Pressing Puzzles

'I'm goin'ta Kansas City...Kansas City here I come!' The song by Wilbert Harrison sounds so easy, since I'd lived there for most of my life, finding a house should be a piece of cake...right? Welllllllll, that wasn't the case, it proved to be a lot harder than I thought. The bad part was for the first time we had to try to sell the house in Seneca before an official move could be made! ( And that wasn't easy either !!!) By the time August rolled around, we were still unsuccessful in finding a home or even being able to sell the current house, and school was starting...soon. We only had one real option, I was going to stay at my parent's house in Kansas City and Jaimee and the girls would have to stay in Seneca. So with the school year beginning, I was at Kansas City Middle School of the Arts (KCMSA for short) and the girls attended Seneca elementary. When I wanted to see my family, I would have to drive about 3 hours to Seneca for my beautiful wife an...

When we moved the family to Seneca, we were bound and determined to try to stay in one location because in all honesty, Jaimee and I were tired of moving; so we did something we had never done before...buy a house! Again, Seneca was a smaller town, but there was something quaint and peaceful about the town. I know what you're thinking, 'Okay, where's the bigger town that you can actually do real stuff in like...shop...at...Wal-Mart? ' Actually, that town ( Joplin ) was just about a 15/20 minute drive. And yes, we visited Joplin a lot. The house we purchased was literally right across the street from the elementary school. Which was great because our older two daughters were in school, so their walk was really short. By far, this house was the smallest house we had ever lived in. ( Except the Cracker Jack Box House !)  I have to admit that if it wasn't for my parents, we might not have been able to have gotten the home. Thanks! So we set up shop and were ready to g...

Like I said before, change is hard. Of course, at the time, I not knowing I had Asperger’s, so I didn't know any different...except, change is hard for me. God bless Mr. Rogers, my former Principal, because he really saw a lot in me and how much potential I had. Again, Pierce City was a small town, not as small as Alton, but still at least there was a larger town nearby called Monett. However, we tried to do the same thing we did in West Plains, try to find a house in the larger town and I would commute to school. Well...it didn't quite work out as well this time around. The only house we were able to find was an old ( literally ) square box house. ( The spider house I called "The House of Horrors", this one I called "The Crackerjack Box House .) After three months, we decided that this wasn't going to work out, so we were able to surprising find a house in Pierce City and only just a block or two from the school. For much of the time, I would walk to schoo...

After I graduated in 1994, teaching positions were difficult to find so I was a substitute teacher for one year before I was able to obtain a teaching job. I was certified in Speech and Drama so let this be a lesson to anyone wanting to go into the teaching biz...make sure you are certified in other areas to cover your rear! The location of the school that offered me my first teaching job was in a tiny little town called Alton. If hindsight were 20/20, I would have been a little more patient because when I was offered the teaching position, I had two more offers come in right after that first one and they were in El Paso, Texas and the other one was right here in my hometown of Kansas City - Independence School District. ( OUCH! ) But, no…I felt like I made a verbal agreement to teach in Alton. ( Yes, it's in Missouri and No, I'm not making this up...it really is a town. ) So Jaimee, I and the four girls all packed up and moved to West Plains. ( There were some famous people t...

My mom and dad always believed that school should come before any job. ( What else would you expect from two teachers !) My first real job was working at an arcade, and for those of you who are too young to remember, an arcade was a store you could go to and play video games! Of course finding one today in nearly impossible...unless you want tasteless pizza and a cartoon animal singing in your ear! So if it wasn't for my friend Chris, who knows how long it would have been before I got a job. The reason is with Asperger's, one never knows what kind of job interview one might have; meaning at that moment you might remember the questions you asked and answered, but when you leave...you forget it! Not on purpose but, trying to think back about what was said may be impossible, unless I took notes!   I remember an interview I had for a video rental company called Applause Video. I recall some questions they would generally ask then they recreated a scene where they wanted me to sell ...