... you totally noticed that halfway through yesterday I caved and created a Woulda Coulda Shoulda fan page, right? And then you went and "like"d it, because we're all such good friends? (I am really unclear on what such a page is meant for, other than going OH HEY YOU GUYS I LOVE YOU AND YOU LOVE ME, which I guess is... fine? Maybe I'll give away ponies on there, periodically. Who knows!) Meanwhile, now that I have a whole slew of NEW FRIENDS over there on my shiny new page, today I'm talking body hair over at Off Our Chests, because I like to break the ice at cocktail parties with frank...
friend (noun) 1. a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard. 2. a person who gives assistance; patron; supporter: friends of the Boston Symphony. 3. a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile: Who goes there? Friend or foe? 4. a member of the same nation, party, etc. 5. ( initial capital letter ) a member of the Religious Society of friends; a Quaker. I understand that my personal definition of friend is not necessarily going to exactly match everyone else's. I likewise understand that there are degrees of friendship; I myself, if...
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Dinner is my favorite time of the day. I don't know if it's because we rarely ate together as a family when I was a kid, or because the various tidbits my kids choose to share always seem more hilarious when we're all seated around the table, but whatever the reason, the best conversations are punctuated with the clatter of silverware and someone slurping their milk. The daily ups and downs with a nearly-teen seem suspended at the table, too. No matter how rotten Chickadee's been in other respects (hint: I love that kid more than chocolate but EGADS...
Y'all, I am bursting with maybe-good-news. I am positively OVERCOME with actual hope that young master Monkeypants is finally---FINALLY!---feeling better. This week at school has been... well, it's unprecedented. That's not to say that there haven't been any challenges, but said challenges are fewer and haven't turned into crises. And when Otto asked Monkey if he could describe what he was feeling, he sort of fluttered his hands around the way he does when there's more than he can force out of his mouth and said, "I don't know. I just feel a lot calmer." But we're not going to talk about it,...
Pop quiz time! 1) You are a typical seventh grader. You receive a manageable assignment which is due in three weeks. You: A) Complete it right away---no use wasting time! B) Chart out your anticipated work trajectory, chipping away at it regularly for the next few weeks and finishing right on time. C) Work on it here and there, spending most of the evening before it's due finishing up. D) Spent five minutes on it one day and then the night before get super-annoyed that your mother won't just "edit it" for you (where "edit" means "do") so that you can hand it in. 2) As a gifted student...
There is Logical Me, and there is Emotional Me. Logical Me is, well, LOGICAL. It knows things. It understands reason. It is measured and wise and only if-thens things which truly have causal relationships and is very rarely given to panic and knows exactly what to do in the unlikely event of a water landing without so much as raising its voice. I love Logical Me, but Logical Me is kind of a robot. Emotional Me is Chicken Little on steroids. The sky isn't just falling, it's SHOOTING TOWARDS US and there's NO WAY TO STOP IT and therefore requires that Emotional Me runs around, arms flailing,...
You know how I never talk about sex here? That's about to change. Sort of. Hang on; let me rev up my spam filter, because I'm about to get slammed with a lot of spammy links for things that I'm desperately going to wish I could unsee. (Like, you know, yesterday's thing. Apologies to those of you with delicate sensibilities.) So I spend a lot of time lamenting the thing I do wrong as a parent or the things I think I ought to be able to fix as a parent, and it was pointed out to me that I really am not given to appropriately celebrating the things I do RIGHT as a parent. Today I thought I...
I'm not saying I have it all figured out, nor am I claiming I came up with this---it was suggested to me, last year, and I've been doing it ever since---but what I AM saying is that if you have a kid on an IEP and you have meetings to attend, the single most important thing you can do in preparation for those meetings is to BAKE SOMETHING. I'm not the world's greatest baker. Not by a long shot. You don't have to be. Just bake something delicious. And then bring it with you while it's still warm. Why? It's very simple: 1) Low blood sugar makes people grumpy, and 2) It turns out that it's...
I forgot to tell you perhaps the greatest thing about Christmas Day: We got to be in the family picture! See, Otto and his brother had arranged for us to talk to the family on Skype at some point on Christmas morning. Which would've been fine. But NO, Nearly Nickless somehow wired up his computer through their giant plasma TV up in the corner of the room and set a webcam on top of it and Otto and I were then beamed into the room, Starship Command-style, to converse with everyone else. That was pretty cool for us, because we could see the entire living room and watch the nephews run around...
