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One Waterfall Leads To Another

1/19/2014

1 Comment

 
Okay. I think I have said this before. I have this thing called P luck. P luck is not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It is where you find yourself in outrageous, ridiculous, unique situations. AKA, things that only happen to me.

Apparently, 2014 is filled with it.

Let's go back eleven days ago. My birthday. I have a nice lunch with my friend, get a lot of facebook posts, and what not. At 4 o'clock the fire alarm goes off. I go outside. Nobody else comes out. I go back inside. Fire trucks come and go. I figure if it is something important, they would tell me. Ha!

Around 7:30, the fire alarm goes off again. I take my time, but I decide to go outside again. On my way out, I hear something dripping. I turn, thinking my PA left the sink on or something. All of the sudden, something starts BEEPING in my kitchen. I have no idea what to do, so I turn, open the door, and get outside as fast as I can.

While I am frantically texting for help, water starts gushing out of my apartment. Apparently, it was so cold outside, the sprinkler pipes burst, damaging twenty apartments. You want to talk about a complete disaster?! I have been with my parents ever since, and I'm hoping to go home Wednesday. We shall see.

Like that wasn't enough.

This Friday. My parents were taking my grandma and my aunt to Niagara Falls. Because I don't have my apartment or PAs at my parents', I had to go with them. Okay. No problem. I always wanted to go to Niagara Falls. It will be cool to get out of the house.

We get to the hotel.  Really nice hotel.  (Hilton Niagara Falls is the place to stay if you ever go there)  Our room was awesome.  We were up high, overlooking the falls. Awesome, awesome view.

My parents said they put off fireworks every night at 9.  I was looking forward to this.  You see, I have an awful startle reflex to loud noises. I totally freak out.  So needless to say, I have not seen many firework displays.  This was going to be cool. I would be indoors, eye level with them, and not hear the boom. 

We got settled in.  We were going to go down to the casino and mall when my
wheelchair decided it was done for the day.  Like it was seriously not working.  So much for the casino and mall.  I'm not big on casinos anyway.  I work way too hard for my money.  So it looked like it was a movie for me.

At 8:55 I reversed my chair over to the window to watch these amazing fireworks.  They promptly started at 9, and were promptly over at 9:05.  So much for these fireworks.  I sneezed and missed most of them.

Now comes bed time.  I sleep in a totally black room.  I can't sleep with light.  This room has an awesome bathroom with a huge Jacuzzi tub.  There is a huge, I am talking 6 feet by 6 feet window, between the bedroom wall and bathroom wall.   Who puts a fricking window in a bathroom in a wall that separates two rooms? My grandma and aunt went to bed.  Their bedroom was on the other side of the bathroom.  I am not sure who the culprit was, but one of them left the fricking bathroom light on.  So we are talking 6x6 feet of light shining on me while I am trying to fall asleep.  You can say sleep was out of the picture.

Day 2. We go to leave.....hotel valet dude goes to get my van......the battery is fricking dead.......van won't start.  That would be called P luck......However, they were able to jump it and bring it to us.  You might be thinking, ok, not too bad they got it started, its all good, but that is not the case.....P luck continues. 

It is about 10 degrees outside with 25 miles an hour winds, and guess what! I go out to the van, and the wheelchair ramp is frozen.....It will not come down.....Can you say "I am FREEZING"?  The valet guys were all very kind and tried to help.  They offered to help my dad lift my chair into the van.  But being that my chair weighs over 500 pounds and they were all over 60, this was not an option I saw happening.  Oh yeah, one more thing, one of the valet guys looks at my tire and says "Did you know your tire is almost flat"?

After about 45 of trying different things to make a ramp, my mom gave the buttons one more try......POOF! the lift came down. 

We loaded in the van so fast and sped away like a bat out of hell.

Stay tuned.......It is only January 19th......
P
1 Comment
Kara Ayers link
1/21/2014 12:44:43 am

Hi Sara-I've really enjoyed following your story! I'm also a WSU alum and working in the disability advocacy field:) So sorry 2014 has already been SO stressful-geez! I hope you catch a break!

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