers of times he tapped my shoulder or squeezed my arm, the tip would have been fat enough to underwrite a weekend in the Hamptons.

12 East 22nd Street between Broadway and Park Avenue 212 260 0103

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A Special Christmas Letter From Dad

  • Posted on January 4, 2010 at 12:20 am

A Special Christmas Letter from Dad to our whole family

When I received the usual Christmas note this year from Betty, my daughter-in-law, about how “perfect” everything was for their family this past year, and about how nice it was to have a loving family like ours, I had a little tingling at the back of my neck. As I thought and prayed about that tingling, I finally identified the source. I had to ask myself this question; is there a widespread denial system in place in our family about addiction? In other words, are we all “sweeping under the rug” what has become commonly known but not spoken since the latest tragic death we have all experienced due to addiction?

The simple truth is that only a year ago we all came together to attend the funeral and mourn the death of John, our oldest son, and Betty’s brother-in-law, from addiction. That reminded us all that we have people in our family who have problems with drugs, alcohol, depression, ADD, eating disorders, nicotine, etc. It also reminded us that addiction can lead to death! Now Carol and I recently learned that now John’s younger brother, Tim, Betty’s husband, is admitting that his doctor is telling him that his liver is showing signs of alcoholic liver disease. We were told that Tim tried so hard to do what his doctor told him to do. He drank gallons of water every day in an attempt to clear his liver of the poisons, and he even cut back on his drinking! Now with his doctor reporting some improvement, I can tell you, as a recovering alcoholic myself with over twenty years of sobriety, that Tim interpreted that news as “…I am cured, and now I can return to normal drinking”(whatever that is).

Drugs and alcohol have gotten most of my attention during the past twenty years because I have had to work so hard to overcome my own addictions through the 12-Step Programs. Yes, I suffered from ADD as a child back in the days when kids who had trouble focusing were just called lazy. But so much has been learned since those days, and if we really do love each other as much as we say we do in this family, shouldn’t we each arm ourselves with as much information as possible about any disease that is harming us?

So how do we help Tim? How do we stop Tim from destroying himself and breaking all of our hearts…again? The tragic truth is this; we can’t! I have learned the hard way that there is no human power that can stop an alcoholic from taking the next drink. Tim has wondered out loud to me if he can quit, so how on earth could one of us imagine that we could somehow make him quit? Tim is in the grip of a disease that creates a powerful mental and emotional compulsion to drink alcohol. That compulsion renders him incapable of asking for help. And yet, until he does just that, nothing can be done for him!

This brings us squarely to the question; what can we do? First, we can take care to take care of ourselves. This is a family disease and we each have a piece in it. We can seek help from others who have “been there” through community support groups like AA, Nar-A-Non and Al-Anon. I am leading our family by example, and have learned so much by getting out of Tim’s way. I learned this after about two years of attending a men’s Al-Anon meeting in our community. I know now that I must allow Tim the dignity of making his own decisions. By learning and growing ourselves we never harm another person. By learning through a program like A-Anon to detach with love we can give Tim a fighting chance to reach his own bottom and then reach out for help. Tim needs a family that is recovering along side him as they cheer him…not a bunch of deniers who continue enabling him while keeping those fake painted smiles on their faces. We need people who give thanks to God every morning that we are still alive, who are big enough to say “but for the grace of God there go I!”

Here are some skills to develop that may help you. These are the combined experience of millions like us who have had to cope with addiction problems in their families.

Do’s.

Do learn the facts about alcoholism.
Do talk to someone who understands alcoholism.
Do go to Al-Anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, or an alcoholism center.
Do develop an attitude to match the facts.
D take a personal inventory of yourself.
Do maintain a healthy emotional atmosphere in your home.
Do encourage new activities.

Don’ts

Don’t preach or lecture.
Don’t argue with a drunk alcoholic.
Don’t have a “holier than thou” attitude.
Don’t use the “if you loved me” appeal.
Don’t make threats you won’t carry out.
Don’t hide liquor or pour it out.
Don’t resent the method of recovery
Don’t expect immediate contented sobriety.
Don’t try to protect an alcoholic against alcohol.
Don’t be discouraged by the mistakes you make.

You may change to word alcohol to drug of choice wherever you wish.

A parent never knows how a child will finally come out. When I took my own careful inventory as part of my recovery process I had to look at the example I set for my children. I taught them that alcohol relieved perceived stress. I made alcohol the center of all family get-togethers. I demonstrated that we could not enjoy a meal out or a party without alcohol present. That is how I was taught, and I just passed it along to the next generation.

My Dad had terrible depression bouts. He would get so hateful that nobody could stand him. He was never totally incapacitated by his disease, but his moods swings had a great deal to do with all of our fears and inability to cope with reality. Don’t get me wrong. I do not blame my Dad for my own derelictions, but I am aware of how far back this disease goes in our family. The insanity that I am trying to stop with this letter is this; we just keep doing the same things generation after generation while hoping that somehow we will get a different result.

Society accepts now that ADD is cause by a mental/chemical imbalance, and some day it is likely to learn the same about alcoholism. People are getting help now for their ADD. Young people throughout our family with ADD are being treated with drugs that help them, and those accepting treatment are becoming excellent students. Until we can do the same with addiction, shouldn’t we do everything we can during this generation to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem?

I am through with living in shame for our family warts. I am tired of sweeping these things under the rug as we continue in lock step to destruction. For this year, and for the coming years, let’s stop hiding our deficiencies. Let’s celebrate that we can now identify them…that we can hold them up to the light and start to correct them! Let’s ask God in unison to give us the strength to deal honestly with each other, and to seek help when we need it. We have another member of our family who needs help in 2008, but is not capable of asking for it. Let’s not allow another tragedy to happen to another loved-one because we all failed to see the problem while failing to support the solution.
I love all of you, with my whole heart and soul. I am proud of each of you. You are completely acceptable to me, and to my God, just as you are, but we can all get well. Why don’t we get well together…as the family that we are?

Dad.

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