Wednesday August 29, 2018

As a quadriplegic, I cannot control my body temperature, which basically means I will take on the temperature around me. Think of it as being cold blooded. I always refer to it as being like a reptile. Typically I freeze my butt off even in the hottest environment. Today was no different. I froze my butt off the entire time. I didn’t get much sleep because I was freezing and I was anxious about driving the next day. This is something that I have wanted for so long and it would crush me if I was told there was no way I could drive.
Thursday August 30, 2018

I had to drive around in a big parking lot to make sure that all of my setting and the equipment was correct. It took quite a while because we would have to stop and adjust everything to make sure it was correct. Kelly, Jessica, and Addison went to do some stuff while I drove so they didn’t get bored. Normally I would have preferred them to stay with me but I know with a two-year-old staying in a parking lot the entire time with nothing to do would have been hard. After about two hours in the parking lot, I got to drive around the huge park. Chad was telling me that the water was ten feet deep for six weeks after hurricane Harvey hit last year. It was beautiful because everything was green, it was kinda hard to believe it was once covered with water. We stopped for lunch at twelve thirty and I had a salad.

At about one o’clock we went back to driving and drove until about three o’clock. I got a tattoo in 2016 that had faded over the course of two years so while I was in Houston I wanted to touch it up. It needed to have some life breathed into it. So once we were finished with my first day of driving we went to the Electric Chair Tattoos and I got my tattoo touched up. As I watched the tattoo come back to life I couldn’t help but smile. I got my two hearts filled in. One heart is colored in with red, for my mom. Red was her favorite color. The other heart was filled in with lime green. It’s the color of the spinal cord injury awareness ribbon. Now that I look at it it’s the Christmas colors but I know what the colors mean and that’s all that matters.
After I got my tattoo touched up, which didn’t take a whole fifteen minutes we decided to go to Outback Steakhouse. It has a gluten-free menu. I didn’t like the restaurant before that night but it was actually really good. I changed my opinion. I got a chicken fried steak and it was huge! There were two steaks on the plate. Jessica was not very hungry so she didn’t order anything and let me tell you; it’s a good thing because there was sooo much food. By the time dinner was over, Addison completely exhausted and fell asleep on the ride back to the hotel. We all got in bed fairly early that night but unfortunately, I woke up at 2 AM again and could not go back to sleep. I was having really bad pain for an unknown reason.
Friday August 31, 2018

We left Houston around 1 o’clock that afternoon but did not get out of Houston until about four. I kept having technical difficulties with finding food that was gluten-free for Kelly. We made it home about 10 o’clock that night. I ended up getting food poisoning so we had to stop a little more than we would have liked too.
Here is the steps that I have to take in order to get my independence with transportation:
-Chair modifications
-Training (40 hours)
-Drivers ed
-Drivers test
-Buy vehicle
-Do drivers modifications
We are having to get a hold of the DMV in order to find out exactly what we need to do in order for me to be able to take the drivers test so it’s going to take a little time to figure out exactly what needs to be done but we are working on it diligently.