Life in progress

Category Archives: Parenting


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#JusJoJan 2018, the 14th – Ultimatum

As a parent, I hand out ultimatums all the time: do this, or you’re not getting that; stop that, otherwise there’s no this. It never ends.

Even though I’ve had a lot of practice over the years with ultimatums, I still sometimes have a hard time knowing when to keep my mouth shut. I’ve learned the hard way that if I don’t follow through with them, they get ignored. And following through is sometimes difficult.

For example, when my behaviorally challenged (good behavior, that is–he’s excellent with bad behavior) son, Alex, gets in his head that he wants to go somewhere, about eight times out of ten he’ll wait until the last minute and then change his mind. The last major instance of this was right after Christmas, when he was excited about all of us going to the mall to shop at the Boxing Day sales. My autistic son, Chris, was all ready to go, waiting outside in the cold–if you’ve never met an autistic person, believe me, it’s not easy to change their mind about something they’ve been promised they’re going to do. We were all about to get our coats on, and Alex said he wanted to stay home alone. Although he’s physically seventeen years old, I’ve never left him alone at home. He’s Deaf, and with the mental age of a six- or seven-year-old, I don’t feel comfortable with it. However, usually when we say to him that we’re going with or without him, he’ll get his coat on and go. Not this time. He called my bluff.

With my ultimatum stuck in my throat, the rest of us piled in the car and left. I managed to get to the end of the block before I turned around and went back home. Sure enough, he’d had his fill of being alone and was getting his coat on when I came back in the door.

Since then, we’ve all gone out as a family once. I made sure to tell Chris that we were going to TRY to go out together, and I didn’t ask him to get ready until Alex was outside and in the car. I learned my lesson. Still have to wonder what my next ultimatum trial will be.

This post was brought to you by Just Jot it January and prompted by the word “ultimatum,” provided by Itinerary Planner! Thank you so much! You can find Itinerary Planner’s JusJoJan post by clicking right here. Please go and say hi! To participate in the prompt, please visit this post, where you’ll find the rules and you can leave your link in the comments.


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One-Liner Wednesday & #JusJoJan Daily Prompt – January 10th, 2018

It’s the age-old battle of mother and child, yet since I became an editor, it has taken on a new tone:

(The first photo, in fridge magnets, is written “Mom! Stop editing my life” and in the second image, is written “Fred! Stop editing my fridge.)

 

Here are the general rules to follow for Just Jot it January:

1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!

2. I’ll post the daily prompts at 2am my time (GMT -5), every day except for Saturday’s Stream of Consciousness (SoCS) prompt–you’ll find that one on Friday morning at 9:30am. That daily post (i.e. this one) will be where you leave your link for others to find in the comment section. There will be a prompt for every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday.

2a. Since today is Wednesday, I challenge you to make your JusJoJan post a one-liner. If you don’t care to, or if you’ve already written your post, no problem. Remember, with One-Liner Wednesday you can write anything – it’s only a prompt to write one line, not necessarily to keep to the same theme as mine. The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

(i) Make it one sentence.

(ii) Make it either funny or inspirational.

(iii) Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

(iv) Enjoy yourself!

(v) Use our One-Liner Wednesday badge.

3. As long as your blog is on WordPress, you’ll be able to link via pingback. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! If you’re participating from another blogging host, just drop a link into the comment section. Note: The newest pingbacks and comments will appear at the top.

4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.

5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!

6. The prompts are here both to remind you and to inspire you to write. However, you don’t have to use the prompt word of the day. You can link any kind of jot back here. Note: If it’s 18+ content, please say so in a comment with your link or close to your pingback.

7. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge so that others can find your post more easily.

8. Have fun!

To find the full list of daily prompts from now until the end of the month, click this link: https://lindaghill.com/2017/12/27/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2018-rules/ and scroll down to the bottom of the post.


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One-Liner Wednesday – Not a Fan of Christmas

For his third Christmas on earth, Winston decides this holiday isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

You’re not seriously planning to put this thing on my head.

This whole Christmas deal sucks.

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If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

#1linerWeds badge by Dan Antion

 


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One-Liner Wednesday – So, how was your evening?

This pretty much sums up my yesterday evening:

How was yours?

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If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

#1linerWeds badge by Dan Antion


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#SoCS – Liquid Love

Ah, the end of a busy day. I’m sitting here with a glass of liquid love–the first bottle of wine I’ve opened in a long time. It’s red. Cabernet Franc, my favourite.

I started writing this post at 11:55pm, so it’s going to be a Stream of Consciousness Sunday for me. I come by it honestly, though. I’ve only been kid-free for an hour, and it’s been an hour of me-time.  So what have I been doing all day? Let me tell you.

I took Alex to see the movie Wonder, and it was, indeed, wonderful. It’s the first time he’s ever sat through a movie without asking to go home part-way through. He related to it–he related to the main character, Auggie. To Auggie’s many hospitalizations, and to his being set apart from kids who should, by rights, be his peers. Although Alex has his Deaf friends and teachers at school who treat him like just another kid, I suppose he’s the polar opposite of Auggie, being treated well outside of school. To the kids in our neighbourhood, Alex is the outcast. If this makes no sense, I apologize. See the movie. Know this is real life, for us.

Anyway, Alex thoroughly enjoyed the movie and so did I. After we came home, and after our ritual (yes, ritual, because my autistic son, Chris, wouldn’t go a weekend without it) McDonald’s feast, we put up our Christmas tree. I have to say I’m loving the new lights we have this year. I can change the colour to suit my mood. As we put the tree up–Alex, his eldest brother and his fiancé, and I–we discussed the difference in the classic white being the calm, sane side of our family (HA!) versus the coloured chaos, which is more the norm in our house.

The lights are more off-white–more warm than this. I’ll try to post a more accurate picture on Instagram.

 

I’m out of liquid love in my glass. One more, methinks, and then off to bed. In the morning it will be another liquid love, less of the liquor kind and more to do with caffeine. Mmmm…

Cheers.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click on the link to find all the other amazing posts in the comments, and join in next week! https://lindaghill.com/2017/12/08/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-9-17/


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#SoCS – Moments in Arms

It didn’t start until I got to the point (or my kids did, rather) that they didn’t need to be held anymore. When my babies were babies, I have to admit I enjoyed being able to put them down. I couldn’t get anything done–they wanted to be held all the time. But then …

As they started to become independent, I cherished those moments when they’d let me hold them. When they were getting bigger–big enough that I knew they’d soon be too big to hold or cuddle in my lap. Or held in my arms.

Time doesn’t stop. Growth happens, and nothing waits until we’re ready to have it happen to us. It’s a skill, I think, to appreciate what we have while we have it. It takes practice to enjoy the moment. To be aware of where we are at any given moment. Because we’re always looking forward or backward. Gotta do this or that, and God, how I regret doing that, or I wish I could go back …

Now, when I have the opportunity to hold my children–two of whom are adults–though those moments are brief, I find myself looking back to when they were small.

I need to take my own advice.

This tired post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Check out the other posts here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/11/10/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-11-17/


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One-Liner Wednesday – Charlie Brown’s Pumpkin?

I know I’m a day late for pumpkin day, but this thing is still sitting in my kitchen and I figured if I’ve got to keep looking at it, you should too. Alex HAD to have it, so for $1, it came home with him. The pictures are actually flattering.

It weighs about twice as much as the orange pumpkin
It’s the Frankenstein of pumpkins
The colour of a zombie
What do I do with it now?

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If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

#1linerWeds badge by Dan Antion


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#SoCS – Well then

An open prompt gives way for a totally random post, yes? Well then, here we go.

Yesterday I took the dog to the vet, because the day before I discovered he has fleas. It wasn’t just that – he needed his shots, too. That, among other things, took me away from the work I need to do. Editing work, that is.

Today, I decided to give said dog a bath. Ha! He had other ideas. Mostly, he was petrified. I have no idea what made it so easy last time I did it … Could it have been that he was half asleep and sick (he’d thrown up in his crate), and couldn’t care less last time? Maybe. So I have a dog that’s been drugged with flea and tick medication, who hasn’t yet been bathed. My question is have the fleas abandoned ship and are looking for more smells-like-home digs? Coz they ain’t swimmin’ in the sewer.

The kid had been looking forward to giving the pup a bath, so he wasn’t happy either. So we’ve just been hanging out all day, playing computer games and watching TV, with me trying to get a minute here and there to concentrate on my editing work. The dog seems happy.

Winston and Alex

It amazes me that I can get a picture out there to all of you even before the kid and the dog have moved an inch. Well done, technology.

This post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click the following link and check out all the other participating blogs, and join in yourself – it’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2017/10/13/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-1417/


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#SoCS – Volition

Gah! Why do I struggle so much to write something positive these days? To write something – anything – of my own volition? I swear, if it wasn’t for these prompts, I might not write at all for weeks on end. Which is strange, really, because when I start, it’s natural. It just goes. Before I go off on a tangent, I want to say thank you. To all of you who help me keep going with my prompts. Because though they may originate here, if it wasn’t for all of you reading and participating in them, I’d have no motivation to keep it up some weeks. Thank you. 🙂

I’m not going to get this posted on Saturday, but I’m happy I at least started it with a minute or two to spare. I’ve spent the day working and occasionally tending to my son Chris’s needs.  And talking to my mother on the phone about half a dozen times, allaying her fears that there really is nothing to worry about when she finds a note in her room that she wrote about something she was trying to remember to do three years ago. I swear sometimes it would be best to go through her room when she’s not there and empty it of every scrap of paper once a week. She’s always been a worrier. Now she finds something to worry about and with her dementia, she can discover it for the first time ten times in the space of an hour.

I actually tried not giving birth to an only child, as I am, so that only one child would be stuck looking after me as I age. As it turns out, my eldest will likely be stuck with both me and his two disabled brothers. Life just isn’t fair.

Gah! Why do I struggle so much to write something positive these days? (Yes, I copied that.)

So I was at the hospital with Alex the other day, and I was amazed at how many people I recognized from when he was there for the first eight months of his life. Not only that, there were so many of those people who recognized me. I must have made an impression. Or Alex did. He was admitted for a night after vomiting as he came out of anaesthesia and they were afraid that he may have aspirated. He spent the night with the nurses at the desk, apparently, hanging out and flirting. He didn’t want to leave the hospital when it was time to go. I remember one time he was in ICU after having a second surgery in the space of two days. He’d had sleep apnea and the first surgery wasn’t as successful as they’d hoped. Even after all that, he managed to wrap every nurse in the ICU around his little finger. I’ve never seen so many nurses drop what they were doing (in the bloody ICU!) to wave goodbye to him as they wheeled him on a stretcher out the door and back up to the ward where he would spend another few days recovering.

He gets it from his dad, I’m sure. I’m simply not that charming.

But soon we won’t have that particular hospital to go to anymore. It’s a children’s hospital, and Alex will turn seventeen in five weeks. I fear the adult hospital may not be as good.

Gah!

Alex’s first day of school, Sept. 5, 2017.

 

Check out the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt at the following link and read all the other posts. And join in too, if you’d like. It’s fun! https://lindaghill.com/2017/09/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-1617/


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One-Liner Wednesday – Cheating?

Not sure whether or not this is technically cheating (since I make up the rules), but I’m using this week’s one-liner Wednesday to let you know I’m going away for a couple of days – Alex has dental surgery on Thursday morning.

Here’s a pretty picture to make up for my sucky one-liner.

See you Friday! Wish us luck!

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If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

#1linerWeds badge by Dan Antion