Ok...gonna jump in feet first

I've really been thinking a lot about NaBloPoMo and I'm gonna go for broke. I'll do it.

I am not going to rigidly stick to any one theme, but I'll probably hit on these two the most: My hubby and I, and, travel. Two of my favorite things (if you don't count my kidlets!).

Wish me luck. I'm gonna need it. And, some Zoloft or Prozac, or something (I'm right there with ya, Leslie!!).

Let the Games Begin!

Strangest Magazine Ad I've Seen in a While...

Well, let's just start out by saying I don't exactly endorse things like this, but the shock value was too great not to make some sort of comment on it. I'm such a shy little wall-flower, as you all already know. (She snickers, to herself)

I don't want a bunch of 'flames' or any other sort of negatives. OK? 'Nuff said.

B. J. was reading (yet another) one his motorcycle magazine tonight while I was innocently looking at articles online (getting my daily blog-crack-fix) and he comes over to me and says:

"You've got to check this advertisement out." and he hands me his magazine, folded in half.

"Um. OK." I reply, wondering why do I remotely care about some overpriced motorcycle part advert. "OH!"

It was one of those moments where if we were on a television sitcom you would have heard the 'needle scratching across a vinyl record' soundbite.

Behold, this is what I saw in the very back of the advertising section of the November 2007 issue of Cycle World (resolution isn't great--thanks to my scanner) :

Sorry ladies, it was just too weird to not post.

Who knew these types of advertisements were found in mainstream (read: non-pornographic) media. (scratching my head, here). Guess I gotta crawl out from under my proverbial rock more often.

...Like a clean litter box.

I want you to think about cats.

Yes, cats.

Those cute little fuzzy, four-legged meowing machines. Now, I want you to imagine a cat litter box. Sufficiently grossed-out, yet? Good. Here's the point I'm attempting to get at: Have you ever seen a cat around a freshly cleaned cat litter box? It is a bewildering sight. As soon as the pet owner cleans out the litter box (be it barely used, or putrid) the first thing the cat does is run and jump into their litter box, walk around in circles in it, more or less love on it, and then, of course, use it. It is like a potty-par-tay. The cat couldn't use the litter box 2 minutes earlier when it was dirty, oh no, they have to wait until it is fresh and clean to leave an unappealing little gift smack-dab in the middle of it in all its nasty glory.

With that little tidbit in mind (a la the 1960's TV show The Outer limits) , I present to you for your approval or disapproval, the following:

Saturday morning rolls around in all its 5am-why-the-heck-are-you-up-you-evil-little-offspring loveliness (sorry folks, I'm not very nice when I'm decaffeinated), and I decide it is time to change the household linens. Yuck. I've been meaning to strip the beds of their summer linens for oh, say, about a MONTH now, and I've effectively been able to procrastinate doing the deed, until then. B.J. had to work, so I figured it would be an opportune time for the kids and I to indulge in a 'Cinderella Saturday' (a working/cleaning day followed by fun in the afternoon).

I start my chore in the Peanut's room, and move through the house in a counter-clockwise fashion.

As I am stripping the bed linens I notice something peculiar: my children are ramping up and beginning to boing around the rooms like super-balls gone supernova. They are ecstatic about the sheets being changed. They can hardly wait to jump into the dirty linen piles and roll around in them--it looked something akin to Dachshund a finding a rotting salmon and rolling in all its putridness. Very weird.

Then, once the beds were 'naked' the kids would hop on top of them and bounce around madly hooting and hollering like demented little popcorn balls. Who knew changing the beds could be so entertaining and be such a cost-free fun activity.

This high-thread-count euphoria continued through each and every room. The children couldn't contain themselves. In no way, shape, or form could they manage to keep themselves off of my freshly made bed. Somewhat annoying, since I'd have liked to keep the beds looking neat for, oh, say a nanosecond! But, hey, they had fun. I got my job done. It was an interesting science experiment to see how similar kids with clean beds are alike to cats with a fresh litter box.

My parental learning curve just accelerated.

Tempus Fugit

Here I am, Friday, and no posts.

How does that happen?

A week goes by, and I don't indulge, even momentarily, in one of my guilty little pleasures (blogging). I suppose I could see it as depressing, or (what I will do) see it as I'm busy living life.

I can hardly believe that next week is Halloween. What happened to this year? I've already done a little bit of my Christmas shopping (my personal deadline this year is to be totally done before Thanksgiving--same goal I have every year, yet, inexplicably, since hatching the Peanut and Chub-chub I haven't accomplished it...).

How does it happen that we always get so busy? Times like these, in my mind, I can time-travel back to an age where I was living South of the Boarder. Time meandered, down there; up here time flies--roughly, at the speed of sound. Perhaps it is our modern American culture (who am I kidding, of course it is!), but don't you think we need to slow down? Are we really enjoying our lives? Our time? What we choose to devote our energy to?

Sometimes I can answer, honestly, 'Yes!' Other times, I can weakly muster a squeaky 'no.'

I've been contemplating joining up with NaBloPoMo, but how on earth can I actually do it, if I can't seem to manage more than one post per week? Sigh.

Something to think about....

Walking On The Moon

"da da la ma nocking on the-moon."
(instrumental refrain)

"baa baa baaa naaa moon"
(instrumental)

"naaa naa leds don't break....maaank on the moon."
(percussion)

I was treated to sounds of those melodic choruses drifting up to the front seat of my van on Thursday. Melodic? You ask. Yes. Indeed, very melodic. My lips curl upward in satisfaction as I recall those magic moments, now, as I am writing about them. We've come a long way, the Peanut and I. I marvel at what she has managed to accomplish, in such short order.

Thinking back to October of 2006, I remember an angry, out of control, constantly agitated little girl with quick blue eyes and snarled blond hair. A little girl who rarely talked in intelligible phrases (unless you were me who was listening, of course), and who could not attend to a single task long enough to remotely come close to mastering it. I remember a little girl who sent me into paroxysms of guilt or frustration, and often had me in the grips of depression--all over the worry I felt for her and her (lack) of development. October of 2006 was nearing the end of the last six months of total darkness that I staggered through day after day, parenting an Autistic child with little or no hope. What a terrible thing to admit to, but it is cathartic to do so.

The Peanut has made such incredible leaps and bounds in her growth and development. When we had her formally evaluated (a year from this past January) by the E.S.D. for her speech and cognition, she ranked equal with that of a child aged 1 year and 9 months. That meant my daughter, who was nearly 3, was on par with a typically developing child aged 1 year 9 months for speech, logic, communication, and overall cognition. I remember the day I got the results, I knew she was low, but I had no idea she was that low. What a blow. To come back to the point, peanut is growing and accomplishing in quantum leaps. She is nearly on par with her typically developing peers (low-normal range) in speech, and cognition and problem solving abilities are steadily coming along. I am so proud of her. I am so proud of us, the Peanut and I, as a team.

It is amazing how, when you find the appropriate therapies, you can help your child to grow. We have searched (and continue to do so) for therapies and interventions that will allow my little love to grow, catch-up, and to develop so that she can reach her full potential as a human being. We have a long way to go, but the little singing episode, from the back seat of my car, sure was a great barometer of how far we've already come.

Before, Peanut couldn't say 'ma-ma', and now she loves to sing along to The Police from the back seat. (we listen to kid music all the time, too, but every now and again mommy needs to hear something other than "...old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O..."). The human brain is such an amazing organ, and my little Peanut's brain is no exception.

So, while Sting sang of feeling alone in the song, hearing my beautiful girl sing the chorus made me feel like I was walking on the moon--not in solitude or from feeling isolated, but from such joy at hearing all that my little love can do. Days like today are precious jewels that I hoard, in my memory, for the 'other' days; days where I hope those hundred million bottles will, for me, wash up on the shore.

An Hour

Today was a good day. Things were hopping at work, light bulbs were going 'on', and nobody wigged out. In my line of work, you can't ask for much better.

The kidlets are safe at the sitter, taking their naps, I have managed (how?) to escape work on time today, and now I find myself at home. My bookwork is done, the kitchen is reasonably clean (not sparkling, but we won't get salmonella poisoning, either), and I find myself with an entire hour. Alone. To myself.

A whole hour and I can do whatever it is my little heart desires. Hmm...this is difficult. I'm a hyper and naturally high-strung person, and as a result sitting still and just being isn't always an easy task for me. I am much more easily able to obsess about cleaning, organizing, or my all time favorite de-stressor, scrubbing the WHITE grout on my kitchen floor. (You all knew I was a bit neurotic, before, right?) Who on Earth puts WHITE grout on the kitchen/dining room/bathroom floors? WHO? It is the constant harbinger of strife in my life. No matter what I do, I don't seem to be able to keep the grout as clean as I'd like. Sigh. I digress...

So, here I am with my free hour. What do I do? I'm already wasting some time blogging (my dirty little not-so-secret hobby). I have vowed, to all that is mommy, I will NOT clean (grout included). That leaves me with what to do? I'm thinking, that with the remnants of my hour (51 minutes to be exact) I'm going to don a baseball cap, strip down, and hop into my hot tub. Yup. That sounds pretty nice. I'll pretend I'm at some sort of lovely day spa, in a warm and comforting meditation room waiting for my Lomi-lomi (hot rock) massage, and with my orange baseball cap (NOT Beaver, mind you, I am faithful to my Alma Mater) I will ignore the large, cold, October raindrops pelting my skull. Yep. I think that's just what I'll do.

An hour...

Suzie Home-maker

What a wild ride of a weekend. B.J. worked some monstrously long hours, Parents Night Out was a fiasco (due to his long work hours--I had a PNO with my friend P., rather than my husband), and Peanutzilla lived up to her name (the -zilla part).

It is always when I think life is all neatly planned out and I've got something lined up for every facet of my day (or weekend) that life tends to generally fall apart. Isn't it funny how it happens? Again, I find that cliches are so utterly...cliche! "The best laid plans of mice and men..."

On a more positive note, my dad surprised me with one of his uber cool garage sale finds: A barely used bread maker. Pretty cool beans, huh? I would have never thought to look for a bread maker at a yard sale, but alas, I am not the 'queen of yard sales', in fact, I'm not even a 'lady in waiting' of yard sales. Frankly, I have about no luck. My dad? He has all the luck.

So my new appliance is a: Welbilt_ABM4900 Bread Machine

I LOVE IT!

I have made two whole recipes, count 'em, TWO! in my new machine: Banana (no nut) Bread and Honey-Oat Wheat bread. Both recipes turned out pretty good. The kidlet love the Banana Bread, and keep asking for more (a plus, since I'm trying to help the Peanut put on some weight). And, B.J. loves (have I ever mentioned how picky this man is? Well, if I haven't, he could give any two-year-old a run for their money in pickiness) the Honey-Oat Wheat bread. He thinks it tastes just like the stuff they used to give you to nibble on while you were waiting for your salads to be served a the Black Angus Steak House (they're called Stuart Anderson's nowadays). B.J. actually likes it. It is totally amazing. Remember those old LIFE Cereal commercials, the ones where the one kid says to the other "Mikey likes it!". Yeah. B.J. is like the Mikey of my universe. Can't even begin to tell you how happy I am I have finally found (well, made!) a bread he will eat.

For the Honey-Oat Wheat bread recipe I went to my favorite online recipe book, AllRecipes.com
If you've never perused their cache of lovely recipes, I highly recommend it.

I can hardly wait to try out a new recipe. But, I gotta wait until at least 1/2 of the bread I made is gone. Can't carbo load to heavily.

If you have any favorite recipes for the bread machine, please post a comment of email me, OK? I'd love to try it out.

Linky-dinky-doo!

I don't have time to really write a thoughtful or funny post, so I'll send you over to a blog entry by The Fabulous Mommy Fussypants' Guide to Life. I loved it. It is on the Oprah and Dr. Oz show on Kids that aired recently (...wish I had seen it. Guess that is what happens when you don't turn on the TV in, oh, say two or three weeks. Sheesh! I really do live under a rock!). I hope you will enjoy this post like I did, too.

Everyone needs a little humor (or if you're me, sarcasm) to start the day.

Enjoy.

Tear Drops in the Pool

I'm sitting here practicing my 'deep breathing' and trying not to absolutely fall apart.

One deep breath in through the nose, and slowly out of the mouth. And, again.

I am having this complete flood of negative emotions right now: sadness, anger, grief, frustration, annoyance, all gently folded in with some helplessness for good measure.

B.J. is sick with 'sinus' issues (whatever those happen to be), Chubber has a snotty nose that is perpetually dripping greenish goop, and he insists of flailing wildly while shaking his head back and forth yelling 'NO!' every time I attempt to wipe it. That combination, two 'sick' males in one household, is a powerful 1-2 punch that knocks me on my butt every time. Males, in my experience, don't do well with being 'sick.'

At any rate, tonight, B.J. had to go to the doctor, and he 'generously' took the Chub with him-- since mommy & me swim lessons were out of the question and Peanut still had her lesson to go to tonight (no way I could possibly take a 2 year old to the pool without expecting a MAJOR melt-down when he found out sister could swim but he couldn't...). That left the Peanut and myself to go to the pool for her swim lesson.

Normally, swim lessons are pretty even-keel and Peanut looks as normal as any other little girl. She splashes, slides along the edge of the pool, and obligingly kicks her legs in the water to play the splashing games that they do in her class. She looks, in a single word, typical. I cherish the moments in time where she is, for all intents and purposes, normal. Normal isn't, well, normal here. We have our share of Autistic moments, but that is 'normal' when your child is on The Spectrum. So, when swimming lessons come around, it is, for me, a joy to see my girl because I am able to catch a single little glimpse of who she really is on the inside: a beautiful, energetic, four-year-old girl. I see her as the daughter I always dreamed she would be. But, tonight wasn't to be one of those sparkling, glorious glimpses into 'typical.'

Tonight, in a nutshell was awful. Peanut was sullen, grumpy, and uncooperative. She was showing, in all its glaring, astrobright loudness her place on the Autism Spectrum. At first she wouldn't even get into the pool. After a time, and some talking, she agreed to sit on the steps and her teacher attempted to entice her further into the pool with a beautiful purple ball. It worked--temporarily. From there, the Peanut proceeded to rock back-and-forth in the water, while sitting on the steps. She receded into her own little universe further than I've seen her disappear into it in a long time (perhaps even a year or more). She shrieked and barked, dementedly in the horrible ear-drum piercingly high tone she so favors. She climbed out of the pool, and crawled around on the deck.

I tried to talk with her and tell her she could go home if she wanted to. She wouldn't have any of it. She was lost in her own oblivion. She refused to join her class, but also refused to leave. All I could do was humor her and hope that she would journey back toward earth. She eventually got into the water and started to participate in class. It was short lived. Soon after, she was back on the swim deck and began the howl and bark again while rocking back and forth, flapping her arms against her head. I have not seen her stim (self-stimulate) this badly--ever.

As I watched my daughter in horror, unable to help her to 'come down' or to come back-- I realized I could only support her in the way she needed, and that was sit patiently by as she danced through her own universe in a ballet that I did not recognize. As she was doing this I felt the mortar in the wall of bricks around my heart slowly begin to disintegrate and the walls of self-denial, or protection, or whatever you want to call them--my self-protection mechanism--came crashing down, one painful brick at a time.





It was all I could do to 'hold it together' while I watched my girl. I wanted to weep, and rage, and disappear all at once. I felt so terrible for her. She was disturbed in some way that she could not communicate to me, and I was utterly helpless.

I wanted to cry for her, but more than that I wanted to cry for me. I feel and felt so alone. I'm back to being adrift on that desolate ice floe in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by the void that I cannot cross. I think I manage to deny my disappointment (at not having a typical child) for a long period of time, so long that I can almost forget it exists. Then, there's an event like tonight. My girl stumbles backward, and continues stumbling, until she's undeniably NOT normal. Then all the bricks around my heart, my self defense, crumble, and the vulnerable, bleeding, soft pink parts of my soul become exposed, again, and I am reduced to tears.

As another blogger put it "it isn't PC to feel this way [that you wish your child was normal], but I do." And, I do. Some days I just wish she were normal. I wish I didn't feel such shame and guilt that I don't celebrate and rejoice in having a 'special needs child', but I don't. If I could do something, anything, to make it so that she was typical I would. I imagine any parent, even those who love the fact that their child is 'special', would wave that magic wand if it appeared in front of them.

I love my little girl as much as I love life itself. I can't imagine my life without her--I wouldn't have the same life without her, nor would I want a life without her--I just wish in moments like these things could be easier. That the pink parts weren't always so raw when they get exposed. That I didn't have to find the mortar to glue everything back into place.

Gift Bag

Look out folks, I'm gettin' creative over here. Better sound the alarms... Martha has some competition...

But, seriously, take a look:

To celebrate one of my colleague's birthday I decided I'd make her some treats, and rather than settle for the gift bag de rigueur, I wanted something different.

I stepped outside 'the bag.'

And came up with the idea to use a trick-or-treat pumpkin ($2.49--roughly the same price as a paper decorative bag). I thought it would be cute, and that my friend could reuse it (as in, probably give it to her 6 year old.)

What, might you ask, do you put into a jack-o-lantern gift bag? Well, you put these into it:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies, of course!

Roughin' it

Our hot water heater took a nose dive. In fact, it doesn't actually heat water anymore. Does that make the 'hot water heater' part a moot point?

Some time on Saturday our water heater ceased heating water. Too bad we didn't actually notice this wee factoid until Sunday morning. 6:30am, is, in fact, when I did notice that we had a substantial lack of hot water--we didn't even have tepid water. So, I told B.J. and he decided it wasn't heating due to a (likely) blown circuit breaker. He reset it. I chilled out and got my morning caffeine fix (if coffee could be given intravenously, I'd sign up...).

After an hour or so, what would have reasonably been long enough for said water heater to begin heating water, I tried to shower. Again. And, again, no hot water. This was a major drag, and a slight inconvenience to our morning. Given that by this point in time it was 8:00am, and we were slated to leave by 8:30am, to go visit family in another city, it necessitated a hasty (and unsatisfactory) baby-wipe-bath and sticking my head under the freezing cold tap to do something with the mass on the top of my head that greatly resembled a rooster's comb.

B.J. decided (reasonably) to reset the circuit breaker (again) and reset the circuit directly on the hot water heater. We figured that by the time we returned from our trip, some time that evening, we would once again be a part of the western world with hot running water.

WRONG!

Too bad we didn't realize it until 9:30pm Sunday evening--we still had a non-working hot water heater. Too late in the evening to actually work on fixing it/get parts. What that meant is that I got to (oh joy) go to work without a morning shower--yet another day being filthy. At this point it has gotten a bit...um...old. When I was 18 or 19 a shower was optional--hey, I was semi-hippie, and rebelling against the system a bit. But, at this age (undisclosed, you might notice) as a working professional, I don't do mornings without a shower.

Monday comes and goes. By the end of the day the children are beginning to resemble the poor street urchins that you see on the Sally Struthers 'sponsor a child' television commercials. I decide that I can't quite send my babies into the world looking like they are in need of social services to rescue them. To accomplish a bath I have to find out how to wash them in reasonably warm water: I boiled a huge stockpot of water on the stove, slogged it (without spilling or burns--on anyone! Hallelujah!) to the kids' bathroom and dumped it into the bathtub. This produced a bath of approximately 1/2 cm. deep water. To cool it down and to give us enough to work with I ran cold water into the tub, to make it about 2" deep.

I have a whole new appreciation for my great-great-grandmother and the womenfolk before her. What a chore to boil water to have a warm bath. It is no wonder why our ancestors only bathed monthly (and semi-annually before that). I also have a bigger appreciation of the differences between the classes--the upper classes could afford to have servants who would boil and slog up hills, stairs, and who-knows-where-else to provide a hot bath for their employers. What a thankless task that must have been, for very little return. I'm, again, grateful that I was born where and when I was born.

Tuesday arrives with all of its unshowered, ripening, hate-to-stick-my-head-in-the-cold-water ugly rainy day glory. I get to be present and accounted for at my place of employment, with only a sponge bath and some (very expensive) perfume to (hopefully) disguise any of my not-next-to-godliness (you know, like the old proverb: Cleanliness is next to...). B.J. takes the day off of work to solve our hot water woes.

In the end, it turns out that it is a simple and inexpensive fix. Yay!! B.J. brainstorms with the guys at George Morlan Plumbing and with my Dad (Mr. Fix-it of the universe--this man can fix it, build it, design it--from cars to appliances to building houses (which, as a matter of fact, he built the one he currently live in--by himself!!)). The end result: our hot water heater needed a $33 part (a new thermostat) and, voilà! We have hot water.

I can hardly wait until I put the kidlets to bed so that I can go and be decadent, and wallow in a super hot, turn-me-lobster-red, ultra luxurious hot water shower.

Random quote for today

So, I was at my father-in-law's birthday party last night, talking with my sister-in-law, J., and she says to me:

J: So, I asked Peanut if she was going to school right now.
Me: Yea. So, what did she tell you?
J: She said "I don't go to school. I'm going to CHURCH!"

Poor Peanut, she still doesn't have any concept of time or the days of the week. This was so hilarious to me simply because Peanut had asked if today (Sunday) she was going to 'my school' and I told her that, no, today wasn't a school day, but that we were going to church. Her response to J. made it sound like she doesn't ever go go school, but only goes to church 6-10 times a week, like some weird cult...

Gotta love kids. Bill Cosby definitely had it right: Kids do say the darnedest things...