Katie and I have been working together for two or three years now, learning to plan menus, budget money, and shop for food. She has excellent restraint, judgment, and skill in planning. She is able to spell fairly well, almost all the food she eats, and can read many of the labels in the store. The pictures on the items help a lot. She has learned how to use her food stamp card, and remember her pin number. She knows what the stamps will, and will not buy.

   Katie has worked with me for three years now, writing her own grocery lists, based on menus she helped to choose. She knows pretty well how much she can buy with her food stamps. She knows exactly how much it costs to buy a month's worth of breakfast and lunch. It's just dinners she's new at. All kinds of new foods are fascinating her, on the shelves of new stores, and now she can spend untold hours, learning them! She is copying down the names and prices of things she would like to buy, and going home and figuring out which ones she will be able to afford.

   She can't add, but she knows how to use her calculator to add the prices of the food she wants, so the total doesn't go over what she has. She can't subtract, but she knows how to use a calculator to subtract, and understands the concepts, so she is now able to take over her own bank account, with her S.S.I. benefits in it. She will only have to write two checks per month - rent, and electricity. And I'm on the other end of the phone, if she has questions. This is great fun for both of us!

   All last winter, Katie searched newspapers, and the net, for apartments. She knew she needed to find one within walking distance of a grocery store, and within her price range. It was very important for her to find one that accepted pets, and that was VERY hard! I was very impressed with how professional and adult she began to sound, on these endless phone calls. People began to respect her in spite of her lisp, and young voice, because she radiates maturity, and the firm knowledge that she knows what she is talking about. Hurray for her!

  Katie applied for a voucher a year ago, which will help pay for her rent, when she gets it in another year. Then she found her own apartment, over the net, and made all the phone calls herself, finding out everything about it. Then we drove there, and she filled out much of the paperwork by herself. I co-signed for her, because she has no credit, and her income alone is too small to make it without my help. But she will get a voucher from the state in about a year, and her financial situation will look up greatly. For about a year, she will not have much money to spend at all, but she is happy, and content to live that way, because she's eager to be independent. She will undoubtedly spend that year walking around the city, and getting to know where everything is. Knowing her, she may volunteer at the animal shelter, or some other place. As I write, she is putting together a cart that she can pull for miles, when she is walking, shopping, after she moves! The sight of all those parts bores me to death. But they fill her with challenge. And she puts them together! (And she did!)

   I am so thrilled for Katie! Her joy is palpable, and her enthusiasm for her future is contagious. She believes that God has a future for her, as do I, and that He will show her the way. She will still get to go to her church, because a nice man who lives in the city, drives to the church, and has offered to drive her too.

   Her father and I bought her three hundred dollars worth of kitchen things that she will need. Everything from can openers, to a coffee pot, to a microwave, to pans and a toaster. It was wonderful fun, and her brilliant smile and excitement opening these things was such fun for us! We've been gathering up furniture, and other things she will need, for a year now. She has saved a fund for emergencies, to take with her.

   Katie recently went to visit her aunt and cousins in a different state. She stayed three weeks, and came home on the train, then taking a taxi home in the middle of the night. Her independent spirit told me then, for sure, that she was really ready to spread her wings and fly from the nest.

   I am so happy for her. We all are. And here she goes, on her new adventure called freedom!

   Well, it's October, 2004. Katie moved into her own apartment two days ago. Her entire income from S.S.I. and a small grant, is $616., plus $149.00 food stamps, and her rent is $495. mo. She has to pay her own electricity, but the rent covers water, garbage, and sewer. Her father and I are paying her phone and cable TV, until she gets her voucher, in a year or so. Until then, she obviously won't have hardly any money to spend. But she's accustomed to being frugal. It's not purchases she is interested in, it is new experiences, and new friends!

   She has called, tremendously excited, several times a day, telling me all the new experiences, including some child pulling the fire alarm, and a fire truck and police coming, and the whole building being evacuated. Very thrilling!

   She has already found a school that holds Christian fellowship every Sunday, a bookmobile only a block away, she's had her first two visitors - friends from church, who brought her a pretty table, since she didn't have one, and they had one they didn't need. She has successfully done her post office change of address form, her food stamps address change, and her S.S.I. address change. She successfully called and arranged for her cable T.V., and electricity bill. She called to ask my opinion as to whether she should have them take the electrticity bill out of her bank account, instead of writing a check, and spending $.37 for a stamp. I explained that she would have to know in advance how much it would be, and make sure there is enough in the account to cover it, because the bank will charge eighteen dollars or something if the check bounces.

   There are so many things to learn - like the seventy-five dollars fine, if she's one day late paying her rent, plus fifteen dollars a day until you do pay it. I am certain that Katie will never be late!

   She has the special number, with a pager, to call the maintenance man if something happens in the night, like a water leak. She found out all about what the maintenance man will help with, and what she is responsible for, and she just realized she needed to buy light bulbs! But then she found out that they give out free light bulbs, but they loan her a key to go get them out of a special room, and if she forgets to give back the key, she has to pay a thirty-five dollar fine!

   Katie even showed remarkable restraint, because someone was giving away a skinny kitten at the Texaco station, and she did not take it! She knows she cannot afford cat food, and shots, until she gets her voucher in a year or so. But animals have always been her passion, and I know she longs for a pet to replace the ones she had to leave behind. Her cats here are country cats, and would never adjust to living in an apartment beside a freeway.

   I noticed, however, that she flew into action in phoning and discovering possibilities. She found out that the SPCA will come and get her and her cat, when she gets one, and take them both to get free spaying or neutering, and then bring her home, because of her disability. There are some definite blessings in the U.S., for people with disabilities. If it weren't for S.S.I., for instance, she would have to spend her entire life at home with us, like folks with problems have had to do through the ages.