{"id":126,"date":"2009-08-24T20:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T20:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2009\/08\/making-it-happen\/"},"modified":"2009-08-24T20:38:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T20:38:00","slug":"making-it-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/making-it-happen\/","title":{"rendered":"Making it Happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill…<\/span>
–Scarlett O’Hara, dealing with Turning 22<\/span><\/p>\n

On Wednesday I’m meeting with a guy Ned and I met at a Turning 22<\/a> workshop. He’s got a kid sort of like Nat, and similar values to mine and Ned’s. He knows around 30 other families like us and has a large pool to draw from for creating an 8-client house. He is definitely a few steps ahead of us, in that he has already spoken to several charitable organizations that are involved with housing for the disabled. He also seems to know the Section 8<\/a> stuff backwards and forwards (Section 8 is the affordable housing voucher, which a disabled person waits perhaps a decade for, which ultimately allows him to pay a much lower rate for designated affordable housing). I have learned a lot about Turning 22, but some of it still makes my head spin.<\/p>\n

Another friend of mine, also with a peer of Nat’s (actually the first kid he had a playdate with) is working on setting up an entire community, a way of life, where you have many choices of activities during the day, as well as access to therapists for S.I., O.T., etc. She has a mission statement and a philosophy, and a location in mind. She has also consulted with organizations for grants. She’s a real powerhouse; always has been. She set up an entire wing of her house for her son to learn, and she had a live-in teacher for him who was also his aide at school. Yes, she’s wealthy but that doesn’t mean it was all easy for her; she’s also dedicated and tireless.<\/p>\n

I really admire both of these people. One is working with every aspect of The System; the other is working with all of her personal and professional connections to do it all privately. Both are serious about creating a brilliant future for their children. I am learning a lot from them. I did some frantic figuring the other day, scribbling numbers all over scrap paper (actually, it was the Sunday Times crossword puzzle). I googled some real estate in the urban Boston area, 10 bedroom homes, that kind of thing, to get an idea of cost. I estimated the salaries of two live-in personal care attendants (for eight clients) and real estate taxes to get the mortgage amount, and divided by 8 families. Anyway, it seemed a little bit possible, even without the Section 8, if there was help from a group like Combined Jewish Philanthropies<\/a>, which sets up housing like what we are looking for (not Jewish-only, by the way; CJP is a fantastic organization that does a ton of remarkable things for the world at large).<\/p>\n

My number and this guy’s number were not that far off. My other friend’s numbers, however, are a bit too high for us. At any rate, I am trying to pick up another course to teach, to double my earnings. Ned and I are making plans, looking at savings. We have Max’s college a year from now, and Ben’s in seven. And we also have Nat’s independence is somewhere in between.<\/p>\n

It is amazing how quickly all of this is upon us, but I think we can make it work. I have to think that, otherwise how will it happen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill…–Scarlett O’Hara, dealing with Turning 22 On Wednesday I’m meeting with a guy Ned and I met at a Turning 22 workshop. He’s got a kid sort of like Nat, and similar values to mine and Ned’s. He knows around 30 other families like us and has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-22","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}