Growing things
I had big plans for this weekend, people. BIG PLANS. I was going to get a ton of work done, and have quality time with my family, and get the rest of my seedlings into the garden, finally, and it was all going to be spectacular.
I got almost no work done, but I bet you already knew that.
I’m not entirely sure how one defines “quality time,” but we’ll just agree to accept “going to the grocery store and arguing about high fructose corn syrup” and “letting my daughter ‘fix’ my hair for me” as quality. Really, I mean, this stuff is what life is made of. Or something.
Also, it’s been incredibly hot here, so my husband and I opened the pool, much to the delight of the small people who live here. Because no one ever remembers that 1) it takes a while to make the pool ready for use and 2) even when it’s 95 degrees out, a long winter means the water in the pool is still pretty cold. read more…
Happy Mother’s Day!
Happy Mother’s Day to all my pals out there who:
1) are moms
2) love moms
or
3) have a mom. (I’m pretty sure that gets everyone.)
I started off my day with breakfast in bed, because somehow I ended up admitting that I’d never had breakfast in bed before and Otto made it his mission to make sure that’s what I got. So I did. It involved a lot of bacon. And this:
Cliffhangers no more
It’s come to my attention that I have a (possibly annoying) habit of telling you an open-ended story and then wandering off and never—oh, look! Something SHINY!
I don’t do it on purpose, you know. I’m just easily distracted. Also, when I know how something turned out I just assume y’all are tapped into the hive mind and everyone knows. (No, that’s a lie. I just forget sometimes that I haven’t told you. I’m sorry!)
As for missing Love Thursday yesterday, well, I spent most of the day at the dentist. I have no other excuse. But on my second visit there (really) a woman fainted in the waiting room, so THAT was sort of exciting. I mean, the kids were getting their teeth cleaned, I was tapping away on my laptop, and suddenly a hygienist was buckling under a woman’s weight and calling for help. I threw my computer aside and rushed to their aid! Or gently put my computer on the floor and grabbed a chair and brought it over. Whatever.
Anyway, Friday seems like a good day to bring you up to speed on a few things I may have inadvertently left dangling. read more…
We are family
The university is in the process of doing an eligibility audit for their benefits, which means that Otto and I have had to prove (again) that we’re married, and yesterday we received some paperwork demanding that we prove the children are actually eligible dependents on Otto’s health insurance. (This is all part of the university’s new plan to start paying its employees in wampum and Double Bubble, by the way.)
We were talking about it at dinner, and Chickadee asked why it matters. Otto told her that without this paperwork, she can’t have health insurance.
“Fine by me,” she said.
“Great, I’ll just go ahead and drop you, then,” said Otto. “Saves us about a hundred bucks a month, anyway. No more health insurance for you!”
Chickadee glared at him, then pointed her fork and intoned, “Just remember, if we’re ever stranded on an island, we’re eating you first.” (Yes, we did that book review a year and a half ago. No, it never stops being funny for the kids to remind Otto that they plan to eat him if the going gets rough.)
All motion and noise at the table stopped, as Monkey and I watched Otto and Chickadee each trying to stare the other down. Finally Otto went back to eating.
“I don’t think cannibalism is going to be your healthiest choice, particularly if you’re WITHOUT INSURANCE,” he said, all smug.
“Yeah, well, you won’t have insurance IF I EAT YOU,” she shot back, before everyone dissolved into giggles.
Feel the love, people. FEEL THE LOVE.
More should be more
I am a slow learner (to my detriment). And while some people live by the credo that less is more, my personal internal monologue runs in the “if some is good, more would be MORE AWESOMER” direction.
Even though it’s not true. Even though the OPPOSITE is usually true.
Like… take food, for example. A normal person enjoys, say, buffalo chicken wings, and eats some and says, “Yum, that was delicious.” Me, I’m like a puppy. If I like a food, I will eat until it’s GONE regardless of whether I’m still hungry or any sort of other common sense. So I am not allowed to partake of things like buffalo wings (which, in my old age, will indeed make me sick if I overindulge) unless the available food matches a reasonable portion size. And that’s not even getting into the Murphy’s Law corollary that applies to family food.
What, you don’t know what I mean? C’mon, anyone with kids knows this great truth of cooking: read more…
Monkey at the bat
Monkey has a friend.
Now, this is not exactly a first; Monkey has always had friends. When he’s having good days, he is charming and gregarious and has no trouble ingratiating himself to others. The problems come in on the not-so-good days when he is easily frustrated and quick to anger. On those days, the not-quite-friends decide to play elsewhere, and the few select kids who’ve chosen to hang out with him anyway give him wide berth for the day. And maybe the next day, too. “He never wants to play with me anymore,” Monkey lamented of one longtime friend, the other day. “We like to do different things, I guess. Also I guess I get mad a lot.” (The kid in question is a saint for still being friendly to him at all, quite frankly.)
But now Monkey has a friend like him. I’ve been hearing about him all year but only in the last couple of months have I seen this pair in action, and it’s something to observe. They GET each other. They laugh and play for hours on end. They chatter endlessly and never tire of each other. Monkey and Lemur: dynamic Aspie duo. read more…
Me, me, me
My navel is FASCINATING. Excuse me while I stare at it some more.
[That’s a total lie. My navel is horrifying. I used to have a belly ring, you know, back when I was convinced I’d never be able to get pregnant so I might as well ENJOY THAT FLAT BELLY and show it off, and I reasoned that a belly ring was less permanent than a tattoo. I was right, but I was short-sighted—I have a big scar where the ring used to be, because I waited until I was a hundred months and fifty pounds pregnant to remove it. Whoops.]
Anyway, to get the full breadth of my navel-gazing, feel free to head over to Five Full Plates, where today I am realizing that my own damn self is out of my comfort zone, and I’m pretty sure the metaphysics of that little gem caused a rift in the space-time continuum. Sorry ’bout that.
And then, if you’re tired of me (which, really, who could blame you?), perhaps you’d like to read my interview with Ruth Wells Fischer on BlogHer, the last in our series of posts for Autism Awareness Month. Ruth is a smart and lovely lady who has kindly held my hand from afar through a lot of this Asperger’s stuff, and I’m thrilled to share her wisdom with the community at large.
Interesting side note, to interpret as you will: BlogHer is currently running a little Meet These Autism Bloggers spot, and when I saw my picture in that post I had a moment of utter confusion. Because I’m not an autism blogg— oh. I guess I am. Writer, know thyself (dumbass).
Err on the side of love
Last year when I started my garden, I had no idea what I was doing. This year I at least have some idea of how little I know, so I consider that progress.
Last year I started almost everything as a plant, with a few seeds sown directly into my planter boxes and grown outside. About a month (maybe even more) after I began the garden, though, I decided to try starting some tomatoes from seed, and so I did that, inside, until they were big enough to transplant. I then moved them to their designated planting spots, where they promptly turned white and tried to die. If you’re a seasoned gardener, you know this is because I knew nothing about hardening them and my poor little tomato seedlings went into shock. They didn’t die, but it was touch and go for a while, there.
This year I’ve been taking my seedlings out to the deck and arranging and rearranging them, trying to help them acclimate, trying to make sure they’re truly ready for full days of Georgia sun before I let them take root in the ground.
And so yesterday when Monkey came home from school, head hanging, despondent over a bad day, I made him come out on the porch with me and sit and talk while I fiddled with the plants. read more…
Punch Buggy Blues
When Chickadee gets her license, she would like to buy a red VW Beetle with yellow lightning bolts down the sides. She has been telling us this for YEARS, which of course means that for years we have been telling her that 1) it’s good to have dreams and 2) she should feel free to get a job at any time.
When that elicits whining and complaining, Otto always points out that he’s perfectly willing to gift her his car once she’s driving. As his car is already 20 years old, for some reason this doesn’t thrill her. Go figure.
Given her lifelong obsession with Beetles, you’d think that playing Punch Buggy would’ve been part of our standard family repertoire for years, but somehow we only started playing it about a month ago. This has been terribly amusing for a number of reasons, but unfortunately it has also increased my driving anxiety by about a hundredfold.
I’m sure that’s totally safe, right? read more…
Paging Dr. Freud
I would certainly never tell him about this while he is a child, and maybe I’ll never tell him, but the fact of the matter is that I have recurring nightmares about Monkey dying. And it’s just as awful as it sounds.
Sometimes I go for months and months without it happening. In the past I’ve even gone a year or more. But they always come back.
The only time I’ve ever dreamed about Chickadee dying was after our car accident, and they faded away after a few months. On the other hand, my nightmares about losing Monkey started when I was pregnant with him. That means I’m coming up on a dozen years of waking up in a panic, convinced my youngest has succumbed to dangers from which I failed to protect him.
Why it happens, why it’s just him… well, I have a few theories. Some are more “woo-woo” than others, and I don’t suppose it really matters. But last night was the worst yet. read more…