I sent you daily affirmations for a while, while you were too far away and dealing with too much, and it was the best way I knew to keep beating out "I love you, I love you" on my heart drum so that you could hear it. You complained, once home again, that I'd stopped doing it. I guess the daily stuff fades into the background, not quite as loud, easy to ignore and easier still to forget where it comes from and what it means. Part of me is grateful for the forgetting. Last year on your birthday all I wanted was for us to forget, all of us. Especially you, my delicate, emotional sponge. You...
New thing: Hey, uh, lollipops and unicorns to everyone who welcomed my debut on Alpha Mom so warmly yesterday. I was hoping for a modest showing and apparently there are a lot more marching band devotees out there than I realized. (As in, the word "viral" was used and I had a giddy moment of amazement.) It was a lovely, lovely way to start off a new gig, although I am kind of having palpitations over what I can write about next week that won't seem like a letdown, in comparison. Maybe I'll have to attend the Incendiary School Of Post Writing so favored by a number of outlets and follow up...
Okay, "wondrous" might be overselling it a bit. There are varying degrees of wondrous. Like, there's a whole spectrum of interesting that spans all the way from "truly wondrous" on down to "WTFness." And I will leave it to you to place the following along that continuum as needed. [Sidebar: Let us pause for a moment to acknowledge that anything you hear from me today or for the next several weeks will be completely allergy-addled. I woke up this morning and had to chisel my face open. For a few minutes I thought maybe I had pinkeye, but no, it's just regular ol' allergies. I guess....
When I was about Chickie's age, I was busy chewing my way through everything Stephen King ever wrote. The freakier and scarier, the better. This came up when I tried to convince Otto to watch Bates Motel with me the other night; he's not so much a fan of a series that is fairly unapologetic about the amount of blood and gore, whereas I love it. I found myself explaining that---for me---there is catharsis in stories filled with terror. I get to experience all the fear/loathing/panic my body can handle WITHOUT having to relate it to my own particular life, and afterward, somehow my brain goes,...
I have a variety of not-long-enough-to-be-a-complete-post stories which are either 1) still interesting enough for sharing or 2) mind-numbingly dull but I don't realize that and insist you must know, and therefore that shall result in this, a disjointed mishmash of unrelated things all in one place. It's just like my junk drawer! Only with more words and fewer pen caps!! (Moral of this story: If you need a paperclip and a button, I'm your gal.) There's a slight twinge of remorse here that I don't have a more exciting life or whatever, but on the other hand, I got up this morning and brought...
Know what Chickadee loves? Let's take a brief quiz: A) When I sing and dance along with Thrift Shop any time it comes on the radio. B) When I refer to visiting our local Goodwill as "poppin' tags." C) When I respond to any compliment on my attire---however slight---with a deep, booming, "I LOOK IN-CRED-UH-BULL!" D) All of the above. E) None of the above, and P.S., it's not nice to taunt the teenager. [Your quiz will not be graded. I am too busy cutting the plastic tag thingies off our latest haul. But here's Licorice's favorite video version as a reward for playing along.] The thing is, I've...
One of my least favorite things to hear about kids on the autism spectrum is that they tend to lack an understanding of humor, and nearly everything "official" says they don't understand sarcasm. And really, as much as I would love to believe that my own particular little snowflakes are just that much more special than the world, no, really, I know a LOT of Aspies who get sarcasm just fine. Monkey has been... well... a little off, lately. If you ask him something you're likely to get a snippy, snarky reply. With an extra helping of sarcasm. I don't know what's up. I suspect it may be...
I keep waiting for something BIG and EXCITING to happen, possibly because I'm still in the pinch-me-I'm-dreaming phase of delicious normality. The reality is that life has been mundane and I am not complaining. I am just... perplexed. Surely one of us is about to come down with Ebola, or the next time we run out of milk and I drive to the store, my car will burst into flames. I mean, that's... just sort of how my life goes, no? Well---hang on, I have to knock on some wood, throw some salt over my shoulder, and perform a rather complicated ritual with the tchotchkes on my desk---right now,...
There's quite a bit of sibling adjustment happening 'round here. The kids have missed each other so much---more than I think either of them realized---but both have grown somewhat used to being the only kid in the house, and so we are seeing some natural jockeying for position now that they're together again. For Monkey's part, I think he has blossomed in his sister's absence; he is the beta to her alpha, and with alpha absent, beta has discovered that he can monopolize the conversation if he feels like it (neat!). He is much more assertive now than he was when she left, and Chickadee finds...
