Comforting Parents One Meal at a Time

Comfort food and hospitals. Usually not two words we put together in the same sentence or thought. However, thanks to the efforts of Dena Hipskind and four of her friends, families facing a stay at Ronald McDonald house while watching over their children at Riley hospital can rest assured that a hot, nutritious meal will be waiting for them.

Comfort Foods was organized in December 2006 as Dena and her friends were contemplating how they could give back to those in times of need. As ideas brewed the group remembered Dena’s worst nightmare and decided to look there.

In early spring 2006, Dena witnessed her 16-month-old son, Auggie, suffer physical and mental deterioration with no confirmed diagnosis. After watching a news story on WRTV6 about another Fishers child with similar symptoms, the Hipskinds began to piece the puzzle together. Auggie was suffering from Opsoclonus-Myoclonus Syndrome (OMS), a cancer-related auto-immune disorder. After numerous rounds of chemo, Auggie is well on his way to recovery and Dena is ready to get to work. “I feel I have healed enough to now be able to help others,” she reports.

“The time spent at Riley was hard, but it was so helpful to have meals provided to my family during those rough days.“Any minute that you are away from that room, you are away from your sick child, so to have someone provide and bring meals is very comforting,” Dena explains. “A lot of people are down there eating fast food standing up, and in times like those you need a healthy, hot meal.” Thus, the birth of Comfort Foods. Originally, Comfort Foods was going to launch its first project in the kitchens of the organizers. The five members were going to shop, prepare, package and deliver all from their own homes. “We were not exactly sure how it was all going to work; we just knew we had to do this,” says Dena. As we got to thinking and planning more we decided that it would really be so much better if we could go to one centralized location and just do it all there. That is when My Girlfriend’s Kitchen became involved.” When Comfort Foods placed a call to Amy Hruskoci, owner of My Girlfriend’s Kitchen, she was immediately onboard to help in whatever way she could. “Amy had a nephew at Riley and understood the need that we were talking about. “She agreed to help with facility use, food, and packaging materials!”

The group held their first cooking session one week before Christmas. Dena, and her fellow cooks, Mikki Carr, Linda Eckel and Beth Greeson, met at My Girlfriend’s Kitchen and quickly whipped out 24 meals. Dishes prepared on their first venture included Turkey Pot Pie, Countess Stroganoff’s Cheecken, Something Wild Mushroom Pasta, Parmesan Heartbreak, Movin’On Up Chicken Crepes and The Leaning Lasagna of Sausage. All dishes were made to serve between four to six people. “We were looking for dishes that would reheat easily while still having high nutritional value,” claims Dena. The meals were put together, packaged with heating directions, and delivered all in one weekend.

All this has been made possible through the generous donations of friends and family. According to Dena, Comfort Foods has funds waiting in the wings for future meals, and was recently given a large donation that will enable them to double the amounts of food made during their first session. However, according to the house manager of Ronald McDonald, the toughest time of year are the months following the holidays.

“Fortunately we have enough money so we can continue feeding Riley families over the next several months; that’s our goal. They don’t have enough freezer space to hold all the meals right away, so we are hoping to replenish them whenever they call with the need. When we exhaust our current funds I am going to go out and find some more,” states Dena.

If you would like to help Comfort Foods with its mission to feed the families of Riley, please contact Dena at dena@hipskind.net or call (317) 903-9635.

Roofer Madness

If you are like hundreds of Geist families, you have spent the spring, summer and now the fall hearing the bang, bang of roofers galore. What once seemed like a happy string of good luck to many Geist residents has now turned into a small nightmare with no foreseeable end in sight. Let me share my story…
I remember the hail storm in April; it was right at the end of Spring Break. My family was quickly unloading the car in a rush to beat the upcoming storm. As we pulled in the last suitcase and shut the door, all hail broke loose and we huddled together, thankful that we made it inside before it all hit.
A couple of months went by and I receive a mailer saying that many households in our neighborhood have been helped through the insurance process by this roofing company, and I am invited to call for a free estimate. Never one to turn down what may be a good situation; I call and arrange for my estimate. My roofing contractor does a thorough inspection and tells me that I do indeed have hail damage and he can work with my insurance company to have a new roof and new gutters installed. Wonderful – or so I thought!
This roofer promises me that he will meet my adjuster at my house to go through the inspection with him – an empty promise there, but no big deal because the adjuster does not question the claim and all wheels start moving forward. All materials are ordered and a start date is set. A deposit is required, but that of course is normal procedure. A little blue sign is placed in my yard, and I feel confident about the choice we have made.
Little did I know . . .
In mid-June a crew of eight to nine non-English speaking men show up. No start date had been set, but since the shingles had been delivered three weeks earlierm we were just assuming that they would come some day. They begin the day-long process of tearing off my three layers of 20-year-old shingles. All is moving well and they begin to carry up the new shingles in preparation of starting fresh and early the next morning. Thankfully at that time a neighbor who was interested in the same roofing company wanders over to see how it is all coming along. He notices that the 30-year shingles that I have ordered and paid for are not what are being taken up – they have delivered 25-year shingles by mistake. Again, not the end of the world (except for the poor crew who spent the last hour lugging those shingles up the ladders!). My contractor is called, he fixes the problem and new shingles are delivered. He apologizes for not checking the order, but “these are busy times, and it just slipped by him.” The new roof is finally laid, and we now wait on the gutters. No word from my contractor, but plenty of blue signs springing up everywhere. I think, good for him, he is working hard and I can be patient. That is where my story turns sour.
It is now mid-July and my gutters are finally in place. I have tried numerous times to get ahold of my roofer because we have some issues that need discussed before this project can be finished; specifically, leaking gutters and a huge “dip” on one side of my roof. Every time I try to reach my roofer, I get a recording that his voicemail box is full. I would like to refer a couple of friends to him, clear up our business and move on, but unfortunately, he has just become unavailable.
Then one day I get my mail and I see a flyer from my roofer; much to my surprise, my name and address is listed as one of their satisfied customers. Really, I think to myself, not sure that is the case, but I sure wish someone from their company would call me to find out! A couple of days later I get the same mailer again, still listing me as a satisfied customer, and still no call from the company that I am “endorsing.”
It is now early fall and I still have shingles that overlap my gutters and cause the rain water to come no where near the gutters. I have also had the roofers show up when I am not at home, and with no forewarning, tear off a side of the roof and replace it. The dip is still there and I am now being told that the structure lines have collapsed, which is of course, through no fault of the roofers. They must not have noticed it the two times they replaced that section of the roof because we were to be told of any underlying damage and have the option to replace at an additional cost.
So, with winter upon us, my roof that was started in mid-June is still not complete, and I am afraid that my battle is no where near its end. We are not getting a discount roof, but the service and workmanship is drive-thru at best.
I know that I am not alone in my battle. On my small little corner of Fishers, I can count on one hand the number of homeowners who are actually happy with the type of work that was done. I don’t have the answers, but would love to hear your stories, good or bad. It appears that all roofing companies are struggling to produce quality jobs, and I am sure we are all learning a lot more about roofs than we ever felt necessary.
I am just anxious to see – will the local lawyers be the next to benefit from the Hailstorm of ‘06? I would guess they would be.
Have you had roofer problems? Sign-up and post your “comments” to this article so your neighbors can read about it. Maybe you can get Jill to spill the beans on who her roofing company was!

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