I managed to renew my medical assistance and found some numbers for a driving school to master turning and all the technical stuff required. I feel accomplished to say the least. Less stuff to worry about.

Procrastination is my middle name. The last time I called the IRS I got an automated message and I haven’t bothered since, but they owe me money and I think I’m the only person in the world who isn’t chasing after money they are long due for. I haven’t received a phone call yet from the cleft palate clinic, but it’s only been a couple of days. I am really hoping they book me as soon as possible so I can get it done and over with. The past couple days I have been homebound so the only opportunity I’ve been given to make eye contact with individuals were members of my family and friends via skype video calls. Making eye contact has been fine, so I think the next step is stepping up i.e. stop avoiding things and convincing myself not to do certain things. I really need to stop going to the restaurant and pointing at what I want to eat off the menu like a child and should really enunciate it instead, but sometimes I just prefer the easier way out. That’s where stepping up comes into play I suppose. On another note, I should start studying decimals and integers. I can’t even pronounce integers, but I need to study them to make up tests in college so I can actually pass this very basic math course. I don’t like math. I don’t care for math. I’ll start on that sometime this week, possibly today if I find the motivation, but I guess we’ll see. 

My life as of lately has been taking a slow stride towards progress. I had an appointment this Tuesday at Lancaster to schedule for my surgery. The secretary said if I don’t receive a phone call in 2 weeks to call back, but I’m sure I will. I’m genuinely looking forward to it and I really hope it fixes the nasality I currently have. Today when looking for a composition notebook to rip a piece of paper out of, I stumbled upon the one I had gotten from speech therapy. It blew my mind to see that I had stuff to do over the break, and I don’t know why this came as a surprise to me. I was supposed to write down everyday my progress with making eye contact towards other people when talking to them, so I guess it’s better late than never. My dad has been stressing for me to look up information on driving schools, and I honestly don’t blame him. I have about 3 months left until my permit expires, so I plan on doing that today. I’ve driven before, in fact, I drove most of Pennsylvania but I just have trouble with the technical stuff e.g. wide turning, parking, and so on and so forth. But I do pretty well on the highway and whatnot. 

Honestly, I’m just looking forward to that surgery. I don’t expect it to be a magic pill to erase everything I feel that is wrong with my voice, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. It’ll give me more confidence I believe because it’s one thing to have a stutter, but nasality and lisp-like speech on top of that is just an overkill. I would make some “life is a highway” analogy to parallel with the whole driving thing I just spoke about, but that would just be cheesy so I hope you appreciate the thought.