Hello all,
it's been a while since I've posted a personal journal as I've been busy with stuff and such other things.. Today started out as a normal day, all was well until earlier this afternoon a bomb was dropped on me and I'm still not sure how to pick up the pieces.  I know some of you are familiar with this situation but for those of you who aren't, my oldest son was diagnosed with Autism a year ago.  

It took me a year to get him in and have him diagnosed since I had already had a previous diagnosis for him which was not Autism (ADHD and Sensory Integration Disorder) and I wanted to get him seen by the best of the best so I could be sure to get an accurate diagnosis as his symptoms over the last 2 years had been changing and seriously looked like Autism but I didn't want it to just be dismissed as we had one doctor do to us already simply because Drake enjoys interacting with adults... Anyway.. so I spent nearly a year waiting to get his diagnosis and we had to fight like hell to get it.  I had social workers and therapists calling the facility for us asking if they would get us in sooner as we really needed help!  

Finally we got a last minute appointment and the diagnosis was as we assumed, Autism with an added anxiety disorder.  We learned that Drake would be able to get services with one of two autism programs here in our area which are absolute top notch!  This was amazing news!  The downfall however was that these programs are incredibly expensive and families like ours don't have cash like that laying around.  So we had to see about getting a state waiver which would pay for it, however before we could get that Drake first had to be deemed disabled by social security.  

So again, we had to wait for social security to approve our claim before we could move forward to get him the services he needed.  Once he was approved by Social Security as being disabled we filed all of the paper work for the waiver.  At that point we were told he qualifies for the waiver and it would be 4-6 months before he would get it and could then get services.  Here we are a year later A YEAR LATER!  

Last month they came back out and spoke with me again, I am told that Drake's waiver will finally come up in May and to go ahead and call the program I chose for him and let them know to get ready to take him in, because remember.. Drake qualifies!!!!!  
Today they call me and tell me OOPS!  We're sorry, Drake doesn't qualify for the waiver!  WTF are you kidding me?  They have had the same paperwork for the past YEAR and they couldn't tell me until NOW that he doesn't qualify?  

So I asked the woman what we should do for help for Drake and her response was that we should just seek regular therapy!!!  Now.. Over the last few months we had been having some really concerning problems with Drake so I had already went and found him a therapist, however.. I almost was not able to get him therapy because of his autism diagnosis.. the therapists in this area didn't want to see him because they are technically not qualified to deal with autistic children.  We found one who was willing to give it a shot anyway but that still doesn't help with his Autism problems, where to we find help with that?  What do we do about that?  

I know we will be okay, I know we will figure something out.  But it's just so frustrating to know that we've been fighting for this for so long and it was so close and now it looks like it's just not going to happen.  I feel a little defeated and lost and overwhelmed and hurt and I just don't know.  It's very hard being a parent of a special needs child, to have hope that there is help for your family is a beautiful feeling, to have that hope pulled out from under you is absolutely devastating!

WIPs/Sketches/and other unrefined pieces

As of late we have had a few submissions which we felt were very clearly in WIP or sketch stages, or at the very least a piece where the artist had gotten a bit sloppy and/or bored with their work and called it finished while it was still unrefined.  While this in itself is perfectly fine, we originally implemented the WIP rule to help weed out such submissions and encourage members to submit work that they are proud of, on top of making sure that our group was not to be treated as a dumping ground of sorts for art.  Until recently we've had very few incidents where we've had to decline a piece that didn't clearly state it was either a sketch or a WIP, however over the past month the number seems to be increasing.  Due to this increase we felt it was time to look at and revise our current WIP rule to eliminate the current loophole in it. The old rule reads: We will no longer accept WIPs (Works In Progress). Please be sure that you are only submitting finished pieces to our gallery. We have also decided that uncolored pieces that do not have nicely defined lines, as you will see in a line art piece, will be considered WIPs and as such we will from now on reject those as well. and ideally, I'd like to add in something that mentions pieces which clearly appear to be WIPs and or sketches or are very unrefined as to the artists usual standards may be rejected as WIPs/sketches even if they are not officially listed as such.  This is only something that will apply to pieces of clear WIP or sketch quality, so no need to worry if you are not submitting your absolute best pieces so long as they are actually finished and refined pieces.  
 

Features

Chat

While our group does have its own chatroom #UniqueEquines, I'd like to take a moment to let you know about #EquineCommunityChat as well.  This new chat has been fairly active as of late with several of your fellow EC members so if you enjoy chatting and have some free time I suggest you stop on in.

Equine Community News

`Crazysparkles06 has started a new article series called Project Equine, check out Volume 2 here.

=KaxantheDragon is looking for some help and has lowered her commission prices, for more info read here.

*orengel is holding FVR Mini Races deadline is June 1st.  Info is here [link]

*TackRack's major tutorial project is a project worth checking out for anyone willing to get involved in helping out with some equine related tutorials etc more info can be found here [link]

=randomkiwibirds is asking for help in saving the Woodlawn Stables [link]

Announcing the Relaxation Contest Winners

First we would like to thank everyone who submitted an entry for participating, we had a lot of fun looking through the submissions.  
Unfortunately there could only be one winner and one runner up.  
So for December's contest the winners are:

1st place:

by =Azzeria

Runner up:

by *puken

Congrats!

#Through-a-Lens will be holding another contest soon so keep an eye out for another great opportunity to win.