Further to my post of yesterday…
I love Lard. So will you. 🙂
Monthly Archives: January 2014
JusJoJan 8 – What Facebook Keeps Teaching Me
If Facebook is good for nothing else, it’s an excellent way to have motivational sayings come across your desk every once in a while. I’ve seen this one a few times before, but with my birthday coming up it made me think. Contemplate life, even.
It’s so easy to fall into the psychological trap of mourning one’s youth. As the years pass we find we’re not able to do the same things we used to, both physically and mentally. We wake up in the morning with new aches and pains, we find gray hairs in places we never imagined would go gray, and skin wrinkling in places reserved in our minds only for someone’s grandparent. Yet one thing is true – if you’re reading this, you’re alive, no matter how old you are.
Whether or not you consider this a privilege, it is what it is. You are alive now and have the potential, for at least another little while, to affect someone else’s life. I may just be affecting yours as I write this.
I think if I could leave behind any legacy at all, it would be to remind people of this: our shared human experiences and our emotions know no cultural nor religious boundaries, and each and every one of us has the ability to affect another of our species. So be good to one another.
We’re all connected, if by nothing more than Facebook, and by nothing less than being human.
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You know you’re tired when…
… you wake up to the alarm at 5:30am and forget what it means and what you’re supposed to do about it.
… the phone rings on your bedside table and you answer your remote control and can’t figure out why it won’t stop ringing. (I watched my ex do this.)
… you don’t realize until you go to put the tea cozy on the milk that you put the teapot full of steaming hot steeping tea in the fridge.
The last I did years ago, the first was just this morning. What notable things have you done or seen when exhaustion sabotaged your poor, defenseless brain cells?
JusJoJan 7 – Antsy
In true “Jot It” style, I’m jotting this down on Monday to be posted on Tuesday. With any luck I won’t be feeling it by the time this goes live, but after a little over two months of not pounding away at any major work of fiction, I’m getting squiggly to get writing.
What does getting squiggly mean, you ask? It means that the pads of my fingers are starting to tingle for the keyboard, I have the shadows of psychologically unsound characters swimming around in my head, and I have voices gurgling in unknown languages, reverberating in my ear drums.
It’s pretty crazy in here.
Before you run away and never revisit this crazy lady’s blog, tell me what kind of symptoms you experience when you want to write something but lack the opportunity. Come on! Join the crazy!
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Call For Submissions
Looking to get your literary work into an anthology? Submissions are being accepted at The Literary Syndicate!
JusJoJan 6 – Vacations Are Fun
I’m at a crossroads, of sorts, in regards to my son, Alex, and his behaviour. Keeping in mind that it’s 5:46am and I’ve had two hours of sleep all night, I’m writing this here as both a way to get it in black and white so I can see the problem from a different perspective, and to put the conundrum out there in hopes that someone else has gone through something similar. My hopes aren’t too high.
First, the history: To say that Alex has a hard time making decisions is a gross understatement. When trying to choose, for instance, between staying home to play a game or come with me to the grocery store, he’ll change his mind at least a dozen times. He’ll get dressed and then completely undressed; he’ll whine, cry, scratch his head a lot – it’s utter torture. I have, however, reduced it from a half hour ordeal to, “I’m leaving, if you want to come with me, be ready before I walk out the door.” As a result the process now only takes five minutes.
He also suffers with the occasional insomnia, and for the past week he’s been combining the lack of decision-making skills with lack of sleep. The fact that there are two single beds in his room has never been a problem before. When my mother comes to visit on the weekends, she sleeps in his room and he’s quite happy with that deal. Only for a week now he can’t decide which bed he wants to sleep in. At approximately 2:30 every morning since before New Year’s Eve, he’s been doing the whining, crying, head-scratching routine. It’s torture for both of us, and it goes on for a couple of hours each night. I tried hanging a calendar in his room and striking up a deal with him that he sleeps one month in one bed and the next in the other. That worked for one night – coincidentally it was the same night he didn’t have a choice because Nanny was in the other bed.
So. I’m faced with a dilemma. Do I go to all the trouble of taking the extra bed out of his room?
On the surface it seems to be the logical thing to do.
Except: there is still the communication barrier thing going on. Not being completely fluent in my own son’s language – American Sign Language – I never really completely know if he understands the consequences of his actions before they happen. It’s always that one word I’m missing: “If you don’t get ready now, I’m leaving without you.” I will temporarily lose from my addled brain the sign for ‘without.’ Or, “If you don’t stay in one bed all night, I’m going to move the other bed out.” Is he getting that I’m going to move the bed? Or does he think I’m going to let him sleep in another room? Even if I turn the sentence around and keep it positive, I have the same problem. Aside from sleeping in his room, which is exactly what he wants me to do and will ensure that I’ll never sleep in my own bed again, I can’t keep him in bed at night. In the past I’ve been able to demonstrate what I mean. Like during the period when he decided to turn the television on in his room at 2am. I tried to explain to him that if he didn’t leave it off I’d take it out of the room, and when that didn’t work, I took it out of the room. He got it after that. Moving a bed, box spring and mattress down four flights of stairs is a rather more difficult undertaking.
So, my next thought was, tip the bed on its side and leave it where it is. Only that would be an all new brand of hell for my little darling and his OCD.
I know I need to ask his school for help. At this point his teacher is already practically living my life for me in regards to making sure he does as he’s told at home. They, unlike me, know how to explain things to him in no uncertain terms. It’s easy to see how vacations from school become nightmares at home.
Before you ask, there is no support for hearing parents to learn sign language for their Deaf children in the area.
Oh, and I just found out there’s no school today because of flash freezing. Oh joy.
Any suggestions, hugs, or paid-in-full Caribbean vacations can be left in the comment box and will be gratefully received.
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JusJoJan 5 – Keeping It Together
I can always tell when my youngest son, Alex, is ready to go back to school after having time off – his behaviour is intolerable. Right now I’m trying to ignore him while he plays a game on his Wii U and screams and claps louder than one would think is humanly possible. The alternative is to shut him in his room until tomorrow morning, in which case he won’t get the nutrition he needs because he’ll unplug his feeding pump.
If tomorrow is a snow day I may just kill something.
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JusJoJan 4 – I Spy
“I spy with my little eye…”
It started out with colours, when I was a small child and progressed to “…something that begins with…” a letter of the alphabet when I was old enough to spell. It was a great way to pass the time on long drives.
I have since graduated from that delightful little game however. Sure, I played it with the kids when they were little. But around the time when my eldest son was born, my ex and I started playing another game in the car. The first one to guess the name of the band playing the song on the radio got a point. The game would start when we got in the car and wouldn’t end until we arrived at our destination. New trip, new game.
Since then I’ve started playing it with my eldest. At nineteen years of age, he’s almost able to beat me, especially when the music is of the newer variety. It’s taught him to appreciate the music that is the same age as he is and older, which is great as far as I’m concerned. I thank heaven to this day he’s never been interested in rap – possibly because of years of listening to his dad and I play “The Game.” It’s amazing how far a little competition can go.
When was the last time you played a silly game with your family and/or friends, and what was it? Let’s have some fun today, and teach each other a game or two!
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A Thank You and a Reminder
I wanted to post a thank you to each and every one who followed my fiction blog after last night’s post. A plate of your favourite cookies will arrive via Santa’s hungover reindeer within the week.
Also, I wanted to say thank you to everyone participating in Just Jot it January – I didn’t think it would be this popular! Don’t forget to link back to the rules post here: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/jusjojan-1-the-rules-are-easy/ for a guaranteed view from me and likely from everyone else participating. And don’t forget, it’s never too late to join. It’s a guaranteed follow from me if you do. Of course the best part of all is that it encourages us all to write! And that’s what we’re here for, right?
I love you guys!
JusJoJan 3 – Frost Quake Fallout
Frost Quakes are continuing with the rapid decline in temperatures. I didn’t actually hear one here, but I have photographic evidence that we had one.
This is what I woke up to on the ground beneath the tree and all around my hedges, here at home and all around the block on my paper route.
Frost Quake icicles
The trees are bare of their previous coating of ice, and now the icicles lay all over the ground like tiny transparent straws. Interesting, yet as slippery as sheer ice to walk on.
Unlike earthquakes, frost quakes are close to the surface and are therefore undetectable by seismic equipment.
So if you live in the widespread area of plummeting temperatures right now, and you hear a loud booming noise, it may not actually be a car hitting your home. It might be a frost quake.
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